What is the Gospel?
The following is an excerpt from a message Eric preached called The Gospel Empowers Everyday.
The title of my message is the Gospel Empowers Everyday and this is the central truth that I want to tease out over the next several minutes by taking these three words and asking three questions
What is the Gospel?
How does it Empower?
How does the gospel empower my everyday life?
So
Let’s roll.
I. What Is The Gospel?
I’m going to introduce you to the Gospel.
G.O.S.P.E.L.-
GOD
God is alive. He lives, He exists, and to deny him is to be a fool. He is the living God who is creator of the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them and reigns over it all as King. He is Supreme and Sovereign.
Because he is our creator, we are indebted to him for life itself. We are accountable to him as subjects in His kingdom. We are to worship him because he is God and there is no other like him.
• Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Rev 4:11
OFFENDED
Now mankind has offended the rule and reign of God. We break God’s holy law. In fact sin is often defined as missing the mark. But what we’ve done is totally rebellious,. We weren’t even aiming at that mark. We turned away from God and said we‘d be God ourselves.
We are not just victims of the fall. Yes, we live in death and disease, heartache and pain, suffering and sickness, guilt and anxiety, addiction and depression, earthquakes and floods, uncertainty and insecurity.
Yet the Bible says
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— Rom 5:12-13
We can thank Adam and Eve, the first humans. We have inherited sin because of them. They were the first to doubt what is true. They were the first to question what is right. They were the first to wonder, “Who am I?”--- ALL BECAUSE THEY SINNED.
BUT WE’VE SINNED TOO!
We all have participated in the great rebellion and the great offense to a Great and Holy God. Our hearts are so deceptive; we deceive ourselves with the severity of our sin. We minimize it! We excuse it. We sin and are evil, no matter how much good we try to do
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; Isa 53:6
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. Isa 64:6
SENTENCED
Since we have offended God’s infinite holiness through our disobedience, we are sentenced. That’s right! We stand condemned. We are sentenced to the judgment and wrath of God. God will be perfectly fair, and we will totally deserve it.
For the wages of sin are death, Rom 6:23
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matt 10:28
PITY
Now God does not take pleasure in condemning sinners. What we see in God’s character is that he has taken PITY on us by providing a way to be saved from our sin and the punishment our sins deserve.
Look at the character of God in this verse:
Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? Ezekiel 18:23
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy… Titus 3:4-6
EXCHANGE
Now God, being loving and desiring to save His people, and yet having a just wrath needing to be satisfied, cannot simply dismiss the punishment we deserve. That would be unjust.
What he has done is: God has sent his son Jesus Christ, to live a righteous life and to unjustly suffer for sins he did not commit. He suffered the full wrath and separation from the Father himself through the Cross and Death. We deserved that! But because of what Jesus has done… God offers us an incredible exchange.
Our sin and its punishment- for God’s forgiveness and Jesus ‘ righteousness
Defining the Exchange
Our sins are counted as His. And His righteousness counted as ours.
For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, 1 Peter 3:18
The Means of the Exchange
You might be asking why is Jesus the only Way?
Well, because Jesus is God, His punishment was valuable because of His Divine nature.
Jesus became man; he was flesh and blood and, as a result, was our substitute.
Jesus lived the perfect life, so he was the perfect sacrifice for our sins, thereby reconciling us to God
Jesus rose from the dead three days later, conquering death, and thus possesses the authority to give eternal life.
The Avenue for the Exchange
Since Jesus is the only way we are to be saved and rescued, what do we do?
We’ve heard that the Gospel is the good news about God and what he has done, and we stand convicted of the truths of our guilt. Yet now we see even clearer the greatness and goodness of God and what he has done and how he is glorified through this. We understand why Jesus is the only way to be saved; we cannot obviously save ourselves… what do we do to be saved?
There must an exchange of our sinfulness for God’s righteousness by having faith in Jesus Christ.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8,9
What is faith? Faith has simply been defined as reliance or trust. Two aspects
Love this acronym: FAITH
Forsaking All! I Take Him- J.I. Packer
Forsaking all- Repenting of sin! Turning from it and turning toward God and asking forgiveness.
I take him- I rely fully on Christ!
You are saved by Faith alone. Better yet, you are saved by Faith alone that is alive! We don’t have a faith that is dead.
We bank everything on Christ! His righteousness, His accomplishment, His Work …for salvation, eternal destiny, and even life here and now.
We forsake all our accomplishments, all our work, all our good deeds to be satisfied in this life
We take him. We find our satisfaction in Him.
Not the gifts of justification and imputation and grace and adoption and the Spirit in us. NO. We find our satisfaction in him!
LIFE
The Gospel is also about Life- Life eternally yes. But also life here. And the Gospel empowers us for life here and now.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10
Now I’m not saying the gospel releases us to have the best life now! I’m not saying he empowers us to live life the way the world declares. The gospel doesn’t help us succeed in the pursuit of materialism, narcissism, and comforts! It is not a means to our selfish ends.
Since God himself is the ultimate good news, and we become reconciled to him through Jesus Christ, and we worship him as Savior and God---
We enjoy this joy in Him despite the pains and disappointments of this world.
We enjoy this life satisfaction in Him despite the situations that leave us empty and dry. Christ is our fullness of life...Simply, he is our life.
That is the gospel! That is the Good news.
OK Now What? What do we do with this information?
The Lord God is calling you to
Turn away from your sin and
Trust in Jesus’s work on the cross to forgive you, make you new over time and
Believe that he is alive and will work in your life until He calls you home
This invitation is a call for you to receive salvation from your sins. This salvation is not a one-time prayer for fire insurance from hell. It is a posture of repenting and placing your faith in Jesus daily.
It begins in a moment, and that moment could be now. Simply talk to God about the three points He is calling all of us to, noted above.
