The Power of The Gospel | Wednesday Night Service

Good evening. Excited to be with you guys. I'm going to jump right in. What I'm going to be talking about tonight is the power of the Gospel. And I was thinking about while we were in worship, we recently did a interfaith event.

Not saying that we all believe the same things, but respectful dialogue on campus with the Muslim Dawah League, which is their education kind of branch on campus for more serious Muslims. And at the end of the panel that I was sitting on was asked a question by the audience and, and when the question was asked, I kind of like, this is not good panel etiquette, but started like pumping my arms and I just spontaneously couldn't stop because I knew that the Gospel had a good news response for the question that was being asked. Genuinely convinced that the gospel is good news. And it's in that spirit of enthusiasm tonight that I come to you as a bringer of good news. If you're in the room tonight and you say, well, I already know the Gospel, my prayer for you is that your heart would be renewed and, and recaptured by the wonder of the gospel if somehow you wandered into a Wednesday night service at a church and you're not in relationship with Jesus, I've got good news that Jesus saves.

The Gospel is the plumb line of reality. It's our true north. It's our theological center point. It's the measure of all true and healthy spirituality. Whenever we lose sight of the gospel, we get off and we get weird.

Our hearts grow cold. The church begins to decline into legalism or licentiousness. We lose our spiritual health and vitality and many become Christians in name only. Those inside the church remain unchanged and those outside the church remain unsaved. And after periods of decline in the church, and this is if you study revival history, where often there's times of decline in the church.

And usually what's happened is that we've lost some core truth of the gospel. People have slid into legalism or licentiousness. And then what tends to happen is that there's a return of the centrality of the gospel message and the clear preaching of the gospel. It's almost always been involved in the church's renewal, hearts being revived and masses of the lost being saved. And I'm convinced, as I said, that the preaching of the gospel is not just for the lost.

Those inside the church from it continually. It is living water and fresh bread from heaven. It was Spurgeon who said that the most important thing he could do every day was remind himself of the Gospel. The gospel is not something that we master and then move on to more advanced things. We will be looking into the gospel throughout all of eternity.

J.D. greer writes, The Gospel is not just the diving board off of which we jumped into the pool of Christianity. It is the pool itself. It's not only the way that we begin in Christ, it is the way we grow in Christ. As Tim Keller says, the Gospel is not just the ABCs of Christianity.

It is the A to Z. It is not the first step in a stairway of truth. It is more like the hub of God's wheel of truth. All other Christian virtues flow out of it. That's why growth in Christ is never going beyond the gospel, but going deeper into the gospel.

So what is the gospel? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The first four books of the New Testament are all called, help me out. The Gospels. And they all tell this story of so the gospel is Jesus.

Jesus is the gospel. The story of Jesus is the gospel. It's the good news of God's kingdom and the way of salvation being opened up through Jesus Christ. According to Romans 1:16. It is the power of God unto salvation.

According to 1 Peter 1:12. It's the message that angels long to look into. You know that the angels long to look into. This message of the gospel, it's the greatest and clearest revelation we've been given of God's glory. We talk about glory a lot and sometimes I think it's a church word that we don't know what it means.

The glory refers to the shining forth of God's attributes. It's the shining forth of his character and his nature. When you experience the grace of God, you've experienced the glory of God. When you've experienced the mercy of God, you're experiencing a dimension of his glory. And there is no place where we revealed a picture of the glory of God than in the face of Jesus Christ revealed in the gospel.

Without the gospel, we're lost. We're in the dark. We have no way home. We're eternally separated from God. We are dead in our sins.

There's no hope. There's only the fearful expectation of judgment. But praise God. Can I get a witness? Praise God.

That that is not the case. Jesus Christ has come. The good news has been revealed from heaven. The mystery of the gospel that Paul refers to, some Bible commentators call it the open secret. There's nothing hidden.

It's open. It's available to everybody.

So tonight I want to turn our attention to consider various dimensions or pillars of the gospel. So that we may be built up in our faith and our confidence. Number one, if you're taking notes, is that the Gospel is something historic. It's been said that the Gospel is not good advice. It's good news.

It's the proclamation of an event that has happened in human history as a result of which everything has changed. I'm going to say that again. The Gospel is not good advice. It is good news. It is the proclamation of an event that has happened in human history as a result of which everything has changed.

If you have your Bibles with you, turn with me to First Corinthians 15, starting in verse 1. 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, starting in verse 1, Says this. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. If you're taking notes. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.

Number one, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. Number two, that he was buried. And number three, that he was raised on the third day in. In accordance with the Scriptures. And then he appeared to Cephas and then to the 12.

Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to one untimely born, he also appeared to me. If the Gospel isn't history, it's useless. If the Gospel isn't history, it's useless. And Paul is making a case that.

That the Gospel is related to actual events. If you have a highlighter, a pen, or a physical Bible. I don't think many people bring physical Bibles to church anymore. We should get back in that habit. It's a good habit.

Look at verse six and I want you to underline verse six in your Bible and make a note. Paul says in verse six, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. Simple math. That's more than 250 people that at one time where eyewitnesses the resurrection of Jesus. Anybody ever heard something like, don't you know that the Bible was written way after the events?

Well, what does this verse right here at the end of 1st Corinthians 15 tell us? That this letter to the Corinthian Church was written well within living memory of the events themselves. If you want to go interview somebody who saw Jesus resurrected from the dead. You can go down to Jerusalem and you can interview them today. And this is not.

If you come to the New Testament, you're not familiar with the Bible. You may expect that somewhere we're just going to have like all the doctrine laid out and one of these apostles may manifestos, but we don't get that. What we get is correspondence from the front lines of the missionary frontier and they're writing to churches that are struggling to try to figure out how to live in the way of Jesus. Now if you were going to fabricate the letter to the Corinthian Church, would you include in that letter that one of the members of that church has been sleeping with his father's mother? Probably don't make up that detail.

Do you say things like, I'm afraid that when you guys get together to take the Lord's Supper, you're actually doing more harm than you are good? No, you probably don't make that up. What we get is Paul not sparing many words, but when he gets to this last part about the actual events of the Gospel, he's resolute and he's unwavering and he's saying this has happened and as a result of it, everything is different. The Gospel is not a superstition, it's not a speculation. It's not about abstraction.

It is about reality, real events in history. It's about something that has happened. 2 Peter 1:16. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of His Majesty.

First John 1:1:3. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. This we proclaim concerning the word of life, the life appeared. We have seen it and testify to it. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Here are these apostles and they're claiming to be witnesses of something. A crucified Christ, an empty tomb, a missing body, a risen Lord. These are the facts of first century history. No cross, no Christianity, no resurrection, no Christianity.

Our faith is inextricably attached to these events. And praise God, they actually happened and have historical veracity. When you believe the Gospel, you weren't believing an old wives tale. You were receiving a reliable historic record of what happened concerning Jesus of Nazareth. Number two, the gospel is something accomplished.

John 19:38 says, When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, come on, you guys know this verse. Three of the most powerful words in human history. It is finished. And he bowed his head and he gave up his spirit. One song puts it this way.

Behold the man upon a cross. Mocking voice, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. His dying breath has brought me life.

I know that it is finished. Through the gospel, victory was secured. Salvation was accomplished. Redemption was purchased. Reconciliation was made possible.

The wrath of God was satisfied. Evil was overcome and death. That should get some amens and some hallelujahs.

I don't usually talk back to. Is the church excited about the Gospel? Are we bored with the gospel? Have we mastered it? We're ready to move on to new things?

No. This is the good news that saved our souls and brought us into right relationship with Jesus. Tim Keller writes, jesus is the true, better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us. Jesus is the true and better able, who, though innocently slain, has blood that now cries out not for our condemnation, but for acquittal. Jesus is the true and better Abraham, who answered the call of God to leave home, not knowing whither he went to create a new people of God.

Jesus is the true and better Isaac, who was not just offered up by his father on the mount, but was truly sacrificed for us. And when God said to Abraham, now I know that you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from me. Now we can look at God taking his son up the mountain and sacrificing him, and say, now we know that you love us because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love from us. Jesus is the true and better Jacob, who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved. Jesus is so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.

Jesus is the true and better Joseph, who at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his power to save them. Jesus is the true and better Moses, who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord, and who mediates a new covenant. Jesus is the true and better rock of Moses, who struck with the rod of God's justice, now gives us water in the desert. Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer who then intercedes for and saves his Stupid friends. Jesus is the true and better David, whose victory becomes his people's victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.

Jesus is the true and better Esther, who didn't just risk leaving an earthly palace, but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn't just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people. Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast into the storm so that we could be brought in. Jesus is the real rock of Moses, the real Passover lamb. Innocent, perfect, helpless, slain, so the angel of death will pass over us. He's the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light and the true bread.

What I'm saying is, as many have pointed out, is that we are not David. The story is not about us mustering up our courage and having enough faith to face our giants. It's about Jesus who marched out and took on the giants of sin and death and wanted accomplished. I'll get to share it. The Gospel is about something accomplished.

But the Gospel is not only something historic and accomplished, but it's also the most relevant and urgent message we must attend to. The Gospel is something relevant. The gospel takes up and consumes the all of history in its scope, past, present and future. And it bears down upon the present and demands our urgent response. Love what Martyn Lloyd Jones used to say is that God hasn't changed, human nature hasn't changed, and God's solution for human condition has not changed.

It's still Jesus Christ. Our wardrobes may have changed, our modes of transportation may have changed, our modes of communication may have changed, but human nature hasn't changed. And God's provision for salvation through Jesus Christ is still the same and only applicable message. Hebrews 3:15 says, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. And he's not speaking to the lost, he's speaking to the church.

Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 6:2 I tell you, now is the time of God's favor. Now is the day of salvation. The Gospel meets our deepest needs and satisfies our deepest longings. As followers of Jesus, we do not serve the memory of Jesus. We don't follow the echo of his voice.

Jesus is the resurrected and living Lord and He's seated in heaven now. It means that if we follow Jesus, we must follow him as the living Lord. His voice is active. The call to obedience is is comprehensive. Jesus is the living Lord, and to his voice we must attend.

The gospel is something given second or Ephesians 2, 8 and 9 says, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works. So that no one may boast, the Gospel is a message of grace. John 3:16. Come on, if you know it, quote it out loud with me.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes shall not perish, but have eternal life. That's grace. That's grace. Grace is God's free, unmerited, undeserved gift of generosity and goodness, namely that he gave His Son for our redemption. And at this point we must make an important distinction.

There's a huge difference between cheap grace and costly grace. Cheap grace often results in a cultural Christianity. It fails to recognize the depth of our sinfulness before a holy God. And therefore it results in a shallow repentance and a shallow apprehension of the grace of God. And it results in little to no transformation in our lives.

Cheap grace is open to the charge that God gave to the prophets and priests through the prophet Jeremiah. They have healed the wound of my people, lightly saying, peace, peace when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed. They did not know how to blush.

Cheap grace causes people to shrug and say, I suppose I've been forgiven. Costly grace causes men to write things like, we're the whole realm of nature, mine that were a gift far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. First Peter 1:18 and 19 says that our redemption was not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. Understand this, that the Father has eternally been loving the Son.

And if there was any price less than the blood of Jesus that he could have paid for your redemption, he would have done it. But it costs nothing less. Kind of helped me out. God just kind of helped me out. I was a mostly good person and God kind of helped me out.

Costly grace says that there was nothing less than the precious blood of Jesus that flowed down from Calvary that was going to put you right with a holy God. When you realize that weight lifted off of your shoulders and what it cost for you to be set right with God. It's the experience I had as a 13, 14 year old boy while the words of that song were being sung in a small church in upstate New York that for the first time I realized there was no such thing as spectators at the cross. If he died for the sins of the world, then I was as guilty as those who put those seven inch nails through his feet and his hands. That it was my sin that caused him to suffer like that.

And at the same time that I felt this just hatred for my sin that I had never known as a young boy. I felt the immense love of God pouring into my heart. I did that. And yet he loves me so much that he did that for me. It made me want to throw off the old life and run to this man and give him everything that's grace.

The Gospel is something received. The Gospel is received by faith. At first glance, James would seem to be in contradiction with Paul when he writes, you see, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Martin Luther once said, we are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. James was not saying that we are saved by meritorious good works, but describing the quality of true saving faith, a faith that always expresses itself in actions.

It's not mere intellectual assent. In that sense, the devil is a believer. The devil believes that Jesus was crucified. In fact, he knows it. He watched.

He knows that Jesus was in that tomb for three days and that he rose again. But the devil is not set right with God. There's a faith that must move beyond intellectual assent to clinging to Jesus. In John's Gospel, he uses the word believe. This would be a fun study for you times for your own personal Bible study.

John uses the word believe 99 times in his Gospel account. It is the key word of his Gospel. At the end of his Gospel, he writes, these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. So what I'm pointing out is if you were to read the entire Gospel of John and pay attention to every way that he uses and every time that he uses the word believe, you would have a good and comprehensive definition of what it means to have faith in Jesus. It's a faith that looks to Jesus, that trust in Jesus, that cleaves to him, that calls on him, that surrenders all to follow and obeys him as Lord.

This is saving faith in Jesus. The good news is that the Gospel results in our justification. When we receive by faith the grace that God comes to us, or, sorry, the grace of God that comes to us through faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible says that we are justified, we are set right with God, we're given the righteous standing of Jesus before a holy God. Our sins are no longer counted against us.

We are forgiven. The merits of Jesus, perfect record and achievements are transferred to our account. And it was the recapturing of this central doctrine that launched the Protestant Reformation and that electrified one of the great preachers of the first Great Awakening, John Wesley, when it became real to him. Martin Luther, before understanding justification by grace through faith, wrote this himself. Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience.

So here's a man living in a monastery. I mean, he's cut off from all the enticements of worldliness and greed and selfishness. And he's just serving others all day and he's doing his, probably his chance and his prayers and his liturgy. And yet he knew in his heart that he was not right before God. And he actually, if you were to read that quote going further, he would say, I railed against the law of God.

I found in my heart that I hated the law of God because all it could do was condemn him. And he struggled with this phrase. In Romans 1, it said that the righteousness of God, which he had been taught, meant that the righteousness of God is exercised the wrath of God against unrighteous sinners. And he said, I could not rejoice in this doctrine of the righteousness of God. And so he said, I beat continually upon this text until its meaning was revealed to me.

And then he realized that righteousness and justification comes by faith in Jesus Christ. And here's this man who's been living in a monastery, whose heart gets opened up to the grace of God. Almost 200 years later, in 1725, John Wesley had what some would consider an ethical or a moral conversion. He began to turn from the world towards God and was extremely zealous and self disciplined. And during this time, he founded what would be called the Holy Club.

Two of its other members were Charles Wesley, who wrote many hymns that you're probably familiar with, and George Whitfield, who was the other great evangelist of the first Great Awakening. Quite a company of people. Holy Club was not a name that they had chosen for themselves. It was a derogatory term given to the group. They were also called the Bible moths.

You can imagine what that is like, just hovering around the Bible. They were made fun of for how serious they were taking the call to personal holiness, but they took it as a badge of honor and just began to call themselves the Holy Club. John believed that apart from Holiness, no one would be saved. However, he was mistaken about how we obtain this righteousness. And on a trip to America for a missions trip, the ship that John was journeying on was almost shipwrecked, and he was traveling with Moravians.

And John Wesley was afraid to die because he realized, I don't have an assurance of salvation. And the Moravians are rejoicing. They're at peace. They're singing hymns and they're praising God. They're not afraid of death because they have an assurance of salvation and knew that their sins had been forgiven.

So he comes back from this mission trip feeling like his. All of his efforts were a total failure. And where the preface to Martin Lee attended a Moravian gathering at Aldersgate street, where the preface to Martin Luther's commentary Imagine the Providence of God on Romans was being read. And Wesley records that he felt his heart strangely warmed and came to trust that Christ and Christ alone for salvation. And he was given an assurance of salvation that his sins had been removed.

I'm wondering tonight if some of us need an Aldersgate conversion. What I mean by that is some of you have awakened to the reality of God. There's a holy God, separated by him because of my sin. I'm gonna try to be a better person. I talk to, I don't even know how many dozens of people every week on a college campus just sparking up gospel conversations.

Probably hundreds, if not thousands over the last couple years. And I meet a lot of Christians, and I never take for granted when they say that they're a Christian, and I say, oh, it's amazing. When did you come to believe in Jesus? Tell me your story. I said, do you.

If you were to tell somebody else how they should get saved or get right with God, what would you tell them? Well, should go to church, read their Bible. They should pray, should be kind to other people. Where is Jesus in this story? Like, where's the cross?

Where. Where's the resurrection? Where's. Where's the grace of God? And what I realized is that so many people have grown up in church and don't know the gospel.

They've had an ethical conversion. They believe that they should be a better person. Islam will give you that same message. Hinduism and karma will tell you the same thing. Balance the scales of karma in the right direction.

That's not the gospel. Some of us are even afraid of God. We have the healthy fear of the Lord, and we're trying hard, but we're depending on our works to set us right with God. And what we need is the justification by the grace of God through the faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ to set us right. I know that I'm going to step on some toes with this.

I believe that the gospel is needs to be preached to the right and to the left. And I am conservative on all cultural issues. So don't run out of here saying that Pastor Jay, let a woke guy come in here. I believe that right wing conservatism right now has a pseudo righteousness. And if people aren't willing to preach the gospel to right wing conservatives in America, many of them will enter into a crisis eternity.

There is one Messiah and his name is Jesus Christ. And that doesn't mean that the left doesn't need the gospel preached to them too. But we are not saved because we have a superior moral position on any cultural issue. We are saved because we have confessed that we are in desperate need of the saving work of Jesus Christ. And apart from him, there is no righteous standing before a holy God.

The gospel leads to our sanctification. We must be careful not to believe that sanctification merits justification. I'm going to say that again. We must be careful not to believe what basically what I just said, that sanctification merits justification. But we must also reject the notion of a justification that does not lead to our sanctification.

Does that make sense? Two simple meanings of this word sanctification that I'll highlight for our understanding are, number one, that we are set apart to God in Christ. This is the work of God himself. This is Paul's favorite way to refer to Christians are those who are in Christ that positionally you have been plucked out of this world and placed into union with Jesus Christ. This is a done deal.

It's finished if you're in Jesus. An analogy that I would use that Spurgeon used is that when something was set apart for holy use in the temple like the altar, that didn't mean that you just now could go use it as a George Foreman grill and flip burgers on it, right? It had a set apart use. It was no longer to be profaned. No longer nobody could just grab the showbread.

There's something about your life when you realize I've been set apart to God in Christ Jesus that doesn't allow you to be given over to the profane anymore. You reckon yourself holy, set apart to God, but then the second use of the word of sanctification is a progressively or sorry is being progressively made holy and righteous in actual character through the inner Working of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, he regenerates us. It means he makes us new creatures, we're given new hearts and a new nature. He progressively makes us more and more like Jesus.

And he does so namely through two means. I'm gonna give you some new words you might not be familiar with. Number one, vivification. And number two, mortification. If you just think about how parts of these words are used, you'll figure out pretty quickly what they mean.

Through vivification, the Holy Spirit vivifies or he amplifies the new life that we have received in Jesus. For example, before I was a follower of Jesus, I had little desire for this. But the Holy Spirit gives me a hunger and an appetite for God's work that then the Spirit breathes on and he vivifies it. He brings it to life. He amplifies my desire.

Before I met Jesus, I was not a super generous person. And if I received money, I was thinking about how I was going to spend it on myself. But when the Holy Spirit comes into our life, he produces Christlike character and he moves and breathes on the desire to do that which is pleasing to God. Again, through vivification, the Holy Spirit vivifies or amplifies the new life we've been given in Christ. He gives us new pure and holy desires and impulses.

And he reminds us of the commands of Christ and moves us to obey them from the heart. This is called walking by the Spirit. This is. I love what Oswald Chambers says. Let's just imagine that you're reading the Sermon on the Mount and there's a command and you read the part where it says, if anyone slaps you on the right side of the cheek, turn to him the left side of your cheek also.

And you say, I've done my Bible reading for the day and guess what? You're sitting in your office or at your breakfast table and nobody's there slapping you. And how can you have obeyed the command of Christ that day, right? But then you get into the office, it's not even 8:30 yet, and somebody says something that offends you and it's just irritating. You know, it's under your skin.

But it's like it doesn't really need a confrontation. Now the Holy Spirit brings back with vivid memory. Remember when Jesus said, turn the other cheek. Now you prove yourself to be an actual disciple of Jesus. Will I obey at the point of confrontation what Christ has commanded?

This is how the Spirit works. Jesus said in John somewhere 14, 16 that when the Spirit comes, he will remind you of all that I have said. So we fill ourselves with God's word and then when the opportunities actually present themselves, the Holy Spirit breathes life on. Will you now actually obey Jesus as your living Lord? Through mortification, the Holy Spirit helps us put to death the deeds of the flesh.

We crucify our flesh and say no to sinful impulses. We are those who have been crucified and buried with Christ through our baptism. So how can sin continue to reign in our bodies? Romans 6 is instructive here. Some of my favorite passages on baptism and one of the most helpful ways to to say no to sin in your life.

The same impulses, because the devil keeps whispering and offering temptation in your life are still going to come into your life. But what I've learned to start doing is I try to picture my baptism as an actual watery grave when the old Schuyler was buried. And I say, there is a Schuyler who used to be open to that conversation. He died. He's not here for the conversation anymore.

He's now alive by the power of the Spirit. And he lives to please his master through the inner working of the Spirit. The lordship of Jesus is demonstrated in our lives. It becomes real. Jesus said, why do you call me Lord, Lord, but you do not what I say?

The lordship of Jesus baked into the Gospel, which is part of the proclamation of the gospel that Jesus is king, is demonstrated in our life as we walk by the Spirit, not gratifying the desires of the flesh. More good news. The gospel ends in our glorification. The gospel points to a future day when Jesus will return in glory. Amen.

The dead in Christ will rise and we will receive resurrected, glorified bodies. Come on. Can I get an amen? That's good news. And the Bible writes about it like it's a guarantee it's going to happen.

It's not a wish. This is a future eventuality. We will be with God forever in glory, in a new heavens and a new earth without sin, sickness, suffering, death or sorrow. Amen.

Last couple points here, and we'll go into a time of praise and adoration, is that the Gospel is a message that must be preached. It must find articulation. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. People must have the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel. How can they hear or respond without having it preached to them?

There's a quote that I love that maybe you've heard this. I don't love the first quote. But I love the response to it is that preach the gospel always and use words when necessary. You guys familiar with this quote? Okay, the response that I like, if you like that, I'm going to step on your toes, is it.

That quote is like saying, feed the starving and when necessary use food. The gospel is a message that must be articulated. How can people understand God's provision of grace through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ if they've not been told how they can respond? How on earth it must find articulation. But as I've been saying throughout is that this is not just a message for the lost.

Believers continually need to hear the gospel in order to understand and appropriate by faith what has been made available to them. Most of our spiritual ailments, most of our struggles in spiritual warfare are a failure to apply what's already been provided through the gospel. And so we preach the gospel continually so that by faith we can take hold of what's been made available in Jesus Christ. You know what the armor of God is? It's putting the gospel on.

Helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness, belt of truth, shoes of the gospel of peace, so you're agile and ready when the enemy comes at you. Shield of faith in who? What? Jesus. And the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, which all of which testify to Jesus Christ.

Praying in the Spirit on all occasions, which you don't have if not for the gospel. It's taking everything Paul's been writing about in Ephesians up until that point. He's saying, so put it on. But how can you put on the armor of God and be forward facing in battle against a very real enemy who wants to pick off and make his church unfruitful? If you've not taken hold of the provisions of the gospel, Matthew 24:14, it's made explicit that the end will not come until this gospel of the kingdom is preached to all people groups.

Paul writes in First Corinthians 9:16, Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. The good news must be proclaimed. I don't mean to get into another message. I'm an evangelist. I have two messages.

I have the gospel and I have help people evangelize. Like those are my messages. And prayer fuels all enemy. I'm just going to go off on a quick tangent. If the enemy knows that the return of Jesus is connected to global evangelization, every tribe, nation, tongue and people having a chance to hear and respond to the gospel, where do you think he's going to focus most of his artillery in stopping our momentum.

The Great Commission.

The Great Commission is the place where the enemy is going to focus most of his artillery and trying to stop the church because it's the forward movement of the church. It's the forward movement of the church. It's the message of Christ's victory. How does Satan lose territory when one soul responds to the Gospel of the Kingdom and he's transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light? Satan has just lost territory.

Now when revival and spiritual awakening hits a city, whole cities come under the lordship of Jesus. He wants us focused on almost anything but the Great Commission. The Spirit has been given explicitly for witness. Acts 1:8. When the Spirit comes, you'll receive power and you'll be my what?

Witnesses. We have to get back to the Great Commission. I always ask people, you have a plan probably for your retirement, for your career, for your children's education. Do you have a Great Commission plan for your life? Do you have a plan for how you're going to throw your life into what Jesus called most important?

Sorry, I guess Great Commandment. Great Commandment is most important. But they're closely tied together. They're the last words of our Lord. The last two points.

Thomas, if you want to come back up. Getting ready to close, is that the gospel has vertical and horizontal dimensions. It's unfortunate that the church has largely been divided into social justice groups and those who value personal piety when the writers of the New Testament allowed no such division. The gospel transforms people from inside out, and then it moves them out into the world as changed people. The gospel not only puts us in right relationship with God, but then it teaches us how to live in right relationship with our brothers and sisters and the rest of humanity.

What this looks like when it actually lands in our life is you can't believe the gospel and stay racist.

You can't. That wall of hostility has been torn down at the cross. You can't believe the gospel and look down on the poor. You can't believe the gospel and hate your brother or sister. You can't believe the gospel and refuse to forgive somebody.

Taking up our cross. To follow Jesus, we must receive both the vertical and the horizontal implications of the gospel. The last and the great message is that God is the gift of the gospel. God himself is the gift of the gospel. Through the gospel, we get union with Christ.

We're filled with the Holy Spirit. We're adopted as sons and daughters. We are accepted in the beloved throughout all of eternity. My favorite way to describe the Trinity. It's not an egg illustration.

Don't use that anymore. It's not ice, vapor and water. Those are actually heretical. They describe modalism. Don't use.

That is, it's the perfect community of love that from all of eternity God the Father has been perfectly and infinitely loving. The Son and the Son, like an eternal sponge of the Father's affections, absorbing all of it. And the Spirit is proceeding from the Father and the Son in this exchange of love. It's why you exist. Why?

Because the nature of love is self giving. It's always outward going. It's always, always trying to give. And so Father, Son and Spirit say, let's create humans to share in the love that we've known throughout all of eternity.

One day, one day you're going to stand inside the interchange of that love flowing between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, with an unveiled faces, all the glory of God, the shining forth of his attributes. There's going to be nothing to hinder that. And because sin is going to be completely done away with on that day. What I love to think about is like all of our relationships with humans on this side are tainted. Even, even the closest ones, your marriage, your kids, all of it, it's all tainted by sin.

Let's be honest, when sin is plucked from the human heart, all of my horizontal relationships are gonna be perfect. I'll just look at you and I'll have nothing but love for you in my heart. That's amazing. The gift of the gospel is God himself. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, what is the chief end of man?

The answer is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. John Piper rephrases that and he says, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. And throughout all of eternity, God will be glorified in the saints as we delight ourselves in Him. If you have a picture of heaven that is not God centric, you don't have a picture of heaven.

What makes heaven heaven is. It's God's space. It's not Disneyland in the sky. It's the fact that God is there and we will be with him forever. The new heavens and the new earth.

The vision is that there's no need for temple or sun or moon, because God himself and the Lamb are in the city and his face is the light of that city. We get God in the gospel.

That's what the gospel has made available to you. Not just a satisfied, clear conscience, not just feeling better about yourself. You get God.

If you're bored with the gospel, you don't understand the gospel. If you think you've mastered it, you've not even begun. Throughout all of eternity, we're going to be reaching our hand into that honey jar. And we're going to discover new dimensions of his glory and his beauty. We must come back to the Gospel.

I believe it's the cure for our infighting. I believe it's the answer to almost every apologetic question. It's all found in the Gospel.