GOSPEL OF JESUS
CHRIST – ACCEPT OR BELIEVE
MY STORY:
The first time my faith was challenged was when I was a teenager. It had been only about a year or two since I had gotten serious about my relationship with my creator.
1. A very close person in my life someone I respected deeply and still do, challenged me to believe differently. This person had once given his life to studying the Bible and serving God but had walked away from that believing that the Bible as we know it was not a trustworthy source of truth.
2. We talked often and the more we talked the more I became confused. What I had believed so strongly seemed now to be a crumbling foundation. I can remember the times when I would throw myself on the floor literally scared to death that I couldn’t know what the truth actually was.
3. I pleaded with God, to either show me the truth or take my life. Life for me wasn’t worth living if I couldn’t be sure of what was true. I prayed and literally wept pleading with God to show me the truth. I didn’t care what it was so long as I knew it was the truth.
THE GOSPEL – A
STUMBLING BLOCK
There will always be tension between the gospel of Jesus Christ and those who disclaim its validity and truth. I’m not talking about God hating atheist either. There are very moral and what we would consider upright people who disclaim the Gospel of Jesus. In fact you might be surprised to find out that many of the greatest theologians of our time don’t hold the gospel of Jesus Christ as absolute truth. Don’t worry, though there are some great theologians that do as well.
The fact is we live in a day of tolerance and pluralism where every god and so called truth is accepted. The gospel of Jesus Christ goes directly against this way of perceiving things because the Gospel declares that Jesus is the only way, and truth and that no one can get to God accept through Him.
Good meaning
Christians stumble over the fact that the gospel of Jesus doesn’t fit the
philosophy of our culture. And then they try to make Jesus and the gospel fit
their cultural perspective. I heard a quote once that goes like this: “There is
a god we want, and there is a God who is. They are not the same God.” You see
when we stop seeking the God who is and begin seeking the God we want, we are
guilty of idolatry. Sadly this is what many people do, they take the gospel of
Jesus and try to make it fit their cultural perspective and philosophy. Paul addressed the Corinthian church with
this issue: 2 Cor 11:3-6 But I am
afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may
somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if
someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or
if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different
gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
The good
news of Jesus is abrasive to many. In fact God even said: Isa. 8:14, 28:16, Rom 9:33 See, I lay in
Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and
the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."
Paul
understood the concept of the gospel being a stumbling block to many because he
wrote the Corinthian church about it: 1
Cor 1:23
but we preach
Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
ACCEPT VS BELIVE
You cannot only accept the gospel but you most hold fast to it being convinced of its truth – you must believe despite what culture tells you. Let’s look at three verses, all which use the word “believe” and the same Greek Word.
John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not
condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has
not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
Acts 16:31
They replied,
"Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved — you and your
household."
Rom 10:9
That if you confess
with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God
raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
This word “believe” is used somewhere around 230 times in the NT. The Word literally means to be persuaded of so you place confidence in. It signifies reliance upon not mere belief of. Take that meaning of believe and read the verses again and you realize that believing is more than just acceptance of. You can accept the gospel or you can believe it. Acceptance is the stuff of this earth – it has no commitment or strength behind it. Believing however is the stuff of heaven it means you put your full trust in.
In order to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ you have to know what it is. The Bible says in Rom 10:14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? Well here is the gospel that I and this church preaches unashamedly – the gospel that is found in the book (hold up the Bible). This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Rich Mullins said “And I believe what I believe Is what makes me what I am I did not make it, no it is making me It is the very truth of God and not The invention of any man.”
DEPRAVITY OF MAN
In the beginning after God had created mankind in His image and had given all that he had created to him – there was peace, and intimacy between God and man. Who knows how long man enjoyed this relationship with the creator but it eventually ended. Mankind disobeyed their creator and listened rather to another voice. They turned from God and that intimacy and peace with Him was broken. God must have been angry when the people he had created chose not to listen to Him. The Words he uses after they sinned are harsh – listen (Gen 3:14-24)
I will greatly increase your pains in
childbearing; Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all
the days of your life. for dust you are and to dust you will return." Cursed are you above all the livestock you will eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, he will crush your head, and you will strike
his heel.
Sin &
death had entered mankind and since has been wreaking havoc of our lives. It
didn’t take long for sin to make mankind a depraved people and far removed from
the Holy Creator from whose image we had been created in. In fact we have
become so depraved that even our righteousness is as filth before God. Isa 64:6 All of us have become like one who
is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up
like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Job 15:14-16 What is man, that he could be
pure, or one born of woman, that he could be righteous? If God places no trust
in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes, how much less
man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water!
Ps 51:5 Surely I was sinful at
birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Rom 7:18-19 I know that nothing
good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do
what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
So man without a savior was unable to climb out from the bondage of sin and death. We are born without having a peace and intimacy with God. Sin rules in our hearts from the day we are born. We may not consider ourselves bad people but God assures us in Rom 3:23 that all have sinned and fall short of His glory.
Dressed in black – perhaps a mask though not scary. Dark music should be playing in the background.
Satan “look death and corruption are gaining an ever firmer hold on mankind, the human race is in process of destruction (happy). Man, who was created in God's image and reflected God himself, is disappearing, and the work of God is being undone (proud of himself). Death, follows mankind because sin prevailed upon them, and from it there is no escape (laughing with pleasure).”
– adapted from Athanasius on the Incarnation.
Dressed in white – soft and
light music playing in background
Angel Look, the Creator longs to again bring man into peace with Him (uncertainty). But what or who can provide such grace to mankind to save them from sin and destruction. Who but God himself which created man and all things could bring good news to their situation? There is no one, no thing which can be found worthy of the creator, there is nothing in all of earth that can satisfy His decree (hopeless). For the Creator told man that sin would bring death and how can He go back upon His Word. Yet to do nothing would mean that the most Holy God would have to overlook sin, evil and injustice. But this can’t be. Can Lucifer be right? – for it seems to be there is no escape for mankind (distraught)!
CHRIST – THE
For this
purpose, to save men from that which there was no escape, the intangible and
incorruptible Word of God, yes Jesus Christ entered our world. In one sense,
indeed, He was never far from man, for no part of creation has ever been
without Him, who all the while was abiding in union with the Father. But now He
entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and revealing
himself to us. We all, like sheep,
have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid
on him the iniquity of us all. For God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal
life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to
save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever
does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the
name of God's one and only Son. Isa
53:6 & John 3:16-18
God
becoming man and taking on flesh is what we celebrate when we observe
Christmas. However, it doesn’t stop there. In fact that was only the beginning
of the good news for you and I. It was only the beginning of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ. When I celebrate Christmas I do not celebrate a baby, I celebrate
newness of life. For once I was dead but now I am alive in Christ.
We do not understand
holiness. We cannot grasp that there is one so holy, pure, and undefiled that
sin or any other impurity has no place before Him. We can’t comprehend a God
who has a wrath and zeal so great and pure that there is no tolerating sin –
not in His presence. Rom 5:8-11 But
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much
more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were
reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been
reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
THE HOPE WE HAVE IN
CHRIST
Ps 25:3 No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame Hope as it used in the Bible – the Hope
we have in Christ is not the same kind of hope we have when we say “I hope it
doesn’t rain today.” Rather the Hope we are talking about in Christ is a
confident expectation of what it is to come. Do you have this hope in Jesus
Christ? Do you believe that Jesus Christ being fully God and fully man rescued
you from your depravity, from death and from God’s Holy wrath? You see we were
once enemies of God because we were objects of his wrath but in Christ we are
reconciled with God no longer objects of his wrath. However, our hope in Jesus
Christ is not just for this world. 1
Peter 1:3-5 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his
great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can
never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you, who through faith are
shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be
revealed in the last time.
Jesus Christ was raised from the dead! Did you know that there is no other religion that claims that their leader – their God - was raised from the dead. Our cultural philosophy can’t rationalize that. But who can rationalize the mind and plans of God. We have a living hope through the resurrection, a hope of an inheritance that will never spoil or fade and which is kept in heaven until Christ returns again to reveal it to us. But what of our hope in this resurrection – a resurrection the world says never happened.
The Bible tells us that if the resurrection of Jesus Christ never happened And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world 1 Cor 15:19. Why is this, well Paul gives us several reasons. If Christ has not been Risen….
1. Our proclamation of the gospel and our faith is in vain
2. We misrepresent God because we teach that He raised Christ from the dead
3. We are still in our sins (there is still nor escape for us)
4. Those who died in Christ have perished.
You see we have a great hope. A hope in Christ of :
Hope in His Victory Rom 8:37-39
Hope in Eternal Life & an inheritance that is waiting
for us John 14:2-3
Hope in being resurrected with new bodies just as Christ
was 1 Cor 15:35-58
Hope in Christ’s return 1 Thes 5:1-2; 2 Peter 3:8-10
The Bible tells us that in heaven the longing and desire for
intimacy with our creator will be completely satisfied at last. For we cannot
inherit the
CONCLUSION
Do you believe this Gospel of Jesus Christ or have you only accepted it. Are you seeking the god you want him to be, or are you seeking the God who is. If do not put your trust in the gospel of Jesus Christ you will be swayed by the world around telling you that there is a different Jesus, one that fits better the mentality and philosophy of our culture. However I conclude, there is no others Jesus than the one I have preached to you, than the one revealed to you through God’s Word.
If you have not trusted in Jesus Christ and do not have that great hope in Him then I invite you to come and pray with me even now. Trusting in the gospel of Jesus Christ means having a right relationship with God. It means having hope, a confident expectation of something greater than we can imagine.