Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be spread throughout the world so that all may know Christ. Join us now for a portion of one of our services here at Kerwin Baptist Church, located in Kernersville, North Carolina. We're going to work on the rest of our series with the idea of our theme being for the gospel, the idea of tonight being the measure of the gospel. And I wanted to believe.
figure out which direction they go with that. And I struggled a little bit because when you think about the measure of the gospel, normally we think about. From our perspective, what the gospel does for us and in us, and that's how we measure it. You can measure the spiritual maturity of a Christian, if you will, and that's how we often measure the gospel. But I'm going to take a little bit different approach tonight, and I want to maybe approach it from God's side.
Show you the measure from his perspective, I think, and just let you see some things. And I won't keep it long tonight. I can't promise that, but I'm going to try not to keep you long. But let me just say again, it's an honor to be here. I just appreciate you guys so much.
I love our church, and it's an honor. It's just a privilege from God to be able to stand behind a pulpit. And we don't take that lightly, but I just appreciate you guys. We're going to open in prayer, if you would pray for my wife this week. Tuesday is our anniversary.
And we are 35 years. You wanna stay in there?
Okay. She has put up with me for 35 years. And she said it's just too hard to train a new one, so she's going to keep me now. But I feel like I have job security, so I think. And also, I have a prayer request.
One of our pastors, dear pastor in the Philippines, that we were able to minister with last time, Pastor and I were there. He just messaged me right before church started. His wife had to go to the hospital tonight, their time, and they are doing some tests on her. They're not sure what's going on. She had some chest pains.
And her name is Rita.
So, if you would, let's pray for Rita tonight. And if you would pray for Rita, and this is a wonderful family, they're getting ready to have their summer camp, and they're excited about it. He said they had 299 registered for camp, and they're excited about that.
So we want to pray for this family tonight and just pray for Rita and her health. And again, that God does bless our time. But let's open up in prayer and then we're going to jump into our passage and go. Father, we love you. We thank you for the week that you've given us, Lord, an amazing week that we don't deserve, Lord.
But you choose to meet with us, to use us, to just love us. And Lord, I appreciate so much all that you do. And I pray for tonight. I pray that, again, you'll be with our time, that you'll just use it in a special way. Open up our hearts.
And Lord, give me the right words, be up my voice. I think about Rita tonight and Lord being in the hospital in the Philippines and just struggling a little bit with her health. And I pray to give doctors wisdom. But, Lord, would you touch this family and just do a miracle in her life that you'll strengthen her? Allow her to be at camp this week and that everything will be fine.
And Lord, for this family, as they have just dedicated their life to serving you. And Lord, their church is so precious. And I just pray that you'll bless them and keep your hand upon them. But Lord, again, thank you for our church. Thank you for these people.
Thank you for the sacrifice. Thank you for those who could be here and for those who could not. Again, you'll just bless them and watch over them tonight. And we just pray for all the events that are coming up as we get ready for the celebration of the resurrection and Easter Sunday. And Lord, what a weekend it's going to be.
I pray that we'll use it effectively, that we'll invite people to come. That, Lord, we'll just see what you'll do because of who you are. And we'll praise you for it. In your name, we pray. Amen.
All right. 1 Peter chapter 1 is where I'm going to be tonight. I really, again, debated, kind of fault this a little bit and debated before I settled. But 1 Peter chapter 1, I'm going to put the verses on the screen for you.
Well, I'm not going to, but he is back there. Because I don't have to tonight.
So, 1 Peter chapter 1, let me just read verses 18 and 19. For as much as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things, such as silver and gold, from your vain conversations received by traditions from your Father, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot.
Now, as we get ready to preach about the gospel, you've probably been gospeled out, haven't you? You've heard about this since January. And let me tell you: if you're sitting here tonight and you think, oh, another message on the gospel, and that does not do something inside of you. If you're looking for an indicator of how you're doing spiritually, that might be it. When you hear about the gospel, when you hear about what God did for you and it doesn't excite you anymore, that's a scary place.
So let me just encourage you tonight. Listen, we've all been there. We all struggle with this. We get complacent. We forget.
We have not thought about some things in our life. But can I tell you, I didn't put this up there, but I just was thinking about this verse, 2 Peter 1:9. But he that lacketh these things, there's a whole list of things there. Do you grow in grace because of the gospel? But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged.
from his old sins. May we never forget that God purged us from our sins. May we never lose the wonder of it all. And so tonight, can I just encourage you as we're going into this message, in our theme and in this series, if you will, as we talk about the gospel, may it be something that excites you because of what God did for you, not because of who's given the message. Tonight, may we just focus on what God did for us?
So, the gospel can be measured, but not with human scales. There's no way for us to evaluate and truly know. And even if you said, Well, I can see it in someone's life, that person could be living a double life and you'd never know it. There are people who show up to church all the time who look really good and they have the game face on and they're going through the motions and they can do everything, but inside they are really far from God. We can be there, can't we?
We can put the game face on. We can do it all.
So we can't just look at somebody and say, oh, that's the measure of the gospel right there. Look at that life. Only God knows the heart. We see the outside. But it's measured by what God gave and what it accomplishes in our life.
And so I want to show you some things because I believe a couple of things about the gospel. Obviously, it was too costly for earth because no one else could pay this price. Only God could pay the price for my sin. And he chose to do it. It's too wide for the whole world.
This cost is so big that only God could feel that. Listen, do you know the gospel is too powerful for sin? It's the one thing that can break sin. In our life, you and I, listen, we struggle, we are weak, but the gospel has the power to break the chains of sin. Did you know that the gospel is too wonderful for angels?
You know, the Bible talks about the angels' desire to look into it. The angels who have no need for the gospel, who God did not give that soul, and they don't have to have that salvation like we do. God made them as eternal beings to live with Him, those in heaven. And you know the story, but I want to say the passage that talks about the angels that have a desire to look into it, I love that because they're probably wondering: do you think God had a business meeting before He did the plan of salvation? Do you think he told the angels what was going on, or did they just find it as it was happening?
Did they get to sit back and watch it? I don't know. I'm really going to ask that question one day. But the angels desire to know why would God. Make a creature who's going to turn against him and then choose to die for that creation.
and pay the price for their sin. The angels desire to look into that. Imagine if you were We're going to dream a little bit tonight.
So imagine if you're dreaming, you know, just think, picture this: you're at an auction, and this auction is priceless items are being brought up for. I mean, we're talking paintings and rare artifacts and treasures from history, and the bidding is ridiculously high and crazy, and the numbers are climbing. And finally, you're watching, and the final item is brought out. And as you look at this item, you notice it's not a piece of art, it's not a piece of jewelry, it's not a fine metal. It's a life, it's a person.
And as you're standing there, you realize that that person is you standing there. You're looking at yourself. And the prize for that life, the price for that life is not money. It was the life of the Son of God. And you realize that I'm standing there, and someone's willing to pay the price for me, and I'm not at an auction, I'm standing at Calvary.
I'm looking at the cross. And God's saying, I'm willing to pay this price for you. That's the gospel. That's the power of the gospel. That's what God chose to do for me.
And as I stand there looking at it, I can ask this question: how do you measure something that costs God his Son? How can you measure something that costs God his everything? But he did that for me. And he did that for you. And may we never lose that.
So let's jump in tonight. I want to show you just three things. Of how we can measure the gospel. Number one, the gospel is measured by its price. If you go back to our text in 1 Peter 1, verse 18, for as much as you know, you are not redeemed with corruptible things, verse number 19, but with the precious blood of Christ, the price that was paid.
This text shows us, it just points out as we get into this verse, that not gold, not silver, nothing can pay this, nothing, because everything is corruptible except for God, except for his Son. Everything else falls short of what we need. It reveals to us, I call this heaven's currency. The currency is the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Your soul required a divine payment.
Sin demanded more than material wealth, and redemption cost the life of God's Son. Do you remember the day you got saved? How many of you remember the date, time, day? You've got like specifics. How many of you are like me and you don't really have all the specifics, but you know you got saved?
There's a lot of you. Listen, you may not be able to go back to the exact moment, but I could take you to the house, I could take you to the place, I could take you to that night. I know exactly what happened, I know exactly what I said, and I remember that, and it's etched in my mind, and it's forever there. Listen, that is because God saw us and said, you can't pay what you owe, so I'll pay it for you. Acts 20, verse 28, which he purchased with his own blood.
God chose to do this. You see, the value of something is what somebody's willing to pay for it. How many of you have ever sold a house? and you had it on the market, it didn't sell very quick. Did you raise the price?
Probably not. Probably not, not our kinds of houses. We lower the price.
So, I did some looking. I was kind of curious on some things, and I remembered that a few months ago, we went to this art exhibit for Van Gogh. Anyone ever remember? You remember Van Gogh? He was a crazy one-eared dude.
He got a lot of vacation time in the hospitals. He was crazy. Died at 38, but painted a lot of paintings. When he was alive, his paintings were worth nothing. He was a bum.
He was like broke. His brother financed everything for him. And he did a lot of sketches, a lot of paintings, but they weren't worth anything. And then he died, and his sister-in-law started pushing his art. He had a piece of art sell for over $80 million.
Somebody was willing to pay that for his art. I looked up a couple things. Do you know there's a car, a Mercedes, a 1954 Mercedes sold for $52,960,000? And I thought, well, that's pretty good. But then there's another one, a 1955 Mercedes sold for $142 million.
We are in the wrong business. I don't know what's going on. How do people? I don't know. People are willing to pay that for a car.
What about diamonds? I looked up a couple diamonds. What's somebody willing to pay for a diamond or what's the value of a diamond? The Pink Star sold for $71.2 million. It's the highest price paid for a diamond in auction because the top two above that can't be sold.
Uh The number three diamond. 530 carats, it's estimated at $2 billion in value. They didn't tell me where they keep it or the safe or anything. I didn't get the numbers. The the most expensive diamond in the world It means mountain of light, but it's a 105-karat diamond, pure.
And they said the estimated value, if they were going to give it a value, at the minimum is $20 billion, but most of them had put it at a, there's no price that they can put on there because the value of the economy and the world can't sustain it. That's an expensive diamond. But what someone's willing to pay for something, you see. You're valued because of what Christ paid for you, and that price was his life. That's what gives you value.
That's what gives salvation its value because the price paid was Jesus Christ Himself. You are not valued by what you have done. Listen, religion will tell you that you have to do and do and do and do and do. And if you do enough, maybe you'll be good enough. But God says it's done.
Because there's nothing that you can do. It's a free gift that only you can have to do is accept.
So the gospel is priceless because it costs heaven everything. The gospel is measured by the price heaven was willing to pay.
So it's measured first by its price. Secondly, I want you to see, it's measured by its pursuit. We go back and you look at this real fast in verse 18 of our text in 1 Peter. For as much as ye know that ye are not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood, what does this imply? It implies that you are redeemed.
Let me do that one more time. It implies you are redeemed. Thank you. There you are now. What does that mean?
It means you were heading for hell, and if you've accepted Jesus Christ, you're not anymore. Do you understand what this is? This is Jesus. This is God, creator of the universe, pursuing you because he wants you and didn't want to spend eternity without you. Yeah, yeah.
Think about that for just a second if you would. God wants to have eternity with you. Redemption is not passive, it's intentional. God was choosing to seek after you so that you would be saved. Do you know it's God's desire that everyone is saved?
Is that gonna happen? Sadly, no. God doesn't force it on us. He says, I want you to have this, so it's a free gift. It's available to all.
And there's verses, if you want to argue that with me, see me afterwards. I'll give you the verses, we'll fight about it. But God wants all men to be saved.
So The word redemption, what does it mean? It means to buy back, to pursue, or to reclaim what was lost. God wants to have you. You see, you're not ignored or abandoned by God or left in your sin. God said, I'm not going to create you and leave you to be separated from me forever because of sin.
I'll do something about it. You were pursued by God. If you forget the fact That God pursued you. You're not going to appreciate what he did for you. Because you were lost.
On your way to hell. And God said, I want you. You know who we tend to like in life? People who like us. God went so far above that, he said, I want you.
Luke's uh Luke 19, 10. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was what? Lost, you were born lost. You weren't born good, you were born lost. You may have been a good-looking baby.
Doesn't matter. You're still lost. Right? I was a good looking baby. I'm like the ugly duckling in reverse.
God came to seek and save what was lost, and that's me, that's you, that was us. John 3:16 and 17, for God so loved the world. You know the verse, they gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish. But have everlasting life. Look at verse 17.
For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be. Say, what does this show us? This is revealing how far the gospel was willing to go for us, how he pursued us, he came down to us. God left heaven. To us The creator.
came to the created. He sought us. He pursued us. He loved us while we were yet sinners. 1 John 4:19, we love him because he.
First loved us. God loved you before you were born. God loved you before you were a thought. God loved you when you were born. God loved you.
You can't go a moment of history of time where God hasn't loved man. God loves us. This is not man searching for God. This is God pursuing man. You see, the gospel is not about your search for God, it's about God's relentless pursuit of you.
God's relentless pursuit of you. The gospel is measured by how far God went to find you. See, you weren't hiding from God. You just play hard to get. And some people it takes a little while.
But if I could stop here for just a moment. Remember when I told you that we have forgotten what God did for us and He purged us from our old sins? If we're not mindful of that, we get to this place and we say, Man, God, you pursued me, you paid the price, the ultimate price, and you have pursued me. And we stop right there. I've got the answer to people's problems beyond these walls.
We've got the answer to what people are looking for. What God did for me, he could do for them. And we sit on that. We hold onto it tight and we don't share it. Can I encourage you?
You've got something that God wants you to share. He wants us to tell the others. He wants us to have a testimony that lives for him. The message this morning, they're in the jail, they're singing. They saw and heard the gospel way before a message was preached.
That's the way our life should be. The price that was paid, the pursuit, and can I give you number three? The gospel is measured by its power. If we go back to 1 Peter, for as much as we know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood. Ye were redeemed.
That word redeemed is not just a transactional word, it's a transformation. When you were redeemed, the old man became new. God took the old man in you and made it new. Do do are you are you with me tonight? He took the old man and made it new.
Some of you are like me. I got saved very early in life. When I got saved, the next day I didn't quit bad habits. I wasn't smoking and drinking one day and not smoking and drinking the next day. I was five.
Didn't work that way. I don't know about you. But God did something to my life when I was five. God started something in my life when I was five. And as I've gotten older, as I've grown, and I've become more sensitive to the Holy Spirit, because for a while it was just me, and I really didn't care what He said, and I wasn't really seeking Him, and I wasn't going after Him.
The power changed my life, but what I did with it. Not too special. What does it mean when a The Bible says it's transformational, means it delivers you from bondage. The gospel has power over sin. People come to us all the time.
My wife and I deal a lot with people who struggle with things. Listen, we all struggle with things. Let me tell you that one more time. We all struggle with things. Don't.
Yeah, we all struggle.
So please don't feel bad if you struggle with something. We all struggle with something because we're human. But the Bible says that we have power. The gospel breaks the bondage of sin, it makes us free from sin. And it brings new life to us.
Romans 1:16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, also the Greek, for it is the power of God. The gospel is the power of God. It's the power to change your life. You see, if Jesus had died on the cross and had not, if they put him in the tomb and he had not resurrected, if he didn't have power over death, we talked about this earlier, you heard it this morning, we wouldn't be here. There would be no help.
There'd be no hope. There'd be no savior. There's no salvation. There's no gospel without the resurrection that God had power over death. 2 Corinthians 5.17, wherefore if any man be in Christ, he is a New creature.
Old things are passed away. Behold, all things become new. What does that mean to you? Listen, if you're like me, you're going to have struggles, and you're like, well, I still have struggles. That's because you're human.
And you have a sin nature. But your desire. What you want. If I think about what God did for me, if I'm focused on the fact that God loved me, that He died for me, that He paid the price for me, He pursues me, and He has the power to conquer anything in my life. If I can focus on those things, I can do anything.
And I'm probably going to stay focused in the right direction. The same blood that paid for you is the same power that changes you. Did you catch that? The blood that saves you is the power that changes you. It's the power that allows you to grow.
And God teaches you things about Himself. And the Holy Spirit brings those things to remembrance and it brings them to life. And you say, Okay, God, I'll surrender to that. And God says, If you do this and you do it, and He says, Oh, I'm going to give you a little bit more, and you grow and you grow. And as you grow spiritually, your desires, I want what God wants in my life.
That's the power of the gospel in my life. taking me from where I was to where God wants me to be. To be the person that God wants me to be. You see, God created a life that He wants you to live. But it lets you turn left and right.
He lets you have the accelerator and the gas pedal. And the break. I guess those are the same things. You get the idea? He's letting you drive, but he says this is where I want you to go.
The gospel is measured by what it can do in a life. But the gospel doesn't just reach you, it changes you. How many of you know somebody outside of these walls who needs changed? How many of you know somebody outside these walls who needs God? Who needs salvation, who needs the gospel, who needs, yet we get so complacent in our life, and we get so busy.
We're just not doing it. We're not taking it. We're not living it sometimes. And we gotta be mindful of the people around us. You see The gospel doesn't reach you, it changes because it saves the sinner, it breaks chains, and it makes all things new.
As I was looking at this again, I went back to religion. Religion modifies behavior. If you think about it, religion just modifies behavior. It wants you just to do a certain number of things or keep doing these things. And as long as you do these things, you're good.
And listen, if that's all it was, God would have given us that checklist and said, do these things. But if he gave us a checklist, guess what you would do? The checklist. And you would do it every day, and you would just check off boxes, and you'd say, Okay, I read my Bible, I prayed, I did this, I did this, I did this. But God says, I don't want you just going through those motions, checking on boxes.
I want you doing it in a relationship because you want to do it.
So God says, I want you to do these things, but do it out of love. And the gospel should motivate us because the gospel transforms our lives to want to do this. But if we forget what God's done for us, If we forget about the measure of the gospel, It's not going to motivate us. We're going to become callous. We're going to slide.
We've got to be mindful of what God did for us.
So you want to measure the gospel. If you would, look at this verse. We get ready to wrap it up here. Colossians 2. Verses 13 to 14.
And you being dead in your sins. That was you. That was me. Dead in my sense. Hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.
blotting out the handwriting of ordinance that was against us. which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way. And look at this next phrase, because this one just This this should squeeze your heart a little bit. It doesn't say nailing it to the cross. What's that say?
Now I need to... His cross. This just got personal. You see, God took your sin. and nailed it to his cross.
And what was nailed on his cross was him. God took your sin. The penalty of your sin, the punishment for your sin. the darkness of your sin and took it to the cross. If you were going to measure the gospel And you wanted a visual.
We go back to Calvary. We take that verse that He nailed it. to his cross. If you were going to measure the gospel, I think it's. The distance from one of God's hands to the other.
stretched out on the cross for you and me. That's the best measurement I can give you. Mm. See, God took it for you and me. He chose that.
He wasn't forced to. He didn't make a mistake and say, well, now I got to fix it. He said, I want to do this. I want to do this. And because of that, because of me accepting God and the gospel's work in my life and in your life, he can say that you are mine by creation and you're mine again by redemption.
Because he did create me, but sins separate us. And accepting God, oh, God says, now you're mine again by redemption.
So, how do you measure the gospel? Remember, we said the price. He paid. the pursuit that he made and the power that he displayed.
So what does that look like? The price was the precious blood. The pursuit, you were redeemed. The power. Redemption accomplished.
God's not trying to figure it out. He did it.
Next Sunday, and next Saturday night, we have the play, and Sunday, we're going to celebrate what God did. We celebrate it every week, but we're going to celebrate it. We're going to stop and focus on what God did in the measure of the gospel. from his perspective. The price he paid was everything.
Yeah. The best thing heaven had was God. The only thing that could pay for our sin was God, and He gave it. the pursuit he wanted us and the power. He has the power over death.
He has the power over sin.
So let me just tell you tonight. You don't measure the gospel by what you bring to God. Bye-bye. by what God brought to you. God brought to you All that he is.
Because you see, God lives in you. God doesn't struggle with anything you struggle with. The gospel has the power over anything you struggle with in your life. God says if you just let me do it So, why do we struggle so much? Why do we have such a hard time?
Why are we fluctuating in our testimonies? Why do we have such a hard time sharing the gospel? Because we have forgotten. that our sins were purged. We take it for granted.
We forget what God did for us.
So I can't just remind you of the night. I hope in the Simplistic way. The measure of the gospel is what God did for us. and what he does in us. The price the pursuit and the power he has.
Let's focus on that this week as we get ready to go into celebrating. the greatest event that happened in the history of man. The death, burial, resurrection of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Father, we love you. We thank you again for the night that you've given us, and Lord, for our time.
Thank you for the attentiveness of our people. Lord, tonight was just a focus on what you have done, but I can't put it into words. I can't describe it accurately. Lord, there's no way. I'm overwhelmed at the thought that you would do this for us.
Lord, that you chose. To create me, knowing that I would turn against you, that I'd be separated from you, but yet you paid the price for me. Lord, you pursued me. Lord, you desire to have a relationship with all men. You want us.
You desire this, and yet. What do you put up with us?
So, Lord, thank you for your patience. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for mercy, for grace, for love. Lord, all that you've done. Thank you for listening today.
We hope you received a blessing from our broadcast. The Kerwin Baptist Church is located at 4520 Old Hollow Road in Kernersville, North Carolina. You may also contact us by phone at 336-993-5192 or via the web. at Kerwin Baptist Church.com. Enjoy our services live and all our media on our website and church app.
Thank you for listening to the Kerwin Broadcast today. God bless you.
