We Prioritize the Gospel Above All

I had a friend in college who told me that on his track team in high school, he always finished in the top three for every event that he ever ran, except for one where he placed last. He said that happened at one of his very first meets he ran at in high school. It was an away meet and it was on a course, of course, that he'd never run. He said the whole bus ride there, he had his headphones in, he was trying to do all Michael Phelps and get his game face on.

He was feeling pretty good when he shows up at the high school, so he kept the headphones on throughout the entire warm-up process. He said that at some point, he saw his coach was up there, obviously trying to explain something. His coach was waving his hands and pointing, but he thought, you know, I mean, what possibly could it be saying that it's that important because in a cross-country meet, you basically just run, you know, the right direction. So, kept his headphones on and he said the race started and, man, he said it started great. He said, I took off and I got way ahead of the closest person.

He said it was about a 5K part of it. You ran through this course in the woods. And he said, as I came up on around the, what I guessed was the four kilometer mark, he said, I was not even, I was out of sight of the person, the person that was second. He said one kilometer to go when I came to this fork in the path that I didn't know was there. He said they had one had an arrow that was blue and then one had an arrow the way that pointed yellow. And he said, I had no which way to go.

And that's obviously what my coach was trying to, you know, explain to us when he was up there waving his hands. He said, so there I stood with, you know, my dilemma was, I didn't know which way to go. If I sat there and waited until the second person caught up with me, then I would squander my entire lead. He said, so I just chose the path that felt right. And I just, I just ran. He said, it did not lead me to the last kilometer home. He said it led me on another seven kilometer loop. He said, actually made pretty good time on that loop. But when I got back to the finish line, all the fans were going to win.

The stadium was entirely empty. He said, our whole team was already on the bus. He says, our bus was the only vehicle left in the parking lot. He said, I never even broke stride. He said, I just ran to the bus. I climbed on. I made eye contact with literally nobody on the bus.

I went back to my seat and put my headphones back on. Right. The point is it doesn't matter how well you run if you're running the wrong direction. Right. So what we're going to do is we're going to spend a few weeks talking about the direction of our church. We're going to look at some core texts of scripture that define us as a church, that define the essential Christian life, and that define our mission in the midst of all the uncertainty that is going on.

This is a really good time, I think, for us to recalibrate about who we are in Jesus and what he's called us to. We always say here at the Summit Church that our mission is to create a movement of disciple-making disciples in Riley Durham and around the world. So the title of this series that we're going to do for the next four weeks is Be the Movement. During this season where we're not able to come together the way that we usually do, we can still be the movement. It's going to require, for us to be the church, to be the movement in this next season, is going to require some leadership and some initiative from our members that we haven't probably had to show before, but I am very confident that all of you are up to the task.

Be the movement. Our mission is shaped by four values, and I'm going to preach through the next four weeks. Each one of those values is deeply anchored in the teachings of Jesus, and I'm going to show you that hopefully here in the next four weeks.

Here are the four values. At the Summit Church, we say that number one, we prioritize the gospel above all. We prioritize the gospel above all. Number two, that we do whatever it takes to reach all people. Number three, we say that we aim to make disciples, not converts. And number four, we believe every member is to be sent, or we say send every member. Now you're like, I didn't have time to write all those down.

I get it, okay? All I have to do is write down the first one this week because over the next several weeks, we'll go through them one at a time. This week, I want to discuss gospel above all. By the way, I hope you realize these are not new values that I'm introducing.

We just are trying to state things clearly, maybe in a fresh way, the values that have guided us for the last two decades, really, okay? 1 Corinthians 15, if you've got your Bible, and I hope that you brought your Bible. Today, I want to show you how in his letter to the Corinthians, as in all of his letters, Paul prioritizes the gospel above everything. For Paul, the gospel is going to be in a special class all by itself, all right? So 1 Corinthians 15, 3 is where I want you to look first.

Paul says, for I delivered unto you as of, see that next word there? First importance. Everybody say first.

First, first. What I also received Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised in the third day in accordance with the scriptures. First importance, by the way, that's the key word there, implies that other things were important to Paul also, but these other things were not of first importance.

First importance means it's in a class all by itself. In fact, earlier in Paul's letter here to the Corinthians, he had made a statement that many scholars think had to be an exaggeration. 1 Corinthians 2, 2, Paul says, I decided to know nothing among you except for Christ Jesus, Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

Here's why they think that that has to be an exaggeration, right? Have you read the letter of 1 Corinthians? It's about a lot of other things besides just, you know, Jesus dead and buried. So why would Paul say, like, I only wanted to know and teach one thing among you, and that was Jesus Christ and him crucified?

Here's why. Because everything else Paul is going to deal with in Corinthians, whether we're talking about relationship problems or doctrinal problems, or people not getting along, ultimately, he's going to say it connects back to how you understand and live out of what you know about Jesus and him crucified. The gospel, Paul says, is really my only agenda. It's my priority. It's my authority.

It's my blueprint for action. You see, the church at Corinth was an absolute mess. Pastor Curtis last weekend, when we took the Lord's table together, showed us that. In fact, my wife in the middle of this thing, she looks over at me after Pastor Curtis is given a message, and she says, you know, she says, I probably shouldn't think this, but hearing how messed up that first century church was at Corinth with Paul as the leader makes me feel better about our church.

And I said, amen, right? The Corinthian church had all kinds of moral problems. They had some really dysfunctional, just jacked up families and marriages. There was just tense situations, doctrinal confusion. There was ethnic strife, political tensions. They were really suckers for a cult of personality. There was just all kinds of problems.

Lots of, lots of immaturity. Paul said, my answer to all that, all that is simply Jesus Christ and him crucified. The solution for all those things, he says, is really grasping Christ, understanding what it meant for him to die for you, what that gives to you, and then putting that as the center of everything that you do and all that you think about. All right, so later, chapter later, chapter three, verse 10.

Here's what Paul says. He says, according to the grace, listen to this, given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and somebody else is building on it. Let each one take care how he builds on that foundation. You're like, well, okay, sounds like this foundation is really important. What foundation are you talking about, Paul? For nobody can lay any other foundation, he says, other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. There can be no foundation for anything in the church other than the message of Christ and him crucified. Everything else, he says, is built on that.

And anybody who builds on that, whether that's a teacher like me or whether that's a disciple maker or a parent with a child or anybody, you can't, if you're gonna build on that foundation, you gotta take care that what you're building is consistent with that message and is really an outgrowth of it. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul goes on, he explains that he is personally willing to change anything about his life if it gets him a better hearing for the gospel. He will set aside his preferences. He will set aside, get this, even his ethnicity. He will put aside his culture.

He will put aside his politics. He'll put aside anything if it means being able to reach more people with the gospel. Verse 22, he says, I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel. For necessity is laid on me, he says. Woe to me if I don't preach the gospel. In other words, I can't let anything get in the way of me doing this one thing that is of first importance. So the point that I'm trying to show you is all throughout this letter from the very beginning of the letter, right to the very end of the letter, Paul shows you that the gospel is prioritized above all for him. So it begs the question, right?

Why? Why does the gospel play such an important role for Paul? And why is the gospel of first importance in our mission as a church? Now, real quick, before we answer that, let's just make sure we all understand what we mean when we say gospel. The gospel, the gospel is the message that because you and I are condemned in our sin. Christ came to earth to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He lived the perfect life and died in our place so that we could be forgiven. But we always say that he lived the life that we could not live the perfect life and then died the death we were condemned to die in our place. The key word in the gospel, I hope you know this, the key word is substitution.

Substitution. We always say here at the Summit Church that you can summarize the gospel in four words, right? You know what they are?

You know what they are? Jesus in my place. A friend of mine says it like this. He says, the gospel is the good news telling us that the determining factor in our relationship with God is Jesus' work for us, not our work for him. His commitment to us, not our commitment to him, his obedience for us, not our obedience to him is what determines where we stand with God.

And this substitutionary work has given birth to a new creation and a new radical way of living, a life committed to kindness and to justice. A new unity as brothers and sisters in Christ, a new family. This gospel message, this gospel message, Jesus said, is the only message by which we can be saved. To be saved means that somebody has to hear that message. They have to believe it. They have to repent of their sins and accept Jesus' offer to save them, which leads us to the first, the first reason why the gospel is of first importance on our mission.

Just write this down as number one. Number one, without the gospel, without the gospel, people are lost. Without the gospel, people are lost. Listen, it doesn't matter what good we do in the world if we don't preach the gospel. Apart from the gospel, apart from believing the gospel, people are lost for eternity. Apart from Christ, whatever earthly things we engage in, no matter how good they are, right?

They simply will not last. Poverty relief, social activism, good business, kindness toward our neighbors or the immigrant or the oppressed, standing for marriage and morality. Raising healthy families. Every single one of those things are good, right?

Right? They show love for our neighbor and they glorify God and we should be engaged in all of them. But see, apart from the gospel message, ultimately, people are lost.

And that's most important, right? I mean, we say that we care about alleviating suffering here, and we do, but the worst kind of suffering would have to be eternal suffering, right? I've heard it said that Jesus spoke about hell more often and more vividly. Than he did just about anything else. In fact, Jesus, the author of love, described hell in the most blood curdling of terms. Jesus, again, the author of love, the one that was known for his compassion and his kindness, that was so tender that children like to just be around him and felt safe around him, right?

He spoke in such terms about hell that it would just, it would curdle your blood. And if that's true, it's gotta be a crucial truth and we gotta pay attention to it. The preaching of the gospel is the one thing given, see, exclusively to the church. Lots of organizations, lots of organizations can work for good business and poverty relief and can help marriages and morality and social change. But the gospel, the gospel, you see, it's given to the church. The gospel is the most important message that God gave it to us, the church, to preach, the local church. And that means that anything and everything else that we could do has to take a distant backseat. To that gospel proclamation.

In fact, let me just say to you, apart from Christ, apart from you believing and receiving the gospel, you were lost. Even if you get everything else you've ever wanted in life, right? A great marriage, great job, great family, right? You retire wealthy, you will lose it all without Jesus.

What does it profit a man? Jesus said, if he were to gain the whole world and lose his own soul. And one thing I pray for my kids who range from elementary school to high school, I pray that they will be able to see life through the lens of eternity.

And when they see people who are rich or popular or successful, I tell them, you know, you got to, you got to consider not just how those people live, but you also got to consider how they die. And usually it's unhappy, unfulfilled and separated from Christ. The question is, have you received Christ? That's the first reason that it's above all. It's the only message by which people can be saved and it's given exclusively to us, the church, to proclaim.

Here is the second reason. That it's above all here. Number two, without the gospel, there is no power in Christianity. Go back to 1 Corinthians 15.

I hope you're still there. Notice what Paul says in the opening verses of that chapter. He says, Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand. So where do you stand?

Right? So in the gospel, and by which, watch this, you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, are being. That is what we call progressive language, ongoing salvation. It's not just that you were saved once by believing the gospel. You were also being saved by believing the gospel.

That's active present tense. Now don't get confused here. Okay, there, you see, there's two dimensions of salvation, right? There's what we call positional salvation, where you accept Christ. And in that instant, your sins are forgiven, all of them, right? You are given in that instant the righteousness of Christ.

You are in that instant made complete in him. You are permanently adopted into God's family once and for all. It's kind of like when you adopt a child. Legally, there's not a gradual process.

In one instant, right, legally, the child goes from being in one family to being in another. That's what happens when you accept Christ. It's what we call positional salvation. And that is not what Paul is referring to here. What Paul is talking about here when he says you are being saved is what we call progressive salvation. He's referring to what happens after you're positionally saved. He says you grow progressively in Christ's likeness for the rest of your life.

You mature. And how does that happen, right? Where is the power for that ongoing growth? Well, see, Paul says it's in the same place that your initial salvation came from, believing the gospel. You see verse two, chapter 15, verse two, holding fast to the word of the gospel. We always say you grow in Christ the same way you began in Christ. How did you, you began in Christ? You began in Christ by believing the gospel.

How do you grow in Christ? By holding fast to the gospel, by re-believing it, if you will, by meditating on it, holding fast to it. You see, I grew up thinking that the gospel was only the entry right into Christianity. It was like the ABCs of Christianity, the door through which you entered, the diving board off of which you jump into the pool of Christianity. And thus, right, I just assumed that the gospel was primarily a message for unbelievers.

And then once you had received it, well, then you kind of move on from that into the deep end. You move on from that deep stuff into maturity, but that is not all the gospel is for Paul. The gospel for Paul, you can see in verse, chapter 15, verse two, the gospel is not just the diving board off of which we jump into the pool.

It's the place we stand. In other words, the gospel is the pool itself, right? Not just the ABCs of Christianity, the A through Z. We grow in Christ, not by going beyond the gospel, but by pressing deeper into it. That's why Paul says, that's why Paul says he is determined to know nothing except for Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Right? Because that's what it means to grow is to go deeper into that message. So for whatever Paul is talking about, he's going to come back to Jesus Christ and him crucified for clarity in what he should do and in the power to do that. Charles Spurgeon, the famous British pastor of the 19th century, he famously said that at the end of every message he preached, he always wanted to plow a trough back to the gospel.

The trough meant like a place that water could run through because he knew that whatever he was talking about, whether it was generosity or treating your spouse correctly or living a holy life, he knew the power to do that came from believing and clinging to the cross. Okay? Write this down.

Write this down. The fire to do in the Christian life comes only from being soaked in the fuel of what has been done. The fire to do in the Christian life comes only, comes only from being soaked in the fuel of what has been done. Only when we realize that we can do nothing to impress God are we motivated from the heart to do everything to please him.

Right? That's the second reason why our gospel has to be above all. Because a church without the gospel at the center is a church without power. Let me show you real quick. One more place in Corinthians where Paul teaches this. 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

Okay? You can turn there real fast or I'll put it on the screen here for you. Paul says, watch this, beholding the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ, we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. How are we transformed into glory? By beholding the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ. How do we grow in other words in our love for God?

We see more of Jesus. We learn more about his love for us. How do we grow in obedience?

How do we grow in self-control? How do we grow in the fruits of the Spirit? Right? We are transformed in all these things by seeing Jesus more clearly. So what should I be doing every time I stand up here and open the Bible for you?

Right? I should be helping you see Jesus. I used to teach the Bible like it was a book of heroes.

That you and I were supposed to emulate. You know, be a man after God's own heart like David and dare to be a Daniel and trust like Timothy and move like Moses and believe like Barnabas and persevere like Paul and smack him like Samson. Or I mean, I could do a whole series on these. Okay, or I thought of the Bible is primarily a book of rules, a list of things to obey. Did you know there are a total of 1663 rules in the Bible? 613 are in the Old Testament, 1050 in the New. And so for me, the Christian life was always like playing a game of whack-a-mole.

Remember that game that you play at the fair where you try to hit it, you hit another one. So one week I'd focus on these commands and obeying them. And while I was doing that, a bunch of others places of disobedience would pop up.

And so the next week I'd focus on trying to whack those moles back down. That's the way a lot of people approach the Christian life and it feels exhausting. Many contemporary teachers of God's Word approach the Bible primarily like it's a book of practical advice.

You know, look at what it says about leadership and look what it says about parenting and happiness and money and relationships and etc. But the Bible has lots of that, okay? But the Bible is not primarily any of those things. The Bible is about Jesus.

It's not a collection of heroes for you to emulate. It is the story of a savior that you're supposed to hope in and adore. The hero of the Bible is not me or you or Daniel or David or Ruth or Barnabas. The hero of the Bible is Jesus. It's less a book of religious duties you need to do for God and more the story of what he has done for you.

The story of a savior who came to rescue us because we had broken all the rules and rejected all the advice and failed to live up to all the heroes and we're so messed up that we couldn't put it all back together again so that he did it for us and all we can do is worship. See, if we want to be a church that fulfills our mission, the gospel has to be at the center. If we want to be a church with any kind of power, any kind of spiritual power, the gospel has to be at the center. That's why Martin Luther, the 16th century reform, that's why he always said the gospel is the doctrine on which the church rises or falls.

Okay, so let's ask, right? What could go wrong at the Summit Church with this? Let's just talk about things that could compete with the gospel above all here at the Summit Church.

I'll give you just a quick handful of them. Number one, it could go wrong by putting a greater emphasis on do rather than done. In many churches, the emphasis starts to get put on what Christians should do instead of what on what Jesus has done. Many churches in the old south where I grew up were focused on what Christians should wear, how we should talk, the movies we should go to and not go to, the music we should listen to and not listen to, dress standards. In many churches today, the focus is all on what social activism is appropriate for Christians and what that looks like and what kind of politics that you should have. Sometimes in churches like ours, the focus tends to shift to what good Christians do in the church, right? A good Christian is faithful in their attendance and they volunteer and they give and they're in a small group and they're in a one-on-one discipleship relationship and they go to women's Bible study or men's Bible study or, you know, whatever. Good Christians are tired Christians, right?

Hear me. These are all that I just mentioned. They're all good things, but they're not the message of the gospel. The gospel is not the message about anything that you should do. The gospel is the message about what Christ has done. And Paul says in holding fast to that message, that's where the power is. Holding fast to the message is what enables you to do the good works of mercy and justice and compassion, not because you have to, but because you desire to, which is why we say here at the Summit Church that in every message, there ought to come a point where your pin should go down and your eyes should go upward.

And you should stop saying, oh my God, look at all these things I've got to do for you. And you should start saying, oh my God, look at the wonderful thing that you have done for me and the gospel and you just worship. The emphasis of our message here should never be on what Christians do. It should be primarily on what Jesus has done.

That's the first one. That's one way we could get away from the gospel above all. Number two, and we could get away from it by just taking conversion for granted. Churches can lose their gospel focus by taking the conversion of its members for granted. People who grew up in the church, they usually adopt their community's morals. They believe in God. They participate in church activities. They obey the laws.

They're generally good people. But Jesus said that is not enough. If you were going to enter the kingdom of God, he said, John 3, 3, you must be born again. By the way, keep in mind, Jesus said that to a super religious guy who kept all the rules and thought that he was fine.

And Jesus said you're actually not fine unless you're born again. You acknowledge your sin and you cast yourself on the mercy of God personally. And you receive him personally as your savior. And then he comes into your life. And when that happens, what Jesus says is it's going to show up in a change of heart.

Right? Jesus said that the born again heart starts to love different things and desire different things. It starts to want to seek God. It starts to find sin repulsive. It's not that you become perfect, but you develop a distaste, a disdain for sin. Friend, let me just ask, has that change happened?

Has it happened to you? Have you had that moment where you humbled yourself and received Christ and gave yourself fully to him? Have you been born again?

Have you? Jonathan Edwards, who led in our country's first great awakening, he said this, almost every natural man who hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it. But you won't escape it. The only way to escape it, Jesus said, is to be born again. The only way, unless you're born again by a special act of God that changes your heart and washes away your sins, you, you will never enter the kingdom of God. That's the second thing is we could just stop putting the emphasis on that moment of being born again. The third thing that competes at our church with the gospel above all is prioritizing preference over mission. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul said that he would put aside all of his preferences for the sake of the gospel to reach more people for Jesus. Right? He'd become, he said, a Jew to the Jew, a Gentile to the Gentile.

Right? He'd do whatever it took, he said, to make the gospel accessible to people. He'd lay aside any preference. He'd be more muted about certain political opinions and cultural perspectives and preferences if it meant getting a greater hearing for the gospel. We've often said here at the Summit Church that the way that you can know you're in a really gospel-centered church is that at some points you feel culturally uncomfortable because we might be doing something in that moment to reach somebody else that's not really designed for you. Right? People come up like, well, I don't really like that.

I'm like, it's not really for you. Right? We're doing this because we're trying to reach people in our community. If you want to be in a place, in a church, where everybody around you shares your preferences and mirrors your politics identically, what you want is a Christian country club, not a church.

And I can point you to several all over the south where you can find that. But here, here, we're going to put the gospel above all for the sake of reaching people even when at times it makes us uncomfortable. As Pastor Brian said, there should be no ethnic home team in the Church of Jesus Christ.

Okay? All right, last thing that threatens the gospel above all here at the Summit Church. Number four, prioritizing uniformity in secondary things. Again, for Paul to say that the gospel was of first importance means that there were other important things to him, but the gospel alone was of first importance. And Paul wouldn't let any of those secondarily important things get in the way of the first important thing.

Right? That included not only his preferences, but also his perspective, his opinion, his agenda on any secondary matter that he thought got in the way of preaching the gospel. We see this, by the way, not just in Paul and his letters, but we see it pretty clearly in the life of Jesus, several times.

One of the clearest to me occurs in Luke chapter 12, about halfway through the chapter. There's a younger of two brothers comes to Jesus, and he accuses his older brother of leveraging the older brother privilege or the older brother position to cheat the younger brother out of his inheritance. Now, if you've read the Old Testament at all, you know immediately that justice is close to God's heart, and so Jesus cares deeply about issues of injustice. Yet, instead of giving this brother a specific, you might even say political answer to this dispute, we see Jesus pull back from adjudicating it.

In fact, what he says is man who made me a judge over you, so that instead of doing that, he could warn both of them, younger and older brother, about the idolatry of money and preach the gospel to them both because in light of eternity, that's ultimately the much more pressing question. Again, it's not that Jesus didn't care about speaking to justice issues or he didn't care about those issues. He did, just that to get involved in that one specifically would hinder him from his one first importance mission, which is preaching the gospel to all people. Now, to be clear, this is not to say that Christians don't speak to justice or political issues. Individual Christians must.

Individual Christians should get involved at all levels, seeking justice, and shalom is a Hebrew word, making peace for the society. As for us, the church as an institution, we focus our platform on the one thing of first importance, and that is the preaching of the gospel, and if that means that we as a church, right, as we preach the gospel and as we proclaim God's standards of justice, if we pull back from offering political solutions or individual applications or interpreting situations and circumstances, that's what we got to do. I've often heard it said it's helpful to think of the church as organization and organism. As an organization, a local church like us, as an organization, we have a pretty narrow focus when it comes to proclaiming the gospel and just what the Bible says, right? But as an organism, individual members, you guys are out in the community and you're taking the message that you learn and things and you're applying them in the community.

That means in business and politics and education, right? That's not all the church's organization. That's not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to teach and inspire you. So we limit our platform to what the Bible directly says and the gospel and then you as the organism out in society, you're the ones that are in politics and things like that, taking the way you understand it. It's just helpful to keep that distinction. Organization and organism. As an organization, we're very limited in what we define ourselves by.

As an organism, we are kind of involved in everything. Gospel, see, above all. All the other values that we're going to go over the next few weeks are going to come off of this one.

We have to get this one right. Gospel, above all, is what unites us and what defines our success in this season. Right? When we say be the movement, we mean be a gospel movement, a gospel above all movement. Okay? A few weeks ago, I told you about a guy named Count Zinsendorf, who lived in the early 18th century, who started one of the greatest mission movements in history.

Okay? His one line motto for his life that defined the movement, I told you, was preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. And with that phrase, he galvanized an entire generation to literally change the world. Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. Summit, I could not think of a better motto for our church. I couldn't think of a better motto for me individually or for you. Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten. That's our role in this generation.

That's our role in this moment. So my question is for you. Have you received the gospel? Have you been born again? If not, you could do that right now. You could just pray a prayer. In fact, why don't we all bow our heads? If you've never been born again, or you're not sure that you have, you could have that happen right now by saying, Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner who needs to be saved.

Just say it to them from your heart. I know that I'm a sinner who needs to be saved. I surrender my life to you right now. And I receive your offer of salvation. Father, I pray for every friend, neighbor, family member who prayed that prayer. God, I pray that you would show them, God, how to continue to walk with you and give them the strength to do that. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Listen, if you prayed that prayer, I want you to let us know right now by taking out your phone and texting, J-E-S-U-S, to this number, 33933.

33933, that's the summit's new five-digit code. You text Jesus there, and we'll know what you mean by that. So do that right now if you prayed that prayer with me. Here's my other question. Gospel above all, have you given yourself to the gospel mission? Who in your life needs to hear the gospel? Because that's where we go from here is we go thinking about where we need to take the gospel and who needs to hear it.