896. The Beauty of the Gospel

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything, so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from The University Chapel platform. Today we're beginning a three-part series on evangelism, and today's speaker is Dave Doran, Jr., pastor of Resurrection Church in Lincoln Park, Michigan. The title of his message is The Beauty of the Gospel. Thank you for the opportunity to preach here.

I want to hopefully be an encouragement to you all as a student body. He talked about how you have been focusing on the work of Jesus Christ and the work of Jesus Christ when we center our attention on it will inevitably propel us forward, and so that's my goal over the next two days is to help you be propelled forward into the places that you're going to disperse across the next coming months. Some of you are going to graduate and go forward for a lifetime, and I hope that evangelism will be central to your career and life plans no matter what you describe your career and life as being, and we're going to talk about how that is. But before we begin to talk about evangelism, we should make sure that we're on the same page. A lot of things get painted as evangelism, and so I want to define my term really quickly by saying that I believe evangelism is teaching the Gospel, proclaiming the Gospel with the aim to persuade. So the relationships you build are excellent things, and they are a part of getting to that point where you evangelize. The outreach events that your church may do are excellent things, and they are a part of getting to opportunities to evangelize. But evangelism is preaching, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the aim of seeing people turn and trust in Him, which leads probably to a simple question, what is the Gospel?

And it's been answered over the last couple weeks. In chapel I trust and in your classes, and hopefully that's such a simple question, but a question that you never stop pondering, because the person and work of Jesus Christ is worth lifelong attention. The Scripture describes the Gospel, uses that word Gospel in a couple different ways. One of the ways is the big picture good news of God's work in the world. We talk about His Kingdom, or we talk about redemption, or we talk about the being in the presence of God, and across the story of Scripture, the biblical, theological, meta-narrative, you see how God is working to bring back the creation which has fallen.

But then some people use the word Gospel like the Gospel of Matthew, right? A theological life narrative of Jesus of Nazareth. And then probably what we most think of when we think of evangelism is what I think we should think of as central is a core theological content of the Gospel, which you've even been focusing on last week. The cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Salvation by replacement by Jesus. That He lived perfectly the way you could never, that He died sacrificially on your behalf, and that He rose victoriously as your hope. That He is coming again, and that He calls all people to turn from sin and to trust in Him, and He holds in His hands the promise of forgiveness and the power of the Holy Spirit to live a new way.

This is the Gospel, the good news that Jesus lived the way you could never and died the way you should have, to give you new life to live for Him and give to others. And if you know that Gospel, then we begin to talk about evangelism, and so often it seems that people want a professional or someone who seems evangelistic or to come and say, what are your pro tips? And I'll tell you, I love to share the Gospel, and I'm going to share stories about how I've seen the Gospel change lives, but I want you to know that I don't have a secret sauce.

I don't have a secret formula. There is no strategy that, like, once you hear it from me, you're like, oh, now, now I am just the evangelist. The Gospel is the secret sauce, and what I believe is that, just like this morning at 4.45, we pulled into CrossFit Potentia in Greenville, and there was a bunch of people who wanted to work out together, and they messaged me before they found out I was visiting some of the guys, and we were excited to get together and get a workout in, and we didn't have anybody lay out a plan. Nobody said, like, you have to be excited about this, and you know that.

If you've met someone who does CrossFit, right, you don't have to ask them. They'll just tell you because they love it, or if you've met somebody who likes Chick-fil-A or if you've met somebody who likes, you know, whatever it is, maybe it's Monat or whatever social media thing, right? If you have a social media account, you've got somebody trying to tell you about something that has changed their life, because when they've experienced the deep impact of a product or a person, when they have understood the weight of something they've found and they see joy and value in it, they share it, and they share it contagiously, almost as if it doesn't have effort. And so I think the best thing that I could start today with is an opportunity to instigate your evangelism by trying to fix your view on the beauty of the Gospel you have, on what the Gospel is. And so from Ephesians chapter 1, I would like to read a passage that because of our time and because of the nature of focusing on evangelism, I would like to then draw several points out about evangelism to help you think and grow in joy, delight, and confidence in this Gospel you have, in this Savior you worship, so that then you will be propelled forward.

Let's read Ephesians chapter 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless, without blame before him in love, having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches, the riches of his grace, wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ, in whom ye also trusted. After that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of his glory. Paul celebrates the beauty of the gospel that you have this morning, and I want to draw out several points that I think will propel you forward in the gospel. I'm going to state them in a couple different ways, but I am going to try to cut off at the knees a weak gospel, and the first thing I want to say is this, your gospel is going to be weak, it's going to be thankless, you're not going to have any energy to go forward if it's thankless because you've forgotten it was a gift. Did you notice in the passage where you hear blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then you see across the passage the fact that our triune God started and finished your salvation, that the Father planned your salvation, that the Son Jesus Christ accomplished your salvation, that the Holy Spirit applied your salvation, brought you in to your salvation, that from the beginning the Father laid out a plan for his people to be holy, and it was before the foundation of the world, so you didn't have any chance to get started, just like Dr. Pettit said, he knew me before I was formed. The Son Jesus accomplished the plan and won for those people all the blessings of the Father, and the Spirit applied these blessings to Christ's people as he united them to Christ in their faith in the gospel.

Father planned, Son provided, Spirit applied. Notice I didn't mention you in there? Because the beauty of what you have is a gift, and gifts are worth bragging about.

If I brag about something that I have accomplished, it's ugly, right? But even one of the guys I was working out with this morning, a friend, Nate, he has a company called Red Elm, and I was visiting him here in Greenville, and I was watching his guys work, and they have these awesome Carharts, and they were working in the colder months, a couple months back, last year, and he had these Carharts, and Carharts is a Detroit company. I said, dude, those are sweet, man.

Those coats are awesome. And he said, here, take one. And maybe you don't like Carhartt, but when he threw me a several hundred dollar jacket, I have worn it every winter day since then, and people come up to me, and they're like, where did you get a red Carhartt all the time in the neighborhood? And I get to brag on the gift I received. Now if I said, well, you know, I bought it because I'm sweet.

They would look at me like, wow, you are not sweet. But because a friend gave it to me, I get to celebrate on it. I get to brag on it. I have no shame in saying, oh, look at this coat. It was given to me. My wife doesn't share the same opinion.

You'll have to see it. But anyway, a gift is worth bragging about. And if God started, planned, accomplished, and applied your salvation, you've got nothing embarrassed about. You're not looking at your friends over the coffee table or your classmates or your coworkers this summer and taking a stance of pride to talk about your religious convictions. It's not a holier than thou.

It's a high-end mighty. It is the same thing as celebrating an awesome gift that was given to you. The second thing is this. Your Gospel is selfish if you forget it isn't about you. Did you notice in the passage where it said to the praise of the glory of His grace that from start to finish, this salvation was given to you and it has ultimately been about a project way bigger than you, which should be encouraging for you, right? Because I know that you young people especially want to be a part of something bigger than yourself. You are not enamored with the kind of rat race to just get for me and mine as much as maybe I have or other generations have been in the past, and that's a credit to you. But sometimes you've set your eyes on a project too low.

But when you set your eyes on the fact that the Gospel is making the glory of the greatest being in all creation sparkle, you have set your eyes on a task so big that you can pour your entire being into it for all of eternity. You have the opportunity not to say, well, this really helped me. People share that on social media anyway.

I mean, I don't care about your hair product, obviously, right? But they still share. But you have a Gospel that is worth celebrating because it's not about you. It's like somebody sitting at the Grand Canyon Welcome Center and they're on their phone and they're playing Fortnite or whatever. They're inside and they're playing this game and they're like, man, Grand Canyon's okay, give or take. Where you sit determines what you see. If you've got your back to the real beauty of the Gospel because you're looking at you, you take that person outside the Welcome Center and you sit them on a bench looking at the Grand Canyon and then they go, oh, wow, this is better than Fortnite, right?

This is beautiful. And you'll be contagious, ready to share. The third thing I want you to know is your Gospel this summer, it's going to be unstable if you forget its center. Did you hear how many times the center of the Gospel, I've heard this passage preached before and thought of it, even myself, as something that unfolds blessings fundamentally about me and all the heavenly blessings that have been dropped on me. And that is definitely part of the passage. But let me read for you the center of this blessing. It says, in Christ, in verse three, you were chosen in him, verse four, adoption by Jesus Christ in verse five, accepted in the beloved, verse six. In him we have redemption, verse seven.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, verse eight. The center of salvation, the center of the Gospel is not its gifts, it is the giver. Salvation is not its blessings. Justification is a beautiful thing, but did you know that justification happens because of what you celebrated last week.

Jesus lived perfectly the way you couldn't and died sacrificially in your place. And when we talk about salvation, like, hey, I just wanted to tell my friend that they can get forgiven, that is true. But they get forgiven by Jesus. Forgiveness is not the Gospel, Jesus is the Gospel.

And when you are seeing him and savoring him, you are not comfortable with keeping him secret. If somebody doesn't really feel that lonely and you tell them of the adoption to sonship, if somebody doesn't feel that guilty and you tell them that they will be forgiven, or they don't feel like they're enslaved to sin and you tell them they'll be redeemed, all of those things are beautiful facets of the Gospel that are provided by Jesus Christ. And I believe that when we forget that being united to Jesus is the heart of the Gospel, we will lose sight and start to think, oh, it's kind of a package of benefits.

And if you don't like this package of benefits, I really don't know how to sell it to you. But we are calling people to turn and trust in Jesus. By the way, if salvation at its center is not having things done to you, but being united with Christ in a death like his and being raised to new life, as Romans 6 says, nobody in here is allowed to claim Jesus that isn't planning on being transformed by Jesus.

It's like saying you're going to hug the sun, S-U-N, and not get hot. This whole bogus idea that God wants to Amazon you blessings. Jesus did not come to take part of your life. He came to take over your life. He did not come to take part in the world.

He came to take over the world. And if you still want somebody to express male you blessings, you are missing the depth and beauty of the picture, which leads to number four, that your Gospel is only optional if you forget the future. Verse 9 and 10 are kind of complex in the way they're worded, but I'm going to boil it down to this. God's plan for everything is Jesus over everything.

That's what he says. In his wisdom, everything's going to be united under Christ, everything, everyone, everything will be united under Jesus. And the book of Ephesians and the scripture entirely makes clear that there are two paths to be under Jesus.

I'll summarize them for you. You can bow, like this passage says, under the sheer weight of his blessings, or you can bow under his boot in judgment. Those are the options for every coworker you have this summer, do you realize that? It's bow or burn. That sounds harsh, but that is the good news that actually everybody has earned the boot, and we have to offer bowing under the sheer weight of God's goodness, kindness, and love. What a gift, what a gift. And when we forget that, here's what we do, you know, me and my friends are having this discussion and in the neighborhood, people have all kinds of different beliefs, and here's what I believe, and here's what God's done to change my life. That is a good and true statement. But I was on the porch of a man in Lincoln Park, it's a rough neighborhood, but not that rough, it's fine, but there are people that have some tough backgrounds, and I stood talking with a guy who was head to toe covered in, not the kind of I want to be cute tattoos, but like the gang memorabilia tattoos that say, walk lightly, right? And we were talking about Christ, and he said in a profanity-laced description that wasn't, I think, meant to be hostile, it was just the way he spoke, that this was a crutch for people to get through hard times, and that Jesus had helped him when he did time in prison a couple times, and that he was fine with that now. He had a wife and kids, and he didn't need what Jesus offered for him. And I asked him, do you think that the disciples would lay down their lives for a self-help myth? And you know what he said to me? He said, yeah. He said, I've got so many buddies who would die for gang leaders that are already dead or locked in prison for life.

That doesn't impress me. And I was taken aback, because usually people don't say that. And we came to a point where my kind of logic was stuck.

And I looked at Jay, and I said, here's the deal, man. Whether you believe this or not, it's the line you're going to be measured by. Whether you believe this or not, this is your future.

I don't care if you functionally don't agree with my arguments. At one point, Jesus is going to kick the door in. And he is going to come through with unending joy for his people. And Thessalonians are told, the Thessalonians are told by Paul that he's also going to come and pay back trouble to those who have troubled you. This will come when Jesus comes with his angels in eternal destruction and fire.

Bow in blessing or bow under the boot of the king is the option. So if you ever feel like, well, I don't want to really interrupt them and ruin their Sunday morning for the rest of their life, that's not what we're talking about when we say you need to be an evangelist. You are offering life when they have earned death.

You have the opportunity to celebrate. If there are any in here who have not turned to Jesus, can I just warn you? This is not my conviction alone.

This is the world you live in. There is a day when every one of us will stand before Jesus and the simple reality is people for Jesus, trusting in Jesus, this world is the closest thing they will ever experience to hell. There is no condemnation. There will be no more sorrow. There will be no more suffering. There will be no more sin. There will be no more death. But people who have stood against Jesus, this world is the closest thing they will ever experience to heaven. There will be no more of the good presence of God and his kindness to send rain on the evil and the good.

It's not, it's not for us to be pansies and be like, well, maybe you should consider this. Set the truth plainly before your friends and family and neighbors because you love them and you love that you were given freedom from condemnation when you had wholeheartedly embraced it. Your gospel, number five, is powerless if you forget the word. Passage says after we heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, you want to see God work. Keep giving people the Bible. The word of God does the work of God and I want to bring, keep us moving here. I almost feel like we could go a couple of times in this passage, but that is not my plan for tomorrow. Number six, your gospel is hopeless if you forget the Spirit.

It says in the passage, you've been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the down payment of our inheritance. In the hardest and darkest places in the world, you have the hope because here's the thing, if we think of the good news as CrossFit or as, you know, Plexus or Monad or whatever thing that people want to make your life better now, and then you enter the darkest parts of the world, you're going to realize that it doesn't turn key, transform people overnight so that no longer, oh, you got saved and now you don't have cancer. You got saved, you turn from trusting in yourself to trusting in Jesus and now the suffering of the world is gone. There's a woman, Althea, who was a part of our church and she was 52 and from the time of 13 years old until the day she died, she was wracked with the struggle of suffering of sin in this world, sickness. Up to age 51, she had been trapped in prostitution and drug addiction from 13 to 51. She lived in a world that many of you have never, praise God, have never seen. Her first year clean was the year she walked with our church, 51 to 52.

But you know what? That didn't just all of a sudden transform her physical body. She still passed away at 52. But the spirit, who was the down payment of her inheritance, made sure that she is with the Lord and he is making sure and is going to accomplish the redemption of her body in the resurrection. My friend Barry was badly damaged and broken by drug addiction and overdose and really, for the last 13 years of his life, he followed the Lord but battled the symptoms and scars of what he had done to his body and his brain and he struggled. But he clung to Jesus because he had the down payment of his inheritance, the Holy Spirit, helping and keeping him in some of the hardest and darkest places.

And when he passed last year at 41, he entered the presence of the King. The Gospel you hold is planned and accomplished by God, your generous God. The Gospel you hold is the biggest cause you could ever be a part of. It is securely built on the King Jesus and it is the only hope for everyone you will ever meet.

It is powerful and living and active and it is secure even in the darkest places by the very power of the Spirit of God. So don't be embarrassed like sharing the Gospel is bragging about your accomplishments. Don't shy away like the Gospel is something you're talking about that you've done and you've found.

Don't be timid like you're sliding benefit packages across to people that they could make a decision about. Call them to the King and don't pretend that there's discussion to be had. The future is written in the very words of God and he is coming again to judge the living and the dead.

You don't have to be cute enough or have enough logic. You keep giving people the Bible and holding out to them the hope. And even when it seems like it got darker from the time they turned to Jesus, you don't have to give in or lose sight because the Spirit in you is going to keep them when they trust Jesus too until we see the beautiful bloom of Christ's Gospel in the new creation.

Let's pray. Father, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of his Spirit that these young people would be compelled by the love of Christ, the Gospel that we have received, that they would hold it out to others, that they would declare it, that it would burn in their hearts this morning, that it would not be a matter of technique and of skill but a matter of declaration of the coming King. You Lord Jesus, fill our hearts with joy inexpressible at what you have done on our behalf. You lived perfectly the way we never could and you died sacrificially on our behalf and you are our hope. Empower us till you come again. It's in Christ's name we pray, Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dave Doran Jr., pastor of Resurrection Church in Lincoln Park, Michigan. We trust that you'll join us tomorrow as we continue this series on evangelism here on The Daily Platform.