The Gospel of Jesus Christ #3

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of The Truth Pulpit.

We're so glad that you joined us. And I know that many of you have recently signed up for the podcast looking for the series that I told you about called Building a Christian Mind, and that series is going to start on February the 5th. February the 5th for Building a Christian Mind. Until then, here's the next episode of our teaching as we look to God's Word and as we continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word on The Truth Pulpit. I say it in love, beloved, that some of you really need to wake up.

You really need to wake up in response to these things. Because the time is short, and as Scripture says, today is the day of salvation. It's time. Being able to effectively share the gospel with our friends and loved ones is in many ways contingent upon our understanding of what the gospel is truly all about. Hi, I'm Bill Wright, and you're listening to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Today, Don wraps up our series called What is the Gospel? with a final eye-opening look at this often hard-to-understand subject. Now, Don, as you prepare to close out our series, isn't it true that believers need to be able to clearly define the gospel before we can share it with people? After all, we need to know what we're talking about, don't we? Well, Bill, that's really essential. And, you know, if you went to a doctor, you would want a doctor who knew what he was talking about and was trained in medicine before he treated you. If you go to a lawyer, it's the same thing.

If you go to a car mechanic, you want someone who knows what they're talking about. Well, it's the same way for us as we are sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to understand the biblical doctrines that underlie the presentation of the gospel so that when we speak to people, we can speak with confidence and our minds are prepared to be used by the Holy Spirit as we speak about Jesus Christ, His person, His work, and the call to repentance and faith for the salvation of our souls from sin. My prayer is that the Lord would use this greatly in your heart and make you effective in your personal evangelism.

Thank you, Don. And, friend, here's Don with today's study on the truth pulpit. God is not pleased with you and me, but He's pleased with His Son. He's pleased with Christ. The righteousness of Christ satisfies everything that He demands.

That's why He could say, I am pleased with Him. And so, in Christ, there was one man who lived a perfect life on this earth that was pleasing to his father. And Scripture says that this one man was living that life with a mission of redemption on his mind.

He came to seek and to save that which was lost. And at the conclusion of his appointed earthly time in God's saving plan for sinners, this blessed Lord Jesus. Remember, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel about Jesus Christ. This blessed Lord Jesus offered His life up on the cruel cross of Calvary, shed His blood as a sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of God against sinners like you, to atone for the sins of His people. That's what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 3, Christ died for our sins. 1 Peter 3 verse 18 puts it this way, Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.

This is the gospel. This is the heart of the only thing that can save your guilty soul, is that the perfect Lord Jesus, God in human flesh, lived a perfectly righteous life and then offered that righteous life up to His Father in an act of substitution, taking your place, standing in your appointed place of punishment, as it were, He sets you aside, He steps into that circle where your judgment was to be poured out, and God punished an innocent victim, an innocent willing victim in your place. God punished Christ. Christ absorbed the wrath of all of God's anger against your sin, of God's anger against your sin, so that that wrath would not be spent on you throughout all of eternity.

Christ died in the place of sinners just like you. He absorbed the wrath of God that sinners deserved in His own body. There was a spiritual transaction taking place on the cross of great consequence.

It's why the earth went dark for three hours according to the Scriptures. Somehow in a way that we can't fully understand, Christ in His infinite essence as God in human flesh absorbed that infinite punishment for sinners, and the world goes dark as somehow the Father pours out His wrath on His own Son, and on that cross, Christ died. Christ absorbed that death penalty.

Christ took it in Himself. And beloved, He was really dead. Those Roman soldiers were trained in the art of death. They knew He was dead. They stuck a sword in His side to make sure, and blood and water flowed out.

It wasn't that He swooned, His human life was gone. And as a historical matter, He was buried in a grave. As a historical matter, God raised Him from that grave on the third day. And Scripture says, turn to Romans chapter 4 with me for just a moment, Scripture says in Romans chapter 4 verse 25, Romans chapter 4 verse 25, at the end of verse 24, it said, God raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, this Jesus, verse 25, who was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification. In His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus Christ accomplished redemption for His people. He accomplished what was necessary for their justification to be declared righteous in the presence of a God who had previously been offended, to have forgiveness of sin credited to your account, that perfect righteousness of Christ laid upon you, given to you, appropriated to you, so that everything that caused your prior alienation from God has been removed. And God now accepts His people on the basis of the work of Christ alone. God forgives sin and declares righteous those who are clothed in that perfect righteousness of Christ.

Christ did a work life like that for sinners like you. You in guilt and judgment, Christ in perfect righteousness, sacrificed that life to deal with your problem of guilt, and it's in that work of Christ alone that you can find deliverance from spiritual and eternal death. The gospel tells us what Christ did for sinners, and it's good news.

It means that though we are condemned, someone, namely Christ, has done something for us that can answer all of the problem that our sin and guilt brings onto our account before a holy God who intends to judge the world in righteousness one day soon. That's what Christ did 2,000 years ago. Let's go to a fourth point here as we consider the gospel. The necessary response of man.

The necessary response of man. What Christ did fully accomplished redemption for His people, but not everyone is saved. Jesus made that clear in Matthew 7 and other places. The way is narrow that leads to life, and now we're brought to this very critical point in the proclamation of the gospel. This very critical question, how do you receive the saving benefits of Christ's death? How do you get from this point of judgment into Him, so to speak, so that everything that pleased God about Christ would benefit you as well? That, in my humble opinion, is the most important question in the universe.

It's certainly the most important question for anyone with a soul. How do I partake of what Christ has done so that I might not face that judgment that I so richly deserve? Well, the call of God, the call of the gospel of Jesus Christ is stated like this in Mark chapter 1 verse 15. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Repent and believe in the gospel. This is the message of Scripture. The Apostle Paul said that when he preached he testified to Jews and Greeks alike, Acts chapter 20 verse 21, he preached to them repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The message is is that you must repent and you must believe in Christ. Those are two sides of the same coin. Those two things work together.

They're wrapped together. A repentant belief, a believing repentance you could say. Here's what that means. I'm going to speak in a metaphor here. Christ literally died on a cross, literally gave his life on a cross. He died on a cross. Metaphorically speaking, when we talk about repentance and faith you come to a point where you die. Your pride, your self-righteousness, your self, your autonomy, it all has to die in an act of repentance and receiving Christ in submissive faith.

Here's what I mean by that, beloved. You must acknowledge your guilt before God. You must agree with what Scripture says, that when it says no one is righteous you're included in that. When it says none have sought for God, you say that's true of me. When it says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, your hand goes up and says yes that's me. The Bible just described the state of my soul.

The Bible just described what my life is like. I'm a sinner and I confess that openly before God and willingly before men and you must forsake any effort to please God through your so-called good works. You must realize that there is nothing good that you have to offer to God. You forsake any effort to find forgiveness in yourself, in your own goodness, in your own works.

You forsake all of that as if you were on a sinking boat throwing cargo overboard again and again and again in order to keep the ship afloat. You cast aside any self-righteousness of your own, any self-will of your own, any pride of your own and you come humbly alone to Christ and ask Him to save you according to the mercy that He displayed on the cross 2,000 years ago. Look at the Gospel of Mark chapter 8.

Mark chapter 8. In true conversion, a death takes place. A death takes place in true conversion. The death of an old man, the death of a sinner who has come to Christ for life. Mark chapter 8 verse 34.

He summoned the crowd with his disciples and Jesus said to them, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of Him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. Christ, hear me out beloved, Christ who is the author of salvation, Christ who is the one who did the work of salvation, has the exclusive prerogative to tell us what the price of that salvation is to your soul. You see, you don't get to say, I think I'll just love Jesus in my own way.

I think instead of going to church, I'll just go out in nature and I'll hug a tree and I'll worship God in my own way. Well you can do that, but it ain't going to do you any good on the day of judgment. That's not the worship that God requires, that's not the response that Christ demanded, as if you could just make up your own response to Him. He not only did the work, He told us what the response to Him must be if you were to be saved. Says you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Him. You must repent of your sin and believe in Him, receive Him in a loving, submissive, grateful way that gives your life to Him for salvation.

That's the necessary response. A true response like that produces enduring life change. The life change is not part of what pays for your sin, rather it is the product of having been born again from the Spirit of God who changes you at that moment of conversion and you live differently henceforth and forevermore. I ask you, I ask you, those of you who have claimed the name of Christ, does your life show evidence of a love and a devotion and an obedience to Christ, this Christ that you say that you know? Or do you just go through life blindly just doing what you want to do, thinking about what you want to think, watching what you want to watch, without any regard to the one that you say saved you? What kind of salvation is that? What kind of repentance and faith is that that doesn't produce a change? I say it in love, beloved, but some of you really need to wake up. You really need to wake up in response to these things because the time is short and as Scripture says, today is the day of salvation.

It's time. We say it in love, but we're not playing games. Jesus meant every word that he said. Scripture means every word that it says. God is not trifling with us here in these warnings of judgment and this call to repentance and faith. This is the only way that you can escape the judgment of God.

The only way. Brings us to our fifth and final point about the gospel of Jesus Christ. And at this point, enough is not often said. This is a point that invites us. This fifth point is that which woos our heart to Christ, which calls our heart to Christ in addition to the other things of which we have spoken, what I am about to tell you is Christ clinching the deal for you. And it's this, point number five, the glorious promises of Christ. The glorious promises of Christ. You see, Christ doesn't bring his gospel to men in a remote, distant, uncaring way.

It's not that he speaks these things from a remote position behind an altar on a stage, as some religions would try to make you think. Christ comes in perfect love, perfect grace, perfect kindness, and tells you what the consequences of a believing response to his gospel is. And what we find is this, is that this great holy God is unspeakably, immeasurably gracious to those who believe in his son. You see, the gospel comes with promises, promises from a faithful God who always keeps his word, who always does what he says, because after all, he's holy.

He cannot lie. And so when the gospel goes out and declares the work of Christ to sinful men, when it calls sinful men to repent and believe, it comes with promises like these in John chapter 1. It says, But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, going from a son of alienation, a son of judgment, to a child of reconciliation, a child reconciled to God, from his enemy to his child, from a hostile force to one welcomed and adopted into his family, John chapter 1 verse 12. To those who believe in Christ like what we've spoken about today, he says, I'll bring you into the family of God. No more judgment, no more hostility, fully reconciled in the full privileges of belonging to the family of God. Eternal death banished under the sound of the gospel. Eternal judgment, eternal condemnation taken away in the promises of the gospel, replaced with these blessed and familiar words in John 3 16.

God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. From eternal death to eternal life, from judgment to forgiveness, from guilt to a declared righteousness, from being an enemy of God to being clothed with that which God said the righteousness of Christ, in this I am well pleased. All received by that act of repentant faith, Jesus said in John 17 verse 3, this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Beloved, this is the gospel of God, a holy God has declared judgment against your guilt and sin but Christ has stepped into the breach and done a magnificent work in his death burial and resurrection that God accepts to atone for the sins of everyone like you, to atone for the sins of people just like you. God accepts the work of Christ instead of the righteousness that you would otherwise have been required to bring. God has told you through his word how this is received, you repent and believe in Christ and the call that goes out when the command goes out repent and believe with Christ it comes attached with glorious promises of complete forgiveness from God, a perfect righteousness credited to your account that satisfies his demands, the promise of eternal life so that the fear of death and judgment are permanently banished from your soul because Christ is the Savior. Christ came to save his own and once you become his own he keeps you forever and ever and so there's this great promise the day the threat of the day of judgment can be removed from you in its place a promise of eternal life from a God who cannot lie and in this the gospel of Jesus Christ is presented to you and Christ calls you and in John 6 37 he says the one who comes to me I'll never cast out.

Every reason for you to neglect Christ and neglect the gospel has been taken away from you here today beloved that is the gospel of Christ and so I ask you will you repent and believe in him? That's Don Green sharing God's perfect plan of salvation through his love letter to us otherwise known as the gospel and friend we're so thankful you've been able to study with us today. Pastor Don Green will return with more from God's wonderful word next time on the Truth Pulpit and we hope you'll be with us but if you missed any part of today's message you can go to the truthpulpit.com and listen again plus you can get other great study materials by Don Green. Also if this series has blessed you and you'd like to get hold of more from Don's teaching library it's really easy to do and it costs you nothing. Here's Don to tell you more. I want to let you know that we have a number of topical series available for download or CD requests at our website thetruthpulpit.com issues like the place of Roman Catholicism, anxiety, transgenderism, homosexuality and the charismatic movement. You'll find series on those topics and so many more at our free offers link at thetruthpulpit.com.

I invite you to take advantage of them all. God bless you. We'll see you next time on the Truth Pulpit. Thanks Don and friend that's all the time we have for today but we'll see you next time on the Truth Pulpit.