Recovering the Gospel

It's important for us to remember that not only do we proclaim the Gospel, we also live out the Gospel. God never intended for His people to remain unchanged. In other words, saving faith reveals itself in living faith.

What you believe eventually affects how you behave. The justified man or woman demonstrates their faith in Jesus Christ by being obedient to His purpose. And we as a body of believers gather together to support as some massive pillar the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you've seen a grand cathedral or a historic structure, you've likely been amazed by its beauty and strength. But did you know that some pillars in those buildings don't actually support anything?

They just look good. Could the same be said about some churches or Christians today? They appear strong on the outside, but they're missing the foundation of truth. If your faith needs a reboot, or if you're wondering how to live out the Gospel in a distracted world, stay with us.

You'll discover why recovering the Gospel is critical to living with purpose and passion. Some of you have traveled to Europe and have seen as I have seen myself some of the great cathedrals that literally took generations to build. One of the most famous of the cathedrals is in London called St. Paul's Cathedral, considered to be one of the ten most beautiful buildings in the whole world. The designer of that enormous cathedral was famed astronomer and architect, Sir Christopher Wren. Christopher Wren was given other projects by city fathers and one particular project he was given as a point of interest today, but for a little different reason. He was given the task of designing the interior of the town hall just west of London and Windsor. And so he designed it, this beautiful town hall with its high ceiling to be supported by beautiful carved columns, these massive pillars that stretched high up to support this very high ceiling of the town hall. When he finished the project, the town fathers came to inspect the work and they all expressed concern about the same thing. Even though they didn't know anything about architecture, they were convinced there weren't enough columns to support that massive ceiling. And so amidst his protests, they demanded that he install four more columns. He protested and they wouldn't hear of it.

And so he went ahead and did what he was told. He added four new columns and they remain, so I have read to this day. They're not hard to identify, though, because he cleverly designed them so that these four columns would not quite reach the ceiling. They support no weight at all. They're fakes.

And he did it to make his point. In fact, by the time they discovered his ploy, the hall was proven already to be built solidly enough without them. But they were left standing, beautiful columns but merely ornamental.

They serve no purpose other than to please the eye. When it comes to supporting the massive weight of that roof and ceiling, they offer no more support than pictures that hang on the wall. When I read that story, I thought of 1 Timothy Chapter 4, where Paul reminded Timothy that the church was the pillar of the truth. The church, local and universal, is to be, he said, the pillar, the column, and the support of biblical truth.

But like those pillars Christopher Wren installed, I'm afraid the church is much like that in that we look good. There are ornamental things about the ministry that satisfy the eye, but we're fast losing in our generation the truth that is supposed to support the gospel. The church, I believe, faces the constant threat from the enemy, not so much of outright destruction, at least in our era and in this country.

It isn't so much destruction that I think we need to be alert to, but distraction. And the truth is if the enemy of the church can distract the church from its intention and its focus, it has effectively destroyed the message of the church. And I'm afraid that we are inundated now by this current thought that has invaded even the evangelical church. The experts and church growth specialists are running around telling the church to invest in everything from telemarketing strategies to entertainment schedules. One well-known pastor who will go unnamed wrote plainly declaring the truth of God's word today is unsophisticated, offensive, and utterly ineffective.

We can get better results by first amusing people and giving them success tips and pop psychology thus wooing them into the fold. And once they feel comfortable, they'll be ready to receive biblical truth in small diluted doses. Compare that to Paul who wrote, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. He had one well-known pastor, another one made a New Year's resolution recently that revealed his own deception by current trends when he wrote, I will waste this year less time with long sermons and spend much more time preparing short ones.

Don't amen anybody in here, you missed the point. He said this, very interesting, insightful words into the current culture that has invaded the church. He said, people I have discovered will forgive even poor theology as long as they get out before noon. In other words, bad doctrine is acceptable as long as you get people out in time for lunch and he's not alone. Thousands of churches in our country today actually survey their unbelieving neighbors to determine what it is the unbeliever wants and then promises them that if they'll come to church, they'll get it. And so if they want casual clothes, wear them, that's fine and it would be fine of course.

That's not the point. If it's hot coffee, they'll get that for free. If it's short sermons, they'll get that every week. If it's teaching that doesn't mention sin or judgment or coming hell or heaven but instead is filled with self-help tips on family and finances and how to feel better about your world, we'll give you that too. This is what they are already calling in our generation consumer-oriented ministry. The church becomes the mall. The audience is sovereign, not God.

Give the audience what it wants. We do not come to support as a pillar and ground of the truth, the honor and glory of God. So Paul told Timothy the church was designed to be a pillar but I'm afraid today in our generation, the pillar doesn't quite reach the ceiling.

It doesn't fully support the truth and here's where the analogy is different. I believe the ceiling of gospel truth in our generation is eroding, is cracking, is crumbling and giving way. Paul reminded the same young pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy 4. He said to him and this is encouraging because it lets them and us know that this is a constant danger in the first century as well as the 21st century. He said, Timothy, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season and here's what you're to do. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but wanting to have their ears tickled. They will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside the myths.

In other words, they will become consumer oriented. Give us what we desire. Give us what we want to hear. In other words, preach anything but Christ. Deliver to us news of anything but sin and holiness and the demands of the gospel and the cross which we are to bear. Give us a self-made religion that makes us feel more comfortable with our deity that we have remade in our own image.

Give us something other than the cross of Christ. And yet when you think about it, ladies and gentlemen, when you come to the gospel, when you come to those two verses in Romans chapter one and you look carefully at those key words that appear, imagine what those words would mean without the claims of Jesus Christ. What they would mean without Christ himself.

In fact, go back in your text and circle some of these key words that appear in Romans 1 16 and 17. Words like power. There's one. God. Salvation. Believe. Righteousness. The word just.

Live. Faith. What would those words mean without Christ? Well, they would sound good in someone's religious vocabulary, but without Christ, they would be meaningless. They would be pillars that do not support the truth.

Let's go back and think through them. What about the word power? Paul wrote in second Corinthians 12 nine, and he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you for power is perfected and weakness most gladly. Therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

He wrote also to the Colossian believers in two eight. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception. According to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in him you have been made complete. And he Christ is the head of all power. Paul wrote that I may know him and the what? The power of his resurrection.

Philippians 3 10. Remove Christ, and there is no power for forgiveness. There is no power for living. There is no power for eternal life. And what about God?

There's another key word that you circled. What is what is God without Christ? John one one were told in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And if you wonder who the word was, it tells us later in the chapter and the word became what flesh and lived among us literally pitched his tent among us, tabernacled among us in the beginning was the law. Goss is the Greek word there, and the law. Goss was with God, and the law. Goss was God, and the law Goss became flesh.

Plato once lamented if only some law Goss. He is that word would come from God to give an explanation. In the beginning was the explanation.

It could be rendered that way. And the explanation was with God, and the explanation was God, and the explanation became flesh. Without Christ, you have no explanation from God or of God. What of salvation?

There's another key word. What is salvation without Christ? You go back when when Christ was born on planet Earth, Simeon, that old godly man took baby Jesus in his arms, and he lifted his eyes toward heaven, and he said, Mine eyes have seen thy salvation. The writer of Hebrews clarified it when he said there is salvation and no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. Eliminate Christ, and you eliminate salvation. You are left in your sin.

What is it to believe, there's another key word, without the Son of God? Acts 16, 30 says, and after he brought them out, that's the Philippian jailer who was attempting to take his own life. He thought the prisoners had gone, fled in the night, and he would have been killed had that happened, but Paul and Silas and the others had remained, and he brought them all out where he could see them, and he knew he had heard them singing. He had probably heard the gospel preached by Paul in the jail, and he said, Man, what must I do to be saved?

There's that word. What is salvation? That's the most important question you'll ever answer. Paul answered, Believe, there's the word, believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved. Eliminate Christ, you eliminate salvation. 1 John 5, 13, These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. I like that word, know, that you may know, not hope so, not think so, not give it your best shot, not get there and think that maybe God will have mercy, but that you may know that you have eternal life.

Why? Because you've believed in Jesus Christ. Another key word in verse 17 in Romans 1 is the word righteousness. What is righteousness without Christ? 1 Corinthians 1, 29, Paul writes, So that no man may boast before God, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness, there's the word, and sanctification and redemption. In 2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 1, Peter writes, A bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

By the way, this is a wonderful verse on the deity of Christ. 2 Peter 1, 1, We have been given this righteousness of our God and Savior who is Jesus Christ. There is no righteousness then apart from this God and Savior Jesus Christ. There is no such thing as righteousness apart from him.

Then the word just appears in verse 17. It is simply another description of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 3, 18, For Christ also died for sins once for all. The just one, he is referred to there.

He's given this title. He is just for the unjust so that he might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit. What about the word life? What is life without Christ? 1 John 5, 11, And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son. He who has the son has life. He who does not have the son of God does not have life. Galatians 2, 20, Paul writes, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Without him, there is no life.

Life not worth living now, no eternal life in the future. To remove or eliminate Christ is to eliminate life. What about faith?

There's another word there. What is faith in relation to Christ? Hebrews 12 says, Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our what? Of our faith.

He created it and he completed it. 1 Corinthians 15, 17 informs us that if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless and you are still in your sins. Ladies and gentlemen, I've said all that and read all that scripture simply to say the gospel is Christ and Christ is the gospel. We do not believe in a plan. We believe in a person. We do not follow some human method. We follow the heavenly Messiah. We do not adhere to, submit to, believe in religion. We adhere to, submit to, believe in the Redeemer. It isn't so much what you believe, although that is critically important.

It is who you believe in. Eliminate Christ. You eliminate the gospel. Now, Paul goes on to say, and let's wrap up our study with this phrase in Romans 1 17 where he further explains the gospel. For in it, the antecedent of it is the gospel. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

Now, what does he mean? That word translated revealed comes from a wonderful Greek word that could be rendered or translated to take up the veil, to take away the veil. I have never ceased to be in awe during those formal weddings that I have had the privilege of officiating as the bride comes down the aisle, hidden, obscured behind the veil. See, it's as if she has been ceremonially revealed to her husband to be. She's been, she's been revealed to him. The veil is gone. And now with an open face, she looks at her groom.

See that's the idea here. The righteousness of God is revealed. It was once veiled in a mystery. In fact, he had a physical symbol of that veil. You remember that great curtain that blocked all of humanity off from seeing into the Holy of Holies, right? And when Jesus Christ, who is the sum and the substance of the gospel, hung on the cross and he said those words, it is finished.

You remember what happened? That veil was rent into, it was ripped from the top to the bottom. No man can reach that high at that moment. It's as if God reached down and he took that veil and he ripped it open and he revealed a holy place of God to all of humanity. So now we can march boldly into his very presence in Paul can write in second Corinthians four six for God who said light shall shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

The veil is gone. We behold our redeemer and believe in him by faith alone. Paul goes on to further explain here the righteousness of God is revealed. Now you need to know that the righteousness of God is vastly different than the righteousness of man. The righteousness of God first of all is what he is. God is perfect holiness. He is sinless righteousness. What he is, it's what we cannot be. Romans three nine it says for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin as it is written there is none righteous.

No not even one. God is holy. God is righteous in and of himself and we are left to ourselves sinful and unrighteous.

It's what he is. It's what we're not. There's more righteousness is not only what God is but it is also what God has and what God has inherently is what we do not have. Isaiah 64 says for all of us have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags and all of us wither like a leaf and all our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. No wonder Paul writes for all have sinned and all fall short of the righteousness, the glory, the character, the place of God in and of ourselves.

We have nothing to offer. He is righteous. He has righteousness. We are not righteous. We do not have righteousness. It is not only what he is.

It's what he possesses. It's what we don't have and what we are not. Listen anybody who thinks that the only difference between the righteousness of God and the righteousness of man is just a matter of degrees. In other words just a little less than God. God has it we know that and we have it but we just don't have as much as he has. We're just slightly inferior that person doesn't comprehend the revelation of the gospel.

It isn't that he has more of it and if we work hard enough we'll get more of it. There are people that believe that religion of human invention, that religion of self-effort, that religion of self-sufficiency and self-centeredness. People think they'll stand before God so deluded and deceived by the religions of our day and say now God I've got I've got 20 percent righteousness I'm 80 percent sure so you give me that and we'll come up with 100 percent. And others say oh you don't know me I'm moral I'm good I'm upstanding I've got 80 percent righteousness or 95 I don't know I know I don't have all of it but but I'll stand before God and say look Lord I'm coming to you I've got 90 percent righteousness I just need another 10 percent to cap it off I'll get that from you and I'm in.

That's man's gospel not God's and it cannot satisfy the soul that knows it is sinful and needy and in need of a redeemer. The Apostle Paul once thought he had quite a bit of it and he just needed God to give him the little bit he didn't have. He had his pedigree he had his history he had his family he was a Pharisee among Pharisees he had his position on the Sanhedrin he kept the law and he kept it as best he possibly could keep it. But then when he came and saw the revealed Son of God he saw the glory of Christ on that Damascus road when he saw the gospel revealed to him in a very unique way he would later say I counted all those things that I've mentioned as rubbish literally as dung I have counted them as refuse so that I may just have Christ. That was the struggle of another man named Martin Luther who agonized as he struggled inside that monastery in the early fifteen hundreds. He struggled to keep the law he struggled to find satisfaction of his soul he struggled to earn mercy from God. You cannot study Romans 1 17 without intersecting the agony of this monk all the commentators deal with it at some point because Romans 1 17 is the foundational verse of the Protestant Reformation but here's a monk who called himself an impeccable monk who had given himself over having been barely having barely survived a strike of lightning.

He was so fearful of his future that he joined an Augustinian monastery became a monk. His desire to earn peace with God was so great and his fear of standing before God was so deep that he spent hours wearing out his confessors in fact they said Dear Martin please stop because he was constantly coming up with more things that he dredged up from within the wickedness of his soul and his heart even though those who would see Martin and knew Martin knew that he was a wonderful dedicated and devoted monk. He would say all of the rituals of the Roman church he would go through the full mass as many times a day as he possibly could he later earned his doctorate in theology and moved to teach at the University of Wittenberg or Wittenberg where he began to teach through Psalms he began to teach through the book of Romans and it was at this verse chapter 1 verse 17 that brought in him he wrote great anger toward God. He said quote I knew that the righteousness or justice which by the way is the same root in the Greek language here in Romans 1 17 I knew that the justice of God which is revealed was revealed in the law but why would the justice of God be revealed in the gospel? I am under the law and I am burdened by that he said in effect but now I find out the gospel is also about the justice of God and he wrote it's as though it really were not enough that miserable sinners should be eternally damned with sin laid upon them by the law of the Ten Commandments now must God go and add sorrow upon sorrow and even through the gospel itself bring his justice and wrath to bear I raged in this wise with a fierce and disturbed conscience. He later wrote I greatly long to understand Paul's epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but this one verse this one phrase the justice of God is revealed in the gospel because I took it to mean the justice whereby God is just and deals justly with with punishing the unjust is what is it mine although I was an impeccable monk I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience I had no confidence that my merit would satisfy God therefore I did not love this just God but rather hated and murmured against him yet I clung to the dear Paul he writes and had a great yearning to know what he meant by the gospel revealed in the justice of God night and day I pondered until by the Spirit of God I saw that the justice of God this righteousness of God is that righteousness by which through grace and mercy God justifies us in other words he came to understand this is a passive justice this is something that God has something that God is it's something he possesses but it is also something that God entirely provides he gives it to the one who comes by faith to him he writes thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise the whole of scripture took on new meaning and whereas before the justice of God had filled me with hate now it became to be inexpressibly sweet in greater love this passage of Paul became to me the gate of heaven it also became the foundation for what we enjoy today of those who believe salvation is by faith in Christ what Martin Luther learned is that God must intervene there isn't anything we can dredge up other than sin he has to intervene and give us something he is and we aren't God must grant something to us that he has that we can never come to ourselves something we can never create something we can never generate something we can never produce the gospel reveals the righteousness of God that it is not only what he is it is not only what he has but it is what he gives to those sinners who come to him by faith it is something he provides so Paul would write in Philippians 3 8 more than that I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ we are not here as a church to make people comfortable to meet everybody's felt need the gospel will do that by the way Christ will do that we're not here to give success tips on everything from finances to family we're here to teach in every classroom in every Bible study in every service the gospel we're not here to be entertained we step up to the plate as it were to bring glory to God to live with eternity in view and forever in mind so that he is glorified and the world is reached our purpose is to say with great passion what Paul said I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes the Jew first and also to the great for in it in the gospel the righteousness of God is unveiled from faith to faith as it is written that justified ones shall live by faith that was Stephen Davey and this is wisdom for the heart today's message is called recovering the gospel this message brings to a close a series entitled living with forever in mind if you'd like to share this series with someone in your life we have it available as a set of three CDs and you can get information either on our website or by calling us today at eight six six forty eight Bible call today to order this resource then join us next time on wisdom for the hearts of Jesus.