The Life-Changing Gospel

C.S. Lewis once said, “Christianity must be from God, for who else could have thought it up.”

I want us to think about this statement, because it’s true! Who could have made this stuff up? Think about how our message (the Gospel, the message of Christianity) must sound to someone who had never heard of, or read the Bible…

God created man and woman, and he gave them everything they could possibly want or need. The only thing God told them was not to eat of a particular fruit on a particular tree. Well, even though they had everything they could possible want or need, including food…they still chose to disobey God and eat of the fruit of that tree. And why did they do it? Because they were tempted by a talking snake. Now, because of their disobedience to God the curse of sin has come into the world and we all are headed to destruction…all because of a talking snake and some fruit on a tree.

But this isn’t even the craziest part. We also believe that God had a plan in all of it, and we believe that God did something to save us. What’s that? God came down to earth, as a man, was born in a stable and lived for 33 years as a poor man, spent three of those years traveling with a rag-tag bunch of people (sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, even some fishermen were his most trusted disciples) preaching and teaching them who he was and about how we should live.

Think about this, GOD became man and did these things. And if that wasn’t crazy enough, this same God went to the cross and died a horrendous death. The death of a criminal on a Roman Cross. Who would make this stuff up?

But it doesn’t stop there! After he died on that cross, three days later he rose from the grave, taught a small group of believers about himself, and then sent them out to teach others. During this time he was disappearing and reappearing, he was cooking fish and eating, and going through doors almost as if he were a ghost of some sort. After 40 days of doing this he went back to heaven. It doesn’t end there.

We also believe he is going to come back as a conquering king to judge the world, and set everything right. Of course there is much more to the Gospel story than that, but that’s the gist of it.

Now, If I’m going to make up a story, that’s not one I’m going to make up. If I’m going to make up a story that I want people to believe, and one that is easy to believe, it wouldn’t be that one.

Just the very fact that the suffering servant is the conquering King…Sin is defeated by death…The one who died is the one who brought victory and saved us…Humanly speaking it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Now to us who are believers it does, because we’ve had our eyes opened by God. We’ve heard the story so many times, it’s second nature to us…but in many ways the Gospel is completely contrary to human reason.

Not only that, the Gospel is contrary to how man’s mind works. Grace is contrary to how we think. We want something we can earn. We want rules to keep. We want to be able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and earn our way to God. That’s the tendency of the natural man, but that is completely contrary to the Gospel.

The Gospel is, “it is finished.” God has already done enough to save you. In Christ you have the grace of God and all you have to do is believe it. It’s too good to be true! It’s like a fairy tale! But friends it’s better than a fairy tale, AND it’s completely true…

This is why Paul said in Galatians 1:11, “For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel.”

The Gospel Paul preached, and the Gospel we preach is not man’s Gospel because it wasn’t made up by a man, and it wasn’t made up in order to please men. The Gospel is the Gospel because the Gospel is true and we can believe it!

We can believe the Gospel because we’ve seen it at work. We’ve been changed by it. False Gospel’s can’t change you. They may change your behavior as you try real hard to keep the rules, but they can’t change your heart. This is the beauty of the true Gospel. It changes your heart.  It changes who you are…and if you’ve truly experienced it, you know it’s true. And if you’ve truly experienced it, you want others to experience it too. As we are out in the world, as we are living our lives, as we talk to others about Christ…this is what they will see.

The obvious question for us is, has this Gospel we are talking about and the Gospel we say we believe changed us? Can people believe what we are saying?

Paul said in Galatians that the source of His Gospel was Christ. And if the source of His message was Christ, then that means the power IN His message, and the power OF his message to transform was Christ as well. Therefore Paul could confidently speak, write, and preach knowing that the Gospel would do its work.

Now, none of us have audibly heard God speak. None of us have the dramatic conversion experience Paul did (Read Acts 9, 22, or 26 to learn more), but at its core, the source of our message and the source of the Gospel we have to proclaim is the same Christ. Therefore, we too can confidently speak the Gospel unashamedly, knowing the Gospel will do its work. If we are doing that as ones changed by its message, there is no telling what God can do. Look back at the Bible. He took the church from 12 to 120 to over 3,000 to what it is today!

From a small group of 12, God changed the world. How? Through His Gospel being proclaimed, taught, believed, and lived out in the world – the very same Gospel we see taught in the Bible – that in Christ we can experience the grace of God, and have peace with God, all to the glory of God, forever and ever, Amen…

It’s a beautiful Gospel, it’s a powerful Gospel. It’s a life-changing Gospel.

 

 

 

 

 

Distorting the Gospel

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:6-8

As you read through these three verses, the thing that immediately stands out if you are familiar with Paul’s writings in his other letters is the firmness with which Paul is writing. Paul is not coming to the Galatians with a gentle rebuke. Paul is upset, and it shows.

Usually Paul would open his letters with some form of thanksgiving to those whom he was writing. But there is no such thanksgiving found in this letter. Paul gets right down to business.

As Paul writes this letter he is a lot like a parent whose child has gone off track or has gone astray. Many of us have children. Have your kids ever done something wrong, and honestly done something so stupid that you were just flabbergasted by it?

I know I’ve looked at my kids many times and just been dumbfounded as to why they would do something like that. They know better! I’ve taught them better than that! And that is sort of what Paul is saying here. Paul is saying, “I can’t believe you! Why would you do this? You know better!”

And why is Paul so upset? These believers were turning away from the true Gospel.

For those of us who have young children, if one of our kids were to take off running towards the road we wouldn’t gently call them back. No, we are going to raise our voices. We are going to yell at the top of our lungs for them to come back. We are willing to do anything, to say anything to keep our children safe and secure. Our child’s safety is a matter of life and death. And so is the Gospel…

This is Paul’s heart as he writes these verses.

In these verses Paul is astonished, he is angry, and he is grieved. It is clear that Paul has the heart of a Pastor. Paul is grieved that the Galatian believers would so quickly turn from the Gospel of grace that he has preached to them, in order to follow those who would distort the Gospel of Christ.

And friends I can so identify with Paul here.

Nothing grieves me more as a pastor, than seeing sweet people who have a real and sincere desire to follow God end up under teaching that distorts the biblical Gospel.

As we talk about this thought of distorting the Gospel, let’s look at some ways in which the Gospel gets distorted in our day. As we will see, this happens in both subtle and non-subtle ways.

First, there is this idea that many Christians have, or they have been taught that, yes they are saved through their surrender to Christ, but THEN they also have to have the right beliefs or the right behaviors to go along with this surrender.

This sounds almost right. And you might be hearing that and say, “Well, I don’t see the problem.” And I’ll give it to you, this is almost the gospel…but, almost the gospel isn’t the Gospel.

There are also times we will hear folks say, or challenge us to “give your life to Jesus” or “ask Jesus into your heart or life” and then we will be saved. Again, this sounds biblical. But here is the problem. When we say things in this way, or believe that this is the order in which things happen, we miss the fact that it is “grace first.” Here is what I mean.

You aren’t saved by your strong belief in God, or even our level of trust in God. Your level of faith or the strength of your faith isn’t the measure of whether or not you are saved. You don’t need to manufacture strong feelings or desire for God in order to feel secure in your standing with God.

Here’s the key. You aren’t saved BY your faith. You are saved THROUGH faith. If we think we are saved “BY” our faith then that means we are making our performance our savior. But when we understand that we are saved “THROUGH” faith, we make it clear that Christ is our Savior.

The Gospel is also sometimes distorted by those that teach it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are a “good” person. (As if there was such a thing. We may be good compared to other people, but compared to a Holy and perfectly righteous God whose standard is complete holiness, we fall quite short)

Now on some level this sounds good. I think a lot of us would like to believe that everyone who is a good person was saved. We all probably know some folks who we would call “good people”, yet they don’t know Christ. It grieves us to think that perhaps these people if they don’t come to know Christ may end up in hell. So, I think a lot of us probably wish that we could be saved simply by being good.

But the problem is, it’s simply not the case. The Bible is clear that we are saved by Christ and Christ alone.

Again, this way of thinking that we can be saved by doing good works, is simply not true. If it were true that we could be saved based on our own goodness then Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die. There would have been no need for the cross. But hopefully we all know that we were in desperate need of the cross. We needed to be rescued, for apart from Christ we have no hope.

But not only would this teaching mean that Christ died for no reason, but what does it say about “bad” people? If “good” people can be saved, where does that leave bad people? I guess it damns them all to hell, with little or no chance of redemption.

But this clearly contradicts Scripture and even Jesus himself, most notably Matthew 9:10-13. Jesus tells us in those verses that He didn’t come for “good” people. Jesus says that He didn’t come to call “righteous” people. Jesus came for sinners, and he came to save sinners. Sinners like you and me!

So trusting in our own works completely misses and distorts the Bible.

There are also those who would tell you, (both professing believers and even unbelievers) if you were to ask them about heaven or how they get there, they would say, “Well, it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.”

But friends, being sincere won’t get you saved. I have a friend who is very sincere that she doesn’t need to believe in Jesus to be saved. But she’s just as lost as she can be. A runner can be very sincere about wanting to win a race. But if he goes the wrong way he’s never going to get to where he needs to be. You have to know the way, and Jesus and Jesus alone is the way. Sincerity isn’t enough. Only Jesus is enough.

There is also another way that the Gospel gets distorted, and I think this is probably the one that most of us are familiar with. There are a lot of churches that are very intolerant of small differences, or what I would call secondary (non-essential) beliefs.

I’ve seen this in some churches who say you can only use a particular Bible translation. Some churches say you can have to dress a certain way, or you have to have your hair a certain length. Other churches elevate certain spiritual gifts to the point of making them a condition of salvation, or perhaps maybe a higher level of salvation…

But the problem is, none of these things are in the Bible. So what these folks are doing is adding to what the Word of God says. They are being more strict about certain issues than God himself is, which I think is a problem. We must be very careful not to speak where God hasn’t, or to shout when God has only whispered. We must put emphasis where God has put emphasis, not where it suits our fancies.

As believers our emphasis must always be on the “gospel of Christ” that the Apostle Paul spoke of. This is the one and only Gospel we see taught in the Bible, and we must be very careful to neither add to it nor to take away from it. We must never, ever, lose sight of this Gospel or the Jesus it points us to.

Let Us Consider: Neglecting to Meet Together

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Hebrews 10:24-25

I’m sure these are verses that we all have heard quoted many times, especially by preachers who are trying to guilt us into coming to church. Let me say right now before we go any further, I don’t want to guilt you into going to church. I tell folks all the time, even the folks that I pastor, that it is not my job to beg people to come to church. Sure, I want you to know that I want you there. Yes, I want you to know that the doors are always open. Please, know that everyone is welcome. But, I will never beg you to come to church nor will I make you feel guilty for not being there.

Does this mean that I don’t think church is important? Absolutely not. There are few things in this world and in our Christian lives that are more important than worshiping corporately with fellow believers. In fact, as this passage from Hebrews shows us very clearly, corporate worship is a command from God. We are to “not neglect to meet together…” Why? So that we can stir one another up to good works, and encourage each other.

Likewise, in Ephesians 4 the Apostle Paul gives another powerful illustration of what is accomplished through the local church. Paul says that the saints are equipped…”for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine…we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

The picture we have throughout the Bible, ALL of the Bible, is that believers WILL gather with other believers in order to worship God and to be built up in their faith. It is through the ministry of the local church that we learn who God really is. It is through the ministry of the local church that we learn what God has done and is doing through Christ. It is through the local church that believers are built up in their faith, grow in their walk with Christ, and are shaped more into his image. It is through the local church that believers draw close to other believers and build relationships that help them to love God and love others as Christ has called them to love. It is through the local church that believers encourage each other, love each other, and build each other up.

This isn’t just a preacher talking, this is the Word of God talking.

So, no, I don’t want to beg anyone to come to church. But what I do want you to know is that if you aren’t a member of a local church, or if you don’t attend a local church and serve in a local church then your faith WILL suffer. Your Christian life WILL suffer. Your relationship with God WILL suffer. Your knowledge of and affection for the Lord Jesus will not be what it should be. Perhaps most frightening of all…If you are neglecting to meet together with other believers, you are neglecting and disobeying the clear command of the word of God, and this is called sin.

As a pastor, I don’t want to see people coming to church because it strokes my ego, or makes me feel more successful. As a pastor, I want to see people coming to church because I want to see people drawing near to Jesus and growing in their relationship with him.

I was reading this week about the persecution of Christians in many parts of the world, and I was reminded yet again what an amazing privilege we have here in the United States to worship and speak the name of Jesus freely. In other parts of the world there are believers who have to meet in secret, and literally risk their lives to speak, sing, and praise the name of Jesus. Believers in other parts of the world would literally die to do the things that so many of us take for granted, and even neglect.

I said previously that I don’t want to guilt anyone into going to church, and I don’t see it as my job to beg you to do so. Those things may be true, but I do want to leave you with this encouragement: PLEASE, for the sake of your own soul and your relationship with the Lord, find a local church. Attend that local church, join that local church, be faithful and serve that local church. This is the will of God for your life – Scripture commands it, a thriving and vibrant Christian life demands it.