The Christian Handbook - The Gospel

We've been in a series called the Christian Handbook Fundamentals of the Faith, and

our hope in going through this series is kind of digging up and going through

what Christians believe and how what they believe drives their action. And actually my

hope is that as we've been going through this series, it's kind of like

us going through our shed. In the back, we go, oh,

I forgot about that. Oh, I stuffed this away a long time ago,

and I've never really looked back at or thought about it twice and so

hopefully this has been an encouraging series for you as well. We've got to

really look at what our foundation is and examine it and start to actually put

it back into practice. So if you would turn with me today, we're

gonna go to our texts. Today, We're gonna be walking through a text

to kind of better explain our fundamental faith that we're looking into today. That

text will be First Corinthians fifteen versus one through eleven. If you don't have

a Bible, we have in the back for you for free. Here we

regularly go through books to the Bible, and even if it is more of

a topical series, our main source is always going to be scripture. So

as we've already seen, God's word is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting,

and training and righteousness. And we all about that. So let's read

today's portion of scripture and then jump right into it. Does that sound good?

We'll put a prayer in between there, don't worry, all right,

So let's read. I'm gonna read from my Bible. It's up here on

the screen. First Corinthians fifteen one through eleven. Now, brothers and sisters,

I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which

you received and on which you've taken your stand. By this gospel. You

are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise

you have believed in vain for what I received. I passed on to as

a first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,

that he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the

scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephists, and then to the twelve.

After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers or of the brothers and

sisters at the same time, most of whom were still living, though some

have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,

and last of all, he appeared to me, also as to one

abnormally born. For I'm the least of the apostles, and do not even

deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.

But by God's by the grace of God, I am what I am,

and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder

than all of them, yet not I, but the grace to God that

was with me, Whether then it is I or they. This is what

we preach, and this is what you believed. Let's pray, Father God.

We just asked that your spear would be here among us right now,

that your presence would be felt, Lord God, as we have lifted up

songs to your glory, to your praise. We asked that you've been working

on our hearts, or God, that our affections have been turned towards you,

that you've been making to our hearts as fertile soil to receive your word,

Lord God, and produced from it. So we just asked that as

we go through your word, that it would not return void, Lord,

that you would provide in us conformity to your image, that you would provide

in us, Lord God, a new desire and a new passion for your

word and who you are. Or God, help us not be left here

the same as when we came, Lord God, as we open your word,

as we expect a great work from you, Or God, we give

this to you in Jesus name, we pray, And everyone said, a

man, all right. So let's recap last week. We talked about the

fall, or what is referred to as the fall of mankind. It can

also be referred to as the rebellion, and that's basically that God in the

beginning created everything good, and Adam and Eve, the first man and woman,

rebel against God under the influence of the serpent, and they rebelled specifically

against God's commands of what he had commanded them to do. Thus, Adam

and all of mankind, having come from Adam, have rebelled against God and

fallen from the right standing before God. So where that leaves us is.

Scripture later tells us that all have sin and fall are short of the glory

of God, and that the wages of sin is death and before you try

and justify yourself and say, oh, maybe I'm not that bad, we

have to remember that the standard isn't the person sitting next to you, to

your left, your right, it's God and his perfection that is our standard

for how we are to live. And very quickly we can see that we

don't measure up. And if you go, well, that's kind of unfair

or that's impossible because nobody's perfect that I would agree with you. And we're

on the SA page and now we can move on. So we're all sinners

before a holy, righteous God, and we in our natural state are hostile

to God and his commands. We're hostile to who God is, and we're

hostile to the way that he has set up life and the commands that he's

given us for how we are to live. But we can be grateful to

God because he did not leave us to our own devices. Last week in

Genesis, we saw that God had given us hope. As man had rebelled

against God and the serpent had stricked man and deceived man into rebelling against God,

God gave us hope. We can let's go look at those verses really

quick. Genesis three fourteen through sixteen. It says, so the Lord God

said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above

all livestock and all the wild animals. You will crawl on your belly,

and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will

put enmity between you and the woman, in between your offspring and hers.

He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. So God,

in his word has given us hope. Because this serpent, the snake that

he's talking to, is our ancient enemy. It's the murderer, the deceiver,

the tempter, the accuser, also known as Satan or the devil.

The serpent will be crushed by the offspring of Eve. That is the hope

that God has given us. Now, as wonderful as that, as wonderful

is that? Wow? I can't say that. But where is it?

That's a wonderful thing to hear? Right that God is going to crush Satan

by the offspring of the woman. But where does that leave us? Satan

will be destroyed, But what about us? We are still sinners that need

to be dealt with. Since Adam, we ourselves are naturally rebels against God.

So God being born day one, we want no thing to do with

God. We went to rebel against his plan and his perfection. God has

pronounced judgment that all who sin shall be judged accordingly. So God's not being

unfair. He's just saying, hey, how do you measure up? And

we sin way more than we ever do good. Even if you try to

justify yourself, it always outweighs. And at the end of the day,

the sin still has to be punished. And he promises that we who have

sinned will not escape the wrath do our sin. And this is all bad

news. It's true news, but it's bad news. And I can imagine

where you might be rethinking your decision to come to church today. But we

have a meal afterwards, and I promise if you stay with me, I'll

get a little bit better. And it's Panda Express, so I can't really

explain too bad complain. So all this bad news leads me to today's message,

simply titled the Gospel. I'm so excited to go through today's text today.

Our fundamental belief is the Gospel, the good News of Jesus Christ.

So we're gonna go back to our text, dig into it specifically The reason

that I chose the text that we're going through today is because it's one of

the most concise places and succinct places in all of Scripture that just lays out

the gospel. So I figured that that would be most helpful, not only

for us it was people to have a scripture to walk through, but also

for you to know, like, hey, where's the gospel? If sometimes

we go like, well, I don't know if I should share the gospel,

what would I even say? Well, Luckily I have places like this

in scripture that just lay it out for us. So let's start in verses

one and two of First Corinthians fifteen. Now, brothers and sisters, I

want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received

and on which you've taken your stand. By this gospel, you are saved

if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise you have

believed in vain. So let's break this down really quick. This, brothers

and sisters he's talking to are the believers who live in corinth. The I

want to remind you is the apostle Paul, and he's actually the kind of

the apostle to the Gentiles. His job, commissioned by Christ Jesus, was

to take the good news to the rest of the world. He would still

take it to the Jews and share it with them, but he would also

his primary concern was going out to the rest of the world that all would

be able to hear about Christ. And so he's actually the one who planted

this church in corinth and helped build it up. And not only that,

now he's writing them a letter not just to remind them, but the entirety

of this level or letter is kind of interesting because the Corinthians just they just

had a lot of issues. They have lots of problems, problems on problems,

and so the whole letter basically is just being like, why are you

doing that? Stop it? Why are you doing that? I can't believe

you're even doing that. I can't believe that I'm hearing that you're doing that,

And like it just kind of builds up, and so finally we're getting

towards the end of the letter to the Corinthians and he's wanting to remind them

of something. He says, I want to remind you of the Gospel,

and this word gospel here anytime you see this word. What this word means

in the Greek simply means good news. It's good news. And here he's

saying that he's preached the good news to them, that they at that time

had received the good news, and not only did they initially just receive it

by hearing it, but it's actually something that had become the foundation on which

they now were taking their stand. He then goes on even more so to

say, by this gospel, you are saved if you hold firmly to it.

So they received the good news. They're standing on this good news.

This is the good news that saves you. This is the good news,

like this is the news that you got to know. This is the news

that you've heard and have been saved by if you hold firmly to it.

And what that is basically saying is that if you don't lose sight of it,

or you don't stray from the initial message that I had delivered to you,

because you'd be straight from this teaching he's saying here, then then why

would you have believed in the first place? It did nothing for you.

So Paul is really laying the groundwork here to remind them. He's reminding them

of the importance of the good News and how foundational it is. He's saying,

this is the good news that saves you. And in light of what

we had gone through all last week and what in light of what we started

with today, and even for the Corinthians in that day, after having this

whole letter of just like, why are you doing this? Stop doing that?

I can't believe you're doing that. Some good news is dearly needed.

So for all of us, as we now move through the rest of this

text, I hope that we would lean in that we're getting ready to hear,

like, what is this good news? And really, I don't tune

me out. Don't tune me out today, because as we walk through the

good news and what it is, we can be like, Oh, I

grow up in church, and so I'm pretty familiar with it. I've heard

it, you know. So I was saved one time, and I then

took that good message and I hid it in my closet and I haven't really

used it since it hasn't been that useful to me. But that is not

how the gospel works. So I'm hoping that today that this isn't just a

reminder for them, but it's also a reminder for all of us. Let's

get into it. First. Corinthians fifteen three says, for what I received,

I passed on to you as of first importance. And here he says

what I received. What this means is Paul didn't make this up. This

isn't an idea or good news of Paul's own origin, but it's what he

himself had received. And what he's about to tell them is he received it

as a first in first importance. He's now showing up when he showed up

to them initially. He's saying, this is what you got to know.

This is the most important thing that you should know first. And he begins

that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. Now, Christ,

we were pretty familiar with this word if we've grown up in church. But

this word Christ, I want us to understand it a little bit better.

This word Christ is the Greek word for Messiah, Messiah and Hebrew Christ.

In Greek, Christ is the Messiah Christ or Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus

is Christ, he is the Christ. And what both those words mean,

and they mean the same thing, is the anointed one or God's anointed or

the anointed. And in the Old Testament, the significance of that which was

anointed is that when things were anointed in the Old Testament, they were set

apart by God for his special purpose. They were made consent crated to God.

They were made sacred so that God would have a special plan for those

things that he was anointing to say, I'm setting you apart and I'm calling

you to do my will. All right. So in the Old Testament we

see a lot of different things that are anointed. We see specifically prophets are

anointed. We see that priests or the high priests, they were anointed in

order to do their role. But also kings were anointed. The kings were

anointed, and that is actually what we are proclaiming when we say that Christ

is Lord. We're saying that or Jesus is the Christ. We're saying that

Jesus is King. Okay, Now, why this is significant is the King,

this Messiah, this an anointed one by God, the one that the

Jews were expecting to come and save them from the Roman government. God had

a bigger plan and it wasn't how people expected. Because the King or the

Christ or our Lord let's to say next, you're gonna go back to the

destory. Sorry, that the Christ died for our sins. The king,

the anointed one, he died. So Jesus is this offspring of the woman

who was promised who would crush the serpent's head. Yet the serpent would bite

his heel, and that biting his heel. Is this where where Jesus died

for our sins? And in that the serpent bit his heel. But there

was a bigger plan in all of that. That was the promise that we

were given of how the serpent was going to be destroyed. But God is

telling us some bigger here. He's saying that Christ died for our sins.

The king, the Lord Christ died for our sins. Us were who were

dead, and our trespasses and our sins, our wages against our sin.

We were rebels and sinners, hopeless, we were weak, poor, we

were enemies of the king. And what did the king do? He paid

for our sins. He died. The king stepped down and laid his life

down in place of ours. And this wasn't an accident, it was it

was God's plan all along. So where he said where we were singing earlier,

Jesus paid it all all to whom I owe. That's true. We

see in the last part of this verse where it says, according to the

scriptures, and this is showing us that God, this was God's intention throughout

all time, that God had promised that the Messiah. It wasn't really a

surprise. If it was a surprise to those who didn't know their Bible.

There was a lot of people who knew the scriptures are said, I know

what it's going to be like when the Messiah shows up. I'm ready for

him. And then the Messiah showed him, showed up and they're like,

you're not him, And He's like you would if you knew your Bible,

you would, if you knew your scripture, you would recognize me. So

let's look at one of the clearest places in all the all of scripture that

has to do with the Messiah, the Christ dying for our sins. And

this is a beautiful passage of scriptures, Isaiah fifty three. Let's read it

together. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the

Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and

like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty, your majesty,

to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire

him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and

familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces. He was

despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our

pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken

by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He

was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him,

And by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep,

have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and

the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed

and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was like a

lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before it shearers is silent.

So he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment, he was

taken in a way. Yet who of his generation protested, for he was

cut off from the land of the living, for the transgression of my people.

He was punished. He was assigned they grave with the wicked and with

the rich. In his death, though he had done no violence, nor

was any deceit in his mouth, Yet it was the Lord's will to crush

him and cause him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life an

offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days. And

the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered,

he will see the light of life and be satisfied by his knowledge.

My righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore

I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the

spoils with the strong. Because he poured out his life unto death and was

numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many and made intercession

for the transgressors. So this whole chapter is a testimony to God's plan that

his Messiah, that his Christ, the one that he would send, would

bear the iniquity of his people. Now this is good news, because what

that means is that when we put our faith in Christ Jesus, our sins

have been dealt with and taken away by Christ dying on our behalf. He

removed the debt that was owed our sin, which was our own life.

Does that make sense? Christ removed the debt which was I had sinned,

I had fallen short of the glory of God. The wages of sin was

death, which means I deserved what death? That he died in my place.

The verse goes on First Corinthians fifteen four, that he was buried,

that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, that he

was buried. What he's saying is he died, he was actually dead,

that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. Now this

is actually really interesting because I tried finding in the Old Testament where it said

that the Messiah or the Christ would be raised on the third day, and

I couldn't find it. But I'm very grateful for Jesus because he helped me

find it. There's something in there that it doesn't It doesn't really say that

he would die specifically on the third day. There's nothing specific in there.

But Jesus is going to show us where to look, and he's also going

to show us how to look. Okay, let's look in Matthew twelve thirty

nine through forty. He answered them, this is Jesus. A wicked and

adulterous generation asked for a sign, but none will be given it except the

sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights

in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be

three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. What's incredible about

this is that Jesus is a pointing to the Old Testament. He points to

the sign of Jonah, that Jonah was in the belly of the fish for

three days, and that it would be just the same for the son of

Man. Which this is incredible because what this does is it just shows us

even more that the whole Old Testament points to Christ even when we're missing it.

It doesn't just the Old Testament. There are places where explicitly talks about

Christ and says this is when you can expect, this is what it's going

to be like. But then there's also pictures, right the lamb who was

slain before the foundations of the world. Who was the lamb is Jesus.

It's a picture. What's the lamb represent It represents the sacrificial systems. It's

a whole thing, right. There's archetypes in the Old Testament, and Jesus

himself actually uses there's a couple of places in the New Yeah, and the

New Testament in the Gospels where he says the sudd is gonna die and he's

gonna be raised, and they're like, we don't get what you're saying.

We don't understand this, right, And these other times were Jesus would also

use pictures, he said in John to eighteen through twenty two. The Jews

then responded to him, him, being Jesus, what sign can you show

us to prove your authority to do all this? Jesus answered them, destroy

this temple and I will raise it again in three days. They replied,

it's taken forty six years to build this temple, because they thought he was

talking about the temple in Jerusalem and you were going to raise it in three

days. But the temple he was speaking, or that he had spoken of,

was his body. After he was raised from the dead. His disciples

recalled what he had said. Then they believe the scripture in the words that

Jesus had spoken. Jesus said he was going to die and be on the

third day. And we'd already seen the we already looked through the Isaiah text.

But we're actually gonna go back to it really quick because there's something that

I noticed I was in there that's actually really cool. Let's look at that

again. By oppression and judgment, he was taken away. Yet who of

his generation protested for He was cut off from the land of the living.

Remember that, we'll write it down. Cut off from the land of the

living for the transgressions of my people. He was punished. Write this down.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his

death. Though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his

mouth, Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to

suffer. And though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, write

this down. He will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the

will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. Write this down. After

he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be sad fied

by his knowledge. And my righteous servant will justify many, and he will

bear their iniquities. What I thought was incredible going through that Texas, I

was realizing it's all right there. He says that the Messiah was going to

die, so we have cut off from the land of the living, which

means he died, that he was assigned a grave with the wicked and the

rich. He was buried, and that though God had made him a offering

for sin, he would prolong his days, that he would see his offspring,

that he would see the light of life, meaning he would be raised.

I had neared it out about that. I thought it was cool.

Even after Jesus had been raised, Jesus tells his disciples the same thing.

Let's look at it. He said to them, this is what I told

you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that has written

about me. Where in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the

Psalms, it's the Old Testament. Then he opened their minds so they could

understand the scriptures. He told them, this is what was written. The

Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third Day, and repentance

for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations,

beginning at Jerusalem. You are my witnesses of these things. Jesus died for

our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day, just

like scripture said he would. Now this is the same thing that Paul is

preaching. He said, what I delivered to you is what we've been saying.

It's the same thing we've been saying. This Jesus at the end says,

you are witnesses of these things. And what's incredible is that in our

text back in First Corinthians, this is where Paul goes next, and first

Crinthiine's fifteen five. He says, and he appeared to c fis Cefas,

that's Peter, and then to the twelve. So Paul is giving them this

radical reminder of this gospel, this good news that he had delivered. Let's

recap these verses really cook altogether. For what I received, I passed on

to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to

the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third

day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephiss and then to

the twelve. But even cooler is that Paul doesn't stop there. He goes

He now goes down a laundry list of others who also saw Christ, let's

see it. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the

brothers and sisters at the same time, at the same time, most of

whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to

James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, he appeared

to me also as to one abnormally born. What's he saying here? Jesus

was seen by a group of people, so many witnesses to his resurrection,

and at the time he's literally like, if you want to fact check me,

you can go talk to him. Only a couple of them have fallen

asleep, which means passed away for the time being. He's saying, there

are witnesses to this thing that I share with you. And then Paul did

something amazing. He kind of makes a shift in his argument. He says,

here as to one abnormally born, and what this is meaning is kind

of like untimely, like he was born a little bit later to where he

didn't get experienced as all the same way, Christ still revealed himself to Paul,

but it wasn't the same in the sense of with the five it was

later, but Christ did reveal himself to him. And this is where we

get to or basically to summarize that Christ had just appeared to him at a

later time than all the rest. And this is where we get to see

something amazing about the Gospel. And it's in these next two verses. And

I love going through this. First Corinthians five or fifteen nine. He said,

for I am the least of the apostles, and do not even deserve

to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. And

he was not wrong. Paul was not wrong. Let's look at it.

Paul was there for the for the death of the first Christian martyr. Let's

look at it. This is Stephen, the one who's about to die,

who's a believe. He said, I see heaven opened, and the Son

of Man standing at the right hand of God. At this they and this

day is all the religious leaders in Jerusalem. They covered their ears and yelling

at the top of their voices. They all rushed at him, dragged him

out of the city, and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses

laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they

were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus received my spirit. Then he

fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold the sin

against them. When he had said this, he fell asleep, and Saul

approved of their killing him. On that day a great persecution broke out against

the Church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and

Samaria. This Saul that we're talking about, this is Paul. Saul is

his Jewish name, and Paul is his name in Greek. So it's the

same person saw Paul. He didn't get a name change. That's sometimes we

grew up in church. We might have thought that once he was saved,

now he became Paul. But that's not what it is. His name is

was Saul in the Hebrew circles, and when he was his Greek name,

or his Greek version of his name, was Paul. If you were a

Christian, you wanted nothing to do with Paul. And while let's look at

a couple of verses, call him big bad Saul. But Saul began to

destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men

and women and put them in prison. Let's go to the next one.

Meanwhile, it's a little bit later on. Saul was still breathing out murderous

threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him

for the letters to the synagogues Damascus, so that if he found any there

who belonged to the Way. That's the Way, that's Jesus, whether men

or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. This is Saal,

this is the one who were reading his letter. He would if you

were a Christian, you didn't want anything to do with Paul. Why because

he dragged your friends off to prison. You don't want anything to do with

him. Paul's mission was to destroy the church. But Paul wasn't left to

his own devices. He says in verse ten of Our Corinthians text. But

by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace

to me was not without effect. No, I worked hard than all of

them, Yet not I but the grace of God that was with me.

While Paul was on mission to destroy the Church, God's Church, Christ was

on mission to save him. And this is good news. This is the

good news. He's delivering and now this is the good news that he's sharing

with them. He's saying, remember who I was? Do you remember who

I was? Because he needed good news and when he received this good news,

he then went on to share this good news. This is the gospel.

He's saying that those who don't deserve grace, he didn't deserve it.

He didn't deserve it. He was dragging people off to prison. He was

dragging people off to jail, and if that was the first place you were

gonna end up, you didn't know where you were going to end up next,

because they're already killing Christians. And sauls all for it. He's all

about it. He says that by God's grace, I am what I am,

and I honestly that'd be a dope tattoo because that's just that's so hardcore.

But it's true. By God's grace, every single one of us are

who we are today because of His grace, and we did not deserve it.

It's really easy for us to look at Palm and be like man,

praise God for him being awesome, which is true, but that should also

remind us that we all the people that we think about in our life that

there's like, there's no way, there's no way that God would say that

person, there's no way that that person could ever come to Christ because they

don't deserve it. Look at what they do, Look how they live their

life. He says, like Od's grace was not without effect. So that

doesn't mean that he just paid that Christ covered over his sins. But he

said, not only that, but he transformed my life. He didn't just

wipe the slate clean and say, all right, now we're starting ground zero.

Don't mess it up again. It's not the gospel. He says that

God's grace was not without effect, meaning that it did something, it produced

something. It means that God's grace changed him. He said, by God's

grace I am when I am, Paul was never the same after his encounter

with Christ, after his encounter with the Good News, nothing would be the

same, even to the point where he would he would have approved of those

who were killed. He approved of the killing of Christian martyrs, and by

the end of his life would he himself be killed as a Christian martyr because

of what he believed. He knew the truth, he'd been saved by it,

he had been radically transformed from the one who persecuted churches now plants churches.

That was the radical shift that he made. I'm going to eradicate the

churches to I'm going to spread this as much as I can. Every city's

going to have a church, every region's going to have a church. And

this is the nature of the gospel, that nobody is beyond God's reach.

So ad Ephesians two one through ten. As for you, you were dead

in your transgressions and sin in which you used to live, when you followed

the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air,

the spirit who is now at work in those who were disobedient, All

of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our

flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by

nature deserving of wrath. It's the bad news. Here's the good news.

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in

mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our

transgressions. We were dead, and God acted, God moved, God reached

and saved us. He made us alive with Christ. It is by grace.

You have been saved by God's grace, and I am what I am,

what's amazing about? And this letter to the Ephesians, this section was

also written by Paul, so he's writing this down for them, and he

has firsthand experience. He was gratifying the cravings of his flesh, trying to

destroy the church, trying to crush the church dead in his sins. But

he's been saved by grace. And he recognizes that God raised us up with

Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, and

ordered that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace

expressed in his kindness to us. In Christ Jesus. That's showing us what

Christ Jesus has done. That the King laid down his life, so it's

expressing Christ Jesus. That's how we can see God's love and kindness expressed towards

us. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and

this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by

works. So that no one can boast, for we are God's handiwork created

in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared and advance for us to

do. Which is even cooler that Paul is writing this because once again he

was in He's been in all these categories where he was the sinner, the

rebel, deserving by nature, wrath, who God reached down and saved and

poured out his grace and not just to wipe the say clean, but created

in Christ Jesus, so that God has built us and fashioned us for good

works which he has plans for us in our life. God has something good

in store and how He's going to use us, and whether that looks grandiose

or whether that looks pitiful, God is going to use us for his good

works. He's going to create us and mold us into the image of Christ

to be used for the good works that He's prepared ahead of time. He

prepared the Christ ahead of time, and He's prepared the works that we will

do in our lives, the lives that we will bless and pour into the

families that will have, the friends that will have, the people that will

be saved through us and sharing the good news. God has prepared all of

those things. By the grace of God, we have been saved through faith

and what God or where Christ is accomplished for us. This is the transformative

power of the good news of Christ. And he goes on to the last

verse. Whether than it is I or they, he's talking about all those

other witnesses. This is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

Saying this, all the witnesses, they're all going to give you the

same message because we all saw the same thing. We're all on the same

page, and this is the good news that we're getting out. And when

we brought this initially, this is what you had believed. The Christ died

for our sins, was buried, was raised on the third day that he

was seen. What's amazing is this is also exactly what the scripture said would

happen. Let's look in Psalm twenty two. We're gonna look at the end

of it. But what's cool about this versus the beginning of it is actually

the section of scripture that Jesus, while hanging on the cross, quotes where

he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

A lot of people have used that to build a whole theology off of that

statement, but once again, they just didn't know their Bibles well enough to

go back and know that he was quoting a psalm. It's the beginning of

this and when you go it's a line by line, play by play call

for what was going on when Jesus was hanging on the cross. And what's

amazing, though, is the end of this chapter. All the ends of

the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of

the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord,

and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast

and worship, All who go down to the dust will kneel before him,

every knee. Those who cannot keep themselves alive posterity will serve him. Future

generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring

to a people yet unborn, he has done it, and that's good news.

He'd done what accomplished our salvation and reconciled us to God. This is

the good news that is to be spread, and this is the good news

that is to be received. And I wanted to make a quick note that

this good news isn't a suggestion. Let's look at that really quick. This

is Paul again preaching and Athens. In the past, God overlooks such ignorance,

but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, for he has set

a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he's appointed.

He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.

This good news is a command from God to turn from your sin,

to put your faith in what Christ is accomplished and the resurrection. The importance

of the resurrection is it seals the deal on the truthfulness of these facts.

It seals the deal on the truthfulness of this good news. People would be

like, well, the only good news of it's true. Tell him to

go go look at the resurrection, go disprove the resurrection. It's impossible most

people who've tried become Christians because they're like, oh, I didn't know,

I didn't know. It's one of the most well recorded facts in all of

history that there was a man named Jesus who died by the hands of Roman

soldiers and was raised on the third day, that his tomb was empty,

and that the believers who were discouraged would then turn around to say that they

had seen him, and then would even take that to being brutally murdered and

tortured to death because what they had seen, because what they knew to be

true. So let's summarize for today. What is the gospel. It's the

good news of what Christ has done. That he died for our sins,

was buried, and was raised from the dead, and has witnesses that there

were witnesses to those facts and these events. This means we must turn from

our sins and put our faith in Christ, or the wrath of God remains

on us. Some of you might have been like, Okay, duncan we're

talking about the gospel. Why didn't we use John through sixteen? Here we

go. He's John three sixteen for you guys. For God so love the

world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him

shall not perish but have eternal life. The gospel is not without effect,

meaning the gospel will change you. So what are we to do with this

first Crinth fifteen one through eleven passage? And say to you that if you

haven't received Christ yet, to receive him, to put your faith in your

trusts in him, receive this good news that He died for your sins,

and if you will turn into him, if you will put your faith in

trust in him, he will cover your sins, that the debt that was

owed of your own life being in your own blood being shed. He will

account to you his righteousness, and he will take that on himself, and

he will make you right with God. That's what we say when we talked

about the fall earlier. It was a fall from what no one. It

wasn't that somebody didn't trip. It was it could be God. They fell

out of the presence of God because of their actions, because of the rebellion.

They fell out of the right standing with God, and they fell out

of God's presence. And God has made a way for us to be right

with him again and be able to walk boldly into His presence and to know

him to have no problems between us because Jesus has paid at all. The

next thing I want us to remember is that the Gospel is not without or

without effect. What this means is that if you would say that you have

received the good news, but you actually haven't seen anything changed in your life,

you still live controlled by your lusts, in your sins, and kind

of actually live like you don't know Christ, if you haven't been set free

from the crushing weight of like I put my faith in Jesus and I'm just

trying to be right with him. We've missed it. So I pray that

you hear me has died for your sins, and that there's nothing that you

can do that will make you right with God apart from putting your faith your

trust in Christ. Jesus. Your sin wants to kill you. So you

should stop living like a child that is deserving of wrath. Stop living like

a child of this world. He saved us out of this world. He's

calling us out of this world to be conformed to his image, which is

to look more like the Lord. I need the band to come up.

I was supposed to do that a couple of minutes ago. It could be

a lot sweeter a moment right now. So please turn to Christ. If

you haven't, If you if you're like I have or I thought I did,

But now I'm examining my life and I haven't. I realized that it

doesn't measure up, that I don't measure up. And my encouragement is that

you would turn to Christ, that you would seek him, that you would

ask him because he promises that you will find him, that he will restore

you, that you will find rest, and that he will give you new

life and new desires. Because that's sometimes what happens. We put our faith

in Jesus, nothing changes, and we're like, oh, so I feel

I still feel like I was before. Well, go to God, say

change my desires please, And honestly, I'd think if you're actually praying that

prayer in the first place, it might be the first fruits and the first

evidence that God is starting to work in your heart to push out the old

desires and bring in the new. Now for those of us who have received

and have been changed by this good news, well, the good news is

too good of news to be kept to ourselves. Do you hear me?

This is good news, and this good news is too good to be kept

to ourselves. We must preach Christ in all of what that means, and

him crucified and all of what that means. That that's the Christ, the

Lord paid for our sins on the cross and was raised to prove it.

So my encouragement to you be that you go and share this good news.

Let's read our last bit of scripture. If you declare with your mouth,

Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the

dead. You will be saved, for it is written. Or wait,

what did I jump ahead? No, for it is with your heart that

you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess

your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, anyone who believes in him

will never be put to shame, for there is no difference between you and

gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all, and richly blesses all who

call on him. And now I want to say something about this lord really

quick. We don't make Jesus lord. Jesus is Lord, and we put

our faith in him. It's not we are recognizing that he is king of

the universe, that he created all of it, and that he has restored

us. You don't make Jesus lord. You submit to him. You put

your faith and trust in him, saying I can't do this of my own

works, I have nothing to offer. He already knows that. That's why

he paid for your sins. And so now he's been made Lord and God.

He's not made God, but he's Lord, and his name is above

every name that every knee would bow. So we're professing what is truth.

We come into alignment with what is true, that Christ is Lord, and

we recognize the truth. The same Lord is lord of all, and richly

blesses all who call on him, For everyone who calls him the name of

the Lord will be saved. How then, can they believe or how can

they call on the one they have not believed him? And how can they

believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they

hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are

sent? As it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who

bring what good news? So I'm sending all of you, Okay, we're

all being sent this week. This is what we're going to do. We're

going to share this good news because it is too good to be kept to

ourselves. Would you please stand to your feet. We're gonna go into a

time of worship and response. We're gonna have prayer on the sides. Our

elders would be on the sides. We'd love to pray with you. We're

a church that loves to pray for one another. Honestly, I think there's

been fruit and blessing and all of that as we get to submit our lives

to our Lord and bring our request before him to be praying for one another,

and all the craziness that could be going on in our life, or

even all the blessings that are going on in our life, we have this

opportunity to rejoice together with one another. So before we share this meal together

which everyone is invited to stay, everyone should partake and enjoy it with us.

We also do communion while we're eating, so if it's your first time,

we'd love just to get to know you, help you become a part

of the body. If you have a prayer request, you can also write

it here so we can send it out and be praying for you in the

middle of the week. Also, if you don't want it to be sent

out to everyone, you can just write private and you'll just go to the

elders so they can be praying for you. If you can't prepared to give

today, you can do that. We have giving envelopes. You can put

both of these things in the offering box right outside the sanctuary doors. Let's

pray and then seeing worship to our Lord Father. We love you, and

we thank you for this great gift that you have given us. In your

son, Jesus Christ, they've poured out grace upon grace upon grace on every

single one of us. Or God, that we would be blessed to know

who you are and that Lord God, by your grace we are what we

are today, or God, if we feel inadequate, if we feel like

we've missed it, we feel like we're not where we should be. We

just asked that that would be your grace calling us and reaching and starting to

work in our lives now, that we would be transformed, just like we've

seen your gospel do over and over and over again in other people's lives.

Or God, even if we're feeling stagnant in our in our belief, in

our walk with You, like we're not growing, we just ask for more

grace that would be poured out, or God, that we would find real

joy in who you are. We'd find renewed joy in this great news.

Or God help it be how we start our day remembering, or God,

that you would had died in our place, that we could know you,

be made right with you, reconciled to you, and people to have a

future where we know that one day we will be raised when you come,

and that we will live with you forever and ever, Lord God, rather

than eternal death and separation and punishment. Or God, you have not left

us alone, but you've called on us. That you've saved us by your

grace, or God that we did not deserve. So we just asked that

you'd be moving in our hearts to draw to yourself, that you'd be moving

in each and one, every one of our hearts. That as we move

forward with our evening, that this wouldn't just be now we're done and now

we've wrapped up, but Lord God, it would be the beginning of how

we get to live differently. Or God, that as we work hard,

that we would recognize that it was you working all along. It was your

grace working through us to accomplish what you've prepared. And so we give you

all glory as we recognize all things are from you, All grace is from

you, God, which means all glory is to you. We thank you,

we love you, and we asked that as we seen these words,

that you would be glorified. Jesus, name me pray Amen,