You Need the Gospel Every Day (Titus 2:11-15)

If you've got a Bible, go ahead and get that open to the book of

Titus. Specifically, we're going to be

in Titus chapter 2, looking at verses 11 through 15.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

If you can't find Titus, there should be an index on the inside

cover of your Bible. If you still can't find it,

that's OK. We'll have all the relevant

Bible verses on the screen for you so that you can't miss them.

This is our 11th sermon, so if you've missed the other ten, I

can catch you up. What Paul has done is he's

writing Titus. Titus is kind of the resident

pastor of these little brand new immature churches that are

popping up on this ancient island called Crete.

And so this is the way Paul's been working through this

letter. He gives his greetings at the

very beginning. And right after that, Paul jumps

into instructions on how to train, develop, install elders

and pastors. He's like, hey, if you guys are

going to be churches, here's how to be a church.

Find these leaders. They have to meet these

qualifications and do these things.

After that, what Paul does is he blasts through all of these

individual instructions to all these various people groups

within the churches. He says, hey, older women do

this. Hey, older men be like this,

younger kids do this. And so he blasts through all

these individual instructions. And finally we find ourselves

this morning in chapter 2, verse 11.

And he's asking the question, what is the central message?

What is the central teaching of the church?

And I'll give you the answer right away.

The answer to that question is the gospel.

But the question of that is, OK, I, I know the gospel, right?

It's the message that Jesus Christ was crucified to take

away my sins and cover me in his very own righteousness.

I know what the gospel is. But the big question is, what's

the utility of the gospel? Or like, think of it a little

bit differently. What's the actual usage or

function of the gospel in your life?

Some Christians treat it like a single use plastic spoon, right?

You use it once, you believe it, you throw it away, you're done

with it. Some Christians treat it like a

multi purpose tool, like it's this.

It's this thing that has relevance for every area of

their life, their salvation, but also their continued

transformation and their eventual glorification.

Which one is it? Is it the single use plastic

spoon or is it the multi purpose tool?

Let me give you another option. Two different ways of treating

the gospel. One way that Christians treat

the gospel is they treat it like a multi purpose vitamin

supplement. Like do you guys have

supplements? I have supplements.

I like supplements. Like my, my cabinets are full of

all these various gym supplements And, and the thing

about supplements is they're nice, right?

I, Noah, you have a lot of supplements, right?

So, so, so, so actually I texted, I texted Noah the other

week. I was like, hey, what's a

supplement for joint pain? And he sent me a stretch and I

was like, I was just looking for something.

I swallowed the album. What is the gospel like?

Is it like that? Is it like it's, it's one, it's

it's one vitamin amidst a bunch of other vitamins.

It's really not life or death, but like it'd be, it would be

nice to take that. And like sometimes you take it

on a weekly basis and sometimes you forget and you can't really

tell the difference. Is that the way that the gospel

works in your life? Like I've got all these other

vitamins, like a good career, a good job, good relationships and

like, it would be nice to have a little Jesus on top of that.

Is it like that or is the gospel more like life support?

You know, you're, you're utterly and totally dependent upon it.

It is sustaining your existence and everything you do on a daily

basis, and you need as much of it as possible.

Which one is it to you? Is it a supplement that'd be

nice to have, or is it life support?

So if you're able, let's go ahead and stand for the reading

of God's Word. This is Paul's clearest

articulation of the content of the message of the gospel in the

book of Titus. It's one of those places where

you see everything in the message of the gospel condensed

into one dense paragraph. If you like memorizing Bible

verses, this is a perfect Bible verse to memorize that will give

you the entire content of the gospel.

In verse 11, Paul says For the grace of God has appeared,

bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce

ungodliness and worldly passions, but also helping us to

live self controlled, upright and godly lives in the present

age. Helping us wait for our blessed

hope. The appearing of the glory of

our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us

to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for

himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for

good works. What are we to do with this

message? Paul says in verse 15

instructions to Titus, Declare these things, exhort and rebuke

with all authority, and let no one disregard you.

Heavenly Father, I pray that even for those of us who have

known and believed the gospel for years, sometimes we just,

sometimes I just get inoculated to it.

I get so used to hearing the gospel that when a brother or

sister preaches it or teaches it to me, my heart's first response

is, oh, I know, I, I know, I know.

Why are you telling me? Do you think I don't know?

I know that I know the gospel. And if we, if, if there are

people in our church who have that defense mechanism, oh, I

know, cool. I know the gospel, and I pray

that the Holy Spirit would just powerfully help us let our

guards down and let go of that defense mechanism so that the

Gospel can freshly hit our heart this morning.

So it's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people

prayed. Amen.

You can have a seat. So this is not you generally my

method of preaching, expositing the scriptures.

I'm just going to do it a little bit differently this morning.

I don't usually do this, but we're going to start with the

end of the thought unit and then kind of work our way back up.

So look at verse 15, summary of all that came before it.

What does Paul say? He says, declare these things,

exhort these things, rebuke with these things with all authority,

and let no one disregard you or this message.

So what verse 15 shows us is that again, this is Paul

speaking Titus. Titus is the resident pastor at

these churches in Crete. What does Paul tell Titus to do

with the verses before verse 15? He says declare them, exhort

with them, rebuke with them. So what this actually is is Paul

telling Titus, this is what you need to preach when the church

gathers together, right? These are preaching instructions

to Titus. Paul's telling Titus what the

sermon series should be at the churches in Crete.

He's telling Titus what the subject of his preaching should

be. And strangely enough, and this

might sound strange to us as modern Christians, Paul doesn't

actually tell Titus to preach an at the movie sermon series or

something a little bit more relevant to the culture.

Paul doesn't tell Titus, hey, what you do when people gather

together is just give them like a little spiritual 15 minute Ted

talk that people find pretty interesting.

And at the very end of it, maybe sprinkle some, sprinkle some

Jesus at the end of it. That's not that's not Paul's

instructions. What should the church be

preaching? What should the church be

teaching? What is the message of the

church? What is Paul tell Titus to

preach? And the answer in verse 15 is

these things. What are these things?

These things are the things that Paul wrote before verse 15

verses 11 through 15 What What are verses 11 through 14?

The answer is the gospel. Verses 11 through 14 are the

gospel of Jesus Christ in a nutshell.

These verses teach about the gospel of Jesus dying for us in

our place. He gave himself up is the way

that Paul articulates it. But Paul also articulates how

the gospel sanctifies us or gives us power that trains us to

both renounce on godliness and to be empowered for godliness.

But also Paul teaches about how the gospel helps us wait for the

glorious hope of when Jesus returns.

So if we were getting, if we already use modern language,

what Paul is instructing Titus to do is he's saying, hey, be a

gospel centered preacher. Help these churches become

gospel centered churches. I think probably one of the

biggest illnesses of of the modern church, one of the

greatest errors of the modern church is reducing the gospel

into an intro class to Christianity.

That's that's the way a lot of Christianity teaches the gospel.

It's this intro class to Christianity.

Once you believe it, great, you graduate from that, and then you

can talk about the real stuff like predestination and election

and gender and sexuality and oh gosh, wait till you get to talk

about end times. Once you graduate, once you

graduate through it, through the gospel, That's the way a lot of

Christians and churches will treat the gospel.

And if you treat the gospel that way, as a vitamin that's helpful

once a month, what you'll end up doing is reducing Christianity

to less than what the Bible's vision is for that.

One of my favorite quotes on this comes from a Bible teacher

named JD Greer. Greer has this this this great

quote. He says this, I want you to, I

want you to visualize this. He says the gospel is not one

classroom in Christianity that you take inside of this

otherwise gigantic school building.

Can you guys picture that like one classroom at the end of the

hall? You take it and then you're done

with it. Greer says that's not what the

gospel is. He says the gospel is the

building where all the other classrooms of Christianity take

place in. It's the building.

Isn't that a good visual? So like whatever subject you're

studying, study them all. But they're all to be done in

the building of the gospel. They're all to be done in light

of this message of a crucified God for our salvation.

I want you to, I want you to see this in our text this morning,

OK? And I'm going to put on my my ex

English teacher hat just a little bit.

One of the coolest things about verses 11 through 14 is how Paul

uses all three tenses to describe the effect of the

gospel past, present and future for how the gospel works through

our lives. Let's let's work through these

three areas quickly. I've got a slide for this.

So the gospel is past tense, present tense, and future tense

power. Let's look at past tense.

The gospel is past tense, which means it saved us.

If you're a Christian in the past when you believed it, look

at verse 11. Paul says for the grace of God

has appeared. It appeared bringing salvation

for all people who believe. So what Paul's emphasizing here

is the fact that the gospel is a historical event that actually

happened in the past tense within the space-time continuum

that we live in. The phrase the grace of God

appeared is Paul talking about Jesus coming to earth to live in

the flesh and to die in our place on a cross for our sins.

It's a historical event and when you believe that message, you

are saved. Amen.

And it becomes a past tense power for salvation in your

life. You could look back at and say

that's when God saved me, when I believe the gospel and, and it

has present tense power. The gospel is also a present

tense power. In other words, it sanctifies

us. Look at verse 12.

The gospel saves us, Yes, and the gospel trains us to renounce

ungodliness and worldly passions and empowers us to live self

controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age.

So notice it's not just a past tense historical event.

It is. It's also a present tense power.

This shows us that it's the power of the gospel and not our

own effort and energy in flesh. It's the power of the gospel

that doesn't just save us from our sins, but also provides us

the power to be transformed into the image of Jesus in our daily

life. The gospel sanctifies us and

past tense, present tense, and it is future tense.

Power to the gospel is also the power that eventually glorifies

us. Look at verse 13.

It helps us wait for our blessed hope.

What this shows us is that in the final judgment, when Jesus

appears again, he is our final hope.

When Jesus stands before us and his glorious return, and we

stand before him ready to receive his verdict, our hope is

not that we will be judged by our works.

Well, there's these two scales. You did some of this, but you

did some of that. It's pretty Even so, So come on

in. Our hope is not our own works.

Our hope is the glory of the gospel, that God will look at

us. And because of our embrace of

the gospel of Jesus, he will look at us on that day and

declare us righteous in the name of Jesus.

And so it's also our future tense hope for glory before God.

So look, here's what I'm trying to say.

Reducing the gospel to an intro class on Christianity is going

to hamper your spiritual life. The gospel is the entire

building, the entire building in which every class and you're

going to take a lot of them, right?

It singleness, marriage, parenting, growth, going through

this experience, all of those classrooms, they all take place

within the building of God's glorious gospel.

Our salvation in the past, our sanctification in the present

and our glorification in the future.

But here's OK, got you, Pat, I agree with you, Pastor.

Here's the big question though. Why do we need the gospel on a

daily basis? OK, so I need the gospel on a

daily. So the church needs to be

preaching the gospel, singing the gospel, praying the gospel,

eating the gospel, and communion.

Got it. I should probably start looking

at myself in the mirror when I brush my teeth in the morning

and preaching the gospel to myself, saying, hey, Cole, Jesus

Christ was crucified for your sins to cover you in his

righteousness. Why?

And there's a lot of ways to answer that question.

I'll give you one that's going to make this text pop this

morning. One of the reasons why we need

the gospel on a daily basis is because it requires a lifetime

of gospel exposure to on learn false religion.

So let me let me show you something really quickly.

There's something really strategic in the way that Paul

articulates the gospel. You don't, you don't need to

look into the historical context to understand these verses.

You can just look at the words and say, wow, that is powerful.

But when you look at the historical context, what's

happening in Crete, you start to see, oh, that's why Paul used

that specific word. Look at a specific word for me.

Look at verse 11. I want you to 0 in on the word

appeared for the grace of God has appeared circle that star it

just think about it appeared in the Greek that word is

epiphanos. It's where we get our English

word epiphany and epiphany is when you can't see something

then all of a sudden this idea, this epiphany comes to you and

you can see it right. The grace of God has epiphanos

or appeared to us. That is a politically charged,

religiously charged word to us. It just looks like the word

appeared and it was to them. It wouldn't.

It would be like I just feel like pressing some buttons this

morning. Are you guys with me still?

It would be like if I use the word in my sermon woke.

If I said that word, it wouldn't just be a word to you.

There would be this entire system of ideas that gathered

around that singular word and you would be like, wow, that's a

really loaded word. But if somebody were to print

off like a copy of my sermon and 2000 years from now someone were

to read this sermon and see the word woke, they would just

assume that it's past tense for awake.

But for you, it's got this entire system of ideas around

it, and probably it's an emotionally charged word that

you feel a certain way when you hear it.

That's what the word appeared would have been like for 1st

century Cretans. Do you want to know why?

Because 1st century Cretans. And this doesn't make them very

different. The majority of people were like

this in the ancient world. They were Zeus worshippers.

And so when when Paul wrote this letter, the dominant religion on

Crete was not Christianity. It was not atheism.

Atheism, atheism hasn't been invented yet by this time in

history. It is the worship of Zeus, which

was pretty common in the ancient world.

Here's where it gets different for Crete, though.

In the ancient world, people worship Zeus as the everlasting

God who reigns from Mount Olympus.

The island of Crete had a little bit different idea of of Zeus.

And it was probably because one time someone asked me, Cole, do

you have little man syndrome? I was like, I didn't think so,

but your question makes me feel like maybe I do.

Well, the island of Crete has a little island syndrome.

And so they wanted some way to feel important.

They weren't Rome to feel important in the ancient world.

So they went around and they claimed, hey, you know what?

Zeus was actually born on our island, and not only was Zeus

born on our island, he died on our island and we actually have

his tomb in a cave on our island.

Aren't we so important? The rest of the ancient world

was like, no, that's ridiculous. He's the everlasting God.

Crete was like, hey, we've got his tomb here.

It puffed them up with a sense of self importance, but it also

shaped them and formed them in really unique ways.

Their holidays were not Easter and Christmas, where they

celebrate the birth of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus.

Their holidays. Who do you think their holidays

revolved around? Zeus, right?

Even their initiation rites result revolved around Zeus.

If you were a young man and you wanted to become a man in the

eyes of your fellow Cretan neighbors, your your initiation

rite would include Zeus. You and a group of boys would

gather together. I'm not making this up.

You would go to The Cave that they supposedly buried Zeus and

you go down to the bottom of The Cave and then you would have a

ritualistic dance in the tomb where Zeus was supposedly buried

and then you would come back out of that cave as a man and that

shapes you in a very They had a Zeus centered imagination,

right? Their ethics were shaped on Zeus

worship. Zeus was known as the deceptive

lying God in the ancient world because, as Zeus mythology had

it, Zeus got the throne by usurping his father Chronos, and

his father tried to chase Zeus down and eat him alive.

And so Zeus, Zeus had to be crafty and Zeus had to be

deceitful and Zeus had to be a liar.

And that doesn't have no effect on you.

If you worship Zeus and your God is a liar, what does that make

you into? Makes you into a liar.

And so the Creighton Island had the reputation.

You can even see that in the Bible of being liars.

It shapes you in a profound way. And so when someone comes along

and gives you this vision of a God who took on flesh and was

crucified in your place on a cross, that is the opposite of a

lying God who hurls around Thunder and lightning to make

his points right. So if, if these people, if these

Cretans, if they are going to trade the lightning bolt of Zeus

for the cross of Jesus Christ, they would need to be pumped

full of the gospel all day, every time, every time they

gathered together as a church. Titus, these people need these

things. The gospel exhorted and rebuked

and declared they need to hear this preached on a daily basis.

And look, I know you don't worship Zeus, but you also grew

up worshipping Zeus. We all grew up with our own

cultural gods that we still have the tendency to worship.

Maybe yours wasn't Zeus. Maybe some of us were taught to

worship the God of success, or money or power, or sex or food

or popularity or sports. Whatever it is that actually

dominates your mind on a daily basis is probably the false God

that you grew up worshipping. And if you're a Christian, if

you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, you listen to me.

You have been legally, legally in the eyes of God.

You have been legally set free from the penalty of worshipping

a false God. It's done that penalty not over

your head. You will not be punished for

that. Jesus absorbed that on the

cross. It's done legally, but

experientially you're probably going to spend the rest of your

life fighting against the power and influence of those household

gods that you grew up with. It still shaped you and formed

you for the 1st 12/20/40 years that you weren't a Christian.

It's why you are the shape that you are today and legally it's

finished experientially. You've just got to unlearn what

you learn through your idol worship.

It formed you in really powerful ways.

And So what you need is to hear the gospel preached every Sunday

and every other day to write, we call, we use the language of

gospel centered at Frontier, everything's got to be gospel

centered. We want to sing gospel centered

worship songs. We want to preach gospel

centered sermons. No matter what text we're in,

we're always going to come back to the gospel.

We like to do gospel centered communion.

Every Sunday we pray gospel centered prayers through the

liturgy. We want Gospel getting pumped

into us from every little tube that's attached to us.

Because I just, let me be stone cold honest for a moment with

you, I think. I think one reason why

Christianity is so weak in the modern world is that so many of

our churches have prioritized good advice over good news.

I want to come to church for 45 minutes.

I want you to give me some good advice, some life hacks, snip,

snap. And then I'll be out of it in 45

minutes in my car on my way to lunch and maybe give me some

vaguely spiritual advice that maybe includes the name of

Jesus. Why?

Why is that the way that why? Why would we prefer good advice

over good news? Why would we prefer life hacks

to the power of God for salvation?

And the answer to that question is because we mostly view

ourselves as decent people who just need a little bit of

improvement rather than as sinners who are desperate for

salvation. And if you think you're just

like a pretty decent person who's just like needs some Jesus

sprinkled on top, then what you want out of your church is just

give me some good advice, man. If, what if what you if you see

yourself as a Sinner desperate for salvation, though, you'll

posture yourselves in front of the gospel by saying I need

more. I need it in my preaching.

I need it in my singing. I need it and everything.

This is life or death for me. Life or death.

Like some moments are just moments, you experience them and

then you're done with them. There are these other moments

that when you go through them, you spend the rest of your life

looking back at it. I had one of these moments a

couple weeks ago. A month ago.

I was literally frozen in my tracks when it happened.

I couldn't believe how powerful the moment was to me.

I froze. It was almost like an auto body

experience. And the experience was I was in

Iowa City a couple weeks ago doing a couple different things,

but I was also visiting the Benton family who were in the

Iowa City hospital. And the Bentons are with us this

morning and they are my heroes. So we've been praying for the

Bentons. We've been encouraging the

Bentons. I would encourage you to

continue to to pray for these two.

These two are they're heroes of the faith they have.

These last couple weeks have so profoundly impacted my walk with

Jesus. And the way that it started for

me was Long story short, the Bentons gave birth to this

unbelievably gorgeous, beautiful little girl named Faye.

She's so gorgeous. And Faye came a little bit

earlier than everybody was expecting.

And so when Faye eventually, when Faye first came, everybody

was praying for her, thinking about her.

And I was talking with Josh and Josh talked about like, yeah,

face, she's weighing in, clocking in at about 1 LB.

And I remember thinking, I think I know what that looks like and

feels like it. So I had this image of Faye in

my mind as this beautiful little baby.

But it was it. My experience of stepping into

the hospital and visiting Faye was radically different.

I stepped into their hospital room excited to see this baby

girl that I've been praying for and heard so much about.

And I gave Josh Lauren really quick hug.

And then I stood in front of Faye and I'm not like I felt

gripped by the hand of God like this little baby girl has so

profoundly influenced me in the little bit of time that I spent

with her. I felt like I froze in front of

her. I froze because when I was

looking at Faye, I, I would, I couldn't believe how beautiful

she was. It's extraordinary, like every

little human feature that makes a human being beautiful is all

present in Faye and squished together in this gorgeous little

1 LB baby. And so I'm looking at this

beautiful 1 LB lump of humanity. It's just gorgeous baby.

And I'm just like, my breath is just taken away.

Like wow, I didn't know she would look like this.

And so I just froze. And the other thing that froze

me about this moment was as I'm as I'm looking at Faye, I did

not expect. I did not expect to see so

clearly in her my own condition. I'm looking at this beautiful 1

LB baby Faye and she's got all of these it it probably a dozen

of these little tubes, right, that are attached to her.

And it's extraordinary because these little tubes, they're

pumping her full of all the nutrients she needs to grow and

survive and keep moving forward. And it's extraordinary because

you can't look at a little baby girl like Faye right there in

that situation and kid yourself and the thinking she's an

independent, autonomous human being, right?

She's, she's completely and totally dependent upon the life

support that comes through those tubes to her.

And I'm looking at her and I felt like it was a word from the

Lord. And in the deepest part of my

heart, it just hit a part of my heart that I didn't know was in

there. Do you know what I'm saying?

Like you think you know what's going on in your heart and

someone says something or does something or God does something

or the Spirit moves in a certain way and you're like, I didn't

know that part was in my I don't know what's down there.

And as I'm looking at her, I feel sense here.

The Lord say so clearly to me. This is you, Cole.

Like this is the condition of the Christian before God.

Too often I think of myself as an independent, autonomous

Christian who's pretty strong willed and disciplined for the

most part and has a pretty good work ethic.

And it's pretty driven. And I can work through sickness

for the most part and push through feelings of exhaustion

to get the job done. And I probably at the end of the

day, I do a pretty good job following Jesus with my own

strength. And at the end of the day, I

probably need just a little, just a little help from the Lord

here and there. And that is, that's an illusion.

That's, that's not true. That's a mirage.

If I could see myself from the perspective of heaven, if I

could see myself through true reality, there would be

thousands, not dozens. There would be thousands of

invisible little tubes that God has graciously attached to me

that He is using to pump constant the proper nutrients

into me to keep me alive in every second.

If He pulled those tubes away from me, I would be gone.

I would vanish right in front of you.

Like do you know what Jesus means when He says apart from

me? You can do nothing?

He means you can't do anything apart from him.

The text means what it says. Like if you want to know what is

it that sustains me? His power alone sustains you.

His life alone upholds you. And if you're going to run the

Christian life, if I'm going to run the Christian life, I need

the gospel pumped into me through every single one of

these tubes that are attached to me.

The gospel is, yes, my past tense power for salvation, but

it is also my present tense power for sanctification.

And it is my future hope for glorification.

I need the gospel preached to me by my church.

I need to sing it through the worship music.

I need to pray it through the liturgy.

I need to see it through communion on a daily basis.

I need to hear the gospel come to me through my spouse, through

through my friends, through my church members.

I need to see the gospel echoed in the movies that I watch.

I need to hear the gospel echoed in the music that I listen to.

I need the gospel to so shape and form my thoughts that it is

in my mind whenever I have an inner dialogue for me, for you,

it is life or death. Or to quote Martin Luther from

500 years ago, I need the gospel every day because I forget the

gospel every day. I need it every day.

And if you do this, if you start to sit before the gospel of if

you start to just say, hey, I got to brush my teeth every day.

When I brush my teeth every day, I'm going to look at myself and

I'm going to preach the gospel to myself.

Cole, the God of the universe was crucified in your place to

take away your sins and cover you and his righteousness.

If you start to preach the gospel to yourself on a daily

basis, you will start to experience the gospel daily in

every facet of your life, every facet in your life.

Yes, it's the message that saves you, but you also grow to start

seeing the gospel in your relationships with other people.

You'll start to recognize, Oh my goodness, the only thing that's

going to hold my friendships together is if I live out the

gospel. I understand friendships now,

like because of the gospel, like I need to be made like Jesus.

OK, what's Jesus like? He gets sinned a lot against and

he forgives people a lot. If I'm going to learn how to be

like that, I need to be sinned against and I need to forgive a

lot of people. And you start to live the gospel

out in your relationships and your friendships.

You start to see it at work. You start to, you start to, you

start to taste the gospel in your meals.

You find yourself hypothetically slobbering over a phenomenal

smash burger at Lachelle's. Amen.

A phenomenal smash burger at the shells and you find yourself

momentarily praising Jesus. Kids, you're like, I don't know

how the bread of Jesus could be better than this, but it is and

it must be. You start to taste it in your

food. You start to hear it in the in

the music. You find yourself being moved by

little pieces in movies where you're like, why am I tearing up

at this part in the movie? Why Cole?

I am 36 years old and I'm tearing up in the movie Friday

Night Lights. It's a high school football

movie. It's a pop movie for 17 year old

kids. Why am I tearing up?

Why is it so moving at the end of that movie where the football

player, he falls 1 yard short of the touchdown and his dad who

won A state championship comes down and he kneels down before

his kid. He takes his championship

football ring off and he puts it on his kids finger who just

failed. And I'm like Oh my gosh, why is

that so moving? And you realize it's because

it's an echo of the gospel. That's what Jesus did for us.

We failed, we fell short, He stooped down.

He took the ring that he earned and he put it on my finger.

So now when God looks at me, he sees the righteousness of

Christ, the victories of Christ now because I earned it, because

he gave it to me through the gospel, you start to see it

everywhere. You start to find yourself

showing up to church on a Sunday morning.

You start to hear me share some strange, ordinary story about my

life. And last year you would have

thought, I have no idea how this would connect to the gospel.

And suddenly after constant gospel exposure, you hear these

little stories and you go, I know where Cole's going with

this, and you can preach the gospel from it, and you connect

the gospel to it. You start to do that because

you're starting to connect the gospel to every area of your own

life. And if you do that, your

spiritual growth will go through the roof.

I heard it said this way. Religion says, oh crap, I

screwed up. My dad's going to kill me.

That's the religion we're all born with.

The gospel says, oh, crap, I screwed up.

Where's my dad? When you believe the gospel, the

crucifixion of Jesus for your sins, while you are yet an enemy

of God, you'll find yourself running to Jesus.

Not when you crush it, but even when you make colossally foolish

choices because you have been so radically saturated by the

gospel that when life cuts you, you bleed gospel out and just

watch what happens to your joy. When the gospel becomes not just

some supplement you take once a week, but the life support that

sustains you in the presence of God, life becomes really, really

fun. Because Jesus is really, really

awesome. Amen.

We are an awesome morning in front of us.

In just a minute, we're going to dedicate kids.

Before we do that, though, we need to take communion together.

We need to see the gospel and taste it in bread and wine.

So if you are a believer, this is for you.

Do business with the Lord and whenever you've done business

with the Lord, we'll have the bread and the juice or the wine

prepared for you. Come at will.

Grab the bread, grab the juice, go back patiently and wait.

For the rest of us, we like to do it together as a symbol that

we're one family with one Jesus who believe in one gospel.

So if you've got kids downstairs and roots, now's the time to go

grab them and bring them up. Communion will be waiting for

you. Let me pray and then you

respond. However God leads you.

Lord, thank you so much for the Gospel of Jesus.

I pray that we would freshly experience it this morning.

Thank you for the Benton family. I just love them so much and I

don't want to draw too much attention to them.

I just want to let them enjoy this Sunday.

But I pray that our church would just be freshly inspired by

their faithfulness, that they would continue to pray for Faye,

and that they would be equally influenced and moved by their

family as I have been these last couple weeks.