Saved by Grace, Sent to the Nations

Well, if you were like me in school, I was not very excited whenever I came to class, and the teacher said the infamous words, class, today we are gonna take a pop quiz.

For some of you, maybe that was your cup of tea.

Praise God for you.

Let's do a pop quiz today.

So imagine if I asked you the question, friends, two questions actually.

What is the gospel?

And then secondly, what are the glories we find within the gospel?

Now, to your benefit, you don't have to answer out loud, but you can ponder that question, answer it, and then maybe talk with someone later on about your answer.

But that is a very important question.

What is the gospel?

There are many world religions who profess to be Christians, who say they believe in Jesus, who say they believe in God and salvation and the gospel, but then when they articulate their faith, it's a very different gospel than what we find in the pages of Scripture.

What we understand the gospel to be is extremely important.

In Galatians, Paul addressed this issue if a church that believed in the true gospel came to faith in Christ, but then some false teachers came in and started trying to weave people away from the true gospel and blending it with, no, no, no, believe in Jesus, but also keep the Old Testament law.

Paul's admonition to them in Galatians 1, 6 is, I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling 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 what we have preached to you, a curse be on him.

As we have said before, I now say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him.

Strong language, isn't it?

To rebuke an entire church because they were getting the gospel wrong.

As we conclude this sermon series on missions, I just want to do what I want to do this morning is focus on beholding the glory of the gospel, what the gospel entails, and how that knowledge should fuel our passion to taking the gospel to the nations.

So if you're visiting with us this morning, our normal rhythm is to work through verse-by-verse books of the Bible, but we're taking a break from that to just focus on the theme of church-centered missions.

And this will be the last sermon in this series.

But just to set the tone here, in this interaction, some of you are familiar with Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus, who was an instructor on behalf of God to instruct Israel in how to follow and worship God.

And in this interaction, Nicodemus is curious about Jesus' teaching.

And so he seeks him out and asks him questions.

And Jesus is essentially giving Nicodemus theology.

He's helping him properly interpret his Old Testament to understand who Jesus is and what he has come to do.

So Nicodemus is a he's a Bible expert.

He's a religious leader.

He's meant to instruct the nation of Israel on how they could worship and follow God.

And yet Jesus is helping him understand, Nicodemus, you must be born again.

In other words, he's telling Nicodemus, brother, being religious is not enough.

Knowing theology is not enough.

You need to be made an entirely new thing by the power of God.

And in our text, I want us to see how a proper understanding of the gospel and all of its beautiful implications should shape how we, number one, understand the God we serve and who saved us, how we understand ourselves as his adopted children, but then how that should motivate us to want to share that gospel with as many people as possible.

So here's my aim in this sermon.

I just want to help us all just lift our heads to beholding the glory of God found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Simple task.

So what I'm gonna do is just walk through what some theologians might call the order of order salutis, the order of salvation.

And we're just gonna look at kind of like we want to lift the diamond up and just behold all of its beauties and intricacies.

But before I do that, we got to talk about a question that I think is good for a foundation of our understanding and appreciation of the gospel, and that is the necessity of the atonement.

Or to put that another way, was it necessary for Jesus to have to come and die for your sins?

Could there have been any other way God could have saved his church?

Because if you look at John 3.14, when Jesus is doing some biblical theology with Nicodemus, he says, quoting, uh he's bringing up a story that took place in the book of Numbers.

He says, Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.

Now I would encourage you on your own time, go back and read that story in Numbers, but that's a story of God's judgment, his wrath.

The nation of Israel was being disobedient, rebellious to God.

So he sends in these um, these um venomous uh serpents within the camp who would bite people, and he told Moses to erect a serpent in the middle of the of the area, and as long as people looked upon that serpent, they would be saved from death.

Jesus is using that story to say, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.

That word must matters, doesn't it?

He didn't say he might be lifted up.

He didn't say, well, one of God's you know ideal plan A, B, and C is to lift the Son up.

He says, No, the Son must be lifted up.

Our sin was so wicked, so serious, our condition was so desperate, our condemnation was so real that nothing less than the death of the Son of God was required.

Only the death of the Son of God could save us.

God did not look on fallen humanity and say, you know what, they just need some good wisdom, they need some good advice, they need some improvement, they need some affirmations.

No, he says they need a substitute to die in their place.

So before we talk about the blessings of salvation, we have to see this clearly clearly.

That's so that is important.

Because if the son is not lifted up on behalf of his church to redeem them from their sins, then there is no belief.

There is no repentance in faith, there is no conversion, there is no eternal life.

So, with that foundation being said, let me walk through different facets of the gospel and let's meditate together.

So I'm gonna I'm gonna highlight the ten benefits of the gospel, starting with the necessity of the atonement.

But number two, God's sovereign grace, the fact that God loved before we loved him.

Just think about that sentence.

Before you loved God, God sovereignly chose to set his affections on you.

In John 3, 16.

I mean, if this is not the most popular verse in the Bible, I don't know what it is.

We see this held up at football games and you name it.

Verse 16, for God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Praise be to God that God loves the world.

Amen.

If God was not a God of love, there would be no salvation.

If God was an angry, stingy God, none of y'all would be saved.

But because God loved the world, he gave his son.

God was not under any obligation to love the world.

God did not see anything in humanity, they in humanity that said, you know what, they are so lovable, I will send my righteous son to die on their behalf.

Go read Genesis 6 when he looked out on the world and the conclusion he came to before the flood.

Everyone's minds was set on evil and wickedness and rebellion against God.

But in God's sovereign grace, he chose before the foundation of the earth to love a people called the church.

Now, I won't get into all the ins and outs of the doctrine of predestination.

The Bible is very clear, I would suggest, if you read it for what it's worth, God, for his own glory and his own divine purposes, decided before he created a single thing in this universe to choose to save some called the church, and to send Jesus to pay the penalty for their sins and brings them to salvation through the effectual calling of the gospel.

So when we read John 3.16, though it says, For God love the world in this way, we got to be careful not to interpret that as Jesus died for all people, all places, all time, because that wouldn't make any sense.

Because later in verse 18, he says, Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

So if Jesus died for all people, all places, all time, then that means he paid the penalty for everybody's sins.

So then it makes no sense that anybody's going to hell.

Which is why I would believe in what's called, uh, some say limited atonement.

I don't like that terminology because it sounds like it's confining God's grace.

I believe a better term is definite atonement, which means you have to ask the question when Jesus hung on the cross, who did he die for?

What did he accomplish on the cross?

And when we survey the scriptures, it seems clear to me that Jesus hung on the cross with people in mind, not making salvation potential, meaning he died to make salvation potential for everybody, but they have to save themselves by exercising their quote unquote free will to choose him.

No, I believe when Jesus hung on the cross, he fulfilled God's sovereign plan to redeem his church.

He hung on the cross with names in mind who would make up his church.

That's a sermon for another day to get into the weeds of all of that.

But let me just say this: whether you struggle with this topic of predestination, election, God choosing some and not choosing others, every Christian believes in God's sovereignty and salvation.

Even if you say you don't, you do.

Here's why.

Number one, you thank and praise and worship God for your salvation, which shows you understand he is the author of your salvation, not yourself.

If you praise God for saving you, you're acknowledging that he sovereignly brought you to saving faith in his son, not yourself.

Second reason why I know you believe in God's sovereignty and salvation is because you pray for the conversion of lost people you love.

If you don't believe God is sovereign and saving sinners, then when you pray for God to save someone, what are you asking him to do?

I know what I'm asking him to do.

Lord, not we're not doing the whole like Lord, you know, knock on the door of their heart and I just hope that they're wise enough to come in.

No, no, no, no.

I'm praying, God, help them even know there is a door, kick it down, give them the gift of faith that leads to repentance and the knowledge of the truth, and make them a new creation and make them born again.

We all believe in God's sovereignty.

Acts 13, 48.

I love how uh Luke captures the salvation of those who are hearing the gospel.

He says, in response to a group who have come to faith in Christ, he says, All who have been appointed to eternal life believed.

All who have been appointed to eternal life, believe.

The doctrine of God's sovereignty and salvation is all over the Bible.

When you look at the all the nations of the earth in the Old Testament, and God chose, he predestined, he elected the nation of Israel.

In Deuteronomy, he's very clear.

I did not choose y'all because you're bigger than the other nations.

I didn't choose y'all because you're wealthier or smarter.

I chose you so solely by my sovereign grace to the praise of my own glory.

This theme is all throughout the Bible.

There are, the Bible refers to elect angels, some who God chose who did not rebel and never will, and others who he did not, and they have rebelled.

All right, that's a sermon for another day.

I'm not going to defend that, but some, though, who struggle with the doctrine of God's sovereignty and salvation say, Well, doesn't that kill like a desire for churches to and Christians to pursue missions?

Like if God has elected those who are going to come to faith in Christ, why preach the gospel?

Why plant churches?

Why send missionaries if God has already chosen?

Well, because if you believe in God's sovereignty and salvation, then you know that when you go and proclaim the gospel, you have confidence that there's going to be a guaranteed result.

God has ordained the means by which he will bring his elect to saving faith in his son, and that is through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I can see the glazed looks.

I know there's some tension we're all wrestling with, right?

How does God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, how do those correlate?

I love how Charles Burgeon once said it.

If God just put an E on everyone's back who are the elect, I would just lift their shirts and just preach to them.

But because he didn't do that, we proclaim to everyone because we don't know who God's elect are.

This is why Paul went to certain places where Christ had not yet been named, because he knew I am confident that God has an elect in this place.

So I'm going to go preach the gospel because that is the means he has elected to bring them to faith.

And so as I do that, the Lord glorifies his name by bringing people to saving faith in Christ.

So I would say God's sovereignty and salvation far from kills and the motivation for mission for missions, but rather it fuels it because God has a people among the nations and he will save them through the preaching of the gospel, which is why we don't get focused on, well, well, you know, what about man's responsibility?

It's like, listen, here's how I live my Christian life.

I just want to understand what I am supposed to do?

And Lord, help me to be faithful in doing that.

And I know you're gonna do what you're gonna do, but I'm struggling just to do what I'm supposed to do, let alone try to reconcile how God works whose ways are above our ways and his thoughts are above our thoughts.

All right.

Second, uh, I'm sorry, third benefit and glory of the gospel is God's general and effectual call.

Or to put it another way, God invites sinners to come.

If you look down at John 3, 16, again, for God loved the world in this way, he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

If you just read verses 14 through 21, it's interesting how many times John uses the word believe, which means the gospel is something to be obeyed.

It's it's not just good news we proclaim, it always commands a response, which is repentance and belief in the message.

And the object of our salvation is Jesus Christ.

So God, there's a there's two ways we can word this.

There's the general call in which we generally proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, saving sinners, to reconcile them to God, to all people, all places, all time.

That is a general call, kind of like me standing up here this morning, preaching to this whole room.

I'm giving a general call to everyone.

But we know according to the Bible, not everyone believes and comes to faith in Jesus Christ.

Only those who are effectually called, those whom God has used his the preaching of his gospel to penetrate the hearts, the hardened hearts of those who are lost, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, he illuminates the gospel to them, regenerates them, and they repent and trust in Jesus for salvation.

That is the effectual call.

Turn over to Romans chapter 10, real quick.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 10, starting in verse 9.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

I love how Paul captures the gospel call in Romans 10, beginning in verse 9.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

If you're here this morning, you're not a Christian, if you know someone who's not a Christian, that is how simple the Christian faith is.

Isn't that crazy?

Doesn't say you gotta work, doesn't say you gotta accumulate enough good deeds.

No, no, no, no.

If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, here's your promise, you will be saved.

That's true for you too, kids.

If you believe what Paul says here, you will be saved.

Verse 10 one believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.

For the scripture says, everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame.

Since there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord of all richly blesses all who call on him.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Another promise.

How then can they call on him if they have not believed in him?

So here we go.

Man's responsibility to believe and repent, but God's sovereign over who comes of faith.

But verse 14, how then can they call on him they have if call on him they have not believed?

And how can they believe without hearing about him?

And how can they hear without a preacher?

And how can they preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

But not, here we go, but not all obeyed the gospel.

General call.

It goes out, not everyone effectually is called.

For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our message?

So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.

This is important.

God does not need any of us to build his church.

God is not like desperate in heaven, just man, I hope my children team up, give money, support missions, share the gospel in their workplaces, because without them, I can't build my church.

I can't save anybody.

God doesn't need a single one of us.

God has just read the Bible carefully and just look at all the characters Jesus uh or the Lord uses throughout redemptive history.

I mean, he uses a donkey, he uses adulterers, he uses, you name it.

He does not need us.

He uses us because it brings him more glory.

He uses us because it brings him more glory, but he makes it very clear how then can they call on him they have not believed in?

And how can they believe without hearing?

So the implication is people believe after hearing the good news of Jesus, which means if there's no hearing of the gospel, people can't come to faith in Jesus Christ because that's how God has ordained the means by which he brings people to saving faith in his son.

So the gospel goes out freely to all.

That is the general call.

And by the power of the Spirit, God opens hearts to respond to that message, which is called the effectual call.

Many of you have different testimonies in this room.

Some of you had the privilege of growing up in a Christian household, and maybe you can't even remember a day of not loving Jesus, and praise God for that.

Many others, you can maybe remember the season or the exact day when God saved you.

When you heard the gospel, or maybe you were hearing the gospel through ongoing conversations with another believer who was evangelizing you, and then something changed.

Where at one point you kind of were like, whatever about the gospel, then all of a sudden Jesus became your Lord and Savior.

I would say that was the moment by the sovereign grace of God, he effectually called you to saving faith in his son.

So again, we don't know who the elect are, so we preach to everyone and trust God to do what only he can do.

All right, fourth benefit and glory of the gospel is our regeneration, the reality that God gives new life.

This is what Jesus is trying to help Nicodemus understand.

In John 3, verses 3 through 8.

John 3:3–8

He tells him, Jesus replied, Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

How can anyone be born when he is old?

Nicodemus asked.

Can he enter his mother's womb a second time and be born?

Jesus answered, Truly, truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the spirit is spirit.

Do not be amazed that I told you you must be born again.

The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it's going.

So it is with every Everyone born of the Spirit.

Jesus makes it very clear: you are so radically depraved and riddled with sin that the only way you can be redeemed is by being made an entirely new creation.

You must be born again.

And if not, you will not enter the kingdom of God.

This is why it is foolish to ever think, well, I'll come to Jesus when I just clean my life up a little bit, and then I'm I'm more worthy of his acceptance.

No, no, no, no.

You can never come close to cleaning yourself up enough.

According to the mouth of our Savior, you must be born again, which is something you have no power to do in and of yourself.

That is the beauty of the gospel and your salvation, friends.

You come to this knowledge, I am so broken, I have to be made new, and I don't have the capacity to do that.

And then Jesus says, now you're ready for the gospel.

Because that's what I do, because nothing is impossible with God.

So salvation is never self-improvement.

It's never, you know, cleaning yourself up.

No, friends, it's it's resurrection.

It's being made new, it's dying to the old man and being made new.

This is how, think about Paul for an example.

How did Paul go from a man persecuting the church, trying to hinder the spread of the gospel?

He's present in the book of Acts as Stephen, a servant of the Lord, is being martyred for the faith.

Paul is right there.

He's condoning it.

He had a hand in it.

How does he go from that to then all of a sudden in Galatians 2.20 saying, I have been crucified with Christ.

I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

How does someone talk like that after persecuting the church and trying to have Christians locked up and killed for simply telling people about Jesus?

I'll tell you how.

He was born again.

He was made new, he was resurrected spiritually, he understood the benefits of regeneration.

The fifth beauty of the gospel is the doctrine of justification, meaning that if you are in Christ, you are fully forgiven, you are declared righteous and freed from shame.

Because, as Jesus says in verse 14 of John 3, because Jesus was lifted up, God does something astonishing for sinners like us.

He justifies us.

He justifies us.

That's a judicial term.

So when Jagi justifies a sinner, nothing personally happens within you.

It's not, it's not like a moral thing, it's more of a judicial declaration where God slams down the gavel in the courtroom of heaven and says, I will forever think of you as forgiven.

And all that I do towards you will be governed by that declaration.

And nothing in the heavenly realm or on earth could ever change your justified status, which means for you, if you're justified, there is no wrath in the heart of God towards any of his children because you have been justified.

It's almost like if someone, you know, owed someone money and someone came and paid that debt on their behalf, the person who received the payment can't go to the person and say, Well, you still owe me the debt.

It's like, well, no, it's been paid for.

You can't hold that over my head.

That's what justification does.

However, justification means more than forgiveness.

It's not less than that, but I think we tend to just camp out at justification means I'm forgiven and I now have access to God.

Praise be to God.

Romans covers that beautifully.

But it means more than that.

It means your guilt has been fully removed and Christ's righteousness has been fully credited to you.

Which means, because of our justification, friends, if you are in Christ, you are not half accepted by God, you are fully accepted by God.

You are not tolerated by God the Father.

He delights and sings over you with rejoicing.

If you're justified, you are not on spiritual probation, where God's like, okay, you know what?

I'm gonna give you a year as a Christian and we're gonna fill out this relationship, and then we'll do a performance review at the end of the year, and I'll let you know if I'm gonna keep you on or not.

No, if you are justified, you are forgiven.

No sin is left unpaid.

So when God justifies you, it's not like he's putting a down payment on your salvation, where God's like, you know, I love him, but I'm gonna put something on it.

I ain't gonna pay the whole price.

No, you are fully justified.

No accusation is left standing.

Even if Satan himself, like he tried to do Job, even if Satan himself tries to make an accusation against you, God is simply gonna say, My son spilled his blood on their behalf.

There's no condemnation, no accusation left.

And here's the humbling beauty and reality of the doctrine of justification.

It's when the judge, God, sits on the judge's bench, hands out a righteous verdict, and then steps down from the judge's bench to take the punishment himself.

That is the beauty of justification.

All of us are standing there in the courtroom of heaven before a holy and just God who rightfully condemns us of our sin and tells us we deserve his wrath.

He issues the punishment, which is death, and then he gets up, takes off his judge's robes, puts on an orange jumpsuit and shackles, and takes our punishment on our behalf.

And we just stand there in benefit in awe, doing nothing to earn it.

The judge declares the verdict and then steps down to take the punishment itself.

What other world religion says anything close to that?

Another benefit of our justification is Christ's obedience in our place.

It is very important, friends, that Jesus came and lived for 33 odd years.

Jesus didn't just die for you, he lived for you.

He obeyed where you disobeyed.

He fulfilled the law where you broke God's law.

He loved the Father perfectly where you imperfectly love the Father.

And then he died the death that you deserved.

It is very important that Jesus came and didn't just make a beeline to the cross, but he lived to establish a righteous life in which he never had a sinful thought.

He never gave in to sinful temptation, he never once rebelled against God.

And when you are justified, God takes that righteous life and imputes it onto your account as if you lived it yourself, which is why we can even define sanctification as becoming what you already are, which is holy in the eyes of God.

But with our justification, we also have to hold up the beauty of the work of the cross.

Because at the cross, God didn't make salvation possible.

Let me just give five aspects of that point.

Number one, we were redeemed by the blood of Jesus.

That word redeemed means to buy back, to buy back, which means we were purchased by God out of our slavery to sin and death and brought into the household of God.

With our justification, we also find that our sins have been expiated.

There's a fancy word for you.

Expiated, which means to remove our sins from us and to cover our guilt.

That's important.

When you were justified through Christ, your sins have been removed from you and your guilt has been covered, and the cleansing power of the atonement has been washed over you.

That is a moral benefit of our justification, but it doesn't stop there because God's wrath has also through our justification been propitiated.

Another fancy term.

Which just means that God's wrath has been fully satisfied.

So that's a personal benefit of our justification.

God's wrath, which was hanging over your soul justly, has been satisfied in Jesus Christ.

Which is why to this day, one of the most craziest realities for me as a Christian is the fact that I will never come close to knowing or experiencing what the wrath of God feels like.

Because Jesus fully satisfied that on my behalf.

So his wrath has been propitiated.

Or in Colossians 1.20, Paul puts it this way: He made peace.

So that's personal relationship.

He made peace through the blood of his cross.

Or another way to put it, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and our justification, God is now made pro-us.

Think about that.

Because the Bible says, before you came into faith in Christ, you were at enmity with God.

You were his enemy, and he was coming for you.

And now he is pro-us.

He is for you.

Christ's atonement was also definite.

As I said earlier, he truly saved his people.

But his atonement in our justification was also sufficient.

Christ's atonement was sufficient.

Hebrews 7 25 says, Therefore, he is able to save completely, or some translations say to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them.

I love that language, uttermost.

We don't talk like that.

I think that's dope.

He saves to the uttermost.

What does that mean?

If you ever wrestled with, I know that God saves people.

But man, God, do you know what I've done?

Do you know my sins?

Yes, friends.

He knows you're more evil than you think you are.

But Jesus' atonement was so sufficient, or as Richard Sibbs says, we can never outsin the mercy of Jesus.

You can never outsin the mercy of Jesus because his atoning sacrifice was sufficient to cover all of your sins.

He saves completely to the utter utmost.

I love how John Stott once said the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, but the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

Praise be to God.

One last aspect of the doctrine of justification in our salvation.

The death of Christ also means the removal of your shame.

I think this is one as Christians in Western society that maybe we neglect the most.

So in the Bible, the word guilt and its derivatives occur over 155 times.

However, the term for shame and its derivatives occur over 345 times.

Keep in mind, most of the Bible takes place in the Middle East, where there's a lot of honor and shame within the culture.

And that's something we're not used to as Western American Christians, are we?

We live in a radically individualistic culture, not a communal culture.

However, the Bible takes place in a communal culture.

So we tend to think about guilt.

We emphasize guilt, which means I did something bad or sinful, and that's appropriate.

Guilt is I did something wrong.

But shame, shame says I am bad.

I am unworthy.

That's what shame says.

And friends, this theme is all throughout the Bible.

From the beginning, sin has brought shame.

When Adam and Eve rebelled in the garden, what was the first thing they came to the knowledge of?

I'm naked and I am ashamed.

What did God do?

We see the first death, right?

Kills an animal, it covers them, symbolizing the blood sacrificed by God covering their shame.

At the cross, Jesus didn't just bear punishment, he bore shame, your shame, your guilt.

Think about it.

For six odd hours when Jesus hung on that cross, he was stripped-necked, he was mocked.

The Savior of the universe was publicly humiliated.

He was lifted up as though he were worthless.

And the Bible in Hebrews even tells us he endured the cross, despising the what?

Despising the shame.

Think about that.

Jesus despising something.

We can understand, of course, he despises sin.

We would all would agree with that.

But have you ever thought about that?

Jesus was despising the shame of him hanging on that cross in your behalf and being humiliated before the world.

Jesus took not only what we owed, but what we feel.

How many of us, no longer no matter how long you've been a Christian, no matter how firm your grasp is of the gospel, you still wrestle with the shame of your sin.

Whether it's your past sin before the Lord Savior, whether it's sin you've committed since following Jesus, our flesh, the enemy uses that to say, yeah, you're saved, but Jesus, like, does he love you though?

You know what you've done.

Jesus would look you straight in the eyes and said, none of that nonsense.

I hung on that cross and took your shame.

So you never have to dwell on that.

Think about that.

The Savior of the universe who never sinned, never did anything wrong.

He's the epitome of everything that is holy and righteous.

And he said, I will be beaten, mocked, stripped naked, and exposed before my enemies, all so that I can save a people who don't even love me yet.

That is how much Jesus loved you.

God doesn't just counsel your debt, he restores your dignity and salvation.

You are clothed in Christ's righteousness, and you are welcome as a son or a daughter of the king.

You are honored and loved, never tolerated.

The sixth benefit and glory of our salvation in the gospel is the doctrine of adoption.

The reality that if you are in Christ, you have been brought into God's family, which means God doesn't merely forgive sinners.

So when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus and he's saying that anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, he's giving this invitation.

Anyone, anyone who believes receives these rich benefits, which includes adoption.

God is not in the business of just checking a box to legally forgive sinners.

He welcomes children into his family.

Think about this: the title most often ascribed to God in the New Testament is Father.

The title most often ascribed to God in the New Testament is Father.

This is striking and very intentional.

I don't care what your upbringing is, if you had a poor earthly father, or if you've had poor figures who had authority over you, who abused that authority and gave you a poor depiction of the heart of God.

And so you struggle sometimes with this understanding of God as a father.

I've struggled with that myself.

You know, we all have our testimonies.

But friends, experiences we've ex we've had in life does not dictate who God actually is.

God is a good father who saves sinners not just to legally declare you saved and forgiven.

He wanted a relationship with you.

He saved you to adoption as a son or daughter of the king, which means you don't just belong in heaven someday.

You belong to God as a child right now.

Right now, as you sit in that pew, if you are in Christ, your heavenly father delights in you, even if you don't believe that to be true.

That we should be called God's children.

And we are.

The reason the world does not know us is that it didn't know him.

This is John just rejoicing.

See what great love the Father has given us.

That it's almost like he's like just expressing joy and shock and awe.

So we great, see what great love the Father has given us that we should be called God's children.

Amen.

Seventh benefit and glory of the gospel is our sanctification.

God transforms us from the inside out.

The grace that saves us doesn't just leave us unchanged.

God loves you so much that he is committed to molding you progressively into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.

God patiently, emphasis on patiently, God patiently reshapes us into the image of Christ.

Through sin, the image of God and man has been distorted to an extent.

But through sanctification, the Holy Spirit is fixing that image, so to speak, molding us into the image of our Savior.

And one day we will behold Christ and we will finally be made like Him.

But on this side of heaven, this is how I said earlier: a good way to define sanctification is becoming what you already are, because positionally, if you're in Christ, you are holy.

The righteousness of Christ has been imputed onto your account.

So when God looks at you, he sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

But on this side of heaven, we still have indwelling sin.

So we are progressively being molded into the image of Jesus Christ.

But then one day we will be finally sanctified, which is our glorification.

And friends, let's be careful here.

I want to do a whole, you know, sermon here on sanctification.

We need to be very careful of our understanding of sanctification.

I think many of us think of it as like, you know, it's just like this flow chart, and we're just like going up and up and up.

No, it's, I mean, if you've been a Christian more than a year, you realize, man, this thing's like hills and valleys, and then it starts spiraling at some places.

But God is sovereign over the whole process because he's promised to complete the work he's begun in you.

So sanctification should be more thought of as a trajectory rather than a destination.

But the eighth benefit of the gospel is perseverance, the promise that if you have been saved, if you have trusted in the gospel and been born again, as Jesus said, God will finish what he started.

Those whom God saves, he keeps.

Those who God saves, he keeps.

Let me say that again.

Those who God saves, he keeps.

This is important because some people wrestle, well, can I lose my salvation?

Those whom God saves, he keeps.

If God is the architect and the sovereign creator of your salvation, how on earth are you more powerful than him to then forfeit your salvation?

I think that we sometimes are just asking the wrong questions.

We should be asking, if you're questioning whether someone lost their salvation, maybe the real question is, were they ever truly born again in the first place?

Because if they're not finishing, then maybe that's evidence that they never truly came to saving faith in Jesus.

Because God promises to complete what he has begun.

Praise be to God that our perseverance is in the sovereign hands of our Heavenly Father.

Because, brothers and sisters, if it was solely in your hands, ain't none of us making it.

We are not going to persevere based on how firm our grip is on God, but rather how firm his grip is on us.

And praise God that God has grown man's strength spiritually.

So even when you try to buck away and rebel and say, you know what, I want to pursue my sin.

God's like, no, if you're truly his, I'm gonna let you go over there for a little bit and you're gonna learn some things, and I'm gonna use it to make you holy, but you ain't walking away.

Those whom he saves, he keeps.

And the same Jesus who saves us lives to intercede on our behalf.

This is a reality that sometimes, if um, if God appeared to me somehow and said, Cam, you know, if I could give you one wish, what would it be?

It might change week from week, but one that comes to mind is like, could I just for an hour just sit in a corner somewhere and just hear one of Jesus' prayers on my behalf?

Like, can you imagine how that would just bolst in your faith?

If you could hear your Savior who's committed to you persevering to the end, especially in a dark season when you're you're suffering and you're just wrestling with, does God even love me?

If God loves me, why is he allowing all these things in my life to happen?

If you could just hear just one prayer that Jesus prays on your behalf, so that you continue to persevere and walk with him, that would do wonders for your faith and confidence in him.

All right, ninth benefit of the gospel and our salvation is the doctrine of glorification, our guaranteed future.

Those who believe in the gospel will never perish, but live forever, gazing upon the glory of God in the face of Christ for all eternity.

Those who believe will never perish, but will live forever, gazing upon the glory of God in the face of Christ for all eternity.

And scripture assures us that glory will include a redeemed people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, proclaiming the glories of God.

One day your sanctification will be complete.

Because you have done what Jesus says here in John 3.

You believe that he was lifted up on your behalf, and you have repented, and his condemnation has been removed, and you were an adopted child of God.

There is a day where there will be no more struggle, there will be no more indwelling sin.

There will be no more shame or guilt.

You will only know glory.

You will have a glorified body, and you will be in the presence of your savior.

The spiritual reality of your faith will now be made sight.

Think about this.

You will sit with your savior, you will converse with your savior.

You will walk with him.

You will you will enjoy him face to face.

Sometimes I imagine, will we have tears in heaven?

Because I know we think of tears as always like associated with sorrow, but what if there's like this redemptive, sanctified sense of, man, when we behold Jesus, we will weep, but a weeping that is only based on rejoicing and glory at the fact that that's him, the one who saved my soul.

I can only but express hot worship for my Lord and Savior.

All right, tenth and final benefit of the gospel and our salvation is that God sends saved sinners to save sinners.

God sends saved sinners to save sinners, bringing this back to the Great Commission.

If salvation is this glorious as I'm talking about, and it is, if grace is this deep, and if Jesus is this sufficient of a savior, then keeping the gospel to ourselves, number one, makes no sense.

And number two, may be the most unloving thing a Christian could ever do.

The God who ordains the salvation of sinners has also ordained the means by which he effectually calls other sinners to come to faith in his son and to become adopted children of God, and that is through his church taking the gospel to the nations.

The gospel doesn't leave forgiven sinners sitting still on our hands, it creates worshipers who out of gratitude go, send, pray, and support.

This isn't guilt-driven obedience.

We don't share the gospel, we don't plant churches, we don't send missionaries to the nations out of guilt.

We do so out of joy and gratitude and confidence in if God is sovereign over salvation, if his elect are scattered across the globe, then we must go and proclaim the good news of Jesus because that is the means by which he has ordained in bringing people to saving faith in his son.

The gospel that saved us now sends us so that others may also come into the fold and behold the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, some wrestle sometimes, well, what about the innocent person running around in the jungle who never heard the gospel?

What happens to them?

Well, friends, they go to heaven.

But the problem is there's no such thing as an innocent person.

There is no innocent person running around the earth.

Listen, the world doesn't agree with us as Christians when we say what is wrong with the world.

The world would say pretty much nothing.

I mean, if you're an atheist, if you're consistent, you don't even believe in morality.

However, the Bible has a very different answer, doesn't it?

The Bible says that God is holy and righteous and loving, and he created everything that we know to be.

And he put man and woman, Adam and Eve, in a garden and desired to have perfect communion with them, to fellowship with them for all eternity, to enjoy his abundance and goodness and to procreate and spread image-bearers all across the globe.

And yet Adam and Eve rebelled against that good God.

They chose to substitute God for themselves to be the sovereign ruler of their kingdom.

And because of their fall, all of us fall in Adam as well.

We have all sinned and rebelled against a holy and just and loving God.

But God being the first missionary, he promised that one day someone will come through the line of the woman who will crush the serpent's head.

And all throughout redemptive history, we see people pop up: Abraham, prophets, King David, and all of them make something very clear.

None of them are the serpent crusher.

We need someone bigger and better.

And then one day he comes.

His cousin is baptizing people, and Jesus just rolls up, and John says, Behold, the Lamb who comes to take away the sins of the world.

Jesus stepped down off of his throne, lived a perfect, righteous life in obedience to God's law, so that that life could one day be imputed on behalf of his people, the church.

He lived for 33 years and then he made it clear, I came to die.

His people wanted him to come and reign to establish an earthly kingdom.

He said, No, no, no, you don't understand my kingdom.

It's a topsy turvy kingdom.

I must die in order for you to be saved.

And he did what he said he would do.

He understood, friends, he came born of a virgin, which is important.

The virgin birth matters, friends, because he was supernaturally placed in his mother's womb, which means he did not have any indwelling sin like we do.

He was a righteous man, fully obedient to the Lord, which is important, because then he's able to offer himself on the cross on your behalf as a sacrificial lamb acceptable to God.

And when he died, he rose three days later, proving that God accepted his sacrifice and his justification on behalf of sinners.

And that's why Jesus in John 3 can say, if anyone will believe, they will be saved.

Condemnation will be removed.

And because Jesus got up, he said, I must go, so the Spirit can come, and that Spirit will indwell his people and convict us of sin and help us obey all that he commanded.

But the beauty of the gospel is it doesn't end there, does it?

He said, One day I will come back.

I will make all sad things untrue.

I will take Satan and his angels and sin and death and throw them in the lake of fire.

I will recreate the earth and we will dwell with our King for all eternity.

Brothers and sisters, that is why we take the gospel to anyone who will give us audience.

Because people have not believed in what I just described.

Which is why we must open our mouths.

If you're a Christian this morning, it's because somebody obeyed the Great Commission and opened their mouths and told you the good news of Jesus Christ.

So how much must we hate somebody not to tell them what someone told us?

Amen.

Let's pray.