Amen. Good morning everybody. Hi. As John said, I'm not the main pastor guy here.
I'm a servant leader, but I'm really excited to preach today. I really asked
John to do this because he's been at camp all week, and I can only assume how
bad his voice feels after all of that dust in the air. I'll give you a heads up
right now. I've sat in those uncomfortable seats for the past two
weeks, so I'm gonna try to keep this short and give your behinds a little bit
of rest. So let's get going. I'm gonna continue our discussion this week about
the gospel. Last week, John discussed these four different movements of the
gospel. The creation that God created, the fall, the cross, and the restoration. He
showed how the gospel fits into the history of the world. God created all
things, and it was good. Humans instead chose sin and separation from God, but
the Son of God became human to die on the cross, and through him all things
will be restored back to God. It is so important to know that the Son of God
coming wasn't a backup plan, but it was the plan from eternity. And I'm gonna
use this sermon, that's why this slide is being reused this week, as the springboard
into my topic today. I'm gonna take a lot of the talk, the doctrine, the teaching
that John had last week, and try to move it into our lives day to day. And I want
to talk about how the gospel is our daily need. The story of God's grace and
love is the power we Christians need every day. I have two main points. First,
we're gonna talk about how the importance of preaching the gospel or
rehearsing the gospel every day, and what a life lived out of the gospel renewal
looks like. So first, I'm gonna use the word gospel a lot. You guys ever, I'm
saying it constantly, okay? So I want to orient you in the ways that I'm going to
use it. I could go to a different dictionary definition, but that usually
kind of falls flat. Last week, John used a great quote by Tim Keller. I'm gonna
put it up here. Tim Keller says, we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than
we ever dared to believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted
in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. So that's what we're gonna use
kind of as a backdrop of what the gospel means. In most of the New Testament
letters, the word gospel is shorthand for all of the teaching wrapped up in this
idea right here. You are separated from God due to your sin. God devised a plan
in the council of the Trinity from eternity past to rescue you from your
original, from your spiritual death. This plan involved sending a person of the
Trinity to become man, and that should hurt your brain a little bit, and die as
payment for your sins. Through his death, you have been restored to God and can
now live in the newness of life, glorifying him. Amen? This message is
God's gospel, God's good news, and it's amazing. The plan, the work, and the
results of Christ's death on the cross is the gospel of God, and the Bible uses
extraordinary words to describe it. Look at this verse, 2nd Corinthians 4. The God
of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the
light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. The gospel
is the glory of Christ, and something similar is said in 1st
Timothy 1, 11, the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God. If you've ever
wondered what it was like to behold Christ's glory on the Mount of
Transfiguration, or maybe what it's gonna look like for Christ to come back at a
second coming, meditate on the gospel. You will start to glimpse the same glory
because that is what the gospel is. It is the demonstration of the glory and the
power of God. The gospel is the most concentrated demonstration of God's
power. Let's look at Romans 1, 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is
the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Through the gospel
we see God's power at its most concentrated. So my thesis this morning,
if the gospel is this culmination of history, the glory of Christ, the
fullest demonstration of God's power, we should be spending our lives consumed
with it. And I mean absolutely consumed with it, totally amazed, completely
love-struck by it. To quote many wise men before me, preach the gospel to yourself.
This is my first point. This gospel is the daily need of us who claim the name
of Christ. And we need to work daily to renew ourselves in it. And Paul couldn't
get enough of telling Christians about the gospel. He injects gospel message
into all of his letters. He spends huge sections of his letters to churches
describing, reviewing, praising the gospel. Paul starts his letter to the
Church of Ephesus, a church that he spent three years himself at teaching. And he
reviews and reminds them of the gospel. Let's look at these verses. He
predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself
according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious
grace that he lavished on us in the beloved one. In him we have redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of
his grace that he richly poured out on us. That's gospel. That's just the whole
message of Jesus. And in 2nd Corinthians, Paul is defending his ministry from
people who were accusing him of being a fraud. He was just in it for the money.
In the middle of this section, where he's trying to convince this church that he
loves Jesus and he's not there to take their money, he just starts throwing
gospel at them. This is the next section in 2nd Corinthians. For the
love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that the one has
died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all that those who live
might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was
raised. Again, this is in the middle of Paul defending himself. This isn't a
message to unbelievers. But the heartbeat of Paul's ministry to churches was the
gospel. And if people were following Christ, Paul preached the gospel to them.
When Paul wrote to encourage other pastors, he wrote the gospel to them and
told them to walk in line with the gospel. He just didn't stop. And the
tenets of the gospel so changed, sorry, the tenets of the gospel should
so change our lives that we apply it to every aspect of our day to day. And this
is what the Apostles did. They didn't do anything different. It was not left for
the days of their early walk with Christ so that they could move on to more
important doctrine and more important obedience. The gospel wasn't put on a
shelf to be taken down when they were going to witness to a non-believer. It
was their manna in the desert. It was their air conditioning in the summer.
Their hot coffee in the morning. Their motivation and inspiration for their
ministry. Again, this is my first point. Be like the Apostles. Meditate on the
work and glory of Christ on the cross. Think on it. Talk about it. Preach the
gospel to yourself. So now that you understand my first point, at least
hopefully you do, I want to try to demonstrate it to you. So I'll show it to
you in action. And I'll be honest, I wrote this down in my notes to remind you,
I've been really excited about this. So if I start talking a little too fast, I
apologize. Just try to keep up. So first we're gonna start with the famous section
out of Ephesians 6. Let's go ahead and bring up those verses. Ephesians 6. For
this reason, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to resist in
the evil day. And having prepared everything to take your stance,
stand therefore with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like
armor on your chest, and your feet sandaled with readiness for the gospel
of peace. In every situation, take up the shield of faith with which you can
extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation
and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So who here needs
protection from evil today? Paul's exhortation to the church is to use the
gospel for protection against the cosmic powers of this world. Here the items used
righteousness, salvation, gospel, faith, Word of God. These verses are not
like this special training of like do like spiritual karate. It's a reminder to
go back to the gospel. Righteousness, salvation, faith are results of God's
work in my life, not results of my actions. Why would we need to pursue
anything other than the fullest image of God's power in this world to protect us
from evil? Why would we turn to anything else? But if we submit to the power of
the gospel and everything that God did there, allowing it to direct every single
one of my actions and every single one of my thoughts, what do I have to fear?
What accusation will stick? What slander will matter to me? I have Jesus.
I'm gonna stand secure in him. Let's go to the next one. Romans 5. Therefore, since
we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in
which we stand and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Anyone struggle with
feeling that God is still angry with you? Or maybe you feel like God is
just waiting for you to sin so he can punish you because you're just an
adopted child. You're not a real one. These verses make some of the biggest
claims in the Bible. One, you have peace with God. It's what it says. Two, your
standing with him, your peace, your position in him has only to do with your
faith. That a faith allows you to be justified in God's sight. Meaning when
God looks on you, he doesn't see you. He sees his son, his perfect, obedient,
submissive, glorious son. That's the gospel. So carve out some time this week
to meditate on this. Just these two verses, Romans 5, 1 & 2. And ask yourself,
what does this mean about God? What does this mean about me? What does this mean
about God? What does this mean about me? I'll give you a thought, give you a thing
to start with. Jesus is the one who provided your peace. It wasn't your good
deeds, it wasn't your good actions, it wasn't the way that you did anything,
that you came to God. It was Jesus. So you don't have the power to destroy your
peace with God. You are not more powerful than Christ's work on the cross.
So you get to live in the assurance of Christ's work. No strings attached. That
is what peace looks like in your life. Let's go to the next one. Psalm 16. In
your presence is abundant joy at your right hand are eternal pleasures. You
ever read the Bible and like it just feels so mundane and like you just want
somebody to come and like act it out for you? That's this verse for me. In
Psalm 16, we don't have time to read all of it, David starts this Psalm with a
plea for protection. God protect me! And then he goes on to mention sleepless
nights, troubled thoughts. He alludes to dying and going down to Sheol. So the
context of this verse, this Psalm, is David struggling with deep fear and
anxiety, struggling to keep his head above water. Anybody else feel like that?
Struggling, trying to make it work, trying to get through feelings of
impending dread and the unknown. David was there and his response was to plead
with himself to keep his heart set on the Lord. Here's some quotes from this
Psalm. I have nothing good beside the Lord. You are my portion. I have a
beautiful inheritance. David is preaching to himself. He is trying to put the
gospel into his heart, put it into his mind so he doesn't forget it. He's
repeating the promises of the Lord. He is wrestling against the fear and lies
around him by recounting the faithfulness of the Lord. And as David
sees that his death may come, his response is not despair but hope. Listen
to it again. In your presence is abundant joy. At your right hand are
eternal pleasures. Meditating on the promises of the Lord and the truth of
his goodness may not keep you from suffering. It didn't from David. But you
will overcome fear and despair with hope in him. He is true. He is faithful and we
will have eternal joy with him. Preaching the gospel to yourself will
overpower the fear and anxiety that comes upon you and you will have hope.
And let me give you one final example. The next slide. Romans 8 one. There is
therefore now no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. When I'm having
difficulty, this is the verse I go back to. It answers so many questions and
doubts for me. My sin, which is my biggest problem, is dealt with. I don't
have to have fear of God's wrath and I can live in freedom. If I have sinned and
failed, like really really sinned, I don't have to live in fear because there's no
condemnation for me. The power of this verse abounds whenever I meditate it,
whenever I go back to it, it is always there to comfort me. Let me give you an
example from my life pretty recently of how that happened. Back in January, I went
back to work. I had been off for 10 weeks of paternity leave and I was hoping to
come back and slowly get into the swing of things, you know, like haven't been
working, it's take it easy. That didn't happen. For those of you who don't know
what I do, like my wife, I handle really big problems for Cisco Systems, not the
food company, the internet company. And we had one of our largest customers
really upset and having a major problem that was affecting their senior vice
presidents. So my job was to show up and fix their big problem as quickly as I
can. Well, I got to work on that problem the second day I
was back. And immediately I started working 10 to 16 hours a day. I would go
to sleep just trying to figure out how to solve this problem and what I would
do the next day. I would wake up in the middle of night and work for an hour or
two because that's the time frame I needed to work with people. And then I
would wake up and go to meetings at 6 a.m. Every morning I hoped, oh I prayed,
that whatever plans I had come up with the night before were good enough for
that day. And after about two weeks of no progress and the problem not solved and
pressure mounting, I started to slide into hopelessness. This escalation, this
problem was consuming my life and the problem wasn't fixed and I was failing
at my job. And this is really really intimate to me. Failure at my job is one
of my deepest fears. Like to be found out that I don't know and that I can't do it,
oh that scares me, like terrifies me. And one night I was searching for hope
anywhere and a way out of this problem which I, my boss couldn't fix it for me,
I started to meditate on this verse. There is therefore now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. I started preaching to this so hard to my
heart. Jesus took away my condemnation. I live in freedom. I don't have to
perform for Jesus. He did it, not me. God loves me and will still love me if I
fail and never solve this problem. My worth is not stored up in my output but
solely in Christ. The next day after this I still had to wake up and still had to
get to work and still try to figure out this problem. It didn't go away. It wasn't
for two more weeks until this problem was solved. But every day I had this
promise to hold on to. Every day I woke up with hope. Every day I could have joy.
Not because what I was doing but because what Christ had already done. The gospel
didn't fix the internet routing problem in a data center in Ashburn Virginia for
me. But that wasn't my biggest problem. My biggest problem was already dealt with
in the death of Jesus on the cross and I needed to be reminded of that. Now that
you are ready to start renewing the gospel, you guys have bought into my idea
that you need to start preaching the gospel to yourself. What does a life
lived out of the gospel look like? What does this look like every day? And I want
to first set up a problem that Christians have been dealing with and
show how holding to the gospel fixes it. A very common response is, well I've
hold on to the gospel, great that's what I've been doing since my Christian walk
started. What's different now? So the thing that Christians have been dealing
with shows up from day one. If my sins are forgiven and I am right with God, can
I keep sinning? Paul addresses it in Romans 6. We don't have time to read it
but the summary is this, no way! Don't! Stop! But this question, well Christ did it,
it's done, right Nick? You keep saying that. Can I? Like can I? Like really,
it'd be really nice. And often what Christians do is they say one thing and
then act a different way. Nobody has ever accused Christians of being hypocrites,
right? We'll say you're forgiven in Jesus, your sins don't count against you, you're
washed clean. But God can still get upset with you if you sin too much, like you
know there's a limit. So you probably want to try really hard this time to
like earn back his love to make sure he's not too upset with you. You guys are
being way too serious. I know you've all seen this before. We say God is
forgiving and loving but we still take responsibility for fixing the
relationship. This is a lie. Lies that distort the gospel. Lies that demean the
work of Jesus on the cross. This is the truth. There is no condemnation for those
who are in Christ. They changed the slide, that was gonna be really cool. But say
that verse to yourself. Repeat it to yourself often. Turn to someone right now.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
There's no condemnation. A quick read through Romans 8, you will find that this
promise directly ties to Paul's description of our status change in
verse 16 which reads, the Spirit himself testifies together with our Spirit that
we are God's children. The Holy Spirit testifies to God the Father that you
are a child of God. You are a child of the triune eternal God. Your
justification by faith turns into no condemnation which turns into your
status as a child of God. You have a birth certificate signed by the Holy
Spirit in the blood of Jesus Christ. So how do you choose to live now? Like what
do you want to do? Do you want to go back to sin? Do you want to go back to anger
and wrath? Do you want to go back to people fearing? Be scared of them? Do you
want to squander your freedom with a computer in a dark room? No way! Don't do
it! Why? You have Jesus! There's not a chance that you would turn to that. And
this is my second point. Gratitude is our motivation. You live a life flowing out
overflowing with joy and gratitude in the work of Jesus on the cross. You wake
up every morning eager to serve, eager to learn, eager to know Christ more. Not
because of fear and punishment, not because you're gonna have to work extra
hard next time, but because of gratitude at all God has done for you. Gratitude is
our motivation. So here's some verses to exemplify this point. Let's go to the next
slide. A verse I don't feel like is quoted enough. 1st John 5.3. For this is
what love for God is to keep his commandments and his commandments are
not burdensome. Do you ever feel that obedience to God is hindering you? It's a
burden to your life that you have to obey? Or how about this next one Titus
2.14. 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. Sorry I got my translations wrong. Are you are you zealous to do good works?
Do you have a zeal to give up your comforts to serve others? Does your heart
ever have enough of the gospel so that saying no to sin is deeply exciting? That
is what a mind changed by the gospel thinks. This mindset propelled Paul to
say this absolutely absurd thing. This is really in your Bible. I have suffered
the loss of all things and consider them as dung so that I may gain Christ. I have
suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung so I may have
Christ. The motivation behind this changed view of God's command that God's
commands are good and glorious and the thing I want to do is is gratitude.
Gratitude overflowing into obedience. Joyful obedience. Obedience that is
excited to glorify God. Excited to make him look amazing. I started with a quote
from Tim Keller so here's one more. Tim Keller describes it like this. Religion
says if I obey God then God will love and accept me. The gospel says God loves
and accepts me therefore I want to obey. When was the last time you told God
please please give me the chance to obey your commands? Give me the opportunity
to sacrifice? Give me the opportunity to make you look precious and glorious to
me? The gospel is God's good news of the work he has done for us and it is shown
through the obedience of those who claim Christ. This obedience is expected as an
expected outcome of our changed hearts. Any other motivation for obedience to
God diminishes the gospel. It makes it look worthless. It makes the work of
Christ on the cross insufficient for your life. So instead of Christ doing
everything he does some of it and then you finish it for him. How nice of you.
But gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude makes much of God. It praises him for his plan.
It praises him for his work. By redeeming of people for his own his own
possession that have a passion for him. Gratitude turns our hearts to sing his
praises. Gratitude drives us to give up everything so that we may know him more
and more. And if you want this type of Christianity that looks otherworldly
it's propelled by gratitude full of joy seeking to glorify God. Meditate on the
gospel. Study it. Talk about it. Talk about it with your spouse. Talk about it
with your friends. Bring it up all the time. Read the Bible and just try to
look for where it talks about the gospel. Where God is doing something and
making a people of his own possession. You will see people differently. Just
visibly like physically you will see people differently. You will see
yourself differently. You will see gospel moments all of the time. Where grace is
can be extended. Where mercy needs to be extended. Where forgiveness is an option.
You'll have all of that stuff and then out of it just so much joy and gratitude
and obedience because it all comes together because it's what God desires
out of us and the only thing that we want to do is to praise him. The gospel
is our daily need. Let us not stray from it. Amen. Amen.