The Church 4

The Gospel Promised in the Holy Scriptures and the Son of David

Apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God, which he promised before through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is born of the seed of David according to the flesh, declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.

Through him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ. To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout.

The whole world.

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you.

For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established, that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you, but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles.

I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. So as much as in me I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. Today is the third Lord's Day that we are addressing this subject, the defense of the.

The Fragility of the Gospel and the Need to Defend It

We have already shown from the scriptures that the gospel is a rather fragile thing. It can easily be corrupted, quickly be corrupted. We saw that in Galatians chapter 1. Paul was amazed that the church is in Galatia, so quickly removed themselves from him when they departed from the grace that is in the gospel.

And so the gospel can be stripped of its content and thereby diluted of its potency. And so what remains of the message of good news may be true, however it is no longer the whole truth. Now thankfully God will bless the truth even when it may be mixed up in a measure with.

Error.

God blesses His truth. But to the degree that our gospel ceases to reflect the content of the biblical gospel, we can expect the lessening of God's blessing upon our truncated message, our abbreviated message to further His work of salvation in our world.

And so there is the ever-present need, we have advocated, to defend the biblical gospel and while doing so to assure ourselves that the gospel we understand and promote is indeed in accordance with God's word.

There is a need for reforming according to God's word, reaffirming. There is a need sometimes for recovery of the gospel. And last Lord's Day we sought to show from the scriptures how far evangelicalism really has departed from the gospel, we would argue, much, not all, but much.

And so we set forth from the Holy Scriptures last Lord's Day how the gospel of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is vitally connected to the promise of the Kingdom of God. We saw that in Mark chapter 1 that we just read.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ was the announcement that the Messiah had come and the Kingdom of God was being inaugurated, Jesus Christ as Lord. The Kingdom of God is a theme that is central to the story of the Bible from the earliest chapters of Genesis through the last chapters of the Revelation.

The Kingdom of God is a major theme. Biblical scholars all readily acknowledge that the message of the Kingdom of God was the principal preaching theme of the Lord Jesus Himself. He preached the Kingdom of God.

The gospel, of course, is the good news that God has brought into realization the long-promised Kingdom foretold in the Old Testament, begun to be realized in the Gospels and the early Church, but will be fully realized, the Kingdom shall come with the Second Coming of Jesus.

Christ.

And so the Kingdom is now, is present, and will one day be fully manifested at His Second Coming. We read of the culmination of God's purpose in history in 1 Corinthians 15, 24 and following when Paul wrote, Then comes the end, talking about the Second Coming of Christ, when He delivers the Kingdom to God the Father.

By the time Jesus comes, all rebellion, all sin will be put down. He'll conquer His enemies, and all of His people will be submitted to Him. And He takes basically this world that He has brought back under a willing submission to the Father, and He presents it to His Father.

He fulfills a task that the Father entrusted to Him. You go down into that fallen world that's in rebellion, and you reclaim it, and you regain it. And that's what He's doing. He's saving His people, and He's setting up His enemies for their big fall, for their judgment.

So Paul wrote about, Then comes the end, when He delivers His Kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule, all authority and power, for He must reign, He is reigning, He must continue to reign, till He has put all enemies under His feet, and the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, for He has put all things under His feet.

But when He, God says all things are put under Him, it's evident that He who put all things under Him is accepted. In other words, Jesus Christ Himself is not put under, or God the Father isn't, when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him, who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.

The Son Himself comes and offers His Kingdom to the Father, and all things are brought back into a willing submission to God the Father. This is a task, the Kingdom to which God sent His Son, to inaugurate and to accomplish.

A book I would highly recommend to you, commend to you, is A Thorough Treatment of the Theme of the Kingdom of God and the Holy Scriptures. I'm back on the treadmill these days, and I'm reading this book as I'm working on the treadmill.

It's written by Thomas Schreiner, and I've mentioned it to a few of you people already. It's entitled The King and His Beauty. And although Schreiner, at the beginning of the book, acknowledged no one theme adequately captures the message of the scriptures, nevertheless, he argues in his book, the phrase, the Kingdom of God, thematically captures, from a Biblical theology standpoint, the message of the scripture.

In other words, he claims that the Kingdom of God is, he doesn't say the, although he implies it, a major theme throughout all the Bible, because you really can't say there is a single major theme. There are a lot of major themes, but he's arguing the Kingdom of God is one of the most principal themes of scripture.

And here's a brief introduction, and really the sense of his assertion. Perhaps it will help if I sketch what I mean by the Kingdom of God. First of all, it designates the rule of God. In one sense, God is always the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, reigning over everything that happens.

God is sovereign. He's King of Kings, as the Creator. But in another sense, God's rule has been flouted since the fall of humankind, and the writers tell the story of the Kingdom regained. The objection to saying the Kingdom is central is that it does not seem to fit with the writings of the Hebrew Bible.

For example, the book of Hebrews, or pardon me, Proverbs. I will argue in due course that Proverbs and the other books are the writings in the Old Testament. There's the Law, the Prophets, and then the Writings.

And some argue, no, the Kingdom is not the central message of the Bible, because you don't find that theme a lot in Job and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. But Schreiner here is arguing, well, if you look and read carefully, it's there, is what.

He's saying.

It fits with such a notion. Even though the term Kingdom is virtually absent in Proverbs, I will demonstrate that the wisdom literature features the supremacy of God in everyday life, showing that He rules over the particulars of our very existence.

We will see that Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes teach that the fear of Yahweh, we commonly say Jehovah, but Yahweh is the proper name for God in the Old Testament, is the beginning of wisdom. To fear the Lord is to live under His Lordship.

The focus on God as King is evident in the regular refrain found in Scripture, particularly the Old Testament, where God is identified as the Lord. As Lord, He is the Sovereign One, the Creator of all, the One who deserves praise and obedience.

In other words, saying that the theme of Scripture is God's Kingship is verified and confirmed by the constant refrain that God is the Lord. And so the entire book, The King and His Beauty, is a setting forth of the Scriptures from Genesis all the way through to Revelation, setting forth the idea of the Kingdom of God.

I am finding a very excellent book. By the way, he will be one of our speakers next year at our Bolton Conference 2017. Now a few moments ago we read those 15 verses in Romans 1, and here we have underscored for us the truthfulness of what we have said about the content of the Gospel and the need to emphasize the Gospel of the Kingdom.

Romans 1 and the Content of the Gospel

Paul had written to this church at Rome, a church he had never visited, for which he had the desire to instruct and encourage in the Lord, and in his opening words Paul referenced the centrality of the Gospel to his own calling and ministry.

And so verse 1, Romans 1, contains Paul's introduction of himself and of the Gospel. Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God. And the Gospel of God, that is one of the few places where the precise wording like that is to be found.

The Gospel, the Good News of God. And then without hesitation or delay, in the very same sentence, Paul defined the content of that Gospel, which is contained in verses 2 through 4. Verse 2 reads, Which God promised before through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.

Now you see the pronoun, which, which God promised? That which is a reference to the Gospel. The Gospel, which God promised. Through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. Paul declared that God had promised the Gospel in history through the prophets, as it was recorded in the Old Testament.

And then in verse 3 he began to set forth the content of the Gospel, concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord. And so the Good News is the Good News of Jesus Christ. But what specifically about Jesus Christ, the Gospel, does Paul give focus?

Verse 4 records for us, Who was born of the seed of David. Oh, he's talking about the Good News of Jesus Christ. Who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.

And so here Paul is declaring, quite clearly, that the Gospel has to do with Jesus Christ being the promised King of Israel, the Son of David. Of which the prophets foretold would one day rise to rule over the Kingdom of Israel, that is the Kingdom of God.

When Paul said that Jesus Christ would declare to be the Son of God with power upon his resurrection, he was declaring that Jesus Christ was inaugurated as the promised King of Israel. When a son of David was coronated in ancient Israel, he was a son of David, in that coronation there was a declaration made by God, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

When that son of David became King, it's as though God adopted that son of David as his son, because this son of David was going to rule on his behalf. And Paul is saying that when Jesus Christ rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven, he was enthroned by God, and he's declared to be the son of David, who is the Son of God, in other words, ruling on behalf of God.

We have the establishment of the Kingdom of God here with Jesus Christ as the promised King, the Son of David. And so when the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, he came to the Father the Ancient of Days, who bestowed upon him his Kingdom, the long promised anticipated King who now sits upon the throne of David.

That's what Paul is declaring here in Romans chapter 1. The promised restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, ruled over by the promised Son of David, had come into realization. And then in verse 5, Paul wrote of the end, or the result that God purposed to bring to pass through his ministry of the Gospel, through him, that is through Christ, we receive grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name.

This is the purpose or end to which God intended for the Gospel. He would have a Kingdom comprised of Jews and Gentiles who were brought into life, a life of obedience, born by faith in Jesus Christ, who is now the enthroned promised Son of David over the Kingdom of God.

Clearly, obviously, in my mind, this is what Paul is declaring. Paul next expressed his desire to travel to Rome to proclaim this Gospel. And so verses 8 -12, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

He's talking about the realization and fulfillment of what God has promised. The Kingdom of David now is encompassing the world and Gentiles are being brought in as.

Well.

And you people at Rome, in that church at Rome, you're part of this. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of his Son. Without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers, making requests if by some.

Means.

Now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you, for I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gifts so that you may be established, that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me.

And so Paul wanted them to be established in the full understanding and realization of what God was doing in history and their part in that. God was bringing into realization the Kingdom of God. He wanted them to understand the blessing that God was accomplishing through them was a fulfillment of God's purpose in history, that they be brought to the obedience to the faith among all nations for his sake, for his name.

And so Paul desired to travel to Rome to impart this glorious news to them. As we read in verses 13 to 15, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, I often plan to come to you, but was hindered until now so that I may might have some fruit among you also.

Just as among other Gentiles, I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both the wise and unwise. So as much as in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. And so this entire introduction in Romans 1 verses 1 through 15 underscores the content of the gospel is the good news of the promised Kingdom of God has come into realization by Jesus Christ through his life, death, resurrection, and his enthronement.

He is the enthroned Son of David over Israel is what Paul is declaring. And then of course the unfolding of the entire epistle of Paul to the Romans is a setting forth of how God is bringing into realization this worldwide Kingdom.

Paul wanted to travel to Rome to better teach them that their church, comprised both of Jews and Gentiles, was the realization of God's purpose in history through Jesus Christ. God was saving his people from their sin, pardoning them of their sin, justifying them freely by the grace that's in Jesus Christ through faith alone, bringing them into a state of justification, and then sanctifying them by the power of the Holy Spirit that their King imparts to his people, even until the day when he glorifies them when they pass from this life into their participation of the future resurrection from the dead when the Kingdom will be fully realized.

So everything that we've said thus far underscores the definitions that we set before us last week in answer to the question, what is salvation? Biblical salvation is the work of God to save his people from their sin unto himself through Jesus Christ.

And so in the light of salvation, what is the gospel? Well, simply, the gospel is the good news that God brings sinners salvation from sin through Jesus Christ. But more precisely, what is the content of the message of the gospel?

It is the good news that God is saving his people from their sin through his King, even our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, so that they might be a people who love God and obey.

God.

It was all to the end that they might be an obedient people, brought to an obedience to God, reconciling of them to God, their Creator, through Jesus Christ. Now to cite Schreiner again, here's an excellent synopsis of the message of the Kingdom of God set forth in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as in Luke's sequel,.

The Book of Acts.

Now this is a long quote, and forgive me for that, but I read it and I thought, no, this is too good not to share it. The Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts, despite all their diversity, have something in common.

All of them proclaim that the King has come, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Messiah, the final prophet, the true Israel, and the Lord of all. Jesus fulfills the promise made to David that his dynasty would never end, that a king would always sit on the Davidic throne.

By virtue of his resurrection and exaltation, he is now seated at God's right hand, and he reigns from heaven. The kingdom promised in the Old Testament has come, for the King has come. The day of fulfillment has arrived in the ministry, death and resurrection.

The age to come has invaded history, for Jesus has risen from the dead. By virtue of Jesus' death, forgiveness of sins is available for those who belong to.

Him.

The presence of the kingdom manifested itself in Jesus' healings, exorcisms, and nature.

Miracles.

These miracles anticipate the new creation that is coming, the day when all that is wrong and the world will be made right. Amnesty is offered to all those who defied the King's lordship, but the day of forgiveness will last for a limited time, for the King will return to the earth and finish what he has started.

That the devil and his cohorts will be destroyed forever, though the crushing blow already was delivered at Jesus' death and resurrection. Luke particularly emphasizes, though the theme is not absent from Matthew and Mark, that the kingdom advances through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The gospel of the kingdom will be heralded to the ends of the world, and Acts testifies that such a mission is carried out through the work of the Holy Spirit, animating and strengthening disciples to testify to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The people of God consist of all those who belong to Jesus Christ. The twelve apostles represent the new and restored Israel, the new twelve tribes, so to speak. All those who accept the apostolic testimony about the Christ are members of God's kingdom.

The restored and new Israel is not limited to the Jewish people. Gentiles who repent of their sins, put their faith in Jesus Christ, and are baptized in his name also belong to the new people of God. Luke particularly emphasizes in Acts the expansion of the people of God.

The promise that Israel and Judah would be reunified is fulfilled when the Samaritans.

Believe.

The folding in of the Gentiles fulfills the universal blessings pledged to Abraham and the other patriarchs. Those who are members of the kingdom repent of their sins and put their faith in Jesus.

Christ.

They submit to Jesus' lordship in his reign as disciples. True disciples are obedient to God and do what Jesus commands them to do. They live a new life as members of the kingdom, bearing truth that is pleasing to God.

That is an all-encompassing description of everything we have been trying to say. We have asserted several times in the past few weeks that it is our conviction that this biblical gospel is not widely understood or proclaimed by evangelicals.

Just as J .I. Packer had written back in the early 1960s, he believed the gospel then needed a recovery and it had been lost. We would argue that the gospel of the kingdom needs to be restored today to our proclamation.

The gospel most often proclaimed is but a shell of what had been proclaimed formerly, that God had formerly blessed to the conversion of many. May the Lord help us to be right in these matters. May he bless our proclamation of his gospel to the furtherance of his kingdom.

How the Gospel Is Corrupted by Redefining Salvation

Having established what is true with respect to the Bible's message, let's consider what is defective about commentations of the gospel. We began to do so somewhat two weeks ago when we spoke about the common heresy corrupting the true meaning of grace, that being legalism on the one hand or licentiousness on the other, teachings commonly heard which must be refuted.

But there are other ways in which the biblical gospel suffers. And I would argue, I would reason, the gospel may be and is perverted by redefining the nature of salvation. It is very lamentable that the gospel has been corrupted in the minds of many because the nature and meaning of salvation has been stripped of its biblical content.

Rather than proclaiming that salvation, the salvation the Bible teaches, which is salvation from all the effects of sin, it is common for salvation to be reduced to the promise of God's forgiveness of sins only.

Most gospel tracts have reduced the gospel to this. Read these verses, believe this, and you can have your sins forgiven. As though that is what salvation is all about. And I would argue that this is less than what the gospel is set forth in the New Testament.

The gospel that is taught to bring about that truncated salvation has been reduced solely to a presentation of how to obtain forgiveness of sins, as though this were all that was necessary and important to biblical salvation.

But in proclaiming this gospel, so-called the true gospel, has been distorted in the minds of many professing Christians. Now, again, what is being said about the forgiveness of sins many times is true.

It's just so narrow and so limited, it's not the whole truth. And again, thankfully, God blesses the truth. He manages to convert people in spite of us, really. Because we proclaim the truth in a measure.

He carries on His work. But I think that our weak and faulty message results in a forfeiture of God's blessing our efforts. Certainly, it's true that one of the great needs in God bringing us to salvation is to extend to us the forgiveness of sins.

This is essential, obviously. Sin is the great barrier between the true God and fallen man. Our sin calls for God's just judgment upon us. Here's a long passage from Isaiah, but here it clearly sets forth the problem.

We've got the sin problem, and we need to be pardoned by God, because we're guilty. Israel, of course, Judah, was suffering under the judgment of God, but they were thinking, hey, something's happening here, and God is not able to deliver us, because they were suffering such reverse from their enemies.

And Isaiah writes, or the Lord did to them, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save. He doesn't have a weak arm that He can't come and save you. It's not because His arm is shortened or paralyzed, nor is He ear-heavy, He cannot hear.

But your iniquities have separated you from your God, your sins have hidden His face from.

You.

We've got a sin problem. So that He will not hear, for your hands are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity. No one calls for justice.

And there's a whole litany here, of course, of the consequences of sin before God. Verse 8, their way of peace they've not known, there's no justice in their eyes, they've made themselves crooked paths, whoever takes that way shall not know peace.

And as a consequence, God's blessing is forfeited. Verse 9, justice is far from us, nor does righteousness overtake us. Verse 12, there's a confession, for our transgressions are multiplied before you, our God.

Our sins testify against us, for our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them. Sin is a problem, a very, very big problem, for God, of course, is holy and just in all His ways.

And no one who is guilty of sin will ever dwell with Him, and every one of us are guilty.

Of sin.

We're estranged from God, distant from God, because God is a holy God, and we are not. Thankfully, however, God, in bringing us to salvation, pardons us of our sin. And so God has promised His people, I will cleanse them from all their iniquities by which they have sinned against me, I will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned, and by which they have transgressed against me.

All other violations of God's law, God promises to forgive. And thankfully, of course, God's forgiveness of sin is extended graciously, even freely, through faith in Jesus Christ. And Micah foretold this, we read in Romans 1, this gospel was foretold by the prophets in the Old Testament.

Micah was one of those, and here he exclaims the glory of a merciful God, who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity, passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage. He does not retain His anger for everybody, because He delights in mercy.

He will again have compassion on us, will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will give truth to Jacob, mercy to Abraham, which you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.

And then, of course, King David wrote a psalm about the free forgiveness of sins, Psalm 32, which the Apostle Paul quoted in Romans chapter 4, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit. But I would advocate, I would argue, it is wrong to think or tell others that they may have the free and full forgiveness of sins only if they believe that Jesus Christ died for sinners.

And yet that is the message it is commonly taught. All you have to do is believe that Jesus died for sinners and you will be forgiven of your sins. I don't think that represents the gospel as the Bible sets forth.

For biblical salvation involves much more than God forgiving our sins. We need more than pardon. Salvation that God bestows includes deliverance from the love and power of sin. When people are saved from their sins, they no longer live to serve sin, but rather they serve God.

Jesus Christ is their Savior and their Master. He directs their lives. He directs them, as Paul described, unto obedience, obedience born of faith, he says. When people are saved from their sins, they are brought to experience new life.

They come to enjoy all that life offers them in their church, among the other people of God who have also been saved from their sins. The fact is, people will believe a message that God will freely forgive them, but if you tell them that it comes with that forgiveness of sins, alongside of that forgiveness they must depart from sin, and that the forgiveness of sins comes with joining with the people of God, learning from and living according to this book he has given to us, you will find your offer of forgiveness will be declined by most people.

People want forgiveness. They don't want, however, to be delivered from their sin. They love their sin. That's one of the problems. And when salvation comes, that love is deposed, isn't it? There's love for Christ, a love for righteousness.

Although sin is attractive, always is, it's enticing, and in some ways it's pleasant, the true Christian would rather never do it again. However, it's a sad thing, in my view, that most presentations of the gospel is a mere offer of forgiveness of sins.

This is how you can get God to forgive you of your sins. But if people are not willing to turn from their sin, they should not be promised that they have been forgiven of their sin. This easy gospel can often be presented like this.

The soul winner confronts the sinner with the reality of his sin. He shows him from the scriptures that all are sinners and are therefore under the just judgment of God. Perhaps the soul winner will even use the law of God to show clearly and convincingly that this man is a transgressor.

But again, rather than presenting the full message, the full gospel, that Jesus Christ is Lord over a kingdom in which he calls and enables sinners to leave their sin and become righteous through faith and to live in righteousness through faith, the sinner is told that if he merely believes that Jesus died and rose for sinners, he too will be forgiven of sins.

And that is not true. And again, this sinner will often accept this gospel. I used to do it back when I was a young man, younger man, in my early twenties. I was hired as a staff soul winner of a large church in Texas.

And that was my job, to go out and win souls. And I'd win a dozen a week, on average. One day a friend and I went out, 52 people one Saturday, bowed their heads, prayed that sinner's prayer. Some were weeping, some were on their knees.

But the following day they didn't come to church, they didn't want to come to church. I was offering them forgiveness of sins, and they wanted that, but they didn't want anything to do with the kind of life as a Christian that we were presenting.

And yet we were telling them they were having, they had salvation, because they believed on Jesus. It's a truncated salvation, it's a truncated gospel. And that's the message that evangelicalism has proclaimed to the world.

Through all its evangelistic crusades, all the tracks that are so superficial and shallow, many well-meaning and well-intentioned Christians are offering that kind of gospel. The salvation is more than the forgiveness of sins, it's new life in Jesus Christ.

It's coming into the kingdom of God with Jesus as Lord. It's coming to believe on Him and trust Him and to look to Him to guide and lead and order one's life. And so people are being deceived, they think they're forgiven because they believe on Jesus, but their life in no way manifests the kind of participation in this kingdom that we've been talking about.

This desire to please God and obey Jesus Christ, and to seek the grace that Christ gives by the power of the Holy Spirit that He imparts to His people, because that's not their desire. The fact is, the free and full forgiveness of sins is indeed conferred upon the one who believes, but it's the one who believes and submits to Jesus Christ as the King, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings.

Many proclaim this aberrant and abbreviated gospel because they do not understand or believe what God has revealed concerning the inauguration of the kingdom of God, as we have considered.

Above.

Many have this twisted view of the gospel, promising the forgiveness of sins while failing to proclaim the kingdom of God. And many have done so because they do not believe God has established Jesus Christ as King over the kingdom of God.

We've talked about this in the past, but it's largely due to the legacy of dispensationalism, which I used to believe and advocate and teach until I came to understand it wasn't right back in 1982. That was a while ago.

But dispensationalism has dominated evangelical belief and thinking theology since the early 20th century, and it denied that Jesus Christ is currently reigning as the Son of David. They teach that God's promise to David that he would have a son to sit on his throne was not the promise of a kingdom realized in this church age, but rather it was a promise of a physical kingdom that would be fulfilled in a future thousand-year Jewish millennium on earth.

That is what dispensationalism teaches, and most everybody believes it. When the Lord returns, it's claimed he will then be seated on a literal physical throne in earthly Jerusalem, and from that throne he'll reign for a thousand years over a revived Jewish nation that will be supreme over the Gentile nations of the world.

They teach that God offered this kingdom to the Jewish people when Jesus, the promised Messiah, came and ministered among them. But when Israel rejected Jesus as the Messiah and they crucified him, they said God withdrew his offer of the kingdom and in its place inaugurated this church age.

And so they don't believe the promised kingdom of the Old Testament is realized presently and that Jesus as the Son of David is ruling. They said, no, that won't occur until the second coming. And so their understanding of the gospel removes the whole idea of the kingdom proclamation as the Son of David, but rather it becomes a gospel of forgiveness of sins, and often that only.

They argue the promised kingdom was not inaugurated upon the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, rather the promised kingdom was postponed. This church age is a great parenthesis in God's program, but one day God will go back to his original intention and plan.

They used to argue, many have abandoned this false teaching, but they used to argue that during a future tribulation period a different gospel will be proclaimed. Once again the gospel of the kingdom will be offered to the world, but that's after the church is taken out of the world.

But they say you don't preach the gospel of the kingdom now in this church age because the kingdom has been postponed. And so the entire gospel of Jesus Christ has been void of the substance of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, for the most part by many people.

And so they'll tend to offer a gospel of forgiveness of sins, but that offer will not be tied to Jesus Christ as the exalted reigning Son of David that so clearly set forth in the New Testament. And so this is one way in which the biblical gospel is commonly distorted, truncated, and I believe that our whole world has been adversely affected by this superficial, shallow message of salvation.

This is how you can get God to forgive your sins, and you're going to begin to feel pretty good about yourself also if you just accept Jesus as your Savior. And that's not what the scriptures declare the gospel is, nor salvation.