The Gospel Will Be Preached (Romans 1:1-17, Jeff Kliewer)

Announcements and Worship Service Prayers

Good morning. Greetings. Good morning. Hello. Bob's ready. Let's go. We don't do flag waving during worship. Yeah, you can wave your Bible. That's fine. All right. We're going to have a couple of announcements here.

And then we're going to open in a word of prayer and begin to worship our Lord, because he's worthy of all of our praise. So tomorrow morning at 6 AM, there is a men's breakfast. Doesn't that sound appealing?

6 AM? You get to get up early? No? Not a morning person here. But if you are a morning person, 6 AM, right here in the building for a men's. It's not really a breakfast, actually. The food is only, it's not physical food.

But you're being fed the word of God. So 6 AM men's meeting. We have a big event next Sunday. OK? Next Sunday on the field out here, right after the second service, there's going to be a baptism and a picnic.

We're going to try and get that Korean barbecue going again. And just have a wonderful time hanging out after second service. So please stick around. You're going to want to hear the testimonies of those getting baptized.

It's always one of the most exciting days of the year. So next Sunday, mark your calendar right now. Put a note in your phone so you don't forget. Baptism time right after second service. We have a congregational meeting on June 23rd.

So it's right after a Sunday service that week. We're not going to do a Monday night meeting, but just stay after second service for a congregational meeting, which we have a few times every year. So with that, I think that's all the announcements I've got.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. And that gives me extra time to preach long. So short announcements, and yeah, you know me. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we come to you now in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.

And Lord, you know our hearts, and you know what's on our minds. Just as we came in the service today, a woman approached asking for special prayer for the youth, that there was a burden on her heart, that the enemy is trying to take a stronghold over the youth of this church, and in general, over the youth in this culture that are being led after lies.

And so Lord, we come together as a congregation to pray for the youth. We ask for the teenagers, the young people, even the children of this church, that they would be raised in the admonition of the Lord, that you would hold onto their hearts, that you would deploy more angels to fight off the demons that are trying to attack them.

God, that you would wrestle and fight for the hearts of the youth, and that, of course, you would be triumphant in that battle. You're the God of angel armies, and we pray that you would defeat the enemy who's seeking to devour, like a roaring lion, the youth of this church and of this country.

So Lord God, we pray for a mighty revival amongst the youth. Revivals almost always start with young people, and we pray, God, that there would be a revival in the youth of this church that spreads throughout New Jersey and really touches to the ends of the earth, that there would be missionaries sent out, kids that grew up in this church, that there will be power in their lives to overcome the enemy, that they would resist temptation, they would flee temptation, and that they would stand strong for you.

Empower them to preach. Raise up preachers among them, missionaries, and faithful Christians amongst the young people. We do pray for them. And now, Father, we lift up this worship service and ask that you would be glorified through the singing of praise unto your name.

You are worthy of the best that we can bring you. So Lord, we ask now that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit, that we could worship you in spirit and in truth, in Jesus' name.

Amen. Amen. Would you please stand as we sing our opening song?

I was buried. I was buried beneath my shame. Who could carry that kind of weight? It was mine. Till I was mine. Into your glorious day. It was heavy, but chains break at the weight of shelter. I was an orphan.

Now you call me a citizen of heaven. When I was broke, it's the end. Into your glorious day.

It is good to be. Next, we're going to sing In the House of Hope.

We worship the God who was. We worship the God who is. We worship the God who evermore. Victory. There's joy in the face. States. We sing to the God who always.

Faithfulness, Communion, and Prayer for the Sermon

And so as we sing this next song, praise thy faithfulness, focus on his love for us, and his care for us, and his provision for us. Worship you together in this wonderful, wonderful country that we have.

And God, we pray for our leaders. We pray for our country. We pray that we would continue to worship you here today, in this time, in this place. And God, we thank you for the opportunity, because you have been faithful to us.

You have been faithful to your promises. And God, we love you, and we thank you for this time. And God, I pray that you bless the rest of this worship service, I pray that you bless communion, that we would be reminded of your sacrifice for us.

And I pray that you bless the preaching today, that the words from Romans would pierce our hearts, and that we would be transformed because of that. I pray this all in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated.

Well, good morning, church, family, brothers, sisters. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, morning. It is our June communion, six months down, six months to go. Now is not the time to be spiritually idle.

I know we have summer, but the world is changing quickly. More so than ever in my lifetime, the gospel needs to be preached. And these days, these months, these years seem to go by so quickly. Even when we think about our own mortality, death seems to be so far off.

And yet, the world hates us. Why? We seek truth. We want truth, and we speak truth. We are prone to think of death as following birth. People are born to live their lives and then die. Spiritually, however, it's actually the other way around.

Peter, by divine inspiration, says that we must be born again because since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God for all fleshes, like grass, all its glory, like the flowers of grass.

The grass withers. The flowers fall or fail. But the word of the Lord remains forever, and this word is the good news that was preached to you. And that's in 1 Peter 1, 23 to 25. This new birth is a spiritual matter, necessitated by the fact that by nature, men are dead in trespasses and sin.

Thus, as believers, we are not born again the same way as we were first born, but are born again, given a new life by believing the word of God, his truth. Yet paradoxically, we live in a world that is a burning house.

And most of humanity is still arguing over its drapes. We trade a truth for the fleeting high cost of acceptance, exchanging it for the moment's peace in the arms of culture that celebrates its own demise.

They call it feelings. We call it, for what it is, lies. But we can be so spiritually lazy that we exchange how we are feeling as truth, supposedly God's truth. Dr. Buck Parsons from St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, sums it up this way.

Even we as Christians can sometimes be deceived by our own feelings. We can fall into a deep unhappiness, loneliness, despair, or shame, and feel as if we are not truly saved. This can occur when we are beaten down by our sin or as our enemies constantly accuse us.

We must remember that sometimes our feelings are the greatest liars. And we must not allow our feelings to override what we know to be true. We must preach the gospel to our feelings, ask the Lord to help us to not forget that we are in Christ.

We must never allow our doctrine to conform to our feelings, but we must always make our feelings conform to our doctrine. In other words, we've been given a new life. You made the most important decision in your life to follow Jesus.

What happens next? Have we been so fretful about the world that creates us as spiritually lazy with feelings that we dismiss that we live and move and our whole total being is with God, that we cannot even raise our hands without God's power behind it?

The world, the pagans, call it secondary causes, but here we call it his creation. So how do we combat spiritual idleness? Well, this communion today is a welcome check and balance for us as we reflect on the past year.

And are we progressing in Christ? And that's the question for us. As he sealed us in his eternity, how are we? That check and balance there. Have we used idle moments to read and meditate on his word or to pray to our Lord, or has our lethargy caused us to do what is rather easy than to what is best and prevented us from storing the word of God within our hearts?

Always be on alert. In today's world, the wicked will deny truth, God's truth, and claim its importance of their feelings against the church judgmentalism. So do not be lazy, always seek truth. I leave you with this, a poem called The Wicked Flee, F-L-E-E.

The wicked flee who no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as lions, Proverbs 28 .1. In the shadows deep, the wicked cower. Though none give chase, they flee the hour. A phantom dread, a nameless fear, drives them to flight, though none is near.

But righteous hearts with lion's might stand firm and fearless in the night. No lurking terror shakes their soul, their faith a fortress, strong and whole. For God, their shield, their strength, their guide, they walk with courage side by side.

No whispered threat, no haunting doubt can dim the fire that burns throughout. So let the wicked tremble and flee while the righteous souls stand tall and free. With lion's heart, they face the fray, for God's own power lights their way.

Ushers. Thank you Lord for Pastor Jeff, and he's preaching on a very important issue here in Romans, and we pray that you will be touched by his sermon, Lord. Throughout this day, Lord, we pray that you will continue to have us honor you.

There's a capsule there, it's a waker on top, and there, that's what you're gonna choose today. Paul writes in the Church of Corinth, let a person examine himself, then we soak the bread and drink it up.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks, judging the bodies. For I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you, the Lord Jesus on the ninth day, when he was betrayed took bread, and with yet hidden thanks he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Prayer for Preaching and the Authority of Scripture

Let's pray. God in heaven, the true and living God, we call upon the name of Jesus Christ this morning. Asking for your help, Lord, I ask that you would help me to proclaim your word as I ought to speak.

Give me clarity and boldness, a filling of your Holy Spirit for the preaching of your word. Pray also for those who hear your word, Lord, that you would make each of us ambassadors, sent out to proclaim your word to everyone around us.

We pray for a fresh filling of your Holy Spirit, that the power of the gospel would be made manifest in our lives, that you would strengthen us to speak the word of God. And Lord, I pray that if there's anybody here this morning that has not yet been saved, they have not yet repented and believed in Jesus, that you would open their eyes this morning through your word and save them, Lord.

We pray that as we study through the book of Romans, we would see many, many people coming to saving faith, and that the baptism down the shore later, after the summer is over in September, we would have so many people to be baptized.

And all this for your name's sake, that the name of Jesus would be lifted high. Do a great work in our congregation now, through your word, through the book of Romans, in Jesus' name, amen. There is no evidence in the earliest 150 years of church history that the Roman bishop was primary over the other bishops in Christianity.

There's no evidence of a pope arising until centuries into Christianity. In fact, when the Bishop of Rome, Clement, wrote a letter to the Corinthian church to try to help them with the dispute they were having, he did not take authority over them, but rather he interceded and sought to appeal to them by their authority to take control of the situation.

But here's when everybody in the world should have known that the pope, the so-called pope, does not speak for God. Here's the decisive turning point, after which no one should ever claim that the Bishop of Rome was God's spokesperson who can speak for God at the level of scripture.

It was in the 800s, near the late 800s, in the ninth century, that Pope Stephen VI was angry at his predecessor, Formosus, the previous pope. And Stephen VI actually ordered that the dead body of the previous pope be exhumed from his grave and the decaying corpse be brought in and seated in a place of judgment so that the new pope could judge the old pope for the wrongs he committed.

It seemed like something out of a horror movie, not something that ought to be done in the name of the holy God. But he did this. They even had someone supply the voice of the dead pope, reading quotes that that person had answering the living pope, after which the first pope, who was dead, was declared to be a heretic, and they mutilated his body and threw it into the river.

At this particular point, every person in Christendom and around the world should understand that this is not the vicar of Christ. This is not the holy father, for Jesus said, call no one on earth father, let alone to take the term of holiness as a title.

But all people should have known that this is an imposter. It didn't get better, it got worse. The 10th century has been called the pornocracy because of the sexual debauchery of the papacy at that time.

And worse still, in the year 1545, at the Council of Trent, the official pope and all of the bishops and deacons actually anathematized the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. You say, what is anathema?

It is to curse and to send to hell anybody who says that the only way of salvation is through faith in Christ alone. Salvation by grace through faith. They thus proclaimed the Reformation to be anathema.

Martin Luther and John Calvin and all of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation were deemed to be heretics and they actually denied the gospel itself. Last week, an ordinary Argentinian man who puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us, but now he lives in a nation state called the Vatican, a monstrous edifice that was built to the exaltation of a man.

They call him Pope, his name is Francis. He fancies himself to speak for God and on 60 minutes, he said this. We are all fundamentally good. Yes, there are some rogues and sinners, but the heart itself is good.

He went on to say, we must meet one another doing good. But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist, but do good. We will meet one another there. The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us with the blood of Christ, all of us, not just Catholics, everyone.

Having proclaimed this heretical teaching, which is a universalistic idea, that one need not have faith in Christ in order to be saved, Muslims can come through their Islamic method and Buddhists through theirs, and that all people will be redeemed through the blood of Christ because ultimately people are good, according to this man.

He then turned his attention to the idolatry of calling on a dead person. He invoked Saint Rita of Cascia, saying, let us ask of her this grace, this grace that all, all, all people would do good and that we would encounter one another in this work.

Church, Francis preached not the gospel of God, but the anti-gospel of man, the anti-good news of man, to proclaim to people that all are good and to open the door of heaven, a false door that gets you nowhere, but ultimately to hell, is to lead people astray, invoking Saint Rita of Cascia is to violate Deuteronomy 18, 11, where necromancy is forbidden, inquiring of the dead and calling upon the dead in prayer is forbidden, and to preach a way of salvation other than Christ alone is itself anathema, according to Galatians 1, 6 -9.

For if anyone, whether he claims the title of Holy Father and Vicar of Christ and Priest and Altar Christos, which in their ordination vows of priestliness, they claim themselves to be another Christ, even if someone takes a title like this to themselves and yet preaches another gospel other than the one delivered by God in his holy word, let him be anathema, let him be cursed, according to the Apostle Paul, Galatians 1, 6 -9.

The Gospel of God in Romans 1:1-17

Open in your Bibles, please, to the book of Romans, and Paul will not make it through the first verse before he proclaims the gospel, not of man, but of God, the gospel of God. As we study the first 17 verses of Romans today, there are three essential takeaways.

Every Christian in here needs to hear this. Every unbeliever needs to hear this for the sake of your eternal soul, that believing in Christ alone, you can be saved. But every Christian needs to understand these three things.

Number one, the content of the gospel. Because if you, like a so-called pope, go out and preach another Jesus and another way of salvation, even if you have a lot of the material right, but you err in one crucial point, you are preaching a false gospel.

And I don't know about you, but I don't ever want to be found guilty of doing that. So you need to know the gospel and to know it right, to get it right. It is absolutely essential that every Christian handle the gospel and be able to get it right.

That's the content. The second thing is to identify yourself as a messenger. Unless you realize that God has not appointed a man in Rome, which a billion people listen to on this planet, but God has appointed you as an ambassador of Christ, a sent one, to preach the gospel to your family and friends.

You won't go unless you know who you were called to be, a messenger. And then third, the power of the gospel. I think it's sad that in our day and age, Christians are discouraged. Maybe not in this room, because there's a room full of courageous, lion-like believers.

Thank you, Ivan, for reading that poem, for what you shared, because it reminds us of who we are in Christ, that we don't have any power in ourselves, but the power of the gospel is mighty for the tearing down of strongholds.

What you have is far greater than what the world has. Greater is he that is in us than he who is in the world. We have the gospel of God. We will not lose this culture war. We will not lose in the end, because Christ is with his people.

The power is in the gospel. Let's begin reading in chapter one, verse one. We'll take six verses, and then from verses seven to 15 will be about us as messengers, and lastly, 16 and 17 is about the power of the gospel.

Paul the Servant and the Gospel of God

First, the content of the gospel. See if you can learn from this passage, what is the essential content of the gospel? Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, and isn't it noteworthy there he doesn't call himself a vicar?

Or a priest even, let alone a father or a holy father. He calls himself a servant. That word in the Greek, doulos, actually means slave, and what he's communicating here is it's not about him. His willfulness, his greatness as a man, as a leader, is completely relegated to irrelevancy, and he is exalting the master and himself as nothing but a slave.

He is surrendered to the will of God. That's what's at issue here. He's a servant of Christ Jesus. He's called to be an apostle. He's given the authority to speak for God because like the 12, Matthias replaced Judas because Judas was a traitor.

Paul was abnormally born as one who saw the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. The light was so blinding, he was blind for three days, but he encountered directly the living Christ, and now he is appointed an apostle to speak for God, but here's the key of verse one that sets the context of the entire book, and that is the last phrase in verse one.

Set apart for the gospel of God. You'll see that word gospel repeated in verse nine, in verse 15, and then in verse 16, so the theme of my message is the gospel. The word is euangelion, euangelion in the Greek.

You hear that word angel in the middle of it, angelos, euangelion, an angel is a messenger. The eu, the E-U at the beginning, that prefix, means good, a good message. The gospel means good news. The gospel is of God.

That means that it comes from him, not from man. God is the source of this gospel. It's his news to the world, and we are stewards of that. Now, as we read verses two to six, we will see five elements of the gospel, and by elements, I mean the content, the ingredients.

If you go to share the gospel with your friend and you leave one of these out, you've preached an incomplete gospel at best. Every one of these things is essential to the good news that God gives us. Verses two to six, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the son of God, in power according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead.

Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you, who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

The first element of the gospel is the person of Christ. In verse four, he is called Jesus Christ, our Lord, and that name is above every name. He is the gospel. To preach the gospel is to proclaim to the world that Jesus Christ is Lord.

In the Roman Empire, people would have to swear their allegiance to Rome by pinching incense and putting it on the altar and saying in that moment, Caesar is Lord, Kaiser Kurios. But Christians refuse to pinch the incense and drop it on the altar and say Caesar is Lord because we proclaim the true Lord, the one and only Lord of glory, Jesus Christ.

And the Romans would have accepted Christians and even Jesus himself as a deity to sit alongside Apollo and the other gods of the Roman pantheon. Why not add another one to the mix? But what infuriated them was the refusal of Christians to say Caesar is Lord.

They wanted the obedience of the populace and Christians just couldn't do that because we have one proclamation, Jesus is Lord. The first element of the gospel is the person of Christ. Now notice that in these verses, Paul expounds, he doesn't just say a name without giving meat to that meal, he describes who this person is.

Fully human, fully God. In verse three, concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh, the full humanity of Christ. Some Gnostics in early centuries thought that a spirit of God came over a mere mortal man.

Docetism, Gnosticism denied the true humanity of Christ. But Paul refutes that here, pointing out that he was descended from David, a man, a human. Later on, actually way later on, in the year 1854, the Pope at the time named Pius would proclaim the immaculate conception of Mary.

And in that encyclical, speaking with the authority of God so he said, he claimed that Mary was conceived without sin. In that same encyclical, speaking ex cathedra from his seat, he declared that she was a co-mediatrix with Jesus and conciliator between God and man.

By proclaiming an immaculate conception, the Pope was saying that Mary was conceived without sin. But this is blasphemy against the Son of God because the very point of verse three is that Jesus alone descended from David is uniquely the Son of God, verse four, declared so in power as the Son of God according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

Listen to me, church. Christ descended physically from David. Mary was a descendant of David in the ordinary way. In fact, that word descendant, if you see, who was descended from David is spermatos in the Greek.

Sperma is the root there. It means seed, a physical fleshly human descendant from David and so Mary is fully human and for Jesus to be born of Mary means he has 100 real humanity from that line. But sin is inherited seminally, passed down from Adam as Paul will teach in Romans five and so that means Mary had inherited sin.

She was not immaculately conceived. To give this kind of glory to a sinner is to devalue the uniqueness of who Jesus Christ is and this is the point here in verses three and four. He is human flesh born of Mary, but look at verse four, he is more than that.

He's not a human in the same way that we are. He is born of a virgin, not sinful, different. How so? Because he is the son of God and notice in verse four that each member of the trinity is present in that verse alone.

The son, the son of who? Theos, God, the father. And declared to be this unique one by the spirit, capital S of holiness. Three members of the trinity because Jesus always was with the father in glory and with the spirit, it's that he was born of a woman in order to take on flesh.

If you preach that Jesus was created by the father like the Jehovah's Witnesses preach, you have another Jesus that cannot save you. If you preach as the Mormons do that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, procreated from Elohim and a spirit mother who themselves had spiritual parents and infinite regression of God's, you have a different Jesus that cannot save you.

You must have this Jesus to be saved. The Jesus that the word of God proclaims. This is the gospel of God, not the gospel of man. And there will be many man-made religions, proclamations like in 1854 by a man who calls himself Holy Father that deter people from the true and only son of God, Jesus Christ.

The first thing you must know and master in your mind in terms of the content of the gospel is the person of Christ. You must preach the true, genuine Christ. The second is the work of Christ. Without his work, you have no gospel.

Verse four says, he was declared who he is by his resurrection from the dead. You need a Christ who died. And in Romans 3, 21 to 25, we will understand the meaning of that death. It is to make propitiation for sin that the father will dole out the punishment that we deserve in the body of the son.

He will die the death that we deserve. Propitiation means to turn away wrath. The death of Jesus was for our sins, that he died for our sins, but you can't leave him dead. If you wanna preach a pure gospel, you need to go on to tell your friend, your loved one, your neighbor, that he is alive.

The resurrection from the dead. In verse four, the gospel includes the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That he rose from the dead bodily, not just spiritually, but he bodily rose from the dead on the third day.

The third point of the gospel is according to the scriptures. I began my sermon this morning by discussing the opinions of man. And oh, 60 Minutes loved what this man, Francis, had to say. Everyone is good, and everybody will essentially make it.

Because that's the philosophy of the world. But let God be true and every man a liar. The authority is not in man. In verse one, when it says the gospel of God, the second verse actually underscores the authority from which we speak.

It says God promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the writings, the graphe. It's not even Paul and the apostles who were inspired, it's what they wrote. The scriptures that were given by God.

And specifically here, Paul is referring to the Old Testament. Do you notice that? What was promised beforehand through the prophets. When we go out preaching Christ, we proclaim him crucified, buried, and risen, and we tell people, you ought to believe this, you must believe this, because God foretold it before he did it.

And if I were to ask you, well, where did he say, Messiah must suffer and die and rise from the dead? Where would you go in your Old Testament to tell somebody the truth of this point? To ground your argument in objective fact that comes from God, and not just your mere opinion.

They have enough of people's opinions. When you go out preaching, you do not bring your religious opinion. You bring the authority of God's holy scripture. And so you must know where the Old Testament speaks to the realities that unfold in Christ.

I'll give you my top 10 quickly. You might have to listen later and take notes from online, because I'm going to have to move really fast. But my top 10 are Isaiah 53. He was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brings us peace is laid upon him. By his stripes, we are healed. The substitutionary atonement of Christ in Isaiah 53. Number two, Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Christ speaking through the father David, the son of David, proclaims in Psalm 22, they have pierced me through my hands and my feet. My bones are out of joint. My tongue sticks to the root of my mouth.

I'm surrounded by wild dogs. Psalm 22 talks about the very crucifixion of Christ. Number three, Leviticus 17 .11. Life is in the blood, and God has given the blood to make atonement on the altar. It is the blood of Christ that saves, because his life is in the blood, and God makes atonement by the shedding of the blood of the innocent lamb, as Leviticus 17 .11 foretold, and Hebrews 9 expounds upon.

Number four, Psalm 110. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The deity of Christ with the father, in verse four of that chapter, we learn that he is a priest that makes atonement, and it's according to the order of Melchizedek.

Melchizedek of Genesis 14, who brings out bread and wine, the body and the blood, whose name means king of righteousness, who is a priest of the most high God, Psalm 110. Number five, I have Genesis 22.

Abraham, in type, in shadow, brings his son, Isaac, to be the sin offering, but he's not the sin offering because Isaac himself is a sinner, and so a ram caught in the thicket is substituted in that place, still pointing forward to the son, who is the sin offering.

Isaac would carry the wood of his own sacrifice up the hill, on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided, but this only typifies, it's only a foreshadowing of Jesus with the cross on his back, going up the mountain to provide salvation, the lamb of God, provided for sinners like us, Genesis 22.

My number six is Psalm 16, Psalm 16, you should know it. Peter preaches it in Acts 2, that David and his son, because David is speaking prophetically of the son of David, will not suffer decay, although buried, dead and buried, he will rise from the dead.

Psalm 16 is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You should know that. Exodus 12 is number seven, the Passover lamb, and the blood of the lamb was marked on the doorpost and on the lintel, and the angel of death passed over, and in this we see the meaning of the cross, that God will pass over our sins, not counting men's sins against us, on account of the blood, not the righteousness or the goodness of the people inside, but that we are under the blood, protected by the blood, the Passover lamb speaks to Christ, and that is revealed in Exodus 12.

Number seven is Numbers 21. When Jesus preaches the gospel in John chapter three, you know the famous verse, John 3, 16, for God so loved the world, just the previous verse, he likens this to Moses in the wilderness, lifting up a bronze serpent, the serpent represents sin, to be cursed, and anyone who looks to that serpent lifted up on a pole will be healed, and that looking is faith, it's to trust, and Jesus became sin for us, that in him we would be the righteousness of God.

The serpent on the pole, in Numbers 21, pictures Christ lifted up on a cross, treated as the cursed one, bearing the sin of the world. Number nine is Zechariah 12, 10. Zechariah 12, 10, the Jewish people will look upon the one they pierced, and mourn for him.

That the Messiah of the Jews would have to be pierced, and only in time would they come to look upon the one they pierced, and mourn for him, Zechariah 12, 10. And lastly, Deuteronomy 21, 23. As I just mentioned, cursed is anyone who is hung upon a tree.

That Jesus would take our curse to the tree, to be hung upon a tree, to take the sin of those who believe in him onto his body on the tree, Deuteronomy 21, 23. So, so far, we have three crucial elements.

The person of Christ, the work of Christ, and the scriptures as the ground for your preaching. The fourth element is forgiveness of sin, and eternal life, given not ubiquitously and indiscriminately, but given to those who belong to Christ.

Look at verse six. It includes you who are called. And that term call will become important at the end of Romans eight, and into chapter nine. But here, it is those called to belong to Jesus Christ. Salvation is to belong to him.

And to belong to him is to be treated like innocent ones. His righteousness given, you are forgiven of your sin, and you're given eternal life because you belong to him. But lastly, the fifth point of the gospel, and many never make it this far, often because people don't wanna listen this long, right?