The Gospel and Why It Is Important (Part 1)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you."

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm going up in volume, down in volume, tweaking the volume, but I'm not even touching the volume button.

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I have my new phone in front of me, and it's interesting. I like reggae music, and you can write me about that,

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Mike Ichabod Abendroth. And I was listening to Peter Tosh's son, Andrew, and he talks about he's an awful man, and he loves awful people.

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And I thought, you know what? That's pretty biblical, that we are sinful people, but we love other sinners.

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And so, I wish it was hooked in through the cord, but it just hooked in through my iPhone, so that's the only way

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I can do it. But I thought that is so true. Uh -oh, uh -oh, we messed up.

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I'm an honest man. There goes my depravity section. That is too bad.

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That is too bad. It started off so well. I used to like to watch the show Cops, because, you know, it reminded me of the depravity of man.

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Well, I've learned some lessons in my life, too. That was Andrew Tosh, Peter's son.

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So anyway. All right, well, today on No Compromise Radio, we're just playing around. We're having some fun.

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We're having some fun today. It's very—there's a lot of wind outside, a lot of wind.

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And today we're going to talk about what is the gospel, and why does it matter?

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It's just going to be the introduction. 24 minutes is not going to be enough to plumb the depths of what is the gospel, and why does it matter.

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But I think it's important for us to deal with this issue. What is the gospel, and why does it matter?

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You know, D .A. Carson is right. He teaches seminary classes at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, TEDS, outside of Chicago, Illinois.

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And he said, you know, his students don't remember everything that he teaches them. And he said, but they do remember what

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I teach them with regularity and with enthusiasm. So what

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I teach people on a regular basis, what

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I'm always harping about, and what I teach with passion, the students remember that. And so, same thing with the gospel.

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That's why the Christian church needs to keep teaching the gospel, because once we assume the gospel is true and we don't teach it with enthusiasm, then the next generation loses it.

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So there's a gospel -centered preaching movement that's out there, and I think for the most part it is excellent, and it's an excellent recovery where we can regularly teach about Jesus Christ.

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Now let's talk about at the beginning of the show what the gospel is not. Let me tell you some things that the gospel is not, and then we'll talk about what the gospel is and why does it matter.

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By the way, if you're a Sunday school teacher, this show's good for you. If you are a Bible study leader, this is an important show for you.

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If you teach your children the Bible, it's important. If you want to be a good student of the Bible, it's important.

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If you're a dad and you're teaching the kids, if you're an evangelist and you like to talk to other people about Christ Jesus so that God saves them through the preaching, if you're a pastor, whoever you are, this is an important message for you.

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Don't say, well, you know, I already got the gospel down and therefore I don't need to know any of this today. So let's start off with a little spice, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

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Here's the provoking. The gospel is not, repent of your sins.

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Where's Andrew Tosh when they need him? The gospel is not. As a matter of fact, I think I can actually pull him up.

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How do I do this? Okay, there he is. Now that part's biblical.

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Be careful of my friends. That's Bob Marley's son singing with Peter Tosh's son.

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How about that? On No Compromise Radio. Boy, I'm going to get the phone calls and letters, aren't I? If I thought the

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Ichabod Nicolaitan one was bad. The gospel is not repent. The gospel is not believe.

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The gospel is not follow. Why? Well, we're going to learn in a minute. Those are responses to the gospel.

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The gospel is good news, and the good news isn't repent. Of course, in light of the good news, because of the good news, the response to the good news is repent.

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The response, and when you're preaching, you certainly can preach to unbelievers, repent, believers for that matter as well.

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But the gospel, the good news, is not you need to do something. It's not the golden rule.

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It's not be good. It's not be nice. It's not love your neighbor.

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It's not be careful of mankind, Mr. Marley. It's not love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is not what 82 % of Americans believe

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Benjamin Franklin's saying is, God helps those who help themselves. That is not the gospel.

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The gospel is not the four spiritual laws. The gospel isn't the law.

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The law, gospel, never mix those two. Never mix those two. That's like beets and carrots in my juicer.

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Never mix those two together. You don't want to do that. The gospel is not the four spiritual laws.

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The gospel isn't in a bumper sticker. One heaven, get Jesus. Jesus rules.

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Do you live by them? Need some good advice? It's in the Bible. Accept Jesus into your heart.

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No. No. By the way, why would Jesus want to go into our messed up lives? But that's another story we can talk about.

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The gospel is not some advice so you could have a better marriage.

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Come to Jesus so you can have your marriage all fixed up. The gospel is not what the joyful, joyful hymn is, horrible hymn, all who live in love are thine.

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That isn't the gospel. So what is the gospel? We're talking about why the gospel is important.

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But first of all, what is the gospel? The gospel means good news. The gospel means good news.

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And here's the good news metaphor that's used in the Greek language. There's a big military battle and the military won the battle.

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The general of a certain army had a victory. Victory was won.

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Victory accomplished. And a runner, a courier, runs back to tell the town.

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The town is about ready to be invaded by the other hordes, but the general, the good general, sends his men out and they heroically, sacrificially defend the town.

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They win the battle, Manassas, Little Bighorn, whatever the battle is, and there is victory.

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And so the courier comes back and says what? He says, well, I think I better live the gospel.

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And he mimes out what happens. No, I better do the gospel. No, you don't do the gospel. You don't live the gospel.

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The good news is victory. The good news is we won.

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The good news is our general defeated the marauding hordes.

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We won. Now, of course, the response to that victory, so that you are not killed if you're a man, so you're not raped if you're a woman, so if you're not taken into slavery as a kid, the response is thankfulness, praise, belief.

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There's all kinds of things that the response is, but the good news itself is good news.

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It is a declaration. It is news. That's exactly what it is.

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It is news. It is a joyful announcement, like in Luke 2 .10.

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And when it comes to the good news of Christ Jesus, the gospel, we have good news that Jesus is truly the

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Son of Man. He's man so He can be our substitute. He can represent us.

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Jesus is truly the Son of God. He's fully God, all the attributes of God, the eternal second person of the

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Trinity, and that this God -man died on our behalf, a substitutionary death, that He was buried.

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His death was confirmed. And then He was raised from the dead, and He ascended into heaven, and He sits on the right hand of the

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Father, and He is the King of the universe. And so the response to that good news is, bow your knee, repent, believe, follow.

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That is the response to the good news, but the good news is not, do something.

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That's not the good news. There's nothing good about that. The good news is Jesus' victory at Calvary.

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It's accomplished. It's accomplished. It happened. There's victory. And so be careful when you say, you know what,

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I'm going to live out the gospel. I'm going to do the gospel. That's a category error, to quote

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Michael Horton. You don't live out good news. You don't see newspaper writers,

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I don't know if some of you are so young you don't know what a newspaper is, but you don't see the Drudge Report acting out the news, acting out 9 % unemployment, acting out, you know,

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Euro crisis in Greece. That's news, and news needs to be what?

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Reported. That's what it needs to be. And so here we have the gospel, good news, and we are to preach the gospel.

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We are to proclaim it. By definition, good news has to be proclaimed. It has to be trumpeted.

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It has to be heralded like the town crier, hear ye, hear ye, and say, do something for the good news.

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The good news is news that's good. Here's the good news. President Reagan reelected.

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I don't know what you want for good news, but something like that. Maybe for you it's President Obama not reelected.

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Whatever news you think is good, that is the news. And this is hot off the press.

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The general won. Jesus, our captain, won. And that kind of news demands a response, and that response is, for the gospel's good news for the unbeliever, repent and believe.

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The good news for the resurrected Jesus for the Christian is, keep on repenting, keep on believing, and keep on living your life with the gospel in your sights and remembering who you are in Christ Jesus.

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And so 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is a great passage that teaches us what the gospel is and why it's important.

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There was a liberal theologian in 1919 who wrote a letter, and what he said was true, and kind of a neat thing that he said, too, even though this guy was a neo -Orthodox.

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So I won't tell you who he was, but I'll just tell you the quote. You know, if you're on the radio, you should never yawn, but what are you going to do?

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I think I need more Bob Marley or something. Why can't I get Bob Marley when I really want him? That's my problem.

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That's my problem, because you know what? When I want him on cue, I don't have him on cue. Money can make friendship end.

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The guy doesn't have a good voice at all, does he? But hey, you're Bob Marley's kid. Now for those of you who are thinking, you know what,

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Abendroth is off his rocker. I'm just going to play the beginning of this song, and you tell me, hey, this is the first song of the album.

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See, that's got some good theology there, don't you think? Well, while I've got my phone here,

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I might as well check my email. There's only one email coming in, so we're set. It's about juicers or something.

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So the gospel in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, there's a guy who, I'll tell you who it is, it's

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Karl Barth. Yesterday and today, I sat over 1 Corinthians 15, but I came to a dead stop in the earliest stages as I started to work through it thoroughly.

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The chapter is the key to the entire letter with its profound disclosures on this and that, which have their source in ultimate wisdom.

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Now here's what Karl Barth said about 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and certainly even a broken clock can be right twice a day.

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And so people who aren't where we are theologically still can tell truthful things.

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And I like what he said here about 1 Corinthians 15. Some of them have struck us recently like shocks from an electric eel.

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Wow. I wonder if we have a Peter Tosh song about that. So there's something so exciting about 1

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Corinthians chapter 15 that it's like a shock from an electric eel. Well, I hope it wasn't too big a shock because I've seen those things kill alligators on YouTube before.

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Type that in. You're going to be in for a shock. Paul is dealing with disorderly worship in 1

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Corinthians chapter 12 and 13 and 14, and he's trying to correct them.

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By the way, I always find it interesting that charismatics want to go to the place where Paul is correcting things. And he is now coming to a different subject, and he's going to talk about the resurrection.

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1 Corinthians chapter 15 is about the resurrection. Some of them were saying in chapter 15 verse 12 that there was no resurrection.

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And Paul is going to try to disavow them of such thinking. They say there's no resurrection.

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Paul says, yes, there is a resurrection. For Paul, that's big because remember with Paul, he would go places and preach so much people thought he was preaching about two gods.

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Jesus is a masculine word, and Anastasia is a feminine word. You can even call a lady

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Anastasia. She could be named that, especially on a Bob Marley album. Anastasia is female.

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So Paul talks so much about Jesus and the resurrection that they thought this was two gods he was preaching,

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Jesus and the resurrection, talking about them so much. And here, these

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Greek -influenced Corinthians, after all, it's in Greece, it's not too far, you know, an hour's walk from Athens.

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I didn't walk there, I drove, but I guess maybe two hours or something to walk. And so here they're influenced by Greek thinking and Plato and immortality of the soul, but the body's bad and the body holds your soul prisoner.

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And once you get, you know, once you die, then your soul is released from the bad body.

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Neoplatonic dualism, body bad, soul good. And so now all of a sudden we're going to have resurrected bodies.

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And these Corinthians didn't really know what to think. And so Paul is going to say to them in this chapter, you're going to be resurrected.

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And he then uses Jesus' resurrection as a point to prove that very thing.

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And he says, now I remind you, brothers, 1 Corinthians 15 .1, of the gospel I preached to you.

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I didn't live the gospel, I preached it. Because it's news. You don't live out news, you preach it.

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Which you received in which I stand. I received it. This is language where I got it from someone technically.

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It's an established truth that's passed on through me. It was heralded by me.

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I received it from someone else. And by which, by which the gospel, verse two, you are being saved if you hold fast to the word

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I preached to you unless you believed in vain. Because real believers hold fast to the gospel.

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And with this formal handing down language, Paul says this is of first importance.

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You know, everything in the Bible is important. But some things are even more important.

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Because 1 Corinthians 15 .3 says, for I delivered to you as of first importance what

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I also received. So is everything in the Bible important? Absolutely. Even genealogies?

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Yes. Even lamentations? Yes. But some things are more important than others.

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And so we have a hierarchical understanding of important truths. Some truths are more important than others, although all truths are

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God -breathed and profitable and are important. But this is of first importance.

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Paul says, I've got what's of first importance. He didn't want to say, he's not saying this is the first thing that's important, a chronology.

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He's saying this is preeminently important. Lots of things in the Bible are important.

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They all are important, obviously. But some things are more important than others. And so now we come to the great passage in 1

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Corinthians chapter 15, what is the gospel? Let me give you a few things. Number one, the gospel is about God.

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The gospel is about God. In this next section, Christ died for our sins.

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He was buried. He was raised. He appeared. Those words have

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Christ as the subject of those verbs. Except for a little clause in chapter 15, verse 6, regarding the 500 witnesses.

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You have Christ the subject of the verbs, and Paul is wanting you to reflect upon the message about Christ Jesus and what he has done for us.

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It's not a message about us, it's a message about what he has done, and then of course, for us.

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God is the Savior. And there's a lot of talk these days about what Jesus has done in our lives, which

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I'm thankful for what Jesus did in my life. But the gospel talk here is not what

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Jesus did in my life. Let's talk about what Jesus did even if you weren't even born. God the

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Son died. God the Son was buried. God the Son was raised. God the

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Son appeared. We have a shift in evangelicalism from the redemptive event, this theological event, and that shift is to how we appropriate the riches of Christ Jesus' atonement.

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That is to say, the gospel is all about what Jesus did. So when we have a testimony here at Bethlehem Bible Church before people get baptized,

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I try to turn all their talk about how they did this and they accepted

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Jesus and they believed. And of course, that's true. God doesn't believe for you. I'm not a hyper -Calvinist.

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But let's use language that gives God all the glory, that gives God the spotlight.

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God saved. God drew. God put somebody in my life to preach the gospel, etc.

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Sinclair Ferguson said, True faith takes its character and quality from its object and not from itself.

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Faith gets a man out of himself and into Christ. Its strength therefore depends on the character of Christ. Even those of us who have weak faith still have the strong Christ as other people.

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And so Sinclair Ferguson's point is, let's be Christ -centered.

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The gospel is all about God. That's why it's of first importance.

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That's why it has to do, not with time, this is the first thing on my list of seven.

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This is at the top of the list of priorities. Listen to B .B. Warfield, There is nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are acceptable to God.

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We must always be accepted for Christ's sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe, it's just as true after we have believed.

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It will continue to be trust as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing, nor does the nature of our relation to him or to God through him even alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be.

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It is always on his blood and righteousness alone that we rest. So the gospel is about God.

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Number two, the gospel is historical. It is an objective reality. Jesus, the historical person, died at Jerusalem, in Jerusalem.

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Listen to what the text says, that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, he was raised. Michael Horton said, no other religion makes its validity wholly dependent on a historical fact.

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He appeared, there's more of a historicity, he appeared. And if Jesus wasn't a real person, or Jesus didn't really die, or Jesus wasn't really raised from the dead,

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Christianity crumbles. If Buddha wasn't really real, you could still be a Buddhist. If Muhammad wasn't really real, you could still be

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Islamic. But Jesus had to be a historical person.

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Our Christianity is done. Christianity is over. It's kaput. So today on No Compromise Radio.

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We've talked about the gospel. And so why don't you go give the good news to people.

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And the good news isn't repent and believe. The good news is, Jesus Christ, the eternal

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God, laid down his prerogative to exercise all of his attributes of God, and he cloaked himself in humanity.

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He was born in a manger. And his mother, Mary, conceived him by the

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Holy Spirit. And Jesus, virgin conception, was born, and therefore he had no taint of any sin.

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No taint of Mary's sin. And he was completely stainless, spotless.

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Jesus never sinned, not even one time. If Jesus would have sinned one time, he would have had to die for his own sin.

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But he died for the sins of others. And here this great King, he healed people, he did miracles, and he taught the way of salvation.

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But the pinnacle of his life was him dying on behalf of sinners like you.

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And if you will look to this risen Savior with faith, that is the right response to the gospel.

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Victory happened. Now you respond with repentance and belief. And you can write us at info at NoCompromiseRadio .com

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if you ever want to know more about salvation or if we can help you understand how to be right in the sight of God.