The Gospel

Okay, let's pray. Father, help us now to quiet our hearts, or to approach you with reverence, and to approach your word with wonder, and with curiosity, and with a hunger for truth, and help us to study a familiar text, a familiar concept like the gospel.

Help us to study this, without any contempt, without just an air of knowing it already, because we're familiar with it.

But Lord, help us to, help me to speak the gospel, to teach on the gospel in a way that that has some freshness, and life.

And Lord, I pray that you'd open our ears and our hearts to understand and meditate upon these things.

And we pray that we would be edified, and that you would be glorified. We pray all this in Jesus name.

Amen. Amen. So tonight, I've already mentioned, we're going to talk about the gospel.

We've looked at, just to rehash what we've looked at so far, we've looked at the gospel, or sorry, the doctrine of the scriptures, the doctrine of Trinity, the doctrine of Jesus Christ, Christology, pneumatology, that's the

Holy Spirit. We heard for two weeks on what I call the bad news, the bad news of sin, and the fallen and flawed nature of humanity.

And now we're going to look at the good news. And I was thinking as I was preparing, if you look out, like I'm almost making it a discipline of mine.

I'm not doing great every day, but just to avoid the news, because it's just always bad news.

And there's just so many emotional appeals that trigger me at least.

And so tonight, we're going to just duck and cover from the bad news of the world, and take some time to consider the good news, the gospel.

And that's what the word gospel means. Does anyone know where that expression gospel comes from?

Yeah, that's right. Evangelion, that's the Greek word, which means good tidings.

And it was translated into Old English as God spell, God, short for good and spell for news.

And so when we say that we're studying the gospel, we're studying the good news, the

God spell, the Evangelion, the glad tidings.

And as we approach it, as I prayed, I hope that we don't approach it with a sense of contempt.

Even I, as I was preparing this, I was thinking, are we going to, do we really need to study this again?

I figured that the people in this room would be the people in this room, and we can all go out, you know.

Would we be better served to go across the street and spread the gospel instead of hearing about the gospel again?

And that's a good cause, but I don't think that we would do well to skip the gospel, to not rehearse and to rehash what it is that the good news is to believers.

And I've heard, it was someone from the Nine Marks ministry that said that a gospel that has been assumed is a gospel fail.

And so we aren't going to assume the gospel tonight. We're going to look at the gospel of God, the gospel of God's grace, the power of salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first, and also the Greek. And so it's important, I really do believe, for us to teach on the gospel, to preach the gospel, to rehearse the gospel.

If you've ever read, it's a book by Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace.

He talks about preaching the gospel to yourself, and I believe that we as believers need to hear the gospel every single day, every single night.

And so I hope the Lord blesses you hearing it from my mouth tonight. Yeah, and it's going to be just a really simple going through of what the gospel is.

And this is really the heart of biblical Christianity, to quote from Charles Spurgeon.

He was called the Prince of Preachers, right? And everyone who, it seems everyone who's part of conservative,

Bible -believing, evangelical Christianity looks at Charles Spurgeon, and whether it was just his productivity or the depth of his insights at times, you know, we just look at him and go, wow, you know, he was a great preacher.

And what did Charles Spurgeon said? He said he really only ever had one sermon, and that was the gospel.

The Apostle Paul, when he went to Corinth, he wrote to the Corinthian Church in 1

Corinthians 2. He said, I preach to you. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Martin Luther, he quoted this. I love Martin Luther quotes. This one isn't very feisty, so it's a safe one, but every time

I quote Martin Luther at Bethel, I always have to put a caveat. Yeah, a little asterisk there.

But he said this, the gospel cannot be beaten into our ears enough or too much.

And why is that? He says, yes, though we learn it and understand it well, yet there is no one who takes hold of it perfectly.

That's why we need the gospel, because we forget it. We get it wrong. We drift towards a performance -based mindset.

He says, no one takes hold of it perfectly or believes it with all his heart. So frail a thing is our flesh.

And so we're going to preach the gospel tonight because it is good and because our flesh is frail.

So I don't know if you guys have your booklets. If not, what I'll do is I'll read through our statement here. I'm looking after the whole statement on the gospel.

It's a long one, and I'm really going to focus primarily on the first sentence, and then we'll piecemeal the ending a bit.

So the gospel is the good news of what God has accomplished for sinners.

So what God has accomplished for sinners through the life, death, and resurrection of his son,

Jesus Christ. As a result of this good news, sinful man can now be justified before God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

The gospel is the foundation for the life of the church and our only hope for eternal life.

The gospel is not only the means by which people are saved, but also the means by which people are sanctified.

The truth of the gospel enables us to genuinely and joyfully do that which is pleasing to God, and to grow in progressive conformity to the image of Christ.

Whoever rejects the gospel remains condemned. Whoever changes the gospel will be cursed, but whoever believes the gospel will be saved.

So the way I've done it, I've unpacked this into about four different sections. Like I said, we're going to focus 80 % of our time on that first sentence, and then that'll leave time for conversation later as well, how this applies a bit.

But it says here, the first sentence, the gospel is the good news, the euangelion, of what

God has accomplished for sinners through the life, death, and resurrection of his son,

Jesus Christ. And so for this section, we're going to lean really heavily on 1 Corinthians 15, because that is essentially what we've done in this statement is cherry -picked from 1

Corinthians 15, because it is such a good, clear, concise explanation of the gospel.

And so the context here, the Apostle Paul is writing to the Corinthian Church. He's confronting heresies about the resurrection that have infected the church, and so he's addressing primarily the resurrection, but he's going to give us a summary of the gospel that he preached, a summary of the substance of that message.

So 1 Corinthians 15, verse 1, he says, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel

I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word

I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. So here he's going to give them the gospel, the gospel that is to be received and believed, the gospel that saves souls.

And he gives us a really simple, concise, accurate description. Verse 3, he says, for I delivered to you as of first importance what

I also received. So here it is, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

First thing that I want us to see here from our statement, and from this passage, is that the gospel is a message of divine accomplishment rather than human achievement.

So when we look here right off the bat, what is this that he delivered? That Christ died.

The active party in the gospel is not humanity. The active party, the active individual in the gospel is the

Lord Jesus Christ, it is God the Son. And when you start to think about this idea of divine accomplishment versus human achievement, you appreciate that we as Christians really are strange animals, because there are only, essentially only two different kinds of religion in the world.

There is a religion of divine accomplishment, and a religion of human achievement, a works -based righteousness, and a divinely sourced righteousness.

And so unlike the Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Mormons, or the Muslims, or the Sikhs, or any other religious group on the face of the entire planet, we as Christians, we believe something altogether different, that God is supremely good, that if he does not accomplish something for us, we cannot do it ourselves.

There is no accomplishing to happen, and so we are reliant. Our only confession before God is his accomplishment, his achievement, his merit, his righteousness.

Everything about the gospel begins and ends with what God has done, and not with what we have done.

And so right away, our gospel sets us apart from everyone else on the stage.

And one of the things that when we call this message the good news, it really is the good news.

It's not like, it's not just any news, right? I mentioned news earlier. It's not like the news that we would read that there's going to be a new library built in our town, or even that there's going to be a perfectly safe, perfectly effective vaccine for a terrible illness, far worse than COVID -19.

It's this gospel, this good news, is on a completely different plane.

It's not just the good news, it is the best news. It is the best news in all of the cosmos, and it's because in the gospel,

God has accomplished for sinful man what we could never accomplish for ourselves.

He's saved us from ourselves. And so what does this all mean?

What I will use a little bit is a framework that I lean on when I share the gospel, and that is

God -man -Christ response. And so we'll look at that a little bit. So we'll look first at God.

And you guys know this well, but what I'll challenge you to do is to consider that we do not know

God's holiness exhaustively. There's more for us to know about the holiness of God.

So what I'm going to do, it's a difficult task to adequately express the holiness of God, the infinite holiness of God, to finite human beings.

So we'll look at some scripture verses together, and we'll just consider those a little bit.

So Exodus chapter 15 and verse 11. So this is the song of Moses, a song that was authored by Moses that was to be sung by the children of Israel.

And it reads like this, Exodus 15 verse 11, Who is like you,

O Lord, among the gods? That's a rhetorical question. No one.

There is no one like him, and there are no other gods. There is no one like him.

Who is like you, Moses asks, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders.

God is matchless. I'm not reading anywhere I'm speaking here. God is matchless in his power.

He is the creator. He is the sustainer of all things. Everything that we see, everything that we cannot see, has been made by God.

He spoke it into existence, and he holds all things together, God the Son, by the word of his power.

And everything that he's made is to declare his glory. We see that in the

Psalms. We see that in Romans 1, that he has made all of these things, that it would return to him in praise.

And we see that he's peerless. I remember way back in the day,

I had a set of handcuffs. And if you were to get us, and when you worked in law enforcement, if you were to get a set of handcuffs, you needed to get peerless.

Those were the handcuffs. And back in that day, I never really connected the dots until I became a

Christian, that peerless means without peer. That's rather obvious, but I didn't get it until I became a believer.

But God is peerless in his righteousness. He's the basic definition of holiness.

He is set apart. He is uniquely complete. He is uniquely morally perfect.

He's so awesome, and that word is so overused now. Our brother

Frank, he likes to point out that awesome means nothing now, because everything is awesome.

But God is so awesome that when man, sinful man, finite man, come into his presence, it becomes an awful experience, an awe -filled experience.

Isaiah 6, can you think of a better example than Isaiah 6 about this type of awe -filled experience before God?

Prophet Isaiah tells us about an encounter that he had with the holy God of the scriptures, the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In Isaiah 6, it says, verse 1, in the year that King Uzziah died,

I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Above him stood the seraphim, each had six wings, with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the

Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

We see this image of this God where the angels, they shield their feet, they shield their faces, and all they can say is, holy, holy, holy is he.

How does a man respond in that type of situation? Verse 5, and I said, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the

King, the Lord of hosts. I'm gonna bounce around to a couple other passages.

Habakkuk 113, it says, your eyes, this is speaking of God, your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and you cannot look on wickedness with favor.

In fact, if God were to show himself, when I've done street evangelism, and people say, if God is real, why doesn't he just show himself?

And my response is, because you wouldn't see him, you would just fall down dead. And we see that in Exodus 33 20, where it says,

God told Moses, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.

And this is the foundation of the gospel, and this is why so many people get the gospel wrong, is because they don't have an understanding of the holiness of God.

God is holy, he is not common, he is not like us.

Even your own vision, I would challenge you, your own vision of the holiness of God is insufficient.

It falls short of his glory. And many theologians and evangelists have rightly pointed out that one of our biggest problems, one of our biggest existential problems as human beings, is that God is good.

And the reason why that is one of our biggest existential problems is because we are not. While God is perfect, and his eyes are too pure to approve evil, to look upon wickedness with favor, that describes us.

So let's look at man. So we've heard over the past couple of weeks, I don't want to dwell on it too much, but we've heard about man.

And our statement of faith, I think, summarizes it quite nicely when the title of our statement on sin is sin slash humanity, because both of them are synonymous with each other.

Man is not good. In fact, that's an understatement, because we're not merely lacking goodness.

We are positively evil. Man in our original condition, all men, all women, even children, are flawed, fallen, wretched, totally depraved.

Ephesians 2 says that we are spiritually dead. And even though God created all things good, the heavens and the earth and the plants and the animals and humanity, and he says that they were good and that they were very good, man has not responded to God with love and obedience, not near the love and obedience that he deserves.

And it started with our first parents, and we heard about that, right? Genesis 1, 2, and 3, when

God created Adam and Eve, he placed them in the garden. Translated into English, the word

Eden means paradise. He gave them paradise in which to dwell, and it was there that they were to enjoy

God's fellowship in paradise with God, to tend to the garden, to live for his glory, to enjoy the blessings of his creation within the confines that he laid out for them, and what did they do?

Instead of enjoying the fellowship of God, instead of enjoying his blessings within the confines of what he had given them, they sided with Satan, and we know the story, right?

They took of the fruit of the knowledge, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They essentially rejected

God. They sought to be like God and to have knowledge of good and evil, and they rebelled.

They transgressed against God, and they rebelled against him. And as we've heard over the last few weeks, that sin introduced physical death, it introduced spiritual death, and this trespass, this one trespass, led to the condemnation of all men.

So Romans 5, 12 tells us that, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

So like a hereditary spiritual cancer, Adam passed down the original sin, the sin nature, to his children, and they passed it to their children, and to their children, and to their children, and eventually to us, and even to our children.

And as I was preparing it this week, I thought to myself that as we bring in, by God's grace, a new generation, we're just bringing in the latest generation of sinners, in a long line of sinners.

So all of humanity is conceived in sin and born with the blood guilt of Adam upon them, and not only his blood guilt, but almost immediately we accrue our own.

And as parents, you guys know, you've never had to teach Nafi to take a toy, or, you know,

Chloe, or Autumn, or at some point Augustine. I know that I never had to teach my kids to hit, or to be greedy, or any of those things.

Sin, because of the fall, comes naturally to humans, to mankind, because it is within our

DNA. The sin nature follows us. Romans chapter 3,

Paul lays out the first two and a half chapters, this case, and if maybe as a

Christian you read Romans 1, and you read Romans 2 for the very first time, you find yourself feeling almost vindictive towards these sinners that he's talking about.

And by the half, I guess halfway into chapter 3, you realize that what

Paul has done is he has demonstrated that all of humanity is under sin.

It says in Romans 3, 9, all, both Jews and Gentiles are under sin. When I read this to people, because it's sometimes a familiar passage,

I like to remind them that these are true statements about the human condition.

It's way worse than even the news gets it.

I once heard from a brother, he said, if you receive criticism, just give thanks to God that they don't know what you're really like.

You're much worse than the criticism you receive. But he says in verse 10, as it is written, none is righteous.

No, not one. So none of us, none of the people in this world, and maybe as looking around here, as brothers and sisters in this room that I know, trust, know the

Lord, and are right with Him, and are in Christ, let us think about this concerning other people, about our family, and our friends.

This is a big problem. None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands.

That was me, and that was you. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside.

Together they have become worthless. Prior to Christ giving me worth, taking my sin from me,

I was worthless. I was like a runaway slave, like Onesimus.

I was without worth. No one does good, not even one.

Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps, poisonous snakes, is under their lips.

Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Did we not see that in the news yesterday?

Feet that are swift to shed blood in their paths are ruined in misery and the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God, no fear of God before their eyes. This describes us.

I know you guys know this, but it describes us, and may it glorify the Lord, just how much

He has forgiven us. We have been forgiven much. Romans 3 .23, for all have sinned, and this is present tense, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We've all sinned against God, and this is no small matter, and I referenced in the news yesterday, if you guys were watching

CNN, or Fox, or Rebel News, or wherever you get your news, you'll see that these people stormed the

Capitol Building, right, and Nicole and I were watching the videos and just marveling. There was,

I don't know if you saw, the one guy with the bison horns standing in in the Speaker's chair in the

Capitol Building with his spear, and it's animalistic, right, and you haven't seen that news yet?

Oh, well, I talked about not dwelling too much on bad news, but it's an interesting photo, but some politicians said, this is treason.

This is a coup d 'etat. I think it was Joe Biden that said, this is an insurrection, right?

This is, in some countries, in Canada, even up, I think it was until 1976, treason was a penalty that was punishable by death, and until Pierre Trudeau, Trudeau Jr.

did away with that, and even Biden, someone who might be really soft on the judicial process and justice, was demanding justice.

There needed to be justice, and this offense, storming into the

Capitol Building, disrupting democracy, pales in comparison.

What these people called treason and insurrection pales in comparison to what we have done, our actions towards God.

We are guilty of cosmic treason. I tell people, you are guilty of the worst possible offense in all the world, as am

I, and they say, I've never murdered anyone. No, you're guilty of something far worse.

You have turned on the living God. You have rebelled against the living

God, and even when God the Son came, you, in humanity, murdered him.

We are all guilty of this cosmic treason, and there are real consequences for this.

Psalm 7, verse 11, he tells us that, God tells us that he is a righteous judge, and a

God who feels indignation every day. He does not wink at our sin.

Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death, physical death, spiritual death.

Ephesians 2 calls all those who are outside of Christ, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

And in Mark 9, 28, sometimes people say that the

Lord Jesus, they almost treat him as if he was soft towards sin. In teaching about those who died in their sins, he said that they are condemned to hell, and he says, and probably it is, this is the text that I go to when

I'm talking to a Jehovah's Witness that believes in annihilationism. Mark 9, 48, they're condemned to hell where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

And so what is the penalty for human sin? It is far worse than the death penalty.

It is condemnation. It is the just wrath of God, the just wrath of a righteous judge.

Scripture says it is being put out of his presence, and yet you endure the wrath of God, some aspect of that presence, and it's eternal.

It's not like the Jehovah's Witnesses say. It's not like you die and the lights are out.

The worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched, and I believe that you guys believe this, but we deserve that.

I deserve at this very moment not to be standing in the presence of friends and brothers and sisters with my

Bible open. I deserve to be in hell forever, and with all the love in the world, you do too.

You do too. When we read, and then we get into what theologians call the great dilemma.

How can a righteous God justify ungodly people, unrighteous people, positively wicked people, especially when we see passages like we see in Exodus or Proverbs 17 15, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both like an abomination to the

Lord. How is God going to right this? And brothers and sisters, that is why this is called good news, because the next word out of my mouth is

Christ, or two words, but Christ, but Christ.

Romans 5, I love this verse. For a few years, I got away with putting it in my work email signature until I was called out on it, but Romans 5, starting verse 6, for while we were still weak, without hope and without God in the world,

I think about, I just think about my own weakness, and I'm sure you can think about yours, right?

Just weakness of mind, moral weakness, corrupt, bankrupt, just utterly bankrupt.

While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died.

He died for the ungodly. We get some elaboration on this.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die, but God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, while we were still in rebellion, while we were still cursing

God, while the venom of asps was still in our mouths, while we were still worthless, while we were still sinners,

Christ died. He died. He really, really, really died. I probably do this too much, but I just think sometimes that we get into this frame of mind where the gospel becomes this transcendent story that is divorced from reality, but Christ really came.

He really, really died. We're going to talk about what he did as he died in a moment, but he really did this.

In verse 10, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life, by his resurrection.

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received reconciliation.

So you guys know the story well. God's son comes. Philippians 2, right?

He emptied himself. That's fine. He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

We see the ultimate picture of humility in Christ, humbling himself, dying.

He came to the world he created. He lived a perfect life. When I spoke on Christmas Eve a couple weeks ago, one of the things

I always seem to say when I speak at Christmas Eve is that he was born to die. Yes, he was, but he was also, it's also true, he was born to live, and he was born to live the life that we have never lived.

He was born to live a perfect life in every area where we have stumbled, in every area where we have been tempted.

He was tempted in all things, and yet he is without sin. And I've spoken about this with others.

We don't know what that's like, to be tempted and to be without sin.

It's like walking in the desert and then eventually getting a glass of cool water halfway through.

We don't know what it's like to walk the whole desert without water, because we've always given in.

But the Lord Jesus, he knew a level of temptation that none of us will ever experience, a level beyond anything that we can even imagine, because there was no there was no giving in to, there was no gratifying that temptation.

But yet Hebrews 4, 15, he was tempted, he was, he was tempted, and yet without sin. I think about when he was baptized, and he said that I must fulfill all righteousness.

He came to fulfill all righteousness, and for three years, we know he traveled, he preached and taught the kingdom of God, the gospel, he healed the sick, he raised the dead, he demonstrated his power as God the

Son. And then how did, how did men respond? I've already said it, right?

John 1, 11, he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Instead, they delivered him to be crucified. They chanted, crucify, crucify, crucify.

And I think about, oh, I'm gonna, maybe you guys can help me with the title of this hymn, but the hymn writer goes, ashamed

I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers, how deep the Father's love for us.

Yeah, yeah, how deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure that he should give his only

Son to make a wretch his treasure. And I can, that, that verse in the song, ashamed

I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers, I can sing that song and, and that verse and that line and, and really know that it's true because, because if Christ were here and, and if the old

Shane would have met him, although I was a fairly neat and tidy sinner, I remember, I remember even

Christians doing a good service to students in high school. We had a

Christian club and they were doing an act of kindness and we, they, we, we received the, the baking that they had prepared for us.

And then as they continued, we mocked them. And that was, that was the heart of Shane.

And that's, that is the heart of man. So they delivered him over to be crucified, like a lamb led to the slaughter.

He was beaten. He was mocked. He was spat on. They pulled the hair out of his beard.

If you're a parent and you've ever had a child tug on your beard, you know what that's like. They pulled it out.

He was humiliated, crucified, the only one to ever live a perfect life.

And he was executed in the most cruel way that we can imagine. It's interesting that the Bible doesn't go into all the details of crucifixion.

It's an interesting study. I won't do it tonight, but, but just all of the, even before we speak about the spiritual torment, the physical torment of crucifixion was just brutal.

Just brutal. I remember one line from a study that I did that said that sometimes those who were crucified died of tetanus before they actually died of the crucifixion.

Just the, the nature of it was, was horrific. And yet, yet, all of this was according to the definite plan, the eternal plan of God.

Because on that cross, Christ was not losing, but Christ was, was winning.

He was, he was finishing what he came to do, which was to die for sinners. It is a trustworthy saying, deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

And on that cross, that's exactly what he was doing. Now there's some debate about, about what he was doing on that cross.

We, we have friends who believe that on that cross, Christ was paying a ransom to the devil.

That, that God, God owed something to the devil, or maybe that, that humanity was in control of the devil and God had to buy them back.

And so on the cross, Christ was paying a ransom to his enemy.

I know other people who say that, that on that cross, and this is, it's hard for me to explain this without saying it's just mere sentimentality, that, that on that cross, as Christ died there, he was just showing how much he loved people.

And, and I'm going to point us to a better way, a biblical way, and that is that on that cross, as Christ hung there, if you think about the night before in the garden of Gethsemane, as he dropped sweat of blood, sorry, sweat drops of blood, and, and as he, as he sought the

Lord in prayer to see if there was any other way, it wasn't the crucifixion, it wasn't the

Roman crucifixion that he was dreading, it was, it was the cup, when he said, let this cup pass from me, it was the cup of God's wrath.

And so we as a church plant believe in the, in the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, that, that on that cross,

Christ was our substitute, paying our penalty, taking our curse, taking our wrath, taking the judgment that we deserved.

1 Peter 2, 24, this is not just a doctrine that we have concocted, not just a doctrine that theologians have thought up in, in their studies, but this is, this is a biblical doctrine.

1 Peter 2, 24, we're told that he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By his wounds, you are healed. You see the substitute there. He bore our sins.

By his wounds, we are healed. Isaiah 53, Isaiah wrote this some 600 years before Christ ever lived.

Speaking of this event, he says he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our sins.

The punishment that brings us peace tonight before God, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds, we are healed.

Galatians 3, 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. It's probably,

I don't know if you guys, if someone were to ask you, what's your favorite Bible verse? Could you think of a favorite Bible verse?

It's hard, it's hard to make a favorite out of the Word of God, but, but this one, if I had to put something down, this might be it.

2 Corinthians 5, 21, for our sake, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We see in this beautiful doctrine of, a heart -wrenching doctrine of double imputation, that our sin on the cross, our sin was imputed to Christ.

Our, our wretchedness, our filthiness was imputed to him, and in so doing, by his death on the cross, his righteousness is imputed to us.

We're going to talk about that more in just a bit. And then not only did he die, but he was buried, not buried in his own tomb, but buried in a borrowed tomb.

But that was the end. We know, we've spoken about it already, Christ's resurrection, his ascension on the third day.

Our Lord Jesus could not be held by death. He overcame death, the last enemy. It says in Romans 4, 25, and in doing so, he completed this work.

In Romans 4, 25, he was delivered over to death for our trespasses, and raised to life for our justification.

So in doing that, he completed that. So that was the first sentence in our statement.

We're going to move through the next stuff a little bit quicker, because I know you guys have to go too, but as a result of this good news, this is the next line in our statement.

Sinful man can now be justified before God, and we borrowed from the Reformers here, unabashedly, can be justified before God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Those are beautiful things that we'll unpack. One of my, I'm talking about a lot of favorites tonight, and I didn't plan it this way, but one of my favorite words in the

English language. Can you guys think if you have a favorite word in the

English language? Can you? Propitiation.

Anybody else? Sleep. My favorite word, one of my favorite words is very similar to Elias's.

Justification. Justification.

What's yours? Joy. Yeah. Grace is up there with me too.

If we were to have another daughter, I would name her Grace, if Nicole would let me anyways. But justification, we see that here.

Sinful man can now be justified before God. It's a forensic term, meaning it's a legal term, and maybe you've hung around with someone before, and they've been explaining justification, and they say, you know, we are justified, just as if I had never sinned.

And that's not wrong, but what I would say is it's only part right, because justification is so much richer than just having not sinned.

It's so much more than just being, maybe what I would call righteous neutral, but to be justified before God is to be declared just.

And so when Christ justifies us, when we are justified before God, not only are we seen before God as if we had never sinned, but we are seen by God as being just and as being righteous.

The way that I might explain this is, it's like having a debt of 10 billion dollars.

It's a debt that is far too great for me to pay, and to say that justification is just as if I had never sinned, it would be like God coming and saying, there you go,

I paid the debt, your balance is at zero. But justification is more than that. It's as if God comes and says, not only have

I paid your debt, but I have filled your account, and it will never be emptied.

You can make a purchase, and when you check your balance, it's still nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine.

This is justification. And think about this, brethren.

Before God, in Christ, if you are justified, I know that I'm just like any other person.

I can drift towards a performance system, but if you are in Christ, and you are justified, when

God sees you right now at this very moment, he doesn't see you as a sinful, wretched, shameful creature, a criminal before the courts, but he sees you, and there's almost no way that I can think of this better than when

God the Father spoke from the heavens in the hearing of the people about his son.

This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. This is my beloved

Steve. This is my beloved Chelsea, my beloved Elias. This is my beloved

Shane. This is my beloved son or daughter, in whom I am pleased.

And so when God looks at us, because of what Christ has done, he looks at us with pleasure, and this is what

Martin Luther called alien righteousness. Not that this righteousness was extraterrestrial, but that this righteousness is a stranger to us, because when

God justifies us, we know, well, he doesn't make us righteous internally immediately.

We will fight with sin, and may we fight with sin until we are on our deathbeds, if we get a deathbed.

But positionally, strangely, from a stranger, from Christ, we are seen, we are declared righteous before God.

And it was this discovery, Martin Luther's discovery, reading passages like Romans 117, right, that the just shall live by faith, the righteous shall live by faith.

It was out of this that the Reformation was ignited, and then the five solas, three of which appear in this statement, but that we are, our hope, our righteousness, our lives are by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, by the scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone.

Again, not just a theological term, biblical term. Romans 321, but now that the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I stopped earlier, but now verse 24, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that he is in Christ Jesus.

Here's your favorite word, Elias, whom God put forward as a propitiation, as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith as a substitute.

This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he passed over former sins.

It was to show his righteousness. This takes care of the great dilemma. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

And so it is through faith, like our statement says here, by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, that we are right before God.

We're not like the Jehovah's Witnesses that keep a time sheet of the houses that they have visited and the time that they have spent.

We're not like everyone else that is enslaved to a human system. We simply come to our

God, the God whom we have offended, whom we've sinned against, and we come to him in repentance and in faith.

And listen to what happens. Romans 5 .1, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God, peace with God.

If you think the current political situation is polarized, that it has nothing on the polarization of our relationship between us and God, and yet by Christ, through faith, by grace, through faith in Christ, we have peace with God.

Romans 8 .1, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, no condemnation, not even a bit, not even a crumb, only grace, only by faith, only in Christ.

And brethren, this is why we need to make much of the gospel in our lives every day, and why we need to make much of the gospel,

Lord willing, as we take it out to those who are still living in darkness, to those who are still without hope, still without God in the world.

I heard a story from Joel Beakey. I don't know if you guys, most of you probably know Joel Beakey. I just, the more and more

I hear from Joel Beakey, the more and more I appreciate his ministry, and I've been blessed by it.

Not quite there, but he tells a story.

He said that the first half of his ministry was brutally hard, and at one time, it was just before a service, he was about to begin the service, and a group of men kind of cornered him, and there was one man amongst the group that was the spokesman, and he got right into Joel Beakey's face, and it was so intense, he said that he could feel the man shaking as he addressed him, and what they said to him, they said, we are so sick, we're so sick of hearing about Christ, Christ this,

Christ that, everything, everything you say is about Christ, and Joel Beakey said something.

He said, instead of feeling fear, or instead of feeling anger, he just was overcome by a deep sense of pity for these men.

They had lost the plot that to be a

Christian, to be a church, to be a human being that is right before God is to be about Christ, and so we must, we must make

Christ our everything. I remember hearing another brother talking about, so often you hear about people talking about God, talking about God in a general sense, and he says,

I look for people that talk about Christ, and we can't be too legalistic about that, but those who know him, those who have been saved by him, those who have been, who have experienced his, his grace, his atoning work, cry, you know, maybe that's, maybe that's my favorite word,

Christ. The gospel, this is the next part of our statement, the gospel is the foundation for the life of the church.

I think I've already kind of expounded upon this a bit. The gospel is the foundation for the life of the church, and our only hope for eternal life.

The gospel is the only means by which people are saved, and also the means by which people are sanctified.

The truth of the gospel enables us, that's the operative word here, enables us to genuinely and joyfully do that which is pleasing to God, and to grow in progressive conformity to the image of Christ.

There is no pleasing God apart from the gospel, but once you are right with God, by faith in Christ, this enables you, this, this empowers our sanctification, this enables our service to him, and it becomes, it says here, the foundation for the life of the church, and the foundation,

I'll add here, the foundation for the life of the Christian. Julius Kim, another

Presbyterian, oddly, in his book, Preaching the Whole Council of God, I love this quote, he says, many

Christians think that the gospel is only needed for the two doors of life. That is, we first become a

Christian by believing in the good news that Jesus died for us, that's the first door, he says, and then after we get through that portal, we don't have to worry about the gospel until the end of our life, that is the second door.

He says, what Christians may not realize is that the gospel is not just the portal to get in and to get out, but it is also the power for living in between.

It is the gospel that enables, it is the gospel that empowers us, our sanctification is all of grace, it is all of grace.

Romans 8, we know Romans 8, 20, 28, 29, 30, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, to be like his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers, and those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

In the person and work of Jesus Christ, we most clearly see the character of the invisible

God, and so we see, brothers, we know how to love our wives, because we know what love looks like, we know what love for our bride looks like, that Christ loved his church and gave himself up for her, we know what it looks like to be humble, we know what it looks like to walk with God, we know what it looks like to love

God, to love neighbor, to love enemies, 1 John 4, 10, and this is love, not that we have loved

God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Christ shows us how to live a holy life, and it's when we behold

Christ in the gospel, 2 Corinthians 3, 18, and we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the

Lord, are being transformed from the same image, into the same image, excuse me, from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

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