THE HERE I STAND THEOLOGY PODCAST Why its important to get the Gospel right...pt1

All right, welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. Matt, Here I Stand.

I can do no other.

God help me. God help me.

At the Here I Stand Theology Podcast, we are a podcast dedicated to a pointed and sometimes spirited debates of biblical doctrine. We're not afraid to get riled up if we have to. And we have with us, of course, in the studio and in the studio via satellite, we have Matt Breeding live in studio and Kevin Michael via, it sounds so cool, don't it, saying via satellite.

Yeah, we wanna welcome Kevin back with us again. For those of you all that have watched some of our previous episodes, he should be a familiar face. We enjoy having Kevin on. He's got a lot of good insight.

So glad to have Kevin back with us this evening.

Yes, so today this is going to begin a multi-episode series, correct?

Yes, we, for those again that have watched many of our episodes, one thing we strive to do on each and every episode, whatever topic we're discussing is to bring it back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So we wanted to spend a little more time just kind of digging into that. On our second episode, we spent about 30 minutes kind of touching on the question, what is the gospel? But we really wanted to get into more detail on that.

So hoping to do, again, a little series of episodes on that. And to start that off with this episode, we're gonna be focusing on the question, why is it important to get the gospel right? But before we do that, if anybody's got anything else they wanna say before we jump into it?

Well, let's front load. Let's front load the gospel, right? I mean, normally we wait till the end, but let's front load with the gospel. So Kevin, I think you actually on the last episode that you were on, you closed us out with the gospel.

Would you care to front load us with the gospel here as we go into this episode?

Sounds good, I was gonna anyway have everybody give just a little succinct definition of the gospel. So hit us with it, Kevin.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ and Why It Matters

All right, when we talk about the gospel in the case of Christianity, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the telling of the good news of Jesus Christ, his birth, his life, his purpose, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and his ascension to heaven where he now sits according to scripture with the right hand of the father.

And I have been long in the habit, I say long for a few years now, I've been in the habit of when I explain the gospel, I do it in four main parts. Talk about God, talk about man, mankind in general, talk about Jesus, and I talk about the response that's necessary.

And to just kind of jump in with it, the Bible teaches that God is holy, meaning that he is without any evil thoughts, any evil words, any evil deeds, or any evil intentions. Now, conversely, man, and that's speaking of all people that's ever existed, man is wicked, and our wickedness separates us from God, is what the book of Isaiah tells us.

Jesus, being the only begotten son of God, being God in the flesh, according to scripture, died upon the cross, that cruel Roman way of capital punishment, and as he was on the cross, he experienced God's wrath, God's anger, God's frustration being poured out upon him, and he experienced God's frustration and anger and wrath against sin.

And as such, the Bible teaches abundantly and clearly that Jesus is the only way for people to have that relationship with God repaired. We call that reconciliation. When a person repents of their wicked unbelief and believes the gospel, they are adopted into God's family and reunited with him.

Now, all of that having been said, I wanted to, I came across this quote from R .C. Sproul that I thought was worth sharing. R .C. Sproul said, "'The gospel is Jesus, the person and work of Christ, "'who Jesus is and what he did.'".

Amen. Amen.

That's awesome.

I think we can just quit right there.

That's it.

That's good, yeah. And I think what you pointed out is important that yes, the gospel has a specific content to it. And so again, that's why we wanna focus this episode on why it's important that we get the gospel right, because whether we get the gospel right or wrong, there are consequences to that.

So you got anything you wanna jump in with, Claude, before we

I'm here with y 'all. You take it.

All right, so well, let's just jump into it. So first, I'm gonna act like a Sunday school teacher here. Anybody got their Bible and wanna read Romans 1 .1 for me?

Yep, hang on.

Let me reach over here and grab my Bible.

Or has anybody got that memorized?

Romans what?

1 .1.

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

That's how it starts, yeah.

Yeah.

Go ahead. Go ahead with the memorization.

Yeah.

I actually, I'm trying. My brain is stretched like a piece of Laffy Taffy right now. Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which he promised before through his prophets in the Holy Scripture concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and he was declared to be the son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.

Thank you.

That's actually one through four.

That's good. So I wanna start out focusing on verse one, the phrase, the gospel of God.

Amen.

And so the first thing that we can see is that God is both the source and the theme of the message of the gospel. It originates with him, because it's the gospel of God. And that means it's about him and from him.

Any thoughts on that from either of you guys?

I may get ahead of myself, but I did have some notes on God being the source and the theme.

Yeah.

Hit us with it.

Well, we talked about, or we talked briefly that little segment where we talked about the gospel. And essentially, the gospel is the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ to be the propitiation, if you will, that's a theological term, that to be the payment to appease the wrath of God against sin.

The Gospel Is God's Plan from the Beginning

Okay, well, let's examine what Matt has said here. Briefly, before we go too far into this, Matt talked about God being the source and the theme. Well, look at it this way. Genesis chapter three is what we call the fall.

That is where it describes Adam and Eve's fall from grace, so to speak. And they actually, it is the description of how Eve was deceived and how Adam made the choice as sinfully to choose Eve over God.

Well, here's the thing. After all that happened, guess what? God was not under any obligation to provide them a way to be reconciled or have their relationship with him repaired. Furthermore, and I don't wanna go too far down this rabbit hole, but God's not under any obligation to give any part of humanity anything, really, other than what he has covenanted through scripture, and that's it.

But God, and I've said this a million times in preaching and teaching, God would have been well within his right to wipe Adam and Eve out and start over, but he didn't. Instead, in Genesis chapter three, we have what we call the protevangelium, which is another theological term.

It's the first mention of the gospel of Jesus in scripture. In Genesis chapter three, verse 15, Jesus, or excuse me, God gave a warning to the serpent. He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.

He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. And God's telling Satan here, he's telling him about the coming defeat that he will experience at the hands and feet, if you will, inside of Jesus.

And I just wanna touch on one more thing before we go on. This was not reactionary. In other words, this was not God saying, oh, Adam and Eve messed up and they did something against my plan, so let me kinda change things around.

In order to get these back.

Yeah, it's not planned. The gospel was not plan B. The gospel was always plan A. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ was ordained in God, or excuse me, by God in eternity past during the covenant of redemption.

I know Claude loves that. But point being, this is not God saying, well, hey, they messed up. No, this was always part of God's plan. So I think I got long winded there, fellas. Sorry about that.

All right, that's good stuff.

And that covenant language that you're using is very, very important, particularly going back to Genesis 3 where the Lord told them that, that the serpent would bruise his head and he would bruise the heel of Christ, right?

So that's setting that up. And it begins just a short time after that. Really, the Lord really begins to, or what we have disclosed to us in the scriptures, to Abram when God makes his covenant with Abram, right?

And he splits the animals in pieces that night. And he causes a deep sleep to fall on Abram. And what many folks really, concerning getting the gospel right, many folks think it's about their part and God's part.

But the covenant that God established from the very beginning has never been a two-way covenant. It's a unilateral, one-way covenant. God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Abram. And he woke him up in the middle of this when between the pieces, I mean, it tears me up with joy to consider this covenant that God made and that God himself put his name on.

He walked between the pieces like a smoke and a flame, walking between those pieces, symbolizing that he was making the covenant and that man cannot, what is it? I think it's, is it in Hebrews? Man cannot disannul the covenant that God makes.

I think that's the statement that you all may have to correct me on that. But it is beautiful when we consider that, when we consider the gospel and the power of the gospel. I mean, when Paul makes that statement, and I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's the power of God unto salvation.

I mean, it is amazing when we think about that and all our hope, all our peace, all our joy, all our comfort rests in Christ and his work. It's beautiful.

Well, we can stop now.

Well, with all that said, it goes to show that again, it's God's message. It originates from him.

Amen.

And we know from throughout scripture that we are not to add to or take away from God's words or his commands. We can see that just a couple examples. I put down Deuteronomy 4 .2, Deuteronomy 12 .32, Proverbs 36, Revelation 22, 18 through 19.

And again, don't add to or take away. God's message is complete and it's sufficient. And if we try to add to or take away, in essence, what we're doing is we're sitting in judgment over God's word and over his message and we're finding them lacking by our own judgment, by human standards.

And that shifts the basis of our knowledge from God and the scriptures that he's revealed to us, shifts it onto ourselves. And as Kevin talked about, we can look back to Genesis, Adam and Eve, the fall, to see what a pursuit of knowledge outside of God and his truth leads to.

That's good stuff, yep.

So I think my first point in my notes was that we need to get the gospel right so that we don't alter God's message, so that we're not speaking contrary to the message that God himself has revealed to us.

Right, and it's important, I think, Matt, for us to take time as we do, you've made all those scripture references. Let's take a minute to look at some of those as well because, I mean, the scripture is what's most important here.

Do you want me to try to go to it? There we go, Deuteronomy 4, right?

Yeah, verse two.

Verse two, so if we look at that, is that showing up? I can't tell, yeah. So Deuteronomy 4, two, you shall not add to the word which I command you nor take from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you, what's the next reference?

Deuteronomy 12, 32.

I've got that one pulled up if you want me to read it.

Okay.

You say Deuteronomy 12, 32?

Yes.

Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do, you shall not add to nor take away from it.

Perfect, perfect. So, I mean, just those two spots right there, there's so much there. So God's message, is it partial and insufficient?

It is complete and sufficient. So, all right, so staying in that same original text that we read in Romans 1, 1, another thing I want to look at is Paul writing, obviously inspired by the Holy Spirit.

So speaking on behalf of God, this points out to the exclusivity of the gospel as well, because he tells us that it's the gospel of God and the use of the word the implies it's the one and only gospel.

There is no other gospel.

Yeah.

And Paul writes this also other places in scripture. We can look at a couple of those real quick. First one's just a couple of verses down, Romans 1, 9, which we'll look at that a little more later anyway.

9, God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son. Let's see, what's the next? Verse 16, as Claude referenced earlier, Paul says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. So we can see throughout his writings, Paul references it as the gospel, again, implying that it's the only gospel.

There is no other gospel.

Right.

You got another reference you want us to look up?

Let's see, I got 1 Corinthians 15, 1.

Oh yes. Anybody quote that off the top of your head?

Hey, my Bible drill is lacking, sorry.

It's Bible drill time.

Kevin, you can look up Galatians 1, 7.

All right. I've got Galatians 1, 7 whenever you want it.

So 1 Corinthians 15, 1. Actually, it's on the screen here too for us. So moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel, which I preach to you, right? So the context here, right? It's very important for us to understand context when we're looking at any passage.

We don't want to just do like a lot of people do, snatch it out of context and just smack it where we want it to be. But Paul is writing to the Corinthians amongst their other issues. Some are claiming the resurrection's already passed and his foundation point, his anchor point is the gospel.

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel, which I preached to you. It's kind of a reminder, right? Which also you received in which you stand, by which also you are saved. If you hold fast that word, which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

First of all, I delivered to you, first of all, that which I received, right? So he's not promoting something that he don't know nothing about. He experienced the gospel, Jesus. He experienced Jesus Christ firsthand, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and he rose again the third day.

How?

According to the scriptures. How do we know? How do we know Christ did this? The scriptures teach us.

The Bible says it.

Yeah.

What was that? There was a bumper sticker years ago. Folks used to like to claim, God said it, I believe it, and that settles it. No buster. God said it, that settles it. It don't matter whether you believe it or not.

I was wondering if you were gonna go there. I remember that, having a discussion.

Go ahead there, Kevin.

So I have Galatians 1. I'm gonna start in verse six and read, I think it's pertinent to read through nine. It says, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another.

Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ but even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.

As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed. One thing I am in the habit of doing when I preach is repetition bears relevance.

So when the apostle Paul says something more than once, he's trying to get a good point across, especially how this text goes into, it's like the last couple of verses in scripture where it says the same thing.

If you add or take away from this book, you will be accursed. It's just important.

Yeah, and we'll talk about that text you just read. We'll get into a little more detail on that later. So it's a good little preview right there. But again, he focuses on the gospel. And in scripture, we can see when the word gospel is used without the definite article the, and in scripture that Kevin just read, where he said a gospel, it's always referring to something contrary to the true gospel.

So you can see that the gospel versus a gospel and how Paul differentiates there and the gospel of God, the true gospel is always presented as the one and only gospel. So again, kind of second point, we need to get the gospel right so that we are not in opposition to the exclusive nature of the true gospel.

So you're using the term exclusive. Would you care to elaborate on what you mean by the exclusivity of the gospel?

It's the only one. There's no others are allowed. It's narrow. It's however you wanna put it. It's the only one. Nothing else is allowed.

Right.

Do you not think, let me play devil's advocate for a moment. So to both of y 'all, I would say this. So there are a lot of other good teachings out there. There are a lot of other good teachers throughout history.

There's Muhammad. There's the other prophets. What makes the gospel, as you call it, better than any of the other messages that are taught in the world?

Because it's the message of the true God. It's the message of scripture that's proven historically.

So you mentioned earlier, the source, right? God being the source and the author and the content of the gospel. Kevin made the quote of R .C. Sproul, right? Jesus is the gospel, right? So I think bearing to the point of the gospel being exclusive and what makes and how dare us even say it, but here I stand, right?

This is where we are. What makes the gospel of Jesus Christ better than any other gospel? I mean, I would say personally, according to the scripture, I would say it's better because it has a, there is continuity going all the way back to the beginning of scripture itself concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The person and work of Jesus Christ itself makes it exclusive because no other religion in history has a teacher, has a prophet that actually was fully God and fully man in the flesh. I'm probably running ahead there too, but still, yeah.

We'll get into that in later episodes. We'll touch on a lot of the things multiple times.

I think that's why it's better in Christ himself being God in the flesh, taking upon himself. And again, Kevin used the term, I praise God. I wish that more and more churches would go back to biblical language, propitiation.

No other religion can claim that their founder became the propitiation for the sins of the world because every other religion is a works-based religion.

And the gospel. Substitutionary atonement.

Yeah.

Christianity, Christ died for his people.

Amen.

As you said, all other religions, work-based, trying to do what they can to appease their God.

Yep.

Where in Christianity, we had the God-man appeasing God on our behalf.

Amen.

There's another.

Go ahead.

Sorry, I just, I had something I wanted to, I know Matt may be chomping at the bit to move on, but one thing that I really picked up in Bible college was the exclusivity of Christianity in general. This applies to what we're talking about, the exclusivity of the Bible.

Matt was talking about how the gospel is exclusive. Well, think about it from this viewpoint. When we get to heaven, after all, after the new heaven and the new earth and all this stuff is done, whether you're pre-meal, post-meal, a meal, whatever, when all this stuff is done and over with and we're standing there with Jesus and we're looking around, not every single person from human history is gonna be there.

Only God's people. And there's a lot of people that say, well, I believe everybody's gonna be in heaven or I believe that everybody is a child of God or so forth and so on. Matthew 7 and Revelation 20 make that abundantly clear that that is not true.

Here's a way to look at it. Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is the only way for someone to spend an eternity in heaven. All these other religions that they're talking about, like you both said, there's something that you have to do.

Well, Christianity is different because Jesus has already done it. He said, to tell us about it upon the cross, it is finished, not what I have done. But, and let me add a little bit of grace to it by going to church and taking the Eucharist and so forth and so on.

No, Christ has done it and he is the only way to heaven. I hate to say this, but Steve Harvey, Oprah Winfrey, and the off chance that you're ever gonna see this, you're wrong. There's not more than one way to get to heaven.

All roads do not lead to heaven. Only those who are saved by faith alone, through Christ alone, in Jesus Christ alone, in accordance with God's word alone, for God's glory alone. Only those people, and we call those people God's elect, only those people will be in heaven.

And don't just trust my word. I'm just an old, broke down, salty sea dog, halfway pastor every now and again. Listen to what Jesus said. Jesus said, the way that he said in John 14, six, he is the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the father, but through me. Speaking of himself, he made that.

He made that exclusive claim himself.

That's right.

All right, so before we move on, do you wanna play the promo clock?

Oh yeah, so real quick, we are going to, yeah, cause we're at 30 minutes. Time flies when you're having fun. So real quick, I wanna kinda show this. This is just gonna be a quick, like 30 seconds we're gonna show this, but for the local folks around the Knoxville area, Eden Chapel, Pastor Aaron Case, he's been on here once before with me.

He'll be on in a couple of weeks again, but they are going to be having a men's conference at Eden Chapel and just for a moment so we can all get a drink, take a breath. We're gonna show this promo. There's not a lot of, there's not a great deal of detail in the promo, but just some basic info.

We would like to invite you all to come out on November the 6th to the Eden Chapel Men's Conference. Hey, we're back. And it looks like there's a few comments coming in very quickly there. So love this podcast.

Again, if you're the Facebook user that's saying you love this podcast.

Yeah, we forgot to talk about that.

Oh, we did. Yeah, so very quickly, one more thing. Housekeeping, that's my fault. I apologize.

We were too excited to get into it.

But as you can see on the bottom of the screen, you're just a blank image and there's no name or anything like that. It just says Facebook user. In order for us to see who you are, when you make comments, you'll need to go to streamyard .com forward slash Facebook and grant them access to, you'll grant them permission to,.

To use your Facebook profile.

Yes.

It's not a scam.

It's not a scam. I was trying to switch to that, but my brain's not wanting to.

It's easy. It'll, like I said, if you go to streamyard .com forward slash Facebook, it'll just be like a blue tab.

Yeah.

Give them permission. That way we can see your name and profile picture.

Yes. Yeah, so we got a few others.

We'll show them.

Thanks for the comment.

Yes, thumbs up. Thank you. Happy face laugh. Yes, there's nothing. Oh, that was Casey Stout actually. Hey, thank you, Casey.

Thanks for your encouragement, Casey. Casey, for those of you that don't know, I don't know if either of you guys have met Casey. Casey and I have worked together now for the last year and a half. He's a solid brother in Christ.

He goes out with the proclaimers of Christ and does a public preaching of the gospel. And I will tell you this, every officer that walks through that facility, Casey stops them and talks to them about the gospel.

I'm telling you right now that this happens. So I love Casey. Thanks, Casey, for the encouragement.

All right.

Thanks for the comments, everybody.

All right, yeah, thanks. Thanks. So got you. So if you're going and you do that, we'll be able to know who you are moving forward. All right, guys.

All right, so we'll jump back into it. We'll, let's get into Romans 1, 16. Again, a familiar text to most people. I'll read it. Somebody read it earlier. I think it was Claude. It says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

So in that, let's focus on the phrase, for it is the power of God for salvation. And this is of the utmost importance because a false gospel cannot save. And actually the English word dynamite comes from the Greek word used here for power.

Do you know what that word is?

Do you, Kevin?

I'm sure.

No.

The Greek word for power there in that verse that we get our word dynamite from.

Is it dynamo? I don't know.

It's awesome. It's fun to say dunamis. Dunamis. And it's the dynamite power of God.

Yeah, it's here.

It's showing, yeah, the explosive power of the gospel. And it says that the true gospel is effective because it carries with it this omnipotence, this power of God behind it.

Yes.

And a false gospel does not contain this power.

That's exactly, it's kind of like a natural illustration might be a placebo versus actual medication, right?

Right.

In largely, I think probably the majority, we were talking in Bible study last night, the majority of the churches, I mean, you just take a small sampling, you could take it from where the churches in the area where you are, Matt, the churches where you are, Kevin, the churches just up and down Chapman Highway here where we are, you just take those churches.

And if you actually like went to their church or good thing is we have the interwebs. You just go to the interwebs and look up a sermon and listen to it. A lot of those churches are sadly preaching a placebo for salvation.

They're not preaching the dunamis of God. They're not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I'm sorry, Matt, go ahead.

Well, I was gonna say it's, yeah, the gospel is where God has placed his power for salvation, not in any other thing. So go ahead, Kevin.

I was just gonna ask, and I know that I believe Matt in the notes that you shared with us that you probably gonna touch on this, but why do they do that, Claude? I mean, I'm playing devil's advocate here and for the listeners that may be listening, why is it that you have, when you go to these, quote, worship services, unquote, it'll either look like a Pink Floyd concert with the smoke and the lights and the lasers, or it looks like a night out at the movies.

And we're talking about churches right here in Knox County. Why is that? Why do they do that?

Well, I would say, number one, because it's the easiest thing to do, because pragmatism has so permeated the minds of preachers. And again, I wouldn't go so far as to say so-called preachers. I mean, literal preachers are falling prey to the pragmatism of our day.

They're falling prey to the idea that if we can just do something, that the world will like, we'll grow our church and we'll become and have a greater influence, when in reality, the influence is a placebo effect, actually, that's going out and kind of, it's literally tricking, tricking the hearers into thinking they have something that they don't.

I mean, a placebo or an idea can work two ways. It can work positively or negatively. If we all work together and every day, let's say, Kevin, you and I, we determined that we're gonna walk up to Matt every day for a month that we see him.

And we're gonna say, Matt, are you feeling okay? You look bad. No, I'm feeling great. First day, second day, third day, I'm feeling great. I don't know what you're talking about. Fourth day, Matt, are you feeling okay?

Well, you know what? I am feeling a little bit funny. You just get this idea continually shot at you. And all of a sudden, you're pumped full of, it's sewage is what it is. The false gospel is sewage.

And people have come to love sewage rather than the sweet fragrance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well, and I don't wanna knock anybody or speak ill of anybody, but Paul warned Timothy about this. And I'm paraphrased loosely, but he talked about how people will gather unto themselves ear ticklers and that they will preach what people want to hear.