Essentials vs Nonessentials (12/10/2023)

The Gospel as the Essential Message of Christianity

Well, let's turn to the book of first Corinthians, first Corinthians chapter two, and the title of this message is essentials versus non-essentials essentials versus non-essentials. You probably, someone would expect me to do like a list, like, okay, here are all the things that are essential, like the deity of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, that he's coming again, the authority of scripture.

So it's not what you think, that's not the type of message I'm going to do, but we're going to be talking about essentials versus non-essentials. Can a person say or do anything they want, believe anything they want and still be considered a Christian?

You should ask what is essential? What do you have to believe? And then what are non-essentials as far as what to believe, what to do doctrine and practice? What can we agree to disagree on? Well, let's start here.

First Corinthians two, one through five. I think we see the essential right here. Paul says to the Corinthian church and I brethren, when I came to you did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God.

For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and fear and in much trembling in my speech and my preaching. We're not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

And of course it was the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead. But Paul says in verse two, when he came into town, he really wasn't worried about anything.

Else.

He was looking to do one simple thing and that was what to preach the gospel, to preach this message of Christ and him crucified. In other words, Paul said, all I cared about was preaching the gospel.

Of course, Paul did preach other things. If you read the book of first Corinthians, Paul is dealing with all sorts of different topics, but it really all stemmed from this central, essential message, which is the gospel.

And this is the whole reason why the Christian church exists. This is why we are here on earth to proclaim this message that all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God and the wages of sin is death.

But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We are sinners separated from God, but God sent Christ into the world to die for our sins that we might be reconciled to our creator. And because Christ was raised from the dead, if we would have faith in him because he lives, we shall live also.

When we die, we will go to heaven. I mean, this is the simple gospel message. Paul says, that's all I was concerned about. I just wanted to preach the gospel. So if we're going to start out talking about essentials, the gospel is essential.

You say, well, that's Paul, right? Well, that would be enough. But Jesus also said in John chapter three, that a person must be born again. And you see that urgency, a person must be born again. And in John three, Jesus went on to talk about how he would be lifted up on the cross.

Whoever believes shall not perish. But those who do not believe, he talks about that as well. So I would say up front, most basic on basic level, the essential is the gospel itself. So let's talk about the gospel for a moment.

That word, what is the gospel? Most of you know, but there's a few who don't. And it's good that we have this kind of like just seared into our mind, memorize that if somebody asks us, we're not going to hesitate.

Hey, here it is. It comes right out of our mouth. So the word gospel comes from the old English word, Godspell. Nobody uses that word anymore. But Godspell evolved into gospel, meaning you know what it means?

Means what?

Good news.

But you have to be careful because we live in a day and age where people throw around the word gospel very loosely. You know, you have gospel music and then you listen to the music and it doesn't have much to do about, you know, the gospel.

But you have the four books called the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which tell of the life and ministry of Christ. But let's turn to first Corinthians 15 because I think it's important to look at a scripture that just gives us the most clear, precise definition of what the gospel is.

You can point to it in black and white. There it is. That's what the gospel is.

But it's the good news.

Generally, it's the good news that God gives to mankind that he has sent a savior into.

The world.

The good news of God's grace and the central message, the central figure of the gospel we know is Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, sometimes any minister could fall into this. A church can fall into this where you're preaching about other things.

And after a while, Christ and the gospel can sort of, you know, fall into the background. And, you know, some churches have dropped it altogether. We want to make sure that never happens. But just thinking about the gospel in biblical terms, for example, in the King James version of the Bible, do you know that the gospel appears, the word gospel appears 98 times.

It's called the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of God, the gospel of the grace of God, the gospel of peace in revelation. It's called the everlasting gospel. People are called to believe it, to obey it, to preach it.

In Romans 2, 16, Paul calls it my gospel. Not that it was about Paul, certainly not. But Paul could say that. That it's mine. He laid hold to it. And we should all be able to say that, that, yes, the gospel is, it's my gospel.

It's good news towards me. I have believed it. I obey it. I have received it. In Ephesians 1, 13, it's called the gospel of your salvation. And then, of course, Paul warned the Corinthians and Galatians of those who preach another gospel, which we've also talked about in weeks and months prior.

But look at 1 Corinthians 15. If you want the most clear definition of what the gospel is, the Bible gives it to us. And I'm very thankful for this passage. Paul tells the church, 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse one, moreover, brethren, I declare to you what?

The gospel, which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved. You are delivered if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed.

In vain.

So you see, we need to hold fast to it. You need to believe it. You need to keep believing it. And here's the definition. He says, for I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures.

So if you want to know what is the gospel, there it is. Christ died for our sins. He rose from the dead, and it's all according to what? Now, how do you know that?

Scripture.

Scripture.

And what does that even mean? Well, you go back to the Old Testament scriptures, which tell us, you know, prophesied and tells us why that's necessary. So really, anyone with any semblance of Christian credibility would agree that this right here is the gospel.

But how is it applied? So that's what it is. You know, that's the definition. But how is it applied to the individual? How is an individual saved? Because there's all sorts of groups that would affirm that basic information.

I mean, again, it is in black and white. It's in the Bible. So all sorts of groups affirm that information, but they're divided, really, if you want to call it, you know, the Christian world, quote unquote, is divided on how the gospel is applied.

Case in point, during the Protestant Reformation, both the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants they agreed on one thing, and you know what that was? They agreed that they disagreed. The Catholics and the Protestants agreed that they did not have the same gospel.

People pretend today like that's not true, but all you have to do is read a history book. Both agreed they had different gospels. The Catholics and the Protestants, they have the same Jesus. They believe that Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, but how the gospel was applied in salvation, that's what they disagreed on.

And again, they had two different gospels, salvation by faith plus works. That was the Catholic view. And the Protestant view is salvation by faith alone. So la fide is the term that came out of the Reformation.

So Rome's gospel included works. Salvation by faith plus works. So according to Rome, and I want you to listen now, according to Rome, if you wanted to go to heaven, here's what you had to do. All these works were involved.

You had to be baptized. It was not optional. You had to be baptized. You had to be a member in good standing in your local parish. You had to take the sacraments. You had to confess your sins. You had to take communion.

If you did all of these things and a few others, then you were saved. Then you were abiding in Christ and you were abiding in Christ because you were abiding through his body, the church. And if you stop doing any one of those things, you were cut off from salvation.

So they said that salvation essentially came through the church, through the sacraments because the sacraments were given through the church. The Protestants on the other hand, is that new information for any of you?

You know this, right? Like this isn't a mystery. I think most people understand that. The Protestants on the other hand said that no, salvation did not come through the church. Salvation does not come through the sacraments.

They made it very simple. Salvation comes through what or through who? Salvation comes through Christ. They said good works. Yes, good works are involved, but good works are not what added to the gospel or it's part of our salvation.

It's the result. So they said you're saved by faith alone, but works, good works are the evidence of salvation. So the Protestant beliefs were summarized this way. A person is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

How do you know that? Because the scripture alone is our authority and it's all to the glory of God alone. So two very different systems. Now in full disclosure, I don't think this comes as a surprise to any of you, but I believe the Protestants were right.

Not that they are correct, rather it's that they were pointing to what the scripture said. So I believe they were right because that's what the Bible teaches. You can look at Ephesians 2, Galatians 2, all sorts of different verses, Romans 4, that salvation is by faith alone.

If you add works, then it's no longer by grace. I mean, this is pretty simple. So I believe the Protestants have the true gospel, but you know what? It's not as simple as saying that the Protestants are the true Christians and the Catholics are the false Christians.

It's not really that easy. It's not that easy because Protestants and evangelicals, evangelical, this is how we would typically be described, evangelical, that word simply means somebody who believes.

The gospel.

Okay.

So Protestants and evangelicals or evangelical Protestants, historically, yeah, we hold to the true gospel like in theory, but you know what? Protestants and evangelicals have gotten a lot of things wrong as well.

There's a lot of problems within both groups, but again, I want you to understand because we're talking about the essentials, right? The essential is what? The gospel is the essential. So the Protestants and Catholics had different views of what the gospel was or how it was applied in salvation.

So here's where the Protestants went wrong. Here is where evangelicals, I'll say it this way. But here's where we include myself. Here's where I went wrong. People would hear this statement that you're saved by faith alone, not of works, you know, not of works.

I grew up, here's a little confession. I grew up thinking that the term good works, it sounds crazy as it's coming out of my mouth, but it's like the term good works. That was almost like a bad word. There's almost like a virtue and like, I don't have any good works.

I'm just saved by faith. I mean, it's crazy, but that's the way some evangelicals were. They hear this message, grace alone, faith alone, and people started to get the idea. They interpret that information to where they think if I'm not saved by works, then I don't need to do good works.

If baptism isn't an essential, if I'm not saved by baptism, then why get baptized? If I don't have to do good work, if I don't have to go to church, if church isn't essential for my salvation, you know, why bother going to church?

I can do all sorts of other things. See people started to view, so we're talking about essentials versus non-essentials. Protestants and evangelicals started to view things like baptism, the Lord's supper, going to church, good works.

We started to view all these things as non-essential, that like they're optional. We might know better in our minds, but that's what we're talking about this morning. That is totally wrong. Totally wrong.

And I want to try to demonstrate that. So the word essential, let's just go back for a moment. What are we talking about? We've been used to hearing this word essential since 2020, right? There are these things that were categorized as essential services and those things that were non-essential, right?

Okay.

So you remember this, the liquor stores, the pot shops, the Black Lives Matter rallies, they were all essential. Well, church and baptism in the Lord's supper were non-essential, you see. Like that's what we were told.

And of course, a sad thing about it, a lot of Christians kind of went along with that and they seem to agree that, you're right, those things are not essential, at least for a year, a couple of years maybe.

And it's no wonder people went along with that because that's what they've been trained to think. That, yeah, you don't really have to do these things. So if you don't, hey, what's the big deal? Now again, the Catholics would say, they might give a dispensation of grace for the pandemic, but they would say, if you don't go to church, if you're not baptized, if you're not partaking of the sacraments, if you're not living an active life of righteousness, you're not going.

To heaven.

I mean, they would say that this is all essential. But then again, the Protestants, evangelicals, well, it's important, but it's sort of non-essential. And that's what happened in 2020. So if you don't go to church, you don't do any of these things, no big deal, it's non-essential.

So here's the thing, here's the conclusion. And when I started this message, I was, yeah, I was going to come up with a list of essential, essential teachings. Like here it is, right? I got a list. I came up with it.

Here's a list of essential teachings of Christianity. The Bible is the word of God. Does that sound essential to you? God is the creator. Does that sound essential? It's essential that we as Bible-believing Christians, we believe the Trinity and the deity of Christ kind of to go hand in hand.

Is that essential? I think that's essential. The virgin birth. That's essential. Substitutionary atonement, okay? Bodily resurrection, the second coming, and you know, the list could get bigger. I didn't want to do that though.

It's almost like the Holy Spirit impressed it upon me that, Mike, you're looking at this.

All wrong.

Here's the thing. I have never read anything in the scripture that says, okay, here are the important things, the gospel, the virgin birth, and here's all the stuff you can neglect. Have you seen that in the Bible?

Because I haven't. Here's all the things Jesus said and taught that you don't really have to worry about. We can kind of disregard all of that. I've never seen it. Now, don't get me wrong. There are things that good Christians can disagree on.

For example, like the mode of baptism, the timing of the rapture, you know, our eschatology. There are things that, hey, I can recognize that this is a good brother in Christ. He loves the Lord, he's saved, and he has some different views than me.

So I want to make it clear. There are some, we might call them non-essentials because we can agree to disagree and we all still love Christ. You understand that? But at the same time, I don't even like using these terms, secondary issues or tertiary.

Issues.

I don't like using those terms because really all of God's truth is important. All of God's truth is important. Here's the thing. If it's in this book, it's important. You might fall into the mindset that, well, you know, maybe the book of Obadiah, I mean, that's not really that important.

So we could kind of do without the book. Well, you remove the book of Obadiah, you've come under the curse of Revelation 22, removing from God's word. So it really is essential. All of God's truth is essential.

That's what God showed me. All of his truth is essential. So what are the non-essentials?

I don't know. I don't know.

What are non-essentials? But at the same time, to be clear, yeah, we're not going to judge a person's salvation because they have a different view on, you know, again, pre-trib or mid-trib or post-trib or the view of the kingdom of God or the millennium or something like that.

But at the same time, if Jesus said it, it's true. It's the word of God. It's essential. If the Holy Spirit led the apostle Paul or Moses to write something down and it's in the Bible, it's essential.

And who am I, who is anyone else to say it's not? So just to recap, on a basic level, what must a person do to even be considered a Christian in the first place? We must do what? Believe the gospel. That's the correct answer.

But I have to warn you, at the same time, you know, the devil is crafty. He knows how to kind of pull one over on people. So here's kind of the play going on right now. A lot of churches, they will say that the gospel, yes, the gospel is essential.

We believe the gospel, but everything else is a conversation. Everything else, you know, is open for dialogue. So let's talk about it. And what's implied in there is you don't really have to believe or do anything else as long as you say you believe the gospel.

One church website, I saw it, they said, we don't have a closed fist. We have an open hand or we hold the gospel with an open hand or something. Well, if you hold the gospel with an open hand, guess what's going to happen?

It's going to fall out. And guess what? It did fall out of that church. This is the idea. Okay, well, as long as you believe the gospel, nothing else matters. It's nonsense. And the new trendy term for this is Christian deconstruction.

All the cool kids are doing it, but I don't want anything to do with it because it's heresy. But we have to believe the gospel. You know why the virgin birth is essential though? Okay, we believe the gospel.

Well, who's Jesus?

You believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Who's Jesus?

We kind of have to go to the scriptures to find out who Jesus is. So then the scriptures become essential because you wouldn't know otherwise. Why is the virgin birth essential? The confession, Christian confession that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God because if he's not born of a virgin, guess what?

He's the son of Joseph or some other guy. He's not the son of God. So you see the gospel, put the gospel here up top. All these other things are connected to it. So it's again, it's all essential. One last thing, because I'm running out of time quick here.

There is continuity between the testaments. Here's another thing people think is non-essential, the whole Old Testament, like two thirds of the Bible is somehow non-essential as that famous pastor from Atlanta said, we need to unhitch from the Old Testament scriptures, Andy Stanley.

And there's just all sorts of people who are going to say, you know, it doesn't even really matter that you do this or do that long as you believe in Jesus. Well, believing in Jesus is the message, but it's not in a vacuum.

All these other things are connected to it. All right. One last thing, because this whole issue with going back to the Catholics and the Protestants and their view of the gospel and how it's applied, really the divide between the Catholics and Protestants was their view of good works and the church.

They had a different view of the necessity of the church and the necessity of good works. So again, Rome said you are saved by faith plus baptism, saved by faith plus being a member in good standing, being saved by faith plus good work saved by faith plus this, this,.

This, and this.

And then the Protestants, we evangelicals, we say salvation by grace alone through faith. Do you believe in that grace alone through faith? Is that the gospel faith alone?

Okay.

Does baptism matter? Is that, is that optional? Here's what really got me thinking about this. So after COVID and this whole idea that the church is non-essential. So a lot of people didn't attend during a time of, you know, the first three weeks totally get it, understand, no problem.

Then three months it's like, okay, after that you should probably come back. Long story short, I was talking with somebody who never came back after COVID. And they said, well, when I was young, this person told me, when I was young, I was brought.

Up Catholic.

And the Catholic said that if you don't go to church, that's a sin. They said, you have to go to church in the Catholic system. And if you don't go, it's a sin. But she said, well, we Protestants are different.

We don't believe that. And I'm taking this statement. She said with the fact that she never returned after COVID and I'm, I'm seeing a problem.

Okay.

I'm seeing a problem within Protestant, evangelical, Baptist, Bible-believing, I don't care what you call it. There's a problem where we say we believe in Jesus, but we treat everything else like it's a non-essential, like it doesn't matter.

If someone's convinced of that, fine. It's between you and God. But I think, I think we know better. I think we know better. So I just want to draw one analogy. You know, we are in relationship with Christ.

How?

We have entered into the new covenant. When we have placed our faith in Jesus, we have been born again. We have entered into the new covenant by faith. You realize that the church is called the bride of Christ.

In a sense, you are married to Christ because we collectively make up his church, the bride.

Okay.

So to be Christ's bride, to be in this relationship with Christ, and this is how most people talk about salvation. It's a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. What do you have to do to be saved?

What is it?

Faith alone.

Well, I'm bored.

Okay.

Let's follow along. We're on board with that. We enter into that marriage, so to speak, through faith. What if I said, okay, I believe now, but I don't have to be baptized. Don't have to do good works.

Don't have to be involved in the church. Don't have to do any of that. Let's apply that to the actual covenant of marriage. What do you have to do to be married? Well, you need, I guess you need to have the ceremony.

You need to be declared husband and wife. You need to say the vows, be declared husband and wife. The minister needs to sign the certificate, mail it in, and then you consummate the marriage. You realize all of that happens on one day, your wedding day.

Let's say you are married on June 13th. It all happened in a day. That's essential for you being married to your spouse. What if you said, well, check that off the list. Now I don't need to love you. I don't need to care for you.

I don't need to talk to you. I don't need to do anything else because I have the essential. I've entered into the covenant, the marriage relationship, and I'm just going to ignore you from this point on.

Is that a marriage? People who have entered into a covenant with Jesus Christ who are neglecting all of the basics, at best, they're backslidden, and I'd be fearful on judgment day having to face Christ in that condition.

At worst, they don't understand the gospel, and this is what I'm seeing. This is what God has laid on my heart, and I just want to leave you with one last thing. You know, that was me. I was brought up understanding, being told all the essentials, all the truths.

I knew the information, but you know what? It wasn't real because I had this false form of Christianity, this false idea that all I had to do was this one thing, believe the gospel. I didn't understand the first thing about faith, and I realized that this is the case.

It is a massive, like I said, the Catholic church, the Reformation, Catholic church has all sorts of problems. That's for them to deal with. This is a problem that evangelicals and Bible believers have.

It is probably the biggest problem, and what is the essential? Well, the gospel is the essential. What are the non-essentials? My friends, they don't exist. There are no non-essentials. If Jesus said it, it's essential.

It's in this book, what? It's essential because it's God's truth. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for your word, and Lord, I thank you for your grace. There's a lot of people, Lord, including myself, who still don't really understand some things.

Lord, we fall short, but I believe that anyone who has the Holy Spirit within them, Lord, we know that we should be obeying you, serving you. I thank you that you forgive us when we fall. I thank you that you're patient with us, Lord.

I believe there's evangelicals who believe all sorts of crazy things, and they're still saved. But Lord, I just pray that you would use this message and use it to bring back a backslider. Lord, I just pray that you would use it to wake up somebody who is in that false form of Christianity that, as long as I said these words, did this one thing, that's enough.

But Lord, the gospel is all of Christ. It's for all of life. It's not a one-time thing. It's a lifelong journey. So Lord, I pray that you would use your word and your spirit to save someone who is living in unbelief, but they have been deceived into thinking they know Christ as their Savior.

Lord, may your spirit do his perfect work, I pray, and it's in Jesus' name, amen.