Sunday Sermon: The Righteous Shall Live By Faith (Romans 1:17)

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Pastor Gabriel Hughes preaches from Romans 1:16-17 once again, the third sermon looking at the thesis to Romans, and understanding what it means that the just shall live by faith. Visit providencecasagrande.com for more info about our church!

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You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.
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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an
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Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.
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Here is Pastor Gabe. Well good morning. Good morning. Pleasure to see everybody this morning.
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If you would open your Bible, please, to Romans 1. We are finishing up what has been three sermons in Romans 1, verses 16 and 17.
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This being the thesis statement to the book of Romans, the statement that's going to carry us through the rest of our study of this particular book.
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And we read today about how the righteous shall live by faith. The Puritan Richard Sibbes said,
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Faith, whereby especially Christ rules, sets the soul so high that it looks down on all other things as far below, as having represented to it by the
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Spirit of Christ, riches, honor, beauty, and pleasures of a higher nature, things we know this world cannot satisfy.
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We find fully satisfied in Christ. Let us read once again Romans 1, 16 to 17 in honor of the word of the
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King. Would you please stand? This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome.
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Hear the word of the Lord. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the
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Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
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You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come back to this word again, we ask that your
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Spirit would teach us, would guide us into all truth, and that we would have assured within our hearts a confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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If we have come to believe in Jesus, we are saved. We are rescued from our sin.
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We are even lifted up from the wages of sin, which is death and promised eternity in heaven above with God and glory.
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We are saved from the very judgment of God that comes against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
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We have nothing to fear of man. We have nothing to fear of anything that this life throws at us if we have faith in Christ.
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The righteous, who are made righteous by their faith in Jesus, shall live, shall be sustained by faith in Him.
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Continue to lead us in this, we ask in your name. And it's in the name of Christ that we pray, and all
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God's people said, Amen. There's a new movie out, not endorsing this film.
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I haven't seen the movie. I know very little about it. But I just happened to catch that Clint Eastwood has made a new movie.
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Anybody have any idea how old Clint Eastwood is? He's 94.
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And he just directed and released a new film that's called Juror No. 2. Now, why am
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I even bringing that up this morning? Because the movie has a fantastic logline. Now, if you're not familiar with what a logline is, it's like the slogan or the tagline that goes along with the film.
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The official name for this is a logline. So back in 1978, when Superman came out, the logline was, you will believe that a man can fly.
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Or when Braveheart came out, every man dies, not every man really lives. That's the logline to the film.
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Well, for this movie, Juror No. 2, the logline is, justice is blind, but guilt sees everything.
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And I read that, and I was like, I can't remember the last time I was convicted by a logline in a movie.
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Not really convicted, but I still found it very thought -provoking. Justice is blind, but guilt sees everything.
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Have you ever felt that way about your own guilt? And there are sins that you're guilty of, and you hide from everybody else, right?
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Plenty of sins I don't want everybody else to see. So as long as you have it out of everybody else's sight, then it's tucked away.
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It's gone. And I can feel relieved of it, but that guilt still remains.
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And it still reminds you of what you have done. And it seems like there's nothing that you can do to get away from it.
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There's always going to be that reminder of what you're guilty of, no matter what you can hide from other people.
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That reminder still exists. And maybe the adversary, maybe Satan himself, stands there in your conscience and reminds you of what it is that you have done.
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You will never be good enough. You're never worthy enough because you are guilty of this, and you know it.
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You can hide it from everybody else, but you can't hide it from yourself. Would you even want everybody to know all the stuff that you are guilty of?
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How are we relieved of this guilt? And furthermore, not only how are we relieved from it, but how can we know and be assured that something's actually been done about it?
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That we're innocent now. That the guilt has been taken away. And there is no offense held against us any longer.
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Is there anything that can be done that can relieve us of that guilt?
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And the answer is in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
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We've been talking about this the past couple of weeks. That His very death on the cross comes with the declaration,
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Tetelestai, it is finished. Paid in full. And so that all who believe in Him, as said in Colossians chapter 1, our sins are nailed to the cross and the debt is paid.
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And so that in Christ Jesus, His death on our behalf has relieved us of our guilt and has justified us before the
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Father, declared innocent, guiltless before God. And so not only can we have assurance, not only can we have that feeling of guilt taken away, but we can even have the assurance that we are not guilty at all.
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We are declared innocent before God by the precious blood of Jesus.
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As we sing in the old hymn, as written by Robert Lowry, what can take away my sin?
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What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again?
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Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And that is the answer to our guilt.
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And it is by faith in Jesus that we receive all the benefits that are given to us through the cross of Christ.
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So that we come to understand that the righteous shall live by faith.
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We have looked the past couple of weeks at just verse 16. I am not ashamed of the gospel.
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That was two weeks ago. What does it mean to be ashamed of the gospel? What is therefore our confidence in the gospel?
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And then last week looking at the next part of that verse. For in the gospel is the power of God for salvation.
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To everyone who believes. And this gospel message was declared first to the
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Jew and then also to the Greek. Today we focus on verse 17.
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For in it, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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What does that mean? We'll consider that. And then lastly, as it is written, and Paul making a reference from the
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Old Testament, specifically from Habakkuk 2 .4, the righteous shall live by faith.
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What does that mean that the righteous shall live by faith? So what we're going to do this morning as we look at this particular verse, we'll break this up into two parts.
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First of all, seeing that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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Then secondly, we'll look at that next part as it is written, the righteous, or in some of your translations, the just shall live by faith.
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And then we want to do some review, looking back over what we have considered these last couple of weeks in the gospel that has been proclaimed to us.
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And also come to understand, I haven't done this yet, so I felt like this Sunday was the best place to do it.
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What is not the gospel? And we'll consider that as well.
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So let's come back to verse 17 here in this first portion. In which it is said that in it, referring to the gospel, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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Now, Paul is a brilliant writer in case you haven't picked that up. And what we have said here in this, what
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I've called a thesis statement to the book of Romans. This is our log line for Romans, basically. It's the statement that's going to set up everything else that comes after it.
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Everything that we're going to learn from this letter, Paul is summarizing here in this statement in verses 16 and 17.
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And as he states it here, he's going to come back to it. Paul has this habit. You'll see this as we go through Romans.
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He's got this habit of making a statement, fleshing out the statement, and then saying the statement again. And he might even word it in a slightly different way.
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Charles Spurgeon, whenever he would teach his young men on preaching, he said, learn to say things twice, but in a different way.
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So word it slightly different so that people hear you say the same thing twice, but word it in such a way that it even gets into their heart.
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It explains itself. It penetrates the heart even more. That was how he would train his pastors in repetition.
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When I was in speech in college, I majored in communications. And I had a speech coach that taught me what he called the tell -em rule.
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Whenever you do a speech, you're going to do the tell -em rule. It's like, okay, tell me what the tell -em rule is.
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He said, you're going to tell them what you're going to tell them. Then you're going to tell them. And then you're going to tell them what you just told them.
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And so it's this constant repetition of, I'm going to tell you this, this, and this. Now here's point one.
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Now here's point two. And now here's point three. And now I've just told you point one and point two and point three.
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Therefore, this, and go back to the previous statement. That's not a new concept. That's not like modern speaking.
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When you go back to rhetoric, even in the ways that the Greeks taught it, we teach math and science and reading and things like that in education.
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Well, the Greeks also had rhetoric classes. So when it was teaching people how to talk, that tell -em rule was a common thing.
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The repetition is how it gets into people's heads. Those of you who are educators, even doing homeschooling, a lot of your homeschool curriculums will probably tell you that.
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To get through to kids in a certain age range, you have to repeat it like seven times or 13 times or whatever it is.
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I learned stuff just listening to my wife teach the kids and repeat that stuff over and over again.
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And I'm sitting in my office listening to it and I'm like, okay, I can say it with them now because I've heard it over and over again.
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So Paul has that habit of doing the same thing, of making a statement and then explaining it and then coming back to the statement again.
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He doesn't do that in all of his letters, but it is very much a pattern in Romans. So we see this statement here in verse 17.
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In it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. Now we're going to spend several weeks, probably a few months here now, going through the rest of chapter one, chapter two, and about halfway through chapter three.
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So make a mental note here or a note in your Bible or something like that. Put a pin in it, as I've heard it said.
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Put a pin in this because this statement in verse 17 comes back up again. In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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Let's go ahead and cheat and look ahead at where it comes back up again. Go to chapter three and look at verse 21.
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Romans 321, but now the what? Righteousness of God has been, what word do you have?
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Manifested or revealed. It's the same word as before. So in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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And here it's, now the righteousness of God has been revealed or manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.
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Verse 22, the righteousness of God through what? Faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
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You see the same statement again, right? So Paul is making the statement here in chapter one, verse 17.
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And then he's spending the rest of chapter one, two, and three, making a point that he's going to come back to repeating the statement again in verse 21.
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The righteousness of God has been revealed. It has been manifested apart from the law, but the law and the prophets bear witness to it.
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The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
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Same thing that we have in Romans 1, 16 and 17. So go back to chapter one now.
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So what's Paul going to do from here? Again, we have this thesis statement that's made here. The capture of the letter.
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And then when we go through the rest of chapter one, beginning next week, in fact, Paul is going to bring all men into condemnation, whether they are
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Jew or Gentile. Because remember, we have that statement in verse 16, that the gospel is first for the
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Jew and then to the Greek. Whether you are Jew or Greek, you are guilty before God.
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All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's what Paul's going to demonstrate. So through all of chapter one, showing the sin of mankind.
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Chapter two, you who are Jews, you're no less guilty than the Gentiles are, than the Greeks are.
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You're guilty as well. Even though the law of God was given to you, you had it, but you broke it.
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So you're no better than they are. In fact, it makes you worse because you knew what God's will was, and yet you didn't follow it.
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So all had sinned and fallen short of God's glory, which Paul summarizes in chapter three, verse 23.
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Bringing all men into condemnation so that all of us now realizing that we are guilty before God.
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Everybody, whether they had the law or not, everyone is guilty before God. And now knowing that, there's a righteousness.
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There is a righteousness of God that has been revealed. It's been manifested apart from the law, because you could never keep the law to attain it anyway.
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So if we can't keep the law to be righteous before God, how do we get there? Good news.
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There's a righteousness that has been revealed apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.
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Whenever we read in the law, you shall do this, you shall not do this.
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What that should be doing for us when we read that, is exposing our hearts to the reality of the fact that we've never kept the law.
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We break the law. Whenever it says, you will not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
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Oh my goodness, I did that on the way to church this morning. Something to that effect. When you read that in the law, you will recognize
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I've broken this law. God says, don't do this, but I know I have done that. And so the righteousness of God is seen there in that way.
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God demands holiness. He demands perfection. And I've never been righteous at any point.
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And so now having seen that in the law, the law and the prophets bear witness to it. But there's a righteousness that's apart from it.
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Again, Romans 3 .22. It is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
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How do I attain that righteousness? If I can't get it through the law, how do
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I get it? Through faith. By believing in Jesus.
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The righteousness of God is given to you apart from the law.
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But whoever has faith in Jesus Christ will be clothed in His righteousness.
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We will be declared righteous. Not by anything that we have done, but by the grace of God.
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So again, in verse 17, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.
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In the good news of the gospel, in the good news of the message, that God sent
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His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the dead. In that very message, we hear about our sin and need for a
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Savior. And God provided that Savior. We hear about our guilt and need for something, some way to pay for that guilt.
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But even giving our lives would not be enough to absolve us of that guilt because we're not a good enough sacrifice.
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And then we would be dead and that would be the end of it. So how can I possibly take away my guilt?
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It is God sending His Son for us on our behalf. And Jesus, who was perfect and was righteous and did everything right when we can't do anything right.
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And He, by His life, fulfilling all of the righteous obligations of the law and dying for us that we might live.
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Laying down His life in our place, on our behalf, paying our sin debt for us.
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And when we hear that message in the gospel, the righteousness of God is seen in it.
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The righteous requirement, the righteous demand. We were sinners, God gave
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His righteous Son to die for us so that in Him, we can be forgiven our sins and have eternal life.
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And when we hear that in the message, in the gospel, the righteousness of God, therefore, is revealed.
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And it is revealed, it said, from faith for faith. What does that mean, from faith for faith?
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Well, it's basically the same as saying something to the effect of it begins with faith and it ends with faith.
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You have come to see and know and even live in the righteousness of God because you believed.
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It's talking about our conversion there. So at the time that we have come to faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, we have come to know the righteousness of God. His righteousness has been upon us from then, from the time that we had faith.
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It's not something that we have to work our way toward and eventually we will get to it.
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Some of you probably remember a commencement speech that was given this past May.
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It was one of the biggest stories of the year by the place kicker of the
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Kansas City Chiefs, Harrison Butker. And he was speaking at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
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I've been there to Atchison. Beautiful little town. You wouldn't think that there's a college there, but there is.
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It's a Roman Catholic college. And Butker is a Roman Catholic. And the commencement speech that he gave was very
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Roman Catholic. Now, he made some statements there specifically toward women and was saying, don't listen to the feminism of this age.
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Here is instead what God has in store for you. One of the greatest accomplishments that you can feel rewarded in as a woman is by being a wife and a mother.
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And those statements were so controversial, you heard them all over the place. I think Serena Williams, it was, even spoke against them at the
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ESPYs, telling young girls, don't listen to that guy. Pursue your hopes and your dreams. Anyway, that was the part of the commencement speech that got all of the attention.
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But as I said, the speech itself was very devoted to Roman Catholicism. So you couldn't really call it a
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Christian message, despite the number of times that he would say something like, be a man of God or be a woman of God.
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He talked about the importance of the Latin mass. He talked about the importance of submitting to your priests and having your sins forgiven you by a priest or something like that.
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He would mention in the message. And there was at one point where he was talking about his wife. He was praising her.
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It was beautiful. It was wonderful. They seem like a very nice couple. But he said in there that as they are working on each other and sanctifying each other and trying to grow in holiness, he made the statement and hopefully one day, by the will of God, will attain salvation.
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It was, it was sad. It's heartbreaking that that message exists under the name of Christ.
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He would say that he's a Christ follower. He would say that he's a Christian, but he would say that he hasn't attained it yet.
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He hasn't attained salvation yet. I'm going to continue to do these works. I'm going to continue to do these things.
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I'm going to fulfill these religious obligations and eventually, hopefully, by the will of God, I'll reach salvation.
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But what is this saying to us here? You have the righteousness of God from the start.
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From the moment you believe, you are in his righteousness.
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And there is nothing else that you need to do. It is by the grace of God.
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The righteousness of God is revealed from faith. From the very beginning of our faith, we are in the righteousness of God.
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But Paul doesn't put the period there. He says it is from faith, for faith.
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So he's not just talking about conversion. He's also talking about living in the faith now that you have in Christ.
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So you receive the righteousness of God from the beginning when you believe, but you are still in the righteousness of God in that you are living by faith in the one whom you believed in.
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So you live by that faith. You came to Christ by that faith. You are still in Christ and living in Christ by that faith.
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So it is from beginning to end in faith. Our emphasis as Christians is not just to convert people.
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And very sadly, there are a lot of church missions out there. It seems like that's the extent of their mission.
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Let's just get out there and convert people and we can write a number down. If we've got them baptized, boom, we've got them.
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Let's increase our baptism numbers. But then there's hardly any investment in the church after that.
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Any investment in their lives, it's just simply about conversion numbers. I've been a
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Southern Baptist for a long time. When you go to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, you hear that a lot.
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The numbers that we attain this year when I became the pastor of a
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Southern Baptist church, and I'm looking at the rosters of people that we had on our membership roles, it was something like 1 ,300 people that were members of this church.
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How many people were showing up on a Sunday morning? Not 1 ,300. It wasn't even 200.
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And I'm like, how in the world do we have 1 ,300 on our membership roles here when we don't have that many people in the church?
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Well, because we love our numbers. So we're gonna keep them on those roles because we got them. They're in our books and they make us look good.
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And that seems to be the extent of a church's discipleship program. Just convert the people, add to our numbers, and then that's it.
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But for the Apostle Paul, it was not about conversion. A genuine conversion means that person is going to live in that faith and is going to continue in that faith.
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And so discipleship meant continuing with one another in the faith of Christ that we first proclaimed.
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So from faith, we have the righteousness of Christ. For faith is continuing to live in that righteousness.
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We will demonstrate by our lives the righteousness of Christ that we've been given. When people look at you, do they see that you're a
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Christian? If you were to ask somebody, what do you think my religion is?
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Would they know that you're a Christian? Here's something that's really humbling for you and is a challenge for you and you're already going to not like me because I give you this challenge.
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Ask your kids sometime. For those of you who are parents, ask your children. Do you think mommy or daddy demonstrates
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Christ to you kids? When you look at mommy or daddy, do you see Jesus? Here's an even harder question.
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What do you think mommy or daddy needs to change? And listen to the opinions of your children with regards to the behavior that they see at home.
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Do you demonstrate the righteousness of Christ in your life? When you say that you believe, do you live what you believe?
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George Whitefield said, the American evangelist, he said, a true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle.
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No, it is an active, lively, restless principle. It fills the heart so that it cannot be easy till it is doing something for Jesus Christ.
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We live by our faith. We have come to faith. We continue in that faith.
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And so now this gives light to the statement that we have in the second half of this verse.
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So we're looking at in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. And now let's look at that second half.
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As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Or as some of you might have in some of your translations, the just shall live by faith.
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The Greek word that's used there can be translated either way. The words are interchangeable. It can be just, or it can be righteous.
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And both those words even in English mean the same. What is just? A just person is a person who does what is right.
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What is a righteous person? It's a person who does what is just. So the definitions make the words synonymous.
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Righteousness, we have right at the very beginning of the word. R -I -G -H -T. I asked my children this one time at devotions, what does righteousness mean?
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And one of my girls said, it means right. It means doing what is right. I said, that's right. So how did you get that answer?
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How did you know that? And she said, because the word is right there. It's right there.
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R -I -G -H -T. Doing what is right. Doing what is right according to what? What's the standard?
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According to God. What God has said is just. What He has said is right.
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The righteous shall live then by their faith. There's another way that this verse can be interpreted.
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The way that it gets translated from the Greek into English, it can be rendered another way. If you have the
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English standard version, then you'll probably see a footnote underneath that gives you this alternate wording.
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But it can also be read this way. The one who by faith is righteous shall live.
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It can also be understood like that. The one who by faith is righteous shall live.
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Because how do we have the righteousness of God? By faith. He's given it to us because we believe in Him.
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We are declared righteous because of faith in Christ. Not because of anything that we have done. But because of what
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He has done for us. Now, you'll note also that this verse is put in quotation marks.
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Or this expression, the righteous shall live by faith is in quotation marks. Where does that come from? It's a quote from Habakkuk.
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It's in Habakkuk chapter two. Now, if you're familiar with the book of Habakkuk, it's a very short prophetic book.
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And because it is a short prophet book, it gets called a minor prophet. You have the major prophets and the minor prophets.
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Really the only distinction between the two of them is the major prophets are longer and the minor prophets are shorter. It doesn't mean that one prophet has more authority than the other prophet.
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It's really more a statement of length. So Habakkuk is one of the shorter prophetic books.
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It's also unique in this sense, in that Habakkuk is having a conversation with God.
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They're talking about the judgment that is going to come upon Judah. But Habakkuk never addresses
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Judah. So he's not a prophet coming to Judah saying, here's what God has said to me.
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Rather, he's written down the conversation that he's had with God about Judah. So that's unique.
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Generally, a prophet is given a word that he must then go and speak to a person or people.
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With Habakkuk, he's writing down a conversation that he's had with God. And the conversation begins with Habakkuk complaining.
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That's relatable. He starts by going to God and saying, how long, oh
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Lord, how long are you going to look at violence? How long are you going to see all this wickedness that is going on?
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When are you going to do something about it? And God responds to Habakkuk and says, behold,
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I'm about to do something among the nations. You wouldn't even understand what it is if I told you what it was.
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That's a fantastic answer. Of course, it came from God. Log that one in your memory bank.
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God is doing something in your days you wouldn't understand even if He told you what it was.
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Here's what Habakkuk doesn't understand. And here's what he's complaining about. Judah's been wicked.
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I acknowledge that. I acknowledge that Judah's evil. We have turned away from you. We have turned to worshiping false gods.
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We deserve judgment. I fully acknowledge that. But the judgment that you're bringing is you're using an even more evil nation to come and bring judgment against Judah.
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Like, look at the Chaldeans, God. Do you see how evil they are? And you're gonna use them to judge us?
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Yes, we're bad, but we're not that bad. So how can you bring this more evil nation to bring judgment to us when that nation that is more evil than us deserves more judgment than we do?
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And God is saying to Habakkuk, essentially, you're all evil, okay? So you're all going to receive judgment, but I will render to each one according to his works.
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It will not be an unfair judgment. In fact, it's gonna be an unfair deliverance in the sense that you don't deserve to be delivered, but I'm going to anyway.
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And it's in chapter two that God says this, write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that he may run who reads it.
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For still the vision awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end. It will not lie.
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If it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay.
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Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
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Judgment is coming upon those who are wicked, but those who are righteous will be spared.
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He will live by his faith. The apostle Paul is pointing back to this passage, and he's pointing out that none of us had the ability to be righteous on our own.
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You couldn't keep the law. So how can this be fulfilled then that the righteous person shall live by his faith?
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And the answer is in Christ. Even here through the prophet Habakkuk, all of this was pointing forward to Christ.
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To see that it is in him that we receive a righteousness, that we not only believe in, but live by.
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And the person who has been made righteous by his faith will live, not just live in it, not just live according to it, but will live, will not perish under the judgment of God, but will be delivered because of the righteousness that God has given to us through faith in Jesus Christ.
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And that's how Paul is demonstrating the fulfillment of that promise that God gave to Habakkuk.
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For as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith, will live.
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We won't perish. We won't be destroyed. We won't be judged. We won't be annihilated, obliterated in our sin by the judgment of God, which is what we deserve.
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But we are made alive, brought back from death by faith in Jesus.
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As we had read previously in Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, it is by grace you are saved through faith.
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And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. It is not a result of your works so that no one may boast.
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And so we have looked at so far in Romans 1, 17, that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.
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It is by faith that you come into it. It is by faith you will live by it. For as it is written, and then this statement going back to Habakkuk, the righteous shall live by faith.
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The righteous will be delivered. The righteous does have eternal life by faith in Jesus Christ.
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And it is by that faith that we've been given that righteousness in the first place. So now having looked at these two parts here in Romans 1, 17,
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A and 17, B, if we wanna call it that way, let's review briefly what it is that we've considered with regards to the gospel.
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So again, in Romans 1, 16, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
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Salvation, what does that mean? It means we're being saved. We're saved from what?
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We are saved from the judgment of God, the wrath of God that is burning against every single one of us because of our sin.
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We are saved by whom? By Jesus. Like as a
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Christian, you call him savior, do you not? And so calling him savior, it is
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Jesus Christ who is the one who has saved us from our sin, from the wages of sin, which is death, from the very judgment of God itself.
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And we are saved how? How are we saved? By faith.
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We are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. As Burke Parsons has said,
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Burke Parsons, who's the pastor of St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, he said, this is soteriology simplified.
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God saves us by himself, from himself, unto himself, for himself.
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And that is the summary of the gospel. So we have considered this about the gospel for the last couple of weeks.
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And I said to you before closing here, we would also consider what is not the gospel?
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There are plenty of things out there that people want to call the gospel that won't actually be the gospel.
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In fact, a lot of these people that will use what we can rightly term false gospels probably can't even define what gospel is.
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They don't even know what a false gospel means anyway. And oftentimes when I've made a confrontation with a person who is teaching a false gospel, that's the question
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I'll ask. Well, define gospel for me. What does that even mean? Can you define the word? And generally they can't, which is why they have been misled and have come into believing something false about the gospel that scripture does not teach us.
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So what are some examples of false gospels? This could be a pretty long list.
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But I've summarized it with just six examples. In the Bible, six is the number of man.
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So I figured six false gospels works well. Number one, the therapeutic gospel.
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This is the gospel that's just out to make you feel good. This is the gospel that promises you all kinds of relief from whatever ails you, whatever mental anguish that you might have.
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It is a gospel that's not gonna cause you any trauma. We're gonna help relieve you of your traumas.
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It's just everything that's gonna make you feel fun and fuzzy and comfortable. In fact, a lot of times the church that is preaching a therapeutic gospel will probably even pitch their church with something like, come in whatever makes you comfortable.
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Now I'm not judging anybody's wardrobe from up here this morning. But generally what you'll hear in that is, hey, come in whatever makes you comfortable because we just want you to be comfortable.
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We just want you to be here and we want you to be comfortable. Then you'll sit down, and if they ever preach anything that makes you uncomfortable, suddenly you're feeling, oh, this wasn't exactly the tag that I heard selling this church to me.
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This wasn't your log line. You told me to come in whatever makes me comfortable and now you're preaching things that make me uncomfortable.
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Well, a church that is preaching a therapeutic gospel is never gonna make you feel uncomfortable. We wanna make you feel warm and fuzzy as if you're wearing your snuggie right there in your pew.
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It's the therapeutic gospel. It's the feel good message. We're never gonna tell you about your sin. We're never gonna tell you that you're guilty or you're not good enough and that only
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Christ makes you worthy. We're not gonna make you anything that feels low.
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The stuff that you like to do in your flesh, that's okay, you can do that.
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May not put it in those words, but that's what they will permit. Not calling anything out, not talking about a
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God of judgment, but just a God that warmly welcomes you no matter what. He loves you just as you are.
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The Bible says, come as you are, but not stay as you are. If we have an encounter with the real
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Christ, he will change us and we should expect that. It might be painful.
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It might be uncomfortable, but that is the work of God in the life of every sinner who needs him.
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So first false gospel, the therapeutic gospel. Second one, the social gospel. What is the social gospel?
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It is the gospel that teaches basically love, but love in the sense that you need to go out and do nice things for people.
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And that's the true gospel. And if we're not going out there and just doing charity work and helping to relieve people of their oppression or their plight or their circumstances, if we're not going out and feeding the poor or doing things like that, all of which are good things by the way, but it's not the gospel.
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It's the effect of the gospel. We do kind works, good works for people as the outworking of the gospel in our lives, but it's not itself the gospel.
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You can do all kinds of nice things for people, but unless they know about their sin and need for a savior and that Christ is that savior, then you've not helped them at all.
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You've just given them a comfortable seat on their way to hell. The message that saves is an actual message, not a work or a deed that we do for someone else, but what
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Christ has done for us. By his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave and by believing in him, our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life.
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That's the message of the gospel. If we're going to do kind things for people, we should, that's great, but all of that is the outworking of the gospel.
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It's not the gospel itself. So the social gospel, just doing kind things for people is a false gospel.
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A third false gospel, the prosperity gospel. It's also called the health and wealth gospel.
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It's the idea that Jesus died for you to have lots of stuff or to not be sick anymore.
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And they will interpret that passage in Isaiah 53, by his stripes, we are healed. Peter repeats it as well in first Peter.
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And they'll take that verse and it'll mean, see, he died so that you don't have to be sick anymore.
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And the people who preach this prosperity gospel will tell you that you need to sow a seed of faith.
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And if you sow a seed, then God will bless you, he'll heal your diseases and he'll give you everything that your heart desires.
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And the more you give, the more God is gonna give back to you. So you'll go to these televangelists or you'll go to these big conferences and they're preaching this particular message and you give thousands of dollars expecting that you're gonna get something in return and you don't receive anything.
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And you know what they tell you when you don't get the healing that you think you paid for? Well, you just don't believe hard enough.
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It's your fault. You didn't have enough faith. As my friend Kosti Hinn has said, the only person who benefits from the prosperity gospel is the prosperity preacher.
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But it is a false gospel. A fourth kind of gospel is the poverty gospel.
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So contrast to the prosperity gospel is the poverty gospel. And I'll tell you, I hear the poverty gospel talked about more often than I actually see it done.
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So the poverty gospel is give up everything. You don't have anything at all. You live in a life of poverty and if you give it all up, then
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God will give you everything. And usually it's, you know, like taking the story from Mark 10, for example, where Jesus speaks to the rich young ruler, give all you have to the poor and then come follow me and you'll have treasure in heaven.
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And they'll take that verse and translate it as you just need to get rid of all your stuff and then you have eternal life.
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But you never see them do that. They just say that. So the poverty gospel is another false gospel.
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A fifth kind of false gospel the faith plus works gospel. And really you could say that this gospel is faith plus anything else.
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If you're adding something to faith, if you're adding something to the grace of God, if you think that you have to do this in order to attain salvation, that's a false gospel.
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Faith plus nothing equals everything. And you might even have within yourself this idea that, okay, well,
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God has done 99 % of the work. This one thing I just need to do and I know if I do this thing, then that's what will attain my salvation.
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You'll never even accomplish that 1%. If you're adding anything to the gospel, then it's a false gospel.
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It's a faith plus works gospel. And lastly, and this one is probably the most common false gospel in our culture today.
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Number six, the universal gospel. Which is what?
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Everybody goes to heaven. And my friends, that is a message more damning than atheism itself.
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Why? Because atheism just posits there is no God. There's no reward for anything you do.
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Good or bad doesn't matter. There's not going to be repercussions. There's not going to be reward. That's atheism.
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The universal gospel will tell you though, no matter what you do, good or bad, you get rewarded for it.
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So you could be the most evil person on the planet. You still get heaven.
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Everybody gets to go. And it is absolutely offensive to that mindset, to the person who thinks that everybody gets to go to heaven.
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To say there is only one way to heaven and that is through Jesus Christ. The exclusivity of that, of the true gospel has been spoken about here in Romans 1.
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I am not ashamed of the gospel for it. It and only it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes there is one way to the father and that is through Jesus Christ and no other way.
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John 3 .16 is a verse that we've referenced a few times as we've been talking about the gospel here. John 3 .16,
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for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.
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It's probably the most well -known verse in all of the New Testament. But it's amazing that when you hear that verse quoted, people will add universality to that and ignore the exclusivity of it.
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For it is said in that very verse, God so loved the world and they'll stop right there, right?
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There's the universality. God loved the world so I'm going to heaven. We're all going, guys.
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That he gave his only son that whoever believes in him won't perish but will have everlasting life.
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It is only through Christ and no other way. God did not provide a whole pantheon of ways for you to go.
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Oh, here's Buddha. Here's Hare Krishna. Here's Gandhi. Here's Muhammad. Here's atheism.
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All these different ways. As long as you believe it with all your heart, then, hey, you get to go. God didn't provide all these different ways.
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He loved the world to provide one way. And you can think that's unfair.
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But why should God provide any way at all? He loved us to give his son to die for us that all who believe in him will not perish but will have everlasting life.
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That's the good news of the gospel. And my friends, since we know that, since we know the exclusivity of the gospel, that should drive us to want to share it with others because there isn't any other way you get to God.
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It's only through Christ. So we have to recognize there are people right here in Casa Grande heading to hell right outside these doors.
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The only way they're going to be rescued from that, saved from that, is by faith in Jesus Christ.
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There is a solution to our guilt problem. There is a solution to our death problem.
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And that solution has been given to us in Christ. And you can be forgiven your sins and relieved of your guilt.
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And not only that, but know with certainty that before God, I am innocent because of what
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Jesus has done for me. And it is by faith the righteous shall live by faith in him.
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What can wash away my sin? Nothing.
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But the blood of Jesus. Would you sing that with me?
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If you know that first verse and chorus, let's do that together. You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.
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For more information about our church, visit our website at providencecasagrande .com. On behalf of our church family, my name is
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Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again Monday for more Bible study, when we understand the text.