What Members Should Expect in the Church 1

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You may be seated.
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It is my custom at this time to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to a particular Bible passage, but you'll notice in the bulletin that there is not a single Bible passage listed.
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The reason for that is we are going to be looking at a plethora of biblical texts.
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We have, beginning today, an 18-point sermon.
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We're not going to do all 18 points today, praise the Lord, but we're going to go as far as we go, and we're going to be looking at various biblical passages.
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You all know that we have been in the series of Biblically Functioning Church.
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We're revisiting this, which we did several years ago, and last week we talked about the subject of church membership.
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We asked the question, is membership in a local church biblical, and we answered that with a yes.
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We affirmed that if you examine the Bible, there's a process by which a person can be excluded from the church, and certainly if there's a process of exclusion, that proves the point that there was a process of inclusion.
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Inclusion in the church is by a statement of faith and being baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, making a covenant with the people that you're going to live together, worship together, work together for the kingdom of God.
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So being a part of the local church is certainly biblical, and we also saw that being a member of the local church is something that's been greatly misunderstood.
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It's been misunderstood as a form of entitlement rather than a form of submission, and that's become a problem in how people even understand what it means to be a member of the local church.
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Well, today we're going to be doing something that wasn't in the first series, because in the first series, I was trying to help the church understand the sort of the warp and woof of what it meant to be a member of a church, but I didn't get around to the subject that we're going to talk about today, and it wasn't a part of the first series.
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So if you were here seven or eight years ago for the first time we did this series, if you were here, you didn't hear this.
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So this is new.
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This is new for everybody, because when I was preaching last week's sermon, I realized I didn't deal much with what it meant to be a church member, just what it didn't mean.
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You know, it didn't mean it was entitlement, it meant submission.
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So today we're going to step away, and we're going to start to ask the question of expectations.
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Expectations in a biblically functioning church.
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Over the years, I have spent countless hours sitting with people either across a dinner table, or in my office, or in our counseling room, discussing the reasons why they choose or choose not to become a part of the church.
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Many of you have been in these conversations with me, I've sat in your homes, or we've sat in a restaurant, or we've sat in my office, and we've talked about why or why not you've chosen to become a member of the church.
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And in that time, I've heard so many variations of expectations.
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Sometimes the expectations are all regarding the programming of the church.
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Some people, as soon as they come in, they want to know, well, do you have a good youth program, are my kids going to be entertained, are they going to be excited and stimulated, is there a good social network, are they going to be enjoying themselves the whole time that they're there? Other times, it's an expectation of support.
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They'll come in with a ministry that they do, that's already established, and they say, well, if I come in, I already am doing this thing, is the church going to support me in what I do, and if they're not going to support me, I'm not going to stay.
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Sometimes it's possible to support them, sometimes it's not, and that becomes an issue.
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Less often, it's an expectation of theology.
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They'll say, are you covenantal, dispensational, are you Calvinist, Arminian, are you Paedo or Credo, Baptist, by the way, Paedo Baptist, do you baptize babies, do you baptize believers, what's your deal? And those are important questions, I'm not diminishing anything.
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It's not wrong to have expectations when you come into a body of believers, and neither is it wrong for the church to have expectations for you when you come in.
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There should be a mutual expectation.
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When you become a member of the church, there are things the church should expect from you, and when you become a member of the church, there are things that you should expect from the church.
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Joining a church is entering into a covenantal relationship with that body, and every covenant relationship has expectations.
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So what I want us to see today are what are the proper expectations a person should have when they're joining a church, and what are the proper expectations the church should have when the person joins the church.
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That's why it's 18 points.
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There's a lot to consider.
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I do respect a person who takes time to pray through and really consider whether or not they should join a church.
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This is an important thing.
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I do think sometimes we wait too long, and sometimes I think that we should consider what it means to submit, but the reality is it's an important decision, and there are things that you need to understand are primary, and they should be considered above all else.
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So I don't have a specific Bible verse to read, so I'm not going to ask you to stand, but I am going to pray that God would lead me through this message.
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So let's bow our heads.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for the opportunity to again preach.
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I pray that this message will remain a biblically sound message, that it would be one that would glorify you and one that would edify your people.
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I pray that they would be challenged to faith and good works, and I pray that they would be called to repentance on any area that they need to repent, and myself included, Father.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error, for I certainly am a fallible man and capable of preaching error, and I pray that you would keep me from that, and I pray ultimately that you would, by your grace and mercy, do that which only you can do, and that is change hearts and conform them to your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, Amen.
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Usually I hear everybody sit at that point, so it's a little odd.
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This is like a little, excuse me.
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The trend in many modern churches, at least what I have seen, and I do look outside of our church a lot at sort of what's going on in the greater world of Christianity, and the trend in many modern churches has been a move away from anything that might seem or feel like old-timey church.
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Buildings with stained glass and bright colors have given way to colored lighting and darker atmospheres.
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Often the look is more akin to a traditional nightclub than it would be to that of a traditional church.
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But at the end of the day, that's really not important, and that's something I wanted to kind of start my message off with.
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There are faithful men of God who preach in modern buildings and modern-looking stages, and there are heretics who preach from the most elaborate and ornate pulpits in America.
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Style by itself is the least important expectation anyone should have in looking for a church, yet it is often that desire which trumps all others.
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Style over substance becomes the focus.
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A church is often accepted or rejected based on what the pastor wears in the pulpit, how the building looks, the age and family demographic of the congregation.
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Those three things become the primary thing.
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In fact, it's the very things that we would never want people to judge us for.
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We'd never want people to judge us by how we dress, the type of home we live in, or the age or family situation that we're in.
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We wouldn't want people to judge us by that, but that's how we judge churches.
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How do they dress? What does their building look like? And what's the age demographic? Weird, huh? Wouldn't want that for you to judge me personally, but that's certainly how I'll judge the church.
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Some kind of hypocritical in a way.
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Superficial expectations for a church are not healthy, and yet they're often the most influential.
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But that again is not to say that expectations are wrong.
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There are right expectations that we should have regarding the church, and so that's what this message is about.
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And we're not going to be talking about whether or not the pastor has a tie or torn up jeans, because that doesn't matter.
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Again, you've got heretics in ties, and you've got righteous men in torn up jeans.
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It doesn't matter.
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What does matter, though, are the things we're going to talk about.
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These are the things that are the qualities that should mark any church that is a true church of Christ, a true church of the living God.
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And that includes churches that are located in cathedrals and those that are located in industrial warehouses, pastors who preach in suits and pastors who preach in screen printed t-shirts, members who are made up of older demographics, younger demographics, or a mixture of the two.
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Because all of the things we're going to talk about transcend style, and we need to understand that in the beginning.
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Everything we're going to talk about that matters transcends style.
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So I didn't give you an outline in your worship folder because I wasn't sure how far we'd get, but I know that we're going to get to the first one.
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So if you want to write down, well, I'll give you the nine, but don't try to write it down because you'll be way behind.
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You'll get them in the weeks to come.
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There are nine things that a person should expect when they come to the church, and I do want to thank Mark Dever.
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Mark Dever wrote the book, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, and he lists some of these qualities for us, and it was very helpful for me.
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So Mark Dever is the pastor of one of the best churches in America.
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It's actually in Washington, amazingly.
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One of the best churches is actually up there in the heart of it, in the heart of all that craziness.
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So I appreciate Mark's input on this.
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And then I, of course, I included nine things that the church should expect from its members.
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So here they are.
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Here are nine things that a person should expect when they come to a church.
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Doesn't matter what the church is, doesn't matter the style.
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They should expect biblical preaching, biblical theology, a biblical understanding of the gospel, a biblical understanding of conversion, a biblical understanding of evangelism, biblical church membership, biblical discipleship, biblical leadership, and biblical discipline.
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Those are the nine things that a person should expect when they go into a church, and if one of those things is missing, there is a problem.
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Now, on the opposite side, what should the church expect from its members? Well, I've broken these nine things down into three categories, participation, contribution, and submission, participation in worship, fellowship, and ministry, contribution in spiritual gifts, prayers, and finances, and submission in scripture and leadership and to discipline.
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Those are the nine things that a church should be able to expect from its members.
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So that's a lot to get through.
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How long is it going to take? Are you guys going to be able to handle it? We'll hope so.
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Well, for the remainder of this lesson and into the weeks ahead, I want to expound on these, and we're going to begin with the first one.
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What should a person expect from the church? Well, the first thing they should expect is biblical preaching.
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Biblical preaching should be primary when a person comes into the church.
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Often you've heard the term expositional preaching.
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You've heard us say that? If you go to the website, in fact, it says that.
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Expositional or expository preaching is what we promote here at Sovereign Grace.
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And we don't promote it because we want to be unique.
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We promote it because we think that this is what every church should be doing.
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Because expositional preaching is simply biblical preaching.
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All exposition means is to expose something or to shed light on something or to open it up so that everyone may see it.
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It's to explain it.
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And you've heard me say this before, but I'll say it again.
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Preaching is very simple.
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Read the text, explain the text, apply the text.
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That's it.
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Preaching is not entertainment.
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Preaching is not how many jokes can you tell or how many stories can you string together.
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Preaching is about going to the Word of God, reading the Word of God and explaining the Word of God.
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Some people think that expositional preaching means that you have to preach all the way through books, and that's the only way to do it.
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And then you hear these same people say, but I love Charles Spurgeon.
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Guess what Charles Spurgeon didn't do? He didn't preach through books.
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Isn't that amazing? George Whitefield.
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They'll say he's the greatest evangelist preacher who ever lived, never preached through a book.
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So if you think that expositional preaching simply means somebody starts at the beginning of Genesis and works their way through or starts at the beginning of Matthew and works their way through because that's the way that you've seen some preachers do it and say that's the only way to do it.
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It's not the only way to do it.
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But I will say this, it's a consistent way of doing it.
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And it's helpful for the minister to make sure that he's preaching in context because if I get up and preach from Matthew 18 and the next week I'm in Mark 6 and the week after that I'm in John 3, I'm having to explain the context every time I preach because we're switching context every time we get to the message.
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And so the benefit and why you have seen me preach through books of the Bible is because my goal is to maintain proper context in my preaching and understand what I'm reading because I want to preach the Bible correctly.
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Turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 15.
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Some of you probably can quote this, especially if you went to the seminary I did, like Jim and I did, because it was over the wall.
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When you walked out of the seminary, this one passage was made into a brass plaque and put on the wall.
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It's 2 Timothy 2.15 and it says, in the King James it says, Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
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But in the ESV it says, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
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Some people say, you're talking about biblical preaching.
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Don't all preachers preach from the Bible? No.
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Because even though somebody might stand up and read a verse from the Bible, that doesn't mean he's preaching from the Bible.
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Paul tells us right here that the workman who needs not to be ashamed is the one who has done the work to show himself approved unto God and is able to rightly handle that word.
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And there are many men in this world who stand behind pulpits who do not rightly handle the word.
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I remember one night, I was at an evangelism meeting at a church.
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I was asked to come do the music, funny enough, I wasn't asked to preach.
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It was more of a charismatic church, so I understand they didn't really want me to preach.
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But I was asked to do the music, so I came and I did the music and I sat down on the chancel behind the man who was preaching.
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He came up, he opened up his Bible.
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He looked at it and went, you know, I was going to read from the Bible, but somebody here needs a touch from God.
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Come down here if you need a touch from God.
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And everybody just flooded the front.
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He never even read.
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He said he had one, but he didn't even read it.
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Because he had to get right to that slapping party that they were having, where he would slap and they would fall and that was that.
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Beloved, that's not biblical preaching.
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And that service was overshadowed with emotionalism.
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And no one was fed the Word of God.
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Paul tells us, he says, do your best.
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He's talking to Timothy.
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He's talking to a preacher.
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He's talking to the one who is his, the one he's raising up in the faith, his son in the faith.
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Paul's the mentor.
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Timothy's the protege.
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And he's reaching down, he's loving him and he's saying, look man, you need to, and I like the fact that the King James says study to show yourself approved.
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In our modern vernacular, we think of study as sitting down before a book and reading.
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And that's fine.
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But really it's saying, do your best.
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It means to do the work.
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Do the work that's necessary to rightly handle this book.
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If you are in a church where the man is not doing the work necessary to rightly handle the Word, I don't care how good their children's programs are.
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I don't care how good the women's ministry is or the men's ministry or the children's ministry.
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I don't care if that Word of God is not being handled correctly.
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Abandon the church.
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That is primary, must be primary.
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Biblical preaching.
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Paul tells Timothy in 2nd Timothy 4, preach the Word.
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In season and out of season, preach the Word.
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Rebuke, reprove, exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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Preach the Word.
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In fact, turn there.
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Turn one chapter over to chapter 4 and just look at this with me.
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He says, I charge you, this is Peter's charge, I'm sorry, Paul's charge to Timothy.
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Paul's charge to Timothy after he's told him to study to show himself approved, rightly handle the Word of truth, and he gets to chapter 4 and verse 1.
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He says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing in His kingdom, preach the Word.
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Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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For the time is coming.
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This is why this is so important.
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Why? Preach the Word.
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Why is it important? For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
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As for you, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your ministry.
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He says, look man, you need to preach the Word because there's coming a time when there's men who won't.
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You need to preach the Word because there's coming a time when men will preach their own passions and people will love them for it.
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Because their ears will itch for that kind of scratch.
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Beloved, if we're not there, I don't know.
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I mean, if you can't look out and see that that is all over the place, the preaching that simply desires to tickle the ear, to satisfy the felt need of the individual, that is where we are.
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So Paul tells Timothy, he says, preach the Word.
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Recently a prominent preacher was on a television show and he was asked, do you preach on sin? This was a few years ago, some of you might remember.
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The person asked him, do you preach on sin like those other guys? You know, those Hellfire Brimstone preachers who talk about sin.
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Do you preach on sin? And he said, well, no, I don't like to focus on the negative.
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That was his response.
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That was the exact quote, unquote.
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No, I don't like to focus on the negative.
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Who do you think Paul was talking about in this passage? You know, I often hear people say, well, we need to pray for the people who are under those false teachers because they're the victims of those false teachers.
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No, they're not.
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They're not their victims.
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This text tells us they wanted that.
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They have asked for that.
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They're under the judgment of God because that's what they wanted and so God gave it to them.
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I recently, you've all seen this quote from John Calvin.
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He says when God wants to judge a nation, he gives them wicked rulers.
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Boy, if we ain't seen that come to pass.
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If God wants to judge a nation, he gives them wicked rulers.
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Well, I believe if God wants to judge a church, he gives them a wicked pastor.
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You see men who come in and they do, who preaches just what the people want to hear.
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I tell you what, it was a great sense of, I want to say this and I hope it comes out the right way.
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It was a great sense of a lifting of the weight on my shoulders when I realized years ago that I don't care if you fire me.
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I really don't.
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If you fire me for preaching the truth, I won't care.
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I'm still going to preach the truth.
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And that was a weight that lifted because I know a lot of men who still have that weight over them.
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They're afraid to lose their job for preaching the truth.
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Biblical preaching must be primary.
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A healthy church starts with preaching.
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So let's move on because I want to get to at least more than one of 18 points if we can.
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Biblical preaching is first.
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Second thing, a person should expect when they come into a church, they should expect that the preaching is biblical.
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Number two, they should expect biblical theology.
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And that's an outgrowth of the first.
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For without biblical preaching, where the Bible takes center stage, biblical theology will not come.
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This is why in regard to the elders, the apostle Paul says to Titus, now I'll have you turn there, turn one book over to Titus.
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Again, I told you we'd be in a lot of passages today.
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Turn over to Titus.
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What does he say to Titus? In regard to an elder.
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Chapter 1, verse 9.
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Verse 9.
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Speaking of the elder, it says this.
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He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he, that is the elder, may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine, and also to rebuke those who contradict it.
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You see, not only must the preaching come from the Bible, but it must also be in accord with sound doctrine.
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That is something that the church should expect in the preaching and from the leadership.
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You should be confident that you are being fed according to sound biblical doctrine.
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That we are not creating religious teaching out of whole cloth, but that we are teaching you what the Bible says.
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And you know what the saddest thing is? Often times when people come into the church looking for the church, the very last thing that they consider is what is taught.
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Almost always it is how it feels, or what they are doing, or the programs that they are running.
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What does it matter if the church has a stellar outreach program, a jam up youth ministry, a hopping worship band, if they don't teach what is in accord with sound doctrine? What does it matter? If all of your felt needs are met, but your spiritual needs leave you anemic and unfilled, what does it matter? If you are not being challenged to repent, to trust in Christ, to change and to be conformed to His image, what does it matter? Recently, Mike and I do the website, Mike does all the heavy lifting, and I give him my little ideas here and there, but Mike and I talk about church websites.
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We'll go out and look at websites, because we want our website to be appealing, when people go on, we want it to be easy to read, we want people to know who we are, but we want to be very clear who we are.
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That's part of the name, Sovereign Grace Family Church, kind of says a lot about who we are right in the name, but we want very prominent our statement of faith, so that people who are looking know who we are.
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So we go out and look at other websites, and isn't it so often that you go and you can't even find what they believe? Mike and I talk about you go out, or it's so obscure that it would fit in anything.
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You realize that if you were to go to the Mormon website and look at the Mormon statement of faith, that it's so obscure that you really couldn't disagree with a whole lot of it, because they have done the work of making it seem so basic.
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They've hidden the stuff that's really obscure and bad.
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Beloved, as a church, we should be very open about what we teach.
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We reform theology.
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I have no shame in saying I'm a reformed pastor.
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I have no shame in saying that we believe in the five solas, and I teach the tulip.
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If you don't know what that means, we'll talk about it another time.
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But these are things you should be ashamed of.
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You are who you are.
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And stand on it.
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Stand for it.
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I'll never forget the conversation I had with a young man.
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He goes, I'm wanting to go to seminary because I want to be a pastor.
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Okay.
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And I said, well, here's a seminary.
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This is a good seminary.
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You should consider this one because it's good theology, and they'll teach you proper doctrine.
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And he goes, well, I hate doctrine.
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I said, you want to be a pastor and you hate doctrine? What, are you nuts? I said, don't hate doctrine, son.
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Called him son.
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I said, don't hate doctrine, son.
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I said, it's what separates you from the false teacher.
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It's what matters.
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So biblical preaching gives way to biblical theology.
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One should lead to the other.
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And if either one are off, abandon the church.
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That's what you should expect from the church.
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That you're going to be preached to correctly, and you're going to be taught correctly.
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Third, and this will be it for today, I guess, because time comes and time goes.
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Oh, I might have a little extra time.
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That clock's off.
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So we said biblical preaching, biblical theology.
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Third, a biblical understanding of the gospel.
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A biblical understanding of the gospel.
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What is the gospel? Now some people, when you ask that question, they will go right to Paul's definition.
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And that's fine.
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Go to 1 Corinthians 15.
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Paul gives us a very simple definition of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15.
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And if this is what somebody says, if I ask you what is the gospel, and you go to this passage and you say, well, this is the way Paul defined the gospel, I'm not going to argue with you.
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Because this is what Paul says.
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So that's fine.
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It says in 1 Corinthians 15, Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believe in vain.
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For I delivered to you, as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
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So if I say, what's the gospel? And somebody says, well, it's the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
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That's the root of all the good news of Jesus Christ.
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That He died, was buried, and He resurrected.
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And if we believe in that, then we understand at least what He has done on our behalf.
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And you say, okay, that's the basic understanding of the gospel.
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But is that all? I mean, I had a guy come in the other day to the church office and wanted to argue with me about sovereignty and things like that.
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Well, he didn't come to argue, but he left arguing.
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Because he was saying some stuff that was off the wall.
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But he came in, and I questioned him, you know, the basic question.
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Mike and I talk about this question all the time.
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How is a sinful man made right with the Holy God? You know, because he was saying all kinds of stuff about contrails and how the government is trying to kill us and all this stuff.
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And I was, okay, I didn't want to argue about that.
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Okay, how is a sinful man made right with the Holy God? And he was stumbling over, well, something about the blood of Jesus.
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This should be a question we should be able to answer, because that's the gospel.
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How is a sinful man made right with the Holy God? That is the gospel.
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The answer to that is the gospel.
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And it's encompassed in 1 Corinthians 15, but you need to understand what all this means.
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Because even though that is the definition of the gospel, if all you tell somebody, if they say, what's the gospel? You say, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
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If you don't tell them how that applies to them, and how that applies to this world, then that's not going to make a whole lot of sense.
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You see, Paul doesn't just write four verses.
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He writes an entire book about this.
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Several, by the way, about what the gospel is.
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Romans 1, he says, The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
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For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
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As it is written, the just shall live by faith.
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The gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
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How is the gospel the power of God unto salvation? Well, there are truths that are definition to the gospel that you need to understand.
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You need to understand the work of Christ in justification.
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That God has declared you righteous before Him because of the work of Christ.
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That's what justification is.
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A declaration, a legal declaration of righteousness that you have received because of the work of Christ.
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Christ's righteousness became yours, and now God can declare you righteous because of Christ.
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You need to understand imputation and double imputation.
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Your sins were imputed to Christ.
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That means your sin were charged to Him.
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His righteousness was given to you, charged to your account.
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Your ledger, which was filled with sin, has now been wiped clean, and all of that sin was placed in Christ.
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All of His righteousness, which filled His ledger, is now placed in yours.
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And you have gone from positively unrighteous to positively righteous because of His work, not your own.
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You need to understand penal substitutionary atonement.
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That the penalty that you deserved, which is the wrath of God, was poured out on His Son for you.
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Go to Isaiah 53.
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Don't ever think that penal substitutionary atonement is optional.
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It is not.
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Go to Isaiah 53 and I will show you.
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Verse 5.
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We could read the whole chapter, but I just want to show you a few things in verse 5.
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Speaking of Christ, it says, He was wounded for what? Our transgressions.
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He was crushed for what? Our iniquities.
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Upon Him was the chastisement, that's the beating, that brought us peace, and by His stripes we are healed.
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What does that mean? Christ took the penalty that you deserved.
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And some people go out into this crazy view, they'll say, well that's cosmic child abuse.
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It's not cosmic child abuse.
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Because Jesus Christ was willing to take what you deserved.
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Jesus Christ went to the cross on His own accord.
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No man takes my life from me, but I lay it down on my own accord.
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Don't give me that cosmic child abuse argument.
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It's foolishness.
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Absolute and utter foolishness.
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Justification, imputation, substitutionary atonement.
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These are things that are included in the Gospel and you need to understand them.
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And if they're not taught in the church you're in, abandon the church.
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Even if it's this one.
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Two last things that are included in the Gospel, and there's so many more that I wish I could spend more time with this, but two last things.
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Forgiveness.
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Forgiveness.
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You stand before God because of justification, because of imputation, and because of the atonement.
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You stand before God absolutely forgiven.
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I tell you what, I have people who have a hard time with that.
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I myself, you know, have times where it's difficult to even understand because I know how bad I am.
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And you know how bad you are.
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And yet you have been forgiven.
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The Bible says He has taken your iniquities and He has separated them from you as far as the east is from the west, which means infinite.
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Never the two shall meet.
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You are forgiven in Christ.
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Amen.
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Absolutely.
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You are forgiven in Christ.
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And that's a beautiful part of the Gospel.
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You don't need to carry the weight of your sin anymore.
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It's gone.
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And that's why Christ says, you know, my burden is light because the burden of sin has been lifted.
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And we no longer work for our own salvation.
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He's done all the work for us.
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And everything we do now is in response to and not in order to earn our salvation.
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And lastly, not only do you have forgiveness, but you have peace with God.
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Romans 5.1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, not by works, not by the pope, not by things you've done, not by money you've given, not by works you've performed, but therefore, having been justified by faith, you have peace with God.
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You know what you were before you came to Christ? You were at enmity with Him.
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You know what the word enmity means? War.
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But now, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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Beloved, that's the Gospel.
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And certainly it's more, but it's no less than what I've said.
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And one of the expectations that every person who comes into a church should have for that church is that they preach the Gospel.
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That the Gospel is clearly enunciated.
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That you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scripture alone, and to God alone be the glory.
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And if it's anything else, abandon the church.
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Father, I thank You for the opportunity to preach the Gospel.
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I thank You for the opportunity to talk about its importance in relationship to the overall health of the church, and how if we are to remain a biblically functioning church, we must biblically preach, we must have a biblical theology, and we must have a biblical understanding of the Gospel.
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For without these things, Lord, we cease to be a church.
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I pray, Lord, that the Gospel has been heard and understood today.
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I pray, Lord, that if there be anyone here who has not received Christ as Savior by the gift of regeneration that You alone can give, I pray, Lord, today might be the day, and they might call out to You in repentance and faith.
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Lord, thank You for this church and for the opportunity again to preach Your Word.
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May it be used to draw Your people closer and to bring Your people in.
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In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.