You Must 'Preach' the Gospel

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Martin Luther said that Romans should be part of the daily feeding of every child of God.

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I agree with him. Romans chapter 1, I'm going to read actually the first portion up to verse 16.

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I'm reading from the ESV. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the

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Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the

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Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead,

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Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

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To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed in all the world.

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For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing

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I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you, for I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.

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I want you to know, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented, in order that I may reap some harvest among you, as well as among the rest of the

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Gentiles. I'm under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish, so I'm eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome.

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And here we go. 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 for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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Thus far is the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Father, I pray you bless this message today, God, to your glory, to the extension of the glory and the fame of Jesus the

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Messiah in all the earth. Lord Jesus, you came to bring salvation to the ends of the earth, and I pray that today you'd get me out of the way,

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God, and that you would bring this message by your Spirit into the hearts and minds of your people, that you would convict, that you would challenge, that you would draw out fire from us,

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God, and that you'd put it there. In Jesus' name, amen. So it's interesting, in Romans the apostle

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Paul calls himself a slave of Jesus, a slave of Jesus. He's called to be an apostle, and he says this, he's set apart for, listen, the good news of God.

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So in this chapter you have Paul calling it the gospel of Jesus, you have

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Paul calling it God's gospel, you have him just referring to it as the gospel, and what we know about the word gospel in English is we get it, it means essentially good news, it means the good message, it's good news, it comes out of my mouth, it's a story that's meaningful to somebody, it's good news.

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It's a proclamation of God's good news, and here's the deal, listen, we should take notice of the message if it's coming from God.

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If you consider for a second, if you had an invitation from the President of the United States to come and speak with him, it'd be an interesting conversation, right?

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But if you had an invitation from the President of the United States of America, no matter who it was, and he offered you the invitation to come and talk to him because he has good news for you, no matter how you feel about the man, you want to go because it's the

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President of the United States and he has something to say to me. He says he has good news for me, he has a good message for me, he wants me to hear it.

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I think all of us would actually agree with the fact that if we got that invitation we would go. If the

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President of the United States of America said I have good news for you specifically and I want you to hear it, we would go, we would listen because we want to know what's so good for me.

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Well this is, listen, the creator of all things, the creator of you, the one who knit you together in your mother's womb, that God, the one who spoke and the universe came into existence, the

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God who actually carries everything along to its intended destination. This God, the

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God who's spinning Saturn right now and Jupiter, keeping him in orbit, keeping it just the right place to protect us from enough space junk, the

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God who actually keeps Neptune where it's at so we can have turkey on Thanksgiving. That God has good news for us.

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It's actually His good news. Now that needs to say something to us because it doesn't really make sense that, listen, the

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God that we've offended has good news for us. It would actually make sense if you consider the context of Scripture, that God Himself who is the

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Holy One, the Good One, the Powerful One, the Just One, the Merciful One, the One that is full of love forever, the

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One whose mercies are new every morning, it would make sense to me if that God actually had some pretty terrible news for me.

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It makes sense to me. Jeff, you're a liar. Jeff, you're a thief. Jeff, you're a criminal in my court.

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Jeff, you're condemned before me because you're a rebel, because you hate my character, because you hate who

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I am. That would make sense to me if God actually came to me and said, I have bad news for you. I'm going to judge you.

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It would make sense. It would be awful to hear, but it would make sense. Listen, here's the trippy thing about Romans as it opens up.

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Paul says that he's a slave of this Jesus, the Messiah, and that it's God's gospel.

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It's God's good news. If you look in the Scriptures, you see gospel used a lot of different ways.

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You see gospel of the kingdom. Jesus in Matthew chapter 4 is out preaching the good news of the kingdom.

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So there's actually a gospel aspect of the kingdom message, that Jesus is

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Messiah, that he is going to die for sinners, ascend, raise from the dead.

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He's going to be seated and bring salvation to the ends of the earth. He's the King of kings, the Lord of lords.

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That message is good news. It's good news of a kingdom. It's also good news of God's salvation, good news of his forgiveness and redemption for sinners who are unworthy of it.

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That's awesome. God has good news. And listen, you can get, admit it for a second, jaded completely by that term.

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You can hear it so much, gospel, gospel, gospel, and it can lose its real beauty. It can lose the real effect it's supposed to have on us as Christians and overwhelm us.

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Think back to when you first heard the message. Maybe some of you remember, maybe some of you don't.

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I remember. I wasn't raised in a Christian home, and so hearing the good news of redemption in Jesus was something that absolutely blew my mind.

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To think about God as the one I've offended who's actually provided in his son redemption as a gift of his grace, apart from works of law,

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Jesus pays it all, that Jesus gives me his righteousness, that he died as my substitute, and all

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I need to do is turn from my sin and cling to him, he's paid it all. That was good news.

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It meant everything to me. But the problem is, as Christians, we get jaded to it.

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We get too comfortable with it. We sort of like start to just sort of accept the fact that God loves me so much, he paid his life for my sins, and it doesn't become so special anymore.

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But it's God's good news. And let me tell you, it's all the more meaningful for all of us as Christians when we stand before the throne of our

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God and we're covered in the righteousness of Jesus and it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with him.

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That message is so much better news then. Amen? It's so much more meaningful then.

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We also get jaded to its proclamation because we've told people before about Jesus and maybe we didn't see fruit.

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We see the world around us as difficult as it may be and we don't go to it because it looks too challenging, it's too big.

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It's a massive thing. It's sort of like a Goliath right in front of us, a massive

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Goliath, and we get, you know, I don't really need to do it, but God's sovereign, he'll take care of it, right? It's the problem of being a

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Calvinist. You can be a little too Calvinistic for your own good, right? God's sovereign, he'll take care of it.

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We're the means of the grace to do it. And here we are in God's field with this massive thing in front of us, this massive creature, and we act much like Israel did at the day of David and Goliath.

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They're freaking out because of this massive guy. David's response is, who does this guy think he is? This uncircumcised

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Philistine. It meant a lot, circumcision situation. This uncircumcised Philistine to come against the armies of the living

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God. Who does he think he is? And the problem we have, listen, right now is this, listen.

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It's not God's gospel that has lost its power. It's not. You look back in the day, in the last couple hundred years even, 200 years, you look at guys like Edwards, Jonathan Edwards, the

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Great Awakening, you look at George Whitefield, you look at guys who would go into a city, proclaim the gospel, and the city would turn from sin to trust in Christ.

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That is a matter of historical record. And it's not just simply a peculiar thing to them.

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It's not. There were towns then that were seeped in sexual immorality.

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They were actually identified for it in the day. And Whitefield would go in, this is only a couple hundred years ago,

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Whitefield would go in, he'd proclaim the gospel and its purity, and this town would turn from sin to Christ, and you would see the effects of it in the world.

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It's not the gospel that's lost its power, and it's certainly not Jesus who can't bring people to himself, and it's not

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Jesus who loses his sheep. Jesus says in John chapter 6, I hope you know this passage, I want you to put it into your heart.

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Jesus says, I've come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given to me,

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I should lose none, but raise it up at the last day. Jesus says, No man can come to me unless the

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Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up. That sounds pretty guaranteed to me.

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What do you think? Sounds guaranteed. Jesus says, I've come down to do my Father's will. Okay, so Jesus is on mission, and he tells us what the will of the

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Father is, that of all that the Father has given to me, I should lose none, but raise it up at the last day.

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Jesus knows who his sheep are, he knows he can bring them, and he says that he will raise up the one the

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Father draws. It's not the gospel message. It's not God's power in bringing his sheep out of darkness into light.

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So what is it? What is it? The problem is solved very simply by looking inward, by looking at ourselves, by looking at our indifference, by looking at our lack of love for the world.

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The problem is solved, listen, for us in our proclamation of the gospel and seeing its light affect the world around us.

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When we start looking at ourselves, because we are the means of God's grace to bring the message of salvation to the world around us.

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I want you to think back to your own salvation experience as a Christian. If you're in here today and you've turned from sin to trust in Christ, I want to suggest something to you before we get into the real meat of the message.

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Nobody in this room is in Christ today without someone suffering as a result of it.

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Nobody is in this room today who knows Jesus and has been joined to him by God's grace through faith in Jesus.

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Nobody's here in that situation without someone having suffered for it along the way.

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You and I are in Christ today and maybe our experience wasn't really something totally stunning.

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You didn't see the suffering going on behind in the story. All you know is that you read it in a book somewhere.

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Someone laid their life down. They spent a lifetime of study and training to write something down for you to see and God delivered it to you.

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They sacrificed maybe their money and time and all you know is you read that book, you saw the gospel message, you turned from sin to trust in Christ, God redeemed you, your life was changed.

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Maybe you were watching television one day and Billy Graham came on and he called you to repentance and faith, to trust in Christ and you didn't see the suffering going on there and so you just take it for granted.

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You see it and you believe and you never really think about the background noise. How did it get there? What happened?

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How'd this get in front of me? Some of you guys are in this room today and this is where it gets intensely personal.

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You're in this room today as a result of a lot of suffering. You came to Christ maybe as a result of the ministry of this church.

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Maybe you came to Christ at Calvary and you've come here now. This is your home or maybe you came to Christ as a result of somebody in this church preaching the gospel to you and I'm gonna say there's so much background noise to this situation.

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There's so much suffering. So much laying down of our lives that went into this, what you see in front of you right now.

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This is very deceptive. This is very deceptive. Some of you guys know. This is nice and beautiful.

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It's very comfortable and let me tell you something right now. The fruit of this ministry of what God has done here to bring salvation is a result of, listen, suffering, suffering, laying down our lives for others to bring the gospel, the good news of salvation to the world around us.

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I want you to just hang on to that. Hang on to that truth. Listen, there were many, many years and I don't like to bring personal stuff into messages as much as I possibly avoid it, but I think it would be good to hear because this is talking to us as a church personally.

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How can we be more effective with our witness to the world, to our families and our friends around us, to the difficult dark spots around us?

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You know, there's a lot of years of fruitless ministry that went into what you see right now and all that God is doing in the world around us.

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I remember for many years, 1996, 1996, go to the Mormon temple in Mesa, Arizona.

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I saw a sign. I was a young kid, 18 years old and I thought I knew it all.

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I think my hair was even in a ponytail then, so it gives you sort of an idea where I was at.

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It was actually shortly before I went on tour with Mortal Kombat that I was in Arizona and I saw a big sign and it said the

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Easter pageant for the temple in Mesa. And I didn't know anybody. I wasn't in a church here yet. I had just gotten here and so I grabbed my backpack,

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Bibles, tracts and all that stuff and I went out to this temple and I get on the streets and I ran into a 16 -year -old pipsqueak named

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Jerry. And so Jerry and I didn't really know each other.

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We just sort of started talking to this guy in the street. We were both preaching the gospel to him, telling him to come to Christ, getting the scriptures with this guy.

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The guy finally walks away. We looked at each other and said, hey, it was great talking with you tonight. Great. Shook hands, walked away. And so there were moments like that, many moments like that, going out to this mission field of the

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Mormon temple. And I remember for years I had Christians and especially pastors telling me,

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Jeff, don't do it. Don't go out to the Mormon temple to preach the gospel. That is way too abrasive.

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It is way too in your face. That is not the way you are going to win those people by going out to that place.

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You need to create friendships with these people. Invite them over for barbecues. Sit down with them and talk with them.

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And I said to him, I do that. But there is 100 ,000 people out there over a week and a half time period that need to hear the gospel.

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I can't eat with all of them. I can't afford it. But they are there and I know the message of life they need.

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And so I would go and it was adversity and difficulty and I would have very few people coming with me, people talking bad about going.

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And there were many, many times where we would preach for a week straight, hand out tracts, talk to people and see absolutely no fruit.

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Nothing. We would walk away and we would think, I just got spit on. I got my tracts torn up. It was an amazing experience.

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Yelled at. I was afraid I would see people that I would know out there but go and risk it anyways.

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There were times where they looked absolutely fruitless. Planting seeds. Gospel is going out.

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Planting seeds. Gospel is going out. Tracts, tracts, tracts. Hear the gospel. Let's talk. Can we get to know you? Let's go eat lunch together.

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Let me take you out for a drink. Something, not coffee, I promise, right? Hot chocolate. And so we would go.

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And nothing. And then all of a sudden, God does something totally unusual.

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He starts bringing people to me that have come to Christ as a result of that ministry. People start contacting us.

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This is years later and they're calling our ministry and they're sending us messages and emails. We're putting the videos up online of our interaction out there and it's going out across the world and all of a sudden we're getting messages from around the world of Mormons turning from sin to trust in Christ, coming to be joined to Him.

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Lives transformed who are reaching their family members now. I had a guy once said he watched our videos, he came to Christ and led his entire family to Christ out of Mormonism.

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But there were years of fruitless ministry. Years of just sort of plowing and going and going and nothing's happening.

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People telling me, don't do it. You can't get away with it. You're not going to lead anybody to Christ. And at this point I've lost count as to how many people have come to Christ as a result of that ministry.

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But it came with suffering. It came with laying your life down. It came with putting into this ministry without seeing any fruit and just the regular sort of humdrum.

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You just go out and you do the work and you plant the seeds and you stay consistent. And as a result of it, what happened?

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The gospel, which is the power of God for salvation, went out, transformed hearts and lives.

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Eyes were opened and today there is no way, brothers and sisters, to even measure the wake that it's caused.

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No way. You have to invest in what appears to be fruitless ministry for the cause of the gospel and people's salvation.

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I want you to remember three things today. Three things. If you're taking notes and you want to write down the major points, here they are.

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Number one, I want you to remember God's power in this. Number one, I want you to remember God's power. Number two,

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I want you to remember that God uses us. And number three, I want you to remember that it's the message of the gospel that counts.

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It's the message of the gospel. So first point, ready? Remember God's power. Number one, you already heard it.

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Romans chapter 116, Paul says this, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. He says, for it is the power of God for salvation.

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The word there in the Greek that we get the word power from is the word where it's we get the word dynamite from.

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So if you can think of dynamite, how it just dynamite, pow, right? It blows up. That's the word behind power.

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So the gospel, the good news, the good message, that message that goes out, that good news goes out and it's the very dynamite, bam, of God.

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When you preach the gospel, it goes out and it brings about the effect that God causes it to have.

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You want to be effective, brothers and sisters, in bringing the gospel to the world around you. And you say things like this, listen, Jeff, I don't know what to say.

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I'm freaked out. Like, I don't want people to hate me. I kind of like my job.

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Like, you know, I like my friends, my sister, my brother. I don't want to lose family. It's okay. Jesus told us that a natural consequence of preaching the gospel and being in him will mean persecution at times.

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But I want to give you some encouragement. This is not you and I saving people. It's not you and I doing it.

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Paul, who is the master evangelist. God used the apostle Paul to bring the gospel all across the entire known world in the

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Roman Empire before 70 A .D. Of course, the other apostles were there, but Paul's the master.

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And what does he say? I'm not ashamed of it. It's the power of God for salvation. You preach this message.

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It's God who brings the fruit. He opens the eyes of the blind. He opens hearts. Listen, it is

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God's power. Romans 1 16. The gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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So, I've got to attack it because it needs to be attacked. Are you ready? In our culture today, there's a popular saying that goes around.

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It's attributed to somebody, I think, falsely. And that is preach the gospel and if necessary, what?

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Preach the gospel and if necessary, use words. And that has got to be one of the stupidest things ever said.

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And why is that? Because it's a message, good news, and you can't give a message without saying it or writing it, right?

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How do you live the gospel message? It's proclaimed.

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This is who Jesus is. This is what God has accomplished in Christ. Now, you turn from sin to come and cling to Him to trust in Him to be saved and forgiven.

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That message has to go out. It's got to come out of your lips. It's got to come out of your hands. It's got to be written.

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It's got to be handed to somebody. The gospel is good news. It's what God uses.

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So listen, it's as simple as this, brothers and sisters. It's God's power. He brings His people out of darkness into light.

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So what's our role? We preach this gospel, which is God's power for salvation to the world around us.

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It's as simple as telling somebody. Have you ever heard about Jesus, what He did? Well, what did

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He do? Well, see, God became a man in Christ, and He died for sinners. He took the penalty they deserved and lived a sinless life.

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He was buried. He rose again, and He calls people to receive this gift of eternal life. He says to turn from your sin to come and trust in Him.

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How long did that take? How long did that take? 20 seconds. 20 seconds.

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I just dropped a gospel bomb. Boop. Right? And it just goes and just travels out there, just stuck in their heart, just boop, like that.

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And God will bring the fruition. He's going to bring it about. But listen, it doesn't have to be you standing sort of on a street corner with like a megaphone or something like shouting like, you know, out at everybody or with a big sign.

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That doesn't have to happen. It could just be as simple as you conversing with somebody, telling them the story of Jesus because it's what

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God uses to bring them to life. It's God's power for salvation. He does it. Romans chapter 8,

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I want you to see. Go to Romans chapter 8. It's God's power that accomplishes this.

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Foundationally, we need to grip this and hold on to it. Listen. Listen to what Paul says here. Romans chapter 8.

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Many of us know the passage. We cherish it at Apologia Church. Romans chapter 8.

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And look in verse, starting in verse 28. This is a favorite verse, I hope, of most of us.

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And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to His purpose.

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For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.

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And those whom He predestined, He also called. And those whom He called, He also justified. And those whom

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He justified, He also glorified. So what do we call this, guys? We call it the what? The golden chain of redemption.

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Now, I'm telling us this for a reason because I'm gonna call us to be on mission together as a church more than we ever have before, to have the gospel coming out of our hearts and our mouths as much as possible to those around us that we love and to those around us that we don't.

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Romans chapter 8, God says this, He foreknows us. He predestines us.

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He calls us. He justifies us. He glorifies us. You cannot break that chain.

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And so what's our role in it with this gospel that's the very dynamite, the very power of God to bring about salvation in a dead person?

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It blows them right up and brings them to life. What's our responsibility? It's a dependence upon God and His power and salvation.

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Listen, what you didn't know when you heard the gospel and you believed in Christ, what you didn't know was the story going on behind it, that you had a loving

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God who loved you with an everlasting love that can never be destroyed, that will never be removed from you.

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Before the world even began, you were on His hearts. He didn't just know stuff about you.

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He intimately connected to you before the world began, knowing all about you before He did it.

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And He planned to redeem you in Christ. Jesus died for your sins. And what happened when you heard that gospel and you clung to Christ was that you were brought to life.

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You were born from above. You were born again. You were granted that ability to trust in Christ.

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Listen, God foreknew you, predestined you, called you, justified you, glorified you.

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Brothers and sisters, this is not us. It's Him. It's absolutely

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Him. It's an amazing thing for me, looking at a lot of your faces, many of you guys,

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I got to watch turn to Christ. I got to see where you were at in your most broken place and to see where you're at today.

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Some of you guys, leading reach groups in your home, leading Bible studies, leading people to Christ today, and I saw you in your mess, in your mess.

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And you heard the gospel and your life was transformed. It's an amazing thing to be able to see a room full of people, from my perspective, years ago at Calvary when

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I was the chaplain at the hospital, just the ugliest, most broken place to be ever.

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Just depraved and broken and hopeless. People coming, wandering in like zombies to the room.

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Detoxing and hating my guts. People coming in like, despising the fact that they had to sit in this thing.

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And it's amazing. Listen, I got to share this with you. I had people in front of me all the time and I finally gave up trying to figure it out.

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I had people in front of me all the time that I would see and I would say, they got it. Like, the light bulb's on.

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They understand. Like, they'd be like, oh, Pastor Jeff, the message is so wonderful, Pastor Jeff. I loved it. I loved it.

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I agree with everything you said. It's wonderful, praise God. These people are out there and I'm with you.

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You know, when you're first preaching like this on a daily basis to groups this size all the time, you're sort of like, all right, you're kind of gauging like, oh,

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I think they kind of got it. God's probably working in their life there. It is amazing, almost every single time

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God would surprise me. He would take the hardest person and flip them overnight.

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He would take the person that was, that from my perspective was the most without hope and did not get it and the next day they'd turn to Christ because at night they felt like God had woke them up or something.

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Or they'd turn to Christ right in front of me. I had people fall down to their knees right in front of me at this place on a regular basis because they heard the gospel, their sin overwhelmed them and they turned to Christ right in front of me.

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It was God's power and I would see the people that I thought understood it initially go back to a life of sin and all the rest, never really knowing

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Christ. God loves to make himself famous, guys, by taking the hardest people and showing the world his glory by saving them.

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It's his power. So here's my encouragement to you. As you think about your life and God saving you but not just saving you for you, saving you so that you can impact the world for Christ and his glory and his gospel, you're part of this whole entire story that God is weaving in history.

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I want to encourage you with something. This is not about you. It's the message that God has that we deliver to the world.

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We say it. We tell people. We write it down. We deliver it to them. We give them the good news of what

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God has done in Christ. We tell them and God uses it to save them. But ultimately, listen, here's the beauty of it is it's

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God behind it the whole time with his perfect plan to bring people to himself for salvation. Even when you and I preach the gospel and we see it looks nothing like oppression.

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It looks nothing like resist, nothing but resistance. It's ultimately God's story of bringing people to life.

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I remember, listen, I got to tell you. There were so many times going out to preach the gospel.

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I remember Candy would be at home. Sometimes I'd go out and I'd come back and she'd go, how'd it go tonight?

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I'd be like, oh, it was good. Well, what happened? Oh, nothing really. Handed out a lot of tracts.

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That's it. A couple conversations. It wasn't like a nightly basis like, you're not going to believe what happened.

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I was preaching the gospel and like 15 Mormon bishops like fell on their knees and turned to Jesus and they started running around preaching the gospel to Mormons.

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It wasn't like that. We did have stories that were kind of close to that. But, you know, it's nothing like this amazing thing that would happen all the time.

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It was just a constant difficulty. And I remember this. I had a point in my life, guys, where after literally hundreds of times going out to preach the gospel in difficult circumstances,

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I remember I had a moment one night before God where I walked away and I thought to myself, God, what are you doing?

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This is just a waste. Maybe everybody's right. Maybe everybody's right.

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I'm not supposed to do this. Because all I see is resistance. This guy cussed me out. This guy told me I was number one.

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And, you know, just oppression and difficulty. And that very night

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I got into a book that I never really read.

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And I opened up the page and it's like God just delivered this message to me and it was all about God's sovereignty and salvation.

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And here's what it was about. You and I can rest with assurance when we preach the gospel to the world.

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And here's why. Whether or not people receive it or not, we can rejoice and have joy in its proclamation.

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Now watch this. I'm not just trying to be the optimist here. I'm telling you the truth of Scripture. If he calls his sheep out of darkness into light and he loses none of them.

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If he's actually the God who's sovereign over every molecule in the universe and your life and mine.

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If he's the God who foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies, that's his plan.

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Then that means that when we go out and we tell the world, look, this is who Jesus is. He's Lord. He's King. He's God in the flesh.

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He was sinless. He died for sinners, was buried, and rose again. He calls you to turn from sin, to trust in him for forgiveness and salvation.

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Come to Christ. Cling to him for life. When we tell the world that message, watch, and we have two groups of people.

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One that says, you're out of your mind. You are nuts. You are a fool.

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You are Moria. Foolish. You are a moron. When we hear that from this side, rejection.

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Listen, we don't know what God's going to do with that person for the rest of their life. Tonight, tomorrow, the next day, to draw them to himself.

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We don't know the story. But listen, if they go to their grave in rejection and hatred towards God and hearing the gospel, listen,

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God is glorified in his proclamation. Why? Because he's glorified in his justice.

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Because when we proclaim the gospel to lost people, and they stand before the throne of God, God is vindicated in his justice because what he says is that even with my love and grace in your life, when

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I send my people to you to preach to you a message of forgiveness, you hated me.

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And when God delivers that person over to what they want for eternity, which is life without him, he is vindicated in his justice and you are a part of that story.

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And God is glorified in the proclamation of the gospel when he takes someone like you and me and he removes a heart of stone, he rips it out of our chest, stony heart gone and fleshy heart replaced, he raises dead people to life, he's glorified because in the halls of heaven we're in communion with each other for all eternity, we're clinging to Christ, rejoicing in him, saying, amazing grace

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God, I shouldn't be here, I got no right to be before your throne, I can only have you,

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Jesus, why would you save a wretch like me? He is glorified in his grace. You and I, our role is to preach the gospel, is to tell people the good news about who

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Jesus is, what he's accomplished and how to come to him. That's it. And he has the power to take dead people and bring them to life.

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Lazarus, awesome story, because it really happened, like seriously, you think about that, it really happened,

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Lazarus is crazy, Lazarus is dead and Jesus purposely waits like four days to go get

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Lazarus like alive again because there's a superstition going around with the Jews of the day where like your soul kind of hangs out like, you know, for a couple of days before like it finally goes off like, you know, into Abraham's bosom or to Hades.

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So they have like this superstition, so Jesus purposely waits like to the end of like the superstition stage, right?

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And where they're like, there's no hope now, Lazarus is gone, it's been four days, like, you know, the train came and got him or whatever.

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Jesus shows up and they're crying and you know, God's there and he's in the flesh and he starts weeping and say, if you'd been here,

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Jesus, my brother wouldn't have died. And Jesus says something spectacular, listen to it, he says, I am,

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I, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

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That's crazy. And so Jesus goes to the tomb and he's weeping on the way, he says, move the rock.

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And they're like, but he stinketh. And so he says, move the rock. And so then they move the rock and it's amazing,

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Jesus lifts up his hands to heaven and he prays to the father and then he calls into the tomb, listen, he calls into the tomb with Lazarus dead for four days who stinketh.

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He's wrapped up in burial clothes, totally incapable of responding. And Jesus says,

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Lazarus, come forth. He doesn't ask his permission. He didn't even have to go in to touch him.

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All he does is he speaks into a dead tomb. He says to Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth.

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And Lazarus comes wobbling, hopping, out of that tomb wrapped up in burial clothes and then the church comes to unwrap him.

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And that's the story of Jesus in salvation. He calls into dead people and he says, come forth.

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And we come hopping out in our clothes, right? We had no responsiveness to Jesus.

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We just come hopping out and then the church comes, starts to unwrap us, starts to be there for us.

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You see the picture? That's pretty awesome, isn't it? But that's the story. Jesus is mighty to save.

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He demonstrates his ability to save sinners and to bring them out of death by raising himself from the dead.

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He has power over death. He calls into dead people. He says, rise up. Little girl is dead.

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They're crying about it. Jesus says, she's always sleeping. They're like, sleeping. What do you know? He says, well, little girl, arise.

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And she gets up. They're like, oh, okay. That was cool. Jesus can tell people get up and they get up.

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And that's what we're doing when we preach the gospel. We're preaching it into death. People are alienated from God.

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What are you saying to the world, guys? Here's who Jesus is. Turn from sin to trust in him.

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And what happens? Jesus calls into death and then life happens. Guys, I want to encourage us to remember

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God's power. Number two, God uses us as the means. Quickly go to Romans 10. God uses us.

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Romans 10. I'm going to go ahead and read as you guys are getting there. Romans 10, verse 1. By the way, this is after one of the most powerful passages on the sovereignty of God that I know.

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Romans 9. Romans 8 and 9. Actually, awesome.

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Read that. But listen to what God does here. Verse 1, chapter 10. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

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For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

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For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Who's he talking about? He's talking about the

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Jews of his day who had perverted the law of God as a means of getting right with God. And so he addresses it.

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You got a zeal for God, but it's not according to knowledge. They're ignorant of the righteousness of God. They want to establish their own righteousness before God and they're missing

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Jesus. Now listen. He says, as you move down in verse 11.

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For the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek.

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For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the

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Lord will be saved. Here we go. He had just told us he foreknows, he predestines, he calls, he justifies, he glorifies.

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He's the potter, we're the clay. He mercies whom he will, Romans 9, and he hardens whom he wills.

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You will say to me then, Paul says, why does he still find fault? For who resists his will? And he says, who are you, oh man, to answer back to God?

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God is sovereign. And now, here we go, after this foundation of sovereignty, the foundation of God's power and salvation, what does

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Paul say? Right here, in the text. Verse 14. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

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And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

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And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

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How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

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But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing, listen, and hearing from the word of Christ.

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Did you get that? Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

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Brothers and sisters, how does God take a person from death to life? His word and his spirit.

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People hear the message and then they believe. God does that.

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But how are they going to hear unless we go? How are we ever going to put to death everything that is off in the culture around us?

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How are we ever going to do it? Brothers and sisters, we have to lay our lives down.

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We have to care enough about neighbor, love neighbor enough to lay our lives down for them.

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Let me say something to you as a church. As a pastor, there are times when you have to confront. You have to talk to your church and you have to confront in a way that is meaningful and it says something that needs to be addressed.

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All the years at this church, God has done all of this. Everything you see right now, it's all

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God. Everything that we can't see right now, it's all God. It's all His grace. We've got nothing to do with it. There's no rock star pastors here.

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There's nobody who's the boss that's in charge of this whole situation. This is Jesus' church.

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He has a leadership here and all that but this is God's doing. But all the years we've been here ministering at Apologia Church, your pastors have tried to model for you as much as we fail.

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We've tried to model for you as a church what a life that is separated for God should look like.

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What laying your life down for the lost should look like. What doing the hard task of the gospel in difficult places should actually look like.

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My fear is, as a church, my fear is this. My fear is that as a church, you may see your pastors doing the hard work of ministry, taking the hits, going to the hard places and saying something like, isn't it great that our pastors are bringing the gospel to the world?

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And brothers and sisters, if I haven't communicated to you rightly what that's supposed to mean, let me say it to you now.

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As your pastors, we have wanted to model for you what it's supposed to look like so that you can go and do it before Christ yourselves.

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Does that make sense? What has to happen for this to have any meaning as a church, what

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God is doing here is that your pastors have to be able to get out of the way.

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Your pastors have to be able to be obsolete. Your pastors have to be able to get gone and out of the picture and what happens is that Christ is still at work,

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God has still power to give and God is still bringing His gospel to the world without your pastor next to you doing it with you.

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So let me ask you a question. How are the people around you with the sovereignty of God in mind going to be brought to Jesus by His power and by His word unless you tell them?

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How are they going to know Christ? How are they going to hear and actually believe if we don't lay our lives down and start giving the gospel to them?

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When you think about your life and what God has called you to as a Christian, whatever context, how are those around you going to hear about Christ and His majesty and His goodness and His salvation if you don't tell them?

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Where's your mission field? It's where God has you. Some of you guys are moms and you're at home with six kids, four kids, five kids, you're thinking,

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I don't know, mission field? I'm trying my best to homeschool these kids and not kill them. Amen?

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Hallelujah. But let me say this to you as a mom, with kids, that is your mission field.

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First and foremost, that's your mission field. It's about the gospel to my kids. It's about the gospel to your kids.

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That's your primary mission field. And God may have more for you outside of that, but that's your primary mission field.

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You can preach the gospel and deliver it to your kids daily. Single people, what has

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God called you to? Where's your ministry? Where's your field He's given to you? Who has He put into your life that needs to hear about Christ and His goodness?

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Because I've got to say it again, God doesn't save anybody without His message being brought.

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They don't see you and see me and go, I'm going to believe in Jesus. They hear the gospel and then they believe.

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When I think about the contrast in approach to the culture, you think about the fruit in our nation when the gospel was proclaimed.

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And again, I'll hang on Whitefield because he's one of my favorites and I'm going to Whitefield Seminary so that makes sense.

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But back and forth from England to the east coast of the United States, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He preached all over here and they kicked him out of the church so he preached in the fields.

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People came to Christ. 30 ,000 people would listen to him. He'd come back and ride on the boats. They'd pull the ships together. He'd preach across the ships and then they'd get off and they'd drive back to America and he'd set up orphanages, preach the gospel, preach the gospel.

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Christ, come to Christ. The whole city is coming to Christ. And I see somebody that went into a place and opened his mouth.

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He told people, this is who Jesus is. This was wrong with us. Turn from your sin and come to Christ.

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Be born from above. Turn from your sin and believe in this Messiah. Come to Christ now. Come to Christ whoever's thirsty.

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Whoever's hungry, come to Christ. Come to Christ. And people came and they believed. It changed everything. And then you look at a culture today that says, don't do that.

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Don't do that. Don't open your mouth in that way. Don't be so bold. Don't be like that.

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And I look at the contrast in cultures and I say, okay, what's worked?

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So the question I have is, your pastor and your brother is, do you have beautiful feet?

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Do you have beautiful feet? Okay, third thing, it's the message.

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Are you ready? Quick thing, this week, read the book of Acts. It's awesome.

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The book of Acts is incredible. If you haven't read the book of Acts, you need to read the book of Acts. Like, read it through.

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It's crazy. Like, what God was doing there and the fulfillment of prophecy and Jesus as King and how they were actually telling people, it's awesome.

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But you know what I love? Is that the gospel is not canned. It's not scripted.

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And you look at the gospel preached in all these different contexts with Jews, with Jews, with Gentiles, same message, but it's not a script.

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And I love that about the gospel. It's all the same story, but it's not scripted.

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So someone says, I don't know how to do this, Pastor Jeff. Like, everyone wants the seven -step kit on how to preach the gospel, right?

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So you have guys like Ray Comfort who is an amazing man of God. He has preached the gospel to more people, led more people to Christ than I think

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I ever will. He really has. Amazing man of God. But he has sort of like, you know, what's it called?

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The way of the master. How to preach the gospel. And people love it because it's a canned system. What do you do?

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You walk up to people and you say, have you ever loyed? Have you ever looked with lust with anyone in your heart? Have you ever stolen anything irrespective of its value?

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And like, you know, he hits people in the nose with a microphone and they eventually get so annoyed by it that they fall on their knees and they turn to Christ.

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Right? No. No, but that's sort of a script. People love it. They love it.

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So I'm out on Mill Avenue. Years ago, me and my wife, candy and the kids went to Kentucky to hang out with family. And so I go to Mill Avenue.

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My wife's gone. I'm going to go preach the gospel on Mill Avenue. That's my Friday night. How's yours going? So we go out there and there's this guy there and he walks up to me and he says, hey, here's a tract.

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I said, no man, I'm saved. I'm a Christian. He goes, no, take the tract. I said, no, you should really save that for the guy over there that's like stumbling around.

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I know the gospel. I'm cool, man. I'll pray for you. Good job, man. Praise God. He's like, no man, take the tract.

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I'm like, oh, take the tract. So I took the tract and I'm like talking. I'm like, I'm a pastor, you know, know the gospel,

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I'm saved. He's like, well, how do you preach the gospel? I was like, well, I tell the story. I call people to repentance and faith.

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He goes, well, do you do the way of the master system? I was like, well, not really.

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I mean, you know, I tell people about God's holiness, our sin, and know what Christ has accomplished, turned from sin to trust in Jesus.

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He goes, no, you gotta do the way of the master. You gotta do the way of the master. I'm like, all right, well, no. People were getting saved long before Ray Comfort came around, but praise

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God for what you're doing, man. Awesome. And I watched as these people went out and they brought the gospel legitimately to people,

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I watched atheists who watched the videos. As the person started talking, they said what they were going to say next.

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The guy goes, have you ever, he says, lied? He's like, well, have you?

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Yeah, sure, I've told a lie or two. And then he would start actually finishing the guy's sentence for him. Have you ever stolen?

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Have you ever committed adultery? Have you ever looked with lust in your heart, you know? And it's an amazing thing.

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Listen, I want to encourage you with something. The gospel is not a canned script. It is the story of what

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God has done in Christ and the call for people to come to repent and to believe. And that can look different and sound different and vary in context, but it's the same foundational story.

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What will you see in the book of Acts every single time the gospel is preached? What will you see every single time as it's differently laid out for us in every different context, you will see the same nuts and bolts.

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What is it, guys? First thing, who Jesus is. People need to know who they're turning to.

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Who is Jesus? We tell people about Christ as Messiah, as God come in the flesh.

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You tell them who He is. He lived a sinless life. What He's done is part two.

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You tell them what He accomplished. He obeyed the law of God perfectly in the place of sinners. He was killed on a cross in the place of His people.

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He was buried and He rose again. You tell them what He did. Second point. The third point is the call every time to repent and believe the gospel.

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Turn from your sin. Have a change of mind, a change of heart. Turn from your sin and cling to Christ for salvation and for forgiveness.

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The call was always different in the context. Paul, in one context, talks to Jews and he brings up the law in a big way and he says, by turning to Christ you'll be justified by all the things the law of God could not justify you in.

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In a different context, he talks to non -Jews and he tugs at their hearts in the way that would reach them telling them that they're in the image of God.

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They already know God. Now God has raised this Jesus up and He commands men everywhere to repent.

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Do you see? The story is always the same but your conversation isn't canned or scripted.

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You're telling people what God has done. Think about that for a moment. Those three things.

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Who Jesus is, what He's done, and the call to repent and believe. Now think about it for a second in your life.

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Would you? How can God use you as a

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Christian in your context to do that? To tell people about who

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Jesus is, what He's done, and to call them to come to Him for life. You wake up in the morning.

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Who's around you? Give them the gospel. You go off to work and you find an opportunity.

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You get in a relationship with a person who's close to you, who trusts you. You give them the gospel. How could you do it?

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You have business relationships with people that you meet on a regular basis. Maybe you meet them for coffee or for lunch.

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How are they ever gonna know about Christ? It's your beautiful feet.

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It's the message on your lips. When we think about our city around us, here's our goal. Are you ready for this?

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I'll tell you the goal of Apology of Church. This is a goal. If you're at man camp, you know this. The goal of Apology of Church is that when we all go to be with Christ, what we leave behind is this whole state under Jesus' feet.

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Is that cool? Yeah? That's our goal is that we wanna put this entire state under the lordship of Christ through the proclamation of the gospel and salvation.

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That's our goal. We wanna move out from there. Our kids can handle the rest. That's a lot of work.

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You set a goal. I know who I wanna reach. I know where I wanna go. I'm gonna pray about it. I'm gonna trust God's power.

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The three parts of the message, we want to one, tell them who Jesus is, two, what he's done, and three, is the call to repent.

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I wanna tell you this now. What are the conditions for our success? I want you to look at two things. So get ready here, and then we're done today.

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Two things. 2 Timothy 2 .24. 2 Timothy 2 .24.

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Listen to what he says here. 2 Timothy 2 .24. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness, if God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

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So the conditions for our success, are you ready? If God grants them repentance.

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That's awesome. Do you know what your hope is? A mighty God who can take people who are hostile to his message, he can knock them off their high horse, and open their eyes, like he did with Saul.

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The guy who wrote this. If God may grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.

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The guy who said that, is the one who was on a horse and got knocked off and blinded by Jesus, and he turned his life to Christ after trying to destroy the church and killing

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Christians. That's the guy who said that. That should excite us as Christians, knowing that God has a plan, he has power to do something, and it is ultimately up to him to change our hearts and minds, and guess what?

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That means a lot to someone like me, because there's a lot I need to learn, there's a lot that I don't know, and there's times where I walk into situations and I think, what if they bring up something

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I don't know? It's okay, because it's God who grants repentance.

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Someone says, Jeff, I don't know all the things that you know, I don't know all the answers, I don't know if I'll even have the right things to say.

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Here's the thing, do you know who Jesus is? Do you know what he did? And do you know how to call someone to repent and believe?

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You are fit for battle. You are fit, and you are ready, and God can use that to bring about salvation.

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He calls life into dead tombs. People go from dead people to ex -dead people.

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The condition for success is that God grants repentance. One more word of hope for us, Acts chapter 13,

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I want you to see it. Acts 13, the gospel is preached, you can read it all later,

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I want you to key in on one verse here. Acts 13, and you can look starting at verse 47,

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For so the Lord has commanded us, I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

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There's our call. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

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Lord. Here we go, ready? And as many as were appointed to eternal life, believed.

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So what just happened here, guys? All of this has been taken out of our hands and delivered over to God's.

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The gospel is the power of God for salvation. God foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies, glorifies.

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Jesus speaks life into dead tombs and he has sheep that are coming that he will raise up and he will not lose them.

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That's the promise. That's what we cling to. How are we going to be successful? We preach this gospel.

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God says he grants repentance. People believe because they were appointed to eternal life.

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How does God do this? You and I are the means of grace in people's lives to bring this message.

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And here's the call. The summons is for you to come. For you to lay your life down for the sake of the lost and for others.

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For you to invest yourselves for the glory of Christ in the world. For you to actually take up your cross and die to self.

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To preach the good news to the world. Brothers and sisters, you came to Christ as a result of great suffering.

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You came to Christ as a result of great suffering. This is in your hands right now.

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Because Christians, our brothers and sisters, hundreds of years ago, spilled their blood.

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Really died for you to have it. Great suffering went into you coming to Christ.

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And God uses beautiful feet and a message on my lips and your lips to bring his elect to himself.

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He accomplishes all the work. But brothers and sisters, we're the means of the grace. And you're going to have hardship in front of you and you're going to have moments where you don't want to serve and you're going to have moments of great difficulty and you're going to have moments of very humdrum ministry activity.

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And what we're doing is planting that seed, planting that seed and God is the one who brings the fruit. But here is the summons.

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You have to lay your life down for the sake of another. You have to put before God whatever idols are in your life that are the thing that stops you from serving

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Jesus. It's the thing that stops you from speaking to your friend or your family member about Christ.

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Watch this. If I was to say to you, think about two or three people in your life that God has in your life that you need to tell about Jesus.

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You have to talk to them about him. Think about him right now. Think about him. Okay, now if I ask you something, if I say, okay, you got him now, you love those people, you want them to know

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Christ desperately, you got him in your mind now, you're thinking about him. If I said to you, okay, ready, what's stopping you from preaching the gospel to them tonight or tomorrow?

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What's stopping you? Now, ready, freeze. Don't say it out loud. This is what you have to face as a

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Christian. Whatever you said to yourself is stopping you.

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It's basically the God you worship. So, for example, well,

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I don't want to preach the gospel to this person because it actually might disrupt my comfort. They may not like me.

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They may not want to be my friends anymore. And so what are we worshiping there? The God of comfort and ease. Now, I'm not telling you, hold on now,

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I'm not telling you to go barreling into work tomorrow like, you know, with a megaphone and like you buy like a box tonight, you put it together and you stand up in the office and you're like, everybody, look, you know, like, and just start, behold, you know, don't do that.

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Like, be wise. But God does give you and I opportunities, doesn't He? Has He ever given you an opportunity and you didn't share it with somebody because you were afraid?

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Me too. God was even sovereign over that. But what stops me from preaching the gospel is ultimately the

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God that I serve. Is it fear? You serve fear in your life?

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That's what you do? You serve fear? Put it to death. Melt it down. When the people of Israel were at the bottom of the mountain and Moses was bringing down the tablets, the two tables, he comes down, he sees them down there having like a little rave, you know, they're like, you know, it's the craziest thing.

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He's not gone for long and they decide to have a rave and start worshiping things at the bottom. They just can't get over their idols.

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When he comes down, one of the things he made those who survived do was to melt their idols down and drink them.

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And the truth is, if we're gonna be effective to the world around us and if we love people enough to care enough to actually do something about it, then what has to happen,

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I promise, is this. You and I must find the idols of our lives, the things that stop us from serving

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Jesus with all that we've got and we have to melt them down and drink them and expel them.

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So what's stopping us? This is not a motivational speech.

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Those aren't effective for long -term health, life, and growth. This is the message that should hit all of us right between the eyes and in the heart.

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How is God gonna use you for His glory? How will they hear and believe if not for you telling them?

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Pray about it. Pray that God would give you passion and power and boldness and then walk with Him.

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I'm gonna use Tom. Tom, can I use you as an example for a second? Stay where you're at. That's Tom. You don't have to come up.

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I won't embarrass you that much. I remember when Tom first came to Apology of Church. I remember you were afraid to go to the temple.

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He was afraid to talk to anybody. He was worried about not knowing the right thing to do or to say. And it's really amazing because I watched that man go from somebody who was afraid to talk to anybody about Christ, afraid to have all, just the wrong answers or not knowing enough.

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Now he's the first one on the street. When I get there many times at the Mormon temple to preach the gospel, during the

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Super Bowl thing, he went out to preach the gospel on the street with guys that aren't even members of this church to go tell people about Jesus.

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And what was it? Ultimately, I remember that I did tell Tom, you just gotta come. You gotta pray. You just gotta be present. Just let God use you.

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And when he got to experience God using him and speaking through him to the world, you can't get enough, right?

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Now you can't stop. There's gonna have to be a time in all of our lives where we actually lay our lives down and experience it.

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So here's my call to you as my brothers and sisters. Do it.

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Do what God's called you to do. Put his gospel on your lips and tell people.

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He's glorified if they reject it. He's glorified if they receive it. No one ever came to Christ without great suffering in the background.

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Let's pray. Father, I pray you bless God the message that went out today. I pray that you would use it, God, to spark in us,

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Lord, love for you and love for others. I pray, God, that you would let us be a church that is centered around bringing the gospel of salvation and forgiveness in Christ to the world.

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That we would, Lord, cherish what you've given to us. Cherish our salvation.

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Cherish, Lord, the message. Cherish the call. And, Lord, that we would approach this,

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Lord, with a diligence and, Lord, with a consistency and, God, with a passion and with a power that only comes because of you and your presence.

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Please bless us in Jesus' name. Amen. Still be my vision