Gospel Culture

Gospel Culture

Good morning. So a church. Good morning. Good morning. How are you guys doing this morning? Who? You guys are doing? Really good. You’re enjoying your fellowship. That’s also good. My name is dan. I’m one of the five elders here. Um, if I haven’t met you yet, Look forward to meeting you. And if I have met you and I forgot your name, please forgive me. Um, I don’t do that on purpose as a part of my Brokenness, as a human being. And on that note, I’m going to talk about the privilege I have of kicking off a new three weeks series here at sewer that we are entitling simply sewer and what we’re gonna cover each week is one of our core values, Gospel community and generosity. And so I’m so thrilled that I get to kick it off talking about the gospel. Hey man, that’s exciting. Yeah, well you guys are really awesome. I’m guessing you got the 20 I hit under the chair. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. So yeah, I get to kick off this series talking about the gospel and uh, my aim with the teaching this morning is to answer three questions for you. The first one being, what is the gospel? What is the gospel was the first question I want to answer for you. And then the second one is why is it so important to us? Why is the gospel is so important to us? And thirdly, how can you help create a thriving gospel culture in this church. How can you play a part in helping to create a thriving Gospel culture in this church and so on that note. Open your bibles to first Corinthians chapter 15 I’m going to reverse this one through four. First Corinthians chapter 15 vs one through 4. If you have the bible app on your phone, you can turn their I’ll be reading from the SV translation um or you can read along on the screen to my left or right. On that note, I’m going to begin the reading of the passage Beginning in Verse one, A paul’s letter to the Corinthians to the church in Corinth Chapter 15: verse one Paul begins this chapter by saying now, I would remind you brothers of the Gospel. I preach to you, which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain, 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 that he was raised on the third day. In accordance with the scriptures? Let us pray father. We thank you for your spirit. We thank you for your word. It is true. It is truth. Lord. Would you remind us today of the power of the Gospel? Help us to see it with fresh eyes will help us to be encouraged by it And God I pray that through this teaching this morning, we would be able to stand more firmly on the powerful truth of your gospel message. I pray this in jesus name Amen. Hey man, have any of you ever had problems with your gps when traveling in a small town um, or a more rural area? Yes. Um, you’re like, yes, yes. I’ll have you know that I have, my wife coached me up on how to say the word rule. Um, and I’m still not sure that I’m saying it correctly. Um, too many ours and too many dialects that I’m juggling in my head being from the southern part of the country and then a little patois in the background. So I’m gonna say remote places. Um, because that’s easier for me. But you guys are shaking your head. Yes. You’ve had problems with your Gps in those places. You, you may be set out on a trip to, to go and visit a third cousin and the GPS told you to turn left and you found yourself in the middle of a cornfield and you said this isn’t uncle charlie’s place. Where am I? This thing is stupid. It’s broken. It doesn’t know what it’s talking about. I hate this thing. Right? You ever had that happen? Maybe that’s just my experience, pray for me. Maybe I need some counseling afterwards, but I hate when that happens. And I found out why that actually happens apparently in these more remote places. Again, I’m going to avoid that word. the other word and he’s more remote places. City planners upload their plans for development into the maps that are then released to us in our GPS, gPS and navigational systems. And so these plans get uploaded. But then when the county or the region begins work of construction plans change, But no one updates the maps. So we’re stuck in the corn field mad saying this thing is stupid and broken. Now many of us when we hear the term Gospel, if we’re not careful our direction, our guidance can lead people down the wrong road if we’re not careful and we only think of emphasizing the parts of the Gospel that we like the most or the parts that we think in terms of our experience makes the most sense to us and we expect that every other person, despite their experiences, will somehow relate to my experience with the Gospel here in this way. That if we aren’t careful, our directions and our guidance will lead people on the wrong path. Not as a heavy thing to consider. And I don’t want you to be discouraged if you found yourself kind of stumbling and bumbling over your words and trying to present the Gospel. I stand with the Apostle paul when he said to the Philippians Church, I rejoice that christ is preached. I rejoice that you are taking steps and efforts to try to preach christ and hold him out to those who don’t know him. So don’t get me wrong. That’s so important that you at least talk about christ, but we want to be clear on what is the Gospel? We need to be clear on that. And we need to avoid the error of the city planners. So for too many of us, the Gospel can just be sort of a junk drawer. Turn it just means whatever it is that we kind of feeling at that moment may be the latest book that we read, maybe the latest experience that we have. And so we kinda make that the Gospel, we really need to avoid that because those things can take people down the wrong path. But while we’re talking about the Gospel, there’s certain terms that we associate with the Gospel terms that are true terms, terms that are very much important terms that simply help us to articulate aspects of the Gospel. And I want to kind of refresh us on some of these terms. I won’t read all of them. But here’s some gospel terms that we are very much familiar with if you are a christian or have been around the church, if you know the Lord jesus christ, some of these terms make sense to you and they relate to the proclaiming of the Gospel message. You know, jesus is Lord very important term phrase raise term, whatever Saint jeopardy, All right, good news Heaven, freedom, God’s love, send forgiveness, hell, all these things right, When we think about the Gospel, these are terms that are related to communicating the message of the Gospel. And with those terms, some of us might want to reach for a bible verse that we’re familiar with to articulate the Gospel. We might turn to romans chapter three or romans chapter four or five or 10 or maybe second Corinthians chapter five or Galatians chapter three on and on Ephesians two, there’s a number of different passages that we might think about in terms of articulating the gospel to someone. And then we might even look at examples of the apostles and scriptures sharing the gospel like peter in Acts chapter two or paul in Acts chapter 17. And so we might look at those things and we might start to think about, hey, these are passages to help us get an understanding of the Gospel. But if I were to ask you as attendees here have soared church members of Sword church here on a sunday morning, what is the most popular go to passage that christians turn to, to articulate the gospel. You would say john 3 16, Say Hello to the John 3 16 guy, this guy was known for crashing sporting events in the seventy’s and eighty’s dawning a john 3 16 t shirt or rainbow wig. Sometimes the t shirt would say God is love. And so he kind of grew famously for showing up at sporting events holding up signs and wearing that t shirt. He’s also called the Rainbow Man. His actual name is Rollin Frederick Stewart. Unfortunately for Rollin, he’s currently serving three Life sentences in prison for doing some pretty bad stuff. Somewhere along the line, he ended up going down the wrong road. My point is sharing all of this is that we want to make sure that we are growing in our understanding of the Gospel. We want to make sure that we have a clear and firm grasp on the Gospel message. We want to avoid uploading our experiences or favorite parts of the Gospel and making that the message of the Gospel. And so when we look at what Paul wrote to the Corinthians, I want to read the passage again. We can learn from what paul says here. We can learn to avoid uploading with the wrong things into the Gospel message. So, reading the passage again, verse one, he says, Now I would remind you brothers of the Gospel. I preach to you what you received and what you stand and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain, 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, that he was raised on the 3rd day in accordance with the scriptures. So three things we can take from this to help us avoid uploading or experiences are only emphasizing our favorite parts of the Gospel message. Three things we can take from what paul says to the church in corn. The first one is this, that the Gospel was not paul’s idea or invention, he was a recipient of it. The message didn’t begin with him, he simply received it. And so if we are to avoid the era of the city planners, then we must receive it and remember that we have received a message. It’s not something that we get to take artistic creative rights over to shape and mold to our liking, but we received a message just as paul had to receive the Gospel message. Secondly, paul says that the scriptures are the map, that he used to gain a robust understanding of the Gospel. The old testament, scriptures is what Paul looked to as a road map for understanding the Gospel more fully, he received it, then he went to the scriptures and then through his studying immersing himself in the scriptures, he developed a much more robust understanding of the Gospel. Now, he didn’t ignore his experiences in terms of the spirit of God working in his life. He’s not ignorant of the fact that there are certain aspects of the Gospel that he really likes. He realizes that he doesn’t own the gospel. He simply received it and that God has given his word to be the true map for helping him to fully understand it. And then the third thing we see him saying to the church and corn is that he expects every christian to follow his example, to receive it, to look to the scriptures, to believe and grow in your understanding of it and then to share it and remain in it. Expected every christian to follow this example, to receive it, to believe the message, to grow in your understanding of it, to share it and to remain in it. Now, if you’re still falling along with me, you may have noticed that I’ve not yet answered the question, what is the Gospel? Still haven’t done it yet. I’m getting there when we read the bible from cover to cover 66 books, 40 different human writers, Spending about 4000 years of history. What we discover is it, God Is telling one story with one primary hero, the Lord, jesus christ. That’s why Paul is able to go to the scriptures and to examine them according to the gospel that he had received and from that place, he’s able to preach the gospel. Clearly, paul can’t preach a better gospel than you and I are called to preach. He may be more effective at communicating it, but he can’t improve on that message. He can’t preach a better gospel than the one that you and I have been called to preach to believe in, to walk in, to remain in, to stand in. He may be better at communicating it, but he can improve on it. No one can improve on one story. One primary hero the scriptures as our spiritual map. This helps us to attain a real, a robust understanding of the gospel and when we look at that one story, we see that there are four main components to the story. The fact that there is only one almighty Sovereign creator, God eternally existing in three persons, one God Eternally existing in three persons. S, theology secondly, that man was created to image God, but we sinned and spoiled everything. That’s anthropology. Thirdly, that jesus christ the son of God, the God man suffered and died to atone for sin And he was raised three days later, he lives forever as our savior King. That’s so teary ology and crist ology. Fourthly, that man must respond to God that we don’t get to play this little teenager game where we kind of ignore you God, We’re not listening right now, we’re not going to do what you say, we’re not going to respond to what you’ve offered. We’re not gonna acknowledge anything that you’ve done for us. We don’t get to play that game. We must respond by faith. So Isaiah, 53 vs three through 5, the prophet, Isaiah, probably one of the passengers that the apostle paul looked to, to gain a more robust understanding of the Gospel message that he received. This is what the passage says, It says that he speaking of jesus, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not surely he has borne our grease and carried our sorrows yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds. We are you this is our savior king. This is what he did for us. This is why we must respond by faith. An easy way to think of these four gospel components is to see them like this God, man, jesus christ and faith. When you’re sharing the Gospel, when you’re thinking of the Gospel, it’s about God. It starts with God, then we get to man and then jesus christ and the response of faith. So to declare what is the gospel? It is good news. The term means good news. It’s an announcement. It must be made publicly, but it’s not like news about our favorite sports team. It’s not like updating our relationship status on social media. You know what I’m talking about the news, right? It’s not that news. So that may be good and fun and exciting. But this is good news that shapes our eternal destinies. The good news about our God about how we messed up and how he didn’t give up on us, How he sent a savior to redeem us, and how he now calls us to respond to him by faith and he makes it possible by his grace. So the Gospel is God’s good news. It’s just plan of redemption. Now, this leads me to the second question. The first question is what is the Gospel? Now, we’re moving on to the second question, Why is the Gospel so important to us? I want to look at first, Peter chapter two verses 9 through 10 Peter says, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for his own possession. That you may proclaim the excellencies of him, who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, But now you have received mercy. And this passage here, Peter is talking about why the gospel is important to the people of God and why the gospel is important to us. Sore Church. The Gospel is the means through which God makes individual christians. We come into the faith. We come into the family of God through the means of Gospel preaching, and us responding to christ by faith through grace. Just as we as human beings can’t come into existence in and of ourselves. We need an agency. We need a means to come into existence. And so God has ordained the Gospel and it being proclaimed. It means by which we come into the family, but the Gospel not only brings us into the family as individuals, but it establishes the church, the church is born because the Gospel is preached. That’s what the history of the church shows us. The Book of Acts gives us a historical account of the early Church and it began with a public proclamation of the Gospel. That’s acts. Chapter two The Gospel not only brings us into the family of God as individuals and establishes us as a church, it also shapes the very culture of the church. That’s what Peter says and his message to the christians who had been dispersed because of persecution. He says that God, through the proclamation of the Gospel chose you and it caused you a royal priesthood, a holy nation, that you now belong to him because of the Gospel that was preached to you. Is that you were once not his people. But now you have become his people. You were once without mercy. Now, you have received mercy. What would you call a person who has received mercy and does not show it to others. You might call that person a hypocrite. It was in the Gospel shapes the very culture of the church. It’s not just for the people outside of the church, is for the people in the church, as well as those outside of the church, we come into the family because the Gospel was preached. We remain in the Gospel. The implications of it. And we’re eager to proclaim it to those outside the church. And if we don’t do this, our individual lives and our churches, if they’re not centered on jesus and his work, then they will be full of emptiness, meaninglessness, spiritual death, and decay. If we lose sight of this gospel message, if it’s not the central focus of our lives as christians and as a church, that’s what we ought to expect. We’ve removed ourselves from the life source, the Gospel, this good news. And so by keeping it front and center, we’re able to develop a more robust and biblical view of God. We’re able to understand just how holy God is. And then we’re able to see how unholy we are. We develop a humble an honest view of man and yet we retain a redemptive hope. We see that God is holy, we see that he is good, that he is perfect, and that he calls us to walk in holiness and we see that we can attain to those standards. We see that we mess up there are people who just can’t get it right and we have this honest and humble view of our humanity, but we don’t lose sight of the possibility of redemption, the hope of redemption. And so this leads us to pray to the God in the Gospel announces to us who hasn’t forgotten us who though we were separate from him, pursued us, leads us to pray to him for ourselves and for those who just simply can’t keep seem to get it right. So the Gospel, when it’s a part of the culture of the church, it’s a daily reminder of the cross and the grace and mercy of God. It creates an environment where we teach. We sing where we disciple where we fellowship along the lines of these principles and we spur one another on in christ because we simply won’t forget the gospel. It’s too important to us. It’s not something that we graduate from. It’s something that we remain in and we grow in our understanding of. So how can you help create a thriving Gospel culture in this church? That’s the 3rd question. I want to tell you a story, Mother’s Day story. So how many of you guys are familiar with anna Marie Jarvis? Okay, ask this question in the first service. No one knew the answer. They failed. Apparently you guys have failed history to All right. You didn’t know you were going to get a history lesson and quiz today, but um, sorry, that’s what you got. I’m kidding. All right. Okay. So we do believe in the gospel culture. I am kidding. And I think you can joke too. If you believe in the Gospel culture. Right, correct me if I’m wrong. But I think you can. But anna Marie Jarvis, she found it Mother’s day. She really wanted to honor her hero, her own mother. And so she fought hard to make this a national holiday. She got in front of the right influencer. She pushed the right button and in the early 1900s Congress passed a law making it a national holiday. Several years later, anna Marie Jarvis began the rest of her life, began the process of fighting for the rest of her life to make mother’s day, not a holiday. She was so frustrated by what it had become. It was no longer about honoring with their whole hearts, the sacrifice of mothers. It just became a commercialized american holiday and kids didn’t have to put much thought into it, but they could just go and buy a card, signed their name on it And maybe at 11:59. Remember to give it tomorrow 11:59 PM p. M. Yeah, before Mother’s day ended. Right, Because who made me do all the work up here. But she was so frustrated and the culture that had developed and I think that’s something that we have to be mindful of as we think about the importance of the gospel and having a gospel culture in this church. I’ve already alluded to one of the mistakes we can make which is thinking that we outgrow the gospel that we’ve graduated from it that we no longer need it. Now that I’m a christian. It’s not for me anymore. But so many other busted thinking about the gospel is that it’s something that we just tack on to the end of a teaching. You’re that weird time where you have to close your eyes, bow your heads, no one looking, not even God and respond, but that’s the gospel. Now, now we’re in the gospel portion of the service or maybe we need to set up some tents outside and sweat a little bit and then have some gospel revival meetings that you can just plan revival like that. All these things indicate that we have kind of gotten away from a robust understanding of the Gospel. And so we don’t want to drift from the Gospel, We don’t want to develop a religious pride that says that we no longer need to understand or know the gospel message and we certainly don’t want to go down the wrong direction of thinking that the Gospel is something we attach onto a sermon or some special event that we create. And there’s three ways that we can, or three steps that we can take to avoid making this mistake. The first one is to receive the message without losing a sense of awe. I mean, in a few moments, in a few moments, we’re gonna take communion together. That’s a part of rehearsing the gospel. You can’t lose sight of the awe of God as you approach the table, when you come to church, even though you know that the primary hero of every teaching is the Lord, jesus christ, don’t fall asleep, don’t get bored, don’t lose a sense of awe at the proclaiming of the gospel and when some new infant christian comes into the faith and you hear their story, rejoice Gospel has taken root in this person. Don’t lose your Aw God, what he’s doing through this message of the Gospel, secondly, practice gospel faithfulness all the time, everywhere and with everyone all the time everywhere and with everyone including that annoying person at your workplace who won’t stop talking or the neighbor whose dog poops in your yard and they intentionally walked by it and not scoop it up knowing that you have little kids like to play football in the backyard are the person that flips you off in traffic and some of you were like he’s not talking about me, is he right now? Don’t be that person, but practice Gospel faithfulness all the time everywhere and with everyone, No, I just threw a big weight on your shoulders. I know that and some of you felt you felt how heavy that is. You realize like man, that’s something I would aspire to, but that’s hard. Well, here’s the 3rd step. Don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised when you forget when you falter and when you fail at practicing gospel faithfulness. Don’t be surprised when you see others around you forgetting and faltering and failing a practicing gospel faithfulness, It’s not the goal to forget it or to falter or two fell at it. The goal is to do it always all the time everywhere and with everyone. But the reality is that when we look at the components of the Gospel hour anthropology, our understanding of humanity is that we have a fallen nature were broken. Our minds don’t even work right. Our emotions don’t always work. Right, husband does not an excuse to poke your wives right now were broken. Sometimes we don’t get it right. Sometimes we fall short. Sometimes our brothers and sisters fall short. Sometimes our Children fall short. Don’t be surprised, but go after them. And when you fall short, when you realize that you have fallen short, that you have forgotten that you have failed that you’ve faltered. You turn to the war. Don’t wait. But turn go to him. In fact, I would submit to you. That that’s a test of how well you truly understand the Gospel. When you realize that you have sinned that you’ve fallen short. How difficult is it for you to pray? Maybe your first response is I’m gonna go do this other thing that I know. It’s good that I know is right. And then maybe that’ll give me a little bit of confidence. So now when I go to God and talk to him about this failure, I can mention that God, but I did do this one good thing. Guess what? You’ve forgotten the Gospel. If that’s your approach, when you sin, when you fall short, you have forgotten the Gospel. And when we see our brothers and sisters falling short. Maybe your first response to them in that moment is not to respond to them, but to go to God and pray for that and then go to them with the desire to win them with love, not with judgment, pleading with him. And this is important. If we’re going to have a Gospel culture, that if each and every one of us will buy into the fruit of the Gospel in our lives, working in this way where it’s our goal to always practice gospel faithfulness. But we understand that we are falling human beings, sometimes we’re just not going to get it right and that there’s grace that we are people who have received mercy and we know how to walk in it, and we know how to extend it to others. This is why the Gospel is so important to a local church. We’re all born with a sinful fallen nature daily. We have to face and fight against evil temptations, we have to take a stand against the devil and against the world and we are finite creatures. That’s what we need power, don’t we? We need power. We need a source of power that’s even stronger than our environment and far stronger than ourselves and that brings us back to the Gospel romans 1 16 paul says for I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation. To everyone who believes to the jew first, and also to the greek. The Gospel is the power of God. The Gospel unleashes real power in our lives. To lift us from spiritual deadness, to lift us out of a rut, to empower us, to go forward in obedience to love that difficult person that we can’t seem to get along with. We need power in our lives like this, in the Gospel, believing it, receiving it, standing in it, remaining in it. Growing in our understanding of it allows us to tap into this power and be changed. That’s the goal, right to be changed, to look more like jesus christ, when that starts. What clinging to the message, the good news about him and what he’s done for us. Amen a man. Let us pray Father in heaven. It’s our desire to honor you, to be your people, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling for what you called. Each and every one of us. We aspire to be a church. There is full of an understanding of the Gospel that has a thriving Gospel culture. But God, we also understand that we can’t do this in and of our own selves with our own strength. We need your power at work in us and through us. Holy Spirit, help us to remember the truth of the Gospel, to stand firm in it, to proclaim it boldly and to cling to every