Thanks so much for the opportunity to uh preach and uh fill this pulpit.
I know I don't take that lightly.
Thank you so much, and thank you for your staff and everyone here.
Uh, there is a long history uh with First Baptist Church.
Uh my parents started going to the Baptist Church in Emerson in the 80s.
I got saved at First Baptist in 1988, and then uh I was uh discipled at First Baptist and uh called into the ministry in 19 uh ninf, I believe, at First Baptist Emerson.
And uh and then I was ordained in 2001, I think, at First Baptist Church here.
So uh we have a long history, very thankful uh for uh this the congregation here, the love, uh the care, concern.
And I know uh someone came up um before and said they're still praying.
We we still take prayers.
We're not on the mission field anymore, but we still need prayers uh more than ever.
And so we just thank you, thank you for this time, and thank you for this opportunity, and um, I'm very thankful uh for this time that we have together.
So if you have your Bibles, hopefully you do, um digital or in written form.
If you don't mind, let's just stand together as we read uh God's Word in honor of the God of the Word.
Romans 1, sorry you might want to have the reference, right?
Romans chapter 1.
It's on the screen too.
Verse 14 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 also who are in Rome, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.
To the Jew first and also to the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
Father, we thank you for your word, we thank you for your gospel, when we pray by the power of your spirit that you would work in our lives for those that know you, you would sanctify us, for those that don't, that you would bring salvation in Christ's name.
Amen.
Yogi Bearer, the famous catcher for the New York Yankers, the Hall of Famer, won several championships, and he was a jokester, and he was trying to distract one of the greatest hitters of all time, Hank Aaron, Henry Aaron, and he's at the bat, and Yogi Barrett looks at Hank Aaron and says, Look, you're holding the bat the wrong way.
You're supposed to be able to read the writing on the bat, and you have it facing away from you.
And Aaron didn't say anything, and the next pitch he hit in the bleachers.
And as he's rounding third base and steps on home plate, he looks at Yogi Barrett and says, They didn't have me called up here to read.
We can be easily distracted as the Church of Jesus Christ by many even good things that we lose focus on what is the main thing.
And so this morning we come and gather, and I have the privilege to share about the gospel, about missions and being on mission.
The mission and the message of the church is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
As Brother Byron said and reiterated, that this is the reason we meet and we sang about it in Christ alone.
And so you can look on the internet, you can Google and you can search, and you can see all the many distractions that the church may have, the busyness of life, or uh you could talk about social media, you could talk about uh even good things uh that uh eventually become God things because they replace what matters most.
But I believe the most distracting and greatest obstacle to us as believers and as the corporate church is that we don't know treasure and herald the gospel as we ought.
It's a huge problem.
So this morning, as we gather together, I hope that we can clarify and refocus, reoriented, reorient our lives around this message that Paul has for us and the book of Romans.
This is a missionary letter.
Paul had never been to the Roman church.
It was most likely started from Pentecost when the Jewish proselytes come together at Pentecost, and there's a group from Rome, and they take the gospel back to Rome and plant a church.
And so Paul's excited to write to them because he wants to visit Rome and be there, and he wants to take the gospel from Rome, Romans 15, 20, to the ends of the earth.
Paul's ambition is to bring the gospel to the places where Jesus has no longer has not been yet named.
And so he writes to gather support, of course, financial support, but prayer support, but he is reiterating with them the gospel.
And it's the most clear expression in the entire Bible outlining the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And so that's why we're here this morning, so we can reorient around the message and the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ from the book of Romans.
I want to clarify two things before we begin in Romans in the text, and uh that is a definition of terms.
You hear these terms thrown around, right?
Evangelism and missions, right?
And some people would even say everyone is a missionary.
I would argue with that.
And so let's clarify these terms from what I'm trying to say.
And that is everyone's called to be or share the gospel.
Everyone's called to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ that are believers.
Okay?
Let's everyone's called to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and share the gospel.
And so evangelism is the proclamation of the gospel, sharing the good news of Jesus with another person.
Every single person that's a that's a follower of Jesus is called in that.
Now, missions is a little bit distinct.
On the International Mission Board website, they have a great article distinguishing between these two terms.
And missions is where you cross a culture, learn a new language, engage in people that maybe don't have a witness for the gospel or church, and you share the gospel, you develop disciples, and you plant churches.
So that's that's distinct.
And so not everybody in that sense is a missionary, but we're called to be about both.
And so whether or not you're a missionary called overseas, for example, we have an obligation to support, to pray, to send missionaries, whether that's us leaving personally or us being a part.
So both of those encompass the mission of the church.
Kevin DeYoung, uh one of the leading theologians, I believe, today in the evangelical world, says to be sure, Christian missionaries may be more active in one aspect of work on the field than others.
But the main thing that we have to think about is our missionaries must be engaged in the goal, which is to win new converts.
So you're preaching the gospel, establish young disciples in the faith, and incorporate them into a local church.
So that's missions.
You're going across culture.
So that's evangelism and missions.
But here Paul is going to talk, who is the missionary.
He's going to talk to the church in Rome.
And so I hope this morning you would receive this word and receive it from the Apostle Paul.
What is the message and the mission of the church of Jesus Christ?
Verse 14, Paul said, I'm under obligation, both to Greeks and barbarians, both to wise and foolish.
Paul uses that word obligation.
Necessity.
He speaks of that in 1 Corinthians 9, 26, when he says, Necessity is laid upon me.
Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.
Paul's so overwhelmed with the good news of Jesus Christ.
He'd rather be accursed than not preach the gospel.
He can't help but preach the gospel of Jesus.
Have you ever been in the place where you had the I can't help it?
We see that in Acts chapter 4, the disciples, when they tell them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and they say, but we can't help but speak in the name of Jesus.
We can't help but speak the gospel.
This is where Paul was.
He said, I'm under obligation.
I find it my my commission, my mandate, as we learn as Paul's going and to Damascus to see Christians destroyed.
And God knocks them off his horse and saves them and then tells Ananias, you tell Paul that he must carry my name to the Gentiles and the kings and to the people of Israel, and I will show them how much he must suffer for my name.
He must carry my name.
He must declare the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul was under obligation by a commission by the Lord Jesus Christ to share that good news with others.
And so when we look at the necessity laid upon Paul, we have to look at the necessity laid upon us.
Do we have an obligation to preach the gospel?
I believe so.
We have an obligation because Jesus said in Matthew 28, 19 and 20.
If you skip back at verse 18, for all authority in heaven and earth have been given unto me, therefore go make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In other words, we're to see conversion, we're to claim the gospel, and then discipleship, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and I'm with you always to the end of the earth.
We we know that our mission or mandate here is to preach Jesus Christ the gospel.
And we'll get to what the gospel is momentarily in verse 16, but that's our obligation.
Paul felt and sensed that obligation.
What motivates you to share the gospel?
I know as parents, uh, you can relate to this.
Maybe if you're a parent, you understand this, or even as a child, you can understand this when your parents tells you to do something and you ask why.
Why?
And then your parents' response is because I said so, right?
And that's good enough, and that's good enough for me.
But there's other motivations besides the fact that God said so, that's good enough, but there's other motivations that we see even in the life of the Apostle Paul.
First of all, we see that the love of Christ motivates him, right?
In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 14, he says, the love of Christ compels me.
It controls me.
Are you controlled by the love of Jesus Christ?
Overwhelmed of the unfathomable love that he would have for us.
For God so loved the world.
The word so there is an intensifier, magnifying the fact that he loves the world, not because, as D.A.
Carzo says, the world is so big, but because the world is so bad, that God would love hellbound haters, rebellious sinners like us, and send his son.
And the son would voluntarily come into the world so that we might believe in him and not perish.
That's a love.
For God demonstrated his own love toward us while we were yet sinners.
What Christ died for us.
One of the most beautiful examples we see in Luke chapter 7 when Jesus is at Simon's house, not the not Simon Peter, but the Sophia the Pharisee, and this woman, the sinful woman, they call her, is washing Jesus' feet.
And they said, Doesn't Jesus know that this is a sinful woman?
And Jesus shares with them a parable of two debtors.
He says, one is forgiven a small debt, and another one is forgiven a great, enormous debt.
And Jesus looks at them and says, Which one do you think loves more?
And so the one who's forgiven more.
And Jesus says, That's right.
He who is forgiven much loves much.
Now, does that mean that I have to have the people that have more sin when they come to Christ will love Jesus more?
Not necessarily.
What it means is the more I understand how far and alienated I was from God and came to Christ and the mercies that He showed up shed upon me, the more love I'll have for Him.
And when love overwhelms us, it will enable us to go and communicate the gospel and motivate us and see we're obligated because of love.
Maybe it's lostness.
You look around and see people and begin to share with people, and many of them don't even know what you're talking about.
They think you're speaking another language when you talk about Jesus and what he's come to do.
Jesus said, I come, the Son of Man comes to seek and to save that which is lost.
Is that our mission?
Are we on board with that?
And what about the reality of hell?
We don't like to talk about that much, right?
But it's a reality.
Jesus talked about it, spoke about.
There's a new movement, it's really not new, but it's gained some traction in recent years called Annihilationism, which basically would say that uh you those who believe in Christ go to heaven, those who don't believe in Christ reject Christ, uh they will be judged and then they will just disappear.
But that's not what the Bible says.
Mark's gospel, Jesus is clear that that the fire goes on forever, that torment goes on forever.
We see in Revelation 20, it's a it's a lake of eternal fire, right?
We see in Luke chapter 16, Jesus diminishes the thought of the gospel of second chances.
That once you die, well, we'll get another chance.
No, this is it.
That should that should be at the forefront of our minds, the reality that that people are actually not only lost, but they're dying and going to hell, and the love of Christ should motivate us.
And not only that, but we're obligated because of the glory of God.
When I look at Revelation and we see chapter 5, we can be distracted by some things in Revelation or by what people say about Revelation.
But here's the main thing is that Jesus will come back, and when he comes back, he will bring all his people to himself.
And Revelation 5, we get a clear picture of what's going on in heaven.
And there's a people from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language, whom he purchased, Jesus, with his own blood, worshiping God and the Lamb.
That's what's happening.
Worship.
Worthy is a lamb who is slain.
That is our motivation.
There's a people from every tribe.
How do we get them to worship?
We get them to worship by go proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I'm obligated because I've tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and I want others to taste and see that the Lord is good.
There's nothing more satisfying than knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
And then he says, I'm obligated both to Greeks, those who are wise, we see that in the latter half of the verse.
They boasted of wisdom and barbarians, which would be foolish.
He says, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, he describes this wisdom of the world.
Paul does 1 Corinthians 1 20, where's the one who is wise?
Where's the scribe?
Where's the debater of the sage?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
For since the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
I hope this morning you will reflect on God's saving grace for you, as Brother Byron mentioned, from the penalty of your sin.
Focus on that this morning, the graciousness of God that He didn't save you because you were smarter than everybody else.
He didn't save us because we're good looking or we have certain status.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians, consider your calling.
That is your effectual calling by which you've been saved, brothers.
Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.
Not many of you are powerful, not many are of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring the things, nothing, the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
And because of him, because of God, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
So let him who boast boast in this.
Boast in the Lord.
It's God's work, God's doing.
He came for the wives of the world who think they had it all together.
And he came for barbarians, those who were uneducated, slaves, those who were the outcast and foreigners of society.
He came for them too.
In fact, to come to Christ, we see in Psalm 51 with David, right?
What God will not deny is a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
Jesus said in Matthew 5, 3, in order to get in the kingdom, you must be poor in spirit.
Recognition of our own depravity, recognition that we don't have anything.
As the great Augustus Toplates says in his great hymn, right?
Nothing do I bring except for to the cross I cling, O rock of ages.
We have nothing.
The only thing that we bring to this salvation thing is our sin.
God does the rest.
And so he doesn't look at us, and the gospel come to us because we're smart.
It doesn't come to us because we're the worst people in the world.
It comes to us by his goodness and his graciousness, and it comes to all.
And he says, I've come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
And Paul says, I'm chief of sinners.
And 1 Timothy.
Verse 15.
So I'm eager, Paul says.
I like this.
I like this word eager.
It's the same word Jesus used in Matthew.
And when he's in the Garden of Gethsemane, he says, Watch and pray that you may not fall into temptation, for the the spirit indeed is what?
Willing, but the flesh is weak.
That word willing is eager.
He's I don't know in any other way to say it, but um, he's giving for the gospel.
He's excited, and the gospel enthralls Paul, and he's so excited to come to preach the gospel.
Is that your desire?
Are you so excited to preach the gospel to others that you can't wait to let them know of Jesus?
Eager.
What describes you and preaching the gospel?
He says, I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
Now the the thing here is that he's eager to preach the gospel to who?
To you.
You Roman Christians.
Whoa, wait a minute.
That's mind-blowing.
Yeah, if you go back up to verse 6 in Romans 1, it says, including you, that's the Roman church, who are called to belong to Jesus.
And you, verse 7, who are loved by God and called to be saints.
He's bringing the gospel not only to the people in Rome that are unbelievers, but he's bringing the gospel to believers.
Think about that for a minute.
Whether you're a believer or unbeliever, we all need the gospel.
And uh, brother Brian was I'll finish it out for you.
What he's saying is the penalty of sin has been done away with the cross, the power of sin has been defeated, right?
He's talked about that.
And what he wanted to say, and right, is the presence of sin one day will be completely be eradicated in heaven.
Okay?
That's the power of the gospel.
And so, as believers, we need the gospel.
You say, what do we mean?
I need to be reminded of the gospel every single day.
Of my life.
I need to know the grace of God.
I need to be reminded.
It says in the 1 John 1 9, right, when we sin, we confess our sins.
And He's faithful and righteous, just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from what?
All unrighteousness.
And so to confess means to agree.
I agree with God that this is sin in my life.
And I want to move on from that.
And here's the reality: when we confess our sins as believers, it's not as if God's re-forgiving, right?
He forgave, but we're agreeing.
And we're being reminded as we move on from that of what he did in the cross, that he paid for our sin and the penalty of sin.
And he gave us the ability by the power of the Spirit not to be controlled by sin any longer because he's canceled the power of sin against us.
And so I'm reminded of what Christ has done and is doing.
I need to remind myself of the gospel.
I can't stay there.
In 1 uh Psalm 139, at the end of Psalm 139, David uh says, what that um teach me if there's any grievous way in me, but it doesn't stay there.
We have to have self-reflection.
We have to go to the Lord and say, How have I sinned?
And ask the Lord, and this is what happens in the Lord's Supper often, right?
We we go to the Lord and we ask the Lord, is there sin?
Just forgive me of my sins, cleanse me.
And what what is happening there, though, is not that we stay there and continue to focus on sin, but he says, and lead me to the way everlasting.
We have to move on from there.
So the gospel reminds us of Christ, and the gospel refreshes us in Christ.
So we have to preach the gospel to ourselves.
Let me give you an example.
In Psalm 42, verses 5 and 11, in Psalm 43, verse 5, it's a refrain, and the psalmist is speaking to himself and says, to his soul, right?
Oh soul, why are you in turmoil within me?
We've gone through those times, right?
We're we're downtrodden, we're weak, and we're struggling, or we're in, we're we have sin, and so we have to preach the gospel to ourselves.
Why are you so downtrodden?
Why are you eternal within me?
Hope in God.
He's talking to himself, right?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him my salvation and my God.
Hope in God, he says three times.
Hope in God, our Psalm 103, that beautiful Psalm.
Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me.
Bless his holy, come on, name.
And forget not all his benefits toward me, for he forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases.
Who's he talking to?
He's not talking to the Lord there, he's talking to himself, he's preaching the gospel to himself.
Do not forget the gospel.
We need the gospel as Christians because it reminds us and it refreshes us in Christ.
The great preacher Robert Murray McSheen, he's well known in the Bible reading plan that maybe some of you are a part of.
I don't know if you you do that, but he died really early, like 28 or 29 years old.
He was pastor of Doug D, Scotland, years ago, and uh not thinking that his life mattered to much, but God is still using what he said and what he's done.
And he said this: he said, for every look to ourselves, every look at our sin where we recognize our sin, it's not an excuse for sin.
We recognize, we come to grips, we turn from it, we hate it, we despise it.
But for every look at our sin, we need to give ten looks to Christ.
For every look at our sin, we need to give ten looks to Christ.
I believe Derek Thomas is right.
It says not only ten, but a hundred.
It's what Thomas Chalmers, the great Puritan, said the expulsive power of a new affection is this overwhelming desire that overwhelms the sin.
We need something of a greater desire than the sin that's in us.
In other words, the expulsive power of a new affection is Christ.
That we need to look at Jesus.
We need to see and exalt Christ.
And when we look at him, the things of this earth what?
Grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
I'm excited to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome so that you can be refreshed and that you can be on mission with this message and this mission of the church.
And so it goes on.
Verse 16 and 17.
For I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
What is the gospel?
Go back up to Romans chapter 1, starting in verse 1.
Paul says he's been set apart for the gospel of God.
We see the gospel is God's gospel.
It's about God.
It's the good news.
The gospel means good news.
Good news of God.
It's not good news of us, it's good news for us.
Right?
What do we have to bring?
Nothing.
We have our sin.
That's not good news.
We have the penalty hanging over our head of sin.
That's not good news.
But it's the good news of God and what God has done.
What the flesh, what the sin weaken by the flesh, Romans 8 could not do.
God did.
Salvation, Psalm 3.8 is of the Lord.
Jonah repeats this refrain.
As he's swallowed by the fish, yes, he's really was swallowed by this great fish.
And as he's in the bell of the well, he has a come to meeting with Jesus.
And as he spewed out and he he declares this in Jonah chapter 2, verse 9, salvation belongs to the Lord.
He recognized that.
He recognized salvation comes.
If you look at the end in Revelation 7, 9, and 10, they have white robes and those who endured to the end.
And we don't have to get into all that, but know what the song was.
The song was this salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
It's a gospel of God and his good news.
And this was not plan B.
It wasn't God created Adam and Eve, and they sinned and he thought to the Son, the Father, the Son, in the midst of the Spirit.
What are we going to do?
Didn't see this one coming.
Noah's been repeated up here from the pulpit.
God is sovereign.
It's plan A.
Christ was slain before the foundation of the world, Romans 13, 8.
It's God's good news.
Look at verse 2.
We promised beforehand through the prophets, it's been handed down.
We see him coming even from Genesis 3.15, right?
The head of Satan will be crushed by the seed, that seed being Jesus Christ.
Verse 3, concerning his son, who is descended from David according to the flesh.
Why did Jesus come?
Because of our sin.
Romans 1.18 through 3.23, all about sin.
There's none righteous, not even one.
No one who does good.
No one seeks for God.
We all, like sheep, have been scattered, going to our own way, and all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
And so we are sinful.
We're born in this world sinners.
Ephesians 2 says, like the rest of mankind, we are children of wrath.
We have the wrath of God hanging over us.
Mentioned that new baby is coming.
Congratulations.
Praise the Lord.
And we love children at Christ's community as well.
And we we see them and seek to train them and love them in the name of Jesus Christ for the gospel.
But your children, and you learn this as parents as you as you go on, they're not innocent.
They have an innocence about them, right?
In the sense that they're not exposed to the things of the world, etc.
But we're born sinners.
As one famous preacher has gone on to be the Lord and Vodibacon would say, they're vipers and diapers.
You just got to wait a little bit longer and see how selfish babies really are and how disobedient they are.
But know this.
He didn't leave us there.
He sent his son.
His son to be declared the Son of God to the resurrection from the dead.
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Not only did Jesus die on a cross, he, as we say in Christ alone, rose from the dead.
Why?
To prove and vindicate that everything Jesus did and said is true.
Jesus lived perfectly in our place, he died in our place as our substitute, and he rose again from the dead.
And that's the essence of the gospel, but that's not it.
We have God, we have man, we have Christ, and the fourth one is we have a response.
A response to God.
The gospel is not good news for us if there's no opportunity to respond to the gospel.
The response to the gospel is that we turn from our sins and what?
Trust in Jesus Christ alone.
They cried out at Pentecost, what shall we do?
He says, Repent for the forgiveness of your sins.
The Philippian jailer cried out as he's about to kill himself, and Paul and Silas said, No, no, no, no.
He said, What shall I do to be saved?
He said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Turn from our sins and put our trust and faith in Jesus Christ.
That's the gospel.
God, man, Christ response.
So he's not ashamed of this gospel.
We could be ashamed of many things.
We saw shame comes in Genesis chapter 3 with sin.
Ed Welch, uh big counselor, says uh it's either things done by us or to us is the cause of shame, and both of those are sin.
Sin.
So there's shame.
But Paul says, I don't have shame in the gospel.
I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
We're ashamed of many things, right?
We maybe what's the reason we don't share the gospel?
Maybe we're fearful of man.
Maybe we're fearful of what someone's gonna say or how they're gonna respond, or maybe they reject us, or maybe they ask a question that we're we're not equipped to answer.
Maybe we're fearful of receiving harm.
Maybe we'll we'll be persecuted.
But Paul says, I'm not a fear.
You know why?
Because Paul knew his life was no longer his own.
In Galatians 2.20, that was quoted by Pastor John, said, What?
I've been crucified with Paul of Christ.
Paul said, I no longer live, but the life I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
I've been crucified.
It's not for me to live as Christ and die as gained.
I I I consider my life of not precious, Paul said to myself, or any value, but if I only fulfill the ministry and and and what I've been called to to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
It's not his own.
And he realized he's not ashamed because Christ was with him.
God is with him.
He never leaves us or forsakes us.
It's not just you sharing the gospel.
Do you realize that?
When you open your mouth, it's not you have the spirit of God inside of you.
That's why he said in Acts 1.8, wait for the Spirit.
Well, now as believers, we have the Spirit.
You don't have to wait for the Spirit.
You could go share the gospel because the power that's in you is the Spirit of God, and He will enable you, He will strengthen you, and you rely on Him, you pray to Him, you ask Him, and He will give you the strength to share the gospel, articulate it.
You don't have to fear or be ashamed.
God's with you, God is for you.
If He's for us, who shall be against us?
So what?
What is someone going to say?
God is with you, and God is for you, He's fighting for you.
He's with you, He's for you.
And you can boldly proclaim the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.
There's power in the gospel.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1, 18, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
The world, when you think about what we're saying in the gospel, that Jesus is the Son of God, came a man, lived perfectly, never sinned, died on a cross to pay for our sin, rose from the dead bodily, and ascended to heaven.
Now turn from your ways and trust Christ.
To the world, that sounds like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Seriously.
But for those of us who are being saved, it's the power of God.
And you think, why would God do this?
Why would God choose to save the world through this message?
This what the world seems as a crazy message.
Why would God choose that to show, 2 Corinthians 4, 7, this power belongs not to us but to God?
So that He would receive all the glory, that He would be magnified and exalted.
For the salvation, for this gospel is the power of God for salvation.
In it is the power of God, not our wisdom, not our intellect, not because uh we have certain things.
No, this is this is the gospel's humbling.
It makes us all equal at the cross.
And we come to Christ, it's not because of something we've done, but our boast is in the Lord.
And so when we share the gospel, we recognize we humbly are one leper telling another leper where to be healed.
Salvation for who believes.
What is that word salvation?
The gospel saves, it saves from and it saves for.
It saves from sin, right?
He came to the world, first John, to save us from our sins.
He appeared to save us from the sins to verse 8, to destroy the works of the devil.
He saved us from death for Romans 6 23.
The ways of sin is death, but the free gift of life is free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
But ultimately, in context, Jesus came to save us from the very wrath of God.
We sing it in Christ alone.
His love, or excuse me, his wrath was satisfied on the cross.
It was so important.
It's being denied by multiple people today.
That Jesus substituted his life in our place.
Why?
So that he would be receiving the penalty we deserve.
The wrath of God, the just, righteous, holy anger of God towards sin would be put on Jesus.
Remember on the cross?
Matthew 26, 46 or so, he said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Because he's receiving the wrath from the Father.
In the garden, he says, If this cup could pass from me, if there's any other way, but yet not my will, but your will.
What was the cup?
The cup is the God pouring out his wrath of our sin on Jesus.
This is a beautiful description of what Jesus did.
He saved us from the wrath of God and he saved us for eternal life.
He saved us for holiness and righteousness, but ultimately eternal life that we might know God and Jesus Christ, his son.
Salvation for everyone who believes.
Believes is a crucial word for us because today we use it all the time, right?
I believe that, you know, might be hurricanes are going to win the College World Series.
Now that's not actually true, right?
That's called wishful thinking.
But when the Bible talks about belief, it encompasses three things.
One, knowledge.
I have to know what we're talking about.
The gospel is facts, right?
God, man, Christ's response.
There's a holy God we sinned and we needed Jesus to substitute his life for us, rise from the dead, and then we believe in him and turn from our sins.
That's the God, that's the gospel of facts.
But even Satan believes, right, James and Shudders.
So it's not just knowledge, but it has to be conviction.
I have to believe that it's actually true.
It's not just another story made up, like the Mormon's book, right?
The book of Mormons made up.
No, we're talking about the truth.
That I not only recognize what it is, but I believe it to be true.
And the third element of faith is trust.
I love that verse that we sang and that we talked about first of John 3.16, for God so loved the world that whoever believes in him.
The word deliberately means into him, right?
That I'm entrusting my life to him.
That faith is not just a knowledge, I know it has to be, it has to be conviction, I believe it is true, but I'm trusting my life unto Jesus.
I make Jesus the object of my faith.
That I believe in him and him alone.
And him alone.
Everyone who believes for the Jew first and the Greek.
The gospel came through the Jews.
Right?
The gospel came, and you see this pattern in Paul's ministry, right?
He goes to the synagogue first, and then they usually kick him out.
A few people get saved, and he goes out to the Gentiles.
But what does this mean?
This certainly means there's one gospel for all peoples.
Jews don't get into heaven based on some other external standard, and neither do Gentiles.
Jesus was clear in John 14, 6.
He said, I am the way, the truth, and what?
The life.
No one comes to the Father except by me.
There's salvation, and no other name given among heaven by which you must be saved, but through Jesus Christ alone.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
As is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
This is an important aspect of the gospel.
Jesus died and born by sin.
So that when we come to Jesus, we turn from our sins and we trust him, and he forgives us, right, of all our sins.
He cleans us up as if we'd never sinned.
But that's not enough.
He removes our sins as far as the east is from the west, but that's not enough.
Verse 17 is crucial, is how Martin Luther, a great reformer, was saved.
By reading and meditating on this verse.
For in it the righteousness of God, not the righteousness of man, but the righteous of God.
In Philippians chapter 3, Paul explains this even more.
Philippians chapter 3, verse 8 and 9.
He said, I count everything lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
For his sake I suffer the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, a righteousness or the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
It's a righteousness of God.
What is that righteousness?
It's the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Remember when Jesus got baptized right before that, it says in Matthew 3?
He's doing this, John.
To fulfill all righteousness.
To fulfill all righteousness, that Jesus had no deceit in his mouth.
He committed no sin.
He was tempted in every way we are yet without sin.
He knew no sin, became or was treated as a sinner, that we might become the righteous of God.
This is the great exchange.
We're forgiven.
He pays their sins, pays for our sins.
The penalty of sins is gone.
It's removed.
The wrath of God is no longer hanging over our head.
There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And the great good news, the other side of that news, is now we receive His righteousness.
Listen, it doesn't mean that He makes us righteous.
It means that He declares us righteous.
This is the mind-blowing thing that we're guilty sinners.
How could the holy, perfect judge, God the Father, declare righteous to us who are guilty sinners?
It's not because of us, brothers and sisters.
It's because of Jesus Christ.
We're clothed with his righteousness.
We're clothed with the righteousness of Jesus.
And he imputes that or he credits that to our account.
So I'm going to give two examples: one for the kids and one for adults, that both apply, right?
So if you're taking a test, right, kids, if you're taking a test and you fail the test and your teacher says, You failed the test, I'm sorry, you receive an F.
Hopefully that never happens to you.
But if it did, right?
Or it probably happened to your friend, right?
So they failed the test.
Then a teacher comes in the next day and says, I have good news.
Good news.
The good news is I canceled the test.
You no longer have an F.
You're forgiven.
That's good news, isn't it?
You ever had that happen?
I had that happen one time.
Not that I've.
Anyway.
All right.
We'll go there.
You're forgiven.
It's completely removed.
That's half the gospel.
What's the other half?
The teacher says, and I'm gonna give you an A plus instead of the F.
That's the the other half of the gospel.
That's righteousness.
Right?
Because if you just have a blank slate, just it's forgiven.
You're like Adam and Eve before the fall.
What credits or what uh uh enables you to get to heaven?
Nothing.
You gotta you gotta earn it.
But you don't, because he's canceled the grave and he's given you 100%.
That's righteous, not here.
For the adults.
This is more geared to the adults.
Talking about marriage.
My buddy just shared this with me this week, this past week.
If you get married and you unknowingly, the husband carries into the relationship a million-dollar debt.
Whoa.
Didn't see that coming, right?
But once you get married, you're legally married, and they just divulge to you, by the way, I have a million-dollar debt.
Whose debt is that?
It's both of yours, right?
You're together, you're one flesh, right?
But the good news is, that's us.
The good news is, the other spouse, the wife in that case, but whatever we want to do, comes into the marriage a million with a billion dollars.
Billions and billions of dollars.
And they get married and says, by the way, I I know you had debt actually, and I canceled it.
And I just want you to know that we have billions and billions and billions of dollars.
That's what happened.
Not only has Christ removed the debt from us, but he's given us his perfect righteousness.
And we continue to believe that day after day after day after day.
So three things.
One, exalt in God.
E-X-U-L-T.
Exalt in God.
That means to rejoice, to revel.
We should exalt God, E-X-A-L-T.
Praise Him, right?
But to exalt means to treasure God in Christ.
That He's the God of the gospel.
He's the good, the good treasure that we sell everything to buy that's hidden in the field.
He's the pearl of great price.
See, Jesus for all that he is.
As John Piper has famously said, God, faith is not only that God is reliable, which he is, but that God is desirable.
Do you delight in God?
Number two.
Number two, embrace the one gospel.
There are many other distractions of gospel, right?
There are many other things that we could do that are good things.
We could feed the poor, which we should, right?
He talked about the pregnancy center.
We should be about the pregnancy center.
We should support the pregnancy center.
But in all these things, if we neglect the gospel, it's all meaningless.
The gospel is the mission of the church.
The gospel is the message we'd have to embrace.
The one gospel.
There's many variations, but the gospel, Paul said, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, I delivered you of first importance.
This is the most important thing that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.
That's the good news.
That's the good news in which you, he says, have believed.
That's the gospel.
Embrace that gospel.
And number three, evangelize the world.
Evangelize the world.
Take that gospel to those that need to hear it.
Run with it.
Speak it.
Preach it.
Maybe you heard the phrase preach the gospel and when necessary, use words.
That's it's horrific.
But you should authenticate the gospel with your life.
There's clarity in that, right?
He says, May you be glorify God by your deeds, Matthew 5, 16, Jesus.
But it's not a substitute for proclaiming the gospel.
We have to speak the gospel.
People come to Jesus through the proclamation of the gospel, right?
Romans is very clear on this.
Romans 10, faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.
So where are you?
Where are you?
John Stott says, nobody can claim a monopoly on the gospel.
Good news is for sharing.
We're obligated to share.
Charles Spurgeon, the great Prince of Preachers, says, The Lord is ready to pardon.
May we be ready to believe, and may we come at once to him, accept salvation through Jesus Christ, and then through the rest of our lives, say to the great captain of our salvation, what good sailors reply to their captain's call.
Ready, I ready.
Ready for storms, ready for calms, ready for whatever that's thou dost command, ready for whatever thou dost ordain.
Are you ready and prepared and equipped to go proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ?
May we say with the prophet Isaiah in chapter six, hear am I, O Lord, send me.
Lord, we love you.
We thank you for this time.
Pray that you would be exalted, that you would stir our hearts and affections more for Jesus, and motivate us to go and take this good news to the world.
And if anybody's here doesn't know you anymore, we pray that they would turn from their sins and put their trust in you.
In Christ's name.
Amen.
And so if you were here this morning and um what the scripture has said, the man of God has said through the word of God by the power of the Spirit of God, if you are wanting to respond to that, myself and some of the other pastors and deacons will be here at the front to receive you.
But I want to give you an opportunity uh to hack have that decision, to make that decision.
It may be that you're here this morning, you just need some time to talk with someone or pray with someone, or you just want to come to the altar and pray.
Um, that is is something we want to give you a chance to do.
I'm gonna ask if you would stand with me, please.
And we're going to have a um a dismissal song.
Do we got we got something?
Okay.
We're gonna have a dismissal song, but um before we do that, I'm gonna ask if if the Solomons, if y'all wouldn't mind, go in the back and let them let them greet you and appreciate um him sharing this morning.
But I want to have a word of prayer with you.
I'm gonna dismiss you, uh, but I'm gonna invite you if you're here and you want to to come, come come forward and and spend some time with us, and we'll be glad to stay here.
As a matter of fact, if I can get one or two of the deacons to come on, come on down and pastors come down, and we'll be here for you um as we're as we're closing in prayer this morning.
Would you pray with me, please?
Lord, I thank you for the truth of your word.
I thank you for the way that it was presented in a way that is clear and concise and convicting.
Lord, that's that's because of you.
I thank you that you give us so much, and I pray, Lord, that we would not leave here the same.
But we have been with you and we would be changed by your grace and for your glory.
In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
Thank you.
You're dismissed.