The Gospel & Salvation - Why do we need a closer look

CTW – Colossians 1

Sermon Series

The Gospel, Conversion, and the Work of Salvation

 Let’s begin today by letting you know what we are going to be doing over the next several weeks or months. I can’t pinpoint a length of time because I don’t know how long it will take. What we are going to cover is important enough that we should not worry about how long it takes. We will let the texts we study dictate how long we are in this series.

We are going to be looking deeply at the gospel and the work of salvation. The word “gospel” means “good news.” The gospel is not simply one message among many messages. The gospel is the greatest message. It is the message above every message. The gospel has no equals when it comes to the importance of the message. The gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. The message of the gospel is the greatest revelation of God’s infinite wisdom to mankind. The gospel reveals to us the answers to life’s most important questions. The gospel explains how sinful people can be reconciled to a holy God. Unless sinners are reconciled to God, they are doomed to an eternal judgment in a place of endless torment called hell. This is the worst fate imaginable. But it is an avoidable fate. God has provided a way for us to be reconciled to Himself. Nothing is more important to understand than how a sinner can be reconciled to a holy God.

As the pastor of this church I must be first and foremost a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have a stewardship entrusted to me from our Lord. I am a steward of the greatest treasure there is. This treasure is the gospel message. It is a treasure given from God to mankind, the church, and the individual Christian. The apostle most used of God to facilitate the spread of the gospel was the Apostle Paul. Paul gave the gospel first place in his preaching and writing. His constant endeavor in life was to preach the gospel, defining the truth of the gospel, and confronting all heretical attacks of the gospel. His ministry was so used of God because the focus was the gospel. Paul was a preacher of the good news.

Paul’s gospel message was consistent with the gospel preached by Jesus and the gospel preached by Peter and the rest of the Apostles. I received an inquiry about our church a couple months ago. The person who sent me an email inquiring about our church said he was a “mid-Acts Pauline dispensationalist.” I had been doing some reading in preparation for this series and had just read something of this idea so I understood how he was identifying himself. Those of this persuasion are not unlike so many who stray from the truth of the gospel. They believe one person was given special insight into the Scriptures. In this case it was a man named John Nelson Darby. Supposedly God revealed special revelation to him sometime in the 19th century. His “special” insight led him to the conclusion that there are three distinct gospel messages given in the New Testament. Each gospel message was narrowly applicable to a specific dispensation or ethnic group.

According to this perspective, they say that Jesus preached the “gospel of the kingdom” and that it was primarily a call to discipleship. If the masses had responded to this message this would have ushered in the earthly kingdom of Christ. When it was rejected by the majority, the offer was set aside and the “gospel of the kingdom” was set aside.

The second “gospel” they say was Peter’s gospel to the circumcised. They claim that this gospel pertained only to the Jewish nation. It was a call to repentance and submission to the Lordship of Christ. They say this was the message preached by the apostles as long as the church was predominately Jewish.

But with the introduction of Gentiles into the church in Acts 10, they claim Paul introduced a whole new “gospel for the uncircumcised.” They claim that this Pauline version of the gospel superseded the two earlier gospels. They teach that this is a distinct message that cannot be harmonized with the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of Peter. They insist that Paul’s gospel is the only gospel that has any immediate relevance for the present dispensation. If this is true, then we can ignore the teaching of Jesus since His message is of diminished significance.

My response to this individual was to let them know that I believed the gospel of Jesus was perfectly consistent with the gospel of message preached by Peter and Paul and the rest of the Apostles. It is the gospel of God. It is the gospel of Christ. It is the gospel of Paul. It is the gospel of Scriptures. I cannot imagine a theological framework in which it is acceptable to relegate the discourses of Jesus, or the sermon of Peter on the day of Pentecost to a place of secondary or tertiary relevance. 

My purpose in telling you about that inquiry was to give you an example of how easy it is for mankind to be confused, deceived, and led away from the truth of the gospel. Many religious persuasions have strayed from the truth of the gospel. There is nothing as important as getting the gospel right. Satan targets gospel truth with his lies more than anything else. Satan wants to distort the way of salvation so that it becomes a way that leads to death. The true gospel message leads to life. Truth sets us free. Lies and deception keep sinners in bondage to their sin. Distortions of the gospel are satanically inspired attempts to prevent sinners from being reconciled to God.

Why do we need to dig deeply into these topics?

God has brought together into the GBC family people from a wide array of backgrounds. Not all backgrounds are the same. Not all spiritual foundations have the same cornerstones. In fact, not all spiritual foundations will support the work of salvation. There are some spiritual foundations that are faulty, meaning that the spiritual house will not stand in judgment. We need to examine and understand the foundational elements of the work of true salvation. We need to make sure that our faith is a true saving faith.

As I read to you in the Scriptures from Colossians 1 in the Call to Worship, Paul wrote, “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.” The emphasis of Paul here is that he didn’t want a single individual to be excluded. He wanted every man, woman, and child presented complete in Christ. This is my desire in this series.

I want to remind you of a verse in Hebrews 13 that I mentioned several weeks ago. Let’s turn there for just a minute. I bring it up here because it communicates the reason I am committed to spending this time focused on the gospel. The writer of Hebrews writes in Hebrews 13:17 saying, “Obey your leaders and submit to them…” (these are the spiritual leaders in the church, the elders and pastors who are shepherding the flock of God). 

The verse goes on to say, “for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account…” This stresses that which is of greatest importance. The spiritual leaders of this church are tasked with the responsibility to keep watch over your souls. Your soul is that part of you that will exist eternally. This is that part of you that will spend forever either in heaven or hell. There are no other options. If I was tasked with keeping watch over your health I would preach the need for eating right and exercising. If I was tasked with keeping watch over your finances I would preach on fiscal responsibility and good investment strategies. I have not been tasked with keeping watch over anything other than your souls. Because the best hope for your soul’s future is found in the gospel, then we must make sure we have the gospel right.

Hebrews 13:17 goes on to say, “as those who will give an account.” As an under-shepherd of the Good Shepherd I will give an account to Him for how faithful I am to keep watch over your souls. I don’t want to hear anything other than, “Well done, good and faithful servant” when I stand before Him. Therefore, we must make sure we get the gospel right.

Hebrews 13:17 then goes on to say, “Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable to you.” This has several implications but I think this is the most important. For me to do this with joy and not with grief means it turns out well. Nothing would be more grievous to me than for you to have been here to be taught the word of God and the way of salvation, and then somehow to fail to obtain the gift of eternal life. That would break my heart. There would be no joy in that outcome. Nothing would be more unprofitable to you than to miss the gift of eternal life. That would represent the greatest wasted opportunity of all. So my challenge to you is to stay focused during this study. Make sure you hear the gospel. Believe the gospel. Obey the gospel. Our objective is to make sure regarding our salvation.

I have many more good reasons for this series but one that is especially compelling. There are some of your young people here who have not yet come to faith in Christ, or at least have not yet made public their commitment to follow Christ. My hope and prayer is that God will use this series to accomplish His work in their lives. I know that parents and grandparents are teaching the gospel. I don’t know of anything I could do that would be more important than teaching the gospel truth to help these young people come to faith in Christ.

That is an explanation for my reasons for doing what we are going to do. Why do we need this as a church? I will attempt to explain why this is a worthwhile endeavor.

There are no safe assumptions when it comes to discerning another person’s spiritual condition. I don’t know if you are genuinely converted or not. It would be easy if God tattooed a distinctive “S” on the forehead of all true saints. God does not do that. Satan has been sowing tares among the wheat for as long as there has been God’s offer of salvation. Satan had one of his own among the twelve, and the only One who knew was Jesus. It is my hope that if there is a single deceived person in our midst, that the truth of God’s word we will examine over these next weeks or months will help you to examine yourself to see if you are in the faith. (2 Cor. 13:5) If you are not, may God reveal the saving message of the gospel to you and do His work of salvation in your heart.

With that in mind I want to begin this series with a look at a passage that emphasizes why this is important and necessary. Turn with me to Matthew 4:23. This verse sets the context for us. It says, “Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.”

Jesus was proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. We must understand something very important regarding this message. Jesus was preaching the gospel of the kingdom to the most religious group of people in the world. He was preaching the gospel to the people who had the truth of Scripture in the Old Testament. And they knew the truth of Scripture. They were fastidiously religious. They were devout. They were sincere. They were committed. They believed in God. They were zealous. They had a devotion to religion that would put most of us to shame. Yet they were not a part of the kingdom of God. They were lost. They were separated from God because of their sin. They just didn’t know it.

So Jesus preached to them the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom beginning in the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7. At the heart of His message was the pride shattering reality of man’s inability to achieve the kingdom by his own effort. The crowd to whom Jesus preached believed they were worthy of the kingdom because they were pleasing to God. Jesus said in 5:20, “For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” If that wasn’t enough to get His point across He stated clearly in 5:48, “Therefore you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

The message of Jesus shatters the false notion that salvation can be obtained through human effort. The truth of the gospel brings us face to face with the need for an understanding of our spiritual poverty, brokenness and humility, hunger and thirst for righteousness, the need for mercy and a purity we cannot possibly achieve on our own. That is the heart of the message of the Beatitudes.

This whole Sermon on the Mount is a contrast between true religion that leads to life and the false religion that leads to destruction. It is a comparison of true and false worship, of divine religion and man-made religion. We need to understand this. Jesus wasn’t preaching this message to a bunch of irreligious heathens. He was preaching this message to the most religious people on the planet at that time. These two ways aren’t contrasting the godless, sinless way of a person who does not know God with a person who is religious. This is a contrast between two kinds of righteousness. There is one kind of righteousness that cannot satisfy God, and there is one kind of righteousness that does. There is one kind of religion that satisfies God, and one that cannot satisfy Him. This isn’t a contrast between religion and no religion. It is between two religions. It is a contrast between the religion of Jesus outlined in this sermon, and the religion of the Pharisees which is summed up in Luke 18:9 that says, “The Pharisees trusted in themselves that they were righteous.”

It was not my intention today to preach the entire Sermon on the Mount. We will be coming back to this sermon from time to time in this series because it does help us understand the gospel. But today I want to focus on the last section of this sermon. This is the part of His sermon where Jesus stresses why His message is so important to understand. This is really a call to consider the truth you have believed. This is a call to examine your life against the backdrop of the truth of the gospel. This is the invitation of Jesus to carefully consider the path we are on. Along with the invitation to consider if we are on the right track to heaven are several warnings.

I’m not going to dig deeply into these truths today. I am simply going to borrow from Jesus the invitation portion of His greatest sermon and invite us to understand why we need to examine the gospel, and why we need to examine what we have believed about the gospel, and why we must make sure that what we have believed truly produces the work of salvation.

In verse 13 of Matthew 7 Jesus invites His listeners to respond to the truth He has taught. This is the point in His sermon where He is calling His listeners to make decision. His truth, if they have heard it and were willing to see themselves in its light, has left them severely lacking. Their righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. They are not perfect as God is perfect. They have no hope of inclusion in the kingdom of heaven. But Jesus offers them a way of entrance. Read verses 13-14. He says, “Enter through the narrow gate.” Because we don’t have time today to examine extensively this truth it will have to simply suffice to say that He alone is the gate. The gate is entered by faith.

There is another gate. It is wide. It leads to a path that is broad. It is broad because it is all inclusive. The problem with the broad path, Jesus said, is that it leads to destruction.

Jesus is the small gate. He said of Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6) In another metaphor familiar to those of His day, Jesus uses the illustration of a shepherd keeping the door of the fold in which the sheep were kept. In John 10:9 Jesus said, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” Jesus went on to say in John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”

The gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life because Jesus is the only way. That is why there are so few who find it. Satanically inspired, man-made alternatives abound. Satan is the angel of light who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. He succeeds when he inspires false prophets who devise broad gate alternatives. I believe God has rescued some of you from those broad gate alternatives.

Here is the point I want to emphasize and this is the reason I challenge all of us to careful self-examination. Jesus tells us that there are many who enter through the broad way that leads to destruction, but only few are those who find the narrow way that leads to life. Many are on the path to destruction. Few are on the path of life. That is concerning.

It is concerning because I know none of us would choose the path that leads to destruction. If it was labeled “death” we would avoid it. The broad path is labeled, “This way to heaven.” Jesus goes on to tell us why it is such a crowded path. Read verses 15-20. The first word is important. “Beware.” Beware because the danger is great. Beware because the consequences are eternal. Beware because the deception is so very effective. Beware because the false prophets employ the most deceitful of tactics. They are actually ravenous wolves who come to you in sheep’s clothing. On the outside they look good. They sound good. Their words seem to make sense. But inwardly they are ravenous wolves. They are very dangerous.

So what do we need to examine? We must examine the fruits. We will know them by their fruits. Just as grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, so the good tree bears good fruit and the bad tree bears bad fruit. You will know them by their fruits.

For false prophets that are seeking to lead people astray, the fruits of their lives will include the words they teach and the lifestyles they live. Bad doctrine always leads to bad behavior. Defective creeds produce defective conduct.

Jesus does not stop here. He goes on to warn that, unfortunately, there will be some who are deceived. Verses 21-23 contain some of the most sobering and frightful words of Scripture. Read verses 21-23. There will be many who fall victim to the false teachers and are deceived into the idea that they are right with God, but are commanded to depart because Christ never knew them. They are characterized by the practice of lawlessness. Their religious performance is noteworthy. They prophesied in Christ’s name. They cast out demons. They performed miracles, many miracles. Yet, they were not among those who had entered the narrow gate. The broad path is filled with very religious, very zealous, very religiously active people. This is because false teachers are effectively deceptive at leading people down the wrong path.

Let’s close with a look at these final words of Jesus in this great sermon. These words constitute not only the end of invitation, but the end of the sermon. These would be the words ringing in the ears of those who heard this message preached. Final words are designed to bring us to place of careful self-examination. Read verses 24-27.

We could spend a couple hours exploring the truth of this passage. I will attempt to explain it in only a few minutes. It isn’t hard to understand. There is a contrast between two men. One is called a wise man and the other is described as a foolish man. The houses built by these men represent something. They represent the spiritual house each one of us is building. The spiritual house represents the true character of our relationship to God. The rains that came and fell and the winds that blew and the floods that slammed against the house represent the judgment of God.

Notice that these two houses are built in the same location. We know that because they both endured the same storm. People looking at these two men building these two houses would not be able to tell which was which. The truth is not revealed until the storm of God’s judgment comes. Then it is too late.

There is so much more that needs to be explained about this passage, but we will have to come back to it later. The reason for looking at it this morning is to emphasize the need for the careful self-examination that will come with this series we are beginning on the gospel and the work of salvation. This study will facilitate the examination of our spiritual foundations. Our spiritual foundation must be Christ and the truth of the gospel. Any other foundation will fall in the judgment of the last day. Great will be the fall because it will have eternal consequences.

How many of those to whom Jesus first preached this message genuinely believed they were on the path to heaven? I would submit to you that the vast majority would have believed themselves to be on the right path. Yet the unfortunate and sad reality is that the vast majority of them were headed for judgment. The majority of them were building their spiritual houses on sand. Their spiritual foundation was on sand. They had not built their spiritual houses on the foundation of Christ.

One of my concerns for the church at large, not necessarily every person at GBC, but the church on the broader scale, could still be described by these solemn words. Because Satan is still deceiving, because false prophets are dressing in sheep’s clothing, there are still people being deceived regarding the path they are on. Far too many people in the church today will hear those dreadful words, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”

If we understand the words of Jesus we know He is still inviting helpless sinners to enter through the narrow gate. He was inviting the religious zealots of His day to enter. A few did. Most did not. He has been inviting spiritually bankrupt, humble, sinners to enter through the narrow gate for more than two thousand years of the church. If anyone here is on the broad path that leads to destruction Jesus still invites us to enter through the narrow gate.

This series is going to be very difficult for me. Please pray for me. Pray for those who will be here or listen to these messages online. We will be challenged. We will be encouraged. We will be edified. We will be confronted with the truth. We never need to fear the truth. God’s word is truth. Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified in the truth.

Let’s pray.