The Mystery of the Gospel

[00:00:01] I have found the more that I read the gospel, the more that I understand the gospel. And by that I mean the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the way Paul talks about it, the way Matthew, Mark, Luke and John talk about it, the way Peter talks about the gospel, James talks about the gospel, the way Jesus himself talks about the gospel. I have found that I just keep needing it, don't you? [00:00:30] Like just in all of the ways that the good news presents itself to us, that the good news is something we need. All of a sudden I need this more and more. You know, when I was growing up, we would have gospel meetings. You ever been to those? They're a hoot. [00:00:53] They're great Sometimes, sometimes. And I remember this clearly, sometimes they involved the gospel, but they always involved meeting. [00:01:05] And that was the problem I had as a 10 year old. Going to church on a Tuesday night, a Tuesday night when it wasn't raining, when it wasn't, we could play basketball in the backyard until my brother and I used to play basketball, until our eyes just couldn't handle it anymore. It get dark and your depth perception gets off. And so we would just, you just get worse. You just get worse. [00:01:37] And so we just like, well, we gotta go in. We're gonna get hit in the face with a ball in a second. [00:01:43] But we wanted to do that. We wanted to play wiffle ball with our friends, we wanted to ride our bikes around the neighborhood. But instead we're meeting. [00:01:57] Now most kids don't like meeting, but I'm guessing one of the, one of the things that was tough about gospel meetings is I left there feeling very much like a sinner at 10, lay in bed and say, oh what? [00:02:19] I am a sinner. I didn't even know what any of that meant half the time I was, we had this. It was a 10 year old, she was young to get baptized, but she loved Jesus, wanted to be one with Jesus. So she. I was in this small little country church and they said, do you want to. She wants to get baptized. And I said, okay, we'll baptize her. And I talked with her beforehand. They had come over to the house, we had talked and we announced she's going to get baptized after worship. All need to stick around. We were having a potluck. [00:03:06] Hold your horses on the potluck. We're going to have a baptism. So she goes back and she gets ready and one of the ladies of the church comes to me and says, I don't think she should get baptized. [00:03:21] And I said, well, that's something you need to talk to her about, like, I'm not one. That's the first time that's ever happened. [00:03:30] And I said, well, why not? And she said, well, she doesn't even have any sins that need forgiveness. And I said, well, if it would make you feel more comfortable, I'll have her go smoke a cigarette beforehand. [00:03:49] Now the problem became pretty clear that baptism isn't just for the remission of sins. [00:04:01] Baptism isn't just for people who have messed up. The gospel is not just for people who have messed up and now they need forgiveness. That is true. We all have messed up and need forgiveness. We are all sinners. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. That is true. But baptism is not just the rectifying of that. It's the union between man and God, between woman and God, between child who's decided to give their life to Jesus in front of their church. [00:04:38] It's the union there that's taking place. The gospel is bigger than, you are a sinner and Jesus makes that better. [00:04:47] Now, that's part of it for sure. [00:04:52] You are a sinner and Jesus makes that better. But if we just distill the gospel down to this math transaction of ethical, then we're missing the bigger part of what we need. [00:05:09] Because I am a sinner, I am broken. And not just in the terms of like, well, this year I cheated on my taxes and that's how I'm a sinner. That's not necessarily. I didn't cheat on my taxes this year, last year, but learn me lesson. [00:05:28] Just kidding. [00:05:30] Sometimes when we have visitors and I say things, I'm sorry. [00:05:35] So. But it's not just I did a bad thing and therefore I need that checked off my list. [00:05:42] Our general brokenness is the problem. [00:05:49] Our general fallen shortness is what God decided, not what God got angry about, but it's what God we fell. So God lifted, we fell short and God forgave. [00:06:11] That's beautiful. But it's not the whole story. It's not even the whole gospel. And the reason that's important is because when we see the gospel not just as this story where I've got sins and God makes it better, but as God is rooting for his creation to be the creation that God created us to be, rooting for his kingdom to interact with the world and the way in which he would interact with it, that when Jesus announces the kingdom, he's walking over a hill and saying, the kingdom, the gospel is, this is the good news. The kingdom is here. [00:06:53] That's the gospel, the kingdom is here. What the kingdom brings with it is forgiveness of sins, for sure. What the kingdom brings with it is the hope that death, that death has lost its reign in this world, that when we grieve, we don't grieve like those who have no hope. We have hope. [00:07:14] What the gospel is is this kingdom that gets together and benefits from the king and the God who put him on the throne and the Spirit that dwells with us. [00:07:28] The gospel's this big thing that I need. When I was 10, I thought it was because I'd messed up and I needed forgiveness. That's true. [00:07:39] I need God's forgiveness. [00:07:42] But as you get older, you realize the brokenness in the world, the hurting, the pain, the death, we need hope from that, too. [00:07:53] But what Paul emphasizes in Ephesians and Colossians, toward the end of Romans, like, over and over again, when he's talking about the Gospel, he's proclaiming a third element that's incredibly important. [00:08:10] And Doris beautifully talked about it in the Communion thoughts. [00:08:16] He's proclaiming that the gospel is for more than we thought it was for in the first place, more people than we thought it was for in the first place in Ephesians, chapter three. And we'll read a little bit of this, 11 verses here. For this reason, I, Paul, he's already introduced himself once. He's saying it again here, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of the Gentiles for this reason. [00:08:52] And he takes a little aside here, for surely you've heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you, that is. And here he brings it up again. This is not the first time he's brought it up in Ephesians, but he's bringing it up here again. The mystery or the surprise made known to me by revelation, as I've already written briefly in reading this, then you'll be able to understand my insight into the mystery or the surprise. What did the king, what did the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed king, do that shocked everybody and it was made known to the it was not made known to people in other generations, he says, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit of God's holy apostles and prophets. [00:09:50] This mystery is that through this is the shock of the King, that through the Gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body and sharers together in the promise of Jesus Christ. Let's park on that verse right there. [00:10:18] This mystery, this surprise, is that the Gentiles now gentiles is a. Is a Bible word. [00:10:28] The Greek word is. You'd actually recognize it, maybe understand it a little better if we just took the Greek word and made it English. The ethnos, the ethnic, different ethnicities, the everybody else. [00:10:47] You got the Jews and then the rest of them, the all y'alls. [00:10:55] That's how it should be translated, that the everybody else's are welcome into the body of Christ. [00:11:08] That everybody that seeks Jesus, they will not find a defining characteristic within their self that precludes them from. From the body of Christ that keeps them out. [00:11:22] Everybody is welcome at the table of Christ. [00:11:30] Doris said, we as the body of Christ, partake in the body of Christ. [00:11:39] We take communion every Sunday so that we can take communion every Sunday so that we can remember every Sunday and so that we. [00:11:54] We can remember together every Sunday. [00:11:59] Now, there's a lot of you. [00:12:03] People ask about our church. They say, ministers do this. They're like, what's your attendance? I'm like, okay, fine. [00:12:10] Now we're just. I don't like that. [00:12:14] But what I tell people is I say we have about 220 people that show up twice a month. [00:12:20] They're never there at the same time. [00:12:23] So every Sunday, it's a general. It's a mixture of different people. [00:12:31] So the group of people that are here this Sunday are different from the whole group of people that are here the next Sunday. Slight variations and changes. Oh, my goodness. Did you say they were here? They've been sick and now they're back and so on and so forth. And every church, every Sunday morning is a unique experience to get to share communion with a new we that we sit and remember together with a new group. [00:13:02] And one of the most important things we do is remember that the body of Christ is bigger than just in us. It's in all y'all. [00:13:13] That the body of Christ, those who are forgiven for their sins, that have hope in the resurrection from the dead. We also are hoping for unity that only Christ can bring, that more seats are set out. We have folding chairs galore. [00:13:34] We set them around the table of God and those who are different and listen, all y'all are different. [00:13:46] We just are. [00:13:48] It's sort of built into the human experience that you are going to be different from me. [00:13:58] Rachel and I were listening to a podcast because we're very educated people. [00:14:04] And we were listening to a podcast and the podcast host said, you know how podcasts are. They have a host and then they have an expert. [00:14:15] They bring on an expert and the host, the Host asked this expert, isn't it crazy how three different people can come from the same family? And they're very. They're so different. Your children are so different from one another, but yet they came from the same family. And the experts said no child comes from the same family. [00:14:42] First in birth order. Your middle child, you're the baby. [00:14:47] You're born into different circumstances with different siblings. You have two older siblings. Some people have two younger siblings. No child comes from the same family. We're all different and just as different as you are from your brothers and sisters. [00:15:07] My sister. My sister's so organized and good at things, and she went to school, went to college, and graduated. Get this, in four years, a nerd, right? Like, so. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. [00:15:33] But, like, I went to college and learned guitar, which, mind you, was not a class I was getting credit for. [00:15:48] I almost failed music. [00:15:54] Like, I really struggled in college. It wasn't a good experience for me. My sister just skipped through and made as and graduated with a Latin title after her name. [00:16:08] You would think that we were similar. We came from. We were born 20 months apart in the same family, in the same place, had the same experiences, were very different. [00:16:22] But our differences, my parents never once in our differences made any of us feel less family because of our differences. [00:16:34] And that's the body of Christ. [00:16:37] Very different people. [00:16:39] All y'all are very different. [00:16:43] Not that there is one normal and you've strayed from it, but it's just we're all so different. And the gospel sees our brokenness, sees our death and sees our differences, our division, the things where we've taken our differences and made them dividers. Where you're over there and I'm over here, I think this way and you think that way. [00:17:08] The Gospel brings us to a table where there is no difference under Christ. [00:17:19] Now, that doesn't mean we aren't still different. That's what's beautiful about it. [00:17:24] Over and over again, all of this, the Gentiles are now welcome causes problems. If they hadn't brought in the Gentiles, they wouldn't have written, we wouldn't have written half. Paul wouldn't have written half the books he wrote. I said we. I didn't write any of them. [00:17:42] They constantly had problems about what they could eat at potluck. [00:17:46] You think I'm joking? But like a religion that has very serious food laws versus a group of people that don't really have that very serious food laws coming together for a common meal is a problem. [00:18:00] And Paul writes them often. And we have this problem in Romans. We have this problem with Corinthians, Ephesians. He's hinting at it at times, but like Paul is addressing this problem often. And he never says who's right. [00:18:15] He just reminds them who's king. [00:18:19] He never says who's correct. [00:18:23] He just points to the Christ. [00:18:27] The answer is not find an opinion. That's correct. The answer is find a king who unites. [00:18:35] And that's gospel. [00:18:38] And I don't know if you've noticed, but we need that kind of gospel right now. [00:18:44] We live in a dying, sinful, divided world. [00:18:50] And I'm right there with them. [00:18:55] I'm a part of it, you're a part of it. [00:18:59] But what Jesus calls us to the surprise of the gospel, is that the all y'alls get to sit with the all of us's, that those out there get to participate with those in here, pull up a chair to the table and the king welcomes the remembrance. [00:19:24] Raise your hands and worship. And God welcomes the song, the gospel. The mystery of the gospel is that what God has spoken over us is forgiveness, hope and unity. [00:19:49] And we need it. [00:19:51] I've needed it my whole life. [00:19:57] Things haven't gotten worse. [00:20:01] I don't know if you know that things have not gotten worse. [00:20:04] Now we're aware of all the bad now because we watch news and it's constantly telling us the bad. [00:20:12] I hear people talk about, remember lawn darts? [00:20:16] Remember that as a toy? [00:20:19] They held a meeting and said, you know, we have too many 12 year olds. We need to invent a toy that you can just, it's a spear that you toss straight into the air and then watch it fall. [00:20:38] I heard someone the other day said, you know, back in my day, we had lawn darts and no one got hurt. I said, it's because you didn't know anyone that got hurt. [00:20:48] But chances are kids got hurt throwing blades in the sky. [00:20:55] There's a good chance. But there wasn't 24 hour news to tell us there's a bunch of kids getting hurt. [00:21:01] There wasn't 24 hour news to tell us. Well, there's this problem in the world and that problem in the world. We were just uneducated or uninformed. [00:21:10] Chances are we're more informed now and less educated. [00:21:18] But the world isn't getting worse. It needs the same thing it needed when Jesus showed up. [00:21:29] Yeah, we're divided, but the Ephesians were divided. [00:21:34] Yeah, we are sinful. [00:21:38] Jesus thought that was a problem then. [00:21:43] Man, we need Hope from death. [00:21:48] The mystery of the gospel is that it keeps surprising us with the needs it fulfills. [00:21:57] So I'm hesitant to sequester it off into this, like, one little formula that says. That says, I've sinned and now I'm forgiven. [00:22:06] That's wonderful. That's part of it for sure. [00:22:11] But the more you interact with the gospel, the more you interact with the good news, you find there's just more good news keeps showing up. [00:22:24] I am anxious for the world to hear about this Jesus who forgives. [00:22:34] I am longing for the world to hear about this tomb that is empty and a God who brings victory over death. [00:22:46] And I really want to show the world what the spirit is doing to unite a bunch of all y'alls around the table of the King, to unite us together. [00:23:04] That's the gospel. [00:23:08] Thank God. The gospel is not that I'm right. [00:23:11] Thank God. The gospel isn't that I said something, and therefore it is so. [00:23:18] But the gospel is what? The Lord speaks over us. [00:23:24] The Lord speaks over us something, and it holds true. [00:23:31] I am so thankful that as an all y'all, I can sit at the table of the King. [00:23:47] That is some good news. [00:23:52] If you need prayer, Jesus, Jesus or Jesus or prayer, that's all we have to offer. [00:24:05] We are not financial consultants. We are not gonna fix your marriage right away, but my goodness, we can pray for you and we can give you Jesus. [00:24:16] And it's been my experience that the gospel just keeps giving us what we need. If you need anything this morning, we have prayer partners at the back. You can come talk to me down front, but please do so while we stand and while we sing.