Sermon Tone Analysis
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It is interesting how every small town has a different culture.
Neligh is different than Oakdale, Clearwater, Elgin, or Plainview.
Each one is different than the other.
We could spend some time and tear apart each culture, explaining how different aspects of those cultures are good or bad.
But we won’t, because most of the differences have nothing to do with the Bible.
I have the privilege of traveling to Brazil once and Germany twice.
What I am about to say might be a shocker to you.
Brazil and Germany are different from each other.
And they are both different from the United States.
When we flew back into the US, I was thrilled to see normal airports.
On each of those trips, my group leaders told us to not act like an American.
We were going to work at youth camps and share the Gospel.
We were told to not act like an America, but to take on the culture of the location, so that the focus would be on the Gospel, instead of on “those crazy Americans.”
We weren’t too successful with that.
Turns out teenagers don’t change their culture that easily.
But, that warning by my group leaders has stuck with me to this day, and has been reinforced by my own ministry to international students in Dallas, and by training through RHMA.
If our goal is to share the Gospel, we must be student of whatever culture we are in, of whatever culture we are interacting with, so that the Gospel shines through, instead of us.
Some people call it being a chameleon.
I call it being colored by the Gospel.
And this is what Paul writes about.
Will you pray with me?
We are to be colored by the Gospel.
Let’s talk about the Gospel.
1.
The Truth
The Gospel is the truth of our salvation.
Paul writes:
He is going to define for us what the gospel is in 1 Cor 15 1-8
I am looking forward to preaching on these verses in a few months.
But, for now, let’s talk briefly about the Gospel.
A. We are sinners
Paul says that we are sinners.
We have lived our lives apart from the holiness of God.
That is quite a phrase, but what does that mean?
God created us.
As his creation, he said that there is a standard that we should meet.
Specifically, we are called to reflect him and his character.
So, thinking about who God is, his faithfulness, his love, his justice, his righteousness, his perfection, his loyalty, his purity, every characteristic you can think of, we were called to reflect that.
But, we didn’t.
Instead, we chose to run away from God.
We chose to worship ourselves, our reason, our desires, our priorities.
We declared that we could provide everything we needed.
What happens when we try to be God?
We mess it up.
We messed up our lives.
We messed up our world.
We messed up eternity.
Because,
God in his holiness cannot have anything sinful around him.
His character drives sin away, as far away from himself as possible.
Our sin, our choices, all those times we said that our priority is not God, have created this situation, that we are driven away from God.
The farthest thing away from God is the place where he is not.
Hell.
So all of the world is doomed to be in Hell for eternity because of our actions and our decisions.
We were created to image him, and we decided not to.
And we will regret it for eternity.
It’s important to note, that everyone who ends up in hell will say that this was just.
No one will be cursing God on that day.
They will be cursing themselves for eternity, in the place that is the absence of God and his character.
The Gospel starts with an understanding of our state: We are sinners.
B. Christ died for us
The Gospel continues with our hope: Christ died for us.
Our sin deserved death.
Adam and Eve were created for eternity.
But they died because of their sin.
They died physically and spiritually.
Physical death: a separation of the soul and the body.
Spiritual death: separation between us and God.
Sin brings death.
It brings separation.
It never brings completion.
That’s why the alcoholic or the drug addict is never satisfied.
The addiction is promising something that it can never deliver.
Our sin brings death, physically and spiritually.
It brings an eternity of death.
But God.
He looked at our state, and sent his son to do what we could not do.
We are all doomed to eternity of death.
And we cannot change that fact.
No amount of good we do changes the fact that we are sinners.
So, no matter what, our sin dooms us to an eternity of death, an eternity of separation from God.
But God.
Jesus on that cross to our sin on his shoulders and paid the penalty for our sin.
With the last breath he breathed, freedom and forgiveness was offered to the world.
Salvation is offered through Jesus Christ.
As he said:
He is the bridge to eternity.
C.
He rose again
Some might say, “how do I know that Jesus offers freedom and forgiveness?
How do I know that this salvation is real?
Why would you say that Jesus is the only way for salvation?”
Well, he offered proof.
As Paul wrote:
Very few people, statistically, have been brought back from the dead.
Only one person has brought himself back from the dead.
That is Jesus Christ.
There is overwhelming proof of his resurrection, we celebrate what he did and all that proof every year at Easter.
Paul mentions briefly that over 500 people saw him, at the same time, and interacted with him.
His resurrection is the seal, saying that this product is the real thing.
He is really God.
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