The Gospel Truth
Notes
Transcript
We don’t live in the Deep South, but one of the wonderful things about living in the South is the unique phrases we tend to use.
How many of you have ever heard someone say, “And that’s the gospel truth”?
What they mean is that they aren’t lying, that this thing really happened like they said it did, etc.
As common a phrase as that may have been at one time, I want us to spend the next several weeks together looking at what the real gospel truth is.
To do that, we are work through the book of Galatians, so go ahead and open your Bibles up to Galatians 1.
This series may be a little different than some of our others. We may pull highlights from the text instead of working verse-by-verse like we often do through a book like this.
Let’s set the stage a bit.
While several of the letters Paul wrote were to churches in specific cities, this letter was written to the churches in the region of Galatia.
There were actually two regions called Galatia in that time, but this likely refers to the southern one.
Paul started or preached at several churches there during his first and second missionary journeys.
If you are familiar with the book of Acts, you might remember Paul preaching in Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium. Those are all cities in this region.
This is where Paul made the Jews so mad that they formed an angry mob that stoned him, dragged him out of the city, and left him for dead.
It isn’t surprising, then, that false teachers sprung up after Paul left.
These false teachers were teaching everyone that they had to follow the rituals of the Mosaic Law, like circumcision and dietary restrictions, if they wanted to be saved.
In this letter, then, Paul is writing to remind them about what the real gospel truth is all about.
He is teaching us that Jesus’s work, which is the real gospel truth, sets us free to have a relationship with God that the Mosaic Law couldn’t give us.
As we will see, he doesn’t free us to live life however we want. Instead, Jesus frees us to live the life he created us to live, related to God and reflecting him more and more as we grow.
This morning, we are going to start at the beginning of the letter and lay the foundation for what is to come.
Before we can look at how the truths of the gospel impact our lives, we need to make sure we are all on the same page about what the gospel actually is.
Paul does this in a bit of a unique way by including a summary of the main points of the gospel in his introduction to the letter.
Some of you are already checking out because you think, “Sean, we know the gospel. Why are we going back over this today?”
There are a few reasons I can think of that go beyond just setting the stage for the rest of this letter.
First, it may be that you are here this morning and you are not yet a follower of Jesus. While there is a lot we can say about what it means to follow him, what we are going over this morning are some of the most essential aspects you need to know if you are going to follow Jesus.
For the rest of us, we are coming back to the gospel because it is so incredibly easy for us to drift from it.
Sometimes, we drift by taking away from the gospel. We might reduce the gospel down to just saying, “God loves everybody so I am sure he will work it out” or something similar.
More often, we drift by adding to the gospel. That’s what the Judaizers in Galatia were doing. They were teaching that you needed Jesus *and* the Mosaic Law to be a Christian. We might add different works to the gospel, like going to church or giving or being nice or voting a particular way—if I do those things, then I am a Christian.
While following Jesus impacts all of those areas, those things are not what saves us, which the gospel makes clear.
You might even hear this in more subtle ways, where well-intentioned Christians may take something and say, “Social justice is the gospel” or something like that.
Again, a relationship with Jesus based off his work as displayed in the gospel has major implications for how we treat impoverished people or those of other races and ethnic backgrounds. Those issues are important, but they are not the gospel.
And the last reason I want us to look at it this morning is because these truths should be so precious to us that we never lose our sense of wonder over what God has done on our behalf.
With all of that introduction, then, let’s answer the question, “What is the gospel?”
Keep in mind that the word we translate “gospel” originally meant “good news.”
When we talk about the gospel, though, we are using it as a technical word to describe a particular set of events that are the best news in history!
Let’s read 1:1-5.
In Paul’s letters, he usually includes a salutation that looks something like this.
We might even be tempted to skip the first few verses because they all seem similar—Paul, an apostle, writing to these people, grace and peace, etc.
In many of those salutations, though, God has something for us to take note of.
Here, Paul is doing a masterful job of reminding the churches in Galatia about what the gospel actually is.
He doesn’t use the word “gospel” until verse 6, but he summarizes it here.
Paul covers all of the bases:
God the Father desired to rescue us
Jesus died for us.
Jesus was raised from the dead.
Jesus is in charge.
That’s the gospel truth. Let’s make a few observations about that this morning:
1) The gospel is about Jesus.
1) The gospel is about Jesus.
This may not surprise you, but it bears repeating that the gospel is about Jesus.
Here’s why that is important.
We live in a pluralistic society where there are lots of different views on religion, salvation, and the afterlife.
In that kind of context, it is easy for us to think that, as long as people sincerely believe in something, it will all work out in the end.
After all, we have all known someone who doesn’t claim to follow Jesus and they are a really nice person, they do good work, they are fun to hang out with, or whatever.
Here’s the thing, though: as great a person as they may be, the only way to be right with God is through Jesus.
Verse 4 said that our salvation was God’s idea. He came up with the plan to save us, and that plan is that Jesus came to earth, died for our sin, was raised from the dead, and now we find life and freedom through surrendering to Jesus as our Savior and our Lord.
That is the way God saves us.
That isn’t just *a* way God saves us, Jesus’s sacrifice on our behalf is the only way anyone can be saved.
That’s why the apostles would say,
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”
The gospel is all about Jesus because Jesus is the only way to be saved!
All of that language about salvation assumes a second truth about the gospel:
2) We are all sinners.
2) We are all sinners.
Verse 4 reminds us that Jesus gave himself for our sins.
Before we talk about his gift, we have to remember that our sin is what made his death necessary.
We can’t ever let ourselves forget this critical reality: We are sinners.
Without hesitation, I can tell you that the biggest problem in your life is sin.
The heartaches you are dealing with are either consequences that come from your sin, the impacts of someone else’s sin on your life, or the general impact of sin in the world around us.
Our biggest need is for someone to forgive our sin.
So many of us live lives that look so clean compared to others that we forget that we ourselves have sinned and will continue to sin until Jesus takes us home to be with him.
Remember, sin is anything that displeases God and goes against his law.
We sin anytime we do what we want instead of what God says.
Sin isn’t just what we do, it is also what we think.
Not only that, we sin when there is something good we should do but we don’t do it!
Scripture makes it clear that everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.
Because we are sinners, there is not a single one of us who deserves to be saved.
There is a popular quote that is attributed to various people—Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther, and most frequently Jonathan Edwards, so we aren’t sure who said it, but it wasn’t me:
“You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.”
Let that sink in.
This is the bad news that makes the good news, the gospel, so good!
You and I are sinners. We have turned our backs on God, we have lived for ourselves, and we cannot fix that on our own.
Through the rest of the letter, Paul is going to talk a lot about the Law. He’s referring to the Law God gave Israel through Moses. We see it in Exodus, Leviticus, and reiterated in Deuteronomy.
That’s the Law that the false teachers in Galatia were trying to tell people they needed to live by.
What Paul is going to teach us through this letter is that the Law couldn’t save anyone.
All the Law could do was show us just how sinful we were and drive us to recognize our need for God.
The sin in our hearts keeps us from ever being able to live up to God’s standards, and we deserve to die because of it.
Stop and think about this for just a minute: If you are a Christian here today, when was the last time you asked God to make you aware of the sin in your own heart?
When was the last time you let God’s word pierce into you deep enough to help you see just how short you have fallen from God’s standard?
Do you look around a people whose sin may be more obvious than yours and quietly think to yourself that you are better than them, or have you let the Holy Spirit shine his light into the dark corners of your heart enough to reveal your own sin?
It is uncomfortable to let him do that, but we need always to remember just how far we drift without him.
We need to stop scrolling, stop distracting, and simply let the weight of our sin break our hearts afresh and anew.
What happened to that whole thing about “good news?” Didn’t you say the gospel is good news?
The good news seems so much sweeter to us when we see the bitterness of the bad.
You see, it really is all about Jesus.
And that takes us to the next truth that really makes the gospel such good news:
3) Jesus died for sin and was raised from the dead.
3) Jesus died for sin and was raised from the dead.
Read verse 4 again.
Slow down and stop on each word for a minute, lest we too quickly pass over these words in familiarity.
Who is this “who” referring to?
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus, the one that Colossians says created the world and sustains it.
For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
This is the Jesus Paul is speaking of. The one who is preeminent over all of creation, who eternally existed with the Father and created everything and who literally holds everything together.
What did Jesus do?
He gave.
We know that those who are saved are the recipients of his gift here.
Stop and think about that: He gave something, which we will see in a second, to those who were sinners.
We rejected him and tried to put ourselves on the throne, and even after salvation, we still reject him and sin day after day after day.
Yet Jesus is so loving, so gracious, so kind, so merciful that he would give something to us.
We don’t deserve anything from him besides death!
So Jesus gave, but what did he give?
He gave himself!
This is the incredible truth of the gospel that separates Christianity from every other world religion.
Lots of people teach that people have somehow offended their deity or lost touch with him.
However, it is only in true, biblical Christianity to you see that the real God, the one true God who calls everyone to be saved by surrendering to and trusting in Jesus, he is the one who gave his own life by dying on the cross in order to rescue us!
Jesus died the death you and I deserved. He didn’t send someone else; he came himself, according to the will of the Father, and died in our place.
Why? To rescue us from this present age.
To rescue us from lives where we have to be in charge of creating our own destinies and trying to find our own meaning.
He rescued us from ourselves and our sin and the destruction we would bring to our souls by continuing in it.
How good must God be if he is willing to do that for us?
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
This is how God showed us his love.
By the way, shouldn’t a God who loved us this much have a right to tell us what to do and how to live?
I mean, he already had that right by the fact that he even created us in the first place.
How much more should we want to give him our love, our devotion, and our allegiance after he gave himself for our sin and rescued us?
Before we look at that more fully, let me remind you not to lose sight of the other key piece of the gospel here: Jesus rose from the dead.
We saw that back in verse 1 where Paul said that the Father raised Jesus from the dead.
That means the penalty had been paid and Christ’s death on our behalf had been accepted.
Jesus paid our entire debt and rose from the dead to prove it.
That means you and I can be forgiven, and we can know we have been forgiven, if we will surrender to Jesus and accept the gift he has given.
With that surrender comes the final truth about the gospel that we want to see this morning:
4) Jesus is in charge.
4) Jesus is in charge.
The message of the gospel is that Jesus came, died for our sins, and rose from the dead.
However, some also included the fact that when Jesus rose, he was put in charge over everything.
We see that spelled out in:
For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow— in heaven and on earth and under the earth—
and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus’ ministry on earth began a new era in his rule and reign over creation.
While we don’t see it fully yet, he established the beginnings of his kingdom and will one day return to complete what he started.
Right now, though, those of us who he has saved are a part of his kingdom.
That’s what Paul says elsewhere:
He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.
Right now, we are living as citizens of Jesus’s kingdom and looking forward to the day when he comes and we see his reign more visibly.
Where do we see that in this passage? Two places.
In an indirect way, we see it in the way Paul says that we have been rescued from this present age.
If you are rescued from somewhere, you have to be rescued *to* somewhere as well, right? If I rescue you from being lost in the ocean, I rescue you onto my boat.
So, like we just saw in Colossians, we have been rescued from this present age and rescued to his kingdom.
If it’s Jesus’s kingdom, then who is in charge?
Jesus.
We see that even clearer in the fact that Jesus is referred to as “Lord” in verse 3.
Remember, Lord is not Jesus’s name. “Lord” is a title we use to refer to the role Jesus plays as our owner, our leader, our boss, our guide, and the one we owe our allegiance to.
Some people have tried to separate Jesus’s work into two different roles.
You might have heard someone say, “I accepted Jesus as my Savior when I was young, but I made Jesus my Lord when I had this experience.”
I don’t mean to disparage anyone, but that isn’t the language the Bible uses—Jesus is both your Savior and Lord or he is neither.
The gospel truth says that Jesus died to save me, and now that he is raised, he lives to be my Lord.
He isn’t a life coach who gives me suggestions or helps me draw out what is already in me; he is my Lord who deserves and demands that I obey him and honor him and represent him well.
Why wouldn’t I want him to be my Lord?
He has been so incredibly good to me by dying in my place and raising from the dead and forgiving my sin.
If I know that, then how can I help but want to give him my life, my love, my everything?
This is the gospel: You and I are sinners who cannot save ourselves. God loves us so much that Jesus would die for my sins to rescue me from myself and this present age. He rose from the dead to prove that the price had been paid, and now he rules and reigns over my life as my Lord and my Savior.
It is in light of these incredible truths that the hymn writer would write,
Logos Digital Hymnal When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
In the weeks to come, we will see more and more about how the gospel impacts our daily lives.
For today, what do you need to do in response to this message?
Surrender to Jesus as Lord and Savior?
Remember your sin and the goodness of God?
Share the gospel with a friend, a neighbor, or a co-worker?
Live like Jesus really is your Lord?
We want to give you space to respond as the Lord leads.