American Gospel #2 (9)
American Gospel • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction
Introduction
During this study we’ve encountered many different people who have a problem with the Biblical Gospel of Jesus Christ being fully-God, fully-man, coming to this world and living a perfect life and dying for sinners like you and I on the cross in order to save us from our sins and restore us to our Father in Heaven. Some people have a problem with this because they think that it’s not very loving of God, others don’t think that they are really that bad of a person to deserve death/separation from God, and others have simply abandoned anything resembling Christianity completely… At the same point, we’ve seen example after example of people defending what the Bible teaches by using Bible verses. As I’ve said, we should always be able to say something to someone and back it up with 3 simple words: Book, Chapter, Verse. If you can book, chapter, and verse it, your argument gets a whole lot stronger!
Many people fail to see the Bible as authoritative. This study has highlighted this sad reality as many place their feelings above that of Scripture and we know this to be true in our world as well as there are people who will use the Bible when it suits them but abandon it whenever they feel a different way. Why is it so important to submit to the authority of Scripture?
If we fail to, we’ll trust self or go with the flow in our society
11 And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ,
13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.
14 Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.
Until we understand the authority of Scripture and that Scripture is God-breathed and inspired by Him and that it has the ability to tell us what to do and why to do what we’re supposed to do, we’ll fall victim to ourselves and our fallen world. If we don’t stand on Scripture, we’ll be like the man who built his house on the sand and it came crashing down whenever the wind and the rain showed up. We must stand on Scripture or we’ll fall away and be led astray by another message that sounds pleasing to our ears but fails to deliver what we really need.
Tonight as we study, we’ll see the result of abandoning the authority of Scripture and how it might lead to what we want but it takes us to a dark place where our deepest questions are unanswerable. Let’s watch tonight’s clip
___________
This first section is about Secular Humanism - this is a phrase that many of us are unfamiliar with… so it might help to look at some things that people who adhere to this worldview believe in:
Nontheism (deny existence of God)
Naturalism (deny supernatural)
Evolution (deny sovereign Creator)
Relativism (deny absolute truth/morals) everything is feelings based
Self-sufficiency (deny need for divine intervention) is our only hope for solving our problems
These people have much in common with Progressive Christians
Believe in existence of God
Some deny supernatural
Many deny sovereignty of God in favor of sovereignty of science
Many deny absolute truth in favor of subjective feelings
Many believe that we can solve all of our problems on our own
Lots to unpack here from these chapters. Let’s start out with Bart Campolo’s confession towards the beginning where he says this, “In the end I stopped believing that Jesus physically rose from the dead.” If you recall, he was the person who in the beginning of the film said, “The Bible is wrong about this one.” What is the slippery slope of placing yourself above Scripture?
You get to pick and choose what you like and what you believe rather than believing all of Scripture
You can water down the hard parts where there is some tension
This photo on the screen will be hard to see, but I’ll break it down for us as I’ve seen this to be true with several people I grew up with and I trust you have as well
Christianity
The Bible is not infallible
We are not made in God’s image
Denial of supernatural/miracles
Denial of virgin birth
Denial of deity of Jesus Christ
Denial of atonement / forgiveness of sins on the cross
Denial of bodily resurrection
Maybe there is a god…?
Full-fledged atheism
This is that slow fade and slippery slope that is hard to stop the moment that you believe that you know better than the Bible and that the Bible is wrong and not authoritative… where does that train stop? Almost always, deconstruction doesn’t stop until the person believes something not even resembling Christianity but themselves. We can think of the word deconstruction in a positive light if we’re deconstructing man-made traditions that are not found in Scripture - for example: I know some friends who were raised in a denomination that taught them that unless you were water baptized, you were not going to go to heaven - to the point that they believed that if you were saved by grace through faith in Christ and you were to have a heart attack on the way to the river to get baptized, you wouldn’t go to heaven. The thief on the cross proves to us that this isn’t true because he wasn’t baptized and Jesus told him that they would be together that day in paradise!
That is a healthy thing to “deconstruct” from because we want to be Biblical, not always necessarily traditional. We can think of other examples of healthy things to deconstruct from that are traditional in some churches and denominations but not taught in the Bible… the problem comes whenever we deconstruct based on our feelings, and not based on God’s Word - that always leads to problems and this is what we see in our clip tonight!
One of the main things that skeptics attack in Christianity is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe it was John Stott who said that Christianity hinges on the Resurrection. Either Jesus really did rise from the grave and, if so, He was who He said He was… Or He did not in which case He was a liar and a fraud. Why do people wrestle with the Resurrection?
Goes against the normal pattern in our world: Life to Death
We don’t see it happen often
Some believe the Resurrection was a made up lie that didn’t really happen but was a coverup by the disciples
Consider some of the complications with this theory, though.
We read in Scripture that Jesus didn’t just appear to the 11 remaining disciples (Judas is gone) and a few others…
6 Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep.
500 people at one time saw the resurrected Christ! We aren’t told in any literature that it was a lie or only a small number of people saw Him post-Resurrection
13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised;
14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith.
As we reflect on these early followers of Jesus Christ, we see that they proclaimed the truth of the resurrection. They went to their deaths still holding onto the truth of the resurrection - if this were to be a made up lie, not only would they have had to steal His body and fool the most powerful empire the world has ever known, they would have had to maintain this lie to their painful deaths and not have a single one of them waver and spill the beans. In philosophy there’s a thing you learn called Occams Razor and it is a principle that says that whenever you have different possibilities, the simplest one is the right one. What is the simplest answer: That 11 disciples, their family members, and 500 others all successfully lied and deceived everyone else, or that the Bible is right and Jesus actually rose from the dead like He promised that He would?
We understand the difficulties with the Resurrection as it does seem to go against conventional wisdom. You and I don’t just see people come back after being dead for 3 days… but we also know from this study that Jesus Christ is no ordinary man… yes, He was man… but He was also fully-God! He never once sinned. His death was God’s plan from the foundation of the earth. Scripture promised that this snake-crushing Savior would be pierced and bruised
15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds.
Jesus Himself promised this
22 saying, “It is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day.”
23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
This is the clear teaching of Scripture - that Jesus would not only die for our sins but rise from the grave and win for us our ultimate victory over sin and death!
Fewer and fewer people are standing on the truth of the Resurrection, but they still claim to be Christian… The Resurrection is foundational to Christianity - to deny it is to deny salvation.
NO!
One of our problems in our post-modern world is that people came to church for a period and were told that church doesn’t really matter, you can be a Christian by yourself, go and read your Bible at home every now and then and you’ll be fine! That’s a low view of Church for one, but for two you wonder why we have so many crazy ideas floating around now about Jesus and things that we’ve seen in this documentary, you know how some of them started? Because people abandoned church, went off on their own, and had no discipline, accountability, and were led astray by false teachers… and that ought to break our hearts! It’s so easy to be deceived if we’re standing in our own - even to deny the resurrection entirely. As one of the people said, “The only difference between me and the atheist is the grace of God.” I would rather people who no longer believe in the resurrection or authority of Scripture or the importance of gathering with God’s people to be honest enough to say so and say that they want nothing to do with Christianity anymore than those who want the benefits of Christ and the comforts of the world to suit whatever need they have. That’s where we’re at in our messed up world.
Bart Campolo said that as he began to deconstruct his faith, he began to really like god because the god that he had made during his deconstruction began to look a whole lot like himself… Do you see this show up in our world at all?
God wouldn’t do _____ because I wouldn’t do ________
He went on to share that the sum of Christianity is to love God and to love others as ourselves and you can do good without God… Voddie Baucham shared, though, that what this mentality does is it leads us to the Law of the Old Testament. The same Law that God’s people could never keep…! What we need is not more law, we need grace - we need the Gospel which shares that Jesus Christ did that perfectly because we couldn’t… therefore, go and follow Jesus.
Some mistake the root for the fruit. The fruit of our salvation is good works (think Loving God and Loving Others), but that cannot be the root of our salvation. The root of our salvation is faith in Jesus Christ. In a “DO” world, the Christian message is “DONE”
8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—
9 not from works, so that no one can boast.
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
We are saved by faith FOR good works! Once we are saved, we should desire to help those in need and to share the good news with the lost… but our pursuit of justice or goodness or any of those things does not save by itself. Faith in Jesus alone saves!
Secular Humanism, or the belief that humans can be moral without believing in God, puts you in unanswerable places when it comes to evil and injustice in the world. Bart Campolo said as much… After this life, the humanist has no hope because they believe that this life is naturally all that there is. Because of this belief, humanists will stop at nothing to see the earth become their perfect utopian society of perfect justice for all. Utopia without God would be like Eden without death = Or, put differently, Hell on Earth.
But in doing so, they have to practice injustice as we saw play out with Marx in the last century. Humanism leaves its proponents hopeless because there is an endless amount of work ahead… How does Christianity stand out from humanism in regards to morality and hope for the future?
Morality is found in God. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6)
Hope is found in God - He will make all things right one day when He returns.
15 The seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.
That’s the utopia we all need - and if we are saved by grace through faith, that is our blessed hope!
What initial problem do you see with Todd White’s view of the cross?
“The cross to me…” How about, according to the Bible, the cross is _________
“See, the cross to me isn’t the revelation of my sin. The cross is actually the revealing of my value. Something underneath of that sin must have been of great value for heaven to go bankrupt to get me back!” Todd White
6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
12 All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one.
So many speakers and churches are centered on self! They’ll talk about self-worth and things of this nature so often that the focus turns away from a Savior who alone is able to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10) and instead turns towards us as finite sinners and exalts us to the point that people think that they deserve the cross at best or at worst, don’t need Jesus at all. Carl Trueman put it like this in his book, “Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.” “At the core of this present age of angst is the coincidence of the psychological self and the liquefaction of traditional institutions.”
What we see in our strange world is that more and more people are searching for purpose and identity and fewer and fewer people are building a solid foundation in their home and church. More and more people are looking inward for the answers to their questions about purpose rather than looking outside for answers - and looking inside for answers will not satisfy! How many of you have heard for the early Christian leader named Augustine? We looked at him a little bit this spring during our church history series - he wrote a book called Confessions which we could call the first great psychological autobiography of sorts. Confessions is a masterpiece, and a book that many students are required to read. What you see in Confessions is that Augustine does examine his own heart and his own life… but what he finds as he looks inward isn’t all that good. Yes, he is made in the image of God like Genesis 1:26 says, but as he looks inward, he is reminded of his own sin.
If sin is as pervasive as the Bible claims that it is, what do we truly need?
Not just a little tune up or an oil change
We need a full on resurrection
“If 'self' is the problem, then 'self' can't be the solution. You need Someone outside of 'self' to save and change you.” Shane Pruitt
Such a helpful statement for us to reflect on! If we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, yes, we are still God’s image bearers and yes human life is sacred and it matters, but if we are the problem… we can’t be the solution. We can’t just try to work harder and save ourselves or make ourselves attractive or “worth” saving - it doesn’t work that way. We need Someone else to save us from this problem - and this is what we see on the cross. Our Savior taking our place. In Christ we find worth - not in self. Our identity is in Christ and He calls us an adopted child of His. He calls us loved, chosen, forgiven, and friend. That’s where we find our worth - in what He says, not in how we feel.
*Thoughts on the song situation: Are we “worth dying for?” Tricky because if we say yes without qualification then we deserved it and our salvation and the cross is due to merit - we deserved it!
One of the biggest questions in this specific episode was in regards to the Therapeutic Gospel vs Biblical Gospel
God loves me because I’m valuable
I’m valuable because God loves me
Think of the things that we love - things that are attractive and useful to us
But God loves people who dropped the ball and are dead in sins… We are called His enemies before the cross! Yet, He loves us.
What are some of the therapeutic gospel messages out there and why are they so popular?
Contrast this with the Biblical Gospel - why do some people think that it won’t “sell” quite as well?
Joel Osteen example - he’s not dumb, he knows what sells and what will pack a stadium! Why does it work?
Original sin discussion
Many believe that original sin isn’t true - we aren’t born as a sinner, we choose to sin later on in life… Yet, this is what we see in Scripture
10 as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.
11 There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away; all alike have become worthless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one.
1 Be gracious to me, God, according to your faithful love; according to your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion.
2 Completely wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I am conscious of my rebellion, and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you—you alone—I have sinned and done this evil in your sight. So you are right when you pass sentence; you are blameless when you judge.
5 Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.
10 For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.”
Jesus was not lost and hiding… You and I were!
We see over and over here that we are not only sinners because we choose to sin, which we all do. But we are sinners because we are human beings and because of Adam in the Garden of Eden, we inherit a fallen sinful nature. David said that he was guilty whenever he was born and sinful when he was conceived. This is heavy language, certainly… but it’s important language to get right. People talk about how lots of people seek God. The Bible doesn’t support that claim, at least how many say it. It’s not like billions of people are looking for God - the Bible shares with us that no one does because we’re so full of self. It is only after the Holy Spirit convicts us that we then begin to seek God and His Word. We see this in places like John 6:44 (No one comes to me unless the Father draws Him). God is the giver of every good gift (James 1:17) including salvation! We were lost and hiding. God loved us so much that He sent His Son to save us and His Spirit to convict and guide us. If we don’t realize how we start out as sinners, we can buy into a lie that says that we’re good enough as we are.
My Worth is Not in What I Own - song lyric that is helpful here as the chorus says over and over
And I rejoice in my redeemer
Greatest treasure
Wellspring of my soul
I will trust in him, no other
My soul is satisfied in him alone
We see all of His attributes on the cross of Christ - love and wrath, goodness and kindness, justice and mercy! God can be both and, not just either or.
How does this reality (God can be just and merciful) help you in your walk with God?
The cross demonstrates the justness of God (sin is serious) and the mercy of God (God makes a way for sinners to be reconciled)
Even though I still fall short and deserve God’s justice, because of Jesus, I am treated with mercy from God. This helps me in my walk with Him every day as I remember my position (adopted son) and my purpose (to glorify Him)!
