Untitled Sermon (7)

You’re standing before the court on trial for your life. The judge pulls up your records of all your good and bad deeds. Before stating whether you’re guilty or innocent, He asks you to give a defense. He asks you why you deserve life over death. What do you tell Him? You start to imagine everything you’ve done good in your life, perhaps that homeless man you gave some money to that one time. The time you held the door open for the people behind you. You think of how kind of a person you are, how much your friends appreciate you. You think of how nice you are, and how you are politically, maybe you’ve donated for charity, or stood up to evil on the internet by commenting against it. All these things come to mind, and you believe you have a reasonable case as to why you deserve life. You begin telling the judge everything good you can recall, and how great of a person you have been in society. As you finish your case, the judge looks at you, and knowing your whole life, displays for you a summary of every action, thought and word you’ve spoken. As you watch your life reflecting before your eyes, your stomach begins to turn, you get an uneasy feeling, and even begin to sweat. The reflection shows your every thought about others, the amount of hatred and pride you held, the gossip you spoke behind others backs, the things you’ve stolen, the disobedience to your elders, the times you’ve made fun or cursed others out. The people you’ve bullied physically and verbally, the adultery you’ve committed in your mind against others and those you’ve taken advantage of. The things you’ve said while driving, and the happiness you felt when your enemy or someone you disliked failed.

You watch as your whole life reflects before you and all the sudden everything good you remember becomes powerless. After the review, the judge looks at you, and asks the question once more. Do you really deserve life over death? Conflicted, you stand there speechless, afraid to say anything. The judge looks at you once more, and begins to speak. “You’ve shown that you’ve lived for your own self, that you’ve chosen the pleasures and desires of the world over anything else, this leaves me to one conclusion—death. Separation from me. You stand there stunned, you have no defense for yourself. Your lawyer, the world, doesn’t even speak for you, but they leave the courtroom. You’re left alone, by yourself, abandoned. All of a sudden, a man walks in, someone you don’t recognize. He comes up to the floor, and asks the judge what the charge is. The judge tells Him, “The price for their sentence is their life.” The man glances over to you, you make eye contact with Him for a few seconds. And He gives you this warm smile, and looks over to the judge. The man tells the judge, “I will pay for his punishment in full.”

Who is this man? Who would come into the courts of our trial for the life we’ve lived, look at us, and choose to take on our punishment; punishment of death for eternity? You’ve never met Him before, yet He gracefully came and paid for your debt. Believe it or not, this man is Jesus. The Bible says in John 3:16-17, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” You see, this life we’ve lived is so far from perfect–the mistakes we’ve made, the wrongs we’ve done, the sins we’ve committed. All of our actions have consequences, but in His grace and love, God saw our broken lives, and chose to love us so much that He sent Jesus, His only Son, to take on humanity and pay our debt by giving His life for us. In our first illustration, the judge represents God, and the man represents Jesus. And the crazy thing is, the judge had it planned all along that Jesus would come and take on your punishment. Thi analogy is not shy from being true for our lives. This is the Gospel!

Transition: In another passage, Romans 5:21-25, it says: “But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past.” There’s a lot to unpack from this message we’ve read. Essentially, we can now be made right with God through the Gospel. We now have the ability to have a relationship with the Creator of the universe.

But why is this Gospel so important? How has it changed so many people’s lives? What can I benefit from it? Why would God sacrifice His Son? There is so much to unravel, but with all the questions you could have in regards to the Gospel, we’ll sum them up with one question–What do we know about the Gospel? To answer this central question, we have 3 aspects that are crucial to understanding how life-changing and vital it is for our lives.

The need for the Gospel (3:21)

Going back to Romans 5, verse 21 says, “But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago.” We see here that this Gospel was prophesied about for thousands of years before Jesus came along. God was planning for it because of the need for it. The Gospel is necessary and needed in our lives, and the first thing we have to realize is why it’s needed; why it’s so important for us. With that, we have two examples that go hand in hand with understanding our need for it. The first of these is…

The Old Testament

The Bible is a collection of 66 different books written by more than 40 authors over the course of 1,600 years with one divine inspiration–God. God inspired these writers to write down the historic events, poems, letters, and songs we have now in order for us to understand the need for the Gospel. The Old Testament is vital for this because it describes, starting from the beginning of Creation, all the way to the time before Jesus, and with that we read and see why Jesus was so necessary. The Old Testament is super long, so to summarize it: God created the world, and then man and woman. Man and woman lived in communion and fellowship with God until they rebelled against His one restriction, showing that what God had given them was not enough for them. This brought sin into the world, and with sin came death. God chose a special family to be set apart from the rest of the world, to be His holy people. He gave them the ten commandments to abide with Him and be made right with God. But because of humanity’s sinful nature, God’s chosen people, Israel, along with the rest of the world, disobeyed these commandments. God gave Israel chance after chance of trying to redeem them, but Israel ultimately was helpless, they wanted the world more. They didn’t live up to the standard God had set, so they chose to live in their sin, separated from God. But God still loved His people so much, that the only thing left for Him to do, was to send Jesus into the world. The Old Testament tells us of historic events that just display how needed a Savior was to the world. Our second example is…

Our own lives

We can see in our own lives a lot of similarities between us and the Israelites. Although different circumstances, the relation to them is the hold our sinful nature has on our lives. The Israelites were God’s chosen people, yet they couldn’t live up to God’s standards, and the same goes for us. Like our first analogy, if we reflect back on our own lives, we see how imperfect of people we are. We’ve sinned so much. We’ve lived lives for our own selfish gain, doing the things we want, and caring only for our benefit. And all of our wrongs have a consequence. Without a Savior, we can’t be made right with God, and therefore, we choose the world, and this leads to eternal separation from God.

Transition: So we can see why we need a Savior for our lives. Without one, we have this immense debt we have to pay, because we haven’t lived perfect lives, and our actions have consequences. But with understanding our wrongs and our broken lives, what do we do now? This leads us to our second aspect, which is…

2. The Gospel itself (3:22-25)

To understand the Gospel, we’ll reread from Romans 3, verses 22-25: “We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past.” The Gospel, essentially, is God seeing how broken and hopeless humanity was, and loving them so much; wanting a relationship with us so much, that He sent Jesus, His own Son, to become human like us. Jesus took on along with humanity, all of the burdens and weaknesses we have. Jesus came and taught us how to have a right relationship with God, and reflected it by living a perfect life without sin, even with all of the difficulties of humanity, even with temptation. Yet in all of this, the Pharisees, who were known to be the “most righteous” in the world; those who strive harder than anyone to keep the laws, hated Jesus. They hated Him so much, they sentenced Him to death. They got the same people who recognized Him as a Savior, to hate Him too. Jesus was sentenced to death for blasphemy, and He suffered the worst punishment known to man at the time–the cross. A source states that the criminal, “after being whipped, or “scourged,” dragged the crossbeam of his cross to the place of punishment, where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground. Stripped of his clothing either then or earlier at his scourging, he was bound fast with outstretched arms to the crossbeam or nailed firmly to it through the wrists. The crossbeam was then raised high against the upright shaft and made fast to it about 9 to 12 feet (approximately 3 metres) from the ground. Next, the feet were tightly bound or nailed to the upright shaft. A ledge inserted about halfway up the upright shaft gave some support to the body; evidence for a similar ledge for the feet is rare and late. Over the criminal’s head was placed a notice stating his name and his crime. Death ultimately occurred through a combination of constrained blood circulation, organ failure, and asphyxiation as the body strained under its own weight. It could be the cross, by dying for us. But even death couldn’t hold. Jehastened by shattering the legs (crurifragium) with an iron club, which prevented them from supporting the body’s weight and made inhalation more difficult, accelerating both asphyxiation and shock.” Following His death, Jesus was buried in a tomb with a heavy boulder rolled over the doorway to seal it. Jesus paid the price for humanities sin onsus, being the Son of God, rose from the dead, revealed Himself to over 500 of His followers over 40 days, and ascended into Heaven. The reference for His death and resurrection would be Mark 15:21-16:20. To re-emphasize how miraculous this is, we’ll read Romans 5:6-11, which says: “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” God saw us in our worst, and gave His Son to die for our sins so we can have a relationship with Him, this is the Gospel!

Transition: So after seeing the need for the Gospel, and what exactly the Gospel is, we now have our final aspect, which is…

3. How we accept the Gospel (3:22)

With the Gospel, comes the need to actually accept it, and in many of these verses, we’ve actually seen how we accept it and have a relationship with God. To reread Romans 3:22 that says, “We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.” Jesus has paid the price, He’s done all the work. We are no longer bound to fulfilling the law because Christ fulfilled it Himself. So all we have to do is believe in Jesus’ death and resurrection. We must put our faith in Him and allow Him to come into our life, heart, mind, and spirit. By believing in Him and what He’s done, we choose to give our lives to Him so that we may be made right with God, and have a relationship with Him. By putting our faith in Him, we receive His Spirit in our lives which destroys the sinful life we’ve been bound to.

Conclusion: So, we’ve seen why the Gospel is so needed and vital for our lives, we’ve examined what the Gospel really is, and we now know how to accept the Gospel and be saved… but all of this just leads to one final thing, and that’s if you’re willing to let the Gospel impact your life. Do you recognize your own need for it? Do you acknowledge the God of the universe wants a relationship with you? Are you willing to let Jesus make the radical, life-changing move in your own life that He has for so many others? This is truly the biggest decision of your life, but it can’t go ignored, and it’s dangerous to be delayed once you know about it, because tomorrow is not promised. God has given you the opportunity to accept this or reject it. To go back to the analogy in the courtroom, Jesus takes on the punishment and pays your debt. But the judge, God looks over to you, and asks you. Are you willing to accept what He has done for you? This is ultimately for you to decide. You have the choice, God loves you so much, and He wants this relationship with you badly, so badly we’ve seen how far He’s willing to go. Are you willing to make that move? This is the time to decide, and it’s open for you, to come forward, acknowledge your sin before God, accept what Jesus did for you, paying your debt by giving His life, and believe and put your faith in Jesus. Will you accept Him into your heart and have a relationship with Him if you haven’t made that choice before?