Untitled Sermon

How People change ch 1: The Gospel Gap

A. Story about Phil and Ellie.

A. Story about Phil and Ellie.

1. Phil has lots of theological knowledge and is engaged significantly in church

2. Phil is not a good man at home. He is angry, short of temper, and simply ungracious.

3. Ellie, is secretly angry when people praise her husband, because she sees a different side of him. She dreams of what a life without Phil would be like, though she would never consider divorce, she dreamed of a life without Phil.

4. Because she could no longer live this way, she decided to approach a church counselor, and convinced Phil to go, though he was initially angry over the whole thing. That counselor is the author of this book.

5. He said he let them talk for most of the first session, and while driving home he had a realization:

“They had given me an extensive history, yet there was little or no reference to God. Here was a theological man and his believing wife, yet their life story was utterly godless! Phil and Ellie had a huge gap in their understanding of the gospel. . . . This was their Christianity.

II. Understanding the Gap

II. Understanding the Gap

1. Notice verse 9: there are Christians who are “ineffective” and “unproductive.” They are further described as “nearsighted” even “blind,” forgetting their forgiveness.

The Gospel Gap

B. The Gospel Gap

📷

1. When we think of salvation, we often think of the past and the future, but we forget the now.

2. It is here that many of us are short-sighted and perhaps blind.

“ Our sight is dimmed by the tyranny of the urgent, by the siren call of success, by the seductive beauty of physical things, by our inability to admit our own problems, and by the casual relationships within the body of Christ that we mistakenly call fellowship. This blindness is often encouraged by preaching that fails to take the gospel to the specific challenges people face. People need to see that the gospel belongs in their workplace, their kitchen, their school, their bedroom, their backyard, and their van.”

III. Three Kinds of Blindness

1. The Blindness of Identity 1. We fail to see our own sinfulness 2. We Fail to see our identity in Christ

1. We fail to see our own sinfulness

a. We then begin to think that our problems are outside us.

b. We fail to realize the battle that naturally rages within believers, and they fail to take proper defenses against falling.

2. Fail to see our identity in Christ

“Often in our blindness, we take on our problems as identities. While divorce, depression, and single parenthood are significant human experiences, they are not identities. Our work is not our identity, though it is an important part of how God intends us to live. For too many of us, our sense of identity is more rooted in our performance than it is in God’s grace.”

b. “Often in our blindness, we take on our problems as identities. While divorce, depression, and single parenthood are significant human experiences, they are not identities. Our work is not our identity, though it is an important part of how God intends us to live. For too many of us, our sense of identity is more rooted in our performance than it is in God’s grace.”

2. The Blindness to God’s Provision

“ Without an awareness of Christ’s presence, we tend to live anxiously. We avoid hard things and are easily overwhelmed. But a clear sense of identity and provision gives us hope and courage to face the struggles and temptations that come our way.

2. “ Without an awareness of Christ’s presence, we tend to live anxiously. We avoid hard things and are easily overwhelmed. But a clear sense of identity and provision gives us hope and courage to face the struggles and temptations that come our way.

3. The Blindness to God’s Process

2. This goal is not always aligned with ours, but it is for the best for His children.

“He wants us to be a community of joy, but he is willing to compromise our temporal happiness in order to increase our Christlikeness.”

“Any time we find ourselves in difficulty or trial, it is easy to think we have been forgotten or rejected by God. This is because we do not understand the present process. God is not working for our comfort and ease; he is working on our growth. At the very moment we are tempted to question his faithfulness, he is fulfilling his redemptive promises to us.”

IV. What Fills the Gap?

A. Holes are always filled

1. He talks about the steps under their stairs being the bane of his wife’s existence. It is where everything is thrown, and if it is clean, then there is more room to throw things!

B. Christian Externalism, a counterfeit of Christianity that is merely external often fills the gap.

C. “ The most dangerous pretensions are those that masquerade as true Christianity but are missing the identity-provision-process core of the gospel.”

1. Formalism—doing the right things on the outside, but having no change in the heart

2. Legalism—believing that my right actions will earn God’s good favor, leading to a list of perfections to achieve and ever-increasing wrongs to avoid

3. Mysticism—searching for a spiritual high through emotional experience. Instead of recognizing that God changes us through small moments of imperceptible change, this seeks those huge moments of shift.

4. Activism— “Whenever you believe that the evil outside you is greater than the evil inside you, a heartfelt pursuit of Christ will be replaced by a zealous fighting of the ‘evil’ around you. A celebration of the grace that rescues you from your own sin will be replaced by a crusade to rescue the church from the ills of the surrounding culture.”

5. Bibliclism—This person is “a theological expert, but he is unable to live by the grace he can define with such technical precision. He has invested a great deal of time and energy mastering the Word, but he does not allow the Word to master him. In biblicism, the gospel is reduced to a mastery of biblical content and theology.”

6. Psychology-ism—“Whenever you view the sin of another against you as a greater problem than your own sin, you will tend to seek Christ as your therapist more than you seek him as your Savior. Christianity becomes more a pursuit of healing than a pursuit of godliness. The gospel is reduced to the healing of emotional needs.

7. Social-ism—This is when the church simply becomes a social club. While this should characterize the church . . .

D. Why are these so attractive?

1. First, they are deceptive, for each of the isms we talked about above has some element of truth to it. But instead of being only a part of our Christian walk, they take on undue importance.

2. Second, they appeal to us as sinners. They are often ways of self-justification. They frequently reduce the view of our own sinfulness, or make the sin appear to be external to us rather than internal.

3. He summarizes, “ We all know on some level that Christ must be our identity, meaning, purpose, hope, and goal. Yet our self-righteousness dies hard. We want to be at the center of our world, and we think we are capable of more independence than would be spiritually helpful. So we tend to reduce the gospel to comfortable elements, none of which do justice to the message of grace found in Christ.”

V. What should fill the Gap?

A. Intro to this section

1. “It’s amazing how long it took me to really understand the gospel. Like many Christians, I understood early on that my sins had been forgiven (past grace) and that I was going to spend my eternity with Christ (future grace). But I did not grasp the depth of my need for the benefits of the work of Christ now (present grace).”

This book is about present grace—it’s about how I should respond in the van on the way to church; it is how I should act towards my spouse after we both had a long day; its about how we live on Monday­–Friday as well as Sunday; its about how we handle anxiety, fear, and depression; its about how we face the sin within by God’s grace. And if you are anything like me, you can right now think of areas you need to grow in.

VI. Five Gospel Perspectives that drive this book

VI. Five Gospel Perspectives that drive this book

A. The Extent and Gravity of Our Sin

It is natural for us to “ accept the doctrine of total depravity, but when we are approached about our own sin, we wrap our robes of self-righteousness around us and rise to our own defense.”

2. It is natural for us to “ accept the doctrine of total depravity, but when we are approached about our own sin, we wrap our robes of self-righteousness around us and rise to our own defense.”

B. The Centrality of the Heart

B. The Centrality of the Heart

: “above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”

2. In the same way, when we approach change, we do so as people seeking to get to the heart. We cannot be fine with anything less.

3. As says, “above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”

C. The Present Benefits of Christ

1. Because of Christ, we have been granted a new birth.

2. This is accompanied by the Holy Spirit, enabling us to respond rightly to God.

D. God’s Call to growth and Change

1. The passage we read talked about the growth God requires and desires of us.

2. Add to that, “Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” ().

E. A Lifestyle of Repentance and Faith

1. None of us have arrived; rather we are all in the process of reformation.

2. Therefore, none of us should view this series as unapplicable.