Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

[READING - Ephesians 6:14-17]

[PRAYER]

[CONTEXT] The Apostle Paul opened his letter to the church in Ephesus blessing “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,” (Eph.

1:3).

These spiritual blessing include adoption as sons of God (Eph.

1:5), redemption through the blood of Jesus, forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace (Eph.

1:7).

This was true for the Ephesian believers and it is true for you today too if “after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,” (Eph.

1:13).

I don’t know about you but I want to be adopted as a son of God; I want to redeemed through the blood of Jesus; I want to be forgiven by the grace of God; I want to be seal by the Holy Spirit of promise—but if that’s what I want, then I must listen to the message of truth, the gospel of salvation, and believe what I hear!

What is that message of truth?

What is the gospel?

What is the good news of salvation?

And how do we believe it?

We have to understand the answers to those questions before we can understand and do what God’s word commands in Ephesians 6:15, “Shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”

[TS] This morning we want to understand and believe the gospel.

We want to receive the peace it brings.

And we want to be always ready to walk in that gospel peace.

Major Ideas

First, let’s understand and believe the gospel.

[ILLUS] A friend of mine once asked, “Why are so many people using the word ‘gospel’ instead of the name ‘Jesus’?

Why do so many preachers today say ‘believe the gospel’ instead of ‘believe in Jesus’?”

Now, you may think that my friend sounds ignorant.

Doesn’t he know that the gospel is about Jesus?

But he’s not ignorant.

His point was that some preachers say things like “believe the gospel” without explaining what the gospel is and how it’s only found in Jesus Christ.

In that case, it would be better to say, “Believe in Jesus!”

But the message of the gospel is indeed this: “Believe in Jesus!”

[EXP] The word gospel means good news, and the first thing to know about the good news of Jesus is that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

Everything starts from that point, so if you get that point wrong then everything else that follows will be wrong.

Because God created everything—including us—he has the right to tell us how to live.

You have to understand that God is the authority in order to understand the good news in Jesus.

How would you describe God’s character?

Loving and good?

Compassionate and forgiving?

All true.

God describes himself as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness…forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but then God adds, “but who will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6-7).

That runs contrary to what many today think they know about God.

This loving God is indeed loving, but He does not leave the guilty unpunished.

To understand just how glorious and life-giving the gospel of Jesus Christ is, we have to understand that God is also holy and righteous.

He is determined never to ignore or tolerate sin, including ours!

When God created the first human beings, Adam and Eve, He desired for them to live under His righteous rule in perfect joy—obeying Him and living in fellowship with Him.

However, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the one fruit that God had told them not to eat, that fellowship with God was broken.

In essence, Adam and Eve had declared rebellion against God.

They were denying God’s authority over their lives.

It’s not just Adam and Eve who are guilty of rebellion or sin.

The Bible says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…none is righteous, no, not one” (Romans.

3:23,10).

But we often don’t think our sins—our lies, our lusts, our thefts, our anger, our pride—is all that serious, so we wonder why God gets so upset about our sin.

But sin is the rejection of God Himself and the rejection of His right to exercise authority over those He created, those to whom He gave life.

To understand the gospel you have to understand that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom.

6:23) because we’ve rebelled against the holy life God created us to live.

The death we deserve is not just physical death but spiritual death—a forceful separation of our sinful, rebellious selves from the good presence of God forever.

The Bible teaches that the final destiny for unbelieving sinners is eternal, active judgment in a place called hell.

This is the Bible’s sobering verdict: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

Every one of us will be held accountable to God.

The Bible warns that “whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18).

This brings us to Jesus Christ.

The name Jesus means Savior, because “He (would) save His people from their sins,” (Matt.

1:21).

The title Christ means anointed one or Messiah, referring to the anointed King that God promised would come to deliver His people.

So, when we say that Jesus of Nazareth is Jesus Christ, we’re saying that Jesus is Savior and King or Savior and Lord.

When Jesus began his public ministry, He came preaching, “The kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe the good news!”

Centuries before God had promised that He would come as a great King to rescue his people from their sins.

And here was Jesus saying, “The kingdom of God is here…now!

I am that great King!”

Jesus’ mission was to bring sinful people into the kingdom of God.

Jesus came to die in our place, to take the punishment we deserved for our rebellion against God.

To understand the gospel, you have to under that as Jesus died on the cross, the awful weight of all our sins fell on his shoulders.

The sentence of death God had pronounced against our sin struck, and Jesus died.

For you and me.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Jesus was crucified, and then He was buried.

But on the third day, God’s word tells us that Jesus rose from the grave.

To understand the gospel we have to understand that in His rising from the grave, God was saying about Jesus, “What Jesus claimed about who He is and what He came to do is true!”

So what should our response be to this?

What does God expect us to do with the information that Jesus died in our place so we can be saved from God’s righteous wrath against our sins?

He expects us to respond with repentance and faith.

To repent of our sins means to turn away from our rebellion against God.

Repentance means we stop sinning.

WE turn away from our rebellion against God by turning to God through faith in Jesus Christ trusting in what He did to pay the price for our sins and to set us free from the power of sin.

We may not live perfectly, but repentance means that we’ll never again live at peace with our sins.

Faith is reliance.

It’s trust in the risen Jesus to save you from your sins.

“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.

Whoever believes in Him is not condemned…He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree (i.e., the cross)…the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God” (John 3:17, 18; 1 Peter 2:24; 3:18).

If God is ever to count us righteous, He’ll have to do it on the basis of someone else’s record, someone who’s qualified to stand as our substitute.

And that’s what happens when we are saved through faith in Jesus:

All our sins are credited to Jesus who took the punishment for them.

And the perfect righteousness of Jesus is then credited to us when we place our trust in what He has done for us!

That’s what faith means—to rely on Jesus, to trust in Him alone to stand in our place and win for us a righteous before God!

Do you believe that you have rebelled against God and deserve His wrath?

Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died the death that you deserve for your sins?

Do you believe that Jesus rose from the grave and lives to stand in your place as your Savior and Lord?

If so, then you believe in Jesus!

You believe the gospel!

The very same gospel that Paul references when he says, “Shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”

Let’s understand the peace that gospel brings.

[ILLUS] This past Wednesday, during the funeral sermon for Bill Guy, I began by saying, “We live in a world that is devoid of peace.

There are wars and rumors of wars.

There are protests and riots.

There is anxiety over increases in crime and corruption.

There are knots in the stomach over spouses, children, finances and a hundred other things.

And of course many of us worry about death.