An Adequate Gospel

We start out with a pair of verses in Mark 1, 14 and 15. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. So when Jesus began his ministry, he has this thing which he calls the gospel.

A message, a word from God. The understanding was that anybody who receives this gospel into his heart or her heart is changed by it. After he fulfills the gospel by dying on the cross and rising again, he then entrusts it to the hands of his disciples and the same understanding is there.

He said to them, go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe.

In my name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues, they will pick up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it will not hurt them. They will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover. So then Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down on the right hand of God and they went forth and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them confirming the message with signs following.

Now the clearer in our own minds we have this gospel and the surer our understanding of what it is and what it's to do, the more freely God himself is able to work through us. A very clear example would be the apostle Paul. Paul was not eloquent, he was not a spellbinder, he was not an orator.

But Paul knew what the gospel was, he knew what it would do, and he knew what to do with it. And so to the Romans he says, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, the gospel concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

To the Corinthians Paul writes, For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross be emptied of its power. To the Galatians he writes, I am astonished that you so quickly are deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.

For even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preach to you, let him be a curse. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you receive, let him be a curse. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel.

Paul demonstrated that if you have that gospel burning in your heart and live in it yourself and speak it without embellishing it or trying to add something to it or throw any kind of goodies in with it, just the clear gospel, lives will be changed. Now the idea behind all this is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not just words, it's power, it's God acting. The understanding is that when this thing goes forth, lives are changed if they receive it.

The dead are raised, the sick are healed, eyes are opened, the prisoners are set free, for example, here's a man who's been battling with alcohol for 15 years and he's been losing the battle. Then he hears the gospel and he receives it into his heart and he comes up free and he puts that alcohol away and it never troubles him again. And if you think this is an exaggeration, there are people sitting in this church right now who could get up right now and testify to exactly that as having happened in their lives.

Others among us may be struggling, but there are people in this room who could say just that, it's happened. Now here's a woman who's been living under the shadow of suicide for a decade, just depressed and unhappy with a miserable marriage or rotten circumstances or whatever it is. And then she hears the gospel.

Her life changes, her outlook on all these problems begins to alter and she finds that now she can handle them before they were crushing her. And she's a different person. And again, there are people here right now who could testify to that as having happened in their lives.

Here's a teenager whose activities are limited with a respiratory problem. He or she hears the gospel, receives it into the heart, and there's a healing. And doubtless there are people among us who will be able to testify to that if we don't already have some.

And where did they hear this gospel? Did they hear it in a church? Or on TV? Or in some large evangelistic meeting? No. They heard it one-to-one from somebody who spoke to them in their daily rounds. Somebody who took to trouble, sat down, listened to their problems, prayed for them, and finally, after much prayer, began to speak.

People so often think people are supposed to get saved in church. That happens at exceptional moments. But the place where the miracle happens is outside.

The preachers are all of us. You don't bring them to some preacher who's supposed to do the job. You do the job.

If Jesus Christ truly died on the cross for our sins, and if he rose from the dead to give us life, and if he sent the Holy Spirit, and if he's in our midst right now, and if he manifests himself to us in the breaking of bread, surely we then are able to go out from this place with a gospel which is adequate to manifest the reality of God to those people whose lives we touch out there. Amen. But, many of us, when it comes to our actual experience, are very frustrated.

Because when it comes down to our speaking this gospel to the lives that we touch in our daily rounds, find that nothing seems to be happening very much. You know, we are talking to people, and worrying about them, praying for them, suffering with them, agonizing with them, grieving over them. And we get a response, but we just don't seem to be able to bring these people out of their prisons.

Many of us, if not all of us, who are at all serious with Jesus Christ find ourselves directed by God, surely, to specific people. And, and these people, you know, know that we care about them. And they don't mind calling us when they're depressed.

And they're glad to have us pray with them. And they consider us their friends. And yet their hearts simply are not catching fire.

And after a while we begin to, if we're at all honest, ask ourselves, you know, where am I missing the boat? How come nobody's getting healed? Nobody's getting set free? Lives aren't changing. What's the matter? Here I am. I'm sowing this seed all over the place.

Surely some of it must be falling on good ground. Then where is the lasting fruit? Where are these men and women who are to come to life through the gospel that I speak and stand on their own two feet and weather the storms? Where are they? Is there something wrong with my message? This is what many of us are honestly asking ourselves. And the truth is, if it's the gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified, there's nothing wrong with the message.

But, for the message to come out of our mouths and out of our lives with any kind of power, there are some things that we have to do. In order to proclaim an adequate gospel, first of all, we have to be living inside that gospel ourselves. Listen to Paul.

After preaching for years and years, this is what he says to the Philippians. Whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse in order that I might gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I, Paul, may know him in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made like him in his death. Not that I have already obtained this or were already perfected, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. In other words, Jesus Christ, for Paul, is his life, not a means to an end, not a stepping stone to a name in the religious world.

There are many preachers who preach Christ in order to build a large congregation or to attain a name for themselves or to amass a fortune and they're good speakers and people come to listen to them. And there are many people, believers, who develop a kind of skill at, quote, saving souls. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking saving souls.

See, but when the thrill is in the saving souls instead of in the gospel itself, you know, what I really like to do is manipulate these people and see them fall on their knees, see their lives changed. This is my lust. This is the thing that gives me satisfaction.

Then I'm in trouble. You know, the gospel is our life, our life. And we, too, may well be called upon to suffer the loss of all things for it.

What if everything that you build crumbles down? Everything. And everything you have is taken away from you and you wake up the next morning in the presence of Jesus. You have everything you need.

Our gospel is not a means to an end. It's not primarily a message for others. It is primarily our reality, our joy, our life, our meat and drink, our dwelling place, our everything.

God help us to be less concerned about our gospel's power over other people's lives and more concerned about our gospel's power over our own lives, then it will begin to bring blessing to other people in a way it never did before. In order to proclaim an adequate gospel, what is this, Grand Central Station? I'm going to stop again. I'm going to do this.

You know, children, go to the bathroom between Sunday school and church. We're not going to have marching. What happens, it gets to be an epidemic.

You know, once it starts, then it begins to grow like mad. You know, otherwise we're going to start bringing glue to church and put it on the pews and the seats. If anybody has a kidney problem, don't feel intimidated.

Go ahead. Other than that, sit still. In order to proclaim an adequate gospel, second, we have to carry a cross.

For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So, death is at work in us, but life in you, says Paul. When Jesus commands us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him, he is calling us into the stream of life the only way we can get into it.

The only way. When the apostle Paul beseeches us by the mercies of God to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, he's speaking out of his own experience the only way we can enter into the stream of God's life is through the death of self. Taking up our cross.

Now, we carry the cross inside, not on the outside. We don't make a big production out of it. All the great things we're suffering.

The only person who sees this, what we're going through is God. Who can see a broken spirit but God? Who but God can recognize a contrite heart? If you're fasting, only God sees that. If other people are seeing it, you're not really fasting for God.

There are exceptions. Maybe your husband or your wife may know it, but even there, don't make a production out of it. And if you're laboring in prayer, only God can see that.

And if you're choosing the low road instead of the limelight, that's God. Alone, who can see it and recognize it? But when we offer ourselves up to death in this manner, life begins to burn and manifest itself. The life of Christ begins to manifest itself in our mortal flesh.

The more death works in us, the more life flows out of us and touches and blesses the lives to which we minister. Finally, if we're going to proclaim an adequate gospel, we're going to have to expect that God is going to move as we proclaim this thing. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us.

I went to Bible college. I went to seminary. I'm really good at winning souls.

Our sufficiency is from God, who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit, for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways, gimmicks.

We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with God's Word, but by the open statement of truth, we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Paul knows that this gospel, when proclaimed by him, will do things. God will do things in it.

His own life has been so radically transformed by it, he knows that when he proclaims it, other lives will be changed. All he has to do is speak it. He doesn't tamper with it.

He doesn't add bribes to it. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He doesn't cover it with silk.

He speaks it directly and leaves it to the conscience of the hearer. We need to learn to believe and expect that when we speak this gospel, God will move. Even if it seems totally out of joint with the spirit of the age, and even if the people to whom we speak this gospel seem as hard as rocks, we speak it.

And we believe that as we do, God will move. There are people out there that we've been praying for and struggling with and worrying about for years who very soon are going to hear a gospel from our lips that will shake them to their toes with the presence of God. Some of them will say yes to it and some will say no to it.

But every one of them will know that they were spoken to by the spirit of the Lord. We have a gospel to proclaim. This is the only reason we're in this world anymore.

And we have to proclaim it in the spirit and power of the Son of God. By the grace of God, we're going to live inside this gospel ourselves. We're going to carry the cross we've been given to carry.

And we're going to expect that God will move as we proclaim it. And as we do, His word on our lips will raise the dead and set the captives free. Let's pray.

We pray Lord that today by the power and help of your spirit you will aid every serious follower of Jesus to come out of the spectator syndrome of Christianity and become in fact participants in this redemptive work that's going on now. Deliver us, O Lord, from being overwhelmed with our own inadequacy and give us eyes to see the awesome power in the mercy of the Lamb. And grant that as we live in that mercy ourselves the things that we touch will come to life and the lives that we touch will begin to see you.

And that we will have by your grace, Heavenly Father, such a liberty in our daily rounds that everywhere we go Jesus will touch people and bless them and open the kingdom to them and give them hope. Open our mouths that we, every one of us, Father, may proclaim the mysteries of your precious word in the power and in the name and in the nature and in the glory and in the splendor of Jesus Christ. We ask it in his name.

Amen.