Understanding the Gospel

Do you truly understand the Gospel?  Perhaps you do.  But, today I want to spend some time going through the Gospel and what about it is good news.  Let’s start by using a hypothetical situation.  One day you get a letter from the court stating that someone has paid $1 million towards your traffic fines.  However, let’s say that you don’t have any outstanding traffic tickets.  How would you respond to this news?  Obviously you would see if there was any way you could get the money, but then you find out that the money can only go towards traffic fines.  The “good news” isn’t as great as it would first seem.  However, what if the letter said something different?  Now you are told that you were recently clocked going 60 mph in a school zone.  But this wasn’t just any school zone.  It was a school for blind, deaf kids.  On top of this there was construction happening on this road and you drove past 3 different signs clearly marking the school zone and construction.  You are told to turn yourself in to the authorities and the least you will be punished is a $500,000 fine, which is doubled to $1 million due to the construction.  But, someone has stepped in and paid the fine for you.  All you have to do is present yourself before a judge and repent for your careless actions.  Now, how do you think the “good news” would be received?

Often when we share the Gospel with people, we can forget that the way in which we present it can affect how they respond.  We can pitch the Gospel as this, “God has died on a cross for you because he loves you so much!”  This good news isn’t such good news to a person who never asked God to die for them.  Why would He go and do a thing like that?  That seems a bit extreme.  However, if we take the time to help them see the guilt of their own sin then it might seem more like good news.

Even worse than then simply sharing Christ’s death on our behalf, without an understanding of our guilt, is when we turn the Gospel into a lottery winning.  “Congratulations, you’ve won the Gospel lottery!  If you put your faith in Jesus today you are going to have the best life ever!”

In the letter to the Romans, Paul takes time to first demonstrate the guilt of the Gentile nations (chapter 1) and then the guilt of the Jewish people (chapter 2).  When he gets to chapter 3, he then ties it together to show that we all need what Jesus has done.  Specifically, let’s look at Romans 3:19-23. 

Everyone In The World Is Guilty Before God

Few people truly understand their guilt before God.  Sure it is easy to feel bad over things we have done.  But there is a part within all of us that says, “But it wasn’t so bad that it deserves hell.”  We say that because we do not see the true depths to what is in our hearts and what we have done.  We can be like the person who will admit they were speeding, but are incensed that the officer pulled them over and that there are laws against speeding.  These are the kind of hearts that God is trying to reach.  He is not happy to just throw the book at us.  He really is trying to change us both in our thinking and our life.  Thus the Law of Moses was needed to help mankind see the true problem of a corrupted, sinful nature. Paul wraps up his arguments of Romans 1-2 in chapter 3 verse 9, “for we have already charged that both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin.”

This is demonstrated in The Great Flood.  The Bible says in Genesis 6:5 that “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”  Yet, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  Notice that Noah found “grace.”  This means that not even Noah could stand on his own righteousness.  God saves him, not because he has to, but because Noah put his faith in God.  Thus God gave him grace, a gift.  But imagine the depths to which mankind had fallen that every thought of every one was continually evil all the time.  Here we see that the guilt of mankind had become so great that God would bring judgment upon everyone all at once.  Yet in the midst of it we see His desire to give grace.

This is also demonstrated through the nation of Israel.  Though God had given Israel laws that he had drawn up for them, they constantly failed to follow them and eventually had corrupted the Truth that he had given them to be a means of power and pleasing of self.  Israel is seen as a people who not only failed to follow God as they should, but also put Him to death when He came to them in the flesh.  They refused to let go of their self-righteousness and the justifications that went along with it.  Their problem was not having good enough laws.  Today people like to try and paint the laws of Israel as not good, and even some of them as evil.  However, the testimony of Scripture is that they are of divine origin.  The problem of Israel was not their laws, but their hearts.  It would help the United States of America to view this example because we have the same problem as Israel.  Our laws are not divine, so we can fool ourselves into believing that if we just passed enough laws and perfected them then we could have Utopia.  However, we are only fooling ourselves.  The more perfect our laws become the more our evil hearts will stick out like a sore thumb and the more evil men will “perfect” their wickedness in order to continue.  We must recognize the evil in our own hearts and our need for mercy.  We are guilty before God.  More importantly, I personally am guilty before God.  He would be righteous to judge me and take away the life that I have taken for granted.

This is something we do not like to accept.  Great thinkers and philosophers try to posit in the modern era that man is basically good.  But all of their reasoning is mere mental gymnastics, as they try to avoid the inevitable conclusion that everyone in the world is guilty before God.  We humans have a heart problem that desires things that are not good.

The Law Shuts Our Mouths

In Romans 3:19 Paul says that the purpose of the law was not to fix the world, but rather to shut our mouths.  Have you ever seen a guilty person in front of a judge who would rail on and on about how they shouldn’t be judged and this is unfair, and they haven’t done anything wrong?  All of us have the desire to self-justify, opening our mouths and decrying our judgment.  Instead of listening to the righteous judge we continue braying like some senseless donkey.  So God sends the law to shut the mouths of people who think they are so good.  The proud who think they should be acceptable to God are both irreligious and religious.  The Jews would have been in total agreement with Paul’s argument in chapter one.  But chapter two would have set many a mouth to yapping.  Whether our mouths are shut in this life or not, we will stand before God one day and at the judgment our sin will be completely evident.

The Law proves once and for all that none of us are righteous.  If God did not provide a way of forgiveness we would all die under the system of Law.  In fact the law convicts even the “best” keepers of the law as mere performers.  By ourselves our best can only be a restrained evil.  Think of it this way, you may never have been “unfaithful” to your spouse in the sense of having sex with someone else after your marriage.  However, unfaithfulness is not just an act.  No one can stand before God (who knows every thought in our heart) and say I have had no unfaithfulness to my spouse, ever, in my heart.  We would be lying.  In fact outward faithfulness is more remarkable because of what we all know is in our hearts.  We would all be unfaithful to one another if we simply followed our hearts.  Like wild horses wanting to run free in any direction, a “faithful spouse” learns to “break” those horses and train them for a more useful function.

The law makes the ignorant aware of their true condition.  In fact, the more we listen to it the more helpless we become.  We realize that we truly are in a prison that no law can deliver us from.  We might even be tempted to despise the law and promote anarchy.  But anarchy leads to death.  Gentiles were ignorant of God’s laws so it is understandable that they would break the laws of God.  But for Israel to break God’s laws was to reveal a deeper problem of which we dare not be ignorant: even when I know the Truth I don’t always want to follow it.

The Law Shows Us The Need For Another Way

After Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, God blocked their way back by placing a guard of Cherubs (not the cute little baby angels, either!) and a flashing darting sword.  The law can be pictured like this.  It stands at the gate of righteousness and cuts down anyone who tries to approach God through their own acts.  It is a clear message that says access denied (and if you try again you’ll be killed).  We have to find another way.

We can’t do enough to dress up our corrupted creation.  We have taken a perfect thing that God has given us and we have ruined it.  We need God to “recreate us” in order to be righteous.

Thus we need to recognize the problem and ask God for His grace and mercy.  Without His mercy and help we are hopeless. 

Final Thoughts

There is a certain freedom that comes from accepting the fact that we are all sinners and in need of God to make another way for us.  I don’t have to compare myself with others and worry about how I look.  I don’t have to prove I am good enough because none of us are good enough.  Yet, even those who embrace the Gospel are warned about forgetting what it means.  In James 2:13, we read, “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy, but mercy triumphs over judgment.”  James was warning them that if they accept God’s mercy and then turn around and show favoritism to people that they will be judged.  Why?  Salvation is not about saying the “magic words.”  It is about embracing the Truth of God.  To show favoritism is to deny the very essence of the gospel.  God gives grace to the humble, but Law to the proud.  What are you today?  Are you a proud atheist?  Beware, God’s law will cut you down.  Are you a professed Christian who is proud?  Beware, God’s law stands as a prophet of doom everyday convicting you of such actions.  Flee to Jesus away from your sin and be saved today!

Understanding the Gospel audio

Holier Than Thou

Today we are going to be in Isaiah 65:1-5.  This passage is the source of a phrase that many will recognize, but perhaps not know exactly where it came from.  This is the phrase, “Holier than Thou.”  We would be inclined to think that it was coined by an irreligious person who was sick of a certain kind of attitude put off by religious people.  But the truth of the matter is that it is religious people who coined the term and it was God who was the first to refer to it as a bad thing. 

As much as God is merciful, he does have a boiling point that requires him to hold mankind accountable.  God opened Isaiah’s eyes to the actions and words of Israel in the midst of God’s long and patient mercy.  Let’s look at the passage.

God’s Mercy is Given to Those Who Never Had a Part in Israel

In verse 1 you might not catch what God is saying.  It is clear from the passage that he is not happy with Israel.  In Romans 10:20, Paul makes it clearer that this passage is God talking about the coming Church.  Don’t confuse this with any institution.  But rather that group of people among all earthly institutions who truly have put their faith in Jesus as God’s Son.  God had given Israel mercy over and over for centuries, but now he contrasts them with another “nation.” 

The Church is not a nation like any nation in the world.  It does not have an earthly headquarters in Rome, or Springfield, or any other city that men have set up.  Its headquarters is the very throne of God where Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father.  It is a nation without boundaries, without a particular race, and without particular social customs.  God tells Israel that he is going to pour out his mercy in three ways to this new nation.  He will reveal himself, He will be found, and He will offer himself.  God in his mercy steps forward and manifests his glory at the same time he draws them near.  The interesting thing is that God says this nation of people weren’t looking for him.  They were lost without any idea of where to turn.  This is in contrast to Israel who had the truth of God.  No matter how much mercy he gave, though, Israel continued to rebel.  Thus the heart of God is seen as he turns and pours out his grace on those who weren’t even looking for it, those who never had a part in God’s special people Israel. 

Peter points this out in 1 Peter 2:9.

“But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that  you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;” (NKJV).

Although Isaiah does not refer to it here, I should mention that elsewhere he notes that God is faithful to save a remnant of Israel.  He takes that believing part of Israel that had not spurned his mercy and makes them to be the foundation of this new nation that he is making, the Church.  Thus the Church is built upon the foundation of Jesus and his apostles, all of whom are Israelites.

Now notice that God does not save the “cream of the crop,” as Israel would have judged it.  Not many great priests and rulers of Israel were saved.  But many “unconnected to power” and “rejected of society” were saved.  God is not impressed with our pomp and greatness.  He is looking for those who have a great trust in Him.  So if you feel like you have no place with the religious and thus with God, think again.  He is not looking for those who have it all together.  We all receive God’s grace and mercy when we are undeserving of it.  In fact this is a hallmark of God’s Grace.

God’s Mercy is Given Long After it is Undeserved

In Verse 2 God points out that he had offered himself and his mercy to Israel in the face of rejection and rebellion.  The picture of open arms is an offer of intimacy.  Instead they followed a way that wasn’t good, that is, a way of their own devising.  In fact not only did their “thoughts” lead them away from God’s offer of intimacy, but it led them to do things that they knew were a provocation to him.  This insolence or arrogance makes the matter worse.  Thus verses 3-5 list some examples of their sins.  They openly embraced idols and false religions when God had clearly commanded them to not do so.  They followed occult rituals in order to obtain power and wealth, rather than turn to God.  The last thing on the list, and perhaps the worst, is their attitude.  These rebels who were openly and flagrantly rebelling against God were abusing God’s stuff to pretend like they were better or “holier” than others.  God says that this attitude was like the smoke of a fire in his nose.  Now God does not have a nose, but uses a metaphor for us to understand.  It doesn’t take long for the smoke of a fire to bring your eyes to tears and your lungs to coughing.  But God says that they were a fire that burned all day long.  This puts God’s mercy in a clearer light.  In fact when we truthfully understand the situation we will not question the righteousness of God’s judgment.  Rather we will question whether or not it is right and wise to offer grace and mercy in the face of such obstinacy.

The problem with a holier-than-thou attitude is that only God is holy by definition.  That is God is the only thing that is holy by nature.  We are holy only because God makes us holy.  We cannot make ourselves holy by certain actions other than fully trusting in God himself.  If they were truly holy they would not be pushing people out of their way in self protection.  Rather they would be laying down their life in order to save the unholy.  God rebukes those who take great pride in their “position” with him over those who do not have such.  This pride itself is unholy.  True holiness is willing to be hurt, cursed, provoked, and spit upon in order to try and awaken faith in the unholy.

In many ways the Church of Jesus Christ has come full circle.  We in many ways are like Israel of old.  We do things that are in direct disobedience to God’s Word.  We mix in beliefs and practices from false religions.  We arrogantly make others aware of our special status in God’s eyes.  Paul warns Christians in Romans chapter 9-11 that we need to be careful of our attitude.  God in his mercy will once again save the people of natural Israel, not because it deserves it, but because it is his nature to give mercy to the outcasts and the rejects of this earth.  At the same time he will cleanse his church of all that is not of faith in him and humble before him.  Let us be careful of our attitude in this day.  Let us reject the attitude of entitlement and embrace the attitude of humble gratefulness.

Holier Than Thou Audio