SPROUL: I want you all to go home happy from this
conference, but I'm going to do something now that may completely destroy any possibility of that.
I'm going to do what every student in history hates. I'm going to give you a pop quiz. Remember
when you'd come into classroom the teacher would just say, as soon as you sat down, "Take out a
piece of paper now and put your name up in the right hand side and get ready for this unannounced
examination." I hated those things. Now, I'm going to do it you, but here's the good news. You
don't have to write down your answer, and you don't have to put your name on the paper. I'm
going to give you this quiz, and you'll take it in the quiet of your own mind, which
at the end of the day will condemn you. What I want you to do is, as
succinctly and as crisply as you can, answer the question right now in your own mind, "What is the gospel?" How would you answer
that question? If somebody said to you, "What is the gospel?" what would
you say? Now, you think about that, okay, you don't have all day to come
up with the answer because if somebody comes up to you and says, "What's the
gospel?" they're not going to wait. The buses might wait, but they're not
going to wait. You have to tell them. Alright. So, before I try to answer that
question, I'd like to read a couple of portions of the New Testament. First, a brief portion
from Paul's letter to the Romans, in chapter 1, beginning at verse 1, with the salutation
and the greeting that the apostle gives, where Romans 1 begins this way, "Paul,
a bondservant," a doulos, a slave, "of Jesus Christ, called to be an
apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through
His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was
born of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with
power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Through
Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all
nations for His name, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ." And then, later
on in the first chapter, beginning at verse 16, we read the thematic verse of the whole epistle,
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for
everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.'" Now, I'm going to come back to these brief
statements in Romans, but first I'll read one more statement that you're all familiar with
from the writings of the Apostle Paul. Turn over to Galatians chapter 1. Do you
hear it? It's Baptist air conditioning. Alright. Galatians chapter
1, beginning at verse 6, with fear and trembling I do this again, "I
marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace
of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who
trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven,
preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As
I have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel
to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade
men, or God? Do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would
not be a bondservant of Christ." Now, those few texts that I've read to you now
that I'd like to take a few minutes to expound. First of all, when we go back to the beginning
of Romans where Paul introduces himself, in this, his magnum opus, he identifies
himself first by name, second as a slave of Jesus Christ, as one who has been
bought by Jesus Christ, purchased by Jesus Christ, and is owned by Jesus Christ. Then he
says, "called to be an apostle," that is, endowed by Christ with nothing
less than the authority of Christ, the authority to be an agent of revelation,
to speak the Word of Christ to the church. Called to be an apostle, separated, set apart,
ordained, consecrated, to what? "Separated to the gospel of God." Paul was cut out of the
mass of teachers of our day, selected by Jesus, ordained and anointed for the gospel of God. Now here, Paul introduces the idea of the gospel, and the first thing I want us to understand
about the gospel here is whose gospel it is. When Paul uses the phrase, "The gospel
of God," the structure here is of the possessive genitive. When he speaks of the "gospel of God,"
he's not talking about a message about God, but rather he's describing an
announcement that belongs to God, is authored by God, and owned by God. That's very
important because if we want to play with that, we're playing with something that is not
ours. You want to mess with the gospel, you want to tinker with it, you want
to improve it, you want to change it, you're fooling around with a message that originates with God Himself. It
is His message and His announcement. Well, we see the word "gospel" here; and in
the New Testament, there are different ways in which that word "gospel" is used. There are
three primary ways in which we encounter the term "gospel." You all know what the word "gospel,"
euangelion in Greek, translates over into English by the words "good news" or "good message"
or "good announcement." The prefix eu-, E-U, comes directly over to English where we speak of
euphonics, euphemisms...you know what a euphemism is? When you go to the dentist and he says you may
experience a little bit of discomfort, that's...he makes something bad sound good, right? And a
eulogy at a funeral, is when somebody says a good word about the person who has passed away. And so,
that prefix eu- simply means "good." And we say, "the euangelion," the same root there is the
root from which we get the English word "angel." An angel is an angelos because his primary
function in the economy of the kingdom of God is to be a messenger who
announces a word that comes from the throne of God. And when we put the prefix
and that root together, we get the euangelion, "the good announcement" or the "good
message." And there are three ways it's used, and one way we're all familiar with it is
used to describe a particular literary genre. We talk about the epistles in the New Testament,
but we also speak of the four Gospels. And the reason why the four Gospels are called
"gospels" is because they have to do with teaching us about the Person and work of the One who is
at the very heart of the gospel, Jesus Himself. Now, the second way in which the term "gospel"
functions in the New Testament early on in the advent of the New Testament is with
respect to an announcement of a kingdom. So in the early stages of the use of the
term "gospel," what is referred to here is the good news of the advent, the breakthrough,
the intrusion, the coming of the kingdom of God, a point that absolutely baffles me that there is
a widespread theology out there in the evangelical world that sees the kingdom of God as something
that is completely utterly in the future. I mean, honestly, I don't know how anybody
can read the New Testament and come to the conclusion that the kingdom of God is something
that is in the far remote distant future. Beloved, sure, there is a future dimension
of the kingdom of God. Certainly, we look to the consummation of the
kingdom of God which has not yet occurred, but let us not miss one of the
central points of the New Testament, and that is that the kingdom of God in
a very real and powerful sense has come. John the Baptist is prepared to
make this announcement and he comes out of the wilderness from the traditional
meeting place between God and His prophets with a call to repentance. And it's a call to
repentance and to baptism to Jews. And he calls them to the Jordan River to be baptized. And we
know that John the Presbyterian had a reason. Do you understand that when John
came on the scene, his ministry, his public ministry, was nothing less than
scandalous? The Pharisees were horrified, because he was saying to Israel, "You need to take
a bath. You need to undergo ritual cleansing," which up to this point was reserved for
proselytes, for Gentiles who were converted to Israel because they were considered to be
ceremonially unclean. So before they could join the covenant community, they had to take a
bath. Now, John comes and he says to the Jews, "You have to take a bath." Why did he
do that? Because a crisis had occurred. A pregnant moment in all of history had
come to pass in the fullness of time. John says, "Repent and be baptized," why?
Because the kingdom of God is coming in two or three or four thousand more years.
No. He said, "Because the kingdom of God is at hand." There is a radical nearness
to this breakthrough of the kingdom. "His fan is in His hand." "The ax is laid at the
root of the tree." He uses these two metaphors from the agricultural environment of the day. The
woodsman who goes off to chop down a tree, and he doesn't chop down the tree with one swing of
the ax. He has to chip away at it through the outer bark, cuts down to the middle core where now
there's only one strand left that's holding that tree upright and keeping it from collapsing.
And John said, "Here's how close we are. One more swing from that ax and that tree is coming down." "The
ax is laid at the root of the tree." "His fan...His threshing fan is in His
hand." The farmer's not just thinking about harvesting his crops and separating the wheat from
the chaff, and he's not gone yet to the shed that holds his tools. No. He's already been to the
woodshed. He grabs his threshing fan, he goes to the threshing floor. It's in his hand. He's
ready to put it into that pile of chaff and wheat, throw it up and let the zephyrs in the
air separate the wheat from the chaff. Do you get it? It's a moment of crisis
and the timeframe of it is immediate, any second, for this generation. "The kingdom
of God is at hand, and you are not ready." And the people, the common
people, heard him gladly, but the religious leaders balked and resisted
this teaching. And then as he's baptizing, one day he looks up and he sees someone
approaching him. He stops what he was doing. And he looks at the man who's coming and
he sings the Agnus Dei, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! I told you that there was One who comes after
me, who is before me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to loosen. He must
increase, I must decrease. Here He is." And at that moment, Jesus begins His public
ministry, and when Jesus enters into the community His message initially was exactly
the same as John's. What does He say? "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." In one sense, the kingdom of God has always
been. The Lord God always reigns in heaven, but in throughout the Old Testament history of
redemption, God promised the coming kingdom. And the Jews looked forward to the
manifestation of the kingdom of God in this world, and really what they were
looking for was the coming of their king who would embody the kingdom of God, who would
initiate and inaugurate that kingdom on earth. And when Jesus came, John says, "Here
He is. The kingdom starts right now." And Jesus continues to preach that as a
central motif. When He preaches in parables, what does He say? "The kingdom of God is
likened to this, the kingdom of God is likened to that," and He continues to talk
about the characteristics of the kingdom. Now, I know that in Matthew's Gospel it's
the "kingdom of heaven," not because Jesus is talking about two different kingdoms but because
Matthew is writing to Jews, and he uses the common circumlocution and periphrasis. Rather than to
pronounce the sacred name of God, he substitutes the name "heaven" for the kingdom of God. This
cost Jesus His life. He was dragged before the authorities. Pilate says, "I'm hearing rumors
about you that they tell me that you're a king. Are you a king?" Jesus said, "Thou hast said,"
which is, being translated means, "You said it." "You better believe I'm a king." "But then My
kingdom is not of this world. If it were, I would call upon the angels and My disciples and you
wouldn't be able to lay a finger on Me, Pilate." And then Jesus dies, He's raised, and one
of the most important elements of redemptive history takes place in that event which is almost
completely disregarded by historic Protestantism, and that is the ascension of Jesus into heaven. You know, when Jesus told His disciples,
"Yet a little while, I'm going away, and where I'm going you can't come." And Peter
responds, "Quō vādis?" "Where are you going?" And Jesus explained He was going away, He
was going to His Father's house, and then He said something that they could hardly believe. He
said, "Do you understand that it is better for you if I go away than if I stay?" Churches
never believe that. The church is still jealous of the first century apostles who
got to live and meet Jesus in the flesh, not realizing that we're in a far better
position redemptive historically than they were. And when the disciples were crushed with
the news that Jesus was going to leave, when He explained to them where He
was going and why He was going there, their whole perception changed so that when
they walked to the Mount of Transfiguration and they watched the shekinah clouds elevate Jesus
into the heavens, taking Him to His coronation, taking Him to His investiture as the King
of the kings and as the Lord of the lords, they realized that and they
returned to Jerusalem rejoicing. They finally got it. You know, the last
question they asked him before He ascended was, "Will You now restore the kingdom to Israel?" And
what does He say? "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not going to restore the kingdom?"
No. He says, "Don't you worry about the times. It's none of your business.
But you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to
the outermost parts of the earth." John Calvin said that the single purpose of
the church is to bear witness here and now to the invisible kingdom of God because right
this minute as I speak the greatest power in this world is not held by the president of the
United States or the prime minister of Russia. It's in the hands of Jesus Christ who is
the King of kings and the Lord of lords right now. That's why the gospel
writers talked about the good news of the kingdom of God. But because
the good news of the kingdom of God was so focused on the Person and work of
Jesus, by the time we get to the epistles, the idea of the gospel, instead of being
described as the "gospel of the kingdom" now is called the "gospel of Jesus Christ." Now, let's go back to the pop quiz. How did
you answer the question, "What is the gospel?" Maybe, you said something like
this, "The gospel is the good news that God loves us and has a
wonderful plan for our lives." "The good news is that Jesus can give purpose
to my seemingly chaotic personal existence." "The good news, the gospel, is that I can
have a personal relationship with Jesus." "The good news of the gospel means
that I can have my sins forgiven." All of those things may be true enough, but
not one of them individually or collectively is the gospel. The gospel has a specific content.
The gospel has an objective content to it as well as a subjective
element added to it. What the gospel is in biblical terms is the good
news of the Person and work of Jesus. When I became a Christian, the only way I could
do evangelism was to tell people my testimony. I would tell them how Jesus had turned
my life upside down. I'd tell them that Jesus is alive and that He had changed
me and He had forgiven me. Very valuable, but the relevance of my personal testimony
ended at the similarities between my experience and the experiences of people to whom I was
teaching. And again, I don't mean to denigrate the value of personal testimony. We see it
in the New Testament. The woman at the well, she's says, "I don't know who He is. All I can
tell you is that the guy gave me...He told me everything that I ever knew about me and I think
He must be the Messiah. Come and check it out!" She gave her testimony. But don't ever think that
your testimony is the gospel, because it isn't. The gospel is a message about the incarnation of
God, which incarnation was promised beforehand by the prophets. You see how Paul begins
back there in Romans 1, "Separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His
prophets in the Holy Scripture concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." The gospel
includes the affirmation that Jesus is the Christ. He's the long-awaited Messiah
of Israel. That's integral to the gospel. Jesus is the Christ and Jesus Christ is our
Lord. You can't have the gospel if you eliminate the lordship of Jesus. It's a
truncated gospel that ignores that. "Who was born of the seed of
David according to the flesh." David's son, David's lord, that part of the
gospel is the good news of a Mediator who has come as the God-Man, who is the incarnation of God. That also is essential to the good news, but not
only are we excited about a message of the coming of this terrific Man who reflects to us what
the image of God is supposed to look like, "He was born of the seed of David according to
the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit
of holiness." Not just man, but God, and He was demonstrated to be the Son of
God by the resurrection from the dead. If you have a Jesus who has
a wonderful earthly ministry and who dies an atoning death but stays
in the grave, you don't have the gospel. That's why Paul would write to the Corinthians and
say that "if Christ is not raised we are still in our sins, we're false prophets of God, there is
no gospel." There is no gospel without atonement. There is no gospel without
resurrection. Do you see that? The gospel is about who
Jesus is and what Jesus did. And if you're telling people about Jesus, you have
to tell who He is in His Person and what He does in His work. That fills up the essence
of the objective content of the gospel, but the gospel itself is endowed by
God with the power of the Holy Ghost. If there is any corporate sin of the twenty-first
century church in America, it is the sin of trying to find success and power in the life of the
church everywhere except where God has placed it. The power of God is never found in a program. It's never found in a liturgy. We read it in verse 16, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it," the gospel now about
Christ, "is the power of God." When I was a Christian, I was
so...when I first became converted in college, I wanted all my friends
in the campus who weren't Christians to become converted. I tried every way I knew to
evangelize and I had no idea what evangelism was. And finally, this little church that was near
the campus announced that we were going to have a revival. I didn't know that you couldn't
plan revivals then. I didn't know that revivals were something that God did, not programs
that are implemented in the church. But they announced this revival and they were bringing
this accomplished evangelist to the campus, and I got a chance to meet with him personally.
And he sat me down, and he said to me, he looked me in the eye, and he said, "Get any...let
me be alone with any person in this world for fifteen minutes, and I'll get
you a decision for Jesus Christ." When I listened to him for fifteen
minutes, I believed him. I thought, "Anybody will do anything and say anything
to get away from you after fifteen minutes." This man did not understand the first thing about
evangelism. He didn't understand the first thing about the gospel. He didn't understand that you
and I are powerless to bring anybody to faith. We may be able to encourage people
to make professions of faith. And this is one of the things where we are so zealous
to get people converted that we'll say to them, "I'm calling you now to get up out
of your chair wherever you are, and you come down here to this altar. I'm
going to call you now. Stand up and come." Or I may say to you, "You don't need to come to
the altar, but bow your head, and if you want to receive Christ just raise your hand. Oh,
I see that hand. I see that one over there." Or, "There are cards there in front of
you and they have the sinner's prayer, and if you would just silently read the sinner's
prayer and sign your name, you can be saved." Now, don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm
not against altar calls. I'm not against raising your hand. I'm not against calling people
to commit their lives to Jesus. God forbid! Here's what I'm deeply concerned about is that
we mistake professions of faith for salvation. Anybody can make a profession of faith.
We are not justified by the profession of faith. If we are justified, we're
justified by the possession of faith; and if we have faith, we're called to profess
it. But Jesus warns us time after time after time that "not everybody who says to Me, "Lord!
Lord!" is going to come into My kingdom." He says, "This people honors Me with their
lips, but their hearts are far from Me." And so, critical to evangelism is how the objective benefits of the atoning
death and resurrected life of Jesus Christ can be appropriated by me personally in my life,
and what the New Testament teaches about that is that the good news is that I
receive the benefits of Jesus Christ, I receive the full measure of His
perfect merit, not by any work that I can ever perform because "by the works of
the law shall no flesh ever be justified." And the good news Paul speaks here in verse 17, "For in it, the gospel, the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith to faith." Luther was preparing his lectures on Romans
at Wittenberg, and while he was poring over an ancient document from St. Augustine,
Augustine commented on this verse and he said, "Here when Paul speaks of the righteousness of
God he's not talking about that righteousness by which God Himself is righteous. Rather,
he's speaking of an alien righteousness, a righteousness that He freely gives
to people who are not righteous, a righteousness that is received by faith
and by faith alone." You can't earn it, you can't deserve it, you can't work for it; you
can only receive it, and you receive the good news of the gospel by trusting in Christ by faith and
by faith alone, with no mixture of your own works. Now, that's the gospel in its full simplicity,
which has been altered, distorted, and improved in every generation of Christian history. It
completely went into eclipse in the Middle Ages, where a whole different system of
salvation was constructed by the church, which church in the sixteenth century condemned
the gospel of justification by faith alone. Let's go now back quickly to Galatians.
Now, that passage I read to you involves some of the strongest language that you
ever read from the pen of the Apostle Paul. If you read the epistles of Paul, you can't miss the
fact that Paul's heart was the heart of a pastor. Paul just exuded compassion
for the sheep of Jesus Christ. He endured unspeakable affliction and pain for
the welfare of the people and of the churches. Paul never manifests himself as being
mean-spirited or harsh, but here he gets exercised. He begins by announcing
what I call "apostolic astonishment." In chapter 1 of Galatians, verse 6, he
said, "I marvel," I am amazed, about what? "That you are turning away so soon from
Him who called you in the grace of Christ." And it wasn't just that
they were turning away from something, but in that turning away
they were turning away to something. And what it was they were turning away to,
the apostle writes, was to a different gospel. And then, he corrects himself, as
it were, "Which is not another." "I use these words, you know, people
think that there's another gospel. They think they can improve upon the gospel.
They think they can edit the gospel. They think that they can change the gospel and move to
another gospel, but there is no other gospel. There's only one gospel, God's gospel. Yet, there are some who trouble you and
want to pervert the gospel of Christ." Now, here's where he really, really turns up the
heat, "But if we or an angel from heaven." Listen to this. "If we, or an angel from heaven, preach
any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be anathema." No stronger
word in the Greek. "Let him be anathema." "Let him be damned." "Let the curse of God
come upon anyone who preaches any other gospel than the one that you have received from the
apostles. Even if it's an angel from heaven, if this angel in glorious lights and refulgent
clothing enters into your church on Sunday morning to give you a new and improved gospel, you
take him by the seat of his ethereal pants and you kick him out with the curse of God on
his head." That's what the apostle's saying. And as a Jew, who believes
in emphasis by repetition, he repeats himself in verse 9, "As we said
before, I say now again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than that which
you have received, let him be anathema." I was involved in a heated controversy about the
nature of the gospel several years ago. Ligon was involved. John MacArthur was involved. He was
standing with me in a very unpopular position. And when the fire was the
hottest, and I was losing friends by the bazillions, I walked into the church
one morning by myself and I sat in the pew and I said, "I got to read this thing in Galatians
1 again," and so I read everything that I've read so far to you, the emphatic warning
that Paul gives about another gospel. And then, I never realized the immediate
connection between verse 9 and the next paragraph, verse 10. I'd never experienced this existentially
or experientially until that day where I read, Paul says, "For do I now persuade
men, or God? Do I seek to please men?" Beloved, the single most frequent reason why
people compromise and negotiate the gospel of Christ is to please men. Paul
says, "Do I seek to please men?" Now, I've got a problem with that. I'd like
to please men. I like people to like me. I don't want to be anathema here to all of
them, but he says, "If I still please men, I wouldn't be a servant of Jesus Christ."
Woe unto you if you ever negotiate the gospel. Anathema be upon you if you ever play
with the gospel. Don't ever turn the good news into bad news because it's God's gospel,
and we're not allowed to tamper with that. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for a message that is so good that it is impossible that we can improve
upon it. O Lord, because the gospel is a scandal to those who are perishing
and because men resist the gospel, we try to make it more acceptable, more palatable,
more easy to go down and sugarcoat it. Forgive us for our lack of confidence in Your
power that You have invested in Your gospel. Father, we have been saved by that gospel and that
we live not by works but by faith because of that gospel. And we have received the imputation
of the very righteousness of Jesus through that gospel. Father, give us the courage and the
passion to communicate that gospel in its fullness to a lost and broken world in Jesus' name. Amen.
