| 1 Corinthians 15: 1 – 4 14 February 2010
Andrew Lim
I want to make two main points this morning
I want to remind us this morning / of not one core-value / but two
I want to make the point that Gospel-preaching and Gospel-living
are two core values we embrace here in Christ Sanctuary
Let’s take the first of the two / Gospel-preaching
If there is one clear reason why we exist as a church and as people of God
we exist in order that we may preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
Making Christ known is the supreme reason why we exist
1 Cor 1:23 / “We preach Christ and Him crucified.”
Or mission on this tiny planet / before we die and go to be with God
is to tell people that what they do with Jesus Christ
is the most important decision they will have to make
Our Mission on earth is to save men and women boys and girls
from perishing in hell
That / is our supreme purpose for why we live / preach the gospel
2 Tim 4:2 / “We preach in and out of season”
There is no close season for the gospel
That being so / your most natural question will be / “What is the gospel?”
If I am supposed to preach the gospel
- just what is the content of the gospel
- what is the thrust of the gospel message
- what is the gospel in a nutshell
to say that John 3:16 is the gospel in a nutshell is correct
but it still vague to a lot of people
If we are to preach the gospel / just what is the gospel?
The true gospel story goes like that
Because of our rebellion against God / we sin against a holy God
And for that God cannot forgive us
If He is just He cannot forgive / we must die on account of our sins
For / when we sin / we violate the justice of God
and provoke His wrath
Now / this troubles many people
God wrathful / I thought God is loving and forgiving
J. I Packer puts it this way:
“Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as He did in good
be a good God?
Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in His world
be morally perfect? / Packer says / Surely not
If He is incapable of wrath / He would not be a perfect God
A God Who is incapable of an infinite hatred against sin
would be a god / who is morally deficient
He would not be a righteous and holy God
What kind of a god would He be
if He looked at vice and virtue with equal satisfaction
If He cannot hate what is profane and vulgar
He cannot love what is pure and lovely
Arthur Pink writes
How could He who is infinitely holy disregard sin
and refuse to manifest His “severity” toward it?
How could He who delights only in that which is pure and lovely
not loathe and hate that which is impure and vile?
Then Pink says this: / The very nature of God
makes Hell as real a necessity / as Heaven is
The prophet Nahum shows us
that a God who is never angry is a God who cannot love
If you love something dearly / you will hate something equally strongly
If you love children / you will hate child-molesters
If you love people of all races / you will hate racism
God’s wrath is in keeping with His justice
God is a just God / and He hates injustice and unrighteousness
and He will not allow it to go unpunished
Not only will God punish sin
the punishment He metes out will be proportionate to the evil
Let me put it this way / We all have a sense of outrage
when we hear of little babies
killed in their mother’s womb with suction machines and forceps
or when we hear of rape / murder / or other forms of social injustice
Now / all this is right and proper
But we need to be sober and realise
that our rebellion against God / our distrust of Him
and our indifference toward Him
is an infinitely greater sin that these
John MacArthur rightly says / that a crime is wicked
in direct proportion to the worth of the one assaulted
- there are no penalties for smashing mosquitoes
- if you kill your hamster / you may get into trouble
- if you kill dogs / cats / horses / you’ll be in worse trouble
- when you assault a human person / your guilt increases
- because a human person is of greater worth than an animal
Now / when you assault the glory and the holiness of God
you offend the infinitely great / and most exalted Being
And an offence on an infinitely holy Being
demand an infinite eternal condemnation
So if you cannot understand why God can be a God of wrath
you need to understand that the violation of God’s infinitely holiness
demands an infinite penalty
God’s wrath is a just / righteous / and proportionate judgement
upon the infinite righteousness and holiness of God
This is why it is written:
“The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment” / Ps 1:5
There are three things for which God will pour out His wrath
All taken from one verse / Romans 1:18
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men
who suppress the truth in unrighteousness”
God’s wrath is against
ungodliness / unrighteousness and our suppression of the truth
Human people must die
Human people cannot simply be forgiven
If God is just He cannot forgive human people
Many of us would’ve heard the news on Friday night
that the body that was found by the search party in Christchurch
has been confirmed / to be that of Venessa Pickering
the Christchurch mother who had gone missing
from her New Brighton house with her 7 year-old daughter
The girl was found wandering in a paddock near Kaiapoi
and found to have been sexually violated
Now imagine you are the brother or sister of this woman
and the judge trying this case comes to the end of the trial
and he says “I am a very loving man / I have great compassion
and so I will let the murderer go free / Case dismissed!”
As her sister / as her brother / you will go berserk / run amok
go on a rampage / you will be up in arms
you will go to no end to make sure justice is done
no matter how many years it will take
you will fight relentless for justice for your sister
Now / it is the same with our God
God is a just God
Sinful and wicked people cannot go unpunished
- they cannot be forgiven
Everything revolves around the righteousness of God
But here is where the plot thickens in the gospel story
Because we have sinned against God
we will have to suffer the pain of the wrath of God
But it did not fall on our heads / as it should have
Does that mean that God’s wrath was somehow averted?
No / His wrath was poured out
at an actual historical time / in real human history
And not only that / it was the most severe instance
of the display of God’s wrath poured out
And it is seen in what Jesus Christ endured
when He hung there to absorb that wrath for us
When He hung there on the cross
the Father struck Him with all the force of His wrath
He bore the brunt / of the wrath that should have fallen on us
Our sins were lumped upon Him / imputed to him
and He was struck with the fiercest blow
- the sword of justice was sheathed in him
“He who knew no sin became sin” / 2 Cor 5:21
The curse of God’s wrath should rightly fall on us
But God has chosen to shield you and I from His wrath
by pouring it all / onto the head of His own Son
This is something so utterly horrendous
we can imagine the horror it must be for our Lord Jesus
This is the reason why / in the garden / just prior to his crucifixion
he ask if it was at all possible / for the cup to be removed?
Why? / Was he a coward? / did he lack courage ?
Thousands upon thousands of His own disciples
have been tortured for their faith in their Saviour
singing all the way to face their executioners
Was Jesus a coward or something !
No / it wasn’t the terror of the crucifixion / that made him flinch
What then was it ?
It was the horror of a holy person / having to suffer the wrath of God
When He hung there on the cross / the Father abandoned the Son
And He cried out! “My God My God / Why have you forsaken me?”
And there is so much force and feelings in these words
that two gospel writers have chosen to record it
in the very language that it was actually spoken: Aramaic
“Eli / Eli / lama sabachthani”
These words are so hard to understand
- some people simply deny that Jesus ever said it
- others say that it was a despairing cry of a disappointed patriot
whose political plans have failed
- the Moslems thought his cry was due to his fear of death
that it was a cry of a person
who didn't have the moral courage
- still others like Schleiermacher say
that in the hour of his deepest spiritual despair
he was simply reciting the opening sentence of the Psalm 22
- the psalm of weeping
- and still there are others who say that he was
so overwhelmed by pain / so drained of his strength
and so crushed by the weight of human sin
he simply felt forsaken by God
but God hadn't forsaken him
But all that isn't true
He feared the cup because He understood
that the cup stood for the wrath of God
The wrath is not something
that issues from the somewhere behind the throne of God
Never make the maximum mistake
of thinking that it was the cruel Romans that killed Jesus
or thinking that it was the Jewish authorities that got Jesus killed
Jesus died
not because the Romans or the Jewish people got Him killed
He died because God crushed Him
Isaiah 53:10 reads this way / “It was the will of the Lord
to crushed Him and put Him to grief”
It was God who meted out the punishment
It was God’s justice / that had to be satisfied
It was God’s wrath / that had to be appeased
The Word of God in Galatians say:
“Christ saved us from the curse of the law
by Himself becoming a curse for us” / Gal 3:13
It is a quotation from Deuteronomy 21
“Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree”
He must pass through hell / in order to become a curse for us
And this / is the reason He asked if the cup could be removed from Him
And what a harrowing day it will be when / in the last day
as the Book of Revelations tells us
the wrath of the Lamb will follow men and women
wherever they run / to catch up with them to kill them
Now / you and I / have been saved from His wrath
because the infinitely holy Son of God / paid the infinite price
so that the infinite justice of an infinitely holy God
might be infinitely satisfied
Now / you can be shielded from His wrath
by coming to Jesus and hiding yourself in Him
It is only by throwing yourself at His mercy
that you may be shielded from the wrath to come
Now / the huge question before us is this:
In the light of that / how shall we preach the gospel?
In the light of what we’ve just heard
how very pathetic and cheap / are some of the gospel messages
that we’ve all heard preach
There are preachers who will tell the people
“You’re life is going well / you’ve made it
you’ve got a nice house a fleet of cars / a great job
a secure future / a loving family / a strong marriage
But there is just one thing that’s missing
Jesus Christ / if you have Him / your life will be complete
Just say this sinner’s prayer / make Him your Saviour
and that / will be the cherry on your cake!!”
Now that / is one of the most perverted form of gospel you can hear
- it’s a perversion / it’s what Paul would call “another gospel”
In fact it’s close to being demonic because it’s a lie
- it lulls people to a slumber believing that all is well
- it leads people to think they are save when they are not
All is not well with us! / Not by a long short
We’re rebels deserving death
Without Christ we’re plummeting down into hell-fire
We’re dangling on a wire / and a very thin wire it is
In Deuteronomy 32:35 / God says / “It is mine to avenge / I will repay
In due time their foot will slip / their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them”
As Jonathan Edwards tells us
“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead
and to tend downwards with great weight
and pressure towards hell
And if God should let you go / you would immediately sink
and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf
And your healthy constitution / and your own care and prudence
and best contrivance / and all your righteousness
would have no more influence
to uphold you and keep you out of hell
than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock”
Edwards goes on
“The bow of God's wrath is bent
and the arrow made ready on the string
and justice bends the arrow at your heart / and strains the bow
and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God...
that keeps the arrow / one moment
from being made drunk with your blood”
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell
much as one holds a spider ... over the fire / abhors you
and is dreadfully provoked
His wrath towards you burns like fire
He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else
but to be cast into the fire
He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight
You are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes
than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours”
Now that / is any day / a far more accurate interpretation of Scripture
than all the tele-evangelists can come up with put together
And / in a plight such as this / you don’t just mumble a one minute prayer
and imagine yourself saved
only to go / living lives that are carnal as goats
You’ve got to come to see your depravity and rebellion
as utterly offensive to a holy and loving God
You’ve got to come to see
that nothing you own / nothing you have done
will amount to any good / for you are only a step away from hell
You’ve got to throw yourself down prostrate at His feet
and say humbly “Nothing in my hands I bring
Simply to Thy Cross I cling”
But this / is such a bitter pill to swallow
and people simply don’t want a bar of it
Even churches don’t want it / and shun it / and don’t preach it
And they will sugar-coat the bitter pill to make it more palatable
And they will say to you:
“There is a saint in you / that is waiting to come out
There is so much good in you that can change the world
if you let Jesus restore your self-esteem”
This is surely not the gospel of Jesus Christ
that tells you that you are a wretched sinner deserving of death
This is not the gospel / this is cheap motivational talk
and there is no shortage of preachers who will preach that
Rather this is how we must preach the gospel’
We need to tell sinners that they must throw themselves down
and plead for God’s mercy
- that they need to relinquish their right to life
- that they need to surrender their right to their own life
and submit totally to His Lordship
- that they need to count all your accomplishments
as “dung” as Paul says
And accept this unpalatable truth that life is not about them at all
- life is all about Jesus Christ
And that they eat / sleep / breathe / for Jesus Christ
so that they may bring people to Christ and enlarge His kingdom
But the tragic observation is this
And this brings me to my second core-value for this morning
- and that is Gospel-Living
Let me begin this way
The reason why Christians
can become so easily disenchanted with church
is only because / they still don’t get it
that life does not revolve around them
Why do you think the reason is for the church being so weak
She’s limping / struggling
and in many places look like she’s dying
Christians as a whole / still don’t get it
they do not know that life is not about them / it’s about God
We boast in many things
but we fail to boast in what we ought to boast in
Jer 9:23, 24 / This is what the LORD says:
Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom
let not the mighty man boast in his might
let not the rich man boast in his riches,
but let him who boasts boast in this
that he understands and knows me / that I am the LORD”
That verse tells us that nothing really matters ultimately in this life
To be sure we will love and provide for our children
To be sure we will be responsible in our jobs
and have integrity in our dealings with people
To be sure we will be good civic-minded citizens and contribute
But we must be able to see clearly through it all
that those are not supremely what we live for or will die for
This is what I mean when I say that we don’t know the gospel
Most of us think of the gospel as ABC
- who you were before you met Christ
- how you came to Christ / and how Jesus saved you
that’s all / that is what the gospel is / the ABC of Christianity
So naturally we think the gospel is for non-Christians
and once we became Christians we have no need of it
But the gospel is not the ABC’s of Christianity
It is A to Z of Christianity
It’s not about how you came to Christ
The gospel determines what will drive you in everything you do
The gospel determines how you will react in your problems
The gospel determines how you will spend your money
If you want it in formal theological language
no one has put it better than Tim Keller who said
“The gospel is what every theological category
should be expounding
when we do our systematic theology”
The gospel determines how I eat / how I spend my time
what I invest in / how I raise my kids / how I treat my wife
what career path I will take / which city I will live
how I am to be involved in the local church
what I will choose to value and what I will choose to frown upon
The gospel should inform everything I do
The gospel should be very much a part of everything in my life
The gospel is there simply to usher you into the kingdom of God
it is as much about how you will be living as a Christian
No one ever progresses beyond the gospel
to something more advanced
Like the hub of a wheel / the gospel holds everything together
Looking at it this way
The gospel is not the ABC of salvation
The gospel is the A-Z of the Christian life
This gospel will never be exhausted after I come to Christ
The whole of life is the gospel
the only reason why I sleep and eat and breathe and live
is for the sake of the gospel of Jesus
If I understand the centrality of the gospel / then when I look for a church
I will resist asking what this church has in it for me
- will I make great friends here / will I be comfortable here
- will my felt-needs be met here
Instead I will ask God / saying:
“Lord / is this the place where I can be all I can be
to serve You / and live my life out for You?”
Churches will limp less and less
when more and more Christians start thinking like this
But until people start thinking like this
then / it’s all about them
and the church will continue to stagnate
How many church leaders there are / out there this morning
who are worried sick over a few people
who are only three weeks away
from leaving for another church
Church leaders are chasing after people / to keep them
they pander to their cravings for recognition
they drive themselves crazy trying to meet all people’s felt-needs
they tire themselves trying to help people
cushion some deep pain in their lives
Christianity Today magazine predicted a few years back
that in the years to come the average Christian family
will have three sets of pastoral staff from three different churches
chasing after them to try to meet their needs
so they will go on staying in their church
Is this gospel living?
Is this what Christ meant for the church to be
Can you see / that something is deeply flawed / not only
in our understanding of what the church is
but in our understanding of how as Christians we should be living
It is not about us / It’s all about God and His glory
It is not whether I will be happy
It is about whether Jesus Christ will be honoured
It is not about whether I will be cared for
It is about whether the name of Jesus will be raised up
It is not whether I will have friends here
The question rather / should be “How I can I be a servant here?”
That / will be gospel-centered thinking
And when Christians adopt Gospel-living
the kingdom of God will grow and flourish
We desperately need / a gospel-centered living!
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