Welcome to the podcast of the White Church in Adelaide, South
Australia. I'm going to invite Dave up to
share this morning. Father, we bless your word and
we know that your word You say Lord, that you would confirm
Your word with signs and wonders following.
So we asked just even on the back of what Dave is sharing
this morning, that in our gathering you would confirm Your
word in Jesus name. Amen.
Excellent. I'm expecting the way we should
be in the church, in his body, just off the back of what Justin
just prayed there. Like we should be expecting to
see God's mighty hand at work, to see, you know, signs and
miracles and wonders. Like we serve the Lord.
We serve a God that created all things.
We serve a God who, you know, sent his Son, that the Lord God
came as a man and did amazing things.
You know, I was reading this week about the feeding of the
5000. These are impossible things that
God did. That God could take 7 loaves and
feed thousands of people. Like that's impossible.
This is the God we serve. This is the same God that we've
been singing to this morning. This is the same God that that
we, you know, we claim to worship because we do, but we
claim to give our life to this God and to serve him and to
follow him. So what could be impossible for
for this God to be working in and through you as a vessel for
his Holy Spirit. Amen.
I'm just trying to stir us up to, you know, increase our
expectation for what God can do innocent through us.
We don't live a mediocre life. You know, the, the body of
Christ, the church isn't, isn't just, you know, a club where we
gather and we sing songs together.
This is like the life of God is administered to the world around
us through his body and we get to be involved in that.
Like if you're in this room and and you believe that Christ is
your Saviour and your Lord, like you get to be a part of what
God's doing. And that excites me.
I hope that excites you. Like it doesn't matter how old
you are. It doesn't matter how young,
young you are in the Lord, all these things you get to be a
part of the same thing that we're all get to be a part of,
you know, So that's that's wonderful.
I hope it fills us with hope and strength.
This morning we're going to talk about his the gospel Justin was
sharing last week about who Jesus is.
So if you haven't heard that, please go and listen to that
because it this this week builds upon last week.
You know, we're going to talk about the gospel, what what
Jesus did, what it means that Jesus came and lived as God in
the flesh and all these things. So go and check it out.
But the gospel, the gospel, the word gospel, what does it mean?
I mean, you guys know, I'm sure. Let's shout it out.
What does the word gospel mean? It's the good news.
Yeah. There we go.
Good news. Bianca knows it's the good news.
It's it's it's bringing, you know, good news, tidings of, of,
of good news. And you know that question, what
is the gospel? The first four books of our New
Testament Bible are known as the Gospels.
And it's simply just it's about Jesus, right.
The gospels are about Jesus, the birth of Jesus, the life of
Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, the
ascension of Jesus. It's all about Jesus.
The gospel is about Jesus. There is 90 plus uses of this
word gospel. I'm not going to try and
pronounce the Greek word, but that word that's translated
gospel in our in our English Bible.
It's like over 90 times we find it in the scripture and to
understand what a what a word or a topic means in the Bible, we
got to go looking. We got to go looking through the
Bible and see what the word of God has to say about what that
word means. So, so when the first mention is
important in in the word of God too, because quite often it will
set a foundation for what that word actually means.
So go looking for the first word and then read a whole bunch of
other references to the word. And so let's seek some of these
words. I didn't read all 90 of these
words, just so you know, I didn't go like, you know,
extensively look at them all. Just Full disclosure from me
here. I did a few, probably more than
a few. But anyway, where the first
mention of this word gospel is found in Matthew 423 and it says
this, it says Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their
synagogues, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom.
So the Gospel of the Kingdom Scripture emphasis emphasizes
that the gospel is about a king and his Kingdom.
That's what the gospel is. Jesus is the king.
We learned last week who Jesus is.
He is the king. And the gospel is the message of
the king and the and the Kingdom which he rules and reigns in
which he rules and reigns from heaven.
Now he's coming back to rule and reign in a very real way, in a
very real earth, right? Like that's the Kingdom, Jesus
is the king. And so, you know, this king in
the Kingdom, it's central to the Gospel message.
We can't understand the gospel without knowing that that Jesus
is a king, is the king, and that we're we get to be a part of his
Kingdom. We are subjects to the king in
his Kingdom. That's not a bad thing.
It's good thing to be a servant to God.
It's a good thing to be a servant to a good king.
It's a terrible thing to be a servant to a bad king, but Jesus
is a good king. He is a righteous king, He is a
holy king, and it's a great thing for us to lay down our
lives and serve a good king. Amen.
Excellent. So other mentions of this word
gospel, this good news, it makes clear that this, this message,
this gospel message should be preached.
It should be spoken boldly. It should be shared.
It should be defended. The gospel needs to be defended
and it needs to be taken to the ends of the earth.
That's our responsibility. Jesus has given us the gospel.
Jesus. Jesus has given us his Holy
Spirit, and we now have a responsibility to preach the
good news boldly, to share, to defend it, and to take it.
To take it wherever we go to the ends of the earth.
And so that Jesus King Jesus and his coming Kingdom could be
known so that it could be known and it could, and that Jesus the
king could be obeyed, right. People need to know who Jesus
is. They need to know that there's
a, there's a Kingdom that he rules and they need to know how,
how to be a follower of Jesus. And we need to teach them to do
that. Jesus said that go and teach
them all the things that I've spoken.
So the the gospel needs to be obeyed.
People need to know the gospel and obey the gospel in order to
have hope and peace and glorious future and life.
That's where those things are found through the gospel,
through the good news, and only through the gospel.
Amen. Excellent.
So the message of Jesus offers us salvation.
Jesus can save us. Amen.
Jesus saved us if if we're believers in this room.
Thank you Lord, like I hope that stirs some Thanksgiving in your
heart. Thank you God for salvation.
But what what is Jesus that that opens this question, what do we
need to be saved from? So God is offering to save me.
And the short answer is that that God that Jesus saves us
from the judgement that's to come.
God will judge the world. God will judge every single
person for their sin. What is sin?
The Bible clearly defines what sin is.
This is the best definition that I could find. 1 John 3 verse 4,
it says, I'll just give you a moment.
We've been pushing for us guys to have our paper Bibles.
So I'm not just going to move on from that.
If you've got a paper Bible, just I'll give you a moment just
to find it there. So that was 1 John 3 verse 4.
This is the the Bible's definition for sin.
It says whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness and catch
this and sin is lawlessness. So sin is is lawlessness.
Sin is not following God's law. That's basically what it is,
right? Lawlessness.
Sin is lawlessness. It's not following God.
It's not doing his walking in his ways.
God has ways, God has good ways. They're perfect, they're
righteous, they're holy. And sin is when we don't follow
those ways. That's the short answer, but in
order to understand more, we need to, to go back to the start
and look at God's plan for his creation.
And so, you know, I would say that like God's plan for his
creation, I, I think that this verse that you find all through
the Bible wraps it up pretty well.
It says I will be their God and they will be my people.
That is God's desire and will for mankind, that He would be
their God and that we would be His people.
And we see that all through the Scripture.
That's God's ultimate plan. And you know when that fits into
the King and the Kingdom, I will be their king, they will be a
part of My Kingdom. Do you see the picture here?
It's the same picture. He is God, we are His people,
God is perfect, God is only good all the time.
Can we get an Amen for that? God is good all the time.
He is only good. He can't be bad.
He can't never be wrong. He is always right.
There is no darkness in him at all.
He only creates good. God can't make things that are
bad. God can't make an unrighteous
person. God created mankind, righteous,
pure, holy, perfect in the Garden of Eden.
That's what God did. 1 John 15 says that God is light and in
him there is no darkness at all. That's amazing to me.
That's like, you got to take a hold of that and believe that to
be true, that God is light. There is no darkness in him at
all. That means that I don't get to
question whether God's right or wrong and whether what he's
doing is the right thing. He is light.
He is right all the time and I can just trust him and I don't
need to question him because he's God and I'm his servant.
I'm, I belong to him. He's never wrong.
So this perfect God made a perfect world and in this
perfect world he made a perfect garden.
The garden was in a place called Eden, perfect garden.
And he created Adam and Eve perfect in every way.
He said they are this is very good.
If God says something is very good, is it good?
Is it very good? It's like, again, God can't
create something that's bad. He made Adam and Eve.
He declared them to be good, right?
Good is good according to God. God let your yes be yes and your
no be no. God doesn't speak in riddles.
That is good, very good. So we trust that Adam and Eve
were made perfect. God gave them authority to take
care of this perfect place, right?
They would, they were to keep this garden.
They were to steward God's creation.
That there was an authority that God gave mankind over his
creation. They would they would rule over
it that it would be in submission to them, right?
It's a hierarchy. It's God.
God gives authority to Adam and Eve and everything else was
under them, which is pretty cool.
That's that's God's intention for mankind to rule and reign
with him. Isn't that cool?
The king and the Kingdom, we are going to be reigning and ruling
with Christ in his Kingdom, those that belong to him.
It's pretty cool. Everyone has a place.
It's very amazing. And so you know, God created
them in this perfect place and he walked with them.
That's amazing to me that the that the creator of all says
that he was walking in the cool of the garden.
He was with them, he was with them in the garden.
Isn't that amazing? And again, this is God's
intention. He wants to he wanted to create
people to be with him, to know him, right?
It's relational. God is a relational God.
He wants to know us. And so he walked with them and,
and I think that, you know, he taught them, he instructed them.
Like when God created an Adam and Eve and walked with him in
the garden, who were they going to go ask questions?
What is this thing? What does that mean?
Who are they not going to ask each other?
Who are they going to ask? They're going to ask God, Hey,
God, what's this thing over here that's called a lake?
Go and swim in it. It's wonderful.
Like, do you see what I'm saying?
Like God's with them and He's instructing them and He's
teaching them. And that's the God that we
serve. He wants to lead us into good
things. He wants to show us the amazing
things that He's made. He wants us to partake in his
goodness. Isn't that cool?
Thank you, Lord. And he gives them one warning.
Our God warns us because he's a good God.
Our God warns us of the things to stay away from, of the things
that are harmful. God's not giving.
Like I'm just getting sidetracked here for a second,
but as believers, as followers of Christ, this is not law to
you. Do what I say and everything
will be good. It's like, do what I'm asking
you to do, show, follow me, you know, submit to my ways because
they're good and I will lead you into good things.
God's word is life to us. He is a good God.
He wants to lead us in truth and, and light, you know, be the
lamp to our feet. This is the God that we follow,
same God in the garden. It's the same God that's leading
us today through his Holy Spirit.
Getting ahead of myself, come back to your notes.
So God gave them one warning. Don't eat of the tree, of the
fruit of this one tree, because in the day that you do that, you
will surely die. They did it right.
They they ate of this tree. So, so they stepped outside of
God's, God's instruction. And what happens when you, when
they stepped outside of God's instruction, they, they, well,
they died, yes. And they sinned against God's
law, lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness, right?
They stepped outside of God's law and they sinned and they,
they died in that day. Jesus, God said that they would
die on that day and they died to death in that day.
They went from being righteous and pure and perfect to, to
becoming unrighteous and sinful and rebellious.
That's what they become. So they died a spiritual death
and now straight away they're experiencing things that God
never intended. They're experiencing shame,
they're experiencing fear, right?
They're they're hiding from God. They're insecure.
God never intended for us to be living that way.
It was never God's intention. God didn't create us for fear.
God didn't create us for shame. Our stepping outside of God's
perfect will is what brought those things upon ourselves.
And so they hid from God and, and it says that Adam and Eve
were, were made to leave this perfect place.
They could no longer say they were no longer perfect.
They no longer fit in God's perfect creation with a perfect
God in a perfect place. God forces them out, but but not
before he covers them, not before he takes care of them,
not before he speaks hope, right?
Because, because the gospel is declared when, when sin happens,
you know, it's not in my notes, but he, he talks about the, the
fall, when he talks about the things that will now happen.
But he talks about Jesus. You know, he, he, he talks about
him and says that, you know, the, the serpent will nip at his
heel, but he will crush the head.
This is Jesus. So he's in that God's giving
hope. He's declaring the gospel.
He's declaring that Jesus is coming right from the moment
that sin enters. And so they're made to leave and
and they're separated from God and and they can follow him no
more. That is the worst thing that
could possibly happen for mankind, that they couldn't
follow him anymore. So now they're out in this world
that, you know, because it creation itself falls, thorns
and thistles. Things aren't the way that it
was intended. And now they're going to have to
try and work it out for themselves.
If they've got any questions who they're going to ask now they're
asking themselves and they're like, you know, led by their own
understanding and all of these things.
God doesn't leave them completely on their own, but
they're they're not walking with him in the way that they once
were. They don't have his leading in
his guidance anymore. They can't follow him
spiritually dead. They're dead on the inside.
They're not connected to the life source.
The Bible describes this state as as walking in the flesh.
You know, it's, it's being led by our carnal nature.
Like we're no longer led by the Spirit of God.
We're no longer led by God. Now we're, we're left to our own
devices, we're left to our own carnal understanding, our own
instincts and emotions. And remember our instincts and
our emotions are now broken. Now we're feeling fear.
Now we're feeling hurt. So now there's the, there's a
response that we, that we have. It's like the fight or flight
thing. Fight or flight was never God's
intention, right? You're either going to have to
fight or you're going to have to run.
That was never God's intention, right?
So, but but that now we're, we're acting out of out of these
emotions and, and these this brokenness from the inside.
And we do feel that we need to fight and defend ourselves and
we do feel that we need to run and we do feel that we need to
hide. We still experience that right
now, like I'm sure that we do like we are hide from God
sometimes not for long. He doesn't let me hide for long
anymore, but that, you know, the period of me hiding from him is
getting shorter. But he like, I know that I know
when I'm hiding from him now and I don't, I don't hide from God
anymore. I mean, I don't not in the same
way that I used to. I don't hide from him anymore.
I turn to him because I know I've trusted him.
I've walked down the road a bit. I know that he's got good
intentions for me. I know that when I find myself
falling and falling short of him, you know, in lawlessness, I
know that he welcomes me straight back in.
He wants me to be living a good life with him.
He wants to protect me. He wants to keep me safe.
He wants to for me to be blessed and be a blessing, right?
So I don't run from him anymore. I turn to him all right, so
another thing that we experience is, you know, with all this
brokenness and, and, and our instincts being messed up is
that we're living at the expense of each other.
Now, you know, you see it straight away, Adam and Eve,
just, you know, at the expense of each other.
This is one of the things that you and I have to face today in
battle because our flesh wants us to live at the expense of
others. And we're called to lay down our
flesh, lay down our lives for, you know, love God and one love
one another. That's the picture.
That's how we get back into following God in his ways.
We've got to, we've got to live for one another.
We've got to live for him. We're not living for ourselves,
right? So through the Bible, you know,
after Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden, the, the Bible
pattern is just this pattern of God just reaching out to mankind
again and in various ways through people and through
prophets. And you know, he, he comes to a,
a nation himself and he comes down and onto the mountain and
he reveals himself. God reaching out, God giving
direction again. Think about that.
They've gone from following God and, and walking closely with
him and asking him any question to being cut off from him.
And now God raises up a nation and says, I'll put my name with
them and they will follow me and I'll give them my laws.
What's he doing? He's back showing them how to
live. He's giving them his laws again.
He's saying don't do these things, do these things.
You do these things. You live in the curse, you do
these things, you live in my blessing.
God is directing his people. This is a good covenant.
You know, the, the word says that the law is good, God is
good. He's wanting to lead his people.
And so we see that through the Scripture.
God makes promises to restore all things.
I said that he made this declaration back in the garden,
but all through the Scripture. We see that God is promising
that things will be made right, right, that that the gospel is
is coming, that Jesus is coming and he will set things right.
There's this promise all through the Scripture.
And God allows, you know, rebellion to go on for a certain
time, but eventually judgement must come.
Eventually judgement must come. And he does.
You think about God flooding the earth and Sodom and Gomorrah.
Eventually God judges. Why does God do that?
Because God must clean things up right?
The the the great flood is this picture of just washing it all
away. What's he doing?
He's cleaning up the mess, right?
When fire comes down and in Sodom and Gomorrah, what is he
doing? He's burning out all of the
ungodliness. He's burning out all the
unrighteousness. God has to clean up his mess.
This is why judgement is coming. God will not allow
unrighteousness and unholiness to continue on forever.
God has set a date where He will deal with it and that is the
end. Never again will there be
rebellion. Never again will there be
unrighteousness and sin and brokenness and all of this
stuff. God's coming and He's going to
clean it up. Jesus Himself taught this.
Matthew 25 verse 31 if you want to turn there, Matthew 25 verse
31, it says when the Son of Man comes in His glory and all His
holy angels with him, then He will sit on the throne of His
glory and all the nations will be gathered before Him and He
will separate them one from another as a shepherd divides
His sheep from His goats. So Jesus, you know this is
talking about Jesus is sitting on this throne.
Jesus is going to be doing the dividing.
He will divide all of mankind. How will He know those that
belong to Him? How is Jesus going to know who
are the sheep and who are the goats?
Romans 89 This is how he's going to know.
Romans 8-9 But you who are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit,
if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.
Jesus is going to be looking for the Spirit of God, those that
belong to him. The the Scripture says they are
sealed by the Holy Spirit, not by your works, not because
you're a good person, not because you've done all the
right things. He's looking for himself.
God's looking for himself in you.
And that is the if he sees himself, if Jesus sees the Holy
Spirit sealing you, he goes, come with me.
You are, you belong to me. So it's the Spirit of God that
that separates the sheep from the goats.
That's the in the final judgement.
That's what God's looking for. One group has the Spirit, they
have become alive. Those that receive the Spirit of
God become alive. The rest do not.
They remain spiritually dead. I, I said that, you know, Adam
and Eve became spiritually dead. They were they, they, they lost,
you know, this connection with the Spirit of God.
And so those that are alive again receive the Spirit of God.
Those that don't remain spiritually dead.
Every single one of us, every person put your hand up if you
were born in this place. Yay, There we go.
I'm just making sure we're all awake.
We're all born, right? Every single one of us is a
descendant of Adam and Eve. We were born in sin.
Adam and Eve reproduced in after their own kind, and they were
unrighteous. They were impure and they
reproduced. And every single person that was
born after Adam and Eve was born in sin, spiritually dead.
This is what the Bible teaches. And I, this is how I know that
that's true. Because like, I've got young
kids and I don't need to teach them to lie, to steal, to, to
hurt one another. You don't need to be taught how
to be unrighteous. We just are.
We're, we're trying to teach our kids how to be right.
You know, you don't have to be a believer to realize that like,
oh, I'm just, I'm just trying to help my kids to do the right
thing. Yeah, because they're born into
sin. There's something in them that's
not right. I've been born into sin.
They're spiritually dead. Most of us, like, don't want to
sin, do we? Doesn't anyone in this room that
just enjoys sinning and likes to sin?
Of course not. We're not created for sin.
We're created for a life of holiness and purity.
God's made us for that. That's why it doesn't feel right
to live outside of God's plan and purpose.
So the final judgement, people will be giving an account of the
sin that they've lived. Each one, like each one's
lawlessness is going to be exposed in the final judgement.
And, and the exposure of our sin and our unworthiness makes us
worthy of death. It means that you, you don't
deserve life. You've lived outside of God's
plan in the same way that Adam and Eve stepped outside of God's
will. Don't do that thing.
We've all done that. We've all stepped outside.
And so this is where we find ourselves.
And if we have to stand before a holy God in that, there's no
escaping. You can't come back into
perfection. You can't just, God can't just
go, oh, don't worry about it. Just come back in because God is
perfect. His judgements are right.
If you're coming back into the perfect place, you need to be
perfect because nothing impure can come back in.
And so we're worthy of death. If we stand before God without
the Holy Spirit, without the saving grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, we're going to, we're worthy of death.
That's, that's what's worthy. We're worthy of.
We will receive that. That is our fate.
Our fate is set. We'll be cut off permanently
from God, the source of perfect light.
We will remain spiritually dead forever and ever.
This is the fate of every single person that's born after Adam
and Eve that doesn't receive their their Savior, Jesus
Christ. And so Jesus offers us the way
to life. You know these words, I am the
way, I am the truth. I am the life.
These aren't just fancy words. That's the truth.
Jesus is just saying I am the way to life.
I am the truth, like no one comes to the Father but through
me. I'm the only way to enter back
into God's perfect plan. So Jesus died the death that you
and I deserve. If we're over here, we deserve
death. Jesus died a death on the cross,
didn't he? Didn't he?
Jesus died for us, right? Amen.
Yes he did, and he died the the life, the the death that we
deserved. He died so that we could have
life. Jesus was born of God's Spirit,
the virgin birth. Jesus was not born of the seed
of Adam. Jesus was born of God's seed
which made him perfect. Jesus was not born into sin like
you and I Jesus was born perfect, holy and righteous.
And Jesus went on in perfection as a man, God as a man, and
lived a perfect sinless life untainted, still pure and so he
was able to be raised back to life when he died when they put
him to death or when he laid down his life willingly, he was
able to be raised back to life again.
Acts 224 Let me just read it here for time's sake.
It says whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of
death. Catch this because it was not
possible that that he should be held by it, that a righteous and
a holy God did not deserve death.
You and I deserve death. That at the judgement we will
receive death because we deserve it.
Jesus, on the other hand, died and death couldn't hold him,
couldn't keep him down, couldn't get a grasp on him.
Why? Because he's sinless, Because
he's perfect. He's like slipped through the
hands of death, right? And he's raised again and God
justly raises him from the grave because he didn't deserve to be
there. This is the Lord that we serve
Gods. He died for us.
He laid down his life for you and I raised back to life.
So we can choose to come to God now, now not wait like I'm
preaching to the to the saved in this room.
But we came to God. We gave our lives to him.
Now we didn't wait until later. We died now with him, you know,
we repent. We excuse me, we, we admit our
sin and our lawless lawlessness. We we repent.
It's like I come to God and I say, gosh, I deserve to die.
That's repentance. He's like, Lord, I'm, I'm just
living like I'm like, I'm just separated from you.
I need to come back to you. Lord, forgive me, forgive me.
Let me turn from that way. Let me turn again to your ways
and follow you. Repentance following him,
turning from lawlessness, turning to God's perfect law by
accepting Jesus and His work on the cross.
We believe that we died with Christ and that we're alive in
him. Like I died with him on that
cross, right? My life was put to death, that I
was dead, spiritually dead already, and I died with him on
the cross. And he rose again because death
couldn't hold him. And now I get to be alive again
by his Spirit and be with Christ and live with him forever.
It's an amazing thing. The gospel is pretty cool.
I feel it feels weird saying that the gospel is cool.
The gospel is amazing. It's so cool.
So this releases us from the need to be judged worthy of
death at the final judgement in Christ with the Holy Spirit
having repented from our sins, having saying, Lord, I died with
you on that cross, I'm alive with you, releases you from
being worthy of death because God's judgement has already been
put on his Son. The debt has been fully paid.
There's no debt to be paid anymore.
Jesus paid the debt in full. How does that make you feel on
the inside? To know that Jesus did that for
you, that you could have good things, that you could live a
righteous and holy life, that you could follow him again, that
you could hear his voice, that you could be back in perfection
listening to him and following him and asking him questions.
Hey, Lord, what's that over there?
That's a river. Go and jump in it.
Like like you said, God wants it like for us to enjoy his
creation Now, even now God was just the Holy Spirit speaks to
you and you have fellowship with him and you look at the sunsets
and you go, Lord, you're so beautiful like you, you you
start to just connect with God and his creation on a way that
you were spiritually dead to. It's very amazing.
One Peter 3 verse 18, it says this for Christ also.
He suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, just
confirming the words that I've spoken that he might bring us to
God being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the
Spirit. We have been made alive in the
spirit. When we receive the good news of
the gospel as true, the Spirit of God enters us and we become
alive. It's good to be alive.
I like to be alive. I will never go back to being
dead again. Once you taste life, you are
never wanting to die again. Amen.
This is why we want to follow Him.
This is why I want to serve Him and do things His way because I
don't want to. I don't want to be found living
in death again. I want to be in life.
I want to turn my life in His direction and do the things that
He says are good and right. So the gospel ultimately is
this. It's I said before, it's this
fulfilment of Scripture that He's given us over and over
again, but one that I really enjoy and love is, is Ezekiel 36
might have read this for us recently, but Ezekiel 36 verse
25, it says this, I'll sprinkle think about, think about the
gospel message here, right? I'll sprinkle clean water on you
and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all
your idols. I will cleanse you.
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within
you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and
I'll give you a heart of flesh, and I'll put my spirit within
you. Listen to this.
And I'll cause you to walk in my statutes and to be careful to
obey my rules. Oh, that's just putting us under
law again. No, it isn't.
It's showing you the way of life.
It's showing you if you follow my rules, if you obey my
commands, you will do well. You will live, you will enjoy
life. Life will be good.
This is why we're not under law, but we're under grace.
It's not a command just to do well.
It's a, it's a, it's an invitation to life.
Come and follow me. Jesus said that's the invitation
to life. So salvation is the work of God.
We read that God does a heart work in US.
And so God has to do something in here in order for us to
receive him as the king and, and know anything about the Kingdom
of God because he's making us fit for his Kingdom.
Salvation is preparing us for for the king and for the
Kingdom. It's showing us who the king is
and it's preparing us for the Kingdom that's coming, making us
a fit for his Kingdom, the welcoming back into perfection.
How does this become my reality? You guys know this.
We've we've given our our life to the Lord.
How do I receive Jesus? Romans 10/9 it says that if I
confess with my mouth that the Lord Jesus and believe in my
heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. See how important it is to
declare and believe that Jesus was raised from the dead?
Because if you don't believe that, how Can you believe that
you could be raised from the dead and that you could have
life? If you don't believe that Jesus
was raised from the dead, how do you think that?
You're walking around and alive now, right?
That's the only reason that we are alive because Jesus was
raised from the dead and we are alive in him.
So it's by faith, it's by faith, it's by confession, it's by a
heart position. It's by we do confess it with
our words. Can I say that the the Scripture
says that what, what goes in on the heart comes out of the mouth
when God does a heart work in you and that you receive the
gospel, You know what happens? It comes out of your mouth.
You can't help it comes out of your mouth.
What's coming out of your mouth, guys, what's in your heart?
This is a good, there's a good test for us.
What's going on in here? So we we take a hold of it by
Faith. Justin pointed me to, to what
Billy Graham had to say about Faith.
And I love her. I watched that I was there was
tears in my eyes. He said that, you know, when you
came into this place, you sat on that chair by Faith.
You sat on it by Faith, who here grabbed the chair before they
sat down and had a good look at it, made sure that it was
strong, made sure that none of the screws had fallen out.
None of us did that. I didn't see any of you do it.
Did anyone do it? You sat on that chair just
believing that that chair was going to hold you, right?
I had, there was no question in my mind that as I sat down, that
thing was going to catch me. If it didn't, I'll be like, Oh
my gosh, what just happened? So faith is the same.
Faith in Jesus is the same. It's just trusting that he is
who he says he is and that he will do what he said He will do.
You just, you believe it and you believe it in your heart.
It's like it's a spiritual work, guys.
It's not an intellectual understanding that like if I
just understand enough of what Jesus said and who he is that
then I'll get it and then I'll be able to trust him and follow
him. No, we, we choose in our hearts
to follow him and believe him for what he is, for who he is.
And then from that point we get to live in the fullness of, of
God. And he and he releases his
spirit to us and, and he awakens us and he leads us and he guides
us and he shapes us. We're being shaped into the
image of God, and that's a partnership between man and God.
I need to allow him to shape me. I need to follow him once again.
And so when we've received Jesus as our Lord and Savior, I'm, I'm
going to rap. I'm realizing that I need to
hurry up. So when we receive the Lord as
our Savior, our life looks very different.
Why does our life look different?
Well, because I was dead once and now I'm alive.
There's a big difference between a corpse and someone that's
walking around. If you can't tell the difference
between a corpse and someone that's alive, I don't know what
to say to you. Like go into a morgue and find
some some living people, right? Like there is a huge difference
between someone who is alive in the spirit of God and someone
who is spiritually dead. And if they if if the world
around you can't see it, something's wrong, right?
If no one knows, that's for you to question what's going on in
your heart here? Are you following him?
Is he your king? Are you serving him?
Are you following him? Are you allowing the word of God
to wash over you and cleanse you and make you like him?
Because if there should be some signs, signs of life when this,
when I became alive in the spirit, there's now fruit in my
life. Galatians 5 gives us a list of
some of these spiritual fruits. But the fruit of the spirit is
love, it's joy, it's peace, it's long-suffering, patience, it's
kindness, it's goodness, it's faithfulness, it's gentleness,
it's self-control. But the way that you live should
show that the Spirit of God is a work in you.
Now, I don't walk this out perfectly, don't ask my wife,
but like you, just just trust me.
I don't walk. I'm not always gentle, I'm not
always kind, I'm not always faithful.
And it's not about walking this out perfectly.
It's about our relationship with Him.
It's about turning to Him and following Him.
Sometimes I slip back into my dead self.
How do I get back out of that? I remind myself that I'm alive
in Him, that I was dead and now I've become alive.
I have to take every thought captive.
I have to know what's going on inside me to make sure that I'm
not being LED astray and allowing the thoughts of the
enemy and thoughts from the past keep me dead.
I'm going to put, I'm going to, I'm going to replace all of
those things with the word of God that speaks life and
wholeness and joy and peace. And I'm going to when, when you
do that, when you replace the way that you think and the
direction of your life, those fruits are just there.
They just, they just happen right when I'm thinking about
the Lord, like I said, when I'm looking at the sunset and
thinking about the Lord and saying, you are so good.
Do you know what I feel in here? Peace, joy.
It's the fruit of the spirit, guys.
The Spirit of of God is, is alive in us.
But I have to remind myself regularly, Romans 66, I'm going
to land somewhere around here. Romans 6/6.
This is what Paul says in how we walk this out.
He says. Likewise, you also reckon
yourselves to be dead, indeed to sin, but alive to Christ Jesus
our Lord. There's a that that that means
that I have to do something. What do I have to do?
I have to consider myself dead to sin and alive to him.
There has to be an understanding that I have where I can move
myself from, from dead works and feeling dead and responding in
dead ways to no, I'm alive in him.
He has made me alive. He died for me.
He's risen again. I'm alive in Him.
You pray that out, you speak those words.
As soon as you start to speak words of life over yourself, you
start to feel alive again. And we have to do that.
There's a responsibility on us to make sure that we're stepping
out in faith, taking a hold of His word by faith, you know,
praying those words over ourselves, speaking those words
over each other. Guys, like when someone's heavy
and they come to you and they say and you say, how's your
week? And, and they say pretty bad.
What are you going to do? Are you just going to go, Oh,
that sucks. Oh, today's a better day?
Or are you going to speak words of life and say, wow, man, like,
you know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to hear that.
I'm sorry that life's been hard this week.
But gosh, I'm so glad that you're alive in him.
Let's pray together. Lord, thank you that you know,
like our old lives are behind us and although we experience
hardship, that you are a God that has an inheritance for us.
You have opened up doors for us to have peace and life and joy
that you've put us in your Kingdom and made us a part of
your plan. These words speak words of life.
Wash with the water. Jesus says that he washes his
bride with the water, right? That's what's happening in those
times you're washing over his bride with with with water and
it's not your word. It's not your water, it's his
word, it's his water, but you could be a mouthpiece with for
the word of God. He could use your vessel and the
Spirit of God could flow in you and through you.
We read we read that scripture this morning about you know all
that are thirsty. Come to me and I'll give you
drink. And Jesus later in the next
verse, he talks about talking about the Spirit of God that you
could drink from me and rivers of water could flow out of you.
That's the Spirit of God. That's like the washing over one
another and the washing over yourself.
Let the Spirit of God wash. And when you speak the words of
life over one another, the Spirit of God in you washes over
the rivers flow out of your heart.
We need to be a church that does that for each other.
Amen. Excellent.
So in landing, what sort of response does the gospel does
this message of the gospel require from us?
What are we going to do now? We're just going to go thank you
Lord, and then just go home. I think we should praise him.
I think we should lift up our voices and and praise the Lord.
I don't know how we're going to do this.
Can we? Bianca's right there.
There we go. Bianca could lead us.
Check it out. She's got the Spirit of God in
her. Awesome, awesome.
I think that a message about the gospel and coming alive and
coming from death to life requires something of us,
Thanksgiving and praise. Let's give the Lord some glory.
Amen. Amen.
So I don't know what she's going to do.
You know what I'm going to hand over to Justin?
Justin's going to pray. So, Father, we thank you for
your gospel in this place. We thank you for the power of
the gospel. This isn't a gospel about making
bad people good. It's a gospel that makes dead
people alive. And we thank you for this
wonderful power that is found in the gospel.
And we praise you in this place because we have been taken from
death to life. We have been ripped out,
snatched out of a Kingdom of darkness and bought into a
Kingdom of light. We thank you for this incredible
power that is found in the gospel, this resurrection power
that takes dead people and makes them alive again.
We've praised you for this power.
We lift our voice and we lift our our words to you, our praise
to you as we kicked off this meeting.
We lift our song to you and offer you praise in this place
for this wonderful, incredible, marvellous power that is found
in the gospel in Jesus name. Thank you for joining us for
today's message. For more information about The
Way Church, please visit ourwebsite@thewaychurch.com dot
AU. Have a blessed day.