If you've got a Bible, go ahead and get that open to the book of
Titus. Specifically, we're going to be
in Titus chapter 2, looking at verses 11 through 15.
If you can't find Titus, there should be an index on the inside
cover of your Bible. If you still can't find it,
that's OK. We'll have all the relevant
Bible verses on the screen for you so that you can't miss them.
This is our 11th sermon, so if you've missed the other ten, I
can catch you up. What Paul has done is he's
writing Titus. Titus is kind of the resident
pastor of these little brand new immature churches that are
popping up on this ancient island called Crete.
And so this is the way Paul's been working through this
letter. He gives his greetings at the
very beginning. And right after that, Paul jumps
into instructions on how to train, develop, install elders
and pastors. He's like, hey, if you guys are
going to be churches, here's how to be a church.
Find these leaders. They have to meet these
qualifications and do these things.
After that, what Paul does is he blasts through all of these
individual instructions to all these various people groups
within the churches. He says, hey, older women do
this. Hey, older men be like this,
younger kids do this. And so he blasts through all
these individual instructions. And finally we find ourselves
this morning in chapter 2, verse 11.
And he's asking the question, what is the central message?
What is the central teaching of the church?
And I'll give you the answer right away.
The answer to that question is the gospel.
But the question of that is, OK, I, I know the gospel, right?
It's the message that Jesus Christ was crucified to take
away my sins and cover me in his very own righteousness.
I know what the gospel is. But the big question is, what's
the utility of the gospel? Or like, think of it a little
bit differently. What's the actual usage or
function of the gospel in your life?
Some Christians treat it like a single use plastic spoon, right?
You use it once, you believe it, you throw it away, you're done
with it. Some Christians treat it like a
multi purpose tool, like it's this.
It's this thing that has relevance for every area of
their life, their salvation, but also their continued
transformation and their eventual glorification.
Which one is it? Is it the single use plastic
spoon or is it the multi purpose tool?
Let me give you another option. Two different ways of treating
the gospel. One way that Christians treat
the gospel is they treat it like a multi purpose vitamin
supplement. Like do you guys have
supplements? I have supplements.
I like supplements. Like my, my cabinets are full of
all these various gym supplements And, and the thing
about supplements is they're nice, right?
I, Noah, you have a lot of supplements, right?
So, so, so, so actually I texted, I texted Noah the other
week. I was like, hey, what's a
supplement for joint pain? And he sent me a stretch and I
was like, I was just looking for something.
I swallowed the album. What is the gospel like?
Is it like that? Is it like it's, it's one, it's
it's one vitamin amidst a bunch of other vitamins.
It's really not life or death, but like it'd be, it would be
nice to take that. And like sometimes you take it
on a weekly basis and sometimes you forget and you can't really
tell the difference. Is that the way that the gospel
works in your life? Like I've got all these other
vitamins, like a good career, a good job, good relationships and
like, it would be nice to have a little Jesus on top of that.
Is it like that or is the gospel more like life support?
You know, you're, you're utterly and totally dependent upon it.
It is sustaining your existence and everything you do on a daily
basis, and you need as much of it as possible.
Which one is it to you? Is it a supplement that'd be
nice to have, or is it life support?
So if you're able, let's go ahead and stand for the reading
of God's Word. This is Paul's clearest
articulation of the content of the message of the gospel in the
book of Titus. It's one of those places where
you see everything in the message of the gospel condensed
into one dense paragraph. If you like memorizing Bible
verses, this is a perfect Bible verse to memorize that will give
you the entire content of the gospel.
In verse 11, Paul says For the grace of God has appeared,
bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce
ungodliness and worldly passions, but also helping us to
live self controlled, upright and godly lives in the present
age. Helping us wait for our blessed
hope. The appearing of the glory of
our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us
to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for
himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for
good works. What are we to do with this
message? Paul says in verse 15
instructions to Titus, Declare these things, exhort and rebuke
with all authority, and let no one disregard you.
Heavenly Father, I pray that even for those of us who have
known and believed the gospel for years, sometimes we just,
sometimes I just get inoculated to it.
I get so used to hearing the gospel that when a brother or
sister preaches it or teaches it to me, my heart's first response
is, oh, I know, I, I know, I know.
Why are you telling me? Do you think I don't know?
I know that I know the gospel. And if we, if, if there are
people in our church who have that defense mechanism, oh, I
know, cool. I know the gospel, and I pray
that the Holy Spirit would just powerfully help us let our
guards down and let go of that defense mechanism so that the
Gospel can freshly hit our heart this morning.
So it's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people
prayed. Amen.
You can have a seat. So this is not you generally my
method of preaching, expositing the scriptures.
I'm just going to do it a little bit differently this morning.
I don't usually do this, but we're going to start with the
end of the thought unit and then kind of work our way back up.
So look at verse 15, summary of all that came before it.
What does Paul say? He says, declare these things,
exhort these things, rebuke with these things with all authority,
and let no one disregard you or this message.
So what verse 15 shows us is that again, this is Paul
speaking Titus. Titus is the resident pastor at
these churches in Crete. What does Paul tell Titus to do
with the verses before verse 15? He says declare them, exhort
with them, rebuke with them. So what this actually is is Paul
telling Titus, this is what you need to preach when the church
gathers together, right? These are preaching instructions
to Titus. Paul's telling Titus what the
sermon series should be at the churches in Crete.
He's telling Titus what the subject of his preaching should
be. And strangely enough, and this
might sound strange to us as modern Christians, Paul doesn't
actually tell Titus to preach an at the movie sermon series or
something a little bit more relevant to the culture.
Paul doesn't tell Titus, hey, what you do when people gather
together is just give them like a little spiritual 15 minute Ted
talk that people find pretty interesting.
And at the very end of it, maybe sprinkle some, sprinkle some
Jesus at the end of it. That's not that's not Paul's
instructions. What should the church be
preaching? What should the church be
teaching? What is the message of the
church? What is Paul tell Titus to
preach? And the answer in verse 15 is
these things. What are these things?
These things are the things that Paul wrote before verse 15
verses 11 through 15 What What are verses 11 through 14?
The answer is the gospel. Verses 11 through 14 are the
gospel of Jesus Christ in a nutshell.
These verses teach about the gospel of Jesus dying for us in
our place. He gave himself up is the way
that Paul articulates it. But Paul also articulates how
the gospel sanctifies us or gives us power that trains us to
both renounce on godliness and to be empowered for godliness.
But also Paul teaches about how the gospel helps us wait for the
glorious hope of when Jesus returns.
So if we were getting, if we already use modern language,
what Paul is instructing Titus to do is he's saying, hey, be a
gospel centered preacher. Help these churches become
gospel centered churches. I think probably one of the
biggest illnesses of of the modern church, one of the
greatest errors of the modern church is reducing the gospel
into an intro class to Christianity.
That's that's the way a lot of Christianity teaches the gospel.
It's this intro class to Christianity.
Once you believe it, great, you graduate from that, and then you
can talk about the real stuff like predestination and election
and gender and sexuality and oh gosh, wait till you get to talk
about end times. Once you graduate, once you
graduate through it, through the gospel, That's the way a lot of
Christians and churches will treat the gospel.
And if you treat the gospel that way, as a vitamin that's helpful
once a month, what you'll end up doing is reducing Christianity
to less than what the Bible's vision is for that.
One of my favorite quotes on this comes from a Bible teacher
named JD Greer. Greer has this this this great
quote. He says this, I want you to, I
want you to visualize this. He says the gospel is not one
classroom in Christianity that you take inside of this
otherwise gigantic school building.
Can you guys picture that like one classroom at the end of the
hall? You take it and then you're done
with it. Greer says that's not what the
gospel is. He says the gospel is the
building where all the other classrooms of Christianity take
place in. It's the building.
Isn't that a good visual? So like whatever subject you're
studying, study them all. But they're all to be done in
the building of the gospel. They're all to be done in light
of this message of a crucified God for our salvation.
I want you to, I want you to see this in our text this morning,
OK? And I'm going to put on my my ex
English teacher hat just a little bit.
One of the coolest things about verses 11 through 14 is how Paul
uses all three tenses to describe the effect of the
gospel past, present and future for how the gospel works through
our lives. Let's let's work through these
three areas quickly. I've got a slide for this.
So the gospel is past tense, present tense, and future tense
power. Let's look at past tense.
The gospel is past tense, which means it saved us.
If you're a Christian in the past when you believed it, look
at verse 11. Paul says for the grace of God
has appeared. It appeared bringing salvation
for all people who believe. So what Paul's emphasizing here
is the fact that the gospel is a historical event that actually
happened in the past tense within the space-time continuum
that we live in. The phrase the grace of God
appeared is Paul talking about Jesus coming to earth to live in
the flesh and to die in our place on a cross for our sins.
It's a historical event and when you believe that message, you
are saved. Amen.
And it becomes a past tense power for salvation in your
life. You could look back at and say
that's when God saved me, when I believe the gospel and, and it
has present tense power. The gospel is also a present
tense power. In other words, it sanctifies
us. Look at verse 12.
The gospel saves us, Yes, and the gospel trains us to renounce
ungodliness and worldly passions and empowers us to live self
controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age.
So notice it's not just a past tense historical event.
It is. It's also a present tense power.
This shows us that it's the power of the gospel and not our
own effort and energy in flesh. It's the power of the gospel
that doesn't just save us from our sins, but also provides us
the power to be transformed into the image of Jesus in our daily
life. The gospel sanctifies us and
past tense, present tense, and it is future tense.
Power to the gospel is also the power that eventually glorifies
us. Look at verse 13.
It helps us wait for our blessed hope.
What this shows us is that in the final judgment, when Jesus
appears again, he is our final hope.
When Jesus stands before us and his glorious return, and we
stand before him ready to receive his verdict, our hope is
not that we will be judged by our works.
Well, there's these two scales. You did some of this, but you
did some of that. It's pretty Even so, So come on
in. Our hope is not our own works.
Our hope is the glory of the gospel, that God will look at
us. And because of our embrace of
the gospel of Jesus, he will look at us on that day and
declare us righteous in the name of Jesus.
And so it's also our future tense hope for glory before God.
So look, here's what I'm trying to say.
Reducing the gospel to an intro class on Christianity is going
to hamper your spiritual life. The gospel is the entire
building, the entire building in which every class and you're
going to take a lot of them, right?
It singleness, marriage, parenting, growth, going through
this experience, all of those classrooms, they all take place
within the building of God's glorious gospel.
Our salvation in the past, our sanctification in the present
and our glorification in the future.
But here's OK, got you, Pat, I agree with you, Pastor.
Here's the big question though. Why do we need the gospel on a
daily basis? OK, so I need the gospel on a
daily. So the church needs to be
preaching the gospel, singing the gospel, praying the gospel,
eating the gospel, and communion.
Got it. I should probably start looking
at myself in the mirror when I brush my teeth in the morning
and preaching the gospel to myself, saying, hey, Cole, Jesus
Christ was crucified for your sins to cover you in his
righteousness. Why?
And there's a lot of ways to answer that question.
I'll give you one that's going to make this text pop this
morning. One of the reasons why we need
the gospel on a daily basis is because it requires a lifetime
of gospel exposure to on learn false religion.
So let me let me show you something really quickly.
There's something really strategic in the way that Paul
articulates the gospel. You don't, you don't need to
look into the historical context to understand these verses.
You can just look at the words and say, wow, that is powerful.
But when you look at the historical context, what's
happening in Crete, you start to see, oh, that's why Paul used
that specific word. Look at a specific word for me.
Look at verse 11. I want you to 0 in on the word
appeared for the grace of God has appeared circle that star it
just think about it appeared in the Greek that word is
epiphanos. It's where we get our English
word epiphany and epiphany is when you can't see something
then all of a sudden this idea, this epiphany comes to you and
you can see it right. The grace of God has epiphanos
or appeared to us. That is a politically charged,
religiously charged word to us. It just looks like the word
appeared and it was to them. It wouldn't.
It would be like I just feel like pressing some buttons this
morning. Are you guys with me still?
It would be like if I use the word in my sermon woke.
If I said that word, it wouldn't just be a word to you.
There would be this entire system of ideas that gathered
around that singular word and you would be like, wow, that's a
really loaded word. But if somebody were to print
off like a copy of my sermon and 2000 years from now someone were
to read this sermon and see the word woke, they would just
assume that it's past tense for awake.
But for you, it's got this entire system of ideas around
it, and probably it's an emotionally charged word that
you feel a certain way when you hear it.
That's what the word appeared would have been like for 1st
century Cretans. Do you want to know why?
Because 1st century Cretans. And this doesn't make them very
different. The majority of people were like
this in the ancient world. They were Zeus worshippers.
And so when when Paul wrote this letter, the dominant religion on
Crete was not Christianity. It was not atheism.
Atheism, atheism hasn't been invented yet by this time in
history. It is the worship of Zeus, which
was pretty common in the ancient world.
Here's where it gets different for Crete, though.
In the ancient world, people worship Zeus as the everlasting
God who reigns from Mount Olympus.
The island of Crete had a little bit different idea of of Zeus.
And it was probably because one time someone asked me, Cole, do
you have little man syndrome? I was like, I didn't think so,
but your question makes me feel like maybe I do.
Well, the island of Crete has a little island syndrome.
And so they wanted some way to feel important.
They weren't Rome to feel important in the ancient world.
So they went around and they claimed, hey, you know what?
Zeus was actually born on our island, and not only was Zeus
born on our island, he died on our island and we actually have
his tomb in a cave on our island.
Aren't we so important? The rest of the ancient world
was like, no, that's ridiculous. He's the everlasting God.
Crete was like, hey, we've got his tomb here.
It puffed them up with a sense of self importance, but it also
shaped them and formed them in really unique ways.
Their holidays were not Easter and Christmas, where they
celebrate the birth of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus.
Their holidays. Who do you think their holidays
revolved around? Zeus, right?
Even their initiation rites result revolved around Zeus.
If you were a young man and you wanted to become a man in the
eyes of your fellow Cretan neighbors, your your initiation
rite would include Zeus. You and a group of boys would
gather together. I'm not making this up.
You would go to The Cave that they supposedly buried Zeus and
you go down to the bottom of The Cave and then you would have a
ritualistic dance in the tomb where Zeus was supposedly buried
and then you would come back out of that cave as a man and that
shapes you in a very They had a Zeus centered imagination,
right? Their ethics were shaped on Zeus
worship. Zeus was known as the deceptive
lying God in the ancient world because, as Zeus mythology had
it, Zeus got the throne by usurping his father Chronos, and
his father tried to chase Zeus down and eat him alive.
And so Zeus, Zeus had to be crafty and Zeus had to be
deceitful and Zeus had to be a liar.
And that doesn't have no effect on you.
If you worship Zeus and your God is a liar, what does that make
you into? Makes you into a liar.
And so the Creighton Island had the reputation.
You can even see that in the Bible of being liars.
It shapes you in a profound way. And so when someone comes along
and gives you this vision of a God who took on flesh and was
crucified in your place on a cross, that is the opposite of a
lying God who hurls around Thunder and lightning to make
his points right. So if, if these people, if these
Cretans, if they are going to trade the lightning bolt of Zeus
for the cross of Jesus Christ, they would need to be pumped
full of the gospel all day, every time, every time they
gathered together as a church. Titus, these people need these
things. The gospel exhorted and rebuked
and declared they need to hear this preached on a daily basis.
And look, I know you don't worship Zeus, but you also grew
up worshipping Zeus. We all grew up with our own
cultural gods that we still have the tendency to worship.
Maybe yours wasn't Zeus. Maybe some of us were taught to
worship the God of success, or money or power, or sex or food
or popularity or sports. Whatever it is that actually
dominates your mind on a daily basis is probably the false God
that you grew up worshipping. And if you're a Christian, if
you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, you listen to me.
You have been legally, legally in the eyes of God.
You have been legally set free from the penalty of worshipping
a false God. It's done that penalty not over
your head. You will not be punished for
that. Jesus absorbed that on the
cross. It's done legally, but
experientially you're probably going to spend the rest of your
life fighting against the power and influence of those household
gods that you grew up with. It still shaped you and formed
you for the 1st 12/20/40 years that you weren't a Christian.
It's why you are the shape that you are today and legally it's
finished experientially. You've just got to unlearn what
you learn through your idol worship.
It formed you in really powerful ways.
And So what you need is to hear the gospel preached every Sunday
and every other day to write, we call, we use the language of
gospel centered at Frontier, everything's got to be gospel
centered. We want to sing gospel centered
worship songs. We want to preach gospel
centered sermons. No matter what text we're in,
we're always going to come back to the gospel.
We like to do gospel centered communion.
Every Sunday we pray gospel centered prayers through the
liturgy. We want Gospel getting pumped
into us from every little tube that's attached to us.
Because I just, let me be stone cold honest for a moment with
you, I think. I think one reason why
Christianity is so weak in the modern world is that so many of
our churches have prioritized good advice over good news.
I want to come to church for 45 minutes.
I want you to give me some good advice, some life hacks, snip,
snap. And then I'll be out of it in 45
minutes in my car on my way to lunch and maybe give me some
vaguely spiritual advice that maybe includes the name of
Jesus. Why?
Why is that the way that why? Why would we prefer good advice
over good news? Why would we prefer life hacks
to the power of God for salvation?
And the answer to that question is because we mostly view
ourselves as decent people who just need a little bit of
improvement rather than as sinners who are desperate for
salvation. And if you think you're just
like a pretty decent person who's just like needs some Jesus
sprinkled on top, then what you want out of your church is just
give me some good advice, man. If, what if what you if you see
yourself as a Sinner desperate for salvation, though, you'll
posture yourselves in front of the gospel by saying I need
more. I need it in my preaching.
I need it in my singing. I need it and everything.
This is life or death for me. Life or death.
Like some moments are just moments, you experience them and
then you're done with them. There are these other moments
that when you go through them, you spend the rest of your life
looking back at it. I had one of these moments a
couple weeks ago. A month ago.
I was literally frozen in my tracks when it happened.
I couldn't believe how powerful the moment was to me.
I froze. It was almost like an auto body
experience. And the experience was I was in
Iowa City a couple weeks ago doing a couple different things,
but I was also visiting the Benton family who were in the
Iowa City hospital. And the Bentons are with us this
morning and they are my heroes. So we've been praying for the
Bentons. We've been encouraging the
Bentons. I would encourage you to
continue to to pray for these two.
These two are they're heroes of the faith they have.
These last couple weeks have so profoundly impacted my walk with
Jesus. And the way that it started for
me was Long story short, the Bentons gave birth to this
unbelievably gorgeous, beautiful little girl named Faye.
She's so gorgeous. And Faye came a little bit
earlier than everybody was expecting.
And so when Faye eventually, when Faye first came, everybody
was praying for her, thinking about her.
And I was talking with Josh and Josh talked about like, yeah,
face, she's weighing in, clocking in at about 1 LB.
And I remember thinking, I think I know what that looks like and
feels like it. So I had this image of Faye in
my mind as this beautiful little baby.
But it was it. My experience of stepping into
the hospital and visiting Faye was radically different.
I stepped into their hospital room excited to see this baby
girl that I've been praying for and heard so much about.
And I gave Josh Lauren really quick hug.
And then I stood in front of Faye and I'm not like I felt
gripped by the hand of God like this little baby girl has so
profoundly influenced me in the little bit of time that I spent
with her. I felt like I froze in front of
her. I froze because when I was
looking at Faye, I, I would, I couldn't believe how beautiful
she was. It's extraordinary, like every
little human feature that makes a human being beautiful is all
present in Faye and squished together in this gorgeous little
1 LB baby. And so I'm looking at this
beautiful 1 LB lump of humanity. It's just gorgeous baby.
And I'm just like, my breath is just taken away.
Like wow, I didn't know she would look like this.
And so I just froze. And the other thing that froze
me about this moment was as I'm as I'm looking at Faye, I did
not expect. I did not expect to see so
clearly in her my own condition. I'm looking at this beautiful 1
LB baby Faye and she's got all of these it it probably a dozen
of these little tubes, right, that are attached to her.
And it's extraordinary because these little tubes, they're
pumping her full of all the nutrients she needs to grow and
survive and keep moving forward. And it's extraordinary because
you can't look at a little baby girl like Faye right there in
that situation and kid yourself and the thinking she's an
independent, autonomous human being, right?
She's, she's completely and totally dependent upon the life
support that comes through those tubes to her.
And I'm looking at her and I felt like it was a word from the
Lord. And in the deepest part of my
heart, it just hit a part of my heart that I didn't know was in
there. Do you know what I'm saying?
Like you think you know what's going on in your heart and
someone says something or does something or God does something
or the Spirit moves in a certain way and you're like, I didn't
know that part was in my I don't know what's down there.
And as I'm looking at her, I feel sense here.
The Lord say so clearly to me. This is you, Cole.
Like this is the condition of the Christian before God.
Too often I think of myself as an independent, autonomous
Christian who's pretty strong willed and disciplined for the
most part and has a pretty good work ethic.
And it's pretty driven. And I can work through sickness
for the most part and push through feelings of exhaustion
to get the job done. And I probably at the end of the
day, I do a pretty good job following Jesus with my own
strength. And at the end of the day, I
probably need just a little, just a little help from the Lord
here and there. And that is, that's an illusion.
That's, that's not true. That's a mirage.
If I could see myself from the perspective of heaven, if I
could see myself through true reality, there would be
thousands, not dozens. There would be thousands of
invisible little tubes that God has graciously attached to me
that He is using to pump constant the proper nutrients
into me to keep me alive in every second.
If He pulled those tubes away from me, I would be gone.
I would vanish right in front of you.
Like do you know what Jesus means when He says apart from
me? You can do nothing?
He means you can't do anything apart from him.
The text means what it says. Like if you want to know what is
it that sustains me? His power alone sustains you.
His life alone upholds you. And if you're going to run the
Christian life, if I'm going to run the Christian life, I need
the gospel pumped into me through every single one of
these tubes that are attached to me.
The gospel is, yes, my past tense power for salvation, but
it is also my present tense power for sanctification.
And it is my future hope for glorification.
I need the gospel preached to me by my church.
I need to sing it through the worship music.
I need to pray it through the liturgy.
I need to see it through communion on a daily basis.
I need to hear the gospel come to me through my spouse, through
through my friends, through my church members.
I need to see the gospel echoed in the movies that I watch.
I need to hear the gospel echoed in the music that I listen to.
I need the gospel to so shape and form my thoughts that it is
in my mind whenever I have an inner dialogue for me, for you,
it is life or death. Or to quote Martin Luther from
500 years ago, I need the gospel every day because I forget the
gospel every day. I need it every day.
And if you do this, if you start to sit before the gospel of if
you start to just say, hey, I got to brush my teeth every day.
When I brush my teeth every day, I'm going to look at myself and
I'm going to preach the gospel to myself.
Cole, the God of the universe was crucified in your place to
take away your sins and cover you and his righteousness.
If you start to preach the gospel to yourself on a daily
basis, you will start to experience the gospel daily in
every facet of your life, every facet in your life.
Yes, it's the message that saves you, but you also grow to start
seeing the gospel in your relationships with other people.
You'll start to recognize, Oh my goodness, the only thing that's
going to hold my friendships together is if I live out the
gospel. I understand friendships now,
like because of the gospel, like I need to be made like Jesus.
OK, what's Jesus like? He gets sinned a lot against and
he forgives people a lot. If I'm going to learn how to be
like that, I need to be sinned against and I need to forgive a
lot of people. And you start to live the gospel
out in your relationships and your friendships.
You start to see it at work. You start to, you start to, you
start to taste the gospel in your meals.
You find yourself hypothetically slobbering over a phenomenal
smash burger at Lachelle's. Amen.
A phenomenal smash burger at the shells and you find yourself
momentarily praising Jesus. Kids, you're like, I don't know
how the bread of Jesus could be better than this, but it is and
it must be. You start to taste it in your
food. You start to hear it in the in
the music. You find yourself being moved by
little pieces in movies where you're like, why am I tearing up
at this part in the movie? Why Cole?
I am 36 years old and I'm tearing up in the movie Friday
Night Lights. It's a high school football
movie. It's a pop movie for 17 year old
kids. Why am I tearing up?
Why is it so moving at the end of that movie where the football
player, he falls 1 yard short of the touchdown and his dad who
won A state championship comes down and he kneels down before
his kid. He takes his championship
football ring off and he puts it on his kids finger who just
failed. And I'm like Oh my gosh, why is
that so moving? And you realize it's because
it's an echo of the gospel. That's what Jesus did for us.
We failed, we fell short, He stooped down.
He took the ring that he earned and he put it on my finger.
So now when God looks at me, he sees the righteousness of
Christ, the victories of Christ now because I earned it, because
he gave it to me through the gospel, you start to see it
everywhere. You start to find yourself
showing up to church on a Sunday morning.
You start to hear me share some strange, ordinary story about my
life. And last year you would have
thought, I have no idea how this would connect to the gospel.
And suddenly after constant gospel exposure, you hear these
little stories and you go, I know where Cole's going with
this, and you can preach the gospel from it, and you connect
the gospel to it. You start to do that because
you're starting to connect the gospel to every area of your own
life. And if you do that, your
spiritual growth will go through the roof.
I heard it said this way. Religion says, oh crap, I
screwed up. My dad's going to kill me.
That's the religion we're all born with.
The gospel says, oh, crap, I screwed up.
Where's my dad? When you believe the gospel, the
crucifixion of Jesus for your sins, while you are yet an enemy
of God, you'll find yourself running to Jesus.
Not when you crush it, but even when you make colossally foolish
choices because you have been so radically saturated by the
gospel that when life cuts you, you bleed gospel out and just
watch what happens to your joy. When the gospel becomes not just
some supplement you take once a week, but the life support that
sustains you in the presence of God, life becomes really, really
fun. Because Jesus is really, really
awesome. Amen.
We are an awesome morning in front of us.
In just a minute, we're going to dedicate kids.
Before we do that, though, we need to take communion together.
We need to see the gospel and taste it in bread and wine.
So if you are a believer, this is for you.
Do business with the Lord and whenever you've done business
with the Lord, we'll have the bread and the juice or the wine
prepared for you. Come at will.
Grab the bread, grab the juice, go back patiently and wait.
For the rest of us, we like to do it together as a symbol that
we're one family with one Jesus who believe in one gospel.
So if you've got kids downstairs and roots, now's the time to go
grab them and bring them up. Communion will be waiting for
you. Let me pray and then you
respond. However God leads you.
Lord, thank you so much for the Gospel of Jesus.
I pray that we would freshly experience it this morning.
Thank you for the Benton family. I just love them so much and I
don't want to draw too much attention to them.
I just want to let them enjoy this Sunday.
But I pray that our church would just be freshly inspired by
their faithfulness, that they would continue to pray for Faye,
and that they would be equally influenced and moved by their
family as I have been these last couple weeks.