Hope Church LV Sermons
The Gospel | The Mystery & The Mission - wk3
I have in my hand here, something that I'm sure you're familiar with, it is a $10 bill. Now, when you see a $10 bill, I want you to think about what a $10 bill means to you. When you think about a $10 bill, what do you think about it? I mean, some of us, when we see a $10 bill, we automatically think lunch, $10 bill would buy me lunch somewhere. I could go to lunch and with a $10 bill, get something good to eat and have a good time at lunch. So maybe you see a $10 bill and you think about lunch. Maybe you see a $10 bill and you're one of those, you know, that every time you see a $10 bill, you think, "Hey, that's two trips to Starbucks," right? You're one of those addicts that every dollar means how much shots you can get at Starbucks, right? Maybe you see a $10 bill and you think Starbucks. Maybe you see a $10 bill and you think, "Hey, I could almost go to the movies on that," in Las Vegas, right? Maybe you see a $10 bill and you think, "Hey, I could almost buy a gallon of gasoline in America with that." I don't know what you think when you see a $10 bill, but the reality is when we see a $10 bill most of the time, when we think about money, we think about what money does for us. You can't have a different perspective with money. You can think about what money means for somebody else. See, we start running down a list of what a $10 bill will do for us and we immediately start thinking about the things that does for us, but you ever thought that a $10 bill, when you first see it, I wonder what difference I can make in somebody else's life. I'm going to use it as an example today and I'm going to see it pays to sit on the front row, right? I'm going to give this $10 bill to somebody right on the front row and there's a $10 bill that can be a blessing to somebody else, right? Because money is one of those things that can mean something for us, but it can also mean something for somebody else. Well, I wanted to use that illustration because I thought it was one we can all relate to, but I don't really want to talk to you today about money. Because you see, we view the gospel in many ways the same way. When I say the word gospel, what do you think of? Good news, right? A lot of times when we begin to think about the good news of Jesus, we think about the good news of Jesus in terms of what it does for us. When we think about the reality that my sins have been forgiven, isn't that good news? That your sins have been forgiven in Jesus Christ, that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, we have been forgiven. It's good news. When we think about the gospel often, we think about heaven and the fact that when I die, I'm going to get to go to heaven, that I don't have to fear death, because of the gospel, because of salvation, because of what Jesus has done in my life, I know for sure the moment I breathe my last breath on planet earth, I will take my first breath in the very presence of God in heaven. Sometimes when we think about the gospel, we think about the reality of how it meets our needs, that Jesus Christ comes into our life and He is our peace and our contentment and our satisfaction and our joy and our hope. We think about how Jesus comes into our life and changes our marriage and changes our children and changes our outlook on everything that the gospel does for us. If we're not careful like we can with a ten dollar bill, we can only look at the gospel through the lenses of what it does for me. I want to give you a reality as we begin this morning that I hope kind of is a perspective changer for you. Here it is. Look at it on the screen. God saved me because He loved me, but also because He loved those around me. I want you to read that off the screen with me this morning. You ready? One, two, three. Leave me because He loved me, but also because He loved those around me. As we continue as a church family, our study through the Book of Colossians, if you're visiting with us as a family of faith, we are just studying verse by verse through the Book of Colossians. A couple of weekends ago, Pastor Travis kicked off a series here within the first chapter simply entitled, "The Gospel, the Mystery and the Mission." For the last two weekends, we've been unpacking some realities about the gospel, understanding more about the gospel. But as we get to the end of chapter one, the last two verses, Paul gives us some helpful insights so that we can maintain a proper perspective towards the gospel. You see, the gospel of Jesus Christ did forgive me of my sin. The gospel of Jesus Christ did give me a relationship with God. The gospel of Jesus Christ did forever settle my eternity in heaven. The gospel of Jesus Christ does meet the deepest needs of my soul, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is not just something for me. This weekend and next, I want to give you two statements to kind of unpack what Paul is saying in these two verses, but before I do, I want to read these two verses for you. If you have your Bible, open to Colossians chapter one, I want you to look at verses 28 and 29. The last two verses here in this great chapters, we bring chapter one to a close, these two verses are very special verses for me personally. They are my life verses that over 22 years ago, when God first spoke into my life and called me into ministry and I put my yes on the table, God gave me these two verses as kind of an anchor for me in ministry. So look what Paul says in these verses, "We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also our labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me." Here's the statement I want to unpack this weekend. The gospel is a message to be shared. The gospel is a message to be shared. Everything I want us to understand this weekend really is under the umbrella of that statement. The gospel is a message to be shared. And I know that sounds very simple, but I hope before you leave here today the reality of that statement has sunk in your heart. We understand money is a resource to be used in our life, but we also understand that money is a resource to be shared, to live generously with. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ by which we began a relationship with God, had our sins forgiven and were forever settled in eternal destiny in heaven, but the gospel is also a message that has been entrusted to us as followers of Jesus Christ. And it is a message that we have a responsibility to share with the people around us. Now I want to ask and answer two questions this morning. Here's the first question. What is the message? What is the message? What is this message of the gospel? Paul sums it up for us in verse number 28, he says, "We proclaim Him." We're living in a day when we are bombarded with messages. I was recently, I looked this week online at a New York Times article that quoted the Yankelvitz marketing firm, and here's what they said in this article, "The average American is exposed to 5,000 commercial messages every single day." That's 300 commercial messages per hour. As I began to think about it, I thought that can't be right. I mean, that just doesn't even seem possible. I read some other articles and other marketing firms, and they all said the same thing, that the average American is bombarded daily with around 5,000 commercial messages from billboards to magazines, to the internet, to smartphones, to newspapers, of television, all this inundation with different messages, and many of the messages that we're hearing today promise us that if you'll just do this, have this, go here, you will have your life changed. There's all kinds of messages that promise life changed. Let me give you some examples. One genre of messaging says you can change your life if you change the way you look. You see any of those commercial messages out there? You can change your life if you change the way you look. Sometimes it's a weight loss program, you know, where you feel just get on this weight loss program, and they put these people on these ads that used to look like this, and now they look like this, and they're telling you, "This has changed my life." If you'll just lose this weight, you can change your life, or sometimes it has to do with some kind of age-defying lotion. If you'll just put this wrinkle cream on, this will change your life, and you'll never be the same, or maybe it's something sharing some exercise equipment, or if your house is like mine, you got to close it that is just dedicated to all of the exercise equipment that you've purchased off television, right? Someday we'll find a good use for all of that. Some of it rolls, some of it rolls out, some of it you can fold up, I mean, it's all kind of stuff, but the premise is you can change your life if you just change the way you look. Another one of the messages that we hear today in our culture is you can change your life if you can just obtain more stuff. If you can just get some more, and what's funny is this message is targeted at people at every economic level. So it's not like when you get to this level you got enough, there's a whole other category of messaging to this level that tells them if you can get to this level, then you'll be better off. From investment seminars and opportunities to get rich programs and books, this message that if you can just get some more stuff you can change your life, or there's the message that says you can change your life if you change your behavior. I googled this morning just kind of wanting to see, change your life. I googled it. The first thing that came up, seven simple steps to change your life. If you'll just change these few behaviors, there's self-help seminars and motivational speakers and even religion often falls into this category. Religion even says if you'll just do these things and not do these things, then you can change your life. Can I be real honest with you this morning? You can try all of those things, and they will not change your life. Let me tell you why. Because all of them promise change from the outside in. It all deals with the change on the outside, the way you look, what you have, a few acts or activities or behaviors, and the premise is if somehow you can make some external superficial change on the outside, that from the outside, there will be a deep lasting transformation on the inside. And the problem is that is not how change really happens in life. That's why Paul, in our verses that we've been studying for the last two weekends, right before what I just read for you in verse 28, listen to what he says in verse 27, "To whom God will to make known what is the riches of the glory of the mystery among the Gentiles, which is, listen, Christ in you the hope of glory." You see the change that Paul is offering, the message that Paul is preaching here is the message of Jesus Christ, that through a personal relationship with Jesus, where God comes to live inside of you, that a change takes place, not from the outside in, but from the inside out, as I come into relationship with God through Jesus, and I begin to deepen my intimate fellowship with Jesus, a process begins to take place where God is changing me on the inside, and it's spilling out of my life on the outside. That's why Paul says we proclaim him. How does this transformation take place? Well, Paul wrote in another book in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 18, listen to this verse, look at it on the screen. He says, "But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord." Now listen to this, are being transformed. Now that phrase, are being transformed is an important phrase the way it's written. It's in the present passive voice in the original manuscript, you say, why is that a big deal? Well the present tense means that it's ongoing continuous action, meaning you could literally translate it, are continuously being transformed, but the fact that it's in the passive voice means something even more incredible. When something is in the active voice, it means the subject is doing the acting. If this was present active, it would mean I am being changed because of what I am doing, I am changing myself. But this is in the passive voice, in the passive voice it means that the subject is being acted upon. Here's what that means, someone else says, I'm not changing myself, somebody else is changing me and it's an ongoing continuous process where, out of the overflow of beholding, my part is to behold, I am to look daily into the face of the Lord Jesus and cultivate intimate fellowship. And out of the overflow of that fellowship, listen, God in me is continuously changing me from the inside out. You see it, it's why Curtis Vaughn said it this way, "At the deepest level, the apostle conceived of his message, not as a system or as a collection of rules and regulations, but as a living and glorious person who is the fulfillment of the deepest hopes of mankind and the source of new life for all his people." The gospel is the good news that Jesus is what you and I are longing for. The gospel is the good news that through Jesus I can be forgiven of my sin and given a relationship with God and it is out of that relationship that God is changing me and conforming me into the image of Christ. You see what this world needs, what Las Vegas needs is not our ideas and philosophies. What Las Vegas needs, what the world needs, is not our opinions or our rules or our regulations. What Las Vegas needs and what the world needs is Jesus. And let me just say in the middle of this season, as we are preparing for an election on Tuesday, Christians, listen to me. What we need is not change in Washington. What we need is change in our hearts through a relationship with Jesus Christ. If we don't like our government, let me tell you what our government is. It's a reflection of us as a people. That's what our government is. Let me tell you what will change our government. When God begins to change our people and our people begin to radically fall in love with Jesus and begin to be conformed to the image of Christ. May we be more passionate about telling people about Jesus than we are about politics. Listen, Jesus is the answer. You do know why lost people act lost, right? They are lost, not because they don't share your view. They act that way because they're lost. And there's not a law in America that's going to change that. Let me tell you what's going to change that. Jesus, Jesus, that's why Paul was so passionate. We read these verses, but I hope you hear his passion. We proclaim him. Paul said, we got one message, it's Jesus. Opinions won't change your life, policies won't change your life. Listen, church won't change your life, Jesus will change your life. Paul's passion was to proclaim him who had done so much for him. Paul had been changed by the gospel. You know, one of the reasons I think many never share the gospel is because they've never been changed by the gospel. When you have a life-changing experience with Jesus, let me tell you something. You talk about it. Now, if you just got church or religion, maybe you don't talk about it too much. But when you meet the man, you talk about it. So let me just pause here and ask you, have you ever been changed by the gospel? I want you to let that question sink in today. In a few moments, we're going to give you an opportunity to respond. Remember what needs to happen today for some of you is you need to stop playing church, stop playing religion, turn from your sin and be changed by the gospel. Just embrace the gospel. Let me give you a second question this morning. What is the message? That's the person. Here's the second one. How are we to share the message? Well, Paul in these verses uses three phrases to describe how we are to share the message. We proclaim Him. There's the first phrase. We proclaim Him. The word proclaim here is a word that means to proclaim openly or publicly or out loud. It's a word that means to laud or to celebrate. And this is also in Paul's usage here in the present tense, meaning that it's describing something that is ongoing and continuous. Paul is describing something here, that when you get it, you talk about it all the time with great joy. You ever been around a grandparent? You know what I'm talking about, right? That's the great illustration of this word, proclaim. You get around a grandparent and it used to, you know, you weren't too much in trouble because they didn't carry around a whole photo album. But now with these smart phones, oh my gosh. Oh, Pastor, let me show you my slideshow. Pull up a chair, right? I mean, you get around a grandparent, especially if the grandbaby is a new grandbaby? Oh, my goodness, what do grandparents do that? Because they love their grandchildren, right? And that's a good thing. A grandparent who loves their grandchildren, it doesn't matter where they are, who's listening, what they think anybody is going to think about them, a grandparent will seize any given opportunity to publicly and continuously celebrate the joy of their grandchildren. What is the image represented by the word proclaim? As a follower of Jesus, I should always be ready to talk about Him, to celebrate Him, to publicly make Him known, to tell everybody about Jesus because Jesus has changed my life in our schools, in our streets, in our neighborhoods, in our pulpits, at the office, at the ballpark, at Walmart. It doesn't matter where I am, I should always, because Jesus has so changed my life. I want everybody to know about Jesus. That's why the psalmist said, "I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth." Now, if that's not where we're living, what's wrong? You can overhear somebody in the line at Walmart talking about your favorite ball team, and that's like them saying, "Hey, I want to talk." You'll just jump right in the middle of that conversation, let them even mention anything spiritual or religious, and you're like, "Well, I don't want to offend anybody." How are we to share the message all the time? Let me tell you what we are, walking, talking, living, breathing missionaries. Everywhere we are, everywhere we go all the time, sharing about Jesus. Now, don't even hear me today say this and think, "I'm living this out perfectly in my own life. I'm not either." Listen, one of the toughest parts of being a preacher is every week, you've got to spend some hours face-to-face with this stuff, and it messes my life up, too. But what a reminder, I mean, listen to the way Paul says Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim Him. We can't stop talking about Him. Then he uses the second phrase, admonishing every man and teaching every man, admonishing every man and teaching every man. This phrase reveals we don't always share Jesus the same way. The word admonish is a strong word. It means to place in the mind, literally, that's what the word means. It's the idea of correcting someone through warning, and what Paul is describing here is a bold sharing of the gospel that warns people of an eternity without Christ. Paul says, "There are times when you and I need to be bold in how we share the gospel with other people, warning them about an eternity separated from God." You say, "Well, that's not my spiritual gift." Paul didn't give us that out. He said, "We, we means we." He says, "We'd always be talking about Jesus, and here's how we're to do it. Sometimes, boldly." But then he says, "And teaching every man." Now the word teaching is a very different word than the word admonishing. Teaching is an in-your-face confrontation, bold teaching is a pastoral word. It's from the shepherding realm, and it's a word that involves an investment of personal time. It describes a sharing of Christ that relationally encourages people to follow Him, meaning there are times when we should boldly present the gospel warning people of a Christless eternity. But there are other times when we should relationally cultivate that friendship and relationship and be sensitive to the Holy Spirit of God in those times and opportunities that we lovingly lead them to the person of Jesus. Now that begs the question, "Who in your life is lost that you are intentionally building a relationship with for the express purpose of making Jesus known to them?" Listen, every Christian should have somebody immediately. When I asked every Christian should go, "I know that person, here's who's in my life. Hey small group leaders, listen to me." One of the things you ought to talk about in your small group every week or every other week when you meet is, "Who in your circle of influence does not know the Lord that you are talking to that you're building a relationship with to share Christ with them?" Now here's the point. Here's what Paul's saying. Every situation to share the gospel is a unique opportunity and requires dependence on the Holy Spirit for guidance and the process. There is no one way to share the gospel. I want to say that again. There's only one gospel, but there's no one way to share the gospel. And Paul here demonstrates that with these two very different words. Sometimes it's an admonishing approach. Sometimes it's a relational teaching approach, but my goal in the end is the same that I'm proclaiming Jesus, I'm making much of Jesus, I'm leading them to the person of Jesus, but it demands as a follower of Christ that I live dependent on the Holy Spirit of God. And here's what I love about that. It takes sharing the gospel right back to the intimate fellowship with the Father. For not careful, we can learn a few catchphrases and we can learn a good little system and we can put that in our pocket and we can just pop people all the time with it. That's not the heart of the gospel. We have to be careful in our presentation of the gospel. Then Paul uses a third phrase that really communicates it, he says, "With all wisdom." We proclaim him admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom. The word wisdom is a word defined by zodiaces, a great Greek scholar, here's the way he defines it. Wise management as shown in forming the best plans and selecting the best means including the idea of sound judgment and good sense. That's wisdom. Here's what Paul is saying, "As Christians we should share Christ wisely, asking God to enable us to say the right thing in the right way at the right time." Listen, the message of the gospel all by itself is offensive. The way we share it shouldn't be. The gospel is an offensive message. What do you mean by that? Here's what I mean. The gospel says, "You are wrong and God is right." We don't like being told we're wrong about anything. The gospel at its core says, "In totality, I'm wrong." There's consequences because of my wrong. The gospel also says that God did for me what I could not do left to myself in sending his son to die on the cross for all of my wrong and rise again from the dead, making it possible for me to be forgiven and have a relationship with God. The gospel is an offensive message by itself. The way we present it shouldn't be. That's what Paul is saying here with all wisdom. Where to be wise? I was in a quiet time one morning in John 8, it's been several years ago, and something just touched my heart and I've never forgotten it. You know the story in John 8 verses 1 through 11 where the Pharisees are trying to catch Jesus in a trap and they bring this woman called an adultery and they throw this woman in front of Jesus and say, "Jesus, the law says we're to stone this woman to death." Now, if you really understand the back story, I believe personally based on the text, they sent her up to be called in this situation, but even at that she was in sexual sin and they were throwing this lady in front of Jesus and said, "The Bible says the law says we're to stone her to death." What do you say? And Jesus said, "He who's got no sin, cast the first on them." And they're all these guys with their rocks, you know, and one by one they just start dropping them and kind of walking away and till there's nobody left, but Jesus and the woman, and Jesus with the woman just bowed, she won't even look up. He says, "Woman, where are those that condemn you?" And her response totally dumbfounded me. You know what she said, "Lord, there are none." Now, here she was caught in sin in the presence of God in the flesh, and yet what she sensed was not condemnation but compassion. Now, you ask the average lost person in the streets of Las Vegas, "What do you think about the church?" Let me tell you what the first thing they would say out of their mouth, condemnation. We've taken the message that we're to be sharing and we've misrepresented Jesus to the Lord. I'm not saying Jesus doesn't deal with sin, He does. He went on and dealt with that in her life. But that wasn't the banner that He waved because here's what He knew. You can stop the stuff on the outside, but if it doesn't start on the inside, it's not real change. We got the message backwards in the church, we're asking people to clean it up on the outside before they bring it in on the inside. The gospel is a message to be shared. Now, here's the summary statement I want to give you this morning. Once you look at it on the screen, "I am to live constantly looking for opportunities to wisely share the gospel with the people in my life." I want you to read that with me because here's what those verses summarize, say, read it with me. "I am to live constantly looking for opportunities to wisely share the gospel with the people in my life." Now, look this way, does that statement reflect the practice of your life? I am to live constantly looking. I am to live constantly looking for opportunities to wisely share the gospel with the people in my life. Does that statement reflect the practice of your life? Because that's what the text said. The gospel is a message to be shared. I'm afraid what we're doing today is we're looking at the gospel like that $10 bill. See what's in it for me instead of it's a message to be shared. Why are we not sharing the gospel? Well, there's really only a few reasons why if we're not. Number one, you've never been changed by the gospel. Maybe you're here today and you've never been born again. You've never trusted Christ. Maybe today you're not sharing the gospel out of ignorance. Maybe you didn't know that the gospel was a message to be shared. Well, you can't claim that anymore. You hear this morning. Some are not sharing the gospel because they're apathetic towards the gospel. You've had it so long that you've just become indifferent. Some are not sharing the gospel just out of pure disobedience. Does that statement reflect the practice of your life? Well, one of the best ways for you to share the gospel is somebody else's your own personal story with the gospel. So as I close today, I'm about to give you homework. We love that, right? Nothing like homework. This brings an inspired feeling to our soul to hear the word. And a seat pocket in front of you or if you're on the front row behind you, there's a little card and I want everybody in the building to grab the card. This is a take home assignment. I'm serious. I'm not kidding. Everybody grab this card. If you got it, it says, "What's your story? Hold it up." Everybody just hold it up for a minute. You got it? All right. Thanks for you to take home and we've broken it down for you into three sections. Before I met Jesus, I met Jesus when and then since I met Jesus. What I want you to do is I want you to take this home and I want you to write your story. When I want you with your family or a close friend that's doing this here, I want you to share your story back and forth with each other. Maybe you get your whole family together and everybody in the family just share this story so everybody in our family is not safe. Great. You're getting them by sneak attack. I just opened the door for you. Just telling me you got a homework assignment from this pastor from Alabama and you got to do it. They don't know it better. Let me tell you what you're doing. You're sharing the gospel with them. Let me give you four quick guidelines of how to fill this out. Number one, make it personal. Make it personal. It's your story. After you write yours down, make sure it's not filled with you and your. Make sure it's filled with I, me and mine. If you're not telling what's wrong with them, you're telling what's wrong with you. Make it personal. Number two, make it short. They do not need your autobiography. You should be able to share your story in three to five minutes. If you can't do it in three to five minutes, go back and work on it some more. Number three, this is very important, keep Christ central. Paul said we proclaim what, him. Highlight what he has done, listen to me, not what you used to do. Too many people share their story and they spend 30 minutes talking about how bad they used to be and say, oh, and then Jesus saved me and it's been different ever since. Listen, let me give you a tip. They understand the bad part. They're living there. What they need to hear about is the new part. Keep Christ central. Number four, use the Word of God. Find some verses of scripture that you can put into your testimony because the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to communicate the gospel. And now here's the challenge. I want you after you've written your story and practiced your story. I want you sometime in the next two weeks to share your story with somebody who's lost. You say, pastor, can God really use me? I was reading this week in our Kent Hughes commentary on Colossians and he shared this story. I'll close with this story. There was a woman in Africa who came to Christ. She was 70 years old, uneducated, and blind. A missionary led her to Christ. She was so grateful for salvation that she wanted to share Jesus with others. So she went to the missionary and she had a French Bible where she, the country she lived in, French was the predominant language. She had a French Bible. She went to this missionary and asked the missionary to find John 3 16 and underline it in red ink. The missionary said she sat in amazement as she watched this little blind, 70 year old woman go to the local boys' school and sit outside the front door and when school would dismiss in the afternoon, she would stop two or three boys and call them over and say, do you speak French? And if they said yes, she would open her Bible and say, would you read the verse underlined in red? They would read John 3 16 and she would say, do you know what that means? And when they said no, she would sit there and tell them the gospel. The missionary said over the next few years, she had the opportunity to lead dozens and dozens of boys to faith in Christ. 24 of them became pastors and church planters that multiplied the gospel in the cities of that country. If you start sharing your story, there is no telling how God will use you.