Tag: Gospel

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The Utterly Crucial Act of Giving Joyful Thanks to the Father

Why do we get so discouraged? For one, the world is discouraging!

But there are also good things, and we don’t see them in the way that we should. I wrote about this in my post last week that you can see here. In this post, I want to speak about the thing for which we should be most thankful. I want to speak to Christians for a moment about giving thanks to the Father for all that He has done for us in Jesus Christ.

I have studied a lot of theology in my life. I’m glad that I have. However, several years back, the Lord reminded me in a powerful way not to forget the simplicity of the message of good news in Jesus Christ. He called me to remember three things.

  1. Whatever we have done and wherever we’ve been, God offers free forgiveness and eternal blessedness and happiness to all as a free gift, if they will only accept Jesus as their Savior.
  2. If someone has accepted Jesus, however else they may differ from me, they are fundamentally at the same place as me and worthy of my special affection.
  3. If someone has not accepted Jesus, then they are only one act of faith away from fundamentally being at the same place as I am. So, I am not that far from anyone I meet.

So, I started preaching the simple message of the good news of Jesus Christ, the simple Gospel, week after week.

Then, one woman came up to me and said, “I appreciate what you are preaching, but how long are we going to go on with this? What difference does it make? I want help living a better life.”

I thought that was a great question. What difference does the simple Gospel make? I began to think about it.

The conclusion that I came to was that it made a huge difference. To the degree we could see all that we have through a relationship with Jesus, to that degree we could live more joyful and peaceful lives that glorified God in the world.

What do I mean?

  • Sometimes we feel shame, but then we remember that God has qualified us to participate in the kingdom of light.
  • We feel guilty, but we can remember that God has forgiven all our sins!
  • We feel alone, but we can give thanks that God is with us!
  • We feel like we don’t belong, but then we remember that we belong to the people of God.
  • We feel like we can’t get ahead, but then we give thanks to the Father that we have an eternal inheritance far surpassing anything we will ever have on earth.

I realized that this has the power to radically change the way we view and live our lives. The good news about what we have in Jesus is life altering!

That’s why it’s utterly crucial to give thanks. Thanksgiving is seeing the good we have and acknowledging God as the source of it. Joyful thanks blesses and transforms us and gives glory to God. And there is nothing for which we should be more thankful than the good news about what Jesus Christ has done for lost people like you and me.

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Will God Forgive Me?

A young man came into my office after our worship service one Sunday morning. He was clearly distraught. As he told me of the wrong things he had done and the guilt he had experienced, tears came to his eyes.

What message did I have for him?

The most basic message of Christianity: no matter what we have done, where we have been, or how much we have sinned, God freely offers to us a restored relationship with Him and the healing and forgiveness that go with it.

Guilt is a universal phenomenon. It is based on the fact that we have not done what we should have done and and not become what we should have become. It is a basic reality of human existence (this side of Adam’s fall).

What are we to do with the guilt we feel? The message of evangelical Christianity is to come, come back to God, come home, and receive forgiveness and new life.

I love the way Isaiah describes this. He compares a life of a restored relationship with God to eating at a banquet table. He says: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (Is. 55:1).

This is a message not only for unbelievers. It is a message for believers. As Christians, we have not made our Christian life what it should have been. But: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

I have encountered so many people who have felt that they were worthless because they had failed. They failed God. They failed other people. They failed themselves.

The good news: God still wants to use you. He wants to restore you. He wants you to come home. He values you even others don’t, even when you don’t value yourself.

It’s crucial to see that though this forgiveness is free for us, it cost God something very weighty: His own Son. Isaiah 55 comes on the heels of Isaiah 53: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (5–6).

He pays. We get life for free.

That is an astonishing and joyful message. It is a message for the weary soul burdened with guilt and for those searching for meaning. It’s the joy of this message that led people like Billy Graham to preach to millions. He wanted to let people know that the way to God was wide open because of Jesus.

In Isaiah 55, there are several pictures of what happens when people receive this offer.

One of these pictures of new life in God is this: “instead of briers the myrtle will grow” (v. 12). Since I’ve been in the South, I’ve grown to love the myrtle trees. I finally got tired of the ugly trees on the side of my driveway and replaced them with two myrtle trees this winter. I have great hope that these will beautify my landscape and symbolize the beauty of God’s forgiveness.

Isaiah also says that these things are “for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.” I recently hiked the Chickamauga National Military Park. There are monuments everywhere: to man’s sacrifice and to his strength in the face of battle.

When people accept God’s forgiveness, they become monuments, too. Not to man’s strength and sacrifice, but to God’s sacrifice and grace.

And we can be sure that God’s Word will produce such monuments wherever we announce God’s free grace. “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (10–11).

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Thoughts on Church Membership

The title of this post may not elicit the most excitement from my readers, but I think it is an important one. What we say about who gets counted in the church says a lot about what we think about the Gospel and the way that human beings can and should connect with God.

Here are some “theses” or “thoughts” that I wrote in 2012 after some serious prayer and consideration of this issue. My view has not substantially changed.

  1. Church membership must be based on our definition of a Christian, since all Christians are members of the true church invisible and should be members of the visible church.
  2. A Christian is someone who has repented of their sins and believes in Jesus Christ for salvation.
  3. Consequently, the test for church membership should be a credible profession of faith in Christ with a promise of repentance as well as a desire to do this in the context of a particular local church (as the questions for membership indicate in the Presbyterian Church in America’s Book of Church Order).

    4. Continue reading “Thoughts on Church Membership”

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10 Ways the Church Needs to Reform, if the Simple Gospel Is Central

At the heart of the Reformation is justification by faith alone. This means that, though human beings stand guilty and condemned, God offers acceptance as a free gift based on what Jesus has done. Closely related is the fact that God also transforms those who are justified to make them more like Jesus (often called sanctification).

This is the simple Gospel that was emphasized and put back at the center of the church by Martin Luther and the other Reformers.

This is what had first place in the New Testament Church: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3–4).

It’s still easy for us to make other things of secondary, tertiary, or no importance central. I still struggle to keep the simple Gospel central. For a long time in my ministry, I did a terrible job of it. Even when I preached the simple Gospel, my actions often said that other things were just as important or more important.

When I left New Covenant Presbyterian in Spearfish in 2015, I preached from 1 Cor. 15:3–4. I explained ten things that I had tried to do, ten reforms that I had tried to make that were based on making the simple gospel central. I said, whatever else I had done, this was my vision and what I had wanted to do.

A man in the church came over to me afterwards and said, “You need to make that the first sermon you preach at your next church.” I changed what I was preaching on based on his advice.

And this is still my vision. This Sunday, I’m preaching on the Reformation. It’s on justification by faith alone. I’m going to share 10 reforms I think the church needs to make, if the simple gospel is central to her life.

  1. If the simple gospel is central, then it gives us an outward focus. The people outside the church are not that different from us. They are just one act of faith away from being fundamentally where we are.
  2. If the simple gospel is central, then all that is necessary to be a member of the church is to embrace the simple gospel. We can’t make entrance into the church higher than entering into the kingdom of God. This is what captivated me in Presbyterian history. Presbyterians aren’t perfect, but they have historically understood this.
  3. If the simple gospel is central, then we cannot let other preferences or other truths crowd it out. If other doctrines, ethical principles, church principles, or anything else gets talked about more than the simple gospel, people will believe what you talk about is the most central. We should not do that.
  4. If the simple gospel is central, then everything we do must be formatted around it. We cannot say one thing & then show another. We can’t say Christ’s love is free and then not care whether or not people can find our building. We can’t say Christ is hospitable but then be inhospitable.
  5. If the simple gospel is central, there is unity of believers in the local church. We may be at different levels in our spiritual journey or knowledge, but we all sit down around the table and let Jesus wash our feet. That gives us a powerful unity.
  6. If the simple gospel is central, then the church is composed of a variety of people from a variety of different backgrounds at a variety of different levels. Each should be valued as a believer in Christ. Thus, the worship and the sermons should be designed to include everybody and give them all sense of being part of the people of God.
  7. If the simple gospel is central, then we will value children in our church because the simple gospel is simple enough for a child to grasp and embrace.
  8. If the simple gospel is central, there is a unity with all believers. It is no longer just about the believers in our church, it is about believers everywhere because we all believe together that which we value most.
  9. If the simple gospel is central, then we can and should work together with all churches who preach this simple gospel. We share a basic unity that transcends other differences.
  10. If the simple gospel is central, then this is what we need most in order to grow. We must preach the gospel to ourselves when we see our sin, when we need guidance, when we are struggling with our circumstances, and when we are struggling with people. What does Paul write to the churches? The Gospel.

The Reformation was about clarifying the Gospel and bringing it back to the center of the church. This is not a completed act. It is not a pristine period in history. It is a continual call to make Christ and Him crucified the center of our lives, churches, and hearts.

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The First Thing We Need to Hear

When we talk about the Gospel, we think of how someone becomes a Christian. Once you believe in Jesus, then you need to learn how to live a Christian life.

There is some truth in this, but there is also something really wrong.

The Gospel is not just for the beginning of the Christian life. It is for the whole Christian life. Continue reading “The First Thing We Need to Hear”

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