Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons

Welcome to our fourth week in our 5-week series called “What is the Gospel?”

The word gospel means good news, and in these weeks we’ve been on a journey as a church to refocus our understanding on the good news is at the very heart of who we are as followers of Jesus.

One of the big ideas in this series is that the gospel message has four major building blocks or components, and we’ve been taking one week on each of those building blocks to try to understand them better.

So the first week in the series we looked at the first building block of the gospel message, which is God. And we asked the question, what do we need to know about God to understand the gospel? And we saw the answer from the Bible is that God is the Creator, God is the King, God is greater than us, and that therefore God deserves our honour and thanks and worship.

The second week we looked at the second building block of the gospel message, which is us and our problem. We saw from Scripture that each and every person knows the truth about God from this world that God has made, but that we have all chosen to rebel against God and worship and serve other things instead of Him. And because of that we all deserve and will receive God’s just judgement.

Last week we considered the third building block of the gospel, which is Jesus. God sent His son Jesus, who willingly came to save us by dying on the cross for our sins. And we saw that on the cross, Jesus took our place. He became our substitute. And as He died in our place he turned aside the wrath of God, set us free from the penalty of our sin, and made us righteous and accepted in God’s eyes.

And now we can know God and have peace with Him. 1 Peter 3:18 sums this up well when it says that "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”

So now today we come to this final and very important building block in the gospel message, which is our response.

How do we need to respond to what God has done for us in Jesus?

And it’s so important that we talk about this because our response to the gospel really matters. In fact, as we’ll see today, the gospel stops being good news if we don’t respond to it at all or respond in the wrong way.

If you want an recent example of how important our response is, just think about the lady from Newfoundland who rolled up the rim recently to discover she had won a $100 gift card. So she ripped that part of the rim off the cup and mailed it in.

Turns out that official contest rules say that you need to have the full cup to claim a prize, especially a big prize like that.

So she received the good news that a $100 gift card was available to her. But she responded the wrong way by ripping their cup up. And no, no prize.

So in order for the gospel to be good news to us, we need to understand how God expects us to respond to it. And to do that, to understand what our response needs to be, we’re going to go back and look at this passage that we looked at last week, which I just read for us, and we’re going to highlight some of the material we skipped over last week, and see what it says about our response to the news about what Jesus has done.

As I read the passage I’m going to draw attention to four small phrases, and it might be a good idea if you have a pen to underline or circle them in your bulletin, because we’ll be referring back to them throughout the rest of the message.

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:23-26).

Did you catch that? What does this passage tell us our response to the gospel needs to be? Faith. Or, believing. In the original language those words are interchangeable.

Our response to what God has done for us in Jesus is faith. And that’s our fourth building block. This is the response that makes the gospel good news. Faith.

Now it’s one thing to say that. It’s another thing to really understand what faith is according to God’s word. So for the rest of our time this morning we’re going to look deeper into this passage so we can understand the nature of saving faith a little bit better.

And what we’ll see is that this passage gives us three very important truths about saving faith:

Faith is not optional, but instead, faith is necessary for salvation.

Faith is not a just a general belief in God, but instead, faith is a specific belief in Jesus Christ.

Faith is not something we do in order to be saved, but instead, faith is believing in what Jesus did to save us.

Faith is not optional, but instead, faith is necessary for salvation.

So that’s where we’re headed. Let’s start by considering that first point, that faith is not optional, but instead, faith is necessary for salvation. And I hope it’s clear to you where I’m getting this from in the passage.

Verse 22 says that the righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ for who? “All who believe.” Not everybody indiscriminately. Only those who believe.

Verse 25 tells us that the propitiation in Jesus’ blood isn’t something that everybody automatically benefits from, but instead that it needs to be received by faith. And verse 26 tells us that God justifies “the one who has faith in Jesus.”

This passage and the rest of Scripture are very clear that the gospel is good news only to those who believe it.

So that’s our first point: faith is not optional, but instead, faith is necessary for salvation.

Faith Is Not Just a General Belief in God

The second thing we see from this passage is that faith is not just a general belief in God.

A lot of people have a general belief in some kind of a god or a higher power. But that’s not the same thing as genuine saving faith. This passage shows us that saving faith is specifically focused on the person of Jesus Christ.

Consider again how verse 22 talks about “faith in Jesus Christ.” And we see that again at the end of verse 26, that God justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. So saving faith is not just a general belief in God, but a specific belief in the person of Jesus Christ.

The gospel is only good news to those who believe in Jesus. And this is one of the major reasons why we as a church care so deeply about missions and evangelism. Because people need to believe in Jesus. And like Romans chapter 10 says, in order to believe in Jesus they need to hear about him. And that means other people need to tell them about Jesus. And that’s where we come in.

So this is the second important truth about faith from this passage. Faith is not a just a general belief in God, but instead, faith is a specific belief in Jesus Christ.

Faith Is Not Something We "Do" in Order to Be Saved

The third and very important point that we need to understand is that faith is not something we do. Faith is not a work or an action. Like we’ve already seen, faith just means believing. And this is our third point. Faith is not something we do in order to be saved, but instead, faith is believing in what Jesus did to save us.

We’ve seen in this series very clearly that there is nothing we can do to save or rescue ourselves from the power and the penalty of sin. Someone else, Jesus, had to come and do the work of saving us. Nobody else but Jesus could justify us and redeem us and turn God’s wrath aside from us.

And when Jesus finished His work on the cross, what did He say? “It is finished.” Finished. There’s nothing we can add to what he did. There’s nothing more for us to do. There’s nothing for us to contribute to our salvation.

All that we do, if I can use that word, is believe in the one who has done everything for us.

And if you were to keep reading into Romans chapter 4 you’d see this truth come out in an even clearer way. Romans 4:4-5 says: "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,” 

You see there that faith and work are presented as opposites. The one who is saved by God is the one who does not work but believes in God who justifies the ungodly.

How does that truth land on your ears today? How does your heart respond to the fact that Jesus paid it all, and that you don’t have anything left to pay? That your salvation is really a free gift that you do nothing except receive?

I’m asking these questions is because Christians throughout history have always struggled to rest in the pure simplicity of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. All of us wrestle with a sinful impulse to want to do something, to want to contribute something to our salvation, to take some credit for ourselves.

And even today, in evangelical churches like ours, it’s very easy for people to say they believe in salvation through faith, but practically to redefine faith in such a way that it ends up sounding more like a work, an action we perform.

So for example, have you ever heard it said that in order for someone to be saved, they need to make a decision for Jesus? Or, that they need to choose to follow Jesus? Or that they need to commit or dedicate their whole lives to Jesus?

I’m sure you’ve been in meetings where people were told that if they want to receive Christ they need to put up their hand or get up and walk down to the front of the room.

Or maybe you’ve heard the sinner’s prayer used that way. If you want to be saved, then pray this prayer, and then you will be saved.

I remember hearing a friend talk about someone in their church who had had come up to them and said that they weren’t sure they were a Christian. So what they told that person to do was to pray the sinner’s prayer, while they listened to make sure they really did it. And then they wrote down in a Bible or something that they had done that with this other person witnessing it. And that was how they found assurance of salvation: I prayed this prayer on this day.

Each of these things that I’ve just mentioned are not necessarily wrong in and of themselves. Some of them, like the idea of committing our lives to Jesus, are really good and things that we need to do.

But they’re not faith. They are all things that we do. And they can subtly lead people to believe that they are saved because of an action that they performed. A choice they made. A prayer they prayed.

According to the Bible, faith does not refer to an action we perform in order to be saved. Faith is believing in Jesus and believing that He has done everything in order to save us.

One of the best descriptions of faith in this regard is summed up so perfectly in the words to the hymn “Rock of Ages” that we sung a couple of weeks ago.

Not the labor of my hands can fulfill thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow,

All for sin couldn’t to atone; thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hands in bring, simply to thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to thee for dress, helpless, look to thee for grace;

Foul, I to the foundation fly; wash me, Saviour, or I die."

That’s faith. Faith is fixed and focused on Jesus and His work. That’s where our confidence, that’s where our assurance, that’s where our hope comes from. Nothing we’ve done. Everything that Jesus has done.

But What About…?

Now I expect, and in fact I hope, that there’s a few of you struggling with what I’ve just said. Because it might sound like I’m saying that people can just believe in Jesus and get saved and they don’t need to follow Jesus or experience any change in their life. They can just keep on living for themselves, doing whatever they want, and they’re fine.

And doesn’t the Bible say we need to repent of our sins? Didn’t Jesus say we need to take up our crosses and follow Him?

If you are asking those kinds of questions right now, those are good questions and good concerns.

So what’s the answer to those questions? How do we reconcile what Scripture says about grace alone through faith alone with what it says about repentance and discipleship and conversion?

And I want to suggest that the solution is quite simple- so simple that it’s easy to miss it. And it’s staring us in the face right here in our passage today.

Think back to our second point this morning, where we saw that faith is a specific belief in who? Jesus. Remember verse 22? “through faith in Jesus Christ.” Or verse 26. “Faith in Jesus.”

Faith, according to Scripture, is believing in a person, the person of Jesus.

So let’s ask the question. Who is that person? Who is Jesus? He is the son of God who died on the cross for our sins like this passage tells us. But that is not all who Jesus is. Jesus is also the Lord who has all authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus is the Son of David who rules as king at God’s right hand.

And when we have faith in Jesus, we have faith in this Jesus. The whole Jesus. The king Jesus. Because there is no other Jesus to believe in.

Only One Jesus

So if someone were to say, “I believe that Jesus died for me. But I’m not quite ready to repent of my sin and follow Jesus as my Lord,” my response would be that they don’t actually believe in Jesus.

It’s like if I was up here telling you how much I loved my wife Aimee. But then I started to say things like, “She has such nice red hair and she’s an amazing professional hockey player and she takes such good care of our 5 kids.”

You would come to the conclusion that I have no idea who my wife really is, and have just invented a figment of my own imagination that happens to have the same name as the real Aimee.

Please understand: a person named Jesus who saves us and then lets us keep doing whatever we want after that doesn’t actually exist.

The real Jesus is the Lord Jesus. He died to save us. And He rose again as the king with all authority in heaven and in earth. And every knee, including ours, must bow before Him. We either believe in this Jesus or we don’t.

And if we do believe in this Jesus, then we will repent of our sins and obey Him and be committed to Him and follow Him and submit to His word.

And all of those things- repentance and commitment and obedience to Jesus as Lord- they are all necessary proof that our faith in Jesus is genuine and real. They are the evidence of genuine faith. If we don’t have them, we must question whether we really have faith in the first place.

But at the same time we need to stress that we are not saved through obeying Jesus or following Jesus. We’re saved through faith in Jesus who saved us.

Illustration of a House

Let me share with you two illustrations to try and show you this. Imagine someone walked up to you today and offered you a brand new home to live in, a home that was huge and beautiful and fully furnished and everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

And you said, “What do I need to do to get this house?” And they said, “You don’t need to do anything. It’s 100% a pure gift. Here’s the key.”

So you reach out and take the key. You receive the free gift. You did nothing to make it happen. You just believed what they said and received it.

But in that moment you also realize that this gift will change everything. You’re going to need to move. You have to decide what to do with all of your old stuff. There’s a lot of changes that come into your life as a result of accepting that gift.

But the gift is still a gift. And moving and selling your old stuff didn’t earn you that gift. That was just the necessary response to the gift. All you had to do to receive the gift was believe and open your hand and receive it.

Application

So I want to end here today by making this really personal to you and I. I want to ask us two big questions this morning.

The first question is, do you believe in Jesus? Are you trusting in Jesus alone for your salvation? Or are you trusting in things that you’ve done?

A good question to help us understand our own hearts on this matter is this: if you were to die right at this moment, why should God let you into heaven?

How do you answer that question? Do you answer it by saying, “I prayed this prayer on such and such a date,” or “I have gone to church for all these years.” Or do you answer it by saying, “Jesus died for me on the cross. And that’s the only reason God should let me into heaven. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.”

Please, if there’s any doubt in your heart how you would answer that question, please ask God today to make your faith be planted firmly in Jesus and Jesus alone.

Now the second big question I want to ask us today is, do you believe in Jesus? But here’s what I’m saying by this. Do you believe in the real Jesus, the Jesus who is saviour and king?

Have you proven your faith in Jesus by turning from your sin and submitting to the word of God and living under the authority of Jesus as king over your life?

I want to get very specific here for a moment. I’m okay if this makes you feel uncomfortable. Because I’m going to talk about baptism.

Please understand I don’t have anyone specific in mind here. If you’re not a member, I have no clue whether or not you’ve been baptized.

But the reason I’m talking about baptism is not just that we are a baptist church, but it’s that when we think about obeying Jesus as our king, baptism should be the very first thing that comes to mind. Because that’s the first thing that Jesus told people to do.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:18-20)

Here in North America baptism has seemed to slip way down the list of priorities for many people. And when people think about obeying Jesus they think about all sorts of things long before we think about being baptized.

And I don’t want to be too hard on you this morning, because maybe that’s the example that’s been set for you. Maybe nobody has ever told you that Jesus has commanded you to prove your faith by being baptized as soon as you can. Maybe you’ve never been told that if you choose to not be baptized, you are choosing to live in active disobedience to the King of Heaven and Earth.

So again, I don’t know if this is convicting any of you this morning. But if it is, then I’d encourage you to prove your faith in Jesus this week and send me an email. It’s there in the bulletin. And say, “I want to be baptized.”

Baptism doesn’t save anybody. But baptism is a part of the proof that you have believed in the one who has saved you.

Maybe for you it’s not baptism, but it’s some other area in your life where you need to prove your faith in Jesus by choosing to obey and submit to Him. Whatever it is, ask God to help you do that this week.

We’re going to end here by singing a song that celebrates what Jesus has done for us. And this song also talks about our response to Jesus- how when Jesus came and caused us to believe in Him, we rose and went forth and followed Him.

All of this comes from His amazing love. Let’s celebrate that together now.

In case you’re joining us or have been away for the past couple weeks, we’re now in week 3 of a 5-week series called “What is the Gospel?” And in this series we’re seeking to answer that question and refocus our spiritual eyes on the gospel.

And over the past couple of weeks we’ve talked about the four reasons we’re doing this series:

We want everybody who spends time with us here at Emmanuel to understand the gospel.

We want those of us who do understand the gospel to understand it better and better so that it can continue to do it’s work in our life.

We want to better understand the gospel so that we be discerning when we encounter counterfeit versions of the gospel that are out there today, just like they always have been.

And we want to know the gospel really well so that we’ll have clarity and confidence in sharing the gospel with other people who need to hear it. And in fact, our goal in this series is to be able to confidently and clearly explain the gospel to someone else in two minutes or less.

Those are the four reasons for this series.

Now as we’ve dug into understanding the message of the gospel itself, we’ve also talked about the very important concept of the four building blocks. The message of the gospel has these four big components that are present- whether we like it or not- every time we talk about the gospel: 

God

Us and our problem

God’s solution

Our response

Those four building blocks are like big empty boxes that need to have the right things put in them every time we explain the gospel.

So week one we explored what Acts chapter 17 has to say about that first building block: God. What do we need to know about God in order to understand the gospel?

And we saw that the Bible teaches us that God is the creator, that He is the king, that He is greater than us, and that He deserves our worship. We owe Him everything, especially all of our honour and thanks.

Last week we saw what Romans 1 has to say about our problem. Our problem is that we haven’t worshipped or served or honoured or thanked our Creator. Even though the truth about God is plain for all of us to see in the things that have been made, we’ve all chosen to worship and serve the things that God has created- especially ourselves- instead of Him.

And because of that, we are on the receiving end of His wrath and judgement. God’s wrath is being revealed now in history as God hands people over to be enslaved to their own destructive desires, and God’s wrath will be revealed fully at the end of our lives and at the end of time when every unrepentant sinner will receive God’s wrath forever in a real place called Hell.

Israel

Now in between last week’s passage and today’s passage is a section on Israel where the Apostle addresses the story of Israel and their current state. And what you’ll see there if you go read that is that even though Israel had been highly privileged by God- especially in them being given God’s law- they still end up in the same spot as the Gentile nations who didn’t have the law. 

Like chapter 3 verse 9 says, "What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’” 

And so that’s the section that verses 19 and 20 are saying. Jew and Gentile are in equal need of the mercy and salvation of God. None of us has any hope in ourselves for salvation.

Words of Hope

And that’s where verse 21 in our passage today comes breaking in like a sunbeam in the middle of a thunderstorm.

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—” 

“But now!”  This “now” is 2,000 years old for us, but we can just imagine Paul trembling with joy as these words were being written down. Now, at long last, God has intervened. He has revealed His righteousness, which in this context is referring to His work that makes us righteous.

And God has done this apart from the law. Even though the law and the prophets bear witness to it, this new way for us to be righteous happens in a different way then us obeying the law perfectly.

I wish we could spend the whole morning just savouring those two words- “But now.” I wish we could all taste the freshness of these words, to know what it’s like to have the goodness of the gospel break in to the bleakness of our hopelessness for the first time.

There’s a sense of “finally, at last, rescue has come” in these words.

And we also shouldn’t miss the wonder here, that this is God Himself revealing His own  righteousness and making it available to us. This isn’t something that humans discovered after a long quest. This is something God revealed to us.

Just think about that. God- the one we have sinned against, the one whose wrath we are under- He Himself is the one who has now revealed His saving righteousness. If we didn’t already know this, could we have dreamed about an turn in this story as good as this?

If you know Jesus this morning and you’ve believed the message of the gospel, pray that God would help you recover the wonder of this truth, the wonder of these words. “But now.”

A Fully-Orbed Salvation

Now in our passage today, following verse 21, this righteousness of God and how is saves us is explained and unpacked in rich detail. And we’re not going to turn over every stone here this morning. Some aspects of this passage we’re going to be coming back to next week, where they fit in better.

But this morning we are going to focus in on what this passage tells us about Jesus and how He rescued us from everything we learned about ourselves last week.

We saw last week that all of humanity is guilty before God, enslaved to sin, and under His wrath.

Our passage today shows us that Jesus has saved us from each of these aspects of our lost condition:

Where we were guilty, Christ has justified us.

Where we were in slavery, Christ has redeemed us and set us free.

Where we were under the judgement of God, Christ has atoned for our sin and turned aside God’s wrath.

And so those three points are going to be our outline as we dig into our passage. Let’s start by considering that first point: 

Where We Were Guilty, Christ Has Justified Us

We see this in verse 23 and 24. Verse 23 begins by reminding us of our guilt: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

All- Jew and Gentile alike- have sinned and present-tense fall short of the glory of God. Right up to this very moment every single one of us falls short of what God created us for and what God expects of us and what God deserves from us. 

But even in this spot of present-tense falling short, verse 24 tells us we are “justified by his grace as a gift.”

Back in Philippians 3 we talked about this word “justify” or “justification,” and how in the original language it comes from the same root word as “righteous.” And so the  “justify” means “to declare righteous.” It means to acquit someone of their charges, to pronounce them righteous. It’s a legal, courtroom word, when the judge wraps the gavel and pronounces you not guilty- but more than just not guilty, but actually righteous.

Romans 3:24 tells us that all who believe in Jesus are justified- declared righteous- by God’s grace as a gift. Justification is not something we earn or become worthy of. It’s something that Jesus does for us. Jesus saves us from our guilty and condemned status and gives us the status of righteous, even as we still fall short of His glory.

Where We Were in Slavery, Christ Has Redeemed Us and Set Us Free

So a question we should ask as we think about this is, how does this work? What did Jesus to to justify us? And the answer to that comes in verse 24, where it says that we are justified “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

This word “redemption” in the ancient world had the basic idea of freeing someone by paying a price for them. It was used to in connection with ransoming prisoners of war, slaves, and condemned criminals. Someone is imprisoned or condemned, and someone else comes along and pays a price, and that person goes free.

So this gift of justification- being declared righteous- comes to us through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This means that Jesus paid a price which set us free, which is the meaning of redemption, and it’s because of that price that we are declared righteous in God’s eyes.

And so I hope you notice that we’re now encountering the second aspect of the work of Christ in this passage. Redemption. Jesus paying a ransom price to set us free.

Apart from Christ, we are all guilty prisoners, marching off to receive the death penalty, and there’s nothing we can do to set ourselves free. But Jesus has set us free from the consequences of our sin by paying our ransom. By redeeming us. And so we are free from the penalty of our sin.

Where We Were Under the Judgement of God, Christ Has Atoned for Our Sin and Turned Aside God’s Wrath

So once again we want to ask questions. What is this price that Jesus paid? Who was this price paid to? And how does this price ransom us and justify us?

And the answer comes in verse 25: “whom”- that is, Jesus- “God put forward as a propitiation by His blood.” We are redeemed and justified because God put forward Jesus as a propitiation.

This word propitiation isn’t one that we use very often, but should. It’s an incredible word that gets at the heart of our salvation. “Propitiation” has the basic meaning of turning aside wrath. It was used in Greek mythology to talk about sacrifices that would appease the wrath of the gods.

This word is also used with even more significance in the Greek Old Testament scriptures that the Jews of Paul and Jesus’ day were very familiar with. See, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which we call the Septuagint, this word for propitiation is used to translate the Hebrew word “mercy seat.”

The mercy seat was the cover over the ark of the covenant that was placed in the most holy place inside the tabernacle and later the temple. And it was the place where the priest would sprinkle the blood of the bull and the goat once a year on the day of atonement.

And it’s so significant that the Greek Old Testament translated “mercy seat” using this word, propitiation. They understood that as the priest brought the blood into the Most Holy Place and sprinkled it on the mercy seat, God’s wrath against them was turned aside.

Their sin deserved the wrath of God in the form of death, but those animals died instead of them. And so God’s wrath was turned aside from them, because those animals took God’s wrath in their place. That’s what’s going on when we talk about our sin being atoned for, and it’s all there in that one word “propitiation.”

And so this word shows us this third way that Jesus has saved us. On the cross, Jesus bore the judgement of God in our place. He became our substitute and suffered the consequences of our sin instead of us. And in so doing, Jesus propitiated the wrath of God- He turned it aside from us. Calvary was our mercy seat, where Jesus poured out His own blood to atone for our sin once and for all.

If the scariest news in the universe is that our Creator is angry with us, then isn’t this the best news in the world- that through Christ, God’s wrath has been fully and finally turned aside from us? Because now we can know God as our loving Father instead of as our angry judge. We can know His love and presence and comfort and peace because His wrath against us has been taken away.

Like Romans 5:12 says, "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Or in the words of 1 Peter 1:18, "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” 

That’s why propitiation is such good news. Because it gives us God.  And God is the best thing in the universe. Which makes this the best news in the universe.

Putting it All Together

Now in this passage we’ve seen the three ways that Jesus has saved us- justification, redemption, and propitiation. But we’ve also seen that these three ideas are tightly connected. The death of Jesus on the cross, which turned aside God’s wrath, is the price that redeemed us from the penalty of our sin and has caused us to be declared righteous by God- because, all of the sin that condemned us has been paid for in full.

Now I know that this is rich and deep but it can also be hard to understand, especially if you’ve just learned some new words and are thinking about these things for one of the first times. So we can simplify it just a little and boil it down to this: on the cross, Jesus took our place. He became our substitute. And by substituting Himself for us, He saved us from the power and the consequences of our sin.

Last week I read you a statement from John Stott where he said that the essence of sin is us substituting ourselves for God. But there’s a second half of that quote that I didn’t read. The essence of sin is us substituting ourselves for God, but the essence of salvation is God substituting Himself for us.

In every act of sin, we try to take God’s place. But in saving us, Jesus came and took our place. And in so doing He saved us from from all the power and penalty of our sin.

For Whom Did Jesus Die?

Now there’s one more stop we need to take this morning, because there’s one more crucial aspect of our salvation that’s mentioned in this passage. And it’s one that we very often skip over or fail to notice.

And we see it in the last half of verse 25, which says that Jesus was put forward as a propitiation “to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

Do you see what this is saying? In His divine forbearance- patience- God had passed over so many sins in the age before Jesus died on the cross.

If you want an example of God passing over sin, think about David and Bathsheba. David stole the wife of one of his 30 mighty men and had him murdered to cover it up. Two sins, both deserving of the death penalty.

But in Psalm 52 we hear David confessing his guilt and sin to the Lord and asking God to forgive him and take that sin away from Him. And God… did. He just forgave Him. He didn’t count that sin against him, just like we heard from Psalm 32 this morning.

And what we so often miss is how this act of forgiveness casts serious doubt about the justice and righteousness of God. How can God just let people get away with sin? How can God just forgive things which He Himself said has deserved the death penalty? How can God just pass over so much sin?

See, when we read the Old Testament scriptures we often take offence at God’s justice. How he punished and judged so many people for their sins.

But if we really understand things from God’s perspective, we should be amazed that God passed over so many sins. That he left so many people unpunished. That He lets so many people get away with so much.

Like we saw last week, sin is an assault on the glory of God. Sin is telling God that He doesn’t deserve our worship and He’s not as great and glorious as He says He is. And when God let’s people get away with sin, it makes God look like He is agreeing with them. It makes God look like He is less than righteous Himself.

It’s against this background that Romans 3:25 tells us that God needed to demonstrate His righteousness, which had been left open to questioning. And so one of the main reasons that Jesus died was to prove God’s righteousness. Because Jesus came and paid for the sins of David and Moses and Noah and Gideon and Abraham and Issac and Jacob and everyone else whose sins had been passed over up until then.

Jesus showed that God is righteous. He won’t sweep sin under the rug. Every sin against God must be paid for in order to uphold God’s honour and glory. And that happened at the cross. Jesus paid for every forgiven sin in full.

And in the exact same way, verse 26 turns to us today and tells us what the death of Jesus means for us today: "It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Jesus died to show God’s righteousness today. You see, if Jesus had not died, God’s very character would be called into question every time He forgave someone for their sin. But Christ has died, in a public, bloody, gruesome way. And in so doing He made it very clear that God is righteous. He does’t ignore sin or let us get away with anything. Jesus has paid for every single one of the sins of His people.

We often speak about Jesus dying for us. And that is true. But just as importantly, Jesus died for God. Jesus died to uphold the glory of God’s name. And because of that, God is just to justify us, here and now, today.

Last week we began a new series called "What is the Gospel," and as you can guess from the title, the goal of this series is to answer the question: what is the gospel? What is the message of the gospel?

And last week we began by talking about four reasons why we are doing this series. First, we’re doing this series because we never want to be a church that assumes the gospel. We never want people to be able to spend time with us here and miss out on hearing the gospel. So as a church we should be regularly proclaiming the gospel and explaining what the gospel is.

The second reason for this series is that Christians need the gospel. The gospel is not just a message that saves us when we first become a child of God. It continues to have power that transforms us as we grow and mature in our faith. And so we never stop needing to be reminded of the gospel and to keep on going deeper in our understanding of the gospel.

The third reason for us to refocus on the gospel is so that we can grow in our discernment. There are and always have been imitation gospels floating around: messages that sounds like the good news but are really just counterfeits. And so we need to know the true gospel well enough so that a fake gospel, or an almost-gospel, or a gospel plus this or that, will never be able to dupe us.

And fourth, we need to clearly understand the gospel so that we can communicate it to others. The more that the gospel becomes crystal clear in our own thinking, the better we'll be at sharing it with all kinds of different people in all kinds of different settings.

And you’ll remember- that’s a goal in this series: any of us, by the end of the series, should be able to explain what the gospel is to someone else in a way that makes sense in 2 minutes or less. And that’s not a lofty goal- we all should be able to do that.

So those are the four reasons that we’re doing this series.

Last week we also introduced the very important concept of the four building blocks that make up the message of the gospel:

God

Us and our problem

God's solution to that problem

What our response needs to be

And these four building blocks are like empty boxes. We need to put the right things in them, or else people tend to fill them in with their own ideas and understanding which may lead them to totally misunderstand the gospel.

So one of the best ways for the gospel to become crystal clear in our thinking is to understand these four boxes, and really understand what's in each box, and how the boxes build on each other. And that’s what we’re doing in this series.

So last week we looked at building block or box #1: that God is the creator, the king, that He is greater than us, and that He deserves all of our honour and thanksgiving and worship.

When we look at the Bible we see that this is where the gospel begins, because this is where everything begins. The Bible begins with “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

And as we trace the story throughout the Bible we see that God created everything for His own glory. God made everything, and God made us, in order that we might see everything He did and give Him glory for it. You might be familiar with Psalm 19, which says that “the heavens declare the glory of God.” And it’s not like that’s their side job. God made the heavens, and everything else, for the specific job of declaring His glory.

Or you should remember Romans 11:36 from a couple of weeks back. “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”

God made all things, including us, for His glory. That’s the point of everything. So it shouldn’t surprise us that this is where the message of the gospel begins, by establishing God’s identity as our great Creator who made all things for His glory. He is the centre of the universe, not us. He made us, and He rules over us. He doesn’t need us, and He deserves our honour and thanks and worship.

Box #2

And so once we have this foundation in place, we can move on to understand the second building block of the gospel, which is us. Who are we, and what is our problem?

We do have a problem. Everybody knows that. The fact that we have a problem is right there in the word “gospel,” which means “good news.” So if we have good news, it makes sense that there would be some sort of a problem to which the good news responds.

And here is why we see that it’s so important to lay the right foundation and put the first building block in place properly. Because once we understand that God has created all things- including us- for His glory, we can then make sense of what the Bible says about our problem, which is that all of us have refused to give God the glory he deserves. Every single one of us has rejected God and chosen to worship other things- especially ourselves- instead of Him. And because of this, we are in big trouble with our creator.

Let’s turn now to Romans 1 and see how this truth comes out in the text. Reading verses 18-21: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

We referenced this passage last week and saw how it stands at the beginning of the longest and most thorough explanation of the gospel in the Bible, which is the book of Romans. And right here at the beginning we see the very same truths about God as we saw in Acts 17: that He is the Creator and that He deserves our worship.

But these verses tell us more than that. They tell us that this truth about God is not hidden or hard to understand. People don’t have to think really hard to figure out that there is a great Creator behind all of this. 

Verse 19 tells us that what can be known about God is plain to us, because God has shown is to us. And verse 20 tells us that tHis eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, or seen, in the created things ever since the creation of the world.

Everybody knows that an incredibly great Creator has made this world that we see. And everybody sees His attributes on display as they look around them. What can be known about God is plain to them.

God designed this world to put His glory on display, and the world has done it’s job. Nobody has an excuse, like verse 20 says.

So when we tell people about the first building block to the gospel- that God is the great Creator- we are never telling anybody anything really new. Deep down inside, everybody gets this already.

Isn’t that how we heard Paul talking to the Athenians in Acts 17? He says things to them like “we ought not to think.” Like, “you guys should know this. It’s plain to you.”

The Essence of Sin

But the problem, is that even though we clearly see the truth, we don’t respond to it the way we know we should. But we do what verse 18 says, when it talks about men “who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

We all see the truth and know the truth, but we suppress the truth. That word “suppress” might not be a word you use a lot, but you know what it’s like to suppress something. Like suppressing a laugh. You know, something is really funny but you don’t want to let it out so you work really hard to hold it in.

Or maybe you’ve tried to suppress a bottle or can of pop that’s been shaken, and it’s foaming everywhere, so you put your hand on it or you try to put the lid back on to keep it from getting everywhere. That’s what it looks like to try to suppress something.

Verse 18 tells us that every person surpasses the truth. The truth is there. The truth about God and who He is is plain to them. But they suppress it. They try to keep a lid on it. They hold it down.

So the question is: why would anybody want to do this? Why would people want to suppress the truth about God?  And verse 18 tell us, when it says that we suppress the truth in “unrighteousness.” Or, a simpler word, sin. We suppress the truth in our sin. In our sin, we all try to put a lid on the truth about God.

Many Christians think that people choose to sin because they don’t know who God is. But what Romans 1 tells us is that people choose to not know God because of their sin. Sin comes first. And that sin causes them to suppress the truth about God.

This is a theme we see all over Scripture. Our thinking, our response to the truth, follows our desires. We believe with our heads what our sinful hearts want to believe. That’s what Romans 1:18-20 is telling us. The truth about God is plain to us. But we suppress it in our sin.

And the reason we do this is because we don’t want to worship God. Look at verse 21: "For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him.” We know that God deserves our worship. We know He deserves our honour and our thanks. But we refuse to do this.

Still Worshipping

Now when we stop worshipping God, it’s not like we stop worshipping altogether. God created us to worship. And what we see in verse 23 is that when we refuse to worship God, our hearts keep on worshipping. They just start worshipping other things.

Verse 23 says that people exchange “the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” And verse 25 says, “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”  

This is the essence of our sin against God. We exchange His truth for a lie, and we worship the things that God has made instead of the God who made them.

Everybody worships. Everybody. You have never talked to someone who isn’t a worshipper. People in 1st Century Athens worshipped literal images of men and animals. Today, we worship images of people too, we just call them celebrities.

And we worship other things too, like money and possessions and pleasure and relationships and entertainment and hobbies and our jobs and power and control and most importantly, ourselves. Our own interests and desires and passions. We worship ourselves instead of the God who made is.

This was the original sin of Adam and Eve in the garden. They didn’t want to honour and depend on God. They wanted to be God. They exchanged the truth about God for the lie of the serpent and worshipped and served themselves more than God.

And we’ve all been doing it ever since. 

This is the heart of what sin is. John Stott said that the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God.

And it’s this essence of sin that causes us to break God’s laws. We disobey God and break His commands because we’ve already refused to honour Him as God, so of course we’re not going to actually listen to what he says.

But at the heart of sin, at the heart of the human condition, is this deadly act of substituting ourselves for God.

The Severity of Sin

And this is why our sin is such a big deal. Because, like we’ve seen, God created us for Himself, for His glory. The whole reason that everything exists, the whole reason that we exist, is to honour and glorify God.

So our sin of of refusing to do that isn’t like breaking some little bylaw. It is a direct act of treason against the whole purpose that the universe exists and that we exist.

Our sin is us telling God that he’s wrong about everything. Our sin is us telling God that He’s not worthy of worship, that He doesn’t deserve our thanks, that He’s not so great after all.

And when we understand sin in this way, then we understand why God doesn’t just sweep it under the rug of the universe. Why he won’t just pretend it away.

Because if God ignored our sin or pretended it away, he would be agreeing with us. He would be agreeing with us that He isn’t really worthy of worship. He would be agreeing with us that He doesn’t really deserve our honour and our thanks. He would be saying, “You’re right.” And He would be joining us in our sin of dishonouring Him.

And that’s something He’ll never do.

Instead, what Scripture reveals is that when we sin against God, God responds to our sin with judgement. And this judgement proves to us and to all who are watching that God is as great and as worthy of worship as He said that He is.

And that is what verse 18 tells us, right at the beginning of the passage: that God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against our ungodliness and unrighteousness.

This is the bad news that we need to understand before the good news of the gospel makes sense. God will not let us get away with dishonouring Him. Instead, He will uphold His glory by punishing sinners to the full measure of their sin.

And that means all of us. We all stand under God’s wrath and judgement.

Now I understand that nobody likes hearing that the person who made the world is angry with them and is going to punish them.

But neither does anybody like hearing that they have a dangerous health condition that needs immediate medical attention. But if someone does have such a condition, a good doctor doesn’t hide that truth from them because they don’t want to hear it.

Some truths we need to hear even if we don’t want to. And we will never come to terms with the gospel until we understand that apart from the good news of the gospel, this is our situation. We have earned, and we will receive the wrath of the Creator that we have rebelled against.

Wrath Revealed

Now Romans chapter 2 talks about the day of judgement, coming at the end of history as we know it, when God’s wrath and fury will be fully revealed against all unrepentant sinners.

But Romans 1:18 in our passage today tells us that God’s wrath is revealed, present-tense- that it is being revealed from heaven over the course of human history.

And this present-tense experience of God’s wrath comes in a way that we might not expect. It’s explained for us in verse 24: "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.”

And verse 26: “For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions.”

And verse 28: "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”

These verses tell us that one of the primary ways that God judges humans is by giving them over to sinful desires. We want the wrong things and God doesn’t stop us from diving into them. That’s how His wrath is revealed against us. He doesn’t stop us from destroying ourselves.

And starting in verse 29 we see the result of God giving people up to their own sinful desires:

"They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” 

I have seen this passage bear itself out on small scale within individual lives. I have seen God judge people by giving them over to the very thing they want most and letting them become enslaved to it.

But I think we are also seeing this passage bearing itself out on a big scale today across our western culture. As we watch our society descending further and further into chaos and moral anarchy, we are tempted to ask, “Where is God in this?” And what Romans 1 tells us is what we are seeing is the wrath of God against our sin. God is giving us over to the things we want most, and those things are enslaving and destroying us.

This is us. This is our problem. This is the really bad news that we need to understand before the good news of the gospel will make sense to us.

For Us This Week

So how do you end a sermon like this? We’re going to spend all of next week focusing on the really good news that comes to us as a result of this bad news, but today I think it’s good for us, all of us, to really come to terms with the situation that we would be in without that good news.

All of us in this room who know Jesus should recognize right now that unless the mercy of God intervened in our lives to save us, we are no better than anybody else.

None of us have worshipped and served our Creator in the way that He deserves. None of us have loved the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength. None of us have given God the glory that He deserves from us. We’ve all worshipped and served so many other things more than Him.

And maybe you’ve known Jesus for so long that you’ve forgotten that Jesus has saved you from God’s wrath. If Jesus had not shown mercy and took your place on a Roman cross 2,000 years ago, you would have nothing to look forward to but God’s wrath. This morning it’s good for us to remember that each of us is the sheep that wandered away from the fold, and if our Good Shepherd had not left the 99 and come out to seek and find us, we’d still be lost.

We have no hope apart from the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. 

And it’s so important for us to come back to this place and remember just how much God has forgiven us, because Jesus told us that those who have been forgiven much, love much.

If you want to love God more, think deeply about how much you’ve been forgiven.

Jesus also told us that our awareness of how much God has forgiven us should cause us to forgive and love others. We will have more mercy for those in our life who need it when we remember how much mercy God has shown us. We will have more forgiveness for those in our life who need it when we remember that God has forgiven us so much.

So it’s not bad for us to linger in this place, remembering the mercy of God towards us and how much he’s forgiven us.

We’re going to end here by singing “Rock of Ages,” a hymn that helps us talk to God about the greatness of our sin and how we have nothing apart from His mercy.

Let’s ask God to use this truth to stir up our love for Him, and that this love would spill over and cause us to be more merciful, more kind, and more loving with those we know as we leave this building and walk out into the weeks that God has prepared for us.

Today we are beginning a new 5-week series called “What is the Gospel?”

And I hope that the title to this series is self-explanatory. This series is all about answering the question, “What is the gospel?”

But the first thing I want to address today is answer another question, which is, why are we doing this series? Why did the board and I agree that it was a good idea for us to do a series that was all about answering the question, “what is the gospel?”

So I’m going to open up today by giving you four answers to that question. Four reasons why we are doing this series about the gospel.

1) The first reason why we’re doing this series on the gospel is that as a church we should always be regularly talking about and explaining the gospel here in our Sunday morning services. We should never ever assume that everybody who ever comes through these doors on a Sunday morning knows what the gospel is.

We never want to become the kind of church that assumes the gospel. Church history tells us that when churches assume the gospel, they are not far away from losing the gospel. And I guess I’ve kind of given two reasons there. But the big idea is that we don’t want anybody who spends time here with us to ever miss the gospel.

2) The second reason we’re doing this series is that Christians regularly need to hear the gospel. Do you know that? Do you know that the gospel is not just a message we need at the beginning of our Christian life? The Bible shows us that the gospel is a message that Christians need all along the course of their lives.

Just think about the letter to the Philippians we just went through, and how many times the Philippians were reminded of the truths about Jesus’ death and resurrection,

and how those truths were the thing they needed in order to keep growing in joyful maturity as a church.

Like one author said, the gospel is not just the ABCs of the Christian life, it’s the A to Zs. We all need to keep growing in our understanding of the gospel so that it’s power can continue to be unleashed in our lives. So that’s the second reason for this series: we never stop needing to hear and better understand this message.

3) The third reason why we need to understand this gospel clearly is so that we can be discerning with all of the false gospels, or the almost-gospels, or the gospel-plus-this-or-that that are floating around the Christian world today.

There have been false gospels competing with the true gospel from the beginning up until now. So it shouldn’t surprise us today to discover that there is a lot of confusion out there about what the gospel is.

A few years back a popular Christian author asked a number of her favourite authors and theologians to answer the question, “What is the gospel?” And every single response was completely different. Some didn’t even mention Jesus. Several of them sounded good and used some of the right words, but ended up putting the pieces together in a very different form than the gospel of the Bible.

One of the scariest things in the world would be for us to ever accept or share something that we think is the gospel but what is really a false gospel, or just an almost gospel, or something that adds to the gospel. And so it’s a part of my burden for us as a church that we’d be able to discern between true and the false gospels.

And the best way for us to do that is to keep studying what the real gospel is. I’m sure you’ve all heard about how federal agents at the Bank of Canada are trained to detect counterfeit money. They do that by studying legitimate money so thoroughly that they can tell a counterfeit right away.

So that’s the third reason we’re doing this series. Studying the real thing so that we’ll be able to spot the counterfeits.

4) There’s a fourth and final reason we’re taking 5 weeks to answer the question, “What is the gospel?” And it’s for evangelism. We all know that as Christians, we need to share the gospel with people who don’t know it. But I think we also know that just because we ourselves believe the gospel doesn’t mean that we feel confident explaining the gospel to someone else in a way that makes sense to them.

I remember that so clearly one day when I was working on the construction site. Everybody there knew I was a Christian, but most people didn’t really know what that meant. So one day me and one other guy were working together, and out of the blue he says, "So, what does God need to forgive us for?"

Seriously, he asked me that. The perfect question. And he asked me. I had the perfect opportunity.

And I fumbled it. I wasn’t ready to share the gospel on the spot. I got nervous, and I didn’t know where to start, and I started to trip over my words, and then he got awkward, and then the conversation was over. I fumbled a perfect opportunity to share the good news with a guy who had asked me the perfect lead-in question.

So that is the goal of this series: having the gospel message so crystal clear in your mind that you can confidently share it with someone else. But my goal is more specific than even that. By the end of this series, I want you to be able to explain the gospel to someone else, clearly and biblically, in two minutes or less.

Does that sound like a lofty goal? I don't think so. I think that should be a bare minimum for any of us as a follower of Christ.

So those are the four reasons we are doing this series. We want to clearly and thoroughly understand the message of the gospel, and be able to explain it to someone else, for the sake of church, for the sake of our own souls, for the sake of discernment, and for the sake of evangelism.

Series Layout

Now let me share a little bit about the layout of the series. I was back in grade 7 at a youth retreat where I first heard the idea that there are four basic components or building blocks to the message of the gospel. And our youth pastor actually had us do push ups as we memorized those four components.

The first one is God. Who is God? That’s where we need to start to understand the gospel.

The second building block is us. Who are we, and what’s our problem? What is the problem that the gospel is a solution to?

The third building block the solution. What has God done to fix this problem?

And the fourth building block is our response. How do we need to respond to what Jesus did? What do we need to do to get in on this salvation that we’ve just described?

Every time we share the gospel, these four building blocks are there. They are like big empty boxes that need something to be put in them. And we can put the right things in them or we can put the wrong things in them.

Even false gospels include these four boxes. Every false gospel or almost-gospel says something about God, about our problem, about God’s solution to our problem, and about our response. They just say the wrong things about some or all of them.

And if we ever share the gospel and don’t put anything in one of the boxes, people will fill in that box with their own assumptions.

So, for example, if we say all the right things about God and sin and Jesus, but we don’t say anything about how we need to respond to this message, then people will fill in that box with their own assumptions. They’ll either thing that everybody gets saved so they don’t need to respond at all, or maybe they’ll think they need to clean up their lives and work hard so that God will save them, or whatever their thinking is.

So in terms of clearly understanding the gospel, and being able to discern false gospels, and being able to share the true gospel, we need to understand the four building blocks, or the four boxes. This is probably one of the most important ideas you can take away from this series.

This idea of the four categories is going to form the layout of this series. Because the first four weeks of this series we’re going to take one week each to think about one of those four building blocks, one of those four components. And as we go along we’ll see how they build on each other and all fit together to complete the whole message of the gospel.

God

So today, we're going to be looking at this first important component of the gospel message: God. Who is God? Who is God in relation to us? What do we need to know about God to really understand the gospel?

This is where every explanation and understanding of the gospel must begin.

The answer to the question “Who is God?" is really as big as the Bible itself, but the Bible does zero in on a few key elements of God's nature that are crucial to understanding and communicating the gospel.

And one of the ways we see that is by looking in the Bible at places where people explained the gospel to others. And we can just ask: what did they say? What was important to them?

That’s what’s going on in our passage today from Acts 17. The setting of this passage is that Paul was in Athens, which was the intellectual centre of the world of that day, and he got to share the gospel with a bunch of people who had never heard it before. 

What would you share in that setting? What do you think would be the most important things about God that these people needed hear?

What we see in our passage is that Paul shared four main truths About God with these people. Four truths about God that build on each other and flow into each other. So let’s take a look at what these four truths are.

1) God Is the Creator

The very first thing that Paul shares with them is that God is the Creator. V. 24: “The God who made the world and everything in it.” We see that again in v. 26: “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.” 

The single most important truth about God that helps us understand who He is and that helps us understand the gospel is that He is the creator. He made the world and He made us.

This truth is important for so many reasons, but one of the main reasons is that it  establishes God’s identity in relation to this world and to us. If God is the person who made this world and who made us, then this all belongs to Him. And we belong to Him.

If He is the creator, than that must also mean that He is the Lord.

2) God Is the Lord

And this is the very next point that Paul made in verse 24: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth.” Because He is the creator, He is the Lord. This is His world and that makes Him the king.

Here in Canada we are unfortunately used to the idea of having a monarch like the queen who is more of a symbol than anything else. Our country runs pretty well without her direct intervention.

We’re not used to a lord or king who is actually involved in running the affairs of their country, and does so with complete authority and sovereignty.

But that’s what God is like. He is an active king. He is actively involved in running and ruling the world that He has made.

We see that in the last half of verse 25: “He himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” He didn’t just make us in the past, but he is actively giving us life and breath and everything today.

Take a breath- that’s from God. Your heart is beating- that’s from God. Everything we have comes from God.

And we see His sovereignty come out again in the last part of verse 26, which says that He has made “every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.”

God is sovereignly ruling over his world down to the arrangement and places of nations and people groups. The country we were born in and the place we live today were determined by this God who is creator and king. He is so closely involved with us.

That comes out in the amazing statement in verse 28: “in him we live and move and have our being.” Because God is the one giving and overseeing every part of our lives, he’s close to us, not far away. We live and move and have our being in Him.

So God is the creator, and therefore God is the active king. These are the two most important foundational truths about God that these people needed to understand.

3) God Is Greater Than Us

The third truth that Paul shares with them builds on these first two. If God is the creator and king, then that means that God is greater than us.

That’s kind of an obvious point, but we see it explained clearly in the last phrase of verse 24: He “does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything.”

The God who made this universe, and who made is, is not Someone we can control or manipulate. He isn’t served by us in the way that we so often think. He doesn’t need us, He doesn’t need our love, and he doesn’t need our obedience. He’s not served by our hands as if he needed anything. He is greater than us.

4) God Deserves Our Worship

So, three truths. So God is the creator, which means He is the king, which means He is far greater than us. And now there is one final truth that builds on these first three that is the final point people need to understand in order to really understand the gospel.

And it’s this: If God is the creator and king and is greater than us, then He deserves our proper worship.

This whole passage has been painted on the background of worship. It started back in verse 16 of this chapter which says, "Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.” 

Paul got involved in Athens because he was bothered that they were worshipping idols and not the one true God. So then in verse 22 he says, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” 

So this whole passage is about Paul correcting their false worship and telling them that they should be worshipping the one true God in the proper way instead of through their man-made religions.

We can see that if we go back to verse 24: God, the creator, “does not live in temples made by men.” He says that as he’s surrounded by temples. “You guys are going to worship in all these temples but that’s not where God lives. You’re worshipping the wrong things.”

We see this again in verse 29: "Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” 

Again, he says this as he’s surrounded by images of gold and silver and stone, images that came from people’s art and imagination. Once again we see that he’s not telling them that they shouldn’t be worshipping. He’s telling them that that they’ve been worshipping the wrong things. 

So this fourth truth he’s communicating to them is that they should be worshipping the one true creator God in the way that He deserves. Or, put another way, the one true God deserves their appropriate worship.

So there we have these four major truths about God. He’s the creator, He’s the king, He’s greater than us, and He deserves our worship. These are the things that they needed to know.

Now one of the best ways that we can confirm that we’re on the right track is by turning over for a couple of minutes to Romans 1:19-20. This is a passage that is very different from Acts 17, because it’s addressed to people who are already Christians. But it’s very similar to Acts 17 because it’s also explaining the gospel, starting with the very basics. So we shouldn’t be surprised to see these same basic truths show up here in Romans chapter 1.

So look at what verse 19 says about all of humankind: “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” 

What can be known about God is plan to every single one of us because God has shown it to us. How and where has he done this? Verse 20 tells us:

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they [which again is all of us] are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to Him.”

And what we see here is at least three out of the four truths that we saw in Acts 17. God is the creator of this world. God is therefore great- his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived in the created world by everyone. And therefore God deserves our honour and our thanks, words that sum up “worship.”

So these are the key truths about God that we need to know in order to understand the gospel message. God is the creator. God is the king. God is great. And God deserves our honour and thanks and worship.

What About Love?

So a little ways back in the message I asked you to imagine yourself standing there in Athens, and to think about what you would say to those people about God. And here in North America, what do we tend to talk about first when we start to explain or share the gospel message?

Love. God is love, right? Isn’t that how the gospel begins? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?

So does it surprise you that these Biblical presentations of the gospel in the Bible don’t start by talking about God’s love?

Why do you think that is?

I think that the reason, or at least one of the reasons, is that people don’t really understand what “God loves you” means until they understand who God is, and how sinful we are, and what God has actually done to show His love for us.

“God loves you” is a really good summary of the gospel, once we have those building blocks in place. But until they are in place, it’s a statement that is so open to misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

And that’s why in the book of Romans, for example, God’s love doesn’t come up until chapter 5, after a whole bunch of the basics have been explained. Because by then we’re able to understand what that actually means, instead of filling in our own definitions about who God is and what loves means.

So God certainly does love us. But in order to understand what that means we need to know that God is the Creator, and God is the king, and God is greater than us, and God deserves our honour and thanks and worship.

Conclusion & Application

So that is our first building block in the message of the gospel. And we’re going to see next week how all of the other truths of the gospel build on and flow out of this central truth.

Now even though there’s still a lot more to come, I think we can stop even here and think about what this truth means for us this week. God is our creator. He made us and the world around us. And our appropriate response to Him should be honour and thanks and worship.

Here in Nipawin, we have more opportunities to see the beauty of God’s creation than most. Coming from the city, we’re still amazed at how well we can see the stars at night and the beauty of the landscape around here.

And that’s part of why people come here. Think about all those snowmobilers zipping around. There here because it’s beautiful here

And what Romans 1 tells us is that God’s eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived in the things that have been made. We all see it. We all know someone made this, and if He made this, then He must be unfathomably great and deserve all of our worship.

Many people choose to suppress that truth and worship other things instead. That’s the sad truth we’ll explore next week.

But if you do know God, and especially if you live here in this part of the world, you should be a worshipper. We should see that every spruce tree is a signpost saying “Worship God.” Worship the one who thought this all up. The one who makes the rain fall and the sun rise and the trees grow and the fish swim and the deer run. Worship the one who thought this all up and made it all and gives it all life and breath and everything.

Nipawin’s Christians should be the best worshippers because of what we get to see and enjoy every single day.

So let this be our posture as we go into our weeks. Every time you look around you and see something that makes you say “wow,” every time you look at yourself or another human and are amazed by the design that God put into them, give God the worship He deserves. Determine that this week you will not just enjoy the beauty around you but you will thank and honour and worship the person behind it, the person who loves you and has saved you with the incredible message of the gospel.