Equipping University

The message about the redeeming work of God in the atonement of Jesus Christ is the greatest information this world has ever received. It is more than news; it is good news. What is this news? That is the ultimate question. People everywhere disagree over the definition of the news and even evangelicals have a difficult time coming to an agreement over what is the gospel and what is not the gospel. The gospel is not meeting physical needs, it is not irrelevant, it is not privatized religion, it is not simply that "God is Love," it is not the path to health and wealth, it is not therapy, it is not moralism, and it is not all about you. The thing that truly distinguishes Christianity from all other belief systems is not its moral code or practicality. The difference lies in Christianity's story - the story of a holy Creator, rejected by his creation, yet stooping do reconcile them through the death of his Son. Christianity is not just a worldview, a way of life, or a program for personal or cultural change. Christianity is news. It is the report of something that happened that will forever change those who truly hear it. As witnesses and messengers of this news, our job is simply to get the story right and report it to all with whom we come in contact.

The Christian often approaches the Bible in the very same way. Most evangelicals view their Bible as a difficult puzzle to be solved. They have been taught their whole lives -through unintentional pastoral neglect or outright doctrinal instruction - that the Bible is made up of a great jumble of disconnected pieces. In other words, many Christians have grown up in the church looking at the Bible as a collection of individual books with no commonality between them. The many who view the Bible like this have never been taught what the "big picture" of the Bible is supposed to look like. They therefore do not see how a particular piece relates to other pieces. The Bible is simply a book of puzzle pieces that belong in the same box (book) but with no discernible reason why they are there. We learned in the last chapter that the first mark of a healthy church is expository preaching. However, our main concern must not be "only with how we are taught, but - more importantly - with specifically what we are taught. We should want pastors who will preach from the Word of God, but we should also carefully listen to what the pastor says and decide whether or not what he says is according to the Word of God." The sermons must be substantially in line with how God has revealed Himself, His plan, and His purpose to us in the Bible. For this purpose, all Christians must be sound biblical theologians.