Part 7 - The Message and the method

[0:00] And as I do, I found tonight's order of service.

[0:11] There it was, all along, the one I lost at the beginning. So John chapter 3, this is part 7 in original mission, and this morning I had the privilege of being able to go out into Crewe, which is, I've not actually been out there before.

[0:27] Daniel was away, so I managed to go out and sit in. And we did the final part of original mission, which was on the new heavens and the new earth.

[0:38] Well, it focused on the end of time, that essentially God wins, and that's the important thing. So there, with the consecutive mornings there, they have finished that study now.

[0:53] So we're on part 7, where we're looking at the, the message and the method, if you remember from the books. We're going to pick our reading up then in John chapter 3, verse 16 through to 21.

[1:10] This is, these words are fairly familiar, even verses 17 through to 21. We all know John 3, 16 is probably the most familiar. But as I read through, it quickly comes back to mind what it says.

[1:26] So now hear God's word. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

[1:39] For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.

[2:02] And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.

[2:12] For everyone who does wicked things hates the light, and does not come into the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.

[2:35] Well, may God bless the reading of his word, his word to us this evening. Let me pray for us before we come back to that.

[2:50] Well, as we begin part seven of Original Mission, we focus on the message of the gospel, and the method that that message must be taken out into the world.

[3:15] But before we move on to that, I have to address what we would call perhaps a common complication, but one which is easily overcome.

[3:28] C.S. Lewis, you know, had finished these stories, the Narnia, the Chronicles of Narnia. Prince Caspian is in one.

[3:40] Trumpkin is in the same one. And there's a debate. And Trumpkin shares his own opinion with Prince Caspian about what he thinks ought to be done.

[3:55] And Prince Caspian says, well, I would like you to do this, I would like you to do that, of which Trumpkin is not in agreement with. But then he says this, but I will go and do it.

[4:07] I will go and do it. And the question is asked, well, why will you go and do it if it is something you don't agree with? Says Trumpkin, well, I know the difference between giving advice and following orders.

[4:22] I know the difference between giving advice and following orders. C.S. Lewis identifies what true loyalty is. We all have our own opinions, but God has established in his church sections of authority.

[4:39] And loyalty is defined by you not having your opinion robbed from you or you not having the right to speak your opinion or your views, but rather recognizing that we do so under the authorities that God has given.

[4:57] Now, since the very beginning of the church, the gospel has had to have been handed down to faithful men, as Timothy is told. Pass this on, train others also, hand the gospel message on.

[5:11] Once the apostles died, the churches then had to have faithful elders to then uphold what the apostles had upheld.

[5:22] And this is to carry on down throughout history. And the way the church has maintained its clarity on the gospel message is by understanding the difference between giving an opinion and following orders.

[5:37] Being able to tell the difference of where loyalty is without me being robbed of my view of what scripture says. That's really, really important.

[5:49] However, even the apostles come under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. All elders come under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastors, teachers, congregations.

[6:01] We all have a duty to understand this word, but hopefully we recognize that God has given pastor teachers to the church. In other words, he's not left it to everybody to make up their mind, but rather for minds to be instructed.

[6:19] Now, this is important based on the end of Matthew's gospel, where the Great Commission is actually given. The highest authority by which all people are to bow down before is, of course, Jesus.

[6:35] Now, we can come to Jesus in our prayers, we can come to God in our prayers and say, Lord, I don't understand your word here. We may even look at the world and go, I don't understand what you are doing, but I know the difference between giving my opinion and coming under authority, following God even in difficult times.

[6:59] The focus here is that the mission, as we have already seen, is in a dark place, and the darkness is scary. We don't want to go out into the dark because there are bad things out there.

[7:11] There's persecution out there. There's the death of Christians out there. The darkness is the place which we are called to go, but it's not a place that is welcoming to the Christian church.

[7:27] But the commission of God is this, that we have been commissioned into the mission of God. The mission of God already exists. The church is the product of God's mission of sending Jesus into the world to seek and to save the lost.

[7:44] We are the result of God's mission, hence why Matthew finishes with a co-mission, that we have been co-opted now into the mission of God so that more and more people throughout the years and the generations that follow are to be brought into the church through the saving knowledge of Christ, through the gospel, the message of the gospel.

[8:08] So it is important for us to know what the message is. If it is the message that saves, it's important for us to know what that message is so that we are proclaiming it not only clearly, faithfully, but properly in every way possible, which includes its method.

[8:27] Jesus says that we are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And as we do this, we are never alone, for Jesus is with us even to the end of the age.

[8:41] We're not alone as we do this. But as we think about the co-mission, as we think about the message, we can't help but think about the method that we are to use.

[8:54] Okay, there is a reason why some things happen the way that they do. There's a reason why Jesus came as the Word and not the DVD. Okay, that's an important distinction.

[9:07] There's a reason why Jesus came as the Word and not the MP3 audio track. There's good reasons for understanding why God did what he did in the way that he did it.

[9:20] Why the message goes hand in hand with certain methods. And this is important. The message, then, is consistent with the method, and the method is consistent with the message.

[9:35] But just in case you think it doesn't have to be, here's just a few examples. Jesus spoke of those who honored him with their lips, but whose hearts are far from them.

[9:46] There's a disconnect between the message that they're saying and their heart, which is under a different method. It's following its own route. In other words, Jesus is saying, you can't really honor me unless your heart and tongue is in unity.

[10:03] It's in a communion to honor me. But these people think that, no, no, the method doesn't matter. I can do it in my own way. I can honor Jesus with my lips. I can do it in that way.

[10:14] Another example might be that if you take a marriage certificate and you look at it, you have no indication as you look at that marriage certificate whether or not the marriage is any good.

[10:26] It doesn't tell you whether or not it is a good or bad marriage. It doesn't tell you whether or not the marriage is a happy one or it is a difficult one. In other words, the certificate alone just cannot do that for you.

[10:42] So we can point to some things as it being a valid sign or a marker, but other things just don't have the power to convey that kind of information.

[10:55] So a marriage certificate cannot convey what the marriage is like. It doesn't contain that kind of information. So what does that mean in terms of the gospel?

[11:06] Well, it means that you could know the gospel really, really well. You could know the gospel exceptionally well, but I cannot tell from your knowledge of the gospel whether or not you tell it to others.

[11:20] I can't... It would seem that that would be the logical conclusion that if you know it well and you're convinced of it, that you would then tell it to others, that that would make sense, but I want to point out that that is an assumption to make that kind of leap, that because you know it well, therefore you tell it well.

[11:43] So when we think of message and method, what I'm driving at here is what are the identifiers of the message and the method being together rather than the certificate and the marriage, though pointing to the same thing, they do not point to the same thing in the same way.

[12:03] So we have to detail the message of the gospel. And this is what it says in John 3, 16 and 17, where I would like your attention to be for a moment. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

[12:23] For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. So I want you to notice what Jesus is saying and why he's saying it in the way that he is.

[12:38] He begins with a positive statement followed then by a reverse of that statement. In other words, this is why God sent his son into the world and this is why God, this is not the reason why God sent his son into the world.

[12:54] He says in verse 16, which is the clarifying verse, God sent his son into the world because he loves the world, but he did not send his son into the world, verse 17, to condemn the world.

[13:06] This is why I did it and this is not the reason I did it. In other words, the way God causes us to arrive at clarity is by saying the same thing but in different ways.

[13:18] So we get to understand absolutely clearly why God sent his son into the world. We arrive at clarity through the positive statement and the negative statement.

[13:30] Another example would be God is good, God is not evil. In other words, just in case there's someone out there that thinks that God could be both, you need both statements to clarify that you don't mean both.

[13:46] So by saying God is good and following it up with God is not bad, you are clarifying what you're getting at, what you mean.

[13:57] And that's what is happening here in verses 16 and 17. God sent his son into the world because he loved the world and God did not send his son into the world to condemn it.

[14:09] Be clear about that. God sent his son out of love, not out of the reason to condemn you when he came. And that's how God causes us to arrive at clarity by saying it from both sides.

[14:25] He then goes on with other clarifying statements and that is how people react to the light that comes into the world and how people love darkness rather than light in case their deeds be exposed.

[14:41] An example of unrepentance or when you're faced with the light and then you don't repent in the light. I've used this before.

[14:52] Imagine you're cuddling something in the dark and it feels just cuddly and it's lovely. It's furry. It's moving. You're not frightened.

[15:02] It's just wonderful. And then someone comes along and they turn the light on and you begin to realize that it's just this tarantula. Right?

[15:15] Unrepentance would be turn the light back off. Right? Just turn the light off. And when you proclaim the message of the gospel adding to the world you're shining light into those situations and when people see in the light the darkness what the things that they're holding on to they can either do two things.

[15:40] Get it away from me or turn the light back off. And you'd be surprised or perhaps not surprised how many people if you say to them if you put it in that way to them that they go I'm not really I guess I am well I'm not and they don't know what to say because they recognize that the illustration is apt.

[16:01] That some people don't want to face the things that they know to be true. And that's what John is getting at here. It's not God who condemns us but rather we're condemned already and the way to see that we're condemned already is just by having the light of the gospel to shine into our lives to have the light of the gospel shine into our situation that suddenly we see in the light what we're like before God.

[16:33] But before that we don't see it because we don't see the things that we're holding on to is wrong. They're nice they're cuddly they give me comfort they give me pleasure they give me all of those things and therefore how can it be bad?

[16:48] How can something which makes me happy be bad? It just gives me all this comfort. And so whenever you're challenging someone with an issue of unrepentance you don't have to you don't have to point at their sin in fact I would advise you don't point at their sin but rather just shine the light and that might be you know stealing is wrong.

[17:14] Okay? They can work out for themselves whether or not where they are at the end of that kind of statement. You know living together before you're married is wrong.

[17:26] You can decide for yourself okay as you just say what the Bible says you are proclaiming light in a dark place and suddenly that's where I am. What do I do with that now?

[17:40] So light bearers are in many ways like fire starters. You don't you don't you don't you don't mean to do it but it's what happens when you shine light into the darkness everything gets exposed.

[17:57] And so what you have at the end of the day is a fully clothed gospel. You don't have a partly clothed gospel. You have a fully clothed gospel. I'm guessing that when you present yourself to someone okay out in the street or wherever it is you do it fully clothed.

[18:17] Okay you you want to and this is not just because you know you want to you want to present yourself in a way where they know all of you.

[18:27] If you're presenting yourself to you it's a fully clothed I don't mean just fully clothed clothes though that's the case as well. But you hold nothing back if you want the person to know you.

[18:39] And of course certain relationships some people will know you better than others. They even know the things that you don't want to be known. Okay the things that you think you can get away from people with knowing in a close relationship it's only a matter of time before those things that you have gone so long in hiding that you can no longer hide anymore.

[19:03] Relationship does that. Okay you get married and for the first year you're still feeling one another out. Year two something why am I noticing this now?

[19:18] Okay year three really right and that's the very definition of light within a relationship. More and more things come out and of course if they come out in the context of love for one another you're able to deal with them but that's the way the gospel works.

[19:36] God so loved the world that he shines light onto it and lots of stuff comes up to the surface. You know nobody likes that bit but it has to happen because you cannot deal with anything you cannot deal with anything by dealing with the last problem.

[19:57] Okay you have to deal with all of them you have to do you have to repent of all of it no excuses no no technicalities and so the gospel is fully clothed we we tell of a Christ whose peers fare transgressions who came to seek and to save the loss who came to serve and not to be served we tell of a gospel of God who loved the world so much that yes he shines light but he did so in order that you get out of the darkness that he gave his son to call you out of the darkness to bring you out that through Jesus Christ we have the forgiveness of sins and that means that we are truly forgiven often when people struggle with the forgiveness of sins Christians who struggle with the forgiveness of sins okay it's not the sin in the past which is causing them the problem you know that big sin that you just cannot get yourself over that's not the issue it's the sin that you're committing today which is not believing that you have been forgiven for that sin okay it's not the sin in the past which is the problem it's the sin that you're committing right now which is not believing that God has actually forgiven you for that sin and this is getting close to a fully clothed gospel that

[21:17] Jesus Christ was delivered over that he gave himself up to death on the cross that God demonstrates his love for us while we don't love him at a time that we don't love him God is loving us when we are not loving him that God sent his son Jesus while we were still sinners that God in Christ Jesus was reconciling us to him that he was reconciling us to him that God in Christ Jesus was exchanging the righteousness of Christ for our sinfulness on the cross that's what we mean is we tell this message that Jesus Christ rose from the grave he's not still dead that Jesus Christ has redeemed us from all wickedness which means that we are to have a proper understanding of conversion and I think that's the language that we've lost we speak about Christians being believers rather than being converted we have gone through a conversion it's not that we just believe something different we have been converted and perhaps what needs to be restored in the church today is a proper understanding of conversion what does it actually mean to identify a converted person so that I can identify if I am converted now that's not to cast doubt on you but it is to draw your attention to the seriousness of what

[22:52] Christ has done that Christ dies so that we may live for righteousness sake that by his wounds we have been healed in other words the gospel expects us or rather the New Testament expects us to understand the details of the message so that we can understand the implications of the message so that we can understand the applications of the message as I said to the crew class this morning what parts of the Bible that you can do can you do that you don't know of course it's a bit of a trick question but it's to drive home the very important point that I cannot live the application of the gospel or any other part of scripture if I don't know it I can't live like God wants me to if I don't know how God wants me to live I can't believe what God wants me to believe if I only stick to a certain portion of the

[23:53] Bible and I leave out the rest I'm shortening my own witness I am not living a fully applied gospel and that there is a bit of an issue is a bit of a big issue the gospel is not being lived out in its fullness we are living out only the pits that we know and perhaps even less than that we are living out only the bits that we believe that we know so we're living as it were a reduced gospel partly because we have not understood the true meaning of loyalty to Christ the difference between having my views and coming under authority so it's not that Christians don't know the gospel but sometimes Christians don't know the implications of the gospel they're quite surprised when it's pointed out to them what believing that means this you're telling me that if

[24:56] I'm converted I can no longer do that yes that's what it means so the the very application of the gospel is part of the gospel message itself how it needs to be lived out what it means to be lived out in the words of Paul you as Christians and I as a Christian and to work out my salvation your salvation in fear and trembling that we're to work at our salvation in obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ that's what we are meant to do that is getting close to the definition of what it means to understand that you are converted and what a converted person looks like it is someone who works out there for salvation in fear and trembling in obedience to God and then of course you understand that the message includes three tenses of salvation you have been saved which gives you assurance you are being saved which is an indication a wonderful promise that God is still working in your life and if you've been a Christian for longer than you have been a non-Christian you have the wonderful assurance that that more good has been poured into your life than bad okay much more good has been poured into your life than bad and much more bad is coming out of your life over time because the present tense of the gospel is that you're being made to be like

[26:24] Christ and and none of us should be surprised that it seems to be taking a long time because we are we're so far away from being like Christ none of us should none of us should be like kids in the back of a car going are we there yet okay are we not there yet and and sometimes we should when you understand the gospel when you understand the gospel properly you though you are kind of shocked by how sinful a Christian can be when you when you think about what sin is you're then not so shocked that a Christian could actually do that and the reason we need to stay close and clean to God is because as I said concerning Hosea sin isn't just wrong it hurts the whole point of Hosea being given the ministry that he was given to Mary Gomer was to learn the letter to feel what God felt concerning sin this is painful this really really hurts now God has his ways and he has his means of of bringing all things to the position that he wants them and sometimes it's through that kind of of pain so we are meant to understand the present tense of the gospel then of course just in case any of us are presumptuous you will be saved what why is salvation spoken of in three tenses well because there's always one person who thinks I'm saved there is a presumption where if you live your life long enough and it looks like an unbelievers way of living then don't be surprised at the end of that that you are in fact unbeliever that you're not actually converted but then at the same time I want to extol God's grace and that is that

[28:17] God's grace is not based on man's merit ever and this means that the the a person can be converted a long time ago and then live a long time not following the Lord Jesus Christ and then still be brought back right because that's grace that annoys us because we've done right where were they when I was opening the doors of the church six o'clock in the morning or let or closing them at nine o'clock at night where were they where were they when we had to serve out on the cold streets where were they when we had to serve in in the busy ministries within the church okay I can understand how we we can get frustrated at people coming in it the last day and enjoying all the grace that we do in fact Jesus even told a parable about it okay but that's grace and you can't do anything about it you just cannot do anything about that because if we truly believe in grace then who are we to go and say you've got to do this that and the other to be saved now of course there are indicators of salvation the way you speak the way you live the way you worship the way okay devote all of those come out but the prodigal son remember was doing none of those things away from the father okay it's not the length of time you have been doing them but it's it's not okay it's not how you start but it's how you finish it's how do you finish in

[29:49] Christ Jesus grace okay God's grace is supremely powerful but it is so powerful that it can make the Christian love it and hate it at the same time okay that's right because sometimes we want people to get what they deserve right at those lawyers in our heart go boy have I got a wrong case against you right and we're filing our lawsuit why God is pouring out his his grace and this is to remind us that sin is the cause not the way God deals with sin okay sin is the is the is the awful thing not grace that's the detailing the message so now we have to detail the method and this is the shorter part because it's hopefully the easier part and that is in order to understand the method that we are to do it's fairly straightforward Christians are to be like post men and women we're simply to deliver what God has already delivered we're not to alter we're not to change we simply say what God says the role of a Bible teacher is to take the word of God and say the word of

[31:10] God drawing out its implications drawing out its applications but at the end of the day the the Bible teacher is not saying anything different than what the word of God actually says now of course not everyone will see the implications or the applications and they're surprised by certain things because they've either read over or read quickly or not read at all but it shouldn't be surprising that we all have the same Bibles we have the same revelation given to every single one of us okay now as I said God has given pastor teachers to the church but at the end of the day he's given the Bible to all of Christians we all have the same truth before us what does this mean well when we think of direction what direction should a Christian go in or what truth should a Christian believe or what is life we shouldn't speak about that in terms as guidance but we should speak of it in terms as a person direction through life is a person truth is not an abstract quality truth is a person and life is a person Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life when we speak about truth we're speaking about a person when we say we're doing what is true we're doing something that Jesus would agree with the truth when we speak the truth to others when we say that we're loving God then we we do and we do it in the truth we're really loving Jesus at the same time I recently wrote a post where I was quoting again C.S. Lewis from the great divorce and I pointed out in that how the man who seeks pity as an adult which he used to do as a child he goes up into the room as a child knowing that sooner or later one of his sisters would give in feeling sorry for him up there and so he uses her pity to get her on board even though he's the one in the wrong the lesson that comes out of this would be like me telling my son listen when you get married you never ever ever ever say sorry to your wife unless you were absolutely wrong you don't say sorry to smooth things over okay because that undervalues what sorry actually is and that would be a denial of the truth that would be a denial of the person of Jesus okay but the temptation is of course we think of truth or perhaps smoothing over as though we're not dealing with Jesus we are always dealing with Jesus the truth is Jesus Jesus says I am the truth so when we're dealing with truth we're dealing with the person of God and so it's tempting isn't it to think well we can we can navigate our way through by redefining these things we can because they are a person guidance through life is a person it's not it's not about trying to find your way it's about following a person it's not about arriving at particular conclusions that you you need is though okay some parts of God's will you include desires opportunities and abilities and of course if those three things line up then it's normally a good indication that that's the way you're to make your way through life but in terms of the general direction of a

[34:43] Christian it's fairly simple you follow Jesus you do what Jesus did and that's the definition of a follower that's the identity of a converted person at least you know yourself that you belong to Jesus because you find yourselves doing these things after Jesus Jesus also said that if you're not for him you're against him and when you put that alongside I am the way the truth and the life it brings in a or it highlights another myth that neutrality is possible you know we tend to think that we can live in the world and neutrality is possible I'm not going to take a side I'm going to be neutral Paul even says to the Corinthian church to the women that even what you wear is not neutral your clothes say something about what type of woman you are how you do your hair the type of earrings you pull now he's not having a go at the way they're dressing he's simply indicating that it's not neutral okay music's not neutral books are not neutral neutrality is a myth invented for people not to make up their mind and Jesus says you're either for me or you're against me the most it's a very uncomfortable statement because Jesus is forcing us by those words into a position where do we stand do we stand with him or do we stand against him so when we think about the message of the method of the gospel we cannot say things just to get by just to smooth things over it has to be the truth because we're dealing with Jesus we have to take a position because

[36:32] Jesus says neutrality is impossible you're either for me or against me that you can't be anywhere else other than that you're either on the narrow road or the broad road there's there's not a third option there as if there was a middle lane and so the message and the method are perfectly consistent consistent because the method is consistent with the truth and the truth is a person we're following Jesus Jesus explains in John 3 16 and 17 this is why God sent his son to do this he did not send his son to do that he's arriving at clarity okay there's no neutrality here concerning the direction a person's life should take it's not possible to say well I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna be somewhere in the middle I've not really made my mind up no you're either with Jesus or you're not so the method is simply demonstrating that you follow Jesus the message is what it means to follow Jesus the method is the demonstration that you're doing it in everything truth telling direction through life life itself your understanding of life itself all have to do with the person of Jesus we recognize that when God speaks creation happens and we should also recognize that when you speak creation happens people come to faith when you speak not because of you or your words but because you speak God's words to them faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God that's the method saying what God says truthfully clearly without error now as we speak God's words and people come to faith this is what happens to them they are given a sense in which they see things that they could never ever see with all their other senses they arrive at a position that all of their other senses up to that point could never bring them to not their natural sight and their natural hearing their their smell their touch none of those senses could arrive them at who Jesus Christ is but the word of God introduces a new sense into a person and that new sense is faith we see by faith we understand by faith and when the mind understands the mind can truly see as I said before we often use the words interchangeably by saying I can't see what you're saying for actually I don't really understand what you mean seeing seeing not seeing is the equivalent to not understanding but faith is the introduction of a new sense by which we see the things of God so people are no longer relying on their natural senses to understand the message they have been given a new sense through the method of simply speaking the word of God to them so here's the exhortation as we close if we live in a world where people generally want to know the truth and the truth sets them free and they kind of know that then it's obvious that we should take them to the truth of Jesus Christ who is the truth we should proclaim the gospel but it seems according to Romans 1 and other passages that we don't actually live in that type of world the type of world where we actually live in is where people want to define truth for themselves and they want to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness but God has given us a means a method to overcome that what do you do in a world where you can't do anything well you tell them the gospel because the gospel introduces something new the gospel is not dealing with what you already have it's the introduction of something new that may makes all the difference the word of God produces faith in a believer's life in a person's life enabling them to see things that they did not see before and therefore enabling them to repent and believe it's introducing something new and that's how you are to think about the message in the method you're introducing something new into a person's life so Christians recognize that these are grace gifts from God but we recognize them after a long time after a long time after a long time after a long time we give thanks to God for them and so we shouldn't forget how we got them and therefore we shouldn't forget how other people are going to get them simply by making known Christ by proclaiming the gospel by going and telling just like God calls us to so with the words that Paul speaks to Galatians I finish with this in the church of Galatians I finish with this in the church in the church of Galatia they have come to believe a false gospel and you might just ask how could something like that happen well the dangers of believing a false gospel is that you proclaim a false gospel and the dangers of proclaiming a false gospel is that you proclaim a false method of salvation faith plus works as what happens in the Galatian church so it's not too long before you're all entangled with falsities all the way down the line and you have to sort it out but you might want to stop and ask yourself the question how can genuine believers who are saved by the genuine gospel end up somewhere down the line believing a false gospel how does something like that happen and why does it happen well it is because new things are introduced okay that are inconsistent with the gospel but that's not checked it's added on we're meant to understand that the gospel converts we're meant to understand that a Christian is a converted person and we're meant to understand that we are to recognize the true gospel Paul calls the church at Galatia a foolish Galatians who's deceived you in other words they should have been able to tell the difference between the false gospel which the true gospel which brought them to faith and the true gospel which brought them to faith and the false gospel which they are now hearing now it's easy to go out into the world relatively easy and to tell the gospel to an absolute stranger for the first time okay it's easy to tell the gospel the first time to almost anyone it's almost it's slightly easy to tell them a second time and possibly a third time it is much much harder however to defend the truth of the gospel amongst God's people as Galatians as Galatians points out that's difficult because now you're dealing with people who are doing something else with the gospel whereas before you're dealing with people who have never heard it and so how do we arrive at clarity in the same way we began with clarity well the role of an elder Titus says is to teach and defend it's not enough simply to teach the truth you have to defend the truth it's simply not enough to say it's simply not enough to say it's simply not enough to say it's simply not enough to say it in one way you have to say it the same thing in another way in order to arrive at the truth it's not enough simply to say for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever should believe in him will not perish but have eternal life you also have to say that God did not send his son into the world to condemn it just in case anybody believes that that's a fair point to make the challenge the challenge then is this in a world where there are lots of views where there are lots of beliefs are you convinced that the gospel introduces something new are you convinced as you ought to be that the gospel actually has something to give the unbeliever that the unbeliever needs in order to believe in God the unbeliever cannot arrive at faith in God in any other way other than receiving the word which produces faith there is no other way there's no other method that a person can come to faith in God unless they hear the thing which produces faith in them and as you speak the word of God to whoever it is who does not yet believe you are sowing that seed you are sowing the word of God which produces faith you are introducing something new and you leave the rest to God when we go out into the world and we say Jesus is Lord we are saying that they're not and remember this that the early

[45:57] Christians were persecuted not because they said Jesus was Lord but rather because they said Jesus is Lord the implication was Caesar isn't okay that's that's clarity it's not by saying Jesus is Lord sometimes we're afraid to say and you're not but that's the implication that's the detailed of the message amen you