That's right. And one of the things we're going to learn throughout this class is some of the things you were saying. Humility, remaining calm if you will, trusting the Lord, being humble. Those are all things that we can do as we imitate Christ in the gospel. So the gospel should have those effects. The gospel should be impacting our life every day. When we're confronted with sin, the gospel should be in our minds as we fight temptation. We're used to thinking about the gospel in the context of evangelism, of course. Whenever I preach, I have the intention or the desire to have the gospel somewhere in the sermon so that if an unbeliever, which we know there's always unbelievers in our midst, if they are to hear that sermon, that they will have some understanding of the gospel to one degree or another. When we sing songs of praise, most of the songs that we sing are specifically focused on some aspect of the gospel, most often forgiveness, of course, the sacrifice of Christ. When you hear someone say, we need to proclaim the gospel, we typically think about that in the context of evangelism. Think about this, in Hebrews 5.12 we read this, For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God. And you have come to need milk and not solid food. So the author of Hebrews is kind of chastising these Hebrew believers, saying, you should have been more mature by now. But instead, you need to kind of get the basics of the Christian life. And I don't know about you, but I think growing up, I always kind of felt like that meant that they just needed the basics of the gospel. But when you're mature, you can kind of move on from the gospel. You can get more deeper theology, if you will. We might even look down sometimes on churches that focus so much on the gospel that we perceive they are cultivating immature believers because they're not teaching believers doctrines that go beyond the gospel. And so the result of a lot of these things is that we can develop a mindset that the gospel is something that unbelievers need, not believers. We certainly celebrate the truth that saves us, But in terms of its importance for our life, day to day, whether you've been saved 5 years or 50 years, the Gospel, for the most part, doesn't play that much of a role. But that mindset is not just misguided, it actually cripples us. The reason that we struggle to respond biblically to the challenges of life is the very reason of neglecting the gospel in our thinking. In fact, think about this simile. Living the Christian life apart from the gospel is like trying to drive without gas. How do you drive without gas? Well, you've got to get out of the driver's seat, you've got to push the car, and you know you're not going to go very far, and you're not going to get there very fast. The Gospel is the fuel of the Christian life. It powers the Christian life. But it's more than that. It's not just what fuels the Christian life. We could also say it's the blueprint for the Christian life. Not only is trying to live the Christian life apart from a conscious, growing understanding of the Gospel, like driving without gas. It's also like trying to drive without knowing how to drive and not knowing where you're going. And when you drive, when you don't know how to drive, and you don't know where you're going, you know what happens, right? Really high insurance premiums. Our oldest son recently got his license and so I had to sign up for car insurance for him. like good night that is expensive well yeah it's we'll see what happens when Chloe does that in a couple years well trying to live the Christian life without the gospel is like trying to drive without gas and like trying to drive without really knowing how to drive That's right. That's right. Yeah, you're exactly right about that, Sarah. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to define the gospel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, I don't know if anything I've said here resonates with you, but I certainly know it's true as I look at my own life. As I think about my walk with the Lord over the last 15, 20 years, whatever it's been. What prevented further growth, or what made struggles with sin more difficult, or what just challenged my sanctification, was the fact that I didn't really understand the gospel very well. In fact, I would say that even when I taught this class the first time, summer of 2020, so just a year and a half ago, that was a huge boost in my own personal walk with the Lord as I thought through these things to a depth that I hadn't really thought about them before. And also, in the counseling that I do, I see that this is true. As I minister to people who are having a variety of struggles, sometimes it's just pure suffering as a result of the challenges of life. Sometimes it's people who are wrestling with sin in their own life. The gospel is usually absent in their thinking. But the main reason we can say these things is because it's really what the Bible teaches. So just to show this to you, go in your Bible to 2 Peter chapter 1. I want you to see just one particular example of how the Bible helps us to realize that when we are not actively thinking about the gospel, our Christian life is hindered. 2 Peter chapter 1. And starting in verse 2, Peter writes, Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these things he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises, so that by them we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Now, for this very reason also, applying all diligence in your faith, supply moral excellence. And in your moral excellence, knowledge. And in your knowledge, self-control. And in your self-control, perseverance. And in your perseverance, godliness. And in your godliness, brotherly kindness. And in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these things are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now let me just pause there. You look at a list like this and you realize what Peter is saying is we need to be cultivating these virtues, these characteristics, these aspects of godliness in our life. And they should be building up on top of each other. And he says there in verse 8, if you are doing this, you're not going to be unfruitful. You will be useful in God's kingdom. So we can ask the question, well, but what if I'm not doing this? What's the explanation if this isn't true in my life? If I'm struggling to cultivate these attributes, these character traits, if I'm continually battling with sin that I've been battling for the last 15, 20, 40 years, what's the explanation of that? Well, Peter tells us in verse 9. He says, for he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. He's forgotten His purification from His former sins. Now that tells us that understanding and remembering the forgiveness of your sins is really what should fuel your growth in Christlikeness. Again, have you thought about that? Is that something that you have found to be true in your life? Is that something that is part of your thinking? Yeah, the reason that I struggle with this sin, the reason that I'm not overcoming my suffering, or that I'm being downtrodden more than perhaps I should be, is because I've forgotten my forgiveness. In our pursuit of holiness and our pursuit of godliness, we can get discouraged because of our failures, because we all fail, we all sin. We read 1 John where it says, if anyone sins, it's like, if? Yeah, we all sin. And it's easy, and again, I've thought this myself, I've heard it from many, many people. Man, I keep failing. What's the point? Why should I keep trying? God must be upset with me. If I can't keep Him happy, what's the point of even trying anymore? Well, we need to remember the forgiveness of sins that we have received. But we can even go back to the beginning of that passage and see, essentially, it's the same principle. He says in verse 3, seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness. So again, He's given us everything that we need. It's a universal statement. There's nothing left out there. He's given us absolutely everything for life and godliness. This is a key passage that teaches the sufficiency of Scripture for life and godliness. Scripture is not just sufficient for faith, what you need to come to know Christ, to be saved. It's also sufficient for your life. How to live your life to the glory of God. In every situation. Yeah, it doesn't teach you how to be a mechanic. It doesn't teach you how to do all the things that many of you do in your careers. But it teaches you how to do all of those things to the glory of God. Life and godliness. Well, how does it do that? How does that divine power come to us? He says it, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. It's through the knowledge of Christ. And the One who called us. The One who saved us. And it's knowing and growing in our knowledge of Christ that we grow. Again, it's like I mentioned in the prayer from 2 Corinthians 4. maybe 318, where it says that we are being transformed into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another as we behold Him face to face. So knowing Christ, having a growing understanding of Christ, and specifically in the gospel, the truths of the gospel, that will fuel our Christian life. So it really doesn't matter what sin you struggle with. It doesn't matter what suffering you're enduring, what is the reason for that suffering. It doesn't matter how broken your relationships are, or what those relationships are. The gospel is both the power to live the life that Christ would call you to live, and it's the blueprints. It's the guide. And so that's what we're going to be studying this quarter as we think about the gospel for life. I do have some goals that I just wanted to articulate. You have them there listed in your notes, I think. Even though we know the gospel generally well, again, for a variety of different reasons. One of the goals I have for this class is that your knowledge and understanding of the gospel will increase, or you might say deepen. It's one thing to be able to articulate kind of a four-point outline that we'll more or less walk through today of what the gospel is, but one of the keys to effective evangelism, effective witnessing, And certainly the key to understanding how the gospel plays into our life is to be able to see it from different angles, different facets, you know, like a diamond that as you turn it you just see different shimmers, different lighting, different things that you don't see from just one angle. And so as you go, as we go through this class, my hope is that you'll be better equipped to understand and articulate the gospel in your evangelism. A second goal that I have is that your love for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will increase. In Ephesians 3, when Paul prays at the end of the chapter there, he just gives a remarkable prayer, obviously inspired by the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit would increase our capacity, supernaturally, to understand the love of Christ. Naturally, we can intellectually understand the love of Christ in the sense of, you know, He gave Himself for us and that's a demonstration of His love. And we can make a statement like that and intellectually understand the logic of it or the concept of it. But in terms of what that means for me, that someone has loved me so much that they have actually died for me, that takes supernatural empowerment. In part, because it happened 2,000 years ago, and we're not seeing that person face-to-face now. But for other reasons as well, because of our sinfulness, we need that supernatural enabling. And so my hope is that this class will be one of the ways the Spirit uses to increase our love for the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. A third goal is that we would have a more biblical perspective on life and be able to respond to personal suffering and societal crises in a uniquely Christian way. We know our world is just going nuts, right? There's no doubt about that. It's not anything new. It's been going nuts for a while. But one of the things that we all struggle with is to respond to the craziness and the darkness and the blindness in a Christian way. We're going to be so tempted to respond just like the rest of the world. To follow the crowd of whatever media source we choose or social media friends that we have. And I think this class is helpful in thinking about responding to life in a uniquely Christian way. which is very unnatural. And then a final goal that I would mention is related to the fact that 2 Corinthians 5.20, in that passage, Paul refers to believers, to us, as ambassadors for Christ. Ambassadors for Christ. And specifically, ambassadors or agents of reconciliation. And so, this kind of overlaps with the idea of evangelism. the more that we grow in our understanding of the gospel, the more effective ambassadors we can be for Christ. Some of you have taken the biblical reconciliation class that I've taught. I'll be teaching that next quarter. And so there will be a lot of overlap, or at least some measure of overlap, conceptually, especially when it comes to the concepts of forgiveness. But this class is very different in many respects, and so my prayer is that it will just help us grow as those who, in understanding our reconciliation to God, are able to better reconcile to others and to make an appeal to others to be reconciled to God. Okay. No, I appreciate that. I don't know that I'll cover it directly, as specifically as that, but what I will say is I really believe that the more that we understand the gospel, the less fearful we are. Because part of our fear, yes, there is definitely the fear of man, in the sense of, what are they going to think of me? But part of the fear that we often have is, I just don't know what I'm going to say, or what if I get into a situation where I don't know what to say? Maybe I have my intro and my plan, my curriculum, but what if they throw me a curveball that I just don't know how to respond to? And so, as we grow in our understanding, we'll have more confidence in saying, yeah, I can step into this situation in the dependence and trust in the Lord, and also in the fear of the Lord, imitating my Savior. So, we'll see how that works out, but I'll try and keep that in mind. Any other questions about things that I've said here? Comments? So with that in mind, the focus of today's lesson is what is the gospel. I was actually originally thinking to take this lesson out of the class. Again, I taught it this way last year. And I only thought about taking this lesson out just because I'm like, okay, we have an understanding of the gospel and there's more that I wanted to add to the class. So I thought we'll just take this part out. Just as I thought about that, and as I had more interactions with people, I just realized, no, we constantly need to be reminded of what is the gospel. Because we can all grow in our ability to articulate the gospel. And the more we hear it, the more we grow in that way. So let's just walk through these notes. And this is a very systematic way of explaining the gospel. This is not the only way to explain the gospel, but these are kind of the basic elements of the gospel, which we'll come back to in various ways throughout the rest of the class. So when you think about the gospel, we can identify the core elements of the gospel as what Paul identified in 1 Corinthians 15. That's the chapter on the resurrection. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3-4, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried. and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. So Paul identifies basically three elements there. Number one, that Christ died for our sins. That is to say, he didn't die for his own sins. He died for our sins. There's a substitutionary purpose of his death. Second, Paul identifies that Christ was buried, which is to say that he actually died. There are many who rejected and continue to reject that. There's the swoon theory that he just kind of passed out and revived later on. But no, Paul says no, he was buried. And in fact he was, as we'll mention later, he was wrapped in clothes so he would have suffocated if he actually did pass out. And then very significantly he rose on the third day. And this is huge. You know, this is one of the elements that people typically forget that I have to draw out as I'm asking people, well, how would you explain the gospel? They say, oh, you know, he lived a perfect life, and, you know, he was God, he was born as a baby, and then he died for our sins. How do we know? How do we know that he died for our sins? How can we be confident that that actually was accomplished? Well, the answer is the resurrection. Right? Muhammad said a lot of things, and then he died. Joseph Smith said a lot of things, and then he died. All these religious leaders in the world have said a lot of things, and then they died. They all taught various things about the afterlife, and then they died. Well, how do you know that what they said was actually true? You don't, because no one's come back to talk about it, except for Jesus Christ. He demonstrated the power of God and the truth of his teaching. Oh, I see. Yeah. Sure, that's good. That's helpful. Yeah, I didn't include the subsequent verses, but that is exactly what Paul goes on to say. Validating the resurrection by virtue of his appearances. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. That's helpful. And I often say to people, the resurrection is one of the most well-attested facts of ancient history. And if we can't know that Christ rose from the dead, then we really can't know anything about ancient history at all. So there's different views on that. I don't personally believe that the scripture teaches that he went to hell. The scripture says that he went to preach to the spirits in prison, and that description is not a description of he went to hell to be punished, but rather to declare victory over death. And the punishment, what actually accomplishes our redemption is not that Christ was punished in any spiritual realm that would be considered hell, but that He received the wrath of God, He experienced the wrath of God as He hung on that cross. And so, yeah, we don't teach that Jesus went to hell in order to be punished for our sin. Yeah, I'm not sure what that is. Oh, the Apostle's Creed? Yeah. So we always want to test everything in the Scripture, right? Yeah. So when we think about those basic elements, I mean, even what Paul says there, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and the proof of those things, that's a pretty minimal explanation. There's a lot that isn't said there. And so it really raises a lot of questions that need to be answered if we're really going to understand even what is the significance of those particular truths. Questions like, Well, who is Christ? Who is this man that died? What is sin? It says that Christ died for our sin. What is sin? What do we have that needed to be dying for? How did Jesus die? Who killed Him? Why is the resurrection important? I've already mentioned that. And if Christ rose from the dead, where is he now? Is he, as the Mormons would teach about John the Apostle, is he just walking around on this earth somehow mysteriously? And then also, what's the benefit of responding or the danger of not responding to this news? There's just all kinds of questions that rise out of the basic elements of what Paul has listed there, and so we don't want to just say the gospel is Christ died for our sins, he was buried, rose again, and he validated that as he showed himself to others. There's more to be said, and so let's start with the reality of God. When we think about the good news, what is the gospel, the good news of salvation, it's good to start with God. Who is god? Well god is the creator as we know genesis 1 1 god created The heavens and the earth there in the beginning everything starts with god Psalm 24 1 says the lord the earth is the lord's and all it contains the world and those who dwell in it By virtue of the fact that god is creator. He owns everything And that means he has the right to do whatever he wants with his creation. Everything belongs to him Nothing is outside of of his rule and reign He is the Creator. In fact, when Paul is preaching in Acts 17, he says this, in verses 24-27, The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us." So Paul is affirming to these Greek folks there in Athens that God is the creator of all, that he gives life and breath to all created beings, and he specifically made mankind that mankind would seek for him. He's obviously summarizing a lot of truth there to those who don't know scripture, who don't know about the Garden of Eden and what happened with Adam and Eve. But he's identifying the reality that the reason that we are all religious people, as you looked at the gods of the Gentiles there, is because God made us to seek after Him. God is the Creator, and He is the one that we should worship. God is also the sovereign king. Sovereign king over all things. There are a number of passages that go to great lengths to identify God as a great king, and one of those is Psalm 104. Psalm 104, I think I preached this sometime in the last year or so. It's interesting how the psalmist talks about the Lord here. In some ways it's similar to the account of creation. It's like a poetic version of creation. In other ways it's similar to the end of Job, which is also listed there in your notes, where God talks about his rule over creation. But the way that the psalmist talks about the Lord here is as a ruling and reigning king, where his creation is at his service, at his beck and call. It is his throne room, it is his castle, if you will. For example, in Verse 1, at the end of verse 1, it talks about the clothing of the Lord. That He is clothed in splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as a cloak. So, what does the Lord wear? What are the royal garments of the King of the Universe? Light. He's not wearing any cotton blend or synthetic fibers. He's wearing light itself. And it says, He stretched out the heavens like the tent curtain. That He has such power that He can establish His domain. You know, kings come into power and they have whatever their domain is that's given to them, and they either lose it, lose portions of it, or expand it. But God Himself determines sovereignly without having to fight any battles the full extent of His domain. It says in verse 3, He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters. In other words, he establishes the earth as his throne room. And then it talks about his servants. He makes the clouds his chariot. He walks on the wings of the wind. He makes the winds his messengers, flaming fire his ministers. So the elements of creation, the clouds and the wind, are how he gets around. That's obviously very poetic, it's not literal. And then the wind and fire are his ministers, they do his bidding. He established the earth on its foundation, so it will never totter. And he goes on from there, talking about his sovereign, how he just decrees things, declares things, and they obey his commands. He goes on to talk about how he provides for the animals and how he orchestrated creation. So it's this remarkable passage that identifies the sovereign king that God is. Then there's, as I mentioned, the end of Job. You're familiar with the story of Job. He goes through his suffering, and then he complains to God about his suffering. You know, how can you do this to me? I've been righteous. I haven't sinned in any way that would deserve the suffering I've experienced. And I demand to have a conversation with the judge of the universe so I can prove my case. He wants to know why God has done this to him. And so finally, in chapter 38, the Lord finally comes to him and says, why don't you take a seat, Job? Let me say something here. And hopefully you're familiar with that text. If you're not, please go back and read it, where God just declares everything that He does as an active ruler of the universe. He didn't just wind up the universe and let it go and spin on its own. No, He is actively involved in His creation, sustaining, feeding, ruling every aspect of creation. It's like Jesus said, that no sparrow falls apart from the Lord, knowing about it, and how the Lord clothes the lilies of the field. That kind of detail is described there at length in Job 38 to 41. And it's after that that Job just says, you know, I shut my mouth, I repent in dust and ashes, who am I to ask or to challenge God? So He is the Sovereign King, He rules over all. And then we have these passages, a couple of my favorite passages in the Old Testament, Isaiah 55 verses 5 to 7, where it says, I am the Lord and there is no other. Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, that men may know from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness. causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does these things." God takes full responsibility for everything that takes place in the universe. The good, the bad, the ugly. He takes responsibility. Then just a couple or a chapter later in Isaiah 46, Remember this and be assured recall it to mind you transgressors Remember the former things long past for I am God and there is no other I am God and there is no one like me Declaring the end from the beginning and from the from ancient times things which have not been done Saying my purpose will stand my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. I calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken, truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it." So not only is he caring for his creation in the moment, but he has planned the end from the beginning. And he has declared to us what he wants us to know about the future. And he says, everything that I've said, both what I've revealed to you and what I haven't revealed to you, I will do it. I will accomplish it. because I am in control. God is the Creator. He is the Sovereign King. As part of His rule over His creation, He is the Lawgiver. He establishes rules, standards, morality by which you and I, His creation, must live. And that started in Genesis 2 in the garden when the Lord commanded man saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." Right? So the Lord gives Adam and Eve that very singular command. And you would think, man, it's one command. That's all you had to do. But in doing that, God cares for His creation. He cares for their good. He tells them how to live their best life now, if you will. How to have joy in life. And they don't keep that one command. And then, of course, we know throughout the rest of Scripture the law of Moses that he gives to the people of Israel. And even within the law of Moses, within God's revelation in the Old Testament, he establishes his character by which all people are to live. And then in Romans 2, we read this, for when Gentiles who do not have the law do instinctively the things of the law, These Gentiles, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them." In other words, not only has God given us an established law on paper, if you will, that we can look externally to ourselves, what is God's standard, but He's also given us a conscience, a knowledge of right and wrong. And we are to live according to our conscience. And so when people who have never read the Scripture, when they intuitively know murder is wrong, adultery is wrong, stealing is wrong, and all the rest, that is a demonstration that the Lawgiver, the Creator, the Sovereign King of the Universe, has put His Law in the heart of man. So no one is without excuse. So God is the Lawgiver. He's given His creation standards by which to live. And then finally, of course, there's so many things we could say, but for today, we can say that God is holy. He's the Creator, He's the Sovereign King, He's the Lawgiver, and He's holy. Holy means that He is separate. He is distinct from. He is transcendent above His creation. There is no one like God. We read that a little bit in Isaiah 45 and 46, that there is no other. But Exodus 15, 11 says, Who is like you among the gods, O Lord? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, working wonders? And then the two passages that are listed there are the two places where we see the holy, holy, holy statements. Isaiah 6-3, when Isaiah got a vision of the Lord seated on his throne and he heard the angels crying out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth, is full of His glory. And then in Revelation, John, in a similar scene of heaven, sees the living creatures, similar ones that Isaiah saw, and each one of them, he says, having six wings full of eyes around and within. And day and night they do not cease to say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come. God is transcendent in holiness. He is distinct apart from His creation. He is not like us. We are like Him in that we've been made in His image. We are like Him in some ways to reflect His character and aspects of His being. And we are not like Him in so many ways. He is holy. And He calls His creation, those who are sinners, all of us, He calls us to holiness, to live a holy life. by obeying His commands and His standards. That's the way that God has set up the universe. He created all things. He is in sovereign control of all things. He's established His law of how we are to live. And He is holy. He demands holiness. He says, be perfect like your Heavenly Father is perfect. That's the reality in which we live. So that's God. What about us? Who are we? Well, we are created in God's image, right? We are made as God's vice-regents, if you will, or viceroys. Whenever I hear that word, I think about Star Wars. But it actually works. It means the right thing in terms of our relationship to God. We are His viceroys on the earth. We read this in Genesis 1, 26-27. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God made man in His own image, in the image of God He created him. Male and female He created. So, one of the ways in which we are created in the likeness of God is that, like God, we were made to rule, to reign over His creation, obviously within the specific domain that He has given us with the limitations that He has. And in order to accomplish that, He's given us a mind. to consider what is a wise way to rule. He's given us a will, the desire. He's given us various faculties. He's given us the aspect of relationality, that we are relational beings like God is relational within the Trinity. And so He's given us all of these facets of His own attributes and character so that we can fulfill His purpose that He has made us for, to rule over this creation. The problem, as we know, in Genesis 3 is that we rejected God's rule over us. And if you were Eve, or you were Adam, or if I were Adam, we would have made the exact same decision. So as much as we might lament over what they did and say, I wish God would have made me Adam, and then everything would have been fine. No, you and I would have done the exact same thing. We read about him probably quicker. We read in Genesis 3 how the serpent came and deceived Eve and convinced her that God was not good, that God did not have her best interest in mind, that she would be better off apart from God and doing things her own way. He caused her to question God's goodness in his character and even his own words. And so being deceived, she ate and then Adam took and he ate. And so that's what we consider to be sin. Sin is rebellion against God. Maybe you've heard that the word sin means to miss the mark. That is literally what the word sin means, but it's not as though we were at an archery range and we were pulling back the arrow, and aiming at the target, and just missed a little bit. The wind picked up, or we just aimed wrong, and somehow we missed the mark in that sin. That we were really trying to obey God, but oh, you didn't quite get it. That's not what it is at all. Sin is us being made by God, given everything we needed to hit that mark. Him teaching us and giving us the strength and training us, if you will, to hit that target. But then we turn around and we shoot God Himself. That's what sin is. It's us being hostile and rebellious against God. Choosing rather to destroy God and remove His rule from over us rather than to honor Him. In Acts 3, verse 14, during one of the sermons it says, I think this is Peter, "...but you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you. But put to death the Prince of Life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses." I like the ESV translation of that phrase, put to death the prince of life. It's verse 15. The ESV says, you killed the author of life. You killed the author of life. That's what we did in Adam and Eve, and frankly that is what we do whenever we sin. We are telling God, I wish you were dead, that you weren't ruler over my life. We'll talk about that later. It's called deicide, the murder of God. As a result of our hostility against God, humanity died. God was faithful to His promise. Romans 5.12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned. So, as Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, on from there, every human being dies. But we don't just physically die, we also died spiritually. That is to say, we lost our ability to respond to God rightly. All humanity is born in an active state of rebellion against God. So we don't need to reenact, if you will, the garden. Every time a kid is born, their first sin, they get condemned. No, we're all born under condemnation. Colossians 121 says about us, Although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds." Referring to believers who formally were apart from God, separated from God. And we had this disposition toward God that was defined by hostility. We hated God. We wanted nothing to do with God. And even though some of us might say, well, I wasn't actively hating God. I wasn't thinking about God and being like, oh, I hate him. We weren't walking around thinking those thoughts necessarily for most of us. But were anyone to come to us and say, hey, this is who God is. This is what God expects of you. We'd be like, no, I don't believe that. I don't want to follow that. I don't want to submit to that. That's hostility. And so Paul says that we demonstrated our hostility through evil deeds, that our life manifested the hostility that we have against God. Ephesians, Paul describes this in Ephesians 4 this way, referring to unbelievers, Gentiles. So this I say and affirm together with the Lord that you no longer walk just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind. So as I read through this, think about these descriptions of the unbeliever. This isn't the worst of the worst. This is all unbelievers of which we were before salvation. They walk in the futility of their mind, the emptiness, the purposelessness, the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. And they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. My hope is that for you, each one of us, as we sit here in this room, as we think about our life, that that cannot be further from the truth of a description of our lives today. But you don't have to go very far outside of these walls to see that that is the very description of unbelievers today. That they are darkened, they are callous, they are greedy to practice every kind of impurity. We see that in the world. That is who we were before Christ. That is what we've been saved out of. Or the ultimate description of unbelievers that Paul gives in Romans chapter 3, where he says, what then? Are we, that is Jews, are we better than they? Are Jews better than Gentiles? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. And then he gives this description of unbelievers, quoting from various places in the Old Testament. He says, There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless. There is none who does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. And underlying it all, there is no fear of God before their eyes. So both the words and the actions of unbelievers, again, which we were before Christ, represent violence and hostility toward God and others. This is the real nature of unbelievers. Again, we can look at our friendly neighbor and be like, man, they just don't seem that bad. They brought me cookies for Christmas or whatever. And praise God for His common grace that allows us to not be as wicked and evil as we can be. But this is the true nature of us all, apart from Christ. And so, because mankind rebelled against God, all are guilty and deserve God's wrath. We are guilty in that judicial sense of violating the law. Romans 2.5 says, But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Every time an unbeliever sins, they're adding to the list of reasons for the wrath of God. And one day, that door will open, and they will be overwhelmed for eternity by His wrath. In Colossians 3, Paul talks about sins that believers shouldn't be participating in. He says, it's because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. So all unbelievers, all humanity, apart from Christ, is under condemnation because of our wickedness, our hostility against God. Again, it doesn't matter how good you are on a relative scale, if your heart is bent against God, you are guilty and deserving of the wrath of God. We certainly, this is part of our being made in the image of God, we know how to make distinctions levels of evil. We even see this week with the parents of the shooter of high school, how they were charged with involuntary manslaughter versus voluntary manslaughter. We see levels of wickedness, levels of culpability, There's varying levels of punishment in our judicial system, and we would believe the same thing with God in the sense of, even though we're all guilty, there are some that are in many ways worse than others, right? Praise God that we're not all Hitler in this room, that we don't all have that bent. We all have the same sinful nature that Hitler had. We all have the same capacity, given the opportunity, if God's grace was not set on us. So while we can say, yeah, I'm not that bad, at the very same time we must say, I am just as deserving of the wrath of God as the most vile, wicked sinner. James 2.10 says, for whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. Sometimes I like to think about sin as purity, purity as a whiteboard. I had a 10th grade teacher that for whatever reason made me very concerned about having a perfect whiteboard. He was very intent on always having it perfectly clean after he was done with it. And if somehow God's judgment on us, if we were each a whiteboard, and God said, okay, in order for you to have a relationship with me, in order for you to enter into my presence, you have to have a perfectly white, pure whiteboard. Not one speck, not one stroke. It certainly can't be all written on or drawn on. has to be perfectly pure and white. Well, what James is saying here in James 2.10 is that even if you live your life and somehow you manage to keep your whiteboard extremely, extraordinarily clean, far above and beyond anyone else that has ever lived. But one day, you mess up. And there's just... There you go. I don't know if you all can see that. There's just the slightest speck. And you say, oh, God, but look at everything else. Ignore that little speck. God says, no, it's not perfect. Now, obviously, this isn't true of us, right? None of us has a pure whiteboard with just a little bit of speck on it. Our lives are, well, compared to this, they look like a blackboard. Right? And so we're all deserving of the wrath of God. And so there's nothing we can do. You know, we can't clean up, we can't be wiping down our lives, because with every wipe, all we're doing is we're spreading things around. You know, like trying to wipe it with a dirty rag. Romans 3.20 says, By the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. the very path that we would think makes us pure and holy, hey, if I can just obey these commands, that's the very thing that makes us dirty, because we realize how sinful we really are. And so that's the bad news. That this Creator, Sovereign, Holy God, who has given us His law, who has made us to be like Him, who has given us the capacity to know Him, to know what is right and wrong, to live according to His standards, He's made us, and we have rebelled against Him. And there's nothing that you or I can do to be right with Him. And God knows that that's true. He knows that there's nothing we could do. And so He stepped in to save us. That's where Christ comes in. Christ, of course, means Messiah. Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, was born. That's what we're celebrating this month. He is God in the flesh. John 1.1 says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And he goes on to identify the Word as being Jesus, the Messiah. So Jesus is not a man like you and I. He is not just the one man who somehow managed to keep his whiteboard clean. No, He is God Himself, who took a body upon Himself, and entered this world, and lived according to his own righteous character. In John 12, Jesus identifies himself, or excuse me, John identifies Jesus as the one that Isaiah saw in Isaiah chapter 6. I read a portion of Isaiah 6 earlier about how the creatures were saying, holy, holy, holy. And Isaiah describes Him who is sitting on the throne, and all of the glorious things that He saw there. And John says of Jesus in John 12, Isaiah is the one who saw Him. Let me just read that real quick to you, so you know the exact wording. John 12, verses 37 to 41. But though Jesus had performed many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet, which he said, Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this reason, John says, they could not believe. For Isaiah said again, He has blinded their eyes, and He has hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, and be converted. And I will heal them." Verse 41, these things Isaiah said because he saw His glory and spoke of Him. So if you remember Isaiah 6, once Isaiah sees these things and he says, I'm about to fall apart because I'm a sinful man, I live among sinful people. The angel comes and touches Isaiah's lips with charcoal from the altar, purifies him, and then the Lord says, who will I send? Who will go for us? And the Lord commissions Isaiah and says, I want you to preach to a people who aren't going to listen, because I'm going to harden their hearts. I'm sending you to preach, but I'm going to harden their hearts so that they don't listen. And John here says, this was Jesus who was sitting on that throne. So Jesus is God. He is a divine human being. He is the God-man. Someone said, God in a body. And he lived a perfect life. Hebrews 7, 6 says, For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners. Jesus never sinned. He perfectly obeyed the law of God. He did things he didn't even have to do, like baptism. Right? Baptism represented dying of your old life, representing that you're living for the Lord now. And Jesus came to John the baptizer and said, I want to be baptized. And John's like, you don't need to be baptized. And Jesus says, no, I need to fulfill righteousness. I need to obey God's standard and model righteousness. So he lived a perfect life. Never sinned. He never had anything that he had to pay for through death or condemnation. And then at the end of his life, as we know, he was betrayed by one of his closest friends, Judas. Judas sold him for some money. Judas was disappointed with the lack of success and the lack of monetary results that he was hoping for, apparently. And so as a result of Judas's betrayal, Jesus was arrested. He was falsely accused repeatedly through multiple illegal trials. He was tortured and beaten and flogged. And then he hung on the cross. And he died one of the most painful, cruel deaths that a human being can ever die. But he was not passive in his death. It wasn't like everything was going well and then somehow things got off target and he accidentally got into a situation he couldn't handle. No, he let it all happen. It was all purposed and planned before time began because he intended to pay the penalty for sinners. Another way to say that is His death, while unjust in human terms, was the accomplishment of the justice of God. Jesus put Himself in the position of a substitute. He had no reason to die otherwise. Theoretically, hypothetically, He would have lived forever. gave Himself up to take the death penalty that sinners deserve. Romans 5.6 says, For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Romans 5.8, For God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He took the punishment that you and I deserve upon Himself. You and I deserve nothing but the eternal wrath of God. We don't deserve the life, the breath, the heartbeats, the functioning bodies that we have right now. You and I all deserve to be in the grave already, a long time ago, and then to be receiving the wrath of God in hell. But Jesus died so that we would not receive the wrath of God. And then he was buried, again, demonstrating that he truly died. We read in Mark 14, 46, Joseph bought a linen cloth, took him down, took Jesus down from the cross, wrapped him in the linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb, which was hewn out in the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Again, if Jesus had simply fallen asleep, he would have suffocated from that. So there's no way that he could have lived through any of those things. But on the third day, Jesus fulfilled the promise that He had given to the disciples many times. He repeatedly told the disciples that He was going to be killed, but that He would rise again. And as Anne helpfully reminded us, it says in 1 Corinthians 15, He was buried, He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and then He appeared to Cephas, Peter, Then to the twelve, and after that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now." So, as Paul is writing 1 Corinthians, he's basically saying, hey, if you really want to be sure that Jesus rushed from the dead, there's some people, I can give you their names, you can go talk to them. They saw Jesus. It says in Acts 10.40 that God raised him up on the third day and granted that he become visible. God proved or demonstrated that He accepted the sacrifice of Christ by raising Him from the dead. There was no reason for Him to stay dead, unlike us who have to stay dead apart from Christ because we are continually receiving the wrath of God. There was no more wrath for Jesus to pay or to receive, and so He could be raised from the dead. And then he ascended into heaven, as we read at the beginning of Acts and the end of Matthew. And so now Jesus sits in heaven, commanding all people everywhere to repent. At the end of his sermon in Acts 17, Paul says, Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent. because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead." So there we get to the response. So we've talked about God, we've talked about man, we've talked about Christ, and now we see the response that is required to this good news. We don't just hear the good news and be like, okay, that's great. No, there's a specific response that's required. First response is to repent, as we saw there in Acts 17. Repent simply means to change your mind, to think differently. Whereas first you were hostile to God, now you believe in God. Where first you loved your sin, now you hate your sin. It's turning from sin toward God. 1 Thessalonians 1.9 says, For they themselves report about us what kind of reception we had with you, how you turned to God from idols. to serve the living and true God. Repentance that leads to salvation is not necessarily, not really a repentance of action. In other words, you don't need to clean up your life before you can be saved. Repentance refers to the mind, and it's only demonstrated that repentance was genuine when it works itself out in your life. I was fixing our dryer the other day, a couple weeks ago, and replaced a part. I'm like, great, it's fixed. Rachel runs it. No, it's not fixed. Take it all apart. Fix it. Great, it's fixed. No, it's not fixed. It took me a while, but I finally got it. The proof is in the pudding, right? But with repentance, it starts in the mind and it's genuineness. We're saved when we repent in the mind, but that genuineness works itself out always in the actions. We are to repent, we are to believe. That's part of the repentance aspect. The Gospel of John, it was written, John says, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. In that believing, you may have life in His name. Another aspect of our response should be confession. To acknowledge our sinfulness, to say the same thing about ourselves that God says about us. Proverbs 28, 6, He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We're also to confess, that is to agree with God that Jesus is Lord. That God raised Him from the dead. Romans 10.9-10, if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord. and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be safe. For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation." So repent, believe, confess. Those are the three responses that Scripture calls sinners to when they hear the Gospel. And the result, when God grants repentance to a sinner, When He gives them the gift of faith, what happens is they experience the forgiveness of God. Colossians 2, 13-14, When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us. which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." Coming back to the whiteboard, you can think about your sin against God as a written declaration of the debt that you owe to God. In ancient times, they would, just like we would, they would have an agreement when you take out a loan. Okay, here's who, here's the lender. Here's the person who's taking the money. Here are the various aspects of that agreement. And also included in that are here are the consequences if you don't pay that back. And what Paul is saying there in Colossians 2 is we had the certificate of debt that was against us. It was with God, showing how we owed Him. And it wasn't just this piece of paper. It was actually set against us. In the sense that the creditors were calling, they were knocking, they were ringing on the phone. And that debt was being called. It was hostile to us, he says. But what Christ has done is he's wiped it all away. Just completely erased that certificate of debt as if it never existed from God's perspective. Amen. That's right. Yeah. So we receive forgiveness of our sin. Not just our past sin, but all of our sin for our whole life. Say again. Bankruptcy? Yep. Yep. Yeah, with the exception that if I'm understanding what you're meaning, that because the debt has been paid, it's not bankruptcy, it's been paid. It's been fulfilled by Christ, right? Yeah, yeah. So we call this justification, where Christ was treated as if he had lived our life, and God treats us as if we had lived Christ's life. Justification, salvation, is not just us getting to that blank slate of Adam, if you will, that state of innocence, but rather God declaring us righteous. Not because we actually are righteous, in terms of our behavior and our thoughts, but because He sees us as righteous because when He looks at us, He looks at us as if we're clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We have to live like it? Yeah. Romans 5.1 says, Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness, speaking of Abraham. Not only was it for his sake only that it was written that it was credited to him, in other words, not just for Abraham's benefit, but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited as those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So when a person repents, believes, confesses, they experience forgiveness from God and God declares them righteous. righteous in His sight. And so, from then on, the fruit of repentance is a whole new life. Jesus calls us to this life in Luke 9, verse 23, when He says, If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. He said this before He died, obviously, knowing that He would model for us exactly what He was calling us to, a life of dying. And that's what we're going to talk about most of this class, is how to die like Christ. And time doesn't allow for me to go into a lot of depth at this very moment. But that's essentially what the Christian life is, a life of daily dying as we follow Christ. 2 Corinthians 5.15 says, "...he died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf." Alright, I'll end there. You can look up the verses. I think you have some more notes there. You can look up those passages to see how does Scripture describe the Christian life today, which we'll be talking about in the rest of this class. Let me pray.