of the true gospel. Consider the first category of people who just don't know any better, but they make statements about what's going to happen to them after they die, or what will happen to other people after they die. The world's full of these people. You've met them. I've met them. And it's a very works-oriented type of gospel. philosophy. It's like, well, you do a lot better in your life than a lot of the bad things, and you know, you wait and balance and you'll be fine. It's zero biblical informing here. They're just completely ignorant of what the Bible has to say. Another category would be of people who know what the Bible has to say, but for various reasons, they just We've got to go back a little bit. The third category, in my view, is people who are very sincere. They know what the Bible has to say, but they are sincerely wrong because they believe that they have to do some things to help in their salvation. They've got to be baptized in a certain way, or they have to do particular works, or on and on and on and on. The first category, which would be really partly also we are okay or living correctly, those two, is the one of those who are just grossly ignorant of what the Bible has to say. And I want to read you a statement from a public person. I'm going to use the names I feel like getting a lot of these propagation campaigns here, but they're wrong. They're insane. But anyway, I apologize for all the noise in there. One or two cycles ago in the presidential election, Michael Bloomberg was running. And here is what he said. He was very proud of what he did as New York's mayor. He got rid of a lot of the ability for people to smoke at all, anywhere in New York City. He was against, of all things, the size of the cylinders you could get from 7-Eleven. He was against the big golf size. You had to have smaller, because it was healthier to have smaller. That's implemented in New York City. You can't get a big golf. And he was very much an antique guy. So he was very proud of all of this. He says this. He had an interview with the New York Times. He says, I'm telling you. If there's a God, when I get to heaven, I'm not stopping to be interviewed. I'm heading straight in. I've earned my place in heaven. It's not even close. So, I mean, that's a pretty crass example of a grossly ignorant statement. He doesn't know his Bible at all for him to make a statement like that. Most of the time, when you hear examples of this, So and so led a life that was so perfect and so wonderful. I know that that guy is now with God. He's in heaven because of all the perfect things that he did in his life. It's very rare to have what we've experienced here. But if you hear it, you'll never forget it. People that are in that category, who are really ignorant of what God has to say, or his word, but they still make statements about how good they are, or about how good somebody else is, is very much like, and almost exactly like, old-timey pirates. And the pirates, from the start, and you're against the king, the king's enemy, whoever it is. They're the greatest subject. From the start, you're the king's enemy. And anything you do for the rest of your private life is just keeping up anger against the king. And it doesn't matter how good you are to the other pirates. You give them social services, and you take care of them, I couldn't believe, you know, such a big pirate you are. But you're still a pirate, and everything is against the king. And until you make yourself right with the king, you're worthy of being hanged. And that's the way to think about this. And until none of them works, you're just trash. The king doesn't want to hear about our good works, that we think are good works. Bloomberg falls in that category. Millions of people in America fall into that category as well. So that's the first big category. There's always a prep in this lesson at the beginning of the book. It takes care of two or three of these. You know, I'm okay. You know, I'm living correctly. So that falls into that. Another category would be those people who certainly know better. They know what the Bible has to say. And I know that they know what a biologist is saying. That's why I went to a big funeral yesterday. You know, I met a poet. He was a spiritual head of 1.4 million people. If you make a search of what he had to say, I did my best, and I looked it up. What does Pope Francis say about the gospel? He uses it all the time. He uses the word prolifically. But he has to do with social justice issues, he has to do with economic issues, he has to do with environmental issues. But he never mentions And why does he do this? I mean, I know that he knows what the Bible says. He was a Jesuit, and he was trained on it, and he studied the scriptures. That system in the House of Commons, we know that. We've talked about it before. If salvation does not require a priesthood functioned by another emphasizing our faith and repenting personally. It's just a house of cards. It all collapses. So they don't emphasize that. They don't even speak like that. Yesterday, there were interviews of various bishops and priests. The word gospel is just all over the place. None of them described it. What they did say was, he lives the gospel. And I didn't know how to do that. But he never spoke the gospel, though. He never described what Jesus said about the gospel to the clarity that scripture gives. It just never did. So he knew better than she would. I mean, all of those people in positions of authority like that. John Calvin said that understanding the gospel, and he used the word justification, they're almost synonymous with it. If we dare justify before God, it's because we understand the gospel and we trust Christ. John Calvin said that that is the hinge of salvation. If you open a door and there's no hinge, it's going to fall down. So if you just ignore that edge, you have nothing. It's just a waste of time. I went across on the 111 to go down that pathway, but there's an early famous one that has gone down that pathway. More I read about him, the paperyer I get, because he has a big platform. Some of you have read his work. Don't waste time. M.T. Wright is his name. He got a lot of notoriety and good publicity about him. About 15 years ago, there was a bunch of controversy over the Jesus Seminar. Supposedly biblical experts got together and said, we're going to have a look at everything that happened in the New Testament. Those things that were convinced Jesus had nothing to do with throughout. There's a lot of, almost all of them. NC9. certainly did happen. Jesus physically, bodily, was resurrected on the third day. And so evangelicals and people who read the Bible said, great, you're on our side. Yes, of course he went. Now he's got a whole bunch of other ideas. If you go to M.T. Wright and you try to pin him down on what the gospel is, you're going to end up just like looking at what the Pope has to say about it. They're very similar fools. M.T. Wright takes the view that the gospel is the kingdom of God. Well, is that good news? It wasn't good news to the demons. I mean, they knew that the revelation of the kingdom of God was the worst thing they were going to hear. For non-believing human beings, if somebody says, here's the good news of the gospel, Jesus is king, the kingdom of God is here, and that's all that you say, willfully cutting apart the gospel, and he refuses to get down to really what the Bible has to say about it. In fact, he'll say that when he was a much younger person, like in his teens, and he'll laugh about it and say, I foolishly believed what the gospel was, that we would exercise faith in Christ. Don't read his stuff, but he has great influence though, he still does, in some theological sources. So he's in the category of people that know better, but for whatever reason he chooses to He's very committed. If you listen to him on YouTube, he's very personable. He's like everybody's pal. Just a regular guy. He's brilliant. He's been gifted by God with great brilliance. And he argues well and persuasively. I think he's just a proud person. He thinks he's come up with some ideas that nobody else has ever seen. He takes the view that the Apostle Paul has been, for the last 2,000 years, entirely misinformed. And he alone, N.T. Wright, has come up with the answer. And that alone should be a red flag for anybody that's listening to this whole system. Everybody else had it wrong, but I got it right. Excuse my language. But an interesting example of that is actually Now it's not a big group of main people who probably are the regular church leaders. They're faithful people. They would be good citizens. They would be very close shoulders with it. But they have some issues in understanding really what the gospel is all about. There was a phrase that came up, but these would be people who are sincere in their beliefs and their There are people who take the view that they're okay, that first view. And the phrase was invented a decade or so ago. It was moralistic, therapeutic, vehement. You go to church, and I may have a few quirks and issues, but I go to church, I'm basically okay. And when I go to church, Nothing from the pulpit is going to say anything against me. I'm just going to hear things that are encouraging about the way that I am already. And I feel that when I leave church. So it's sort of a therapy session for me to go to church. I go to church and I feel better. It's a therapeutic process. That's not the gospel. We should be challenged by God's work and we are. We don't come here for spiritual therapy telling us that we're okay. And you're wrong here. That's not how the gospel works. The other examples of that would be people who are sincerely wrong would be people who go to church with the idea that the act of going to church in and of itself somehow endears us to God. And that's the form of the Lord. We should go to church because we want to worship the Lord, not because we want to get something from God. We are, as human beings, we're transactional, and then we are. Whatever we do, we want to get something out of our actions. We have jobs, we have pay for the work that we do. There's a transaction that occurs. And it's very tempting to make that transaction with God. Nothing that we as humans, prior to our salvation or after our salvation, will ever make God owe us anything. Salvation is pure grace. It's a mercy of God. It's given to us freely. We don't earn it or deserve it. And after our salvation, no matter how wonderfully we may live our lives, He still doesn't know us. There's not a transaction that occurs there. We can lead our lives in a way that's pleasing to the Lord because we know that it pleases Him. And we should be driven to do that, but not because we expect great blessings. He may never give us any blessings in our life. There are plenty of examples of good, Only people for centuries who lived lives that were redeemed lives, but their original lives, and then they died. So, being a Christian does not guarantee somebody a wonderful life. People will believe in a gospel that, as long as you're sincere in whatever you believe, the Lord will accept that. If you're a sincere believer in Jesus, that's acceptable. If you sincerely believe in Christianity, that's okay, as long as you're sincere about it and whatever other evidence might be. I don't know people who probably do. Live up to the life that God has given you, and that's acceptable to the Lord. If God is killing us, that's acceptable to the Lord. about how I can preach them for people, even for people that I know are saved individuals. I know that certainly exemplify what Christian life can be. Sometimes we call prayer to non-Christian ways of thinking. Here's an example. He's one of my neighbors, so I get a lot of him, and I read his diaries, and he's usually very good, and he's phenomenal. I'm not going to mention his name, but he's just as phenomenal as I am. It's not that hard. But anyway, he wrote an article which had this Tom went back to Aristotle. He said, we should study Aristotle, who was a pre-Christian, a pagan Greek philosopher. And to understand what virtue is and how we should act virtuously, we study Aristotle. And then we can act virtuously as Christians. thinking of this, and at the end of an article, there's all these comments, great article, I've been wondering how in the world I can live a holy life, how I can be charitable to other people, how I can be brave, and how I can be generous, and all these Christian virtues, and I never really understood, but I'm glad you brought Aristotle into this. It's steaming as I read this, because it's turned something that should be just a secondary thing in our Christian lives and follow directly from our salvation into our works. We are going back and studying the Old Greek. We knew nothing about Jesus or Jesus. So I did something that I haven't done in years. I actually responded to what was on there. I typed down and wrote my response to it. And that was the only negative response I got at all. It's interesting to study Aristotle, historically, more than what Aristotle had to say to people in the Christian community. But it's an error for us to take Aristotle and use his methods of thinking, as did Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s, and try to merge that into Christianity. And I say, you see what it did to Roman Catholicism, which is a warped religion. Why are we as Protestants going back and repeating the same errors, and using this 2,100-year-old Christian as our foundation for moral principles. And I quoted Ephesians 2.10. I said, there are works prepared ahead of time for us as Christians. As Christians, they just fall in that trap. If we are regenerate, and we've understood the doctrine, then we will be naturally loving and kind and charitable. Maybe not perfectly, but that's the source of our virtue, is our regenerate spirit. It's not Aristotle. That's about every five years, I respond to something like that. I don't mind again having that. OK. His personal evangelism. We have to be able to tell people clearly, no clouds on what is going on. What is the gospel? We should be able to tell people in our own words this, so we can summarize this. That there is one God. He's holy. He's righteous. He's perfect. He's loving to mankind. And for His own good purposes, He created humanity. Sinless. First, human examples chose to rebel against God. Fellowship with that perfect God was cut off. God, at his mercy, decided to restore fellowship by having a remedy of sin in himself. In a second person of eternity, Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins on the cross. He died. He was resurrected. He lived a perfect life. All of his perfection is given to us. Perfect righteousness. When God looks at us, he sees us as perfect people. When he looks at us, he sees no trace of sin. Sin has been extinguished. The penalty of sin for those in Christ has been paid. It is done. And because of that payment, we're able to have fellowship with God for all eternity. We will inhabit all eternity with him in glory, sinlessly beginning to worship him in perfection and doing those things that he calls us to do. and it's like an eyewitness Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel. But I looked up passages on NT like this Anglican scholar who just wrote, he speaks delicately about what he views as the simplicity of the gospel held by single believers. And he's very condescending, very, very arrogant when he's speaking about that. And when you look at the papers I have here about Catholic theology and what the gospel is, you're going to find I would remind you brothers He was raised on the third day, and according to the scriptures, he appeared to Cephas in the twelfth. We're not talking about other appearances, but the risen Lord made in various schools. That's Paul's gospel. There's nothing confusing. It is that Jesus died for the sins of his people. And to prove satisfaction of that, And it's no more complicated than that. But there are a lot of people in darkness about that in the world. We should. The purpose of this class is to have us be able to clearly, in our own words, be able to communicate less to people that we're against, or people that make silly, foolish comments like, well, you know, Bob's certainly going to have him because he lives such a great life. You know, what the Bible has to say about people who don't fit with heaven is that they're going because of Jesus, because of their condition. You can be flexible, you can be able to have a conversation. They should slip easily across whatever, whatever, whatever opportunity. It's not commonplace at all. Other paths exist, but I don't know. Running down, there is, with Peter 3.18, with Peter 3.24, Hebrews 9.28, Colossians 2.14, look at the Romans, and about 10 to your right. These pages are divisible, you use the phrase The Lord came to my mind. I had to look it up and make sure I had the right floor to describe it. He's super serious. He's super serious. I'm very happy about that. Anyway, and it is correct. He was condescending and arrogant and dealing by the majority of evangelicals, the Bible-believing Christians, who believe in Apodosis. He just dismisses us. And he preaches nonsense. here, but go through your Bibles. You can find out what the Gospel is. It's not a mystery. There's nothing hidden there. So you've got to think it through. Do you have any comments on this, possibly? I think I can clarify what I want to say. But throughout the Bible, there's a discussion in the New Testament and the Old Testament I do think part of the issue might be is, you know, people from the church, because I'm referring to the thought of the gospel, but there's no personal discipleship going on. If I'm not talking to other Christians about my faith, how am I going to talk to non-Christians about my faith? So I don't know if there would be feel like there's any Yeah, I think that we're all guilty of that. I know that I am. I'd like more opportunities just to spend with people and talk about faith and our religion. And a lot of that is just my own potential, you know, to do that. But you're exactly right. We can talk with other Christians and not, not, and, and, not to admonish them, but I mean, I do. I do talk about my faith. Don't get me wrong. Is there an equator? What's the balance of that? Does that make sense? Because if I come on Sundays and I hear the word, I even may have my own personal sentiment, but I'm not even discussing it. I'm not talking about it. I'm not, you know, hey, I don't know what I'm trying to say. I know what I want to say, but it's not really coming out right. But should there be more? If a church wants to evangelize and the power feels like that's what they call the beauty, should they that people do know about. Does that make sense? Or do you know how to? I mean, I guess that's kind of what we're doing now. This is a class. It's not people really investing in each other's lives. And how am I going to invest in a non-Christian's life if I'm not being invested in or investing in a Christian's life? Well, I don't really know how to answer your question, but that is something we're doing to search out and find like-minded believers who want to be part of a group such as that. Yeah, I think there's an aspect there for me in getting that, is that as Christians, one of the reasons perhaps that we struggle talking to unbelievers about our faith is that we just struggle, period, talking about our faith. And one of the best ways to grow in talking about our faith is that fellowship that we have as Christians with each other. We can be scared of sharing the gospel with someone else if we're not sure how they're going to respond. Well, we shouldn't be afraid about that with other Christians. We should be able to have a good fellowship and communion together as a body of Christ over the shared hope that we have. And so I think there's an aspect that we can I'm going to say it this way, and I hope it makes sense what I'm saying, that the church can be a training ground for evangelism just to our building relationships with each other and being upfront and open about our growth in the faith, our questions, cares, concerns, all those things. That can be practiced in the evangelism world as well. And I think that's probably what you're getting at. Yeah, because I think of stories I hear of people coming out of churches with a false gospel. And normally, it's because someone took them to the Bible and really showed them what it meant, because they were not getting into the church. And I'm not saying that here at all. But I'm just saying that personal discipleship is what I think builds Christians to be able to go out to non-Christians. There's a correlation between discipleship and marriage. There's a very strong correlation between the influence. But we, all of us, we're all different people. We lead different lives. And you have directed our lives in such a way, you've put it into our pathway, people that we need to speak with. So these people may be up front, wanting to speak with us. Others, we may just have to be a little more bold and find out if there's a status. I would pray that each of us clearly understands what the good news is. We don't want to add anything to it. We don't want to subtract anything to it. But we are saved by grace alone. And it's not by anything that we do. It depends. You drive us to repentance. You cause us to exercise faith. And because of that, we have fellowship with you forever. Give us clear minds. Give us ballparks as we learn opportunities to share that knowledge. to pray for the rest of our morning for us because all aspects of that would be honored and glorified. Offering to our prayers, to our singing, to some of the words that you have read and preached to us that we would have years to hear. Thank you for that.