Well, we continue on in Romans. We'll be working through the first chapter all the way up until the end of November. And then, as I mentioned, some people will be diving into a Daniel 9 series for three weeks, November 30th, December 1st, or 7th, and then 14th, kind of looking at his prayer life and then seeing his prediction of the Messiah coming and second coming. But We'll finish through all of chapter one before the year closes out, looking at Romans. And we've walked through this introduction, this presentation of the gospel of God. He's been very clear. Paul has been clear that he has a driving passion to preach it. He's articulated the gospel. And now we come to these central verses. These are verses that are the thesis of this statement. And I entitled this, Not Ashamed. Now, there's certain connections, actions, decisions that we're proud of. And we tend to give no disclaimer to those, right? We say it straight, no excuse, no caveat, no other words about it. But there's so many things in life we feel the need to explain or alter just a bit. Take your pets, right? You might say, well, this is my dog, this is the family dog, but it's always been mean, ugly, and dumb, but it's ours, this is our dog. You have certain friends, right? Anyone have certain friends? Certain friends, you're like, yeah, they're friends with this person, they seem intelligent enough, they seem normal enough, but there's certain friends that you say, man, I've been friends with that person since elementary school, so I still hang out. They're a little different, but they're still my friend. How many times with family you say, that's my family, But you know you can't pick who you're born into, so you deal with the cards that you have, right? And then I put brothers or sister, because I only have one sister. And I say, just repeat the one about pets, all right? So it's, where it is. I didn't say which one. I have six brothers and one sister, so yeah. I'm not necessarily thinking of one individual at all. in that standpoint, but either way, all those are just an illustration, right, of how we will tweak the facts, right? We claim it, we own it to some extent, but we find a way to take something and add a caveat, add an addition to explain, because really, we're a little ashamed and wanna make sure people hear our pre-excuse. We want to make sure they're okay with something that we truly are ashamed of and not ashamed. I say all those, and I was thinking through an illustration beyond that in my life, and I was thinking my youngest son, Clayton, who hates for me to use him in an illustration, but if you're the son of a preacher, then you get stopped being used in illustration. This is when he was younger, much younger. He'd want me to let you know that. But Clayton, middle name is Reed. We always have a tie-in to some type of family connection. So last kid, we're like, we're gonna bring Heather's family name. Her family name is Reed. He has a bunch of cousins who he likes, whose last name is Reed. But when he was younger, and you know how you do that, right? As a parent, when you're trying to get someone's attention, I wouldn't say he was being disobedient, but maybe he was, you don't just say, hey, Clayton, we would go, Clayton Reed, right? You're getting his attention. Well, Clayton, when he was younger, took offense at that. He would always correct us. Not even belligerently. He would say, my name is Clayton Van Hoven. That's what he would say. And you know, when someone's a toddler, you don't reason with a toddler. Not unless you have a lot of spare time. You don't reason with a toddler. But what was very clear, and this was not a one-time thing, anytime we said, Clayton Reed, he would say, my name, my name is Clayton Van Hoven. Don't worry, he'll get over that pride at some point. At that point, he was bothered by the potential confusion that his last name may or may not be Van Hoven. He wanted us to know that he identified and was proud of the fact that he was a Van Hoven. He's not ashamed of his last name. He wanted it purely and boldly proclaimed. And that's coupled with the fact that he likes his cousins who are Reeves, but he wanted to be known as a Van Hoven. Paul, in these two verses, is going to make something crystal clear, and he wants them to understand that the gospel he is driven to preach, that he wants to preach, that he's under obligation to preach, would be a pure gospel, untainted by the constraints of society and culture, untouched by the perspective and judgments of his world, or any other world for that matter. It was a gospel with power that brings salvation through faith, revealing and imputing the righteousness of God. Paul is giving the thesis of the whole epistle, and it begins with him boldly stating that he is not ashamed of the gospel. For he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel. And it's a way in the language, and we do this, he's making sure by saying, I'm not ashamed, to make sure they understand that he's fully confident and proud of the gospel. He's proud of it. And as has already stated to them, he's eager to come preach it to them. Now I want you to understand, why would Paul need to write this? One commentator notes this, that there were, deeply ingrained social reasons why Paul should have been ashamed to proclaim such a gospel, especially in a world where matters of honor and shame were extremely important. As 1 Corinthians 1.18 notes, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. Now we read that verse as believers and sometimes we lose sight of the reality of that. Because a world who doesn't see God, doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in Jesus Christ, looks at what we preach and they say, that's ridiculous. Who would believe that? Why would you bother? The gospel seemed to be an easy target to the world. It was an easy target in the society and culture of the day. It could even be tempting to tweak it. so that it would appeal to the different societal demands. But Paul makes clear that that would never be the case, because when it came to the pure gospel, Paul was unapologetic. Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. He's defined that gospel, the gospel of God. And even though the world may mock the idea of a God, They may mock the idea of an exclusive God, and I think we can all know we see this. They might mock the idea of God dying on the cross to redeem humans. They might mock and deride anything and everything associated with the truth. Paul would be unapologetic. Just so you understand the weight and that time, because sometimes we think ancient culture, everything was easy. Yes, they were martyred for their faith, but when they walked through the streets, everyone respected them and cared about them. When they were excavating archaeological digs in Rome, they found a painting that mocked the crucifixion of Jesus. They had a slave bowing down to a cross with a donkey hanging on it. And the caption read, Alexamenos worships his God. Had Paul felt derision for his faith? Well, he was imprisoned in Philippi. He was chased out of Thessalonica. He was laughed at in Athens. He was considered a fool in Corinth and declared a blasphemer and lawbreaker in Jerusalem. Has he felt pressure because of the truth? Has he felt pressure because of the gospel? He has. This world likes to mock. They like to find a way to demean the gospel. But I want to make a statement. It's underlined in my notes. We should make no apology for the gospel message. We should feel no shame for what is boldly proclaimed. The world will mock truth. The world will also take offense at the gospel. We see that today. They don't like what the gospel says. They don't like what it points out. They don't like what it exposes in them. The gospel message, I want us to hear this, because Paul's saying that in a statement, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. The gospel message does not stutter when it articulates the condition of humanity. It makes very clear that we are sinful and desperately in need of a savior. There's nothing that we do that can change that reality. That is the gospel message. We are lost. The gospel message does not stutter when it articulates the way of salvation. It is an exclusive solution. There is no other way than through the saving sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm preaching in church, and so people say, obviously we know that, Kenny. Yeah, but do we obviously live that? Jesus was very clear, John 14 6, when he said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. No one. No other sincere religion. No other monotheistic religion. No other spin or turn or look. Nothing except through Jesus Christ. It is not a Judeo-Christian religion. It is not a Muslim or monotheistic. If you want to link them all together, there's three religions, Christianity, Muslim, and Judaism, that would be monotheistic. That doesn't add up. There is one way, and it's Jesus Christ. Paul made no apology. He was persecuted for it, but no apology for it. The world may mock the gospel, they may take offense at the gospel, but we remain unapologetically confident and clear when we proclaim it. As Paul states clearly, we're not ashamed of the gospel. Because regardless of the mockery, regardless of the over-sensitivity or offense to the gospel, and I'm going to repeat that over and over again, because we live in a world that is over-sensitive. They're very easily offended. They have big feet and they don't like when you preach truth. Paul states in Corinthians, we preach Christ crucified. Why? Because the way, the truth, and the life is Jesus Christ. We preach the gospel unapologetically and unadulterated. Unadulterated means it's not mixed or diluted with any different or extra elements. The world pressure for the gospel to be changed is for it to fit a model. Why does the world want a change to the gospel? Well, it confronts them. It confronts us with the reality of sin and what we're walking through. And so the world says, how about this? How about this deal? You change some of it. Shift your focus a little bit. Add a little bit more. Anything to fit where we're at right now. Anything that fits their model. Anything that removes the exposure of who humanity is. And let me state this so we're clear. We are sinful and depraved. There is nothing in us that is redeemable. That is something we struggle with, right? I was reading one commentator, and we'll talk a little bit more, talking about the righteousness, and don't we think that, well, this person has this percentage of righteousness, and this person might have 50%, and maybe someone who's really religious would have 80%, and then God comes and saves them and gives them the rest, and the reality is, we're sinful and depraved, we have nothing, we need 100% from God. Sadly, the church embraces the world's ideology, the world's religion. It chases after any and every chance to pollute the gospel. The current scourge we see is this social gospel message. The woke movement that capitulates to a literally twisted ideology on race and negates the gospel in pursuit of some bigger goal. Why do I bring that up? And I'm not trying to dive into one specific. I want us to see how easily we get duped into this. I won't name lames because I don't want to disappoint. One of the people that I read, I appreciate, I've learned from, pushed a book that added to the gospel, disappointing. Because they had a bigger goal in mind. And I put my notes, a bigger goal? Bigger than redemption from our sins? Well, they seem to have found something, right? But I want you to realize something, and as Kelvin's been preaching through Galatians, we should know it. There is no addition to the gospel, because it's no gospel at all. It's a lie from Satan, and it's just another twisted form of humanism. As you break it down, it's just worship of humanity. You're either gonna worship the true God, the only God, or in some form or fashion, you're finding a way to worship yourself. Maybe it's in infancy, maybe it doesn't look as dangerous as it really is, but it has the same end result. It ends up being an attempt to remove the stain of real sin the reality of the righteous wrath of God, which by the way, verse 18 is going to let us know very clearly, the wrath of God against sin, the wrath of God that's against sin right now, currently, not future judgment, but current wrath, and the real weight of that truth for all eternity. Look, I want you to realize, and that's just an illustration, that there's a host of foolish preachers, theologians, teachers, authors that have fallen prey to a lie that says, let's tweak the gospel. People who were formerly biblical, who formerly stood for truth, have bought into the lie. Why do I say that? Because I want to be clear about something. You do that, and you are ashamed of the gospel. Those people, when they stood up, when they wrote the book, when they said what they said, are ashamed of the gospel because they no longer preach the truth unadulterated or unapologetically. They found an addition. But I want you to understand something because that's how it's a twist the world does. You need more than the gospel. You need more than this. We don't like this idea of sin. We don't like this idea of, you say, well, they're not saying exactly that. Well, they're adding to the gospel. And I want you to process something. How do you add to what is perfect and complete? See, Paul is making sure they understand, I want to preach the gospel of God. He articulated the gospel of God. He talked about their faith. And then he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. I'm not going to add, I'm not going to take away, I'm not going to apologize, I'm not going to explain it against the culture of the day. And by the way, you go to their culture, you go to our culture, you go to any future culture, any culture in the middle, there's always something that's going to attack the truth. But how do you add to something that is perfect and complete? You don't. Because when you put something else on, you ultimately are subtracting from it, destroying it, and polluting it. They ultimately are trying to appease humanity instead of addressing their need. Gregory, Jeffrey Wilson actually notes this, he says, the unpopularity of a crucified Christ has prompted many to present a message which is more palatable to the unbeliever, but the removal of the offense of the cross always renders the message ineffective. And he's speaking to another culture at a different time. Our culture says that's not enough, you need to deal with X, Y, Z, and they label a thousand things on top of it. But what they're all doing is the same thing. They're trying to remove the offense of the gospel. And this man continues, an inoffensive gospel is also an inoperative gospel. Thus Christianity is wounded most in the house of its friends. I'm making a driving point I hope we can get. And I know I'm just making light references to certain things that we have an issue with. But I want to summarize it so we get the right picture. To be not ashamed of the gospel means we preach the gospel unapologetically and unaltered. We are not adding to it. You are not being a gospel witness because you add a whole social agenda on top of that. You are actually ashamed of the gospel when you do that. You are not preaching the gospel at all. You're adding which is subtracting. We are called, when Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, he's not ashamed of the gospel of God, which is the fact that Jesus Christ came to earth to die on the cross for our sins. He rose from the grave victoriously so that we can have eternal life. That's the gospel. And when someone says we need to add to that, they are a liar and a heretic. We don't. It is perfect and complete. That's what we need for all eternity. We need to be confronted with the reality that we are sin stricken. Every one of us, no matter what our ethnicity is, no matter what our background is, we are stricken with sin and we need a Savior. Paul was not ashamed of the gospel. He offered no compromise to the gospel, regardless of the current swing in politics or culture. And I want you to realize he walked through multiple cultures. He had the very religious Jerusalem culture. He had a early church culture in Antioch. He had the pagan culture in all these places he visited. He confronted the intellectual culture in Athens. Everywhere he met and went, he preached the gospel of God. No change, no alteration. He preached Christ. Why? Because the gospel, pure and simple, is power. It says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Now, Paul is speaking here, he uses a word that signifies dynamic power, power to change. And the gospel is dynamic power and action. The gospel is His power to overcome sin and give life. I want you to understand what the gospel is not, though. The gospel is power. The gospel is not empowerment. God did not send His Son to die on the cross so you would be empowered. He sent His Son to die on the cross so you could be saved. I was reading a Baptist writer. I want to pick, since our church is a Baptist church, I want to pick on us in that sense. I don't align with this person at all. That's why we're a local autonomous church. I can just reject anyone that does anything wrong. We're not tied to them. I was reading, it was a Baptist writer, and it was fascinating to me. I'm just clicking through some stuff. It was just, and I noticed this guy's writing, and he was taking offense at preaching. He actually highlighted John MacArthur specifically, but he was upset at current preaching that articulates humankind's eternal problem, sin, and their absolute need of a very specific Savior and Lord. This was a Baptist doctorate teaching at a seminary who was upset about that. He's offended by the clear presentation of God's, as the gospel presented in God's Word. He even says this, I don't see the gospel as the power of God. I see the gospel, he wrote, as empowerment for humankind. He sadly missed the whole point and the whole beauty of God's redemptive plan. The gospel is not empowerment for you or for me. It is the power of God for salvation. The power of God was a very specific reason. God's gospel is his power that transforms, that means completely alters our nature and gives us eternal life through his son. God's power, the word salvation means rescue, he rescues believers from the ultimate penalty of sin, which is spiritual death, extended into a tormented eternal separation from him. What are you saved from? Hell. You're saved from eternal death. You're saved from eternal separation from God. And we say, well, who cares? I know that that's that mindset people have. Who cares if I'm separated from God? I hear this frequently. I've shared it before. All my friends are in hell. You have no friends in hell. There are no family in hell. All of those are gifts of God's grace. You're alone in hell, suffering eternal separation from him. And when the gospel came and preached, the gospel that's been God's plan since before we were created. We talked about that in Genesis. He had a redemptive plan. And when Paul says, I preach and I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power for salvation. He's talking about being redeemed from that eternal punishment. No amount of temporal ease, no amount of societal change will alter eternity. And sometimes we lose sight of that because we're constrained to time-space. And so we think of this world as everything and anything. And we lose sight of the fact that if you don't have eternity taken care of, that that lasts a whole heap longer than a short little segment of life here on earth. This is the gospel power of God on display, redeeming us for all eternity. Nothing Nothing can be better than what He offers to us as broken humankind, and no extra social cause would ever come close, nor needs to be added. Because through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, through Him and Him alone, we can be saved from sin, from Satan, from judgment, from wrath, and from spiritual death. Paul makes clear that he was not ashamed of the gospel, and neither should we, because it is the power of God for salvation, a salvation that comes through faith. When I said this is his thesis, he's dealing with the power, he's dealing with the gospel, he's dealing with salvation, he's dealing with faith, and he's gonna be dealing with righteousness. He says it's salvation for who? to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Now, faith carries this basic idea of trusting in or relying on, and everyday life requires faith. If you got in the car and turned it on, you had faith that it would get you here. If you crossed the bridge, you had faith or made an assumption, which is based on natural faith, that the bridge would not collapse. Every time you get on a plane, you assume that it's going to land wheels down. We make a faith judgment there. We drink water and assume it's not contaminated. We have faith that it's pure to drink. Paul's not talking about a natural faith, though. He's talking of a supernatural faith. A faith that is in our Lord, who through His work on the cross has given us eternal life. The gospel is God's power for salvation through faith. And as MacArthur notes, God does not first ask men to behave. He asks them to believe. The world gets caught up in that. Oh, you want me to do this, this, this, this, this. That's not what God even says. He's not excusing obedience or throwing it away. But God says that the gospel is about Jesus Christ. It is about our faith and trust in Him. Nothing added to it. Nothing taken away from it. And God is calling for us to believe. Our salvation is not simply professing to be a Christian. It is not baptism, moral reform, social reform. It is not going to church or being self-disciplined. No, salvation is believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It's not about what we accomplish socially or how about how many systems we overturn or rewrite. Because that's what we've gotten caught up in as a Christian movement, or so many people have gotten caught in. What are we accomplishing socially? What are we changing on the broad dynamic? And we've linked that to salvation, because ultimately what we're trying to do is earn our salvation. As MacArthur continues his discussion on the faith, he lists it here, he says, salvation comes through giving up on one's own goodness. Giving up on one's own works, knowledge, and wisdom, and trusting in the finished, perfect work of Christ. Salvation is letting go of what you think you've earned and turning completely to Him. As a side note, Paul's not giving an order. When we read to the Jew first and also to the Greek, I had a guy I grew up with and he used to preach, well, you have to go to Jewish people first and then you can go to Greek people, Gentile people. And it's a misinterpretation of what Paul is saying. Paul is highlighting a couple things here. To everyone that believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, what he's saying is that he's highlighting the universality of outreach. Who should you reach for? Everyone. He's articulating, though, the chronology that took place. The Jews are God's specially chosen people through whom he ordained salvation to come and to whom the Messiah first came. If you look at the Gospels, he spent the majority of his time, an inordinate amount of his time, 99% of his time in Israel. I hate when people say, oh, he was an outcast. Jesus was an immigrant. That is ignorant. The man even told a Phoenician woman, why would I give this to you and take away from the nation of Israel? And she, in faith, responded. And of course, he healed her. But his whole premise, he started in Israel, but we see the gospel message reaching out. And so he has ordained that through the Jewish people salvation would come, and it first came to them, yet the gospel is not addressed to any person based on nationality or ethnicity. It is presented to everyone because they belong to the human race. And that's amazing, right? What does someone in Nicaragua need? The gospel. What about in Africa? The gospel. What about in Culpeper? The gospel. What about in Winchester? What about in North Carolina? What about even in California? They need the gospel. No matter where you go, they need the gospel. That's what Paul is stating. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's power for salvation through faith. To who? Who does it for? Everyone. He's reaching the world. The fact is, as one writer noted, all who believe may be saved. Only those who truly believe will be. We cannot and should not miss that the gospel for which we are not ashamed. And I know I keep repeating myself over and over because I want that ingrained in our head that we are not to be ashamed of the gospel and that when we add to the gospel, we are ashamed of the gospel then. That the gospel for which we are not ashamed is the power of God accomplishing salvation through faith. It is not empowerment. It is not societal adjustments. It's not restructuring history or any social gospel that may be presented. It is, however, the power of God to alter our eternal destiny. Does the gospel change you? Yes, it transforms you. Does the gospel change a person? Does it change a people? Will it change a country? Yes. But not because we manipulate and try to do all the things that we want to do. It changes us and it changes our eternal destiny. It's a reality that's far above any proposed social solution and direction. because this gospel that is power for salvation by faith is also the revealer of righteousness. And I want us to note something. It is a very specific type of righteousness. It says, for, he's continuing on, Paul uses all these connective words, for, for, for, over and over again, leading us down a path, for, in it, in the gospel, The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith." And that's a nice tie-in to faith again. You see how faith is interwoven in this. Now, Barnhouse notes this when our text tells us that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God. It is saying that God must inevitably demand of mankind that which man can never furnish himself. If the gospel of salvation to everyone believes and it reveals the righteousness of God, then we know we don't have that righteousness. Because there are two distinct types of righteousness. God's and ours. How would you describe ours? Isaiah 64 6 does it perfectly. For all of us have become like one who is unclean. and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment, and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind carry us away. How good are you? Never are you good enough. That's offensive. If someone doesn't know Christ as their Savior, they say, wait a second, there's good that I do, there's righteousness that I have, I'm definitely better than X, Y, Z, I'm more righteous than this person, I do more good than this person, I've accomplished this, I've done that. All the things that we list, and we say, I'm righteous, what does the Bible say? Your righteousness, as filthy rags because we tend to take the word righteousness and then give it to ourselves and God in an equal portion. We don't realize that when Paul says that the gospel reveals righteousness of God, it's a righteousness that is different than what we have. But the gospel reveals, it manifests the righteousness of God because it is the righteousness from God because our own righteousness accomplishes nothing. And we don't come to God with any percentage of earned rightness. That is the fallacy, that is the heresy of so many other faiths. Because they come to God with some sense of earning. And you might say, well, just a small little bit of earning. Yes, then it's not the righteousness of God. You're building on your own righteousness. But when we believe, when we have faith and as believers, we are given righteousness. The righteousness of God is imputed to our account. When we stand in judgment, how does God see us? He sees us as his son. What right or wrong are we doing? It's based on the cross, not on us. And if you're honest with yourself, if you pause for a moment, who here, who here has ever in the world's existence, what person do you think has ever lived that would want to stand before God based on their own rightness. Who wants to go to God and say, well, God, I'd like to list what I've done right. I'd like to tell you how righteous I am. Well, God's already told you how righteous that looks to him. Filthy. It's filthy. That's hard, right? In a world that is self-esteem based, that is elevating of self, how great am I, how wonderful am I, what have I done, how have I changed society, how have I lifted up this, done that, changed this? Yeah, it's filthy garments. But He, when we by faith trust in Him, He gives us His righteousness, that when we stand before God, He sees Christ's righteousness because it's been given to us. How is that done? Well, logically, by the vehicle of faith. We are made righteous with God's righteousness by faith. He ties it together. And he says the word from faith to faith. He's paralleling in that statement everyone who believes. And so what is Paul emphasizing? He says the gospel reveals God's righteousness, which is given to us, the righteousness of God. And you can actually translate it, the righteousness from God that God gives to us. From faith to faith, and one commentator says this, from faith to faith to faith to faith to faith to faith to faith. And what is Paul emphasizing to the Roman believers? He's emphasizing individual faith of each believer, down through history and on into the future. How is righteousness imputed? From faith to faith to faith to faith. Everybody who trusts in Christ is imputed his righteousness. As MacArthur remarked, salvation by his grace, working through man's faith, was always God's plan. And so Paul now encouraged or implies that by quoting Habakkuk 2.4. It says, as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith, or by faith the righteous will live. Tying it all together, right? The gospel is power for salvation. And then it is salvation by faith, which imputes his righteousness, by which we live by faith. Paul states clearly that he's not ashamed of the gospel. He will not alter or tweak God's way to fit society's way. He will not apologize for God's Word, nor adapt it to the nuanced priorities of any culture. I'm afraid that Christianity today stands on the brink of constantly apologizing for God's Word, Constantly explaining it away. Well, I don't like how this seems sounds feels It's hard to explain this to someone who doesn't believe and so we begin to take the gospel And we think God you gave us something neat, but let's make it right Let's shape this up I told you about reading a book recommended by an author I think has done a great work in his life, but fell flat on his face here. He recommended a book by a pastor who put the gospel in four quadrants. I have no problem agreeing with him on the two quadrants that have nothing to do with the gospel. And then he had one quadrant that was the pure gospel and literally wrote in his book, it's not enough. We got to add to it. What is that? That's you capitulating to this world, and what you're doing is heresy. It's heretical. It's not that I disagree with these preachers, it's that they're agents of Satan when they preach that. Well, that's harsh, Kenny. I'm not the one that said it. God commanded us not to be ashamed of the gospel. Why do we not capitulate to the nuanced priorities of any culture? Any culture, not just ours. Any culture. Why? Because the gospel of God is the power for salvation by faith, giving to believers God's righteousness, resulting in eternal life. How do you have eternal life? Because when you stand before God, you have his righteousness given to you. Nothing you've done will be an answer you can give to God. That may be offensive. That may be hard to swallow. You may have a hard time believing it. but it's not gonna change the reality of it. We have eternal life because by faith we believe in Jesus Christ, and our faith in Jesus Christ, he imputes his righteousness to us, so we stand before our God and our creator, clean, righteous before him. The gospel of God is perfect and complete, needing no addition, no tweaks, and no improvement. Paul is not ashamed of the gospel of God, pure and simple. but are you? Will you stand unapologetically on the unadulterated gospel of God? Because every time you or some preacher you hear or know, some author you like to read, starts adding to the gospel call, and what is salvation? They're really telling God that his salvation is not enough. They are subtracting from his plan. They are arrogantly thinking they know best. They are shouting that they are ashamed of the gospel. And then my closing question is this, so what are we shouting? Is it that I am not ashamed of the gospel because I will proclaim Christ and Him crucified? Or am I shouting out to the world, I think I need to tweak it because we've gotten smarter We've gotten better, and we definitely need to adapt this message to our culture, because surely out of all the civilizations in the world, ours must be the most elite. What are we shouting? Are we shouting, I'm not ashamed? Or are we shouting, I am ashamed of the gospel?