All right, well, good morning. It's a pleasure to be back with you here at Sovereign Savior. I'm going to bring you greetings once again from the saints at Berean Baptist Church in Hiram, Georgia. It's a pleasure to be able to preach the word of God to you once more. Turn with me in your Bibles to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. With the Lord's help this morning, we're going to explore the topic of preaching the gospel to yourself. And we're going to look at a bunch of different passages of scripture this morning, but 1 Corinthians 15 is going to be our home base. We're going to constantly reference back to this text throughout the sermon this morning. And it's arguably the most succinct description of the gospel given to us in all of Holy Scripture. So before we begin, Let me pray and ask for God's help and blessing, and then we'll read our text. Let's pray. Holy Father, we've gathered here this morning according to your commandment. And we've done so not because we have hope that you'll meet with us because we've been so good this past week. We don't come to you in hopes that you'll meet with us because of what we're going to do for you in the week ahead of us. We come purely and only to you and the merits of your son, Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that I ask that you would pour out the Holy Spirit upon your people here this morning. We need to be fed. We need to be edified. And Lord, we need to hear from you. And so we pray that you would be pleased to pour your spirit out upon us this morning, that you would bless your word to us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Well, let's read first Corinthians chapter 15. We're going to read verses one through four. Hear the word of God. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you were being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Amen. Well, think for a moment if you knew that you were about to die, if you knew that you were in the final moments of your life and you had one final chance to write a letter to that most beloved person in your life, whether it's a friend or a family member, what would you say to them in that letter? How would you use your final moments? Beyond expressing your love for them, what advice or words of wisdom would you give to that beloved friend or family member? Well, the Apostle Paul, when he was at the end of his life, he wrote such a letter to his protege, Timothy. And we know it as Second Timothy. Paul was Timothy's father in the faith. He had discipled him. He had taught him how to be a pastor he had entrusted into his care, the church at Ephesus, which Paul had founded. So Timothy was obviously a very important person to the apostle Paul. Well, in his final letter to this much-beloved friend, Paul gave this exhortation to Timothy. He says this, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel. Remember Jesus Christ. Remember that he rose from the dead. Timothy, remember the gospel. That's how Paul chooses to use his last moments to exhort his friend. Now, certainly Timothy knew the gospel, didn't he? Paul had commended him for his familiarity with the scriptures. He had laid hands on him to ordain him as a pastor. So why would Paul take time in this final letter to instruct Timothy to remember Jesus Christ, to remember the gospel? And friends, a lot of things in life are important to us. A lot of doctrine in Christianity is important and central, but there are few things that are of first importance. And the gospel is one of those things that are of first importance. And when we forget the gospel or think that we've moved beyond the gospel in our Christian walk, we open ourselves up to many errors, to heresies, potentially. And the gospel is central not only to our salvation, but it's central to the whole of the Christian life. It's central to our sanctification, to God making us more like his son. It's central to our future glorification. And so we must hear Paul's exhortation to Timothy here and do the same. We must remember the gospel. So may God grant us grace, not only to receive the gospel by faith, but to remember it, to stand firm in it, to hold fast to it, and to, as it were, preach it to ourselves day by day, that we might live in a manner worthy of our calling. So to explore this topic of preaching the gospel to yourself, I wanna use five different questions as our headings this morning. And these are the questions. Firstly, what is the gospel? Second, why do you need to preach the gospel to yourself? Third, how do you preach the gospel to yourself? Fourth, when and where do you preach the gospel to yourself? And fifth and finally, who is the gospel for? Well, we're gonna start first with what is the gospel? And as I mentioned in the introduction to 1 Corinthians 15, it's arguably the most succinct description of the gospel given to us in all of Holy Scripture. Verses 3 and 4. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Now the word gospel, it literally means glad tidings or a good message. So if we use 1 Corinthians 15 as our framework, we can say that the gospel is the good message or perhaps the good news. You've heard it said like that. The gospel is the good news that Jesus lived, died, and rose again for sinners. But why is the gospel good news instead of just news? Why is it good news? Well, the gospel is good news because it's contrasted against the bad news. And that bad news is that every human being since Adam and Eve, Jesus Christ being the only exception, every human being is born in sin and is naturally an enemy of God. Now, the Children's Catechism has a series of questions and answers that help explain this reality in a simple to understand way. And those questions and answers go as follows. Question. In what condition did God make Adam and Eve? Answer. He made them holy and happy. Question. Did Adam and Eve stay holy and happy? Answer. No, they sinned against God. Question. What is sin? Answer. Sin is any failure to keep God's law. What is meant by failure to keep God's law? Answer. We fail to keep God's law when we do not do what he requires or when we do what he forbids. So in this series of questions and answers, we can see that Adam and Eve were not created sinful creatures. They were created upright and perfect. But of course, we know through the temptation of the serpent, they sinned against God. They disobeyed the positive law that he gave them in the garden to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Well, the catechism goes on, and just a few more questions here. What effect did the sin of Adam have on all mankind? Now, we might rephrase this and say, what effect did the sin of Adam have on you and on me? We are included in mankind. Answer, all mankind, that means you and me also, is born in a state of sin and misery. And what do we inherit from Adam as a result of this original sin? Answer, a sinful nature. And finally, what does every sin deserve? Answer, the anger and judgment of God. In short, we are born guilty before God because of Adam's first sin. We then only add to that guilt as we start to transgress God's law personally. And friends, as a result of this, each one of us deserves the anger and the judgment of God. And this is the bad news, that each one of us deserve the anger and judgment of God because of our sin against Him. And this is why the gospel is good news for us, because we are sinners in desperate need of a Savior. And Jesus Christ is that Savior. As we sang about in two or three hymns this morning, he lived a perfect life, obeying God's law completely, where we have not and cannot. He then died a substitutionary death. He received in himself the anger and judgment of God against the sin of his people. But what did Christ deserve? Look at his life. What did he deserve from God? He didn't deserve anger and judgment. He deserved, he earned, nothing but God's love and blessing. But that is the wonder of the gospel. We read about it a little bit in Isaiah, the sinless son of God, stricken, smitten, and afflicted for wicked sinners like you and me. Christ himself said in Mark chapter 10, for even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve. And the principle way in which he served was in the giving of his life as a ransom for many. So the gospel is the good news that Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many. The gospel is the good news that Jesus lived, died, and rose again for sinners. And each of these pieces are important. His life, his death, and his resurrection. These are all central for us. The gospel is the perfect life of Jesus for sinners. His record of obedience having been transferred to our account by God. The gospel is the sacrificial death of Jesus. Our sins transferred to Christ's account and paid in full. And finally, the gospel is the victorious resurrection of Jesus for sinners, his victory over sin and death, freeing you from the curse of the law and enabling you to walk in new obedience in this life and also giving you a hope that in the life to come, you can be made like Christ, that your corruptible body will be raised incorruptible and you'll be made like him. Finally, again, the gospel is the good news. that Jesus lived, died, and rose again for sinners. Now we could stop there and we can move on, but I want to dig just a little bit deeper here to answer the question, what is the gospel? And I want to draw out from the scriptures four different attributes or four different descriptors that the Bible gives us of the gospel. Firstly, the gospel is sufficient. The gospel is sufficient. Paul declares in Romans 1 that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. The life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus is the power of God for salvation. It's the method by which he accomplishes salvation for all who believe. Now, Paul does not say that the power of the gospel plus obeying the Ten Commandments is going to get you saved. He doesn't say it's the gospel plus your church membership that's going to get you saved. He doesn't say it's the gospel plus homeschooling your children that's going to get you saved. It is the gospel alone that is the power of God unto salvation. The gospel alone is sufficient to save sinners. And isn't this our confession? Justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. This is what we confess. This is where we take our stand. Think about when the Galatians began to imbibe the heresy of the Judaizers. Do you remember this? They were saying that circumcision was necessary, plus faith in Christ. Once you blend those two together, well, you're really good, you're saved, right? Well, the Apostle Paul, remember he wrote a scathing rebuke to the churches in Galatia. And beginning this rebuke, he says this, I am astonished that you were so quickly deserting him who calls you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who would trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed, let him be damned. That's what Paul is saying. This is strong language, but Paul had a zeal for the purity of the gospel. It was of first importance to Paul, and it should be also the same way for us. So brothers and sisters, to add anything to the gospel, is to render it useless. If you add anything to the finished work and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, you have created just more bad news. There is no hope apart from the finished work of Christ alone. To add anything to the gospel is to fall away from grace. It is to put yourself really under the obligation of keeping the entire law. And can you do that? Even if you started today, even if God said, I'm going to forget everything you've done up until this point in your life. Could you, from this point forward, keep the law perfectly? Could you keep the law perfectly for the rest of this service? I don't think so. I couldn't either. That's why we need the gospel. Secondly, the gospel is free. This attribute is intimately connected to the sufficiency of the gospel, and it's been rightly described as the article upon which the church stands or falls. We hold again that by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight. It is not possible. If the gospel is something that we earn, then salvation is no longer of grace. It's simply God giving to us what he owes us. Paul makes this clear in Romans chapter four. He says this, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. Furthermore, if we work for our own salvation, our self-righteous and prideful hearts now have something to boast about. See, look how good I am. Look what I've done. Aren't you impressed, God? Look how much I love you. But friends, we know that the gospel of grace, it excludes our boasting. We can only boast in him who loved us and gave himself for us. As Paul explains in Romans four, verse six, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. In other words, to the one who freely receives the gospel of Jesus Christ, to him, his faith is counted as righteousness. The gospel is free. Thirdly, the gospel is to be obeyed. There may seem like there's some tension here with what I've said previously leading up to this point. After all, if the gospel is good news, if the gospel is free, what is there to obey? But friends, God did not send his only begotten son into the world to live, die, and rise again for sinners so that we might have the option to believe in Christ. That it would just be one of many potential ways of coming to the Father. He did it because the gospel is to be obeyed, is to be believed on by the world, is to be received by sinners. And sinners, if they're to receive the gospel, they must repent. They must let go of their love of sin. They must let go of their own self-righteousness and come to Jesus Christ with empty hands for salvation. And so if you're here and if you have not obeyed the gospel by repenting of your sin, by coming to the Lord Jesus Christ in faith, then I want you to hear Paul's words of admonishment in Acts chapter 17. He's speaking here to the Athenians As you remember, these were people who were very pagan, but they had lots of different gods. Remember, Paul was walking the streets and he said, there are gods everywhere. You've even got the statue to the unknown God. And he goes and he explains to them, I'm going to tell you who this unknown God is. This unknown God is the one true living God. And at the climax of this explanation to the Athenians, Paul says this, the times of ignorance God has overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." So Paul exhorts the Athenians, and I would exhort you if you do not trust in Christ, that God commands you to repent. He commands all people everywhere to believe in Christ. Well, fourth and finally, the gospel produces fruit. The gospel produces fruit. As we've seen, it's free. The gospel is complete. Adding our good works to the finished work of Christ only pollutes the finished work of Christ. Sinners are not saved by their good works. And yet, sinners are saved unto good works. If you're a Christian, you are saved unto good works. If we look at the Bible and we seek to find a clear, unmistakable exposition of this doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, we would be hard pressed to find a better example than the book of Romans. So rich in its presentation of that doctrine. And in that book, Paul labors to make it crystal clear that sinners cannot be saved by their obedience to the law of God. They cannot be saved by obeying the Ten Commandments. And in doing this, he emphatically states what we've already referenced this morning. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. The law cannot save us. The law can condemn us, but it cannot save us. Well, as Paul closes his argument for salvation by faith alone, he poses a logical question that someone might have if they're listening to his preaching. And he says, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound all the more? So in other words, Paul is saying, since grace is free and I can't do anything to earn my salvation, that means I just get to live however I want, right? And the grace of Christ is going to abound all the more and cover all of that sin. And this, of course, is not Paul's conclusion. Listen to what he says in verses two through four. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. Literally, God forbid. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. So do you hear what Paul is saying? God saves sinners so that they might walk in newness of life, so that they might obey his Ten Commandments, so that you and I might love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, that we might love our neighbor as ourselves. We are not saved by good works, but we are saved unto good works. The gospel produces fruit. So we've attempted under this first heading to answer the question, what is the gospel? The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again for sinners. We also saw the gospel is sufficient. The gospel is free. The gospel is to be obeyed. And finally, the gospel produces fruit. This leads to our second heading or our second question. Why do we need to preach the gospel to ourselves? And I would submit to you that there are at least four reasons why we need to preach the gospel to ourselves. Firstly, because we're commanded to. God commands us to remember his great work of salvation. And we're commanded to remember this not only for our good and for the benefit of ourselves, but for the benefit of others. And we see this reflected in the old covenant with God's command to Israel to keep the Passover feast. If you have your Bibles open to Exodus, Chapter 12, please. As you remember, the Passover was a glorious picture of salvation. And what we see in Exodus chapter 12 is Moses giving instructions to Israel on the day of the first Passover, starting at verse 21. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin and touch the lintel in the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians. And when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your house and strike you. Moses then commands this, you shall observe this right as a statute for you and your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? In other words, mom, dad, why do we do this? What's this Passover thing all about? You shall say to them, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses. And the Bible says that the people bowed their heads and worshiped. It was so important to the Lord that his people remember the salvation that he worked for them in the Exodus, that he instituted a special feast to ensure that they would remember it. Again, not only was the feast for those who had experienced this deliverance firsthand, it was also for the benefit of their children. It was a means by which the knowledge of the Lord's glory would be imparted to future generations. The institution of the Passover celebration, in doing so, the Lord commanded his people to remember the salvation that he had worked for them. And we see, excuse me, the same command to remember the salvation worked by the Lord in a similar New Covenant ordinance, this time with the Lord's Supper. Paul explains the supper to the Corinthian church by saying this in 1 Corinthians 11. Familiar words, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you, Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, also he took the cup after supper, saying, This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Similar to the Passover command of the Old Covenant, the Lord instituted a special feast for his new covenant people designed for their remembrance of the salvation that he worked for them in the gospel, the salvation earned for them in the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And remember that in both cases, with the Passover feast and the Lord's Supper, God's people are commanded not only to remember his great works for their sake, but for the sake of others around them. Again, the Passover was to be a statute for the Israelites and for their children forever. It was to be a tangible way that God's people could tell of his mighty work of salvation to generations yet to come. And similarly with the Lord's Supper. The Bible says that every time we partake of the supper, we proclaim, we declare to those watching the Lord's death until he returns. Friends, if we're to share the good news that Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, if we are to share the gospel with others, we ourselves must remember it. We must be saturated in it. And I'm sure many of you have been on trips where you had to get on an airplane and fly somewhere. And as you're going through, that safety briefing as the plane is backing away and taxiing towards the runway, the flight attendants go through their normal speech. And as part of that speech, what they say is that if there happens to be a loss of cabin pressure while the airplane is flying, that oxygen masks are going to drop down from this compartment and to put on your oxygen masks. But they instruct the adults particularly, they say, put on your oxygen mask first before you go and assist someone with putting theirs on. And there's wisdom in this instruction for us. God commands us to remember the gospel, not for our sake only, but also for the sake of those who have yet to be effectually called into his kingdom. and preaching the gospel to yourself, it's a prerequisite to preaching it to anyone else. We must, as it were, put on our oxygen mask first if we are to help others put on their mask. Well, secondly, we must preach the gospel to ourselves because we are prone to wander into error. We sang about it this morning. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. There's a reason that Paul in 1 Corinthians speaks of the gospel as being of first importance. The gospel keeps us theologically grounded while helping us guard against wolves that would come in and seek to destroy the gospel of God. We actually see this happening in our text. So if we kind of expand out from our first four verses in 1 Corinthians 15, we can see this exact thing happening. Paul is giving this great discourse on the resurrection of Christ, 1 Corinthians 15. And if we read down to verse 12, Paul says this. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Certain members in the Corinthian church were denying the resurrection. And Paul was obligated to reply with this discourse in 1 Corinthians 15, a discourse which reaches its climax in the conclusion that if Christ has not been raised, then the Corinthians' faith was futile and they were still in their sins. They were still condemned if Christ was still in the grave. And here is a church that the apostle himself founded. And yet some of them had wandered so far from the truth that they were denying the bodily resurrection of Christ. And as a result, Paul was compelled to write to them are verses. Verses 1 through 4. And he goes on and reminds them. I delivered this to you of first importance. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. He was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. So the apostles' remedy for those in the Corinthian church who were denying the resurrection is to remind them of the gospel. Let me remind you, brothers, of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for sinners. Don't forget this. So friends, preaching the gospel to yourself is a guard against error. It helps keep you grounded and balanced in those things that are most fundamental in Christianity. Accordingly, it is a discipline, that is, preaching the gospel to ourselves, it is a discipline that we must practice with regularity in our life. And by God's grace, we'll keep ourselves from wandering into all sorts of theological error. Well, thirdly, we need to preach the gospel to ourselves to be joyful and secure. Now, I don't need to tell you that we live in a world where depression and anxiety abound. It is so easy to find ourselves being conformed to the world's way of thinking. All the inputs that we have, the news, the social media, the entertainment, all of those things can, and friends, they do have a powerful effect on our minds, whether or not we recognize it. And God is not ignorant of this, and he's commanded us to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. And when applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, all of God's word is certainly helpful in transforming our minds, making sure that we're not conformed to the way of the world. But I would suggest to you that the gospel in particular is central to this end. And it's not only the world's influences that contempt us to depression or anxiety, is it? So often our own hearts do the same thing. So often we don't need inputs from the external world to find ourselves being anxious over things or feeling depressed. So often our apprehension of God's love for us is based on his providential dealings with us in temporal matters. Do I have a good job? Do I have a house? Do I have all the things I think I need to live a happy life? Too often, this is the way that we measure whether or not God loves us. We look at the material things He has seen fit to give us, and we gauge how happy God is with us. And this is an incorrect way to think. We cannot conflate the temporal blessings of God with the eternal blessings of God in the Gospel. Consider 1 John 4 10. In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So friends, the gospel, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for sinners, this alone is the measure of God's love for his people, not our temporal circumstances. Even if everything in your life seems to be going wrong, if you have received the gospel of grace, then you have a home in heaven because Jesus lived, died, and rose again for you. And even on our worst day, and I'm not discounting the fact that we have bad days. I'm not discounting the fact that we have trials and tribulations that we have to work through in this life that are painful and that hurt. But even on those worst days, the best of news is true for us if we're in Christ. And that is, we are marching and working our way towards heaven, towards glory. We have an eternity secured for us in heaven with him because of his grace and his love. The late Jerry Bridges, in his book, The Gospel for Real Life, puts it this way, quote, The good news doesn't begin when we die. It certainly does address that issue, but it also tells us that there's good news for us now. We don't have to feel guilt-ridden and insecure in our relationship with God. We don't have to wonder if he likes us. We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization that I am accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, thank God, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is why God can look at us and not destroy us. That is why God can look at us and love us, because he sees his son. So friends, the gospel is our cure for depression. The gospel is our cure for anxiety. It is how we find true happiness and security in this life and in the life to come. Well, fourthly, and finally under this heading, we need to preach the gospel to ourselves as fuel for good works. When God, by his grace, grants a sinner a proper understanding of his holiness and his standard of righteousness as revealed in his law, the sinner only has two options. He could be driven, firstly, to despair in a futile attempt to keep God's law unto salvation. Perhaps some of you have been there before. Or, he can be driven to the gospel of free grace. And he can exchange his love of sin for the perfect righteousness and propitiation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the only two options a sinner has when they come to the realization of God's holiness and what that means for them as a sinner. They can try to work their way towards God, which is futile. There's no good outcome there, or they can humbly receive the free grace that is offered to them in the gospel. A proper understanding of God's law will drive us to the gospel, right? But when we receive the gospel by faith, what's interesting is the Bible says we should be driven right back to the law of God. The law points us to the gospel, which points us back to the law, not as a way of saving ourselves, but as a rule of life, how we're to live because God has saved us. So we need to remember when we talk about this, that Jesus fulfilled the law. Amen to that. But he did not abolish the law. The law is good. The law is righteous. The law is holy. The law shows us what is pleasing to our God, and it should be something that we seek after. Our confession words it this way, the gospel in no way dissolves the Christian's obligation to keep the law of God. In fact, the gospel only strengthens that obligation. Because we have received much grace, we are to exercise obedience to the Lord. And it's convicting to me as I stand up here and talk about it, but when we consider the measure of grace that God has extended to us in the gospel, how much more should we desire to please God by walking in obedience to his commandments? And we need the gospel if we're going to do this. We need the gospel if we're going to live in a manner worthy of our calling. I want to illustrate this by looking at something the Apostle Peter says in his second epistle. The first time I read this, I remember it stood out to me as just extremely profound. When we think about our sanctification and our pursuit of holiness, and so often we find ourselves falling short of that, don't we? It can become frustrating. It can become almost like a dooming cycle. But Peter says this, He lists numerous Christian qualities, things like faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. He says those are the things that should mark you as a Christian. But then he says, whoever lacks these qualities, and I found this interesting, he doesn't say whoever lacks these qualities, well, they're a false believer. They're not a Christian. They're going to hell. Now that could be the case. It could be someone who doesn't understand the gospel, someone who's not received the gospel. But that's not what Peter says. He says, if someone lacks these qualities, that person is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Certain Christians had forgotten that they were cleansed from their former sins. We might say they had neglected to preach the gospel to themselves. And as a result, they became unfruitful and slack in their obedience to God's law. So brothers and sisters, we need the grace of God given in the gospel if we are to be fruitful Christians, if we are to be Christians who are known for our good works. So may the Spirit of Christ subdue us and enable us to freely and cheerfully pursue his will as revealed in his holy law. Well, we've seen four reasons why we must preach the gospel to ourselves. Our next heading and our next question, how do we preach the gospel to ourselves? How do we do this? Consider our text again. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Paul is going back to the Bible as the foundation for his argument here. And when we consider that God is the source of the gospel and that he's inscripturated this gospel in his word for his church, it makes sense to us. Consider chapter one, paragraph one of our confession of faith. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men inexcusable, yet they're not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will, which is necessary unto salvation. What's being said here is that as amazing as natural revelation is, as glorious as God's created world is, it's only enough revelation to condemn mankind. It's not sufficient to save anyone. Lost men and women cannot go outside and look at this beautiful created world and suddenly understand that the one true living God has a son named Jesus Christ who lived, died, and rose again for sinners. Creation doesn't tell us that. Only special revelation, only God's Word tells us about Jesus. And so the confession says that The Holy Scriptures, because of this, are most necessary. They're most necessary. Because we can only find the Gospel in the Scriptures, we must have the Scriptures. If we are to be saved, we must look to the Word of God for the Gospel. So back to our question, how do you preach the Gospel to yourself? Well, quite simply, you must prayerfully saturate your mind with the Word of God, with the Scriptures. There's no other way. There's no shortcut. to this. You must find those gospel rich texts of which there are numerous texts like this in the Bible, mercifully. We must find those texts that speak to us and that speak the gospel clearly to us, and we must impress them upon our mind and heart. We must read them and meditate on them. We must memorize them and pray through them. These are all good things for us. We can go to God. We can ask him that he would give us a heart to believe those texts with more earnestness, with more truthfulness than we have in the past, that he would give us grace to apply them to our lives. So if you are a child of God, know that your Savior has prayed for you. He's asked that his Father would sanctify you in truth. And what does he say after that? Your word is truth. Your word is truth. We must start in the Bible and continually go back to the Bible if we are to preach the gospel to ourselves. Our next heading and question, when and where should we preach the gospel to ourselves? Paul tells the Corinthians, once again, that he delivered the gospel to them as of first importance. And I wanna use a illustration, a physical illustration to maybe draw some parallels here. Think about the health of our physical bodies. What are the most foundational things that we need to survive as human beings? Now we need oxygen, right? But we need food and water too, don't we? To survive. We can live for a little bit without any one of those, but you take one or all of those away for long enough, and the outcome is that we're going to die. How often, with that in mind, do we eat food and drink water? We do it every day, right? Does anyone do it more than one time a day? I do. Now, again, thinking spiritually about the gospel and feeding our souls, as it were, I think that this gives us some clues as to what Paul means when he says the gospel is of first importance. It's primary to our spiritual health. Therefore, if we desire good spiritual health, we must preach the gospel to ourselves daily. And when we neglect this, what we do is we starve ourselves of that much needed spiritual nutrition. Now to be sure, this looks different for different Christians because God does not deal with us in the same ways providentially. We're all at different stages in life. We all have differing levels of responsibility. And because of this, we all have more or less time to devote to reading God's word, to praying through God's word. And this is normal. This is life in God's created world. But each one of us must be careful to set aside at least some time each day for the renewing of our minds, for preaching the gospel to ourselves. And I want to ask a question that maybe will help us put this into context. And if you were a fly on the wall in my home, you would hear my wife, Stephanie and I talking all the time about the blessings and curses of technology, cell phones in particular. They can be such a powerful tool if they're used well, but they're a terrible master, aren't they? So this is something that I struggle with myself. I don't want you to think that I'm standing up here having figured all of this out, asking this question. But with that qualification laid out, how much time, thinking over the last seven days, how much time did you spend on your cell phone? How much time did you spend on social media? What about watching sports or movies or TV shows or maybe video games is the thing you like to do? I'm not saying any of those things are bad in and of themselves, okay? But compare the time that you spent on those things to the time that you spent in God's Word and prayer, preaching the gospel to yourself, feeding your soul. What do the scales look like? Now, I'll confess there's an imbalance in my life, and it's a sinful imbalance, and it's one that needs to be repented of. But as has been said before, Christians, when they realize that something is sin, we know what to do with that, don't we? We repent of it and we walk in new obedience. So my intention in asking this question is not to set up a legalistic hurdle that you need to jump over, far from it. Instead, I want you just to think about how you might reallocate some of your time to ensure that you're preaching the gospel to yourself on a regular basis. Brothers and sisters, we were bought with a price. Christ has set us free from the bondage of sin, but at the same time, we have become slaves to Jesus Christ. He is Lord over how we spend our time. And we have to answer to him for that. So let us all work to be good stewards of the time that he's given us, being sure to keep the word of God, to keep the gospel ever before us. I will say that Deuteronomy chapter 6, I believe, gives us a helpful framework for considering when and where we are to preach the gospel to ourselves. So while instructing Israel to always remember God's commandments to them, Moses says this, You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So friends, it's not a stretch to say that preaching the gospel to yourself should be a daily activity. And on top of that, it should be an activity that's not confined only to that place in our house. So for me, it would be on the love seat, right next to the little side table with the lamp. It shouldn't be confined to that place where we sit down to intentionally do our devotions. It should be something we carry with us throughout the day. So may God grant us grace to hold the truth of the gospel in our hearts, but also to preach it to ourselves as we go throughout our day, day by day, being inwardly renewed. Well, I'd like to use the final heading today as an additional chance to make application of the text. So our final question, our final heading, who is the gospel for? And in a word, the gospel is for sinners. And let me first address the forgiven sinners to my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. You will never outgrow the gospel. You will never outgrow the gospel. God willing, you will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. God willing, your steadfastness and obedience to his commands will increase. You'll become more useful to him in the dealings with his church as you mature. God willing, all of those things are true. But even so, you will never outgrow the gospel. You'll never get over the gospel. You'll never move beyond the gospel. As I hope you've seen today, the gospel is the foundation and fuel for the whole of the Christian life. From our salvation, to our sanctification, to our future glorification, the gospel is central. So my prayer for you is that God would grant you grace to comprehend with all the saints the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, that love that is shown so clearly in the gospel of Christ. to know that love that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. So believer in Jesus, remember the gospel, remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for you. Well, not only is the gospel for forgiven sinners, it's also for unforgiven sinners, for those who are outside of Christ. Now, earlier, we looked at some of the questions in the children's catechism. Children, what does every sin deserve? Every sin deserves the anger and judgment of God. And the anger and judgment of God will be poured out on every sin. That is a fact, it will happen. It'll be poured out either on Christ while he suffered on the cross, or it will be poured out upon your own head in an eternity in hell. The Bible rightly declares that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And if you're to avoid this fate, you must understand the message of the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ lived, died, and rose again for sinners. But you also must believe that this message is true. But you cannot stop short at understanding the message intellectually, at believing that the message is true and stopping there. What you have to do is take that gospel and make it your own. You have to trust in Christ yourself. You have to believe he's able to save you. Not that he's able to just save sinners, that he can save you. There's a common analogy that's used to describe this type of trust. So think back to the airplane illustration I was using. So let's say we get up in the air and the oxygen masks do fall from the overhead compartment and there's panic aboard the airplane. But the stewardess had come to you 10 minutes before that happened. And she had said, there's a problem with the plane and it's going down. When that happens, there's a parachute under your seat. If you put that parachute on, and you tighten it, it'll save your life. Now, a few things have to happen for that parachute to save your life. You have to hear and understand the words she's speaking to you. You have to understand them in your head. You also have to believe that she's not lying to you. I believe she's telling me the truth. The airplane is going down and also there's a parachute under my seat that will save me. But if you stop there, what happens when the plane goes down? You go down with it. You have to take the parachute out from under your seat and put it on your back and say, I'm gonna trust in this to save my life. You have to do the same thing with the gospel. It is not enough to hear and understand that Jesus lived, died and rose again for sinners. It's not enough to even believe that that message is true. You must put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You must put all your hope and trust in him just as you would that parachute on the crashing plane. So, unbeliever, obey the gospel. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Let me pray. Father, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you that you sent your only begotten son, Lord Jesus. We thank you for your perfect life. for your death, for your resurrection. And Holy Spirit, we praise you for applying in due time the work of Christ to the children of God. We pray that for those of us who are in Christ, we would not forget this, that we would not take it for granted, that we would not think that for some reason, once we're saved, we move beyond the gospel and we go to Christianity 200. No, we stay there in the fundamentals. Lord, let us never forget that. Let us live and operate with the gospel in view at all times. Would you give us grace for that? For those who do not know you, Lord, would you make their sin clear to them? Would you impress upon them the guilt of their transgressions? Would you make Jesus Christ so beautiful to them? Would you make his life and sacrificial death so beautiful to them that they're drawn irresistibly to him, that they might be saved? We pray that you would bless your word to us in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you, Matt. There's no more supper today. Let me just close this in a quick prayer of dismissal and you guys will be free to go. Lord, we thank you for this time. We thank you for speaking your word clearly through Matt, for blessing us with with his knowledge and lord just all the things you've done we just praise your name god for who you are and for your gospel and pray that you would remind us of this message throughout this week god that we would go out not just preaching the gospel to others, but preaching it to ourselves. And Lord, taking time to know you, to, as Matt said, saturate ourselves in the gospel. Lord, we pray that you would move in our hearts to do so, and do all to the glory of your name. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.