, we're gonna continue talking about the gospel, this morning., we as a church have been on a journey over the last decade and with regard to understanding and, appreciating the role that the gospel plays in our lives as believers and, and so, over the years, we've, at times from the pulpit just use language that, makes sense to those that have been a part of our church body over that length of time, but we've had people coming in recent months and years that they're like, what, what's all this about the gospel and, and, and, and so what I wanna do just in this block of time last week as well as today and maybe even beyond this, to just gather our thoughts around the gospel and to, to make it explicitly clear what we mean when we speak of the gospel, what it is, and the role that it is to play in our lives as believers, and today we'll get into this, the effects that will be manifested in the lives of those that are living in the good of the gospel each day. Now, last week, we essentially addressed the question, now that I'm saved, what do I do with the gospel? And we're trying to combat the notion that the gospel is just for nonbelievers and that once I get saved, OK, thank you Lord, for the gospel, and I set it aside and I move on to bigger and better things. We learned last week that that's absolutely the opposite of what the Lord wants us to do.
We never move on from the gospel. In fact, from Peter's example and from his reader's example, we learn. 5 things that we are to do with the gospel. Number 1, we are to worship God with the gospel.
We observe this in verses 3 through 5. Just take gospel truth, study it, and then go into the presence of God and bless His name and worship God for the things that He has done for us revealed in the Gospel. And then in verses 6 through 12 we learn that we need to rejoice in the gospel as well as our position in it. Our historical position, just in the timeline of history.
We are very blessed to be living today on this side of the cross and the resurrection of Christ. And then even our cosmic position in it, angelic beings look upon us and our position In the midst of God's redemptive plan, and they fold their wings in envy, as it were, just looking at our position saying, man, it must be great to be in the position that we are in as believers in Jesus living in the good of the gospel. We also learned last week throughout chapter one that we need to be motivated by the gospel, motivated by the gospel and our acts of obedience. We learned last week, and I'll repeat this, God doesn't want your obedience....
