Gospel Immersion

Good morning. Yeah, so great to see all of you, at least see you before the lights go down. but what a, what a great, blessing to, worship God together in the new song that was introduced this morning, just coming to God with our brokenness. And that's what we're all about, here at Cornerstone, and we're gonna continue talking about that theme, this, this morning, the journey from brokenness to wholeness.

before we do that, actually, let me make a couple of announcements, First of all, regarding Sunday school. God has entrusted to the elders of Cornerstone a deposit of truth, to use the apostle Paul's terminology to guard. And to deliver to you, the people of, of Cornerstone, and as elders, I remember a little bit over a year ago we put a tremendous amount of thought and discussion and prayer into the mediums through which this deposit is delivered from us to the people of this church, and one of those mediums is the pulpit ministry.

That's what I'm going to be doing in In just a few moments, another content delivery medium.

Used to be our Sunday evening services, but we dropped those several years ago and replaced them with our care group ministry, and the care group ministry was to serve, amongst other things, as a gathering for fellowship and for the mutual processing of the preached word that was delivered in the previous Sunday morning sermon. So essentially we eliminated Several years ago, one of the content delivery mediums on Sunday and replaced it with another care groups, wherein we process the preached word.

But there is another Sunday venue, to use that term for lack of a better one, in which we do seek to deliver the deposit of truth to you, the people of Cornerstone, and that is our Sunday school and adult equiping school, ministry that runs about 9 months out of the year. this is a wonderful ministry.

This year, we're putting a tremendous amount of effort and energy into our Sunday school and adult equiping school, ministry, and this ministry starts up next Sunday, here in this building at 9 o'clock next Sunday. Sunday, the Sunday school hour will go from 9 to 10 and then our morning service will continue to be at the time that it is now and that is at 10:30. We have a great lineup of teachers. Who stand ready to invest in and to teach, your children, during the ministry fair that'll take place after the service, this morning, those Sunday children, Sunday school teachers all the way up through youth, I believe, will be in their Sunday school rooms over in this direction past those doors, and you're welcome during the ministry fair to go.

and visit some of those rooms, the classes where your children will be, attending starting next week and get to know the teacher, ask them whatever questions you have. Lord willing, they should be in their rooms waiting, for you. So take advantage of that, that opportunity. There's an insert that's in your bulletin regarding the adult equipping school class that also begins, next Sunday.

And, Probably the best way to frame that class is that, starting around the middle of October, we're going to be launching a series from the pulpit through the Book of Genesis. And what you're going to be studying in this adult equipping school class is going to be tethered to that. and issues will be addressed in that class, many of which do arise from a study of the Book of Genesis, subjects that are fundamental. In nature, issues like the word of God being our foundation, how to read, how to study and understand the Bible, the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture, and how it is that we should be responding to God's word, we'll be getting in that class and apologetic issues like how do I know that God exists?

What is God like, the Trinity, what is the gospel, and even a biblical way of looking at history. So there's a number of issues that are going to be addressed in the coming quarter, in our series through Genesis from the pulpit. We're going to be touching on a number of these issues, but, I, we don't want the pulpit ministry to bear the full weight of covering all of those things in, in detail. And so this equipping school class will take you deeper.

And further into some of these doctrines and actually help you to get more out of the Genesis study that we'll be doing from, the pulpit. so, our Sunday school ministry at this point in our church's history is one of the mediums by which we deliver. the deposit of God's truth to you, and, if you want the full package of what we're wanting to offer to you as shepherds of this flock, then we would welcome you to be a part of the Sunday school and adult equiping school program that begins next Sunday here in this building.

And what time?

9:00, OK? So, Lord willing, we'll, we'll see you, next, This, try to make this, a part of your Sunday experience. Sunday school, morning service and care group would make for a very rich Sunday indeed. And then one other thing before we get underway with looking at the word this morning, I just want to take a moment to thank, so many of you that had a hand in making our grand opening last Sunday the success that it was.

We had 617 people in our service last week. That's 617 souls, precious souls, and many of them were visiting Cornerstone for the very, first time. So many of you labored in so many capacities officially and unofficially in the lead up to last Sunday, and then with everything that was going on last Sunday, so many of you served in so many capacities, and we just want to say thank you to you for all that you did. My heart was just swelling with gratitude.

for all of you, for your labor, your prayers, and making last Sunday what it was for everybody. It was a great occasion, wasn't it? It was a tacos. Yeah.

A great occasion indeed, and then it rained. with a rain that we haven't seen in a long time, it was a deluge, and we ended up with wet tacos and soaked people, destroyed hairdos, and, and even, leaky roofs here. But amazingly, I didn't see one person with a bad attitudes even if you were stranded. The rain did not hinder anybody's joy.

In fact, the rain seemed to increase the joy of our young people here. but amazingly, like as soon as the rains came, instantly, in the snap of a finger, there were about 100 ministry opportunities created out of thin air and so many of you pitched in and you did what needed to be done, serving other people, moving tables, so many things. In my mind, when I thought back on why did God have the rain come on that occasion and I think I know why, because those reigns provided a chance for one of Cornerstone's greatest assets to be put on vivid display.

That asset is our people, the people of Cornerstone.

so thank you for the ways that you displayed God's grace, His mercy, his joy, last week, and all the ways that you rejoiced and worshiped and also served so many, other people. So I just wanted to, on behalf of the elders, express that to all of you. A prophetic blessing, Milton. It was a blessing from God.

Praise God. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we received that. Thank you.

Well, let's get underway with looking at continuing in our series that we began looking at. Last Sunday, you see on the screen behind me that our purpose as a church is to help people to journey from brokenness to wholeness, to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we began to see last Sunday that there are some critical points in that journey from brokenness to wholeness. And we looked at gospel conversion last Sunday. And today, we're going to move to the second key point in the journey from brokenness to wholeness, and that is gospel immersion.

Maybe that's another reason it rained so hard last week as a lead in, a setup for what we're going to talk about, today. what is gospel immersion? I went ahead and put this on the notes that are in your bulletin, so that you don't have to write furiously, this morning. But here's what we mean by, by gospel immersion.

It's willfully and continuously drenching ourselves with massive waves of gospel truth, leaving every part of our being and every part of our life marked by that deluge. Another way of saying it is letting the gospel abide richly in us and among us, orienting all of our thoughts around gospel truth. And another way of describing this is being continuously absorbed in meditation upon gospel truth and letting it mark our thoughts and behavior in every area of life as believers, having been converted to learn what the gospel is, to learn to think gospel, and then to reason from the gospel to all of the varied areas of our lives, and that's what we're going to be talking about today.

And by the way, let's take a moment to define what we mean by gospel.

there's two definitions we can give it, but let's look at this. We can define the gospel as the full truth of all that God has done. to bring us into the fullness of salvation through Christ, which includes the historical facts of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, along with the news of all the blessings that belong to those who believe in Christ. Another way of saying it is that the gospel is the good news of absolutely anything that is now true for believers as a result of the death and the resurrection.

of Christ. I hope you get the sense from this that the gospel is big. There's a lot to know. There's a lot of good news that is contained in the scriptures that we call the gospel.

That's what the word gospel means, good news. It's anything that is true of us who have believed in Jesus. It's the truth about Christ, and what he has done, and also all of the blessings that now come to us. who have believed in Him.

This is the gospel and it's ginormous. And so with that understanding in mind, let me ask you, a question. I've got a, here we go. I drew with my own hand a perfect circle.

for the sermon this morning. but I want you to imagine that the circle that is on the screen, behind me represents the sum total of all gospel truths. The historical facts of the life and the death and the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, along with all the gospel blessings and gospel promises that belong to Christians upon believing in Christ. Imagine that the circle also represents the sum total of all of the ramifications of gospel truth.

And all of the applications of those ramifications to every area of your life. You have that in your head? That's what that circle represents. Now, here's my question for you.

On the day of your conversion, obviously you heard the gospel and you responded by believing in Christ, but on the day of your conversion, how much of this gospel circle did you comprehend? If you want on your notes, just draw a circle and then just carve out of that circle how much of all that I just described that we're calling the gospel circle, how much of that did you understand and comprehend? I did this exercise myself and here's what I did looking back. See that?

Can everyone see that? that's about how much looking back with hindsight that I felt like I understood of the fullness of the gospel on the day that I believed in Christ, and I would suspect that there are a few of you in this room who carved out more than 5% of that circle representing how much you knew on the day of your conversion. That fact alone shows the insanity. of us preaching the gospel to people until they believe in Jesus, and then after they believe in Jesus, We stop preaching the gospel to them.

Once someone believes in Jesus for the first time, we should not assume that that person has been fully evangelized or fully gospelized. The truth is, at best, they may be 5% evangelized. The gospel is much bigger and more grandiose than anyone can possibly understand on the day of their conversion. But often what we do in the church is we'll evangelize people, man, we're hitting them hard with the good news.

Until they get saved, and then we put the gospel down and stop evangelizing them and we say, OK, good, now you're saved. Now let me give you the rules to live by. And we start coming at them with the rules and the guidelines, and, and I know in my own life, this is what I did after I got saved. My, my basic attitude was, OK, I'm saved now.

Lord, thank you for the gospel. Now, now give me the rules to live by. And I sought to live my Christian life in that way without a comprehension of the gospel. and it doesn't work if you try to live the Christian life with An underappreciation of and a lack of understanding of the gospel, then you're not going to be succeeding in that.

Consequently, we have churches full of under evangelized Christians. I think that's the number one problem in the church today, the problem of under-evangelized Christians. And there are many Christians who become sufficiently legalized. But they're grossly under evangelized.

Elise Fitzpatrick says it beautifully. She says, talking about herself, it seems like right after I became a Christian, I mostly forgot about Jesus and asked Moses to come into my heart and make me better. Isn't that true though? And we, we lay aside the gospel and forget about it.

This is the story of many Christians and even many Christian ministries. On many levels, this is my own confession. I believed in Jesus as a young person, I was saved at an early age, but I wasted many years of my life not really understanding the central, centrality of the gospel. In my life from day to day.

And so here I am, trying to walk with the Lord and do the Christian living thing. And I'm only partially evangelized, yet I'm trying to live the Christian life and it was going haywire. Let me just read off some indications of the fact that I was not sufficiently evangelized. Here's some examples.

On a gut level, I often was not sure that I was always under God's grace. On a gut level, I often felt as if God were angry with me. On a gut level, I would think that God was cold and distant toward me after I sinned. And would come back into his presence to seek his forgiveness.

On a gut level, I often felt like God was fed up with me and fed up with forgiving me, to where even when he would forgive, he's like, all right, this is it. I'll forgive you this time. But you better not mess up again. On a gut level, I often felt like God was very difficult to please.

I often felt like there was still some wrath, just some wrath in the heart of God against me that I still needed to bear as a Christian. On a gut level, I felt that my standing before God was dictated to some degree by my performance. On my bad days, I would feel that I had fallen out of His good favor, and on my good days, I felt like, man, I must be in His good favor because I'm behaving very well. I felt more worthy on my good days.

On a gut level, I often felt like I was under God's condemnation on my bad days. This is as a Christian. By my actions and choices, I have often demonstrated a belief that sometimes sin is better for me than God's love. I have failed to love and value and make sacrifices for brothers and sisters in Christ for whom Christ gave up his life.

I've harbored bitterness in my heart against people who have wronged me feeling justified in holding a grudge. Against them. I've often disregarded prohibitions from God in His word because I've thought less than the best about the heart of the God from whom those prohibitions have come. I have believed that sin is more powerful than Christ and that I have no choice but to give way to it.

There have been moments where I have felt that and believed that my actions would indicate that I believe that even if I may not have intellectually been thinking that way. I often throughout my Christian life allowed myself to become worried and anxious, not believing that the God who saved me loved me enough to care for me utterly. I've often been offended by my painful circumstances, feeling that I deserve better than what my circumstances are. I've often fretted over my circumstances thinking that things would not work out for my ultimate good and God's ultimate glory.

I've often depended on my own performance to be what commends me to God rather than solely the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I have at times felt insecure in God's love, fearing that I can do anything at any moment that might blow the deal. These are merely some indications throughout my Christian life in various moments. That indicate a lack of comprehension of some important and very relevant gospel truth.

To any degree that anything I just said still persists in me, and many of these things do, they serve as indications that Milton Vincent is still not yet fully evangelized. What I've just shared with you are common struggles. Not every Christian struggles with all of these things all of the time, but every Christian struggles with some of them. And the reason is because evangelism is a lifelong pursuit.

I'm not yet fully evangelized in every area of my life, and neither are you. And this is why it's so important after a person becomes converted to Christ through the gospel that we not put the gospel aside. But that we keep evangelizing them and giving them the good news, keep taking them back to the death and the resurrection of Christ and what Christ has done and pointing them to the good news of what is now theirs in Christ. The gospel is not intended to be merely the means by which you and I are converted.

But once converted, the gospel is to be our daily food, our daily bath water, our daily meditation, the ground we stand on. Our fundamental orientation, the air we breathe, the armor we wear. Having been saved, we are now to eat, drink and sleep gospel. The reason that we want to live this way in our hearts and minds and in our community here at Cornerstone and when we assemble together in our gatherings on Sunday mornings and all of our other ministries is because we believe that, and this is biblical, that an environment of high density gospel truth is the perfect matrix for transformation and for spiritual growth.

You're like, well, where did you learn that? Well, we learned this from the apostle Paul, whose life we began tracking last Sunday. Paul had a gospel mindset. He was crazy about the gospel.

He was obsessed with the gospel in his life and his, ministry, his approach to ministry. was gospel immersion. Paul was not just converted through the gospel, but once he was saved, he believed that the gospel was to be the basic obsession of his life. Let me just give you some passages.

Look at the language that he uses when talking about himself. In Romans 1:1, he says, Paul, a bond servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, literally, the Greek says, set apart into the gospel of God. In the mind of Paul, Paul was not merely saved through the gospel, but he was saved into the gospel. Paul would happily say that the gospel is not simply something you're saved through, but something you're saved into.

It is to be the air that you breathe, the garden that you live in, the water that you swim in, the house that you live in, the gospel is to be the one great permanent circumstance in which you live and move and have your being, now that you are a believer in Jesus. God saved you through the gospel, in order to enable you to live a life that is now immersed in the gospel. 1 Corinthians 9:23. Paul says, I do all things for the sake of the gospel.

Everything I do in my life is tied to the gospel. Everything I do, so that I might become a fellow partaker of it. Everything Paul did, he did for the purpose of furthering God's gospel purposes in him. And in other people.

Paul, when he was evaluating, should I do this in my life? Should I allow this, practice in my life? should I do this or this? When he's evaluating things like that, Paul would always ask, how will this serve God's gospel purposes in me or in other people?

And Paul lived such a streamlined life that he could honestly say, I do everything I do everything. For the furtherance of God's gospel purposes in me and others, always seeking to become a deeper and deeper participant in the gospel together with other people. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 2, Paul says, To the Corinthians, I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He's reflecting on his visit to Corinth, when he initially met the Corinthians and reflecting on how he ministered to them and behaved among them.

And Paul is telling these proud and cultured and sophisticated and worldly Corinthians that when he was with them a few years earlier ministering to them, he says, I was content. Everyone wanted to talk philosophy and what this philosopher said and that guru said, I was content to be among you as someone who knew nothing except Jesus and Him crucified. That's amazing. I remember many, many years ago when our daughter Brooke Who's now, 24, when she was, I don't know, maybe about 5 or 6 years old, I walked out into our backyard porch and she was on our porch on a bicycle and she was just going round and round in circles on her bike.

And I heard her talking as she was doing that, saying something over and over again, and, and so that intrigued me. So I got closer to her. And what I heard her saying repeatedly were these words, Poor stinky rookie. All I know is Jesus and how to ride a two-wheeler.

And she just kept saying that poor stinky Brookie, all I know is Jesus, and how to ride a two-wheeler. well, what? Paul was even content to not know how to ride a two-wheeler. In fact, he probably didn't know how to ride a two wheeler.

He was content to have the reputation. Of only knowing Jesus. And Him crucified. That's an amazing thing.

That's what his life was all about. One final passage here reflecting Paul's mindset is in 1 Corinthians 9:12, Paul says, woe is me. If I do not evangelize or if I do not preach the gospel. Paul's not saying, I'm going to be judged by God if I don't preach the gospel, or my life will one day be ruined if I don't preach the gospel.

What Paul is saying is my life is ruined. If I am not preaching the gospel and speaking it to other people. Paul's saying, I can't think of a worse fate that could ever befall me than to not be able to speak gospel truth to other people, both saved and lost. one philosopher has said the unexamined life is not worth living.

Paul would say the non-evangelizing life is not worth living. And he's like, my life is ruined. If that fate befalls me that I cannot speak the gospel to other people, so we see just from these passages that the gospel was Paul's obsession. He felt like his destiny was to be immersed in the gospel, to live for the gospel, to know nothing but the gospel.

Experience life according to the gospel, and he viewed his life as being ruined if he could not speak the gospel to other people and you might look at all of that and say, well, Paul was an apostle, his calling was unique. Well, read his epistles and hear how many times he's saying imitate me. And follow the pattern that you see in me. Paul invites us into this same lifestyle of gospel immersion, and we should follow him in, in that.

Paul was not content to merely be saved by the gospel, but he wanted his life immersed in the gospel. And here's what I want to do with the time that we have left this morning. I want us to just look at three beliefs of Paul about the gospel. Three things that he believed about the gospel that served to explain why his life and his ministry were so immersed in.

The gospel. We could make quite a list here, but we'll just look at 3. The first thing Paul believed about the gospel is he believed that the gospel is the power of God into salvation. if you really believe that something was the power of God, you'd want to be obsessed with that, right?

You'd want to stay close to that, right? You would want that inside of you, right? Well, that's how Paul felt about the Gospel. In 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul says, for the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is.

The power of God. In Romans 1:16, Paul says something similar. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. I'm not ashamed to preach it.

I'm not ashamed to believe it for myself. I'm not ashamed of the good news about Christ, for it, the good news is the power of God. Salvation to everyone who is believing. It is the power of God.

In both of these passages, Paul refers to the gospel as the power of God. He doesn't say a power of God or a demonstration of the power of God, but it is the. Power of God. If I came up to some guy this morning and said, you are a man, What am I saying by that?

I'm saying of the billions of men on the planet, I recognize you among them as being one of them, OK. but if I came up to them and I said, You're the man. What am I saying? What I'm saying is you are the ultimate man of all men that I know.

You are the consummate man, OK? That's what I would be saying by that. For Paul to say that the gospel is the power of God, what he's saying by that is that the gospel is the ultimate location where God's power resides and does its most amazing work. The universe is filled with demonstrations of the amazing power of God.

And among all of those demonstrations of the power of God, Paul points to the gospel, the good news about the person and the work of Jesus, and says, behold the power of God. We're told in Romans 1 that the power of God is seen throughout all of creation. And, when you, you go to various places here on this planet and when you look in our solar system and beyond at all of creation, we see incredible demonstrations of the power of God, do we not? our own sun at the center of our solar system is a ridiculous demonstration of the power.

Of God. It's over a million kilometers in diameter. The core of our sun is like 27 million degrees. If I had, If I just heated the tip of this pencil, just the tip of this pencil to 27 million degrees, everyone in Riverside would be dead from the heat.

OK? The sun, the rays of the sun emanate in every direction. And of all of the rays that emanate from the sun in any given second, less than 1 billionth of those rays hit our tiny little planet and enter Earth's atmosphere, and scientists say the energy of what just hits our atmosphere is the equivalent of 126 trillion horsepower. Of energy.

And that's less than 1 billionth of the energy that emanates from the sun in any given second. And you might become a student of the sun and come to God and say, God, the sun is amazing. Surely this is the power of God. And God would say, no.

No, indeed it does demonstrate my power to a degree, but it's not the ultimate location where my power resides. You can go to a neutron star, a dying star, and in some of those stars, scientists tell us that matter is so compressed on some of these neutron stars that if you were to scoop out just a teaspoonful of matter from the core of a neutron star and bring it back to Earth, that 1 teaspoonful of matter would weigh over a billion tons. Imagine the power that's involved in pressing the atoms together to that degree.

But God would say no, that's not the power of God.

If you want to know the ultimate location of my power, it's in Jesus, and it's in the good news about Him. That is where my power resides in its thickest density. And so guys, if you want to experience the power of God in your life, you will experience it inside the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we want to be a church that experiences the power of God, then we want to be a gospel centered church, right?

we want our worship to be infused with the gospel. We want to sing gospel and pray gospel and celebrate Jesus Christ and gospel truths about him, about his person, and about his work, because that's where the power of God is. Notice what Paul says in Romans. He says, literally, it is the power of God into salvation.

In other words, the gospel has the power to generate movement in your life, to take you from where you are right now. If you don't know the Lord, then you're in the kingdom of Satan, and your sins have not been forgiven, and you are under the wrath of God, you are so far away from God. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you were to believe it, has the power to move you from where you are now into this thing called salvation, the blessings of transformation and forgiveness and relationship with Jesus Christ and power and forgiveness and love and acceptance by God, and the list is endless.

The gospel is the power of God into salvation.

Paul says that's why Paul was obsessed with the gospel. That leads to a second thing that Paul believed about the gospel, and that is that he believed that the gospel is especially for Christians. We see Paul evangelizing and preaching the gospel in the Book of Acts. But what, if you look at all of Paul's life and ministry on the pages of the New Testament, most by far of his gospel preaching was the Christian people.

This often gets overlooked. It's so obvious, though, but we can miss the forest for the trees. Paul believed that the gospel was for Christian people. In Romans chapter 1, verse 16, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God into salvation for whom?

2 or for everyone who is continuously believing. It is the power of God for believers into salvation. And that doesn't just mean to get you into salvation. And that's it.

But even once you're inside the gospel is the power of God to take you deeper and deeper into all things salvation. In 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul says the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are continuously being saved, it is the power of God. Paul saying, this is my testimony today. I've known the Lord for years, and I'm telling you that.

Experiencing this reality in my life right now. For those of us, including myself, who are day by day in the process of experiencing God's saving work in our lives through Jesus, I'm telling you our experience is this, that the gospel is. The power of God. For believers, for believers.

Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 and 12. Just very briefly, Paul, Paul says, this, that Christ, when he ascended on high, he gave gifts to men, and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets, and he gave some as evangelists. Those are gospellirs, that's the word that is used there, the word for gospel. He gave some as gospel preachers, people who explain the gospel.

And some as pastors and teachers. And why did he give these gifts, among which is gospelizers, evangelists, look at this verse 12, for the equipping of the saints. What Paul is saying is that the saints need pastors and teachers and apostles and prophets, and the saints need evangelizers. In their life, so that they can be equipped.

That word equip is used various ways in the New Testament. It's used in Matthew 4:21 to speak of the disciples who were mending nets. This word means to repair, for the repair of the saints. How many of you need some repair?

Raise your hand. OK, evangelists amongst pastors and teachers and what Paul lists here are God's gift to you. To help bring about that repair in Galatians 6:1, Paul says, if anyone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one. OK?

That word restore, the Greek word translated restore in Galatians 6:1 is the same word translated equipping here. So when you're off track and you need to be restored, you need pastors and teachers and apostles and prophets, and you need gospellizers. Who can serve you and help you in this way. Paul clearly viewed evangelist as being for the equipping and the mending and the restoring of the saints of God, equipping them for the work of ministry.

This passage alone teaches that Christians need evangelists in their life who can in an ongoing way evangelize them. Now, does that sound like a foreign thought to you? Those of you that have been coming to Cornerstone for a while, it's not a foreign thought, but just, is that jarring at all? Does that seem like a novel thought to you?

Actually, it's not novel at all. We find it, it, it's in the pages of the New Testament, but even think of the book Pilgrim's Progress written by John Bunyan hundreds of years ago. John Bunyan was locked on to the very thing that we're talking about this morning. for those of you that have read the book, you guys remember how, Christian, who is the pilgrim, before he goes to the cross and becomes converted and gets his sin burden off of his back, he is met by a man named Evangelist on two occasions who on both occasions points him ultimately to the cross.

All right, that makes total sense to us. That's what evangelists do. They talk to lost people. And point them to the cross.

And so Christian gives heed to what evangelist says, and he makes his way to the cross and he gets the burden of his sin rolled off his back, and he becomes a child of God. And then from there he continues his journey. To the celestial city. But here's what's interesting.

Long after his visit to the cross, long after his conversion, Christian and a companion named Faithful are approaching the city of Vanity Fair, and guess who meets up with them post conversion. Evangelist does. And what is so revealing to us and instructive for us is how Christian and faithful respond to the arrival of evangelists. Let me just read a part of the dialogue to you as evangelist is approaching them, faithful recognized him.

He recognized evangelist and said, Oh, look who's coming yonder, brother. Then Christian looked and exclaimed, It's my good friend, evangelist. Yes, said faithful, and my good friend too, he's the one who set me in the pathway to the gate. By that time, evangelists had caught up with them and greeted them, saying, Peace be with you, dearly beloved.

See, he can't help but speak good news. Peace to you. Your beloved, your dearly beloved. Those are gospel truths that belong to Christians, and look at how they respond.

Welcome, welcome, good evangelist, said Christian, and welcome 1000 times over, said faithful. Dear evangelist, your companionship is so desirable to us poor pilgrims. Isn't it interesting that they say that rather than why are you talking to us? go talk to lost people.

We don't need you anymore. No, they're so happy to see evangelist, and they desire his companionship. They're welcoming him 1000 times over. And so evangelist begins to converse with them.

And among the things that he says to them, is this, you have been champions. You will reap a harvest if you do not give up. The crown is in front of you. And it is one that will last forever.

See, these are gospel truths that belong to Christians. You're not out of gunshot range of the devil. Let nothing of the world get inside of you, set your face like stone. You have all power of heaven and earth on your side, speaking good news to them.

At the end of the exchange, It says this, then Christian thanked him for his words of encouragement, but told him that they nevertheless wanted him to speak more to them for their edification the rest of the way. Do you see the point? That John Bunyan is making. This is not a novel thought.

John Bunyan wants you to know that an evangelist is someone whose companionship you as a believer should desire and welcome 1000 times over. And you should want him to speak to you for your edification for the rest of the way. This is exactly why Paul desired to evangelize Christian people. For example, in Romans chapter 1 verse 15, Paul is saying to the, to the Roman Christians, I've wanted to come and visit you guys and I've been hindered a number of times, but I so want to see your face and to be with you.

And look at what he says in verse 15. He says, so for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are at Rome. Who's he talking to? He's talking to Christians.

Certainly Paul was eager to preach the gospel to lost people at Rome, but he's writing to Christians here and he says, I can't wait to come to Rome and to have a chance, literally in the Greek to evangelize you Christians. In the church at Rome. Paul could not be with them. He's like, I can't get there right now, so I'm writing you a letter and he writes the book of Romans, and what is the book of Romans, but the fullest, most detailed explanation of gospel truth anywhere in the New Testament.

And even after writing that letter and sending it to them, and Paul knows what his intentions are, he's gonna lay the gospel out for them. He's going to evangelize these Christians through letter. He's still saying, when I do get to you, I'm going to evangelize you again. This is why in many of Paul's letters he spent so much time preaching gospel truth to his Christian readers.

What is Ephesians 12 and 3? It's all gospel. Colossians 1 and 2, it's all gospel. Romans 1 through 11, it's all an explanation of gospel truth.

Paul spends the first parts of these books immersing his readers into gospel truth, soaking and drenching them. In the gospel before he delivers even a single command to them on how to live their lives. And that leads us to a third and a final thing that Paul believed about the gospel that serves to explain why he was so obsessed with the gospel and immersed in the gospel and his life and ministry. And that is because Paul believed that the gospel applies to every area of life.

It applies to everything. There's no area of your life that the gospel does not apply to. We need to let that reality sink into us in Ephesians and Colossians and the book of Romans before Paul gives any counsel on work, family, marriage, child rearing, relationships with other people, forgiveness, speech, conduct, citizenship, responding to wrongs, and the list goes on before he gives any instruction about any of those things, he first immerses his audience. And gospel truth.

And then he says, therefore, And then everything he says after is tied to the gospel that he has just explained to them. Why would Paul do that? He did that because he believed that the gospel applied to everything. Here's the gospel.

Therefore, here's how to be in the workplace. Here's the gospel, therefore, here's how to live in your home. Here's the gospel, therefore, here's how to Practice marriage, do child rearing. Here's how to speak.

Here's how to respond to people and respond when you're wronged. Every command in every area of life that Paul gives was attached to the gospel in this way, and many times with, with great specificity. In Ephesians 4, be forgiving one another just as God in Christ has forgiven you. The husbands and Ephesians 5 husbands love your wives, and a lot of husbands would hear that and go, yeah, I got that down.

I'll love my wife. I know how to do that. And then Paul says, just like Christ loved the church. And gave himself up for her.

Suddenly, he takes us to a whole another level. What he's saying, husbands, you want to know how to be a good husband, go to the foot of the cross and stare at and study what you see there and then turn around and be that towards your wife. Where you are a living embodiment of the grace and the love and the sacrifice of the gospel. My own thinking about the gospel's applicability to every area of life, began to shift over a decade ago when we started our series through the Book of First Corinthians.

How many of you were a part of Cornerstone when we started through First Corinthians? I was talking to my younger brother who's a pastor on the East Coast, and I was telling him we're about to do First Corinthians, and he said, as you go through the book, keep your eyes open for how many times Paul goes back to gospel truth. In addressing the various ethical and theological relational issues that he addresses in the letter, and, So I began to do that as we studied through the book and I just was left astounded at how gospel centered Paul was in dealing with a whole array of issues.

Can we rattle through some examples real quick?

here's one, example. Paul, one of the problems that the Corinthians had was they had some defects in their theology about the physicality of our bodies in the afterlife. And they thought our bodies are just spiritual or whatever. Paul sees this theological defect and evaluates it.

He's like, man, how do I solve this problem and address it? What do they need? Hmm, oh, yeah, I know they need the gospel. And so in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is going to address this defect, but look at how he starts.

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel. These are Christian people. He's like, let me make known to you. The gospel, which I gospeled to you, which also you received, and which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast, the word I gospel to you, for I delivered to you as a first importance that Christ died for our sins, he was buried, and he was raised.

And then Paul, if you read chapter 15, he begins to reason from those truths to the area where they had the theological defect. That's his pattern. church discipline, what does the gospel have to do with church discipline? In chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians you see that there was sin in their midst.

There was a man sleeping with his father's wife, and rather than confronting this man and rebuking him and calling sin sin, they were tolerating this man's behavior in the church, and Paul is basically telling them, you've got to Practice church discipline and boot this man out of the church. What is his rationale? Look at this. 1 Corinthians 5:7, he says, clean out the old leaven, the leaven of sin, so that you may be a new lump, just as you are, in fact, a new lump, unleavened.

You as a body are already unleavened. Why? For Christ, our Passover also has been sacrificed. He's been slain and that has made you an unleavened congregation.

How can you an unleavened people tolerate the leaven of sin in your midst? Another example, the Corinthians were engaging in immorality with temple prostitutes at the local temple in Corinth, and they thought it was acceptable for them to do that because sex is a body thing and God doesn't really care about what we do with our bodies. They bought into the dualistic notion that was popular back then that God only cares about the spiritual. The immaterial, but that which is material and physical, that's beneath the concern of God.

So sex is just a body thing. It doesn't really affect you spiritually and it doesn't matter to God. And so there people in the Corinthian church during the week are engaging in sexual practices with temple prostitutes. How would you address that problem?

Look at how Paul addresses it. He says, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? when you got saved, you became a member of the body of Christ, and that makes even your physical bodies members of Christ. That's a gospel truth.

Paul then says, shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? You're going to use Christ's body, a part of his body in this way, may it never be. He goes on to say, flee immorality, every other sin. That a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body, which he's just established is a member of Christ's body.

He goes on verse 19. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who's in you, whom you have from God? He's saying, when you believed in Jesus, God gave His Holy Spirit to you, who now resides in your body, making your body a temple of the Spirit. That's a gospel truth.

And Paul says, and don't that you're not your own? Why? For you have been bought. With a price, there it is, the cross.

Christ died for you. He shed His blood, and he purchased you, and that includes your body. Therefore, glorify God with your bodies. Paul goes back to gospel truth, reasons from that truth to their area of moral defect.

This one final issue, Paul, the Corinthians were going to the pagan temple restaurants and dining there, and those who were stronger Christians said, yeah, I can do that. It doesn't cause me to stumble, and it's great food, it's a cheap price, great restaurant, and I just ignore the sin that's going on around me, and they had a conscience that was supposedly stronger. And they were spiritually strong enough to do that without stumbling, but by doing that, the weaker Christians saved out of that background were saying, Man, maybe, maybe I can go do that too.

And then they would go to the temple, pagan temple restaurant and, and slip right back into their former lifestyle and stumble all over the place.

And Paul, but nonetheless, these stronger Christians were like, hey, I got liberty in Christ. I'm not going to give that up. I can do that. I got freedom in Christ.

Well, notice how Paul goes back to the gospel. He says, if someone sees you who have knowledge dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge, he who is weak is ruined, the brother. For whose sake Christ died.

Paul says, when you look at your brothers and sisters in Christ, even the weaker ones, you need to put the same premium on them that Christ placed upon them. Christ shed his blood for those brothers and sisters. He gave up his life for them. And you can't give up a delicious slab of meat.

For them, you can't give up a good deal for them. You can't give up the luxury of dining in a pagan temple for the sake of that brother for whom Christ gave up his life. You see what Paul is doing in all of these examples. He's talking to Christian people who had moved away from the gospel.

And Paul keeps bringing them back to gospel truth and then reasoning from that. To the moral, the theological, the relational, and even the ecclesiastical church related issues that they were defective in. This is Paul's pattern and this should be our pattern. This is what Paul's life was all about.

He was saved by the gospel into The gospel. The gospel was his obsession. He made it his basic orientation for all of life. He spent all of his life thinking about the gospel and teasing out all of the ramifications of the gospel to every area of his own life.

And then he just went around evangelizing people, both lost and saved. Let me, let me explain to you this good news, and let me tell you how this applies to your life. His ministry and life was drenched in gospel truth, and he invited other believers, including you and I, into that lifestyle. And so I ask you this morning, you may be a born again child of God, but here's my question.

You may say, yes, I've been saved through the instrumentality of the gospel. But my question to you is, Are you in the gospel? Are you immersed in the gospel? Are you fully hydrated with the gospel?

Colossians 3:16, does the word of Christ, which is a synonym for the gospel, does the gospel dwell richly inside of you at all times? And if not, get into this book. Read your New Testament, read the Gospels, stare at Jesus, who he is and what he has done. Read the New Testament.

This is your portfolio of all of the blessings that now belong to you and learn to think gospel and reason from the gospel to every area of your life. That is, Gospel immersion, and it lasts from the moment of conversion all the way to and through glory. Amen. Let's pray together Lord, you're so good to give us such practical help in, in your word.

Help us to get it right. I still struggle to get this right in my life, in our home, as a pastor. Help us to get this right as a church. To be a people, Lord, who lives and breathes the atmosphere of the gospel.

Who makes it the basic obsession of our life from day to day, Lord. That we would experience and know your tremendous power. This is the power of God. And we will never lack for the full experience of your power as long as we are firmly established in and residing inside of the good news about the person of Jesus Christ, who He is and what He has done for us, and all of the blessings that now come to us.

And I pray, Lord, that You would make us all good evangelizer of not only ourselves but good evangellizers of one another. That this place, this people, this congregation would be drenched. With gospel truth. Which would serve as an incredibly rich matrix in which we can grow and be transformed.

We thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you. Receive these funds that we give to you now, and use, Lord, every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus and the furtherance of this good news about Him that we've been talking about today. We ask all of these things in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said,