Some Post-Election Gospel Reminders

, well, let me have you guys, turn in your Bibles to First Timothy chapter one-ish. First Timothy chapter 1, for those of you visiting with us, we're doing a verse by verse study through the book of First Timothy, and as we continue in our study this morning, we come to the very end of verse 10, and my goal this morning is to cover verses, the latter part of verse 10 through, verse 11. And the title of the message this morning, is some post-election gospel reminders. How many of you are suffering or have suffered from post-election stress disorder?

All right. Pest. Well, it's been an interesting, week for those of you that may have been living in a cave. We had a national election on Tuesday.

And what an election it was. We have ourselves a new president elect. And I think, I think that all of us can, In good conscience joined with President Bush as he mentioned in his radio address yesterday and just celebrating the fact that we have our first African-American president and that is a triumph in the American story. And there's something to, to cherish, in that.

I had told myself election day, I'm not going to get all caught up in the election, and while I was at work on Tuesday, I did a pretty good job, but as the afternoon wore on, I started going online and checking the, all of the results, and before I knew it, I was suckered in and the whole night was, till like midnight was just devoted to nothing but that, as if it all depended on me to be tracking everything for, but, I got so absorbed in it that that night I went to bed Tuesday night and I had a dream.

And a handful of dreams. And in the first dream I ran into Barack Obama. And I walked up to him and I shook his hand and greeted him and I said these words to him.

I said, Mr. Obama, I am a part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. To pray for you every day. And I told him I will pray for you.

As you serve as president, that God will bless you. And that he will give you the wisdom of Solomon because you are going to need it. And to his credit, he was very grateful and he expressed his gratitude for That sentiment and then we went on from that to talk about a few other things, but that's classified. But then I, I woke up and then I fell back to sleep and I dreamed that I was elected president and, And, and it wasn't a happy feeling.

I, I was, I was worried. I was frantic. I was scrambling around trying to put together an administration by January and just trying to think through who the right people would be to serve in various posts given the mess that our country is in. And you'll be happy to know I, I considered some of you, and So you can be encouraged in that to serve in those roles, but, but it just, it wasn't a happy feeling that I had, it was just more of concern and, and feeling the weight of the burden, and I, I just woke up from that just really feeling like, man, we really need to pray for not only President Bush, who is still our president, but be praying for our new president as well.

At his victory speech. Tuesday night, he didn't seem overly happy and some of the commentators commented on that, that he seemed very sober and very sobered by the responsibility that he's now going to be assuming. In fact, my understanding is that that night they had a big fireworks display planned as part of the festivities, and he called it off. I think probably to his credit, just given where our country is right now, he I didn't feel that that was appropriate.

So, we really need to be praying for all those that were elected to office, including our new president. I was happy on Tuesday to find out that Proposition 81, That that is a victory for God's definition of marriage. We didn't make that up. It's God's definition of marriage, but there's already lawsuits that have been filed and every attempt is being made and will be made to undo this.

There are protests that have been going on and probably will continue, in fact, right now at Saddleback, Rick Warren's church. in Irvine, I think, there's protests that are going on because that church took a stand, for God's definition of marriage. So we want to be praying for, for them, as well. and, and, with the fallout from the election, there's been articles since then, and I expected this on evangelical Christians and, evangelical Christians are doing a lot of soul searching and some of the issues that are prominent in their thinking were, in some cases ignored by those that went to the polls and voted for their portfolio.

and maybe lost some of the passion for some of the, the, social or the moral issues that are founded in, in scripture. And there have been articles about that and just some of the soul searching that evangelical Christians are doing. And some of this soul searching is, is good for us. And Cal Thomas, I think, expresses it well.

He says after 30 years, 30 years after the birth of the moral majority, you guys remember that? after 30 years of trying to transform culture through politics, conservative evangelicals would be wise to try a different God glorifying, direction. And talking about other social movements in the past, he said social movements that relied mainly on political power to enforce a conservative moral code weren't anywhere near as successful as those that focused on changing hearts. And so this is a time, I think, for us to really consider what we're all about, and we're not about political power, even though there might be some of that just because of the number of evangelical Christians.

What is the location where energy should be put in terms of impacting this society? We learned some things about that last week. But I, I don't know, I just found as I studied the passage for today here in First Timothy, my heart was just wrapping itself around some of the reminders that we're going to be seeing in this passage. that just serve to give us perspective, some things that we would do well to be reminded of about the gospel, which is the most powerful weapon.

It is the most powerful thing that God has given to us, by which we can impact our society for Christ, one person at a time, one heart at a time. And, let me show you this on the screen. The, the, this is basically all we're going to cover today. And I put it on the screen because I'm, I'm going with something of a literal translation, of this.

It's a little different than the new American Standard. But in 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 9 and 10, Paul is listing off all of the different kinds of sins that come to his mind, rebelliousness, sinners, unholy, profane, and those who kill fathers and mothers and And so forth. And, and then he says at the end of verse 10, and he says, whatever else or whatever other sin is contrary to sound teaching, what is sound teaching, which is verse 11, according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

There's so much here and just, this verse and a half for us to ponder this morning.

And what we'll do this morning, this is how we'll frame the message is 5 reminders that we would do well to remember about the gospel. I think, I think it'll encourage us both in our own individual lives and also in contemplating the way that we can impact our, our culture. Now, Before we look at these reminders about the gospel, let's just remind ourselves of what the gospel is. And there's different ways I could do this this morning.

But the way I'm going to do it is just remind ourselves of what we learned in verses 1 and 2. that book, Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. You can almost say that about 1 Timothy, Everything you need to know about the gospel, you can learn in verses 1 and 2. And it's at least stated or implied there, just in the, these are gospel truths here.

and we learned this just in verses 1 and 2 of this book, Jesus Christ is Lord. George Bush is not Lord, Obama is not Lord, Jesus is Lord, and he's never going to be voted out of office. He is the sovereign king and Lord of the universe. And a second thing we learned is that God is our Savior, God, with all of this Lord, all of this power has put himself into service as our Savior.

Implied in this is the fact that we need a Savior, right? We're not OK. We need a Savior. We also learned in verses 1 and 2 that Christ Jesus is our hope.

Positively speaking, he is our hope. And for Paul to describe Jesus Christ as our hope implies that apart from him, we are. Hopeless, right? That we can't be our hope, we can't put our hope in anyone or anything else.

He is our only. hope for salvation and the forgiveness of sins in a relationship with God. At the end of verse two, he says, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. And from that we learned that grace comes from the Father and from Jesus Christ.

This is ill-deserved favor. we are sinners, we deserve God's judgment, but instead Through Christ and through the death of Christ, we receive the forgiveness of our sins, and we get this favor that is actually the opposite of what we deserve. Mercy, he says, also comes from the Father and Christ to us, implying that we were hopelessly wretched. We were in dire straits, and we elicited from God a feeling of pity and compassion.

And we could not have rescued ourselves. And also at the end of verse two, that peace comes from God, where there was once hostility between us and God. There is now peace because of what Jesus has done. And all of this has happened through the cross.

Jesus died for our sins, took God's punishment that we deserve for our sins upon Himself. He was buried in the tomb, and on the 3rd day, he was raised from the dead by the power of Almighty God. This is I gospel truth. The world looks at these things and says that's foolishness.

But this is the gospel. And with these cherished truths that compose the gospel, we do well to remember five things about them when we think about our own lives from day to day and how they impact our culture. Reminder number 1, that we would do well to remember this week after the election. And as we look upon our society is that the gospel is contrary to sin.

The gospel is contrary to sin., we all know that the law is contrary to sin, right? And even people in our culture today, they say, yeah, in the Old Testament, God was a God of wrath and a God of judgment and But, we're under grace now, and somehow the gospel makes people who don't understand the gospel lackadaisical about it and, well, I'm forgiven and And the New Testament is a God of grace and sin just suddenly is no big deal anymore. Actually, the New Testament makes a bigger deal out of sin than the Old Testament.

The Old Testament said, don't commit adultery.

Jesus said, if you even think it, you've committed adultery. The Old Testament said, don't murder. The New Testament says, if you hate or you're angry, you've committed murder. Sin is a bigger deal.

In the New Testament, and the gospel is contrary to sin. It's antagonistic to sin. Sin is antagonistic to the gospel. The two should not coexist in the life of a person.

Look at verse 9. He says, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly sinners, the unholy, the profane, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers and immoral men. and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars, and perjurers, and whatever else that would be categorized as sin, look at this, which is contrary to sound teaching. What is sound teaching?

Teaching that's according to the gospel. It's gospel teaching. So sin is contrary to the gospel. And the gospel is contrary.

To sin. Both the law and the gospel set themselves In opposition to sin, we need to realize this. This is not a time for us to get weak on, on some of the moral issues that are before us as a society. This is not a time to stop calling sin sin.

Yes, the gospel is a gospel of grace, but it's a gospel that takes sin absolutely seriously, and we need to take sin seriously as well. I had someone in Moreno Valley come to me who is attending a church in that city, and he goes, I just don't know what to do about the church I'm a member of, and I said, what's going on? And he said, my pastor has a vote no on Proposition 8 sticker on his car and has preached against it and said that all people should be included in the definition of marriage and He was wanting to know and asking me what the Bible teaches about that.

So I basically preached to him the sermon I preached to you guys last week.

But it's just, it's, it's sad that in the church, people who claim to embrace the gospel, won't call sin sin. We forget the fact that the gospel is contrary to sin. Paul, who was the preacher of the gospel, is naming sins, and speaking of them the way that God speaks of them. The law and the gospel are contrary and in opposition to sin.

However, this is where the law and the gospel part ways. And I love this. The gospel, though, the law and gospel are against sin and opposed to sin, the gospel, though, actually succeeds in curing people's sin problem and making them spiritually healthy. The law cannot do that.

The law opposes sin, but it actually makes our sin problem worse. Read Romans 7, and you'll see that explained by Paul himself. The gospel, though, is against Sin and it succeeds in addressing our sin problem and healing us of our sin malady, our sin problem, our sin disease, as it were, and generates good spiritual health in us. We get this, of course, from the word sound, sound teaching, which is gospel teaching.

And as we've already seen, guys, the word, sound is the Greek word we get our English word hygiene from. Now I know if you're like me, when you think of hygiene, you think of taking a bath and cleanliness, and certainly it involves that. But this word And the Greek New Testament, and in other literature, it was used to speak of someone that was healthy, like, this, this person is healthy. He is whole.

But this word was also used to speak of something that was wholesome. like if I had an apple up here, I could describe this apple as wholesome, and I'm not so much speaking of the fact that this apple is healthy in and of itself, although certainly it would be, but I'm speaking of the effect that it has upon those who partake of it. An apple a day keeps the Doctor, away. You eat an apple, you eat wholesome foods, and it not only could strengthen your immune system and maybe help you recover from a cold or whatever, but it, it also contributes and generates, good health, good physical health, That is what the gospel is.

The gospel is the ultimate in the wholesome. You partake of the gospel, you partake of these truths that we just reviewed a few minutes ago, and you would find that it is wholesome. Now, in being wholesome, that means a couple things. Number one, it means that it addresses our basic sin problem.

Our malady, which by the way, is, before Christ, before the gospel, we were dead. All right, that's a serious health condition. we were not just sick, but we were spiritually, absolutely dead. Sin was alive in us, the disease of sin was alive in us, but we were spiritually dead.

But the gospel coming into our life, the spirit quickening us through the power of the gospel brings us to life. And the sin issues that are in our lives, the gospel, actually succeeds in curing those problems, delivering us from the guilt of sin and all of the defilement that comes along with bondage to the guilt of the sins that we have already, committed in our lives. The gospel also delivers us from the power of sin. So that sin no longer is ruling over us and has power over us.

And the gospel also has the power day by day to mortify, sin in our members. It has a mortifying effect upon sin. And though the presence of sin is still with us, the day will come when because we have believed in the gospel, we will be completely liberated from even the presence of sin. And actually, the gospel contributes to good physical health because in eternity, we will have eternally glorified physical bodies joined to our soul, and we will live in a completed, flawless, perfect, completely healthy.

Existence as physical and spiritual beings. And so, man, when we're in heaven, we're going to go, yeah, the gospel was wholesome. Look at the effect that it has had upon us, not only when we were on earth, but even now and especially that we are in heaven. And what guys, as we look at our society, proposition 221 8 years ago by 22 points.

Proposition 8, this past week, won by 5% points. people that are opposed to God's definition of marriage, they've duly noted that, and they know, what, we'll push this issue again and give us another five years or so, and, and, and we're going to win, this thing. Our society is clearly not heading in the right direction on these kinds of things. and as we look at our increasingly darkened society, we need to be able to say, what, we can make a difference because we have the gospel, which is wholesome.

And all of this mess of sin that we see maybe in us and in other people, the gospel has the power. To cure them, to give them life, and to generate spiritual health in them by addressing their sin problem, and giving them the very life of God., even unsaved people have observed this about the gospel, that they don't get the gospel, they don't believe the gospel, but they do observe that the gospel has the power to change people's lives. In fact, I was reading some time ago, Chuck Coulson in one of his books was talking about a friend of his that is a, Christian counselor with prison fellowship.

He goes into prison and he teaches, The believers that are there in prison and and counsels them.

This particular prison biblical counselor was, was talking to a prison psychiatrist who was a nonbeliever, a secular psychiatrist, and they were rooming together during this particular time where both of them were at the same prison. This secular psychologist confessed to this Christian his own frustration. In his ability to minister to prisoners in, and, and his line of work and listen to what he says here. He says, I can cure somebody's madness, but I can't cure his badness.

Psychiatry properly administered can turn a schizophrenic bank robber into a mentally healthy bank robber. A good teacher can turn an illiterate criminal into an educated criminal. He's like, what, all I can do is address the edges and behavior modification, but I can't, I can't address that core problem of people's badness. Well, guess what?

The gospel can in us and in those that we deliver these goods, these gospel goods to. And not only should we be motivated to say, man, if this is wholesome in our society right now is unhealthy from a spiritual standpoint, so therefore, this is what I need to give them. We also need to look in the mirror at ourselves and realize that there's a lot in me that is not very wholesome. I need to be made spiritually strong and spiritually vibrant and healthy.

And what will do that, it's the gospel that will do that. And that's why later in, in 1 Timothy, in chapter 4, verse 6, Paul is telling Timothy, yeah, Timothy, I want you to speak these things to, to other people. But he says, I also expect you to be constantly nourished on the words of the faith, that's the gospel, and of sound doctrine. There's that word sound again, wholesome gospel doctrine.

I want you to be in a constant state of gorging on these things to where you are being nourished by these things, so that the power of the gospel can be wielded in your life to address the maladies that are there, the sin problems that are there, mortifying sin within you, and generating within you a spiritual life, health, and vibrancy. The gospel is contrary to sin. But there's a lot of people that might be contrary to something, but they don't succeed in actually destroying what they're contrary to.

But the gospel, number 2, actually cures and kills this sin problem that it is against and can make people healthy.

There's a 3rd reminder that we would do well to remember this week, and that is that the gospel contains the glory of God. what? Imagine that I gave you something to drink, and maybe you had a cold or whatever, and you weren't feeling very well for the last few days. I, I say just, just, just drink this.

I think you'll like it. And you drink it, in a matter of hours, you're like just full of life. Whatever you were feeling in terms of sickness is completely gone. And it's made an amazing physical difference in you, would you just be like, oh, no big deal, and just go on, or would you not come to me and say, what was in that?

What, what ingredients were in that? Because whatever it is, I want to know about it because it's made a difference. And the same is true of the gospel. The gospel is against sin, contrary to sin, it actually cures this deeply entrenched sin problem in all of us and makes us who were dead spiritually healthy.

And the question is, what is in the gospel? What ingredient is in the gospel that would make it have this effect? of generating health, And deliverance and transformation. Well, no doubt there's a lot of ingredients, but God would say, you want to make it real simple.

The number one ingredient in the gospel is my glory. It's my glory. That's the most powerful ingredient in the gospel that makes it so powerful. Paul says in verse 11, according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, John Piper, regarding this passage says the glory is the actual content of the gospel.

God has looked at all of the philosophies of men, all of their strategies for living and addressing problems from BF Skinner to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and all these guys and you read their stuff and on paper, it's like, wow, that's compelling, that's wise, that's sophisticated. God has looked upon all of that and he said, what, I'm not going to let my glory dwell inside of that. And so none of that stuff has any power to transform anybody's life. But there's a message over here, and that is that man is a sinner, so much so that the perfect Son of God was slaughtered on the cross.

And hang naked and utter shame upon a cross to die for the sins of mankind, and he was raised from the dead. God basically looks upon that and God creates that, by the way, and then he says, I will take my glory. I will take actual deposits of my glory, and I will put it here. Now the world looks at it and the wise men of the world, they look at it and say that's stupid, that's foolish.

God says, I knew you would say that. That's why I designed it this way, because you have to humble yourself to come over here. But anyone that does come over here and steps inside of this, they're going to experience my glory. Actual deposits of my very glory will begin to attach themselves to anyone who comes over here, and that glory will transform them.

From one level of glory to another. Paul attaches glory in the gospel, the glory of God and the gospel, and 2 Corinthians, like in chapter 4, he says, if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing in whose case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, which is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. basically, when you open up the gospel, what do you find?

It's Jesus.

It's the person and the work of Jesus. According to Hebrews 1:3, He is the radiance of the very glory of God. And we don't just say, Well, God's glory is in the gospel, and we'll just admire it there. No, it's like when Moses, we read the passage, earlier, I think from Exodus 33, when God went before Moses and, and revealed his glory to Moses, what happened to Moses's face?

When he came down from the mountain, his face was the globe. It changed. Moses. Now, ultimately, that ended up fading.

But the fact is, Moses didn't come down and say, Hey, I saw God's glory. No, he actually had deposits of God's glory on his physical countenance. It's an amazing thing. And all of us would say, I would love to have the experience of that, to see God's glory and then have deposits of His glory attach themselves to my person.

I'm walking around with deposits of His glory on me, and those deposits actually transforming me. Well, guess what? Paul's point in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 is we got a better deal going on than Moses' head. We really do.

Because he talks about the gospel, how it's veiled to those that are perishing. And, and through the gospel, we see the light of the glory of Jesus Christ. What happens as we gaze upon that glory that is inside of the gospel? What is Do to us.

Look at what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, as we are continuously beholding, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord. This is inside the gospel. We are being continuously transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. Man, what he's saying is, as he says, all we're doing is just beholding the glory of God that is inside of the gospel in the face of Jesus Christ and the person in the work of Jesus Christ.

And as we stare at that with an open heart, the Spirit takes deposits of God's glory. And attaches them to us. And we are catching ourselves being changed. We just find ourselves being, he doesn't say we're transforming ourselves.

No, we just stare. And we get changed. what guys, you don't have to wait until you die to get glorified. You can begin the process of glorification now by beholding and living in the gospel, which has the glory of God in its highest density outside of heaven.

And you can know that God's glory will attach itself to you and it will begin to change you. You will find yourself changing. You will find sin being mortified within you. You will find things in you that never were there before in terms of good qualities, and you didn't even make that happen.

You just gazed. As one writer says, beholding is the way to become. Beholding is a way of becoming. We behold God's glory in the gospel.

God by use of that glory transforms us. So we live in a sin darkened society that is sick with sin. And, and we have this, this gospel. That has the power to cure, to give life, to give health, and inside of it is the very glory of God as its primary ingredient.

And this has the power to change us and those to whom we speak, one person at a time, one heart at a time to those that receive it by faith. There's another thing about the gospel we do well to remember. And that is not only does the gospel contain the glory of God, but the gospel reveals a happy God. I don't know if you think about this much.

But this is actually in this passage. Look at verse 11. According to the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God, that's the Greek word Makarios. And it's found in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the pure in heart.

Throughout the Old and New Testament, this word is always and only used to refer to human beings. All right. Speaks of someone that is enviously happy. Someone you look at and say, man, I'd love to be in their shoes.

But there's 2 places, and only 2 places in all of the Bible, where this word is actually used to describe God. And that the first place is in this text right here. God is described as the happy God, the enviously happy God, and the only other place in the Bible where it occurs is later in this very same book, First Timothy chapter 6, verse 15, where Paul describes God as the blessed, the happy, and the only sovereign. That's why he's happy, because there's no one over him.

he is the only and the ultimate sovereign. He is a happy God. what? This does not dispute the fact that God is a God of wrath, that his wrath is real, that God is angry at the sin of the wicked every day, that God is grieved at the sin of his own people.

All of that is affirmed in Scripture. But in addition to those other things we learn about the emotions of God, the wrath of God in Scripture, we must also fit this idea. That the gospel reveals to us a God who is happy, a God who has joy. And actually, we should be grateful for that.

John Piper in his book, God is the Gospel, says this, I love this. An essential part of what makes the gospel of the death and resurrection of Christ good news, is that the God it reveals is infinitely joyful. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God were unhappy, then the goal of the gospel would not be a happy goal.

And that means it would be no gospel at all. Would you want to live in heaven with a moody God? yesterday he was happy. Today, he's extremely unhappy about something.

No, at the bottom of it all, there is a God at the bottom of the gospel. The gospel reveals a God that is filled with pleasure and joy, blessedness and happiness. And this is worth pondering. And you might say, well, what is he so happy about?

Well, there's a handful of answers to this. He's happy in his son, right? If somehow the curtains could be pulled back and we see, could see God the Father interacting with the Son, we'd be blown away by the joy that they both have in the other. In fact, all three members of the Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they love each other.

They're ecstatic about each other. They find so much joy in each other. We know from Scripture that God finds great pleasure in His Son. After Jesus' baptism in Mark 1:11, God could not hold back.

He spoke from heaven, the words, You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And Matthew 17:5. And as Jesus was transfigured and they saw a glimpse of His glory, God spoke from heaven and said, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. God loves His Son.

God is so happy in His Son. He has so much pleasure in His Son. In fact, the basic message of the gospel is God takes this, this one, His, His only begotten Son. He takes this second member of the Trinity that gives Him so much pleasure, and he gives them to us.

Say, I want you to be brought in to the enjoyment, the pleasure and the happiness that I know God was not up in heaven lonely, and he's like, I need to save someone so that I can have a relationship with someone. No, the gospel is simply an explosion of the joy and the happiness that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were experiencing in each other. God is happy in His Son. The gospel also reveals to us a God who is very happy to love us.

He's not begrudging in His love, He is pleasured to love us. In Ephesians 1:4, and guys, you can, you can, you can speak this way to those that you're sharing the gospel with, that if you will believe in Jesus and repent of your sin, God will be pleasured. He will be happy to forgive you. And to love you.

Ephesians 1:4, Paul says in love, God predestined us to adoption of sons through Jesus Christ, literally into himself, not just making us as children, but gathering us into Himself into his arms, into his embrace, according to the good pleasure of His will. Someone asked God, why are you doing this? He'd say, because it makes me happy to do this, and to show my love in this way. In the gospel, we also find a God who is happy to forgive us of our sins.

Probably all of us struggle with this at different times. Like, I can't believe God's actually happy to forgive me after the 100th time. But now, the Bible teaches he is. read Luke chapter 5, where you, you see this, I'm sorry, Luke 15, that's a typo there, where Jesus tells the parable of the, the lost sheep and how shepherd goes out and finds that lost sheep.

And Jesus says, I tell you in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. He then tells the parable of the lost coin. That when it was found by the woman, she was ecstatic and wanted to celebrate. And Jesus says in Luke 15:10, in the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

And then in the same chapter, Jesus tells a story that we often call the prodigal son, the story of the prodigal son. It's more accurately to be titled The Prodigal God. We tend to think of prodigal as a bad word. To be prodigal is just to be excessive.

And to be lavish in your expenditures. And yes, the son was lavish in his spending and sin, but that's not the point of Jesus' story. The point of the parable is to show how lavish the Father is in His love, in his joy, in His forgiveness. You guys know the story about the young man who wanted his inheritance early.

And he demanded it from his father. His father gave it to him, and then the son went off and lived a wicked, selfish life and ended up spending all of his money and he ends up at a job feeding pigs, and he comes to his senses there and realizes, I need to go back to my father. I need to repent. And so while he's there, he rehearses his confession speech.

And he rehearses what he's going to say to his father when he gets back home. And so after he gets that rehearsed, and he knows what he's going to say, he gets up and he begins to go back to his father's house and look at how this story, and, and keep in mind, Jesus would say, I'm telling you this story, so you'll know what your Heavenly Father is like. Verse 20 while this young man was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

The guy hasn't even delivered his confession speech yet, and the father is kissing all over him.

And the son said to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven, and in your sight, I'm no longer worthy to be called your Son. Imagine trying to confess sin to your father, while he's embracing you and kissing on you the whole while. Why does Jesus tell that story? He tells us that story because this is what our Heavenly Father is like.

And the son gets those words out of his mouth. Verse 22, the father said, quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. And they began to celebrate, and there was celebration. There was music, there.

dancing. There was an older brother who was ticked about that and complained to his father. The father, by way of defense, said a handful of things, one of which was, we had to celebrate and rejoice. Don't take this away from me as a father to celebrate and rejoice over the son who was dead and now is alive.

Jesus would say, I tell you the story so that you'll know what God is like towards those who repent. If you've blown it this week and you're like, man, God has ticked at me and I dare not go to him and confess because his arms are going to be folded and he's going to be mad and I'm going to have to say a bunch of stuff and beat myself up in his presence, maybe give him a few days to cool down over what I've done. Listen, that's not the God of the Bible. Jesus says that is not the God of the gospel.

The God of the gospel is if you just come to him in brokenness before you even get a word of confession out of your mouth. He will have already run towards you and be hugging and kissing you. And then that doesn't mean you don't confess. Go ahead and confess while he's hugging you and kissing on you and is just ready to celebrate.

Your repentance In the gospel, we have a God who is happy to share his joy. He has so much joy. Jesus said to his disciples, these things I've spoken, so that my joy may be in you, your joy may be full. He's like, I got so much joy inside of me.

And here's, here's what I'm all about. I'm just teaching you guys what I'm teaching you because I want the joy that I have in me to be inside of you. That's the God of the gospel right there. And this is the message we have to the world.

There are many people bound in sin. They're bound by the pleasure of sin in our culture. But there are also people that, that are bound by the guilt of sin, they're living in darkness, they don't believe God could ever forgive them. The devil is speaking those lies into their ears all the time.

And they desperately need to hear of a God of holiness, justice, and righteousness. But a God who is also a God of love, who would be delighted to save them and to forgive them. If they would repent and come to Him by faith. There's a final thing about the gospel, and this is more by way of application that This glorious gospel that is so wholesome, this gospel that contains the glory of God, this gospel that reveals this God who is happy to save.

This gospel has been entrusted to us. Paul says at the end of verse 11, with which I have been entrusted. You say, well, I just believe that means Paul was entrusted, not me with that gospel. And true, that is what Paul is.

is saying there, but if you look later in 1 Timothy, Paul says to Timothy, and chapter 6, verse 20, guard what's been entrusted to you. So I've been entrusted with the gospel. Timothy, I want you to guard what I've entrusted to you. And if you go to 2 Timothy, when Paul is speaking to Timothy again about this, look in 2 Timothy 2:2 on the screen at the bottom of the screen.

He says to Timothy, the things that you have heard from me, that's the gospel, entrust those to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So Paul was entrusted with the. Gospel, he entrusted that Gospel to Timothy. He tells Timothy, you entrusted the faithful man, who will then be able to teach it to others and entrust it to others and down through the centuries, here we are today in 2008, and passing from one person to the next, this trust.

has been given to us. The same gospel has been entrusted to us. And what are we going to do with it? In this culture in which we live.

I'll tell you what to do with it. Every day, be gorging on it, be constantly nourished by it. Let it change and transform you. And then out of the overflow of that.

Take this gospel that's been entrusted to you, and give it to others. Speak it to others, live it before others, let them see this gospel through your deeds, and hear it in your words. Let me ask you to bow your heads. We're going to be taking up an offering in just a moment.

And encourage you to give as the Lord leads. You also have a comment card in your bulletin. I would encourage you to fill that out. If you feel comfortable doing so, if there's any way we can minister to you, let us know.

If there's any prayer requests. Put that on the back of the comment card. Do you have any response to the message by way of like, here's what God has spoken to me about, and here's what I'd like prayer about. OK.

Feel free to share that also and then put that in the offering bag as it goes by. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Let's thank Him for this trust, but oh man, what a trust it is. Lord, if you, If you handed us, An object, that we knew was worth $1 trillion.

We would go, man, we gotta, we gotta guard this with our life. We got to make sure it's never damaged. We've got to, we got to do the right thing with this. But God, you, you've given us something that is infinitely more valuable and more powerful than this.

This is a trust. We've been given This gospel that is wholesome. Changes lives because of its primary ingredient that is your glory. That acts as the ultimate antibiotic to send.

And in the gospel, Lord, we see a God who at the bottom of it all is happy, happy to save, not just willing to save, but happy to save, happy to forgive. There's anyone in this room this morning, Lord, that has never just put their trust in you. Through Jesus that they would do that even right now before they walk out of here and embrace. You as their God, their Savior, their Lord.

That they would enter into this joy of yours, as you are pleasured to save them and forgive them and make them your children. And help us to be faithful as Christians to gorge on these things each day, be nourished by them. And to deliver this, To others You've given us this, Lord, and now we in this offering give to you of what you have blessed us with, so that the message and the ministry of the gospel could go forward in this community and around the world. Thank you for the privilege of receiving and then giving back to you.

We commit ourselves to you in Jesus' name. And all God's people said,