The WHOLE Gospel Acts 20:20-27 Sunday 15 February, 2015 Delivered by: Marshall Muller (Senior Pastor, Hobart City Church of Christ, Tasmania) Scripture Passage: You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus. And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me the task of testifying to the good news of God s grace. Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. Therefore, I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God. Illustration Half a Burger! (Acts 20:20-27) A while ago now, it was late at night and I was pretty hungry. I had been out and I needed to eat. I think Yvonne was interstate, so I thought I d go and get a burger from one of the fast food groups. The WHOLE Gospel! Page 1
I drove through and ordered my burger, and arrived at the window to be given a little box with my burger inside. I drove off down the road, and it s one of those things that, with the aroma of the food inside your car, you can t resist any longer. You have to eat NOW. Instead of waiting till I got home, I thought I could eat it driving along. So I dove inside the little box and attempted to pick it up. But to my dismay, whether it was a joke or not on my behalf, there was no burger bun on the bottom. They had made my burger directly onto the cardboard box. I only had half of the bread bun. For the life of me I couldn t pick it up. But hunger persisted and so I just grabbed a handful of meat and salad and sauce etc. But with only half of the bun and one part missing to contain it at one end, it ended up all over me. I thought I had been ripped off. I paid full price for this, but only got half of what I paid for. I wanted to go back and return it and complain, but it was now all over my lap. I was pretty cranky that I hadn t received a whole burger. I learned an important lesson that day eat your burger in their car park (before driving home), then you can return it if there s anything wrong. Well, last week I spoke from Romans 1:16 and I mentioned about being careful that we preach a whole Gospel, and how sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking the Gospel is just social justice, or just forgiveness or just love. So this week I want to explore a bit further this whole Gospel concept. An appropriate question for any Church and any Pastor to ask is Are we preaching the Gospel of Nice (where we re just concerned that we don t offend anyone). or are we preaching the Gospel of Christ where the truth is spoken? The Whole Gospel of Christ - Heaven forbid that we preach half a gospel, but what is the whole gospel? Your answer to that question says a lot about your views on the finished work of the cross. There have been times when I have spoken on the good news of God s unconditional love as revealed in Jesus. Pretty good stuff. The WHOLE Gospel! Page 2
But I can just about guarantee that some serious, well-meaning person will pull me up for not preaching the whole gospel. What they say to me is something like: Hey, you can t just preach that. You ve got to preach the whole counsel of God. What they really mean: You should tell people they need to do stuff like repent, confess, turn from their sin, give up things, do works, etc. to earn the free gifts of grace. Earn the free gifts of grace?! What an absurd thing to say. It s like saying, Right kids, pull out your piggy banks because Mom and Dad expect you to reimburse us for your Christmas presents. This is just so ridiculous - how can you compensate God for his priceless gifts? Don t get me wrong - I am a big fan of both repentance and confession, but they may not be what you think they are. And turning from sin? Well any time you turn to Jesus you automatically turn from sin. It s inevitable. The issue is not what you are turning from, but Who you are turning to. The Pharisees turned from sin every day, but they never turned to Jesus. Turning from sin doesn t make you righteous, just religious. What is the whole counsel of God? Paul told the Ephesians I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). Some translations say, the whole will of God. The whole counsel and the whole gospel are the same thing because God s will is always good news. He is not willing that any perish. He doesn t want anyone to be lost but desires all of us to come to him to receive new life. So what is the whole counsel of God that Paul proclaimed? He tells us just three verses earlier: The WHOLE Gospel! Page 3
I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me the task of testifying to the gospel of God s grace. (Acts 20:24) The whole counsel of God is the unmixed gospel of his grace. End of story. Just grace?! says the serious man. Yes, grace and nothing but. Not graceplus-your-confession, nor grace-plus-your-repentance just grace. I can t accept that, says the serious man. Well, you wouldn t be the first religious person to have a problem with grace: The Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God (Luke 7:30) Isn t that interesting. Those who loved the law rejected God s counsel. Who else did the Pharisees and law-teachers reject? Jesus (see Mark 8:31)! Indeed, Jesus is the whole counsel of God. If you would preach the counsel, the whole counsel, and nothing but the counsel of God, then preach Jesus and nothing else. He is both the will of God made flesh and the means by which God s will comes to pass. Jesus is the Good News! How not to preach the gospel Here s how to not preach the Gospel - Add stuff to it! If we re not careful we can go off track and preach a different Gospel by adding stuff to the Gospel. Some cooks stick to the recipe book exactly when they make a cake. But when others cook, they put a bit of this in, they put a handful of that in, they put in their favourite ingredient etc. But by adding extra stuff to the recipe, they get a different type of cake. It s like that with adding stuff to the Gospel. If you take all the blessings of God his love, favor, forgiveness, acceptance, healing, provision, deliverance, etc. and tell people they must do stuff to The WHOLE Gospel! Page 4
merit/earn them, then you are diluting the gospel of grace. You get something else. You re preaching a mixed gospel of grace-plus-somethingelse. Grace is no longer the whole gospel; it s only part of the gospel. Whenever we add things to the gospel of grace we dilute its strength and we empty the cross of its saving power. So what do these gospel additives look like? I am sure you know them. They are called prayer and fasting, Bible study, the spiritual disciplines, tithes and offerings, Christian duty, the virtues, works of service, ministry, self-sacrifice, helps, missions, outreach, submission, etc. In the hands of graceless religion these good things become death-dealing burdens. If you think you must do them before God will bless you, you have fallen from grace as hard as any of the people in the Galatian Church that Paul spoke about. (Galatians 3) Let me explain it another way Religion is cruel Imagine a man crawls out of the desert in desperate thirst and you say to him, Drink this, it is pure, ice-cold, spring water. That s good news for the thirsty man. He doesn t need to do anything except receive what you are offering. But if you ask that man to do something before you give him the drink, then it s no longer good news. It s cruel torture. Telling a thirsty man he must pray for an hour before he can drink is not good news. Nor is telling him that he must keep the rules, play the game, and do what he s told. This isn t good news; it s bad news. It s the religion of this world that derailed the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Laodiceans and thousands of other churches since. And telling him that the drink is free now but he must pay later is no different. In fact it s worse because you given him a taste of real freedom before binding him with cords of some sort of obligation. The WHOLE Gospel! Page 5
The good news is that grace is always free and if we drink it daily it ll change us from the inside-out. You want to see change in your own life and the lives of others? Then follow Paul s lead and preach the whole gospel of grace adding nothing to it. This emphasis on what we must do before God will bless us is a doctrine of demons. It s poison in the water. The true gospel is additive-free and it s grace from start to finish. Look to the cross God has blessed us already! Look to the empty tomb the work of saving you is finished! Believe it! Reach out and receive by faith the gift God has already given. If we want to preach the whole gospel then preach Christ alone. Trust me, He is all you need. Christ alone but which one? Christ alone - but which Christ are we talking about? Which Jesus are you trusting in? - Is it the baby Jesus who appears each Christmas? Is it the tolerant teacher who was friendly to sinners? Is it Jesus on the cross dying for the sins of the world? Hopefully, it is none of the above. This may shock you but none of these Jesuses is particularly good news. There is only one Jesus that saves, delivers, heals, rescues, and gives new life, and that is the risen Jesus, seated at the right hand of God. The resurrection is not simply an Easter sermon. It is the reason the Good News is good. - Baby Jesus is good news but it is not good enough. Jesus the friend of sinners is good news but it is not good enough. Jesus dying on the cross is certainly very good news but it is not good enough. Why? A dead Jesus saves no one. The WHOLE Gospel! Page 6
If Jesus had not been raised to new life, then everything he did was for nought. Consider someone who preaches, Jesus died on the cross for your sins. That s wonderful but how do we know Jesus death was a sufficient sacrifice? How do we know that all our sins past, present, and future have been eternally forgiven? Answer: Because Jesus was raised from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:25) It is because Jesus has been raised from the dead that you have been justified and made wholly righteous by God. This is the good news. The resurrection s the thing It s important that you get this. A gospel which proclaims the cross but not the resurrection is not the whole gospel. A gospel which proclaims a dead Jesus but not a living, all-conquering, ruling and reigning King Jesus, is not the whole gospel. If you would preach the whole gospel, then tell the whole story, not the one that ends at Calvary. Why am I telling you this? I recently heard a story about a man called Stan who battled with alcoholism for more than 40 years. (The story is told by Bob George in his book Classic Christianity.) Stan had given his life to Jesus but nothing changed. The drinking continued as before. One night the man came home in such a state that his wife called Bob George. Please come and talk to him. Bob went around and was inspired to ask the following question: Stan, when you accepted Christ, which Jesus did you believe in? Did you have in mind an honorable man who lived 2000 years ago before and died on a cross? Stan, did you accept Jesus the man? Or did you accept Jesus Christ the God who became a man and was raised from the dead? The Lord Jesus who is alive today and offers his life to you? The WHOLE Gospel! Page 7
Stan replied that he had put his faith in Jesus the man. Bob asked if he was willing to put his trust in Jesus the living God. Stan was and he was completely delivered from alcoholism that night. What you believe determines what you see: If you don t believe that Jesus heals today, guess what? You won t get healed. If you don t believe that Jesus conquered death in order that we might enjoy new life here and now, guess what? You won t experience new life here and now. Your life will be no different from your unsaved neighbor s, except that you dress up a bit and go to church on Sunday mornings. The outcome of the gospel is not merely the forgiveness of sins, as wonderful as that is. It is literally new life his life. What does this new life look like? It looks like freedom. It is the prisoner freed from his/her captivity and the alcoholic liberated from his/her dependency. This doesn t mean that if you are sick or struggling with addiction, you are not fully saved. If you believe Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, then you are saved! One-hundred percent saved. Rest in God s promise and let nothing move you. But at the same time, don t make friends with your enemies. If you re battling with illness, work out in your experience that awesome gift of salvation that you have already received. Talk to your problems about your mighty God and what he has done for you. My point is this: many Christians settle at the cross. They are so grateful for grace and forgiveness that they camp at Calvary and miss the point of the resurrection. They lead others to the cross and no further and the result is powerless, fruitless Christianity (I spoke about restoring the power of the Gospel last week). God saved us so that we might live, really live here and now. Eternal life is knowing God in your present circumstances and trials (John 17:3). It s a whole new reality. The WHOLE Gospel! Page 8
Conclusion - Which Jesus? The gospel of grace reveals a certain Jesus and it is this one: This good news is about God s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ! As a human, he was from the family of David. But the Holy Spirit proved that Jesus is the powerful Son of God, because he was raised from death. (Romans 1:3-4) Confess Jesus as Lord and you shall be saved, but do you know what the word Lord means? It means Jesus has power and authority. It means he is the living king (not a dead martyr like in other religions); he is on the throne (not on the cross). Maybe today, like Stan, you are wrestling with stuff in your life. It s only when you proclaim the Lord Jesus over your addictions, sin and failings, you are making a bold declaration of faith. You re saying: Addiction (or illness), you have a strong grip on me but the Lord Jesus is stronger still. I cannot defeat you in my strength, but let me tell you about Jesus my God at whose name every knee shall bow, including yours. What does James say? Does he say, Submit yourselves to Jesus the tolerant teacher? Submit yourselves to Jesus the dead Messiah? No! Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7) As Stan s story illustrates, the devil doesn t flee from those who know Jesus as man. But those who know their God shall be strong and their exploits (through faith) will bear testimony to God s power & grace. They shall walk through the fires of life and not be burned (Isaiah 43:2). That s the whole Gospel of Jesus. That s what each of us wants and needs. But now, this is what the LORD says he who created you, Jacob, The WHOLE Gospel! Page 9
he who formed you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. Let s Pray God of grace Thank you for redeeming us through the life, death, burial and resurrection of your perfect Son, Jesus. We apologize if we have watered down the Good News, and made it only part of what it should be in our lives. The power of the Gospel is what we seek today, and we thank you that it is ours to receive through the resurrected Jesus. Thank you that when we walk in your Spirit, that the world doesn t have the last word in us. Continue your glorious work the work of the additive-free whole Gospel of Jesus - within each of us this week as we walk in the power of your grace, and as we, listen to you, remain in you and are encouraged by your Holy Spirit. Send your Holy Spirit right now to remind us not to camp at the Cross. Restore us and regenerate us into a fruitful, power-filled life lived in fullness each day until eternity with you. Thank you for choosing to love us like you do. Amen The WHOLE Gospel! Page 10