Sermon –The Other Side of the Gospel

Sermon –The Other Side of the Gospel April 10, 2005

Intro
I love my job. I love what I get to do. Some time ago the Lord gave me Isaiah 61 as a job description.

Isa 61:1-3
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion —
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.

We Must Confront
What a wonderful calling, to go around binding up the brokenhearted, freeing captives, applying the oil of gladness. But did you hear that one line in there that was a little scary? Verse 2 says to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor AND the day of vengeance of our God. I confess I have been quick to skim over the vengeance part. This week I was knocked up-side the head by another passage:

Lam 2:14
The visions of your prophets
were false and worthless;
they did not expose your sin
to ward off your captivity.
The oracles they gave you
were false and misleading.

To be a true prophet of the Lord a preacher sometimes needs to say difficult things. Today is one of those days. There is a false, lopsided gospel floating around our evangelical churches. It goes like this. All you need to do to get into heaven is to believe in Jesus and say the sinner’s prayer. This can lead to an “aborted grace” theology. So let’s go to the Bible and get our answers there. What does it tell us about fully entering grace? Let’s begin by turning to:

Matt 7:21-23
21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'

I want to pick on the word ‘knew’ for a moment. A tool theologians often use to better understand N.T. words is to compare how that same word is used in other references. This word knew is also used when Mary made her reply to the angel who told her she would have a baby:

Luke 1:34
"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"

In the original Greek she says, “How shall this be, seeing a man I know not?” This word ‘know’ is used for the intimacy of sexual intercourse. Mary never ‘knew’ a man, that is she never had intercourse with anybody. That is the level of knowing we are talking about. So Jesus is saying I never knew you intimately, you never knew Me. You may have believed in Me, you may have know about Me, you may have even gotten in on the whole go-to-church-love-others-and-do-good-things-in-My-name thing. But you never intimately knew Me or My Father’s heart. Away from Me!

How Can I Tell?
How about you and me? Have we said the sinner’s prayer, perhaps even been baptized, and held on to that as some sort of superstitious ‘get out of jail and go to heaven free’ card? Or have we truly known Jesus intimately? You might be thinking, I think I know Jesus, but how can I be sure? Jesus simply and directly answered this question in the verses right before Mat 7:21-23 where we just read:

Matt 7:18-20
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

This is such a beautiful and simple metaphor. Is my life showing any fruit for the Lord? Am I growing in the fruits of the Spirit? If the answer is, “Yes”, than I am a good tree, I intimately know Jesus, and I’ll spend eternity with Him. That is how we know if we have an intimate relationship with the Lord or if we only know Him from afar. Look at your life, is it changed from what it was a year ago? This message is not intended to scare you if you are an intimate believer, growing in grace. You can rest assured of your home in heaven. On the other hand, if your life bears no resemblance to your claim to be a follower of Jesus, if you have no fruit, then it is intended to scare the hell out of you—literally.

Works Don’t Work
There is another important part of Jesus’ metaphor we need to look at. It is critical to understand that bearing good fruit does not make the tree a good tree; it only indicates the tree is a good tree. An apple tree is an apple tree whether it has apples or not. But seeing apples on the tree is how we can tell it is an apple tree. Likewise, good works in our lives do not make us born-again Christians. They are merely indicators we truly know Jesus. Knowing Jesus intimately, being united with Him is what saves us. It can never, never, never be said that we earn any part of our salvation. Jesus didn’t pay 50, or 90, or even 99 percent of the cost for our redemption, He paid it all—100 percent. There is nothing left for us to do accept know Him intimately. That is how a bad tree becomes good. It gets its roots intimately into the right soil and it draws in the good nutrients and living water. When a tree does this, it grows and eventually produces good fruit.

Question: Where are your roots drawing their substance?

The Parable of the Soils
Jesus taught this same Gospel, both sides of it, in the parable of the soils:

Matt 13:3-8
"A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop-a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

Four categories of soil. The first is a hard path. The Devil snatches the truth away before it ever germinates. The second is rocky and shallow. The seed of truth dies when it becomes difficult to follow Christ. The third has weeds. Truth gets a good start but is choked to death by the weeds of worry and worldly desire. Only the fourth bears fruit.

Question: How many of these plants end up in heaven? Only the last one. The first never conceives, the second and third abort the grace shown to them. Only the fourth has an intimate relationship with Jesus and draws on His good soil.

Found then Lost Again
What about you and me? Have we aborted the grace shown to us? Part of the false gospel we spoke of earlier is the teaching that once saved, we are always saved—no matter what. According to this unbiblical contrivance, it is okay to lose our connection with the good soil. As long as we had it sometime in the past, everything will be forgiven. Baloney! In addition to the 2nd and 3rd soils where Jesus exemplified those who begin well but lose their salvation, let’s look at a few of many additional scriptures which clarify this:

Rev 2:5
Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

Rev 3:15-16
15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

1 Tim 1:18-19
18 Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, 19 holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith.

John 15:5-7
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

Those who lose their intimate relationship with Jesus can be removed from their place, spit out, shipwrecked, and thrown in the fire. We are clearly warned, all through scripture, to never let our faith go slack.

An Awesome God
Why is that? It is because God is a holy God and He wants holy children like Himself. So often we talk about God’s love, patience, and grace—and so we should, for God is love itself, as 1 John tells us. But, to talk ONLY of His love and gentleness is to tell half the story. It is like describing this quarter to you and talking in great detail about the heads side and never mentioning the tails side. I have not truly described a quarter to you if I did that. The side of the Gospel that is seldom talked about is that God is a holy, awesome, consuming fire. He is vengeful against sin in all its forms.

Heb 12:29
our "God is a consuming fire."

Ps 5:5
The arrogant cannot stand in your presence;
you hate all who do wrong.

1 Peter 1:15-16
15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."

So often we see God as this tame, sappy grandpa in the sky granting all the things His children want. No. God is love, He is not sentimentality. Sentimentality is shallow and flaky. God’s love is deep, persistent, and radical. Why did God force all the stubborn Israelites to die in the desert? Why did God tell Joshua to kill all the inhabitants of Canaan including women, children, and animals? Why did Ananias and Sapphira drop dead the moment they lied to the Holy Spirit? Why is a place like Hell prepared for those who despise God’s gift of the cross? Does this sound like a sentimental, sappy God to You? No, this is a God who wants a deep and passionate relationship with a people who will love Him and be loved by Him forever. Compared to eternity, paradise, and perfection, God puts a small price tag on the things of this world. They are cheap to Him and He calls us out of sentimental attachments to this cursed existence and into holy, radical, everlasting love with Him.

Question: Are we willing to love a wildly passionate and awesome God? Are we willing if loving Him means we will be changed in the process?

A Good Start
Have you said the sinner’s prayer, have you been baptized into Christ? If so, know that these are good things. We must all admit we are sinners, we must all pray, we must all be baptized. That is where it all starts. That is where to seed first gets poked into the soil. God honors that beginning. Recall the thief on the cross next to Jesus. The man put his faith in Jesus and was promised paradise that very day. Strung up on a cross, the thief had no chance of allowing his seed of faith to do anything more that push a shoot past the husk—yet God honored his beginning. I doubt God would have honored him, though, if he were allowed off the cross and returned to his life of sin and forgot Jesus.


Jesus to the Rescue
Have you and I made a start? Good, let’s not stop now. We must push down roots, our faith must grow, it must develop fruit. Matthew quotes Isaiah’s description of Christ in:

Matt 12:20-21
20 A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he leads justice to victory.
21 In his name the nations will put their hope.

Our faith, no matter how small and fledgling is a precious thing to God. It may be a weak and bruised reed. Jesus did not come to break it but to nurture and encourage it. He desperately wants it to grow and be healthy because He knows a day is coming when everything else will be burned away. The only thing that matters in this life is letting our roots feed on Jesus and getting the plant of faith strong and growing.

Today I proclaim to you both sides of the Gospel. The one who is detached from Jesus has everything to fear—everything! I cringe and weep when I consider the fate of the lost. But thankfully, on the flip side, the one whose roots are sunk deep into the source of living water has nothing to fear and everything to celebrate.

Jer 17:7-8
7 "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

Prayer