Welcome back to CLA and this morning we are in our applied theology or practical theology track and so we are back to our discussion of evangelism. I want to begin by briefly reviewing what we said last month on the subject and then continuing on from there. Last week, as we introduced the subject of evangelism, what we did was we looked at what kind of people we need to be in order to be those who share the gospel, who proclaim the gospel, to others. And primarily what we said was three things, that we need to be people of faith. If we're going to share the faith, if we're going to share the gospel, then we need to have faith ourselves. We need to believe and obey the gospel in our own lives. Secondly, we said that we need to be people of prayer, calling on and trusting God to work through the gospel, through the proclamation of Jesus Christ. And then thirdly, we said that we need to be people of the book. That what we're sharing is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what evangelism is. We're not sharing how to get right with society or how to have a better life. We're sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to be familiar with the book, with the Bible, where God has revealed to us the means of salvation through Christ Jesus. And we said that evangelism at its very core is the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus. It's a message that must be spoken, so we are to proclaim it, right? It's not Evangelism itself is the proclamation of the gospel. It is not us trying to emotionally or mentally or in some way manipulate people to get a certain response from them, but evangelism for us is to proclaim the gospel and to trust God to work through that by His Spirit in people's hearts so that they respond to it. And so what I want to do this morning is to follow on, continue on from that last point from last month, that we must be people of the book. We must know the gospel. So we need to know what it is. If we're going to evangelize, if we're going to share the gospel with people, we need to know it. We need to know what it is we're sharing. We need to know it thoroughly so that we can share it properly and answer whatever questions or objections they might have. So first of all, what is the gospel? Well, the very word gospel means what? Good news, right? It means good news. So let's think about that phrase. We say that all the time. We talk about the gospel, we talk about the good news of Jesus. What do we mean by that? What is good news? Well, what is news? Let's just start there. News is a report of important events that have happened, right? So, when we're sharing the good news about Jesus Christ, we're sharing a report about what has happened, what Christ has done in history, what he has done at a point in the past. Everything is not news, right? If everything were news, there would be no news. When we watch the news or we read the news, we're given the important things that have happened, right? Not just everything. We're not given a list of every single event that occurred in the world yesterday. It's the important things that have happened. In the same way with the gospel, this is the most important thing that has happened in human history, is Christ and the work that he did to atone for our sins and to rescue us. And it's good news. It means it's favorable, it's advantageous, right? It works in our favor. So the gospel is a report about an important event that is advantageous to the hearer. So that should be an encouragement to us as we go to share the gospel with people is that what we have to share with them is good for them. It's good news. We don't need to be ashamed of it because we're giving them something that is good for them. We're giving them the best, most important news that we could possibly give them. So, let's talk a little bit about what it means, what the gospel is, and what it means to share it. I want to turn to Matthew chapter 16, if you would, and we'll look at verses 13 through 23. Matthew 16, beginning in verse 13, and this is a passage we're very familiar with. Christ is speaking to his disciples and he is asking them some questions. And we'll see next month as we get into the how of evangelization that questions are very important. And we see this throughout Jesus' ministry. He asks a lot of questions. But in this particular passage we see him asking his disciples what other people are saying about him and what they themselves believe about him. So Matthew 16 beginning in verse 13. When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? So they said, Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then he commanded his disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan, you are an offense to me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men. So this is a very interesting passage. We see Peter vacillate between making this great confession of Christ to then Christ having to tell him to get behind me, Satan, because he's mindful not of the things of God but of the things of men. And so there's a couple of important things I want to point out in regards to our understanding of the gospel here. First, if we look at verse 16, when Jesus has asked him, who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Now, Peter doesn't go into a big dissertation about what it means for him to be the Christ, right? He just assumes the definition of that. And I think that's a fairly safe assumption for Peter in that moment, right? There was a cultural knowledge among the Jews who had studied the Old Testament scriptures. They knew about the promise of the Messiah, and that's what the word Christ means. It's the Greek equivalent. of the Hebrew word Messiah. So Peter knew that the other disciples and Jesus knew what he meant when he said, the Christ. So they didn't respond by going, the who now? What do you mean by that? They knew what he meant when he said Christ. So, this term was one they were familiar with. It was laden with Old Testament significance. Now, our cultural context is a little bit different. When we talk about Jesus the Christ, a lot of people assume that's just his last name. They do not understand all of the Old Testament implications of him being the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah. We need to be aware of what the cultural knowledge is. We need to be wise about that. Peter understood in his context that people had some understanding of the promise of the Messiah. We will see that their understanding of that was not entirely accurate of what the Messiah would do, but they understood the term. They knew where it came from. They had studied the Old Testament. We can't make that assumption, right? So we need to be careful as we share the gospel that we don't assume that our listeners understand things that they might not. Secondly, we can see that he says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Well, now at this point, Peter is kind of defying the cultural assumptions. There was an understanding of this idea of the Messiah, the anointed one, or the Christ, but to say that this Christ is the son of the living God, that was offensive. to the Jews, to make himself equal with God. We see them wanting to stone Jesus for that at various times. So at this point, Peter is proclaiming or professing a truth that is at odds with the cultural assumptions of his day. They had assumptions about the Christ or the Messiah being a military or political leader who would free them from Rome, free them from foreign oppression, They weren't thinking in terms of the Messiah freeing them from bondage to sin. They were thinking about him freeing them from bondage to Rome. So Peter here is saying something that really kind of flies in the face of what the culture would have thought. And so we need to be aware of that when we're sharing the gospel at times. We're going to say things that are at odds with the cultural assumptions of the people that we're speaking to. What were some of the cultural assumptions? Well, if you look back at when he asked, who do men say that I am? The answer is in verse 14, so they said, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. They had ideas about who this teacher, Jesus, was. And they thought maybe one of the prophets, maybe even the prophet, right? Because we know that Moses talked about God raising up a prophet like himself from among them. So they were willing to maybe go that far. but not to acknowledge him as the son of God. And so Peter is confessing something that is at odds with what they understood. But then what happens is after that discussion, Jesus begins to explain to his disciples the work that he is going to do as the Christ. That he's going to suffer, that he's going to die, that he's going to be raised from the dead. And Peter, it says in verse 22, took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, far be it from you, Lord, this shall not happen to you. So Peter's understanding of what it meant for Christ, for Jesus to be the Christ, to be the Son of God, he still didn't understand the necessity of Christ's suffering and his death and his resurrection. And so Peter, at this point, is subtracting from the gospel message, really. He's professing Jesus to be the Christ, but he's subtracting the work of atonement that Christ would do on the cross. And so we have to be very careful as we share the gospel to make sure that we don't subtract from it the necessary elements of what the gospel is. What is the good news? The good news is that Jesus died on the cross in our place. If we share the gospel and we fail to share that, we haven't shared the gospel. We've subtracted the two most important elements of the gospel, his death and his resurrection. His death in our place and his resurrection to new life, which gives us new life as well. Jesus was going to do these things and it was necessary, right? We see Jesus later describing to the disciples after his resurrection how it was necessary for the Christ to suffer. and to do these things. And yet Peter, he wanted the glory of the Messiah, of the Christ, as a deliverer, but he wanted to leave out the difficult parts, the suffering and the death. And ultimately, when you do that, you're leaving out the most glorious parts as well. So we can't leave those parts out. Another thing that we need to be careful of, and we'll flip around now to several different passages, but if you want to turn over with me to Ephesians chapter 2. As Paul is writing to the church there in Ephesus, and remember this is the church where Timothy is at. Paul has a good relationship with them. Timothy will be there in Ephesus for quite some time organizing that church and training elders. But as Paul writes to them in his letter in Ephesians chapter 2, he says this in verses 8 and 9, So just like we need to be careful not to subtract from the gospel, we need to be careful not to add to it as well. We don't want to add to the gospel our own works. Even our faith is a gift from God. We don't want to say, well, yes, Christ died on the cross to atone for sin. Yes, he was resurrected from the grave for new life. And now if I do X, Y, and Z, then I procure that gift. accomplishment that he accomplished in the atonement. No. Now we've added our own works to the gospel and now we've lost the gospel again because now we're depending on our works rather than on Christ's. So we have to be careful not to subtract from the gospel but also careful not to add to it as well. The other thing that we want to be careful of, let's flip over to James chapter 2. James chapter 2, and we'll look down at the very last verse of chapter 2, James 2 verse 26, and James says this, he says, for as the body without the spirit is dead, so he's making an analogy, for as the body without the spirit is dead." So, if your spirit departs from your body, your body dies. The flesh is dead. So, in a like manner, he says, faith without works is dead also. So, if you say, well, I have faith, I believe in Christ, and yet you're not actually working, you're not actually following up that faith with obedience, then that faith is as dead as a body is without a spirit. So we want to be careful that we don't diminish the effects of the gospel. The works James is talking about are not for us to procure salvation, but they are the results of salvation. So if we're sharing the gospel and we leave out the obedience that follows faith, if we leave out the effects of the gospel, that it changes us. If we just say, well here's the gospel, Jesus died for you so you can be forgiven and you don't have to change at all. God just accepts you the way you are and you can keep on in your sin, we've lost the gospel again because we've diminished the fact that the gospel changes us. If we have faith in Christ, we become new creatures, we're transformed. Paul says this in Romans 12, we're to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We don't stay in the state that we are when Christ saves us. So, the gospel is not just this work of Christ and we believe it, but it has real effects in our lives. And so, part of sharing the gospel is understanding that we need to tell people this, that this is going to change your life. and for the better, but it is going to change us. And it's not just that it changes us that now we have life in Christ, which is true, but we also know that it requires of us obedience. If we look at Romans chapter 6 verse 16, Paul is telling us, He's speaking to Christians and he says, what then, shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Certainly not. So just because we have the grace of salvation, we should not continue in sin. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey. Whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. So, we need to obey Christ after we believe in Him, after He saves us. We follow that up with faith that works, faith that obeys the gospel, that obeys Christ. So, the gospel transforms us and it demands our obedience to Christ our Lord. All of these things are involved in the gospel. We don't want to subtract from it. We don't want to add to it. We don't want to diminish the effects of the work of Christ in our lives. We want to make sure that we are sharing the whole gospel and nothing but the gospel and that we are talking about what the gospel actually accomplishes. We don't want to give people cheap grace. We don't want to give people easy believism. We want to give them the true gospel and what its effects actually are in our lives. So, I want to do this now. I want us to talk about the gospel. As we think about evangelization, if we think about sharing the gospel, if we think about messages that we hear on the gospel, what do we need to know? Just like Peter confessing Christ to be Christ, the son of the living God, he made some assumptions about what his hearers might have known and understood. Now at other times at Pentecost and whatnot we see him preaching to the Jews and explaining to them that Jesus is the Christ promised in the Old Testament. We see Paul doing that, proving to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ, and he's doing so from the Old Testament. But there are several components to the gospel, and I guess my point is this. We need to know these things. Sharing the gospel doesn't necessarily mean that we have to go over all these little details, but it's important that we know them so that we can understand what we do need to share. Every situation is going to be different. Different people have different backgrounds. Maybe they were raised in church. Maybe they weren't. Maybe they don't know the first thing about the gospel. Maybe they are very familiar with it because they were raised in church. So it helps for us to understand that and to know what we need to spend our time on. But let's talk about what is involved in the gospel. Give me some of the elements that are part of the gospel. If you were to share the gospel with people, what would you need to tell them? What's that? Forgiveness. Okay. Let's see. Let's put that over here. that we're sinners, okay? Put that here. What else? That there is a God, okay? What else? Okay. We that we have an inheritance as sons in Christ? What is it? Faith. Okay. You can see I'm putting these in different columns here if you're paying attention. What are these columns that we've got represented so far? Can anybody tell me? These are like the basic elements of the gospel. Right here God. We need to know some things about God in order to share the gospel. Right here, we need to know some things about ourselves, about man. If the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, it's only good news because we need good news. We're sinners. There's bad news. We're sinners. The good news is what Christ has done, which is our third column. Christ. We need to know who he is and what he has accomplished in salvation. And then what do we have over here? Our response. Those are the basic elements that we need. God, man, Christ, and response. So as we're thinking about, if we hear a presentation of the gospel, or if we're thinking about sharing the gospel with somebody, we need to make sure that we understand these four things. There is a God, and who is he? Who are we as creatures, as men? What is our need? What has Christ accomplished and how are we to respond to that? So let's look at some various verses on these subjects. Now, there are tons of verses in all four of these categories, right? So the ones that we're gonna look at here briefly, I'm not saying these are the ones that you have to use and you can't use other ones. I'm just giving examples here. But let's look at Isaiah chapter six. Isaiah chapter six, and this is a familiar passage, right? Isaiah, this is Isaiah's call to be a prophet. Isaiah chapter six, beginning in verse one. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. The train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. Now what are these three short verses teaching us about God that we might need to communicate to people as we're sharing the gospel? That He's holy. He's perfect. Right? This is important that God is holy. What does that mean? It means he's perfect. It means he's altogether separate from and above creation and everything else. It means that when we get over here and we see that we're sinners, how do we reconcile that with a holy God? Right? So the gospel is the gospel because there is a holy God and we're sinners. If God wasn't holy or we weren't sinners, we wouldn't need this third column. We need the third column because God is holy and we're sinners. So that's part of sharing the gospel message is before we get to the good news of forgiveness and adoption and inheritance, we have to have the bad news that there's a holy God and we've offended him. How about turning to Psalm chapter eight? Psalm chapter 8 beginning in verse 1. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels and you have crowned him with glory and honor." What are we learning about God here? Who is God in this passage? He's the creator. Exactly. God is the creator. What does that mean? For us, it means that if he's the creator, that he has authority over what he has made, including the sons of men. So, as we share the gospel, this is part of sharing this God, this holy God is in authority as our creator. Right? And there are multiple passages you could turn to for that one. Genesis 1, Colossians 1, John 1, right? There's tons. I'm not saying these are the only passages. I'm just saying these are the sorts of things that we need to know and be able to explain to people. And again, you know, if you're sharing the gospel with a friend who grew up in Roman Catholicism, do they already have some idea about this? Probably, right? They already recognize that there is a God, that he's the creator. Probably even some sense of his holiness, although I think we all struggle to really comprehend how holy God is. But you might not need to spend near as much time on this when you're sharing with a Roman Catholic as you maybe need to do with this and this. So, we need to be wise when we're sharing the gospel to know, like, sometimes if you have an opportunity to share the gospel with somebody, you don't have all day, right? You may have a few minutes. So, you don't want to waste all your time going over something that they already agree with you about. We need to get to the things that they really need to hear. Other people might have no sense of God as the creator. They might have grown up out of church with an atheist evolutionary understanding of the world and we may really need to explain to them the presence of God as a creator and a holy God. So we need to be wise about this. How about Romans chapter 1? One of these scary passages, right? This is why the gospel is such great news. When we read a passage, you're like Romans 1, verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. What is this passage telling us about God? He hates sin, right? He hates sin. He's wrathful towards it. That's kind of bad news. If we just have these two columns here, we don't have the gospel, because we don't have any good news. All we have is bad news. But if we don't have these, and all we have is these two, we won't understand why it's such good news. We have to have all of this. But this isn't the only thing that we know about God, right? The Bible doesn't stop with telling us that he hates sin, that he's wrathful against it. Passage that we're very familiar with. John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. What's this telling us about God? He's a loving God. Now we're starting to get into the good news. This holy God, who is the creator and in authority, who hates sin and is wrathful toward it, is also loving. We need to know that. We don't want to have a picture of God that's just this. without the love of God. There would be no gospel if there were no love. So we need to have a holistic understanding of who God is. And as we're sharing the gospel with people, we need to be discerning because they may understand some of this and not all of it, and we need to use our time wisely to share with them. And again, there are many passages that you could turn to. I'm just using examples. What about over here in column two? What are we doing on time? We got a little time. What does Genesis 1, 26 and 27 tell us about ourselves? Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. What does this passage tell us about ourselves? or made in the image of God, right? This is important. This is important for us to understand. Why would God love us? Well, He made us. He made us in His own image, right? He made us for a reason, for a purpose. And we're made in the image of God. That means every person is made in the image of God. Every person has inherent value and worth as a human because they're made in the image of God. So, and this makes, this makes this all the worse, right? Made in the image of God and yet we've sinned against Him. How about Romans chapter three? I know we're flipping back and forth like crazy here, but Romans chapter three, verses nine through 12. What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous. No, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. No, not one." Right? We're sinners. Every single one of us. No exceptions. Christ is the only exception because He's not just man, He's God as well. But all of us are sinners. You will never share the gospel with somebody who doesn't need it. We all need it. Christians need the gospel. We all need the gospel. We're all sinners. What does Ephesians 2 tell us about the state that we're in as sinners? Ephesians 2 1-3, and you he made alive, so this is talking about the results of the gospel, who were dead in trespasses and sins. in which you once walked, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others." What is this telling us? We're dead in our sins, right? Sin causes spiritual deadness. God breathed the breath of life into Adam in the garden, more than just physically, spiritually, but our sin causes spiritual deadness. The gospel is not throwing a life preserver to somebody that's drowning. It's bringing people back from the dead. We're talking about people who are dead in sin, being given new life in Christ. Let's look at Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53, six, this is a familiar passage. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. What is this telling us about ourselves? We have strayed, we have turned everyone to his own way. We've turned away from God. We're in rebellion against God, right? We're going our own way. instead of his way. This is why we need the gospel, because we're in rebellion against our creator. And what does our sin do for us? In chapter 59, Isaiah 59. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear. Our sin separates us from God. This is why we need the gospel. We've been separated from God because of our sin. What do we deserve because of our sin? In Romans chapter six, verse 23, what are the wages of sin? Death. Here, we talked about the inheritance that we have when we believe the gospel, when we're adopted by God as his sons and daughters. But here, our inheritance, what we have earned, is death. Right, so when we have this on this side of this line, we've got a whole lot of bad news right there. The good news starts on the right side. And I think a lot of times when we think about sharing the gospel, this is where we start. And sometimes we've taken this for granted and we shouldn't. Our hearers don't always know this. They don't always believe this. So for the good news to be really good, we have to make sure that the bad news has been expressed as well. But what is the good news? What has Christ done? Well, He has given us forgiveness. He has given us adoption and an inheritance with the saints. We'll quickly go over this. We won't look up all these passages. I'll just say them. But John 3, 16, again, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him. Right? So Jesus is our way to God. If we've been separated from God by our sin, how do we get back to God? Only through faith in Christ. That's the only way. Romans 5, 6 and 8, what did Christ do? He died. We're dead in our sins. Christ died. He took our place so that he could give us new life. Romans 6.23, that's what he does. He gives us the gift of everlasting life. See, these are the things we think about most of the time when we think about the gospel. Christ's death, forgiveness in him, everlasting life. So there's tons of things that we could look at there. What do we need to know about Christ that makes all of this possible? 1 Peter 2, 22. He was sinless. He's the only one that's ever lived a sinless life in the flesh. We've seen it, we've said it already, but 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses one through four. He rose from the dead. by the power of God, we're told in Acts. He rose from the dead. This is gloriously good news because we're dead in our sins and if we want to have new life and be redeemed and reconnected with our God, we need the new life that is only found in Christ. and he came to give us new life, it says in John 10, 10. And then this last column, response, we've talked about faith, right? We can look at Romans 10, verses nine to 11 that talk about how we need to confess and believe, right? So that's what faith is. We need to believe in Christ and in what he has done. We need to repent. turn away from our sins, it's Matthew 4, 17 and Acts 2, 38. John 5, 24, we need to listen to Christ's words. We need to listen to Christ, His words in the gospel to us. And John 1, 12, we need to believe what? In His name. That is the only place that salvation is found. The only other thing that we might want to add to these four categories is the idea of the cost. What did it cost? What does our salvation cost? It costs the death of the Son of God, right? What does it cost for us? Nothing. It's by grace, right? By grace we're saved. Yet, after our salvation, as we said, we are to deny ourselves and take up our cross. There is a cost to be born after we're saved, and that is obedience to the gospel, not cheap grace, right? It's not grace that doesn't, have effects in our lives. So we need to think about this when we're thinking about evangelism and wanting to share the gospel with people. These are four helpful categories to keep in mind and to think about the person that I'm sharing to, how much do they understand out of any of these categories and then we can spend our time where we need to to help give them a full understanding of what the good news of the gospel is and why it is such good news and then what we are to do in response to it. So let's close in a word of prayer.