What Can We Show & What Must We Tell?

Welcome to Providence Bible Church. If you would like, you can open
your Bible to Acts chapter one. We’re going to be starting in
verse six. Acts chapter one, verse six.
So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you
at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, and
it’s not for you to know times or seasons that the father is
fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the
Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses
in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of
the earth. And when he had said these things
as they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him
out of their sight. One of the ministries my wife
and I happily support is called To the End of the Earth Ministries,
founded by a brother named Bobby McCreary. The name of his ministry
is taken from this very important text, which was, as we read,
spoken to the disciples immediately before the risen Jesus ascended
into heaven. Bobby is, as far as we can tell,
if there’s anyone around that is an evangelist of the Ephesians
411 variety. We believe this, not just because
he is very active in evangelism, which he is. But because of the
way he’s trying to live his life, we have observed him time and
again, trying to be a peacemaker in difficult situations involving
either being reviled for preaching Christ or being called out for
not going along with the latest Christian fad. And though we
are not all called to be evangelists like Bobby, we are all called
to be witnesses and we are all called to evangelize. And in
that, as the Apostle Paul wrote, we are called not to preach ourselves,
but Jesus as Lord and ourselves as the servants of others for
Jesus’ sake. The main point of this message
deals with the relationship between striving to be a faithful witness
of Christ, which we could call our manner of life, and evangelism,
which we could call our mission. Both of these things, our manner
of life and our mission, are vitally important for us as followers
of Christ. They’re both vitally important
for us to properly understand and to enthusiastically pursue. And one thing that I hope will
help make this a little clearer is to keep in mind the fact that,
as someone has said, witnessing is a broad category of which
evangelism is a subset. Or in other words, evangelism
is part of striving to be a good witness, but not everything we
do in pursuit of being a good witness is evangelism. Both are
vitally important, but both are not equally important. Only one
thing can be ultimately important, and that thing which must take
precedence, which must be ultimate, I’m going to argue this morning,
is the verbal communication of the gospel. And I will try to
make the reason for that supremacy as clear as I can as we work
through various parts of my sermon this morning. Today’s title,
as you can see, if you have a bulletin, is the question, what can we
show and what must we tell? The impetus for this question
slash statement comes in large part from a book by the late
Dr. R.C. Sproul entitled, What is the
Gospel? I’ll talk more about this as
we go along. But first, I want to give you the basic outline
of what I’m arguing for today. Number one, what can we show?
What can we show? We could show people around us
both the genuineness of our love and the validity of our faith
in numerous ways, all of which involves how we are trying to
live our lives. And number two, what must we
tell? Nothing in scripture tells us that we can show people the
gospel itself by how we are trying to live our lives. We must tell
or verbally communicate the gospel to people because the gospel
is very specifically the good news of who Jesus is and what
Jesus has done. It must be proclaimed, it must
be published, it must be spoken, it must be told. The telling
of the gospel is properly called evangelism. Point number three,
showing is important But telling is ultimate. We are striving
who we are striving to be and what we’re striving to do as
witnesses of Christ is very important, but it is not ultimately superior
to or even equal to the importance of evangelism because nothing
is more important than the gospel. Amen. As those who are called
and chosen to be witnesses of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
we are called to make every effort to show Christ-like love to everyone
and especially to our fellow saints. As you read in 1 John
3.14, we know that we have passed out of death into life because
we love the brothers. Or as the Apostle John also wrote
in 1 John 4.19, we love because he first loved us. We love not
primarily as a response to God’s love, but rather as a result
of God’s love. He loved us first. He loved us
in a redemptive way. What Jesus did in loving us resulted
in us being able to love genuinely and really all things that we
are called to show as witnesses of Jesus are properly called
the results of the gospel. rather than the gospel itself.
We are called to show love, mercy, patience, and hospitality, just
to name a few. And as the apostle Paul wrote
in his letter to the Romans, if you guys want to open to Romans
12 through 16, That’s Romans 12, starting with
verse nine says, Let love be genuine of what is evil. Hold
fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly
affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful
in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the
Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be
constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the
saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you.
Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice.
Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Never be wise
in your own sight. Another way scripture puts it
is that we are called to show our faith. by our works. As James
2 18 says that someone will say you have faith and I have works.
Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you
my faith by my works. We are not justified before God
by our works, but we are in a different sense justified before our fellow
human beings by our works. For instance, James says, Abraham
was justified by his works when he offered up his son Isaac upon
the altar. He showed the genuineness of
his faith by what he did. All of this is part of what it
means to be a witness. A witness is supposed to testify
to the truth of what he or she has seen. A witness presents
testimonial evidence. The way we are trying to live
our lives should testify to the reality of the radical change
that has occurred in our hearts. Jesus said to his disciples in
John 13, a new commandment I give you. that you love one another
just as I have loved you. You are also to love one another
by this. All men will know that you are
my disciples if you have love for one another. Jesus is not
saying that we will be able to love each other perfectly, but
he is saying that we would love each other with the same kind
of genuine love that he exhibited when he condescended to take
on flesh and dwell among us. So genuine love is emblematic
of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. The second half of
first John 3 14 says whoever does not love abides in death.
Every Christian has genuine love for God and for others. It’s
not perfect love, but that genuine love is at the heart of what
it means to be his witnesses. And that genuine love is, as
we have said, a result of the gospel. It’s not the gospel itself,
nor is it evangelism. It is not the proclamation of
the gospel, because though we can, by the grace of God, show
love, we must tell the gospel. Why? Basically, we must tell
the gospel because of what the gospel is. So what is the gospel? I thought
you’d never ask. The late Dr. Sproul in this book,
what is the gospel, outlines the definition of it with 12
affirmations and an equal number of denials. This material is
taken by Dr. Sproul from an earlier document.
I think it was published around 1998 or something. called The
Gospel of Jesus Christ and Evangelical Celebration. Dr. Sproul was not
the sole author of that document, but he was a member of the drafting
committee. The authors are essentially saying
in that document that the gospel is this and not that. This form of argumentation has
been adopted by Christian theologians in an attempt to bring a high
degree of clarity to what’s being defined. For instance, they start
with the fact that the gospel is the gospel of God. Not that
it’s just about God, but that it’s God’s gospel. They say,
we affirm that the gospel entrusted to the church is, in the first
instance, God’s gospel. God is its author, and he reveals
it to us in and by his word. Its authority and truth rest
on him alone. The corresponding denial reads, we deny that the
truth or authority of the gospel derives from any human institution
or excuse me, any human insight or invention. We deny that the
truth or authority of the gospel rests on the authority of any
particular church or human institution. In Romans. Chapter one, verse
one, the apostle Paul writes, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ
called to be an apostle set apart for the gospel of God. And again in Galatians 1 11,
I would have you know brothers that the gospel that was preached
by me is not man’s gospel and because it’s God’s gospel. We
really should not try to amend or improve upon or in any other
way seek to change it for any reason as the Apostle Paul wrote
in 2nd Corinthians chapter. Four, verse two, we refuse to
practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word. But by open
statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone’s
conscience in the sight of God. It is God’s gospel. It’s given
to us by him. It’s not a gospel that is given
to us by any human institution. In his book, R.C. Sproul continues
through 11 chapters, outlining and further defining the gospel.
There are chapters on the Gospels power to save and Jesus is the
only Savior and Jesus is the God man and Jesus says the perfect
sacrifice and a chapter how on how on how our sin is imputed
to Christ and Christ’s righteousness imputed is imputed to us. All
of which are very important aspects of the gospel, but it was the
last chapter that drew my attention the most. That chapter is entitled
Proclaiming the Gospel. And it was interesting to me,
not merely because it affirms that Jesus Christ commands his
followers to proclaim the gospel to all living persons, evangelizing
everyone everywhere, and discipling believers within the fellowship
of the church. But it goes on to say something in the second
part of the affirmation, which was also quite illuminating.
And it says this, a full and faithful witness to Christ includes
The witness of personal testimony, godly living, and acts of mercy
and charity to our neighbor, without which the preacher of
the gospel appears barren. So a full and faithful witness
includes these things. Personal testimony, godly living,
acts of charity, and so forth. So this last part is a restatement
of our first point. What can we show? We must be
striving to show the people around us both the genuineness of our
love and the validity of our faith in the gospel in numerous
ways. The corresponding denial in this
12th chapter of R.C.’ ‘s book called What is the Gospel, reads,
we deny that the witness of personal testimony, godly living, and
acts of mercy and charity to our neighbors constitutes evangelism
apart from the proclamation of the gospel. My restatement of
this is our second point, what we must tell. Nothing in scripture
tells us that we can show people the gospel by how we are trying
to live our lives. We must tell or verbally communicate
the gospel to people. So the question is, what can
we show and what must we tell? I would argue that though there
are many things that we can and should be striving to show both
to our fellow believers in the body of Christ and to the world
at large by our manner of life, the gospel is not one of those
things. The content of the gospel cannot be shown to people by
our actions. The gospel must be told or proclaimed or published.
And the reasons for this are found in the content of the gospel
itself. The essence of the gospel is
who Christ is and what he’s done in his redemptive work. The gospel
is about the perfection of Christ’s person and work, perfection of
his life and death and resurrection and ascension. And therefore,
since we are still imperfect people and we are yet not yet
lightened, we are yet not like him, not to mention the fact
that we will never be him. We cannot show people that perfection. We cannot show people who Christ
is and what he’s done. We have to tell them. We have
to endeavor to teach or disciple them in the truth of the gospel.
I’ve been lately talking to someone online, which, as you know, if
you’ve ever done it, can be quite difficult, especially if there’s
a disagreement. And usually, that’s why you’re
talking to somebody online. But this person with whom I’ve
been trading comments is a supporter of an agreement with a self-proclaimed
evangelist slash open-air preacher who says that he’s attained sinless
perfection. And this is becoming more and
more common, unfortunately. In fact, this preacher, who I
would not at all accept at this point in time as a genuine follower
of Christ, would say that if you are a real Christian, then
you do not sin anymore in any sense. And this blatant false
teacher, I would say, claims that it is required of you that
you stop sinning completely. And if you have not stopped sinning
completely, you’re not really a Christian. Now, this false
teaching is not something that’s really new. In fact, this is
something that has been taught by various people throughout
the history of the church. It was embraced perhaps most
notably by a man named Pelagius, a British monk and theologian
who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries. He also taught that
the doctrine of original sin is false. And Pelagius and those
who have adopted his beliefs claim that Adam did not really
pass a sin nature on to any of us. Therefore, everyone is born
more or less sinless, even though we all or perhaps most of us
do eventually fall into sin. But for these people, the good
news is kind of a word salad with the law and Jesus and grace
and faith thrown in. And when it’s all tossed together
and mixed up outcomes, the result to claim of an immediate secession
of any kind of sin in their lives. And if you’re willing to labor,
if you’re willing to label yourself sinless, you too can be part
of their religious club. But if you don’t, well. No, you’re
not really a genuine follower of Christ. Now, you know, if
you are all familiar and all familiar with what the word of
God teaches about this, that the apostles and Jesus himself.
Completely repudiated this notion. In fact, Jesus said when he was
asked by the rich young ruler good teacher What must I do to
inherit eternal life? Said why do you call me good?
There’s none good but one That is God. Jesus is not at this
point saying that he was not good He was saying that the only
sin this person in all of history was the God-man to whom all scripture
points. I Now, if it was the teaching
of God’s word that anyone that has genuine faith has also stopped
sinning completely, then why would he say this? And there’s
no doubt that scripture points out that not only have we all
sinned in the past, which these people admit, but that we all
also all presently fall short of the glory of God. If we’re
alive here on this earth, we still fall short of the glory
of God. This is why the Apostle Paul said that it was a faithful
saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came in the
world to save what kind of people? Sinners. And Apostle Paul went
on to make the shocking statement, for some, of whom I am the foremost. So the apostles did not embrace
this notion that to be a Christian means to not any longer be a
sinner, to not any longer have a sin nature. Rather, We are
brought into the kingdom and we are given a new heart in a
new way by faith. We’re given genuine love for
God and love for people by that faith. But that new heart does
not mean that we do not, in any sense, sin any longer. That new
heart is a heart of love for God and a heart of love for people,
but it’s not perfect love at this stage in our progress in
the process of sanctification. Our faith and our repentance
and subsequently our love are all things that are still imperfect
because, and because of that we are not able to rightly say,
I have no sin. We are forced to acknowledge
that we are trying to live a godly life, trying to attain to a greater
and greater level of holiness in our lives, but that we still
fall short and that we still are not arrived, as the Apostle
Paul said, I have not apprehended that for which I was apprehended
by God. So, What are we doing then? We’re, as the Apostle Paul said,
pressing towards the mark, striving to be more like Christ. We strive
to run the race that before us, looking to Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. So when we’re looking at this
question of what we can show, what we must tell, we certainly
don’t want to say that we can’t show or that we don’t need to
show people anything. We are not in any way saying
that somehow our testimony or our manner of life is irrelevant
or unimportant. We would not say that somehow
the way we’re striving to live our life just doesn’t matter.
We can show something to people about how we’re trying to live.
But the fact that we’re trying is an obvious indication that
we’re still failing. Amen. Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t
merely try. Jesus accomplished everything
that the Father sent him to do. Jesus lived absolutely perfectly.
Jesus lived, as R.C. Sproul has said, for our righteousness. And because of that, his perfect
righteousness can be counted ours by faith. And he died vicariously,
he died on behalf of sinners. He died in such a way that he
took the punishment that sinners deserve so that if anyone would
have faith in him, it would be counted righteous by that faith
alone. So why do I bring up this idea
of sinless perfectionism? It is because in all of this,
There is a seriously sinful tendency in which I’m convinced all of
us struggle. We are for the most part not
sinless perfectionists like the people I’ve been interacting
with online, but we are still battling with an inclination
to be self-focused and to be self-righteous. We are by our
fallen nature, legalists. We tend to think that we were
at one time like those people who desperately needed to hear
that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, but now, not
so much. We’re so focused on so many other
things, including trying to live the way we should live, that
we have forgotten that the gospel is not just for unrepentant sinners,
but also for sinners like us. We are constantly tempted to
think that our faith in the gospel means that we are no longer in
any sense one of those people. and too often the fact that the
sin we have committed in the last few seconds would be more
than enough to send us to hell for all eternity has almost completely
escaped our minds. I remember exactly where I was
when I was made acutely aware of this a number of years ago,
as I was sitting on the old stone steps of the church I first attended
after God so graciously saved me. It was also the building
in which Tracy and I met and were later married almost 40
years ago this August. Well, it is 40 years ago this
August, so we’re still figuring out what
we’re going to do. So if anyone has any good ideas of where we
should go or what we should do, let us know. My experience of
the Christian faith and of the Christian life and what it was
all about had started in this building that I was sitting in
front of. And my thinking had been largely shaped by what I’d
been taught there. And as I was sitting there and
realizing the extent to which I had adopted the idea that I
was not really one of those sinners out there anymore, I realized
that I was thinking much more like the, I thank thee God that
I am not like other men Pharisees than to have mercy on me, a sinner,
the publican. It’s like my thinking had gradually
shifted, and though I knew it intellectually in my heart, I
was really putting myself in a category I didn’t belong, saying
I’m not, thank God I’m not like those people out there. And at
the time when I met my Christian upbringing, I thank God for once
I came to Christ, I had what was really a very great church,
fairly small, much more charismatic Pentecostal, which we love our
charismatic Pentecostal brothers and sisters in Christ, amen.
But we went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday
night, Friday night. And we were, you know, we were
holy. We didn’t, we didn’t mix with those people so much out
there. So it, it all, it all affected
me. I realized that much of what
I’ve been taught and much would have been seen modeled up to
that point in my Christian life was encouraging me to be legalistic
rather than helping me. to put to death my own inner
Pharisee. And it was such a major turning
point in my life, my Christian life, that I prayed then and
I continue to pray now that I will never forget that truth. And
it’s because I’m convinced that this is a temptation that is
common to all of us that I’m addressing it today. So what
is the anecdote? What is the solution? I’m arguing
this morning that the gospel and the fact that the gospel
must be told and can’t be shown flows from the fact that we all
still need the gospel. We are too much like the Pharisee
who said to himself that Jesus could not be a prophet since
he evidently did not know that the woman who was washing his
feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair was a notorious
sinner. So if you remember, Jesus tells
Simon, who was a Pharisee, this story. He tells him the story
of the money lender that has two debtors. One owes a very
large debt, one owes a relatively small debt. If he forgives them
both, Jesus asks, which one of them will love him the most?
The Pharisee answers correctly, that the one who had the larger
debt canceled would no doubt love him the most. And Jesus,
in effect, says, that’s exactly what you see playing out before
your eyes with this woman and her tears. So he says in verse
47 of Luke 7, therefore I tell you her sins which are many are
forgiven for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little
loves little. And that’s me, that’s you, brothers
and sisters. Now we forget how much we’ve forgiven and our ability
and our inclination to love is diminished. So point number three. Showing
is important but telling is ultimate. Who we are striving to be and
what we’re striving to do as witnesses of Christ is important,
but it is not ultimately superior or even equal to the importance
of the gospel and the gospel’s proclamation. In his message
entitled Gospel Clarity, given at this year’s Shepherds Conference,
Votie Bauckham said this, and some of you were there, and so
I apologize that I’m not going to try to channel Votie. I’m
just going to quote him. Bodhi said this, as I survey
the last few decades, I can remember how there was a recognition of
a loss of the gospel. It was a recognition that the
gospel had begun to be messed with and tinkered with. There
was a recognition that things like the church growth movement
and other movements like that were shying away from the gospel.
And all of a sudden, in response to that, you had gospel everything. in this attempt to recover the
gospel and put the gospel at the center of everything. All
of a sudden, that became a fad. The gospel became a fad. And
there was gospel this, and gospel that, and gospel everything.
Gospel bake sales. But interestingly enough, he
goes on, as gospel became a fad and attaching gospel to everything
became a fad, the gospel was being lost again in the name
of the gospel. And there were things that were being called
gospel because that was the fad, but they had no gospel in them
whatsoever. And fast forward and gospels
become everything, which means it’s become nothing. And then
people start saying things of the gospel that aren’t the gospel.
And all of a sudden, there are implications of the gospel and
maybe fruit of the gospel that are being identified as the gospel. Classic example. And Vodi has
been very much in the forefront, the whole socialist justice thing
and how we as Christians should be responding to the critical
race theory and intersectionality and all of that. It’s not my
main point here, but he goes on to say, we’ve gone from social justice is a gospel issue
to social justice is the gospel. Racial reconciliation is the
gospel. These things are the gospel,
but actually they’re not the gospel. And ironically, for the
most part, they are law, which is the opposite of the gospel.
End of quote. So just to highlight one sentence
of that quote, he says, and fast forward in the gospels become
everything, which means it’s become nothing. It’s like when
people say to you, everything is gone. Well, does a that that’s
impossible to be the case because the definition of god is completely
obliterated at that point god is not god is no different than
the rock or the tree or the you know the the murderer or the
you know uh rapist or whatever else i mean if if we say everything
is god then it just obliterates the uh the definition of god
and same thing if we say everything is the gospel he’s saying here
Uh, that means nothing is the gospel. What is the point? The
point is that even if we start out with good intentions, if
we don’t carefully guard the definition of the gospel, where
are we going to end up? Voting seems to be saying that
we’ll end up, we will end up with no gospel at all. Is that possible? Are there churches
that have more or less started out well, and now they’re not
really preaching the gospel anymore. They don’t really have the gospel
anymore. Along those lines, we once heard
a sermon that equated the importance of our manner of life with the
importance of preaching the gospel, arguing that these two things
were like two wings of a bird. In other words, one is useless
without the other. And both have to be given exactly
the same weight or the whole thing collapses. The speaker
tried to use Paul’s statement in First Thessalonians to aid
about being ready to share with the Thessalonians, not only the
gospel, but also his own life. And he was using this to say
that the way Paul acted towards those who had come to faith in
Christ through the preaching of the gospel was just as important
as the preaching he did. Because evidently, if he had
not gone the extra mile of working night and day so that he would
not be a burden to any of them, that the preaching of the gospel
would have had no effect in their lives. Now I agree that if we
are trying to show, or not trying to show genuine love to people,
our preaching will appear barren. But that does not mean it is
barren or useless so that we have to make what we can show
and what we must tell equally important. When we begin to say
that one without the other is like a one winged bird, we are
going way beyond what scripture itself teaches. Paul himself
wrote that even though some people were preaching the gospel out
of envy and strive, hoping to add affliction to his bonds as
he sat in prison for preaching the gospel himself, he rejoiced
that Christ was being preached. Now, he was not rejoicing that
a false gospel and false Christ were being preached. He rejoiced
that the true Christ and the true gospel were being preached
by people who, at the very least, were not acting very Christlike.
At the very least, their motivation was not what it should be. He
said, some were preaching Christ out of selfish ambition, not
sincerely, but thinking to add affliction to my imprisonment. What a great opportunity to say,
that dog ain’t going to hunt. That one-winged bird ain’t going
to fly. Right? But did he say that? No. He said, Christ is proclaimed.
And in that, I rejoice. Yes, I will rejoice for I know
that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus
Christ this will turn out for my deliverance. Paul had so much
confidence in the power of the gospel that he rejoiced that
it was being preached by people whose manner of life was sorely
lacking. So as great and as important
as our manner of life is, it is not equivalent to preaching
the gospel, because the gospel is the power of God to salvation. And again, from his message given
at this year’s Shepherds Conference, and you can blame Bodhi, I’ll give you his email address
or something. He says this, he says, we’re
the ones that have come to believe that there are things we are
doing that are more significant than the work we do in preaching
and proclaiming the gospel. We’ve come to believe that there
are things that are more significant. And he obviously disagrees with
that idea. It has been my observation that
when we begin to say that the call to endeavor to be a godly
witness by living a godly life and the call to preach the gospel
are essentially equal, important, equal in importance. Then we
eventually begin to treat our manner of life as more important
than our mission. And the mission falls further
and further out of focus, out of the place of prominence given
to it by the Lord Jesus himself. And as we become more and more
focused on ourselves in ways that scripture does not prescribe,
we begin to doubt or even deny the centrality of the mission
laid out so clearly for us in numerous places in Holy Scripture.
We begin to forget the centrality of the Great Commission. For
instance, A 2018 article I recently read
talks about the results of a Barna survey. You guys have all heard
of Barna, the great pollster. I don’t know how great he is,
but he did a survey. He was asking churchgoers this
question. Have you heard of the Great Commission?
What do you think the results of that poll were? I would say
that it was not good. 51% of those churchgoers polled
said they had not heard of the Great Commission at all. 51%. 25% said they had heard of it, but
they didn’t recall the exact meaning. And 6% said they were
not sure. And only 17% said they had heard
of it and could give a definitive answer on its meaning. Can it
really be that 83% of churchgoers Are that oblivious to the mission
of the church? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. And we wonder
why our society seems to be falling apart so rapidly, but what is the great commission
as defined by the scriptures? Can we briefly refresh our minds
on that here this morning? Let’s start with Matthew 28.
If you want to turn there, this is. really the go-to passage,
though there are other passages we’ll talk about. Matthew 28,
verse 18. And Jesus came and said to them,
all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded you. And
behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. So he
starts out, all authority is given To me in heaven and on
earth, the Lordship of Christ. Or Mark 1310 in the gospel must
be first proclaimed to all nations or Mark 14, nine. And truly I
say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world,
what she has done will be told in memory of her talking about
the woman who broke the alabaster box. of ointment and anointed
Jesus for his burial ahead of time. Or how about Luke 24, verse
44? If you want to turn there real
quick, I think we have time. Starting Luke 24, verse 44, this
is the account of the two disciples that were walking along the road
to Emmaus. Along comes this person that they don’t recognize, and
they’re saying, no, we thought that, you know, the Messiah was
going to, you know, save us, but Jesus says to them, starting
in verse 44, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was
still with you, that everything written about me in the law of
Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. And he opened their minds to
understand the scriptures and said to them, thus, it is written
that the Christ should suffer. And then the third day rise from
the dead and that repentance for the,
for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to
all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things
and behold, I’m sending the promise of my father upon you, but stay
in the city until you’re clothed with power from on high. What
do all these texts have in common? They all speak of the necessity
of proclaiming the gospel. Nowhere in scripture to Jesus
or his disciples even hint that we could substitute who we are
or what we’re doing for the proclamation of who he is and what he has
done. As great and as important as our personal testimony, both
spoken and lived out is it is not equivalent to preaching the
gospel because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The apostle Paul in the first
chapter of his letter to the Romans verse 16 did not say. I’m not ashamed of my personal
testimony or my witness or of. The love that I’ve tried to show
people because it is the power of God’s salvation to all who
have seen it. Amen. Even as our beloved elder,
Ron Frasco, you’ve heard of Ron. You haven’t forgotten him already,
hopefully. Even as our beloved elder, Ron has said, no one is
ever going to come to faith merely because he has observed my life.
Amen. The Apostle Paul said, I’m not
ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God and salvation
to everyone who believes. So what is this gospel that cannot
be shown but must be told? What is this gospel of which
we should not be ashamed? Great question. Here’s my summary. Mostly in my own words of what
is found in the book that I’ve been referencing entitled. What
is the gospel buyer dear brother RC Sproul? First of all, the
gospel is good news. It is the announcement of what
someone else. Namely, the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit have done for God’s glory and on behalf of God’s
people. It is the proclamation of not just the possibility of
salvation, but of the guarantee of eternal life for all those
who will, by the grace of God, believe. It is given to the church
by God. It is it’s who is its author
and who reveals it to us in and by his word. It’s authority and
truth does not originate from any human source, nor does it
rest on the authority of any particular church or human institution.
The gospel is the power of God into salvation. unto all those
who hear it and by God’s grace believe it. The power is not
in our eloquent words, or creative methods, or persuasive rational
arguments, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are
perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power
of God. The gospel is the only solution
to the universal problem of the rebellion of every fallen son
and daughter of Adam against our holy and righteous triune
creator. This rebellion is so serious
that its proper consequence, if not fully paid by the second
person of the Trinity, would be eternal conscious torment
under God’s holy and righteous wrath. Jesus Christ alone is
the mediator between holy God and sinful man. God has promised
and prefigured and presented Christ throughout all of human
history as the only one who could and would save his people from
their sins. There is no other name given
among men whereby we must be saved. That salvation comes through
grace alone, by faith alone, and Christ alone. Therefore,
the church is commissioned and commanded. by Jesus the Lord
of heaven and earth to preach the gospel to every living person
on earth. No one is excluded based on ethnicity
or cultural heritage from the necessity of hearing and believing
the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the greatest need of every
human being from every tribe, language, and nation to hear
and understand and embrace by faith the truth of the gospel
of Christ, the second person of the Trinity, co-eternal and
co-equal with the Father and the Spirit. Not only what Jesus
has done, but also Jesus’ person is foundational to the faith
that unites us to the one who is our salvation. In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through
him. Without him was not anything
made that was made in him was life and the life was the light
of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has
not overcome it. And the word became flesh and
dwelt among us and we have seen his glory glory as of the only
son from the father full of grace and truth. Jesus now became the
God man. but he obediently humbled himself
to the point of death, even death on a cross. He offered himself
as the perfect wrath-absorbing sacrifice, which alone could
actually and fully atone for our sins. All we like sheep have
gone astray. We have turned everyone. to his
own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He actually satisfied divine
justice on behalf of his people, securing for them everything
they needed or will need to be fully, finally, and forever reconciled
to him by faith. He not only died for our sins,
but He bodily arose on the third day for justification. He rose
triumphant over everything that stood against us in the same
body in which he died so that we who trust in him can look
forward to our lowly bodies being made like his glorious body will
be fully and finally freed from the presence of sin and the effects
thereof. We know that when he appears,
we shall be like him. because we will see him as he is. And
everyone that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as
he is pure. First John chapter three. You
shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from
their sins. And we who are citizens of the
kingdom of God by faith are at this time justified sinners. Martin Luther called this state
simul justus et peccator, at the same time, just and sinner.
And this reality was at the heart of the Reformation, because it
is at the center of the gospel. And it is the faithful saying
found in 1 Timothy 1 15, that Jesus Christ came into the world
to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. So we are called
to be his witnesses as sinners that are justified by faith,
but the faith that truly justifies also results in a manner of life
that truly is a witness to the life-changing power of the gospel
poured out upon us by the grace of God. So this brings us back
to the question that serves as the title of this message. What
can we show and what must we tell? You must not deny the importance
of the fact that the genuineness of our love and faith is shown
to people around us by our manner of life, by our witness, by who
we are trying to be and what we’re trying to do. But how does
what we can do or show compared to the gospel? How does our witness
minus evangelism communicate the gospel? We can call what
we’re doing, trying to do gospel behavior, gospel living, or gospel
this or gospel that. But without opening our mouths
and telling people, providing people with the message in writing,
how is there any gospel in it? As the apostle Paul wrote in
his letter to the Romans, how then will they call on him of
whom they have not believed and how are they believe in him of
whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without
someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless
they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of those who preach the good news. May those beautiful feet, brothers
and sisters, increasingly be your feet and my feet for the
glory of God and the good of his people. Amen. Amen. Would you pray with me
quick?