Sunday School | Foundations - What is the Gospel?

Introduction

Hey guys, thank you so much for making the effort to be here. I imagine true to form for CHS, people will start coming in as we begin. That's part of our DNA, right? When things are getting started. Here come the masses. But we are thrilled to have you guys here.

And we come to this time, and I say we, I mean, Tim and I, we come to this time with tremendous anticipation. We've been talking about this, really, for like six months, maybe even longer, about what it would be like to get everybody who would consider themselves a regular attender, someone who belongs to this church, to get everybody together in the same room and say, hey, what does it actually mean to belong to Church of the Holy Spirit?

Maybe you came from a family where you had a father or a mother who was constantly reminding you what it meant to be a sloop or a smith or a jones. That there were just some distinctives about your family that were important. And we thought that it would be an incredible opportunity to just come together and talk about what those things are.

I mean, obviously, there are some things that for all Christians, we need to cherish and hold up. But for this body in particular, what are the things that we value? What are some of the things that we believe deeply in that might differ from some other congregations in the Renkok Valley? And then how do we, as people that belong to this community, what does it look like to get involved more deeply? And so we think this is going to be an incredibly beneficial time.

Invitation to Membership and Opening Prayer

When you came in, we have these little cards, and there's a QR code on there. And it says, becoming a member for the first time, scan the QR code to register. We recognize that some of you have been attending this church for a month or a year, but you've never joined. There might be some of you who have been coming to this church for a decade or more, and you haven't taken the time yet to join.

Wherever you find yourself on that spectrum, we would encourage you to sign up. And if you do, Brian will follow up with an email. There's going to be an opportunity for us to meet face-to-face with you, someone on our staff, to get to know you a little better, to answer any questions you might have, and to just walk on the journey with you.

So please do that. If you didn't get one of these, you don't have to grab it now; you can get it on your way out.

Let me pray for our time, and then Tim is going to teach us today. So let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this church. Lord, we know that it is your good plan that we grow in the context of a community. We live an incredibly individualistic time in human history, where if you want to live life that is all about me, it is pretty easy to do that, and you'll have a lot of company doing the same thing. But that is not your way.

Your way is that we would grow in the context of a healthy community, a body. We're a body of Christ. And I pray that during this time, we would understand more deeply what that means, and that we would actually begin to flesh it out and live as if we are a body. And so would you move in the coming weeks to grow us into the church that you want us to be, cause us to be sensitive to your spirit, for we recognize and believe that you are here with us now.

And we're just asking that you would lead this time. It is in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.

Let's give it up for Tim Henderson.

The Gospel: What Is It?

That does not feel churchy, does it? That's a weird thing.

Alright, so you guys, as Sloop and I were kind of building out this curriculum for the next, it's about 12 weeks, I think, the first thing is going to be just basically like one of the most fundamental biblical truths that we want to make sure we all agree and understand. And the center of the center is what is the gospel? What is the good news?

So we're going to talk through that this week. And then as the weeks go on, we're going to talk not just the central biblical truths, but what does it mean to be Anglican? What does it mean to be part of Church of the Holy Spirit? So it'd be kind of concentric circles as we go out.

And as I begin the question of what is the gospel, the one hazard that we have to do that in this particular setting is that I teach all the time in lots of different contexts. And so a lot of people know the punchline of this conversation that we're about to have. If you don't know the punchline, it's going to be surprising. And that surprise is designed on purpose, but there's something I want you to see that is rarely taught, rarely understood, but incredibly important.

So if you've been in a Sunday school class with me or you've been a Blue Ridge Fellow or you're in my Tuesday morning Bible study and we've been through this, just sit on your hands, bite your finger, okay? Like, be quiet, all right? Because I want to allow-- I want to run the process that we've run many times with other people. And I want you to remember that it was helpful to you to not know the answer before it was revealed, right?

There's something about learning things that are surprising that help some stick. And I really would love this to stick for everybody in here, okay? So you can say anything that you know that you didn't learn from me, all right? But like, if you know the punchline of this, like, let's create a little bit of space for folks to make this kind of self-discovery. Good enough?

Alright, so we asked the question here. What is the gospel? Let's back that up and say, what is a gospel? What's a gospel? Good news, right? So Christians didn't invent the language of gospel. That's not our word. We stole it from the Romans, right? So the most fundamental level, like a gospel was good news.

And generally, the good news is, hey, great news. Caesar's just conquered another community. And the Roman Empire has grown, right? That's the good news. The good news is, hey, we want a war. We've subjugated more people. Christians show up and we say, you know what? That's kind of good news, but we have better news. We have gooder news, right?

And the nature of news is that it's new. Something just happened. If I were to say, hey, good news, you guys. George Washington was elected first president of the United States. He'd be like, yeah, that was like a long time ago. I'm not sure it qualifies as news, okay? So the gospel itself, when it comes to anybody, it's news to them. It's new to them. It's new, it's transformative.

His mercies are new every morning.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. — 2 Corinthians 5:17

So there's a sense in which every time you hear the gospel, it's new. The first time you hear the gospel, the first time you believe the gospel, it's new. But there is another sense in which something has changed. And what we want to discover this morning together is, what's new? What changed? What has happened, okay?

That's what we're gonna head. But right now, if we were to say to you, like, I found you to get out a piece of paper, get out an index card and jot down on it, two, three, four, seven, eight, nine, attributes of the gospel message. You know, what are the things that you say, if you're gonna share the gospel with somebody, if you're explaining the gospel message to your child, if you're talking to a colleague at work and you're gonna explain to them the nature of what Christians believe, what are some of the key ingredients that we'd have to include in this?

The gospel message, the news, the information packet, contains the following, you know, handful of attributes. What would be some of these things?

• Kingdom of God is at hand.

• Kingdom of God is at hand, right? Especially if you read the gospel of Matthew over and over again, they're gonna talk about this kind of language, right? You don't see that so much in John, you don't see that so much in Paul, but it's pervasive. The Kingdom of God is at hand, excellent.

What else? What are some other things that are part of the gospel message?

• You are loved.

• You are loved, right? So maybe the most famous package, you know, our presentation of the gospel is the four spiritual laws that Bill Bright wrote, and law one is God loves you. As someone said, it has a wonderful plan for your life. Sometimes it says God loves you and created you to know him personally, but the God loves you is central to this whole thing, excellent.

• Forgiveness?

• Forgiveness, okay, that we can be forgiven. The gospel message is a story that we who are, you know, that your sins are a scarlet. They can be made white as snow.

Excellent. Forgiveness, the love of God, the Kingdom is here. What else do we have to include? Yeah, Eric?

• It's our reason for hope in this crazy world.

Okay, so in the gospel, we have hope, right? Romans 5, hope does not disappoint us, that there is something that gives us hope in a world filled honestly with despair and hopelessness. Excellent. The gospel message, have you shared the gospel with somebody, if you haven't mentioned this?

• Bad.

Okay, so the bad news is, right? So the good news, I had a pastor who said that the diamond of the gospel sparkles in its brilliance against the black velvet of sin, right?

I'm assuming the bad news is, in the Four Spiritual Laws, you're sinful and separated from God, right? Excellent.

• We don't have to carry the burden ourselves.

Okay, fantastic. So we are now along, and the Bible's gonna describe that in lots of different language. Maybe adoption is one of the primary kinds of depictions of this that, he gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in his name.

Implication is, you didn't used to be. And Ephesians is gonna say, you who once were far away, have been brought near, excellent, okay?

You guys are doing a great job on like the implications or the benefits of the gospel. Brenda?

• Resurrection.

Okay, this is pretty central. It will be really hard, I think, to say that you've actually, now you can say, hey, everything's gonna be okay. You can bring comfort. You can bring reassurance. You can say, there's hope. But if we're not going to, really, two things, and you've hit the second part of the two-part set, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, I would suggest to you you're not really sharing the gospel. And what's the other part of that two-part set?

• It's okay, all right.

That's more benefit, but what goes with, yeah. The death and resurrection, if you're not saying that Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead, you're, I mean, this is pretty central to this whole story, right? It's gonna be hard to share the gospel without that, right? So something about his death. Now, there's a lot we could unpack that. What was going on on the cross? He's, you know, absorbing it to himself. You know, the punishment of sin. He is defeating Satan. There's a number of, there's more going on on the cross than you might realize, but we have to talk about his cross and his empty tomb, right? His physical body, bodily literal resurrection from the dead, all right?

We got, now we got a cross, we got an empty tomb, we got forgiveness, we've got hope. Keep going here, what do we need? What are we missing in our gospel message so far? Yeah, Harry?

• He dwells among us.

Okay, so he dwells among us. And we might in this, now though you haven't named him, we might say, do we need to talk about the Holy Spirit? When you look at the Old Testament and it anticipates the new covenant coming, we're gonna have to, we're gonna absolutely have to talk about the fact that God dwells in us, that he puts his spirit in us.

The Spirit of God is the means by which Christ dwells with his people. When Jesus says, never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. The person of the Trinity who fulfills that promise is the Spirit of God. Probably gonna need to bring him up. Feel like I saw Bianca.

• It's good news that you respond and surrender.

Okay, the good news, okay, this is interesting. So we've talked about Jesus is dying on a cross. He's rising from the dead. We're talking about these benefits that we get, forgiveness and hope. Bianca is very wise, he's saying yeah, but we've got to answer the question, how do we obtain these? If all of these blessings are purchased, how are they obtained? How do we get them? How do they go from being some kind of a theoretical, available reality to my reality? And how would you answer that?

• Believe.

Faith, believe. These are pretty good answers, right? And there's a couple of key terms we're gonna want to include. Fundamentally, I would say belief would be the key thing, right?

For God so loved the world... — John 3:16

More bad news. But have eternal life, right? So that we are, or Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. You guys memorize that one? Or by grace, you have been saved through faith, right? And even in that pithy little statement, we have not only that this is by faith, but also, or through faith, rather, but that it's by grace, right?

I think our gospel message is gonna have to include, not just that we get all these things and we get them by believing, but it's an incredibly gracious act. So our gospel message is gonna have to talk about a cross and an empty tomb. It's gonna have to talk about all these innumerable benefits that we get and if there's any bridge between them, we're gonna have to say something about that by grace, we have been saved through faith.

And then there's one thing that we might wanna add into our grace and faith that is like the agency that gives us to these things.

• It's a gift.

Okay, so grace and gift, I'll put those in synonyms. Okay, but that's great. So when we say that it's a gift and that's great language because grace is a little bit religious, might be a little bit unclear to people, but everybody understands what a gift is, right? So yeah, and what am I missing? So we're saved by faith, but did you wanna add anything to that?

• Repentance.

Okay, very good. So how do we obtain all this? Sometimes we'll summarize the gospel message and we'll say that by grace you're saved through faith, that's excellent, right? That is what Paul says, but other times, or even if you continue to read just a little bit more, I'll give you one more verse out of Ephesians 2.8-9.

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

But then what's 2.10?

• We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works.

Exactly. We're God's workmanship, creating in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do, right? And so the very nature of salvation, the only way to receive the good news of the gospel is to receive it, right? And it's kind of to go back to what Lily had said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand to experience the good news of the gospel necessarily involves kingdom transfer, right? And so to turn to Christ implies turning away from something else.

I trust him and I stop trusting something else, right? It's just, it's the other side of the coin, it's not an addition to faith, it is the manifestation of faith, right? I am necessarily going to have to abandon my self-righteousness and abandon my unrighteousness. I haven't gonna take upon myself his righteousness, right? It's just, it just doesn't make any sense to do anything else, right?

So we've got a cross, we've got an empty tomb, we've got this mechanism by which we begin to trust and stop trusting, right? We turn from self-righteousness, unrighteousness. We turn to his righteousness, credit to us. When we do, we're transferring kingdoms. We have forgiveness, we're giving hope, right? All kinds of fantastic things. What are we missing? A couple more things, okay? Who was Christ?

The Kingship of Jesus

Okay, so now we're gonna say who, when we look at his cross and his empty tomb, this is a depiction of the fact that he is divine. This is the living God. So we might say, perhaps, that our gospel message might need to include some reference to the incarnation, that this is not just a person, but this is someone who has been sent from above.

We're gonna look at this two weeks in John 6; we're gonna see this a very strong focus, that Jesus came down, right? Central to understanding his pre-existence.

So this is great. Now I will warn you, we're getting close to the edge where now we can start adding bigger and bigger things because to a certain extent, you can't have the full gospel message if you don't have all that God has revealed. But we are gonna start to get spilling out into more and more, like, further away from the central core, okay?

There's a couple more things that are central core though, and you guys are doing fantastic. I love this church.

Catherine.

• Can we cover rescue or set free?

Yes. Rescue, set free.

So I would say this is great. So part of the gospel message is that you can be set free from the bondage to Satan. And I think that we would say that on the cross, what Jesus was doing was not only freeing us from the penalty of sin, but he was also freeing us from the power of sin.

Jesus says if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Romans 6 is gonna say, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have been set free.

So I think that's fantastic, incredibly important.

Benefits of the Gospel

Alright, any benefits we're missing?

How many do you want second duty? So we have hope, we have forgiveness. Any other thing you want to put on the benefit column?

• It's missing with Christ himself.

Okay, so okay, this is so good Lily. He is the prize. He's not merely the means to a prize. It’s like, hey, Jesus is the vending machine, and one of his buttons is for forgiveness. But the whole point of forgiveness is that you get him.

If you and your wife are in a fight, if you and your children are in a fight, if you and your parents are in a fight, and they, because you're wrong and you blew it, and they forgive you, what's the point of the forgiveness? It's not arithmetic, it's restoration, right? If I have wounded Kelly and we're estranged from one another, I want her to forgive me so that we can be reunited again, so that I can enjoy her smile again, so that we are now in community again.

And Jesus is not just forgiving us in some theoretical sense, but it's for intimacy, Lily. Exactly right.

Alright, anything else for missing? We have Ben.

• We have more abundant life.

Yes. And we have victory over sin, death and the great...

Okay, so great, okay, so abundant life, John 10:10. I have come that they may have life and they might have it abundantly. And that's probably true here, right now, for the next 20, 30, 50 years of our lives. And it is ultimately true, we haven't said this yet, it’s interesting, is one of the massive promises of the gospel is eternal life. It shows up over and over, and if you just go through and you just kind of like put on your little filter and look for eternal life language in the New Testament, it just shows up over and over and over again.

I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will never be thirsty. — John 6:35

A thousand pardons, good job, so good, so good. Eternal life is so good and you're the best, whoever you are, you're the best person in the class right now, okay? Is that good enough? Was it you though, Dave? It was you, wasn't it? Yeah. It was somewhere right here, yeah, yeah, okay.

We get to live forever, oh my goodness, it's amazing. Incredible, we get to live forever.

Ellen?

• We have the promise of you never leaving us alone.

I'm gonna do it.

• With us and we'll always take care of us.

He will always take care of us.

Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. — Hebrews 13:5

Okay, I just glanced at my watch and it was horrified, so I gotta keep moving.

The Central Message: Jesus as King

So here's what I want you to do, all this data we've got on the table. I don't know if this is gonna work and it's gonna be really humiliating to see how badly I write, but if we were to take this information, I can't even enter my passcode, there we go.

Doom, doom, on my screen, can I be on screen? Oh, back screen, okay, great.

So, if we were to take all this information that we just threw up and I want to put it in three columns, remember, this is good news. First question is what's the news, what's new? We're gonna ask what happened? And I know that you can't read this, this is just like symbolic, okay?

Then the next question is how did it happen? And then the next is implications.

And I want to divide those implications into two broad categories. They are, what do we get? And how do we get it?

It's hard to write on these and my handwriting's bad under the best of circumstances, okay?

So, we're asking the question, what happened? How did it happen? And what do we get and how do we get it?

Alright, now let's start with the easy stuff. What is the stuff that goes into the category of what do we get? What were some of those things?

Okay, so up here, we're gonna get eternal life, this is gonna be even more symbolic. Eternal life, what do we get?

For the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 6:23

This is gonna be even more symbolic. Eternal life. What do we get? Fellowship of Christ.

We get fellowship, that's right, they’re just gonna be letters, okay? You can write the word things, I don’t have much space. We get eternal life, we get fellowship, what do we get? We get the Holy Spirit, so great, what else do we get? Forgiveness.

This is a big category, just letters, sorry. Okay, we get forgiveness. So, salvation is maybe the whole packet, but we get, we're forgiven, we're no longer estranged, we're in Him, right? You get all this? Anything else that we get?

• We get peace.

We get peace, so great. Okay, we get all this stuff, long list, all these things, we gotta know that, okay?

How do we get it, you guys?

(Indistinct chatter)

Faith, repentance, right? It's trust, right?

If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. — Romans 10:9

This is actually a really small category. We get lots and lots of lots and lots and lots of stuff.

What do we do? Trust Him.

We turn to Him, right? It’s for my grace you’ve been saved through faith.

There’s not a list, this is a big category. This is like a tiny category. Trust Him. In like this universe of blessings opens up to you, okay?

Now this one starts to get interesting. Where do we put the cross? Where do we put the empty tomb?

(Indistinct chatter)

Is that what happened or is it how it happened?

(Indistinct chatter)

Ooh, ooh, ooh, okay. Let's have a fight, okay? Everybody who thinks it’s what happened over here and get ready to joust over these guys. You guys, what happened, we haven't mentioned yet.

Partly because I told you not to say it if you know, but partly because nobody knows. You guys, how it happened is absolutely the cross (indistinct chatter) and the empty tomb.

We have a tendency to put the death of Christ as if it’s the news. The good news is that Jesus died, and that’s a theological error. He did die and it’s good news that he died. So don’t over realize that. But that was a means, not an end. We haven’t mentioned the end yet. The cross and the empty tomb.

The sin, atoning, Satan, defeating, death on the cross is massive. It is gargantuan. You have nothing without it. But it is how the change of state occurred. The resurrection from the dead, the validation that he is king, is incredibly important in the how category. But what happened?

• Sin.

No, so I just said it. What happened?

• I knew sin was defeated.

It is this. Jesus. Became.

King.

You guys, that, zoom in on that. Can that happen? Okay, that is so scrawly. You guys, the good news of the gospel, the change of state, the central blessing in your life is that Jesus became king.

If you had to summarize the gospel down to its most essential claim, it's not the cross, it's not the empty tomb, it's not the forgiveness, it’s not, I don't know, the Holy Spirit, it is that Jesus became king.

Now he became king by means of his sin atoning death. He was affirmed as king through his resurrection from the dead. But what has changed, what is new, what is news, what is good news is that Jesus has been made king.

And because he has been made king, the kingdom of heaven has come upon us.

You guys, the essential attribute of a kingdom is a king. And when Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is here, what he is saying is my enthronement is imminent.

The reason, if you've never, if you ever thought I was puzzling, the reason that he is dressed in a purple robe and wearing a crown of thorns and mocked with a scepter in the very midst of his crucifixion was not merely the cruelty and malice of pilots and his minions. It was the display of God's eternal purposes to enthron his son as king over the cosmos. His coronation was his cross.

And the good news is that Jesus has become king. The implications of this are staggering and generally unrecognized by most. We don't tend to teach on this. We don't tend to make this all that clear. But I'm, and so much of the, some of you might be like, yeah, maybe, but I'm not sure if that's true. Then no problem, take time, hit it with a hammer, all right?

But I'm telling you, the good news is that Jesus became king. The fact that Jesus became king has a number of staggering implications. Number one, it means he didn't used to be. He didn't used to be king and that is also true.

Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever. — Hebrews 1:8

Jesus is God. He has always been God. But the Bible is very explicit in teaching that Jesus became king. Let me show you this. I got about 10 minutes. I'll try to give you a quick primer on this.

There's a number of places we could go and we can shut that thing down now, Caleb. It's gonna be normal without that beautiful artwork. Go to Psalm two. Let me show you this.

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? — Psalm 2:1

The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his anointed one.

Anointed one is Messiah. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters. What this is the world in rebellion against God. And they don't wanna be under his rule. They wanna throw it all off.

And look at this, verse 4.

The one enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.

Then he rebukes them in anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying this:

I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill.

He is describing a change of state, a moment in time. Something happens where God the Father enthrones someone else who was not previously ruling the cosmos.

And then that person, the son, the Messiah, says this.

I will proclaim the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

That is a statement saying, "You will be made king." I am bequeathing to you rule over all things.

It's change of state, it's new, it's different.

Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. — Psalm 2

Psalm 2 is a picture of the coronation of the son of God as king over the earth. You go to Daniel 7, we can see it actually happening. Here's a depiction of it.

In my vision at night, I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. — Daniel 7:13

What you have to understand, you guys, is we are in the throne room of God. Everything is on fire. There are no humans there. It is angels and the Lord God Almighty.

And into this room walks a human being—a being who has been born of a woman. Some, something like this. Something who has no right to be there. Something that is so lowly, it's just incongruent with the whole thing, except he does have a right to be there because he is not just like this. He is also the divine son of God.

He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. — Daniel 7:13

That is so astonishing. To approach the Ancient of Days, you would not do it. You'd be too terrified. And if you did it, you'd be destroyed by his holiness. Probably the angels would intercept you.

He approaches the Ancient of Days. He is led into his presence. And get this, verse 14:

To him was given authority, glory, and sovereign power. All peoples, nations, and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. — Daniel 7:14

This is the moment. I'm not sure when this happens, but if I had to guess, I would say it was on a Saturday between a Friday and a Sunday. I think—and I might be wrong—but this is happening to a crucified but not yet resurrected Son of God.

This is the moment that Jesus becomes king.

Jesus refers to this moment in one of the most quoted passages in the New Testament. You've probably heard this before:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. — Matthew 28:18

To make that maybe just a little bit more clear, you might say it like this:

All authority has just been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. — Matthew 28:18-19

Why? Because I’m the king, and I can have anything I want.

And what I want is that people, the know me, would travel the world and tell everybody this simple and singular message: there is a new king.

This is the gospel. This is the good news.

You guys, it's incredibly good news because what I haven't mentioned is that before this, the world had been stolen. It had been taken over. The throne had been usurped.

When God made the world, he put Adam and Eve in a garden, and we've said this before, that that garden was a temple. It was a place where Adam was to play the role of priest. But it's also a place where Adam and Eve served as the kings and queens.

The language given to them is language of rulership—they were to rule over the creation. But a snake shows up and steals the kingdom. He steals it all. He is a little bit like Gollum, if you guys remember your Lord of the Rings theology, if such a thing can be.

Gollum's story about the ring. What's his story about the ring?

Oh yeah.

He thought it was a birthday present. He got it on his birthday. It was a birthday gift. But of course, he was lying. It wasn't a gift. He had stolen it. We see that same, I don't know, that same theme played out in the gospels. When Jesus goes into the wilderness and he meets Satan. Do you remember what Satan offers him there in the wilderness?

Go to Luke 4.

Jesus is in the wilderness, and Satan appears with him.

He says, we'll just start verse 5: The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to them, I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me—and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.

More is happening in that moment than you might realize. He knows, Satan knows. The end game is that all the authority in the world is granted to the Son. He knows that he has come to be made king. You'll see this, it shows up over and over in Jesus' parables. He'll tell stories about a man who came from a distant land who came and he sent away to be made king.

Jesus has come to be made king and says like, you know what, hey, I know what you're here for. I know you have come to make you king and I have an offer: I’ll make you king. And I won't crucify you. What do you say? All you have to do is bow down to me.

Now, Satan is a liar, he's the father of lies. When he lies, he speaks his native language. So it is not true that it was given to him. He stole it like Gollum. But it is true, far and away, the number one language used—number one term used to describe Satan throughout the New Testament—is that of ruler.

He is the prince of this age, he is the god of this age. He is a ruler.

When Jesus came, he came not just to pay the penalty for sin, but he came to destroy the works of the devil.

He said, look at this:

He disarmed the powers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. — Colossians 2:15

The good news is that the malicious, hateful tyrant who had taken over the world, that he might rule it in malice and wickedness, has been defeated. And there is a new king.

And if there is a new king, there is a new kingdom.

The good news of the gospel is that all you who live in the domain of darkness are welcome to leave and come into the kingdom of light. And if you will, walk out of this—repent, if you will—turn from the domain of darkness, come into the kingdom of light, which is simply accomplished by faith as a gift.

Then, in the midst of this kingdom transfer, you will experience full amnesty. We will take off the books, all the shady stuff that you pulled when you belonged to this kingdom. It’s wiped out. It’s forgiven. It’s gone.

And as you become a member of this new kingdom, you get to live forever, you’ll have intimacy with God, you’ll have hope, you’ll have fellowship with him. Oh, and by the way, the kind of crummy habits that you just didn’t shed on an instant as you walked from this one to this one, we’ll forgive that too. Because it’s a process, not an event.

We have left Egypt. We're not yet in the promised land. Salvation is a process as much as it’s an event.

The Gospel in Summary

So, what's the gospel? What's the good news? And I gotta stop right now, okay? Here’s the good news—it's really simple: Jesus has become king. That is the good news. It's unbelievably good news.

How did he become king? By means of his sin, atoning, Satan-defeating death. How do we know that he's king? Because God raised him from the dead. He was declared with power to be the Son of God.

He was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. — Romans 1:4

And having been made king and having established a new kingdom, he invites anybody at all to leave the old one, to enter the new one, and experience this massive list of benefits— forgiveness, hope, intimacy, relationship, eternal life.

That's the gospel. And our job now is not only to make the journey from the old kingdom to the new kingdom, but to tell everybody we meet everywhere we go that they can come with us.

Conclusion

Gospel proclamation is a declaration of the lordship of Christ, meaning the kingship of Christ, meaning the reign of Christ.

Meaning you guys, there's a new way we can do this entire thing. We don't have to stay over here in this world, living in malice and envy, hating, and hating one another.

For the love of God and Christ has appeared, and it teaches us to say no to ungodliness, to live righteous, upright lives, as we wait for him to come back and wait for the kingdom to be more obvious than it is right now.

We live between the declaration of independence when Jesus said, “It's it. I’m the king,” and Yorktown, when Satan's final destruction will finally occur.

We live in the mill, but the day is coming when Satan will not only be defeated but destroyed.

And in the meantime, we experience mercy and we invite others to come with us. That's the gospel.

Amen.

– Imagine joy.

Joy is another benefit, right? We get all these magnificent things, okay? So, that's the gospel message. Jesus became king through his death and resurrection. We get all this stuff as we trust in him. Amen? That's all you get. We'll do it again next week.

Well, good to see you, Tim.