Happy Thanksgiving Ren Church family and friends!
My hope is that you might find the time to read and reflect on these thoughts before heading into the activities of the day. My aim is to stir gratitude. Now, there are thousands upon thousands of things to be grateful for: breath, life, health, food, shelter, loved ones, sausage stuffing, sunshine, a bed to sleep in, heat, good books, coffee, the stars in the sky, a dog. I’m sure we could each make a long list of specific things we are thankful for. What I want to remind you of is perhaps the greatest of all things to be thankful for—the gospel message.
You’ve probably heard, more than once, a pastor or teacher say something like, “The Word of God is a gift” or “The gospel message can transform your life” or “The gospel is the power of God to save.” These are true statements, of course, but how does this work exactly? How is the message of the gospel a blessing? Why should we be thankful for it?
What I’m going to do is take you through the basic elements of the gospel message and show you how they generally affect a person’s life. Sometimes this effect happens suddenly and dramatically, but other times it might happen gradually over time. Whichever way it happens I believe the gospel message will affect us in the following ways.
Oh, before I get to that, I want to say that I’m not just talking about religious information when I speak of the gospel. Many many people have heard the gospel message, but—it has not changed them at all. It has not blessed them in any tangible way. It’s kind of “in one ear and out the other.” So it’s not just the hearing of the Word, but it’s hearing and receiving that changes us. It’s not even something we are capable of without the help of the Holy Spirit. But when the message of the gospel is heard, and the Spirit illuminates the heart to understand it, and a person humbly receives it, then—the blessings fall. What I’m saying is that the message alone doesn’t save us. It must be mixed with the Spirit’s awakening work of imparting faith.
The gospel message is not always heard in one sitting. Sometimes a person gets bits and pieces of the Word over years, and the effects are here and there. It’s also explained in a variety of ways. Some explanations are more narrative-based and others more like a 4-point sermon. By the way, this is what the entire Bible is all about. It’s the grand story of redemption. It’s not merely a book of dos and don'ts; it’s not just a book of inspiring stories; it’s not a book of wisdom for living. Sure, it has all of that, but it’s primarily a written revelation of who God is and how we can be part of the eternal kingdom he is building. The short word for this is gospel which means “good news.”
Wonder and Awe
One of the starting points of the gospel is the simple idea that there is a God who created and sustains all things. Many of us learn this as children, or we at least ponder about it when we are in our peak years of wonder (ages 3-9). Our little minds strain to connect the dots about the world we live in. We look up at the clouds, we hear thunder, we watch the snow fall, we examine insects, we marvel at what our bodies can do … and we think, “who made all this?” Even if we don’t have a clear understanding of God, we perceive him. The Bible tells us that God put eternity in our hearts and that God makes himself known to all. Consider these verses:
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made … (Romans 1:19-20).
The Bible tells us in the psalms that all creation declares the glory of God. In other words, the beauty and power of creation preaches to us. And, especially when we are small, we experience a sense of wonder and awe.
Desire For God
This general revelation of God as Creator leaves us curious for more. We then learn that not only is there a God, but this God wants us to know him and enjoy him forever. We learn that God created us for a purpose. We were made not just to pursue our pleasures and passions but to have a relationship with God. We were made for being loved by him and for loving him. These ideas strike a deep chord within us. They resonate. It’s almost as if we knew these ideas even before we heard about them. It’s like they were already in us in some mysterious way.
When this part of the gospel begins to be understood, it has a very powerful effect of making us desire to know God. For many of us, the experience of desiring God was entirely new. We spent most of our lives as enemies of God. We didn’t want God. We avoided conversations about God. We didn’t pray and had no desire to pray. Perhaps from a philosophical standpoint we were occasionally fascinated by the idea of God, but we possessed no genuine desire to know him. We may not have been overt God-haters, but we just weren’t that interested. In fact, people we knew who were filled with passionate desire for God, well, just seemed strange. We couldn’t even relate to them.
But as this gospel idea of God creating us to lavish us begins to sink it, we find our hearts desiring, thirsting, hungering, yearning, longing, burning, to know God. The experience can be so intense that a person feels like unless they can find God and be reconciled to him they will die.
Despair
Perhaps the most soul-disturbing element of the gospel message is that God isn’t a big fluffy teddy bear in the sky, but rather, is a “consuming fire.” The Holy Spirit awakens us to the biblical vision that God is holy. “God is light and in him is no darkness.” God isn’t just perfect, but he is infinitely the opposite of evil. “He dwells in unapproachable light.” We read of great Bible characters like Moses and Isaiah, falling down in terror before the manifestation of God’s glory. Daniel trembled. John fell as though dead in terror at the sight of the resurrected Christ in a vision. This part of the gospel message doesn’t make us feel warm and fuzzy. It would be dishonest to say that it just has an effect of making us reverent. It’s more than that. The sight of God is absolutely terrifying.
Part of why the gospel affects us in this way is not just that we realize God is all-powerful and eternal and vast, but it’s that we realize, in comparison to him, we are tiny sinful little creatures. The gulf between our goodness and his is so great that we feel evil. The gospel message tells us that “all have sinned” and there is no one who does good or is good but God. Even the best humans who ever lived are not good enough to dwell in the presence of God.
As the gospel bears down harder upon our pathetic self-righteousness and pride, we realize that we are guilty before this holy God. The term often used by preachers is that we are “convicted of sin.” It’s the realization that we are sinful creatures heading for the great day of judgment with no hope of saving ourselves. We realize no amount of religious service, tears, or good works can wash away the stain of our sin. We realize that we are in desperate need of divine mercy or else we will be lost for eternity. This uncomfortable revelation produces despair.
So many people at this point of understanding the gospel turn away. It’s too heavy. It’s too negative. It doesn’t go with their sentimental view of a nice God up above. It’s usually at this point that people either harden their hearts against the message of Christ or they become broken and contrite.
Surrender
Upon the backdrop of this terrible revelation that we are sinful little creatures fit only for eternal separation from God, we hear the good news that God, in his mercy, did not leave us in this hopeless condition. Even before he created the world, he planned on providing a remedy for our sin. For thousands of years, prophets foretold of a time when a Savior would come who would bear our iniquities (Isaiah 53). This Savior would be a man, but he would be more than that. This would be God, the Son, taking on human flesh and dwelling amongst us (John 1). He would come into this world not to just be a moral teacher or to reveal who God is. He came for one main purpose: to die. He came to essentially take the punishment we deserve. He came to die in our stead. To redeem us. The price of our redemption was nothing less than the very blood of the sinless Savior shed for us.
Now, when this gospel idea starts sinking in, all our ignorant and stupid thoughts of God being unfair or unjust are flushed away. We realize God is not only loving but that he is infinitely more loving than we could ever imagine. That Christ would subject himself to beatings and floggings, to crucifixion, and to the unleashing of the Father’s wrath for sin—is a love beyond anything we can comprehend. It’s hard to describe what happens to us when we start grasping the sacrificial love behind the cross of Christ. It melts us. That this God who is so holy would do this for us who are so unholy is unthinkable. It’s scandalous. It makes no sense. We don’t deserve it. For some of us this realization produced tears. Not tears of sadness but tears of being loved.
The effect of this part of the gospel could be summed up in one word: surrender. It’s incredible how stubborn and proud we can be. Even when we hear the gospel preached over and over we still keep a wall erected between us and God. In a sense, we want God to sort of toss his blessings over the wall, but we don’t want him coming in here and changing everything. We have our way of doing things. We don’t want him taking over our lives. We aren’t quite sure he has our best interest in mind. But when we realize the love behind his voluntary death in our stead—we are undone. It suddenly feels very natural to place all we have and all we are in his care. Our prayer becomes, “My life is no longer my own, I’ve been bought with a price; let your will be done.”
New Birth
It’s at this point of surrender that real change takes place. It’s always been a problem that some people profess to believe in Jesus and to be Christians, but they don’t surrender to God. They might attend a church or practice some of the teachings of Jesus, but they don’t want to devote themselves to Christ. I was walking the neighborhood Sunday inviting people to the Thanksgiving meal we put together for the homeless. One guy I met was totally drunk but told me he was filled with the Spirit, sanctified, and heading for glory. I tried to tell him it’s not enough to just believe about God. If we truly love Christ we will live for him. He went on to show me how he had all the names of the 66 books of the Bible memorized, I suppose as proof that he was a Christian. Paul put it this way in one of his letters:
They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work (Titus 1:16).
Basically, they are religious people who have never truly surrendered their hearts to Christ. They’ve never stepped into the new life God has for them. What happens when we come to the place of surrender is that the Holy Spirit dwells within us. This is called the new birth, or being born of the Spirit. It’s the point when we are rescued from darkness and brought into life. We are dead but then made alive. It’s a supernatural work upon the heart. We hear the gospel message saying, “Arise O Sleeper, come alive! Come out of the world, and be set free! Dead bones, live! I am calling you by name to be my child. I am making you new.” Again, we don’t hear this as mere information but as a Spirit-illuminated message from God. We are transformed!
Again, there’s not always a step by step unveiling of the gospel message. Most of us piece it together over time. Certain elements may be understood before other elements. Much of our interaction with the gospel happens before we are regenerated (born again). Some call this the pre-salvation work of grace. Theologians argue about this, but it seems clear that before we are indwelt by the Spirit we are worked on by the Spirit. He illuminates, he woos, he convicts, he touches. When we surrender, the Spirit indwells and we are saved. Is the work of causing us to surrender God’s doing? Yes. But do we choose to surrender? Yes. It’s a mystery.
Grateful Devotion
That brings me to the last part of the gospel message which is the ongoing work of growing in the knowledge of God. It’s not like when we come to Christ we suddenly have all spiritual knowledge downloaded into our minds. No. It takes time to renew our minds. Little by little we understand God’s story of redemption. We grow in our understanding of just how amazing God’s grace really is. And this deepening of our understanding of what God has done for us makes us want to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to him in every way possible. We lose the ability to be half-hearted. We aren’t content to hold back any part of our lives. We don’t want to be nominal. We search for new ways to express our love and devotion to him.
Come Home
What I’ve written may seem long, but I’m really just touching the surface of these sublime gospel ideas. Be glad on this Thanksgiving day that there is a God in heaven who loves you and who desires you. There is perfect love at the center of the universe. If you have breath in your lungs today but have not yet become a new creation in Christ, you are blessed because it means he is calling you today. His arms are extended wide and he is saying, “Come to me. Come as you are. Come home.”
Those who receive these letters include people who are new Christians, pastor friends, Ren Church alumni, family members, seekers, skeptics, and people who have been Christians for decades. But one thing we all have in common is that there is a God above who loves us and invites to Himself. May we all hear his voice and run into his arms. May we not hesitate. If you would confess that you are spiritually lost and need Christ to save you, throw yourself at his mercy. Surrender today. You’ll never be the same.
Pastor Scott A