Believe in the Gospel

The series that we've been going through, and some of you may have been here from the past, or some of this may be the first one that you've attended, we've actually been going through a whole series of seminars based on one verse in the Bible. So let's go and start at that verse here today. Let's go to Mark 1.

Mark 1. Because what we covered here this morning and this afternoon comes right from this statement made by Jesus Christ. Let's start in verse 14 to give the context. Now, after John, this is John the Baptist, was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel. Now, we've talked about what it means that the time is fulfilled.

We spent a lot of time talking about that in these series of seminars. We've talked about what is the kingdom of God, what it means that it is at hand, and we've talked about repentance. These were all core messages of what Jesus Christ brought and what he taught. The one phrase here we haven't talked about, which we'll be talking about today, is believe in the gospel.

What I'm going to do this morning is take a little time to sort of recap what we have covered in the past three seminars about the gospel and then bring it into this afternoon and how that must change your life. If we truly believe in the gospel, lots of people accept the gospel. Lots of people sort of take bits and pieces of it.

Lots of people believe in Jesus Christ, and as I've said before, Christianity has enough believers in Jesus Christ. What Christianity needs and what God wants are disciples of Jesus Christ. And there are very few disciples of Jesus Christ. People have really dedicated their lives to becoming like Him as their older brother in the family of God. When we look at the gospel message, we understand that it actually happens in three stages. Gospel means good news, so we have the good news of the kingdom of God.

But when we look at the gospel message, we realize that you don't have any good news until you first understand the bad news. That's why in the very first of the seminars we started talking about how bad the world is that you and I live in. We live in this age of anxiety where everybody's anxious all the time and everybody's afraid all the time and everybody knows something's wrong, but we can't quite put our finger on it. It's like someone said to my wife recently, I don't even have a Bible. I've never been a religious person.

But do you believe what's happening in the world right now? Maybe is what the book of Revelation says is going to happen? She knew she lived in a greater context, a greater story than her own life, but she didn't know how that story works. And that's what we've been going through. That's what the gospel is about. It's about the context in which you and I come into this world. Each one of us has a story, right?

Each one of us has a life that we've lived. But when you were born, you were born into a greater story. You didn't know the beginning of it. You didn't know the real meaning of today, and you have no idea what the future is. This story, the past, the present, and the future, is the gospel. It's all about what God is doing. When we look at the past of the gospel, we begin with a simple statement in the book of Genesis. God created human beings in His own image. God had a reason for creating human beings.

He had a reason for creating Adam and Eve. And yes, I do believe that the story of Adam and Eve is real. It's not a fairy tale that teaches children's stories. It's a good lesson. The story of Adam and Eve is a real happening. It explains how we got where we are. It's the beginning of the story. God created us in His image. Why is it such a mess? I've had people ask me, if God is really a loving, caring, great God, how can He allow hatred and prejudice and murder and stealing?

How can He allow war? How can He allow little children to starve to death? And someplace in the world today, a little child will starve to death. How can God allow that? And if we're made in His image, then God must be really evil. Well, we were made in His image, but Adam and Eve didn't stay in His image. Now, even though Adam and Eve were created in His image, they weren't complete.

I'll show you what I mean. Let's go to Genesis 2. Here we're going to talk about just a little bit about the past of the Gospel and explain the bad news a little bit. Then we're going to go into the present and we're going to go into the future. This is the story. This is where your story begins. It didn't begin where you were born here in San Antonio or some small town or some hospital out in the country someplace.

That's actually not where your story began. Your story begins here, long, long before you were ever born. When there's the first man and woman and God creates them and they're in a perfect environment and they're in a perfect relationship with God. But look at Genesis 2, verse 9.

And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life. You know, Adam and Eve were still created physical. They did not have in them some kind of inherent physical life or eternal life. Eternal life was going to have to be given to them by God. But there was also something else there. The ability to choose for themselves good and evil. Now we know what happened. You know, you read this story, you go down to chapter 3 and Satan comes into the picture. Satan is real. Once again, we're not talking about a fairy tale here. Satan is a real being. In our modern scientific world sometimes it's hard for people to believe that there is a Satan, but he is real. And God allowed Satan, and that's very important to understand, He allowed him to come into the garden. And he'd get defensed, Eve and then Adam, that they should be able to choose the difference between good and evil. He says to Eve, are you allowed to eat of the fruit? She's like, we can't eat of the knowledge of the good and evil. But notice verse 4 of Genesis chapter 3. The serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, because God had told them, death will become part of your experience if you eat of this fruit. Well, they had never seen death before. They didn't know exactly what that was. He told them it was bad. All they'd ever see was life. All they had ever experienced was good. Verse 5, for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Humanity has spent its entire existence. The whole story begins here with a humanity choosing for itself good and evil. In fact, Adam and Eve, remember, did not walk out of the garden of Eden. God drove them out of the garden of Eden. God's kingdom exists in the universe. There was a short period of time where humanity lived under God's kingdom. They lived under God's rule, His sovereignty, and everything was good. Everything was good. But because God has given us the right to choose, He has given us this free will, they chose for themselves, we get to pick what's right for me. We get to pick, you know, they get to pick their own rights, define what goodness is, define what evil is. It's amazing. You and I live in a world where even at the political level, what does everybody argue about? Definitions of what is good and what is evil.

I was arguing over what is good and what is evil. It's been like this since this point, and God drove them out and said, you will now die, and you are going to have to go out there and learn what it's like to live as a mixture of good and evil instead of good. But there's something else that happened, and we talked about this in the second seminar. When that happened, Satan didn't go away. Satan became what the Apostle Paul calls in the New Testament the God of this world.

Ever since this point that we're talking about here, humanity has lived under the rule of a false God. The Creator God of this book did not create a world of crime. The Creator God of this book did not create a society in which people took advantage of each other, in which dishonesty was considered a virtue, a manly virtue. He did not create a society where families broke up. He did not create a society where people abused each other. Every one of us in this room were damaged people. God did not damage us, and He did not create humanity to be damaged. We got to choose that. And we've been choosing that way ever since, because we inherently want so much. We'll talk about this in the second session here. Why we want so much to have self-determination until we literally push our Creator God out of our own lives, and then we create this mess, and then we blame Him for it. It's His fault somehow, when the truth is He's not even the God of this world. You and I live in occupied territory. This little piece of God's kingdom known as the earth is occupied by another God for a short amount of time because God allows Him to be there.

We have to understand what He convinces us to do. Much of what you and I do in life, unless we come under God's sovereign rule, is not what God wants.

And then we can't figure out why we have the consequences that we do. We damage ourselves, and we damage each other. Well, that's the past, and that's the bad news. Now, if you look at the Old Testament, there's a central theme that runs throughout the entire Old Testament that God said—and we went through this in one of the seminars—we went through all these prophecies about how God said, I'm going to send an anointed one. He's called the Son of God. He's called the Messiah, and He's going to come, and He's going to save humanity. We looked at it even in places like Isaiah where it's obvious He comes twice.

He came the first time as a human being for a number of reasons. One is to show us how to live. This is how it's supposed to be lived, folks, but it took God in the flesh to show us that. Secondly, He came to die because the law of God requires your death and my death. God is a God of love, and God is a God of justice. If He was a God of love without justice, this would be a mess. God's kingdom would be a mess. God's way would be a mess. If He was a God of justice without love, would you really want to live under that? He's the perfect balance of both. In love, He sent His Son to die for us so that justice could be served. That way, the love aspect of God is fulfilled and the justice aspect of God is fulfilled. It's amazing who He is. It's amazing that Jesus' Son is willing to come and do this for us.

So we know this is the past message of the Gospel. That's why in 1 Corinthians 15, we won't go there, but the Apostle Paul says, well, let's go there. 1 Corinthians 15.

We'll come back to 1 Corinthians 15 later.

In verse 1, the Apostle Paul writes, Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel, which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you stand, in which you stand, by which also you are saved. This is the good news. You and I are lost under a God of this world who wishes to destroy us. And you and I keep picking a mixture of good and evil. We eat of this fruit. At one moment, we do good. At the next moment, we do evil. And we all suffer because of it. And we're damaged and we damage others. That's what life is. It's not what God designed it to be. And God is giving you an opportunity to come out of that. Understand what's happening. You are here today because the Almighty God is saying to you, you don't have to stay where you are. You can come become part of His Kingdom, which Christ is going to establish on this earth when He comes back. But He says, You are saved if you hold fast that word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered you first of all. In other words, He said, this was the number one thing I taught you, Paul says to the people in Corinth, that which also I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He goes on to the next eight or ten verses and just describes what that means. He says, I'm here to tell you the bad news and I'm here to tell you the first part of the good news. He said, this is where we start. And this is where we have started. This is why Jesus Christ told His disciples on the ninth day He was betrayed. He says, I go away in John 14, but I will come back.

If we believe the gospel message, you have to believe that you are damaged. You have to believe that there's something wrong with your nature. You have to accept that you are a sinner at the core of who you are. And that's bad news. You know, why can't we hear the preachers give us all the messages about how good you are? There's lots of them that do that. Because it's not the gospel. The gospel starts with you're damaged. You're damaged because there's a wrong God in charge of this world and you're damaged because you messed up other people and other people messed up you and this is where we are. And until we come to that realization, we'll never move forward. Once we do, we understand Jesus Christ. We're made in the image of God. We're damaged in the images of God. And Christ came the first time and He promised. He said, we'll come back a second time. Now, you and I live between the first and second comings of Jesus Christ. Is that all the gospel is? He comes the first time, He comes the second time, and I just sort of anticipate Him coming back. No, the gospel has a present importance. A present importance. Mark chapter 8. If you go through all the teachings of Jesus Christ in the gospels, you will see statements like this repeated in different ways over and over again.

He would talk about how the kingdom of God is like a pearl of great price, and a man who went and sold everything he had so that he could buy that.

Mark chapter 8 and verse 34.

Christ calls the people to Himself with His disciples also, and He said to them, whoever desires to come after Him, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. When we covered this in the third of the seminars, we talked about what that meant. They knew what that meant. You know, the cross wasn't something they hung around their neck as a decoration. When they saw someone carrying that big, heavy crossbar, they knew where they were carrying it. They were taking it out to be killed. How long do you carry this? We carry it until we are nailed to it. This is a level of commitment that's required.

It's not just believing in Jesus. So many people believe that the Gospel is just believe in Jesus.

We'll talk about that in a minute. Is that all that this is? Jesus Christ didn't look at it that way. He said, if you want to come follow Me, you pick this up and you carry it until the day you die.

Verse 35, for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospels will save it.

I don't have a health and wealth Gospel to give you. I have a Gospel of a promise that God gives you of a life so much greater than you can even imagine, than I can even imagine. But right now, right now, you're being prepared for that. And right now, you're in the cross-bearing stage. You're carrying that big bar to where God's going to take you.

Jesus Christ goes on and He says, for what will a prophet demand if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What prophet does it to us if we're all millionaires and we're all just accepting of our own wickedness, that we're a mixture of good and evil, that at our core we are damaged, that we should be images of God, but we really don't look like we're supposed to look.

We are told here by Jesus Christ that there is a price to be paid to understand what it is to be part of the kingdom. It's even more than that. You know, when we still live in Satan's world, you say, well, what do I have to do with God's kingdom? How do I live God's kingdom now if, you know, looking ahead, He comes back in the future to establish God's kingdom on the earth? How do I do that now? Not only are you being called to live under God's sovereign rule now, which means to live under His kingdom, you are being called to actually have a job that you're supposed to perform in that kingdom in your life today. Let's go to 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians chapter 5. Paul is talking about himself and fellow ministers, but this reaches out and encompasses anyone that responds to God and understands what God is doing and becomes part of this great story, this great plan, realizing we exist in this little, little piece of this story. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 17.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. It's not just enough to accept Jesus Christ. We have to become new. We actually have to become like Jesus Christ. Now, the idea of a disciple is very interesting because disciple does not mean student. Disciple means imitator. If you were a disciple, you were an imitator of the master. You were an imitator of the teacher. To be disciples of Jesus Christ does not mean just to believe in Jesus Christ. It is to be an imitator of Jesus Christ. A new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Now, all things are of God who is reconciled to us, to Himself, through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. We are the enemies of God. That's one of the hardest things for people to understand about the past and present understanding of the Gospel. That you are an enemy of God until you are reconciled to God. Well, come on! Okay, you know, I wasn't that bad of a person until God called me. No, every human being, because we have to understand something, God will not accept us as partly evil and partly good.

He won't accept us that way. So, every human being has to understand at some point, we say, wait a minute, I'm God's enemy, but God still loves me. And God reconciles us to Him through Jesus Christ. I've used this analogy before, but how many of you have ever been to the Grand Canyon?

There's a point at the Grand Canyon where it's a mile deep and five miles across. Now, once you've imagined for a minute that God's on the other side, now the question is, what kind of running start do you have to get to get over there?

You know, the Olympics, we just had the Olympics, right? It was amazing to watch the guys do the the broad jump. Well, long jump, I think it's called. It used to be called the broad jump years ago. Watch them do the long jump, and they get that running start, and it's just amazing. I mean, if I try to do that, especially if my knees are shot at my age, I can jump about that far.

But what kind of athlete does it take to jump the Grand Canyon? Well, God's on the other side. There's only one way you get there. He sends His Son across to come get us. That's it! There's no way across! People say, explain grace to me. There it is. You're on one side, He's on the other, and if He doesn't come across, you don't get there. That's grace. Now, what we're talking about today is what we must do to participate in that, because there is a required participation. This is not a spectator sport. It is becoming a new person. It is recognizing that we are damaged, and we must be changed, and we must be healed at the core of who we are. And it will change everything about you. It will change how you think. It will change how you feel. It will change your marriage. It will change how you interact with people at work and at school. It will change everything. There isn't a part of your life that shouldn't be changed by the gospel. That's why the watered-down version of the gospel we hear all the time isn't what it's all about. It isn't what it's all about. He goes on, he says, verse 19, continue on in the sentence here, that is, that God was in Christ, reconciled the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and was committed to us, the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were pleading through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

You have the opportunity to be an ambassador for the kingdom of God, and God can plead through you to others to be reconciled to God. But, you know, to do that, you have to first be reconciled to God.

Oh, we can give people knowledge. Now, there's lots of people who give people knowledge and information. Giving people knowledge and information of itself will not produce what God wants to produce in people's lives.

At an intellectual, emotional level, we'll talk about this this afternoon, we have to be reconciled to God. Then the knowledge will have impact. I know people who know all about prophecy, but their lives are no different than non-Christians. There's something wrong, isn't it? Oh, we have lots of knowledge, but, you know, if our divorce rate is the same as non-Christians, who are we? The divorce rate in the Christian world is the same as the non-Christian world. And so we have in our churches the argument that can homosexuals be ministers instead of where the argument should be. Is it sin? Is it against God? I'm not picking on one group of people. All of us are just as damaged as the next person. It's just a different sin, that's all. It's so easy for us to, oh, that sin's really bad. I can label that person. Forgetting self-righteousness is a terrible sin, too. So, we have to, you know, if we're going to talk about sin, we've got to eventually I can start listing enough sins that every one of us would get up and walk out, including myself, because we're on the list someplace. But we should be beyond that argument, shouldn't we? In a Christian world, that shouldn't be an argument, but it's where we are. Abortion should not be an argument.

We should be past that. Yet we're degenerating into those becoming arguments, so those who are becoming acceptable, and as they do, everything else will become acceptable. There'll be no good and evil. Evil will be good and good will be evil.

You and I are to be ambassadors. What do ambassadors do? They live in the country of another country. Ambassadors live in another country, and they represent their governments. You and I have a political party that we're supposed to be part of. Oh, wow, he's going to tell me how to vote. Now, because we're supposed to be monarchists, we represent Jesus Christ. We're ambassadors for Jesus Christ on this earth right now. That's His kingdom, and that's who we are. That's who we're supposed to be. All the politics of the world's going to fail anyways. It all will fail eventually. We're told that. Why would Jesus Christ have to come back if we can fix this? Damaged people following the wrong God can't fix the world. That's the simple truth. But I know somebody who can. He can fix it. And that brings us to the future. The future of the Gospels, where we covered Matthew 24. Remember when we went through Matthew 24, one of the seminars for those who were here in the past, where Jesus sits down and His disciples say, tell us when you're going to come. He says, well, it's going to get really, really bad. And then what is really, really bad, and you think, wow, this is bad. He says, and then that's the beginning of it getting really, really bad.

And He says, then there's going to come a tribulation like no other time in history. That's amazing to me. If you read through the Middle Ages in Europe, that was the most violent, bizarre time to live on earth. Well, for them, I mean, Nazi Germany, 1943, that's a terrible time to live on earth. Right? I mean, this has been a bad history. Our story is a bad story. Our story is humanity. It's a bad story. Well, of course, it's a bad story. We're following the wrong God, and we're all damaged people.

God's going to fix us. And He's going to fix us one person at a time, and you can have Him do that now. And when He returns, you can be part of that. Because in Matthew 24, it says that when He returns, He's going to gather all the elect, and they will meet Him. Revelation chapter 20 says that He will come to this earth, and they will help Him rule on this earth. He was, oh good, I can be a king. That's not what we're supposed to look for. We're supposed to look at, I can help Jesus Christ come back, and I can help change this world.

No longer an ambassador. Well, an ambassador, but now not in an occupied land, but taking all these damaged people and bringing them to Christ who's on this earth, and to the Father, the God, the Father of this family. That's what we're looking forward to. That's the future of the gospel.

And we live moving every day closer to those events, but are we prepared for those events? Are we prepared by living the gospel every day right now?

We were told to believe the gospel. Believing the gospel is more than just an intellectual acceptance of what it means. And people think that belief in God is all that we need. Belief in Jesus Christ is all that we need. I can tell you that's not true. By the words of Jesus Christ, let's go to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7. Remember, Jesus said, Believe in the gospel. Matthew 5, 6, and 7 have sometimes been called the Constitution of the Kingdom of God. It encapsulates everything that Jesus was going to teach. And from this point on, you just see where He expands this message outward and outward. There was three and a half year ministry. He keeps expanding off of this. And at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, this very positive message about how we must become peacemakers and how He teaches us how to pray. He teaches us how to fast. He teaches us not to have anxiety, to let God rule in our lives now. And you go through this positive message, and then at the very end, in verse 21, He says this, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Belief is not enough.

I didn't make that up. This is what Jesus Christ says.

He says, You can say to me, Lord, Lord, You can accept Jesus Christ as the Christ, and not receive the kingdom. Look what He says as He goes on. Many will say to me, You know, that word many bothers me, because I sure don't want to be in this group. It'd be nice to say, Well, there'll be a couple people. He says, Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?

He doesn't say, No, You didn't do it in my name. These things will have been done in the name of Jesus Christ. And I will declare to them, I never knew You, depart from me, You who practice lawlessness. Practice lawlessness. He says, Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mind in us, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But anyone who hears these things of mind and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house, and it fell. And great was its fall. And it says that He just stopped talking. And everybody was stunned. We're just stunned.

But Jesus Christ comes back. He says, There will be people who will run up to Him and say, Lord, we did what we were supposed to do. We told people about You. We prophesied in Your name. We gave to charity. We went to church. And He's got to say, but I don't know You. You didn't do what I said to do. And You live lives of lawlessness. That should frighten us a little bit.

The idea of lawlessness is interesting. There is a fundamental problem that entered into Protestantism at its very foundation.

As the early Protestant leaders, they began to realize that what grace is and that God has to give it, which was true. But they concluded, in many cases, well, that means that you and I don't have to obey God's law. People were surprised. Martin Luther, one of the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation, tried to get the book of James removed from the Bible.

He said it was not inspired by God. Not inspired by God. He said, because what James is saying couldn't be true. Now, what I find interesting is today many scholars solve this problem by saying, well, Paul was teaching one Christianity and James was teaching a second Christianity. You mean there are two Christianities? The truth is, Paul and James agree. Paul is usually talking about grace and justification. James is talking about what you are supposed to do after you receive grace in your justification. Oh, good, I received God's grace. Now, what do you do?

Well, Jesus Christ said, okay, the people here actually knew who He was that He's talking about. They must have received a grace from God to know who Jesus was at His coming. So, He's talking about the Christian world. He says, look, you're going to come up to me and I'm going to say, I don't know you. I said, but wait a minute. We know about you. We taught about you. Yeah, but you practice lawlessness. You refuse to obey my Father, to do the will of the Father. Now, when we talk about law, let's just start with the Ten Commandments. We give lip service to the Ten Commandments, but do people actually keep the Ten Commandments? Let's look at James. I want to talk about James here for a minute. Let's go to James 2. I went to the mall that over a little bit. Do we really keep the Ten Commandments? Well, was that mall done away with? Well, we don't have to obey anything. We just have to accept Jesus. I've heard that a hundred times. I've watched guys on television say that over and over again. James 2. He says, What is a prophet, my brother? And if someone says he has faith and does not have works, can faith save him? Well, yes, it can, we'd say. That's true. But you have to understand, belief doesn't equal faith. If I trust God, I do what God says.

Right?

I believe in all kinds of people that I've never met. I've seen them on TV or I've read about them in a magazine, heard about them on the news. I wouldn't obey what they tell me to do, but I believe in them. Faith transcends belief. Verse 17 says, Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. In other words, it's not really faith. But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works. And I will show you my faith by my works. He doesn't say here we can earn our salvation. He says, If we're receiving salvation from God, it will produce works. If there's no works being produced, then we're in danger of what Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. He says, You believe that there's one God that's the one the most of all the Bible, that's one of the most sarcastic statements ever made. You believe that there's one God? He says, You're that pretty God. You do well. Even the demons believe that, and they tremble. You believe there's one God? Satan knows that the God of this world knows that there's one God. He tried to overthrow him one time in the past. He said, So that's not so good. But do you want to know, foolish man, what is faith? That faith without works is dead. Verse 21 was on Abraham, our father, justified by works. When he offered Isaac his son of the altar, do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works, faith was made perfect? The Scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God, and was accounted to him for righteousness. He was called a friend of God. So, okay, wait a minute. How does that work? What's very simple? He uses the exact same analogy that Paul does. He says, you look at Abraham, Abraham believes God, and God said, That's righteous. Now, how do you and I know Abraham believed God? Well, let's look at it this way. What if God had said, Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son? And Abraham would have said, I believe you, God. No problem. Yes, we'll do. Then he never did it. Do you think he would be an example of faith in the Bible? Do you think we'd be reading and saying, oh, good. When God tells us to do something, all I have to say is, yes, God, I believe and did not do it. But you can't escape James' logic. We know that Abraham believed God because his actions showed that he believed God. His actions were just incredible. I am willing to sacrifice my son. Now, as we know in the book of Hebrews, the reason he was willing to sacrifice his son is because God had made him a promise. And the promise was, your son will have children. So he believed that God was going to resurrect his son. Now, you talk about faith. God told me that this boy will have children. Therefore, I will sacrifice him to please God, and that God will resurrect him because God will not lie. That's faith. And he raised the knife to kill the boy before God stopped him.

If we didn't have that story, we wouldn't know what faith really is. That's why he's called the Father of the Faithful.

Your faith, my faith, has to produce something or it's dead.

And we go back to the Ten Commandments.

Go back to the Ten Commandments.

If your worship of God involves idols, then you're not believing the gospel. If your worship of God involves the use of his name in vain all the time, you're not believing the gospel. You're not following the gospel.

If you don't believe in the Seventh-Day Sabbath, you're not truly following the gospel. If you're not honoring your parents, if you're committing adultery, you are not honoring the gospel. If you're dishonest at your work and your job and you're stealing, you're dishonoring the gospel. And it goes beyond that because the servant of the Mount Jesus said, well, you know not to murder, but I'm telling you if you hate somebody, you're not honoring the gospel.

The Ten Commandments is kindergarten. It's where we start. And unfortunately, mainstream Christianity is tearing down the Ten Commandments, so they're not even kept. We can't even go to kindergarten now.

There was a point where after the death of Jesus Christ, Peter went into the temple there in Jerusalem, and he told people they had to do something. He told them how Jesus was the prophesied Messiah, that he had died, that he was resurrected. He told why, and he said he was going to come back someday. And he's standing in front of a large Jewish audience. So remember, these people knew the old the Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. That's all they had at the time. They believed it. They understood. They had read Isaiah. They had read about how the Messiah was going to be beaten and killed. They read how the Messiah was going to come and rule on this earth. They had seen Jesus Christ. I mean, he didn't do his work under a rock someplace. You know, he performed miracles so everybody would see him.

They knew what had happened. They put it all together, and many of them were shocked to realize, wait a minute! Now remember, these are the people of God. These are the people who obeyed God. These were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These were the people who even followed some of the commandments of God. But they finally realized something that they had not realized. Deep inside, I'm really still damaged.

Deep inside, I'm still a sinner. It was so easy for them to say, I'm not a sinner. I obey all of God's laws. I do what I'm supposed to do, just like it's easy for us to believe that. These people were now confronted with the power of, Christ had to die for you too. We recently did a television program on who really killed Jesus.

And I was shocked at some of the hate mail I got, because the purpose of the program was to show people that every one of us is responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.

And I got letters from people who told me the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, and how dare I try to make them feel guilty. To tell you the truth, I got so angry, and I didn't even respond to the letters. I got about four or five of them. I don't even know how to answer that, folks. So I won't even answer it. I won't even answer it.

So what are we supposed to do? Acts 2. He said, okay, I do understand that I'm supposed to be a certain way, and at least start to keep the Ten Commandments. Remember, that's kindergarten. Christianity is a lot more than the Ten Commandments, because it involves how we think and how we feel. It involves how you treat each other all the time. It involves being part of a congregation. It's commanded. It involves all kinds of things, how you relate to God.

And they realize this. These people who had been exposed to God in His ways, in many ways, all their lives. I mean, they were right there in the temple in Jerusalem. And after Peter spoke in verse 37 of Acts 2, when they heard these things, they were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? But I thought I was a good Jew. I thought I had followed God all my life. I'd been really trying, but I realized I'd been missing something.

That's where all of us have to get. But I thought I was a good Christian. But are you missing something? And notice what Peter said. Peter said to them in verse 38, Repent. We talked about repentance last time. And let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Repent, which as we talked about last time is turning to God with everything you are. You turn to God. But he also commands them to be baptized. I fear that baptism is being lost in Christianity today, where a lot of groups don't even teach that you have to be baptized. This is a command. Peter told these people, Be baptized! It's a command. It's just another one of the commandments we have to keep. So that you may receive the Holy Spirit. You see, you and I were created incomplete. Adam and Eve were incomplete. For them to be a completed creation. They were the only thing, by the way, created by God physically that was incomplete. Dogs were complete. Trees were complete. Elephants were complete. Elephants are elephants are elephants. Human beings were created half complete. They were already half created. They needed God's Spirit in them. They needed the mind of God put into them for them to be completed. You and I were born half completed. And then we were damaged. So now we're a half completed damaged person. No wonder we're such a mess.

This afternoon I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how damaged we really are on a real personal level. Let's get into how we're really damaged.

And at some point we come to God and say, I'm half complete and I'm damaged. Ah, beginning of repentance. Baptism and receiving the Holy Spirit. Because God will complete the work He starts in us, but it takes God's Spirit. We can be half Christians believing certain beliefs, going to church, doing certain things, but that's not what it's all about. It is about being changed because God has a purpose for you. You were created for a reason. When God created Adam and Eve, it wasn't sort of afterthought. Oh, I think I'll create some people of my image. They were created for a reason. That reason goes on into the future. The Gospel goes clear on to the end of the book of Revelation where it explains the goal of the Gospel. The great good news isn't even completed at Christ's Second Coming. The great good news is completed when God finishes His purpose, and His purpose is you.

So this afternoon, we'll talk about His purpose and you.