The Power of God for Salvation - Salt & Light - August 18th, 2024 (Sermon Transcript)

Welcome to the podcast of Penngrove Community Church.

We exist to bring glory to God through lives changed by the Gospel of Jesus.

Our church is located about 45 minutes north of San Francisco, and if you live in the area, we'd love to have you join us.

You can also learn more about us online at pengrovechurch.org.

Enjoy the sermon.

Well, this morning, we're actually going to take a break from our series through the Gospel of John.

And we'll come back to it, but for the next four weeks, I want to talk about evangelism.

We've been going through John for, let's see, six months.

I'm doing the numbers in my head.

Seven months, eight months, almost nine months now.

So if you are still desperate for more Gospel of John, don't worry, we'll come back in just a few weeks.

But I wanted to take this time to talk about evangelism, and if you don't know, evangelism means preaching the Gospel.

Whether it's on Sunday morning through a sermon, or whether it's public preaching, or just a conversation with a friend, evangelism is preaching or sharing the Gospel with non-Christians.

It's not being nice to people.

It's not offering people some kind of service or doing good in the community.

It's not telling people that God loves them.

Evangelism is preaching the Gospel.

And I've picked four passages related to evangelism.

We're going to go through one of those four passages each Sunday for the next month.

Now, it's been a long time since we've done a topical series, and there's a reason for that.

I believe it is really, really important for pastors to preach the Word of God, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book.

I believe in expositional preaching.

But sometimes, it becomes clear that a church needs to spend some time on a certain topic.

So I think there are appropriate exceptions to the rule of verse by verse expositional preaching through the Bible.

And this is one of those appropriate exceptions.

And I wanna spend a few minutes before we get into the text, explaining why I think this is so good and necessary for our church right now.

First, is we've been going through significant financial challenges.

Most of you know what I'm talking about.

Most of you have been very generous and very helpful.

And we've been making some progress towards alleviating those financial challenges.

But in the long run, there is one essential foundational solution.

We can come up with different ideas and strategies and implement those methods and strategies.

And I think, you know, in terms of our financial challenges, we should throw the kitchen sink at it, just do anything and everything that we can.

But the most essential foundational long term solution is evangelism.

People getting saved and coming to this church.

This church will not be financially viable unless we have more people than what we currently have.

And where do we get more people?

How do we get more people?

Sadly, most churches get more people from other churches.

If they have better preaching and better worship music, those are really the two deciding factors.

Better preaching, better worship.

If we have that, then we could draw people from other churches in the area.

I think that's problematic though.

I don't think that's the right way to go about it.

Another source is Christians new to the area who are looking for a new church.

Both of those strategies are very common, but they have some issues and they won't work in Sonoma County.

They will not work in Sonoma County.

The issue, for one, is that other churches in Sonoma County don't have enough people either.

And there are almost zero Christians moving into this area.

So when it comes to people moving into this area, people who move into this area, from my experience, from what I can tell based on my research, my own conversations with people, they're moving here from other parts of the Bay Area in order to find cheaper housing.

So you have a lot of like young professionals moving from Oakland and Berkeley and San Francisco and places like that to find cheaper housing.

Those people are not looking for a church in the area.

I can assure you of that.

So if this church is going to grow and become financially viable, we need new Christians, not Christians from other churches, and not Christians moving into the area looking for a church.

We need new Christians, meaning we need to be sharing the gospel with our friends and family, and acquaintances and neighbors and coworkers and even strangers.

Because as Romans 1 16 says, the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

The gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

That's what evangelism is about.

That's where it starts, and that's where our series will start in just a few minutes with that text.

The other thing I want to say before we get started, regarding how this series came about, is it really came about from a council meeting, a church council meeting that we had a couple weeks ago.

We meet every month the members of the church council, me, Alan, and Frank, and we pray and we talk and we handle church business.

In this last month that we met, Frank brought up this issue of sharing the gospel with others.

And after talking for a little bit about what he was thinking and where his heart was at, it really, it made sense and me and Alan were quickly on board.

We agreed, we were unified in our conviction about this.

This is the key for the future of Penngrove Community Church.

We as a church, listen carefully, we as a church need a massive change in mindset, a massive change in behavior.

We need new life, new joy, new passion for Christ, and we need new people.

The key to all of that is evangelism.

And the final thing I'll say before we get into the text is that evangelism is not just a benefit or a blessing to non-Christians.

Many of you have experienced this already, but if you haven't yet, trust me when I say this, sharing the gospel with others is one of the most exciting, fulfilling things you can do with your time.

Sharing the gospel with others will bring an infusion of joy and passion into your spiritual life.

So it is the power of God for salvation and the power of God for Christian joy and transformation.

So as much as it is necessary and vital and absolutely a wonderful blessing to non-Christians that we're sharing the gospel with, sharing the gospel is also necessary and vital and a wonderful blessing of joy and transformation for us too.

It makes an absolutely huge difference in our own spiritual lives.

If we're not sharing the gospel, we are missing such a key source of blessing and joy and growth in life for ourselves as well.

With that said, let's get into the text.

Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us, Romans 1, verses 16 through 17.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father in heaven, as we encounter you and your word this morning, I pray that it would be powerful and life-giving and transformative for us.

Lord, I pray that you would use this to bring much fruit, to bear much fruit, and to bring many people into your kingdom.

We pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

As far as how we approach this text, I want to keep things very simple this morning.

We're just going to go through it phrase by phrase by asking four key questions.

What is the gospel?

That's the first question.

The second one is, what is the power of God?

And then what does the gospel save people from?

And how does the gospel save people?

So let's start with that first and foundational question.

What is the gospel?

The gospel is like getting a very important letter in the mail that contains the best news you've ever heard.

Anybody ever experience that?

Getting an unexpected letter with some great news or even a phone call or text message or email?

A few years ago, I went down to the post office to check our mail, just another regular day, not expecting anything.

And as I was sorting through the mail, I saw a letter from a law firm.

I was like, well, that's kind of weird.

And so I opened it up, and as I started to read this letter, I realized, wow, this is some unexpected good news, along with the letter was a check for like $4,000.

I forget the exact amount, but it was a check to me for $4,000.

And it turns out, I didn't even remember it, but I had opted in to a class action lawsuit against my former employer, the University of San Diego.

So long story short, the University of San Diego had been underpaying their professors for years and years, and one professor decided to finally do something about it, and brought this lawsuit against the University, and I had been opted in sort of semi-voluntarily, and I didn't think anything of it, totally forgot about it.

And one day, I checked the mail, and boom, here's some great news, an unexpected check for $4,000 or something like that.

Well, the gospel is a little bit similar to that, in that it's some really, really good news.

Some really, really good news that we didn't have much to do with.

It was just an undeserved blessing to us.

It's good news about something wonderful that has happened, something wonderful that has happened, namely that Jesus died to pay for our sins and rose again, conquering sin and death.

And it's really curious that, it's just so interesting that the gospel is like that.

It's not good advice, it's good news.

That good news is the exact definition of the Greek word for gospel in the New Testament.

Euangelion, which is the Greek word, literally means good news or good message.

And evangelism is drawn from the same Greek word.

Euangelion is translated as gospel, and there's a very similar form of that Greek word that is translated evangelism.

So to evangelize somebody is literally to gospel somebody.

That's what the word means.

I want you to keep that in mind because it's very tempting and very common for us as Christians to practice evangelism without actually telling somebody the gospel.

And what I'm saying is that's not actually evangelism.

Evangelism literally means to gospel somebody.

And so if we are trying to engage in evangelism without telling the gospel to somebody, we're not actually engaging in evangelism, and they won't actually be saved.

There's a famous quote, I forget who it's attributed to, like St.

Francis of Assisi or something like that, but it's, preach the gospel, if necessary, use words.

It is necessary.

It's not if necessary.

You can't preach the gospel without using words.

And the point of the quote is, I agree with it.

I agree that we should live in such a way that we make people want to know about Jesus, or we should live in such a way that we demonstrate the love of Jesus to people.

That's important and that's very good, but that's not evangelism.

Evangelism is preaching the gospel.

Now, what is the gospel?

The Apostle Paul spells out this gospel for us in 1 Corinthians 15.

Verse one, he says, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you.

Then in verse three, he just states it clearly and succinctly.

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

This is the gospel, right here.

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and he was buried, and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas, and then to the 12th.

You see why it's called good news?

Because it announces something that happened, and it's good because it's not a list of rules that we have to try really hard to follow in order to earn favor with God.

That wouldn't be good news.

That would be Old Testament law, and it would be bad news because inevitably we would fail and come under the judgment of God.

It's not some moral or ethical teaching.

It's not some religious or mystical formula.

It's not something, the gospel is not something for us to do.

It's news about what God did for us.

What did God do for us?

He sent his one and only son to die for us.

Jesus died so that we could live.

He rose from the dead and he defeated sin and death because we could never do that on our own.

And through his resurrection, we can overcome sin and death too.

That's good news.

And we could spend forever unpacking it and expounding upon it and exploring it.

The gospel contains this almost infinite depth and beauty, but there's also a simplicity to it.

And one other aspect that I want to mention before we move on to our other questions is that in his death and resurrection, Jesus satisfied the wrath of God against us for our sins.

Every single human being who has ever lived has been born with a sin nature and has gone on, if they live long enough, to practice sin.

And because of the sin that we practice, because of the ways that we disobey God and violate our consciences, God is angry at us.

He is righteously, justly angry at us for our sins.

We are under the just wrath of God for our sins.

But Jesus, instead of us experiencing the wrath, Jesus experienced the wrath for us.

And he didn't just experience it.

He drank the whole cup of the wrath of God.

He satisfied the wrath of God against you for your sins.

So if you've ever thought about some sins that you've committed and felt guilty and felt afraid and wondered, like is God angry at me for this?

Is God gonna punish me for this?

Through Jesus, we can be confident that his anger has been abated.

It has been satisfied.

The punishment has been executed because of what Jesus did for us.

We don't have to wonder and worry and sweat the wrath of God against us because Jesus paid it all.

Because we have faith in him, he has wiped away all of our guilt and shame and conquered death and opened the door to eternal life.

That's the good news.

And what does it say in verse 16?

That good news, that gospel message is the power of God.

It is the power of God.

Nothing else contains the power of God like that.

Here in Romans 1, the Apostle Paul is writing to a group of Christians who are located in Rome.

That's why it's called Romans.

And these are Christians he has not met, but they're newer converts, and he wants to teach them some stuff.

And so he writes 16 chapters of amazing, brilliant, theological, doctrinal treatise and practical encouragement and so forth.

And based on his other writings, I think we can assume that some of them experienced distractions from the true power of God.

He's telling them here at the start, the gospel is the power of God.

And probably like a lot of other Christians during that time, some of them probably thought that baptism was the power of God.

They probably thought baptism is the key.

That's where God's power really comes in, and that's where change really happens, baptism.

So some of the other people in Rome may have thought that communion was the power of God.

Like, that's the key.

That's where the real power flows through.

Some of them probably thought the power of God came through the law of Moses.

So Paul is reminding them of the real ultimate power of God.

The gospel is the real ultimate power of God to save people from sin and death.

And without it, without it, if we don't have the gospel, we have no power.

If we don't have the gospel, we really have nothing to offer.

I want to give you a few examples of powerless churches and powerless ministries and powerless Christians.

The gospel is the power of God, and yet many churches have forsaken the gospel.

And this is something that is very common in our world and very dangerous.

What we see is that without the gospel, many churches have just become social clubs.

If you don't have the gospel, you don't have the power, and so you're left with a social club, is one thing that we often see.

So these churches that have really become social clubs, they might try really hard to be really welcoming.

They might put on a lot of events and provide a lot of opportunities for people to build friendships, and that's nice.

And some people will show up for that.

But for those people who show up for the social club, if they find a better social club, they'll just leave.

They'll join the Penngrove Social Firemen, or the Rotary Club, or the Book Club, or the hiking group.

Or maybe they'll just go have a drink at the pub.

Without the gospel, we have no power.

Without the gospel, we have nothing special to offer.

If we're just a social club, well, there are plenty of other great social clubs out there for people to choose from.

We have nothing unique.

Without the gospel, some churches just resort to entertainment.

And some of those churches do pretty well.

They put together a really impressive band.

They have nice lighting and sound, and the pastor gives a really entertaining and practical message, and he tells lots of stories to keep people entertained.

And sometimes people will show up for that.

Sometimes a lot of people will show up for that.

But ultimately, ultimately, can we really compete with Sunday morning football?

Can we really compete with the Olympics?

Can we really compete with a 24-hour news cycle?

If we're going to get into the entertainment game, are we going to win?

No, we're not.

We could sell all our assets and invest millions of dollars into the best sound and the best lighting and the best band and the best guest speakers, and we're going to lose.

We can't compete with the world when it comes to entertainment.

So, what do we do?

We preach the gospel.

That's what we do.

That's where the power is.

The last alternative that I'll mention is the approach of instead of preaching the gospel, let's just be really, really nice and really, really loving.

If we're just the nicest people in the neighborhood, if we're just the most loving people in the neighborhood, maybe that'll do the trick.

After all, we live in a world that preaches incessantly the values of love and inclusion and tolerance and diversity.

So maybe, maybe we could become the most loving and inclusive and tolerant and hopefully the most diverse group in town.

And Jesus was a great ethical teacher and he preached a great message of love, so we'll preach a great message of love.

Our world will appreciate that and we could preach good ethics and loving ethics.

Lots of churches have tried that one too, but it doesn't work.

If you want proof that the gospel is the power of God, just look at the data on church attendance in America over the past 50 years.

Just look at the numbers.

There are a bunch of churches who have explicitly rejected the gospel and most of these churches have resorted to being really loving social clubs.

That's the method, that's the approach.

I'm talking about the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church, the PCUSA, which is a kind of Presbyterianism, the United Church of Christ.

These are the so-called mainline Protestant denominations.

There are a few others as well.

But these churches ruled the world as far as churches in America in the 1900s.

Those denominations were packed, but slowly but surely, through the middle of the 20th century, they abandoned the gospel.

They abandoned the power of God.

And there's a whole historical backstory to this.

You could trace it all the way back to the Enlightenment, which was sort of this intellectual and cultural revolution, mostly in Europe in the 1700s with philosophers like John Locke and Voltaire and on and on.

And this Enlightenment, this intellectual revolution, really abandoned God.

And that revolution seeped into the theological world throughout the 1800s and 1900s, mostly with German theologians and other Europeans.

And their theology eventually trickled down to seminaries here in the United States in the late 1800s and the early 1900s.

And slowly but surely, one by one, seminaries throughout the United States abandoned the gospel.

And all of it was closely connected to an abandonment of biblical inerrancy.

Raise your hand if you know what biblical inerrancy means.

Biblical inerrancy, it's the view that the Bible is without error.

The view that the Bible, 100%, every word is the inspired word of God.

Do you believe that?

100% from cover to cover, the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God.

That's what we believe.

But because of the enlightenment and because of those philosophical views and ultimately those theological views, people within seminaries in the United States started to doubt that.

And then they started to deny that.

And after they denied that, the whole house of cards came crashing down.

And they started denying the gospel.

And this movement of seminaries and Christian intellectuals denying the gospel, it really came to a head in the early 1900s at Princeton.

And there was a battle between the so-called fundamentalists and modernists and this guy named J.

Gresham Machin.

There's all this fascinating history behind it.

And I would encourage you to look into it, and you can ask me more about it if you'd like.

But here's the ultimate point.

People denied the scriptures, which led to a denial of the gospel, which led to these denominations, which led to the major Protestant churches in the United States throughout the 20th century abandoning the gospel.

And you know what happened?

They started shrinking rapidly.

Over the past 50 years, the United Methodist Church has lost over 3 million people.

Imagine that.

We're sitting here in a room with roughly 30 people.

Imagine 3 million people all leaving one denomination.

From 1987 to 2021, the Lutheran Church lost over 41% of its members.

During the same period, the Presbyterian Church USA lost over 58% of their members.

Tens of millions of people left these churches and they have never gone back.

That's what happens when you abandon the power of God.

Now, this is crazy.

Listen to this.

The Presbyterian Church split in the 1980s.

It split into the PCUSA and the PCA.

They were apparently both really connected to that name or whatever, so you had the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, and then the Presbyterian Church of America.

And one of them, the PCUSA, abandoned the gospel, and the other one remained faithful to the gospel.

That's why they split.

The PCUSA became a really loving social club, and they declined by over 60%.

But the PCA held fast to the gospel, and they have grown by over 100% since that time.

That's the power right there.

They did not serve better muffins and coffee.

They did not put on better events.

They didn't have nicer buildings.

The PCA had the gospel, and they doubled in size, while the PCUSA abandoned the gospel, and they lost half their people.

Over and over again, churches who abandon the gospel die out.

But churches who remain faithful to the gospel grow and thrive.

There are exceptions to this rule.

Let me just be very clear about that.

There are exceptions to this rule.

Some bad churches grow, and some good churches die.

Not every church is destined by God to last forever.

It's okay for a church to come into existence and do good ministry, and eventually phase out, and another church takes over.

That happens.

But in most places, generally speaking, gospel churches tend to grow.

Gospel-preaching, gospel-centered churches tend to grow.

And what we know for sure is that churches that abandon the gospel will die out.

Here's the thing, though.

You have to tell people.

You have to tell people.

The gospel is the power of God, but there is no power if you keep it all to yourself.

In the words of Jesus, you are the salt of the earth.

But if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

You are the salt of the earth, but if you sit in the cupboard and you never come out and do anything, there's no point.

Jesus goes on and says, you are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand.

And it gives light to all in the house.

We have the light, but we need to show the world.

We need to tell people.

When people hear it, they can be saved and their lives can be changed, but how will they hear it if nobody tells them?

As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 10, verses 13 through 15, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Isn't that beautiful?

Isn't that amazing?

Because of what Jesus did in paying the penalty for our sins, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

But how will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to 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?

Consider yourself sent.

Consider this your call to preach.

Every single Christian should be sharing the gospel with people.

This is not a gift that some Christians have and other Christians do not have.

This is a universal command from God to every single Christian.

Preach the gospel.

I know it's hard.

As you work on it, if you feel like you can't do it, at least invite people to church.

If they come, I'll preach the gospel to them.

And by God's grace, some of them might get saved because we have the power.

There is power in this news.

We just have to tell people.

It strikes me that people have no idea what Christianity actually is.

This area is filled with non-Christians who think they know what Christianity is about, but they have no clue.

They literally think it's a list of rules that you try to obey so that you can go to heaven when you die.

Ask people.

Talk to your unsaved friends and family and neighbors and strangers.

Ask them, what do you think Christianity is?

What do you think it's about?

And they'll say, well, you know, well, it's a religion, you know, Jesus, a religion founded by Jesus.

And Jesus taught, he taught about love and and and he taught a bunch of good ethics.

And if you, you know, the Bible has all this ethics and these rules.

And if you follow the rules and if you try really hard, if you're a good person based on the teachings of Jesus and you do more good than bad, then you can go to heaven when you die.

That's Christianity.

That's not Christianity.

It's not.

And people don't know that.

We have to tell them what it really is.

What it really is, is the gospel.

And imagine if they heard the gospel in comparison to what they think it is.

Now, they might be blown away.

They might say, wow, that's incredible.

I had no idea that that was the message.

I want you to also think for a moment about what happens if we don't tell people.

What happens if we don't start telling people the gospel?

Of course, we have to consider this church and the financial implications and the broader implications for this church if we don't grow, but there's actually something far worse than that.

If we don't tell people the gospel, they will face the wrath of God for their sins.

That's the motivation that Paul gives us here in Romans 1.

I've heard from Christians who really doubt that this is an appropriate motivation for preaching the gospel.

In other words, is hell, the fear of hell, a good reason to believe in Jesus?

You better this.

Is the fear of hell a good reason to share the gospel with people?

Absolutely.

Right here, Romans 1 18, what does Paul say right after this passage?

He says, for the wrath of God, that word for means because, because we need the gospel, because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

We all know that being a Christian means getting saved.

People are familiar with that language.

People use that language.

It's about getting saved, but saved from what?

It begs the question, what are we saved from?

We are saved from our sins.

Yes, that's true.

Jesus died to set us free from the power of sin in our lives, from the power of death, but there's more to it.

We are also saved from the wrath of God against us for our sins.

And we don't like that word, wrath.

Nobody likes that word, wrath, but think about it like this.

God is holy and just and good and righteous.

He is pure.

He is morally perfect and filled with love and goodness.

And because of that, because of who he is, sin is offensive to him.

You might think of it like a good judge in a courtroom, a good judge who spends his whole career doing his very best to be fair and honest, to follow the law, to dispense justice, to punish criminals, and to make sure that the innocent go free, an honorable, good, just judge.

How would somebody like that feel about a corrupt judge?

That would be offensive.

Or a corrupt cop, or a corrupt attorney, people taking bribes, people abusing the justice system, and punishing innocent people, and letting criminals go free, and using the law to enrich themselves.

How would a judge feel about all of that, a good judge?

He would be disgusted.

He would be repulsed and offended.

Well, God is kind of like that.

He is a good judge.

And corruption, and deception, and dishonesty, and injustice, those things are offensive to God.

They are offensive such that they evoke his wrath.

He wants wrongdoers to be punished, as he should.

Another aspect of this, this wrath of God, is it comes ultimately from a place of love.

Sin hurts the people that God loves.

Every single person on the planet was created by God.

Ultimately, yes, there's a biological process that goes along with it, but ultimately every single person on the planet is a special creation of God and he loves them deeply.

So when my sin hurts one of his creations, he doesn't like that.

When your sin, when sin hurts people, it makes God angry.

It destroys the good creation that he made.

Therefore, God is opposed to sin and he will punish sin.

One scholar said this, which I thought was really helpful.

He said, the wrath of God is not, of course, an emotional rage, but a steadfast and absolute opposition to all that is evil.

That's the problem with the wrath of God.

We think of it like our own wrath, which is easily provoked, which is often caused out of our own selfishness, which is often sinful.

That's what our wrath is like.

God's wrath is not like that.

God's wrath is not an emotional rage, but a steadfast and absolute opposition to all that is evil.

We can all get on board with that.

We all want God to oppose evil.

The problem is that apart from Christ, we are evil.

The problem is that apart from Christ, apart from his saving grace in us, God is opposed to us.

As much as I wish this weren't true, let me just say it really clearly.

If a person does not believe the gospel, they will die and go to hell forever to endure the wrath of God against them for their sins.

God's wrath is real.

It is real.

Right now, he is burning with white hot anger against people for their sins, and he will punish them unless they believe the gospel and surrender to Jesus and are saved.

Do you believe that?

I think that if you believe that, if you really believe and understand the reality of hell and the wrath of God, you will be motivated to share the gospel with people.

But if you don't believe that, you won't.

So let me make this really practical for a minute.

If you struggle to share the gospel with people, try this.

Commit over the next two weeks to spending two hours, maybe three, studying the wrath of God.

Imagine that.

Imagine what might happen in your life if you did that.

If you said, for the next two weeks, Sunday to the following Sunday, I am going to commit to spending at least two hours, and I'm going to keep track of it.

I'm going to commit to spending at least two hours studying the biblical doctrine of the wrath of God and hell.

Searching the scriptures.

I would recommend go to desiringgod.org.

Do some research.

Go to thegospelcoalition.org.

Do some research.

Study the wrath of God.

Read the scriptures and think of your friends and family and what it would be like for them to experience hell.

And let that motivate you to share the gospel with them.

That is a proper and good and biblical motivation for evangelism.

Listen, I treasure the love of God.

I take great joy in reading about and thinking about God's great love for us, his fatherly care of us, how God is a good shepherd who leads us in goodness and mercy all the days of our lives.

I love all of those doctrines and all those truths about who God is, but if we over emphasize that at the expense of God's justice and his wrath, we will lack motivation to share the gospel with people.

And I think that we as a church, as a whole here in America for the past few decades, have emphasized the love of God at the expense of the wrath of God, and it has led to a lack of motivation to share the gospel with people.

So let's recalibrate.

Let's make sure we have a full, or a more full understanding of all of who God is.

Now, as we go about sharing the gospel with people, it is so important that we understand how it works.

Jesus died and rose again.

That's the good news, but there's another piece to the puzzle, and we can see it here in verse 16.

The apostle Paul writes that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to everyone who believes.

You see, you have to believe the gospel in order to be saved.

As he says in verse 17, it's a matter of faith, which is another word for belief.

He uses a really interesting phrase there in verse 17.

He says, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

Now, what does he mean by that?

Well, the righteousness of God is the righteousness that God requires in order to be with him, in order to go to heaven.

God requires a certain level of moral purity, and moral goodness, righteousness, in order for us to be with him.

Where do you get that righteousness?

By grace, through faith, in Jesus.

That's where you get the righteousness.

That phrase from faith for faith really means, I think more clearly, by faith from beginning to end, by faith from start to finish, wire to wire.

In other words, your salvation, your righteousness, is a matter of faith from beginning to end.

It's all about your belief in Jesus and what he accomplished for you in his life, death, and resurrection.

The temptation is to think, I'm gonna believe in Jesus and get some grace from him, and whatever grace I don't get from him, I'm gonna make up with my own good behavior.

It doesn't work like that.

It's by faith from beginning to end, 100%.

However, we have to understand that belief or faith in the Bible is not just about intellectually accepting that a set of facts is true.

So we have the good news about what Jesus did.

He died, he was buried, he rose again on the third day.

That's the gospel, that's the good news.

You have to believe that, but it can't be just a merely intellectual belief.

There's more to it.

According to the Bible, faith has three elements.

There's the intellectual, sort of understanding it, comprehending it, and accepting that's a true set of facts.

But there's also the emotional.

In order to have biblical saving faith, you have to have an emotional connection with that set of facts, an emotional response.

You have to embrace the truthfulness of the Gospel, along with sorrow over sin, and joy over God's mercy and grace.

Jesus died for my sins, and I'm sorry for those sins.

I'm sorry for the sins that put Jesus on the cross.

And I am so grateful for God's mercy and grace through his son, Jesus, and what he did for me.

There has to be that emotional connection with the facts as well as a volitional or intentional response.

You have to make a decision.

You have to submit your will to Jesus and say, okay, Jesus, I give up.

You are in charge.

You have to commit to obeying him and steadfastly trusting in him as your one and only hope for salvation.

So the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

And that belief must have all three elements, intellectual, emotional, and volitional.

That's what the Bible means by faith.

And that kind of faith, by the way, always produces fruit.

Somebody can say they believe in Jesus.

They can say they have faith, but if they don't live accordingly, you know it's not genuine biblical faith.

That kind of faith always has a transforming effect in a person's life that leads to increasing obedience to Jesus.

When people hear that gospel and have that kind of faith, they experience a powerful transformation.

It's like nothing else in this world, and many of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You came to believe in Jesus and it changed your life.

You can look back at who you were before, and it's like it was a totally different person.

You heard the gospel and you believed, and all of a sudden you had this new hope and this new joy, and all of those things that you did before that were so displeasing to God, you don't even want to do them anymore.

You have new desires.

Before you thought prayer and church was the most boring thing in the world, and now you can't get enough of it.

And of course that comes and goes, and sometimes it's more and sometimes it's less, but you're a different person.

And it is so beautiful and good.

So let me ask you this.

Don't you want that same thing for your friends and family and the people that you care about?

Somebody told you about Jesus and it changed your world forever.

Shouldn't you tell others?

Imagine what God could do.

If this really is the power of God for salvation to all who believe, imagine what God could do if you told people.

Imagine seeing the people that you love transformed.

Imagine the joy and peace they could experience in Christ.

Imagine the freedom from addiction and anxiety and fear.

Me and Kayla were talking yesterday, my wife, Kayla, and her mom works in the school system in the East Bay.

And she was telling Kayla about the increasing number of kids with horrific disabilities and issues and problems.

She works in special education.

And the guy that she works with, when he started maybe back in the 70s or 80s, there was a handful of kids in the school who needed special education.

And he went and got his master's degree in special ed.

And people at the time told him, like, what are you doing?

We're not gonna need special ed in 10 years.

There's only a handful of kids now.

And with the progress we're seeing in the world and with science and all nutrition, like, we're not gonna need special ed in 10 years.

Now there are five full classes of special ed students.

Every single year, kids have more and more problems, more and more learning disabilities, more and more difficulty speaking and paying attention, more and more difficulty with behavior.

Apparently, the public schools have tons and tons of kids who aren't even potty trained yet.

Thing, what I'm trying to say is that we need the gospel more than ever.

And I'm not saying that if you preach the gospel, it's going to solve all learning disabilities or something like that.

I'm just saying that this world is headed in the wrong direction in 10,000 different ways.

Our kids, our adults, our schools, our government, our neighbors, we need the gospel.

People need hope.

People need Jesus.

Imagine what could happen if we all went forth boldly declaring the gospel wherever we went.

Why don't we do that?

Because we don't want to have an awkward conversation?

Because we don't want people to think that we're crazy or weird?

But if somebody is dying and you have the cure, who cares what they think about you?

It's so easy to let fear get in the way, but I want you to say with the Apostle Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel.

Right now, you don't have to say it out loud, but in your heart, in your mind, I want you to say, I am not ashamed of the gospel.

I always think of this video I saw with an atheist talking about evangelism.

It was really fascinating to hear the perspective of an outsider.

It's this famous magician named Pen Gillette.

Apparently, he's part of this magician duo called Gillette and Pen and Teller.

I think that's what it is.

And Pen Gillette, this is what he said about sharing the gospel.

Again, this is from an atheist.

He said, I've always said that I don't respect people who don't proselytize, that is, evangelize.

I don't respect that at all.

If you believe that there's a heaven and a hell, and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life, and you think that it's not really worth telling them because it would make it socially awkward, and atheists who think people shouldn't proselytize and who say, just leave me alone and keep your religion to yourself, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?

How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?

Because we love our neighbors, because we love the God who saved us, we must, must, must commit to telling people the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Let's pray.

Jesus, I pray that you would give us all the motivation we need and more to share the message about what you've done for us.

We thank you, Jesus, for your love for us, for the life that you gave for us.

And we pray that we would be willing to give our lives to you in return, that we would respond with obedience, with a willingness to make sacrifices, with a passion to tell people about you and your love and your salvation.

We pray in your name.

Amen.