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Thank you Janet. We um in the last two months we have actually gone through a series in our pullpit on disciplehip uh challenges from the of the kingdom from the parables. And as we as the church goes on this year, we've decided that we would be the kind of church that's shaped by the gospel. And so this series that we're going to be doing in the next few months would be based on a uh a book, the letter written by the apostle Paul. Um it's on to the church in Rome. And we'll be going through chapter by chapter. And what this does is that it reintroduces us back to this very vital message that we bear in this Sububanga community, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Um, and so I hope you bear with us, get your notes, read Romans. So that Romans is not an easy book to understand. This is much harder to even preach. But if you read ahead of time and you commit this to the Lord, then I'm sure that the Lord will reveal to us what he has for us. So let's start with a word of prayer. Lord, we ask you this morning to help us ease into the book of Romans. Help us understand what the gospel is. Let the gospel seep into our life. Reconfigure our lives and our DNA so that we will share this. We will live and breathe this to our friends and our neighbors. And this gospel will transform our lives, our family, and our church. We ask for Jesus' sake. Amen. I spent a couple of weeks in Melbourne uh uh recently. That's why you haven't seen me in a a while. And I was talking to some newfound friends there who had started a a Bible Presbyterian church uh in an outer suburb of Melbourne. And they were very fortunate. This is not very many of them, about 50 of them. They started a new church and they were looking for premises and actually found a beautiful church, a huge one about 4 acres of land. My goodness, four acres of land. You were salivating, you k uh and they bought it for a very small sum of money. And when they asked, you know, how, you know, why is it so cheap? You know, you get 4 acres of land. Well, this used to be a very big Baptist church. But over the years, the, you know, people grew old. The youth fellowship wasn't there anymore. And, and it has got a couple of older delightful saints who then moved on to be with the Lord. And we have to sell the place. It's not, you know, it's very sad. Baptist church is closed down. Then we got to talking about them planting another church. And this time they plant nearer the city and this suburb called Chadston. Some of you go to Melbourne, know Chadston. That's not that far from the city. And then another church for sale Baptist church again. So I'm wondering what's happening to the Baptist churches in the future. You could be growing very well, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now, it all starts to shrink. In fact, if you look at the uh the Christianity which had a great foothold in the west, uh this is what the United general secretary of the United Reformed Church in Britain says in the Western Europe, we are hanging by our finger nails. The fact is Europe is no longer Christian. This is a poll taken in the 1990s and look at church attendance in England 27%. In Norway, in Sweden, it is about 4%. And that's probably less than Malaysia which is about 7 to 9%. It is absolutely terrible. This is Bishop Jack Shelby Spong uh Episcopalian church and he writes uh these words. We need to seek a new way a totally different way to tell the Christ story if it can be told in a new way is our only option. The Christian church stands in the early years of this millennium on the threshold of either extinction or radical new beginning. no other alternative presents itself. Then you've got clever people from Stanford University and he's a professor of religious studies. He says if we perform radical surgery on Christianity that is required not only will certain traditional formulations of faith fall by the wayside but also much of the presumed content of Christianity and rightly so. Our only consolation we do not intervene radically soon the patient will die. And what he means is that with Jack shall be spawn they say the Christ story really sucks. So people in the west don't want it anymore. You take out keep Jesus out because center fellow you know in the name but you take out his virgin birth. That's a bit difficult to explain. Take out his miracles take that out. Take out the death in the cross the resurrection. That's the most embarrassing thing. He actually died instead. And you take out all these sort of things. then maybe we have a Christianity that will survive in the west. But the strange thing is as he says these things and you look at the church in the west dwindling to uh bear fragment of what it was before you you have churches sprouting up and growing in Africa huge numbers. You know 100 years ago there were hardly 10 million there and today we're looking at about you know more than 100 million uh uh uh Christians there. China, you know, 130 million Christians there. India, it is growing. South America, in the east, it is growing. And there's an article that came out that drew this conclusion. It says, "It is not the modernistic liberal Christianity that is sweeping through the southern hemisphere, but a Christianity which the gospel is proclaimed, that believes in God's word, that refuses to conform to the world. If there's anything that will save the church, it's not radical surgery on Jesus. is radical surgery on our hearts. And so therefore, we need to look back at what the gospel is. What is the gospel? Because this is a central issue why we exist as a church, why we exist as a people. And this is a message we need to tell. Is it a message like the introductory message like Alpha? After you gone through alpha, you never want to look back anymore because you already graduated. All right? So, it's an introductory story. Is it just an introductory story we learn in Sunday school and we leave behind that we become Christians? Or is it the gospel about loving God and loving man? Or or is the gospel just distilling the ethical teachings about Jesus when love your enemies? When someone slaps you one side, you turn the other side and then you punch him. Uh or is it a message of faith, repentance and baptism? Or is it uh you know to improve our society like a social gospel? What is the gospel? So today we're going to take about seven verses of Romans to introduce us very clearly. I want you when you leave the hall to know exactly what the gospel is. There's no confusion. Whether it's about baptism, whether it's predestination, you got to argue all over the place. If you have to tell someone the gospel today in one sentence, what is the gospel? So, if I've done that and you walked out and you know, then we've done our job. So, let's look at Paul who is an apostle who serves our Lord Jesus Christ. And let's start off at three points. What is the original gospel? What is the gospel? What is the purpose of the gospel? Very simple. The original gospel is God. If you look at the first verse, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle set apart for the gospel of God. It is a gospel that belongs to God. So therefore, we need to know what a gospel is. A gospel is basically an announcement. Yangelion is the Greek word. It is this is an announcement for example taken um about Augustus in 9th century BC and it says since providence is set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus the Caesar from whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit mankind sending him as savior both for us and our descendants that he might end wars and arrange things and since the birthday of the god Augustus which is actually the emperor was the beginning of the good tidings of the gospel for the world that came by reason of him. It is an announcement and it's often an a royal announcement of something that's going to happen. It's not something that's good advice. Uh we had a couple of uh doctors at our doctor's lounge. They came in with a huge good news, gospel news. You know, uh Audi having hybrid car, you know, no tax. So now 400,000 Wong, you need to buy one. Instead of 400,000, you know, no tax, so it's 200,000 now. You know that's called good advice. I mean I don't care about cars and I would never buy it. Doesn't affect my life at all. A lot of them will rush for and buy and book it. You know that's not what the gospel about. Gospel changes your life. And if you look at this uh uh story of Fidipites now, now 500 years before Christ, the Persian army landed 600 boats 20,000 men 26 milesi north of Athens and they were for the first time going to challenge and take Athens, which is the cradle of Greek civilization. People there were in a panic. They didn't have a strong army. They were very upset. Everybody who was Greek turned pale. Everybody, all the Persian migrants and the Persian maids are very happy. You know why? Something happened, I will be the boss and you will be the maid. Right? So um they landed the army there and and the Greeks sent a force up 26 miles to the plains of Marathon and the Greek army was only 10,000 strong. And they had to meet an army twice its size. And they were actually led by a very uh uh a crazy general, Militiadis his name was. And what he did was the first time in military history where you actually have a huge line of Persian soldiers. What he did is he asked the Greek soldiers to line up and stretch out so you match their line. So you know you'll be very thin, right? And not only that, instead of standing there and praying, you know what you did? Charge forward. So when the Greeks were one mile one mile, you know, not 100 meters, one mile from the the Persian, they charge forward and they're so scared the lights out of the Persians that they actually defeated the Persians on the flanks, but they lost the center. But because they lost the center, the flanks came in and compressed and they actually the the Persians lost 6,000 men and the Greeks 193 and they won a huge victory. And then they sent this guy Fidipities with this huge message, very important message. No email, no SMS. So the guy has to run 26 miles. That's why you get the 26 mile marathon, right? Okay. He runs 26 miles so fast, so hard, such important news that he he he lands right there in front of the council of the Senate and he announces, "Joy to you. We have won." Fell to the ground. Joy to you, Himati. He died. And so imagine this is what the gospel is. He holds up the message and he tells them this message has great implications. Imagine before the message comes, right? before the message comes, people selling their property, Amansara Heights, going for $1 per square foot, you know, and and exactly what happens, you know, and the people who are Persian will be rejoicing, you know, and then when you receive the message, it has implications for your life and all the other uh the Persians will be very upset and the Greeks will be very very happy because it changes your life. It's it's announcement. Now here we actually have Paul a servant of Christ Jesus called to be apostle set apart for this gospel of God. This good news which he promises beforehand through his prophets in the holy scripture. Now it tells you something about this gospel. This gospel is not a message which you just reconfigure and type out like an essay. It's actually promised beforehand through his prophets in holy scripture. This is an old message. This is a message that comes from the Jewish religion. It is planned by God. I was attending a church somewhere in in Melbourne recently and we have this uh Australian lady called Vicky Simpson, a very famous prophetess and she was doing the service. At the end of the service, she was having a prophetic session and she was saying, you know, this person, that person, and then she pointed to a couple up in the front, and it was a Chinese man, Lee and his wife, Reena, you're going through very difficult time. Life is like a whirlpool and whirlwind, but the Lord is telling you, um, you will be okay. You will come through this. Then she turns to the right and I was sitting just there you know and then and the couple over there the Lord is saying then the woman stands up excuse me we're not couple
this is a prophet you know so now immediately you know you can't be a prophet because a prophet can tell that you're not married you know so so uh uh very disingen when we talk about prophets in in the Bible you know it's completely different we're talking about a space of a0 400 years. Many different people writing the same Bible, different messages, but they all make sense together. Now, if you look at scientific uh uh uh discovery today, medicine for example, see if we were to decide that a particular tablet was useful for you, we would do studies. We would take a hundred of you on this side and we give you if all of you have back pain, right? We give you Ferrero Rocher and we going to say that Ferrero Rocher will cure your back pain right you also got back pain 100 of you here and we give you a dummy tablet something like you know to kachang put or something to take right and then we find at the end of time 70% of here people here the back pain was gone and 10% back pain was gone when you take it and calculate the difference the likelihood of this result being by chance if it's less than one in 1,000 therefore it must actually work. You know, prophecy works like that. You know, you see, in the old days, you don't have that kind of statistical analysis. So, what God does to show people that the gospel is real, is authentic, is to give you prophecy. If I were to prophesy today, hopefully it'll be better than Vicky Simpson and say after this service on the second week of Sunday from now on the 17th of March, Shirley O who sits at the back uh we'll get up and and trundle down here to Richard and invite him for lunch at Rakuzen.
Now am I a false prophet or am I a true prophet? Well, you have to calculate the odds. What did the odds of Shirley coming to talk to Richard whom she never talks to anyway? Right. One in 550. All right. Multiply by two Sundays. I'm saying the six the second Sunday on the 17. So you must be multiply by two. 500 multiply by two is one in a thousand. You know how many restaurants are there in in Subang Jaya? 100 right? So the the the thousand multiply by 100. What are the chances? That means it is not by fluke. It is I'm a prophet. And so if you look at Jesus Christ, why is it so important that the message is promised beforehand? Well, you know, there are number of prophecies. If he says he must come from the the the the tribe of Shem. Uh then he'll come from Abraham. Out of Abraham, out of in you all the families of earth will be blessed. There are 60,000 Shemmites at that particular time. That's estimated. You must multiply by 60. Abraham had eight sons. Two by uh one by Hagar, one by Sarah, and then there's Catura, one out of eight. Isaac had two sons, one out of two. Then you've got Judah, one of 12. Then you choose David. By that time, 200,000 people, right? One guy out of that. So if you calculate, you find that the property of Messiah comes from David is about one in 13 trillion. You know what is one in 13 trillion? One in 13 trillion is you put $1 coins, you stack up to my knee and you fill up the stage. Okay? And then you not only fill up the stage, you fill up the whole of Malaysia twice over and then you dive in, you pick up one black coin. What are the chances of that happening? Impossible. Absolutely. In fact, if you want to throw in if he followed this me uh uh prophecy as well, not only born of David born in Bethlehem, then your chances are one in,300 trillion. If you have 48 prophecies of Jesus Christ, I mean he will also be crucified. You also divide his clothing. They will not break his bones. That is one out of 10 to the power 157. There are 300 prophecies about Jesus Christ, my friends. 300. And so therefore, even if you're a scientist, you think about it. All right? This is God's message. And so therefore, we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God which God decreed before the ages for our glory. This message uh is for our glory. Just like militiadis running with all his might. It is for our glory. But none of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had, they wouldn't have crucified our Lord Jesus Christ. It's a tricky message. That's why you need so many prophecies to testify to it. So when it comes, you know, this really comes from God. All right? Now, so therefore, we are like Paul. See, Militis, sorry, Fidipities, which is the the runner, he could have said, "This is a message. I need to tell the people." So he's running, running, running. And five miles down the road, he oh Rotanga stall there, mama, you know, Simalo, you know, he stops and has his coffee, has his tea. What's the big deal? We win tomorrow. We win next day. So we win. So why are we doing anything to tell him? So he checks in, has his toare then 26 km. Very long. 26. How many of you run 26 miles? So only one yet. So he stops and have a tea. Then after that he has his time to to to to to go to a hotel. He meets a girl, gets married, has children. He probably never get there. The trouble is many of us the gospel is like that to us. We we don't have the urgency. Fidelities for him the message is so important that he runs with every ounce of his body until he falls down, delivers his message and he dies. That that's amazing, isn't it? That's a picture of the couer of a gospel. You look at Paul. Paul is described in two terms. One apostle, great respon, great uh h authority. Another that's called privilege. Another is called described as what? Servant. You have great descriptions of him. One pole to the other. One brings pain, one brings privilege. Like it or not, if you are a servant, it brings pain. Pain and privilege come together. And yet he's set apart from the gospel. So this church, all of us are set apart as a holy people to worship our Lord and tell people about this message. And we would like that all of us as a community when this is not a spiritual mall you know what a spiritual mall is you go good speaker you come ah there's a lot of analy come preach here next way or something I no don't go it's like coming watching TV you know and and and we provide everything and maybe Joey sings a couple of good songs it's a spiritual mall the church become spiritual the church is a community where we work together where we become like Philippides together where this message is so strength central and so inspires us and so drives us that we work to get this message sorry out. Why is it okay? The second of all the gospel is about his son. It's not about wealth. It's not about health. It's not about power. It's not about social issues. It's actually the content of the gospel is about his son. Look concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead and conclusion is Jesus Christ our lord that's the important bit now if you break it down because I don't like long sentence very difficult to read right so what we do is you break it down and we see this in four parts and the first part is this message is about his son when we talk about his son which his eternal son who was with him right from the beginning. So it's about God about God's son who then verse further down descended from David according to the flesh declared second part declared to be son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection and then finally the conclusion because of those two he is Jesus Christ our Lord let's take the first part is turn concerning his son who who one descended into uh uh who became uh uh sorry uh descended from David according to the flesh So this descended from David called in flesh and declared to be son of God according power uh uh by his resurrection are basically like two wings in a plane. See the plane won't fly. How many know seen one plane with one wing? Two wings you fly one wing cannot fly. So there are two facts that undergurt this gospel that this gospel is the gospel of our lord Jesus Christ is Lord. And the only way Jesus Christ is Lord here is that he's descended from David in the flesh. And number two, he's resurrected in power. You take one out, it doesn't quite work. He can't have uh uh be be full of power and resurrected but not descended from David. Let's look at this. He concerning a son who was descended from David according to the flesh. The gospel is therefore anchored in a historical event where God's son becomes Messiah, becomes mediator, becomes redeemer. This is why he was born. Now if you look at Old Testament promises, this is uh 2 Samuel 7:10. When your days uh talk, God talks to David. When your days are fulfilled, you lie down with your fathers. I will raise up for your offspring after you who shall come from your body. I will establish his kingdom. Verse 13, he shall bring a build a house for my name. I will establish his kingdom forever. So he promises David that he will have a son and this son will rule in that everlasting kingdom. Isaiah 9 600 years before Jesus comes he prophesies for to us a child is born a son is given the government shall be on his shoulder. His name shall be wonderful counselor mighty God everlasting father prince of priests. of the increase of this government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David over his kingdom to establish it to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forever more the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this another prophecy telling you that someone will come from the line of David will be a child it will be uh the prince of peace he will sit on the throne of David and in his kingdom there will be no end so therefore you need to look for this kind of person because he will be the Messiah. Many messiahs have come and gone. You've got Simon Barova after Jesus AD 132, one of the most successful messiahs. He comes, he actually defeats the Romans, rules for about three years. He even issue his own coins until the Romans come and wallop him and then died. All right. Time after time, the Jews are looking for someone who will fulfill all of God's promises to them to redeem their country, restore the temple. Uh in fact, uh there have been 23 messiahs since uh Jesus and also 36 Christian ones. In fact, this is the uh Hakka one. This hakka uh uh uh messiah taka is for some of you who are from America is a subgroup, ethnic group of the Chinese. We make very good noodles. So it's Hongi. All right. Hakka Masiah is a Southern Baptist missionary uh from IMB witnessed to him in 16 uh uh 47 or something like that and he came to know Christ and he gathered a group of people of Christians and grew the church very large. In fact they became very militant. They took over the city of Nanjing and ruled for several years until you know other people came and destroyed him basically. But see he had a lot of followers go. So your haka remember hiwan but let's look on to the bible concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and declared to be the son of god in power according to spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. Oh my goodness. Here we got full stop something's happened from the dead. That means you got your messiah who died. That's a problem because everybody thinks messiah looks like this. If he is to come, he surely must have a 50 caliber machine gun. He surely must be very buff, you know, like Steven working out in the gym, you know, that's why all our men are working out because this is a picture of power. This is a picture of majesty. This is a picture of a king who will rule. All right. So, so they expecting this, but they got this. Halama, I might as well put Mr. Bean's face up there. You see, that's the problem. You see? So how can you expect a Jew who believes it'll come like this and he comes like this he's dead on the cross. See that's their problem. But they forgot when you read prophecy some parts that you like you read. The one part you don't like you don't read. Ah like some of you who read Bible. Okay then this is the part that you don't like. And this is the part that talks about the Messiah who dies for surely he has borne our griefs carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken smitten by God afflicted but he was pierced for our transgressions crushed for our iniquity. is sin. Okay. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and is by his wounds we were healed. We were like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. The Lord has laid upon him the iniquity or the sin of us all. So you have another prophecy about the Messiah. The Messiah not only come full of steroids, he will also come to take your place to die for your sin. So therefore for him to do that he must be human. He must represent you to die for your sin. That's the part they forgot. Now, let me ask the question. Who was the first person to recognize the true nature of the Messiah? Anyone? The most unlikely person in the world. The first person to recognize the true nature of this Messiah. That this Messiah was not Rambo but actually someone who dies on the cross. Anyone put your hands up? Who is the first that you can get? No prize. You get my adulation. What? Robert who? Robert Chia. Huh? You're right. Hanging on the cross. Right next to Jesus. You got two thieves who doesn't know Jesus from a can of worms. You know, they don't know anything. And yet one thief says, "Halama, you're lying on the Hey, you and me same. I'm on the cross. Hey guy, you're on the cross. We're both going to die, right? Then he says to him, "Hey, you son of God. I remember they tell me about you son of God. You get down. Hey, take me also when you go down." And he mocked him. That's a normal human response. If you hang cross to the other guy, you also in jail, right? But the other thief on his right side, I can't remember right or left. He says, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Hello. This is a thief thinking that the guy next to him hanging on the cross going to die going to have kingdom law. If you ramble sitting next to you with his gun got kingdom when you break out a G I will break up with you. You're hanging on the cross you know he's dying going into your kingdom which means that this robber this thief can see you know that this Jesus is a messiah who will rule. That's amazing. You put most of us on the cross thanks to Jesus, you will not say that. And so therefore, God arranges for two robbers to basically tell you there only two responses to the gospel of Jesus Christ. One to say, hey, you you can't save yourself, you died, I won't believe in you. The other one is even though you're going to die, I'm going to believe in you. That's why this is the most unique person. You talk about faith of all the whole world, this guy's faith beats everybody because he never saw the resurrection. You see the rest of us, we know that concerning his son designated to be son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. The rest of us have the witness. The rest of us are like uh uh uh this guy Thomas. See, see, I don't believe until I put my finger into the wound. Oh God, you're really resurrected. Then we believe you see. So therefore if you look here it is Jesus Christ his son who was not only died who was designated son of God in power by his resurrection and he's therefore our Lord. Dr. seaman told of a story of a Muslim who became a Christian in a Muslim country some far far away from here and uh he was a new convert and he was going to share the gospel with his other friends of the similar religion and he told this story to his friends who asked him about you know why you want to believe in Jesus then he said to him you know one day if you walk on the road and you come to a fork road and you don't know which direction to tell to take on one side there's a dead man another one alive which one you ask actions. You ask directions from the guy who's alive. That's exactly right. Resurrection is the key element why Christians believe in our Lord Jesus Christ. Not because of Christmas or Santa Claus or all the nice things he said, but the fact that he rose from the dead. So therefore, when he rises in the dead, this son of God, eternal son of God, who became man becomes designated, declared to be son of God in power. That means this is a son of God that's not the weak son of God that came down that was weak. Now he's actually died and was risen again. So he's designated a new title on top of your tans. You get tunit and the final title is Jesus Christ our Lord. Now Jesus Christ our Lord is an important uh uh uh title. Let me talk about it a little bit more. Now for the Jews, they still don't believe. This is a picture of Rabbi Yeets Kaduri. He lived to 118 years of age. He still the Jews are looking for Rambo to come except this fellow. This fellow one of the most respected Jews ever. He died in 2004 I think and he has been attributed with prophetic powers where he actually predicted the tsunami etc. Jews hold him in great reverence. When he died in 204, uh about 300,000 Jews attended his wedding. I saw his wedding as a funeral. Sorry, I get the two mixed up attending too many. One day I'll turn up to the wedding with a different a different uniform. Uh anyway, so anyway, so um before he died, he he was very ill and he actually had a number of visions and and he be to change and uh he called his uh lieutenants into his room and gave them a letter. This is a letter I want you to open, but this letter after one year after I died and they don't know what it is. It's about the Messiah, who it is. And they actually waited until I don't know why he want to wait one year you know you know after his death but he actually died and one year later on they opened the message and the acronym of this message reads Yahosua which is what Jesus here we actually have one of the most reverred Jewish rabbis in the world actually saying because it was through a series of visions Jesus Christ actually appeared to him and so Jews are also being told that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. So here we have the gist of what the gospel is. It is a son of God, the eternal son of God who then became the Messiah, took on fully human nature who died for us and also now declared son of God and power by his resurrection. So therefore this Jesus Christ, Christ is Messiah. So Mashiach is in uh in Hebrew. So Jesus our Messiah is our Lord. Now what's the big deal about this our Lord? out you might understand that in those days the emperors were declared as gods. Caesar Julius Caesar was called the invincible god. Jupiter Julius Augustus was called savior and lord. So whenever you come to a fellow citizen in Rome you like the Germans hi Hitler he will say caesar is lord. Everywhere you go, Caesar is Lord. And and the lordship and becoming a god in those days have less to do with justice and morality and more to do with power. So you here you actually have a Caesar who's able to defeat all the armies of the world and impose peace. The Pex Romana. So therefore he must be God. So power defines a God. Not our concepts of Christian concept of morality or justice or you know so for them Caesar is Lord is Caesar's power his power above the entire realm now imagine uh imagine you're a Christian Caesar is Lord you stand up there Jesus is Lord hello what will happen to you you're saying it's like you going to the palace and they say dalaton and you're saying something else that is terri terrible that's absolutely disastrous because you are now declaring that they're not going to understand it's in the spiritual realm whatever you're saying somebody else is the Lord and Savior of the realm where it should actually be a Roman emperor that's why the Christians were persecuted that's why they were killed that's why they were hunted down because they were direct affront you know today we don't face that much of a persecution we can freely say Jesus is Lord. But in those days you are declaring your whole world view changes that everything in the world now you live not for Caesar but you live for our Lord Jesus Christ. So having a gospel like this what implications does it have on us? The implications are that we as a community should live a gospel- centered life in so far as we like our God who be strong and became weak and became a servant in order to reach out to the world. We as a church also becomes weak. We exist as a church not for ourselves but for non-Christians. We exist for the poor. We exist to minister and we look forward for a time when he comes to rule again. Lastly, the purpose of the gospel is to bring about obedience of faith. All right, this is I'll rush to the last part part. It says through whom we have received grace and apostilhip to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among the nations. So Jesus Christ is Lord is our message and we're going to bring this so that people will obey and have faith in him. Uh Jesus did the same thing. Time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Let me illustrate this. In 204, there was a huge tsunami. We're all aware of that. Now, if you look here, there's an island called Similu, right? The earthquake epicenter is just north of Similu.
100,000 people in Ache died. Guess how many people died in Simolu?
Not one. Not one. Why? Well, because in simileo they actually have a legend that is passed down from generation to generation to generation. The legend is whenever you have a earthquake, you must run to the hills. Doesn't exactly tell you that a tsunami, what pressure, what earthquake, you're under crust or whatever, firing a fire. They don't know all this scientific bits. They just say you earthquake, you run to the hills. That's all. That's what grandma says. And they all trusted grandma and grandpa. And on that day they had the earthquake. They felt the earthquake. They all ran to the hills. They don't know why. They grabbed their children, their goats. And not a single person died. Where else? Just further up the river 100 people, thousand people died. That's exactly what the gospel is about. You tell the gospel so that lives will be saved. That's called the obedience of faith. That mean you trust grandma's message. You act on grandma's message. You can have a guy who believe in the gospel. You know, yes, earthquake come. I'm standing here. It's nice. It's theoretical. We'll describe it. We'll do a Bible study about it. We'll discover and you know, read by commentary, you know, Google search and all that all the time. By the time you finish your Google search, a tsunami comes and you're dead. That's exactly what some of us do with the gospel. We study all about it, but we don't do anything about it. So, faith and obedience are always linked together. the obedience that comes you see this is a bit difficult you obey God by having faith in Jesus Christ but because you have faith in Jesus Christ your life is lived in obedience to Jesus Christ you can't delink the two things together we are his workmanship created for Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should work and walk in them so therefore when we come to faith there are a lot of stuff which God wants us to do in obedience to him our lives actually change and so therefore the gospel is in center where we are saved by grace. We obey because we are saved. There are two ways you can go. You can have just have faith alone and forget about obedience. Or you could have obedience and forget about faith. These are the two things that actually hit us. If you have faith alone and just emphasize on grace and faith, then things will happen. There are a lot of churches that do that. Let me give you an example of one down south. Uh this is a book. I've got a book by Joseph Prince and he let me page 147 when I was doing my choir time. I was reading this book um it's not very useful but it reads to be full of God is to come to a place of life health peace prosperity total wellness also when you are conscious of how much God loves you you become full of the fullness of God that means you become full of God you be full this exactly words that he writes bestseller you know in the world so you you know this is the gospel uh that means for him it's a faith no works now he writes about the Lord's supper. We just had the Lord's supper. You know, when Paul wrote the Lord about the Lord's supper in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, he's warning them when you when you come down to have Lord's supper together, some of you are so greedy, you're eating, you know, by the time you finish eating it and nobody else has anything to eat. Reminds me of some of our buffets, you know, that's exactly what's happening. So therefore, he says when you come together, you really have to wait for each other. If you have to discern the body, if you don't discern the body, we take lost supper, you will die. God will judge you. That's what was happening. Okay. Now if you look at the the 1 Corinthians chapter 11:33 it says the conclusion. So my brothers when you come together to eat wait for one another. If anyone is hungry let him eat alone uh at home so that you can come together it will not be for judgment. So that's why when we have the bread you know I didn't see anybody gobble up first. You all hold the bread together and you eat it so daintily right? Um if you ask Joseph Prince you know how he interprets it. Here's what he writes. So it's not a matter whether you're worthy or unworthy to partake. But how you partake? Come to the Lord's supper. Partake because Christ has qualified you with his precious blood. What are you saying? Very subtle. You are not worthy. You're obviously worthy because Christ died for you. All your sins forgiven. Right? So when you come to the Lord's supper, but take take boldly. Don't bother about the other guy. Which is exactly what Paul said you shouldn't do. What he has done he's taken faith and disconnected it from obedience. Another way is legalism where you put obedience and disconnected from faith. And that's why when Jesus came his message very popular among tax collectors, prostitute Samaritan woman among intellectuals and Pharisees who are always working for salvation. The message doesn't resonate. He talks to Samaritan woman one shot. She becomes Christian. She tells everybody in her village about Jesus Christ. Talk to Nicodemus the Pharisee. Hey, I'll go home and think about it. That's a difference because people who have a lot depend on their performance. Martin Luton says religion is the default mode of the human heart. The default mode is that even if you're a non-Christian, you set yourself a set of principles and you live up to it. That's what our default mode is. 20 years after Jesus Christ, Paul has to write to the Galatians. Instead of defending on Christ and Christ alone, they're depending on what circumcision. Come to church, make sure you're based, you're not a real Christian. You see, that's the whole problem. Uh this is a door in the Vatican. I was there a couple of months ago and a very interesting door since the pope just resigned. Um and if you were to go through this door once in 25 years one particular day better buy your air ticket uh a sha will be booked out. You walk through the door you'll be saved straight away. You won't disappear but you'll have salvation. I was there and the guy was telling us this is it. This is salvation by works. Suppose you have a building and you know like Arnold would be familiar with this and you have to go and apply for CF. Would you bribe the guy? What are our reasons for not bribing that? Well, I won't bribe the guy because I'll get in trouble with God. I'll get in trouble with authorities. I'll be, you know, I'll be called a corrupted person. Or perhaps um you know, remember what uh uh uh uh they say, if you honor God, God will honor you. Isn't it? So, what are the actual mo motivations? If you actually have look into yourself, what motivations we have? We actually may not give the bribe because we fear punishment. We have a moral pride of self-righteousness. Oh, I'm not kind of guy who bribe other people. I'll gain respect or perhaps I will gain God's blessings. Now, if these are the motivations that underneath our behavior as Christians, then we become moralists. We actually become people who are legalists. We're not transformed. It's like a bird. You know, a bird can't fly. It falls down from the nest. As it falls down from the nest, there's a hole in the trunk and then there's a fox. Fox comes and what you do as a bird, run into the hole in the trunk, he can't get you. You escape. You escape few times, but you unless you learn to fly, one day he'll eat you up. That's exactly right. So what the gospel is saying is that your motivations for living a moral life cannot be because you want to be self-righteous, you want to gain respect, you fear punishment, you fear going to hell, or you want to gain God's blessing. It must resonate from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The the grace of God given to you is the one that should motivate your change. That's why when you have a sermon up here, usually I find preachers who like to to to scull you and lecture you, we don't invite them because you can never scold people into the kingdom of God. I know there are some preachers like to scold you a lot. We we we stop them. Scolding people is like a bird running into the hole, escape a few time, but there's no real life transformation. Life transformation is because the gospel of Jesus Christ, the love of Jesus Christ transforms your life so that you want to change. You absolutely want to change. So that's the difference. So we the godly motivations that you reciprocate his love and we love righteousness because our natures have been transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many of us on one level we come become Christians we say Jesus paid for our sins we trust on him on the other level we actually underneath you scratch the surface we are all legalists we depend on our ministry our moral behavior our talent and our discipline and we depend on all these things to give ourselves selfworth so on the surface we say we're Christian we Jesus Christ death but actually when we what's actually governing our motives is actually something else. You know, that's the problem. You the other day, let me illustrate to you this point. I was a bit depressed. Came back from Melbourne, uh missing my family and um uh um just feeling low for no other reason. And then something happened that one day, it was Tuesday that made me happy and so I'm on top of the world. One, I saw the graph that showed church growth over the last two years, three years. Number two, I saw my paycheck.
So you tell me where is the basis of my satisfaction in life? It actually lies in things other than Christ. Who cares about your paycheck? Who cares about what happens unless you think you're responsible for your paycheck? Your selfworth is derived from your paycheck. And your selfworth is derived from the fact that you're a leader of a church and the church grew. You see, I am depending on my own works. And that's not how a person should operate. If you actually live a gospel- centered life, your self-worth is anchored on the blood of Jesus Christ. Imagine one of you are kids and and you had a bad day and a and the most beautiful girl in in the whole class actually gave you a call. Hello. Want to go out for a date? you'll be on top of the world, right? And no matter what your mother said to you or your father said to you or your dog bit you in your backside, it won't matter, right? Because the most beautiful girl in the world called you. What if pastor Rama had a call from
the young Aong? Hey Rama, my boy, come over for a spot of tea. So no matter what you do to Rama that day he can crash his car and you know he can run over by a bus he'll still be fantastic isn't it? But you don't do you know for the rest of us the king of the universe came in the world and died for your sin that's higher than the girl and higher than aong and you see I mean we need to rest on this gospel truth and this gospel truth will transform our lives. Let me just end in this last verse. How do we get transformed by the gospel? This is how it goes. So that Ephesians chapter 3, Christ may dwell in your heart through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints that is what is the breadth, the length, the height, the depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with the fullness of God. How are you filled with the fullness of God? You are filled with the fullness of God. Transformed to be like God only one way when you experience his love. You see, you know why we fight in church? We fight in church because when somebody criticizes your ministry, your selfworth is so tied to your ministry. You criticize my ministry. Oh, I get upset with you. I fight with you. We split the church. That's exactly what happens because all of us are invested in what we do rather than resting what Christ does has done for you. So the key to gospel transformation is to believe and experience God's love in our lives so greatly and and is sacrificed so so so magnificently and so preciously that it transforms our every action and then we are transformed. Otherwise, we're just obeying a set of laws. All right, let's pray. Father Lord, we thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are a people who will stand out in the public. We are the people who will say boldly, unashamedly, proudly and convincingly, Jesus is God. Jesus is our Lord. And more importantly, I pray for all of us that this message would transform our own lives. that we stand out in the way we live and the things we are happy about with things we were sad about that we depend most on the fact that Christ died loved and rose for us. So we ask that this gospel transform us as a people that we may bring it to the world. We ask for Jesus sake. Amen.
