Next week is Pentecost Sunday. The festival of Pentecost did not originate in the first century, but rather it dates to the Exodus of the Jews from Egyptian bondage. The festival is known in the Old Testament by several synonymous titles: The Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Harvest, and also the Feast of the First Fruits (Exodus 23:15-17; Leviticus 23:10-16; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:16). In Hebrew, Pentecost is known as Shavuot (meaning, ‘Weeks’).
The word ‘Pentecost’ comes from the Greek word
meaning ‘fifty,’ and so, in Scripture, Pentecost occurs fifty days each year
after the first day of Passover when the Passover lamb was slain. Of course,
Christians today recognize the fulfillment of the picture God began to paint in
the Books of Moses and which would eventually be finished fifty days after the
Passover Lamb of God was slain on Calvary. As the former Pharisaical rabbi Saul
– better known as the apostle Paul – wrote to the Christians at Colossae:
(Colossians 2:16-17) “Therefore no one is
to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to
a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which
are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs
to Christ.”
And I hope you can already see the connection between
the crucifixion of God's Lamb and the feast of the ‘First Fruits’ of the Church
on Pentecost Sunday as it occurred in the second chapter of Acts. But more on
that in part two of this message.
It was on that first Pentecost after the Lamb of God's crucifixion that Peter, along with the other apostles and disciples stood on the Temple grounds proclaiming the Christ and His resurrection to the thousands of Jews gathered from across the land. Luke records it this way:
“Therefore
let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him
both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when
they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter
and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you
be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins;
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit . . . And with many other
words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved
from this perverse generation!” Acts 2:36-38, 40)
So,
this week before Pentecost Sunday, I want to begin a short series on the
messages exploring how Pentecost can – and should – apply to the Christian’s
life in 2024. To do
that, I will draw attention from time to time to Peter’s words as he spoke to
those thousands of Jews gathered in Jerusalem. But for the most part I want to
focus today on the letter the former Pharisee wrote to the Christians at Rome.
We focus there because what Paul wrote about the gospel is simply an extension
of what Peter preached to the crowd in Jerusalem on Pentecost.
My text is a familiar
one – nearly as familiar, I suspect, as John 3:16 - (Romans 1:16-17): “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 to faith; as
it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by
faith.”
Let’s look a moment at that first
sentence: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Now think for a moment again
of Peter’s declaration to the crowd. He made it not very long after he and the
rest of the apostles and disciples cowered in that small room in desperate fear
for their lives. Their hopes which centered around Jesus as their Messiah lay
buried in that borrowed tomb.
But on that first Pentecost Peter and the others fearlessly
trumpeted the news – the good news – which we know as ‘the gospel.’ And it
should be clear to us that something very odd had happened to them. And what
happened to them is precisely what happened to the former religious terrorist who
wrote to the Christians at Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”
As many of you know, Saul (later known as Paul) went out of
his way – quite literally – to find Christians. When he found them . . . well,
hear it in his own words: (Acts 26:10-11) “Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons,
having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were
being put to death, I cast my vote against them. And as
I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to
blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing
them even to foreign cities.”
But just as something stunningly incredible happened to
Peter and the others, something happened to Saul on that road to the city of
Damascus that changed his trajectory forever. He’d met the risen Jesus. If you
don’t know the story, you can find it easily enough in Acts chapter 9. And so,
the religious terrorist who made it his all-consuming ambition to murder
Christians now proclaimed the One whose very name he hated. He was not
‘ashamed’ of the gospel message. Some modern synonyms of the word are
‘embarrassed’; ‘apologetic’; and ‘shy.’
Are we embarrassed by the gospel message? And why might a
person be ashamed of that message?
Well, for one thing the gospel declares itself to be exclusive
of all other messages related to salvation and eternal life. The gospel message
declares unequivocally that obedient faith in Jesus Christ alone is the
Creator’s inflexible requirement for eternal life. Jesus alone is the only door
for the remission – the erasing – of our confessed sins.
Paul’s text here in Romans chapter one cuts to
the heart of a growing problem facing many of today’s Christians in America who
are increasingly ashamed or apologetic or shy about the gospel message. The media,
our educational systems, the courts, the marketplace, Hollywood, and even many
churches (of all places!) have been slowly squeezing Christians into the mold
called ‘religious pluralism.’ That ought to frighten us because that mold has
the inevitable effect of reducing Jesus the Christ to just one of many
religious teachers and prophets.
The mold called Religious Pluralism promotes the
devilish lie that different religious worldviews are equally valid, equally
true, and equally acceptable to God. Therefore, all religious roads lead to
God.
But when anyone thinks that thought through, he
or she will realize that philosophy doesn’t make sense on any level. There can
only be one truth, not a half-dozen. The claims of Christianity and
every other religious belief are not only diverse in their views of sin,
righteousness, and judgment, but they are wildly diverse in their understanding
of the nature of Jesus the Christ.
Either Islamic faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith
is true. Either Hindu faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true.
Either Buddhist faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true. Either Jewish
faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true.
To say EACH can be true would be like saying 2+2 does not
always equal four. Can you imagine architects using 2+2=4 on Monday, and 2+2 =
3 on Tuesday?
Is it not utterly tragic that a growing number
of today’s Christians in the pews, in pulpits, and in seminaries are becoming
increasingly reluctant to draw a proverbial line in the sand, and
unapologetically declare what Peter and Paul declared to be ‘truth’ about
Jesus, about sin, judgment, and eternal life? Is it not heart-rending to know
how quickly even those in churches are moving away from God's infallible
definition of Truth?
God has never been one to mince words. He has never been one to
equivocate or be ambiguous. And neither should you or I, His servants, when
people ask us the reason for our hope of eternal life.
Listen to God speak through Jeremiah (23:8b-30):
“But let him who has My word speak My
word in truth. What does straw have in common with grain?”
declares the Lord. “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock? Therefore
behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the Lord, “who steal My words from each other.”
And hear God speak
through the apostle Paul: (1 Thessalonians 2:3-4) “For our exhortation does
not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit; but
just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so
we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.”
Or again in Galatians 1:(8-10) “But even if
we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary
to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching
to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking
the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still
trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.”
Only TRUE Christianity – which is synonymous
to Bible-based Christianity – only true Christianity holds the definitive
answer to the question about the Person of Jesus, and of sin, eternal judgment,
and eternal life.
Let me repeat that for emphasis. There are not
multiple truths about these eternally central questions. There is only ONE
truth. And that truth is rooted in God’s love for all of humanity AND is
evidenced by His sacrificial offering of His Son Jesus as substitutionary
payment for our sins. No other religion portrays the Creator taking on human
flesh, living life as a real man, dying as a real man for our sins, and being
raised from the dead for our justification.
And that means ALL other religions, when held
up to the light of the Creator’s truth, ALL other religious are false, and their
satanic origin becomes clear as glass.
I don’t know how to be more clear.
The former Jewish pharisee was not ashamed of
the gospel. As many of you remember from my earlier sermons and Bible studies,
the word ‘gospel’ means in Greek: “Good news.” So, what is the good news of
which the apostle was not ashamed? To better understand what is the ‘good news’
– let’s first look at the ‘bad news’ – which makes the good news all that much
‘gooder.’
The bad news is this – Almighty Holy God has inflexibly deemed, “All have sin
and fallen short of the glory of God. He has declared, “There is none
righteous, no, not one.” (see Romans 3:10-12 and Romans 3:23).
The ‘all have sinned’ and fallen short of God's required
holiness applies to every one of the 8 billion people on this planet in 2024 –
including the hundred or so in this building right now.
Of course, and not surprisingly, most men and
women scoff at the idea that they are sinners who justly and rightly deserve
eternal punishment. Many of us think of ourselves as not-so-bad, especially
when we compare ourselves with sinners like rapists and murderers. But when we
compare ourselves with others, we demonstrate our total ignorance of the
infinite holiness of God. The sun itself, in all its noonday brilliance, is as
dark as night when placed next to God’s holiness. And because God demands our
holiness be as HIS holiness – without His intervention, we all are lost.
Listen: Jesus was not speaking in hyperbole when He commanded us, “Be ye
perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).
And listen: God's word tells us there is nothing ANYONE can
do to fix our terrible dilemma. Not our parents, not our pastors . . . no one.
Well . . . no one but the One who set the standard for
salvation in the first place. Listen to Paul again as he writes to the
Christians at Ephesus:
And
you were dead in your trespasses and sins . . . But God,
being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved
us, even
when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive
together with Christ. For by grace you have
been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it
is the gift of God; not as a result of works,
so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:1,4-5, 8-9)
The bad news is that without Christ we live helpless and
hopeless. And without Christ we die helpless and hopeless. Were it not for the
merciful and gracious intervention of God Himself, we are all under the
horrible condemnation of a just and holy Creator God.
That’s the bad news. But the ‘good news’ – the gospel which
Peter preached on that first Pentecost and of which Paul was not ashamed – and
of which neither should we be ashamed – is this: “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love
for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have
done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of
regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us
richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His
grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus
3:4-7)
Oh, may God bury this good news deep in our souls. When
we were helpless and hopeless, God did what no one in the universe could do. He
opened our blind eyes so that we could turn “from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God,
that [we] may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among
those who have been sanctified by faith in [Christ].’ (See Acts 26:18).
It was the gracious and merciful intervention of the Creator God who ‘rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the
kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13-14)
How – why – is anyone ashamed of THAT good news?
That GREAT news? That unparalleled, incomparable news? We can be born again,
receive a clean slate – and not just once in our lifetime when we come to Jesus
as our savior – but every day, every day, when we confess our newly committed
sins, we find His forgiveness such that He chooses to no longer remember those
sins! Surely, as Jeremiah told it: “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never
cease, for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23, NASB)
Oh! Be not ashamed of the gospel. Call its truths
what they are: Absolute and unchangeable. Not surprisingly, then, the first
recorded words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel are these: “Repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark
1:15)
It’s what Peter told the assembled crowd in that
second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent,
and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit . .
.”
And it is the message of repentance that forms the basis of Paul’s
words to the Christians at Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”
Please, do not fall for Satan’s deceptions spread
by men and women of high titles and degrees and popularity. God's truth
remains: Unless a person repents of their sins and receives by faith God's
promise of the remission of those sins through the sacrificial blood of Christ,
that person cannot ever, throughout eternity, ever enter heaven.
An absolute truth? And unchangeable truth? Yes. It is and forever will be.
We will come back to this text in Romans next
week as we celebrate Pentecost Sunday 2024.
No comments:
Post a Comment