“How do you come to know this? The holy gospel tells me. God began to reveal the gospel already in paradise; later God proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed it by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law; and, finally, God fulfilled it through His own beloved Son.”
So much of what we think is obvious is anything but obvious. Let’s say that you are teacher. You know how to work with a number of people at the same time. You know how to quickly identify a person’s emotional state. You know how to manage the expectations of multiple parties. You don’t consider this knowledge all that unusual; you have come to consider it obvious. You tend to think that everyone simply knows how to do all of that. They don’t. What you have learned in your years of teaching is not obvious to a plumber just as what seems obvious to a plumber is not obvious to you.
You tend to think that knowledge which is obvious to you is obvious to everyone; others tend to think that knowledge which is obvious to them is obvious to you; it isn’t. Knowledge only becomes obvious to you once you work with it regularly.
Churches tend to think that the way in which a man is saved from his sin is obvious. It isn’t. There are billions of souls alive today who never think in the categories of sin or grace. They suffer the consequences of sin, but they don’t understand sin. They are like a man riddled with cancer who knows something is wrong but has no idea what it is let alone how it can be treated. If you know what is wrong with humanity and how it can be treated, please recognize that you only have this knowledge because of the Scriptures.
God has made the way of salvation clear to us in His word and this is the only way anyone can learn it. That is the claim of this sermon: God has made the way of salvation clear to us in His word and this is the only way anyone can learn it.
We will see this in three points. First: the Bible tells me so. Second: the gospel in the Old Testament. Third: the gospel in the New Testament.
First: the Bible tells me so. There is a great deal of truth in the song, “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” You only know that Jesus loves you because the Bible tells you so. Astronomy can tell you a good deal about this universe, but it cannot tell you that the creator of this universe took on flesh and suffered on a Roman cross for the sin of his creatures. Biology can tell you a good deal about human life, but it cannot tell you that there was a man who was as fully human as you and yet fully divine and that this man’s love is the most obvious part of his biography.
Only Scripture can tell you what you must know regarding sin and salvation. As the Catechism puts it, “How do you come to know this? The holy gospel tells me.”
Christians are adamant that God has spoken and that we have His word in the form of the Scriptures. We say with Peter that Scripture is the result of men hearing from God and speaking by God, “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
The world, at best, is willing to listen to Scripture as one voice among many. The world will quote Scripture when it finds it useful for its purposes and ignore Scripture when it finds it useless for its purposes. The world thinks that Scripture is the wisdom of humanity about God.
The church thinks that the Scripture is the wisdom of God made clear to humanity. We Christians are people of revelation. We believe that the truths which we hold are not self-evident but rather had to be revealed. “He has revealed His word to Jacob, His laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation,” as Psalm 147 puts it.
We Christians submit to the authority of Scripture not because it agrees with what we think but because it agrees with what God thinks. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” Scripture is useful for teaching because everything it is reveals is true since everything it reveals comes from God. Scripture is useful for rebuking and correcting because it is not the ideas of men but rather the truth of God. Scripture is useful for training in righteousness because it is the word of the only one who is righteous.
Now Scripture is hated because it claims this authority. People would have no problem with the Bible if it claimed to merely contain wisdom. People would have no problem with the Bible if it claimed to merely contain comfort. People have a problem with the Bible because it claims to be the authoritative word of God to humanity. Scripture claims that to disagree with it is to disagree with God and that to agree with it is to agree with God. This is the reason that Jesus felt no need to argue with Satan beyond simply quoting Scripture and saying, “it is written.” God said it and that settles it.
We humans can know God’s mind because God has revealed it in His word. Now this is not a reason for arrogance on the part of the church as if we could look down on those who do not know what we know. We only know it because God has spoken to us. What Paul told the Corinthians is certainly true for us, “what makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”
We only know what God thinks because He has revealed it and we must be humble about our understanding of this word. It is true that, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart,” but that doesn’t mean that your or my understanding of it is always perfect, sure, and right. This is one of the reasons there is theological education. This is one of the reasons that there is a plurality of elders. This is one of the reasons that we need each other to help us understand what we have misunderstood.
You don’t want to misunderstand what God has said. You don’t want to misunderstand the gospel. God has taken pains to make the gospel plain. He has made it plain in both the Old and the New Testaments. Please don’t imagine, as many have, that the Old Testament is the book of a god of wrath and the New Testament is the book of a god of love. The way of salvation is clear in both. The gospel is clear in both.
We would not know the way of salvation were it not for this revelation of God. He speaks in the Old Testament. That is our second point: the gospel in the Old Testament.
Some well-meaning Christians seem to think that the gospel of Jesus Christ was God’s plan C. They assume that what we see in the Garden of Eden was plan A and when that failed, God formed the nation of Israel and gave them the law as plan B. When that failed, He threw up His hands and sent Jesus.
The reality is quite different. The incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God was the plan from the beginning. He is the, “lamb who was slain from the creation of the world,” as Revelation puts it. The Catechism explains, “God began to reveal the gospel already in paradise; later God proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed it by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law.”
Almost immediately after the fall into sin God communicated His plan to send a man to destroy the work of the devil. God didn’t say that He would teach the people ten ways to defeat the devil. He said that He would send one man to destroy the work of the devil. The people of God awaited this son of Eve and the gospel of Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy back to Adam and Eve to make clear that the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth is the story of this man who destroys the work of the devil.
God promised the gospel to Abraham. He told Abraham, “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.” The book of Genesis spends so much time focusing on Abraham and Sarah’s infertility because it was by their lineage that this promised salvation would come. Looking back on this promise, Jesus told the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”
God made this coming of the Christ clear to Moses. He told Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.” Jesus made clear that he was this prophet and that he spoke the very words of God. To listen to Jesus is to listen to God.
God instituted the sacrificial system as parable of the cross. Jesus is the Passover lamb who was slain so that death might pass over God’s people. Jesus is the offering that was made on behalf of the sin of the people. Jesus is the high priest who offers not an animal but himself for the sins of the people. As Hebrews puts it, “The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
The kingship pointed to Jesus. The people of Israel wanted a human king so they could be like the nations around them. This was abhorrent to their leader Samuel because to desire a human king was to reject God as king. God gave them a human king and then in time became this human king in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He gave them a human king, as they asked, by giving them a human king who was also God, the king whom they rejected.
The temple was a parable for Jesus. The temple was the meeting place between God and man. Jesus is the meeting place of God and man. This is why he could say, “I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.”
Prophet after prophet spoke of the coming Christ. Micah prophesied, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past.” That is the Christmas story. That is the story of a baby who was older than the distant past.
Isaiah spoke of this incarnation. He said, “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. And the government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Those titles are both human and divine. You don’t call any mere mortal Everlasting Father or Mighty God.
Zechariah made clear how this coming king would be greeted. “Rejoice greatly, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey – even on a donkey’s colt.” That was written hundreds of years before Palm Sunday. The Jews are still waiting for that king to come riding in on a donkey. May God give them eyes to see that he has already come.
Isaiah made clear that this coming Christ would also be rejected, “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” That is certainly how the disciple whom Jesus loved saw the situation; he wrote, “he was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
Zechariah made clear that the God who pours out His Spirit is the God who is pierced. “I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.” Peter heard these pleas for mercy firsthand when the Jews were cut to the heart at his proclamation of Jesus whom they pierced; they asked Peter, “what shall we do to be saved?”
The gospel is all over the Old Testament. The Jews knew this. This is why, as Jesus told them, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life.” They knew that their Scriptures made the good news of salvation clear and yet it wasn’t clear to them. “These are the very Scriptures that testify about me,” said Jesus, “yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
Those Jews knew their Scriptures, but they missed the gospel. It is very possible for you sitting here tonight to know your Scriptures and miss the gospel. We’ve seen that Scripture makes the gospel clear, but you must be receptive to the gospel.
You can know the gospel quite well and remain unsaved. Doctrinal knowledge doesn’t save. Faith saves. If you know that Jesus died on a cross, you must believe that his death is what your sin deserves. Your sin is heinous as is mine. It demands hell—either for us or for Jesus. You aren’t saved by merely knowing information about the cross. You are saved by being crucified with Christ. You lose your life. You gain his life.
The gospel was quite clear in the Old Testament but so many of those who knew only the Old Testament chose not to believe in Jesus when he stood before them. I want to make clear that they chose not to believe in him. If you do not have faith in Jesus, you are choosing not to believe. Those people knew enough to recognize Jesus for who he was. Some of them didn’t recognize him because they loved sin too much. That might be you. Some of them didn’t recognize Jesus because they wanted to retain the illusion that they were in charge of their lives. That might be you. Some of them didn’t recognize Jesus because they cared more about their own expectations than they did about the power of God. That might be you. If you are choosing not to put your faith in Christ, please consider why you are doing so. Please take your own soul as seriously as Jesus did.
Now you have access to far more knowledge about the gospel than the men and women who only had the Old Testament. You have the New Testament. That is our third point: the gospel in the New Testament.
The book of Hebrews makes the difference between the Old and New Testament clear, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.”
We have the New Testament. We have the good news of what Jesus has done for sinners like us. We have four gospels detailing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That is 89 chapters for which Moses and Isaiah would have given anything to read. We have one book outlining how the gospel spread throughout the known world. You can read and see how men and women just like you and just like your neighbors responded to the good news of Jesus. You have 21 letters written by Jesus’ apostles to the churches. This is 21 opportunities to hear God speak to people who have struggles and joys just like yours. You have one revelation describing what has happened, what is happening, and what is yet to come.
These 27 books bend over backwards to make the gospel clear. “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” “Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” “God loved the world in this way: He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.”
The New Testament makes clear how God delivers humanity from sin. There were prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the incarnation and the cross but here in the New Testament everything is made painfully obvious. I beg you to read it. If you have not read the New Testament, read it. If you have read the New Testament, read it. “Tell me the story of Jesus,” wrote Fanny Crosby, “write on my heart every word; tell me the story most precious, the sweetest that ever was heard.” That woman wasn’t merely sentimental. She knew first-hand something that so many people only know second-hand. You need to ask yourself if you really do think this is the most precious story anyone could ever know.
This is the story of one man. The gospel is work of one man. When you understand the good news of salvation, the gospel, you are struck by the fact that it is all the work of Jesus. He did not leave a program for us to implement. He did not merely leave an example for people to follow. He left a finished work for people to enter. This is why he said with his dying breath, “it is finished.” He did everything. What you need to do is believe this good news that Jesus died to save sinners of whom you are most certainly one.
When you do, remarkable changes will occur. You will no longer be a slave to sin; you will be a slave to righteousness, and you will find that this is true freedom. You can be free as Jesus is free. You will come to see that the way of life the New Testament describes is not something you must manufacture or even something you can manufacture; it is something that wells up within you because you no longer live by you own willpower but by the power of the Holy Spirit. You will find that you have hope. You will find that you love.
This is all the work of the gospel in your life. Jesus came so that you can have this sort of life. As he put it, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
If this life is yours, you know that you did nothing to deserve it. You know that it is a gift. If this life is not yours, it can be. You don’t have to earn it which is good because you couldn’t earn it. None of us can. If we could, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die. However, Jesus did die for all who would believe, and he did so out of love. “God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That is not obvious. God made that clear to you. Jesus loves you - this you can know for the Bible tells you so. Amen.