Youth & Outreach Director, Hunter Newton, preached this message on May 18, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
So you notice in your bulletin, it says we’re going to be in the Book of Luke, and it says Pastor Robert’s going to be here, but he’s out sick this morning. Pray for him that he would get well. Pray for me, though. I’m excited. My preaching professor, Dr. Perry, was a very godly man.
I loved him and I loved his class. But he would always say if he was here, he’d be clapping with anticipation, not because of my message, but because he would say that emergency preaching allows no room for the preacher to get the credit, only the Holy Spirit. Amen. So let’s go ahead and give him the glory. As we get ready to approach God’s word, we’re going to be in Second Peter, Chapter two.
We’re covering all of that Second Peter, Chapter two. I apologize, I don’t have the Pew Bible number for you, but if you’re new to this whole church thing, you can go ahead and either ask the person next to you or a lot of Bibles have towards the front a table of content, and that’s second Peter is in the New Testament. Towards the back, second Peter 2, 122 is where we’ll be. Let me just kind of set a scene here.
When I was 19 years old, I went on a significant miss trip that changed my life. And God used it to form and shape me. It’s a country that’s still close to the gospel, but it’s in Eastern Asia. And it was a wonderful trip there for about a month. I loved it.
God used that to not only grow my heart for God’s people, but also my heart for the lost. But that’s. I hate to say that’s besides the point because that is really important. But one thing this country had was like a market system, like a bartering system. You could buy friends.
Believe it or not, we’re spending way too much money on stuff. You could buy a full iPad for $30. And so it was a barring system and people like. One of the gifts that I loved that I bought for my brother was this really cheap Rolex. Retail price of a Rolex, I think I looked it up.
It’s like $7,000. This one was eight. Okay, obviously we’re talking about knockoff goods there. One of the other things I bought for my dad was this Apple watch that shocked him every time he put it on.
And it was only in French, so it was, like, doubly confusing. That was $14.99. My first clue that this Rolex was fake, though, was that it was $8. Second clue was that the guy pulled it out of a Walmart grocery bag like in the middle. I didn’t even know you could do that.
And then third, like you just looked at the it was supposed to be it’s a genuine leather, but it started to peel like as soon as you looked at it the wrong way. And he still has it and it still works. Obviously that’s a really silly story and there’s plenty of ways to know that thing is not a genuine Rolex. And I think you probably can start to see where I’m going In order to know the right gospel Sorry. In order to spot a false gospel we must be well acquainted with the right gospel.
That’s our big idea this morning. Be certain of the right gospel. Be certain of the right gospel. That is something to be applied, something that we must do. That’s our big idea.
That’s what everything is going to be connected to. That’s our big takeaway. Be certain of the right gospel. And it doesn’t just happen. It’s important to know it, to get in our bones, to get in our guts.
Three ways that we are certain of the right gospel we look for common signs of a wrong gospel. And that’s rooted in verses one through eight. We next know the symptoms experienced with a wrong gospel. That’s verses 10 through 22. And the last really gospel tie in gospel nugget is found in verse nine.
That’s no the beauty or sorry, enjoy the beauty of the real gospel. So big idea. Be certain of the right gospel. Point one way. One way we be that we can be certain of the right gospel is to look for common signs of a wrong gospel.
We’ll get there in a second, but let’s read the text. 2nd Peter 2:1 22 God’s Word there says there were indeed false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved ways and the way of truth will be maligned because of them. They will exploit you in their greed with made up stories.
Their condemnation pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep.
Just a preface for verses four through six here. They probably have some questions on these. They’re not the main point of the text. They’re very important and if you have more questions, I’d be happy to talk to you about them after service. It’s just, it’s opening up a whole can of worms.
That’s one. It’s, it’s important to know, but I’m just saying we won’t be able to probably satisfactory cover everything but just verses 4 through 6. Just bear with me here. It says, for if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into hell and delivered them in chains of darkness to be kept for judgment, and if he didn’t spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others when he brought the flood on the world of the ungodly, and if he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly, he said, I’m sure we have questions on that. We’ll touch on it just briefly, but that’s probably a 30 minute conversation.
We continue in verse seven. And if he rescued righteous Lot, distressed by the depraved behavior of the immoral. For as that righteous man lived among them day by day, his righteous soul was tormented by the lawless deeds he saw and heard.
Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, especially those who follow the polluting desires of the flesh and despise authority. Bold, arrogant people. They are not afraid to slander the glorious ones. However, angels who are greater in might and power, do not bring a slanderous charge against them before the Lord. But these people, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed, slander what they do not understand.
And in their destruction they too will be destroyed. They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done. They consider it a pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. They are spots and blemishes, delighting in their deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery that never stop looking for sin.
They seduce unstable people and have hearts trained in greed. Children under a curse. They have gone astray by abandoning the straight path and have followed the path of Balaam, the son of Boser, who loved the wages of wickedness but received a rebuke for his lawlessness. A speechless donkey spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness. These people are springs without water, mists driven by a storm.
The gloom of darkness has been reserved for them, for by uttering boastful, empty words they seduce with fleshly desires and debauchery people who have barely escaped from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves in corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them. For if, having escaped the world’s impurity through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in these things and defeated. The last state is worse for them than the first, for it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy command delivered to them. It has happened to them.
According to the true proverb, a dog returns to his own vomit, and a wash sow returns to wallowing in the mud. This is the word of the Lord. So, big idea. Be Certain of the Right Gospel One way we can be certain of the right gospel is to look for common signs of a wrong gospel. So we’re rooted here.
This first point is rooted in verses 1 through 8. The text like this is intense, isn’t it? Like, I’m guessing, some of the imagery. The language here is startling. It’s not mincing words and verses one through eight, it talks about this these wrong gospels, these wrong things that are claiming to be true about Jesus, but they’re not.
If we accurately define the gospel, is Jesus in my place so I can take care of my sin? We can also define the gospel right by the good creation, destructive choice, deadly condition, gracious cure, and new creation. If we’re talking about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for us, then anything that’s even a fraction of a degree off will lead to being terribly off in eternity. To get the gospel wrong has eternal consequences.
The text here starts listing plenty of signs of typical gospels. These are also called heresies. That’s a church word for saying a false teaching. There are also whole books or whole sections of books in the Bible talking about the need to stand up to these false teachings, to these false gospels. The Apostle Paul gives us incredibly strong warning about false teachers in Galatians 18 9, both false teaching and false teachers, he says in Galatians 1:8:9.
But even if we or that’s done by Paul and the apostles, even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him. As we have said before, I now say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him. In other words, friends, it is tough to overstress how serious this is. The youth group students are probably sick of me saying this for now, but we’re going to keep saying it. Bad theology hurts people.
It’s wrong. It Leads us to try to strive for affection that we can never earn or breaking rules that don’t exist or have a wrong view and bad relationship with God. Friends Pastor Aw Tozer said, the most important thing about us is what comes into our mind when we think about who God is. Because every belief is, every action is rooted in a belief. I’m standing on the stage right now because I believe that it will hold me.
Every single thing we do is rooted in some sort of belief. So when we have a wrong belief, a wrong understanding about Jesus and his gospel, that’s going to lead to some terrible consequences. Some common signs of these wrong gospels it talks about lists a few here in the passage. It says they distort the truth. Right?
Very, very few wrong gospels are going to come to you and say, hey, I’m wrong. I’m going to lead to sin, death and destruction. If they do, they’re a very bad false prophet. But it’s a slight degree off, just a fraction of a degree off. An ancient heresy known as Arianism.
We said that Jesus was created and maybe some of us were like, yeah, it sounds right because he was born. But to say that Jesus was created is to say that he has not always been God and that’s to make him less than God. Just a fraction of a degree off has terrible, terrible consequences.
Another way that these gospel, another common sign of a wrong gospel is just lying to you to take money. Talks about that here in the passage and talks about like that’s common today still, isn’t it? Not every preacher who’s on television is trying to sell you something, but there are plenty that are. The scriptures also say we should call out false teachers like Kenneth Copeland Creflo$, Joel Osteen. Want your money?
There’s no promise in God’s word that if you give God $1,000, he’s going to turn into 10,000. There’s just nowhere that’s true that’s distorting and perverting the gospel.
People will make up stories, wrong things about who God is. These wrong gospels are human centered rather than God centered. And all of them are going to sound just close enough to be true. And if we’re being honest, sometimes we want some of these things to sound. We want part of it to be true.
And it’s often subtle, like it creeps in. Just whether it’s through a bad teaching or just like a cultural cliche, like a really common one maybe some of us have heard before is like, well, all things in moderation. It’s like sounds good. It’s a general cliche, but that’s not true. Like when I first came to know Jesus, like, I saw people be like, well, you got to keep Jesus kind of over in the corner like.
And don’t be like you. Don’t talk about religion at work, friends, we’re called to share Jesus with people. How can we keep this to ourselves? Cultural cliches to say. Or another one is just do what makes you happy.
No. Jeremiah 17. 9 says, the heart is desperately wicked. Who can understand it? Don’t follow your heart.
That will not go well for you. That will not go well for you.
But instead God wants to give us a new heart that’s satisfied in him. These wrong gospels are going to sound just close enough to the truth for at least a degree or two off. Maybe we don’t face quite the same exact false gospels, but I’m guessing a lot of things are similar to Peter’s time look for how do we. How do we stand against these things though? We look for where it’s off.
We knew that the Rolex was fake because we know what a genuine Rolex looks like, how it performs, how it looks, how it functions, how it it plays out. To do this, we must know God’s word. We must have a biblical worldview. We must test everything against the scriptures. I think about the Bereans in the Book of Acts.
They tested when they heard the report about Jesus, they tested the Old Testament. That would have been their scriptures at the time. They tested to see if this could be true. And it was.
I love being a part of the Evangelical Free Church of America because the battle cry of the early founders of our denomination was where stands it written? Where is that in God’s word? That must be our battle cry. Our heart too.
Some practical ways we have developed a worldview is we’re doing one today. We’re in church. We hear God’s word sung and proclaim. We must know God in his word. But I think one really practical thing that I think that evangelicals, just as a whole, at least in America, don’t do a great job of is we don’t have a lot of personal discipleship relationships.
We should do classes like the classes we offer here at Lake Wisconsin Bible Institute are incredible. You’d pay some decent money to get that good of a training elsewhere. Do those. But we must be personally involved in each other’s lives.
Find an adult of the same gender and ask them, somebody who you think is just spiritually more mature than you and say, will you help me follow Jesus. And they may be physically younger than us. Sometimes we need that think about just how life works. Somebody showed us how to walk. Somebody showed us how to eat food with a fork.
Somebody showed us how to do just about everything, how to read. Following Jesus should be no different. And if we follow. And so if we are in these discipleship relationships, if we are in these mentoring relationships with someone who’s maybe a little bit further along in their walk with Jesus, if we’re in these relationships, they will help us follow Jesus. And they will also point out what’s where.
We’ve maybe gone off center. I can think about the men who have discipled me in my life. Like, they have called me on the carpet and they say, hunter, that’s not true of the gospel. You’re believing a lie. But also the simple things like, hey, I’m changing my oil.
Do you want to just come over and talk? And it’s the side by side. It’s the following Jesus together that’s so wonderful. And so if we want to stand and look against and point out false gospels, it’s really easy to do that. If we have someone who’s a little bit more spiritually mature helping us do that.
We saw other people do the majority of things that we do in our life. Following Jesus should be no different. Find a trusted friend of the same gender and ask them to help you follow Jesus. And once a month is fine. The more frequent, the better.
Personal discipleship is really important. I can stay here, friends. I am not standing here because I went to seminary. I am standing here because faithful men have been careful to love me and call me on the carpet, but to encourage me where I need to be encouraged, they’ve shown me how to follow Jesus. That is one really powerful way that we can push back against false gospels.
Some easy signs to point out that Rolex. Coming back to it again, some easy ways. We knew that it was wrong. The cost was too low, pulled it out of a Walmart bag, and it was cheap materials. None of that’s true about a real Rolex.
None of these false signs are true about the real gospel.
To be certain of the right gospel, we must also know the symptoms experienced with the wrong gospel. To do that, we turn our attention to verses 10 through 22. To be certain of the right gospel, we can look for common signs of the wrong gospel, but also to know the symptoms that we will experience with the wrong gospel. Let’s just list some of those symptoms. The text here says, again, this is strong Language, it says, well, if a symptom here would say, well, following the desires of your flesh rather than the Lord, that’s something that’s gonna.
That’s gonna be rooted from a wrong gospel. If you’re following a wrong gospel, it says that it makes one like an irrational animal. It’ll lead to destroying good things, constantly looking for sin, living in a false freedom, and more.
And this is a strong language. And I don’t think that Peter’s writing here to make people feel like garbage, but he’s trying to help us see and understand just how serious sin is. It’s not something to be played around with. It’s not a trite thing. I think that even our.
The illustrations we use sometimes are a little bit faulty. Like if we. If maybe you’ve heard the illustration. Well, sin is missing the mark. That’s true, but it’s also so much more than that.
Think about it. Maybe this way. You maybe hear stories every once in a while on the news about people who have, like lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. As pets.
And then they break out and they hurt them. And yes, we’re sad that that hurts somebody, but are we surprised? Of course not, because that’s what that thing was meant to do. We shouldn’t be surprised that when we make a pet of any sort of sin, well, it’s just a little white lie. I spent a little bit too long looking at something on the Internet that I know I shouldn’t have.
Well, what’s the. Just cheating on my taxes. It’ll save me thousands of dollars, and the list goes on and on. But when we make pets and we play around with sin, that’s like playing around with an apex predator. That thing is meant to going to destroy you.
The. The book of James says that sin, when fully born, leads to death. It leads to destruction.
What Peter’s pointing out here is how absolutely devastating the effects of wrong belief can be. How devastating they are.
We said it already before, but bad theology hurts people. In verse 22, it says. It says it has happened to them. According to the true proverb, a dog returns to its own vomit, and a wash sow returns to wallowing in mud. It says earlier in verse 19, says that they promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them.
Just really bluntly, this lines up with what Ephesians 2 says. If you don’t know Jesus like a child, you’re a child of the devil. Like we were all children of wrath until we came to know Christ. We either serve the world in our flesh and the wicked one, or we serve Christ. And so these wrong gospels, these false gospels, a symptom of that is we’re going to think we’re living in freedom, but we’re hardly anything.
But that a world without order, a life without God, is, is not freedom. If somebody says, do whatever you want, then I’m going to do that. And that’s. I’ve tried that. Self help books can be really helpful, but self help, like, how am I supposed to help self when self is the problem?
If I feel that it’s little to nothing to sin, it’s not going to go well. It’s going to make a bumbling mess of my life. And maybe, maybe like not physically, like it doesn’t make sense sometimes why wicked people prosper. I mean, look at the Book of Job. Like wicked people prosper, but then righteous people suffer.
Look at Jesus. It doesn’t make sense sometimes.
I’m not going to sit here and say that sin’s not going to feel good in the moment, because it does. It’s very tempting. That’s why it’s tempting. But it’s fleeting. It’s momentary.
We are so tempted to mess around with sin because C.S. lewis says because we are so content to mess around with sin. This is somewhat of a paraphrase, but he says that we’re like little children in a slum and can tend to play with mud pies because we are unable to fathom the promise of God to have a holiday at sin.
If I believe a gospel that tells me to do what I want, I’m going to make a mess of my life. But the same way, if I try to believe a gospel that adds more than the Bible does, I’ll work myself to death trying to earn favor with God that He never required of me. The application here is again, really simple. The first two points. The application is really simple.
To combat these things, we must know the real thing.
Ephesians 17:14 gives us just some, a list of some of the symptoms rooted in the real gospel that we will experience if we are following Jesus. Ephesians 17:14. This is rich. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful.
God’s word there says, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. He made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him. In him we have also received an inheritance because we were predestined according to the plan who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory in Him. You also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed the Holy Spirit is a down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of his glory. Aren’t those wonderful symptoms, brothers and sisters?
We’re redeemed, forgiven recipients of grace. It says that if you know Jesus, it is not on accident. It says before the foundation of the world, God predestined that it would be so. That’s wonderfully good news. God knew what he was buying when he got you.
He doesn’t look at the blubbering message you’ve made of your life after following him sometimes and and say, oh man, I didn’t really know what I was getting into with this one. No, he knows us, he understands us. He bought us fully, completely, so that we can be sons and daughters of the king.
In John 15, Jesus promises that we’ll have joy if we know him, we’ll have joy, a joy that cannot be taken from us. Or the famous the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:2 22 through 23. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. It’s not a watermelon, it’s not a coconut. These are the fruit of the Spirit.
All of these things are pretty much the opposite of what we experience with wrong beliefs. Again, it’s fruit of the Spirit, not fruits, because there’s one Spirit that we drink from, one Spirit that we have. If we are growing in Christlikeness, these are things we’ll experience. And we’ll experience the Joy of John 15. We’ll experience the redemption, the forgiveness, the sealing of Ephesians 1.
All these things are promises that just what anyone will tell you that they want, like whether somebody wants to follow Jesus or not. They will say, I want to have peace, I want to have love, I want to have joy, I want to have these things you’re taught talking about. It’s another way we can be certain of the right gospel is to know these, know the symptoms that we experience with this right gospel. We also need to enjoy the beauty of the real gospel hidden in a in a chapter that’s admittedly it’s hard news. But it’s still God’s word.
It’s still profitable for teaching and reproof. But hidden in the middle of that is verse nine. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. Isn’t that the gospel, friends? The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.
What greater trial have we ever faced than one of sin and death? The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.
We’ve seen that being certain of the right gospel involves looking for common signs of wrong gospels, knowing the symptoms experienced with a wrong gospel. And we turn our attention here to enjoying the beauty of the real gospel. The Lord knows how to rescue the righteous. That is the gospel, friends. The Lord knows how to rescue the righteous who receive him by faith.
The Lord knows how to save those who have put their trust in him. Romans 4, 3 says, for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. This beautiful thing we call imputed righteousness. Christ’s righteousness being credited to our account.
I don’t know of better news that can be found than that. Because even our best works and God wants our good works. But Isaiah talks about even these good works are still filthy compared to what Christ has offered. That’s why we need to be clothed in his righteous garment that we can walk in the good news. We don’t obey God’s word to be accepted.
We are accepted by God by faith. Therefore we must obey. Compare it to the false gospels. The characteristics of this real gospel are wonderfully different. First off, it’s true.
There’s no deception. God’s not trying to pull a fast one on us. There’s no sneakiness going on here. It’s true. It’s all the way down to be believed, to be celebrated, to be enjoyed.
It’s also hopeful. There’s no eternal pain. There’s no increasing desire to sin. If you don’t know Jesus, the desire to sin increases and increases. Increases, right?
Because if you’ve dabbled with sin, you know that the better it is, is the more of it you have. But the more we come to know Jesus, the less we desire sin, right? What does the famous hymn say for and for the. Sorry? The famous hymn, Right.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
Knowing who God really is and the fact that he came to save us can only help. While bad theology hurts people, good theology can only help. Friends, I’ve never met a person who is suffering from over encouragement to Christ I’ve never met somebody who is just too satisfied in being a daughter or a son of the king. I’ve never met somebody who’s just like, you know, I have too much joy of the Lord. I’ve never met somebody who says, you know, I’m really suffering from an abundance of peace of God that surpasses all understanding not possible.
These things are both promised and delivered. In the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul writes that all of God’s promises are yes and amen in Jesus.
In John 15, Jesus says that he gives the gospel to us so that our joy may be complete. Friends, we can have that our joy can be complete if we’re in Christ. Only when we know the real gospel, though, can we enjoy it. And only when we know the ins and the outs of the gospel can we spot the fakes. And so I was talking about books of the Bible that push back against wrong teaching.
Jude 3, 4 is a wonderful short passage in a short little book. It says, jude three, four. Dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all. For some people who were designated for this judgment long ago have come in by stealth. Elsewhere in the Bible, they’re called wolves in sheep’s clothing.
It says they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ our only master and Lord. In other words, know this gospel and enjoy it. But be ready to call out false gospels. And it doesn’t always come from false teachers. It can be just a friend who’s just, hey, a little bit off.
Hey, come back to the right gospel. Come back to the true gospel. Be ready to always enjoy it, but be ready to defend it and know it well enough that you can spot what’s wrong, what’s false. We talked about some popular ways people try to mess with the gospel. But the real good news, the real good news does not need our help.
It’s better than we could have ever imagined or come up with. As people who are saved by this gospel, we should be so familiar with it that when we bleed, we bleed it out. We bleed out the good news of Jesus. When we’re squeezed, what comes out of us is this good news that we are so secure, so held in Christ, we should be so familiar, so consumed by it. The spying, the lie of a false teaching is easy for us as breathing.
Just really practically. A fake gospel can’t help when you suffer. There’s no hope there when life kicks you in the gut and it just won’t seem to stop and take those shallow breaths like God. When is this going to end? A false gospel, a man made one can’t help.
When, for one reason or another, you’re lying on the floor of a hospital room, sitting, sitting there in a puddle of your own tears.
That false gospel can’t help you.
When you get the call on the phone of the unexplainable, unimaginable happening. There’s no hope in these false teachings. There’s no goodness for us there. When the estranged child won’t call you back after 20 years of praying.
Or when the person you thought you could trust more than anything in the world, anyone in the world, does the unthinkable.
Or when any number of other myriad of scenarios happens. The gospel of try harder. The gospel of an ambiguous Jesus. The gospel of an uninvolved God, or the gospel of our own making. Or the gospel where Jesus never says hard things, cannot and will not help you.
Tim Keller writes in his book Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, and some of you want to know this to be true firsthand. It says there is no way to really learn how to trust in God until you are drowning.
Plenty of people have been broken by suffering, terribly broken. So what do you have to do in order to grow instead of being destroyed by your suffering?
The answer is that you must walk with God. And what is that? It means we must treat God as God. And as there, of course, that means we speak to him. Pour out your heart to him in prayer.
It means to trust him. But preeminently. It means to see with the eyes of your heart how Jesus plunged into the fire for you when he went to the cross. Friends, we know a God who knows what it means to suffer. He continues.
This is what you need to know so you will trust him, sick with him, and thus turn into pure gold in the heat. If you remember with grateful amazement that Jesus was thrown into the ultimate furnace for you, you can begin to sense him your smaller furnaces with you.
Amen. Praise be to God. That’s the incredible beauty of this real gospel, just the smallest sliver honestly of it. Because we’ll never plumb the entire depths of this wonderful gospel. Because no other ideology, no medication, no hobby, no great vacation, no perfect cut of prime rib, no amount of commas in our bank account can display and reveal such beauty, something that every human really desires and longs to be true.
These desires, these longings, are only Met in Christ. The good news, my friends, is if you know Jesus, these things, these thoughts, these promises, this person, this Christ is for you.
Be certain of the right gospel. We do that by spotting signs of wrong ones, knowing the common symptoms experienced with wrong ones, and by beholding the beauty of the real Jesus.
Disciplers, mentors can help us do this. Enjoying the symptoms of the true good news of God helps us do this.
And it’s the most important thing we’ll ever hear. That’s why it’s worth knowing for certain. It’s as serious as flourishing or spinning into death and destruction.
Let these truths of the real right good Gospel be what comforts us as we seek to know our great God and enjoy him all the more.
So we get ready for our final song. I invite you to remain seated, or you can invite you to stand, just however God leads you to respond. But take the time to do business with God. Maybe it’s just sitting and being quiet for a moment and saying, God, thank you for you, God, what is it that you have for me? Or maybe it’s the time just to sit and to listen to God’s people sing truths of him.
Whatever it is, I pray that we’re attentive to what God is leading to. How leading? How he’s leading us to respond today. Would you pray with me?
God? It’s good to know you. And it’s good to be certain of the right, real, true good gospel. What a gift. What a delight, what a promise, what a God you are.
We pray that we would that those of us who know you and enjoy you would leave these wrong gospels or these wrong actions rooted in wrong beliefs. We leave them and repent and turn to you and trust you. Not that it’s a whole new salvation issue, but it’s just God, we want to follow you and enjoy you all the more as we see the day of return of Christ Jesus approaching where we will not struggle with sin anymore. Help us to behold your right gospel. And for some in the room who have never beheld this right gospel, who have never professed with their mouth and declared with their heart that Jesus is Lord, I pray that they would see the beauty, the wonderful of this Jesus and they would confess and turn to embrace you and they would tell someone here about them.
But God, we thank you for your word and we pray that we would love you all the more as we behold you and as we be certain of this right, wonderful true gospel, it’s in Jesus name we pray. Amen.