Pensamientos para hoy (afterthought for today)

The Gospel

Over the last several weeks we've explored some of the purposes of the church. We've seen that the church exists to worship God, to help Christians grow, and to meet needs in the community. Today I'd like to explore another important purpose of the church--to help people find God. Jesus says, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come (Matthew 24:14)."¹ The gospel of the kingdom is the message of Jesus. Primarily, it is the good news that through faith in Jesus we can have our sins forgiven.

The Apostle Paul talked about the gospel. Paul said,

I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. . . I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that all of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will no longer see my face (Acts 20:20-25).

Paul mentions five key words that help us to understand the Gospel. These five key words are: repentance, faith, gospel, grace and kingdom. We see some of these words again when Jesus called Paul to be a missionary. Jesus said to Paul,

For this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness . . . [to] the Jewish people and [to] the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.' So, King Agrippa, I did not prove disobedient to the heavenly vision, but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance (Acts 26:16-20).

Here the key words are: open their eyes, turn from darkness, receive forgiveness of sins, sanctified by faith, repent, and perform deeds appropriate to repentance.

God has given us this message to share with people who do not know Jesus. Every Christian is to be a messenger. The message we carry is the gospel--the good news of forgiveness of sins by faith in Jesus. We carry the message to those who are still lost in their sins. The Church of Jesus Christ must see this great task as one of its greatest responsibilities. We may do a great job of worshipping God, we may be great at helping Christians grow, we may have many programs to help the poor and suffering in our community, but are we sharing the Gospel? Let's pray together that God will help our church to take the Gospel to as many people possible. May God bless you as you faithfully carry the Gospel to your friends and neighbors.

Pastor Steve

March 26, 2011

¹ Matthew 24:14, NASB (New American Standard Bible). Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations taken from the NASB.

Jesus is the greatest teacher who ever lived. One of Jesus' techniques was to relate spiritual ideas to common everyday life. Pensamientos (afterthought) is an attempt to follow Jesus' method of teaching. Its title is in Spanish because we recognize the importance of multi-culturalism. We hope to translate some of these messages into Spanish soon.

Find more afterthoughts at Pensamientos (afterthoughts).

You can read recent sermons by Pastor Lorenz at Featured Sermon.