Sunday, June 23, 2013

Real Gospel Life ... comes out of death, and God says, "I will do it"


Audio: (44 sec.)


Real Gospel Life:

This is a story of genuine hope in the midst of genuine despair.  It's at that crossroads where the finality of death and the end of all our hopes and dreams and prospects, meets God's grace ... God's desire to bring life where there is no life.

That's the great paradigm of the Gospel.  Not some moralistic call to spruce yourself up, but it's a promise to a dying world:  I will bring life out of death.  I will do it, for your sake.  That's the Gospel.  For you!  Not, you do it.  God will do it.

--Pastor Mark Anderson


Audio: (< 2 min.)


Real Gospel Life:

That's what gripped Paul.  That's what changed him.  That's what transformed the early church.  That's what over the centuries has gripped people, in the power of the Holy Spirit ...

... is that God is not asking me to be something, He is giving me a life.  As a gift.  He's not calling me to be righteous.  He's declaring me to be righteous.  There is nothing for me to do, but to say with Paul, "I count everything else as lost, as worthless, in comparison to knowing "that", to knowing Him, to being known, by the God who brings life out of the dead ones." 

One of my professors once said to me (preaching professor), "Never forget when you stand on Sunday morning you're a dying man preaching to dying people.  Don't ever forget it.  Don't call them to some kind of moral project.  Don't you dare let them think that they have something to offer in comparison to the cross of Jesus Christ.  But take them to that cross, and there remind them of what He has done for them."  For that's the story.  Out of the death on the old wooden cross, came the life of the resurrection. From death to life, that's the christian paradigm. Not from vice to virtue.  It is to glory in the cross of Christ and what He has done for us, the grace He has given us, the forgiveness He has given us.

--Pastor Mark Anderson

To hear these quotes in more context, here is a 15 minute version of Pastor Mark's full sermon:
Audio: (15 min)

No comments: