PowerPoint

Jack Graham: There are many subjects that we address. Everything else is temporal. The gospel is eternal. That is why it is of extreme importance that we continue to be passionate regarding the gospel.

Guest Female: On today's PowerPoint, Dr. Graham brings a message about why the good news of Jesus Christ never gets old. Now, here's Dr. Graham with his message, The Supremacy of the Gospel.

Jack Graham: Take your Bible please and turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. It is God's gospel that we see throughout the pages of His word, penetrating, punctuating the word of God throughout the scriptures in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. It flows, this gospel, like a red river of redemption throughout the pages of God's word.

One of my ministerial pastoral heroes is Dr. W.A. Criswell, now in heaven. A number of years ago, he decided to preach through the Bible in one evening. He started about 7:00 in the evening and preached well past midnight. His subject, as he traced the scriptures—Old Testament passages to New Testament passages, Genesis to Revelation—his theme was The Scarlet Thread through the Bible.

Because it is the message of redemption, it is the story of salvation. It is the gospel of God, and we're going to examine together, discover together, the vast dimensions and depths of this gospel. Now, lest you think that this series is all about evangelism, I want to remind you that while we certainly believe that in proclaiming the gospel, we're going to see many people come to Christ, I want to remind you that the gospel is for believers as well as unbelievers.

It will take all eternity for us to plumb the depths of this great gospel of Christ, the good news. That's what the word gospel means. It means good news. In a world filled with so much bad news and in a bad-news world, thank God for His good news, the greatest good news a dying, desperate world has ever heard.

The word gospel, good news, is used over 90 times in the New Testament alone. There are many religions, there are many philosophical ideas, but there is only one gospel. It is the gospel of God. Paul declares this gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 4 with these words.

"Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For 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 to the scriptures."

Now listen closely because this is the gospel, simply and sublimely put. It is profoundly simple and yet simply profound. The gospel is the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No matter what else you may be saying, you're not declaring the gospel unless you're speaking of Christ and what He has done for us, His person and work.

The gospel, as I mentioned, radiates throughout all of the scripture. It is the sum and the summation of everything that God is saying to us in His word. The gospel—the death, the burial, the resurrection of Christ—describes these most important events in human history. That's why we say first of all that the gospel is primary.

Paul put it this way in verse 3: it is of first importance. He said, "Let me remind you of these things." Jesus gave us a permanent reminder in the Lord's Supper of the gospel: His body broken for us, His blood shed for us. Paul is reminding us. You see, Paul could never get over the gospel. It had been 20 years since he had met Christ on the Damascus Road, his life radically transformed from a revolutionary and a murderer to a redeemed apostle of God.

And yet, while it had been 20 years, he was still in love with Christ. He was still proclaiming the gospel. He was gripped by this gospel. He never got over it. It is of first importance. You know, teaching is not so much instructing as it is reminding. So we are to be reminded constantly of this of first importance. The gospel is not incidental; it is fundamental to our faith.

There are many subjects that we address from God's word and in God's church. We talk about marriage and family. We may talk about raising children. We may talk about ethical and moral issues. We may address the cultural landscape. We may speak regarding apologetics and defending our faith. We may speak of eschatology and those things which are to come, which is certainly a part of the gospel of Christ. But let me say that while all of these subjects are of extreme interest and vitality for the church and extreme importance, everything else but the gospel is secondary.

Everything else is temporal. The gospel is eternal. That is why it is of extreme importance that we continue to be passionate regarding the gospel. That's why at our church we are committed to declare this good news. The gospel at its center and circumference is Christ. So Paul is saying, "Listen up, pay attention to the gospel and never forget it."

Why? Because the gospel is not only primary, but it is powerful. It is the most powerful force on earth. No wonder Paul said, "I'm not ashamed of this gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes." How so? Power to save. Verse 2 says, "by which you are being saved." Saved from what? Sin. Sin is choosing my way over God's will.

The gospel is good news because of the problem of sin. Just as a jeweler might take a dark piece of cloth or velvet and lay it out and place a diamond there or a beautiful jewel to examine its clarity and its magnificence and its beauty, God places the gospel on the dark backdrop of man's sin. It is there that the gospel shines and shows the depths of our sin and from which we have been delivered. Our sins are the reason that Jesus died.

Now, sin is a huge problem. It's not just a little lapse in judgment that we may get over. The gospel shatters our rationalization regarding sin and reminds us that sin is not ignorance that can be corrected by education, nor is sin a social maladjustment that can be corrected by environment, nor is sin a myth or a mistake that can be corrected by good example. No, sin is so tragic, so damning, so vile that it takes the precious blood of God's only Son to forgive us of our sins.

Sin is described in the Bible as a defiance. It is man shaking his puny fist in the face of God and saying, "God, you're not big enough to make me believe," or, "God, I choose my way over your way." It is described as a defiance, a trespass against the laws of God. Ultimately, sin is against God. Sin may be against your family, you may sin against your church, you may sin against your friends, you may sin against your country, but ultimately sin is a defiance of God.

Sin is also described as a debt. A debt. The wages of sin is death. That is why Jesus paid a debt that He did not owe because we owed a debt that we could not pay. Sin is a defiance, sin is a debt, sin is a disease. A disease for which there is no cure but the gospel. Even our good deeds cannot measure up to the holiness of God. The scripture tells us that even our righteousness is as filthy rags.

The very best that we can do are like the filthy rags, and this probably referred to the rags removed from the leprous sores of a dying man. Wretched, vile. God hates unrighteous, evil, bad deeds, but God also despises self-righteous good deeds when these become a substitute for salvation in your life. Sin is a disease for which there is no cure.

Sin is a distance that separates us from God. God is holy and is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. So even when Jesus died on the cross and cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" even God's Son bearing the sins of the world at that moment was separated from the Father, forsaken of God. Sin is death. The wages of sin is death. It is a living death without God. Life without God, the separation of the soul, the spirit from God.

That's why so many people say things like, "If this is life, if this is living, why do I feel so empty? What is this emptiness inside of me? What is this hole that I try to fill with all kinds of things but I'm never satisfied?" This is sin. Sin may be popular, but it is an offense to a holy God. Sin may be pleasurable, but it is vile in the sight of a God and His throne in whose pleasure and fullness we seek. Yes, sin is the bad news that makes the good news so good. The good news: Jesus died for our sins.

Guest Female: You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message, The Supremacy of the Gospel. Be sure to sign up to receive Dr. Graham's daily video devotional on the seven words from the cross. This powerful study will remind you of the sacrifice Jesus made so that we can be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God. Dr. Graham will share a short devotional about the final words that Jesus spoke from the cross and what they mean to us today. To sign up, text CROSS to 59789. It's absolutely free to join, so text CROSS to 59789.

Right now, you have an incredible opportunity to help someone experience the hope and truth of Jesus Christ. And thanks to an exciting $150,000 matching grant, your gifts this month will be doubled to help proclaim God's word even farther through PowerPoint Ministries. And as our way of saying thank you, we'd love to send you Dr. Graham's book, Help, a powerful resource showing you how Jesus meets you in your struggles with strength, comfort, and hope. Text MAR to 59789 to give today. Again, that's MAR, M-A-R, to 59789. Now let's get back to today's message, The Supremacy of the Gospel.

Jack Graham: This was a voluntary death. Jesus said, "No man takes my life from me; I lay it down of myself." Jesus was not the victim of His circumstances, nor was He overpowered by His enemies, but rather He willingly gave Himself as a sacrifice. The voluntary death was a sacrifice and fulfillment of all of the sacrificial systems of the Old Testament, the bloody sacrifices of the temple and the tabernacle. All of these conditioning man to receive the ultimate sacrifice: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. Therefore when Jesus died, it was a voluntary death, a sacrificial death. But not only a voluntary death, it was a vicarious death. God demonstrated His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us as our substitute, in our place, in our behalf. He took our sins upon Himself. He bore our sins on the tree. This is vicarious death.

He suffered our shame, our sin, our sorrows and died. Isaiah, the prince of prophets, put it this way: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; and upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed." It is a voluntary death, sacrifice. It is a vicarious death, substitution. It is also a victorious death because on the cross, as our Savior, Jesus defeated the powers of sin and death and hell.

That's why we sing Victory in Jesus. But not only did Jesus die for our sins, but interestingly enough, Paul includes in the gospel message the fact that he was buried. He was buried. It was clear that He was dead and therefore buried in a borrowed tomb. Puts away all these shameful theories of Jesus just swooning on the cross or someone else was the one who died—some other Jesus, some other revolutionary. There are all kinds of wacky theories. They normally come out around Easter time. Somebody trying to explain that it really wasn't Jesus or that Jesus really didn't die on the cross, that it was some myth or some mystical thing or it was some secret plot or secret code.

No, the gospel means that Jesus died and He was buried. But not only physically true, this is a spiritual lesson because the Bible teaches us in this gospel that when Jesus was buried—now listen up, when Jesus was buried, this is of first importance—when Jesus was buried, our sins were buried with Him. We died with Christ and our sins are buried in the sea of God's forgetfulness. He remembers them no more.

There's a beautiful picture that teaches this and it's called baptism. Baptism. You know, when you baptize someone the Bible way, you put them all the way under the water. That's clear in the scripture. The very word baptize means immerse or to submerge. There are other methods of baptism that people have adopted and accepted over the years, but we believe that baptism is by immersion only for believers only.

We don't sprinkle babies or infants. We sprinkle no one because we believe believers ought to be baptized by immersion because it is a testimony of the very thing that Paul is talking about here about the burial of Christ. And then look at Romans 6, 3 to 5: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" That is, we identify with Him in His death, His cross.

"We were buried therefore with him in baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of Father, we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." So baptism pictures the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ.

When you bury somebody, you don't sprinkle a little dirt on them. You put them under. You know, I love that old preacher thing that says some people only come to church three times—when they're hatched, matched, and dispatched. Sprinkle a little water on them, sprinkle a little rice on them, sprinkle a little dirt on them, they're done.

No, baptism is a beautiful, powerful, persuasive testimony. It tells people to whom we belong and what we believe. That we belong to Jesus. We believe that He died for our sins according to the scripture on the cross, that He was buried and on the third day He rose again. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our spiritual identification with Christ, which is symbolized by the beautiful testimony of baptism. But the gospel is not only that He died and was buried, but that He rose again. Verse 4: "He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scripture, the scriptures."

The good news, the greatest good news the world has heard, came out of a graveyard, out of a tomb over 2,000 years ago. When Jesus rose, He gave us the potential, the possibility of having eternal life. Now this is vital, this is critical, this is of the most extreme and first importance. Every now and then you may hear someone say something like, "Well, it really doesn't matter to me." You may hear preachers and theologians say something around Easter time like this: "Well, it really doesn't matter to me if Jesus actually literally physically came out of the grave because of the ethical, moral teachings of Christ, because of the beautiful witness and the charge of Christ in the gospel. It doesn't matter if He really came out of the grave. The spiritual resurrection is what matters."

Friends, according to 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus is still in the grave, our faith is foolish, our lives are futile, our preaching is worthless. We have nothing to say, we have nothing to believe if Jesus is still in the grave. But what we believe is that on the third day He conquered sin and death and the grave. And this is the gospel. Romans 4:25: "Jesus who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification." This gospel is powerful to save, it is also powerful to secure. Because in verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 15, it says, "in which you stand." This gospel in which you stand. We stand on these truths.

We believe these facts more than intellectually; we believe them in our hearts, that Christ did all that was necessary for us to stand in the presence of a holy God. Our faith may be small, our faith may be weak, but we stand in Christ. Jesus never fails. We stand upon a solid rock. We may tremble on the rock, but the rock never trembles under us.

The gospel that saves us also grows us. Notice verse 2 says, "by which we are saved" or "are being saved." Present tense, active, continuous. And that is we are always being saved. We are kept by the same gospel that saves us. The same gospel that saves us keeps us. The same gospel that saves us grows us. And we're being made more and more like Christ. I have been saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved ultimately and finally in the presence of Christ.

And we'll be talking about what that means in this series. But I tell you that if you believe the gospel, that He who begins the good work in you, He will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Paul said, "I preached to you this gospel." It's important to live the gospel, to be salt and light in the world, but the gospel is not just a demonstration or a debate or a discussion, it is a declaration.

And we're not sharing the gospel unless we're sharing Jesus, His death, His burial, and His resurrection. Who He is and what He has done for us. Jesus is made known by the preaching of Christ and His gospel. Tell it, share it, explain it so people may receive it. This gospel is for every person. Everyone is included. It is all-inclusive. It is a universal message for the whole world to hear. The gospel is not the American gospel or the Western gospel or the white man's gospel. It is the world's gospel. It is the gospel for the world. God so loved the world. God so loved you that He gave His only Son.

Guest Female: You're listening to PowerPoint with Jack Graham and the message, The Supremacy of the Gospel. I want you to know that right now your support goes even farther to help share the hope of Jesus with people around the world. Thanks to a generous $150,000 matching grant, every gift this month will be doubled to help proclaim God's word through PowerPoint Ministries. That means you'll help reach even more people who desperately need truth, encouragement, and the gospel.

And as a heartfelt thank you for your generous gift this month, we'll send you Dr. Graham's book, Help, to remind you that you are not alone, your pain is not unseen, and God's peace is real. Text MAR to 59789 to have your gift doubled and request your copy today. Again, text MAR, M-A-R, to 59789. Be sure to sign up to receive Dr. Graham's daily video devotional on the seven words from the cross. This powerful study will remind you of the sacrifice Jesus made so that we can be forgiven of our sins and reconciled to God.

Dr. Graham will share a short devotional about the final words that Jesus spoke from the cross and what they mean to us today. To sign up, just text CROSS to 59789. It's absolutely free to join, so text CROSS to 59789. Pastor, what is your PowerPoint for today?

Jack Graham: The word gospel means good news and it's used over 90 times in the New Testament. So right away we can see that this is something important to God, and He wants you to understand that the gospel is the good news of the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, we can be talking about many spiritual things from scripture, but we're not declaring the gospel unless we are speaking specifically about who Christ is and what He has done for us.

Now let me say this. We might think that the good news of Jesus Christ is found only in the New Testament or the four gospels, but in reality the gospel message radiates throughout all of scripture. It is the sum and the summation of everything God is saying to us in His word regarding the plan of redemption for mankind.

And because the gospel—again, the death, burial, resurrection of Christ—that message of hope and salvation, because this gospel describes the most important events in human history, we should say that the gospel is of first importance just as the scripture tells us: of first importance in our lives as followers of Christ. That's how the apostle Paul put it. This gospel is first.

You see, Paul could never get over the gospel. His life was so radically transformed from a murderer to a redeemed missionary apostle of God who preached the gospel throughout the world. He was completely and utterly gripped by this gospel. So the gospel is not incidental to the Bible. It is in fact fundamental, the most important thing about our faith as Christ followers. There is nothing more important than this gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And even though we address other vital topics from God's word, such as marriage and family, ethical and moral issues, these are topics of secondary importance to the gospel. That is why it is so important for you to understand the gift that God has given you in Jesus Christ. And that is today's PowerPoint.

Guest Female: Remember, when you give a gift to PowerPoint, we'll send you Dr. Graham's book, Help. Just text MAR to 59789. And join us again next time as Dr. Graham brings a message about how God had plans for your salvation before time began. That's next time on PowerPoint with Jack Graham. PowerPoint with Jack Graham is sponsored by PowerPoint Ministries.