The Unchanging Truth

Announcer: Welcome to The Unchanging Truth, the verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Jerod Gilcher, Lead Pastor of Christ Community Bible Church in Arlington, Texas. Through the living and active Word of God, The Unchanging Truth exists to encourage your soul, transform your life, and help you trust and treasure Christ as Redeemer, Savior, and King. Now, opening the Scriptures and proclaiming the truth that never changes, here is Dr. Jerod Gilcher.

Dr. Jerod Gilcher: The God in whom you believe and love and who saved you by His grace is a talking God. God is a talking God. What I mean is that one of the fundamental ways that God moves His plan and saves His people and rules the world is through talking, through speech, through words, through declaration, and through proclamation.

You think about it. You open up the Bible, and the first thing we see is that God spoke. "Let there be light." By the Word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth, all of their host. He upholds the universe by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3).

And then you think about that declaration in the Old Testament 1,900 times, over 1,900 times: "Thus says the Lord." Which means that God primarily reveals Himself through speech, through words that are spoken and proclaimed. In fact, the speech of God is so central to the plan of God that the very name of His incarnate Son, when He sends Him into the world, is the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Bible is clear about this. God speaks, and a universe appears. God speaks, and He saves. God speaks, and He judges. God speaks, and He delivers His people. God speaks, and He reveals who He is in the splendor of His glory.

My point is very simply this: When we get to the Great Commission and the church and the reaching of the nations and the saving of lost souls, absolutely nothing has changed. The spoken Word of God is still how the plan unfolds. That's exactly what we see in our text this morning. How people get saved from sin and delivered from hell and reconciled to God is through the proclamation of a message called the Gospel, which Paul calls the power of God.

And you know the text, don't you? "I am not ashamed of the Gospel. Why? For it is the power of God, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." There it is. The Gospel is the power of God to save and redeem and deliver, which means the Gospel doesn't need help. It doesn't need additions. It doesn't need recharging, modifications, or corrections. No, all you need to do is push the detonation button of the Gospel, and it has the power in itself not to kill or destroy but to bring the dead to life and reconcile sinners back to God.

And here's the thing about verses 16 and 17 in chapter one. These two verses are the thesis statement to the entire letter. They are the thesis statement to the entire letter to the Romans. What that means is that everything after verses 16 and 17 is meant to explain verses 16 and 17. The Gospel is the central theme, and everything after to the end is the unfolding, the exposition, and the declaration of the Gospel.

And you understand the Gospel is words. It is a message. It is a declaration, a proclamation, the very means of God to save the elect and bring salvation to the ends of the earth. And if you are saved here this morning, that is exactly what happened to you. You read words. You heard words. And those words, like light, pierced the darkness of the soul. Those words, like a hammer, shattered the heart of stone. Those words, like creation, brought life into existence where it did not previously exist, and you got saved.

My question for you this morning is: How do you feel about those words? What are the implications of knowing and having a message like that? The Gospel is good news. Do you know why it's good news? Have you mastered the message that brings life to the dead?

Let me ask you this: What are you willing to risk to make that message known to the lost? What is it worth to you? What are you willing, or what are you not willing, to lose for the sake of that message? And furthermore, what do we not believe when we are ashamed of that message? Now don't get me wrong. This is not a "you should go evangelize" sermon or an urgent proclamation to declare the Gospel to the lost. It's more than that.

It is a call to know and to love and to believe so deeply in what the Gospel is that you cannot help but tell people of the God who became man for us and for our salvation. Because words are the way, the message is the means, and proclamation is the path. So let's go to the text. The thesis and purpose of Paul's letter to the Romans. I have half sheets; they are in between those two sets of double doors either way.

Here is the roadmap of where we are going this morning. I want you to see two reasons to be eager and unashamed of the Gospel of Christ. Two reasons to be eager and unashamed of the soul-saving, life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is where we are headed. Reason number one: First, the Gospel is the power of God to save. The Gospel is the power of God to save. And that is reason enough to be eager and unashamed. The Gospel is the means by which sinners come to be saved.

And you remember, I know you know why Paul wrote this letter to the Romans, don't you? It is 16 chapters of staggering theological treasure designed to thrill this church with the riches of the Gospel, to make them fluent in the Gospel, familiar with the Gospel, and gripped with all that God has done in Christ to save ruined sinners from despair. When you are gripped by the Gospel, you are then more equipped to proclaim it.

The more compelled you are, the more courageous you are. The more fluent you are, the less fearful you become. Do you see? That's what Paul's doing. After his introduction in verses one through seven, Paul reveals his heart in verses 8 through 15, and not even just his heart, but why he wrote this letter in the first place. Look at verse 10. He says, "I am praying for you. And I am praying that by the will of God, I may at last be able to come to you." Why? Verse 11: "For I long to see you, that I may impart some spiritual gift to you."

"I have a gift for you," he says. And he calls it a spiritual gift, meaning a gift by the Spirit's power, a gift that would give spiritual power to their souls. And we saw last week that that gift is none other than preaching. Preaching is the gift. Look at verse 14: "I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. Thus, for my part, I am eager to preach the Gospel to you who are in Rome."

There we see the two passions of Paul working together. Verse 14: "I am under obligation." Verse 15: "I am eager." I must preach, and I get to preach. I have to preach, and I want to preach. Woe is me if I don't preach the Gospel, and I can't even believe that I get to preach the Gospel. Do you see? Now the question is why? Why must Paul preach? Why does he get to preach?

The answer is given in verse 16. "I am compelled and eager to preach the Gospel. Why? For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." And there it is. Paul was under obligation and eager simply because he was not ashamed of the Gospel. "I am not ashamed," he says. And that's, of course, an understatement. Not only is he not ashamed, he is the opposite of that, isn't he?

Unashamed means unapologetic, not afraid, courageous, bold, compelled, undaunted, and convinced by the power and message of the Gospel. We feel shame when we feel like a failure, don't we? When we feel inferior or foolish, or when we feel deceived. When something we trust turns out to be a hoax, or when something we hope in has a defect that disappoints us or shows how stupid we were to have put our trust in that.

The Gospel has none of those things. There is no defect here. There is no flaw here. There is no weakness here. I mean, sure, you could be ashamed of it. You could be afraid to proclaim it. You could be tempted to change it. You could not believe that it is the power of God to save sinners, but that is not the fault of the Gospel. Now, so convinced was Paul that the Gospel was true, and not even just true, but alone had the power to save the souls of men, that being hated and imprisoned and tortured and death were worth it.

Undaunted by any of that, Paul could walk into pagan villages with all their superstition and endure their mockery for the message, couldn't he? Paul could stand before the greatest intellectual minds on the face of the planet with all their philosophical power (Acts 17) and destroy their speculations. Paul could face tyrannical kings and Roman guards and hostile Jews and hear all of their opposition and objections and know that the Gospel has the wisdom and the power to crush them all.

Paul's entire life was filled with opposition, filled with hatred, filled with attempts to make him feel ridiculous, and yet the great apostle remained unmoved. There is no shame in this. There is no shame in what Paul calls the Gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). There is no shame in what he calls the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God (1 Timothy 1:11). There is no shame in this.

And look at the reason why Paul was unembarrassed by the message. Notice: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel. Why? For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." There it is. The Gospel is the power of God to do what exactly? To save sinners. To bring salvation to sinners. I mean, you understand what he just said, don't you? Paul just said that the means, the method by which God reverses spiritual death and awakens the soul and opens blind eyes and overcomes all hard-hearted resistance and brings a soul to faith in Christ, is through the message of the Gospel.

It does that. Words do that. That is astonishing, isn't it? The very power with which God created the cosmos and made the stars and upholds the universe and parted the Red Sea and raised the dead and calmed the storm and healed lepers with a single touch is the very power of God channeled through the means of a message that is preached. We would have less power if we had the launch codes for nuclear weapons.

The Gospel is called good news, after all, which is a dramatic understatement. It is not just good news; it is good news of great joy that although God does not need us and is in fact estranged from us because of our God-belittling sins, He has made a way through Jesus Christ for us to drink at the river of His delights. What is the Gospel? The Gospel is the answer to the greatest dilemma facing the human race, which is: How do hell-deserving sinners get reconciled to God as the treasure of their souls?

The answer is the God who became man for us and for our salvation. That is the power of God to save, which of course raises the question: What is salvation? What does it mean to be saved? We talk about salvation all the time, and we should, but what is salvation? Salvation is all of the blood-bought blessings predestined by the Father and purchased by the Son. That's salvation.

The word salvation is a summary way to describe all of the riches of redemption purchased by the ransom price of Jesus Christ. Salvation is a vault of treasure, and every single individual aspect of salvation is a gold bar that makes what salvation is what it is. Regeneration, that's a gold bar. Propitiation, that's a gold bar. Forgiveness, imputation, justification, adoption, reconciliation. What are those? Gold bars of redemption. And added together, what do you have but the priceless treasure of eternal salvation? And that is what the Gospel has the power to give.

Maybe you think, okay, if that's true, the message is the means and the proclamation is the power to save sinners, well then why is there not more success? Not many people seem to believe this. More people disbelieve it than do believe it, and so therefore maybe Paul's a little overconfident. Maybe there is cause for fear and shame because the Gospel is the power of God to save some of the time.

To which we say, that depends on how you look at it. Even more than that, it depends on your theology of sovereignty, doesn't it? The Gospel, the power of God, isn't a gun full of blanks mixed with some live ammo. It's not that. God's power isn't some gamble or roll of the dice; maybe we'll get lucky today. No, the power of God is focused like a laser. It always does what God wants.

Or put it this way: The power of God is the means by which He achieves everything He predestined before the ages began. And even then, He chose some from every nation and He gave them to His Son, for whom He would die and purchase with His blood. The point is, the Gospel saves every single person God intends. Or to put it an even better way, the Gospel saves every person God elects.

Which means election does not make evangelism meaningless. It guarantees that our evangelism cannot possibly fail, because all we need to do is go out there and find them by indiscriminately preaching the Gospel to everyone. Do you see? What that does is free us. It frees us from doubt and from fear and from shame.

I mean, you remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:18. He says, "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are the called, it is the power of God." You see, beloved, we just don't care if the world thinks the Gospel is ridiculous. We don't care. It is the power of God to save. Many will reject, some will believe, the elect will believe, and our job is simply to preach. It is simply to proclaim a sinless, crucified, risen, returning Redeemer and just let the chips fall where they may.

Let me ask you this. Put you on the spot here. Are you ashamed of the Gospel? Silent about the Gospel? Do you ever feel the temptation to spice the Gospel up a little bit? Jazz it up just a little bit? Make it sound more credible, more scientifically plausible, less wacko to a 21st-century postmodern culture? Do you ever try to cover up the scandal of a bloody cross, which shows sinners to be exactly what they are, namely sinners who need a Savior?

Oh, beloved, who has believed our message? Who loves and believes the Gospel we proclaim? Precious few, hardly any. But in the end, it doesn't matter. It doesn't move us at all because we are not after their approval. We are not after their acceptance, nor are we even after, ultimately, their friendship. We are after their souls. And only the message of a mutilated Savior is the means to bring them from death to life.

But you have to believe it. So Paul says, doesn't he? "The Gospel is the power of God to everyone who believes." Just because the crucifixion happened doesn't change anything about the status of your soul. You have to hear and comprehend and agree and yield to the message. You have got to believe. And yet the question is, what does that mean? What is faith?

It is one of those well-trodden words that we talk about all the time: "You have got to believe, you have got to have faith." And we should use that word, but we have got to define that word. What is faith? Faith is not just believing what you cannot see. This is not mere intellectual agreement with a few historical facts. There are historical facts, but it is not just that. Rather, authentic saving faith is these three things. Authentic saving faith is desperation, it is admission, and it is submission.

First, faith is desperation. Faith is despair in your worthless works to save you where you cast yourself alone on Jesus Christ for all of His redemptive achievements. Number two: Faith is admission, where you admit that the only contribution that we have to our own salvation are the sins that need to be forgiven and the guilt that needs to be atoned. "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. Naked, come to thee for dress. Helpless, look to thee for grace."

And then number three: Faith is submission. Submission to the one with all authority, who alone satisfies the deepest longings of the soul. That is faith, where it is desperation and admission and submission to Jesus Christ as Lord and God and King and Savior and treasure of the soul. The question is, is that the kind of faith that you possess?

Announcer: Thanks for joining us for The Unchanging Truth, the verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry of Dr. Jerod Gilcher and Christ Community Bible Church in Arlington, Texas. At Christ Community Bible Church, we exist to prize, portray, and proclaim the supremacy of Christ as we trust in His Word and wait for His return. We hope today's teaching has encouraged your soul and helped you trust and treasure Christ as your Redeemer, Savior, and King. If you're in the DFW area and looking for a church home, join us for worship Sunday mornings at 10:30. To learn more about the mission of the church, meet the pastoral staff, or plan a visit, go to ccbiblechurch.com. You'll find ministry services and additional teachings there as well. Just click on the resources tab to get started. That's ccbiblechurch.com. Join us again next time as we open the Scriptures together and proclaim the truth that never changes. This has been The Unchanging Truth.