Sermon Cloud

Three Legged Stool

This week and the next two we’ll be working off the conviction of a three-legged stool.  Without one of the legs, as a community of God’s people, we aren’t going to be stable.  We’ll come crashing down at worst, and at best we’ll constantly have vertigo because we’re imbalanced.

The three legs are: Gospel, Community, and Mission.

I want to be very, very careful so as not to confuse the significance or primacy of the Gospel by putting this leg next to community and mission.  However, I don’t think you have clearly understood the Gospel and what it accomplishes and its results without community and mission. 

The goal of the Gospel is to create a Christ-treasuring community that is empowered by the Gospel for purpose of mission together.  It is how God has chosen to show off His glory and make His grace known to our hurting and broken world. 

These always go together. They are never to be pitted against each other into either/or categories.  It is always yes to all three. 

Like a California roll, wasabe and soy sauce, or Nascar, mobile homes and mullets—they are never to be separated.  The only make sense together.  So for these messages we want to show how a church looks when all three are understood biblically.

The History of Good News

A long time ago, before the first humans walked on the earth, there was an angel called Lucifer.  Now he is known by many names—Satan, the Devil, the Accuser—but then he was simply Lucifer.  It means “light bearer.”  Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the angels and his glory and beauty shined brightly in God’s presence. 

But it was not enough for him, he became jealous of God.  Exactly what happened is unknown to us.  It’s become the stuff of myth and legend over the centuries.  But as best as we know, it went something like this:

One day Lucifer led a rebellion against God.  His demanded to be equal with God.  He rejected God’s love and he rejected God’s glory, the very glory that made him so beautiful.  But God alone is God.  No one can take His place.  So Lucifer was thrown out of God’s presence.

Once he had been the closest to God as the light bearer, now he became the Prince of Darkness.  Once he lit up heaven, now he only rages against God.

It was the beginning of a battle that continues to this day.  Lucifer’s first act was to get the angels that he once directed to glorify and praise the beauty of his God, to leave him and join him in his campaign of envy and hatred towards this God.  A third of them chose to follow Lucifer and were cast out of God’s presence.    

His next act was to get newly created humanity to become suspicious of the goodness of their God and leave the God that loved them.  He wanted them to switch sides and join in his rebellion.

This is what we know for sure about the story:  In the first days that humans walked on the earth, Lucifer came to them in the form of a Serpent.  God had made the first home of man and woman in a beautiful garden.  It was a place of security, peace and all the provision they would need.

He invited them to willingly know Him and trust Him by giving them a single command.  He told them not to eat of only one particular tree in the Garden.  But the Serpent came to the woman and said, “Did God really say that you must not eat of any of the trees in the Garden?” 

By doing this, he twisted what God actually said and made the woman doubt God’s word and made God out to be a tyrant.  God had given them everything, but the Serpent accused God of holding them back. 

In confusion and doubt, they believed the Serpent and switched sides and joined the rebellion of Lucifer. 

Many believe that because God promised death would come to Adam and Eve if they rebelled against Him, it should have been the end of the story.  God could have confined humanity to hell along with Lucifer and brought the curtains of history to a close.  But God is patient, loving and gracious as well as holy, righteous and just.

He made a promise to start a new humanity.  He said to the Serpent, “I will put hostility between your seed and her seed.  He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” 

This promise was good news to a fallen and broken humanity.  It was a promise of a battle that would be won by God and it would be won through the seed of the woman. 

This Gospel promise was a call to battle.  God created hostility between the Serpent and the woman, between Satan’s people and God’s people.  And in this conflict Satan would harm God’s people but God would send a champion to come and snap the neck of the Serpent and crush him and his rebellion.    

Now, we fast forward the story many hundreds of years.  The promise has grown from seedling form to a full-blown battle strategy that the prophets have been spelling out for centuries. 

By the time Isaiah the prophet spoke on behalf of God, we knew that the Seed promised to Eve was going to be born of a virgin, would be no less that God himself coming as a man, and this man would be the promise of the good news.

He would come and crush Lucifer and his people, but in this battle the promised One would be stricken by the Serpent.  He would have to give up His life for the sake of all those that God was making His very own.  He would be brutally beaten to fulfill the promise of God.  He would suffer greatly.  But He would win and the promise would be fulfilled and the enemies of God would be able to switch sides and become the children of God once again.  The offspring of God would be victorious against the offspring of the Serpent.

Death would no longer win.  Evil would not triumph.  And all that is wrong with the world that God made right would be made right again. 

When we come to the New Testament we see the Gospel story fully explained as we’re called into it.

The Importance of Story

This story shapes our life.  How we see ourselves fitting into this story is how we make sense of this world and our place in it.  It’s how we connect the various experiences we have and it’s how our identity is shaped. 

When we gather to talk about the Gospel, I pray we don’t merely rattle it off as a set of disconnected facts where we expect others to fill in the narrative blanks.  The problem is that we already fill in the narrative gaps and that’s what causes confusion. 

The Gospel is the true story of the world that is for the whole world.  It is not simply a collection of jumbled facts, but rather is a unified and comprehensive story that is declared as true for the whole world.  That’s why we call others to believe it.  It isn’t just because it works for you or for me, it’s because it is true for everyone. 

And if it’s true then it has power.  If it’s true it can change me.  If it’s true I can trust it, even when I’m struggling. 

If the Bible is the grand narrative and true story of the whole world that calls all men to believe it, then the interpretive key to understand any part of it is the Gospel.  Without the Gospel, the Bible would be a loose and disconnected bunch of stories that have no central meaning or purpose.

So, let me try to give the best summary I can to this glorious and true Gospel.  

The Gospel

Ok, so the first leg of this stool is the Gospel.

Because the Gospel is the power of God (Romans 1:16) and is of first importance (1 Corinthians 15:3), I’ll try to give a gospel summary and then we can start to talk about it’s implications for our shared lives.

“Jesus Christ, God’s promised Rescuer and Ruler, lived our life, died our death and rose again in triumphant vindication as the first fruits of the new creation to bring forgiven sinners together under His gracious reign as His Kingdom People.”

Jesus Christ…

It would seem obvious that the Gospel would be about Jesus.  However, just as there are many that agree we should be gospel-centered, but then disagree about exactly what that Gospel is, so it is with Jesus. 

Jesus is the central figure of the Gospel.  Jesus says so in John 5:39. 

John 5:39: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”

Luke 24:25-27: “And he said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’  27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

Luke 24:45-47: “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,  46 and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead,  47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’”

The whole of Scripture is about Jesus.  But, what Jesus are we talking about? 

Do we mean the Jesus who has blonde, feathered hair, blue eyes, and a really nice complexion that is sitting with a lovely flowing robe looking off in the distance as if He’s posing for a glamour shot? 

Is it the Jesus with a tie-die shirt who has a Grateful Dead tattoo, wears Birkenstocks, drives a beat-up VW bus, and seems to like a specific plant He created a bit too much? 

Is it the macho, UFC Jesus who has an eternal membership to the NRA, votes republican, and really enjoys knock-knock jokes like our backwoods uncle from Kentucky? 

Clearly these creations of our personal and cultural imaginations can’t be the way we define Jesus.  The name of Jesus isn’t some free floating term that can mean whatever we want it to.

The name Jesus has significance and substance to it that comes directly from the Old Testament.

…God’s promised Rescuer and Ruler

Christ isn’t His last name like Fairchild is for me.  It is a title.  It’s a Greek translation of the Hebrew term, Messiah. 

It’s really helpful to think of that when you say Jesus Christ.  What you’re saying is Jesus the Messiah.  It draws us back to the Old Testament where we learn more about who this Messiah was promised to be for His people.

The Messiah in the Old Testament was promised to come and:

• Rescue His people.

• Bring them out of exile.

• Lead them into the promises of God where they would come together and live communally under His gracious rule.

That’s a Jesus that came to get things done.  He is an anointed King who came to rule over history. 

This is a Jesus with presence and power who accomplished what no one in history was able to accomplish. 
He is someone you bow before, worship, honor, and to whom you pledge your allegiance and obedience.  He commands respect, awe, and He can call the strongest of men to Himself and they’ll drop what they’re doing and follow Him like children. 

He’s a far better Jack Bauer.  He is able to come and rescue billions and then reign over them as a glorious and benevolent King. 

This changes the shape and ethos of our various communities because at the heart of the Gospel is the promised God-Man who snatched us out of the depths of hell-bound rebellion and now brings us under his protective rule as His very own treasured possession.

For many men, you need to hear about this kind of Jesus so that you don’t think that loving Jesus in community is only for guys who are predisposed to gathering and talking about their feelings. 

This kind of community is not built around touchy-feely guys; it’s build around the True Man, Jesus who is at the very center of our community.

This doesn’t mean that real accountability, real emotions, or real sharing of our brokenness and needs aren’t happening.  It just means that it isn’t the center and reason for why we come together.  That’s not our hope, Jesus is! 

…Lived our Life and Died our Death

This aspect of the Gospel is incredibly important if we’re going to make any progress in our lives and with each other.  

Since Jesus the Christ lived our life and died our death, all our failures are swallowed as a bitter pill by a King who humbled Himself and came to die for our rebellion against a Holy God and to give us a standing before God as if we lived perfect lives.

My sin is given to Him and His righteous is given to me.  This is called double imputation.  My sin is imputed to Him, and His righteousness is imputed to me. 

Why is this important?  Most of us realize that Jesus died for our sins.  We realize we’ve failed, we’ve sinned, and we deserve nothing but God’s disfavor.  However, that’s usually as far as we go.

We picture God coming to wipe our slate clean don’t we?  But what’s wrong with that?  God didn’t create us to be a bunch of blank slates.  He created us to stand in His presence in righteousness. 

If I’m in incredible debt and my bank account is overdrawn by an amount that I could never repay, and someone says to me, “David, I’m going to pay off your debt out of my own resources so that you are debt free.”  Would I be happy?  Would you be happy?  Of course you would. 

But, here’s the problem.  I’m still broke!  Bringing me back to a zero balance is sweet, but I’m still poor.  I still have to go out and find a way to make some money so I’m not broke anymore.

Most of us think that’s what Jesus came to do.  He came to clear our debts and give us a second chance to go out and build our own righteousness again.  But that isn’t the Gospel.

If someone came to me and said, “David, I’m going to pay off all your debt out of my own resources, and I’m also going to sell my home, my cars, clear out all my accounts, and give you everything I have—all my riches I’ve worked my entire life to gather.  I’m going to become poor for you so that you might become rich,” would that make you happy?  Happy!?  I’d be confused, stunned, curious, unsure, shocked, and a whole range of emotions.  But what I’d probably be marked by more than anything is gratitude and joy.   I’d be overwhelmed and so thankful that I doubt I’d ever forget what this person did for me.

This is a Jesus that drank the cup of God’s wrath down to the very last drop as the Father treated His son as the worst sinner on earth and in history. 

He is also that Jesus that perfectly obeyed every command, every law, every imperative, every impulse of holiness and righteousness without wavering.  He was tempted in all ways and yet didn’t sin.  He didn’t do this like Spock, you know, detached and without emotion.His obedience was keeping the Law perfectly and that law was summed up by loving the Lord God with all His heart, mind, soul and strength, and loving His neighbor.  He loved God perfectly so that the Father could accept the sacrifice of His Son and look at you and me and say, “This is my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom I’m well pleased.” 

He gave us His righteousness and this means we don’t have to build a righteousness of our own.  This is freeing isn’t it?

This community created by Jesus’ life and death is transformed into a community of humility, thankfulness and grace.

1) Humility

If we believe this, our communities will be filled with men and women who know they’re failures. 

We wouldn’t need to pretend we have it all together.  We could breathe a collected exhale and start to deal honestly with one another. 

For all our self-help and sense of having our lives together, we stand naked and exposed before God and our only hope and security is being wrapped in Jesus’ robes of righteousness to cover our nakedness.

Do you know how freeing this is if you believe it?  Oh, what a joy it is to admit I’m a failure.  I can cheer up because I’m far worse than I can ever imagine.Whatever someone says about me that is critical, if I’m thinking and being honest, I’d have to say, “It’s much worse than that.  That’s only what you’ve seen. You should see my heart!”

2) Thankfulness

The best way to defeat despair and depression is by being thankful.  I know there are various ways in which depression can be physiological and I don’t want to discount that.

So much of our despair and apathy is owing to the plain fact that we aren’t reciting the Gospel to one another and stirring up gratitude for all the Jesus was, is and promises to be for us. 

If we had only a glimpse of the incredible sacrifice that Jesus made and the beautiful righteousness that He’s given to us, we’d be floored.

And, since He has given us a righteousness we have now the face of a smiling Father looking down upon us and He is utterly overjoyed at what He sees.  Do you believe that? 

Do you see how this community would be attractive if we were not only humble but also thankful? 

3) Grace

Healthy things reproduce.  I can’t think of anything healthier that has brought more life than grace.  God’s grace caused hearts to bloom for thousands of years and it has reproduced itself all the way to San Diego. 

As we remind each other of this Gospel, our communities will no longer be marked by performance, achievement and focused on how holy we look.

This community will have a lightness and levity to it. It won’t be heavy and dark, but gracious and joyful.  Not always, but it should be the consistent mark if we believe we’re saved by grace.

Our communities would welcome the outcast, the rejects, the sinners and scum of the earth because it is filled with people who realize that’s exactly who we were apart from God’s grace.  It’s who we’d still be, except for the intrusion of grace into our lives.

Jesus Christ is God’s Rescuer and Ruler, who lived our life and died our death…

…Rose Again in Triumphant Vindication

As the world watched Jesus being tortured on the cross, He was looked upon merely as another loser who died for defying the empire.

The promise that the Father made centuries prior, of His promised Rescuer and Ruler, appeared to be thwarted.  Jesus suffered and died and in His death it appeared as if man had the last word.

But three days later, Jesus the Christ, the Messiah One, the anointed One, the promised One, the Son of God, rose from the dead.

The resurrection was the Father throwing his arms around His Son and saying with gleaming pride and satisfaction: that’s my boy!

Jesus proved that all that was promised was fulfilled in Him.  His sacrifice was accepted and he was vindicated which means He was proven true and right. 

And do you know what else Jesus has killed?  Death, the final enemy, for all those who trust in Him will live again.

…As the First Fruits of a New Creation

The resurrection wasn’t just a personal victory for Jesus who was able to flip off His enemies with a resounding, “I told you so!”

It was a pledge of a new world.  It was a promise that He is in fact coming back to finish what He began by completing what He started in His great restoration project of the entire world.

But it was also a shout to all that would hear that this new world order has begun and the old is being done away with.  It was the breaking in of God’s Kingdom in this world as the old kingdom is on its way to a close.  He is restoring this world before our very eyes and is coming back to finish His job.  No sin, no death, and no more tears was His promise. 

Because of Jesus’ resurrection we now have a foretaste of what is coming and we’re to put on display that foretaste to the entire world, starting with one another.

And He does this by bringing “Forgiven sinners together…”

…To Bring Forgiven Sinners Together Under His Gracious Rule as His Kingdom People

He brings this new creation together under Jesus’ rule and reign as our new King. 

Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father where His sits enthroned as the Holy One.  He has sent His Holy Spirit to indwell His people and apply His victory to their lives in a new community.

In these communities, the fruit of Jesus’ work is put on display for the glory of God and the world to see.

If anyone would ever ask, “What kind of Rescuer and Ruler is Jesus?”  We should answer, “Look at His Church, His community of His People.”

What is the future like for those who trust in Him?  Look at His church, who shows off what eternity will be like.”

That’s the Gospel!

“Jesus Christ, God’s promised Rescuer and Ruler, lived our life, died our death and rose again in triumphant vindication as the first fruits of the new creation to bring forgiven sinners together under His gracious reign.”

God’s people who have switched sides and turned away from the Serpent to Him have not only become His children in a community that is new family, they have become a “light to the nations” themselves.  They are “light bearers” who carry this beautiful and glorious light of good news to the ends of the earth so that other rebels could be forgiven of their rebellion and brought into the family and join in the victory won by their Champion.

The community of God’s people is to be so shaped by this Gospel that the Gospel story changes and molds them and causes them to be something different and other in a world that is filled with sameness and lacks color.