Annual Sermons: Vol. 5 No. 23
homeorchurchbiblestudy.com bob marcaurelle
NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL
Romans 1:16-17
Christianity has always been tempted to hang its head when it comes to witnessing here at home and even as a part of world missions.
Popular television talk show hosts love to attack Christians with questions like this.
- Why do you think Christianity is the only way to God?
- Do you think yours is the only true religion?
- What gives you the right to intrude in another culture and another religion and tell good devout people they are wrong?
The man on the street who believes one religion is as good as another feels the same way. What right do we have to intrude in his or anyone else’s life and religion?
The tragedy here is that all too many Christians join in the criticism. And far more Christians know they should witness but are too ashamed or afraid to share their faith.
.
WHAT SHOULD WE BE PROUD OF
Turning the words, “I am not ashamed. . .” to the positive Paul was saying to his world, “I am proud to be a
Christian” and this pride pointed in two directions.
1. OUR Christian Faith
Elsewhere Paul called the gospel “my gospel” (Ro. 2:16) and spoke of the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:20 ff).
Young people, how many of your classmates know you are a Christian?
College students, how about you?
Men and women, do the people you work with and the neighbors you live around know that you are a follower of the Lord? Our church rolls are full of people who are ashamed to stand up for Christ in their everyday lives.
If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
We have too many “reverse hypocrites” today who pretend to enjoy sin so people won’t poke fun at their Christianity. Let’s call it what it is - being ashamed of Jesus Christ.
A teenage boy went to work in a logging camp one summer and his parents and his pastor were afraid the rough loggers would make fun of the lifestyle he lived for Christ. The summer ended and they asked him if the men were rough on him because of his faith and he said, “No! They never found out.”
2. THE Christian Faith.
OBLIGATION
We have an obligation to Jesus to tell about the reason for His sacrifice and the results it can bring.
We go to the whole world because we are TOLD to go in the great commission (Matthew 28:18020)
We are to go next door to our family, friends and neighbors because that is what Jesus told the wild man of Gadara to do. (Mark 5)
We go because all PEOPLE NEED and have the right to know who their God really is.
We do not have all the answers about the fate of the heathen and other questions the world throws at us. We may have doubts ourselves but were must never doubt or debate our obligation to go and to share and to tell the world that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
To Paul and to us the good news that Jesus can give us God’s forgiveness, the power to live right and a place in heaven is like having a cure for cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease. If we had that we would be obligated to share it.
Paul called himself a DEBTOR to all men and he shared Christ with all men, whether they were cultured philosophers on Mars Hill or back alley sinners in Corinth.
THE OPPOSITION
Many reporters tell us that when a drug is developed that will cure some horrible disease, the big drug companies will buy it and raise the price so much that poor people cannot afford it. They oppose the spread of the cure.
- The world opposes the sharing of the gospel by MAKING FUN of our faith.
- In the catacombs under the city of Rome, where the early church met for worship, archeologists found something strange. Someone had carved an image on the wall of a donkey hanging on a cross, with people bowed down before it.
They attack the faith INTELLECTUALLY.
When Paul preached the resurrection on Mars Hill, the scholars laughed at him (Acts 17:32).
The conservative Christian, then and now, is the laughing stock of the cultured educated world.
Paul said the message of Christ crucified was foolishness (nonsense) to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23).
Do you believe that Christ is God? / That the Bible is inerrant ?/ That there is a hell / Christ was virgin born and sinless?
Do you believe that this world did not just come into being through a blind process of evolution, but came from the creative hand of God?
Do you believe that our task is to take the name of Jesus to every culture and every religion? Then, in the eyes of the vast majority of people, you are an ignorant fool.
Our faith is attacked RELIGIOUSLY.
The philosophers of Athens were surrounded by thousands of idols and their belief was “it doesn’t matter WHO people worship, only THAT they worship.”
Sound familiar? The man on the street feels this way and tragically so do many people in the pews and pulpits of our churches.
THE GOSPEL OF CHARITY
Liberal Christianity, still alive and well, reduces Christianity to an ETHIC OF LOVE that if followed, leads to heaven on earth and heaven hereafter. The world’s gospel is, “Do your best; hope God grades on the curve and hope you have been good enough to make it to heaven.
MY PERSONAL STRUGGLE
After my first year in seminary I was confused about things like Calvinism, inerrancy, the fate of those who never get the chance to accept Christ and the Second Coming.
I was doubting my call to preach that summer I was home, thinking God did not need another confused preacher. Then I went to Discipleship Training in the First Baptist Church in our town.
It was a single adult class and the visiting teacher was a PHD from our Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In his teaching he said Jesus was not God. He was a God-filled man.
I asked him if Jesus was only a man, how could he pay for my sins on the cross. He said we are not saved by believing Jesus died for us but by living like he did.
I didn’t get in an argument or a discussion but unable to keep my mouth shut (as always) I said, “Well, if that’s what it takes, I am doomed to be damned because I can't do it..
The tragedy is that most of the young men and women in the class believed he was right.
That night I told God I might be confused about things lke the millennium, the great tribulation, Calvinism, etc. but I was not confused about how we are saved by “the blood of the Lamb” who takes away all of our sins (John 1).
My Christianity is summed up in the hymnal and in that prayer time I said (Even God does not want to hear me sing.):
I love to tell the story of unseen things above
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and his love
And when in scenes of glory I sing a new, new song
Twill’ be the old, old story that I have loved so long
The GOSPEL OF SINCERITY
The gospel of Proud man, making himself acceptable to God, does not want to hear about the blood and the new birth - for he is moral and he is religious and he is good and he does not need the old time bloody religion of yesterday.
The important thing he says, is SINCERITY. –and TOLERANCE. We should leave each other alone and each find God in our own way. We should live and let live
The problem is we can be sincerely WRONG. Paul was just as sincere when he was a Pharisee, having Christians imprisoned as he was as a Christian missionary.
Did you hear about Willy, the man who made a mistake in the chemistry lab and drank sulfuric acid thinking it was water?
“Poor Willy, he will be with us no more / For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4
Christianity to the world is not fashionable SOCIALLY. The world hates what we adore and it adores what God hates. The world’s values are bucks, beauty, brains and brawn.
Its golden rule is “Whoever has the gold rules”
Its heroes are celebrities – handsome men and beautiful women. It applauds the steel nerved executive who makes his way to the top and doesn’t mind who he steps o to do it.
The world admires that and looks down on “MAMBY PAMBY,” SISSY CHRISTIANS. It you don’t believe that just watch how Christians are portrayed in TV sitcoms.
B. THE WHY OF CHRISTIAN PRIDE
1. The PERSON Of the Gospel
Christianity is more than a view of life, it is a relationship with a person.
Paul was proud of WHO JESUS WAS He came through the womb of the virgin, the blessed God-man, as much God as if He were not man and as much man as if He were not God.
He lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial, substituting death for you and me. On the third day God raised Him from the dead.
On the fortieth day God raised Him to the highest place in heaven and one day God will send Him back to remove sin and sorrow from this universe. Paul was proud of this Jesus.
He was proud of WHAT JESUS DID. He gave himself to his murderers. He could have called ten thousand angels to rescue him but he died alone for you and me. He said, “I give my life, no man takes it from me.” (Jn. 10)
He was proud of what he did FOR HIM PERSONALLY.
Paul said, “He loved me. He gave himself for me. The cross in not real until we personalize it.
The famous baseball star Mickey Mantle was saved on his death bed after being witnessed to by fellow players like Bobby Richardson. When Bobby’s wife heard of his conversion she went to he hospital and said, “Mickey, are you sure you are saved? I have to know.”
Mickey flashed his famous Oklahoma smile and said:
“For God so loved Mickey Mantle, that He gave his only begotten Son so that if Mickey Mantle has faith he will not perish but will have eternal life.
2. The POWER of the Gospel
THE SAVAGE SINS
The sacrifice of Jesus takes away the PENALTY of sin. We are justified, declared not guilty before God and we will not go to hell. (Romans 1:24-27)
Hell is not the invention of priests and preachers to scare people out of their money. It is something Jesus talked about more than all the other people in the Bible combined and something he died a shameful, painful death to save us from
The Gospel sets us free from the controlling POWER of sin.
- Most of our pain is self inflicted
- Why are our young - men and women lined up to fight and die in a desert in the middle East - Sin.
- Why have you and I made such a mess of our lives and hurt ourselves and others? Sin!
- Sin is why the migrant worker gets drunk and beats his children.
- Sin is why the wealthy man neglects his family, buys a ten thousand dollar watch and throws a few scraps at the poor.
- Sin is why we have so many homeless people in the world’s wealthiest nation.
- Sin is what makes life a hell on earth and takes us to hell in the hereafter. .
SELF RIGHTEOUS SINS
We must never forget that it was the self-righteous Pharisees and Rabbis (Scribes) who went to church every week; who fasted twice a week; who knew their Bibles from cover to cover; who tithed everything they received; who fasted and prayed regularly; who gave money to the poor;who had Jesus killed and went to hell.
3. The PEOPLE touched by the Gospel
It reaches Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles). It is the medicine made for all humanity – the good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly, the savage sinner and the self righteous sinner.
The Bible talks about the wisdom of the cross. Paschal tells us the cross tells the savage sinner, “Jesus loves you. It was savage people who killed them and He offered them forgiveness.
And it tells the self-righteous sinner, people like you – religious, moral, ethical caused this to happen.
The cross tells the savage sinner you CAN be forgiven. It tells the self righteous you NEED to be forgiven.
- John Wesley was the son of a clergyman. He was moral and devout from his childhood and found Christ after he answered the call to foreign missions.
George Whitfield was born over a bar and came to Christ from the wild side. Both preached side by side in the great awakening and both came to God by way of the cross. No amount of goodness will save us and no amount of badness can keep us from being saved if we will come to Jesus
The way of the cross leads home
There’s no other way but this
We will ne’er catch sight,
Of the gates of light
If the way of the cross we miss.
CONCLUSION,
We are all ashamed of BAD CHRISTIANITY
- White hooded hate mongers who burn crosses in the name of Christ.
- Greedy faith healers who make money from of human misery.
- White hooded cowards who lift up the cross in hatred.
- Religious leaders who hide sexual abuse and put children in harms way
- Churches that fight like cats and dogs
Sometimes we are ashamed of OURSELVES, but we never have to be ASHAMED OF JESUS
The floodlight of criticism has shone on Him for twenty centuries and has failed to find in Him, one suggestion of sin, one ill-advised word, or one selfish deed.
The important question is – Is Jesus ashamed of ME or YOU
“I am satisfied with Jesus
He has done so much for me
But the question comes to me
As I think of Calvary
Is my master satisfied with me”
Annual Sermons: Vol. 5 No. 23
homeorchurchbiblestudy.com bob marcaurelle
NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL
Romans 1:16-17
Christianity has always been tempted to hang its head when it comes to witnessing here at home and even as a part of world missions.
Popular television talk show hosts love to attack Christians with questions like this.
- Why do you think Christianity is the only way to God?
- Do you think yours is the only true religion?
- What gives you the right to intrude in another culture and another religion and tell good devout people they are wrong?
The man on the street who believes one religion is as good as another feels the same way. What right do we have to intrude in his or anyone else’s life and religion?
The tragedy here is that all too many Christians join in the criticism. And far more Christians know we should witness but are to ashamed or afraid to share their faith.
.
WHAT SHOULD WE BE PROUD OF
Turning the words, “I am not ashamed. . .” to the positive Paul was saying to his world, “I am proud to be a
Christian” and this pride pointed in two directions.
1. OUR Christian Faith
Elsewhere Paul called the gospel “my gospel” (Ro. 2:16) and spoke of the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:20 ff).
Young people, how many of your classmates know you are a Christian?
College students, how about you?
Men and women, do the people you work with and the neighbors you live around know that you are a follower of the Lord? Our church rolls are full of people who are ashamed to stand up for Christ in their everyday lives.
If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be evidence to convict you?
We have so many “reverse hypocrites” today who pretend to enjoy sin so people won’t poke fun at their Christianity. Let’s call it what it is - being ashamed of Jesus Christ.
A teenage boy went to work in a logging camp one summer and his parents and his pastor were afraid the rough loggers would make fun of the lifestyle he lived for Christ. The summer ended and they asked him if the men were rough on him because of his faith and he said, “No! They never found out.”
2. THE Christian Faith.
OBLIGATION
We have an obligation to Jesus to tell about the reason for His sacrifice and the results it can bring.
We go to the whole world because we are TOLD to go in the great commission (Matthew 28:18020)
We are to go next door to our family, friends and neighbors because that is what Jesus told the wild man of Gadara to do. (Mark 5)
We go because all PEOPLE NEED and have the right to know who their God really is.
We do not have all the answers about the fate of the heathen and other questions the world throws at us. We may have doubts ourselves but were must never doubt or debate our obligation to go and to share and to tell the world that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
To Paul and to us the good news that Jesus can give us God’s forgiveness, the power to live right and a place in heaven is like having a cure for cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease. If we had that we would be obligated to share it.
Paul called himself a DEBTOR to all men and he shared Christ with all men, whether they were cultured philosophers on Mars Hill or back alley sinners in Corinth.
THE OPPOSITION
Many reporters tell us that when a drug is developed that will cure some horrible disease, the big drug companies will buy it and raise the price so much that poor people cannot afford it. They oppose the spread of the cure.
- The world opposes the sharing of the gospel by MAKING FUN of our faith.
- In the catacombs under the city of Rome, where the early church met for worship, archeologists found something strange. Someone had carved an image on the wall of a donkey hanging on a cross, with people bowed down before it.
They attack the faith INTELLECTUALLY.
When Paul preached the resurrection on Mars Hill, the scholars laughed at him (Acts 17:32).
The conservative Christian, then and now, is the laughing stock of the cultured educated world.
Paul said the message of Christ crucified was foolishness (nonsense) to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23).
Do you believe that Christ is God? / That the Bible is inerrant ?/ That there is a hell / Christ was virgin born and sinless?
Do you believe that this world did not just come into being through a blind process of evolution, but came from the creative hand of God?
Do you believe that our task is to take the name of Jesus to every culture and every religion? Then, in the eyes of the vast majority of people, you are an ignorant fool.
Our faith is attacked RELIGIOUSLY.
The philosophers of Athens were surrounded by thousands of idols and their belief was “it doesn’t matter WHO people worship, only THAT they worship.”
Sound familiar? The man on the street feels this way and tragically so do many people in the pews and pulpits of our churches.
THE GOSPEL OF CHARITY
Liberal Christianity, still alive and well, reduces Christianity to an ETHIC OF LOVE that if followed, leads to heaven on earth and heaven hereafter. The world’s gospel is, “Do your best; hope God grades on the curve and hope you have been good enough to make it to heaven.
MY PERSONAL STRUGGLE
After my first year in seminary I was confused about things like Calvinism, inerrancy, the fate of those who never get the chance to accept Christ and the Second Coming.
I was doubting my call to preach that summer I was home, thinking God did not need another confused preacher. Then I went to Discipleship Training in the First Baptist Church in our town.
It was a single adult class and the visiting teacher was a PHD from our Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In his teaching he said Jesus was not God. He was a God-filled man.
I asked him if Jesus was only a man, how could he pay for my sins on the cross. He said we are not saved by believing Jesus died for us but by living like he did.
I didn’t get in an argument or a discussion but unable to keep my mouth shut (as always) I said, “Well, if that’s what it takes, I am doomed to be damned.
The tragedy is that most of the young men and women in the class believed he was right.
That night I told God I might be confused about things lke the millennium, the great tribulation, Calvinism, etc. but I was not confused about how we are saved by “the blood of the Lamb” to takes away all of our sins (John 1).
My Christianity is summed up in the hymnal and in that prayer time I said (Even God does not want to hear me sing.):
I love to tell the story of unseen things above
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and his love
And when in scenes of glory I sing a new, new song
Twill’ be the old, old story that I have loved so long
The GOSPEL OF SINCERITY
The gospel of Proud man, making himself acceptable to God, does not want to hear about the blood and the new birth - for he is moral and he is religious and he is good and he does not need the old time bloody religion of yesterday.
The important thing he says, is SINCERITY. –and TOLERANCE. We should leave each other alone and each find God in our own way. We should live and let live
The problem is we can be sincerely WRONG. Paul was just as sincere when he was a Pharisee, having Christians imprisoned as he was as a Christian missionary.
Did you hear about Willy, the man who made a mistake in the chemistry lab and drank sulfuric acid thinking it was water?
“Poor Willy, he will be with us no more / For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4
Christianity to the world is not fashionable SOCIALLY. The world hates what we adore and it adores what God hates. The world’s values are bucks, beauty, brains and brawn.
Its golden rule is “Whoever has the gold rules”
Its heroes are celebrities – handsome men and beautiful women. It applauds the steel nerved executive who makes his way to the top and doesn’t mind who he steps o to do it.
The world admires that and looks down on “MAMBY PAMBY,” SISSY CHRISTIANS. It you don’t believe that just watch how Christians are portrayed in TV sitcoms.
B. THE WHY OF CHRISTIAN PRIDE
1. The PERSON Of the Gospel
Christianity is more than a view of life, it is a relationship with a person.
Paul was proud of WHO JESUS WAS He came through the womb of the virgin, the blessed God-man, as much God as if He were not man and as much man as if He were not God.
He lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial, substituting death for you and me. On the third day God raised Him from the dead.
On the fortieth day God raised Him to the highest place in heaven and one day God will send Him back to remove sin and sorrow from this universe. Paul was proud of this Jesus.
He was proud of WHAT JESUS DID. He gave himself to his murderers. He could have called ten thousand angels to rescue him but he dies alone for you and me. He said, “I give my life, no man takes it from me.” (Jn. 10)
He was proud of what he did FOR HIM PERSONALLY.
Paul said, “He loved me. He gave himself for me. The cross in not real until we personalize it.
The famous baseball star Mickey Mantle was saved on his death bed after being witnessed to by fellow players like Bobby xxx. When Bobby’s wife heard of his conversion when went to he hospital and said, “Mickey, are you sure you are saved? I have to know.”
Mickey flashed his famous Oklahoma smile and said:
“For God so loved Mickey Mantle, that He gave his only begotten Son so that if Mickey Mantle has faith he will not perish but will have eternal life.
2. The POWER of the Gospel
THE SAVAGE SINS
The sacrifice of Jesus takes away the PENALTY of sin. We are justified, declared not guilty before God and we will not go to hell.
Hell is not the invention of priests and preachers to scare people out of their money. It is something Jesus talked about more than all the other people in the Bible combined and something he died a shameful, painful death to save us from
The Gospel sets us free from the controlling POWER of sin.
- Most of our pain is self inflicted
- Why are our young - men and women lined up to fight and die in a desert in the middle East - Sin.
- Why have you and I made such a mess of our lives and hurt ourselves and others? Sin!
- Sin is why the migrant worker gets drunk and beats his children.
- Sin is why the wealthy man neglects his family, buys a ten thousand dollar watch and throws a few scraps at the poor.
- Sin is why we have so many homeless people in the world’s wealthiest nation.
- Sin is what makes life a hell on earth and takes us to hell in the hereafter. .
SELF RIGHTEOUS SINS
We must never forget that it was the self-righteous Pharisees and Rabbis (Scribes) who went to church every week; who fasted twice a week; who knew their Bibles from cover to cover; who tithed everything they received; who fast and prayed; who gave money to the poor and who had Jesus killed and when to hell.
3. The PEOPLE touched by the Gospel
It reaches Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles). It is the medicine made for all humanity – the good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly, the savage sinner and the self righteous sinner.
The Bible talks about the wisdom of the cross. Paschal tells us the cross tells the savage sinner, “Jesus loves you. It was savage people who killed them and He offered them forgiveness.
And it tells the self-righteous sinner, people like you – religious, moral, ethical caused this to happen.
The cross tells the savage sinner you CAN be forgiven. It tells the self righteous you NEED to be forgiven.
- John Wesley was the son of a clergyman. He was moral and devout from his childhood and found Christ after he answered the call to foreign missions.
George Whitfield was born over a bar and came to Christ from the wild side. Both preached side by side in the great awakening and both came to God by way of the cross. No amount of goodness will save us and no amount of badness can keep us from being saved if we will come to Jesus
The way of the cross leads home
There’s no other way but this
We will ne’er catch sight,
Of the gates of light
If the way of the cross we miss.
CONCLUSION,
We are all ashamed of BAD CHRISTIANITY
- White hooded hate mongers who burn crosses in the name of Christ. I know that.
- Greedy faith healers who make money from of human miser. White hooded cowards who lift up the cross in hatred.
- Religious leaders who hide sexual abuse and put children in harms way
- Churches that fight like cats and dogs
Sometimes we are ashamed of OURSELVES, but we never have to be ASHAMED OF JESUS
The floodlight of criticism has shone on Him for twenty centuries and has failed to find in Him, one suggestion of sin, one ill-advised word, or one selfish deed.
The important question is – Is Jesus ashamed of ME or YOU
“I am satisfied with Jesus
He has done so much for me
But the question comes to me
As I think of Calvary
Is my master satisfied with me”
Annual Sermons: Vol. 5 No. 23
homeorchurchbiblestudy.com bob marcaurelle
NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL
Romans 1:16-17
Christianity has always been tempted to hang its head when it comes to witnessing here at home and even as a part of world missions.
Popular television talk show hosts love to attack Christians with questions like this.
- Why do you think Christianity is the only way to God?
- Do you think yours is the only true religion?
- What gives you the right to intrude in another culture and another religion and tell good devout people they are wrong?
The man on the street who believes one religion is as good as another feels the same way. What right do we have to intrude in his or anyone else’s life and religion?
The tragedy here is that all too many Christians join in the criticism. And far more Christians know we should witness but are to ashamed or afraid to share their faith.
.
WHAT SHOULD WE BE PROUD OF
Turning the words, “I am not ashamed. . .” to the positive Paul was saying to his world, “I am proud to be a
Christian” and this pride pointed in two directions.
1. OUR Christian Faith
Elsewhere Paul called the gospel “my gospel” (Ro. 2:16) and spoke of the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:20 ff).
Young people, how many of your classmates know you are a Christian?
College students, how about you?
Men and women, do the people you work with and the neighbors you live around know that you are a follower of the Lord? Our church rolls are full of people who are ashamed to stand up for Christ in their everyday lives.
If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be evidence to convict you?
We have so many “reverse hypocrites” today who pretend to enjoy sin so people won’t poke fun at their Christianity. Let’s call it what it is - being ashamed of Jesus Christ.
A teenage boy went to work in a logging camp one summer and his parents and his pastor were afraid the rough loggers would make fun of the lifestyle he lived for Christ. The summer ended and they asked him if the men were rough on him because of his faith and he said, “No! They never found out.”
2. THE Christian Faith.
OBLIGATION
We have an obligation to Jesus to tell about the reason for His sacrifice and the results it can bring.
We go to the whole world because we are TOLD to go in the great commission (Matthew 28:18020)
We are to go next door to our family, friends and neighbors because that is what Jesus told the wild man of Gadara to do. (Mark 5)
We go because all PEOPLE NEED and have the right to know who their God really is.
We do not have all the answers about the fate of the heathen and other questions the world throws at us. We may have doubts ourselves but were must never doubt or debate our obligation to go and to share and to tell the world that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
To Paul and to us the good news that Jesus can give us God’s forgiveness, the power to live right and a place in heaven is like having a cure for cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease. If we had that we would be obligated to share it.
Paul called himself a DEBTOR to all men and he shared Christ with all men, whether they were cultured philosophers on Mars Hill or back alley sinners in Corinth.
THE OPPOSITION
Many reporters tell us that when a drug is developed that will cure some horrible disease, the big drug companies will buy it and raise the price so much that poor people cannot afford it. They oppose the spread of the cure.
- The world opposes the sharing of the gospel by MAKING FUN of our faith.
- In the catacombs under the city of Rome, where the early church met for worship, archeologists found something strange. Someone had carved an image on the wall of a donkey hanging on a cross, with people bowed down before it.
They attack the faith INTELLECTUALLY.
When Paul preached the resurrection on Mars Hill, the scholars laughed at him (Acts 17:32).
The conservative Christian, then and now, is the laughing stock of the cultured educated world.
Paul said the message of Christ crucified was foolishness (nonsense) to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23).
Do you believe that Christ is God? / That the Bible is inerrant ?/ That there is a hell / Christ was virgin born and sinless?
Do you believe that this world did not just come into being through a blind process of evolution, but came from the creative hand of God?
Do you believe that our task is to take the name of Jesus to every culture and every religion? Then, in the eyes of the vast majority of people, you are an ignorant fool.
Our faith is attacked RELIGIOUSLY.
The philosophers of Athens were surrounded by thousands of idols and their belief was “it doesn’t matter WHO people worship, only THAT they worship.”
Sound familiar? The man on the street feels this way and tragically so do many people in the pews and pulpits of our churches.
THE GOSPEL OF CHARITY
Liberal Christianity, still alive and well, reduces Christianity to an ETHIC OF LOVE that if followed, leads to heaven on earth and heaven hereafter. The world’s gospel is, “Do your best; hope God grades on the curve and hope you have been good enough to make it to heaven.
MY PERSONAL STRUGGLE
After my first year in seminary I was confused about things like Calvinism, inerrancy, the fate of those who never get the chance to accept Christ and the Second Coming.
I was doubting my call to preach that summer I was home, thinking God did not need another confused preacher. Then I went to Discipleship Training in the First Baptist Church in our town.
It was a single adult class and the visiting teacher was a PHD from our Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In his teaching he said Jesus was not God. He was a God-filled man.
I asked him if Jesus was only a man, how could he pay for my sins on the cross. He said we are not saved by believing Jesus died for us but by living like he did.
I didn’t get in an argument or a discussion but unable to keep my mouth shut (as always) I said, “Well, if that’s what it takes, I am doomed to be damned.
The tragedy is that most of the young men and women in the class believed he was right.
That night I told God I might be confused about things lke the millennium, the great tribulation, Calvinism, etc. but I was not confused about how we are saved by “the blood of the Lamb” to takes away all of our sins (John 1).
My Christianity is summed up in the hymnal and in that prayer time I said (Even God does not want to hear me sing.):
I love to tell the story of unseen things above
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and his love
And when in scenes of glory I sing a new, new song
Twill’ be the old, old story that I have loved so long
The GOSPEL OF SINCERITY
The gospel of Proud man, making himself acceptable to God, does not want to hear about the blood and the new birth - for he is moral and he is religious and he is good and he does not need the old time bloody religion of yesterday.
The important thing he says, is SINCERITY. –and TOLERANCE. We should leave each other alone and each find God in our own way. We should live and let live
The problem is we can be sincerely WRONG. Paul was just as sincere when he was a Pharisee, having Christians imprisoned as he was as a Christian missionary.
Did you hear about Willy, the man who made a mistake in the chemistry lab and drank sulfuric acid thinking it was water?
“Poor Willy, he will be with us no more / For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4
Christianity to the world is not fashionable SOCIALLY. The world hates what we adore and it adores what God hates. The world’s values are bucks, beauty, brains and brawn.
Its golden rule is “Whoever has the gold rules”
Its heroes are celebrities – handsome men and beautiful women. It applauds the steel nerved executive who makes his way to the top and doesn’t mind who he steps o to do it.
The world admires that and looks down on “MAMBY PAMBY,” SISSY CHRISTIANS. It you don’t believe that just watch how Christians are portrayed in TV sitcoms.
B. THE WHY OF CHRISTIAN PRIDE
1. The PERSON Of the Gospel
Christianity is more than a view of life, it is a relationship with a person.
Paul was proud of WHO JESUS WAS He came through the womb of the virgin, the blessed God-man, as much God as if He were not man and as much man as if He were not God.
He lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial, substituting death for you and me. On the third day God raised Him from the dead.
On the fortieth day God raised Him to the highest place in heaven and one day God will send Him back to remove sin and sorrow from this universe. Paul was proud of this Jesus.
He was proud of WHAT JESUS DID. He gave himself to his murderers. He could have called ten thousand angels to rescue him but he dies alone for you and me. He said, “I give my life, no man takes it from me.” (Jn. 10)
He was proud of what he did FOR HIM PERSONALLY.
Paul said, “He loved me. He gave himself for me. The cross in not real until we personalize it.
The famous baseball star Mickey Mantle was saved on his death bed after being witnessed to by fellow players like Bobby xxx. When Bobby’s wife heard of his conversion when went to he hospital and said, “Mickey, are you sure you are saved? I have to know.”
Mickey flashed his famous Oklahoma smile and said:
“For God so loved Mickey Mantle, that He gave his only begotten Son so that if Mickey Mantle has faith he will not perish but will have eternal life.
2. The POWER of the Gospel
THE SAVAGE SINS
The sacrifice of Jesus takes away the PENALTY of sin. We are justified, declared not guilty before God and we will not go to hell.
Hell is not the invention of priests and preachers to scare people out of their money. It is something Jesus talked about more than all the other people in the Bible combined and something he died a shameful, painful death to save us from
The Gospel sets us free from the controlling POWER of sin.
- Most of our pain is self inflicted
- Why are our young - men and women lined up to fight and die in a desert in the middle East - Sin.
- Why have you and I made such a mess of our lives and hurt ourselves and others? Sin!
- Sin is why the migrant worker gets drunk and beats his children.
- Sin is why the wealthy man neglects his family, buys a ten thousand dollar watch and throws a few scraps at the poor.
- Sin is why we have so many homeless people in the world’s wealthiest nation.
- Sin is what makes life a hell on earth and takes us to hell in the hereafter. .
SELF RIGHTEOUS SINS
We must never forget that it was the self-righteous Pharisees and Rabbis (Scribes) who went to church every week; who fasted twice a week; who knew their Bibles from cover to cover; who tithed everything they received; who fast and prayed; who gave money to the poor and who had Jesus killed and when to hell.
3. The PEOPLE touched by the Gospel
It reaches Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles). It is the medicine made for all humanity – the good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly, the savage sinner and the self righteous sinner.
The Bible talks about the wisdom of the cross. Paschal tells us the cross tells the savage sinner, “Jesus loves you. It was savage people who killed them and He offered them forgiveness.
And it tells the self-righteous sinner, people like you – religious, moral, ethical caused this to happen.
The cross tells the savage sinner you CAN be forgiven. It tells the self righteous you NEED to be forgiven.
- John Wesley was the son of a clergyman. He was moral and devout from his childhood and found Christ after he answered the call to foreign missions.
George Whitfield was born over a bar and came to Christ from the wild side. Both preached side by side in the great awakening and both came to God by way of the cross. No amount of goodness will save us and no amount of badness can keep us from being saved if we will come to Jesus
The way of the cross leads home
There’s no other way but this
We will ne’er catch sight,
Of the gates of light
If the way of the cross we miss.
CONCLUSION,
We are all ashamed of BAD CHRISTIANITY
- White hooded hate mongers who burn crosses in the name of Christ. I know that.
- Greedy faith healers who make money from of human miser. White hooded cowards who lift up the cross in hatred.
- Religious leaders who hide sexual abuse and put children in harms way
- Churches that fight like cats and dogs
Sometimes we are ashamed of OURSELVES, but we never have to be ASHAMED OF JESUS
The floodlight of criticism has shone on Him for twenty centuries and has failed to find in Him, one suggestion of sin, one ill-advised word, or one selfish deed.
The important question is – Is Jesus ashamed of ME or YOU
“I am satisfied with Jesus
He has done so much for me
But the question comes to me
As I think of Calvary
Is my master satisfied with me”
Annual Sermons: Vol. 5 No. 23
homeorchurchbiblestudy.com bob marcaurelle
NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL
Romans 1:16-17
Christianity has always been tempted to hang its head when it comes to witnessing here at home and even as a part of world missions.
Popular television talk show hosts love to attack Christians with questions like this.
- Why do you think Christianity is the only way to God?
- Do you think yours is the only true religion?
- What gives you the right to intrude in another culture and another religion and tell good devout people they are wrong?
The man on the street who believes one religion is as good as another feels the same way. What right do we have to intrude in his or anyone else’s life and religion?
The tragedy here is that all too many Christians join in the criticism. And far more Christians know we should witness but are to ashamed or afraid to share their faith.
.
WHAT SHOULD WE BE PROUD OF
Turning the words, “I am not ashamed. . .” to the positive Paul was saying to his world, “I am proud to be a
Christian” and this pride pointed in two directions.
1. OUR Christian Faith
Elsewhere Paul called the gospel “my gospel” (Ro. 2:16) and spoke of the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:20 ff).
Young people, how many of your classmates know you are a Christian?
College students, how about you?
Men and women, do the people you work with and the neighbors you live around know that you are a follower of the Lord? Our church rolls are full of people who are ashamed to stand up for Christ in their everyday lives.
If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be evidence to convict you?
We have so many “reverse hypocrites” today who pretend to enjoy sin so people won’t poke fun at their Christianity. Let’s call it what it is - being ashamed of Jesus Christ.
A teenage boy went to work in a logging camp one summer and his parents and his pastor were afraid the rough loggers would make fun of the lifestyle he lived for Christ. The summer ended and they asked him if the men were rough on him because of his faith and he said, “No! They never found out.”
2. THE Christian Faith.
OBLIGATION
We have an obligation to Jesus to tell about the reason for His sacrifice and the results it can bring.
We go to the whole world because we are TOLD to go in the great commission (Matthew 28:18020)
We are to go next door to our family, friends and neighbors because that is what Jesus told the wild man of Gadara to do. (Mark 5)
We go because all PEOPLE NEED and have the right to know who their God really is.
We do not have all the answers about the fate of the heathen and other questions the world throws at us. We may have doubts ourselves but were must never doubt or debate our obligation to go and to share and to tell the world that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
To Paul and to us the good news that Jesus can give us God’s forgiveness, the power to live right and a place in heaven is like having a cure for cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease. If we had that we would be obligated to share it.
Paul called himself a DEBTOR to all men and he shared Christ with all men, whether they were cultured philosophers on Mars Hill or back alley sinners in Corinth.
THE OPPOSITION
Many reporters tell us that when a drug is developed that will cure some horrible disease, the big drug companies will buy it and raise the price so much that poor people cannot afford it. They oppose the spread of the cure.
- The world opposes the sharing of the gospel by MAKING FUN of our faith.
- In the catacombs under the city of Rome, where the early church met for worship, archeologists found something strange. Someone had carved an image on the wall of a donkey hanging on a cross, with people bowed down before it.
They attack the faith INTELLECTUALLY.
When Paul preached the resurrection on Mars Hill, the scholars laughed at him (Acts 17:32).
The conservative Christian, then and now, is the laughing stock of the cultured educated world.
Paul said the message of Christ crucified was foolishness (nonsense) to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23).
Do you believe that Christ is God? / That the Bible is inerrant ?/ That there is a hell / Christ was virgin born and sinless?
Do you believe that this world did not just come into being through a blind process of evolution, but came from the creative hand of God?
Do you believe that our task is to take the name of Jesus to every culture and every religion? Then, in the eyes of the vast majority of people, you are an ignorant fool.
Our faith is attacked RELIGIOUSLY.
The philosophers of Athens were surrounded by thousands of idols and their belief was “it doesn’t matter WHO people worship, only THAT they worship.”
Sound familiar? The man on the street feels this way and tragically so do many people in the pews and pulpits of our churches.
THE GOSPEL OF CHARITY
Liberal Christianity, still alive and well, reduces Christianity to an ETHIC OF LOVE that if followed, leads to heaven on earth and heaven hereafter. The world’s gospel is, “Do your best; hope God grades on the curve and hope you have been good enough to make it to heaven.
MY PERSONAL STRUGGLE
After my first year in seminary I was confused about things like Calvinism, inerrancy, the fate of those who never get the chance to accept Christ and the Second Coming.
I was doubting my call to preach that summer I was home, thinking God did not need another confused preacher. Then I went to Discipleship Training in the First Baptist Church in our town.
It was a single adult class and the visiting teacher was a PHD from our Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In his teaching he said Jesus was not God. He was a God-filled man.
I asked him if Jesus was only a man, how could he pay for my sins on the cross. He said we are not saved by believing Jesus died for us but by living like he did.
I didn’t get in an argument or a discussion but unable to keep my mouth shut (as always) I said, “Well, if that’s what it takes, I am doomed to be damned.
The tragedy is that most of the young men and women in the class believed he was right.
That night I told God I might be confused about things lke the millennium, the great tribulation, Calvinism, etc. but I was not confused about how we are saved by “the blood of the Lamb” to takes away all of our sins (John 1).
My Christianity is summed up in the hymnal and in that prayer time I said (Even God does not want to hear me sing.):
I love to tell the story of unseen things above
Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and his love
And when in scenes of glory I sing a new, new song
Twill’ be the old, old story that I have loved so long
The GOSPEL OF SINCERITY
The gospel of Proud man, making himself acceptable to God, does not want to hear about the blood and the new birth - for he is moral and he is religious and he is good and he does not need the old time bloody religion of yesterday.
The important thing he says, is SINCERITY. –and TOLERANCE. We should leave each other alone and each find God in our own way. We should live and let live
The problem is we can be sincerely WRONG. Paul was just as sincere when he was a Pharisee, having Christians imprisoned as he was as a Christian missionary.
Did you hear about Willy, the man who made a mistake in the chemistry lab and drank sulfuric acid thinking it was water?
“Poor Willy, he will be with us no more / For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4
Christianity to the world is not fashionable SOCIALLY. The world hates what we adore and it adores what God hates. The world’s values are bucks, beauty, brains and brawn.
Its golden rule is “Whoever has the gold rules”
Its heroes are celebrities – handsome men and beautiful women. It applauds the steel nerved executive who makes his way to the top and doesn’t mind who he steps o to do it.
The world admires that and looks down on “MAMBY PAMBY,” SISSY CHRISTIANS. It you don’t believe that just watch how Christians are portrayed in TV sitcoms.
B. THE WHY OF CHRISTIAN PRIDE
1. The PERSON Of the Gospel
Christianity is more than a view of life, it is a relationship with a person.
Paul was proud of WHO JESUS WAS He came through the womb of the virgin, the blessed God-man, as much God as if He were not man and as much man as if He were not God.
He lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial, substituting death for you and me. On the third day God raised Him from the dead.
On the fortieth day God raised Him to the highest place in heaven and one day God will send Him back to remove sin and sorrow from this universe. Paul was proud of this Jesus.
He was proud of WHAT JESUS DID. He gave himself to his murderers. He could have called ten thousand angels to rescue him but he dies alone for you and me. He said, “I give my life, no man takes it from me.” (Jn. 10)
He was proud of what he did FOR HIM PERSONALLY.
Paul said, “He loved me. He gave himself for me. The cross in not real until we personalize it.
The famous baseball star Mickey Mantle was saved on his death bed after being witnessed to by fellow players like Bobby xxx. When Bobby’s wife heard of his conversion when went to he hospital and said, “Mickey, are you sure you are saved? I have to know.”
Mickey flashed his famous Oklahoma smile and said:
“For God so loved Mickey Mantle, that He gave his only begotten Son so that if Mickey Mantle has faith he will not perish but will have eternal life.
2. The POWER of the Gospel
THE SAVAGE SINS
The sacrifice of Jesus takes away the PENALTY of sin. We are justified, declared not guilty before God and we will not go to hell.
Hell is not the invention of priests and preachers to scare people out of their money. It is something Jesus talked about more than all the other people in the Bible combined and something he died a shameful, painful death to save us from
The Gospel sets us free from the controlling POWER of sin.
- Most of our pain is self inflicted
- Why are our young - men and women lined up to fight and die in a desert in the middle East - Sin.
- Why have you and I made such a mess of our lives and hurt ourselves and others? Sin!
- Sin is why the migrant worker gets drunk and beats his children.
- Sin is why the wealthy man neglects his family, buys a ten thousand dollar watch and throws a few scraps at the poor.
- Sin is why we have so many homeless people in the world’s wealthiest nation.
- Sin is what makes life a hell on earth and takes us to hell in the hereafter. .
SELF RIGHTEOUS SINS
We must never forget that it was the self-righteous Pharisees and Rabbis (Scribes) who went to church every week; who fasted twice a week; who knew their Bibles from cover to cover; who tithed everything they received; who fast and prayed; who gave money to the poor and who had Jesus killed and when to hell.
3. The PEOPLE touched by the Gospel
It reaches Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles). It is the medicine made for all humanity – the good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly, the savage sinner and the self righteous sinner.
The Bible talks about the wisdom of the cross. Paschal tells us the cross tells the savage sinner, “Jesus loves you. It was savage people who killed them and He offered them forgiveness.
And it tells the self-righteous sinner, people like you – religious, moral, ethical caused this to happen.
The cross tells the savage sinner you CAN be forgiven. It tells the self righteous you NEED to be forgiven.
- John Wesley was the son of a clergyman. He was moral and devout from his childhood and found Christ after he answered the call to foreign missions.
George Whitfield was born over a bar and came to Christ from the wild side. Both preached side by side in the great awakening and both came to God by way of the cross. No amount of goodness will save us and no amount of badness can keep us from being saved if we will come to Jesus
The way of the cross leads home
There’s no other way but this
We will ne’er catch sight,
Of the gates of light
If the way of the cross we miss.
CONCLUSION,
We are all ashamed of BAD CHRISTIANITY
- White hooded hate mongers who burn crosses in the name of Christ. I know that.
- Greedy faith healers who make money from of human miser. White hooded cowards who lift up the cross in hatred.
- Religious leaders who hide sexual abuse and put children in harms way
- Churches that fight like cats and dogs
Sometimes we are ashamed of OURSELVES, but we never have to be ASHAMED OF JESUS
The floodlight of criticism has shone on Him for twenty centuries and has failed to find in Him, one suggestion of sin, one ill-advised word, or one selfish deed.
The important question is – Is Jesus ashamed of ME or YOU
“I am satisfied with Jesus
He has done so much for me
But the question comes to me
As I think of Calvary
Is my master satisfied with me”
