Indepence Day Thoughts
Next week is Pentecost Sunday. The festival of Pentecost did not originate in the first century, but rather it dates to the Exodus of the Jews from Egyptian bondage. The festival is known in the Old Testament by several synonymous titles: The Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Harvest, and also the Feast of the First Fruits (Exodus 23:15-17; Leviticus 23:10-16; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:16). In Hebrew, Pentecost is known as Shavuot (meaning, ‘Weeks’).
The word ‘Pentecost’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘fifty,’ and so, in Scripture, Pentecost occurs fifty days each year after the first day of Passover when the Passover lamb was slain. Of course, Christians today recognize the fulfillment of the picture God began to paint in the Books of Moses and which would eventually be finished fifty days after the Passover Lamb of God was slain on Calvary. As the former Pharisaical rabbi Saul – better known as the apostle Paul – wrote to the Christians at Colossae:
(Colossians 2:16-17) “Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”
And I hope you can already see the connection between the crucifixion of God's Lamb and the feast of the ‘First Fruits’ of the Church on Pentecost Sunday as it occurred in the second chapter of Acts. But more on that in part two of this message.
It was on that first Pentecost after the Lamb of God's crucifixion that Peter, along with the other apostles and disciples stood on the Temple grounds proclaiming the Christ and His resurrection to the thousands of Jews gathered from across the land. Luke records it this way:
“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit . . . And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” Acts 2:36-38, 40)
So, this week before Pentecost Sunday, I want to begin a short series on the messages exploring how Pentecost can – and should – apply to the Christian’s life in 2024. To do that, I will draw attention from time to time to Peter’s words as he spoke to those thousands of Jews gathered in Jerusalem. But for the most part I want to focus today on the letter the former Pharisee wrote to the Christians at Rome. We focus there because what Paul wrote about the gospel is simply an extension of what Peter preached to the crowd in Jerusalem on Pentecost.
My text is a familiar one – nearly as familiar, I suspect, as John 3:16 - (Romans 1:16-17): “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. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”
Let’s look a moment at that first sentence: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Now think for a moment again of Peter’s declaration to the crowd. He made it not very long after he and the rest of the apostles and disciples cowered in that small room in desperate fear for their lives. Their hopes which centered around Jesus as their Messiah lay buried in that borrowed tomb.
But on that first Pentecost Peter and the others fearlessly trumpeted the news – the good news – which we know as ‘the gospel.’ And it should be clear to us that something very odd had happened to them. And what happened to them is precisely what happened to the former religious terrorist who wrote to the Christians at Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”
As many of you know, Saul (later known as Paul) went out of his way – quite literally – to find Christians. When he found them . . . well, hear it in his own words: (Acts 26:10-11) “Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. 11 And as I punished them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities.”
But just as something stunningly incredible happened to Peter and the others, something happened to Saul on that road to the city of Damascus that changed his trajectory forever. He’d met the risen Jesus. If you don’t know the story, you can find it easily enough in Acts chapter 9. And so, the religious terrorist who made it his all-consuming ambition to murder Christians now proclaimed the One whose very name he hated. He was not ‘ashamed’ of the gospel message. Some modern synonyms of the word are ‘embarrassed’; ‘apologetic’; and ‘shy.’
Are we embarrassed by the gospel message? And why might a person be ashamed of that message?
Well, for one thing the gospel declares itself to be exclusive of all other messages related to salvation and eternal life. The gospel message declares unequivocally that obedient faith in Jesus Christ alone is the Creator’s inflexible requirement for eternal life. Jesus alone is the only door for the remission – the erasing – of our confessed sins.
Paul’s text here in Romans chapter one cuts to the heart of a growing problem facing many of today’s Christians in America who are increasingly ashamed or apologetic or shy about the gospel message. The media, our educational systems, the courts, the marketplace, Hollywood, and even many churches (of all places!) have been slowly squeezing Christians into the mold called ‘religious pluralism.’ That ought to frighten us because that mold has the inevitable effect of reducing Jesus the Christ to just one of many religious teachers and prophets.
The mold called Religious Pluralism promotes the devilish lie that different religious worldviews are equally valid, equally true, and equally acceptable to God. Therefore, all religious roads lead to God.
But when anyone thinks that thought through, he or she will realize that philosophy doesn’t make sense on any level. There can only be one truth, not a half-dozen. The claims of Christianity and every other religious belief are not only diverse in their views of sin, righteousness, and judgment, but they are wildly diverse in their understanding of the nature of Jesus the Christ.
Either Islamic faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true. Either Hindu faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true. Either Buddhist faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true. Either Jewish faith about Jesus is true, or Christian faith is true.
To say EACH can be true would be like saying 2+2 does not always equal four. Can you imagine architects using 2+2=4 on Monday, and 2+2 = 3 on Tuesday?
Is it not utterly tragic that a growing number of today’s Christians in the pews, in pulpits, and in seminaries are becoming increasingly reluctant to draw a proverbial line in the sand, and unapologetically declare what Peter and Paul declared to be ‘truth’ about Jesus, about sin, judgment, and eternal life? Is it not heart-rending to know how quickly even those in churches are moving away from God's infallible definition of Truth?
God has never been one to mince words. He has never been one to equivocate or be ambiguous. And neither should you or I, His servants, when people ask us the reason for our hope of eternal life.
Listen to God speak through Jeremiah (23:8b-30): “But let him who has My word speak My word in truth. What does straw have in common with grain?” declares the Lord. “Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock? Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the Lord, “who steal My words from each other.”
And hear God speak through the apostle Paul: (1 Thessalonians 2:3-4) “For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit; but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.”
Or again in Galatians 1:(8-10) “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.”
Only TRUE Christianity – which is synonymous to Bible-based Christianity – only true Christianity holds the definitive answer to the question about the Person of Jesus, and of sin, eternal judgment, and eternal life.
Let me repeat that for emphasis. There are not multiple truths about these eternally central questions. There is only ONE truth. And that truth is rooted in God’s love for all of humanity AND is evidenced by His sacrificial offering of His Son Jesus as substitutionary payment for our sins. No other religion portrays the Creator taking on human flesh, living life as a real man, dying as a real man for our sins, and being raised from the dead for our justification.
And that means ALL other religions, when held up to the light of the Creator’s truth, ALL other religious are false, and their satanic origin becomes clear as glass.
I don’t know how to be more clear.
The former Jewish pharisee was not ashamed of the gospel. As many of you remember from my earlier sermons and Bible studies, the word ‘gospel’ means in Greek: “Good news.” So, what is the good news of which the apostle was not ashamed? To better understand what is the ‘good news’ – let’s first look at the ‘bad news’ – which makes the good news all that much ‘gooder.’
The bad news is this – Almighty Holy God has inflexibly deemed, “All have sin and fallen short of the glory of God. He has declared, “There is none righteous, no, not one.” (see Romans 3:10-12 and Romans 3:23).
The ‘all have sinned’ and fallen short of God's required holiness applies to every one of the 8 billion people on this planet in 2024 – including the hundred or so in this building right now.
Of course, and not surprisingly, most men and women scoff at the idea that they are sinners who justly and rightly deserve eternal punishment. Many of us think of ourselves as not-so-bad, especially when we compare ourselves with sinners like rapists and murderers. But when we compare ourselves with others, we demonstrate our total ignorance of the infinite holiness of God. The sun itself, in all its noonday brilliance, is as dark as night when placed next to God’s holiness. And because God demands our holiness be as HIS holiness – without His intervention, we all are lost. Listen: Jesus was not speaking in hyperbole when He commanded us, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).
And listen: God's word tells us there is nothing ANYONE can do to fix our terrible dilemma. Not our parents, not our pastors . . . no one.
Well . . . no one but the One who set the standard for salvation in the first place. Listen to Paul again as he writes to the Christians at Ephesus:
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins . . . But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:1,4-5, 8-9)
The bad news is that without Christ we live helpless and hopeless. And without Christ we die helpless and hopeless. Were it not for the merciful and gracious intervention of God Himself, we are all under the horrible condemnation of a just and holy Creator God.
That’s the bad news. But the ‘good news’ – the gospel which Peter preached on that first Pentecost and of which Paul was not ashamed – and of which neither should we be ashamed – is this: “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4-7)
Oh, may God bury this good news deep in our souls. When we were helpless and hopeless, God did what no one in the universe could do. He opened our blind eyes so that we could turn “from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that [we] may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in [Christ].’ (See Acts 26:18).
It was the gracious and merciful intervention of the Creator God who ‘rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13-14)
How – why – is anyone ashamed of THAT good news? That GREAT news? That unparalleled, incomparable news? We can be born again, receive a clean slate – and not just once in our lifetime when we come to Jesus as our savior – but every day, every day, when we confess our newly committed sins, we find His forgiveness such that He chooses to no longer remember those sins! Surely, as Jeremiah told it: “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23, NASB)
Oh! Be not ashamed of the gospel. Call its truths what they are: Absolute and unchangeable. Not surprisingly, then, the first recorded words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel are these: “Repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
It’s what Peter told the assembled crowd in that second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit . . .”
And it is the message of repentance that forms the basis of Paul’s words to the Christians at Rome: “I am not ashamed of the gospel.”
Please, do not fall for Satan’s deceptions spread by men and women of high titles and degrees and popularity. God's truth remains: Unless a person repents of their sins and receives by faith God's promise of the remission of those sins through the sacrificial blood of Christ, that person cannot ever, throughout eternity, ever enter heaven.
An absolute truth? And unchangeable truth? Yes. It is and forever will be.
We will come back to this text in Romans next week as we celebrate Pentecost Sunday 2024.