The Gospel That Saves Stands Alone

Transcript

GR 2081
04/09/2017
The Gospel that Saves Stands Alone
Galatians 1:13-14
Gil Rugh

We are studying the book of Galatians so you can turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 1 but before we look into Galatians I want to talk about some matters that show how I think they connect to Galatians. It relates to what we have been talking about, we were talking about earlier today in prophetic matters.

I was asked when we were doing some of the verses in Galatians, “do I have anything particular in mind when I am looking at these verses.” You always look at things and sometimes I will mention to you whether it is liberal Protestantism or Roman Catholicism but I do get concerned about subtle things that infiltrate in among evangelical Bible believing Christians that the end result is a corrupting of the Gospel and creating a very similar situation to what we have that Paul is addressing in the Galatian church. He is addressing a Jewish problem where Jews who had professed faith in Christ were saying that now you not only have to believe in Christ but you have to keep the Mosaic Law. So the Gospel was corrupted by the addition.

I was talking with you earlier today. Most of you were probably part of our study earlier today about different views on the kingdom that Scripture prophesied back in the Old Testament and continues in the New Testament. We noted that dispensational premillennialism which is a mouthful but simply means those who take the Bible literally and even prophetic matters in a literal or normal way. That is the only understanding of Scripture that does not see us as being in the kingdom that was prophesied in the Old Testament and when you move to a position where you see we are in the kingdom in one way or another, I think you have opened the door to some corrupting influences.

I want to read you from a section. I am going to start with “What’s going on in the Mission Field?” So we are just aware of the issues. These come out of the book written promoting historical or post-tribulational premillennialism, believing that the kingdom began with the first coming of Christ and we the church are in the kingdom today. But there also will be a future dimension of the kingdom when Christ comes and rules on earth and this is having a dramatic impact not only here in the states but in other parts of the world and on the mission field in particular ways. This book has a chapter on missions. It happens to have been written by a man whose doctoral degree is from Dallas Seminary which has been noted for dispensational views but has undergone some changes in relatively recent times.

He is talking about the fact the idea of a kingdom that was postponed when the Jews rejected it. Not postponed in the plan of God but Christ came and offered the kingdom to the nation of Israel but they rejected Him as their king. So the kingdom was not established. He is writing opposing that view and he sees the view that we are not in the kingdom as having too narrow a focus on just the salvation of individuals and has lost the perspective of what they call a holistic view where we are not only dealing with the spiritual needs of fallen humanity but there are social needs. The need for political changes, justice at all levels and so on.

So here is what he writes, being critical now, keep in mind. “Within dispensational evangelicalism this emphasis is on the individual who is spiritual and morally transformed without regard to his or her social context. It is an individual spiritual salvation (and we would believe that. He is critical of that.) Thus the mission of the church according to the thought and practice of dispensational evangelicalism in Latin America is to save people from eternal damnation. For this reason the material, physical and earthly affairs of the individual were secondary. Any social involvement was of little importance.” And that is true and they make the point that what we know as faith missions which came until the nineteenth century, the only religion in Latin America was Roman Catholicism and as we talked about and he started this chapter by noting Roman Catholicism had a strong focus on social issues but you can look at the impact of Roman Catholicism in Latin America and see that you would not want to change places with them. There was an extended time when that was the religion there.

Then missions reached into in the nineteenth century primarily by dispensational premillennialist and the faith mission movement. He said the problem was they were only interested in the saving of souls. Unfortunately contemporary evangelicals especially in Latin America have been influenced by a dispensationalist theology that has given them a Gospel without kingdom and by a western world view that has deprived them from a holistic understanding of human beings and the world.” This man himself is Latin American and that is where he ministers. Then he quotes from different evangelicals in Latin America who are critical of dispensational premillennialism and its limit to focusing on the spiritual needs of men and women.

He quotes one and says, “His accusation is that understanding the eschatological kingdom of God exclusively as a future historical event has made dispensational missiology indifferent to concern for the present social context.” They are concerned about the social conditions in Latin America. The missionaries have come there with this view that we are not in the kingdom that our responsibility today is to lead people to salvation in Christ so they can be prepared for a kingdom that someday will be established. They said that has been a disaster. In fact they call it here, the great reversal which turned attention away from the social needs which characterize Roman Catholicism and focused just on the spiritual needs which is strange for evangelicals.

At any rate they go on to say, “Although this missional approach is changing now most dispensational evangelicals have shared this common understanding of the missionary of the church to seek at the present time individual spiritual salvation. They thus seek to spread the Gospel about Jesus Christ the Savior in order that sinners may repent and receive forgiveness from God and prepare for the coming of the Lord to establish His future kingdom. The future kingdom of God is the physical earthly millennial kingdom.” We would say “Amen” but they think that has been a negative in Latin America. “The evangelical holistic missiology (and I am not reading concurrent, I am jumping for time) that developed in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century reveals a transitional movement within evangelicalism.” So in the last half of the twentieth century we saw a change as we talked about with the new evangelicalism which wanted more social involvement. In our country we had that movement. He connects it with what is going on there as well. “It is a transition from the non-holistic missiology represented by traditional dispensational and fundamentalist evangelicalism into the holistic, missional approach of an emergent, contextual evangelism in the region. Contextual evangelicalism has been called in Latin America, ‘New Evangelicalism.’” And this view is not carrying the Gospel and being sensitive to the context like, you know, you go to another country to bring the Gospel to them but you don’t have to convert them to eating American kinds of food. We would say you know, “you adjust to that.” They don’t have to dress like we do in the United States. Those things you would say – you are sensitive to the context and some of their customs and so on. When they talk about contextual evangelicalism they are talking about you go and shape the message that you bring according to the context they are in. Latin America has great social needs so you must come with a Gospel that is going to involve meeting the social needs. That becomes a real issue.

We find that in the New Testament everywhere Paul went for example he preached the same Gospel. It didn’t matter whether he was in Israel or he was in other places like Galatia or he had crossed the continent and was over in Europe, it is the same Gospel. But they are saying you need a holistic Gospel which means more than just addressing spiritual needs. It is contextual. It is a Gospel that had been shaped and redone to address and be involved in whatever the situation is here in Latin America.

“In Latin America the theological and exegetical work of liberation theologians has served to spur evangelicals to reconsider how they read the Biblical text and mine from this study the foundations of their conception of what it means to be the church in a needy continent.”

Now there ought to be things here depending on how familiar you are. Liberation theology came out of a meeting of Roman Catholic Bishops after Vatican II, 1968, Latin America. Liberation theology has no message of salvation. It is a message of social and political liberation. Now here you have in Latin American the theological and exegetical work of liberation theology has served to spur evangelicals to reconsider how they study. You go to Roman Catholic liberation theology that they will later agree has no salvation message but what we should learn from them is the need to meet social needs, address political situations. Now these are evangelicals. The book is for an evangelical case for these views. Something is wrong. We are going to….you get the point.

This is their footnote and they are clear: “Liberation theology was officially born with the Latin American Bishops Conference celebrated in Mettaying in 1968 in the aftermath of Vatican II. I don’t go there to find my theology, to redo my study of the Scripture because what they think is we ought to learn from them, of the importance of having social impact and political impact. We say this was the present pope, came from a Latin American country and everybody says he is going to be involved with social issues for the poor and political justice in Latin America.

“Contextual evangelicalism (now remember what I told you contextual evangelicalism is. That is where you adjust your Gospel and your ministry according to the needs that are going on beyond spiritual) also represented a middle ground theology of the kingdom of God. It rejected the opposite views held by liberation theology” (which had no salvation message) and traditional dispensation evangelicalism on the kingdom of God.)

There are some well-known people here if you have done any reading in evangelicalism in missions. Some of these names you would be familiar with. I am not going to read them now. I remember my contact with a very well-known mission’s leader a number of years ago and the person whose name happens to come up here. He was talking to me about what a great impact this man was having in Latin America in bringing about changes.

“Therefore in order to support his holistic missiology contextual evangelicalism incorporated a corresponding theological framework that included a present and active manifestation of the eschatological kingdom of God even while expecting its future consummation.”

You see if we were going to develop it they determine we have to learn from like liberation theology. We have to be immersed into this culture and their social needs, their needs of political justice. So we have to look and see if we could redo our theology of the kingdom to include this. And we noted Roman Catholicism is a-millennial. They believe we have been in the kingdom. The church is the kingdom. So they wed political action, social action and they are heavily involved everywhere in our city and in countries around the world in these kinds of activities but they change their view of the kingdom and think it ought to be done in Latin America, South America even though they admit here in a footnote from one of the South American leaders approximately 95% of the Protestants in Latin America are conservative evangelicals. So there has been an impact with dispensational premillennialism in the salvation of people and seeing them converted but it is still a failure. They call it the great reversal particularly in the early 1900’s.

“The challenges of liberation theology and of contemporary Biblical scholarship led to a consensus that a treatment of the Biblical theme of the kingdom of God was needed in order to support a holistic missiology.” Now again we have things upside down. We go to liberation theology and Biblical scholarship and we have to come up with an understanding of the kingdom that will support a holistic missiology. You don’t come to the Scripture that way. You don’t decide what you want to see done and now we will come back and come up with a theology of the kingdom that will enable us to say we have Biblical reasons for this. It just boggles my mind!

A footnote: “A focus on the kingdom of God for a holistic missiology has become a conscious and common theological framework within liberation theology, conciliar or ecumenical theology and new evangelicalism as well as others.” You see how everybody is coming together. We can all agree we are in the kingdom. Everybody except dispensational premillennialists and they are the problem. They have some pretty strong things to say about dispensational premillennialists.

“Latin American contextual evangelicalism has focused on the present aspect of the kingdom of God in order to support its holistic missiology.” Again you see the order. You want to support your holistic missiology, you develop a concept of we are in the kingdom and nobody doubts as we look into the kingdom we get toward the back of revelation we will see. There are many social things. There will be no poverty. There will be no sickness. There will be righteous government. We are in the kingdom. That is what we ought to be doing, dealing with poverty, eliminating poverty, sickness, illness. One thing is characteristic of this. They build it all either out of the Old Testament or the Gospels. There is almost no reference to the epistles because Jesus was offering a kingdom to Israel. See, He brought the kingdom. I was going to read that to you but they have a section here, here are the things we ought to be patterning our ministry as the church after Christ’s earthly ministry which is a kingdom ministry. He healed the sick. We ought to be concerned about the health of the sick and on it goes.

Now let me just read you the conclusion and this is where we connect to Galatians. “Contextual evangelicalism developed its missiology under the rubric that the mission of the church is evangelism and social responsibility, a holistic ministry. It was the present manifestation of the eschatological kingdom of God that supported this Latin America’s fellowship holistic missiology approach.” You know what they say about the present kingdom. “The whole world therefore has been placed under His lordship. The church is called to share His concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation from men from every kind of oppression.” That is a quote from the Evangelism Conference that was held a number of years ago in Switzerland which actively promoted.

My concern is now the mission of the church is evangelism and social responsibility. When you elevate anything to equality with the Gospel, you have a corrupting influence that will eventually eat up the Gospel.

I attended some courses in a seminary on the West Coast that became a center for the developing for the new evangelicalism. Over the years, 20 or 30 years I received the magazine they published since I attended there. I have read articles in there where I couldn’t tell that I was reading anyone that was a believer. It was all about social action, political change. That is what happens when you wed the message of the Gospel and say there is something of equal importance that is part of it.

Let me read you something out of the mission’s context and then we will turn to Galatians. Here is one and this man was a leader in the evangelism conference in Switzerland and it had been held in other places. Billy Graham was the key figure in putting that together. I think they said there were 2,300 evangelical leaders from around the world that signed the covenant that they had established there. Here is what one person said: “I now see more clearly that not only the consequences of the great commission (Go into all the world and make disciples) but the actual commission itself must be understood to include social as well as evangelical responsibility.”

Another has written in a book published by an evangelical school and an evangelical press: “There are two legs to the Gospel, evangelism and social action. If we don’t walk or run on both legs we have a lopsided Gospel.” You see what has happened. Social action has become incorporated as part of the Gospel. There are two legs to the Gospel, the message of Christ and social action. I don’t see how that is different than what Paul is concerned about in writing to the Galatians. “There are two parts to the Gospel,” the Judaizers said, “the message of Christ and the Mosaic Law.” As soon as you say there is anything added to the Gospel you have corrupted the Gospel. I say that because that is going on in our own country. Here the example of what is happening, on the mission field, it begins to permeate it and the subtle thing and the foundation for it comes we are in the kingdom. We have to do kingdom things. That’s why I say, “It seems like well, we can disagree on the kingdom.” And they say that here. We don’t have to make this a major issue but the dispensational premillennialist, they are the bad guys.

Isn’t it interesting? You are open to everybody but you know you can be, you can work together with Roman Catholics and the a-millennialism because we both agree we are in the kingdom. We can agree with post-millennialist because we are in the kingdom. The only people we can’t agree with are those dispensational premillennialist who say we are not in the kingdom. All they want to do is carry the Gospel to the lost so they can get saved and prepared for the coming of Christ.

To me we come into a corruption of the Gospel. As soon as you elevate anything to an equal level with the Gospel the message of Jesus Christ, you have corrupted the Gospel and given time the Gospel will eventually disappear, the Biblical Gospel, that is Paul’s concern. That’s why we have the letter to the Galatians.

I took the time to do that because I don’t want us just to see, well, we don’t deal with Jews and we don’t have the same problems. We have exactly the same problem. That’s the reason the book of Galatians is here. The Gospel is at stake in this. It troubles me greatly. I mentioned a leader in Latin America who got his doctor of theology from Dallas Seminary is writing the chapter I just read to you. What has happened? Where are we going? Criticizing those who came to Latin America with the goal to bring the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ to these people and limit their focus to that and it was the great reversal because they left out social transformation.

Come to Galatians chapter 1. Paul is defending the Gospel he preaches and he is defending himself. He wants to be clear where the Gospel came from. In verses 11 and 12 of chapter 1: “I would have you know brethren that the Gospel which was preached by me is not according to man for I neither received it from man nor was I taught it but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” This is the Gospel according to verse 4 of chapter 1 is about the Lord Jesus Christ “Who gave Himself for our sins that He might rescue us from this present evil age.” This is not a message of having us transform this present evil age. He came to rescue us out of this present evil age. That is the Gospel we bring. It doesn’t matter. Your miserable social conditions, your living an unjust…. Paul did nothing to do away with slavery which envelopes so much of the Roman Empire. He told slaves, “Be good slaves.” You don’t have to deal with the social. Obviously there wasn’t much political justice with some of the men of the most debase character and behavior ruling but why has Paul come to Corinth? “I determine to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” I know the Greeks wanted wisdom. I gave them Christ. Now we are saying “Well the world wants wisdom. We have to give them wisdom. Paul said “I don’t mind being considered a fool for Christ’s sake.” Concerned that we not lose our perspective and the clarity we have to have on the Gospel that rescues people from this present evil age. When you place your faith in Christ you may be in a miserable slave condition today but you have a brilliant, bright future. Somehow we get entangled and we begin to do what the world says is important. Paul wouldn’t do that with the Gospel. The Judaizers wanted to add to the Gospel. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for them, the Mosaic Law but anything that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and is a corruption and ultimately destructive.

Now what Paul is going to do in verse 13 and 14 is show that his message didn’t come to him from the human source and the transformation of his life demonstrates this is a totally different message than the Judaizers are preaching and there ought to be clarity in that.

Look at verse 13: “For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and try to destroy it and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.” It was well-known what Paul was like before he was converted. He was an up and coming Jew, a Pharisee going places in Judaism. They had heard of that. They were well aware of what life was like. They had heard about it. He had probably shared his testimony. Others had come and talked about it without doubt. So this is not a hidden thing; “My former life in Judaism.” He is making a strong contrast.

Now we sometimes make the mistake of looking at what we agree with. There was much that Paul would have agreed with the Jews on like the Old Testament is the Word of God. God had given His Word exclusively to the Jews in what we have as our Old Testament in that period of time and many things but that is not what is important. What is important is what we disagree on. He is disassociating himself from his former manner of life and the Judaism there. “Before I was completely committed to being the best Jew I could be in every way.”

Come over to Philippians. Paul gives his testimony to the Philippians and Paul is always clear. His testimony is a testimony of contrast – what I was and what I am; no place here for the fuzziness. Well, I trusted Christ but I stayed in my liberal church. I trusted Christ. I stayed in this religious system. For Paul there is no joining the two. The transformation is radical.

Philippians chapter 3 he has some harsh things to say about the Judaizers. He says in verse 2: “Beware of the dogs, the evil workers, the false circumcision.” They are the unbelieving Jews. You come down to verse 5: “They think they are good Jews? I was a better Jew, circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. As to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.” He didn’t mean he had obtained perfect righteousness but you couldn’t have done any better than Paul. Humanly speaking I was as righteous as you could be by being faithful to keeping the Law and rules of Judaism. “But whatever things were gain to me those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for which I suffered the loss of all things and I count them but rubbish that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” I mean there was no joining the two. I did my best to be saved by Judaism and the Law and I was a failure but when Christ saved me everything changed and I now put all that on the rubbish heap, worthless and worse than worthless.

When God changes a life He changes a life. There is no “Well, I’ve got a lot of things.” Obviously he learned. He knew a lot of the Old Testament. That was a benefit but he understood it now as Christ intended it to be understood, before it was a distortion. He was a Pharisee, the strictest sect of the Jews and I had a list of things from Josephus, a first century Jewish historian but you can go to a Bible dictionary, a Bible encyclopedia and read about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Pharisees were the stricter sect. They not only believed the Law and the Old Testament but they believed all the laws that they had added to the Old Testament to ensure keeping the Old Testament. The Sadducees didn’t even believe in supernatural things. They didn’t believe God controlled the events of the world. They didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. They didn’t believe in the existence of angels. So they were in that sense more liberal. Paul said he lived according to the strict sect, the Pharisees.

He was a persecutor of the church. I mean he was committed, all out committed to his beliefs. These weren’t just, these were my parents religion and I was raised in it and this was a passionate commitment of Saul as he was known then.

He persecuted, back in Galatians the church of God. He is writing to the churches of Galatia and he was a persecutor of the church because he persecuted the church of God wherever there were churches that were a manifestation of the body of Christ in the world. He persecuted them. You know he would travel outside of Israel looking for people to arrest, to persecute. It didn’t matter, men or women. In Acts 8 and 9 we find he was there to arrest men and women alike. He had no sympathy for them because he was bringing Judaism. So he was a persecutor of the church and later he will say in the writing to the Corinthians in I Corinthians 15:9 – he of all people was unworthy to be an apostle because he persecuted the church. I mean he not only was a hell deserving sinner but he had gone beyond what a lot of people did. He actively persecuted the church. Remember when they stoned Stephen in the book of Acts? They laid their outer garments, their robes which would have kept them from having the freedom of their arms to throw the stones at the feet of Saul. He is sort of there overseeing the activity, a young man.

Come back to Galatians, verse 13: “You have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and I tried to destroy it.” I went all out. I went beyond what you would even think someone who hated Christians would do. I went beyond measure. My goal was to destroy the church. He was an active agent of the devil. That is what the devil’s goal is, isn’t it? To destroy the Jews and the nation God has chosen for Himself, to destroy the church and believers because that is God’s work today. The devil is the destroyer and here you have one who was on a crusade to persecute the church, do all I could to destroy it.

He reminded the Corinthians when he wrote that he wasn’t worthy to be an apostle because he persecuted the church but then he said, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” That is what brought about the change and transformation in Paul.

One of the Greek commentators on this expression, “he tried to destroy it” that word ‘to destroy’ he says the word means pillage, make havoc of, destroy, annihilate. The word he used is the word for utterly sacking a city. He had tried to make a scorched earth of the church. I mean Paul was intense. I am going to all I can to wipe out Christianity, the churches that have comprised the people committed to Christ.

Galatians 1:14 “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen.” Paul was an up and coming young man and he was rising faster than his contemporaries, those men in Judaism, Pharisees who were about his age. They were coming along but Paul was outshining them. We say when we see him at the stoning of Stephen in Acts they are laying their cloaks at the feet of Saul. This indicates something of his position there, overseeing this action, being a key part of it. “I was excelling above my contemporaries,” my countrymen, other young men and young Pharisees like myself but his zeal brought him to the top. We would say he is a rising star. “Being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.” This was not only the Mosaic Law and Old Testament requirements but the Pharisees had the whole host of additions to the law, minutia. You know when we have seen that in the Gospels and Christ condemns them, the traditions of the elders and how they went to nullify the Word of God and in effect by their traditions, the way they could avoid their responsibility for supporting their elderly parents by declaring it was a gift to God and devoted. All these, Paul took it all seriously and he was extremely zealous in carrying these things out.

You see verses 13 and 14 sort of run parallel. In verse 13 “Beyond measure I persecuted the church of God. More exceedingly being zealous for the tradition of my fathers.” They go together, that overpowering zeal for all that was involved in being a Pharisee in Judaism caused him to have an overpowering passion to destroy what he saw to be a threat to Judaism, the church of Jesus Christ.

You know the Gospel is a changed life. This idea that we have believing liberal Protestants and we have believing Catholics and everything gets muddled. With Paul there was no connection. I mean he can say “Well I am a Jew.” He was not ashamed of his heritage but he is clear on the transformation that was brought to his life and that he is a new creature with a new focus and a new life. And that passion that he had in Judaism now is a passion that drives him in his service for Christ and what saves him is a confrontation with the risen Christ as you are aware on the Damascus Road in Acts 9; the purity of the Gospel.

That is why Paul is spending this time and he started out with that condemnation of any corruption of the Gospel. He doesn’t care where it comes from. We get a little touchy. Well, I think maybe they are believers but we want to be careful. He said, “I don’t care if it is an angel. There is only One Gospel. I want you to know it came from Heaven. It was entrusted to me. It transformed my life. It made me a new person, a different person.” “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creature, a new creation. Old things pass away, new things come.” This doesn’t mean we live perfect lives. It doesn’t mean life has been radically transformed. You can’t live with one foot here and one foot here.

This is where I wonder as I read some of what I have shared with you. Where are these people? I am not saying they are all unbelievers but something is wrong. We are trying to fit in with the world. We don’t mind saying we have learned from liberation theology that they say has no message of salvation but we have learned how important it is to incorporate social justice, political justice into our ministry as a co-equal leg with the message of Christ.

Somewhere along the line we moved from genuine believers to those who are not believers. But I don’t have to make that decision. All I have to say like Paul did, I don’t care if an angel from heaven preached a different Gospel. He is condemned to hell. That is the way it is. The truth is the truth. Now we get into, “Well, I think maybe an angel did present that so I ought to give it more serious consideration.” All I have to say is “Anathema.” We get delegate and then we are reluctant to be viewed as too narrow. That’s why I want to move away from that narrowness, that fundamentalist, that separates you but He came to rescue us from this present evil age. There is a separation that takes place and Paul did get separated from his Jewish heritage in that sense. Not that he would deny that he was a Jew but that religious context is no longer what I am. I stand for the purity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the churches at Galatia have to understand that because they are being drawn into an unbiblical compromise and Paul realizes the end of this will be no Gospel and everyone who has tried to wed things to the Gospel has ended up with no Gospel. So we as the church of Jesus Christ must understand the importance, the purity of the Gospel. That alone saves a soul for the poorest, most wretched social condition to the richest and it is the same Gospel. It is the only Gospel. It doesn’t matter whether you are a slave or a master. The Gospel of Jesus Christ rescues you from this present evil age by cleansing you from your sin, making you new in Christ and gives you a glorious future even if your social condition doesn’t change.

Let’s pray together. Thank You Lord for the sufficiency of the Gospel. Lord we see the pattern in Your people Israel, in their history of the corruption that came in and soon consumed the nation and there was no place for the truth. Lord we see that happen time and time again in the history of Your church as corruption subtly makes its way in and the beauty of the power of the Gospel to bring about salvation is found to be inadequate, insufficient, not what is needed in this particular context. Lord the beauty of the Gospel anywhere in the world to any people in any situation, the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to any and everyone who believes. May we as a church be faithful to that Gospel in our ministry together. Bless us in the week before us and the opportunities these days provide as people’s attention is drawn to the events of the death of Christ, His resurrection. Give us boldness, give us clarity, give us many opportunities to bring this truth to the lost we pray in Christ’s name, amen.