Tony Evans - The Good News of the Gospel (05/15/2017)
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This sermon equips believers to share the gospel by presenting a clear, Bible-based outline: starting with the bad news that all are sinners facing eternal death, then proclaiming the good news of Christ's substitutionary death and the free gift of eternal life received solely by faith in Him.
The Purpose: Equipping You to Share the Gospel
I want to walk you through a gospel presentation. It is not the only one. There are many ways to do it. But I want to get you started because many have not started. Or many have started years ago and have allowed emptiness to seep in and distractions to come. And you are not right now a witness for Christ.
The purpose of the church is not merely to inform you and not merely to inspire you. It is to equip you to do the work that God has called you to do. I want to walk you through a gospel presentation. I am going to explain it because the purpose is for you to leave here and use it.
The Opening Question
We start with an opening question. Has anyone ever shown you from the Bible how you can be sure you are on your way to heaven? Would you allow me to show you?
That is an opening question. Now you can arrive at that question a number of ways. There could be a hurting person and you know they are hurting about something. You say, can I pray with you about your problem or whatever it is. And then after you do that, by the way, has anybody ever shown you how you can know for sure from the Bible that you are on your way to heaven?
You can get to this question. There is not a road you can drive down that will not get you to this question, the question of being sure. Because most people are not sure and most people would love to be sure, but they do not know how. Even people who have gone to church all of their lives.
So what you are asking for is permission to show them from the Bible how they can be certain of their eternal destiny. For there is no greater question to be answered in life than where will I go when I die?
Understanding the Gospel: Good News After Bad News
That is the question against the backdrop of this thing we call the gospel. The word gospel means good news. But it is only good news if you understand the bad news. So the bad news leads us to the good news.
And so we start with the bad news, which is why you need the good news. You want to make the point, show the point—that is, show them the biblical reference so that they know you are not making this up. And then illustrate the point. You want to state it, show it, and then illustrate it so they can grab it.
We will give you some illustrations, or you can come up with your own. Do I have permission? If they say yes, proceed. If they say no, then you do not force it. If they are not interested, fine, you move on. But you raise the question.
The Bad News: All Are Sinners
The bad news is that the human race has a problem. Every person is a sinner before a holy God and unable to save themselves. That is bad news.
Romans chapter 3, verse 10, says as it is written, there is none righteous, not even one. So if they think they are an exception, we have a problem. What people need to understand is that the fact we are sinners has made us unacceptable to God regardless of how we measure up to others.
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So you may be better than your neighbor, better than your family, better than your coworkers, but you still do not meet the standard. Sin is the failure to meet the divine standard, which is set by God.
So a lot of people think they are on their way to heaven because they are comparing themselves against the wrong standard. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Here is the second part of that. Because God is the standard, they cannot fix it. See, they cannot solve the problem themselves. Nothing a person can do can solve the problem of not meeting a perfect standard.
Why? Because perfection does not allow exception. If it is perfection, there is no exception. Not if perfection is the standard. So we have a problem we cannot fix on our own.
Men are sinners, the Bible declares, and unable to save themselves. They are unable to fix the problem. Look at verse 21. Now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Christ for all those who believe.
Please notice the first line. Righteousness apart from the law. Righteousness apart from what you can do. So, all men are sinners before a holy God and cannot rectify the problem themselves. No exceptions.
The Penalty for Sin
Secondly, the penalty. Every person is under the sentence of death and will be forever separated from God because of their sin. Look at Romans chapter 6, verse 23. For the wages of sin is death.
He says sin has a pay scale. And it is called death. Look at chapter 5, verse 12. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.
The reason why you are going to die, and it is a hundred percent guarantee, is because of sin that has been passed through the human race, and that we commit, and the sentence is death.
All men are sinners. Sin has a price. The price tag is death. You are going to die. No way around it. The only way you could not die is not to have a sin problem. He says everybody has a sin problem. Everybody is going to die.
He says sin entered through one man, and then it passed to all men. I have not kept God's law perfectly. And so there is a price tag built in. God told Adam, the day you sin, you shall surely die.
So death is the wage that all men pay because of the problem of sin. The word death, by the way, means separation. When a person physically dies, their soul gets separated from their body. The separation occurs. The life leaves.
Then there is spiritual death. That is where the soul gets separated from God. Physical death is where the soul gets separated from the body. Spiritual death is where the soul gets separated from God. That is called hell.
The wages of sin is death. And it is two deaths. The Bible calls it the second death. The first death is you are going to physically die because of sin. The second death is that you eternally die because your soul gets separated from God.
With eternal interest payments. In other words, the penalty is an eternal penalty. It is a physical penalty in time and then it is an eternal penalty after time.
Why? Because God does not change the rules. He does not accommodate us by changing his rules or changing his standard.
So when you witness, they need to understand there is a consequence to the reality that we all sin and we all pay the price tag. And that price tag, the Bible says, the wages, the payment of sin is death.
Well, there is an eternal interest payment to sin because of who God is. And God cannot change his standard because then he would not be God.
And that payment is physical, in time, and eternal or spiritual separation from him. So, the bad news, and it is really bad. All men are sinners.
Look, most of the things you hate in life are tied to sin. Either yours or somebody else's. It is tied to wrong. Most of the things you hate are tied to sin.
And why we hate it is we do not like the cost, the penalty that has to be paid because of its impact.
The Good News: God's Provision Through Christ
So, you are witnessing to this person. Will you give me the opportunity to show you from the Bible how you can be sure you are on your way to heaven? Let me show you why this is an important issue.
Because we have a problem. All are sinners. And we cannot fix it ourselves. And there is a penalty associated with the problem. That is the bad news.
So, let us get to the good news. The word gospel means good news. What does gospel mean? Good news. It is the good news.
Here is the good news, but it is only good if you understand how bad the bad news is. See, if the bad news is not that bad, then you will not need the good news.
But if the bad news is really bad, now you are going to pay attention to the good news because you need some.
The good news involves the provision. Through the substitutionary sacrificial death of Christ, God has addressed the sin problem for us.
We cannot address it ourselves because we cannot get to perfection. But what God has done is address our problem for us through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ.
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrated his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
On the cross, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was made an eternal provision for the sins of all men for all time. It was the provision of Calvary.
On the cross, God's demand for the penalty for sin was addressed in the person of Jesus Christ.
Verses 17 to 21 kind of give you a detailed description. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.
So then, as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there results justification of life to all men.
For as through one man's disobedience, Adam, the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.
The judgment due me was taken by Jesus Christ. Sin created a bill we could not pay. God stepped in and picked up the tab for us on the cross, which was why on the cross Jesus said, it is finished, which means paid in full.
The debt that I owe to God because of my sin, that bill was picked up by Jesus Christ.
Why Jesus Christ? Because the one who had to pay the tab could not have a tab of their own. You see, an imperfect man cannot be my sacrifice. He messed up as I am.
I need a perfect substitute. The problem is, all have sinned. So there is no perfect substitute. In fact, the only one who is perfect is God.
So if I am going to get a savior, only God can be my savior. But God cannot die. Unless he becomes a man.
God saw us speeding down the highway of sin. He zipped down the independent youth of his deity and put on the jacket of humanity.
He came down on the cross and paid the price that you and I could not pay, but we do not want to get locked up forever. So he picked up the tab, rose from the dead, zipped up his glorified body, and ascended up to heaven.
He picked up the tab for us. The good news of the gospel is, a bill we could not pay has been paid. And it has been paid by God himself in the person of Jesus Christ.
The bill has already been paid. Is that good news? Suppose you went home today and you found a letter that says, you do not have any more house note, the bill has already been paid.
That is what I am talking about. That is good news.
Receiving the Pardon: Faith Alone in Christ
A free pardon and eternal life instead of eternal death. Eternal life to all who place faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation.
Look at Romans 10 verse 9. That if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart a person believes resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation. Verse 11, whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.
A man is saved, born again, redeemed, justified, reconciled—whatever word you want. He is on his way to heaven by placing faith alone in Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins and for the gift of eternal life.
Because it is all free now. This is all free. It is faith apart from works, not faith plus works. It is faith alone in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins.
It is not trusting in anything or anybody else but the finished work of Christ for my salvation.
On the cross, you will find this in 2 Corinthians 5:21, on the cross, God credited the sin of the whole world onto Jesus Christ. Jesus did not have any sin of his own. That qualified him to be the savior.
He died on sin credit. God took all of our sins and credited them, put them in Jesus' account and then punished him for having them in his account.
All of our sin was placed in Jesus' account and God said, because you have the sin of the whole world in your account, then I am going to judge you because of their sin because their sin is in your account.
But to the person who places faith alone in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life, a reverse credit occurs.
God takes the righteousness of Christ, his perfection, and credits it to our account. I am on my way to heaven by credit.
See, to get to heaven, you have to be perfect. Remember? The glory of God. God's standard. I have a problem. You have a problem. I am not perfect unless you look at my credit.
Because in my account on credit is the righteousness of Christ that has been credited to my account and that is perfect righteousness.
So, when I go to heaven, I will stand before God as though I have never sinned. Even though I have, we have more than I will share, I will stand before him as though I have never sinned.
Because when he looks at my credit, it will reflect the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. And if I am credited with perfect righteousness, I do not have to add to it. It is already perfect.
You say, well, should you not try to live a good life and all that? Yeah, I should try to live a good life but not to go to heaven.
I am going to heaven because the best life has already been lived for me. Perfect life. You live a good life out of gratitude for such a big free gift.
I got a big free gift. I want to please the giver. I want to let the giver know that I am grateful. I do not live it to earn it because then it is a wage and I expect payment.
What does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ? It is the act of faith that is faith. Not merely the discussion about faith.
You say, well, how do I know I have acted in faith? Simple. You reject anything but Christ to save you. You reject anything but Christ so you no longer look at your achievements as salvific, as able to save you.
What God then does is a credit transfer. The reason he can do it, Romans 10 says, is because he is risen from the dead. You cannot have a living faith in a dead savior.
The resurrection allows him to save you because he is alive to do the saving. It is not trusting in myself anymore but trusting in Christ alone.
I want to put it in the one verse that says it all. John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.
Calling for a Decision
But you are not finished yet. You have one more thing. You ask the question, would you allow me to show you how you can know you have eternal life?
You give him the problem, the penalty, the provision, and here is how you get the pardon. There must be a transfer of trust.
And here is where a lot of people doing the evangelism miss it. You call for a decision.
Would you like to trust the Lord Jesus Christ right now as your personal savior, because it has to be personal for them.
You call for a decision. If they agree with you after you go through these four points, you may get stuck on a point because they do not understand, but once they agree with these four points, it is calling for a decision.
Would you right now like to trust Jesus Christ as savior? And we have listed their prayer.
Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for my sins and rising from the dead to save me. By transferring my total trust to you alone as my savior, I now receive the forgiveness of my sins and the free gift of eternal life that you offer me.
Let me clear something up. The prayer does not save you. The prayer does not save you. The transfer of the trust saves you.
The prayer is simply the way you are expressing the transfer of the trust. If you say the prayer but do not transfer the trust, then you are not saved even though you have mouthed the right words.
You must transfer the trust but you can express that in a prayer. It concretizes it because you can say it and have something concrete that you are verbalizing to validate the transfer.
Once the transfer is made, which oftentimes is before the person has ever prayed the prayer, because if they understood the first four points and have agreed, often in their heart they have made the trust transfer, and the prayer is only a confirmation.
Or it may be done as they pray. But the key is, it is not the prayer, because you can get saved without even having the prayer if there is the transfer of the trust.
It is transferring the trust to Christ alone.
Your Challenge: Go and Share
This week, you find somebody to share the good news with. They will not be hard to find. You have them in your family. You have them on your job. You have them in your neighborhood.
You have them at the gas station. You have them at the grocery store. It is not hard to find sinners who need salvation, and somebody found you. So you find somebody.
Now, I know you are a little nervous. If you are not used to doing this, you are a little nervous. You are a little scared. You are a little squeamish. Okay?
But practice makes perfect. You are going to get better and better as you do it.
You have been given the word of reconciliation. And when Christ now sees that you are not ashamed to be associated with him, you have greater access to him.
Because now, you are a benefit to him. Because you are telling the greatest message that has ever been told, and that is about the free gift of salvation.