Your Daily Bread – Gospel Is A Message

The gospel is a word from heaven. It is there called the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Those are parallel statements. The message of truth is the gospel of your salvation. Salvation is dependent upon believing the gospel, which is a true message from God. In Colossians chapter 1 and verse 5, we read this. The word of truth, the gospel which has come to you. Again, the word of truth from heaven about salvation is the message of the gospel. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, Paul says, we had the boldness to speak to you the gospel of God.

In verse 4 he says, entrusted with the gospel, so we speak. And in verse 9 of that same chapter, we proclaim to you the gospel of God. The gospel is truth from heaven about salvation to be spoken, to be spoken. If you go into the amazing book of Revelation and look into the future in the time of tribulation, as judgment unfolds on the earth, in an act of divine love and mercy, we read in Revelation 14th. This is a vision of what will come in the future. I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people.

In the future time of tribulation, as judgment is unleashed on the earth, there will be an angel in heaven preaching the eternal gospel. The gospel is always a message to be preached. The term gospel is used about a hundred times in the New Testament. The word itself, euagelian, incorporates the idea of a message, therefore of communication, announcing, preaching, declaring, proclaiming. Euagelian is the message, and you is prefixed to the word because it makes a reference to something that is good. So what is the gospel? It’s a good message. It is the good news.

Bound up in the verb form, euageliso, is the idea of preaching a good message. Euageliso is the word from which we get evangelised or evangelical. So you cannot understand the gospel unless you understand it as something to be communicated, something to be declared, announced, preached and proclaimed. And that something is good news. The gospel is called the gospel of God, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of the sun, the gospel of the glory of God, the gospel of peace, the gospel of the blessed God. And then in Acts 2024, the gospel of the grace of God.

It’s all the same good news. Jesus came preaching the gospel. You see that in Matthew, Mark and Luke. He came preaching the gospel. Subject to Jesus were the apostles, and they were told to take the gospel into the world. And so when you come into the book of Acts, it isn’t long before they are preaching right away in chapter 2. By the time you get into a few chapters later into chapter 8, you have Philip preaching the gospel, and then you have Peter and John preaching the gospel, and then you have around chapter 12 of the book of Acts, the apostle Paul begins to preach the gospel.

And all of them are preaching, all of them are proclaiming, all of them are declaring the message from heaven that is good news of salvation. Now because the gospel is so essential, because the gospel is necessary, because there is no salvation apart from hearing the gospel, the apostle Paul knows that the gospel will be under attack. We saw this last week in 2 Corinthians 11. Paul says in verse 3, I’m afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness or his cunning, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. Imagine a church willing to bear beautifully another different gospel. This is such a problem that the apostle Paul came out blazing in the book of Galatians, chapter 1. Verse 6, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel, which is really not another. Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

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. He’s to be damned. 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 or damned. Again, the gospel is something to be preached, and it is so precious that anyone who preaches a different or distorted gospel is cursed. Now why am I saying all this? Because I want to make one very important point.

There is a statement that has been floating around for a long time in Christianity. It was originally basically thought to have been written by Saint Francis of Assisi, the father of the Franciscan Order of the Roman Catholic Church, but that’s not likely the case. We don’t know where it came from, but you’ll recognise it. And here’s the statement. Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words. Have you heard that? Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words. You see it on plaques, you see it on signs, you see it in artwork of all kinds.

Preach the gospel at all times, if necessary use words. That is a noxious toxic weed in the gospel garden that is very hard to kill because it’s kind of a clever statement, and it lets you off the hook if you don’t feel like you want to say anything. The gospel is truth communicated with words, and the gospel is the most powerful reality in the world. The Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1 says, and you’re I am not ashamed of the gospel, verse 16, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

The power is in the gospel, and the gospel must be communicated so that people can hear it and believe it. In Paul writing to the Corinthians in his first letter, he says this in chapter 1 verse 17, Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the gospel, not in the cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. You can void the cross with clever speech. You don’t do that if you preach the gospel. In chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians in verse 14, Paul says, so the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.

Paul is simply saying that we should pay the preacher, that preachers should be able to be supported by their ministry. Then Paul goes on to say, but I’m not going to use that privilege that right. I am not writing these things so that it will be done so in my case. I don’t want your money, for it would be better for me to die than have any man make my boast an empty one. I don’t want anyone to think I’m in ministry for money. Here’s why I preach the gospel. Verse 16, I preach the gospel and I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion, for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.

And down in verse 18 he says, when I preach the gospel, I offer the gospel without charge. I don’t want anybody accusing me of doing it for the money. Paul says, look, I’m under compulsion to preach the gospel. I don’t really have a choice. This is a divine compulsion. Later on in 1 Corinthians 15, now I make known to you brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved. You’re only saved when you hear the gospel preached. Another passage that I would direct you to is Romans chapter 10, and this is very important along this line, and I’ll give you the wrap-up on why I’m going down this path.

But in Romans chapter 10 verse 13 we read, whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. That’s the free offer of salvation. Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved, Jew or Greek. How then will the call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things.

Verse 17, faith comes from hearing and hearing by the message concerning Christ. All of that to make the very important point that you can’t preach the gospel without words. It is words. It is words. Why am I belaboring this a little bit? Just want to remind you of your commission and your responsibility and mine. But I also want you to know that the gospel is being confused today in our world. I heard one of the social justice pastors say this, we have to say social justice is a gospel issue, or people won’t take it seriously.

Really? So because you have an agenda, a social agenda that you want to be taken seriously, you label it a gospel issue. This is very, very frequently being done and has been done in the life of the church through its history. In our national history, there has been devastating, devastating ruin of churches and denominations and institutions because the gospel was redefined in a social way. We even remember the term the social gospel. Well, we’re back doing it again, taking all kinds of social causes that in themselves may be good, bad or indifferent, and giving them a gospel label so that we can make people think they rise to the level of the absolute priority of the word of God.

If somebody wants a certain ethical issue to be given prominence, if someone has a social idea or a moral idea or some ideology, they want to label it as a gospel issue, which confuses the gospel, dilutes the gospel, adds to the gospel, and that is very, very unacceptable. And it’s a real problem, and I’ll tell you why. In a recent survey of Christians, 50% of the people surveyed believe that salvation is earned by good works. This is 50% of professing Christians who believe you earn your salvation by good works. So they already are at the point where they think works are what earn salvation.

And if you give them another social agenda and you make it a supposedly gospel issue, you just compound that error. The survey included the question about who goes to heaven, and the same percentage of people say heaven is for those people who earn it by their good works. So when certain behaviors, certain actions, are elevated to the level of this is the gospel, the true gospel is confused in the eyes of an already confused professing church. The gospel is not about any behavior. It is not about any activity, any social cause, ethical cause, moral cause.

The gospel nowhere is something you do. It is always something you believe. We never read anywhere in the New Testament. Do the gospel. All we read is believe the gospel. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of gospel is a message. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].