Gospel City Church is a brand new church, and we don’t want to waste any time letting everyone know some of the most important stuff about us. In this first message, we start unpacking what we believe as a church by talking about what we mean when we say, "We believe the Bible."
Transcript (automatically-generated):
If you are single and you're dating or you find yourself in a dating relationship, let me give you some advice. Don't wait too long to share some of the most important stuff in your life that the other person needs to know. You don't want the relationship to go so well that you find yourself getting married to this person. But then on your honeymoon is the time when the big stuff finally comes out. You don't want to find out on your honeymoon that they don't want to have kids.
But you really, really, really want to have kids. You don't want to wake up on your honeymoon to find out that they're actually an atheist and you're a devout Jesus loving Christian. You don't want to find that out on your honeymoon. You don't want to find out on your honeymoon that they don't think Die Hard is a Christmas movie. But because you're a normal person, you absolutely believe Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Some of the big stuff doesn't have to come out on the first or the second date, but the big stuff has to come out before you decide to get married.
Now, there's always a chance that letting the big stuff out early might deter the other person from moving forward in the relationship. But it might not. I think it would be wise to take that chance. Either way. And this is this is the big idea behind our new Surman series that we're kicking off with this message today, we're calling this three part series who is Gospel City Church. And over the course of this series, we're going to be answering three big questions.
What do we believe? What do we love and what do we do? Gospel City is a brand new church and we don't want to let too much time pass before we let the big stuff out. There are some things about our church that we want everyone to know right up front, right out of the gate. No matter who you are, we want you to know these things about us. If you aren't a Christian, but you've decided to come and check our church out, we want you to know these things.
If you are a Christian, you just happen to be visiting from another church. And we want you to know these things. If you are a Christian and you call gospel city church home. We want everyone to know so that if you ever decide that one day you might want to become a member of Gospel City Church, none of the big stuff that we're going to share in this series is going to catch you off guard or catch you by surprise.
You will know what you're getting yourself into. So what's the big stuff you might be thinking to yourself? Well, in this first message, we're going to be talking about what we believe here at Gospel City, what a person believes or what a church believes will shape everything that they say and do. There's one main overarching thing that we believe, that gospel city church. And it's this we believe the Bible. Now, that may seem simple and obvious to many of you that probably didn't catch a lot of you by surprise.
We are a church, after all. Isn't the Bible kind of a big deal for Christians? It is. But we need to realize that the statement we believe the Bible needs some clarification because everyone believes the Bible in some way, but not everyone believes the Bible in the same way. Everyone believes the Bible in some way, but not everyone believes the Bible in the same way. Everyone doesn't believe the Bible the same way that we do here at Gospel City Church.
And I'm going to show you three different layers of belief that a person can have in the Bible. It's possible to believe in the first layer or a couple of them layered on top of each other. Or you can believe in all three of them. As we go through this message, you will see where you are at when it comes to believing the Bible and as we go, you will get to see what we mean here at Gospel City Church when we say we believe the Bible and we want everyone to know this about us.
So layer one, and this is the first fill in on your outline, we believe the facts about the Bible, we believe the facts about the Bible as a piece of literature. There are some facts about the Bible that when you know these facts, they should lead you to at least one conclusion. The Bible is the most remarkable book on the planet. Here are some facts about the Bible, you may or may not have known this, but the word Bible simply means book or books.
The Bible is one book that's made up of 66 different books, and these 66 different books are divided into two main sections or testaments, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament contains thirty nine out of the 66 books, and the New Testament has the other twenty seven. The two testaments are separated by a time period of four hundred years and the whole Bible was written over a period of 1500 years by a collection of over 40 different authors who came from various backgrounds, most of whom never met each other.
Isaiah was a prophet. Ezra was a priest. Matthew was a tax collector. Peter was a fisherman. Moses was a shepherd. Luke was a physician. David was a king. Just to give you an idea of the diversity in the author's lives, different sections of the Bible were written in different literary genres. I found small traders using the word genre. A genre is a category of artistic composition characterized by similarities in form, style or subject matter.
So the main genres found in the Bible are law, history, wisdom, poetry, narrative, epistles, prophecy and apocalyptic literature. The Bible was written on three different continents, Asia, Africa and Europe. It was written in three original languages. The Old Testament was written predominantly in Hebrew, and the New Testament was written predominantly in Greek. And there are portions in both testaments that were written in Aramaic. The Bible has been translated from his original languages into a whole bunch of different languages, including English.
As of September twenty twenty, the full Bible has been translated into 704 languages. The New Testament on his own has been translated into an additional one thousand five hundred and fifty one languages and Bible portions or stories into another one thousand one hundred and sixty languages. The Bible is easily the most heavily authenticated piece of ancient literature in existence today, and it's not even close. Ancient writings are tested using something called manuscripts. A manuscript is any handwritten copy or portion of a text.
The more manuscripts we have of any ancient work, the more we have to test the reliability of that work. A biblical manuscript is only handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. And how many manuscripts do we have of the Bible compared to other pieces of ancient literature? Well, according to Wikipedia, the New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work of literature, with over five thousand eight hundred complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts cataloged ten thousand Latin manuscripts and nine thousand three hundred manuscripts and various other ancient languages, including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian.
Well known Christian teacher and author Shaun McDowall says this through the New Testament documents compare with other ancient books, a stack of existing manuscripts from the average classical writer would measure about four feet high. Yet the New Testament manuscripts would start to more than one mile high. The Bible is unique in how popular it is as well, the familiar observation that the Bible is the best selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact. The Bible is the best selling book of the year.
Every single year, over 100 million Bibles are sold or given away for free every year in the world, according to The Economist and the Guinness Book of World Records. Record Records estimates that more than five billion copies of the Bible have been printed. None of these facts about the Bible should overshadow one of the most incredible aspects of it. The Bible contains one single cohesive story all the way through from beginning to end. If you are a person who fancies themselves as someone who appreciates things like reason, logic, facts and reality.
Then you will be forced to acknowledge that there is no other book on the planet that even comes close to how awesome the Bible is as a piece of literature. This is the first layer of believing the Bible, believing the facts about it as a book. And many people, both Christians and non Christians, would claim to believe the things I've just shared with you. But but the Bible is not just an incredible book because of some of the facts we just heard about it, the Bible is an incredible book because of some incredible things that it says about itself.
It makes out of this world claims. It's one thing to believe the facts about the Bible as a piece of literature, but it's another thing altogether to actually actually believe what the Bible says about itself. Which brings us to the second layer of believing the Bible. And it's the next villain on your outline later to, we believe, the claims the Bible makes about itself. We believe the claims the Bible makes about itself. There are a lot of them we're going to break down the claims the Bible makes into eight specific categories.
Claim number one, the Bible is inspired when Christians claim the Bible is inspired. What do they mean? Well, inspiration is about the relationship between God and the Bible. The Bible's authors, these men were inspired in the way that we typically use the word today. It's not as if the apostle Paul saw a gorgeous sunset and then it was moved emotionally to write the book of Galatians. Nor does it mean he would enter some into some catatonic state where his eyes would roll into the back of his head and start foaming at the mouth and start reciting words.
And someone else would copy those words down. And then he would snap out of it and pick up the parchment and say, OK, let's see what God wrote. First and foremost, inspiration has to do with the fact that the Bible's ultimate author is God. Listen to what Paul says in his letter to Timothy a second one second, Timothy. Chapter three verses 16 to 17 reads like this. All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The entirety of the Bible is God breathed, exhaled from God, no wonder is commonly referred to as God's word. If God authored it, though, then what were Moses and David and Paul and John and all the rest doing? Weren't they writing Holy Scripture to. Exactly. The Bible was written by God and humans or more precisely by God through humans. The apostle Peter explains it this way. Second, Peter, chapter one verse is twenty to twenty one.
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture came about by the Prophet's own interpretation of things for prophecy never had its origin in the human will. But prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. In other words, God made sure that human authors wrote exactly what he wanted them to write, no more, no less. These authors weren't passive robots, though. God didn't erase their personalities or commandeer their minds.
They wrote as thinking, feeling human beings. God worked through their unique personalities and educations and backgrounds and experiences to enable to inspire them to write divine truth in this way that the Bible claims to be inspired. Claim number two, the Bible is true, the Bible is true, God's word is true because God's character is true. He's not a liar. The God of truth cannot speak false words. And to doubt the truthfulness of God's word is to doubt the truthfulness of God himself.
Looking to scripture itself, we find numerous claims to pervasive truthfulness. So I'm 19. Verse seven to nine reads this The law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoice in the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure and lightning. The eyes, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
So I'm 119 Verse is, 160 says this, The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. And Proverbs Chapter thirty five says this Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Jesus affirmed this concisely, listen to the words he prayed to the father on the night of his betrayal, drawn 1717, 17, says Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.
When properly interpreted, the Bible will never mislead you, what it says, God says. Claim number three, the Bible is authoritative, God owns the universe he verbalized into existence and his loving authority intended for our good is exercised through his word. In fact, God has so identified himself with scripture that to disbelieve or disobey it is to disbelieve or disobey him. It's true that the Bible isn't the only authority that exists in our life. There are other rightful authorities.
Parents are in authority. The Bible says this in the six church elders are in authority. The Bible says this in places like Hebrews 13 and first Peter five. And government officials are in authority. God says this in Romans Chapter 13. And first, Peter Chapter two. None of these how authorities, however, is above God's word, the Bible is the Supreme Court. This means the correctness of every belief, value, opinion statement. And the sermon is finally settled by the question, what does the Bible say?
Jesus himself appealed to each part of scripture and to each element of scripture as to an unimpeachable authority, kings don't give advice, they give orders and obedience to the word of God, therefore, is not optional. As J.C. Riley remarked, happy is the man who possesses a Bible. Happier still is he who reads it happiest of all is he who not only reads it, but obeys it as countercultural and counterintuitive as it may feel at times, submission to God's word is where true life and freedom are found.
Because the Bible claims to be God's word. The Bible claims to be the supreme authority in all things. Claim number four, the Bible is clear. The Bible is an ancient document. It can feel foreign and some parts are confusing. Nevertheless, the Bible is clear enough, as the Psalmist says, and so on. One 19 Verse 8, one 30, the unfolding of your words give gives light. It gives understanding to the simple. Sometimes scripture is difficult to understand because it's talking about complicated things often, however, it's hard to grasp because we simply don't like what it says.
As Mark Twain famously quipped, it ain't those parts of the Bible I can't understand that bother me. It's the parts I do understand. Often it's not that the Bible is unclear, is that we're unreceptive claim number five, the Bible is sufficient. Scripture contains all the words from God that we need in order to know him, truly trust him, fully, obey him perfectly and enjoy him abundantly. While the Bible may not tell us everything we want to know, it does tell us everything we need to know.
The Bible contains all we need to know in order to be saved. Second, Timothy, 315, says in how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ, Jesus and in James, chapter one, verse eighteen and twenty one of his own will. He brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures, therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
And first, Peter, chapter one, verse twenty three since you've been born again. Not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. The Bible contains all we need to know in order to obey God in faith. Second, Peter, chapter one verses three to four, says this His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.
And having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. The Bible claims to be sufficient in it. We can find everything we need to know in order to be saved and everything we need to know in order to live the life. God is calling each one of us to live. Claim number six, the Bible is powerful. Since the Bible's ultimate author is God, it is a book of unparalleled power, its words are strong enough to change lives.
John 1717 once again, Jesus said to the father, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth in Romans 116, Paul says, For I'm not ashamed of the Gospel. Why, Paul? For it's the power of God, for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And Paul, later, and for First Thessalonians, chapter one, Verse is four to five says this for we know brothers loved by God that he's chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.
You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And the book of Hebrews States and Hebrews for 12, the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double edged sword it penetrates even to divide in soul and spirit joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Saying the Bible is powerful is another way of saying it's a fact of the Holy Spirit uses the word of God to accomplish God's plans.
Isaiah fifty five, 10 and 11 four as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes up from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. The Bible is an instrument in of action in God's all powerful hand.
It's crucial to realize that God intends His word, not simply to engage our minds, but to change our hearts. As one person put it, the Bible was not written to satisfy your curiosity. It was written to transform your life. The Bible claims to be powerful enough to do that. Claim number seven, the Bible is Christ centered. Contrary to popular belief, the Bible is not simply a collection of ethical principles and moral platitudes and abstract life lessons.
It is a thrilling story. And the story is not ultimately about you and me. In Luke, 24, the resurrected Jesus appears to two followers on the road to a mass, Luke recounts what happens in Luke Chapter 24 starting verse twenty five. Jesus said to them how foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things, then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.
Later, after appearing to his 11 disciples, Jesus says to them in Luke twenty four, verse forty four, this is what I told you while I was still with you, everything must be fulfilled. That was written about me in the law and the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms. Then you open their mind so that they could understand the scriptures. It wasn't just after his resurrection that Jesus spoke this way during his earthly ministry, he explained to the Bible experts of the day, his central place in the great story, John, Chapter five, Verse is thirty nine to 40 and verse forty six.
Read like this, Jesus said. You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. If you believed Moses, you'd believe me for he wrote about me. It's been rightly noted that the Old Testament is Jesus Christ concealed and the New Testament is Jesus Christ revealed from beginning to end Genesis to Revelation, the plotline of scripture anticipates, spotlights and finds his ultimate resolution in God's redeeming son.
And perhaps the most stunning thing about this story is that the central character of the story loves you. He loves you, Jesus loves us, and he is the one the Bible claims to be all about. Claim number eight, the Bible is precious, the Bible is the most valuable treasure in the universe. Here are some things the Bible says to us and these references will be on your outline. Matthew, chapter four verse for says that the Bible is our food.
It says, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Deuteronomy Chapter 30 To verse forty six to forty seven says that the Bible is our life. So I'm 119 verse is 50 says that the Bible is our comfort. This is my comfort in my affliction that your promise gives me life, someone 19 years, 28, says that the Bible is our strength. It says my soul melts away for sorrow.
Strengthen me. According to your word, Psalm 119 Verse is, one of five says the Bible is our guidance. It says your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. So I'm 119. Verse 20 says that the Bible is our desire. Psalm one thirty five says that the Bible is our hope. It says, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. And in his word, I hope. Someone nineteen ninety seven says that the Bible is our love, oh, how I love your law.
It is my meditation all the day. John, 15, 11 says it says that the Bible is our joy. And Psalm 119 for 72 says that the Bible is our treasure. It says The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. Did you know that even Leviticus and Chronicles and Obadiah were written to encourage you? Paul says this and Romans Chapter 15, verse four for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.
Everything Paul is going so far as to claim the entirety of the Old Testament was written for you, to instruct you, to encourage you, to help you endure and to flood your heart with hope. And while we must avoid biblical illiteracy, a term that describes the idolatry of Treasury and scripture more than its author, it's striking to note how inseparably connected God's word is with God himself. Indeed, to abandon it is to abandon him. Or, as one great preacher remarked to me, the Bible is not God, but it's God's voice.
And I do not hear it without our. The Bible is a bottomless treasure chest of beauty and wonder. These are eight these are eight wild claims that the Bible makes about itself, the Bible claims to be inspired, true, authoritative, clear, sufficient, powerful, Christ centered and precious. And for the record, Gospel City Church believes these claims that the Bible makes about itself. Important question. Do we have any good reason to believe these claims?
Because anybody can make a claim. Making claims is an easy thing to do, claiming things to be true is relatively easy. In the cinematic masterpiece Napoleon Dynamite, Uncle Rico famously made the claim to his nephew Kip that he could throw a football over the mountains. That was a bold claim to make. But the question is, could he actually do it? There would have been only one way to find out. Give Uncle Rico a football and have him validate his claims by actually doing what he said he could do, throw a football over the mountains.
If he could do it, then his claims would be proven true, if he couldn't do it, then his claims would be proven false. It's that simple. And we have reasons to believe the claims the Bible makes about itself. There are ways to test the claims and claim. No one says that the Bible is inspired, meaning it's God's word, maybe the boldest of all the claims. How can we test such a claim if we wanted to?
Well, since the Bible is the very word of God, it should contain things in it that no other book has. And it does. The Bible is chock full of fulfilled prophecies. A prophecy is the foretelling or prediction of what's to come. And the Bible has hundreds of them, most of them have already come to pass. The only ones that haven't come to pass are the ones that are still to be fulfilled in the future. Every single prophecy that could have been fulfilled has been fulfilled perfectly and you can verify this, you can look at the date, the Bible records of prophecy, and then look at the later date to see when that prophecy was fulfilled.
The most famous, fulfilled prophecies are the ones fulfilled in the life, death and the resurrection of the Messiah. Jesus Christ. All you need to do to discredit the Bible is to find one prophecy God makes in the Bible and prove it didn't happen exactly the way God said it would. Good luck with that. Chuck Missler says the Bible is the only book that hangs its entire credibility on its ability to write history in advance without error. Claim number two says that the Bible's true every word.
That's a bold claim to make. Here's a way that that claim can be tested. Archeology, the Bible talks a lot about ancient cultures, peoples, kingdoms, events, things that it says happened in history. The more that archeologists dig and study certain areas in the world where the Bible says certain things happened, the more we can test the claims that the Bible makes to date, there has never been a find that has disproven anything that the Bible has claimed none.
On the contrary, the more findings that come to light, the more the claims of the Bible are verified. The evidence that comes from archeology is a great test. The Bible passes with flying colors. Dropped down to claim number six, the Bible claims that it's powerful, how can you test that claim? This proof they're going to give you is a little more subjective than fulfilled prophecy or archeology, but it's not any less profound. Born again Christians are the evidence that the word of God is powerful.
Sinners get saved by hearing and believing the word of God, and then over the course of the rest of their lives, they are changed continually by that same word. People get saved when they hear the word of God. They go from not loving Jesus to loving Jesus more than anything else in the world. What does that to a person? And sanctification, this is a fancy word to describe the process of a person changing to become more and more like Jesus, Christians who expose themselves to the Bible on a regular basis have their lives transformed in a way that people around them notice.
That's how you can test the claim that the Bible's powerful. You see people who love Jesus and are being transformed into his likeness right before your very eyes. The question is, are you looking and understanding that what you're seeing? The Bible makes some incredible claims about itself, but we don't have to believe those claims blindly. There are good reasons to believe them. This brings us now to our third layer of belief in the Bible, and this third layer is tied directly to the second.
If you believe the second layer, then chances are really good you're going to believe the third is your third and final fill in on your outline layer. Number three, we believe anything the Bible says about anything. We believe anything the Bible says about anything, the Bible doesn't speak on every single possible subject that can be brought up, but whatever the Bible does address and it addresses some big time issues like the biggest issues in the world, whatever the Bible has to say about anything, we believe it.
Who is God and what is he like, the Bible tells us. How did the universe come into existence? The Bible tells us what are human beings? Where did we come from? What's our purpose? What's the meaning of life? The Bible tells us what's right, what's wrong. The Bible tells us how are we supposed to live in this life? How are we supposed to understand money, sexuality, singleness, marriage, parenting? The Bible tells us where did evil come from?
Why is there suffering in the world? The Bible tells us how is the world going to end? The Bible tells us what happens after we die. Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? The Bible tells us who goes to heaven. What does a person need to be saved? I bet you're not going to believe where we can find these answers. The Bible tells us the Bible has a lot to say about the most important questions people have in this life and gospel city church believes anything the Bible has to say about any of it.
OK, admittedly, that's a lot, but I hope it answers the question I raised at the beginning of our time together. What does Gospel City Church believe? We believe the Bible. We believe the facts about the Bible as a piece of literature. We believe the claims the Bible makes about itself and we believe anything the Bible says about anything. But as I begin to begin to wrap up part one of this message series, I need to highlight a second really important question that needs to be addressed in this conversation about believing the Bible.
And the question is how? How do we go about believing the Bible, how you do something can be just as important as what you do? Let me give you an illustration to show you what I mean. Imagine I ask you to give me some bacon. I say, please give me some bacon. There are a few different ways you could give me some way. Number one, you drive to the supermarket, you go to the refrigeration section, you pick up some bacon, you drive to my house, you cut it open while it's still cold and raw and you cut it open and you take it out of its package and you just throw this lump of cold, raw bacon.
Just throw it in my face. That's one way you can give me some bacon. Here's another way. A second way. You could go to the store again, like in the first example, and you could buy some bacon. But this time you bring it over to my house and you turn on the stove top and you throw some you throw the pack of bacon into the frying pan, fry it up. And when it's at its highest possible heat with the frying pan full of hot grease, you can take the handle of the pan and you can throw all of the bacon with the grease right in my face.
You can give me back in that way or option three, you could prepare the bacon perfectly, not too soft, not too crispy, and you can place it on a platter and you could serve it to me kindly in each of those examples, you'd be giving me some bacon. How you give the bacon to me matters, trust me. How we believe the Bible matters, so how do we believe the Bible? There are a few ways. We should believe the Bible gratefully, gratefully, I don't have to figure out how my life is supposed to work.
We don't have to figure out how the life of the church is supposed to work, God tells us in the Bible. All that's left for us is to figure out just what it says and then do what it says. We should be grateful for that. It takes all the guesswork out of figuring out life. We should believe the Bible actively as opposed to passively, we don't just say we believe the Bible then and then go home and live our lives however we want, even if it's a way that contradicts what the Bible plainly says we give ourselves to apply what the Bible says to our lives.
We do this on an individual basis. We do this collectively as the church. We study to learn how to live out the implications of the Bible. So we should believe the Bible actively. James one twenty two says do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. We should leave the Bible thoughtfully, we don't believe the Bible blindly, we believe while using our minds, that means that we don't simply believe what it says.
We believe what it means. We need to interpret the Bible in order to figure out what God is saying to us in it. We take into account things like historical context, literary context, literary genre, author's intent, grammar and so on and so on. We don't believe a a passage of the Bible has 10 different meanings. We believe it has a primary meaning behind it, but it may have several different applications for our lives. How do we know what the Bible means?
We believe it thoughtfully, using our minds with the much and necessary needed help that the Holy Spirit gives us. We should believe the Bible humbly, we put ourselves underneath the authority of the word of God. We don't put ourselves over it, determining what parts we like or what parts we're going to be obey or not obey. We put ourselves under it in humility, the term meaning to do whatever it says. We should believe the Bible graciously, we extend grace to those who don't believe what we believe, if you're not a Christian and you don't believe the Bible, but you're curious about it and want to check out the church, come, come.
We do not expect you to believe the Bible if you are not a Christian, come to church believing whatever you want. You are so welcome here among us and with us. Just come and we extend grace to other Christians who don't believe the same way that we believe there are parts of the Bible that are non-negotiable, meaning there are parts of the Bible that you need to believe in order to be a Christian. These include, but are not limited to believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, his sinless life, his substitutionary death on the cross for our sins, his physical resurrection from the dead, just to name a few.
There's no wiggle room when it comes to believing these truths and being a Christian. But there are disagreements on how to interpret other parts of the Bible, parts that do not affect a person's right standing with God. A great example of this is the study we are about to launch into in just a few weeks here at Gospel City Church. We're going to walk through the Book of Revelation front to back. And do you know that not every church agrees with what the Book of Revelation actually means?
And did you know that you can be a Christian and disagree about issues like this? This is what we mean by grace, Grace, and we need to show grace to ourselves to as we are going to make mistakes along the way to obeying every part of the Bible in every area of our life. There's a lot of room to grow in our lives in understanding the Bible and doing the Bible. We can't forget that we need grace. We need to believe the Bible graciously.
We should believe the Bible stubbornly, most people in the world today do not believe the Bible that we do here at Gospel City Church, and do you know what? That has no impact on us continuing to believe every single word of it. Even when the pressure rises to change our views or our beliefs, we never will. Why? Because this is God's word. What are we going to believe in? And instead, other people's opinions about life?
No. We should believe the Bible expectantly, we believe that God will do what he says in his word he's going to do, we believe what he says he is going to do in our lives individually. We believe what he says he's going to do in our life together as a church. And we believe what he is going to do in the world on a global scale. We expect God to be faithful to his word. And we should believe the Bible sacrificially, it costs to believe the Bible sometimes, sometimes it's going to hurt to obey God, but we're going to do it anyway.
Why? Because what else are we going to do instead? Not believe and not obey the Bible is the word of God. It's our treasure. It's our life. It's our joy. We give ourselves to obey it at any cost. This brings part one of our series, who is Gospel City Church to a close. This is the first big thing we want people to know about gospel, city, church, and it will shape everything we love and everything we do as a church.
We believe the Bible. So let me ask you a couple of questions. In closing, do you have a Bible? If not, do you want one after hearing a message like this? There's a couple of ways you could go about getting one. You could order one at a local bookstore. You can go online to Amazon or anywhere online that sells books and you can order a Bible. But if you can't, if you're in a place in your life right now where you want a Bible and you and you actually can't afford one, please reach out to us and contact us at Gospel City Church and we will do our very best to make sure we put a Bible in your hands.
We will be committed to doing that for anyone who needs one and can't afford one. So you have a Bible in question one. Here's my second question I want to ask. In light of a message like this, have you ever heard and believed the main message of the Bible? The Bible calls it the gospel, the good news. Have you ever. Have you ever heard and believe the gospel that you you are a great sinner and you've sinned against God in vile ways in your life, but not just you.
All of humanity has the Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. And if God gave you and me and all of us what we deserved, he'd give us justice, which means an eternity in hell, set apart from his grace and his glory and his presence. That's if we got what we deserved. But the goodness of the good news is this that God loves you so much that he doesn't want to give you what you deserve.
He wants to give you what you don't deserve. He wants to give you mercy and grace. Instead, he wants to lavish love upon you. Instead, he wants to give you himself instead. And so this is what God did. He sent his only son and Jesus was born of a virgin, born into a sinless life. And then he lived his life from beginning to end, completely, senselessly, perfectly. At the end of his life, he traded his life for ours.
He substituted his life by going to the cross. And the Bible says that while he hung on the cross, the sins of the entire world were put on Christ, your sins and my sins. And everyone's were put on to him. And when they were on there, the father crushed the son for our sins. Jesus died on the cross after paying for the sins of the world. He was buried in a tomb, and on the third day he rose to new life, conquering sin, conquering death forever, appearing to his disciples, appearing to crowds of people for a period of forty days before you send it back to heaven.
And before he left back for heaven, he gave this charge to his disciples, which rings true for disciples. Today you go to the ends of the Earth and you tell everyone that God has made a way for sins to be forgiven. God died on the cross and God rose. And how can sinners have their sins forgiven? Confessing and repenting from your sins, coming to Jesus in faith, asking him to apply the forgiveness that he purchased on the cross for you, ask right now in this moment, Jesus, I'm a sinner, but I want you to forgive me.
I believe that you did what was needed in order to give that to me. You died on the cross to forgive me. And here's the rest of my life. Whatever I have got is yours. I'm going to follow you forever. If you do that simply by believing in the message of the gospel, your sins are removed, you are made a child of God and what the Bible says, you're born again. The spirit of God comes to live inside of you.
You're given the gift of eternal life and friendship with God. And now you get to spend the rest of this life growing in your knowledge and love of God. And then you get to spend all of eternity basking in and enjoying the presence of Jesus. That's the core message of the Bible, if you're hearing this for the first time, if you're believing for this for the first time, we celebrate with you and praise God with you. And if you want more information about this good news, this gospel, I'm going to invite you to head over to Gospel City, see a gospel, and they're going to be more information there for you.
But if you made that decision today, if you gave your life to the Lord, reach out to us, send us a message, send us an e-mail, a phone call or something, and let us celebrate this decision that you've made following Jesus. Now, I'm listening to this and I invite you to pray, let's close this message and prayer, Father. Thank you for your word. Lord, you didn't leave us. You didn't make us.
And then leave us scrambling around in the dark, trying to figure out up from down and left from right, trying to make sense of this world, try to make sense of existence. You've revealed yourself. You've revealed your will and your word. You've spoken and you've recorded it for us in in a book. We can know you and know your ways. And I pray, Lord, that you would open up the hearts of people all over the world to love your word, cherish your word, obey your word and be changed by your word.
Do that for those who don't yet know you, but continually do that for your church. Make us a people marked by the word of God. Do this Jesus. We pray. We always pray this Lord for your glory, but do it for our deepest joy and satisfaction. We pray all these things in your name, Lord Amen Amen.