The Great Savior

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Transcript:

And so on top of the other reasons, not to the exclusion of the other reasons we’ve already talked about, not to the exclusion of the great commission, not to the exclusion of the great need or the reward for us, but in addition to these others, we talk about the reason for sharing is because of our great Savior, the great Savior and the glory that He deserves. And folks, He is glorified when we tell people about what He did. Whether they trust Him or not, the fact that people hear for the first time that there is a Savior who loved them enough to die for them.

Folks, whether they end up trusting Him or not, people have got to respect somebody that would die for them, that would die on their behalf. That’s why, unfortunately, in our world, there are so many people who think highly of Jesus but have not quite taken the step of trusting Him as their Savior. But when they hear the story about what He did for them, they still think highly of Him, and in some way He’s glorified.

Folks, when we tell the story of what He did, we are glorifying Him. We’re saying that there’s something noteworthy about what Christ did. You realize that?

When we tell the story, we’re indicating that that story is worth telling. I tell a lot of stories in conversation. My wife says that most of my job consists of talking.

So I tell a lot of stories in conversation. And a lot of times I get done with those stories and I think, why did I tell that? There was no point to that.

And probably nobody cared what I was talking about. I don’t just mean preaching. I mean talking to people in conversation.

I think, why did I tell? This story was stupid. Most people, though, are not me.

Most people don’t just talk because that’s what they do. Most people, if they tell a story, it’s because there’s something important about that story to tell. Especially, folks, if we are going to tell people a story that’s going to get us ridiculed, if we’re going to tell people a story that’s going to get us ostracized by the people around us, if we’re going to tell a story that in some parts of the world can get you arrested or even killed, it’s testament to the fact that there’s something about that story that’s important enough to tell.

There’s something important enough about that story that we’re willing to invest our time and energy in going and telling people. And we, regardless of whether or not people accept Christ, and it is important whether or not they trust Christ, but whether or not they ever do, we are still giving glory to God by telling the story of the gospel. We are still telling, we, I’m getting a little off topic of my notes here, but I think it goes with what we’re talking about.

Some of the problem that I have with some of the modern methods of evangelism, some of them, is that they are man-centered. I remember hearing the story about the four spiritual laws and the man that wrote it, and it started out one way, talking about God, and then he decided to change it a little bit, and his daughter was helping him with the things that he was writing out for this tract. And the story goes that his daughter came crying because he had changed the gospel.

Now, I don’t know whether or not he’s changed the gospel, but he’s certainly, I think, tweaked with the focus of it. I don’t even know if that’s an appropriate way to say that. To where it started, it had started out talking about God, and then they got to the point where the four spiritual laws started with the idea that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Well, folks, it’s true that God loves us. It’s true that God has, in the sum total of all things, a wonderful plan that includes our lives. But when we start there in telling people the story, that gives the idea that it’s all about us.

And quite honestly, a lot has been done about trying to evangelize people, about telling them how to get saved without telling them why they need to be saved or what they need to be saved from. Before we can get to the good news and get people to understand and respond to the good news, there’s got to be bad news that comes first. Folks, I believe a biblical presentation of the gospel starts with a holy God who created us and that we fell into sin. God’s wonderful plan for our life is sort of an addition to the gospel, a result of the gospel.

not the cause of it. The gospel story is a holy God who created us. We fell into sin.

That sin was offensive to God, and God could not stand it. God could not allow it. God could not excuse it, simply pretend it didn’t happen.

It had to be dealt with. Such was the holiness and justice of God. And God could have sent us all to hell.

God would have been right to send us all to hell, and yet, out of His mercy and love, which somehow, perfect mercy and love, coexists with this perfect justice and holiness in a way that’s really outside of my realm of being able to completely comprehend. And out of his mercy and love, sent his son Jesus Christ to willingly die on the cross after coming down and living among us and living a perfect life, to die on the cross and shed his blood and be buried in a borrowed tomb and rise again on the third day. So that all we would have to do would be to trust in him and our sins would be forgiven, the penalty would be paid and we’d be purchased a place in heaven.

Folks, that’s the gospel. and when we tell people the gospel from a biblical standpoint, we’re glorifying God because we point out the fact that He is a holy and just God. See, a lot of people in our world have the idea that God is something different than what the Bible says that He is.

And I’ll not spend a lot of time on this because we preached a whole series on the sovereignty of God. I told you when I came in view of a call here, I think it was, I talked about the Christian magazine that called God a drama queen and just some of the wrong ideas that people have, or God’s just a genie in a lamp, or God’s kind of the senile old grandfather that lives in the attic, or some of these bad ideas that people have about God. We bring glory to God when we share the gospel, when we disciple people, when we evangelize people, because it starts by pointing out who God is and the holiness and justice and omnipotence of our God.

And it starts there. And us telling people that and correcting the misconceptions that our culture has brings glory to God because we’re telling people who He really is. And then it brings glory to God when we draw the contrast between ourselves and Him and show that we are in the depths of sin and in contrast, He is so perfect.

And we bring glory to Him when we talk about His love and His willingness to send His Son. And the willingness of the Son to come, that’s important too. We talk about the great love and that glorifies Him.

We talk about how He was the only one able to pay the penalty. Folks, that brings Him glory. We talk about how everything He went through and He did it willingly for us because He loved us and because it was the right thing because it was the will of the Father.

And that glorifies Him. And we talk about the fact that He rose again from the dead. You better believe that that glorifies Him.

Folks, we bring glory to God. We bring glory to God the Father and to God the Son by sharing the gospel. I just realized we hadn’t even gotten to the text yet.

I was downstairs going on about something. I heard the music start and I told them if I’m going to get on my soapbox, I better get upstairs and do it. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 3, where we’re going to start.

And it does talk about the need and it talks about some other things that we’ve already discussed. but tonight I want to focus on the great Savior. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. If we hide the gospel, if we neglect to share the gospel, the ones we’re hurting are the ones that are lost because it’s hid from them.

In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. This verse says that the gospel, if our gospel is hid, it’s hidden to those who are lost, in whom the God of this world have blinded the minds of them which believe not. That’s not saying that God has blinded the minds of those who believe not.

That’s saying the God of this world. And it’s referring to Satan. Now the Bible here is not saying that Satan is a God.

It’s not saying that Satan is equal and opposite to God. It’s not saying that Satan is on par with God. Satan was and is a created being who fell.

But it’s saying here the sense that he is the God of this world, in the sense that he is the one that this world worships. And it’s not saying that he’s comparable to God any more than in the places in the New Testament where it talks about people who can’t control themselves and how their God is their belly. Now, the Apostle Paul did not believe that the stomach was a God.

I could see that in Greek mythology when they had a God for everything, the God of the stomach. No, but that’s not what Paul is talking about when he says their God is their belly. He’s saying that’s the thing that they worship.

At the same time, Satan is the one that this world worships. Because since the Garden of Eden, mankind has sided with Satan over God, unfortunately. And the God of this world, the one that this world has chosen to worship, has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

He’s blinded their minds, he’s perverted their minds, in the hope that they would not see the light of the gospel. That’s his hope. That’s Satan’s aim, that the people of this world would not see the light of the gospel.

And so he’s blinded their minds, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ. It says, who is the image of God should shine unto them. He calls Christ the image of God. We’re going to talk about that here in a minute.

It’s an important phrase. But it says, the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves.

Paul tells the church at Corinth. He’d already straightened out the church at Corinth in the book of 1 Corinthians when he writes to them about all the wickedness and the division that were going on in the church. And there were some, I believe we can deduce from this, that didn’t like it because he spends a good deal of time in 2 Corinthians defending his own ministry.

And it seems likely that some of the people in Corinth didn’t like what he had to say the first time around, and instead of dealing with the sin in the church, they decided to go after the Apostle Paul. But he says, we preach not ourselves. What we’re telling you is not about Paul, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.

He said, the message we’ve come to you preaching is not about Paul, but it’s about Jesus Christ, and about us being your servants and your ministers for his sake, because of him. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God is the one who commanded the light to shine out of darkness. Now, that can mean in a literal sense, as in Genesis chapter 1, when God said, let there be light, and there was light.

It can mean the spiritual light. When God sent Jesus Christ into the world, and John chapter 1 calls him the light of the world, and it was because of God that that light shone in the darkness. But God who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to give to their hearts.

He shined the light in their hearts to give to their hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That the glory of God was seen in Jesus Christ. Folks, this passage, I’ve preached this passage before, before I came here. Not this same message though, because the beginning part of this passage really does speak to the need for the gospel. I preached a sermon on that and then preached a partial other sermon on that in the last two weeks.

I think we understand that the lost around us need the gospel. But this passage also speaks to the one that the gospel is about. Look at some of the ways it describes Christ. It contrasts him with Satan, the God of this world who’s blinded people, and it says the glorious gospel of Christ, and it calls it the light of the glorious gospel of Christ. Already, Paul is speaking of Christ in the highest, most glowing terms possible.

That his gospel is glorious. That it’s light. He calls him the image of God that he would shine to him.

And he said, we don’t even come to you preaching ourselves, but we preach Christ. And because of him being your servants. Folks, that doesn’t make sense to the normal human mind. To come and preach somebody, to undergo the things that Paul went for somebody else’s agenda.

All of the other religious leaders of the world at that time and at this time had their own agenda that they preached. It’s not supposed to be so among the Christians. We don’t preach ourselves.

We don’t preach our opinions, hopefully. We don’t preach our doctrines. Hopefully, we preach Christ and the truth that we know as a result of Him.

But the things that we preach should not be about us but about Christ. And He’s even saying here that we consider ourselves your servants because of Him. He’s talking about Christ as someone who was completely able to transform his life. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts.

That what God has done through Christ is able to penetrate even into the heart of man and give it the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. The knowledge of the glory of God. Think about that.

The full realization of God’s glory. Think about somebody else who saw, who realized God’s glory being Moses. Folks, and he came down from the mountain and he was glowing.

His face shone. It changed him. Such is the glory of God that it changes us and it does something miraculous to it.

And he says that this is put into our hearts, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. I don’t think there are very many things that he could have said about Jesus Christ in this passage that are nicer. I can’t think of much more complimentary terms he could have used. We’re going to talk about in just the next few minutes some of the things just in this passage that Christ deserves glory for.

We’ve already talked about some of them with the gospel, but as he talks about the gospel, he talks about Christ in these glowing terms. The first is that he calls him the image of God. And we need to see here that Jesus Christ deserves to be glorified as the image of God. Verse 4, calls him the image of God who would shine unto them.

I’m intrigued sometimes by art, if you want to call it art, or icons or whatever, that are used in some faiths that claim to be Christian. Whether it’s Catholicism, whether it’s Eastern Orthodoxy, whether it’s any other whatever you want to call it, that in order to be closer to God, they use these icons. I realize it’s a little different whether it’s Catholic or Orthodox, but in order to, especially in the Orthodox Church, they’ll have these icons.

And I think as an art form, there’s something pretty about them, but I would never want to hang them in my home and pray to them. They have these icons, these paintings of God and of Christ and of the saints. And part of their disagreement with Catholicism was over the use of these icons in worship and whether or not it was idolatry.

And they consider that it’s not idolatry because they say not actually praying to the picture, but it’s a tool that connects them to the one that’s in the picture. And so they pray to the image of God. I may not be using all the terminology correctly.

I hope I’m not misrepresenting what they believe. But they believe there’s some kind of connection with these images or icons that allows them to have greater fellowship with God when they pray toward these things. Folks, we don’t need an image of God made out of wood or canvas or stone or anything else because Christ is the image of God.

They say that these images give them a connection to God, but our connection to God the Father is through the real image of God, Jesus Christ. He’s the only way that we have a connection. We’ve already talked about that verse in previous messages that he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but by me. Oh, my sermon notes just turned off on me.

Maybe the Lord’s telling me to wrap it up. It says, No man comes unto the Father but by me. Colossians calls Jesus Christ the image of the invisible God.

In multiple places in Scripture, it talks about no man having seen God at any time. And what that means is God the Father. Because one verse in particular goes on to say, For the only begotten Son of God has declared him, has made him known.

Nobody has seen God the Father but through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the image of God. I’m not talking about in a physical sense necessarily that if we were to somehow be able to see the face of Jesus, we’d know what the face of God the Father looks like. What it’s talking about is the spiritual image, I believe.

The members of the Trinity of the same will and essence and nature and spirit. If we want to see how the Father is, we can look at the Son. If we want to see what the Father would be like if He walked among us, we look at the Son.

If we want to see how the Father loves, we look at the Son. If we want to see the power that the Father has among us, we look at the Son. You see a pattern developing here?

During his three years on earth, Jesus Christ was in a very literal sense. I mean, sorry, not three years on earth. He was here a lot longer than that.

But especially during his three years of ministry, he was in a very literal sense, the image of God. If you’ll forgive the expression, the spitting image of his Father. The image of God.

And the Bible calls him that. Folks, our Savior, The one we point people to when we evangelize and when we make disciples, we say this is the man you must trust. He’s the one you must follow. We’re pointing people not just to a great religious teacher, not just to a man, but to the very image of God.

That when they look at Jesus Christ, they see who God is in his fullness. The Bible says in him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. They see Jesus Christ as the image of God.

And when we point people to Jesus Christ, we glorify him as the image of God because He is where they look to see God and He is the connection to God. He’s the mediator between God and man. Secondly, we see that Jesus Christ deserves to be glorified as the bringer of light in the darkness.

John chapter 1. If you want to turn there, you’re welcome to. But there are several instances in John chapter 1 where it calls Jesus Christ the light.

Well, I was thinking of verse 18, but that goes with the last point. That no man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him. verse 9 speaking of Jesus Christ says that was the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world if we go back a little further it had talked about the word which was with God and was God and the same was in the beginning with God talks about all things being made by him verse 4 in him was life and the life was the light of men and the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not there was a man sent from God whose name was John the same came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe.

He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Speaking of Jesus here, that he’s the light.

I told you a couple weeks ago that part of the reason for the great need is that without Christ, men dwell in spiritual darkness. That means we are completely devoid of any spiritual understanding or knowledge. Our consciences are seared, our hearts are darkened and we live in sin and depravity and filth and separation from God so deep that we don’t even realize that there’s a problem.

We can’t even see the problem. But Jesus Christ, the Bible says, is the light that shines and brings light to every man. And when we share the gospel with people, we glorify Christ because we point them to the fact that He is the only one able, not only to illuminate, but to address their spiritual problems, their wickedness, their fallenness, the sin.

That when we tell people about Jesus Christ, we point out that He’s the only one, He’s the only light able to illuminate and to fix the darkness that’s within them. Folks, He deserves glory for that because not one of us on our own and not all of us together could overcome the problem of the darkness that’s within us. And yet Christ was able to do it.

And finally tonight, Christ deserves glory because He is the Lord of all. He deserves glory as Lord. He says in verse 5, that we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.

When we make disciples, and again Making disciples, as I said I think last week, is about reaching them and teaching them. It involves evangelizing people, leading them to trust Christ, and it involves leading them then to follow Christ. When we make disciples, we point people to the fact that Jesus is Lord and that once they’ve trusted Him, there is a need to submit to Him as Lord. One day, as I’ve said already before tonight, one day everybody will submit to Him as Lord.

Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess. Philippians says, Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Every knee shall bow, things in heaven, things in the earth, and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Sorry, I knew I was leaving a part out there. One day everybody will recognize him as Lord, and he will have the glory that he deserves, whether he died for us or not. But when we make disciples here on earth, we bring glory to God because we’re pointing people to the fact that He is Lord and encouraging them to submit to Him as Lord.

Because that’s what following Christ is. It’s about submitting to Him as Lord. If we’re not going to submit to Him, we’re not following Him either.

Otherwise, we’re just taking a walk in the same direction. But when we make disciples, we teach people that Jesus Christ is not only their Savior, but He’s their Lord, and He’s to be submitted to, and He’s to be followed. And folks, He deserves for us to tell people that, not only for the betterment of their own lives, which is true, but because he deserves the glory that’s due the Lord of all.

Colossians, right after the passage that I mentioned earlier that calls him the image of the invisible God, says that by him and for him all things exist. Folks, everything that was made, everything that exists, exists for him, by him, and because of him. And he will have his glory eventually, but when we make disciples, we teach men and women to glorify him here and now. To give him here and now the glory that He’s due as the Lord of all, as someone who’s to be submitted to, as someone who’s to be followed.

Folks, when we make disciples, we do it because He commanded it, and we do it because the people need it, and we do it because it’s good for us, but we also do it because He deserves to have disciples.