Today we’ll answer a basic, yet important question: What is the real gospel? The true gospel has been hijacked by televangelists, secularist, and political parties, but to rediscover it we simply need to re-read the first sermon ever preached in the church age.
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What is the “Good News” that the church should offer to the world?
- Churches have corrupted it since the beginning!
- Galatians 1:6-7 (NLT) I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News 7 but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.
- These were the Judaizers in Paul’s day, already corrupting the simple message of Jesus.
- Said you had to become a Jew first, and then a Christian
- Works gospel = God wants you to save yourself
- Today there are too many false gospels to count, but I’ll mention a few:
- Prosperity gospel = God wants you to be healthy and wealthy
- Woke gospel = God wants you to be YOU
- Red/Blue gospel = God wants you to be a Republican/Democrat
- The true gospel has been hijacked by televangelists, secular humanists, and political parties, but to rediscover it we simply need to re-read the first sermon ever preached in the church age.
- That’s what we’ll do today.
Let’s turn to Acts 2.
Last week we saw part one of Peter’s sermon
- The day Moses longed for and Joel predicted had finally come!
- Now the HS was available to everyone
- That’s what they were seeing in real time - historic!
Today we’re looking at the second part of the sermon
- This is the first time we see the bare essentials of the Christian message
- Peter didn’t sit down days earlier and write this out, but…
- His mind was opened to understanding the Scriptures (Luke 24:45)
- He had been trained by Jesus for 40 days on the “Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3)
- He had just been “baptized with the Holy Spirit” and empowered! (Acts 1:8)
- These three things combined to produce the first sermon ever preached
- And the basic elements of Peter’s message will be repeated throughout Acts
- See 3:13-26; 4:10-12; 5:30-2; 10:36-43; 13:23-41
- And these bare essentials have never changed.
The gospel is all about Jesus.
Acts 2:22-24 (NLT) 22 People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him, as you well know.
- First part of Peter’s sermon was about HS (last week)
- But the meat of the sermon was about Jesus; already the false gospels get it wrong
- Works gospel: Jesus + works
- LDS: “We are saved by grace after all we can do.”
- Galatians 3:2 (NLT) 2 Let me ask you this one...
