Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Last week I shared with you that we are helping the Alpha Georgia ministry, that is a rehab ministry, and that during the tornado the wind blew the roof off one of their facilities and a roofing company is going to do the work for free. But we're paying for the materials.
[00:00:32] And last week 6000 of the 9000 that we need came in.
[00:00:43] So if you helped, thank you very much and if you would like to help, we're only $3,000 short and we can pitch in and do that together, can't we?
[00:01:02] Our dear heavenly Father, you left us this incredible idea of the gospel.
[00:01:17] It is.
[00:01:20] It reveals your righteousness from heaven.
[00:01:25] It is your power exerted to change souls.
[00:01:34] And I pray that we would have a richer appreciation for the gospel in Christ's name. Amen.
[00:01:43] From the late seventies to the late nineties, I read the New York Times, the Sunday New York Times every week. I read part of it on Monday and part of it on Thursday.
[00:02:00] And back then the New York Times was a. It was a new. It was this thick.
[00:02:05] I'm really not kidding you. It was like a cushion for your couch.
[00:02:11] And it was. It was divided into sections. So there was national news, there was international news, there was fashion, there was books, there was the sports page and the New York Times printed at the top of the paper every Sunday. All the news that's fit to print.
[00:02:40] And that was pretty much true.
[00:02:45] And I can remember looking forward to reading the paper.
[00:02:53] Well, newspapers are not what they once were. Amen.
[00:03:01] The whole plain dealer isn't even one good section of the old newspaper. Well, anyway.
[00:03:09] But over time, I began to notice that the Times wasn't just about news.
[00:03:21] It was.
[00:03:24] They had to put their message into everything.
[00:03:30] So when I first started reading the Times, it wasn't uncommon to read authors across the spectrum.
[00:03:39] But over 20 years, writer after writer, that wasn't philosophically identical to the editor.
[00:03:54] Over the years, one by one, they stopped appearing in a paper until finally I said, I'm just not paying for this anymore.
[00:04:08] I'm just not going to pay for you to sell me a paper that's supposed to be about news, when in fact it's about your message, it's about your agenda, it's about you spinning everything to make it look a certain way.
[00:04:30] And I canceled my subscription and. And sent a letter and told them why, which I never heard from again because they didn't think a letter from some guy in Cleveland was. Well, anyway.
[00:04:50] But it helps me illustrate the point.
[00:04:55] There are a great many messages in the world and not all of them.
[00:05:06] Some of them are cloaked.
[00:05:13] Some of the messages they stitch in subtly because they want to run their message by you, but you necessarily not pick up on it right away.
[00:05:30] You see what I'm saying?
[00:05:37] The Bible has a message, but it is not cloaked.
[00:05:45] The Bible has a message and it's not hidden.
[00:05:48] The Bible message is as clear and as plain as day, and that the message of the Bible is what we call the gospel.
[00:06:01] And Paul, who probably wrote the first book in the New Testament, the Book of Galatians, he makes a huge deal about the gospel.
[00:06:13] Now, as Christians, you've heard the word gospel so many times that it's come to be kind of another one of these words that it's got that good religious sound to it. But if you had to write down and define what the gospel is, you might have a hard time doing that.
[00:06:36] So Paul wrote the book of Galatians, and at the very beginning of the book, he gives the core message of the whole Bible. He talks to us about the gospel.
[00:06:50] He probably wrote this book about 20 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[00:06:58] And it was probably in connection to the Jerusalem Council in acts 15 where there was a big argument about, did you have to practice jewish rituals to be a Christian?
[00:07:13] Did you have to do the jewish initiation rituals? Did you have to obey the cultural laws to be a Christian? Because some people were saying you did, and Paul was saying, that's not right.
[00:07:29] In fact, Paul says the jewish law never made one single person right with goddesse. No one was ever made right with God by the law. The law simply tells you where you are not right.
[00:07:48] The law is a way of saying this is out of bounds.
[00:07:56] On the other hand, the gospel is God's shared revelation about how we have a healthy and holy and eternal relationship with him.
[00:08:13] Can you hear this?
[00:08:15] So the same thing happens in church today. You have churches that put a whole bunch of emphasis on rules.
[00:08:24] The religion is really about what you're not allowed and not supposed to do. And the gospel gets lost because everybody's looking at the rules and nobody measures up to them. No matter how arrogant they think they are, nobody measures up to them.
[00:08:42] And then we have this sense of, I'm never going to be good enough.
[00:08:48] But Paul introduces the gospel and he says, it's not who you are and what you do that make you acceptable to God. It's who Jesus Christ is and what he's already done that makes you acceptable to God.
[00:09:12] And the word gospel, it's an unfortunate translation in the New Testament, the original New Testament, the word was oangelionhead, and we borrowed it from culture.
[00:09:28] We borrowed, the church borrowed that word from the greek culture, and it originally meant the proclamation of victory. When an army won a victory, they would always send a proclaimer back, and the proclaimer would proclaim the victory. And that's what Uangelian originally meant to declare, that the argives won the battle.
[00:09:56] But like every other word, over time it gets massaged. And it came to mean to announce good news.
[00:10:04] Uangelian was the announcing of any good news.
[00:10:10] The baby was born at 06:00 eastern standard time, weighed eight pounds 12oz had long, curly hair. Announcing the good news, all right.
[00:10:28] Then when Christianity picked it up and Paul started using it in a theological way, it developed another meaning, and it came to mean the life and work of Jesus Christ. That makes us right with God.
[00:10:53] The word gospel is unfortunate, because when we translated the Bible into English, they made this word up, and it's the putting together of. It's making one word out of two.
[00:11:09] It's turning the word God spell into an abbreviated gospel. Do you see it? God spell gets abbreviated to the gospel, and the gospel is not a God spell at all. It has nothing to do with spells.
[00:11:30] So it was unfortunate that it got translated that way.
[00:11:34] All right. The gospel is the life and the work of Jesus Christ.
[00:11:43] So whenever we say the gospel, the good news, we're talking about who Jesus was himself and what work he accomplished.
[00:11:56] So when Paul says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, he's saying, I'm not ashamed of who Jesus was and what he did.
[00:12:11] I'm not ashamed that he was crucified. I'm not ashamed that he was condemned by his own people.
[00:12:18] I'm not ashamed that he was buried in a borrowed tomb.
[00:12:22] I'm not ashamed that I believe in the resurrection.
[00:12:26] The gospel is the word. Gospel is a way of saying who Jesus Christ was and what he did.
[00:12:40] So Paul tells us in Galatians chapter one, we're going to have one sermon on every chapter. In Galatians.
[00:12:47] He tells us in Galatians chapter one, he writes this letter. On his first missionary trip, Paul and Barnabas had gone to an area that is in modern Turkey today. It's basically the cities of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. And he had started churches in all these towns.
[00:13:11] Well, when he went back to Antioch, Syria, some other people came behind him and said, paul didn't tell you everything.
[00:13:21] You really can't trust Paul. There's a lot more to this than what Paul told you.
[00:13:26] In fact, you're going to have to go through an initiation ceremony and you're going to have to change the way you eat, and you can't wear the clothes you've been wearing, and you have to change your holidays.
[00:13:39] They added the law to the gospel.
[00:13:44] And Paul wrote a letter to the churches and he said, listen, those people are not sent from God.
[00:13:53] In fact, it's not the gospel. It's another gospel. They have made up a religion. It is really not the religion of Jesus Christ.
[00:14:06] And then Paul said to them, I am amazed how quickly you set aside your calling in the grace of Christ.
[00:14:21] Paul said, I am surprised that you're willing to trade God treating you better than what you deserve for a bunch of rituals and rules that you'll never be able to keep.
[00:14:39] This is the first book in the New Testament, and they're already messing with the gospel.
[00:14:45] Do you hear it 20 years after Christ? Their people are already messing with the gospel.
[00:14:52] Now, I want to apply what Paul says here to us.
[00:14:57] What does the gospel mean to you when you look at yourself real honestly, are you on the legal side or are you on the gray side?
[00:15:10] Now, some of you still think that at some point you're going to get your act together and you're going to be able to obey all the religious rules you learned when you were a kid.
[00:15:24] And you think that someday you'll be able to go a whole day and not do one thing bad. And you got it in your head that someday you're going to get this right.
[00:15:38] All right, that's the rules side, church.
[00:15:42] That's the rule side. And take my word for it, I've tried really, really hard in my life to get it right.
[00:15:53] And now I'm 70 years into this and I'm still not getting it right.
[00:16:00] If you're 70 and not getting it right, you're not going to get it right.
[00:16:05] Church.
[00:16:07] So my relationship to Christ isn't, do I go to church?
[00:16:15] Do I go to church Easter and Christmas?
[00:16:20] Do I obey the rules?
[00:16:23] I don't live that way. Because if I do, it's setting the grace of Christ aside. It's saying to the grace of Christ, I don't need your grace because I'm going to get this right myself.
[00:16:38] On the other hand, the gospel says you're never going to get it right yourself. You have to have the grace of God.
[00:16:47] Is your understanding of the gospel that, is this your understanding of the gospel, that Christ came into the world to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, that Christ came into the world to make us something we could not make ourselves church.
[00:17:11] See, this is the gospel that Paul is preaching. Paul is preaching. The way you become acceptable to God is you look to Jesus Christ, who he was and what he did.
[00:17:29] And then Paul says in verse ten, chapter one, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trained to please man?
[00:17:42] If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
[00:17:52] You see, the gospel focuses on Christ, works focus on us.
[00:18:02] I've gone to church my whole life, and here's something I know.
[00:18:10] I've known a lot of christians who were more anxious about what other people thought of them than of what God thought of them.
[00:18:21] Church.
[00:18:23] I'm not criticizing them. I feel sorry for them. They learned it.
[00:18:29] They learned it by going to church.
[00:18:31] And if the people around you get suspicious of you, church can get ugly in some places.
[00:18:38] So they developed a religion that was more about pleasing the people around them than it was about pleasing God.
[00:18:48] Now do you see the problem? If my religion focuses on pleasing the people around me, I'm not focusing on Christ.
[00:18:58] If I am focusing on Christ, and I have a sense of his grace, I have a sense of his kindness, his love, and his goodness, your opinion of me doesn't matter nearly as much.
[00:19:11] This is what Paul is saying. When the gospel is effective in your heart, you start saying more than I want to please people. I want to please Christ.
[00:19:23] I want to think the thoughts that please Christ.
[00:19:27] I want to have the feelings that please Christ. I want to make the choices that please Christ.
[00:19:34] The gospel focuses me away from myself and my works and trying to keep people around me happy to. And it turns my focus to Christ. And I see how good he has been, how blessed he has made me, all the kindness he has shown me and in my heart. The gospel makes a radical change. And now I just want to. I want to please him.
[00:20:04] When we believe the right things, when we believe the gospel, it transforms us into willing servants of God. I don't serve God because I'm afraid to go to hell. I don't serve God to please people.
[00:20:21] I don't serve God to make up for something wrong I've done. I've served God because the gospel changed me. And I appreciate him so much. I just want to do something for him. Church, the gospel changes us, and we stop being duty servants, and we come to appreciate Christ so much. We say, I just want to do something for Christ, he's been so good to me. He's blessed me so richly. He's made me such a better person. I just can't stand not doing something for him. Church.
[00:21:03] It is true, though. You can be a servant of religion and still not be a servant of Christ.
[00:21:16] I've seen this over the years.
[00:21:20] People mistake serving in a ministry for serving Christ.
[00:21:31] You know what the apostle Paul said? I can give my body, but if I don't love Christ, it doesn't matter at all.
[00:21:43] Do you get it? You can make a lot of sacrifices. You can do a lot of service. But if that service doesn't focus on Christ, you are a servant of religion. You are not a servant of Christ.
[00:22:00] Church.
[00:22:03] Then Paul said in verse eleven, for I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached to me, preached by me, is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any Mandev, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
[00:22:27] Now, this goes to the question of.
[00:22:31] Ah, doc, how do you know you're right?
[00:22:35] How do you know that the people who are legalists aren't right? How do you know that the people are who are obeying all the rules? How do you know they're not right? And you've got this wrong.
[00:22:46] Okay, very simply, the apostle Paul says, the gospel that I teach, I didn't learn from people.
[00:23:01] I learned it from Jesus Christ himself.
[00:23:05] Do you see? He said, I did not learn what I'm teaching you from other people. I learned it from Jesus Christ himself.
[00:23:18] The faith that we have in the gospel is not a faith that we invented ourselves.
[00:23:28] I can say this more plainly. Christianity did not evolve out of Judeo Greco roman culture.
[00:23:39] Christianity did not evolve out of the culture that it began in.
[00:23:45] Jesus Christ himself created Christianity.
[00:23:50] Can you hear this? Our Lord Jesus Christ, by his life and death, created Christianity. All right, now I want you to read the gospels. When you read the gospels, you meet two different kinds of people. You meet the Pharisees, and they're always walking around with their rulebook.
[00:24:16] They're always pointing out wrong. You can't do that. That's not right. Shame on you.
[00:24:24] And then you meet Jesus Christ.
[00:24:30] I shared with the staff, I think. I can't remember where I shared it. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Can you hear this?
[00:24:43] When you see Jesus in the gospels, you don't see a pharisee pointing out everything everybody does wrong. You see Jesus Christ treating people with grace.
[00:24:57] You see Jesus Christ living out the idea that God wants to invest something in you that will change you and you'll be the better person that God wants you to be. Can you see this church? All right, so how did all these rules get here? All right, two ways. Number one, from the very beginning, Old Testament rules tried to infringe upon the church.
[00:25:26] Second of all, rules are very great religious tools to get people to do what you want them to do, and they won't do otherwise.
[00:25:39] That sounds a little cynical, doesn't it? I've been doing this my whole life.
[00:25:45] See, I have this idea that if you only serve because you're afraid or because you have to or because somebody is manipulating into it, it doesn't improve your soul.
[00:26:01] On the other hand, if you serve because you love Christ, your soul gets richer and richer and richer.
[00:26:14] Jesus Christ did not only create the gospel, he is the gospel.
[00:26:20] The gospel is I am acceptable to God because of Jesus Christ.
[00:26:29] And Paul said, I didn't learn that when I went to Gamaliel's yeshiva.
[00:26:40] I did not learn that. When I studied the Old Testament with the great teacher Gamal, I didn't learn it from the other apostles.
[00:26:55] Christ himself taught it to me.
[00:26:59] Church.
[00:27:00] The gospel that we cling to is shared with us through Paul, who received it himself by revelation from Jesus Christ.
[00:27:15] I would rather trust the scriptures that Paul wrote than all of the evolved religion that has ever been created.
[00:27:31] Now, I'm skipping to verse 17.
[00:27:34] Paul says that after he.
[00:27:37] After he met Christ on the road to Damascus, I did not go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and there returned again to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him 15 days.
[00:28:02] But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother, in what I am writing to you, in what I am writing to you before God, I do not lie.
[00:28:19] Listen to what Paul says.
[00:28:21] These people who came to you and told you that you had to start obeying the rules, they claim to be the students of the apostles, but they're not.
[00:28:40] He said, I'm not a student of apostles, but I've met them.
[00:28:46] I've met Peter. I spent two weeks with him once. I've met James, the half brother of our Lord. I know the apostles and the people who came to you with these new regulations. They don't represent the apostolic teaching either.
[00:29:05] I am fascinated that Paul says after he became a Christian on the road to Damascus, he didn't go to Jerusalem to learn from the apostles, he went to Arabia. Most people believe he went to the city of Petra. It was a thriving city then. And for three years he thought about everything he had learned in rabbi school and everything that Christ had taught him. And he came to clarity about it all. Do you hear this? He spent three years contemplating, meditating, praying, seeking God. And it all settled in his mind. And when the three years was over, he started doing his mission trips and changing the greco roman world. All right, why is this important?
[00:30:02] Here we are again.
[00:30:04] I'm sorry, but Christianity is a thinking religion. It matters what you think about church.
[00:30:11] Paul became the great apostle Paul because he let the Holy Spirit teach him.
[00:30:18] He dedicated time to let the Holy Spirit teach him. Alright, I want to make two recommendations.
[00:30:26] I want to recommend that you read your Bible every single day.
[00:30:30] And if you are a new Bible reader, don't start in Genesis. If you are a new Bible reader, start in the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
[00:30:43] If you read the Bible and it doesn't make sense to you, go back to the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
[00:30:52] Don't worry about reading the book of Leviticus. You can be just fine and never read the book of Leviticus. All right? You can't be fine and never read the gospels.
[00:31:06] Do you hear this? The gospels are at the core of our faith. And the gospels tell us who Jesus Christ was, what he did and what he taught. So you can't ever read the gospels too much. It is the core of everything.
[00:31:25] All right, now here's what I want to suggest you do too. When you read the gospels, and it turns out they're pretty nice. They're nicely paragraphed. In most bibles, the gospels are nicely paragraphed. So you take one event from the life of Christ.
[00:31:48] Just pick any the woman at the well.
[00:31:52] You can read the story of the woman at the well who meets Jesus in John's gospel. All right? You read that story and then you rehearse in your mind the story.
[00:32:03] You just tell yourself the story over again. Jesus was walking, stopped at a well. Lady came up drawing water. He asked for a drink. She said, you're a jewish person. You don't drink out of cups with us. Jesus said, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for a drink. They had a little debate and finally she said, I'd like to have a drink of that water.
[00:32:30] Jesus told her part of her life story. She was so impressed, she ran back to the city, invited everybody to come. And the whole city of Samaritans became believers in Jesus Christ. All right, that's the story in a nutshell. All right. Then I say, what does this story mean to me?
[00:32:49] This is about more than just a woman who lived 2000 years ago. There are ideas, there is meaning in this story that can make me a better person.
[00:33:04] Jesus told her about her life and he did it in a kind of way that didn't offend her. He brought her to repentance without offending her. Christ wants to bring me to repentance.
[00:33:17] He's not calling me to repent because he's angry and wants to offend me. He's calling me to repent because he just longs to forgive me. Church and I start thinking about the ideas and I say, how does this apply to me?
[00:33:33] How does this apply to me?
[00:33:35] And then if you do this in the morning, it's the best. Do it in the morning if you can. Then you carry that with you throughout the day. Christ loves me as much as he loved that woman and he wants to forgive me of everything that I carry around in me that is unpleasant more than he wants to forgive me. He wants to make me a better mandehead. That woman was never the same after she met Jesus Christ. Her life was changed. She was a better person. She was more reliable. She was more loving, more kind. Christ changed her. I'm going to take that idea with me today. I believe Christ wants to change me today and make me a better man. All right, now do you see what's happening? I'm thinking about the gospel. I'm carrying it with me throughout the day.
[00:34:26] I'm challenging myself with these ideas. I'm letting the gospel, the life and teaching of Jesus Christ remold me from the inside out.
[00:34:44] This is just an interesting note for you who like this kind of thing.
[00:34:50] When it said in verse 18, I went up to Jerusalem to visit.
[00:35:00] The word visit is a word that we get on one of our english words from.
[00:35:08] See if you can guess it. The greek word is historia.
[00:35:17] Historia.
[00:35:20] Come on, somebody's got it.
[00:35:23] History. Yes, we get our word history from this word.
[00:35:29] History is an inquiry, a learning about the past.
[00:35:36] When what's implied in this word is Paul went to Jerusalem. He talked to Peter and while they were talking Peter told him about the life of Christ.
[00:35:50] The historia.
[00:35:54] All right. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. I do my best for you people.
[00:36:01] All right. Verse 23.
[00:36:05] Paul writes that when I came back from Arabia I spent two weeks in Jerusalem and then I went to Damascus and started preaching. And when I started preaching the gospel everyone was amazed.
[00:36:23] They said, he who used to persecute us, the word is hunt. He used to hunt us down, is now preaching. That is the word for proclaiming the gospel. The word preached, there is a verb form of uangelian, the noun. The guy who used to hunt us down is now telling the gospel story.
[00:36:47] He's preaching the faith that he once destroyed. And they glorified God because of me.
[00:36:54] The gospel of Christ radically changed Paul's life.
[00:36:59] He was a terrible man before the gospel. Do you hear this? And it radically transformed him. Do you know the gospel could change your life?
[00:37:11] Some of you were daydreaming when I said that the gospel can change your life, the gospel can change the life of people around you. If the gospel can change Paul from a man who hunted people to a man who proclaimed the good news himself, if the gospel can do that to Paul, guess what it could do to you and to other people around you.
[00:37:40] Church.
[00:37:42] Now, here's the important thing. But for the gospel to be powerful, I have to believe it.
[00:37:50] The gospel is not a spell that religion shakes over you. The gospel is you believing in your heart and confessing with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. Can you hear this? And every one of us have to come to this point in life where we say, I believe the gospel.
[00:38:15] I believe that Jesus Christ is God and man. I believe that he lived a sinless life. I believe that he died on the cross to pay for my sin. I believe he rose the third day. I believe he's alive, and he's trying to make me a better person. I have to believe it, all right? And then I have to believe it enough that I'm willing to have the same change that Paul had. When Paul really, really believed it, he found he wanted to share it with somebody.
[00:38:47] Do you see?
[00:38:49] Now, here's the problem.
[00:38:53] When the gospel has its most profound effect on you, you can't help but talk about it.
[00:39:01] And if you have to coerce yourself to talk about it, or if you feel upset about talking about it, or if you feel embarrassed about talking about it, the gospel is not doing its complete work in you.
[00:39:15] If you went to a great restaurant and you had an awesome meal, you would not be embarrassed at all to tell five or six people that you had an awesome meal at this restaurant, right?
[00:39:28] Our browns lost 17 games one year, and some of you are still wearing browns gear. You're not ashamed. You're not ashamed. God bless you.
[00:39:40] All right.
[00:39:42] But something odd happens when it comes to the gospel of Christ.
[00:39:49] Something odd happens and we feel like, well, if I talked about Christ, what would they think of me?
[00:39:59] I listen to sports radio. What did people think of us in Cleveland when we were losing all those games? Nobody thought very highly of us. Church didn't stop one person from tailgating, though, did it?
[00:40:13] Okay, listen, listen. What I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say Paul is an example. When the gospel has a profound effect on me, it changes who I am. It changes what's important to me.
[00:40:27] I start feeling a nervous desire to say something to somebody about the wonder, the beauty, and the dignity of Jesus Christ.
[00:40:39] I find myself wanting to tell somebody a story from the gospels.
[00:40:44] Do you see this? This is what Paul is not only telling us, he modeled it. The church changes the world when the gospel changes us.
[00:40:56] The church changes the world. When we start seeing the gospel for what it is. It is this beautiful thing that God has done, and it is so beautiful that we feel compelled to share it with somebody else.
[00:41:12] Christianity converted the world because people like you and I believed the gospel. They believed that it changed them, and they believed it would change other people. And person by person, day by day, voice by voice, christians went out and told people the stories about Jesus Christ, and those stories about Jesus Christ change them.
[00:41:39] We didn't convert the world to Christ by nonsense rules and rituals. We converted the world to Christ by sharing the gospel, the story of Jesus Christ.
[00:41:56] The gospel is God's means for bringing us to Christ so that our sin can be forgiveness.
[00:42:07] The gospel is used by the Holy Spirit to create saving faith.
[00:42:15] Saving faith is accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, eternal life. I can say that an easier way. Saving faith is the Holy Spirit working within us so that when we hear the gospel, we believe it. It makes sense to us. And when we believe, we're justified.
[00:42:40] We are made right with God. We are sanctified. The Holy Spirit makes us a better person every day. We become recipients of the life of the age. Eternal life, church.
[00:42:54] I'm trying to tell you in the most simple terms I can. Christianity is built on the gospel.
[00:43:01] The gospel is who Jesus was and what he did. And when we believe in Jesus, who he was and what he did, it changes us.
[00:43:12] And when it changes us the way it should change us, we feel a natural desire to share it with someone else, and that ends in they glorified God because of me. The gospel leads to God being glorified. God gets the glory when the gospel changes people.
[00:43:35] Church our dear heavenly Father, I pray that this seed would take root in our heart.
[00:43:45] I pray that the gospel would change us.
[00:43:49] I pray that we would not be religious people, but we would be people of the gospel.
[00:43:58] I pray that the same transformation that happened in Paul could happen in us.
[00:44:05] The gospel could change our priorities. It could change our values. It could change our purpose.
[00:44:12] Then I pray, Father, that we would find it more and more compelling to tell somebody something about the beauty and the majesty and the wonder of Jesus Christ.
[00:44:23] And I pray that you would receive all the glory for it. Amen.
