Matt Chandler - The Breadth of the Gospel

Well, good morning. That makes me wish that I had taken high school more seriously. If you have your Bibles, grab those. I do want to show you something, kids. Let that be a lesson to you: dial in. Alright, if you have your Bibles, I want to pull some pretty significant things out of this passage. This is part two of a two-part series where I wanted us to get back a little bit to the gospel, to look at the gospel, and to consider what the gospel is. Last week, in fact, what we looked at was what I called the depth of the gospel; namely, that the gospel isn’t merely some past event in your life that you look back on and say, «That’s the door I walked through to become a Christian,» but that the gospel is something you and I are standing in right now. It’s not just a past event; it is the thing that marks and shapes our lives as Christians. We covered that at length last week. To be a Christian, we have to believe that Christ has died for our sins. First, we have to believe that we’re actually sinners, that we’ve fallen short of the glory of God, and then accept by faith alone, grace alone, that Christ has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. I wanted to press hard on this because we’re in the Bible Belt. If all the gospel is, is some past event and there’s no present reality, then I ask you to consider whether or not you’re genuinely a Christian. The Bible knows nothing of saying, «I was baptized when I was seven, so I’m a follower of Jesus.» The Bible goes, «If you follow Jesus, you’re a follower of Jesus.» That’s kind of how it looks at it. We are not talking about perfection; we’re not even talking about being fully mature yet. We are saying there should be some semblance of fruit in our lives, fruit being: I hate sin, and I want to follow Jesus. I wanted to press rightly on this. If there is none of that in your life, then I’m not sure how you’re defining the Christian faith. You might be talking about being a moral conservative—kudos—but that’s not Christianity. You might have a story of, «I used to do this, and I don’t do it anymore; I do these things.» That’s not Christianity. Christianity is: I believe that Christ has died for my sins; I am in a relationship with God through His work, and I am to follow Him with my life as best I know how in any given moment. Even if it looks messy, even if you’re not quite where you want to be, even if everybody else is like, «Man, you’ve got issues,» that’s okay as long as there’s, «Jesus is my Lord; I’m pursuing Him as best I can where I am, and I am trusting that the Spirit of God is going to continually work on me for the rest of my life.» So that was depth. Now, this week, what I want to do—and I don’t have enough time to do it, but we’re going to—is talk about the breadth of the gospel. Last week was the depth; this is the breadth. The breadth of the gospel is wildly controversial in church history and even in our present moment because you and I are westerners, for the most part, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You should never despise where you live or where God placed you; that’s God’s doing. We’re westerners, which means our plausibility structure orders our whole world around being an individual. For many of us, when we hear «gospel,» we think of personal salvation. Now, you’re not wrong; it’s just incomplete. The Bible doesn’t just talk about the gospel as individual conversion. The gospel is the good news that God is redeeming everything; the good news is that God has bound the enemy and is taking back all that is rightfully His, which is everything. What I want to do today is look at the Bible and show you that the gospel is bigger than your conversion. Then I want to step into a space that’s going to be awkward and heavy, and some are going to wish I hadn’t done it and had just stayed on the passage. But conscience bids me to make things heavy and awkward today. Are you looking forward to that? I’m not! No, it’s fine—don’t worry. The Scriptures are clear that when God created man and woman, He gave them what has been called throughout Christian history the cultural mandate: «Fill the earth and subdue it.» The cultural mandate was a command to Adam and Eve. If you know your Bible well, you know that Eden was ordered for human flourishing. That’s what you’re reading about in Genesis one and two. You’ve got the establishment of Eden; that’s ordered. The presence of God is there; shalom is there; joy is there. The command to Adam and Eve, the cultural mandate, is to have lots of babies and spread this all over the wild, untamed world. Since that day, human beings have done just that; they have built governments, created systems, and built cities. They have subdued the earth and filled it. This is the cultural mandate. What we believe as Christians is that…