Preserve The Gospel

0:51And Father, you said that you've done all this so that in the coming ages you can show even more immeasurable riches of grace to us in Christ Jesus. Father, I pray that through our time together singing your praises and praying and hearing your word, that our hearts would be captured anew with your great grace, that we will be excited to serve you, and that we will wait with great anticipation for the ways that you are going to continue to bless us and to show us your goodness and your glory. We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen.

1:33Our scripture reading this evening is from the book of Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians 2. The New Testament will be about three-quarters of the way through your Bible. When you find Ephesians 2, please stand and we'll read verses 1-10 together. Ephesians 2:1-10 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He has loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Jesus Christ. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. This is God's Word. You may be seated.

3:23Every September, we take two weeks to focus in on the vision of our church. This is a very important two weeks in the life of our church body when we take time just to focus on this one particular topic, what we're about at New Life. Now, if you're a visitor, you should know that ordinarily we preach verse by verse through books of the Bible. We just finished a study in the book of Hebrews last week, and in a couple of weeks, we'll be starting a 16-month study through the Gospel of Mark.

3:56So, the ordinary preaching diet of our church is verse-by-verse exposition of Scripture. But we do see value in taking time to look at particular topics from time to time so that we can focus in on what God's Word teaches on a particular area of Scripture, or in this case, about the vision of our church. Why do we exist? What's the purpose that we're here? So, for the members that are gathered here tonight, this is one of the most exciting times of the year. This is going to be a reminder for you and for me as to why we planted this church three and a half years. Half years ago. And it's a reminder for us as to why we still exist today.

4:36For what purpose do we gather on Sundays? For what purpose do we go about the work of the church during the week in our life groups, in elements classes, in one-on-one or small group discipleship, in the work that we do to proclaim the gospel in this community and in our world? Why do we do it? And then for you visitors, this is a wonderful chance for you to explore along with us what we're about as a church, to understand why we're here and what we're doing, and then to make an informed decision about partnering with us or partnering with another healthy local church in our community, because that's our heart for you, is that you would join a local church, a healthy local church, where you can live out the commands of Scripture, like here at New Life or somewhere else. So, visitors, we hope that this series will bless you. We hope that it will encourage you.

5:28We hope it will make you more aware as to what we believe as a church body. And members, we hope you'll be encouraged as well. So, having shared those hopes, let's begin exploring the vision statement together. And in just a moment, we'll dive into the scripture as well. Put the vision statement up here on the screen for us to focus on. New Life exists to preserve and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to make mature disciples of all nations for the glory of God.

5:57Now, we want to begin by asking the question, What do we do as a church? Well, according to our vision statement here, we do two things. We exist to preserve the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we exist to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything in our church life, what we do in the church, what we do in the community, what we do in the world, comes back to these two ideas, preservation and proclamation. This is the meat of our vision statement. It's what we are about.

6:33It reminds our members and it informs everyone else of who we are as a church. You should know that for us, the vision statement isn't something that we dust off once a year during our vision series. It's not something that we just have on t-shirts or on the website because it sounds cool or it looks good. But for us, the vision statement, and especially the meat of the vision statement, preservation and proclamation, is the grid through which we make all decisions as a church.

7:04Will this help us preserve the gospel? Yes or no? Will this help us proclaim the gospel? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, and we believe God is calling us to do it, we do it. And if the answer is no, we don't consider it further. Because what we are about is preservation and proclamation, not anything else. This week particularly, we're going to focus on preservation. Why is this message called Preserve the Gospel? Next week we'll talk about gospel proclamation.

7:35But first, I want to finish giving you this big 30,000-foot view, rather. So, this first question: what do we do as a church? We preserve and we proclaim. But the next question is: why do we do that? Why do we do what we do? And there's two answers to that question. First, we preserve and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to do what? To make mature disciples of all nations. When Jesus gave what we call the great commission, he said this: we'll put this on the screen for you. This is Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

8:25Jesus commanded us, the church, to make disciples of all nations. And it's very important for us to understand what this means. When most people think about a disciple, they think that a disciple is merely a student. It's merely a learner. Now, it's true that a disciple is a student. A disciple is a learner. There is a learning component to discipleship. But it is reductionistic to say that that's all that a disciple is. It's a misunderstanding about what the Scripture teaches.

8:58Because a biblical disciple, Is not only a learner, not only a student, but it's a man, woman, or child who's seeking to conform his or her life to the person and work of Jesus. That's what a biblical disciple is. One who is seeking to conform all of his or her life to the person and work of Jesus. This is something that our church takes very seriously. For us here at New Life, discipleship is not just something that we execute for an hour at a particular time. At 4 o'clock, we have what we call our discipleship hour, and that's a time where we come and we pray together as a church. We have a prayer meeting.

9:40We have kids' discipleship activities going on for elementary school-age kids. And so we call that our discipleship time, but that's more of a common vernacular. It's a language that people would understand if they came to New Life for the first time. They say, what's going on at 4 o'clock? Well, that's an easy way for us to describe that. But that's not all that we consider discipleship here at New Life. Because discipleship is the process by which we come to exhibit the person and work of Christ in our lives. As we come to know His Word, as we come to believe His Word, as we come to apply His Word to our own lives and to the lives of others, we are discipling. We are doing the work of discipleship. And I'm regularly encouraged when I'm out in the community because I often run into people from our church who are doing the work. Things of life together. Sometimes I'm in the coffee shop and I run into people there, there with their Bibles open, studying the Word together. Other times I'll be going out in the community and I'll see some of our church members working together, actually doing work together where I know because I know some of these guys, they're not just executing a job together, they're actually discipling one another. They're using their job and a way to make money as a form of discipleship as well. I'm regularly encouraged by things like that at our church because it shows that our members take this discipleship so seriously. It's not just one aspect of our lives, it's who we are, and it's how we seek to live on a day-to-day basis. Now, this is especially important here in college station, here in the Bible Belt, because most people conceive of a disciple of Jesus as merely one who agrees with a set of facts, one who maybe knows the right information about God or about his Son, Jesus. In fact, if you walked up and down our street and you asked the average person, just someone that you ran into, do you believe in God? They would probably say yes. Do you believe in Jesus? They would probably say yes.

11:42But according to the scripture, a disciple is much more than a person who says that he or she believes in God or he or she believes in Jesus. A disciple is a follower of Christ. So when anybody asks me, what do your life groups do? Tell me about your small group communities. I tell People that our life groups are a way that we seek to live out the teachings of 1 John. Because the book of 1 John is all about what a true believer should look like. He or she believes the right information about who God is. They have right doctrine. But it's more than that. He or she also seeks to live a godly life in obedience to God and His Word. And he or she is functionally living out the commands of Scripture by loving other people. Those are the three characteristics that 1 John goes through, and that's what we're trying to structure our church life around, living out not only 1 John, of course, but all of the word. But 1 John is just so clear as to what a follower is supposed to be. That's what we want to see our life groups doing. That's what we want to see our whole church doing together. Believing the truth about God, obeying His Word, loving others. Those are key components of the Christian life. So we exist to preserve and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to make mature disciples. That's what we're going for. Men and women who reflect the character of God, just as our church as a whole should reflect the character of God. But secondly, why do we do what we do? We preserve and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to make mature disciples of all nations for the glory of God. It's all about God's glory here at New Life. One of the Apostle Paul's most famous statements in Scripture is whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, what? Do it all for the glory of God. He says, all of your life, and therefore all of our lives. Remember, this is a letter that he wrote to a church, not to an individual. All of our lives should be about the glory of God. And when you think back to Genesis chapter 3, what was at the root of Satan's temptation? When he came to Adam and Eve, what was the root of his temptation? He wanted them to take for themselves the glory that belonged to God. He said, Look, if you eat this fruit, the reason that God doesn't want you to eat it is because if you eat it, you'll be like him, knowing good and evil. You can be glorious like he's glorious. You can know what he knows. The tragedy, of course, is that in Genesis 1 and 2, we're told that Adam and Eve were created in God's image and likeness. They already were like God, inasmuch as God wanted them to be like him.

14:36But that wasn't enough. They wanted God's glory for themselves. And so they disobeyed God. They ate the fruit. And ever since that day, we've all been seeking glory for ourselves, for our families, for our organizations. Instead of being about God, it's become about us. So at New Life, we aren't seeking to make disciples of all nations so that we would be glorified. So that New Life would become a great big church that people know about, that has a reputation beyond these walls of this community. Rather, we seek to make disciples of all nations so that God will be glorified. So, in all that we do as a church, we need to ask ourselves: are we doing this for God's glory or for our glory? Is this about Him or is this about us? Is this about Him or is this about me? Because it's all about His glory.

15:30So, that's the big 30,000-foot view of our vision statement. We've taken that big picture view, and now what I want to do is focus on this first portion of the vision statement: that we exist to preserve the gospel. But for us to talk about why and how we preserve the gospel, we've got to talk about what the gospel is. It's essential that we understand what the gospel is and is not. And if you've been through membership class here at New Life, or if you're going to go through membership class, then you either have read or you will read Thabiti Anyubuile's book, What is a Healthy Church Member? It's a great book about being a healthy church member in a healthy local church. And he writes this in his book. We'll put this on the screen for you. It's helpful to rule out some ideas frequently presented as the gospel. The gospel is not simply that we are okay, that God is love, that Jesus wants to be our friends, or that we should live right. Neither is the gospel simply that all our problems will be fixed if we follow Jesus, or that God wants us to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

16:40Now, perhaps you've been a member here for some time, or you've recently moved from another Bible-believing church in another city, and this isn't news to you. You know the biblical gospel, you know that it's not those things, that those are all at best partial truths. But for some people who consider themselves Christians, these statements come as a real surprise. Many people have been taught their entire lives that the message of Christianity is that God wants you to try really hard to be a good person. And if you meet that standard, whatever that standard is, for a good person, then you've pleased God and you'll earn admittance into heaven. That's what most people in our country believe that the message of Christianity is.

17:33But we know from Scripture that that's not true. And that's why we've asked you to turn to Ephesians 2:1 through 10, because it's most important that we understand what the gospel is, what this message is that we're preserving. So I want to look there with you now at Ephesians chapter 2, beginning in verses 1 through 3. You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the The prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

18:19In these first three verses, the problem is clearly spelled out. We mentioned a few moments ago that every person was created in the image and likeness of God. But our first parents, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God, and when they rebelled against God, they died spiritually. That spiritual death was passed down to their children and to their children's children, and truly to all people. So that when people are born, people are born dead in sin. And that answers the question: why do I sin?

18:54When you ask the question, why do I sin? The answer is, it's because of our sinful nature. We aren't born innocent. Many people teach that we're born innocent and that we learn sinful ways and sinful patterns from our environments, from the bad examples of our parents, maybe, the bad examples of our classmates or older siblings or friends. But the truth is that we don't have to learn how to sin. We're born with a sinful nature. And that once we are born, we're able to start expressing that sinful nature in our. Variety of ways. All of us that have children know this to be true. You don't have to teach your young infant son or daughter to sin. As soon as you start to change that diaper, you see it. It manifests itself, the sinful nature. As soon as you try to tell your toddler no about something that will hurt them or something that wouldn't be good for them, then you see it. You see the sinful nature manifest itself. It's ingrained into our hearts.

20:02I think it's important to note as well in these first three verses that what Paul teaches is that our sin had more consequences than simply spiritual death and separation from God. What these verses say is that God is actively angry at sin and sinners. His wrath burns. We have to keep in mind that God is unlike us. He is holy in every sense of the word. He is set apart. He's perfect, morally and otherwise. And our sin angers him because it is rebellion to him and to his authority, to his good law. That's why God is angry at sin.

20:46And one of the hallmarks of a healthy church, of a good local church, is that the people speak the truth to one another. See, this is uncomfortable to talk about, isn't it? We start talking about sin, we start talking about our sin, we start talking about... Sinning against each other, this is uncomfortable. But I can say one of my favorite things about our church is that this is a place where we speak the truth in love, where the members of our church aren't afraid to go to one another and say, hey man, I think you sinned in this way. When you said that to that person in our life group, when you made that comment or that joke the other night, that was hurtful. I think you sinned against God and against that person. I think you need to go to them and ask forgiveness.

21:33See, whenever you love people, you speak the truth, even when it's hard to say, even when it's hard to hear. Because that's what love requires. Love requires truth. You can't have love without truth, and you shouldn't have truth without love. So we go for both truth and love here at New Life. And we want to speak the truth in love, including the truth about sin and about our own sin and our need for regular repentance, confession.

22:01Let's look at verse 4. Thankfully, there's good news. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the Coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

22:39We learn in these verses that because God is rich in mercy, because he's rich in grace, he desired to do for us what we could not and would not do. You see, friends, the Bible teaches that we are dead in our sins. We haven't merely been wounded by sin. We haven't been given a bad example by sin. We have been killed. We are dead in our sins. And because we're dead, because we are spiritually dead people, we need a great God, rich in mercy, rich in grace, who will regenerate those dead hearts, who will grant faith to people that don't have faith, who will grant repentance to people who have no desire to repent. We need that kind of a God, and these verses say that that's exactly the kind of God that we have. You know as well as I do that no amount of New Year's resolutions, no amount of I'll try harder, I won't do this again, I won't drink so much next time, I won't do that with that guy or that girl again, no amount of those things help us to change because the resolutions don't affect the heart.

23:47And the problem is not the mind and what we've decided, it's the heart and what it wants. So when we have hearts that want sin, we need a great God, rich in mercy, rich in grace, who will do for us what we will not and cannot. Cannot do, and that's regenerate our hearts, that's give us faith and repentance, that's change us from the inside out. See, God sent His Son, Jesus, to do all of this. He sent His own Son to be born of a virgin, to live a sinless and miraculous life, the life of obedience that you and I were called to live, but that none of us do live.

24:26And then Jesus submitted himself to death. The King of kings and the Lord of Lords allowed himself to be brutally murdered, executed on a cross in our place and for our sins. And the Scriptures say that on the third day, he rose from the dead, physically alive, in the same body that he was crucified in. And the scripture says that he did this for us, because God is rich in grace and mercy. The question is: okay, I understand he's rich in grace and mercy, but did he do this because some of us deserved it? Is there a difference between the people who believe in Jesus and the people who don't believe in Jesus? I think maybe there is. I'm not sure. Look at verse 8. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. A result of works, so that no one may boast.

25:36Paul says that we've been saved by grace. He says we've been saved by unmerited favor, something that we did not earn, something that we did not deserve. And what's amazing is that it's even a step further than that. Because it's not merely that I didn't deserve grace as though I had done nothing, I just merely didn't do enough to deserve it. I had actually done everything in the opposite direction, and so had you. See, it's not that we're morally neutral, right?

26:12And we just didn't do enough to earn God's grace. We actually did everything to not deserve it. We did everything to deserve God's wrath. Because in every sinful thought, every sinful action, every single word, every sinful word, we have mounted the evidence against ourselves, which says, I deserve judgment, not grace and mercy. But the scripture says that God gave us grace. And he did this because he's rich in mercy, and he did this so that no one could boast. So no one could stand before God and say, I earned this, I deserved it, so that no one could stand before another. Church member or another non-Christian, and say, I deserved God's grace.

27:07He did this to display His glory and to show the kind of God that He is, a gracious and compassionate God. His grace is received through faith, it says here. And I think that's very important to understand. You don't receive God's grace because you're born into a Christian family. You don't receive God's grace, hard as it may be to believe, because you went to Texas AM. You don't receive God's grace because of any of those kinds of reasons. We receive God's grace through faith.

27:39And even faith is a gift. Even faith is a gift. Think about your own spiritual journey. Why was it that one day you placed your faith in Christ? Why hadn't you placed your faith in Christ all of the days before, all of the weeks before, all of the years before? For me, I grew up in the church. I was the most involved kid in the youth group. Everybody knew me and my family and my home church. I was there all the time.

28:15And yet I didn't become a Christian until I went to college. I didn't become a Christian until God used, by his grace, my roommates, the preaching of a faithful church in this community. His Holy Spirit, His Word. See, I can't explain why I didn't come to faith before the time that I did, other than God wasn't pleased to give me faith until then. Because outwardly speaking, I had everything going for me. I wasn't a pagan that lived in some foreign country that had no opportunity to hear the gospel. I heard the gospel all the time.

28:53But God graciously changed my heart when He did. And if you're sitting in here tonight and you say, Man, I don't know what He's talking about. I don't feel like my heart's ever been changed. It may not have been. And that's the harsh reality that I had to come to grips with in college as well. Maybe you're sitting here, maybe you've been in church your entire life. Maybe you brought your family here tonight, your wife and your kids. Maybe you brought your husband here tonight. Maybe you came with your roommates. You're the one that invited them tonight. And you think, I don't know if my heart's ever been changed. I don't know if I've ever received the good news of Jesus by faith.

29:33Well, friends, then the word is clear on what you need to do. You need to receive the good news of Jesus through faith. You need to believe that Jesus did all that there was to do on your behalf, that he lived a perfect life for you, that he died in your place and for your sins, that he rose from the dead. The scripture says that any who confess with their mouth and believe in their heart that Christ was raised from the dead shall never be put to shame. You cannot. And trust our great God because he's a God who makes and keeps promises.

30:05That's the great news of the gospel. That's the gospel that we seek to remind each other of all the time here at New Life. We say that the gospel is not the ABCs of the faith or of our church, it's the A to Z. Because there's not a day that goes by that we don't need Jesus as a church. There's not a day that goes by that we don't need fresh faith and fresh repentance as a church. There's not a day that goes by that we don't need one another to press the truth of the gospel further and deeper into our hearts. That's what all of us need. That's what you need.

30:46And if you've been struggling to grow in your Christian life for a while, one of the main reasons may be that you haven't been plugged into a healthy local church where people are pressing the gospel deeply into you on a regular basis. We need one another. And this is part of what verse 10 is talking about. Look at verse 10. We haven't just been forgiven as an end, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

31:22Isn't that amazing? Paul has said right here: we are not saved by our works. But then he says here in verse 10, but you know what? We are saved for good works. We're not saved just to enjoy forgiveness, just to enjoy right standing with God. We're saved so that we can do the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. Those good works include worshiping God. They include building up brothers and sisters in the local church in Christ. They include seeking justice for the poor and the oppressed, serving the widow and the orphan. All this and more. These are the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do.

32:11And our church encourages me and challenges me regularly on this. People at New Life are always asking these hard questions: what does the gospel require of me? What does God want me to do? And we've seen several families at our church answer that question by saying, I think God wants us to go to the mission field. So we've got three families that we support as a church, two of which came out of our church to go and lead new church planting, new missionary efforts in other parts of the world. We have a group of folks upstairs right now because they saw that the deaf community was not being reached here in Bryan College Station with the gospel. So right now, upstairs, we have a deaf service going on where men and women. Members of our church are putting on a service that the deaf can understand because it's an ASL.

33:09We have members regularly asking, what does the gospel require of me? And the answer to that question is: it calls me to reach out to the least of these people in our community, those socially who would not be accepted elsewhere, physically who would not be accepted elsewhere, and say, I'm going to go out of my way to love and serve them. Those are the good works that God has called us to do. I'm always encouraged at what our church is doing because we are seeking to live out this gospel on a daily basis. So that's the message, friends, that we're called to preserve. The question is, why? Why does the gospel need to be preserved? It's a question that many people ask. They look at this logo or this vision statement and they think, why is that in there?

34:02The answer is that the gospel is always under attack. You remember what we read at the start of the service? I'll put these verses back up as well, 2 Timothy 1, 13 and 14. And you can see here at the end, he says, by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. This is even in the first century. Paul is telling Timothy, guard it, guard it, because it's under attack. And the gospel. Is under attack just as much today as it was then. It's under attack from outside the church, and it's under attack from inside the church. Now, outside the church, that's not that hard to understand. That's not a big surprise to most of us. We just went over the content of the biblical gospel just a moment ago from Ephesians chapter 2. Now, that message is hard to receive, isn't it? In fact, spiritually speaking, it's impossible to receive. It's offensive to be told that we've sinned against God and that we're under his wrath and that we can't do anything to make up for our sin. Only Jesus can. That's offensive. The world finds that message offensive, and so it seeks to change it.

35:15And that's why you have many churches in our day and age who have ceased preaching the biblical gospel and are instead preaching some varied form of the gospel, which is no gospel at all. It's the gospel of self-help. Believe in Jesus and try hard to fix yourself, and then God will save you, will forgive you. It's the message that if we simply try harder and do more, God will accept us. It's the message that our sin doesn't really matter to God. He's a kind, gentle, grandfatherly figure. Sin is not really a big deal to him. So let's not talk about that too much. It's all of these messages and more that the world outside. Of the church is causing to come into question. They're saying, we don't think that this is true. We don't like this part of the gospel, and so we don't believe that anymore. And if you think about the first time that you heard the gospel or the times before you came to faith in Christ, then you'll agree, you remember, it was offensive to you, I'm sure, as well. So the gospel is under attack from outside the church, and that shouldn't really surprise us. But what does surprise a lot of people is that the gospel is under attack from inside the church? That surprises a lot of people to hear that. Some of the most heated battles concerning the gospel message were not fought outside the walls of the church, but inside the walls of the church. In fact, this is why many of Paul's letters were written. They were written to correct false beliefs about the gospel. Take Galatians, for example. What is Paul's point to the Galatians? These false teachers had come in and they said, you need to believe in Jesus if you want to be saved, but you also need to be circumcised according to the law of Moses. If you want to be saved, you have to believe in Jesus and keep the Mosaic law. That is required. And Paul said, no, that's not the gospel. Don't you realize that we've never been able to keep the law? We cannot keep the law. Any attempt to keep the law is doomed to failure because we can't keep it perfectly as God intends. That's why we need a Savior. That's why we need Jesus. That's why he is enough. Because we can't keep the law. Or consider Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church. These men and women believed in Jesus. They believed the truth about who he was, that he was the Son of God, that he was crucified, that he died, that he rose.

37:50But they were living as though repentance didn't matter. That repentance was not a part of the gospel message. As though Jesus didn't come preaching repent and believe the good news. So you had these people living in any way that they pleased. You just go through it chapter by chapter. You had divisions in the church, people dividing according to who their favorite teachers were. You had a man sleeping with his stepmother. You had people in the church suing one another. And all of these things, he's saying, you're not walking in repentance. The biblical gospel is that we walk in faith and repentance, that we turn to Christ and we turn from sin. That's the one message of the gospel. We can't eliminate either part. So the message was under attack from inside the church as well. And this started, friends, as soon as Jesus had risen from the dead. Have you ever noticed that when you read the Gospels? Right away, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, this is highlighted. Jesus is risen from the dead. The people discover him. Then the religious leaders discover that the tomb is empty. And so what do they do? They start a rumor. They bribe the guards and they say, you tell. The people that come asking that his disciples came and stole his body away while you were asleep. We'll give you some money if you say that. Matthew notes that that story was spread among the Jews to that day.

39:12So the gospel was under attack right away, and the gospel remains under attack today. With many people inside the church in particular trying to either add to or take away from the gospel. But friends, we have to remember that any false gospel, whether it's Jesus plus works or it's Jesus minus repentance, all of these false gospels are the same in that they are man-centered and they do not save. Because in some way, shape, or form, all of these false gospels depend on us and our effort. Am I doing enough?

39:50Am I trying hard enough? Is my repentance good enough? Am I keeping the law fully enough? Am I attending church faithfully enough? Every false gospel depends in some way, shape, or form on us that add to it. And so we have to remember that these false gospels don't save. Jesus saves. We need a great Savior, and Jesus is Him. So we exist to preserve this gospel message so that we have something in the church to hold fast to, a hope to hold on to.

40:31But beyond that, we preserve the gospel so that others in this generation can come to know God through Jesus, and that others in the coming generations can come to know God through Jesus. Because there's no other way to be reconciled to God the Father except through faith in Christ. So, friends, here at New Life, we do this through our sermons. Our sermons are geared towards gospel preservation. We want to help you know and believe and apply the gospel to your daily life. We do this at New Life through our life groups. They're geared to gospel preservation, putting you in community with other believers who are seeking to preserve the gospel along with you, ensuring that it's preserved in your own heart and mind, first and foremost. This is true of our elements classes. It's true of our kids' discipleship classes. It's true of all that we do here as a church.

41:31And if you've been coming to New Life for a little while now, at least since the end of last semester, then you know also that another way that we're seeking to preserve the gospel more faithfully is by seeking a facility of our own. This has everything to do with our vision as a church. Many organizations want a nice facility so that it serves as a monument to them and their greatness. But for us, that's not at all why we're pursuing a facility. We're pursuing a facility. So that we can open more doors, Lord willing, for opportunities to preserve and proclaim the gospel.

42:07So, on the chairs around you, you've seen these envelopes, these white envelopes, they have our Building the Future cards in them. Many of you have already given generously to Building the Future, and that's wonderful. Thank you for that. We're on pace right now to have almost $325,000 raised by this Christmas. So, God has done a great work. We're praying that He would continue to do more. But we're not going to give you a hard sales pitch here for this.

42:36If God moves in your heart to participate in Building the Future, then the cards are there. You can fill them out, you can drop them in the boxes at the end, you can bring them back next week. But what we want you to own is the vision of the church. Because when you own the vision of the church, when preserving and proclaiming the gospel becomes everything to you, then you're going to be invested, just like many of us in this room are already invested. Invested in the discipleship that's going on through this church, invested in the initiatives of this church, like building the future.

43:11So, I close by asking you to join with us, join with us in preserving the gospel. That might look like giving, that might look like joining the church, that might look like getting further involved, that might look like exploring the gospel that we've talked about tonight in a more in-depth way. There's nothing. That we want for you more than to grow in relationship with God through Christ because of the work of the gospel. So, friends, I don't know what your action step is tonight. For every one of us, it's going to be different, but I do want you to consider how you are being called to preserve the gospel in your life, in this community, in this world. Let's pray, Father, we are thankful to have a local church like New Life where the gospel is preserved.

44:24Lord, you've been preserving your gospel for all time. We know that ultimately, gospel preservation doesn't hinge on us, and we are thankful for that because that's a burden we couldn't bear. We see our own unfaithfulness in our lives with respect to what we believe and how we live it out, and so we come to you in prayer, in confidence, because we know that you. You are more passionate about your gospel than we could ever be. We know you are more passionate about gospel preservation than we could ever be. You're more powerful to do it. You're all-powerful.

45:16So, Lord, we humble ourselves before you and we say that if the gospel is going to be preserved and proclaimed, it's going to be done through you and because of you. And we simply ask that you would use us. Make us a faithful local church. Make every member here faithful. Bring new members into our church that will help us with this task. Send others to other faithful local churches in our community. Because, as we talked about tonight, God, this is not about new life.

45:56This is not about us, it's about you. We thank you for what you've done so far in this three and a half years, and we pray for greater things in the days ahead. In Jesus' name, amen.