The Scope of the Gospel

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The Scope of the Gospel

April 17, 2022

Now that we have laid the foundations of the gospel we now seek to apply it as we lay out the entire scope of the gospel. Join us on the Sunday Series episodes as we apply the gospel to all of life! Thanks for listening!

Key Texts:

* Matthew 23:23

* Hebrews 6:1-3

* Matthew 28:18-20

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Transcript

But what it sets out to do is to stress the inward emotional devotional, inward emotional and devotional experience of the believer in their religious faith. The faith is never externalized. It's always me, my Bible, and God.

It's a stress on, "Oh, well did you wake up this morning and read your Bible and spend some time in prayer?" Because that's really all the Christian life is. You're not going to go to work and if your co-worker brings up homosexual eyes, okay, you're not going to oppose him to his face. That that's completely wicked and sinful and then preach the gospel to this person, right? As long as you got your Bible study in the morning, you're a good Christian, right? That's kind of, that's pietism.

Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron. And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] This is the For The King podcast and I'm your host, Rocky Ramji, joined with my co-host and brother, Bryce, where we proclaim the edicts of the king over all his creation that Yahweh reigns. Our topic today is why the scope of the gospel. Our topic is why the scope of the gospel.

What do we mean by that? What are we doing here next on the For The King podcast on the Sunday series? So we just had finished up our most recent series on the gospel in terms of redemption, in terms of soteriology. The gospel has the good news of salvation to sinners as individual people and also corporate bodies, right? We're not totally denying the individual element and sorry, not denying the corporate element, but we also want to stress the individual justification which Paul does very clearly. So now we're going to get into this more corporate or worldwide scope of the gospel, the good news.

We don't want to stop at individual salvation because, you know, Bryce and I as husbands, we are a part of families and our families are a part of churches and our churches are a part of nations and the nations make up the world. So no man is an island and it doesn't make sense to think of the gospel just in terms of individual salvation because your individual salvation, those people that are saved are a part of an entire structure and framework that includes the entire world. Does that make sense, Bryce? What I'm saying here? Yeah.

I mean, that's what Paul says in Timothy as well, that you are the household of God. Yeah, exactly. You know, there's familial aspects of it.

It's contextualized in so many different ways that we relate with the world in terms of our citizenship, our family relations, church relations, all of it. Exactly. So, you know, that's getting into a little bit of why we're going to the scope now.

And we didn't want to just, we do want to draw this strong distinction between socirology and now this applied scope because a big issue in modern day evangelicalism is the emphasis on socirology. So you have a ton of reform people and Bryce and I are all too familiar with this. You have, you know, we're just going to start naming names.

You've got the John Piper, D.A. Carson, Ray and Dane Ortland, Tim Keller. You got a lot of these gospel coalition, big Eva guys, Russell Moore, J.D. Greer, and they're just, they're killer when it comes to teaching Calvinism. They'll give you the best exegesis or exegetical argument for Calvinism and tool up, you know, they'll just kill it on that.

But when it comes to applying the gospel, the socirology in light of, right, redemption to the world, they're awful. They're atrocious at how they apply the gospel. So Bryce and I now are actually getting into some of the nitty gritty and the huge gaps in our theology, especially in the reform community in modern day evangelicalism in the West.

Anything you want to add there, Bryce? Yeah, I mean, this falls into the same error that the Galatians, the Judaizers fell into when they desired, they began by the spirit, but now they're being perfected by the flesh. So in other words, it's an overemphasis of the justification by the spirit or the individual, but that same sort of justification has no bearings upon their sanctification for the individual or even the sanctification of that individual who's a part of families and a part of a nation and a part of the church. Yeah, exactly.

So that's really what we're trying to emphasize here. Yeah. So, oh, sorry, what? No, yeah, my bad.

I didn't finish my, you know, my thought. Oh, go ahead. And it's also about preaching the gospel of justification by faith alone to the whole man.

Yeah. We don't want to just preach to a person's soul. We want to preach to the person as he is, the whole man.

Exactly. The whole gospel for the whole man, for all of life, and it's all for Christ. Yeah.

Yeah. So a great emphasis or sorry, a great example of kind of what we're getting at would be John Piper just killing it on the doctrines of grace. But then when he's asked a question, what would you do if somebody broke into your home and threatened your wife's life, he'd be like, well, my wife is already in right standing with God.

So I'd let her go meet her maker because we want to preach the gospel to this intruder, right? We want them to be safe. So it's just a complete misunderstanding of what the duty of man is in a relationship, a marriage of needing to protect your wife and protect your kids and what justice would call for in a situation like that. Not applying your faith and seeing what the scriptures have to say about very practical situations.

Something like JD Greer saying what the Bible whispers about, we should whisper about and downplaying the full counsel of God and not applying justification to the whole man and saying something very simple like a sentence like this. This would be a very simple sentence to say, homosexuality is an abomination to God. That's a very simple stance the Christian should have on questions like this about how the gospel is applied, especially concerning the bad news is usually how they'll lighten the load a little bit.

The whole thought system that leads these big Eva people to not apply the gospel and its scope properly would be two different ideas, two different terms, one called pietism and the other called churchianity. So just a quick definition of pietism, that would be a, it really comes out of the 17th century with the, I think the first great awakening, John Wesley and a lot of these guys. I don't know exactly where it was formalized and what figure people would look to for the movement of pietism, but what it sets out to do is to stress the inward emotional devotion, inward emotional and devotional experience of the believer in their religious faith.

The faith is never externalized. It's always me, my Bible and God. It's a stress on, oh, well, did you wake up this morning and read your Bible and spend some time in prayer? Cause that's really all the Christian life is.

You're not going to go to work. And if your coworker brings up homosexual eyes, okay, you're not going to oppose him to his face that that's completely wicked and sinful and then preach the gospel to this person. Right.

As long as you got your Bible study in the morning, you're a good Christian, right? That's kind of, that's pietism. The other big time issue that we're trying to attack is churchianity, stressing the church, stressing ecclesiology far too much and not applying the gospel to every sphere of life. The reformers were big on this and applying the sacredness of the job, the civil sphere, the civil magistrate.

That was huge for the reformers because the Catholic church had had such a strong ecclesiology that had so much tradition and wrapped in it. That was completely useless and stupid that they had lost sight of this whole civil sphere. And also the inward piety that we're supposed to have that pietism sought out to regain, but wasn't able to.

So churchianity is stressing the church. And a good example of this would be John Piper's statement. If you're not going, you're sending.

If you're not going as a missionary, you're sending as a missionary. And if you're not doing that, you're not a faithful Christian. You are not supporting the church the way you ought to.

So we want to have a proper ecclesiology. We don't want to give into the era of churchianity where we just care about the church. We want to have a proper ecclesiology and a proper piety and a proper application of the gospel.

And that's the goal of this series that Bryce and I are about to do. Okay. So those are those terms of a defined Bryce.

Did you want to hop on me? Hop on that there? Yeah, great definitions. Okay, good. So that's what we're setting out to do.

That's what we're going to try to do. A reminder, when we say scope, as you continue to listen to us talk about that, this is the application of the gospel to every sphere of life, all of Christ for all of life, never once letting off the pedal of righteousness concerning the whole council of God and what God calls us to do as Christians applied to every single area of life and never stressing or emphasizing one part of the Christian life without the whole. A great example of pietism is when a person says that well, no, you really should be talking about that.

You really just need to preach the gospel. Yeah. That's the major issue.

I know Rocky's had a run in with that with one of the podcast episodes prior where somebody at our previous church had indicated that man, we really need to sit down and talk about this episode. You can't release that because we really should be focusing on the gospel. That's what's called pietism because what it's doing is it's neglecting the weightier matters of the law.

That's exactly what Jesus is woe is to the Pharisees. He says, "Woe to you, you scribes and hypocrites." Excuse me. Sorry, I had this.

Oh yeah. Jesus says in Matthew 23, 23, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you tithe and of men and anise and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone.

Align guys who strain out a mat and swallow a camel." So he's issuing a woe to these Pharisees because they have neglected the weightier matters of the law. They've said what we have is enough. We have the foundations.

We have the minimal faith. Yeah. Right.

And that is enough. And this is again Paul's indictment and his letter to the Hebrews in chapter six. He says, "Therefore leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God, of the doctrine of baptism, of laying on of hands of resurrection of the dead and of eternal life.

And this we will do if God permits." So he says, "Let's go on." These are elementary doctrines. Let's go on to more. Yeah.

Right. We can't neglect the weightier matters of the law. As soon as you do that, you're acting more like a Pharisee.

Yeah. Because what you ought to be doing is expounding the whole counsel of God. And that's exactly what Paul says in Acts chapter 20, 28, or verse 27.

He says, "For we did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God." Yep. Right. And that's what by testing, we have a renewed mind and by testing, we know the will of God, that which is good and perfect and acceptable.

And the things that have been revealed as Deuteronomy 29, 29 says, they belong to us and to our children forever. Yeah. That we may keep and obey the commandments that's been given to us.

Right. So we have a totalizing faith where whatever God has revealed is game. Right.

Anything that hasn't revealed is off limits. Yeah. But what he has revealed, oh, that's game and we better know.

We better search these things out. Yeah. Yeah.

They're a fear of pietism. Exactly. Yeah.

And pietism breeds far too many men that sit on the fence rather than having conviction about what the scripture is going to teach. They get so wrapped up in, oh, like, let's just stick to the gospel. Let's stick to the basics.

When the things have been clearly revealed that aren't, like Bryce and I said, we were talking about things of first importance. That's what we did the whole last series about redemption. That's a first importance.

Paul says that clearly, but we're also recognizing that God has revealed to us much more than just so to your ology, how he saves us things of first importance. He's very clearly revealed lots of other things. Right.

So we want range. We want theological maximalism to coin Brian. So Bay's term, uh, or maybe he heard it from somewhere else, but I mean, this is very accurate.

The, the, the theologians of old, when you read, um, Westminster confession of faith, London Baptist 16, eight, nine London Baptist confession of faith, the, the basics for them took, you know, 80 pages to, to, to figure out what are the basics of the Christian faith take. It takes them 80 pages to lay it out. So that's really what we're trying to get at guys.

Um, that's why it's good to be confessional. It's good to understand what the basics are, the confessional basics all throughout church history. And yes, we have the creeds, the creeds are the basics as well.

Um, but just because it's basic doesn't mean it's not profound or, or maybe it's not even a first importance. Maybe they're secondary issues. Like for instance, Calvinism is, you know, it's not that, that right understanding is not going, it's not a first importance, but it is very important.

And it's a hill I would be very close to dying on in terms of remaining the integrity of what the scriptures could teach about the character of God and his sovereignty. Um, so good. Do you have anything to add rice? We don't have to go too long on this.

I think we kind of want to just get you guys an idea of what we mean by scope and what we're trying to fight against. Yeah. And, uh, I'd like to add a last point.

Um, unless you have anything else after that, I think that's kind of what I wanted to say. You can wrap it up here. Yeah.

So, um, when we're, so this, so this next little series that we're going onto into the scope of the gospel, it's not really an offshoot of the foundations of the gospel. It's still the foundations we're now just building up. We've laid, uh, the foundation has been laid.

Christ has been seen as King, as Lord, as the Redeemer, um, and Ransom are of our souls as the one who has, um, condescended to down to mankind who has saved us from our rebellious state. And now what we're doing is this has been brought down to us. Christ has condescended to us.

He has caused us to be obedient from the heart. He has redeemed us as new creations, as members of his church. And now what we're doing is this is, this is the part where we go into the declaration or the gospel, right? When it goes into preaching the gospel, what does this mean? Well, one way that John the Baptist did it was he declared to Herod, it's unlawful for you to have your brother's wife.

Yeah. Right. It says Daniel, the fine, the government when Nebuchadnezzar told him to bow down and worship the idol, right? It's the Hebrew midwives who said, no, we're actually not going to kill the firstborn.

Like Pharaoh said, right? This is the building of godly Christian culture of godly Christian ideology and worldview. So that's the scope of the gospel. The gospel does something to the world.

And that's exactly what Jesus said when he said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them all that he's commanded of us. So what's our goal? What's our mission? The nations, like Rocky said at the beginning, which has been, which is the, the sum total of the world.

Yeah. They're going to be discipled or they're going to be baptized and discipled. That's what's going to happen.

So what does that mean? That does mean that there's going to be a Christian nation. Isaiah 60, 12, Psalm 33, 12 say the same exact thing. It says, blessed is the nation whose god is Yahweh.

Right. So what does it mean to build a godly Christian culture? Right. How does the gospel affect these things? This is the scope of it.

This is what we're going to talk about. The gospel does something. It's not just about individual justification.

It bleeds out into all of life. So we need to be having this before us that the gospel has been internalized. It's, we've seen how justifications by faith alone in Christ alone to God's glory alone.

And now we're seeing the whole reform faith, just like Martin Luther, just like Calvin would always preach that this is something that affects the world. Exactly. So Amen, brother.

That was well said first Corinthians 15, 25, he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. That's what we're going to get into. So thanks for listening to the for the king podcast.

And we're really excited guys about this next series. So we're happy you guys are with us, sticking with us. And we pray that it's edifying as you guys continue to listen.

We appreciate you stick, sticking with us from the last series and now seeing what we're doing as we continue to build on it and may God glorify it and make it useful for his kingdom. If you want to interact with me at all, as we go through the series, you can reach me for the king podcast.com or sorry, at gmail.com. And then I have a website for the king podcast.com. So thanks so much for listening. God.

Thanks so much for listening, guys. God is listening, but thanks for listening, guys. The king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. Sole day. Oh, glory.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

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