Great Doctrines of Salvation

What we do for those of you who are new in the class, we kind of work off of a series of questions every week, and we're working on the Gospel this week, and last week too. We had talked about, I think we got down to six, but just as a review, why is it necessary for the Gospel to be offered to man is because all men are sinned and fall short of the glory of God. What's the act of Christ that afforded salvation? It was his death on the cross. Randy, is there somebody back there? Is there somebody back there with the kids? Okay. If you want to go, go ahead.

Is the gospel the only way one can be saved? The answer is yes, and we quoted the verses. So how does one enter into the good news of the gospel? Let's start there. How do you enter into the good news of the gospel? By reading it. You hear it? By reading it. Yeah, you have to believe it. You enter into the good news. Faith in the good news of God's Son is the only condition For we are assured that here that salvation comes to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and then to the Gentile. The message must be believed in order to be received. Why faith? Why would God say, well, you know, some other method? Why would he use the method of faith?

It's a non-meritorious thing. That's exactly the right answer. It's because it's the one thing man can do that's non-meritorious. A man can never say, can never put God in a position where God owes him or in a debt situation. So when God comes to man with the news of the gospel He invites man's response to be that of faith, because the value of faith is in what you believe, not the fact that you believe. Alright with that? The value is in the object of your faith, not the fact that you believe.

What about then you take it the next step, like MacArthur says, you must make the Lord your Lordship type salvation, or that you need to do work around the church, or you need to go What do you think about that? It's not the gospel, is it? Anything that's added to the basic gospel, and we talked last week, what is the gospel? What's the good news? What are the tenets of it?

There's only three. Christ died for your sins according to the scripture. He was buried and raised the third day according to the scriptures. Those are the only tenets. There's nothing else for you to do other than to believe those facts and the person and therefore you enter into the fullness of the gospel.

I can't remember. 1 Corinthians 15, 3? Is that where it is? So, we talked about last week there was 115 passages in the New Testament that condition salvation, not just on believing. And 35 alone that just talks about simple faith. So, our question 8 was, Was that the same condition for salvation in the Old Testament? Faith? What do you think? In the Old Testament, before Christ coming and dying, being buried and resurrected, what was the condition that God placed on if you wanted to be saved?

Now, my closest friend in all the world is Rahab. I love her, she's terrific. She was not a Jew, yet she got saved. How come? Faith in what? Christ. Faith in the what? when she heard about the testimony of the Israelites, what God has done in their lives, and a trip from Egypt, and what God was doing, she believed that God is powerful, and just by hearing the testimony, she believed in God. She believed in the God of Israel, and so God saved her, right? So Rahab wouldn't have known had any information about the gospel that we believe.

So, I want to talk this morning. How many gospels are there? Would you be surprised if I told you there were three? Huh? Yes, I thought there were four. What you find in scripture is that you'll find three distinct gospels and they have to do with different time frames in which God has called men to salvation. There is what you'll read a lot about and try to distinguish between today is what I would call the Kingdom Gospel. Anybody want to take a shot at what the Kingdom Gospel is?

And who's it for? What's that? It's for the Jews. And for what time frame? Pre-Christ. Well, if, and you don't have to look this up, in Mark 1.14, it says, Now, after John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. See that? You have to pay close attention to the words. And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. repent and believe the gospel.

Or in Luke 1.8.1, And it came to pass afterward that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and the Twelve were with him.

Now notice, he put another criteria, it seems, on the gospel of the kingdom. But first of all, let's talk about the gospel of the kingdom is what? What's the kingdom? The Messianic kingdom that they looked forward to for so long. And he was presenting it to them as an opportunity to repent and believe. When Jesus says the kingdom of God is at hand, What does he mean by that? He's there. He was there. Does everybody understand that? If the king shows up, the king says, my kingdom is here. There's no kingdom without a king. And there he is. He said, the kingdom of God is in him. And then he says, repent and believe. Why does he use the term repent? What's the word repent mean? It means to feel really sorry for your sins, right? And the more sorry you are, the more grace you get. It just means to have a change of mind.

So when Jesus would say to his disciples and to Israel, repent, have a change of mind, what's he asking them to have a change of mind about? Who he is. Who he is. It's the same message that Peter gave on Pentecost. The Jews needed to repent. And here's how he sets it up. He says, Jesus of Nazareth, you need to repent about who he is. That's like saying, Courtney of Commerce City. Just another guy coming from a poor part of town, and he was just a man. And Peter says, no, you need to change your mind about who he is.

The Jews needed to change their mind about who Jesus was. The message of the kingdom. Do you think that Jesus intended to bring the kingdom in at that point? I think he did. I think he would have. If they'd have believed him. The disciples believed him. Don't you think the disciples looked at Jesus as king and messiah of Israel? But they were looking for an earthly kingdom. Most of them were. But that's what he's talking about. That's what the kingdom gospel is. It's earthly. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm on the planet. This is the land. I'm here right now. Is that different than the gospel presented to us? What do you think? We have the gospel of the grace of God. Our gospel is different. I'm going to title that the church gospel. Now, the kingdom may be another distinction.

When the Lord Jesus taught the disciples to pray, Who is it? Oh, this is the first time I've covered this. Steve got upset with me because some of the tunes he was playing had to throw them away. When the Lord Jesus taught the disciples, they said, teach us how to pray. He said, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And Hassan and I were talking about this this week.

Thy kingdom come. Is that appropriate for us to pray? What do you think? Maybe we ought to talk about the word kingdom. What's the difference between kingdom and what we are and have? Maybe that's the best way to look at it. We have a guy on our Tuesday class, he doesn't say it anymore because we've intimidated him, but he says he's been working for the kingdom. And I always ask him, what kingdom are you talking about? What do you think about that?

What's the difference between the kingdom and the body of Christ? Well, when you think about it, it seems like it has to do with law, doesn't it? In the kingdom age, they will be under law, and the Jews were anticipating A kingdom needs a king, doesn't it? And the kingdom that's been promised to Israel has been promised here on the earth, no place else. And so we believers don't view ourselves as being subject to a king here on the earth, do we? Or do you? If you do, there's a reformed church down the block. I'm kidding.

The Lord's Prayer, if it was suitable, it was suitable for the disciples at the time that it was given to them, because it was before Christ had died. And it was before the gift of the Spirit had been given, and could not be suitable after they had known the blessings of redemption and their union with the Lord Jesus. And the key is this. That prayer says, forgive me as I forgive others.

Is that how you live your life? No. I mean, if you do something to offend me, and you don't ask me for forgiveness, then you don't get it yourself. Is that the condition that we're under? What's the criteria of your forgiveness? Or maybe ask it this way. Why would you forgive me as a believer? Why would you do it? Well, that's the problem. Being I'm a human being, it's hard sometimes to forgive a person. Yes, it is. I forgive you because I have been forgiven. See, I forgive, I cannot not forgive you because I have already been forgiven.

And it's interesting when you study 1 John 1.9, which is the Restoration to Fellowship passage, Notice in there, it does not have any language about to ask for forgiveness. Why not? Because you already have been forgiven.

Now your sinfulness may have caused you to lose fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, but it did not affect your position and your standing in Christ. So if you enter into fully and understand your forgiveness, you're never in a position not to forgive somebody else. Never! as a believer.

Do you see that? Okay. So the gospel of the kingdom is presented to Jews and is designed specifically for them to believe that Jesus was the Messiah and he was the king and he was there now. Now the gospel of the kingdom will it be preached again? What do you think? Will the gospel of the kingdom be preached again? You couldn't hear? What do you think?

It's louder. I think during the tribulation, isn't it? During the tribulation. You said in Matthew 24. Sure. It's preached again. After the church is raptured out of here, God begins to deal with the planet through the nation of Israel again. And so the issue becomes a focus on Judaism again. And the gospel of the kingdom is going to be preached again. There's another gospel talked about, it's called the earthly gospel. It's interesting, I'm going to read a couple of things to you.

This marks a new and wondrous era in the grace and mercy of God. on the descent of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost. Peter insists on this blessed truth, showing that the manifestation of the power of the Spirit was indicative of the time when it should be fulfilled.

It will come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, Acts 2.21. Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom you have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now the Lordship guys use that verse to propagate lordship salvation. We can see where the gospel then preached such souls. Saved was the great leading characteristic of those who had accepted the gospel.

And on earth they were in the unity of Christ's body by the Holy Spirit, though that truth had not yet been revealed. Understand that what I'm saying? At the time that Pentecost and Peter was preaching, some of the issues of the body of Christ being a heavenly body had not yet been revealed. There's an awful lot of information about the gospel, the church gospel, that does not get revealed until Paul comes on the scene.

Are you with me with that? And maybe ask it this way. If you take Paul's epistles out of the New Testament, what do you miss? What isn't there? Grace. Number one is grace. What's that? Identification. Identification's not there? What else? To the Gentiles. The Gentiles? The issue with the Gentiles isn't there? What else is not there?

Our position in Christ. Participation in Christ? Position. Our position in Christ, not only individually, but as a body of believers. Here's the other thing, and really an important thing, is that the heavenliness of believers is not there. Because Peter, James and John never talk about heavenly position.

See that? So the point that I'm after is this, that the gospel, the church gospel is not an earthly one. You alright with that? Am I losing you in the minutia? But Christ has been rejected from the earth and when you believe in the person and work of Christ, you are believing in a Christ who is not an earthly, not accepted earthly anymore. That's one of the big differences between the kingdom and the Lord Jesus is in glory now. and the gospel of the church has to do with the glory of Christ. Paul calls it the gospel of the glory of Christ, doesn't he? The glorified Lord Jesus Christ.

He said to Saul, I have appeared unto you for the purpose to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which you have seen and those things which I will show to you. What are the things that Paul was to see? not only Christ risen but also Christ ascended in glory. If you take into consideration that the very first exposure that Paul had to the Lord Jesus Christ, who did he see and what characteristics of the person of Christ did he see? Who did he see as opposed to the other twelve?

Christ in glory. He saw the glorified Christ. That's his first exposure. The other twelve knew him on the earth for three plus years, saw him crucified, buried, saw him resurrected, and they saw him ascend. But none of them, even at Pentecost, none of them had ever beheld the glory of the Lord face to face like Paul did on his very first exposure. So what kind of an effect do you think it has on a guy like Paul when his first meeting with the Lord Jesus is the glorified man? What do you think the effect is? It certainly does away with anything earthly about him. Do you see that? Does that concept make sense to you?

That if you were the Apostle Paul and your first exposure to Christ was the glorified man and that was your whole frame of reference going forward? So what about when Christ showed the three apostles his glorified body and transfiguration? the same as what Paul saw, not to the point where it blinded him. And here's another bit of information. Here's Paul beholding the glory of the Lord and he says, who are you? And Jesus says, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. What did that say to him? It said to him that those members of my body that you persecute, you're persecuting me, Buster. We're the same. We're one.

That was another idea that got amplified over the next three years that Paul knew about, that Peter didn't know about that. James didn't know about that. John probably picks it up later because his writings are much later, 35 years later. But the other apostles didn't pick up on that. I mean, Peter even said, boy, Paul says some really weird things, but I think he's okay.

The gospel of God according to the fullness of his heart and purpose. Can anyone for the moment hesitate to accept a beautiful order of the wondrous gospel beginning and consummating in the bright full circle of the Father's presence and glory? Believers start, run, and finish in glory today.

The gospel of the kingdom is earthly. See the difference? Now what you run into in contemporary Christianity is an admixture of kingdom gospel and church gospel. And there's a dumbing down of one to try to get it all to fit in so that there isn't any distinguishing or separation between what is preached vis-a-vis a kingdom and what is preached vis-a-vis the heavenliness of the church.

So our hope is not earthly. Our hope has nothing to do with what God is going to do earthly, does it? What involvement do you have or what concern do you have of anything that goes on in the earth from a member of the body of Christ? Well, we're ambassadors of the Reconciliation. We're not from here, but we're to be ambassadors in a foreign land. Maybe I've answered with Ephesians 3, 8, and 9.

And to me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery. What's the mystery? The mystery, whenever you see that word in the New Testament, it means not a previously revealed truth. So Peter didn't have the mystery, James didn't have the mystery, Paul had the mystery. which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things by Jesus Christ. Paul the Apostle was the one who has had the mystery. What's the mystery? The mystery is the heavenly character of the church.

And I know you don't think of yourself as being heavenly people, but you are. You all think you're Republicans, well you're not. Or Democrats, or Independent, or whatever you are. All earthly associations have gone away. You don't belong here. Courtney said we're sojourners. In other words, we're passing through. Hassan is a sojourner in Denver. He's not from here. When Bruce was in Uganda, he was a sojourner in Uganda. He's not from Uganda, he's from here. So he's passing through a sojourner and a stranger is someone who is here on the earth temporarily as an ambassador of the mystery of the kingdom of God. Why didn't anybody jump me about that?

You hear what I just said? I know we don't spend a lot of time distinguishing the Gospels that are taught, but I think it's important for us to at least have a cursory understanding that the Gospels are different. Salvation is always by believing the gospel presented to you, presented to a man at the time that it's presented, the information that's presented. But lots of times in contemporary Christianity we use kingdom information and associate it with what we are as heavenly believers. as evidenced by how many places have you been that may think that this Lord's Prayer is appropriate for all of us to pray?

Is it? Not if you look at the content. I thought it was just for the Jews. It is for the Jews. But if you attend a church that puts a focus on the Lord's Prayer, the problem is that If you're sincere about what you're praying, you have to say, well, wow, I guess this prayer says to me that I'm not forgiven unless I forgive somebody else.

Because that's exactly what it says. Well, I hope that's not true. Because if it's true, I'm in big trouble. Because I never forgave any of you. So the gospel of grace or the gospel of the glorified Christ is what we're involved in, not the gospel of the kingdom.

And it's not earthly. And I think it's important to understand it's not earthly. Should I ask that? What do I mean that it's not earthly? Well? It's not heavenly. If it's not earthly, it must be heavenly. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle. If you look at what we're conformed to. OK, we're conformed to the glorious Christ. And where is he? In the heavenlies.

Steve, I'm picking up more clearly what heavenly, what's the kingdom or the body of Christ that I'm not catching. When Jesus was here, he was the promised Messiah to the nation of Israel and the Savior of the world. Now, there was no Old Testament information, as Paul says, there's a mystery that's been hidden until now. There was no information about a heavenly characteristic of salvation. If you were a Jew and you believed in Christ, or believed in what God had revealed to you, you were accounted righteous.

What was your destiny? Where were you going after you died? Where were you going to end up? On the earth. On the earth. Where? Where on the earth? In the ground. Now, if you were a godly Jew at the time that Christ was on the planet, and he went around preaching the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe, and you'll enter into the kingdom.

When he said to Nicodemus, what did he say to Nicodemus? Unless you are born again, you will not what? Go to heaven? The first thing he said is you won't even see the kingdom, and the second time he said you won't enter into the kingdom. Is that the church? No, it's not. And we use that, John 3, all the time, don't we? About salvation. Okay, if I don't believe, if I'm not born again, I don't get to enter into the kingdom, do I want to be in the kingdom? Huh?

What is the Kingdom? It's an earthly, theocratic rule of the King, and the King is Jesus Christ. Is that considered the Millennium also? It's the Millennial Kingdom. It's the Millennial Kingdom. And, after the Millennial Kingdom, after everything is done and the new heavens and new earths are created, where's the Kingdom going to be?

In heaven. Nope. On the earth. It's going to be on the earth. Why would you recreate the earth if nobody's going to be here? Huh? I don't get it. Why? I thought we were all going to heaven. Yeah, where is heaven, by the way? It's up there somewhere. Up where? I don't know.

See, that's the point. The point is that the kingdom gospel promises those who believe in the king Jesus said, believe in me, and you'll enter into the kingdom of God. And so as you study Revelation and other places, you find out, gee, the kingdom is here. Because God made promises to Abraham that are eternal promises, and just because the age ends doesn't mean the promise ends. And one of the promises he made to Abraham is, I'm going to give you land.

There isn't any land, as far as I can tell, in heaven. I do know, because land is a material substance. Heaven is a spiritual place. I mean, it's a real estate game. I don't want to be here on the earth. No, not at all. If we go to heaven, it's right here. I'll do everything. That's a good point. How would you describe heaven? I don't know. What would you say it is? Wherever Christ is, is where heaven is. Yeah. Why would you want to go to a place he isn't?

So he recreates the earth and the earth is populated by Jewish saints and who else? Anybody else? Only the people on this side of the room. Millennial kingdom saints and Gentile saints who believed in Christ through the ages will live here on the earth. They will be absolutely, totally fulfilled and blissfully happy to have what they have. Where are you going to be? Here, on the earth. Right. You might be.

But where does Revelation 22, I think, tell you where you're going to be? Where's the Lord Jesus Christ going to be? There's this thing called the New Jerusalem. It's the city of God and it's a temple. You're the temple. Don't you realize that you're the sons of God? You're different than them guys. Who are the Gentile Christians? People that had believed either before Pentecost or after the rapture believed in Christ.

Rahab is a Gentile. Where is she going to be? She ends up being in the line of Christ. She's not Jewish. Of course, Abraham wasn't Jewish either. They're going to be here and perfectly fulfilled. Perfectly fulfilled. But you and I are different. We are no longer earthly people. We are heavenly people. And so therefore, even our physical makeup is going to be different. And that's why the Gospels are different. OK? You're all looking at me like... This is so confusing that I wish that next week you were going to bring a paper on just this. OK, I will. I got it right here. I'll bring it. I'll have it at Xerox and I'll give every one of you a copy of it. OK.

Sir, are you saying the kingdom is set aside when earthly gospel is fulfilled? That's exactly right. And we're studying Romans on Wednesday night, and when we start into Romans chapter 9, 10 and 11, that's exactly what we're going to find out. Because you have to say, if this mystery that Paul is the one who has been sent to reveal, and we begin to see it and understand it in the beginning of Romans, then you have to turn to God and say, well you made all these promises to the Jews, are you changing your mind? And he says, no, let me tell you what I've done with the Jews. I've set them apart for a time. I've parked them right over here.

And any Jew who believes on the person and work of Christ during the age of grace, which we live in, what happens to that Jew? He comes to our side. What happens to him personally, physically and spiritually? He's no longer a Jew. In Christ Jesus there's neither Jew nor Gentile, there's neither bond or free, there's no barbarian, there's no Scythian, there's no nobody. Everyone in Christ is a brand new creation. If you are a brand new creation by being in Christ, would it not make sense to you that your home would be different than where the old creation's home was? Sure it would. Would to me. You OK with that?

You're puzzled. I always look puzzled. That's why I keep hammering on it. I think it'd be good to have a class that sets up this distinction of Jew and Gentile belief and just the whole mechanism of the background that feeds into this. Would this be the time to do it? What do you think? Of course. I'll do that over the next couple of weeks, if that's what you'd like. You want to do that? Yeah. Just just the illustration you made about Nicodemus, you have to have the understanding of who was being spoken to from who and from what perspective. Yeah, you do.

And I know that coming up in my 35 years of Christianity, that distinction was never made clear. There probably never was a distinction. Well, that's what I'll work on for next week. I was going to finish up the book next week, Salvation, but this is a good time to deal with the Gospel messages and why they're different ones. And I'll get some stuff together for you. You can stick in your book and you can sort of review and then we can have a good discussion.

I know it's difficult for us because we just insist on not being as gracious as God says we are. We want a little bit of a hang on to the earth if we can. I had a guy call me yesterday who I haven't talked to in 10 years, he was a high school There's a 50th reunion coming up in Chicago in September.

He says, I'm retired. Are you retired? I said, well, not really. He said, well, what are you doing? I said, well, how do you explain to a guy who has no idea what we're about, what we're about? I said, well, I'm an elder at a church and I teach. He said, what do they pay you? I said, oh, it's so much I couldn't tell you. He said, really? I said, oh, it's over the top because it is over the top. Just isn't in money.

So, OK, well, we'll do that. So let's you know, like the thing of it is, I'm leaving for three weeks to see my mother. So next week, I'm going to be on the Internet. When are you leaving? You're leaving Friday. Well, I'll have it together by then, I'll get it to you. At least the information that you can read and take with you. Okay? You can give it to me on Wednesday? Yeah, I'll try to have it together for you on Wednesday. Are you going to touch on a lot of these things?

What I'm going to focus on is try to make the distinction of these Gospels really clear, hopefully, and why Basically, why is there a difference scripturally between what Christ offered in terms of salvation and what is offered to us? Why is that different? And a lot of it has to do with what Paul preached. And the earthly gospel that I talked about this morning is a progressive gospel that by the time Paul gets on the scene, he adds an awful lot to it.

Yeah, the thief on the cross, that's another one. Yeah, that's a great one. I mean, that's one that always comes up. For a long time, I don't know if he's a third Christian. They're the same as us. Yeah, that's a great question. The thief on the cross, is he in the body of Christ? No. How come? Christ hadn't ascended into heaven yet. He wasn't glorified. Wasn't glorified, and what else hadn't happened? When did the church begin? At Pentecost. It began at Pentecost, right? How many people were in the church before then? They're all. So what happened to them? Where did they go?

You mean the guy on the cross? Yeah. We called the good thief oxymoron. The guy's a bad thief, come on, he just got saved. Where did he go? He went to paradise. He went to what you would describe as heaven. And when you study in the book of Hebrews, and there's this, I think it's chapter 8, there's this description of what it's like in the heavenlies.

There's the church of the firstborn, which is us, around the throne room. And there's the souls of just men made perfect. Who are those guys? Jew, Jewish saints, and Gentile saints. the souls of just men made perfect. And they're distinguished between the church of the firstborn.

And there's the angels and all these other groups. Well, they're not all the same. We classify angels. There's at least four different classifications of these spiritual beings. We think they're all angels. Well, they're not. A cherubim is not an angel. He's something else. It's hard for us.

We think that at the end game, what God is going to do is homogenize every human being and we're all going to go to heaven. Or the bad guys are all going to go to hell. The bad guys are all going to go to hell, but heaven is going to be a multi-structured environment.

That's the fairness doctrine. We think the fairness is everybody's. Everybody's got to be the same. I think that's terrible. No, really, I'm not kidding. It's just like here, you know, steps up the ladder to success. Okay, they have the same thing in heaven? How pathetic is that?

Well, let's say that you were a nice Jewish woman in 50 B.C. and you believed in the revelation of God was going to send a Savior to you, to your nation, and you believed the tenets of what you were learning in the temple. And so God declared you righteous because you believed Him. And let's say that you die before 30 AD, before Christ dies on the cross and is buried and resurrected and that kind of thing. Are you saved? Yes, you are. When you enter into the Kingdom of God, are you going to be short-changed? No, you're not. No, you're not.

But you just told me that, you just said, there's all the difference there, it's vast, and why is that? Because, is there a difference between an angel and me? Oh yeah, the angels up there are not, they are like this on earth. And the elect angels are perfectly and totally happy?

Right? Are they, do they know about love? by studying us. That's right. Angels look at us and they learn about God by looking at us. Does that mean that they say, oh we got screwed somehow? No, they're very excited that God even allows them to learn about Him by looking at us.

So when God institutes a new stewardship Now you're living in 200 A.D. and somebody brings you the gospel and you believe it, and now you become not a Jewish saint, you become a son of God. You become an heir in all the things that we study. So now when you leave the planet and you're glorified, you're a different creature than your twin that lived in 50 B.C. Because who you are as a heavenly person is much different than who your sister is who is a Jewish saint. But she's not disappointed, she's a matter of fact over excited about you.

When we get to the beam of judgment and God rewards us all for doing what we're supposed to do. And you get more of a reward than I do. Am I going to look at you and say, I got screwed in this deal. No. You know what my attitude is going to be? Hooray for you. That is absolutely marvelous that you are filled more than I am. Because our sin nature will go away and we will see things from a glorious standpoint. I know, but I thought we were all the same. Yeah, most Christians think that way. We're not the same. Because there wouldn't be a need for judgment, right? You mean at the beam of judgment? Well, there's judgment not based on sin, but based on, it's a place of reward. Yeah, you wouldn't even think that.

Well, you need it for two reasons. One, the things that you could have done as a believer are burned up and taken out of your memory and God's memory for all eternity. That's a really good thing, because then you don't ever have to think about them. And the second thing is that you get filled to overflowing by the grace of God for the things that you did do.

It's a good start. And then from there we all go to the wedding feast of the Lamb and we become the Bride of Christ. That's one of the mysteries. I can go on and on about what being the Bride of Christ is all about, why that's so cool. So we are different. It never says that Abraham is going to be the bride of Christ. Never. Or any of his Jewish buddies. So, quickly. Let's see.

Is the whole gospel only about salvation? When you talk about the good news, No matter which gospel it is, is it only about salvation? Yes, it is. And no, it isn't. Yes, it is in the sense of being saved, and no, because it's an expansion. The reason we come to Sunday School and the reason we read the Bible is we want to find out what the whole salvation package includes, which is everything that the New Testament has for you.

Is the gospel a daily manner of living? Is the gospel a daily manner of living? As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. Does the gospel bind us together? It sure does. In life, in faith, in nature, in future, and in love. The bonds of the gospel, Philemon 18, binds us to all who are in Christ and not to fill our hearts with love towards them as together wait for the hope of the gospel.

Colossians 1.23 which is the hope of the glory of God when we shall see our Lord and be like Him. So next week that's what I'm going to do. We'll spend a week talking about the differences in the gospel and why. Anybody not want to do that? Okay, let's close.

Father, how we thank you for your grace and mercy. How we thank you for your word. And how we thank you that you do open up our understanding so that we might fully enter into what you have freely given us in your Son. We thank you. We pray in his name. Amen.