Our Response • 12.28.25
The Beautiful Gospel – Our Response
12/28/25
- A saving response to the Gospel must include repentance.
- A saving response to the Gospel must include believing on the Lord Jesus.
- We are to receive the Gospel and to stand in the Gospel
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This morning we are finishing our four part series in the month of December on the Beautiful Gospel. We have just celebrated the birth of Our Lord Jesus. We are soon to put 2025 behind us and launch into a New Year.
In week 1 of the series, Pastor Nick, teaches us out of Isaiah and Genesis about God’s holiness. He is holy. Without sin. That holiness sets him apart from anything that is wicked and unrighteous. He can have nothing to do with sin and sin cannot be in His presence
It is good to ponder the holiness and righteousness of God. Creator. All powerful. King of Kings and Lord of Lords. All knowing. Omniscience. Wonderful Counselor. Love. Prince of Peace.
That is who God is and that is where the Gospel starts. With Him.
Pastor Nick then went on to week 2 and talked us through mankind’s sinfulness. And not just mankind as a whole, but each of us individually and how we are sinful. How we are broken, chaotic, prideful, wrong, hurtful, misguided, selfish, covetous.
You can try to think of the best person you know. Kind hearted. A servant. Not easily angered. Easy to forgive or give the benefit of the doubt. Hard working. ….that person? A sinner. You? A sinner. Me? A sinner. All of us has fallen short of the glory and obedience of God.
And we need to be honest. Not just one sin. Tens of thousands of sinful thoughts, actions, omissions, commissions…day in and day out. We have folly and disobedience and ignorance bound up in our hearts. It is our very nature and it comes out as sin.
The great dilemma
So now we reach the great dilemma…at least for us. God is holy and separate from sin. And we by our own actions and thoughts are sinful, through and through. How does a God who is Holy and Loving deal with sinful people?
God’s righteousness demands that He addresses that sin. Each person’s sin needs to be paid for. Laws were broken and a just payment is due. God cannot be righteous and simply overlook sin or forget about it. That is not righteous. On the other hand, while God is holy and righteous, He is also love. He wants to forgive. He wants to have His children in relationship to Him. He knows we cannot save ourselves, so He has a plan.
His answer is the person and work of Jesus Christ. Pastor Nick, last week, walked us through Ephesian 2 and the work that Jesus Christ did by going to the cross. Born fully man, yet still fully God. Tempted in every way that we are and yet always, always did the will of the Father. His life was a life of obedience to God the Father.
He walked among people. Healed them, loved them, fed them, taught them, rebuked them, and corrected them. Jesus demonstrated perfect righteousness through His obedience. Ultimately, He would willingly go to the cross. He Himself bearing our sin in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live for righteousness.
And on that cross, God imputed all the sin of his people on Jesus and then poured out all his wrath onto his son… this was always his plan to satisfy his wrath… for those who believe. Which brings us to our point of tension for today. Do you believe? Have you recognized the necessary response required for the hope of salvation? That is what I’d like to study with you in more detail this morning
We will cover this final piece of the Gospel: What will be our response? Or How does our necessary response of faith fit into the Gospel?
Christ’s work on the cross demands or requires a response. Pilate after questioning Jesus and finding no fault in Him brought Him before the Jewish leaders and people and asked them – “what will you do with this man Jesus?” I think the same question is before us today. What will we do with this man, Jesus? We have to respond. We have to make a decision. Pastor Billy Graham would often say, “To not make a decision is to make a decision not to.”
And I say it this way on purpose. It is not enough to know a lot about God and the bible. A decision must be made. The bible mentions that there will be people who know a lot about God. Who do things in His name. Who think they are saved, but in fact are not.
Matthew 7:21-23 –
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Here is a sad fact that we should pray for daily. Many churches and pulpits do not tell people about a need for a response. They never explain to their people that there is a need to enter through the gate. To enter through Jesus Christ. That Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Light. Sure they talk a lot about Jesus and they teach from the Bible, but they leave out a need for a response.
In fact, my wife and I attended a lunch a couple of weeks ago where a lady at the table was sharing that while she was growing up and beginning to want to know God, she asked the pastor of her local church how a person can go to Heaven. He told her that he did not know. How can a man be a pastor of a church, responsible for the souls entrusted to him and not know the Gospel message?
How do I know I am right? Do I or does Harvest Bible Chapel have some sort of secret code or understanding that we are saved and others are not? No. No. No.
Let us this morning, go to the Word of God and look. Turn with me to Acts 2:14-41. We won’t read all of it.
Acts 2:14-41 – this is on Pentecost. Many Jewish people from surrounding countries traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. This took place about 50 days after Jesus was crucified. Since then He was raised from the tomb, appeared to many and ascended to heaven. On this day, the Holy Spirit came and rested on disciples and they spoke in other tongues as the Holy Spirit guided them. Men from those other kingdoms wondered how these men of Galilee could speak in foreign tongues and some even thought they may be drunk. Peter tells them:
14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. 15 For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.[fn] 16 But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:
17 “‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
18 even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
20 the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
21 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus,[fn] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
25-35 is how Peter is comparing Jesus to David and was not left in the tomb.
36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Repent and be baptized. Baptism is the public profession of faith. Demonstrating that you are not ashamed of being identified with Jesus. He is saying, repent and believe.
Look with me to Acts 16:25-31 – Paul and Silas in prison in Phillipi
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, 26 and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. 27 When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. 28 But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 29 And the jailer[fn] called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
The bible is full of many other scripture that tell the same story.
Romans 10:9-11
9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. 11 For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”
These scriptures have given us the blue print of a correct or saving response to the Gospel. As pointed out to us in Acts 2 by Peter and Act 16 by Paul, a saving response to the Gospel includes repenting and believing. The rest of our sermon this morning will be fleshing out this response. To repent and believe.
Repent and Believe (have faith) – let’s talk about those.
- A saving response to the Gospel must include repentance.
Let’s first define repentance and then let’s look to scripture.
Repentance – gift from God and work of the Holy Spirit in the sinner’s heart that results in a change of mind that leads to a change in life. It literally means “to turn” – turn from your old way of life to the new way of following Jesus.
I want you to see this is in Scripture. Regarding it being a gift, we see this in Acts 5:31 – God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And Acts 11:18 – When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
We also see the Holy Spirit playing His role in 1 Thessalonians 1:5 because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.
The definition states that it results in a change of mind. Again in 1 Thessalonians 1:9 it says For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God
Now after defining the term and before we go into what that change looks like, I want us to discuss what that “gift” is. What has God and Holy Spirit given us that will cause us to change? This “gift” is God choosing to reveal our sinfulness and depravity to us. More than just words or an indictment, God and the Holy Spirit show us how far we are missing the mark. He shows us the effect of our sin. Hurt it has caused. The size of our pride. How far from God’s holiness a person truly is.
This is not a safe or soothing process. In my own life, God was at it for months, maybe even years. My pride, my belief I was right, wanting to do things my way – was like a thick layer of concrete needing to be busted through. Think of God taking a jack hammer to that concrete. Loud. Dusty. Shards of rock flying out. But God kept at it. My wife talking to me and praying. Her Christian friends sharing the gospel to a hard headed, proud man. Mark Miller sharing and staying after me. A men’s group here in town teaching and showing how a godly man acts. Evenings full of conviction and shame. God had to show me that my faith was in myself and in the world (or creation) and this was sin and it leads to all sorts of hurt and chaos and wrong thinking. He had to show me that my way was the wrong way.
This was the gift of repentance that He brought to me. That is the gift He chooses to bring to those He calls so that we might hear, see it and receive it. This kind of gift is intended to cause a change. It has to. Repentance that leads to salvation changes our heart. We refer to our heart as our control center. It is our intellect, our will and our emotion and it drives our thinking and our actions. Let’s talk about those:
- Repentance brings a change in thinking. If we really understand what God is showing us. He is stating in very certain terms that what He says is true and that my (or our) way of thinking is wrong. Our learning, our experiences, our thinking is all through the lens of this world and often sin and we have learned and come to wrong conclusions. Wherever our ways conflict with God’s, we need to jettison what we think is right and seek to know Him and His ways.
- Repentance brings a change in our By emotions, I mean the way we see sin. We need to see sin as God sees sin. This will lead us to Godly sorrow, shame, and even hatred of our sin and what it does and what it leads to.
- Ezekiel 20:43 – And there you shall remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves, and you shall loathe yourselves for all the evils that you have committed.
- Jeremiah 31:19 – For after I had turned away, I relented, and after I was instructed, I struck my thigh; I was ashamed, and I was confounded, because I bore the disgrace of my youth.
- Romans 7:15 – For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
- Romans 7:24 – Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
- Psalm 51:17 – The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
- Repentance is to bring a change in our actions – true repentance is accompanied by a change that produces right actions – turning from sin and turning to Jesus.
So…We have discussed that the Gospel needs a response and that response is to repent and believe or to have faith. We have covered repenting and now we move on to believing or having faith.
- A saving response to the Gospel must include believing on the Lord Jesus or having faith.
Faith – gift from God and work of the Holy Spirit in the sinner’s heart that results in believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He was sent by the Father to accomplish His plan.
- 1 John 5:1-5 – 1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
- We dont’t believe in the notion of Christ. We believe He was real, His actions were real, His death and atonement.
- We believe in the trust worthiness of the Holy Scripture
- We believe in the person and work of God the Father and the Holy Spirit
- We believe that we need salvation for our sins.
Have faith. Do you have this kind of faith? If not, what keeps you from believing?
I have already referred earlier to the sermon Pastor Nick preached a couple of weeks ago. In it, Pastor Nick had us read Genesis 3 and it told us how Adam and Eve were in the garden walking and conversing with God and all was good. Then it tells us how the serpent comes in and tempts Eve and Adam to doubt God’s word. “That doubt” led them to begin to want the fruit and knowledge for themselves and they wanted to be like God. That doubt led to them “worshipping” the creation (as Romans 1 tells us) instead of the Creator. Their faith had changed from believing everything that God said and obeying Him to distrusting God and believing in something else – the lies of Satan? Theeir own thinking? Their own wants and abilities?
Do you see the seismic shift that happened? Their trust was in God. But doubt and distrust caused their faith to shift from God and they disobey.
Do you have those “aha” moments in the faith when something finally clicks? We know parts of the bible and then there are times when God puts the pieces together and helps us to understand. “Doubt” led to “shifting of their faith from God to something else” and Christ’s work on the cross is to put our “faith” back to Jesus and God.
Our salvation and our victory is faith in Christ. Our faith rightly restored to Him who deserves our faith. To Him who saves. We don’t work for our salvation. We are saved by repenting of our sin and believing or having faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and our faith is shown by a changed life.
I want to be really clear that I/we are not preaching that faith plus works save a person. A lot of words and verses are talking about our response or our repentance or our faith. All the “work” has been done by the Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son. Repentance is a gift from God. Jesus did the work on the cross. The Holy Spirit helps us to repent and then understand and remember. Our job is to “receive” this free gift given to us and continue in that faith.
Transition – A Gospel to be Received
What we have covered so far is the Gospel message. A Holy God enacted a plan to have His Son come and provide the means of salvation (a gift) that whoever repents and believes in Him can be forgiven and become a child of God. That is the Good News.
I want use the last part of our sermon time to focus a little tighter into what goes into a decision to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” when a person is called to Him.
1 Corinthians 15:1 says it this way, “Now I would remind you, brothers,[fn] of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand”
And that is our third point.
- We are to receive the Gospel and to stand in the Gospel
For an unbelieving person to “receive” the gospel, it means this.
Receiving the Gospel means this:
- To receive the Gospel is to reject the world. They are understanding that their hearts/actions/ways have been wrong and they no longer want to continue to do things they way they have. To receive the gospel is to reject
- All that can be seen with the eye and held in the hand. This means they are no longer chasing after things of this world to give them value or to save them or to be cherished or loved. That is no longer what is important to them. They want to follow Jesus.
- And that means they reject personal autonomy and the right to self govern and to enslave oneself to a Messiah who died 2000 years ago on the cross as a blasphemer.
- It is to reject the majority and its views join in with the minority of Christian weirdos.
- To risk everything in this one shot you have a life to believe and trust in a crucified prophet who said He was the Son of God.
- To trust exclusively in the person and work of Christ
- No back up plans, no hedging your bets
- Throw off every other hope and trust in Him alone. Christ alone.
- We don’t just turn from sin. We turn from trust in anything or anyone else, including ourselves.
- To receive the Gospel is submit willingly to Jesus’ Lordship in my life.
- The fact is that He is Lord. We just have to recognize and submit.
- To receive the Gospel is to receive an entirely different view of reality, where Christ is at the center.
- Not me/you, not your family, not your country, not any idol.
- He is the source, the purpose, the goal, the motivation of all we are and do.
- Christ tells us in John 6 that He is the bread of life. The very sustenance. His blood, His body. He is the Manna from Heaven. The living waters.
“Receiving the gospel” speaks to your position before God when the Gospel is received. Standing has to do with your conviction and resoluteness. This is to the believer. One who has already repented and believed on Jesus.
“Standing in the Gospel” is living in the Gospel and it’s truth.
- It is building our house on the Rock. – This means knowing what the Word says and then doing it.
- It is growing into the image and likeness of Christ. 1 Thess 4 says this is God’s Will for your life, your sanctification.
- It is the not growing weary and giving up. Remaining steadfast.
- Keeping your eyes set on things above.
Standing in the Gospel implies that the Gospel is not just a one time a event. Christ’s work was a one time event. Our being saved is a one time event, but the Gospel message is to be remembered daily.
Standing is remembering all those truths God revealed to us to bring us to Christ. Remember what we just covered:
- To receive the Gospel is to reject the world.
- To trust exclusively in the person and work of Christ
- To receive the Gospel is submit willingly to Jesus’ Lordship in my life.
- To receive the Gospel is to receive an entirely different view of reality, where Christ is at the center.
- Christ tells us in John 6 that He is the bread of life. The very sustenance. His blood, His body. He is the Manna from Heaven. The living waters.
As we come to a close, let me leave you with this. Our topic was “Our necessary response”. Jesus stated that “whoever believes”. This is similar to the question Pilate asked – what are you going to do with Jesus? Whether you are a person who has not believed on Jesus and need to make that decision or if you are an existing believer, what choice will you make daily with the freedom that has been given to you?
What is your response? What will you do with this man Jesus?
Remind people of the bible reading plans in the back.