What is the Gospel?

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Shabbat Shalom

Shabbat Shalom, everyone. It's good to be back this week. We are so excited to be here again today. I sure am. I look forward to Shabbat all week long. Life, it seems the past couple years have been a bit trying. For some of us, everyone else, it's a bit trying and it's just as if we're still experiencing shockwaves of that stress, of that anxiety in many different forms. And so I am so thankful for people who love the Sabbath, for community who really embraces the Sabbath. We find joy in the entirety of the Bible. But most of all, we are a community that seeks first and foremost to orbit the person of Jesus that we call Yeshua.

So welcome to our fellowship, Founded in Truth Fellowship. The gospel, man, a word that has become so familiar in the world. And today I hope to take a look at what the gospel is in the Bible. I know last week we talked about the Sabbath and a few of you approached me afterwards thinking I was going to talk about the weekly Sabbath and how Israel is supposed to keep the Sabbath. We approached it more from the lens of the narrative of the entire Bible. And hopefully that was helpful to see the Sabbath as more than simply a single command and see it as a motif over the entire Hebrew Bible, as well as its fulfillment, if you will, grand climactic jubilee fulfillment from the prophets in Yeshua.

You Are More Than Your Ideas

And so today I want to approach the gospel that way, because many times I was taught to have a very minimalistic view, scope of the gospel. And so we're going to dive in. We don't like for our ideas and opinions and philosophies to be messed with, do we? No. No. A couple of you, right? Every four years in the U.S., we found out that's a lie, right? Right? Okay. So we're close. Of course not. We've been taught and journeyed through and had experiences that form our ideas and opinions. But we've also been taught that our ideas and opinions make up who we are. And that is a lie. You are more than your ideas and opinions. And so are the people around you. And so is everyone in the world. And I think that's a lesson that sometimes we miss. But we are sensitive to having our preconceived ideas or notions or opinions threatened. And I want to let you guys know that that is not my mission today. And I want you to hear my heart on that.

Reframing the Gospel

My goal is to maybe help reframe an idea about the gospel through the lens of the story that the Bible tells. And this is not an exhaustive lecture on the scope of dogma of heaven or hell. I'm not really going to jump into an exhaustive scope of that. It's a fascinating study throughout church history and how that has evolved. Nor is this meant to be threatening to denominational doctrine or traditions. I hope the message of what the Bible brings to light is edifying. That's my goal prayerfully in every single message that is preached here. And so, if you at the end of this message find yourself upset that I did not present a survey of atonement theory or justification, that was not the trajectory of the sermon.

We good? Stupendous. This is great. Guys, if at the end of this message you say, wow, I've never seen the gospel so impactful in this light on such an amazing scope, and I'd love to learn a little bit more, we have a few resources I put in the YouTube description. There's three different books that I recommend that have been helpful for me. One of them is very pastoral in nature, Divine Conspiracy. The other one is a mixture between pastoral application and scholarship. It's Surprised by Hope. And then you have the scholarly book from Christopher Wright, amazing author, called The Mission of God. So check those out if this is something that you want to dive into more.

A Gospel of Fear

The gospel. So what does the gospel mean? Not a trick question. The good news, right? And what is the good news? Well, if you're like me, I grew up in a fundamentalistic evangelical church. It is what it is. And this is a church where Halloween was bad. You dress up as Mickey Mouse and you go ring the doorbell and you get a Snickers, it's bad. But dressing up like a demon and scaring kids into praying the sinner's prayer was totally kosher. That's what we did.

You're worshiping Satan if you ring the doorbell and get candy, but you'd come to church Halloween night and they would walk you down a nature trail called Tribulation Trail and demons would come out and they'd have skits and they'd drag people to hell and people would die and then they'd have martyrs and I'd see guns being pulled on Christians, deny Christ, and then they'd set firecrackers off, bam, and the scene would go black. And I'm eight years old. And then finally you get to the very end and there's the white throne judgment and there's Jesus and the fog machine and everything's white lights and it's like, finally we're here. Depart from me. I never knew all the demons would come in. And that was horrible. Right? It just, yeah. And so that was it, we don't do Halloween, but I definitely don't think that was a wise way to present the gospel to a seven or eight year old.

Waiting to Die

There are ways that I treat situations today that I'm just now realizing are rooted in that. But yeah, my presentation of what the gospel was, it revolved around being scared. Being scared of going to hell. And then they'd buffer the message to us. They'd say, but it's okay because you get to go to heaven and have eternal life and it's not a bad deal. I'm reflecting on what I perceived when I was seven and eight years old in that mindset. And that was the scope. If we're being honest, that's what I was taught: you're born and throughout life you might make some bad decisions, some really bad decisions, you still lie, you gossip, you make destructive decisions.

And then one day you accept Jesus and you continue your life and you do better because of this encounter with Jesus and this relationship that you have. And you still mess up every once in a while, but the real focus, what you're really waiting on is to die. Because then you get to go to heaven, and that's what the concept of being saved and the gospel, the good news, is all about. And of course, in our church, we had stipulations. So if you cussed or played Pokemon, you didn't lose your salvation, you were just never saved to begin with. This was my tradition growing up. Everyone has a different one, but generally speaking, that's it.

What the Bible Actually Says

And the issue with this being the carrying, solidified, complete scope of the gospel is that the Bible has a problem with this. The Bible never focuses a ton of energy into you going to heaven after you die. That just wasn't the main spotlight of the biblical story. Jesus, Yeshua, never made this the complete ultimate goal, emphasizing that you're going to go to heaven when you die.

It's just not what the stories talk about, what he emphasized, what he did in his life and ministry. What did Yeshua focus on when it came to the gospel? What did he say the gospel was? Well, if we read Mark chapter 1, starting in verse 14, going through verse 15, we get what he says the gospel is. And he says this: after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God, Evangelium, right? Gospel. The time has come, he said, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.

The Kingdom Has Come Near

He's proclaiming the good news. The time has come. We're all going to go to heaven when we die now. That's not the emphasis. That's not what he was zealous about. Sure, we can say that's a part of it. Eternal life? Yes. I think he's trying to let us know that eternal life can start now and transcend death into foreverness. No, the kingdom of God has come near. That's what he's proclaiming. And the Greek word here is coming near. It's beautiful. It was beautifully illustrated in one of the commentaries. It's like you get this image of the morning dawn, right? And you have this huge hill and all of a sudden the sun is rising up and it's bursting over the hill.

It has come near. The time has come. Repent. Believe the good news. So repent in Greek, much like Hebrew means to turn around. To turn around. Sometimes it can mean to reconsider. Turn around and believe or trust. Turn around from what? Well, we have the kingdom of God over here, and you have to turn around in order to be in the kingdom. So turn around from the things that cannot coexist with this kingdom that is now here. Sin. Sin. Self-seeking agendas. Manipulating good and evil for ourselves. ...gossiping to destroy others. Sin is what tore the marriage of heaven and earth apart in the beginning.

And it must be removed for the reconciliation of heaven and earth to once again take place. The Old Testament story, the narrative, depicts the wrongs in the world... ...the violence that has erupted from the human heart... ...the injustice that takes place... ...all things that come from the sinful thirst of mankind... The Old Testament story speaks about one day God's going to make it all right. God is going to burst into this world and this great reversal is going to take place. Wrongs will be made right, justice will be given, and creation will be brought back to a place of good. He will rule as king here.

And where he rules, where a king rules is known as what? His kingdom. This is what Yeshua was proclaiming was happening through himself. But let's start at the beginning, the story.

His Kingdom

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, right? Ha-shemayim et ha-iretz. Now, the heavens, of course, are the sky, right? And so when we read this verse, in the beginning, heavens and the earth, right? Because we're like in 2022 and we science and stuff. We always picture what? Ourselves like in the middle of space, right? Does anyone else? Just black space. And then there's like heavens and earth. And I would submit, specifically because of what the words formless and void mean, tohu vavohu, the author here—no one in the original audience would have pictured space. It's this picture and they're looking up.

They got the heavens, the sky, the clouds, these little bright lights and such. And the land down here. Now, heavens again, that's the context. But the context in Genesis 1 is that these things are somehow spiritually charged with the purposes and plan of God. Something big is taking place. Something about this heaven and this earth embodies the goodness of God's presence and the culmination of his will. The birds, the fish, the land that gives forth, and his presence resting with mankind as his image bearers in this mountain garden that forms. Remember, it's a mountain, a garden, this place of God's presence, and all the water runs down it into all the lands, right?

Notice there's no sign of hell mentioned. It's not mentioned. The counterpart of heaven is earth. It's earth. Heaven and earth, not heaven and hell. At least here, this motif is carried out throughout the rest of Scripture. Heaven becoming synonymous with the place of God's dwelling. Did I put any verses? What's the next slide here? I'm not sure if I was ready for this one or not. Nope, we'll come to it. That's fine.

In the Beginning, God Created

So what happens next in the story? Well, God gives Adam and Eve, or Zoe, her Greek name, the life giver of all living. It's beautiful. He gives them dominion, authority, over the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the livestock and the lamb. The creation continues to flourish when mankind works with God, having dominion over his good creation. That's what's being painted here. But what does mankind decide to do? Sin. And notice it immediately impacts everything under their authority. Everything that was flourishing begins to erode in this story. The fertile, ever-producing land under their feet turns to thorns and thistles.

The story continues this downward spiral for all of humanity. Adam blames his wife. Their first son becomes a murderer of their own family. Lamech becomes gleeful over being a masterful killer, slayer of fellow man. The bringer of death becomes a type of trophy for him that he's proud of and sings songs about. In the first few chapters of the biblical story, humanity grows in population and their growth is only matched by their thirst for violence and destruction. Sin has been spread and it's taken root and it's sprouting. It's overtaken the garden. If you will, the images and the pictures have changed.

It is now this parasitical plant prompting humanity to begin to groan and cry out as the light from God's presence fades and gets pushed into the distance. In Yeshua's most famous parable about the prodigal son, the father gave his inheritance, but instead of enjoying it with our father, we've distanced ourselves from him only to squander it for ourselves.

Heaven and Earth Ripped Apart

In the beginning, God is portrayed as walking on the earth with mankind. But now, it seems we have pushed him away, taking what he gave us only to exploit it and have our way with it. Heaven and earth have been ripped from one another in the biblical story because of our choices. We have been sent—or mankind was sent—eastward from the garden, Adam and Eve. And we follow the story. And what happens after the flood, after everything? It says that all nations come together, all the people come together in Genesis 11:2. It says, as the people migrated, where? To the east. Now, depending on the translation, it might say "from," but the NLT says they migrated to the east and they found the plain of Babylon and settled there.

So mankind travels east from the garden and they continue traveling eastward until they land in this place that becomes known as Babel. It's Babylon. It's very relevant later in the story of the Bible. Notice in the story of the Tower of Babel. All nations come together. They want to make a name for themselves, right? And so they build up their own kind of mountain garden, their own tower to the heavens, right? And God is down there with them, looking up at it, right? No, he's not depicted on earth anymore. Like in the garden, he's up in the heavens. He comes down to take a look, which is irony. It's a humorous point in the story that I believe was intentional because humans are going to build this big old tower up to heaven, right?

And they're so proud of it. We're going to get a name for ourselves and God has to, right? Like you kind of get, he has to come down to see what is this little thing? Anyway. The point is we no longer see God walking in the cool of the day. Heaven and earth are no longer overlapped. There's a division. God has taken his abode, his residence in the heavens, and here's mankind down here.

God Dwells in Heaven

Psalm 115:16. The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth has been given to man. The ripping apart has taken place. This is why the heavens become associated very quickly in the story with the place where God dwells, right? The heavens up there are where God is. We see this in multiple other scriptures in Isaiah , Job 28:2, 2 Chronicles 6:1, 1 Samuel 2, Psalm 103. We have a whole list of scriptures that speak about these counterparts of heaven and hell, these divisions. God hears from heaven. He orchestrates human affairs from heaven. He blots out the wicked from under heaven. And he comes down and even judges from heaven. But this is the flow of the story, the way it's written. This is where we get the idea that God's in heaven, right? That whole thing is part of the story. But this is not the original plan, as we saw in the garden story. It's not the original plan. This is not how the plan was supposed to end up. This is not how the story was supposed to end up. Earth rebels against heaven while God's kingdom continues to reign over the earth from heaven.

God's Long Story of Promises

So where does the story go from here? The long story consists of God's promises that he will fix what we messed up. He's going to do it by choosing a barren couple who are from the land of Babylon, that area, Abraham and Sarah. Through them, all of the nations of the earth will experience immense blessing. This is where Paul gets his narrative. The story flows to the Exodus, the birth of Israel as a kingdom of priests. Priests are mediators between God and man, between heaven and earth. Israel gets the inheritance of the land, and God pseudo-dwells with them in the form of a tabernacle. And Israel begins to manipulate good and evil for themselves.

They embody everything the world turned into after the garden in the story. Book of Amos, Isaiah, Israel becomes everything that pushes God's presence away in the story. Abusing the poor, exploiting the weak, all for power and gain financially. They profit off of war. Yeah. So God sends them out of the land of Israel eastward to the land of Babylon in exile. That's where they went because they wanted to make a name for themselves instead of bearing the name of God. And this becomes the launching pad for the prophets to begin explaining the promises of God that he's going to bring about a new heavens and earth, according to Isaiah, where the barren deserts will once again bloom, where the lion and the lamb will lie down together, where children will lead wild animals around as pets.

Reconciliation of heaven and earth with Edenic images. This is what the flashing is. This was the mission of Jesus, to fulfill these promises.

All Things Reconciled

Paul says that through the shedding of his blood on the cross, he has reconciled all things back together. All things in heaven, all things in earth. Colossians —I have it in two different translations here because I love the paraphrasing of the NLT. The CSB states... The New Living Translation says... Paul seems to believe that this entire story drawn out in the Old Testament that ends with the promises that God is going to make everything right despite man messing it all up has been fulfilled in Christ. He did it. When we went through the Revelation series, we saw this now-and-not-yet hope displayed in Revelation , the proclamation, right?

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever. They've come back together. Somehow they've come back together in Christ. Reconciliation, the two becoming one again. No longer is God up there. God is with us. Emmanuel, that's the promise. Yeshua the Savior reunited heaven and earth. One kingdom, the kingdom of God. God has given Yeshua authority as his resurrected king, and he established the kingdom reality on earth through him, as it is in heaven.

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done

That's what we're taught to pray daily, right? That's what we pray daily? I hope it was something, right? Our Father, who is where? In heaven, holy be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done as it is in heaven. Make them one again. And the rest of the prayer is kind of like praying that we're going to be a part of that. The whole forgiveness thing and sustaining through God, faith in God. Yeah. When Yeshua is resurrected, what does he say in Matthew 28? This great commission. Everybody say all. That's a big word here. All authority and power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

The Eternal Plan of Reconciliation

Sovereign King. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 9. I love it. It says, He may know to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. This was the promise of the Old Testament story. Under Christ, which means king, Messiah, Christoph, heaven and earth are reconciled. John's vision recorded in Revelation ends with what? A new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, connecting the two together. God's plan, according to the biblical story, has never been to provide an escape from this awful sin-ridden earth so that he could take us to heaven.

It's always been about him ushering his kingdom in heaven down to earth. That's what it's always been, Genesis 1. And when the new Jerusalem is depicted coming down from heaven, Revelation 20, 21, what does it say in verse 3? Now we know after the Revelation study, it's not simply a futuristic crystal ball book. It's a now and not them. It's a now and soon to come. This is the story of the gospel as depicted in the Bible. That God created heaven and earth together, unified. That sin tore it apart. And that its destiny has always been to be reconciled back together again. And that has taken place only through King Jesus, King Yeshua.

Through this entire story, though, where does hell show up? Where's hell come into it? Well, it's not mentioned in Genesis 1. God created heaven and earth.

No hell there. So where do we see hell? Well, we see it in a lot of different places. It pops up in very ambiguous ways, if we can be honest. But Jesus mentions hell in Matthew chapter 23 when he's scolding the Pharisees. And the Pharisees, they're keeping the Torah. They're keeping the commandments of God. But what's his beef with them? They're ignoring justice, mercy, grace, the things that are the foundation of God's throne. Psalm 89, 14 says, I love that going before you. I get this image, and this is probably the wrong image, but I always think of how we do it today in weddings—the kids run and they do flowers before the king, right?

Or the mat that rolls out before the king. Love and faithfulness go before him. These are not just extra things that we do on top of keeping the commandments of God. These are the things that reconcile heaven to earth. Clean and unclean foods are not the foundation of God's throne. Sabbath is not the foundation of God's throne. Passover, waving the lulav, it's not the foundation of God's throne. These are great, but these are not the things that reconcile heaven and earth back together. These are the key identifiers of what God's kingdom stands for. And that's why Yeshua is calling them out.

The Herb Garden and God's Throne

The Pharisees were tithing their herb gardens. Put it in perspective. Who has an herb garden? Is it acres large? It's not a big thing, right? It's an itty bitty thing. And usually you neglect it. You're going for the tomatoes, the peppers, the cucumbers, right? And then if you're going to make tea, you can grab whatever smells good. And you put it in there, mint, whatever, lavender, right? Does anyone have one of the little herb gardens, little kits that you put in your kitchen? You know what I'm talking about? Sitting on your window sill. So imagine yourself there with all of your righteousness and obedience to God with those pruning scissors, with your glass monocle, 10%. And then you put it on the scale, the little scale that no one has, right? 10%. This is how dedicated they were in keeping these commandments. But they ignored the very foundation of what God's throne was. And here's what Yeshua says to them right before this section. What happens when man takes that dominion and rules the earth in this manner?

We Create Hell on God's Earth

In August 1939, healthcare providers throughout Germany received a letter, an order, a missive from the Reich ministry. The note stipulated that all physicians and nurses and midwives need to report infants ages three and under who appeared to suffer from severe mental or physical disabilities. Two months later in October, these health experts started suggesting that parents the best thing for them to do to their disabled children is to send them to certain specialty pediatric clinics in Germany and Austria for treatment. But the catch was, the children sent to these clinics were never helped. They were killed.

Why? Well, authority, power, right? These people were viewed as a threat to power, as a hindrance to the power of the growing empire of Germany. Between 1937 and 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army conducted lethal human experiments in northeast China, predominantly on Chinese populace as well as Russian populations. The group conducting the experiments was known as Unit 731. Throughout the years, researchers have focused on all the practices. Awful things took place, but the main thing they would do to these people was purposely inject diseases such as syphilis, anthrax, gonorrhea into victims to study the effects.

They raped women to conduct experiments on their fetuses. They used prisoners as human targets for grenades to make sure our weapons worked effectively. And how do we do that? Well, we try them out. The Japanese army is also recorded as dropping plague-carrying fleas onto Chinese villages to see how long it takes for things to spread. Thousands, some estimate hundreds of thousands of people died in single camps where this took place. What is perhaps most disturbing in the history of this is that many of the doctors that were performing these experiments considered them routine. This became just a way of life of preserving the power of empire on Earth.

In spite of this, many Unit 731 researchers never stood trial for war crimes because the United States was in an arms race against the Soviet Union, right? So we'd give them immunity on the condition that they give us all the information that they've gathered through all their experiments. Power. What would you do to keep power? Soviet Union, our biggest up-and-coming competitor. We got the atomic bomb first. What was the motive of dropping those two bombs in Japan? We don't know. How about the Congo War? Child soldiers. Rebels would come into towns, rape and then kill mothers. And we always think of rape—what a horrible thing.

Rape took place during this era and this incident on such a mass scale that the United Nations felt compelled to label it as an instrument, not a side effect of war. What happens when mankind takes his power, manipulates good and evil for itself, and rules the world in this manner? We create hell here. We create hell on God's good earth.

Hell Gains Entrance Through Us

James chapter 3, starting in verse 6. James says, Likewise the tongues, and the gossip that we love to spread, and the things that we will say in order to manipulate and shift power for our own agendas—we are wielding the fires of hell, and we're spreading it even now. And it hurts, and it crushes, and it kills in some of the most painful ways. According to James, hell gains entrance into God's good world through us, through you. We are the agents of destructive powers. We unleash the fires of hell onto this world. We make up the beast of Daniel chapter 7 and Revelation. Oh man, those beasts are the kingdoms of the world that manipulate and use their power to destroy and wreak havoc all over the world.

What are kingdoms made of? People like you and me who believe that their nation is not the wicked one. We make up the beasts of Daniel 7 and Revelation. But there is good news, good news, because God is coming as king, and he is establishing his life-giving redemptive kingdom. Repent and turn around and believe the kingdom of God is riding in like an army, and it's coming to get the hell out of earth. And if that's not amazing enough, God loves you. You rebellious agent of hellish destruction. God loves you and God yearns to forgive you, knowing that hell may still have a tangle on you, manifesting itself as it sucks you down. God wants you to rest, nuach, with him in his kingdom.

The Kingdom Actualizing

Yeshua is driving out demons, and Pharisees accuse him of wielding demonic powers to do so. And here's what Yeshua says in Matthew chapter 12, verse 28. It says, It's here. You're seeing it. What you are seeing is the kingdom actualizing. And we tend to rightfully focus and emphasize the death, burial, and resurrection of King Yeshua. Oh man, that's how he dealt with sin. This is the means of how he reconciles heaven and earth. Defeating the powers of darkness and throwing off the power of sin from the world. But we sometimes don't understand the significance of the recorded events of Yeshua's life and ministry.

Literally every part of what he did when he was alive was acting out the kingdom ethic as well as projecting the prophecies of new creation coming into the present. The prophecies that Isaiah says, when this comes, when God's kingdom comes, the lame will walk and the deaf will hear. This is why his miracles revolved around these things. Luke chapter 17, verse 20. When Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he replied, The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is in your midst.

Where Yeshua is, heaven and earth are overlapping again. Heaven and earth are reconciled. Paul encourages the Corinthian church to wear the lenses of crucifixion and exaltation of Jesus as king when they look out at the world who doesn't realize it yet. In 2 Corinthians 5, starting in verse 18, I want you to listen to what Paul says here. He says, All of this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. What are you?

Ambassadors of the Kingdom

Ambassadors. You know what an ambassador is? You represent the king. When people see an ambassador, they see the king. He's representing the king. You are the king's ambassadors. As though God were making his appeal through us. Here's the gospel: that God's kingdom has come and is manifesting itself through your turning to it and living in it. Living out the authority of Yeshua. Living out heaven and earth reconciled. Living out the ethic of the king. By walking away from a life of being an ambassador of hell on earth and embodying being an ambassador of heaven on earth. This is what Yeshua taught and lived out. We've become so concerned about what happens after we die. I mean, it's a big deal, right? It's a question. I have this resurrection thing that's gonna happen, but then what happens before that? I mean, yeah, that's a lot of stuff that isn't—the biblical authors don't spend a lot of time talking about, if we're honest. They don't spend a lot of time going into details. That was never the full emphasis of what Yeshua was talking about in his ministry.

The Real Focus: Eternal Life Starts Now

This is why sin had to be dealt with through the saving blood of Jesus. Now guys, I believe in a final judgment. I think that's in scripture. I believe in eternal life. I believe that after you die, you will experience the peace that is only felt in the arms of Yeshua. What does that look like? We have vague glimpses of it spoken about in the Bible. But I believe that eternal life starts the moment you enter new creation through the blood of Yeshua. And guess what? As a follower of Yeshua here and now, you are walking out and manifesting the kingdom of heaven now. That's your call. Now, not later, not after you die.

You are called to be an ambassador of this kingdom now here on earth. You are called to stand against the fires of hell on earth right now. All of it, wherever you see it, you stand in the way of it. Because you're not an agent of hell anymore. You are an agent of heaven. And you represent the space of heaven overlapping earth that is represented on Calvary through the exaltation of King Yeshua. That is where we find ourselves. It was a mission on earth that we're supposed to be involved in.

The Gospel I Was Taught

And the gospel I was taught growing up—and later on I understood doctrine and dogma and extra commentary, and I know all that—but growing up, I was taught that once you get saved, well, you just kind of wait till you die before you can turn that in. You turn it into St. Peter and that's when you get—no. Ezekiel talks about how God is going to do heart surgery and remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Jeremiah speaks about how, you know what? We are gonna rewrite everything that is on your heart and the spirit of God is going to come into it and occupy that so that you can live out the mission of everything that God has for you as a human being and as his image bearer. Guys, you're saved from your own heart. You're saved from sin. You're saved from the thing that causes you to say, "Did God really say?" No, I want to take, I want to determine good and evil for myself and manipulate it for my selfish gain. And you are recruited as an agent of heaven.

Standing Against the Fires of Hell

So whenever you see the fires of hell engulfing the world, guess what you're called to do? Go put it out. And guess what? That will get you killed. That's what got the apostles killed. That's what got Yeshua killed. He threatened the fires of hell. The ministry of reconciliation has been given to you. Your sins are no more. Not counting them against you. Sin has been dealt with. The power of hell was allowed to flex its muscle on Yeshua. The powers of hell threw the most powerful thing it had. The lovers of hell once again were trying to push God out of his good creation. "Forgive them, for they don't even know what they're doing."

"I forgive you"—those were his words—"for you have no idea what you're doing." The most powerful weapon the lovers of hell could unleash. It always worked before. No, it was not enough this time. He calls your name. The kingdom of God is here because the king is here, but there are still fires of hell because there are still lovers of hell. And so we do our thing as followers of this hell-fighting heavenly king. We stand in the way of them because the kingdom of heaven is like a little bit of yeast that is kneaded into a whole big ball of dough and slowly but surely it will overtake the entire world and bring the knowledge of heaven and the knowledge of the kingdom of Yahweh back into the minds and hearts of all mankind. Creation will be renewed.

The Gospel of Getting Hell Out

So I'm here to preach the gospel that Jesus has come to get the hell out of earth and to get the hell out of you. And as far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us. He will cast them into the sea. He will tread them under his feet. And so I don't know where you're at today, but this is the good news: that Jesus brought—that God is not sitting idly. God has come into the world despite the world wanting to push him back once again. No, no.

I believe final judgment is coming. I believe eternal life after death, but the mission is now. You have a job to do now. And we can argue semantics and dogma. We could do all that just like we love to do, but your calling is to represent heaven now on earth. And that's not debatable in the Bible. "Go. Have dominion over the earth." This is the good news. "The kingdom of God has come near. Repent, turn around, and believe."

The Closing Call

And so guys, I would ask that you would stand with me in prayer as we enter into a time of worship. Worship team, you can come. And a time of worship is a time of reflection. It's a time of prayer. It's a time of meditation. It's a time of worship. And you're free to do any of those things. But I hope you leave today edified by your calling. Edified by who your king is and what he's done for you and what he's now calling you to do. Repent, turn, get the fires out of your life. Call on the name of the Lord and ask him to equip you with a new type of armor. Alvina Moccano, our father, our king, father, we thank you for this time that we've come together on the day of your rest, this Sabbath that you have always invited us back into ever since the beginning, where we now find our rest through your son, Yeshua.

Father, I ask that your Holy Spirit—that your word says is within us now, if we have accepted the blood of your son—that it would do its job in strengthening us, but also revealing to us maybe the things in our life that continue to spread the fires of hell in your good creation. And you would give us the strength to call upon you to say, "Take care of these so that I can stand as a witness of your kingdom now." Father, I pray that you would give us the strength and the courage that when we see fires of hell manifesting out in the world, either in individuals or in collective groups and kingdoms, that we would be willing to stand boldly against them. We thank you, Father, for the saving power of your son, Yeshua. We thank you for eternal life, and we thank you for casting our transgressions, our sins, and iniquity so far away that heaven is reunited with earth.

In Yeshua's name we pray. Amen. Shalom. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Shabbat Shalom. Shalom. I'm Matthew Vanderells and I hope you enjoyed this message. Found in Truth exists to build a community that bears the image of God and lives the redeemed life only Yeshua gives. If this message impacted you or if this ministry has been a blessing to you, we invite you to take part in making sure the message of Yeshua and the truth of God's word continues to reach others. To make sure this happens, you can donate through our online giving portal at foundinatruth.com slash give or by texting any amount to 704-275-0752.

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