Gospel Warning

High School Ministry just concluded its series “Understanding Gospel” on Wednesday night.  After taking four weeks to examine the topics of (1) God as Creator and Lawgiver, (2) Man as sinner, (3) Jesus Christ as Savior, and (4) Grace and Faith as the basis and means of salvation, the final message came in the form of a warning, a warning to not merely understand the gospel but to embrace it wholeheartedly as the good news that it truly is.  Here’s a summary of that warning.

There have been two catastrophic world events in the past few weeks.  The cyclone that hit Myanmar could have a death toll well over 100,000 people.  The earthquake in China has claimed at least 22,000 lives.   The sudden nature of such devastating events should wake us from our spiritual slumber.  No one in either Myanmar or China could foresee these events.  There were no warnings.  Families were not marking their calendars for the coming cyclone.  Businesses weren’t planning to close down for the coming earthquake.  These events took their victims by surprise.

The urgency to embrace the gospel becomes more apparent with these catastrophes playing on our televisions.  They should remind us of our own mortality and the relative ease with which our lives can unexpectedly terminated.  There is no guarantee that our next breath will not be our last; tomorrow isn’t promised to anybody.  Jesus gives us a strong warning when he was questioned about two tragic events in His day (see Luke 13:1-5).  He told his listeners that it wasn’t their superior righteousness that kept them alive and safe from harm’s way.  In fact He urged them toward repentance, lest they also perish.  We must take this to heart.  It isn’t as though our righteousness has kept us from a massive disaster.  The reason that our lives have been spared is not owing to the fact that we don’t deserve a devastating encounter with God’s power in nature.  On account of our rebellion against God we do deserve for our lives to be swept away, and unless we repent and embrace the gospel, we will likewise perish.

To illustrate with colorful language the precarious condition of the unbeliever and to help create a sense of urgency, I quoted at length from Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (with a little explanation and paraphrase the students followed along great):

“The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen.”

“Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment . . .”

These sobering and graphic thoughts aren’t meant to serve as scare tactics but rather as poignant pictures into reality so that we might be roused from our apathy as we observe the horrors in Myanmar and China on the evening news and then head off for a cozy night’s sleep in our comfy beds.  Unless we repent and embrace the gospel we will likewise perish, maybe not in a cyclone or earthquake, but nevertheless, we’ll perish.