04.02. Is Our Gospel The Gospel?
I believe with all my heart that Jesus would be ashamed of most of the "gospel" messages and sermons that are being preached today, mainly because they lack almost every major point He Himself preached on. (Mark 8:38; Romans 1:16; 2 Timothy 1:8) How dare we try to change the Gospel. We remove most of its vital parts, and replace them with artificial limbs of our own. (Galatians 1:6-7)
Isn’t Jesus the master evangelist? Shouldn’t we judge our evangelism by His example?(Ephesians 5:1, 1 Peter 2:21; 1 John 2:6) Was His message anything like what we’re hearing today? It is my intention to try to briefly cover in Section 1 each of the major parts of the Gospel that have been "surgically" removed in most of today’s preaching. And in Section 2, we will go over each of the "new additions" that have become a very part of our modern gospel. The Removed Parts Of The Gospel The Blood of Jesus. It’s a fact that the very word blood scares people. It’s also a fact that the blood of Christ scares the devil, because it is the only cleansing agent for a sin-sick soul.(Matthew 26:28; Acts 20:28; Romans 3:25, Romans 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:13; Colossians 1:20; Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 9:22; Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 13:12; 1 Peter 1:2; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 1:5; Revelation 5:9; Revelation 12:11; Revelation 19:13) Can you imagine what the preaching and writings of Paul would have been like, if he had been as squeamish in proclaiming the magnificent power and beauty of the blood of Jesus as our generation of preachers are? What we have now is a bloodless gospel!
Today, people are afraid to think and preachers are afraid to make them. The whole concept of Jesus being the Passover Lamb of the Old Testament(Exodus 12:23-24; Isaiah 53:7; Luke 22:15; John 1:29; John 1:36; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Peter 1:19; Revelation 5:6; Revelation 5:12; Revelation 7:14; Revelation 22:1; Revelation 22:3) has been lost - "It takes too much time and thought to explain," you will hear some say. (Hebrews 5:11-14) "We need to simplify the Gospel so that we can reach the masses." Oh, what logic! Remove the blood from the preaching of the Gospel, and you remove the power to conquer the devil for the souls of men!