Gospel

In the first chapter of the gospel of John, John introduces readers to the Word. He tells his 1st century audience (primarily Jews and Greeks) a number of surprising things about the Word. We’ll look at four of those traits followed by a few points of application/significance.

In the critical last hours of Jesus’ earthly ministry, he instituted what we call the Lord's Supper at his last meal with the disciples. As we saw in our Sunday sermon, the Lord's Supper is a simple act, but it has profound meaning. What is the Lord's Supper? We answered that question in four parts.

Someone asked me for a list of Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. I expected the search to be a fairly easy one in our digitized society, but it wasn't. Here is a good list of the Old Testament prophecy followed by a New Testament fulfillment. It comes from R.A. Torrey, who died in 1928. The sheer length of this list reminds us that Christ is thoroughly (though not completely) revealed in the Old Testament, and that he is precisely who Peter said that he was: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16).

Ricky Wright was baptized this past Sunday, along with Mike Smith. It was a great day of celebrating God's grace saving two more sinners! Ricky was gracious enough to let us post his profession.

As a family of churches we have a unique opportunity to help provide relief to those in the Philippines devestated by Typhoon Haiyan. In God's kindness, we have had a long and fruitful partnership with pastors Nilo Ebu and Pete Valdez, both of whom lead churches in the Philippines. 

This past Saturday Mickey Connolly taught a parenting seminar at SGC on the goal and the how of parenting. His target was parents of children through aged 12 years, but as a father of three grown children his gaze often extended upwards to the adult years. 

"Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning!"John Calvin, The Institutes, Book II, Chapter 13, section 4

Over the last couple days we've examined this phrase "gospel-centered" and seen that it rightly reminds us to keep the good news about Jesus Christ at the center of our teaching, discipleship, and life with the Lord. But there is something else we need to think about in this discussion: Is the gospel we have placed at the center complete? Are we thinking of the gospel in large enough terms? Or are we taking only a part of it and treating it like the whole?

Okay, so in our last post we looked at how the phrase "gospel-centered" gets used frequently these days. It is a wonderful phrase, and because of that we want to understand it and use it intentionally.

The phrase "gospel-centered" has become an adjective that can get put in front of about everything that relates to the Christian life....But we need to take a step back from all of this gospel-centeredness and ask a basic question, What is the good news—the "gospel"—anyway?