The gospel of change?

My grace roots teeth were cut in large part through the help of my former pastor, "Pastor Mark," in the last half of the 1990's. Pastor Mark had formerly been a Word of Faith pastor at a church called Life Christian Center here in Waterloo, Iowa, but went through his own grace revolution and began to preach what I believe is "the" gospel. It's known in the Bible as "the gospel of grace," "the gospel of Jesus Christ" and "the gospel of peace," among other terms. But no matter the term, it's one gospel. Romans 1:16-17 reveals that the gospel is a revelation of God's righteousness (not our own righteousness), and of course it's given to us as a gift (Romans 5:17), not by us performing in any way to earn it.

Mark preached for about an hour every week, digging deep into the glorious gospel, expounding upon the scriptures like I've never seen anyone do, before or since. My knowledge and understanding of who God is and who I am in Him really grew during the period of my life that I was able to hear him preach. In short, it all started sometime in 1995 when my friend Mike (who was the P.D. at the radio station I worked at back then, and with whom I record Growing in Grace) began sharing sermon tapes with me. I was blown away, and I began to experience freedom in the Lord like never before. Then in 1996, about 5 or 6 months after my wife and I were married, we left our church and began attending Life Christian Center, until the end of 1999 when we stopped meeting as a church (for various reasons), and the Lord sent us out to share the wonderful gospel of freedom in other places.

Well, I was listening to one of the old sermon tapes this morning, and I just had to share it! It's from 1995 and it's entitled "The Gospel to the Poor," based upon Jesus' reading of Isaiah's prophecy of Him, in Luke 4. Before getting into that, Mark spends a great deal of time talking about what the gospel isn't. Apparently in the Word of Faith church, various phrases had been coined, such as "the gospel of healing" and "the gospel of prosperity." Now, it's not that God doesn't heal, and it's not that a person can't be prosperous financially, but Mark makes the point that those things aren't the gospel.

But what really struck me back then, in 1995, and what has stuck with me all these years and is highlighted in this sermon, is how the church today has created its own "gospel of change." To many people, the gospel essentially means "I've changed the way I live." Our testimonies are nothing more than, "I used to do bad things, now I do good things." "I used to smoke dope; now I'm clean as a whistle." Again, it's not that changed behavior is bad! Those testimonies come from the wonderful work of God in the lives of people, and are well worth sharing. But... that's not the gospel! Those things may be a fruit - or a result - of the transformation that happens in a person's life because of the gospel, but as Mark often said, "the gospel isn't a gospel of change; it's a gospel of exchange." The gospel at its core means an exchange of our sin for Christ's righteousness (see for example 2 Corinthians 5:21), and of our life for Christ's life (see Galatians 2:20). That's good news!

I think many of you will enjoy Mark's sarcasm, humor, zeal and insight as he talks about all this and more. (He also talks about how many in the church have become separatists, worrying that we'll be contaminated by "sinners." He talks about how it's very easy for him to understand why people don't like church, or the church system. And if you've ever heard me share the story about my pastor who visited another church in which the pastor of that church pointed out the bartender in his congregation, that's in this sermon. It's an awesome story!). You can download the teaching here. If you can't listen to it now, why not download it for a later time.



It's 47 minutes long, and unfortunately it ends abruptly because the final part of the hour-long sermon was cut off, but you get a heavy dose of gospel freedom in those 47 minutes! (For some reason it was recorded onto the first side of a 90-minute tape, and the other side of the tape has something completely different on it). It's a 16MB download. Let me know if you have any troubles downloading/listening to it.

If interested, I've previously linked to a short snippet of another message from Mark here.