In this sermon Tim encourages us to have an answer ready for the question: why are you a Christian? He spurs us on to be bold and unashamed of the gospel and to share it in our families, workplace and community! How will you share the gospel this week?
Sermon preached by Tim Giovanelli on Sunday October 30, 2022.
05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series – Manly Life Church Podcast
- 05/02/23 – John 12:20-33 Following Jesus & Intro – by Tim Giovanelli – The Farewell Discourse Series
- 29/01/23 – The Glory of Christ – Greg Beech
- 22/01/23 – Luke 15:1-8 God's Heart for the Lost – by Lani Daniel
- 15/01/23 – 1 John 4:11 Friendship In Church by Tim Giovanelli
- 08/01/23 – Philipians 3:17-4:4 Stand Firm in 2023 – by Peter Brooks
SERMON NOTES:
Read Romans 1:1-17
1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. 6 And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
15 That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
Welcome and Introduce myself…
Well Victoria and I are back from Georgia and Peter’s wedding in the Barossa Valley. The weekend before we were out near Orange for Katie and Oli’s wedding.
Well at Peter and Georgia’s wedding, I enjoyed sitting at the reception next to this burly, broad acre farmer in his early 70’s named Peter.
So I thought for a second… a genuine question needed a genuine answer…
I wonder how would you answer that question… not why are you a Pastor, but why are you a Christian?
But why are you a Christian?
And we get some other clues at the start of Romans as to why Paul believed…
At the time of writing this letter to the church in Rome.
So the Apostle Paul sends the first Christians in Rome this amazing letter… it is his calling card before his hoped for visit. A place from which he desired to launch mission into Spain!
And I want us as a church to have the same confidence and clarity in proclaiming the good news of Jesus through our lives and our words…
And just as this message of Jesus transformed lives and communities and eventually affected the entire empire…
So what is the Gospel?
And of course we are living in a generation now where people don’t know the Christian message…
Someone asked John Stott, the famous British Evangelical Anglican: “if you had to reduce the Gospel to its most basic truth, what is it?
So what is the Gospel? – well it is the good news! And it centres around the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
NT Wright puts it this way: This is the good news of how God did the thing he had promised to do…
And now the world is a different place… and you get invited into this story…
So this is the Gospel that Paul is unashamed to proclaim… this is the Gospel that has and does and will change lives and your life…
So just to finish today… where do we find ourselves as Christians today in a secular society?
Of course there are thriving churches and I constantly here great stories…
And our society will pay a price for this… with the decline in Christian faith… will come a decline in the value of life and Christian values.
Jim Wallis from Sojourners states,
“The message of the Kingdom became more than an idea. A new human society had sprung up, and it looked a lot like the new order to which the evangelists pointed. Here love was given daily expression; reconciliation was actually occurring. People were no longer divided into Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. In this community the weak were protected, the stranger welcomed. People were healed and the poor and dispossessed were cared for and found justice. Everything was shared and joy abounded, and ordinary lives were filled with praise. Something was happening among the Christians that no one could deny.”
Well my hope is that even now, and certainly in years to come, that Manly would be worse off place if our church did not exist…
Manly Life we have the opportunity to re-tell and live out this story…
I want to suggest today that we must renew our Gospel confidence… that we need to release the caged lion, we got to get the gospel out!
Up at the college we get about 200 or so new international students each term…
Well if one accepts that Jesus is Lord… the one who reconciles us to God, and who transforms our lives and sets us free…
I want to rededicate myself tonight to this Gospel and to this community.
- Will you do the same?
- Just a bunch of ordinary people, following an extraordinary God.
- But each with a story to tell, a role to play, and a church to come alive in
- Amen.