On most Mondays we will have a “Gospel Jump-start” post. The purpose of these posts will be to give you a quick gospel truth to encourage you as you start your week. Webster defines jump-start as imparting fresh or renewed energy to something. Over the years many have encouraged Christians to preach the gospel to themselves often. Martin Luther said we need to hear it often because we forget it often. Therefore we all could use consistent gospel jump-starts. These posts will be an attempt to get you to preach the gospel to yourself as you begin your week.
In his book, The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges wrote:
To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you. (pg. 59)
William Farley’s book, Hidden in the Gospel, is meant to be a “tutorial” on preaching the Gospel to yourself. Farley says preaching the Gospel to yourself is more than merely Scripture memory because you are seeking to apply Scripture to your life. You are seeking to get it into your head in order to get it down to your heart, so to speak. He also says it “differs radically” from positive thinking. “Truth is often irrelevant to the positive thinker. Instead, he or she tries to create reality by thinking positively.” However, he concludes, “Christians do not create truth. The Truth creates the Christian. It shapes and molds us.”
Pastor Farley is a practitioner, not just an instructor. Let the following remarks from his experience further encourage you to adopt this practice as well as spur others on in it. He writes:
I have discovered the benefit of continually preaching the gospel to myself. It has melted the fog of depression, repulsed the demons of despair, and displaced feelings of unworthiness and failure with the love of God. When I have been discouraged, it has motivated me to keep plodding. It has humbled me before the wonder of God’s glorious grace. It has encouraged me to love God and others. It has prompted me to be patient with the failings of others. It has urged me to forgive seventy times seven times. (pg. 11)
Now that I have explained the purpose of this series of blogs, here is this week’s jumpstart, it comes from the Prince of Preachers himself. Charles Spurgeon said:
Believe it, for it is certainly true that the great God is able to treat the guilty with abundant mercy; yea, He is able to treat the ungodly as if they had been always godly. (All of Grace, pg. 26)
He continued:
God will spare the sinner because He did not spare His Son. God can pass by your transgressions because He laid those transgressions upon His only begotten Son nearly two thousand years ago. If you believe in Jesus, then your sins were carried away by Him who was the scapegoat for His people. What is it to believe in Him? It is not merely to say, “He is God and the Savior,” but to trust Him wholly and entirely, and take Him for all your salvation from this time forth and forever—your Lord, your Master, your all. If you will have Jesus, He has you already. If you believe on Him, I tell you cannot go to hell; for that were to make the sacrifice of Christ of none effect. (pg. 38)
I hope you have a good week as you walk in gospel truth!
Written by Matt Baker