The Preaching of the Gospel Preach the gospel to yourself every day. So how many of us are going to be preachers this week? Not you’ve not got it yet. Every Christian must preach the gospel to himself or herself every day. So how many of us are going to be preachers this week? Good. Okay, we’re getting the idea now. Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I’m David Pick. And Colin, what do you mean by preaching the gospel to ourselves? We’ve got to tell ourselves the truth. We’re living in a world that’s telling us lies all the time. And so a healthy Christian is someone who learns to speak to himself or to speak to herself and to speak truth into our own lives. You have this all the time in the Psalms, you know, bless the Lord. Oh, my soul. He’s not speaking to the Lord. At that point, he’s speaking to himself, to his own soul. And he’s telling truth to himself. And the truth that I’ve got to tell to myself is my own great need. The Lord’s great love is sufficiency for all the circumstances of my life. I got to tell myself that, feed myself truth to counteract the lies that are in the world. So this isn’t just motivational self-talk, is it? Nothing like that. No, it’s God’s truth being filtered into my life. We’re transformed by the renewing of our minds. Well, how is the mind going to be renewed unless, truth comes into it to replace the lies that are all around us? So that’s what I mean by the phrase, preach the truth to yourself. It’s not my phrase, but is a very, very helpful one, and I think it’s something that every Christian needs to learn to do. And we’ll get that truth from our message today which is called restore faith. Part of our series restore my soul. If you can I hope you’ll open your Bible and join us in Isaiah chapter 53 as we continue the message. Here’s Colin. In Jesus Christ, you are more loved than you ever dared to dream. You really are. To be loved this much that He would have so much joy over redeeming you that He would count that infinitely worth all the suffering that He endured, that He would love you that much. I tell you, for some of us being loved that much is going to be pretty scary. I’m saying, my, I don’t know, do I want to be loved that much? You are loved in Jesus Christ more than you ever dared to dream. And this love, the love of the Savior, who offers Himself as a sacrifice for your sins, substituting Himself under the piercing, crushing, and wounding, that belonged to us so that we might be liberated, redeemed into peace and healing and brought out of our sorrows and our infirmities into eternal joy forever and ever, this love, this sacrifice, this Jesus is your salvation. And that’s Isaiah’s message. But who believes this? Now, I want you to notice that that’s how the chapter begins, with a question. And some of us who are very familiar with Isaiah, chapter 53, rejoice in what’s been said in these last moments. You could perhaps recite Isaiah 53 by heart. Have you ever noticed the headline? The headline, the banner over the whole chapter, is a question. Who believes this? And the most important thing to get about this question is that it is a question that Isaiah the prophet asks of the people of God, the people who bear the Lord’s name. Who has believed our message? He’s asking, if I can put it this way, the church crowd, the folks who profess faith. The folks who have come into difficult times, and he’s saying, I’m asking this question as I open up this doctrine of what the Lord Jesus Christ, who will come as the Messiah Savior will do. I’m asking, who believes this? And to make it doubly clear he asks the second question. Who gets this? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Who really gets the life-changing power of this redeeming work of Jesus Christ? Now you may say, I do. I believe everything I’ve just been talking about. I believe in the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe in that, it’s in our Statement Of Faith. Well, let me ask you the question this way. Would you say that this week you have lived in the conscious enjoyment of the love of Jesus Christ who loved you and gave himself for you? Would you say that you have lived in the conscious enjoyment of that this week? Because, you know, knowing the doctrine of what Jesus did subconsciously will not change your life, and signing off on the doctrine of what Jesus did on the cross in a statement of faith will not restore your soul. So the whole point of what Isaiah is saying here, this marvelous revelation of what God has done in Jesus Christ, the real question for the people of God is who believes it? Who gets it? Who sees it? That’s the question of Isaiah 53. Earlier this summer, I was given by Mike Boullmore, a good friend and known to many of us here, wonderful pastor up in Kenosha, a book that had really helped him, and I found it’s really helped me by a guy called Milton Vincent, who’s a pastor in California. The title of the book is A Gospel Primer for Christians. That got me interested straightaway. Here’s what Vincent’s theme is. He says, many Christians make the disastrous mistake of thinking that the gospel has exhausted its useful purpose as soon as you believed in Jesus for salvation. Milton says this. He says, in truth, the gospel is, and I’m quoting here, so foolish according to my natural wisdom. He’s quoting 1 Corinthians chapter 1 there. It’s so foolish according to my natural wisdom, it is so scandalous according to my conscience, and so incredible, that means hard to believe, according to my timid heart, that it is for me, he says, a daily battle to believe the full scope of this gospel as I should. This is a mature pastor writing, and he’s saying, look, my conscience tells me that I am so bad in so many ways, I struggle to really believe that Jesus Christ can redeem me and truly love me. My timid heart hardly dares to believe the vastness of this gospel that Isaiah is laying out here, and that struggle is so great, it’s a daily battle for me to believe the full scope of this gospel as I should. And what that means is, that as a Christian, you and I, we need to reset our soul. We need to embrace, believe and live on and rejoice in all that Jesus Christ has done for us freshly every day. And Milton Vincent has a way of putting this that I think is helpful, he says, what you’ve got to do as an ordinary Christian, is that you must preach the gospel to yourself every day. You may never preach to another person, never preach to a crowd, but you must be a preacher of the gospel to yourself every day. You must tell yourself who you are in Christ. You must tell yourself what Christ has done for you. You must tell yourself what it is that lies ahead of you. You must remind yourself on this every day, because it is a daily battle to believe it as we should. It is so vast, it is so great that our mind typically defaults to not really laying hold of it, which is why Isaiah says to the people of God, now who’s really believing this? Who’s really holding on to this? Who in this dark time is really living on this? Who has believed our message? Preach the gospel to yourself every day. So how many of us are going to be preachers this week? Nope, you’ve not got it yet. Every Christian must preach the gospel to himself or herself every day. So how many of us are going to be preachers this week? Good, okay, we’re getting the idea now. You really do because I tell you, Satan preaches bad news to you every day. Bad news about your own condemnation, bad news about your own failure, bad news about your own weakness. Tell yourself who you are in Christ. Oh, and by the way, just a sideline. Make sure it’s the gospel you preach to yourself every day and not the law. Because some of us are actually in the long-term habit of preaching the law to ourselves every day. And that goes like this, well I really missed the mark again, didn’t I? I’m really not up to it again, am I? It’s always like this. And you know what happens? If you preach the law to yourself every day it’ll suck the life out of your soul. The way Paul puts it is this, in 2 Corinthians he says, the letter kills. He’s talking about the law, it’s the spirit, the gospel, that gives life. So, make sure it is the gospel that you are preaching to yourself every day and not the law because it is in this way that your soul will be restored. This is how Isaiah, the prophet, is trying to help these people who are facing such difficulties and such vast questions and struggles in their lives. Let’s start here. Do you really believe? Are you laying hold today of what God has done for you in Jesus Christ? Because that will make all the difference in the world. Folks, talk often about spiritual disciplines. Reading the Bible and prayer, and so forth. Spiritual disciplines are of great importance. I just want to put this right up in the top raft of spiritual disciplines. You must preach the Gospel to yourself every day, and your soul will be strengthened and refreshed, and renewed and restored as you savour all that is yours in Jesus Christ. You’re listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and today’s message, Restore Faith. It’s part of our series, Restore My Soul. If you’ve missed any of the series, or if you want to go back in the future and listen again, you can do that by coming online to our website, OpenTheBible.org.uk. Back to the message now in Isaiah Chapter 53. Here’s Colin. Now, I want to spend the remaining time that we have here, by way of application. I want you to see clearly what difference it will make in your life if you will do this this week. So, you preach the gospel for yourself on Monday, on Tuesday right through the week, and next week, and next month, and this becomes the habit of your life, that rather than just saying, well I guess I believe that, and kind of moving on in a default mode, that you really are resetting your mind and your heart, laying hold of Jesus Christ. I want you to see the difference that it will make increasingly over time in your life, and it is a radical difference. Because, the same life looks very different when you know that that life, whatever the sorrows and whatever the griefs and whatever the infirmities and whatever the failures and sins, when you know that that life is a life in the Redeemer’s hand. It looks very, very different. Let me just try and picture that for you by way of an illustration. Ever since I’ve been here in the church, 12 years, and probably for long before that, there have been a series of pictures out there in the parlor showing the various places where this congregation has worshiped over the last 55 or so years. And these pencil drawings were framed actually, they were in some fairly unimpressive, cheap frames, which is not really our style. And I gotta tell you, I didn’t pay an awful lot of attention, they used to be pointed out, but you know, in the wrong frame a picture dies on the wall, doesn’t it, you know? It was just in a little bit of cheap white frame. And earlier this year, some artistically gifted ladies said, you know, it’s time we gave a bit of a facelift to the parlor. And they did a wonderful job, it was repainted and refurbished, and one of them said to me, just as they were talking about that, she said, you know what we need to do there, we need to put these pictures in new frames, they’ll look entirely different. And so they did. And I’ll probably get into trouble for taking stuff off the wall in the parlor. But I just wanted you to see, they put them in these magnificent frames. I’ll tell you, this picture and the others that go with it that you can see out there, for years they sort of died on the wall. In this marvelous frame, the same drawing, looks entirely different. It really does, looks entirely different. So thank you for that. Now, I want you to think this way, that the frame in which you see your life, whatever your sorrows, whatever your griefs, whatever your failures, whatever your experience, the frame in which you see your life makes all the difference in the world. And the default mode of the human heart is always to look at life in the frame of unbelief. And as long as you look at your life through the frame of unbelief, here’s how you’ll think. And you might recognize these patterns of thought. Well, you know, God seems to be largely absent from my life. He doesn’t seem to do anything. He seems to be fairly passive. And if you feel that He’s active at all, your temptation is to think that He’s maybe against you, catching up with you, getting even with you, paying you back. As long as you look at your life, your experience, in the frame of unbelief, you will live in confusion and doubt and fear. You will keep finding yourself saying, how can there really be a God of love when there’s all this trouble in the world and all this trouble in the lives of people I love and all this trouble for me? You may honor God—I guess you probably wouldn’t be here unless you wanted to do that, but the bottom line truth is that you are honoring God out of fear, lest, if you don’t, something worse may happen to you. And so long as you feel like that towards Him, which is the effect of unbelief, you will never love Him. You will never trust Him. You will never have joy in Him. You may just honor Him out of fear. Now, Isaiah knew that this was the reality for many of God’s people. They professed faith, but they lived, at a functional level, in unbelief. Which is why he says, right at the beginning and the headline of Isaiah chapter 53, here’s the question, who believes this message? To whom has the arms of the Lord been revealed? Now, suppose that today, you were to lay hold of Isaiah’s message and really believe it. And suppose that this week and next week, you were to preach the gospel to yourselves so that, though it is a daily battle to believe it as you should, you reset your mind and your heart around all that is yours in Jesus Christ, all that he’s done for you, and the new person that you are in him. Your life would be in a new frame, and the same picture, the same sorrow, the same experience will look entirely different, I promise you. Because faith is the God-centered conviction that God is always up to something good. The cross-centered conviction that God is always up to something good. Faith – seeing that Jesus Christ loved me and gave himself for me – says God is totally for me, the cross drives me to that conclusion, it trumps everything else. I see suffering and pain and death. I hear of evil and abuse and injustice. I see disasters and pain and loneliness and heartache, but the Son of God loved me, and he gave himself for me, and that outweighs everything else. My life is a life in the Redeemer’s hand. This life, with all of its pain and sorrow, is one that Jesus Christ has laid hold of … and is redeeming so that my life will be brought into the eternal joy that he already sees and knows. The same life looks radically different when you know that it is a life in the Redeemer’s hands. I mean, it comes out in the simplest of ways. I had a young Christian, I chatted to this guy this week, he’s only been a Christian a very short time, a very, very difficult background, this week he lost his job. Now, that’s hard. And he said to me, Colin, I lost my job, what am I going to do now, and then he said, you know what? I think God is yanking my chain. I love that, you see his instinct was something’s gone wrong in my life but I’ve discovered that God is good, so whatever God’s doing I know he must be up to something good. So when you believe in the cross, the darkest moment in human history, and see what God did there, you live on that conviction. I said to him, hey, just remember God doesn’t think of you as a dog, he thinks of you as a son, but your instinct is absolutely right, absolutely right. Let me give you one illustration and then we’re through from the Bible. Think of the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. Let’s put it for a moment in the frame of unbelief. What’s this man’s story? Well, he’s born into a dysfunctional family where his brothers beat him up, physical abuse, and he is sold as human traffic. Think about that. Think about the impact of that on a young man’s life. He sets his heart on integrity, incredibly, and yet suffers the loss of his job and years in prison on account of a totally false accusation from a woman who had tried to seduce him. In prison, he reaches out to a colleague who he helps, and when the colleague is released and then promoted to a high position in the land, what does the colleague do? Utterly forgets about Joseph, does nothing to help him. Now, you read this story and you look at that life, and you’re going to say this man is going to be totally messed up, bitter, dysfunctional in the extreme. But you see, the miracle of Joseph’s life is that he knew that it was a life in the Redeemer’s hands. And so, he’s not looking at these terrible events of his life through the framework of unbelief, he’s looking at them through the framework of faith, a cross centered conviction that God is always up to something good. So, when his brothers turn up in Egypt and, after years, he’s now beginning to see how God’s wonderful providence has been at work in his life, he says to them, you know, you guys meant it for evil. But God meant it for good. Now, that is the transforming power of the Gospel. And it’s the same transforming power of the Gospel that can operate in your life when Isaiah’s inviting us to believe this message. To refuse the default mode of unbelief and to engage in that daily struggle to believe this awesome Gospel of the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ as we should, and therefore, to know its redeeming and restoring power in our lives as Joseph did. Same life, same experiences, same sorrows, looks very , very different when you know that your life is in the Redeemer’s hands and your story, therefore, is the story of God’s love and kindness reaching into your pain and your sorrow and your sin and your rebellion, redeeming your life for His eternal glory and your eternal joy. So, this is where the restoration of your soul begins. This is where revival in your heart begins. I commend to you, preaching to yourself the Gospel every day, telling yourself who you are in Christ, what He has done for you, what lies ahead of you, bathing your own soul in the healing streams of the amazing love of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to refuse the unbelief that says God is passive and He does not care. Or to put it another way, as the apostles did, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. So that’s a reminder that we need to be preaching the Gospel to ourselves every day, just reminding ourselves every day of what Jesus has done for us. You’ve been listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and today’s message, Restore Faith, part of our series, Restore My Soul. And don’t forget, if you tuned in late or if you’ve missed any of the series, you can catch up online at our website, openthebible dot org dot uk or find us, as a podcast, on your favourite podcast site by searching, Open The Bible UK. Open the Bible is supported by our listeners, and this month, if you’ve been considering setting up a new payment, in support of Open the Bible, we have a great offer for you. To say thank you, we’ll send you a copy of C.H. Spurgeon’s book, Encouragement for the Depressed. Colin, how will C.H. Spurgeon’s book help those who feel discouraged today? Well, Spurgeon is really a very tender shepherd. He was a pastor, and he spoke with great strength, but also with great gentleness. That arose, really, out of his own experience of suffering, and especially what he sometimes referred to as the black dog. There was a darkness that sometimes came over him, and it was a real struggle in his life. I mean he says, for example, the strong are not always vigorous. The wise are not always ready. The brave are not always courageous. And the joyous are not always happy. So this is a realistic view of the Christian life. He’s speaking into the realities that we all experience, and he’s speaking out of his own personal experience. And what he brings is a wonderful encouragement to lay our burdens on the Lord, and to trust His promises even in the darkest times. Well, we’d love to send you a copy of this book to say thank you for supporting Open the Bible Financially. This offer is available all this month if you are able to set up a new donation to the work of Open the Bible in the amount of five pounds per month or more. Full details, or to give online, come to our website, openthebible.org.uk. For Open the Bible and Pastor Colin Smith, I’m David Pick, and I hope you’ll join us here again next time. It’s often true that some people who experience great sorrow in life also experience great joy. Find out how this happens next time on Open the Bible