200511 What are we saved from?

Some months ago, before Corona, I was invited into a meeting with our web developers. They came to discover what defines us as a church to better help us with our branding. They began asking questions, clearly trying to figure out what "flavor" we are. You know what I'm talking about - we're not quite Baptist, certainly not Presbyterian, we like our worship band but not quite assembly of God style. Basically we do drums, not hymnals; jeans, not suits, coffee, not beer; Small groups, not Sunday school; smoke machines but no dancing. If we clearly communicate the answers to those questions and visitors have a pretty good idea of what to expect on Sunday morning, right?

One member of the development team briefly asked about our beliefs, which caught my attention. He asked if we were an "Evangelical Church" - heads nodded in a room of universal agreement and we moved on. I bobbed my head with the group, but it started bothering me. It takes a dozen questions to define what to expect at our church on Sunday morning, but the only answer necessary to define our basic beliefs was a word that I, embarrassingly, couldn't define for you. What, exactly, does an Evangelical believe?

So I started Googling to understand this and I wanted to share it with you today.

There's not really one defining organizational body of Evangelical leadership to define all of this, but the word evangelical carries the most important defining characteristic in it. Evangel is the root, and it comes from a Greek word meaning "good news carried by a messenger". The notion is that in ancient Greece LTE service was spotty, so they'd have a guy running around between cities carrying information. That guy, the "angelos", was the messenger and if he was a messenger carrying good news he'd be called an "euangelos".

If you're interested, I believe the opposite of an Evangelist is a dysangelist. I've got a red squiggly line underneath that word from spell check, so maybe it doesn't exist, but the internet says it does.

OK, great, so all good Christians know what the good news is. 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus the Christ died on the cross for our sins, rose again and His righteousness is now credited to us. Every one of us knows that's true, and I don't think we'd get much argument on that point from someone attending most any other Christian church. What if we could get a better understanding of good news by looking at the bad news? Kind of like when we describe our church service to a web developer, not just in things that we do but in things that we don't do. What bad news that makes the good news so good?

So the good news is that we are saved, but what are we saved from? Think about it for a moment. What is so important about the evangel that one word can define the belief system of so many churches including ours?

We're going to read a passage from Exodus 15. Right before this Israel has left their captivity in Egypt. Pharaoh changes his mind and decides to chase down the Israelites and re-enslave them. Israel has just passed through the red sea and they're looking back at the water where an entire Egyptian army just drowned. Moses and Israel sing this amazing song back to God and in the middle of it there's verse 6:

6 Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,
    your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.
7 In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;
    you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.

So in that example we see that God's wrath is justly turned toward Pharaoh, who wants to re-enslave the Israelites. In His perfect justice, God drowns an entire army in the sea.

In Deuteronomy 9, the Israelites are waiting at the foot of the mountain where Moses went up to receive the 10 Commandments from God. The same God who rescued them from Egypt and went before them, day and night, as a pillar of fire and a cloud. They become impatient and make the golden calf to worship.

13 “Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stubborn people. 14 Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

From https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+9&version=ESV

In Verse 19, Moses describes his response to the Lord's anger and the people's sin. His description of destroying the calf is fun to read.

19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also. 20 And the Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him. And I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. 21 Then I took the sinful thing, the calf that you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. And I threw the dust of it into the brook that ran down from the mountain.

From https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+9&version=ESV

In this passage, and actually all through Deuteronomy, God is repeatedly driven to righteous fury by Israel, and He would be completely justified in destroying them. How many times did He rescue them, and how many times did they defy Him immediately after?

Our God us unchanging. His wrath against those who defy Him is the same in the Old and New Testaments.

Paul wastes no time getting there in Romans 1:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,[g] in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

From https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+1&version=ESV

And who are these men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth? He tells us in Romans 3.

 What then? Are we Jews[a] any better off?[b] No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
11     no one understands;
    no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
    no one does good,
    not even one.”

From https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+3&version=ESV

So people who aren't righteous deserve God's full wrath, with destruction and plagues and all manner of unpleasantness. Who are these people? We are! The idolaters, the Sabbath breakers, the murders, adulterers, thieves, lairs, prideful, boastful, and those who don't love their neighbor as themselves. Any sin, of which we've probably each committed many in our hearts within the past 15 minutes, is worthy of God's wrath. If God didn't pour out that wrath against everyone who sinned against Him, He'd no longer be just. That's not just bad news, it's terrible news, right? I guess today I'm your dysangelist - your bad news messenger.

So, as we define our church as Evangelical, good news messengers, the banner we place ourselves under is that Jesus, fully God, became fully man, came to Earth and suffered like one of us yet didn't sin. He willingly took God's wrath that was meant for us on Himself and in dying paid the debt for our sins. Now He's risen, and anyone who is given the faith to believe in Him is credited with Jesus' perfect obedience.

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

From https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+3&version=ESV

What are we saved from? Not ourselves, not our pride, not our bad behaviors or any political issue. The Gospel certainly speaks into those things, but that's not what it's primarily about. We are saved from God Himself and His righteous fury. What are we given instead? Perfect righteousness and adoption as sons and daughters of God. What do we have to do to earn that? Nothing, we are given the faith believe in Jesus instead of our own idolatry.

That is the evangel, and as best I can tell from a branding meeting with web developers from California, it's the single most important thing about our church.