The Hope of the Gospel

Theme: The Gospel of Your Salvation
“Him you also trusted, after you heard the Word of Truth, the Gospel of your salvation…” (Ephesians 1:13)
Date: October 19, 2003 - Sunday 5:00 P.M. Worship Service - (During a Gospel Meeting October 17 Through 19, 2003, at the Northeast church of Christ, Albuquerque, New Mexico)
Speaker: Mack Lyon, Speaker on the In Search of the Lord’s Way Television Program
Main Scripture: Colossians 1:19-29; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15; Revelation 21:18-23

It’s been a real pleasure for Lois and me to be here this week and to enjoy your friendship and your fellowship—the association with so many of you. You’ve been very courteous and hospitable. There hasn’t been a stone left unturned to make us happy and to be comfortable here. And we’re very grateful to you for that.

I hope someday that we’ll be able to work together again. It’s been a few years since I was here before this meeting. But somehow or other, I developed a fondness for you all even then.

The first meeting I ever held a number of years ago, we had three weeks. We had, well, three Sundays. We started on Sunday, went over to the next Sunday and closed the next Sunday. Of course, I hadn’t had much education or much preaching experience. I was just a very youthful preacher, and— Oh, I’ll tell you! By the time we got to that middle Sunday I’d preached everything I knew about the Bible from every way it could be preached, I guess, any way I knew. That second week was a miserable one for me! But we had lots of baptisms and lots of people were converted to Christ.

You could do that in a fifteen-day Gospel Meeting. Someone might begin with you on the first night, or the second night, or a little later, even. You might be able to teach a person enough Gospel that, before the meeting was over he’d be convinced of Christ, and he would want to come and be a Christian. You could do that in those days.

Now, we’ve reduced those three-Sunday meetings down to three-day meetings. It’s almost impossible to introduce a person to the Gospel in a short meeting like this and teach them enough about Christ and salvation and all of the things that we would like to say, and need to say, before we have converted them. We cannot do that very often. We do not see as many public responses in a Gospel Meeting as we used to in those long ones.

What we can do, though, in a meeting like this, is to introduce someone to the Gospel. When you bring your friends who are not Christians to a short Gospel Meeting like this, they at least have an introduction to the Gospel of Christ, and, perhaps then, you can study with them in the days to come. When you and members of the congregation welcome them and they come to the meetings thereafter, perhaps they would later become Christians. Or, there’s a second possibility. If you have friends that you’ve been studying with in the past weeks and they come to a Gospel Meeting, this can be sort of a climax to all of those studies so that, now, you would be able to persuade them in a short meeting like this that now is the time to become a Christian. So, these are some of things that we strive to do and hope to do in a short meeting of this kind.

Tonight, we’re going to speak to you about “The Hope of the Gospel.” We’ve had a Gospel Meeting. We’ve tried to present to you some thoughts about the Gospel. We’ve talked about “The Gospel of God.” We’ve spoken about “The Gospel of Christ.” We’ve spoken also about “The Gospel of God’s Grace.”

And tonight, we’re going to close with the idea of “The Hope of the Gospel.” We’re going to read from the book of Colossians, chapter 1, and we’re going to begin at verse 19 and read down for a few verses:

[Colossians 1:19-29:] “ For it pleased the Father that in Him [Christ] should all fulness dwell; ²⁰ And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him [Christ] to reconcile all things unto Himself [God]; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.

²¹ And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled

²² In the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight:

²³ If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel , which ye have heard….”

Let me go back to emphasize:

“If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel , which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;

²⁴ Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the church:

²⁵ Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the Word of God;

²⁶ Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints:

²⁷ To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

²⁸ Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:

²⁹ Whereunto I also labour, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily.” (KJV)