Do you believe that the gospel story is true? Does this shape your outlook on life? In this video, Pastor David Platt argues that many of us know the gospel is true but do not let this shatter and shake us to the core. Pastor Platt likens the good news of the gospel to a diagnosis of cancer that causes an individual to think of their life in a fundamentally different way. Similarly, many claim to follow Christ but think of the gospel in abstract and matter-of-fact terms. We must wake up to the diagnosis of salvation God has given us and begin to walk in the health of this new condition.
- Hearing and Believing About Jesus
- When the Facts Become Real
- A New Perspective
Watch Full Message of Religion and the Resurrection
So imagine one scenario, sitting in your living room watching the news on TV. And as you watch the news on TV, you hear a report about pancreatic cancer. One of the most, if not the most deadly cancers there is. You hear the facts, pancreatic cancer, tough to diagnose, often doesn’t appear until it’s too late. It kills 95% of people who have it, usually within six months.
Changing your Outlook
Sometimes people die within two or three days after diagnosis. So imagine hearing that on the news and thinking, “What a horrible disease.” And then flipping to another channel to see something else that’s on. So that’s one scenario. Now, in another scenario, imagine going to a routine physical and after undergoing the physical, sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for him to come in after a routine scan. And the doctor comes in, sits down, looks at you across the desk and says, “I don’t know how to share this with you, but you have pancreatic cancer.”
The Gospel Can Change Your Life
That news strikes you much, much differently. Now notice this, in the first scenario, you believed the facts were true, you accept them, believed them, flipped the channel, moved on to something else. But when those facts become real and personal and shake you at the core of your being and shatter suddenly your whole outlook on life and death. And so this is what I could wish for us this morning, not with bad news, but with really good news, that you would not hear it and then flip the channel onto the rest of your day, flip the channel onto the rest of your life.
But you would hear this news of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and it would shake you to the core of who you are, and it would shatter your whole outlook on life and death and your eternity forever.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
