A Simple Message

Mordecai Ham isn’t a name that a lot of people know, but in the early 1900s, he was the greatest evangelist in the US. He would go from town to town sharing the gospel and the need for a savior. Over the course of three decades, it’s estimated that more than 300,000 people were converted to faith in Christ. He was brazen. He was outspoken, and he was fearless. During a big tent revival in Charlotte, NC in 1934, he started his opening message with the words, “There’s a great sinner in this place tonight.” From that line forward, he caught the ears of a young man named Billy. The simple message that we have all sinned and we all need a savior struck him, and by the end of the revival, Billy had given his life to Christ. What neither Billy nor Mordecai knew at the time was that Billy would go on to lead hundreds of thousands to Christ as well. That Billy was a young man with the last name of Graham. It was the simple Gospel message that had captured his heart and led him to decades of ministry throughout the world.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
John 3:16–17

If you grew up in the Church, you probably learned that verse early in life. There’s good reason for that. It’s the gospel at its most simple. God loved the world. God sent His Son to the world. Whoever believes in the Son will have eternal life. The Son was sent so the world could be saved through Him. What did we need to be saved from? Our sin. That’s about as simple as it gets.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation (or sacrifice) 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. 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.
Romans 3:21–26

We have all sinned. I’m going to repeat that. We have ALL sinned. Without sin, there would be no need for a savior. There would be no need for a sacrifice to cover over something that didn’t exist. Our imperfection made it imperative for God to have a sacrifice in place that could take on such an immense burden and cleanse multiple millennia of sin. For us to understand the Gospel, we have to understand that we have sinned. Without that understanding, we could never grasp the good news of Jesus, because it wouldn’t make any sense.

When I graduated college, I was terrible with my finances and wasn’t sure how to handle them properly. As a result, I had to file for a forbearance on my student loans. Simply put, my loans were put on hold without additional interest for a determined amount of time. I was granted a time of loan forgiveness to get my stuff together. In Romans 3:25, we read about divine forbearance. This forbearance also has a determined amount of time….eternity. This is only made possible by the blood of Jesus. We read in 1 Peter…

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
1 Peter 1:17–19

During the original Passover in the Old Testament, we read of the Israelites in slavery to the Egyptians. Moses was in the midst of several plagues that were brought down on Pharoah and his people. None of them could break the Pharoah enough to release God’s people from their bonds. God then told Moses to have all His people kill a spotless lamb and spread its blood over their doorposts. 

“Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ….It is the Lord’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.”
Exodus 12:7,11-13

What saved the Israelites? The blood of the lamb. God has a way of foreshadowing things greater than any other author. His story through time has been consistent. Without the blood of the Lamb, we cannot be saved. The Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, is the only way to the Father. Because we have sinned, we need a savior. God sends His only Son to be that Savior. If we believe in Him, we are saved. Is there a more simple message? When we believe, confess, repent, and are baptized, we begin a new life chasing after the Lamb of God. Even John the Baptist knew it the first time he saw Christ.

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
John 1:29

God calls us to a simpler life, and He’s called us to share a simple gospel to a very complex and lost world.