R.C. Sproul

Now, I'll explore that with you later on, but for now, I want us to understand that when we see Paul, for example, speaking about the gospel of Jesus or the gospel of Jesus Christ,

He is not differing or protesting or contending against the motif of Jesus' proclamation about the gospel, because when we look at Jesus' announcement about the coming of the kingdom of God, he's not concerned simply to talk about some abstract idea of heavenly rule.

that is then transferred to a message about him by the apostles.

On the contrary, if you look closely,

at Jesus preaching and His preaching about the kingdom, Jesus is preaching about Himself because the coming breakthrough of the kingdom of God and the crisis that is associated with it in the proclamation of Jesus is the crisis that's directly related to what?

His being there.

and His personal ministry and His redemptive task.

So He is the Messiah who is God's anointed King who now appears in history.

And so we could boil down the message of the kingdom of God by saying the good news that is being proclaimed is that the long-awaited Messiah, the long-awaited King after the seed of David has finally come into history to do His redemptive work.

So what I'm saying at this point is that the gospel of the kingdom is not a different gospel fundamentally from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But when we go then to the epistles or even to the book of Acts and we look at the preaching, not of Jesus, but of the apostles,

Then we discern what again scholars call, making use of another Greek word, the kerygma, k-e-r-y-g-m-a, the kerygma.

When I was in college,

I was studying in a pre-ministerial program, and there was a kind of fraternity for pre-ministerial students, and this organization was called CARUX, K-A-R-U-X.

And that was because it was taken from the Greek word for preacher or preaching.

And so this word kerygma has to do with the preaching of the early church.

And if we look, for example, at the sermons that are recorded for us by the apostles in the book of Acts, Peter's speech at Pentecost, Stephen's speech, and so on, and find other examples of the apostolic preaching,

we see certain ideas or elements that are routinely proclaimed in the initial proclamation of the infant church.

And again, they focus on the person and work of Christ.

Now, not every one of these sermons contains every element of this basic outline of the pattern of Jesus' work.