Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 1 Study # 4
February 10, 2004
Lincolnton, N.C.
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<015> Thesis:   The Gospel of God concerns the Son of God as the Davidic Seed. Introduction:   In our last study we looked into the issue of how men can be assured of Paul's apostleship as a legitimate foundation for "faith choices". We noted that there is no escape from the linkage between what one "believes" and what one then "does" and what one then "experiences as consequences of his doings". Therefore, there are few questions that are more important than those which have to do with whether the claims that are being made are true or not. Thus, we have Paul's description of his message as the on-going out-flow of already-established-divine-revelation. His Gospel of God is a further explanation of promises God has already made and demonstrated to be Truth. The promises are already established in writing. This makes them "verifiable". Once verified, they then become the criteria for the evaluation of any doctrine which comes later. Any doctrine which, coming later, is antithetical to the verified truth is a lie. Any doctrine which, coming later, is in a smooth flowing harmony with the verified truth can be confidently accepted as a basis for decision-making in faith. Thus, Paul's words stand for our assurance. This evening we are going to look into Paul's succinct summary of the content of his Gospel of God. He says it "concerns God's Son Who entered into human history by means of God's use of David's gene pool." There are two issues in this summary. The first is the essential identity of God's "Son". The second is the extreme focus upon His connection with David. Though the use of the word "extreme" may be, itself, extreme, the fact stands that when Paul decided to make a brief summary statement of his message, he brought out two issues: God's Gospel is about His Son and God's focus is upon His Son's connection to David in terms of "fleshliness". Why this focus?