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If you want to follow along today, we'll be reading from several places. Our primary text as called will be from the gospel of Mark, just two verses there in the first chapter. But I want to begin today in Isaiah chapter 61 verses one through three. And we will turn to Luke chapter 4 and read a few verses from that section of scripture, and then find our way to Mark chapter 1, verses 14 and 15 as our primary text this morning. So if you want to begin turning there and follow along, as we always encourage you to do, we give you time to do that. Isaiah 61, Luke 4, and Mark chapter 1. Good news sometimes is hard to come by. Good news, bad news is not difficult to come by. Many, including myself, have, right or wrong, I think largely turned off the news because it seems to be negative and bad news most of the time. I remember as a young person and even as a child, And at that point it was central time where I was living in the evening news or the late news came on at 10pm, which was a reasonable hour for somebody to be up and finally in their day and we moved to the eastern time zone and 11 o'clock is entirely too late to be up. In my opinion, and so I haven't seen that news, I think, in 12 years. But you watch I remember. watching the news and in the evening. And I know the internet has changed things as well and everybody's got a news feed in their pockets and so things have changed. Technologies change things. But I remember that that was an event usually in the day. You would watch the news at night and maybe you still do and that's fine. I have not done that in a very long time. But as you watch those the news, or you read the news now, or you've seen headlines flash across your browser as you're doing various things. It seems that good news is difficult to come by. It seems to be a rarity. And bad news is pretty easy to come by. Wars, and a murder here, and terrible things that have happened. And sometimes life can throw so many so many negative things at us and throw so many negative things our way that we almost then begin to associate news automatically with bad news. Any new thing, well, this might be bad news. We can start to think that way. We dread our email at work because any new message might be some bad news. We dread the voicemail that pops up on our phones. We dread, even perhaps at times, the text messages or, again, the phone calls, convinced that bad news is coming our way. And sometimes life can throw things at you like that and can begin to train you, almost like Pavlov's dog, to think that way. And it's not a good way to think, and it's not a good way to be, because certainly not all news is bad. Even in the world, not all news is bad. Some of it is good. And yet it seems like we focus on the bad more easily than the good. In the investing world, it is said that people fear loss more than they enjoy gain. And so there's a fear of losing money is typically in the average person they say is greater than the hope of a reward of gain. And so people are generally very conservative with their money. And it is those who are willing to take risks at times that find financial benefit. And certainly there are times it works the opposite way. But bad news is on every hand, and good news seems to be rare. But I do want to bring to you today good news, and specifically, good news from God. That'll be our title, Good News from God. Isaiah 61, the first three verses, we read this. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. And then we turn hundreds and hundreds of years later into the gospel of Luke chapter four, verse 17. And we read this, Jesus invited to speak in the temple. or in the synagogue, I should say. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him, that is Jesus, and he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Finally today, Mark chapter one, verses 14 and 15. Now after John, that is John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Good news from God. I hope to be a mouthpiece for that good news today. Whatever bad news you might be dealing with in your life, there's good news that can swallow up that bad news and not make it go away, perhaps, but put it in light of eternal good news that can encourage us and remind us that God has sent to the world good news. And I want to share that with you today. And in the 14th verse, We read that now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. John had now served his purpose. He had prepared the way for the Lord just as he was prophesied that he would do and was tasked to do by God. He had prepared the people to see and hear from Christ the manifestation of the good news of God. John understood that he must decrease so that Christ would increase. And that's what is said in John 3, verse 30. I believe that John the Baptist longed for that to happen. I believe that when from that moment that he saw Jesus coming to him to be baptized and he looked and he saw and God revealed to him who he was. And he says, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. And never has there been better news than that, that John was able to proclaim on that day as he looked at Christ. I think it was in his heart that Jesus would increase among the people and that he, John, would decrease, would fade into the background. would come out of people's minds and no longer be the place that their eyes set. And instead, their ears would be trained toward Christ, and their eyes would be upon Him, and their hearts would long to follow Him, and to lead John the Baptist, and to follow Christ wherever He would lead them. I think John had in his heart that desire. And here we read that we shouldn't just overlook this, that after John was imprisoned, after he was taken off the scene, after he was arrested, that is when Jesus came upon the scene publicly to begin truly teaching and preaching. With John's imprisonment and his ultimate martyrdom, it's almost, as I thought about this, as if God determined to dispel any perceived competition between the two men. There was to be no competition between Christ and any other person, any other man, including John the Baptist, who had assembled a large following. Many came out to Him, we were told in the early verses here in Mark. Many came out from all of Judea to hear John the Baptist preach, to teach and to tell them about the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. He had caused quite a stir in all of the area, and many were going to Him to hear. But it is as if God wants to remove from these people at the time any desire to have any competition between the two. John says openly, I must decrease, he must increase. John says openly, I am not willing to stoop down and unlatch his sandals. I am not willing to stand next to him in any way at all. And in order to help us, perhaps even, God pulls John off of the scene. He pulls John and takes him away. Now, I think there's something to consider here, that when we tell people about Christ, when a pastor preaches about Christ, when you hear about Christ from someone else, When God uses somebody to tell you the good news of Jesus Christ, when God uses a song, or He uses a friend, or He uses a minister in a church setting, or He uses a mother or a father, or He uses the Bible where you, one day, for some chance, open it and read it, or you see some verse, or God uses something, and you're presented the gospel by someone, there comes a point when they must fade into the background, and you must realize it is Christ with whom you deal. No one less than that. You don't deal with a person. Those people, they will fade, and they ought to, into the background so that you, the hearer, can turn and deal with Christ directly. The gospel message is not about you dealing with me. Are you being impressed by a preacher or a teacher or a quote, good Christian? It's about you dealing with Christ and understanding the good news of the gospel, the good news from God. After John is taken off, now after John was arrested, we're told Jesus came into Galilee, not exactly the place that you would expect the long awaited Messiah to begin his work, certainly not. Surely in the minds of the Pharisees, indeed, and if not most of the people in Israel, surely Christ would present himself in Judea at least, and most likely specifically in Jerusalem itself. That's where he would present himself. But that's not where Christ begins to preach. He speaks in Galilee. Christ begins his public ministry in a place unexpected and sometimes That's where good news comes from, from God, too, in unexpected places. But I want to focus on what he says. What is the good news? What is the message that Jesus preached as he began his ministry here, according to Mark, verses 14 and 15? It says that he came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. There is a lot of attention that's paid to the miracles of Christ, and rightly so. To think about the many things that he did that testified to his divine authority and power. The blind that he returned sight to, the multitudes that he fed, the sea that he walked upon, the storm that he calmed. the thoughts that He discerned in the hearts of others before they ever said it, anything out loud to indicate what they were thinking. The Lord's miracles were certainly things that caught the attention, and they catch our attention today. But I think we need to remember that we must not forget that Jesus, His chosen method of communicating the gospel was to proclaim, was to speak, It was to teach. In fact, I think his miracles and his signs, all those things that he did, they were performed to set up or reinforce what it was that he was saying in his teaching and in his preaching. They were never done just to entertain. They were never the end. The miracles weren't in themselves. They were meant to present and to bring the people to a place where they would hear what it was that he had to say. And what does he say? What is the good news that he shares? He came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. Now Paul and Peter, they use this same terminology when referring to the gospel. None of the other gospel writers do, though. This is unique to Mark among Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Mark is the one that uses this phrase and says that Jesus began to proclaim the gospel of God. So this phrasing is unique to him, and I think it's something that we should consider or at least look at. There are a lot of ways. There are several different variations of the gospel and how it is referred to in Scripture. In Scripture, the gospel of God appears seven times. The gospel of Christ appears eight times. The gospel of our Lord and Savior is also used. The gospel of the kingdom is used four times. The gospel of God's Son is used. The gospel of God's grace is used. And just on its own, the gospel, without any other attribution or any other descriptive term, is used 70 times. And incidentally, that's how Jesus refers to it here. when he says to believe in the gospel, the gospel. These all are, of course, have they had their central theme in the good news that is proclaimed to men of what God has done through Christ in making a way for them to be saved and to confirm for them their hope in eternal life with God in heaven. It makes sense, I think, in a way that there would be so many ways to refer to the gospel. It originated and was accomplished by one God, and yet one God who is in three persons, the Father and the Son and the Spirit. That is the gospel of God and His Son and the Spirit. And that the Father and the Son are involved is obvious, but sometimes I think we fail to remember that it is also the gospel of the Spirit of God. It is the Spirit, no less so. It is through the Spirit that we experience the power of this good news. It is through the presence of the Spirit of God that we feel and we sense and we become convinced of the truth of the gospel of God. That's what Paul says to the Thessalonians in verse 5 of chapter 1. because, Paul says, our gospel came to you not only in word. It wasn't just words. I didn't just convince you. I didn't just spin eloquent words or philosophical words even, or tricky words, or impressive words. This gospel didn't come to you in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction. That's how the gospel, that's how the good news comes, is the spirit of God comes and he drives it home with power to convince, to convict, to make one fully convinced in their own mind of the gospel. You can hear the gospel over and over your entire life, but when the spirit communicates it to your heart, that is when the power of the gospel is truly understood and felt. The power of the Spirit who communicates the good news of the gospel. I pray that you have had a moment in your life when that has happened. And God, through His Holy Spirit, has told you about the good news of Christ. And you believed in that moment and you repented in that moment. And in that moment, you became convinced of the truth of the gospel. And here, specifically, Mark uses and chooses to use this terminology, the gospel of God. And we don't want to miss his choice. The gospel is God's and it is not man's. So we are unable to change it and we ought not to try. This good news of God, it's his good news. It's not my good news. It's good news that I want to bring to you, but it's good news from God. It's the good news of God. It's His good news to us and to you, to me. I want to bring to you the good news of God that will be far better for you than any good news that I might be able to bring. And I want you to think about that for a minute. I have no good news that is mine to give. I don't have any good news of my own that I can give to you that will last. Ultimately, any good news I can give to you of my own that is tied to this world, I cannot give you any good news here that will last. Maybe, perhaps I can bring you good news that you will recover from an illness, perhaps even cancer. But you see, that good news has an expiration date. Even if you are recovered and you are restored from whatever illness, maybe I'm the doctor that comes in and says, we were able to get rid of all the cancer and you are now cancer free. That is tremendous news. That is good news. But that good news has an expiration date. That news is not going to continue forever to be good news. It's going to be temporary good news. You're going to one day walk away from that good news and it will no longer do you any good. There's an expiration date on any good news that I can give you. Maybe I can bring you good news and tell you that while your company is laying off and many people are facing this right now, your company is laying off a lot of people and a lot of workers, but your job is safe. That's good news. That's really good news. But it too has an expiration date because one day you will be on that list or you will walk away from that job. That's a temporary piece of good news. It's not lasting. One day, we'll walk away from all of the good news in the world, and none of it will matter. Perhaps, though, I can tell you that you have all the money that you need to live happily and comfortably the rest of your life. But you see, that too has an expiration date. Every piece of good news you are given in this life outside of the good news of God has an expiration date. All of it. This is true, by the way. And I think this is important to remember because it's easy. It's easy to go into a negative frame of mind after hearing something like that. And I think what I've said, I think it is true. I think all the good news that we experience here, all the good things that we have here, there's an expiration date on those. But I want you to remember that that's also true for all the bad news. Bad news in the world, it too has an expiration. you one day will be delivered from it. If you are in Christ, if you are a possessor of the good news of God, if you are a believer in what He has done for you, and you know Him, and you've repented, and you believe, you will one day be forever done with bad news. There will never be another moment when you dread bad news coming. If you know Him, and you know and understand the good news of God in your heart, and you're a follower of Christ, you one day are going to walk away from every shred of bad news that this world has ever thrown your way, and you'll never be faced with it again. And that is good news, too, but remember, that's good news that's gonna walk with you. There's no expiration date on that. One day, though, one day, Job, who was given as much bad news in a short period of time as just about anybody in history, the people come to him, his servants do, and said, essentially, in a matter of a few heartbeats, your wealth is completely gone, and your children are all dead. That's a bad day. That's bad news, as bad as perhaps it can get. All of that again in a matter of just a few heartbeats. But today, right now, and however eternity lines up with time, Job is no longer fearing bad news. That bad news had an expiration date because he understood the good news of God. So what is the bad news either that you've received or that you dread today? I want to encourage you to focus and think upon the good news of God that does not have an expiration date. The good news of God is eternally good news with no expiration date. The seal on salvation, if the marketers put a seal on it, it would say this, best if used by eternity. It will last and it will last and it will last and it will never expire. It will never go bad. I want you to consider this as well. If there is eternal good news that we've been talking about and sharing here about the good news of God being eternal. If there's eternal good news, then then by definition, there must be eternal bad news. Wasn't there be? If there's eternal good news, there must be something of eternal bad news that equals it. And I'm not trying to be yin and yang or deistic or Yoda and saying the good has to be balanced with the bad. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying the presence of good news eternally means that there must be a presence of bad news if you are not a possessor of the good news. Because if for nothing else, you don't have the good news, you don't know God. So even if that bad news is simply this, you're not a participant in the eternal good news. And if you are not a participant in the eternal good news of God, then you stand now at risk of eternal bad news. And that has no expiration date. The gospel here of God, we remember and see again that the gospel originated, comes from God, Not man. One of the witnesses, I think, that the Bible was indeed authored by God and not man is the nature of the message that it brings. And we've shared this before. But you see, the Bible shows man a hopeless, sinful, fallen version of the human being that God created. That's how the Bible represents us as human beings. Even the heroes of the Bible are not immune from this description. The Bible shows Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, to be a liar and weak in faith at times. The Bible shows David to be an adulterous, murderous monster. The Bible shows Peter denying Christ in the very hours of his betrayal. These heroes that we think of, Abraham, and Moses, and David, and Paul, and all of these men and these women that we read of in Scripture, the Bible paints them and shows them in the light of what they really are, fallen. The Bible shows the apostle Paul standing by silently and approving as men took stones and stoned the life out of Stephen. The Bible shows you and me lost in our sin. That's what it shows us. Fumbling our way, by the way, to hell and rebellion against God and in selfish ambition that robs us of any real joy. And it shows us the emptiness inside us all. It does. It tells us why it's there. Because we are fallen. I was listening this past week to a podcast and the hosts of the podcast began to talk about the dangers of negative self-talk. And the remedy was, you should not have negative self-talk. You should have positive self-talk. And I don't wanna get into this too much, but I stopped and I thought a minute and I thought, wait, both can be a problem. Can they not? Sure, you shouldn't beat yourself up. The negative self-talk that we have, it can be a real danger. And it can be a lie, by the way. The things you tell yourself negative, those can be lies. But listen, the answer to the emptiness inside us is surely not remedied, or negative self-talk surely shouldn't simply be balanced by what we might call positive self-talk or positive thinking, because either of those two things can be a lie. We shouldn't lie to ourselves. That's not how you get through these difficulties. Again, the answer to our emptiness and yours and your harm inside us. Surely it's not to lie to ourselves, whether the lie makes us feel worse about ourselves than we should, or that lie makes us feel better about ourselves than we should. Surely the answer is not self-talk. And I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis when he said, humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking of yourself less. Stop the self-talk. Stop talking to yourself and start talking to God. Start listening to what He has to say. The answer is to stop talking to ourselves. Humility and submission to God and to hear the good news of God. It is to realize our fallenness and it is to deal then with Him, not make something up in our head. The Bible reveals this about us. It reveals the desperate condition of every human heart that's desperate for love, desperate for hope, and desperate for forgiveness. And you are, whether you admit it or not, you're desperate for those things. We've been blessed to live in a land and in a place and in peace and prosperity, where most of these things, at least at a surface level, are available to us. But you take those things away. That's what you long for most. But then the Bible shows us and tells us that we are empty. But then the Bible shares with us the good news of God that can provide us with those things that we are desperate for. But you see, the good news is not what we would think it would be. This is the gospel of God. This is not the gospel of man. This is God's gospel, man's gospel. We've shared this before too, typically, doesn't it not? It involves great acts of faith and acts of heroism on the part of us, on the part of ourselves or some other person maybe. I was saved when that person was preaching. And well, if you were saved when that person was preaching, because they're such a good preacher, well, you must be saved. It's silly ideas that get into our head like that. Silly thoughts that allow us to convince ourselves of things that really don't make any sense when the light of truth is shown upon them. But this is man's gospel. It involves great acts on our part. And here are, by the way, some of the ways you can identify this false gospel. It's false gospel. False gospel, false good news. It's not good news. The false prophet has false good news to give you. Here's how you can identify some of those things. They'll say things like, be a good person and you'll be saved. That's man's gospel. It's not God's. Join the church and you'll be a part of God's people automatically. That's man's gospel, not God's. Sounds good. Follow the religious exercises of your faith, and you'll be saved. That's man's gospel, not God's. They'll say other things. Attend church regularly. Get baptized. Read your Bible daily. Associate with believers. All of these are good things to do, but they're not the good news of God. That gospel that we've been saying, this false gospel that depends on our behavior and depends upon us, is not good news. All of these things, though, while they are good, if these are the things you are banking on for your deliverance from the bondage of sin and judgment, then it is not good news at all, because it's a lie. Why is this true, these things? Because inwardly, Inwardly, I think you and I know that nothing we do will ever be enough to erase the sin from our heart. We know that. And false gospel tells you that you can make things right with God by balancing out your evil works and your evil deeds with good ones. That's what the false gospel will tell you. The false prophet will spin his lie, even perhaps through good intentions, but ignorance. They'll tell you balance your bad out with your good and God will be okay with that. But I want you to think about that for just a moment with me here today. Would this not be like telling someone that you have wronged, that it's okay that you've wronged them because you've also done something good for them? Maybe you'd come up to somebody, how silly would this be? I don't owe you an apology for insulting you yesterday because the day before I said something good about you. You see, the good and the bad, they balance out in our scales. And so it's okay. I don't owe you an apology. But we think about that when we think about God. That's often how we think. That's how man's gospel presents the good news of God, which is a false gospel. It's not God's gospel at all. Who would accept that, by the way, somebody that came and said that to you, oh, well, I guess you're right, you did steal from me, or you did speak ill of me, but you did the good thing, and so, yeah, it's okay, you don't need to apologize. Who would accept that? Well, why do we think God does? From the very beginning, the good news of the gospel has come from God to man. From the very beginning. In Genesis 3, we read how man fell from the holy state that God created him in, and how their sin and our own is at the heart of all the bad news that anyone has ever received. We live in a world that acquaints us all with sorrow and loss to one degree or another. We do. We live in a world that brings fear and anxiety, worry, selfishness, Burden. Emptiness. There is not a man or a woman alive today or ever has been alive who has not felt the sting of the world's sorrows. Many have felt these sorrows more deeply than others, but none are immune from the sickness and consequences of sin. We have felt the brokenness of this world and the brokenness of our own hearts. And we know that we are in need of some good news that far exceeds any good news that we can bring ourselves. We are in need of good news from God. Where did all this bad news originate? Well, it originated when Adam and Eve fell from the wall. That's where it started. And what do we find in the moment of man's sin? Well, we find God coming to man. In Genesis 3, verses 8 and 9, they, that is Adam and Eve, they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to the man and said to him, where are you? We find that God is bringing to them good news, because in verse 15, what is referred to in the Latin as the Proto-Evangelium, the first gospel, Genesis 3, 15, that's why he came to the garden. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. You see, left to his own, man would only have bad news. That's all we would have. Even good news would be bad. Yes, this sickness is no longer a threat to you imminently, but you're still going to die one day. Wouldn't it be all good news would ultimately end in bad if it were not for God and his good news. Now God had told Adam and Eve, had He not, what would happen? Were they to disobey Him and eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? And they thus would have only had to obey that one rule. And thus they would have known that had they done what God told them not to do, that all that would be left is God's judgment. And then we read further in Scripture, and we get to this passage at one place that says, But God, He comes and He gives them the first gospel and the first proclamation of the coming one, the Messiah, His Son Himself, who had come, who John the Baptist pointed to and said, Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, the best news the world has ever heard or ever will. And I have this good news to share with you today, this good news from God. that can cure, that can put into perspective all of the bad news of the world. You see, God has sent good news in sending his son. And that good news is this. Jesus has come. He has made it so that you can be saved from the sin that now separates you from him. You can. The good news of the gospel. The good news of God. There is a way to be made right with God. You know, just that itself is good news. Even if you don't yet come to Him, the very fact that I can present to you today that God has sent good news to you, He sent His Son to die in your place so that He would satisfy the sin of the world, that you might believe in Him and through Him have redemption and be adopted into the family of God. Just knowing that by itself is good news. There's something already of good news in this, whether you believe it or not. And that is you can be saved. You don't have to die in your sin. You don't have to. And that's good news. You might die in your sin. But the very fact that I can tell you here today, you don't have to. That's good news. You don't have to be separated from God any longer. You don't have to endure the guilt and the fear and the uncertainty of life. You don't have to do that. God has sent good news into the world. It's his good news. And he sent it to you. And maybe he's sending it to you right now. And the Holy Spirit is convicting your heart to come to God, to turn from the world that has nothing but bad news for you and turn to God who has nothing but good for you. You don't have to live apart from peace and security. You can be saved. The opportunity is here. Christ has come and He placed on His shoulders your sin when He went to that cross. Every last one of them is like a rock he picks up and sets it on his strong, eternally secure shoulders and stretched out his arms. And he died for them there. And he died for you and for me. That's good news. And that's good news whether you believe it or not. Because you have the opportunity. You're breathing air into your lungs right now. And God is giving you an opportunity to come to him and to believe. Christ came and he's done these things. He offered himself up for you and for me and for the entire world. That's good news. There's hope. Hoping God through Jesus Christ, he has done what you and I never could do. This is the gospel of God. But how and we'll we'll finish this as quickly as we can. How does a person gain access to this good news? How does one benefit from this good news? Jesus tells us in verse 15. This is how you partake in the good news of God, the good news of the gospel of God. In the 15th verse of... of Genesis chapter 3. I found this interesting just from a numbers pattern perspective. No meaning, I think, any deeper than this. But in the 15th verse of Genesis chapter 3, we read the first gospel. And here in the 15th verse of Mark chapter 1, we read how one gains access to that gospel, the good news. And Jesus says this in that verse, the time is fulfilled. That's what it begins with. Now is the time. First, there is no need to wait. That's further good news for you. Now is the time. Now is the time. The time is fulfilled. Jesus announces here that the waiting had come to an end. The 400 years of deafening silence that followed the prophet Malachi had come to an end. The time is fulfilled. The silence that was shattered by the angels as they sung to the shepherds that night when Jesus was born, and we won't take time to read it, but we'll read it no doubt in the coming weeks here. Luke 2, verses 8-14, when those angels came to those shepherds on that hillside and broke the silence from heaven. and said, The Son has been born. Glory to God in the highest on earth. Peace among those with whom He is pleased. What a scene that must have been. A lot of people think about, I want to talk to Moses when I get to heaven. I want to talk to Paul, and certainly I do, but I want to talk to those shepherds. Describe for me that night. Tell me in as clear words as you can what was going through your mind, what you saw when God broke his 400-year silence on a hillside to a bunch of lowly shepherds. What was that like? But that's what he's done because he's brought good news, and this is why it's his He brought it to us. He brought it to Adam and Eve. He brought it to the shepherds. He brought it to me when I was 11 years old. He brought it to you if he did one day that I pray you can tell me about. What a scene that was for the shepherds and what a scene it was for me when I was saved as that little boy. Southwest Missouri, what a scene it was to know and understand that I knew and understood the good news of God and peace filled my heart. And I knew that day that I knew God and whatever happened in the world, whatever bad news might come my way. I had the eternal good news of God to rely on, to be a rock that I would never be moved from because he will never leave me or forsake me. What joy to know that the waiting was over for them. And what joy to know in the moment that you get saved that the waiting is over for you because you know God. Well, if now is the time and salvation is on offer from God, isn't everyone saved then? That's what some will think. There are conditions to the gospel of God. There are conditions. Many have the wrong idea about the freeness of the gospel and have made train wreck of their beliefs and their own lives and their own eternities. It is free, salvation is, this good news of God. It is free in the sense that none could ever pay for it and thus no one could ever buy it. The riches of all the world would not pay for one drop of blood that was shed from the righteous, holy son of God and man, Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, not the riches of the whole world or the riches of a million worlds. They would not pay for one drop of that precious blood. So it is free in that sense. The greatest acts of kindness or goodness on our part could never make right what our sin has made wrong. Can't do it. Stop trying and start resting in Christ. Nothing we could ever do or say or give could ever balance the scales between us and God with regard to His sending of His own Son to die in our place. So yes, it is free in this sense. And if it were not free in this sense, none of us would ever be the recipients of any good news. You know, I think it would be a cruel thing to give someone bad news and call it good. It would be like saying, you know, I know the medicine. The scientists, I believe they've discovered the medicine that will cure you. And they give you hope. They say this, I know what will cure you. I know you've searched for years and gone to doctors in every part of the world without success, but I know what will cure you. And then upon getting your hopes up and perking your ears up and you, and the hope begins to well up in your heart. And then they say, you just have to find your way to the furthest planet known in the solar system. It's right there. I know that's a silly analogy. But that's what many do today when it comes to finding peace with God. I know what you need to do. You need to be perfect. Maybe you've gone from place to place, read your Bible. You want to know God. Maybe even you do, but you're not resting in the good news of God like you ought, because you think somehow this rests on you. And you believe that lie. And sometimes people tell you, and they call it good news, and it's really just bad news. You see, this is exactly the false gospel so many proclaim today. They tell you you have good news, or that they have good news, and then proceed to tell you something that you could never do, or could never be done by anyone else. So yes, this is free. The gospel is free. Were it not free, none of us could ever have it, but there are conditions. Now some balk here and they grow skeptical. They say, wait a minute, preacher, I thought you said it was free. What is this about conditions? To say that there are conditions to salvation, to the good news of God, is to take nothing at all away from its freeness. It's not. It doesn't. It doesn't. Not in my mind. Something can be free, while at the same time require conditions. And some will say, well, if it's got conditions, it's not free. I say, no. It can be with condition. It can be with condition and without merit. And that's what the good news of God is. Salvation is without merit. You'll never buy it. You'll never earn it. You'll never be good enough to impress God so much that he's going to let you into heaven based on your good behavior. Every step that is taken by every human being that has made their way to heaven through Christ is there because of the goodness of Jesus Christ, not their own. not an ounce of their own. This is the danger when men try to combine the grace of God with the works of men and say that salvation, this is not good news. It's the worst kind of bad news because it's dressed up in good and you don't recognize it sometimes. Well, what are those conditions? And we will close and we'll not spend long here. I know you know these. The Bible says it again and again and again. How do I obtain this good news? How am I a recipient of the good news of God? Well, Jesus says, repent and believe in the gospel. The conditions are these. There are no less and there are no more. There are no less, but there are no more. There must be repentance and faith, but there must not be anything else. No other requirements outside of this scripturally. This is said again and again. The people pricked in their hearts or convicted on the day of Pentecost and they said, what should we do? Peter says, repent and believe and be baptized because of the remission of sins. Repent and believe. Jesus says here, repent and believe. Now, Nida, the lexicon of the Greek language, this word, it means to change one's way of life as the result of a complete change of thought and attitude with regard to sin and righteousness. And I would say to you, it's a complete change of thought and attitude wrought by the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart when you repent to God. I think Paul says it this way in Corinthians, repentance that need not be repented of. It's repentance that once and done, my attitude has changed about sin and about God. It doesn't mean I am without sin. It means my attitude and my disposition toward it is and has. Because of the work of God in my heart, that's repentance. Strong's Dictionary simply says it to think differently afterward. to reconsider, to change one's mind. And that is what it means. And some have taken that and they've mixed it all up in their theology or in their thinking, I think. And they say, well, then this is just a matter of my decision. And yet a human being's decision is far more than just their intellectual understanding and agreement with a word of scripture. It's far deeper than that. And I think you know that. What is it that we are to do when we repent? It is to lay ourselves before God and His court and His justice and His righteousness and His holiness and admit and say and ask and beg God to forgive our sin, not to negotiate with Him. not to barter with Him, not to bargain with Him, not to say, well, I've done these bad things, but Lord, I'll do all these good things the rest of my life. And I'm sure they're going to balance out. That's like saying again, Lord, I know I hurt you, but I'll do some good things. And I'm not going to ask you to forgive me for those times I hurt you. I'm just going to do some good things. And at the end, you're going to put them in the stew and whatever comes out. Hopefully it's more good than bad. It's silly. Repent. No one's ever walked the streets of heaven who has not walked the street of repentance. and believe and believe to believe to the extent of complete trust and reliance again according to the launayda lexicon and i think that's what the greek means to believe to the extent of complete trust and reliance walking away If it's faith and belief in Christ to the salvation of your soul, to the coming under the umbrella of the good news of God, it is faith that is to the complete extent of walking away from trusting anything or anyone else. Repent and believe. Repent and believe in the gospel, not in you, not in your prayer, not in your goodness, not in your heritage, not in your intentions, not in your Christian traditions that cover your life, primarily as a result of the traditions that cover our culture and our society, at least in some degree still, not in these things. not in a preacher, not in a way of life, not in the world or its riches, but in the gospel, the good news of God. That's where the, from repentance, and that's where the faith rests. I trust God. If you are a possessor of this good news as we close, through sincere repentance and faith, and you can sense his presence and you remember when you sensed it initially and you sense it yet now, then I would ask you to praise God today for the good news that he has sent into the world. If you are not, then I beg you to hear the good news I'm trying to share with you today. More importantly, I beg that you would hear the good news in your own heart from God himself, to hear the good news that it's well with your soul, that you would repent and believe in the gospel, that you're headed from this day to the endless day of eternity to be with him forevermore and not to be sent to a place where there is only bad news. and loss and separation and darkness and pain and fear. Repent and believe in the gospel. Believe the good news of God. I pray that the Lord would bless his word to his honor, to his glory. Let's have a song.
Good News from God
Series Mark
Sermon ID | 12422221483603 |
Duration | 54:40 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | Mark 1:13-14 |
Language | English |
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