Hello, my name's John Blevins, I'm the pastor of Christ Church Presbyterian. I'm gonna be reading for you a little post that I put on our church website called The Gospel is the Best News You Will Ever Hear. So let's go ahead, let's read it together. Why are we here? What is life all about? Why do we exist? Does anything in life really even matter? The Bible, God's word, contains the answers to these questions and many more that have plagued people for thousands of years. The scripture's answer to these questions was summarized several hundred years ago with the truth, man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. To understand how you glorify God and enjoy Him, you must understand the Gospel message from the Bible. The Gospel is the best news you will ever hear because it explains how God deals with the number one problem you and every person faces in their life. The reality that the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit is holy while you are not. God is the Creator, Ruler, and Sustainer of all things. He is just and He will judge each person when they die based upon His perfect, holy standard of righteousness revealed in the Bible. Your problem is that you're not holy. or righteous in and of yourself, and a holy God cannot allow a sinful person to be in His presence. This is a massive problem for sinners, which we all are. Even our best efforts fall immeasurably short of perfect righteousness as we sin throughout every day in our thoughts, attitudes, actions, and the very words we speak. And even if we somehow go an hour without breaking God's law, we still fail to keep it as God has commanded. We live in a fallen, sinful world and are born with a sinful nature that's in bondage to sin. The reality is our best efforts to be sinless fail before you even start. Everyone is dead in their sins and if this is where everything ended, life would be miserable, pointless, and guaranteed to end in destruction. but God. God, in His own good pleasure, chose to save for Himself a people. The Lord knows you are unable to work your way to holiness and to Him. So, loving His people before they loved Him, He moved to save a people greater in number than the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on all the earth's beaches. God the Father gave these people, the church, to His Son as a gift, and the Son willingly came to earth in the incarnation, taking on flesh that He might keep the law perfectly and live without sinning. Jesus, the God-man, died on the cross, paying the penalty for the sins of His people as His perfect righteousness was given to them. Then three days later, Jesus Christ rose from the dead. His resurrection testified that He, the God-man, did save His people from their sins. This reality is made real in the lives of God's people when the Spirit applies salvation by giving spiritual life to those whom the Father chose and the Son redeemed. By God's grace, you were saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone. All those who ask God to forgive them for their sins while turning to belief in Jesus Christ for their salvation are adopted into God's family, the church. This adoption is recognized by your baptism into the visible church. God blesses His children with fruitful lives lived by faith in the power of the Spirit and in union with Jesus Christ. that they may, over time, be made more and more like their Savior Jesus through sanctification. God's amazing grace casts your sin, guilt, and shame away. As far as the East is from the West, By God's grace, you are given faith in Jesus Christ, who reconciles you with God, who adopts you into an eternal relationship with the Triune God. Salvation also brings you through Christ into a relationship with everyone else whom the Lord has saved. This relationship exists in the local church, which is part of Christ's church. When you are in Christ, you are never alone. Well, there's some significant aspects of the gospel, and here they are. The first one is God is holy. And you can read about that in the Bible, in Genesis chapter one and two, in Psalm 19, Revelation chapter four. These are just a few places you can read that. In particular, in Isaiah 6-3, we read this. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. God is the source of all things. He reveals through the Bible that He created you, the universe, and everything in existence. He created man to love, serve, and enjoy Him forever. God is holy. His character is perfect, and He cannot even look upon sin. God is just, and He hates all evil. Now another aspect of the gospel is that man is sinful. And you can read about that sad reality in the Bible in places like Genesis chapter 3, Romans chapter 5 and 6, 1 John chapter 1. And we read from John, excuse me, Romans chapter 3 verse 23 this, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned against God and caused the entire human race to fall. Instead of loving God, we rebel and sin against Him. Man's sinfulness has separated us from God. We are sinful in our nature and sin every day by breaking God's law. We justly deserve eternal punishment from God, who is holy. All people will be held accountable for every one of their thoughts, words, and actions. Another aspect of the gospel is that Jesus Christ is the Savior. Now you can go to the Bible and read about this in John chapter 3, John chapter 10, Matthew chapter 28, 1 Peter chapter 3, and we read from Acts chapter 4 verse 12, there is salvation in no one else, as Act 4.12 is speaking of Jesus Christ there. The gospel is good news for sinners. Jesus, the Son of God, became a man and lived a perfect, sinless life. Jesus is the God-man. He was the only person who has never deserved the penalty of eternal punishment from God. Jesus Christ died on the cross, taking upon himself the punishment for the sin of all those who will repent and trust in him. Then three days later, he rose from the dead. Another aspect of the gospel is repentance and faith is the answer. You can read in the Bible about this in places such as John 5, Acts 17, Ephesians 2. We read from Mark 1, verse 15, repent and believe in the gospel. This is what Jesus came into the land and he preached. That was the beginning of his earthly ministry. He was preaching that message. Repent. and believe in the gospel. Ask God to forgive you from your sins. Turn from them by the power of His grace towards God and belief. God commands you to turn away from your sin and to trust in Jesus Christ alone for your forgiveness and salvation. If you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, as He is revealed in the Bible, and what He has done for sinners, you will be saved. Christ places His perfect righteousness upon those who repent and trust in Him. This righteousness brings you into eternal life and communion with Him. There is no denying this isn't good news. It's amazing news. Now another aspect of the gospel we see here is the new life of the Christian. We can read about that in the Bible, you can read about that in 1st John, the whole book, and 1st Corinthians chapter 6, those are just a few places you can go. We read now from 2nd Corinthians 5, 17, When God saves a person, He gives them a new nature. No longer are they in rebellion to God because now they love Him. A believer is not perfect, but there are fruits of salvation that will begin to appear in a believer's life that show they are changed. The book of 1 John explains how a person is assured of their salvation in Jesus Christ. As a new believer, you will be growing in your love for God and for other Christians. You will desire to obey God's commandments out of love for Him. You will begin to see victory over sins that you have previously struggled with. You will never be sinless, but you should look more and more like Jesus every day through sanctification. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ alone. The final aspect we're going to look at regarding the gospel is that the Christian life in God's family. You can read in the Bible in Matthew chapter 28 about this, John chapter 1, Ephesians chapter 1 are good places to go. We're going to read from Galatians chapter 4 verses 3 to 7 now. In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of this world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you were sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God." God the Father adopts believers into his family upon salvation and through baptism. They are admitted into the church. The New Testament is written with the understanding that, except in rare situations, Christians live their lives as members of a local church. In the local church, you experience the means of grace during corporate worship on the Lord's Day. Jesus Christ is the one who provides his people the gifts of elders and deacons to care for their spiritual and temporal needs in the local church throughout the world. As a member of Christ's body, it is in the context of the local church that the Holy Spirit works in and through you to care for your brothers and sisters in Christ. We invite you to visit Christ Church Presbyterian to learn more about becoming part of the church. Instead of a comment section on our website, we accept and encourage email letters to the editor. So I encourage you to visit our website, www.cometochrist.church. You can read this original post. The gospel is the best news you will ever hear. You can contact us through the site if you'd like to give feedback, ask questions. If you live in the Knoxville, Tennessee area, we would love to to have you come visit with us out at Christ Church. Myself, John Blevins, the pastor of Christ Church, I'd be more than happy to talk to you on the phone, to text with you, to meet with you up at a restaurant or a coffee shop that's in the area, and answer whatever questions you may have. Regardless, if you've been a Christian for decades and are continuing to grow in love for the Lord, or perhaps you've had bad experiences regarding faith, religion, perhaps even maybe the church, other Christians, or you've never even heard anything about the Bible or Jesus or the gospel and you're wondering or maybe you're skeptical, whatever those things, we would love the opportunity to get together and talk and to tell you more about the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel in which that post spoke about. We would love to take the opportunity to be able to talk those things through with you. So I hope you will take that opportunity. Visit our website, as I mentioned, www.cometochrist.church. You can contact us through that means, and you can also get more resources there, from sermons to other posts. and things that we will also have here on our YouTube channel and in other places. So we hope that you will take advantage of those and that they'll be a great blessing to you. So may our great God, may the Lord bless and keep you and we look forward to meeting you in person, hopefully soon.