God of Good News

[00:00:00] Thank you, Lacey. [00:00:03] We give them the scripture to read before, you know. Have you ever noticed it matches up with the sermon every time? [00:00:11] We do not, however, give those who are giving communion the scripture to read. [00:00:19] And Grant used my scripture this morning, and I'm not mad about it. Grant. I'll tell you why. [00:00:25] It's a good one. [00:00:28] And if there is any scripture that needs doubling down on. And now some of you may say, well, Benjamin, if Grant did some of your sermon, will you cut it short? [00:00:39] No, probably not. We'll see. [00:00:44] But if there's a scripture that needs doubling down on, in a time where we live in a world that is evil, that is chaotic, and it's a world we are a part of, and we live under a God who is good. [00:01:01] We live under the rule of a God who is good, we need to be reminded on a regular basis that we have been saved by a good God. [00:01:16] We have been. We have been found and redeemed and shown grace. And our salvation is indeed a gift. And it's from that gift, from that grace that we live out a saved life as a part of the kingdom of God in this world, showing love to a world that needs it, to people who need to find salvation, we show it. [00:01:44] And we need to remember, as the saved, that we are saved. [00:01:53] I've been a preacher now for a while, 20 years now, I've been doing this, and I get a lot of interesting questions. [00:02:09] When I was teaching the youth, you'd have this time where you would say, all right, it's time. We're going to ask questions, and y' all are going to. I'm going to feel the questions of the youth. And all of a sudden, I mean, guys, if you've done this with a youth class, you know, it gets to dinosaurs real fast. [00:02:28] The youth care about whether. What about the dinosaurs? Now, y' all don't know this about me, but I'm not a paleontologist. [00:02:39] I know nothing about that world. [00:02:44] There have been some attempts by some to meander into scripture to pick out pieces, to create their own fossils, but I. I'm not a. I'm not a biblical digger. I want to see Jesus in scripture. And I haven't been on a whole lot of dinosaur hunts in the Bible, but they care about it. Oh, man. Well, what about the dinosaurs? I don't know. [00:03:11] But you're. What about the Bible? Yeah, I know. I got that. I know the Bible. Not dinosaurs, something else the Bible isn't super concerned about. [00:03:24] Why do bad things happen to good people? [00:03:28] The Bible doesn't really answer that question and doesn't really ask it. [00:03:36] Now, I think it's good practice as a student of the Bible to not try to force the Bible to answer questions that the Bible didn't ask. [00:03:47] But it's one I've been asked quite a bit. [00:03:50] Why do bad things happen to good people? [00:03:55] Now, that's one of those questions that someone is going through a very difficult time, typically when they ask it, and one of the hardest things to do in that moment is to a show sympathy and empathy for them as a human being loved by God and loved by me, and simultaneously remind them that they are not good people. [00:04:21] That's tough. [00:04:23] Typically when we say, why do bad things happen to good people? We were talking of ourselves. I'm a good person. [00:04:31] Why did this bad thing happen to me? I'm good. [00:04:35] I mean, an appropriate question then to ask, well, who should it have happened to? [00:04:42] If you could take what's happening to you and put it on somebody else, who would you pick? [00:04:49] Now there's a good chance because of the chaos of the world and the brokenness of the world and the evil of just all of us at times, that the bad things have happened to all of us. [00:05:05] Another way of asking the question, why do bad things happen to good people? Is, well, why don't bad things only happen to bad people? [00:05:16] Why doesn't God just punish the people that are bad? [00:05:21] Well, I'm arguing that you wouldn't be okay with that scenario and that the Bible isn't about trying to explain the evil in the world. It's telling us about the goodness of the God who's rescuing it. [00:05:36] It's not trying to tell us, well, this is why this happened and this is why that happened. And you have to understand this to understand that and then script to this scripture and that scripture and this scripture and make a case that this is why bad things happen. [00:05:50] It doesn't. [00:05:52] It doesn't seem to matter. [00:05:55] And it's a faulty question because we have been justified by our trust in Jesus and Jesus faithfulness to God's plan. [00:06:13] It assumes that we haven't got it all together. [00:06:19] That good people often, often is pretty subjective. [00:06:27] The people I agree with are the people that are like me, people who sin but sin in those acceptable ways. [00:06:36] You know, church sins like gossip and gluttony, we like those are fine. [00:06:48] We even sometimes will do gossip in forms of prayer requests. Have you ever heard that done? [00:06:56] Not for it, but it's sometime entertaining. [00:07:01] But like we say, this is a good thing, but we are broken people. [00:07:08] And so to make this a deviation between the bad people out there and the good people out here is missing the point of the gospel, missing the point of Romans. Here, Romans 5, verse 1 says, Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace. Or this is a heavy word for Paul. He likes. He likes shalom. [00:07:37] This, I mean, this is in Greek, but in the Jewish world peace, shalom is like this place where you want to end up. We have shalom with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace or this gift in which we stand right now. And we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. Still not yet. One thing I've achieved because I'm a good person, but it's all because of Jesus goodness, God's goodness, that we have this hope, that we have been planted in this peace. [00:08:24] And he said, not only that, we boast in our sufferings. [00:08:31] The stuff we go through, that's difficult. The stuff that we've made it through, that is difficult. That we've lived through, that is hard. The stuff we've grieved and the people we've missed. [00:08:44] We can boast in our sufferings knowing that our suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope. Our hope in God does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak at just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [00:09:23] So I don't. I don't want you to walk away from church feeling guilty. [00:09:31] This is not the point of claiming that we're not. When I claim that none of us are fully good people, that we have, even in our goodness, sometimes we have, like, there's just those awful thoughts about other people who aren't quite as good as. I'm trying really hard, and they're not trying at all. I have good motivations and they don't have this comparison. That exists is a brokenness in our community. [00:09:56] When I say that exists, I want you to know that that just is. [00:10:01] And because that is, Christ died for us while we were still broken, while we were still sinners, while we are still falling short and missing the mark. Christ Jesus died for us. [00:10:19] While that exists, Jesus died for us. We're the ungodly. [00:10:27] When we walk out of here, we walk out not guilty, but saved. [00:10:36] We walk out not ashamed, but knowing full well that the Grace of God covers all of our brokenness. [00:10:45] You will remain broken till the day you die. [00:10:49] And one of the worst, like the most unhealthy brokennesses that we have is all those times that we don't think we're broken, that the world out there is evil, there's evil, evil, evil. And that just the line between good and evil runs between me and them. [00:11:13] What a foolish way to think. [00:11:18] But deep in my soul I have judgment and I have greed. [00:11:26] Deep in my soul I have arrogance and foolishness. [00:11:34] And evil runs straight through me while I am still a sinner. [00:11:43] Christ died for me. [00:11:47] He goes on indeed. Rarely will anyone die, although for a righteous person, some might perhaps actually dare to die. [00:11:56] But God proves his love for us that while we were sinners, while we were broken, while we were failures, while we were not hitting the mark, while we were, while we were missing, Christ died for us. The plurals here are pretty important. [00:12:16] While we died for us. [00:12:21] In the end, yes, there is individual sin, but the awfulness in the world typically exists because of collective sin, because we're all together kind of in this broken message that the fruit of the Spirit joins us in unity. Because what does a unified community look like, except one that has love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control? [00:12:52] Those aren't just individual skills, but they are skills that lead to a group of people who are broken but saved, disjointed, but united around the table, the table of the king, the king who was resurrected, the resurrection that conquered the cross, the cross that was for our sins. [00:13:18] We have to know our state, be aware of our state to appreciate the grace of God. [00:13:30] Just one of the worst. There's two horrible places that I want to escort Christians out of. Usually that I am awful and can't be forgiven and nothing can save me. That's an awful place to be. And I want to bring them out of that and say, yes, you're a sinner, but you are saved by the grace of Jesus. [00:13:53] The harder, and that's good news. [00:13:59] Sometimes a harder place to pull a Christian out of is to say when they're entrenched in, like, well, I'm a good person and I deserve what's good. [00:14:10] Well, let me introduce you to sinners. [00:14:18] I think I've told this story before, but I was baptizing a nine year old once. It's pretty young, it's little, but she had studied, we talked about it. [00:14:33] She wanted to give her life to Jesus. [00:14:37] And I know of one way to do that. [00:14:41] And the answer isn't, wait till you're 12. [00:14:46] For some reason, that was kind of. That's been the designated age, right? [00:14:50] At least that was for me. That's what they sang on my 12th birthday. They said, happy birthday, you're a sinner. Now, they didn't say that, but she was nine. She's young. [00:15:06] And it bothered a lady. She came up and she said, listen, she doesn't even have sin to forgive. [00:15:15] I said, well, if you want, we can have her go outside and smoke a cigarette. [00:15:22] Will that make you feel better? [00:15:24] Now, we were good friends, this lady and I. I wouldn't say that to a stranger. She knew my. She knew my sense of humor. She knew my tone. She knew I wasn't being sassy, but she knew I was making a point. [00:15:37] That the baptism this girl was going through was not just some magic eraser to her sins that she's accumulated throughout the years, but it was her dedication to being united with the burial and resurrection of Jesus. This girl was saying, jesus is king and I'm going to unite myself with him. I was good with it. [00:15:58] I'm good with it. [00:16:01] Yes, in baptism we find. In the uniting with Jesus, we find forgiveness of sins. We find the gift of the Holy Spirit. There's a lot that goes on there, but it isn't just saying, I'm a sinner. And here I am now, I'm cleaning. [00:16:15] It's bigger than that. [00:16:19] But if we don't know we have sin, if we don't know we have sin, in the end, we'll start to feel a little pompous. [00:16:37] We'll start to feel like we've got it all together. We've got it all figured out. [00:16:42] And that is a mistake. [00:16:45] Because the Christian position is not one of correctness. It's one of savedness. And if we needed to be saved, it's one of salvation we need. If we need salvation, then we must know we needed to be saved. [00:17:00] We needed that in the moment. [00:17:04] While we were still sinners, God showed his love for us. God showed us love. And while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So we serve a good God. The God of good gives us good news that in this broken and chaotic world, in this world where bad things happen because of consequences, because of chaos, because of all, like our poor choices. Yeah, God won't give you more than you can handle, but my goodness, you'll take it on, won't you? [00:17:39] God doesn't give us more than we can handle, but we sure do make our life More difficult by the choices we make. [00:17:50] All things work together for good. But humans are stupid. That's what the Greek says. [00:17:58] Not really. [00:18:00] My preacher said the Greek. [00:18:04] The we have. We have to acknowledge our proper place as the broken and the chaotic and the ignorant and we make poor choices and we have bad attitudes and we aren't Jesus and we need Jesus. [00:18:27] We have to know that from the jump or we'll start acting like the people. Like you people need Jesus, but first you need us. [00:18:38] Nope, they just need Jesus. [00:18:43] You people need Jesus, but first you need to look like him. But first you need to look like us. [00:18:51] You think like us, understand scripture like us. [00:19:01] We say the tomb is empty and the cross is for all. [00:19:07] But we've taken our doctrine and built walls around both of them and said you can only enter through our entrance. [00:19:21] I get, I get disagreeing with people about the Bible. I do that all the time. [00:19:28] Some of you do that all the time with me. [00:19:33] I get it. And let's have those discussions. [00:19:39] But we cannot disagree and argue over small and even big portions of scripture until we get sit around the table and both acknowledge we are broken and saved. [00:19:55] We live in a chaotic world that we are a part of and we add to. [00:20:04] But we have a God who is good, who offers good news to those who need it. [00:20:16] Church, I want you to know that your God is good and you aren't always. [00:20:27] That does not take away from the fact that you are loved fully and enjoyed currently by the God who loves you. [00:20:42] And so while we live in a chaotic world, we need to recognize we're a part of it and God saved us. [00:20:53] Sometimes we read while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God showed us love to the God showed his love for us in this that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We read that and we think, man, glad I'm not a sinner anymore. [00:21:08] But every morning would you say like 6,000 times you've sinned? My goodness, I've done less. But it's just joking. [00:21:25] I did always wonder about the we had a guy who led a closing prayer and he was the guy who led the opening prayer said, forgive us of all our many sins. [00:21:40] And then the guy who led the closing prayer said, forgive us of all my many sins. And I just always think, what was he doing during this hour? [00:21:50] That he needed a second round of forgiveness. [00:21:56] Yeah, we're sinners. [00:21:59] And you know what it's like to sin in church. [00:22:03] You know what it's like to have bad attitudes and to be judgmental. Like what are they wearing? [00:22:12] You know what it's like to sit in church and the older I get, the more I connect with that guy. At the end I'm just sort of a broken person and I always need God's forgiveness. But here's the good news from the God who is good. [00:22:33] When you need forgiveness, it's given not because you said the right prayer or you did the right thing or you named the right sin like not because you confessed in the right way. [00:22:48] It's forgiven because God, the God who is good loves you and he showed his love in this that while we were still sinners, the promised anointed king, the Christ Jesus died for us. [00:23:08] We have good news from a good God. [00:23:13] Share that good news with somebody this week please. [00:23:18] Because they are still sinners and while we are still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ died for them. Show your love by sharing this gospel. [00:23:28] Let's pray together.