Good News of God

[00:00:00] I appreciate DJ for stepping in last Sunday when I just got done with my brother's funeral and just did not feel like driving home, frankly, probably couldn't have made it through a sermon. And so I'm so thankful for a church that understands that. [00:00:22] I am grateful for men and women like Gerald and Barbara who have been a consistent part of a church family for 69 years. Did you say, I don't know if you know that, know this, but that's longer than I've been alive, so that's pretty exciting for you guys. [00:00:47] That communion talk really struck me because it just the weight of people remembering Jesus weekly for nearly seven decades together. [00:01:03] And the together changes. [00:01:06] It's a completely different group of 200 people, Jerrell here today. [00:01:15] And it's a different crew, but the same kingdom, the same remembrance where we remember what Jesus did for us regularly. [00:01:33] Gospel sermons have only gotten longer since Jesus started them. [00:01:38] This 1 in Mark 1 is about as short as you can get, but it has all of has the good news right there in it. [00:01:51] So we have a word, gospel. [00:01:54] We like gospel. We used to have gospel meetings when I was a, when I was a kid. [00:02:02] My parents would say, good news, there's a gospel meeting this week. And we'd say, okay, yeah. And they would say it's like church, but more of it. [00:02:12] And you know, that's just what a 12 year old would love to hear. You mean every night instead of playing basketball at home with my brother, I get to go listen to a preacher that bores me instead. And they would say, yeah, and we sing too. And I'd say, great, that's great. [00:02:33] And we would grin and bear it. But the gospel meetings oftentimes were about something. [00:02:42] They had a purpose and they were about. [00:02:47] I remember hell being talked about a lot and I remember churches being talked about a lot and what church should do and what church shouldn't do. I remember those gospel meetings, but I don't recall a ton of gospel. [00:03:08] Now, Jesus saved you from sins and you better be careful because he might change his mind. [00:03:16] Like the Baptist believed in once saved, always saved. But we believed in once saved, barely saved. [00:03:26] And that just wasn't super com. I remember coming home from those meetings a little terrified of the fact that I'm a sinner. [00:03:40] And I was. I fall short of the glory of God. We all do. All creation falls short of what God wants for creation. [00:03:49] We fall short. And the good news is not that if we can get it right somehow, therefore we will have some salvation. [00:04:07] The good news as Jesus proclaimed, it isn't just the body and the blood, the sacrifice of Jesus, that is a part of the good news. [00:04:21] But the word gospel is almost a creation. There's a word in the Greek that is just. That means a good message. [00:04:35] It's closer to the word that in Greek is for gospel is closer to eulogy than anything else. It's a good or beautiful message. [00:04:52] And all we have is the good news. [00:04:59] And I'm a. [00:05:01] I grew up in the 80s in Southwest Arkansas, which was like growing up in Tyler in the mid-70s. [00:05:10] It's just a cultural. It was just. We were lagging behind a little bit. [00:05:18] And the. [00:05:21] When I hear. I'm gonna say gospel occasionally, it's just. But what I want, what I hope is eventually I get out of the gospel mode and into just naming it what it is. [00:05:36] It's good news. [00:05:38] I don't need a fancy church word to tell you there's good news. I don't need a fancy church word to say the proclamation. The message we have from God is beautiful and good. [00:05:53] And so in Mark 1, John had been arrested, and Jesus comes into the Galilee and he proclaims the good news of God. The good message of God saying, now, if you didn't have it on the screen, and you do so, you're all cheating. But if you didn't have it on the screen, you just go on to go into the street. And you said, all right, Jesus shows up in Galilee and he's proclaiming the good news. He does it in one sentence or he does it in two sentences? Well, there's a semicolon. It's a sentence and a half. [00:06:38] Did someone just say, I love semicolons? You said that. I heard that sentence, and I thought, what? [00:06:45] They're underappreciated. Okay, we'll clip that for Facebook. Today. [00:06:55] We say Jesus. Jesus says the good news in one sentence. He shows up in Cana of Galilee, and he shows up to Galilee. I'm sorry. He shows up to Galilee and he proclaims the good news in one sentence. 1. What do you think that sentence is? [00:07:15] I would guess oftentimes that we would. That maybe just the world would think, well, if you're good, you go to heaven, or the cross forgives sins, or maybe we might even go, the resurrection conquers death, and all of those things aren't wrong. Those are all part of and can be considered good news. [00:07:46] But when Jesus shows up and proclaims the good news, he says, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near, and Then there's an action statement and we'll get to that next week. [00:08:09] But just the time. It's, the time is upon us. [00:08:15] The kingdom of God has come near. [00:08:21] Simple as that. [00:08:24] Now if you're like me, you hear that and you think, well, that's less simple than what I would have said. That's more complicated than what I would have said. [00:08:31] I would have said something about forgiveness of sins or resurrection from the dead. But he comes in and he says something about kingdom. [00:08:43] Jesus declares a new king. [00:08:49] The time has come, the time when God is to rule. [00:08:59] Right now it's upon us, it's on its way. [00:09:12] Now if I would have stood up in a gospel meeting in the 1980s and early 1990s and would have said people would have showed up, shown up and their best and fancy outfits, we have Mr. Neely here, he's going to preach a gospel sermon, proclaim the good news to us. [00:09:36] And I just stood up and said, the time has come, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is near or is at hand. [00:09:51] Repent and believe. Let's stand and sing. [00:09:55] I'm going to tell you, they wouldn't have thought they got their money, their money's worth. [00:10:01] 12 year old Benjamin would have been pumped. [00:10:04] I would have been the first to my feet, singing as loud as I could. [00:10:09] Short little sermon, just like one flannel graph, that's all it would have needed. [00:10:21] But within that sentence, there's so much to pull out of that. [00:10:27] What does it mean for the king, for God's king to arrive and to rule? [00:10:38] It has huge implications on our life. [00:10:42] But oftentimes the big part of a good news, it needs to be. We need to jump in and look around and figure it out and see the benefits and see how it affects us and changes us and shapes us. But the big event is the king shows up. [00:10:59] The big event is that Jesus is now here. [00:11:04] It is what Jesus did for us, but his presence is what was promised. [00:11:12] Jesus dies on the cross and from his sacrifice our sins are forgiven. Jesus rose from the tomb and from that resurrection, death is beaten. He rules on the throne and unifies what would otherwise be division. But it is his presence that is the beautiful message of God. [00:11:35] It is him being with us. [00:11:40] The king has arrived. [00:11:46] There's so much built into that. But my goodness, let's just take a minute before we start dissecting the gospel to enjoy the presence of the gospel, but before we start studying exactly how salvation works and what exactly justification means and how exactly resurrection, resurrection is and the new heavens and the new earth and what that looks like. Before we get there, let's just sit in the presence of the king who defeated all of sin and death and division for us. He showed up. [00:12:30] The kingdom has arrived. [00:12:35] That means Jesus has arrived. [00:12:39] Now, as the kingdom of God, we claim this. We are the people of God, the kingdom of God, the followers of Jesus. Jesus the Christ. Jesus, the anointed king. You could translate Christ as anointed king every time in your Bible if you want to. [00:12:53] Jesus as the anointed king, shows up as his followers. We are his kingdom. [00:13:00] But it is not our kingdom that saves. It is the king who rules the kingdom. [00:13:06] For a kingdom to show up, the king has to step in. [00:13:12] And the good news. Sometimes we parse it and we find our favorite slice or sliver and we say, that's the good news. [00:13:22] I can be guilty of this. [00:13:25] I focus on unity. [00:13:28] That's my hobby horse. [00:13:31] That's unity in division. [00:13:38] Because we need unity, but we also need to be justified. We need to be forgiven death. We need death to be overcome. [00:13:50] But we can get caught up in our own little favorite slices of the kingdom. But the kingdom together is a throne on which God rules. And his son, Jesus is the ruler, is the king who saved us, and his spirit is uniting us. We are are living in the presence of the gospel. The gospel is not a doctrine to be believed, but a savior who is present with his people. [00:14:19] The gospel, the good news, is not just a teaching that one must accept. [00:14:26] It's an actual human being who walked over a hill and said, the good news is here. [00:14:34] The gospel has been fulfilled. [00:14:37] The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has shown up. This is the gospel. The kingdom has arrived. [00:14:44] The king has arrived. [00:14:47] And so it is the presence of Jesus that is the message to the world. [00:14:57] When we are told to go and preach the good news, we're to show people that Jesus has arrived. [00:15:07] Now, we can always get into the details of that, to what that means and what that looks like in our life and daily. Those of you who have been Christians for a long time know you never get to a place where you feel like Jesus. You don't feel done. [00:15:25] And those of you who've been Christians for a long time know that probably the unhealthiest you've ever been is when you thought you had arrived. [00:15:37] You don't ever feel accomplished. Like, I finished it. What's next? [00:15:43] Done with Christianity. Check that off my to do list. [00:15:46] Me and Jesus were the same. [00:15:49] It doesn't feel right. [00:15:56] But we can get into those details and it's going to take a long time to parse out everything that this means, this kingdom arriving. [00:16:08] But I can go. I can go. Door knocking. [00:16:12] I can knock. I've done it. I had long hair. Long, beautiful blonde hair. We've got a picture. I'm just kidding. We don't have a picture. Y'all got excited. [00:16:23] I had long, beautiful blonde hair. And I walked into an inner city neighborhood. [00:16:31] And remember, the Titans had come out recently. [00:16:36] You remember Sunshine from Remember the Titans. These people did, too. [00:16:44] I knocked on the door and there was just a screen door and it was dark inside. I couldn't tell if you know those screen doors where you can't tell if anybody's looking back at you. And I just hear Sunshine. [00:16:58] I was like, jesus loves you. Bye. [00:17:02] But I can knock on doors. I can tell people about their sin. [00:17:07] I can. [00:17:09] I can tell people. I can point to scriptures and say, repent. [00:17:14] You know what repent means? We can walk through repent. [00:17:17] We can walk through a new life. You gotta live a certain way. We can do that. We can talk about baptism. We can get them baptized. If you have sins, you can be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. [00:17:30] I'm a fast enough talker that I think I could get someone baptized without mentioning Jesus name once. [00:17:37] And I think it's been done where there's process, like there's a problem and we have a solution to the problem. There was sin and baptism, forgiveness. [00:17:54] But at the heart of the gospel is not. Is not that people can get baptized and join in Jesus death, burial and resurrection. The heart of the gospel is not. You can come to church with us and be a part of a church that has everything correct. [00:18:14] Visitors, we don't think that about ourselves. [00:18:19] We know we've got something wrong and we know you've spotted it already. [00:18:26] But we know our king isn't here to admire our perfection. [00:18:34] Our king is here to rule. [00:18:38] And that message is good. [00:18:41] Our king is Jesus and he is present. [00:18:48] Sometimes religion can feel quite complicated. [00:18:52] Like I'm not doing this right or that I feel awful. I feel like I don't pray enough. I don't read my Bible enough. I don't. Yeah, okay. Do it more. Maybe, I don't know. But your salvation, your forgiveness, your. [00:19:07] The good news. Jesus presence is not dependent on your success. [00:19:14] It's dependent on the arrival, on the walking in here. Jesus is. He showed up. [00:19:28] The good news did not show up because the message was spoken. The good news showed up because he just walked over the hill. [00:19:42] Where Jesus is there is good news. And the good news is that Jesus is there, that he has arrived. That has all sorts of implications. And throughout this series, we will get into those. But we have to keep our mind focused on this one singular thing, that wherever Jesus is, that is good news. [00:20:14] And no matter how right we get it, how ethical we are, when Jesus isn't there, it's bad news. [00:20:27] The good news is that Jesus showed up and we needed Jesus. [00:20:33] The king rolled up and we needed a king. [00:20:40] But as soon as we start focusing on ourselves, of what we've accomplished and how good we are, that's not good news. [00:20:50] Because that story has holes in it, doesn't it? [00:20:56] It's not true. [00:20:58] My correctness, my earning. [00:21:04] It's not true. [00:21:07] Well, this church is the church that has figured out that's not true either. [00:21:13] Never has been, never will be. [00:21:18] But yesterday, today and tomorrow, Jesus will be here. [00:21:27] Jesus will be king and the kingdom will have arrived. [00:21:37] And that shows how much God loves us, that the Holy Father, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Son, that in their full and complete goodness have made their way to us. [00:22:07] The good news is presence, not process. [00:22:13] The good news is a king. [00:22:18] And so we celebrate the King this morning. [00:22:25] And if you have anything you need, if you want a prayer of praise and you want someone to be happy with you, come see me. Come see our prayer. Go see our prayer team at the back. [00:22:37] If you have difficulty that you're struggling with, you just need the presence of God. The presence of God is here. [00:22:45] Jesus is here. The Spirit is here. [00:22:48] And that is indeed, as Jesus says, good news. Let's stand and sing together.