Good OR Bad News?

 

“I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

 

Maybe you’re thinking, “I only want good news. I’m tired of the bad.” I fully understand. So, here's my good news:  God gave us the bad news first. What?

 

Yes, Almighty God established a LAW—man broke it—SIN entered the world and brought a penalty—DEATH—both physical and spiritual. Physical bodies age and eventually return to dust. For Adam, that took 930 years. However, his spiritual death—separation from this Holy God—began immediately. Isaiah 59:2 says, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”

 

That’s a lot of bad news. And I know you’ve heard it all before. But please stick with me. I do have a point. You see, if there were no good news to follow the bad, we would be doomed and rightly proclaim, “…Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”[1]

 

Thankfully, God followed His bad news with Good News, which He demonstrated to Adam and Eve. God took innocent animals, possibly lambs, shed their blood, and made clothing from their skin.[2]

 

How is that good news? Something died anyway. True, but in the [lambs’] death, God provided a beautiful picture countering the bad news. Our Creator made a way for man’s sin to be covered and forgiven.[3] Though separated by sin, Adam could still have a relationship with God because now his sin-nature had a temporary covering—the blood.

 

Embedded within Adam’s nature, sin replicated in every human born from Adam.[4] And Adam could not remove his sin-nature by being good. For Adam to stand in God’s presence and find forgiveness, the same type of sacrifice had to be performed repeatedly. Why? Because, in God’s economy, animal blood could never take away sins.[5] It could only cover.

 

Enter the SAVIOR, Jesus Christ—God, the Son.

 

ONCE for ALL, the sinless Jesus hung on a cross, shed His own blood, and died in our place—taking sin’s death penalty for us.[6] I Corinthians 15:3-4 explains, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,[7] …He was buried,[8] and…He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”[9] This is the GOSPEL—the GOOD NEWS that followed the bad! God in Christ demonstrated His love—while we were still sinners.[10]

 

But lately, God’s perfect Gospel is being skewed by wolves in shepherd’s clothing.[11] They claim to be Christians, yet their words betray them. Catering to the world, they preach social justice—a euphemism for Marxism.”[12] These deceivers remove or downplay God’s bad news—man breaking His Law and sin’s penalty—by their “social gospel,” stressing only the good news of God’s love.

 

God’s love cannot be manifest apart from His Law. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments….”[13] By God’s LAW, we KNOW SIN and our NEED for a Savior.[14] Separating God’s love from His Law causes us to redefine love—making it feeling instead of choice.

 

God is LOVE.[15] Shouldn’t He have the right to define it?

 

He could have just wiped-out Adam and Eve and started over, but He didn’t. Instead, this Sovereign God LOVED His sin-cursed creation BY coming in human flesh and taking our punishment—the one He, himself, set.[16] “Sacrifice is the very basis for love.”[17] And this GOOD NEWS—this GOSPEL “…is the POWER of God unto salvation…[It] must be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.”[18]

 

Humans need the BAD NEWS first to truly understand AND receive the GOOD NEWS.

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[1] Isaiah 22:13; I Corinthians 15:32

[2] Genesis 3:21

[3] Hebrews 9:22

[4] Romans 3:23; Romans 5:12

[5] Hebrews 10:4

[6] Hebrews 9:12

[7] Isaiah 53:4-7; Psalm 22:1, 6-7, 12-18

[8] Isaiah 53:8-9

[9] Psalm 16:9-10

[10] Romans 5:8; Revelation 13:8

[11] Dr. Everett Piper – Enemies Within the Church

[12] Kevin McGary – Enemies Within the Church

[13] 1 John 5:3

[14] Romans 7:7-8, 24-25

[15] I John 4:8

[16] John 3:16

[17] Michael Hichborn – Enemies Within the Church

[18] Romans 1:16-17; Matthew 24:14