The Church of Eleven22 - S01 E48 - Good News

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

Hey, church family, it's Devo time. And so if you've got your Bible, would you turn to Mark Chapter 1? We're going to be there most of our time for today. I don't know about you, but I have just felt over the last few months like there's this constant stream of bad news. No matter what I tune into, no matter what I'm trying to ignore, it just seems like bad news after bad news after bad news has come, whether that was COVID-19 or social injustice. or the fact that I was having to become a homeschool parent, which I've never wanted to be, or whether it was like figuring out how to work from home. Like it was just bad news after bad news, and I found myself constantly waiting to hear more bad news.

And I just had this desire in me over and over and over to hear some good news, just to hear some hope. And every time it felt like we took one step forward, it went like two steps back. and it got me thinking a lot about times in throughout history, in times in the Bible, where it just seemed like there was a lot of bad news. And so we pick up our story here in Mark chapter one. And in Mark chapter one, verse 14 says this. Now after John 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. So when we jump in here, it says, now after John was arrested, and that is a summation statement, but what we have to realize is that as you go into your Bible, all of the Old Testament, all of the Old Testament is pointing towards over and over and over that there's a coming Messiah,

from the beginning in Genesis, where in Genesis sin occurs and fractures all of the world. And God comes and says, Take heart. There will come one from me and he will be attacked or struck by the enemy, but he will crush the enemy's head. And from that point on, they're looking for this man, this one that is to come. And that keeps going and keeps going and keeps going all the way up to the end of the Old Testament. And in my Bible, there's this blank page, this one blank page. But that one blank page represents, hundreds of years, hundreds of years. And the last thing we see is that one's going to come

and someone's going to cry out in the wilderness and say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is here. And then for hundreds of years, there's just silence. And all they had is bad news. During that time, Roman oppression comes in and takes over all of Israel. They are suffering. It seems like it's just bad news after bad news, after bad news. And then you get it. get into the Gospels and John shows up, this voice in the wilderness going, he's coming. He's coming. The one that we've talked about over and over and over, he's coming. And then you get to Mark chapter 1, verse 14, and says, and John the Baptist was arrested. And Jesus begins to his ministry. And the very first sermon that we have that Jesus preaches is Mark

chapter 1 verse 14 and i think it's so significant that i just wanted to spend all of our time today in just those couple of verses it says this jesus came into galilee proclaiming the gospel of god now we have to back up for a second because when you hear the word gospel so often you have all of these different things that come to mind gospel could be like a type of singing gospel could be the truth. You've heard gospel so many times in your life that it's almost become an empty word, but the word that is being used by Mark in here is a word that was actually part of a military framework of language. And see, gospel was this Greek word, this Ewan Galion, and it meant a message of good news. And so when we say some good news, that he's coming to preach good news, it actually

referenced that in those days when a city would have watchers out on the wall watching to see if invading armies were coming to attack them. If a watcher saw the army coming from a distance off, the city would gather together all of its army

if it had, and all of its men to go fight, and its leader would lead them out onto the battlefield to fight the invading army. And everyone who was left would huddle up. All the women and the children and those who couldn't fight, they would huddle up. And would just wait and wait and wait and there's a battle raging outside of their city but they would

just wait because they didn't not know what was happening there's no email there's no internet there's no texting right there's there's no way for them to know what's going on and as the battle would be fought they would send a messenger they would send a messenger back to the city to report on what happened and the messenger would bring one or two one or two things of news he would either bring come back and say, bad news, we are losing, we have lost. And so we need to run. We need to get out of here because that invading army is going to take over and who knows what's going to happen. Or, or the messenger would come back and he would bring what was called an uwing, eulengalian, a gospel.

He would bring back good news that a battle had been fought and won on your behalf. And now you get victory because someone else fought and won. one for you and celebrate because we are victorious. Jesus comes and it says he came proclaiming a good news of God and he said this, the time is fulfilled. Now the time is fulfilled is this, this statement that's over and over and over used throughout scriptures and it wasn't a good, it wasn't one you wanted to hear. Usually when the time was fulfilled, it referred to God's, the end of God's patience, the end of God holding back his wrath. So if you look through the Old Testament, you'll see a bunch of times where prophets show up and go,

hey, the moment is at hand, the time of the Lord has arrived, and everybody kind of flinches because what they're expecting is that God has waited and waited and waited for us to change, and it hasn't happened. So now he's pouring out wrath. That's how they thought about it. But in this situation, Jesus comes and goes, the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand and you can feel everyone kind of lean back and tense up

but then what he says is like nothing else that had ever come before. He says repent and believe in the gospel. Believe the good news. He says repent, turn back to God and just believe in the good news and what was the good news? The good news was the battle had already been fought and won. He wasn't coming to declare

that they needed to get their act together He wasn't coming to declare that they needed to do better. He wasn't coming to tell them, hey man, this is the end for you because God's been patient and merciful, but patience has a certain end to it, and this is the end, and now you're going to pay. What he was saying was, good news, a battle has been fought and won on your behalf. Now, what's really important about this is that Jesus did not come to establish a religion. He did not come to tell us how to take care of the wrath of God. He came to tell us it was already taken care of for us.

The time is fulfilled. Later in Jesus will say, Father, the time is at hand. The time is at hand. The moment has come. When I'm going to go to the cross, I'm going to take the full wrath of God upon me. And I'm going to become the propitiation, a payment that satisfies for sin. And this is such good news because normally when I hear repent throughout most of my life, repent meant you've done bad things. Go do better ones. You've done bad things. You need to pay for those.

Can I just confess something to you here? Like one of the darkest things or hardest things for me to talk about in my life is this. All of the worst things that I've ever done have become since I became a Christian. all of the worst sins I've ever committed were after I knew Jesus, they weren't before. Why? Because I knew Jesus, I got to know him when I was five. So there's only so many sins you can pull off that are that bad before you're five.

And most all of the things that I regret the most in my life came since that point, not before it. And for much of my life, I spent time striving and trying to do better, to earn God's favor, to clean myself up when I would sin. Repentance to me meant run away, go clean myself up. And then once I was clean enough, once I had read more scriptures and prayed harder and done better and told more people about him, I could come back to him. And then I would be like, I'm going to do good. It's going to be good. And for, you know, three months, two weeks, one day, I would do good. And then I would fail again in the same thing.

And I would run back to clean myself up. And I would say, you know, I promise I'm so sorry. weep before the Lord. I'm going to be better. I'm going to do better. And I'd come back to him. And then I would, you know, two weeks, five days, two hours, I would do it again. And it was exhausting. And eventually I said, I can't do it anymore. If this is what it looks like, I don't have enough faith. But Jesus here says, no, no, no, no. Repentance is that you get to run to God because he's already paid for it all. Not that you have to run from him to clean yourselves up. And there was this joy that overwhelmed me that I don't have to obey. I get to obey.

If I was religion, if I was following the religion of Christianity, I would have to obey. Because I get to follow Jesus, I get to obey. And his first sermon is, good news. I've paid for it all. I'm paying for it all. So you can run to the Father. And man, I hope that good news. is good news for you.

In this time and in this season where it seems like it's all dark, the good news is that there is no condemnation in Jesus Christ, that he absorbed it all, that he loved you so much that he would die that you could be part of his family. So would you pray with me? Jesus, we love you,

and we are so thankful that the thing that you have always said from the first sermon throughout the whole Bible is that, Lord, it's not about our works. It's about your grace. That's good news for those dying and in need of good news. That you have paid the price. You have absorbed the wrath of God. That you have made a way that we are your family and you call us holy and righteous and pure. And that thank you, Lord. when we sin, we don't got to go clean ourselves up because you've already paid for it. You already knew it. You look at us and know us completely and accept us wholly because of Jesus

what you did on the cross. And so we can run to you and you are a source of peace and rest and a refuge for those in times of trouble. Would you be that for us now? You see, in your name we pray Jesus. Amen.