The Good News

Introduction

We need to grow

Church growth experts

What about the power of the gospel?

Romans 1:16 (ESV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

FCF: Many in the church do not proclaim the good news because they do not know the good news.

We will not proclaim the good news unless we know the good news.

What is the good news?

1 Corinthians 15:1–5 ESV

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

The Nature of the Gospel (1-2)

A message that is preached (1)

A message that is received by some and rejected by others (1)

A message that produces permanent change (1)

A message that works perpetually (2)

A message that is biblical (3-4)

Luke 24:25–27 ESV

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

The Message of the Gospel (3-5)

The good news that Jesus died (3)

The good news that the death of Jesus satisfied a penalty (3)

Genesis 2:17 ESV

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

1 Peter 2:24 ESV

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

1 John 2:2 ESV

He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

The good news that the death of Jesus was substitutionary (3)

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The good news that Jesus rose from the dead (4-5)

1 Corinthians 15:17–19 ESV

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.