INTRODUCTION
Today we’re starting a series of four talks titled ‘the gospel.’ The word ‘gospel’ means ‘Good News.’ We like good news! People complain about the press and say that the press really prefers bad news to good news. But I think most of us like good news.
• Your friends have a baby. Good news!
• Your team’s star player is fit to play after an injury. Good news!
• You get a job offer. Good news!
• You get the results of a scan. There’s nothing to worry about. Good news!
Let’s imagine some bigger things…
• Britain and the EU work out a trade deal. Very good news!
• A vaccine against Covid-19 is approved. Very, very good news!
But there’s one piece of good news that is even better than all of these. It is that there is a solution to death itself. That is amazingly good – if it is true! But it seems unbelievable, and most people don’t believe it.
However, it is what Jesus claimed. Jesus said it over and over again. One place Jesus says this absolutely clearly is in John 6. I’m reading from verse 47 to 54:
'"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes HAS ETERNAL LIFE. [That’s clear.] I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, SO THAT ONE MAY EAT OF IT AND NOT DIE. [That’s clear too.] I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, HE WILL LIVE FOR EVER. [Also clear!] And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood HAS ETERNAL LIFE, AND I WILL RAISE HIM UP ON THE LAST DAY."' [This is clear too!]
Jesus is speaking very clearly, isn’t he? We may not believe what he says, but it’s clear what he’s saying. When politicians tell you something you often end up not being at all clear what they’ve told you. But Jesus is absolutely clear. He is saying that it’s possible to live forever!
If anyone else were to say this we would probably not give it a second’s thought. It can’t possibly be true. But if Jesus says it? Jesus seems like a reliable sort of guy… Let’s suppose this extraordinary claim IS true. In that case, where would we put it on the scale of ‘good news’? Surely it would be at the top! You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the Good News that Jesus brings doesn’t stop there! When Jesus started to preach, he said this:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.”
That is Luke 4:18-19.
In the first passage we looked at, Jesus said that it’s possible to live forever! That applies to THE FUTURE. In this passage, Jesus is promising blessings which apply to THIS LIFE. The gospel isn’t just Good News for the life to come; it’s also Good News for the here and now! It means that as Christians, we don’t just have GOOD news, we have the BEST possible news!
In my next four talks I’m going to try to explain this Good News. In this talk I’m going to talk about the problem. Next week, we’ll look at the solution. After that we’ll look at what it will mean if we accept Christ’s offer and what it will mean if we reject it.
THE PROBLEM
Why do I need to talk about ‘the problem’? A problem doesn’t sound like Good News! The reason I need to talk about ‘the problem’ is that we need to understand that there is a problem – a big problem – in order to see that the solution is really Good News.
Let me take Covid-19 as an example. The first case of Covid-19 was reported to the World Health Organization in December last year. But Covid-19 didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere. It most probably came into the human population from bats. Somehow a person came into contact with an infected bat, or perhaps with bat waste, and the virus was able to move from the bat to the person.
Covid-19 is a massive problem now. But when did that massive problem happen? Did it happen when the number of deaths passed one million? Did it happen when the virus moved from a bat to a human? Did it happen when another virus mutated and became Covid-19?
Suppose you saw the moment that a virus mutated and became Covid-19. If you were very, very smart you might say to yourself, sooner or later, that virus is going to be a massive problem.
The Covid-19 virus is really, really small. It’s so small you can’t see it with an ordinary microscope. You need an electron microscope. And yet, at some unknown time in the past it was formed, probably by a mutation, and here we are now. Who would ever have imagined that one tiny, insignificant, invisible virus could wreak such havoc?
Would a vaccine for Covid-19 be good news? Absolutely! We get it. Covid-19 is really serious. It’s BECAUSE Covid-19 is such BAD NEWS that a vaccine would be such GOOD NEWS. The same is true of the gospel. The gospel is really GOOD NEWS because the problem which the gospel fixes is such BAD NEWS.
So, what IS the problem? What do you suppose? As we look at the world around us, we see conflict, oppression, poverty, lots of different kinds of abuse, environmental problems and so on. There is no shortage of problems! But what is the problem the gospel addresses? The Bible teaches that all these problems are symptomatic of a deeper problem. There is a fundamental problem which results in all these other problems. The fundamental problem is man’s – humankind’s – relationship to God. The other problems stem from this basic problem.
A quick aside... I probably should say something like ‘humankind’ instead of ‘man.’ But ‘humankind’ is a mouthful. So, could you please just accept that I’m going to say ‘man’ and that most of the time when I say 'man' I mean men and women?
Many years ago, I attempted to write a novel. I completed it too! When I started to write, my wife bought me two books about writing novels. One was called ‘The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes.’ It’s a really good, practical book, if you’re thinking of writing a novel. The author, someone called Jack Bickham, has a chapter titled, ‘Don’t warm up your engines.’ Bickham writes:
“…you should not warm up your engines at the outset. You should start the action. What kind of action? Threat—and a response to it. EVERY GOOD STORY STARTS AT A MOMENT OF THREAT.”
The Bible isn’t simply a good story; it’s the best story of all. And it follows that principle. The author – God – doesn’t warm up his engines. Chapter three of the first book of the Bible – Genesis – presents us with the greatest, most intractable problem of all time. The whole of the rest of the Bible is about the solution to that problem.
Let’s take a look. We need to spend a little time in chapters 1 and 2 before we come to chapter 3.
In Genesis 1:26-27, God creates man. We read: “male and female he created THEM. And God blessed THEM.”
In Genesis 2:7, God creates a man, a specific man. We read: “THEN the Lord God formed THE man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, AND THE MAN BECAME A LIVING CREATURE.”
The man is Adam. It seems that God formed him after the 'them' in chapter 1. Are your eyes rolling?!
Then it says, ‘the man became a living creature.’ That either means that Adam became PHYSICALLY alive, or that he became SPIRITUALLY alive. I think it means that Adam became spiritually alive at this point. I don’t know for sure, but I think there are a couple of hints.
One hint is something Paul wrote. He wrote, ‘The first man Adam became a living being.’ The word for 'being' is literally ‘soul.’ Adam became ‘a living soul.’ That suggests that Adam was spiritually alive.
Another hint is something Jesus did. After he rose from the grave he breathed on the disciples and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ If Jesus, as the son of God, breathed on the disciples to pass on the Holy Spirit, then it suggests to me that when God breathed on Adam, he was passing on the Holy Spirit. When someone has the Holy Spirit, they are spiritually alive.
But regardless of whether Adam was born again of the Holy Spirit or not, he certainly had a relationship to God. He talks to God and God talks to him. Unfortunately, that pleasant relationship is about to come to an end.
In Genesis 2:16-17, God gives Adam an instruction. We read: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 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.”
Adam is in the middle of a massive garden. Earlier in chapter 2 we find that there are four rivers in or near the Garden of Eden. We don’t know about two of the rivers, but two are the Tigris and Euphrates. These are big rivers that drain an area four times the size of the UK. God tells Adam not to eat from one tree in the garden. It wouldn’t be too hard, one would think.
We all know what happens next – it’s one of the most famous stories in the Bible. Eve comes along and fancies some of the fruit from the forbidden tree. Because Adam is such a gentleman and can never say no to Eve (that’s my reading – the Bible doesn’t say that), he keeps her company. Poor excuse, Adam. God tells him, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife…’ Take warning, husbands! Adam should have paid attention to what GOD had told him, not his wife's suggestion.
It seems that Adam and Eve knew very well that they’d done something wrong. Here is Genesis 3:8:
“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
But I don’t suppose Adam or Eve imagined for one moment what would come of their eating the fruit.
God tells Adam and Eve that the serpent – Satan – will now be their enemy. Their relationship as husband and wife is damaged. The ground is cursed. They will return to the dust – they will die, in other words. Then God evicts them from the garden.
Those are a lot of consequences for eating some fruit! No one has been murdered! No one has been betrayed! Surely it was just a tiny sin! Maybe it was. But it was the first time in history when someone – two people in fact – who clearly understood what God had told them did the complete opposite. Maybe it was, in itself, tiny. But, like the Covid-19 virus, it would have massive consequences.
Genesis makes it painstakingly clear that Adam and Eve knew what God had told them. They knowingly and deliberately did the opposite. It didn’t matter if it was a tiny matter. They rejected God’s authority. God, in turn, ejected them. The relationship between God and man had broken down. God now has a problem. Several problems, in fact.
First, Adam and Eve have rejected what God told them. Sons and daughters will be born; more men and women will come along. But how can God persuade them to respect him and indeed love him? He can’t force them to! That’s a problem.
Second, that horrible virus of sin has entered the world. It will spread everywhere. How can it be eradicated? That’s a problem.
Third, Adam and Eve have knowingly and deliberately disobeyed God. That can’t simply be swept under the carpet. But the proper punishment is more than they can take. That’s a problem.
Unless a solution can be found, man will be estranged from God for ever. The Good News – the really great news! – is that God found a solution. That is the subject of our next talk.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, 11th October 2020
