The Kingdom of God (Pt 2) : Why Even the Least Christian is Greater Than John the Baptist

You know, the gospel is good news, eh? It's good news. It really is.

And I hope you get it into your head that this gospel is good news.

In some churches, you struggle hard all week, then you come to church, they tell you how bad you've been.

You got to struggle even harder to be good, to be welcomed by God, isn't it?

But this gospel liberates. It is incredibly good news.

Can I say this? It is such good news, we struggle to believe it.

It's that good, the news. One day, someone in this room is going to share testimony

of how he has struggled financially and someone he never even knew, never met,

died and left him enough money to go and buy a home, cash, which he did in the last month or two in this church.

And when he spoke to me about it this week, he said, Greg, you know what?

Looking at where my life's been and looking at how what's been given me,

I dared not ever believe God could be so good that he works out things for my good

when I don't even know he's working behind the scenes at all.

And God works for your good and God works for my good. And when you share the Gospel, you don't have to be afraid.

It's good news. And I started off by saying three points last time I preached two weeks ago.

The first point was this. You got to have the faith of Jesus, not just faith in Jesus.

Remember the story of being in the boat? If you're in the boat with Jesus and you're in a storm

and you have faith in Jesus, that's when you start shouting, screaming, calling out for help, waking Jesus up.

If you have the faith of Jesus, well, then you just get up, tell the waves to be still and go back to bed.

Because you got the faith of Jesus, not just faith in Jesus.

Number two, the kingdom gives life initiated by the new birth.

Any person here who's born again today, the kingdom is your inheritance. You've inherited a whole kingdom of which you are a son or a daughter.

Then thirdly, I said, God offers himself to us and draws us closer to Him.

Do you know that in every single religion in the world, you climb a staircase to get to God and you have to get his approval.

You've got to somehow get to God. It is only Christianity who teaches us that God came down to us to reach out to us, number one.

Number two, every religion has things you have to do to get God's favor.

Only Christianity teaches you that God did something. But the death and resurrection of his own son to give you favor.

Do you see how the Gospel is good news and God introduces you to a kingdom

and that's what we're going to spend many weeks talking about.