This Good News is Love

Hey guys, happy Sunday.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the Sunday stream.

We're gonna jump into a series that we started last Sunday called This Good News.

What we're doing is we're studying the book of Romans.

Specifically, right now, we're in Romans chapter 1, verses 1 through 17.

Romans 1:1–17

And the theme of this whole section, really the theme of all of Romans, is the good news of Jesus.

The good news of Jesus and what it really means for us and how we live our lives in response to it.

Paul uses the phrase good news in verse 1.

He uses it in verse 2.

He uses it in verse 3.

If I had to pick out one verse that sort of sums up this section, it would be verse 16 when he says, I'm not ashamed of this good news about Christ.

It is the power of God at work saving everyone who believes, Jews first, and also Gentiles.

He says, I'm not ashamed of this good news.

This good news is the power of God at work, and it's what saves us, it's what rescues us.

Last week we said that the good news is it's Jesus.

The good news ultimately is about him and who he is and what he's done for us.

Jesus has done something for you.

Whether you realize it or not, whether you've responded to it or not, please understand, Jesus has done something for you, and it's changed everything.

Good news can do that.

If news is actually good enough, it can change everything.

It can change your entire life.

One of the most powerful memories I think I'll ever have is a memory where I got to witness someone receiving good news that changed their life.

And it happened to me in an IHOP.

Now, if you're familiar, there's actually a group of churches called IHOPs, International Houses of Prayer.

And you would think that that would be where I would have had a life-altering moment, a life-altering memory.

But no, no, no.

It was the pancake IHOP.

I was by myself, no shame in that, eating pancakes at an IHOP, and I just so happened to be seated directly across from this woman in what appeared to be her son.

He was probably in his early 20s, and she she definitely seemed like a cancer patient.

She had a head covering that was consistent with chemotherapy, and it just had that look.

And so I don't know that for sure, but I was pretty certain at first glance.

Oh, I think she might be going through chemotherapy.

And they're having they're having breakfast together, and I'm just drawn to them for some reason.

I'm not trying to people watch, I wasn't trying to be creepy, but I was really drawn to them.

And I was seated in such a way that it was almost hard not to look at them.

A few minutes into their meal, her phone rings, and she picks up the phone, and her face just completely changes.

There's this look on her face of awe and wonder.

Her eyes lit up and they got really, really wide, and she just starts saying, Thank you, thank you so much, thank you on the phone.

And I can see tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

And when she hung up the phone, she looks at her son and she says, It's gone.

They told me that it's it's gone, it's completely and totally gone.

And then they embrace, and there's this outpouring of joy, unlike anything I've honestly ever seen before.

And I was sitting across from eating my pancakes, and I wanted to jump up and just go and hug them, even though I didn't know them.

I decided not to do that, that maybe that would be a little too much.

But on the inside, I was I was leaping out of my seat because I'm watching a person in real time receive the news that their cancer is gone, that they're healed, and I'm seeing the result in her eyes and the result in her son, and it was truly, truly amazing just to watch the wonder and the amazement of what that good news meant for that woman.

What we have to understand is that Paul, who who wrote Romans, he had the same kind of amazement and wonder when it came to the good news of Jesus.

See, Paul would have would have been taught to believe that all of us have a disease, that all of us are born broken, that there's something inside of us that's just off.

That's an idea that's not super popular in our culture today.

The idea that's popular in our culture is that we're born and we're great and we're awesome and we're born wonderful and perfect, and then life sort of messes us up.

But that's actually not the teaching of Scripture.

The teaching of Scripture is that from our birth, we're just a little off.

And there's nothing we can really, in and of ourselves, do in our own power to change it.

Paul would have believed that.

He would have called that sin.

And what he would have done to mitigate that sin, to make up for that sin, was devote his entire life to a religion.

To devote his entire life to doing all the things that God says to do and all the things that God says not to do.

And if he could do a good enough job, if he could do the right do's and avoid the wrong don'ts, if he could do that, then maybe God would look past his sin.

At the end of the day, that's what most religions boil down to.

Some version of sin management, some version of how you can make up for your mistakes.

They just all have different terms and different ways of going about it.

But that's kind of the uniting principle.

That's not good news.

The fact that you're perhaps broken, that that's the reason for all your selfishness, for all the thoughts that you have that you shouldn't have, for the greed, for whatever, all the problems that we see in the world, all the hate, all the anger, all the violence, that we all have this disease, this sin, that's not good news.

And religion isn't good news either.

The idea that, hey, here's a long list of things that you've got to do, or here's a long list of things that you've got to avoid, that's not good news.

But Paul had experienced something different.

On his way to a place called Damascus, ironically, on his way to persecute people who were following Jesus, because that's what Paul's life was devoted to at the time, he encountered the risen Jesus.

And it changed everything for him.

And a short time after that, his eyes were opened, both literally and figuratively, if you know that story, his eyes were open to the reality of who Jesus is and what Jesus had done.

And the reality of who Jesus is is that he is the Messiah, he is the Son of God, and the reality of what Jesus had done was the fact that Jesus on the cross had completely and totally forgiven the sin of all humanity, Paul included, and that meant that that disease that Paul had spent his entire life knowing was there, it had been cured.

Literally, that it was it was gone.

It was like that woman receiving the news at IHOP that it's gone, it's covered, it's paid for, it's done.

Jesus said on the cross, it is finished.

And now Paul has the ability to no longer live his life trying to tow the line, trying to walk this very tight line and do everything right so that God would be pleased.

But Paul could live his life knowing that God was so pleased with him, that God loved him, that God himself had taken care of all of the guilt, all the shame, and that to Paul was unbelievable good news.

And he was filled with awe and he was filled with wonder about it.

God, please fill us with awe and wonder at your good news.

God, please forgive us for the fact that sometimes we become apathetic and how life-changing and how powerful your good news really is because we hear about it so much, it becomes common knowledge to us.

But in reality, Lord, this good news of Jesus and what he's done for us, this good news is it's the best news ever.

It's more powerful news, God, even than hearing that cancer is gone.

So, God, fill us with awe and wonder for your good news.

Do that for us, Father.

We need that.

This good news, guys, it it changes everything.

And I want to read verse 7 and focus on verse 7 a little bit this morning because this good news, it's multifaceted.

Last week was the fact that this good news is Jesus, it's about him, a person.

But there's this angle I want us to examine the good news today that again should be something that fills us with wonder and amazement and awe.

It should be something that compels us to respond.

Paul says in verse 7, Dear friends in Rome, God loves you dearly.

And he's called you to be his very own people.

God loves you dearly.

Now I want to challenge you right now to keep watching.

I want to challenge you not to tune out.

Because what we're gonna talk about this morning is the fact that this good news is love.

And we have a tendency to tune out when we hear about love because love's one of those things that we all kind of feel like we get we get it.

It's so easy for us to believe that, yeah, yeah, love, God loves me, and the love of God, I get it.

I've heard that before.

I'll never forget Steve, who is a pastor of mine and a mentor of mine in my life.

He's the one who started his hands.

He used to say that we have a tendency to believe that love is the elementary thing.

Love's the easy thing, it's the basic thing.

And we want to move into the advanced courses, so to speak.

But no, no, no, trust me, love is not the easy thing.

If love was the easy thing, it would be easy to love people.

And I don't think that it's very hard right now to look at our world and realize how hard it is to actually love.

Love is not the easy thing.

Love is the deep thing, love is the challenging thing.

That's why Jesus spent so much time teaching about and displaying love.

So as we talk about the fact that this good news is love, do not for a second believe that you get it, you understand it completely, and you're past that, because you should never be past the love of God.

You should never be at a place in life where you're sort of over the wonder and amazement that comes from really believing what Paul just said, that you are dearly loved by God.

You are dearly loved by God.

That statement to Paul wouldn't have made sense.

That statement to Paul would have required great faith to believe.

And again, it filled him with awe and wonder, the kind of amazement that all of us should have, because this good news is the fact that we are dearly loved by God.

I want you to think for a second about the way that we tend to love.

As people, we tend to love out of ignorance.

And hear me when I say this.

What I mean by that is that the more we know about someone, oftentimes the less we love them.

It's a lot easier to love someone when you don't know much about them, right?

That's the way it goes.

Like, think about romantic relationships.

That's why oftentimes the trajectory of a romantic relationship is that you meet someone and there's infatuation and you click and you're like, I love this person, I love this person, and they look at you and they're like, I love you.

And there's intense love.

But as time goes on and you learn more about the person, and they maybe learn more about you, and they learn about some of your habits and some of your tendencies and some of your struggles and some of your issues and some of your idiosyncrasies.

They maybe learn about some of your views about the world, about life, about yourself, about other people, the more they know, sometimes the tendency is that they love you less.

I'm sure all of us have had a situation in life where we met someone and we clicked with them, and I'm not even talking about romance, even just friendship.

You meet somebody, you're like, I love that person, oh, I love them, they're awesome, I love them.

And then one day you find out something about them that you didn't know, and you're like, oh, uh, I maybe love them a little bit less.

That's pretty normal.

See, our love is often wrapped up in ignorance, and we see that by the way on display in a big way right now in our culture, because we're living in what a lot of people are calling cancel culture.

And so what that means, if you're not familiar, is that there are a lot of very famous people, celebrities, actors, athletes, those types of people.

And they're adored by thousands, maybe even millions of people.

They're adored and they're followed on social media and people love them, and people you know talk about them all the time, and people are inspired by them, and they're great, and they're wonderful.

But then someone will dig up an old tweet from 10, 15 years ago, or something will come out that they said something in an interview or whatever, and instantly they go from being adored to being despised.

They're canceled.

And that just shows us that our love as people, as human beings, our love is so often rooted in ignorance.

We love someone so long as we don't really, really know them, and that's why we all subconsciously at least try really hard to make sure that a lot of people don't really know us.

Because if they really knew me, if they really knew me, would they still love me?

We've got to understand that Jesus is different.

His love is completely different.

In fact, I'm gonna turn to Mark chapter 10.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 10, there's this very famous story of Jesus and what's often called the rich young man or the rich young ruler.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

I'll start in verse 17.

As he was starting out on a trip, a man came running up to Jesus, knelt down, and asked, Good teacher, what should I do to get eternal life?

And Jesus does what Jesus does often.

He answers a question with a question.

He says, Why do you call me good?

Only God is truly good.

But as for your question, you know the commandments.

Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not testify falsely, do not cheat, honor your father and mother.

Teacher, the man replied, I've obeyed all these commandments since I was a child, and here's what's awesome.

Verse 21.

Jesus felt genuine love for this man.

Jesus felt genuine love for this man.

And as we read this, we're kind of led to believe that, man, this is this is awesome.

Like Jesus loves him, and they're having this moment, and he's come to Jesus, and he's asking Jesus for advice, and Jesus loves him, and so clearly there's a relationship that's about to start.

Maybe this man's gonna become one of the disciples.

Because the way that this story's playing out right now is very similar to the way that many of the disciples came to Jesus.

And Jesus loves them.

And so here's what happens next.

After feeling genuine love for this man, Jesus says, You lack only one thing.

Go and sell all you have and give it to the poor, and then you'll have treasure in heaven, and then come follow me.

And at this, the man's face fell, and he went sadly away because he had many possessions.

If you keep reading, Jesus doesn't seem surprised that this is what happens.

He doesn't seem caught off guard.

The reality is Jesus knows us, he knows people.

He knows people really, really well.

And he knew, he knew that this man was not going to follow him, and yet, even though he knew he was about to be rejected, he felt genuine love for this man.

Genuine love.

In John chapter 2, verses 24 and 25, it's early in Jesus' ministry, and it tells us that because of the miraculous signs that he performed, many people trusted Jesus.

John 2:24

But then it says something really interesting.

It says, but Jesus didn't trust them because he knew the human heart.

It actually says that he knew what was in each heart.

Jesus knows us.

He knows us completely, he knows us totally.

That is a truly amazing idea.

That you don't have to hide anything from Jesus, that you don't have to believe that if something's exposed, that his love for you is going to diminish, that if you fail in some way, that if you have a season in life where you just miss the mark in a major way, even if you do something that's truly awful, that his love for you is going to diminish.

No, no, trust me, Jesus already knows you.

He knows everything about you.

He's not ignorant of a thing, he knows your heart, and yet, yet, even though, yes, there's so much that maybe logically he shouldn't love, he loves you.

He genuinely and dearly loves you.

That is good news.

We see that on full display with the way that Jesus treats the Pharisees.

If you read the story of Jesus, if you read the Gospels, the Pharisees, they're the bad guys, no question.

They're always opposing Jesus, they're challenging Jesus, they're the ones that plot to kill Jesus, they're the ones that pressure Jesus into being crucified.

They're the reason that Jesus dies in the story.

They're the antagonists.

And Jesus has numerous moments of conflict with the Pharisees, numerous times where he calls them things like snakes and vipers, and he was being true.

These were not good men.

These were men who were hypocrites, these were men who were greedy, these were men who used God to advance in life.

They hated Jesus.

And it would make all the sense in the world for Jesus to hate them too, but he didn't.

The very last thing that we see Jesus say of the Pharisees, of all of those who opposed him, of all those who contributed to his arrest, his beating, his humiliation, and ultimately his crucifixion, the last thing that he says of them is, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.

I mean, literally, think about that for a second.

He's hanging on the cross, there's nails in his hands, there's a nail in his feet, he's got a crown of thorns shoved into his skull, he's been beaten senseless, he's humiliated, they're laughing at him, they're mocking him, and Jesus says, Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing.

That is the love of Jesus.

That is genuine, that is powerful, that is otherworldly, supernatural love.

This good news is love.

And it's that kind of love that Jesus loves you the same.

Hear me when I say this.

Jesus loves you even when you even when you stand in opposition to him.

Let's go ahead a little bit in Romans.

We'll go to Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Romans 5, verse 10.

Romans 5:10

It says, For since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his son, while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life.

Now, this this is a this is a pretty loaded statement.

And it says it so casually, right?

That we were restored to friendship with God while we were still his enemies.

Most of us might hear that and say, Whoa, whoa, I know I haven't been perfect, I've made mistakes, but I've never been an enemy of God.

This word in the original Greek language is a very specific word, and it literally means to stand opposed to.

What it's saying is that when Jesus came for us, we were living in opposition to God.

Heard a theologian say that we have a tendency to vastly underestimate our natural opposition to God.

It's not a popular idea in the sense that it feels good to think about this, but the reality is I have opposed God many times in my life, often unintentionally.

Because there have been things that God is for that I have been against.

And there have been things that God has been clearly against that I have either been for or maybe just you know tolerant of or apathetic toward.

There are things that God is passionate about that I don't really move the needle in my heart sometimes.

There are things that God is so passionate about that he yearns for and longs for.

There's justice, there's goodness in the world that God wants to do, and it moves his heart deeply, but for me it's like, ah, it's not that big of a deal.

And scripture actually tells us that as followers of God, we are to love what he loves and to hate what he hates.

And there have absolutely been times where I have maybe loved what God has hated, or I may have even hated what God has loved.

There have been times where I have stood against people that God loves.

I have stood in opposition to God.

Even unintentionally, but to be honest with you, also intentionally, there have been many times in my life where I knew what I was doing.

I knew what I was doing, where I knew what I was thinking, the thoughts that I was entertaining, I knew that those were not right, those did not line up with the goodness of God, and yet I did it anyway.

I have absolutely, absolutely, unintentionally and intentionally stood in opposition to God.

And yet, he loves me.

Not out of ignorance, not because he doesn't know, not because he hasn't found out yet, but because he loves me.

He loves me because he loves me, because he's decided to.

Because he himself is love.

His love is powerful.

His love changes everything.

You should be amazed by it because it's the same with you.

It doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter where you've been, it doesn't matter how well you've done, it doesn't matter how poorly you've done, it doesn't matter how the last week has been, the last month.

What matters more than anything else is that you have the good news of God's love for you.

So enjoy it.

It's like that worship song that says over and over again, He loves us, He loves us, oh, how He loves us, and it repeats it because we're supposed to be amazed by that.

We're supposed to be blown away by that, that He loves us, He loves us, oh, how He loves us.

How in the world could He love us if He knows everything about us?

Paul was a man who had who had literally sent Jesus' followers to their death.

And yet God loved him.

If anyone knew what it was like to stand in opposition to Jesus, Paul did.

And yet Paul was loved by Jesus and brought into the family of God.

This good news is love, and guys, it's it's so good.

What do we do with it?

What do we do with it?

How do we respond to it?

And please understand, if you're a Jesus follower, this is like the key to how to live life.

If I could boil down how to live life as a Jesus follower into the simplest idea, it would just be this.

Daily, as often as you can, reflect on and be amazed by and be filled with wonder at the love that God has for you.

Truly grab a hold of it.

Grasp it, own it.

Really think about the depth of it.

Paul himself later calls himself the chief of all sinners, that God loved him, even though he was the worst, he says.

Paul understood the depth of God's love for him, and he understood the depths of his undeserving nature.

And so he was he was in awe.

He didn't believe for a second that, yeah, I mean, he loves me, but like who wouldn't?

I mean, come on, I'm pretty awesome.

He didn't have that thought at all.

He was blown away by the love of God.

If you want to know how to live your life as a Jesus follower, be blown away by the love that God has for you.

Reflect on it.

Spend time being filled with wonder.

Ask God to give you that wonder.

He loves me, he loves me.

Oh, how he loves me.

And then when you've when you felt it, when you've allowed that love to affect you the way that it's meant to, you ask yourself this one simple question God, how do I respond to this?

God, how do I respond to your love?

That that's how we actually live out our faith.

We receive from God.

His love, we take it in, we experience it, we enjoy it, we savor it, we're filled with wonder by it, and then we respond to it.

God, how do I respond to your love?

And the answer is really simple, guys.

It's simple, but it's challenging.

It's to love.

This good news is love.

And so the way that we respond to this good news is we we love.

John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

I'm gonna start in verse 9.

Jesus says this.

I have loved you, even as the Father has loved me.

Remain in my love.

When you obey me, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father and remain in his love.

I've told you this.

So that you will be filled with my joy.

Yes, your joy will overflow.

I command you to love each other in the same way that I love you.

And here's how to measure it.

The greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends.

You're my friends if you obey me.

I no longer call you servants because a master doesn't confide in his servants.

Now you're my friends, since I've told you everything the Father told me.

You didn't choose me, I chose you.

I appointed you to go and produce fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name.

I command you to love each other.

Jesus commands us to love.

It's not a suggestion, it's not advice.

Jesus doesn't say, hey, I think it'd be a good idea if you tried your best to love.

He says, I command you to love one another.

Jesus is well aware of his authority.

And he says, I command you, I command you to love.

Elsewhere in Scripture, Jesus says that we're to love our enemies.

That we're to love those who are opposed to us, maybe opposed to the ideas that we hold dear, just like God loves us even when we were opposed to him.

It's interesting if you ever take a step back and look at the people that Jesus called to be his disciples.

One of them was named Matthew.

Matthew was a tax collector.

Tax collectors were traitors.

Matthew would have been a Jewish man who had basically sold out to the Roman government, which was occupying the Jewish land, and he was working for the Romans.

And he was collecting taxes on behalf of Rome, and he was probably extorting tremendous amounts of money from the people to pay himself, and everyone in his area would have hated him because he was a traitor.

One of Jesus' other followers was a man named Simon.

Simon was a zealot.

And the zealots were a very, very intense political group, and they were bent on insurrection, and they were bent on the violent overthrow of the Roman government and anyone allied with the Roman government.

In fact, there was a group of zealots that were assassins.

And they were trained to be able to find Roman officers or people that were aligned with Rome, Roman officials, men like Matthew, and stab them and assassinate them with daggers.

They were called the dagger men in public.

Simon was a zealot.

He was one of these people.

And Matthew is a tax collector.

So if you want to talk about like political differences, it doesn't get any any further apart than a zealot and a tax collector.

Forget Democrat, Republican, zealot and tax collector, that takes the cake.

And Jesus intentionally called these two men, though as opposed in thought and in lifestyle as you could possibly be, he chose each of those men to be his disciples.

And then he commanded them to love one another.

We have to understand, church, that we have been commanded by Jesus to love.

We've been commanded by him to love, not suggested, not advised, commanded.

This good news, it's love.

That God loves us even though we don't deserve it.

That God loves us even though he's not ignorant of who we really are, that he knows it all and he loves us anyway.

That he loves us and we should be so filled with wonder at that because he loves us even when we stand opposed to him, and the way we respond to that is that we love others the same way.

We don't just love those who agree with us.

We don't just love those who see the world the same way as we see the world.

We don't just love those who champion the causes that we champion.

We don't just love those who vote the way that we vote.

We don't just love those who look the way that we look.

We love people, period, fully, completely, because why?

We've been commanded to.

We've received this kind of love.

Now we've got to do something with it.

And the only way we can do that is through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We don't have that power in and of ourselves whatsoever.

The only way is through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So here's what I want us to do as we as we wrap up.

I want us to take Lord's Supper together.

And understand as we take Lord's Supper, as we as we eat the bread, as we drink the juice, and by the way, if you're new to this, you can just you can watch if you want.

This is something Jesus' followers have done for 2,000 years.

Something he asks us to do.

When we eat this, we understand that we're receiving something into our bodies.

When you eat food, you receive sustenance.

And that sustenance, it empowers you to do the things that you need to do.

Spiritually speaking, if we're going to do the things that God has called us to do, if we're going to love people the way that he's challenged us and commanded us to love people, then we have to receive from him.

We have to let his spirit fill us with the love that he has.

We have to love out of the overflow that he gives us, not out of what we have left in the tank, because often we don't have much left in the tank.

And so as we take Lord's Supper, I want us to be very mindful of the fact that we're receiving something.

So if you have a piece of bread, grab it.

We're going to pray for this bread.

Lord, thank you so much for what this bread represents.

Thank you, Lord, that this represents your body broken for us on the cross.

Lord, as we eat this, we're reminded that just as physical food empowers our bodies to do the work that we have to do every day, the truth of your word, the power of your love, the power of your spirit, fills us with the ability, with the energy that we need to do what you've called us to do, Lord.

So as we take this in, we are saying to you that we need you to fill us.

We need you to sustain us.

We need you to energize us, to fill us with your spirit so that we can pour out your love.

Let's take the bread.

In some ways, Lord, to purchase for us a love that we could have never earned.

Lord, as we take this in, we're reminded that the only way we can love is because you first loved us.

And your blood shed for us, it's the ultimate example of how you loved us, how intensely, how completely you gave up your life for us.

Like you said, perfect love is to lay down one's life, and you lay down your life for us, Lord.

So as we take this in, we thank you.

And we ask that you would empower us to be filled with your love to pour it out through the power of your spirit.

Let's take the juice.