The Mission: Romans 1:18-32 ( In Need of Rescue)

If you are a first-time guest, make sure to stop by the Welcome Center because we want to give you a free Bible if you don't have one so that next next week you can struggle to find the book of Romans like the rest of us.

All right.

And so you can keep looking or you can just stop where you are.

No one's going to know the difference as we get ready to jump into this because I am so excited about the idea of the book of Romans.

And kind of the way we were talking about the big idea and kind of getting into it last week was I asked this, turned out to be pretty controversial question, which is what is your favorite movie of all time?

That started a lot of questions or a lot of conversations.

Some are still happening a week later because apparently there's that is an unfair question.

You have to give your top 10 for some folks.

Some folks is top 25.

There's a lot of movie watchers around here.

And and actually showed this slide, and people were complaining, telling me, you missed my favorite movie.

I was like, that wasn't the point.

It was an illustration.

But if you have your favorite movie, you let me know and I might be able to add it to the list.

But the idea is that we all have our favorite movie.

We love stories.

And as I was studying through some of the different uh movies that are considered to be the greatest of all times, you know, a lot of them that rise to the top are true stories.

Movies about things that really did happen.

And it doesn't really matter really what the story is, if it's true or whatever it is, they all usually have the same thing, if you would agree.

And that is that things start off well, then something bad happens, then the hero arrives.

He does his hero thing, and by the time the end of the story happens, everything is back good again.

It's the hero's journey for a lot of it.

And there are so many great stories out there.

But my hope is that by the time we are finished with the book of Romans, you're still gonna have your favorite movie.

But you will say this with me for taking notes, and that is that my favorite movie might be Princess Bride.

It might be one of the Star Wars movies, but the greatest story ever told is the mission of God to rescue all of us.

At the greatest story ever told, it doesn't matter.

I like Frodo.

Thank goodness he had his way with the ring.

I like, you know, all these other things.

I you know, I'm so glad what happened.

I almost spoiled the end of Star Wars, just in case you haven't seen it yet.

But I'm so glad about that.

But the greatest story ever told is the mission of God to rescue all of us.

Look at somebody and say, that's good news.

That's good news.

And because it's good news, it's the best news ever, and because it's the greatest story ever told, we talked about last week.

We're gonna have some fun with this series, and we want to treat it like a story, like a mission that we're gonna learn about, and we're gonna treat it almost like a Netflix documentary or a Netflix show, like on Hulu or Amazon Prime or whatever you watch.

And that is, you know, if you ever have your favorite show that you watch, it's a it's a collection of different series.

You know, you have, you know, some don't know when to stop, right?

You got series, you got season number 548.

You know you got all these seasons, but the basic idea is you have different seasons that tell part of the story to get the overall idea.

And that's what we're gonna do throughout the book of Romans, is we are gonna break it up into some different seasons to help us get our mind around the main point of the greatest story ever told.

And so season one is what we started last week with kind of the beginning and the hope for us in the series.

But the the idea behind season one, and that is this, and that is that our God sees us.

And I tell you, one of the greatest pieces of news I could ever give you is that our God sees us.

And if it doesn't start there, I don't know really where it can start because it starts with the fact that we need to be seen by God, and there's already good news in that he sees us.

And I love the reason why the book of Romans was written.

I was telling you how it was written by a guy named Paul.

It was written toward the end of his ministry, and it was written to the city of Rome.

And if you remember, the reason why it was written was to unify the divided believers under the amazing good news about Jesus.

So the city of Rome was a great church and God was doing great things, but there were divisions that were starting to happen where people were dividing for all these different reasons.

And inspired of the Holy Spirit, Paul says, Hey, listen, there may be a lot of reasons why we have different opinions about stuff, but if there's one thing we can all rally around, it's the good news that the greatest story ever told is the mission of God to rescue all of us.

And we can find more common ground there than we realize.

And can I tell all of us in here that there may be so many reasons why we have different opinions about so many things?

But if there's one thing we can all rally around, is that we all have this amazing good news that Jesus came on a rescue mission to save all of us.

And that he spends half of the book of Romans, the first eight chapters, just slowly outlining what that good news looks like.

And so that's what we're gonna get into today, really the meat of where that message comes from.

And so, to do that, I want to ask you a question.

I genuinely am curious about this.

How about this one?

What do you prefer to hear first?

Good news or bad news?

All right, I want to ask this question.

I want to see a show of hands real quick.

How many of you would say, I'd like to hear the good news first?

Good news, good news, give me the good news, give me the good news.

There's a few of you, a few of you, not that many.

Okay, all right.

How many of us say, give me the bad news, give me the bad news?

Whoa.

Good news, y'all lost.

Bad.

Is there anybody who says, I don't care, just give it to me straight, let me decide what it is?

Couple of you, a couple of you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I asked someone on social media this, this I asked everybody on social media, and one particular person said, the way I like to do it is I like to hear the good news and then punch them in the throat so I can't hear the bad news.

That isn't that's not how that works.

And also, I'm never talking to you ever again.

I don't want you to decide I just gave you good news because I know something bad's coming for me, you know.

But the reality of it is, is we all have news.

It's really, you know, good news and bad news.

It's really a matter of perspective, if you think about it, until you start to realize, no, there's some things that's bad news, there's some things that's great news.

And what I love about the apostle Paul, inspired of the Holy Spirit, is he's gonna give us both because we need both.

And that's what this text is all about.

It's about helping us understand why the good news is so good.

So if you got your Bibles with me, you want to read along with me, it starts off like this, and he says this he says, For I am not ashamed of the good news about Christ.

It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes.

It tells us how God makes us right in his sight.

This accomplished, this is accomplished from start to finish by faith.

In other words, that's the good news.

It's so such good news.

But the question becomes wait a minute, that's bad, that's good news.

Where's the bad news?

Like, like, why do I need good news?

It's like, oh, I'm so glad you asked.

Well, here's the reason why you need it.

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them.

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky.

Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature.

So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks.

They even began to think of foolish ideas of what God must be like.

As a result, their minds became dark and confused.

Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

Instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

So God abandoned them to do whatever the shameful things their hearts desired.

And as a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies.

They traded the truth about God for a lie.

So they worshiped and served the thing God created instead of the creator himself, who was worthy of eternal praise.

Amen.

That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires.

Even the women turned against their natural way to have sex and instead indulged with sex with each other.

And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other.

Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.

Their lives became so full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.

They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful.

They invent new ways of sinning.

They even disobey their parents.

I didn't put that in there just for the parents.

Okay, yeah.

Um, they refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.

They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway.

Worse yet, they encourage others to do them too.

Welcome to Real Life Church.

We're here to make you feel good about you.

Okay, yes, absolutely.

Here's the thing that I absolutely love about the good news is that we need it more than we realize, and it's available more than we can imagine.

What I love about this is Paul says, I know for so many of us who are kind of like, yo, shining our halos, can we just be real honest and say we all need this?

And so here's the thing.

If you're not taking notes, I want you to write this down.

If you are, write it down no matter who you are.

If you need to write it on your arm and pencil, I want you to write this down.

Here's what we need to understand, and that is the gospel is good news for everyone.

When I count to three, I want you to say everyone.

One, two, three, everyone.

Or if you're where I come from, it's error one.

We ain't got time for enunciation, okay?

We got stuff to do.

Here, here's the truth: God's word doesn't care about culture or social acceptability, he cares about you and your salvation.

God, what you know what I love about God's word is culture changes so much.

Opinions and ideas change so much, but his word doesn't.

The reason why is because his word is not about making us happy, it's about making us holy.

It's about finding the broken places in our life and saying, I can heal that too.

But the reason why the good news is good, because he first has to tell us you need it.

You need the good news.

And that's what the gospel is.

And so if you're taking notes, that's what we talked about.

The gospel is the gospel is the good news.

What is the good news?

Well, it's about Jesus and his rescue and transformation of all who trust in him.

So, in other words, we have to remember that really the gospel is not about us, it's about Jesus.

We are the object of his affection.

We are the object, we are the one who needed the rescue.

But it was about the fact that God didn't just shout his love from heaven, but he saw the mess that we were in.

And instead of just saying, ew, that's gross, instead he said, Let me step into that so that I can rescue you from all of that.

And if you don't want to have to remember all of that, just remember the gospel is good news.

It is absolutely good news that we need to hear.

So here's the question because the question is, well, if the gospel is good news, well, you just said a whole lot of pastor, did not sound like good news.

So how can that be good?

Well, here's the question of the day.

How is it possible to face the bad news of our need for the gospel and still find hope?

You ever thought about that?

How is it possible?

Because for so many people, the way they find the good news is they just don't focus on that.

They just don't talk about the reality of it.

I'm saying let's take at least one Sunday and look right in that mirror and just be honest and say, man, I'm not Jesus, but I sure do love him and I sure do need him.

And so we're gonna talk about it.

And here's the thing we're not gonna do justice to this text.

That's why if you see in front of you, you've got it's called a tap back card.

And if you want to tap this, the very first link is a link to a blog post that I do because I I love to kind of show my work.

I don't want you to ever believe me just because I say so.

I want to show you where I get my information from.

And so that's why I do a blog post about our message every single week is here.

Look, here's here's my work, and you can do it.

And in that, I'm gonna go into deep dives.

I'm gonna answer questions.

I'm not gonna have a chance to get to today because there's gonna be a lot of questions from today, and also cover more information.

And so if you hear me move past a point and you're like, wait a minute, teacher, first of all, it's in a class, okay?

But first of all, if you want to, I'm just gonna keep pointing.

As a matter of fact, I'm gonna have this on the screen for almost every single uh slide for the rest of the message to remind you that I want to engage with you about this because culture wants to tell you that everything we're gonna talk about today is wrong.

Well, you want to believe culture or do you want to believe the Bible?

But that doesn't mean we don't have questions, so I want us to walk through them together, okay?

I still think there's joy here.

Even if you look in the mirror and you see something broken, it's not a sign that it's hopeless.

It's a sign that thank goodness, that the greatest story ever told is God went on a rescue mission to rescue all of us.

Rescue us from what?

Well, let's talk about it today.

I want to show with you three reasons why the gospel is good news.

Look at your neighbor and say, it's still good news.

It's still good news.

Here's the reason why it's good.

The gospel is so good because sin separates us from God.

The reason why it's so good is because we have a need for the gospel.

We have a need for some good news.

Because the bad news is at some point we sinned and it separated us from God.

Look at what he said.

He said, God shows his anger, we're gonna talk about that in a second, from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them.

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky, and through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power, which means his greatness, and his divine nature, which means his goodness.

So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

In other words, he is saying that God has shown himself to us, but at some point we turned away, and when we became sinful people, that's when all the trouble started.

Well, what does it mean to be sinful?

Now there's a lot of different definitions.

Maybe give you one that's not in your notes, but here's one, and that is sin is simply falling short of God's perfect standard, which means all of us, okay?

It's unless unless you is perfect, okay, that means all of us has fallen short of God's perfect holy standard, which means we are now subject to God's anger.

If you're reading a different translation, that's wrath.

Well, now here's the thing though.

When we think of God's anger, we think about what we do when somebody cuts us off in traffic.

Well, not you, okay.

Let me tell you what I do.

What I do is I pray God's judgment on them quickly.

God, may it be now in Jesus' name.

All right.

I get angry.

I start having feelings.

And so when we hear God's anger or wrath, we think that God is having anger, like he's mad at you.

That's not the word.

The word is actually orge, which means deliberate.

It's the settled, deliberate, sustained opposition to evil.

It's the same thing as if you tell one of your children, hey, listen, here's your chores you have to do.

If you do them, there is a reward.

If you don't do them, you're going to be in trouble.

And then if they don't do them and you get over here, you tell them, listen, I'm not mad at you, but now it's time for justice.

And so it's God's justice.

It is the due result of us turning our back toward God.

And so then the Bible says God has revealed Himself in creation, which is called general revelation.

It says you can look around and go, man, where'd all this come from?

There must have been something.

And he said that God has done it in such a way so that if you are looking, you can find his greatness, are drawn to his goodness.

Therefore, no one is without excuse.

And one way it looks is like this.

You ever seen one of these miracles of creation, right?

You ever seen a lego?

We all we all have.

You ever used to build a lego, uh, build something with a lego?

You know what's amazing about that?

Is I've never looked at someone who built something and thought, you know what I bet they did?

I bet they just took a bag of Legos and just threw them on the ground, and that's how they did it.

Never.

As a matter of fact, if you've ever seen something like this right here, you are absolutely certain that an intelligent mind came up with this, okay?

Andrew Todd would have probably been able to put something like this together, okay?

I mean, this someone knew what they were doing when they put this together.

Nobody in this, well, if you are that person, can I talk to you after church?

But no one actually thought, you know what I bet he did?

He just kept taking these things in piles and throwing them, and eventually, voila, you know.

No, somebody said, I bet that took a lot of time.

I bet it took a lot of attention.

I bet that he he he really, really cares a whole lot about this.

We look at that and we automatically see design.

However, we look at these things and have no idea where they came from.

When you when you look at a precious baby, when you look at a wonderful sunset, when you look at the stars, there's people that literally say, it just happened.

No, the more the bigger the telescopes and the more amazing the microscopes, the more people are saying, somebody did this on purpose.

Somebody must have spent time on this.

Look at your neighbor, real quick.

Someone spent time on that person.

Some more than others.

Okay.

But it is amazing to realize that that happened.

But you know what's amazing is God said that we saw this beautiful creation and said, No, I'm gonna go this way.

And then at some point, that's the difference between when we talk about the age of accountability, is the point when you realize what sin is and you consciously choose to go in your own direction.

And he said, at some point, all of us as sinful people have done this, and the result is sin.

It reminds me of a story in the Old Testament where the nation of Israel had been divided in two, and you had King Rehobam, who's the son of Solomon, and you had King Jeroboam, who was splitting the kingdom, and he noticed that the people of God were still going to worship and turn their hearts toward God.

So instead of looking for healing for the nation and turning their hearts toward God, he actually said this.

It said, Jeroboam thought to himself, unless I am careful, the kingdom will return to the dynasty of David.

And when these people go to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the temple, they will again give their allegiance to King Rehoboam of Judah, and they will kill me and make him their king instead.

In other words, he said, if they keep pursuing God and keep going after him, he's gonna heal all of this.

And I'm not looking for healing, I'm looking for my way.

And so instead the king made two gold calves, and he said to the people, it is too much for you to worship in Jerusalem.

Look, Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of Egypt, and this became a great sin for the people because the people worshiped the idols.

In other words, we're supposed to be going and worshiping God, but he said, No, no, no, don't do that.

Go your direction instead.

And it's when they knew to do the right thing and did the wrong thing, that's when it became a great sin as they turned against God.

And that's the first step in our need.

This is a progression that happens.

The first step is when we know to do good and not to do it.

And here's the reason why it's good news is because the darkness of sin shows us how far Jesus was willing to go to rescue us.

That's why it's such amazing news.

It's not how broken we are, but how amazing our King is at fixing broken things.

That He's so good in what He is able to do.

That's why the greatest story ever told is the fact that the King Himself, God, went on a rescue mission to rescue all of us.

And the darker our dungeons, the more powerful he is to reach out and grab us.

We got to know the bad news before we know how great the good news is.

Look at your neighbor and say, that really is good news.

The progression of sin that happens is remember, number one, is that sin separates us from God.

Here's the second in the progression, and that is that God's news, good news, the gospel is so good because sin destroys our identity.

Sin destroys our identity.

So remember, sin is when we fall short of the glorious standard of God because we've turned around and we go the other way.

And because we no longer have God telling us who we are and no longer have him charting the course for us, now we have no direction.

And so we have to find it on our own.

Look at what he says.

He says, yes, they knew God, like they knew what they were supposed to do, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks.

In other words, acknowledge that he exists.

And so instead, they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.

In other words, God wouldn't do that.

Surely God would be this way.

And notice it's always something that agrees with us.

As a result, their minds became dark and confused.

You ever talk to somebody about God and you're wondering if you're talking about two different topics?

It's because of the sin that happens in our life.

And he says, claiming to be wise, instead, they became utter fools.

And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever living God, they worshiped idols made to look like people birds, animals, and reptiles.

In other words, they took what was holy.

And precious and wonderful, and they made it look just like them and wondered why it wasn't working.

And what was crazy is that they took something that was beautiful and holy and wonderful, and that is what God says about you and said, No, thank you.

It's the idea that we took what God made and called beautiful when He created us and called us good, and we called it not good enough.

He calls us good, our identity becomes not good enough.

So we start looking to fill that void with anything that we can find.

We try to find significance, success, acceptance, security, and everything but God.

But it is a it is a bag with holes in it.

And the more we have, the more we think we need to have because it'll never satisfy, because we think that if we have enough, we will be enough when God already said you're good enough.

As long as you do it my way.

But instead of turning to Him, we continue to turn further and further away, and we treat something precious as something common.

And one of the best examples I can think of is taking something precious and thinking of it as common is exactly what happens every time a little uh toddler wants to hold a baby.

Do you know there are so many wonderful parents out there that they are willing to risk it all by letting a toddler hold a baby?

Can I tell you that to this day it makes me nervous because I was one of those at one time.

Like, like this is a wonderful picture of my little Ellie wanting to hold her baby sister.

And she was like, Hold me, hold me, which wasn't hold me, it was I want to hold the baby, hold me, hold me.

And my wonderful wife was so kind.

Of course you can.

And I said, of course you cannot.

But we were gonna give it a try.

We were gonna give it a try.

And so she would sit there, and the guy with the big nose, that's me, and I would I would be holding her and I'd be holding her real tight, going, hey, listen, all right, isn't this fun?

And I'm just like shaking, I'm just shaking, it's good.

And and I was just like, it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be good.

We've had five seconds.

Is that enough?

Is that enough?

And the reason why wasn't because I didn't I didn't think she loved her, it's that she thought she was another baby doll.

So she thought she was common, just like any other one of her dolls.

And if you don't believe me, this was probably the very next day.

She's saying, Is that enough?

And that's poor Hinsley going, help! And she is slowly rolling to her demise, but we do catch them in Jesus' name, okay?

And help them to survive.

Yo, it's good.

It's like because in her mind, it's just another one of my baby dolls.

She doesn't realize this is made in the image of God and it's just as precious as I am.

They don't know that.

But isn't that what we do so many times?

Is we take what was precious and we treat it like just another Tuesday.

And you know what happens is when we forget our identity, first sin separates us from God, and then when we forget our identity, we start to break apart in any possible way.

Look at what happened to the nation of Israel.

One of the reasons why they were overwhelmed by their enemies was because it says again and again the Lord sent his prophets and seers to warn Israel and Judah turn from all your evil ways, obey my commands and decrees.

The entire law commanded your ancestors to obey that I gave you through my servants of prophets.

Other words, I've given you so much to help you stay in freedom.

Align yourself with who I am.

But the Israelites wouldn't listen.

They were stubborn, just as their ancestors who had refused to believe the Lord their God, and they rejected the decrees and the covenants that have been made with their ancestors, and they despised God.

You can't tell me who I am.

I know who I am.

Well, the result was they worshiped worthless idols, so they themselves became worthless.

They followed the example of the nations around them, disobeying the Lord's commands not to imitate them.

In other words, they forgot who they were and they started following everything else, and the result was expected because you can't follow the world and end up looking like Jesus.

You can't follow yourself and find wholeness.

The only place to find wholeness is in the one that made us.

And the reason why that is good news is because the world and our own broken selves want to tell us who we are.

But the truth is, if you only knew what Jesus says about you, you would settle for nothing less.

If you only knew what he thinks about you, if you only could see in his word that he says you are his special treasure, that he puts you on display for the world to say, look at my boy go, look at my daughter, look at her.

She's not perfect, but look how much better she's getting every single day.

I'm so proud.

And instead, we go, God, don't talk to me.

I'm too busy figuring myself out.

And the whole time, he never takes his hand away.

And he, that's why it's the greatest story ever told.

It's because it is when the king came on a rescue mission to save all of us.

But the problem becomes is when sin separates us from God, and because we turned our back on God and we start trying to find our own identity ourselves, it breaks us over and over and over again, which is why the gospel is such good news.

Look at your neighbor and say, That's real good news.

You know why it's good news?

It's because God knows that sin separates us from Him.

God knows that it breaks our identity.

And then here's one more, and that is that the gospel is so good because sin spirals us into complete brokenness.

Praise the Lord.

It's such good news.

Why?

Because the king hadn't found a case he couldn't heal yet.

But at the same time, we have to acknowledge the fact that the only reason why it's good is because we acknowledge the bad, and that is, notice what is gonna happen is he is gonna give a list of things that are results of the first two.

Because we turned our back on God, because we decided to find our identity outside of him, the result are all the things that we like to talk about.

Really, we should be talking about the first two to explain the third one.

Because this is what he said.

He said they traded the truth about God for a lie.

That is why God abandoned them.

We'll talk about that to their shameful desires.

Even women turned against the natural ways of having sex and instead indulged with sex with others with each other.

And men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other.

Men did what was shameful with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.

Since they thought it was foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.

Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.

They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful.

They invent new ways of sinning and they disobey their parents in Jesus' name.

They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.

They know God's justice requires that they do these things.

They deserve, and that and that they do these things, they deserve to die, yet they do them anyway.

In other words, they know God doesn't approve and they say, but I'm gonna do me.

Worse yet, they encourage others to do them too.

Here's the thing that we miss.

We spend so much time talking about the sin, and we should, but you ever wondered why?

Why are these things so okay?

Is it because we lost our identity and we lost our identity because sin crept into our life because we turned our backs on God?

That's the reality of it.

And so the Bible says he abandons them.

Now we gotta make sure we understand, abandon them doesn't mean he leaves you on a doorstep and never is gonna see you again.

It does not mean that God gave up.

It means he did not stop them.

He let them have what they wanted.

In other words, he's saying, Come on back to me, come on back to me.

No, I don't want you, come on back to me.

No, I don't okay.

Finally, he says, Okay.

He still stays there, which breaks my heart.

He still watches us walk away.

He still watches us do the very thing he knows that breaks us.

But he says, Okay, and I'll be here when you're ready.

And he just starts talking about the outflow of our brokenness, the outflow of our sin and the outflow of losing our identity in Christ and putting our identity in everything else.

And yes, of course, the elephant in the room, he talks first of all about homosexuality.

He talks about the idea of sexual brokenness.

Now, here's the truth: God's design is for the holy sexual union of a man and a woman in the context of marriage, period.

That means anything outside of this is sexual brokenness.

So does it does it mean homosexuality?

Yes, it also means hookup culture, it also means adultery, it also means all form of other things that is outside the holy sexual union of a man and woman in the context of marriage.

And notice how the reason why that is a thing is because we've lost our identity in Christ because we turned our back on him and engaged in sin.

The reason goes back to that area right there.

Because when we engage in this, what we are saying is, God, you didn't know what you were doing when you made me.

You made a mistake.

Well, Pastor, I was born this way.

That's why Jesus said we had to be born again.

Because people were born with all kinds of sin.

You're just not supposed to stay that way.

Because that's why the gospel is so good.

And so I think so many of us agree.

And that's why, please, you see this right here, scan that.

Because we have some people who will say there's a Greek phrase called arsenic quinti.

I know, that's a$10 word, which means something else.

It's not what it means, it means homosexuality.

But here's the thing so many of us, wonderful Christians, stop right there.

Those disgusting homosexuals, and we forget that he places the rest of us in that category as well.

Because he starts with saying this is sexual brokenness and sin.

And oh, by the way, any of y'all who think y'all are good, here's the rest of you.

And that covers about all of us.

If it doesn't, can I can I point you to this one right here, you know?

And so Paul starts with sexual brokenness, and he said, You know what else is broken?

Everything.

Why?

Because we turned our backs on God, we started to figure it out for ourselves, and we got more and more and more broken, and these are the tools of our brokenness.

You know, it reminds me of the book of Judges when the Bible said that there was no king, and it says in the first part of Judges and the last part of Judges, if you ever read Judges, do you ever get bored with your Bible?

Open up to the book of Judges, okay?

It is the Jerry Springer of the Old Testament.

If you're that old, know what I'm talking about.

It is absolutely crazy.

It is so crazy that at the end of the book of Judges, a lady dies, and her, well, really it was her living boyfriend actually has her cut into 12 pieces and sent to the other tribes to say, Look what happened to my wife.

That's crazy.

And the reason why is because the Bible said in those days Israel had no king.

All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Do you know why we need God's word that doesn't change with culture?

Because I often do things that seem right in my own eyes that are dead wrong.

And they lead to brokenness over and over and over again.

And the reason why God's good news is so very good is the greatest story ever told, is that the king himself came on a rescue mission.

He saw how broken we were, he saw all the different broken places, and he said, I can fix that.

And so here's the good news, and that is the good news is that Jesus came to rescue us all.

When I count the three, say all.

One, two, three.

Look at your neighbor and say, Especially you.

Because you need it in Jesus' name.

Okay, listen, you need some of this, all right?

That the good news came to rescue us all.

That's why when you get your mind around how good God is, it is amazing.

We're gonna read the book of Psalms here and we're gonna talk about the book of Psalms over the course of the week.

And David, who definitely experienced brokenness in so many different ways, when he gets his mind around this, he says this.

He says, That how lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of heaven's armies.

I long, yes, even faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord with my whole being, body and soul.

I shout joyfully to the living God.

You know why?

It's because he looked in the mirror and he saw how broken he was, and then he watches as God was healing him one step at a time.

Because what happens is when we turn our hearts away from God and we try to find our identity and we get broken, we get broken over and over and over again.

And the reason why the good news is so good is because when we receive Jesus and the Holy Spirit comes and lives in our life, he begins to heal us of every broken place.

And he does it by giving us his love, his joy, his peace, his patience, his kindness, his gentleness, his faithfulness, his goodness, his self-control.

And he starts to slowly spiral us up into maturity.

And every broken place, he has an antidote.

And it's called himself.

It's called his presence.

The reason why it's called the fruit of the spirit is it is the outflow of our relationship with God.

And so we look at all of these broken pieces, and for every one of them, God has good news for all of us.

And he says, You come to me broken, but because of me, you don't stay that way.

And that's why it's such good news.

That's why when I read this, yes, we got to hear the bad news before we hear the good news.

The bad news is when we look in the mirror, at some point for all of us, we turned our back on Jesus.

And then we started to break our identity by trying to find him ourselves, and it led to all the broken pieces of our life.

And then Jesus came and he finds us in that broken place, and he picks us up and he starts to carry us and he starts to fix our identity and he starts to turn us back toward him.

And you ever talk to a new Christian?

They start looking at the sky and they go, This is the most beautiful sky I've ever seen.

They start looking at things, they even like cats.

You just pray for them in Jesus' name because God made that cat.

They just start going crazy because they start to see God everywhere.

Where did he come from?

He's been there the whole time.

It's just your vision was blinded.

But thank goodness for him.

And here's the word of the Lord for us today, and that means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone, and a new life has begun.

That's the good news is it doesn't matter what has happened to break you.

God is in the business of making things new.

It doesn't matter how far you've fallen, it doesn't matter what's happened in your life, God is in the business of making things new.

And the reason why the good news is so good is because the bad news was so bad.

It reminds me of a story one time several years ago.

I had a friend of mine who he had a he had a pain in his side, and so he he went to went to the emergency room and they sent him to the doctor, and then the worst thing that happens, and that is the doctor looks and kind of turns his head a little bit and he says, Hey, we need to send this off for a biopsy.

Y'all ever heard those phrases or that phrase?

It's just instant.

I'm not sleeping until that comes back, right?

Because of just what all it could be.

Many times what it could be is worse than what it is.

And so he finally gets a call and he says, Hey, let's come on in, let's talk about it.

And he said, Hey, listen, I got some bad news.

It's cancer.

And my friend said, It was probably just five seconds, but it felt like an eternity because I wanted to be anything but that.

It was cancer.

And he just said, like, I just just froze.

He said, Man, I had two small kids.

I I had so much ahead of me, and I just I'd give myself a death sentence.

It was just, and he said, I finally looked up at the doctor, he had a smile on his face.

And he said, Dude, I never want to punch somebody so bad.

You just told me, you know, and he smiled on his face.

He said, That was bad news.

Good news is there's a cure.

Dude, I'm gonna kill you.

Okay, you know.

Do you mean there's a cure?

He's like, Oh, yeah, this is like the the best, if you're gonna ever have cancer, it's the best cancer to ever have.

You're just gonna have to take, you know, some medicine for about 30 days, it's gonna kill it real quick.

It's probably never gonna come back, you're gonna be fine.

Could you have led with that?

I mean, you know, and he's in for real, that's about 20 years ago.

He hasn't had a single problem since then, it was amazing.

And he said, Man, I ain't never understood the need for good news until I got bad news.

And for some of us, we need to know how badly we need Jesus, so we never take for granted how good He is.

I get that we have bad days, I get that we have things that we don't understand, I get we have seasons that we don't want, but you know that none of that touches the fact that we can't do anything about it, we can't save ourselves.

At some point, we turned our back on God, we started trying to figure it out on our own, and it's only gotten worse and worse and worse.

That's the bad news.

Let me give you some more bad news.

We have all sinned, but here's the good news Jesus came to save us.

And you know what I love about Jesus?

He doesn't just save us and then move on, he saves us, and he turns around and he starts healing us of every single broken place.

No matter how broken we are, he's never gonna stop.

He's never gonna quit.

He's not just interested in washing away your sin.

Of course, he's interested in that, but he's interested in all of you.

He's interested in your hopes and your dreams, he's interested in your eternity, he's interested in that moment that happened years ago that has now defined who you think you are, when the whole time he's saying, Can I have that?

Can I remind you that you are not what they said about you?

You are loved more than you can imagine.

That you are healed and whole if you will let me have your life.

That for so many of us we have let other people tell us who we are when the whole time Jesus has been screaming from the rooftops, I came on a rescue mission to save you.

Come home to me.

That's why the gospel is such good news.

And I don't know what you need to do with this message today.

Maybe you're in here today and you've received salvation in your life and you love Jesus, but the enemy has tried to twist and change that good news and cause you to doubt your salvation and doubt what God is doing in your life.

And maybe, maybe in just a moment when the band leads us in a song of worship, you what you need to do is just maybe find a quiet place.

Maybe, maybe find a quiet place up here at the altar, maybe right where you're standing, and just say, God, will you restore to me the joy of your salvation?

God, will you wipe clean the lies of the enemy?

Help me to see them for what they are, help me to get into your word like never before, to see what you have said about me.

Freedom comes when we renew our mind with God's word, we remember what he says about us.

Is that you?

You love Jesus, but you're not so sure he loves you anymore.

I just bind that lie in the name of Jesus.

And that while you may have 99 problems, Jesus will never be one, and you'll remember that he is your best friend.

Maybe you're in here and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, can I tell you?

He's the best friend that you didn't know you needed.

You've tried everything else at some point in your life.

You turned your back from him and you've tried to figure it out on your own.

I just want to ask you this question: how is that going for you?

Have you found a way to wash away your sins?

I'd like to hear about it.

Have you found a way to make it to heaven without him?

I'd love to hear about it.

If you haven't, his hands are still open to you.

He still says, I've never forgotten you.

Yes, I let you go, but it wasn't what I wanted, and I'm still here.

Come home.

Come home to me.

If that's you, on the back of that connect card is the plan of salvation.

And what it is, it's coming home to Jesus.

It's letting him rewrite your identity and reminding you of who you were always supposed to be, and that is his child.

But you gotta give him everything.

You can't just give him what you think he ought to have, you gotta give him everything.

And I'll tell you a secret: he knows you better than you know yourself.

Therefore, he will give you the best identity, and that is his child, fully loved by him, fully seen by him, fully secure and accepted and significant in him.

And you've never been more loved than you are right now.

Don't let the enemy lie to you.

Instead, embrace the mercy of Jesus today.

In just a moment, as we as the man leads us in that final song of worship, your next best act of worship is to take that card and join us at the prayer table.

The reason why we ask you to join us at the prayer table is because we want to be there with you as you make your decision to follow after Jesus.

It's our honor and our privilege to watch you be born into the kingdom of heaven.

It's also to answer questions.

If you have any questions about what salvation is, we want you to join us back there so we can have the joy of seeing one more child of God come on home.

Is that what you need to do?

It's time to make some decisions.

Allow God to heal you with his good news today.

Let's pray together right now.