Gospel Basics

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, which is a national bestseller for business leaders. It's been around for 25 years. He opens that book, Good to Great. With this opening line. He says that good is the enemy of great.

That's probably not profound to many of us. We live in a culture where we look at good as a necessary stop on the road to greatness. We look at good as being something we aim for, but we never want to settle for. We want to move on to better and best and great. If we were to come up with synonyms for the word good, we likely would come up with words like average or okay or maybe even mediocre.

Good is a great place to start, but it's never a place we want to land. At least that's how it is in our culture. I've been a Bears fan since I was a little kid. I remember 1985. I was six and a half years old.

I was sitting on the floor in the living room of our home in Bismarck, Illinois. I had a chocolate in one hand my mom had bought me at the grocery store. I was wearing my Walter Payton Kangaroo sneakers, and I watched the Bears just completely demolish the New England Patriots. And so, for me, looking back at this last season of the Chicago Bears football, I actually had a lot of fun. It brought back a lot of memories of when the Bears would win when I was a kid, but maybe you picked up on it, too.

The Bears this year had a chant that they would share after every victory. It was brought in by their new coach, Ben Johnson. They would gather in the locker room. Ben would be at the center of his players who were surrounded all around him, and he would say a phrase with energy, and they would repeat it with passion. And here's how it went.

He would say, good, better, best. And they would repeat it. Never let it rest till the good gets better and the better gets best. And while it was inspirational and motivational for me, I just. I hear the repeated, like, cultural meaning to good.

Like the good is not where we want to end up. Good is not where we want to finish. The good is just a step on. On the ladder of greatness. And while that might not be a bad thing in our American culture, what if our understanding of good somehow creates a bias in us towards how good is used in God's story in Scripture?

Because good is often used to describe God and the things that God does. And as I've helped people follow Jesus, as I follow Jesus myself, I've had to learn that I have to Help others overcome our bias towards good as an inferior quality. When we see good in the pages of Scripture, whether it's a Hebrew word translated as good in the Old Testament or a Greek word translated as good in the New Testament, it doesn't mean mediocre, it doesn't mean average. It means excellent, amazing, desirable, incredible. Here's some examples.

If you look at Genesis, chapter one, God creates. As you move through the days of creation, repeated refrain starts to show up. We learned that God creates and he saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, and the next day of creation, God creates and we see that it's good. We get to day six, he creates the animals and they're good.

But then he creates humankind and we're told that it's very good. Now, if you love nature like I do, then it's not likely that you look out at the Grand Canyon or the narrows in Zion national park, or the beautiful mountains and grassy slopes of New Zealand, or a whale breaching the water out in the Pacific and think to yourself, that's okay. That's average. When we see God's creation eagle soaring in the sky, or a newborn baby, we think, man, that's incredible. That's amazing.

And that's the meaning that the word good has in our Bibles. It's the same in the New Testament. We have this encounter with Jesus and a religious leader in Luke chapter 18. In that story, this religious leader comes to Jesus and he says to him, good teacher, and then asks a question. Before answering the question, Jesus replies to this religious leader.

He says, why do you call me good? No one but my heavenly Father is good. And that word good means excellent, praiseworthy, amazing. You see in the pages of Scripture, the word good is the top of the ladder. It is the end.

It is the destination. And that's so important for us as we look at Scripture, because we were told that the message surrounding Jesus is actually good news. In fact, there's a word used in our New Testaments in Greek. The word is euangelion, and it means quite literally, good news or gospel. Those words are used interchangeably.

It shows up in a noun form, it shows up in a verb form. But every time this word shows up in our Bible and it's translated either good news or gospel, it means this is an incredible message that's being proclaimed, that has been proclaimed to you. And the word doesn't originate with Jesus, by the way, or with the Bible or with the Bible writers in the Roman Empire. When Caesar or a Governor would issue a decree that had great benefit for the people. A messenger would be sent out, a herald would be sent out, and he would go to the communities and the cities and the villages and he would proclaim a euangelion, a message of good news.

What they might even call, if they spoke English, the Gospel. And that's the same word that God chooses to inspire his writers to grab hold of, to tell us the story of Jesus and God's actions towards humankind. Just to give you an idea, this is how it shows up sometimes in the New Testament. Mark, one of the early writers that tells us the story of Jesus life. He writes what we might call a biography or a theological biography of Jesus life.

It's in our New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Mark begins his gospel with these words, the beginning of the good news. Euangelion, the gospel about Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God. Mark says this is just the beginning of the good news, the most incredible news ever.

And then if you fast forward a few verses in his gospel, he says this about John and Jesus. He says, after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God. Part of Jesus mission on this earth was to share, to proclaim. That's that word again. Euangelion, the good news, the gospel of God.

Then in the very next verse, it tells us that Jesus was calling people to respond to that good news. He says, the time has come, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. Jesus is like, you've got to respond to this most incredible message ever. And I don't think any of us would be willing to look Jesus in the eyes and say, well, that was just an average message.

Jesus. No, it's incredible. It's great, it's amazing, it's inspiring. It's the same word that Paul uses in his letters to talk about the gospel or the good news that he's sharing with other people. There's even this really neat verse tucked into Galatians, chapter 3, verse 8, where Paul says that the gospel was announced in advance to Abraham.

So this incredible message, this incredible message of good news was something that God was even sharing with Abraham. Now, if you're not familiar with the Bible, that's a story that occurs 4,000 years before Jesus. God already had in mind this incredible message that included Jesus. Here's how I would define the gospel most completely. It's that the gospel is the good news about who God is, who I am, what God has done, and the life that he invites.

Me to live the gospel is the good news about who God is, who I am, what God has done, and the life that he invites me to live. It's the good news about who God is, His character, his essence, his identity, who I am, my character, who I can be, my identity in God's creation, what God has done, all the things that he's done in history and that he is still doing in the life that he invites me to live. Like who God is and what he's done and who I am should have implications for how I live my life now. Why is it important to see the gospel as being full and complete in this way? It's because most of us have grown up in a world, in a culture, a Christian culture, where we often narrow the gospel down to only being the good news about Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, and him saving us from sins.

And while that is an essential part of the gospel, it can't be the complete gospel, because as we've already seen, Jesus himself proclaimed the good news. He proclaimed the gospel, and he did that even before he died and he rose again. It can't be just that one narrow focus, because Paul said that the gospel was given to Abraham in advance some 4,000 years before Jesus. And so what is that complete gospel message, that incredible good news that God wants to share with us in our lives? And that's what we hope to discover today.

Last week, we wrapped up our Love, Grow and Inspire series by exploring the importance of inspiring others to follow Jesus. And this week, we launch a new series. We're going to be digging into that. How can we engage those in our lives who are near to us, but they might be far from God. And every one of us has people like that.

There are people in our lives who are near to us. Family members, friends, co workers, teammates, people that are in our choir or our band, people that live in our neighborhoods, people that we interact with on a regular basis who don't yet know Jesus like we do. And over the next several weeks, we want to help you learn how to be more intentional with inspiring them on how to follow Jesus. We're going to start with our focus on the gospel, because the gospel is this good news about who God is, who I am, what God has done in the life that he invites me to, who God is, who we are, what God has done, the life that he invites all of us into. That gospel message not only has transformed our lives, but it's what God will use to transform the lives of ones in our life.

Those who are near to us but far from Him. The gospel both shared through our words and lived through our lives is something that I have seen Christians, followers of Jesus struggled to articulate simply, plainly and clearly over my 47 years of life. The reason why I can say with confidence that we've struggled to share it clearly is because I once was there up until three and a half years ago. Like, I could tell people about Jesus. I could tell people about God's love for them.

I could tell people about how Jesus died for our sins, how God has better plans and purposes for us. I could even lead someone how to make a decision to follow Jesus, but to fit it into this big, overarching, incredible story that God was writing to help people understand God more fully. And the things that kind of war against us and our quest to be the people God's made us to be, that kind of reveals our need for Jesus. I couldn't do it clearly for me, often I was like that third grader trying to retell a story from the playground where he or she starts a story and then jumps over here and then jumps over here and mom or dad or grandma and grandpa are just trying to keep up. That wasn't until three and a half years ago when I feel like God led me in developing a more clear and concise way to share the fullness of his gospel.

Who he is, who I am, what he's done, and the life that he invites me into with other people. I don't have time to tell you the whole story. Here's what I would tell you, is that if you want to know the whole story, I'm happy to have coffee or share a Coke with you sometime and discuss it. But three and a half years ago, I found myself in a desperate season. It was June of 22.

Our boys were just finishing. Our sons were just finishing their gap year that they took after high school. One of them was getting ready to move off into full time employment with the EMS in the county. We were in the emergency services department. The other son was getting ready to go away six hours to college.

And I just felt the crushing weight and the pressure that I was no longer going to be the primary influence in my son's lives.

And these questions began to haunt me. Questions like, did our children fully understand the gospel now? They'd grown up in my home. I had quite literally been the primary biblical teacher in their lives. Like I was their youth minister and children's minister for a season.

And then I had been their main preacher for the rest of their lives up until that point. I could see them bearing fruit that honored Jesus. I knew that they'd made decisions to follow Jesus. They'd been baptized. They were.

They were making Jesus somewhat of a priority in their lives. But I still was haunted by this question. Like, could they clearly articulate and share with somebody this incredible news about who God was and who they were and what he'd done and the life that he invites us to live? And I couldn't answer that. And so I prayed and I asked God to show me a way to help our boys completely and fully understand who God was and what he had done for them and who they were and the life that he wanted them to live.

And it all kind of came together early one morning, we were on vacation. We were at the cabin of some friends of ours. I couldn't sleep. I got out my prayer journal and I just started praying. God help me know how to share this with my boys.

Over the next three hours, God took me on an incredible journey. He gave me the tool that I'm gonna share with you in the coming moments. He helped me come up with a way to clearly share, understand, remember the full gospel, who he is, who I am, what he's done, and what he's called me to. What unfolded was. The next six weeks, I met with our boys weekly.

They went through a reading plan of scriptures that supported each part of this tool. The tool is an acronym. The name for the acronym is basics. B, A, S, I, C, S. And it's a way to remember, understand, and share the gospel, to understand it for ourselves and to share it with other people. I'm going to give you a simple way to remember.

We're going to use our hands as a memory device, each finger representing one of the letters. And if you're quick, you're going to soon realize that there are six letters. We only have five fingers. And we'll get to that in a minute. The thumb represents the B.

The b. In basics, the B stands for big God. From the beginning to end of all of history and all of God's words to us. In the pages of the Bible, we see a consistent picture of who God is and how God is so much bigger than we are. We learn that he's all powerful.

We learn that he's all knowing. We learn that he is ever present. And this is from the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis through the end. That incredible picture of his glory and his power and revelation and includes every day of history lived up until this very moment. We see how big God is.

There are a number of places we could go in Scripture to show us just how big and incredible and great God is. But one of my favorites is Psalm 145. I'm going to tell you right now, before we read a couple of verses from it, Psalm 145 is worthy of your time. We don't have time to go through every verse, but every verse reveals the greatness, the bigness of who God is. But here's just a sample.

Look at Psalm 145. 3. The Psalmist David writes, great is the Lord. It's a term that means strong, absolute. Like, it's the pinnacle, it's the top.

Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise. His greatness no one can fathom. Did you catch that? His greatness no one can fathom. Like, God is great, God is absolute.

God is the best. And yet he's so much greater, so much bigger than we can even begin to fathom. And in the verses that follow, we see evidence of God's greatness, His bigness. But we also see something really incredible in verse eight. It tells us that the Lord, this great God, whose greatness is greater than we can fathom, that he is also gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.

So somehow this God, who is bigger than we can fathom, also loves us more than we can imagine. This God, who is bigger than we can fathom, loves us more than we can imagine. That, yeah, God is big. He creates, he moves, he works in history. And yet he has this special place in his heart for humanity.

And that's the foundation of this gospel. When we talk about who God is and who we are and what God's done, the life he invites us to like, it all starts by understanding that our God is big. So much bigger than we can fathom, but also big enough to love us more than we can imagine. Now, often those truths resonate with us. They create a spark in our heart.

They bring joy to us. And at the same time, while we can accept those truths as being real, we also live in this world where our experience sometimes is far less than ideal. We know pain, pain brought on by our own actions, pain brought on by the actions of other people. We know the pain that comes into our life that we can't even trace back to a single person or any one individual.

And so how do we reconcile this God who is bigger than we can fathom and loves us more than we can imagine. And yet some of the difficulties of our human experience and that Leads us to the second letter of basics. There's an adversary. There is a supernatural, powerful being who is opposed to God's best in this world. And God's best for you.

He goes by a number of different names. Among them are the devil, Satan, the father of lies. And he wants nothing more than direct God's purposes and plans. And again, from beginning to end, Genesis to Revelation, we see this story of how this adversary is opposed to God's very best in this world. If we looked at the whole council of Scripture, all of it, we begin to see a picture of the adversary.

I just want to show you a few highlights about him. We learned that the adversary is a murderer. We learn that he is destructive, that he is an accuser, and that he is a liar. The adversary is opposed to the goodness of God. He's at work trying to disrupt God's mission.

And yet that's not the end of the story. Because even though he's more powerful than us, he's not more powerful than Jesus.

And when we place our faith in Jesus, we stand in Jesus power and Jesus victory. And that leads me to one really important concluding truth about the adversary. And it's this, is that the adversary is limited. Yeah, he's powerful. He's more powerful than you on your own.

But when you stand in Jesus, his power is limited. Here's what Colossians chapter 2, verse 15 tells us. That having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. If you read earlier in Colossians 2, you'll learn that these powers and authorities, it's spiritual powers and authorities. It's the devil, it's Satan, it's the adversary and his minions, demons and evil spirits.

Like he made a public spectacle. Jesus made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, he defeated the enemy. Now the enemy, the adversary, is still in the death throes. He's still wreaking havoc, but he is limited.

And that leads us to the third letter of basics. He's limited because God has supplied a solution in Jesus. He supplied an answer in Jesus, a remedy for this sin and adversary problem. And one of the best places to look for that is a familiar passage of scripture, John chapter 3, verse 16. The familiar words.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. See, that's the answer. That's the solution. That whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. God loved us so much that he sent Jesus to rescue us and to save us.

He's God's solution to the sin and the evil problem in our world. He's already triumphed over the enemy, and we're just experiencing those final death throes that the adversary likes to inflict on our world. But Jesus brings victory as we place our faith in him. And that leads to the fourth letter of basics. It's an invitation.

There's this big God. There's an adversary opposed to him. God's made a solution in Jesus. We only experience that solution when we respond to his invitation. And again, this shows up in John, chapter 3, verse 16.

It tells us that Jesus is the solution, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. But what follows that that whoever believes, we have to respond. We have to express faith in him, that we're going to trust in what Jesus has done for us. And as we respond to him, we experience that new life. We see this in the way people make decisions to follow Jesus.

Our response to the invitation comes by believing in faith. And believing in faith is seen in confessing Jesus as Lord, Master, King of our lives. In repenting, our belief shows itself in repenting from sin, from repenting from living life our way to turning towards living life God's way. And it's seen in baptism, when our belief leads us to go all in for Jesus to climb into his life in the waters of baptism and rise again in new life filled with his spirit, to learn to live in a new way. And that leads me to the sea that we're to be changed.

When we experience this big God and understand the adversary and that Jesus is a solution, he invites us to follow him. God wants to change us. The New Testament, the stories about Jesus and Jesus teachings, the words that people like Paul and John and Peter wrote, they tell story after story how when we follow Jesus, we should look differently. People who follow Jesus who respond to that incredible message should live lives that are noticeably different from those who don't. There's a number of places we could look, but one of them that I've chosen is Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 22 through 24.

We read this. You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. God wants us to change as we follow him, so we experience the fullness of Life that he's intended for us as humans. One writer, Max Anders, in his book Brave New Discipleship, says it this the single greatest challenge of the Christian life is changing our attitudes, values and behaviors, our lifestyle, from who we are to who Jesus is. And to live a life where we're being changed by Jesus.

Every part of our lifestyle requires surrender. Back to basics. We only have five fingers, or most of us only have five fingers. The B, the A, the S, the I, the C. And you run out of fingers and what are you left with?

An open hand. And what are open hands but symbols and signs of surrender?

To live a life changed by Jesus is going to require surrender. And some of the strongest words on what it looks like to surrender are given by Jesus in Luke chapter 9. In Luke 9, Jesus says, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow me. Whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will save it.

Jesus calls us to a life of surrender. We should measure our likeness to Jesus by measuring our surrender to Him.

He wants us to extend open hands to him, allowing him access and control to every area of our lives, our relationships, our wealth, our financial resources, the stuff that we own, our words and our speech, our bodies, our emotions. He wants us to surrender everything and in every way to Him. And that's what it looks like, to take up our cross daily and follow Him. So the basics, this big God, adversary, solution, invitation, change and surrender, helps us better understand, visualize and have a way to share with people the gospel. This incredible news about who God is, who I am, what God has done, and the life that he invites me to live.

Now, I know that that has been a blitz. It's been a crash course. I'd love to talk about this more with you if you want to, but I want to give you some practical steps where to take this from here. One of them is this. You can scan the QR code that you see on the screen.

You can go to our website, www.greenwoodchristian.com info. Select the highlight of today's message and you can see that we've included a Bible reading plan for the basics for you. It's a six week reading plan each week focusing on one letter of the acronym, five scriptures to read each week. That will allow God to impress upon you more this picture of his complete and full gospel. I'd encourage you to follow along on that reading plan.

You might even hold onto that document, download it, and then when you start to build an intentional bridge with one of your ones, someone who is near to you but far from God. That if they want to know, like show me more about this God you talk about. Show me more about this God who's changed your life. You can maybe sit down with them and walk through that reading plan with them. Maybe you go even slower than six weeks and you look at each passage individually with them.

Maybe you ask them to read the passages leading up to a meeting you have with them each week, ask them to bring their questions, and slowly you can help them come to see and understand this amazing God who has great plans and great purposes and great life for them. The second thing I encourage you to do is that this tool will only help you if you incorporate it into your life. If you're up for the challenge, here's what I would challenge you to do for the next week. Every day, write down B A S, I C s in a journal or on a piece of paper and write down the words and write down a brief summary of each point and maybe a scripture that goes with it. And then speak it out aloud as well.

And what you'll find is that if you do this every day for one week, slowly you begin to be more familiar with articulating the Gospel in a clear and simple way and understanding it even for yourself. So write it down. Say aloud once a day for a week. And then beginning next week, just once a week for a month. Write it down, say it aloud, and then after February, once a month, write it down and say it aloud.

And even as you do it, begin to think when you get familiar with it, think about how I could share this in three minutes with someone who maybe isn't ready to listen to the whole thing. Or what would this look like to share it? No longer 30, 45 minute hour long coffee shop conversation. Or maybe you could write it out on a napkin for someone. But our hope, my hope is that you'll have a simple and compelling way to only understand the Gospel for yourself, but to share it with other people.

And here's just a final thought on that. I want to go back to what I said about sharing this with my two sons.

The reality is I don't know if my boys, Ezekiel and Isaiah remember the basics or not. I don't know if they've ever shared it with somebody else.

But I do know that I took the time to clearly and simply share with them the gospel in a way that they could remember it and share it with someone else. But I also know that it's not My words that will leave the greatest impact on their lives. It's my life. So if you're a follower of Jesus, let's be intentional with how we articulate the Gospel to other people. But let's remember that while the Gospel is a message that's meant to be shared and meant to be spoken and meant to be written, it's equally important that we understand it's a message that's meant to be lived.

If you're not yet a follower of Jesus and you were encouraged to check out our our livestream by a friend, by a family member, if you've just stumbled upon us through a Google search or Facebook or through YouTube and something that I've shared today about this incredible God just sparks some interest in you. We encourage you to connect with us. You can do that by texting the word next to the number that you see on the screen or scanning the QR code and it'll lead you to a form on the Internet and you can let us know how we can help you, even if you are a follower of Jesus. If you'd like to know more about this again, fill out the Next Steps form by scanning the QR code or texting the word next to what you see on the screen. And then finally, I want to encourage you to come worship with us in person.

And when you do, know that each week, the first three Sundays of every month, we have Next Steps classes. And that means that the first week of February, next week, we have Next Steps. Discuss. Discover. It's a class of 11am in rooms 502, A and D, that's geared towards helping you discover how your story matters, but how your story is actually a part of God's incredible story.

And it'll help you discover how Greenwood Christian Church is a part of bringing those two stories together. Grateful for you. We're thankful for you. May the Gospel change your life as it has mine. Let me pray.

Father, I thank you for everyone who is able to watch and to listen.

God, I thank you that you love us enough to be an incredible God that has great plans and purposes for us that include all that Jesus has done and even more. God, would you help us in not only being able to share with others your good news, your incredible news, but Lord, being able to live it out as well. Help us and lead us, and it's in your name. We pray and trust the name of Jesus. Amen.

May you live in peace. This week.