Romans chapter one, beginning in verse 13. Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, but oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and a salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. I'll conclude our reading this morning, and drawn from this scripture reading today, give maybe an odd title to our message this morning, The Bad News of the Gospel. The Bad News of the Gospel. I feel certain this is probably going to take me two weeks to talk about or to preach on. There's many things in my heart that I want to convey. And yesterday, as I was thinking about today and had been preparing throughout the week, planned to come with a different intent. I felt compelled. My boys and I, the older boys and I, were mowing the yard. And as I was doing that, I was just thinking a lot. And there was a comment whenever Kathleen's mom was down this past week that she worked in the public schools like I did for a number of years. And there was a comment that she had made about how you get out of 13 years of schooling And then there's still certain important things you don't know, which that's not an insult. That's just a sometimes we get so busied teaching so many things that we forget some of the central things. And that got my mind churning a little bit, perhaps thinking about last week's graduation celebration or whatever you want to call it, presentations. I thought about for those of you that are younger, there's many things that we as a church strive to teach you. Whole lot of things, whole lot of stories. Very important truths that are all inspired. But I began to think about what is the one thing that I want you, like my children when they leave my home, what I want you to know from the scriptures. And simply put, it's the gospel. I want you to know the gospel. And if we fail to do a fun craft on Jonah and the whale or David never kills Goliath, it'll be okay. But it is not okay for people to leave our homes and our churches and not know the central message of the gospel. And so yesterday, after our boys got done, I sat down and I just started to preach the gospel to them. Because I want them to know, even more than my salvation experience, what it took that I could be saved. And so today I wanna ask you, I'm gonna do my best, I'm gonna really try hard to keep this as simple as I possibly can. I'm gonna act like you've never heard the gospel. And young person today, whether you're five or six or seven, where you're 16, 17, or 18 years old, and you sat in this church and you're gonna walk away, no doubt, with a good worldview and a value system aligned with the morality of scriptures. But if that's all you walk away with, then we have missed the mark, regrettably. I have missed the mark as your pastor, regrettably, if you cannot tell, if you're a person who's been a member here for years, and I ask you, like I did my boys yesterday, I ask them just a simple question, what is the gospel? And if I ask you that question, you can't just pick up the whole book. The whole book is not the gospel. There is a particular part of this book that I believe can be defined as the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so this morning, and it's probably gonna take a couple weeks to talk about some of this, but I wanna keep it simple. So parents, make sure your kids are listening this morning, because this is really important. and talk to them about this this week. Ask them questions, because listen to me, more than being a good husband and wife, father and mother, you want them to know the gospel. So make sure to confirm the word at home, this week especially. May I have grown kids, make sure they know the gospel. Why is this so important? Well, Paul tells us in verse 16, first he says this about himself, and I'm not gonna get off on this point very far. He says, I am a debtor, basically to all people. I owe all people a debt. And do you know what that debt is? Telling them the gospel. All manner of people, I owe it to them to share that with them. And as he's anticipating going to this pagan city where they're persecuting Christians, he says this, that not only am I a debtor to them, but even amidst persecution, I am not ashamed to talk about the gospel. Yesterday, as I was telling my kids the gospel, there was a point that I began to share where emotions began to flare up. And for some reason, I wanted to restrain them. I thought, no, no. I'm not ashamed in my kitchen for my children to see that what moves me at the deepest level telling them is the gospel truth and the beauty of it. Paul says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Why is the gospel so important? He says next, it is the power of God unto salvation. Please hear me today. Young person, the message of salvation does not begin with me getting up and preaching a bludgeoning sermon that is rooted in fear of hell. And then you coming forward and crying really hard for a really long period of time, and then suddenly you get something that takes that away. That is not the essence of the Gospel. That might be in some a side effect of the Gospel, but it is not meant to be the heart of the Gospel message. Because the Gospel means good news. And let me tell you, the gospel is very good news. It is the best news. It is the news that the world needs to so desperately hear correctly. And Paul says it is the power of God unto salvation. So this morning, if you're lost and without God, I want you to know that this message is the revelatory message that leads to your salvation. That's why God left it. It reveals a truth that you need to trust in the person that this truth reveals in order to find eternal salvation. And without the gospel, nobody will be saved. If I don't know who to trust, if I don't know the work that he has done, there's no hope for me. So the gospel starts out for something to be good news. There has to be some bad news. And I want you to know that this morning, I'm probably only gonna get as far as the bad news. And listen to me, it's really bad news, and it's not a bad news of far off, it's a bad news about you. And it's not cliche storytelling. It's about the story of your existence, your life, and your nature. This is you. See, I think the Old Testament is grossly misunderstood very often, not just sections of it. But what the world has painted is that in the Old Testament, God was just this evil, vindictive, mean, angry being who kills people randomly. And in the New Testament is this guy named Jesus comes along and he starts being nice. And that's the perversion of this world as to the story of the gospel. Listen to me, God is never the bad guy. And making him the bad guy is an attempt to do one thing. Protect you from being revealed to yourself as the real bad guy. Listen to me this morning. You are the bad guy. You are the sinful one. You are the problem. It's not because of your pants, it's not because of our culture, it's not because of any problem that people have imposed upon you. Listen to me, it is your willful rebellion and disobedience against God that is the problem. And the world is terrified to say that and parents are terrified in this coddling culture to just point blankly acknowledge we are the problem. And there is nothing good and redeemable about us that makes us worthy of God's love. And so the Old Testament is revealing this story And one of its central aims is to reveal to all of us just how deep, just how broad sin really is and how offensive it is to God. And so it begins by telling this story about the beginning of sin. Now the first three chapters of Genesis talk a lot about creation. And I think sometimes people get lost in the technicalities about creation, which are important, but that's not the central purpose of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. Something much more important than what God did on what day exists in the first three chapters of Genesis. And that is after God made man and had a relationship with him, God gave, He revealed something to him. And that revelation comes in what we call law, a rule. Do not, and one of the things that I love about Genesis three, one of the things I love about what God did with Adam, is that if you're five years old this morning, you can understand the commandment that God gave to Adam. Do not touch that. Do not eat that. Have everything else. Do what you please everywhere else. But this one thing, Don't touch it. Don't taste it. And the day you do, there's gonna be a change that occurs between me and you. Isn't that something common? Like if we all have relationships, because that's what it's meant to portray, is a relationship. There's God and there's Adam. And at this point, there's oneness, there's unity between them, there's agreement, there's friendship. That's probably the best way to put it. There's friendship between God and Adam. And God says, if you wanna keep in this relationship, I have one rule. Don't touch that. And we can continue to have this relationship. And Adam, breaks that one thing that God asks. That feels very personal to me because I feel very often that the same thing exists in my own heart between me and God. There are certain sins and attitudes. There are certain things that God has not only instructed me in his word, to resist and stay away from. But in my conscience, he has especially spoken to me in my conscience and said, that thing in particular that you have a proneness toward, don't. For your good and for our relationship, just don't do that. Just don't think those things. Just don't. Stir up those bad attitudes Man I Just like a magnet and Constantly drawn and let me say this sometimes passively But sometimes deliberately Sometimes I know I am descending the mount into the valley of sin and I know that the quagmire of sin that just is gonna consume me and overcome me and be like this swamp that just fills me all over with filth. I know I am headed that way and I am watching myself go. All the while, step after step, justifying every single step as I go. Adam just, breaks the rule. That's the origin, that's the beginning of sin in the world. See, Adam reveals the beginning of sin, but the Old Testament continues. We were in the kitchen when I was telling the boys this, and Kathleen, I asked her, she was working, and I said, I want you to give me what you would say is one of the biggest examples of sin in the Old Testament. Like what's something that happens there that just reveals how awful mankind really is? Well, not surprisingly, she has a whole lot of things to choose from. And not so surprisingly, it's so brutal and wicked that it's just hard to think about for very, very long. She said, remember that story where this nation had a false god, and it was like made of brass or iron, and it was, I don't know, we'll say 10 feet tall in their temple, and it was hollow. So inside of that, they would put stuff to burn. And they would get that fire really hot. And that statue would be just like a frying pan. And the God's hands were outstretched like this. And the people would come and offer their children to the idol. Man is wicked, isn't he? Think about that. Think about you ladies going through nine long months. Think about all what God did when he made even the process of having children and oh what What a gift that it was meant to be. A gift unparalleled to nearly anything else in creation. That a man and a woman could become one flesh and have one after their own kind. Blood of their blood and flesh of their flesh to love and to cherish and to raise. And the Bible speaks over and over about the blessing of children. And that the more that arrows in the quiver, the better. the more joy. And yet, mankind in his heart by nature is so perverse and wicked that when the knowledge of God and the truth of God is removed from us, we begin to create all of these own systems of religion and systems of behavior. And so this morning we can look at ourselves and whether you're saved or not, I can say with deep assurance that your value system and the life that you lived is propped up by the knowledge of God's word. Where do you think that this country learned true morality? Why do you think this is such a joyous place to live? It's because God, in his word, revealed the ways that are most both glorifying to him, but advantageous to us. What works best for mankind? He revealed that in his word. And throughout our history, men and women have adopted those values, and it is the implementation of those values that make this a pleasant place to be. But what if God restrained those values in his presence? And the Old Testament reveals nations that never had the light of truth in an explicit, clear manner revealed to them. And so they created their own value systems. And we read the Old Testament, and what Kathleen pointed out was not some exception to the rule. It was the norm. Unless we criticize those people, we find that dwelling within us is the very same nature that dwells in them. And so had we not had the knowledge of God given to us, we would be acting no differently. The Bible reveals the whole Testament, the broadness of man's sin through the law. You know, What's amazing is how, not only deeply I can break God's law, but how broadly I can do it. Like you know how in, maybe in your profession, you become very good at a particular field of study, or a particular skill, and you just keep on developing that skill deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and you become an expert at that. But it's, one humbling thing is it's very narrow. It's a very narrow, form of expertise. I want you to know today that I'm not only an expert deep in specific sins, but I have a broad range of expertise in sin. And Law's friend, you do too, and that's what the scriptures through God Law is meant to reveal to us. It is meant to teach us through God's law that when God gave laws to mankind, it was to show you, listen, you're not just bad in one area, but your expertise in sin covers a multitude of things. And so let me ask you, do you lie? The Bible says all men are liars. We lie to ourself. That's probably the person I'm most guilty of lying to, isn't it? How do I lie to myself? Justifying perverse motivations, sinful motivations, why I do something, why you do something. And the Bible reveals through the law, and the Bible says the reason the law was given is so that sin might abound in your mind and your understanding. You might come to a deep knowledge that, listen, you are full of sin, not provoked by other people just because you choose it. Look at Romans chapter three, verse 10, Paul. is making this point in the book of Romans is beginning in verse 20, or excuse me, verse 19 in Romans one, all the way down through this point, he's trying to get everyone to realize that listen, whether you're a Jew or whether you're a Gentile, whether whoever you are, it doesn't matter. Everyone is universally all under sin. We are all perverse, we all have wickedness and evil in the heart. And he comes to this, Summary point. And he looks back in the Old Testament and he says, I'm gonna prove this to you, not only by what I've said, but by picking out verses through the Old Testament, putting them all together and quoting them one after the other after the other to show that through all time, God has tried to communicate to all of us, we are full of sin. So look what he says in verse 10. As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of their way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good. No, not one. Their throat is an open grave. With their deeds they have used deceit. The poison of snakes is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. It just gives us a succinct summary. I was telling the boys yesterday, I asked them what an asp was, because that's what's in the King James, that's what you read, and I changed the words. They weren't sure, and I said, it's like a snake. So an asp is, the poison it's talking about is a venom. It's saying, In mankind's mouth, we are like snakes full of venom with our mouths. Oh man, isn't that true? Some of you are shouting amen inside, right, towards yourself. Because sometimes the words exit so fast before the righteous heart, the righteous spirit conformed into Christ's image can stop them. It just comes out. This just reveals all the various ways into the depth that man is sinful. Now listen, part of the gospel story is to properly recognize you are not a victim to God not saving you. Well, I think that can often be a undercurrent thought that people have who seek the Lord for a little while. Well, I've come and prayed. Something's wrong with God. I can assure you that is not the case. Something is wrong with you. And you know what that is? Sin. It's sin. Whether it's the sin of unbelief, whether it's the sin of idolatry, whether it's the sin of pride that exalts yourself and won't humble itself, whether it's the unwillingness to confess before Almighty God who you are and what you are, The problem is sin in you, period. The scripture reveals to us, man's sin problem. And we find here that man is not just a little bit sinful. And God is not being rude or impolite or not following social etiquette by saying, you know what, I don't wanna have a relationship with you. Because another point of the gospel that's essential is to recognize amidst man's sin, who God is. God is holy. God is purity. In God there is light and no darkness at all. I was telling my boys yesterday, when I was about Emmeter Judson's age, probably both, I'm sure both, I played basketball and I used to fib a lot. Mom didn't go to my game very often because she was working a lot, and so she would ask, how many points did you score tonight? A lot of times I knew exactly how many I scored. What do you think I always did when I gave her the answer? I just bumped it up a few extras. I didn't score six points, I scored 12 points. I hit a shot not when there was one second on the clock, but there was really 30 seconds on the clock. And though we trivialize those things because their impact upon us is quite small, I want you to recognize that a being that was created after the image of God and made to be in fellowship with Him, a God who is holy and just, who only fellowships with righteousness and holiness, all sin is worthy of his disconnection from the sinner. God wants nothing to do with people who are sinful. And so part of our biggest problem is that God is good. You never thought of that, did you? That one of our biggest problems is that God is good and we're not. And because he's so good, and we're so not good, God cannot have fellowship with darkness, let alone the degree of darkness that we are. Now listen, young person, today, oftentimes I think we rightly lament the lack of conviction among us during our services, and rightly so. I wanna tell you that I think very often what is needed in the heart of a lost person, regardless of whether they're here or by themselves running about to and fro, is they need to have a recognition of how filthy their sin is before the sight of a holy God. If you look to your friends and if you look to your parents and if you look to other people and thereby determine how sinful that you are, you're going to feel okay about yourself. You're gonna feel just slightly misaligned from God. You're gonna feel maybe like, you know, there's tier one, I'm just a tier two person. But if you erase all comparison, and you just consider who you are before God, a God that expects perfect holiness, no misthought, no misspoken word, no misdeed, one time ever, that that is what God will fellowship. And then you dwell for a few moments upon all the sin you've committed just this week in thought and in word and attitude. I'll tell you, when I do that, the conscience that God placed inside of me begins to preach the gospel to me. Oh, you need more than the conscience. You need the Holy Spirit of God to convict you as well, but listen, I think sometimes people's conscience are just so calloused over. And we've become so immune that sin abounds and we compare ourselves to the sin abounds. And so then we look at the unholiness of ourselves. We look at the unrighteousness of ourselves. We look at the sin of ourselves and say, you know what? I just told a little fib here. I just spoke once a little harshly to the person that I love. They don't really care anyway. And I did this and I did this. None of those things are a big deal. Listen to me, to God, they're a very big deal. Because there's sin inside of you. And so God says, you know what? Because I'm holy and just, because I'm your creator, and because within you, you know that there is going to be a reckoning for sin. You know, it's sad today, the way the world is so perverted to think that by carrying out justice, The one who is doing that is the sinner. And so now there's gentle parenting where we don't ever wanna discipline our child because it could cause them some harmful thinking, it could make them feel bad. Good, if they're in sin, that's what a child needs is to know, even through that small interaction of telling a fib that there is judgment for sin. And when you absorb their sin and just pass over it, perhaps you're just easing their conscience when they're confronted by God with their own sin. Woe to us when we deviate from the systems and patterns that God has set up in His Word. Maybe sin has just been too compared. So there's judgment that's due. And God called out and he said, listen, the penalty for sin is eternal separation from me. I'm never gonna have to do with anybody that sins. And those people are deserving of it. And so he created this place called hell. And you know, I think hell is, Woefully misunderstood. Because the first thing that people think about are flames and darkness. And let me tell you, in hell are flames and darkness. There's no doubt about it. Flames and darkness in hell. But I think because people don't know the richness of the goodness of God, They don't understand that the true pains of hell are found when we are banished eternally from the presence of God. Everything you enjoy, everything you enjoy, everything, everything you enjoy is from God. Do you enjoy your health? Feeling good? That's a gift from God, truly. God gave it to you as a gift for you. Do you enjoy being loved and loving people? I think that's one of the richest things in life, isn't it? What I love about love, there you go. What I love about love is how indescribable and unutterable that it is, but how you can know it exists and is real. What do I mean? Everybody's definition of love, beyond the obvious God is love, But when they try to describe it, I think, yeah, it's pretty good. It doesn't cut it. And so then you take somebody's really good definition and you pair it with somebody else's really good definition. I say, well, that's a little better than those two, but it's still pretty awful compared to what I know. They say, well, then you give your own definition. I don't know. Because love is something experienced so deeply and with such an unutterable sense of what it is. And you've experienced no doubt from time to time. You've been the recipient of just this outpouring of abundant love. And let me tell you, every moment you ever felt that was a gift from God. Joy. You know, I've realized that the last year. I am in pursuit of greater joy in Christ in my life. I need to have more joy. Not expressing it necessarily, that's fine too, but I'm saying the experience of joying in God and joying in Christ and joying in the blessings of God. Joy is a gift that is meant to bring vibrance to life and God has given it to us, or peace. Oh man. You know something that brought to my mind recently is how easily my mind is troubled Some of you are like this. Your mind is troubled just so easily. So, you know, if you got a leaky faucet at home, you can be out doing things you're enjoying and some reason that darn leaky faucet is still disrupting your ability to enjoy something. And some people are that way. They're just wired to allow things, their threshold to disrupt joy or peace very low. And so sometimes when I'm experiencing peace, sometimes when I go to bed, and all is good with life for just a few moments, it almost, as I'm getting older, brings me to tears. because I realized just how fragile that my life and my mind are from being disrupted from the peace and the joy and the love and the comfort that I can feel in that moment. So I can just rejoice in Him. All of that is a gift from God. I could go on and on and on. But everything that you have ever enjoyed for just a moment and found satisfaction in is a gift of God. And do you know what hell is? A place where God is not found. So everything that you've ever experienced that has been good will not be there. And then if you're lost today, everything you've never experienced that is beyond what you've experienced as good is also not there. Here's what I mean. My kids have experienced up to this point limited experiences in life. Thus their understanding of the joys and the pleasures of life, the good things in life are limited. because they've only lived for so long and seen so many things. And as they grow, one of the joys of parenthood is when they begin to discover new areas of life that heighten the goodness of life. And you stand there with them and you experience it so when they get married and you're standing there on their wedding day and you feel this overwhelming joy, it's because you know They're entering into a new area of life whereby their joy is going to grow. And so you sit there with tears and an eagerness saying, I can't wait for you to experience the joys of marriage and the joys of having children and the joys of listening to that first cry of your child, all of those things. You've not experienced any of those things and I can't wait for you to have that. Like that lost person, That's what you won't have in hell from having never been saved. In other words, there are joys that have saved people that we have, that you've not experienced, that will also be deprived from you when you're in hell. And I'll tell you the foremost one, and then I'm gonna close. Be gracious when I try to explain this. Please. The nearer I walk to the Lord, the closer I get to His goodness. The more back here in this little office, or in my home by myself, when I am in His presence, for real in His presence. Sometimes, here recently, it's been as I've been reading the Psalms, I'll read the Psalms as my morning devotion on. I can't explain, I can't explain to you the fellowship with God that I have felt dwelling there with his word and knowing that it is him that is feeding my spirit in a way that everything else in this life, every single thing in this life is insufficient to fill. And lately there's just been this awareness, this heightened awareness inside of me That the fellowship with God, my creator, that I have at those moments, despite the lofty stature that he holds. I look at it this way some days. Some days I get up and I sit at my kitchen counter before everybody gets up. And for just a few minutes I open up my Bible to the book of Psalms. And some days the birds have just begun chirping and it's still dark outside. And in my mind, the world is still asleep. And I live as a nobody in a nowhere little town in a house that never going to be notable. I open up the word and God himself comes down to that place. Not in this bang, not in this, not in this, what the movie's depicted as. In a way that I almost have grown more to prefer. There's a time and a place for wedding celebrations, but you know what's better than a wedding celebration is just the joy of having unity with your spouse on a normal day. I don't need the pageantry. I don't need all the things. I just want to be in harmony with you. That's all I want. Some days when God comes down and says, let's just be in harmony together. Why don't you feast on what I've given? I began to just slowly, calmly drink of his word. And it just begins to satisfy. Just quiet satisfaction. There is a joy that I just described that what I just said does not do it justice. As the world seeks the pageantry to fill the void and to impress others, the greatest joy is Him. I have Him. And I'm satisfied in Him. In hell, you will never be satisfied in Him. You'll never know of that. You'll be forever separated from that. And there will be a knowledge that nothing can alter the state that you're in. Friends, this morning I have told you bad news. But it is essential, I've not even been close to it. I wish I could have done so much better. Lost today. You're a sinner. And judgment is forthcoming. So next week, I'm gonna tell you of some good news amidst the bad news. Because there's some really good news And it has to do with the person that came for you so that you wouldn't have to experience all the things that are awaiting. I pray the Lord would do some good today with his word. I pray as we near our revival, we would jointly pray for sin to abound in the heart and the conscience of those that are lost, and for Christ to be magnified in their hearts. I pray that will be the case. That's our message today. We stop with some bad news. We look forward to next week getting to some good news.