Good News

7/17/1986

Here's some good news. All of what we have been talking about would lead us to believe there isn't any hope, right? Certainly there isn't any hope by ourselves. But, that's really the whole point. That's the nature of what we call “gospel,” the good news…that there really isn't any hope in ourselves. We are really not going to make it. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. “All” includes everyone who reads this. We have fallen short of the glory of God. There isn't any chance. And yet, when God looked down at us and saw that we have all come short of His glory, He said, “Well, if they are reaching up and because of their wretched hearts and the wickedness in their being they reach up and still come so far short of the glory of God, then I will do something. I will bring My glory down to them.” And, that's exactly what happened.

God’s infinite wisdom is something that we will never fully understand. Even the apostle Paul, who was caught up into the third heaven and saw Jesus face to face in His resurrection, didn't understand it and called it a “mystery.” He said, ”I don't understand how it could be.” It's a mystery. But, God incarnate has become flesh. The eternal and immortal God has become a human being—born of God, the Father, through the Holy Spirit. God is His Father. And a human being, a teenage girl, is the mother of God?! How could it be? The angels long to look into these things. It's impossible! We can't comprehend that. And yet, because the gulf was so big, sin was so wretched within us that there was no hope because we were blinded in our minds. We couldn't even see it. We couldn't even see how wretched we were. So, God came down; His glory came down to earth. Immanuel, God with us—a little baby born in an animal trough. And, He grew up and walked into life, into this thing that we are walking around in. He wrote Himself into the script of mankind and walked around with us.

That's the hope—Glory came to live with us. He dwelt for a while with us. Glory came to His own and His own received Him not. Those were religious people that didn't receive him. Amazing! They didn't want any part of it. They could study it and they could memorize it; and yet, they wouldn't deal with it. They just wouldn't deal with it. It's always been that way. Martin Luther showed up in the 1500's and said, “Wait a minute! We've gotten way off base here! That's not what God said. God didn't say that. Man said that. Let's distinguish between what God said and what man said.” People wanted to put Luther to death for that. They were saying, “Well, everybody's sincere. It doesn't matter what God said. It's good enough. God can be here and God can be there.” So they wanted to put Martin Luther to death.

The same thing happened to him that happened to Jesus. What's wrong with the sterile system of religion called Judaism? I'll tell you what's wrong with it—God wasn't in it! He wasn't part of it. There were no marks of God being there. So, Jesus came down and showed us something different and men hated it. They didn't want it. They liked the security of sterility, and they didn't want the challenge of life. They didn't want to come into the light so that their deeds might be exposed. It's much easier to shrink back and to believe a certain number of things than it is to come into the light and let your whole life be displayed before men—to shout from the rooftops what things are whispered in the inner chambers. The average person doesn't like that. And, if they can find something that will allow them to shrink back, they will.

However, this is not true of a person with a good heart. God is searching. His eyes run to and fro over the whole earth to look for a good heart—somebody who is willing to take a chance and move ahead. Will you be a person like that? Someone who is willing to let his life be exposed and who will reach out for the Kingdom of God in all of its Glory and not fool around with cheap imitations. Jesus came down to give that Life—to give glory, to give power, to give immortality to His people. Those with good hearts will grab hold of that. But the average person didn’t really care too much for that.