What’s God's Good News?
This sermon was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, August 2. You can watch the video of this sermon by clicking below.
For the last few weeks we've been listening to stories. Buster Bray shared with us his Before Jesus, his Meeting Jesus, and his After Jesus. We heard testimonies of what my Luke 10 missions team witnessed God do in Greece this past June in the lives of Muslim refugees who have experienced Jesus through dreams, visions, and lifestyle discipleship. Two weeks ago, Jim LeShana and Lisa shared with us what God is building across the Yearly Meeting among our 40 Friends churches here in the Northwest. Last week Roger Knox stood right where I'm standing and told us his story too.
Here's what I've noticed. Every one of those stories followed the same shape. Before Jesus. Meeting Jesus. After Jesus. You see, that happens to be the basic template of sharing our story and it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
If you’re like me, and you also like a good backstory, today I want to tell you the story behind all of those stories. This is the one every other Jesus story borrows its shape from. This story is the greatest story that’s ever been told, and it's not just history, but the story we're all living inside, whether you've noticed it or not.
We call it the Gospel. And I want to spend our time together doing two things. First, my hope is you will walk away understanding what that word actually means, because I think we've heard it so many times it's gone a little numb on us. Second, we’ll be walking through it using the same three phrases we've been using during this Share Your Story series: Before Jesus, Meeting Jesus, After Jesus.
My hope is that by the time we're done, you won't just understand the Gospel better, but all of us will know how to tell it with confidence. Because that's the whole point of a story like this one. It’s so powerful and it was never meant to stay with us when we first heard it.
The Gospel was shared to keep sharing.
What Does "Gospel" Actually Mean?
First, let’s talk about what “Gospel” means.
The word gospel comes from the Greek word euangelion. Eu means good. Angelion means announcement, which is the same root word we get the word angel from, which simply means messenger. So euangelion meansGood News. That's the simple meaning.
But here's what most of us don't know. In the ancient world, euangelion wasn't a soft, private word. It was a public, political word. It was the word you used when a new king took the throne. When a herald stood in the town square and announced that everything was about to change because a new ruler had come to power, that announcement was called euangelion. And it was good news.
The Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures have their own version of this. The word is besorah, and the verb is bisser. When David was crowned king over Israel, there was a besorah, a royal proclamation that the throne now belonged to him. When Solomon took his father's place on the throne, the same thing happened. A besorah went out. The king had come. And it was good news to the entire kingdom.
Centuries before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah picked up this same language and pointed it somewhere much bigger.
Isaiah 52:7 CSB"How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the herald, who proclaims peace, who brings news of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns!'"
Isaiah wasn't talking about David or Solomon anymore. He was pointing forward to a King who was still coming to rule the entire Kingdom in a brand new way. This would be a cosmic King who would one day establish his rule not just over Israel, but over every nation on earth.
So when the Gospel writer Mark sits down to write his account of Jesus, he opens with a sentence that would have stopped the scroll for any first-century reader. He said…
Mark 1:1 CSB"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
They would instantly connect that Mark is making a royal announcement. He is standing in the town square of history and saying, the King has come, and everything in the Kingdom is about to change.
That's what euangelion means. That’s what the Gospel means. The Gospel is not good advice. It’s not a suggestion for a better life. The Gospel is a royal announcement. It’s a pronouncement of God’s Good News that a new King and a new Kingdom have arrived, and all of us are being invited to live inside of it. Amen?!
Let’s look at the Gospel’s…
Before Jesus
Every good story needs to tell us what things were like before everything changed. So let's start there.
What was the world like before this new King arrived?
Way back in the beginning, Genesis tells us that God made us to walk with him in such a way that it was close, unhurried, and face to face. We were never meant to wonder if God was for us or against us. We were made to know him intimately.
But somewhere along the way, we chose our own way over his. We wanted to be our own king. And that choice didn't just cost us a garden. It cost us the very closeness we were made for. Sin entered, and with it came distance. The intimacy we once had with God was gone— not because God moved— because we did.
“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way.” Isaiah 53:6
“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
By the time Jesus shows up, that distance has calcified into something so vast it was hard to mistake how far gone humanity had become. Israel was a conquered people living under Roman occupation. And Rome had adopted the Hellenized lifestyle of the Greeks, a culture built around placing self at the center of everything.
The Jews had no choice but to get swallowed up by this society where the powerful trampled the powerless, or go the opposite direction entirely. And what we see happening from the pages of scripture is religious leaders had turned God's law into a weight nobody could carry. People are hungry, sick, grieving, feeling desperately empty, barely scraping by, some living as outcasts, and everyone is told by every voice around them that this is simply how the world is. Empire wins because it always has.
If you strip away the specific details of first-century Judea, you'll recognize this world immediately, because it's still the one we live in. People still wonder if they matter. People still carry sickness in their bodies, emptiness and shame in their hearts. People are still told that the way things are is the way things will always be. The powers of this world win the day… or so it seems.
That— was the world waiting for a King. That— was the world before Jesus.
Meeting Jesus
Then something happens. An unknown and unassuming man from Nazareth begins to travel through Galilee, and the very first thing out of his mouth is an announcement— a proclamation of Good News.
Mark 1:15 CSB"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the gospel."
Let’s read that again.
Did you notice how Jesus doesn't say: “Alright folks get ready because I’m a good teacher and about to drop some wisdom your way”. He doesn't say, let me tell you a little parable to consider. What does he say? He says the time is fulfilled. The waiting is over. The Kingdom people have longed for since Isaiah stood on that mountain proclaiming his euangelion— his Good News— Jesus said it has come near, and it has come near in him. Amen?!
And then he goes and proves it. Mark records in his Gospel that Jesus teaches with an authority nobody had heard before, and people are amazed. He heals the sick, opens blind eyes and deaf ears, restores the outcasts, and sends demons running. He feeds thousands with a boy's lunch. Everywhere Jesus goes, the emptiness and brokenness of the world before him starts to come undone in his presence. This is what the Kingdom of God looks like when it shows up. Amen?!
But here's where the story gets strange, and here's where it becomes the good news we actually need.
This King's Kingdom didn't come the way every other kingdom in history had come— through power hungry conquerors, swords, and armies. It came through a cross.
Jesus gets arrested because he threatened the lifestyle and financial arrangements of the religious elites. He's beaten, mocked, and a crown is pressed onto his head, except it's made of thick, long, sharp thorns. He's shamed, stripped naked, whipped, and nailed to a Roman cross to die the death reserved for the worst of criminals. To anyone watching that day, this looked like the total, humiliating defeat of an itinerant man who had claimed to be King.
But Mark wants his audience to see something else entirely. He wants us to see this moment not as Jesus's darkest hour, but as his coronation. This was the moment Jesus as King took his throne. It looked like Rome won, but what most couldn’t see at the time was that the cross was actually Jesus winning, in the only way that could ever truly set us free.
Mark’s narrative reveals the least likely person in the whole scene to say it out loud. A Roman centurion, standing at the foot of the cross, watching Jesus breathe his last, utters these words:
Mark 15:39b CSB“Truly this man was the Son of God!”
The man everyone assumed was defeated is declared King by the very empire that thought it had killed him.
As we consider all of this, how does the cross accomplish anything that makes sense to be Good News? You see it’s because our sin had built a chasm between us and God, and someone had to pay the price for a bridge. Jesus, fully God and fully man, took our place and his death made the way.
“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you.” Isaiah 59:2
1 Peter 3:18 CSB"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."
All of us sitting here know the cross wasn’t the end of the story when it comes to Jesus. Three days later, he walked out of the grave they put him in, proving that death itself now answers to him. Death has no power in his Kingdom. Amen?!
That's who we meet in Jesus. He’s not a good teacher offering advice. Jesus is a King who conquered sin and death by giving up his own life so we don’t have to succumb to the consequence of sin, which is death, and eternal separation from God. He is now inviting us into the Kingdom he opened up.
After Jesus
So what changes? What does life actually look like after you've met this King?
Apostle Paul said:
Romans 6:4 CSB"Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."
By surrendering our life and will and whole self to Jesus, we don’t receive a slightly improved version of our old life, but God’s promise in scripture is we receive a new one.
Paul also said:
2 Corinthians 5:17 CSB"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!"
The distance that our sin created is closed because Jesus bridged the chasm for us. Because of his death and resurrection, we get to walk with God again, close, unhurried, and face to face, the way we were always meant to— intimately.
And this part’s important... After Jesus is not simply about your soul finally being at peace, though it is that, but After Jesus means you now belong to a King whose Kingdom is still advancing, and he has chosen to advance it through people like us.
Every act of healing we offer someone, every table we open to someone hungry or lonely, every kindness we extend to someone the world has written off, that's the Kingdom breaking in, exactly the way it did through Jesus himself. These are the acts of this King’s people. These are the acts of his Church.
And one day, the story ends the way every good king's story should. He returns, and everything empty and broken gets restored. Every tear gets wiped away. Every wrong is made right. Full restoration, forever, under the reign of the King who already proved on a cross and out of a grave that his love is stronger than anything trying to stand against it.
That’s the life after Jesus that his church is called to bring here and now. We are not just forgiven with the intention of staying home and hunkering down, but we are sent to go out and tell the story of his Good News. Amen?!
Conclusion
Do you have beautiful feet?
Paul wrote in…
Romans 10:14-15 CSB"How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things!"
That passage isn't meant only for pastors, missionaries, and church leaders. It's for every person who’s ever made the decision to follow Jesus. It’s for everyone who has a Before, a Meeting, and an After Jesus.
Your story and the Gospel story aren't two different things. That’s what happens when this bigger story of God’s Good News reaches you personally and then your story gets intertwined within the greater global story of what he’s doing in and through the Church.
So here's what I'm asking you to do this week. Take the same three phrases we've been using and write your story. Use them on the Gospel itself and weave it into your story. Practice telling it.
Before Jesus: This is how the world was like, how you were, and why he had to come.
Meeting Jesus: This is what he did when he showed up and brought his Kingdom, healing and forgiving and dying and rising. How did you meet him?
After Jesus: This is what's different now, this is how you’re different now, and this is the hope everyone gets to carry into whatever happens throughout life.
You don't need a seminary degree to tell this story. You don't need perfect words. You just need to know God’s Good News well enough to share it with someone else. That's what a herald with beautiful feet does. People with beautiful feet carry God’s Good News to people who haven't heard it yet.
Jesus told his followers,
Matthew 28:18-20 CSB"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
That's his great commission for all of us. And that’s how his Kingdom continues to expand and do its healing, forgiving, dying, and rising throughout the world through the power, grace, and love of Jesus Christ.
You know, the reality of hell is being as far away from God that you could possibly get.
Only Jesus can restore our broken relationship with God. “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” 1 John 5:11-12
Only by faith, nothing by our own efforts, can bridge us back to God. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
Jesus declared his royal announcement that God’s Good News is that he came to bring us close. The King has come. His Kingdom is here. Real hope, real purpose, real freedom, real family comes only from knowing him.
You can choose to put your faith in Jesus right now by praying something like this:
“God, I know you made me to walk closely with you and live a life that matters. My sin, choosing my own way over yours, has cut me off from you, and there’s nothing I can do to fix that on my own. I need to be forgiven. I need your new life.
I believe Jesus died on the cross and rose again to pay for my sin and break its hold on me. By faith, I’m surrendering to you as my Savior and King. I want to follow you with my whole life. Forgive my sin, give me eternal life, and fill me with your Holy Spirit to make me more like Jesus every day.
In the Name of Jesus, Amen.”
You want to hear some more good news? He's not finished writing this story. He's just waiting for you to share your part of it with someone else.
Will you share this story?
If you found value in this, here are some additional articles for you.
