Bad News & Good News

Q: What does the Bible say about the wages of sin?

The Bible states that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Romans 6:23 clearly articulates the dire consequence of sin, stating, 'for the wages of sin is death.' This highlights the seriousness of sin, revealing that it incurs a penalty that leads to spiritual death and separation from God. However, this verse does not end on a bleak note; it also provides hope by declaring that 'the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.' This duality reflects the Christian message that while sin leads to death, God offers a means of salvation through the sacrifice of His Son.

Q: Why is understanding the bad news of sin important for Christians?

Understanding the bad news of sin is crucial as it helps Christians appreciate the depth of God's grace in the good news of salvation. The bad news of sin is essential to the Christian faith because it lays the groundwork for understanding the necessity of salvation. If one does not comprehend the seriousness of sin – that its wages are death and that everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God – the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ can seem trivial. By truly grasping the extent of their sinfulness and the impending judgment, Christians can appreciate the magnitude of God's grace and the redemptive work of Christ more profoundly. This understanding leads to genuine gratitude and a deepened relationship with God, fostering a life that reflects His righteousness.

Q: How do we know that Jesus fulfills the law for righteousness?

Jesus fulfilled the law perfectly, providing the righteousness that we cannot achieve on our own. In Romans 10:4, Paul states that 'Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.' This indicates that Jesus, through His perfect obedience, fulfills the demands of the law completely. He lived a sinless life, adhering to every requirement of God's holy standard, thus becoming the perfect representation of righteousness. Moreover, 2 Corinthians 5:21 underscores this truth by stating, 'For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.' Therefore, when we place our faith in Christ, His righteousness is credited to us, allowing us to stand justified before God.

Q: What is the good news of salvation?

The good news of salvation is that through Jesus Christ, we are offered eternal life despite the consequences of our sin. The good news, or Gospel, is fundamentally about Jesus Christ and His redemptive work on behalf of sinners. As stated in 1 Timothy 1:15, 'This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' The good news emphasizes that, although the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), God provides eternal life as a gift through faith in Jesus. This gift is received by grace and is not based on our works or righteousness but solely on Christ's merits. By believing in Him, one can experience forgiveness and be reconciled to God, transforming the trajectory from death to eternal life.

Now, everyone is familiar with
the stories which begin with this phrase, I have bad news
and good news. Well, that's the title of my
message today, Bad News and Good News. I want you to turn with me to
the book of Romans, chapter 6, verse 23. And here's the bad
news and the good news. Romans 6, 23. Paul says here,
the bad news, the wages of sin is death. And the good news,
but the gift of God The gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Bad news and good news. Now a
man will not hear the good news until he's first heard the bad
news. And a man will not be interested in the good news until he knows
the extent of the bad news. And after a man has heard, really
heard in his heart the good news, He'll no longer fear the bad
news. Did you hear me? Did you hear
what I said? I said a man will not hear the
good news, he'll not hear it, until he's first heard the bad
news. And a man will not be interested
in the gift of God until he knows the extent of the wages of sin. And after one has heard, really
heard in his heart and in his soul that good news, the gift
of God, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord, he'll never any longer fear the bad news because there's
therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus
our Lord. Well, let's dwell on those two things for a little
while. What is the bad news and what is the good news? First
of all, the bad news. The wages of sin is death. Sin, when it's finished, bringeth
forth death. Now, I don't like to dwell on
the bad news. I don't like to dwell on unpleasant
things. But if we're going to be honest
with our congregations, if we're going to be honest with our heroes,
we're going to have to preach the bad news. Now, whether we
like it or not, It's true, the wages of sin is death. Whether we like it or not, it's
true, the wages of sin is death. Now let me give you seven things.
I want you, and I believe if you write these down, it will
be helpful to you to write them down and study them. Now listen
to them, seven things, seven things that have to do with this
bad news. The first one is this. There
is an eternal, holy God, an almighty, eternal, holy God that I cannot
satisfy. I cannot please this God. Now, that's right. There's no
way that I can please this holy God. The scripture says that.
It says, in the flesh, no man can please God. In the flesh,
no man can please God. The scripture says, all have
sinned and come short. of the glory of God, of the pleasure
of God. He dwells in a light to which
no man can approach. This is what God said to Israel
when he gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Their people
were all out there, and the thunder and the lightning and the smoke
and the glory of God filled the mountains. And God said to the
people, Don't come near the mountain. Stay away. Stay away. You cannot
please this God. And then the tabernacle. When
you view that tabernacle in the wilderness, there's the holy
of holies in which God dwelt. And no man was allowed to come
into that holy of holies. Stay out. Only the high priest
once a year, and then not without blood. So there is a holy God,
an eternal, almighty, holy God that I cannot please. That's bad news. Secondly, now
get this. There's a holy law which I cannot
keep. Paul wrote this in Galatians.
He said, tell me, you that would be under the law, do you not
hear the law? Would you be under the law of
God? Would you seek to obey the law of God? Do you hear the law
of God? The holy law of God requires
what you cannot produce, what you cannot keep. The Holy Lord
God requires absolute, unchangeable, perfect obedience, inwardly and
outwardly. There's a law that I cannot keep.
It demands what you and I do not have. It demands first a
holy birth. It demands a holy love. It demands
a sinless heart. It condemns even a fault contrary
to perfection. That's bad news. There's a law. which I cannot keep, a holy,
immaculate, infinite God that I cannot please. And there's
a law given by that God, impossible for me to keep. Bad news. And
then thirdly, there is a righteousness. There is a righteousness. Now,
the Bible talks all the way through about righteousness, righteousness,
righteousness. There is a righteousness and
a holiness required which I cannot produce. I know a lot of people
are trying it. That's what he said in Romans
10. He said they're ignorant of God's holiness and going about
to establish their own righteousness. But our Lord said in Matthew
5.20, I say unto you, and he said this to his disciples, I
say unto you, my chosen twelve, my disciples, except your righteousness
exceed, exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
you shall in no case enter the kingdom of God. You've got to
have a righteousness far better, far greater than the best righteousness
that any man can produce. There's a righteousness required,
and this is the very holiness of God himself which is required
of all men. Deuteronomy 10.12 says this,
What doth the Lord thy God require of thee? Have you ever read that
scripture? That's pretty plain, isn't it?
It's a good question. What doth the Lord thy God require
of thee? Can you answer that? I can. Read on. But to fear the Lord
thy God, fear him in a reverence, an awe, a worship, a subjection,
fear the Lord thy God, walk in all his ways, not the ones you
approve of, the ones you can keep, all his ways, love him
with all your heart, serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart
and with all thy soul. for tall order in it, and there's
no way that you can do it. Absolutely no way. There's a
righteousness I cannot produce. That's bad news, because God
cannot compromise his law, he cannot compromise his holiness,
he cannot accept anything inferior to be accepted, the Word of God
says it must be perfect. And under that rule, Nothing
good you've ever done has been accepted because it's not perfect. And then fourthly, this is bad
news, there's a love I cannot give. There's a lot of talk about
love. I hear the talk all the time. I hear them talk about love.
But I'll tell you this, the love which God requires, no man knows
anything about. No man, no woman, no boy, no
girl has at all. Not even a smidgen of it. Not
the love which God requires. This love requires loving God
with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. You know anything
about that? And this love requires you to
love your neighbor as you love yourself. Know anything about
that? This love requires you to love your enemies Love them
that hate you, and them that despise you, and them that say
all manner of evil against you. Do what? Tolerate them, pity
them, no sir. Love them. Love as God loves. Lay down your life for your enemies. That's the love that is required,
that you and I cannot give. That's bad news. God cannot accept
anything less. Nothing less. And then fifthly,
this is bad news, but it won't change. There's a sin that I
cannot get rid of. That's right, there's a sin.
We're sinners. We're sinners. Didn't used to be sinners, we're
sinners now. There are unbelieving sinners and believing sinners
and saved sinners and unsaved sinners and white sinners and
black sinners and old sinners and young sinners, but everybody
in this world, born from Adam, of the human race right now,
as of this moment, is a sinner. And if anybody says he has no
sin, he's a liar and the truth's not in him. And he makes God
a liar. There's a sin we cannot get rid
of. There's none good, no, not one. There's none righteous,
no, not one. There's none that seeketh after God. There's none
that understandeth. None. Man in his best state is
altogether vanity. Sin dominates your thoughts,
dominates your dreams, dominates your words, and dominates your
acts in the flesh. Sin is as much a part of you
as your blood. Sin is born in us, dwells in
us, and we can't get rid of it. Repentance won't put away sin.
You can be sorry all you want to. Baptism won't put away sin. Walking a church aisle won't
put away sin. Shaking a preacher's hand won't
put away sin. A profession of faith won't put
away sin. God must and will punish sin. And that's bad news. Because
we've got plenty of it. And it keeps adding up. It keeps
on adding up. The mountain keeps getting higher
and higher, and the ditch keeps getting deeper and deeper, and
the picture keeps getting blacker and blacker. And the wages of
sin is death, and sin, when it's finished, is going to bring forth
death. That's bad news. And in the 6th place, there's
a judgment. There's an awesome, awful judgment
that we cannot endure. We cannot endure. It's appointed
unto men once to die, and after this, judgment. Judgment. Every man shall stand at the
judgment seat of Christ. Small and great, rich and poor,
old and young shall stand before God and be judged out of those
things written in God's books. God's book and your book. God's
book of law, God's book of truth, God's book of holiness, and your
book. which is an ugly book, and my
book which is an ugly book, and God's going to judge this world
by that man, Jesus Christ, which will do nothing but add to our
condemnation if we do not know him. Now, here's the seventh
thing. This bad news, and like I said,
I hate to dwell on the bad news, but it has to be faced. We have
to face the truth. There is a condemnation that
I cannot escape. The soul that sinneth It shall
die. That's the condemnation. I've
sinned. I've got to die. The soul that's
in it shall surely die. God Almighty said that. He hasn't
changed yet. Everyone's going to spend eternity
somewhere, either in his presence or separated from his presence.
That's right. So I tell you, this is bad news.
There's a God I cannot please. There's a law I cannot keep.
There's a righteousness I cannot produce. There's a love I cannot
give. There's a sin I can't get rid
of. There's a judgment I fear I don't
want to face because I can't endure it. My record won't stand
the searchlight of God Almighty's piercing, sobbing eye. And there's
a condemnation. that if I stand in that judgment,
I cannot escape. And you don't have any reason
to doubt what I'm saying. This is true. The word of God
is too plain on the subject. The wages of sin is death. That's
bad news. But here's the good news. I said
the title of this message is Bad News and Good News. I've
got some good news. You see, this is what the gospel
is all about. The word gospel is good news,
because it relates to these things that make up the bad news. This
is what the angels said to the shepherds on the Judean hillsides. They said, we bring you good
news. We bring you glad tidings of great joy. Unto you is born
this day in the city of David a Savior, somebody who can do
something about the bad news. Somebody who can do something
about the predicament in which we have been born and lived and
will die if he doesn't do something about it. You see, 1 Timothy
1.15 says this is good news, this is a faithful saying, a
faithful saying, a sure saying. and worthy of acceptation by
all, that Jesus Christ became a man. He came into this world,
the Lord of glory, took upon himself human flesh to do for
us what we couldn't do, to do for us what's required, to do
for us what is demanded, to do for us what we cannot effect
ourselves, and that is to save us from our sin. By one man's
disobedience we became sinners. By another man's obedience we
became righteous. Bad news, good news. As in Adam
and Eve all die, bad news. In Christ we are made alive,
good news. As we have borne the image of
the earthy, bad news. We shall bear the image of the
heavenly, that's good news. You see? So let's take these
seven things. You remember the seven things
I gave you? The seven things I gave you. Let's see how we're
going to cope with these things now. As a God I cannot please. In the flesh, no man can please
God. But Christ pleased him, Christ the man, my representative,
pleased the Father. The Father spake from heaven
and said that this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And Christ himself said this,
I always do those things that please my Father. He became a
man, born of a woman. And all that he did and all that
he thought and all that he said actually, completely pleased
the Father. And let me tell you now, if he's
my representative and I dwell in him, and he did that not for
himself, he had no sin, but if he did that for me, if I'm one
of those somebodies for which he pleased the Father, then in
him I pleased God. You understand? He pleased the
Father. And then secondly, when I say
there's a law I cannot keep, a law I cannot keep, he did. Listen, in the fullness of time,
God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
to redeem them that were born under the law. All that the law
required, all that the law demanded of you and me, Christ fulfilled. Yes, he did. I'll give you an
example. What's the one word? The one word that's given two
or three times in the scripture as being the fulfillment of the
law. What does it say? All the law is fulfilled in this
one word. Love God with all your heart,
mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. He
did. He did. Greater love hath no
man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. And when he died, you say, did
he love his enemies more than himself? Father forgave them. They know not what they did. A law I cannot keep, but a law
he kept. Thirdly, there's a righteousness
I cannot produce, a holiness, an immaculate, infinite, God-honoring
holiness and righteousness. He did. His righteousness, his
obedience was perfect. By one man's sin, By the disobedience
of that man we were made sinners, so by the obedience of Christ
we were made righteous. Even his enemies could find no
fault in him. In Romans 10 verse 4 it says,
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to them that
believe. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21, he was made sin for us who
knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him. Romans 1.16 says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for
therein is the righteousness of God revealed. And Jeremiah
called him the Lord our righteousness. A righteousness I cannot produce. But he did. He did. And do you know how I know that
the Heavenly Father was totally pleased with his righteousness?
He raised him from the dead and exalted him to his right hand.
He's seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. And then,
fourthly, there's a love I cannot give. But he did. His love is
so perfect. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the
flesh, as a man, loved so perfectly he could say to his disciples
something you cannot say, never have been able to, never will
be able to say. He looked at his disciples and
he said, you love one another as I loved you. I'm the example
of love. I'm the perfect pattern. You
love like I love. That's perfect love. His perfect
love was twofold. He loved his Father. He prayed,
Not my will, but thy will be done. And men He loved his own
disciples. Having loved his own, he loved
them unto the end. And Paul wrote this, he said,
You let this mind, this spirit, this attitude be in you, which
was also in Christ Jesus, who thought it not robbery to be
equal with God, yet made himself of no reputation, and took upon
himself the habit of a servant, and was made in the likeness
of men, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross. That's his love. That's his love. Perfect, everlasting, infinite,
unchanging, infallible love. I can't produce it, but my friend,
my substitute did. My Lord did. And then in the
fifth place, what was that next word I used? I said there's a
sin I cannot get rid of. Can't get rid of it. It stains,
it mars, Everything I do, sin. Sin is mixed with all I do. And
you too. How can sin be put away? Jewish
sacrifices wouldn't put away sin. The Bible says that. The
Bible says all the blood on Jewish altars slain, the blood of bulls
and goats cannot take away sin. Baptism can't take away sin.
Repentance can't take away sin. Death won't take away sin. Because
after men die, they meet their sins at the judgment. Hell won't
take away sin. We can spend eternity separated
from God, and it won't put sin away. We're still there. Let
him that's filthy be filthy still. Let him that's unholy be unholy
still. How can sin be put away? I'll tell you how sin can be
put away, away from you as far as the East is from the West.
In the depths of the sea to be remembered no more, blotted out,
canceled. Here it is, Hebrews 9.26. He,
Christ, put away sin. by the sacrifice of himself. Hebrews 1, having by himself
purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of God. The
blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. One way sin can be put away,
the blood of Christ, the death of Christ, the sacrifice of the
Son of God, one way that sin can be counseled, one way that
sin can be blotted out, one way that sin can be covered as a
mercy seat of old covered the broken law, and that's through
the blood of Christ. By one sacrifice he perfected
forever them that are sanctified. And God says there are sins and
iniquities, I remember no more. No more. I can't put it away. Pray till my knees wear out. Make professions and join churches.
Like one preacher said one time, be baptized so many times the
frogs know my middle name. They won't put away sin. But
his blood maketh atonement for sin. God said, and I see the
blood, I'll pass it over to you. The last one, there's a judgment
I cannot endure. I don't want to stand there.
I don't want to be there. I don't want to be one of those
charged with offending a holy God. What am I going to do? Well, I'll tell you. He was taken
from prison and from judgment. He was cut off out of the land
of the living. For the transgression of my people
was he stricken, and there is therefore now no judgment to
them who are in Christ Jesus the Lord. You know anything that's
as good news, that's as much good news as that is? No transgressions,
no condemnation, no judgment, that's right. There's therefore
no judgment to them who are in Christ Jesus. Paul challenged
heaven, earth and hell. He said, who can lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? Who is he that condemneth? It's
Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again. There is
no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He said, look unto me and be
ye saved. I'm God, there's none else. You know, Job wrote this. He said, deliver him from going
down into the pit. I found a ransom. I found a ransom. Have you heard the bad news?
Have you really heard the bad news? Have you really given it
any thought? Are you accountable for sin? You are a sinner, are
you accountable? Yeah, what, to whom? To mother? No. Father? No. Preacher? You're
accountable to God. David said that, against thee
and thee only have I sinned. Have you heard the bad news?
God's angry with the wicked. God will by no means clear the
guilty. The soul that sinneth shall surely die, the wages of
sin is death. Have you heard the bad news?
And if you've ever heard the bad news, you'll be glad to hear
this. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord.

Bad News & Good News

What does the Bible say about the wages of sin?

Why is understanding the bad news of sin important for Christians?

How do we know that Jesus fulfills the law for righteousness?

What is the good news of salvation?

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Bad News & Good News

What does the Bible say about the wages of sin?

Why is understanding the bad news of sin important for Christians?

How do we know that Jesus fulfills the law for righteousness?

What is the good news of salvation?

Sermon Transcript

About Henry Mahan

Comments

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