This good news is just for you! Have you heard it? Will you accept it? The word gospel means good news. God gave us the last-day commission to spread “the everlasting gospel . . . to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (Rev. 14:6). Note here, it will last and continue to be preached till the end of the world. Every man on this earth will be given a chance to hear this good news before his death or end of the world. Gospel is about Jesus and His message. Its essence is salvation through Jesus. Christ came down to earth, sent by the Father for mankind. Either we can accept Him or reject Him. Some may ask, whether the gospel was preached during the Old Testament times. Paul says yes. “For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith” (Heb. 4:2). Gospel was preached then just as in the New Testament times. There is no hint that there was any difference in the message. The problem, was not with the message but the way it was heard. Today also different people hear the same gospel in different ways. How crucial is then we submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit in complete faith when the gospel is preached or when we read the word of God, so that we hear it correctly and understand it. Lastly, but not the least, how we apply it fully in our lives. The good news is reverberating throughout the Bible. God intervenes to save us. He forgives our sins and puts “enmity” in us toward sin and devil (Gen. 3:15) so that we can be willing and obedient (Isa. 1:19). One (Jesus) died for the many (2 Cor. 5:15), bore our iniquities (1 Peter 2:24; Isa. 53:5), and justifies the undeserving (Rom. 5:6-8). The new covenant is different from the old covenant because the law is written in the heart (Rom. 2:15; Hebrews 10:16; Jeremiah 31:33; Hebrews 8:10; Romans 2:14), and sins are remembered no more (Heb. 8:12). To summarize, forgiveness and the new birth are a package. Justification and sanctification represent Gods solution to the sin problem. Various passages contain the same message repeated again and again. But the message is the same throughout the Bible: despite our sin, God loves us and has done everything to save us from it. Some people have very hard time finding the good news (gospel) within the gospels itself. The teaching of Jesus may seem legalistic if they don’t read and understand the message in the Bible fully. Most Jewish people in Jesus’ time considered themselves to be in good standing before God. They supported the temple by paying the required tax and offering the appropriate sacrifices. They abstained from unclean food, circumcised their sons, kept the festival days and the Sabbaths, and generally tried to keep the law as taught by their religious leaders. Then John came and cried Repent, and be baptized. Many realized they were sinners, repented and got baptized. Then Jesus came and went further teaching the need for new birth (John 3:3, 5). He also said “except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). In other words, Jesus was saying, “You need what you do not have. You need something more. Your life is not good enough.” This was something very difficult for them to swallow, except through faith in Him. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-17) should have been an eye opener for those Israelites of Jesus time. Here the “righteous” Pharisee is ignored by God, while the sinful tax collector is not only accepted but leaves justified, forgiven, and free from guilt. In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), when the lost son returned, he was astonished to be lavished with honor by his father. The relationship is not only restored, but fully transformed. These parables show us a fatherly God, who not only loves us unconditionally, but justifies the undeserving. We all know that John pointed towards Jesus as “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The same Jesus willingly suffers as the real Passover Lamb, a substitutionary death that should have been ours (Matt. 26:28). Thus salvation is made free to all of us because of Him, who paid the full price for it on our behalf. Like many of his fellow Jews, Paul also thought he was in correct spiritual standing before God. Then coming out from his spiritual blindness, he saw Jesus as “the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). Very soon he saw himself not saved, but lost; not Gods servant, but Gods enemy; not righteous, but the chief of sinners. As the scales fell from his eyes, the same verses from the Old Testament took up newer meanings under a newer light. Gods revelation, to him personally and through the Scriptures, transformed his heart and changed his life forever. The full meaning of the old covenant becomes clear only “when one turns to the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:16). Till that time our minds will be “blinded” (v 14) and the “veil remains un-lifted”. Jesus is the only way to salvation. It all begins and ends in Him. For the Jews who trusted in their obedience to God’s laws, as Paul did before, the old covenant was like a minister of death, because all have sinned (Rom. 3:23), and so the commandments could only condemn them (2 Cor. 3:7). In contrast Paul compares the true believers as “a letter of Christ…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (v 3). The gospel is the power of God to save all who believe. Righteousness is based not on what we do but on what Christ has done for us, which we claim by faith, which grows from faith to faith (Rom. 1:17). Through Christ we have redemption (God has bought us back by paying for our sins), justification (we are cleared of guilt and cleansed by grace), and forgiveness (God accepts us back and “forgets” our past sins). The book of Hebrews describes the new covenant as “better” than the old covenant (Heb. 8:1-2, 6). Then why should God establish the old covenant if it was faulty? Here just like any other free choice we make, the problem is not with the covenant but with the response of the people to it. Those people “did not remain faithful” to the covenant (Heb. 8:9), but were disobedient and rebellious. In addition the animal sacrifices of the old covenant could never take away sins (Heb. 10:4), which meant sin remained. Only “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” could atone for sin, including those committed under the old covenant (Heb. 10:10; 9:15). In one sense the new covenant is not new at all since the promise in Eden of the seed, who would bruise the serpents head (Gen. 3:15), the plan of salvation has always been predicated on the death of Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8; Jer. 32:40; Heb. 13:20-21; John 13:34). This covenant of grace is not a new truth, for it existed in the mind of God from all eternity. That is why it is called the everlasting covenant (Gen. 17:7; Jer. 32:40). The good news is that the immeasurable cost of our sin has been paid by Jesus “through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb. 13:20). This “new” covenant changes the way we look at everything, such as the commandment to love one another. Although it is not really new (Lev. 19:18), we are not just to love our neighbor as ourselves, but “as I (Jesus) have loved you” (John 13:34). But there is a climax for the gospel, when “the mystery of God is finished, as He preached to His servants the prophets” (Rev. 10:7). At this moment in time the mystery of God will be fully revealed. The commission God has entrusted us in Rev. 14:6 to proclaim the “everlasting gospel” will be completed. The gospel (good news) is the same from Genesis to Revelation. Our God is in pursuit of the lost mankind. In Genesis, the first book, we see Eden and the last book Revelation we see Eden restored (Rev. 22). The law is the same. The covenant is the same. Jesus, Paul, and James all affirm that the gospel is the same one believed by Abraham (John 8:56, Rom. 4:13, James 2:21-23). Only when we define the gospel narrower than the Bible, we find the above statement difficult to believe. Abrahams obedient faith, originated through his foreseeing Jesus sacrifice (John 8:56). We do not need to balance faith with works in order to be saved, as some says. Faith alone is sufficient, but it must not be an intellectual faith as the devils have, nor a presumptuous faith that claims the promises of God without complying with the conditions of salvation; rather it must be a faith that works. What is your opinion about keeping the Commandments and testimony and faith of Jesus (Rev. 12:17; Rev. 14:12) in the context of the everlasting gospel? The decisive issues are at the end time - whom will we worship and obey? The God “who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters”? (Rev. 14:7) Or the beast and his image? (Rev. 14:9, 11) Obedience to all the commandments (including the 4th Sabbath commandment) through the faith of Jesus signifies those who remain faithful to the end. True religion demands both faith and obedience. Always remember Eve who fell to the cunningness of Satan and ate from a tree which looked like any other tree in the garden, although there was an explicit command from God not to eat from it. The tree may look like any other tree. The day may look like any other day. But obedience to God’s commandments cannot be replaced by anything else. God’s commandments will not change as God will not change. May God bless us! Welcome to this page for more messages https://facebook/SomeTruthsThatYouShouldNotMiss
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 23:42:48 +0000
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