Tag: good news

  • Words left unsaid

    Grateful for what Jesus didn’t say

    I don’t know about you, but sometimes I speak before thinking. It’s gotten me into trouble over the years, and I’ve had to explain and apologize a lot.  Somethings are just better left unsaid.

    There was an instance in the Bible where something was intentionally left unsaid by Jesus, and I’m literally eternally grateful. We find it in Luke’s gospel.

    And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

    He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:16-21 ESV

    It was a familiar passage to his audience, taken from Isaiah 61. He didn’t finish reading the passage. The next line in Isaiah is: “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God”

    That’s significant. When Jesus was reading in the synagogue, He declared that He was the Messiah. It was fulfilled in their hearing. If He had said “the day of the vengeance of our God” was fulfilled, then there would be no time for anyone else to come to faith.

    The day of vengeance (mentioned in several other places in Scripture) is when the Lord finally deals with His enemies. Anyone who is not a believer is an enemy of God.

    Had Jesus read the rest of that passage, time would have been up. All hope for the lost would be gone.

    That day is coming. Jesus is returning to fulfill it. In the interim, though, there is time for God’s enemies to be reconciled through faith in Christ. 

    Don’t waste a moment longer. Time truly is limited because none of us knows the day or hour of His return.

    Praise God, He left those words unsaid … for the moment.

    Kevin

    SUMMARY

    Jesus stopped reading Isaiah’s scroll one line too soon. He left out the day of vengeance, and grace is still open to you and me.

    TAKEAWAY

    You are still living in the year of the Lord’s favor, not the day of His vengeance.

    Your chance to be reconciled to God through faith in Christ is still open right now.

    You don’t know the day or hour of Christ’s return, so this isn’t the moment to delay

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  • The Gospel – the best news you will ever hear

    You know the silence that falls right before you open an envelope, or pick up the phone, when you have already braced for the worst. Most of the time the news matches the dread. But every now and then it does not. Every now and then you brace yourself and find out the test was clear, or the debt was settled, or the answer was yes, and for a second you just stand there rereading it, because good news that size is hard to trust on the first pass.

    That mix of disbelief and relief is about the closest thing I know, in ordinary life, to what the Bible calls the gospel.

    The word itself simply means good news. But you cannot understand why it is good until you understand the news that came before it, and that part is not pleasant. Scripture does not soften it. All of us, every last one, have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Not just the people we point to on the news. Us. Our sin is not a smudge to wipe off. It is a debt we cannot pay, and the wages of that debt are death (Romans 6:23).

    If the story stopped there, it would just be bad news, true and unbearable. But it does not stop there.

    Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. He was buried, and He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). That is the gospel in its smallest form, four facts that changed everything. And Paul will not let us read past the cost of it without feeling it. God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Not after we cleaned ourselves up. While we were still enemies. He paid a debt He did not owe, for people who could never repay Him.

    Here is where the gospel parts ways with every other religion and every self-improvement plan you have ever tried. It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). You do not earn your way into this. You do not balance the scales with enough good deeds to outweigh the bad. The debt was already paid. The only question left is whether you will receive the gift.

    As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name (John 1:12). That word receive is doing a lot of work. It is not a transaction you negotiate. It is a gift you open. Faith is simply reaching out your hand and taking what Christ already purchased at the cross.

    And what happens next is not a slight improvement. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away, behold, new things have come (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are not patched up. You are remade. Rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13-14). That is not a metaphor for self-help. That is a change of citizenship, paid for in blood, sealed by an empty tomb.

    Some people can tell you the exact day they stopped bracing for bad news and finally believed the good news was real. I hope you have a day like that to point back to as well, the day you stopped trying to pay a debt you could never settle and simply received what Christ already finished.

    If you have never reached out your hand for that gift, today is a good day to start. Tell Him you know the bad news is true of you, and ask Him to make the good news true of you too. He has already done the hard part.

    If you have already received it, do not let the wonder of it go stale. Read those four facts from 1 Corinthians 15 again slowly. Let them surprise you the way they did the first day.

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God)

    Be blessed,

    Kevin

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