This News Will Change Your Life

1 Corinthians 15:56-57

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We often use the term good news talking about the gospel, and that’s what gospel means is good news. One of the problems in our world today is that people use so much hyperbole to describe such mundane things that I think some of the impact of that term good news can often be lost.

Maybe this illustration will help. I want you to imagine that you live in an ancient village and your village is at war with the neighboring village, which is across the hills on the other side of the hills. And so all of the men of your village, fathers and sons, they’ve gone off to battle to that other village. And so there you are in your village, in your home, and you’re waiting. You don’t know what’s happening. And every so often you can hear the sounds of the battle. You look and maybe you can see some smoke wafting up from the other side of the hills. But you don’t know what’s going on, and neither does anyone else in the village. There’s no cell phones or texting or anything like that. You have to wait for a runner, a messenger to come over the hill. And that messenger is going to say one of two things.

Either he’s going to say, we lost. Run for your lives! Or he’s going to say, we won! Let’s celebrate! Everything depends on that message. It’s going to change your life. Either you’re going to look and see your husband and son coming over the hill victorious and bringing with them the spoils of war. Or you’re going to look and you’re going to see the enemy coming over the hill and you’re going to have to run for your life and go hide in a forest or in a cave or something. Everything depends on that message. It’s going to change your life.

And then finally you look and the runner comes over the hill and that messenger comes into the village and he says. Good news! And you go, oh, yes. Thank you. That is the impact of the good news. Dear friends, that is the gospel.

Jesus Christ won the greatest victory ever obtained on Earth. It was a victory over terrible enemies. Enemies that could destroy you and me forever. For all eternity. But not now. Jesus went to battle on Good Friday with our sins and with our shame. And he defeated them. And he defeated the devil. And on Easter Sunday, he showed that he had even defeated death, the grave itself, with his resurrection.

The Apostle Paul says in first Corinthians Chapter 15,

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:56-57)

So dear friends, the next time you hear that term, the good news, know that you can celebrate it. It changes your life. You are going to live for all eternity. The enemy is defeated. Amen.