The Promise and the Person of the Good News

The good news, beloved, is this. God has become a man, and that man is fully man, who can bear the sin of man, who can substitute for man, who can take the punishment of God on man.

And not only is He just man, but He's the right man, who even with all of that has the right to rule and to reign, who can restore the kingdom and redeem the creation. Oh, what news? Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Maybe it's your latest credit card statement, or it's the final draft of a term paper you wrote. Maybe it's your driver's handbook, or an insurance policy, or even your grocery list. If I asked you to name something you reviewed lately, what would you say?

Well, let me encourage you to take the next half hour to review something far more important than personal finances or homework assignments, or really, anything else. John MacArthur will help you review what you understand and what you may not understand about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's part of John's continuing study from Romans chapter 1, titled, And Now for the Good News.

Here's John to set the context for today's lesson. Let's look together at Romans chapter 1. We're looking at one of the messages as we move through the first seven verses in the introduction to this great epistle. Now, Paul is going to unfold the good news in 16 chapters in Romans, but he can't wait. He can't wait for 16 chapters to say it, so he sums it up in seven verses. And this is in seed what flowers in the rest of the epistle, carefully chosen.

You know, I was struck again as I read these words. I kept reading through verses 1 to 7 over and over and over and over. And it literally thrills me, the incredible, infinite mind of God who is able in a few words to distill and condense the infinite truth of the gospel. Now, let's look then at the gospel in miniature as it were in these seven verses, and we're just going to take one little piece out of the middle of it. First, let's meet the preacher of the good news, verse 1.

We've already gone through this, just to review. Paul is the preacher, and if you look at 1625, you'll be reminded that he affirms it at the end of the epistle as well as at the beginning. So we meet the preacher of the good news. Secondly, let's look at the promise of the good news, the promise, verse 2.

Which, that is the gospel of God, which God had promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures. Now he says the good news is not something out of continuity. It isn't a novelty. It isn't a new idea. It isn't a change in the strategy. It isn't a shift in the plan.

It isn't something dropped in that's obtuse. It is the gospel of God which was promised. It gives us the Old Testament continuity, and this is utterly important. You'll recall that the apostle Paul was accused of being anti-Jewish. The Judaizers went around condemning Paul and condemning his message because they said he's anti-Jewish. He speaks against Moses. He speaks against the law.

He speaks against this people. He speaks against the temple. They accused him in Acts 21 of dragging Gentiles into the inner area of the temple where they were forbidden to go. They accused him of desecrating Moses.

They accused him of denying circumcision and the sustaining of the law. They were saying he preaches some new, some revolutionary new message that is in no way connected to traditional Judaism. And so Paul, in order to put the record straight, says, the good news of God which I preach is not new good news. It's old good news that was indicated to us in the promises of the prophets who wrote in Holy Scripture. That verse, too, I tell you, you could preach on it for weeks. It's just loaded with truth. The Old Testament promises of the New Testament gospel.

Oh my. Just in one area, there are at least 332 prophecies in the Old Testament referring to Christ, most of which were fulfilled in His first coming. The Old Testament is literally loaded with truth, laying out the groundwork for the coming of the new. Jesus faced identically the same situation that Paul faced. Jesus did not connect up, as it were, with the extant or contemporary Jewish theology of His day. He did not identify with the most devout sect of His day, the Pharisees. He denied the Pharisees their devotion and called it hypocrisy.

He denied the theology of His day its validity and called it the tradition of men. And so the people said, is this new truth? Is this something other than what we've been taught?

Or are you in continuity? Is this really the one speaking for God? I mean, He doesn't say what the Pharisees say. He doesn't identify with the Jewish establishment. He doesn't do what we do. His disciples don't fast when we fast. He doesn't treat the Sabbath like we treat the Sabbath. He doesn't teach what we learn.

In fact, quite the opposite. Jesus said to them in the Sermon on the Mount, you have heard it said by them of old. In other words, your tradition teaches you, but I say unto you. And He gave them completely different instruction. And He said it over and over again, you have heard it said, but I say.

You have heard it said, but I say. But the you have heard it said part was not Old Testament. It was the perversion of their tradition that He was denying. Did Jesus come with a new revelation, disconnected from the old?

No, He did not. And listen to His own words in Matthew 5 17. Think not that I am come to destroy the law of the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

I came to fill it up. And until heaven and earth pass, not one jot, not one little tiny mark, or one tittle shall in any way pass from the law till all is fulfilled. I am not come to set the law aside, but to fulfill the law, and to do away with the traditions of men that have perverted it. That's why He said your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. So the good news was old good news. Jewish people say, well, I can't become a Christian because I'm Jewish and I would be denying my heritage.

No. The fact is if you're Jewish and you haven't become a Christian, you've denied your heritage because you are completed only in the new covenant. As Jeremiah 31 said, as Ezekiel 36 and 37 promised, when Jesus Christ arrived on the scene, He began to preach the good news of the kingdom. And the people wondered if it was revolutionary, but He cleared the air and said, no, it's just that your theology today is so heretical you've lost the continuity. Hebrews 1 says, God, at sundry times, in time past, through diverse means, spoke unto the fathers by the prophets, and God has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the world.

And He went on to say, who is the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person. God spoke in the old and God spoke through His Son in the new. In 1 Peter chapter 1, you read verses 8 to 12 and it says the prophets wrote and they didn't understand what they wrote and they looked at what they wrote and they searched what manner of time or what manner of person was signified in what they wrote. They knew they were writing about a future that they couldn't yet understand and the writer of Hebrews says they were not perfected without us.

In other words, there was an incompletion until the coming of the new covenant. So the good news has been promised throughout all the Old Testament. Every sacrificial lamb spoke of the ultimate lamb. Every verbal prophecy spoke of the time when the Messiah would come. All of the truth about restoration in the kingdom spoke of what the Messiah would do. And then the incredible event of all history, when it all comes to consummation, they kill the Messiah and deny that He had any continuity at all with the Old Testament. Paul says, the gospel is the gospel of God, is the gospel of God's Son, the gospel of God's Son, Jesus Christ. And it is exactly what was promised.

By who? Look at verse 2, by the prophets. What does the word prophet refer to?

It refers here to all the Scripture writers because it says by the prophets and the Holy Scriptures. And by the way, just to show you this, the Old Testament in the mind of a Jew is called the law and the prophets. They just call it the law and the prophets.

Basically, they divide it into those two general categories. Some would single out the writings, hagiography, but basically it's the law and the prophets. And the prophets would encompass everything but the law.

And the law was written by whom? Moses. And, of course, in the Bible Moses is called a prophet. So that the term the prophets can encompass all of the writers of the Old Testament. And that's exactly what he's saying. The gospel was promised before by the writers of the Old Testament, note this, in the Holy Scriptures. That is a very important statement. The Holy Scriptures.

What do you mean by that? That the Scriptures are holy. They are not authored by men. They are not designed by men.

They do not reflect the thinking of men. They are holy. It means set apart, divine, unique, sanctified, righteous, godly. The Holy Scriptures. People say, why should we believe the Bible is inspired? For one reason, the Bible says right here it's holy. These are holy Scriptures. And they spoke of the gospel.

In John 5, 39, our dear Lord said, search the Scriptures. He told the Jews, look at the Old Testament, for they are they which speak of me. On the road to Emmaus, he said to them, opening the Scriptures, he spoke of all the things concerning himself, beginning at Moses and the prophets. He said, if you knew the Scripture, you would know these things.

Repeatedly, he affirmed that. In Hebrews 10, 7, he says, in the volume of the book, it is written of me. The Old Testament is filled with the promise of the good news.

Whether you go to Genesis 3, 15 at the beginning and talk about the seed of the woman, or you go to Malachi 4, 2 at the end and talk about the son of righteousness who rises with healing in his beams, or anywhere in between, you will find the revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul said it was promised, the gospel by the prophets in the holy Scriptures. Beloved, don't you for a moment ever question the holiness of Scripture.

Later on in Romans, Paul will develop this as he develops every other theme. In Romans 7 and verse 12, he says, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good. God's truth is pure.

Now listen to this. Holy men of God moved along by the Holy Spirit wrote the Scripture. You have holy God moving along holy men by His Holy Spirit to produce, says Paul, a holy Scripture.

Unique, pure, the work of God. And it is in that Scripture that we find the third point, the person of the good news. We've seen the preacher Paul, the promise, the Old Testament, the person of the good news, verse 3 and 4.

And here's the heart. Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. Now what he's saying here is, really verse 2 is a parenthesis, it is the gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

That's the good news, folks. The good news that God came in the box in the form of Jesus Christ the Lord. Jesus, that means Savior. Christ, that means anointed one.

Lord, that means sovereign ruler. He is Jesus for He will save His people. He is Christ for He has been anointed by God as King and Priest. He is Lord for He has always been. In Romans 9 and 5 Paul says He is God blessed forever. And then Paul also says He is over all. Philippians 2 tells us He is God.

Colossians 2, the fullness of the God had dwelled in Him. So He is the Lord God. He is the Christ, the anointed one to come back and reign in the earth. And He is Jesus who saves His people from their sins.

You want to know what the good news is then? The good news is God became a man. God became a man. A real man. He came into the world born in a family like all of us have a family. With flesh like we have flesh. He was actually born of a virgin but nonetheless born of Mary.

Why? That He might become one of us according to the flesh. That He might have that perfect humanness. That He might be a sympathetic high priest. That He might succor us. That He might understand us.

That He might be at all points tempted like as we are yet without sin. That He might be a man who could die for men. Who could take the place of men. Who could substitute for men. Who could bear the brunt of God's wrath for men. He had to be a man. And He wasn't just any man.

Look what it says. He was of the seed of David. It wasn't just any family, it was the right family. It was the royal family. The only family that had a right to rule in the land.

A right to establish the throne on Mount Zion in that holy hill in Jerusalem, the holy city, and from there to rule the world. He was the right man in the right family. If He hadn't been the son of David, He couldn't have been the Messiah. He would have contradicted 2 Samuel chapter 7, Psalm 89, Isaiah 11, Jeremiah 23, Jeremiah 33, Ezekiel 33, Ezekiel 37. All of them would have been contradicted if He had not been the son of the family of David. So He was a man and He was the right man. And repeatedly at His birth in Luke 1, I think at least five times in that chapter it says He's the son of David, son of David, son of David, son of David, son of David.

The good news, beloved, is this. God has become a man. And that man is fully man, fully a son who can sympathize with man, who can bear the sin of man, who can substitute for man, who can take the punishment of God on man. And not only is He just man, but He's the right man who even with all of that has the right to rule and to reign, who can restore the kingdom and redeem the creation.

Oh, what news. Then you hear some pea-brain come along and say, well, we don't know if Jesus ever really existed. You know, even outside the Bible, people don't deny that if they have their heads screwed on. You can go back to historians of the early time. Tacitus, who lived in A.D. 114, tells us that the founder of the Christian religion, Jesus Christ, was put to death by Pontius Pilate in the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius.

It's an established fact. Pliny the Younger wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan on the subject of Christ and Christians. Josephus, the Jewish historian writing in A.D. 90, even before John wrote Revelation, has a short biographical note in his writings on Jesus who is called Christ. The Babylonian Talmud talks about Jesus Christ. You know what Josephus said? Josephus died before John wrote Revelation and this is what Josephus the historian said in volume 2, book 18, chapter 3, page 3 of Jewish antiquity. Quote, "'Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call Him a man, for He was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure.

He drew over to Him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was Christ. And when Pilate, the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first did not forsake Him, for He appeared to them alive again the third day as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning Him. And the tribe of Christians so named from Him are not extinct at this day.'"

End quote. No way to deny that He lived and He was a man. And John says it this way, 1 John chapter 4, verse 2, "'By this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesses not Jesus is not of God, and that is the spirit of antichrist.'" People who want to deny that God came in real human flesh are from the antichrist. He was man.

May I hasten to add this as we draw to a close? He had to be more than man. He had to be God also. "'For if He was man, even the best of men, even the right man of the seed of David, but not God, then He could not have withstood the punishment of God. He could not have risen from the dead.

He could not have overcome but would have been conquered as all men are conquered.'" And so verse 4 adds, "'He was declared to be the Son of God with power.'" And how is that power displayed? By the Spirit of holiness. That's another way of saying the Holy Spirit. Through the resurrection from the dead. Listen, if there was ever any question in anybody's mind about whether He was the Son of God, the resurrection should have ended it. He had to be man to reach us, but He had to be God to lift us. And so the second way, and mark it in verse 4, the second way He manifested His sonship was in His resurrection. It says, "'And He is declared the Son of God through a powerful act wrought by the Holy Spirit in raising Him from the dead.'" Listen, if some guy came along and said, "'I am the Son of God,' and he was a phony," do you think God would raise him from the dead?

God would be playing into the hands of a phony. If God raised Christ from the dead, it was an affirmation that what He said was true. And so He was begotten in resurrection.

He is a son twice born. And the key to this thing is the word declared. Do you see it in verse 4?

Declared. It can be translated in various ways. It is a marvelous word. It is the word in Greek horizo. And we get our English word horizon from it. Horizo means horizon. And horizon is the clear demarcation line between earth and sky, isn't it?

And what He's saying is this. There may have been some question in some people's minds about whether He was the Son of God when they looked at His humanness. But the line was drawn in absolute clarity. The horizon between earth and sky is instantly made clear by His resurrection from the dead. You see, as clearly as the horizon divides the earth from the sky, so clearly does the resurrection divide Jesus from the rest of humanity. He is God. When God raised Jesus from the dead, irrefutable evidence marked out and distinguished the Son of God from all other human beings as clearly as the horizon distinguishes the sky from the earth.

Now listen. He became a son in incarnation, but that was clearly marked out to end all question in resurrection. That's the good news. The good news, people, God came into the box, became a man. The good news, He can get back out of the box because He's also God and He can take us all with Him. And He demonstrated His ability to do that in His resurrection from the dead, which was energized by the Holy Spirit. Listen, in the 18th century, the United States Congress issued a special edition of the Bible of Thomas Jefferson. It was a very simple Bible that Jefferson had. It was just like your Bible or my Bible, except Jefferson had gone through and eliminated all references to the supernatural. And all Jefferson wanted of Jesus in his Bible were some historical facts and the moral teaching of Jesus.

He cut all the rest out. Here's the last statement in Thomas Jefferson's Bible. These are the closing words.

"'There laid they Jesus and rolled a great stone at the mouth of the sepulcher and departed.'" That's the end. But that's only the end of Thomas Jefferson's Bible. That is not the end of the gospel, right? Thank God our Bible ends with He is risen and He's coming back for His own.

Good news, people, good news. Jesus Christ has come into our world. Tell us about God to take us back out into God's glorious eternity. When I think about the Lord Jesus Christ, I think of Paul's term, His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, and then his term in verse 4, the Son of God.

He uses all of the terms that pick up all that Christ is. I marvel and wonder at the incredible majesty of the person who is the good news of God. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today John looked at the promise and the person of the good news. It's part of his study titled, And Now for the Good News. Well, speaking of good news, you have a letter there, John, that encouraged us and I know it will encourage our listeners. So the mic is yours. Take a minute to read that letter.

Yeah, I'm happy to do that. This letter is from Nick in New York. He writes, I was not a Christian until the fall of 2022. The gospel message became clear to me while listening to your sermon on total depravity called The Most Hated Christian Doctrine. God had been working on me in the weeks leading up to hearing that message. Then that message jumped out at me like nothing I had ever heard. At that moment, I didn't yet know that I had been converted, but the course of my life changed in more ways than I can describe. I opened the Bible and it started to make sense. It struck me as incredibly clear, transcendent and true.

I could not get enough of it and read it cover to cover over the ensuing months. I now have a MacArthur study Bible and would not want to live without it. He goes on, the very things that have governed my previous life became repulsive to me and I began to love the Lord and long for his glory. I found myself able to love and forgive in ways that I could not before, knowing that I could not do that without the mercy and love of Christ shown to me first. I found that even though I still have many faults, my life is no longer dominated by sin. I could say more, but I really just wanted to thank you for your ministry. I heard the gospel because of your preaching and even though I was not even seeking God, he chose me and saved me. I praise God that I have a wife and young son who will now have a husband and a father who's a believer with a biblical world view, signs his name Nick. I mean, it demonstrates the power of the word, the transforming power of the word. It is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword as scripture says. And it's a reminder that when you support grace to you, you are helping pour biblical truth into lives that God has prepared to receive it.

People like Nick. And God's truth is more desperately needed than ever. And God's truth is harder to find than ever in some ways because of the cacophony of lies that surrounds our society. So we rejoice at the opportunities the Lord has given us through radio, books, television and the internet to cut God's word straight and unleash it one verse at a time. I want you to join us in praying that God's truth through grace to you would continue to reach people worldwide, people who are starving for the truth.

Yes, friend, it's because of your support that we can reach people like Nick around the world. Your gifts allow us to take God's word to big cities, small towns and even remote villages. If that kind of ministry resonates with you, consider making a donation when you contact us today. You can mail your tax-deductible gift to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Or you can call us at 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, GTY.org.

And thank you again for helping us equip people far and wide with biblical truth. Send the number to call, 800-55-GRACE or go to GTY.org. Remember too, there are other ways you can support this ministry. Pray for John, for our staff, for those who come into contact with our Bible teaching resources. It's also great when you can reach out to this radio station and let them know you appreciate programs like Grace to You. And of course, we want to know how John's teaching is encouraging you, so email us at Letters at GTY.org, that's our email address, Letters at GTY.org, or you can mail your letter to Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. Now for John McArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Be sure to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV, channel 378, or you can watch anytime at GTY.org, and then be here tomorrow as John continues his look at the greatest news there is, the gospel. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.