The Provision, Proclamation, Privilege, and Purpose of the Good News A

The good news is that salvation is by grace. It is grace, unmerited favor.

The kind good will, the mercy, the loving kindness of God grants this as a gift. Accidents, murders, wars, and court decisions that displease God. Sadly, that is the kind of news we hear every day. We obviously live in a culture that is in desperate need of some good news. Well, the good news is, there is good news, profoundly good news that revolves around Jesus Christ and what he has done for sinners. Today, John MacArthur continues his look at the gospel. What it is, what it's not, how it can transform your life, and how you can effectively communicate the gospel to others. The title of John's study, and now for the good news.

Here's John with a lesson. Now these seven verses contain the seed of truth that blooms fully in the remaining 16 chapters. We have noted for you that there are at least seven elements to this introduction, seven features regarding the good news. There is the preacher of the good news, the promise of the good news, the person of the good news, the provision of the good news, the proclamation of the good news, the privileges of the good news, and the purpose of the good news.

Let me remind you briefly of the first three. First of all, the preacher of the good news is introduced to us in verse 1. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated under the gospel of God. And there we have met the preacher of the good news. And it points us to a very important reality and that is this, that God has chosen human vessels to be the instruments of the transporting of the good news.

Paul, a man like us, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated under the gospel of God, pointing to the fact that God has chosen to use human agency. God has designed to use men and women to proclaim the good news. In fact, it tells us in 1 Corinthians that God has chosen by the foolishness of preaching to proclaim His message and even use weak and ignoble and foolish preachers to do it.

So no one's faith stands in the wisdom of men, but it stands only in the power of God through the weakness of men. God's people are still the instruments. Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

Preacher, a human instrument. Secondly, we looked at the promise of the good news. Verse 2, which He had promised before by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, the good news or the gospel had already been promised in the Old Testament. That's why in Matthew 5, 17 Jesus said, I didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

I came to fill it up, to bring it to fulfillment, to bring it to fruition, to bring it to wholeness, to bring it to completeness. The New Testament is the Word of God that completes the Old Testament, that consummates the promise. So the good news is going to come through a human preacher and the good news is going to be based upon the promises of God in the Old Testament. And thirdly, we saw not only the preacher and the person, or rather the preacher and the promise, but the preacher and the promise and the person. What and whom is the heart and object of the good news? Look at verse 3. It concerns His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. The person of the good news is Christ.

That's the issue. It is what you do with God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ that determines whether you inherit the riches of the Father. And there is in those two verses an absolutely wonderful presentation of Christ. We see His humanness in verse 3. He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.

He was a real human being. We see His deity in verse 4. He was declared to be the Son of God with power through the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. We see His humanity. We see His deity. He had to be man to take man's place.

He had to be God to conquer sin and death and hell and Satan. Now I want you to notice one thing in verse 4, just as we conclude our thoughts on the person. It says that this was accomplished, that is His power and resurrection, according to the Spirit of holiness. That is another way to say the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit working in Christ. Through the agency of the Spirit, Christ did what He did. He expressed His power and He was raised from the dead through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

Now this relationship is very important. If you look back, for example, at Matthew chapter 3 for a moment, let me take you just on a very fast tour of how Jesus was related to the Holy Spirit in His incarnation. The Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity, as you know, and within the Trinity they were equal and yet when Jesus was incarnate, He submitted Himself to the will of the Father and to the power of the Spirit in a voluntary submission. And we find that at His baptism in Matthew chapter 3, He was baptized in verse 16, He went up out of the water, the heavens were open to Him and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon Him in a voice from heaven saying, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now the Father was bestowing on Christ the Spirit.

Now mark this. I believe that from this time on, and this was the initiation into His ministry, His ministry was controlled by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now follow a little further into Matthew chapter 12 and verse 31. He said this to those who accused Him of being of the devil. They accused Him of being of Satan.

They accused Him of being representative of Beelzebub, which was a pagan term for Satan. And He said in verse 31, I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men. But the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven men. And whosoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, a word against the Son of Man can be forgiven. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven. Now what was He saying?

He's saying, You might say something against my humanness, and that would be forgivable. But when you blaspheme the Spirit of God who is doing the work through me, that is unforgivable. But the point that I want you to see is this, that when they denied the works of Christ, He says, You're not blaspheming the Son of Man, you're blaspheming whom? The Holy Spirit.

Why? Because He had surrendered to the power of the Holy Spirit. And when they blasphemed His works, they were blaspheming the Spirit because it was the Spirit working through Him. And so you have just in this introduction, in that one little phrase, not only an understanding of the humanity of Christ and the deity of Christ, but His relationship to the Holy Spirit, one of the most marvelous of all theological categories. Listen to what it says in Luke 4, 1, And Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. After His baptism, He went from that place full of the Holy Spirit. In John 3, 34, it says this, For God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him. The Father loves the Son and hath given all things into His hand. When God gave the Son the Spirit, He gave Him the Spirit without measure.

In other words, in absolute and utter fullness. Now this is a mystery, people. Jesus is God. He's one with the Father and one with the Spirit. The Trinity is one and yet distinctly three.

But in a marvel of the incarnation, there was some kind of separation. The Son took on a voluntary submission, did only the will of the Father and only through the power of the Spirit. And so it was the agency of the Holy Spirit that empowered Him in His voluntary humiliation. It was the agency of the Holy Spirit that was doing the work through Him. And that shows you, that shows you the utter submissiveness of Christ. And when it says in Philippians that He set aside these things, that He took on the form of a servant and was found in fashion as a man and humbled Himself, it really means that. He did only what the Father showed Him to do and only in the power of the Spirit. Quite a submission for one who is fully God and has been and will be for all eternity. And so it was the Spirit who empowered Him in His resurrection.

You say, why is that important? It is important because it indicates to us that the Trinity, that God Himself is involved in the living and the dying and the rising of Christ. And the greatest affirmation that Jesus was who He claimed to be was that God Himself raised Him from the dead through the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit. So Christ is the God-man, fully man and fully God. And that is fully indicated in that God Himself raised Him from the dead through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

That's good news. He came to identify with us. He came to be a man as we are men, to suffer, to understand the role of human life. But at the same time He was God and He overcame by the power of the Spirit and rose from the dead. The marvel of His humanity and deity and that mysterious union we can never fully understand. And we can never fully understand how He was related to the Father and how He was related to the Spirit because it is so mysterious. We can't really grasp it all, but that is precisely what the Bible teaches.

Fully man and fully God. So we meet the preacher. We see the promise and the person of the good news, Jesus Christ, God in human flesh doing the will of the Father whose Son He has become in the power of the Spirit. Now let's come, number four, to the provision of the good news...the provision.

If you love the Son, what happens? If you receive the good news, what happens? Two things first pop out of the treasure trove that God has provided. Verse 5 says, "...by whom we have received grace and apostleship."

And you can stop there. What is it that the good news gives us? What is it that the good news bestows upon us?

What is the treasure that we inherit when we love the Son? First, grace. Second, apostleship.

First, watch this, conversion. Second, vocation. First, to be called.

Second, to be sent. First, let's look at grace. We receive grace. What do you mean, Paul? Well, there is the possibility that he could be meaning the grace of apostleship.

That's possible. But I like to think he's saying something more distinct than that, that the translation of the authorized is right, that he is saying we have received grace and apostleship. What is grace?

It's unmerited favor, unearned favor. The good news is that salvation is by grace. Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 says, "...for by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should...what?...should boast." We're saved by grace. The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. It is grace, unmerited favor. The kind good will, the mercy, the loving kindness of God grants this as a gift. And all we do is respond in believing.

A baby breathes because it is slapped. And we enter into the kingdom of God and receive the gift of life from Him because with divine sovereignty He waxes us and we begin to breathe spiritually. If we are alive, it is because His breath has been breathed into us. We are born from above. There's no place for self-congratulations.

There's no place for human achievement. We are not saved by works. In Romans 3 verse 24 it says we are justified freely by His grace. Verse 27, "...where is boasting then? It is excluded.

By what law or works? Nay, but by the law of faith we believe and God is gracious." In Romans chapter 5, he'll develop that more in verses 20 and 21.

It talks about where sin abounded, grace did much more about. Mercy without cause, kindness without deserving. So salvation did not come by confirmation. Salvation does not come by communion, does not come by baptism, does not come by church membership, does not come by church attendance, does not come by trying to keep the Ten Commandments or trying to live the Sermon on the Mount. It does not come by giving to charity. It does not come by believing there is a God or there is a Christ. It does not come by simply being moral and respectable. It does not come even by claiming to be a Christian. It comes when we receive by faith the gift of grace.

By the way, hell will be full of people I've just described who think they have salvation in the wrong thing. And so, Paul says, we receive grace. That's the first provision of the gospel, that you don't have to earn it.

You couldn't if you wanted to. It's impossible, for by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified. Dr. Barnhouse had a good word. He said this, love that looks upward is worship.

Love that looks outward is affection. And love that stoops is grace. And God has stooped to give us grace, though we don't deserve it. The dying Saint Payson said this, grace is the only thing that can make us like God. I might be dragged through heaven, through earth, and through hell, and I would still be the same sinful, polluted wretch unless God Himself should cleanse me by His grace. Now we're going to see a lot more about grace, so I'm just going to leave it there.

But it is free, it is a gift. The first provision, grace. The second, apostleship. And I think Paul is expanding his thinking here.

He starts with himself, Paul. By the time he gets to verse 5, he has the word we. We have received grace and I think he embraces the believing community. We've received a certain kind of apostleship. I know he sees himself in that we and he sees the other apostles there and those who work with him.

It's also possible he senses the breadth of that term in its broadest possible context. We are called and saved to be sent to reach the world. And for Paul, his apostleship was that very unique apostleship, very unique.

In fact, there was none like it. There was the Twelve, Judas fell out, Matthias was added, that kept the Twelve intact. And later, Paul appeared on the scene as born out of due season, an apostle as truly as any of the others who saw Christ personally after the resurrection. And yet there was a uniqueness about his apostleship and I think he sensed that. But he also realized that all of us are encompassed in the concept of being sent ones. You know that Hebrews 3, 1 calls the Lord Jesus an apostle? He was sent from the Father. So in its widest sense, I believe the term refers to any gospel messenger.

William Hendrickson agrees with that. He says, anyone who is on a spiritual mission, anyone who in that capacity represents the sender, anyone who brings the message of salvation is in a sense an apostle. But please don't be confused. We are not equal to the apostles of the New Testament. They were unique for their own time.

But you can find as you study and we've seen this in past lessons, so we won't belabor the point, that there were many who were sent ones. For example, in Romans 16, 7 it says, greet Andronicus and Junius. Have you ever heard of them? You know anything about them?

I don't. It says, who are of note among the apostles. What kind of apostles were Andronicus and Junius? Well, certainly not apostles with a capital A, not the official ones, but they were dispatched. They were sent ones on a mission of proclaiming the truth of Christ in his behalf.

And so I believe that this is what we are learning here, that there is not only the grace of salvation but the challenge of being sent. By the way, in Acts 14, 14 it calls Barnabas an apostle. He wasn't one of the twelve and nor was he the equivalent of Paul in that sense. And this goes on throughout the Scripture. You have the term apostle being broadened and broadened in many texts so that we can't confine it to just some limited specific individuals.

Now let me just see if I can give you an illustration to help you. I grew up with athletics as a background and I was on a lot of different teams and some coaches that I played for in various sports were kind souls. Others were not so kind.

Winning was everything. But I can remember several different teams that I was on in my life where a boy would come and he would try out for the team and he really wasn't very good. He didn't have a lot of ability. But maybe his father had died.

Maybe he was a poor fellow or maybe he was just kind of the sort of person that draws sympathy out of you. And every once in a while a coach would just put him on the team, you know, just give him a uniform, make him feel apart. But he'd never play, never get in the game.

And I thought about that in reference to this. The Lord doesn't work that way. If you get on the team, you're going to get in the game. It's going to be grace and apostleship that He's called us to.

It is not just to be redeemed, it is to be redeemed and then sent. He graciously puts us on the team. And by the way, we're all like that little kid who couldn't do anything. And He puts us on the team and then He uses us.

And what a tough bunch we are to work with. The good news, beloved, is that He provides conversion and vocation, the high and holy privilege of serving Jesus Christ. Oh my, do you have any comprehension of what a high calling that is? It says in Ephesians 2 10 that we have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. We have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works.

That's the whole point. A victor at the Olympic Games in ancient times was asked, Spartan, what will you gain by this victory? He replied, I, sir, shall have the honor to fight on the front line for my king. That's it.

We're called to serve with all of our limitations. D. L. Moody gave an address one time in Chicago, and it was typical Moody. At the close of the address, a highly educated man came to him and said, sir, excuse me, but you made eleven mistakes in your grammar tonight.

Mr. Moody said, I probably did. You see, my early education was very limited and faulty, but I'm using all the grammar that I know for the cause of Christ. How about you? That was the right answer, wasn't it? Well, what is the provision of the good news? It is grace to save, apostleship to serve.

That's John MacArthur, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, as he shows you the immense blessings of being in Christ. His current study here on Grace to You is titled, And Now for the Good News. Now, John, you've made a point in this study that in the gospel, there is continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. And in fact, as Paul says, the gospel was promised beforehand through God's prophets in the Holy Scriptures. That point, simply to say, understanding the fullness of the good news really means having a more thorough understanding of all biblical truth. Yeah, the foundations of the gospel which unfolds fully in the New Testament are laid down in the Old Testament. You know, so many Christian people get bits and pieces.

You know that, Phil. They don't get the full picture. And when you get the full picture of how the Old Testament presents everything necessary for the foundation of the gospel and the New Testament brings the fulfillment into place, when you get that full big picture, it's amazing. And so obviously, that's one of the reasons that Grace to You does what we do. We're teaching the Word of God one verse at a time so that people get not just the details here and there, but they get the big picture over time. And I want to mention again that the Legacy Standard Bible, this brand new English translation of the entire Bible is now available with the MacArthur Study Bible Notes, the LSB edition of the MacArthur Study Bible.

This is the best of all possibilities. The best translation and the notes that will help you to dig deeply into that translation and understand it. My hope is that you would know God's Word, not only in its individual aspects, but comprehensively, handling it accurately both in the verse by verse manner, but also in the sweeping saga of redemptive history, getting the big picture. MacArthur Study Bible, an all in one resource to help you know God's Word. So for the first time ever, the MacArthur Study Bible is available in the Legacy Standard Text of Scripture, and the LSB is a very helpful refinement of the New American Standard Bible, which is the text I've preached from for many years. Now let me just say, among the benefits of the Legacy Standard Text are gender language that is precisely what is found in the original Greek and Hebrew, the name of God, Yahweh, consistently used in the Old Testament, and also the translation of doulos as slave and not bondservant, which is a very important reality in understanding the identity of a believer who submits to the Lordship of Christ.

So throughout the MacArthur Study Bible, you'll find 25,000 footnotes that I've written drawing out theological, historical, cultural, grammatical insights that make the passage clear. A great Christmas gift this Christmas. Shipping is free on U.S. orders. You can expect the mail system to get overloaded as we get closer to December 25th. So take advantage of free shipping now. That's free shipping now. Receive your MacArthur Study Bibles in the new Legacy Standard Version in plenty of time for Christmas.

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Four binding options to choose from, including premium goatskin, and our telephone number again, 800-55-GRACE. Our web address, gty.org. And when you visit gty.org, be sure to enjoy the various opportunities to listen to John's verse-by-verse teaching. You can download 3,600 sermons free of charge in audio and transcript format.

Just search by topic, date, or book of the Bible. And if you're not sure where to start, log on to GraceStream. It's a continual broadcast of John's teaching. We begin in Matthew chapter 1 and go all the way through the end of the book of Revelation.

It's an excellent way to spend a few minutes or a couple of hours. The name again, GraceStream. And that web address, one more time, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, with a question. What do you need to understand most about the gospel of Jesus Christ? Consider that tomorrow as John continues his study. And now for the good news, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.