The Gospel Driven Life
Being Good News People in a Bad
News World
Tentative Schedule
Chapter
Title
Week
Date
Looking Up, Looking Out: Breaking News
1
The Front Page God: Checking Headlines
1
17 August
2
The Real Crisis
2
24 August
3
The Big Story
3
31 August
4
Getting the Story Straight
4
7 September
5
Don’t Just DO Something, SIT There! Finding yourself in the Story
5
14 September
6
The Promise-Driven Life
6
21 September
Looking Around, Looking Ahead: A Cross-Cultural Community
7
News of War and Peace: God’s Politics for a New Creation
7
28 September
8
How the Good News Creates a Cross-Cultural Community
8
5 October
9
The Health Page: Feasting in a Fast-Food World
9
12 October
10
Today’s Headline: The Church in Exile
10
19 October
What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You get Things Done
Part 1
First Things First: Making God Supreme in Our Productivity
11
26 October
Part 2
Gospel-Driven Productivity
12
2 November
Parts 3-- 6
DARE: Define, Architect, Reduce, Execute
13
9 November
Chapter 1
THE FRONT PAGE GOD: CHECKING THE
HEADLINES
What is the GOOD NEWS?
• The ANNOUNCEMENT
of what GOD has done!
• A recitation of historical
facts that have an
impact
• Not: inner light, rules to
live by, good advice
The Impact of REALLY important news.
• No other religion is
based on historical facts
– 1 Cor 15:17-19
• REALLY important news
has an impact
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith
is futile and you are still in your sins. Then
those also who have fallen asleep in Christ
have perished. If in Christ we have hope in
this life only, we are of all people most to be
pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:17-19 ESV)
Chapter 2
THE REAL CRISIS
The real crisis summed up:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,
who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”
(Romans 1:18 ESV)
For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I
will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his
people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
the living God. (Hebrews 10:30-31 ESV)
Life Transformation or Life Ending ?
• The bad news is worse than we imagined –
driving us to despair
• The good news is better than we could have
dreamed
“God does not come to improve our life, but to end
it; not to transform the “old Adam,” but to kill it and
to raise us together with Christ in newness of life.”
Chapter 3
THE BIG STORY
The Courtroom Drama
• The airtight defense seems impenetrable
• Then a piece of evidence is discovered that
exposes the criminal and forces a confession
• The Biblical story is a courtroom drama – but
the guilty are clearly guilty, condemned , and
sentenced to death – how can the verdict be
overturned?
The Real Crisis…
• “Our real crisis is the righteousness of God…
… but the solution is the righteousness from God – that is a
FREE GIFT.”
• The bad news is overcome by the Good News:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins …. But God,
being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he
loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us
alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he
might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness
toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:1-7 ESV)
The Greatest Story Ever Told
• The life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ is the greatest story
ever told…
• Dorothy Sayers wondered why churches had traded it for bland
moralism.
“That God should play the tyrant over man is the dismal story of
unrelieved oppression; that man should play the tyrant over man is the
usual dreary record of human futility; but that man should play a
tyrant over God and find Him a better man than himself is an
astonishing drama indeed. Now we may call that doctrine exhilarating,
or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation or we may call it
rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all.”
All of our ideas are challenged…
• The Judge bears the sentence of His own
justice
• The offended party becomes the Redeemer
• Outcasts become royal heirs
• Outsiders become insiders
• Insiders become outsiders
“Jesus Christ is Lord!”:
The Resurrection as Historical Fact
… [He] was delivered up for our trespasses and
raised for our justification. (Romans 4:25 ESV)
• Not something in the realm of the mystical
• Blatant historical fact that can – and has –
been debated out in the public sphere
If Jesus is the Answer, What is the
Question?
• According to the popular, Christian bookstore,
Jesus:
– Fixes broken lives, marriages relationships; helps
us recover from addictions; relieves stress;
teaches u how to raise positive kids; improves our
self-esteem; boosts our optimism about life.
• We try to make the gospel “relevant” to
people judging problems by their own life
movie
Context changes everything…
• Those on the Titanic may have had broken
marriages, addictions, etc., but what they needed
– was rescued out of the icy water
• If we are facing God’s courtroom and certain
judgment – we need to be made right before Him
• What will do? Grace through faith in the
completed work of Christ or a cooperation of our
own effort with God?
Really!!???
The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the
LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give
every man according to his ways, according to the
fruit of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10 ESV)
Don’t Follow Your Heart
• We want to measure everything by our self, through
our self, and to for our self
• It is a good thing that are not allowed to follow our
heart as often as we would like and that there are
courts and officers to back it up!
• If we are looking for real drama, we need to follow
God’s script, not our heart
“For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:36 ESV)
The Gospel Transforms
• Our transformation is not the gospel, but the gospel
does transform
– Nothing that I am, feel, choose or do qualifies as good
news
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
….All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us
to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;”
(2 Corinthians 5:17-18 ESV)
Saved from What?
• Christ died to …
– Undo Adam’s corruption of our nature
– Triumph over the powers of evil, death, and hell
liberating the captives from the oppression and
violence that especially stalk the poor and weak
– Make payment to God’s offended dignity (Anselm)
• Well, yes, to some extent but…
In the OT context:
• He was the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin
of the world…”
• He died a vicarious, substitutionary sin-bearing
death…
– To propitiate God’s wrath!
• What are we saved from? God!
We are save from God’s wrath, by God himself,
because God is love.
Salvation is OF THE LORD… (Jonah 2:9)
“So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on
God, who has mercy.” (Romans 9:16 ESV)
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be
conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might
be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom
he predestined he also called, and those whom he called
he also justified, and those whom he justified he also
glorified. (Romans 8:29-30 ESV)
[No link in this golden chain has our finger prints on it!]
THAT IS THE GOOD NEWS – THAT IS THE BIG STORY