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Tag: freedom

Published September 9, 2019

Freedom from Sin

Last week we asked the question: “What Good is the Gospel?” When we think about sharing the ‘good news’ of Jesus Christ with others, exactly what good is it that we sharing with them?

And I think most of us would quickly point to an eternity in heaven with Jesus as the first and most obvious answer to that question. After all, having the hope that when we die, we won’t be eternally condemned as we deserve, but rather, we have the assurance of eternal life with our Creator – that’s some pretty significant good!

But what if there is even more than that? What if our salvation is more than just a get-out-of-jail-free card? What if there is some significant ‘good’ to be had right here and now – BEFORE we die and see Jesus face-to-face?

Well, actually, that’s just what the Bible teaches! According to the Bible, eternal life doesn’t begin when we die – it starts right from the moment when we accept Jesus as our Saviour. The Gospel brings about a radical life-change immediately. We don’t have until wait to get to heaven before we experience the goodness of the Gospel!

And so last week, we did just a quick overview of just four incredible benefits of the Gospel. And I won’t rehash them all today, but just in point form, here are the four things we looked at.

#1. Jesus’ death paid the price for our sin

#2. Death and sin are both defeated.

#3. God lives within us.

#4. Our lives have meaning and purpose.

Now of course, this is not an all-inclusive list of the goodness of the Gospel – this is just a sampling! And we’re going to dig into these benefits over the next few weeks to see just how good they really are and how they can radically transform our lives right here and now.

So I am really excited to spend the next few weeks with you examining the question: What Good is the Gospel? And I trust that as we look at all this, we will be reminded all over again of why the Gospel is such good news!

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Published February 8, 2012

Nutshell Truths

Have any of you ever been duped by counterfeit money? I’ve never experienced getting stuck with counterfeit money and I hope I never do. But I know others have. And that’s got to be a terrible feeling.

Imagine that you’re selling your car on Kijiji for maybe a couple thousand dollars. Some guy comes and checks it out and want to pay cash for it. So he gives you 20 one hundred dollar bills. He takes the car, you take the money and when you go to deposit it in the bank, the teller tells you that it’s all counterfeit. It’s fake. You got ripped off and there’s nothing you can do about.

That would stink big time! Wouldn’t you be mad? Mad at the guy for ripping you off and mad at yourself for not checking the money closer? No body likes getting duped.

But you know, people get duped all the time. Not just with counterfeit money, but with all kinds of things. We get duped by the “no-money-down” commercials on tv, or the “drink this beer and life will become a party” advertisements. We’re likely to see several of those during the superbowl this afternoon. We get duped by the big promises of the lottery tickets or by investments too good to be true.” You read in the news about people who have invested all their life savings with a certain investor only to find out later that the investor was a fraud and all their money is gone. They were duped and now they have nothing.

And while its certainly painful to get deceived out of your hard-earned cash, it’s tragic when people get duped in areas of life that are far more serious.

We live in a world where many people have been duped about God – about who He is and what He’s like – About the meaning of life and realities after death. Our world is full of counterfeit religions and counterfeit beliefs. And getting duped by those are far more serious than getting duped by a used-car salesman. I mean, we’re talking about life-changing, eternal consequences here. So it is absolutely imperative that we can sort out what is true and real and what is counterfeit when it comes to our beliefs about God.

And what makes it increasingly difficult is that many of these counterfeits are very convincing. I mean, that’s the nature of a counterfeit – it looks like the real thing. If it wasn’t convincing, no one would fall for it.

So with so many convincing, yet different beliefs about God and life and death out there, how do we make sure that we know what is really true and real? How do we keep from being duped?

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