Don't Forget the Good News

Ezekiel 20:1-49
Hebrews 9:11-28
Psalm 107:1-43
Proverbs 27:11


I've become increasingly worried over the last while at how churches seem to be polarising over methods of reaching out to people and ways to grow the Kingdom of God.  On the one hand some churches seem to want to water absolutely everything down so that just about every aspect of Christian faith is up for grabs.  If we have to look exactly like the culture around us in it's greed and it's celebration of all things youthful and successful then so be it, off we go, let's look more and more like the world so that we can bring more people in.


The flip side of that comes in the form of movements such as Way of the Master that seem to see the problem not in the look of the church or in what we should adopt to attract the world but in a wholesale redesign of the story of Jesus so that what he does is come to tell the world the bad news of how much God can't stand who they are and is really, really itching to send them to hell for stealing cookies from the cookie jar or pens from the office.


In contrast to both of these approaches the Bible emphasises this weird and wonderful idea that it calls the "Good News."  That phrase has become so over used and hackneyed that it pays to go back to the Bible every once in a while to read what it means.  I would encourage you to use something like www.biblegateway.com and search under each use of that phrase "Good News" to rediscover what way the Bible uses it and then compare it to how your church or community use it.


In Psalm 107 the idea of telling the Good News is broken down to its simplest form, "1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good!  His faithful love endures forever.  2 Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out!  Tell others he has redeemed you from your enemies.  3 For he has gathered the exiles from many lands, from east and west, from north and south."


"Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out!"  The word redeemed here is a word used when talking about buying someone out of debt slavery or marrying someone who has been left destitute.  Has God changed your life and lifted you out of the mess you were in?  Go on, tell people about it!  There are enough people out there in the church fixated on convincing people of the "Bad News" first before they will let them know the Good News but this psalm tells us repeatedly to let people know what God has done for us.  Tell them the Good News and tell them it again and again and again.