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Am I willing to rethink what
I have been taught and believe
about the Bible's Gospel?
Am I willing to seriously ponder
what the Bible itself says.

THE CHALLENGE
The idea of "Gospel" can be described as: fundamental principles presented as facts intended to provide meaning and hope to challenging circumstances. There are many different gospels, each proposing their own unique path to their form of personal peace prosperity and prominence. The source of each gospel is some sort of deity, which can be anything that is considered able to deliver power or pleasure to the faithful follower. All of these things can be served and worshipped as a "God." Each of them have gospel principles that claim to rescue their followers from whatever challenges they believe they are experiencing. Gospels are easy to find, they are championed all around us. The challenge is to find "a True GOSPEL" that really delivers what it promises. Adding to the challenge is to find a True GOD among all the gods that are vying for our attention.

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The GOSPEL of The Bible
The search can seem impossible. But for those willing to consider it, the Bible reduces the search to two competing options. The Bible reduces the choice to believing and serving gospels and gods of our own making OR a GOSPEL and GOD Whom the Bible describes as: "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of GOD! How unsearchable are his judgments an how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:33-36) A person can investigate and experiment with all the other gospels and gods, but as many have found, none of them truly rescue and satisfy. Only the pursuit of other gods will keep a person from reading and pondering the GOSPEL according to the Bible.

The Bible GOSPEL outline is simple:
1. The True GOSPEL is Bad News.
... There are gods and gospels that do not rescue
2. The True GOSPEL is GOOD NEWS.
... There is One GOD Whose GOSPEL Truly rescues

This GOSPEL is clearly presented in the first three chapters of the Bible. This GOSPEL is then described and demonstrated throughout both the Old and New Testaments.
Read the first three chapters of the Bible for yourself. You will find the following: A GOD Who, unlike anything else we know or understand, simply and profoundly WAS "In the beginning" and He created everything that we see around us, including ourselves, by speaking ("and GOD said") it into existence. (It is understandable that we would think it is impossible to have something come from nothing. We blindly and arrogantly say If we cannot understand it, it can't be true. We naturally make our gods conform to our understanding.) GOD gave our first parents, Adam and Eve, work to do, instructions to follow and He was with them. All was "very good." The Good News that there is a GOD who truly cares for His people cannot be fully appreciated without understanding the Bad News that follows GOD's "very good" creation.

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There are gods and gospels that do not rescue
For reasons fully understood only to Himself, GOD allowed a serpent (later revealed to be an angel who longed to himself be equal with the GOD from Whom he was rebelling) to tempt Adam and Eve to disobey GOD's command to not eat the fruit of one particular tree in the garden. For the temptation, the serpent used his "gospel," his "good news." Read it in chapter three. The serpent first challenged them to doubt what GOD had said. ("Did GOD actually say...") The serpent then offered his own truth that challenged GOD's warning. ("You will not surely die") Finally, the serpent presented the idea that GOD was selfishly withholding from them the opportunity for them to become GODs themselves. The serpent suggested that GOD was keeping them "blind" to "being like GOD." And he strangely likened being like GOD to "knowing good and evil," which he evidently thought was a good thing.
This "gospel" presented by the serpent said there is a better way to enjoy life than the way GOD offers. It suggests that to disregard GOD's warnings is the way to a better life. And, in all of the temptation was the implication that "you have the power within yourself to be the agent of your own destiny. You can choose to enjoy the happy independence that GOD enjoys if you will just reach out and take it." This is the self-centered gospel that has been presented over and over again in a million different ways throughout all of human history. Denying and ignoring GOD we have been making and worshipping gods in our image. It is bad news that this kind of gospel is presented as Good News. But it is not bad news only because it worships man-like gods. It is also bad news because of the results of its failed promises. This man-made gospel promises happiness but delivers guilt, loneliness, and death. Continue reading in Genesis chapter three.
The Bible text continues: believing the serpent's gospel "... the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate." According to the gospel of the serpent, the story should continue with: "their eyes were opened and they were delighted to discover the happy joy of knowing good and evil, they understood the grand potential of being like GOD, and set off to discover their new-found freedom from the bondage of GOD's restrictive commands."
But, notice, and ponder what really happened. "Then the eyes of both were opened." It was true that GOD was keeping them blind. But it was blindness to the guilt, loneliness and death that not following GOD's instructions would produce. Their eyes were opened, "and they knew they were naked." It was not a sexual embarrassment issue, it was a full-exposure issue. Their new-selfish-selves were exposed to GOD, to themselves and to each other. "And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths." Following the serpent's gospel, they became the primary agents of their own lives and by themselves, made loincloths for themselves. The promised freedom became lonely guilt.
The next thing that happened was "they heard the sound of the LORD GOD walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD GOD." What used to be glad communion with GOD became shame and a compulsion to hide. The serpent's gospel promise of the fellowship of GOD-LIKE peers became dark loneliness. When GOD called out to Adam, he answered: "when I heard You, I was afraid, I was naked, and I hid." The serpent's gospel promise of knowing good and evil was being revealed as the half-truth it really was, and is.
The guilt and loneliness that Adam and Eve experienced in their new (and broken) relationship with GOD was not just with GOD but infected the relationship between the two once-loving partners. Refusing the personal agency they once desired, they now blamed each other and the serpent for their condition. It was not just evil actions that plagued them. Rejecting GOD, their hearts became "deceitful above all things and desperately sick." (Jeremiah 17:9) Add to these awful consequences of their choosing the serpent's gospel, "the LORD GOD sent him (them) out of the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken." This alienation from GOD, and all He created good, was "death," the result of their choices. And they had yet to experience physical death, which could almost be considered a relief from the guilt, loneliness, and bondage to the serpent's selfish gospel they, and we their children, were left to hopelessly endure. How could they, and we, be rescued from the awful results of believing this wanna-be god and his self-centered gospel?
If you are reading the Genesis text, there are some things we skipped mentioning. Isn't it interesting that the serpent didn't come to congratulate them on their independent choice and the attractiveness of their new clothing. Perhaps he did not want to face the questions of their buyers remorse. More probably he was off congratulating himself on the addition to his following, the power of his crafty cunning and planning how he would enslave and devour their children. Anyway, soon after they had they sewed the last stitch in their fig leaf aprons, they heard GOD call out "where are you?" Knowing what the rest of the Bible teaches us, GOD knew exactly where they were, what they were doing, what they had done, and how they were feeling. GOD asked them a second question: "Who told you that you were naked?" Like the five hundred other questions GOD asks in the Bible, it was not that He needed to learn the rest of the details. It was to prompt them to think about the awful reality of their situation; to prompt them to realize that it was the consequences of their own choices that they were experiencing. And, there was more.
Demonstrating that He has no peer, no all-powerful rival, GOD addressed the serpent, then Eve, then Adam. To each one GOD described His judgment on their selfish rebellions. It seems obvious that the reality of their judgments were not really understood in the moment because there is no mention of either remorse nor repentance. The real weight would settle in as the guilt, loneliness, and bondage to the selfishness of sin would settle and engulf them like a chilly fog. Our human response to this bondage to sin is so "desperately wicked," that we became like "our father, the Devil," and we devise all kinds of "gospels" to rescue ourselves and devise our own preferred lives, all the while ignoring what God did just before "He drove the man out of the garden."

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THE GOSPEL IS GOOD NEWS
In His judgment of the serpent, GOD said something very curious. He said: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." Perhaps Adam and Eve understood "offspring" but it is certain that the comments about bruising ("crush, bruise, batter," in Hebrew) were surely confusing to them and would be better understood only as GOD's plans for the ages were revealed most fully in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. GOD was content to let the puzzling phrases percolate for centuries. But the mysterious judgments on the serpent and the woman's offspring were not all GOD did before the garden of LIFE was closed off.
THERE IS A GOD WHO TRULY RESCUES
It seems to be just an insignificant comment, but to ponder it in the light of the rest of the Bible, "the LORD GOD made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them," introduced The GOSPEL which is truly GOOD NEWS. The serpent's gospel is actually the bad news that like Adam and Eve all their children are born sinners, guilty, lonely, and slaves to the Devil and sin. In this condition all false gospels are born and flourish. We all, like sewing our own fig leaf loincloths, seek to rescue ourselves from the seemingly hopeless condition of our own making. Seeking to be "like GOD" we imagine ourselves wise and powerful enough to work our way out of the penalty we owe for our rebellion. Adam and Eve were in this exact condition. They tried to rescue themselves. But GOD, realizing the futility of their human gospel, killed an animal and "made garments of skins and clothed them."
The marvelous connection between the bruising of the woman's offspring and the killing an animal, perhaps a lamb, for their garments remained a mystery until it was fully revealed in Jesus Christ. His crucifixion and resurrection rescued all who would believe the True GOSPEL of The GOD Who Rescues from our bondage to sin and death. While the story of mankind abounds with examples of self-centered "wanna-be gods" and their self-help gospels, these first chapters of Genesis introduce us to the only GOSPEL that truly rescues us from our bondage to sin and the eternal consequences. There is only One GOSPEL that Truly rescues and gives all the Glory and Praise to the One GOD Who forgives, pardons, and rescues all who want His clothing more than their own.
Today, having both the Old and New Testaments, we know much more fully the details of this GOSPEL of our rescue, our redemption, our forgiveness, and the atoning grace that purchased for us our Eternal LIFE. But for hundreds and even thousands of years, the simple and profound GOSPEL / GOOD NEWS that there is a GOD Who Rescues from the enslaving consequences of sinful selfish pride, was the fundamental and sufficient focus of forgiven believers.
Many people, including the religious Jews, who claimed to faithfully obey God, see the Bible as a guidebook on how to be obedient in order to win GOD's blessing. This perspective is rooted in the self-help gospel of the serpent. If a person can do their best to obey GOD's commands, GOD will see their good deeds and graciously bless them. Actually, the Bible is a record book of the failure of that gospel. Over and over and over the pride of partial obedience led to "honoring GOD with their lips, while their hearts were far from Him." The Bible is the story of the long-suffering, everlasting love of GOD. It is the story of repentant hearts, seeking forgiveness, represented first by the blood sacrifices of substitute animals, then by Jesus Christ. It is the story of obedience that responds to the GOSPEL-GIFT of Forgiveness.
The symbolic sacrifice of an animal to clothe Adam and Eve, and the symbolic blood sacrifices of untold numbers of animals were for centuries the demonstrations of the, now real history, life-blood sacrifice of GOD Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. The blood-sacrifice of animals was never sufficient to fully atone, pay for, substitute for, the debt we owe for our rebellion. It took the blood-sacrifice, the bruising/crushing of the only Perfect offspring of Eve. This raises the question, "who was Jesus Christ, really? Why was His crucifixion and resurrection so special, so unique, so sufficient? We can go back to Genesis One for the answer.

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ONE GOD!
The fourth word in Genesis one is "GOD." "In the beginning, GOD created the heavens and the earth." Then it describes how GOD created. Six times, "GOD said." With a WORD GOD created, not evolved, not arranged, not organized, but created with a WORD, the heavens and the earth. The Bible declares in numerous places that GOD is the One and Only GOD. Here are a few: When Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest He quoted
Deuteronomy 6:4 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our GOD, the LORD is one."
Isaiah 45:18 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the GOD who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), “I am the Lord, and there is none else."
Isaiah 43:10 ... "Before Me there was no GOD formed, And there will be none after Me."
Psalm 86:10 "For You are great and do wondrous deeds; You alone are GOD."
Ephesians 4:6 "one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all."
GOD is "US"
Returning to Genesis one, GOD says something curious in verse 26. The Bible's "One GOD" says: "Let US make man in our image, after our likeness." What can the One GOD have meant by "US?" How can there be an "US" if "our GOD the LORD is one," "I Am the Lord, and there is none else," "Before Me there was no GOD formed, And there will be none after Me." "You alone are GOD?" It may help to realize that God uses hundreds of different names and titles of Himself in the Bible. In addition to GOD, perhaps the most familiar title is "FATHER." Here are some others that are obviously descriptions of this "One GOD's" character: Almighty GOD; Consuming Fire; Everlasting Light; Father of Glory; GOD of All Grace; GOD of Peace; GOD of Hope; I AM; King of Kings; LORD; Refuge; Sovereign; and Strong Deliverer, The LORD our Righteousness; True GOD; to list just a few.
Jesus Christ is perhaps most referred to as "The SON OF GOD." This can be confusing because we tend to think of "son" in biological terms, but for Jesus Christ the Bible uses the term "Son" to describe a different and infinitely closer relationship. There are names and titles used of Jesus Christ that are used of GOD and can really only apply to GOD, such as: Almighty; Alpha and Omega; Author of Salvation; The Blessed and Only Sovereign; Chief Shepherd; Creator; Deliverer; Mighty GOD, Everlasting Father; Prince of Peace; Holy and Righteous One; Immanuel; Lamb of GOD; My Lord and My GOD; Lord of Glory; Messiah; Our Passover; Righteous One; and Word of GOD, among many others. The only conclusion we can draw is that, even though it seems impossible, Jesus Christ is GOD, a part of the "US" of Genesis 1:26 and also the "woman's offspring" of 3:15. Could there be another part of the 1:26 "US" in these first chapters of Genesis? How about "the Spirit of GOD" was hovering over the face of the waters?" Are there names and titles which reveal that, like Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is GOD as well?
Here are titles and names of the SPIRIT OF GOD who is One GOD: He is the "Breath of GOD" the Holy Spirit is the Author of Scripture; the Comforter; Counselor; Advocate; Convicts of Sin; The Deposit, Seal, Earnest of our Salvation; Guide into all Truth; Indwelling of GOD; Spirit of Truth; Spirit of GOD, Spirit of Life; Eternal Spirit; Breath of the Almighty; Power of the Highest; Spirit of Holiness; Spirit of Grace."
Getting back to the GOSPEL / GOOD NEWS. The bad news is that we all, like Adam and Eve, are sinners and need to be rescued from the guilt, loneliness and death (separation from GOD) that is our present and eternal destiny. Our natural reaction is, like Adam and Eve, to try to cover our nakedness with all sorts of good works (gospel remedies). We try to earn our way into a god's favor by trying to keep His commands, doing things we think will impress and bring us into his favor. But unless it is the Real GOD and His GOSPEL we labor in vain.

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THE SUMMARY
The GOSPEL GOOD NEWS of Genesis 1-3 (and of the whole Bible) is:
There is a GOD Who Rescues, Guilty, Lonely, Dying, Sinners.
> This GOD is Father, Son and Spirit
> This GOD knows we cannot rescue ourselves
> This GOD (Jesus Christ) became one of us
... for the purpose of taking our judgment upon Himself
> This GOD (by His Spirit) raised Jesus from the dead, defeating sin and death.
> This GOD forgives, and gives His LIFE to all who:
1- Admit they need to be forgiven and cannot earn it.
2- Believe Who This GOD is and What This GOD has done
... by dying and living in our place.
> This GOD, After Rescuing us:
... writes to His Saints, sending His Grace and Peace...
READ EPHESIANS 1 ... Notice: 1:13,14 "In HIM you also, when you heard the word of truth, the GOSPEL OF YOUR SALVATION, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory."

Even though we may sincerely try, we cannot be good enough to deserve or earn the Eternal LIFE GOD gives us.
In Justice and Love GOD has done it for us:
The Father Loves us ...
The Son Died and Lives for us ...
The Spirit Seals us.
We have Eternal LIFE because GOD has rescued us from our sin
You have Heard! Do you Believe?
Now,
Thank GOD! LIVE for HIM! Tell others the GOSPEL / GOOD NEWS!!!
Read and Ponder the Bible to learn about the Eternal LIFE GOD gives us!
QUESTIONS TO PONDER...
1. If the Ten commandments were God's only requirement to get into His Heaven, could you perfectly obey them?
2. If perfectly trying to keep the Ten Commandments were God's only requirement, are you doing all you can do?
3. What is keeping you from accepting GOD's complete, perfect payment for your sin?
4. How reliable is the source of any different Gospel you are believing?
GOD BLESS YOU WITH HIMSELF!!!

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