I. INTRODUCTION

A.  The Bad News

A quick look at any newspaper or magazine shows that the world is getting worse and worse.  The bad news that occurs on a larger scale is only the multiplication of what is occurring on an individual level.  The term "bad news" has become a colloquialism to describe our era.

The reason there is so much bad news today is that people are in the grasp of a terrifying power that grips them deep inside their being.  It causes men to self-destruct.  The power that makes for bad news is sin.  There are four ways in which sin produces bad news in the human race. 

1.      Selfishness

It is truly bad news when everyone is bent on fulfilling his own particular desires at any price.  The basic element in selfishness is the dominance of your own ego above others.  It all started when Satan said, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the most high" (Isa.  14:13-14).  Man has inherited that propensity to sin and is utterly self-centered.  Whatever evil a society permits, man will attempt.  He will go as far as society's toleration will allow.  Man will consume everything in sight based on his own lust--things, people, and ultimately himself.  Many times when a friend, spouse, or family member ceases to provide what an individual wants, they are discarded like an old pair of useless shoes.

The ultimate goal in life for sinful man is to achieve self- satisfaction.  Whether it is in businesses or marriages, man ends up perverting everything because of his selfish lust for fame, dominance, popularity, money, and physical fulfillment.  Sin pushes humanity to self-consumption.  Someone has well said we ought to use things and love people, but instead we love things and use people.  The end result of man's selfishness is that he is unable to have meaningful relationships.  He is unwilling to give and thus he forfeits that which is the truest source of joy--an unselfish, sacrificial love for others.  Man becomes dominated by selfish greed that alienates him from everyone and everything.  He finally comes to a place of utter loneliness and despair.  When man follows his own lust, he begins to realize the law of diminishing returns--the more he wants, the less it satisfies.

2.      Guilt

Using and abusing people, or doing whatever else is necessary to indulge yourself brings about guilt.  God has designed man to feel sorrow when he sins, otherwise man could never prevent himself from going to hell.  It is like pain.  God has given the sensation of pain to allow you to recognize when your body is injured.  Likewise, God has given us the sensation of guilt as a way to tell us that we are sinful and something has to change.  The bad news is that man lives with anxiety, fear, psychological problems, ulcers, and a myriad of illnesses caused by his guilt.  He may try to alleviate his guilt by drunkenness, debauchery, or even suicide.  Men try to cover their guilt with a frivolous facade.  Some men even try to rationalize their guilt away with money, possessions, alcohol, drugs, sex, travel, and psychoanalysis.  Some blame their guilt on society, perhaps on a so-called antiquated biblical tradition.  People will push off their sin on anything.  I read of one man who blamed his guilt on a banana his mother gave him when he was a child! But you only end up compounding your guilt when you blame someone else for it.

3.      Meaninglessness

When man experiences selfishness and guilt, he will invariably ask himself, "Is what I'm experiencing all there is to life? What are the real answers? The real questions? Why am I alive? What is the real meaning of life?" Man is fed a steady diet of lies by Satan himself, who runs the world's evil system.  And since his lies never really answer the question of man's existence, man is left with no answers.  Edna St.  Vincent Millay said this in her poem "Lament": "Life must go on; I forget just why. " Many live in a series of 24-hour periods without real significance, where little changes.  The epitomy of man's problem is summed up by Roquentin, the main character in philosopher Jean Paul Sartre's novel Nansea, who said, "I decided to kill myself to remove at least one superfluous life. "

4.      Hopelessness

Born out of the trauma and anxiety of meaninglessness is the reality that you have nothing to live for and nothing to look forward to.  The only result of a self-centered, guilt-ridden meaningless life is the starkness of death.  That is why people mask the reality of death by laughing at it or ignoring it to avoid the inevitable hopelessness--the sense there is nothing for man here in this life or in the life to come--is the worst news of all.

Thousands of babies are born every day into a world filled with bad news.  With each passing day, men find themselves falling deeper into the human dilemma because they live in a world dominated by the father of lies--Satan himself.  As a result, sin produces bad news.  And even the small amounts of good news are but moments of rest in an unending saga of bad news.  It is like so many peace treaties--those moments when everyone stops to reload.  In between the bad news, much of the good news is short-lived. 

B.    The Good News

With so much bad news, can there really be any good news? Yes! The good news is that sin can be dealt with.  You don't have to be selfish.  Guilt and anxiety can be alleviated.  There is meaning to life and hope of life after death.  The apostle Paul says in Romans 1:1 that the good news is the gospel, which is the good news of God.  That is what the book of Romans is all about.  Paul begins this epistle with the good news of God, and ends with it as well (cf.  15:16).  Bracketing the entire epistle is the great reality that there is good news from God. 

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