These are notes on the sermon, The Best News You'll Ever Hear, preached by Pastor Joseph Prince on Sunday, 21 April 2019, at The Star Performing Arts Centre, Singapore. We hope these sermon notes will be an encouragement to you!
Be sure to sign up to get updates on the latest sermon notes by Team JP.
Pastor Prince wishes all a Blessed Resurrection Sunday!
You can come to church expecting to receive from the Lord because He is a God of miracles.
If you are feeling downcast or depressed because you received a bad report from the doctor, know that God is a God of miracles who can heal you. He created your body and He has also redeemed your body through the blood of Jesus Christ.
God loves you. You’re not alone. You’re not just a face in the crowd.
The Lord knows you. He knows the number of hairs on your head and He knows exactly what you’re going through—even the things that you don’t share with those closest to you.
God knows all about you and He loves you just as you are. That’s the best kind of love you can receive.
God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for your sins. On this day 2000 years ago, Jesus rose from the dead as a testimony that all your sins have been put away. That’s why today, we can sing, “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.”
How do you see God today? Do you see Him as an old and feeble God who is angry and stingy?
We have to change how we see God.
In heaven, everyone is forever young.
God isn’t an old man sitting on His throne in heaven today. He is a dynamic God who is young and never ages.
As a believer, you can experience that same life flowing through you today.
Eternal life is not just about living forever. It’s about living a good life forever. Eternal life is the life of God, the life that God lives by. It is the disease-free, ageless life, and it becomes yours through Jesus Christ!
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
—Romans 6:23 NKJV
All of us sin because we are sinners. We don’t become sinners because we sin. When we were born into this world, we were born in sin.
Maybe you are thinking, “But that’s not fair.”
The truth is that our lives are intricately linked with those who went before us, our fathers and our grandfathers, and so on. When the first man, Adam, made the choice to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden, sin entered into all mankind.
When God made the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, He put them in a beautiful place called Eden. It was full of beauty and goodness.
God could have created robots, but He didn’t. He made man in His image, according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26–27), and gave man free choice.
If God created everything to be good and perfect, man would not have been able to exercise his free choice.
So God planted many good trees including the Tree of Life and told them that they could freely eat of every tree except one, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:16–17). But Adam and Eve chose to eat of that tree, and sin entered into the world.
The wages of sin is death. You can’t make a choice and not experience the consequences.
Death came into the world, but it was never God’s heart for man to die.
God’s desire is for you to be young forever. God never designed man to be sick, grow old, and die. That’s why Jesus wept when Lazarus died even though He knew He was about to raise him from the dead. Jesus wept because He knew the Father’s original plan for man.
God never designed for man to die. Innately, we all hate death. It feels foreign to us.
When Jesus rose from the dead, He rose bodily.
His resurrection proves that our sins have been put away.
Sin is what separates man from God. God hates sin because sin destroys everything beautiful that God has made. Sin hurts us.
For example: If your child had cancer, you would hate the cancer because you love your child. You would hate the cancer to the same extent that you love your child. In the same way, God hates sin because He loves you. He hates sin because sin destroys everything good that He has created and intended for you to enjoy.
While God is love, God is also righteous.
God had to punish sin, but He also loved man.
How did our righteous God punish sin yet save man?
There was only one solution, and He took it: He sent His sinless Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins.
“For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
—John 1:17 NKJV
This is one of Pastor Prince’s favorite verses, and it’s a verse that marks his ministry.
The law was given through Moses, a servant. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, the Son.
The law demands but grace supplies.
Under law, God demands righteousness from sinfully bankrupt man.
But under grace, God says, “Take the gift of righteousness! It’s only to be received.”
The first miracle that Moses did was to turn water into blood, resulting in death.
The first miracle that Jesus did was to turn water into wine, resulting in joyous celebration at a wedding.
He can do the same for your marriage; He can turn what is bland and mundane into intoxicating wine.
Under law, God said, “I’ll by no means pass by your sins, but I’ll visit your sins to the third and fourth generation.” (Exod. 34:7).
Under grace, God says, “I’ll remember your sins no more.” (Heb. 8:12).
The law says, “Do, do, do.”
Grace says, “Done.”
On the cross, the last word uttered by the Person of Grace, Jesus, is, “Finished!”
That word signified the complete fulfillment of every requirement that God has for us.
When God gave the Ten Commandments, He knew that man would break them. He knew that even the best of man would fail.
God’s standard is perfect. To Him, adultery happens the moment you lust in your heart. Murder happens the moment you hate someone (see Matt. 5:21–30).
None of us can keep God’s law.
The law brings us to the end of ourselves. Jesus came to show us that our only hope lies in Him, our Savior.
The rituals in the Old Testament are visual aids that point to the finished work of Jesus on the cross.
Let’s look at the sin-offering in the Old Testament:
1. When a man sins, he brings a lamb to the priest in the tabernacle.
Back in Old Testament times, when someone sinned, he had to bring a sin-offering to the priest in the tabernacle.
In this situation, the priest represents God; his eyes represent the eyes of God.
2. The priest examines the lamb to ensure it is without flaw or blemish.
When the sinner brings the lamb to the priest, the priest examines the lamb to make sure it does not have any flaws or blemishes. The priest does not examine the man for sin (because it’s obvious that the man has sinned—that’s why he is there with the lamb). The priest only examines the lamb.
Why did the priest in the Old Testament have to check the lamb to make sure it did not have any flaws or blemishes? Because the lamb had to be a good representation of the sinless Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.
Today, we are like the man who brings the lamb to the priest. We come before God with our Lamb—the true Lamb, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ.
When we bring Jesus, God is not examining us for sin. He is only looking at Jesus.
How good is your Lamb today? He is perfect.
Today, God is looking at Jesus, the perfect One, instead of you.
Only Someone without blemish, without sin, can rightfully take your place.
3. The man who sinned lays his hands on the lamb in an act of identification so that his sins are transferred to the lamb.
Once the priest in the Old Testament has examined the lamb and made sure it is without blemish, then the act of identification takes place: the sinner lays his hands on the lamb he has brought. Now, the lamb that was once without sin now bears the sins of the sinner. Now, the lamb is guilty in the sinner’s place.
4. The man then kills the lamb who is carrying his sins.
The priest then passes the sinner a knife, and he kills the lamb. The lamb dies in his place, carrying his sins.
That is what happened when Jesus hung on the cross. He hung on the cross carrying our sins and died for our sins. He took our place.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
—John 3:16 NKJV
Love gives. In love, God gave His only Son for us.
By the sin-offerings in the Old Testament, sin was covered over and over again. Sin was covered year after year until Jesus came.
Jesus did not come to cover our sins. He came to remove them completely.
“... Behold! the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
—John 1:29 NKJV
Now, our sin isn’t just covered—it is taken away by the blood of Jesus, the true Lamb of God.
God could have chosen a grand palace for Jesus to be born in, yet He chose a lowly manger filled with lambs and oxen.
5. The slain lamb is placed on an altar and burned.
The slain lamb is then placed on an altar. The altar has four corners representing the cross of Jesus Christ. When Jesus hung on the cross, He was hanging on the altar of all altars, the final altar. He is the perfect and the last offering.
The lamb is then burned before God. The fire that consumes the lamb represents God’s judgment. On the cross, Jesus consumed the fire of God’s judgment on our behalf. Today, there is no more fiery judgment of God on us.
The wages of sin is death, and Jesus took our death. He took our punishment on the cross.
6. The man walks out of the tabernacle with something he never had before: the lamb’s righteousness.
Now, the man who brought the lamb looks at the altar, knowing that that should have been his death but the lamb took his place. Not only does he leave without his sins, but he also leaves with something he never had before: the lamb’s righteousness. Because he has the lamb’s righteousness, he has the blessing of God. He leaves as a free man, no longer a sinner.
Today, because of Jesus’ finished work, we are like this man! Righteous and under God’s blessings.
“Blessings are on the head of the righteous,
But violence covers the mouth of the wicked.”
—Proverbs 10:6 NKJV
In the eyes of God, you are now the righteousness of God in Christ. There’s no more judgement upon you; you can walk away confident that good things will happen to you because God is looking at you and treating you as the blameless Lamb of God.
Today, the light of God’s favor shines on you and His favor abounds towards you!
Pastor Prince shares a video of what happened to Jesus on the cross.
At the cross, Jesus absorbed every sin, condemnation, sickness, curse, and death. He received the full judgment of God for all our sins so that today, we would not walk under God’s judgment or the fear of His judgment, but we would walk under His open heaven of blessings and His promises.
Today, because of Jesus’s finished work, we are standing where the fire has already burned.
We do not have to experience the fire, the judgment of God. You stand before God as Jesus is, righteous and blameless.
The divine transfer has taken place!
Pastor Prince shares a video of Jesus meeting the leper in Matthew 8.
After Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, He met a leper who came to Him, asking if He was willing to heal him.
Many times, people don’t doubt that God is able to heal. They doubt His willingness to heal.
Look at the Lord’s response to this leper and know that His response is the same to you today: He reached out to touch the leper and said, “I am willing, be cleansed.” (see Matt. 8:2–3).
Leprosy is a picture of sin. Under law, sin is contagious. Under the law, if you touch a leper, you become unclean.
His grace is greater than all our sins.
The leper is a picture of all of us—ridden with sin.
Jesus came a long way to seek us out and reach us.
Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.
It isn’t about us doing and trying our best to be accepted by God, it’s about God giving His best for us.
God came down to us, to our level, and declared His love for us by dying for our sins.
“...who was delivered up because of our offences, and was raised up because of our being declared righteous.”
—Romans 4:25 YLT
Jesus was delivered to the cross because of our offences against a holy God, and He was raised from the dead because we were declared righteous by God. Jesus’ resurrection means that today, we are acquitted. We are righteous.
“[Jesus was] raised up because of our being declared righteous” — How do you know a prisoner has fulfilled his obligations to the law? When he has served his sentence and is released from jail. When Jesus was raised from the dead, He was “released from jail.”
The same body that carried your sins and bore your judgment rose from the dead without your sins. That means Jesus did a perfect work at the cross and God is completely satisfied with it!
The only choice you have to make today is to believe in Jesus, and you shall be saved. You are not your own savior. He is your Savior.
Pastor Prince encourages us to continue coming to church to receive more and more of God’s abundant life. You’ll never leave church the same way you came in. The thief comes to steal but Jesus has come to give you life, and life more abundantly (see John 10:10)!
“Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your gift, the greatest gift of all, Your Son, Jesus Christ. He died on the cross for my sins, He took all my judgment and my condemnation upon Himself, and finished it all. There’s no more judgment from You in my life. There’s no more condemnation. From now on, I thank You that You see me in Christ, as if I’m Jesus and You bless me accordingly. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and You raised Him from the dead because You’ve declared me righteous and acquitted. Thank You Father. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
“Father in Heaven, I thank You Lord that because we are righteous in Your eyes, all the prayers of the people here, when they pray, You hear. It’s the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man that avails. Thank You, Father.
Right now in the name of Jesus, the Lord bless you and your families this coming week. The Lord bless you with the blessings of father Abraham. The Lord bless you and all that you touch will prosper. The Lord protect you from every harm, you and your loved ones, from every danger, from every sickness and from all the power of the evil one through the blood of His Son, through the blood that has remitted your sins. Through that same blood, you have divine protection. I confess that and I declare that over you and your families. You will see good, good days ahead of you. The Lord lift up His countenance and grant to you and your loved ones His shalom peace. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And all the people said? Amen.”
We hope these sermon notes blessed you! If they did, we encourage you to get the sermon and allow the Lord to speak to you personally as you watch or listen to it.
© Copyright JosephPrince.com 2019
These sermon notes were taken by volunteers during the service. They are not a verbatim representation of the sermon.
Sign Up for Latest Sermon Notes Updates
SubscribeTo complete the subscription process, please click on the confirmation link in the email we just sent you.
You're already in our mailing list. Thank You!
