Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach at Grace Bible Church in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The audio is embedded below and I’ve also included my speaking notes.

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Jesus, the True and Better Everything

• Everyone thinks Jesus was good man.
  • From NT evidence
  • Can we then ignore the OT? Jesus didn’t
  • Luke 24:25-27
• Whole Bible about Jesus, not just NT
• biblical theology = studying something throughout the entire narrative or story of the Bible
• Why Biblical Theology of Jesus? Culture has lots of Jesus, most of which aren’t from the Bible
  • Revolutionary Jesus
  • Hippy Jesus
  • Republican Jesus
  • Democrat Jesus
  • Therapist Jesus
  • Touchdown Jesus
  • Gandhi – “I like your Christ. I don’t like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ”
    • Fact is, he didn’t really like Christ or he would have believed
• All of these Jesus’ have enough truth to make them appealing, but not all of them have the full truth, Let’s look at what the Bible says and we’ll get a much clearer picture of who Jesus really is and how He really is the True and Better Everything.

Adam

• The story of Adam starts the Bible.
• God creates everything
• He puts Adam & Eve in the garden of Eden, which is perfect.
  • They lack nothing
  • Adam even got to name the animals. Awesome
• God gave them only 1 command
  • Genesis 2:16-17
• Adam and Eve – perfect place in community with God.
  • They were so close that they could hear God walking (Genesis 3:8).
• All they had to do: refrain from eating from that one tree.
• Sadly, they did not. The serpent comes, tempts them, and they both eat.
• Adam and Eve eat and everything changes. They’re ashamed of their nakedness and afraid of God. Let’s continue in Genesis 3:16-19
• So now, everything has changed.
  • Death
  • Pain
  • Toil
  • All because of the actions of one man, Adam.
  • The rest of the Bible is the story of humanity dealing with the effects of one man’s sin
• Because of that sin, a way was needed to be cleansed from that sin. This was done through the Old Testament system of priestly sacrifices

OT High Priest / Sacrifice

• Modern man don’t know about sacrifices
  • they were integral to the life of the Jewish people
• Here is the prescription for the sacrifice from Leviticus 16:15-22 which was a yearly sacrifice to make atonement for Israel (Leviticus 16:15-22)
• That is a lot to that.
  • Atoning for sin is serious.
  • Even rope tied to leg.
• Imagine if that’s how seriously we took atoning for our sin.
• Legacy of that sacrifice – term scapegoat.
• Don’t think God is blood thirsty
  • but God is a holy and just God
  • His holiness and justice requires repenting and atoning for sins committed against Him.
  • Alternative, facing His righteous wrath
    • If He isn’t holy, then why worship Him? He would be fallible .
    • If He isn’t just, then why repent? No confidence of forgiveness or mercy
• Blood of sacrifices reminds us
  • sin and its effects aren’t pretty.
  • God spilled blood in the garden to clothe Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21)
• If we sacrificed, we would think differently about sin
• Jewish people thought it could be atoned for yearly.
• Anything that needs to happen regularly isn’t truly satisfied, though.
• Repeating yearly = more work for the people
• With that work, comes need for rest

Sabbath / Rest

• God commands that work / rest cycle
  • Genesis 3:18-19
• Adam’s sin, life requires hard work.
• God told us to rest (Moses & 10 Commandments)
  • Exodus 20:8-11
• We’ve made Sabbath into the day that we gather to worship God, but physiologically, it’s very beneficial to have a day off every week, even if we rarely treat it like a day of rest.
  • Ends up being yardwork day or fix-it day
  • Tell story of growing up
• In the Bible, however, It seems like it required a lot of work to not do work.
  • Pharisees beefed with Jesus in Matthew 12 about his disciples plucking heads of grain
  • Are we that picky sometimes? How Christian is Christian enough?
• How did a day of rest become so much work, then?
  • When it became all about men and what they have to do, what things they can or can’t do.
• In fact, if you look at the three things we’ve talked about so far (Adam, High Priest and sacrifice, the Sabbath) they’re all about man
  • First Man sins (Adam)
  • Man needs to repent and atone for his, and others, sins which brings in the High Priest
  • Man needs to work and then rest (Sabbath)
• Each of these repeats and repeats and by the end of the Old Testament, there was no hope for an end. However, there would soon come a Man who would satisfy all of these and become
  • True and Better Adam
  • True and Better High Priest
  • True and Better Sacrifice
  • True and Better Sabbath

Jesus, the True and Better Adam

• Started with the First Man, Adam, the man who started everything off bad.
• Now it’s the Second Adam, Jesus, the God Man who makes everything right.
• Look at Romans, written by Paul
• Give Paul’s history.
  • Damascus conversion
  • Planted churches
  • Wrote letters to churches which became books of the Bible.
• His letter to the church in Rome, the book of Romans, is deep. Specifically, let’s look at Romans 5:17-19
• Paul contrasts
  • Adam, whose sin led to condemnation for all men,
  • Jesus, whose righteousness leads to life for all mankind.
• Jesus led a completely sinless, perfect life, even while being fully human.
  • We can’t imagine it
  • Jesus did it.
• He lead a sinless life so we can be reconciled to God and declared righteous.
  • This is the idea of imputed righteousness, that Christ’s righteousness has been credited to believers through no action of their own.
  • There is nothing we can do to deserve it and nothing we can do to lose it.
• When we receive Christ’s righteousness, we acknowledge him as the True and Better Adam because He was fully righteous and obedient before God.

Jesus, both the True and Better High Priest AND the True and Better Sacrifice

• Adam’s sin required atonement.
• I talked about High Priest, who needed to make sacrifices to atone for the sins of Israel.
  • Done yearly
  • Dangerous (rope)
• We need High Priest who once and for all atoned and became the perfect mediator between us and God
• Let’s read Hebrews 4:14 – 5:10
• Contrasts between High Priest and Jesus as High Priest
• Sacrifice defines mediatorial relationship
  • High Priests between the Jews and God.
  • Jesus is acting on our behalf as a mediator between us and God.
• Frequency of sacrifice
  • High Priests – yearly
  • Jesus – once
• Jesus’ mediation better
  • Jesus is fully man – experience of being human and “sympathizing with our weaknesses”
  • Jesus is fully God – authority to be our mediator, no chance of “messing up”
• And not only is Jesus our High Priest, he’s also the rest of the atoning act by being the Sacrifice as well . Let’s look at 1 John 4:10
  • 1 John 4:10
• Propitiation is the idea of satisfying wrath, or “appeasing wrath by the offering of a gift”
  • Our sins, our rebellion against God rightly deserve God’s wrath
• We can’t satisfy God’s wrath.
• How do we respond?
  • Despair of knowing we’re going to hell.
  • No. We can rejoice that God sent Jesus to appease God’s wrath, as the atoning sacrifice or propiation for us.
    • Jesus = fully human = proper payment
    • Jesus = fully God = the ability to take God’s punishment for all the sins of man that have ever and will ever happen.
• That’s amazing to think of, that Jesus satisfied God’s righteous wrath forever, on our behalf, that through it we might worship God.
• Jesus is the True and Better Priest, because He perfectly acts as the mediator between us and God, making petitions for us in love and mercy.
• Jesus is the True and Better Sacrifice, because He gave His life on the cross, forever satisfying God’s righteous wrath against sin.
• And now as a result of that mediation and that sacrifice, we can find rest.
• That rest, however, is not the temporary rest of the Sabbath, but the permanent rest for those who live in Christ.

Jesus, the True and Better Rest

• To recap,
  • Adam’s sin = condemnation.
  • Christ’s life = True and Better Adam
    • we are made righteous.
  • High Priest’s sacrifice = Israel’s sinned were atoned for, with a goat being the yearly sacrifice.
  • Christ’s life = True and Better High Priest
    • we have a mediator between us and God
    • we can approach Him based on Christ’s righteousness.
  • Christ’s death = True and Better Sacrifice
    • propitiation has been made for our sins
    • God’s wrath has been appeased
    • we are no longer in fear of judgment.
• That’s good news, due in no part to us but due all to Christ
• But some people still think they need to work for it, that they still have to toil to be righteous.
  • They are still looking at the law, with its command to Sabbath
  • They think they need to do work to be righteous before God and to obey and please him.
  • There’s no grace, it’s all work
• They aren’t believing the promises made to us in Scripture that in Christ we find rest.
• Matthew 11:28-29
• Those verses promise
  • rest in Christ.
  • release from our burdens
  • understanding from Christ.
• Do we live in the truth of those promises? NO
  • We work, trying to prove our worth to Jesus
  • We worry about the burdens in our lives
  • We seek to learn about Christ without going to Him
• How then, should we rest in Christ?  What does that even mean?
• It means resting in the Gospel, secure in the Good News of who Jesus is and what He has done — The perfect God man who lived a holy life, dies on the cross taking the penalty for sin and facing God’s righteous wrath, and rising from the dead triumphing over death. Resting in the Gospel means trusting that it’s not “I do it” but “Jesus did it”
• It means resting in your identity in Christ, as a beloved son or daughter of God.
  • Dad issues
    • God is the perfect father and run to Him as a child.
  • Christians
    • Rejoice in your faith and share God with others.
  • Non-Christians
    • The offer of rest in Christ is made to everyone.
    • Requires nothing special but
      • acknowledge of your sin, your rebellion
      • acknowledge your inability to both stop sinning & pay the just penalty for your sins.
    • When you
      • seek after God,
      • repent of your sin, your rebellion against God
      • ask for forgiveness and turn away from sin,
      • you will find that you are turning into God, who has been seeking you all along.
      • Then you find true identity in Christ
• It means resting in contentment,
  • Having joy in pain
  • Having peace in struggle
• And finally, it means resting in worship because
  • Our sin being cleansed.
  • Our debt being paid for.
  • Our need to work being replaced by rest.
• Our reflection on the grand narrative of Jesus in the Bible, from Adam through the High Priests and the Sabbath, should cause us to
  • fall on our knees in worship.
  • sing and shout praises to God.
  • want to share that good news, that gospel, with others.
  • look forward to the day foretold in Revelation 7:9-12

http://ComePlantChurchesinAnnArborMichigan.com came about because of the lack of gospel-centered churches and gospel-centered church planting in Ann Arbor. My vision is to see dozens of churches planted here in Ann Arbor that are centered on the gospel in all areas and missional in their practice. For that to happen, local churches, regardless of their size, should be planting churches. There’s really no excuse for a church to not plant a church. A healthy church should plant. An unhealthy church should either let itself die or replant. Ray Ortlund and Immanuel Church in Nashville, while only two years old with 150 people on a Sunday, have already planted a church, which means a 30 year old church with 500 people should be planting churches as well. Ray recently wrote a great post on Ed Stetzer’s blog about Small Churches Planting Churches and I’m reprinting the whole thing because it’s so good.

Immanuel Church is small – growing but small. We’re about two years old and averaging around 150 people on Sunday morning. And we are involved in a church plant. Jeremy Rose is pioneering The Axis Church, another Acts 29 church, in downtown Nashville. Jeremy served with us at Immanuel the second half of 2009, and now we are committed to his new work in prayer, fellowship and money – 10% of our regular offerings. At Immanuel, we’re stoked about this.Why not wait until we’re bigger before committing to another church plant? Well, why not wait on every aspect of obedience? I don’t know about you, but I almost never feel ready to obey the Lord Jesus Christ, except in those routine areas of obedience I already have some handle on, like “Ray, read your Bible and pray each day” – and I’m not even good at them! But real obedience, new risks for the name of Christ – that’s part of the “newness of life” the Bible calls us to (Romans 6:4). If all the obedience I offer the Lord is stuff I’m already okay at, where’s the newness? What am I, what are we, doing in obedience to him that we’ve never done before and that we don’t feel entirely ready for? That’s newness. That’s our real growth. We always want to be out there on that edge. Church planting is one way to stay there. So it doesn’t matter how small or how big our church is. If we believe that church planting is a matter of obedience to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for his greater glory in our time, then right now is when we should start taking steps toward jumping in. He will be with us.

Plus, it’s a joy to help give birth to a new church. It fills our own sails at Immanuel with a larger sense of purpose and fulfillment. Every church has a purpose. The stated purpose is almost always gospel-centered, expansive, outreaching. That’s great. But sometimes churches also have an unstated purpose, a functional purpose not in writing but in routines. The functional purpose is the pattern the members default to without thinking. And the functional purpose always wins out over the formally stated purpose. The real purpose of some churches might be something like, “Your best comfort zone now.” But it isn’t comfortable. It isn’t even alive. It’s death.

But when a church’s stated purpose and functional purpose converge as one, and that church really is reaching out in sacrifice and innovation and solid accomplishment, it’s thrilling! That church starts feeling like God’s kingdom coming and God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. An awareness comes over that church, “Wow, by his grace we are involved! We’re not just talking big. We’re actually doing it. What a privilege!” It’s one of the ways a church’s corporate conscience and sense of responsibility ease into a settled happiness. Not complacency, but real happiness in Christ. A small church can get traction for growth when everyone can see they mean business about unselfish kingdom expansion.

We live in such a great time for church planting. Practical guidance is now available to churches of all faithful denominations and non-denominations. Ed’s blog is itself a tremendous resource. Hey brothers and sisters in churches small, medium and large, let’s go for it – now!

This article is a clarion call to church leaders to be faithful to what is clear in Scripture and to lead their people outside of the comfort of their current church body for the kingdom bounty that awaits with the planting of new churches and the conversion of the lost.

“God, make me a man with thick skin and a soft heart. Make me a man who is tough and tender. Make me tough so I can handle life. Make me tender so I can love people. God, make me a man.”

From Darrin Patrick. This will now be part of Malachi and my nighttime ritual.

Ask yourself

• Is there someone to pray for?
• Is there someone needing counsel?
• Is there someone to encourage?
• Is there someone to hold accountable?
• Is there something to celebrate with someone?
• Is there a need to be met?
• Is there a leadership call to make?
• Is there a conflict to be resolved?

From Rick Howerton at Small Group World

Virgin Atlantic plane livery time-lapse movie from johnson banks on Vimeo.

1. view themselves as fellow and equal journiers longing to know God really and are committed to building a micro-Christian community together
2. will utilize the spiritual gifts, learned abilities, and resources they have been given on behalf of one another
3. are committed to the weekly small group meeting where we learn from one another, pray for one another, and see God work miracles when “two or three are gathered.” (Matt. 18:20)
4. will hold them accountable to do the spiritual disciplines as they birth spiritual maturity in us
5. purposefully and passionately direct one another to God and His Words found in the Bible when concluding how to deal with a difficult life issue, make a major decision, or determine the rightness or wrongness of a moral dilemma

1. loves the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love’s their neighbor as they love themselves (Mark 12:30 – 31)
2. understands that life is messy and that the leader will leverage the synergy of the group to help carry the load and remind the struggling group member of the hope that is in them in the messy times
3. is espousing and instilling a biblical world-view
4. is available as a sounding board and willing to give wise counsel when requested
5. will make sure that no known financial, emotional, or spiritual need will be glossed over but that the group leader will coalesce the spiritual gifts, abilities, and resources of the group members to meet those needs

From Rick Howerton

1. is their confidant, co-laborer, and friend
2. is available and honored to answer practical questions about small group leadership
3. is praying for them daily and proves so by connecting with the small group leader periodically via phone or face-to-face so they can hear that prayer
4. understands that the small group leaders they are responsible for one another, can learn from one another, and become better by being together, so they welcome them into their home from time to time to discuss group life, encourage one another, and celebrate what God is doing in each of their groups
5. is willing to come to the group meeting and speak into the conversation when the small group leader has been unable to resolve conflict, a doctrinal discussion has become a foolish and divisive debate, when the group is in rebellion and unwilling to consider multiplication, etc…

From Rick Howerton

That quote is from a recent interview on Joe Thorn’s blog with Jonathan Dodson. The whole interview is fabulous. Here are some highlights

In chapter one of 1 Timothy Paul shows us that sound doctrine is “in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” Literally, the good news of the glory of the happy God. Sound doctrine shows us the something about God, namely that he is glorious and blessed! Sound doctrine isn’t merely getting your beliefs right; it is getting your heart happy in a right view of God. …

This deep heart change happens through doctrine, God-centered teaching …

If we’re to make progress in godliness, we must be continually taught and trained in Jesus …

Practically speaking, how would you encourage churches to make disciples?

Recover the centrality of the gospel in producing Jesus-shaped godliness, a godliness that is missional and God-centered. Apply the gospel everyday.

Recover a practice of discipleship that is communal not individualistic. Jesus make disciples in community, sent them by two, make them by threes and a dozen. Be a disciple with other disciples.

Recover a discipleship that is missional not comfort or knowledge based. Sound doctrine sends disciples that imitate Jesus. The incarnation is the paradigm of mission. Be a disciples that makes disciples, not on your turf but on their turf.

Follow the biblical distinctives of discipleship in the Gospels. Ask yourself where you are 1) relying on the Spirit 2) embracing suffering 3) dying to yourself 4) living in the hope of resurrection. If our lives aren’t risky enough to force us to rely on the Spirit, to suffer the reproach of others or loss of comfort, to surrender our rights, and demonstrate hope in a much greater world to come, then we have very little to point to as Christian discipleship. Take these 4 areas, plucked from the Gospels and Acts, and ask a group of disciples to provoke you to live this kind of life, one that puts Jesus at the center of your failures and your successes.

1. Mentoring – This generation has great respect for those older than they are. Most of them have good relationships with their parents. They have learned from older people all their lives, and they don’t want to stop now. They want to be led and taught in their places of work, in their churches, and in their families. They particularly want to learn from couples who have had long and successful marriages. Many Millennials see such examples as heroes to emulate.
2. Gentle spirit – This category is easier to describe by what Millennials do not want in leaders. Divisive, loud, and acrimonious persons turn them off. They loathe politicians and political pundits who scream at each other. They are leaving churches to some extent because they see many Christian leaders as negative and prone to divisiveness. They are repulsed by business leaders with harsh and autocratic spirits.
3. Transparency and authenticity – I wish Jess and I had counted the number of times that Millennials used the word “real” to describe leaders they want to follow. As one Millennial told us, her generation “can smell phony and pretentiousness a mile away.” They don’t want phony; they want authentic. They don’t want pretentious; they want transparent.
4. Integrity – The Millennials are weary of politicians who don’t keep promises. They are tired of Christian leaders who fail basic moral standards. They are fed up with business leaders who are more concerned about personal gain than serving others. They want leaders with integrity.

From Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, and culled from research in his upcoming book The Millennials.