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

I daresay that no current Christian leader and writer has had as much impact on me as Mark Dever, Senior Pastor of Capital Hill Baptist Church. He loves the church and loves to serve her while calling churches to greater fidelity to God. His books have been illuminating, challenging, and foundational to my understanding of ecclesiology and church life. I can’t highly recommend them enough.

A number of years ago he and Capital Hill Baptist started 9Marks, which is “a ministry dedicated to equipping church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources. Our goal is simple: churches that display the glory of God“. The nine marks that are needed in a healthy, biblical church are

1. Expositional Preaching.
2. Biblical Theology.
3. A Biblical Understanding of the Good News.
4. A Biblical Understanding of Conversion.
5. A Biblical Understanding of Evangelism.
6. Biblical Church Membership.
7. Biblical Church Discipline.
8. Biblical Discipleship and Growth.
9. Biblical Church Leadership

Recently 9Marks posted overview videos about each mark. You can watch them below, along with a video announcing a new collab between 9Marks and Lamp Mode Recordings, a lyrical theology record label. Who would have guessed a church where the preacher wears a suit each week would be the inspiration between a rap album?

Mark 1 – Expositional Preaching

Mark 2 – Biblical Theology

Mark 3 – A Biblical Understanding of the Good News

Mark 4 – A Biblical Understanding of Conversion

Mark 5 – A Biblical Understanding of Evangelism

Mark 6 – Biblical Church Membership

Mark 7 – Biblical Church Discipline

Mark 8 – Biblical Discipleship and Growth

Mark 9 – Biblical Church Leadership

And here’s the rap video announcement

I’ve been told by my Re:Train coach, Cliff Low, that the best use of my time is developing leaders. Much easier said than done, however. When developing leaders, you need a plan and you need to make it a priority. When planning, you should ask “What are the

1. Requirements from Scripture (For example, what do 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 say?)
2. Requirements from your Denomination or Network (For example, what does it mean to be an elder in a Presbyterian, Baptist, or an Acts 29 church?)
3. Requirements from your context and church (For example, what does it mean to be an elder at my church, at this time, this stage, this size, in this part of this specific city?)

Scott Thomas of the Acts 29 Network recently published a study guide that is very useful in training and raising up new leaders. Here’s an overview of the guide.

This study guide is an interactive curriculum of the book, Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005) written by Wayne A. Grudem and edited by Elliot Grudem.

Christian Beliefs (160 pages) is a condensed version of Grudem’s book, Bible Doctrine (528 pages), and that itself is a condensed version of Grudem’s award-winning Systematic Theology (1,290 pages).* This guide is designed to introduce Christians to the core beliefs of Bible doctrine in preparation for church leadership or to help new Christians to distinguish truth from error. This guide can be used to prepare elders, deacons, small group leaders, Sunday School teachers and all those who want to learn more about maturing in their Christian faith and becoming equipped to give a gentle and respectful answer to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15). An instructor in a class or small group or in a one to one environment can facilitate the questions or it can be utilized as a self-study or as a tool to equip a family in Biblical doctrine.

Theological Clarity and Application seeks to preserve the contents of Grudem’s Christian Beliefs by using questions to stimulate further understanding and application. The participants in this curriculum would benefit by first reading each chapter in Christian Beliefs before answering questions. It is also highly recommended to have a respected study Bible and a copy of Grudem’s Systematic Theology available for reference.

Each chapter of this guide corresponds to the chapters in Christian Beliefs. At the end of each section, a prayer text and Scripture memory is included. Additionally, a reference to the corresponding chapters and supplementary readings in Grudem’s Systematic Theology are included as well as further readings by noted conservative scholars and authors who contribute to the specific topic covered in the chapter.

This material is not something that should be rushed through to complete. It is a refrigerated locker full of meat that must be eaten regularly and systematically one meal at a time, allowing ample time to chew and digest the information and ideally to savor with others. One can complete the study in 20 weeks by covering one chapter a week or complete it in 40 weeks (approximately one school year) by covering one chapter every two weeks. The latter allows for a deeper reading of the accompanying Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem.

You can download it here

• B&W Questions Only (63 pages),
• B&W Workbook (color cover) 91 pages,
• Color Questions Only
• Color Workbook

From Keith Mathison via Justin Taylor

OLD TESTAMENT:

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Leviticus
• Numbers
• Deuteronomy
• Joshua
• Judges
• Ruth
• 1 & 2 Samuel
• 1 & 2 Kings
• 1 & 2 Chronicles
• Ezra & Nehemiah
• Esther
• Job
• Psalms
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• Song of Songs
• Isaiah
• Jeremiah
• Lamentations
• Ezekiel
• Daniel
• Hosea
• Joel
• Amos
• Obadiah
• Jonah
• Micah
• Nahum
• Habakkuk
• Zephaniah
• Haggai
• Zechariah
• Malachi

NEW TESTAMENT:

• The Gospel of Matthew
• The Gospel of Mark
• The Gospel of Luke
• The Gospel of John
• Acts
• Romans
• 1 Corinthians
• 2 Corinthians
• Galatians
• Ephesians
• Philippians
• Colossians & Philemon
• 1 & 2 Thessalonians
• The Pastoral Epistles
• Hebrews
• James
• 1 Peter
• 2 Peter & Jude
• The Epistles of John
• Revelation

Another helpful post from Mike Gilbert-Smith

We are having a useful ongoing conversation with our elders on the last of those: how to fence the table at communion. There was an earlier discussion on this blog with useful comments.

One resource I’ve found helpful in recommending to our elders to read came out of a Sovereign Grace church plant and is very useful.

It, in turn, provides the following further reading list

• Dennis Gunderson, Your Child’s Profession of Faith. Amityville, N.Y., Calvary Press, 1994.
• “Childhood Conversion” by Jim Elliff
• Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology. Leicester, England, InterVarsity Press, 1994. On baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
• “Why Can’t I Have a Snack Like Everyone Else?” by David Michael
• Donald Whitney, How Can I Be Sure I’m a Christian? Colorado Springs, NavPress, 1994.
• John T. McNeill, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, Chapters 14, 15 & 17. Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1960

Amazingly thorough collection maintained by Andy Naselli, Carson’s full-time research assistant.

Andy Naselli posted about the master Scripture index that he created for the New Studies in Biblical Theology series edited by D. A. Carson. It’s an amazing resource. Wow.

Whatever the case, it’s both biblical, practical and beneficial. Here is an example Partner Booklet from Jonathan Dodson at Austin City Life.

From Andy Naselli via D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo’s Introduction to the New Testament

1. James: around 46–48 (just before the Jerusalem Council)
2. Galatians: 48 (just prior to the Jerusalem Council)
3. 1 Thessalonians: 50
4. 2 Thessalonians: either in late 50 or early 51
5. 1 Corinthians: probably early in 55
6. 2 Corinthians: 56 (i.e., within the next year or so of 1 Corinthians)
7. Romans: 57
8. Philippians: mid–50s to early 60s if written from Ephesus (61–62 if written from Rome)
9. Mark: sometime in the late 50s or the 60s
10. Philemon: probably Rome in the early 60s
11. Colossians: early 60s, probably 61
12. Ephesians: the early 60s
13. 1 Peter: almost surely in 62–63
14. Titus: probably not later than the mid-60s
15. 1 Timothy: early to mid-60s
16. 2 Timothy: early or mid-60s (about 64 or 65)
17. 2 Peter: likely shortly before 65
18. Acts: mid-60s
19. Jude: middle-to-late 60s
20. Luke: mid or late 60s
21. Hebrews: before 70
22. Matthew: not long before 70
23. John: tentatively 80–85
24. 1 John: early 90s
25. 2 John: early 90s
26. 3 John: early 90s
27. Revelation: 95–96 (at the end of the Emperor Domitian’s reign)

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From John Piper’s The Godward Focus of Faithfulness :: Desiring God

One of my long-standing dissatisfactions with the focus of biblical theology is the habit of tracing God’s faithfulness only as far back as his covenant-keeping. Righteousness (tsedeqa) is portrayed as covenant-keeping. Love (hesed) is portrayed as covenant-keeping. Faithfulness (emet) is portrayed as covenant-keeping.

This has an ill-effect. It skews biblical revelation by making God’s relation with man seem more ultimate than God himself. There is always something more ultimate than God’s faithfulness to his covenant, namely, God’s faithfulness to God.

If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself. (2Timothy 2:13)

Here is how Jeremiah pleads for God’s covenant-keeping mercy:

“Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake;
do not dishonor your glorious throne;
remember and do not break your covenant with us.” (Jeremiah 14:21)

Beneath covenant-keeping there is a more ultimate foundation: God’s allegiance to his name—God’s jealousy for the honor of the glory of his throne.

This emphasis on God’s allegiance to his own name and glory behind his allegiance to his covenant and his people, is desperately needed in a day when we are spring-loaded by nature and culture to make ourselves ultimate: “Of course, God will keep his covenant, he made it with us!”

There is a great biblical antidote for our pride. God keeps covenant for his name’s sake:

“Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name” (Ezekiel 36:22).