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

Audio

Notes

Romans 7:18-25

¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

²¹ So I find it to be a law (principle) that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³ but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

We can’t do good

• Romans 7:18, 7:24a
  • 7:18  ”nothing good dwells in me” & ”not the ability to carry it out”
  • 7:24 “Wretched man that I am!”
• Romans 3:10-11
  • None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God.
  • cited from Psalm 14:1-3 (and Psalm 53:1-3)
    • The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none who does good. ²The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. ³ They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.
• Reformed Theology refers to the concept of Total Depravity (it’s the T in TULIP). The concept behind Total Depravity is not that we are as bad as we can be, but that we have an inability to do true good.
• True good is that which is done to the glory of God, not the notoriety of self, and is done with joy. Mowing my neighbor’s lawn while he’s on vacation is truly good if, and only if, I don’t expect him to mow mine while I’m out of town AND if I am able to doing it with joy. If I expect reciprocation, or if I mow his lawn grudgingly, then its not truly good act because I am being selfish about it.
• People who do not see God as the ultimate object of all that they do cannot do true good. They can do good (like idea of common grace, Matthew 5:45 “he causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous^“)

Even when we want to do good, we don’t

• 7:19 & 7:20
  • 7:19 For I do not do the good I want,
  • 7:20 Now if I do what I do not want,
• When we want to do good, what is the motivation? Can good be done by those without pure motivations and a pure heart?
• Why don’t we? Momentary lapses, don’t know how, old habits
• It takes practice to do good
• One of the most difficult things is when you fail. This can be disheartening, especially for new Christians, who have this new life. They can feel like they haven’t “really” been regenerated because they quickly fall back into their old ways. While that may be the case for some, for others the reason they stumble is that the one who was working to keep them separated from God has redoubled his efforts now that the people have committed to follow Christ. We fail because Satan fights us

We don’t do good because Satan battles us

• 7:19-24
  • 7:19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
  • 7:20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
  • 7:21 So I find it to be a law (principle) that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
  • 7:23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
  • 7:24 Who will deliver me from this body of death?
• This is a very important point to remember. Often, people think that the reason that they can’t do good is that they aren’t actually a Christian or they’re weak or they’ve spent so much of their life doing wrong that they can’t do right.
• The fact is that Satan is actively battling against you to keep you away from Christ. Satan knows that if he can distract you or shame you or beat you down, that you are less likely to seek refuge and strength in our true comforter, Jesus Christ.
• Talk about current unwillingness to see Satan as active in world

How do we overcome Satan? Our deliverance comes through Jesus Christ our Lord

• How does this deliverance come?
  • We see evidence of a changed heart
  • 7:22 “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,”
  • Reference to Psalm 1:1-2
    • ¹ Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; ² but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
  • I am longer “doing”, which is an external action, but it is central to me “in my inner being”.
  • Note in v22 that my “members” have another law. That which is part of your inner being is more “you” than something on the fringe. Wouldn’t you say that your soul is more uniquely you than your fingers? A change, a newness of life has come
• 7:24 asks “Who will deliver me?” I am unable to deliver myself. Someone with greater power must deliver me, must take the action that saves me from “this body of death”
• 7:25 “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
• Our first response to the deliverance is thankfulness, being grateful to God, recognizing that only He has the power to deliver us
• We see how God worked through Jesus Christ our Lord. The mediatorial role of Christ is needed. This is the gospel, that God, through Christ, allows us to satisfy the requirements of His righteous law
• Notice use of “serve” in 7:25. Contrast that with “do” in all the other verses
  • The passage starts with “doing”, which is very me-oriented. It ends with us “serving”, which implies there is something or someone in authority over us. That authority must be God. We all serve and make idols out of things. The challenge is to ensure that we are serving God, and not our job, our family, our hobbies, our ministry.
• Look to Romans 8: 1-11
  • ¹ There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. ³ For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶ For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹ You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹ If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
• 7:23 vs. 8:2
  • “another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” vs “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death”
• What now dwells within me?
  • 7:18 “nothing good dwells in me”
  • 7:20 “but sin that dwells within me”
  • 7:23 “law of sin that dwells in my members”
  • 8:9 “if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you”
  • 8:10 “But if Christ is in you”
  • 8:11 “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you”
• Glimpse of Trinity in our newness
  • God “who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you”
  • We also can have Christ in us (8:10)
• This gets to the heart of the Gospel, God “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (8:3) “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (8:4) and He “will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (8:11)