back to indexEV Training Class #4
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Heavenly Father, as we talk about Christ today, I pray that we would see truly the good part 00:00:12.960 |
of the Gospel, that it cannot and we should not get to Christ until we see the reality 00:00:20.880 |
of who you are and our brokenness before you. 00:00:26.680 |
Thank you that we are people who are not just learning about how to perhaps clarify evangelism 00:00:33.480 |
or the message of the Gospel better for ourselves, but Father, that as we hear about these things, 00:00:38.600 |
we're reminded of the fact that this is our very hope of existence, the reason why we're 00:00:45.880 |
Father, any type of joy that we have is hinged on this Gospel message. 00:00:50.640 |
So Lord, let it be a time of gratefulness, of joy, of worship for us as we learn about 00:00:57.320 |
these things because we don't handle these things as if we're just going to launch it 00:01:01.200 |
into evangelism, into this world, but Father, that this is truly our own truth. 00:01:08.000 |
And so God, would you teach us and mold us as we go into this material? 00:01:21.840 |
So the first, we're breaking the Gospel message down into four parts. 00:01:25.880 |
The first was God, the second was humanity, and now we're getting into this part of who 00:01:30.420 |
It is very difficult to talk about Jesus until you get through the first two parts in some 00:01:37.100 |
But eventually, this is the place, I would call it the hinge, right? 00:01:41.760 |
This is where it goes from something that can bring about a very bleak outlook into 00:01:49.300 |
something that's going to show the goodness and grace of God. 00:01:53.560 |
So if we're saying, "Hey, God loves you," this is where it comes in. 00:01:58.800 |
This is where it has to come in because even though God loves us as creation, once we're 00:02:03.840 |
broken into sin, we are clearly and confidently and with conviction able to say that God hates 00:02:18.580 |
He loves the fact that there is some semblance of the image that He's created inside of us 00:02:26.520 |
and that there is a redemptive quality that's going to be happening as He looks at all creation 00:02:31.480 |
So He loves humanity, but He does indeed hate the sinner. 00:02:43.900 |
And even when we're talking about Jesus, we don't start with, "Jesus loves you and He 00:02:57.960 |
We will this time start maybe from Tim and then we'll kind of go this way. 00:03:10.160 |
In the beginning was the worst and the worst was his God and the worst was God and the 00:03:13.160 |
Glory as of His only begotten Son, the Father, full of grace and mercy. 00:03:30.480 |
Like every time a Jehovah's Witness comes in, this is what we jump to. 00:03:45.160 |
This is the one I really like using with Jehovah's Witnesses. 00:03:51.280 |
And then you look at it and you go, "Why is He called Mighty God, Eternal Father?" 00:03:55.160 |
It's actually confusing for us too, but we won't go there today. 00:04:07.120 |
"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny 00:04:28.080 |
all sin, to forgive all that is evil, and to purify for Himself a people for His own 00:04:51.200 |
These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. 00:04:54.200 |
I added that whole section just because it's so good. 00:04:56.200 |
The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus. 00:04:57.200 |
And then we have a couple of other points there. 00:04:58.200 |
1 John 3.5, Revelation 17.14, Hebrews 1.1-8, Colossians 1.16-19, and many, many more. 00:05:06.040 |
Jesus as God is the focal point of the gospel. 00:05:12.440 |
Now the second part of that focal point is going to be Roman numeral number two here. 00:05:16.560 |
So you just want to make sure to hit these two points. 00:05:21.440 |
The Roman letter A would be that He is sinless. 00:05:53.320 |
He came as man, and we'll talk about that now, but He came sinless. 00:05:57.080 |
I would say in your mind, order it in that way. 00:06:00.480 |
Just to make sure that you don't mess something up in your own mind. 00:06:05.320 |
Before you get to the fact that He was man, He is sinless as He comes. 00:06:10.960 |
Because we are coming from the fact that Jesus is God, and nothing gets lost in translation 00:06:19.720 |
The letter B, ultimately, though, is the fact that He is man. 00:06:39.440 |
"Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it lawful to be equal with God, and made himself 00:07:11.680 |
So why is it important that Jesus is fully man? 00:07:13.840 |
These are just texts for you to understand the authority of Scripture here. 00:07:18.120 |
But for us, I think pretty much everyone here has gone through BCC, and we've covered this 00:07:25.040 |
material on Jesus being fully God and fully man, so we're not going to go back into that. 00:07:31.520 |
But if we could open it up for discussion just for a moment here. 00:07:34.440 |
Why is it so important that Jesus is fully man? 00:07:42.720 |
So if someone were to come to claim, and here's a substitute, it has to be something that 00:07:57.160 |
So we have to take it from the perspective of God, who is the one who is being offended, 00:08:03.360 |
And so if someone comes and says, "Hey, you were driving this car, and you ran over my 00:08:13.520 |
And he comes to court and says, "Well, I'm going to try to cover over something like 00:08:19.440 |
No one's going to look at that and be like, "It has to be a life for a life." 00:08:25.280 |
But if someone comes and says, "Here's my dog," or something like that, "Take this and 00:08:32.640 |
There's this idea of fairness involved that really begins to show us that he needs to 00:09:09.720 |
I think one of the important things is this idea of mediator. 00:09:14.120 |
A mediator needs to be someone who's able to represent both sides. 00:09:18.640 |
So if Christ is not man and he's removed from us, there's some kind of... 00:09:23.200 |
Let's just say the fullness of deity only resides with him. 00:09:29.200 |
Then for us, we're always going to be looking to him as someone who was not able to walk 00:09:36.840 |
He was not able to actually accomplish what I could not accomplish. 00:09:43.560 |
Of course God should be able to accomplish this. 00:09:45.880 |
But if a man is able to accomplish it, then it becomes something that on this side of 00:09:53.760 |
So he is able to come into the courtroom of God and say, "I did it. 00:09:58.080 |
I actually did what they could not accomplish." 00:10:00.720 |
If he was doing that without coming down fully as man, that would not apply. 00:10:06.720 |
There are many other reasons why this is so important, but the fact of the matter is that 00:10:10.680 |
Jesus had to come to the world in the form of man and the way that he lived is now what 00:10:23.000 |
If you want to be very, very careful about how you slice it, we are not becoming more 00:10:30.360 |
And that is very, very important to remember for all of us. 00:10:36.640 |
So even the fact that the Holy Spirit resides within us, when it says in John chapter 1 00:10:41.640 |
verse 1, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God." 00:10:46.400 |
And then you jump to verse 14 where it says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." 00:10:52.480 |
The idea there is the word tabernacle, that he tabernacled among us. 00:10:56.920 |
And so if you think of the idea of tabernacle, it is a place where God is able to reside. 00:11:04.440 |
So Christ becomes that person who comes and opens the way to this. 00:11:10.000 |
He opens up the doorway so that as we become like Christ, the Holy Spirit is actually able 00:11:17.160 |
There is no way for God's presence to be with us unless the Holy Spirit is within us. 00:11:22.400 |
And there is no way for the Holy Spirit to be within us unless Christ is able to kind 00:11:28.680 |
And it is a little bit heady and you do not need to bring these things in, but for you 00:11:32.700 |
to understand why it is so important that Jesus came as sinless man. 00:11:40.440 |
One of the arguments that you are posing is that because Christ is God and that we 00:11:47.440 |
are trying to be more like Christ, wouldn't someone say you are still trying to be like 00:11:54.440 |
Yeah, and the reason why I say be careful about this is because, not because we do not 00:11:59.960 |
want to defend the Trinity, but because it becomes a rabbit hole that takes them away 00:12:05.320 |
from like, that is not even the issue for them. 00:12:08.840 |
When these questions will come up, you could address it, but I would say, I am going to 00:12:14.760 |
I would say, no that is a great question, but if we can kind of talk about what I am 00:12:24.680 |
Because a lot of times, the questions that are being asked, it just pops up in people's 00:12:30.800 |
minds as a secondary or tertiary question, but you want to stay laser beam focused on 00:12:37.440 |
why am I talking about the fact that Christ came. 00:12:41.880 |
I am not here to defend all the nitty gritty, which I can do, but what I want to do is really 00:12:52.260 |
He came into the world and He did these things and the fact of the matter is, He rose from 00:12:58.240 |
There is a reason why worldwide Christianity has exploded onto the scene, where other religions 00:13:03.800 |
take generations to solidify, this was momentary. 00:13:12.680 |
He claimed His deity and people saw Him and people were proclaiming His deity. 00:13:19.720 |
I am not trying to wiggle my way out of it, you are trying to keep them very focused on 00:13:27.080 |
So I am not going to answer it because of that reason. 00:13:33.720 |
We have this understanding that Christ is the only one who can reconcile us. 00:13:53.240 |
So we saw God being holy and just and righteous and fair, wrathful against sin, and then humanity 00:14:01.880 |
then falls under that, that umbrella of wrath that is just waiting to fall down upon humanity 00:14:14.120 |
And so the question that automatically happens after points one and two of the gospel is 00:14:22.920 |
And the answer to that is going to be only God can save you. 00:14:27.480 |
Very quickly, if you go through points one and two, you are going to look around and 00:14:30.280 |
be like, "Okay, there is nobody that can save me from God except Him." 00:14:35.440 |
So then Christ coming down in the form of man, there is no other conceivable way of 00:14:46.440 |
Because we are saying, "I need to pay an eternal punishment. 00:14:51.880 |
The only way I could pay that eternal punishment is through eternal hell. 00:14:58.000 |
Well, the fairness of God would lack in any scenario I can conjure up. 00:15:04.280 |
We could not even actually come up with this answer. 00:15:07.880 |
That is why there is a part of Christianity, I believe it, because this is not man-made. 00:15:13.800 |
There is nothing about this that any form of logic can get to this. 00:15:20.000 |
That God says there is actually no conceivable way of humanity to even think there is any 00:15:26.240 |
hope of salvation in the condition that we are in. 00:15:32.200 |
And the only way is through Jesus because you need God Himself on that cross." 00:15:40.360 |
Who is the only one who is going to be able to acquit guilt? 00:15:44.720 |
It is going to be the one who has been offended. 00:15:49.560 |
People call it, theologians call it a scandalous grace. 00:15:53.520 |
But the idea is when He hangs on that cross, the only holy, just, righteous one is hanging 00:15:59.840 |
on that cross who is able to say then, "Now I can pay for your sins." 00:16:06.280 |
Which is a mind-blowing concept that I know that I ought to be spending the rest of eternity 00:16:14.200 |
Every day, if you call it a million years, if you call it a trillion years, that I should 00:16:28.880 |
Christ on that cross was able to absorb that relatively in an instant. 00:16:36.600 |
And so only someone who is eternal is able to do something like that. 00:16:40.920 |
How can He, He is actually, when He was on that cross, He actually, in a manner of speaking, 00:16:48.480 |
was able to absorb the wrath that I ought to be spending every day forever. 00:16:56.660 |
And so every single one of us that is a believer in this room, He did that for all of us at 00:17:03.260 |
Whatever you might say about the three days or the one day or that instant when Christ 00:17:10.060 |
There is no conceivable way that if this isn't God on the cross that He could be paying this 00:17:17.020 |
I always have this in my mind, this very gray area, at what point is man and nature sinful? 00:17:18.020 |
Rebelled against God, but Christ clearly did not, can't rebel against Himself. 00:17:46.540 |
So I always wonder what was the purpose of the temptation, the struggle, so that He could 00:18:06.380 |
I think what you bring up would be secondary though, right? 00:18:10.540 |
Like He can sympathize with my weaknesses, or I feel better about myself, you know? 00:18:15.100 |
There's actually an element of that that's helpful. 00:18:17.420 |
But the idea is that He was the perfect substitute. 00:18:22.460 |
But the first part of your assumption is actually that man is not naturally rebellious. 00:18:38.900 |
Adam and Eve weren't naturally rebellious until they fell, but Jesus never fell. 00:18:48.860 |
He still felt the temptation like Adam and Eve, but the reason was Him. 00:18:50.860 |
And we could go into the dichotomy of the spirit and their flesh, but we probably can't 00:18:54.900 |
But yeah, so these are all good questions that could come up. 00:19:02.180 |
For those of you guys who go to evangelize, the problem usually doesn't fall with like, 00:19:07.740 |
"Uh-uh, he wasn't like God, or he wasn't man even." 00:19:13.140 |
But this is so important for us to anchor down in our own thinking. 00:19:16.540 |
And so if these questions do come up, I will say, sidestep them. 00:19:25.860 |
But sidestep it with confidence in the fact of the matter, or in the fact that Christ, 00:19:31.180 |
oh, okay, I'm really like fuzzy this morning, that this isn't their main concern. 00:19:45.420 |
So Roman numeral number one, Jesus died on the cross to pay your penalty. 00:20:02.380 |
So I think the legal and the relational thing is spoken of all through scripture. 00:20:14.980 |
So some of the ramifications of that was that there's a judicial ramification in the court 00:20:22.060 |
And also the relational thing, I'm just like, man, there's a foreignness about us. 00:20:29.540 |
Second Corinthians 5.21, wherever we left off. 00:20:41.860 |
"Who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died the sins, 00:20:42.860 |
might live for righteousness by whose stripes we were healed." 00:20:44.860 |
"And we have been saved by the blood of Christ, and we are saved by the blood of Christ." 00:20:45.860 |
Okay, and then some other supporting verses, and there are more. 00:21:06.460 |
Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty, legally, judicially. 00:21:11.500 |
He bridged the divide in his own body by paying. 00:21:15.460 |
There was no, it's not just striking it as if, oh, I never saw it. 00:21:26.620 |
And then Roman numeral two, Jesus' death also restores us to God. 00:21:35.220 |
"Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, and he might 00:21:36.220 |
bring us to God, being put to death and nuflaged, but made alive in his Son." 00:21:37.220 |
I think that when I walk people through conversion, people get stuck on the first and then forget 00:21:58.900 |
And when I ask, oh, this is your testimony, okay, was there a brokenness of sin? 00:22:03.660 |
Many people say, yeah, there's a brokenness here now. 00:22:07.140 |
But then for a long time after that, they still feel like kind of afraid under the mighty 00:22:14.740 |
And for a long time, I was trying to figure out what that was because I understand it. 00:22:21.120 |
But really being able to feel the freedom of a relationship of someone who forgives 00:22:25.340 |
you, that can be done only through the cross of Christ who says, now you are brought into 00:22:35.180 |
If you're to ask someone, I say, hey, do you feel like God's forgiven you? 00:22:38.500 |
You'd be surprised how many people feel like, I'm not sure. 00:22:46.540 |
God will completely forgive you when he looks upon you that he will, because of Christ and 00:22:52.820 |
who he is and what he did on that cross, there is nothing there. 00:22:57.700 |
There is nothing that he looks upon you and he will look upon you as he would look upon 00:23:04.100 |
And this is part of the good news of the gospel. 00:23:07.740 |
And then Roman numeral three, we're going to be a little behind here today. 00:23:11.620 |
Jesus was sacrificed out of a love for humanity. 00:23:15.260 |
Jesus was sacrificed out of a love for humanity. 00:23:19.460 |
So God desires for people like, when you walk with people and say, hey, do you feel like 00:23:27.900 |
The next question I'll ask is, well, did you ask him to forgive you though? 00:23:34.180 |
And I'll say, tell me what you said when you became a Christian. 00:23:36.460 |
And they'll say like, I was confessing my sins. 00:23:56.140 |
But sometimes people will just sit there and be like, God, I'm sorry. 00:24:05.220 |
And God really desires this whole restoration with them. 00:24:09.380 |
That there is no partial restoration, even in sanctification. 00:24:12.220 |
It's a whole restoration with the sinner and himself. 00:24:25.260 |
Worm theology is awesome, and then it's the worst thing in the world. 00:24:29.260 |
So the awesome portion is, it shows the person who is broken before God, and it's like, 00:24:38.180 |
And then so, the worm theology, there's a biblical term in it, right? 00:24:49.700 |
If you stay there, the freedom of the gospel never comes to you. 00:24:53.180 |
The gospel says, no, you are no longer there though. 00:24:57.020 |
You are completely purged of all sin legally. 00:25:03.460 |
And now you are, everything that happens then has already been paid on the cross. 00:25:07.340 |
We're afraid that we're going to look at that and abuse that grace, right? 00:25:15.820 |
That every sin from here to the moment I die has been paid for by Christ. 00:25:23.540 |
And that it gives you the wings to be able to. 00:25:25.680 |
And so we have to get them to this point of not just someone being broken over sin and 00:25:29.860 |
saying therefore I will accept the love of God. 00:25:32.140 |
But they need to feel that bridging of like, oh, you're saying God loves me? 00:25:40.140 |
But you have to walk them through the repentance and the accepting of forgiveness and the confessing 00:25:46.380 |
of sin and asking them really, do you believe that Christ has fully paid for your sin now? 00:25:53.700 |
And we're going to talk more about that next week. 00:25:58.380 |
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in 00:26:00.380 |
For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might 00:26:13.940 |
So God sent Jesus to be a sacrifice because of his great love for humanity. 00:26:19.660 |
There's a song I grew up singing, it's called "Above All." 00:26:24.100 |
At the end, so it's a whole song that builds up like, God is above all things and at the 00:26:32.620 |
And so I grew up like, really moved by that kind of song and then later on I was like, 00:26:44.380 |
And so I went back and forth and then I went the opposite direction though of saying like, 00:26:51.460 |
He was thinking just about his glory and that was wrong too. 00:26:55.180 |
We have to be able to balance this out and say like, man, does God have this deep love 00:27:01.060 |
for me where we would actually call it unconditional in Christ? 00:27:05.980 |
That he would send his only son to take my place on that cross? 00:27:10.500 |
Yes as far as glory, yes it will exalt him, but in the middle of that, is it because of 00:27:16.020 |
Is this like a zero sum game or is this something that like can coexist? 00:27:21.780 |
Like on that cross, like Jesus sent his son and he poured out his wrath on Christ and 00:27:27.700 |
I know he was thinking of me, you know, and I know he did it because of his love for me. 00:27:33.620 |
And when we're talking about this with people, I hope that it's not so separate and stoic 00:27:38.460 |
Like when we're talking about God, the fact that God loves you and the fact that like, 00:27:44.060 |
which is good, but that, but the fact of the matter is we're coming and we're saying that 00:27:54.220 |
They need to see that this is a message that we actually believe and practice. 00:28:05.340 |
God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died 00:28:07.340 |
Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath 00:28:09.340 |
For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 00:28:10.340 |
Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath 00:28:12.340 |
For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 00:28:13.340 |
Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath 00:28:15.340 |
For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 00:28:16.340 |
Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath 00:28:18.340 |
For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. 00:28:19.340 |
Much more than having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his blood. 00:28:28.700 |
So again, when you're sitting across from the person you're evangelizing, we are much 00:28:38.140 |
We should be understanding the shoes they're walking in. 00:28:41.380 |
Much more than saying like, "Hey, get out of our level." 00:28:46.020 |
To really feel like there is no frustration when we're talking to these people. 00:28:53.820 |
If they're open-handed slapping the God we serve, then that's something. 00:28:58.980 |
But if there's rebellion in them, we're like, "Of course there's rebellion in them." 00:29:05.060 |
If they're self-centered, of course they're self-centered. 00:29:07.420 |
We should actually feel this deep, seated compassion in our heart. 00:29:13.860 |
Because that's where I was, and I remember that. 00:29:16.740 |
So be very close to them in the place of evangelizing. 00:29:20.900 |
Because the gospel message as we preach it is very close to us. 00:29:27.340 |
Roman numeral four, Jesus rose from the grave and is still alive today. 00:29:37.820 |
And so don't stop with the death of Christ, but that Christ rose from the dead, and he 00:29:43.060 |
is the only historical figure that rose from the dead and never died again. 00:29:57.620 |
People talk about enlightenment and what happens to people, but he is the only one who rose 00:30:04.660 |
And that was the end of the story, that he continues life like that. 00:30:10.660 |
So you get them to this point where when you're talking about his humanity, you are going 00:30:15.020 |
to need to go into the fact that he was a historical figure. 00:30:17.940 |
Any secular historian will scoff at any secular person who doesn't believe in the historicity 00:30:28.540 |
And people like to just throw things out there to kind of be a rabble-rouser, but he was 00:30:36.220 |
a person born into the world and we are saying he rose from the grave. 00:30:40.780 |
And all of these people then attested to that fact and were willing to die for that fact. 00:30:45.900 |
And there's a lot of apologetics you could go into that, and I know you guys are thinking 00:30:49.180 |
of a lot of that kind of stuff, but let's move on. 00:30:59.200 |
If you didn't email me back and you're still planning on going, I think you could still 00:31:26.740 |
I think because you're part of this class, you might not want to send in on the seminar. 00:31:33.500 |
If you want to come, I guess that would be good too. 00:31:41.940 |
And then secondly, now we're going to start to put these things into practice and it's 00:31:48.940 |
So you are going to think of one individual and next week you're going to bring the name 00:31:54.260 |
of that individual and then we're going to share it with each other so that the final 00:31:58.880 |
week we're going to share with each other how you shared the gospel with this individual. 00:32:03.380 |
It's just accountability to practice what we're learning. 00:32:06.100 |
So we're going to be practicing that in cold evangelism this Saturday, but come with somebody 00:32:11.100 |
that you really want to share the whole gospel with. 00:32:15.060 |
Okay, and ask them, "Hey, can I sit down and actually share the gospel with you?" 00:32:20.580 |
And you would probably want to kind of go through your notes, rehearse it, think through 00:32:27.840 |
If you want to just say, "Hey, can you just hear me out?" 00:32:29.740 |
And then at the end of this dialogue you could do that. 00:32:32.060 |
Just give them the whole gospel and then sit down and say, "Have you heard that before?" 00:32:37.680 |
We think that a lot of Americans, because we live in America, have heard the gospel 00:32:51.540 |
I think you should do that with every unbeliever. 00:32:54.900 |
If they prove otherwise and they're able to articulate it, that's different. 00:32:58.700 |
But actually, more often than not, really when I go evangelize on campus, I feel like 00:33:04.340 |
9 out of 10 people just don't know the gospel at all. 00:33:07.620 |
They just heard about the name of Jesus, that's it. 00:33:14.200 |
And so we understand now the gospel includes who God is, includes who we are before him, 00:33:19.820 |
and includes Christ and what he did on that cross. 00:33:36.180 |
We're bringing to people, and what we're saying is, we are bringing to you so great a salvation. 00:33:46.380 |
I think it can be easy to think about it very two-dimensionally and think that it's Jesus 00:33:53.240 |
dying on the cross for my sins, and so I don't get to go to hell, I get to go to heaven. 00:34:06.500 |
And I wanted to do this, but we're not going to have time. 00:34:08.820 |
But when we think about what atonement is, the work Christ did in his life and death 00:34:12.080 |
to earn our salvation, it's actually very complex. 00:34:18.420 |
We're not trying to be like all hoity-toity Christians, but there are words for this. 00:34:23.180 |
There's word for expiation, that our guilt is actually taken away from us. 00:34:28.900 |
I don't think you, I'm going to go too fast for you to write it down, sorry. 00:34:37.100 |
That now, the belief of expiation is that there is no longer guilt on me. 00:34:40.740 |
You'd be surprised how many people believe so wholeheartedly propitiation without believing 00:34:46.180 |
And so they believe that God's wrath is at peace, but I still feel guilty. 00:34:51.380 |
These are biblical matters, that Christ actually removes guilt from us so that we don't walk 00:34:58.420 |
There's reconciliation, that he brought into right and restored relationship. 00:35:03.580 |
When he looks at me, I ask people, "Do you feel like God's constantly disappointed in 00:35:11.460 |
Think about how you answer that, depending on how you were this past week. 00:35:20.060 |
Redemption is not just that he saved us and rescued us out of the water as we were drowning. 00:35:25.180 |
It's that he actually had to pay something to rescue us out of that drowning. 00:35:31.860 |
I think redemption, the idea of redeeming, you know redeeming is like a coupon you take 00:35:37.820 |
The idea of redeeming is, oh, you know the gospel just does not make any sense. 00:35:44.780 |
There's one thing for God to save people who are so ugly in their sin, right? 00:35:54.340 |
There's no one that would want to save these things. 00:35:56.940 |
But it's another thing to say that I am going to pay something to redeem them. 00:36:02.940 |
And there's another thing to say that that payment is going to be what is most precious 00:36:07.920 |
Like the increasing intensity as to the cost of this redemption is like mind blowing. 00:36:15.560 |
Substitutionary, that it was a substitution to atonement. 00:36:18.160 |
That Jesus was a substitute that brought about the atonement. 00:36:22.200 |
And this is when we think about the deeper theology of Christ being fully God, fully 00:36:27.040 |
What was actually accomplished on that cross? 00:36:29.060 |
Why is it that he was considered the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the 00:36:36.400 |
Why is it that when we read the Pentateuch that it expands our idea of what Christ did 00:36:42.400 |
All these things, it deepens so that when we look at the cross, when we come about to 00:36:46.360 |
Easter time, to Resurrection Sunday, that we're not just like, "Wow, Jesus died on 00:36:53.040 |
That everything that we're doing as we're reading scripture, that as we're growing in 00:36:57.040 |
the knowledge of God, and that's what happened in Ephesians 2 for a lot of us, right? 00:37:00.840 |
When Pastor Mark was teaching through Ephesians 2, we're like, "Wow, that's so deep." 00:37:10.440 |
And these blessings, he's reminding us of how deep these blessings go. 00:37:16.680 |
And so when you go and you take the salvation to the masses, oh, you ought to be jumping 00:37:26.680 |
But I think a lot of people see Christians who are so versed in Christianity. 00:37:35.440 |
And so we're trying to take something that's coming straight out of our heart. 00:37:40.560 |
I was going to show you something that the Navigators have come up with, and I thought 00:37:53.560 |
it was very helpful, especially for people who don't feel much confidence. 00:37:58.560 |
Have you guys seen the bridge analogy of the cross before? 00:38:02.960 |
That's something that's helpful, right, to think through, to try to get your way through 00:38:08.600 |
So you can sit there and draw it out, or you can actually just kind of keep it in your 00:38:15.120 |
mind to think, "Am I guiding someone?" rather than constantly getting stuck in these little 00:38:26.300 |
If someone just wants to go into a hole and they just want to do it for this whole little 00:38:29.240 |
time, I'd say, "Just dust your hands, dust your feet off, and then move on." 00:38:36.200 |
So the idea of this is that there is us, there's God, and we're created in His image to be 00:38:59.080 |
That's what, when we think of all the good stuff of Christianity, this is what we're 00:39:05.200 |
That we are meant to exist in a perfect relationship with Him. 00:39:06.200 |
That's Genesis 1, verse 26, where it says that God has created us in His image. 00:39:08.200 |
There's this repetition and voiding thing going on, right? 00:39:09.200 |
But in sin, what happens is, we're not going to be able to do that.