EV Training Class #4

Okay, let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, as we talk about Christ today, I pray that we would see truly the good part of the Gospel, that it cannot and we should not get to Christ until we see the reality of who you are and our brokenness before you.

Father, thank you for Christ. Thank you that we are people who are not just learning about how to perhaps clarify evangelism or the message of the Gospel better for ourselves, but Father, that as we hear about these things, we're reminded of the fact that this is our very hope of existence, the reason why we're able to wake up every morning.

Father, any type of joy that we have is hinged on this Gospel message. So Lord, let it be a time of gratefulness, of joy, of worship for us as we learn about these things because we don't handle these things as if we're just going to launch it into evangelism, into this world, but Father, that this is truly our own truth.

And so God, would you teach us and mold us as we go into this material? In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Okay. So who is Jesus? This is where we're starting here. So the first, we're breaking the Gospel message down into four parts. The first was God, the second was humanity, and now we're getting into this part of who Jesus is.

It is very difficult to talk about Jesus until you get through the first two parts in some way, shape, or form. But eventually, this is the place, I would call it the hinge, right? This is where it goes from something that can bring about a very bleak outlook into something that's going to show the goodness and grace of God.

So if we're saying, "Hey, God loves you," this is where it comes in. This is where it has to come in because even though God loves us as creation, once we're broken into sin, we are clearly and confidently and with conviction able to say that God hates all sin.

And God hates then all sinners. God loves His creation. He loves the fact that there is some semblance of the image that He's created inside of us and that there is a redemptive quality that's going to be happening as He looks at all creation that He will save some.

So He loves humanity, but He does indeed hate the sinner. So Roman numeral one, Jesus is God. We're finally getting to Jesus. And even when we're talking about Jesus, we don't start with, "Jesus loves you and He died for you." We start here again. We're like, we're going all the way back.

Remember that God we talked about? Actually, Jesus is God. We will this time start maybe from Tim and then we'll kind of go this way. So John 1030. It's a quick one. Yeah. I am a father for one. Yes. So simple. Okay. And the next, John 1, 1 and 14.

In the beginning was the worst and the worst was his God and the worst was God and the worst became flesh as well as the mother. And He became His glory. Glory as of His only begotten Son, the Father, full of grace and mercy. We all know this one.

Like every time a Jehovah's Witness comes in, this is what we jump to. And then Isaiah 9.6. This is the one I really like using with Jehovah's Witnesses. We ask, "Who are they talking about?" And they're going to say, "Jesus." And then you look at it and you go, "Why is He called Mighty God, Eternal Father?" It's actually confusing for us too, but we won't go there today.

Colossians 2.9. And then Titus 2.11-15. "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny all sin, to forgive all that is evil, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority.

Let no one disregard these." Okay. I added that whole section just because it's so good. But the idea there is right in the middle. The appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus. And then we have a couple of other points there. 1 John 3.5, Revelation 17.14, Hebrews 1.1-8, Colossians 1.16-19, and many, many more.

Jesus as God is the focal point of the gospel. Now the second part of that focal point is going to be Roman numeral number two here. So you just want to make sure to hit these two points. Jesus came, though, as sinless man. The Roman letter A would be that He is sinless.

Can we keep going with Hebrews 4.15? And then John 3.5? Okay. So we have to hit both qualities of Christ. He came as man, and we'll talk about that now, but He came sinless. I would say in your mind, order it in that way. Just to make sure that you don't mess something up in your own mind.

Before you get to the fact that He was man, He is sinless as He comes. Because we are coming from the fact that Jesus is God, and nothing gets lost in translation there in terms of His absolute holiness. The letter B, ultimately, though, is the fact that He is man.

So John 4.2? And then Galatians 4.4.5? And then Philippians? "Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it lawful to be equal with God, and made himself the Lord God of His Father." So why is it important that Jesus is fully man? These are just texts for you to understand the authority of Scripture here.

But for us, I think pretty much everyone here has gone through BCC, and we've covered this material on Jesus being fully God and fully man, so we're not going to go back into that. But if we could open it up for discussion just for a moment here. Why is it so important that Jesus is fully man?

He could fully represent us. So if someone were to come to claim, and here's a substitute, it has to be something that matches. So we have to take it from the perspective of God, who is the one who is being offended, or even as judge. And so if someone comes and says, "Hey, you were driving this car, and you ran over my sister and she died." And he comes to court and says, "Well, I'm going to try to cover over something like this." No one's going to look at that and be like, "It has to be a life for a life." Your life has to play into this.

But if someone comes and says, "Here's my dog," or something like that, "Take this and let it become..." It just doesn't fit. It doesn't match. There's this idea of fairness involved that really begins to show us that he needs to be a perfect match. But what else about substitute?

Why does Jesus have to be fully man? Any other thoughts on this one? I think one of the important things is this idea of mediator. A mediator needs to be someone who's able to represent both sides. So if Christ is not man and he's removed from us, there's some kind of...

Let's just say the fullness of deity only resides with him. Then for us, we're always going to be looking to him as someone who was not able to walk in my shoes. He was not able to actually accomplish what I could not accomplish. Because why? He's God. Of course God should be able to accomplish this.

But if a man is able to accomplish it, then it becomes something that on this side of the mediation begins to work. So he is able to come into the courtroom of God and say, "I did it. I actually did what they could not accomplish." If he was doing that without coming down fully as man, that would not apply.

There are many other reasons why this is so important, but the fact of the matter is that Jesus had to come to the world in the form of man and the way that he lived is now what we are in sanctification becoming like. If you want to be very, very careful about how you slice it, we are not becoming more like God.

We are becoming more like Christ. And that is very, very important to remember for all of us. That we are growing in Christ-likeness. So even the fact that the Holy Spirit resides within us, when it says in John chapter 1 verse 1, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God." And then you jump to verse 14 where it says, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The idea there is the word tabernacle, that he tabernacled among us.

And so if you think of the idea of tabernacle, it is a place where God is able to reside. It is a place where God's presence comes. So Christ becomes that person who comes and opens the way to this. He opens up the doorway so that as we become like Christ, the Holy Spirit is actually able to reside within us.

There is no way for God's presence to be with us unless the Holy Spirit is within us. And there is no way for the Holy Spirit to be within us unless Christ is able to kind of unlock that for us. And it is a little bit heady and you do not need to bring these things in, but for you to understand why it is so important that Jesus came as sinless man.

Any questions about this one? Yeah? One of the arguments that you are posing is that because Christ is God and that we are trying to be more like Christ, wouldn't someone say you are still trying to be like God in that sense? Yeah, and the reason why I say be careful about this is because, not because we do not want to defend the Trinity, but because it becomes a rabbit hole that takes them away from like, that is not even the issue for them.

When these questions will come up, you could address it, but I would say, I am going to bypass it right now. I would say, no that is a great question, but if we can kind of talk about what I am really trying to get to here. Because a lot of times, the questions that are being asked, it just pops up in people's minds as a secondary or tertiary question, but you want to stay laser beam focused on why am I talking about the fact that Christ came.

I am not here to defend all the nitty gritty, which I can do, but what I want to do is really show you that Christ came. Historically, He came. He came into the world and He did these things and the fact of the matter is, He rose from the dead.

There is a reason why worldwide Christianity has exploded onto the scene, where other religions take generations to solidify, this was momentary. He came as God into this world as man. He claimed His deity and people saw Him and people were proclaiming His deity. I am not trying to wiggle my way out of it, you are trying to keep them very focused on that.

So I am not going to answer it because of that reason. We have this understanding that Christ is the only one who can reconcile us. So we saw God being holy and just and righteous and fair, wrathful against sin, and then humanity then falls under that, that umbrella of wrath that is just waiting to fall down upon humanity and demolish humanity.

That is just waiting there. And so the question that automatically happens after points one and two of the gospel is what? Who is going to save me? What am I going to do then? And the answer to that is going to be only God can save you. Very quickly, if you go through points one and two, you are going to look around and be like, "Okay, there is nobody that can save me from God except Him." So then Christ coming down in the form of man, there is no other conceivable way of salvation to be able to occur in this.

Because we are saying, "I need to pay an eternal punishment. The only way I could pay that eternal punishment is through eternal hell. But can anybody save me from this?" Well, the fairness of God would lack in any scenario I can conjure up. We could not even actually come up with this answer.

That is why there is a part of Christianity, I believe it, because this is not man-made. There is nothing about this that any form of logic can get to this. That God says there is actually no conceivable way of humanity to even think there is any hope of salvation in the condition that we are in.

But He says, "I will make a way. And the only way is through Jesus because you need God Himself on that cross." That is the only way. Who is the only one who is going to be able to acquit guilt? It is going to be the one who has been offended.

So it is really confusing. People call it, theologians call it a scandalous grace. But the idea is when He hangs on that cross, the only holy, just, righteous one is hanging on that cross who is able to say then, "Now I can pay for your sins." Which is a mind-blowing concept that I know that I ought to be spending the rest of eternity in hell.

Every day, if you call it a million years, if you call it a trillion years, that I should be subject to that kind of wrath. Christ on that cross was able to absorb that relatively in an instant. And so only someone who is eternal is able to do something like that.

How can He, He is actually, when He was on that cross, He actually, in a manner of speaking, was able to absorb the wrath that I ought to be spending every day forever. And He took it. And so every single one of us that is a believer in this room, He did that for all of us at that same moment.

Whatever you might say about the three days or the one day or that instant when Christ gives up His spirit, but He paid it. There is no conceivable way that if this isn't God on the cross that He could be paying this kind of punishment. Any other questions? Yeah.

I always have this in my mind, this very gray area, at what point is man and nature sinful? Rebelled against God, but Christ clearly did not, can't rebel against Himself. So I always wonder what was the purpose of the temptation, the struggle, so that He could relate better to us?

Did that come out of that something? I'm not quite sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. Sorry, my question is very vague. Oh no, no, no. I think it's a great question. I think what you bring up would be secondary though, right? That we can relate to Him. Like He can sympathize with my weaknesses, or I feel better about myself, you know?

There's actually an element of that that's helpful. But the idea is that He was the perfect substitute. That's why. But the first part of your assumption is actually that man is not naturally rebellious. Sinful man is naturally rebellious. Adam and Eve weren't naturally rebellious until they fell, but Jesus never fell.

He still felt the temptation like Adam and Eve, but the reason was Him. Yeah, yeah. And we could go into the dichotomy of the spirit and their flesh, but we probably can't do that this morning. But yeah, so these are all good questions that could come up. They're rare.

I feel like it's rare. For those of you guys who go to evangelize, the problem usually doesn't fall with like, "Uh-uh, he wasn't like God, or he wasn't man even." But this is so important for us to anchor down in our own thinking. And so if these questions do come up, I will say, sidestep them.

With confidence though. Don't be like, "Uh-oh." You know, like that kind of thing. But sidestep it with confidence in the fact of the matter, or in the fact that Christ, oh, okay, I'm really like fuzzy this morning, that this isn't their main concern. So okay, so let's move on.

What has Jesus done? So Roman numeral number one, Jesus died on the cross to pay your penalty. And this is judicial. So I think the legal and the relational thing is spoken of all through scripture. So we talked about a little bit of that. Humanity is broken. So some of the ramifications of that was that there's a judicial ramification in the court of law, what we're declared to be.

And also the relational thing, I'm just like, man, there's a foreignness about us. Well, Jesus came to bridge both. Second Corinthians 5.21, wherever we left off. The first Peter. "Who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died the sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes we were healed." In Colossians.

"And we have been saved by the blood of Christ, and we are saved by the blood of Christ." Okay, and then some other supporting verses, and there are more. Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty, legally, judicially. He bridged the divide in his own body by paying.

There was no, it's not just striking it as if, oh, I never saw it. It's like he actually paid it. There's a difference there. That Jesus actually paid my debt. And then Roman numeral two, Jesus' death also restores us to God. This is the relational. First Peter 3.18. "Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, and he might bring us to God, being put to death and nuflaged, but made alive in his Son." I think that when I walk people through conversion, people get stuck on the first and then forget the second.

And when I ask, oh, this is your testimony, okay, was there a brokenness of sin? Many people say, yeah, there's a brokenness here now. But then for a long time after that, they still feel like kind of afraid under the mighty hand of God. And for a long time, I was trying to figure out what that was because I understand it.

I kind of feel like that too sometimes. But really being able to feel the freedom of a relationship of someone who forgives you, that can be done only through the cross of Christ who says, now you are brought into union with God through my body. If you're to ask someone, I say, hey, do you feel like God's forgiven you?

You'd be surprised how many people feel like, I'm not sure. We need to bring them to this point. God will completely forgive you when he looks upon you that he will, because of Christ and who he is and what he did on that cross, there is nothing there. There is nothing that he looks upon you and he will look upon you as he would look upon his very own son.

And this is part of the good news of the gospel. And then Roman numeral three, we're going to be a little behind here today. Jesus was sacrificed out of a love for humanity. Jesus was sacrificed out of a love for humanity. So God desires for people like, when you walk with people and say, hey, do you feel like God's forgiven you?

And they'll say, I'm not sure. The next question I'll ask is, well, did you ask him to forgive you though? And they'll be like, I think so. And I'll say, tell me what you said when you became a Christian. And they'll say like, I was confessing my sins. So they were saying like, I was broken.

And I said, God, I'm selfish. I hate people. I'm an angry person. They'll say all these things. But sometimes people will just sit there and be like, God, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me though? And then receive his forgiveness. And God really desires this whole restoration with them. That there is no partial restoration, even in sanctification.

It's a whole restoration with the sinner and himself. He looks upon us now as saints. Have you heard of worm theology before? Worm theology is awesome, and then it's the worst thing in the world. So the awesome portion is, it shows the person who is broken before God, and it's like, so man, I am a wicked sinner.

And then so, the worm theology, there's a biblical term in it, right? They'll say, I'm a worm before God. That goes only halfway. So that's good, unless you stay there. If you stay there, the freedom of the gospel never comes to you. The gospel says, no, you are no longer there though.

You are completely purged of all sin legally. And now you are, everything that happens then has already been paid on the cross. We're afraid that we're going to look at that and abuse that grace, right? We're going to grow licentious in it. But that's actually the gospel though. That every sin from here to the moment I die has been paid for by Christ.

That's actually a very freeing gospel. And that it gives you the wings to be able to. And so we have to get them to this point of not just someone being broken over sin and saying therefore I will accept the love of God. But they need to feel that bridging of like, oh, you're saying God loves me?

Great, I place my faith in Christ. But you have to walk them through the repentance and the accepting of forgiveness and the confessing of sin and asking them really, do you believe that Christ has fully paid for your sin now? That has to be there in this. And we're going to talk more about that next week.

John 3, 16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him." So God sent Jesus to be a sacrifice because of his great love for humanity.

There's a song I grew up singing, it's called "Above All." Do you know that song? At the end, so it's a whole song that builds up like, God is above all things and at the end it says he loved me above all. And so I grew up like, really moved by that kind of song and then later on I was like, wait a second, this is a weird song.

Did God really love me above all things? And so I went back and forth and then I went the opposite direction though of saying like, no, you know, it's all about God's glory. He was thinking just about his glory and that was wrong too. We have to be able to balance this out and say like, man, does God have this deep love for me where we would actually call it unconditional in Christ?

That he would send his only son to take my place on that cross? Yes as far as glory, yes it will exalt him, but in the middle of that, is it because of his great love for me? Is this like a zero sum game or is this something that like can coexist?

Oh man, it coexists. Like on that cross, like Jesus sent his son and he poured out his wrath on Christ and I know he was thinking of me, you know, and I know he did it because of his love for me. And when we're talking about this with people, I hope that it's not so separate and stoic from us.

Like when we're talking about God, the fact that God loves you and the fact that like, which is good, but that, but the fact of the matter is we're coming and we're saying that this is what I believe. And it can't be sterile, you know. They need to see that this is a message that we actually believe and practice.

So okay, I'm not going to take questions. Romans 5, 8 through 10. Can we move over to Jason? God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. Much more than having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his blood.

Okay. And there are other supporting verses. So again, when you're sitting across from the person you're evangelizing, we are much more in the state of where they're sitting. We should be understanding the shoes they're walking in. Much more than saying like, "Hey, get out of our level." To really feel like there is no frustration when we're talking to these people.

There isn't. If they're open-handed slapping the God we serve, then that's something. But if there's rebellion in them, we're like, "Of course there's rebellion in them." If they're self-centered, of course they're self-centered. We should actually feel this deep, seated compassion in our heart. Because that's where I was, and I remember that.

So be very close to them in the place of evangelizing. Because the gospel message as we preach it is very close to us. Roman numeral four, Jesus rose from the grave and is still alive today. That's found in 1 Corinthians and 1 Peter. You can read those on your own.

And so don't stop with the death of Christ, but that Christ rose from the dead, and he is the only historical figure that rose from the dead and never died again. So you don't want to go too far into this. People talk about enlightenment and what happens to people, but he is the only one who rose from the dead and that was it.

And that was the end of the story, that he continues life like that. So you get them to this point where when you're talking about his humanity, you are going to need to go into the fact that he was a historical figure. Any secular historian will scoff at any secular person who doesn't believe in the historicity of Christ.

It's not up for debate anymore. And people like to just throw things out there to kind of be a rabble-rouser, but he was a person born into the world and we are saying he rose from the grave. And all of these people then attested to that fact and were willing to die for that fact.

And there's a lot of apologetics you could go into that, and I know you guys are thinking of a lot of that kind of stuff, but let's move on. So this Saturday we're going evangelizing. I sent the list over to June. If you didn't email me back and you're still planning on going, I think you could still message June.

The best thing would be that Google form. I think because you're part of this class, you might not want to send in on the seminar. It's just going to be the same stuff. I'm just going to condense it. If you want to come, I guess that would be good too.

There's lunch at 1130 at UTC. Okay, cool. And then secondly, now we're going to start to put these things into practice and it's going to be forced. So you are going to think of one individual and next week you're going to bring the name of that individual and then we're going to share it with each other so that the final week we're going to share with each other how you shared the gospel with this individual.

It's just accountability to practice what we're learning. So we're going to be practicing that in cold evangelism this Saturday, but come with somebody that you really want to share the whole gospel with. Okay, and ask them, "Hey, can I sit down and actually share the gospel with you?" And you would probably want to kind of go through your notes, rehearse it, think through things.

If you want to make it a dialogue, you can. If you want to just say, "Hey, can you just hear me out?" And then at the end of this dialogue you could do that. Just give them the whole gospel and then sit down and say, "Have you heard that before?" We think that a lot of Americans, because we live in America, have heard the gospel message before.

Don't do that. Don't think that they have. Assume they don't know the gospel. I think you should do that with every unbeliever. Just assume they don't know the gospel. If they prove otherwise and they're able to articulate it, that's different. But actually, more often than not, really when I go evangelize on campus, I feel like 9 out of 10 people just don't know the gospel at all.

They just heard about the name of Jesus, that's it. Something about the cross and sin. But they don't know the gospel. And so we understand now the gospel includes who God is, includes who we are before him, and includes Christ and what he did on that cross. Here's your homework.

We're not going to have time for this. I'll say this though. We're bringing to people, and what we're saying is, we are bringing to you so great a salvation. And when we say, "What is the salvation?" I think it can be easy to think about it very two-dimensionally and think that it's Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, and so I don't get to go to hell, I get to go to heaven.

And that's really, really good. But the salvation story runs very deep. And I wanted to do this, but we're not going to have time. But when we think about what atonement is, the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation, it's actually very complex. And so we have words.

We're not trying to be like all hoity-toity Christians, but there are words for this. There's word for expiation, that our guilt is actually taken away from us. I don't think you, I'm going to go too fast for you to write it down, sorry. Propitiation, that God's wrath is at peace.

These are different things. That now, the belief of expiation is that there is no longer guilt on me. You'd be surprised how many people believe so wholeheartedly propitiation without believing in expiation. And so they believe that God's wrath is at peace, but I still feel guilty. These are biblical matters, that Christ actually removes guilt from us so that we don't walk around guilty anymore.

There's reconciliation, that he brought into right and restored relationship. We are no longer enemies of God. When he looks at me, I ask people, "Do you feel like God's constantly disappointed in you?" Man, think about how people answer that. Think about how you answer that, depending on how you were this past week.

Like that he's disappointed in me. What are you trying to say with that? Redemption is not just that he saved us and rescued us out of the water as we were drowning. It's that he actually had to pay something to rescue us out of that drowning. I think redemption, the idea of redeeming, you know redeeming is like a coupon you take in and you get something back.

The idea of redeeming is, oh, you know the gospel just does not make any sense. There's one thing for God to save people who are so ugly in their sin, right? Dead, foul, filthy creatures. We talked about cockroach eggs. There's no one that would want to save these things.

But it's another thing to say that I am going to pay something to redeem them. And there's another thing to say that that payment is going to be what is most precious to me. Like the increasing intensity as to the cost of this redemption is like mind blowing. Substitutionary, that it was a substitution to atonement.

That Jesus was a substitute that brought about the atonement. And this is when we think about the deeper theology of Christ being fully God, fully man. What was actually accomplished on that cross? Why is it that he was considered the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world?

Why was, what was the priest in this? Why is it that when we read the Pentateuch that it expands our idea of what Christ did on that cross? All these things, it deepens so that when we look at the cross, when we come about to Easter time, to Resurrection Sunday, that we're not just like, "Wow, Jesus died on the cross for my sin." That everything that we're doing as we're reading scripture, that as we're growing in the knowledge of God, and that's what happened in Ephesians 2 for a lot of us, right?

When Pastor Mark was teaching through Ephesians 2, we're like, "Wow, that's so deep." It's so rich what God has given to us. And these blessings, he's reminding us of how deep these blessings go. They're not superficial. And so when you go and you take the salvation to the masses, oh, you ought to be jumping up and down with joy in this, right?

But I think a lot of people see Christians who are so versed in Christianity. And so we're trying to take something that's coming straight out of our heart. Okay. I was going to show you something that the Navigators have come up with, and I thought it was very helpful, especially for people who don't feel much confidence.

Have you guys seen the bridge analogy of the cross before? That's something that's helpful, right, to think through, to try to get your way through the Gospel message. So you can sit there and draw it out, or you can actually just kind of keep it in your mind to think, "Am I guiding someone?" rather than constantly getting stuck in these little holes.

So don't get stuck in holes. You want to see movement and walking. If someone just wants to go into a hole and they just want to do it for this whole little time, I'd say, "Just dust your hands, dust your feet off, and then move on." There's no reason to do that.

So the idea of this is that there is us, there's God, and we're created in His image to be in eternal fellowship with Him, right? That's what, when we think of all the good stuff of Christianity, this is what we're kind of thinking, right? Or of humanity, this is what we're thinking.

That we are meant to exist in a perfect relationship with Him. That's Genesis 1, verse 26, where it says that God has created us in His image. In the image of God, He created us. There's this repetition and voiding thing going on, right? But in sin, what happens is, we're not going to be able to do that.

We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that.

We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that.

EV Training Class #4

Transcript