This past Sunday we looked at marriage from various passages in the Bible. During the confession time Jerry read from Ephesians 5:22-33 which says:

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³² This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

As we discussed last week we live in a man-centered culture. Many people will come to a text like Ephesians 5:22 that talks about wives submitting to their husbands and we don’t like the word submit here. Like Mark said, we think it is a four letter word. It has negative connotations. John Piper says: “The ideas of headship and submission are not popular today. The spirit of our society makes it very hard for people to even hear texts like this in a positive way.” We were reminded of a great quote from C.S. Lewis who said: “The most dangerous ideas in a society are not the ones being argued, but the ones that are assumed.” So, the assumption about this word submit in Ephesians 5:22 is that it means the husband can go home and sit on the couch and say: “woman give me my dinner and the remote.” This could not be further from the truth. The husband is to love his wife ‘as Christ loved the church.’ Adrian Rogers says this means: “A husband is to love his wife sacrificially because that’s the way Jesus loves the church. He is to love his wife supplyingly; that’t the way Jesus loves the church. He is to love his wife steadfastly; that’s the way Jesus loves the church. He is to love his wife selflessly; that’s the way Jesus loves the church.” He goes on to say: “Most women don’t mind being in submission to a man who loves her enough to die for her and shows it by the way he lives for her.”

Adrian Rogers reminds us that: “Submission is one equal voluntarily placing himself or herself under another equal that God may thereby be glorified. It has nothing to do with inferiority or superiority.” The Lord Jesus Christ submitted to his father as Philippians 2 tells us: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,”

James Boice writing about Philippians 2 tells us that: “Paul says that before the incarnation Jesus was in the form of God and was God’s equal…Jesus Christ possesses all of God’s attributes. They mean that he is God. Is God omniscient? So is Jesus. Is God all-powerful? So is Jesus. Is God the creator, the redeemer, the truth, the way, the life,…? So is Jesus.” He goes on: “We can imagine the scene that must have taken place in heaven on the eve of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. God is omniscient, but the angels are not…We must imagine therefore, that something like rumors of Christ’s descent to earth had been in circulation around heaven and that for weeks the angels had been contemplating the form in which Christ would enter human history. Would he appear in a blaze of light bursting into the night of the Palestinian country-side, dazzling all who beheld him? Perhaps he would appear as a mighty general marching into pagan Rome as Caesar did when he crossed the Rubicon. Perhaps he would come as the wisest of the Greek philosophers, putting the wisdom of Plato and Socrates to foolishness by a supernatural display of intellect. But what is this? There is no display of glory, no pomp, no marching of the feet of heavenly legions! Instead Christ lays his robes aside, the glory that was his from eternity. He steps down from the heavenly throne and becomes a baby in the arms of his mother in a far eastern colony of the Roman empire. At this display of divine condescension the angels are amazed, and they burst into such crescendo of song that the shepherds hear them on the hills of Bethlehem.”

Marriage In The Beginning

Next we looked at the end of Genesis 1 and portions of Genesis 2.Genesis 1:26 & 27 tell us:

“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

So, God creates men and women in His own image. Mark reminded us that men and women are equal in dignity, value, and worth.

Next we looked at portions of Genesis 2. Some of those verses are below:

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” ¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” ¹⁹ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. ²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. ²² And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” ²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ²⁵ And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

God gives Adam a job before he is gives him a wife. Then in verse 18 God says: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Missionary martyr Jim Elliot says that: “When God saw that it was not good for a man to be alone, He saw something that is terribly obvious, and He did not meet the need by making a second man!” God says that he is going to make a helper fit for Adam, then he brings all of the animals to Adam for him to name. Why does God do this? Well as Adam starts to name the animals he sees a gorilla. He sees a male gorilla and a female gorilla. Then he sees a lion. He sees a male lion and a female lion. He sees all these male and female animals and yet he is alone as verse 18 says. So, God causes a deep sleep to come over him and then he removes Adam’s rib and ‘the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.’ This portion of scripture reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Matthew Henry. My wife loves this quote as well. Matthew Henry said: “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”

This passage in Genesis 2 describes the first marriage. In verse 24 we are told that “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” In Matthew 19: 4-6 Jesus quotes this passage in Genesis 2: “Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, ⁵ and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? ⁶ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” John Piper says that Jesus makes three conclusions about marriage. First, ‘therefore Jesus concludes for his day and ours: “So they are no longer two but one flesh.” Marriage is that kind of union—very profound, just as Christ and the church are one body (Romans 12:5).’ The second conclusion ‘Jesus draws is that this union of one flesh is the creation, the work, of God, not man. He says…, “What therefore God has joined together . . .” So even though two humans decide to get married. And a human pastor or priest or justice of the peace or some other person solemnizes and legalizes the union, all that is secondary to the main actor, namely, God. “What God has joined together . . .” God is the main actor in the event of marriage.” The third conclusion is that ‘what God has joined together, let not man separate.’ Piper says: “The contrast is: “If God joined the man and woman in marriage, then mere humans have no right to separate what he joined. That’s Jesus third conclusion from Genesis 1 and 2. Since God created this sacred union with this sacred purpose to display the unbreakable firmness of his covenant love for his people, it simply does not lie within man’s rights to destroy what God created.”

Jesus does give an exception for divorce in Matthew 19:9 when he says: “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” We are thankful however, that God has not divorced us because of our unfaithfulness. Through our unfaithfulness he has remained faithful.

The Purpose Of Marriage

Voddie Baucham says: “If you don’t know the purpose of a thing, you will probably misuse it. That saying is as true for marriage as it is for power tools. Once we know the purpose for which marriage was given, we are able to evaluate our use of and participation in it properly.” So, what is the purpose of marriage? Baucham answers: “God designed marriage on purpose, for a purpose (and it isn’t our happiness). Marriage was intended to serve as a living breathing illustration of the relationship between Christ and his bride, the Church. If we understand this, it will revolutionize the way we view our marriages. We will go from a man-centered marriage to a gospel-centered marriage.” Most people in our culture believe that the purpose of marriage is our individual happiness. Then when they are no longer happy they want to throw in the towel and call off the marriage. They say they are no longer happy and are no longer in love. Ligon Duncan reminds us that: “People don’t fall out of love. They fall out of repentance and forgiveness.”

So, the purpose of marriage is not our own personal happiness. John Piper again says: “What God has joined together in marriage is to be a reflection of the union between the Son of God and his bride the church. Those of us who are married need to ponder again and again how mysterious and wonderful it is that we are granted by God the privilege to image forth stupendous divine realities infinitely bigger and greater than ourselves.”

Jim Hamilton tells us that Ephesians 5 “says that the reason God gave marriage was to demonstrate the relationship between Jesus and those He redeems. Jesus redeemed His people by suffering and dying on their behalf.” So, husbands (I am preaching to myself here) the Bible commands us to love our wives in the same way that Jesus loved His beloved.  Jim Hamilton reminds us that: “Many of life’s days seem routine, even mundane. And as years crawl by, strong emotions, like bright colors, seem to fade and there will be times when the euphoria of the honeymoon and all the joy of this day will be forgotten. It is during those times that other things may seem more exciting than your aging wife. During those times, you must love her with the same extravagancy with which Jesus has loved the church.”

Hamilton goes on: “God is making you two husband and wife to give the world a picture of the relationship between Jesus and the church. If you do not love your wife the way that Jesus loved the church, you lie to the world about God. My friend, there is one way for you to maintain the mindset and ability to do this. You must satisfy yourself primarily in God, and then receive your wife as God’s gift to you. If you look primarily to your wife to meet your deepest needs, understand all of your emotions, and be a constant source of encouragement and strength for you, you will be frustrated. God has made you such that only He can satisfy you.”

Jim Hamilton sums up his article on marriage like this: “The glory of God is at stake in your marriage. In order to love each other as you must until you die, you must satisfy yourselves on God. People get divorced because their spouses do not satisfy them. God doesn’t intend for your spouse to satisfy you. God intends for your spouse to remind you that you need God. And in casting yourselves again and again on God, satisfying yourselves day after day on God, you will have the emotional resources necessary to love each other.

You will be happy. And God will get glory because your lives will testify that He is the best, most beautiful, most worthy, most valuable, most able, most glorious thing in the universe. Seek your own joy in the pleasure of having a happy, pleased spouse. Gladly, humbly, prayerfully seek to live out the roles that God has clearly appointed for you. And enjoy the all-sufficient God who made you, redeemed you, and has promised to make you perfect like Jesus.”

So, whether you are single or married let us all ‘enjoy the all-sufficient God who made us, redeemed us, and has promised to make us perfect like Jesus.’ Let us look with expectancy to what Revelation 19 describes as the marriage supper of the lamb. At this marriage supper of the lamb Matt Chandler says we will be “sitting and…eating face to face with Jesus. Did you catch that? Not by faith, but by sight, face to face with Jesus in a day where there are no more tears, no more pain, no more suffering, just communing with our Savior for all eternity.”

Picture from here

This past Sunday Jerry read from Romans chapter 1. He read verses 18-25. They are below:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. ²⁴ Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵ because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

Many people come to a text like verse 18 that says: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” and they don’t like what the text says about God. The problem is that we live in a culture that is so incredibly man-centered. We believe that man is the center of the universe. The Bible, which is so radically different than the culture in which we live, is not man-centered, but is so unapologetically God-centered. We spend our lives swimming in the salt water ocean of man-centeredness, and we don’t even realize that we are wet. Our culture talks much about human rights, and even animal rights, but when was the last time you heard someone talk about Creator rights?

Our culture and we ourselves to put it bluntly are ungodly. Jerry Bridges says that ungodliness describes an attitude toward God. He goes on to say that: “Ungodliness may be defined as living one’s everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God’s will, or of God’s glory, or of one’s dependence on God. You can readily see, then, that someone can lead a respectable life and still be ungodly in the sense that God is essentially irrelevant in his or her life. We rub shoulders with such people every day in the course of our ordinary activities. They may be friendly, courteous, and helpful to other people, but God is not at all in their thoughts. They may even attend church for an hour or so each week but then live the remainder of the week as if God doesn’t exist. They are not wicked people, but they are ungodly.”

He goes on, and this may sting a little bit: “Now, the sad fact is that many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God. We may even read our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go out into the day’s activities and basically live as though God doesn’t exist. We seldom think of our dependence on God or our responsibility to Him. We might go for hours with no thought of God at all. In that sense, we are hardly different from our nice, decent, but unbelieving neighbor. God is not at all in his thoughts and is seldom in ours.” As Mark said this past Sunday God becomes just one star in the sky of our lives, or He becomes just another App in our lives. I don’t want this to be true of me, that God is just a small piece of my life. I hope we all want to do ‘all to the glory of God.’

David Wells similarly says: “But the real question to ask about belief in God’s existence is this: what “weight” does that belief have? The U.S. Congress had the words “In God We Trust” placed on our paper currency in 1956, but it is also clear that this belief, for many, is a bit skinny and peripheral to how they actually live. They believe in God’s existence but it is a belief without much cash value. To say that God is “before” them, therefore, would be somewhat meaningless. It does not necessarily have the weight to define how they think about life and how they live. Indeed, one of the defining marks of our time, at least here in the West, is the practical atheism that is true of so many people. They say that God is there but then they live as if he were not.”

So, how can we avoid this ‘practical atheism’ that David Wells speaks of, and how can we do all to God’s glory? Jerry Bridges helps us out when he says that doing all to the glory of God means: “that I eat and drive and shop and engage in my social relationships with a twofold goal. First, I desire that all that I do be pleasing to God. I want God to be pleased with the way I go about ordinary activities of my day. So I pray prospectively over the day before me, asking that the Holy Spirit will so direct my thoughts, words, and actions that they will be pleasing to God. Second, to do all to the glory of God means that I desire that all my activities of an ordinary day will honor God before other people. Jesus said: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). He goes on to say that we should view every circumstance and every activity of life, whether in the temporal or spiritual realms…through a God-centered lens. We are all probably falling short on this, but the way we can get to this point of seeing everything through a God-centered lens is through an ‘ever-growing intimate relationship with God.’ I will come back to this idea of ungodliness at the end of this post, but lets jump to the book of Genesis.

Genesis 1

We read through the first several verses of Genesis 1 last Sunday. The first 6 verses are below:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.⁶ And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

I love how the Bible starts with these four words: ‘In the beginning, God…’ It is not in the beginning, time plus matter plus chance. It is not in the beginning, the universe burst into being on it’s own. It is not in the beginning, man. No, it is in the beginning, God. A.W. Tozer said: “give me Genesis 1:1 and the rest of the Bible gives me no problem.”

If you remove God from Genesis 1 like the atheist and new atheist of our day, then your life has no purpose or meaning. As Christian apologist William Lane Craig says: “If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality, man’s life leads only to the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever. Therefore, everyone must come face to face with what theologian Paul Tillich has called “the threat of non-being.” For though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call “myself” will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.

So if God does not exist, that means that man and the universe exist to no purpose—since the end of everything is death—and that they came to be for no purpose, since they are only blind products of chance. In short, life is utterly without reason.

The point is this: if God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance.”

Atheist will try and say that Christians have moral issues or that God has moral issues. However, if you don’t have God in the picture you can’t talk about human beings doing something right or wrong because we don’t have any purpose without God. A real life example of something like this was when one of the so called new atheist Christopher Hitchens was debating pastor and author Doug Wilson. Hitchens said: “One of Christianity’s specifically horrible contributions to human mythology and delusion is the idea, the terrifying idea that you could be tortured forever.” Doug Wilson replies: “Horrible by what standard?” Hitchens then flounders and says: “Horrible by—well, good question.”

Hitchens goes on and tries to appeal to the audience and wiggle his way out of the question. Wilson soon pressed him further and asks: “How do you give an accounting of what is good and what is bad? When you say—if the universe is, on your accounting, time and chance acting on matter, if all the universe is is matter in motion, what do you mean “horrible”? What do you mean by “horrible idea”? Who cares?”

The Trinity

The Bible not only teaches us about God from the beginning, but also tells us that God is a trinity. Matt Perman says: “The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Stated differently, God is one in essence and three in person. These definitions express three crucial truths: (1) The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons, (2) each Person is fully God, (3) there is only one God.” We see glimpses of the trinity in Genesis 1. In the first three verses it says: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” You have God, the Spirit of God and the Word of God. Further down in verse 26 of chapter 1 it says: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Wayne Grudem says: “The best explanation is that already in the first chapter of Genesis we have an indication of a plurality of persons in God himself.”

Other religions like Islam and Mormonism never say that God is love. They can’t say that God is love, because in their view, before God created the world he existed alone. As Ravi Zacharias says: “If God ever says He loves, who was He loving before the creation?” In these other religions God can’t be love in his essence. Raw power would precede love. However, the Bible in 1 John 4 says that God is love. This is true because of the trinity. Ravi Zacharias says that God in his essence is a being in relationship. He also says that in God you have unity and diversity, which is what the word university means. He goes on to say that: “Only in the Trinity is there Unity and Diversity in the Community of the Trinity!”

The New Heaven and New Earth

Mark ended his sermon doing a fly over of the Bible focusing specifically on the Word of God. He then read from Revelation 21 which says:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” ⁵ And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

As Jerry Ediger is always quick to remind us that we are one day closer to heaven! Just meditate on verse 4: ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore,…’ Wow, just wow. The question that we should ask is how in the world is God going to allow us access into this new heaven? We who have made ourselves the center of the universe. We who have worshiped and served the creature and creation over our creator. We who are ungodly and unrighteous.

As I mentioned earlier I wanted to come back to ungodliness and Romans 1:18 (‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,’). Jerry Bridges says that: “Total godliness and utter ungodliness are the opposite ends of a continuum. All of us are somewhere between those two extremes. The only person who ever lived a totally godly life was Jesus.” So, Jesus is the only person who ever lived a totally godly life. All Jesus did his whole life was go around doing good. Jesus, the perfect spotless lamb of God then goes to the cross. He then cry’s out from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones says: “What was happening at that moment? Jesus was experiencing the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. There was never such a revelation of the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, as that which took place there.” So, the wrath of God that should have fallen on the ungodly and unrighteous Scott McAndrew, inexplicably falls upon Jesus, the only person who ever lived a totally godly life. This is the good news of the gospel, indeed this is the greatest news that we could ever hear. As Tim Keller says: “The gospel is the good news of gracious acceptance. Jesus lived the life we should live. He also paid the penalty we owe for the rebellious life we do live. He did this in our place (Isaiah 53:4-10; 2 Cor 5:21; Mark 10:45). We are not reconciled to God through our efforts and record, as in all other religions, but through his efforts and record.”

If you have trusted in Christ as your Savior this song is your story and the story of all of us who have turned from sin and trusted in Christ:

But as I ran my hell-bound race
Indifferent to the cost
You looked upon my helpless state
And led me to the cross
And I beheld God’s love displayed
You suffered in my place
You bore the wrath reserved for me
Now all I know is grace

Hallelujah! All I have is Christ
Hallelujah! Jesus is my life

Picture from Nasa

We spent most of our time together this past Sunday looking at Romans chapter 5. We spent a brief amount of time on verses 6-11. They are below:

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Francis Schaeffer commenting on these verses says: “The one comforting and overwhelming fact is that, when I was totally a sinner, without strength and without one good thing to commend me to God, it was then that Jesus died for me.” He goes on: “Who dies for the enemy? Well, who was the enemy? I was! I was the enemy of God. I was stamping through God’s universe, shaking my fist in His face. And in the very moment when I was shaking my fist in God’s face and tramping through the Creator’s universe, muddying all His streams, that’s when Jesus died for me. And if this is when Jesus died for me, what hope it gives me now! Now, even when I fall, the blood of Jesus is enough. He didn’t save me because I was strong; He saved me when I was weak. He didn’t save me when I was a pretty thing; He saved me when I was a mess. On the basis of this reality, I can have comfort.”

John Stott elaborates on the amazing fact that ‘while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ Stott says: “The more the gift costs the giver, and the less the recipient deserves it, the greater the love is seen to be. Measured by these standards, God’s love in Christ is absolutely unique. For in sending his Son to die for sinners, he was giving everything, his very self, to those who deserved nothing from him except judgment.”

In verse 9 Paul says that “we have now been justified by his blood,…” Francis Schaeffer says: “Justification is our reality in the present tense, based on the fact that, at some particular time in the past tense, Jesus died for us and we accepted His death on our behalf and therefore became justified.” Your week may not be going that well. I know I haven’t had the best week, but the fact that ‘justification is our reality in the present tense,’ should cause us to be joyful. Ian read from Psalm 145 during the worship service this past Sunday. The first three verses of Psalm 145 are below:

“I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.

2  Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.

3  Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.”

This again causes joy, that we will praise the name of God forever and ever. Matthew Henry says: “Praising God must be our daily work. No day must pass, though ever so busy a day, though ever so sorrowful a day, without praising God. We ought to reckon it the most needful of our daily employments, and the most delightful of our daily comforts. God is every day blessing us, doing well for us, there is therefore reason that we should be every day blessing him, speaking well of him…I will bless thee for ever and ever, Psalm 145:1&2. This intimates,…that he resolved to continue in this work to the end of his life,…That he hoped to be praising God to all eternity in the other world. Those that make praise their constant work on earth shall have it their everlasting bliss in heaven.”

Sin and Brokenness

Okay, lets get back to Romans 5:12-14:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”

So, God made a perfect world, with no sin, no pain, and no death. Today all we have to do is turn on the news in the morning and we will find out fairly quickly that we live in a broken world. There is murder, violence, wars, tragedies, cancer, hurricane’s, tornado’s, corruption, and on and on. So, what is wrong with the world? Years ago the London Times asked this same question: “what is wrong with the world?” G.K. Chesterton wrote in a brilliant reply. He simply said:

“Dear Sir,

I am.

Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”

Tanya Walker says: “This is no glib reply. In two little words, Chesterton points us to the profound reality that we are, each and every one of us, broken, and in desperate need of forgiveness.” We are all broken and we live in a broken world. Why are we broken and why is the world broken? Well the answer that Paul gives is that sin has entered the world through Adam. Once sin entered the world, death and suffering, and brokenness followed. Which death and suffering and brokenness is a just response to sin. As Mark said in his sermon this past Sunday, we just don’t realize how serious sin is. John Piper says that: “sin is infinitely offensive.”

Adam and Jesus

So, in Romans 5 starting in verse 12 Paul begins to show us the relationship between Adam and Jesus. He introduces them, then compares and contrasts them. In verse 14 Paul says that ‘Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.’ John Piper says: “What does “type” mean? The NIV says “pattern.” Adam was a pattern of Christ who was to come. He was an example, or a foreshadowing, or a prefiguring of Christ…In verse 14 Paul says he is going to view Christ in comparison and contrast with Adam. That makes Adam a type or a pattern. And the aim is to see more clearly and more fully and more deeply the work of Christ and how he became the foundation of our justification.”

How then is Adam a type of Christ? As John Stott says: “How can the Lord of glory be likened to the man of shame, the Saviour to the sinner, the giver of life to the broker of death?” Mark introduced us to the fancy theological term called federal headship. We were reminded of the story of David and Goliath. Goliath was a giant of man who was mocking the Israelite’s and mocking God. Teenage David comes along and asked why nobody is doing anything? So, he takes his stone’s and his slingshot and takes on the giant Goliath. He lets his stone fly and kills Goliath. In that moment the Israelite’s won the battle. David was representing the Israelite’s and if he would have been defeated, Israel would have been defeated. This is the idea of federal headship, and this is how Adam is a type of Christ.

R.C. Sproul further explains this idea of federal headship: “Adam acted as a representative of the entire human race. With the test that God set before Adam and Eve, he was testing the whole of mankind. Adam’s name means “man” or “mankind.” Adam was the first human being created. He stands at the head of the human race. He was placed in the garden to act not only for himself but for all of his future descendents. Just as a federal government has a chief spokesman who is the head of the nation, so Adam was the federal head of mankind.” So, we have all sinned in and through Adam. We in the West may not like this idea, but this is what Paul is saying in verse 18: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”

Charles Cranfield said that it was perfectly understandable that Adam’s sin was answered by judgment. However what about the accumulated sins and guilt of all the ages, how should that be answered? Incomprehensibly, the accumulated sins and guilt of all the ages is answered by God’s free gift of salvation. As Cranfield says: “this is the miracle of miracles, utterly beyond human comprehension.”

So, we who have been poorly represented by Adam can be gloriously represented by the true and better Adam. As Sam Storms says: “only if Adam represents you in the garden can Jesus represent you on Golgotha. It was on the cross that Jesus served as your representative head: his obedience to the law, his righteousness, and his suffering the penalty of the law were all the acts of a covenant head acting in the stead and on behalf of his people. If Adam stood for you in the garden, Christ may also hang for you on the cross.”

Towards the end of the sermon Mark quoted a powerful quote comparing Adam and Christ. This is amazing and deserves our reflection: “The first Adam turned from God in a garden; the last Adam turned to God in a much more difficult garden. The first Adam was naked and unashamed; the last Adam was naked and bore our shame. The first Adam’s sin brought thorns; the last Adam wore a crown of thorns. The first Adam was a man substituting himself for God; the last Adam was the God-Man substituting himself for sinners. The first Adam sinned at a tree; the last Adam bore our sin on a tree. The first Adam died for his own sin; the last Adam died for our sin. In the first Adam there is defeat. In the last Adam there is victory. In the first Adam there is condemnation. In the last Adam there is justification and salvation. In the first Adam we receive a sin nature. In the last Adam we receive a new nature. In Adam we are cursed. In the last Adam we experience God’s eternal blessing. In Adam there is wrath and death. In the last Adam there is life, love, grace, and peace.”

That previous quote should really stir up our affections for King Jesus. What love, grace, and peace the true and better Adam brings! This past Sunday we celebrated God’s merciful grace in our lives as we sang these words:

During the sermon this past Sunday at North Avenue Church I was reminded that the gospel never gets old. As Tim Keller says: “There are depths in the gospel that are always there to be discovered and applied, not only to our ministry and daily Christian life, but above all, to the worship of the God of the gospel with renewed vision and humility.” So, lets dive in again into the depths of the gospel.

Mark dismantled the idea that the gospel of Luke doesn’t teach about the atonement. We read from Luke 22:7-14 and saw that the word Passover is mentioned over and over:

Luke 22:7-14 

“Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat it.” They said to him, “Where will you have us prepare it?” He said to them, “Behold, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters and tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ And he will show you a large upper room furnished; prepare it there.” And they went and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

Matthew Henry tells us: “The Passover and the deliverance out of Egypt were typical and prophetic signs of a Christ to come, who should by dying deliver us from sin and death, and the tyranny of Satan…and therefore the Lord’s supper is instituted to be a commemorative sign or memorial of a Christ already come, that has by dying delivered us and it is his death that is in a special manner set before us in that ordinance.”

We then read through Luke 22:36-38:

Jesus said to them,“But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.”

Mark then walked us through many passages in Isaiah that have their fulfillment in Jesus. The one that Jesus specifically refers to in Luke 22:37 is from Isaiah 53:12. Isaiah 53:2-6 says:

This my second installment of the digging deeper series. I will try and post this series by Wednesday or Thursday each week. The idea behind this series is that we don’t want to lose the benefit of Mark’s sermon. As I said last time, I have found myself moved by a sermon on a Sunday and then by Monday or Tuesday morning I have nearly forgotten the entire sermon.  So, my prayer is that this series will help us keep the benefit of Mark’s sermons, and force us back to the text and dig in deeper one more time.

So, lets dig into Luke 15 again. Mark started off by quickly talking about glory. He said that we all love seeing something that is glorious. Since it was Super Bowl Sunday, Mark mentioned how later that afternoon many of us would be watching the game on large HDTV’s and when something glorious happens in the game we will see it from 20 different camera angles in slow motion.  We will later go online and watch the same amazing play on YouTube 20 times and tell our friends to watch this play. We are telling others to come see glory. Mark then reminded us that Luke 15 contains something far more glorious than the most amazing football play of all time.

Mark then focused our attention on the first two verses of Luke 15 which says: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” Mark pointed out that there were certain types of people who were attracted to Jesus. Those types of people included tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors in the days of Jesus were one of the most despised groups of people. Most people think of tax collectors in the days of Jesus as thieves, but Matt Chandler says it goes well beyond thievery.  Chandler adds: “At the time that Jesus is walking on the earth, at the time that the gospel of Luke is written, Israel is ruled by Rome. In fact, Rome, at this time, rules from England to India. Try to get your head around how massive of an empire that was. And…they were a ruthless, ruthless, ruthless empire that conquered the world by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of men, women and children…So for Rome to rule ruthlessly like this, they had to have a massive, massive, massive army. How do you fund a massive, massive, massive army? Taxes. In the 1st Century, tax collectors were Jews who paid Rome for the right to gather taxes. At this time in history, the best bet is that almost 90% of a household income went to taxes.” So, we can begin to see why the tax collectors were so despised.

Then the passage tells us that ‘sinners’ were drawing near as well.  Mark said that the Bible tells us that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So, we are all sinners, but this word sinners here in Luke is describing a group of people who are known for their sin. They have their scarlet letter on them. Matt Chandler says: “So, a sinner in the 1st Century wasn’t everybody, but it was a class of people, specifically those who had jobs that were considered questionable or immoral. So, slave traders, prostitutes.” Mark pointed out how the people who were coming to Jesus were the outcasts, the broken, the shamed and despised. Mark then in essence asked if our churches today are drawing these same types of people? Tim Keller in his wonderful little book The Prodigal God says: “Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches,…We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners doesn’t have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.” Matt Chandler helpfully reminds us that: “Where the true gospel is, even the tax collectors will push close to hear.”

In verse two the Pharisees say that Jesus: “receives sinners and eats with them.” John Piper says that this word ‘receives’ means: ‘eagerly await or expect and look for.’ Piper adds: “In other words, Luke 15:2 says that Jesus is not just receiving sinners; he is looking for them and eagerly awaiting their coming. He has his eye out for them. The word “receive” sounds passive. But Jesus is not passive. He is seeking sinners and tax-gatherers to come to him and eat with him.” Praise God that Jesus came to seek and to save lost sinners like you and me!

Mark then jumped into the main text for the sermon. Starting in verse 11 of chapter 15 he read: “And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them.” Mark pointed out that most people call this the parable of the prodigal son, but Jesus never calls it that. The parable is about a man who had ‘two sons.’ Tim Keller says that a better name for this parable would be: “The Parable of the Two Lost Sons.” The younger of these two lost sons comes to the father and disrespectfully demands his inheritance even though his father is still living. Tim Keller points out that for this son to ask for his inheritance now, “was a sign of deep disrespect. To ask this while the father still lived was the same as to wish him dead. The younger son was saying, essentially, that he wants his father’s things, but not his father. His relationship to the father has been a means to the end of enjoying his wealth, and now he is weary of that relationship. He wants out. Now. “Give me what is mine,” he says.”

Mark then said that the father in the parable actually gives his younger son his inheritance. This would have required the father to sell a portion of his estate. Keller again says: “The father patiently endures a tremendous loss of honor as well as the pain of rejected love.” Verse 13 of chapter 15 says: “Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.” Mark then asked if the younger son took his inheritance and moved into a house down the street? No, he went to a ‘far country.’ He wanted to get as far away as he could. He probably ran out of his father’s house filled with joy as he gets to enjoy his newfound freedom. He lived recklessly with his inheritance for probably a few months, but eventually the money dries up, and the joy that he had a few weeks back is long gone. A modern day worship song describes the prodigal son so well: “The sin that promised joy and life Had led me to the grave.”

So, a famine arose in this far country and this younger brother begins to be in need, and in desperation he takes a job feeding pigs. While feeding the pigs he longs to be feed with this pig slop, but he can’t even have that.  Verses 17-19 tell us: “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. 19 I am am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ Mark asked how many of us have been in trouble and have worked up a speech to try and spin the situation to our advantage the best we can? The younger brother in this parable works on his speech in verses 18&19. Once he has his speech ready he rises and makes the long journey home to his father.

Charles Spurgeon talks about the long journey home for this younger brother. He says: “It is a long and weary journey. He walks many a mile, until his feet are sore, and at last, from the summit of a mountain, he views his father’s house far away in the plain. There are yet many miles between him and his father whom he has neglected. Can you conceive his emotions when, for the first time after so long an absence, he sees the old house at home?…You would imagine that for one moment he feels a flash of joy, like some flash of lightning in the midst of the tempest, but…a black darkness comes over his spirit. In the first place, it is probable he will think, “Oh! suppose I could reach my home, will my father receive me? Will he not shut the door in my face and tell me begone and spend the rest of my life where I have been spending the first of it?”

Spurgeon says as the prodigal son gets closer to home he thinks that his father is going to be harsh with him. He expects his father to say: “Well…you have wasted all your money, you can not expect me to do anything for you again.” Spurgeon then asks: “what would you do if you had a son that had run away with half your living, and spent it upon harlots?” Well here is the glory that Mark talked about at the start of his sermon. Here in verse 20 is stunning, glorious, prodigal grace: “And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” Mark pointed out that a Middle Eastern father in the 1st century would never run. Tim Keller says that: “Children might run;…young men might run. But not the…owner of the great estate. He would not pick up his robes and bare his legs like some boy. But this father does. He runs to his son and, showing his emotions openly, falls upon him and kisses him.” Mark reminded us that Christianity is the only religion that has a God who picks up his robes, bares his legs, runs after us and then warmly embraces us.

The son stunned by his father’s kindness tries to give his rehearsed speech in verse 21: “‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’” He can’t even finish the speech before his father calls for the best robe, the fattened calf, and then gives his reason for the celebration in verses 22-24: “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. 23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.”

Mark told us that the robe that the father calls for would have been the fathers very own robe.  Tim Keller says that the father is saying: “I’m not going to wait until you’ve paid off your debt;…You are not going to earn your way back into the family, I am going to simply take you back. I will cover your nakedness, poverty, and rags with the robes of my office and honor.”

Before we get into the older brother in this parable, I think it would be helpful to see how the two characters in this parable correspond to the people who are listening to Jesus tell this story. In the first two verses of this 15th chapter of Luke we saw that tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to Jesus, but there are also Pharisees and scribes that were close to Jesus as well.  As verse 2 says: “And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled,” Tim Challies helpfully points out that: “The tax collectors and sinners correspond to the younger brother—people who left the traditional morality of their families and social groups and engaged in what others would consider wild living. The religious leaders, on the other hand, correspond to the older brother, representing the moral and obedient who have never turned from the traditions of their culture and religion. Where the first group seek God through some kind of self-discovery, the second group seeks him through a type of moral conformity. Jesus’ message is that both of these approaches are wrong and in this parable he offers his radical alternative.”  Tim Keller adds: “There are two ways to be your own Savior and Lord,…One is by breaking all the moral laws and setting your own course, and one is by keeping all the moral laws and being very, very good.”

With that said, the older brother is highlighted in verses 25-32. He is out working in the field when he hears the uproar at the house. He asks a servant what is going on and the servant tells him: “‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.’” This angers the son and he refuses to go in to the party. Verses 28&29 tell us that the older brother: “was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, 29 but he answered his father, ‘Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.” Mark pointed out that the son speaks very disrespectfully to his father, in the way he addresses him. He doesn’t address him by saying father, but simply says: “Look, these many years I have served you.” You can feel the anger that is coming out of this son.

Mark pointed out that the younger brother and older brother are more similar than we might think. The younger brother wanted the share of his inheritance so he could celebrate with his friends, and the older brother wants the same thing when he says: “you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.” Tim Keller helpfully writes: “Underneath the brothers’ sharply different patterns of behavior is the same motivation and aim. Both are using the father in different ways to get things on which their hearts are really fixed. It was the wealth not the love of the father, that they believed would make them happy and fulfilled.”

Elisabeth Elliot shares this very helpful fictional story that describes an elder brother: “One day Jesus said to his disciples: “I’d like you to carry a stone for me.” He didn’t give any explanation. So the disciples looked around for a stone to carry, and Peter, being the practical sort, sought out the smallest stone he could possibly find. After all, Jesus didn’t give any regulation for weight and size! So he put it in his pocket.  Jesus then said: “Follow Me.” He led them on a journey. About noontime Jesus had everyone sit down. He waved his hands and all the stones turned to bread. He said, “Now it’s time for lunch.” In a few seconds, Peter’s lunch was over.  When lunch was done Jesus told them to stand up. He said again, “I’d like you to carry a stone for me.” This time Peter said, “Aha! Now I get it!” So he looked around and saw a small boulder. He hoisted it on his back and it was painful, it made him stagger. But he said, “I can’t wait for supper.” Jesus then said: “Follow Me.” He led them on a journey, with Peter barely being able to keep up. Around supper time Jesus led them to the side of a river. He said, “Now everyone throw your stones into the water.” They did. Then he said, “Follow Me,” and began to walk. Peter and the others looked at him dumbfounded.  Jesus sighed and said, “Don’t you remember what I asked you to do?  Who were you carrying the stone for?”

Tim Keller in speaking about this story from Elisabeth Elliot adds: “Like Peter, elder brothers expect their goodness to pay off, and if it doesn’t, there is confusion and rage. If you think goodness and decency is the way to merit a good life from God, you will be eaten up with anger, since life never goes as we wish. You will always feel that you are owed more than you are getting.”

Mark then towards the end of his sermon asked about our prayer lives. He asked if when we pray are we mainly praying about us and our circumstances, or are we praying for more of God? Are our prayers overflowing with spontaneous joyful praise? This was convicting for my wife and I and we discussed this later Sunday afternoon after the sermon. Tim Keller says that if our prayers are wholly taken up with a recitation of needs and petitions, not spontaneous, joyful praise. Then this reveals that our main goal in prayer is to control our environment rather than to delve into an intimate relationship with a God who loves us.

Lastly, Mark talked to us about our true elder brother. In the parable the younger brother doesn’t get a true older brother, he only gets a Pharisee. We however, get a true elder brother. Our true elder brother doesn’t just go into a far away country to find us, he leaves the throne room of heaven and comes to Earth. He can’t just pay a sum of money to bring us back. No, he has to pay the infinite cost of his life to bring us into God’s family. Tim Keller again powerfully writes: “Our true elder brother paid our debt, on the cross, in our place. There Jesus was stripped naked of his robe and dignity so that we could be clothed with a dignity and standing we don’t deserve. On the cross Jesus was treated as an outcast so that we could be brought into God’s family freely by grace. There Jesus drank the cup of eternal justice so that we might have the cup of the Father’s joy.” As we consider our true elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, how can we not overflow with spontaneous, joyful praise in our lives and our prayers?

Picture from bayviewfamilychurch