Rediscovering the Gospel - Part 8

Welcome back everyone. Part 2.

So we're going to be hearing from Bill now.

And if you're new to Hope, my name is Chris, I'm one of the

pastors. This is Bill and we're going to

be Bill's going to be speaking as part of a trilogy.

This is Part 2 of his trilogy on the crucifixion as we're getting

coming towards Easter. And the way this works is he'll

speak for about 40 minutes or so, and then from a will it be

less, might be less. OK, well, you'll take 40 minutes

and then we'll have some time at the end to pray.

And we, and that's an opportunity really to respond to

what Bill's been saying. If there's something that's been

stirring in you or if there's something else in your life that

you'd like some prayer for. And we kind of suggest that in

three ways you can just, if you'd like to just process on

your own, you and God do that. If you'd like to pray with

someone around you, do that or if you want to come to the front

and we can find someone to pray with you.

But we just want to make sure that we, you know, after every

Sunday, we've got a space, space to pray.

And so that's how we'll, and then we're sort of finished by

12:10. That's our sort of timings.

So great to be together, great to be worshipping Jesus

together. And if you've missed Bill's last

talk, you can catch up with it on on our website.

It's a link to all of our previous talks and they're on

Spotify and Apple Podcasts and all that sort of thing as well.

So you can catch up with it there if you'd like to.

Let's pray and then I'm going to hand over to Bill.

Lord, thank you for this opportunity to get together as

part of your church. And as Alice was reminding us of

the church in Iran in the first half, we, we're aware that we're

part of this global body of Christ that has been set aside

this day, Sunday, each day of the week, particularly to

worship you. And so we're taking the baton on

from, I don't know, maybe the French and Spanish and Italians

and others a bit to the east of us.

And, and then soon will be the American church will be waking

up and, and, and rising to worship you.

And we're part of this body of Christ through history as well.

And we're grateful for those who've gone before us and who's

who have, who have discovered some of who you are.

And we get to stand on the shoulders of those people and

benefit from the things that they've learned and discovered.

And it's our prayer as well that that that the generations to

come will be able to grow further from our learning and

our maturing as well. We will help us to be good

stewards of, of, of truth of the good news of Jesus.

We're aware that that we're small and insignificant in many

ways, but we're also hugely significant.

And that you do Jesus said that you you talked about yeast

working through dough. You talked about salt giving

flavour. And that's how you describe us.

And so we want, it's important that we know and understand and

live in light of the truth of who you are and who we are.

So we pray that these words that Bill speaks to us this morning,

they feed us and equip us to see the world as you intended, as

you designed it, help us to thrive so that we can bring your

life and goodness to those around us.

Amen. Thanks, Chris.

Hello, everyone. I was talking to someone last

Sunday and they said, are you still doing that series on

rediscovering the Gospel? Yeah, I know it, it is going on

and on, isn't it? Oh, well, thank you very much.

Thank you. But she also said, and I, I'm

not going to name names, but she also said, have you actually

told us yet what the gospel is? And so I, I think I'm going to

begin by taking stock, OK, just by clarifying where we are.

Actually, I have in earlier in the series, I did explain what

the gospel is, but it was kind of blink and you miss it because

it's, it's actually really straightforward and it's quite

brief. The gospel.

And when I say this, I mean in, in biblical terms, as far as the

Bible is concerned, the gospel is the news of the life, death

and resurrection of Jesus, of Jesus Christ.

That is what the Bible means by the gospel.

It's the good news of Jesus, his life, death and resurrection.

Now I know that comes as a shock because by and large today when

people use that word, the gospel, what they mean is the

Christian sales pitch. You know, how do you get saved?

These four steps. This is the sharing the gospel

means giving people the sales pitch.

And that's fine. We we can use that word in that

way. But the gospel, as far as Paul,

for example, is concerned, is simply the life death is the

news of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

That's why we call those four books the Gospels, because

that's what they are. They tell us the story, the

story, which is the news of the life, death and resurrection of

Jesus. When Paul summarises the gospel,

which he does in a number of places, and he does it in one or

two verses, and it's simply that the Messiah has died and God has

raised him from the dead. That's that is Paul's gospel.

That's the news. Now we're looking at Romans and

he doesn't really explain that. He alludes to it a bit at the

front in in chapter 1. Now, why doesn't he explain what

the gospel is when he's writing a letter?

Because he's writing to Christians.

This is a letter to a church, the church in Rome.

So as far as, as far as Paul and the church in Rome is concerned,

it's taken for granted. They know what the gospel is.

You know, that's tacit knowledge.

He doesn't need to explain to them what the gospel is.

It's the reason they're Christians.

They know the story. What Paul does in Romans is he

explains the meaning of the gospel because it's clear from

what the church in Rome is like that they haven't really thought

through the consequences of the gospel.

They haven't thought through how the life, death, and

resurrection of Jesus effects them.

They don't understand it. They don't understand how it

works. They don't understand why it

matters, why it's important. They don't understand what it

changes, what it affects, and they don't understand how it

applies to them. And So what we're looking at

now, so we're looking at the crucifixion and resurrection and

what I think is the heart of Romans, this letter, which is

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

chapters 5 to 8, the second quarter of this letter.

In the heart of the letter, chapters 5 to 8, Paul explains

what does the life, death and resurrection of Jesus mean?

How does it work? How does it save us?

How does it affect us? Why does it matter?

Why is it important? And in these 4 chapters, he kind

of says the same thing three different times, but in very

different ways and from different perspectives.

And that's what we're looking at now.

We're going to, we're going to switch our focus to chapters 567

and 8, the heart of the Gospel. What does the, the resurrection,

what, what does the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus

mean? Now?

He's already kind of explained it a bit in chapter 3, but using

metaphors, and we looked at this earlier in the series.

He used a range of different metaphors to explain how the

crucifixion and the resurrection work.

And he talks about sacrifice, and he talks about law courts

and punishment and judgement. He talks about redemption, which

is setting slaves free. Now these are all metaphors, but

it kind of raises the question, OK, well, Paul, if these are

your metaphors, can you speak directly?

You know, how can you explain it without using metaphors?

How does the crucifixion work? How does the resurrection work?

What does it mean? Can you unpack it for us?

And that's what it what he does. And that's what I'm going to

start looking at today. And we're going to start in

chapter 5. Here's how it starts.

Now there's a health warning here.

Chapters 5 to 8 of Romans are just about the most dense bits

of the Bible. It's there's an awful lot going

on. It's hard to understand, but my

aim this morning is to look at this passage, chapter 5, verse

12 and then 15 to 19 and just kind of unpack what's going on.

But I warn you, it's not easy. There's something else.

He he refers to one man a lot. Now what he's, what he's talking

about. He's thinking about Genesis one

to three. The one man that he has in mind,

I don't think he names him in this passage is Adam.

And what he's doing in this passage is he's comparing Adam

and Christ. OK, Adam and Christ, that's

that's his mental pattern, his mental model of what's going on.

OK, you ready? Brace yourselves.

We'll have a read. Therefore, just as sin entered

the world through one man and death through sin.

And in this way, death came to all people because all sinned.

And then he doesn't finish his thought.

He kind of starts a sentence and then gets sidetracked.

So I've cut out the next couple of verses.

But then he he returns to his main train of thought.

But the gift is not like the trespass.

For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how

much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace

of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many?

Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one

man's sin. The judgement followed one sin

and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many

trespasses and brought justification.

For if by the trespass of the one man death reigned through

that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant

provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in

life through the one man, Jesus Christ?

Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in

condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted

in justification and life for all people.

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the

many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one

man, the many will be made righteous.

Do you get it? There's two patterns here.

There's Adam and there's Christ, and he's kind of saying the same

thing again and again. He's hammering it home.

There are these two ways of being human, but they're very,

very different. And it's a kind of either or

situation. And what he's going to unfold in

the rest of 567 and 8 is how you become in Christ.

There is a choice that we all have to make.

You know, there are some Bible passages which you love and you

return to and you feast on and you drink deeply and you read

them again and again and again. And there are others which you

kind of avoid. Now, for me, this is 1.

Can you guess out of those two categories of Bible passage,

where do you think? Naturally I would put this

passage? It's not in the first camp.

Why? Because it's hard.

It's difficult to work out what's going on.

It's hard work. But secondly, I have a real

issue with Adam and with the the way that Paul or, or I, I had a

real issue with the way that Paul seems to understand Genesis

one to three, because he seems to read it historically.

He seems to think there was this real one man long, long time ago

who made one bad choice and as a result, everything's gone wrong.

And why? Why don't I like that?

And what kind of why do I see it that way?

Well, because we know that in the old days people were stupid,

whereas now we're smart. Isn't that?

Isn't that true? In the old days people were

stupid, but today we're smart. And so we we understand this is

myth, don't we? Well, hang on a minute.

First of all, we don't know what Paul thinks.

He might be speaking literally. He might be reading it

historically, or he might be reading it as a myth.

He doesn't say. It's a mistake to assume that in

those days, those people around at the same time of Paul, they

all read everything literally. We know we've got plenty of

examples from contemporaries of Paul, both Christian and Jewish,

who are very sensitive to different genres, different

literary genres and sensitive to the category of myth.

For example, Philo, Oregon, Clement of Alexandria,

Augustine, you know, these are all people about the same time.

Oregon's fantastic. He's absolutely scathing about

people who read Genesis one to three as history.

He said, can't you, can't you see?

Of course it's myth. So we, we mustn't assume that

just because, you know, Paul lived a long time ago, he must

have read it historically. But the key thing is how is he

reading it here? He's reading it theologically.

He's reading these two types, these two patterns, but he's

thinking it through theologically.

He's he's interested in life and death.

He's interested in sin and righteousness.

He's interested in judgement and grace.

Those are his categories. We don't know how he's reading

it. And what I find fascinating is

if we read Genesis 1 to 3 the same way, kind of through Paul's

lens theologically, and then we think about the gospel, which is

the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and we

look at those events through the same theological lens, then what

do we see? What do we notice?

And that's what we're going to do now, if that's all right.

That's this morning's plan. So here we are, Genesis 1, God

and Adam, Adam with God. Now, what happens in Genesis 2?

Basically, God gives Adam a choice.

What God does is he creates for Adam the opportunity to exercise

free will. He gives him a choice.

I mean, there's a lot going on with the the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil. But in some ways it's really

simple. You know, he could have drawn a

circle on the floor and said, don't stand in that circle.

You know, there's one command and he gives Adam a choice.

Is it yes God or no God? Do I agree or do I not agree?

And God makes it crystal clear that there are consequences

riding on this choice. If you do this, you will die.

Absolutely. Big consequences.

And so fundamentally, the question that Adam has, the

choice he's got to make is, will you acknowledge me as God?

God says to him, Will you let me be God in your life?

Will you depend on me? Will you trust me?

Will you trust my judgement? Will you let me be your God?

Or do you want that role? Do you trust your own judgement?

Are you going to depend on yourself?

Are you going to turn away from me and not allow me to be your

God? And we know what happens.

Adam makes a bad choice. And the consequences that Adam

had been warned about, they occur. 2 main consequences.

First of all, separation. All of a sudden we have these

two categories. We have heaven, the place where

God is, and the world, the place where human is, and they're no

longer the same place. There's a separation, there's a

barrier between the two, and then there are ultimate

consequences. On the left hand side of the

line, these are the people who are living and heading towards

life. On the right hand side is the

people who are dying and heading towards death.

Death reigns. As Paul says in Romans chapter

Romans 5 · chapter mention

5, Adam makes a bad choice and in a way this thread runs

through the whole of the Old Testament.

If we think about Israel, Israel takes the place of Adam and

running all the way through the story of Israel is this attempt

of humans to get close to God. And what they find again and

again and again is it's mighty hard.

I love this. I mean love it.

I love the story of Mount Sinai in Exodus and God comes down on

the mountain. But the warning is don't touch

the mountain. You'll get zapped.

You know, you can come close, but not too close.

You can approach the mountain, but don't touch it.

Only one person. One human is allowed to go up

the mountain and get extra close to God.

Same picture in the temple, no? Yes, the presence of God is in

the Holy of Holies. But who's allowed to enter the

Holy of Holies and how often and at great risk, you know, the

chief priest. And so we we get this picture

that there's this separation. It's really hard to get close to

God. It's hard to approach him.

It's possible, but it's really, really difficult.

And so by the end of the end of the Old Testament, Israel has

become Israel stands for all of humanity.

And the question is, how are we going to bridge that gap?

How is it possible for humans to get close to God?

That's the question we're asking.

How can we be with him? How can we get near to him?

Are you ready for the gospel? Remember, the gospel is the

events of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

It's the four gospels. How did the Gospel start,

particularly Matthew and Luke, The Nativity.

Here's the nativity. The question everyone is asking

at the end of the Old Testament is how can we humans get close

to God? How can we approach him?

How can we overcome that barrier?

Well, here's a surprise. He comes to us, God with us.

Emmanuel, we've been trying to make the journey, but he

approaches us. He comes and joins us.

And he's not just with us. He's chosen to become like us.

He's become human in order to be with us.

He's taken on humanity and more than that, he takes on our

identity. He identifies with us and stands

with us. Do you remember the story of the

baptism, especially in Matthew? Jesus lines up, he cues up to be

baptised by John, John the Baptist.

Now what's going on in this baptism?

Well, people are the sinners, People who want to change, who

recognise their need to change and repent as a way of saying I

want to turn to you God. They come to John in the

wilderness and they're baptised and John sees Jesus there and he

says this is wrong, You know, you should be baptising me

because relative to you I'm the Sinner here.

But Jesus insists, he says no, no, so that all righteousness

can be fulfilled. No, I need to be baptised.

Why? Because he's standing with us.

He's taking on the human identity.

It reverses the Old Testament picture.

And so we come to Easter. OK, think about Gethsemane.

Think about Gethsemane in Genesis one to three.

We had a man in a garden, and this man is given a choice, and

it's an easy choice. The consequences of saying yes,

Lord, are only good. The consequences of saying no, I

don't want you to be my God, are only bad.

And what does he say? No God, no God, not my God.

In Gethsemane we have a man in the garden who's confronted with

a choice, and it's an agonising choice.

The consequences of saying yes, Lord, are horrifying.

And what does he say? He says I acknowledge you as

God, I choose you as my God, I submit.

And so we come to Good Friday, the crucifixion.

I think the crucifixion is far more astonishing and far more

miraculous than the resurrection, because bringing

things to life, creating life, giving life, well, that's what

God does. That's the business he's in.

But the idea that God should die, well, that's not what God

does. That's extraordinary.

Remind me, what is the penalty? The the price you pay, the

consequences, the fruit, the wages, the punishment, the

outcome of sin. The outcome of sin is death.

Did Jesus sin? No, Jesus is faithful and

obedient and yet the consequence of Jesus faithfulness and

obedience is death. It's all wrong.

It's back to front, it's upside down.

That is far more shocking than Easter Sunday.

But then we come to Easter Sunday.

New life. In Romans 5, what Paul presents

us is two ways of being human. There's the Adam pattern, and

there's the God, and there's the Christ pattern.

There are two ways to be human. I mean, the way Paul puts it is

you can be in Adam or you can be in Christ.

You can follow the Adam pattern or you can follow the Christ

pattern. The Adam pattern is unfaithful,

turning away from God and dying. The Christ pattern is faithful,

trusting God, depending on him and heading for life, living and

heading for life. And for Paul, this is the

meaning of the gospel. This is the meaning of the

crucifixion and the resurrection.

We can choose, we have a choice to be a different kind of human.

And he summarises this different kind of human in a very simple

phrase, which is in Christ. And he'll spend the next 3 1/2

chapters unpacking what it means to be in Christ, how you can

become in Christ, what it looks like, and particularly how's it

going to work? Because humanity's track record

has been pretty bad. So why should we be confident

that this time it's actually going to work?

So there are loads of questions, loads of questions about this,

this pattern, this idea. And Paul is going to unpack them

over the next few chapters. And we're going to look at them

over the next few talks in this everlasting series.

But for now, I want to make 2 observations.

First one is this I mentioned before.

Paul uses all sorts of metaphors to explain the gospel, and in

particular to explain the crucifixion and the

resurrection. And The thing is, in our day, in

evangelical circles, one of those metaphors has become

central, become quite dominant, the metaphor of kind of the law

court, picture God as judge, judgement and punishment.

This metaphor has become central and kind of elbowed the others

out, I would suggest. But also, it's read literally.

It's often read literally. If if you ask some people to

summarise the gospel, they'll, they'll say something like God

punishes Jesus so that we can escape punishment.

That is the summary of of the gospel.

And many people object to that, and they object, I think

rightly, because it makes God into this cruel master, this

cruel judge, this cruel monster. And today's big argument in

Christian circles is often around that question.

It's one reason why I'm doing this series is to try and, you

know, contribute, not contribute to the argument, but bring some

understanding, you know, who's right and who's wrong in this

argument. Penal substitution view of

atonement or not, Which side do you land on, Bill?

Well, here's my question. If if the gospel is the news of

the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the historical news of

real life events that happened 2000 years ago, then who killed

Jesus? I'll tell you it was Roman

soldiers on the orders of the Roman political leader,

encouraged by the Jewish religious leaders and under

pressure from the mob. I mean, that's what we read in

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those are the historical event.

That's how Jesus ended up dead. In historical terms, it was

military power, human military power, human political power,

human religious power and people power.

Who killed Jesus? We did, We did.

How appalling to suggest that it was the Father.

But if the penalty for sin is death, and He did not sin but

died, if He died as a consequence of His choice to be

with us and to become become like us, to stand with us, is

there a way in which He took our punishment?

Well, yes there is. He came and stood with us, and

so along with us He took that punishment.

And if as a result of his life and death, we end up living even

though we deserve to die, is there a way in which is it like

his punishment sets us free? Well, yes, it is.

So the metaphor has value. It says something important.

It provides A valuable insight. Paul chooses his metaphors for a

good reason. They're saying something

important. But we need to be really, really

careful about how we use them. In particular, we need to

clarify that they are metaphors. We mustn't read them in a

wooden, kind of simplistic way. What I find striking about the

argument, the argument which seems to be raging in Christian

circles, is that both sides read these passages in the same way.

They read a metaphor literally. And one side says, well this if

this is what the Bible says, then we need to believe it even

though it makes God into a monster.

And the other, the other side says, if this is what Paul is

saying, then we need to set it aside.

We need to dismiss it because it turns God into a monster.

Neither side, I would suggest is reading it very well.

There was another reason I didn't like the passage, which

is it seems so unfair because Paul seems to be suggesting that

I'm condemned to the right hand side of the picture because of a

choice Adam made. Now how is that fair?

Adam, whoever he was, if he existed, made this choice a

long, long time ago and as a result I end up on the right

side of the picture. I'm being punished for his

choice. And what I notice is that Paul's

explanation of the gospel, his explanation of Jesus death and

resurrection, what that does is it puts us in Adam's place.

We get to make the same choice for ourselves.

Each of us is in the garden facing the same choice.

We're asked, what do you want? Adam in the garden is face to

face with God. And God says, do you acknowledge

that I'm God? Do you trust and depend on me?

Do you want to be with me? Do you want to be like me?

Will you call me Lord? Do you want to live and I'm face

to face with Jesus and he asked me, Do you acknowledge that I'm

God? Will you trust and depend on me?

Do you want to be with me? Do you want to be like me?

Will you call me Lord? Do you want to live?

We're in exactly the same situation.

OK, so it may be unfair that I'm on the right hand side because

of Adam's choice. But now I'm in the in.

I'm facing the same choice. It's up to me.

I can't blame Adam anymore. You know Adam isn't a name.

I mean, I know it is. There are people called Adam,

but Adam is the Hebrew for human.

We're all Adam, and we're all facing Adam's choice.

What do you want? Let's pray Bill described those

two gardens just as as Duncan continues to play, let's just

take our minds back to those, to those two gardens.

There's the Garden of Eden where Adam was describing that

proximity of God and humanity, that intimacy, that closeness.

And then Bill describes Gethsemane, the garden outside

Jerusalem where Jesus was before he was arrested and then taken

to be tried and crucified. And he was in that garden and in

that place he was praying and he'd asked his disciples to go

and pray with him. And he, we read that it is a

real time of anguish for him. It says that as he was praying,

he was sweating blood, such was the extensively pain he was he

was feeling in terms of knowing what he was going to experience.

And then the other image that that Bill described was was the

was the incarnation. You know, those circles that

Bill had, Bill had on the screen where you see God and man,

humanity separate sides of a dividing line.

And how does humanity breach that to get to God?

And, and the surprise is that God is born into into humanity.

And Bill describes Jesus lining up on the river Jordan banks

together with others where John the Baptist was baptising

people. And Jesus patiently with others,

sort of took his place in the queue and humbly went into the

water baptised by John. So Lord, be grateful that

you've, you've walked these paths, grateful that you've

experienced that suffering on our behalf in Gethsemane,

grateful that you've taken that walk to baptism in the Jordan,

grateful that you've come to live amongst us.

And then the, the, the, the question that Bill put to us

was, will we choose to choose the way of the way of Jesus or

the way of Adam? So I think it'd be good for us

to, to respond to that as well with we've done it 100 times

before, or this is the first time to do it.

If you'd like to to to to pray that prayer and.

And and again, just acknowledge our need for Jesus and the life

that comes in and through knowing and following and living

in Jesus. I'm going to pray that now,

Lord, I recognise that in myself is a is a is a leaning and a

temptation to do things in my own strength and in my own

independence. And it manifests in all sorts of

ways in my life. But I've discovered and realised

that life comes through you, Jesus.

And again today I, I want to acknowledge that you are my Lord

and I, I submit to you and I want to follow you and I give my

life to you. Thank you.

Amen.