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
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
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.