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Well, I am a bit sad that we find ourselves in the final one of these gospel summaries.  It has been an amazing thing for me; I feel incredibly blessed that I have been able to spend my time tracing that golden cord of the gospel through every book of the Bible. We’re at the final book, the book of Revelation, and I would title this, “The Great War and the Final Victory.”

Revelation begins with the past, present, and future gospel. Let me read:

John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, (There it is: past, present, and future.) and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.

“I am the Alpha and Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

What a way to begin! But hear how this passage ends in (Chapter) 22:

Then the angel showed me the river of the waters of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on the foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

I love that this gospel book, this Bible that's not a collection of stories but is one story, ends in this triumphant note.

Well, Revelation, in the middle, is this great war. John, in the midst of his own trials, in the midst of struggles in the church, is given this amazing vision of the throne room to see the conquering King Christ setting up His kingdom, opening the scrolls of judgment. John wants us to have that scene in our minds as he then turns to this great war, this war of Satan on the church and the triumphs of the Kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ. This is a triumphant book!

Yes, you see the horrors of life in a fallen world. Yes, you see the evil of Satan. But you see the triumph of the King of Kings and of His Kingdom. Revelation is a celebration of God's final victory, sealed by the blood of the Lamb and His ultimate reign. Isn’t this a wonderful way to end this study with The King on His throne reigning, gathering His children around Him of every tribe and every nation of every tongue, celebrating His grace forever and ever?

We should eavesdrop on eternity and have our values clarified. Those people on the other side don't say, “Well, we lived in such great houses, we had such great jobs, so many people loved us.” They just celebrate The King and His final victory against sin, death, and the devil. There is a Victor; He is our Savior, Jesus!

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I would title Jude, “What the Gospel Is and Is Not.” Jude is a strong drink; it's tough. It demonstrates again how important it is for us to hold on to the purity of the gospel. And so, there's this contrast in Jude between what the gospel isn't and what the gospel is, and that contrast is in content and character. And, as he begins to talk about what the gospel isn't, Jude just uses these devastating, impolite word pictures.

Here's his characterization of false teachers. They’re like hidden reefs, like shepherds who only feed themselves, like waterless clouds, like fruitless trees, like wild waves producing the foam of their own shame (I love that!), like wandering stars in the gloom of darkness! What he’s saying is, “They have nothing to offer!” A hidden reef will hurt you. If you have a shepherd who only feeds himself, you will die! Waterless clouds give no rain! Fruitless trees won't feed you! Wandering stars will get you lost in the darkness. It's a very, very powerful indictment of the danger of falsehood.  The danger of falsehood is it can't offer you the grace of Jesus; it just doesn't! It's a counterfeit!

But he says that this false gospel is revealed in the character of these people. They’re grumblers, they’re malcontents, they only follow their sinful desires. They’re loudmouth boasters. They show favoritism in order to gain advantage. They’re scoffers who cause division. They’re worldly, devoid of the Spirit. You see gospel counterfeit in teaching and in life. 

What the gospel is in life and faith, it's about contending for the faith, about building yourself up in the faith, about praying in the Spirit, about feeding yourselves on the love of God. It's waiting for the mercy of Jesus. It's by His grace being a tool of His grace, showing mercy on the doubters, snatching them from the fire. There's this picture of this beautiful self-controlled, perseverant, generous, merciful life that is the ultimate picture of what the gospel does for us.

But I love in this strong, strong piece of writing where he goes after these false teachers with a devastating critique of their content, a devastating critique of their character, the Judeans, with a doxology, because my hope is not in my ability to fight falsehood; my hope is only ever in my Redeemer.

Now, hear this:

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time now and forever. Amen.

Listen, I'm not kept because I contend for the faith. I’m kept by the power of my Savior! Listen, as I contend for the faith, He contends for me. He is my hope!

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Well, I would title 2 and 3 John, “Contending for the Gospel.” I’ve decided to handle these two little letters together because first, their size, there are a total of 28 verses together. And so, it seemed wise to handle that as a piece.

But there are, again, this two sides of the same coin; the content of 2 John is guarding the truth. Let me read verse 1, “The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever.” I'm writing because I love the truth, and I want to talk about what it means to love the truth, the truth or the word ‘teaching’ is in, literally, every other verse in 1 John. It's about the truth, it’s about the teaching of the gospel. And again, it's about the importance of the theology of Christ and the theology of His return.

And John's counsel is, do not have fellowship with deceivers, be careful. Be careful whom you listen to, be careful who interrupts your gospel conversation, be careful who has your ear, guard the truth, and guarding the truth really does mean guard your heart, guard that body of teaching that is so central to the gospel, that body of teaching that we have been looking at that is a thread through every portion of the Word of God. So, 2 John is about guarding the truth.

3 John is about guarding the truth too, but it really has the theme of supporting those who contend for the truth. If we’re going to guard the truth, we should love our teachers; we should love those who give themselves to helping us understand the gospel. That means we want to refuse those who teach what John would call wicked nonsense; and acknowledge, support, and honor those who work for the truth, who do what is good, who have a good testimony, a good reputation. John says this, “I have no greater joy than to hear my children are walking in the truth.” That's 2 and 3 John.

I think that 2 and 3 John are in the Bible as values clarification to remind us of the unprecedented incalculable value of the gospel that has been given to us. There are so many things that can distract us, so many things that take up our time, so many things to take up our mind, so many things that become more valuable to us than they really should be. Is the gospel a treasure to us; a treasure worth fighting for, a treasure worth protecting, and because it is, do we honor and support those who labor to teach us and to deepen our understanding of the gospel? Is the gospel worth contending for? We need that values clarification because we’re often gospel distracted, we’re often gospel amnesiacs. You can go through a gospel-forgetting day or a gospel-devaluing day. And, so it's great to be called to guard the truth and support those who are in the frontlines, contending for the truth. The gospel is valuable!

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Well, I would title 1 John, “Genuine Fellowship with God.” The theme of this wonderful letter is fellowship with God, and John is very intent on rooting his readers in the truth that there's no such thing as fellowship with God that doesn't have its foundation in the personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our fellowship with God is through the Lord Jesus Christ, that sin broke that fellowship, and Jesus had to come, again to live the life that we could not live, die a death that we should have died, rise again conquering sin and death. He is our advocate, He is our righteousness, He is our propitiation.

And then John wants us, this is two sides of his fellowship coin, he wants us to understand that the expression, the fruit of fellowship with God, is transformed living. So, two things he has on the two sides of his gospel coin, his fellowship with God coin is, foundation is Jesus Christ, the result of that fellowship is gospel living. And this little letter is organized by three signs of gospel living, three signs of true faith, true fellowship with God.

First is the moral sign, do you keep God's commands? It's impossible for John to think of people who have fellowship with God who willingly, consistently break God's command; that’s a contradiction that doesn't work for John, so there’s a moral sign.

There's the theological side. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? That's the watershed. And you know that there are many people outside of the church who would recognize that Jesus was a great teacher, a good man. That's not enough. If Jesus is not the Son of God, the whole of the gospel is a lie.  C.S. Lewis says, “If Jesus is just a great prophet, He is either an incredible liar or He's insane.” In either case, He's not worth following because He declared Himself to be the Son of God, that's exactly where John is. Do you believe in the Son of God?

And then there's the affection side. Do you love God and His people? I think these three hold a wonderful mirror for all of us. Are we zealous to keep God's commands? Do we hold tightly onto our belief in Jesus as the Son of God, and do we live a life of love for God and love for His people?

Now why those three signs? Because, John says, the grace of the gospel transforms you. Biblical thinkers, theologians have talked years of the test of true faith as being the testimony of a transformed life. There's no such thing as true faith, grace at work in a person's heart, and that person's life remaining the same.

This book about fellowship with God really becomes an argument for the transforming power of grace. God's grace transforms your morality. God's grace gives you a brand-new worldview and a theology of Jesus at the center. God's grace transforms the loves of your heart where love of God and His people become the most important love to you.

What does fellowship with God look like? Well, it looks like more than joyfully singing on Sunday. It looks like a life that's transformed because when God touches you by His grace, you won't be the same!

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I would title 2 Peter, “Faith and Falsehood.” One of the additions that this particular letter makes, this particular book of the Bible makes, to our understanding of the gospel, how to know the gospel, how to preserve the gospel, how to live out of the gospel, is that it reminds us, listen carefully here, that the greatest dangers to the church and the church’s allegiance to the gospel are never found outside the church. They’re always found inside the church. The greatest danger to the people of God is found inside of the people of God. The greatest danger to the gospel is found inside of the company of people who say they've gathered around the gospel.

So, in 1 Peter, you see external hostility to the gospel; in 2 Peter, you see internal hostility to the gospel. And that hostility is really addressed by Peter in a personal way. The summary passage in 2 Peter is exactly like 1 Peter. 1 Peter is, 1 Peter 1:3 through 9; and 2 Peter is, 2 Peter 1: 3 through 9.

And Peter proposes a shocking thing, it’s a diagnostic passage that there are people who really do know the Lord, but whose lives are ineffective and unproductive. Their lives are not producing the expected harvest of the fruit of faith. Now, when you read that kind of diagnosis in Scripture, you ought to ask yourself, “Why?” Well, Peter says because they lack certain qualities of Christian character.

Well, if I have been redeemed by God's blood, if the Holy Spirit is now living within me, why would I lack character? Well, Peter answers that question too. And he says, “They lack these qualities,” listen now, “because they are nearsighted and blind and having forgotten that they have been cleansed from their past sins.” 

Peter is arguing that the greatest dangers to the gospel are not first philosophical; they’re personal. The greatest danger to the gospel is identity amnesia. It's that I would forget who I am and what I've been given in Christ. And you see when I forget who I am in Christ, I then start looking horizontally for what I've already been given vertically, and I begin to move away from the gospel. Maybe the gospel isn't the answer, maybe it doesn't have everything that I need, and you're just steps away from falsehood.

Peter argues we’ve got to hold on to the fact that we have already been given everything we need for life and godliness. He uses two words there because he wants us to understand that it's not eternal life that he’s talking about, but godliness, a God honoring life between the time I’ve come to Christ and the time I go home to be with Him. And so, there's a call to persevere even in the face of this false teaching, “knowing that the day of the Lord will come.” The rub in Peter is he reminds us that God is patient, more patient than we are, so we will be called to wait. God is patient because, as the God of mercy, He leaves room for more people to repent.

And so, Peter says this, here’s his sort of final encouragement to the people he’s writing to, “Commit yourselves to grow in His grace,” to grow in God's grace. It is important for us to humbly admit that we’re never grace graduates, that there's always room to grow in the faith and to unpack what it means to be in Christ, this new identity and this new potential that we've been given. What does it mean to live out of all that has been provided for us right here, right now, and make every effort to continue to grow in those qualities of Christian character that are ours in Christ?

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Well, I was thinking that I love 1 Peter, but I think, in this series, I've probably said that ten times approaching a new passage. But there's something particularly helpful and particularly sweet about 1 Peter. I would title 1 Peter, “Suffering and True Spirituality.”

Peter is writing to a now mixed bag of believers, Gentiles who had lived in this world of worldly pleasure and Jews who had lived in the Old Testament traditions and the legalism that came out of out of that.  But, now they’re together, they’re aliens and exiles in a hostile world. I think for us, Peter has a very fresh and modern feel because we now exist in a world that's growingly hostile to our faith, hostile to a biblical worldview, hostile to a biblical morality. And like the people to whom Peter was writing, we’re going to begin to experience the persecution and the suffering, the misunderstanding, the rejection that comes out of that hostility.

It's very interesting. If a pastor told you that he was going to write a letter to sufferers, what would you think the letter would be? I would think it would just be filled with compassion and sympathy. And you have a bit of that in 1 Peter, but boy that’s not the content of it. This is really marching orders.

And it reminds us that the sweetest thing that God does for us in suffering is not call us to focus on our suffering, but to focus on who we are and what we’ve been given and get up and follow Jesus. And you really see that from the get go in 1 Peter; the summary message of 1 Peter is in chapter 1, verses 3 through 9. And there, Peter makes, it must've been for his readers, a shocking connection between hardship and holiness, that God has actually chosen to use these difficult things that they’re facing to advance His work in their lives.

The example that Peter uses is metallurgy where a metal is mined; it’s in an ore-state; ore is not very attractive and very usable, and so a chemical agent is added to it and white-hot heat, and what you end up with something that reaches its greatest beauty and its greatest usability. That's what God does with trials. He takes the very things we want to avoid and uses them to produce maturity of faith and godliness in us. There's a way in which, if you follow Christ, that hostility is inevitable. But it's also inevitable because it's a primary tool of the Savior to form His likeness in us.

So, Peter establishes that hardship and hostility, that suffering and true spirituality principal, and then he applies it to our everyday citizenship, our family life, and the church. And then he leaves us with this incredible encouragement; I can't not read this to you:

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever, Amen.

Don't worry, God's at work. He's going to confirm and establish you; and because He has dominion, His way will win!

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Well, I would entitle James, “A Portrait of the Life of Faith.” James is so incredibly intent on demonstrating that true faith is demonstrated by how you live, that of 108 verses in James, there are almost 60 commands. That's a command for every like verse and three quarters; it's pretty amazing. And that is a very, very important part of this gospel thread to understand that the gospel, belief in the gospel, is not just a transaction of your brain, but it really is a move of your heart that just completely alters the way that you live your life. You live the gospel.

But James is so command heavy that some have questioned if there's any gospel in James at all; in fact, some have questioned if James should even be included in the canon of Scripture. James applies faith to trials, to poverty, to riches, to our talk, to worldliness, to wisdom, to sickness, to conflict, to prejudice, to prayer. It’s a very thorough look at how is your life transformed in all the places where people live by your belief in the gospel, by true biblical faith?

Now here's the rub, James never mentions the cross, James never mentions the resurrection, and only mentions the name of Jesus twice. Now, before you say, “Forget it, James is out!” The gospel is in every chapter of James. Let me do this tour for you really quick.

James 1, we see a God who is at work in the life of a believer; a God who even, in our trials, in our darkest moments, is maturing us. In James 1, we see God as a generous giver of wisdom. In James 1, we realize that every good gift comes from above; we see this active, loving, giving, generous Lord.

James 2, we see God's particular love for the poor and that this God makes Himself a friend of those who believe.

The theme of James 3 is that true wisdom is a gift from above, that God graciously gives fools wisdom; what an argument for His grace!

Chapter 4, God gives grace to the humble. And chapter 4, we see God giving grace upon grace, upon grace, upon grace. He gives more grace.

Chapter 5, we learn that the Lord is compassionate and merciful and answers prayer.

Now, when you look in between the commands in James, you see the gospel, literally, in every chapter. You see the grace of God operating in every chapter. You see God present and active in the lives of His children in every chapter. God who comes near, breaks down the alienation of sinners between Him, and becomes a friend of us. Imagine a sinner standing before a holy God and that God declares him to be a friend. What a greater argument for the gospel than that! What a huge miracle!

Yes, James is intent on adding to our understanding of the gospel by saying, “You live it!” Faith is lived; faith is not just a mental assent. But in the midst of that, James keeps returning again and again, our hope is the generosity and the grace and the activity of our Lord. Our faith is in Him; and without Him, all of those commands would simply mean nothing!

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Hebrews is one of those very thorough handlings of the gospel in Scripture. I would liken Hebrews to Romans for its thoroughness. Romans has this central contrast between the law and grace, what the law isn’t able to do and what grace does. And Hebrews has a central contrast too; it’s between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, the inadequacies of the Old Covenant and the fulfillment of the New Covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ.

To go after that, Hebrews essentially is organized by three questions, and these questions don't come in sort of chronological order, but they dot the whole of this book. The first question is, “Why do people need redemption?” The gospel really hinges on that question. If people are okay in and of themselves, then why redemption, why a Savior, why this plan that we have traced through all of these books of the Bible? Well, Hebrews presents people that are unclean, that are prone to wander, that are in bondage of the fear of death of the devil, that are prone to unbelief, that are rebellious.

In fact, if you take that collection of the way that Hebrews talks about people apart from grace, it really is a summary of those three words for sin:  transgression, iniquity, and sin. Transgression being rebellion, iniquity being moral uncleanness, and sin pointing to inability. So, it's a very powerful argument that every human being is in need of redemption.

The second question is, “Why then is Jesus the hope of sinners?” And the argument in Hebrews is that Jesus is far superior to the Old Testament priests and institutions because Jesus is both God and man. It was a God-man needed for salvation. And because He is the God-man, He is able to overcome death and the devil, and becomes then for us, a sympathetic and understanding high priest.

I love that Hebrews presents Jesus as God's final word to us. It's like the author of Hebrews was saying. “Okay, it doesn't get any better than this. This is the zenith, this is the high point; this is Jesus, the superior one.”

And then there is a third question that really flows out of the first two. It is, “What are the dangers to those who believe?” Okay, let's say that I recognize my need for redemption; I recognize Jesus is the only Redeemer, what are the dangers? Well, it's a misunderstanding of what faith is. So, Hebrews has a lot to say about the nature of faith. It's a danger of a wandering heart, and so Hebrews has a lot to say about apostasy. And in Hebrews, you have some of the scariest warnings you find in all of Scripture for forsaking God.

There's a third danger; it’s the failure to persevere, to get weary, to get tired. And then finally, there's the danger of misunderstanding God's discipline; that God's discipline of the believer is not condemnation; our condemnation was carried by Jesus, but is correction for the purpose of righteousness. What an amazing piece of writing! It’s just so hard to do justice to Hebrews in such a short period of time.

But those three questions, “Why do people need redemption? Why is Jesus the hope of the sinners? What are the dangers to those who believe?” are three questions that we should go back to again and again and again and instill in our hearts a deep love for the God-man, the fulfillment, the superior one, the sympathetic high priest, Jesus!

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Again, I love the order of these letters because it's as if Philemon is placed where it's placed as a practical case study of everything that's been said so far in all of these books. The position is just incredible. It is a case study of two men, well three men. I would entitle Philemon, “Forgiveness and Restoration.”

Philemon is the account of a personal letter from Paul in prison to Philemon. The subject of the letter is Onesimus, who was Philemon's servant who had run away to Rome. While he was at Rome, he became a believer and a dear friend and brother of the Apostle Paul. And the letter is Paul's appeal to Philemon to forgive Onesimus and restore him. The whole tenor of this letter is that it is the grace of our vertical reconciliation, our peace with God that produces the hope of horizontal reconciliation, peace with people, because it is the gospel that transforms our relationships.

I don't think we talk enough about the transformative power of the gospel for relationships. You see, Paul is arguing that, at this moment, at the moment when he writes this letter to Philemon about Onesimus, it's more than a guy in prison writing to a wealthy man about a fugitive slave. These three men now share a deeper identity, identity in Christ, that by grace, this is just so beautiful, this wealthy man and this fugitive are brothers. They’re now in the same family; they now have the same Father; they’re united to the same Christ. They now have the deepest reason for reconciliation, restoration, and unity that any human being could ever have because they’re no longer united by ethnicity or united by economics or by subculture. They’re united by grace into the ultimate family, the family of God.

And so, Paul is not appealing that, look, “Onesimus made a mistake, and he’s really a nice guy and, you know, just have him back.” He's asking him to receive this man as his brother. Now, in order to do that, Philemon has to reflect on the fact that he was unworthy and was accepted into God's family; and because of that, he can receive this man, unworthy as he may be, as his brother.

You see, new identity in Christ, I love this, I love this, I love this, means new potential for my relationships because we share something. So, we have new love, new forgiveness, new reconciliation, new unity. The transforming grace of Jesus transforms relationships and creates a depth of love, a depth of brotherhood, a depth of unity, that could not be found any other way. Christ transforms our relationships!

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Titus is about hope.  I would entitle Titus, “Where is Hope to be Found?”  The foundation of this letter is a contrast; it’s a contrast between hope in human accomplishment and hope in God’s grace in Christ Jesus. 

Now, the fact of the matter is every human being hopes. Everything that we do in our life is connected to some kind of hope. Everybody hooks his/her hope to something. Hope has an expectation placed in some kind of object; that’s what hope is. It’s an expectation placed in a person or a thing. And so, Paul is arguing there are only two pathways of hope; hope in human accomplishment or hope in God’s grace.

The church that he is addressing in Crete is plagued two problems. It's, on one hand, lawlessness, that’s rule-free living; or legalism, that’s rule-bound living. And the unique thing that Paul does is that he wants us to know those are connected by the same root. Lawlessness, which takes God’s grace for granted, and legalism, which seems to earn God’s grace, both have the same root.  And that root is human pride, pride in self.  What’s dangerous about lawlessness for all of us, what’s dangerous about legalism for all of us, is they play to the core of our struggle with sin; that’s pride.

That goes right back to the fall where what fueled the disobedience of Adam and Eve was pride, a desire to be like God, a desire for a self-sufficient, autonomous existence. I have everything in myself to be what I’m supposed to be and to do what I’m supposed to do.  I can pull this off. And as long as sin still lives inside of us, there are still artifacts of that pride in us; we are still susceptible to writing our own rulebook; we’re still susceptible to believing that we’re way more righteous than we actually are.

In fact, it’s our temptation when we sin to minimize that sin and to tell ourselves that that sin really wasn’t sin-sin, that we’re really better than we actually are. And the solution to this pride is the devastating message of the gospel because the gospel is bad news that leads you to good news.

The bad news is your sin, that your greatest problem in life exists inside of you, not outside of you, and that you cannot escape it on your own. The greatest danger to Paul Tripp is Paul Tripp; and for that, I have the grace of Jesus.

Listen to these words:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

What Paul is saying is, “We were people in deep need of a rescue; without the rescue of Jesus, we would have no hope.”  Pride in self is a lie! May your hope be in the person and work of the Lord Jesus who lived the life you could not live; who died the death you should have died; who rose again, conquering sin and death so that you would live a life of Christ-centered godliness. His grace is your hope!

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Well, 2 Timothy is even more of a personal feel than 1 Timothy is, and I'm going to, in a minute, read you one culminating passage in this book. If the theme of 1 Timothy is “Order in the Church; the theme of 2 Timothy is “Endurance in the Church.” If we’re going to maintain that order, we will need to endure because the church lives under hardship, the church lives under attack, both inside the church and outside the church.

Maybe you've been reading the news and following what’s happening in our culture, and you think, “How does it get any worse than what we’re going through?” It just looks like all the things that we love and hold dear, that our culture is turning their back on it. How is the Church going to survive? Listen, every generation of the Church has faced the same thing; every generation of the Church has felt the same way. And that's why this message of endurance is so important. 

But it's gospel endurance; it's not just sort of flexing your muscles and saying to yourself, “I'm going to make it! It's endurance that’s rooted in the gospel. Again, willing to suffer for the gospel-are you? Part of endurance is a willingness to suffer. It's, for Timothy, it means again stirring the gift that God has given him. It's being strengthened by Christ’s grace. If your strengthened by Christ's grace, you’re no longer afraid of your weaknesses because your weaknesses are a playground for His strength.

Endurance means rightly handling God's Word; that's very, very important that God's Word is our wisdom; it is our guide. Endurance means I want to be an honorable vessel; I don't want my life to get in the way of what God has called His people to be.

It means being ready for every good work. I call that the principal of prepared spontaneity, I don't know when God will give me an opportunity, but I position myself to be ready so I can step into those opportunities that God will give me.

It means avoiding foolish controversies. You don't have to have an opinion on everything; and you don't have to get in every debate. There are things that are worth avoiding! And can I make a twitter application here? Well, I don’t know why I'm asking permission, I'm going to. There is so much needless controversy, needless debate, angry talk on twitter that is not helping you endure, it's not helping you grow, it's not helping you love Jesus more. You need to avoid that stuff. Correct others with gentleness. Wow! Again, social media is not known for its gentleness; it's angry, often despicable communication, and correction should be done with gentleness.

But endurance is rooted in the stunning gift of the Word of God. Imagine what our faith would be like without the gift of the Word of God. And so, the culmination of the high point of this book is this passage:

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra--which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from a childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Stand firm in God's Word; endure in God's Word!

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In 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul is writing personal instructions to young Pastor Timothy. These two letters have such a mentoring feel to them. This older man in the faith, counseling this younger man in the faith, and they’re very sweet as a result. You can see Paul's love for Timothy and his desire for Timothy in the church, to get it right.

And so, because Paul is writing to a pastor, 1 and 2 Timothy is the gospel in the church. The location of the gospel in Timothy is the church; it's the gospel for the church, the gospel in the church, the gospel because of the church. And that's really the whole focus of these two letters.

And again, the call of Paul is to a uniquely Christ-centered godliness in the church. Again, even as Paul discusses the church, it’s the centrality of Jesus. Listen to this, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He (Christ) was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” There it is, Christ, the hope of the church.

I would title 1 Timothy, “Order in the Church.” This letter is meant to help Timothy to understand to how the church is meant to operate. And, you really have seven topics that Paul ticks through. First of all, how does a church deal with false teachers? How do you conduct worship? What are the qualifications for elders and deacons? How do you train to be godly in doctrine and in life? How do you care for and honor widows? How do you deal with conflict and quarrels and controversy? What does it look like to pursue the riches of Christ and not the riches of this world?

I mean, think about it, what church doesn't need that list? Let me go through it again, dealing with false teaching; we’re always dealing with a new generation of false teaching. What does godly Christ-centered worship look like? What should it do and what should it not do? How does one become qualified for leadership in Christ’s church? How do you train for godliness, not just theologically, but practically in your life? Who are the needy ones for whom we need to care, and what does it look like to care for them? How do you deal with conflict; conflict arises in the church, quarrels, controversies? What does it look like to treasure the riches of godliness in a world that treasures physical, material riches? And then he says to Timothy, “You be rich in good works; you guard what has been entrusted to you.”

I am so thankful for the message of 1 Timothy. I'm so thankful that God just didn't call us to be His church, but through Paul to Timothy, gave us a specificity of instructions on what life in the church is to look like, what the church is to be. There's not one of these topics that Paul writes to Timothy that is, today, out of date. This list seems incredibly current, incredibly timely; that is the riches of the Word of God. It has a really long shelf life! And if you’re a member of the church, you read this list, and you know your church needs this and so does mine.

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Well, as I’ve said, the two Thessalonians are focusing on living with eternity in view, and that is surely true of 2 Thessalonians. My deeply creative title for this is, “Waiting-Part II,” this time not ‘Action,’ but ‘Comfort,’ the ultimate comfort that Paul wants to give these people who are living in the difficulty of life between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’ Where we still live in a broken groaning world; where we still struggle with our sin and the sin of others; where things are not operating the way they are supposed to operate; where there are confusing mysteries for us; where temptation abounds.

The ultimate comfort for us is that God will make all things right again! Jesus will return and there will be no more suffering, there will be no more sin, there will be no more sorrow, that He will in fact make all things new! What an incredible promise! We have a hard time conceptualizing this because we've always lived as sinners, flawed people in this broken world. What would it be like for all of that brokenness to be gone and for us to stand with Jesus, like Jesus, righteousness and peace forever? What an amazing thing!

So, the call is to stand firm. Don't be wooed away from the life you’ve been called to, from the teaching that you’ve been called to. And, in order to instill their hope, Paul gives more details about Christ’s coming, again, defense against false teaching.  And he says, “Remember your comfort in trial, your comfort in persecution is always, ‘this will end.’”  Christ’s first resurrection guarantees that second resurrection.

But, as he is calling them to comfort, Paul has to deal with a misunderstanding, and it is this, that if this is all going to be gone and Jesus is going to create something new, why work?  Why not just chill out and wait for it to happen? What good does it do for us to work? And Paul says, “No, no, no, no,” and returns to that action emphasis that was there in 1 Thessalonians.

Three things he says, “Don't ever stop doing good, do good.” One of the ways you live with eternity in view is you commit yourself to a life of doing good.

Second, don't grow weary. Life in a fallen world is hard. I don’t know about you, but there are times I'm just weary. I'm just tired of the fight. I wish I didn’t have to face temptation. I wish I wouldn't get needlessly irritable. But he says, “Don’t grow weary!”

And then he says, “Wait in hope, let hope fuel you're waiting, let hope give you the strength to wait.”

And, then he ends with this sweet reminder, “God will guard and establish you!” You don't wait alone. You don't wait in your own power. You are not your own security system as you wait. You are never your own strength. You never grow yourself; you never grow your own ability to wait; it's God who guards you, and it's God who establishes you! The reason that we have hope in waiting is that God is working in the wait. He is with us in the wait. He strengthens us in the wait. He gives us wisdom in the wait. He renews us in the wait. He establishes us in the wait. God is our hope in waiting, and the God who will live with us in eternity has invaded our ‘here and now,’ and He gives us hope as we wait!

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Well, 1 and 2 Thessalonians are essentially on the same topic; it is, “What does it look like to live with eternity in view?” The whole message of Scripture is, this right here, right now, time and place that we’re in, is not our final destination. It is a preparation for a final destination.

 So, you can't live with a destination mentality, you can't try to turn this moment into paradise. Sorry, but your marriage will never be the paradise you want it to be, right here, right now. Your children won’t offer you paradise; your job won’t offer you paradise; your church won't offer you paradise; we are heading for paradise. And so, we have to know what it means to live with eternity in view.

Thessalonians are incredibly personal, loving, and affectionate. Paul says this, “So being affectionately desirous of you, we are ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us.” How sweet and pastoral that is. We didn’t give you just the gospel; we gave you ourselves. I have to say that God makes His invisible love visible by sending people of love to give love to people who need love. Paul is a model of that.

And so, 1 Thessalonians, addressing that period of time between the ‘already’ of our conversion and the ‘not yet’ of our home going, is a call to action. I’m going to entitle this, “Waiting-Part I-Action,” because waiting, in Paul's understanding, is not like waiting in the dentist’s office. You know, you get an appointment with the dentist, and you're sitting there for forty-five minutes, and it’s just making you mad because it just seems like useless waiting. You’re a man and now you're reading ladies home magazine, reading recipes. You know if you're a man doing that, you’ve waited in the dentist’s office too long.

Waiting, in the New Testament, isn’t meaningless. Waiting is a call to action! Paul says, “Be committed to holiness, be self-controlled, stay alert, live quiet hard-working lives, win the respect of others, love one another, live at peace, give thanks for everything. All those things together define this life of waiting. Waiting is an action.

But it's more than that. You get this hinted at here in this book that waiting is not just about what you will get at the end of the wait, pay attention to what I'm about to say here, waiting is about what you become as you wait. Waiting is a tool of God's sanctifying grace. He uses waiting to transform us, to change us, to restore us, to reconcile us, to grow us, to mature us.

And so, waiting is a participatory action. I wait, committed to grow in holiness. I wait, committed to be self-controlled. I wait, committed to stay alert. I wait, committed to live in such a way that I gain the respect of others. I wait, committed to love others as Christ has loved me. I wait, committed to live at peace and in peace. I wait, committed to give thanks in everything.

I was thinking about this list that I just went through for myself and how good it would be for me to tick through this list every morning and say, “Am I committed as I wait for my Lord to do these things?” Listen, your marriage would change, your parenting would change, your work would change, your joy would change if you and I would be committed to wait in the way that Paul says. This kind of waiting is living with eternity in view!

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I sort of think of Colossians as being at the top of this staircase we’ve been walking up; Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. It's like each one of these letters, the way they’re positioned in the Bible, are a stairstep up to this message. I would entitle Colossians, “Jesus at the Center.”

The culmination of this gospel is this, that Jesus is the grace of God; that grace isn't a theology first, grace isn’t a way of thinking, grace isn't just a plan. Jesus is the ultimate embodiment of the grace of God! No Jesus, no grace; no incarnation, no grace; no righteous life, no grace; no sacrifice, no grace; no resurrection, no grace. Jesus is the grace of God!

And more than any of the books we’ve just looked at, Colossians focuses on the supremacy and the sufficiency of Christ Jesus. This is Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, in every passage, every verse of Colossians. Paul has one thing that he wants you to know, that there is no gospel apart from His person and work. You take Jesus away and the gospel ceases to be the gospel; it’s some weird religious message, but it is no longer the gospel.

You see, that really is the turning point. There are only two places of hope. Everybody who is at all honest will recognize that the world we live in just doesn’t function the way it should. And they would recognize that people have problems; people are a bit of a mess. And so, you either give yourself, you put your hope in a system of redemption. All other psychologies, all other philosophies are systems of redemption. We don't believe in a system of redemption. Christianity is not a system of redemption. The entire hope of Christianity is in a Person, a Redeemer. And so, when you minister the gospel to people, you're not ministering the system; you’re introducing a person to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the Lord of creation. He is the one victorious on the cross. He is our source of all wisdom. He is now ruling in power. This Christology is our defense against all falsehood; because anything that says you can be okay, now and then, without Jesus is a lie! Everything the Bible describes about the sorry state of our world and our state as sinners argues for the intervention of a Redeemer! That's the message of Colossians. All fullness dwells where? In Christ! We are made full, how?  Through Christ!

So, what does He then say? What’s the life He then calls us to? So, seek the things that are above. So, put on Christ. So, love one another as He has loved you. So, do everything out of thanks for Him. So, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. So, teach and admonish one another with this gospel. Gospel living and gospel community.

If I have come to know Christ, I want you to know Christ. If I’ve come to know a life that's built on rest in Christ, I want you to know rest in Christ. Seek the things above, put on Christ; love one another as He has loved you. Do everything out of thanks for Him! Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another with this gospel. Christ is the center!

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I don't know what you're facing today. I don't know what burdens or temptations in this fallen world, I don't know what trials you're going through, how discouraging they may be, physical, financial. I don't know if this pandemic, we have been through, has altered your life in ways that are very troubling. There are times in life where it seems like there's not much reason to rejoice, and that is actually the title that I'm giving to Philippians, “Reason to Rejoice.”

Now, if you look at the history of Philippians, you would conclude there's absolutely no reason to rejoice. Paul is in prison, the church is under attack, the church is disunified, and it's being weakened by false teaching. 

Now if you look horizontally, you would say, “We’re cooked! This is not working!” And what Paul is doing in Ephesians (Philippians) is arguing that no matter what is going on in your life, no matter how severe the things are that you're facing, you have reason to rejoice because of your union with Christ and your citizenship in heaven. Again, you're not just saved, you’re united to Christ; and you're not just a citizen of the kingdoms of earth, you're the citizen of a greater King and a greater Kingdom.

Again, I would summarize this reason to rejoice with four words. Twenty times, Paul uses the word ‘joy’ in this book, twenty times! That means one of the sturdiest things in my life, as a believer, should be my joy. Sickness should not rob me of my joy, financial problems should not rob me of my joy, a person's rejection of me should not rob me of my joy, because my joy is not rooted in created things. My joy is rooted in the love of God and His Son, the Lord Jesus.

Second word is ‘fellowship.’ By Christ’s work, we have fellowship with the Lord; that’s an amazing thing.

A third word is ’citizenship.’ I mentioned already that there's an emphasis in this passage on the incredible reality that we are not just citizens on earth, but we now have a citizenship in heaven.

And then, the fourth word is really two words, it's again ‘in Christ.’ It's incredible in these gospel letters, Paul's zeal to help us to understand that we’ve been united to Christ. And then because of this, there's a call to humbly persevere; don't let anything move you. Paul says, “God empowers you to do His will, and to do His good pleasure, to desire to do what is right and to be able to do it.” I love the emphasis in Ephesians (Philippians) on empowering grace, “It is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” So, Paul says, “Rejoice, rejoice!”

It would do well for all of us to get up in the morning and count our blessings instead of counting our complaints. “Do not be anxious!” Don't give way to that paralyzing anxiety and worry where you push the ‘what-ifs’ through your brain one more time.

And then focus on “What is true, what is good, what is true, what is noble, what is honorable, think on these things.” Listen, if you're God's child, if He has saved you by His grace, if He's purchased your ticket to citizenry in heaven, it doesn’t matter what you're facing today; you have reason to rejoice. How about, give your heart to joy today?

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It's an understatement to say that I love Ephesians. Ephesians is so gospel-rich; I mean there's so much gospel-fire in Ephesians; it’s a wonder the pages don't burn or melt. It’s just incredible! And Ephesians is probably one of those books that divides, very clearly, into two parts. I would entitle Ephesians, “Gospel Roots and Gospel Fruit.”

In the first three chapters of Ephesians, you get this explanation of the gospel. It's just glorious; every verse is just brimming with the explanation of this message that is our message of hope of the work of the person, the Lord Jesus Christ. There are some root themes here. The blessings of being in Him. Ephesians really emphasizes our union with Christ. We’re not just forgiven, we’re not just adopted; we are united to Christ, chosen, adopted, redeemed, with inheritance, all of those things are the product of our union in Christ. Christ in us; we in Him. As Paul says in Galatians, “It’s no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” That too is the message of Ephesians.

And then that section ends with a prayer that we would really come to know God's love, know the depth and breadth of what it means to say that God has placed His love on us, particularly in the gift of love, the Lord Jesus Christ. You and I will dig for the rest of our lives into the love of God. We will dig for all eternity into the depth and breadth of the love of God. And he prays that we would be filled to full measure of God, that we would grow in grace.

Now, it's very clear that Paul understands that the gospel is not just something that you conceptualize. Faith is not just something you do with your brain; faith is a transaction of your heart that changes the way you live your life. You live what you believe. In fact, you could argue that if you don't live it, you don't actually believe it, that faith is really demonstrated by the way you live your life. So, Paul cannot help but apply this gospel to every area of life.

Look at the subjects to which he applies the gospel: to the church, to your thinking, to your desires, to your communication, to your anger, to your work, to your relationship, to your sexuality, to your marriage, to your parenting. He just looks at every aspect of the life of a normal person and says, “The gospel alters this, the gospel changes this; if you believe in Jesus, you’ll handle it this way.” You’re getting tracking, right down at street level, right in the hallways and bedrooms and living rooms of everyday life, right in the workplace, right in our neighborhood, what it looks like to actually live out of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a wonderful contribution of Ephesians.

But I love how Ephesians ends. Ephesians 6 ends with a discussion of spiritual warfare and a call to arm ourselves for the battle. Now, when you're reading through Ephesians and you hit that section, it almost seems like Paul is changing the topic, but he’s not changing the topic. What he’s saying is, “All those things I've talked about, the church, your thinking, your desires, your communication, your anger, your working relationship, your sexuality, your marriage, your parenting are all spiritual warfare.” Life between the ‘already’ of our conversion and the ‘not yet’ of our home-going is a great spiritual war! Arm yourself for battle! That war is a war against your mind, it’s a war against your theology, it’s a war against your living, it's a war of temptation. The gospel is your armor in that war.

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Well, as we've been summarizing these books of the Bible, it’s really impressed me that the zeal of God for giving us His Word is so that we would know the God of the Word, and that we would know His Son, the Lord Jesus. The Bible is way more than a religious, formally religious book, or a theological book; it is the narrative of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we've seen that literally in every book of the Bible so far.

Well, we’re in Galatians, and I would entitle this “The Gospel’s Greatest Enemy.” Galatians is a powerful reminder that the greatest dangers to the Church of Jesus Christ are never outside of the church; they’re always inside of the church. And the greatest danger is that there would be some kind of pollution of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that would weaken the life and ministry and message of the Church. And the greatest of those pollution dangers is legalism.

And the reason it’s so dangerous is legalism plays to our pride, it plays to the self-righteousness of sin, it plays to that belief that somehow, someway, by my performance, by my obedience, I can achieve acceptance with God, that I could be that good, I could be that wise, I could be that faithful. And so that's the great enemy that's being addressed in Galatians.

It was addressed because there was this group called the Judaizers who said, “No! No! It's not just the grace of God; it’s the grace of God plus observance of Mosaic Law.” Listen, the gospel is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Anytime you add ‘plus,’ you’ve destroyed the gospel. And so that's the challenge of Galatians.

You have the challenge to the gospel in the theology of the Judaizers; that's where you see it theologically. You have the challenge of the gospel, practically, in Peter when Peter, under pressure, refuses to eat with Gentile believers and sides with the Judaizers; and in that way, he lives out a contradiction of the gospel of, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

There are five words here that sort of summarize the message. The first word is ‘vain.’ If we could be justified by the law, then the person and work of Jesus Christ is in vain. Second word is ‘heirs.’ Through the work of Christ, not through our performance, we become heirs to the promises made to Abraham. Third word is ‘sons.’ By means of the justifying grace of God, we’ve become sons of God; we’ve become adopted into God's family. Fourth word is ‘freedom.’ The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus set us free from the bondage of the law because Jesus is our righteousness. And then the fifth word just makes sense. If it's all through Christ, it's not through my performance, then if I'm going to ‘boast,’ that's the fifth word, I boast only in the cross.

Jesus is our righteousness! Jesus fully measured up, perfectly measured up to God's Law because God knew, this is very humbling, that we would not measure up. And so, He became our righteousness. Every act of obedience in Christ's life was done on our behalf. He paid the penalty for our sin so we could be adopted into God's family, sinners in the hands of a loving God of grace!

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Well, we get to 2 Corinthians and you think, “Well, what else can be said about the gospel?” Well, I would title 2 Corinthians, “Different From Anything Else.” Paul, through the vehicle of his own life, lays out for us how this way of living that is the life that is formed by the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the life that really finds its hope in what Jesus has done, is different from any other life.

And, he is his most autobiographical here; Paul is his most transparent here. That transparency really begins with 2 Corinthians where Paul talks about this moment where he thought it was the end. He said he had given up hope; and in his heart, he felt this was a sentence of death. Now, this is the great man of faith, the Apostle Paul, who thinks, “This is it! I'm done; it's over!” And he does that again to reinforce that our hope is in God; it's not in us, our reliance is on Him.

And it's a gospel that is contrasted to everything else; it's not the external religion that is so much the man-made religion that so many people have given themselves to. It's a religion of, again, a heart change. It's not about self-glory; it's about humility. It's worship of God versus all of the idols of power and pleasure and wealth.

And you see in 2 Corinthians these contrasts, well, a better word is paradox, like comfort in suffering. I mean, that’s where the book begins. I mean, how can suffering ever bring comfort? But Paul argues that that's what the gospel can do. That this is the gospel of the cross. What does the cross teach us? That God can bring very good things out of very bad things. What is the worst thing that ever happened? The death of Jesus! What is the best thing that ever happened? The death of Jesus! It's strength and weakness.

How could you ever be excited about your weakness? Well, the gospel does that because my weakness is a playground for God's grace; it’s where God's grace does its best work. It's a gospel that is about reconciliation versus living for yourself. It's a gospel that really is different than anything else.

Let me read you one of those passages that I find so moving. Paul writes:  (2 Corinthians 4:7ff.)

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the (all) surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested (into) our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So, death is at work in us, but life in you…So we do not lose heart. Though our (outward) self is wasting away, our (inward) self is being renewed day by day.  For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.  For things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

What a beautiful life we’ve been called to. It's not living for the moment, it's not living for what you can see, it's not living for comfort; it's understanding that, although we face struggles every day in this fallen world, every moment, we are being renewed by the presence and promises and power and grace of Jesus!

And this is not our destination; it is a preparation for a final destination; and when we’re on the other side, we will look back and we will name the struggles that seem so big today as light and momentary afflictions. That message is fundamentally different from any other philosophy you will ever hear. It's a radically different gospel infused with glorious, ‘right here right now,’ and eternal hope!

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I don't know about you, but often my life seems incredibly messy; it seems like there's unexpected difficulty all the time; there are difficult choices, and oppositions and quandaries that are just part of life. Well, welcome to life in a fallen world. We live in a world that's groaning, waiting for redemption, and that brokenness of our world will enter your door. There's no sense in the Bible that being a child of God gives you a ticket out of the fallenness of this world. God has chosen for us between ‘the already of our conversion’ and ‘the not yet of our home going’ for us to live in this groaning world; that's for our good and for His glory.

Well, this is why you need 1 Corinthians, because I would title 1 Corinthians, “A Gospel That's Up To The Challenges.” This is a sturdy gospel; this is a gospel that's able to deal with all of the challenges of life in a fallen world. And 1 Corinthians begins with arguing that the wisdom of God is infinitely wiser than anything you would ever encounter in the world. In fact, it's so wise that Paul sort of pushes his description of the wisdom of God and says, “If God was capable of being foolish, God's foolishness would be wiser than the wisdom of the world.”

And so what he does is 1 Corinthians pictures for us the kind of challenges we will face:  divisions in the church, divisions caused by sort of a personality idolatry, the questions of divorce and remarriage, tough questions, gender roles in the church, the question of spiritual gifts, questions of sexual immorality and sexual immorality in the church, and how do we handle our sexuality, church discipline, lawsuits between believers, food offered to idols, and what's the nature of my liberty as a Christian, and how much should I restrict my liberty out of love for somebody else? Those are just some of the knotty issues that are looked at in 1 Corinthians, and Paul has demonstrated the gospel is able to bring answers to every one of those difficulties. It is, like Luke wrote, a great big wide gospel that reaches to every area of our lives. There’s no difficulty that isn't addressed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. It reaches the deepest, darkest issues of our lives.

And in that is that core theme again, Jesus Christ crucified, Jesus Christ resurrected, Jesus Christ reigning, Jesus Christ our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. You see in the difficulties of life, our hope is deeper than a theology.  Our hope is deeper than a world view. Our hope is a person who will not fail us, who is for us and with us and in us in all of those moments of difficulty. And He does for us what we could not do for ourselves.

So, following Him is a life of humility and wisdom and holiness and perseverance. It’s characterized by these words way at the end of this letter in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “(So) be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is (never) in vain.” Don't let the obstacles stop you, don't let opposition make you quit, don't let difficulty dishearten you because the One you serve has risen and is reigning and will not fail you!

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Romans, it makes sense that Romans does what it does because it's so needed. We've seen so much of Jesus and we've begun to hear of the gospel and the early preaching of the disciples. Well, here comes Romans! I love where it's positioned for us in the Bibles that we hold in our hands because I would entitle Romans, “The Explanation.”  

Here's where the gospel of Jesus Christ gets unpacked for its meaning, its purpose, its implications. And, I don't know how else to say this but it's so important that you not miss the glorious explanation of the gospel in Romans.

I was a seminary student and I was exegeting Romans in the Greek and I had taken a bound legal notebook, you know, the long ones, and I had cut the corner out of every other page, and I glued a page from Romans in the Greek so I could see it from both sides, and I would write exegetical notes all around, explanatory notes.

I got to Romans, about Romans 7, and I realized it had just been an intellectual exercise for me and I hadn't been touched by the glorious content of Romans. I began to weep. Luella came in; she heard me, and she said, “What's wrong?” And I said, “I'm quitting seminary.” She said, “Your what?” I said, “I have been in this glorious message of the gospel and haven’t been touched by it at all!” Although Romans is full of doctrine, don't let it just be an intellectual exercise for you; be touched by the glory of the gospel of grace in Romans!

Because it is an explanation and unpacking of the person and work of Jesus, you see all the major themes of the gospel in Romans. First is the character of God:  His righteousness, His faithfulness, His glory, and His kindness. Listen, if we only had the righteousness of God, we would run from Him! But we have His mercy, His faithfulness, and His kindness.

You see, the nature of sin, how sin is the ultimate rebellion, how sin is idolatrous and enslaving.  Paul can't write about sin without writing about idolatry because every sin is idolatrous; every sin replaces God with something else in creation.

We understand the law in Romans; we understand the importance of the law, the importance of its’ demands, the importance of the way that the law exposes sin. But we also see the inability of the law. The law is good! God's law is good, but it cannot rescue you, it cannot reform you, it cannot offer you what you need; only the grace of God can do that.

We see justifying grace, that we are accepted because of a righteousness that's not our own. And in the latter part of Romans, we begin to get a sense of what gospel living looks like. We’re created to live life shaped by devotion for God, love pouring out of our hearts because we have been loved by Him.

I love the doxology that’s at the end of Romans; it should be the doxology of our lives, “To the only one wise God be glory forever and forever more through Jesus Christ. Amen! To the only wise God be glory forever more through Jesus Christ. Amen!”

Spend some time in Romans. Don't just let your mind be engaged; let your heart be changed by the unpacking of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Well, what do you say about Acts other than it is ridiculously exciting! The Gospels are just full of the excitement of the arrival of Jesus, but you begin to see the fruit of His work exploding in Acts from the cross and the resurrection, to Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and across the known world, to Rome. Acts is amazing! You could title Acts, “Preach The Gospel” because a third of the content of Acts is actually speeches or sermons; it's where you begin to see the gospel formed into this way of thinking, this way of thinking about us, the way of thinking about our world, the way of thinking about this person, Jesus, and what He has provided.

And, because that message is to be carried to the world, empowerment is needed, help is needed. We are not capable of doing the work of the gospel justice; and so in Acts 2, we see the gift of the Spirit. As the Spirit is given, you see the fulfillment of those promises of Jesus that, “I'll be with you always.” We become the place where God dwells.

You see very quickly that this gospel is not a gospel of the Law; it's a new way, it's a gospel of grace, and it’s a gospel that's not offered just to Jews. It's a gospel offered to all people. Acts 10, we see that very clearly depicted as Peter is called to bring the gospel to Cornelius and has to deal with the fact that there’s a new economy, there's a new people, there's a new call in the gospel. The first time we see the people of God that Jesus came to restore, now collected into this thing called, “The Church.” That's what we are now part of.

And it's a gospel that is not thwarted by enemies and persecution and opposition. You see, the exact opposite, that that opposition, that persecution, is actually God's tool to propel His Church. Listen, you learn from Acts that nothing will stop the march of God's grace through His Church. Church is God's powerful tool of change on earth and it actually thrives under opposition.

You see unlikely messengers, and this should be comfort to us all as you see the rise of the ministries of Peter and Paul. Whenever I read of Peter and Paul and the second opportunity they were given, I think how inpatient and how judgmental I am. If it had been me, Peter wouldn't have ever gotten a second chance, and Paul wouldn’t have gotten his first opportunity. But that's why this is a gospel of grace; no one measures up. That's why Jesus had to come because He alone is able to measure up to God's holy standard.

And so, it's very clear that the message that needs to be taken to the world, by this newly formed church, is Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, and Him crucified and Him risen. Jesus Christ is our hope! Jesus Christ is our message! And whether that's carrying that to your children or to your spouse, to your neighbors, or around the world, Christ is our message because Christ is our hope!

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I know I've been saying this as we've talked about Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but I think the uniqueness of each one of these Gospels is a beautiful gift from the Lord. You know, it's sort of like you're at an ancient building, it's part of what you want to see in your vacation, and you just don't stand in front of it and leave. You walk around it, and then you go inside of it, and you go up and down the steps into various rooms; that's what the gospel is doing for us. It's walking us around the person and work of Jesus Christ. They’re opening the door; they’re taking us up into the various rooms so we get all the different elements of who Jesus is and what God came to do.

Well, I would entitle the Gospel of John, “The Encounter.” You see, John is not writing an abstract theology of Jesus. John doesn't come across as distant and an intellectual discussion of who this person is. Now, don't get me wrong. There are loads of gospel theology in John, but John is doing something different. His gospel is an invitation to an encounter with Jesus. John is saying, “Come and see this One.”

It makes sense that there are these two moments early in John. In John 3, it's the story of Nicodemus’s encounter with Jesus because it's that kind of encounter that John wants us to have where we come, and we begin to understand the awesome new birth that can be found in Jesus and Jesus alone. In John 4, you have this, “Come and see a man who told me all that I ever did!” Could this be the Christ? Well, the answer is, “Yes, yes, and again yes!” 

“Come and see,” that's what John is saying to us. And the reason that John is saying this to us is John recognizes that the greatest gift of grace God has given to us is not a thing, it's not a force, it's not an idea; it's a person! “For God so loved the world that He gave (He gave, He gave!) His only Son.” The ultimate generosity of grace is Jesus. Jesus is the grace of God; and without this gift, that is Jesus, there would be no grace, and there would be no hope. Because of that, about forty percent of John's writing is about the last week of the life of Jesus.

Why? Because the gift of grace required His suffering, the gift of grace required His death, the gift of grace required His resurrection because Jesus had to come and live the life we could not live, and die the death that we should have died, and rise again, conquering sin and death so that we would have life now and life forever. John is saying, “Won't you walk with me, won't you come and see this One who is life, who is peace, who is hope, who is redemption, who is our righteousness? Come and see!”

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I’ve got to say I love the contrast between Mark and Luke. Luke is a physician and he writes as a historian; there a lot of editorial asides in Luke that are not there in Mark. And, it makes Luke again unique from Matthew and unique from Mark and unique from John. I would title Luke, “A Great Big Gospel,” because it's very clear as you work your way through Luke that Luke is presenting that Jesus did not come to establish a religious movement. 

He came to take over your life; He came to propel a gospel through His own person and work that reaches to every area of your life. One of the sad things that we tend to do is we tend to break our life up into the secular and the spiritual, things that are religious and things that aren't.  And Luke just blows that away. It's very clear that God is after every area of our lives and He welcomes us to renewal of every part of us, physical and spiritual, external and internal, now and the future, God and others. 

And at the core of this, and this is very important, it's a unique contribution in Luke, is a gospel for the heart. Luke makes it very clear why the gospel has to reach to every area of your life; it is that the gospel is about renewal of the heart. Now, if you take all the passages that describe the heart in the Bible and you put them down into one definition, the heart is the causal core of your personhood, the heart is the steering wheel; what rules your heart then exercises inescapable influence over your life and behavior.  And so, if the gospel doesn't have your heart, if the grace of God doesn't renew your heart, it doesn't have you. 

But here's what's important, you never leave your heart at the door. Your heart is operating in family and friends, in entertainment, and at work, as a citizen, in sex, in finances, in every situation, every relationship, every location of your life, the heart is operating! And Luke makes it very clear that you live out of the heart and makes it very clear that God is after heart change; humility versus power and prejudice, mercy versus a legalistic condemnation, acceptance with God versus living for favor with people, spiritual riches versus living for money, that there's radical change. It's really good news that God wants your heart because I don't know about you, well I do know about you; our biggest problem is not outside of us; our biggest problem in all of life lives inside of us, the Bible names it, it’s sin.

And so, I don't need just be rescued from things outside of me, I need to be rescued inside of me, I need to be rescued from me. And if that rescue wasn’t provided in the personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ, it just doesn't work. And so, what we have is this great big gospel of forgiveness for the heart, peace of heart, hope of heart. 

You see, if your heart changes, then you will change in every dimension of your life.  It really is a great big gospel; you become a new you wherever you are in every dimension of your life, not just religiously new, not just new in a formal religious sense, but completely new in every way. And I don't know if you're getting this; that is huge, glorious, great news. It is a great big gospel because it's a gospel for the heart.

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One of the things I love about the four Gospels is, although they are all focusing on the person and work, the life and ministry of Jesus, they are not repetitive at all. Each gospel is unique and different. I would title the gospel of Mark, “The fulfillment.”  Mark has one goal in mind, and it's to argue, to demonstrate, that Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the Son of God, the promised Messiah.

The book is called itself, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Son of God.” And, right after that statement, which is the beginning of Mark, is a quote from Isaiah. Now, Mark does that on purpose; he's connecting this man, Jesus, this real human being, Jesus, this one from Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, he's connecting Him to the prophecy of Isaiah. He’s saying this is the One, this is the Son of God.

Now, Mark is very different than Matthew and Luke because Mark is fast-paced, quick hitting, it’s history, history, history, history, event upon event. Mark doesn't make many editorial comments because he wants you to see that if you pay attention to this person, if you watch who He is and what He does, it's unalterable the conclusion that this has to be the Son of God.

We see Mark emphasizing that Jesus has come to restore a people to Himself, a people who recognizes who He is, Lord of the Sabbath, Lord of creation, the conqueror of evil, the Lord of the Law. I love that moment when Jesus calms the storm; that is meant to make you remember a moment in Jonah when God sends the storm. The storm is the theme there that this is the One who is the Lord of creation and the connection there is important for us. He wants His people to have a new culture, a culture that has Him at the center. 

And so, in Mark, you have a call to servanthood; you have a call to childlike faith; you have a call to love God and love neighbor; you have a call again to carry His message. Mark makes it very clear that the only way you and I will ever answer the call, as the restored people of God, is through His death and His resurrection and the grace that flows to us.

Here's what’s so encouraging about Mark. It argues that God always will keep His promises. Yes, you may have to wait; and yes, it is true; God's way more patient than we are. And between those promises in the Old Testament and the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man and Son of God, there were many dark years.  But God will never turn His back on His people, and He will never walk away from His promises. 

And so, fulfillment came more wonderfully than we would've ever imagined; this God Man will do what we could never do, provide what we could never provide, and give us new identity and new potential as the restored people of God.  How beautiful is that?  We’re included in that people. He restores us to Himself and calls us to a brand new way of living and to always live with fulfillment in mind no matter what we’re facing.

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Well, this series we’ve been working on is called, “The Gospel: One Chapter at a Time.” And we have walked through the Old Testament and seen that the gospel is not only present, but the gospel is evident in every book in the Old Testament. It's very encouraging and reminds us that the Bible is not a collection of stories. The Bible is one story, one theme.  It's God's great and glorious plan of redemption.

And the Bible has one main character; it's the Lord Jesus Christ, and that chord goes from Genesis to Revelation. And so, our work has been, not to summarize the total content or the history of each passage of the Word of God, but to focus on that central gospel theme in every book.

Well, we want to do that with the New Testament. And as I've done before, I like to title each one of these, give it the title, the gospel theme. And Matthew, the title I’ve given Matthew is the arrival of the King, that's what Matthew is about. It’s the good news that the King that has been promised in the Old Testament has come. There are loads of kingdom language in Matthew. Probably the most famous kingdom passage in all of Scripture is that call to “seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness.”

Well, if you read Matthew, that call just makes perfect sense because the whole theme of Matthew is the King and His kingdom. Listen how that is an emphasis. We begin with the genealogy of the King. And you know, if you think of a genealogy, it's sort of so-and-so begat so-and-so, begat so-and-so and it's the kind of biblical literature that you would be tempted just to jump over. But the gospel explodes in this genealogy. One of the things that you see is all of a sudden, you realize that God's plan is not just limited to the people of Israel but will explode beyond them. You have the name Ruth there who becomes one of the ladies in that genealogy.

Probably the one that is the most exciting and comforting is the name Rahab. Rahab was a prostitute! How could it be that she is in the genealogy of Jesus? And we’re reminded that no one can buy their way into God's favor; no one earns their way into God's favor because they're a good person. It's only ever by grace; and if God could include Rahab into His family, there is hope for every one of us.

In Matthew, we see the display of the power of the King. There's no effect of the fall that is beyond His power and His grace. I think of that Christmas hymn, it says, “Far as the curse is found.” That's how great the reach of His grace is.

We see the King beginning to collect His disciples because He’s established His kingdom. He's going to send His people out to represent His message and His method and His character. We get to sit and listen to the wisdom of the King; probably the longest teaching of Christ that's been retained for us is the Sermon on the Mount. It is expansive in its wisdom; it changes everything you think about life as you listen to the wisdom of the King.

We see the mercy of the King…Jesus’s heart for the poor, for the grieving, for those suffering injustice, and for those longing for forgiveness. We see the tender heartedness of the King. We see the King's enemies and, surprisingly, His enemies are religious leaders who have distorted what it looks like to believe and have burdened people with a legalism. Christ goes after them in ways that are almost shocking.

And then finally, we see the commission of the King. The King says, “You go, and you represent my kingdom on earth. You make kingdom disciples, and oh, by the way, when you go, I go with you, and you'll never go to a place that isn’t ruled by my kingdom because all power has been given to me.

Listen, the kingdoms of this earth will fail us. We don't need to be afraid because we are the citizens of a greater kingdom. We’re the sons and daughters of a King who will never ever fail us.

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So, we come to the final book of the Old Testament and the content of Malachi should be familiar to you. Well, let me say, “If you're willing to be honest, it should be familiar to you.”  

I would entitle Malachi, “Doubt and Grace.” Malachi is a recording of a series of disputes between the people and God, disputes that question God's goodness, His faithfulness, His presence, and His love.

Listen to how Malachi begins, “I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob's brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste to his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert. . .” and it goes on. So, God says, “I have loved you,” and the people of God said, “Yeah, like how?  Doesn't look like we’re being loved.”

Now all of us carry on disputes with God. “Why did I have to get sick? Why did this person have to betray me? Why did I lose my job? God, I thought you loved me…” And it's back to that struggle that is in all of us between doubt and faith. And so I want to talk about that struggle a moment and it really emerges out of the content of Malachi (?). 

There are two types of doubt. There's the doubt of wonderment; it's very clear as we complete all of these prophetic writings that God will surprise you, God will confuse you. God's way of working won't always make sense to you. So, there's nothing wrong with the doubt of wonderment; that's a necessary part of faith. If you have hooked your life to this One, you will go through moments of wonder.

That's very different than the doubt of judgment; that's where I have concluded that God is not good, I've concluded that He is not faithful. And once you do that, you quit going to Him for help because you won't go to help from someone whom you no longer trust.

The message of Malachi is, once again, that our doubt, the wobbliness, and weakness, and fickleness of our faith proves once again that we are not chosen and capped an object of God's mercy because of our righteousness, but because of His grace.

And what's the plan? He won't say, “I've had enough of your weak faith.” The plan is, “I'm going to come, and I'm going to make my presence known, and I'm going to refine, and I'm going to cleanse.”

Isn't it amazing that, in the spiritual struggle that we have seen, this war of the heart that we have seen, the way the Old Testament ends is a theme of redeeming grace? “I'm coming, I'm going to purify, I'm going to strengthen, I'm going to cleanse, and there will be a day when your faith will be weak no more. There will be a day when your questions will be silenced. I will do this for you, I am the Lord!” What a beautiful way to end this story of travail and we know what's coming. The Gospels are coming, Jesus is coming; cleansing will take place.

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Well, if you're a person that likes mysterious and rather confusing visions, read Zechariah. Zechariah is a mysterious, confusing vision after vision after vision. Zechariah was a prophet and priest around twenty years after the return of God's people from captivity in Babylon. And things are not as good as people of God would've hoped. In fact, Zechariah is addressing discouraged people.

The Temple foundation has been constructed, but the Temple is unfinished, and it's that living between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ that is so hard. It's that life in the middle where you sort of see the promises of God, but you don't see them really realized fully. And I think that's very helpful because that's where we all live. You see glimpses of God's promises, but you don't see them in full bloom yet, and there are times that is so discouraging. God promises me peace, but I get shreds of peace; but I don't get complete peace in my heart, and I don't have complete peace around me. And it's that weary middle that is addressed in Zechariah.

Where are the glorious promises that the earlier prophets spoke of? If you were living in Zechariah's day, you would say, “Don't read me that stuff, I've heard that; it doesn't seem to be happening. It seems to be little to be encouraged with.”

Yet in the midst of this are some of the most beautiful promises of God. Zechariah 3, says this, “I will remove their iniquity in a single day.” Now what possibly could that be talking about? Do you have a clue? When is this ‘single day’ that sin is once and for all dealt with? You could not get a more direct prophecy of the cross of Jesus Christ unless those words, “the cross of Jesus Christ,” were there.

And then you have these words written in the 12th chapter of Zechariah, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on…whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. (And) the land shall mourn, each family by itself: the family the house of David by itself, and their wives of by themselves; (and) the family the house of (Nathan) by itself, and their wives by themselves.” And the passage goes on.

Again, who is the One who is pierced and what is that mourning about? What God consistently does for His people is He keeps saying, “Don't be discouraged; this is not all there is. There is more to come.” For people in the Old Testament, that was the promise of His first coming; “I'm not done yet, there's a Lamb Redeemer King coming. He will be pierced for your sin so you would receive my mercy.” For us, it is, “I'm coming again; don't give up, don't be discouraged, there's more to come!”

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Well after talking about the power of divine repetition, we come to a prophet that’s unique. Haggai has this unique central theme; it is the theme of the rebuilding of the Temple. In fact, I would subtitle this prophet, “The Rebuilding.” And in focusing on the rebuilding of the Temple, this little prophecy gets to the heart of the gospel message. You could not get more to the core of what our hope really is than this.

You see, our hope is not in theology; our hope is not in religious institutions. The function of theology is that it would be shorthand for the narrative of the work of God. So instead of having to tell the whole narrative of the justifying grace of God and how to accomplish this, I can use the term ‘justification.’ But my hope is not in justification; my hope is in a God who justifies; our hope is in the presence of a person, God Himself! God's greatest gift to His people, the ultimate transforming gift is Himself. He is grace, He is hope, He is life, He is mercy, He is the source of our hope.

Now, what does that have to do with the Temple? The Temple stands as a visible symbol of the presence of God with His people. And that Temple is a finger-pointing to that moment when the church, the people of God, will become the temple where God dwells. God’s no longer located in a building; He’s located in His people. He literally dwells in His people.

And the reason we have hope is because God is with us. And Jesus will take the name, ‘Immanuel.’ What does Immanuel mean? “God with us;” you could not get more at the center of what our hope is. Our hope is not in a thing; our hope is not in a philosophy or a theology. Our hope is in God Himself.

God looked at the brokenness of this world, at the devastating rebellion, lostness, and brokenness of the people He created and understood that the only fix for this was Himself. And that's why, in that night with rather nervous Nicodemus, Jesus says these words, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.”

This rebuilding of the temple is a reminder to us that we have no hope if God separates Himself from us. We have no hope unless people who don't deserve it, who could never earn it, could never demand it, could never deserve it, have been blessed by the presence of God. God comes and He dwells with His people. Today, no matter what is going on in your life, you're blessed because God is in you, and He's with you, and He’s for you, and that presence changes everything for you.

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Well, I like where Zephaniah is positioned, and I like his function. Zephaniah’s review, that’s just what it is. And you read through Zephaniah and you should be thankful for the rescuing power of divine repetition that God knows this, that these themes of redemption are not intuitive to us. It’s not our normal way of thinking about ourselves; they’re not our normal way of thinking about the world; they’re radical and counterintuitive mainly because the whole redemptive message is other-centered rather than me-centered. My narrative often has me in the center and it's about my hopes, my dreams, my comfort, my ease. I love me and have a wonderful plan for my life versus this radical message that God has chosen us to be part of something transcendent, part of something hugely bigger than us, namely, relationship with Him.

And so, we need those themes repeated to us again and again and again. Listen, you will never ever reach a point where it doesn’t benefit you to hear the gospel again, and you should never be bored when you hear the gospel again. You should never be bored when God repeats those themes again because it’s so deeply counterintuitive for all of us. We need to be confronted with those truths moment by moment by moment till our thoughts are really like God's thoughts.

Well, here are the familiar themes in Zephaniah. It's the redemptive pattern that's depicted from the Garden to Revelation; God sets His love on His people. This whole plan is initiated by God and by the move of His love.

The second step is sad, but it happens again and again. In the face of that love, His people rebel against Him. Don't be too hard on the children of Israel because you do it too. In fact, it's a good possibility, today, there will be a moment of rebellion in your life, where you speak to somebody in the way that you shouldn’t speak or you’re a bit greedy, a bit selfish, a bit lustful, a bit angry, a bit impatient.

Third, God disciplines His people in His judgment. He disciplines His people because He loves His people, and He wants to deliver them from this evil that is their destruction. And then after His discipline, He extends, once again, to His people His mercy.

Now, if you pay attention to biblical history, that theme is repeated over and over again. If you pay attention to your own life, that theme is in your life; God loves you with an everlasting love. You find it hard to follow Him because you still want your own way. And so He disciplines you to draw you back and then He extends His mercy once again to you.

How do mercy and judgment live together? How can this God be both of those things? Once again, that's answered most powerfully by the cross. God's love is demonstrated there; His discipline is demonstrated there; His mercy is demonstrated there. Those themes need to be repeated again and again and again because we are so forgetful.

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Habakkuk really addresses this question, “How is it that you make sense out of your circumstances?” We need the shockingly honest message of Habakkuk. Where does your heart go when life makes no sense at all; when God doesn't seem near; when He doesn't seem caring; when, from your vantage point, God seems inactive; when it feels like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling?

I love Habakkuk because it's a dialogue between the prophet and God. And probably the two questions that are asked that everybody, if they’re honest, asks at some point in their relationship with God, “Where are you? God, where are you? I've hooked my life to you; are you there?” And second question, the corollary question that hooks to the first one is, “And what in the world are you doing?”

I would subtitle Habakkuk, “Is God absent?” Here's what Habakkuk challenges. It challenges the temptation that all of us have in letting our circumstances define God for us, that our theology is a circumstantial theology. It's driven by our personal, temporary, narrow interpretation of our lives. And so, if good doesn't seem to be happening in our lives, then it seems okay to question the goodness and faithfulness of God. It never works! You can never ever have a stable hope-giving, life-transforming theology based on your read of the circumstances. The opposite is the case, that what is called for in Habakkuk is you let God's careful, consistent revelation of Himself be the means by which you interpret your circumstances.

Let me give you an example. Let's say it's a bright, sunny day; the sun is shining brightly. But you're down in your basement that has no windows that's completely dark. Now you know it would be an act of personal insanity to conclude, because you're in the darkness, that the sun no longer exists. But it doesn't seem so insane for us when we let a particular hard set of circumstances begin to cause us to question the goodness, the faithfulness of God. And sadly, we become comfortable in bringing God into the court of our judgment and question His character.

I love the resolve of Habakkuk. In fact, this is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture; it's a passage that does get me up in the morning. Here's the final verses of Habakkuk, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor no fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls. . .”

Now if you're in an agricultural economy, that means it's over. Now here's what follows, “…yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.” And then it says, “To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments,” and that means, “Sing this every day because God is faithful to His declaration of who He is.” You have reason for hope, reason for joy, no matter what your circumstances may say to you.

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The structure of Nahum is, in a basic way, different than any of the other of the Minor Prophets because this is a book that is not written to the children of Israel. It's actually, the primary audience of Nahum is Assyria, that marauding superpower that had crushed Israel. But here's what God is doing. The implicit audience is Israel; it's sort of like this. It's sort of like a mom who's correcting one of her children, but she’s speaking loudly enough because she wants her other children to hear, that’s what’s going on. God wants Israel to hear what He's saying to Nahum because there are things that they need to get a hold of that are in this message to this ungodly, not God-fearing, idolatrous nation that has so victimized Israel.

The hope of Israel is, in ways, defined by God's message to Nahum. Here are some of the elements of that message. First, that God is holy and righteous in all His ways. All of the ways of the Lord are right and true.

I think one of the things that has happened to us culturally is we have lost the category of holy. No one ever talks about holy anymore. And that sense of that there are things that are holy and there are things that are not and that the One that rules it all is absolutely perfectly holy, and holiness is not just one of His characteristics; He is holy in all of His characteristics. God is holy in faithfulness, and holy in sovereignty, and holy in justice, and holy in power, is the epicenter of our hope.

Second thing, because God is holy, He's angry with sin. It's hard for us understand that the anger of God against sin really is the hope of the universe. You would not want to live in a world where the one in charge of the world did not care about evil.

You could argue that it’s the anger of God with evil that drove Jesus to the cross because He would not let evil win. You should be heartened that God is angry with sin because His anger with sin is part of the zeal to deliver us from sin by the mercy of the Savior.

Because God is holy and because He's angry with sin, He will meet out His justice. There will be penalties to be paid; and the fact that there will be penalties to be paid, again, points us to the One who would come, who would bear the ultimate penalty for sin. So at the cross, we see God's anger; at the cross, we see God's justice; at the cross, we see God's mercy, all coming together.

And then, He is faithful to His righteous cause; He will not forsake His righteous cause. And so, we see history marching toward this moment where Jesus would come, justice would reign, righteousness would reign, anger would do its work, mercy would be the result. And we know, because God won't forsake His righteous cause, that He’s not done yet. There will be the final defeat of sin, and we will live forever in a place where sin is and suffering are no more, and we will live with Him in righteousness and peace forever and ever and ever! That's the hope of the people of God; it's rooted in His holiness.

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So, Micah is covering and written in the same time as Hosea and Isaiah. And Micah is basically a warning of judgment against Samaria and Judah. And God is outraged because His people are doing this unthinkable thing; they've combined Temple worship with the worship of idols. These are people that would actually worship, stop and worship an idol on their way to the Temple. It’s a shocking ability for us to have duplicitous hearts, and Micah is in the Bible because it mirrors our struggle. You can confess allegiance to the Lord and disobey Him almost at the same time.

You may be driving your family to Sunday morning service; you're going there to celebrate the grace you've been given, and you’re screaming and yelling at your children on the way! You are a person of absolute un-grace; you are absolutely contradicting the very thing that you say you want to celebrate, and your life is about. Micah pictures a struggle that is in all of us.

And so, what would you say about the gospel and judgment? Well, here's what's really important to understand and it travels through all of these prophets, that warnings of judgment are always grace. Because if all God wanted to do was to judge us, He wouldn’t warn us first, He would just judge us. Whenever God announces His judgment, why is He doing that? To give us a chance to listen, and to see, and to confess, and to turn. The core message then of Micah is that this righteous Judge is also a tender Savior, and He will not forsake His righteous requirement in order to deliver His mercy. But He will not forsake His mercy to be a Judge.

I love how this begins to culminate the crescendo here in Micah. Let me read for you, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be the ruler of Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days. Therefore, he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall draw secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace.”

Do you know when that passage was quoted? It was quoted by the wise men when nervous King Herod was wondering where is this One, “Who has been born King of the Jews?” Pretty amazing! A direct prophecy in the midst of this warning of judgment of the exact place of the birth of this Shepherd King who would come!

You see in the midst of the judgment, God holds out the hope that there's a Shepherd coming who will draw His people back, and He will rule His people in righteousness. Running right alongside of the warnings of judgment are the themes of mercy and grace and a very specific promise of Jesus. Jesus would be the Shepherd; Jesus would be the King. And His methodology of being that would be that He would be the Lamb, who would pay the penalty that would open the floodgates of mercy so that people would have a Shepherd and have a King forever!

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Well, you sort of have to ask yourself, “Why in the world is Jonah in the Bible?” This weird story of this rebellious prophet and this big fish, and it's listed as a prophet, but there's almost no prophecy in Jonah, a forty-eight-verse weird narrative. Well, I would propose that Jonah is in the Bible because this narrative captures an entire biblical worldview in a podcast.

There are four elements that are part of a biblical worldview that are so powerfully depicted in Jonah. First, you have, in Jonah, a God of awesome, inestimable glory. This God is in absolute control of His world. I love, as you begin to go through the narrative, that first you see God sending the storm; He's that in control. And then it says that He appoints a fish to do something. Now either you say, “That's just a metaphor or this is real history.” Near the end of Jonah, we find God appointing a worm; I mean think, how many worms are there that a single worm will do the bidding of this One? It’s a God of just mind-boggling power and glory.

You see a world that's terribly broken by sin. You see sin in its ugliness in Jonah both in the huge corporate sense in Nineveh, which was a wicked city, and in the heart of Jonah who would rebel against God and fall into such spiritual insanity that he could actually believe that he could escape the presence of God. Let me just say this; “If, in any moment, you think you are able to escape the presence of God, you are spiritually insane!”

And then you see, in Jonah, just beautifully depicted, the existence of powerful, rescuing grace. In fact, the subtitle I would give to Jonah is, “Unrelenting Grace.” You see grace in its most amazing forms, surprising grace. You see grace operating so that this fish that has swallowed Jonah, now vomits him up on the beach. Sometimes grace looks like vomit! We have chapter and verse for that! It's surprising. God will do whatever is necessary. He will use whatever tool is necessary to draw us back. He will not abandon His work of grace.

And then we see the fact that we human beings were made to live for something bigger than us! Jonah was called to live for something bigger than Jonah's comfort, Jonah’s vision of what his life should be, his political leanings. Every human being was created for transcendent life, way, way bigger than what we would normally choose for ourselves.

But what really captures the power of the message of Jonah are three words; three of the most important words that have ever been written down on a page, three of the most important words that you could ever, ever consider, three words that have the power to change you and everything about you. Here are the three words, “But the Lord.” What changes the narrative of the book of Jonah, this man was heading for disaster, was the divine interruption.

And that's our hope too, “But the Lord;” there would be no covenant promises. “But the Lord,” there would be no Bible. “But the Lord,” there would have been no coming of Christ. “But the Lord,” there'd be no church. “But the Lord,” there would be no conviction in our hearts. “But the Lord,” there would be no ability to believe. “But the Lord,” there would be no protecting, providing, delivering, transforming grace. Our life hangs on those three words, “But the Lord.” If Jonah were only three words long, “But the Lord,” it would be worth its place in the Old Testament.

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Well, Obadiah is an oracle against Edom. Now, you probably don't know what an oracle is, so an oracle is a message passed down by one of authority. And Edom was a neighboring nation, hostile toward Judah. The Edomites were the descendants of Esau, and that sort of brings the whole history of the Old Testament into focus. And so, because of that, I would entitle Obadiah, “Salvation is from the Lord.”

You would read through this set of charges against Edom, and you would say to yourself, “Okay, Paul, your model that the Gospel is in every one of these Prophets has just been busted because it doesn’t seem there's anything you can ever find of the gospel here in Obadiah. But it is there, and it goes right back to the fact that in every way you would mean these words, “Salvation is from the Lord.” It is God who chose to place His grace on Jacob and not Esau. And it's God who now is extending His favor to Judah and not Edom. And where's the hope in that?

The hope is this, if God did not first choose me, I would never choose Him. It takes grace to desire grace; and unless God meets me in His grace, I would never ever desire His grace. There are four ways that Obadiah demonstrates that salvation is from Lord.

Here’s the first. It's the Lord who chooses. The remarkable message of the Old Testament is God will set His mercy on whom He will set His mercy. You could not argue, in any way shape or form if you're ever faithful to the history the Old Testament, that Israel deserved God's mercy. If you watch these people rebel again and again and again, do exactly what God has asked them not to do, you would have to conclude, “These people do not deserve God's mercy. God chooses whom He will place His mercy on.”

Second, the Lord is the final judge. Judgment is in the hands of the Lord, and that immediately drives us to the cross because, at the cross, God's judgment and God's mercy kiss. Judgment is meted out on Christ as a penalty for sin so that mercy would be delivered to those whom God has chosen.

Third, the Lord defends. God will defend the people on whom He has set His mercy. He defends, He protects, He delivers. He fights battles for His people even when His people don't have the sense enough to fight those battles themselves.

And then finally, the Lord blesses. The Lord placed His blessing on Abraham. That blessing was extended to Jacob. That blessing was then extended to Judah. You can see the passing down of the blessing of the Lord. And we know out of Judah came Jesus Christ; and we know that in Galatians, it says that those who are in Christ are now the heirs of the promises made to Abraham.

Like other prophets, Obadiah is a finger-pointing down the years from Abraham to Jesus, to you and me, the unshakable chain of the blessings of God. He will not forsake those upon whom He has placed His favor, and He will continue to promote His redemptive plan till that plan is complete. When you read Obadiah, you should hear echoing in the background the words of Christ, “It is finished!” God will complete His plan. He will do what's necessary. He will bless His people.

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There are a lot of people out there who are sort of afraid of the Old Testament and don't really think there is anything for them there. There are wonderful encouraging gospel themes in the Old Testament. You see who God is; you see His love, His power, His zeal for His redemptive plan, His zeal for His people. 

You see yourself revealed there and the ways that every person who has ever taken a breath needs God's grace. It is just wonderful, and I would encourage you to again, spend time in the Old Testament.

We find ourselves in what is called the Minor Prophets and, you know, if you would read quickly through the Minor Prophets you would say, “Well, this is really pretty repetitive.” What has impressed me is there's a unity of theme through all of these prophetic writings; yet there's a specificity of content that meets the needs of the moment and the audience of the moment, and isn’t that the way God works in our lives as well? We all experience the beauty of His grace, but we experience it in very, very different ways. God meets us exactly where we are.

Now we’re in Amos. I would subtitle Amos, “Mercy Produces Mercy.” And it's clear in Amos that God's plan for His people is not just to claim them and forgive them when they mess up, but to transform them that they would become His people, not just by means of His choosing, but demonstrated by the way they live; they live like they're the people of God. And what you see in in Amos, surprising in a book about mercy, is the harsh hand of the Lord.

I want to read to you from Amos 4:

“I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,
    and lack of bread in all your places,
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.

⁷ “I also withheld the rain from you
    when there were yet three months to the harvest;
I would send rain on one city,
    and send no rain on another city;
one field would have rain,
    and the field on which it did not rain would wither;
⁸ so two or three cities would wander to another city
    to drink water, and would not be satisfied;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.

⁹ “I struck you with blight and mildew;
    your many gardens and your vineyards,
    your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.

¹⁰ “I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt;
    I killed your young men with the sword,
and carried away your horses,
    and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.

¹¹ “I overthrew some of you,
    as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
    and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.

Now you think, “Who would follow a God that is that harsh?” Well, the refrain is the giveaway. “I did this, but you did not return to Me. I did this, but you did not return to Me. I did this, but you did not return to Me.” The harsh hand of the Lord is at once His hand of restorative mercy. God brings those difficult things to His people so that they would return to Him and then know His life, His hope, His grace. You see, God's mercy doesn't always come to us in comfortable forms. I think we need to teach, preach, and encourage one another with a theology of uncomfortable grace because often God's grace comes to us in uncomfortable forms.

And the reason you have that harsh mercy is because God is dissatisfied with the way His people are living. He charges leaders from being uncaring, celebrating their wealth and their power, while the rest of their people are suffering! You see God's mercy is not just forgiving mercy; it’s transformative mercy! And so He will bring hard things our way in order to mold us into His image, to mold us into the people of God.

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Joel, in very obvious ways, carries foreword the logical, theological structure of the redemptive story. It is organized very clearly in that bad news-good news structure.

You see, the gospel is the worst news ever because the gospel puts before us the harsh reality of sin, and that sin is not just a matter of our environment, it's more prominently a matter of our heart. That's why that bad news devastates me because I can run from a situation, I can run from a location, I can run from a relationship; but I can't run from me. I’ve found that whenever I try to run from me, I show up with me at the end of the run. So, it doesn't work.

And so, I’ve got to accept the bad news before the good news is ever going to be interesting to me because it's only when I say, “I can't find the solution here, and I can’t actually find a solution here,” that I begin to look for the solution here. And so, you have in Joel a theme of the bad news, the judgment of the Law of God, and the theme of the good news, the rescuing grace of God.

Without the Law, there's no need for grace. But you cannot ask the Law to do what only grace can accomplish. The Law does a brilliant job of exposing our sin; the Law is a wonderful guide for our lives, but it has no capacity whatsoever to rescue and restore our hearts. So, you have to have both of those themes, Law and grace, bad news, good new; that's the gospel. You drop either one of those themes, you either have no hope or you have false hope. It's important in a culture, Joel is important in our culture that has abandoned the category of sin, to remind us again that we need that category in order to seek and celebrate God's grace.

Two really wonderful gospel themes that are here. First of all, is the promise of the Spirit. It's in Joel that we hear, “I will pour out My Spirit on these people.” Now, we see that promise in its fulfillment in Acts, chapter 2, as Peter says, “This is happening now in your presence; God has poured out His Spirit into the hearts of His people; God now dwelling in His people; His people now becoming His Temple.”

And then I love this message in Joel; I’ll say it this way because it's the exact words. God says, “You repent, and I’ll repent too.” You say, “Well, wait a minute, what does that mean?” God says, “You repent, and I will turn, I will turn from My judgment, and I will turn towards you in grace.”

What a beautiful picture of God who repents! He doesn’t repent of sin because He has none, but He repents from that move of judgment and replaces judgment with mercy. “You turn and I'll turn too!” That's the beautiful promise there in Joel, chapter 2, “You come!”

Joel even says, “You bring words with you, you make confession, and I will gladly turn.” And, then he says this, “And I will bring a blessing.” Isn’t that beautiful? Not physical blessing, but the blessing of His love, the blessing of His grace, the blessing of His indwelling Spirit. I love Joel! I love the honesty of the bad news, but I love the good news so much more!

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I’m going title Hosea, “The Ultimate Payment.” Maybe there are few places in the Old Testament where you see such a graphic, shocking, humbling picture of sin and God's grace. This is a shocking book of the Bible, on the surface, hard to understand. And so I want to put this in context; you will never understand the shocking nature of Hosea without understanding the warnings that God made to the children of Israel as they were entering the Promised Land.

I want to go back and read for you from Deuteronomy 6, verses 10ff:

And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and…Jacob, to give you…(to) build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and…destroy you from off the face of the earth.

Hosea presents to us a sad marital drama as an illustration of what sin is. Sin is spiritual adultery; it's being unfaithful in the same way marital adultery is an act of unfaithfulness. And it’s the exact warning that was made by God. You will think that you have everything, and you will first forget me, and then you will forsake me, and then you will run after other gods, other lovers.

God calls Hosea to marry a sexually immoral woman. The thing that you think is going to happen, happens. She leaves and she prostitutes herself. What a sad and horrible thing. It's in ways, a bad marriage that's gone worse. And then God tells Hosea to go and buy her back and make her his own again.

That shockingly, is us. We are the unfaithful ones; we run after other lovers. There are moments in my marriage where I would rather win an argument than to do what pleases my Lord. There are moments where I would rather use my money to buy me a nicer steak or another pair shoes than I would to give it in-service of God's kingdom work. There are times when I treat people as objects for my pleasure rather than as those made in the image of God.

Sin is spiritual adultery, but God takes spiritually adulterous people, and He pays the penalty for their unfaithfulness and buys them back by His redeeming grace so that we may be wed to Him in an eternal, spiritual union. How amazing is that! I bring no righteousness; I bring no worthiness; I bring nothing but my sin. But He places His love on me, and He will not turn His back on me. Jesus takes every ounce of our rejection; so in our marriage to our Lord, we would never again see the back of His head.

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Well, before I talk about the gospel themes in Daniel, I want to talk about a problem we seem to have with Daniel. And the problem is that we tend to miss what Daniel is about and make heroes out of the characters in Daniel…like Daniel, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And the reality is there is only one glorious hero in Daniel. In fact, the heroic nature of this one is the dominant theme of Daniel, and it just really sadly misses the point when we focus more on the action of the human characters and not the One that is on center stage in Daniel.

I would title Daniel, “Lord of Glory.” There are three themes in Daniel that I want to look at, but I want to say this. Daniel clearly presents to us this God who rules over the affairs of human history and the affairs of nations, and that is a central theme. This is a God who is in charge; He is in control. The Lord rules and that's a central theme of all of the biblical story.

But there are interesting details in Daniel. First is, you see the willingness of God's people to step into danger for the sake of the Lord. Now you have to ask yourself the question, “Where would they get this willingness?” Listen; if I am ever willing to risk my life for the sake of something other than myself, you know that grace has visited me because it's counterintuitive for a human being to do that. We are self-oriented, self-protecting human beings, and so the righteous, courageous acts of God's children in exile point to the grace that enables them to have those responses because that's not natural to a human being.

Along with that, you have prayers all over Daniel; Daniel is a book of prayer. Those prayers are prayers of worship and cries of help and cries for wisdom. And once again that demonstrates that these characters we make heroes of are not self-sufficient; they're getting their strength, they’re getting their wisdom, they're getting their courage from their Lord even though they are in exile.

You see a second theme. You see, in Daniel, very powerfully presented the war between human glory and the glory of God. We are self-aggrandizing human beings. You would have to wonder why we have all the fine-grained details of the story of Nebuchadnezzar, for example. Well, because there’s a whole lot of Nebuchadnezzar in all of us. And you see the battle between human glory and the glory of God very clearly presented.

And then that grand theme of the sovereignty of God over all things! God will continue to advance His story until that story is complete. Nations will rise and nations will fall; kingdoms will come; kings will live; kings will die--nothing will thwart God's story because God rules and He will advance His work until that work has completed its work. In that, there is hope! Daniel gives us a Lord of glory.

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Ezekiel is one of those places in the Old Testament where the gospel themes are not hard to find. I would call Ezekiel, “Resurrecting Grace.”

Maybe the big questions of Ezekiel are: “Where do you look? What do you think? How do you act when life makes no sense? When the things that you depend on have crumbled?” Maybe that’s your job that you thought you would have forever. Maybe that's a marriage that has broken up--it's unthinkable to you. Maybe it's physical sickness that's robbed you of your strength. Maybe it's a church that you thought would be a place of refuge and now is in horrible controversy. Maybe it's your family of origin that’s just a place of controversy and division. When life is hard, when it doesn't seem to make sense, where do you run? Where do you hide? That's the world of Ezekiel.

It's a broken world. It’s a world that looks like death is reigning and life is dead. And in that moment, it's tempting to question God's promises; it's tempting to question His power; it's tempting to doubt His presence; it's tempting to bring God into the court of our judgment and to question His faithfulness and His love.

On the surface, Ezekiel seems to be a portion of Scripture that you should not read if you're depressed already because it seems very depressing. But there is this moment in Ezekiel that’s hope-given, so beautiful. It's that valley of dry bones; this word picture is just amazing. Dry bones as far as you can see, and the ultimate question of the whole biblical story is asked in that moment, “Can life come out of death?”

The reason that question so important is if the answer isn’t, “Yes!” then we’re doomed. And the answer is, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” God has that power and God has that willingness, and you can't look at life coming into those dry bones in Ezekiel without thinking of Ephesians where we’re told that, “We who were once dead in sin are made alive in Christ.”

You see apart from God's resurrecting life-giving grace, we’re all just dry bones, we’re just dead people walking. Out of death and destruction, God brings life! That's the story of Jesus. He who died conquered death so that we could experience new life in Him. In the darkest of moments, the gospel shines the brightest!

I am persuaded, and this will surprise some of you, that hopelessness is the doorway to hope because it's only when you give up on finding life anywhere else that you will seek life where it can only ever be found. When you look around and say, “There’s death all around me, death inside of me, I can't look this way, and I can't look this way for hope,” then you are ready to find the hope that can only be found in the person and work of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.

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Lamentations picks up an important theme. I think it's a theme that all of us would like to deny. In fact, I think every human being has told the lie to himself or herself that Lamentations confronts. I know I have and it's this, “That I can do what is wrong in the eyes of God and it will be okay, that sin doesn't have consequences.”

And Lamentations is a very, very sad portion of Scripture. The content of Lamentations is five mournfully sad poems; because what Lamentations puts in front of us, in ways that are impossible to deny, is the horrible consequences of rebellion against God, the horrible consequences of acting like you know better, you're smarter, your way is better, the consequences of rejecting God's Law and writing your own.

We find these consequences in the life of Israel. We now see the suffering of Judah and Jerusalem under the siege of Babylon. The unthinkable has happened; in terms of biblical history, it’s unthinkable. Jerusalem is destroyed; the temple is gone! How could this happen? God warned His people; they denied His warning. Remember, a warning is never judgment; a warning is grace. If all God is going to do is judge you, He wouldn’t warn you first. And yet those warnings were ignored.

As you’re reading those sad poems, it looks like God has been defeated; it looks like His promises have failed; it looks like all hope is lost. But that's not what's going on. What’s going on is God's people are experiencing the consequences, the seriousness of sin.

Listen, even that experience is grace because it confronts the lie in us that we can do whatever we want to do and it will be okay. It's not okay to scream at your wife; it’s not okay to look at pornography; it’s not okay to mistreat your children; it’s not okay to misuse your money; it’s not okay to cheat on your taxes; it’s not okay to be a prideful, arrogant person; it's not okay! Sin is serious and has consequences!

I would title Lamentations, “The Exiles,” because God's people are now living in horrible exile. And Lamentations reminds us that there are three exiles in Scripture. The first one is in Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve are exiled out of the garden because of their sin. The second one is the exile in Lamentations and these prophets that talk about God's exiled people. The third one is when Jesus, the Messiah, is exiled, driven out of the walls of the city, put on a mountain of death, treated as a criminal, so that exiles could finally be brought home.

You see, all of us are born as exiles, separated from God, outside of His kingdom of love and grace, and we need to be brought home, not by our righteousness, but by the righteousness of another; not by our goodness, but by His grace. There's hope for exiles because Jesus was willing to be exiled so that we would be brought home.

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I find myself wanting to say, every time we launch into one of these studies, “I love this book,” because I do. The study of these Old Testament books has been so much fun for me, so deeply encouraging and joy producing. Don't just spend your entire life in your New Testament; there are gospel riches to be found in your Old Testament.

And Jeremiah has an important place as a thread in this gospel cord. There's huge tension in Jeremiah; it's the tension that's inescapable in the gospel story. I would call Jeremiah, “The Paradox” because Jeremiah, as clearly as any of the prophets, presents to us the paradox that's in the Prophets. It's a question that lurks in the background all the time, and that question launches us into the center of the gospel and pushes us toward the necessity of the cross of Jesus Christ.

In ways that often we don't notice, Jeremiah presses the cross toward us because Jeremiah presents these people who have sinned grievously and repeatedly against God; it puts that rebellion in our face. These are people who have rebelled against a God of boundless love and faithful grace and tender mercy. This is the God who rescued them, who provided for them, who gave of Himself and His promises, who literally dwelt in the middle of them, and they’ve turned their backs on this God. And yet, He's everything that they need.

Now, here's the paradox; how can this holy, righteous God turn a blind eye to this sin? How can He have relationship with these people? It seems like it's over! A holy God cannot live with unholy people without turning His back on His righteousness; and if He turns His back on His righteousness, He's not a God worthy of our trust.

That's the tension; what's going to happen now? They've ignored all of His warnings, ignored all of His offers of grace. How can a holy God live with unholy people? Well, the answer is this, unless a payment is made so that forgiveness can be given. Jeremiah cries for a payment so that sin can be atoned for, so that sinful people can be accepted by this holy God. There's the tension of the biblical story, and so Jeremiah pushes the cross at us.

Oh no, you won't find the cross mentioned in Jeremiah, but the cross is there; because without the sacrifice of Jesus, we are doomed because we can never ever be accepted by this Holy One because He will not turn His back on His own righteousness. Jesus comes, the righteous Lamb, and He pays the penalty so that broken, rebellious, foolish sinners can be accepted by God--now with their penalty paid! Jeremiah pushes us to the cross of Jesus.

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So you probably don't need me to say this to you if you're at all familiar with the Old Testament, “You're familiar with Isaiah.” Maybe there's a way in which Isaiah is the most comfortable of the Old Testament books for those of us who tend to spend most of our time in the New Testament because it reads a lot like the New Testament because there's no Old Testament portion of Scripture where the gospel is more apparent and more obvious than it is in Isaiah.

I would title Isaiah, although this is really a title for every portion of Scripture in the Bible, “Looking for Jesus.” You know, I do appreciate how all of the gospel themes, the themes of the gospel that we’re familiar with are apparent in Isaiah, apparent there with a whole lot of digging.

Isaiah presents us this central reality; it’s a God who is in our world and is holy beyond our understanding. There's this moment in the throne room that's captured in Isaiah 6 where we get to look into the throne room of Almighty God. We get to eavesdrop on the voices there, and we hear, “Holy! Holy! Holy! is the Lord God Almighty. The earth is filled with His glory.” That glory of His holiness; it's trying to capture the expansiveness of the holiness of God.

God's holiness is not one of His characteristics; it's His essence! He's holy in every way. He's holy in grace and holy in righteous and holy in justice and holy in mercy and holy in faithfulness--He's holy!

But there's a second reality powerfully depicted in Isaiah. It's people who are corrupted by sin, unholy. You see gross idolatry; gross materialism; horrible, sad, cultural corruption; injustice; lack of care for the needy. You see a world as broken as the world that you live in. You know, as you look at the Internet or you follow the news, you think, “How can this world be this broken?” Well, that's Isaiah as well.

And then you see a God who acts. He doesn't just exist; He acts. And He acts in two ways. He acts in judgment and mercy. You wouldn’t want to live in a world where there is no righteous judge because evil would reign without challenge. You wouldn’t want to live in a world where there is no mercy because none of us could sustain life in that world. There's a God of justice and a God of mercy, and in that there's hope.

There's a fourth thing that’s clearly there. Hope can't be found in us; it's only found in God. And so it makes sense that as Isaiah talks about justice and mercy, you have some of the clearest prophecies of the coming Messiah because that justice and that mercy will meet on the cross. Because of God's justice, Christ will die. Because of His mercy, He will die, and there is redemption found for us.

Isaiah preaches the gospel to us; the gospel that is a combination of bad news and good news. The good news culminates in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, which is the joy that's put before us, the joy of His coming in Isaiah!

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You know, you’re working your way through the Old Testament and its history and the theology that's there, and you're beginning to get this worldview, and you’re beginning to tune into the gospel themes, and then you hit Song of Solomon, and you think, “What? Why is this in here? What is this about? Do I really need these embarrassing details in my Bible? There's too much sex in the Song of Solomon.”

Well, I want to call this little song, “God cares about the details.” You know, there's a beautiful picture here of the intimacy of pure marital love, it's just gorgeous. And the details are poetic and picturesque and moving. If you are at all interested in love, in what pure, committed, faithful love looks like, what the deepest joys of intimacy feel like, they’re there in the Song of Solomon.

And I love that this is in the Bible because it reminds me that the deepest, most intimate details of my life are not outside of God's attention. God cares about even the most intimate details that I wouldn't talk about, that I wouldn’t share with somebody else, that are as private as they can be, even the moment when two human beings in marital love are naked next to one another with no protection, God's there!

His presence is there, His love is there, His concern is there. God's present in those moments; there is no place, no situation, no location, no matter how seemingly private and intimate, where God is absent. God is all over the pages of the Song of Solomon, and that picture of His presence is grace to us. It’s grace that He would paint a picture for us of something that sin has so terribly broken and so terribly distorted, that we’re reminded again of what sexuality is meant to be. That's grace to us that God would paint a picture of intimacy that would be a correction and an encouragement to us,

But there's something else to remember about Song of Solomon. Although it's not an allegory of the Church, know that the highest purpose for marital intimacy is to point a picture to Christ’s relationship to His church. We see that in Ephesians 5, that there's no more beautiful marital love, there is no sweeter marital intimacy, there is no better purity of marital faithfulness than the love that Jesus has for His Church. It’s faithful and pure and intimate and lovely.

And so Song of Solomon is a finger pointing to a level of love that we will experience with Jesus if we never experience it with another human being. Jesus loves us! He loves us with the depth of purity; He loves us in intimate, personal moments that you can't stretch the human language to its furthest elasticity to capture. He loves us! He loves us! He loves us! And God cares that we would know that we are loved, and we’re loved with a pure and faithful love, the love of Jesus. Song of Solomon is a finger pointing to that love!

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I love Ecclesiastes and I think you should too. It's a reminder that you should run to again and again. I would subtitle Ecclesiastes, “The Search,” because this is a dramatic book. It captures the drama of every human being's existence. We were made in the image of God; and one of the aspects of that is we’re rational human beings, we’re meaning-makers, we want life to make sense to us.

I say this a lot and I mean it, “Everyone, everyone is a theologian whether you're a baker or a painter or a mechanic or an accountant, you’re a theologian. Everyone's a philosopher, everyone's an archaeologist, and you'll dig through the mound of your existence to make sense out of life.” That's why a little child will ask 200 "Why?" questions in a row till their parents are ready to go crazy, because a child wants to understand his world. He wants to know why things are the way they are.

You know, in Ecclesiastes, you see that everyone searches for hope. Everyone is going to hook their hope to something; you want to be hopeful. Everyone searches somewhere for meaning. Everyone looks for truth. Everyone attaches his/her identity to someone, to something. Everyone searches for fulfillment. And what the Ecclesiastes says to us, which is just such good gospel talk, “Everything in this world will fail you.”

You think that your job will satisfy you, and five years later, you’re thinking about working somewhere else. You think your spouse will make you happy and unhappiness creeps back in. You think that money will satisfy your problem, but it won't.

You see, this created world was never designed to satisfy that deeper longing, that deeper hunger for identity and for meaning for satisfaction. All the success in the world doesn't do that. It's always amazing to me, sad at the deepest level, when we’re confronted in the news with some ultimately successful person who has committed suicide. They’ve looked for meaning where meaning can't be found.

And so there's this theme in Ecclesiastes that what we’re searching for can't be found under the sun. “Under the sun” sort of is, if the world, the universe was a sheet of paper, and you would tear off the heavens, you're left with a world that can't provide meaning for you.

Ultimately, meaning is only found in God. We were made for Him, and our hearts will only ever be satisfied and our minds will only rest in union with Him. And so the Ecclesiastes points us to Jesus because Jesus is the One that makes the union with the God who alone is able to satisfy our hearts possible because sin separates me from this One. Sin causes me to look elsewhere for meaning and hope. Sin makes me think that I can be and do what I cannot be and cannot do on my own. Sin causes me to worship at the foot of things that I was never meant to worship.

It's only Jesus who can rescue me and unite me with the One who will bring peace to my heart, satisfaction to my soul, who’ll give me hope that circumstances can't take away, meaning that success cannot buy. No philosophy, no thought, no human action can do what God can do for my heart, and Jesus makes relationship with this One possible.

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I love Proverbs! I've lived in Proverbs; when our kids were at home, we would go through Proverbs, and we would have them memorize one verse from each chapter. But I have to admit I don't think I understood the Proverbs for a long time. I didn't understand what this was about. I want to subtitle the Proverbs, “The Rescue.”

And the reason I'm doing that is sin reduces all of us to fools. A fool has the world inside out and upside down. A fool looks at true and sees false, and wise and sees foolish, and good and sees bad. He’s just got it wrong, and the Bible tells us that the epicenter of foolishness is, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

Now I don't think the Bible is talking at that point about philosophical atheism, but rather living as if I am a self-sufficient human being, and I know everything I need to know in order to live the way that I should live. That's craziness! That's insanity!

And so the Proverbs are designed, be prepared to be humbled, to rescue you from you because the greatest danger in your life is not outside of you; the greatest danger of your life is inside of you, it’s the foolishness of sin. And as long as sin remains inside of us, there will be artifacts of that foolishness.

It's humbling to understand that I need daily, moment by moment, to be rescued from me. And the Proverbs are all about that rescue, how God, in His grace, pours down His wisdom, wisdom we could never know on our own, wisdom we could never achieve or earn, only because He's a God of grace.

Now there are two things that I think are important about the gospel in Proverbs. First, we understand that the Proverbs are about Jesus. You say, “Well, how could that be?” Well, because the New Testament lets us know that wisdom is not an outline; wisdom is not a concept; wisdom is a person, and His name is Jesus. The wisdom on the pages of Proverbs is the wisdom of Jesus. This is Jesus, the sweet Savior coming to us, whispering in our ear things that are true. How beautiful is that?

But there's something else to realize about the Proverbs. This is where I think you unlock the Proverbs. The whole biblical story is embedded in every proverb because the Proverbs see the promises fulfilled in the future and embed those in the Proverbs. 

Let me give you an example. There's a Proverb that says, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” Now it's not meant to be mechanically true; it's not true that every time you respond softly to someone, they're going to cease being angry in a miracle because that's not exactly what the Proverbs teach. But when you decide you're going to love in the face of hatred, you’re going to make peace in the face of war, that you’re going to be kind in mistreatment. You are now living in the way that the world is moving by the plan of God. The meek will inherit the earth! Ultimately, the people who live God's way will win! That's the Proverbs.

How about marching the way wisdom is marching? How about living the way Jesus, the wise one, says to live? When you do that, you’re moving the way God is moving the story, and you will experience the benefit of that in your life. Every proverb tells us the whole biblical story and embeds in us the promise that Jesus the King will win! What a beautiful thought that is. Run to the rescue of the Proverbs. We all need that because there is foolishness inside of us.

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Before we look at our next study, I want to remind you of what we’re doing with these summaries of books of the Bible. We’re not doing a historical summary; we’re not even doing a content outline. Our goal is to find the gospel thread that goes through every book of the Bible.  Now here's what's important to remember. The Bible is not a collection of stories or a theological outline or just a bunch of wisdom statements for everyday life.

The Bible is one story; maybe the best way to say it is it’s a theologically annotated story. It’s a story with God's application and doctrinal notes, and the one story is how God moves to rescue foolish and rebellious people with the gift of a Redeemer. That is the thread that unites every book of the Bible. The Bible, with all of its various authors and all of its various periods of time, tells us one story, and what we’re trying to do is find that story in every passage of the Word of God. Well, that brings us to the Psalms.

As you’ve probably noticed I like to give these books of the Bible a subtitle and I would title the Psalms, “Honest Grace.” There are probably few portions of Scripture that are better known than the Psalms because the Psalms portray for us a picture of a world that we’re all familiar with. It's a world where dark things happen; it's a world where God confuses us; it's a world where it looks like the bad guys are winning; it's a world where unthinkable things happen. Yet it’s a world inhabited by God, a world marked by His presence and His promises.

And so you have, in the Psalms, depicted something that all of us experience--it's the messiness of faith in this fallen world. God surprises you and does things that you didn't expect, and you're never sure what's around the corner; and yet you hold on to His presence, and you hold onto His promises. That's the world of the Psalms.

The cries for help in the Psalms are the cries of everyone. Maybe the two biggest cries in the Psalms get to the heart of every human being, here it is. Will somebody love me in this broken world where all this stuff happens? Is there somebody that loves me faithfully, continually, with restoring and rescuing power? And that's accompanied with a second even deeper question that creates fear and anxiety unless you know the answer. If they know me, will they still love me?

And that's the Psalms; and those cries, that are the cries of every politician and every educator and every rock musician and every person who ever lived, are not answered by theology in the Psalms. It's answered by the hope of a Redeemer. There is no system that can meet the depth of human need that's depicted in the Psalms. There is no system that can heal the world of the Psalms. There's no system that can bring peace where there seems to be no peace and hope where there seems to be no hope. The Psalms cries for a Redeemer, and so the grace of the Psalms is honest grace; it's grace that is honest about what we face every day and gives us the only honest answer ever.

Nothing will solve the problem of the Psalms but the coming of a Redeemer, and so the Psalms are about Jesus. You don't have a few Messianic Psalms; every Psalm is Messianic because every Psalm cries for Jesus or every Psalm carries with it the promise of Jesus. You should live in the Psalms because there you find yourself and there you find Jesus.

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Everybody knows about Job. Everybody knows the suffering of this man. Everybody knows the sort of details of this story. Job could be the oldest book in the Old Testament; maybe it's foundational in ways that we haven't thought about. If you think of this story, what would you think is the big deep question of Job? I think Job asked the question of questions, and it's a question so deep that human wisdom fails to answer it correctly. Wise people don't answer this question correctly.

Maybe you would think that the primary question of Job is, “Why do bad guys prosper and good guys suffer?” And you do see that question here; you see the suffering of a righteous man. You would be tempted to think, “Doesn't my righteousness get me something?” Job echoes Psalm 73, where Asaph is looking around, and the bad guys are prospering, and the good guys are suffering, and he says this, it's rather humorous, he says, “Surely for no reason have I kept myself pure. I've obeyed for this? This is the game?”

Now the assumption of Asaph at that moment and the assumption of Job's counselors get at what is the ultimate question of Job. Here it is--Is relationship with God a meritocracy?

You say, “Paul, I don't know what that means.” Do we achieve the favor of God, the blessing of God, by means of our performance? And the devastating answer of Job is, “Absolutely not!” Because human righteousness always falls short of God's standard, and so Job destroys, decimates, human understanding of what's fair, because you would read Job and say, “It’s not fair for Job to suffer!” Fair on what standard? No one deserves God's favor; no one deserves His blessing!

The most righteous person you could name falls short. That's the penetrating drama of Job, that all of our human wisdom, all of our scorekeeping falls short, doesn't answer the question. It's not right to say, “Job suffered because of his sin. It’s not right to say Job deserved blessing because he was righteous,” because, all of those deny the existence of a holy God who cannot be pleased by our righteousness, who must provide for us another righteousness so that we can have a relationship with Him.

The last four chapters of Job say, “You're not like me. You don't know what I know. You can't do what I do. You must not question me. I am magnificent in the ways that you will never be magnificent. My glory is beyond what you can understand. You cannot cross that creature-creator line. I'm good, I'm holy, I'm righteous, and I will do what I will. And hope is found in placing your trust in Me, not your trust in your righteousness!”

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If you read the book of Esther, you may wonder why in the world is this in the Bible? It is the one book of the Bible that does not mention God at all. Yeah, you heard me right--God's not in the book of Esther, and you would wonder then how does this fit in this redemptive story? I thought this story was the biography of God, God’s story, the redemptive story, ultimately the story of Jesus. We’ve seen God's presence in all these books; we’ve seen the way that He works; we've seen His love for His people; we've seen Him; we've seen Him; we've seen Him. And now we don't see Him. Why? What in the world is going on?

I think the absence of God in Esther is why Esther is in the Bible. It's about those moments in the history of God's story and in the history of our story where God does not seem anywhere to be found, where God seems absent. And maybe the drama of Esther is how will the people of God live when God doesn't seem near? How do you live in those moments when God doesn't seem near?

Listen, don't judge the quality of your faith by your excitement on Sunday morning when you're surrounded by people with hands raised, and you’re remembering the truths of the gospel. Judge the nature of your living faith in those moments where none of that exists, where you're alone, and it seems like the heavens are brass, it seems like the promises of God don't include you. It seems like God has walked away, when it looks like bad people are prospering.

You see in Esther arrogant kings, no heart for God, who have power. And you would think maybe that Esther then is a different biography; it's a biography of a woman who gains power and changes the story. But it's not that. It’s that in those moments where God seems most absent, God is actually actively working. He will never stop working until His work is complete.

And as I have said before, this is a theme throughout all the Old Testament. God raises up unlikely instruments; He raises up this woman whom He uses to continue to protect and propel His plan for His people and His plan for the ages, His plan of redemption.

This God who seems absent is actually working to protect and preserve His story. You shouldn’t conclude, because you can't see the hand of God, that God isn’t at work anymore then you should conclude that the sun isn't shining because you’re in your basement and you can't see it. These are these moments where you have to do what Hebrews 11 says, “You must believe that God exists and He rewards those who seek Him.” I'm not going to give way to belief in the functional death of my Redeemer even in moments where I do not see His hand.

The power of the message of Esther is that God is not absent even in the moments where He seems He's absent. I'm thankful for Esther. I'm thankful this book is in the Bible; it confronts the deepest of our questions and gives us hope.

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If I love Ezra, you just have to love Nehemiah. It’s a companion book, same sort of period of time of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the wall. It's a time of restoration and reconciliation and rebuilding. And I love the picture of those three words; think of those three words: Reconciliation, Restoration, Rebuilding.

Those three words are at the heart of the redemptive story. Reconciliation-God reconciles us to Himself; Israel is reconciled again. God restores us to what we were meant to be and what we were meant to do. And God rebuilds us-your heart is in the process of rebuilding. We call that progressive sanctification. It's God's process of a moral rebuilding of all of us because the house that has a heart has been broken down by sin.

And so what Nehemiah teaches us, in this moment in redemptive history, is embedded in restoration, reconciliation, and rebuilding, is this bright hope, the hope of fresh starts and new beginnings. That what grace offers us, what redemption offers us, what God offers His people is fresh starts and new beginnings.

Listen, God, in His righteousness, would have been completely right in turning His back on these people and saying, “I am going to walk away from this.” They were covenant breakers; they were lawbreakers; they were idolaters. But God is not just a Righteous Judge; He's a Compassionate Redeemer; and so He finds a way of delivering fresh starts and new beginnings to His people without compromising His holiness and His righteousness. And so without a moment of compromise, God offers that second opportunity, that fresh start and new beginnings. And in that way, Nehemiah preaches the cross; because on the cross of Jesus Christ, justice, holiness, and grace kiss.

You see, God would not walk away from His holy requirement, and say, “You know, these are kind of nice people, let's just forgive them and move on.” Jesus had to come; He had to live a perfect life; He had to die an acceptable death, because God would not turn from His justice in order to deliver His grace.

On the cross, justice and grace intersect, intermingle. The hope of humanity is that God would not abandon His righteousness. If this world is not run by One who is righteous, we have no hope! But the hope of the world also is God would not abandon His grace.

Restoration, Reconciliation, Rebuilding--that was not just the plan for Nehemiah; it was not just the hope of the people in that period of time that God would restore them, that God would reconcile them, that God word rebuild for them. It’s the hope of every human being who has ever taken a breath that there is reconciliation, there is restoration, there is rebuilding. Welcome to the hope of Nehemiah!

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I love Ezra! Well, I love the whole Bible, but I just love Ezra. You have this moment where Israel returns from captivity, and you can say, “Ahhh! God's not done; the story is not over. Maybe out of this ragbag of remnant people, He can do something.”

But there's something else that confronts me when I read Ezra that is mind blowing to me, and I'm just going to ask you, as I talk about this, to put this in your theological pipe and smoke it. Or, if that offends you, get out this theological gum and chew it because you have to have this in your theology. God is willing and able to use evil to accomplish good. Are you rattled? Does that bother you? Is that outside of the way you think about spiritual things?

I think often we have this good God and bad god thing where there’s two sovereign gods. One is evil; we call him Satan. One is good; we call Him God. And every bad thing is under the sovereignty of Satan; every good thing is under the sovereignty of God. Well, that's not what's presented in Scripture. God raises up Cyrus, a pagan, evil king, to supply what is necessary and to lead the rebuilding of the House of God in Israel. God actually works in the heart of this man to do this unthinkable thing.

Now it should not surprise us because, elsewhere in Scripture, we’re told that God rules over the affairs of nations--that He raises kings up and He casts kings down. Proverbs says, I love this, “The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wills.”

Listen, God's toolbox, the tools that He can use to accomplish His purpose (Are you ready for this?) includes everything. Everything is in His toolbox. He is unshakably Sovereign, and He can use whomever He wills to do what ever He wills, whenever He wills it for the sake of His people and for the sound of His glory. That's the God we serve.

And in the celebration that we should all feel as Israel is coming back, we should weep with joy that these people are coming back, and the plan of God is not done, and it’s going to continue, and God’s going to find a way to fulfill His promises even though unthinkable things have happened. We should not forget that God raises up people whom you wouldn't normally trust, whom you wouldn’t normally think that anything good could come from them, to provide what is good for His people. God's toolbox is everything.

What do we see happen? We see God's Law being read again. We see worship happening again. We see life again for the people of God. Captivity was not the end of the story. We’re all exiles and captives, and God uses a variety of means to bring us back to Him, back to relationship with Him, back to the worship of Him, back to the love of His Law, what He says is right and good.

Now maybe your problem today is your God is too small; He’s too limited; you don't understand the hugeness of this God, how big His toolbox is. He can really use everything to do what is best for His people and His glory! That’s your God!

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Well, when you read 1 Chronicles, you get greeted with a long set of genealogies. It's the genealogy of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and you may wonder why is that genealogy there? Well, it’s really meant to highlight the genealogy of two tribes, the tribe of Levi and the tribe of Judah. Levi, the tribe of Levi, is that priestly line; and the tribe of Judah is that royal line; and why are those lines highlighted? Because God again is reminding us of what this story is about.

This story is about the biography of a Priest and the biography of a King, happens to be the same person, the Priest King Jesus who is the ultimate mediator. He is not only the one who makes the sacrifice, He is the sacrifice, and He is the King of kings who invites us into His Kingdom, a kingdom not of this world, a kingdom where He rules our hearts. You get that time in this moment of genealogy, pushing us toward the coming of the Kingdom Priest.

You see a couple of other things; you see Solomon’s quest for wisdom. Solomon doesn't get wisdom because he had earned God's favor; he got wisdom because he already had God's favor. Wisdom is a gift of grace.

You see the awesome moment where the temple is finally built, and a fire comes down from heaven, and the glory of God is now living amongst His people. God chooses to dwell in the middle of His people even though His people could never earn, achieve, or deserve the right of His presence. His presence is a constant sign of the glory of His grace. You can't think of that Shekinah Glory filling the temple without realizing that God's plan is that His presence would not be just in one temple in one place, but we would become the temple of God, the place where God dwells, where He is wherever His people are.

Sadly, you see, in 1 and 2 Chronicles, a nation in decline; the end is near; and before long, this nation is taken in captivity. It’s another moment where you think, “Is the story over; is this the last chapter?” How could it be that Israel would be gone? How could it be that Jerusalem would be gone? How could it be? You wonder, “Is God faithful to His promise? Does God hear the cries of His people? What is going on with the plan of God? How could evil triumph over good? Is God really sovereign?”

These are the questions, the deep theological questions of these passages of Scripture. These questions are forced onto us. You're meant to ask those questions. You're meant in moments to say, “Where is God? What is He doing? Is He sovereign? Does He care? Is He near? Are His promises faithful?”

Because asking those questions as you read through the Old Testament will prepare you to ask those questions in your life. There will be moments where you will say, “Where is God? What is He doing?” And the way you answer those questions will determine everything in your life. Nation in decline! Is God here? Does He hear? Does He care? Lord, where are you?

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Well, as you read through 1 and 2 Kings, it's hard not to be discouraged; it's hard not to think that the whole plan of God has just blown up, that these people have gone crazy, corrupt king after corrupt king, kings murdering kings; it's a mess, and you wonder, “Where is God? Why is this happening?” as you watch Israel descend into political, cultural, social chaos. Israel is not a very nice place to be; it’s not led by very noble leaders; these guys don't want what is best for their own people. And you would ask, “Where in the world is God? What in the world is He doing? How in the world can this take place?”

I think, if you're honest, you've asked those questions too. Maybe you look around at your culture, and you say, “This thing just seems to be getting worse. People seem more lost and confused than ever; things that we thought would never change rapidly change. Where is God? What is He doing?” And in the middle of that chaos, in 1 Kings 8:56, there is this encouragement. Listen to these words, “Blessed be the LORD who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He has promised; not one word has failed of all of His good promises, which He spoke by Moses His servant.”

Now, think of the contrast. God is saying, “I have not failed to deliver anything that I've promised to my people.” Again, you get this contrast between God, the Promise Keeper, and His people, Covenant Breakers. And as you watch king after king after king after king, you would wonder, “Why doesn't God just turn His back and walk away, and say, “Enough already! I'm done! I'm not going to do that anymore!”

Well, you get another phrase in 1 Kings where God says, “I do this for the sake of my servant David.” Now think about what is being said, “for the sake of my servant David.” What is He saying? God is saying, “I am committed to the promise I made to David; that out of him, would come a kingdom that would never end, and that King would be the Messiah, the Lord Jesus. I have not abandoned my promise.”

And so God is saying, “I'm going to remain faithful to these unfaithful people, not because of the fact that I'm keeping score, and they’re still worthy enough to be rewarded by my love; I'm doing it because of what is inside of me. I’m a God of such awesome love; such burning, redemptive zeal; that even in light of the rebellion of these people that have led to such cultural, political, social chaos, I will not walk away because I will not deny myself. I will remain true to my plan; and out of this mess, somehow, my plan will continue until every promise I ever made will be fully delivered.”

You know, we still live in the middle of the mess because there are promises of God yet to be fulfilled. We still live in hope. There's a way in which, if you could summarize the whole theme of the Old Testament, it's waiting, waiting for this God because He's worthy of the wait!

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Well, we’re in 1 and 2 Samuel, and my title for this portion of God's Word is, “Kings and The King.” It is again tempting to think of 1 and 2 Samuel as the biographies of two kings, King Saul and King David, and to make the big contrast in Samuel between Saul and David. The old way that that is handled is Saul was an unrighteous king, and David was a righteous king. And that really misses the power of the real content of Samuel.

Samuel is actually not a contrast between David and Saul; although there are contrasts there, and I'll talk about those in a minute. But a contrast between these two flawed kings and the King of kings, because what you really do see is how does God operate? What does He require of His people, and what does He do when His people fail? That's the message.

You see, Saul is a flawed king, but David too is a flawed king, David doing the unthinkable in adultery and murder. The difference between these two kings is with Saul; God is not central at all; there's no indication that God is central in the heart and life of King Saul. For David, God is central, and David ends up confessing sin and returning to his Lord.

But what you really get is that hope is never found in a human king; hope is found in the King of kings. That King, The King is righteous and will not, in holiness, tolerate the rebellion of His people. He couldn’t love them if He did that. But He’s also a compassionate King who is ready and willing to forgive and to reconcile and to restore.

If you’re going to read through 1 and 2 Samuel, how about asking the question, “What do I learn about the King of kings in this period of time? What do I learn about His heart? What do I learn about the way He works? What do I learn about what He wants for His people? What do I learn about myself and what happens to me when I decide I know better than God does?”

You know, sin is always rooted in, even for a moment, thinking I'm smarter than God, thinking that I know better, thinking my way is better than His way. And in that way, I deny my need for a king. Yes, it's true, Israel needs a king, but they need something more than human king. Every human king will be flawed; every human king will fail. There's one King that will never ever fail; it is the King of kings.

srael has a King; He is righteous, He is holy, He is powerful, He is faithful, He is compassionate, He will do what is right, and what He asks of you is always right. I love the Psalm that says, “All the ways of the Lord are right and true.” That's really the message of Samuel and all the evil of kings, there's a King who is not evil and will never ask evil and will only ever deliver what is good. How about seeking and celebrating that King; He's the hero of 1 and 2 Samuel.

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Well, if you think of the book of Ruth, what comes into your mind? For a lot of people, it is this awesome love story, how Ruth meets and marries Boaz. And that story is there, but that's a sub story to the real story of the book of Ruth. This is one of these moments where you see God's zeal for advancing the redemptive story and advancing it in ways that are surprising. I would title Ruth, not a love story, but a redemptive story, a redemption story. It is about the plan of redemption, and there are so many metaphors in Ruth of the way God works and the way God works in each of our lives.

Ruth was a Moabite woman who had no claim to the promises of God, who had no natural entrance to relationship with God. She was an outsider, an outcast, an alien, a stranger who, by God's mysterious plan, His sovereign power, and His amazing grace, this Moabite woman becomes an heir of His covenant promises.

Are you hearing what I just said? That is the entire story of redemption in this lady's biography, that's us! Sin makes us strangers and aliens. We have no right to Covenant promises; we have no natural entrance to relationship with God. Paul says it very powerfully in Ephesians, like I can't read Ruth ever without hearing these words from Paul, “We were without God and without hope in the world.” That's Ruth; but that's us.

And we begin to get the picture that God's sights on the size of redemption are way bigger than just the people of Israel; that His grace is going to spread beyond the borders of one nation and actually encompass all the nations on earth. Seeds of that are here in this wonderful story.

You know, there's no doubt that redemption is the theme. Unlike any other passage in the Old Testament, words that have redemption as their root are used twenty-three times in Ruth. God is hammering home the message of this story.

And why is it a story about redemption? Because this is God taking one more step in delivering His promise, because out of this couple would come David, and out of David would come the Messiah Jesus. This is God through this alien woman, this stranger, making sure that the promised Messiah would actually come. It confronts us again with the wild ways that God accomplishes His work of grace.

God uses unexpected people and unexpected instruments to propel the mission. This is God protecting His promises, making sure that they’ll happen, creating the line, the genealogy, out of which Jesus, The Redeemer, will come. Yes, Boaz is a picture of redemption, but he's not the Redeemer. But he's in the line of the Redeemer because God makes sure it will happen. Listen, the physical history of Scripture is important because it's that history in which God works to make sure that His promises actually do take place for His people.

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Well, in Judges, we find God's people settled into the Promised Land. Now, you would think that after the awesome gift of a place, a fulfillment of God's covenant promise, and the display of God's power, that the people of Israel would get the point, and they'd say, “We were created for this One; He will provide for us everything we need. Our lives are meant to be shaped by this one thing--the worship of Him.” You would think that would be the next chapter of the story, but it's not.

There’s a way in which Judges should bring sadness into our hearts. I would sort of title Judges, “Faithful and Unfaithful.” You begin to see just how quickly the hearts of God's people, once they have a place to live, once their lives become regular again, how quickly the hearts of God's people wander away from Him and begin to serve false gods. You see, it shouldn't surprise us because sin, in its fundamental form, is idolatrous. It's wanting, it’s loving, it’s desiring something more than God Himself.

And so, God's people begin to look around; they begin to be attracted to the surrounding cultures; they begin to intermarry, and they begin to worship false gods. You're always confronted in these moments with that war for the heart that's always there throughout Scripture at street level--what will we really serve?

And you see the unfaithfulness of God's people; yet you see the incredible compassion and patience and faithfulness of God. God raises up a judge, out of His grace, to lead Israel. Israel ends up rebelling against that judge. They end up being attacked by other nations.

God rescues them again; raises up another judge, and that pattern goes throughout all of Judges--the faithfulness of God; the unfaithfulness of His people; the compassion of God; the unfaithfulness of His people. That pattern goes back and forth again and again.

And what it ultimately points you to is, as much as a human judge to deliver Israel is a wonderful provision of God, it's not enough of a provision. Because the one thing that a human judge can't do is deliver Israel from Israel. You see, that's what I actually need. I don't need just to be rescued from outside temptation; I need to be rescued from me because my problem is my heart. My problem is my propensity to wander. I love the hymn that says:

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love.
Here's my heart, take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above.

Judges is a cry for another judge that will come who has the power to deliver us from us because my wandering will never end until I am finally rescued from me. Israel continues to need judge after judge after judge because what they actually need, cannot be provided by a human judge. But there's a Judge to come who holds life and death in His hands and can offer us true life; true abundant life involves not just rescue from sin external, but rescue from sin internal; there's a Judge coming who can do that.

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I'm excited about the next six studies; they take us from the shores of the Jordan River to Israel's captivity. And I'm excited about this because this is way, way more than dusty, boring, Old Testament history. You really do see things that will encourage your hearts, things that will leave you devastated and discouraged, things that are so awesome they're hard to take in, things that are humbling and convicting, woven in this history as a picture of who God is, and what He does, and who His people are, and what He wants for them, and what He wants in them.

We start with Joshua, this exciting moment when Israel is going to cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land. And the thing that you're confronted with, which is a theme throughout the whole biblical story, is the massive difference between God's plan for us and our plan for our lives. Now think, God's about to fulfill this awesome promise that He’s going to give His people a land of their own. I would sort of title Joshua, “God gives, God's people get;” because there's no way possible that they would ever be able to conquer this land on their own. They are utterly dependent on the goodness of God.

But think with me for a moment. If I promised you a piece of property that would be your living place, when you got there, you would expect that that property would be empty. You wouldn't expect that somebody else would be living there. But that's exactly what Israel encounters, that this land is filled with other nations who aren’t really excited about turning over their property to Israel. Why would God do this? And when you face that history, you are immediately confronted, not just with Israel's position, but that's our position all the time--confused at the way God works, wondering why He's doing what He's doing, tempted to question His goodness.

You see, God wants more for His people than just a place; He wants His people; He wants their hearts; He wants to build their faith in Him; He wants them to live with a God’s-story mentality. And so, God puts them through things like Jericho where they see the unbelievable power of God on display and begin to think, “Hey, we’re the people of God. We’re going to be okay!” That's how God works.

You know, it's tempting to think of Joshua as being the hero of the book of Joshua; I mean the book has his name, but he’s far from the hero. As I've said as we’ve looked at other Old Testament passages, God's the hero of this Book. In fact, Joshua's name doesn't even point to Joshua. Joshua's name actually means, “Yahweh saves.” Joshua's name points to the need for a Redeemer, and that redemption is only ever found vertically; nothing horizontally will ever redeem us. In fact, Joshua's name preaches the importance of the coming of Jesus.

You know today, God won’t work the way you expect Him to work. He won’t deliver His promises the way you expect. But take heart, you're not alone--it's always been the experience of God's people. You can't judge the goodness of God by your little interpretation of your present experience because perhaps in that very difficult thing, God is doing something awesome, something you could never earn, you could never deserve, you can never achieve on your own. If you’re God's child, you know, “God gives, you get.” That's the grace of the gospel!

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Deuteronomy only summarizes a few days in the redemptive story. But it's nonetheless important because Deuteronomy addresses something that we all need to understand. What does it look like to live in light of the grace of God, the grace of God that is most powerfully brought to us through the person and work of the Lord Jesus? I would subtitle Deuteronomy: “Identity, Warning, And Responsibility.”

Deuteronomy basically is built around three sermons of Moses. And those sermons are meant to instill in the people of Israel a sense of identity as the children of God, that they are unlike the surrounding nations because they are the result of His rescuing grace, His forgiving grace, His restoring grace. And so they’re meant to live in light of that identity as the children of God. Now they’re going to go into this land of promise, and they’re going to be assaulted by all kinds of other identities.

And so a major portion of Deuteronomy is warning, warning to these people against the idolatry that is going to be tempting for them. Moses says it this way, “You're going to go into a land that you didn’t get by your own power, in houses that you didn't build, in fields that you didn't plant.” And then he says this shocking thing, “You’re going to forget the God who gave all those things to you, and you’re going to worship false gods.” How sad is that warning, but how needed?

You see, idolatry is not just rooted in the surrounding temptations. Idolatry is always coupled, for us, with God-forgetfulness. When we forget the magnitude of what He has given us and He alone is able to continue to give us, we are susceptible to begin to put other things in its place. That's where the call to responsibility is. Oh, that I would live every day as one who is a recipient of His grace.

Listen, my identity as a child of God should shape the way I approach my dear wife, Luella. It should shape the way that I spend my leisure time and should shape the way that I think about and invest my money; it should shape the way I parent my children; it should shape the way I respond to my neighbor; it should shape the way I eat and take care of my body; it should shape everything. And yet there are idolatries that creep in and compete for my identity as a child of God.

The warning of Deuteronomy is important for everyone who includes themselves in this story of redemption. You see, what God wants me to do with my life is to embed my little story in the larger story of redemption. So every day, I live not with the “Paul's story mentality,” but I live with a “God's story mentality.”

Deuteronomy says, Moses says, “Remember the story that you have been made part of; remember the God who has poured His grace down on you. Don't let yourself forget. Live out of that identity and know that you will face idols; you will face other identities. Commit yourself again and again to remember; and in remembering, live in every sector of your life as a child of God. That warning, given in three messages for three days, is a warning for us all; it's just as important today as it was when it was spoken by Moses.

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I have to give you some time clues here because the length of a particular book doesn't tell you the period of time. Leviticus was all lived, the entire Leviticus was lived at the base of Mount Sinai, maybe about a year. Numbers encompasses forty years; Deuteronomy, probably anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks. So the time period doesn’t always correspond to the length of the passage, just a little thing on the side there.

Well, Numbers, what would I call Numbers? Well, my title for Numbers is, “Grace, Rebellion, And Travail.” What Numbers powerfully presents is that, even in the face of magnificent gifts of grace, we are still able, often willing to rebel against the plan, the purpose, and the call of God.

And that presents the moral struggle that the rest of the redemptive story will be about; it's about that struggle of submission of my heart to this God who owns me and has called me to Himself. You would think that, after the outpouring of grace, we’d get it and there would be no rebellion in our hearts. And you would think that in the life of Israel, what a magnificent outpouring of God's goodness on these people. And they were on a short trip to the land that He had promised them, and they rebelled against His purpose; they rebelled against His power; they questioned His goodness. And what resulted were forty years of travail.

It's a powerful message that rebelling against God never goes anywhere good. And yet in the middle of this horrible story of travail, forty years, you see again the grace of the Lord Jesus. These people can't provide for themselves, and so God sends down manna from heaven. We know, we have chapter and verse for the fact, that the manna was not very attractive, not very delicious. It says that you actually have a bit of a recipe that manna was cooked with olive oil. This is hysterical and it says, when it was done, it tasted like olive oil. That meant the manna had no taste of its own.

And God's people didn't like the manna, and they hungered for the leaks, and onions, and the things that they ate in slavery. Think about that! Jesus boldly declares, to us in John, that He's the manna from heaven. That provision of manna is actually a finger pointing to the Bread that would come that would ultimately satisfy the hearts, our hearts, the Bread of Life, Jesus.

Now, I want to make this confession. I’m like those people in the wilderness. The Bread of Jesus isn’t always a thing that attracts me. I'm still susceptible to placing my eyes on and setting my desires on other bread, bread that I think will satisfy me more…the bread of human acceptance, the bread of personal power and success, the bread of affluence, the bread of ease, fill in the blank. And in so doing, I'd rather have slavery than the freedom that Jesus can give me.

Numbers exegetes our struggle; we’re like those people more than we’re unlike them, and it warns us that rebellion never goes anywhere good. And what we actually hunger for will only ever be found in the Bread of Life, Jesus.

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I love Leviticus! I'm pretty sure that you don't because Leviticus has gotten bad billing. It just seems hard to work through when you get in all the details of the sacrificial system and all the repeated regulations and feast days, and you just get lost. Well, I want to give you a title for Leviticus that I think will help and then explain it. I would subtitle Leviticus, “Holy And Unholy.”

Leviticus is in the Bible to entertain and answer probably one of the most important questions that we could ever ask as we’re getting to understand the biblical story and it’s this: “How can a perfectly holy God live with such unholy people?” How can He do that without compromising His Holiness? How can He except unholy people?

Now the answer is not that the Trinity got together and said, “You know, these are pretty nice people. I know they’re pretty wicked. Why don’t we just turn our backs on that wickedness and just accept them?” No, God wouldn’t do that because God will not violate His justice in order to extend His grace. And so that's why God designed the sacrificial system that's there in Leviticus.

It's designed to atone for sin so that sinful people may have entrance into relationship with God; there could be forgiveness for unholy people. For unholy people to live with a holy God, there has to be penalty paid and forgiveness granted. That's the only way and that's what that system is about. And what you realize is God is not going to unleash His condemnation, but this story is going to tell you that God is going to unleash His forgiveness.

There are few more hopeful books in all of Scripture than Leviticus. Leviticus tells me that there is hope for me in my darkest, dumbest, stupidest, most rebellious moment; there's hope for me because God has made a way for sinners to know Him and to be accepted by Him.

But there's a second thing. As you're watching priests, knee-deep in blood, garments covered in blood, sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice, you begin to realize the inadequacy of this system. It's not enough because yesterday’s sacrifices covered yesterday, but they won't cover tomorrow. And so this whole system screams for a “once-and-for-all sacrifice.” Listen, every sacrificial lamb cried out for a lamb, The Lamb, The Lamb of God, Jesus. In the bleating of a lamb being slaughtered, hear a cry for Jesus, The Lamb, who would come. He would live perfectly; He would be the ultimate perfect Lamb, and when He would die as a substitution, once for all, forever ending the need for sacrifice.

If Genesis introduces you to Jesus, Leviticus is a cry, “Oh, Jesus, come. Come quickly. We need The Lamb.” It is the magnificent glory of my life that unholy Paul can stand in the presence of a perfectly holy God, and He wraps arms of love around me. There's nothing more magnificent in my entire life than that. He has the right to damn me, but He chooses not to.

And that hymn is not first sung in the New Testament; it's first sung in Leviticus. In Leviticus, you see Almighty God becoming the forgiving One who makes a way for an unholy people to know Him, to live in His presence, and receive all that He has to offer them. I love Leviticus and I hope you will too.

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Where Genesis ends on a high point, Exodus begins at a low point. The people that God has placed His heart on are now in slavery. I would subtitle Exodus: “Slavery, Rescue, And Restoration.”

Again, the redemptive story is picked up powerfully here because what you learn in Exodus is God is willing to unleash His mighty power for the rescue of His people. That predicts what God is going to do through all the rest of the redemptive story because here's how the story goes. God will harness the forces of nature; He will control the events of human history; He will actually control the rise and fall of kings and princes; He will move the story by His power, so that at just the right moment, the Redeemer will come and will deliver us from the ultimate slavery, not a national slavery to a cruel nation, but slavery to sin--the one slavery that politics or education or government can't break. What a finger-pointing to where the story is going is the whole narrative of Exodus--the drama of slavery and suffering, the picture of redeeming blood of God who does unthinkable, magnificent things just because He loves His people.

There's another theme; it's the theme of God's Law. It’s really important to understand, as you will encounter God's Law in your study of Scripture, to know the place of God's Law. Remember, the Law is given after God has redeemed His people from Egypt, now that's important. You see, the Law was never ever meant as a means of those people achieving God's acceptance. They were now liberated from their slavery because they were already the objects of His love. They’re objects of His rescuing grace. Now He gives them His Law, the Law that has the power to do two very important things.

One, it has the power to expose their need of the grace that that God would offer them. The Law exposes sin. We would not know wrong if it were not for God's Law. And the Law is a beautiful guide for your everyday living. These poor people didn't know how to live. They had been under the bondage of slavery; they didn’t have choices. Now that they would have freedom, they needed to know how to live properly in light of that freedom. God gives them His Law.

Here's what you need to understand; God's Law was not a way of achieving the grace of His acceptance. God's Law is a gift of grace to people He's already accepted. We could never ever stand under the burden of God's Law. If God's Law was a means of us achieving God's favor, we would all be damned. And the history of Exodus makes it clear that was never the purpose of God's Law.

His Law is a continuance of His redeeming grace. The people that He has rescued, He will now restore to be what He has created them to be. Grace is not just rescue, grace is restoration, and that is powerfully presented to us in Exodus. And you and I need both aspects of that grace.

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So we begin our journey through the Word of God, summarizing the content of each book of the Bible. I’m going to give every book of the Bible a subtitle, and the subtitle I’m going to give for Genesis is going to surprise you, and it’s going to take some explanation. I’m going to subtitle Genesis, “Welcome To The Story Of Jesus.” You may say, “Paul, Jesus is never mentioned in Genesis, what are you talking about?” Well, actually He is.

Genesis begins with the story of creation. It's not meant to be a scientific analysis of the creation of the world; it's meant to put God in the center of everything! He's the initiator, He's the controller, He's the designer. Life is about Him. I’m going to say more about this the second time we pass through the Scripture, but you could argue the four most important words in all of Scripture are, “In the beginning God,” because, if God is on the scene first, then everything in the human existence is about Him. He's at the center; we’re not!

But if you look at what Colossians says about Jesus, it actually says these shocking words that should change the way you think about Genesis, “All things were created by him; and without him was nothing made that was made.” The creator of Genesis 1 (Are you ready for this?) is Jesus. You are immediately confronted with the awesome glory, the awesome power, the awesome wisdom, the awesome love of Jesus to create this magnificent cosmos that is the place where we all live.

But that's not all. It doesn't take long in Genesis before we meet Jesus the promised Redeemer. Because what Genesis does is Genesis has embedded in it the three acts of the redemptive drama. Think of a play--Act I: Creation; Act II: The Fall of Human Beings into Sin; Act III: Redeeming Grace. All three of those acts, which will comprise the rest of the whole redemptive story, are found, first introduced to you with Jesus. In the redemptive drama, there is only one hero central character; it’s Jesus: Jesus the Creator, Jesus the Redeemer, Jesus the Hope of all of humanity.

Genesis introduces us to Jesus, and it's right to say that because deep inside of all of us is a hunger for and a need for what only Jesus is ever going to be able to supply. It's wonderful to think that the One who is my Savior is also my Creator. He knows everything about me. He knows the purpose for my existence. He understands how I function and operate. He knows how broken I actually am. He comes with the wisdom of the designer. Jesus as Savior comes with a willingness to exercise His power so that I would have everything I need.

What an amazing start to the Word of God that the very One who will bring all of us to glorious conclusion is the One who brought it all into origin. Isn’t that amazing? Jesus, He is the brackets of the Word of God. He's the One who keeps the drama moving; and from the very first start of Scripture, we are introduced to His glory, the glory that is the only glory that will ever satisfy my heart, the glory that I was designed to live for, Jesus.

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There is a great spiritual war fought on the turf of your heart, fought for control of your soul in every situation, every location, every circumstance of your life. I sort of hate the way spiritual warfare is often talked about; it's this weird world of demons and deliverance (ooOoo!). Really, spiritual warfare is a very normal thing. We live in a dramatically broken world that doesn't operate the way God intended. We live with sin still inside of us. We live with seductive voices of temptation.

And so, marriage is spiritual war, parenting a spiritual war, and surely the study of the Word of God is spiritual warfare. As I said earlier, you have to know that you bring some kind of position, some kind of condition of your heart to your study of the Bible. And so that is war for your heart, that your heart would be open and ready and expectant. I love this parable that Jesus told in Luke 18 of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Let me read for you:

You come to the Word of God full of your own righteousness, proud of what you’ve become, trying to build a little bit of your knowledge base, or you come to the Word of God devastated by the continuing evidence of your own iniquity. You come dependent, crying out that this portion of the Word of God would be a tool of grace in your life, that you would meet your Savior there and that He would take you one more step toward what His grace gives you the potential to be, that through this study, sin would be defeated in your heart.

Or, you come like that Pharisee, reminding yourself of how righteous you’ve become. The thing that’s shocking about the prayer of the Pharisee is that he is basically saying to God, “Here I am, I'm in your temple, but I don't need you; I'm doing quite well on my own.”

I want to encourage you to pray that God would give you the grace to bring these three things to your study of the Word of God. First, an expectant heart; that you really believe God reveals Himself in His Word. You expect that Word to be a tool of transformation. Bring a humble heart. Admit how desperately you need what the Word of God is able to give you. And, bring an obedient heart ready to live in light of what the Word will teach you that day.

I'm afraid, if I'm honest with myself, that there's much of my study of Scripture that’s just a massive waste of time because I came with a proud heart, I came with a closed heart, I came studying for other people while forgetting that I desperately need the Word of God myself.

It’s shocking for me to say this, but I will, “There are many times rather than standing underneath the Word of God, I stood above it.” And it was just an abstract information exercise done by a proud man.

Listen, it takes grace to know how much you need grace! Pray for that grace as you approach God's Word every time. Pray for expectancy and humility and obedience and you watch what God will do through His Word.

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It's really important to understand that you never come to the Word of God empty. You’ll always bring attitudes, and thoughts, and perspectives, and life experience, and ways of thinking about yourself, and ways of thinking about God, and ways of thinking about the meaning and purpose of life--all those things shape the way that you come to Scripture. And it's really important, as we think about walking our way through the entire Bible, to understand there is a huge danger in Bible study, and the danger is that you can be a student of the Word of God and entirely miss the point.

There’s this moment in the life of Christ when He's being followed around by Jewish leaders and these are biblical scholars; they’re scholars of the Old Testament, and they're trying to trap Him. And there's one moment where they’re sort of quoting Scripture to Jesus, and Jesus says this, I think this is so powerful, this is John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you will have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”

He’s saying, don't you understand it? In all of your Bible study and all of your pride of Old Testament literacy and Old Testament theology, you have missed the point of the entire story. These are people who spent hours unpacking the Old Testament, who taught it to their children; it was in their common way of thinking about life. These are people that studied the Messiah who would come; yet when He came, they didn't recognize Him.

Think about that! They missed the entire point of the Word of God; everything they studied was about Jesus; everything they studied was to prepare them for the coming of this one that they had longed for. This was the fulfillment of all that they were taught. This was the fulfillment of all the sacrifices that were made. He was the fulfillment of the law that they prided themselves in knowing and understanding.

You see, if you don't come to Scripture with a desire to know Jesus, to surrender your life to Jesus, it's possible that it just becomes abstract, impersonal theology and you pride yourself in your biblical literacy. But there's no evidence that that biblical literacy has transformed the deepest love of your heart.

Study of the Bible ought to alter more than the way you think; it ought to alter the deepest desires of your heart, the fundamental ways you think about who you are and what you need. The Bible should produce in you a fear of idolatry and a growing worship of the One who alone has offered you forgiveness, transformation, rescue, deliverance, life eternal. It's not enough to learn the content. It's not enough to become theologically literate. It's not enough to memorize large portions of Scripture--those are all wonderful things, but those have direction, those have purpose!

Jesus says to the Pharisees and the scribes, “How could you study Scripture and not love me?” What a question for me today? Do I walk away from my study of the Word of God, not just with more knowledge, but a deeper love for Jesus, a deeper sense of need for His grace?

Or do I walk away with a little bit of pride of how knowledgeable I’ve become, and what a good theologian I am, and looking for the next person to correct because I get what the Bible is about? May that not be for us! May humility and neediness and dependence and rest in Jesus, powered by a love for Him, be what the Bible does for us?

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It’s not only important to know why you need the Bible, but if you’re going to get the best out of the Word of God, it's vital to know what the Bible is actually about. There’s massive confusion about what the Bible is about. Some people think it's just doctrine; other people think it's not a story, it's a collection of stories; some people think it's just, you know, practical wisdom for everyday life.

There is this dramatic moment in the life of Christ; it's the most dramatic moment between his birth and the cross that really does explode open our understanding of what the Bible is about. It’s what's called the Transfiguration; let me read for you from Matthew 17:

This moment dramatically pictures who Jesus is, but in picturing who Jesus is, it pictures for us what the Bible is about, why Elijah and why Moses are transfigured there with Christ. Why are they part of this vision?

Because God is declaring that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law. He will be the ultimate Law-keeper. Everything the Law is about is fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is the promised one that the prophets write about, everything that the prophets hope in; everything that the prophets want are carried on the shoulders of Jesus. Jesus is what the Bible is about. All of the Law and all the Prophets are about him because what the world needs is more than theology, more than wisdom principles, more than interesting moral stories. What the world needs is a Redeemer!

Because I need to be rescued from me, I need One to come who will do what I'm unable to do, who will carry my penalty, the one that I should carry, who will conquer sin and death and resurrection power. The entire Bible, from beginning to end, is the story of the one solution for the human dilemma--it's Jesus!

It's Jesus who the prophets longed for; it's Jesus that the Law pointed to; it's Jesus that the Bible is about. And as you study the Word of God, you're meant to find more than theological wisdom and practical help for daily living; you're meant to find Jesus; you're meant to fall in love with Jesus; you're meant to find rest in Jesus; you're meant to find hope in Jesus; you're meant to surrender your life to Jesus.

Jesus is what you need and that's why the Bible is a massive introduction to the story of Jesus because, in Him, there is hope. The hope that everyone needs whether they realize it or not is found in the person and the work, the power, the presence, the grace, of Jesus. Elijah longed for Jesus; Moses longed for Jesus, and that Jesus is introduced to us and explained to us and given to us in God's Word. The Bible is the story of Jesus.

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(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

You probably know me as the person who writes on marriage and parenting and other Christian life issues. But the thing that really excites me, that gets me up in the morning, that motivates me to do what I do is the Word of God. I think of myself as a Bible teacher, that everything I write about emerges from the study of God's Word.

And so I am excited to launch this journey with you. We call it “The Gospel: One Chapter At A Time,” where we’re going to trace the redemptive story through every book of the Bible. The first time through, we’re going to do summaries of the various books in Scripture, and then we’ll go back and begin to look at the first chapter of every book of the Bible.

But before we begin that, I want to do some preparatory things that ask the question, “Why do I need to study the Bible? What is the Bible actually about? What will the Bible do for me?” And then when we cover those things, we’ll then launch into the study of the various books of Scripture.

I want to take you to a passage that really does address the question, “Why do I need the Bible in my life?” It’s Isaiah 55; I’m going to read verses 10 through 13:

You've all heard somebody teach that the Word of God will never return void but will accomplish its purpose. When I hear someone teach on that passage without teaching on what follows, I go crazy. Because if I said to you, “I will always accomplish my purpose in your life,” what would your next question be? “What in the world is your purpose?” That could be a scary thing to say.

Well, this passage does that. It uses this weird word picture that once you understand it, you get everything that the Bible is about. It is the word picture of rain and snow watering plants. It says when the rain and the snow come down watering these plants, now listen to the weirdness of this, “instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle.”

Now think about this, if I have a thorn bush in my back yard and it’s nourished by the rain and the snow, what do I expect to get? I don't expect to get a myrtle tree; I expect to get a larger thorn bush. It's a word picture that makes no sense. If I have a brier in my back yard and it gets nourished by rain and snow, the only thing I would expect is a bigger brier. What Isaiah is doing is it’s pushing this metaphor to let us know what the Word of God is about.

The Word of God has as its primary purpose the transformation of our hearts, and in the transformation of our hearts, the transformation of our lives. Not that we become bigger and better of what we are, but we become fundamentally different than we could ever have been apart from the Word of God. The theology of the Word of God is never an end in itself. The stories of the Word of God are never an end in itself. The wisdom principles of the Word of God are never an end in themselves; they’re always a means to an end, and the end is the transforming power of God's grace. When the Word of God is brought to you by the Spirit of God, propelled by the grace of God, the result should be heart and life transformation.

You need the Word of God in your life because you need to be transformed. All of us still have the artifacts of sin inside of us. All of us still need the power of transforming grace. If you're not satisfied with who you are, you’re not satisfied with everything you say, everything you choose, everything that you decide, the ways that you act, then you need the Word of God every day in your life. It's God's powerful tool of personal transformation.