Jesus

Friends, for the last 25 years, my family and I have lived in neighborhoods with homeowners associations, which means we've also lived with these things called covenants. How many of you live in a neighborhood like that? Most of us, I think in concept, you know, covenants are a good thing. They maintain order and they protect property values by holding residents accountable to certain standards. For example, in our neighborhood, covenants are require residents to keep their lawn mowed.

I mean, if you move to the Amazon and you want to live in a rainforest, that's a good thing. But if you live in the city, you don't want to have overgrown jungle next to you. So we appreciate that covenants discourage people from leaving their trash dumpsters out at the curb all week. Covenants ensure that structures like fences and decks and sheds and room additions are built properly and according to code. Covenants stop that one quirky neighbor from painting their house the color of Pepto Bismol.

I mean, there are, there are restrictions that covenants place for the benefit of everybody that lives there. Covenants are a good idea, but I'll bet that many of you have discovered, like I have, that even when expectations are spelled out clearly, not everybody plays along. Some people don't know about the covenants, perhaps, but some people just don't care. So despite covenants, you're still going to find sometimes that there is that home with knee high grass in the yard, or that home with junk that is just stacked alongside the garage, or those homes with untrimmed trees that have really low hanging branches that you have to kind of get down on your hands and knees and crawl underneath on the sidewalk. You have those homes in your neighborhood, maybe that look like 26 cars are parked in the driveway every moment of every day.

See, the main problem with covenants is people. In scripture, God established a number of covenants. He promised Noah, for example, that he wouldn't flood the earth again. He promised Abraham that all people on earth would be blessed through him. God gave Moses the law for Israel to live by.

And he promised David that a descendant would always sit on his throne. And in every instance, God held up his end of the bargain. But people, not so much. So over the past few weeks, we've seen a lot of examples of human failure, all of which set the stage for God's future promise of a Messiah who would restore our relationship with him, who would enable us to live the life that he created us for. And Jesus is that Messiah.

Jesus is the foundation of God's new permanent covenant with us. Now, there are way too many important connections between the Old Testament and Jesus for us to mention nearly all of them. But I want us today to quickly highlight a few of them, beginning with some that we've already touched on in this series. For starters, we've already seen that Adam pointed to Jesus. We saw in Genesis how Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, listened to Satan rather than God.

They made the first ever purchase from the Apple Store and they were not satisfied customers, were they? Their disobedience brought death into our world. But from the very beginning, we saw that God had a plan to redeem and restore. And he announced that the woman's offspring, a prophetic reference to Jesus, would crush the serpent's head by his resurrection. And centuries later, the apostle Paul wrote these words.

I want to point this out to you if you're following along, if you're taking notes in the bulletin, the There is an error though that is 100% my fault. The scripture listed there is Genesis. It's actually not Genesis, it's the book of first Corinthians. I've been trying to figure out ever since how I made that switch. I don't know.

But now you know. So you can make that correction if you want to do that. Paul wrote, it is written, the first man, Adam became a living being, the last Adam a life giving spirit. The first man was of the dust of the earth. The second man is of heaven.

And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, the first Adam, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man, the last Adam. See, Paul called Jesus the last Adam because he fulfilled the promise that God made in response to the sin of the first Adam. So Adam points to Jesus, but we've also seen that Abraham pointed to Jesus. Later in Genesis, God promised to make a childless old man named Abraham the father of a great nation that would bless the entire world. And the apostle Paul later wrote about that, that the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

Singular scripture does not say antecedes plural meaning many people, but and to your seed, meaning one person who is Christ Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham, his covenant with him. But God didn't just promise Abraham a big family tree. He promised him offspring that would bless the world. And Jesus mission was global in scope. Jesus himself said that God so loved what the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Abraham was the start of that blessing. But Jesus the blessing and he's available to the entire world. We've also seen in the last few weeks how Moses pointed to Jesus. In the Book of Exodus, God raised up Moses to lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt and to deliver his law to them. But as significant as Moses leadership was, he wasn't the main event.

The Apostle John later wrote that the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The commandments that God gave through Moses were not the end of the story. So we read in the New Testament Book of Hebrews, holy brothers and sisters who share in the heavenly calling. Fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.

He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house. And then it says Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses. Just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. Moses was important, but Jesus is infinitely greater. In the same way, we've seen that David pointed to Jesus.

David was Israel's most celebrated king. He was a brave warrior. He was a gifted songwriter. His psalms prophetically predicted many specific details of Jesus life. David wrote in Psalm 16, for example, I keep my eyes always on the Lord.

With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices. My body also will rest secure. Because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life.

You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Now that sounds very personal. But David wasn't talking about himself. Years later, after David had been dead and gone and buried for centuries in a well known tomb, the Apostle Peter said this about David seeing what was to come. He spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay.

God has raised Jesus to life and and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. David was important, but David wrote about Jesus, who is even greater. After David, the Old Testament introduces us to some other characters who also foreshadowed the ministry of Jesus. For example, Elijah pointed to Jesus during the reign of a corrupt king by the name of Ahab.

God sent Elijah to confront the people of Israel for their insistence on worshiping idols. And on top of Mount Carmel, here's a view from the 1800 foot summit of Mount Carmel. I got to be there. Just a few years ago, from the top of that mountain, Elijah challenged 450 pagan prophets to a very public showdown. Both Elijah and the prophets of a false Canaanite God called BAAL built stone altars and they prepared animal sacrifices.

Now, Baal's prophets, they prayed and they danced and they screamed and they cut themselves and they begged their God to send fire. And the response was a loud, resounding nothing. But then Elijah had his sacrifice and his altar doused completely with water three times, just to put a point on it. And when Elijah prayed, scripture says that God sent fire that consumed not just the animal sacrifice, but the water and the stones of the altar as well, which would have been a spectacular thing to witness. But even after that amazing display of God's power, Israel continued to worship idols because what they needed was more than just another prophet.

So in Luke chapter one, an angel predicted to a priest named Zechariah that his wife would give birth to a son, John the Baptist, who would play this very special role. Luke chapter one says, he will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Like Elijah before him, John the Baptist would point people to one who was infinitely greater than himself, and that one was Jesus. Now we also see in the Old Testament that Daniel pointed to Jesus. You know, as followers of Jesus, living in a secular culture that is sometimes very hostile to God.

You and I have a lot in common with Daniel, who was one of many Jews captured by the Babylonians. Three friends were deported along with Daniel. They were given government jobs, and they were given the new Babylonian names of Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. Now they tolerated all that forced enculturation until the day king Nebuchadnezzar set up a giant statue and issued an ultimatum. Either you bow down to my idol or you get thrown into a blazing hot furnace.

And I love the way that Daniel's friends responded. They said, if we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from your majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, your majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. In other words, they said King, our God can and will protect us. But even if he chooses not to, we're still going to trust in him alone.

And we will never bow to your lifeless, powerless man made statue. Well, in a rage, Nebuchadnezzar had them thrown into the fire. And then something incredible happened. This is one of those Bible stories as a kid that just leaps off the page. The king looked into the furnace and he saw not three men, but four unharmed by the flames.

And the king said, the fourth looks like a son of the gods. There are a lot of Bible scholars who believe that that fourth figure in the fire was a pre incarnate meaning. Before he put on flesh appearance of Jesus, the king called Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego out of the furnace. And he had no choice but to admit to no other God, including the one that I made myself and forced you to bow down to. No other God can save in this way.

Now, that story often comes to mind when I talk to people facing difficult situations. And in recent months, it's become much more real and personal for Allison and me. You know, many of you know that my wife, Allison has breast cancer. And she's going to have surgery on October 15, about 10 days from now. Now, her.

Her doctors caught it early, and the medical prognosis is very good, but the word cancer is still scary. So we're praying and we would appreciate if you would pray as well for her complete healing, because we know our God can do that. But we're also praying that no matter the medical outcome, that we remain faithful and that the Holy Spirit gives us hope and peace to, to encourage others who are struggling and to point them to Jesus. We're so grateful for the outpouring of love and encouragement and prayer that we've already experienced, and we're really, really grateful for that. But we just want to ask you to continue to pray not only for healing, but that God would be glorified in all of this.

Now, in the Old Testament, after Daniel, Malachi pointed to Jesus. Malachi was a prophet whose ministry took place after God's people returned from that period of exile in Babylon. They came back to their homeland, they resumed their worship rituals, but they were really just going through the motions. God had commanded Israel's priests centuries earlier to sacrifice only healthy, unblemished animals. But instead they decided to begin offering blind and disabled and diseased animals that really represented no real sacrifice because they had little monetary value.

They didn't give their best. And God communicated through Malachi that he would Rather have no offering than a worthless, insincere offering. Now, on a related note, I need to share something with all of you who are members of our church family. Okay? If you consider GCC your home, this is for you.

If you're a guest with us today. We're so glad you're here, but I'm gonna give you a pass on what I'm about to say. Okay? We just began a new budget year that happens for us every October 1st. So I want all of us who are a part of GCC to understand the connection between worship and ministry and our giving.

Every worship service, every event we host, every family we assist, every Monday night community meal we serve, every child we welcome, every baptism we celebrate, every staff member we employ, every program, every facility space is a result of our collective giving. So if we give in a minimal way, that costs us very little personally, our church's ministry resources will be very limited. But if we all give in a generous and open handed and worshipful and sacrificial way that we actually feel a way that requires us to sacrifice something, we're going to see much greater impact on many more lives. Now, we can't all give the same amount. Every time we talk about giving, we want to stress that we can't all give the same amount.

But we can all worship genuinely by giving God our best. So I want to challenge all of us to give God our very best. No matter what that looks like in terms of dollar amount. Let's give generously, let's give sacrificially. Why did God care so much about Israel's giving?

And why does scripture say so much about our giving habits? It's because God knows that nothing else compares to him. God doesn't ask us to worship him because he's insecure, because he has a fragile self esteem and he needs our worship to sort of bolster that. God knows that nothing else compares to him. That if there were something more excellent, if there were something more beautiful or praiseworthy, then that would be God.

But God stands alone. There's nothing better or greater than him. And from that place of unparalleled worth, God rebuked Israel's stingy, anemic offerings that suggested that he really wasn't worth the sacrifice. God said, my name will be great among the nations from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be brought to me because my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty.

God wants to be known. God wants to be worshiped. In every nation. He wants our worship to demonstrate to others how good and how worthy he is. God loves and he wants to give eternal life to all people.

And that entire mission revolves around Jesus. At the end of the Bible, Jesus is worshiped with these words. Revelation 5 says, you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God. Persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. Think about that for just a moment.

The God who commands us to give generously, the God who commands us to give sacrificially set the pace by sacrificing himself for us. Jesus wants to be worshiped far beyond Old Testament Israel. So he gave his life to save people from every tribe and tongue and nation. And when we give, we are simply following the example of Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less.

Now, Israel's problem wasn't that they stopped worshiping. Their problem was that they stopped worshiping God. You and I don't have to be taught to worship. To worship is simply to ascribe worth. It's to attach value to something, and we are wired for that.

So we instinctively do that all the time in a variety of ways. Some of us follow our favorite sports teams religiously. Some of us work out religiously. Some of us give a religious attention to the way we look and the clothes we wear. Some of us consume CNN or Fox News religiously.

Some of us treat food like a religious experience. Some of us are religious shoppers. Some of us are religious about the appearance of our homes. Some of us scroll social media religiously. Some of us pursue job success with a religious level of devotion.

And these are not inherently bad things, but none of them are ultimate things. So when they dominate our focus, when they consistently get the best of our time and our attention and our energy, they become idols. And at the end of the day, anything that steals our focus from God is an inferior counterfeit. Only God can save us. Only he can satisfy us.

So worshiping God is actually our highest good. If we settle for anything else, it simply won't be able to come through for us. When we worship God, we are actually accepting his gracious invitation to a life of joy and purpose. Now, as we said last week, the Old Testament comes to an end without much in the way of resolution. Jerusalem's damaged walls got repaired, but Israel's worship remained broken.

People robotically offered sacrifices that really couldn't remove their sins. And they were desperate for a new king who had the power to actually change their hearts. They needed rescue, and so do we. So at the end of the Old Testament, God predicted through Malachi that that rescuer was coming. God said, I will send my messenger who will prepare the way before me.

Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come, says the Lord Almighty. Now that messenger who would prepare the way would be John the Baptist the but the Lord and the messenger of the covenant, that would be Jesus. Malachi's new covenant talk echoed God's promise through the prophet Jeremiah. We read these words in Jeremiah chapter 31.

The days are coming, declares the Lord. When I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt. Because they broke my covenant. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people. They will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their wickedness and I will remember their sins no more. All of scripture points to Jesus. And Jesus is the foundation of God's new permanent covenant with us.

Jesus the Son was with God the Father in the beginning and at just the right time. Jesus put on flesh and he entered our world through a miracle birth to a virgin by the name of Mary. Jesus was prophetically born into the family tree of Adam and Abraham and David. He lived his entire life with single minded devotion to God. Jesus was always on mission.

He refused to be distracted by anything else and he obeyed God perfectly. Jesus taught with authority and wisdom. He compassionately noticed and cared for people wherever he went. Jesus demonstrated power over creation, over disease, over even death itself with his miracles. And yet he chose to lead by serving.

He cared more about people's hearts than outward religious appearances. Jesus came to offer himself as a sacrifice, not to stage a military coup. And that infuriated those who craved political power. Jesus had opponents who conspired to kill him. And he used that very plot to establish his new covenant.

At his last supper with his disciples, Jesus said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you. We remember that new covenant together every time we celebrate communion. And Jesus poured out that new covenant blood for us at the cross. You see, unlike all those Old Testament priests who repeatedly for centuries entered the tabernacle to offer sacrifices, Jesus did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves, but he entered the most holy place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption for this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. The Old Testament was a revolving door of imperfect mortal human priests who temporarily stood in the gap between God and people.

But under God's new covenant, Jesus has become our permanent replacement for all of that. Hebrews goes on to say, because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through Him because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly meets our need. One who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.

Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. And we know these new covenant promises are for real. Because not only did Jesus give His life to establish them, he came back from the dead to prove it. The Apostle Peter wrote, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. Jesus identified with us through his birth. He set an example for us with his life. He paid for our sins once and for all with his death.

And he offers us never ending life through his resurrection. And for all of these reasons, Jesus is the completion of all God's promises. He crushed Satan's head. He fulfilled God's promise to Abraham by offering salvation to all people. Jesus is the king who rules forever on the throne of David.

He is the initiator and the completer of God's new covenant. He is the only one who can save us. He is the only one who can give us life beyond this world and these bodies. Jesus is the foundation of God's new permanent covenant with us. And through that covenant, through that covenant that Jesus established at the cost of his own life, that covenant that he ratified through the power of his resurrection, he offers forgiveness and new life to every person.

And he invites us to step into relationship with our Heavenly Father through a relationship with him. By believing that Jesus is who he says he is, that he is God in flesh. By trusting that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and mine, and then rose from the dead by surrendering to him as Lord and Savior, crowning him king in our lives. That's exactly what we declare when we're baptized. Every time we celebrate a baptism, we are celebrating someone commitment to say I surrender my life to Jesus.

Jesus as Lord. I receive him as my Savior, but I surrender to him as Lord. He will be the boss. He's going to be my commander in chief from this day forward. And we enter into a relationship with Jesus by turning away from the sin in our lives and turning toward him in obedience.

So the question we ask regularly around here is do you know him? We've said a lot of things about him today and in previous weeks, but do you know him? Are you walking with him? Are you trusting him? Are you living in a covenant relationship with him?

Are you confident that the sin in your life has been nailed to the cross, buried because of what Jesus did for us? If you're not certain about that, we'd to love, love to have a conversation with you because God desires that every single one of us would know him personally and be in relationship with him through this new covenant that Jesus came to establish. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we thank you today for the privilege of coming together. I'm thankful God for this church family, the friends, the encouragement, the sharpening that we experienced together.

And God, we're thankful that we, we don't just come together as a human organization. We are called together out of the broken dead end lives that are a part of all of our past. That you called us together as a new people, that you put on flesh, that you suffered and died in our place to deal with the just consequences of our sin. We praise you for the resurrection that that conquered death, that came back from the grave and makes it possible for us to see death as just a comma and not a period. God, we're thankful that we have the opportunity to live our lives in hope that things only get better from here.

That while the world around us continues to struggle and continues to be dominated by fear and anger and conflict and decay, we're thankful God, that you have called us to something greater than that and that at the cost of your own life, you've made that possible. And so God, we just pray that you would regularly wake us up to the call you've placed on our lives. Help us to see your goodness, God, help us to see your supreme worthiness of all of the devotion that we can offer. And I pray that rather than seeing living our lives for you as something that we grudgingly yield to, God, help us to recognize the the beauty and the goodness of what you offer to us and that nothing else that's offered anywhere else even begins to compare. God, we're thankful for these moments together.

And we ask you to fill us with your spirit. We ask you to guide us, show us what next steps you would have each of us take in response to who you are and what you're doing. And we pray it in Jesus name, Amen. It's always good to be together. And every time we're together, we don't want to walk out of here without extending an invitation to you to take a next step, whatever that looks like.

I'm going to invite a few friends who are part of our next step team to go ahead and make their way down here to the front of the room. But want to say first of all to all of our friends who are watching online today, you can reach out to us, just text the word next at any time to the number that you see on the screen. Uh, we'd love to connect with you and begin a conversation that would help you to discern where is God taking you next. But for all of us who are gathered here in person right now, we just want you to know that all of us down here at the front would be more than happy to pray with you, answer questions, anything that we can do to help you to understand who Jesus is and the life he calls us to. That's why we're here.

So it's always a pleasure, it's always a blessing to be together. We don't have the any obligation any longer to live life in our own strength. We're not dependent on our own power because Jesus came and he died. And he offers us the gift of his spirit to empower us to the life that he calls us to. Thanks so much for spending some time with us this morning.

If we can be of help to you, please come down and see us. God bless you all.