Why Does Jesus Matter?

0:00Colossians 2:13-14 and who Jesus is

If y’all don’t start that clock, we’ll be here till 3 a.m. I’ll just go and go and go. Every service is a revival service. Hallelujah. Colossians chapter 2, join me there. I’m going to just read a short portion of Scripture, and my paper notes are just all over the place right now.

Colossians chapter 2, verse 13 says, “And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Last week, we started a series called “We Are Building Everything on Jesus.” Everybody say that with me: we are building everything on Jesus.

And last week, what we talked about is who Jesus is. We talked about seven things that you need to know about Jesus. Jesus is fully God. He’s fully human. He lived a sinless life. He died on the cross.

He rose from the dead. He will come again. And the seventh thing that we talked about is He will judge all people. We ended there in Revelation chapter 20, that says at the culmination of time, every human, both living and dead, will be judged according to their works. Meaning that every sin, every missed opportunity, and every good deed will go up before the Lord for you to be judged by that. And the bad news is at the end of that judgment, you’re going to find out that you just are not good enough to go to heaven.

It’s almost a rhetorical judgment, amen? And then there’s going to be another book that opens. I call it Jesus’ little black book. It’s His little black book called the Lamb’s Book of Life. And if your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, you will spend eternity with God in heaven, reaping an eternal reward. And anyone whose name is not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will be cast into the lake of fire.

But what we’ve decided is just to say, that’s not going to happen in Mobile County. In Mobile County, we’re going to take everybody we can get our hands on to heaven with us. Somebody ought to give the Lord a praise right there. Amen, so last week we talked about who Jesus is.

2:37Why does Jesus matter?

This week, I’m calling today’s message, “Why Does Jesus Matter?” Why does Jesus matter?

Now, obviously, I do not mean that with any type of disrespect. I think the first point of last week’s message, Jesus is fully God, is probably reason enough to answer the question, why does Jesus matter, amen? That’s enough, but what I really want us to look at today is what does Jesus have to do with me? What does it have to do with us? How does this impact us? In fact, if you were to look at your Bible and just kind of divide what the content is about, the gospels tell us what Jesus did.

All of the epistles spend their time telling us why it matters, why what Jesus did, or how what Jesus did impacts us. Did you know that Jesus did not just die on the cross, but he died on the cross for you? He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, went to the cross, rose again, not just to do those things, but he did it for you. So this is a significant subject that the Bible talks about, and that’s why I want to spend some time unpacking it today. And the best way that I know how to start this, because I am going to be honest, we’re going to fit a 900-page theological dissertation into a 28-minute message today. So I have to kind of just find a starting point and go there.

And so what we’re going to start with is essentially three moments of time that you look at in your Bible. Have any of you ever heard the word dispensation? Have you heard the word dispensation? Dispensation essentially just means a moment of time where something was in effect, and you can actually divide the Bible in a lot of dispensations. So there’s — I know some of us just buy the books with the fire and the earth on the front of it, and that’s what we think of when we think of dispensations, but you can divide the Bible into lots of dispensations. You can kind of see different movements throughout Scripture.

So I’m kind of choosing three basic dispensations this morning that I want to share with you. And those are the fall — the fall is the problem. That’s the fall. The Assemblies of God, one of our 16 fundamental truths. We’re an Assemblies of God church if you did not know that. I’m an Assemblies of God minister, and you’re an Assemblies of God person. Even if you didn’t know it, we decided that when you walked through the doors this morning, amen.

But the Assemblies of God, one of our 16 fundamental truths, is the fall of man. So there’s the fall of man. That’s the problem. The second is the law. The law is the opportunity. So you’ve got the fall, that’s the problem.

You’ve got the law, that’s the opportunity. And then lastly, you have the cross, which is the sufficient solution, the sufficient solution. So the fall, the law, and the cross. Now we’re going to unpack all of this today, and what I believe is going to happen is by the time you walk out of here this morning, you will clearly understand why Jesus matters. Okay, here we go. If you’re ready, give the Lord a praise.

Okay, that’s better.

6:09The fall: the problem

All right, so the first is the fall. This is the problem. The problem that becomes everyone’s problem. This is the problem. Now I want you to turn with me in your Bible.

If you’ve got a paper Bible — if you have a digital Bible, I guess click the buttons. Amen, I’m a paper Bible guy. Turn with me to Genesis chapter two. I do just want to acknowledge something real quick. I have to nerd out on you for just a moment. And just when we get into Genesis chapter two, especially at the beginning towards the creation, I always want to acknowledge a theological reality.

Now some folks in the church have trouble accepting this, but this is centuries-old stuff we’re talking about. This isn’t in the last 10 years. This has been around for a long time. Every book of the Bible is a certain type of literature. So for instance, like the Psalms, that’s poetry. If you read Second Kings, for instance, that’s history.

If you were to read Revelation, it’s apocalyptic literature. Mark is a gospel. Romans is an epistle. Each one of these writings in the Bible — Isaiah is a prophetic book. And so we have all of these different types of literature in the Bible that help us to understand what we’re reading at any given time. So if you read a prophetic book and it’s a little weird, it’s supposed to be, it’s prophetic.

It’s supposed to be a little strange. With Genesis, there is an interesting issue that we run into, and that is that nobody really knows what type of literature Genesis is. And it seems to be moving between historical and prophetic and poetic, and we aren’t always sure what to do with it in any given time. We’re getting into the beginning section of Genesis that, for the most part, it’s moving at a lightning pace. We go from Adam to Abraham in 12 chapters, and that is no short period of time. We’re busting through the timeline.

Y’all hear me right now? I know, I got y’all leaned in, I can feel it, okay? And so I don’t know that I have — this is why I’m saying this — I don’t know that I have every answer to every scientific question you may have around the beginning of Genesis. But what I do know is, like we sang this morning, [worship], amen? And so what I know is whether the earth was created in seven days, seven billion days, seven weeks, or like Amazon Prime, it got here the next day, amen. Doesn’t matter. What I do know is that this is what the Holy Ghost wants you to know.

And that’s why he made sure somebody put it on paper at some point. If you agree with that, just shout amen. Amen. Okay, Genesis chapter two, let me read this to you. “Then the Lord took the man” — this is verse 15, by the way — “then the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it, and the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.’” And then jump over to chapter three and verse six, and it says, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food” — if I was funnier, I’d go back and read that. “So when the woman saw” — okay, here we go.

“And that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Verse eight: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.” What you see right here in Genesis chapter three is you see sin enter the world and an immediate separation between Adam and Eve and God take place. In fact, if you keep reading down to verse 16, you’ll see that there’s not only a separation between Adam and Eve and the Lord, there’s also a separation between Adam and Eve, and I’m not preaching on this this morning, but that’s why you need Jesus Christ in the center of your relationship when you’re married, because it will change everything, amen. It’ll bring you closer together.

It’ll make things more cohesive in your life. But what we’ve just read here, where sin enters the world and creates a separation between Adam and Eve and the Lord, it doesn’t just stop with Adam and Eve. Romans chapter five — I am going to read a ton of Scripture this morning. Romans chapter five, verse 12 says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Hear this: sin has spread to all humanity. See, the fall is the problem that became everyone’s problem, and because of it, we all have a measure of separation between us and the Lord. The fall of man created a separation between all people and the Lord.

12:02Two kinds of sin, two kinds of death

Now, I want to let you know this. If you were to read down a little bit here in Romans chapter five, you would find that there are two types of sin. One is the sin that you do. Romans chapter five, verse 12, we just read it, said that sin spread to all, for all sinned. Look at your neighbor and just say, “Shame on you.” My goodness, bunch of sinners in here today.

But all people have sinned. All people have behaviorally participated in something that dishonors the Lord. Everyone has done it, and usually they’ve done it by the time they can say their first few words. It’s amazing that the first thing a little baby can learn to do is argue with you, right? And so sin is something that is — it is something that people do, but sometimes the church specifically focuses a little too much on what I call behavioral sin, the sin that you do, because the sin that you do is not actually the sin that is the most important to get dealt with. See, we want our fish to come into the boat already ready to be cooked, but you don’t clean a fish before you bring him in the boat.

Amen? You catch a fish and he’s still got a little dirty on him. He’s still a little grimy. He’s still a little gross. And if you’re like me, he’s still got eyeballs, and you can’t eat them when they got the eyeballs. You can’t — I know some of y’all are down here and y’all are a little more okay with it, but I’m not.

But the sin that we actually have to be more concerned with is the second type of sin. Romans chapter five, verse 14 says, “And death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not in the likeness of Adam.” And I don’t have time to get into this a lot this morning. Everything I’m preaching, I could probably do a month on each point, but we’re moving at a lightning pace, like the beginning of Genesis. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord if you were listening and you caught that.

Amen. But there is a sin that we are dealing with, even though we cannot in any way, shape, or form sin in the same way Adam sinned. Do you understand that there’s a sin that you’ve inherited that you could not participate in? None of you can eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam committed a sin that is impossible for any other man to sin in that way. And yet that sin has now traveled through all humanity, and it’s gotten down in the DNA of every person.

We call this a — just a theological term for it is, we call it a sin nature. All of us have a sin nature. You have a bend towards sin. The reason you want to do something, even when you know that it’s wrong, is because there’s something in your DNA. I’m using DNA lightly. If you’re a theologian in here this morning, please don’t come and ask me about DNA in the Bible.

Good grief. But there’s something down on the inside of you that’s bending you towards that sin. That’s the sin nature. And the sin that you inherit, the sin nature, the sin that’s in your DNA, is actually what separates you from the Lord. But because there is sin, there is also death. So because of sin, there is death.

That’s what Romans chapter five just said. And not only is there two types of sin, there’s also two types of death. There’s a physical death. This is the death that everyone is going to experience at some point in their life, the natural course of action or the natural course of life. You will at some point cease to exist. You will perish.

You will go to be with the Lord because you’re in this church and you’re under this good preaching. Amen. So there’s the physical death, but there’s also a spiritual death. We started with Colossians chapter two, and in Colossians chapter two, the verse we read talks about being dead in your trespasses. We call this a spiritual death.

Until you are born again into the kingdom of God and become a part of the family of faith through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, you are spiritually dead. You’re a dead man walking. And because of this death, because of the spiritual death, every area of your life is being negatively affected to some degree, because spiritual death causes everything it touches to die. The fall, sin entering the world, it is the problem that became everyone’s problem, which brings us to the next point in time. The second is the law. The law is the opportunity that became the revelation.

17:06The law: the opportunity

If we jump forward several thousand years from Adam and Eve, we come to Moses. And if you get into your Bible in Exodus chapters one through about 20, you will see a time that God demonstratively shows His power to His people. Not only to the people of Israel, but also to the nations. And it’s almost as if God is reintroducing Himself to the world as what Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four says is the one true God. He is the one true God. Deuteronomy chapter six says, “Behold, O Israel, the Lord your God is one.” So in this process of God revealing Himself, we come to Exodus chapters 19 and 20 at a mountain called Sinai.

And at Sinai, God institutes an opportunity, a way for people to deal with the sin issue. He gives everyone an opportunity, not just Israel. I know some of us get into this Jew and Gentile paradigm. There were many Gentiles amongst the Jews at this time that were at Sinai, and God introduces an opportunity for people to live in a righteous way that will result in blessing. He shows them a pattern to be holy that will result in the full favor of God resting on them. This is where God gives what we call the law of Moses, with the cornerstone of the 10 Commandments.

This is the opportunity to achieve righteousness through the law of Moses. And the law of Moses essentially says this: if you do right according to this standard, you will be blessed. And if you do wrong, you will be cursed. Here is the problem with this solution, with this opportunity — it does not work. It does not work. And we don’t find this out in the New Testament.

Joshua, at the end of Joshua, at the end of his life, 110 years old, he writes a very startling declaration to the people of Israel. He’s about 110 years old. He was about 30 at Sinai. So he’s been watching Israel under the law of Moses for 80 years. And this is what Joshua writes. He says, “You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.”

That’s Joshua chapter 24, verse 19. Joshua observed people trying to achieve righteousness under the law, and he said, it does not work. The apostle Paul goes on to explain this to us more in his epistles, just a couple of things he says about the law of Moses here as an opportunity for righteousness. He says in Romans chapter eight, verse three, “For God has done what the law, weakened by flesh, could not do.” The law could not do it.

Romans chapter five, verse 20 says, “Now the law came in to increase the trespass.” In fact, wherever the law is applied, it seems that the trespass increases. That’s why some of y’all who grew up under legalism, it’s almost like the legalism caused you to be more of a hellion. Some of y’all grew up in church hearing “don’t, don’t, don’t.” And then just thought you’d see what you could do, do, do. Amen.

That’s what the law does. It increases the trespass. Romans chapter seven, verse 13 says, “Through the commandment, sin became sinful beyond measure.” First Corinthians chapter 15 says that the power of sin is the law. Sin’s dominion over you seems to be empowered from what should have been an opportunity for righteousness. It almost seems as if not only does the opportunity, the law, not make it better, it almost makes it worse.

There’s a lot I could go into here, but I’m going to move on, because I am already, like, not going to do this in 28 minutes today. I like to preach in 28 minutes, because I think it’s a fun challenge.

21:47The law becomes the revelation

So the law is the opportunity, but it didn’t work. But what it did do is it became a revelation. The law showed us humanity that we are entirely unable to live up to God’s standard. In fact, Galatians chapter three tells us this.

I’m going to read from verse 21. It says, “Is the law contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

“So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.” The law was our guardian to show us that we are unable in and of ourselves to achieve our own righteousness. The law showed us that we needed something outside of ourselves to be made right with God, which brings us to the third, the cross.

23:13The cross: Jesus solved the fall and the law

So there’s the fall, there’s the law, and there’s the cross, which is the sufficient solution. If we go back to where we started this morning, Colossians chapter two, in verse 13, it says, “And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

At the cross of Calvary, Jesus solved our issue of sin and satisfied the legal demands of the law. In Romans chapter five, we see that Jesus solved the issue of the fall. We read this earlier in verse 12. It says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” But I want to unpack this further and see more of what this Scripture says. It says, “For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” Verse 15 — it’s about to get good.

“But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through the one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the free gift is not like the result of the one man’s sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace” — hallelujah — “and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous.” Hallelujah.

Jesus accomplished in his finished work at the cross a work that is much more powerful and much more farther reaching than that of Adam. Jesus didn’t only solve our sin issue, but he also solved the issue of the law. A much shorter portion of Scripture in Romans chapter eight, verse one says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

Jesus Christ has fulfilled in you everything that the law required for you to have the favor of God rest on your life, hallelujah. This gives us the full rights and benefits of someone who meets every requirement of God’s law, which is really powerful. And I’ll just toss in a little promo here. That’s what we’re talking about next week: how you have access to everything that would be granted to a person who has perfectly kept God’s law. That sounds like that’s going to be good.

I’m not going to miss next week, amen.

27:05Sufficiently solved: nothing left to do

And not only has Jesus solved the issue of sin and the issue of the fall, the issue of the law, but he has sufficiently solved them. I’m not going to read this, but Hebrews chapter seven talks about how Jesus gives us a better hope, and he’s a guarantor of a better covenant, and how he’s able to save to the uttermost, and how he does not have to offer sacrifices repeatedly because he has done it once for all when he offered up himself. Jesus sufficiently solved the issue of the law, meaning completely — there’s nothing left to do. When Jesus said it’s finished, he meant it.

27:47My belief releases His supply

And so you may ask this morning, you may say, “Well, Pastor, how do I get that to work in my life?”

How do I get the work that Jesus has accomplished to work in my life? My friend, we’re going to talk more about this next week, but let me simply say today that Ephesians chapter two, verses eight and nine says that you are saved by grace through faith, not of your own works. I just want to say this today. This is where I’m going to leave you with the point of this message, because we are going to unpack this next week. But when I believe, when I put my faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ, when I put my faith in Calvary, by grace Jesus releases everything that I need. My belief releases his supply.

If you believe that, give the Lord a shout of praise in this place. Amen.