- Ezra Institute - https://www.ezrainstitute.com -

Searching for Truth: The Big Story

Plotting the Biblical Drama

The Bible gives us a big story about reality, beginning with paradise lost in Adam's Fall and culminating with paradise restored by Christ's redemption in the cross. God's people cannot merely admire the gospel; we need to rest in it, entrusting our whole beings to God in Christ.

Sermon Notes:

  1. The Bible gives us a big story about reality, beginning with paradise lost in Adam’s Fall and culminating with paradise restored by Christ’s redemption in the cross.
  2. Though offensive to man’s reason, the biblical story makes total sense of the world and the human condition.  
  3. Already in Gen. 3:15, the Seed of the woman is promised. God judged rebellion in Noah’s global flood; God divided languages at Babel; Abraham was called out by God; Jacob’s family becomes a nation in Egypt; Israel was promised Canaan if they kept covenant; God’s prophets repeatedly called Israel to remember the promise; the New Testament begins with Jesus’ genealogy from Adam.
  4. Jesus shatters history into two halves: BC and AD. Though He led a humble life and died as a criminal, His life and ministry is unprecedented:  He commanded people to follow Him; He claimed to be the Way, the Truth, the source of eternal Life; He forgives sin; He claimed to have seen Abraham.  
  5. Jesus was the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the only wise God, the Second Adam, the true Dominion Man.
  6. We see God’s glory in the peerless person, acts, and life of Jesus. Yet He was a true man who got hungry, was tempted, slept, and wept.
  7. Jesus cannot be just a good moral example. He was either a deceiver, or the Son of God.
  8. Old Testament prophecies, Jesus’ miracles, and His ministry all confirm Christ’s divinity.
  9. Jesus was not a martyred social reformer; He gave up His life willingly to accomplish redemption.
  10. The Jews viewed Jesus as a threat to their position.
  11. Falsely accused and condemned, Jesus was cruelly beaten, tortured, mocked and killed by crucifixion.
  12. Giving up His Spirit, Jesus cries out “it is finished.” Death was finally vanquished, for Jesus had paid the penalty for sin.  The cross was the completion of redemption, the fulfillment of centuries of prophecy (Romans 5:8).
  13. A sinful person cannot be pardoned on his own merit without doing injury to God’s perfect holiness and justice.
  14. There was no means of escape, except that God fully satisfied His own justice by the God-man, Christ Jesus.
  15. Jesus paid our sin debt (Isaiah 53:5-6; Gal. 3:13-14).
  16. We cannot obtain grace and mercy apart from a perfectly just and holy God.  We therefore need to surrender fully to the Lordship and salvation of Christ.
  17. God requires that we repent and put faith in Jesus.  Then the Holy Spirit changes us from the inside out and puts us into the international body of the Church, unified in Christ.
  18. The gospel is that people from every nation come into the kingdom of God.
  19. God's people cannot merely admire the gospel; we need to rest in it, entrusting our whole beings to God in Christ.

Application Questions

  1. Outline the major components of the biblical story.
  2. How does the biblical story answer life’s big questions?
  3. Why did Christ need to be both God and man and sinless?
  4. How could our unpayable debt of sin be cleared?
  5. Why can’t we pay for our own sins by doing good deeds?
  6. Do we merely admire the gospel or do we rest our whole lives in it?