There’s a principle of Bible study when we come to the word of God that is absolutely indispensable, and that is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. With all of the aids, helps, books and commentaries, the bottom line is that we must come as little children before Him and ask the Holy Spirit to unveil Christ to our hearts.
As I prepared these messages, this verse became very meaningful to me. Isaiah 32:6,
“A fool speaks nonsense…… to keep the hungry person unsatisfied and to withhold drink for the thirsty.”
Anyone hungry and thirsty here? I would be a fool and speak nonsense if I didn’t give you something to satisfy your soul. A fool speaks nonsense if he lets the hungry go out hungry and lets the thirsty go out thirsty. That’s why it’s important that I proclaim Christ, because no other message can satisfy hunger and thirst. I don’t want to be a fool and speak nonsense. You’ll know the difference between straw and grain. Let’s trust God’s word together as we open up His word, and that we come to have our spirits fed to see and behold the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Father, we do praise You this morning, that we have the privilege again to come and wait before You. You have been so faithful, are faithful at this moment, and will be faithful throughout all eternity. We pray now that in a special way we might tap into that great fountain, and that we might drink and imbibe deeply to receive everything that you have for us to receive. We trust You as we look into Your word; minister unto us, and show us the Lord Jesus Christ. We did not come for a soul massage but for a revelation of Christ. We ask you, Lord, in Your mercy to give us that. In the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
OUTLINE
Before I begin sharing the burden that’s on my heart for this weekend, let me say something about an introductory lesson. It’s very difficult for me because it’s tedious. I think it’s important to get us looking in the right direction. Please pray that the Lord will assist me in what to proclaim, because I long that He would do that. In an introductory lesson we don’t just have a text. The closest we will come to a text is 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 11 and Genesis 2. I’ll be quoting those verses. I want to give you what the theme is in my heart. Galatians 4:19: you might look at that and say that it’s not a prayer, but I say that it is, because I’m going to pray it! Paul talks about travail in his heart. Travail is prayer. Galatians 4:19:
That’s my prayer, that Christ be formed in you. I’ve been praying in a special way as we go through this, that Christ would be formed in you. The message that I have on my heart is Christ formed in you and me.
I’ve been going through that portion of scripture that goes through the first forty years of our Lord Jesus and His ministry. You might think that there’s very little information on the first thirty years in the Bible and that those are the obscure years and God doesn’t say much. We won’t be looking to any so-called gospel books outside the Bible to fill in those years. One example of such a book says that when Jesus was four years old a friend had broken a clay tool, so Jesus killed the child. The parent of the child told Mary, so Jesus kicked him in the ribs, and he came back to life. Can you believe this stuff is in there? Then when He was six years old, somebody bumped into him, and he didn’t like it, and he killed that child. Again, the parents came, and Jesus lifted him up by the ears, and he was alive again. He made some clay animals on the Sabbath day, and some of the religious leaders came into Joseph and Mary and rebuked them that He was making things on the Sabbath day. So, Jesus clapped his hands, and the clay pigeons flew away, and the clay animals ran away.
When we look at the thirty years, we aren’t going to be looking at that kind of thing. We’ll only be getting our information from the Bible. When you take all the infancy stories and take the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus and take the baptism and the temptation in the wilderness, that’s a lot of scripture, and it’s all about those first thirty years. I want God’s heart on those thirty years. I don’t want to just get some facts, that Joseph was a carpenter, and that His family was Godly, and they kept the customs, and He knew three languages, etc. I’m not interested in that. We’re already accustomed to reading these stories in an isolated way. We all know the Christmas story, how Gabriel came and appeared to Mary, the virgin birth, the shepherds, Simeon in the temple, the wise men, Herod destroying the children, the rescue in Egypt, God settling them in Nazareth, and the twelve-year-old Jesus. We’ve all studied them in a detached way. Has God ever dawned on your heart the thirty years in a segment, how Christ is revealed in that period of time, and how all those stories are tied together to give us that revelation of Christ? That’s what we want to look at.
Jesus is representative Man, our substitute – not our example
My son told me to just give you my burden. He said that you aren’t interested in my outline or illustrations and how I am going to present it. So, we’re just here to proclaim the Lord. I want you to see three things. First, you have got to see God’s revelation of His Son, how God reveals Jesus. There are many answers to that question, but I think this is the chief answer; He is the representative man. There are other ways that He’s presented; He’s the God-man, He’s the perfect man and all that. I’m not talking about Jesus as the ideal man, man created as God created man to be, the model and specimen of humanity. That’s not the point. We aren’t studying those thirty years so that we can copy and imitate and say that it’s the way we ought to live. If we did, we would miss God’s main point. He did not live on the earth to show us how to live; He didn’t do it first so that we could do it second. If you miss this, you miss those thirty years. He came as our substitute, as our representative; He came to be man in our place and for us. I might be a good example to you but I’m not your representative.
I think thousands of Christians miss this. If you ask the average Christian if Christ is their substitute, their representative, almost without exception they would say, “Yes, He was my substitute and He became sin for me and died for me. He’s my substitute on the cross.” Think about this; when He was in Gethsemane, was He your substitute then? Was He transfigured as Your substitute? His temptation in the wilderness, did He do that as your example so that we’d know how to face temptation? Did He do it first so that we could do it second? He did it once so that we don’t have to do it. He was circumcised. Was He circumcised for you? Col. 2:11 says we are circumcised in Christ, with a circumcision not made with hands. I know He died for me. When He died, I died. When He was there, I was there. I’ve never heard anyone stand up and testify that when He was circumcised, I was circumcised with Him. He was not only my substitute in death, but the thirty years shows that He was my substitute in life. He died for me, but He also lived for me. So, we need to look at Christ as our representative.
Jesus obeyed perfectly as our representative
Let me give a stupid illustration. Picture September 12, 2001, the day after September 11. Let’s assume that somewhere on this earth there is someone who is completely uncivilized, uncultured, as primitive as primitive can be, some aborigine in some deep dark jungle that has never heard of anything, and you lift that person out of his culture, and bring him to America. Let’s say that you bring him to the financial capital of the world, to lower Manhattan. On the way over in the plane you begin to explain to him that he’s going to see the most amazing thing he can ever imagine, the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers. Then you explain that he’ll see buildings 110 stories high, 1,377 feet above the level of the sea. His eyes get big with amazement. You tell him that these buildings house more the 450 businesses and that more than 50,000 people are employed in just those two buildings, and underneath there is a great shopping complex. So, you arrive on September 12 and go to ground zero and say, “There it is!” What does he see? He sees a hundred thousand tons of rubble; he sees a wreck. He doesn’t see a north and south tower looking over a great metropolis. He sees a pile of melted steel, crumbled concrete, and twisted everything, a mass grave. That’s all he sees.
Let me ask you this. As we stood at the pit at ground zero, did I lie to him? That’s the Twin Towers, but the problem is that they’re not there because it’s after the fall. It’s the Twin Towers after the enemy did his monstrous deed. That’s the problem with the study of man today. That’s the problem with anthropology and psychology and psychiatry where some of these educators are trying to study man. They don’t see a man. They are seeing man after the fall; and that’s not man as God intended man to be. The second thing we must see is that the representative Man lived a perfect life; in every obedience to His Father God, every moment of every day, every day of every week, every week of every month, and every month of every year He lived flawlessly. You won’t understand those thirty years unless God gives you a vision of that; He’s not only a representative but One Who obeyed perfectly and satisfied God.
Jesus is progressively revealed to us as representative man
“The child continued to grow and became strong, increasing in wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him.”
Christ was growing; Christ was maturing. As you come to the gospel record, you see a representative man, a perfect representative, progressively revealed, until He’s revealed and can carry out His redemptive ministry to all the earth. God helping me, I will take those three facts, and will show you a glorious principle. God has done a most wonderful thing with those thirty years. If we can see that here, we’ll never be the same. So, one by one, let’s go back and look at these three things.
JESUS IS OUR REPRESENTAIVE – NOT OUR EXAMPLE
Only two times, as far as I know, in the history of the world, has God given us a representative man; once is Jesus and the other is Adam. We can’t look at man because that’s the fallen towers; more than 110 stories had fallen. So, we can either look at Adam or the last Adam. 1 Cor. 15:45-47,
“So also, it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven.”
This is not my bright idea, but God in His word has made a connection between Adam and the Lord Jesus; Adam is called the first man. It tells me that there were none before him. In verse 47, Christ is called the second man. The first man is from the earth, “earthy”, and the second man is from heaven. In verse 47, Christ is called the second man. If Adam is the first man, there is none before him. If Christ is the second man, there’s none between them. Verse 45, Christ is called the Last Adam because He’s a life-giving spirit. Adam is the first Adam because there’s none before him, Christ is the second man and there’s nothing between them, and Christ is the last Adam because there’s nothing after Him. In other words, from God’s viewpoint there are only two men that have ever lived as God intended man to live. They have this in common; they were both representative men. If we’re going to see Christ as the representative, it will help me to see the first representative. So, what I’d like to do is to show you Adam one and then we’ll look at Adam, the last. We’ll drive home this idea of representation.
What did it look like before the tower fell? Before man sinned, let’s turn to 2 Corinthians, because that’s fully developed formed, and we’ll get some insight what it was like before the Fall. 2 Corinthians 11:2,
“I’m jealous over you with a Godly jealousy. I espoused you to one husband; that I present you as a pure virgin to Christ. I fear less by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in His craftiness, your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity of devotion to Christ.”
The New American Standard says, “Led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” King James says, “Corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Kenneth Wuest in His expanded translation words it this way, “Lest your mind be corrupted from the simplicity, the single-hearted loyalty and purity and uprightness of life which you expressed toward Christ.”
In other words, here was Paul’s concern for the Corinthians; God had used him as the instrument to lead them into wedded union with the Lord and brought them as a virgin into a marriage relationship with God, but as He watched them, he had a concern for them, and it was that Satan would do to them what he did to Eve in the garden before she fell, “As Satan deceived Eve, I’m afraid that Satan is going to deceive you from your simplicity and your devotion to Christ.” What did it look like before man sinned? Life was simple and devoted to the Lord. When we get saved and come back to the Lord, that’s our new life. It’s simple and devoted to Him, and lived in union with God. That’s how it was back then. Isaiah has a description of Eden. Isaiah 51:3,
“The garden of the Lord, joy and gladness was found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of a melody.”
That’s what it was like: joy, gladness, thanksgiving, the sound of the melody, man as God intended man to be— simple and related to God and living out a holy and happy life. That was Adam as the representative man; he wasn’t living for himself. Even though Adam didn’t have a family, God looked at Adam and said, “I see your family; I see your grandchildren; I see your grandchildren’s grandchildren; I see your grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren. And He looked at Adam and said, “I see all the nations of the world.” Adam was man, but he wasn’t one man; he was one representative man. As he stood there, the whole race stood there. If we are going to understand the thirty years, you have to see that the first Adam was like the last Adam.
JESUS LIVED IN PERECT OBEDIENCE AS REPRESENTATIVE MAN
Christ is not only the representative man, but He lived in perfect obedience to God. This was true of both representatives. God desired that man live simply and in devotion to Him, but He didn’t want a robot. He didn’t want to force that. So, He made a covenant with Adam. Some theologians say that the first covenant in the Bible is with Abraham and David, and then Moses, but that He never made a covenant with Adam. Well, just because the word “covenant” doesn’t appear, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a covenant. The word “trinity” doesn’t appear, and there is a trinity. The word “rapture” doesn’t appear, and the word “Shekinah” doesn’t appear, but there’s a rapture and a Shekinah glory. The word “substitute” doesn’t appear in your Bible, but there’s a substitute.
Actually, the word “covenant” does appear. Genesis 2:15,
“Jehovah took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and keep; and Jehovah God commanded the man saying, ‘Of every tree in the garden thou may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.”
See, that’s a covenant. There’s a duty required, and a promise made, and a punishment threatened; that’s a covenant. In fact, Hosea 6:7 in addressing Israel says,
“Like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant.”
Theologians call it the “covenant of works”. Adam was required to obey and live; disobey and he’d die. That’s it. It’s simple.
If he had obeyed and walked the path of obedience, he would have eventually come to the tree of life, and then been sealed in that obedience. He would have passed the test, and everything would have been different. It’s all about obedience. God did not give him any out. There was not one jot, and not one failing was allowed—no latitude in the covenant. Adam couldn’t come back and say, “I tried my best and put my best foot forward and I’m really sorry.” There was no room for repentance in the covenant. It’s a covenant of works; it’s all about God’s will and God’s pleasure and God’s heart and authority. It’s clear when the commandment isn’t a moral issue; “Don’t because I said so.” God said to not eat of that tree. Why? “Because I said so. Instead, you walk in simplicity and devotion to me.”
Some commentaries try to identify Adam’s sin. Some say it’s pride, some say it’s envy, some say it’s selfishness, some say it’s independence, and some say it’s covetousness. My guess is that it was probably all of those things, but God names it. Romans 5:19,
“As through one man’s disobedience many were made sinners…”
It’s a covenant of works. God, in effect, said, “Here’s the deal. I’m going to make a covenant with you. If you live simply and in devotion to me, and the law is written in your heart, and you are happy and holy, everything is wonderful. Here’s the deal. I’m going to let you represent the whole family tree. If you pass the test, they pass the test. If you flunk, they’ll flunk.” That was the whole thing. “When you act, they act; the destiny of the whole world depends on your actions. You are the representative of the entire race.”
You know the story. Adam disobeyed; Adam one sinned. The first representative man went down, and the towers came down, and that’s been the history of society ever since. Man fell from his integrity, and the image of God was ruined. In the middle of the history, God gave us a great mirror, the Law, so they could see how terrible their fall was. Man could not have fallen any more than he fell when he fell in his federal head. That’s when enters the second man, thousands of years ago, Galatians 4:4,
“When the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.”
Enter—the Second Man. Don’t miss this, brothers and sisters in Christ. God is starting over—the last Adam, the second man. It’s like the Garden of Eden all over again. There’s another man on the earth as God intended man to be. God had figured out a way for a person to not only do what Adam didn’t do, but undo everything the first Adam did. In other words, the second man had to live for the whole race. Same deal. If you pass, they pass. If you flunk, they flunk.
We look at the manger and we see a cute little baby. That’s not just a baby; it’s a new start of a new race. It’s a new representative. God is beginning all over again. Right from the start, the issue was the same. The Bible says that Jesus spoke when He was an infant. It’s in Hebrews 10:7,
“Then I said, ‘Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do Thy will, oh God.’ After saying above, ‘Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offering and sacrifices for sin Thou hast not desired, nor hast Thou taken pleasure in them (which are offered according to Law),’ then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Thy will.’”
When He came into the world, He said that He came to do, “Thy will”. That’s what it’s all about.
When the disciples brought Him food to eat because He was tired and hungry in John 4:32-34,
“‘I have meat to eat that you know not of.’ Therefore, the disciples said one to another, ‘Has any man brought Him anything to eat?’ And Jesus said, ‘My meat is to do the will of Him Who sent me, to finish His work.’”
This is representative man. This is the second man, the Last Adam. “Do or die.” John 6:38,
“Jesus said, ‘I’ve come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of Him Who sent me.’”
He claimed in John 8:28-29 not to do or say anything on His own,
“When you’ve lifted up the Son of Man, you shall know that I am He, and that I do nothing by Myself. As My Father has taught me, I speak these things. He that sent me is with Me. The Father has not left me alone. I always do those things that please Him.”
So, when you read the record, the second man came to do what the first man wouldn’t do—obey. It’s about obedience. Who can forget Gethsemane? “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” If you are going to understand these thirty years, you’ve got to see that it’s representative man living life in perfect obedience until finally He could go on the cross and say, “It is finished.” We learn in Hebrews that He learned obedience by the things that He suffered, and He cried out, but was unable to be saved from death. You can never understand the thirty years if you don’t see Jesus as the second man, as The last Adam, as our substitute and representative, doing what the first man didn’t do, and undoing what the first man did.
JESUS IS REVEALED PROGRESSIVELY AS REPRESENTATIVE MAN
How is He revealed in the Bible? The answer is little by little, as He matures before our eyes. God wants us to know the Lord Jesus as our substitute, and as the One who does the work, but according to the thirty years, as He was progressively revealed. Before His life could become redemptive, He had to grow and grow and grow, and then His ministry began. As He came, it’s how He comes. What He did then, He does now. The way He was progressively revealed then is exactly how He is progressively revealed in your heart. Step by step we’ll read those stories and we’ll be amazed. Galatians 4:19 is my prayer, “I’m in labor over you until Christ is formed in you.” It’s not how to grow in Christ. I want to show you how Christ grows in you. That’s my burden, how He is formed in you, because in some of us who may still be a fetus, we’ve got to watch Him grow. In some of us He may be an infant. We’ll look at each of the characteristics of Christ, and after an infant He’ll become a young adult. Then, when finally we’ve matured to where He can minister, we need to follow that. He desires to be in us now.
Why do we study these thirty years? It’s because I see our substitute who wants to come into my heart to be a substitute, to be a representative. As far as I can follow it back, Hudson Taylor is the first one who ever used the expression, “The Exchanged Life”. It’s about Christ coming in to live in my place as my substitute. Christ lived by works and He still does. He’s come into your life to live by works. He did it by works and gives it to you by grace. It’s His life. We’re so busy trying to live the Christian life. It takes God to be a Christian. There’s only one Person who ever lived the Christian life, and His name is Jesus; and He’s the only one that can live it again. It takes God to be a man, as God intended man to be. It takes God to be a Christian. It’s not your life; it’s Him. He’s the substitute; He does the work, and He’s progressively revealed. As I studied those thirty years, I saw that He comes into my life to be a substitute, to do the work, and He is progressively revealed. As I saw Him as a fetus, and as I saw Him as an infant, and I look at my life, and I see the forming of Christ, this is my prayer, “That Christ be formed in you.”
The other day my wife was watching the Olympics, the swim team and the men’s all-around gymnastics. When I walked in, she looked at me and lit up and said, “We won!” She’s been doing that with the Red Sox lately, too. She didn’t even get wet! She wasn’t in the pool. How could she identify with that? How could she say that we won? Somehow, she was able to identify with that, and it became her team and her athlete, and she began to praise the athletes. It touched me because I had been studying about representative.
I asked her, “If you had read about some athletic team two thousand years ago, before our nation was a nation, that they had represented something called the United States, and they won the gold, would you be dancing around right now?” She said, “No.” I began to think about how we look back at our Lord Jesus, and all that He has done, and we’re told to enter in; to identify with His victory. Two thousand years later we’re trying to appropriate and enter in. Then it hit me. He was my substitute. He IS my substitute. Do you know why she could enter in? It’s because it was now, and it wasn’t then. If we try to walk on a balance beam, we know we are going to fall off. But He’s not. He’s going to be doing flips on the balance beam. It’s Him under those heavy weights; it’s Him tearing down the track—now. It’s not then—it’s now.
If we could see Him as our representative now, how we would cheer on that athlete now. In the hour of temptation we would say, “Run, Jesus, run.” It’s Him. It’s His life. He’s the substitute, He’s the one on the balance beam, and He’s swimming the course, and He’s living the Christian life. It’s Him, if we could see that NOW He lives in me as my substitute; He’s living in us, instead of us as an exchanged life. He comes in to live and do the work NOW. The way He does it is by being progressively formed in us. We want to see those stages; we want to watch Christ being formed in us, and we’ll be able to see every step. Those stories unfolding won’t just be Christmas stories. It’s God telling how He wants to do now what He did then; as He came, He comes. As He worked, He works. As He was progressively manifested then; He is progressively manifested now in our lives.
We pray as we look at these wonderful stories, that we’ll see Christ formed, because we’ll see Him being formed in our life to the place where He then begins to minister. This is all preparation for that redemptive ministry where He pours Himself out for the world.
Father, thank You for Your word, not what we think we know about it but all that You know about it. Show us Christ our representative, the worker, and how Christ is formed in us. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
