New Life Bible Conference (2014) – A Summary

What follows are just the main headings of the sermons delivered in the 2014 New Life Bible Conference. Whatever details I selected from my notebook to put under the headings are only things that stuck out to me. They might not represent what the preachers may have deemed most central to their sermons. Check out my short take-away from the conference.

Sermon recordings:

Creation (Carter), Fall (Anyabwile), Flood (Jones), Abraham (Anyabwile), Judah (Jones), Joseph (Carter), also Phillip Duncanson on Hebrews 3:1-6 (Preached the Sunday of the conference)

June 26th, 2014

Anthony Carter

Sermon 1: Genesis 2:4-25

God’s creation of Adam, what it meant, and what it means

1) Creation is God’s power displayed

2) Creation is God’s beauty portrayed

3) Creation is intelligently made (culmination of God’s design=man)

a) God the creator to give Adam work

– Preachers like to make much of themselves because they make much of preaching, but any work is worship to God, who gives each man a “calling”; street-sweeping that makes heaven praise God

b) God’s compassion to give Adam a wife

c) God’s covenant to give Adam a will (one provision, one prohibition, 2:16-17)

– Choose life (Deut 30:29; Matt 7)

– Adam lost all: worshipful work, innocence, fellowship

– In Christ, all this will be redeemed: work, worship, relationships (already/not yet)

Thabiti Anyabwile

Sermon 2: Genesis 3

The Gospel according to the Fall

1) Serpent (3:1)

– Incredulous account, but true; God’s thoughts/ways are not ours

2) Sayings exchanged

– Either listen to the bad counselors of the world (empty philosophies) or to God’s word

3) Sight

– What Eve did with her eyes & how they were opened, seeing totally new appeal of tree

– They already had knowledge of good (it was God himself); it was knowledge of evil that was the addition; eyes opened, but a light that was a darkness, seeing things as in a photo negative, evil, corrupt

– Worldview of believers (sees goodness of a sovereign God in crushing brutality of the world) vs. unbelievers (mechanistic, materialistic)

4) Sound (3:8-9)

– Lord walking in garden: What used to sound like an invitation, now sounded like death

– Hiding like animals (sin makes God’s image-bearers bestial);

5) Sentencing

– Completeness of God’s justice (Chiastic, from Adam, Eve, Serpent/ Serpent, Eve, Adam)

– Enmity: Break up the little relationship between serpent & Eve

– Discord in marriage, the more she grabs, the more he retreats

– Pain & Dissatisfaction in work

6) Salvation

1) Promise of a seed. Seed from a woman, though seed language usually applied to men: so, it’s a seed that will come totally from a woman, Christ the true Son, born of a virgin;

– This seed bore the afflictions of men & God

2) Promise of covering. Garments of skin: Covering, atoning through death of an animal, clothes us in his own righteousness

3) Pushing from the Garden (3:23). Didn’t kill them immediately; didn’t seal them forever in their sin (this would result if they ate from tree of life);

– Anticipates a day when it will be not possible not to be righteous

– When we hear the “well done,” we’ll know it was he who was doing it well

June 27th, 2014

Ken Jones

Sermon 3: The Flood: Genesis 6:5-8; 7:1-6; 8:1-2; 8:20-22

1) The flood is a manifestation of God’s holy & immutable hatred for sin

– Flood wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction, God has a fixed hatred for sin

2) The contaminating and corrupting effects of fallen man

– That’s why he destroys not only man, but the entire earth

3) The flood was both punitive as well as purifying

– intentional punishment & removing that which is offensive to God

4) The flood was a preview of the final judgment

– Another day of judgment is coming; parallel themes: judgment/deliverance

5) The flood is as much about divine grace as it is about judgment

– Noah might have been blameless in a relative sense (offered acceptable worship, called upon the name of the Lord), but he was not pure; he received grace from God

6) The covenantal underpinnings of the flood

– Though Noah deserves the same as the world, God made a unilateral covenant

– Special grace: Anthropopathic language: God remembered, God honored his own covenant (8:1)

– Common grace: God will never destroy the earth again with water

7) There was only one way to escape the flood

– To be invited into the covenant

– The waters didn’t touch Noah, but they did touch the Ark

– The wrath of God doesn’t touch those in Christ, but it touched Jesus Christ

Thabiti Anyabwile

Sermon 4: Genesis 11:27-12:3

1) The life of faith is a going life

– Christ’s call to “go” recapitulates God’s call for Abraham to “go” (Matt 28)

– Besetting sin of the Western church is a complacent staying; we ought to go

2) The life of faith is a great life

– It is a great thing to be a Christian, being justified by faith (Gal 3);

– Beware of using the pulpit or ministry to make your own name great

3) The life of faith is a guarded life

– 1 Pet 1:3-5

June 28th, 2014

Sermon 5: Ken Jones

Judah: Gen, 37, 38, 42, 44, espec. Gen 49:8-12

1) Although his actions are wicked, Judah is a covenant child

– Advocates selling Joseph, Separates from his brothers, marries a Canaanite, pagan woman, fathers the Perrezites via Perez, borne by his own daughter in law, whom he thought was a prostitute

– The free actions of humans in history are the details that become the props and players by which the plot line of redemptive history are unfolded

– Judah is in stark contrast to Joseph in terms of wicked/virtuous behavior, yet Judah is just as much a covenant child as Joseph is; both recipients of divine grace

2) Images of the mediatorial function and work of the Messiah; Judah unwittingly pictures Messiah

a) Judah speaks up: “I will be surety for Benjamin… let me bear the blame for ever” (KJV) (for all Judah knew, Benjamin actually did steal the cup) (Gen 43:9)

b) Judah shares in the guilt of Benjamin: “How can we clear ourselves?” (Gen 44:16)

c) Judah was willing to bear the weight of the responsibility of his brother (44:18-34) in order to appease the wrath against him

3) Jacob’s prophecy regarding Judah (Gen 49:8-12)

a) In Messiah, we have a conquering king (v 8, 10)

b) In Messiah, we have a great protector (Lion’s whelp)

c) In Messiah, we have a great provider (v 11-12)

– Conquering king, great protector, great provider, fulfilled in Rev 5:1-14: The Lion of the Tribe of Judah!

Anthony Carter

Sermon 6: Genesis 50:1-8; 15-21

Joseph, ruler and redeemer, as a type of Christ

1) A ruler highly favored

– Divine favor that Joseph found in God’s eyes, which spilled over into favor in Pharaoh’s eyes; important biblical theme (Prov 3:4; 2 Chron 16:5; Matt 3:17)

– Christ was blessed & highly favored & so are those who are in him (Jn 11; Jn 16:23)

– No good thing will he withhold from you when you walk in Christ Jesus

2) A redeemer highly gracious

– Rulers uphold & enforce the law; they are not redeemers

– While all creation knows God as creator and ruler, the unique knowledge of believers is we know God as redeemer (1 Pet 1:12)

– Starts with Mercy: After Jacob’s death, Joseph’s brothers’ misery was due to recognition of their sin; but this is where mercy begins

– Joseph knows he’s been the recipient of mercy, so he shows mercy

– Sealed by sovereignty: Gen 50:20 – “ you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good”; conclusion and summary of Genesis, as well as much of biblical history= God’s sovereignty;

– Sustained by grace. “Fear not, for I am with you” (Isa 41:14). What he has’ we’ll have. Do I have a place in heaven? You’ll have a place in heaven. Do I have ample provision? You’ll have ample provision. Mercy= You won’t be punished. Grace= You’ll be rewarded.

– Redemption starts in mercy, and is sealed in sovereignty, and is sustained by grace; God’s mercy starts it; God’s sovereignty seals it; God’s grace sustains it

– We can sing a song of sovereignty in the midst of sorrow; Gen 50:20 was Josephs’ song

 Check out my short take-away from the conference.