“There is no one besides me”: Bruce Ware sermon recap

Sermon

This week, Dr. Bruce Ware swapped his khakis for jeans and came to teach Mars Hill for the second sermon in our Best Sermon Ever series. He preached the sermon “The Incomparable Glory of God” out of Isaiah 40–45.

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• God, as Creator, is independent of all he’s made—we, his creatures, are dependent on him for all. #bestsermonever


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• Nothing brings God into existence. He is his own basis for existing eternally and is self-sufficient. #bestsermonever
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• Anything you think of that is good, any perfection—these are possessed within God intrinsically. #bestsermonever


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• Entitlement before God is destroyed when we recognize we are dependent on him for everything. #bestsermonever
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• It’s an offense in culture to proclaim Jesus is the only way to be saved—but it’s true. #bestsermonever


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• Do you doubt God’s love? Look at the cross of Christ. #bestsermonever

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• God alone is deserving of our ultimate dependence, our trust, and our hope in him. #bestsermonever
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• Do you doubt God’s love? Look at the cross of Christ, the greatest display. Trust him. Be thankful to him for what he has done for you in Christ. 
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Anything you think of that is qualitatively good, any perfection, any attribute that we might think of that is a good thing—things like righteousness and holiness wisdom and knowledge power and goodness—these are possessed within God intrinsically.
• Creator God, who looks now upon us as sinners deserving judgment, designed a plan by which he could redeem us, save us from our sin, and bring us back to himself so that we could, with him, then again experience the fullness of joy we will only know because we are with the one who has it all. 
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This redeeming God in Christ has come to us so that his Son would bear our sin and receive the judgment of God against our sin in himself that by faith in Christ alone we might be saved. What a glorious thing!

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Other resources

When he’s not gracing our church with his teaching, Dr. Ware is a professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He’s also a prolific author and expert on the Trinity. So if you want more, dig in!

Interviews

“An Interview with Bruce Ware on the Humanity of Jesus,” with Dane Ortlund (via the Gospel Coalition).

Ortlund poses these questions to Ware, among others:

• “Why did Jesus have to come as a man and not a woman?” (09:25)
• “What would you say to a woman who says to you, ‘OK Dr. Ware, Jesus came as a male. Is it not true then that Jesus doesn’t really understand me as a woman?’” (11:43)
• “Why did Jesus have to come and be a man to save us? I can understand why only God could save me, but why did the second person of the trinity also need to become fully human and, it seems, do what Psalm 49 says can’t be done?” (14:00)
• “Is Jesus still a man today?” (18:13)

Here’s another interview he did with the blog My Digital Seminary on that same book:

Q: What do you hope pursuing a deeper understanding of Christ will lead to for readers?
A: I hope and pray that a clearer understanding of Christ, the God become (also) a man, will give them more confidence in living the new covenant, Spirit-empowered lives we are called to live. . . . Knowing this—knowing that Jesus really did suffer, and grow, and fight to obey, and resist temptation, fully as a man—can give us hope that as he lived in obedience in the power of the Spirit, so we can hope and pray for increasing obedience in our lives as we rely on that same powerful Spirit. We really are called to “follow in his steps” (1 Pet. 2:21), and I hope this book will show better why this command is one we should long to obey.

Books

• The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Reflections on the Humanity of Christ, (Crossway, 2012).
• Big Truths for Young Hearts: Teaching and Learning the Greatness of God, (Crossway, 2009).
• Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance, (Crossway, 2005).
• God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith, (Crossway, 2004).
• Their God Is Too Small: Open Theism and the Undermining of Confidence in God, (Crossway, 2003).
• God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism, (Crossway, 2000).

Regular writing

• On Monergism.
• On Resurgence.