I’ve been teaching off and on for nearly 20 years now, which is such an odd thought to me. It makes me sound old. Even though I can look back fondly on a great many of the lessons and series I’ve taught, I still have times where things don’t go as planned. My most recent church series was one of them. And as one of my seminary profs liked to say, it’s not experience that matters, it’s evaluated experience that really counts. So I’d like to share with you what I learned in my most recent experience.

The Setup

The subject of study was modern identity. I was excited about the new (2020) Carl Trueman book on the subject, I’d heard enough interviews with him to understand the main ideas, and I felt it was an important contribution to worldview. I enjoy taking things one might consider “out of reach” and packaging them for a lay audience, so I thought I would do that here. I was given three nights of an hour each to make it happen. And with all of my training, I was confident I could pitch the material in the right way.

The venue was Sunday evening church, and I didn’t realize it at first, but this was a fact that deserved a great more thought than I initially put into it. Regardless, I talked over the plan with the pastor and we both felt good about where we were going and why.

Complication 1: Subject Matter

The first mistake I made was suggesting a book I had not yet read. I have sometimes chosen a topic based on things I want to study, and that has always worked for me in the past. So I jumped at the chance to teach on this without giving it much thought. But in hindsight, every time I had done that was in the context of an elective course. The audience was a group who came in already sharing my interest in the subject. A broader audience meant that this approach would turn out to have serious drawbacks. More on that later.

Beyond this, the book left out some things that I thought were absolutely crucial to teaching on the subject. It did an excellent job of detailing the problems, but I wanted to present the solution. This meant I had much, much more research ahead of me than I initially thought. The subject of the book was not the kind of thing one can easily summon in Scripture.

By way of contrast, I once taught on the Bible’s view of homosexuality. While definitely a contentious subject, the question at stake is clear, there are many resources devoted to it on both sides of the issue, and it’s relatively easy to determine which portions of the Bible deal with it. This time, I was teaching on personal identity, which is less clear as a subject, not as well documented, and not as easy to target in Scripture.

It was a fascinating study! I have no regrets about that. But because the topic was tougher and the book I chose was less comprehensive, I set myself up for trouble when it came time to teach.

Complication 2: Audience

The second mistake is one I already alluded to: not putting enough thought into the audience.

I love people. I find that when I’m teaching, my passion for the subject and care for the student help pull things together in the moment, and it’s a glorious feeling. I remember one time where all my preparation had failed me, and I was terrified. After pleading with God, I found myself walking up to a podium with only a vague idea of what to say. And when I looked out at the audience, by God’s grace, something clicked, and everything went the way it should have. It’s a glorious feeling. So I thought that “click” would happen walking into this room, too.

But this was my first time teaching a Sunday evening church session, and it took time to process what that meant.

There are general rules for every format or venue. Sunday morning, I know to preach the Word. In Sunday School, I learned quickly that it’s best to study Scripture and bring in history, philosophy, etc., only when the subject required. In college courses, students are committed to the study because it helps them achieve their goals, so there are already boundaries and expectation to grease the skids. In adult electives, as I said, a common interest brings people together. In a small group, there is typically a commitment to one another that helps focus and drive the lesson.

But what is Sunday evening church? I thought it would be like an adult elective. What was I thinking?! I was totally wrong!

After the second night of class, it finally sank in: these people aren’t united by subject interest or commitment to each other. This is more like Sunday School. They are united by their interest in studying God’s Word together. I should have been preparing and teaching according to Sunday School rules.

Thankfully, the last night of class was already going to be devoted to Scripture, but that meant I had been fighting an uphill battle the first two weeks of the course. What I had to share was good, but because I misjudged the audience, (and self-confidence may have played a part, too), I missed the opportunity to make the most of the time together.

Lessons Learned

So there, I’ve confessed the error of my ways. How can we make it better next time?

1: Know the unwritten rules of your format. While it may seem like teaching is like a sport with its own set of rules, I’m more inclined now to think that teaching is really like “sports” in general. Despite their commonalities, basketball, volleyball, and soccer are different games with different rules, obviously. But less obviously, the same holds true for different venues and audiences. It’s not enough to know the people and care about them. It’s not enough to know “how to teach.” It’s not even enough to know what style best fits your content. You can’t simply get in there and hustle. You need to know which game you’re really playing. Format comes first because reaching the audience is everything.

Sunday evening may be different at your church. Maybe it’s another sermon. Maybe it’s small group time. Maybe it’s adult electives. Make sure to identify which format you’re teaching so that you know which set of norms to adopt. Don’t preach in a small group, don’t unpack Carl Trueman in a sermon, and don’t teach a college course to a Sunday School class.

(Note: actually, I do know what I was thinking. We used to do adult electives in this hour, but because of COVID, we combined the elective courses into one group that takes different courses in sequence. I just didn’t stop to realize this change in format also changed the rules of the game.)

2: Don’t trust the book to tell you what your students need. When designing a course, a program, an organization, a piece of communication—anything—you always want to clarify the win before you formulate strategy. Know where you’re going before trying to plot the course. I thought that a good book from a good writer with good reviews would come with its own “win” that I could deliver to my students. That was a mistake. The objective of the book was to detail a problem. But I would never have let that be the main objective for a church lesson. So what was my objective? I wanted to help students see where they might be captive to worldly thinking, yes, but in order to replace it with biblical thinking. The former served the latter.

By not stopping to note this ahead of time and being brutally realistic about what it would take to fill that gap, I bound myself to spending a far larger percentage of my prep time on research than on constructing a good learning experience. Research is great. Sometimes it takes time, and it’s important not to cut it short. But you need to protect enough time to process and package your research for the audience. And if you have a limited amount of time to offer a teaching project, you need to choose a topic that doesn’t go “over budget” on research.

Conclusion

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to teach, for the students who showed up week after week, and for the power of God’s Word to produce fruit during our time together. Last night was a good night, and I don’t mean to take away from that. I believe God was honored. But if I had it to do over again, I would have approached things very differently from the start. While a do-over is a rare opportunity, you can always stop and reflect and find ways to make the next lesson better, whatever it may be.

Before you plan your next lesson, do me a favor and avoid my mistakes: be sure you know the real format behind the venue and clarify your main objective before you commit to a good book!

Last year was so busy, I confess that I didn’t celebrate holidays all that deeply. This year I’m determined to make more of the time. Today is Good Friday, and while it’s not the first significant day in what some call Holy Week, it is one of the biggest.

Christmas gets more attention because the holiday has come to celebrate much more than Jesus’s birth. Easter isn’t celebrated quite as much these days, but we still have our sanitized festivities to share with our neighbors.

But I’ve never known Good Friday to get much attention outside of Christian circles, and frankly, I’m grateful. There are no gifts today, no candy, no jolly old men or fluffy white bunnies. Just the reality of the execution of Jesus Christ. The images aren’t heartwarming; they repel you.

So why do we “celebrate” Good Friday? And why attach the word “good” to it at all? I’ve been spending the past few months in the book of Genesis, and I want to offer a few reflections based on what I have seen there.

The Creator and the Cross

First of all, we reflect on the death of our very creator. Genesis teaches us that in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth, and often throughout Scripture this is how God reveals Himself to people who don’t have a personal relationship with Him. We all have a relationship with Him because He is our maker. In the New Testament, we see that Jesus Christ Himself was involved in creation. John says that “without Him, nothing was made,” and Paul says in his letter to the Colossians that all things were made by Him and for Him.

Could the creation kill the Creator? It’s part of the modern fantasy. Didn’t Frankenstein’s monster kill him, and wasn’t the maker’s hubris to blame? Nietzsche’s madman proclaimed the death of God as an enduring fact: must we not become gods ourselves to be worthy of the act? In the ancient world, Oedipus killed his father, but it was an accident.

As the early Christian writer, Melito of Sardis, powerfully wrote: “the One who hung the earth is hanging.”

Creation was a series of acts full of wisdom and power. God orders, fills, distinguishes, and names. He also blesses and makes one thing for another, as a gift. He needs nothing. All He must do is will it. When He speaks, the universe makes it so.

If the Creator is on the cross, something is terribly, terribly wrong. The very source of life met death. In that moment, the sky mourned and the earth shuddered when it should have unraveled. Adam had no father but God; he was called God’s son. There on the cross, the soldier noted in awe: surely He was the Son of God.

The Fall and the Raising Up

Adam and Eve were infamously deceived by a serpent, who we later find out was under the control of the Accuser who leads the rebellion against God the maker. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden, but they ate from it. The unlawful eating of the fruit of that tree brought them sin, and sin introduced them to death. Disobedience brought a curse. All of creation was marred from then on.

The tree of life, which was originally theirs to eat, now became the forbidden tree, its fruit unavailable because it would permit them to live forever despite the evil now in their hearts. Death had come to man made in God’s image.

On Good Friday, God Himself was raised on a tree. This tree would bring God death, although not because He did anything unlawful. Christ was purportedly crucified for calling Himself God, an act of blasphemy on the lips of mere man. And yet if He was God, there was no crime. God was nailed to a tree not for His crimes but as a result of man’s. It was said “cursed is any man who hangs on a tree.” He hanged there. He became accursed.

The maker, our living tree of life, met His death on the tree that knew both good and evil. Man was still deceived, but Christ knew what He was doing. “Father, forgive them,” he said while dying, “they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Adam and Eve were naked, ashamed, and afraid, and God Himself met them and clothed them. Christ, with nothing to be ashamed of, was stripped bare. Man, who deserved and feared God’s contempt found care. Christ was reviled and mocked for nothing.

The Fall in the garden meant that sin was now in the world, and the wages of sin is death. But on Good Friday, a man without sin died. What could this mean?

Blood and Witness

Jesus was not the first innocent man to die. In fact, the very first death was not a punishment for sin but a wrongful death at the hands of a sinner. Abel was killed because he did what was right, and his brother took his anger out on him. God said that his innocent blood was crying out from the ground, that the earth that swallowed his blood would be cursed for the man who shed it.

On Good Friday, the ground opened its mouth to received the Creator’s blood. But Hebrews 12 tells us this blood speaks a better word. A better word? How can it be that divine blood shed by guilty hands could speak anything but condemnation when the innocent blood of mere man cried out to God from the ground?

The first innocent human blood received by the earth brought a curse, but the Creator’s innocent blood brought healing. Abel’s murderer, despite his sin, received a gracious mark to protect him from vengeance. Jesus’s murderers, while no less guilty, had no fear of God’s vengeance because this death would not need to be avenged. This life and this blood would bring reconciliation. And Paul saw that if Christ’s death meant reconciliation for His enemies, even greater things would be possible if somehow Christ’s death could be undone.

Putting an End to Sin

“In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” Sometimes I have been puzzled that Adam and Eve did not drop dead right there in the Garden. God chose to be patient with sinners, but God’s patience in and of itself does not deal with sin. We would have to wait for the Flood to see that.

In the Flood, the world was cleansed of sinners. In the Flood, the wages of sin were meted out to everyone with the exception of one extended family. The world was baptized and the wicked were washed away. This is justice. It is not pretty, but God only does what is right. As Abraham said, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” He was pleading for Sodom, and God said that for the sake of 10 He would not wipe away the just with the wicked. In the Flood, the Judge of all the earth did what was right.

On the Cross, Jesus demonstrated a radically different way of dealing with sin. Instead of cleansing sin by executing the sinners, cleansing would come by executing the sinless. The just punishment of the world would not be borne by the world this time. God would accomplish justice by making recompense Himself. The baptism of the world in flood would be replaced by the baptism of the believer, plunging under the water not to stay and in staying die, but only momentarily, to be baptized into the likeness of the death of Christ, putting to death not the man, but only the sinful version of that man.

The Giving of the Son

In the cross, God followed through on the unfathomable request He used to test Abraham. Abraham, after waiting decades for a son that his wife physically could not produce, found himself the father of a miracle child. And when that child had grown, God commanded Abraham to make him a sacrificial offering.

Abraham’s response confounds human wisdom. It has captivated philosophers. When his God demanded a child sacrifice, he obeyed. He trusted God. God had provided the child, and the author of Hebrews tells us that Abraham believed the same God who once brought life where it could not be would do it again.

God stopped that sacrifice. Abraham did not have to give his son for God. He was tested and passed the test. God provided another sacrifice so the boy could live. But on Good Friday, the Father offered the Son. Just as Isaac was spared because of the ram, we were spared because of the one John the Baptist called the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We don’t know when Isaac put two and two together. But I have to believe that he was alarmed when his father began to bind him. To some degree, he must have chosen to submit and trust. He didn’t run away from his 100+ year-old father. Even more so, Jesus submitted to the Father’s will, going willingly to the cross to become the sacrifice.

The foreign gods of Abrahams neighbors would have delighted in child sacrifices, but the Maker and Judge does not. Christ was a man. He was fully invested in this plan, even though it overwhelmed Him in His humanity.

Jesus was tempted in the desert by the Accuser after His baptism, but it was in the Garden of Gethsemane and the road to the cross that He was tested by the Father. Just as Abraham was faithful in providing the sacrifice, Jesus passed the test. He was faithful. At the cross we see Jesus’s character on display; we learn what He was made of. Now we know who He really is. He is the kind of man who lays aside His power for the weak, submitting to punishment at the hands of unworthy men, and forgives them even as they mock Him. An exceptional man may be resigned to his fate, but who could bind the power that made the universe for the sake of his enemies?

Wrestling with God and Man

Isaac’s son Jacob lived away from his family for decades, and he was afraid of reuniting with his brother after the mess he had made of that relationship. He had used deception to gain power and sacrificed relationships in the process.

He cried out to God, claiming the promises God had given him, and soon found himself wrestling with a man. He was a match for this man. And yet, soon it is revealed that this man is not just a man; somehow this man is also God. In this startling moment, God confirms that He can take on human flesh, and that when He does, He limits Himself accordingly. Jacob wrestled with the God-man and somehow won.

Who wins against God? Only the one God lets win. The same God who took on human flesh, weak enough to be beaten by Jacob, would take on human flesh in a new way by actually being born as a man. He would grow up to wrestle with the descendants of Jacob, and He would let them win. Jacob demanded a blessing; Jerusalem demanded Barabbas. But in letting Himself be defeated, Christ would offer up a greater blessing.

What God Has Done

This is not an exhaustive list; there are surely more connections to be mentioned. But for now, I will close with Joseph. He is a classic type of Christ, the servant unjustly punished who ends up saving his people. But the story of Joseph teaches us something about God that may not have been obvious at first.

Joseph was going to be killed by his brothers out of jealousy. (Jealousy was a motive of those who sought to kill Jesus, too.) At the last minute they chose to sell him for money instead. (Judas profited off of handing over Christ.) Joseph had sterling character and patiently submitted to the authorities around him.

And while the whole book of Genesis is rich with incredible stories and gripping moments, Joseph’s story has always been a page-turner for me. His rise to power, yes, but his dealings with his brothers even more so. How he chooses to deal with them and how they struggle to respond is so compelling. They betrayed him. And he forgave them.

The climax comes with new theological insight: what you meant for evil, God used for good. God’s power is unmatched. Not only can He work miracles, but He can even work through people who are opposed to Him. They cannot thwart His will.

As we see Christ on the cross, some accuse the Jews of crucifying Him. Some accuse the Romans. Doubtless there are other conspiracy theories out there. But no matter who was complicit—Jews and Gentiles—what they intended for evil, God used for good.

In fact, Joseph interprets his case even more strongly: “And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

Did God kill Jesus. No, of course not. And yet, what man intended for evil, God orchestrated for good. It was not man who sent Christ to the cross, but God.

Conclusion

If we’re not careful, we can stare at the cross all year long and forget what it means. It was the death of God, and it would be resolved on the third day, and it paid for your sins. And that is beautiful. But the death of God is no small thing. Neither is the redemption of the whole human race.

I hope these reflections have helped refresh you on the wonder of Good Friday. The betrayal, torture, and death, as dark as they are, contain something praiseworthy without parallel.

It is indeed a good, good day. Thank you, Jesus.