| September 9, 2001 | The Three R's | Gen. 1:1, Rev. 1:11 |
As a pastor, that presents me with a wonderful challenge: the
Bible is full of great stuff that God wants us to know, where
do we start? How can I make things comprehensible to someone who
is jumping into this big book, and yet still meet
the needs of someone else who has already spent a lot of time
in it and some of it is starting to become old hat? This is not
a new problem. Paul had the same problem almost 2000 years ago,
and he mentions it in his letter to the Hebrews when he says:
"We have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing
ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers,
ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles
of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk,
and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful
in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat
belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason
of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."
(Heb. 5:11-14)
All of us as spiritual babes need spiritual milk
to start with, and then we grow up to eating spiritual meat. And
then some of us get distracted and weakened by the things of the
world, and we get back to where we need some milk with our meat.
Some fundamentals. Some ABC's. Remember back when people talked
about going to school and learning the three R's? Reading, Ritin',
and Rithmatic? Well, I plan to spend the next several weeks preaching
about a different set of 3 R's: Redemption, Restoration, and Relationship.
There will be some milk, and some meat.
The Bible is a book that is a unified whole. It is not
a collection of unrelated old stories, and it is not hard
to understand. It is a book about real people, real events
with one primary theme, God reconciling all creation to
Himself. The Bible sets forth the premise that the creation
is damaged, marred, corrupted, and God has a plan to fix it. God
tells us how we got into this fix, and how He plans
to get us out. If you want to know what the Bible is about in
a nutshell, that's it.
His plans are not complicated. First, God is going to redeem
fallen man, and He is going to do it Himself, in and through the
person of Jesus Christ. The Bible is a book that focuses on God's
plan of Redemption. Some people speak of the Bible
having a Scarlet Thread running through it, redemption through
the shed blood of a sinless sacrifice, and that's true, it does.
The Bible is a book that focuses on Relationships.
God's relationship to man, and the relationships that people have
with each other. It is no secret that most of us have had relationship
problems with other people over the years, people that we love,
people that hurt us, people that disappoint us. Most of us here
would probably agree that if only we could get our relationship
problems sorted out, the rest of our problems would be pretty
manageable, amen?
The Bible also focuses on Restoration. Man was created
to worship God, and enjoy Him forever, but seems to have lost
his way; God is going to restore that. We are crippled in our
ability to worship God and enjoy Him; the day is coming when He
will give us back that blessing. And He is going to do it all
through the person and work of Jesus Christ; consequently the
Bible points to Him and His work from beginning to end, and that's
what I want to focus on today. Patterns of Redemption.
The Bible uses symbols, allegories, object lessons, parables,
all kinds of different methods to get it's message across to a
world of people from all different cultures and societies, and
sometimes, new born Christian babes in Christ have trouble sorting
it all out. That's OK, that's normal. My goal, for the next several
weeks, is to help all of us see and think about these things,
to help our beginners get a good grasp on the basics, and encourage
those of you that have been in this for a while to get excited
and get back into the action more than you ever have before.
If you have your Bibles with you today, and I hope you do, turn
to Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth." The Bible does not start with any arguments for
the existence of God, no philosophical yada yada about whether
or not anybody is out there, God states His position, and by the
time you get done reading through His Word, He expects you to
bow the knee and accept that He is who He says He is.
Verse 2: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness
was upon the face of the deep." Since we have gone over this
a lot before, I don't want to take the time now to prove for you
that the earth is less than 15,000 years old, if any of you want
to talk about that, see me later, we'll have some fun with it.
The important thing is, there are two main doctrinal positions
within Bible believing Christianity. (The other,
liberal parts of professing Christianity have the same position
the secular world does, so we'll skip them.) One position says
that God created everything between 6 and 15,000 years ago. The
other position says that God created everything about 6,000 or
more years ago, and in between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, something
bad happened, and verse 2 is God re-creating the
earth to it's present state.
Both theories have good arguments for their position. Twenty years
ago I liked the first one better, right now I like the second
one better. And that brings up an important principle of unity
within the body of Christ. As long as Christians believe that
God's Word means what it says, and says what it means, we can
agree on the main things, agree to disagree on the minor things,
and still have fellowship. But I'll talk more about that in a
few weeks.
There appears to be some good reasons for believing that what
we see in verse two is a re-creation of the earth,
one of them is that the Hebrew of Isaiah 45:18 uses terminology
that says that God did not create the earth void,
contrary to what Genesis 1 verse 2 says. The implication is that
something happened to make it void.
Another reason, among many, is that no sooner had God finished
His creating process and placed humans on the earth, than humanity
came under attack from somebody or something
that was already present.
And right now maybe some of you are thinking: "Wait a minute;
do you believe in evil spirits?" Yep. I Do.
Once you accept the idea that there is a war going on that for
some reason we can't see, a war that is spiritual in nature, a
war between God and a large rebellious group of creatures that
are somehow very different from us, an awful lot of things in
this world start to make sense, both in history, and in the present.
Question: Does it really matter if I can't see them?
I love astronomy, and last Tuesday I saw a NASA chart of the entire
known cosmos, as far as all the latest instruments can detect
anything. And scientists have run into a puzzle: the amount of
mass and energy in the known universe is 70% greater than it ought
to be according to what any of our instruments can
see out there. They call it dark matter, because they know it
is out there, but cannot see it. Something is out there that cannot
be seen, visually or with infrared, or electromagnetically, or
radio waves, yet it registers in terms of total mass and energy
output. All that we can see or detect with our present latest
instruments is only 30% of what is actually there. 70% of everything
that exists is unable to be seen by any technology that we possess.
We're blind to it. It's there, but we can't see it.
And if that is the case, and apparently it is, then I guess it
is not too surprising if God tells us that there are spiritual
creatures out there, and around here, and that we can't
usually see them either. Bottom line: one of the basics
of our existence on this planet is that we are not alone, there
is an enemy present that is opposed to us and God, and his main
weapon against us is deception. Our best defense
against him is truth, and that is found in the Word of God.
Young Christian; a word of advice: not everything that comes into
your mind is something that you thought of all by yourself. That
is also something that we will try to get back to later. In the
meantime, when you have something come into your head that is
not something that you want, something that is contrary
to God's Word, something contrary to what you know is right and
wrong, here's what you do:
Think about what God's Word says on the matter. Then tell Jesus
that you want what He wants instead of what is being
dumped into your head, and tell the enemy that you
want what Jesus wants instead of whatever it is your are
hearing. And then thank Jesus for what He has already blessed
you with. It works. It works best of all when you do it out
loud. Why? The enemy can choose not to listen to your
thoughts, but he cannot miss hearing your voice.
Something else that we need to know about God's Word is that God
uses repetition to teach us things. Years ago, back
when I had to train people how to separate airplanes, I learned
something that is essential to learning and teaching. When you
want to teach somebody something, you tell them what you're going
to tell them, and then you tell them, and then you tell them what
you told them. Repetition. God does that. The Bible is full of
repetition, but it is not repetititious. God tells the same story
in a lot of different ways, but the pattern
stays the same. The pattern stays the same.
For instance, we believe that Jesus Christ is the central figure
in the Bible, and that He is also God in the flesh, God in human
form. Let me show you an interesting pattern that God uses to
identify Himself with: turn to Isaiah 44:6.
"Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer
the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last;
and beside me there is no God."
Interesting that there appears to be two distinct personalities
here doesn't it? The Lord the King of Israel, and
his redeemer, the Lord of Hosts?
But as neat as that is, and as much as it points to both Father
and Son, that's just a rabbit trail, it's not where
we are going today. Notice that God says of Himself; "I
am the first, and I am the last." Now turn over a
couple pages to Isaiah 48:12: "Hearken unto me, O Jacob and
Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the
last."
Now go to the last book in the Bible, Revelation 1:11, Jesus Christ
is the speaker: "Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the
first and the last:". It is apparent that in both
the Old and the New Testaments God refers to Himself as the First
and the Last, and He also refers to Himself as the Alpha and the
Omega, the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet. Jesus
uses Alpha and Omega for Himself as a proper name in several other
places in Revelation, for the sake of time, we will not go read
them.
The point is, the God of the Old Testament in Isaiah is also the
same God who is revealed at the end of the book, in the person
of Jesus Christ. Since I said a minute ago that the Bible reveals
things in patterns, if we find Jesus Christ at the end of
the book, revealing Himself as the First and the Last, then it
would seem reasonable to also find Him revealed as the first and
the last at the very start of the book, right?
Let's go back to the middle of the book first. Turn to Zechariah
12:10. This is a last days prophecy, the context is Israel at
the height of the tribulation, when Jesus Christ comes back and
Israel finally recognizes Him as their true Messiah. "And
I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and
they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they
shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall
be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his
firstborn."
Unfortunately, none of us here can read Hebrew, at least as far
as I know, but if we were using Hebrew interlinear Bibles, where
the Hebrew was written out and the English translation was just
below it, it would look like this:
If you have never noticed it before, Hebrew goes from right to left. In fact, the writings of all nations point towards Jerusalem: the writing of all nations east of Jerusalem go from right to left, all nations west of Jerusalem go from left to right. Interesting, huh? Another rabbit trail.
Notice that there is an untranslated word between the "on
me" and the "whom." The reason that it is untranslated,
is that it is not really a word. It is simply two letters, the
aleph and the tau, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
The written Hebrew has the ability to do something that English
cannot, and that is to indicate what is called a grammatical pun.
A grammatical pun. It indicates something that is hidden but implied.
It is used to indicate something that resembles, or points to
something else.
In other words, it would also be acceptable to write Zechariah
12:10 out this way;
"...and they shall look upon me, the Aleph and the Tau, whom they have pierced..." This would be the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek "Alpha and Omega."
And we find the exact same thing in Genesis 1:1
"In the beginning God, the Aleph and the Tau, the Alpha and Omega, created the heavens and the earth."
A consistent pattern: Jesus Christ, the beginning and the end,
is found from the beginning to the end of the Bible. Jesus Christ
is the Creator of all things, and He is also the Redeemer of all
things, He is the Alpha and the Omega, He is also the Aleph and
the Tau. He is found at the beginning of this book, and He is
found at the end of this book. This book is all about Him, and
his signature is all over it.
Let's look at another pattern that we find throughout the Bible:
the Father offering up His Son as a sacrifice. Turn to Genesis
22, verse 1.
"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
-or test-Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold,
here I am.
Gen 22:2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac,
whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer
him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which
I will tell thee of.
Gen 22:3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled
his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his
son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and
went unto the place of which God had told him.
Gen 22:4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and
saw the place afar off.
Gen 22:5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with
the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come
again to you.
Gen 22:6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and
laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand,
and a knife; and they went both of them together."
Notice that it took three days for them to get there, and also
that only Abraham and Isaac go up the hill; the two young men
remain at the bottom of the hill. What the Father and the Son
do, they do without other help.
This is Jerusalem as seen from the south. Mount Moriah is a long
ridge stretching away from the viewer that lies in between the
Mount of Olives out of camera view on the east side, and Mount
Zion, out of sight off to the west.
Just below the bottom of the picture is where a town called Salem
used to be, later it became known as Jerusalem,
the city of David. In the center is a place that was called the
threshing floor of Ornan, which was purchased by David as the
site for the building of Solomon's Temple. This is where the Muslim
Dome of the Rock is now constructed, approximately at the spot
where the temple stood.
Up toward the top is the place called Golgotha, the place of a
skull, the place where Jesus was crucified, and it appears that
Abraham and Isaac were going to that exact same place. This incredibly
important piece of real estate that is in the news almost every
day is Mount Moriah. You may find some Bible dictionaries or commentaries
that say that the actual location of Mount Moriah is unknown,
whatever, I believe that the best evidence points
to this being the place.
Verse 7: "And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said,
My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold
the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"
Good question. If I was in Isaac's position, something like that
would certainly be going through my mind....
Verse 8: "And Abraham said, My son, God will provide
himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both
of them together." 2,000 years later, on that very same hill,
God the Father would provide for Himself a Lamb
to take away the sins of the world.
Verse 9: "And they came to the place which God had told him
of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order,
and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
Gen 22:10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife
to slay his son."
Maybe over the years, some of us have seen pictures in Sunday
School books or whatever of Isaac as a little boy? Actually he
was at least 18, and possibly as old as 30. So that makes him
a good pattern for Jesus Christ as making a conscious decision
to submit himself to the will of his father, even unto death.
Verse 11: "And the angel of the LORD called unto him out
of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
Gen 22:12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither
do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God,
seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
Gen 22:13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold
behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham
went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering
in the stead of his son."
After Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden, they tried to
make themselves acceptable coverings of leaves, but God gave them
coverings of skins. For that to happen, an innocent sacrifice
had to die. The principle of a sinless substitute is seen at the
very beginning, that pattern is there at the start of man's story,
and we see it again here.
A ram caught in the thicket by it's horns. If it were caught by
anything else, it would be a pretty well torn up ram, but you
can't hurt a ram catching it by it's horns, it won't get a scratch.
Just like Jesus was a perfect, sinless substitutionary sacrifice
for us, this ram has no blemishes either.
Verse 14: "And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh:
as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be
seen." Jehovah Jireh means "God will provide,"
and Abraham seems almost like a prophet here, indicating that
in a time to come, the whole world would see God provide Himself
a Lamb on the top of that mountain.
Abraham would also have been convinced that if he sacrificed Isaac,
that God would have to resurrect Isaac from the dead, because
God had promised that Isaac would have a multitude of descendants.
It is also interesting that there is a sense in which Isaac -
like Jesus- was dead for three days, because from the time that
God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, it was three days until they
got to the top of Mount Moriah, and then the angel substituted
the ram for Isaac.
This is a wonderful pattern of what God would do at Calvary. Abraham
pictures for us the role of God the Father, Isaac is cast in the
role of the Son, submitting himself even to death at his father's
will, and the principle of God providing a perfect sinless substitute
is very plainly brought out. A pattern of redemption. God
will rehearse that pattern in many different ways, in many different
situations throughout His Word, so look for it.
In your own personal witnessing, let it be an example for you
to creatively use many different situations and occasions to tell
others about Jesus. How God gave a sinless perfect Lamb as a substitute
for them.
God presents Christ and His redemption through different pictures
and illustrations in His Word to touch all people in all kinds
of social and cultural situations to bring them to redemption
and restoration in Himself. That is our example to imitate. Our
pattern to follow.
We don't try and get other people to fit our mold or conform to
our cookie cutter ideas so that they can be saved, we meet them
where they are, as they are, and present them with God's love,
challenge them with God's standards of righteousness, and tell
them about God's salvation on their behalf, and we encourage them
to repent and receive Christ as Savior. That is what God does
through out this book, and that is the pattern for us to follow.
I said at the beginning that this book is about God reconciling
the world to Himself. It is about Redemption, Restoration, and
Relationships. If you count the main idea, Reconciliation, that
really makes 4 R's, not three, and we only talked about one today,
Redemption. But then it is a big book.
Over the next several weeks in addition to Redemption, we will
look at Relationships; why can't we all just get along? Why do
we fight and fall out with the ones we love? Why does God sometimes
seem to be so far away?
And Restoration: what did God intend for things to be like really?
What will they be like someday? Paradise lost and paradise regained,
is it just wishful thinking? What is worship all about, really?
Over the next several weeks I want you to be thinking about something:
God is not satisfied with things like they are, and He has plans
to make them better. His plans always come to pass.
Is there something in your life that is not working? Do you have
relationships that are all messed up? Are there people that you
would love to be reconciled to, but things are not going well?
God has an answer for you. Since we live in a world that is fallen
and ruined by sin, it may not be an easy answer, it may not be
a convenient answer, it may not even be the answer you want, but
God has plans for His people.
You need to make up your mind that the way God does things is
not the way that the world does things, so don't necessarily expect
your answer from God to be accomplished through worldly techniques.
God can use whatever He wants to accomplish His will, but he tells
us in 2Corinthians 10:3 "For though we walk in the flesh,
we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons
of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty
through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)"
Spend some time thinking about the patterns that God uses to accomplish
His purposes, spend time in His Word to see what He says about
things, and ask the Holy Spirit to transform your mind, to renew
it after the likeness of Jesus Christ.
When you have the mind of Christ, it is so much easier to follow
the leading of the Holy Spirit in the will of Christ. That is
how you find the answers that God has for you. Spend time doing
that this week, and spend time doing it from now on.