What is God's Plan For You, Me, and the Human Race?

Introduction

COVID-19 changed a lot of things in our world. Change is difficult and much of the change that we experienced was extremely hard to endure because it was so sudden and many of us experienced significant loss. In the midst of loss and sorrow and difficulty, I pray that you and your family learned some positive things along the way in 2020 and beyond. I was looking at some research about positive changes in recent years and I believe that many can relate to at least some of them. We’ve been forced whether we like it or not to spend more time together as a family. We’ve had to get creative about how we communicate. We don’t take our time for granted. Lots of people pursued further education because they were at home.

One of the changes that has stuck around years after and has thrived is the change in ways that people shop. Whether it be through Amazon and its 100 million US app users or through Walmart grocery pickup, the way that people shop has changed dramatically! One of the cool things whenever Walmart debuted its grocery pickup option was its substitution feature. If you wanted a 20 ounce orange gatorade and all they had was a 28 ounce orange gatorade, they’d substitute the larger one in place of the smaller one and originally they’d do this at no extra cost! That’s a pretty good substitute as you’re paying for a smaller version and receiving a larger version and the company eats the cost difference.

Think about some substitutes that we experience in our world - in the classroom whenever a teacher is absent often times they have a substitute teacher who fills in and God bless those brave souls! Think about parenting as well. A child is completely dependent upon their parents for years and years of their life. If a parent only plays and assists a child whenever it is convenient to them, the child won’t fully develop… they’ll have needs that will not be met. Every parent must make a conscious decision to sacrifice or substitute their freedom in place of their child. Your freedom must decrease in order for theirs to increase.

Substitution can be difficult… but in the Bible we see that substitution is one of the most glorious truths concerning Who our God is and What our God does! The God of the Bible chooses to substitute Himself in our place even though He never once sinned or made a mistake so that sinners like you and I would be saved. As many things as COVID changed, COVID didn’t for one nanosecond change God’s perfect plan! This morning as we continue looking at Hebrews, we’re going to be in Hebrews 2:5-9 looking at the substitution of Jesus Christ as He suffered in our place so that we will one day reign with Him in glory. This is a good change but it is a costly one that we must never forget. Let’s read from God’s Word this morning

Hebrews 2:5–9 CSB

5 For he has not subjected to angels the world to come that we are talking about. 6 But someone somewhere has testified: What is man that you remember him, or the son of man that you care for him? 7 You made him lower than the angels for a short time; you crowned him with glory and honor 8 and subjected everything under his feet. For in subjecting everything to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. As it is, we do not yet see everything subjected to him. 9 But we do see Jesus—made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone—crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.

Our Purpose: Glorify God (5)

In the Garden of Eden we read that humans are created with the responsibility to rule over creation and to fill the earth. Have you ever wondered why God commanded Adam and Eve to multiply and fill the earth? What is so special about the two of them that God would give them this special command? What about Adam and Eve stands out from the rest of creation? Genesis 1:26 tells us the answer as they are created in the image of God! Imagine that you are the leader of a company and you have a product that turns dirty water into clean, drinkable water. This is a wonderful product and you are passionate about its use and how it will literally change millions of lives. You want every person in the world to have this product and you want your company to expand to the point that it has offices in every country in the world so that people will benefit and drink clean water. Why do you want to fill the earth with this product, in our selfish brains maybe we’d argue this so that we’d become really rich and famous! On the practical side, though, we know that this will help others live longer and healthier lives without problems that unclean water can bring to them.

God commands Adam and Eve to rule over this world and multiply it - why? So that His image is spread throughout the world. Now, is God saying this because He’s a businessman most interested in making money? No. He owns all things! Is He a politician who is most interested in people voting for Him? No. He’s already won and is reigning as King today! So, why would He give them this command? So that He would be glorified! See, you and I are a part of something far bigger than ourselves, we’re apart of God’s perfect unfolding plan and His purpose for our lives is to bring Him glory. Bringing God glory is not only something that pleases God but it is something that benefits others including people around us who don’t know Christ as Lord.

Michael Kruger shares that the more humans there are, the more God’s glory and image are spread. This is the purpose for mankind today and in the world to come, but one of the incredible things that we see in verse 5 is that in the world to come, things will look a little bit different. We were created as humans to rule over this world, the angels were not created to rule over this world. Here is that comparison yet again between angels and God’s people. Everything said to this point in Hebrews has been forward looking - our eternal destination with God. That world will not be ruled and governed by angels, instead it will be ruled by humans. This is the focus of this passage of Scripture - chapter 1 focused on the divinity of Jesus and how He is the eternal Son of God, here in chapter 2 we see a focus on Jesus being fully man in addition to fully God.

Why emphasize the humanity of Jesus and why remind his audience of the inferiority of angels? Because it’s easy to get things a bit out of order in our mind at times. Adrian Rogers shares that there are 3 views of mankind and only 1 of them is correct:

Understatement - Man is no different from the rest of creation, we are accidents, we are cosmic flukes

Overstatement - We are our own gods and we have the power to speak things into existence because we’re perfect and our own little gods

Biblical Testament - We are made in God’s image to bring Him glory but we are not God.

So many of our problems today stem from not knowing what the Bible says concerning our purpose in this life! We must get this right in order to get anything else right. Either we understand that we’re made in God’s image to glorify Him with all that we do and pay attention as Hebrews 2:1-4 reminded us to make sure that we’re actually glorifying Him with our life… or we fail to do this!

My purpose is to glorify God and to serve Him faithfully in this life and in eternity to come. Today the angels have much power - we read in Scripture that this world is known as Satan’s dominion. Angels are powerful and they exercise some authority here and now as Daniel 10 and Ephesians 6 tell us, we might even be tempted to think that they are more important than us as humans because of this power… but nothing could be further from the truth! God didn’t create angels to rule for all eternity and bring Him glory - that’s what He created humankind to do!

This is good news - except for the fact that we quickly realize that we have a problem

Our Problem: We’re Guilty Before God (6)

Our chief problem according to God’s Word is not our poor communication skills, busyness, job, weakness, or lack of understanding… the Bible tells us that our problem is that we are guilty before God because of our sinfulness. Further than disobeying God with our actions and thoughts, we read in the Bible that each and every one of us has a fallen sinful nature that means that not only do we choose to sin, but deep down we are sinners. This isn’t God’s design in the Garden, though. This isn’t what God intended for humanity. God created man in His own image to bring Him glory and to spread His image around the world! Yes, we’re still made in God’s image, but that image is distorted today because of sin.

Have you ever gone into the Grand Father’s Mansion at Silver Dollar City? If you don’t have any clue what that is, I’m sorry because it’s a classic at SDC and you can just think of a mirror maze. The Grand Father’s Mansion is always a fun but confusing place because you look around and you see yourself but it’s a distorted image of yourself. In some mirrors you’re 2x as tall as you really are… in others you’re half the height that you really are… in some you’re 2x as wide as you really are and in others you just look like a cartoon character because you’re lopsided. God created us to be His image bearers on this earth but what sin does is even worse than walking through the Grand Father’s Mansion. Whenever you look in to the mirror, you should see the grace, mercy, and holiness of God because you’re in His image yet because of our sin it’s like a rock has been thrown at that mirror and it is shattered in a million pieces. You see glimpses of God’s character peeking through the cracks but by and large you can’t see anything and the reason why is because of our own sinfulness. The fall in Genesis 3 completely changes the story for humanity because it makes all of us guilty before God. We discussed this during our Bible study on Wednesday night - does this seem fair to you? Does it seem fair that we’re marked as guilty before God because Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden?

For many people they’d say no, that doesn’t sound like God is fair for counting us as sinners because of their mistake and disobedience. But this is what the Bible clearly teaches us

Romans 5:12 CSB

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.

God gave Adam and Eve a straightforward command: rule over the world and don’t eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eat anything else, and you’re fine! One rule and what did they do? They failed to obey… We love picking on them but if we’re being honest with one another, would we have faired any different? Let’s do a case study. You can think of anything you want and you’re fine but if you picture a 5,000 pound pink elephant riding a unicycle you fail. 300 people just failed because what did we all just imagine in our mind? A 5,000 pound pink elephant riding a unicycle! If you have a child and you tell them not to do something, what do they almost always go and do? The thing you tell them not to do! Why? Because we’re sinners. We give into this temptation to sin and this has been true from Eden until today and it will remain true until Jesus returns to rule with His people forever. Adam’s sin dooms us. Death spreads to all the world and to people of all generations simply because he sinned and, again, we don’t think this is fair! Do you know what’s also not fair? The fact that a holy God cares for and remembers sinful humans. The fact that our God sent His Son to die on the cross for sinners like you and me! Romans 5 tells us two truths that blow our minds:

We’re all separated from God simply because we’re humans. Adam’s sin impacts all of humanity and makes us deserving of death and separation from God for all eternity.

Jesus’ obedience impacts all of His children and instead of making us deserving of death and separation from God for all eternity, if you’re in Christ you’ve been restored to God and you will spend eternity in glory with your heavenly Father!

See, you and I don’t really want God to be fair to us… have you ever heard someone say that God isn’t fair and that if God were fair this or that wouldn’t have happened to them? See, if God were fair we’d all be separated from Him forever. We’d all suffer eternally. I’m not sure about you, but I’m thankful that God doesn’t immediately give us what our works deserve but due to His grace, He is patient! God is so much more patient than you or I as well… This week our internet at the church was having some problems and it took 2 extra days to upload our Wednesday night Bible study video and it aggravated me because I can usually work around tech problems but there’s nothing you can do when it’s a problem outside your control. Aren’t you thankful that there’s nothing outside of God’s control, for one, and that God is patient with us whenever we’re just a little hard headed? The preacher of Hebrews quotes from Psalm 8 in this passage of Scripture and he does so to reflect on God’s grace

Psalm 8:4–6 CSB

4 what is a human being that you remember him, a son of man that you look after him? 5 You made him little less than God and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet:

God made a promise to Adam and Eve in the Garden that from the seed of the woman would come a sin squashing, snake severing Savior! God doesn’t forget His people. He remembers. He cares. He loves. Even in our sins, God promises not to leave us where we are at! If you look further back in Psalm 8 the Psalmist talks about all that God has made

Psalm 8:1–3 CSB

1 Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth! You have covered the heavens with your majesty. 2 From the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have established a stronghold on account of your adversaries in order to silence the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you set in place,

Our sins are many, our size is miniscule, our strength isn’t much compared to all that God has made… yet, we see that God has a perfect plan to not leave us where we’re at. His plan as the rest of this Psalm states, is to

God’s Plan: Redeem Sinners through His Grace (7-9)

God has a plan for each and every human being and His plan is perfect and far greater than anything that we could ever imagine for ourselves. Sometimes plans can be a little confusing. A couple weeks ago I shared that my dad went on a mission trip to South East Asia with a couple of other people from FBC Ozark and my dad had the entire trip planned out. They knew where they’d arrive and they had transportation lined up to take them to their missionary contact and eventually up to the mountainous village that they’d be doing ministry with for several days in an unreached area of the country. The plan was good and it was going well for all of 3 hours as the team flew from Springfield to Atlanta and the Delta agent in Atlanta told them that their upcoming flight from Atlanta to Tokyo was no longer going to happen that day and that they needed to go back to Springfield and try again tomorrow. Talk about a wrench thrown into the equation! It seemed like the trip was going to have some problems, but God made a way. The team traveled to South Korea instead of Tokyo and ended up making it to their destination relatively close to when they were originally supposed to. God provided, even though there were some complications. For the mission team, they didn’t know there were going to be complications. But God did. They didn’t know that they’d be flying to a different city… but God did. Before they even left Springfield, God had already worked out every single detail to this trip and even when it seemed like things weren’t going to work out, God made a way as He always does!

See, so often we look at sin as if it made God go back to the drawing board and have to come up with a new plan that He hadn’t thought of beforehand. We’re not that powerful, friends! You can’t stump God when He’s all knowing and all powerful. What we see in the Bible in places like Ephesians 1 and Revelation 13 is that from the beginning, God had a plan

Revelation 13:8 NIV

8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.

When was God’s plan for Jesus to come and sacrifice Himself in our place? The Bible doesn’t say this became God’s plan in Genesis chapter 4 - instead we see that this was God’s plan even before creation. Jesus was God’s Plan A all along!

What we see in our text is that sin causes problems. Humans were created to rule over this earth, yet, sin distorted that and now mankind are in a position where angels are a little bit higher than us for the time being. Why? Think to the Garden - Adam was made to rule yet, it was a fallen angel who tempted Adam to rebel against God. Instead of leading as God instructed, Adam listened to an angel and because of this, all humans suffer this consequence of not fulfilling our original purpose in its entirety.

While this may be true for today, while we may have failed… we know that God has a plan and that He has made a promise to save sinners like you and I! Not only does He promise to save and redeem us, but He will restore things to their original status. Look at what the Word says in 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 6:3 CSB

3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels—how much more matters of this life?

So here and now we as mankind are lower than the angels, still made in God’s image, but one day we will have a role in ruling over them. How does this happen? How do we go from the bottom of the ladder to near the top? What is God’s solution to the brokenness in this world? The answer isn’t more education, cleaner water, more money, or nicer tweets. Those things might help at times, but ultimately the problem in our world is us. God’s plan for humanity was to rule and live in relation with Him in paradise and one day that will be restored, but that’s not where we find ourselves today… Today we find ourselves separated from God because of our sinfulness. It’s not only our sin that is the problem, we are the problem and if we are the problem we cannot be the solution. You can’t just work harder in hopes of being less of a problem, Romans 5 reminds us that we all have this sinful nature. We need help! We can’t save ourselves! So, what’s the solution. What is God’s ultimate plan here?

He can’t just wipe the slate clean - if He did that then He wouldn’t be just. If there was clear and absolute evidence that a man killed another man in cold blood and there was a video documenting the scene and the judge looked at the evidence and ignored it before letting the man walk away with no punishment, we would say that the judge wasn’t just, in fact his action was unjust toward the family of the man who was killed. The problem that we often fail to see is that we have sinned and committed treason against a holy God and we deserve the death penalty. Before you think that this is too harsh, remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount… If you’ve ever hated another person, in God’s eyes you’ve committed murder in your heart. Again, we deserve the death penalty from God! So what does God do? He’s perfectly just but He’s also perfectly loving and gracious… because of this in verse 9 we see that He sent His Son Jesus Christ.

Every single time you see the name Jesus show up in Hebrews (9x) it emphasizes His humanity. The fact that He was a man like you and I, not just kind of man, but He too was lower than the angels for a period of time and this was purposeful. Why? Why did God have to become man? To save fallen mankind from ourselves. God poured out grace upon humanity by pouring out His wrath upon His Son.

The only way for you and I to be redeemed by God was for God to do something that we could never do. Jesus recovers, restores, and redeems humanity by dying in our place on the cross and that’s not where the story stops - He defeats death by dying because He rose 3 days later victorious. He tasted death and suffered in our place. Death could only be conquered by death. Sin can only be forgiven through death. Therefore, what Jesus as both full God and fully man does, is die on the cross - taking our guilt upon Himself and then He transfers His righteousness to all who place their faith in Him as Lord and Savior! Only because of the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is there hope for humanity and this is exactly what the Bible shares with us.

Galatians 3:13 CSB

13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

Jesus isn’t only fully God - He is the true and better Adam who doesn’t fail and sin in the Garden. He humbled Himself and became a man and suffered just like you and I do every single day. This Son of Man, as Daniel talks about in the Old Testament, redeems sinners because He alone has the authority to do so. Has He redeemed you today?

Application

Our society is facing an identity problem and that societal problem is filtering its way into the church. People want to know who they are and why they are here. In this confusing world, we must go back to what the Word of God plainly states: We are created in God’s image to give Him glory in all that we do. We have all fallen away due to our sin and we’re all guilty - there is no one innocent. We desperately need God to be merciful… not fair! This is what God has done. What must we do as a result? Let’s look at a couple of things to keep in mind as we go throughout our week

I must remember that:

1. Jesus Humbled Himself and Died in My Place

You and I are sinners who deserve to be separated from God because of our sin - yet, Jesus bore our sin and shame and died the death we deserved to die. We must remember the sacrifice He made in our place and humble ourselves and not allow our preferences and opinions to divide what Christ has redeemed.

2. Jesus Won the Victory over Sin

Not only did Jesus die in our place, but Jesus defeated our greatest enemy once and for all! Therefore, as Romans 8:1 reminds us, if you’re in Christ there is no condemnation for you. You can rejoice this week, even in difficult times, because the victory has already been won.

3. God has an Eternal Plan for My Life

God has a perfect plan that may not always make sense, but His plan will come to pass. He is faithful to His promises and He always comes through. Even when I can’t trace His hand, I can trust His heart and look back at all He has done in the past for His people and trust in that He has a plan for me.

4. I Must Help Others See God’s Purpose For Their Life as I Seek to Glorify Him in All I Do

You and I are not saved to sit… we are saved to serve our King. He created us to rule over His creation and bring Him glory. While sin distorts that picture, He commands His followers to proclaim His Gospel and make disciples of our neighbors and nations. As CS Lewis once put it, “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” The least that you and I can do today is help people see that they are created in God’s image for a purpose. You are not a cosmic accident. You are not a mistake. You are here for a reason. God has a plan for your life. You are a part of something infinitely and eternally more significant than you can even begin to wrap your mind around today. Trust in God’s plan and glorify Him in all you say, think, and do.

May this be the pulse of our church here at FBC Salem in the years to come. May we be known as a congregation of Bible-believing, Christ-centered, Spirit-saturated, Discipleship-driven people who come together to glorify our God and focus on Who He is and what He wants us to do rather than what we think or what we like the most… because at the end of the day, you and I are finite. We have an expiration date. Your opinion and preference will change. Styles will fade out of style… but God’s Word will remain. He doesn’t change - He changes us. His substitutionary death still changes lives. Let’s be a people who care infinitely more about Finding God’s will than we do about feeling good and comfortable. Let’s run the race before us and reach out for God’s prize and crown rather than man’s fleeting approval.