The Sinner Seeker

As parents, we’re familiar with sin. Our own sin, the sins our children commit. There’s the time you walk into the kitchen and there are chocolate chips on the floor, the water’s running in the sink, there’s water on the counter... and there are no children to be found, but somebody made the mess.

So, you go looking. You go to the bedroom and at first glance, it’s empty. But then you see a toe sticking out from under the bed. “My child, why are you hiding?” Come out and let’s talk about it.

As parents, we often have to go after our children when they’ve misbehaved and know it. Like Adam, they hide; their guilt and shame make them run away. Like Adam, our guilt and shame drive us away from our Holy Father. We try to hide. We can’t look at him.

God Seeks

But the amazing thing is this; God is a seeker. God seeks sinners. In the 1980’s and ‘90’s, seeker sensitivity was all the rage in churches. The style of worship, the message, the building, the people, everything was seeker driven. Churches wanted to make church as welcoming as possible. It was a successful tool. Many people came to know Jesus, to be born again, and to develop a life-long trust in God’s promises.

Sure, there were some casualties along the way. Sometimes the needs or perceived needs so shaped everything, that some of the other important things were neglected. If we were to compare it to healthcare, the seeker sensitive emphasis was like promoting vaccination to the exclusion of other medicine. Vaccines are very effective in preventing illness. However, they do not cure everything.

Part of the problem also lies with focus. As Article 17 tells us, as we read in Genesis 3, God seeks sinners; He’s a sinner seeker. God first seeks out sinners and he brings them to him. Like the song we sing, “I sought the Lord, and Afterward I knew, it was God seeking me first.”

What we need to consider with regard to our lives, to church, to everything, is how God is seeking sinners through us. He’s using us. He’s working in us and through us to bring those who have run away and hid, back to him. So, we ought to fashion our services, our programs, our plans, our lives knowing that God is a sinner seeker. We want our lives, our church, our programs to be most able to bring God’s love to those around us.

We do this because God tells us to do it. We do this, because that is what God has done. God sought sinners so that he could save them.

The Big Picture of Redemption

Article 17 is wonderfully short, but concise. It packs the whole history of redemption into two sentences. We recall that article 17 comes on the heels of articles 15 & 16 which looked at the teachings on original sin and God’s providence, respectively. God, in his mercy chose, before the foundations of the earth were laid, some for salvation, out of his good will. He didn’t have to, he chose to do so.

Article seventeen summarizes the process of salvation. It describes what God did to save people from his wrath against sin, his just judgement.

It is helpful for us to step back and view the history of redemption from the big picture perspective. This is what really sets Christianity apart from everything else. What we have is a series of historical events, each following the other, whereby God acts on behalf of humanity. God speaks, and he gets involved, in order to redeem sinners. Christianity is an historical religion. It is dependant up on accurate historical records of God’s interaction with humans. If these events are untrue, or didn’t happen, then Christianity is false. Christianity is not a system of ethics, but a record of God speaking and doing in order to save his people.

When we look at the big picture, we can understand it as looking like a big U. Creation, fall, redemption and restoration, we’re in the place between redemption and restoration, the already but not yet. Restoration is more than creation regained. But what we hope for is more than a return to the garden. We’re hoping for creation glorified. We hope for the promise that was present but never actualised in the garden.

This is why the artists and thinkers, secular and otherwise get it so wrong. They imagine an idyllic return to Eden. But Eden was the beginning. Even if Adam hadn’t sinned, he still would have grown. He would have developed, he would have learned. Even in heaven, we’ll learn, we’ll grow in perfection, we’ll have work and challenges, but it will be completely without sin.

So, in the first three chapters of this historical book, we have creation and the fall. But there’s the promise, already then, of the redemption, the plan of action that God will one day take. We learn right away that God will win, that his mercy and grace will be triumphant.

Between the fall and Christ’s coming, there are a series of events which happen, deals are made that we need to understand. These deals are called covenants. Historically, they followed the pattern of the age. What we might call a legal process, they called a suzerainty treaty, or suzerainty covenant.

Covenants

A covenant was an agreement between two parties, usually kings and vassals, though there were covenants between equals, like David and Jonathan. There were three kinds of covenants, the covenant of equals already mentioned, a royal decree, and a suzerain (king) vassal agreement.

As I mentioned this morning, the giving of the Ten Commandments was one such covenant. That covenant was an agreement to a relationship with conditions. There were two parties involved, God, as the King of kings, and his subjects, Israel, or their representatives, Moses or Abraham.

With these covenants, there was an agreement, if the vassal was faithful and kept the covenantal requirements, then the king would pour out blessings. But if the vassals failed to keep the requirements, then curses would follow. These curses were sanctions which had been already agree to.

In the royal decree covenant, God promised to fulfil all the terms of the covenant. The blessing wouldn’t depend upon the vassal’s behaviour. In the covenants of law, the vassals, God’s people, promise be faithful.

Genesis 15 follows up Genesis 3, with greater detail. It is a promise made by God, kept by God. God, like he sought out Adam, seeks out Abraham, causes him to go to sleep, and passes through the slaughtered animals. Abraham doesn’t. If it had been the other kind of covenant, then Abraham would have passed through the animals as well. But because God went alone, he alone is on the hook if either side fails to meet the requirements of the covenant, thus setting up a future event when Christ would become like a slaughtered animal.

Exodus 24, gives us a great example of the law covenant. There the people swear the oath, that if they don’t keep the covenant rules, they will be punished. Even so, it is interesting that Moses acts as a mediator between God and all the people. Moses alone goes up the mountain, standing between God and the people, an example of the coming great mediator, Christ.

So, there are two kinds of covenants between God and his people, promise and law. These are hinted at in Article 17, covenant of works and the covenant of grace. The historical covenants made between God and his people are connected. It isn’t as though they’re random things that happen, rather they all come together under the overarching covenants of works and grace.

The individual covenants that God makes with his people, are covenants of grace. Thus we see grace not just in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament as well. Thus we see that there are not two gospels, but one gospel written throughout the scriptures. This protects us from emphasising one over the other, furthermore, it helps us understand both. The redemptive covenants in the OT are meaningless apart from the NT, and the NT language is empty without the understanding of the OT.

The covenant of works is that which God set up in the beginning with Adam. He was to obey, to care for the land, to be a vice regent over creation and under God. Had he obeyed, he would have grown and he and all creation would have been glorified over time. But God demanded perfect obedience, and Adam failed. However, the covenant of works remained and needed to be fulfilled.

Covenant Fulfillment

Someone needed to fulfil it, Jesus had to come to fulfil what Adam, and the rest of humanity failed to do. He fulfilled it perfectly, as well as ushered in a covenant of grace by which his perfect obedience can be imputed, or given to sinners.

This process was revealed over time. Just as a child grows from infancy, into childhood, teenage years, early adult, etc., God’s people grew in their understanding of God and his plan of salvation. It all points, as hinted in Gen. 3:15, to Jesus Christ, the single mediator between God and people.

The result is a new creation, a paradise glorified, a new Jerusalem, where “no longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and the lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face” (Rev. 22.3-4). We will be with God, God will be with us, as it was in Eden, only it will be forever and ever.

There’s a connection between the new creation and the covenant of grace, for Jesus, the mediator, is also creator of all things new. Thus the pattern, as revealed in our New Testament passage, is Creation, Fall, Redemption and I add, Restoration. On the highway to Emmaus, Jesus “said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.”

Just as God breathed life into Adam, Christ breathes new life into dead in their sin sinners. He has born the curse of death, and has brought life!

This is the great, great news, while Adam was hiding ashamed, God didn’t smite him dead. God instead, went looking for him (though he knew where he was all along), he punished him, but also comforted him with the promise to come. We can look at it this way, “When Adam broke God’s law, God preached the gospel to him. God set out to find him” (Kim Riddlebarger, sermons on the Belgic Confession, the Riddleblog).

It’s also true for us, we’re guilty of Adam’s sin, we’re born that way. We are enslaved to sinful desires, darkened is our understanding. God’s wrath is justly upon us. But God’s mercy is greater than his wrath. God sought us out, that’s why we’re here tonight. Even when we kept running, God kept after us, “Where are you?” Even though we were his enemies, God died for us, reconciling himself to us and us to him, through the cross.

This is the point of everything. In Adam, we all ran like little children guilty of disobedience. But Christ comes to us, sent by the loving Father. Christ, incarnate, is our brother, fully human, fully divine. In Christ, God comes to us, saying, “Where are you?” Today, let’s say, “Here I am!”