Believe the Gospel
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Now after John was imprisoned, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the gospel of God.He said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!”
There are a lot of messages in this World we live in. There are a myriad of voices that will happily give you direction, most of it horrible but nevertheless, these voices are happy to take your money and deliver little to nothing that gives you life, peace or an eternal future.
Jesus, the son of God came to bring One Message. In the 21 century we have really lost sight of what this message is. Today it is my prayer and my heart’s desire to help you make sense of the truth and the power of this message.
Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed this Message which was the “Euangelion” the Good News of God.
He says “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near.
Repent (have a change of mind, a change of heart) and believe (place absolute confidence in) this message of Good News.
When our ears hear this message that was spoken by Jesus, the power, the hope, the shear relief and joy of hearing such a message is lost on us, because we didn’t grow up in a World where
We understood the Bad News
Our entire nation had lived in captivity and under the occupation of foreign powers and we were consider 2nd rate citizens, slaves and dogs.
We had grown up hearing stories about the God of Israel and been feed the stories of His promises to us from the time we could speak.
In a way, those of you who are imprisoned today may actually have a better capability of understanding and hearing this message that was said to be Good News, because Bad News is something you understand.
Today, I want you to try and stop thinking like an American that lives in the 21st century and do your best to follow me as we learn to think like the persons to whom the promises were written to. I want us to get a grasp of what the Bad News is so that when we hear the Good News, we can gain the same sense of hope, joy, astonishment and excitement that this Message from God actually carries.
So what Bad News did this Good News come to address?
The Fallen State and Depravity of Humankind -A Universal Problem
For we too were once foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to various passions and desires, spending our lives in evil and envy, hateful and hating one another.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
For most of us, when we think about the story of mankind falling in sin, we think of the Garden of Eden story and something about Eve eating an Apple and a Snake.
A better understanding of this event would be to say that God, before he form Eve, instructed Adam concerning which trees he could eat from and and the one tree that was not be eaten from.
It was Adam’s job to teach Eve this truth. Eve knows God’s desire and the command given Adam, but it seems she doesn’t understand the heart behind the command or the consequences for disobey God in this matter, which was something called death.
The serpent in this scene isn’t just a talking Snake.
This isn’t some scene from a Dr Dolittle book.
He is a divine being, a part of God’s spiritual family that was created some time before the our World was ever formed.
This divine being fully understands who God is and the consequences of disobeying God’s word in this matter of the Tree of Knowledge and Evil and he uses his understanding and perhaps even his divine presence and appearance to convince Eve that God has lied to her and Adam, that God is holding them back and keeping the good stuff for himself.
He convinced Eve that the threat of death is just a scare tactic and that she won’t really die if she eats the fruit, but that she will become divine herself, that she will be like God and that God being a unloving God doesn’t want her or Adam to have that experience.
I’ve heard some form of this lie thousands of times in my lifetime, the Idea that God doesn’t really care about us at all that his commands are meant to hold us back and keep us for experiencing life to the fullest; that following Jesus, or being a Christian makes you soft, weak and that the experience is one giant buzzkill after another.
The first event that starts the coming of the Bad News is where Eve places here trust in any being other than God, believes that God is not Good and is not Good towards her and decides that taking matters into her own hands to become like the gods that are also present in the garden is the wise thing to do.
Adam’s cowardly sin was to stand there and watch her do it. To allow her the be endangered so he could see if what the serpent had to say was true.
I she died or something bad happen, he could simply ask God to take another rib and make another Eve. He not only failed to trust God’s love for him, he failed to lead and in doing so surrendered his dominion, his rulership of this world to another.
What we agree with, we give power over us. Adam agreed with the Serpent who is the Father of all Sin and Depravity and in so doing Sin Entered the Good World God had created and became a part of the Human Consciousness and Experience. I brought a curse that was then passes down to every human to ever breathe.
The Serpent is cursed as well and a promise is made to him.
The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all the wild beasts and all the living creatures of the field! On your belly you will crawl and dust you will eat all the days of your life. And I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring (your children) and her offspring (her child); her offspring (child) will attack your head, and you (not your child) will attack her offspring’s heel.”
Here War is declared. God makes a declaration of War on the Serpent and the stage is set for a conflict that has raged for thousands of years and brought tremendous sorrow, pain and destruction to the earth and to mankind.
Here ls where your Sunday School teacher stopped and here is where most preachers hang all the ravages of the curse, but the text that we call the Bible tells a story that says this was just strike one.
Strike Two
When humankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humankind were beautiful. Thus they took wives for themselves from any they chose. So the Lord said, “My spirit will not remain in humankind indefinitely, since they are mortal. They will remain for 120 more years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after this) when the sons of God were having sexual relations with the daughters of humankind, who gave birth to their children. They were the mighty heroes of old, the famous men. But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended. So the Lord said, “I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—everything from humankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.
The Fallen Sons of God
This is where most teachers of the scriptures will skim past and try to explain away what the text actually says here, because it is weird and it doesn’t fit our modern thinking.
But, to miss what happens here is to lose understanding of the story and the power of what Jesus did for us.
During about a 400 year period before Jesus is born, the Jewish community has a period where great scholarly work was done. The books we now called the Bible were gathered and curated, volumes of knowledge and teaching were written during this time and if you were to ask these men what the greatest contributor to the depravity of humankind was, they would overwhelmingly agree that this due to the sin of the Watchers.
While the exact number may not be known, Israelite scholars in ancient days recorded that there were about 200 divine beings, Sons of God also called Watchers
English Standard Version Chapter 4
17 The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.
The Watchers are created beings that were very powerful and to a human, god-like, with mystical powers that were far beyond those of a human; who left their positions and assignments in the Spiritual realm of God to come earth, have sex with attractive human women and raise up for themselves, their own bloodline, which would worship them and oppose God.
These hybrid children, called Nephilim were giants and this is where the giants mentioned in the scriptures several time, came from.
Numbers 13:33 “We even saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak came from the Nephilim), and we seemed liked grasshoppers both to ourselves and to them.””
English Standard Version Chapter 17
4 And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. 5 He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. 6 And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. 7 The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron.
These fallen sons of God, shared knowledge with humankind that God had forbidden because God knew that such knowledge without the right heart would bring massive destruction and horrible depravity on man and that is exactly what happened.
But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made humankind on the earth, and he was highly offended. So the Lord said, “I will wipe humankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—everything from humankind to animals, including creatures that move on the ground and birds of the air, for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.
Every major religion, and the stories found in the Sands of the deserts of the region where all of this occured all tell of Divine Beings who came to mankind and a great flood that came upon the earth.
The depravity of these fallen sons of God was judged and according to later passages of scripture, we learn that God sent his Arch Angels capture and imprisoned these divine beings in chains of darkness until the final day of judgement.
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but threw them into hell and locked them up in chains in utter darkness, to be kept until the judgment, and if he did not spare the ancient world, but did protect Noah, a herald of righteousness, along with seven others, when God brought a flood on an ungodly world,
Strike Two - BUT GOD, whose plan can never be thwarted saves Noah and continues the bloodline promised in Gen 3. The line from which the one who would crush the head of the serpent would come.
Strike 3-
The Tower of Babel
Gen 11
God’s vision and command to mankind has always been from the first days in Eden that they should be Fruitful, Multiply and fill the Earth. The were meant, commanded even to scatter and fill the world.
Here in Genesis 11 we are shown a story where men generations after Noah have all one language and they decide for themselves, to settle in the Plain of Shinar (Babylon), build a great city with a temple (tower) that is like a mountain (whose top reaches the heavens), so they can
Make a name for themselves
Not be scattered like God commanded.
An awareness of the knowledge of the Watchers, the Sons of God from before the flood carried forward into the human experience and here, humanity decides to once again reject the Creator God, seek out the help of other gods by building a place where these other gods would meet with them and help them make a name for themselves and take their own path, opposed to the path God asks of them.
God sees what is happening, understands that if this is left alone, it will yet again result in great destruction of humankind and horrible depravity and so he decides to there, confuse their languages and create an event that would scatter them across the face of the earth.
What we are later told in Deuteronomy 32:8 that here on this day, God gives humanity what they wished for and instead of them being in relationship with him, he disowns humanity and places these people groups under the guardianship of other sons of God.
)
English Standard Version Chapter 32
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the LORD’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
When you look at the world through this Worldview, which is the Worldview that all the Prophets, Jesus and the Apostles held, then stories like the Prodigal Son and the Events on the day of Pentecost after Jesus’ resurrection start making a lot more sense.
All the other nations are disowned but not abandoned.
Because God kept a portion for himself. Jacob was the Lord’s portion of humanity.
God kept One man for himself, a pagan named Abram, whose name was later changed to Abraham. Which means “Father of many Nations”
English Standard Version Chapter 12
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Babel was Strike 3, and yet again rather than giving up on his love and plan for us, God has a man, who He calls and claims for Himself and the bloodline that would Ultimately lead to One who would crush the Serpents head, is protected and blessed and in this One, this seed from Abraham’s line all the families of the earth, all the people who chose to reject and abandon God, who wanted to go their own away apart from God, would be blessed.
If you know this story, then you can see as you read your Bible that the enemies of God are constantly driving the killing of boys from this clan of people and that their is a constant attempt to kill off this bloodline, because the enemies of God have no idea who this One is or When he will show up, just that he will come through Abraham’s blood line.
God Passes Judgment on the Rulers of the Nations and their failures towards humanity and their own corruption and declares that the Authority given them would not only be stripped away, but that they (immortal beings) would die mortal.
Psalm 82:title–8 (ESV)
English Standard Version Psalm 82
1 God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
7 nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
8 Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations!
The Bad News, Humanity, (our forefathers) reject God and so God allows Humanity to make that choice and places all of them under the rule and eventual abuse and slavery to created divine beings who are just as subject to corruption as the humans they were to guard, they just had a lot more understanding of the spiritual and physical realms and the ability to manipulate and enslave humans for their own purposes and power.
Remember, whom ever or whatever you make agreement with, those that you are enslaved.
What ever you yield your body and mind to becomes your master and your give that entity power over your life.
The Bad News, were we all, with the exception of the handful of Israelites who were living in faithful covenant with God before the cross, under the rule and oppression of other divine beings, who care nothing for us and only use humanity to maintain power and authority.
Every human however is under influence of a broken, distorted nature that is bent towards rebellion, anger, hatred, lust, disobedience, self-seek, self-promoting behavior that fall under the heading of Sin. This Problem is Universal
A Universal Problem requires a Universal Solution.
The Good News
This is the time, that the promise claims would be fulfilled and Jesus says has now come.
The coming of the One in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed.
The coming of the One who would bring about the judgement and destruction of the abusive guardians they were enslaved too and free them from that slavery to once again be invited to become children of God Most High.
A promise not just to Israelites but to all people, or every nation, tribe and language, just as God promised to Abraham and just as He promised the Serpent in the Garden.
The Gospel is the Power of God.
Romans 1:16 (ESV)
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
English Standard Version Chapter 2
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
English Standard Version Chapter 2
7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Now after John was imprisoned, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the gospel of God.He said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!”
So, the Good News is, Jesus is the One. He is One that God Promised would reverse the curse of sin and deliver us out from under the failed guardianship of the Fallen Sons of God by adopting us once again into his family and make us a part of his covenant people who are His portion.
The Good News is, you never have to be a slave ever again from this day forward unless you of course you chose not the believe and decide not to alter your course, not have a change of mind and heart, but to continue doing things your own way.
Jesus said the time if Fulfilled, the Kingdom is Here and Now, Turn around and believe this amazing news.