Making Us Thankful: The Story of Salvation (2)
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· 1 viewTrue thankfulness comes as a response to God’s mercy and grace.
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Thanksgiving Sunday - Big meals, family, friends, blessings from God
A Holiday set up so that we can reflect on how God has blessed us and taken care of us in the past season.
Really wanted to talk about how to thank God, but instead talking about our ultimate reason to be thankful people
Looking at the story of redemption through the Bible
10 week series in Hebrews to follow, will be charting this course in more detail.
Our #1 reason to thank God is because of His mercy and grace.
We have much to be thankful for, but the #1 reason, the one that I believe God wants to firmly impress anew into our hearts this morning, is the life-changing truth that Jesus died and rose again so you can be set free from sin and death, and be made right with God.
Old Testament: Pointing to Jesus
Old Testament: Pointing to Jesus
The Beginning
The Beginning
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Simple 2 chapter story of creation
Adam and Eve are the finishing point
Beautiful scene, until Genesis 3.
Eve and Adam eat the fruit, become sinful, hide from God
God makes atonement with animal blood, makes clothes, sends them from the garden
3 chapters and humanity has messed it up
2 things to realize:
The whole Bible is about Jesus
Nothing takes God by surprise
QUESTION: Was God’s redemption plan formed at Genesis 3, or Genesis 1. Here’s God going , “oh dang, I wondered if they would do this and here we go! Guess we’d better tell them to start slaughtering animals for eternity to make up for their sin.” Is that how it worked?
We fall into the trap of thinking that God is reactionary - that all this took Him by surprise.
TRUTH: God had this figured out from the beginning
The Promise
The Promise
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
The offspring of the woman is anyone who comes after her, who has her nature. This is humanity. This humanity would one day triumph over the offspring of serpent. These are not baby snakes that are pictured, but rather evil and those who choose to embrace it. So somehow, God is going to send someone - someone fully human - who will triumph over evil and restore what Adam and Eve broke.
Sin didn’t take God by surprise.
We have choice, but God still had a plan
Noah - the world is completely depraved:
Noah - the world is completely depraved:
And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
God chooses to judge the people of earth for their sin. He sends a flood. But for those who follow God and trust Him, there is salvation from the flood.
This foreshadows how the Messiah is salvation from destruction from sin.
Yet Humanity is still sinful - still needs a Saviour:
Abram
Abram
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. 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.”
God promises that if Abram will follow God, He will bless Him and prosper His family, so that they will be a great nation - God’s nation, who will follow after Him.
LAST LINE OF PROMISE:
“IN YOU ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH SHALL BE BLESSED.”
This is another iteration of the promise that a Redeemer, a Messiah is coming. Abram - if he will follow God - will be part of the lineage of the Messiah.
God orchestrated all of this, promising a Messiah and then pointing down through these different times in history to the Messiah.
As we travel throughout the rest of the OT, we see that God does grow Abram’s family into a nation. Not just those of that particular bloodline. Rather, God grafts in anyone who will choose to follow Him and live according to His law. We meet Rehab, Ruth, Melchizedek, and others whom God adopts into the family of Abraham. God makes a covenant with this family, and in doing so gives them the sacrificial system. Not so that he could trial it to see if it would do the trick for 3000-4000 years, but rather to demonstrate and foreshadow that One was coming - fully human - would could pay the price once for all, and free us through His sacrifice.
Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
For the Israelites, cutting an animal’s throat and watching its blood (that is, its life) drain from its body was a visceral symbol of the devastating results of their sin and selfishness. The stakes are high—human evil releases death out into the world.
The sacrificial system provided a means for the Israelites to atone for sin and keep a right relationship with God.
It’s a symbolic gift provided by God to show how sin brings pain and death. The life of the animal acted like a detergent, washing away death. Therefore the community of Israel would remain clean.
Only the sacrifice of One one who is fully spotless and guiltless can do that. Only one who is fully human. And only One who is fully God is big enough to cover the price for the sin of all people, for all time.
where does someone like that come from? Humanity is broken!
What do we do?
New Testament: The Messiah Has Come
New Testament: The Messiah Has Come
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Jesus Christ, born of the virgin Mary, came and lived a life like ours. He experienced pain, and grief, and childhood, and teenage years, etc.
He was labeled a traitor and a blasphemer
He was beaten, and bruised, and carried that cross.
They nailed Him to it.
He fulfilled all the prophecies
He paid the eternal debt.
Perhaps worse than the physical pain was the pain of His Father turning His face away from Jesus, as the full wrath of God was poured out on Christ.
He defeated sin in his death, and death in His resurrection
Our hope is in Jesus
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
Everyone pick up your Bibles
This is the story of redemption. This is the reason why we are thankful.
Our #1 reason to thank God is because of His mercy and grace.