WONDER, PART TWO – THE WONDER OF HIS PLAN

WONDER, PART TWO – THE WONDER OF HIS PLAN Amos 3:7 Luke 24:25-27 December 10, 2006 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Does anyone recognize this shape? What is it? That’s right—it’s a snowflake crystal. It fell right out of the sky onto God’s earth somewhere in Michigan’s upper peninsula. Just a simple snowflake with a random shape and design that is, they say, unlike any other snowflake crystal there ever was. It certainly is possible, given that there are 10 to the eighteenth power water molecules in each crystal, and those molecules could be arranged in an infinitely different pattern—sure it could be true that no two snowflakes are exactly alike. But only God could do it! Consider this specimen from the Sierra Nevada mountains. Here’s another retrieved from Alaska. Vermont was graced by the arrival of this gem. And look what fell in Ontario! Do you like a little variety in your nature? How about this odd but symmetrically spectacular crystal that fell in Minnesota? If the beauty and design and intricacy of these minute masters don’t cause you to wonder (with an !), you may not be alive. It ought to also cause you to wonder (with a ?) at the “Designer” behind this exquisite artwork and engineering. If it doesn’t, or you don’t see intelligent, artistic design in it, well, you’re as dumb as the rock this beauty fell on last winter. I use this fascinating realm of God’s creative design to transition from the discussion two weeks ago on the wonder of God’s creation to the wonder of His design in another realm. His plan. The God of magnificent creative power and genius would also like us to know He is the God of order and purpose. He is neither random nor hapless, and this cosmos He has created has purpose and direction. The Wonderful Plan I will restrict my observations to only one category of God’s plan for this planet—the one plan that He Himself considers the most important. That is His plan to redeem sinful mankind by sending His divine Son to the world as a man who would live sinlessly, die unjustly as a sin offering for mankind, then rise from death to vindicate His office as Lord of all. The omniscient and perfect Planner, who designs every snowflake with order and beauty did not go about His plan haphazardly. Before the Son would be sent the Father revealed His plan. Part of His plan to make salvation’s plan believable to human beings was to tell them in advance what He was going to do before He did it, so there would be no mistaking His intent and there would be enough evidence for those who would believe. God once said through a Tekoan shepherd named Amos whom he called into the ministry of prophet, Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7) That is, every major plan of God which He would carry out in history He pre-announced so every believer could point back to His promise and faithfulness and so no detractor could label His works luck or coincidence. Examples of Prophecies of His Glorious Plan God arranged to reveal to His patriarchs, prophets and poets more than 300 references to the future arrival and ministry of Jesus His Son. More than 60 of those references are direct and precise predictions of events and conditions surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And just to add certainty, not one of them was made any closer than 500 years prior to His birth on our planet. (I have collected 61 of these in a printed format for those who would like it. Included in the eight-page study are the biblical references to both the prophecies and the fulfillment. Click here to view) I want to reference a couple, so we might together worshipfully wonder at His great plan and grace toward us. Incidentally, I happened to be reading at the website of the American Scientific Affiliation where the collection of Christian PhD’s in that great organization commented that if the prophecies fulfilled by Christ were written by humans, and not inspired by God, the chances of all the prophecies coming true in Christ would be one chance in 8 X 1063. I’m no statistician, so I am glad that they illustrated this figure in a more understandable way. In an attempt to visualize this probability, suppose that we had this number of silver dollars and we made them into solid balls the size of our sun. (The volume of the sun is more than 1,000,000 times the volume of the earth.) We found that we would have 1032 such balls. If we had such a ball to replace each of the estimated 30 billion suns in each of 2 billion galaxies, which probably do exist, the operation would have to be repeated every second for about 70,000 years to use up all of the 8 X 10 63 silver dollars. Now imagine that one of these silver dollars was marked before they were made into suns. Let us blindfold a man and tell him to go out and pick up the one silver dollar that is marked. We would say that he had no chance of producing it. But his chance of grabbing the right coin is about the same as the chance of all of the prophets being correct in only 11 messianic prophecies, if they wrote from human knowledge alone. Only God—only God could have fixed this pin-point accurate prophecies in history, hundreds of years before He sent His Son, at just the right time, and have them fulfilled in His life and ministry. Genesis 3:15 More than four thousand years before Jesus appeared on this planet, Adam and Eve incurred God’s punishment for their sin in the great Fall, precipitating our banishment from the tree of life and the insinuation of depravity, evil and death into our world. On that occasion, God granted the first recorded prophecy of the coming of Christ as our redeemer. Referring to the devil, dressed as a serpent in Genesis, God said, And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. That from the third chapter in the Bible. From the third last chapter in the Bible: And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (Revelation 20:10) First John 3:8 celebrates how Jesus, God’s Son has crushed the enemy’s head, dealing his a death blow: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. When the only begotten Son of God did as was prophesied over four millennia earlier, giving his life on the cross and receiving the painful strike from the devil, God was at work. He was fulfilling the prophetic Word, finalizing His plan, and, as Colossians 2:15 says, …having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross! His Descendancy The book of Genesis leads us to understand that the Messiah promised in chapter 3 would be a descendant Noah’s son, Shem, who loved and served the Lord. More specifically, the Deliverer would be a descendant of Abraham, because the Lord promised him that through his offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 22:18). More specifically, he would be a descendant of Isaac and not Ishmael, and he would come through Isaac’s son, Jacob, not his son Esau. Further, he would be a descendant not of just any of the 12 sons of Jacob, but only of Judah.   More specifically, he would come from the line of Jesse in the tribe of Benjamin. And he was clearly prophesied to come through David’s descendants. God had sovereignly laid out a plan, rehearsed it over and over again through history, specifying which people, tribe and family the Messiah would come through. And He was faithful. Matthew saw the fulfillment: Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ. (Matthew 1:17) The angel announced it as he said to Mary of her child, He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end. (Luke 1:32-33) Zechariah knew it as, filled with the Holy Spirit, he prophesied, Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago) (1:68-70) The God who cares about the intricate beauty and structure of snowflakes planned carefully the lineage of His Son’s earthly life. With absolute precision, He announced this descendancy beforehand, then carried it out flawlessly. We think we’re pretty good when someone guesses the right sex of a child. God had this pregnancy planned since before the foundation of the world! How He would be Born Perhaps the most miraculous aspect of all is that God predicted that the God-man would be born in the most unusual manner that could be imagined. He would be conceived in his mother by a miracle, and not by natural means. A pregnant virgin would be his earthly mother! Miracle enough, just in itself, but he also prophesied it over 700 years before it happened. Proud and stubborn Ahaz would not obey the Lord who dared his to ask Him in faith for a sign concerning a military campaign that God wanted to give victory in, if only Ahaz would be humble and have faith. God said He Himself would give Ahaz a sign, whether he wanted it or not—and it wasn’t good news. The enigmatic part of that sign was that a young virgin will be pregnant and will give birth to a son and will call his name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14). In Matthew 1:21-23, the angel reassures Joseph with these words: “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means “God with us.” There was no human engineering here—it was God at work, beginning to end. Not only was the amazing conception the work of God, but He announced He would do it 8 centuries in advance. God works all things according to the counsel of His will! The Place of His Birth One more prophecy this morning. Almost as if to add humor to the plan to send His Son, God arranges in advance to have His Son born into humanity in an odd place. By “in advance” I mean 800 years in advance of the actual event. By humor I mean that God selected a tiny out-of-the-way village, that not only was unimportant in any way, it was also not even near where Jesus’ earthly mother and step-father lived. It is as if God went out of the way create a puzzle. But the prophetic word was fulfilled with absolute accuracy. Micah 5:2 – But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. There is a little town in Illinois called Bone Gap—‘ever heard of it? Yep, just about 4 miles straight north of Browns, IL. 272 people living there, last time they checked, 133 boys and 139 girls. Aside from having an interesting name that almost makes you want to find out how they got it, there’s not much exciting about Bone Gap, IL. I’d say that makes it the perfect place for God to do something interesting, wouldn’t you? That’s the way it was with Bethlehem. A no-account little village with nothing going for it except that it was the city of David, Rachel was buried there, there Ruth gleaned in Boaz’s field and David was anointed to be king. Almost because it was a nothing place, God chose it. Did you notice the language Micah used to describe Jesus? “One who will be ruler over Israel” and “whose origins are from old, from ancient times.” That’s the language of eternity for the Hebrew tongue. God tells Micah to announce to the world and human history that the someone special who will be born there will be eternal. Do you know what that does? That makes the accidental birth of someone in Bethlehem who pretends to be the Messiah impossible! That is, if someone who happened to be born in Bethlehem read the prophecy and decided he’d just impersonate the Messiah, he’d be at a real disadvantage. He’d be disqualified because he was not the eternal God. Only Jesus would qualify to fulfill this enormously precise prophecy. Now you can take the other 58 specific prophecies of the Messiah and study them out as well and in every one you will find wonder. God announced, for example, way in advance exactly how Jesus would suffer, die and rise from the dead. This is not to mention the literally hundreds of ways the life and ministry of Jesus fulfills the typology of the Old Testament—from being a prophet like Moses to the Temple and sacrifice system, priesthood and Savior. Conclusion Shortly after His resurrection, Jesus met a couple of disciples walking down Emmaus Road. They were discouraged about the death of Jesus, not recognizing Him. Things just hadn’t worked out like they had hoped they would. Jesus listened to them for a few minutes, then brought them a word of correction. Then He 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. (Luke 24:25-27) God has not only acted in history, providing everything mankind needs—forgiveness of sins and salvation and hope—but He also pre-announced everything! In His infinite wisdom, He has provided all the proof and evidence anyone could ever need that the work of Jesus is neither a hoax nor an accident. He told His prophets hundreds of years before it happened that it would happen, they wrote it down and now God is pointing to it saying, “I told you so!” The bottom line is this—you have every reason you need to trust the Lord Jesus Christ for your life. He has made it possible for you to return to God by paying your debt of guilt and condemnation. If you will trust Him today, He will save you. Believers, let your confidence be restored in what God has done for you in Christ. Know for certain that God’s plans come to pass just as He said they will. May the God of snowflakes and salvation give you peace this Christmas season.   [Back to Top]