The Story in Five Parts
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 26 viewsEaster sermon
Files
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Easter Expectations
I know you’re all expecting to hear a sermon on the resurrection of Christ today, and we will surely be talking about that, as it represents one of the most important events in human history, but I want to approach it from a slightly different perspective than I think most of you have heard it before.
M
I want to show you today how Christ’s death and resurrection fit into the grand story the Bible tells us about God and mankind. By the time we’re through, I hope you will have a new way of looking at God’s revelation and — even more importantly — God’s plan for the world and for we who live on it.
Turn with me, please to , and let’s start at the very beginning.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The first thing you need to understand about the story of the Bible is that is a sort of title for the rest of the first chapter of the book of Genesis.
It’s a Hebrew way of introducing the subject, which is then expounded upon in the coming text, much as Chapter 2 is an expanded look at what took place in Chapter 1.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
What we have here is a sort of prologue to what is about to take place. It gives us the setting.
Something already exists at the time when we see God starting to do the creative acts we see in the rest of this chapter. There were waters for the Spirit of God to move over, and there was an earth, albeit one that was “formless and void.”
Now, understand that I’m not suggesting that God did not create what was there; He certainly did. I’m merely suggesting that we have not been given revelation — at least not here — about how and when and for what purpose He had created the earth that Moses describes here as “formless and void.”
What’s important to note here is that there was darkness and chaos at the time that we are brought into the story of creation.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
God created light to dispel the darkness. And the light was good. This tells us something about God. He brings light to darkness, and He makes good things.
Through the next 22 verses, God continues His creative work during the process of five more days.
He created life where there was lifelessness. He created the birds and the fish and blessed them and told them to “be fruitful and multiply.” Then, he created the animals on the land (which would have included the serpent, by the way). And all of it was good.
In short, God has brought light out of darkness, and He has brought order out of chaos. He has established good things in the world.
And now He would create mankind, His crowning achievement in creation.
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Modern scholars, looking at the Hebrew grammar and the cultural and political traditions of the Ancient Near East have begun to conclude that the wording here is closer to “Les Us make man as Our image.”
Therefore, men and women were placed on the earth as symbols of the God who created them, much as a king might erect a statue in an outlying province of His kingdom to remind his subjects who he is.
As God’s image-bearers, we are His representatives on earth, but He has also given us a special responsibility as his regents, ruling over and shaping this place in His name.
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Gen.
28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Humans are given the same blessing as the birds and the fish — be fruitful and multiply — but God also gives mankind a special job: Subdue the earth.
Note that the word “subdue” comes from the Hebrew “kabash,” which you’ll recognize from the phrase “put the kabash on something.” We say that when we mean we’re going to put a stop to something. The Hebrew meaning ranges from “subjugate” to “violate.”
In other words, God said this to Adam and Eve:
“Be productive. Have children. You are in charge of the earth and all that is on it. Go out and bring it under control. Stop the chaos.”
So the God who brings order out of chaos is charging the regents made in His name to do the same. I think what He’s telling them is to expand the borders of the Garden of Eden until the conditions of Paradise that God created within the Garden exist all over the Earth.
“Display My Kingdom,” God has said.
So how does that work out?
Well, you will recall that God had told Adam and Eve they could eat from any tree in the Garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day that they eat from it, He said, they would die.
But Eve was enticed by the serpent, and
But the serpent was crafty, and he engaged Eve in a debate about God’s word — that should have raised great big warning flags for her, but she persisted in the conversation.
4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!
4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
It’s important to understand that this “knowing” that the serpent talks about is not the type of knowing that comes from having something revealed to us. It’s not the kind of knowing that suggests we can distinguish one thing from another. This knowing is the knowing by which we make known or declare something.
It’s important to understand that this “knowing” that the serpent talks about is not the type of knowing that comes from having something revealed to us. It’s not the kind of knowing that suggests we can distinguish one thing from another. This knowing is the knowing by which we make known or declare something.
In other words, when they ate from the tree that had been forbidden, Adam and Eve were looking for the power to determine for themselves what was right and what was wrong.
It’s the same thing we all desire: to be our own masters.
This is rebellion.
As the Maker of everything — including men and women — God has the right to set all the rules. He was and is the rightful ruler and master. As Creator, He owns all of His creation.
So they ate the forbidden fruit. And what happened?
Their eyes were opened, and they suddenly became ashamed.
Prior to their disobedience, they were both naked and were not ashamed.
But as soon as they rebelled — as soon as they sinned — they became ashamed and covered themselves up and then hid from God.
Their sin had the immediate effect of giving them an unhealthy focus on self. That’s what sin still does. It makes us ashamed and fearful and intimidated and secretive and sneaky.
It causes us to pursue selfish desires, even at the price of hurting others and ourselves. It turns our attention from God toward ourselves. It separates us from God and it isolates us from our fellow man.
Sin is the reason wives have problems communicating with their husbands. Sin is the reason there are misunderstandings between friends. Sin is the thing that causes nations to go to war. And sin is punishable by death.
In the Garden of Eden, a place where Adam and Even had access to the Tree of Life, they chose to eat the fruit of the tree that God had said would bring death. In their doing so, they unleashed sin and death into the world.
God had planted a garden for them and charged them with extending its borders and displaying His kingdom across the earth.
In their doing so, they unleashed sin and death into the world. God had planted a garden for them and charged them with extending its borders and displaying His kingdom across the earth.
Instead they had planted the foul and poisonous seeds of sin, earning their banishment from the garden and causing God to curse them and the very earth He had created.
And those seeds planted by Adam and Eve continue to bear their foul fruit today. The first crop came in when their son, Cain, killed his brother, Abel. But the poison would not run out so easily. By the time of Noah, Scripture says, evil had become rampant across the earth.
5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
So God brought a great flood that wiped out all living creatures — man and beast — except for Noah and his family and the pair of every animal that they had loaded onto the ark.
You all know this story. What I want to point out to you today is what God said to Noah after the flood had subsided and everyone had left the ark to start their new lives.
6 “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.
7 “As for you, be fruitful and multiply; Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.”
Doesn’t that look familiar? Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And be My image-bearers, My representatives. Display My kingdom.
Except that’s not what happened. The people failed to spread out and fill the earth, choosing, instead, to gather together into a large city and then to build a great tower.
4 They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
See that? They wanted to be like God. Instead of being the representatives of the rightful King, they were seeking to put themselves in His position; they had become insurrectionists, and their sins would eventually become more egregious than those of their pre-flood ancestors if God did not intervene.
So he confused their language at the Tower of Babel.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.
And now we see that, once again, the world is in chaos.
God had brought order out of chaos in His first creative act. And mankind, charged with being God’s image-bearers, the king’s representatives in His kingdom, had re-introduced chaos when they’d pursued sin.
And mankind, charged with being God’s image-bearers, the king’s representatives in His kingdom, had re-introduced chaos when they’d pursued sin.
Now, once again, we see a world in darkness, this time a spiritual darkness.
But God is merciful and gracious. And so he found a man named Abram.
1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;
2 And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;
3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
The words here are not explicit, but the meaning is still there: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Display my kingdom.
God had given the same blessing and the same charge to Adam and Eve and through them to their descendants all the way through Noah to the people who were finally scattered from the tower of Babel.
But they had all failed.
Now God was going to give this blessing and this charge to a new people whom He had chosen sheerly out of His grace.
He created Israel to display His kingdom.
Through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and then through the nation of Israel, God desired that His kingdom would be on earth as it is in heaven.
So how does God’s kingdom look in Heaven? It looks like Him. Perfect and holy and with subjects who obediently follow His will.
His will for the people of Israel was that they follow Him in faith. And He gave them the Mosaic Law and all of the Levitical laws to point them toward holiness and to show them the way toward faith.
But the entire rest of the Old Testament consists of an account of how God’s people failed to seek Him in faith and failed to bless the nations of the earth by displaying His kingdom.
They not only failed to keep His Law, but they found it to be an enticement to sin, much as a “Keep off the grass” sign makes us wonder how nice it would be to take off our shoes and walk around in that lush grass.
And so, God sent the nations of Assyria and Babylon to destroy the place where He had planted this people and to carry them off into exile. And then, after they had been allowed back into the land, He became silent.
The world was once again in spiritual darkness, and chaos ruled.
And then God did something completely different. He sent His Son, the very image of the invisible God, to live among us.
Jesus Christ, very God and very Man, would not only show mankind the image of God, He would show us how mankind was supposed to live — how we were supposed to display God’s kingdom.
Jesus Himself represented the Kingdom of God, and He made that point clear to the religious leaders of His time.
20 Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed;
21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
Luke 117:20
Jesus had spent much of His ministry talking about the Kingdom of God, and his descriptions never fit the desires of the religious leaders of His time.
They wanted a King who would destroy their Roman oppressors. They wanted a King who would make the nation of Israel great again.
But Jesus promised a kingdom in which he who was first would be last and he who was least would be greatest.
He who was King of Kings and Lord of Lords had come as a servant. God Himself had come in the person of His Son to perfectly display the Kingdom of God to those who had been made in His own image.
And we murdered Him on a cross on Calvary.
This was the ultimate rebellion.
And we see during His crucifixion that mankind has once again brought darkness into the world because of its sin.
45 Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.
And then there was chaos.
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.
And so the third part of the story ends, just as the first two have ended — in darkness and chaos.
But that was Friday. And this is Sunday. And on Sunday, God did something wonderful.
When the women had arrived at the tomb where the lifeless body of Jesus had been laid, they encountered an angel.
5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. 6 “He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying.
Matt 28:5
7 “Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.
7 “Go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you into Galilee, there you will see Him; behold, I have told you.”
In His death on the cross, Jesus had claimed victory over sin. Those who would follow Him are no longer under its authority.
In His resurrection, He claimed victory over death itself. God had brought life out of death. In the resurrection of Christ, God took the greatest evil of all time and turned it into the greatest good.
In the
Those who would follow Jesus can now be sure that they will have eternal life with Him in heaven. They may die physically, but the Spirit they have been given will not. And when Christ returns, they will receive glorified bodies.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ showed God bringing life out of death, and it ushered in a new part of the story — this one featuring the church as God’s agent on earth.
We see the growth of the church throughout the book of Acts and the epistles of the New Testament.
But I want you to notice something about its establishment, and we see it in what we know as the Great Commission.
19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
19
Do you see it?
“Go make disciples of all the nations.” In other words, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
“Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.” In other words, display My kingdom.
This is the same commandment that Adam and Eve received. This is the same commandment that the people of Israel received though Abraham.
So, let me ask you this: How well has the church done what Jesus charged it to do?
Well, let’s take a look. In terms of when it was written, the epistle of First Corinthians is the first New Testament book, and it’s a sad commentary on the divisions and chaos within that church, less than 20 years after Jesus ascended in his resurrected body back into heaven.
Have things improved within the church since then?
We still have church splits; we still have Christians who pursue their selfish ends, rather than the kingdom of God. We still have believers who want to run the church like a business rather than stepping out in faith to tell people about Jesus.
I think we can conclusively say that the church has been largely ineffective in its call to make the world look like the kingdom of God.
This part of the story continues through the New Testament into the Book of Revelation, where Jesus dictates to the Apostle John seven letters to the churches, concluding with one to the church in Laodicea.
In that letter, He says the church has become lukewarm. They think they are in great shape, but Jesus says something else about them.
17 ‘Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,
Once again, this part of the story ends in darkness, this time the spiritual darkness of a blind church that doesn’t even recognize its blindness.
Most of the rest of the book of Revelation describes the chaos and darkness that marks the end of this part of the story. The seven seals are broken, bringing war and famine, death and terror, hail and fire — and, eventually, darkness, as the sun and moon are stricken.
And then we see that, once again, mankind has brought darkness and chaos to God’s good creation.
And yet, as the antichrist arises, the people of earth think it’s their best day.
So ends the fourth part of the story.
The whole world seems lost.
But God has something entirely new in store.
In the final battle, a word from Jesus brings death to Satan and to all his followers.
And then, this:
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them,
4 and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
5 And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”
God will remove the curse that He placed upon the world when Adam and Eve sinned. We who have followed Jesus will be made new, made to be without the bent of sin. We will be like Him and owned by Him, with His name on our foreheads.
No longer will there be any curse. We
His name and His character and His person will be what people see when they see us.
In this new heaven and new earth, God will accomplish what He had set out to do at the beginning — to fill the earth with His rule.
You see, our Good News is much bigger than simply “you get to go to heaven.”
Our good news is that what we have been designed to be, we will finally be. Our good news is that life will be as it should be. Our good news is that the rule of God will fill the earth through His people, not because we made it that way but because He will make it that way for those who follow Jesus Christ in faith.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ on that first Easter morning is the pivotal event in this story.
The resurrection of Christ is God’s demonstration to us that He can do what He has said He will do. It is His shining proof that He is the God who brings order out of chaos, who brings light out of darkness, who brings life out of death.
And these are the very things He does for those who put their faith in Jesus, those who submit themselves to Him as their rightful King, those who admit and repent of the sin of serving themselves instead of serving Jesus.
Since the beginning God has desired for his kingdom to be on earth as it is in heaven. And since the beginning, we who were created to display that kingdom have rebelled and put ourselves in His rightful place.
That rebellion brought death into the world, and it reached its climax on the cross, where Jesus bore the punishment that we deserved for it.
But that was Friday, and today is Sunday. Today, we know that He is risen. Today we know that there is hope. Today, we celebrate the hope of the empty tomb, and because of the empty tomb we can look boldly to the day when all things will be made new, when everything that is wrong will be made right, when God’s kingdom will be on earth as it is in heaven.
Where will you be on that day?
If you have not humbly submitted yourself to Christ as your Savior and Lord — if you have not repented of your selfish rebellion — you will never experience the world as it should be. All you will ever know of this world is its broken, cursed condition.
Today, you can choose life. Today, you can choose light. Today, you can choose Jesus Christ, the risen savior.
The question is, will you?