Jesus Is The Plan

Scripture Reading

Today’s Scripture reading will come from two locations, but I am only going to ask that you turn to one of them. Turn in your Bible to Galatians, but before we read that passage, I am going to read from .

, verses 1-3

Hebrews 1:1–3 ESV

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

Hebrews 1:1–4 ESV

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

, verses 4-7

Galatians 4:4–7 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

This is God’s Word / thanks be to God

Almighty God and Father, we thank you and praise you for today. We thank you for this beautiful weekend in El Porvenir, where we are able to enjoy your majestic creativity and beauty in the nature around us. As we continue our weekend of rest and study, I pray the Spirit remove distractions from our minds and hearts and that the Spirit opens our eyes to the even greater beauty and majesty of Jesus Christ. It is in his name I ask this, amen.

Introduction

As most of you know, I wear several different hats. I’m currently a full time seminary student, a part time pest control technician, and I work at the church. I’ve been doing the dual part-time job arrangement now for several years at this point, but there was a brief period of time where I was wearing a third hat, but it wasn’t school. My third hat, for a time, was the captain of a semi-professional competitive Halo 5 team.

After playing in the 2016 World Championships, the owner of the organization I was playing for asked if I’d be willing to take point on building a team for the upcoming Spring Pro League Season, and so we put together a team of he and I, a guy we recruited from California, and my younger brother Travis. We would practice several nights a week, go over game footage after scrimmages and tournaments, and do everything else that you’d expect a team like this to do. But there was one thing I did as being the captain of this team that drove everyone insane, especially my brother. It was my catchphrase at the time (still is among certain friends), and even though I meant it to be genuinely helpful, it very quickly became genuinely annoying.

What was this catchphrase? It was a very simple, three word phrase: “what’s the plan?”

“What’s the plan?”, I would ask, as we would load into a game, and I expected everyone to respond with whatever the plan was for the given map/gametype/team we were about to play. If things started to go south during a game, I’d override the comms and ask “what’s the plan?” with the hope of getting us back on track. The problem with this was that I wasn’t the strategist I esteemed myself to be, so often my plans sucked, but the idea itself is pretty sound and common. When we start new projects or want to accomplish something, we make plans for them. When there’s a fire or storm or other emergency, we have plans in place to be able to deal with them. When we know what “the plan” is, we tend to feel more comfortable and hopeful about how things are going to turn out, especially if it’s a scary or dangerous situation. When we don’t know what “the plan” is, we feel afraid, insecure, or worried about the future.

I’m sure all of us can think of a time where you were going through something scary and you didn’t quite know what the plan was to get out of the situation or make the situation okay. Maybe there was a sickness, or a financial emergency, or your life was in actual danger. But I want to put before you another situation and I want to imagine yourself in it: you’re Adam, or Eve, standing outside the garden. You were once in paradise, but you chose to ruin that paradise, and now you are cursed and cast out. But you’re not without hope: the God who created you has given you a promise that he will put enmity “between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between her offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” You have ruined everything, but you know that not all hope is lost. But until then, you begin walking east, asking yourself “God, what is the plan to crush the serpent’s head?”

The History of Special Revelation

Of course, you’re sitting here thinking “Jesus! Jesus is the plan!”, and you’re absolutely right! But we are also living on the other side of Jesus and his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and so we have all the benefit of hindsight afforded to us. We are able to look back in the Scriptures and see how all of the Old Testament points to Christ and how Christ is the one that has crushed the serpent’s head. But if you’re Adam or Eve, or Noah, or Abraham, or Moses, or David, you don’t know that. You have part of the pieces of the plan, especially the closer you get to Christ, but you still don’t fully know what God’s plan is. So what do you do when you’re Adam and Eve, and all you have is this promise with no ETA as to when it’ll happen, or you’re Abraham, and all you know that God wants to bless the nations through your offspring, or you’re Moses, and all you know is God wants you to lead the offspring of Abraham out of the slavery that God said they’d be in?

The technical term for what I’m describing here is something called “biblical theology” - and yes, I’m know that is super confusing. You’re probably thinking “well shouldn’t all theology be biblical? Why are you calling this ‘biblical theology’?’ When I say “Biblical Theology” in this case, I am referring to a specific way of studying the Bible, much like one does “systematic” theology or “historical” theology. This type of theology explores the theology of the people of God as God gave further revelation to his people over time. If you’re Noah, you don’t know about Abraham. If you’re Moses, you don’t know about David. If you’re the prophets, you don’t know about Jesus of Nazareth, who happens to be fully man AND fully God. If you want to call this type of study something else, you could call this “the study of the history of special revelation.”, or an even simpler way to think of it as “God’s gradual unfolding of The Plan.”

This field of study is huge, and we are not going to spend too much time talking about this because there is way too much to talk about. If this topic interests you, I’ll go ahead and plug two books, the first being “Biblical Theology” by Geerharus Vos and the second being “A New Testament Biblical Theology” by Greg Beale; I’m sure Mack and Hutton have other great recommendations too. But, since the theme of this weekend is the revelation of Jesus, we need to talk some about how the revelation of Jesus as being God’s plan came about, because it didn’t just all come about at once. God gave new revelation about his plan over a long period of time, and depending on when you lived, you had different pieces of “the plan” already in place, and even if you didn’t have the full story, the pieces of “the plan” that you had shaped your expectation for what the rest of “the plan” would look like. The best example of this is John the Baptist - as he sits in prison, he asks Jesus “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” John, and the rest of the Jews, expected the Messiah to be someone who would free them from the tyranny of Roman oppression and take his rightful place as the King, and this understanding of the Messiah was shaped by several things, but it was largely based on the revelation they had received from God up until that point. When we read the Old Testament, and even when read the Gospels, we need to always keep in mind that the people in the story didn’t know what we now know about God’s plan.

The Plan Before Christ

So what did people think the plan was prior to Christ? Obviously Adam and Eve didn’t know all that much, but what about later on? Let’s start with Abraham: Abraham understood that God was going to bless the nations through his offspring, who were going to be as numerous as the stars in the sky. God’s plan then must be to create a people who love and serve him! Yes, that’s part of the plan, but there’s a problem: those people are enslaved. Moses understood that God had called these enslaved children of Abraham to freedom from their captivity, and that he was to lead the people to the land God had promised to Abraham, and God would give them a holy law governing how they would live and worship Him. God’s plan then must be that his people are to be the people who live as a holy and righteous nation for the surrounding nations. That must be how God plans to crush the serpent - all of the nations will come to worship him and the serpent’s influence will be stamped out, and it’ll all be because of Moses! Maybe Moses is our guy! Yes, that is part of the plan, but there’s a problem: the Israelites cannot keep the law, the priests can’t truly take away the sins of the people, Moses doesn’t even get to enter into the land he led the people into, and the people of God totally and completely fail at being a witness to the nations. What’s the plan from there?

Well, maybe we need a king! These judges that keep having to save us from our stupidity aren’t working - maybe we need to have a king to lead us! God gives into their demand for a king, but it’s not the guy they want at first. Saul sucks as a king, so he makes David the king, and after some tense political drama David finally secures his rule and authority as king, and turns out that David is a pretty good king - the best king the people could hope for, and Israel enters into this golden age. Could David possibly be the offspring of Eve that God talked about? Nope - David starts screwing up in all sorts of ways. His son Solomon, who he had with a woman who wasn’t originally his wife, builds a temple for the worship of God - maybe Solomon is the guy? Nope. Ditto with all the kings who come after him. So at this point, we know that God plan is…kinda unclear. We have a lot of different balls to juggle here - God’s covenant with Abraham, God’s covenant with Moses in the Law, God’s covenant with David, the land, the temple, the sacrificial system - where is God’s plan going?

Well, given that God has done nothing but bless his people whenever he acts, the next thing God does must be great, right? Surely God wouldn’t do something like destroy his temple, destroy the kingdom, take us out of the land he gave us and take us into exile, right? Narrator: It was exile. God had sent prophets to call the people to repentance, but they didn’t listen, and so God did what he threatened to do if they didn’t, and carried them off into exile. If the plan was unclear before, it’s REALLY unclear now! God does eventually let his people return to the land, but it’s not like it was before. They’re constantly under the thumb of nations and rulers more powerful than them, the kings that rise up still suck, and even though the temple gets rebuilt, there is widespread corruption everywhere. We are several millennia removed from God’s promise to Adam and Eve - God, at this point, is there even a plan?

The Fullness of Time

Galatians 4:4–5 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Galatians 4:4–5 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Yes, there was still a plan:

Galatians 4:4–5 ESV

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

We don’t know why the Lord orchestrated his plan the way he did, but we know that the “fullness of time had come”, God’s long promised plan would come to pass - and it would come to pass in a way that nobody other than God could’ve seen coming.

Jesus’ entrance into the world was one completely unfit for the king of the universe. Being born in a feeding troth to a meager family living in a backwater town is no way to welcome in the savior of the world, but the Lord chose to be born in a humble estate and grow up as a sinless boy. Thirty-ish years later, Christ begins his ministry, and people begin to wonder if he’s the Messiah. There are plenty who believe he’s a fraud, but there are also plenty who think Jesus might actually be it. Still, even the people that believe that he’s the Messiah have to admit that he isn’t living up to what they were expecting him to be. There was no overthrow of the Roman rulers. There was no political upheaval. There were signs and wonders and fierce confrontations with the Jewish religious authorities, but even those would be called into question once Jesus is arrested, tried, condemned, and crucified on a cross - all according to plan.

It wouldn’t be until after the resurrection and ascension of Christ where all of the pieces of the plan would come to click together. All of the uncertainty, confusion, and complexity in the Old Testament gains new understanding and meaning as God’s plan is finally and properly understood. Jesus is the last and final Prophet, the Prophet foretold by all the Prophets. Jesus is the eternal King, sinless and immortal, unlike the kings of Israel. Jesus is both the High Priest AND the spotless sacrificial lamb, securing permanent and lasting forgiveness that the sacrificial system could never accomplish. When God promised Abraham to bless the nations through his offspring, he meant something far greater than what Abraham could conceive of - salvation both for Abraham’s offspring and the rest of the world. When God promised Adam and Eve that through Eve would come one that crushes the serpent’s head, he meant something far great than what they could conceive of - not only would God destroy the serpent, he would adopt sinful men and women, exiled from the garden from Adam and Eve’s sin, back into God’s family, giving them an inheritance greater than anything Eden could offer. Born of woman, born under the law, Christ would “redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

From our vantage point, when we read the Old Testament, it can be hard to see how Christ fits into all of it. We know that there are passages that refer to Christ, but the events, details, and characters all seem to clutter and distract from Christ. But from God’s vantage point, the plan has never been anything other than Christ. There has never been a plan B, there has never been a course correction, there has never been any uncertainty as to what God was going to do, even if his people didn’t always have the full picture. God’s plan has always been centered on Jesus Christ living the sinless life we couldn’t live and dying in the place of his enemies for their salvation and securing an eternal resurrection for his people by his resurrection from the dead. Now that Christ has ascended into heaven, we, the church, are sent into the world to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations, because God desires that people from every nation, tribe, language, and tongue worship him and for the earth to be filled with the knowledge of God. Jesus has always been the plan. It has never been anything else.

God’s Plans, Our Plans

It might be at this point where you start thinking “yes, God’s plan has always centered around Christ, but what does that mean for His plans for my life?” And this is a perfectly good and legitimate question to ask. Many of you have hopes and dreams for a successful and meaningful career, getting married and starting a family, or just even getting through this semester in one piece. It is perfectly reasonable to wonder what God’s plan for your life is and whether or not it’ll include the things you hope for. The challenge for us today is not to want to know what God’s plan for our life is - the challenge for us today is to see Christ as being the centerpiece of whatever God’s plan for our life is.

Just because Christ has always been at the center of God’s plan doesn’t mean that the details of the plan leading up along the way don’t matter. God’s plan wasn’t just about Christ and all of the other people and events didn’t matter. God called Abraham, Moses, David, and the Prophets to their roles because those roles were important to him, and part of the reason why those roles were important was because we see glimpses of God’s plan revealed through them. Our lives, our stories, our callings, our passions are not worthless simply because Christ is worth everything - in fact, it is because of Christ that all of the nitty gritty details of our lives matter immensely. If Christ is the center of God’s plan for everything, He must be the center of our plans for everything as well, which means that in our studies, in our jobs, in our relationships, in our pursuits we have the opportunity to communicate the Gospel of Christ in all that we do. You may not know whether your life will include success, marriage, a comfortable retirement, or whatever it is you’re setting out to accomplish, but you do already know, right here and right now, that your eternity has been bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ, and that no calamity or misfortune can snatch you out of your Father’s hand, and that God is always working all things together for his glory and our good. And even if those things don’t turn out the way you hope they will, even if God takes us on an entirely different path than what we want or hope it to be, we must always strive to see God’s plans for our lives as being a part of God’s plan for us to know His son, and that there is nothing greater than knowing Jesus.