Jesus! God's Ultimate Dream!

When we talk about dreams, there is no one who has greater dreams than God. He is able to make things happen that are impossible for man. He is the Creator and can make things out of nothing. So in the Garden we see that the man and the woman decide to do things their way and for get about what God said.

Genesis 3:8–13 NLT

8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” 11 “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Chapter 3

The Man, known as Adam, named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living.

21  GOD made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dressed them.

22  GOD said, “The Man has become like one of us, capable of knowing everything, ranging from good to evil. What if he now should reach out and take fruit from the Tree-of-Life and eat, and live forever? Never—this cannot happen!”

23–24  So GOD expelled them from the Garden of Eden and sent them to work the ground, the same dirt out of which they’d been made. He threw them out of the garden and stationed angel-cherubim and a revolving sword of fire east of it, guarding the path to the Tree-of-Life.

Because of sin, man was separated from God!

Because Adam disobeyed God and not only that, he blamed God for giving him the woman, God thrusted them out of the Garden to toil over the dirt that he was formed out of. They were no longer in fellowship with God. Just think about this, God would come into the garden in the cool of the evening to spend time with the man and the woman. Now all of that has been ruined because of disobedience. What really hurt God was that Adam trusted more in his wife telling him the fruit was good than listening to God who told Adam not to eat that fruit. Had every other tree to eat from. The devil never tempts you with what you have, he tempts you with what you perceive to be missing out on. God provide so much for us and yet we tend to focus on what we don’t have instead of what we have been blessed with.

Genesis 3:14–15 AMP

14 And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all [domestic] animals and above every [wild] living thing of the field; upon your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust [and what it contains] all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring; He will bruise and tread your head underfoot, and you will lie in wait and bruise His heel.

In the midst of this upheaval, God already has a dream to redeem mankind!

Here we get a glimpse right in the beginning, right when sin happened, of God’s big dream to restore mankind into right standing with Him. He is declaring His plan for redemption through Jesus who is the seed of the Woman. Notice the word seed. Women don’t have seed which is God declaring that Jesus would not be like any other. He would be sent from God to destroy the devil when He stomps on him and bruises his head. In other words, the Offspring, and that’s a capital letter Offspring, is going to stomp your heads satan. You are going to be sorry you ever went up against God again. You know it wasn’t enough to get kicked out of heaven for rebellion, now he’s going to eat dust until his head is smashed in. So we see how God has a plan to combat what the devil has tried to do to get back at God. And now God is starting to reveal His plan to everyone though His prophets.

Isaiah 7:14 The Message

14 So the Master is going to give you a sign anyway. Watch for this: A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant. She’ll bear a son and name him Immanuel (God-With-Us).

Isaiah 53:5–12 AMP

5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, [yet when] He was afflicted, He was submissive and opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living [stricken to His death] for the transgression of my [Isaiah’s] people, to whom the stroke was due? 9 And they assigned Him a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. 10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick. When You and He make His life an offering for sin [and He has risen from the dead, in time to come], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see [the fruit] of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; by His knowledge of Himself [which He possesses and imparts to others] shall My [uncompromisingly] righteous One, My Servant, justify many and make many righteous (upright and in right standing with God), for He shall bear their iniquities and their guilt [with the consequences, says the Lord]. 12 Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great [kings and rulers], and He shall divide the spoil with the mighty, because He poured out His life unto death, and [He let Himself] be regarded as a criminal and be numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore [and took away] the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors (the rebellious).

God’s “dream” was to send Jesus, both man and God to die for our sins!

God’s plan to redeem mankind was to send Jesus to be the sacrifice needed to pay the price for the the sins of the world. So Jesus paid for us to be totally redeemed from every curse of sin. He suffered grief, infirmities, and insecurity so that we would be emotionally healed. He took on our sins and transgressions so we would be forgiven, sickness and disease so we would have health and wholeness. He went through mental turmoil and pain so that we would have peace of mind, He was weak so we would be strong. God’s dream would be that Jesus would do everything needed to reconcile us totally to God since we were separated from Him. It’s a dream of God to restore our relationship with Him.

John 3:16–18 The Message

16 “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. 17 God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. 18 Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

John 1:12–14 ESV

12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

God’s dream would multiply His family!

Here we see that because God loved His creation, mankind, He was willing to sacrifice His only Son and that sacrifice would open the door for many to become family to God. Wow! You and I have beed redeemed by the blood of Jesus. By His unselfish sacrifice for all of us. No longer would we be strangers to God. No longer would He hide Himself from us. Now we have the ability to again fellowship with Him, and talk with Him and listen to Him just like Adam did before the fall.

John 8:31–36 The Message

31 Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. 32 Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.” 33 Surprised, they said, “But we’re descendants of Abraham. We’ve never been slaves to anyone. How can you say, ‘The truth will free you’?” 34 Jesus said, “I tell you most solemnly that anyone who chooses a life of sin is trapped in a dead-end life and is, in fact, a slave. 35 A slave is a transient, who can’t come and go at will. The Son, though, has an established position, the run of the house. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through.

God’s dream is for us to be free!

Jesus came to set us free. Free from sin and shame. Free to be able to go through life with no condemnation. Free to be everything God intended us to be. No limits because if fear of failing God. He is now our Father because we are children of God. So this is like one of those movies that starts with the end and goes on to find out how it started. Next week we will see what is so very special about the Christmas account. Here’s a hint. None of this would have taken place if certain parts of the dream were left out. We’ve looked and why God had a dream to send Jesus and we’ve looked at what He accomplished for us through His sacrifice, but there’s another part and that’s really what Christmas is all about and that’s happening next week.