Rescue and Law

Good morning. Welcome to episode three in the Greatest Story Ever told. To truly understand a big picture narrative, it's often helpful to be able to go back and piece together some of its backstory. For example, any of you superhero fans will recognize that Peter Parker being bitten by a spider is a pretty important part of the Spider man story, is it not? No spider bite, you got no Spider Man.

Or the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents. That's a really foundational piece of Batman's origin story that shaped him into someone that wanted to fight injustice. Smeagol's murder of his cousin Deagle over a ring that they found in a river is a really critical part in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of where this character named Gollum came from. You know, without his mother's death, Anakin Skywalker might not have become Darth Vader. And without Bruce Banner's gamma radiation exposure, there would be no Hulk.

Now, this is a true principle in a lot of fictional stories, but it's not limited to just fiction. This is a really important principle in the Bible as well. If we want to understand God's story, there are some important dots we need to connect. We're going to try to connect some of those dots today. We're going to cover a lot of ground today.

Would be a difficult message for me just to say, but open your Bibles to this passage of scripture because we're going to jump all over the place. But if you're following along in your bulletin, these scripture references are noted there, and our podcasts make the transcript available. So if you want to dig into those things further, we would love to help you do that. Just want to encourage you to fasten your seat belts because we're going to go for kind of a bumpy ride here, but this is the big idea I want us to keep in mind as we travel today. It's this, that all of scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus.

All of scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus. And we're going to start today by jumping back to a part of God's story that we looked at last week, and that had to do with a man by the name of Abraham. Last Sunday, Cody introduced us to Abraham, who at that time was a man with no children, but whom God promised that he would make the father of a nation through whom all people on earth would be blessed. Sounded crazy. But centuries later, Jesus, who was a biological descendant of Abraham, fulfilled that promise.

Now, God illustrated his promise to Abraham in Genesis 15 in a rather unusual Way. In those days, people established legally binding covenants, typically by sacrificing an animal and then cutting that animal in half and dividing the pieces on the ground and then walking together between them. And it was a symbolic way of saying, I promise to hold up my end of this covenant, and if I don't, may I be cut up like this animal. Suddenly signing your name 67 times to close a home mortgage doesn't seem like that big a deal, right? But God's covenant with Abraham was different.

Instead of having Abraham walk with him between those halves of those butchered animals, God put Abraham into a deep sleep. And God passed between the pieces all by himself. He did all the work. Abraham was there. But the covenant was not up to Abraham.

God made a promise. And Abraham's job was to trust that God would keep his promise. But as we saw last week, Abraham and his wife Sarah's faith in God to keep that promise to got shaky at times. As they grew older, Sarah got impatient and she told Abraham to sleep with her servant Hagar in hopes of having a son with her instead. And Abraham said okay, and he did.

Now Hagar did become pregnant, and she did have a son, but not the son God had promised. Now, we might expect that at this point in the story, God would have written Abraham and Sarah off because of the way that they, that they took matters into their own hands. But God didn't do that. God remained faithful and he kept his promise despite Abraham and Sarah's lack of faith. Years went by, and Sarah eventually got pregnant and delivered a son named Isaac.

Now, these two pregnancies in Abraham's story were very different. Abraham had a son with Hagar not by trusting God, but by trusting his own efforts. He refused to wait for God to fulfill his promise. But Abraham had a son with Sarah only because of God. Sarah was too old to have children, but through God's power and through God's promise, she miraculously conceived and she gave birth to Isaac.

God is not dependent on us to accomplish his purposes. Now, next in this big picture story, we need to talk for a minute about Israel, who is also known as Jacob. Abraham's son Isaac had a son of his own named Jacob, whose name God later changed to Israel. And Jacob had 12 sons whose families became the tribes of Israel or the Israelites. In the later chapters of the book of Genesis, a famine struck the land where the Israelites lived.

So they moved to Egypt where there was food. And the reason there was food in Egypt is because of Jacob's favorite son, Joseph, going to cover this really high speed. But years earlier, Jacob's older sons had grown resentful of his preferential treatment of their little brother Joseph. So they sold Joseph as a slave, and they told Jacob, their father, that he had been killed by an animal. Joseph wound up being sold to an Egyptian military officer whom he served very faithfully, but whose wife had Joseph thrown in prison on false charges.

And yet, even behind bars, Joseph's wisdom and his character distinguished him, and he eventually became a trusted advisor to the king of Egypt. When the king had a dream that he was unable to interpret, Joseph explained that God was warning of a coming famine. And the king put Joseph in charge of stockpiling grain. In preparation for that famine, God kept his promise to Abraham by having his great grandson Joseph bring his family to Egypt, where they escape starvation. And when Joseph saved the lives of the brothers who had betrayed him and sold him as a slave years earlier, this is what he said.

Genesis 50. Joseph said, you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. God isn't dependent on our circumstances to accomplish his purposes, because. Because God is uniquely able to bring good, even from evil. And there's no more powerful picture of that than the cross.

The prophet Isaiah wrote these prophetic words about Jesus 700 years ahead of time. Isaiah wrote, he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, our sins. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and, and by his wounds, we are healed. God used the greatest injustice ever perpetrated to make eternal life available to all people. All of scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus.

Now, another pivotal player in God's story is a prophet by the name of Moses. God's promise to make Abraham's descendants into a nation came to fruition in Egypt, where the Israelites multiplied so rapidly that the Egyptians got nervous and feared a rebellion. So to maintain the upper hand, the Egyptians enslaved and they oppressed the Israelites and they began killing all of their baby boys. So God raised up Moses, whose life we looked at a few weeks ago in our Flawed Heroes series. God raised up Moses to lead Israel to freedom.

And here's why. Exodus chapter 2 says the Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God raised up Moses because of his promise to Abraham. Moses story, which is recorded for us in the old Testament Book of Exodus provides us a couple of really powerful sneak peeks of things to come, like Jesus unity with God.

See, even though God had clearly called Moses, Moses was afraid. He was nervous. He was apprehensive about standing before the king of Egypt and making demands for his people's freedom. So Moses asked God how he should respond if people questioned who sent him. And God said to Moses, I am who I am.

This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. Say to the Israelites, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. God said, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.

God's name I am reflects his eternal nature to God, who is not bound by time and space the way that you and I are. All times are present tense. Now, centuries later, Jesus came under fire from some Jewish leaders. And he said to them, your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad.

And when they said, what are you talking about, Jesus? Abraham died hundreds of years ago, so how could you have seen him? Jesus said, very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am. And with that statement, Jesus declared that he was, in flesh, the same God who had appeared to Moses. Now, Moses story also foreshadowed Jesus sacrifice for sin.

See, Moses concerns about going before the king of Egypt and not being listened to were actually pretty well founded. The king refused to free the Israelites, so God sent 10 devastating plagues to show his supremacy over Egypt's pagan gods and to convince their king to let his people go. In the 10th plague, God took the life of every firstborn son in Egypt. But he passed over the homes of the Israelites who had marked their doorposts with the blood of sacrificial Passover lambs. The king of Egypt lost his own son that night, so he finally relented.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back. And the king said that the Israelites could go. The Passover event became an annual Jewish celebration. But the Passover wasn't just about looking back on that night. It also looked forward to the time when the blood of Jesus would cover all of our sins and save all of us from death.

That's why Second Corinthians, chapter 5. The apostle Paul writing, calls Jesus our Passover lamb. See, all of scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus. Through the prophet Moses, God freed Israel from slavery. God gave Israel the law, God taught Israel how to worship, and God actually lived among his people as they journeyed.

But God wasn't dependent on the law for his purposes either. See, centuries later, the apostle Paul connected the dots of God's story like this. In Galatians, chapter three, Paul wrote, brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Paul's a good preacher, so let me illustrate this to you in the terms you'll understand. He says, just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case.

The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Now, scripture does not say and to seeds plural, meaning many people, but and to your seed singular, meaning one person who is Christ. What I mean is this. The law introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise.

But God, in His grace, gave it to Abraham through a promise. Here's what Paul is saying in that mouthful of words. Just as a person's will cannot be altered after they die, God's covenant doesn't change. When God promised Abraham that all nations on earth would be blessed through him, God was announcing the gospel. God was announcing the good news of Jesus in advance.

That promise came four centuries before God gave his law to Moses. And the law didn't change that covenant. The offspring that brings God's blessing to all nations, the epicenter of all God's promises is Jesus. All of Scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus. And that reality is the foundation of everything the Bible teaches about how we become right with God.

Salvation is something that God accomplishes and gives us by his grace. Through our faith. We don't have to earn it, but we often still try. We're so focused on achievement much of the time, we so value independence and autonomy that we often feel compelled to earn salvation ourselves by going to church and reading our Bibles and praying and giving and going on mission trips and participating in Serve Day and so many other things that in and of themselves are good things. But when we are determined to climb a spiritual ladder, we miss the big picture.

And we also tend to be offended by the biblical suggestion that we can't climb that ladder. So Paul wrote these really important words in Ephesians, chapter 2. Paul said, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. He's talking about Satan, the spirit, who is now at work in those who are disobedient. And then Paul says, all of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. And then he goes on to say this. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Doing good is important, but any good we do is simply a response to God's goodness to us. It is not the cause of it. Jesus came for us not because we deserve it, but because he loves us and because he knows that we cannot save ourselves. William Temple, an Anglican church leader, wrote, the only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.

We bring our sin and our brokenness and our corruption to the table. And what transforms us comes from God himself. Only God is in the salvation business. There is no such thing as do it yourself salvation. That is a contradiction in terms.

And that foundational biblical principle leads us to what I believe are three really important questions, the first of which is this. If we can't be saved by the law, if doing all these good things doesn't save us, then why did God give the law in the first place? That's a great question, and it's one that the apostle Paul anticipated. Paul wrote in Galatians, chapter three. He said, why then was the law given at all?

It was added because of transgressions, because of sins, until the seed Jesus, to whom the promise referred, had come. God gave the law to point us to Jesus, the seed of his promise to Abraham. The law makes us painfully aware of our sinfulness. All you have to do is read through the Old Testament regulations to recognize how comprehensive God's holiness is and how utterly short we fall of that standard. The law points us to Jesus, who kept God's law in the perfect way that we have all failed to.

The law shows us that we are sinful and that we are in need of Christ to rescue us. And when we trust Jesus to save us. We become participants in God's promise that goes all the way back to Abraham. Paul went on to write this. Later in Galatians, chapter three, he said, so in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs. According to the promise.

When we surrender to Jesus, we become a part of this family that God promised to Abraham. It's our faith that makes us right with God. It's not our race, it's not our upbringing, it's not our church background or our socioeconomic status or our gender. Only our faith in Jesus. Okay, you might say, but what about the people who lived before Jesus came?

That's also a really good question. And it's one that Scripture speaks to. I've heard it suggested before that those who lived before Jesus were saved by keeping the law, but that now Jesus has come. We are saved by our faith, but that isn't quite right. See, if it were possible for us to be saved by how well we keep rules, Jesus wouldn't have needed to die.

You and I are saved by looking back to the cross and trusting God's promise in Jesus. Before that time, people were saved by looking forward in faith to God's promise, which was ultimately realized in Jesus. Throughout history, all of Scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus. And Paul drove this point home. In his letter to the Romans.

Paul wrote, in Romans, chapter three, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness. Because in his forbearance in his patience, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. God knew that a time was coming when he would personally pay for all of humanity's sins at the cross. So he held off on final judgment against the sins of those who lived before Jesus.

And then in verse 26, Paul goes on to say, he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so as to be just the one who enforces all of his commands and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Now, later in that same letter, I want you to hang on to that word justifies. Because in that very same letter, the very next chapter, Paul wrote, what does Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him.

Now, to the one who works, the one who tries to earn their salvation by all the good things they do. Wages are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God, who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. So in both of those texts, Paul used the word justified. That's a really, really significant biblical word.

Abraham didn't earn God's favor, he simply trusted him. And God regarded that faith as righteousness. And he does the same thing for us. When we trust Jesus. Being justified means that God sees me just as if I'd always obeyed as perfectly as Jesus did.

We don't instantly become good people because we trust Jesus for salvation, but God chooses, when we are in Christ, to see us through the lens of the perfect righteousness of Jesus. Abraham was justified. He was declared righteous by God for trusting him. And when we trust in Jesus, sacrifice at the cross, so are we. That's what Paul meant when he wrote God made him who had no sin Jesus, to be sin for us at the cross, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

When we trust in Jesus sacrifice, God declares us righteous. All of us who follow Jesus are beneficiaries of God's promise. There was a time for all of us when we were dead in our sins. Some of us are still there. But God gave us new birth and he made us alive in Him.

We've been forgiven, we have been accepted, we've been adopted, we have been given hope. Not because we earned it with our good behavior, but because God is gracious and he keeps his promises. And when we put our trust in him, the righteousness of Jesus covers us. And if we haven't quite covered all of this yet, maybe a third question that occurs to us, because I think. I think this comes up every time we delve deeply into the Old Testament, is simply, what do all these Old Testament stories have to do with me?

All these bizarre, hard to pronounce names, all these faraway places I couldn't begin to find on a map. What does all this have to do with me? Well, all of scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus, which means that the Bible is full of connections between the Old Testament and Jesus. We can't illustrate all of those this morning, but very quickly, let me just point out that multiple New Testament writers highlight Abraham's faith not because he was perfect, but for these three reasons. First, Abraham followed God into the unknown.

The New Testament book of Hebrews Highlights this truth about Abraham. Hebrews chapter 11 says, by faith, by trust in God, Abraham how, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, delayed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. Road trip, no idea what the final destination is. Abraham packed his bags, gathered up his family and he went. By faith, he made his home in the promised land.

Like a stranger in a foreign country, he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. See, Abraham was willing to follow God in difficult places because his eyes were ultimately focused on the next life and not just this one. God doesn't promise us an easy life here and now, but he promises that he will be with us through forever, that we will be with him forever. Do we trust God enough to follow him even when the road is hard?

That's a really important question we have to ask ourselves if we're going to fully understand the implications of scripture. Here's a second thing that we see in the life of Abraham. It's that Abraham offered God what was most precious to him. Last week, Cody walked us through God's crazy sounding instruction to Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. And we saw last week that without hesitation, Abraham was ready to obey.

Now we know in hindsight Cody alluded to this last week. We know in hindsight that God never intended for Abraham to kill Isaac because he provided a ram, a substitute sacrifice. At the last minute. God simply wanted to reveal who was really on the throne of Abraham's life. And Abraham passed that test centuries after that moment when Abraham obeyed God by raising his knife to his son.

The book of Hebrews gives us this insight by faith. Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son. Even though God had said to him, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead.

And so, in a manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. Abraham didn't know as he raised that knife to his son what we know, but he trusted, we're told, that even if he took his son's life, God was good and faithful and would bring his son back from the dead and continue to fulfill his promise. Abraham's actions were grounded in his trust in God. Do we trust God enough to give him our very best and not hold anything back?

Now there's one more thing. About Abraham's faith, the scripture calls attention to, and that is that Abraham put his faith into action. In the New Testament book of James, we. We read these words. James says, someone will say, you have faith, I have deeds.

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. James says, you believe that there is one God good. The Greek word here is whoop de do.

It says, you believe there is one God good. Even the demons believe that. James was saying that if you and I believe in God only in the sense that we acknowledge his existence, then we live in the same theological neighborhood as all of the demons because they believe in God too. James went on to say this, you foolish person. Do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?

Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together. And his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.

Our actions don't lead to faith. Our faith produces our actions. If we have real faith, Scripture says our lives will show it. Abraham believed God. Abraham received God's righteousness.

And then he showed that he had true faith in his willingness to offer his son.

As I read and as I study and as I listen to song lyrics, I often hear people say things to the effect of, we are saved by faith alone. But the faith that saves is never really alone because it's always accompanied by obedience.

I don't know about you, but I can't picture Abraham on that mountain standing over an altar with his son bound and raising a knife, preparing to take his life without hearing these words of Jesus that God, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. So whoever believes in him wouldn't perish but have eternal life. And the question that all of scripture asks us is, do you believe in Jesus? But I need to clarify what I mean by that. I'm not asking whether you acknowledge that Jesus was a real historical person, because there are lots of people that would do that.

Not asking whether we know a few songs or a few stories about him. What I'm asking is, are you trusting Jesus? Are you following Him? Are you obeying Him? The story of God points us to Jesus as the only one who can remove our sins, the only one who can connect us to God the only one who can give us life beyond these mortal bodies and this broken world.

All of scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus. Those of you who have been with us for a little while know that in the past few weeks, our church has seen a lot of loss. A few weeks ago, we had to say goodbye to our friend and our executive minister, Steve Poston, and not long after that, to our friend, longtime elder Bill Springer. Yesterday, a number of us gathered here in this room to celebrate the life of Tanya Nall, our Greenwood Christian School music teacher. And in each one of those instances, we have grieved, but we have grieved with hope because we know that our friends trusted and followed and hoped in Jesus.

What scripture asks all of us to consider is this. Do you have that kind of hope for this life and beyond? See, all of scripture points to God's deliverance through Jesus. So the question for us in every part of God's story is, do you know Jesus? Are you trusting Jesus to save you?

Have you surrendered your life to Jesus beginning in baptism? Are you turning away from the sin in your life and following Jesus? Would God call you like he did Abraham, his friend? What is your next step toward total surrender to Jesus? Because the call of a disciple of Jesus is to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him.

And whatever that next step is for you, that next step toward more complete surrender to Jesus. We are here as a church family to help each other take those sometimes difficult steps. Would you pray with me, Father? God, we thank you this morning that you offer a relationship to us not because of how good we are, but because of how good you are, because of how perfectly Jesus lived, because of the sacrifice that he offered in our place for our sins. God, we thank you that the Bible isn't just an ancient, dusty book full of stories about a faraway land.

But God, this is the story of all of us. And it's a story that that's still being written. God, we ask for your help in seeing you more clearly as. As we continue to dig into your word, even some of the places that we find a little puzzling, even as we encounter stories or events or teachings that make us scratch our heads. God, we ask that you would help us to continue to dig, and we pray that you would continue to lay these pieces on top of one another and that through your Spirit's help, through the guidance of your Holy Spirit, through Father, through the encouragement and the instruction of your people, that you would help all of us, God, to continue to get to know you better and as we do, to trust you and obey you more fully.

God, I thank you for this place and for these people and the journey that we all share. Help us, God, to identify whatever that next step is that you're calling each of us to. And we pray that you'd give us the courage and humility to take it. And we ask these things in Jesus name and friends in the interest of taking next steps every time we're together. We just want to extend that opportunity.

It's really simple. Not easy, but it's really simple to reach out and begin that conversation to all of our friends online. We just want to encourage you just anytime. Text the word next to 317-707-9997. We'd love to hear from you and know what God is stirring in your heart and begin to walk with you in that process.

And all of us who are gathered here this morning, I'm going to invite our Next Step team, just some staff and some elders and some other friends to make their way down here to the front of the stage. And if we can be of help to you in any way, if we can pray with you, if we can answer questions, if you're ready to take the next step of baptism, if you're looking for connection, belonging, whatever that looks like for each of you, we want you to know that there are a number of us here who would love nothing more than to have a conversation and be of help to you. It's always great to be together as a church family. Grateful for your presence here, your participation with us today as we go this week. Let's go.

Recognizing that you and I are players in this promise that God has been unfolding since the beginning of time. Love you all. Have a great week.