God's Amazing Plan Series

God’s Amazing Plan-From the Foundations of the World

Sermon 1 in the Easter Series-The Road to The Cross

EOLS: God’s provision for our salvation is eternal and shows His amazing, loving individual plan for His Creation.

Often when I begin to do research and as I long to satisfy my inner thirst for knowledge-I take great solace in the fact that-God has not told us everything He knows-but He has told us all we need to know! Often times as we search, reason and try to understand-we will come up empty as our finite minds reach for the infinite. At that point, join me in apprehending the Truth, even when our minds cannot comprehend it!

It’s the question of the ages-who am I, where did I come from? Who created me and what is the very purpose of my life? Every rational human being looks at themselves and asks that question from time to time.

Many voices around us, so-called “authorities” scream in response “you are an evolutionary accident!” We are told that in defiance of incomprehensible odds, using numbers that make time travel and inter-galaxy travel seem easy-that we sprang from a primordial soup when microbes accidentally received a charge of radiation billions of years ago.

Yet the very fact is, I sit here and ponder my existence. I display a void, a vacuum in my existence. We need purpose, we need self-worth, we need to love and to be loved. The theme of the human soul’s need for redemption runs so deep it permeates every form of human art, in every age.

Let’s take this process forward-a man or woman has resolved this matter and found peace, forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption at the foot of the Cross. Jesus Christ has become their Lord and master. Most of us don’t understand all the details-but we know He is our Lord, and we know that we trust Him for our eternal salvation.

We still ask the questions: why does sin exist? Why did God create us, knowing we would turn away? Why did Jesus have to die?

Why do we suffer? Why is there evil in the world if God is in control?

And I will solve all these questions for you in the next twenty minutes-so here we go! If you believe that, then I’ve got some snake oil in the trunk of my car and we need to talk after church…

What I’m believing God to show us here this morning-is something that will show us that not only are we no evolutionary accident-His amazing plan for our lives was not haphazard or random. He did not simply react to things that went terribly wrong in His creation. God did not wring his hands and wonder what to do next when men Adam and Eve ate the fruit, or when men put nails in the hands and feet of Jesus Christ.

Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. It’s the familiar story that we know so well. But there’s more to it than meets the eye. It’s not just a good Sunday School story for Children. It was the beginning of human history, and the Lord himself opens it with the knockout punch.

Adam and Eve had been given the precious gift of a free will. They were allowed to choose to love God, to follow Him and His commandments-just as He had first loved them. God refused to coerce their love or to demand it. I love how the Bible tells us that they knew the voice of God-intimately. He would come to visit them routinely, in the cool of the day.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

(Gen 3:8)

The Creator, the Lord God who had made them-was intimately interested in the details of their daily lives. Can you imagine with me what it must’ve been like to walk and talk with God himself *every* single day? Your every question could be answered. Perfect information on any topic! Every concern or item that could cause fear and heartache in you life would be dispelled immediately. Any challenge they faced was a good challenge-there would be no frustration or disarray because the perfect answer and comfort was always available.

But now, something had happened-and they instinctively knew something was wrong. They had willingly, of their own volition-done exactly what God had commanded them not to do.

I try to put myself in their shoes for a moment. Do you relate to what I’m saying when I describe the little adrenalin rush I get from stepping out of line? I want to try something new-something different!