Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation was the fulfillment of an ancient promise by God. Now ancient is an interesting term, at least in its usage. Children can use it to describe some-thing from their parents’ growing up years – IOW 30 or so years before, thus to them 30 years in the past is ancient. Now we’ve all done this so I’m not picking on our current crop of children.
Ancient can also mean when our grandparents or great grandparents were growing up – which for some of us would mean in the 1800s. This past 4th of July, we celebrated our nation’s 244th birthday – that’s a long time ago. Denise & I have done some research with Ancestory.com & have traced the Wall family back to the late 1300s in England. 1300’s – that’s ancient. As we think about the birth of Christ today, we’re talking about ~2000 years ago. That’s so far back, it’s kind of hard to even fathom it – 2000 years b/c just 1000 years, the year 1020 seems forever ago – but 2000 years!!!
But try to go back to the Garden of Eden days. Numerous creationists argue that our world/universe is somewhere around 6000 years old which seems to fit with the biblical narrative & was the position I took when we studied Genesis a few years ago. If 2000 years ago is hard to fathom, try wrapping your mind around 6000 years ago. It’s almost like once you get pass 1000 years, everything is just a blur.
But 6000 or so years ago, God created the heavens & the earth & in that creation, He planted a special garden in Eden. The climax of all His creating was the creation of 2 individuals, a man & a woman, created in His image for the purpose of knowing & having a relationship with Him. It was beautiful & very good! It just didn’t last long b/c those 2 disobeyed God’s 1 prohibition, thought they knew better, thought God was somehow depriving them of something good they deserved – and through their disobedience brought sin into this world & into their hearts & thus brought upon them-selves God’s judgment against sin & sinners. And tragedy upon tragedies, it didn’t just impact them, but literally every single person who has been born since them – billions & billions & billions of people.
God is serious about sin & being holy & righteous, is serious about holding sinners accountable for their sins against Him – which is a completely right & just thing to do. But God is also immensely merciful, more so than we can comprehend. And so on that very day when Adam/Eve stood guilty before Him as sinners, while judgment was pronounced, He also issued a glorious, hope-filled, merciful promise – that 1 day in the future, 1 would come that would make right what had been made wrong by Adam/Eve. One would come that would deal with sin that had now become part of man's nature & would make it possible for mankind to once again walk with & have a relationship with a holy, righteous & perfect God.
Speaking to the serpent, but in reality to Satan who had used the serpent as his instrument of tempta- tion, God declared & made this promise: (Gen 3:15): “And I will put enmity b/w you & the woman, & b/w your seed & her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, & you shall bruise him on the heel." In future years & centuries, God would get more specific about this promise, but it was originally given on that day in the Garden of Eden.
It was a promise made by God, who always keeps & fulfills His promises. And this specific promise was fulfilled 4000 years later through the birth, death, & resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And on this Sunday before Christmas, we gather to celebrate God keeping that ancient promise when God the Son came & was born as the God-man which began His journey toward the cross where sin, death & hell would be defeated - 4000 years after it was promised. And now for us in 2020, we live in the light of a 6000-year-old promise. But wait, I technically misspoke – for this promise is actually & more accurately much, much more ancient than 6000 years – for it goes back before that. Let me show it to you. Strange as it may seem, we need to look to the NT, not the OT or Genesis to see this. Turn to Ephesian 1.
-1:3-4: Blessed be the God & Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
V.4 actually predates Genesis 3:15, not in terms of when it was written but in terms of when it is talking about. It predates Gen.3:15 for it is speaking about before man, the earth, & the universe were created & TF before Adam & Eve sinned.
I want you to think about what the implications of this verse means - that God chose you knowing that you would be a sinner & TF in need of Him paying for your sins. The implication then is that the original promise of salvation was made before anything that we know of today was created. And since no being had been created at that point, God made that promise to Himself, within the Godhead.
Sometimes we make decisions not really knowing what we are getting ourselves into - right? "Oh brother, are you right? Let me tell you how right you are." And we’ve all had those experiences & could share some horror stories this morning. Projects you thought might take a couple of hours ended up taking all day or more. But this was not true of God. He knew exactly what He was “getting Himself into”, what He was committing Himself to when He created mankind.
I’m sure you have also experienced this – where you considered doing a project or maybe had something that was broken & in need of repair. And as you thought about doing it, repairing it, as you evaluated the project your response was, "No, it's not worth the effort & the time. It's just not worth the effort." And so you didn't do it or you threw the broken item away & bought a new one or hired someone to do it.
What is stunning to me, is that in light of human history & its rejection & rebellion against God & its perverse wickedness - that God didn't say, back then before the foundations of the world that, "it's not worth the effort." It is amazing & humbling to me in light of my history, my failure, my stubbornness & selfishness - that God didn't say, "HE'S not worth the effort & the cost."
A minister 1 day sat in the vestry of his church to meet anyone who might have spiritual difficulties. Only 1 came. "What is your difficulty?" asked the minister. The man answered, "My difficulty is the 9th chapter of Romans, where it says, 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,'" "Yes," said the minister, "there is great difficulty in that verse; but which part of the verse is difficult for you?" The latter part, of course," said the man. "I cannot understand why God should hate Esau." The minister replied, "That verse has often been difficult, but my difficulty has always been with the first part of the verse. I never could understand how God could love that wily, deceit-ful scoundrel Jacob."
And when you begin to comprehend this truth, it forces you to say that God's choosing of you was all His doing & had nothing to do with you or your supposed goodness & worth for if your devotion to Him (or mine) was the consideration in God choosing you, any logical person would have said that it is not worth the effort. Yet b/c of who God is, He said IT IS worth the effort, IT IS worth the cost.
Garrison Keillor recalls the childhood pain of being chosen last for baseball teams. “The captains are down to their last grudging choices: a slow kid for catcher, someone to stick out in right field where nobody hits it. They choose the last ones two at a time—"you & you" — b/c it makes no difference. And the remaining kids—the scrubs, the excess—they deal for us as handicaps. "If I take him, then you gotta take him," they say.
“Sometimes I go as high as 6th, usually lower. But just once I'd like Darrel to pick me first & say, "Him! I want him! The skinny kid with the glasses & the black shoes. You, c'mon!" But I've never been chosen with much enthusiasm.” And some of you know exactly what he is talking about, don’t you?
I’ve got exciting news for you today. You are so valuable to God; He chose you early — with enthusiasm even though He was fully aware of all your handicaps & what it would cost Him.
How many of you, would be inclined to make a promise if somehow you were able to know in advance the complete hardship, inconvenience, suffering, disappointment, rejection, mocking, & slander on your name & character that having to keep that promise would cost you? If you could know that, in advance, I wonder how many of us would commit to that promise? I many times, it's impossible to get people to promise, commitment to something when you’ve put the best face on it as possible. Yet that is exactly what God did. The all-wise & loving God, knowing fully what it would cost Him, knowing fully the kind of person we would be (before & after salvation) still made the promise. In the council of the Godhead, the Father, Son & HS made that promise - to create us with free will knowing that we would reject Him & He would need to come & receive the judgment for our sins & rebellion through the death of Jesus Christ, God the Son.
He chose you before the foundation of the world & by choosing you committed Himself at that point to coming into this world as a baby & to grow up to be despised & rejected & put to death by the people He created & loved - in order to pay their penalty. I want to tell you something, if there was someway to make a movie using the plot of the Bible & redemption & somehow disguise it so that people did not recognize it as the story of the Bible - think about the mixed emotions people would have after viewing it. Anger - that people could so wickedly reject 1 who had so great a love for them. Love, joy - for the sacrificial love shown in the story. It would have to win best picture. What has happened is many have read the story so much in a religious context that they’ve lost the incredible drama that is involved.
Please do not miss that God didn't create Adam & Eve unaware of what they were going to do. And then when they chose sin, the Godhead did not group together & have an emergency meeting & 1 of them say, "Well, what should we do now?" "What are our options?" And another 1 say, "Well, we could..." & then presented the program of redemption. No, this was all foreseen & decided upon & committed too before the 1st act of creation took place.
Again, if you could take this story & put it in any other context, our response would be, "what a fool a person would be to reject so great of love & to reject it from such a wonderful, incredible person."
God chose you before the foundation of the world & by doing so, committed Himself to being born as a baby in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, as well as all that followed after His birth. And so everything we read about in the Bible, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 flows from that decision, commitment & promise made before the foundation of the world, before any-thing was created. And if you are going to talk about the promise of Jesus coming to this earth, you have to start way back then, not in Genesis 3:15 - that's just the 1st time it was told to a human being, it had been made long before that day.
Can you remember when someone made you a promise, a very special promise - it was a promise that involved something in the future. And can you remember the anticipation of waiting for that day when the promise would be fulfilled. You might have to go back to your childhood to remember the emotions of such great anticipation, the anticipation of waiting for a promise to come to pass.
I think it would be hard to find 2 people who anticipated a fulfillment of a promise more than Adam & Eve. Sometimes we move on from Adam & Eve not really giving much thought to what their situation was like or if we do, we think of it only in negative terms in connection with them bringing sin into the world. So I would like to help us think a little about them in connection with this promise God made to them in Gen. 3:15 & the anticipation that must have been theirs because of this promise.
Who has not read in Genesis about God walking in the cool of the day with Adam & Eve & not been a little envious & longing to be able to do such a thing? What an exciting thing if God came at the end of each day, personally, visibly & walked & talked with you - just took a walk & chatted, shared. But then when Adam/Eve sinned, it stopped.
Sometimes I wonder if Adam & Eve fully comprehended just how badly they had messed up. I wonder if anyone could have anticipated the promise of the coming One as much as Adam & Eve. They are the only ones in the entire history of mankind, to have as it were, a before & after picture. The only ones to have seen a world perfect, to have seen themselves perfect, w/o a sinful heart, to have seen creation in perfect harmony with its Creator & then bam - to see the after picture, to see creation changed, to see the ground cursed, the serpent cursed, to see the change in their own hearts, in their relationship & responses to each other, to see their children as they began to grow up & to observe the selfishness & sin in them, to see their son killing another of their sons. Try to imagine how tragic & devastating it was for them. But not only that, to know now, where they did not know at 1 time, the vile-ness in their own hearts that had not been there before. I would dare say, they, more than anyone else who has ever lived, appreciated & longed for the coming of that seed of the woman that would deal with what they had ruined & messed up.
Maybe no one else in history has had a fuller under-standing of just how desperately we needed to be saved from sin. In reading about Adam/Eve, we can fail to stop & think of what must have been going through their minds in the years afterwards. IDK what kind of people they were like after they sinned, but if anybody was ever a candidate for deep regret it was Adam/Eve. IDK if they struggled at times with a guilty conscience or not. In 1 sense, how they could not have? It makes you wonder whenever they would walk around & see people sinning or hear about some dreadful act being committed [remember they lived some 900+ yrs. so they saw quite a bit of wickedness]. You wonder if every time they saw or heard of some wrong or wickedness, if it didn't just pierce them in a certain way, knowing that in 1 sense they were the cause of what was happening.
I wonder how often they reflected back on God's promise to them in Gen.3:15 & longed, longed for the day when that promise would be fulfilled.
And now we, instead of looking forward, look back to the birth, life & death of Christ as He came in fulfillment of this promise. God chose you before the foundations of the world & that is why we celebrate this season for it was the fulfillment of that ancient promise.
God chose you before the foundation of the world – Hallelujah! BUT He didn't choose you just so you could now live anyway you wanted. Continuing on in Eph.1:4 - "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy & blameless before Him."
He chose us. He is also the 1 who makes us holy & blameless as He accepts the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf & as we put our trust in Christ, He imputes (credits) Christ's righteousness to us. But then He calls us to walk according to the people that we now are - His holy children.
Ephesians 4:1 - I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called,
Colossians 1:10 - …so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects,
And when you view this in light of Ephesians 1:4 & its implications as we have considered them today, the command to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called” or to live holy & godly lives is not something we grudgingly have to do but that we get to live like this which BTW, is the best way to live & the most fulfilling way to live. Thus, there ought to be such love, devotion & gratitude for what God did that it should be our delight to walk & live this way.
That’s a different way of thinking about it, isn’t it? I wonder how many Christians think about living godly lives in this way? It shouldn’t be a burden, but rather a delight flowing out of deep gratitude & love. And yet, we can still be inconsistent, which prompts a deeper humility & love that after knowing the Lord for so many years, such stuff still comes out of my heart. O Lord, we stand amazed at Your love.
I stand amazed in the presence
of Jesus the Nazarene,
And wonder how He could love me,
A sinner condemned, unclean.
How marvelous! How wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! How wonderful!
Is my Savior’s love for me!
He chose you, He chose me that we might know Him, not know about Him or of Him, but know personally, intimately the person of God. And in choosing you, He looked across the years from that point before the creation of anything & saw the desperate need you & I would be in b/c of sin. And in choosing you, He also chose to take the awful penalty of your sin upon Him-self so that you might be made new knowing full well all that would be involved in that choice.
He chose you before the foundation of the world & thus made the promise of the coming of Christ for you. I’d say you have something truly worth celebrating!
Closing Song:
I Was In His Mind
I was in His mind before the worlds were made,
I was in His mind before earth’s frame was laid
Because He knew me, because He loved me!
I was in His thoughts the night He prayed for me,
I was in His thoughts before Gethsemane,
Because He saw me, because He loved me!
I was in His heart when Calv’ry’s hill He climbed,
I was in His heart when He died for all mankind,
Because He sought me, because He love me!
I am in His mind, and soon He’ll come for me,
I am in His mind with Him in heav’n to be,
Because He wants me, because He loves me,
Because He loves me!
