God’s Salvation Plan
Morning Greeting:
Announcements:
- *See Steve Weissert for Special Music*
- *Need more helpers for Orientation Day!*
- *New Sunday School Class Next Week*
- *Church Picnic August 26*
Introduction:
Forecast:
- July 29 – Part 1 – Sanctify Them in Your Truth (Know Your Bible)
- August 5 – Part 2 – Know Thine Enemy (Know the Plan and Strategy of the Enemy)
- August 12 – Part 3 – God’s Salvation Plan (Know the Plan and Strategy of Your King)
- August 19 – Part 4 – The Great Commission (Know Your Part in God’s Plan)
- August 26 – Part 5 – Made to Worship (Know Your Created Purpose)
- September 2 – Part 6 – Principles for Decision Making #1 (Applying Parts 1-5 to Our Decisions)
- September 9 – Part 7 – Principles for Decision Making #2 (Applying Parts 1-5 to Our Decisions)
Review:
Following God in a Fallen World means knowing the truth, which means knowing the Bible. Jesus’ prayer for believers living in the world which we read in our first sermon was that they be “sanctified in the truth.” Knowing the truth is a very large part of what helps us to be holy in a fallen world. Without knowing the truth, it will always be extremely difficult to choose rightly.
In our second sermon we learned a big part of why it is extremely difficult to choose rightly if you don’t know the truth: our adversary, the devil, is very good at deception. He uses temptation and lies to advance his sinful agenda and to lead you into sin too. The less truth you know, the easier it will be for him to deceive you. And if you are ignorant of his strategy, it will be easy to be outwitted by him.
A thought that might naturally occur to you in all this discussion is: what is God doing about all of this? There is a cosmic rebellion going on, led by Satan, we know what the adversary is doing now, but what is God doing?
Well, first, it might or might not surprise you, but God knows everything. Just read Revelation and you can see that He knows the future perfectly. And that means He knew that this rebellion would take place. And before ever the world was created, God had a plan to rescue sinners like you and I, to put down the rebellion once and for all, and to establish a new heaven and earth that are perfectly pure and free from sin for all eternity.
So how do I know that God knew this would happen and that He had a plan? The most important verse for showing that is in Revelation 13:8.
Theme: God’s Salvation Plan
Verse: Revelation 13:8
Before the creation of the world. Before the creation of Adam and Eve. Before Satan ever tempted them to sin. There was a book written called “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.” From the title of the book, it’s evident that God knew that Jesus would become the Lamb who was slain. The slain Lamb is our Savior, the sacrifice for our sin.
And this book is also closely linked to salvation, for we find in Revelation 20:15 that those whose name is written in the book of life enter into heaven and those whose name is not written in the book enter into hell. The book of life, then, is a recording of those who have been saved by Jesus, the Lamb slain, and it was written before the world began.
God, then, was not caught by surprise when so many turned against Him. Knowing all things, He knew that this too would occur. And God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit had a plan to do something about it. That’s what we’ll be talking about today: God’s Salvation Plan.
We know that the world has fallen. Let’s now see what God is doing about it. We get the first hints of God’s Salvation Plan very early in the Bible, in the book of Genesis.
Verses: Genesis 3:14-15
These two verses occur after the events of the fall. Satan succeeded in his temptation and deception, and Adam and Eve fell into sin. The root of sin, if you’ll remember, is not being God-centered. Or to put it in more biblical terms: sin is idolatry. Adam and Eve and with them the rest of mankind have been diverted from being God-centered worshipful creatures to being self-centered idolatrous creatures.
In Genesis 3:14 and following, because of the events in the Garden of Eden, God curses first the serpent, then the woman, and then the man. It is in this list of curses that we find an early clue as to what God’s plan for this fallen world is. On the day of our fall, we are given hope and a promise.
He says to the Devil: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
It doesn’t come out as an obvious point in the English translation, but offspring is singular in Hebrew. “He” is also singular. It’s easy to assume that this is talking about “mankind won’t like snakes, so people will step on the head of snakes and snakes will bite them on the heel.” But it isn’t mankind. It is singular and he. It is one male person who will be descended from Eve who will come to stomp on the head of Satan, but He himself will be injured in the process.
This is not about snakes being gross, but about a descendent of Eve who will triumph over Satan. Hope.
We see still more hope in the midst of this tragedy. Look at verses 20 and 21.
Verses: Genesis 3:20-21
Adam expresses faith in the promise of God and he does so in the choice of name that he gives to Eve. She is called Eve because it sounds like the Hebrew word for life-giver and because it looks like the word living. God has said that Eve will bear children, albeit in pain. She is living and life will come from her. She is not death and we are not doomed. There is hope.
On the day that sin was born in mankind, so was faith and hope.
Verse 21, we see that on the day mankind became sinners, God still loved us and He showed us love, provision, mercy, and grace.
A lot of people have wondered “why didn’t God put a stop to this fall? Why didn’t He do something about it? If He knew it would happen, why did He allow it to happen?” I don’t think we realize what we are asking. What would we have had Him do? Remove the free will of His creatures? Make us into trees instead who have no ability to choose? Destroy mankind and start over? Never have created us in the first place?
Instead God says: though you have sinned, yet I will still love you. And though you have chosen to follow Satan instead of me, yet I will clothe and protect you. Though you believed Satan to tell the truth and me to be a liar, and you deserve death and destruction, yet I will give you mercy and grace instead.
I like what God has done about the situation. In fact, I love Him for it. How great the love of God that on the day we chose ourselves over Him, He provided clothing for us. And this provision came as a sacrifice. We sinned and God provided a sacrifice to cover our shame. Another image of what was to come.
But after God provides a sacrifice, shows that He still loves us and cares, He must nevertheless enforce His decree. We are then banished from the Garden of Eden. Our direct fellowship with God is lost as well as eternal life. Now we will die. God must do this because He is holy. He cannot stain His character by condoning and living in fellowship with sinful creatures. And because of so many factors, His justice, righteousness, love, mercy, and more: He cannot allow what is evil to live forever. We are sent away.
But we are not left without hope.
Time doesn’t permit me to trace God’s entire salvation plan through the Bible. But the acts of mercy and grace found at the fall don’t stop here and God gives many other shadows, types, promises, and prophecies of the Savior who is to come.
God’s promise to come is shown again in the days of Abraham, when He makes a promise to Abraham that through his offspring (singular again!) the world would be blessed. And through faith in God, Abraham was counted as righteous.
He does through Joseph, when Joseph’s own people rose up against him with the intention of killing him. But though Joseph was brought very low, yet eventually he was exalted to the right hand of Pharaoh and chose to show mercy and grace to those who had abused him.
He does again during the days the Israelites were in slavery in Egypt when people were saved from certain death by the sacrifice of a lamb and through obedient faith to the instruction of God.
He does a particularly beautiful illustration again during the days the Israelites were in the wilderness. They were being bitten by snakes and perishing. They were instructed to look in faith upon the bronze serpent lifted up on a pole and live.
And that’s just the first few books of the Bible! Over and over again we see hints of the Savior to come. There will be a sacrifice for sins. God will save you through faith. God will have mercy and grace upon you. There will be an offspring who will crush the head of the serpent. He is coming.
The most direct and clear of all comes to us in Isaiah 53:1-12. In these verses we see so very clearly God’s plan to save through Jesus, and He had it written out before Jesus was born.
Verses: Isaiah 53:1-12
It is difficult for me to know where to begin in describing the wonder of these verses. The outworking of God’s plan revealed here is mind blowing.
God sent His Son and we didn’t want Him. He was despised and rejected by men. Men looked upon Him in His affliction and saw Him as one afflicted by God. Evil men oppressed Him and gave wicked judgment against Him and took Him away. They cut Him off from the land of the living. They appointed to Him the death of a wicked person, crucifixion, killed Him along with two thieves, and then buried Him amongst the wealthy – in a private tomb with a fortune of spices.
Here is where it becomes mind blowing. God outsmarted us. While from our side of the equation we were carrying out evil and rejecting the holy and righteous one, God was fulfilling His salvation plan.
It was God’s plan that Jesus would become the Lamb who was slain. It was the will of the Lord to crush him and it was to make his soul an offering for the guilt of sin. As Joseph once said in a different context to his brothers who had betrayed him: “what you intended for evil, God intended for good.”
At the height of the rebellion led by Satan. That rebellion of rejecting God in order to become like God and pursue self’s own way. At the highest point of it where the very dirtiest deed of all was done – our murder of God’s own Son. It was here that God won. God won.
And His victory was unlike anything we ever could have imagined because His victory did not mean our destruction. His victory meant our salvation. The one we murdered became our salvation. The one we killed was the one long ago appointed to be our Savior. By the stripes we gave Him, we are healed. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. We had all gone astray and turned to our own way. But the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
But Jesus didn’t stay dead. Verse 12 makes clear that there was life after death. Though his soul was poured out to death, He lived to see spoils from His victory over the adversary. And so Jesus does live forever now and He makes intercession for us sinners. And He is exalted to the right hand of God where He now waits to completely finish the war with Satan and establish His forever kingdom.
When Satan imagined himself to be at the height of his victory with the death of God’s Son, it was here that he suffered a catastrophic defeat. Because now, those people he had led away into sin, God could now justly forgive, save, and give them new life.
Review:
So what is God doing about this fallen world? Here is what God has done: He has provided a way for everyone to be saved. He has provided a way for us to once again become worshippers of God, in a right relationship with Him, and enjoy new life. And it is through faith in His Son Jesus and what He did for us on the cross.
God did this for us because He loves us. It is not His desire that we be separated from Him by our sins. He wants to be in a relationship with us. He foreordained a rescue plan for this fallen world and has accomplished it. Salvation now comes through Jesus. That is what God has done and is doing about this fallen world.
Application 1:
So if you are here today and you have not trusted in Jesus as your Savior, I urge you to do so. God has a plan to save you, He wants to save you, He did all the work for you, but salvation only comes to those who trust in His Son. In this war, there are no neutral participants. You can either be on God’s side or the enemy’s side. And God’s side will win. The most crucial battle of all has already been fought and now people are being eternally saved through faith in Jesus. Jesus is now building His church and the gates of hell will not be able to withstand her advance. Come to Jesus today.
Application 2:
If you are here and have trusted in Jesus as your Savior, I want us to be reminded from this sermon of God’s mission and God’s ways. God wants to save. His way is of love, mercy, and grace. And He is saving people through the Gospel. You can be like Him as you show love, mercy and grace to others. And you can be a part of His plan as you share the Gospel with others.