“Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.” -Psalm 78:1-4
Let’s pray. [PRAYER]
Picture this: you’re watching a movie. You’re about halfway through, and the main character is talking with some grumpy old man. He’s brusque and rude and standoffish, but the more screen time he gets, the clearer it becomes that that this old man is hiding something. He’s got a secret that is obviously the key to understanding who they are and why they do what they do.
So you keep watching the movie, and finally, at the critical point, the main character confronts the old man: “What’s your deal, dude? Why are you so grumpy all the time?” And the old man sighs and looks into the middle distance and starts to speak softly: “As a child, I yearned for the mines. But then one day…” The screen starts to ripple and fade away, and when the camera comes back into focus, we’re no longer in the present day. We’re now in the PAST.
There’s something really powerful about the past, isn’t there? And I’m not just talking about nostalgia—that bittersweet feeling you get when you remember something you loved from your childhood. What I mean is that there is something uniquely powerful about the PAST itself.
Think about it: The future is constantly in a state of being UNKNOWN to us. It’s always a blurry haze, a question mark that we can’t see clearly. And by the time we CAN see it clearly, it’s not the future any more, it’s the present. And the present is always in a state of flux. It’s chaotic and unpredictable, and it’s always changing. That’s the one thing we can count on in the present moment—change of one sort or another is always occurring.
But the Past is different. We can see the Past with perfect clarity, because it never changes. Ever. When something is in the present or the future, its outcome is uncertain, at least to some degree. But when it enters the realm of the past, it’s set in stone. It can never be changed or undone. It’s permanent.
Have you ever thought about that? This sentence I’m speaking right now—while I’m speaking it, I might have the ability to change it, but once it’s been said, it can never be un-said. That sentence I just said—it’s set in stone now, forever. It can never be changed. From this point forward until eternity, that sentence will always be the same, because the past never changes.
I think that’s part of the reason that time travel stories are so much fun. Sure, it would be nice to see the future more clearly, but to change the PAST—now that would be power! Imagine how many mistakes I could fix if I could go back in time and change the past!
But of course, in reality there is no time travel. There are no autosaves, no checkpoints, no reloads or do-overs. Right now—right this very second—is the ONLY moment in time that you have any control over. And once this second is over, everything you do and everything I do will be immortalized in the past, written down in the record-book of God’s perfect memory.
And while that can work against us for obvious reasons, this fact about the way the Past works is exactly what makes it so valuable. Look again at our passage with me:
“Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”
Do you see what the Psalmist is saying here? He is saying, “Hey guys! Let’s take a careful look AT THE PAST. Let’s look at what God has done, and how our forefathers responded, and let’s learn from these stories.” And that’s exactly what the rest of this Psalm is. In fact, that’s what most of the Bible is! Some of it is focused on the present, and some on the future, but much of the Bible is an unchangeable permanent record of what happened in the past, given to us for our instruction. Look at verses 5-7:
“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children,
that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments…”
That’s right, folks. THIS is why you need to learn your Bible history. It’s not just about filling your head with random facts, it’s about knowing who God is and who you are. It’s about putting your hope in God and keeping His commandments. Learning what happened in the past is essential if you want to live rightly in the present.
So that’s what we’re going to do! The rest of this message, and the whole next message, will be one big flashback. We’re going to go back in time. You ready? Here we go! Doodley doodley doodley! Doodley doodley doodley!
Creation & Covenant
So in the very beginning, God is there, right? And out of the overflow of His imagination and creativity, He creates this little trinket, a tiny little thing called the ENTIRE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE. He creates light and energy and and mass and gravity, all ruled by a special sets of rules we call physics and logic and time. He creates giant clouds of gas that coalesce into big balls called planets, and even bigger balls that condense and catch fire and become giant thermonuclear explosions (we call them stars). He creates some balls so large that they collapse in on themselves, sucking everything in around them ( we call these black holes). He creates massive groups of stars called galaxies that form larger groups called galaxy clusters. And all of it is pure and lovely and beautiful.
And in one of these galaxies, around a very normal-looking star, he creates eight or nine planets, (depending how you want to count them). And one of them He creates in a very particular and unusual way. Rather than forming it to be a gas planet or an ice planet, He puts it at just the right distance from the sun so that there could be liquid water and a breathable atmosphere. He covers it with oceans, and makes areas of dry land with mountains and valleys and plains.
He then does the most amazing thing yet: He populates this planet with a thing He calls “life.” He creates plants and trees and grass and flowers and seaweed, and he covers the entire planet with them! He creates them to be self-reproducing, so that each species of plant would bear seeds according to its kind. He puts them in the sea and on the mountains and in places that you wouldn’t think life could exist. And they make the planet beautiful, filling its atmosphere with oxygen and keeping everything in perfect balance.
But God is just getting started! He creates a Moon so that the oceans will have tides and so that there will be a special light in the nighttime to separate it from the daytime. He creates a new kind of life called animals. He makes fish that swim in the oceans, and birds that fly in the sky, and all kinds of land animals that hop and walk and slither and crawl. And he doesn’t just make a few types here and there. No, he creates thousands of different types. Hundreds of thousands. Millions, even! And God gives the animals His blessing so that they would thrive and multiply. And they do. And all of it is pure and lovely and beautiful.
And then, God creates His masterpiece, His magnum opus, His piece de resistance. He creates a new form of life that is not a plant, nor an animal, but better and higher because it is made in His own image. He creates man. And He gives this man authority to rule over all the other forms of life on the earth. He also creates woman, who was taken from the man, and together they are to rule in love and harmony and fellowship with God. And all of it is pure and lovely and beautiful. It is VERY GOOD.
But suddenly, the story takes a dark twist. You see, God had also made these invisible spiritual beings called angels who love God and love to watch Him work. But one of those angels decides that he wants to be God. He wants to be the one who is worshiped. But since he can’t ever be God, he decides that he hates God. And so this angel becomes evil—the first thing in God’s creation that isn’t pure and lovely and beautiful. And since this evil angel can’t hurt God directly, he does the next best thing: he decides to mess up God’s creation by destroying the human beings made in God’s image.
He comes to Adam and Eve and tells the first lie, twisting God’s words around and using the truth to strengthen his lie. Unfortunately, this mixture of lie and truth proves too tempting for Adam and Eve, and they eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And rather than becoming like God, they become like the fallen angel, infected with evil. They go from being happy to being miserable, separated from God because of their sin. Whereas before they had been blessed and happy, God now rightfully and righteously curses them. He removes them from the garden they had been living in and forces them to live according to their own choices.
And this evil, this sin, not only infects them completely, but taints the world around them. Everywhere the humans spread, they bring their evil with them. Granted, they’re still made in God’s image, and they still do amazing and wonderful things, but they also do wicked and heinous things as well. And over time, the poison of their sin grows and grows until the entire planet is affected.
Now, God could have tossed the entire planet into the sun and started over. But He had something infinitely better in mind, You see, because He is God, he is not surprised by what happened. He knew it would happen. And even though it wasn’t His fault that evil came into the good world he had made, He has already decided what He is going to do about it. Instead of destroying the humans he had made, he decides to make a way for them to be REDEEMED.
But first He has to find a way to communicate with them and PROVE to them what they are really like. One of the main effects of being infected with evil is that you become blind to how evil you are. Evil people don’t naturally believe they’re evil! They believe everyone else around them is wicked and corrupt, but me? No sir, I’m not evil! So God begins the process of proving to us, without a shadow of a doubt, what we are really like.
For those who believe that society is the source of all wickedness, God proves the opposite by saving Noah from a worldwide flood. He was the most righteous person on Earth, but even he is infected with enough wickedness to pollute the entire world. He didn’t need a wicked society to corrupt him—he was evil enough to fall into temptation all on his own the moment his feet hit the dry ground. And that evil gets passed down and gets worse and worse.
For those who think that they can be good enough to earn God’s favor, He gives the promise of grace though faith to Abraham, and the Law to the people of Israel. Now this Law is perfect and holy and good, and if any human can live up to it, they will be worthy of being restored to fellowship with God. They will have the same happiness and blessedness that Adam and Eve had before the fall. But for sinful people like us who are infected with the plague of evil in our hearts, it is impossible to keep the Law. If you don’t believe me, try keeping the Ten Commandments for a single day, and start with Commandment One, and see how far you get.
For those who said, “We can keep the Law eventually. Just give us enough time!” God gives them time—1,500 years, in fact. And in all those years, not a single person is able to keep the law. Many try, with all their hearts—kings, prophets, godly men. But no one is perfect enough to measure up to God’s standard for a single second, let alone a lifetime.
So far, then, it seems like all of God’s actions in the world have only served to make things WORSE for us. It seems like God is trying to convince us that we’re hopelessly condemned, and that because of our fallen condition it’s impossible to ever make it back to the happiness we were originally made for. And that is EXACTLY what God has been trying to tell us! It IS hopeless and impossible for us to be good enough.
But what if God were to do it? Could God somehow find a way to forgive humanity of our wickedness without us having to suffer the penalty? And could he do it in such a way that His perfect justice and righteousness would be satisfied completely? After all, if he forgives those who are guilty, wouldn’t that mean he’s unjust? And if he’s just, then he can’t be gracious and forgiving, right? Surely it’s impossible to be both?
It’s at this point that God reveals the greatest plot-twist in all of history. Up until now, there has been a strict separation between God and His creation. After all, we have bodies; he does not. We are limited in every way; he is not. We can only be in one place at a time, but God is everywhere. There literally could not be a bigger difference in nature between two beings than between us and God.
And yet, God chooses to do the impossible by becoming a human being! This is a bigger deal than everything else in creation. This is bigger than the billions of planets and stars and galaxies he fashioned from nothing. In fact, this is a bigger deal than everything that’s ever happened before, because the unchanging God actually changes! God Himself—specifically God the Son—becomes fully human, taking on both human appearance as well as a human nature, yet also remains fully God. And, critically, crucially, He is without sin. He is a new kind of humanity, a second but better Adam that is able to do a greater work than the work of creation: the work of REDEMPTION.
This man’s name is Jesus, and He is unlike anyone else who has ever lived. Unlike us, He fulfills ALL of God’s laws and commandments. Unlike anyone else who has ever lived, He deserves to go to heaven for what he’s done. And yet, by the foreknowledge of God, Jesus is unjustly sentenced to death for crimes He did not commit. The sun itself goes dark as He is tortured, and then sentenced to death via crucifixion, the most cursed form of death possible.
But while this is happening, there is a deeper spiritual reality than what we can see with our eyes. Remember how I said that God, from all eternity, has been in perfect, harmonious relationship with Himself? Well, while Jesus hangs on the cross, that peace is broken. As the Father and the Spirit look at the Son, they do not see a perfect man, or the beauty of God in all its fullness. No, what they see is sin—specifically, OUR sin. Jesus has taken on Himself all of the sins His people would ever commit. He becomes sin for us. And in this moment, the Trinity is temporarily shattered. The Father and the Spirit condemn Jesus to death, subjecting His infinite soul to an eternity of suffering. All while He hangs there, bleeding, suffering, and dying.
In this moment—the crucifixion of Jesus—we see God’s mightiest work of all time. Everything else that God has ever done up until this point has been easy for Him. But this—there has never been, nor could there ever be any work to rival this. Everything else has been the work of His fingers, or the work of His hands. But in the crucifixion of Christ, God rolls up His sleeves and call it the work of His ARMS. It is the hardest thing He has ever done. In the words of the old hymn,
Oh love of God, o sin of man!
In this dread act Your strength is tried;
And victory remains with love,
Jesus our Lord is crucified.
Suddenly, Jesus says, “It is finished.” And as He dies, He defeats our sin once and for all, just like God said He would. He further proves this point by rising from the dead on the third day. And after He ascends back into heaven, another world-changing event happens: God’s Holy Spirit comes down from heaven and dwells inside everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. And He inspires a new set of books to be written, the New Testament, which finally reveals God’s plan for salvation to all people, including you and me, right here, right now.
Outro
And with that, the flashback ends. Now we return to present day. Everything I’ve just said actually happened in the past. It’s unchangeable fact, set in stone. It’s not a myth or a legend; it’s the deepest truth there can ever be. You can try to brush it aside as just a story, but if you do, you are blinding yourself to reality. I know, because that’s what I did for the first 22 years of my life. And I can testify that it is only by the illumination of God’s Spirit that that blindness can be taken away.
So as the Psalmist says, “Give ear, O my people!” Those who have ears to hear, let him hear. And those who do not have ears to hear yet, may God grant you a knowledge of the truth that will draw you to closer to Him, forever and ever.
[PRAYER]
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