Our Choice Of King

Luke 19:28-44.  This message was given by Pastor Marty Bonner on August 2, 2015.

Today we are going to look at what is called the Triumphal Entry of Jesus.  The week before he was crucified, Jesus came to Jerusalem in such a way as to make it very clear that he was presenting himself to Israel as their Messiah.

This sets up an important theme of the New Testament.  God is the King of the whole world and yet we really do not want Him.  When given the choice the majority of mankind will reject God and choose to serve someone else.  Let’s look at this passage.

Jesus Present Himself As A King

Israel had been waiting for a particular king to come who would be God’s Anointed One (Hebrew= Messiah, Greek= Christ).  The prophets had promised the people that God would raise up a perfect king who would be anointed by His Spirit to give Justice and Peace to Israel and the world.  It was popular among the common people to believe that Jesus was this Messiah.  But up to now he had rebuffed any attempts to make him king.  However, in this event, Jesus openly declares himself as the Messiah of God and King of Israel.  This puts the ball into the court of the leaders of Israel: What will you do?

The passage starts out with Jesus giving some very specific instructions to his disciples.  He must have a donkey’s colt to ride on.  If you don’t know your Old Testament prophecies you would miss that Jesus is purposefully fulfilling a prophecy from Zechariah chapter 9.  Now some people say that the reason Jesus appears to fufill the Old Testament prophecies is because he conspired to make it look like he did.  However, though it is true with this one prophecy, most of the prophecies were out of his hands.  He couldn’t determine where he would be born and perform the amazing signs surrounding it such as: the star, the wise men, the angels, and the shepherds, etc…  Thus Jesus fulfills this prophecy on purpose so as to give the people of Israel a choice.  Will they agree with him and accept him, or will they reject him?

Now when we look at the prophecy in Zechariah 9, we see that Jesus is everything that it said.  It says very clearly that the messiah would present himself to Israel on the back of a small colt of a donkey.  Verses 9-10 say, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.  I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem; the battle bow shall be cut off.  He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from The River to the ends of the earth.”  Notice once you get past the setting of his arrival on a donkey’s colt, you get to the character and administration of this king.  He would be just, upright, and doing what is right with all men.  The ministry of Jesus demonstrates what true justice looks like, whether he is rebuking the Pharisees or having mercy on a woman caught in adultery.  The messiah would also have salvation.  The stories of the healings and grace of Jesus are the heart of salvation.  It is a word that simply means to be delivered, rescued, or avenged.  Even the name of Jesus means “God is salvation.”  It also says that the messiah would be lowly.  Now, the word for lowly is not just humility of attitude.  It means poor and afflicted.  Thus Jesus is born into a poor family.  He lives as a poor person.  He has felt the crush of a society that cares less for the poor.  Why a donkey’s colt?  He does not ride in on a battle horse, but on a small beast of burden that has never been used before.  It also says that the messiah would cut off the means of military ability and instead speak peace to the nations.  This is critical because most people in Israel missed this.  They wanted a king to rise up and destroy the Romans.  But Jesus allowed himself to be crucified and spoke a gospel of peace to Rome and the rest of the world.  The word cut off in this prophecy is the same word that is used in the prophecy of Daniel 9:26.  There it says that the messiah would be executed.  Thus the work of Jesus would “execute” or kill Israel’s ability to fight.  It should be noted that Jesus was not just speaking peace to the nations.  He was also speaking peace to Israel.  He was not the King they wanted in their hearts.  Do we really want world peace?  It is easy to give lip service to such concepts and yet go on to do everything that keeps it from happening.  This is where we are as a world today.  We say we want peace and yet we choose the wrong leaders and the wrong kings. 

The People Give Lip Service

As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, the crowds recognize what he is doing and loudly give full-throated declaration of his kingship.  Yet, I call this lip service because in one week the cries will change to “crucify him.”  What went wrong?  It wasn’t their understanding of who he was.  The people clearly understood that he was the messiah.  They throw down their cloaks and strip off palm branches to wave and throw on the path.  Thus they rolled out the red carpet.  They even use as their chant a declaration of his kingship by quoting Psalm 118, which is a prophecy about the messiah.  “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  The leaders also clearly understood that Jesus was presenting himself as messiah and that the people were accepting it.  They become incensed because they have already made up their mind that Jesus could not be the messiah.  So they turn the situation to Jesus.  Rebuke your disciples!  Thus they challenge Jesus to reject his own calling as messiah.

The response that Jesus gives helps us to see that he knew who he was.  He was not making himself messiah.  God the Father had given this to him.  Thus it wasn’t up to Jesus.  Jesus will be honored because God the Father has determined it to be so.  The question is, Will you honor him or dishonor him?  Jesus has fulfilled the prophecies of the messiah, but which side of this fulfillment will you be on?  Will you be helping it and receiving it, or will you be standing against it?

They Miss Their Opportunity For Peace

It seems odd to us that he would not be overjoyed at this moment.  It appears as if everything is working and he has the crowds of people on his side.  But Jesus knows the truth of where it was all heading.  He knows that the praises will not last.  Within the week they will call for his death.  This one who knew what was in the heart of a man also knew that these praises were mostly people caught up in the mania of the crowd.  Their praises would disappear like the morning mist in the heat of trial and when things didn’t go their way.

This breaks the heart of Jesus.  He weeps as he approaches Jerusalem.  Yet, he does not weep over what is going to happen to him.  He is weeping because he knows what their rejection of him will bring upon themselves.  He knows what bloodshed lies ahead.  As they reject the one who speaks peace they receive the fruit of such choices: war and bloodshed.  Within 40 years Jerusalem would be surrounded by the armies of Rome and become a slaughter house.  The sad thing is that they didn’t have to make that choice.  Even then God was putting a path of peace before them.  There was a remnant of Israel that embraced this offer of peace and because they believed that Jesus was the messiah, they avoided the slaughterhouse that Jerusalem would become.  Why do we reject the very things that would make for our peace in order to embrace things that will destroy us?  This is the plight of God: that He is the only one who can give peace, but mankind resents Him for that.

Thus a day of visitation had arrived for Israel.  It is a day in which God comes into our life and puts a decision before us.  Our choice in that day determines what we will receive.  It is in essence a last offer of peace before judgment is poured out.  There always comes a day of visitation for individuals, nations, and ultimately one for this whole world.  Have you been waffling in regards to your own beliefs about Jesus?  Know this.  God has been working to help you see Jesus as the Anointed One that He has sent.  If we will put our faith in him we will come to know the peace of God.  But if we reject it we will be caught up, not only in our own judgment, but also in the judgment of our nation.  It is very clear that the USA is in the midst of a national rejection of Jesus.  May God help us to repent before it is too late.

Choice of King audio

An Impossible Salvation

July 19, 2015—Luke 19:1-10, Pastor Marty Bonner

Today we are going to look at a “wee, little” man named Zacchaeus.  In Luke 18 we saw a rich ruler of Israel who left Jesus saddened at what was required to follow him.  It was then Jesus told his disciples that it was impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  This caught the disciples by surprise.  They thought that riches were proof of God’s blessing.  Yet money, wealth, and riches are very powerful motivators.  Once we obtain them it is impossible not to become ruled by them.  However, Jesus did also say that what is impossible with man is possible with God.  Thus rich men can get saved, but it will only be by the grace of God.  Thus Zacchaeus becomes the proof of this.  In him we witness such an impossible salvation.

Another Rich Man Checks Out Jesus

Now that we have in mind the parallels between Zacchaeus and the previous, unnamed ruler, we can look at some other similarities between them.  Both of these stories start with an interest in Jesus.  Something in them both drew them to Jesus in order to find out more about him, and this is where any salvation starts.

Both of these men had a ruling position.  The first rich man is a member of the Sanhedrin, which was a group of 71 priests, scribes, and “ancients” who served as an official “Supreme Court” of Israel.  Zacchaeus is a ruling or chief tax collector- not nearly as prestigious as the other man, but it was a powerful position.  Both of the men have become rich.  In fact Zacchaeus is rich precisely because of his position.  Many people desire positions in the Church and in the world because they know it will make them rich.  This always leads to a destruction of the individual’s soul.  However, both of these men were still aware of their need for “something more.”  They knew they were lacking spiritually.

It is here that the stories diverge.  There are no difficulties or negatives listed about the rich ruler.  He knows the law and has “done it all his life.”  He is the type of guy who has the golden touch.  He is the golden child who seems to always end up on top and has everything going his way, and yet, he knows he is missing something spiritually.  Zacchaeus, on the other hand, has several negatives that stick out about him; things that made his life much more difficult than the rich ruler.  No one likes negative things in their life, but it is generally the negative things in life that teach us that we can live without many of the things we desire.  Negative things tend to teach us what really matters. But, when we have everything we want and have the “Midas touch,” we generally lose sight of God and His salvation.

Let’s look at several negatives that Zacchaeus had.  First, he was a short man.  He lacked in the area of physique.  It is very difficult to grow up with a physical deficiency of any kind.  Other kids look down on you and ridicule you.  Even in the best of environments you are continually made to know that you do not measure up.  Thus we   speak of a “little man” syndrome that can drive such a person with anger and even rage.  Perhaps this is the reason why a person would chose to take up a profession that would make you an outcast (tax collector).  He already felt like an outcast who never really fit in to his own country.  This leads us to the second negative.  He was a collector of taxes for the Romans.  The Romans were an occupying force in Israel, which was much resented.  A fellow Israelite who was collecting taxes for the enemy would be bad enough.  But it was also common for tax collectors to abuse their position to get more money then was right from people.  Thus Zacchaeus bore the mark of a traitor who betrayed his people for the ability to steal from them and enrich himself.  However, in his mind, he may just see this as embracing the outcast status that had already been forced upon him.  I realize there is some speculation in this, but I doubt it is far from the bulls-eye.  Zacchaeus would never fit in, but he could rise above most in Israel through the riches amassed.  Yet, Zacchaeus was still empty.  Thus he is drawn to Jesus.

This is an important point: An outcast can more easily identify with Jesus.  You see, Jesus was an outcast too.  He was rejected by his own nation, but also the Romans.  He told his disciples in John 15:18-19, “If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”  People who have suffered as outcasts know what it is like to be rejected.  A part of them longs for acceptance and yet has had any hope of such crushed.  Now being an outcast cannot save a person in and of itself.  But it can help you to appreciate and embrace the love and wisdom of Jesus.  Historically it was the poor and downtrodden that were drawn to Jesus, but not many great and mighty.  Typically the great and mighty only give lip service to God in the midst of nations where there is a strong belief in God.  But once this is stripped away, the great and mighty will show their true colors.  They have always served themselves out of selfish ambition and have never feared God.

This brings me to a point I must make about our own nation.  Up to now Christians have enjoyed a status of acceptance.  Now let me compare this to a group, such as those who embrace homosexuality.  They have been social outcasts in this society for a long time.  How have these things affected both groups?  The acceptance that Christians have enjoyed for so long has caused them to lose sight of God and His salvation.  In fact many have joined the ranks of Christians out of reasons other than true repentance and belief in God.  Many who call themselves Christians are empty and don’t know what they are missing.  But what they miss is a true saving faith in Jesus.  What about homosexuals?  On one hand the outcast status has bonded them together and made them committed to the cause of being accepted.  Yet, we might miss that it also enables them “to get” the message of Jesus.  Though it is a negative, it can have a positive effect.  Jesus does not tell us to make others accept us, he tells us to pick up our cross and follow him on in to further rejection.  As homosexuals win the fight of social acceptance, we see Christians becoming less and less acceptable (at least a certain kind of Christian).  It is here that we should be broken hearted for the homosexuals.  They are in danger of losing the one thing that keeps the door open for their salvation.  It is hard to follow Jesus when you have all you ever wanted.  Yet even then, we serve a God who can save the impossible!

Jesus Invites Himself Into His House

Because Zacchaeus is short, he climbs up into a Sycamore tree in order to see and hear Jesus when he passes by.  Yet, when Jesus comes to the tree he initiates a discussion by inviting himself to the house of Zacchaeus.  On one hand this might seem arrogant and rude.  But when you look at it from the mind of an outcast, Jesus is telling Zacchaeus that he accepts him and wants to have relationship with him.  This must have sent his heart flying.  Everyone there would despise him and tell him to leave, but Jesus honors him by wanting to come to his house.

This brings up the issue of guilt by association.  The crowd is surprised with this.  A righteous man should not associate with sinners and let us not fool ourselves, Zacchaeus is a sinner.  How should we interact with sinners and those who do not believe in Jesus?  In 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 Paul teaches the believers that we should not associate with Christians who are living in sexual immorality.  Why?  When sin is condoned and treated as acceptable, we are not displaying the heart of God, but rather the heart of the devil.  Of course, Matthew 18 describes a process whereby Christians are not on a witch hunt.  But rather we confront each other in love and forgive each other.  But if a person refuses to quit sinning and refuses to repent, we cannot pretend that they are following Jesus.  This is not being judgmental, but rather being honest.  On the other hand Paul tells the believers that he does not mean they should separate themselves from the sexually immoral people of the world who are not believers in Jesus.  Christians are not called to wall themselves off from sinners.  No, we are called to interact with them and share the gospel of Jesus.  We are called to be a channel of the love of God reaching out to them.  Yet, we are not called to participate in sin.  This is where the phrase comes from, “love the sinner but hate the sin.”  Sure, those who are sinners are not going to like this phrase.  But it is the truth.  You can love people and yet not agree with what they call “good.”  Any parent who has tried to raise a child can attest to this.  Even Paul’s principle of not associating with a Christian who persists in sexual immorality (or any open sin for that matter) is not meant to be treated legalistically.  The sin of a sinner cannot contaminate the believer, unless he opens himself up to sin.  Thus we are free to plead with and correct another Christian in the hope of drawing them back to Jesus.  However, we can never pretend that calling yourself a Christian and refusing to repent can coexist for long.

Zacchaeus is a sinner, but he is also repentant.  It is not clear if this happens on the street in front of the crowd or if it happens back at the house.  Regardless, the simple kindness of Jesus softens Zacchaeus to the point that he lets go of the justifications he had created for his lifestyle.  His mind had changed about things and that lead to a change of actions in his life.  He would no longer cheat people in the taxes.  Also, he would repay those whom he did cheat four times more than he stole.  On top of this he was going to give half of his legitimate holding to the poor.  That is not how the old Zacchaeus thought.  Something drastic has changed in him.  He has believed in Jesus.  John the Baptist called this “fruit worthy of repentance” in Luke 3.  If our mind has really changed then “fruit” will grow out of that real change.  The fruit of his repentance grew out the real actions of compassion and restitution towards his fellow Israelites.

Thus Jesus confirms the impossible salvation of this sinner.  He publically declares him as a righteous man.  The gospel’s depiction of instantaneous righteousness because of faith can rub some people the wrong way.  How can such a horrible sinner be considered acceptable in just a moment?  This truth is not meant to undermine a life of faithfulness.  If Zacchaeus only repents for a day and then goes back to those old sins then that is a new sin, a worse sin.  Rather, this instantaneous change of acceptance is meant to open the door of hope to those who have so much guilt and shame hanging over their head that they will never approach for forgiveness.  We see here a picture of salvation.  Jesus comes into our lives and in the relationship of love and truth that follows we are changed.  Faith comes alive, repentance is born, and righteousness is embraced.  Jesus even calls him a son of Abraham.  When we remember the discussion in John 8, we can see that Jesus is saying that he is a true son of Abraham.  Abraham was a man who heard God calling to him and he trusted God enough to follow Him.  Jesus is calling to you today.  Will you trust him and follow Him or will you continue to follow the sinful path of the self-life?

Jesus ends this section by telling us that his mission is to seek and save that which is lost.  We must never forget this.  Jesus is not physically on this earth right now.  But his mission has not changed.  He tells his believers to go into all the world and tell people the good news of how they can have the salvation of God and be set free from their sins.  May God help us to overlook the “impossibility” of a person and see the true, inner longing for the love and acceptance of God. God does not accept our sin, but He does accept us as sinners who are sorry for their sins and look to Him for salvation.  In this way many we think deserve salvation miss it and many we think can never be saved find it.

Impossible audio

A Heart For That Which Is Lost-Part I

Today we will pick back up in the Gospel of Luke 15:1-10.

This chapter has three parables that are in response to a complaint by the Pharisees regarding the fact that Jesus allowed sinners to be around him.  They were not wrong that these people were sinners.  However they were wrong in understanding how God wants us to interact with them.

Now it is never easy to be told that you are damaged goods.  Whether you are being rejected by others in a relationship, or being looked over by those who are looking for skills and abilities, or even a certain genetic makeup, there will always be those who are not acceptable in the eyes of others.  This creates a natural division between the haves and the have nots, the pure and the damaged.  Yet, the message in the Bible makes all of these distinctions moot.  God says that all mankind (yes even Mother Theresa) have been damaged by sin and are in need of healing.

In our passage today we will look at the first two parables that give parallel pictures of God’s heart for the sin-damaged soul.

Jesus Did Not Despise And Reject Sinners

When Jesus taught, it was not just religious people who showed up to listen to him.  Many people who had long quit following the Laws of Moses, AKA “sinners,” also came to hear him.  This was not normal.  When religious teachers were teaching, generally only the devout would come to listen to them.  Sinners tend to avoid environments where they are reminded that they are sinners.  The Pharisees obviously expected Jesus to run them off or have them removed.  But, instead Jesus let them listen and even ate meals with them.

Notice that many sinners were drawn to Jesus.  He was different.  Instead of rubbing their sins in their face and pushing them away, he spoke the truth in love and invited them in.  His teaching promoted righteousness as the heart of God for mankind rather than the disqualification of the sinner.  Now don’t get me wrong.  Jesus was in some ways stricter than the Pharisees.  Imagine being in the crowd the day he says that to even think with lust toward a woman was committing the sin of adultery.  The shock of such a statement blasted past any pretense and moral superiority and stripped all as bare and naked, lacking any real righteousness with which to clothe themselves.

So how do we explain the approach of Jesus who did not compromise truth, yet wanted sinners to come to him?  The reality is that sinners need to know their true situation.  God is just and will judge everyone, even those self-righteous types who outwardly look devout but inwardly are full of every kind of sin.  Yet, Jesus knew that God was trying to draw people towards Him, not push them away.  They really wouldn’t come to hear Jesus if God wasn’t working on their heart already.  And, they wouldn’t stick around long if they wouldn’t accept the truth.  Yes, we can point to the popularity of Jesus and castigate the Church today.  However, to be intellectually honest, we must recognize that the multitudes of sinners did not stay with Jesus for long.  The closer he came to the cross the less people who decided to stick with him.  In fact, his disciples basically fell away and later had to repent of their doubt.  Jesus wasn’t trying to control how people responded and force them in a mold.  The truth would either draw them in or push them out.  It is their choice.  Judas becomes a perfect picture of this.  We never see Jesus pushing him away.  But in the end the reality of who Jesus was and the truth that he taught caused Judas to betray Jesus.  We should not change the message of Christ to draw people.  Rather we need to change our attitude of trying to control the response of others.  In such an environment of freedom, the Spirit of God is free to work on the hearts of men.  Some will believe and many will walk away.

In each of the parables Jesus will emphasize that the friends of God will rejoice when a sinner repents.  Thus he turns the complaining of the religious leaders back on their own heads.  Their spirit of offense and anger at his interactions with sinners was itself proof that they were not true friends of God.  Otherwise they would be rejoicing in what Jesus was doing (and they would have been doing it themselves).   The truth is that they are lost sinners themselves in need of hearing the truth and repenting.

A Lost Sheep & A Lost Coin

Although these three parables (#3 is the Prodigal Son) underline the same spiritual message there are some contrasts worth noting.  We have three very different characters that represent the heart of God: a shepherd, a woman, and a father.  Some have pointed out that this is most likely to emphasize the work of Christ, who is the Good Shepherd, the woman with the lamp, who is the Church aided by the Holy Spirit of Truth, and the father, who represents God the Father.  This demonstrates how all are working together to accomplish the same goal.  Secondly we have three very different lost things: a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son.  Again we can see three different facets of how mankind is “lost” from God.  A sheep is a living being but has no understanding.  It wanders out of ignorance is dear to the shepherd as that which is a creature.  However, in others ways we see the lost coin represents the immense value that each person who is lost has to God.  The person has value, but they are separated from him and may spend an eternity stuck between floor boards.  Lastly, the most tender picture is that mankind is like a wayward son that has turned its back on a loving father and squandered everything that he has supplied for them.  In each we hear the same echo: yet, God loves them and wants them back.  Do you believe that today?  God loves each sinner and desires greatly to have them back to himself.

Thus the reality in these parables is that sinners really are lost from God.  The term “lost” summons a picture of hopelessness and despair; and on our own that is very true.  But Jesus does not share it as a pejorative in order to put us down.  Rather, it is a statement of why he is working so hard to reach sinners.  Lostness has nothing to do with intellectual ability, or genetic material.  It is a description of our separateness from God and His ways.  Sinners are lost because they are not walking in fellowship and harmony with God.  As such, they are in dangerous territory and subject to great harm like a sheep that has run off from the shepherd.  Sinners are also a great value that is squandered in the darkness and hopelessness of life, like a coin that has fallen into a crack only to be forgotten.

Yet, in both cases, the lost thing is not forgotten.  It is not expendable to the shepherd or the woman.  Yes, the shepherd has 99 other sheep and the woman has 9 other coins.  But God will not let it go.  He will go out after that which is lost and seek to reclaim it.  He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and have eternal life.  What in the world is God doing right now?  God is seeking throughout this world for lost sheep that He can bring back into His fold.  Every one of us enters life innocent of sin and yet quickly we turn to paths other than God’s.  Yet, God diligently goes out after each of us in order to bring us in.  No, we are not lost to Him in the sense that He doesn’t know where we are.  Rather, we are lost to Him in the sense that there are barriers that keep us from Him.  Those barriers are our desire for sin, but also our wounds, feelings, and twisted ideas.  Those barriers are all the lies that we have come to believe about the world and about ourselves.  So God is seeking us in that He is trying to break through those barriers and draw our hearts towards Him.

Each of these parables ends with great rejoicing when the object is found.  Even just one sinner repenting is enough to cause God and all the angels of heaven to rejoice.  Though we cannot see it and may even doubt it, we have the world of Jesus himself saying so.  Notice that the goal is not to get sinners to hang out with Jesus.  The goal is to bring them to repentance.  We can eat all the meals we want with those who are still lost but if we never give them the message of truth, they will not know their need of repentance.  If they do hear the truth they will feel the polarizing affects of it.  Truth forces us to face reality and make a decision.  Jesus is happy that sinners are coming to Him, but he is also sad that so many will eventually walk away and cling to their sins instead of embracing the truth.  His true joy is when we repent.  To repent is to reject our way of life and our “truths,” and then to turn towards the way of Jesus.  He is the Truth, and the Life and the Way to peace with the Father. 

It is not our job to force the choice.  Part of seeking is finding the words and the issues that will speak to the heart of the lost person.  We have to learn how to discern the hurts and wounds that serve as barriers between them and God.  However, in the end their choice is between them and God.  God pleads through us to them, but ultimately it is He who pleads.  Why do we get so uptight when people don’t respond as we want?  Perhaps if we did not take so personal the slowness of response and even flat out rejection of the message, our spirit would much more pure and much more alluring.  Yet, some believers do not seem to care about the lostness of others.  If we really understood how much joy it brings our Lord, we would be more patient and persistent in our attempts to help Him find the lost and make them “found.”  Ask God to place His Spirit upon you  and light up your life in such a way that sinners will see your good works and glorify the Father in heaven.

Heart For That Which is Lost audio

This is His Story

Today is the day that we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  When you think about how much history there is in the world, both that we know about and that which was never recorded, we can forget that all of those things are connected.  Nothing happens in a vacuum.  Thus historians throughout the ages have sought to explain not just the facts of history but also the relationships between them.  Why did the Roman Empire rise to such great power but then fall apart?  Why did Germany fall under the spell of Adolph Hitler?  Of course was WWII a failure or a success?  It all depends upon your view point.  Thus the facts of historical events can all be the same but many different interpretations of the relationships that existed will be promoted today. 

The Bible is a book from history, but it is also a book about history.  In fact it has been stated that the history is really His story (God’s).  You can approach the Bible as the history of mankind from God’s perspective when you think about it in that way.  There are multitudes of viewpoints among mankind, but only one view point of God’s.  Which will you live by?

Thus God gives us a narrative of what is really going on throughout history.  Of course, today, politicians and various groups have learned that you can control people by controlling the narrative that they accept.  So instead of responding to accusations with facts and events, we respond with a “narrative” that the people would rather believe.  We have ceased to be a people who look for truth, but rather a people who believe the story that we like best.  Well, into this pool of narratives, God gives his take.  Many may accuse religions of trying to manipulate the people, but the truth is we manipulate ourselves all the time.  Let’s look at history from God’s perspective

Creation Exists For God’s Purpose

In Genesis 1 we are told, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Then in verse 26 God says, “let us make man in our own image.”  Here we see that God purposefully created all that we can see including ourselves.  Modern man has embraced the idea that there is no purpose to what we see and probably no real beginning.  We are simply an accident of nature.  But that begs the question, “What was nature an accident of?”    Societies cannot function on a foundation of purposelessness and amorality and so we create a hybrid philosophy that keeps the concept of morality that God gives us and makes society itself as the arbiter of what is good and bad.  Yet, this means our definitions of good and bad will shift from generation to generation.  This shifting sand cannot hold up society very long before it will go through cataclysmic social change, over and over again.  Without God the foundation for defining good and evil will become a quagmire that will never sustain anything we build on it.

God not only tells us that He created us, but that he created mankind to be able to relate with Him.  Thus God places Adam and Eve in a Garden and gives them a purpose.  He also converses with them daily.  This picture of a relationship is central to all that follows in human history.

Now in John 1:1-5 we see that God is the giver of light to mankind.  But that is not just natural light.  Just as he gave natural light, so God has given intellectual and spiritual light to mankind.  It is easy to exist merely on a natural level.  And, yes, God did create all the natural beauty we see around us and wants us to enjoy it.  Yet, there is more to life than just nature.  Some people will say, “I don’t believe in the Bible.  I believe in science.”  But doesn’t science mean knowledge?  The Bible is definitely knowledge.  What is really meant by the above statements is that the person only accepts a certain method of obtaining knowledge.  They categorically reject any knowledge that doesn’t come by the scientific method.  Yet, we cannot put the ultimate questions of life into a test tube.  We can only find circumstantial evidence in regards to the origins of the universe, but nothing by which to determine without a doubt what it really was.  Even our attempts to analyze human psychology and social dynamics has found that such thing evade yielding ultimate answers about ourselves.  Without God, man is doomed to a future of making purpose out of the sand of the beach, only to have it either destroyed by the next generation stomping on it, or by the waves of time crashing on the beach.

But Hebrews 1:1-3 tells us that God has been there all along.  He has been talking to mankind and helping us to understand what is going on.  He even sent Jesus who was the perfect light and knowledge concerning God’s purpose for this world.  Francis Schaeffer, after talking with many college age students, came to the conclusion that many felt that God was not there because they didn’t hear him or see him.  Yet, he stated that, “God is there and He has not been silent.”  Of all the books and teachers of history only Jesus and the Bible have verified themselves with prophecy and resurrection from the dead.  All of history has been God speaking to mankind about its problems and its destiny.  Will you not give it an honest reading?

Man Has Desecrated It And Himself

In Romans 8:19-22 we have a passage that points to creation groaning.  Today many fear and point out that man has the ability to drastically affect the earth.  They arrive at this without the Bible.  Interestingly enough, this is the Bible’s position.  The actions of the first human couple have affected mankind and the world in a negative way.  Though God and man enjoyed a perfect relationship in a perfect world, man rebelled against God after it was manipulated by Satan.  They were seduced by the idea that God was holding out on them.  If they disobeyed God they could become like Him themselves.  Yet, when you read the whole Bible, you see that it was God’s intention to make us like Him all along.  We are on a path to try and make ourselves God’s and yet we do so having rejected a path in which God has promised to make us like Him.  This choice leads in two very different directions.  The Bible pictures mankind as willfully persisting in accomplishing on its own what God has promised for those who love Him and wait upon Him.  Because God is the creator of nature, we find our rebellion against him bleeding into nature.  We do not like the “nature” he has created and thus try to manipulate it into our desire and will.  Sometimes this is innocent enough.  But think about those who are born a certain gender and yet feel like they want to be another gender.  We can reject the way we are naturally and replace it with the way we are mentally.  But this only causes grief and trouble.  When you fight against nature you always find yourself fighting a losing battle.

This rebellion of mankind has affected not just man, but also the rest of creation.  The creation has been subjected to futility because of man’s sin.  This curse that God placed upon Adam caused something to change in the earth.  It would not grow things like it used to.  Later after the flood we see something else changing to where people did not live as long.  The effects were drastic for us and for the creation.  However, the curse could just as easily be called “The Effects of our Choice.”  We live in a nature in which each choice brings about certain effects.  We don’t always like those effects and try to avoid or counteract them.  But this too has effects.  God does not wish to destroy mankind.  Rather He has promised to fix the problem.  That is why Paul states in Romans 8 that the Creation groans awaiting the revealing of the Sons of God.  God is bringing this broken world to a place where things are going to be fixed.  Yet, mankind persists in trying to fix the problem without Him.  Yet, the problem today is not the perfecting of our forms of governance.  Our founding fathers did their best to create a new and better form of republican governance.  And yet, they testified that it would only work for a godly people.  No matter how much we perfect governance, it will be ran by faulty humans.  Even if we put in their place computers, they will be programmed by faulty humans.  Like the movie “Minority Report” we can build a system to remove all murder and yet someone will learn to game the system. We have a rebellion problem.  Neither can we fix how our society functions because it will always be the interactions of fallen people. 

Our problem is much deeper than DNA, politics, and religion.  As Romans 5:12, 18 says, sin has come into the world and by it death has spread to all men.  We are all sinners and under the judgment of a righteous God, completely condemned.  Our problem is an internal, moral problem.  Some may ridicule looking to an ancient book for wisdom and knowledge in this modern technological age.  However, the moral problem of man has not gotten better with our technology.  We are the same people we were 2,000 years ago.  A people filled with bitterness, hate and anger.  A people still manipulating others in order to get what our flesh wants.   We are still the same actors acting out the same plot lines, only on a different stage with better special effects.  If we could travel 6,000 years into the future and mankind hasn’t destroyed itself by then, we would find people struggling with the same moral issues, in spite of the great technology we will have by then.  Notice that Star Trek and Star Wars still assume people will be morally the same no matter how much we learn about physics.  But God offers a different answer.

God Promises A Re-Creation Of All things

Romans 5 goes on to say in verses 18 and 19 that God has an answer for man’s continual wandering in the wilderness of right and wrong.  God has implemented a plan to fix mankind and the creation and it centers upon Jesus.  All of the Old Testament was God’s attempt to ensure that the world would be able to understand what was going on when Jesus came.  God’s plan starts with a spiritual fix or internal one, and then has a second phase of a physical fix.

Our spiritual problem cannot be fixed through changing our DNA, and any physical problems we are able to fix will only make the spiritual worse.  Thus God promises to transform our spirits and then re-create our bodies.  Notice how the book of Revelation ends with the reality that God will complete His purpose of fixing not only mankind, but all of creation.  We will dwell with God in perfect relationship in a New Heavens and a New Earth (Revelation 21:1-5).  God states unequivocally that this story will have a particular ending.  We will be back in close fellowship with God.  The heavens and the earth will be remade.  This is no reason to abuse the earth, but rather recognition of what God’s desire is.  Will you embrace God’s story today?  There is a place for you within this story.  However, if we reject the Creator of all creation, we not only will find ourselves fighting against nature, but also nature’s God.  The other narrative puts man in the driver’s seat of a vehicle that is careening out of control.

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