Promises Promises

SERMON: 2015-12-27--mt01b15--promises-promises-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:38:09.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins with a conversational transition into the sermon material (opening edge) and continues through sustained theological exposition, biblical exegesis, and pastoral application until segment [302] (closing edge). Segment [303] is too brief and lacks context to be included as part of the main body. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I want to pick up with you this morning where we left off last week. We were looking last week, you will recall, at the very first verse of the New Testament, Matthew 1 verse 1, which reads as follows, "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." And we saw that from Matthew's point of view, if we want to understand the person and the ministry of Jesus, we have to make our starting point the life of Abraham. Luke, for the record, does the same thing in his gospel, except his genealogy goes back all the way to Adam, the reason being that Matthew is speaking to the Jewish people whose history as a people goes back to Abraham, but Luke is speaking to Gentiles and their history as a people, of course, as it does for all of us, goes back all the way to Adam. From Matthew's point of view, Abraham is the beginning of the selection of God's people. We saw last week that if you go back to the book of Genesis, you find that God enters into a very sacred covenant with Abraham. And under the terms of that covenant, God promises him four things. He promises him a land. He promises to multiply his offspring so that they will one day be like the stars of the heavens in the sand of the seashore. He promises that he will pour out upon them abundant blessings. And then he promises that through them, the blessings will flow to the nations of the world. Genesis chapter 12, the verses one and two puts it this way, God speaks to Abraham. He's now living in Heron, having left Ur of the Chaldeans many years earlier with his father. And God says to him, leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. And if you roll together these four things that God is promising to Abraham, then Abram, you discover that what God is promising is a return to the status of Adam. Adam was originally put in charge of all of creation. In the fall, he lost it. God comes to Abraham and he says to Abraham, you are going to inherit the world. And I pointed out last time, that's how the apostle Paul interprets the covenant that God makes with Abraham. He puts it this way, Romans four verse 13, the promise to Abraham and his descendants that they should inherit the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. And I pointed out three things in that verse that are just critically important. Very quickly again, first of all, the promise is that he would inherit the world. Throughout history, here is the big question, who is going to end up on top of the pile? Who is going to inherit the wealth and the riches of the world? Is it going to be God's people who are usually marginalized and nothing's in nobody's or is it going to be the nations of the world with their power and with their glory? You may remember the temptation to Jesus when the devil came to him was all of the glory of the kingdoms of the world I will give to you if you bow down and worship me. The big question is who's going to inherit the world? The second question then is under what terms is that world inherited? In other words, how do I get there? How do I get to be good enough to receive that inheritance? And there are two answers, either I try to do it by myself, which is keeping the law, or God gives it to me because he declares me righteous and the whole emphasis of scripture in the Old Testament and in the New Testament is that we are made righteous by faith. And this is a theme that runs throughout the history of Abraham's life. And then the final question is who gets the inheritance? Abraham does and who else? His descendants, his offspring, his seed, and I said keep that in mind because Paul in the New Testament does some very interesting things with Abraham's offspring. So here's the covenant with Abraham, I'm going to give you land, I'm going to make you a mighty nation, I'm going to bless you and you are going to be a blessing and it's all coming to you by faith. You cannot make it happen yourself, I will give it to you as a righteous gift. And that's a covenant that God makes as we'll see later that is unconditional because God is going to make it happen. Now moving on from there then, if you want to see what that looks like in history, what it looks like that Abraham and his descendants inherit the earth, then you need to roll the clock forward about a thousand years and you come to the person of David. Because notice again how Matthew puts it, a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So who's David? Well he is the son of Abraham. Now remember whenever you read the word son in scripture, it's almost always in the context of who is the heir. So the fact then that Matthew says David is the son of Abraham means that David is heir to the promises that God has made to Abraham. And if you want to see then what it is that God promised Abraham and what that looks like in a physical way, in a physical world, in time and in history, then you've got to look at the life of David. Now David the Bible says was a man after God's own heart. And what that means is that David understood what God was after. That is to say a people that are qualified by faith to inherit the world. He not only understood that, but he committed himself to following God to be part of the solution to the problem occasioned by the fall. And so if you look at the life of David, what do you see? Well you see here a man who first and foremost cultivates his own relationship with God because he knows that ultimately the inheritance belongs to God and God gives it to whoever he wills. Then you see that David commits himself to the call of God on his life. He is taken from behind the sheep and he becomes a military man and eventually climbs to become king over Israel and as king over Israel what does he do? Well first of all he delivers his people from the power of the enemy. You know all the stories of Goliath and the Philistines and all the neighboring countries that were always trying to oppress the people of God and take their freedom away. David as a warrior stands up, wages war not because he is warlike, but because he wants to deliver his people. Not only that but he consolidates the nation, he organizes the national life, he builds a civil society, he builds an organizational and an administrative structure and more than anything he leads his people into a structured worship of God because he knows that Israel's success depends on their walk and on their relationship with God. And so I love the way Psalm 78 verse 72 sums up the person and the nature of David's rule. It shepherded them, that is Israel, with integrity of heart and with skillful hands he led them. So David is a fulfillment of the covenant made with Abraham a thousand years later and under his reign and then under the reign of his son Solomon you see this fourfold promise made to Abraham fulfilled in a most realistic fashion. They have a land, they become a mighty nation, they are incredibly blessed of God and the blessings of God flow through them to the nations because that's the significance of the queen of Sheba. She represents the nations even as the wise men do in the nativity story by the way, she represents the nations coming to behold the glory of God's blessing on God's people. You with me so far? Pretty simple to track right? Now what happens next of course is a great tragedy and to understand what happens next we need to understand that in the Old Testament for our purposes there are two covenants that God makes with his people, there are more covenants but for our purposes there are two. We've already alluded to the first one and that is the covenant that God makes with Abraham. Now the covenant made with Abraham is recorded in Genesis chapter 15 and I'm going to reference a number of scripture passages today and if you have pen and pencil with you I suggest you write them down and then re-read those chapters because they're crucial to understanding the message of scripture and if you know the Bible then you will know that in Genesis 15 in this covenant where Abraham falls asleep after he has cut animals in half and then while he sleeps there is this smoking fire pot representing God's judgment that passes in between the two halves of that sacrifice. That's the way covenants were made in those days and what that means is I am swearing faithfulness to you and you're swearing faithfulness to me and if I break covenant I am inviting a curse on me and in that particular covenant because Abraham is asleep God invites the curse on himself and so this covenant is an unconditional covenant whereby God says even if you sin I'm going to pay the price for that sin, looks forward to the cross as we'll see later on, I'm going to pay the price for that sin but I'm going to fulfill my promise. You are going to be this mighty nation and you're going to inherit the world and you're going to be blessed and through you God's blessings will flow. Now we don't have time to talk about it there is a temporal fulfillment in history and there is an eternal fulfillment, the book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham was looking for a city whose builder and maker is God never settled in Canaan because even though his physical descendants would inherit a physical kingdom he was looking for the kingdom that is to come the eternal kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, you with me? That's the covenant made with Abraham it was unconditional. Then God makes a second covenant and that is at Mount Sinai, that's recorded for us in Exodus 19 to 40 it is conditional, it is temporal, is it eternal that depends on your interpretation of Israel as the people of God we don't have time to go into that. Paul talks extensively about this covenant in the book of Galatians because this covenant is a law covenant and under the terms of this covenant God says by the ten commandments and all the other commandments that he gives them this is how I want you to live and if you live this way I will bless you but if you do not live this way you're in big, big trouble the curse of the covenant will come upon you and the purpose of the Sunniatic covenant Paul points out in the New Testament especially in the book of Galatians is to serve as a teacher to lead people to Christ God never intended for people to become holy by their own efforts he just wanted to put rules and regulations in place so that evil would be limited and the stage would eventually be set for the person of Jesus Christ. Now keep this in mind let's put that slide back up because what happens next is this here is Solomon he is the son of David and though he was the wisest man that ever lived what did he do? He broke covenant how did he break covenant? Well he married what 900 wives you got to be an idiot to marry that many wives to begin with why did he marry that many wives? Because they were political alliances this is how you consolidate your empire I mean how in the world is he going to sleep with that many women all at once or even in the course of a year right? See it's a political move and it gives him prestige among the nations he wasn't supposed to do that who remembers what else he did that he wasn't supposed to do? He collected thousands of horses now I have no idea why he wasn't allowed to have horses but God specifically told him not to have horses so between the horses and the women his heart was weaned away from God and he became unfaithful and God began pronouncing judgment and so during the reign of his son Rehoboam the kingdom split Judah had a series of good kings mostly but some bad ones Israel had mostly bad kings in 722 BC the northern kingdom got led off into captivity and in 586 BC Judah followed Israel went to Assyria Judah went to Babylon and the land lay desolate now understand what's happening here we have just lost our inheritance you get that? We've been unfaithful to God we've just lost the land we've lost the nation because now we're reduced to next to nothing we have lost the blessing and if you read Jeremiah and the other prophets we have become a byword to the nation to the nations no longer is the queen of Sheba coming to admire how great we are we have just really messed up because we have broken covenant with God on the basis of the covenant made at Mount Sinai but remember there's two covenants are you tracking with me here? This covenant was conditional this covenant was unconditional so guess what God does? He says I will come and save you who has ever heard of a people being scattered repeatedly historically all over the world and they're brought back to their nation and the hunters are rubbable and Nehemiah and Ezra they get reestablished in the land hundreds of years go by roll the clock forward now remember God's got a long memory what happens? Guess who gets born? Jesus which brings us to Jesus so let me ask you a real simple question who is Jesus? You may think you know the answer Matthew knows the answer he says Jesus we can put the slide up Jesus is a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham who's Jesus? The son of David what does that mean? Jesus inherits the promise made first of all to David and that introduces still a third covenant that you find in the Old Testament and that is the covenant that God makes with King David you read about that in second Samuel chapter 7 it is both conditional and unconditional that's why I want you to go home and read these passages because once I frame them for you they will make sense in ways that probably they don't make sense now and in second Samuel chapter 7 God comes to David and he promises him two things he says essentially your son is going to sit on your throne and one fulfillment of that is Solomon and God says if your son is faithful he's going to stay on his throne Solomon wasn't faithful was he and the kingdom was lost but then and this is what's really interesting it takes on another whole twist because now it isn't just this your son is going to be on the throne I am going to give you a son who is going to be king forever listen to this verse now if we can read that together second Samuel chapter 7 verse 16 your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me your throne shall be established forever your house your kingdom put that full it's okay your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me your throne shall be established forever so what's God saying God is saying to David I'm making a covenant with you and under the terms of that covenant the blessings that I promised to Abraham that were reinforced conditionally at Mount Sinai that you experienced in your life are now going to endure forever in the person of a son your son Jesus long term it's not spelled out here is going to be the recipient of the promises I made to you and just as I called you to be a shepherd and a king over your people to deliver them from the power of evil and to establish their kingdom and to bring my blessings to them there is going to be a son coming forth from you who is going to bring about the coming of my kingdom and that is why the angel Gabriel now in Luke chapter 1 verses 31 to 33 puts it this way he says you will be with child speaking to Mary in the story of the Annunciation you will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus he will be great and will be called the son of the most high the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will never end he will reign over the house of David forever and his kingdom will never end why do both Matthew and Luke in their gospels include the genealogy they spoke about that a number of nights ago because for Jesus to be legitimate it had to be demonstrated that he was the son of David that is to say he had the legal right to inherit the promises made to David which in turn were the promises which were made to Abraham now bear with me because this is going someplace because let me ask you the question again who is Jesus he is the son of David yes but what else is Jesus son of Abraham he is the son of Abraham what does that mean what that means is that the promises that God made to Abraham are fulfilled in Jesus what was the promise a land mighty nation I'm going to bless you and through you I am going to make the blessings known to the nations of the world all the nations of the world will bless themselves by you that's the promise made to Abraham we see a fulfillment of that in history in David and in Solomon when the nation of Israel rises to the top and gets admired by the nations all around them and God's people live in peace and prosperity and in the worship of God but the ultimate fulfillment of this is Jesus who is the offspring of Abraham and the recipient of the promises made to Abraham listen to how Paul puts it in Galatians chapter 3 verse 16 let's put that up on the screen the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed the scripture does not say and two seeds meaning many people but to your seed meaning one person who is Christ let me read that again because this is incredibly important because you'll see in a moment how that impacts you and me the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed the scripture does not say and two seeds which is a Paul does things with scripture that in my seminary days we would never get away with because he reaches conclusions that a seminary professor would say is illegitimate but when you're inspired by the Holy Spirit you can do just about anything and get away with it so understand what his argument is his argument is that the promise was made to Abraham and to his offspring Abraham and his seed that seed says Paul is Jesus your seed meaning one person who is Christ so here's the argument God promises all these blessings to Abraham you see these blessings fulfilled in the historical movement of David right now he says what you see partially fulfilled in history in David is going to be totally fulfilled in this person called Jesus this Jesus is got a relationship with God where there is no sin that gets in the way this Jesus is perfectly committed to God the Father keeps the covenant makes the service of God his ultimate priority and is committed to delivering his people and has received the name that is above every name that at the mention of the name of Jesus every knee should bow he is Lord of Lords he is King of Kings he owns the whole blooming universe it's all given to Jesus you with me because now comes the big clincher because if you have followed nothing of what I have been saying please get hold of this when you and I are joined to Jesus by faith guess what happens we become joint heirs with Christ and heirs of God we become the children pardon me here while I straighten myself out we become get this you got to get this I'm going to yell at you until you get it we become sons of God and if we're sons of God guess what we are heirs of the promises made to whom to Abraham what are those promises a land a mighty nation a blessing and you're made to be a blessing now lest you think that I'm just making that up let me quote the Apostle Paul Galatians chapter 3 the verses 26 and 27 you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus for all of you who were baptized into Christ Jesus have clothed yourselves with Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus and if you belong to Christ then guess what say it with me you are Abraham's seed ears according to the promise now notice a couple of things about this verse notice first of all he has these three pairs of names Jew and Greek he's got slave nor free male nor female why does he rattle those off I'll tell you why he rattles them off because it has to do with inheritance because in the Jewish world if you were a Greek you didn't count you didn't belong to God you had no inheritance you were a bad bad person you were outside of the covenant slave nor free slaves had no title only the free did male or female in that culture females were minimized and the inheritance typically passed on to the male so what's he saying when you come to Jesus it doesn't matter what you have or what you don't have doesn't matter what you were born into doesn't matter what you were not born in doesn't matter how good you were doesn't matter how bad you were because the inheritance is not determined by your genetic background it's not determined by your status it's not determined by your family it's only determined by what are you in Christ because guess what if you're in Christ then you are let's put it back up you are Abraham seed and heirs according to the promise so all that matters in the world from God's perspective is are you in Christ because if you are in Christ the promise that God made to Abraham the promise that you see historically fulfilled in David is now by faith yours as Paul puts it in another place in scripture now if we are children then we are heirs heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ and our destiny is to share the glory of Jesus what Jesus has received he has received for you and me I said last time we tend to truncate the gospel we understand that he died for our sins so that our sins can be forgiven so that one day we can go to heaven that's all well and dandy and true but it's a lot more than that Adam lost the world God promised it back to Abraham in David you see a partial fulfillment of that in Christ you see the total fulfillment of that and you and I when we're joined to Jesus we get to share in his inheritance in spirit today and in fullness in the age that is to come listen again to how Paul puts it Galatians chapter 3 the verses 13 and 14 he says Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law becoming a curse for us if we can have that next slide up please Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it is written cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree he redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the promise of the spirit get it the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the promise of the spirit I think that's where we'll quit because what happens now is that the ultimate fulfillment of what God promises to Abraham happens in the age to come in the age to come when Jesus comes back Lord of Lords and King of Kings all those who have been joined to him by faith and who have walked this out by faith are going to inherit the kingdom come blessed of my father says Jesus on that final day inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you from before the foundation of the world eye hasn't seen ear hasn't heard what it is that God has prepared for those who love him but through the Holy Spirit we have a foretaste of that life today and through the Holy Spirit we experience a foretaste of the blessings of Abraham in the here and now for the glory of God that has huge implications huge implications for how we live and in preparation for next week when we come back to that ask yourself this question if you knew if you discovered that there was hidden away a secret bank account with billions of dollars in it with your name on it and suddenly you found out about that how would that change the way you live your life today how would that change how you live your life today and in similar fashion if we had only a revelation of who Jesus is and who it is that we are in him how would that impact and change our lives I started last week by saying all of this came to me in a moment of revelation as I sat behind my desk many many years ago and I can tell you it has made a profound difference not only for me in my ministry but for many other people that I've been privileged to minister to and it's my hope and it's my prayer as we talk about this kind of thing the Holy Spirit will give us that kind of eye-opening oh my land I'm richer than I ever thought because I'm blessed in Christ Jesus with every spiritual blessing every spiritual blessing in heavenly places we press on for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:38:06.180; remove through 00:38:09.000] you [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:38:09.000; resume after this marked segment]