What is the Gospel? - Lesson 4

Dr. Marc Cortez
What is the Gospel?
TH106-04
God's Faithfulness to His People
Lesson Transcripit

[00:00:01] The following lecture is provided by biblical training. More information is available at WW w dot Biblical training dot org. All right. So as we have made our way through this presentation of the gospel in our last lesson, we focused on the problem of the fall, the problem that sin introduces to really the story of God's plan for creation, this wonderful plan for his people in his land, so that his people might be a blessing throughout the land. But as we saw in the last lesson, the introduction of sin into that equation caused all sorts of problems and problems with people, problems between people and God, problems between people and creation, so that the shalom that we have been describing that was God's intent from the beginning begins to disintegrate and shatter and fall apart. And the story of the fall is really fairly depressing as we come to grips or begin to come to grips with the reality of what we've done. As we look around us in the world and we begin to get a sense or an awareness of how much pain and suffering and anguish that has caused. And as we begin to come to grips with the depths of our depravity, this suggest that we actually even like it that way, not the pain and the suffering, but we like going our own way. We like doing things differently than God told us to. So the story of the fall is fairly depressing. And we ended the last lesson on a note that was not particularly encouraging. But fortunately, of course, that's not the end of the story, because if that were the end of the story, God would have failed in accomplishing his own purposes. So God created everything for a purpose.

[00:01:57] He has a plan for all of this, and it's a pretty incredible plan. By the time we get to the end of our story, hopefully we will be amazed not just at what God was doing at the beginning, but where he is bringing everything in the end. God has a plan for all of this. And if we were to put a period at the end of Genesis chapter three and call that the end of the story, then God's plan would have failed and God's plans don't fail. And when God sets out to accomplish something, he accomplishes it. So fortunately for us, there is far more to the story. There is much more that comes after Genesis Chapter three that we get to appreciate and enjoy. And in this lesson, we're really going to focus on the good news that despite our fall into sin, the good news that despite our destruction of Shalom, the good news that God remains faithful to his plans and his purposes and his people, God's faithfulness, despite our sin, is an amazing part of the good news and is one of the reasons why, as we're understanding and unpacking the gospel, we need to make sure that we spend some time understanding what happens after Genesis Chapter three and before Matthew Chapter one. So oftentimes we go back to the first lesson we were talking about the way that people explain the gospel. There's a little bit of a tendency to jump straight from the fall to Christ, and again, that's understandable. Christ is the climax of the story, and it's an incredible climax. So sometimes we're in a little bit of a hurry to get to the climax. We want to get to the the birth of Christ. We want to get to Christmas and we want to get to the cross and resurrection that the incredible climax of the story.

[00:03:45] That's such an amazing thing that we have a tendency to skip straight from Genesis three to the climax. But we need to take a little bit of time to appreciate what's happening between here and there, because it's the story between Genesis three and Jesus that really helps us to appreciate that God remains faithful despite our own sin, God remains faithful to His good purposes. He will accomplish them because God's purposes do not fail. So let's start off by looking quickly about what happened after the fall. And I think if we look at what happened after the fall, we're going to recognize that there are a number of important signs of God's grace to his people in his creation after the fall. If we look at the garden itself, and of course, one of the first things that we notice about God's response to Adam and Eve sin in the garden is judgment. Typically, if you ask people, What did God do when Adam and Eve sinned, they're going to summarize you summarize for you the things that God did in judgment on Adam and Eve in the Garden. And that's perfectly understandable. I mean, Adam and Eve had rejected God's good grace. They had rejected his plans and his purposes. They had rejected him. They had decided to go their own way and do their own thing. And unsurprisingly, when faced with that kind of rebellion and rejection and sin God. In fact, respond with judgment. And so we do see judgment in the garden. And God approaches both Adam and Eve and he judges them. He expresses his condemnation of their action and the consequences that would result from that. And he communicates wrath. He got in the garden is not happy with what has happened.

[00:05:34] And because sin is an offense against him, a sin is a slap in the face to the creator. And and it's a desecration of his creation and his plans for creation. So sin brings the wrath of God. And along with that, God's judgment and God curses Adam and Eve. And He curses creation. And Adam and Eve are excluded from the garden. And those are acts of judgment in God's wrath against their rebellion. But we do want to take time to make sure that we recognize that God also responds very graciously in the garden. God's response in the garden is not all about judgment. I would actually say God's response in the garden is primarily about grace, although it does include judgment. And God's gracious response starts right at the very beginning when Adam and Eve sin and God chooses not to destroy them. That would have been a perfectly legitimate response. And if the Almighty Creator is offended by his itty bitty little creation, it would have been perfectly appropriate for God to squish them and to squish them out of existence. And God graciously chooses not to do that. He remains in connection with Adam and Eve. He allows them to continue. He allows humanity to continue. That's a gracious response for which, hopefully you and I are very appreciative of the same time God seeks out his people. I notice when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, the very next thing that happens is that God seeks them out and God pursues them in the garden, and certainly didn't mean to do that. Of course, as soon as Adam and Eve sinned, God knew precisely what had happened and God could have rejected them immediately, but chose not to because he graciously desired to continue to be with them.

[00:07:35] He sought them out in the garden. He pursued them after their sin in the next and almost equally amazing. He speaks to them. The almighty creator who had just been spurned and offended deeply by sin, not only sought out the offenders, but spoke to them, continued the relationship that had been there in Genesis Chapter two. That's an amazingly gracious thing for God to do. Any time God speaks to his people, that is an act of grace for which we should be, again, appreciative. And one of the most amazing things, one of the most amazing signs of grace in the story comes in verse 15, and God, speaking to Adam and Eve, says, I will put enmity between you, speaking to the serpent here, between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. And this one that God promises who will come and crush the serpent. And that idea that there is someone coming who will crush those who oppress God's people. There is someone coming who will bring redemption for God's people. There is someone coming who's going to help us out of this mess that we've gotten ourselves in. That is going to be echoed now throughout the Old Testament all the way up until we have the birth of Christ. So the earliest promise that we have that God is going to send someone and really for the rest of the story that will tell now, through the Old Testament, we'll have this echo of someone is coming. So right away in the garden, God wants his people to know that He has not abandoned them. He has not forsaken them in their sin. He is responding graciously to their sin.

[00:09:28] And he promises to send someone. And when that someone comes, God's purposes will be accomplished. He even continues from there. And of course, the next thing that he does is that he curses creation. You know, in many ways, we can rightly understand that as a judgment. But I think it would be helpful if we twisted that slightly and recognize that there is grace in the curse itself. Because it's the curse that helps us look around the world and see that this is not the way things were supposed to be. It's the brokenness that we see within us and in the world around us that helps us to realize it really slaps us in the face and says this alienation that you have between you and your creator is not right. There is something broken about you. There is something broken about me. There's something broken about the world. It's the curse that puts front and center in our faces that this is not the way things God intended them to be. And it plants deep within us an awareness that we've lost something, that this is not shallow. And there are many ways in which we can actually see the the curse itself as a redemptive judgment. It is judgment, but it's judgment with a purpose. It's judgment intended to help us see that there is more. If God had left creation as the Garden of Eden, this perfectly content place for us to live in, have all of our needs met. Would we have recognized how fundamentally wrong that was? As long as we are still in alienation from God. The curse screams at us. This is wrong. This is broken. The curse is itself, in many ways, an expression of grace. And then as we move on toward the end of the story, we have God providing for his people.

[00:11:29] I remember Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness after their sin. And one of the things God does is he clothes them. He provides for them. God continuing to act and care for his creation. We saw that in Genesis two, and he created a place for them to live. And even after the fall, he is still caring for his people and providing for them in their needs. And then lastly, God protects his people. Again, we look at their exclusion from the garden as an act of judgment. But if you read the story there in versus 22 through 24, God's concern is to send them out of the garden, to protect them from the eating of the tree of life and eating and living forever. That's the concern. And why wouldn't God want them to eat from the tree of life and live forever? Well, who wants to live forever in alienation and isolation and brokenness? Where's the gospel? Where's the hope in that? And got exclude them from the garden as an act of protection and preventing them from living in alienation and isolation and brokenness forever. And so throughout the story after the fall, we do have God acting in judgment. No question about that. But I think even more clearly, we have God acting in grace as he continues to pursue his purposes with his people. Now, the story continues after the garden and we move on into the chapters after Adam and Eve are excluded from the garden. The chapters they start talking about Adam and Eve living east of Eden and in the land that is not shalom. And unfortunately, the story actually gets worse if we read the story as it unfolds in the next few chapters of Genesis.

[00:13:15] We really see a cycle of spiraling sin. We now read about murder. We now read about peoples in conflict with one another. We now read about entire peoples in conflict with God so that the offense of humanity against a Holy God has extended not just from Adam and Eve, and we talked last time about sins, ability to spread pervasively throughout creation. That starts right away in Genesis chapter four, and that sin begins to spread and it begins to seep and it begins to ink all of God's creation. And we see that spiral continuing until we get to Genesis six five. And God looks out over creation and saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. What an amazing declaration of the spiral of sin, the spread of sin, the pervasive depths of sin. So as we move on from Genesis chapter six, despite God's gracious response after the fall in the garden, humanity continues to spiral into the destruction of Shalom and continues to desecrate and destroy God's good plan. Because clearly this is not a picture of humans living in intimate and open relationship with other humans in submission, in obedience and glory to God tending to creation so that God might be glorified throughout creation. That's clearly not the picture we have in these chapters. They are continuing to desecrate and destroy God's good plan and in the process continuing to defile themselves. So Shalom continues to shatter as the story unfolds. So we get to Genesis chapter six. God looks at over creation. He declares his judgment on creation. And of course, at this point we've reached the story of the flood God, again acting in judgment against his creation.

[00:15:10] He looks out at the sin, the sin that is an offense against him as a holy God, and he responds in wrath as he should, as is right. And he responds in judgment because God will not dwell within a God as a holy God. A righteous God will not dwell with sin. So he does respond in judgment, in sin, and expresses his grief in needing to do so. For reading Genesis Chapter six and seven right after Chapter six, verses six and seven right after his declaration of the total depravity of humanity. The Lord says he was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. And because he had these grand purposes for his people in his land to his glory and his people had rejected him. And that plan. So God has grief, He has of wrath. And then, of course, he expresses his judgment. And we have the coming of the flood on all of creation. But again, I. I think we need to turn the story slightly and remember the elements of grace that are in the story of the flood. First, there's an element of grace simply in the fact that God does grieve but does not completely destroy. God continues to be committed to His good plan for creation. God continues to want the best for creation. And we look at the flood as judgment. And indeed the flood was judgment, but it wasn't judgment simply for the sake of judgment. It was judgment because God knew the good that he had in store for creation and the judgment was necessary to keep us pressing down the road toward that good. Would it have been grace to allow humanity to continue to spiral into destruction? Is that Greece? If I'm interacting with my daughters and say, go back to the story I told in the last lesson when Sydney rampages into the room and destroys Leah's little toy Shalom Town.

[00:17:22] Is it grace for me to allow her to do that without any consequences? Is it grace for me to allow her to develop destructive ways of behaving? Well, of course not. That's not grace. There's no love in that. And grace can be expressed. Must be expressed at times in and through judgment in consequence. So because of God's grace and because of his great love for creation, he sends the flood as judgment and destruction in service to his grace. So we can really see the flood in many ways as the preservation of God's good plan, the extension of God's grace into the world, and again, an act of redemptive judgment. We move on from the flood, and as the story continues to unfold, we unfortunately continue to see a story of sin. And right off the bat, Noah and his family after the flood. Let's just say that you're going to tell the story of Noah, his family, after the flood. It's not a story of exceeding righteousness and there is continued sin. There is continued destruction of God's shalom, but there is continued faithfulness on God's part to his people and his plans and his purposes. So by the time we get to Genesis Chapter 12, we come to one of the most amazing things in this part of the Bible in that God not only has a purpose for a people, but He approaches one of them, Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, verse one, and he makes a covenant with him. He makes a promise with him. He steps forward to this people, to Abraham, and he declares his intent to work with Abraham. Now, it's important that we recognize that this was a gracious choice. This was completely an extension of grace. Abraham had done nothing up to this point in time to deserve the promise that God was giving to him.

[00:19:29] It isn't as though God looked out over the peoples of the earth and thought, I need somebody who's really going to be good for this promise. Abraham looks like a great guy, so I'm going to make my covenant with Abraham. It was a gracious extension. God continuing to have a purpose, to have a people through whom he could glorify himself throughout creation. And he chose Abraham graciously. And in doing that, he makes a promise to Abraham. And it's a promise with some important elements. Let's read Genesis 12 one, two, three. Together, it says, Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you. I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. There are at least three pieces to that promise that we want to notice. And they should sound familiar. A first God promises a land and says, I have a land in store for you. Then he also promises Abraham, a people from you will come a people, and he promises a blessing through you and your people. Blessing will come on you and throughout the earth. Sound familiar? A land for people. And a blessing to everyone. Everywhere. It's God's purposes and God's plan. Back in Genesis one and two we saw was to create a land in which his people would be a blessing everywhere to the glory of God. God's continuing to work out His purposes. And it's a land with the people as a blessing everywhere, the glory of God.

[00:21:29] The grace is that God continues to be faithful to His people, His plans and his purposes. Despite this continued cycle of sin that we read as we go along. There is great news in this. There's some really terrible news as well, if we look at what humans continue to do. But if we focus on God, remember this story is about God. There is great news in here because God is faithful despite our own sin. Again, we move forward. We won't be able to unpack all of the Old Testament this way, but we want to highlight at least two more pieces to that. We move forward to the next. We come to the giving of the law to God's people. And if you remember, God's people had entered into bondage in Egypt. God rescued them out of that bondage through the exodus, declaring to them vividly, loudly that this is my people to whom I will remain faithful. I will rescue my people out of the bondage in which they find them selves. We'll talk more about that in a second. So he's faithful to his people. He rescues his people out of bondage, and then he gives them a law, the Mosaic Law. Now, we have a couple of misconceptions about the law that I think are important if we're going to understand the gospel. The first misconception is that we often view the law as though God were giving that to them as the rules necessary for salvation, as though God were saying, I'm going to give you this list of several hundred rules, and if you obey all of them properly, you will be saved. The misconception is that we need to understand God's covenant, God's promises. God's purposes are always based on grace.

[00:23:09] We saw that with Adam and Eve. God didn't have to create Adam and Eve. He chose to. We saw it with Noah. God didn't have to save Noah. He chose to. We saw it with Abraham. God didn't have to choose Abraham. He chose to. God's promises. His relationships are always fundamentally built on grace. And that's true in the law itself. And the law is not fundamentally about following the rules necessary for salvation. The law itself declares that at the core is a loving relationship between humans and God as an expression of gratitude of grace. Deuteronomy 645 Hero Israel the Lord Our God. The Lord is one. Hey, what is it that we need to do? You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. That's fundamental. That's what the law is primarily about. Deuteronomy 1113. If you will indeed obey my commandment that I command you today, I'm sure obeying the commandments. Great. Tell me, Moses, what are the commandments that you were so concerned to make sure that we obey, to love the Lord your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul. Love is primary in the law. There are commandments in the law, but they're not there as rules and stipulations for salvation. The salvation, the relationship between God and His people always begins with grace, and it's a love relationship between God and His people. The commandments, the rules, the regulations are really a response to that. And the rules and regulations are an expression of our love for God. They're really an expression of our salvation. Might be more accurate to look at it from the perspective of my relationship with my wife.

[00:25:01] Are there rules in the relationship that I have with my wife? Well, sure there are. We have all sorts of rules. Most of them are written down, but there are on my side, there are rules like, please don't go to bed without telling me that you're going to go to bed. I like to know that it's a rule and it's an unwritten rule. On my wife's side, please don't come home 5 hours late from work without telling me that you're going to. And those are rules. Now, do we follow those rules? Because we think that checking off the box next to each rule is going to lead to the kind of marriage relationship that we want to have? Well, of course not. That simply isn't the way that it works. And marriage is fundamentally founded in grace and love. The rules are an expression of that. It's because I love you and because you have graciously entered into a relationship with me. Let me express my love for you in these ways. The law functions that way. It's God's gift to his people to so that they might communicate their love back to him. We have a second misconception in the law, and that's the idea that the law provides the sacrifices necessary for salvation. If we've sinned and to deal with the sin, we need to offer these sacrifices. And if we offer the right sacrifices, then we will be saved. And the problem is, is that Old Testament sacrifices again are not what salvation is all about. And the sacrifices themselves are no good without faith. A solemn four or five still says offer right sacrifices. Great. But put your trust in the Lord because salvation is from the Lord. They're not ultimately about your sacrifices.

[00:26:47] They're ultimately about who God is and putting your faith in him. Jose is 66, even says that sacrifices. Are not primarily what God wants. God desires steadfast love and not sacrifice. Isn't he the one who told us to do the sacrifices? Of course he is. But he wants us to understand what the sacrifices are there for. They don't achieve salvation for us. Salvation comes by God's grace and his love for us, not the sacrifices that we offer to Him, the sacrifices our love response back to him. And according to Hebrews, the sacrifices themselves aren't even able to take away sins. The blood of blood of bulls and goats don't take away, since God's grace is all that is sufficient to take away sins and Old Testament sacrifices to the extent that they have anything to do with within are only because they're ultimately grounded. What Jesus Christ comes to do in His grace, in love on the cross. That's what sacrifices are all about. Not our sacrifices to God, but God's sacrifice for us. Grace from beginning to end. Hebrews 1014 four. By a single offering he Jesus has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. So the law, if we're going to break it down, the Lord does do some very important things that we need to recognize. As long as we keep in mind that what the law was not there for was to give us the rules necessary for salvation or even the sacrifices necessary for salvation with the law. Does is it exemplifies the holiness of God. It sets apart the people of God. It testifies to the sinfulness of humanity. So we can see God's standard and recognize how awful, how far short we fall of that standard.

[00:28:49] And it declares to us loudly and consistently the necessity of grace and faith and love throughout. So the law fulfills some tremendous purposes. God in his grace, gave the law so that we might recognize that He is holy, that his people are holy, the humanity is sinful and desperately in need of the grace of God. But of course, after the giving of the law, the problem continues. Continue to have spirals of sin and destruction. We read the history of Israel both through the time of the judges and through the time of the kings. We've continued sin and continued rebellion and destruction. And throughout, God remains faithful to his people, so that by the time we move toward the end of the story, unfortunately, God's people have come into exile. They have been cast out of the land because of their rebellion and their continued unfaithfulness. They are in exile because unfaithfulness to God leads to exert. We saw that with Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve. Unfaithful to God in the land. Exiled from the land. Now living east of Eden. God's people unfaithful to him. And now exiled from the land. And in many ways, humanity as a whole has been living, exiled from the land east of Eden on the shadow side of Shalom. Remember, we have been in many ways in exile since Genesis chapter three. Not in the land, not serving as God's people, not being a blessing throughout creation, desperately in need of a new exodus. Remember God's people trapped in slavery in Egypt? God faithful to His people, bringing them out of the land, bringing them out of bondage, bringing them out of that oppression. That's the exodus. We are in desperate need of a new exodus. We need to return to the land of promise.

[00:30:55] A return to shalom. That's what we long for. That's what we need. We need a new exodus that will bring us out of oppression and bondage and exile. The great news is that one is coming. Remember Genesis 315? One is coming. God has promised us a king who will come and rule over us that we might return to the promised Land. He has promised us a prophet, one who will come and declare to us the truths of God, the reality of God who revealed to us the very nature of God. He has promised us a priest, one who will stand between us and God. He has promised us a servant. One who will come and stand in our place and be crushed for us. Throughout the Old Testament, we have a whole series of promises that one is coming, and when this one comes, God promises that his spirit will be poured out on all of his people. Joel 228 It shall come to pass that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and when the spirit is poured out, then all of God's people will be restored to Him. And I will not hide my face any more from them. When I pour out my spirit upon the House of Israel, declares the Lord God no longer hiding his face from those who have fallen into sin because He is redeeming them and pouring his spirit out upon them. When this one comes, the sins of God's people will be taken away. Isaiah 53 That outstanding passage about the servant who comes to suffer for us. And he was wounded for us and he was crushed for us. But it was for our forgiveness, taking our sins upon himself. When this one comes, God's people will receive a new heart, both in the sequel and Jeremiah with the amazing promise.

[00:32:58] Because as I will give them one heart and a new spirit, I will take their heart of stone and I will give them a heart of flesh. Remember back to Genesis three. One of our problems was that we have come to love, not Shalom. We have come to love sin. We have come to love going our own way. And God says, You know what? When this one comes, I will give you a heart that loves me. When this one comes, you will get a new heart. And when this one comes, God says all of creation will be restored. Isaiah 32. If the Spirit poured out upon us from on high and what happens? The wilderness becomes a fruitful field. The fruitful field is deemed a forest. Justice will dwell in the wilderness and righteousness abides in the fruitful field, and the effective righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. Shalom. When this one comes, shalom comes. God's purposes. God's people in God's land as a blessing to everyone. Everywhere to the glory of God. That's the tremendous news. The tremendous news is that though we have fallen, though we have broken ourselves, that we have shattered shalom, that we have become so steeped in int by sin that we have come to love our own sinful state. God remains faithful. God remains faithful to His people, His plans and his purposes. And as we see that faithfulness unfold throughout the Old Testament, God over and over and over again declares I am faithful. That is good news indeed. So what we need to see now is we need to see how does this unfold. We reached the end of the Old Testament and we have this tremendous promise of one who comes and the tremendous expectations of when this one comes and all the things that flow out of that.

[00:35:02] But at the end of the Old Testament. He hasn't come. We're still longing and expecting and waiting. And when this one comes, we'll be the topic for our next lesson. Thank you for listening to this lecture. Brought to you by biblical training dot org. Feel free to make copies of this lecture to give to others. But please do not charge for these copies or alter the content in any way without permission. We invite you to visit our website at W WW dot Biblical training dawg. There you will find the finest in evangelical teaching for use in the home and the church. And it is absolutely free. Our curriculum includes classes for new believers, lay education classes, and seminary level classes taught by some of the finest seminary teachers drawn from a wide range of evangelical traditions.