The Promise
Sunday, March 29
Teaching Series: The Blood of Jesus
Easter isn’t about bunnies and eggs. It’s not even just about the cross and the resurrection. Easter is much bigger than that. To fully understand Easter we must start with “In the beginning.” We must start with the promise.
Preface – Perfect Creation
God made all the things we can see and all the things we cannot see. Because God made everything, He owns everything. It all belongs to Him. That’s why God is also called Lord. He is the King, the Owner of all that He has made. God created it, so He owns it.
The Bible also tells us that God likes things done in a right way. That’s why God made rules and laws. God made laws so that everything would fit together and the world would work in the right way. He made rules because He knows what is best for us. He knows that when things are done in a right way, we are happy. God cares for us.
Everything God made was perfect. There was nothing wrong with it. It is good in every way. God created a perfect world because that’s the way He is. He is perfect. God never does anything wrong. God’s home is perfect – heaven. Heaven is a perfect place, where perfect people and perfect angels live with a perfect God. Only perfect people can live with a perfect God.
The first people were Adam and Eve. God loved them and made a beautiful garden for them to enjoy. God told them not to eat the fruit from one special tree. If Adam and Eve disobeyed that one rule, and ate fruit from that one tree, then they would die.
Creation ended with God’s stamp of approval. He pronounced it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). All was in order. There was no pain, no disease, no struggle for the survival of the fittest, no discord, and above all, no death. Between God and man there was a unique relationship, a friendship. Eden was the perfect place to live. Everything was very good.
Problem – Humanity’s Sin
But today the world is not a very good place. What happened? It all goes back to the Garden of Eden. Something terrible happened. Sin entered into God’s perfect creation. Sin always spoils things.
Lucifer, who was perfect, rebelled against God. Not only did Lucifer want to take over heaven, but he was determined to replace God with himself. God called Lucifer’s attitude sin. Because God is perfect, He could not tolerate Lucifer’s sin as if it did not matter. Perfection, by its very nature, demands the absence of imperfection.
God’s response to Lucifer’s sin was immediate. He expelled him from his position in heaven. Lucifer became known as the devil or Satan. Satan and his demon followers were now enemies of God. Satan would be against everything good, everything that God planned to do, and everything that God stood for. Satan would fight dirty.
In Genesis 3, Satan visited Adam and Eve in the beautiful, perfect garden. He told Adam and Eve that God was hiding something from them. Satan said that if they ate the fruit from the special tree, then they would be just like God. Adam and Eve did the one thing that God told them not to do – they ate the fruit. Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lie. They broke God’s one simple rule. They took sides with Satan against God.
God told Adam and Eve that because they sinned, their bodies would someday die. Death came into the world because of Adam and Eve’s sin. But as if that wasn’t bad enough, because they joined Satan, when their bodies died, they would have to go and live in his terrible home – hell. Adam and Eve would be separated from God forever!
Sin’s effects are very costly. Adam and Eve had abandoned their friendship with God and joined Satan. The friendship was over. Perfection was gone.
Mankind, by creation, was designed to live in God’s presence. But when man disobeyed God, his whole being changed. He lost that sinless nature which made him acceptable to God. So, how can man gain back that perfection which allows him to live with God?
Paradox – God’s Situation
To understand God’s situation, we need to look at two different attributes that are part of His character – justice and love.
We have seen that the Lord is a perfect God, entirely without sin. To be sinless also means that God is honest and fair – just. We would say that God is a good judge because He does not treat one person one way, and another person another way. God enforces His rules equally and fairly. No one will escape God’s justice. “For God will evaluate every deed, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). Honesty and fairness are fundamental to God’s perfect nature.
Because God is perfect, we can count on Him being absolutely fair. We like that. But here’s the bad news. Perfect justice demands that sin be punished with a penalty equal to the offense. The Bible says that our sin-debt can only be paid with our death. This is not good news. Fortunately, the other aspect of God’s character comes into the picture.
God is not only perfectly just, but He is also completely loving. By His very nature, God loves. It was Adam and Eve who broke the friendship with God, but God had not changed. God still loved them. What He did not love was their sin. As sinners, we don’t deserve God’s kindness, yet God loves us with a perfect love in spite of our sin.
Now we find a paradox. To be completely just, God must enforce our payment of the sin-debt – we must die. But because God is loving, He has no desire to destroy us. Both qualities of His character are equal. God is not more loving than he is just. So how can God maintain justice and still be loving?
Promise – The Deliverer
That’s a very important question. You see, just as Adam and Eve had sin that needed to be punished, so we all do. Everyone who’s born into this world does wrong things. We all sin. We’re just like Adam and Eve. Everyone needs to know how God can punish sin without punishing people.
Adam and Eve’s sin brought a curse, but God in His love also gave a promise. “The Lord said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this … I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; her offspring will attack your head, and you will attack her offspring’s heel’” (Genesis 3:14, 15).
God was saying that He would some day deliver man from Satan. There would be a male child, born of the woman, who would crush Satan’s head – a fatal wound. True, Satan would also hurt the child, but only with a strike at the heel – a temporary injury that would heal.
This was the first of many promises to come about the future offspring of Eve. This male child would be known as the Anointed One, because of the special task given to Him by God. The task God had in mind for this chosen one was to deliver or save mankind from the consequences of sin and the power of Satan. For this reason, He would also be known as the Promised Deliverer or the Saviour.
God also wanted to show them what it would take to remove sin. It involved a rather vivid visual aid. The Bible says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). God was saying that man’s sin-debt could only be paid, or forgiven, if there was death.
This concept of a blood sacrifice has two aspects: substitution and atonement. Normally, man would die for his own sin. But now, based on certain future events, God was saying that He would accept an innocent animal’s death in man’s place – as a substitute. It was a life for a life, the innocent dying in place of the guilty. The sacrificed pictured the law of sin and death being obeyed and justice being fulfilled. But could not a sacrifice be killed without the shedding of blood, perhaps by drowning?
God said that the blood would make atonement for sin. The word atonement means covering. The shed blood would cover man’s sin, therefore when God looked at man, he would no longer see the sin. Man would be viewed as righteous and therefore acceptable by God. The relationship would be restored. Man would still die physically, but the eternal consequences would no longer apply.
God promised to send a special man to earth. This man would be able to save mankind from being punished for their sin. If people trusted God, believing His promise, when they died He would make them perfect again. Perfect people can live with God. All they needed to do was to trust Him. It was that simple.
So we have a choice. We can come God’s way and live forever in God’s perfect home in heaven, or we can ignore God’s way and live forever in Satan’s terrible home. There are no other choices – only perfect people can live with a perfect God.
The Blood of Jesus series