Restoration

Tonight is the culmination of our four part series, “Creation – Fall – Redemption – Restoration,” the Big Picture of God’s Redemptive Story. Each week we have been seeking to understand The Story in order to see our place in the story. Each part of this story is essential to and the building block of the next part. This is what makes tonight’s lesson so exciting!

As a child and throughout my influential years, I remember the Gospel giving to me and others as “do you want to go to heaven?” or “where are you going when you die?” Then the allure of the golden streets and pearly gates are dangled before me as the end goal in comparison the frightful fires of hell. Of course any child, teen or adult would rather choose heaven over hell. Yet there seems something incomplete about the question “do you want to trust Jesus so that you can go to heaven one day?”

Now Heaven is an amazing place and it will be beautiful beyond measure. It will be a place where are senses are alive and full, deeper then anything we could even imagine here. It will be a place where death, disease, pain and suffering are nowhere to be found. It will be the ultimate rest. However, it is not and should not be the object in which we pursue. For coming to faith in Jesus for the prize of heaven is idolatry.

Jesus did not save you in order that you can go to heaven. What we learn from each of the four movements of the Redemptive Story is that God created human kind to be in a relationship with Him. However our sinful rebellion brought separation, brokenness, and death. Yet Jesus came to live the perfect life that we could not achieve, willingly die an innocent death, shed his pure blood for our sins and to rise again from the dead to offer reconciliation with God. That’s it right there, did you catch it? Why did Jesus die on the cross? For us to be reconciled with Him. The prize of our faith is not heaven it is Jesus!

When we begin to understand that the Bible is bookended with Paradise, the Garden of Eden and the New Heaven and New Earth, the promise we see all throughout is that God is moving to restore the relationship we were intended for. The cross restores us to a right relationship with God and brings us into a community of faith.

 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Restoration is the promise Jesus made to make all things new. It is the promise that He will pick up the broken pieces of our lives and put them back together. It is the promise we find in Ephesians 2:10, that we are His masterpieces that He is fashioning together for good. It is the hope we draw from Romans 8:28 that everything we go through God has designed for our ultimate good and His glory. And in the midst of the struggle we have His continual promise of Philippians 1:6 that He will complete it.

As He is making us new, He has called us to be agents of restoration in this world.

Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the kingdom is here. Bring health to the sick. Raise the dead. Touch the untouchables. Kick out the demons. You have been treated generously, so live generously…Stay alert. This is hazardous work I’m assigning you. You’re going to be like sheep running through a wolf pack, so don’t call attention to yourselves. Be as cunning as a snake, inoffensive as a dove.

Don’t be naive. Some people will impugn your motives; others will smear your reputation—just because you believe in me. Don’t be upset when they haul you before the civil authorities. Without knowing it, they’ve done you—and me—a favor; they’ve given you a platform for preaching the kingdom news! And don’t worry about what you’ll say or how you’ll say it. The right words will be there; the Spirit of your Father will supply the words.

When people realize it is the living God you are presenting and not some idol that makes them feel good, they are going to turn on you, even people in your own family.

There is a great irony here: Proclaiming so much love, experiencing so much hate. But don’t quit. Don’t cave in. It is all well worth it in the end.

This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing. —Jesus (Matthew 10 The Message)

If heaven were the end goal, I’d wager that at salvation we would be taken home. Jesus has us here for a reason. He has us here for a mission. He wants us to make disciples wherever we are, proclaiming the Good News and hope to the lost. Loving the unlovable. Watching out for the vulnerable. Comforting the hurting. Being an extension of God’s love to all we meet until He returns and sets all things right.

He will one day come and complete the restoration by eradicating sin, disease and death. He will establish a New Heaven and a New Earth. Yet the satisfaction we get will not be from living in a mansion, but being in the presence of Jesus. Then we will see clearly what is shadowed today. Yet eternal life doesn’t have to wait for eternity, for life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever. 

Redemption

Wednesday night started with buzz of uncertainty. I deviated from my normal teaching pattern to follow an experiential walk through of the life of Christ. How do I take what so many teens are familiar with and teach it in such a way that is fresh and exciting? This is a constant question and struggle for me. I love the Gospel. I love the Bible. I think it is a sin to bore students with the Bible. It is the Greatest Story ever told and within the Story is the Key to true Life.

In our four part series on Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration, we are looking at the Big Story running through the Bible. We had already done Creation and The Fall. So for Redemption I planed on a walk through of the Story at 13 Stations. Honestly I thought it would take maybe 45 minutes to and hour max. I figured most would quickly walk through and move to the next stop, almost missing the importance of what they were doing. Thankfully I was wrong!

It was amazing to watch as the teens, even the new visitors, embraced the idea of silently walking through the church and reading the story and doing activities. The idea is that they might pause and reflect on what it might have been like to be present during the life of Christ, the Last Supper, the betrayal, the trials, His death, burial and resurrection. I was blessed to see that the teens would pause, think, write and pray before moving on.

One of my favorite, and the teens that I talked to, was the Cross. The teens wrote down areas of sins and struggles on a piece of paper. They folded it and nailed it to the cross! If you pause and think about it yourself, maybe grab a piece of paper right now. Write down your sin struggles. Remember that Christ nailed it to the cross and shed His blood as payment for you! You may not have a cross handy to nail it into, but you can simply burn it and reflect on how Jesus forgives our sins and no longer holds it against us.

A Scandalous Story

The third movement of the four-part meta-narrative is offensive and scandalous. It does not resonate with human logic or preference. We, by nature, desire to earn our way. We want to prove our worth. We make transactions everyday based on what benefits us most. Philosophically we desire the survival of the fittest mentality. Good people should get good things and bad people should pay.

The story of Redemption is the story of an Innocent receiving punishment on behalf of the guilty. It strikes of injustice. It brings us face to face with our inadequacy. We are confronted with our own guilt and shame. It compels a choice.

The Son of God was willing to take our place and pay our price that we might receive life. Perhaps no greater lyric of love has ever been written then, “But God demonstrated His love for us in this, while we were still sinning, Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:8).

The truth of this story is you are faced with an enormous debt that you cannot pay. It’s as if you ran a credit card bill up past a billion dollars. It would take hundreds of lifetimes to pay, if that were even possible. Yet a benefactor stepped in and paid it for you, free and clear. All you had to do was admit your spending habits were out of control, that you needed help, accept the payment and live in the freedom that was paid for you.  To refuse Christ is as if you refused to allow the payment to be credited to this account and try to pay it off yourself. You will fail and reap the consequences.

The Gospel is this, God created you to be in a relationship with Him. Yet when faced with a choice, we chose to rebel and sinned against God. Our sins separated us from God and created a debt so big that we could never pay it off. Yet God loved us so much that He came as a man and paid our sin debt on the cross and rose again. He freely offers forgiveness of sins and life, true life, to all who trust in Him alone. Have you decided to follow Jesus?

The Fall

Why I Wear Blinders

You ever seen blinders on a horse? As a kid I used to love riding horses. Maybe it was because I grew up watching “The Duke,” John Wayne, movies. I had the opportunity to take classes and attend camps learning how to ride horses. My favorite thing to do was go trail riding. Getting out of the barn, the corral and into the open land. It was great. However, if you’ve ever ridden a horse, you know how easily distracted a horse can get when they see some delicious clovers. If you have a particularly easily distracted horse it can be a real annoyance and you spend the majority of your time trying to get your horse to keep focus.

Blinders were developed to help block out the distractions. When wearing blinders the horse can only see what’s directly in front of it through small openings. It has been a very effective means of controlling the horses.

Spiritual Blinders

I, along with all of humanity if we are honest, willingly chose to wear spiritual blinders everyday. These blinders are little lies I tell myself like “I’m in control,” “everything is good,” “everything always works out,” etc. I deny the uncertainties of life, I push away my fears, and I function in a way to avoid the hurting going on around me. These are little defenses we have developed to protect ourselves from the truth that we live in a fallen world. There is so much hurting and pain in our lives and the lives of those around us that we could drown in the flood of issues.

It is the natural man’s tendency to deny the fact that we live in a fallen world. A world that isn’t the way it was intended to be. Some live an entire life without really seeing the world for what it is. In Christ, He has opened our eyes and removed the blinders for us to see that we desperately need Him because everything else is broken.

The Disruption Takes Place

The first humans, Adam and Eve, were created by God to be His Image Bearers. The Imago Dei, image of God, is a profound truth that shapes everything about us and our views of life. However our Edenic parents made a choice that marred the image of God that has been passed down from generation to generation. As the Serpent tempted Eve in the garden to eat of the one fruit the Father told them not to, she saw that it was good to eat and tasted it. That’s all it took for perfection to cease and the image bearer to be tainted with sin.

Sin is the heart attitude of removing God from His proper place and replacing Him with anything else. Eve saw that knowledge and understanding were desirable. She began to desire experience and knowledge more then pleasing God. What is your particular area of sin that you struggle with the most? Is it your job? Your family? Your sports? Your relationships? Sex? Pornography? Popularity? Gossip? Etc. Whatever you are willing to pursue in place of God. That is an idol and the misplaced affection is sin.

When Adam was faced with the same decision, he chose to please his wife and his own curiosity then to honor God. Sin entered in the world like a raging tidal wave. The ordered creation of the Garden was thrown into chaos. What was to be a life of tending the perfect garden in close relationship with their Creator, turned into the curse of hard work, pain in child bearing and rivalries.

The Extent of the Disruption

Within that first generation we see a brother slaughter his brother. Why? Because Cain was angry at Able’s righteousness.  Have you ever felt that way? You see someone living more righteous then you and for some reason you are just mad at them. This jealousy is connected to the sin nature that has passed on to every human that ever lived, except for Jesus Christ.

The generations that followed began to seek out their own schemes and paid no attention to their Creator. They began to build a tower called Babel, in order to centralize and make a name for themselves. This was in direct opposition to God’s command to multiply and spread throughout the world.

Violence and evil spread like wild fire. Mankind forgot about the Creator and the garden where they came from. All their thoughts were depraved and violent. Even to the point that God wanted to destroy all of mankind because of their wickedness.

Yet God had grace on one man, Noah, and his family. The flood came because of the spread of sin, wickedness and violence. But God made a promise after the flood with an reminder, the rainbow, that He will not destroy the world like that again and He hasn’t given up on mankind.

The World is still disrupted

Looking around at our world today, we see that we are indeed still living in a broken and fallen world. With the advancement of intellect, education, technology and wealth you would think mankind could overcome their predicament. However that is not the case. We still live in a fallen world. Relationships are broken. Wars are being fought. Selfishness is reigning.

We live in a world in need of a Savior and we are called to be agents of reconciliation. Looking to the past to remember that we are sinners and in desperate need of a Savior will keep us with our eyes on the prize: Jesus Christ. Look for ways to help bring hope and healing to the broken and fallen people around you today. Remember that many are wearing spiritual blinders because seeing the true condition will hurt too much. Don’t be surprised by some kickback, but longingly and patiently seek the spiritual welfare of those around you.

Beginnings

Over the next four weeks, in preparation for Camp, we will be looking at the Meta-narrative (or Big Picture) of the Bible. The Big Story of God has four movements:  Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration. These four movements are the dramatic unveiling of God’s redemptive plan and provide the foundation we are to build our lives and faith on. Too often we try to piece together our lives according to an understanding of God divorced from the context of His revealed purpose and plan. The end result is we create God into our image instead of us being the image bearers of God.

Essentially we create an idol that we are comfortable with because we are the stars in our own story. However, understanding God’s redemptive meta-narrative we will see that we play a supporting role, not the lead, in His Story. The Story is about Him and when understood and told properly we see The Story is Good News and revolutionary to how we view everything. If what the Bible tells us about Creation is true, then it will affect how we see ourselves, how we view relationships, how we look at the poor, how we understand hot topics (like sex before marriage, homosexuality, abortion, racism etc.). If what the Bible says is true about the Fall, then it will shape our view of our human condition and our desperate need for a hero. If what the Bible says is true about Redemption then it brings hope to our desperate need, and assurance of better things to come. If what the Bible says is true about Reconciliation, then we begin to live lives today that enjoy the presence of Jesus and long for the day that He restores all things.

Creation – The Beginnings

We live in an era where modern myths rule the day as truth and shape the direction of our entire culture. When I use the word “myth,” I am referring to the philosophical meaning of “a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind have taken their present form.” Myths can be good and combine elements of truth to paint the picture of where we came from and where we are heading. Every people group throughout history has myths that have been passed down for generations.

Evolution, by evolution I mean macro-evolution and not micro-evolution, is a modern myth, a sacred narrative. Yes that is what I meant to say. Evolution is a religious claim. It is not based in true science, but in speculative science. It is a faith based religious slant on science.  Evolution that is being taught in our schools and colleges are teaching a scientific hypothesis that is contrary to established scientific laws as truth. It is a faith-based claim that attempts to explain the formation of our world and answer where we come from. Yet it is taught as fact and not as theory. It is presented as the only rational way of thinking and any other faith claim as ludicrous.

In the Beginning…

With these words, the Holy Scriptures, begin to answer the questions of origin, meaning and purpose. The Bible is not just a myth like the others, it claims to be divine rather then human in origin. It presents the beginning as if it was from an eyewitness account, because it was. According to the Bible, God created the world in 6 literal days. He spoke the world into existence, out of nothing, demonstrating His sovereign power. All through His creation He left breadcrumbs, little clues, for us to see whom He is, that He is a creative designer and a God of intelligence and order.

All parts of creation were a result of His spoken word, with the exception of humans. When it came to creating man, God decided to get dirty and form man with His own hands out of the dust of the ground. He breathed His own breath into man, creating an embodied spirit, a creation that is both physical and spiritual. Not only that, He created him to be relational with the decree “it is not good that man is alone,” and so He created for him a “helpmeet.” God made a compliment to Adam in Eve.

And with the creation of humankind, God gave us the pattern for healthy life. He established marriage between a man and a woman. He made two sexes, not left to be determined by social constructs, but as part of the creative order. He instituted marriage as the primary building block of civilization.

The Garden

Upon completing the apex of His creation in humanity, God put our first parents in a garden. The garden was where they were to fulfill the order and rules established for them. They were to tend the garden, multiply and not eat of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good an Evil.

How great would it be to really only have three general rules to live by? In the garden there was no pain, sorrow, disease or even sunburn. Adam and Eve frequently walked and talked with their Creator in the midst of His most beautiful creation. It was perfect as God intended. Yet the Shalom, peace, they had was going to be short lived, but that’s where the story picks up next time.

The Picture

The Creation story is an account of the beginnings and teaches us about our Creator. He is the author and giver of life. He made us and created us for His glory. He gave to us the Holy Scriptures that we might know how to live this life to the fullest. It is in seeing and knowing our Creator through Jesus Christ, that we will understand our meaning, our purpose and our place in this world and His Story.


Just for fun: I thought this video clip from the new movie Noah was pretty good, with a few exceptions. However, I loved how he told his children that this is the story that his family was given to protect and pass on to future generations. I love how he sat down with his family and told the story. I love how the imagery of creation paints a great picture for us of the order of creation.