History or His Story
Are we God’s creation or God’s children? We scratched the surface of this in today’s sermon. There is no disputing that we are God’s creation. Genesis 1-2 gives us the account of God’s creation of man. We see the care and trust God gave to man as Adam was placed in the Garden and given dominion over God’s creation. He was to be God’s representative, the image bearer of God to all of creation. Yet the apex of God’s creation fell into rebellion and sin, believing the lie of the serpent that he could be like God, thereby knowing both good and evil. The relationship was severed as Adam is barred from the Garden and expelled to now provide for himself from the sweat of his brow as he toiled in the dirt and struggled against the thorns.
Adam had already experienced good, but now, separated from God, he experiences the bad: the evil brought about by rebellion and sin. Yet in the sovereign plan of God from before the creation of the world and of Adam, God was looking down the corridors of time to how His love would provide for the redemption of His creation through the incarnation of Jesus (God in the flesh), through His sinless life, through His vicarious and willing sacrifice by dying on the cross, and by His victory over sin and death through His resurrection. When Adam rebelled in the Garden, sin and the accompanying threefold death (began to die physically, his death spiritually, and his eternal separation from the presence of God) could not be overcome through anything other than a sacrifice of innocent, sinless blood.
And the threefold death has been passed on from father to children through history, but the victory is that His Story (God’s) is one of love and redemption, adopting us from the bondage of sin and shame into a relationship not one of us has experienced since Adam’s sin. This adoption moves us from children of sin and the devil to children of God. Not longer are we part of a fallen sinful creation, but those in Christ are now the children of God, joint heirs with Christ — the goal of God’s sovereign plan for His glory.
Pressing on,
Senior Pastor Ron Tipton
