Found in the Promises of God

Listen Online:

Transcript:

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of praying and a lot of studying and came to the question of what happened before Bethlehem? What was going on in God’s plans? What was going on in Jesus’ life before Bethlehem?

Because I thought back to early, early on in my ministry, pastoring a small group of people, many of whom had been lifelong Baptists. And I remember being surprised upon finding out that several of these lifelong Baptists Jesus just started to be when he was born at Bethlehem. And I don’t think they’re heretics.

I think they just hadn’t ever thought about it. The problem with that view, and there’s a lot of people out there, that if you ask them, you know, when did Jesus come to be? Well, he was born at Bethlehem.

The problem with that is if Jesus had a beginning, then he’s not eternal. And if he’s not eternal, then he’s not God. And if he’s not God, he could not possibly have paid for our sins. So again, I don’t think that these lifelong Baptists were heretics who thought Jesus was somehow less than God.

I just think they’d never thought about it before and never thought about the implications before. Because we talk so much, you know, we go through the Bible and we’ve got all the stories of the Old Testament, and then bam, you get to Matthew and there’s Jesus. And that’s the First, really, we hear about him unless we know where to look, unless we know where to dig.

By the way, that’s the same thing that happened in Jesus’ day. A lot of the people had studied the Old Testament and missed Jesus all the way through. But if you look at the Old Testament, Jesus is there from day one, page one.

He’s there before day one, actually. As a matter of fact, I’ve said many times that when God said, let us make man in our own image, it’s not God suddenly forgetting the rules of grammar and forgetting how many he is. It’s not as the History Channel, some of the experts on the Bible who apparently have never seen a Bible in its natural habitat would tell us that it’s aliens.

Maybe aliens got in your brain and made you say that. It’s the Trinity. I don’t know why this is so hard to figure out.

It’s the triune Godhead. It’s God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit talking amongst themselves. And yes, I said themselves because one God in three eternally distinct persons, they’re up there in heaven enjoying perfect fellowship together, needing nothing but deserving all the praise that they could ever be given by creatures who choose to love and praise them.

And said, you know what? Let us make man in our image. Jesus was there.

And it’s not just me doing linguistic somersaults around the beginning of the book of Genesis. The Apostle Paul writes this and says that all things were created by him and for him, and by him all things exist. So Jesus has been there from the very beginning. You go back to the very beginning of the Old Testament, Jesus was already there, and he’s there through the whole thing.

Jesus existed and was God long before Bethlehem. But not only that, let’s take it a step further and understand that God has been working to make Jesus known long before Bethlehem. Jesus is present all throughout the Old Testament.

And from now to Christmas, we’re going to be looking at some of these ways that God was making Jesus known and preparing for him to come and be the Savior of his people. And we’re going to see how Jesus today was present in the promises of God. That God made promises that God said, you know what, you’ve got this problem with sin, and I’m going to send my son to deal with this sin problem because you can’t do it.

So we’re going to see how Jesus is present in the promises of God. We’re going to see how Jesus is present in the prophecies of the Jews, where God spoke through holy men, the Holy Spirit indwelled them, and they spoke the words of God, explaining some of the hallmarks, some of the things that we’re going to validate when the Son came. I don’t know if you realize this, there were lots of people before and after Jesus who claimed to be the Messiah and claimed to be the Son of God.

And some of them even did some miraculous things, and some of them even developed a following. But there were, oh, for lack of a better term, there were breadcrumbs all throughout the Old Testament to help us find the trail. Things like, he’s going to be born in Bethlehem.

Things like, he’s going to be born of a virgin. That’s a pretty big sign, okay? And we’ll talk about that next week.

He’s going to be born from this particular family. He’s going to be born at this particular time. God laid out some of the signs that we’re going to validate when the Messiah truly came.

And Jesus is present in the prophecies of the Jews. We’re going to look at how Jesus is present in the pictures of the gospel. Jesus is found in the pictures of the gospel.

And you can go back to the very earliest days of creation and see, as I’ve pointed out many times, how God killed an animal in the Garden of Eden to make a coat of skins to cover Adam and Eve’s sin, to cover their sin, setting the precedent that the innocent die for the sins of the guilty. And you can go through the sacrificial system that God revealed to Moses and see the blood sacrifices. You can see in Moses’ day the serpent, the bronze serpent that was raised up on the pole.

You can see Boaz in the life of Ruth. You can see Joshua as a deliverer. You can see Moses as a deliverer.

You can see the Ark of the Covenant. You can see the tabernacle. And all throughout there, there are pictures of who Jesus would be and what he would do for us.

There are pictures of the gospel hidden all throughout the Old Testament. And we’ll see that Jesus can be found in the pictures of the gospel. And then we’ll see in a few weeks how Jesus can be found in the presence of God’s people.

Because there are actually some places, there are actually some places in the Old Testament where Jesus shows up. Now, he may be called by the name the angel of the Lord. Don’t be confused because I’ve explained on Wednesday nights this idea that angels are a class of created being all by themselves.

What we think of as angels, these cherubs with the wings, and I don’t know if they actually had the halos or not, don’t be misled and think, well, people die and they become those. No, those are a separate deal altogether. But the word that the Bible uses for angel actually means messenger.

And so you’ve got these class of created, I guess cherubim, the Bible calls them, for lack of a better word, who are angels. But you’ve also got, that term can be used for the messenger of the Lord, whoever it may be. That term is used in the book of Revelation, the angel of such and such church, and it’s talking about the pastors.

And I can tell you, knowing myself and knowing several other pastors, we are not angels, okay? As our wives can probably attest. We are not angels, but that word means messenger. And so there are times in the Old Testament where somebody shows up and is called the messenger of the Lord and just doesn’t quite seem to fit what they are expecting.

Or where a mysterious king or prophet will show up, as when Abraham met the king of Salem. Or when there was a fourth man walking in the fire with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And most mainstream Christian Bible scholars believe those are appearances of Jesus Christ. when his people needed him most to show up before Bethlehem.

So Jesus didn’t start being in Bethlehem. He didn’t come into existence in Bethlehem. He’s been there from before the beginning with God the Father, and God the Father has been working to make him known all throughout human history long before Bethlehem.

And this morning we’re going to look at this concept of the promises of God and where Jesus was found. We’re going to be in Isaiah chapter 9 this morning. Isaiah chapter 9.

When we begin chapter 9, Isaiah is writing to the nation of Israel during one of its bleakest periods. And this is after the death of David, and after the death of Solomon who came after him. And when Solomon died, if you remember the story, when Solomon died, his son was a young guy who thought he knew better than any of the wise old men who had advised Solomon.

The people came and said, you know, we love Solomon, but he was really hard on us. He worked us to death. He taxed us to death.

Could you ease up on us? And Rehoboam, his son, said, well, let me think about it. And he consults with the wise old men who’d advised Solomon.

They said, yes, we think this is a good move. Ease up on the people and they’ll love you for it. He says, well, let me ask somebody else because we like to go around and ask advice until we find somebody who agrees with exactly what we want to do anyway, right?

We do that. So Rehoboam goes to the, the Bible says the guys that he grew up with, Bible doesn’t say guys, I’m paraphrasing there. But I imagine this group of frat boys in their infinite wisdom coming around Rehoboam, and they said, no, no, you need to ride the people even harder.

Make them respect you. Well, it backfires. There’s a civil war.

Ten of the kingdoms revolt, and the kingdom splits. Rehoboam is left with two of the tribes in the south, the kingdom of Judah, and the ten northern tribes become the kingdom of Israel. Well, a couple hundred years later, you’ve still got this split, And the kingdom of Israel is in difficult times.

Because while the kingdom of Judah in the south, you know, went through cycles where they’d have a really good king who led the people to serve God and God would bless them. And then he’d die and they’d get a really awful king who led them to do awful things and God would punish them. And they’d go through this cycle.

The northern kingdom, Israel had no such cycle. The northern kingdom had nothing but wicked, awful kings. Their cycle was just how bad are they going to be?

Are they going to be regular evil bad, or are they going to be like child sacrifice bad? That was where the northern kingdom was. And so God had continually sent his prophets and said, you know, you’ve got to repent.

You’ve got to stop this. You’ve got to turn away. And God had given them signs and said, there’s going to be punishment.

There’s going to be trouble. It’s going to be bad for you. God was doing everything he could to get their attention, short of just destroying them.

But they were coming to a period of time where they were about to meet that destruction, where their time was about to be up to repent. And Isaiah’s writing to them during this time because they’re being threatened by the Assyrians. And if you’re familiar with the story of Jonah, it’s the same group of people.

Nineveh was the capital of Assyria. These were rough people. These were people with a brutal reputation.

And they were coming in from the north and they were threatening this northern kingdom. And as a matter of fact, they’ve already taken parts of the northern kingdom. What we know of in Jesus’ day is Galilee, Nazareth, that area.

They’ve come in and taken parts of that land for themselves. And it says in verse 1, Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations. Isaiah, under the inspiration of God, is writing to these people after the Assyrians have already come in and taken big chunks of their country.

So for our purposes, imagine what life would be like in America if, say, the Canadians became really fierce and really hostile. It’s laughable, but imagine that it happened, and they’ve already taken big chunks of the Northeast and the Midwest. Now, we’d be down here saying, what is going on? What is happening in our country?

Why is falling apart. Why is our country being ripped out from us and by the Canadians? Now, they had a much fiercer adversary than that.

But that gives you some idea. I mean, their country has already been ripped in two by these people, and it’s about to get even worse. And he says in verse 2, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them have the light shined. Folks, these people were living in a time that was gloomy for the nation of Israel. They were living in a time when the nation was humbled and when the people were distressed.

And likely they would feel as though God had forgotten them. I mean, think about it. They’re Israel.

They’re supposed to be the chosen people. They’re not supposed to be having these troubles and these difficulties. And yet they were because they’d ignored God.

See, the problem wasn’t that God had forgotten them. The problem was that they had forgotten God. But we don’t think about things that way when we’re having our little pity party.

And so they would have felt like God’s forgotten us. God’s ignoring us. God is just letting all these awful things happen to them.

They thought God had forgotten them, but he hadn’t. And this nation that was about to be devastated, they were about to go through a time when Assyria was just going to take over all of Israel and carry the people off and scatter them all over the Assyrian empire. It’s to this nation that is about to go through this time where they’re really going to feel like God has forgotten them, that God sends a reminder that everything was not lost, and he reaffirms the promise that he’d been making all along to send his son to restore the nation of Israel.

And this is a promise that he’d been making for over 3,000 years. Don’t ever feel like just because God takes a while to keep his promise, that he won’t. Don’t ever feel like just because God doesn’t do things in your time, that he won’t.

There are things that I’ve been praying for for years, to the point that I start despairing over whether God is even listening to me. And then I remember the fact that God had been making this promise for 3,000 years. Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do it.

Just meant he was going to do it when he was good and ready. But he started making the promise of Jesus coming back in Genesis chapter 3 when God is dealing with the fallout from Adam and Eve’s disobedience. And he’s handing out the consequences.

And to the serpent, he talks about how he’ll put enmity between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed. So in other words, the people and the snakes are not going to get along. And I still think that’s a good policy.

I still think that’s a great policy. Keep them away from me or they’re going to die. That’s just the way it is.

I advocate the murder of all snakes everywhere. So he says that he’s going to put enmity. He’s going to make them enemies.

And that the serpent is going, he talks about the seed of the woman, the offspring of the woman, and says that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. Well, the serpent bruises his heel. Well, the thing is, the bruised of the heel, the serpent thinks, I’ve won.

It doesn’t say that it’s a venomous serpent. He thinks he’s won, but he’s only just bruised the heel. It’s just a flesh wound.

The seed of the woman crushes his head, and that’s fatal. You go to the cross, you look at Calvary, Satan, I’m sure, thought he’d won. I put Jesus to death. Three days later, though, he comes up out of the grave and it’s just a flesh wound.

Now, I’m not saying he didn’t really die, but when you’re God and you can come back to life, that death was just a flesh wound. And you know what? There on the cross, when he said, it is finished, he put an end to Satan and his plans for world domination right then and there, because he purchased us back out of sin.

He purchased us back out of our slavery and out of our darkness so that we can be translated out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light. He dealt the death blow at the cross to Satan’s plans. So God began promising this in the garden, that Jesus was going to come and defeat Satan.

He continued to promise it, and these are just a few examples. These aren’t all of them. He promised that Abraham and his descendants would be a blessing to all nations.

He promised that in Genesis chapter 12, but there were other places as well. He promised the same thing to Isaac, Abraham’s son, that his descendants in chapter 26 would be a blessing to all nations. He said that David’s descendants would be a blessing to all nations.

I’m sorry, Jacob’s descendants. Looking at the wrong line here. Jacob’s descendants would be a blessing to all nations.

So he’s promising that this one would come and be a blessing to all nations through the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then he talks about David and Solomon. He says this in 2 Samuel chapter 7 and 1 Chronicles chapter 17.

that David and Solomon, that their offspring, that their descendants would reign on the throne of Israel forever. All of these are pointing, all of these are promises that point to the victory, the coming, the victory, and the eternal reign of Jesus Christ. So these little bits and pieces of this promise are found scattered all throughout the Old Testament. And he’s been making this promise to them starting way back in the garden 3,000 years ago.

And so now through Isaiah, God promises that there’s going to be a lot. He looks at them in their darkness, in their despair, in their thinking, oh, what are the Assyrians going to do to us and why has God forgotten us? He looks to them and promises that God is going to send light to those who walk in the darkness.

He says that in verse 2 here. The people that have walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them hath the light shine.

And you have to kind of look past verb tenses when you’re looking at prophecy because sometimes he’ll talk about things that are in the future as though they’re happening right now. And sometimes he’ll talk about things that are in the past as though they’re happening right now. And so you have to kind of take the whole thing as one big story and kind of understand what he’s saying.

But I think there’s a point to that. When he’s talking about something that God is going to do, and he’s using a verb tense as though it’s happening now, it’s because when God says it, you can go ahead and count on it as though it’s already happened. Now, does that mean he’s already sent his son?

No, but that means that’s how sure he is that God’s going to follow through with his promises. If God says that, you might as well just consider that it’s already happened. You know, they call that counting your chickens before they hatch, right?

And typically, that’s not a good thing to do. Unless the promise is from God, and you’re absolutely certain that he’s going to follow through. So he says this light will be brought to those who walk in darkness.

We look at verse 3, and it says, thou hast multiplied the nation and not increased the joy. Now, I really don’t understand this translation right here, this word not. You look at almost any other translation, old or new, and it doesn’t say not.

It says something along the lines of you’ve increased the joy to him. And the best I can tell is somebody who doesn’t speak Hebrew. The words there are very close in Hebrew, and it could have been just a one copy was misspelled or something.

It doesn’t make sense to me to say you have not increased their joy in the context of the rest of this verse. What it really sounds like is thou hast multiplied the nation and increased their joy, because he says they joy before thee. So it’s talking about how God has increased their joy.

according to the joy and harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. What he’s talking about is there’s a time when God will increase the nation of Israel, when God will increase his people. Yes, they’re suffering and they’re struggling now, but there’s going to come a time when God will increase them and God will increase their joy.

And again, he’s talking about it in a verb tense as though it’s already happened, because he’s that sure that God’s going to follow through. And he says that it’s going to be like when they join the harvest and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. We don’t think about this a lot because most of us in our society today are not farmers.

But imagine if you were a farmer and that’s how you made your living and that’s what you had to live on. And suddenly you’re at the end of the season and you’ve got a bumper crop. You’ve got more than enough not just to live on but to sell and to maybe get ahead.

To put it in our terms, think about when you come to the end of the month and there’s more money than there is month left, if that ever happens, you’ll be excited, won’t you? You’ll feel like I’m getting ahead finally at their great harvest. I’ve seen all these people posting pictures of their deer all over Facebook. It’s nice to see one on Facebook because I haven’t seen one out in the hunting grounds.

But they’ve had a great harvest, these people with these 95-point bucks, and I don’t know how they get them that big. But you know what? They’ve had a bumper harvest, and they’re excited.

There’s joy there. They can’t wait to share it with everybody. Maybe they’ll share some of the meat with me, I hope.

We’ll see. But they’re excited. There’s joy there, right?

He talks about the spoils of war. When they would go and do battle with these countries that were going to destroy them, and God might sometimes let them take some of the spoils back, some of the food, some of the goods, some of the gold. And it was like payday.

And he says, that’s what it’s going to be like for Israel. Yes, you’re in this time of despair right now. He said, but there’s coming a time when God is going to increase the nation and he’s going to increase the joy of the nation as though it’s one of those days, as though it’s payday where we got extra money left over, or as though it’s the day we caught the really big buck, or it’s the day that we had the bumper crop come in, or the day that we won the lottery without even buying a ticket.

It’s going to be like that day, he says. And there’s going to be joy throughout Israel. These people who were in despair, they were going to be enlarged in their joy as they received an abundance that they needed.

Verse 4 says, for thou has broken the yoke of his burden and the staff of his oppressor, the rod of his, excuse me, the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. Now we’ve talked about that story just in the last couple of months on a Sunday night, on several Sunday nights as a matter of fact, when he’s talking about Midian. He’s talking about when Gideon was alive and God called Gideon out of the wine press.

Do you remember that? He’s down there threshing wheat in a wine press, which is a really bad place to thresh it, but it’s the only place he could do it and hide it from the Midianites because the Midianites had come in and they’d so oppressed Israel that they were taking all their food and the people were starving to death. So in order to have any food for his family, He has to hide down in this little valley and try to thresh wheat as best he can.

And God calls this pitiful little man and says, I want you to raise the defense of Israel. I want you to lead my armies. And Gideon says, who, me?

And yet God prepared him. God used him. God strengthened him.

And if you remember the story, God said, you’ve got way too many men. Your army’s too big. Wait a minute.

We’re going up against the Midianites. Okay, that’s like me. How big is a football team?

I can’t remember. 11. That’s like me saying, let’s get together 11 of us and go take on the OU Sooners.

And then God says, wait a minute, you’ve got too many people. Well, God, we’re going up against the Sooners. Really?

At football. I don’t think we’ll beat them at football. We might beat them at some things, but not football.

And God says, wait a minute, you’ve got too many people. Wait a minute, we’re supposed to have 11. We’re going up against the Sooners.

God, I’m not sure we shouldn’t have 30. No, no, you’ve got too many people, and God says, take three. Yeah, that doesn’t make sense, right?

But God put Gideon through these two tests and says, you’ve got to whittle your army down. until he goes in with 300 men. And they surround the Midianite camp, and God says, just do what I tell you to.

And they go in with their torches covered with pottery. And they go in with trumpets. And when God tells Gideon, Gideon gives the signal. And they break the pots, revealing the torches.

And they blow the trumpets, and they scream. And the Midianites wake up and think they’re surrounded by a much larger force. And they wake up in confusion and disorientation.

And God causes this disorientation to fall on them. And they start slaughtering each other, thinking they’re being overrun. And the ones who survive take off running like a bunch of little cowards.

And they’re chased by the Israelites. And from that day on, they didn’t have any more problems with Midian. And God said, it’s going to be like that.

He says, I’m going to break the yoke of your oppressor. Now, if you don’t know, a yoke is what they use to connect oxen or cattle, I guess. Anything, really, with a neck and strong back to pull things.

But you wanted to make sure that your animals that were pulling your plow or your wagon, whatever it was, you wanted to make sure that they were working together so you’d hook them together with this big wooden yoke over their shoulders. And they were basically stuck. They were basically stuck together, pulling whatever you wanted them to pull.

And for the people of Israel, it felt like the Assyrians had a yoke over their shoulders. You know what? Even more than that, I believe Satan had a yoke over their shoulders.

Because long before they were oppressed by the Assyrians, they were enslaved to Satan. They were enslaved to sin and to doing evil. And that’s what brought the Assyrians their direction in the first place.

And they were oppressed by this. And you know what? It’s not just an Israelite problem.

All of mankind is afflicted with the same problem. People think, oh, I can sin, I can do what I want, and they think that’s freedom. What they don’t realize is that sin is a brutal master, and sin will require much more of you than you’re prepared to pay.

Sin will lead you down roads you don’t want to go down. And that’s where true bondage is found. And mankind is in bondage to sin.

And God promises that one day that yoke was going to be broken. The rod of the oppressor was going to be broken just like in the days of Midian. To where it’s not only broken, oh, they had a military victory.

It is shattered and the Midianites are not going to be a problem anymore. The Midianites do not get to call the shots anymore. And that’s exactly what happened when Jesus came.

It doesn’t mean that we won’t have struggles with sin. I sin, you sin. I’ve been a believer for 25, 26 years.

I lose count. I still sin. Some of you have been believers longer than that.

You still sin, but does sin rule over us? No, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. It doesn’t call the shots.

And yes, I’ll struggle and sin and I’ll fall and I’ll slip and fall. And you know what? I come back to God and I confess my sins.

He’s faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. But I also have the option of looking at sin and quoting the book of Romans and saying, sin will not have dominion over me because I’m not under the law, but under grace. You don’t get to call the shots around here.

Midian is not in charge because Jesus Christ has broken the yoke of sin that we carry around with us. And he says in verse 5, For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood, but this shall be with burning of fuel and fire. He talks about the blood and the noise and the confusion that surrounds battle.

Then he talks about ending it with a cleansing flame, burning the whole thing down. And there’s going to come a time when that war is over and the smoke clears and there’s peace. And that’s what Jesus Christ offers to us.

Now, why is this possible? God offers this to us and God made this possible because of one person, Jesus Christ. God promised all these things or God could promise all these things because God also promised to send his son to be our savior. Let’s look at verse six.

For unto us a child is born. These next couple of verses will probably be familiar to a lot of you. For unto us a child is born.

Unto us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. And upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Now we hear that verse quoted a lot at Christmas time, especially verse 6, but you may never have stopped to read it in context and realize who God was writing this to. Yes, it’s a promise to us, but it’s an already fulfilled promise to us. The promise was given to people who were about to go through their darkest time, and God is saying, but on the other side of it, I’m going to send one who will save you from this.

I’m going to send one who will redeem you as a nation and someone who will put an end to this nonsense once and for all. Now we still look forward to the ultimate fulfillment of that. We’ve seen the spiritual fulfillment of this.

When Jesus defeated sin and death and hell, we also look forward to the physical fulfillment of this where one day Jesus defeats Satan and casts him into the lake of fire once and for all. And there’s no more sin and no more crying and no more pain and no more suffering. And we live in a perfect paradise with Jesus the way we were created to in the garden in the first place.

But Jesus, again, did not just start being at Bethlehem. He was there long before and he was found in the promises of God long before. God promised his own son as a gift to humanity.

God loved you enough that he promised his son as a gift to you. I love y’all, but I don’t think I’d give my children to you. Well, sometimes I 

Powered by atecplugins.com