A BRIEF REVIEW
1. God lovingly created Man and Man rebelled against him. The rebellion cost Man life and friendship with God. Evil became so widespread that in Noah's day God had to virtually destroy Man and begin again with Noah (Genesis 1-9). Despite Man's evil God sought to bless him and chose Abraham as his instrument through which to do it (Genesis 12).
2. Abraham's descendants became slaves in Egypt but God rescued them (Exodus 1-15) and made a covenant with them at mount Sinai (Exodus 19-24). Because of their treachery and distrust, Israel's entrance into Caanan was delayed for forty years (Numbers 13-14). After the death of Moses, Joshua took them into the promised land and by God's help they settled there (see the book of Joshua). After Joshua's death the nation betrayed God and was eventually taken from the land into captivity to the Assyrians and the Babylonians (2 Kings 17 and 2 Chronicles 36:11-21). God brought them back into the land but they were never out of trouble. Trouble which usually arose because of wickedness--their own and the evil of their enemies (Ezra and Nehemiah). They sorely needed a deliverer who would liberate them.
THE DELIVERER ARRIVES
3. A plague worse than cholera had broken out in the garden. Sin became lord of the world and the earth corrupted itself. Families and nations taught one another how to sin. They made gods of lifeless rocks and prayed to them for life while they butchered their babies in religious sacrifice. Evil of the filthiest kind became widespread and some nations became famous for it. Men worshiped insects and things that crawled and slithered. They even worshiped men! And they wondered why they had no real life. They were in terrible need of a deliverer! The world hasn't changed. People today butcher their babies in abortion-on-demand-centres in search of life. Nations war their way to peace, riot their way to harmony and cheat their way to fairness. The world became (and is for many) a giant prison, whirling its way through space.
4. A gloomy prince (Satan) from another world had led the eager earth into death and corruption¾he became their lord! They were just as surely his slaves as Israel had been slaves in Egypt. They hated him but served him. He was too powerful for them.
5. But there was an old legend which kept surfacing. It was very old. A few strange men told it generation after generation and it was written in a dusty old Book that not too many knew the value of. It was about a lost garden, about men walking with the Lord of the universe and about a coming Prince who would stand up against Man and his gloomy lord; but he would do it for Man and finally to right all wrongs!
6. Though it was too hard for many to believe, this strange story said the Prince would come from heaven itself and would enter the world as a human. The signal of his arrival would be the pregnancy of a virgin girl (Isaiah 7:14) who would give birth to this baby in a tiny town called Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). His names would reveal who he was and what he was here for. He would be called Immanuel (God with us) because he would be God's own Son and Jesus (saviour) because he was on a rescue mission (Matthew 1:21, 23). He would rescue people from their slavery to the World Hater, the gloomy prince they had submitted to.
7. What had been an old legend became fact! What had been whispered as a story quietly became history in the days of the Roman kings (Daniel 2:44). The virgin's son grew to be a carpenter and waited until he heard the voice of God telling him to lay down his tools and publicly champion Man's cause against Satan.
8. The GOSPELS tell the us the message Jesus brought. He said the reign of God was about to show itself in him (Mark 1:15). He worked miracles by the power of God as part of the proof of what he said (Luke 11:20). He made it clear he hadn't come to condemn the world but that through him God was offering life to the world (John 3:16-17). He also made it clear that there was no other way to God other than through him (John 14:6). To find life the world had built armies, fought wars, worshiped crawling and flying things, they appealed to the dead to help them to stay alive, they invented elaborate rituals, washings and prayers. They even worshiped men! None of it worked! They had done everything but turn to God who gave and gives life! In me, Jesus taught, God would show once and for all time that he meant only to bless and not to curse Man!
9. This manifestation of God's reign finally showed itself in the voluntary death of Jesus Christ. His kingdom was not like the kingdoms of the world, built on war, powerful armies, lies and exploitation (John 18:36). To make people his subjects, God renounced all coercive power. He wanted their hearts and hearts cannot be won by force! Tyrants cannot win hearts! Jesus taught again and again that the way to kingly power was through self-giving service (Matthew 20:25-28). And he practiced what he taught!
THE CURSE DESTROYED IN JESUS CHRIST
10. Blessing in the Bible means life, it means the ability to thrive and prosper. God blessed the living things in Genesis 1:22 and Man in 1:28. The result of blessing is fruitfulness; but blessing can only come from God and from being right with God. So when Man chose to depart from God he chose death and cursing rather than life and blessing.
11. Whenever you see divisions among people, think curse! When you see nation against nation, unions against management, when you see deserts, swamps, the homeless, the hungry and the exploited¾think curse! Man has chosen it! Man has chosen life without God and has found that life without God is just another name for death! (But what of all the children who have made no such choice what of those who have been exploited from the cradle to the grave? See Lesson 6, paragraphs 5 and 6.)
12. The central blessing out of which all other blessings flow is life with God! And there is no possibility of life with God unless the issue of Sin is settled. The astounding truth is that in spite of our wickedly rejecting him, God still wants to bless us. But the Sin problem can only be dealt with in Jesus Christ!
13. When God became Man in Jesus Christ (John 1:1,14), a human finally understood how God felt about Sin. Finally a man knew Evil as God knew it. At last mankind had someone who could truly confess for them the utter horror of Sin. A man (Jesus) was being treated by Man as God had been treated by Man all along! This man knew God's side of the story because he was God with us as a man.
14. The sinless Man identified himself fully with sinful men. He lovingly chose to stand with and among them. He insisted on knowing the worst Sin could do because he was to make mankind's confession of Sin before God. So he tremblingly and lovingly went to the cross. At last! A man was able to understand the full horror of Sin. A man was able to understand why Sin is a curse and brings a curse!
15. Though personally sinless (Hebrews 4:15), Christ stood as Man's representative to share and bear God's judgment against Sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). Standing in mankind's place he will admit that God's judgment against Sin is righteous (John 12:31). In his crucifixion he came to God saying: "I am one with them by loving choice. We confess that you are right about Sin. In me, as the representative of us all, we humbly bear your judgment on our Sin. We say yes to you as our Lord and choose blessing and life rather than cursing and death." That is part of what Galatians 3:13 means when it says Christ became a curse for us in order to bring us blessing. And when we remember that Christ is God incarnate, we remember that it is God who bears our Sin on the tree!
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