Rescue and Restoration

hello I'm Professor Timothy Moore and I get to be your instructor in this course Christian spirituality and this is unit two rescue and restoration we're going to be talking about um the promises of God as they relate to the coming the first Advent the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ um what we're studying here um in theology is referred to as a Biblical soteriology the word soteros means savior the one who rescues and restores and when we look at what the Bible teaches about this process of Salvation this rescue and this restoration we are

developing a Biblical soteriology which is a foundation for Effective Ministry because we need to understand every aspect of God's Plan of Redemption and specifically in this lecture what I'm going to be talking about and covering is um prophetic promises the things that make the Bible unique imagine if you will that you were in a um a theological bookstore a place where you go to get your textbooks on campus and you're in the the section with all of the Bibles and uh the these are the lowtech Bibles not the Bible ABS but the ones that are

leather thin pages and and those new Bibles have that new Bible smell and you're in there and you're just admiring the Bibles and someone comes into the store and they they take one of the Bibles off the shelf and with a snarl they wave the Bible in front of your face and they say what makes this book different than any other book and they wait just a couple of seconds and you are startled and so you don't respond and this person just in a very disrespectful way throws the Bible back on the shelf and storms

out how would that make you feel well that's exactly what happened to me when I was 19 years old I was in Bible College at the chriswell center for biblical studies in Dallas Texas was in the bookstore admiring those Bibles and an older man probably the age I am now because that was about 34 years ago he comes in and he does exactly that wave that Bible under my nose and said what makes this book different than any other book and these slammed it down on the shelf and he stormed out and I'd like to

think now after nearly 12 years of Bible College and Graduate Studies in three different seminaries and 34 years of ministry that my response to that man would be very quick concise and correct and so that's what I hope will happen to you after you listen to this lecture and think about how you can express the sacred and unique qualities of God's word specifically as it relates to the promise of Christ's coming to this earth to be our savior our rescuer Our Redeemer the one who restores us to relationship with God God can we pray about

that pray with me Father God thank you for your sacred and unique word I pray that you would Open the Eyes of our understanding so that we can see your great and precious promises that we can embrace them by faith and that we can understand Lord God how unique and precious your Plan of Redemption is and I pray God that you would get your glory through the lives of the students as they grasp this and are able to apply this truth in their lives and in their Ministry in Jesus good name we pray amen amen

so that's the encounter with the critic what we're going to see in this lecture is what Dr John Piper was expressing when he said Christ is at the heart of the scriptures in all of the Bible in all of the Old Testament let's just talk about the Old Testament Christ is patterned he is promised and he is present from Genesis onward everything connects to Christ he has patterned promised or present second Peter 1:4 touches on this it says because of his glory and Excellence he God has given us great and precious promises these are the

promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires God has given us incredible promises and we're going to be looking at those promises as they relate to Christ being patterned promised and present from Genesis forward Jesus himself testified that the scriptures were all about him in John 5:39 Jesus said you search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life but the scriptures point to me yet you refus to come to me to receive this life the Pharisees the Sadducees the religious leaders uh the the

um the lawyers the the religious legalists of the day rejected Christ because they felt like studying the scriptures the old Testament scriptures um and and their knowledge would save them and Jesus was saying to them those scriptures that you're studying all speak about me and they considered that to be blasphemy and that's why they wanted to kill Jesus but again in Luke 24 and verse 27 says Jesus took them through the writings of Moses that's the first five books of the Bible and all the prophets Major Prophets Minor Prophets explaining from all the scriptures and

so he's talking about what we consider the 39 books of the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi and he says all of these are about me they concern him and we're going to see how that plays out in scripture in this lecture the promises of God there are [Music] 365 prophetic promises prophecies are promises um but there are 365 prophetic promises with specificity in other words they they specifically talk about a time an exact time a place or an experience fulfilled directly in the person of Jesus Christ no other book no there there's no writing

religious writing that has Prophecies of specificity no other specific prophecies about one individual written up to 1500 years before that individual was born with time place and experiences that doesn't exist in any other religious literature and so what we're going to do is we're going to go um back to what we covered in unit chapter one that Proto Evangelion that First Gospel Genesis 3:15 that's where it begins and and it's like a a funnel a large funnel that begins in in Genesis Genesis with the fall and this funnel Narrows Narrows Narrows throughout the 39 books

of the Old Testament until it comes to an extremely narrow Point expressed in the first couple of chapters of the Gospel of Luke where this point can only aim at one person and that person is Christ and so here's that verse that we studied in unit one I'll put enmity between you The Serpent and the woman between your seed and her seed remember seed is Zara in the Greek Sperma the reproductive fluid of a man it's never used of a woman this is the Virgin birth and he it's a male child that will be born

and do this will brute will crush the head of the serpent even though the serpent crushes his heel bruises his heel that's the Proto evangelium the First Gospel the Fulfillment so the point of the funnel top of the funnel is the Proto evangelium the point of the funnel is Luke 131 the Fulfillment of all of the Prophecies of Messiah SA avor Redeemer of the Old Testament come to a point in Luke 1:31 where it says and behold you will conceive this is the Angel Gabriel speaking to Mary saying you will conceive in your womb and

bear a son and you will call his name Jesus Jesus means Yahweh God Saves his name is God saves he will be great and will be called the son of the most high and the Lord God will give to him the Throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end and so it starts with the Proto evangelium gen Genesis 3:15 and we have 365 promises prophetic prophecies with specificity that can talk about no one else no one else fulfilled all of

those prophecies every single prophecy time place specific experiences all fulfilled in Jesus so let's examine uh more about that funnel of fulfilled prophecy and time would never permit Us in this course to go through through all 365 Prophecies of specificity so I've just handpicked a few that we can go through and understand the context of the content and the context and where they came from and again we've already talked about the top of that funnel the garden promise the Proto evangelium and then beyond that I want to talk about the promise that's made to Abraham

and I want to tee that up a little bit before we look at that exact promise in in Genesis 22:18 after the fall and this uh pronouncement of judgment and then the promise that is given Adam and Eve go out of the garden and in Genesis chapter 1 through the end of Genesis um 11 we have the development of two things first and from from Genesis 3 to Noah and and the flood we have the development of what is called secularism uh a life without God secular means to be separated from God separated from anything

that has to do with faith or belief in God and so people began to live for possessions uh they lived uh for what they could experience physically and they lived for um for pride and position in other words first John 2:16 lust of the eyes lust of the Flesh and the pride of life was expressed in secularism Godless living lust of the eye is material ISM it's wanting what you see you see God created Adam and Eve with the intention that they would love God and use things and then the lust of the eye materialism

instead of loving God and using things it is using God and loving things and so that is how they were living their lives they were chasing after possessions they were chasing after sensual experiences that's the lust of the Flesh and they were chasing after achievement and positions that is the pride of life and that um The Pinnacle of that was building a tower attempting to build a tower the Tower of Babel all the way into the heavens the achievement of Man Apart from God and so you had this rise of secularism and the Pinnacle um

of that secularism was the Judgment of God and the flood that Noah and his three sons and their family survived in the ark and then began to repopulate the Earth but unfortunately as they repopulated the Earth instead of secularism develop developing an even more heinous thing an even more evil thing developed and that was idolatry that was the trinket God movement where um where people were just expressing what Adam and Eve fell for in the garden which is they will be like God they wanted to be God Gods when someone starts building Gods carved out

of wood that you can put in your pocket what they're really saying is I want to be God and I want something to serve me so if I'm going to call it God I'm going to carve it put it in my pocket and it's going to serve me and if I don't think it serve serves me I'll get another one that someone else has carved or I'll carve another type of idol and I'll worship that and if I have good luck and I have good things happening in my life then that will be my God

and that increased that idolatrous movement increased from the time of Noah till the end of Genesis 11 and that is the time of Tara Tara was the father of Abram Abram's name was changed to Abraham and Abraham with his father and all of his brothers worshiped Idols we see that in Joshua 24 at verse two which says that Joshua said to the people this is what the Lord the god of Israel says long ago your ancestors including Tara that's the father of Abraham the father of Abraham and nahor lived beyond the Euphrates River and they

worshiped other gods and so Tara his sons and ab Abram who became Abraham were a part of that idolatrous movement they were worshiping those trinket gods and then somehow in Genesis CH 12 God reveals himself the one true God reveals himself to Abram and promises are made to Abraham and a Covenant of Grace unfolds between God and Abraham so that all of Abraham's descendants and that's not his necessarily his physical descendants because the scripture says in Romans all who believe all who have faith in Christ are children of Abraham but God develops this Covenant of

Grace from Genesis 121 through Genesis 22 there are 10 chapters as God unfolds the Covenant of Grace with Abraham his name was Abram in Hebrew it's a v aam Aram means Father Abraham means the father of Nations and so I joke with my kids abam means Daddy and Abraham means Big Daddy um he's he's going to impact Nations and there's one thing that's going to happen through abraam the father of Nations one thing is going to be the key piece that impacts and blesses all the nations of the earth and we see that in Genesis

22:18 where God says it is through your seed that I will bless the Nations it's through your seed it's the same word as Genesis 3:15 zerah and it is singular so he says to to Abraham I'm going to make you a father of many nations but one descendant one zeran not all of them just one will be the one that blesses all people of all Nations this is a promise so we have the Proto evangelium we have the promise made to Abraham and so it's not just a descendant of Eve and Adam now we know

it's a descendant of Abraham so the prophetic funnel begins to tighten a little bit and the next thing is the promise to Judah so Abraham has a son Isaac Isaac has a son Jacob Jacob's name is changed to Israel the prince of God and Jacob has 12 sons and those 12 sons eventually become the 12 nations of Israel or the 12 tribes excuse me of Israel and when Jacob is at the end of his life he pronounces blessings over his sons and there's a blessing that's promised to Judah one of the sons and that blessing

is that the scepter the king's scepter will never depart from the tribe of Judah in other words there will be a king that comes through the lineage of Judah who will reign forever and ever it's the promise of the king scepter and when Christ came he was called The Lion of the tribe of Judah the king of all Kings and the Lord of all Lords one interesting thing as we look at these promises is I think about the people that the promises are made made to and their faults their Humanity their sin is recorded in

the scripture um obviously the sin in the garden obviously um Abraham lied he deceived people about his wife twice and it's recorded in scripture and then Judah who's called the most righteous son of Jacob his life was like uh a crazy talk show his son dies and he leaves a wife named um Tam Tamar and judah's wife dies and Tamar had never had a child and so she dresses up like a prostitute and Judah goes in and lies with her and she becomes pregnant and so Judah gets his daughter-in-law pregnant thinking she was a prostitute

and then when he finds out that she's pregnant he orders her to be killed to be stoned to death and he had given the prostitute a ring and she said the father of the child is the one to whom this ring belongs and then Judah repents and he says she's more righteous than me and so the faults of these people are recorded in scripture and yet God forgives them as they repent and put their faith in God God forgives them and he uses them in beautiful ways and that is a part of the Covenant of

Grace God not just being merciful but going Beyond mercy and having Grace and so that's the promise to Judah the the scepter will not depart from Judah so you have the garden promise tightening to the abrahamic promise and then tightening again to it's one son of Jacob that the Messiah will come to the Earth the the one who rescues and restores will come through that son and so you see the funnel getting smaller and smaller and next we have the promise to David in 2 Samuel 7:16 God is making a covenant with David and he

makes a promise to David in verse 16 he says this your house your kingdom will continue before me for all time and your throne will be established forever so we have the garden we have the promise to Abraham we have the promise to Judah and now we have the promise to David King David that it's his throne that will be established forever and when Christ came to the Earth he was called The Lion of the tribe of Judah and he was called the son the descendant of David and he was a descendant of David Mary

the Virgin Mary was was a direct descendant of King David and Jesus is the Fulfillment of that promise and then there's a promise to Isaiah later on about 400 years later God raises up the prophet Isaiah and he gets very specific with Isaiah in 7 uh chter 7:14 he says therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign behold the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel and so God is clearly expressing what he implied in Genesis 3:15 that the Virgin seed will crush the head of the serpent he

says the Virgin shall conceive and bear the son and you shall call his name Emmanuel Emmanuel in Hebrew means God is with us and so Jesus had a name and he had a title his name Jesus means God Saves and his title Emmanuel means God is with us and then in chapter 9 verse 6 he he the Isaiah says unto us a child is born unto us a son is given and the government will be upon his shoulder and his name will be called wonderful counselor Mighty God Everlasting father and the prince of peace and

so the funnels getting tighter Garden Abraham Judah David Isaiah and he starts talking about the fact that he will be born of a virgin and his character what he will be like and then there's a promise to Daniel an incredibly specific promise in Daniel chapter 9 it says in verse 25 know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until the Messiah the prince there shall be seven weeks and 62 weeks of years and so the weeks represent years and so 7 and 62 is 69 69 *

7 is 483 and so what God is doing with the prophet with with Daniel as a prophet he's giving him the a prophecy with specificity and saying the exact year and time that the Messiah the Christ the one who will rescue the one who will restore will will be crucified 483 years from the time a decree Goes Forth to rebuild Jerusalem and we know that that happened King arz Xerxes of Persia financed it he made the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem and from the time that he made that decree until the time that Jesus

was crucified was exactly 400 83 years 69 weeks of years that takes you from the time of the Declaration to the crucifixion of Jesus is 33 add and and he says later in that um chapter Daniel chapter n that uh he says that the end of the end of wickedness the payment of sin talks about why Jesus died in Daniel chapter 9 so this is unique it's Unique to specify a time that something would happen 483 years in the future and so that funnel is getting very tight very very tight The Funnel of Prophecy phy

and you got to remember there are hundreds of prophecies between these there's 365 of these total and we're just looking at a handful but speaking of specificity of place the prophet Micah in Micah 52 about 600 years before Christ was born said but you Bethlehem eph Bethlehem he's talking about the city and the region the town and the region says though you are little among the thousands of Judah yet out of you will come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel whose goings forth are from old from Everlasting and so Micah specifies

the place of the birth of the Messiah he says it is the town of Bethlehem now I have gotten pushed back in the past when I've talked about the Prophecies of with specificity or any of the Prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament and someone um said one time well Jesus was Jesus knew those scriptures and he was just um trying to live those out to to make people think he was the Messiah and my response was how do you choose where you're going to be born how do you choose the place of your birth

Micah 52 600 years is before Jesus was born and said he will be born in Bethlehem and the Magi came from east from Persia through the deserts to the place why because they had the Prophecies of specificity and they knew when and they knew where the Messiah would be born that's what makes the Bible unique these prophecies with specificity and then another amazing prophetic Psalm is Psalm chapter 22 this is written uh over a thousand years before Jesus was born and it describes the crucifixion of Jesus in verse 16 it says for dogs have surrounded

me the congregation of the wicked enclosed me they pierced my hands and my feet I can count all my bones they look at me and stare at me they divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots so this is not only talking about crucifixion and having his hands and his feet pierced it's talking about what the soldiers would do they gambled for the clothing of Jesus because someone had given Jesus a cloak that was one uh one piece of fabric which was very unusual for that day but from the neck to

the floor one long piece of fabric and it was worth something and so the soldiers gambled for that clothing of Jesus and this is talking about that over a thousand years before Jesus was born not Cru crucified before he was born and it's talking about it hundreds of years before the first crucifixion ever happened the first recorded crucifixion happened in 550 BC the world had never seen a crucifixion yet in Psalm 22 16-18 the Bible describes the crucifixion of Jesus and even that the soldiers would gamble for his clothing and so the funnel is coming

to an incredibly sharp point in his book science speaks Peter Stoner applies the modern science of probability to just eight prophecies not the 365 just eight regarding Christ uh Dr Stoner is a mathematician he's not a theologian but he says that the chance that any man might have fulfilled eight prophecies is one in 10 to the 17th power that would be one in 100 quadrillion that's 17 zeros and so uh Stoner suggests that when we take 10 to the 17th power and again that's just a probability of eight prophecies being fulfilled in Christ and this

is what uh Dr Stoner said if you take that many silver dollars and you cover the entire state of Texas they would be two feet deep and if you marked one of those silver dollars somehow and you stirred the whole mass of silver dollars thoroughly and you blindfolded a man that that didn't see any of that you brought someone in and you put a blindfold on them and you could tell you tell that man he could travel as far as he wishes but he must pick up only one silver dollar what chance would he have

of getting the right one I'll tell you 10 to the 17 power one in 100 quadrillion that's the probability of someone fulfilling eight prophecies with specificity and Jesus fulfilled 365 prophecies with specificity we don't have numbers in in human mathematics we do not have numbers to express the magnitude of that so what do you do with it what do we what do we do with this information as people who are training for ministry as people who are in Ministry um what do you do with it personally how do you apply it in your ministry setting

well first personally you let it strengthen the veracity the the verification the truthfulness the trustworthiness of God's word as sacred and unique and you let it assure you that this great Plan of Redemption that's prophesied from Genesis and fulfilled in Luke chapter 1 in the birth of Christ and then the perfect life of Christ the crucifixion the resurrection his perfect example for us and and the promises of the future are our hope our confident and joyful expectation and the scripture speaks of the return of Jesus Christ to this earth Eden was perfect before the fall

and when Christ Returns the Bible says everything will be Eden again not just one Garden the Earth will be what the theologians call edenic it'll be the identic Earth Jesus will make all things new all things as they were meant to be and there will be no hurtful thing he will come back to this earth and when his feet touch down we see the evidence of that his feet touch down on the Mount of Olives the Bible says it splits in two and Living Waters Flow into the desert and the desert blow blooms like springtime

there's flowers throughout the desert and that continues over the entire earth the earth blooms as the Garden of Eden and all things are restored that's why the Bible ends with the phrase even so come Lord Jesus he will make all things right he can make all things right in the heart of an individual now that is receptive to him and he will eventually not just restore relationship with God he will restore all creation Romans chapter 8 says all creation groans and waits for the day the creation Longs for the day because he doesn't just save

our Immortal Souls he he saves all of creation from the corruption of the fall when he returns to this earth and so I would say um if you haven't put your trust in Christ as Savior example and King Eternal follow your heart and that pull of your heart come into a relationship with him Romans 10:13 says whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved believe in what he's done for you he died for your sins he rose from the grave to prove he's your source of forgiveness invite him to come into your

life and we can lead others to do that as well in our Ministries and they can have the Assurance of an eternal relationship with God forgiveness the possibility of an abundant life and know that when this life is over they will be received by the Lord welcomed into heaven and I want to finish with the words of Isaiah in Isaiah 556 he said seek the Lord while he may be found call upon him while he is near let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts let him return to the Lord and

He will have mercy on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon