5 - When Adam fell, it ruined God s perfect plan for mankind Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:3-6

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1 1 5 - When Adam fell, it ruined God s perfect plan for mankind Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:3-6 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. (Eph. 1:3-6) Most people in America have some idea of the story of Adam and Eve. They might not get the details right, and they may not understand it all, but they know the gist of the story. Most Christians agree that sin ruined paradise. But did it ruin God s eternal plan? Was God hoping that Adam and Eve would obey His commands and live forever in bliss? Or was the whole plan of salvation in God s mind long before they partook of the forbidden fruit? Here is how many people see it. This perspective embodies the lie, the distortion we want to consider today. God had plan A. All His created beings would live together in love and joy. However since some of his creatures took advantage of their free will, the entire human race was plunged into sin and all its ugly consequences. So God came up with plan B. He entered it into humanity in the person of Jesus Christ to redeem as many people as possible. According to this scenario, the fall of man in Eden ruined God s plan. Faced with this disaster, Jesus came to clean up the mess. God did not so much act, but was required to react in order to halt the devastation in sins wake. It seems to be like an artist who was painting a masterpiece, but whose enemy came and spilled a blot of indelible ink on the canvass. The artist chooses to work the blot into his plan for the painting. So, God took the mess that His creation made and handed to Him, and made the best of it. Welcome to this series of sermons we are offering called Distortions: lies that Christians have chosen to believe about God. So far we have looked at four of these lies: - God is whoever or whatever you want Him to be - All paths lead to God - God is more tolerant now than He used to be - God does not care about my suffering. Today I ask you to join me on this next journey into the land of distortions and consider the next lie: When Adam fell when Adam and Eve sinned it ruined God s perfect plan for mankind. I suggest to you that this is one of Satan s slyest lies. Quite to the contrary, I think there is ample biblical evidence to prove that the fall of Adam was man s part of God s Grand Plan A. I think the unified story of the Bible is that God created that He might redeem; He redeemed that He might better display His glory. So this present world, in all its brokenness, is used by our sovereign God to fulfill His Plan A. READ with me from Acts. Known to God from eternity are all His works. (Acts 15:18) PRAY! Once again we are venturing out into deep waters! When we seek to take on such well-entrenched lies and expose them to the light of Truth, it is never a simple task. We have dealt with suffering and sin, but today we have to deal with how they were involved in God s goal for His glory. Look with me first at God s Eternal purposes Try if you can to imagine nothing but God. Nothing else. God is all there is. No heaven or earth. No living creatures. No space. No nothing. Just God in Three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

2 I know that is quite the challenge, but bear with me. This is how our Bible tells us it was. God always was. He was not created. He has no beginning or end. He just was, is, and always will be. As such He needs nothing. He was and is totally complete within Himself. There are those that would tell you that God was lonely and so He created a world to play with. That makes good mythology but it is not biblical! Not in the least. God needs nothing, wants for nothing: He is totally self-sufficient. Paul said, God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. (Acts 17:24-25) Why, then, did God create the universe? In the words of Jonathan Edwards whose preaching was a huge part of the Great Awakening that hit America like a spiritual sledge hammer for the overflow of His glory! He created all that is to do His bidding and to radiate the divine glory that is God. When God created He did so out of nothing. He simply and profoundly spoke and it was! By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. (Ps. 33:6) If anything ever existed, it is because God created it. When we go to the Word of God asking about God s eternal purposes for His creation, the goals He wished His creation would accomplish, the Bible answers those questions many times and in many ways. What He began in creation He was to consummate in His glory. Maybe the most dynamic of those biblical references is to be found in Paul s writing to the Colossians. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (1:16-17) Nothing is left out! Everything was made through Him and for Him. We were created by His good pleasure and for His good pleasure! Let me make it simple: this world was created by Christ and for Christ! God made all that was made for Himself. The result of this vast creative enterprise is for creation to radiate His glory: for Him to be glorified by and through that which He has created. Now the tough question: But, Pastor what about evil? What about the devil? Did God create those as well? How does a good and holy God create evil? Paul spoke these words, Known to God from eternity are all His works. (Acts 15:18) Let me make a couple of observations and then seek to answer. First, remember that God is omnipotent: that is, He is all-powerful. There is nothing He cannot do except violate His own nature. Second, remember that God is omniscient: that is, He is all-knowing. Nothing has ever happened that has taken Him by surprise. He has foreknowledge of all things. He is beyond time and sees everything in one moment. So, when He created Adam and Eve, He knew that they would abuse their freedom of choice and sin against Him. He knew man would fall. No new fact can ever arise that God did not know beforehand! None! But God made the earth by His power; He founded the world by His wisdom and stretched out the heavens by His understanding. (Jer. 10:12) Here His omnipotence and omniscience are linked in creation. Third, God is omnipresent: that is, He was, is and always will be everywhere at all times. He fills His creation. There is no place that God is not. The Psalmist grasped this in Ps. 139:7-12. There is no place in creation where we can run that we do not run into God! Can anyone hide himself in secret places, so I shall not see him? says the Lord; Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord? (Jer. 23:24) Now think with me about these three attributes of God: His omnipotence, His omniscience, and His omnipresence. Do you think that this God, so powerful, wise, and present, would have created a universe in which anything might happen beyond His will? Think of Job: I know that You can do all things; no plan of Yours can be thwarted! (42:2) Listen to me not even free will can stand in the way of God s sovereign purposes! His power, His wisdom, His presence are infinite! 2

3 Don t think for a moment that you can limit such a God by our limited human reasoning! That having been said, to answer the question of whether or not God created evil No! God is not the source of anything evil! But He created a perfect flaw in His perfect creation! He gave mankind freedom! Free will! Granted, God stacked the deck in His own favor. He surrounded Adam and Eve with a vast garden, full of His most wondrous creations. Only one thing was forbidden them. But that one thing was what they longed for. Did Adam s sin surprise God? Did He hasten to try and make right what Adam messed up? No! In His omniscience, God knew from before the creation that the pinnacle of His creation would break His heart. So, before time began, God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit agreed on a means by which the apex of their creation might be saved. That takes us to God s Eternal redemption Paul intentionally connected creation with redemption in Eph. 1:4. just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love I want you to get this clear in your thinking. The plan of redemption was in the mind of the Godhead before He created the people who would need to be redeemed! We cannot think of creation apart from redemption: the two are linked from before the beginning in the Mind of God. The World was made for Calvary! When God created the world it was with the intention of dying for it! When He pushed up the mountains and shoved down the valleys, it was to create a skull shaped hill on the top of a mountain upon which He would offer Himself! Can you grasp that? The remedy was created before the disease came into existence! Look with me at the Word. Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; (Acts 2:23) For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done. (Acts 4:27-28) The Holy Godhead planed the Cross in the distant eons of eternity past. He planned our redemption before He created us! Wow! One more scripture text! who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began (2 Tim. 1:9) Have you ever thought of that? It is mind blowing! If anyone wants to shout Amen now would be a good time! God s Future consummation Let s bring all this together the way Paul did, under the leadership of Holy Spirit. having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. (Eph. 1:9-12) It was God s plan from before the creation of time to bring praise and glory to Himself through the redemption of His creation! One more time, if anyone wants to shout Amen now would be a good time! Questions about God s Great Plan So how is it that God planned this out from before time began? Are we all playing a part that was pre-written for us? Are we puppets on His stage unknowingly doing His bidding to accomplish His 3

4 purposes? And what does this tell us about all the evil stuff that has happened throughout history? How can God be blameless regarding atrocities like the Holocaust if all that has happened is according to His plan? Who am I to give a quick, simple answer to questions that have plagued mankind for centuries? Yet to confront the lies of the Enemy, I must try. I find the answer in a mystery. Have you discovered yet that God loves mystery? Have you pondered the tension God intentionally creates in His dealings with us? Consider the mystery of the Trinity! Consider faith and works. We are saved by faith apart from works, but faith without works is dead! Consider Paul s admonition that we have to die to live or we will live only to die. If we are to save our lives we must lose our lives. We are never truly free until we are bondservants of Jesus Christ. God loves to bring us truth in mysterious tension. The answer to our dilemma today is couched in just such a mystery: God s sovereignty and man s free will. Free Will vs. Sovereignty Minds much greater than mine have debated this mystery since who knows when! Christians have been polarized over it: many taking one position to the exclusion of the other. This is the old Calvinist vs. Armenian debate. Why must we choose one or the other when both are supported in Scripture? Why must we break fellowship over this? But we do. God help us! For some devilish reason we tend to see only those things that we disagree about rather than all we agree on! I heard a story told by Emo Phillips that illustrates this. Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!" Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, you heretic!" And I pushed him off the bridge! Really friends, do we need to argue about this? Can we not see that both free will and God s sovereignty are biblical, often found side by side? God has so thoroughly thought out this matter of creation and redemption going hand in hand. He has arranged the universe so that our desires unite with His will. The Bible does not see a contradiction between human responsibility and divine providence and direction. Why should we? The same scripture that teaches that Christ died by the predetermined will of God also calls the men who carried it out wicked; they are accountable for their actions! (Acts. 2:23) Both God s predetermined will and man s free will occur in the same verse. Maybe the best I can do is this. Any view of free will that denies that God rules among the inhabitants of the earth is unscriptural. Any view of predestination that treats us as puppets is equally unscriptural. The Bible presents a union between our inclinations, desires, and choices and the will and plan of God. These come together in the Bible to accomplish His purposes. God s side renders the events certain; our side means that we act responsibly. It is both and, not either or! 4

5 5 I can no more explain that mystery than I can others He has left us with. So where does that leave us with our distortion for today? The Word of God is Truth and it alone is required to expose the lie. Adam s fall did not ruin God s Plan A. He did not have to go to Plan B. Man in his free will did not destroy what God had planned. From long before time began, the Eternal Godhead planned the redemption of the creation He had yet to speak into being. In His omniscience His foreknowledge He knew that His beloved creation would rebel. He knew it would break His heart. He knew that there would be a deadly price for man s rebellion. He knew all this! Ahead of time! And chose to create us anyway! Wow! The eternal Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, chose to bring us into being knowing the pain and suffering He would have to bear to redeem us! Double WOW! Why? Because He knew He had a plan to blend the free will of man with His sovereignty in such a way that His beloved creation would be saved, and spend eternity with the Godhead bringing the Trinity honor and glory forever and ever. So what does this mean to you today? You are here by divine appointment! You are here today because God foreknew you would be here. He so completely planned this service that you would hear of His eternal love for you. He set all this up so that you might freely chose to accept or reject His offer of grace and mercy. If you choose to accept Him, it is because He knew you would. If you choose to reject Him, it is because He knew you would. Either way He will be glorified! You can choose to accept Him and He will be glorified in your eternal life. You can choose to reject Him and He will be glorified as Just when He refuses you entrance into His heavenly abode. Him knowing ahead of time does not determine your choice. If you want to know what He wants from you right now, let me show you His will for your life. The Lord isn t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. (2 Peter 3:9 LT) God s will His desire His heart is for you to be moved by His love for you and accept Him as your Lord and Savior. That is His heart what is your choice?

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