God's Plan of Salvation -6
In my dictionary the word humiliation is defined as "the state of being humiliated - abasement: to lower the dignity of".
I don't think we fully understand the nature of the humiliation that was Christ's and because perhaps we don't fully appreciate it then perhaps we fail to understand the magnitude of the Love of God shown to us in Jesus.
Nor do I think that so far in our discussion of the nature of God's Plan of Salvation have we fully addressed the reality of THE LOVE that lies behind all of this. God could so easily and readily have simply destroyed sinful and disobedient man. But through all of his dealings with us we see the underlying power of love at work. A love that we can barely begin to understand.
For the creator to willingly and voluntarily take on human form is an act of love that defies description. To be born vulnerable and helpless is an amazing act of love.
This then is the nature of the humiliation that our God undertakes in order to bring us back into his bosom.
In Adam we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God but in the events of this weekend we see the central and pivotal point of the Plan revealed to us in all its wondrous glory.
We see almighty God humiliated and rejected and hung on a cross. We see the long hard struggle to get there - even in the Garden, the Lord asked that this cup should be taken from him.
Here is the man - the creator God - perfect and sinless and he is rejected by his creation. It is the ultimate sin, the ultimate consequence of Adam's action - we try to kill God. And still we do it. We try to ignore God. We try to pretend he doesn't exist.
Christ dies in order to set us free. He takes sin, our sin, all our sin, upon himself and he experiences death. Real death.
Here is atonement which means a making at one and points to a process of bringing those who are estranged into a unity. The need for atonement in God's plan of Salvation is brought about by two things: the nature of sin as we have seen in our study of the Fall and man's inability to deal with it.
We come to the CROSS which is central to the PLAN and therefore to Scripture. Everything that went before leads to this point and everything that is to follow stems from it.
Let me share with you this quote: "All are agreed that the atonement proceeds from the love of God. It is not something wrung from a stern and unwilling Father, perfectly just but perfectly inflexible by a loving Son. The atonement shows us the love of the Father just as it does the love of the Son."
Do you remember Paul's great words in Romans 5 : "God has shown us how much he love us - it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!"
Or of course John 3v16:" For God loved the world so much that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life."
And in Hebrews 2v9 we read: "We see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, so that through God's grace he should die for everyone."
Put crudely "men should die,Christ died instead, men no longer die." Or as Paul puts it in Romans 3,25 &26, :"God offered him, so that by his sacrificial death he should become the means by which people's sins are forgiven through their faith in him. God did this in order to demonstrate that he is righteous. In the past he was patient and overlooked people's sins; but in the present time he deals with their sins, in order to demonstrate his righteousness. In this way God shows that he himself is righteous and that he puts right everyone who believes in Jesus."
Over the years on these evenings we have dwelt on the reality of what Jesus suffered and often dwelt on the emotional aspects of it and our own emotional response to these events and that is both good and proper but today we need to see all of this set in its proper context.
At the moment of the death of Jesus we hear of some powerful and amazing portents such as those recorded by Matthew: "Then the curtain hanging in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and rocks split apart, the graves broke open and many of God's people who had died were raised to life. They left the graves and after Jesus rose from death they went into the Holy City where many people saw them."
The temple curtain referred to here was that which separated the Holy of Holies ( the symbolic place where the presence of God was to be found ) from the people and priests. Its tearing and therefore exposing of the emptiness of the Holy of Holies symbolises the reality of the event taking place on Calvary. Here is the new Covenant is Jesus Christ. No longer is access to God to be found through ritual and through the temple sacrifices. The curtain has been removed and we have new and direct access to God through his Son Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Jesus died for our sins - with all the many layers of understanding we can bring to this let us for tonight simply understand it for what it is. He died for us. In being raised from death to life, he burst forth from the tomb with the mortal and corrupt body transformed into the glorified body that will be ours in the future.
There is a very famous painting, I think on a ceiling somewhere the name of which escapes me utterly and totally for the moment of two feet disappearing into a cloud and this symbolises the ascension. And it is totally accurate in its message.
As we have said already Jesus was born a man. died a man and remains a man in heaven. He didn't adopt human form for 33 years and then throw it aside when he ascended into heaven. He was perfect God and perfect man and so he remains.
He made real the possibility that man could once more return to his creator in fellowship. By being united to him in faith and reality by our conversion nothing can now ever separate us from the reality that is heaven.
The Holy Spirit dwells within us and God will never let us go.......
Jesus is now there in heaven our perfect advocate. When we pray to the Father we do so through Jesus Christ - we do so through him because there is no other way of access to God. Jesus is our friend - he knows and understands what our lives are like - on our behalf he intercedes with the Father in love. He is our High Priest. The Eternal One.
Salvation is through Jesus. And through Jesus alone as is made abundantly clear in the Gospels and elsewhere. "I am the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to Father except by me".
So here then we have almost reached the end of the Plan of Salvation. It is now complete but not yet fulfilled. The program is written but not yet finished running if I may use a computer analogy.
Let's summarise again.
God created a perfect world that we destroyed by our disobedience. God set in motion a plan to undo the effects of the fall if you want to think of it that way. He called Abraham and founded his people. Through Moses and others the people were brought into the promised land and moulded into his people. The laws rules and teachings were given to them. Then they were taught about the coming Messiah and came to expect him in their hearts. The Messiah came - God, incarnate in Jesus. In dying on the cross Jesus died for our sins that we might be set free. In rising from the dead Jesus became the first fruits of all those who will follow who love the Lord with all their hearts. The way to heaven is for the moment wide open.........
So what now? Well in our final part of the Plan we look at how it is working out in our world and what the future holds. But for now let us remember with due and just reverence what God has done for us .... for we did not deserve this!