Our ‘GPS’ to Eternal Life

 

Sermon by Rev. John Zuidema

BoW: 8a; Rej2: 357; BoW: 361; BoW: 511; BoW 534;

Scripture Reading: Gen 1:24-31; Eph 4:17-5:2; LD 3 Q&A6;

 

Beloved people of God,

Today I wish to speak to you about a GPS. Now some of you may be thinking of an electronic GPS that are basically a Sydway or UBD or Gregorys in an electronic gadget. It has a suction cap attached to it so that sticks to your windshield.

Now the advantage of a car GPS is that it can tell exactly where you are and you can enter in a destination and this electronic gadget will give you verbal and visual instructions on how to get there. And when you go wrong or there is a road blocked for some reason or other, it recalculates the route as you drive, so that you never need to be lost. It’s a great invention and works reasonably well most of the time.

Well this morning I am going to speak to you about another GPS. I have called it “God’s plan of salvation.” Although there are many electronic versions about, it can still be purchased in book form. And the real beauty of it is that it is simple enough for any person to read and become wise to God’s Plan of Salvation. But of course, that raises a question for many people. Why would you need God’s Plan of Salvation?

Because dear friend without it, you wouldn’t know that you are going in the wrong direction. More than that, you wouldn’t even know when or where you started to go wrong. Nor for that matter, what you need to do to get back on track. God’s Plan of Salvation does all those things and what’s more, it brings you safely to your eternal destination.

I put it to you, that for an unbelieving sinner to arrive at a joyous eternal destination, three things are needed. First, they need to be made aware that things didn’t start out bad, but according to God’s GPS, things started out very good! (Gen 1:31)

Secondly, they need to be made aware that they are heading in the wrong direction. Remember what Paul said in Romans 7:7? I would not know what it was to covet if the law had not said, “Do not covet”. And then thirdly, they need to be given a map that shows the right direction to eternal life. They need God’s plan of salvation.

And God’s plan of Salvation is Jesus Christ and that is found in God’s word, His GPS to eternal life. It is this GPS that makes us aware of our glorious beginning, our current misery and never ending dead end streets, and our glorious end in Jesus Christ.

God’s word reminds us that man wasn’t always so wicked and perverse as they now are. He wasn’t always lost and in misery for not loving the Creator God and his neighbour. In Genesis 1:31 we read that God had created all things and it was very good!

In Gen 3:8 we read that Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day! At man’s glorious beginning he had perfect fellowship with his Creator! He walked in the cool of the day with him! Initially, man had no trouble loving God and his neighbour. There was perfect harmony between God the Creator and mankind.

But when Adam and Eve were no longer satisfied with that idealic relationship, everything went pear shape real quick! Thorns and thistles and labour pains and last but not least banishment from God’s presence and death.

I wonder sometimes what Adam and Eve and their children talked about when they recalled how Adam and Eve were banished from Eden. What a contrast that must have been for them! They had lived in perfect fellowship with God in Paradise and because of their wilful disobedience of God’s one request, they now lived in the misery of sin and all its consequences.

Instead of walking in perfect harmony with God in the cool of the day, they were strangers and foreigners at enmity with their Creator. Instead of harmony in their family, there was hatred, intense jealousy, murder and death! And ever since that first awful day, mankind has been going down the wrong road and dead end streets and the consequences have been devastating.

We are unable, we don’t have it in us to love God and our neighbour as our Creator expects. In fact, worse than that, left to ourselves we are inclined to hate God and our neighbour. Oh how we would love to go back to a time when there isn’t toil and trouble, wars, illness, and death.

Now some people like to blame God for the trouble we have today. They even dare to accuse the Almighty God of being unfair. In their foolishness they say, “God shouldn’t have had the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden in the first place.”

But hang on a minute. God created everything very good! God didn’t plant some tree full of sin in the garden. There was nothing wrong with the tree that God called “the tree of knowledge of “Good and evil”. There was nothing wrong with the tree – what was wrong was man’s wilful disobedience! God was up-front with them. He simply said – “Don’t eat of that one tree. The day you do is the day you will die!”

So don’t blame the Creator God for man’s sin. Scripture teaches us clearly that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5). Scripture doesn’t allow us to blame God for our own stupidity.

Thankfully it doesn’t end with Adam and Eve’s stupidity. God’s plan of salvation to bring us back to our original condition can virtually be found on every page. He already promised to do something about man’s desperate plight immediately after Adam and Eve fell into sin (Gen 3:15).

And the more we see death and disease and tragedies the more we long to return to perfection where there will be no death or tears, or sadness. We have a spotless origin. But the trouble with us is, and that everything is so contaminated that we cannot even think clearly what life would be like without sin ruining everything.

And that is precisely why the first chapters of Genesis are vital to our Christian faith. If we didn’t know there was a perfect beginning, we could never know with confidence that there would be a perfect end.

So whatever you do as you read God’s plan of salvation, don’t put the first chapters in Genesis on shaky ground, particularly the first Adam as some people do, for then eventually you will put the second Adam, who came to save mankind on shaky ground as well (Romans 5).

If you no longer believe in the first Adam’s perfect beginning then you will also place man’s perfect end in jeopardy for you won’t believe what the second Adam, Jesus Christ accomplished for us at Calvary which is clearly revealed in God’s plan of salvation.

The story of our origin is more than history. It is liberating, it brings us joy and hope, and the whole world should hear it. Our origin is with God and our eternal destination is either with him or without him. In fact God’s plan of salvation reminds us that we are made in God’s image! We’re not animals. Just as a son can reflect certain traits of his father, so can we show certain characteristics of God.

Now don’t let your imagination run away with you. The day we make God out like us is the day our imagination has gone wild! Being made in “His image” does not refer to our size or height or wisdom or strength or shape, for we are but finite creatures, but refers to the fact that that we can love and show mercy and compassion as God did with us and be holy as He is holy.

Now being made in the “image” of God has many benefits. We can show that we are his stewards or governors. It says in Gen 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over everything.”

We have “God” like powers over air, sea and earth. Just as God rules over all things, including people, we rule over all things that God has placed under us. That includes the mineral deposits, the oil coming from deep inside the earth, the wonderful forests, the beautiful lakes, the air we breathe. The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, every animal and insect has been placed under our care. What a privilege, what an honour. And yet we find that there is something drastically wrong.

Man rapes the land and often pollutes the environment unnecessarily. Our role in governing on God’s behalf has become perverse and wicked. Matter of fact it’s all up the spout. Instead of ruling in God’s honour, we have become enslaved to the very things God has asked us to govern.

People will die for a tree or work tirelessly to save some whales that have beached themselves, yet we seem to be quite happy to allow thousands of abortions to go on unchecked and hundreds of thousands to die of poverty every year.

Instead of governing with care and proper respect, giving honour to God, many are now governed by what God has placed under us. We have become idolaters for we are ruled by our love for money or machines or work, or whatever God has given us to use.

Nevertheless, being made in the image of God also spells out our relationship to the Creator. And one particular virtue that we read about is that God is holy. That’s what we are called to be. It’s a constant theme throughout the OT. “Be holy as I am holy” (Lev 11:45).

The NT speaks of the Holy Spirit remaking God’s people to “be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24). In fact, Eph 4:24 shows us that Christ by the work of his Holy Spirit, does not make us a new race of beings, but rather restores us to be the original design.

We were made good and that is what we will be again. We are to be mirrors of God’s own righteousness and holiness. So that means we can communicate, we can love as God loved, yes, even the un-loveable neighbour. We can choose, think, reason. We can put off falsehood and speak truthfully to our neighbours.

We don’t give the devil a foothold. We no longer steal. We work! We no longer allow coarse language to cross our lips, but only word that builds up, benefitting those who listen. We get rid of bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander!

Rather we are kind to each, reflecting more and more the character and love of Christ that he showed to us at Calvary! But again, the mirror is cracked. We look so little like our Creator. We don’t know how to communicate properly. We don’t know what it is to truly love. We don’t know what it is to chose and think correctly in every instance. We are not holy! The proof is in the pudding.

We are often full of jealousy and hatred and suspicious of everyone who is better off than we are. We dishonour our parents, we cheat, steal, murder, bear false witness and covet everything we legitimately can get how hands on.

Yes the mirror is cracked. Instead of loving God and being holy, we much rather deny his existence and worship ourselves. Worse than that, people rather believe that their existence started in a silly big bang story that started out with no joy and no hope and total chaos. How silly is that?

To think and believe that our origin was in some chance and faulty big bang! Crazy! Surely we don’t want to believe in such a terrible origin. Where is the comfort and joy in that for we may very well end with a big bang!

And so we hold onto the first chapters of Genesis for we want to return to our true origin. We want to be perfect, we want to be good, and we want to have that relationship with God restored. We want to truly know God, so that we can love him with all our heart, so that we can live with him eternally for his praise and glory.

But again we are wicked and perverse, we need help! Something needs to happen to fix it. Thanks be to God, for that was his desire the moment Adam and Eve fell into sin. What’s more, He knew that without his help the perfect relationship could never be restored by us.

So our Creator helped us. He gives us his GPS. In it we read that He so moved history that the Word became flesh says John 1:1. He became one of us. He dwelt among us. He took upon himself all our wrong, all our sin. And he died a cruel death. That is what God did for us through his one and only Son.

By doing that he has restored us and continues to do so through his Holy Spirit guaranteeing that just as our origin was with God, our destination is to be with God to his praise and glory so that we can enjoy him forever.

Yes, we started good, and thanks be to God, we end good. That is the joy and comfort in knowing the history of our sin and the extent of it. That is the wisdom of God!

And even though many presenters and commentators point us to evolution and other nonsense things that give no hope, let us be thankful that more and more secular scientists are acknowledging an intelligent design.

Now just one thing about the GPS. Sometimes, even though we have GPS, we think we are smart and know it all and don’t switch it on! Don’t do that with the GPS God has provided. Don’t leave it in glove box or on the shelf. It won’t give you any direction in life if you do that. Rather, every day you get up, make some time to read God’s plan of Salvation.

Congregation, let’s be diligent in pointing people to our perfect origin, our fall into sin and then explain to them the joy of knowing the way forward to that glorious ending in Jesus Christ. Let just close with a few verses from Rev 21:3-4.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. [4] He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” And all God’s people say, Amen.