Sequel
After much planning, preparation and delay a sequel is announced through movie trailers that reveal to us a new crises or challenge has arisen in that paradise or maybe it is a second, third, or fourteenth episode. What is your favorite movie? Does it have a sequel or follow on episodes?
Today, God recounts for us, through His faithful servants David, Isaiah and Matthew, the first of two sequels. Each of these sequels is more powerful and encompassing than the preceding event.
Genesis 1 – 2.
The original event was Genesis – in the beginning God created all things by calling them into existence by the power of His Word from nothing. God then did something unexpected – He brought you and me into His confidence – His divine counsel – revealing He delighted to make mankind In His own image with His own hands breathing His very life into Adam and Eve and having fellowship with them. Nothing in all that He created was made with such love and intimacy.
Genesis 3.
Unfortunately, Adam and Eve betrayed God’s love and fellowship for selfish and rebellious gain – forfeiting all that God offered them.
Psalm 24.
We joined our voices to King David’s joyfully confession that God has not abandoned mankind but remembers His promise to send the Savior. God affirms the Savior would be His own Son, begotten from before the foundation of the world, whom He loves and is well pleased to save mankind from foes that seek our suffering, anguish and death.
Isaiah 7: 1 – 17.
God later sent the Prophet Isaiah, who spoke by the power of the Holy Spirit. God Himself would give mankind a spectacular, undeniable, and divine sign of the new Genesis – the second beginning – the new beginning.
Have you ever waited for the sequel to come out and it not only did not meet your expectations but took you on a completely different journey than you hoped for or expected? God the Father, being just and unwilling to put mankind to shame, resolved a second Genesis: His immortal and eternal Son would become true man, holy and righteous in His sight. Unlike our expectations of a powerful and privileged savoir God sent His Son as a suffering servant. God the Son, Jesus, would exchange His sinless life on the cross for our sinful lives, dying so that we would have His true and eternal life with God.
Matthew 1: 18 – 25.
There was no other way, no one else was capable and willing to embark on such an important and perilous task. 700 years after the Holy Spirit had spoken through Isaiah God fulfilled every detail of the Messiah’s, Wonderful Counselor’s, Mighty God’s, Everlasting Father’s, Prince of Peace’s birth and life. God is true to His promise and it is faithfully, truthfully and undeniably fulfilled in Jesus.
Surprisingly, on that night approximately 2,000 years ago, God send His angel Gabriel to proclaim His peace and comfort to Joseph as he anguished over and wrestled with the reality of his betrothed bride’s pregnancy by someone not himself. Gabriel comforted and reassured Joseph that salvation had come in a scandalous and righteous way. God announced the imminent arrival of the long-awaited sequel – the birth of Immanuel through the virgin Mary.
God’s people expected this baby to be the realization of their hopes and dreams – a mighty warrior King who would reestablish King David’s great and powerful kingdom by which Messiah would free them from their oppressors and establish a kingdom of unimaginable riches and peace. Jesus would do this, according to God’s will and wisdom, establishing His kingdom: eternal, holy, righteous and peace filled.
The one who created all things out of nothing, walked with Adam in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden and freed the children of Israel from Pharaoh’s tyrannical grip entered His creation as a baby, defenseless and dependent upon Joseph and Mary.
Jesus later emerged from obscurity as the 30 year old Messiah, not as a nobleman from a palace, arrayed in royal clothes and surrounded by a mighty army but from a scandalous birth and as an itinerant rabbi. Jesus’ life is both a disappointment and an offense to those still dead in their sins. Yet, Jesus’ life is both the delight and comfort to those alive in God.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, there are movies that seem to get worse with each successive sequel while others exceed our imagination. The reality is movies and their sequels are fiction, the product of someone’s fancy, meant for our entertainment. God’s genesis events are reality. The proof of His steadfast love and faithfulness for His fallen creation are meant for our salvation
God the Father calls us to prepare ourselves today to celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ which marked the second Genesis – Immanuel taking on human nature and abiding with us.
Even more, God calls us not fear the confusing and dangerous days and years ahead for there is coming the third and final Genesis that will come suddenly when Jesus appears on the clouds with His holy angels to the eternal joy and peace of all who believe in Him and the eternal anguish and suffering of all who refused to believe in Him.
The final sequel will exceed and eclipse all that has gone before. In the final sequence, Jesus will appear in an instant, without warning. He will eternally destroy sin and death and cast the evil one and all who refused to believe in Jesus into eternal angusih. We, God’s children, will rise from death with immortal and incorruptible bodies like Jesus’. Jesus will usher us into with our heavenly Father home and recline you and me, as royal heirs, at His wedding feast which will have no end.
Amen and Amen
