3ABN Homecoming

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: HC

Program Code: HC180015A


00:24 Welcome to 3ABN's Fall Camp Meeting
00:27 Homecoming 2018,
00:32 featuring inspired messages from your 3ABN family,
00:41 and featured speaker, Ty Gibson
00:44 all to prepare your heart for the coming of the Lord.
00:49 Hello, friends, and welcome back
00:51 to the final evening
00:53 of the 3ABN Fall Camp Meeting here,
00:57 right here in 2018, can you guys believe it's 2018?
01:02 That's incredible.
01:04 We have been so blessed here at this camp meeting
01:06 with all of the wonderful music,
01:08 and the wonderful messages.
01:09 Do you guys agree with that?
01:11 And then we are so thankful for each and every one of you
01:13 who have joined us here at the Worship Center here
01:16 at the 3ABN headquarters, and all of you at home
01:19 who are joining us around the world live and tuning in,
01:22 we are so blessed,
01:23 and I know we are going to be continued to be blessed
01:27 'cause it's not over yet,
01:29 we still have a wonderful song
01:30 that's going to be brought to us
01:32 by Ms. Yvonne Lewis and the title of that song
01:35 is, "Remember Me."
01:37 And as soon as Ms. Yvonne is finished with her song,
01:40 then the next person you will see
01:42 is Brother Ty Gibson, and the title of his sermon is,
01:45 "Our Covenant Identity in Christ."
01:48 So, thank you. Ms. Yvonne.
02:06 The thief lay dying on the cross
02:12 And he knew all along
02:16 That he had done wrong
02:21 And for his sins, he must die.
02:28 And so he turned and saw the Christ
02:35 With his blood flowing down
02:39 He knew he had found the One
02:44 Who could save his soul
02:48 And so he cried
02:50 Remember me when You come
02:55 Into Your kingdom, oh, Lord
02:58 Remember me when You talk
03:02 To your Father
03:06 And tell Him that I know I've not been
03:11 All he wants me to be
03:15 But in mercy now I plead
03:22 Remember
03:23 Me
03:31 Jesus said have no fear, my child
03:37 You shall be with Me eternally
03:45 It is for you that I die
03:50 Oh, now I know Christ lives again
03:58 And He stands all alone
04:02 Before the white throne
04:05 With his own righteous life
04:09 He covers mine
04:12 So now I cry Remember me when You come
04:18 Into Your kingdom, oh, Lord
04:21 Remember me when You talk
04:26 To your Father
04:29 And tell Him that I know I've not been
04:35 All He wants me to be
04:37 But in mercy now I plead
04:44 Remember me
04:50 Remember me when you come
04:56 Into Your kingdom, oh, Lord,
05:00 Remember me when You talk To your Father
05:07 And tell Him that I know I've not been
05:13 All He wants me to be
05:15 But in mercy now I plead
05:22 But in mercy now I plead
05:30 But in mercy now I plead
05:40 Remember
05:44 Me
06:00 Thank you.
06:01 Beautiful.
06:03 Well, good evening, everybody.
06:05 This is our final time together.
06:08 And the message tonight is best served by the ladies
06:13 helping me out here for a moment.
06:16 Women, I want you to imagine that you and I have never met,
06:20 you don't know who I am, you've never seen my face.
06:23 You come home, you open your door,
06:26 you walk in, and you see me
06:29 sitting on your sofa eating a sandwich.
06:34 Now something immediately happens
06:36 inside of you.
06:38 The first thing you think of course is,
06:40 why is this strange man in my house, on my sofa,
06:45 eating my sandwich material.
06:48 Those avocados were for later.
06:51 But the next thing you think is,
06:54 and maybe you don't wrap words around it,
06:56 but you have a sense that you have been trespassed,
07:01 that you have been violated
07:03 because this space on planet earth,
07:06 your home is your domicile, your domain.
07:11 It's a territory that you hold in the world.
07:16 It belongs to you.
07:18 The door locks.
07:21 You come in and you have a perfect right to be there.
07:25 I come in, I do not have
07:28 a perfect right to be there.
07:31 You, your domicile,
07:34 your territory has been breached,
07:37 it has been violated.
07:38 And just as you are about to tell me
07:42 to get out of your house,
07:46 your husband emerges from a back room and says,
07:49 "Oh, hey, sweetie.
07:50 This is my new friend, Ty.
07:52 He likes sandwiches, I invited him over.
07:56 So he is having a sandwich with me."
08:00 Did anything changed in the scenario?
08:03 Did anything changed inside of you?
08:06 Of course, it did because you and your husband
08:08 hold this domain, this territory together.
08:13 It is jointly held, is it not?
08:15 And I was invited legitimately into your space,
08:20 into your domain by someone
08:24 who has a perfect right to invite someone in.
08:28 Suddenly everything is fine,
08:30 and you have a seat on the sofa next to me,
08:33 and have a sandwich as well.
08:36 Everything is fine now.
08:38 I'm going to suggest you this evening
08:41 that whether we ever explain it to ourselves in detail,
08:47 we have an intuitive sense
08:50 about this thing we call "territory."
08:54 Because we are free moral agents,
08:57 we sense that we exist
09:00 in a shared world,
09:03 and that there are legitimate boundaries.
09:06 We also sense that those boundaries
09:09 can only be crossed by permission
09:12 because we are free moral agents.
09:17 Now I want to bring to you this angle
09:21 on the plan of salvation by calling your attention
09:24 first of all to a remarkable book
09:27 that I need on the screen in front of me.
09:30 A remarkable book by William Barrett.
09:33 William Barrett was a philosopher
09:35 and probably one of the best thinkers in philosophy
09:39 over the last 50 to 100 years.
09:43 And Barrett summarizes in his book,
09:46 this amazing treatment, "The Irrational Man,"
09:50 he summarizes that there are only two ways
09:52 really of processing reality,
09:55 two ways of thinking as human beings.
09:58 Two ways of thinking,
10:00 Hebraism, and Hellenism,
10:04 between these two points of influence moves the world
10:10 or the world moves.
10:12 He's saying, there's the Hebrew way of thinking
10:15 and there's the Greek way of thinking,
10:17 Greek referred to here as Hellenism.
10:20 There are only two ways of processing information.
10:24 It doesn't matter who you are,
10:25 whether you ever sat down and really thought it through,
10:30 you think in a Hebrew manner or in a Greek manner,
10:35 or maybe a mixture of the two that needs to be sorted out.
10:40 The Bible is a Hebrew book, it's not a Greek book.
10:43 The New Testament was written in Greek by Hebrews.
10:49 Jesus was and is a Jewish Messiah,
10:54 He was a Hebrew.
10:56 And Jesus came into the world through a Hebrew narrative
11:01 so that everything that is occurring
11:03 in the New Testament
11:04 is occurring against the backdrop
11:07 and upon the stage of that Hebrew narrative
11:11 that we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures.
11:15 Now the Greek way of thinking is centered on power.
11:20 God is conceived of in terms of sheer power.
11:24 Doesn't matter if you like Him or not,
11:26 He's in-charge.
11:28 The Hebrew way of thinking is that God is love
11:33 and that actually God's character
11:37 either solicits
11:39 or repels our engagement.
11:43 The Hebrew way of thinking says,
11:45 God is a particular kind of God
11:48 who is to be worshipped and praised
11:51 because of the attributes of His character.
11:54 The Greek way of thinking says,
11:56 "It doesn't matter what you think
11:57 or what God is like.
11:59 You had better get with His program
12:01 because He has power over you."
12:04 Christianity down through the ages
12:06 has been infiltrated by Greek thinking
12:10 so much so that many believers in Christ, in name,
12:16 have lost track of the fact that we as believers in Christ
12:20 are living out a Hebrew narrative, not a Greek one.
12:24 So within our framework for our purposes this evening,
12:29 I want to peel back a piece of the Hebrew story
12:34 that is vital to understand who Jesus is
12:38 and why He came to the world.
12:40 So we go back to the beginning of the story
12:42 as we have every previous message.
12:45 Genesis 1:26, 27,
12:49 tells us something that we are familiar with
12:51 but we are going to re-familiarize ourselves
12:54 with this passage
12:55 and we are going to notice something
12:57 that we don't normally take into account.
12:59 The scripture says, "Then God said,
13:02 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,
13:08 and let them have
13:13 dominion over all the earth.'"
13:16 Now the image part
13:18 of the text we quote frequently.
13:20 "God made man in His own image."
13:22 The dominion part we lost track of
13:25 and it is distinctly territorial idea
13:28 like your home that was breached
13:31 by the guy who loved sandwiches.
13:34 So here what we have
13:35 is we have a presentation of the fact
13:38 that God created human beings in His own image.
13:41 Now we normally think that
13:42 that text is saying something to us like,
13:44 "God made man in His own image, that means He made us
13:48 with characters like His character."
13:52 That's true.
13:53 But the context widens our perspective.
13:57 We were made in the image of God not only character wise,
14:02 we were made in the image of God
14:05 functionally, vocationally.
14:08 Do you hear me?
14:09 Functionally and vocationally.
14:12 God operates in such a manner as to have a universe
14:18 over which He presides as God.
14:21 He creates a world,
14:22 and he creates the man and the woman,
14:24 and rather than micromanaging them
14:28 setting up His own throne on earth,
14:31 God says, "Let's create them on our image,"
14:34 and what is His image?
14:35 Character, yes, but also, "Let's give them dominion."
14:38 That's the context.
14:40 "Let's give them autonomy.
14:42 Let them operate with freedom over this domain.
14:47 Let's give them a domicile."
14:49 Are you still with me, have I lost you?
14:51 Okay.
14:52 So if you fast forward in the story,
14:53 this is the way Hebrew prophets think.
14:57 According to Psalm 115:16,
14:59 listen to this language very carefully.
15:03 "The heavens
15:04 are the Lord's heavens, but,"
15:10 qualifier, the word,
15:12 "but," here is a grammatical qualifier,
15:14 "The heavens are the Lord's heavens,
15:16 but the earth He has given
15:20 to human beings."
15:22 This is delegation language.
15:26 God is not like the Greek gods.
15:30 The one and only true God isn't like Zeus.
15:32 He is not a power mongering kind of God.
15:35 He doesn't operate by sheer control.
15:38 God in fact, the God of Scripture
15:40 is not a micromanaging control freak.
15:44 He is a delegator.
15:46 God is the kind of God who gives autonomy
15:49 and delegates authority.
15:52 He says, "We are going to create the world
15:55 and we are going to give them dominion."
15:56 This is fascinating.
15:58 When you read the Genesis account,
16:00 God sets up Eden.
16:04 Eden is one piece of ground, a small piece of ground,
16:08 we don't know how many acres it was, of ground on the earth,
16:12 and God says, "Okay, this is what things look like
16:15 when they are beautiful and wonderful and incredible."
16:18 But I'm just giving you a little example
16:21 of the kind of stuff that you
16:23 with your God given creativity can do.
16:27 So now what I want you to do is I want you to look around
16:29 in this little piece of ground
16:31 that I have myself cultivated for you,
16:34 and now I want you to expand the beauty,
16:36 I want you to beautify the whole earth,
16:38 I want you to go out from this central point called Eden,
16:43 and turn the whole world into a garden
16:47 exercising your autonomy, your authority.
16:50 Make it however you want to make it.
16:52 Do whatever you want to do within the parameters
16:56 of goodness and love, and covenant or faithfulness.
17:01 So God gives autonomy and delegates authority
17:04 at the beginning of the story of Scripture.
17:08 This is fascinating.
17:09 Now in the Greek way of thinking,
17:12 God never delegates authority, God exercises authority.
17:16 According to Plato and Aristotle,
17:18 God is sheer being and power.
17:22 In fact, there's a term you've probably heard
17:25 that came to us out of Greek philosophy,
17:27 specifically a term that was coined by Aristotle
17:30 and that term was that God is,
17:33 in Aristotle's thinking, God is the unmoved mover.
17:38 Have you heard the term?
17:40 Now think about it for a minute.
17:41 "The unmoved mover."
17:44 That is to say that God Himself is static,
17:48 He's impassible, or without passion.
17:50 He never experiences anybody acting upon Him.
17:55 God only Himself moves all others.
17:57 We are puppets on strings, we are characters in a novel,
18:01 a story that's already told.
18:03 You didn't decide to have Cheerios this morning
18:06 even though you are under the illusion
18:08 that you made a free choice to have Cheerios.
18:11 You were predetermined to have Cheerios this morning
18:15 because God is sovereign overall.
18:18 This theology comes into Christianity
18:21 in what's called determinism or chauvinistic predestination
18:25 in which the idea is expanded to take on the form
18:29 that nobody ever chooses to be saved or lost
18:33 but that God predetermines who's saved, who's lost.
18:37 This is where you get the doctrine of,
18:39 "Once saved, always saved," because God unilaterally
18:42 makes all the decisions in His universe.
18:44 God is in fact according to chauvinism,
18:47 a micromanaging controlling kind of God.
18:51 Nothing happens unless God makes it happen.
18:55 So it doesn't matter if you get a cancer diagnosis,
18:58 or you are violated
18:59 as a little boy or a little girl
19:01 by an uncle or a brother or a daddy,
19:03 the message is always the same.
19:05 God had a plan in that horrific thing
19:08 that happened to you.
19:10 The fact is that God stands against what was done to you,
19:15 and God condemns all violating actions
19:19 that are contrary to covenantal love,
19:22 and the only way that any of us can process God
19:26 in a way that we would come to love Him
19:28 rather than to grovelingly fear Him
19:31 and serve Him as slaves is to be
19:34 from the Greek way of processing God in reality
19:38 and be delivered into the messianic
19:40 or Hebrew way of thinking
19:42 in which a human being was created
19:45 in the image of God with free will,
19:48 God is love therefore God created creatures
19:51 capable of love which means
19:53 we are also capable of not loving.
19:56 All the bad stuff going down in human history,
20:01 all of it is traceable to violations
20:06 of the covenant of love.
20:09 God is not ultimately responsible
20:13 for any horrible thing
20:14 that has ever happened to anybody.
20:16 And the Great Controversy unfolds in such a way
20:19 that when all is said and done, when all is said and done,
20:23 the character of God is completely exonerated,
20:27 vindicated, from all
20:29 confusing Babylonian theological paradigms
20:32 that lies sin at the door of God.
20:36 So what's happening in the biblical narrative,
20:39 in the Hebrew flow of thinking is that God gives autonomy
20:42 and delegates authority.
20:44 So we are not surprised then when Jesus comes to the messiah
20:47 and he says, "Let me tell you how to pray."
20:50 Our Father who is in heaven,
20:53 hallowed be Your name, your character is amazing.
20:57 Your kingdom come,
21:00 Your will be done on earth
21:05 the way it's done in heaven.
21:06 Apparently, God's will is not done
21:09 in all instances on earth.
21:11 Your will be done on earth as it in heaven.
21:14 Give us this day, our daily bread,
21:17 etcetera, etcetera and then there's this part.
21:19 "And deliver us from evil," or Luke's gospel says,
21:24 "Deliver us from the evil one."
21:28 Our territory has been breached.
21:31 A foreign Lord has taken control
21:35 of planet earth.
21:37 Planet earth is a territory held hostage
21:41 by a power that is contrary to the will of God.
21:47 And so believers pray in a great controversy sense.
21:51 Let me just tell you something about prayer.
21:53 Prayer in a Calvinistic sense, in a Greek sense,
21:57 is trying to get God do things He is not willing to do.
22:02 Prayer in a Hebrew sense
22:05 is an act of war in the Great Controversy.
22:09 It is me leveraging my free will as a child of God
22:13 against the kingdom of darkness by inviting people,
22:17 by inviting God and his angelic forces
22:20 into people's lives and situations
22:22 where they are not giving permission.
22:25 I'm the husband in the house that's inviting God
22:29 to have influence in my children's lives
22:32 when they are not inviting God in to have influence.
22:36 Prayer is an act of war in the Great Controversy.
22:41 It's not trying to get God to be better than He is,
22:44 God is always doing all the good He can
22:47 to the degree that He can,
22:49 in every circumstance that He can barring one factor,
22:54 one variable, one line that God will never cross,
22:59 and that is the autonomy, the free will of human beings.
23:05 God isn't made better than He already is through prayer.
23:09 God has given permission to access situations
23:13 that He has barred from accessing
23:15 because we are free moral agents.
23:17 He'll never kick the door down, He knocks.
23:21 And prayer is the means by which we say,
23:23 "Come on in, Lord, to my house.
23:25 Have a sandwich if You'd like, do whatever You want.
23:28 You are welcome in my house.
23:30 You are welcome in my town.
23:32 You are welcome in my nation.
23:35 You are welcome in my world."
23:38 So our voices are united in intercessory prayer
23:42 to give God increased access.
23:45 This is what Jesus means when He says,
23:47 "Hey, if two or three of you get together,
23:50 I'll do whatever you say because I want to.
23:54 But I need for two or three of you
23:57 to leverage your free will in the Great Controversy
23:59 to give me access."
24:01 That's what's happening in the Great Controversy.
24:04 So check this out.
24:06 In this context, the Old Testament,
24:09 that is the Hebrew story assumes
24:13 this territorial view of reality.
24:18 When we come to the Book of Job, for example,
24:20 now there was a day,
24:21 there is a chapter 1 starting with verse 6,
24:23 "Now there was a day when the sons of God
24:25 came to present themselves before the Lord,
24:27 and Satan came also among them."
24:31 Now it's logical at this point to ask,
24:33 "What is he doing here?"
24:37 But listen.
24:38 Satan shows up in some kind of heavenly conclave.
24:42 There's a congress going on, there's a meeting.
24:44 And you'll notice that in the Scripture
24:47 there was a day when the sons of God
24:50 came to present themselves before the Lord.
24:52 They were summoned,
24:53 they were brought together before the Lord.
24:55 There's some kind of meeting taking place,
24:57 and Satan just kind of shows up.
25:00 But watch how the conversation ensues.
25:03 "And the Lord said to Satan,"
25:05 not what you and I just asked, but something different.
25:09 Not what are you doing here, but, "Where do you come from?"
25:12 It's a territorial question.
25:15 God doesn't say, "What are you doing here?
25:18 What is your justification?"
25:20 He says, "What is your point of origin?"
25:23 Because the sons of God are here
25:25 and they are representing various territories
25:28 in God's vast universe.
25:31 Satan comes and he's there and God says,
25:35 "What part of My universe
25:37 are you purporting to represent?
25:40 From where exactly do you come?
25:44 What part of My universe are you here
25:46 to supposedly speak on behalf of?"
25:51 Check this out.
25:52 "So Satan answered the Lord and said,
25:54 'From going to and fro on the earth,
25:58 and from walking back and forth on it.'"
26:02 Have you ever brought a piece of property?
26:05 What's one of the first things you do,
26:06 if not the first thing you do
26:07 when you buy a piece of property?
26:09 You walk the property line.
26:10 You stake it out. You figure out.
26:12 You walk to and fro all over your piece
26:14 and you figure out, and you put stakes,
26:16 "Okay, this is it, this is my territory,
26:18 this is my domain,
26:20 this is my plot of ground on planet earth."
26:25 The devil is telling God, "Hey,
26:27 I'm here to represent planet earth
26:30 and the human race."
26:33 Now this is a very bold claim.
26:36 But God doesn't throw him out.
26:39 There is a legitimacy to his claim
26:43 that we are about to see in a minute.
26:45 It is a claim that has been taken
26:50 in a dastardly manner,
26:53 but it's a claim nonetheless that has been given teeth,
26:58 and we'll see who is given teeth by.
26:59 So God responds and doesn't say,
27:00 "Oh, fine, have a seat.
27:03 I like you."
27:05 God says, "Then the Lord said to Satan,
27:08 'Have you considered My servant Job,
27:12 that there is none like him
27:14 on the earth,
27:18 a blameless and upright man,"
27:22 that's a moral evaluation,
27:26 a moral evaluation.
27:28 Watch this.
27:30 "And he fears God and he shuns evil?'"
27:33 Well, evil has its source in Satan
27:36 who is in this heavenly congress
27:38 purporting to represent planet earth.
27:40 So in that context, what is God essentially saying?
27:42 God is saying, "Okay, you are here
27:44 claiming to represent earth
27:48 but I have a counter claim,
27:50 and his name is Job.
27:53 You think you have control of the earth,
27:55 but I have a beachhead in that territory.
27:59 I haven't given it up.
28:00 And I plan on taking it back from you,"
28:03 this is between the lines
28:04 that we'll see in just a moment.
28:07 The war between good and evil is a territorial dispute.
28:11 This is why when Jesus comes, one of the things He says
28:15 to those who are listening to His teachings.
28:17 He says, "When this is all said and done,
28:21 the meek will inherit the earth.
28:26 It's coming back to you.
28:27 I'm here to take the earth back
28:33 and put it back in your hands."
28:34 This is where Jesus says things like,
28:36 "Fear not little children,
28:39 it is your Father's good pleasure
28:41 to give you the kingdom."
28:45 The war between good and evil
28:47 on one level is a territorial dispute.
28:50 C.S. Lewis articulates it like this.
28:53 "There is no neutral ground in the universe."
28:57 Just let that sink in for a minute.
28:59 "There is no neutral ground in the universe.
29:01 Every square inch, every split second
29:05 is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan,"
29:10 including your frontal lobe and mine,
29:14 including the space between our ears
29:16 as well as the terra firma under our feet.
29:20 Every square inch, every second,
29:23 claimed, counterclaimed.
29:24 There is a great controversy going on that traces
29:26 all the way back to the beginning of the war
29:28 between good and evil.
29:29 So then we come to the New Testament.
29:31 We are crossing the bridge now,
29:33 from the Old Testament narrative
29:34 to the New Testament,
29:36 from the Hebrew story that's being told
29:37 to the Hebrew Messiah
29:39 who is bringing it to a conclusion.
29:44 So Jesus comes into the world
29:46 and He is somehow
29:51 put in a position, well, not somehow,
29:54 He's lead by the spirit
29:56 into a war with Satan.
30:02 Luke 4:5-7, watch this, don't miss this.
30:07 "Then the devil,
30:09 taking Him up on a high mountain,
30:11 showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment."
30:15 Now just pause right there and just imagine this.
30:19 So Jesus is now in the world
30:24 and at the beginning of His ministry,
30:26 a conflict occurs.
30:28 And the conflict that occurs between Him and the devil
30:30 is not a physical conflict.
30:33 It's not an arm wrestling match,
30:35 it's not a dual, it's not a sword fight,
30:38 there are no bombs.
30:41 It is a political engagement.
30:45 It is a dispute over territory.
30:51 The devil takes Him to a high mountain
30:52 and he shows Him all the kingdoms
30:54 of the world in an instant.
30:56 Now watch this, the next verse.
30:58 "And the devil said to Him, to the Messiah,
31:02 'All this authority I will give You,
31:07 and their glory,
31:09 for this has been delivered to me,
31:12 and I can give it to whomever I wish.'"
31:18 What a claim, huh?
31:19 Now if you know the Hebrew story,
31:22 if somebody hand you New Testament in Psalms,
31:25 but you actually have the Old Testament
31:27 between your covers,
31:29 and if you've taken the entire narrative,
31:31 you know exactly what's going on here,
31:34 there's a backdrop.
31:35 When the devil says,
31:38 "If you bow down and worship me,
31:40 I'll give you all the kingdoms of this world
31:43 and the authority," and he says,
31:45 "because it was all given to me,
31:46 and I can give it to whoever I want."
31:49 He's referring back to what event
31:52 in the biblical story?
31:55 The fall in Genesis.
31:58 So when he says, "It was given to me,"
32:00 who gave the world to Satan?
32:03 Did God give the world to Satan?
32:05 No.
32:06 Adam gave the world to Satan.
32:08 How did he give the world to Satan?
32:10 Was it his to give?
32:12 Yes, because we had noted
32:14 that God gave him dominion.
32:19 And because he had dominion,
32:22 the fall of mankind involved an abdication of authority.
32:28 And this is why it is a legitimate title
32:30 that Satan bears at this juncture
32:32 of the great controversy
32:34 that scripture is describing here,
32:35 in John 12:31,
32:37 Jesus Himself says that Satan
32:40 is the ruler of this world.
32:43 He just is.
32:44 So when he shows up in the heavenly meeting,
32:49 and God doesn't just throw him out,
32:52 it's because
32:54 there's a legitimacy to the claim,
32:56 because the ones who had authority
33:00 gave it to him.
33:02 So he's the ruler of this world.
33:04 2 Corinthians 4:4,
33:05 he's called the god of this age.
33:07 And Ephesians 2:2 says that
33:10 he is the prince of the power of the air.
33:13 That doesn't mean by the way
33:15 that he is the ruler of the oxygen supply.
33:18 That's not what the word air means there.
33:20 Oxygen is not the issue here.
33:23 It's more like the idea, he's the prince of the power
33:25 of the popular trends and society and in the world.
33:31 He's the one who presides over pop culture.
33:34 He's the one who is pushing the buttons
33:39 for the general moral trends of society.
33:43 This is what the Germans called the Zeitgeist,
33:46 the spirit of the age.
33:47 He is the one who is presiding over the trends in society.
33:53 So John was saying,
33:55 "The whole world lies under the sway
33:58 of the wicked ones."
33:59 Sway means there is a current,
34:02 there is a moral current to society,
34:05 and the devil is the one who is presiding over it.
34:09 So he is the god of this age.
34:11 He is the prince of this world.
34:14 So let's draw conclusion
34:16 from where we've come from so far
34:18 in order to launch forward with clarity now.
34:21 Essentially what we've said
34:23 to this point in our time together
34:24 is that the fall of humanity was, yes, it was a moral fall.
34:29 That's the part we're generally familiar with.
34:31 Adam and Eve sinned and we take that to mean,
34:34 and rightly so,
34:35 that they fell on a moral level.
34:38 Yes, there was a moral fall.
34:39 But the fall of humanity was a moral fall,
34:42 and as a result, it was a governmental fall,
34:46 a political coup occurred.
34:48 The fact is that a foreign invading force,
34:54 a fallen angel took the world
34:58 from humanity through deception and temptation.
35:04 So a moral fall gave way to a governmental fall.
35:09 Or we could say it this way,
35:10 if you like this language better.
35:12 The go with language is simply to understand.
35:15 So if this helps, essentially, the fall of mankind
35:20 constitutes a transfer of dominion.
35:24 A transfer of dominion occurred.
35:29 Now this transfer of dominion
35:31 happened by the free choice of Adam and Eve.
35:35 Adam and Eve abdicated their dominion over the earth.
35:37 Now in order to make the point,
35:39 I want you to just reason with me here for a minute.
35:42 I want you to hypothetically imagine
35:44 that the fall had never occurred.
35:46 What if Adam and Eve had said no to the deceptions
35:50 and temptations of Satan?
35:52 What if the sin problem had never entered the world,
35:55 hypothetically, question,
35:57 would Adam and Eve still be alive today?
36:00 How old would they be?
36:02 Just take a wild guess.
36:03 Approximately 6,000 years old.
36:07 Where would they live?
36:09 In Iraq.
36:11 Would it be beautiful there?
36:13 Oh, it would be gorgeous.
36:15 But not only would it be beautiful there,
36:17 the whole world by this point would just be,
36:20 what did Isaiah say?
36:21 Blossoming like a rose, the whole world.
36:25 So Adam and Eve would still be alive,
36:26 they would live somewhere over near Babylon, no doubt,
36:29 and listen,
36:33 who would they be to us?
36:36 Oh, they'd be great, great, great, great, great, great,
36:39 great, great, great, great,
36:40 great, great, great, great, great,
36:42 totally great grandma and grandpa.
36:45 And they'd be really young.
36:48 Adam and Eve would look like,
36:49 if they did that whole guess my age thing,
36:51 if Adam and Eve were still alive right now
36:53 and they said, "Hey, hey, guess how old we are."
36:55 Just by appearances we'd say, "I don't know, 22?"
37:00 Because intrepid would have never happened,
37:02 the aging process would have never kicked in,
37:05 the sin problem would have never tarnished creation.
37:09 They would be young and old simultaneously.
37:13 And who would they be to us?
37:16 They would be the representative heads
37:18 of the human race.
37:20 And any time God, what did he say in Job,
37:23 "There was a day when the sons of God
37:25 came to present themselves before the Lord."
37:27 Who would go to represent us?
37:28 Adam and Eve.
37:30 Yeah, we would have our representatives.
37:33 But what is the devil saying when he tempts Jesus?
37:36 He is saying to Jesus, "Hey, I took it.
37:40 It's mine.
37:42 And if you bow down and worship me,
37:46 then I'll give you the authority
37:48 of the whole world
37:50 as long as I'm above you
37:53 as ultimate Lord of earth.
37:56 I'll let you run the whole thing.
37:59 I'll delegate it all to you
38:01 right under me if you worship me."
38:04 This is amazing.
38:06 So now look back to the beginning of the story.
38:09 Back to Genesis 3:15 which we've read
38:10 in every single time that we've been together
38:12 and that's not accidental
38:14 because this is the mother of all prophecies,
38:16 this is the point from whence comes
38:18 the entire great controversy
38:21 and messianic prophetic world view.
38:24 If you want to think like a Hebrew,
38:27 you need to begin with Genesis.
38:29 And Genesis 3:15 tells us,
38:32 God speaking to the serpent who took the earth
38:36 from Adam and Eve and is now the Lord, the ruler,
38:39 the god of this world in this age.
38:41 God says, "I will put enmity, hostility between you, Satan,
38:45 and the woman,
38:46 between your offspring and hers,
38:48 he will crush your head,
38:50 he singular will crush your head,
38:53 and you will strike or bruise,
38:55 one version says his heel."
38:59 I'm going to suggest to you something that I haven't said
39:02 in the three previous presentations
39:04 where we've quoted this text.
39:06 I'm going to suggest to you that
39:07 if you look at the passage carefully
39:09 that Genesis 3 constitutes a declaration of war.
39:14 God is saying to Satan who has taken the world.
39:16 He's saying, "This isn't over yet.
39:21 You took it by deception.
39:24 I'm going to take it back by truth."
39:28 Misrepresented My character
39:31 and drawn them away from Me
39:34 on the premise of a lie.
39:37 But I'm going to draw them back to Myself
39:41 on the premise of the truth of who I really am.
39:46 The lie that Satan told our first parents,
39:50 it was a three pronged lie, but the essence of that lie
39:53 collectively was simply
39:56 that God is only looking out
39:59 for His own best interest, God doesn't love you,
40:04 so you better live for yourself.
40:06 That's Genesis 3:1-5.
40:11 Jesus comes into the world in order to demonstrate
40:14 unequivocally and beyond
40:15 all question that God is love,
40:21 and it is that revelation that constitutes
40:26 the fatal blow to Satan's kingdom.
40:31 So Genesis is a declaration of war.
40:34 So now that we have this Hebrew background,
40:36 we come to the New Testament and we encountered Jesus
40:39 and we are not surprised when He tells us
40:40 this little parable, this little story.
40:43 He says in Luke 11:21, 22.
40:47 He says, to the disciples
40:49 and those who are around Him listening.
40:52 He says, "When a strong man,"
40:55 what?
40:56 "A strong men fully armed, guards his own palace,
41:02 his goods are in peace."
41:05 So the first part of this little parable.
41:06 There's a strong man, his strength is acknowledged,
41:10 and this strong man has a palace,
41:12 he has a territory, he has a domain,
41:14 and he has goods, he has possessions.
41:18 And then Jesus says this, "But when a stronger than he,"
41:24 there's a strong man, and now Jesus says,
41:27 "But when a stronger than he comes upon him"
41:32 the strong man,
41:34 "when a stronger than he comes upon him,
41:35 and overcome sin,
41:37 he takes from him all his armor
41:40 in which he trusted, and divides his spoils."
41:44 What is Jesus saying here?
41:47 Jesus in this context had just sent out
41:50 the 12 and the 70.
41:52 And they've come back rejoicing,
41:54 "Hey, even demons flee at your name."
41:59 And Jesus is simply explaining to them
42:01 why the demons are fleeing.
42:03 As the 12 and the 70 our proclaiming the gospel,
42:07 the devil is trembling
42:08 and demons are running for cover
42:11 and Jesus in this little parable
42:13 is explaining why.
42:14 He's saying, "Okay, I'll tell you
42:16 what's going on here.
42:17 The devil is the strong man and he took the world,
42:19 but I'm here now to take it back."
42:23 He's telling the disciples that Satan has taken the world
42:29 and he's guarding his palace, and his goods.
42:33 And Jesus says, "But a stronger than he
42:35 is here now.
42:36 And that's me.
42:38 And you are my emissaries,
42:39 and you are going out not with force and deception
42:42 but with the proclamation of the good news of God's love,
42:45 and the kingdom of Satan is falling
42:49 proportional to the revelation of God's love.
42:52 The devil knows that his gig is up
42:56 and I'm here now to take away from him
43:00 all the armor in which he trusted."
43:03 That is his lies,
43:05 his deceptions regarding the character of God.
43:10 And his kingdom is going to fall now
43:12 and he knows it.
43:14 And then Jesus says, "And when I take it back,
43:18 when I regain the world, when I take it back,
43:21 I'm going to divide the spoils among my followers."
43:25 The earth is coming back into human lordship.
43:29 We will again become the stewards of our planet
43:33 and the devil will be expelled from the world.
43:38 So then, having told us what's going on
43:41 out of His Hebrew narrative,
43:45 Jesus' explaining that he is here to fulfill
43:47 Genesis 3:15.
43:50 He then, as He comes to the close of His ministry,
43:54 He tells us,
43:55 "Something is going to happen at Calvary,"
43:58 that again, in a Greek paradigm,
44:02 we don't notice.
44:03 We read it, we don't know what to do with it.
44:05 Doesn't make any sense to us.
44:08 We opt for the more Greek way of thinking that Jesus died,
44:13 so I don't have to,
44:15 so I can go to heaven when I die.
44:18 Well, Jesus doesn't know anything about
44:19 this way of thinking.
44:21 Jesus knows that you're going to go to heaven
44:23 for a short period of time in the millennium
44:25 but that the earth is your home,
44:29 new heavens, new earth, we're coming back here.
44:31 In fact, we could hypothetically have a reunion
44:34 about a million years from now.
44:36 If you want, we schedule it.
44:37 We could have a reunion right here on this very spot.
44:40 This very earth itself under our feet
44:42 is under the process of being redeemed
44:44 by the Messiah.
44:46 And He's going to give it back to us.
44:48 Now yes, Jesus died for our sins,
44:51 but what about this dimension
44:55 of the death of Jesus at the cross.
44:57 Jesus explains what's going to happen when He dies.
45:00 Now He says,
45:01 "Now is the judgment of this world,
45:04 now the ruler of this world will be cast out."
45:10 Satan at the cross of Calvary will be cast out.
45:13 Cast out of what, where, how?
45:16 Well, in the large sense,
45:17 he's going to be cast out of having any more credibility
45:21 or authority with the human race.
45:25 In a more detailed sense,
45:26 he's going to be cast out of the affections
45:29 and the perceptions of human beings
45:32 so that the true knowledge of one and only true God
45:36 takes up residence in our thinking
45:38 and we fall back in love with God
45:42 on the premise of His love for us.
45:45 How do we know that's what Jesus means?
45:46 Well, because He says so in the next verse.
45:48 "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth,"
45:51 he's referring to the Calvary, right?
45:52 When I'm lifted up from the cross,
45:54 when the devil marshals his force against me,
45:59 when the devil in all of his demons
46:03 come against Jesus at the cross,
46:07 there is a poetic justice that occurs,
46:11 and the devil doesn't see it coming.
46:13 The devil thinks that through deception and force
46:16 he can win the war.
46:18 He doesn't understand that there is a deeper power
46:22 at work in the universe that's foreign to him now.
46:26 He once knew it.
46:28 He once knew that God is love,
46:31 and he once knew what it felt like
46:33 to be loyal to God out of love,
46:37 but he deceived himself
46:38 into believing that God is self-serving
46:41 in order to justify his own selfish interests.
46:45 This is what Freud would later call projection.
46:50 Viewing somebody as guilty of what you are guilty of
46:53 so that you let yourself off the hook.
46:55 The devil is deeply entrenched in selfishness to the point
47:00 where love is now foreign to him.
47:03 He doesn't even know what it feels like to love
47:05 and he doesn't know what love looks like,
47:07 and he doesn't see it coming.
47:09 He can't even remember
47:11 what it felt like to worship God
47:14 with adoration.
47:16 All of that's gone from him now.
47:20 And Jesus comes, and he says,
47:22 "When I die on the cross, something is going to occur
47:26 that is going to produce two effects.
47:29 It will bring the kingdom of Satan down,
47:33 and I,
47:37 if I am lifted up from the earth,"
47:38 well, here's the key word, draw,
47:41 "I'll draw, attract, allure, all to me.
47:46 There will be such a revelation
47:51 of My love that it will topple
47:56 the lies that Satan has spun regarding My character."
48:00 The great controversy is won
48:02 on the premise of the revelation
48:05 of who God really is in Christ,
48:08 and most specifically, at the cross,
48:10 so that Paul says it like this.
48:14 Colossians 2:15,
48:16 Paul says that something happened at Calvary.
48:21 "Having disarmed the powers and authorities,"
48:25 he's referring specifically here to Satan
48:28 and all his demonic hosts
48:30 who preside over various territories
48:33 on the earth.
48:36 But he's referring also to human regimes,
48:38 human kingdoms, human political engines,
48:43 human political machines that operate
48:46 by principles of deception,
48:50 that operate by principles of force.
48:52 Every kingdom of the world that operates by deception
48:56 and force is coming down.
49:00 It's not wise for followers of Jesus
49:05 to be deeply tied to any political system.
49:08 I won't say much more about that,
49:10 but I think you know what I mean.
49:14 We are captive to the kingdom of Christ,
49:19 and we are just passing through this world to heaven,
49:23 so we can look back and rule it by covenantal love.
49:28 So every kingdom of this world,
49:32 and the entire psycho edifice
49:35 of Satan's kingdom is coming down
49:37 because Jesus having disarmed the powers and authorities,
49:41 "he made a public spectacle of them," at Calvary,
49:45 "triumphing over them by the cross."
49:48 Now this is so counterintuitive
49:50 that we hardly know what it means.
49:53 You have to pause, you have to take a deep breath,
49:55 you really have to process this,
49:57 because this scripture as well as
50:00 the rest of the New Testament is essentially saying
50:04 that God has won the great controversy
50:07 in precisely the way that nobody expected Him to.
50:11 Even the disciples themselves right up until the resurrection
50:16 and ascension and the testimony of Jesus
50:20 after His resurrection itself
50:23 and on the walk on the road to Emmaus.
50:27 The disciples themselves the whole time
50:29 were expecting a military Messiah
50:33 that would take the Roman Empire
50:36 down by force of arms,
50:39 that the Messiah by force of arms
50:42 would be seated upon an earthly throne,
50:46 that James and John would be his right hand thugs,
50:49 according to their mothers' request,
50:53 and that God would, listen,
50:55 basically operate by the same principles
50:59 as the kingdom of Satan just with greater power.
51:04 This is what is called, in history,
51:07 the myth of redemptive violence.
51:11 This is the idea
51:12 that is articulated in scripture
51:14 when the Bible says, "Be warned,"
51:17 the Bible says two times in the teachings of Jesus,
51:20 and then it's repeated in Revelation 13,
51:23 "He who kills with the sword will be killed with the sword."
51:27 Don't operate by principles of force and coercion,
51:31 don't force the conscience, leave people free, why?
51:36 Because freedom is the only way that it is possible
51:40 for human being to love God.
51:43 The moment force is entered into the equation,
51:46 whether it's emotional force, or physical force,
51:51 or theological force in doctrines like
51:53 "eternal torment," it's a form of force.
51:56 All of these doctrines constitute
51:59 theological and emotional coercion
52:03 and that's the principle that Satan is operating on.
52:05 But what's happening in Christ
52:08 is that He is toppling the kingdom of darkness
52:11 not by force of arms
52:14 but by subjecting Himself
52:18 to the violence of humanity and responding
52:23 to their hatred and violence with love and forgiveness.
52:27 Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
52:30 You can just picture Satan at this point,
52:34 chomping at the bit...
52:35 No, no, not forgive them, retaliate.
52:40 "Save yourself," the Roman soldiers said,
52:43 "save yourself,"
52:45 the two thieves beside him said,
52:47 "save yourself," the mob cried.
52:53 If you are the Son of God,
52:58 save yourself.
53:01 That was the temptation.
53:03 If Jesus would've crossed the line
53:08 to exert force or coercion
53:10 in any form to save Himself,
53:15 the kingdom would have been forfeited
53:20 to Satan's control.
53:23 The devil is mad,
53:27 as in insane,
53:31 with an insatiable desire
53:34 to through violence push Jesus
53:37 over the line to stop loving you and me
53:42 because of what we are doing to Him.
53:45 But when Jesus dies
53:48 with a covenantal faithfulness of God intact
53:53 in His heart,
53:55 the kingdom of Satan is defeated
53:58 in his expiring breath.
54:02 Jesus comes forth from the grave
54:06 not by some kind of
54:09 arbitrary active God,
54:12 Jesus comes forth from the grave
54:14 by virtue of the victory that He gained
54:18 by loving us to the end.
54:24 Our savior,
54:26 our brother, our Lord,
54:30 is one who has conquered the kingdom of darkness
54:34 by truth and love rather than deception and force.
54:39 The gospel commission therefore is a call of God
54:44 upon us as human beings to spread the good news
54:49 of who God is and what He is really like
54:51 as displayed in Christ.
54:54 The point of the biblical story
54:58 is not that God as God
55:03 would regain control of the world.
55:05 That wouldn't have taken 6,000 years.
55:07 If it were merely a matter of sheer power,
55:10 God has the sheer power.
55:13 If it were merely a matter of force, God has the force.
55:18 He could snap his fingers
55:21 and by sheer force destroy all His enemies.
55:26 But the point of the biblical story
55:28 is not that God as God
55:30 would regain control of the world
55:32 but the God as man, the second Adam.
55:37 The Son of God would regain control of the world
55:40 by truth and love.
55:42 The whole thing came back into human control,
55:45 and according to the Gospel of John,
55:48 as many has received this Messiah
55:52 in the display of His love,
55:55 as many has received Him, He gave the right,
56:00 the authority to become sons of God,
56:06 even to those who believe on His name, His character,
56:08 the display of God's love that is manifested in Him.
56:11 So that finally when we come to end of John Chapter 1,
56:17 the narrative very clearly tells us that the one who is
56:20 the Son of God, John 1:49,
56:23 is the Son of God in the Davidic sense
56:27 of the Hebrew narrative.
56:28 He is the Son of God in the sense that
56:31 He is the King of Israel.
56:34 He is now here the rightful ruler of world.
56:37 And now John 3:16 finally makes sense
56:42 in this very trajectory,
56:43 in this very narrative form.
56:48 "For God so loved the world,"
56:53 with the covenantal love that the Hebrew prophets
56:56 articulated and foretold,
56:59 "God so loved the world," Jews and Gentiles alike,
57:04 "that He gave," out of covenantal faithfulness,
57:08 "His only begotten, covenantal Son,
57:13 that whoever believes,"
57:15 that he is in fact the new Adam,
57:17 the new head of the human race, "should not perish,"
57:22 under the covenant curses articulated by Moses,
57:25 "but have everlasting life," under the covenant blessings
57:28 articulated by Moses.
57:31 John 3:16
57:33 is not trying to communicate anything to us
57:36 like we have generally thought.
57:39 John 3:16 is telling us
57:42 that the Son of God and the Savior of the world
57:46 is the one in whom planet earth has been regained
57:52 for human regency and stewardship.
57:56 We are sons and daughters of God
57:59 by virtue of the victory
58:00 that Jesus gained on our behalf.
58:02 Thank you for your time.


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Revised 2018-11-19