Thesis: God’s greatness is our good.
Text: Gal. 3:13
Sometimes I hate life in this world. It can be so frustrating! Oftentimes the good I want to do I don’t do and what I don’t want to do I do. Does that sound familiar? The Apostle Paul wrote about the struggle of the Christian life in Romans 7 saying, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” The law of sin that dwelled within Paul was the result of the curse of God. And we all struggle with it. No one is exempt from the curse.
Blessing and Cursing
In the Scriptures we find two principles at work: blessing and cursing. God created us to live in his blessing. We read in Genesis 1:28 that following the creation of man and woman, “God blessed them.” But God gave man the responsibility to continue in obedience in order to continue in and be confirmed in his blessing. Disobedience would lead to cursing. Genesis 2:16 reads: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”” And later in Deuteronomy when the law of God is republished we read: ““See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them” (Deut. 30:15-20).
Blessing comes through obedience. Cursing comes through disobedience. And what is obedience? Fundamentally, it is recognizing that God is great, that his will is supreme, that he is to be trusted and followed. In other words, God’s greatness is our good.
The Curse Established
Remember the temptation in the garden? What was it that fundamentally happened? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden, it was held back, as a reminder of God’s greatness, of his authority, over his image bearers. Only by maintaining that basic relationship could mankind live in happiness, in fullness, in God’s blessing. So when Adam took from the tree and ate he basically said, “I will make my own way! I will establish my own happiness! I will be my own blessing!” But ironically, the opposite occurred. Rather than reaping blessing, Adam reaped the curse of God. He was expelled from the Garden, the dwelling place of God own earth, the source of life and blessing for man. He was expelled to die, returning to the ground from which he was formed, as God said to him, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
The Curse Reversed
What hope could mankind possibly have? Only what God established by his own sovereign initiative. Mankind’s hope was that a Second Adam would come to be tempted in the same way as the first, but instead of falling he would overcome the temptation unto obedience and blessing.
As we’ve seen these last few days, at the beginning of his ministry Jesus was led out into the desert by the Holy Spirit. There he was tempted just as the first Adam was tempted, but rather than falling into sin, he overcame the temptation through faith in God’s word. Jesus stood before the forbidden tree in full appreciation for the beauty of the principle it represented. Therefore he refused to eat from it.
Satan showed Jesus the physical pleasures he could have by eating its fruit, but Jesus was more attracted to the supremacy of pleasure in God.
Satan showed Jesus the visible beauty of the forbidden fruit, but Jesus kept his eyes focused on the supremacy of the beauty of God.
Satan showed Jesus the supposed "freedom" of autonomy, but Jesus kept his heart set on the revealed will of God.
Jesus overcame the temptation and lived a sinless life, but still there was more to be done. Not only did humanity owe God its obedience, but it also owed God a debt for disobedience. That debt had to be paid if we were to be freed. Jesus had to go to the tree of cursing, to suffer the penalty of disobedience on our behalf. And he did just that. As the Apostle writes, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). There on the cursed tree Christ demonstrated the greatest act of faith ever witnessed by man. Under the extreme duress of his willful curse-bearing he said, “Father into your hands I commit my Spirit.” Through his cursing on the tree, the foundational principle of creation was reestablished for all God’s chosen people: God’s greatness is our good.
So I encourage you today, search your heart. Ask yourself whether you are trusting in Christ’s finished work on your behalf or is this church stuff just fun and games for you? Perhaps you’re asking yourself, how you can know if you're trusting in Christ? There are two ways: (1) Do you often find yourself resting in the assurance of God’s love to you in Christ? Or do you rarely, if ever consider it? (2) When you look at your life over time, do you see any marks of growth in maturity? Do you see areas in which God’s Spirit has worked to transform you? If you can answer yes to those questions you have no reason to doubt that you are trusting in Christ. Another way to put those questions is to simply, but honestly, ask yourself: Do I really believe that God’s greatness is my good?
Discussion
This evening I’d like you to explore these questions with your discussion groups.
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