God's Plan for Evangelism Part 7

The bad news of human’s sin and God’s judgment is not the end of the story. If it was there would be no hope for us. But why was Salvation through the sacrifice of His Son?

For thousands of years after the fall God prepared the world through law and prophecy for the fulfillment of his promise in Genesis 3:15 with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Bible is the story of God’s counter offensive against sin. It’s the grand narration of how God made it right, how He is making it right and how he will one day make it right forever and ever.

Jesus had to be fully God in order to live a sin free life and beat death and he had to be fully human to represent us before the Father.

Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

Jesus began His ministry on earth by proclaiming “The time has come! The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news!” What was the good news? For centuries, through His law and prophets, God had foretold of a time when He would once and for all put an end to the world’s evil and rescue his people form their sin. He would establish His rule, His “kingdom” in the person of a messianic King, one who was of the royal line of King David.

In 2 Samuel 7:11 God promised David that one of his sons would rule on his throne forever.

And in Isaiah 9:6-7 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. ⁷ Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

This was Jesus! And in Luke 1:32-33 the angel said to Mary, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy that traces Jesus’ ancestry directly back to King David and then on to Abraham himself.  Matthew stylizes his genealogy, dividing it into 3 generations of 14. And 14, as any good Jew would have known, was the number arrived at by adding up the values of the 3 Hebrew letters D-V-D “David”. There should never have been a question of who Jesus is!

But the kingdom He was preaching wasn’t what they were looking for. They wanted someone to overthrow the Roman government and Jesus was healing, teaching, forgiving sin and telling the Roman governor “My kingdom is not of this world.”

John 18:36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

Someday He will rule on earth for 1000 years and then over the new Heavens and earth forever. But they were looking at what was going on right then.