A Portrait of Christ - D. Patrick Ramsey

Скачать книгу

has promised to save us from sin and death. He did so right after the fall, when he said to Adam and Eve, in Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you [the devil] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” In this verse, God promises that a descendent of Eve will one day come and destroy the devil: “he shall bruise your head.”

      The Battle between Good and Evil

      Undoubtedly, Satan wasn’t too pleased when he heard about God’s promise to send someone to crush him and take away his newly acquired minions. His displeasure, though, was translated into action. He decided to fight back. The battle lines were thus drawn, and the war over humanity began in earnest between God and Satan.

      Throughout the period leading up to the fulfillment of God’s promise, if we would have pulled back the curtain to peer into what was going on behind the scenes, we would have seen the devil doing his best to eradicate the seed of the woman. He began with the ungodly Cain murdering his righteous brother Abel. Yet, the hope carried on in Eve’s third son, Seth. Satan changed tactics and used marriage between the godly and the ungodly to wipe out the godly seed (Genesis 6). This approach nearly worked, as the newfound alliance diluted the true religion, causing humanity’s wickedness to flourish, to the point where God decided to destroy humanity from the face of the earth. There was, however, one righteous man, Noah. God delivered him and his family from the flood, thereby keeping the hope of a future savior alive.

      From the numerous peoples that came from Noah, God chose Abraham. The promised deliverer would be one of his descendents. A difficulty arose, however, in that Abraham’s wife, Sarah, was unable to have any children (a consequence of the fall). As nothing is impossible with God, Sarah conceived and gave birth to the promised child, Isaac, in her old age. Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, also had a hard time conceiving, yet God is faithful, and she eventually gave birth to twin boys, Esau and Jacob.

      The promise carried on through Jacob. He had twelve sons, so the question of an heir was not an issue. Survival during the seven-year famine, however, was. To keep them and the promise alive, God used the wicked actions of ten sons to send one son, Joseph, to Egypt, so that he might be in a position to save them all from the severe famine. With Joseph being Pharaoh’s right-hand man, Jacob and his family moved to Egypt, where after a long period of time, his family turned into a nation, containing as many people as the stars in the heavens.

      At this juncture, Satan executed a violent assault on Israel in order to nullify God’s promise. We learn in Exodus 1 that Pharaoh first enslaved the entire nation of Israel and then ordered the killing of all Hebrew male babies. Killing all the males would have effectively destroyed the nation, as the remaining girls would have been assimilated into the Egyptian culture and people. The continuing line leading to the coming savior would have then been wiped out. God countered this attack through the Hebrew midwives who refused to carry out Pharaoh’s orders, and by raising up Moses to lead his people out of Egypt.

      While in the promised land, God chose Jesse’s youngest son as the one through whom the savior would come. The Messiah would be a son of David. For a time, things went fairly smoothly, with just a few bumps in the road; but a tense moment occurred after the death of Ahaziah, the seventh king after David. Upon his death, Ahaziah’s mother, Athaliah, killed all the royal heirs—that is, all the sons of David. She murdered all of them, except one. Unbeknownst to her, little Joash was rescued from among the king’s sons who were being put to death. Satan was again frustrated after another close call. But though he lost another battle, he was far from giving up the war.

      During the reign of Ahaz, Syria and Israel combined forces to blot out the house of David and set up their own king in Jerusalem (Isaiah 7). God promised to Ahaz that their attempt would fail: “It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass” (Isa 7:7). To confirm his promise, God gave a sign: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa 7:14).

      Further attempts were made by Satan to wipe out the line of the promised one: the exile due to the people’s apostasy, the mixed marriages of the Jews who remained in Jerusalem, and the decree to exterminate the Jews during the time of Esther. All of them were unsuccessful, which set up a climactic battle, wherein Satan launched another violent assault to destroy the one who was supposed to destroy him. We will turn to this in a moment.

      The point to be grasped is that there is a cosmic battle between good and evil. The Bible often describes it as the battle between two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. When we speak of the kingdom of God we do have to distinguish between God’s kingdom in a redemptive sense and his kingdom in a providential sense. God is and always will be king and ruler over the world. As Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged, God’s kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and he rules over all (Daniel 4). This is God’s providential kingdom. But God’s kingdom is also used in a redemptive sense, and it is this kingdom that is contrasted with the kingdom of Satan or darkness. This kingdom refers to God in time and history securing redemption and breaking the power of evil in this world.

      In The Lord of the Rings, the hobbits live blissfully unaware of the great battle to save Middle Earth from the evil Sauron. Many people are like hobbits and do not understand or see the great battle waging between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, a battle over the allegiance of people’s hearts and lives. But though they do not know it or admit it, the battle goes on. This is why believers must put on the whole armor of God daily: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).

      Jesus is the Promised Savior

      The climactic battle between the two warring kingdoms began with the birth of Jesus, because he is the promised savior. With the appearance of his nemesis, Satan gathered his forces together for the showdown. Before we look at this part of the story, however, we want to demonstrate from the Gospels that Jesus, the son of Mary, is indeed God’s promised savior.

      The events surrounding Jesus’ birth provided the first clues that he is the savior. Shortly after the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner to Jesus, John’s father, Zechariah, prophesied, saying in reference to Jesus that God had “raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophet from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us” (Luke 1:69–71).

      When an angel appeared to Mary to tell her that she would conceive and have a son, he said to her, “You shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:31–33).

      Later on, as Joseph was thinking about quietly divorcing Mary because she had become pregnant, an angel appeared to him and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:20–21).

      After his birth, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem. While there, Simeon took the child into his arms and blessed God, saying, “My eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples” (Luke 2:30–31).

      Jesus’ public ministry provided further clues that he is the savior. Right from the beginning of his ministry, Jesus proclaimed openly and with authority that “the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). In other words, it was time for the messianic kingdom of God to be established. The long-awaited kingdom was coming, because the long-awaited savior and king had come. It was time to dethrone Satan and take away his power over people. It was time to see Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Luke 10:18).

      Jesus’ message of the nearness of the kingdom was confirmed by his casting out demons. In Mark 1:23–26, Jesus confronted a man possessed by an unclean spirit. Most of, if not all, the people witnessing this confrontation did not know who Jesus was or that he was the promised Messiah. The unclean spirit, however, knew exactly who Jesus was: “I know

Скачать книгу