God Will Provide
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God Himself
God Himself
There are many words of comfort found in scripture. This morning, I am going to focus on two words found together often in scripture, “but God”. Now these two words at times indicate God was ruling against humanity, and in other cases they show his great mercy towards humanity. The Bible starts out in the first few chapters with some very sad and very bad news. Sin entered the world. Our first parents had but one rule, and a simple one at that. As our representative, Adam’s sin was a curse upon the entire human race, and upon the earth itself. In fact, that first rule is where we first find those two words, “but God”
but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
Of course, we know that the rule was not kept, and therefore, God placed curses on his creation. Curses on man, curses on women, curses on the earth itself, and a curse on the serpent who had tempted the woman, leading to her sin, and her husband, being responsible as head of the human race sinned as well.
After this, it was shown from the very first sin, that to cover that sin, blood had to be shed. And God himself provided for that sacrifice. I want you to remember this phrase as well, “God himself”. We are going to focus on those words as well. Be attentive, then. “But God”, and “God himself”.
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
Not long after this, mankind, despite the graciousness of God in not destroying our race completely, once again forgot to honor God by keeping his moral laws that he had written on the heart of man. And it got so bad that God decided to destroy most of mankind, that is all but 8, those 8 being Noah and his family.
And after all that time of water destroying the earth, we see a glimmer of hope once again in those two words, “But God”.
But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.
A little while later in human history, the man Abraham arose to be a special receiver of God’s grace, and Abraham had been promised by God that his offspring would become a great nation, but when Abraham’s wife was not yet having children, she gave to Abraham her servant to have a child with, showing a lack of faith, and this bad act on their part led to dissension in the family, which should not surprise us in the least. And it seemed as though Abraham’s promise from God would not come through Sarah, But God said
But God said to Abraham, “Be not displeased because of the boy and because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
Once again, despite a lack of faith and bad decisions, God renewed his gracious promise to Abraham. And Isaac was born, and with him growing nicely and everything seeming to go well, God asked Abraham to sacrifice that boy. And then we see those two words, “God Himself”. Abraham had faith that God would provide for a sacrifice, and when Isaac asked his father where the lamb for the burnt offering was;
Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Then the two of them walked on together.
Indeed, God himself did provide the sacrifice, and it was a ram caught in a thicket. And keep this in mind, because before we are finished this morning, we will marvel at the lamb in the thicket that God provided. He spared Abraham from having to sacrifice his own son, but God Himself put his own son up as a sacrifice.
Those who are chosen by God in scripture find that when it comes to their safety, the merciful words, “but God” come to their rescue. It happens again and again. It reminds us that Our help only can come from God. When Jacob’s father-in-law tried every which way to cheat him out of his rightful wages, it was God who protected Jacob.
yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me.
But God.
And again, when Jacob fled from Laban and Laban pursued him, God intervened.
But God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream by night and said to him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.”
In the next generation, once again we see that phrase, “but God”, and again it means that God has acted to preserve, to protect, to honor his promises. Joseph has the wisdom to understand it. When his brothers discovered that he was alive and held the power of Egypt, they were frightened, because they assumed he would want revenge on them, but Joseph saw the hand of God at work.
So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.
After this, there was a family reunion, and Israel, as he was nearing the end of his mortal life, reminded Joseph of the promise, with “but God”
Then Israel said to Joseph, “Behold, I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you again to the land of your fathers.
After that, when his brothers again thought that since their father had died, now Joseph would take his revenge, he comforted them once again with “but God”
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
And Joseph, like his father, when he was about to die, renewed the promise of God to his family, telling them that God would bring them out of Egypt.
And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
And the people did leave Egypt, and God Himself would go before them, as Moses told the people when he was about to die.
The Lord your God himself will go over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, so that you shall dispossess them, and Joshua will go over at your head, as the Lord has spoken.
Let us move forward in time in the history of God’s salvation, and see David. David, who was chosen by God and anointed to be king over Israel, yet had not taken his position yet, and Saul was hotly pursuing him to kill him. But God. God preserved David
And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him into his hand.
Many of us have been comforted by Psalms that use one of these phrases.
But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. Selah
The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge! Selah
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
The preacher in Ecclesiastes cautioned that God is to be feared: Ecc5.7
For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.
Now so far, perhaps you have thought this has only to do with ancient people, but I promise you it is relevant to you and I. We, like Adam and Eve, Like Noah, like Abraham, like Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Joshua and David, we all need those phrases to apply to us. We need to know what “but God” means for us, and how “God himself” has provided us a way of salvation, and we desperately need that because we are desperately wicked and desperately in dire straits if we must face God on judgment day without and advocate to speak on our behalf, without a substitute to take the wrath of God on our behalf, without a sacrifice to die on our behalf, and without one who defeated death on our behalf.
The good news, is that the Old Testament pointed to this advocate, this substitute, this sacrifice, this victor over the grave, this Savior. The Old Testament is beautiful. It teaches us about the holiness of God, his righteousness and justice, and his lovingkindness. Every believer should study the Old Testament and know it very well, because all of it points to Jesus. But now let us look at the new testament.
In Mark, we see even those who opposed Jesus knew that only God can forgive sins:
“Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Jesus said that God knows our hearts: Luke16.15
And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.
God raised Jesus from the dead:
And we are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree,
but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear,
not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
But God raised him from the dead,
Paul pointed out how love is demonstrated to us: Rom5.6-8
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And Paul wrote to the Corinthians that unlike the world’s way of choosing, God uses what seems unlikely in his cause:
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
He said that it isn’t the preacher who gets credit for the work of salvation and sanctification:
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
He shows how the church is God’s to rule and build: 1Cor12.24-25
1 Corinthians 12:24–25 (ESV)
… But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,
that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.
And for those in Christ, we will receive a resurrection body. 1Cor15.38
But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
He gives comfort;
But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus,
And finally, my very favorite of all the “but God”s, is a beautiful reminder to the believer, and a promise to the one who will believe, that reminds us of our desperate need for a saviour. Before the good news, let’s digest together some bad news. The wages of sin is still death. The wages of sin for Adam and Eve was death. God killed the animals to provide a covering for the sinners. The wages of sin was death when God killed all of the human population save 8. The wages of death were seen in the sacrificial system, when all people were responsible for their sins, and the only was to atone for them was death.
However, without atonement, without a substitute, without an animal to kill, the death remained on the sinner themselves. Sin is death. Death is its natural outcome, death is the payment to the sinner. And everyone here either is still dead in their sins or was dead in their sins. And Paul reminds the church at Ephesus of this chilling reminder:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Yes, this is who we were. Some of you still are. Those in Christ were, the rest still are. This is bad news, but the very more wonderfullest news comes in the next two words: “But God”
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
The Diagnosis
The Diagnosis
Dead in trespasses and sins.
Following the course of this world.
Following the prince of the power of the air.
Living in the passions of our flesh
Carrying out the desires of the body and mind
by nature children of wrath.
The Solution:
The Solution:
I am pleased to say that many here have been redeemed and can say to this, “Amen!”. However, there are undoubtedly some here who have not done this. You may be the twice a year church visitors. Easter and Christmas only. Or perhaps you have come along to church regularly with your family, but the faith is not your own yet. Maybe someone is here who was, until this morning, unaware of the terrible position you are in because of your guilt for sin. God’s wrath is being stored up for you. You are headed towards an eternal, conscious torment under the wrath of God because in his Holiness, he demands perfection from his race, yet from the first sin, the nature of sin is part of our DNA, and we are sinners because we sin, but also we are sinners because of our inherited nature:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
That’s tough news to bear, that we not only are guilty of sin, but guilty of having a sinful nature. And to hear that we inherited this because of the sin of our first human father is even harder for some people, but the good news is that the Bible teaches that just as we received that nature, we can receive a new nature. We received Adam’s sin nature, but if we trust in Christ, we can receive a new nature, a righteous nature. We don’t need to bear the wrath of God because Jesus took on himself the fullness of God’s wrath on the cross, and so we can exchange our sin nature for a nature like Christ’s:
For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.
For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
When you come to the realization that you are a sinner, and in grave danger of having God’s wrath poured out on you for all eternity because you committed cosmic treason against the holy God, you must look for help.
There was a day at the beginning of the church, and Peter preached a sermon. He and others like Stephen, who also gave a sermon recorded in the book of Acts, set a pattern for preachers throughout the church age. That pattern includes showing people what the Old Testament said, how it pointed to Christ, and then declaring that Jesus is the Christ. After reminding his listeners of some of the history of the covenant, Peter said this:
Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
I want to say some things about this sermon Peter gave. First, it was on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit of God had powerfully filled the disciples of Jesus, which Jesus had promised would happen. This was empowerment from on high, but it was also the Holy Spirit who caused the words of scripture to take hold of the people who responded. You see, whenever someone puts faith in Christ, the preacher gets no credit. He can only say, I am a worthless servant, I only did what was required of me. But when someone believes, it is most certainly the saving work of the Holy Spirit, who enables the listener not only to comprehend what is preached, but grants them the faith to believe it. The response of a new believer is both joyful and full of anguish. They will be full of anguish over their sin, and full of joy for the free gift, the mercy, the grace, the salvation provided through Jesus on the cross and His resurrection. The Word of God preached, in conjunction with the work of the Spirit of God, regenerates the new believer so that they can respond in faith.
That is exactly what happened for Peter after his sermon. He did not give an altar call, or say to them please bow your heads and close your eyes, which I have not understood frankly. Committing to Christ should be boldy public, and yet many preachers and evangelists will tell everyone to close their eyes so no one can figure out who might be receiving that grace. It seems very silly if you think about it. We do public baptism but try to keep it secret when people are going to commit to Christ the first time. Perhaps that is why there are so many false converts, because if you made people declare out loud their need instead of having everyone close their eyes and bow their heads, maybe we would have less people responding by raising their hands, but those being certainly and surely moved by the Spirit of God will not be hindered by any public humiliation they may endure, for they have come to understand that following Jesus is more valuable, just as Moses, who refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.
At any rate, Peter did not call on anyone to close their eyes to protect the guilty, but spontaneously, the people cried out:
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
This is the power of God’s Holy Spirit. When the Spirit of God works a regenerating faith in the heart of someone hearing the gospel, the preacher does not need to coax them forward, he does not need to have them close their eyes. The one truly being drawn to Christ by God will respond to the gospel. Neither did Jesus tell the man next to him on the cross, to close his eyes and say a sinners prayer. The man responded. That is evidence of the work of the Spirit. God redeemed that man.
So if God is working in your heart to bring about repentance and faith, and you want to know what to do next, let me give you the answer Peter gave: Act2.38-41
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”
And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.