Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Good Morning!

I’m Pastor Wayne and I’d like to welcome you all to the gathering of Ephesus Baptist Church.

Jesus is a great example of this verse.

He chose the Good name that His Father bestowed on Him along with the favor that accompanied it over the great riches of Heaven when He took on the frailty of human flesh to come and rescue us from ourselves.

Today, you are here to worship God; to chose a better name for yourself than all the riches of this world.

The name, “child of God” or “follower of Jesus.”

May you experience in the Father’s Favor as we worship Him together for His glory and our joy!

If you are visiting with us this morning, we want you to know that Ephesus is an active faith community on a mission with Jesus.

Here at Ephesus, we are one people giving our all to love God, love others, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.

We have a connect card in the pew in front of you.

I invite you to take one and fill it out!

If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.

I promise, our prayer team will lift you up soon.

You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.

Scripture Memory

Opening Scripture

Introduction

What a great passage of Scripture we studied last week which relays to us the Father’s commitment to save His creation through His Son Jesus Christ.

Our Heavenly Father designed a rescue mission to save all who would believe in the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Concerning this rescue mission, God the Father was All In, but what about the Son of God? How did He feel about this mission?

Is He All In on His Father’s plan?

Does He willingly accept His mission?

This morning we are going to survey the Scriptures to seek to answer that question.

It is my prayer that you will come away with a deeper appreciation for the sacrifice that was made on your behalf.

I pray that Easter will loom even more meaningful after our study this morning.

You will see that Jesus Christ our Lord, willingly and faithfully submitted to the Father’s will as He looks at the Rescue Mission and very clearly says: Mission | Accepted!

There are at least two things we must realize about Jesus and the rescue mission of God.

First, we must realize that.....

1. God’s rescue mission involved Jesus’ Sacrifice from the very beginning.

Gen 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

Gen 1:31 And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.

God allowed Adam and Eve an abundance of liberty in how they lived their lives, but with one exception: they could “not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”(2:17).

Death is clearly promised if they break this command (2:17), because God knows that they will be removed from their connection to the tree of life.

It becomes clear, then, that God’s favor is not unconditional in the sense that Adam and Eve may do as they please and still enjoy God’s blessing.

What God is saying is that they must live by keeping His command.

To do so they must trust God’s word and believe God’s warning.

Faith is required.

Loyalty is required.

God said, “You see that tree.

Don’t touch it!”

That should have been enough.

If they just left it alone.

That would have demonstrated the faith and loyalty they owed to their Creator.

But, you see, in the liberty God gifted us, there’s something about our freedom that causes us to want to investigate and see for itself.

Adrian Rogers once said,

Have you ever touched the paint when the sign says, “Wet paint—don’t touch”?

...There’s something about us that, when the sign says, “This is wet paint,” rather than just simply taking what the sign says, rather than just taking the revelation, we want the experimentation.

And so we touch, and we have the results there on our fingertips.

And the wall is marred, because we cannot just simply believe the sign, obey the sign.

We have to see for ourselves.1

Had mankind obeyed God at this point, the rescue mission would never have been necessary.

But God knew that humanity was going to rebel against Him.

He knew that we would be disobedient and unfaithful.

He knew that our loyalty would cease.

He knew what would be in our hearts.

For that reason, Calvary was in the heart and mind of God before He even created this world.

When John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about the beast, he spoke of the authority the beast would have over two groups of people.

Revelation 13 and verses 7 and 8 say

7b And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, 8 and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.

The beast will have total authority over those who are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

But the names in the Lamb’s Book of Life, he has no power over.

Those names were “written before the foundation of the world.”

Where were they written, in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

God planned our redemption, our rescue, before He even created the first molecule of earth.

His plan was detailed and thorough.

God knew that there was only one way to save humanity.

He knew that it would require the sacrifice of His beloved Son.

In fact, He revealed to us the precise time the sacrifice would happen.

Daniel Akin, in his book, Discovering the Biblical Jesus, is very helpful on this point.

The Angel Gabriel told Daniel “Seventy Weeks” are decreed.

The word for “weeks” is best translated “sevens.”

“Sevens” refer to a period of years similar to our word “dozens.”

Decreed means to “cut out” or to “be determined.”

God has cut out or determined 490 years of history in His plan for Israel.

From the time of Nehemiah’s calling to rebuild to the completion of the rebuilding was 49 years or seven weeks or sevens.

Then there are 62 weeks or sevens until the arrival of the anointed prince or the messiah.

So that is 49 years of rebuilding plus 434 years until the the arrival of the great prince.

The decree to rebuild can be dated to the time of King Artaxerxes found in Nehemiah 2:1-8.

According to our calendars, the date was March 5, 444 BC.

The Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem has been dated around March 30, AD 33.

Since the Jews use a 360 day lunar calendar, we can start at 444 BC and go forward 483 years of 360 days each, and we get a total of 173,880 days.

Going from March 5, 444 BC to March 30, AD 33 is exactly 173,880 days.

God knew the very century, year, month, week, day, hour, minute, and second His plan would be accomplished.

Indeed, our God has His hand on history2.

He planned when His Son would come.

He also preordained when Jesus would die as the suffering Lamb of God.

Ephesus, do you realize that from the very beginning, before the foundations of earth were spoken into existence, God’s rescue mission involved the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Second, we must realize that

2. In the ultimate act of humility, Jesus accepted His role as the sacrificial Lamb of God and set His face toward Jerusalem.

The whole trinity is at work in planning and implementing the greatest rescue mission ever.

Jesus who is the Logos or the Word of God, was with God, and was God as the 2nd Person of the Trinity, the Son of God.

All things were made through him, including the plan for this rescue mission we call redemption.

Jesus knew that He would have to condescend or come down to us to save us.

In Him, Life is available to all who would have a relationship to God the Father through Christ the Son.

Whatever God is in essence, Christ is, in all of His heavenly Glory.

Christ gave up His high and lofty position in heaven for the salvation of souls and the pleasure of His Father.

Paul says that Jesus “emptied himself.”

This does not mean that He gave up divinity, He was still God, but He voluntarily became subordinate in His function as the Lamb of God.

It was an emptying by addition.