A CERTAIN WORD IN HISTORY

A couple of weeks ago Sharon and I were privileged to be able to spend a few days in Quebec City. While there we were able to take in quite a number of historical exhibits, some of which gave a little glimpse into some of the roots of the conflict between the English and French that still rears its head today in the form of the independence movement.
We saw and heard about the conflicts between France and England that spilled over into the so-called "New World", fighting throughout North America and the final conquests on the Plains of Abraham. We read about attempts to suppress the French language and culture in following years, and the stubborn streak of the Quebec nationalist movement, keeping their spirit as a separate people, a spirit that we all see and experience through the media even today.

It's quite something, to see how what transpires in Canadian politics today has its roots in something so many generations ago, how it is one continuum of events, rather than a series of disconnected items.
Especially in our day and age when it seems we tend to move from one idea to something else, supposedly new and improved, where old paradigms have to give way to new ones, culture shift happen in radical ways, and roots are almost obsolete.

Tonight I want to look at something with a continuity that is far greater, far more intricate, and far longer in duration than anything going today, certainly than the struggle between the two solitudes in Canadian society.
I want to look at a movement, actually a carefully laid out and documented plan that has endured for - well, why don't we read about it first and then take up the discussion.

A plan, intricate detailed historical plan far greater, far more intricate and far longer in duration than any other. This plan has been going since the beginning of time -- far before recorded time. We're talking the beginning of time, period. A plan that has occurred with relentless forward progress, and which will continue to move forward until the trumpet sounds the end of historical time and the final judgement.

The plan we're referring to is the plan of salvation -to use the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, the official teaching document of our denomination, "how...we escape [God's] punishment and return to God's favour." (q/a12). It is God's merciful and perfect plan laid down, and throughout the course of human history being executed by God Himself, to bring salvation to people who had wandered away from the safety and freedom of His love and fallen into generations of selfish stealing and lying, cheating and backstabbing, wars and famines, hatred and isolation, crying and frustration.
We're talking of God's plan to send Jesus Christ into the world to be the perfect human being, while at the same time being complete divine Son of God the Father, in order to completely pay for all our sins and to bring all those who believe in Him home again.

It's a plan that was laid down and first articulated right after the Fall of our first human parents in the garden of Eden. It's a plan that was carefully prepared and laid out over thousands of years of human history. That plan came to its greatest moment with the birth, life, sacrificing death, and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ some 2000 years ago. And this plan continues to be worked through, with details continually being unveiled and manoeuvred towards a final day when all will be completed, Jesus will return to earth and be visible to all as King and Sovereign Judge of the Cosmos.

Tonight, in a world that operates so much -- at least so it seems -- by impulse; where things done today seem to have little connected relevance to what happened even 20 years ago in that kind of a world I'd like us to understand that here in the Church we are anchored in a divine plan that was relevant back in the hazy beginnings of time, relevant in the days of the early disciples, and that will remain relevant as long as the world remains in its present form. God, in His fully reliable and historically continuous, unshakeable and thoroughly reliable way has set His sights on the goal of reclaiming humanity.
He has made His plan and since the beginning of time, throughout the Old Testament, through the New Testament and still today, has stuck to that plan without deviating an inch.

Understand also that the great world-wide testimony to that remarkable and miraculous salvation plan of God, a plan that in every way revolves around the Son of God, Jesus Christ
- the great testimony -
is the bible.

Jesus himself made that claim. That's the whole point of our reading from John 5. Jesus has gone to a place of great tragedy and despair, the pool of Bethesda and given healing to a man crippled for years, a man lost in his world of hopelessness. He is given a new life, new flexibility in his limbs, by Jesus.
Of course the healing causes a commotion -- 1. because it was a healing, 2. because it was so radical and done in such an unorthodox manner; nobody had ever seen anything like this before. It broke all the religious and social conventions of the day.

The officials of the time begin to grumble - "Who does this guy think he is, anyway?"
And to them Jesus responds, "Who do you think I am? Look at the scriptures - the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Look at them carefully and you will see me written all through their pages."

Jesus was telling them, and by the inspiring work of the Holy Spirit in St. John is telling us, that from first page to last the whole purpose of the Bible, and the central focus of the bible -- it's fulcrum
-- is Him.

Jesus is the key to unlocking the meaning of the Bible.
That's not a hard thing to grasp about the overtly Christian New Testament, the books from Matthew to Revelation.But Jesus made that same claim about the books from Genesis to Malachi as well. Oh, perhaps it's not as clear there. But as one biblical scholar put it, "His redeeming work binds all 66 books together into one all-embracing gospel of salvation. His coming, concealed in the Old Testament, is revealed in the New Testament." [G.Spykman, p.55]
That's exactly the point made by the teachers who wrote the Catechism. They wanted their students to know that the central truth of the Christian Faith -- the same truth that draws us here together at Calvin church - was no afterthought, no "Plan B", so to speak, of God.
Remember that, as you read through your bibles.
Look for this plan of salvation for humanity in Jesus Christ, look for it on every page.
The Catechism points out that we have the first dim strains of God's Master Plan already in the Garden of Eden when He promises a future of hope to two cowering humans, Adam and Eve. That's recorded in Genesis 3.15.
Then it is published to the great fathers of the faith, the patriarchs -- men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph -- as they trudge through life, tired and dusty, moving from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan to Egypt and back to Canaan.
They trudged through life always looking for the One to come who was going to do what God promised, to crush the head of the serpent who had brought so much misery into God's perfect creation.

Time moves on, but the plan never falters.
The nation of Israel is assembled. They are given "audio-visual" training, so to speak -- that's the point of all the sacrifices and ceremonies of the various Laws. They were designed to train the people and keep them separate; to remind them that they were the people of the Plan, the people of the Messiah, the people through whom God would redeem the world.
The centuries roll by, and prophets come. In their own personal ways they all announce the same basic message:"God is still working. He hasn't forgotten. He hasn't changed His mind. Can a mother forget her baby, and a woman the child within her womb? Yet, even if they might possibly forget, I WILL NEVER FORGET. Though things may sometimes seem dark and hopeless, they are not out of control." And finally, with the birth of Jesus Christ, the clear scope of what God had in mind and the magnificence of His project come into clear view.

Understand that, fellow believers.
From first page to last the Bible carries this one central message, the message of the Plan. Don't get sucked into thinking that the messages of any of the books can somehow be interpreted in a manner apart from that. Don't ever begin to think that what is taught in the Old Testament revolves around Jesus any less than the teaching of the New Testament;that there is some sort of discontinuity between the two; that they have no relationship to each other.
The Great Plan.
One continuous whole.
And we're part of it today -- historically one, in solidarity with all those who have been part of the story of Salvation all down through time; they that now stand as part of the great cloud of witnesses, as Hebrews 12.1 puts it.

The Great Plan -
As we said God, in His rich treasure house of surprises and goodness, reached for that plan even as Satan was cackling with laughter and the thought of victory after luring Adam and Eve into sin. God reached for that plan which Eph 1.4 tells us was made quot;before the creation of the world." He announces that one day there would be complete restoration. That's Genesis 3.15

A few chapters later we have the story of Noah. And in Genesis 9 God promises that the earth will continue in an orderly fashion until God has fully worked out His entire plan of salvation.

The Plan begins to roll with increased inertia in the story of the life of Abraham. God makes a promise and a covenant with him in Genesis 12, 15, 17, and 18. We, the readers, are reminded that the Fall, the Flood, the chaos of Babel, and the sordid stories of the lives of early humans as depicted in Genesis, were all unable to shake God from beginning to move towards fulfilling that Plan. In Abraham we first read about the faith of people being a key component of that plan. "Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to Him as righteousness."

Move along in the Old Testament through into the book of Exodus and you see God make formal covenant and promises with the new nation of Israel. It's the same Plan -- the same sort of language used for Abraham. "I am your God and you are my people."
That's the constant refrain as God reclaims what is rightfully His.

History rolls on. Temptations are great. There are struggles. Pain is enormous in places, and sometimes darkness settles over these people of the Great Plan -- such darkness that one begins to wonder if it will work out or not.
But then we encounter the life of David. Again echoes of the very first promise are heard. The Plan still is on the move. We hear of a Son of David.
The prophet Jeremiah talks about a new covenant.
Other prophets speak of One to Come, a Son of Man.

Promise after promise until, finally -- fulfilment in Jesus.
And the Old Testament act of circumcision becomes baptism.
The Old Testament act of Passover becomes Holy Communion.
The Old Testament people of Israel becomes the Church. Manna becomes the bread of Life. The Temple becomes a congregation. The priest becomes a pastor, elders and deacons. The altar is replaced by an empty cross. People waiting in an outer court are replaced by congregations in active worship, inside the sanctuary.
And Christ is the focal point of it all! Join me tonight in marvelling at the greatness of that Plan.
Join me in looking in new ways to see that focal point as you read the entire bible.
See Jesus, for example when you read about the Passover Lamb in Exodus. See Jesus in the book of Numbers as the smitten Rock, the One lifted up in the wilderness. See Jesus in Joshua as the Captain of the Lord's Host.
See Jesus in Ruth as the Kinsman-Redeemer.
See Jesus in Esther as the Advocate for His people.
See Jesus in Job as the ever-living Redeemer.
See Jesus in the Song of Solomon as the long-awaited, beloved Bridegroom.
See Jesus in Daniel as the Son of Man.
See Jesus in Hosea as the redeeming Husband of the fallen wife.
See Jesus in Jonah as the resurrector.
See Jesus in Haggai as the Desire of the Nations.
See Him in Malachi as the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His Wings.

See Him, our Saviour and Lord, in every page of Scripture.
And then, as you leave here -- can you see Him working in the pages of History?
Ah, there is will not be as clear.
We stand, in that respect, something like the people of the Old Testament, because we are looking forward. But we can do so with the sure and certain words of Scripture. Words that describe God's faithfulness and sure workings in bringing Jesus the first time. Words that describe what the final end is going to be. And words that give us clear direction on how to live and move as we approach that final end.

So read those words.
And then face tomorrow.
Face it not as people who took a bit of a breather, who had a disconnected "time out" on Sunday and who on Monday "go back to reality."
Face it, rather, as people of the great reality, people who are by the Grace of God and salvation in Christ, part of the Great Plan -- true and ultimate reality.

And allow that reality, that Plan, that hope and that certain future to affect the way you think, the way you talk, the way you relate to your neighbours, the way you work and the way you play.

For His glory. And His purposes.
Forever.
Amen.