Those who question why God’s Kingdom should come at this
time probably would not be any more impressed were it said God’s been “putting
this thing together” for about 4,500 years.
They’d still wonder “Why now?”
Maybe it can be answered this way.
Without God, man is a mess. With
God, man is still a mess, but a redeemable mess. How messed up is man? Let’s go back, say, to the beginning.
God created man (we’ll pass beyond arguments surrounding
this) and created him perfectly, without sin.
As God viewed His creative handiwork He didn’t think it could be
improved upon (Genesis 1:31). The understanding is that God and Adam (and
later, Eve) walked in perfect accord—they actually had fellowship together and
didn’t think twice about it. It was
natural. That was the way it was
supposed to be. Out of the naturalness
of that relationship God gave Adam enormous authority—authority over the whole
world! Further, Adam was made (built,
put together, created) to last forever.
It was good—almost totally good.
Except for the fact Adam needed a partner, and God took care of that beautifully
giving him Eve. Now, things were
perfect. Then this perfect picture was
marred.
It happened in this way, Adam and Eve were tempted, by the enemy
of their souls, to exercise their wills against the Father’s. This was a temptation “to be as God”,
supplanting His place. They went for it,
though God had said, “In the day you do this (partake of the fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil) you will die.”
And die they did. It took Adam
930 years to die, Eve is not spoken of. Our amazement with his length of life is
tempered by the fact he was designed to live forever! But the thing that happened first was they
lost fellowship with God.
Adam’s rebellion provoked something else very critical, it
cut God “out of the loop” with man. That’s
because God had given man total authority over the earth and to exercise
authority, a person must be “under” authority—but Adam is no longer under God’s
authority. That authority roamed about
as a heat-seeking missile, attempting to find a “power” (authority) to be
under. Satan graciously volunteered and
it became a fact.
Proof of this transaction is revealed when Satan was
tempting Jesus (the Second Adam) to sin.
“Then the devil, taking Him (Jesus)
up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of
time. And the devil said to Him, ‘All
this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered
to me (by Adam) and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if You will worship before me, all
will be Yours’” Luke 4:6&7). Of
course, Jesus didn’t "bite” and remained sinless.
Because man was built, designed, created to operate in
complete and open fellowship with God and that relationship had been scuttled,
how can it be rejoined? It would work
like this. God must find a man He can
hook up with, enter into “covenant” with (the best contemporary picture of this
is marriage) where everything that belonged to God, belonged to man and vice
versa. This ultimately means God will
take upon Himself (through Jesus at Calvary) man’s sin and the consequences
thereof which is death and man will take upon himself (through faith and trust
in the “redeeming” work of Christ at Calvary) God’s sinlessness and eternal life. This got God “back into the loop” with man.
Next we will talk about “that man” and the development of
Covenant.
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