98. How Genesis Proves Postmillennialism

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 98, how

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Genesis proves post -millennialism. Let's go. Introduction.

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If you've been with us over the last eight weeks, we've been attempting to summarize what a failed eschatology actually looks like.

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From the hyper -defeatism of dispensationalism and the premillennialism as well, to the kind of subtle apathy for cultural engagement that has stepped into the modern church by amillennialism and radical two kingdoms, well, we've been attempting to show that the wrong view of eschatology will actually have an impact on the way you live.

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Because let's face it, if you believe that we lose down here, which is what John MacArthur famously said, well, then you're not going to work down here.

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If you believe the rapture is just moments away, right around the corner, why would you waste your life and your time doing the long work of making disciples or transforming culture?

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Why would you do that? Well, you wouldn't, because we believe that all of our energy and effort is to go into a spiritual kingdom alone that has no overlap with the physical world, the kingdom of man, then we will not engage it.

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I mean, why would we obey Jesus's command to be salt and light, very physical things in a world that's only going to see a spiritual redemption, better in fact, to spend our time converting souls for a

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Gnostic utopia, then biblically discipling the nations to live out the faithfulness of Christ to the ends of the earth.

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Now, while each of these views that we've been talking about that, that we have argued are wrong, each of them have some sort of minimal overlap.

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There's not a lot of overlap between them, but two things that they do have in common are this. Number one, they're entirely wrong.

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They're wrong about eschatology and they're wrong about the way that the Bible works. Secondly, they have successfully accomplished something.

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They've throttled down the American church and they've caused her to become passive sickly and defeated in this world.

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In this series, we're trying to change that. Now that brings us to our topic for today.

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How is post -millennialism the correct view? And maybe you're like my son who

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I told him that I was having this episode this week and he said, what's post -millennialism? Maybe you've never heard of that term.

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Maybe you don't know what it means. Well, we're going to talk about that today. We're going to talk about why it's the correct view. What does it mean?

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What implications is it going to have for your life? And can it be demonstrated from scripture?

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That's the most important thing. Whatever eschatological view you hold to, whatever opinion you have on the end times inside your mind, it must be able to be demonstrated from scripture because you can't prove it from scripture.

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It's not real. It's not true. So to that end, let us begin first by defining what post -millennialism is, and then we're going to spend the rest of our time trying to demonstrate this and showcase this in the pages of scripture.

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And today we're going to be focused on the book of Genesis because we're not going to be able to get much more done than that.

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Part one, what is post -millennialism? Unlike the smorgasbord of major, major depressive eschatologies, post -millennialism uniquely grapples with the unstoppable power of God, the awesome glory of Jesus's gospel, and how the earth will come under the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ before this whole rodeo is over. Now, instead of presenting

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Jesus's great commission as a failed project, which most eschatologies actually do, if you're honest about it, did we disciple the nations or did we not?

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Well, instead of that, post -millennialism takes it seriously. We say that the gospel is going to change hearts, that the church is going to disciple the nations in fulfillment of Matthew 28.

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And we're going to do that because Satan is bound, Matthew 12, 29, the principalities and the powers have been disarmed and they've been put to open shame,

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Colossians 2, 15. And we believe that Jesus is going to win back the world that fell into the tyranny of the devil.

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He's going to win it back for God, the father. And that's shown to us in first Corinthians 15, 24 through 28.

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Now central to this perspective is the Bible. But even underneath that is an understanding of what eschatology actually is.

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Because if you don't know what eschatology is, you're not going to know how the end times function in the

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Bible and then you're going to be confused and then you're going to end up at a show like this. Praise God for that.

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Eschatology is not the cataclysmic, poorly written conclusion.

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It's not the plane crash moment where the church goes down in a blazing glory. It's not the foxhole where we're pinned down by the enemy and we're just praying that reinforcements arrive.

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That is not what eschatology is. It is not the story of how everything comes falling apart.

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Eschatology is concerned how everything that was lost in the first Adam is going to be restored in the

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Lordship of the second Adam. Jesus eschatology is not the final chapter where everything goes to hell.

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It is the final story where everything comes back under the dominion of Christ. That distinction is crucial.

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And if you don't understand that, then you're going to constantly be looking for a defeatist future when

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Christ is working to bring all things under his dominion. He's working to bring redemption to every area that was lost.

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Now with that in mind, postmillennialism acknowledges that everything that fell in the first creation is going to be restored in Jesus's new creation.

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And to clarify, what I am saying is that the new creation kingdom is right now.

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We're not waiting for that to happen in the future. That kingdom began when Jesus ascended into heaven and it will not be finished until everything that Jesus intends on making right is made right again.

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Like the song, like the hymn, joy to the world says his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.

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That's what we're waiting on. Now that postmillennial conviction is that God will do this by filling the world with worshipers who worship him in spirit and in truth.

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Why? Because that is the end by which God created the world. Genesis 128.

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That is the purpose for why God made a world in the first place. And that's to fill it full of worshipers.

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You see at the heart of the postmillennial thinking is the idea that God is going to redeem everything that was lost in Adam and he will fill this fallen world with worshipers in his name, indwelled by his spirit, living in garden spaces where he will bring the kingdom of God back to a world that was under the curse of Satan.

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And he will do that through the preaching of the gospel, through the making of disciples and through the life changing work of the

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Holy Spirit of God. And as Christians, we know that everything Christ puts his heart to do, he will accomplish.

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There's nothing that Christ ever endeavored to do that he's going to fail at.

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He is not going to bring his rule to this world in order for this world to end in a class cataclysmic failure.

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And he's not going to stop until everything that he intends on accomplishing is finished.

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Now according to the postmillennialist, this process of worldwide kingdom expansion, it began when

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Jesus ascended into heaven. It began when he sat down on the throne of God to rule, and it was inaugurating this period that we know as the millennium.

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That's where you get premillennialism, amillennialism, postmillennialism. You get it from this chapter in Revelation chapter 20.

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This millennium stands for not a chronological term, but instead it stands for a symbolic era where the

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Messiah is reigning over the earth. It is a symbolic period of time where there's this growing sense of righteousness, peace and the acknowledgement of God's sovereignty on planet earth, where it becomes pervasive realities.

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And the question is, when is it going to happen? The premillennialists say Jesus returns before that kingdom happens.

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The amillennialists have no real good answer for when that happens. And the postmillennialist says, no, no, no, no.

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Jesus is going to return after this era occurs. This era of time, this millennial reign of Jesus, this unprecedented increase in the number of worshipers is going to happen on this side of heaven where Christ is going to multiply his church so that every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every time zone, every latitude, every longitude is filled with worshipers of Christ who live out and who celebrate the truths of God's word, which is going to culminate in a world that is filled with Christians, saturated with the adorations and the praises of Yahweh, our

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King. Now, unlike the escapist or the pessimistic eschatologies of premillennialism and amillennialism, postmillennialism sees this future, the future that we are looking forward to as the canvas for God's redemptive activity.

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God is going to transform not just the individuals, but whole families, whole cultures, whole nations, and the whole world.

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This view that I'm talking about does not naively ignore the presence of sin and the misery and suffering that is happening in the world by no means, but it instead acknowledges a substantial decrease in its power and the power of sin and the power of Satan and in a substantial increase in the influence of the risen

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Lord Christ. Through this global period of transformation that we are living in now, that we've been living in for 2 ,000 years,

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Jesus is going to bring his reign on earth and it's going to happen slowly. It's going to happen over many generations, it's going to happen over centuries, it's going to happen over a millennium.

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It's not going to happen in our microwave culture timeframe. The world will experience a foretaste of heaven increasingly so as more and more people come to know

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God, and as more people on earth are filled with his spirit, and as more people begin living out

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Christ -like behavior and attitudes on earth, we are going to experience a sanctification of the earth.

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This post -millennial vision is what compels Christians who adhere to it to engage actively in the world, driven by the sort of certainty that their labors for the

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Lord are not in vain. Believers are called to spread the aroma of Christ in every sphere of life, laboring in their hamlets, along their highways, in their high -rises, in their downtowns, in their

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White Houses, in their empires, so that all of life would be transformed into communities of grace, into worshipers before the

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Lord returns. That eschatological outlook infuses the post -millennial's daily life, and it gives them a sense of purpose and direction, motivating us to partake in the divine mission of filling the world with the knowledge of God as the water covers the sea.

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Habakkuk 2 .14 Now, I'm not saying that you can't have that sense of purpose in other eschatological views.

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I'm just saying that you don't have a biblical foundation for doing it. I'm saying that post -millennialism has the biblical foundation for that ethic, and that's what we're going to be talking about today.

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Now, in sum, post -millennialism is God's plan in Christ by the power of the Spirit to fill the world with worshipers.

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It is not just a dusty old eschatological viewpoint for the ivory tower theologians.

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It's a biblical vision of hope, hope for God's people, hope in the redemption of God, promised to bring back this fallen world into its original state.

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It is the only view out of the eschatological views that shows how everything that was lost in Adam is going to be found in Christ.

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It is the only view that opens up our eyes to the incredible success that Christ is going to have in church history.

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It's the only view that frees us from the future panic and future pessimism in order to see that hard labor in the present actually has an impact in Jesus's kingdom.

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And it's my opinion that it's the only view that accounts for what the Bible promises that God says.

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And we're going to look at that today by opening up the book of Genesis. Part two, post -millennialism according to Genesis.

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Section one, a world filled with worshipers by design. Genesis 1, 28 says,

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God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

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Genesis 1, 28. Now to construct a biblical eschatology, again, that's the theology of the end times, we must actually go back to the first times.

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We need to go back to where the Bible begins and the Bible begins in chapter one, shocking. It begins in chapter one of Genesis 1, where it tells us of God's plans and his purposes for the world, a world that was made out of nothing, ex nihilo, a world that was constructed without sin, a world in perfect conformity to the will of the father, such that everything we behold in Genesis 1 was pleasing to God.

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It was called good by God. And even the last thing that he makes, he calls very good.

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If there was ever a way for you and I to discern the kind of world that would please God, the kind of world that God is hoping for, the kind of world that God wants to bring us to.

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Well, then we must look no further than the one that he made in Genesis 1. In Genesis 1, you have

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God's declaration of a very good world and his very good plan for it.

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Now, after constructing the heavenly spaces in the earthly spaces, God made man and he made man with unique and glorious features and with a glorious purpose.

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And after filling the entire cosmos with lights to rule the day and rule the night, and after filling all of the skies with the winged creatures and the birds, and after filling all of the oceans with the teeming sea monsters and fish, and after filling the earth with every kind of animal and creeping thing,

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God decided to fill the earth with human beings who would worship him and it would spread his dominion and his rule over his creation to the glory of God.

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You see what God is doing? He's creating a space and he's filling it. He's creating a space and he's filling it. He creates the sky, fills it with light.

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He creates the oceans. He fills them with fish. He creates the land. Now he's going to fill it with man.

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But instead of beginning like he did with the stars, where he starts with a completed multitude, he does not tell the stars to be fruitful and multiply.

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He multiplies them himself. And instead of filling the oceans with a couple fish and telling them to be fruitful and multiply, he fills the oceans full of fish.

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But instead of doing that with man, God decided to begin with just two human bodies, two bodies that were made in his image, made to worship him, both male and female, with the commission that they were going to use those two bodies to populate the earth with their offspring,

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Genesis 1 .28. Let's say that a different way. God himself multiplied the galaxies and the stars.

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He multiplied the winged and the scaly beast, but he invited humans, the only creature under heaven that he did this with.

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He invited them to partner with him in their multiplication. This means that God made humans to become a multiplied species, yes and amen, but he allowed them to participate in that fruitful, faithful multiplication through monogamous covenant marriage.

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Thus, we see the kind of world that God wanted to make was a world filled with human worshipers and by God's grace,

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God invited them to partner with him in that feat to accomplish that vision.

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And that tells us all that we need to know about God's intention for the world. He created two heterosexual creatures to be in covenant monogamy with one another to propagate the knowledge of God across the face of the earth through child rearing and family worship.

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If your view of love and marriage doesn't fit into that, then it's an abomination. We'll just say that.

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This worshiping, fruitful, multiplying family is what God called very good in Genesis one, which means that everything else is very bad.

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And that is also why the fall that happens in Genesis three was very bad as well.

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When sin entered the world, things fell and by fell, I do not mean like a vase falling off the shelf.

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Although as a metaphor, that's not that far off. What I mean is that everything God designed became broken.

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It no longer functioned in the way that it was intended. And by everything, I mean everything.

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The earth fell, the land fell, the masculinity fell, femininity fell, marriage and sexuality.

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They all fell. Moral reasoning, spiritual discernment, worship, creativity, the ability to comprehend the knowledge of God, all of these things resoundingly fell.

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But what did not fall and what was not broken was

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God's intention to fill the world with worshipers. That never fell. God never abandoned that vision.

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And that is where post -millennialism is unique among all of the other eschatological systems.

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Because instead of believing that God gave up on that very good plan and has no intention of ever accomplishing what he set out initially to do, post -millennialism sees that God will continually and consistently engage with his fallen creation to ensure his plan comes true.

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Again, God originally designed the world to be filled with human worshipers who spread his glory and dominion all over every square inch of the earth, and he will accomplish it.

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Now, with that in mind, those who ascribe to post -millennialism do not see God abandoning this vision, but gloriously and joyfully fulfilling it.

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Throughout biblical and redemptive history, we see this and in the following, I'm going to sketch out just honestly today through the book of Genesis, how

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God intends to interact with his fallen creatures. Now along the way, we're going to stop at various points and we're going to stop at various places in Genesis in order to see how

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God is going to do this, how he's going to accomplish this plan with sinful people. But as you will see, these are the hopeful little breadcrumbs that are littered liberally among the

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Old Testament paths, that if you pick them up and taste them, you will see how good God is to bring this about.

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And by the end, my hope, my prayer is that if you have eyes that are open to look at the text, to be a

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Berean, to look up the verses, and I'm going to mention to you to study the Bible for yourself. If you do that,

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I believe that you will not only see that God is still interested in accomplishing that very good

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Genesis one vision of filling the world with worshipers, but he will do so undeniably through Jesus Christ.

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Section two, a world filled with worshipers through Noah. Now when

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Adam fell, he, that's Adam and his family chose to fill the world with sin and misery.

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To fill it with sin and sinners instead of worship by godly worshipers. This polluting of the earth spiritual landscape began when

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Adam was thrust out of the garden. Genesis three and his family began multiplying transgressions and iniquity on the surface of the land.

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Remember, it was his son Cain who painted the ground with Abel's blood. Genesis four, eight.

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It was Lamech, the fifth generation from Adam who boasted in his gratuitous sin.

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Genesis four, 23 and 24. It was the pre -Diluvian race of man who, it says in the

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Bible, multiplied their sin across the face of the earth. Genesis six, five.

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And it was that demonically driven horde who interbred with the fallen angels to produce the race of giants, what we call

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Nephilim. Genesis six, one through four. Instead of multiplying godly, worshipful creatures, they were multiplying sin and disobedience.

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Now you do have to give them credit. Now in the obedience to the nature that God gave them, they began multiplying and they multiplied what they most loved.

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But instead of multiplying affections for God and holiness, which is what they were designed to love, they began multiplying sin, misery, and destruction, which originally they were created to hate.

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This led to a period of unspeakable horror on earth as the only inclination of man at all times was only sin.

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Genesis six, five. These acts of global rebellion and the sorry, sordid state that the world had fallen into provoked the wrath of almighty

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God to destroy the world in the torrent of his flooding, furious holiness.

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Genesis six, six through seven. Now in God's justice, he wasn't obligated to save anyone.

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All had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3, 23, that includes Noah. All deserved his wrath,

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Ephesians 2, 3, that includes Noah. And yet God, out of unimaginable sheer mercy and grace, spared a single family and he set that family apart from the rest of the generation that was in rebellion against him and he decided to save them.

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And instead of judgment, he brought them through the waters of the flood on the ark and he saved them.

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He reiterated his commitment to not only rescuing them, but to fill the world with worshipers.

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I want you to take a look for a second at what God says. When the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, when the family that God decided to save got off the boat, when

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Noah disembarked the Titan vessel, what does God say? Does God say, I'm done with my plan?

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This wicked, adulterous creation that I made called humans, they're worth nothing.

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I can't get them to do what I've told them to do. I've given up on my plan. I'm not going to fill the world full of worshipers.

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No, that is not what God says. As soon as Noah gets off the boat, this is what

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God spoke to Noah. It says, and God blessed Noah and his sons.

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And he said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

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Genesis nine one. That's the exact same thing God said to Adam. So God is reiterating the promises far from being finished with his plan.

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He's repeating it. I mean, I want you to think about this for a moment. If there was ever a time for God to scrap the old plan and to institute a new one, this would have been the time.

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The whole world was filled with sin. Everybody's in rebellion and God could have thrown his hands up and said, you know what? I'm done. I'm done.

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But that is not what God does instead. He repeats and reinstitutes and reminds them of the same old plan that he gave to Adam showcasing that he's not moved on from it, that he's not forgotten it, that he's not going to abandon it, that he is going to accomplish it before God is finished with this physical world.

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Before he destroys it permanently, he will fill it full of worshipers. That promise was given to Noah section three, a world filled with worshipers through Babel.

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Now, after Noah died, his offspring and his ancestors do what every biblical story tells us.

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After the faithful man dies, everything goes to hell. They rebelled against the

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Lord as their father Adam and his progeny had before, and instead of multiplying worshipers, instead of filling the world with worshipers, which was the plan of God, they gathered all together a little rebel, factious group of sinners who refused to leave a little plane called

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Shinar. There's Genesis 11. Instead of spreading outward, they decided to build upward.

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Instead of following God, they decided to rebel. Instead of building a culture that obeyed

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God to the ends of the earth, they built a tower that touched the heavens. And by doing that, that blatant act of rebellion against the plans of God occasion, the

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Almighty's fury once again. It says that he came down, which is a bit of dramatic irony in the text because it was so minuscule and so insignificant that he had to come down to see it.

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So he comes down and he sees their little anthill that they made, and he throws them into a fit of fantastic chaos and confusion,

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Genesis 11, three through nine. By doing this, God subdivides all of human, all of humanity into various people, groups, tribes, ethnicities, and linguistic pairings.

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And from that, it is clear that even in his judgment on the people of Babel, God was showcasing to us that he was committed to his plan.

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He was committed to scattering humans to the four corners of the world and filling the earth full of worshipers.

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So in Babel, he does, he scatters the people to the ends of the earth. That's part one. Now we're going to move to the promises of Abraham where we see part two.

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So section four, a world filled with worshipers. Section four, a world filled with worshipers through Abraham.

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Now after God accomplished the first part of his Genesis one plan by scattering everyone to the ends of the earth and giving them different languages, now it was time for him to fulfill the second part of his goal, which was to convert all of the pagans that live in the world to followers of him so that they would be fruitful, so that they would be blessed, so that they would come under his covenant love.

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And it was at this point that God chose a man, a family, in order to begin that redemption project.

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God chose Abraham, which at that point his name was Abram, from the cities of Sin in the

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Mesopotamian world. He drew that man from the pagan metropolis of Ur and he brought him into the land that was not his own and he made promises to him.

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He began telling him incredible things that he was going to do for him, revealing God's purposes for the world and how

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Abraham was going to be a part of it. Instead of reducing his plan or his scale or the magnitude of his plan,

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God does not give up on humans yet again. He engages with Abraham and he tells this man that through his seed, all of the families on earth are going to come under God's blessings.

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If you don't believe me, look it up. Genesis 12, two through three, he promises Abraham that every family on earth will be blessed through his seed.

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We got to take that seriously. This is a world that God is promising to fill with worshipers in every family, that every family on earth is going to be blessed by the seed of Abraham.

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And while Abraham could look around him and he could see that the whole world was filled with wicked men, that it looked like the promises of God were not going to come true.

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Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness because he believed that God could bring about his promises to transform this world into a place where the families of God blanket the world over every square inch and that all the families on earth had come under the covenant blessings of God.

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Abraham believed that, that God was speaking to him and telling him these things because God absolutely intended to bring them to pass.

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Now again, if God can be trusted by Abraham to accomplish his promises and he can, why can't we trust him with these promises as well?

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That there is nothing under heaven that is going to stop God from accomplishing what he promised to Abraham.

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And that hasn't come true yet. The whole world has not been filled with worshipers yet as he promised

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Abraham. So we know that God is going to continue to work until that comes to pass.

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He starts with Abraham, but he doesn't finish with Abraham. Now in case we are tempted today to doubt the faithfulness of God, it's been a long time since Abraham and we look around and we see the world we see, you know, just a few years ago we saw

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COVID and Dr. Fauci in the world economic forum. And now we're looking at AI and, and we look around and we see all of the crazy things that are going on.

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A friend of mine just told me he got robbed in New York. Where is God in that? Why isn't

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God dealing with the evil? If we're tempted to think that way, if we're tempted to believe that God is not going to accomplish his plan, look at what

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God says to the Israelites in, uh, as they're waiting to come into the land of promise, this

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Deuteronomy four 31, look at what God says to them for the Lord. Your God is a compassionate God.

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He will not fail you. He will not destroy you. And he will not forget the covenant that he made with your fathers, which he swore to them.

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You see what Moses is saying through the spirit of God, he's saying, as the Israelites were preparing to go into make war with the

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Canaanites, as they were get sharpening their swords and getting their, getting everything ready for the battle, as they were going to go in and make war with the

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Canaanites and topple the giants and put under the band, every single person who followed these demon gods and sacrifice their children to idols.

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Moses through the spirit of God was encouraging them to remember the promises of Abraham. When you go into fight, remember the promises of Abraham.

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When you're tempted to, to think that everything is crashing and burning and everything is going to fall apart.

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Remember the promises of Abraham. He was telling them, remember that God swore that he was going to bless all the family's owner through the seed of our ancestor,

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Abraham. He was challenging them. Moses was challenging them. Do not give up, do not give in, do not forget.

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And if you think that you have any room in your heart to be afraid, you are wrong. Do not be discouraged.

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Do not give up. Moses was admonishing them to remember the promises of God. When the battle is raging and when it looks like that you're losing and when you're tempted to quit and you're tempted to give in, you're throwing in the white towel.

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They are being called to remember God's word to Abraham. The same God yesterday, today and forever who fulfilled his promises to that old patriarch who waited 25, 30 years before he got a son in his old age is the same

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God who's going to bring about his promises to you today. When God's covenant people have been long upon the earth in the same way that Abraham waited long for the promise of his son, we too will see the promise of God fulfilled.

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We too will see that God keeps his promises, that God never reneges on his promises and that he will deliver a world filled with worshipers under his blessing because he said that he was going to do it.

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Those promises and those blessings are richer than the sweetest fudge. And God not only told

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Abraham that he was going to bless all the families of the earth through his seed, he promised that he was going to make Abraham's family exceedingly fruitful with nations and kings coming out of his very loins.

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Genesis 17, six. He told Abraham that his family was going to become so great that a mighty nation was going to come out of him.

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That was going to bless all the nations on earth. Genesis 18, 18, which tells us that God is not only in the business of sanctifying families, but he's going to transform nations as well.

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He promised that, that every family on earth, every nation on earth, we're going to come under his covenant blessings by the seat of Abraham.

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He promised Abraham that he would have a blessed and faithful offspring that multiplied more than the stars of heaven, more than the grains of sand that are littered upon the seashore, that through his seed, all of the nations on earth would come under the blessings of God.

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Genesis 22, 17 through 18, Genesis 26, chapter four. There's more. God is not making small promises to Abraham.

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He is not bloviating about the things that he has no intention on bringing to fruition. He is promising

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Abraham that under the ministry and the activity of Abraham's child, his descendant, his seed, that all the world's nations and all the world families will bow the knee to Yahweh God.

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And because Paul believes that and Paul understands his theology, he tells us that the seed of Abraham is not

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Isaac. The seed of the Abraham is Christ. Spoiler alert. It's under Christ and under his reign that Paul is saying all of the

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Abrahamic promises will come true. That means in Christ, all the world's families will be blessed in Christ.

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All the nations are going to come under the blessing of God in Christ. The whole world is going to be made

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Christian. That's what Paul's saying. Let me say this even more clearly than that at some point in the future.

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And I don't know when I don't know that. That's above my pay grade. But at some point in the future, the entire world will be

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Christian, which is a world filled with worshipers.

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That's the dream of Adam. That's the promise to Noah. And that's the reality that Abraham believed in was waiting on.

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The question is, will you believe it? Section five, a world filled with worshipers through the patriarchs.

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Now after Abraham dies, God reminds the patriarchs. That's the sons of Abraham and Abraham included.

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But he reminds them of his promises because again, if there was room for any of them to forget the promises that God made to Abraham, to forget

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God's global mission that he's going to bring about to where they would become overly preoccupied with life in the dust bowl of Canaan.

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Well, if there was ever a chance of that, where they would miss the magnificent horizon of God's blessings, will

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God himself prevented that from happening? God did not abandon the patriarchs.

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He reminded them over and over and over that this is his plan and for them to trust him.

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For instance, God said to Abraham, who is Isaac's son is after Abraham is dead. I will establish my oath, which

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I swore to your father, Abraham, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven.

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And I will give your descendants all these lands and by your descendants, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

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Genesis 26, three through four. That very same night, Isaac probably was having trouble believing this promise as many do today.

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That very same night, God reminded him again that he could be trusted, that he will fulfill his promises.

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He said to Abraham, he said to Isaac, I am the God of your father, Abraham, do not fear and do not fail to believe me.

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Emphasis mine. For I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for the sake of my servant,

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Abraham. Genesis 26, 24 to believe that God will not accomplish his plan, which is to overcome the evil in the world by filling it with worshipers through the family of Abraham.

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To believe that God will not bring that to pass. You must believe that God abandoned something that he called very good in the garden, that he will not keep his promise to Noah, even though he said that he would, that he arbitrarily scattered the people at Babel, that he bore false witness to Abraham, that he allowed

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Isaac to build his entire life on a lie, the biggest lie, in fact, that's ever been told.

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And more simply, to believe that God will not overcome evil by filling the world with worshipers would be to accuse

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God of sin. You would be saying that God does not keep his promises, that he's a liar, that he is miserly, that he is an

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Indian giver, and he is not worth trusting. And when you go down that path, brother and sister, your entire faith falls apart because if you can't trust him here, how can you trust him at the cross?

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If you can't trust God, you have no faith. And I hope you're beginning to see how these promises that God made to Abraham are not just matters of doctrinal quibbles, but they're central to our faith and the trustworthiness of the gospel of God.

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And if that were not enough, God reiterates these promises again to the next generation of patriarchs.

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He reiterates them not just to Isaac, but to Isaac's son, Jacob, to that man whose name originally was

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Yacob, which means surplanter, who was renamed Israel, which means to wrestle with God.

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To that man, God announced the Abrahamic blessing, and he gave Jacob the blessing that his offspring would be as numerous as the dust of the earth.

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He's repeating himself and that through his family, all the families on earth are going to be blessed.

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Genesis 28, 14, he's saying the same things to Jacob that he said to Isaac, to Abraham, to Noah, to Adam.

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Not to state the obvious here, but this is just another instance where God is promising that he is going to fill the world full of worshipers before he returns.

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Jacob was told that he could trust these promises because they were given to him by almighty

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God. Genesis 35, 11, God is putting his own character to the test to say, believe them because I said them, not because you look around the world and it makes sense.

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It might not, but believe them because I said them. If that were not enough, God repeated these promises to Jacob's fourth born son,

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Judah, to clarify to Judah what a world filled with worshipers was actually going to look like.

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It's not going to be a world filled with choirs where everybody's holding their Trinity Psalters and we're all singing

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Kumbaya. That's not what a world filled with worshipers looks like to Judah. God gives extra clarity so that he would understand what a world filled with worshipers is.

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This is what he says to Jacob, the scepter shall not depart from Judah nor the law giver from between his feet until Shiloh comes and into him shall the gathering of the peoples be.

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Genesis 49, 10. This coming Shiloh is the seed of Abraham.

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This coming Shiloh is none other than Jesus Christ. He is the singular son of promise that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah were all looking forward to.

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He is Jesus. The one born in the line of Judah, Matthew one, two, and three, the one whose scepter will never be taken away,

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Hebrew seven 24, the one whose rule will be an everlasting rule, Daniel seven 14, and the one who will gather all of God's promised people together.

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All of the people from Genesis one, all the way until the end of the earth, he will gather God's people as God promised.

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You see, since God promised a world filled with worshipers and since no mere human being could ever accomplish such a glorious vision,

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God is going to come from heaven down to earth and he's going to do it himself. He's going to take on the form of man so that he is going to be the one to bring about the fruitful, multiplying dominion, acquiring rule that God promised and purposed.

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And so that he alone was going to be the one who gathers the worshipers over every corner of this earth and fills it to God's purposes.

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God promises Judah that all of the promises that he gave to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah will be fulfilled when

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God himself comes in the flesh. That's why Paul tells us that all of God's promises are yes and amen.

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In this coming Shiloh, Jesus Christ, second Corinthians one 20, that means everything God promised in the old

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Testament, everything, even the promises to Abraham, the promises to Isaac, the promise to Judah, all of them are going to come true in Christ.

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If you don't believe that you don't believe the Bible, there's not a single promise that God made, including these world filling promises that he gave to the patriarchs that Jesus himself is not going to bring to fruition.

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King Jesus is going to have a world filled with worshipers before he returns. The book of Genesis proves it.

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The question is, will you believe it conclusion now, as we draw to a close this week, brothers and sisters,

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I want you to remember that it's God who's making these promises. It's not me. It's not some other person.

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It's God. From the verdant gardens of Genesis one to the mountains of Ararat and Turkey, Genesis nine, the plains of Shinar and Mesopotamia and Genesis 11, all the way to the lands of Canaan, where God showered his patriarchs with these world changing promises.

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God has been demonstrating unwavering faithfulness, consistency, and trustworthiness.

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His promises are going to come about just as he said. These are not theological noodlings that only the post -millennialists have dreamed up in their overly optimistic heads.

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These are unambiguous promises made by a sovereign God who made the universe out of breath.

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Do we really think that he can't accomplish his plan by his Holy spirit this week?

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You and I saw how God made these promises in Genesis, and he's going to bring them into completion through his son, who's the seed of Abraham promised to Abraham, and he's the

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Shiloh who was promised to Judah. And this Jesus, as Paul says in Galatians, is going to be the one who blesses all the families on earth and who brings all the nations on earth under his dominion.

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He's going to crush his enemies and put them under his feet, and he's going to lift up those nations who lift up him, and he's going to bless them, and he's going to fill the world with them.

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That is what Genesis promises. And again, not theological niceties, not doctrinal opium for the

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Christian who always needs a happy ending. No, these are not esoteric musings for the ivory tower nerds who wear the pocket protectors and whatever else.

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These are doctrines that are central to the very nature of scripture and to the nature of God.

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They drive the arc of redemption forward to God's God -centered ends, and they maintain

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God as faithful to his promises, even if you and I struggle to believe them.

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Today, dear brothers and sisters, I would ask you to believe God's promises.

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Believe God's promises to Adam that he didn't lie. Believe God's promises to Noah that he wasn't telling a story.

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Believe God's promises to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to Judah. And I am calling you to put away your doubt, to put away your fear, to put away your pessimism, a pessimism that has infected the

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American church for far too long, and I'm asking you to embrace what God says in his word. And for the last 2 ,000 years, what

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God has been faithfully doing throughout church history, this Shiloh who began with 12 has increased his kingdom to 2 .3

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billion people, and we still believe that this is all going to come crashing down in a blaze of fury.

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He's going to continue doing this. He's going to continue building his church until there's 3 billion, 4 billion, 5 billion, until the whole earth is filled with his people.

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He's going to continue until every nation bows the knee to Christ. He's going to continue until every culture upholds the

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Lord and his supremacy. Until all the earthly families fill up all the earthly churches and they all come under his royal blessing.

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Believe that, dear one. Find your place in that story and get to work for the glory of God and for your eternal enjoyment of him.

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Your nation, if you're in America, might collapse and fall, but the nation that Christ is building, the kingdom of priest and that holy nation will never end, and it will continue.