Do you know the Christmas Prequel?
Within the story before the story there are Problems, but there is also Promise.

We usually try to avoid the site of our problems & failures. To walk those locations bring back hurt, fear, & shame.  But in the Word of God we see that God keeps coming back to the site of mankind's failure?

Why would he travel back to Jerusalem time & time again? Is it to point out our failure or to draw us back to the promise that existed from the beginning?

Before Christ 3 - Promises & Problems from Redemption Church on Vimeo.

Before Christ 3 – Promise Problems
SERMON NOTES BY CHRIS FLUITT
Redemption Church Plano Tx
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Hello & welcome back to the 3rd & final week of our Before Christ Series! My name is Chris Fluitt and I serve as Lead Pastor here at Redemption Church. We are a Church that Jesus is building in Plano Tx.

The 1st 2 weeks of this series we talked about the PLAN

In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1) The Word in the Greek is LOGOS and it means logic, reason, thought or PLAN.

God formed this plan.. Redemption Church when did He formulate the plan?  IN THE BEGINNING.

The center piece of this plan is the INCARNATION.

Incarnation is a big word that means a spirit or deity embodied in flesh. As we like to say it.. The incarnation is when God put on a bod.

The incarnation was God’s plan from the very beginning. It was not a response to man’s fall into sin. But the very God who planned to be born of a virgin, be born a man, and to have a face to face relationship with us ALSO PLANNED TO BE OUR RESCUER IF WE NEEDED IT.  And boy do we need His rescue. Thankfully whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved! (Acts 2:23, Romans 10:13)

PLAN

This is the plan from the beginning.  It gives a prequel to the Christmas story.

So that’s the plan.. now what?

PROMISE

God would reveal the Plan to man.  He told us what would happen.

Before the baby was born, wrapped in rags, and laid in a manger, Holy men of old gave predictions, prophecy, & promise to the fact the baby would be born, how he would be born, where he would be born, why he would be born, and other surrounding circumstance.

For those before the incarnation the promise would point to the knowledge of His coming. So when He came they would know.  More than just shepherds & wise men had knowledge of His coming.
For us after the coming of Christ into the world, it points us to the reality of the incarnation.  It is more than just a fable or made up story. The promises were true!  The prophecy was fulfilled in one man!  The predictions bring us to say “Maybe there is something to this Jesus Christ.  Maybe He is who the Bible claims Him to be.”

The promises we see lead us to investigate further, and here we find that Christ is more than just real. We find that He loves us. We don’t just believe the story. We make Jesus our Lord, we surrender our lives, and then we become a part of the story.

God has a plan. When God reveals His plan it becomes PROMISE.

After sin entered the Garden of Eden, God handed out judgement to the serpent, Adam, & Eve. But right in the middle of the judgement our God gave PROMISE. This is the first promise mankind would receive from God and it is about the incarnation.

Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between you (the serpent) and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."(NIV)

This is a promise of the coming of Jesus.  That Jesus would come from the seed of Eve and would bring victory over the serpent – the devil.

Micah 5:2 "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times."(NIV)