The Story That Explains Everything

Have you ever had the experience of having some awareness or knowledge of a particular situation, but your observations of the details and the people involved just don't quite add up? Something is off. Some of the facts are unaccounted for.

They just don't follow, and you're not sure why. But it intrigues you. You want to know more. You want to know, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

You want to hear the story behind the story. I remember visiting my grandmother as a boy and wondering about a physical deformity that she had. Her left wrist was permanently bent at a 90-degree angle. It was the kind of abnormality you couldn't help but notice, but neither could you politely ask about it.

And so I was left with many questions. What had happened to her hand? Was she born like that?

Did it hurt? I noticed that she would often try to conceal her left arm in public like it was an embarrassment to her. Whenever she would pose for a picture, she would go out of her way to hide behind someone or something. At the same time, she had a lot of dexterity with that hand. She could sew.

She could embroider. She could do all sorts of things that you wouldn't expect her to be able to do. She had clearly grown accustomed to her handicap, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to hear the whole story of how this came to be. Well, one day my mother told me the whole story. She told me how, as a young girl, my grandmother had been told not to climb a particular tree near their house, but she disobeyed her parents' instruction. She climbed the tree, and she fell out of the tree, landing on the ground and breaking her wrist. Her parents rushed her to the only doctor they had access to that night, a doctor who had a drinking problem. The doctor was drunk the night that he had this girl, who would become my grandmother, show up on his doorstep needing help. He decided he was sober enough to set the wrist and cast it, so he did, but he set the wrist incorrectly. As the bone healed, it healed crooked and would remain that way until her dying day some 90 years later.

I asked my mother why she didn't just get it fixed now that she was an adult, and my mother explained to me that by the time they had access to a competent doctor and realized it could be repaired, she had grown so accustomed to her arm the way it was that it would have been too much of an adjustment to overcome if it could have been overcome at all. Well, as my mother finished the story, I instantly understood my grandmother in a whole new light. I understood that her handicap had been the result of a childhood accident.

I understood that the drunken doctor was the reason why it was never properly fixed. I understood that my grandmother's self-consciousness over her arm was in part due to her awareness of her own culpability when she chose to disobey her parents, and that resentment towards a careless doctor had been an internal struggle that she had had to deal with her whole life. This story made sense of everything that I knew about my grandmother. You know, there's a different story, a larger story that doesn't make sense until you hear it properly told. It's a story of the human race.

This story is nothing less than the history of the whole world, and it's full of unanswered questions and unexplained details, things that just don't add up at face value. Why are people sometimes inexplicably cruel to each other? Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why am I so full of angst and fear when there's no apparent reason for it? Why do people have to die? How did we even get here? Where do we come from, and what will happen to me after I die? These are profound questions that we all ask, questions that often go unanswered. And so people settle for distractions, amusements that tickle their fancy, or causes that give them a sense of purpose.

But deep inside, they're empty and scared and confused because they don't have answers for life's most pressing questions. I'm glad you're here tonight because I want to tell you the story behind the story. I want to tell you the story that explains everything. Now, I realize that's a bold claim, but understand it's not my story. It's a story that was told to me, and I'm simply passing it along to you at the end of tonight. You can believe this story, or you can reject it and keep looking for answers, but you should know I'm willing to vouch for the veracity of this story.

I'm willing to stake my very soul on this story, and so I implore you to listen to it if for no other reason than the fact that the person telling it tonight believes it to be true and reliable and life-changing. This story begins in a garden with a man and a woman and a rule. Do not eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden or you will die. Now, we know that rules don't make up themselves, do they? They must come from somewhere, and so where did this rule come from? It came from the one who created the man and the woman and the tree and, in fact, the entire garden. All of these things belong to him by virtue of the fact that he had created them, and the owner gets to make the rules.

The creator gets to say what is right and wrong, what is allowed and what is forbidden. For a while, this man and this woman obeyed the rule, and because they obeyed the rule, they enjoyed a wonderful friendship with the creator. He would walk with them in the garden and talk with them.

They would enjoy each other's company. All was well. But one day, an evil being in the form of a crafty serpent crept up to the woman and began to put doubts in her head about the rule and about the creator who had made the rule. He said to the woman, if you eat the fruit, you won't die.

You'll, in fact, become like the one who created you, and he doesn't want that. The woman thought about it and then made a decision that would change the course of history for her and her descendants forever. She broke the rule. She ate the fruit, and then she gave some to the man, and he broke the rule.

He ate the fruit. And immediately, something deep inside of them changed, something irresistible, something irreversible. They became aware that they were guilty and exposed and vulnerable, and so they hid themselves. They hid themselves because they were self-conscious and embarrassed. There was so much more than just embarrassment.

It was shame. It was guilt. For the very first time, they were feeling what would come to be the defining emotion of all their descendants.

They were experiencing fear, fear for themselves, fear of their creator. This is what it felt like to die. Now, this is where the story could have ended, and, in fact, for many, this is how the story ends. My story tonight is not a tragedy.

It ends with a happy ever after because at this, the saddest of all moments, the creator entered the scene with a promise, a promise that even though death was inevitable, it was not to be the last word, the final chapter. I want to read that promise to you tonight. It's actually written down at the very beginning of the Bible.

It's found in Genesis 3, 15, and it says this. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. That's our modern ears. I suppose it sounds like a strange promise.

We don't really talk that way, do we? So what does it all mean? What exactly is being promised in these strange words? Well, let me explain it to you, and then we can see how the promise gets fulfilled and how the story ends.

First of all, the promise was made by the one who created the man and the woman and the serpent and the garden. He's the author of the story. And just as the creator gets to make the rules, the author gets to write the story. We could say the author has absolute control over how the story unfolds. If the author makes a promise, he has the privilege and the ability to fulfill that promise exactly as he sees fit.

Why? Because it's his story. He's the author. So what was this promise that the author made? First, he promised to divide the human race into two groups that would be fiercely opposed to each other.

These two groups are referred to as offspring or seed. It's describing a world in which two lines of descendants begin to emerge from this first man and woman in the garden. One line belongs to and follows the way of the serpent, resisting the rules, the laws of the creator, and breaking those rules. The other line belongs to the woman and is constantly harassed and tormented by the serpent's line. This hostility, this enmity between the two lines would culminate in a clash between the serpent and a future descendant of the woman.

Let's call this future descendant the promised one. In that clash, the serpent would injure the promised one or bruise his heel, as the promise goes, but the promised one would inflict a mortal wound on the serpent that would bring about his full and final destruction. He would bruise the serpent's head.

A bruise to the heel is painful, but a bruise to the head is fatal. And so, in time, the promised one would come and defeat the serpent once and for all, thus fulfilling the promises of the story's author and upholding the goodness of the creator's law. But what of the man and the woman in the garden? What would become of them? What would become of their descendants?

What's the rest of the story as far as they are concerned? Remember, it was not only the serpent who had broken the rules, the woman and man had also broken the rules. And not only that, but their children after them broke the rules of the creator. And so the creator gave them mortals, but they broke them as well. It was as if that first eating of the forbidden fruit in the garden had twisted something inside of that first man and first woman, and that twistedness was passed down to every generation that descended from the first couple.

They were all lawbreakers, and so they all began to die. What good would come from the author's promise if all it could do was to destroy the serpent but not rescue the woman's offspring from the tragic silence of death? Who would be left to tend the garden or keep the rules or rejoice over the serpent's demise or commune with the creator in the cool of the day? What would be the point?

It would all have been for nothing. But there's more to the story, and this is where Christmas comes in. At just the right moment in the story, the creator did something incredibly unexpected and impossible. He made himself, through miraculous means, a descendant of the woman.

Suddenly the creator had a face and a name. His name was Jesus, which means God saves. But this Jesus was not just any descendant. He became the first descendant who had broken none of the creator's laws, and because he had broken none of the creator's laws, he became the first descendant of the woman who did not deserve to die. He was innocent. He was guilt-free, which is why what happened next is so unbelievably shocking. The promised one did die, and it was not just a normal death. It was the most horrific, dehumanizing, shameful death that there was. Why would this creator-turned-human die if he had not broken a single rule? That wasn't fair.

That wasn't just. Death was for lawbreakers, not lawkeepers, and Jesus was no lawbreaker. He had obeyed the law, his own law, perfectly. Why would he die? To answer that question, we have to go back to the promise given in Genesis 3.15. The serpent would bruise the heel of the woman's seed, and for thousands of years, the serpent had tried to extinguish the line of the woman through murder and war and barrenness and child sacrifice and genocide, but the woman's line of descendants could not be extinguished. It was moving inevitably, unstoppable to a climax in the person of Jesus Christ. The crucifixion and death of Jesus was the serpent's best attempt to extinguish the line of the woman once and for all, and now the promised one lay in a tomb, dead and gone.

But the story doesn't end there. There was more to the promise. The promise said that the serpent would succeed only in bruising the promised one's heel, but the promised one would crush the serpent's head. And so in an act of incomparable power, Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the power of the Creator. And so the promise was fulfilled. The serpent, whose only weapon was the threat of death, had bruised the heel of the promised seed only to have that promised seed render the serpent powerless by conquering death itself. In the very act of bruising the promised one's heel, the serpent's head was fatally crushed. But even that is not the end of the story. Jesus Christ, now in human flesh, returned to the throne of the universe, to the Creator's throne, to the author's throne, and declared the line of the woman, past, present, and future, innocent of all rule-breaking.

How could he do this? Rule-breakers were supposed to die. Guilt needed to be punished. He was able to declare the guilty innocent because he himself had died in their place. He, who alone did not deserve death, died anyway and so fulfilled the demands of justice, which gave Jesus Christ the sole right and privilege of granting innocence to whomever he wished.

And in granting that innocence, he single-handedly restored the woman's line to the state she had been in before she ever took the forbidden fruit and ate it. And that line will live happily ever after, forever and ever and ever. So how does this story explain everything? How does it make sense of my life and of your life and of the history of mankind and of the world around us? It makes sense of everything because it's true.

It really happened. And if it really happened, then the world of that story is the world in which we live. There really is a creator who made heaven and earth and everything they contain. And if there is a creator who made and owns all things, then that creator gets to make the rules.

His law is supreme. All of his creatures must submit to that law or else suffer the consequence of disobedience. And just like in the story, the consequence of disobedience is shame and guilt and fear and death. The wages of sin is death. The sin that our first parents committed has broken something deep inside of us. We feel guilty because we are guilty. We feel shame because we have shame.

And no amount of penance or good deeds, no amount of distraction or denial can fix the brokenness of sin that resides in the human heart. Why is the world so full of cruel, malicious people and horrific acts of injustice and violence and arrogance and perversion? It's because the human race is inherited from its first parents, a disposition that wants to break the rules of their creator. Why do I often do the very things I know to be wrong and hurtful?

It's because I have inherited that same disposition that the entire human race shares, a disposition that breaks the creator's rules and rejects the author's story. That serpent of old who was the devil, Satan, the tempter, the accuser, certainly does his part in stoking the fire of rebellion that resides in our own hearts, but there would be no fire for him to stoke if we weren't already predisposed to sin. And so what a mess we're in.

It's a mess of our very own making. That's why the promise of Genesis 3.15 is so incredibly hopeful. In one failed swoop, God would deal with the serpent and sin and death by sending a savior. In order to conquer death, this savior would need to be God. In order to die, this savior would need to be man. In order for his death to cover someone else's punishment, this savior would need to be morally pure, without sin. In order to be without sin, he would need to come from a line that possessed no inherent sin nature, and yet in order to save the first woman's line, he would need to be a part of that line without sharing its sinfulness, which is to say this savior would need to be conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. This savior would need to live for a time under the law, under the rules of the creator, and keep them perfectly. And when it was all said and done, this savior would have to be gracious enough to credit all that he had done to a race of people that had not only broken all of his rules, but who hated him and wanted nothing to do with him. Sons and daughters of Adam, Jesus Christ is all of these things. Jesus Christ has done all of these things.

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. This story truly explains everything. It explains where we came from. It explains why we're here. It explains where we're going. It explains what's wrong with us. But here's the wonderful news.

This story not only explains everything, it also fixes everything. The seed of the woman has crushed the head of the serpent. The dragon has been defeated.

The promised one has won. As we reflect on this story and enjoy its happy ending, I think a very troubling question begins to emerge. If the promised one has come and defeated the serpent and endured the punishment for lawbreakers and fixed everything, then why is everything still broken? Why is the human race still full of rage and violence, immorality and self-centeredness?

Why am I still laden down with guilt and shame? Why do I keep experiencing this desire inside of me to reject the author's story and be my own author or break the Creator's rules and make up my own rules? If this story is supposed to fix everything, why are things still broken? Let's go back to the promise of Genesis 3.15 one more time. We saw that embedded in that promise, there is a division of the human race into two lines, the line of the serpent and the line of the woman. Both lines are guilty. Both lines have broken God's law.

Both lines deserve to die. The difference is one line dies for its own sin. The other line escapes death from the death of the Promised One. And so while the Promised One has defeated the serpent and rescued many, there are those for whom no rescue will come. There are those who will resist the Creator to the very last day of the story at the end of history and will receive the death that all lawbreakers deserve. But also on that last day, everyone who stands in the line of the woman and is represented by the Promised One before the throne of the Creator will be rescued not only from the punishment of sin but also from the guilt and the shame and the fear that comes with sin and even from the desire to sin itself. Everyone here tonight is part of this grand story and we're living between that first coming of the Promised One which we celebrate at Christmas and the second coming of the Promised One, that last great day of the story which will be the beginning of another even grander story. That's another sermon for another day.

But the crucial question tonight that we need to answer is this. Which line am I in? Am I in the serpent's line awaiting the day when my rule-breaking will finally catch up with me and I will receive the just punishment for my sin and guilt? Or am I in the woman's line graciously receiving life and happiness instead of the death that I deserve?

More importantly, how can I get in the woman's line? How can my sins be covered and erased by the obedience and death of Jesus Christ? You're not going to believe how simple this is. The Bible tells us in plain words how to get from death to life, how to move from the line of the serpent to the line of the woman, how to escape the just wrath of the creator whose law we have broken and become his child fully forgiven, fully loved by him. Here's how we get in that line. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

It is that simple. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. To believe means to accept that Jesus is the Promised One of Genesis 3.15. That he came to this earth as God to die the death that we deserve. To believe on Jesus Christ means that we aren't believing in ourselves because we, left to ourselves, are morally wicked and bankrupt, spiritually dead.

It means we acknowledge Jesus to be the only pure, sinless savior who is capable of dying in someone else's place. It means to rest in the fact that his innocence is greater than my guilt. His purity is greater than my shame. His love for me is greater than my dreadful fear of him. Confess that you are a sinner who deserves death.

Believe that Jesus Christ is the Promised One whose death pays for your sin and your story, like countless others who have gone before you, will end happily ever after. Let's pray. God, we have listened to the lying voice of the serpent. We have eaten forbidden fruit. Please forgive us. And may we now listen to and believe the voice of Jesus Christ, who bids us come to him and find rest for our souls. We pray this in his name. Amen.