Promises & Previews

SUMMARY

In this Lenten sermon from the "Rescue" series, Karl Ihfe uses the analogy of movie trailers to explain how the Old Testament points to Jesus' ultimate rescue mission. Beginning with Abraham's call in Genesis 12, where God promises to bless all nations through him, Karl traces the thread of rescue throughout Scripture. He shows how Abraham had to trust a promise he couldn't see, and how generations later, when Israel was enslaved in Egypt, God's rescue came through the blood of a spotless lamb during Passover - a preview of the greater sacrifice to come.

Karl then connects this to Isaiah's prophecy of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, explaining how early Christians like Philip helped others understand that this servant was Jesus himself. The cross wasn't a tragic accident but the centerpiece of God's rescue plan, orchestrated over thousands of years. He emphasizes that different scenes, centuries, and authors all point to one story, one rescue, one Savior. Karl challenges the congregation to read Scripture as God's "divine trailer," asking where they see whispers of rescue pointing to Jesus. He concludes by connecting this to the church's mission work, encouraging sacrificial giving toward a $133,000 goal to support missionaries sharing this rescue story with unreached peoples around the world.

TRANSCRIPTION:

I think it's very appropriate that we're in this series, this Lenten season called Rescue. As we think about how God has, through the whole story of our story of God with us is this story of a rescue and how we get to partner with men and women around the world to bring that message of hope and joy and peace and new life together. And so in just a few minutes, we'll have a chance to take up an offering, a collection where we get to partner financially with them today, but also looking down the road of new opportunities to walk deeper and into this work together. Now, as we look this morning, I invite you to turn over to Genesis chapter 12. You have your Bible with you, whether you're analog or digital one.

Turn over to Genesis 12. We'll begin there this morning. As you do so, I want to prompt you by thinking about, have you ever watched a movie trailer that just gave too much away? You know, watch a trailer where when you actually sit down and watch the movie, you think to yourself, I've already seen it. I've seen all the highlights.

I saw all the good parts. You know, a good movie trailer is not supposed to show you everything. It's just supposed to build up a little hope, a little anticipation, something that gets you looking forward to actually watching the story unfold. You know, in scripture, I think that's one of the roles that the Old Testament can play for us, that from Genesis to Malachi, there are these previews of God's rescue story unfolding in the world all around us. He gives us these teasers and these hints of how he has been and continues to be at work.

He doesn't reveal the whole picture all at once. You know, as we talked about last week, through the promises, through the prophets, through the covenants and sacrifices, God is whispering to his creation, rescue is coming. And that rescue story actually starts back in the garden, back in Genesis chapter three, where grace begins to unfold. Even though sin has entered the scene. Adam and Eve have broken the covenant with God, their trust, themselves.

Rather than trusting him that God still plants a word of hope. He says one day one will come and he will crush the head of sin and death, and it will no longer have power over you. Even in the midst of brokenness, God speaks his grace to us. Well, this week I want us to keep pulling on this thread of rescue that we see all throughout Scripture. And we find ourselves here in Genesis chapter 12.

We learned at the very beginning, this passage that Jennifer read for us just a moment ago, that the chapter opens with this God calling a man named Abram. And he calls him to leave all that he knows, his family, his friends, all that he's ever known, and go to a new place. And he gives him this promise. He says, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you. And whoever curses you, I will curse. And all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you. I think that last line is so powerful. All peoples on the earth.

He doesn't say all your best friends or your tribe or just your nation or the people that you really like. He says, everybody will be blessed through you. It's an incredible thing. From the very beginning, God's rescue plan was global. It wasn't just local.

Now, Abram didn't know the details. He didn't know how or where or when or why. He just knew that the promise had been made. And so, generations later, even through Abram's lineage, through Israel's story, through a messy family tree with broken people and broken stories, God would bring forth Jesus. That rescue wasn't an afterthought.

It wasn't God reacting to humanity not living up to the their end of the bargain. Rather, this was God's plan all along. And so here's what's so powerful about Abram's story in Genesis 12 is Abram had to trust a promise that he could not see. He had to trust a God and a promise that was made to him that he couldn't see. He had to walk forward just based on that whisper of rescue.

Now, some of us are living there right now, right? Like Abram, we feel like God's called us, but he hadn't given us all the details. We're not sure how and we're not sure why. We're not sure where or what he's going to do, how he's going to fulfill that promise or that calling that he's put on our life. But we can trust the one who's promised us because he is faithful.

If you keep reading through Genesis, what you'll discover pretty quickly is that the family God chose to work through to bless the world wasn't very impressive. In fact, they're broken and they lie and they deceive and they cheat and they doubt. I mean, by the time we reach Exodus, just one book over, they aren't a blessing to the nations. In fact, they're enslaved by one Egypt. And it's there that raises this question, how do you bless the world when you're enslaved, how are you going to become a blessing to all nations when you're enslaved under a nation?

See, the promise of blessing required something first. It required a rescue. So that's where we turn next. As Exodus opens up, we find that Joseph and all his siblings, his brothers, his father, they've all died. And a new pharaoh is in charge in Egypt.

And he doesn't know anything about Joseph, nor does he really care much about him at all. He's come to power, and the Israelite population has exploded. And he knows, I've got to do something. I've got to take care of this problem. And so his answer is, I'm going to enslave people.

I'm going to make them work. I'm going to make it really hard on them. And generations have passed over since Abram's promise, since God made that promise to Abraham. And they're beginning to wonder, is this ever going to happen? The promise feels so distant and so oppressed and beaten down.

The people of God cry out to God for a rescue. And God raises up Moses and he sends him to declare rescue is on the way. But the rescue plan doesn't look exactly the way they thought it might, does it? In Exodus 12, God tells each family, take a spotless lamb and sacrifice it, and then wipe the blood on the doorpost over your home. And when judgment comes, God says in verse 13 of Exodus 12, the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are.

And when I see the blood, I will pass over. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt, the rescue came through the blood of a lamb. I mean, can you imagine how odd that must have been for those first hearers to hear those words, take blood and wipe it on the door? Is that really the plan, Moses? Yes, that's the plan.

Wipe it on the door. It doesn't look very powerful, Moses. It looks kind of weird, maybe even to some, a little strange, a little silly. Is that really what we're supposed to do? Yes.

Yes. But by that night, death had passed over every house covered by the blood, right? The chains were broken. Slavery was being destroyed. And now the journey to freedom was about to begin again.

As you keep reading through Exodus and you follow Israel as they head out of Egypt and into the wilderness, something else becomes clear. That Egypt really wasn't Israel's biggest problem, their deepest problem. You see, after the Red Sea was parted and manna is falling down from heaven and the laws handed over to them at Sinai, what we learn is Israel's hearts are still enslaved. That Pharaoh wasn't Israel's biggest problem. It was sin.

That rescue from Egypt, it was real, but it wasn't final. It wasn't the end of the story. Passover was powerful, but it was just a preview of what's to come. That deeper enemy was sin. And so a few centuries later, we hear another whisper through one of God's prophets, Isaiah.

Rescue is on the way. Isaiah wrote about a coming rescuer who would suffer on behalf of the people. And when he first spoke these words, I imagine Isaiah likely understood that servant would be a representative represented by Israel, this people who was called to bear witness to God, to a God who's faithful, and to a God who. And this servant rather, would suffer deeply on behalf of the people. Yet even as he describes this servant in his writings, the language he uses actually begins to stretch beyond the nation of Israel itself.

Here's what he says. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God. Stricken by him and afflicted, he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him.

And by his wounds we are healed. What we learn in reading through the story of Israel is that Israel suffered, but they hadn't suffered innocently for the sins of other people. Israel needed rescue as well. So God's whisper to Isaiah and through Isaiah to us, it speaks of a greater story, a bigger rescue, something deeper. That this rescue that God would be sending to his people wasn't going to be political.

It wasn't going to be a military rescue. Instead, it was going to be deeply personal. You see, sin requires a payment. That brokenness requires healing. Injustice demands satisfaction.

And so God's suffering servant would willingly suffer what was required of him for the rescue. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. Did you hear the echo?

Did you catch the whisper? A lamb led to slaughter would be part of the rescue of God's people. For centuries, these words inspired the question, who is this suffering servant? Who is it? When will they come?

How will one suffer on behalf of many? It was only after the resurrection that Christians began to look back and reread Isaiah's words in a new light. They began to understand it in a new way. For example, over in Acts, chapter eight, we encounter one of Jesus earliest followers A man named Philip, one of the first Christians. And he was led by the Holy Spirit to travel down this road from Jerusalem to Gaza.

And on his way down the road, he sees a chariot pulled off on the side of the road. And we're told Philip ran up to the chariot, and he heard the man reading Isaiah, the prophet. Turns out he was reading this exact passage, Isaiah 53. And so Philip asked him, do you understand what you're reading? How can I, he said, unless someone explains it to me?

And so he invites Philip to come up and sit with him. Tell me, please, this man says, who is the prophet talking about? Who is the suffering servant? Who is this one? I've heard echoes and I've heard stories and I've heard whispers, and I'm wondering, who is he talking about, himself or someone else?

And then Philip began with that very passage of scripture, Isaiah 53. And he told him the good news about Jesus.

See, that suffering servant? It wasn't actually Israel. It was Jesus. The cross was not a tragic accident that just kind of happened. No, it was the centerpiece of God's rescue plan.

All the way back from Abram's promise to the Passover lamb to Isaiah's prophecy, it's always been a part of the plan. These were simply previews of what is to come. The true story. When Jesus went to the cross, heaven wasn't scrambling. Instead, heaven was fulfilling a promise.

So when you step back and you look at the whole of the Old Testament, you start to see this thread running through it more clearly. That a promise to bless all nations led to a lamb whose blood would rescue the people, and eventually to a suffering servant who would be pierced by for our sins. Different scenes, different centuries, different authors. And yet one story, one rescue, one savior.

And that changes how we read scripture then, now that we know that story, that the Old Testament isn't just some disconnected collection of stories about an ancient people that doesn't quite fit with our world today. Instead, it's like a trailer pointing us to the story of Jesus. So how do we respond? How might we respond to this good news? Well, the first thing is it changes how we read scripture that we read differently, you know, during Lent.

I want to challenge you as you read through the Old Testament to just ask yourself some questions. If you've been in our Sunday morning Bible class series, we've been in the book of Genesis reading and thinking together. But the invitation is, as we read, are we asking where are the whispers of rescue? Where are those trailers kind of pointing us back to the great story of God, when we read through Exodus to ask ourselves, where does this point me to Jesus? Where is it showing that how God's plan is unfolding?

Even then, when you read through the prophets to ask yourself, how are they speaking of the cross? How is this a preview of what Jesus will do that one day on the Golgotha? So you start seeing Jesus everywhere and it changes how we read Scripture. The second thing we can do is trust, trust more deeply that if God spent thousands of years orchestrating all of these details of redemption, that if throughout the centuries he was faithfully fulfilling his promises over and over again, that if somehow he could work out that he could align all these covenants and all of these sacrifices and all these prophecies to work perfectly, do we really think he doesn't care much about our life? You see, the same God who was intentional with history is intentional about you.

In fact, we're told all through God's word that we were created on purpose, his image, that he knows us so well. He knows every hair that's on our head or used to be on our head. He knows them all. You may not see the whole picture. You may not understand exactly how he's at work.

Neither did Abram and neither did Israel when they were in Egypt, and neither did Isaiah when he was speaking these words of prophecy about the suffering servant, that one day would come and all would be set right. Yet God was moving that rescue plan forward, each time in each story. I hope this Lenten season will start to read differently and we'll start to trust God more deeply and finally, that we'll start to live with a sense of anticipation. You know, the Old Testament saints, they lived looking forward. We live kind of looking back at the cross, but also looking forward to when Jesus will come again.

That the rescue has come, but it's also on its way, still coming. You know, Advent, the season we just celebrated over the Christmas time. It teaches us to wait with hope. I think Lent teaches us to remember with patience, both teaching us to anticipate that God's plan is still unfolding. You see, the best movie trailers don't spoil the ending.

They build anticipation and hope with every promise, with every opportunity. The Old Testament is, in one sense, God's divine trailer, pointing us to the story of Jesus. Every whisper, every promise, every prophecy, every lamb was pointing us to Jesus. So this Lent, let's not rush to Easter. Let's take our time, let's trace the thread, let's listen for those whispers once again of how God's plan of rescuing us has been laid out from the very beginning.

Because when we do, we learn not to just admire the story, but we fall in love with the man you see. All through the Old Testament, God's been speaking a word to us. Rescue is coming. And that rescue, it has a name, and his name is Jesus. In fact, that's why we partnered with our missionaries around the world, as these are men and women, families with parents and children who said, I want to dedicate my life to sharing the story of God's rescue, especially with those who are far from God.

They've been willing to go into really hard and difficult places, places that have never seen a word of scripture ever, who've never had a chance to. To read scripture in their own language. And they're partnering together to say, how can we open up and create a preview for this group of people to discover the God who is going to rescue them? We believe God's promise of rescue is for everyone, right? Every tribe, every nation, every tongue.

So this morning, as we take up this offering, this morning, we're going to have a bold goal that we're throwing out. It's $133,000. And last week I kind of gave us another way to think about that, around 770 bucks a family here at Broadway. If we could give that. And I know some of our families are going, man, we don't have that right now.

That's okay. We trust that God's going to multiply our efforts because there are some here who can give more than 770 bucks and there are some who can't quite make it. Or maybe some of you are thinking, well, I could do that, but it's going to take me a couple of months. Well, that's part of why we pushed our mission Sunday up into March, is to give ourselves some space to go. Hey, this is really important.

We want to dedicate some time to making this happen. Our new budget starts in June, so you got a couple of months. So for you, the commitment may be, I'm going to pledge to give that amount or maybe more. I'm not sure exactly how God is inspiring you or challenging you to give sacrificially this year, but that one more person might learn about the great rescue operation that God has launched. That God longs to know and love us, that he longs to be in relationship with us, that he has sent us a savior, a savior who will rescue God.

I pray now, as we get our money, our wallets, our checkbooks, our digital apps, whichever way we're going to give. I pray that you would give us generous hearts. Would you remind us, Lord, how you have grafted us into this great story rescue, that at one point in time, there was a man, a woman who loved us enough to share with us this great story that they walked us through. The previews, the teasers, those stories that remind us of life as it often feels in this world, where there's brokenness and struggle and things don't often go the way that we want them to go. And yet through it all, there's this thread of hope and joy running through it that death does not have the final answer, that sin is ultimately defeated, that there is one who came and suffered on our behalf.

He was willing to give his life that we might have life with you in eternity forever. God, this church has been here in this place on this corner in Lubbock, Texas, for goodness, 130 years sharing this story. We've been able to partner with men and women all over your world to bring this story to a new generation. God, that's our heart. That's what we want to be about in 2026.

Would you bless us now as we offer this gift on behalf of the missionaries who have sacrificed their life so much that they might be able to take your good news to those all over the world. We pray for our friends in Africa and for the challenges they are facing today, maybe even a deeper way because of this ongoing conflict, Lord, in the Middle east and in Iran especially. And I pray for mercy. I pray for lots of grace. I pray that your hope would shine through.

And for those who, like Abram or Isaiah or those, even the Israelites in Egypt who are wondering, God, where are you?

When is your promise going to be fulfilled? God, I pray that you would speak a word of hope again today. Would you strengthen our feeble arms and our weak knees? Would you come alongside our mission partners? Would you encourage their hearts?

Would you give them words to say when those conversations, when those opportunities open up. And may those in those foreign lands, may they see a preview once again of this incredible story of rescue. God, what an amazing story to get to be a part of. Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you for inviting us deeper into it.

And we want to live faithful to that calling that you've given to us. And so, God, we ask for you to bless this offering now in the name of Jesus. Would you multiply it for those who don't have as much as they wish and those who have more than enough. God, would you help us to be radically generous as being best we can. And we trust and believe that this story, it's going to find its fulfillment when Jesus comes again one day.

But Father, between that one and this, would you help us to play our part in your great rescue story? Thank you Father. Thank you for your amazing love. Would you rescue us once again? We pray in Jesus name.

Amen.