I Have Some Questions, Part One Series

Listen, have you ever read the Bible and then saw a scripture and went, "What’s up with that?" I mean, "Why did God say that? Why did God do that? That doesn’t make any sense to me." Or maybe you saw something happen in your life where you had a question and you said, "Why would God allow that? What is going on?" We’ve all had those moments, haven’t we?

Well, that’s what this series was about, and what we decided is that we’d take just a short series. We’re gonna just make it two weeks and we would say to you, "Hey, email us your questions." Well, the stack that I’ve gotten in is like this. It’s like a whole ream so far.

And so we’re gonna stretch it out. How long is it gonna last? I don’t know. Until we get tired of it. Until we want to move onto something else. Because I think we’ll be able to hit a lot of really good issues Biblically and then personally also.

And so I want to say don’t quit sending your questions. If this sparks something today or maybe you haven’t really gotten a question in, send it in to me at pastorgreg@seacoast.org and we’ll try to do our best to deal with them.

Now, obviously I will not be able to get through every question. I’m trying to kind of stack them to those that are the most asked or maybe the most interesting. And -- but we have a tool that you can access called After the Message. What you do is you go to the website, whatever campus that you happen to be in, and click on Current Series, Today’s Message, and on there there’ll be a click for After the Message and it’s a really cool resource and tool.

We just started about a month ago. We can send you emails if you want email updates or whatever. But what it is, is we’ve taken some of the things that will fall off the table, like today, I’m not gonna be able to get to even everything I’ve got on your outline sheet. I already figured that out. And some of the answers will have to be very, very brief. We’ll have expanded answers on there. We’ll have questions that we didn’t get to.

We also will have ways that you can self-feed. You know, how do you find your own answers on these issues? So take advantage of that resource, After the Message.

Let me jump in, let’s go. We’ve got a lot to cover. You guys have some great questions. Before I do this -- a little bit more background, okay? We’re gonna kind of categorize it for a little while and then we’ll scatter as we go.

If you have questions on relationships, you know, somebody asked the question I saw that -- I don’t know, I won’t even say last night there were questions asked, but all kinds of different questions, questions of relationships, questions of Jesus, question on work, family, whatever. Text those in.

This week we’re gonna talk about God, okay? Specifically God and how God responds. We may do that for a couple of weeks, it looks like, then we’ll go in various directions.

Here we go. Ready? All right. Question number 1. In fact, the first three questions that I want to deal with has to do with creation. And so let’s have a look at them. First of all, here’s a question from Eric and I think that Eric lives here in Charleston.

It says, "Thank you, Greg. I continually find myself in the same roadblock when it comes to discussions of the Bible. I’m very analytical and have difficulty with trying to grasp the intangibles. Perhaps your insight might be the path that helps me navigate this obstacle. For example, Adam and Eve, creation of the earth, Noah and the ark, do you believe literally word for word or perhaps they’re parables, stories back during those times where people didn’t know as much and used parables or stories to explain certain issues and questions?"

Let me just ask real quickly, how many of you have had a question like that? Have you ever wondered that? I mean, you read Noah and the ark, you read Adam and Eve, all that, is this really literal?

Well, let me just dive into that one and say that obviously some parts of the Bible are history. They’re history. Not a lot of it but some are, Kings and Chronicles and just the historical account of what went on. Some parts of the Bible are poetry. You’ve got obviously the Psalms and some Proverbs and Song of Solomon and some various -- and then there’s little bits of poetry and other things.