Community Busters - Genesis 3-11
We are in the beginning of a great journey, looking at the lives of those who have gone before us. We want to look at their highs and lows, their steps of faith and their pitfalls into sin. We are traveling through the record of their lives that is found in the Old Testament. This is not just a boring lecture about laws and sacrifices, but a very relevant message for each one of us today. I want to personally invite each one here to travel with us. Each week we will be reading a few chapters of the Old Testament and talking about it the following Sunday. There is a list in the back to sign up to buy a Bible Reading guide which will help you by offering a few questions for reflection on each day’s reading. The reading will be printed in the bulletin each week. And we will be changed as we read through God’s word together. As we get started this morning, as an encouragement to you to read along with us, I want you to watch this video of one person who chose to do this.
**PLAY DVD segment
The power and love of our great God is displayed over and over again throughout the Old Testament. Last week, as we looked in the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 1 & 2, we saw that the basic questions of man’s existence - Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? - are answered for us here in the very beginning of Genesis. We were created to be in a loving community with God and each other. But as we will see today, flawed thinking and disobedient action separated man from that loving community.
***Get 5 volunteers -
God eternally has existed in a fellowship, a community of three - Father, Son, and Spirit. And in creation, He invited man into that circle - Adam and Eve. But sin separated man and woman from community with God and community with each other. And ever since, as a result of sin, every man and woman has been born going his and her own way.
Now God’s plan was not bad - it was good. To have community with us - was a great plan. But our sin caused that fellowship to be broken. Our sin causes us to run from the community that God desires for us. And we’ll see that in the OT today.
A television program before the 1988 Winter Olympics showed blind skiers being trained for slalom skiing, impossible as that sounds. Paired with sighted skiers, the blind skiers were taught on the flats how to make right and left turns. When that was mastered, they were taken to the slalom slope, where their sighted partners skied beside them shouting, "Left!" and "Right!" As they obeyed the commands, they were able to negotiate the course and cross the finish line, depending solely on the sighted skiers’ word. It was either complete trust or catastrophe.
Our relationship with God is like that, just infinitely more so. Just like in blind slalom skiing, it’s either complete trust or catastrophe. Genesis 3-11 tells the story of man’s distrusting God in various ways, and the horrible things that came from that. They distrusted God because they fell into believing things about God that are not true—deadly beliefs that poisoned their relationship with God and with each other. Today we’re going to take a look at these deadly beliefs, because often we hold to the same flawed line of thinking. We want to identify this wrong thinking and see how God can cure us of it and restore us into relationship with himself.
PRAYER -
The first lesson from these chapters comes in chapter 3, in the lesson of Adam and Eve.
1. Adam and Eve: “God is STINGY.”
Adam and Eve were made perfectly by God. So often we blame our circumstances for our sin. We say, if only my circumstances were better, I could do right and follow God. Yet here is a perfect man and a perfect woman in a perfect sinless environment, but they fall prey to faulty thinking. They believe God is stingy. They don’t believe God wants to provide all good things for them. They end up thinking “maybe God isn’t so good after all.” And we see a downward spiral of wrong thinking in all their future generations.***Read Genesis 3:1-10.
God has placed them in a wonderful garden with everything they need - yet he places restrictions on them. And they rebel against those restrictions. At the root of all disobedience to God is the idea that maybe God isn’t so good after all. That maybe he doesn’t have my best interest at heart. Eve believed that lie and so did Adam. They disobeyed God, and the result was alienation from him, from each other, and from creation, and that very day they entered into a new world of pain and death. It’s either complete trust or catastrophe.
Satan is a deceiver - and he gets us to fall by deceiving us, by getting us to believe his lies - that God is not good - that God does not have our best interest at heart. But we combat Satan’s lies with the truth - You shall know the truth, and the TRUTH shall SET YOU FREE!
So, what is the right thinking we need to combat this?
The truth is - “God will give me EVERY GOOD THING in His own timing.” I struggle a lot with this, because there are a lot of things I want. James tells us that many of our problems come from our desires that war within us - we don’t control our desires. There are many I would like - yet I know that God will give me what is BEST. God knows what we need; he knows what’s good for you. And he will give it to you at exactly the moment it is right and good for you to get it. Period. Our job is to trust him to know what he’s doing, even when we don’t understand.
So, to combat this wrong thinking, we need to take action. What can we do to think rightly?
Action Step: 1. Sacrifice your “forbidden fruit.”
Think about something that you think is good that God is not letting you have. Instead of desperately trying to bring it about by your scheming and manipulation, thank God that He has not let you have it yet. Instead of blaming God that you can’t get what you want, take time to rejoice that God knows best and He will give you what you need at just the right time. This doesn’t mean that you can’t desire things you don’t have. But it does mean that we are not obsessed by any THING, but we are obsessed with TRUSTING GOD to provide for us everything that we need, everything that is good for us.
Adam and Eve thought wrongly, and often we do too - thinking God is stingy. Let’s change our thinking to believe that God will give me every good thing I need.
We go on in Genesis to chapter 4, and we see the example of
2. Cain and Abel: “God is too DEMANDING.”
Read Genesis 4:1-7.
Once again, we see the choice of doing right is presented, but Cain chooses disobedience resulting in catastrophe instead of total trust. Here we see family conflict arising, and where does it start? In their worship! There are a lot of fights and disagreements over worship - even back in the beginning. God was pleased with Abel’s offering but displeased with Cain’s offering. We’re not told all the details, and very likely God may have asked for a blood sacrifice, which would be a symbol of Jesus needing to die and shed his blood for the forgiveness of our sins. We’re not told everything - only highlights.
But what we do see is that Cain gave God SOME of his wealth. That’s what it says. But Abel gave to God from the firstborn of his sheep. It’s like your first paycheck from a new job. Abel gave it to God as a sign of trust that God would continue providing for him. And he didn’t just give God the hooves and intestines, the parts Abel didn’t want. He gave the ‘fat portions.’ People back then didn’t avoid fat; the problem wasn’t obesity, but starvation. Fat was a wonderful thing for them, because fat stays on the body longer. Abel gave the best parts to God.
Abel gave God the FIRST and BEST of his wealth. And God liked it. It was an expression of trust, while Cain just grabbed a basket of apples and pumpkins and corn on his way to church. Do you see the difference?
Abel believed that God would provide extravagantly for him. But Cain focused on the fact that he had to give an offering. “Man, is that God ever greedy and demanding! I wish I could keep my money for myself!” Sound familiar? He was again distrusting God’s goodness. And his distrust led to the stinginess of his offering which God didn’t like, which led to envy of his brother and hate. And that hate grew until he killed his brother. The wrong thinking of Abel was “why can’t God just be satisfied with what I offer?” And once again, the wrong thinking had results - God was not happy - and when God’s not happy there ain’t NOBODY happy! But the answer comes in confronting Satan’s lies with truth. What is the truth?
The truth is - “God is GENEROUS, so I can afford to be generous.” It’s that simple. Generosity is at the core of his joy as God. Romans 8:32 tells us “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all--how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” God is generous - he is a gracious giver. And he wants us to learn that lesson as well. 2 Corinthians 9:7 reminds us, “You must each make up your own mind as to how much you should give. Don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. For God loves the person who gives cheerfully. And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.”
Once again, to put this into practice, we need to take action.
Action step - 2. Surrender the first portion back to God.
As we start this new year out, let’s begin by affirming our trust of God to be generous to us in providing for our needs, and show this trust by offering a tithe, 10%, the first 10% as a step of faith to say “I believe God will provide for my needs, so I will show my trust through complete obedience by giving the first portion as an offering to him.”
Now let’s fast-forward 1700 - 1800 years, several generations have gone by. There are now lots and lots of people, and God has told them to spread out and fill the world. But there are safety in numbers, so they decide to stay together in one place. They don’t quite trust God to care for them, so they try to focus on taking care of themselves. They built big cities so they could enjoy their combined strength. We find this recorded in Genesis 11. This is the story of the Tower of Babel and their fatal belief:
3. The Tower of Babel: “God is NOT ENOUGH.”
God commanded these people to spread out and fill the earth, so here’s what they did:
Genesis 11:1-4 - “At one time the whole world spoke a single language and used the same words. As the people migrated eastward, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began to talk about construction projects. “Come,” they said, “let’s make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar. Let’s build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies--a monument to our greatness! This will bring us together and keep us from scattering all over the world.”
They weren’t content to spread out as God told them to. No one gets famous or super-powerful by wandering off alone. So they teamed up in this city for two reasons (v 4): To make a name for themselves and to avoid being scattered. These are the gods of fame and power, and the people at Babel chose them over the real God. These people had wrong thinking that God is not enough, that you need other things too if you’re going to survive. They said, “I need to take care of #1 - I need to look out for myself, after all, no one else will.” They didn’t believe that God would take care of them. And the result we see to their wrong thinking and action is that God comes down and thwarts their schemes.
So many times we say, I believe in God, but that’s not enough. And that is the lie from Satan.
The truth is - “God is all I need.” I don’t need power or fame and reputation.
Satan tempted Jesus in the desert with the same lies - power over all the cities of the world. He tempted Jesus with a reputation as that guy who jumped from the roof of the Temple and just floated to the ground on the wings of angels. But Jesus rejected both, because he knew that all he needed was God his Father. He submitted all his plans for his life to his Father, who knew EXACTLY what to do with it.
The action step we need to take is this: 3. Submit your plan for your life to God.
Instead of making all kinds of New Year’s resolutions of things that YOU would like to accomplish, start by sitting in silence and pray and ask God what HE would like to do in your life this year. How would HE like to use you. And whatever God tells you, obey!
Now in the midst of all these stories about people doubting God’s goodness and mistrusting him, there is one story of someone who DOES trust and reaps the benefits of it. The cure for the flawed thinking of mankind is the one thing that God told us to have all along: TRUST. And the story of Noah shows us what trust is.
Look with me in Genesis 6:5-9
“Now the LORD observed the extent of the people’s wickedness, and he saw that all their thoughts were consistently and totally evil. So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them. It broke his heart. And the LORD said, “I will completely wipe out this human race that I have created. Yes, and I will destroy all the animals and birds, too. I am sorry I ever made them.” But Noah found favor with the LORD. This is the history of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless man living on earth at the time. He consistently followed God’s will and enjoyed a close relationship with him.”
God sees one man, Noah, who still lives by TRUST - and God rewards him for it. God told Noah to go build a huge boat, an ocean liner, in the middle of his field. So Noah did it. No questions asked. THAT is trust. And remember that there was no rain before this - Genesis 2:6 tells us a mist came up from the ground to water everything - a heavy dew every day, like a tropical rain forest.
I can remember as a kid hearing the old Bill Cosby record about Noah - “Noah, build an ark” - Right, what’s an ark? “Noah, it’s going to rain 40 days” - Right, what’s rain? “Noah, how long can you tread water?!!””
Noah was a man of complete faith and obedience. This trust is borne from one simple belief that was rock-solid in Noah’s mind: “God is seeking what is good for me!”
Noah knew God wasn’t trying to humiliate him or do anything bad to him. Even though building this boat would be an enormously expensive and embarrassing undertaking, he did it. He spent 100 years getting laughed at by the people who would come to gawk at the moron building an ocean liner on his farm that was nowhere near water. 2 Peter 2 tells us “Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment. Then God destroyed the whole world of ungodly people with a vast flood.” God had the last laugh, when the rain finally came and covered everything, and the only ones to survive were Noah and his family and the animals on the ark. God was only out for Noah’s good, though for 100 years it looked as though God was intent only on making Noah a laughingstock.
The most important truth we will ever learn in our life is this: GOD LOVES ME! And all that means is that no matter who you are and what you have done, God is seeking what is good for you, always and in every situation, even if it looks like God is being mean to you. We need never doubt his good intentions toward us; that truth is rock-solid as God himself.
God loved Adam and Eve so much, that despite their rebellion, He decided that one of their descendants would reverse the curse their sin had brought on mankind. And that descendent was Jesus of Nazareth. Genesis 3:15 gives a prophecy of the Messiah who would come and crush the serpent’s head.
God loved Cain so much that, even while He had to punish Cain, He provided him with a life with a wife and children, and He would eventually provide the “perfect sacrifice”, Jesus, who shed his blood for the sins of the whole world.
God loved the people of Babel so much that he confused their languages so that they could not finish this horribly destructive project they were working on. And he loved them so much that on a day called Pentecost in a town called Jerusalem people of many languages would all hear the gospel preached in their own language.
And God loves you so much that He will not wait forever in letting the evil of this world get you down. There will come a day that he will say “Enough is enough” and he will destroy all evil on this planet, like he did in the Flood. God loves you so much that He offers you a seat on the ark, and our ark is named Jesus. We each deserve to drown just like everybody else, but all of us are invited to enter into the ark of forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ.
Let’s commit ourselves to right thinking, to obedience, to love this wonderful God of ours. Let’s Pray!
