The Story - Chapter 1
September 12, 2010
When’s the last time you saw a movie that had a huge beginning, a beginning that if you missed it, you missed a crucial part of the story. Maybe you were stuck in line buying popcorn and snacks, and suddenly the movie begins; and when that happened you had two very serious problems - first, the lights are out, and you couldn’t find where your seat was, and nobody was looking for you either; and secondly, you missed the beginning. And when you finally get to your seat, you try to ask those your with what happened, and all they do is shush you. Because they are already deeply engrossed into the movie. Ever have that happen to you?
When that happens you miss the crucial set up for the entire movie, and you feel like you’re playing catch up the entire time. Well, the story of the Bible opens with a big bang. And this big bang is not an accident. God is behind it. And you don’t want to miss anything in the story. The Bible, God’s Word.
With that in mind, I want you to watch what I believe is one of the best readings of the creation story in Genesis 1, which is page 1 of The Story.
Apollo video reading scripture . . .
Wasn’t that great?
“In the beginning, God created.” Right there, by the 4th word, we’re introduced to the main character of the Bible, God.
As we continue to read through Genesis 1, it would seem that the main vision for God is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the way He goes about accomplishing this mission.
The sequence and pattern of creation in Genesis 1 is simple, yet it’s so overwhelming to see what God is doing. There’s a 2 part pattern. On days 1-3, God is busy creating the places of His creation. And on days 4-6, God is busy putting the objects in these places.
For example, on day 1, God is separating the light from darkness; on day 2 God creates the water and the sky; and on day 3 He creates the land. Then when you look at day 4 He puts the objects of the sun, moon and stars in the places of the light and darkness. On day 5 He puts the fish and the birds in the places of the water and sky; and on day 6 He puts the animals on the land. It all works in an amazingly orderly fashion. Wouldn’t you love to have seen what God’s blueprints looked like? And at the end of every day, God looked over what He accomplished and said, “This is good!” This had to have been amazingly impressive.
Yet, the best was still to come, because you see, this was the prelude, this was not God’s core passion or vision for what He wanted to accomplish. The pride and joy of God’s handiwork comes in Genesis 1:26-27, bottom of page 2, what He creates in these two verses is the core of His passion, the primary subject of His big idea. In these 2 verses God creates people. When you look at the world and all the beauty, we need to realize, all of that was for us. We read —
26 Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
After God created us, He stepped back and again looked at His creation and this time, and catch this folks, this is the only time in the creation story, God stepped back and now instead of saying “this is good,” God now says, “This was very good.” Please understand the word very in Hebrew can also mean abundantly or greatly. God was excited, thrilled and very, very pleased with His creation.
How wonderful is that to hear? How great to know and hear God say this about you and I. Whenever you’re feeling low or depressed about your lot in life, remember these words, remember this is how God feels about you. He loves you, and He considers you not just good, but very, very good.
We should start everyday with that thought. Because you know, when I wake up in the morning and I look in that mirror, I say to myself, “this doesn’t look good.” But when God looks at you, He says, ‘looking at you is better than an ocean view. It’s better than watching the sun rise. Looking at you is better than a Colts super bowl victory. You need a boost of self esteem today? Drink in some of this God esteem.
And understand this, men, take note, there’s more information as to how God created woman. Yes, man was created first, but I happened to pick up Debbie’s Bible and was reading over Genesis 2 and this is what I read, “when God created Eve, He caused man to fall into a deep sleep, and he took out man’s brains and created woman.”
Actually, we know God created woman by taking one of Adam’s ribs. And it would be great to think that it was the rib closest to man’s heart. And when Adam saw Eve for the first time, I would like to think his first words were, “OY! This is very good!”
Now, if we keep moving in the story, we see Adam and Eve in the garden. It’s a great picture, and we can only imagine the beauty of what the garden looked like. It had to have been amazing.
In Genesis 3:8 (page 4) we read that God is walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. This is so important for us to understand, because we don’t see God up in the heavens, sitting in His proverbial rocking chair. We get a picture of God walking with Adam and Eve, God hanging out with them, talking with them, laughing and reveling in the joy of life. What a great picture, and it’s so important for us to hold onto that because that is just how important we are to God. God’s simple vision was to hang with Adam and Eve.
And this folks is the BIG IDEA of the story, the grand idea, His supreme passion and vision, the point of the Story is this . . . God wants to be with us. The community of God, Father, Son and Spirit, wants to extend their life with us. God wants to be with us, to hang with us, to walk with us and dwell with us, God wants to be right here with us. We need to hold onto that.
And I know there are some here today who have a different view of God, you view God as that angry cosmic being, who is looking down waiting to zap you when you do something wrong. Or maybe you feel God is distant, or doesn’t care, or that He’s forgotten you. As we uncover and move through the Bible, there’s not a chance He’s forgotten about you, or lost His desire to be with you. And this dear friends is the point of the story. Can I get an Amen!?
Yet, as we look at the story as it unfolds, we see a huge problem. God wants us to freely choose to worship and love Him, so He gives us some choices to make, and He was no different with Adam and Eve. He gave them choices, Adam and Eve have the freedom to walk with God, as God walks with them. You can read about the tree of life in Genesis 2:11. So, God put the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. He told Adam, don’t eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, because when you do, you will die. But eating from all of the other trees and vegetation will not cause death. In essence, the deeper issue is this, eating from that tree represents your choice not to be in relationship with me and sharing my vision. Not only will you die, but my vision will die along with it.
So, Adam and Eve choose to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. God’s vision as it was planted in humanity is destroyed. Sin enters Adam and Eve, and becomes part of their DNA, which is passed on to all generations. The Bible teaches us that sin and evil have now been deposited into the nature or DNA of Adam and Eve. This deadly virus separates us from God. And it’s the root of all kinds of evil, and includes, sickness, hatred, death, and more.
On the top of page 6, we learn that Adam and Eve are banned from the garden. We read, 23So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24After he drove them out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:23-24)
Now, this might sound like God is being mean and vengeful, but I really believe this is for Adam and Eve’s own benefit; and for ours in the long run. You see, if they were able to come and go from the garden, not only would there be no consequences for their choice of eating from the tree, but they would also keep eating from the tree of life. And can you imagine the disaster which would happen if they kept eating from that tree, added to the sin nature that had now entered their DNA? Can you imagine the explosive nature of combining these two natures?
So, God in all of His wisdom, banished them from the garden. Now I have to admit, there are parts of that we don’t like, because that means there will be suffering and death. We will become sick, we will grieve over the loss of loved ones; I understand that, yet, in God’s grand plan He wants to protect us from living forever in a sin cursed world; add to that the fact that there was more to come.
The grand vision of God had been destroyed by the sin of Adam and Eve. It broke the heart of God, but listen to this, and this is also crucial. We’ve discovered the true vision of God, and once that vision was lost, God made a commitment to do whatever was necessary to get us back. And the rest of the story is telling us how God gets us back. It won’t be easy, and it will come at an extreme price. But God is ready, able and willing to do that for you and I, because He loves us.
We see in chapter 4, Adam and Eve are outside of the garden, they now have 2 children, Cain and Abel. And we learn that the sin nature has been transferred into their children. That’s the point of chapter 4, and we know the consequences of sin, as Cain becomes jealous of Abel and commits the first murder in the Bible.
As we move through the Bible we see how the sin nature continued and continued and it in fact, it got worse, and in Genesis 6, we read,
5 The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
If you stopped right there, you would see how God regretted creating us and how He was going to give up on us, but you would miss how God was going to pursue us. God decides to start all over, even though this guy has a sin nature, God sees Noah as a righteous person.
But we continue reading what the LORD said, 7 I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created — and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground — for I regret that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
Can you imagine what God is going to ask Noah to do, kind of like Evan Almighty. Noah builds an ark which is about the length of 1½ football fields or 150 yards long. Imagine Noah coming home from work one day and saying, ‘hey honey, kids come here, God just spoke to me and you’ll never guess what! He wants me to build an ark, I mean a huge ark, because God told me He’s going to destroy all the people except for us. Oh and by the way, we’re going to bring two of every type of animal on the ship. Who’s with me?’
After the ark is finished and his family and animals are on board, it begins to rain, and it rains and rains and rains. It rained for 40 straight days until the whole earth is covered with water and every living thing is wiped out.
After 150 days, the water begins to subside, and the ark finally comes to rest on Mt. Ararat. So, now we’re going to get a geography lesson. Open your books to the inside cover and draw a picture of a boat on your map. Just to the left of Assyria. Ararat is in northern Iraq / southern Turkey.
When Noah exits the boat, the very first thing he does is to offer a sacrifice to God, and the aroma was wonderfully pleasing to God. As God looks at the heart of Noah, and God thinks I love the people I created. I’m never going to send a flood again. I love Noah, I love his family, I’m never going to do this again. God makes a promise, a covenant that He will never do this again . . . because God loves us and the sign is the rainbow. It’s a reminder of God’s grace and covenant with us.
We also learn that Noah’s plan does not work. We learn in chapter 9 in Genesis, after the sacrifice Noah gets drunk, falls asleep in his tent, naked and uncovered. His son, Ham, saw his father in that situation, and defiled his father by looking at his nakedness. It might not be a big deal to us, but it’s a reminder that the sin nature didn’t get washed away through the flood, and never does. So sin remained and was carried off that boat by Noah and his family and it persists today.
I told you this was a fast paced story, within the first chapters of the Bible we see amazing action taking place.
So, what do we takeaway from this first Sunday of moving through The Story . . .
The vision of God is to be with us. That’s the point of the story. And next week we’ll see more of God’s plan to make His vision a reality.
We learned that the first people didn’t have that same vision, and as a result sin entered their nature and has entered our nature as well. So, now we’re separated from God.
We learned the first plan didn’t work, because the sin nature was not eliminated. The rest of the story of the Bible is going to be page after page of the never ending plan of God’s deep love for us to get us back.
Throughout the Bible there will be clues which remind us of God’s love. Let me tell you a subtle one from today’s story. If you aren’t looking for it, you could easily miss it.
Remember when Adam and Eve ate from the tree, what was the first thing they recognized? They were naked. Nakedness is a state of vulnerability. We recognize there’s evil in the world. Remember what they did? They got fig leafs to cover themselves. They felt vulnerable, exposed and they needed to cover themselves, and they took that fig leaf, a leaf which comes from a plant.
But, do you recall what God does? In Genesis 3:21, when God sees them naked, He makes a garment of skin for Adam and Eve. God replaces the clothes made from fig leafs, a plant, with clothes made from skin, which comes from an animal.
The solution to restore God’s vision and passion requires our sins to be covered. And it will require the shedding of blood to make this happen. The shedding of someone else’s blood will be necessary for our sins to be forgiven, for our sins to be covered. Now does anyone see where this is going?
Listen folks, as we opened up this chapter we were introduced to the fast pace of The Story, what I don’t want you to miss is that you are the point of God’s story. He is doing everything He can to provide a way to get you back. That is great news.
Power point available for free upon request.
