Sermon Date 01-12-2014 The Story: Part 2 Genesis Ch. 1-9 (Chuck Gohn)
We are beginning our 31-week series simply called The Story. This will take us well into the fall with a little bit of break for the summer. If you were here last week, when I mentioned that when we are talking about the story, we are talking about the story of the Bible. Specifically the story that has Christ at the very center; a Christ-centered story. Because we only have 31 weeks and we have a lot of books to cover, I am going to each week to a high flyover of the Bible, while occasionally zooming in on some key people, places, and events just so we can begin to connect the dots together. As I mentioned last week, what I would like to do is periodically have people come up here and give a little bit of testimony about their own personal story so that you begin to see how individual stories are connected to God’s story. That is what I am hoping to do in the next few weeks. Today, I do have to jump right in to the book of Genesis. We are going to cover very quickly nine chapters of Genesis. It is really not that overwhelming. I would say in the first nine chapters there are really three key events. There is the creation, the fall, and the flood. Creation, fall, flood. I decided today I would tell it like a story like it was originally intended to be told just as a story. Like any good stories, all stories begin in the beginning.
As Genesis 1:1 says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That is how that story begins. Right in that very first line we get some very critical information. We know when this creation started; it started in the beginning. We learn who the creator is: God. We learn what he created: the heavens and the earth, pretty much everything. As it unfolds, we begin to see that the creation started with four words where God spoke and said “Let there be light.” Over the next five or six days, you begin to see creation unfold in a very beautiful way. The second day you begin to see how God began to separate the atmosphere from the waters that were below on the earth. Then you begin to see on the third day what happened is God began to bring some of those waters together and create the seas. Then he would place the land in between the seas. Then we get onto the fourth day and we begin to see how he put seed-producing plants on the earth. As you go on, you begin to see how he created the galaxies and the heavens. Placing the stars and the moon so we might be able to separate life by seasons. Then we see how he began to create the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. By day six he was creating all sorts of animals that walked the earth. He would stand back after each day and he would say “It is good.” As good as it was it was missing something. He was missing the crown of creation. He was missing people. He was missing man and woman. It goes on to say “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.” Right here it is important to stop and say you can tell by this passage that when God created man and woman, they were created a little different than the rest of the animals. The animals are said to be created according to their kind. Man and woman are said to be created according to the very image of God, which basically means that God has his divine imprint on every single human being, which means there is worth and there is dignity to every human life. That is pretty much the steps of creation. On the seventh day we know that he stood back and he didn’t just say that it was good. He said “It is very good.” So what happened is he creates man and woman and places them in this beautiful garden known as Eden. He pretty much gives them access and dominion over everything. The plants, the animals, everything. Really he created it for one central purpose; so that he might be able to commune and be with his people. That is what it was. It was a pretty good situation there. It was a pretty good gig for Adam and Eve.
We know that at some point things went terribly wrong. Not only did God give Adam and Eve everything in the physical world, he also gave them something that he thought they might need; he gave them the freedom to choose. God didn’t create robots. He wanted everybody to have the option to obey or disobey. If you have the freedom to choose that means you have to have choices. God set out to give them a choice. The choice was this. He was going to plant a tree in the middle of the garden, a tree that he referred to as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then he put restrictions on the tree. He said you can eat from any tree in the garden except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Don’t look at it. Don’t smell it. Don’t touch it and especially don’t eat from the fruit of that tree because you will die. Some of us who have kids know that when we tell our kids not to do something, they end up wanting to do it. That is what kind of the way it happened with Eve. She is walking around the garden one day and there is something about the tree that really attracts her to it. She is looking at the fruit and all of a sudden a serpent shows up. I don’t know about you, but I suspect if Debbie was in the garden working away and a little snake shows up, she might get frightened and run. Actually, if I was working in the garden and snake showed up, I would definitely run because I don’t like snakes. You have to keep in mind that at this point in time, there was no need to be afraid of the animals. This particular snake was any typical snake. This was a snake that could talk. A talking snake. Not only could he talk, he was smart. It said that he was a crafty snake, a very devious snake. He ended up approaching Eve and says did God really say that you are not supposed to eat from any tree in the garden? What he was doing was planting the seed of doubt right in the middle of Eve’s head. So Eve gets into this conversation with him. Before she knows it, she is getting very confused. This snake has Eve convinced that God is trying to keep her from the tree because if she eats from it she will be just like God. He says “For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That is a little bit too much temptation for Eve. She begins looking at the tree saying that food looks good to eat. It has an appeal to it. It is pleasing to the eye. It is also good for wisdom. Before she knew it, she took an apple off the tree and very defiantly just took a bite out of that apple or whatever it was. Here comes Adam walking along and she sticks out the apple and says eat this. Like most men, it is like okay cool, an apple. I will eat it.
Before long, something begins to happen. Before long, we begin to see a change happening within Adam and Eve. We begin to see a sense of guilt come over them and particularly a sense of shame. So much shame that they looked and noticed they were naked. They ran and searched out fig leaves and covered themselves up and hid in the brush. God comes along and says Adam where are you? It seems like a silly question coming from God. God created him. God knows every inch of space in the place that he created. Really what I think he was doing was trying to get Adam to tell him what was going on. To admit to what he had done. Adam’s response was simply “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” Just in this one little line you begin to see the relationship changing between Adam and God. A relationship that was originally grounded on love was now becoming based on fear and mistrust. What does God say to Adam? How do you know you were naked? Did you happen to eat from this Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? At that point, Adam realizes he is cornered so he starts the blame game like we often do. He says that woman over there, the one you stuck in the garden, she gave me the fruit and I decided to eat it. So God looks at Eve and says what is going on here? What did you do? She turns to the snake and says that snake deceived me into eating that fruit. According to God, all three of them are guilty as charged. As the story goes, the penalty was pretty severe. At least for woman, they were forced to endure the pains of childbirth for the next several thousand years. All you woman have Eve to thank for that. The men were sentenced to a life of hard labor, which some of you men partake in and some of you don’t. Whatever the case, he was sentenced to be the main breadwinner. The one who would have to work the land in a hard labor. The snake you might think got off a little easy. The snake was just basically sentenced to do what snakes do. They crawl around on the ground. They get dust up their nose. You think the snake got off easy and he is the one that caused the problem in the first place. But you have to remember it wasn’t about the snake. It was about the snake behind the snake; the snake called Satan. Satan was going to get his due. Before he got his due, Satan was going to have free reign over the dominion that was given to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve had the dominion of everything. They were to rule over all the creatures. The only thing they were supposed to do was live under the submission of their creator. When they disobeyed, they gave that right over to Satan.
If we look at one particular verse, we get the first hint that at some point all that is about to change. What was taken away from Adam and Eve and all humanity will someday be returned to them. We see that in a very obscure verse, Genesis 3:15 where God is talking to Satan and he says “He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.” Some scholars believe that this is actually the first glimpse of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some believe that the He here that he is talking about is Jesus. Someday, way down the road, He, being Jesus, will crush Satan even though for this short time you are going to be able to mess with all of humanity and be able to wound the heel of Christ, which some think is a reference to the crucifixion. Ultimately, Jesus is the one who is going to crush the head of Satan. So that is the story. You have the first sin coming through Adam and Eve. What we see following is that that sin that started with Adam and Eve is injected into the DNA of all humanity. The result is death. Not just physical death but spiritual death.
To make matters worse, Adam and Eve, who were given this beautiful garden, were now basically kicked out of the garden. They were sent out into this cold and dark world. The world that was created a paradise began to change. Suddenly, we begin to see physical decay of the world and we begin to rapidly see moral decay of the people. Moral decay that really began in the first kids of Adam and Eve. You might recall that shortly outside of the garden, Eve became pregnant and had a son named Cain. Then she had another son named Abel. Apparently Cain was responsible for taking care of the crops and Abel was in charge of taking care of the livestock. As the story goes, one day they come in to bring an offering of some sort to God and I guess Cain brings a basket of produce. Abel brings something like a thick steak with very nice marbling. The Bible says that God looked favorably upon the offering of Abel but didn’t look too favorably on the offering by Cain. This upset Cain greatly. He got angry and very sad. God says “Why are you so angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” God is giving Cain a little life lesson. He is letting him know that you have something bad inside your heart. You inherited a bad heart and you need to learn to master it or it is going to get a hold of you. As the story goes, Cain did not figure this out. Cain did not receive the lesson well. He was so jealous of his brother Abel that he went out there and actually violently killed Abel in the middle of the field. From that point forward, it was all downhill. We begin to see the rapid decay of society. People were probably just viscous and evil and murderers and just looking out for their own self. This decay in society was not overlooked by God. It says that the Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil at all times. The thoughts of the people’s hearts were evil at all times. It got pretty bad.
God had to make a choice. What do I do here? Do I let them go on the way they are or do I make a change? He decided to make a change. He decided he was going to pretty much start over. He was going to flood the entire earth. Before he would flood the entire earth, he was going to seek out someone who could be the first person to help begin to populate the new earth; the new creation at that time. He found the guy. Some of you know the name of Noah. It says “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” Noah had the same relationship with God that Adam once had. Noah walked with God. He was pretty much blameless at that time. As the story goes, God says I have a project for you. I want you to build an ark. I want you to build an ark and make it according to certain dimensions. I want you to make it about 450 feet long, which is a little bit longer than an average football field today. I want you to make it 75 feet wide, 45 feet tall. There were a lot of other specifics in there. I want you to get two of every animal according to its kind and bring it on this ark. I want you to get seven certain types animals that we would use for sacrifice. Then I want you to bring your immediate family in there, your kids and their spouses and their kids. Bring them in and then shut the door of that ark and wait. Just wait. I am about to flood the earth.
I want to stop right here because I imagine when you hear the story of Noah and the ark don’t we get this sort of image in our mind. We all grew up hearing this kind of story about the ark and the animals. I think the problem is it doesn’t mean anything to us anymore. It doesn’t even seem realistic. I think this creates almost a fairytale imaging in our minds about the story of Noah. What I thought I would do is show you a movie clip from the upcoming movie called Noah. It looks like a pretty good movie. I thought I would show the clip because, to me, it gives a more realistic image, even though it is Hollywood, of how bad things were during that day. We will watch this clip and I will come back. (Clip shown.) Doesn’t that look good? Anyway, as the story goes, he gets off the boat and all the people get off the boat and all the animals get off the boat, and the people begin to repopulate the earth. The earth begins to sprout new forms of life. That is pretty much the end of the first nine chapters. Chapter two of the story is that God calls a new person out as we will see next week. He calls a new person out by the name of Abraham. He calls him out because he wants to start a brand new nation that he would call the Nation of Israel. Made up of the Jewish people, the chosen people, because they have been chosen to not only be blessed by God but as we will see next week to be a blessing to others. That is the high flyover version of the first nine chapters of the Bible of the book of Genesis.
I know it is probably easy to sit back and think that is a nice story, Chuck. I like how you told it. I like how it reads, but it just leaves so many unanswered questions. Some questions are quite simple and straightforward. Like when God said at the very beginning “Let there be light” the question that sometimes people ask is what language did God say that in. There were no languages yet on the earth. Did he use Hebrew? Did he use Greek or possibly English? Then you have the question of Cain? Cain was the first-born of Adam and Eve. Killed his brother, but it said that Cain had kids. The obvious question is who was Cain’s wife? Then the question everybody is dying to know, since Adam and Eve had no parents, the big question is did they have belly buttons? Debbie says no. I said yes. They would be a little weird. We don’t know if they were innies or outies but we know they probably did. All kidding aside, then you have the whole ark thing. He said grab every animal two by two. Does that mean all the animals? Including insects and stinkbugs? Did God decide to put stinkbugs on the ark so we can be harassed by them several thousand years later in the middle of winter in Pittsburgh? What about the dinosaurs? Did they get on the ark? Those are all good, valid questions. If you are a Christian, you know you have had those questions in your own mind, but you have probably taken the stance that I don’t have all the answers and I am just trusting that God will someday clue me in on all this stuff. It generally gets us by. Occasionally, somebody comes along and really gives a challenge to the Christian views of the origins of the universe.
Most recently, it is a guy by the name of Bill Nye. If you grew up in the 90s, you know that Bill Nye is the Science Guy. There were 100 episodes all geared toward science and addressing science topics in a very humorous way. He was able to grab quite a large audience. Not only with the pre-teen generation but with the adults because he was funny and he was good and you learned a lot of stuff. Lately, he is in the news because he is an evolutionist. He is beginning to seriously challenge the creationist views of the origins of the universe. You know that is going to upset some people, especially the conservative Christians and it is especially going to upset the creationists. It is going to get them up in arms because he is attacking their view. He is even attacking the very first line of the Bible that says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Christians are up in arms. Some people aren’t going to stand for it. Some big names are coming out against him. Including the people that started Answers in Genesis. They are the ones that give a very good defense of the creationists’ view. They built a museum in Kentucky called The Creation Museum. Some of you have been there. I have never been there, but it looks pretty good and it looks like they go and address some very valid questions including the idea of where were the dinosaurs and who was Cain’s wife and all that kind of stuff. Very good answers they give. The Answers in Genesis people have basically challenged Bill Nye to a debate at The Creation Museum. Apparently, it is getting a lot of publicity. All the tickets are sold out for this debate. I am a bit curious about it. I am hoping to see the video and how it all turns out. To be honest, I don’t think it is anything to get too excited about because I really don’t think that the creationists, whoever is on the panel, are going to say something that is going to get all the evolutionists and all the atheists running and screaming to church so they can accept Jesus into their heart. I just don’t think it is going to happen. In the same way, I don’t think Bill Nye or any of the evolutionists or any of the atheists in the crowd are going to say anything that is going to cause the creationist’s view of the origin of the universe to suddenly come crumbling down. That is not going to happen. I don’t really see the need for the debate and I really don’t see the need for Christians debating it.
I know I am probably going to upset a few of you. That is my job. I do like to upset people. I personally for one don’t think the Bible was ever intended to be a science book. I got no Amens there but hear me out. I am not saying I don’t think it should be in school rooms because I think it is the greatest book that has ever been sold and I think it should be there along with all the other great literary books. But I don’t think it was ever intended to take a Bible and take a science book and go line by line down so that you can compare the different origins and hopefully come out with the creationist view of the origins of the universe. I don’t think that was intended. I don’t think for one that the Bible makes a good science book any more than I think a science book that we have all studied in elementary school makes a good Bible. In other words, the beautiful story of creation as told in Genesis was never meant to be read like a science textbook. And a science textbook was never meant to be read like a beautiful narrative. You have had science classes. You know it is almost impossible for that to happen. Some of you are thinking, well, Chuck, do you believe in the creation story the way it is told in the Bible? I will tell you what I don’t believe. I don’t believe that 3,500 years ago, when it is pretty well documented that is when the book of Genesis was written, there is substantial proof about that, I don’t believe that when it was written that God sat down with Moses, who they believe to be the author, and he said listen Moses, I am about to tell you a story. Get your scroll out and I want you to take notes. Just start right now. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Listen Moses, you aren’t paying attention. You need to really get it good. I don’t want any typos. I don’t want anything wrong. Line by line you better get this letter perfect because someday somebody may be facing the likes of Stephen Hawking or Carl Sagan or Bill Nye the Science Guy at a museum in Kentucky and you better have your facts down right. That is a joke, but it’s true. God doesn’t need that sort of detail. God doesn’t need that. I would suspect that God probably left a certain amount of detail out there because he didn’t want us to idolize any book of the Bible. He didn’t want us to rely totally on our intellect to be able to give answers to others. He didn’t. And you say, well Chuck, I think it says somewhere in the Bible that aren’t we supposed to be prepared to give an answer for those who oppose us? You are right. It is in 1 Peter.
Let me back up a little bit. I forgot this. This is actually a quote by Bill Nye right off of YouTube. It says “If you grownups want to deny evolution and live in your world that is completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe that is fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them.” That is a direct quote from Bill Nye the Science Guy. He is saying if you teach your kids creationist theory you are going to mess them up and mess up the world. When he says “we need them” if I was to go on he talks about we need engineers, we need doctors, we need people that have brains basically. That is what he is saying. He is saying you cannot be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, and at the same time be able to believe in this outdated view of the origins of the world. He is saying you can’t do that. Again this is from him saying this. He says so many things in there. So much generalization. He actually makes himself look foolish by some of the things he says.
But anyway, getting back to the idea that the Bible is not meant to be a science text. It is not meant to be used as a debate. It goes on to say “But in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Yes we are to give an answer. For what? The hope that we have. We use this word hope really generally. What he is talking about here is the idea of hope is not a verb the way we use it as a verb like I hope I get a job. The idea here is that hope is not a verb but a noun. A noun that has a future aspect to it but also a present reality. It is a secure hope. It is a present possession that we have. Yes we are supposed to give an answer. Be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have been given. We are to do that. Answer doesn’t mean that we are taking field trips up to The Creation Museum and trying to memorize all the questions and answers so that someday we can go head to head with anybody who walks on the street, whether it is a scientist or atheist or whatever. That is not what it is saying. To be honest, most of us would lose that debate. I for one don’t remember anything about science. I don’t think most of you do either. We are not prepared intellectually to go against a scientist. We are not prepared to go head to head, but we are prepared and equipped to go heart to heart with somebody. Whether it is Bill Nye, Carl Sagan, or Stephen Hawking. We are definitely prepared to go heart to heart.
You say what does that look like? It is really quite simple. You see yourself out having a cup of coffee with somebody who is an evolutionist. Pretty soon you just start talking about current events. The world is getting bad. Look at the crime, the wars, the violence, and the earth how crazy things are happening. Something just doesn’t seem right about the world. Something is not right. Then you share a little and say for a long time something was not right with me. I had my priorities wrong. I had bad attitudes. I had prejudice. I had a lot of sinful behavior. Something was not right in me. With a few well-placed questions, the person you are sitting with is going to admit that maybe there is something not quite right with their heart too. You may finally say I can’t prove that that not-right feeling goes back to Adam or Eve eating an apple from a tree in a garden 4,000 years ago or so but until the scientists come up with a good explanation of why this thing we call sin is so pervasive in the world, I am going to choose to continue to believe the creation story and I am going to teach my kids to do the same. Then you say speaking of my kids, you bring out a picture and say here is a picture of my son and daughter. Gosh, the first time we held that baby it was nothing short of a miracle. I cannot see how anybody can see this child as anything but a miracle. As hard as I try, as hard as I think about it, I cannot see this child as just some sort of a piece of carbon or that evolved from slime. I just can’t get that. Although I can’t trace it back to the book of Genesis, I have no proof that it came from the idea that God created man and woman in his image, until you scientists are able to say where that divine nature, why people are so much more special than the average animal, until you can explain that, I choose to believe the creation story and I choose to tell my kids the same story. Then take them outside. Take them on a walk through the park. Take them at night and let them look up at the night sky and see all the galaxies and stars. See the stuff we saw more recently about the lights over the top of the world. We see all these beautiful pictures. Take them and begin to think about those things and tell them do you ever think about the earth we are on? Again, Bill Nye, you know there are all these planets out there, but why did they never find one like our earth that is so perfectly able to sustain life. Why are there no other ones out there? As hard as I really try to want to believe in your evolution theory, there is something that doesn’t make sense about having absolutely nothing and then all of a sudden having some sort of a Big Bang and starting the earth. That takes a lot of faith to believe that. Even though I cannot trace my view back to that first day when God said “Let there be light”, until you come up with a more acceptable solution than the Big Bang, I am going to continue to believe the creation story and I am going to teach my kids the same story. Finally, just talk about relationships. Why are relationships so important in this world? Why are we so attracted to others? Why do we have such strong man-and-wife bonds? When those bonds are suddenly taken away by divorce or death, it feels like a ripping of flesh. Although I cannot prove that that goes back to the garden again when God joined man and woman together and said you will be one flesh, until you scientists come up with a better reason about why we feel such strong emotional bonds with somebody, I am going to choose to believe the creation story and I am going to teach my kids the same thing. Finally, we begin to think about why is it that we know there is death, but there is something inside of us that tells us death is so unnatural. I think it says in Ecclesiastes that God has placed eternity on our hearts. God has placed the desire to live forever on every single human being. Unless you can come up with an explanation for that and where it comes from, I am going to believe that it stems from the very beginning when God intended us to live forever and I am going to teach my kids the same thing.
So that is an easy way to talk to an atheist or an evolutionist. Talk heart to heart because if you are someone who has set apart Christ as Lord, you are very equipped to engage in that kind of discussion with anybody of any intellectual capacity. When it all boils down, it is not about being able to argue or convince somebody about the old creation origins. What you are trying to do is convince people that you are a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: the old has gone, the new has come.” When you convince yourself that you are part of the new creation, you automatically create a link back to the old creation. When you are confident, you are able to tell people yes I do believe that story. I do believe it. I have that connection that goes way back there.
That is really all I have today. I mentioned before that I would like to get testimonies from people to come up and summarize what I am trying to say. But I really didn’t have a testimony for today. I really didn’t think about it. This morning, in my quiet time when I am preparing the service, God said you got a video a while back last year from one of your members. Some of you know Jennifer. You know she has been confined to a wheelchair all of her life, but she has not been confined to Pittsburgh all of her life. In fact, she travels the world freely and attends and speaks at conferences and organizes conferences and facilitates discussions. She sent me this video sometime last year while she was at a conference in Toronto I believe. She said use this sometime. I thought you would be interested in that. So I thought, in close, I would show a brief portion of the video just so you can begin to see what it means to be prepared to give an answer or the hope that is in you. (Video clip shown here.)
That is a picture of what it means to be prepared to give an answer for the hope that you have within you. It was in a secular conference and somebody asked who is God to you. If you think you are not equipped to answer that question, watch that video a couple times. You realize you are more than equipped to give an answer for the hope that you have within you. It is because Jen, a long time ago as a little girl, she set apart Christ as Lord in her heart. If you haven’t set apart Christ as Lord in your heart, you are not equipped. You don’t have a testimony. When you have decided that you are going to set Christ apart as Lord in your heart, you are not only confident that you are a new creation, but you are confident you are going to be part of the creation that has come and is becoming. When you are able to do that, you really don’t care what the evolutionists think. You don’t care what the atheists think. You know what you believe and you believe that first line of the Bible that says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Let us pray.
