Rescue Begins Series

So hey there, good to see you and to have you with us as we continue on in this series that we doing called Route 66, a series that we are doing because we believe that just like a journey to the west on the actual road Route 66 led many to a better life, a journey through the larger story told in the 66 books of the Bible is the path to a much better life for all of us too. You don’t have to believe that to belong here with us. It is one of my favorite things about this place. Regardless of what you believe or don’t believe, how your story past or present reads, you are safe and welcome with us here every single week. We are people just like you who want to give a special shout and welcome to you if you are brand new (to all of our online friends out there too) and let you know that we hope that you have a great experience today and want to come back and do this all over again with us real soon. So, because of all that we have to talk about today I want to jump back in fairly quickly but before we do that let’s talk a little bit about where have been so that we are all on the same page heading into this.

ILLUST> In week 1 as we walked through the creation story together we discovered this. We are not at war with science. We ought to love science because it is a study of God’s creation and God’s creation is good. We have to remind ourselves that Genesis 1 was not written to answer our 21st century scientific questions but basic life questions for readers in that day and for us too like who are we, why are we here, who do we worship, and who do we trust. God is trying to communicate what he did and that it was him who did it not how he did it or how long it took him to do it. In the end creation demonstrates how important we are to God. We weren’t an afterthought in the story. He created it all with us in mind. Then last week we talked about the rebellion that happens early in the story. We talked at length about the enemy that we are up against and everything that was unleashed on earth in that moment in the Garden of Eden that we still see in each of our lives today...passivity, men looking to women for validation, the assault on beauty, man finding identity in work, shame, hiding, and blame. We need to understand all that this moment in the story did to us. See, God having a deep loving relationship with us has always been what the story is really about. Our story has always been a rescue story. If we aren’t convinced of that already, we should be by the time we wrap up today.

So, as we jump back in let’s remember this. There are 39 books in the Old Testament but we really only find the narrative or story in 17 which can be confusing because they are not the first 17 books. 5 of the remaining books are books of wisdom and poetry. The remaining 17 are the prophets. The prophets are books that contain specific things, life lessons, instructions that God sent his prophets to say to his chosen people Israel during different parts of the story. We will flush that out more next week. So, all of that to say this. We have about 2000 of years of story to talk through before we ever get to Jesus. We are going to hit 1,000 of it today. Now, my experience has been that things start to get confusing after the Garden of Eden really up until we get to Jesus. So, let’s jump back into this and see if we can clear up the confusion, not for the sake of knowing more information but for transformation, the life change that we come in here chasing after every single week. What does what we are reading say about God? What does it say about us?

If you brought a Bible today we are going to start in Genesis chapter 12 today. If you don’t have a Bible they are back on the back tables that you can grab right now if you would like if you close or on you can always grab one on your way out. As always you can hit our app or the YouVersion app too. Or you can ignore all of that and read along with me on the screens. So here we go, Genesis chapter 12 verse 1…

The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 ‘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. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’