The Story - Chapter 1

I'm not sure which one of these books you are going to use today, it's all about both of them. They have the same thing in them. If you want to turn in the story to the first page, if you turn to Genesis chapter 1 verse 1, that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about this because I'm convinced that this first verse in the book of Genesis is the foundation stone on which all the rest of the Bible rests. This great biblical truth is what is exemplified in all the scripture. The story of the world, the spiritual story of the world starts here. And while most of the people ignore this great spiritual dimension, it's the reality, the great reality that we live in. The Bible makes it clear in this beginning how the world operates and where we fit in it. This is a great picture of how God sees the world and how we are supposed to see it. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the first phrase in this, in the beginning, is a focus on pointing out that God is not a part of the material world, this time order in which we live. In the very beginning, before that took place, God was in existence. This helps us to understand that the world, the physical, material world in which we live does not encompass God. He supersedes all of that. He is bigger than this world, bigger than this universe, far beyond what we can see, feel, touch, or experience. The Bible begins by pointing out God, his nature and his character. Then it begins by saying God created the heavens and the earth. Now in our language, the word created can be used in a lot of different ways. You could say, well, I took some paint and I painted on a piece of canvas and I created a picture. Or you could say that I took a piece of wood and carved it and I created a piece of art. We use this word that way. You may know that the Bible was originally written in the Old Testament in the Hebrew language. And the word that's translated into our language here for created is never used in the Bible for human activity. This is something only God does. It's never used in the Bible to describe someone taking material and rearranging it to make something. Like you could take a door and make it a piece of artwork or something. The Bible never uses this word to describe that. It always uses it to describe something that is made uniquely that God alone could do. So what the Bible is telling us is that in the very beginning, before there was anything, God did something. He did something to create the universe that we know. But the Bible is giving us some idea in the very beginning of what this whole story about the world is about. It's about someone with the power to be able to make something that no one else in the world could ever make. It's telling us a story of some being, God. The word God here is a word that's generally used for all gods in the world. Sometimes it's of the gods of pagans or Christian God too, but simply that being that is greater and more powerful than anything in all the world. When God began to create the world, he had nothing to work with. He had to create the stuff out of which he made all these things. We might be able to take things and arrange them, but God is different than us. He had in his mind a picture of what a human being would be like, all the intricate parts of our body. The more you learn about your body, the more you discover what a marvelous thing this is. How could God sit down and think of all the things that need to take place in a human body so you could eat food, digest food, so that your blood would course through your arms and your hands and your legs, so that your body in the heat of the day would digest itself so you sweat to take away that heat. God has a mind that is far above and beyond anything that we can imagine. He planned the universe. The Bible is trying to help us understand in the very beginning the magnitude of God. The mind, I wouldn't want to call it intelligence because it is so much greater than anything we in human terms could ever imagine. But God with his mind, his brain, whatever he uses, thought of all these things in the universe and step by step planned them. This in this book is a God who has plans, that's what he's telling us. Here is a God not only that has plans, but a God who has the power and ability to make those plans come to reality. When he's talking about the history of the world, he's describing the origin or the power or the beginning of it as a great mind and brain that knows all kinds of things. That's why we can go to him with questions. That's why you can present to him whatever need that you have and know that you're getting in contact with someone who really has the answer. Have you ever called a helpline to try to get help? You'll never run into that problem here. For this is the person, not who read a manual, but who wrote the manual and who made the universe. You won't come across a thing that is mysterious to this creator. For he from the beginning planned what he wanted and he did it. In the ancient world there are all kinds of stories of creation and sometimes people say well this is just another one like those, but it isn't. You read those stories and there's one God up here and another God up here and they got in a fight and they had kids and it's just sort of, every one of them has some violent issue that brings the earth into existence. Not this story. Here is a God who planned what he wanted and then he had the power to make it. He didn't even work at it. He just said here's the sun that I have in my mind, let there be light. And by the power of his word everything took place exactly as he wanted, exactly as he thought in his mind it ought to be and there it was. God wants us to understand that he's a God who understands this world. And when you run up against some problem of a magnitude beyond and above you and you know who God is and you trust him, you can bring to him that problem and it is really nothing to him. I mean the most severe problems, you face death, it's nothing to him. He can say make Doyle alive and even though I'm dead I'd come back to life. He wants us to understand in the very beginning of this book who he is. Not only does he speak these words that bring this into reality but he's a God who acts in the world. In this story he simply acts by making all the things that are in the world and he goes through details in that first chapter describing the animals and all the things that take place on this earth and then tell us much about all the things that are out there that we've yet to discover but those two he made and he knows them. But what's unique about this God is he acts in the world. You're going to see throughout this story with Adam and Eve and all the rest of the stories in the Bible that here's a God who's not distant and remote but who comes in this world in the presence of people to speak to them and talk to them. The other side of that, he is a God who talks. In the ancient world they would make a statue of wood or stone or metal and they would come to it and they would offer their sacrifices and make their requests and the stone statue would sit there without a word. The metal statue would be cold and silent. But this God, he answers. He speaks back. Here in the middle of all of this, the great God of the universe is a God who speaks. He made the heavens and the earth and he made people, the Bible says, in his own image. What he means by that is that he didn't make the cows in his image. He didn't make the buffaloes in his image because they don't plan and they don't think through things and they're not able to build relationships and they do act in the world but they don't have the ability to make choices. But he made us. You can sit down and plan what you're going to do tomorrow. You can actually do things that would cause your plans to come to reality. Do you realize that this is a reflection of the very nature of God himself? He made us in his image. He made us so that we could relate to each other, listen to another person, have sympathy with that person, compassion for that person, understand that person and love that person. This is because the God who created the universe does that and we are made in his image. He made us also able to make choices just like he does, to choose one thing over another. And in this story, he put Adam and Eve in this place he'd prepared for them, this beautiful, wonderful place he'd prepared. Everything was exactly as they wanted and they were to live there. This was what God's plan for you and for me really was. So every day God would come where the people were, Adam and Eve, and he would talk to them. We have no idea what they talked about but he built a relationship with them. He listened to them and he talked with them. They listened to him and they talked to him. This was the way God intended the world to be. He was in charge of the birds, the sun, the planets, the earth, everything. He had a plan for it and all of the universe was doing exactly as God planned. And then one day, the serpent came to talk to the woman and the man and raised in their minds a question, do you think God is being fair with you? Has he told you that you can't eat of the fruit in this great, wonderful place? And they said, oh no, no, no, we can eat anything but one. And then he said, do you think God is trying to keep you from getting everything that you should have? Why does he not want you to eat of that tree? They began to look at the tree and the fruit on it and say, it looks wonderful to us. And in their own mind they reasoned, as human beings do, what's the good part of this and what's the bad part of this? They began to think that if they could eat that fruit, their life would be better. Now this is a story describing what happens to all the people in the world. You come to the place where you begin to think and live your life and you try to decide, how should I live? What should I do? They knew what God wanted them to do and they knew what God didn't want them to do. The sin that took place in the Garden of Eden was rebellion. They said to themselves, we know what God has told us to do, but we don't see anything wrong with this. In fact, it looks delicious and we think if we had this one experience, we would have all the experience that God has and we would be like him. So in their own reasoning, they thought God's rule for them was foolishness. And they thought their idea was better than his. What happened in the Garden of Eden was the rejection of the authority of God over their lives. No animals have done that in the history of the world. No planets have done that in the history of the world. No plants have done that in the history of the world. Only human beings have said to God, I have a better idea than you do. And I'm going to do what I think will be good for me even though you tell me not to do it. I think that if I did this, my life would be good and better, fun, enjoyable, whatever it is, whatever our reason is, our human reason, because I don't trust your judgment. And we don't say that to God. But we know what he tells us to do and we do something different than that. And that's really what we're saying. I don't trust your instructions. None of us have ever made a tree. We may plant seeds, but we never make a tree. None of us have ever made a star. None of us have ever made a world. And yet we say to God, I have a better idea. The great sin that ratchets throughout the Bible, the one in Romans 3.23, all have sinned. This is what it's talking about. Every human being in the world comes to the place to recognize there's some supreme authority over all this. In the most remote places in the world, a man living in the jungle or in the desert looks around and says, I know no human being in the world can make those trees. I know that no human being I've ever met can make the sand of the desert. There must be something or someone bigger than all this. And then consciously we all choose to do things that inside of ourselves we know are not right. That's what Adam and Eve did. It broke the relationship with God because the relationship was built on the fact that God was the ruler of the world and part of His world said to Him, You will no longer rule my life. Suddenly discord comes into the world. God can no longer have the same relationship with them because He knows He can't say, here's what I want you to do and they will do it. They will stop and say, well, do I want to? Does it fit my schedule? Is it what I enjoy doing? He knows they will no longer respond as the stars and the animals respond automatically subject to the authority of this divine person who made all of this. And when God comes to talk to them, in your book, page 5, then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? This is a God that talks to us. And when you do something that God doesn't want you to do, in your mind, in your heart, you know it. You don't know it because you're so wonderful and spiritual. You know it because the one who made the world talks to us. The guilt, the shame, the feeling of worthlessness because of what we've done. The woman said, the servant deceived me and I ate. What she admitted was she listened to the snake instead of God. Who was the authority over her life here? It was the snake. She had traded God who created all of this, gave her the garden and everything that she had for a snake. And because she had exalted the snake to the place of God in her life and obeyed him instead of God, she was driven from the garden. On page 6 in your book, in the middle of that page, to Adam he said, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat from it. You see here God spells it out. I commanded you not to eat of that fruit. You listened to your wife when she told you it would be a good thing. You traded your wife for me. You put your wife in a position of supreme authority over your life instead of me. I told you what to do. She said what to do. You had to make a choice and you rejected me for her. You see the story of the scripture from this first part to the end is a story over and over and over again of people who hear the voice of God but they say for some reason of their own, I choose to do something else. Now you'd think after two or three of these times the whole world would stop and say whoa! What's going on here? I mean every time this happens to me bad things come along. But you'll see over and over again that we ignore this. Every one of us thinks for the first time we have figured out life. And when we come to a choice of doing what we think is right or what everyone around us tells us is right or what seemed good to us or what we enjoy doing that is contrary to what God wants, we inevitably choose that. All have rebelled against God. That's what Paul was talking about. Every human being in the world has come to this experience. And so what happens is the same thing that happened there. God said you have broken the relationship with me and it can never be that way now. You have to leave. The place he prepared for them, the future he had for them, the life he wanted them to live was all stopped. The world didn't get any better. If you look at your story again, you'll find whenever the world got further and further along it got worse and worse and worse. In the days of Noah, page 8 in your book The Story, the first paragraph, the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. Now when he uses the word wickedness, what he's really talking about are people who are doing things contrary to what God says is the right thing to do. It can cover all kinds of immoral circumstances. It can cover all kinds of things that are not necessarily immoral, but people who choose to do what they would like to do instead of what they know God should want them to do. For example, if you have children and you know you're supposed to raise them to be godly people and you choose not to do that but to do something else, ignore their religious training for athletics or music or whatever else it is, you haven't done anything wicked but you've failed to do what God tells you is the right thing. That's the wickedness he's talking about, choosing to do the opposite of what God says is right, whether it's with your time or your money or your marriage or your children or your job, whatever it is, God has a clear instruction about how all of those things are to be done. And now he looks at the world filled with people who ignore him. That's what the sin is. Many good people born into this world live their lives ignoring God. They get an education based on what they want, they don't ask God's advice. They get married because they found someone they like, they don't ask God's advice. They raise their children the way their parents raised them or the way their family, people around them raised them. They don't ask God how to do that, they take their money and they spend it without asking God what to do with the money he gave them. They live their life ignoring the ruler and creator of the universe who literally owns them. See, every one of us are made by God. He has the right over us of authority, of ownership. But we say, no, I don't want to listen to you, I want to do what I want. The wickedness of the human race had become on earth so great that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. It doesn't mean that they were trying to kill people all the time, but it was contrary to what he told them they should do and how they should live. In this very sad sentence, the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on earth and his heart was deeply troubled. Have you ever set out to do something really good? You thought it would be helpful to everybody and made people mad at you or it turned out bad and you said to yourself, I'll never try to do anything good for anybody again when it turns out this way. You ever think of God thinking that way? I gave you a good home, I gave you a good life, I gave you a good job, now look, you're living as if I don't exist. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on earth and his heart was deeply troubled. I don't know if you've ever thought about God being sad, but you know when you have a child who goes off the deep end, your heart is broken. Every person who ignores the authority of God breaks his heart because he had better plans for us than that. In this instance, God became so upset, he said, I'll wipe the face of the earth and the human race I've created. I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I've created and with them the animals, the birds, the creatures that move along the ground for I regret that I've made them. God decided that his experiment of having people in the world with the ability to choose was not working because we all choose the wrong things. And then something amazing happened. Lord Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. He looked out and saw one human being who was faithful to listen to him and do what he wanted. And then he reconsidered his plan. People say God has no plan B. He did. He had a plan B and C. The second plan was to destroy everything. Plan C was to not do it. But he did it because he saw in one human being a glimmer of hope. Here is a man who listens to me. Here is a man who follows me. Here is a man who will do what I tell him to do. And then he reconsidered. You know the story of what happened. He rescued Noah, his family, but he destroyed so much of the world. Here we have in this very beginning a great picture of what the whole Bible is about. God's great battle to bring about in this human world a world of people like Noah who are righteous. He means by this that Noah was the kind of person who did the things that were right by God's definition. He walked with God who means that he was in a relationship with God where there was a friendship like two people walking down a road together. They were connected to each other. And because of that he decided to change his mind and not destroy the world. You see we see in this first section God says I am the ruler of everything in the world and if people listen to me and the world listens to me it will be great. But look at these two, Adam and Eve, they turned their back on me and they rejected what I told them. I had to throw them out of the garden. I had to leave them. I couldn't be around them anymore. And then it got worse and worse and now I find a man who is willing to say I will follow you God. I will do whatever you ask. You are in charge. God spends the rest of the story of the Bible and today looking for people who are willing to listen and obey him. And Paul tells us the bad news. There are none. All of us have rebelled against the authority of God and we said to ourselves I can manage my own life. I don't need to read this book. I don't need to ask God what to do with my time or my life. I can do that on my own. And there we exalt ourselves to a position of greater authority than even God himself. Same story we found in the first chapters of the book of Genesis over and over again. So what God has done is to say if I can find a person who is willing to say to me you are my Lord I will take that person and make them my own. So God is looking in the minds and hearts of people. He is looking for people who are righteous that is to say I want to live the way God says is the right way because I believe in God. I believe that he is the supreme ruler and I should be serving him. He is looking for people who listen to him instead of all the voices around us that tell us what to do and how to live. To help us out he sent Jesus his son into the world to live so we would know exactly how we should live. And he says to us if you will accept Jesus Christ as the guide for your life then I will forgive you for your rebellion and I will adopt you into my family. John said to as many as received Jesus to them he gave the power to become children of God. Remember this is the one that makes all the universe. He can give you the power to become his child. He has the power to forgive your sins. He has the power to change your life. He has the power to guide you. He comes into this world and talks to you. All he needs is a person who in their mind chooses to say I believe you are the creator of the world and the Lord of everything and I believe I was made to follow you. In beginning today I want to commit myself to listen to you over all the voices around me even my own desires and my own wisdom even my friends and even my family. You alone Lord are the ruler of my life. With that commitment of your will to God he erases all the things that you have done that are contrary to his will. He receives you as his child and begins to walk with you day by day. I don't have to ask this because I know the answer to it. Every one of us here have listened to God. We knew what was right and at some point in our lives we have said to God I'd rather do my way instead of yours. The question I need to ask you is is that a life that is satisfactory to you? Do you find that you have found the life that you really want to have with love, peace, joy, contentment, faithfulness, meaning and value? God has a good life for every person he creates and he wants us to have that life. There is one condition to it. You must give God supreme authority over your life. Would you bow your heads please for a moment. I want to ask you if there has ever been a time in your life in which you have said to God I surrender my life and will to you. If it is, then you know exactly what that means. If you are not certain of that, today you can be and say to God I realize that you are the supreme ruler of this world and I surrender myself to your control and your authority and from this moment on I will to live my life in obedience to you. You are going to need his help and he will help you. He will do everything you need but he needs your will to do that. The moment we are going to have an invitation hymn, you may have felt all of a sudden today that you should say to God in no uncertain terms I want to commit my life to you openly and publicly. You will know that because when we sing you will have the thought keep coming to your mind I should go down there and tell these people that I am ready to make this promise to God or I have made it in the past and I want to renew it. The God who created the universe is talking to you. Please listen to him or you will end up like Adam and Eve. This is a church. To become a part of this church you have to say to God I give you my life and I commit myself to live in submission and faith and trust in you. That's what we are about. God may be saying to you this is the place I have for you. The doors of our church are open for you to come and say God wants me to be a part of this family. But listen, you do it because God tells you. That's what this story is about. So Lord Jesus, whatever you want from me or any else here, be sure to tell us. We know you are God who speaks to us and you put thoughts in our minds and attitudes in our heart. I ask that every one of us today would accept your authority over us to live as you have directed us. Because we know that your life is the way of life. Now may each of us do what you have asked today. In Jesus name we pray, Amen. God has spoken to you and you know what he wants. This is a moment of time in which you reflect on what he said. And we want you to say to God right now a response to what you know he wants. If you need to come and make that expression openly and publicly, we will help you to do that and we will pray with you too. What has God told you and what will you do about it? Would you stand please for a moment of prayer together? It is humbling and amazing that the God who created the universe with all of its complexities would take time to speak to a human being. But we know that you do. I ask Father for each of us who have heard your voice today that we would submit to you the Lord of the universe, the creator of heaven and earth. In the name of Jesus we ask this, Amen. Morning by morning new mercies I see, all I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.