Sermon - June 1, 2014 - The Story Week 1 - Creation

The Story Chapter 1

If you have paid attention to the movies we have talked about going to see, you might have realized I am a super hero junky. One thing that most super hero movies have is a lot of action. Most of them start off with some major action scenes that get your blood pumping and setup the battle that the super hero is going to face. In many cases if you miss the opening minutes of these movies you are trying to play catch up and figure out what is going on.

The beginning of our journey through the story of the Bible is like the beginning of an action packed super hero movie. If you miss the beginning of a fast paced movie you will struggle to understand the film. It is the same way with the Bible’s grand Story. The Story opens with a ‘big bang.’ Not the ‘big bang’ of evolution, but the ‘big bang’ of the revelation of God, Who is the main character of the Grand Story we are embarking on.

The Bible Story opens with the “big bang” of creation.

The opening verse, Genesis 1:1, introduces us to the Story’s main character: God. 

Genesis 1:1

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

“In the beginning” this is before time ever began. It might be impossible for the human mind to understand whatever was before the beginning. God obviously existed before Genesis 1, but what was it like. Before time, before creation, before there was anything, was it just chaos, nothingness, like I said it is probably impossible for us to comprehend.

Genesis 1:1 then goes on to introduce the Story’s main character; God.

“In the beginning God”

See God is not something man dreamt up or He is not something that can be explained through evolutionary theory of a ‘big bang’. God is the main character of our Bible’s and as it tells us right here He existed before time, He always was, The Creator, and a God with a plan.

Genesis 1:1

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

God created everything out of nothing. He created order and wonder out of chaos.

The ‘big bang’ of creation is presented poetically and artistically.

Days 1, 2, and 3 are places created by God.

Day 1 –Light and Dark

Day 2 – Sky and Water

Day 3 – Land

Days 4, 5, and 6 God created the things that filled those places.

Day 1 was Light and Dark – Day 4 were the Sun, Moon, and stars

Day 2 was the Sky and Water – Day 5 was the birds and creatures of the sea

Day 3 was land – Day 6 was all of animal kind and human beings

Even each day of creation was magnificently tied together with another part of creation. Think about it, it would not have worked out so well if Adam was created before the land.

In 1996, astronomers focused the powerful Hubble telescope on a small and utterly black patch of space right next to the Big Dipper constellation.  They left the shutter open for 10 days.  Do you know what they found?  They found 3000 more galaxies.  In 2004, they did it again, this time focusing the telescope on a patch of darkness next to the constellation Orion.  They left the shutter open for 11 days and found 10,000 more galaxies.  But, scientists say there are over 1 billion galaxies in our universe.  Can you even conceive of the vastness of space?  Can you even take in the complexity of all of creation.  You might read through Genesis 1 and think that the point is the creation of the universe, but that would not be correct.

The ‘big bang’ of creation concludes with God’s core passion: human beings.

Genesis 1:26-27

“²⁶ Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

It is nice even in the first chapter of the Bible we are finding references to the Trinity.

‘Let Us’ is referring to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit... ‘Let Us make man in Our image’

Now I would be hard pressed to stand up here today and say that God looks like us. After all, who would look more like him Homer, Becky, Chris??? We all look different, so it is obviously not a physical resemblance.

Genesis 1:27

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

If we look in chapter 2 of the book of Genesis I think we get a little more information on what it means to be created in the image of God. See God caused the man to fall asleep and God pulled a rib out of him and made the woman. Now physically speaking the rib bone is the closet bone to the man’s heart to create the woman.

Genesis 1:24

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were bound together in love. A man and woman were created in the image of God as people who are supposed to be bound together out of love. Being created in the image of God means that we are meant to love.

As we look through the creation story, you will note that at the end of every day ‘God saw that it was good’ but at the end of the sixth day after the creation of man and woman, God saw that ‘it was very good.’

The crowning accomplishment of all creation was God’s core passion, and that is that people were made in God’s image. In God’s opinion all of creation regardless of how remarkable or beautiful we say it is dulls in comparison to you. God’s sees you as His ultimate creation.

When you are feeling down or discouraged, read Genesis 1 and remember that all of creation was good, but you are ‘very good’ in the eyes of the Creator. Who can argue with that? You are more beautiful than the grandest mountain, more beautiful than the rarest of flowers, you are God’s reason for creation.

Don’t listen to what the world has to say, don’t pay heed to some comments made to you this week, last year, or whenever they were made. Do you really want to listen to what some person said about you or to what God says? How are you going to judge yourself worth, from your thoughts and the thoughts of others or are you going to listen to God?

God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden. Probably one of the most beautiful places on earth, but that was not enough. God walked through the garden with them. Think about how amazing and powerful and awesome our God is and yet he is found walking on one of those tiny planets that He created.

God’s supreme passion is to be with us at all costs.

Think about that for a moment. The God that existed before anything else, the God that existed before all of creation, the God that existed before the creation of the universe, the God that already exists in a loving community as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit wants to spend time with you. You may not feel like God is with you, maybe you wonder if He has forgotten all about you, but Genesis 1 tells us something different. There is not even the slimmest of chances that God has forgotten or overlooked you. His supreme passion is to be with you at all costs. The whole story we are starting today is about God’s passion for being with you.

God created you to be with you!

The Bible Story continues with the ‘big bang’ of the Fall. Adam and Eve were created with the freedom and power to chose, our God does not force His creation to love Him. God gives us a choice, He wants our love to be freely given. He does not want blind obedience, He wants us to willingly follow Him. You could call it the tale of two trees.

Genesis 2:9

“⁹ Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

God gave Adam and Eve both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with one simple rule.

Genesis 2:16-17

“¹⁶ The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; ¹⁷ but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

God gave them the choice, you can eat from anything else in the garden but that one tree. That one tree is off limits. Basically He was saying if you eat from that tree you are choosing to live a life different than what I created you for. God had a plan and in some ways it could be summed up with, He was God and Adam and Eve were not. Eating from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil would be like telling God He was no longer God. That is essentially what the serpent said.

Genesis 3:4-5

“⁴ The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! ⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Adam and Eve made the choice to try to be like God. It did not work out to good for them or us.

Adam and Eve rebelled against God and ate from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and God’s vision to be with His people was ruined. He had to take His plan to the next step and begin the process of restoration. The rest of the story, the rest of the Bible is about God’s pursuit to get us back.

The Bible Story reports the ‘big bang’ of sin’s damage to the human race. Because Adam and Eve chose a different vision than God’s vision, sin became part of their spiritual DNA and they produced more sinners. As we look through the next several chapters in Genesis we find sin upon sin upon sin in the human race. Starting with Cain killing Able continuing all the way to where God is disappointed in His creation and is considering wiping human kind out.

When God begins to question what to do with the growing sin problem, He finds Noah. Noah is a man who loves God and it is through Noah and his family that God gave the human race a chance at a ‘do over’.

Sin was so rampant in the world that God could no longer allow it to continue. God gave mankind the ability to choose, and it choose to not follow God’s plan for His creation. The judgement came in the form of a great flood that wiped away all signs of the wickedness but it did not erase the sin DNA out of Noah and his family. During and immediately after the flood sin was minimal, but it still existed.

The Bible Story offers a salvation clue even in the midst of the opening ‘big bang’.

After Adam and Eve sinned and became aware of their nakedness, they made fig leaf clothing to cover their nakedness. Then God intervened.

Genesis 3:21

“²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.”

God knew that they need more than garments to cover their nakedness. They needed to have their skins forgiven. As we will see in the Old Testament, blood of animals was used to pay for the sins of human kind. The clue to the coming salvation story is that blood was shed to pay for their sins as Christ’s blood was shed to pay for our sins.

From the creation story we discover the value of all human beings. God wants to be with you. Think about that. He wants to be with YOU! God wants to personally be with you. At great cost to God, God had done everything possible to get you back. You are Valuable. True, lasting self-esteem begins by believing what God says about you.

If you want to join the Clark Baptist Family over the next 31 weeks as we journey through the Bible, please come see us. If you are not local, pick up the Story from your favorite book store (online or brick and mortar) and read 12 pages a week as we go through the Bible cover to cover.

God Bless,

Robert