Genesis: Part 5

Genesis: Part 5

Genesis 12:1-9; 15:1-6

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are going to be continuing in our Genesis series this morning, so if you want to flip over or maybe pull up an app on your phone, tap over. We're going to start in Genesis chapter 12, and this is a little bit of a jump. If you remember last week, Andrei was nowhere near chapter 12. And so this is going to kind of jump a few chapters, and we're going to jump in and talk about Abraham this morning. And the big picture in this series is within Genesis, we wanted to kind of connect the dots. That sometimes we can read this book of Genesis, which is crazy. I think we were doing some research this week. Genesis covers like 800 and something years, which is absolutely crazy. Just like one book, and I think I butchered that number just now. But one book's covering hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, and it's just like the beginning of the Bible. And then you have all the rest of this. It's absolutely crazy. And so what our heart in this Genesis series was to do was to connect dots, to see kind of how God moves and his character in Genesis doesn't just stay in Genesis, right? But to see how he connects to the whole scripture, and ultimately how even Genesis directly connects into the New Testament and the Gospels with Jesus. And we're going to touch on that this morning in talking about the covenantal faithfulness in the life of Abraham. And so if you wanted to jot down some thoughts this morning or to take some notes this morning, here's where I want to go today. I want to remind us to live by faith. To remind us to live by faith and to emulate Abraham's actions, even in the midst of unknown, uncertainty, delay, society chaos, the world around us. Does that sound familiar to these last few weeks? Of the chaos that is happening around us that even in the midst of all of this, we can rest in the faithfulness of God. Amen?

And so knowing that these promises that we're going to read about here, even in Genesis, a couple thousand years before a man by the name of Jesus who comes to earth, God is fulfilling those and that Jesus Christ is the yes to all of Abraham's questions. And we're blessed because we get to have kind of this backward perspective to see all throughout history, to see the life of Jesus, and then to make the connect to Abraham. Abraham didn't have that. Abraham just had what was in front of him and what God was calling him to, and he was called to be faithful. So we're going to jump in Genesis chapter 12 verse 1, and we're going to have it on the screen, but I really want us to pay attention to what's happening right here. And it says this, it says, "The Lord had said to Abram," okay, time out real quick. I have already said Abraham, right? Right? So a little context here for you. Abraham is his original name, okay? And it isn't, I believe, until chapter 17 or 18 in Genesis, does Abraham, or actually God, change Abraham's name to Abraham. Okay, so this morning, we just said it, Abram and Abraham, we're just going to use those interchangeable, okay? We understand kind of where it's going, where it's headed, and so I may say Abraham, and I might say Abram, but we're just going to keep tracking with me here with this, okay?

So the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you, Abram, will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he set out for Haraan. He took his wife Sarai, whose name also will be changed later to Sarah, Sarai, his nephew Lot, so we know the relationship, uncle, nephew, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired from Haraan, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram traveled throughout the land as far as the site of the great tree of Morah at Shechem, and at the time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give you this land." So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he went through the east hills of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward Negev.

So right here at the beginning of this, we kind of, just a few short verses, we come on scene and Abraham, he's hanging out, 75 years old, and he's just living life in Haraan. Life's great, business is great, he's making wealth, his fucks are booming. He couldn't be happier where he's at. Life is fabulous. But then in the midst of all this, he receives this divine summons from heaven. God comes down to him and says, "Hey, I want you to pick up, I want you to go from your country, your people, your father's household, where he had been, so Abram is actually the tenth great-grandson from Shem, who was the son from Noah. So Abraham is actually a direct descendant of Noah himself, who after the flood, you guys, if you know some of your Bible, the flood waters receded and then it was Noah and his family and their wives, and then they were in charge of repopulating the earth. And so it's probably understood that Haraan was where the family settled, and then generation after generation after generation after generation, they're building up their big family and they create cities and communities and homes, and here we come to Abram. And so he's living nine generations deep in this just beautiful world that is just going great financially, but spiritually is in the tank. We know that we read from Joshua 24, too, that the sins of the people had started to grow again. And that was kind of the problem that began with the flood, that the people had grown so wicked apart from Noah and his family that God said, "I've got to hit the reset button here." And so God hits the reset button and then we go through the Tower of Babel and all these other bad things that are happening in Sodom and Gomorrah and all these things. And so we kind of find ourselves in the same place and God's like, "I need to get my guy Abram out of this land because I want to take him to what's going to be understood that we hear about later through Exodus and Joshua and all that into the promised land." So God is kind of setting this thing up and he calls out Abram and he says, "Hey, I need you to leave." And we kind of just in a one short verse we read and it says, "And Abraham went." But what we forget is like the divine nature of this and the steps of faith that Abraham had to take to just pick up roots of his whole life that he knew in this land of Haraan. But what happened here, we're going to see this pattern of back and forth. God moves and God begins to provide a sovereign initiative.

There is something bigger that God is doing in this moment that we just read in one tiny little sentence of what God is trying to set up for the future. And God in here in this divine invitation, he layers in some pretty extravagant promises. Did you guys catch those? He said he's going to forge Abram into a great nation. He's going to bless and magnify his name. He's going to curse those who curse him. But most profoundly, he's going to channel blessing through him to all the people of the earth. That's pretty amazing. And if you guys were ever in Sunday school growing up, Father Abraham had many sons and many sons had Father Abraham. The problem is right now, Abram and Sarai, they don't have no sons. All they have is Lot, his nephew, which probably at this point would be assumed that that's his son. Abraham sees his nephew Lot as his son because he doesn't have any biological children. So even at this moment, Abram has an immediate and worshipful response even though there's still so much unknown. There's still so much that Abram's like, "Okay, I don't know how you're going to do this, God, but you know what? I'm going to be faithful." And there's an immediate worshipful response. And so Abraham packs everything up and starts a 400-mile trek over to this land that God is calling to. The problem is that where he is and where Canaan is, there's a giant desert in the middle. And so Abraham actually has to go up and over all around the desert because there ain't no way that he can just shoot straight through. They would die in the desert. So 400 miles they start traveling. And then they arrive. They show up at Shechem. It says, "Beneath the sacred oak." I don't know where that is. It sounds like it would be a pretty cool place to be. And so 400 miles, I don't know how long the journey would have taken, years, they finally arrive and they see this massive oak tree and God just pours out onto Abraham and says, "You have arrived." And so what is the first thing that Abraham does? He builds an altar and he worships God. Immediate worship. And then he does it again or he travels on to Bethel and does the exact same thing in verse 6 through 9. These are heartfelt markers of a life oriented towards God. And in this we see a couple things.

The first thing we see, we see obedience is the hallmark of faith. Obedience is the hallmark of faith. See, this early testament move from Abraham is actually the same thing that Jesus calls us to today, right? What does it say? It says in Matthew 16:24, "Whoever wants to be my disciple, they must deny themselves to take up the cross and follow me." True faithfulness thrives not in safety but in surrender. Abraham had the safety in Haraan. He was set. He was probably going to be set for many generations after him. But he knew that God was calling him to something greater than that. And we have to, in ourselves, in our lives, we need to prioritize God's voice over cultural ties or personal security. Sometimes God's going to call us to step out. And we need to be obedient in that to step out, not to delay, not to go, "Hey God, I need to know a little bit more detail. I need to know what my net worth is going to be when I get over to the land of Canaan, God. I need to have some hard numbers in front of me. I need a spreadsheet. I need to see that ROI really going up to the right before I'm going to make any move here, big guy." But that's not what Abraham did, right? He was obedient immediately and stepped out. And then too, in that, we see that worship is the fruit of responsive trust. These altars that Abraham built, they integrated faith into the very fabric of Abraham's life. And that every time that he would go back, he would pass those altars, he goes, "I remember what God did there." And the generations that would come after Abraham, we'd pass by those altars and go, "Remember when grandpa came through here with all of his people? God was here. God was in this space. God showed up." The reminders that we worship where God meets us, even in the midst of the unknown.

So then we go into the next chapter, and I'll kind of give you a synopsis here, that basically it comes to the land of Canaan and his nephew Lot and Abram. They start having their own herds and their wealth and all this start growing, and there's not enough land. And so Abraham tells Lot, "Hey, I don't want to get into more conflict than where we're at. You choose whatever land you want around here, and I'll go the opposite. You go your way, I'll go my way. I don't want to fight with you anymore. It's getting too hard. Family, right? Come on." And so he goes out. They go out to a hillside, and Abram goes, "Where do you want to go, Lot?" Lot sees this really beautiful green land right near the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he goes, "I want to go towards the green." And Abram goes, "Okay, you go that way. I'll go this way." And so they kind of split ways for a little bit, and what starts to happen is Lot starts going and hanging out in Sodom and Gomorrah. Maybe one weekend a month, and then a couple weekends, and then he's staying there for like a whole week, and things are not good in Sodom and Gomorrah. And what happens is this military power rises up and actually comes in and captures Lot and takes all of his wealth and all of his hurt and all this stuff, and then Abraham hears about his nephew and goes on a rescue mission. Good old Uncle Abraham coming in hot and captures back Lot, takes back all of his wealth that he had passed on to Lot, and they capture everything, and he brings Lot and all of his family back to where he is. And so at this point, there's a little bit of anxiousness that's happened in Abraham, right? He kind of has this reality check of who he thought was going to be his heir because, again, still no children. And in Lot, he realized the fragility of life, that at any moment, his heir, his future could be taken from him. And so he kind of starts to get anxious, and he has this hard reality check that he remembers previously that God had promised to him that he was going to be a great nation, that he was going to bless all the peoples of the earth through him, that he was going to have all this extra stuff, but he's going, "God, how is that going to work? I have nobody." And what I love about this is that even in the midst of Abraham wrestling with this, God's not forgotten about Abraham.

And it says this, chapter 15, it says, "After this, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, 'Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your very great reward.' But Abram said, 'Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless? And the one who will inherit my state is Eliezer of Damascus.' And Abraham said, 'You have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir.' Then the word of the Lord came to him, 'This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.' He took him outside and said, 'Look up at the sky and count the stars. Indeed, you can count them if you can count them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”

It's pretty amazing what we see in this. Is that even in the midst of everything that's happening to him right now in this moment, that God's faithful reassurances come to him. And God meets him where he's at, that decades have passed in this, that the promise with no error in sight, and the flesh of perils of rescuing Lot just recently, that these fears begin to surface, and yet, God invades him in the night with a vision. "Do not be afraid, Abraham. I am your shield, your very great reward." God addresses Abraham's real, raw lament. Everyone's like, "Dude, I got nobody. You keep saying I got somebody, but I don't have anybody." And God goes, "I'm not done yet. I'm not done yet. In fact, let's go outside. Go outside. Take a look at the stars." You guys ever been camping and looked up at the stars? Get away from city light, like pitch black darkness, and look up at the stars? It's like holy buckets. And God kind of jokingly, I feel like, he's like, "Abraham, go ahead and count them, bud. Like, go ahead. I'm waiting. I have all of eternity. Go ahead." And God's like, "This is what I'm doing." And I think about how many times post this, even before, spoiler alert, he gets a son. Okay, sorry. Season two, a little early. But how many times would Abraham, when he's feel discouraged, I could see him going out, laying down at night, just staring up at the stars, and falling asleep in the peace of God? What a blessing. What a blessing that God's faithful reassurances don't go away. That this cosmic illustration counters our human limitation with his divine vastness. Because I guarantee you, there ain't no counting those stars. We have telescopes today that Abraham never had, and we can't even keep counting the stars. You hear about scientists discovering new stars, millions and millions of light years away. Each day it feels like. That God's still working. And what's Abraham's response? He has a vulnerable, yet victorious belief.

Here's how he responds. It says, "Abraham believed the Lord and accredited him as righteousness." There's this word in here, pistis, which is an idea of faith. But a faith that is active, as relational, that is not just a passive nod, but a defiant hope. As we read that in Romans 4:18, it says, "Against all hope." Abraham believes. Abraham believes at a depth I don't know that he's ever believed before. And probably deeper than any of us have ever had to have a faith in our lives here and now. That despite barren wombs and advancing years for both him and his wife Sarai, he continues to have faith. And this enduring faith, even amid delay and doubt, Abraham holds strong. Paul, the Apostle Paul in the New Testament in the book of Romans writes about the faith of Abraham. And he said, "It did not weaken his faith, but it grew strong through what he believed." See, I think the greatest acts of faith in God come in the midst of the waiting, not in the receiving. The greatest thing that we can receive in our faith, the gift of God, is received in the waiting, not in the receiving. And that this idea of righteousness is a gift of trust, not effort. Righteousness is something that we can only receive when we have trust in God. And it's really a prototype for us and the Jews and the Gentiles in the early church that Abraham reveals Jesus' justification. That faith alone activates God's accounting of righteousness as seen in Galatians chapter 3. And it's faith, not works. A truth that is essential to the gospel. Nothing that we have done. At this point, Abraham has done nothing except be obedient to go.

And there's a portion after this in chapter 15 of Genesis where God has a covenant before Abraham. And traditionally in that culture, what they would do when two people would have a covenant, there's a couple different versions of them, but one of them would be done with animals. And each party would bring an animal to the covenant and they would literally, it starts getting a little gross, they would cut the animals in half and they would lay them out in front of them with space between the two animals, with each having their own personal sacrifice in this commitment. And the two of them would walk through the animals together signifying that we both have committed to this, we both have sacrificed into this, and we both play a part in this. This isn't just a one-sided deal. These are both parties coming together in a full commitment till death. And so God has Abraham bring in a calf, a ram, an ox, I think there's birds involved, a lamb. And all these animals are sacrificed. And do you know who walks through that? God. God as a pillar of smoke and a fire representative walks through that path of the animals. And this is powerful because for the first time on earth, a covenant is being made by one party. And God is signifying to Abraham that I am the one that sustained this, I am the one that will fulfill this, that I am the one of this covenant. And this is so powerful. God, we could do like an eight-week series on covenants. It's pretty amazing. I know this one's a little gory, but it is a beautiful picture that God is giving Abraham that I alone am the one that will fulfill this, sustain this, and I will redeem you. I will keep my word. And so in this we see that God is moving in powerful ways. And that God actually has this inviting covenant and calling on Abraham's heart.

And so when we see this, we read about this covenant and we see this calling that's echoed throughout Scripture as God's eternal love, not based on foreseen merit, but sheer grace. And so what is our response? Our response, just like Abraham, is to have an urgent and personal calling. See, God breaks into the ordinary of Abraham and he calls him out. He says, "Go, I will make, I will bless." God is wooing him, drawing him from the earth's pagan altars into a destiny of divine partnership. Abraham hasn't done anything yet. And yet God is giving him this promise. God is calling him and inviting him to co-labor in the redemption on a grand narrative. And even amidst vulnerability and not understanding, God calls Abraham deeper. He says, "Fear not, look towards heaven. Look up to the scars. Look up, look up. See what I have promised to you." And he makes a vow. He says, "I, God, am a God of my word. I don't break covenants. I don't break promises." God is the one that will faithfully sustain this bond. And so God sees and has a key demonstration for us to be invited into his protection, into his blessing, into his safety, into his love. And just like a shepherd caring and calling his flock, God woos his shielding presence and overflowing bounty, drawing out of our fears to replace them with awe-inspiring trust in who God is. See, a covenant was not broken. That covenant that God made with Abraham was fulfilled.

Because when we look at the bigger picture from Genesis down the line, we see Abraham, he gets his new name Abraham. He has a son Isaac, and then comes Jacob. And then all the way down we come to King David. And then from King David we come down, and this is like in Matthew chapter 1, all of the names that we read through, it might take us like an hour to get through all these names. We go literally person by person, point by point, connect the dots, all the way to a man who shows up out of Nazareth by the name of Jesus. That even at this time of Abraham calling, or God calling Abraham out to take him to the land of Canaan, to the promised land, would then fulfill and start a trek towards the redemption of the true, fulfilling covenant in Jesus Christ. That this new covenant as seen in Hebrews chapter 8 is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic call. And God declares, He says, "I will put My laws in their minds and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be My people." No longer is there just this unknown of what's going to happen. God lays it out with Abraham. And He says, "I am beginning the redemption party." And it's going to start with Abraham. And I'm going to redeem him and his family in this moment as well. And we ultimately know that in the end, the old law is fulfilled in Jesus, and that from one man's obedience becomes a multitude's adoption into God's family. That even while Abraham is childless, God already has the redemption plan with a giant party for eternity in heaven ready to go. And that all who believe, and they said in Galatians chapter 3, that all who believe are called the sons and daughters and the heirs of the most high God.

o where does this leave us? Well, it leads us to a place of we ourselves as followers of Christ get to share in Abraham's inheritance through the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. And that we not inherit just promises, but a calling to mirror Abraham's trust in responsiveness, in worship, and endurance. And as we bask in this new covenant superiority where Jesus' blood seals what Abraham alters had foreshadows, a practical exhortation of our daily living is played out. That was a big, real large word sentence to say we live it every day. And part of our vision and mission to be making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. You and I are called to be faithful followers of Jesus in the everyday things that we do. That in our mowing of the lawn, we are faithful to God. In our taking our kids to school, we are faithful to God. In our shopping, we are faithful to God. In our errands, we are faithful to God. In our work, every single day, the hours we put in, we are faithful to God. We are faithful to God in our retirement that we, every day, God doesn't have the calling of the workplace, but he has a calling probably for a family life, right? To love our spouse, we are to be faithful to God. To how we parent our children, we are to be faithful to God. How we take care of our bodies, we are to be faithful to God. Abraham stepped out in bold faith. He had to leave the life behind where he was living to step into the calling of the new life that God had for him. And this models the same response of obedience that we have and the submission of even that Jesus had to God to willingly go to the cross for our sins. And that Abraham's faithful steps foreshadow the ultimate covenant being fulfilled in Jesus Christ, which then trickles into the calling that Jesus gave us before he went back to heaven to go and make disciples. Turning this abstract covenant fulfillment into a practical daily living of missional obedience. We have to nurture belief even in the seasons of delay. Abraham had to wait years before God gave him that son.

I think sometimes, Andrei and I, we were looking at, we have this book in our office that has like the timeline of people in the Bible. And sometimes there were hundreds of years that passed before God answered a prayer. We get frustrated if it doesn't happen in the next 24 hours, right? 200 plus years, God still fulfills his promises. And that all of God's promises are answered as a yes in Jesus Christ. Abraham shows us in the New Testament of firms in Hebrews 11:6, that without faith it is impossible to please God. Just this. It's only by faith. And then we see Abraham's response when he arrives in the land of worship by building altars to remember what God has done, remembering how he moved, remembering his fulfillment. A journey that long, there was no guarantee that you would arrive at your destination. So I think even arriving in the land that God said I'm going to give you was a blessing and an answer to prayer by itself. And this is a call for us to build altars of praise in our lives. Maybe this is done in personal worship. Maybe this is done corporately together. That's why we gather every single week. We are making an altar to God to remember his faithfulness and his promises and his covenant. To celebrate God's drawing, wooing faithfulness, which sustains us against a culture of provisional vows. So God's faithfulness, or faithfulness in itself, equals bold, obedient steps, steadfast belief, and enduring worship. Christian, live by faith. If you call yourself a believer in Jesus, you're a disciple of him, be encouraged today. Live by faith. Maybe you've been praying for something for a really long time and you don't know if God's going to come through. God will come through. I promise you that. Live by faith, but don't live by a passive faith. Live a faith that is active, that is enduring, that isn't just sitting and waiting, but that is still on mission for Jesus. Where you live, where you learn, where you work, where you play and have fun. Worship God.

I've got three questions for us to ponder as we close out this morning. I want us to think about how does Abraham's immediate obedience challenge areas in my life where I'm hesitant to follow God's call? Where's God currently calling me to step out or maybe wooing me out of my comfort into a deeper dependence in him? Maybe you think about how can I respond with Abraham's openness that when God says, "Go," Abraham says, "Yes, I will go." Second question. In your waiting seasons, how can I practice Abraham's active faith? What intentional steps can I take? Even when we're tempted to doubt, which we all are, right? We're all fallible. We're sinful. We freak out. We try to take control. We try to do it ourselves. We try to fix it, right? Even when we're tempted to doubt, what does choosing belief over despair look like for you? And then finally, in what ways can I build an altar this week to remind me of God's faithfulness? What can you do this week? Maybe you need to take some time intentionally and block out on your schedule and go on a prayer walk. Maybe go find a quiet place in a park. Maybe take a drive out into the nature. I don't know, maybe you're driving up to Lake Tahoe this week. Just to sit along the shore, bask in his glory, and to take a moment and be very intentional in a worship to him. Building an altar. Maybe you need to start a prayer journal and you just call it "my altar." And every day you're going to write something down in that. And you can go back when times are hard. You can go, "God, I remembered when you did this." How can we build altars of worship in our journey, deepening our trust during uncertainty? Abraham is an amazing man of faith. Called him, I think, called the father of faith. Even in the midst of everything that was coming against him, he stood strong, he stood bold, and he worshiped.

Let's pray. Jesus, I thank you for the man who Abraham was. And Jesus, we know that right now in eternity, he's there worshiping you. That even in the midst of everything that came up against him, he was still faithful to you. And God, that you divinely invaded his life with an audacious call to go to the promised land where God was going to establish his people through the lineage of Abraham. And that even while he was having no child, there was failed attempt after failed attempt after failed attempt with him and Sarai. God, you gave him the promise of your covenant with him. So God, as we sit where we sit in our life today, where we feel like you might be so far away, where you're not listening to us, or you're not hearing our cries, God, I pray that we would continue to cry out to you, that we would continue to worship you in our waiting, that even in the midst of that, God, we may take time to even tonight go outside and look up at the stars and begin to count them to know that you gave that starry promise to Abraham. God, that you have a promise to us to fulfill our eternity. That through the lineage of Abraham would come David, who would come Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. And that in receiving Jesus Christ, we receive in the same covenantal inheritance promised to Abraham thousands of years ago. So Jesus, I pray that we would continue to trust, we would continue to endure, we would continue to have the faith, the father of faith, Abraham, and that we would worship where our feet are in front of us. We thank you, Jesus. We love you. Amen.

Genesis: Part 4

Genesis: Part 4

Genesis 3:15

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We’re excited to be continuing in a series. We just finished up our "We Are The Church" series. If you've been around for the last few weeks, you've heard that three-part series. "We Are The Church," if you've missed it at all or any part of it, we would really encourage you to go back and listen to those. It really helps unite us in our mission and vision here at Spring Valley Church to hear each week of those different aspects of church life. Again, we encourage you to go back on YouTube or podcasts, however you listen to sermons, and catch up on those. But we're going to jump back into a series that we started before "We Are The Church," which is our Genesis series, where we're looking at different patterns and themes that are repeated throughout Scripture that find their origin here in Genesis. And so far, we've looked at the themes of the power of God's Word, where he brings order out of chaos and creation. We've talked about Imago Dei being made in the image of God, and how we are called today to reflect that image to the world around us. We've also talked about the Fall, where sin entered the world, and then the human tendency that we see throughout Scripture, where humans rebel against God and choose their own way. You may be wondering, "Well, if I remember correctly, we only got through Genesis 3. Are we going to cover all of Genesis?" No, we're not. We're not going verse by verse in this series. We could be here forever, and I would love that. But this series, we're just highlighting some of these main themes. And again, the work that the biblical authors did in writing Scripture the way that they did was extremely intentional, as they weave these themes into the fabric of the text that we can notice them. And so that as we read more and more of Scripture, we're going to see these themes play out. And so that's part of our goal, is to help equip you with the tools that as you read the Bible on your own, as you study the Bible on your own, you're going to notice some of these patterns, like, "Oh, I've seen that before. I've seen this motif, or this theme, or I kind of know what happens here. This is a good thing." Or, "Maybe this is a bad thing that happens." There are so many, yeah, we won't have time to go into all of the reoccurring patterns, but the big ones happen here at the beginning of Genesis, and so that's what we're highlighting in our series.

Now that we're all caught up, jogging your memory of our series, I want to ask you a few questions as we begin our morning. First one is this. Can you think of the first time, do you remember the first time that you heard the gospel? So you think of that time, were you a child? Was it when you were an adult? A student? Where were you when you heard the first gospel message presented to you? Who did you hear it from? Was it a parent, a friend, a co-worker, a pastor? All right, you got that memory up in your mind. Follow-up question, can you think of the first time you knew that you had sinned? A little bit different. Can you think of the first time you remember feeling guilty over something? The first time that you recognized that I am responsible for the wrong that just happened? The last question, did these two experiences, the first time you remember hearing the gospel, the first time that you knew you had sinned, did those two experiences coincide with each other? I would say probably not. Maybe they did. Maybe the first time you sinned someone was like, "By the way, let me share Jesus with you right now." That would have been really cool. I think oftentimes we know that something's off and something's wrong and we're doing something we don't want to do. I think that comes along usually first, and then at some point someone brings about Jesus and the gospel. Everyone's experiences are a bit different, but again, you've probably had that moment. You can remember where I remember doing this in my life or this pattern in my life, and it just wasn't good. And then hopefully you can also remember the first time that you heard the gospel address that problem of sin in your life. Today we're going to revisit a passage that we've covered a couple weeks ago in our Genesis series. We're going to take a deeper look at a moment where sin entered the world for the first time and the first gospel message of hope was given, all in one.

So we're going to be in Genesis 3. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there now, Genesis 3. It'll be on the screen for you in a second. But just to give some context of what's happening in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are in the garden, the snake is there, he tempts Adam and Eve and they sin. They take the fruit from the tree, and this is what is known as the fall. And sin is introduced into the world. Adam and Eve rebelled against God, thinking that they could live life without God. They didn't need God, we're going to do this on our own. And so now, because of that, all of humanity since then deals with the problem of sin. And we learn from that moment what sin did in the garden. On a human level, it's us thinking that we have the wisdom to run our own lives without God. But all that leads to is selfishness, pain, murder, abuse, slavery, failure, and the list goes on and on and on. It does not end in anything good. It's where we act out of our own selfish desires and urges that compel us to act for our own benefit at the expense of others. Sin always affects us, affects us with God, and it affects us with others. Between God and humanity, sin put a distance where there was no distance. There was, it was relationship, God was walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, and it was great, but now sin put a distance between humanity and God. Paul writes that humanity became slaves to sin. We can't help it. Sin is this failure to be the humans who fully love God and others like God intended. And it's this inability to judge whether we are succeeding or failing. It's a deep and selfish impulse that drives much of our behavior. And this problem of sin, it's a problem that humanity cannot address on our own. We cannot save ourselves from sin and the consequences of sin. But something must be done. If humanity is to be with God and dwell with God forever in heaven as God desires, then something has to happen. And thankfully, just as we find out in Scripture that we have a sin problem, we also find out that God is going to intervene and do something about that sin problem. After the fall, after that moment, God and Adam and Eve and Satan, they have a conversation. And he tells Adam and Eve that life is going to be different. He talks about the pain and toil, that working and childbearing and the death that they will have to face. And so their reality is flipped upside down overnight, banished from the perfect garden of Eden to enter into the world marred by sin. And then to Satan, he says this in Genesis 3:15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

It's one of the most important verses in the Bible. Because in the midst of judgment, this is a very heavy scene where God is handing out the judgment of sin. In the midst of that, God promises that one day someone will come, a descendant who will do what Adam and Eve should have done, just crush the serpent and destroy him. And this promise that we get from God right here cuts through the darkness of death and sin and gives a glimmer of light, a little bit of hope in this moment. It's a promise of redemption. The first gospel message, the first glimmer of hope that would be found in Christ is here in Genesis 3, 15. So today, we're going to be focusing on redemption, redemption that is promised here in Genesis 3 that comes later and is woven throughout all of Scripture. We're going to talk about that today. I want to answer this question, what does it mean to be redeemed? Because understanding this will really truly affect so much of the story found throughout the Bible. Redemption comes up over and over and over and over again. So we want to make sure we understand what does biblical redemption mean. We don't often use the word redeem in our everyday language. I think most often we're talking about coupons. When we say the word redeem today, I have a coupon, I'm going to redeem it for a free burger or 20% off. Things aren't really free anymore, so it's like percentage off. You get to redeem a code, right? That's pretty much what we use, but that doesn't, if we were to just take that and put that over the Bible's definition of redemption, that's not the full picture. That's not the whole thing of what's happening. In the Bible, it describes something being transferred back to its rightful owner. So when you have something, when you own something, it belongs to you. And somewhere along the line, someone else ends up possessing that thing that was yours, whether they stole it, took it, whatever, however that happens, but they have something, someone else has something that was yours. So that's why already the way we use redeem does not really work fully with the Bible definition of redemption. We never had the burger, then gave it back to the restaurant, and then we're going to redeem that burger. No, it doesn't work like that, right? So in the Bible things, it once belonged to someone, someone else ends up with it. How do they get it back? Well, they can show proof of ownership, say, "Hey, this is mine. I have proof that that belongs to me. Can I have it back, please?" You can purchase it back. "Hey, you have that. What is it worth to you? I'm going to pay you. I want to get that back." Or you can take it back by demanding it. "That's mine. Better give it back to me right now." However it happens, the transferring of that thing back to you, to the rightful owner, is what the Bible calls redemption.

The Bible Project says this quote, I think it's really helpful, it says, "The story of the Bible begins with the idea that all creation, and especially humanity, belongs to God. But tragically, humans have been corrupted and enslaved by death. God wants humanity back. And the story of the Bible is about how God transfers us back into his possession. He redeems us." You may have heard those Christian phrases before, maybe in songs, but something like, "Purchased by the blood of the Lamb," or "Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb." This is referring to exactly that quote right there, where God is getting what was his back. What sin and death and Satan took, he's getting it back and it belongs to him. So we're talking about humanity being redeemed. This is about God taking humans back from evil and sin, redeeming us out of that into the life that he created us for.

Being redeemed by God is our only hope. The salvation that he gives is the only hope to the problem of sin. There is no other way. The world around us says that there's a lot of ways to deal with the pain and sin, and there is only one, and it's through Jesus Christ. And while we don't get all of that here, that huge definition of redemption and Jesus Christ, we don't get all of it per se in Genesis 3:15, we get the first building block of God's plan of redemption. We have the fortune of knowing the rest of the story. We can look back on this verse and understand that all that God is saying and implying in Genesis 3.15. But what's said right here is just a glimmer of faint hope. "He will crush your head and you will strike his heel." And if you know the Bible, you're putting together already, when you hear that, you know. We're talking about Jesus, we're talking about Satan, and we're talking about the death on the cross. So God is already saying, "I know what just happened here and how unfortunate this is, how devastating this is. I've got a plan. I've got a plan." Well, as we've also been doing in our series, I want to take time this morning to show how this theme shows up throughout the rest of Scripture. And just again, highlighting things, this is kind of just an overview, because each of these things I'm about to bring up could be its own sermon series in a way. But I want to show us how redemption is woven throughout Scripture. And it's a slow reveal. More and more of the plan becomes known over time. But what do we know right now? God tells the snake, despite this apparent victory in the garden, it's destined for defeat. The snake will be crushed. But the snake will deliver a lethal strike to the crusher. And so we have this mysterious future victory, but it gives us a clue to God's rescue plan.

He's got a plan to take what's His back. And the next part where we get more is Genesis 12, 15, and 17. You see, Genesis is divided up kind of into two sections. Genesis 1 through 11 is God interacting with the entire world. Genesis 12 through the end of Genesis is God interacting with one family, Abraham, and his plan to redeem, this plan of redemption being put in place through Abraham and his family. And so in Genesis 12, it kicks off with a covenant made to Abraham for a people, a land, and a blessing. It says in Genesis 12, 2 through 3, "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. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." So again, if we put on our lens of knowing the whole story, we look back at this and we say, "We know that God is talking about Jesus right here." And then in Genesis 15 and 17, he expounds more on that promise to Abraham. But God is saying, "Through your family, Abraham, I will bring a Savior that will be a blessing to the entire world." So now our picture of God's redemptive plan is filling out some more.

Now are you ready for even more? I got a lot of information. If you're a note taker, I'll let you know when to write something down. But I want to show some specifics here. So the first thing, this is God unveils this redemptive plan and there's a lot of different aspects. I don't know if you guys have ever played like Cranium or is it... Is it that game that you have little pie pieces and whoever gets the... It's like a trivia game? Anyways, this is Trivial Pursuit. Thank you. And if you ever played Trivial Pursuit, there's different categories. And if you get it and you fill out your little pie, that's kind of what's happening here. Don't... a little bit. So we're giving all these different pictures and pieces of God's redemption and how it works in the Bible. So the first one is this. First specific of redemption plan is redemption from enslavement. If you've read your Bible, you know that pretty soon after Abraham and his family gets going, they're in Egypt and they become enslaved. Exodus 6, Deuteronomy, God establishes a pattern of redemption by rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and bringing them back into his family. This is the part of the framework of redemption. It's not his entire plan, but he's letting the people know, he's letting us know more about him, about God, and his plan is he reveals this piece that, "Hey, when you get in trouble, when you are in some stage of consequence of sin, which is slavery, I have the power to redeem you and bring you out of that." So the redemption from enslavement.

We also have the redemption of the firstborn. Another part, Exodus 13 and Numbers 3, after the tenth plague, so where Israel is in Egypt and Moses has been sent and he says, "Hey, you got to get my people," and Pharaoh's like, "No," and so then the plagues happen. That's God saying, "Hey, I have the power to bring my people. Will you let them go?" And he sends the plagues and the tenth plague brings death of the firstborn of Egypt and Israel. Israel was not exempt. It wasn't just the Egyptians' firstborn. It was everyone in that land. All their firstborns were going to die, and God instructs Israel to redeem their firstborns by sacrificing a perfect lamb, painting that blood over the doorpost, and when the Holy Spirit would come through, he would let the firstborns live. If those people who show that they believe in God and trust in God, this is where Passover comes from. So he knew who to let live, and this is the redemption of the firstborn. This is another sign of where certain death is there. God is saying, "I have the power to redeem you from that situation and bring you back into life.”

The next one is redemption of land and enslaved relatives. It's found a lot in Leviticus, and this is where this happens because Israel experienced God's rescue and redemption from slavery. So now we're fast-forwarding in our story. Again, if you haven't noticed, we're just working our way through the Bible here in order. And God has brought them out of Egypt, and he's giving them instructions about how to be a nation. This is why I want you, Israel. This is how I want you to run as a people. Because of their past experience and being redeemed from slavery, God calls Israel to do likewise by redeeming family land and relatives sold as slaves due to poverty. So what would happen is they had a seven-year cycle. I'm just going to give you a little history and context here. And if your business was going so bad or your crops were going bad, you'd have to go to someone and say, "Hey, I need to borrow some money. It's not going well." And if that happened so much, you would give of yourself. You'd offer yourself into slavery and say, "I'm just going to work for you." But God said that's not going to be forever. We saw that happen in Egypt. We saw how bad that was and how the selfishness of humanity would take over and just run that slave into the ground and just use them and abuse them. And so he says, "We're going to have what's referred to as the year of Jubilee." Every seven years, the land was restored. Slaves were set free. Debts were forgiven. It's this amazing system that God created. And he said, "Look, we're going to put a cap on these unfortunate situations and give back." If you had to give up your land to make it, you get that land back at the end of seven years. If you had a debt that was racking up and you're working, it's just not working out, well, that debt is forgiven at the end of seven years. And so there's a redemption of land and enslaved relatives that's built into God's plan and God's people. The Israelites receive these commands from God. Again, they likely had that fresh and painful memories of the brutalities related to their experience in Egypt. And so God calls them to never perpetuate that kind of oppression again. Instead, they are to live according to his own pattern of redemption, refusing to let any Israelite stay trapped in poverty or bondage forever. Beautiful. Again, another piece in our pie puzzle of what redemption looks like and God's plan of redemption playing out in the people and in the Bible.

The next one is the redemption of blood. This is found in Numbers 35. And the Hebrew Bible describes not only the redemption of land and people, but also the redemption of blood in the wake of a murder. So what God instituted were these cities of refuge. Where if someone accidentally killed someone, accidentally killed someone, they could go to this city and be safe until they stood trial before the assembly. And these regulations about the redemption of blood are about preventing the spiral of violence. That people, when even if it's an accident, people get angry. And they might want to act out and say, "I don't care if it was an accident. I want to get back at you. I want to take your life." And God says, "We're going to have moments where we have opportunities for people to escape that, go to have a safe place to be until they stand trial, and we'll see what happens then." But it's about preventing the spiral of violence and upholding the supreme value that God puts on human life. So another piece of our puzzle. God continues to reveal more about his plan of redemption.

And we see it next in the Bible in Boaz's redemption of Naomi and restoration of Ruth. If you've heard of these people, you know the story. If you haven't yet, these are Israelites except for Ruth. And you should read the book of Ruth. It's really short. But it's all foreshadowing what God is doing in this bigger picture of redemption. Boaz acts as a kinsman redeemer for his relative Naomi, buying her land and restoring her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth back to the family through marriage. And so we see again, this is all the... In the book of Ruth, they follow the laws that God had instituted. And it creates this beautiful scenario. And it also foreshadows what Christ will do through his sacrifice. Redeeming us back into his family.

We next have the redemption from distress or death. The Hebrew Bible describes many situations where people are redeemed from situations of distress or death. That first Samuel passage is a passage in the Old Testament where Jonathan, who's the son of the first king of Israel, King Saul. Jonathan is his son. And he goes against his father's words. And the punishment for going against the king's words was death. If you disobey the king, you die. But he's saved from that outcome because of his character. And he follows God and all the men vouch for him. And he was not put to death. And again, this just foreshadows. This is a moment of redemption where he was bound. He should have died. But God has the power to do something about people who should die. That's foreshadowing the power that God displays through Jesus on the cross. And the eternal punishment we should face for our sin but that God saves us from.

Continuing on, if you know the story of Israel and through the Bible after the kings, the kings were not a good thing for Israel. And they get into exile. And other nations come and they take Israel. And so then we have this theme of the redemption from exile. And a lot of the prophets talk about this, but specifically Isaiah 43.1 says, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you." So God is telling the people through the prophets, "I have a plan. I will bring you back." God promises to redeem the Israelites from Babylonian exile, just as he earlier redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. And when God redeems his people, he not only frees them, but also forgives their sins that led to their exile in the first place. God says their wrongdoing will be removed like a heavy mist that vanishes. That's Isaiah 44 and 22. And as he redeems them from exile, God is also inviting them back into loving relationship with him. I love this picture, how loving God is in the prophets. When you read it, it's very dark, it's very heavy. It's a sad message because Israel's reality is so broken. But on God's side, it's such a picture of love. He's saying, "I forgive you, come back to me, and I love you." We know, having been in life where people have wronged us, how hard that is, we know we often want to say, "Sure, we can come back." But there's going to be some stipulations now. And we got some distance now, we got to build some trust again. But God in his infinite love says, "I forgive you, come back into my family. I love you just the same." I hope that we're getting the picture. All these pieces and the parts of redemption that God is playing out. All that sin has distorted and the pains and tragic realities that sin has caused for humanity, God has the power and his redemption redeems all of it. In the end, at the end, God will redeem all that sin has touched. Sin touched everything in the world, from the earth that we work with, to our lives, to the death that we face. That's all the cause of sin. And God is going to redeem all of it. God is doing work to redeem his people.

Then we get, at the end of the prophets, now in our Bibles, we're in the New Testament. And so we have redemption anticipated through Jesus. And this is going to be through his ministry, through his life and ministry. Israel awaited the fulfillment of the prophetic promise of redemption for centuries. But Jesus' way of fulfilling that promise surprises everyone. We've talked about this in many series. At this part in Israel's time, they're expecting a certain king. A king that would free them from the political landscape, that would bring them up to be a kingdom, an earthly kingdom, where they could rule over the other kingdoms in the world. But the way that Jesus fulfills the promise of redemption is so different than what the people were expecting. I want us to hear this today. We need to hear this today. Jesus is trying to tell the world at the time that the people's real enemies are not Romans, or other flesh and blood people, but the cosmic powers of sin and death. And Jesus redeems people from those powers so that he might restore them to life with God. That's what Jesus' mission was. I want to read this again. This is so important that we hear this, and I want to let you apply this in our context today. Jesus is trying to tell the world at the time that the people's real enemies are not the Romans, or other flesh and blood people. The enemy is the cosmic power of sin and death. And Jesus redeems people from those powers so that he might restore them to life with God. Church, we need to understand who our enemy is today. The word enemy is thrown around a lot, and we need to remember the words of Jesus and who he says our enemy is, who his enemy is, and therefore as Christians who our enemy is. And it's Satan, it's the enemy. It's the enemy. And the way that his sin and the power of death works in life, that's what we are fighting against. He did not speak into and affirm the people's desires to have an earthly king, to see their earthly enemies, who they thought were enemies, destroyed or killed. He doesn't do any of that. He doesn't speak to that. He redirects them to the real enemy, the cosmic power of sin and death, Satan. And we too need to be reminded that the flesh and blood people in our world are the ones that we need to love, that we need to reach with the gospel. Your enemy today is still Satan. Jesus is the only one who can redeem from those powers and restore us to life with God. If you are a Christian and you believe and you are in the family of God, then you too have the same enemy as him.

In the New Testament, we anticipate the redemption at the end of the gospels, the redemption is accomplished through Christ. And that's the final piece of our puzzle here, as we filled out what redemption looks like through scripture, we come to redemption accomplished through Jesus. Jesus redeems people from the corruption of sin and death. And there are so many passages, I only listed three here. I want to read Romans 3, it says, "The righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are all justified freely by his grace through redemption that came by Christ Jesus." God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. After the gospels in the New Testament, every letter, every book in the New Testament talks about the redemption found in Christ. 1 Peter says, "Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, so your faith and hope are in God." There's just so many more. But it talks about the accomplished work of Jesus. So by teaching us to relate rightly with God and neighbor, Jesus restored us to the kind of people God made humanity to be. He repossesses, he redeems us back into God's family. So we have a slide of everything listed up here. This is all the full picture of redemption throughout the scriptures. And all of it helps us understand the power of God, who he is, different aspects of how we see redemption. Even today, we can see some of these happening. All of these fill out God's redemptive rescue plan. They all show a different facet of God's redemptive work in the world and in our lives. There's another quote I want to share with you. It says this. I think we have a slide. Maybe we don't. "God's redemption aims for his people to be restored to his family, living as his children. Ultimately, God's redemption aims at healing people, making them whole and setting them free to be truly human so that they can live in ways that bring life for themselves, for others and for creation." He's bringing you back to the garden and say, "This is what I meant you to do. Do this now. I'll bring you back to the purpose that I created humanity for." Healing people, making them whole, setting them free to be truly human in the ways to bring life to others, for ourselves and for creation. All that sin touched, the ground that Adam had to work, the death that Adam and Eve and humanity faced, the pain, perversion, the slavery, the stealing, all the sin, God's plan of redemption rescues it all. So hearing all that with the context of all this in the Bible, we read Genesis 3.15, and it means so much more. "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers, and he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

We understand that God had an incredible rescue plan from the beginning. I just want to have some very brief exhortations for us today in light of our message. The first is this, trust in God's redemptive plan, even when it unfolds over time. This book covers thousands of years, and the moment that hope entered is in the first few pages, and we don't get the fulfillment of that redemption until way over here. Trust in God's redemptive plan, even when it takes a long time. It can be hard to wait. It's so hard to be in the waiting, to not have everything restored and rescued right away, when we know that God has the power to do it right away. Some of us want to be perfect, we want to be better. And so we're like, "God, just make me, like, do the work quickly. Can you just microwave this whole process and, like, make me perfect?" But the work of the Spirit is a slow one, and it takes time. And it goes on for our entire lives. And so how does this affect your day-to-day faith with God? God's redemptive plan taking place over time? Where in your life do you need to rely on God, even in the waiting, and trust in his redemptive plan and work? Whether for you or for someone else in your life, how can you trust in God's redemptive plan?

Next is, remember God's redemption plan covers everything. Nothing and no one is beyond God's redemptive plan and power. We may not understand how that's possible. We may see someone and be like, "There's no way that God can save them. They are way out there." But God has outlined in his Word that his plan of redemption reaches everything that sin has touched, including the person that we don't know how they're going to get to God, but God has a way to get to them. How does that affect the way we view others? How does that affect the way we view the tragedies and chaos of the world? Remember the power of Christ's sacrifice in his heart to see everyone come to be restored into his family. And that leads us to the last one. Desire God's redemptive work in the lives of others. Pastor Chris, last week at our celebration Sunday, introduced the new vision for this next year, which was the 167. We have 168 hours in our week. One of them is spent here at church every week, hopefully at Sunday here in Spring Valley. And so what are you going to do with the other 167 hours to be intentional in partnering with God in his redemptive work in the world today? Who in your life would you love to see God's redemptive work take place in? Are you a part of God's redemptive plan for that person then? If you're like, "Hey, I know that I would love to see this person come to Jesus." Are you partaking with God and pushing that along in that plan that's taking place? Who do you need to talk to about Jesus or invite to church?

We need to be people who desire to see God's redemptive work in the lives of others, to take joy in it, to be eager to partner with God and say, "God, put me in." Is this the conversation you want? Spirit, are you prompting me right now? God, I'm going to keep praying. There's no conversation. I'm just going to keep praying for this person. Trust in God's redemptive plan. Remember his plan that covers everything and desire God's redemptive plan in the work of others. I hope that this pattern of redemption in scripture is more visible to you now, that when you read scripture, you go to your Bible, you see this plan of redemption more clearly, and that you can rejoice in the work that God is doing.

Genesis: Part 3

Genesis: Part 3

Genesis 3:1-24

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We're going to continue in our series and we are going to be jumping in. We've got a lot to cover today, so I want to get going. I'm so excited for our sermon this morning. We are in our patterns, Genesis series, where we look at different themes and patterns that repeat throughout Scripture that begin here in Genesis. And as we've mentioned each week, we're looking at how biblical authors were intentional in the way they wrote the Bible, where readers could pick up on some of the deeper currents moving in the story that are beyond the surface. And so these patterns and themes clue us into maybe the tone of the story, they remind us of who God is and what He does, or maybe if the people involved in the story are prone to follow God or to rebel against Him. And something that we're covering each week is how these patterns that we see not just in Scripture, but also pertain to our lives and how these patterns might still be around today. That's certainly going to be the case in our sermon this morning.

So far in our series we've covered in the first week in Genesis 1 in the Creation account how God's words have power, and we saw how He, with His words, created order out of chaos. Last week, Pastor Lauren talked about the imago Dei, the dignity of human life being made in God's image, and our responsibility to share God's image accurately with the world around us, and also the desire we should have to better reflect that image, to be as close to God's image as possible. Today we're going to continue in Genesis, and we're looking again in Genesis 3, and after creation, after God has given order to the world and set up structure, including who is to co-rule with Him, which is Adam and Eve, things quickly change. And they change forever, and they change for the worse.

So in Genesis 3, this is the story of when sin enters the world. It's one of the darkest moments in history, where humanity, after God again had set up everything for the better, humanity invites chaos and darkness back into the picture, a moment where they ignored the imago Dei within them, and they chose rebellion instead of obedience to God. So the pattern we'll see here in Genesis 3, I want to tell you up front, is the fall and humanity's need to be rescued. We're going to see over and over again in Scripture this pattern. I think we have a slide here. So the first one is humanity chooses their own way. This is the first step of the pattern. Humanity thinks that they know better, that they know enough, that they can do it on their own. They think that they have what it takes to be God, in a sense, as God is the one with the perfect wisdom, who knows right from evil, who can discern and decide what is evil and what is good. Humanity thinks, "I can do the same." Then we have the subsequent fallout and the consequence of those actions. That's the next part of this pattern, is God often says, "Okay, if you want to do that, go ahead and do that," and then it doesn't work out. And then the third part of our pattern is God rescuing humanity. He continues to give grace. So this happens over, just keep that up there for a bit, this happens over and over again. Humanity's rebellion, constantly thinking they know better, and then God's provision of grace, where he continues to love and rescue and redeem. You can almost flip page by page in the Bible and just see another example of another person in history thinking, "I got this. God, thank you for getting me this far, but I got it from here," or whatever it is, that whisper that they have, that they hear of, "I'm going to do this my way." And then we see, again, just the fallout of that and them getting themselves into trouble and the consequences they have to face, and then God continuing to rescue, continuing to redeem whatever situation it is. So this morning, I want us to see how this theme plays out and where it really begins.

So if you want to open your Bibles or you can follow along on the screen, look for this pattern as I walk through this dark, dark moment. And just to recap us, if you haven't been here yet, in Genesis 1 and chapters 1 and chapter 2, we have God creating the world, and he created Adam and Eve, and he gave them purpose and he gave them opportunity. He gave them purpose in ruling over the earth with him, and he gave them some parameters, but it was very much set up for success. And it's this place, this Garden of Eden is this place where God dwells on earth with his creation until chapter 3, verse 1, which reads, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?'" I'm going to stop right there. I'm going to be reading and just expounding as we go along. Satan gets crafty immediately. There's no polite introduction. He just automatically, right from the beginning, is starting to twist some things that God had told Adam and Eve. In chapter 2, verse 16, God says, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die." And we hear Satan say, "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree?" So you just notice the subtle difference there. And he's just priming the pump. He's softening the ground so that his lies can get further and further in.

Verse 2, it says, "The woman said to the serpent, 'You may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, so far so good, and you must not touch it.'" Huh. Don't know where that came from. "Or you will die." The woman corrects Satan, but not precisely. And instead of echoing God's words specifically, she kind of generalizes what God said. Not just that, but she adds to God's words. That's not today's pattern, but that is a pattern that repeats throughout Scripture of adding to God's words, thinking, again, this kind of ties into our pattern, that, "God, you kind of said it, but I have some better things to add. So I'm going to add some words to what you say." One of the most famous people that we see in the Bible, an example of people adding to God's words, are the Pharisees. The Pharisees in the New Testament, Jesus has explained that, "You have added so much to my commandments that you've lost track of the heart of God." And so already we see Eve kind of adding to God's words. She says, "If you touch it, you die." God has not said that. Galatians 4-5, "You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman, "for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Satan continues to twist, continues to turn, the lies, God's words. And he's using this ambiguity of the penalty, his warning, to make the woman less fearful and more prone to follow where Satan is leading. This phrase, "knowing good and evil," this does not mean choosing right and wrong, choosing what is good and choosing, because as we'll see, they already have that power. Eve demonstrates that that is already in existence. Rather, it speaks to this idea of becoming like God in His divine wisdom. A lot of the phrase in the Old Testament, you see someone is wise or someone, God is described as having divine wisdom. It's this ability to discern and to decide what is good and what is evil. So Satan is saying, "You will certainly be able to do this," meaning you will certainly be like God, thinking that they will be able to know enough to define what is right and wrong in the world. He's saying like, "Hey, I know God said you wanted to rule, and He's ruling with you, but I think you can pretty much rule by yourselves. You'll be able to do this without God." He hasn't said that explicitly, but you can see that that's in the background of what he's saying, and that's what's turning in Eve's mind.

Verse 6, "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom," she's like, "Wow, this is a win-win-win," "she took some and ate it, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it." Hold on, let's just stop right there. Did we catch that? I know that Eve catches a lot of flack for being the one who was like, "Ah, she made the decision, and Adam was off doing his cool thing, and she's the one." She gave some to her husband who was with her. So we can deduce from this that Adam was there the whole time. He was there the whole time. He heard the conversation, and he did nothing. He didn't do anything to stop it. So Eve, you're not off the hook because you still sin, but it's definitely Adam and Eve who are sinning in this moment. Verse 7, "Then the eyes of both of them were open, and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." They experience now this new knowledge of rebellion and the reality of sin. This phrase "eyes being open," we still use that today, right? Seeing the truth now, or the new reality. And this is the step in the undoing of the order that God had brought about. This is a step backwards towards darkness and disorder and chaos.

Verse 8, "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord as he was walking in the garden the cool of the day." That is just such a cool, awesome phrase. Walking in the garden, the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord among the trees of the garden, hiding after sin. That's a natural thing. I think we can all relate to that. You've done something wrong, and immediately you do not want to be seen. Maybe you see that in your kids right now, or your grandkids. When they do something wrong, and you come across a scene of something broken or something that was not supposed to be touched, and it's there, and the kid is nowhere to be found because they are hiding. And they know that what they did is wrong, and so they are ashamed. And it's right here from the very first moment that sin entered the world. Hiding because of your sin is natural. It's not good, but it's what we do. It could be something as simple as avoiding eye contact. We don't want to be seen by the person who is in authority. We just had, I'm not going to call on any kids specifically, but we just had a family fun night at our house this last Friday, and all the kids were there, and there was someone who was like, "Hey, can you not do that?" And immediately they didn't want to look me in the eye. They were just like, "No, okay, yeah. No, I didn't do anything. That wasn't me. That wasn't me. That wasn't me." The avoidance of being seen by the person who has the authority to decide what is right and wrong, it's very real. Also what we see in this verse, I just want to point out, it says, "Heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day." The Hebrew word here for the cool of the day is translated for spirit or wind, and the words for Hebrew spirit and wind are also often associated with God, the Holy Spirit. And so we lose kind of some of the scene that makes sense to us in English, but in the Hebrew, what they would hear is that the undeniable presence of God was in the garden. That's what that is saying, is that God was right there, and the whole garden knew it. Adam and Eve felt it. They were hiding, but they knew God was there. And already we begin to understand that sin and God do not mix, like water and oil. God shows up, and all of a sudden the people who are sinful are gone. Adam and Eve are finding this out live as it's happening to them. Verse 9 says, "But the Lord called to the man, 'Where are you?' And he answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'" I just want to note here that nakedness is not the sin here. It's the recognition that they are naked, their awareness of that, and the shame they feel that exposes their guilt from the sin that they did of eating from the tree. Before their disobedience, Adam and Eve had no reason to be ashamed, but now they feel that shame. Their innocence is gone.

Verse 11 says, "And he said," God speaking, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" I love this. This is so good. First of all, if we were reading the story again in Hebrew, God is right there. The way that it is written and the way the story unfolds is meant to convey that God, in far as proximity, he was close. He already knew what happened. And so God isn't asking because he doesn't know, "Hey, did this exact thing happen?" He's asking to elicit a confession. Right? I'm sure we've all been in that situation. Again, I think so much of parenting right now, of God with his firstborn, Adam and Eve. And we've all been in that situation, whether on the receiving end where someone has asked us a question or we've been the one asking the questions to someone, but it's cool to see here where this parenting strategy originated, right here in Genesis 3 with the first sin, asking the question, "Hey, did you do that exact thing that happened?" I already know, but I want to hear it from you. By the way, this is another repeating pattern in Scripture, not ours today, but I'm just going to give you these clues as like if you are liking this series and you like seeing these patterns, this is another one where God or Jesus asked a question they already know the answer to and just look at how people respond. See if their guilt drives them to confess or whether they keep going down their path of a lie and hiding from God.

All right, verse 12 says, "The man said, 'The woman,'" oh, this is good, guys, "'The woman that you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.'" Again, Adam is not looking good, right? Like we always think that it's all Eve. He was there and he blames God. God, it was, you put her here. You are the one that's not, you can't say that to God. Bold attempt, Adam, and it does not pay off. He blames the woman and he blames God. Verse 13, "Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?' And the woman said, 'The serpent deceived me and I ate it.'" Eve now blames the serpent. I want to pause here to address this common question. Who is the serpent? Which also leads to who is Satan? Because we know that this is the enemy, this is Satan. And so I just want to explain, Satan is this creature whose entire existence is a state of rebellion against God's creation, against the good of God's creation. Satan is on a mission to ruin God's good world for everyone, for all creatures. And Satan, we know this from other passages in the Bible, he did not want to live under God's wisdom and authority. And if anything, he wanted to be God. And that's the very temptation that he puts in front of Adam and Eve. I want to be like God and I have rebelled. Do you, Adam and Eve, also want to rebel? He doesn't say it that way because that would be too obvious. So he says, "Hey, I think you guys are pretty good. I think you can do this on your own. I don't think you need God." When we read this passage, I want to encourage us to think less about like the zoological, there's probably a more official word for that, but less about the snake and the details of like what kind of snake it is and are snakes inherently evil because they're always associated with Satan? Not the case. The story is describing Satan as a snake. And just focus more on what's happening for creation, what's happening to Satan. Because as we'll find out in the verses to come, God is taming Satan, the enemy. He's making the snake more docile. That's the big takeaway is that God is the one whose power is supreme over everything, even those in rebellion against him. God is more powerful. There's a lot of ancient Eastern context that the story is written into. And so it may sound fanciful. If you're reading the Bible for the first time, you're like, "Wow, there's a snake talking to humans. What is this?" It's meant to sound like that. The snake is talking to people, but to the ancient listener, these implications would have come through vibrantly that the snake always represents something sly, something evil. So just keep that in mind.

Verses 14 through 15, "The Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offsprings and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.'" So the serpent's offspring that he's talking about are those that will follow in rebelling against God. And the woman's offspring is very specific. It's the people of God, but also it says, "He will strike you on the head." And that is specifically talking about Jesus. So guys, already on what is page four of my Bible, chapter three, we have the hope of Jesus entering the story. As soon as sin enters the story, God has a plan and God has hope. And he gives that hope to humanity. I love it. It's amazing. God has a plan to deal with Satan. And that promise is still alive. And as mentioned again throughout the Bible, Romans 16, 20 says, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you." Revelation also talks about this, of what God is going to do, the final steps of his plan. So again, God from this very moment promises an answer to the problem of sin. And his grace, remember our pattern, we've seen humanity rebel, think that they can do it on their own. We see the fallout of those consequences of their actions. They're facing that right now. They're getting explained those consequences. But we also have God providing grace.

And now he talks to the woman and the man in verses 16 through 18. To the woman, he said, "I will make your pains and childbearing very severe. With painful labor, you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." To Adam, he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat from it." God's clarifying, by the way. He's like, "I know you tried to blame me, but I definitely told you the rules. You definitely did not listen. Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you. And you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food." Oh, we'll stop right there. Hold on. So again, the original task that has been given to Adam and Eve from Genesis 1, Genesis 2, to tend the garden, to be fruitful and to multiply, those commands are still there, but now it is so much more difficult. It is now true labor that they are going to have to partake in. God says to Eve, having kids, what was going to be just a blessing for you, this gift that I was giving you and this part of reigning with me to multiply, now it's going to include a lot of pain. It's going to be very severe. And to Adam, he says, the work that you will have to do for food and survival, it's going to be brutal. It means serious effort and overcoming of obstacles will be necessary to make the earth produce what humanity needs it to produce, to live, and just to do what they were created to do. And he's emphasizing what once was freely given to them, the food that was available for them at any point, at any time, they didn't have to do anything, it was just there, God created it for them, now it's going to be backbreaking work. This reality is something that we still live with. If you live in Rocklin, you know why it is called Rocklin. And if you've ever had to dig and plant a tree, you come to a certain layer and it is so hard and the shovels that you have may not, I mean, I've broken tips of shovels trying to get through that hard pan. And if you've gone through walks and you've gone off the paved trail and you walk around, you will have thistles and thorns in your socks and your shoes, and you can, next time you do that, you can be like, thank you Adam and Eve for bringing that about.

Verse 19 says, by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you will return. You might have heard that before, from dust you are, and to dust you will return. It's a line that, in some context, provides a little comfort, but in this moment it's absolutely devastating. Because it's not what God intended for his creation. It's not what he intended for his co-rulers, Adam and Eve, and what he had envisioned would be an eternity in the Garden of Eden with his creation in the way that he intended it to be. So we have this consequence of sin, which is lifelong toil and then death. And death is unique. Only death is the release from the lifelong toil that he will have to do, but also death is a natural consequence of their sin. And so you just see this bleak outlook for humanity now, juxtaposed to what God created, which is something full of life, holy opportunities, and good work to the world that Adam and Eve brought about, which is full of pain and life-dependent toil and death. And it's just so saddening to see, just for a few moments in the Bible, two chapters, the Garden, to now the reality that we are all a part of and we're born into. But in verse 20, "Adam named his Eve wife because she would become the mother of all the living." In 21, "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them." Even now, in just that small verse, God is being gracious to Adam and Eve, and he's meeting them where they're at, and he's giving and providing and sustaining them. And he's saying, "You're going to need this from now on, and I'm going to give it to you. Here's something for you." But things do have to change.

In verse 22, "And the Lord God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.' So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken." This is the dilemma. Adam and Eve, if they were to stay in the Garden, now knowing good and evil, meaning they can rebel and they can choose to continue to rebel, they can also take from the tree of eternity, of eternal life, never facing the penalty for their transgressions, never facing death. So God says that we can't have that. And unfortunately, we have to banish you from the Garden. So they are cut off from the full presence of God, and immortality was made unavailable. They would eventually die. Something that doesn't seem to be intended when God created the world. I think that's why death is so hard for us. Whether accepting it for ourselves when we come to that point, or watching someone we love pass away, there's something in us, in our imago Dei, that pushes back against the idea of death. I think from that and from this verse, we can deduce that it's not what God intended. It's the result of sin.

Verse 24 says, "After he drove the man 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." So that's a lot. That was a lot. We covered how sin entered the world. Honestly, we could do a whole series on Genesis 3. I spent a whole semester in the first three chapters of Genesis in seminary, and that felt really quick, so I can imagine in your seats right now. This was like a flyby at jet speed, but I want to remind us to focus on the pattern. And if you also want to encourage you in your own time to go back, read Genesis 3 and over and over again and just see what plays out here, see what Adam and Eve chose to do, the lies that Satan said. But our purpose today is to see the origin of this pattern. Can we put that pattern back up on the screen really quick? Again, humanity choosing their own way, thinking they can be God, the consequence of that decision, and God being gracious and redeeming and rescuing them, despite the fact that they rebelled against him. And so, in this scene, we saw that Satan tempted Adam and Eve that they can define good and evil, which we know is a God task, not a human task, but Satan says, "You guys can do it." He's tempting them to be in the place of God, to live in a garden and rule without God. And Adam and Eve succumb to that temptation. They give in, they rebel. And sin enters the world and it now plagues humanity.

Every single person from that point forward is born into sin. Romans 3:10 says that no one is without sin. And then we see the fallout, the sadder, new devastating reality that humanity and the world now exist in. Because of sin, there is now devastation and death, broken relationships, battles and violence, disease, slavery, power struggles, selfish perversion, where there was once beauty, nothing but beauty within us. Now there is some ugliness within us. But we also see God be gracious, letting them live, clothing them, and even giving a clue to a major redeeming moment in the future, where the enemy will be defeated. That's our pattern right here. The authors were intentional. They wanted us to see, this is how it starts, but as I said, you just flip page after page, you're going to see it over and over again. And always, the last part of that pattern is God rescuing. God having the final say, saying I know that you keep straying from me. You keep going in your own direction. And it's almost like he picks us up and says, all right, back to your spot where you're supposed to go. Now see if you can go in a straight line. And then eventually humanity wanders off and he's always picking us up and saying, no, right back here. I've got a plan for you. It doesn't take long for us to see the pattern over and over again. The Bible Project, by the way, has some really cool videos on making this connection. But the next culminating moment is the Tower of Babel. I'll just quickly touch on how this is seen throughout the Bible. And the Tower of Babel, if you don't know, is a story of all of humanity, which speaks the same language, coming together and saying, let's be God. Let's try this again. And so they build this tower to literally be at the height, the same height as God. They say, God's up there. We'll go be up there too. And we're going to build this tower and we're going to decide we're going to be the rulers. We're going to say this is what's right, this is what's wrong. And God has to intervene and he scatters them as we know, and he gives us different languages. And so there's mass confusion. But he still is redeeming. And we get, we know this because even in Revelation at the end of the Bible, it says there's a promise that people from every nation, tongue, tribe, and language will be praising God in heaven. So God is going to use what humanity was trying to do for their own selfishness. He's going to, that's still a part of his plan. He's like, don't worry, you guys did that, but I still have you as a part of what I'm doing. I'm going to redeem you. There's more. We can go, Abraham has his own story. He tries to have a child by his own methods. God says, hey, I have promises for you. You are going to be the father of many nations. And it's not happening. Abraham is very old. And he says, you know what, God, I got this. I'm going to choose my own way. I think I figured it out. The first part of the pattern is right there with Abraham and Sarah thinking, okay, we'll take control. And as you may know, they have Ishmael instead of waiting for Isaac. And it causes a bunch of messy division in the family. But God still blesses them. He blesses Ishmael and he provides Isaac as the son who would be the father of many nations. We can also go to the Israelites. They are in the desert and they begin worshiping a golden calf. God has brought them out of slavery into the desert. He's bringing them to a promised land. But in the midst of that, they say, God, I think we got a better idea of this golden calf, which we hear now are like, that's ridiculous. But in the moment, Israel was thinking, this is great. We have gold. We have, we can make up our own God and we're going to define what is right and wrong. They end up having to wander for 40 years, but God still redeems and still rescues and he brings them to the promised land.

You can get to the book of Judges in the Old Testament. And this is story after story of literally God's people. This is what it says in the Bible, doing what is right in their own eyes. That is exactly the language from the garden story right here. Doing what is right in their own eyes, defining what is good and evil. And the nation, all of Israel would get into trouble with other nations and God would provide a judge, a kind of hero or a leader to bring them back out of that and say, no, come back to where you're supposed to be and there's a peaceful time. And then the next chapter you read again and they were doing what is right in their own eyes. So this over and over again, you get to the Kings, Saul and Kings, the people wanted their own King, even though God was their King. And they said, no, God, I think we have a better idea. We want an earthly King. And again, we read this and we're like, Israel, you are so dumb. But we make the same choices. So be careful on who you're judging. But they come up and God says, this is not going to work out. And they say, no, we want it. We really want an earthly King. He says, fine, I'll give you an earthly King, but it will not work out. It will lead to your own destruction. He says that at the very beginning, but he gives them Saul. And besides a few Kings like David, and there's a few others that are good, the rest of the Kings are terrible and they lead Israel farther and farther away from God until they are in captivity. Last one in the Old Testament that I'll mention is Jonah, thinking that he knows better than God. God has called him and said, hey, I want you to go reach the people of Nineveh. And he says to God, again, bold move, kind of like Adam, it's not good. God, they're not worthy of being saved. You should just destroy them. You should just judge them. They're terrible. They're terrible, terrible people. I think I know better than you. I think I know your ways better than you know your own ways. There's a lot of interesting, bold things that Jonah says to God. And then, as we know, Jonah gets swallowed up by the near-death experience. He is in that storm where he thinks his life is over. But then God redeems and he rescues and he says, and Jonah goes and the people of Nineveh hear the gospel and for a time they believe in God. So there are many, there are so many, those are just some of the major ones, but there are all these mini episodes of a fall and redemption within the bigger story.

But then we come to the New Testament, and this is where the main theme comes to the forefront again. In all of humanity's sin, and the fall is addressed. Excuse me. And salvation arrives in the form of Jesus Christ. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus brings eternal life and undoes the effect of sin. We see Jesus live the perfect life. He is the perfect Adam, the Son of Man. He resists all the temptation. He has his own moment with Satan, where Satan tempts him in the desert. But Jesus succeeds. And through his death on the cross and his ascension to heaven, he defeats sin and death, and he provides a way for eternal relationship with God. A way for us to be in the full presence of God again. What was taken away at the garden is now restored. So through Christ, we know that the pattern of rebellion against God will come to an end. But we still struggle with this pattern today in our own lives. We still encounter the same temptation that Abam Eve faced, thinking that we might be able to live this life better without God. We think, "I got this. I can do this on my own. What I'm doing is working. I'll decide what's best for my life, for me and my family." And it's never really that bold. We don't think, "God, I got this." But our actions say that. Our heart, what's really in our hearts, reveals that that's what we're thinking. And Satan doesn't often mention God when he's whispering things to us. He's like, "Hey, you're better than God." Because we'd be like, "Absolutely not. I'm not better than God." But he likes to twist the truth. "Hey, you're really good. Hey, you've got this." He's trying to fill us with this false sense of confidence to then make steps on our own that are apart from God. And so he, again, he's twisting the truth. It's never really at first a flat-out lie. It's something that we can believe in to some extent. And then after a few of those decisions, we see that we are really truly far apart from Jesus. And we have to face the consequence of our actions. And we are, just as we began, in need of rescuing. And Jesus rescues and he forgives and his mercies are new every morning.

So I want to quickly just mention three lessons from the fall, from Genesis 3. And the first is to live with humility. Humility is this proper view of self, which begins with a proper understanding of God. It's why we preach so much here at Spring Valley, who God is and what he does. When we better understand that, when we better understand God, we better understand ourselves. So once we understand God and his place, not just in our own lives but over the entire world, we better understand in a good way how small we are. That we don't know everything. That God does. And so we should really follow his ways and his wisdom and plan for our lives. This is counter to what the world often says. We often hear that knowing more will lead to more power and influence and opportunity. Knowledge equals power. Have you guys heard that before? There is truth to that. But where it gets dangerous is more knowledge and less reliance on God. More knowledge and you become independent and you don't need God. And that's not good. Pastor Matthew McCleary, he's a pastor in Sacramento, says, "Rarely do we see in Scripture someone get more knowledge and it works out for good. In fact, it's mostly the opposite." What he's talking about is living with humility. Recognizing and acknowledging that we need Jesus to live the best life here on earth. So I invite you to reflect in your own heart and mind, are you living with humility?

Secondly, live on guard. We know from our passage in Genesis 3 that in all the other passages throughout Bible we see this pattern that the temptation to rebel against God is always lurking. We must live intentionally and fervently to fight to live aligned with God's heart. It won't happen by accident, it won't happen passively, just like, "God, I hope that I live according to your ways." No, it doesn't happen like that. We need to be on guard for temptation, to be on guard for when Satan will want to whisper in your ear, "You don't need God." "You have a better plan. You have it figured out. Just go ahead and act with what your gut is telling you." Again, Satan will twist and turn the truth ever so slightly at first before you realize you are living in complete rebellion against God. So be on guard, be vigilant, be ready. Know that Satan is trying, he's desperate for God's creation to rebel against God. He's out there trying to ruin God's good creation and the order and beauty that God is trying to bring, and as co-rulers, we are also trying to bring into the world. And as we are intentional, as Pastor Lauren preached last week, to model the image of God, to reflect the image of God, that means that Satan is out to ruin us too. Be ready to fight, arm yourselves with the truth of God's Word. Jesus showed us when he went to the desert and defeated Satan in that moment and overcame the temptation, he showed us how. With every twisting temptation that Satan threw at Jesus, Jesus threw back at him with the truth of God's Word, properly interpreted and saying, "This is what God said. This is truly what God meant." And that's the blueprint for us. That's how we are to live, to knowing God's truth, and so that when we are faced with temptation, we can speak the truth of God right back at that temptation. So ask yourselves, are you living intentionally and ready to fight against the temptation of the enemy? And do you know God's truth?

Thirdly, live in God's grace. God showed us in Genesis 3, from the moment that sin entered the world, that God's grace is more. His grace covers all that he continues to love and provide for us. He reaches across the divide that sin puts between us and him, and he wants us to live with him. We must choose to accept God's free gift of grace. As Christians, those of you who are in this room who believe in Jesus, we still struggle with sin. We know this. None of us are living perfectly. But if we want the pattern of sin to stop in our lives, we need to live into God's gift of grace. We need his love that endures all, his mercies that are new every morning, his grace that covers all, his forgiveness that forgives all sin, his salvation that rescues us from sin and death and gives us eternal life with him in heaven. So are you living in God's grace every day? Are you choosing God's grace? Are you accepting that? Are you wanting it, desiring it? If you call yourself a Christian and believe that Jesus is your savior, again, you're still going to be struggling with some of these patterns in your life. But I pray that today's sermon is a reminder of the life that God has called you to, that the Spirit would use it to speak to you and make apparent things that might need to change in your life, patterns that might need to be addressed. And if you haven't yet made that decision to follow Jesus, to surrender your heart and control of your life over to him, to confess your sins, I want to invite you to do that right now.

So we're going to go ahead and bow our heads and close our eyes. We're going to pray. And if that's you and you realize you don't want to go another moment without Jesus in your life, without his love and grace, and you want to accept his salvation, I'd encourage you to do just that. With everyone's eyes closed and heads bowed, just silently to yourself, if you want to pray this prayer, "Lord, I believe Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for my sins and rose again. I receive him as my Lord and Savior today and ask for the forgiveness of my sins." Let's all pray. God, thank you so much for your Word. And even though we live in this reality of sin, we have hope. From the very moment that sin entered the world, you were good and gracious and loving. You continue to reach out and rescue us daily. God, without you, there is no hope. But in you, there's more than hope. There is salvation. And with that hope and promise of eternity with you, thank you for sending your Son Jesus as the answer to the problem of sin. And God, I pray that for us who are fallen, we be encouraged in our faith, that we be renewed in our fight against the enemy, that we would live on guard, that we live with humility, that we would live in your grace. And God, I pray for those who are not yet believers, God, that you would continue to soften their heart, open their eyes to see their need for you. God, I pray that you would help us to be able to see the patterns in our lives that are unhealthy, moments and areas in our life where we are choosing our own wisdom. We may not even see it that way, but God, I pray that you would reveal that to us through your Spirit, that you would convict where conviction is needed. And you would say, "Look, you're choosing your own way." And God, I pray that our hearts would be softened to say, "God, I'm sorry. Please guide me and show me the way to live." God, we cannot do this life without you. We need you. We're thankful for you. And we give you all the glory and praise. Amen.

Genesis: Part 2

Genesis: Part 2

Genesis 1:26-28

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So today we are going to talk about the theme or the idea of the imago Dei. Imago Dei means the image of God. And God created all of us in His image, so we all have the imago Dei. And also we're going to talk about how because we have this imago Dei, we are called to reflect God to the world. So we're going to read our passage together here. We're going to dive in. We're just going to be in Genesis 1 again, but we're just going to hit a couple of verses

If you would turn to Genesis 1, verse 26 to 28, we're just going to read that together. “Then God said, Let us make mankind 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. So God created mankind in His own image. In the image of God, He created the male and female. He created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. God made man and woman in His image and in His likeness.”

This use of both the word image and likeness is important because they're very similar meanings. And so when things are repeated in the Bible, when they're said in multiple times, it's a cue. It's a literary tool that the authors use to clue us in that this is important. And also it is true. It is very, very true. If it can be more true, this is when it is more true because it was repeated. It was said again, the image and likeness of God. It also indicates that of all the things that were created, man was the one thing that is made most like God. We are made in His image and likeness. We take after Him. It's interesting because everything we see in all creation before mankind was created with a command. God said, Let there be light. And there was light. He said, Let there be fish in the sea. And there was fish in the sea. Let there be moon and star. There were moon and star. It was a command. It was spoken and it was so. But one commentary said that the creation of humans or with the creation of humans, the word of command turned into a word of consultation. The Trinity, God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit consulted each other. They conferred on the making of man. See, man wasn't just one more thing that God made, but humanity was the pinnacle of creation. God had already made a really good world and now it was time to put man in it. So He wanted man and woman to be made in His likeness, in His image. So what does it mean to be made in the image of God? That sounds nice, but like, what does that actually mean? Well, the ancient readers and listeners would have understood this within their own context because they, there were so many gods, little g gods, that the surrounding countries followed and worshipped. And often there would be some sort of human representative of that god, often a king or some other ruler or authority figure. But they would be the representative of this little god. And so this wasn't unusual to have some sort of representative for Yahweh as well. It would be considered usual. But how can we be made in the image of something that has no physical body? Now, we know Jesus does have a physical body and that's not what we're talking about. He does have a physical body. But God, especially at the time of creation, did not have a physical body.

So how can we be made like Him? How can we be made in the image of something we can't even see? Well, I think there's three main ways that we can look at that we are made in His image. The first is in the ruling and reigning. We have given, as Pastor Andrei said last week about our purpose, we've been given a role and a responsibility. We are called to have dominion over the earth. Just like God is the king of the universe, He's given us a role to almost be like royalty, to rule and to reign and have dominion over the earth. We're also like God in reference to some human-like qualities. Things like moral awareness, rationality, spiritual capacity. Things that kind of separate us from the animals and trees. They can't rationalize. They don't have the spiritual awareness that humans do. So we're like God in that way. And thirdly, it's in our ability to have relationships with God and others. God is in relationship with Himself as the Trinity. And so He created us like Him in that to be in relationship with other people, to be in relationship with Him. He made us for community. He made us for relationship. And He gave us the capacity to do so when He made us in their image. Now, just to be clear, this is not this idea of being made in the image of God. This is not like we are little gods. We are not. We don't have like God did not just like put a little bit of God in all of us. We are not gods. We are made in His likeness.

So this passage here in Genesis and this understanding of imago Dei, the image of God, establishes two truths for us that we can see here in the passage and then also we can see repeated throughout scripture. The first one is that it establishes the status, value and dignity of human life. If we are made in the image of God and we are, then every human being has value. This naturally brings up some big issues. You know, things like sanctity of life, life at conception, things like the death penalty or medically assisted suicide. These really big, hot button issues that I'm sure many of you in here have personal experience with. But the reality is that we have to let the Word of God inform our stance on these issues because a lot of these issues aren't directly mentioned in the Bible. But our value is, our dignity is, as humans, we all have the imago Dei. And so the Bible and the biblical view of the dignity of human life must inform our beliefs, not the other way around. Each human, every person, no matter how small, no matter how sinful, no matter how wrong they are, they were made in the image of God. Beyond these supercharged topics, there's more of those everyday type of situations. When we have hate in our heart towards someone, Jesus said that that is if we are murdering them. Because they are an image bearer as well, even having hate towards them is not treating them like they have the imago Dei in them. When we choose to treat others with respect, despite disagreeing with each other, that is acknowledging the image of God in someone else. When we choose to forgive someone, even though that they have made, maybe they've hurt us terribly, but we choose forgiveness that is acknowledging the image of God in them. A little caveat for us, this does not mean that every person who has ever hurt you needs to be within your bubble. Not every person gets the same access to you. Boundaries are good. We are pro boundaries here. You can still acknowledge the imago Dei in someone else from a distance. It is your heart posture that we're talking about. You don't ever have to see that person to forgive them. You don't have to see that person to respect them. They don't have to have access to you for you to have to acknowledge the imago Dei. It's your own heart we're talking about here. It is your own heart. Amen.

This idea, when we live with this biblical view that every human has dignity and value and status as a child of God, it changes, or it should, it changes how we interact with others. It changes how we treat other people. It changes how we see them. There are several scriptures we could point to with this, but we're going to go over a few here, kind of bullet point style. First one is Genesis 9, 6. Just a few chapters later here in Genesis, it literally says that humans are made in the image of God, and that life is sacred and has value because of that. Psalm 8, 5. It says that humanity is crowned with glory and honor. That royalty verbiage again. Crowned with glory and honor. Psalm 139, one of my favorites. Verse 13 through 16. For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Jumping down to 16. Since your eyes saw my unformed substance, in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. We're fearfully and wonderfully made, and we have value, and we are known by God before we were ever conceived. Before we were ever born, we had dignity because we had the imago Dei. Again, Jeremiah 1, 5, along the same lines, we are known and we are called and we are given a purpose before our conception. It says before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you. I'm going to pause right here because I think that some of us have no problem seeing the imago Dei in other people. We have a problem seeing it in ourselves. I feel like there's some people in here that are struggling with that truth. That maybe you have no problem forgiving, you have no problem respecting other people because you know that they're God's children, you know they're made in the image of God, but you don't believe in it about yourself. You may believe God's good, but you don't believe He's good to you. He is. He knew you before you were conceived. He knew and loved you before the day that you were born. You have the image of God. You were made in His image and likeness. I love the story in Luke 1 of the newly pregnant Mary, pregnant with baby Jesus, goes and sees her cousin Elizabeth, who's pregnant with John the Baptist. And when Mary greets Elizabeth, the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaps. He was the one who, when he got older, was going to make a way for Jesus and point to Him. But he was doing his job in utero. He did it before he was even born. He acknowledged, "That is the Messiah. That is my Jesus." He had purpose, and he was set apart for that purpose even before the day he was born. Matthew 10, 29 through 31, "We are so valued by our Lord that He knows the number of hairs on our head." Nothing we do goes unnoticed by our Father. John 3, 16, "God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son." He wouldn't have sent His Son if we weren't worth saving. If we didn't have value, He wouldn't have sent Him to die a gruesome death on the cross in order to bring us back into a reconciled relationship with Him. In Ephesians 4, 24, "We are made new and fashioned after the likeness of God." We are made holy and righteous. So not only were we made in the image of God when we were created, when we were born, but we are also remade in His image when we chose to walk in His way, when we chose to make Him Lord. We were given His righteousness and holiness.

So it establishes the status, value, and dignity of human life. The second thing it does is it establishes the call to reflect God to the world. If we are made in His likeness, and we are, then we are also called as His followers to reflect that imago Dei to those we come in contact with. 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, we'll have it up on the screen. It says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation. Therefore, you are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

We are His ambassadors. We represent Him to the world. We are the ones who've been entrusted to take the ministry and message of reconciliation, reconciliation, so that the other image bearers we encounter will know that Jesus wants a relationship with them, that Jesus wants to save and redeem and restore them. We get to be His ambassadors and reflect His image out to the world. In high school, multiple people, it was kind of a running joke between family and friends, but several people said, "It looks like Daniel Fishel who played Topanga on Boy Meets World." Anybody familiar with that? It was a big show when I was a kid. Love it. But people would joke. I even went to school with a girl who, I don't think she knew my real name. She would just call me Topanga when we passed in the hallways. It was just an ongoing joke. But while I could pass as looking like her, no one would think I spoke for her. No one would think I was her. No one would mistake me for Daniel Fishel or think that I represented her in some capacity. I resembled her, but I didn't represent her. But I also looked like my dad. And I was literally made in his image. I looked like him. And my dad is fairly well known in our community where our church was and even in our greater network of churches. Several people knew him. And as I got older and would encounter these people, apart from my dad, I felt this responsibility that, "Hey, they know my dad. I better be on my best behavior because they know I'm his kid. I represent him." I looked like my dad, and so therefore I represented him to the world. They knew I was connected to my father. They knew I represented him. And just like my dad, we represent God the Father to the world. We were made in his image, and so we must show the world who he is. The reality is that we are all, and I say we all as in all of humanity, are image bearers. But not every image bearer reflects the imago Dei. We reflect what we worship. We reflect what we value. We reflect what we love. There are going to be people who, although they're made in the image of God, they reflect the things of the world. They reflect what they value. They reflect what they think is important or what they are worshiping. But as followers of Jesus, we are called to reflect our father.

We are called to show the world who Yahweh is. Some scriptures that we can point to throughout the Bible. First in Leviticus 19:2. We are called to be holy as God is holy. So as we grow in our relationship with him, as we grow in our holiness, we reflect that holiness to the world. God is holy, and so therefore we must be holy so we can show that holiness to the world. Micah 6:8. We're called to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Those things are nice, but it's also because it's who God is. God is just. God is merciful. God is worthy of our humility towards him, so we reflect those things because we reflect the character of God. Matthew 5. Jesus talks about how believers are the light of the world. We reflect God's light to the world so that we can light up the darkness. There's a lot of darkness in our world. There's a lot of darkness in our own spheres of influence. But we are called to be the light and to reflect his light to others. Colossians 3:9. We are a royal priesthood. Again, more of that royalty language. We act as priests to one another. Pastor Andre talked about this several weeks ago now, but this idea that we have this role of priest where we represent God to others and people to God. We reflect who God is to those around us, and we represent people to God through prayer and intercession. We are a royal priesthood. John 13. It talks about how we are commanded to love others just as Christ loved us, so we reflect his love. It says we will be known by our love. They will know that we are a follower of Jesus by the way that we love because if we're doing it right, if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, we're reflecting the love of God. Not in our own strength or lack thereof, but we're reflecting the love of God. And the reality is that the best way that we can reflect God is to be made more like Jesus. Colossians 1:15 says, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." Jesus literally put on flesh so he could model what it was to literally reflect God to the world. He was the firstborn of all creation to do this. He was the image to show us how we can reflect God to others. And 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, "We are being transformed into the image of Christ."

Every day we are being made more and more into the image of Christ so that we are giving a much clearer reflection to the world. When you get out of the shower and the mirror is all foggy, it's not a very clear reflection, right? If our actions and our behavior and our lives are not looking like Jesus, it's going to send the world a really blurry picture. So the more we are transformed, the more our minds are renewed, we are going to send the world a much clearer picture of who God is. So today I want us to understand the importance of living intentionally as image bearers, not only of acknowledging the image that we are made in, but also that in others. And then reflecting God's character to the world, His justice, His love, His mercy, His holiness. Reflecting that to the world.

So I have a few questions for us. First one, how can you better acknowledge the imago Dei in other people? What are some things that you can do that would help you be better at this? Maybe it's just praying for your own heart, praying that God would give you self-control, patience, respect for other people. But what does that look like for you? How can you better acknowledge the imago Dei in other people? Number two, in what ways can you intentionally reflect the image of God in you to the world? What do you need to do to be a better reflection of who He is? Or what do you need to allow Him to do in your own life to be a better reflection? And kind of tacking onto that, what areas in your life need to be transformed to make you more into the image of Christ? We all have something. We are all on this journey to be sanctified, to be made holy, to be made more and more like Jesus. I don't know what it is for you. Maybe it's a sin issue. Maybe it's needing healing from some past hurts or wounds. Maybe it's just surrendering to God, things that you keep trying to hang onto. But what areas in your life need to be transformed to make you more into His image?

Genesis: Part 1

Genesis: Part 1

Genesis 1:1–2:3

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Very excited to be here with you. As Pastor Lauren was saying, Pastor Chris, lead pastor, and Lauren and myself, we're very excited about the upcoming fall and what's in store here at the church, and particularly about Sundays and what we're going to be covering in our series. And so this new series, it's a part of Scripture that really excites me. I love being able to talk about this and it piques my interest in understanding God's Word. And so I just want to give a little background as to what this series is about, if that sounds good with you guys. This series stemmed from a desire for all of us to be able to approach Scripture the way that it intended to be approached. And what do I mean by that? Well, we have to recognize that the Bible was written to a specific audience at a specific time within a specific culture. As well versed in the Bible as some of us may be, it always requires a little bit of work and effort to approach and understand the text in the way that it was meant to be read. If we don't do that work, we run the danger of misinterpreting Scripture, misapplying Scripture to our lives, and building an understanding of God and what He does that doesn't align with who He truly is or what He actually does do. And so while we believe here at Spring Valley Church that God's Word is for all people for all time, that does not mean that we shouldn't do the work to understand its meaning and its original context. And so we want to take some time through our series to sharpen our Bible comprehension skills, to give us tools in how to approach the Holy Scriptures, and to teach us how to read Scripture that requires our engagement. I think sometimes there is a place where we just read and we just let the Word wash over us, but the way that the Bible was written was meant for us to be engaged with it, to wrestle with it, to ponder it, to think about it, to think more deeply. And so we want to make sure that we're doing that to the best of our ability.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been reading your Bible and you came across a passage and you're like, "That sounds really familiar. That sounds like another passage that I've read at some point." And maybe you are thinking like, "Wow, this verbiage or this situation, this is very familiar to something else in the Bible." Maybe something like, "Hey, when I read that Jesus spent three days in the grave, that reminds me of that Jonah story where he spent three days in the belly of the whale, and they both live." And maybe sometimes we're just like, "What a coincidence. That's pretty crazy. Two people spending three days near death or in death." And some of us may be like, "That's got to be something." And then you think, "But I don't know what it is. I don't know why it's something." But that seems too much of a coincidence to be coincidence. And I want to encourage the detective within all of us to say yes. It's probably not coincidence. There's probably some kind of meaning there, something for us as readers to pick up on. The Bible was written by some brilliant scholars and authors, absolutely brilliant, with the help of the Spirit. And there is so much intentionality and purpose and layers that build upon themselves as you read the Bible. And so when you read what's on the surface at some point in Scripture, if you were to be able to look into and kind of un-surface that, look deeper down, you'd see the richness and all the layers that it references from before. We want to encourage this, teach this, develop this skill and tool within all of us by walking together through Scripture and showing some of what this looks like. And we thought there's no better place to start than in Genesis, where so many of these patterns and repeating motifs and themes begin. Bible Project, who we reference often as a great source, maybe you guys have watched their YouTube videos, they say this. It says, "The literary design gives us a clue as to how to understand the message of the book as a whole, as well as how the entire story of the Bible comes together." So we're saying, right, what's here in Genesis at the beginning gives us a clue as to how to read the whole book and also how the whole entire Scripture, all the Bible, comes together. So our goal is to identify these literary designs, these repeating patterns, motifs and themes that happen over and over again in order to see how they reveal God's character and how God interacts with His creation and His people.

Each week we're going to look at a different passage in Genesis and see the origin of those biblical themes and motifs and then point to where else in Scripture they reoccur. And we're just going to, that sounds like a lot on a Sunday, we're just going to reference. We're going to say, here's the theme, here's where it starts, and we'll just say, in Exodus, in Judges, and you see it in Psalms. And we're just going to give you an idea of how often it happens and just really help you discover and want to read the Bible in a way that is engaging and be like, oh, this is good, I want to remember this, I want to remember what I read so that as I read the rest of Scripture I can kind of build up this memory of how God is working and what He does. Sometimes these patterns are as specific as reoccurring words or a series of words. Like maybe you've read in the Bible when God's favor is upon someone. And that's a reoccurring theme that God's favor is upon multiple people in the Bible. Noah, Abraham, and Genesis, and Samuel, and David, and we know that, oh, that means that that person is holy, set apart for God's purpose. If the Bible's mentioning it, it's important, and so we want to pay attention to that. And already we don't have to know the story of that whole person, but as soon as it says that person had God's favor, or that person was a righteous person, we just know, okay, we're in for a good story. This person is God's person in this time. Maybe it's like a situation, like I said before, about three days. This phrase of, or the situation of being three days in a near death is a reoccurring thing. So it first happens with Joseph in Genesis where his brothers cast him into a pit for to die. And then we come across to Jonah who's in the belly of the whale, or Daniel who's in the pit, or Lazarus, or Jesus. And so these reoccurring things of someone being left for dead in a situation where death should have had them, but then they live, and for God's reason, and for God's purpose. And so sometimes we can, you might be able to read like, oh, this person just got left for dead. Is God about to do something? Because I know that he's done it before. And we want to be able to read the Bible in this way that we're engaging with Scripture, we're tracking what God is doing in multiple people through his story.

So that's what we're going to be doing today and for the next couple weeks. Anyone here, this is going to be a movie reference, National Treasure? Anyone love? I see some nodding of heads. Yes, it is a favorite. We all like a bit of adventure. If you have not watched National Treasure, it's about a guy who, unlike anyone else in the world apparently, can recognize secret patterns on like maps and stuff like that and put it all together and he finds hidden treasures around the world, mostly for the USA because it's on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Just kind of gave the movie away, so if you want to go watch it, he finds treasure. But it kind of reminds me of that a bit where we're looking at things and there's some deeper meaning. Now, I don't want to go to the, we want to be careful. We don't want to connect things that aren't there. We're not looking for the Bible for secret meanings that no one else knows. That's not what I'm talking about. We just want to be able to connect the right dots together in putting a picture together. And this is where commentaries can be helpful because scholars have been studying this for thousands of years. Pastors can be helpful, but this is a helpful skill set to just question is, here's what's on the surface. Is there anything underneath that helps me understand better what this story is about? We don't want to obsess over the wrong thing, be missing the point of Scripture. We just want to refine our minds to focus the lens of how we see Scripture and to encourage being intentional with reading the Bible, to engage with the Word of God the way that was meant to be engaged with. So we don't want to be trying to create, I guess I want to leave this, this is a huge warning because I think we can go down a dangerous road of reading the Bible but missing the relationship with Jesus. We're reading this to better understand God for our relationship with Him. We're not trying to become, see like amazing scholars that know all the right things but have zero relationship with God. It's not what this is about. So I just want to give that warning before this whole series. But I do want to encourage us, don't just, when we read, don't just, it's not a checklist of I read my Bible and I'm good. Engage with it. God wants you to sit there and this is how we get to know Him is by mulling it over and meditating on His Word. All right, with all that as our background for our series, are we ready to start our first passage? Yes? Sweet.

Let me pray really quick. God, thank you again for our time together. Thank you for what you've put on our hearts and this desire to know you. Thank you for your Word that we, one of the best ways, the best way to get to know who you are and what you do. So I pray that through your Spirit you would open up our minds to the truth that you have in your Word and that you would instill in us in our hearts a desire to read the Bible often and in a way that it was meant to be read. And so we give this time to you, God. Guide us this morning. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right.

So in the Bible, you're opening, if you have your Bible, God's story, our story, all begins with God taking disorder and darkness and creating out of it order and beauty and goodness. God creates a world where life can flourish as well as creatures who inhabit that world. And within that, He creates humanity to partner with Him. He creates order to the universe, He breathes life in, and He gives purpose. And at the beginning, the authors help us believers by beginning some themes that will help us see God more clearly and understand who He is and what He does. So if you're not there yet, we're going to be in Genesis 1. I'm going to read for us through all of chapter 1 and the first couple of verses of chapter 2. And as I read this, I want you, you have some work to do right now. Do your best to imagine yourself as an early Hebrew and whether you're reading or listening, thousands of years ago, not knowing any of your elementary science that you have learned and grow up knowing now, but just you have some questions. Who are you? Where are you? Why are you here? And how did everything come to be? So as you just kind of go back to the rudimentary questions that we have, let's listen as I read this aloud.

It says, Genesis 1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Now that's kind of Genesis 1's title right there. So we're just, that's a summary of what's about to happen. Verse 2, "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." There's a lot happening right there. Come back to that. "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. And God said, 'Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.' So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it, and it was so. God called the vault sky, and there was evening, and there was morning the second day. And God said, 'Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.' And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.' And it was so. The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the third day. And God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate from the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years.'" I love that intentionality already, to mark sacred times. "And let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on earth.' And it was so. God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness.

And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day. And God said, 'Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.' So God created the great creatures of the sea, and every living thing with which the water teems, and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the waters and the seas, let the birds increase on earth.' And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. And God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, the wild animals, each according to its kind.' And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then, God said, 'Let us make mankind 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.' So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea, and the birds in the sky, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.' And then God says something amazing, he says, 'I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.' And so all the beasts of the earth, and all the birds in the sky, and all the creatures that move along the ground, everything that has breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food, and it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating all that he had done." Woo, amen?

So I asked some questions, maybe as you were hearing that or reading it, you kind of got some answers. Who are we? Where are we? What did we hear? How did everything come to be? And again, as a Hebrew listener, reader, I think it's pretty clear that God is at the center of all those things. God is the source of life. One of the big themes in our series, repeating patterns and themes, motifs in the Bible, something that starts right here at the very beginning, that repeats all throughout Scripture, is that God's words have power. If you're taking notes, that's like, you could take that note and be done. God's word has power. Might be obvious to some of us, well yeah, God's words have power, but again, when we read our Bible and we're engaging with the Scripture, we can know every time God speaks, it's powerful. Something big is happening. There's power in his words. People listen. The world listens. Everyone listens. I think we've all been in situations where our voice has had some power. Maybe as parents, you're speaking to your children and your voice carries authority and power. Maybe at work, you're in a position where you say something and maybe there's some people that work for you that have to listen and obey your instruction. If you've ever coached a team, your words to your players, they carry weight, they carry authority. If you're a leader of a band, maybe you give the instruction, you give the one, two, three, or the five, six, seven, eight, whichever one. That's dance. That's dance. Okay. One, two, three. Maybe all of us were using Alexa and Siri, and so more than ever before, our voices carry power. We can just say something to them and lights turn on or something's ordered on Amazon for you. In whatever situation you're thinking of, the power that you have had, the most power, if you think of like the most powerful situation you've ever been in and the most authority you carried, it pales in comparison to the power of God's words and the power that his words have. When God speaks, planet and stars arrive. Oceans and mountains are made. Plants and animals and all their ecosystems and habitats appear. When God speaks, all of creation is under its authority and listens. God's word has power. That's not the only theme or pattern that begins here. When God speaks, it evokes certain things. And so I have three things, three other patterns that we'll see throughout Scripture.

The first one is this, when God speaks, his words bring order out of chaos. This one is probably one of my favorites. I love this theme in the Bible, and I think it's one of the more recognizable patterns that we see throughout Scripture. Where there's... Oh, I'm about to sneeze. God bring order out of this chaos. Where there is chaos, God can bring order. So where do we see this in our passage? If we go to verse 2, it says, "The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." We see that the earth was chaotic, formless, and darkness. It's an interesting image that I don't know if we can really imagine, but the Hebrew words here are "tohu va'vohu." If you want to learn some Hebrew today, this is probably one of the easiest Hebrew things you can learn. Tohu va'vohu. And if you say that, you can just be like, "It's chaotic. This is a chaotic situation." Well, this is... I'm in an absolute tohu va'vohu situation with my kids right now. It describes a chaotic wilderness environment. The same phrase is found in Jeremiah 4, describing a non-functional and barren land. And so it's formless and void, and the seas... All of this language to the Hebrew listener thousands of years ago meant chaos. It's not an okay place to be. It does not sustain life. It is chaotic. And this is a story about how God brings order and beauty out of chaos. God created order and beauty in a garden out of a land that was chaotic and uninhabitable. God is bringing order out of the chaos. So we see it in our passage here. Well, where do we see it? Throughout the Bible. Where does this repeat? Taking that scenario, not necessarily the Hebrew words of tohu va'vohu, but the scenario of chaos and God bringing order out of that chaos.

We can go to Genesis 3, just a couple chapters later, when sin enters the world and the chaos that that brings for humanity. And God brings about an orderly situation that doesn't yet see fruition until Jesus, but He brings order to that situation. We can go to Genesis 6, 6 through 8, in the flood and the chaos waters that take over the earth again and having the recreation starting over, a new form of order. We can go to Genesis 11 in a tower of Babel and how everyone was speaking different languages and the Bible describes it as a very chaotic scene. And then God gives order to that situation. We can go to Genesis 41 in the chaos of Pharaoh's dream in Egypt at that time and the land being in famine. And God uses Joseph to bring order for the present situation and for the future of God's people. You can go to Exodus and this theme is all throughout Exodus. Chaotic situations, you can think of Israel and the chaos waters going through the Red Sea and out of that God makes them into a nation. Brings order by giving them the commandments, He brings a culture to them. He brings order. Isaiah, many of the prophets speak to what is a chaotic time in Israel's history and the hope that God will bring out of that chaos. We can go all the way to the New Testament in Mark 4 and the chaos waters of the sea threatening the lives of the disciples on the boat. And Jesus brings order. He speaks to creationing. And again, for them, with this understanding of the Hebrew Bible, hearkening back to the only other person who ever spoke over creation and creation listened to God. For them, that would have been a connecting point, like the only other person we've seen do that was God and Jesus just did that. And Jesus, I'm sure hoping like, are you making the connection here, the authority and power that I have, as you've seen, when God speaks, there is power. And when there is chaos, and when God speaks, order comes out of it. God's words have power and the power to bring order out of chaos.

Secondly, God's words have power to bring life. Where do we see this in our passage? Well, all over in verse 11, he brings vegetation. In verse 20, the birds and sea creatures. In verse 22, we get the mandate to make more life. And then in 24, we get the land animals. And then famously in verse 26, he makes humans, makes people. So our passage is full of God's word bringing life. Where do we see this repeated throughout Scripture? Well, God does not create again, like he does in Genesis. This is the one creation he does. He does bring life into certain situations. In Genesis 15, God's covenant with Abraham. He promises Abraham and Sarai, or Abram and Sarai at the time, "I will give you life. I will give you a son." Later that would be Isaac. In the prophets Ezekiel 37, there's a vision that Ezekiel has. And God says to him, "Speak," these words, "over the valley of dry bones." And those bones become an army. It's a very interesting vision that Ezekiel has. And the Bible literally says, as he speaks, the bones kind of join together and sinews and tissues come back over those bones and they become alive again. And it's a vision of what God is going to do for Israel. How Israel is dead now, or in chaotic terms, or in...they're not what they're supposed to be, but God will bring life to them. And we can read that. It's a vision also for what God does in us, making us new. As we are dead in our sins, He makes, He brings life to us again. We go to the New Testament in Mark 5, verse 41. Jesus raises Jairus' daughter by telling her with His words, "Little girl, I say to you, get up." And that girl is raised from the dead, brings life back to her. In John 11, 43, you guys know the raising of Lazarus. When Jesus speaks and His words, the power and authority of God, Lazarus come out. Lazarus is raised from the dead. Those verses in the New Testament have weight and significance and show that Jesus is God when He speaks and brings life, again, because it's harkening back to what God did in the Old Testament. The only other person whose words had the power to bring life were God's. So when Jesus does it in the New Testament, we're automatically connected to say, "Is this person God? He's doing the same things that God did." Again, intentional and purposeful, these patterns that we're supposed to be developing to recognize, "Oh, this is a God thing. This is God who's doing this.”

The third thing, God's words have power, and they have power to bring a purpose. We mention this often in our preaching. It's because it's a pattern that started here in the garden. It's brought up over and over again. And so when we preach on Sundays from different passages, we've referenced this verse before, and it's that we are created and made for a unique purpose, set apart from the rest of creation to co-rule and co-reign with God. Our role intended by God from this passage was to rule over His creation. And not in the domineering way that takes advantage and is selfish and all about ambition and selfish gain. That's not until sin enters the picture later that that kind of ruling starts happening. But to bring life and order and flourishing, our priestly duty is to fill the earth, to bring life, and to rule over it, to bring order. Where do we see this in our passage? Well, verse 26 says, "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image and 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.'" And then in verse 28 says, "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over every living creature that moves on the ground.'" We had a purpose. God created humanity with a purpose. God's words instill purpose in those who He speaks to. Well, where do we see this repeated throughout Scripture? Well, this specifically, this idea of God's purpose for humanity is repeated many times. Exodus 19, verses 5 through 6, this is God telling Moses up on the mountain, this is what you're going to say to the people, "If you obey, you shall be My kingdom of priests and a holy nation." That kingdom of priests and the holy nation, that's ruling language. It's the same language that we're seeing here in Genesis. You're going to do, you're going to be set apart for what I had intended you to do. Psalm 8, verses 4 through 8, the psalmist is saying that God made humanity rulers over the works of His hands. Even the psalmist recognized, God, you had humanity as a special part of your creation, that they would have similar authority that you have, not the same, but a God-given authority to rule over creation. And then in the New Testament, 2 Timothy 2, verses 12, Paul is writing to the early church and saying, "If we endure, we will also reign with Him." So now the focus goes to the future in heaven and the reigning that God always intended us to have on earth and in the future. Paul is saying that our purpose is not just now, but forever. And then Peter says in 1 Peter 2, 5, "You also, like living stones, are being built up to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God and through Jesus Christ." And then in verse 9, he continues, "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light." God's words, which are all powerful, give purpose to humanity.

I want to close with some questions for us this week. I want to be thinking about the following. In regards to chaos, think about whatever in your life, if you're going through a chaotic situation, how you might need to bring order to that situation. I can tell you many chaotic situations in my life right now, one of them being our daughter's toy area, very chaotic, and I feel called every night to bring order to that situation, lest my feet suffer from stepping on all those toys. Sometimes I get in the mood, these are very practical, to like clean a closet or a cabinet. I just see chaos. Maybe you guys can relate. You see chaos and you're like, "I can't stand it anymore. I got to bring order to this whatever it is." Or maybe you're a gardener and you see your garden, you're like, "I let it be overgrown and it's chaotic and I got to start trimming the bushes and mowing the lawn and pruning." Maybe some of you, maybe this will hit home, dishwasher. Maybe your spouse or partner loads it in a certain way and you're like, "That is absolute chaos. Who puts the plates over there and the bowls over there?" Let me bring some order at the end of the night before I turn this dishwasher on. Whatever situation, however lighthearted it may be, or physical, relational, emotional, there's chaos, you're sensing chaos in your life. How can God's words from Scripture through the prompting of His Spirit bring order to that chaos? How can God's words in this book bring order to the chaos in your life, can help you bring order? I want you to think this week about how God's words bring life. Is there a part of you that needs the breath of life from God to breathe into your soul? Is there a part of you that's feeling dead or withering and there's no life in you when it comes to certain parts of your life? Maybe it's all of you right now, you're just feeling like there's nothing there. Maybe it's with parenting, maybe it's with relationships, maybe it's a relationship with God, maybe it's with a passion or a hobby that you used to have and it used to, like, when you participated in that and engaged with it, breathe life into your soul. Maybe it's at work and you're just feeling like work is just draining, there's no life there at work. Where in your situation do you need the words of God to breathe life into that situation, to help you? Do what you were meant to do, be who you were meant to be. So ask yourself this week, how can God's words bring life to that which is dead within me? And then thirdly, talking about, I want you to think this week about God's power and his words bringing purpose to your life. Do you need to be reminded of the purpose you were created for, to co-reign with Christ? Are you living life with that purpose? Are God's words constantly at the forefront of our minds helping us live missionally in whatever we're doing at work, around other parents, with our kids, even by ourselves? Do we have it on the forefront of our mind that we live for Christ? That our purpose, our existence was made by God with a purpose to partner with him in what he is doing here on earth? And instead of having to try to create that purpose ourselves or just willing things to be better by our own strength, where can we search God's words and find the power where the Spirit moves to find that purpose? Instead of feeling lost or wandering around in life, where can scripture help us be more intentional and live with that purpose? How can God's words bring purpose into your life? So I hope this was helpful.

Again, the hope of our series and each week is to build within us the tools to better read and understand scripture, to recognize certain themes and motifs that the author has intentionally included to help us readers and followers of Jesus better understand God's message, who he is and what he does. As you read your Bible this week, look for any parts where there is chaos and see if God brings order at some point. Look for moments where God brings life and look for moments where he speaks and it brings purpose to that passage. And as you do, trust that God's creative power to bring purpose to the chaos in your life is alive and he wants that for you. We can read this and think, great, this is going to happen elsewhere in the text, but we can also think this is going to happen for me. What happens here, what I read about is the same God that I worship today. So what he did then, he can do now. I also want to open up from this Sunday for all the other Sundays, understanding that we're asking you to engage with scripture, maybe in the way that you already are or maybe in a new way. And that can be difficult or challenging. You may have questions. We would love to walk alongside you as you read your scriptures, as you read the Bible.

So if you ever have any questions, please text Pastor Chris, myself, you can text the church number, Pastor Lauren, email us, however you want to get ahold of us. Don't let those questions go by the wayside. Offer them up and say, hey, I'm thinking this, I'm seeing this, is that true? Because again, we don't want to be connecting dots that aren't there and all of a sudden we have this misunderstanding. But as you engage with scripture and as God is revealing things to you, share those things. It's so good. It's so encouraging to hear what God is doing in your lives through the reading of his word. All right, you guys pray with me? God, thank you again for your word. Thank you so much for a text that is alive and living and is powerful. God to see and read what you have done in the past and what you continue to do. Just give such encouragement, such joy and is so reassuring for our faith. And so I pray that as we read this morning, as we read in our day to day lives, this point forward, God, that you would speak through your scripture. You would speak to our hearts, that you know exactly where we're at in life and what we need. And so if it's order, God, if we're in chaotic situations, God, I pray that you would use scripture to see how we might make steps to bring order to that. If we are feeling dead or withering and our souls are just not thriving, God, I pray that your word would speak life into us. And God, if we're wandering and feeling lost, God, I pray that your word would speak purpose and give us steps to take. God, that we would cling to you in these times and that we would cling to your word as our guide. We ask that you would speak to us this week, God. We love you and we give all that we have to you. In your name we pray. Amen.