“Isaac” – Genesis 22

Okay, now that the kids have gone off to kid’s church, I have a confession to make. I cheated in French class. Yep. I’m a cheater. In high school, we had to take a foreign language and I took French, probably because my buddy Kevin was in there and my girlfriend at the time was in there, so why not?

Now, when I say I cheated, I don’t mean I cheated one time on a test. It’s a little more than that. On the first day of school, the French teacher passed out the textbook for the year and also a workbook. We were to read a chapter in the textbook every day and then, for our homework, we would take a little quiz in the handbook.

But the handbook had all the answers to the quizzes in the back. They were printed on perforated paper and the teacher told us to rip all the answers out of the workbook and pass them forward. She made sure we all did that and she took them all up and then she put them in a tall, metal storage cabinet at the front of the room. We all watched her put them on the top shelf and then she closed the storage cabinet. No lock.

About that time, if I remember right, something happened and she got called out of class. Maybe it was another teacher calling her into the hallway to discuss where happy hour was that evening or something. I don’t know. But when she left, my buddy Kevin looked at me and then he looked at the cabinet. He looked at me again and I knew what he was thinking and I just nodded. So, he walked up to the front of the room, opened the cabinet, took out two answer packets and walked back to his seat and handed me one. Nobody said a word.

So, all year, all during the week, I made perfect 100’s on every quiz. But there was a problem. I’ll give you one guess as to what happened every Friday. Yep. Every Friday, we had a test on what we had learned during the week, a test that couldn’t be taken home and cheated on. And I hadn’t learned anything during the week so, every test, I bombed.

Now, I’m not proud of what we did although I will always blame Kevin for being the instigator. But don’t you worry, I have asked God to forgive me of that and a billion other things and He has forgiven me. But even today, I still don’t like tests. Can you imagine how I felt in high school French class though on Fridays? I knew I had no chance of passing that test. I had zero confidence in myself to be able to pass that test.

It is the same way today. When I go through tests and trials in this life, I have no confidence in myself. I am not smart enough or strong enough or wise enough or anything enough to get through what this life throws at me. But I have something better than a cheat sheet. I have a personal relationship with the Teacher, the Great I Am, the King of kings and Lord of lords and He loves me. In fact, I am the Teacher’s pet.

This does not mean that I don’t go through tests nor does it mean I always pass the first time I go through them. Sometimes I still bomb. But He forgives me and helps me and guides me and is always there to provide everything I need. But it is not because there is anything special in me. In fact, He will do all of that for you as well. Yes, you too can be the Teacher’s pet and you may already be. If you are not, I will tell you how you can in just a minute.

But first, I want us to look at a major test that Abraham and his son, Isaac, went through. We are continuing our study of Genesis with a focus on knowing God better and we have come to chapter 22 of Genesis where we read the famous story of Abe and Isaac and like so much in the book of Genesis, we are left with a lot of questions but also a lot of instructions and examples and ultimately a wonderful picture of who God is. Let’s see it in Genesis 22:1-14.

1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. 

2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” 

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 

4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 

5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” 

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 

7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” 

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. 

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 

10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 

11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. 

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” 

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 

14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

Before we get any further, I think we need to answer some questions about this story. And there are lots of questions but only a few do we really need to know the answer to. I would like to know how old Isaac was when this happened but we aren’t told. Experts say anywhere between 10 and 33. However old he was, he could have refused and we will talk some more about that later.

 

I would like to know how Abraham felt about all of this but nothing is written of his emotions. I would also like to know what Isaac thought. That would be interesting. But the real question is, what did they tell Sarah when they got home? “Hey guys! How was the camping trip?” What do you tell her? I can imagine Isaac saying, “Well, it was okay until dad tried to plunge the dagger into my heart.” Right? That conversation didn’t get recorded and while it would be interesting to know the answers to those questions, we don’t need to know them.

 

One question that we do need to know the answer to is, why would God ask Abe to do this in the first place? What kind of God do we serve that would ask a man to do such a thing to his son, especially after promising old man Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation? And then at the last minute say, “Aw, psyche! Just checking to see if you would do it.” That sounds cruel, doesn’t it?

 

The answer to that question is in the first verse. God did it to “test” Abraham. But to understand that, we need to know the difference in a test and a temptation. The difference is in the expected outcome. You may be tested by God. If so, He wants you to make the right choice because He wants to bless you. Satan will tempt you hoping you make the wrong choice so you have to endure the consequences. And sometimes God may test and Satan may tempt in the same circumstance.

 

When General Motors tests a Ford vehicle, what outcome do they hope to see? They hope to see failure. When GM tests a GM product, what do they hope to see? Success. It may be the same test. They just hope for different outcomes. Sometimes it is obvious in our lives. Is God testing you by presenting you with an opportunity for a weekend of booze and prostitutes? That’s an easy one to see. Of course not. But maybe you find yourself with an opportunity to have a new job. And in this opportunity, God is testing you to see if you will hear His still, small voice that is saying, “That’s not the best for you.”, but Satan is screaming, “Take it and get rich, big boy!”

 

Here in Genesis 22, God is testing Abraham. But He is testing Isaac as well and that is the fascinating thing that often gets overlooked in this passage. Like I said, Isaac can be anywhere between 10 and 33 and was probably closer to 33, I think. But however old he was, he could have refused. He could have said no to Abe and just run off. What was Abe gonna do? He was over one hundred years old at this point. So, obviously Isaac had faith in God and faith in his father at the same time.

 

So, what about you? Let’s get right to the application of this passage. Do you have faith? How do you know? I have been told that soldiers can go through basic training and every kind of preparation, school, physical and mental training and every pep talk and motivational speech the military can provide for them but they will still never be prepared for combat…until they see combat. Nothing can prepare you or prove that you are ready for combat until you are there and not everybody is able to handle it.

 

Ben works on airplanes and he told me that when they get a certain type of airplane ready for production, they take one of them and test it on some kind of big machine that shakes it and puts pressure on it and simulates all the stresses of air travel. That helps them to know if any bolts are going to come loose or if under pressure something is going to happen that they didn’t plan on. But nothing proves that airplane is safe and effective until a test pilot flies it and puts it through some live tests and those tests are difficult but they prove the plane’s stability.

 

So, if I ask you if you have faith, what would you say? Of course, you would say you have faith, right? But God tests us to prove that faith. And your faith is for your benefit, the benefit of others and for God’s glory. God wants all that to happen so you can expect God to give you plenty of opportunities to prove that faith.

 

Before this happened, if you had asked Abe if he had faith, I’m sure he would say he did. He could have pointed to the fact that it was already said of him in Genesis 15:6 that he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. But after this, he didn’t have to say anything. Nobody would ask that question because it was obvious by how he and Isaac both reacted to being tested.

 

James 2 in the New Testament says, “21Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23And the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called God's friend. 24You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.”

 

Scripture was proven to be true. Abraham and Isaac were both proven to have faith and God was proven to provide through this one test. That is a situation with “God” written all over it. Yes, it was difficult. But in one test, God proved His word was true, His servants were faithful and He would provide AND prove another scripture that people have a hard time understanding in Romans 8:28 that says that God causes all things to work together for the Christian’s good. This difficult test proved to be for the good of Abe, Isaac and every believer from then until now.

 

And isn’t that just like God? When God says He will provide, He provides more than we could ever ask or imagine, especially when you go through a test and make it to the other side in faith. So many times, when it looks like God is taking away just what we always wanted, he provides something for us that is so much better. How many of you can testify to that?

 

I heard the story of a little girl that loved to wear her mother’s pearl necklace. Her mother would put it on her sometimes and let her wear it in front of the mirror for a few minutes but they were, of course, too valuable to let her wear all the time. But that little girl just thought those pearls were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and thought when she grew up, she wanted to wear pearls like her mama.

 

Then one day, while the girl was playing outside, she found a cheap strand of fake, plastic pearls. They were made in China and not the right color and the string was even broken. But the little girl didn’t care. She took them inside and cleaned them up and tied the string back together and she wore those pearls everywhere. She never took them off. She thought she now looked just like her mama and she was quite the little miss thang, you know? She was so proud!

 

But then one day, her mama came to her and asked for the little girl’s necklace. The girl asked “Why?” but her mama just asked again. The girl was confused. She couldn’t understand why her mama would take the necklace from her. She was so proud of it and now they looked alike. Why would she ask for her necklace when she had one of her own? She cried and cried and just refused and her mother kept asking.

 

This went on for awhile and finally it was bedtime. The little girl went to bed but couldn’t sleep thinking of how pretty she looked and why her mother would be so mean to take away her pearls. But the longer she laid there, the more she knew what she had to do. So, she went to her mama in the middle of the night and through tears in her eyes, gave her the prized necklace. And you know what happened, right? The mother opened up her own jewelry box, pulled out the real pearls and put them around her daughter’s neck. And everybody was happy.

 

For those of you that have been tested by God, you can attest to God’s provision after the test. You can now see that what was horrible, He turned for your good. You can see that what Satan wanted to use for your undoing, God used for your good. You can see, like Joseph saw later in Genesis, that what your enemies intended for your harm, God intended for your good and for the benefit of those around you. (Genesis 50:20) You knew it with your mind before that God provides but now you know that you know that God provides and when He provides, He provides more than we could ever ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20)

 

God may take something away that is good so He can give you His best. It may be painful. It may be your wife, your job and your church and those might not be bad things but not what God wants for you. They may not be the best for you and God wants what is best for you and all you have to do is be obedient.

 

Isaac had heard his father talk about God’s provision and God’s promise and how he, Isaac, was the fulfillment of that promise. He knew that God provided. He would say that he had faith in God and faith in his father but it wasn’t until Isaac was tested that he really knew it. Abraham and Isaac were both like privates fresh out of boot camp before this. They knew what they were supposed to do but they had not been tested.

 

Look back to verse 12. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”  “Now I know”, God says. And that doesn’t mean that God didn’t know before. God wasn’t on the sidelines biting His nails hoping that Abe and Isaac would do the right thing but He wasn’t sure. He knew it. He just wanted Abe and Isaac to prove it; prove it to themselves and to God and to everybody watching.

 

And what is it that God knows? God knows that they feared God. They obeyed because they feared God. That word “fear” in Hebrew is “yare” (yaw-ray) and it means to stand in awe of and to show the respect due. It means to revere and worship.

 

I have a niece who is deathly afraid of clowns. She can’t stand them, doesn’t want to look at them or even see a picture of them. Clowns are not a laughing matter to her. She hates them. I don’t know why. But that’s not the picture here of yare fear.

 

The fear of the Lord is knowing that God gives and God takes away. He is sovereign, all-powerful, and all-knowing. He can bless you with long life or stop your beating heart with a thought. When you know God you will fear God. You aren’t scared of Him but you understand His power and you don’t want any part of His wrath. When you know God, you are obedient to God and when you are obedient to God, God provides everything you need.

 

Abraham knew God as the God Who provides. That’s what he called the place where they were in verse 14. We would translate that verse from the Hebrew as, “So Abraham called that place (Jehovah-Jireh). And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.” Jehovah-Jireh means the God that provides or even the God that makes it happen. I like that.

 

God will test you. It will be difficult. You may lose friends, family, job, stuff, health, money, contentment or a string of pearls but all we have to do is be obedient. All we have to do is make God look good in our lives. Fear Him. Revere Him. Worship Him even when it is hard and you watch God provide. You watch God reward you.

 

But just like me trying to take a French test, you can’t go through God’s test or Satan’s temptations by yourself. But even there, God provides. God has provided His Word. He has provided His Spirit to live inside you. He has provided His bride, the church, to comfort you and support you and hold you accountable. He has provided everything you need. All you have to do is be obedient.

 

Do you know God today? Do you really know Him or just know of Him? Do you believe in Him or really just believe Him? There is a big difference. You can know Him and believe Him and He wants you to and He wants to bless you. But you have to give Him everything that is you. Give Him your faith, your dreams, your future, your health, your finances and your very life and He will provide.

 

He provided His Son for you. Just like Abraham was willing to do, God did. Oh, the parallels between God the Father and His Son Jesus with Father Abraham and his son Isaac are staggering and maybe we will see some of that tonight but all you need to know right now is that God provided His Son as the perfect sacrifice to pay the price the Father said was due for your sins. It is a price you can only pay with death in Hell forever but Jesus paid the price for you and all you have to do is believe. When you do, you can be Teacher’s pet like the rest of us. Do that right now as we pray.

 

 

 

“Abram” – Genesis 12:1-3

Okay, I want to show you a trick I used to do on my skateboard. (Skateboard in hand, helmet on head) It’s a really good trick. I think you’ll be impressed. Are you ready? Here we go. You know what? I think I better not. Years ago, I might have done it but now, when I get tempted to ride this thing, there is a little voice in my head that tells me not to. And the older I get, the louder that voice becomes. Anybody know what I’m talking about? I bet my mother is thinking, “Finally, that voice started talking to him!”

I have a question for you. How do you know when God is speaking to you? How do you know it is God and not your own idea, or even worse, a temptation from Satan to do something that is wrong? How do you know when it’s not just common sense telling you something like, don’t ride that skateboard, old man? How do you know? I ask that because rarely does God speak to us audibly. It would be a lot easier to know it was God if He would just say, “Hey, Todd! This is God. I want you to do so and so.” But He has never done that for me.

First, to hear God’s voice we must belong to God. Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27) Those who hear God’s voice are those who belong to Him—those who have been saved by His grace through faith in Jesus. These are the sheep who hear and recognize His voice, because they know Him as their Shepherd. If we are to recognize God’s voice, we must belong to Him. If you never hear God speaking to you, it may be because you don’t truly know Him.

God speaks to us most often through His Word, the Bible, and through prayer. If you never hear God speaking to you and you do know Him, you should probably start there. God also speaks through His Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. Romans 8:26 says the Spirit helps us in our weakness. He does that by speaking to us in a still, small voice just like God did with Elijah. But sometimes that voice is so still and small that it can be hard to hear.

Can you imagine, though, living before any scripture was written, before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and lived in every believer like He does now and before much was known about God at all? Abram lived before Christianity and even before Judaism and yet Genesis 12 says that God spoke to Abram. Stephen tells us in the New Testament in Acts 7 that God gave Abram some specific instructions and that Abram just obeyed.

We don’t know but I think God must have spoken to him audibly but however God spoke, Abram was obedient. I could stop right there and camp out just on that thought. God spoke to Abram and Abram was obedient. What a concept! It doesn’t say Abram had to pray about it or that Abram doubted or tried to explain to God all the reasons why he couldn’t do what God asked. And God asked him to do a big thing. Let’s look at it in Genesis 12, verses 1-3.

We are continuing our study in Genesis trying to know God better and you can’t deal with Genesis without dealing with Abram who most of us know became the great Abraham, the father of Judaism and Christianity. Abram is a fascinating character. Like I said he was born before any real organized religion and his family would have been considered pagans. There was nothing really special about Abe before God spoke to him and yet God made him great.

Abram lived in what was called Ur of the Chaldeans. It was in probably modern-day Iraq. God told him to move to Canaan, which is roughly what we call Israel today. That doesn’t look too far away on a map but for Abram, it meant a trip of about 500 miles which would be like moving to Australia for us today.

Let me read to you exactly what God said in Genesis chapter 12. It was a life-changing promise from God; life-changing for Abram and his family and it continues to change lives even today. What a huge thing God asked of Abram and I want you to see the huge promise that God makes and Abram’s response to it. Let’s read Genesis 12:1-3.

The LORD had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. 2"I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Let’s stop right there. That’s enough to keep us busy for a while. Let me ask you a question. Why? Not, “Why would Abram agree to this promise and be obedient?” That’s not hard to see at all. He was going to make out like a bandit in this deal. I want to know why God would offer this promise in the first place. And…why Abram? What had Abram done to deserve to become the father of the great nation of Israel?

But this is not to diminish the sacrifice Abram had to make and the huge leap of faith he had to take. Abram had to walk away from everyone and everything he knew and go to a place God had yet to reveal. But when he did, God promised three big blessings. God will bless him. He will be a blessing and he will be a channel of blessing.

The first means that Abram will come under God’s care, protection and favor. The second means that Abram will provide care and protection to those in favor with him. Lot is an example of that in chapter 14. The third means that God will bring blessing to other people through Abram and his family. (NIV Application Commentary)

Those are huge, in fact, unfathomable promises from God. There is no way Abram could have foreseen all that this would mean just for his own family, not to mention the world. But I go back to the question, why? What’s in it for God? We see some of what it means for Abram but what’s in it for God? Well, I have come to understand that the ultimate reason that God does anything is for His glory. There may be other reasons for things happening but all things are for God’s glory.

In Psalm 19 it says He created the world to declare his glory. Isaiah 43 says He made man for His glory. He gave us the Law for His glory. I could go on and on. He allows some to get sick and some to be healed for His glory. And He should! That is why He is God. God made people out of a desire to glorify himself. If it didn’t glorify God to make us, to save us, to love us, he wouldn’t have done it. God never ever puts anything above himself. The fact that God made and commands all living creatures to worship him is the very evidence he alone is God. (Mark Ballenger)

So, the ultimate reason that God made this deal; this promise; this covenant with Abram was for God’s glory. But I see at least three other specific reasons why God did this and as we have been focusing on knowing God better, I believe that all three reasons make this a prophecy that is completely fulfilled in Jesus. I didn’t set out to make them all start with the letter “R” but it just worked out.

The first part of this prophecy is a promise for a relationship. In verse 2, God says, "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.” Think about your kids and your grandkids for a minute. What is the absolute best thing you can do for your them? Would giving them a million dollars be best for them? I don’t care how old they are. Lots of money is rarely the best thing for anybody.

If you want to make your kids grow up into great people, the best thing you can do for them is have a good relationship with them. When they are little, you don’t have to be their friend. You teach them how to behave and how to interact with others and to show character and have morals and love God and they will be great.

That’s what our Heavenly Father promised Abram. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.” What better way of doing that; what better way to make a person great than to have a relationship with God? Does God give you everything you want? Does He spoil you? Does He ever give you anything that is going to harm you? Sometimes we get our hands on things (or people) that are not good for us but that is not God’s will. James 1:17 says every good and perfect thing comes from God.

Imagine this with me. Triune God; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are looking down from Heaven to earth. God has created all things and now wants to have a closer relationship with what He has created so the Spirit goes down to Abram and starts to place thoughts in his mind about something better and something different. He causes Abram to have dreams about moving. He does the same for Abram’s wife, Sarai, giving her peace about packing up and leaving so that when God speaks to Abram, His word is verified by Sarai and makes the choice to be obedient an easy one.

But God cannot tolerate sin. He can’t be around it. He doesn’t want to look at it and for God to have a better relationship with man, He gives man the institutions of sacrifice and the Law of Moses. With the Law, man can see he is sinful and with the sacrifice of an animal, his sins are covered over.

But we have Jesus. We aren’t under the Law. We follow Jesus. We don’t need the sacrifice anymore. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice. Do you see how Jesus was the perfect fulfillment of the prophecy and the promise God gave to Abram back thousands of years before Jesus came to earth in the flesh? God doesn’t want your sacrifice. He doesn’t want your religion. He wants you and only you but all of you and we can now have that relationship with God through His Son, Jesus.

The second part of this prophecy is a promise for revelation. I’m not talking about just the last book of the Bible. I mean God has revealed Himself to us. At the end of verse 2, God tells Abe, “I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” It’s not going to be long before people start seeing Abram and seeing how he is blessed and how he’s a blessing and they start saying, “I don’t know who his God is, but I need to find out.” And God will reveal Himself to them. Can you imagine not having that revelation of who God is?

How does God reveal Himself to us? A big part of being a disciple of Jesus is the peace and joy we can have even in the difficult times and we have that peace and joy because we know God.  And God wants to reveal Himself to us. How does God reveal Himself to us today? One way is He has given us His Holy Spirit to live inside us. 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

He reveals Himself through His creation. Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

He reveals Himself through prayer. David prayed in Psalm 143:10, “God, teach me to do your will.” What God wants is revealed to us through prayer. All we have to do is ask. God wants you to know His will and He wants to reveal it to you.

But the greatest way that God reveals Himself to us is through the life of Jesus as found in scripture. In John 14:8-10 Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”

Again, Jesus fulfilled the promise of God to Abram. He wants a relationship with us and so He has revealed Himself to us, mainly through His Son, Jesus. And the last part of this promise to Abram is the prophecy that Jesus fulfilled of redemption. One of the most world-changing verses in scripture is found in this passage in verse 3 where God says, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Abram became the father of the nation of Israel, the same nation of Israel that still sits over in the Middle East and is hated by every country around it. You know, I’m not a very smart guy (you don’t have to say amen right there) but I wish I could give one piece of advice to every world leader. All you democrats that hate Israel, all you countries around Israel, the leader of Russia and China and everybody else, let me give you this advice.

God, the Creator of the universe, the Almighty, the One who is and was and is to come made a promise several thousand years ago to a little guy named Abram and that promise has no expiration date. If you bless Israel, you will be blessed. If you curse Israel, you will be cursed. Period. So, when the president says we are going to give Israel millions of dollars, that is a great investment. Go for it. We should all support Israel, if no other reason than because God says we will be blessed if we do.

But there is more to this than just supporting Israel. God said that all peoples on earth will be blessed through Abram and Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of that because it is through Jesus that we are redeemed. What does it mean to be redeemed? How did God redeem you? The word redeem means “to buy out.” The term was used specifically in reference to the purchase of a slave’s freedom. We were all slaves to sin and the Law said that sin required death. That was God’s Law. But God sent Jesus to pay that price; literally to redeem us and make us right with Him.

For Abram, it says he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15). He was saved by grace and through faith just like we are. And God was faithful to Abram and did all that He promised and continues that promise even today. How has God been faithful to you in the past?  Let’s think about that for a minute. What promises has God made us?

God promised protection for His children (Psalm 121). God promised that His love will never fail (1 Chronicles 16:34). God promised that all things will work out for good for His children (Romans 8:28). God promised comfort in our trials (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). God promised new life in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). God promised peace when we pray (Philippians 4:6–7). God promised to supply our needs (Matthew 6:33; Philippians 4:19). I could go on and on. But God has been faithful to keep every promise He has ever made. He has been faithful!

God called Abram out of his old life and into a new life and promised Abe He would bless him and God was faithful. That same God loves you too much to leave you alone where you are. He is always calling us out of the old and into the new. He is always calling us to look and act more like Jesus and when we are obedient, God is still faithful.

What is He calling you out of today? Is it a place, a thing, a habit? It might be a person or a way of life. It may be completely life-changing or it may be a small thing. But like Abram’s obedience affecting the whole rest of the world, oftentimes our obedience has a great affect on other people.

There is a great story that I read that illustrates this. You probably know the story. It never mentions God but it doesn’t have to. It’s still a great story. I’ll paraphrase it and you will still probably recognize it. Years ago, there was a beautiful young queen. And all she had to do was go talk to the king. Actually, all she had to do was go stand in the king’s presence. That’s all she had to do and it would have been no big deal but the problem was, it was against the law to go into the king’s presence, even for the queen, if you hadn’t been summoned. She could be killed just for going into his inner court unless he extended his golden scepter towards her when he saw her.

She told her uncle, “Look Uncle Mordy, I can’t do that. He might have me killed before I can even talk to him.” But her uncle was a wise old man and he said, “Look, girl, this is not just for your benefit. It is for the benefit of your whole family and even the whole nation that you do this. And it will be done by somebody even if you don’t. But if you aren’t obedient, you will miss out on the blessing. And who knows but maybe this is the very reason that God made you and put you in this place for this very thing?” (Esther 4)

Do y’all want to guess how the story ends? The queen was obedient and it all worked out better than expected. Do you know what God did? He was faithful. He was so faithful it was literally funny! He was so faithful to her and to her uncle and God did more than they could ever ask or imagine for the whole nation just because the queen was obedient.

What is God asking you to do? Maybe He wants you to do something in your family or in the church. Maybe He wants you to start something or to stop something. Maybe it involves what you put in your mouth or maybe it involves what comes out of your mouth. Maybe He is telling you what He has told everybody else already or maybe He wants you to do what nobody has ever done before. It may be dangerous or it may be no big deal. All you have to do is be obedient. And do you know what God will do? He will be faithful. He will be faithful to the promises He has given in the Bible. He will be faithful to the promises He gives you in prayer. He will be faithful and it will often affect the people around you.

If you knew that your obedience to that thing He is telling you about right now would be the catalyst to bringing your friend or your relative or even your child or grandchild to Christ, would you do it? Would you be obedient if it meant changing the world? It might. And God’s will is going to be done. But if you aren’t obedient, you will miss out on the blessing. But who knows? Maybe you were put in this position for such a time as this?

Let’s pray.

Noah’s Ark – Genesis 6:5-22

How many of you remember a TV show simply called “24”? It was popular back 10-15 years ago and featured a character named Jack Bauer who was supposedly a counter-terrorism specialist and he got into all kinds of adventures and every episode was based on one day – 24 hours - in his life. Now, I had to look all that up because I never watched the show. But I had a friend who just loved it and he kept telling me how much I would enjoy it. I kept resisting and he kept talking about how great it was and so, I was flipping channels one day and it was on, so I tried to watch it. I tuned in just in time to see the great Jack Bauer run into a parking lot and smash the window of a car with his fist. He reaches in and unlocks it, opens the door and sits down and reaches under the dash. He then pulls out a bunch of wires from under the dash, pulls two of them apart and immediately hotwires the car and drives off. And I’m done. I turned it off and never watched another minute of it. Anybody want to guess why?

I can’t stand to watch shows that aren’t at least a little bit believable. You can’t do what Jack Bauer did and I know because, for one thing, I locked my keys in my car one time and decided I would just break the window with my fist. Do you know what broke? Not the window. Modern cars are made to where you just can’t do that. And do you have any idea how impossible it is to hotwire a car like that? If you have ever done any wiring on a car, you know that is completely impossible. I told my buddy that loved the show about it and how I would rather watch a cartoon than something like that. At least with a cartoon, they aren’t trying to be believable. But I could probably believe Popeye could throw Brutus over a house after eating spinach more than I could believe Jack Bauer hotwired a car. Just stop with that. It’s ridiculous.

A lot of people read the Bible like that, especially all the cool old stories in the Old Testament. They like to read about David and Goliath or Daniel in the lions’ den or Samson killing a thousand men. Those are great stories and fun to read and you can get some good morals from them but surely they aren’t meant to be true, right? Except they are true. And there are a lot more of them than that and some are even harder to believe than those. When was the last time you read about Noah’s ark? I hope you have lately. It is found in Genesis chapters 6, 7 and 8 and when you read through it with an eye toward plausibility, it might as well be Popeye the sailor man. Most of us grew up hearing and reading the story of Noah and the ark and we read in the little story book that Noah brought two of all the animals into the ark and it rained for forty daisy daisies, as the song goes. But there is way more to it than that. Like I say, I hope you got my email to read Genesis 6, 7 and 8 because I am only going to read a small portion of it, not all three chapters. And as I read this, I want us to think about why God flooded the earth, how God flooded the earth and how would all of this even be remotely possible?

Listen as I read just Genesis 6:5-22. The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. 11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

Okay, let’s start with the first question. Why did God flood the earth? It says that God saw how evil man was and regretted making them. So, I guess this was God’s first mistake. He goofed. He didn’t make man quite right and he regretted the mistake. Some versions even say He repented of it so I guess you could say His mistake was a sin, huh? Well, you could say it but it would be blasphemy so probably don’t do that. This phrasing has been a problem for a lot of people over the years. A misunderstanding of what it says can lead to a lot of other problems, so we want to get it right. How many of you have ever read any Shakespeare at all? Most of us had to read Romeo and Juliet in high school at least. Probably the most famous line in Romeo and Juliet is when Juliet cries out from her window, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefor art thou, Romeo?” That sounds like she is asking Romeo where he is but it actually means, “Why is your name Romeo?” Well, we don’t talk like that anymore, do we? The English language has changed a bit since Bill Shakespeare was writing sonnets and love poems back in the day trying to impress girls and English teachers. Well, if you think the language has changed since Shakespeare who lived about 500 years ago, you can imagine how it has changed since Moses wrote this about 3500 years ago in another language that has been translated into English.

In other words, we don’t have the right English words to accurately reflect what God was thinking when He decided to flood the earth. Commentators tell us that a better reading of this would be that God, like a good bookkeeper, audited the books and decided the time was right to bring them into balance. God is all-powerful. God is orderly. He is sovereign and He is full of grace. He is also just, as we saw last week. And being all these things rolled into One, God allows sin for a time. He allows the books to be unbalanced for a while, but not forever. It says that God saw how wicked mankind was. He saw that it needed adjustment. It is also what happens sometimes to the stock market. When the Federal Reserve guys see that the stock market is headed seriously in the wrong direction, they make an adjustment. God saw that the earth needed a huge adjustment and He was just the One to do it. It does not mean that He made a mistake. It was mankind’s continued mistakes that made the adjustment necessary and so God flooded the earth and destroyed everything and everybody except Noah and his family.

That leads us to question number two. How did God flood the earth? Well, in chapter 7, verses 11-12, it says that “on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.” So, that’s a lot of water, evidently. It was enough water for a long enough period of time to cover all the mountains. The question that everybody asks is, was the flood global or local? Did God really flood the whole earth or just the part that had people on it at the time or was it just in the area of the Middle East that Noah lived in?

Genesis 1:6-7 and 2:6 tell us that the pre-flood environment was much different from that which we experience today. Based on these and other biblical descriptions, it is reasonably speculated that at one time the earth was covered by some kind of water canopy. This canopy could have been a vapor canopy, or it might have consisted of rings, somewhat like Saturn’s ice rings. This, in combination with a layer of water underground, released upon the land (Genesis 2:6) would have resulted in a global flood. The clearest verses that show the extent of the flood are Genesis 7:19-23. Regarding the waters, “They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet.” In these verses we not only find the word “all” being used repeatedly, but we also find “all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered,” “the waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet,“ and “every living thing that moved on the earth perished.” These descriptions clearly show a universal flood covering the whole earth. (https://www.gotquestions.org/global-flood.html)

So, now that leads me to the last and most important question. How is all of this (or any of this) even remotely possible? In Matthew 19:26, Jesus said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." If you want to get a laugh, just google, “Was Noah’s flood possible?” Page after page of all the reasons why this is just a myth. This has to be a fairy tale because the ark wasn’t big enough to hold all the animals and the eight people and all of their food and fresh water. There is no way for it to rain and even add all the waters under the earth to get that much water on this planet. It couldn’t get here and it couldn’t go away, especially in that amount of time. How could there still be fresh water and saltwater if they obviously had to mix? How come nobody has ever found any evidence of the ark? It must have been an impressive structure. If the ark came to rest on top of Mt. Ararat which is about 17,000 feet above sea level, how did Noah and his family get down, especially with him being 600 years old? How did the elephants get down? How did the three-toed sloth get down and all the way to South America?  How did the dove fly down to where olive trees grow in valleys and then fly all the way back up to the boat?

I could go on and on. And they all have the same answer. It is impossible. A lot of people try to make it work scientifically and mathematically. They try to take up for God and prove that it really could actually happen. But it’s impossible. It just is. You know what else is impossible? It is impossible for a meth addict to get off meth. It is impossible for a drunk to quit drinking. It is impossible for a little country church to have any affect for the Kingdom of God. It is impossible for people to be cured of cancer. It is impossible for white people to love black people in this day and age. It is impossible for any of us to be worthy of another breath, much less to be able to live in Heaven for eternity but I quote Jesus again when I say, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." We are sitting in a church building filled with impossibilities and yet here we sit. We sit here as created beings loved by the Creator who can, and by all rights should, thump me right off the planet into Hell and yet, by His amazing grace, I am still here. I am still here and we have seen all of those impossibilities happen. We have any number of us who can testify that God has brought us out of any number of impossible circumstances, many of which were self-imposed over and over again.

We know that the flood narrative is true because it is in the Bible. We know that it is true because Peter, Isaiah and Jesus also believed it. We know that it is true because we know God to be all-powerful and if He can create the universe with a word then He can destroy it with a flood. And while He is all-powerful, we also know Him to be all-loving and just like He protected and provided for Noah, God will protect and provide for His children today. In chapter 6 did you read the part where Noah asks God why and how and then argues with Him that it is impossible?  No?  Did you see in chapter 7, I believe, where Noah complained that it was too hard and too much work?  Or maybe it was in chapter 8 where Noah doubted God and His instructions.  No.  In fact, there is no record of Noah ever saying anything.  But it does say in 6:22 that “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.” Oh, I wish that could be said of me!  I wish that God could have faith in me that when He told me to do something, I would just do it instead of trying to figure out why and how and then figure out a “better” way and then make excuses for not doing what I was told to do because God’s way was obviously impossible.

If you have a hard time believing all of the stories in the Bible then you must have a hard time believing that the sun comes up in the east every morning.  You can’t surely believe that cells multiply in the body, that babies are born or that hair grows on heads!  At least some heads.  Because I dare you to explain how any of that works if there is not an infinite Creator Who can and does do miracles! And He wants to do a miracle in your life. Now, this is the part in the sermon where a lot of pretty preachers with perfect hair and thousands of people in their church this morning will stand up and declare that God wants to do a miracle in your life by lifting you out of poverty. God wants to do a miracle in your life by healing your body right here and right now and all you have to do is have faith (and tithe to their church).

I’m not going to say that. I’m not going to say that even though it could possibly be true. God might want to deliver you financially or physically but that is not promised anywhere in scripture. A lot of times God allows us or even causes us to go through a flood or a storm or some great difficulty because He knows that on the other side of that storm, you will look more like Him. That is the miracle. Another miracle that God wants to do in your life is just protect you and provide for you. As a true believer, a disciple of Jesus, a follower of the one, true God, we have God’s special favor. God is love and He loves everybody but not everybody is a Christian. But for those that are, those that have surrendered their lives and their will to Him, God shows favor.

2 Chronicles 6:19 says, “For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” To those of us who are fully committed, we can watch the news in the evening and we don’t have to lose our peace. We can have joy – calm delight - in the middle of the horror and injustices of this life. We can see that some crazy people are rioting and looting and tearing down statues and taking guns away from cartoon characters and we don’t have to be upset because we know that the same all-powerful God that spoke the universe into existence and the same all-powerful God that delivered Noah and his family is the same all-powerful God that has you right in the palm of His mighty right hand protecting you and providing for you and strengthening your heart.

But don’t you doubt it, all these people out there screaming for justice and telling you what you need to do and how you need to think and how anything else is offensive to them, don’t you worry, they are going to get justice one of these days. But it’s not what they are thinking. God sees what is going on and He sees the injustice and He sees the sin and He sees the wrong motives. He sees the back room deals and the double standards. He sees the pandering politicians and the lies they tell to get re-elected. He sees the idols mankind has put up to worship instead of Him and pretty soon – maybe today – He is going to look to Jesus sitting at His right and tell Him to go get His bride. And who is the bride? We are. The church is the bride of Christ and God the Father – the great bookkeeper – is keeping the books and is only going to allow us to go through so much and then we will be raptured home to Heaven. After that, the world will really descend into chaos and evil until one day the Bookkeeper will once again say, “That’s enough. The account has been audited and the books will be brought back into perfect balance.”

God promised Noah that God would never again flood the earth and sealed that promise with a rainbow but next time God will destroy the earth with fire. One of the places that tell us that is 2 Peter 3:7 that says, “But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” God is love. God is generous. He is good and merciful. But He is also just and as Noah’s story has told us today, He is also all-powerful. Are you ready to meet Him? Are you ready to go right now? We aren’t guaranteed another breath. Jesus may call us home in the next few minutes. We never know. Make double sure you are ready. Let’s go to God in prayer right now and, if you never have before, ask God to forgive you and to cleanse you and to come into your life and change you. All you have to do is believe but that belief will manifest itself in a changed life. Does that describe you? Make sure right now as we pray.

Adam and Eve - Genesis 3

Many of you remember General H. Norman Schwarzkopf for his role as commander of United States Central Command in the Middle East during Operation Desert Storm. In his autobiography, It Doesn’t Take A Hero, he talks about being a freshman - or plebe - at West Point Military Academy. It is fascinating to read his account of life in that school as young man. He says at one point, “Most of the rules plebes had to follow made no sense – for example, you weren’t allowed to look out the window of your room.”

He went on to say that rules like that were there just to see if you could follow them and most were not enforced. They only existed to test your personal truthfulness and honor. He says that one afternoon there was a parade, called a “bandbox review” going on in the Central Area, which was just outside his window. A plebe who lived on the other side of the building came to his room and said, “Mind if I look out your window?”

Schwarzkopf said, “You know you’re not supposed to do that.” The other guy said, “Don’t worry. I’ll stand on a chair way back from the window and no one will ever know.” So that’s what he did but Schwarzkopf never looked and when the parade was over, the guy went back to his room. But just a few minutes later an upperclassman at the Academy burst into Schwarzkopf’s room and accused Schwarzkopf of looking out the window which was, obviously, against the rules.

Schwarzkopf said that this upperclassman had always had it in for him and was just looking for something to accuse him of and couldn’t wait to drum Schwarzkopf out of the Academy. After the older guy chewed him out for a while, Schwarzkopf finally just said, “Sir, I did not watch the review.” The guy screamed at him and said he had seen him standing on the chair. But Schwarzkopf simply said again, “Sir, I did not watch the review.”

“You didn’t?” “No, sir.” “All right.” And he walked out the door. Schwarzkopf never told on the other guy and the upperclassman didn’t ask. But he knew that Schwarzkopf was a man of integrity and would never lie so he left him alone.

I love that little story and when I read it I knew it would make a good sermon illustration one of these days but I want to use it, not for the importance of being honorable necessarily, but for the crazy rules. How many of you have ever read something in scripture or been told by God in prayer or found out some other way that God wants you to do something or not do something and you thought that sounded crazy?

I hear it all the time. Surely God doesn’t say sex before marriage is wrong. It’s not hurting anybody for two consenting adults to live together. And yet scripture teaches that any kind of sex outside of the marriage of one man and one woman is a sin.

Or how about lying? We all know that sometimes you have to tell a little white lie, right? You don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. Or maybe God reveals to you that smoking is a sin for you. “Well, God, why? Everybody else does it!” Well, number one, not everybody is doing it and number two, as your mother would say, “If everybody jumped off a bridge would you do it too?” (Don’t you hate it when somebody – especially you – quotes your mom and you know they’re right?)

Some of God’s rules are hard to understand. At least they are hard to understand until one day you finally see how doing it caused a problem and you finally say, “Oh! Okay, God. I see now why you said not to do that.” I wish I had listened even when I didn’t understand. I wish I had just been obedient even when it didn’t make sense because maybe I wouldn’t be in this jam if I had.

Can you imagine how Adam and Eve must have felt? They didn’t have the privilege of growing up with parents telling them “Sit down! Be quiet! Don’t put that in your mouth! Just because I said so, that’s why! I’ll give you something to cry about. Just wait until your father gets home young man!” Right? Their Father was always home and evidently spent a lot of time with them in the garden and had told them plainly what He expected them to do and what He expected them not to do. But I’m sure it didn’t all make a lot of sense.

Let’s look at some of that in Genesis chapter three this morning. We are continuing our study going through Genesis with a focus on knowing God better. I love Genesis because of the cool, old stories that I grew up reading. Some of you older folks might remember, like me, going to the doctor’s office and in the waiting room there was always this big, light-blue book of Bible stories. I don’t think they still have those in the waiting room anymore but, then again, I haven’t been in a little kid’s waiting room in a few years.

But, anyway, in those books you could read or just look at the pictures of Adam and Eve or David and Goliath or Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac. I remember how those Adam and Eve pictures always placed them strategically behind bushes, at least through chapter three. That’s where we are today. In our passage today, if you were reading from one of those little kids’ story books of the Bible stories, Adam and Eve would be discreetly behind a bush and the picture would show Eve taking a shiny red apple off of a tree that had a mean-looking snake slithering around it. It was fascinating to me when I was 4 years old and it is still fascinating to me today.

Let’s read chapter three of Genesis. I want to read the whole chapter. It’s not that long and it’s a great story with a lot to teach us so just sit back and enjoy the story as I read it. Genesis three says, “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’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” 11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” 12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” 14 So 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. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”16 To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in 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.” 17 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,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 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.” 20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. 21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 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.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 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.

Now, some of my commentaries tell me that Adam bit the apple and feeling great shame, covered himself with a fig leaf. Eve too, felt shame and covered herself with a fig leaf. Then she went behind a bush to try on a maple leaf, a sycamore, and an oak. I don’t know for sure that’s true but it’s probably not far off.

I give you a little joke there because this passage can be depressing. It is very confusing and often frustrating. It is depressing because we want to think that Adam and Eve messed everything up but deep down we know that even if they had resisted temptation and every ancestor after them had somehow resisted temptation, we know that we would have been the ones to mess it up for everybody else.

It is confusing and frustrating because it brings out so many questions and so few answers. I want to know how old Adam and Eve were. What did they look like? What language did they speak? Are they walking with God the Father physically or is this a Christophany? And what about this talking snake? Was that common? Did all the animals talk before the fall? Was that Satan embodied in serpent form? It is frustrating to not know for sure the answers to some of those questions. But, again, if scripture doesn’t answer our questions, then we don’t need to know them.

Like I said last week, the original readers of this would have just accepted everything at face value and not tried to squeeze answers out of verses that weren’t meant to answer them. What we do know is that God told them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that if they did, they would surely die. Those are God’s words in chapter 2.

But then the serpent comes along and whether he was Satan or just used by Satan, we don’t know, but he comes along and twists God’s words. Did you see that? God said don’t eat of this certain tree or you will die. Satan asks Eve, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from any tree”? It’s sort of like asking somebody, “So, do you still beat your wife?” Wait. What? No. I mean…

Satan twists God’s words to sound like there is a bit of truth to it and that is quite literally the oldest trick in the book and Satan still uses it – because it still works. He twists love into sex, work into greed, pleasure into abuse and on and on. He rarely tells an obvious bald-faced lie. He is still too crafty for that. Satan takes the loving union between a man and woman that God blesses and says, “Love is love. Does it really matter if it is between two women or two men or a man and a monkey or a woman and a tree? God says don’t judge.”

We can’t get too mad at Eve or Adam in this deal because we have all fallen for Satan’s lies. We do it every day. He is still crafty and we have to be aware that Satan was then and is still prowling around like a roaring lion looking to see who he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

But here is what I really want us to see this morning. Look at Adam and Eve’s responses to God’s justice. God told them plainly what He expected and what the consequences would be and, yes, Satan was tricky but they have no excuse. But that doesn’t stop them from trying. Look at verses 12 and 13.

Cars and trucks had yet to be invented but Adam threw Eve right under the bus. Eve does the same with the snake. The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Now, who advised them it would help their situation to blame somebody else? Where did they learn that? That’s just our old sinful nature, isn’t it? That’s what all of us sinners do. At least that is our nature to do that. As Christians, we know that Jesus has put to death that old nature. Our job is to just keep it dead.

Numbers 32 says, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Isn’t that the truth? But when it does, we rarely go quietly. If we are going down, we are taking somebody with us. It is what Adam and Eve did and we still do it today.

Now, before I go any further with that, I want you to understand what God meant when He said, “If you eat of this tree, you will die.” Did Adam and Eve die when they ate the fruit? Not physically. But they most definitely died spiritually. Their innocence died. Their hopes died. Their peace most certainly died. They had everything they could ever want in the garden but sin cost them all of it and it does the same for us today. And so often we react to God’s justice in the same way the first couple did.

So many times when we are confronted by our own sin, we lash out at somebody else. We blame somebody else or something else or we make excuses for what we did to shift the guilt, at least partially, to something else. We try to distract from our own injustice to the injustice of somebody else. We love to compare ourselves with somebody else because we can always find somebody that is worse than we are. And when we find that other person, we cry out for justice and it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God in the garden was a snowflake that rolled into a massive snowball that has developed into a world-shaking avalanche of sin. With it has come a tsunami of hatred for our fellow man, a tornado of anger and an earthquake of guilt and it all leaves us desperate for what we think is justice. We think if we can just get the other guy to act right, we will have peace, but it never comes. That’s what sin does. Sin robs us of our peace and so we blame somebody else. Then because of our sin, we rob somebody else of their peace. Sin rarely affects only the sinner and Satan laughs at us just like he laughed the very first time.

Unless you live under a rock, you know that our world and especially our country is falling apart. I have tried to make sense of it and I just can’t. Part of me wants to believe that it is just because I am a white guy living in a white area and I just can’t understand what black people have to go through and I’m sure that is part of it. I know there is racism in this world and it is unacceptable. It is just dumb to me to think that somebody is not as good as I am because of the color of their skin. That’s crazy.

But it’s also sinful and the problem in our world today is not skin but sin and our reaction to God’s justice when we sin. God is just. He always has been and we should be glad for it. He demands perfection and when we can’t be perfect, He has provided a way to Himself through His perfect Son, Jesus, who gave His life for our forgiveness. If you choose not to believe that then you are choosing to be judged according to your deeds. That is just. That is fair. But in this life, don’t expect justice. Don’t expect peace. Don’t expect the other guy to have it either.

One day there was a knock on the king’s door. King David said, “Hey, Nathan, come in. What’s up?” Nathan said, “My king, I want to report a grave injustice! There is a rich guy down the street that stole the only little lamb of the poor man who lived next door. The rich guy had everything but stole from the poor man.”

David puffed up with righteous indignation and said, “I will make that rich man pay! He can’t do that. He won’t get away with it! I will see justice done!”

Then Nathan said, “Oh, by the way, you are that man.” (2 Samuel 12)

And David knew it was true. Do you think David still wanted justice done? Turn to Psalm 51 and read the very first verse where David cries out to God, “Have mercy on me, oh God!” Have mercy. He goes on to say in verse 4, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.”

God is just but we don’t want God’s justice. We want His mercy and we need to go to God before God comes to us and we need to admit, “I am that man. I am that sinner. I am that racist. I am that murderer. I am that liar and that thief and that pervert and that gossip and I am sorry. Please forgive me. I have no excuse. I can’t blame anybody else. I made the choice.”

Before we pray for God to change the world or this country or even change one other person, we need to pray, “God, change me. Please change me. We will talk about that other guy later but right now, I beg of you, Lord, please change me.”

There will be no real justice in this world until the great judgment in Heaven. The Book of Revelation tells us about that in chapter 20. John says, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 15Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

There is only one way to get your name in that eternal book and that is to admit to God that you are a sinner. Ask Him for forgiveness based on His grace and allow Him to come into your life and change you from the inside out. We can do that because Jesus died a perfect sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sins. God is just. Sin always requires death. But all we have to do is believe that Jesus paid that price for us and we get to live eternally in Heaven by God’s amazing grace. Your life WILL change when you truly believe. Have you done that today? Do it right now as we pray.

“Creation” – Genesis 1

Years ago, when our church was still in Runaway Bay, we had a young man in our church who was from India. He was here taking some computer training of some kind and he spoke English well but had not been here long. I remember one Easter we announced that after church we would have an Easter egg hunt for the kids.

We all gathered outside to watch the kids run around and pick up the eggs and put them in their baskets as we have all grown up doing. But as the adults went around and hid the eggs, I could see the man from India looked confused and finally he asked, “What are we doing?”

I said, “We’re hiding Easter eggs.” He nodded his head like he knew what I was talking about and then it became a look of not understanding again and finally he asked, “Why?” I asked him if they hide Easter eggs in India and he said no. They celebrate Easter but he couldn’t understand what fake, plastic chicken eggs had to do with it. And I honestly couldn’t really explain it to him.

Some things we do and we understand just because we have always done those things and they are a part of our culture and we just expect everybody to get it. Were any of you ladies Lucia brides when you grew up? No? If you grew up in Sweden, you probably would have been. In Sweden, December 13^th is St. Lucia’s Day and the young girls dress up as "Lucia brides" in long white gowns with red sashes, and a wreath of burning candles on their heads. (What could go wrong with this?) They wake up their families by singing songs and bringing them coffee and twisted saffron buns called "Lucia cats." (https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/religious-commemorations-around-world/)

That sounds crazy to us, doesn’t it? A wreath of burning candles on your head sounds dumber than fake, plastic chicken eggs in the grass, but whatever. Anyway, there are some things that we can learn from different cultures even if we don’t understand them. The nation of Israel and the Hebrew people have always been a people to themselves. They are close-knit in a way that most other cultures can’t imagine. They have their own culture and it has been relatively unaffected by outsiders.

The United States, on the other hand, has always been a melting pot of different people and different cultures with different styles and tastes and religions and different expectations about all of that. We have taken a bunch of different cultures and made that into our culture in general. So, don’t be surprised when we read scripture that was originally written specifically to the Hebrew people and we don’t understand it. We will have questions because of our culture and our heritage and our language that wouldn’t be a question for the Hebrews.

We just have a whole different mind-set than the original readers of scripture. My brother-in-law, Randy, explained it to me like this. Suppose you went out and bought a brand-new Lamborghini. It has all the options. It is beautiful and crazy fast. Now, for our Bible illustration, suppose you pull up to a group of Greeks in this car. The Greek culture has always appreciated art and beauty and the Greek people that see your new Lambo would want to see it and touch and smell of it. They would love the swoopy lines and the color and the beautiful leather interior. That would impress them.

Now, suppose you showed it to a group of Romans. The Romans were engineers and were into details and they would want you to pop the hood and tell them the horsepower rating and the size of the tires and how fast could it go? That would impress them. That was their culture.

But if you pulled up to an Old Testament Hebrew Bible character (humor me on this) they would probably just have one question. Can you take me to the store? None of that other stuff would impress them. It’s a car. It’s useful for travel. It’ll work fine. Let’s go. They would take things at face value whereas we usually have questions and we want all the details. When we read something, we want to be told the whole story and for that reason, reading scripture can be frustrating to us sometimes.

And nowhere does it get more frustrating to us usually than in Genesis. Genesis should tell us all the details about where we came from and how we got here and why God did things like He did them and we actually get very little of that. Instead we get Genesis chapter one that says, “In the beginning God…” and there are libraries of English books just on those four words. In chapter two, it says that God planted a garden. Well, my life just won’t be complete unless I know if He used a Troy-Bilt or Craftsman tiller. And don’t even get me started with the talking snake in chapter three!

But even so, we are going to start a series going through the book of Genesis with the emphasis on knowing God. I believe that if you truly want to know God that Genesis is the best place to start and we need to know God. We need to know what He wants us to about Him and all the other questions that we have about Him probably won’t all be answered but I will say again that if scripture doesn’t give us the answer then we don’t need to know it.

I think a lot of us don’t have a complete and correct view of God. We believe in God. We pray to God and we know that He can help us sometimes but He is too often sort of a vague theory instead of a close friend and Lord. Turn to the very beginning of your Bibles and let’s start at the start. I told somebody this week that the problem with starting at the start of the Bible is knowing where to start. If you have studied Genesis in depth, you probably know what I mean.

Let’s start with Genesis 1:1. It says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Now, we will skip some details about that and go right to chapter 1, verses 26- chapter 2:2. “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.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 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.” 29 Then God said, “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. 30 And to 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 the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. 2 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

Have you ever had a little kid ask you a question and you answer the question completely and in full telling the kid everything he really needs to know about it, knowing he won’t understand anything else? And what does the kid say immediately after? Why? It doesn’t matter how thoroughly you answer, the kid is always going to ask why. Until finally you get tired of answering and you just say, “It just is, kid. It just is.”

My first question when I read the first part of Genesis is like a little kid. I want to know why. Why would God do all of that? What’s in it for Him? What’s the purpose? But we aren’t told all the answers to my little kid questions. Now, if you read and keep in context the rest of the Bible, you will learn that God made us and all of creation for His glory. So, four-year-old Todd asks, why does He need glory? Was His life lacking something? Did He need us? Was He lonely?

Now, to be honest with you, there are some good answers to those questions and we will talk more about that tonight but one of the main things we need to learn about God is…He is sovereign. He doesn’t have to answer our questions. He doesn’t have to answer to us at all. He is God and as such He doesn’t ask our permission. He doesn’t apologize for anything and the only reason He doesn’t thump us off the planet straight into Hell right now is because of His condescending grace. And sometimes the answer to the question of why is, it just is.

Now, as we go through the book of Genesis and you have questions, I want you to write those questions down on a piece of paper and put that paper in a special place where you won’t forget it and when you get to Heaven, the first question you should ask God is, “Where is the trash can because I need to throw this piece of paper away?” I say that because most of the questions we have are not going to be important in the least when we see Jesus.

What we need to understand today is God’s sovereignty. Now, again, my 4-year-old self wants to ask the question, just how sovereign is He? Do we have free will or are we chosen? Well, for now, put that question on your list of questions to throw away. Genesis one does not answer that question so I’m not either right now.

God is described in the Bible as all-powerful and all-knowing (Psalm 147:5), outside of time (Exodus 3:14; Psalm 90:2), and responsible for the creation of everything (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1). As such, nothing in the universe occurs without God’s permission. God has the power and knowledge to prevent anything He chooses to prevent, so anything that does happen must, at the very least, be “allowed” by God, if not caused by God.

At the same time, the Bible describes God as offering humanity choices (Deuteronomy 30:15–19), holding them personally responsible for their sins (Exodus 20:5), and being unhappy with some of their actions (Numbers 25:3). The fact that sin exists at all proves that not all things that occur are the direct actions of God, who is holy. (www.gotquestions.org/God-is-sovereign.html)

God is sovereign and He can be sovereign because He created everything. That word used in Genesis 1:1 that is translated “created” is “bara” in Hebrew and it means to create out of nothing. Only God can create out of nothing. You can make a pie. You can make a baby. You can make a mistake or make sense but you cannot create out of nothing. Only God can do that and because He did that, He is sovereign over His creation.

Now, that can bring you great peace or it can scare you to death to think that God is in control of what happens to you. It ought to scare you to death to be out of the will of the Creator. Even a little sin – just a little baby sin, a little white lie, a little bit of gossip or small habit of gluttony – puts a barrier between you and God and you miss out on His full blessings and protection. If you are truly saved, you are still saved even when you sin but you are still in a precarious position to be out of the will of sovereign God.

But just think about the benefits of being in the will of the Creator of the universe, the great I AM, the sovereign, all-knowing, all-powerful King of kings! That blows my mind. You know what really blows my mind? Prayer. Prayer, to me, is amazing. It is amazing to think that I am a child of the one true King and He not only allows me to come into His presence but gives me full access to His spiritual throne room and, in fact, tells me to come there boldly. (Heb. 4:16)

You have probably seen the iconic picture of little John John Kennedy playing under the Resolute Desk of his father, JFK, in the Oval Office. That is a picture of our privilege with God the Father. We have that kind of right and opportunity to just go and hang out with the most powerful force in the universe. Now, that doesn’t mean we should take it lightly. We need to remember that it is a throne. It’s not a lawn chair. We need to come respectfully before the King. He’s not the man upstairs. He’s not the big guy. You don’t fist bump Him.

Scripture talks about the fear of God for a reason. Some people water that down to mean just a kind of respect. But, for a true believer, while it doesn’t mean to be scared of God necessarily, it is the kind of reverence and awe you show to One that has the ability to end your life with a thought. For an unbeliever, you just ought to be scared. But a believer shows God respect and worship and Jesus even said there is a right way to pray in Matthew 6.

So, what does it all boil down to, to know God is sovereign? How is that going to affect you tomorrow? Turn in your Bibles to Romans 8:28. Yea, I know you have it memorized but humor me again and turn there. This verse is the perfect example of God’s sovereignty. Like God Himself, I can’t explain it but I know it is right and true and it gives me great peace to think about the reality of this powerful verse.

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Now, take all your questions about how this works and all your feelings about how this can’t be true and put them on that piece of paper to throw away and just believe it. I do know that this doesn’t say that all things are fair. It doesn’t say that only good things will come into your life. I think it could even be argued that bad things that happen in your life might be for the good of other believers.

Take Job for instance. That is another great illustration of God’s sovereignty. God never did answer Job’s questions. God gave and God took away (Job 1:21). Now, I fully realize that Romans 8:28 will not be fully realized in our lives until we are in Heaven and we can look back on our lives and understand it fully but for Job, it’s hard to see how, in this life, God worked for Job’s good. Maybe God did but we just can’t see it.

But what if God has used Job’s story to work good in every person to ever read his story? What if God uses the difficult times in your life to work good in the lives of your kids and grandkids? I’m still not saying it is fair or that you deserve it but maybe your kids and your grandkids can see something good come out of what has happened to you because you reacted to it properly because you know that God is sovereign and you trust Him?

Understanding that God is sovereign is a mark of Christian maturity. Understanding that you don’t have to understand everything and still believing that God is good is the mark of someone that God can use and has probably been using to further the Kingdom of God. It is the mark of someone who has been through difficulties and has peace, knowing that God is in control and He loves us.

In Genesis 1:27 it says that God made man in His own image. There are 92 different sermons I could preach on just that one phrase but one important aspect of that means that, while we will never understand God fully, that we are His children. Just like you are an image of your earthly parents and your kids are an image of you, we are to look more and more like God spiritually as we grow older and wiser. You can only do that if you know Him.

Do you know Him today? I’m not asking if you know of Him. I mean, do you have a personal relationship with Him through His Son Jesus? Are you waiting until you understand it all better? Don’t wait. You are saved by grace and through faith, not understanding. It’s not blind faith. We can see God at work in our lives every day and scripture says that His ways are above our ways and so we may never understand Him. But all you have to know is that He is in control and He loves you and wants to have a relationship with you right now.

If you need someone to pray with you, you can get somebody and go back to one of the rooms in the back right now or I will be glad to pray with you when this is all over. Let’s pray.