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 13th 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.
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