Sermon Tone Analysis

VIDEO before sermon

Welcome - Join me in Genesis 1 this morning

First week of a 31 week series entitled “The Story”

Chronological look at how all of God’s Word fits together

Chapter 1 - Covers Genesis 1-8

Upper and Lower Story Emphasis

Lower Story

Our perspective of everyday situations

bills, relationships, sickness, pain, hobbies, family life, careers, etc

limited, linear, horizontal in nature

Upper Story

God’s perspective

His sovereign ability to know the beginning from the end

unlimited, all-encompassing, vertical

Example: Job

Lower Story

Upright man, rich

In the span of a day, he lost all of his possessions and then all of his 10 kids - later had boils from head to toe

Wife response - curse God and die

Friend response - Repent!

Upper Story

Satan approached God to accuse Job for following only because of God’s blessings

God permits trial except to touch Job’s body

takes his 3 businesses, and crushes Job’s kids in a wind storm.

Job doesn’t curse God

Satan approaches again - acquiring physical harm - God permits

Job gets boils - sits in ashes and scrapes with broken pottery

Job never sins…

Lower Story - “Ouch, this is not fair”

Upper Story - “Hold on Job, I have a bigger plan, trust me!”

Catechism 1 “What is our only hope in life and death?” “That we are not our own, but belong to God.”

Throughout this book, we are going to see the upper story, and lower story, and how our story is to line up with God’s story.

Did you get to read Chapter 1? I hope you did!

As you are well aware, Chapter 1 begins at the beginning.

“The Beginning of Life as we Know it”

At Sunday School they were learning how God created everything, including human beings.

Johnny was especially intent when the teacher told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs.

Later in the week his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill, and said, "Johnny, what is the matter?"

Johnny responded, "I have pain in my side.

I think I'm having a wife."

CREATION

Look with me there in Genesis 1:1

First 4 words - introduces main character of the story - God

Everyone and Everything else finds life and breath from Him

How do I know this?

Because the next seven words tell us: God created the heavens and the earth.

How exactly, other than simply by His word, He accomplished this feat we do not know.

But that is not the intent of Genesis 1-2.

From my study and point of view it is completely appropriate to hold to a young earth creationism point of view, which means God created the earth in six earth-bound days, therefore leaving our earth rather young but with the appearance of age.

Sort of like today, when teenagers buy a pair of jeans with the appearance of age – a brand-new pair of jeans, whitewashed, with holes all over them.

Doesn’t make any sense to me, but God could have done creation that way.

A good resource for this debate is an organization called Answers in Genesis.

They host the Creation museum and Ark Encounter in Kentucky.

OR, you could hold the view on the other end, called theistic evolution, which suggests there is a gap of millions of years between Genesis 1:2 and 1:3, or that each of the six days represents a longer period of time than 24 earth-bound hours.

The main point you need to embrace is that God is behind creation.

Just know that you are not an accident, or happened by chance.

We need to conclude that God started with nothing and created all we can see and everything we cannot see.

Once you conclude that there is a Creator God, frankly he can do what he wants, whether it’s over a billion years or in a nanosecond.

ILL: Naked Cheetoh

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

Day 1—Light and Dark

Day 2—Sky and Water

Day 3—Land

Days 4, 5, and 6 those places are filled with the things the places were created for.

Day 4—Sun and Moon/stars

Day 5—Birds and Sea creatures

Day 6—Animals and human beings

Now we move to the whole point of creation: Why did God do all of this?

It comes down to a magnificent garden God created called Eden that the Bible tells us is located where the Tigris and the Euphrates River intersect down by the Persian Gulf in modern day Iraq.

MAP

In this garden God places his crowning achievement, the apple of his eye – he creates humanity.

God created all of the universe and the 100 billion galaxies we have found to date to display his glory and he does his best work right here.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the community of God, simply desires to come down and do life with the community of humanity.

But God wants to know if Adam and Eve embrace the same vision.

So, he instills in Adam and Eve something that is different from the rest of creation; he instills within humans the freedom to choose.

To give Adam and Eve a way to declare their decision, he places two trees in the middle of the garden – The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Turn with me to Gen 2.

That leads us to the second part in the story of the Garden.

THE FALL

Look over at Genesis 3

Read

Because Adam and Eve chose a different vision than God’s vision, sin became part of their spiritual DNA and they produced more sinners.

They now have two choices, signified by the name of the tree – the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

There’s the good option that is right, moral, good for the sake of others, and there’s the other option that is warring within us, the evil choice, which is immoral, all about me getting what I want at the expense of others.

That’s one of the best definitions of sin there is, and Adam and Eve are now faced with that warring within.

We get the signal this has occurred by asking, “What is the very first thing Adam and Eve do after they bite into the forbidden fruit?”

The Bible says they clothed themselves with fig leaves.

Why? Now they are looking at each other, and instead of having just good thoughts about each other, now an evil thought emerges.

For the first time they feel shame and they feel vulnerable.

They cover up to protect themselves from the other person, and we have been in this defensive mode ever since.

Because of this sin

Both are cast out from the Garden

Both are cursed

And humanity suffers the consequences of sin

so, Genesis 4 – 9 present sin and a sin nature permeating the human race.

One example of this immediate permeating of sin is with

Cain and Abel

The Bible tells us that this single decision affects all of us, even today.

How do we know this?

On page 7 of The Story or in Genesis 4 we are introduced to Adam and Eve’s two boys, Cain and Abel.