Creation

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0:00 For the rest of us, we're starting this week on this thing here. Did anybody get one of these yet? There's more back there. It's a somewhat unsatisfying synopsis of the scripture. But it's very easy to read. I have never read the scriptures chronologically before or even the whole Bible before.

0:32 And I admire several of you in the room have done that even more than once. I've never done that. This is like the scriptures in the NIV laid out chronologically. The reason I say it's somewhat unsatisfying is like I read the first chapter and it runs through creation, Noah, and gets to Abraham and leaves out stuff. And of course it leaves out stuff, you know, but that's a bummer for me. But what is, I mean, the first chapter that gets through that is 11 pages.

1:07 It's very approachable and doable. And so we're going to do a chapter a week from now through Easter for 31 weeks. And you just got to go into it knowing it's going to be an unsatisfying synopsis of scripture. But it's going to get you the major movements of the story of scripture. So it'll put the stories that you know and the ones you wish it included in a larger context, which I think will be really helpful. So I'm really hopeful that you guys will do this with me. Read an unsatisfying synopsis of scripture one chapter at a time, one week at a time.

1:42 Okay? And it'll awaken more desire for us to get into the scriptures. The first 11 pages did go through creation up to Abraham. Great. The first thing about this is like what we've set. Oh, I didn't put up our little banner this morning. But we, this room is comfortable with talking about the scriptures as a story.

2:13 And so it's worth thinking about how the story starts. Right? And so you've all read the beginning before, but it's has the very first thing, right? In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. You know, I think that's really like, it's really pretty.

2:46 The first two chapters of the Bible are written actually really beautifully, kind of like poems. And it sounds super cool, right? The spirit of God hovering over the waters of the deep. There's nothing there like that's kind of amazing. And then it was like, I think I was still a kid, like maybe in middle school where I'm like, wait a minute, how do they know that? Right? I mean, that sounds amazing, but like who was there taking notes that was like, okay, what we've got now is we've got the spirit of God hovering over the waters.

3:24 What does the spirit look like? You know, like, and one of the things because it's an unsatisfying synopsis of scripture, I was reading other places this week. So one of the guys, Dietrich Bonheifer has a really kind of famous and interesting commentary on creation and the fall. And one of the things he talks about in that is like the infatuation of humanity with the beginning, like wanting to know the beginning and being completely inept and incapable of getting to the beginning, right?

4:03 We were talking last night some friends about like the... Not the 23 and me, but the other one. Yes, thank you.

4:33 I was like, man, that is kind of weird. Like if you think about it, how do they know? Like, there's no genetic difference between Italian and Norwegian, right? And we like decided basically like there's so much data that they go with correlation. Like, oh, people from Norway tend to have these markers in their thing, right?

5:03 But this is why I'm bringing this up. Like, where do... where does your story start? Really? Like, I know... I mean, I've never seen that I remember, but I know intellectually where I was born, right? I haven't done the Ancestry.com, so I don't know like what stuff is floating around in my DNA.

5:37 I know that my grandpa spoke German in his house, and I'm pretty pragmatic. Does that go together? Maybe, right? Like the beginning, the origin thing, the further you go down, the more threads there are to follow, I'm saying. Like, if you think about where you came from, it can be hard to pin down, and at some point,

6:08 you just throw up your hands and go, well, I don't know why I am the way that I am, but here I am now, right? And this notion of trying to get back to the beginning, trying to understand how things started, where things came from, is like kind of built into people, and also an impossible task. I cannot get there.

6:38 Nobody that wrote the Bible was there, right? And we don't even really think that Moses, like John, the Apostle John, when he writes his apocalypse, his revelation, or when Daniel writes his visions about how things will open up, they get visual images that they translate into words for us and get preserved for the church. We don't even really think Moses had that. Now remember that they are a couple million people in a desert, wondering, waiting for a generation to die before they go into the Promised Land.

7:17 And while they're doing that, Moses is often meeting with God in the tent of meeting. He puts the veil over his face so that people will listen to him all the time, but he's talking to God as a man speaks to another man face to face. And while the Israelites are realizing that they're not just slaves, that they're a whole nation of people, that they have this supernatural provision and they don't know why, while they're doing that, God is communicating to Moses the story of God and humanity and how they got to the desert.

7:48 And where they're going to go next? This is the first five books. And so when we go in the beginning, there was nothing, and out of the nothing God created, this is what God told Moses. And Moses wrote down, and the Spirit of God has preserved through myriad troubles to get down to us and this unsatisfying synopsis of the Scriptures that we have together.

8:18 But it starts at the tent of meeting out of the mouth of God to Moses. Why? Because God recognizes people want to know the beginning. One of the things for me about the Scriptures, whether it's the unsatisfying synopsis or the whole thing, is that what we, this is important, what we know about God, we learn from what God does.

8:54 We only know God by what God does. Meaning, we don't know really what God is in God's essence. We only know what God does, sorry, for us, to us, with us. We only know who God is within relationship to us. And this starts at the very, at the very start in the beginning. Because look at it one more time, the very beginning, Genesis 1-1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

9:32 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters, and God said, let there be light, and there was light. Several questions are not answered there. Why did you create? Kind of we got how we created, but not a satisfactory early. And what was there before and out of what did you, and how could you, and where did the thought come from, and who else was involved in, is this the only, and are there others, and we don't know.

10:17 We know in the beginning, out of nothing, God creates. And there's not like a, actually a moment of hesitation, or it seems like God says, and then it is. God says, and then it is without hesitation or mediation, or God speaks light.

10:48 And I've said this before, it's a fun little thing. We still don't really know what light is, it's funny that it's the first thing God makes, right? We don't know whether it's a particle or a wave, it can move through matter, but it doesn't need matter to move. It's like a crazy light, it's like a weird thing. And it's the first thing he made, just like, because he said it. It's incredible. So the first thing is, God makes out of nothing. The next thing that was interesting to me, well the first thing is, God gives us the beginning.

11:23 What a nice thing to do. To tell us, we weren't there, we didn't experience it, so he's like, hey guys, let me orient you to who I am. And the beginning was me. And I spoke and things emerged out of the nothing. And then the next thing is, this is interesting, Bonhoeffer pointed it out for us, how separate he is.

11:54 It's not as though he has to take light out from himself and put it into the world. God is not in the creation, he's separate from the creation. God speaks the creation into existence and then the creation exists apart from God, out here, because the God brought it into the world. This is important because then this other guy, I took the Bonhoeffer, this other guy, TD Alexander, a very smart guy if you're interested, talks about how the punchline, or one of the punchlines of creation, is that earth matters.

12:33 So when we get to the garden and we've got Adam and Eve, we've got the plants and they're producing fruit, like, I don't know what it's like to produce the food you need without toil. But like the earth is not begrudgingly letting go of its produce, it's giving it over. And Adam and Eve walk around in the garden taking care of the place, then they're walking around with God. So in creation we have these three main characters, God, humanity, and earth.

13:06 And earth is like this character in the story of scripture, think about it. Like when they, well, let's look at it, Genesis chapter three, I don't know what page it's on in the story. But they do cover it, I read it. Genesis chapter three, verse 14, then the Lord God, this is after they eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

13:39 And he says, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock, and above all beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go, and you shall, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, and he shall bruise your head, and you will strike his heel. Of course, that's like the famous Proteau on Gellion, the first example of the gospel, the giving of the solution.

14:10 But then he goes down to woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing, and the pain that you shall bring forth children, your disaster, be for your husband, and he will rule over you. And then verse 17, into Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it, cursed are the ground because of you, in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life, and thorns and thistles that shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face, and you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken.

14:50 For you are dust, and to dust you will return. When Adam and Eve take from the earth in order to usurp the role of God, they mess up the relationship between all three characters, and all three characters go out bearing the ramifications of the disruption of the relationship of all three of them. So now things between the humans are not right, things between human, and God are not right, and things between human, and the earth are not right, everything is messed up from here going forward.

15:34 Maybe you've experienced some messed up life. I know I have. Family is great, and sometimes not. Work is awesome, and sometimes terrible.

16:10 Nature is beautiful, and destructive. It's all a mess. The creation story is one that can be hard to believe. It's one that we like to kind of write off.

16:42 Like, did he really create the world in seven days, or did he not? Like, is it spread out over a long period of time, or? And I'll say this, I don't really, I mean I do care, but doesn't really matter to me, or that you believe God created the world or not. And definitely, I don't think the story of creation is how people find their way to Jesus. I think it goes the other way around.

17:22 And yet, I decided a long time ago, it's a way better world if God made it than if it happened by accident. Why better? Are you kidding me? I might be able to get my head around some aspects of evolution, but like ah, it takes more, this is just me, faith for me to believe that we all evolved from one thing than it does to believe there is a God, it's not me, and that God started it all.

18:12 Just, one's easier, and I like what creation does for who I am in the world, and how I engage in the world, who I can become in the world. This is why I think God took the trouble to communicate to Moses and preserve the scriptures, even unsatisfying synopses of the scriptures for us to get the story of creation in it. Because the invitation of our people from Paul through Jesus, through the prophets and the kings, all the way down to the first ones, has always been that we live in a world where there is a God, it's not us, and he made the world for us.

19:02 The invitation is you don't have to figure out the beginning. You don't have to decide where it all started from. The nice part about that is if God made the world, he can also resolve it. Jesus consistently says when he comes, he brings a new heavens and a new earth.

19:34 That he's making all things new, that he's not done on the cross or with the resurrection or the creation of you in the womb wherever you came from. He's not done, he's still creating, he's still speaking new things into existence, and when the day comes and he returns, he'll bring a whole new thing into existence. Set the three characters into right relationship again. God, humanity, and earth off into forever.

20:07 The invitation of the story of creation is not to debate evolution or to figure out how long a day is or to try to decide the age of the earth. The invitation of creation is to recognize that you are not God. There is a God though, and he's good. And out of his largesse and creativity and imagination, he spins the world into existence that you might live in it forever. I used to try and surprise our kids.

20:43 You know, like you're going somewhere, they've got to run errands with you, and so you're going to sneak in like ice cream at the end. And inevitably, if I was going to surprise them with something good, they'd be complaining about going so bad, right? They just were just crabby about having to run these errands.

21:14 In the back of my head, I knew they were going to love it once they get that ice cream, and they would just kind of get so aggravated about having to go along and trust that I could handle it. I knew where we were going, and it was going to be okay. As a matter of fact, they were going to like it. They did not want to give that up. They wanted the control. They wanted to know we're going to go there and then be there how long, and then we're going to go there and be there how long, and why do I have to go with you, and what might happen, and can't we get something good, and they couldn't just let me be in charge of the trip.

21:45 That was the most frustrating point when that would happen. You be the kid. I'll be the adult. I'll drive. I'll set the course. You just come along and trust. This adult has your best interest at heart. This is the invitation for you. The world is a mess. In six out of eight ways, right?

22:16 It's a mess. Our economy, our politics, our families, our earth. Everything's a mess. But the good news is, it's not ours. It belongs to the God. We do what we can. We're faithful and responsible, but we're not charting the course, man. He made it, and he'll bring a new one in for us when the time is right. The invitation of the story of creation is to relax.

22:48 Let God be God. You be the people, the created. Rest in a world that he made for you. In a life he set you up for. And wait for him to return it to what it ought to be. Next week we go into Abram. Reach chapter two, and I guarantee you, if you haven't read chapter one yet, you can read chapter one and chapter two this week. You're going to have time. It's not hard. You'll be unsatisfied, but it'll push you into the Bible.

23:22 Okay? Let me pray. Hey Lord, thank you for this story. We are moved by it. Teach us what it means that you made the world for us. Teach us how to appropriately teach us what responsible action and stewardship of earth, family, work looks like. And then also teach us how to rest well in you. That you could be God and we could be people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.