One night last week Daniel and I “metroed” into D.C. to see the final installment of the Batman trilogy at the I-Max theater that is in the Smithsonian. It was the first TRUE I-Max film I’ve seen and we had a great time. The screen was six stories high. When Batman flew his hovercraft I felt like I was right there in the seat next to him! As I sat there watching the film I got to thinking that if a viewer didn’t know the BEGINNING of the Batman story the movie wouldn’t make much sense. Someone who hadn’t read the first comic book published in 1939 or seen the first film in this trilogy might wonder things like:
“Why is this guy running around in black tights and body armor?”
“Why does he hang out in a cave under his mansion?”
“Why does he spend all his money on high-tech weapons?”
Of course, as most people in the know—know—the REASON Bruce Wayne dons that mask and does all the other stuff….the reason he BECAME “The Batman…” is because when he was a young boy he witnessed his parents’ brutal murder and this horrible experience drove him a little crazy…you could say it made him a little “batty!” I mean seeing his mom and dad gunned down before his eyes turned him into a costumed vigilante—a man passionate about fighting crime. He used his vast fortune on costumes and Batarangs and Batmobiles and hover craft…to make it possible to somehow avenge his parents. That’s the BEGINNING of the Batman story.
Now, you may think, “Well, Mark, thanks for sharing. I didn’t know that about Batman—but I have to say, I still think this story is a little crazy.” And that’s ok. To each his own when it comes to movie preferences. The only reason I bring it all up is to illustrate the fact that the BEGINNING of a STORY IS very important. I would go so far as to say it is the MOST important part of al…because it explains everything that happens in the rest of the story.
Now—as I’ve reminded you in the past THE BIBLE is best described as a STORY—a TRUE STORY—the greatest TRUE story ever told—but like all stories we can’t fully understand this all-important story unless we start at the BEGINNING. And, that’s what we’re doing this morning. For the next 31 weeks we are studying the Bible—by looking at 31 of its MAIN stories chronologically—using a book put out by Randy Frazee and his church in San Antonio rightly entitled: The Story. Today we start at the BEGINNING. …the most important part…and from now through next April we’ll do a survey of the entire Bible—the WHOLE story.
So—TAKE YOUR BIBLES AND TURN TO PAGE 1—I always wanted to say that! Our text is huge for one sermon—it covers a total of eight chapters in the book of Genesis so we can’t read it all now but I do want us to read together—out loud—just the first verse of chapter 1.
Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Say those first FIVE words with me one more time: “In the beginning God created.” These “beginning words” are important words INDEED when it comes to understanding the story that is the Bible and we’ll talk about WHY this is true in a moment…but as we begin our study I would also say that the REST of this FIRST book of the Bible is EQUALLY important because without its teachings life itself is meaningless. There are even parts of the Bible that would be meaningless without the book of Genesis. Let me put it this way: without this book of beginnings, the Bible would be like the last acts of a play without the first act, or a meeting of a corporation’s trustees with no agenda. Henry Morris goes even further. He says, “In a very real sense, the book of Genesis is the most important book in the world; for it is the foundation upon which all the other sixty-five books of God’s written Word have been based.” So our study of this first part of the story IS very important. And as we begin our study of these eight chapters, I want you to note three vitally important principles found in the beginning of THE STORY that we must understand. (I am indebted to David Stone at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville for my outline this morning)
(1) God CREATES. It’s all good. (Genesis 1-2)
As you know from your reading this week—by the way who did their reading? Who read the first chapter of The Story? Great! While we’re “checking homework” I’ll ask, how many have contacted the other members of your CRAG groups to share an insight or a question? Great again! You all get an “A!” Well, those of you who did your reading know that the first two chapters of the Bible describe the CREATION of the universe—and introduce the CREATURE—man…but the FOCUS is on the CREATOR. I mean, when the curtain first rises in the first verse of THE STORY, only God is there.
You know, tonight if you were to drive out into the country—away from the lights of the city and look up you would see countless stars! In 1996, astronomers basically did that with the powerful Hubble Space Telescope. They focused its lense on a small and utterly black patch of space right next to the Big Dipper. They left the shutter open for ten days. This one exposure revealed 3,000 galaxies out beyond our own Milky Way galaxy. Each of these 3,000 new galaxies contained hundreds of billions of starts, planets, moons, comets, and asteroids. In 2004 scientists did it again. This time they focused on a patch of darkness next to the constellation Orion. They left the lens open eleven days this time and discovered ten thousand MORE galaxies. I could go on because it turns out the Hubble has revealed that there are over ONE HUNDRED BILLION galaxies out there in the universe! BUT GENESIS 1:1 TELLS US THAT IT WASN’T ALWAYS THIS WAY! In a beginning that had not beginning there was ONLY God!
And at some point in the distant past, God CREATED it all….the stars…the planets…people…GOD created everything! In fact, if you would take a pencil and circle the word, “God” each time it is used in the first two chapters of Genesis and then count your circles you would come to a tally of 46. So in these first two chapters GOD is the primary subject. “In the beginning GOD created!” Years ago some scientists and computer experts were determined to discover the mystery of creation by using a complex computer program. Research was done. Information was fed into the computer. They asked the computer to tell them about creation…how it happened, etc. It began it’s computations…and then the magic moment arrived. As the computer printer came to life, it spit out a sheet of paper on which was written one simple sentence: “See Genesis 1.” Even the computer was “wise” enough to realize that as we said a moment ago, “In the beginning GOD created!” By the way, I remember enough Hebrew from my seminary studies to know that the Hebrew word for “create” is “bara” and is a word that is used ONLY in reference to God. It means to bring into existence that which was not in existence before. Only God can do that! Only He can create something from nothing. And that’s what these first two chapters affirm. GOD created this universe and all the billions of galaxies in it.
God is not PART of nature; He CREATED it. He is not a PART of history; He STARTED it. Everything is under His SOVEREIGN control. As Rick Warren puts it, “History is HIS story.”
I have to stop at this point and ask you a question. Do you believe those first five words? Do you believe that “In the beginning—GOD CREATED.” Great! Well, I have to point out that if you raised your hand…if you believe those five words…if you believe the first sentence of the Bible you should not balk at anything else it says. I mean, if a Being could create all this out of nothing, then a man being swallowed by a whale and living three days in his stomach…the Red Sea parting…the head of an ax floating on water…the blind being given sight…the dead being raised back to life…if you believe the miracle of the first sentence of this story all those miracles are no big deal! And that’s what Genesis tells us! God created it all. He created the universe—and everything in it—from nothing.
One reason I personally don’t believe in evolution is the fact that it cannot scientifically explain how you get something from nothing. In fact, let’s stop and talk science a bit. Science is defined as, “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” So…you see, based on this definition, evolution is not really science. It is just a guess. In spite of what you might hear—true scientific “observation and experimentation” does not support the theory of evolution. For example, the fossil record doesn’t match up with what evolution says happened. Instead of a slow evolutionary development of life it shows an almost instantaneous “explosion” of life. I recommend you read Strobel’s Case for a Creator for more information on this.
Here’s some more “science.” Astrophysicists have found that there are over 60 criteria that are necessary for life to exist here on earth. Life could not exist or form if any ONE of the following were true:
- Earth’s rotation faster or slower
- We were 2% closer to the sun.
- Earth had a 1% change in sunlight
- Earth was smaller or bigger
- The moon was smaller or larger
- We had more than one moon
- Earth’s crust was thinner or thicker
- Oxygen/nitrogen ratio was greater or less
- Ozone layer was greater or less
- Starbucks went out of business (just kidding)
Well, this creates a dilemma. To believe that all this just came together by itself…to believe all these factors just lined up accidentally…this requires faith in the impossible.
Here’s a word picture to help you see what I’m saying: If someone told you they could pick a winning lottery number out of the air—and then did it—you’d be impressed…and rightly so because, the odds of doing that are 1 in 10 to the 7th power. Now—suppose they did it twice in a row. That’s one chance in a hundred thousand billion. If they did this you would go from being impressed—to being SUSPICIOUS.You’d rightly assume something is up…this guy must have some sort of inside knowledge. He’s cheating. Well, the odds of evolution being true are like someone randomly winning not one—not two—but thousands of lotteries in a row. It is statistically possible—but it is also statistically absurd. The probability of a single cell forming on its own by evolution through limitless time, particles, and events has been calculated by a Swiss mathematician named Charles Eugene Guy. He found that the odds are one chance in 10 to the 160th power. This is a number too big to calculate. Statisticians point out that anything beyond 1 to the 50th power is beyond reason, essentially impossible—ABSURD. So belief in the THEORY of evolution is belief in spite of the fact that’ is statistically absurd. I mean for evolution to happen would require a miracle of God. Even Charles Darwin, the father of evolution said, “To suppose that the human eye could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”
So—GOD created this universe. Say it with me again, “In the beginning God created.”
Good! That’s what the beginning of the story says. As we read in the first two chapters of Genesis, God created light and darkness, water and sky, land, sun, moon, stars, fish, birds, animals. And at the end of each day of creation He stepped back and said, “It is good!” But while the creation of the heavens and the earth and the other one hundred plus billion galaxies out there is impressive…it is not the POINT of this part of the story. Frazee writes, “Mount Everest…the Grand Canyon…the stark beauty of the Sahara…the cascading elegance of Victoria falls…combine these and thousands of other jewels of His creative powers and you’re not even close to identifying the CORE passion of God. Those are just the DISPLAY cases to highlight His REAL work of art.” And Frazee is right. God’s REAL work of art—is MANKIND—people like you and me. He made this universe for US…and scientific discovery supports this fact. Geneticist Dr. Michael Denton writes, “All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition…that the cosmos is a specially-designed with mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose.”
But God didn’t just make the world for people like you and me to enjoy. He made US—PEOPLE—MANKIND to enjoy and love and fellowship WITH. We are designed to walk through life in relationship with our Creator! In fact, Frazee says that THE STORY that is the Bible is really two stories…an UPPER STORY…and a LOWER STORY. In the UPPER STORY God experienced perfect community with the Trinity. And He could have continued to enjoy this total oneness forever but He wanted to SHARE it. He desired to bring this perfect community to a place where it could be enjoyed by others…and that brings us to THE LOWER STORY. The LOWER STORY is our story. It BEGAN with God’s grand idea to create men and women in His image and then share life with them. So—God made you for fellowship…relationship. You are designed to fellowship with GOD HIMSELF! If you don’t know Him and feel like something is missing in your life, that’s it. God is missing!
We are made in His image—made to relate to Him in a way no other part of His creation can. This is why after God created mankind He said, “It is VERY good!”
A little girl once asked her mom, “Where did people come from?” and the mom said, “God made man. Then He made woman and they had children.” Then the little girl went in the living room and asked her dad the same question, “Where did people come from?” He said, “Well, many years ago there were monkeys and humans evolved from those monkeys.” She went back to her mom and said, “I’m confused you said God created …dad said we evolved from monkeys? Who’s right?” The mom said, “It is very simple I explained my side of the family. He explained his.” Listen! We are not just evolved monkeys! That’s silly! Mankind was made in the image of God from the beginning—made to fellowship with God.
As I inferred a moment ago, one of the wonderful IMPLICATIONS of the fact that God made us for relationship with Him is that it gives our lives MEANING and PURPOSE. This past week Daniel used ancestry.com to trace the lineage of our family. It turns out there’s a good chance I’m related to two presidents: John Adams and John Quincy Adams. I see some resemblance to John Quincy—especially in hairstyle! Of course most Adamses in America can say the same thing so it’s not that big of a deal—but feel free to be impressed anyway! We also learned my mother’s family came from France. Well, the reason sites like ancestry.com are so popular is that learning about our roots gives us a sense of value…a feeling of significance. And before you begin to get excited about your own roots I’ll remind you that evolution counters all that. It says we have no real past—and no real future. If we believe the theory of evolution, life began billions of years ago by a cosmic accident. We are only complex animals with no ultimate purpose or meaning in life and our final destiny is to become worm-food. But, if we believe in the Biblical account of Creation, we realize that we are the special and unique creation of God. Our PURPOSE is to relate to Him—to work with Him. And, our final DESTINY is to live forever with Him in a paradise called Heaven.
Isn’t that an exciting thought!? I mean, do those first five words take on new significance for you today? They should—because they tell you that you didn’t just happen. GOD CREATED PEOPLE like you and me! He made us to share fellowship with—share life with. He CHOSE to bring you and me into the world for His pleasure and to this day He yearns to be WITH you…to walk beside you and experience all of life with you. He wants to help you through the deepest valleys—the tough times of life. And He also wants to celebrate with you the highest mountains—the great joys of life.
Now—of course meaningful relationships like this—where we share the good and the bad—require reciprocity. In order for the relationship between God and mankind to be real, it had to be a relationship which each side freely CHOSE to enter. So, man had to be free to choose NOT to enter into the relationship…free to choose to break it. And that leads us to the second principle that is found in this first chapter of THE STORY.
(2) Man SINS and everything falls apart (Genesis 3:1-7)
You see, the 3rd chapter of Genesis tells us the sad truth that the first people, Adam and Eve, used their God-given free will to break their relationship with God by disobeying His one law. Theologians call this “the FALL” but I agree with Brian Harbour who says that a better phrase would be, “the COLLAPSE of mankind…” because with the exception of creation, the entrance of SIN is the most far-reaching event in the history of the world. It was a COLLAPSE indeed. Let’s review how it happened. First God made Adam. Then He made Eve as His helpmate—partner in life. Now—we don’t know why God made man FIRT. Female Bible Scholars say that God made man and then thought, “I can do better!” but of course that’s not true! God made Eve to compliment Adam—and vice versa.
God gave the first two humans a beautiful garden to live in—the Garden of Eden. It had everything they needed to literally live happily ever after. God would relate to them there. They would walk together down the pathways of that paradise. Can you imagine how wonderful that must have been!?
Sue and I love to walk our neighborhood in the morning and as we walk we pray—and one of the reasons we love doing that is that’s what the first man and woman did. They walked with God—and talked with Him. Eden was indeed a paradise in every sense of the word! As I said God gave them only ONE RULE in this paradise. They could eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now for some time—we don’t know how long—but for some time, Adam and Eve OBEYED this one rule. They lived in perfect harmony with God and could have done this forever. But then that horrible day came when they broke the one rule and this is where the story introduces the antagonist—the evil one—satan—the guy we talked about last week. The Bible tells us he came to kill and destroy and we see that stuff starting in Genesis 3. Let’s review the TACTICS satan used on that horrible day.
First, he QUESTIONED God’s Word.
In Genesis 3:1 satan said to Eve, “Did God REALLY say, ‘you must not eat from ANY tree of the garden?’” And of course satan was not seeking information with this question. He knew they could eat of all trees but one. So he wasn’t seeking information—he was making an accusation…the accusation that God was unkind in withholding anything from mankind. He was questioning the fairness of God’s rule.
Next, he DENIED God’s Word.
In verse 4 he said to Eve, “You will not surely die!” “Don’t believe It Eve! You won’t die if you eat that fruit. It’s just a trick God is trying to pull on you. You can do what you want and nothing will happen to you!”
Finally, satan REVERSED God’s Word.
Look at verse 5. He said, “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” In other words, satan says, “You won’t die if you eat that. In fact, you’ll begin to really LIVE!”
By the way, satan still uses these same tactics! He still tempts us to doubt the truth of the teachings’ of God’s Word. He still tells us there is no harm in ignoring God’s loving laws.
He still tells us real life is found by those who disobey God.
Well, Eve eats and gives to Adam and he eats—they BOTH disobey God. They both break the relationship. And from that moment on the world has never been the same. Think of it. In that horrible moment GUILT appeared for the first time. Adam and Eve knew they had done something wrong and they felt something they had never felt before…regret and shame! Then another horrible thing happened. They felt FEAR. God came to walk with them and they hid from this all-loving Being. Their relationship was shattered indeed.
Now—when we read this part of the story we all like to say, “If I had been in their shoes, I wouldn’t have eaten of the fruit! What a couple idiots! How could they do something so stupid!” But privately we all know better. We know our own sin nature. We know all the times we KNEW not to sin—but we did any way…so we stop our accusing thoughts and we realize we would have done the exact same thing. This shows that the decision to disobey God didn’t stay with Adam and Eve. It has passed down from generation to generation…from them—all the way down to us! Frazee writes, “The tree lived up to its name. Evil was deposited alongside truth in the DNA of Adam and Eve—and in the DNA of every human being who came after them. At the core of this evil, which is called sin, is selfishness. Good looks out for others; evil looks out for self. Selfishness is the root of hatred, jealousy, violence, anger, lust, and greed. Adam and Eve are covered in it.”
Well, God banned Adam and Eve from the Garden—not to be mean but to protect mankind. He kept them from Eden so they would not have access to the Tree of Life. Without the fruit of this tree they would eventually die and that sounds cruel—-but it was actually an act of God’s grace to keep us all from being able to sustain our life forever in a state of sin and rebellion.
After Adam and Eve left Eden they had children. Their first child was a son named CAIN and we see the first evidence of this “DNA shift” in his behavior. Remember? Cain murdered his brother ABEL because he was jealous of the fact that God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected his own. From that point on things go from bad to worse. The human race grew in number but the “DNA of sin” infected everyone. Genesis 6:5 says that a day came when, “…the Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” In other words—every human on the planet was completely degraded with no possibility of repentance. This was true of everyone except for one man and his family—a man named Noah. Genesis 6:9 says, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time…” but the word “blameless” doesn’t meant perfection. It literally means “uncontaminated.” In other words, Noah was not completely “contaminated” by the wickedness of his day. He still tried to obey God. Clarence MacCartney calls Noah, “the SOLITARY Saint” because Noah, was the ONLY ONE of his kind. Noah lived in a culture that was unimaginably degraded…horribly corrupt and yet he was different. He was the only man of faith in an entire world that had turned its back on God.
And so to preserve the possibility of mankind getting back what Adam and Eve lost, God sent a flood that destroyed the world—every thing and every person in it—–except for Noah and his family—and the animals in the ark. But—when the waters finally receded, we can still see that DNA strand of sin. Noah get’s drunk and one of his sons disrespects his father. It looks like that’s it—mankind will just go on sinning—go on ignoring God…but God is still at work! He wants us back and that leads to principle #3…
(3) God PROMISES — There is still hope! (Genesis 3:15, 21-24)
You would think that the fall or the COLLAPSE of mankind would be the END of THE STORY—that God would finally give up on us—but He didn’t. You see, regardless of our sin, God still wanted to be with us. His UPPER STORY didn’t change. It never has. God still wants to do life with us in a perfect, loving community of unified fellowship. In fact, from this point in the story until the final chapter of the Bible we see this passion of God unfolding one story at a time. He has a plan to make this happen. And we see glimmers of His plan even here in the first part of the STORY.
This week I read about a talented landscape artist who was painting a very bleak winter scene… a scene filled with wind and snow and dark clouds. In the background of this frigid painting he drew an isolated cabin nestled against a hillside. Then with one simple stroke of yellow paint he put a touch of gold in the window of the cabin and suddenly the picture had a literal window of hope. Can you imagine that picture? Think of it as a subtle Kincaide painting.
Well the first section of the Bible paints a similarly gloomy picture…a picture of despair…of frigid hopelessness…but then God dips His brush in promise and gives the story a window of hope. In fact, there are SEVERAL windows of hope in these opening chapters: First there is Genesis 3:15, which many theologians call, “protoevangelium” or “the first Gospel.” It’s the first Messianic prophesy…the first specific time God the Father talks about His Son Who will come to save us from our DNA—save us from our sin. God says to satan, “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.” This phrase, “offspring of a woman” is a reference to the virgin birth of Jesus. He would come from a woman—without the seed of a man. God Himself would be His Father! And the crushing and striking is a reference to the cross. On that old rugged cross, satan would bruise the Messiah—but on Easter Sunday, Jesus would crush Satan, and deal a death blow to his cause.
The second glimmer of hope is in Genesis 3:21 right after the fall or the collapse…where it tells us that the Lord made garments of skin and clothed Adam and Eve. Remember they had made clothes out of fig leaves…so when God made them clothing out of animal skins it was not an issue of modesty. No—God puts animal skins on them for a specific purpose. Those outfits were object lessons. They were a teaching tool. God took an animal and shed its blood…in the presence of Adam and Eve. This was the first time blood had been shed. God was showing them—telling them—that a sacrifice would be required to COVER their sin. And this same sacrificial object lesson system deal goes on over and over again throughout the Old Testament. So in our text, God was beginning to teach Adam and Eve that as Hebrews 9 says, “Without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin.” Through this first sacrificial act and all the others that were to come our Heavenly Father was teaching us a lesson like Pavlov’s dog, “SIN BRINGS DEATH! SIN BRINGS DEATH. SIN BRINGS DEATH!” He was doing this so that mankind would come to see that man cannot COVER his own sin…but that one day the Lamb of God would be sacrificed on the cross to provide the necessary covering. Jesus would die for our sin, making our forgiveness possible.
I think a third window of hope is seen in the rainbow that God put in the sky after the flood. In my mind it was God saying, “Destruction is ending…salvation is coming!” And it was! Jesus was on the way! Plus—in the book of Revelation when John describes Jesus sitting on the throne there is a rainbow around Him.
Well, this part of The Story should remind us that the focus of the Bible is Christ. I love what Alistair Begg says, “In the Old Testament, Jesus is predicted. In the Gospels He is revealed.
In Acts He is preached. In the Epistles He is explained. And in Revelation, He is expected.”
Begg is correct because Jesus has been the plan all along! He is the Lamb that was slain BEFORE the foundation of the world. That’s how MUCH—that’s how LONG—God has loved you!
LET US PRAY