Chapter 01 “Creation”
Genesis 1 – 3
Intro – welcome to chapter one of The Story…today we begin with the beginning of God’s great story…the message He wants to communicate to the whole world…
-hopefully you’ve read the first chapter in the book…if you have then you know you’ve just read selections from the first 9 chapters of Genesis…all the way from Adam to Noah…
-and what I love most about these first chapters in Genesis is that we find the main message of the Bible summarized in the first 3 chapters alone…
-it’s like God starts the story with an overview of what we can anticipate discovering:
Gen 1 – God created the world and you are His crowning achievement
Gen 2 and 3 – God loves you and wants companionship with you
Gen 3 – God lost you because of sin
Gen 3 – God provides a way back to Himself
The Boy and the Sailboat
-if you liked the story I told last week “Love You Forever”…then you’ll probably like this short story called “The Boy and The Sailboat”
A young boy made for himself a beautiful little sailboat, built with carefully chosen pieces of wood, sanded, painted and put together with the greatest of care. It became his favorite possession, and almost daily he went to sail it on the river near his home.
He loved that boat and imagined himself one day sailing the oceans of the world on a far bigger sailboat.
One day a storm came up suddenly, the string holding the boat broke and the boat got away from him.
He spent many days searching for the boat along the banks of the river, but he began to fear he would never see it again.
Months later, his grandpa took him to town and as they were poking around in a second hand shop, the boy spotted a familiar looking boat, high up on one of the shelves, with a price tag attached to it.
“Let me see that boat” he said to the shop owner. “I think that’s the boat I made.”
The shop owner took it off the shelf and showed it to the boy. “See, these are my initials! I carved them in the bottom. This is my boat.”
“Sorry son”, the shop owner said. “I bought that boat from a man who brought it into my shop. If you want it, you’ll have to pay for it.”
Heartbroken, the boy left the shop. But, he had a plan. For the next several weeks he worked hard doing every job he could find, trying to earn enough money to buy the boat, carefully saving every dollar.
At last he had the required amount of money. He went back to the shop and redeemed for himself his beloved boat, the boat he had made and loved. (didn’t cry!)
-now, once again, I’ve just illustrated the story of the Bible…the grand theme, the meta-narrative: a story of creation, separation and restoration through redemption…
Let’s look at it more closely as told in the first three chapters of Genesis:
1 God created the world and you are His crowning achievement Gen 1
-the first 4 words of the Bible are so important, so foundational to everything about The Story…”in the beginning God…” v.1
-that sets the tone, lays the foundation, determines the worldview upon which the entire Story is based…
-that there is a God…and He is eternal…and He is the center of the story, the beginning, the middle and the end…
v. 1 reminds us that we need a view of life full of God, from start to finish…so that instead of being an add-on to our lives, He is the focal point, the originator, the beginning, the end…and everything in between…
-that’s why God starts the Story with those four words: “in the Beginning God…”
Creator God
And then He adds that fifth word, “created”. “In the beginning God created…the heavens and the earth…” v.1
Days 1, 2, and 3: places created by God.
Day 1—Light and Dark
Day 2—Sky and Water
Day 3—Land
Days 4, 5, and 6: things for which those places were created.
Day 4—Sun Moon and stars – in places of light and dark
Day 5—Birds and Sea creatures – in places of sky and water
Day 6—Animals and human beings – on the land
-and at the end of each day God says “this is good!”
Crowning Achievement of Creation
But then He creates people, a man and a woman, Adam and Eve…His crowning achievement of creation…read 1:27-30…
And as He steps back and looks at His crowning achievement of creation, He says in v.31, ‘it was very good…”
You are very good in God’s eyes… some of you here today need to start believing that about yourself…
…that you are very good in the eyes of God…that He made you in His image and you were made to bring God delight and glory and He is absolutely pleased with who you are and how He made you…
-some of you don’t see yourself that way…God wants you to start believing that you have been “fearfully and wonderfully made…”
-Adam and Eve believed this…this was their experience in the Garden pre-Gen 3…complete self-worth, perfect self-esteem, no doubt about how much God loved them and valued them…never a moment of questioning how God felt about them…
God wants to restore your sense of His love and value and approval in your life…
…and He does this not through a self-help program…quite the opposite actually…He does this through the truth of the Bible…our minds are renewed when we listen to what He says in the Bible is true about you…
…and one thing He says is true about us is that we were made in the image of God…how great is that! there is such worth, value, dignity, significance being made in God’s image…maybe that’s one part of your story that is going to be restored by reading God’s Story…
But God also restores a sense of His love and value and approval in our lives through the gift of Jesus Christ…the work Jesus did for us on the cross…through the love, value and approval of Jesus Christ imparts to us through His substitutionary death on the cross and His resurrection.
God loves you because He loves Jesus. If you are in Christ, God loves and accepts and values you the same way He does with His Son Jesus…
…not because of your merits and accomplishments, but because of Christ’s merits and accomplishments…
II God loves you and wants companionship with you
Gen 2, 3
The fact that we were created in the image of God means that we were designed for relationships…because God is inherently a relational Being…His triune nature, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, make this very clear…v. 26, “Let us make man in our image…”
…within the nature of God there is a community…there is relationship…and being made in His image means we share that built in capacity and need for relationship, for meaningful companionship…with other people and with God…
Gen 3 tells us we were designed to enjoy a personal, living, walk with God…to enjoy conversation with Him…to walk with Him and talk with Him…spending time with Him…just being with Him…we were built for free and open and unobstructed companionship with God…
-read 3:8-9…(in a positive light)
-that’s the ideal, that’s the original design and purpose and blueprint of God…companionship with you…
-what do you do to develop companionship with someone?
-ever gone for a walk with God? just to speak to Him, listen to Him, spend time with Him?…just to be His friend…
-that’s what you and I were created for…and God loves it when we do this…even though our companionship with God is limited here on earth by our humanity and sin and inability to see God clearly…we can still connect…still enjoy Him…
III God Lost You Because of Sin Gen 3
-just like the little boy lost the sailboat…God lost you because of a choice that Adam and Eve made back in Gen 3…and because of the sinful nature we have inherited from Adam…we’re lost through a sinful nature and sinful choices…
-in Gen 3 sin entered the world and broke the perfect relationship people had with God, perfect companionship gone.
-that’s because God gives us a choice to love Him in response to His love…He doesn’t force Himself upon us…He gives us free will so we can freely choose to love Him or freely chose not to love Him…and we made the choice, the choice to disobey Him and go our own way…
-so once again we read 3:8 and following verses, but this time in an incredibly sad light…read 3:8-13…
-now, because we are related to Adam and Eve, because we share the same human nature, which has been passed down to every human born in history, then acc. to the Bible we too share a sinful nature which separates us from God…by birth and by choice…
-Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned”
-so we hide from God…we hide from God for the same reasons Adam and Eve did…because of fear produced by guilt and shame…
• guilt is feeling bad about what we’ve done…
• shame is feeling bad about who we are…
-we consider ourselves unacceptable, unworthy, sinful, disappointing, someone God will have nothing to do with…
-maybe that’s where some of you are at today…hiding from God…separated from God…not in a relationship with Him…not a companion of Christ…
IV God provides a way back to Himself Gen 3:15, 21
So here is where things start to turn around…a flicker of hope starts to emerge…God begins a rescue mission to bring lost people back to Himself…He launches a plan to create a way back home…a way back to loving companionship with Him…ultimately a way to heaven forever in eternity…
We see the first hints of His saving plan in two places:
Hint One: 3:15 ”He will crush your head and you will strike his heel”
I believe this is the first reference in the Bible to the future work of Christ on the cross…the first gospel message… where we learn He crushed Satan’s head, spiritually defeated him by His victorious death and resurrection…
Heb. 2:14 “…by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil…”
This is amazing when you realize this verse is not just about a snake but about Satan. God is saying one of the descendants of Adam and Eve, referred to as “your offspring, He”, is going to destroy sin and death itself but get a fatal wound in the process, the serpent will “strike his heel.”
A person is going to come, and he’s going to destroy sin and death, and in the process lose his life. And that so clearly points to the future work of Christ.
And v. 15 also talks about enmity between the snake and the woman and her offspring…enmity, hatred between Satan and God’s people…
-which we know to be true from passages like Rev. 12 where we read about the dragon, (switch of metaphors), but which also describes Satan, who is filled with fury towards Christ and His people. He hates them/us so much that he goes off to make war against them…us…
…a war which he ultimately loses because he is
“hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray…because of…the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah…triumphed over by the blood of the Lamb”. Rev. 12:10-11
-that is the heart of the gospel…Jesus’ victorious death and res.
The second hint of His future saving plan:
Hint Two: 3:21 “The Lord made garments of skin…and clothed them.”
-this is the first time in scripture we see the intentional sacrifice of an innocent animal…and it’s God who kills the animal to make coverings for Adam and Eve…clearly foreshadowing of the OT sacrificial system, and, more importantly…
…a foreshadowing of the future sacrificial death of JC on the cross; the perfect, innocent Lamb of God being put to death so that our sins could be atoned for and we could be redeemed…that you and I could be covered with the right covering, the righteousness of Christ…His forgiveness and salvation so we could have a restored relationship with God the Father…
Ps. 85:2 You forgave the iniquity of your people and covered all their sins.
Through Christ’s atoning death our sins are covered…we are justified (declared righteous) and are clothed with His righteousness…
It’s all about the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ…and that’s good news!
Conclusion
Remember what the little boy was willing to do to get that boat back? whatever it took…
And you know what Jesus Christ was willing to do to get you back? sacrifice His life…die on the cross…take your sin upon Himself so you and I could be declared innocent…
He was willing to become our Savior…
That’s how The Story starts dear friends…pretty awesome start if you ask me…this is where we’re going…we’re going to see this perfect sacrificial love unfold before us chapter by chapter, story after story…all taking us toward one great focal point, the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ…Pray…