The Story of Scripture and the Questions of Life

We have a lot of ground to cover in the Word today, as we prepare to start our Bible reading plan together tomorrow. If you’re new to McLean Bible Church, or if you’ve missed the last few weeks, we’ve been looking forward to the start of a journey through the Bible together. Hopefully, you have received one of our Bible Reading Plans. This represents a journey through the story of Scripture over the next ten months, from now until November, during which we’re going to walk chronologically through the Bible together.

Many people have read parts of the Bible here and there, but they’ve never read straight through the story of Scripture and seen how it all fits together. I want to invite everyone to join us on this journey—even if you’re not a Christian but are just exploring Christianity. This is the best-selling book in the history of the world. Surely it would at least be worth reading once to get a picture of what it says.

As you know, February is Black History Month. I was thinking about one of my favorite quotes from Francis Grimke who was born a slave in 1850—it’s an incredible story. He went on to graduate from Princeton, then became a pastor of 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, where except for a brief stint elsewhere he served for the next 60 years. As a pastor, he preached in one church for 60 years. You would think it might get old? But not for Grimke. Here’s what he said:

What a book the Bible is! Where in all the world’s literature will you find such a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom? Where will you find such sublime ideas about God, such noble standards of living? Open it up anywhere and see how the light flashes in upon us from another source. Take the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, the warnings and exhortations found in the Gospels and epistles, and above all, the glorious character and life of Jesus Christ. And yet, how often we find men in our pulpits searching heaven and earth for something new to preach about, while this treasure house of wisdom and knowledge of the things necessary to salvation is neglected, passed by and overlooked.

We will not neglect, pass by or overlook this Book. Our plan is to start this journey tomorrow, or today if you want. There are six days a week in this plan, a chapter or two a day. If you go to the church website—www.mcleanbible.org—on the front page you’ll see a link to Bible Reading Plan. That will take you to a place where you can download the plan, along with several other resources.

There are daily three to five-minute podcasts called “Pray the Word” that correspond with a verse from each day’s reading. That will start tomorrow. There are resources for small groups and families to discuss what you’re reading. You can do that around the table or when you gather together with other brothers and sisters in Christ. There are resources to help you individually to journal through what you’re reading in the Word.

Then our plan is to spend each Sunday either thinking through what we’ve just read the previous week or what we’re going to be reading next week. We’ll start our time each Sunday, Lord willing, saying a verse together that we have hopefully memorized that week. All that is on the website and also on the “Beyond Sundays” app, so if you have that or you want to download that, you can subscribe to the track for the 2019 Bible Reading Plan and it will be fed to your device.

The point of all of this is not just to help you know the story of Scripture. The point is to help you see how this story has the power to transform your story; how this story has the power to enable you to know, love and enjoy life as God created you to live. I’m guessing everybody wants to know and love and enjoy life. That won’t happen if we just read some chapters and check off some boxes on a spiritual to-do list. That’s not the point. We talked about how we need to read the Bible reflectively and experience all that God has for us in it.

Last week, I introduced you to the acrostic called MAPS—Meditate and memorize, Apply, Pray and Share—a guide for moving from reading the Bible to actually experiencing intimacy with God and enjoyment of life. We’ll use this acrostic with our reading in Genesis this week.

I want to ask the most fundamental questions in all of life and have you reflect and meditate on how those questions are answered in the opening chapters of the Bible we’re going to be reading. At the same time, I want to introduce you to the verse we’re going to memorize together this week that sums up the answers to these questions. Then I want us to think about how the answers to these questions will fundamentally change the way we live and work, the way we approach singleness and marriage and family, the way we approach business, the future, finances, plans, and dreams—essentially all of life.

Obviously, we’re not going to read all 11 chapters of Genesis together today, but I do want to start by reading chapter one together. I want us to see how the Bible begins and in the process, you’ll have half the reading for Day 1 accomplished in the next few minutes.

Let’s pray before we read.

God, we praise You for Your Word, for speaking to us, and for Your promise by Your Spirit to help us understand it and apply it to our lives. So we pray with anticipation that You would speak to us right now. Open our eyes to see wonderful things in Your Word. We pray that the next few minutes will be a supernatural encounter with You. You know what’s going on in every one of our lives and families and work, and we pray that You would take Your Word and speak directly to our hearts through it right now. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 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. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. 20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. 24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds— livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

So let’s meditate, which means to reflect. Let’s ask questions about what’s happening in what we just read in God’s Word, what He is teaching us about Himself, about us, about Jesus and about what it means to follow Him.

Who is God?

Our first question is who is God? Based on what we just read in this chapter—as well as the chapters that follow that we’ll read this week—we see that God is the supreme Creator, sovereign King, righteous Judge, and merciful Savior of the world. Let’s take these one by one.

God is the supreme Creator. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The opening verse of the Bible is a breathtaking declaration that all things begin with God, but God had no beginning. He was “in the beginning…” He was and is, always has been, and always will be, which is different from everything else in the universe. All the stars and all the sky, all the oceans and all the galaxies, all the vast expanse—they all had a beginning. There was a time when they were not, then God created them. This is huge!

I don’t have to tell you that we live in a culture that says there is no God and we were not created. Let’s quickly unpack these two ideas. First, you really can’t say definitively that there is no God. That would be an unsustainable negation. If you say something is not there, you have to have searched out all possibilities that it might be there. If I were to say something is not in the room where I’m standing right now, I would have to have searched this entire room to see if it is there.

So in the case of God, to say that God is not there is to say you’ve searched all knowledge to see if God is there. If you’ve searched all knowledge, that means you have all knowledge and by definition, that makes you God. So you would deny your own divinity with your own statement that there is no God. Some of you will catch that by lunch time—just go back and listen to it. The point is this: all of us at least have to admit the possibility that there is a God Who exists.

Now, someone might say at this point that God did not create us—a big bang did. We’re all part of a process that began billions of years ago; we’re not created beings. Let’s think about that one briefly. Even if we assume there was a time when, however many years ago, certain molecules came together in a big bang, it would still beg the question, where did those molecules come from? They had to come from somewhere. They didn’t come from nowhere and just appear.

There’s an old saying, “Out of nothing, nothing comes.” If I have in my hands a cup of nothing, what can you get from it? You get nothing. Aristotle said, “Nothing is what rocks dream about.” In order to even have particles that come together to make a big bang, those particles had to come from somewhere. You either have to believe that some natural particles have eternally existed or a supernatural God has supernaturally existed—the Creator of all things. This is why I love what Robert Jastrow—the former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—said about Genesis:

The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always believed the word of the Bible. But we scientists did not expect to find evidence for an abrupt beginning because we have had, until recently, such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

God is the beginning. He is the supreme Creator of all things. So keep following this. That means God is distinct from creation and He rules over it. This leads right into the next reality: God is the sovereign King, meaning He exercises authority and reign over creation. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, going on in Genesis 1 that is outside of His control. There’s nothing that happens in Genesis 3, when sin enters the world, that is ultimately outside of His control. The Author of creation has authority over creation.

This leads to the reality that He is the righteous Judge. In Genesis 2 we read that God establishes laws that govern creation. Jump down to Genesis 2:16-17, where the Bible says, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” This is God establishing His law, giving commandments that creation is responsible for heeding.

In Genesis 3, man and woman do not heed His commands. They disobey and disregard them, so they experience God’s judgment. Here in the very beginning of the Bible, we’re confronted with the reality that God is the righteous Judge Who will judge every single person in this room and every single person in the world. Every single one of us will one day stand before God as Judge and He will be just.

This makes us all the more thankful, when we realize that He is also the merciful Savior. He is not a creator or judge who is indifferent to us. God loves us and desires our good. Whether it’s in the initial creation of man in Genesis 2 before the fall or the grace of God toward man after the fall in Genesis 3-11, God is a merciful Savior.

How did the world come to be? 

Now, before we talk more about God in relationship to us, let’s ask the second question: how did the world come to be? The answer we see from the beginning of the Bible is that the world was fashioned by the word of God and is sustained by the power of God as a display of the goodness of God. There’s so much there.

It’s interesting, as you read through Genesis 1 and 2, that we basically have two creation accounts in the book of Genesis. Genesis 1 describes creation mainly in terms of the universe in all of its various elements. Then in Genesis 2:4, we have an account of creation that focuses specifically on people and our relationship with God.

When we put all this together, what do we learn about creation? We learn that creation was fashioned by the word of God. Genesis 1:3, “And God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’” Creation starts with the word of God. All He does is speak and it is. You see this phrase over and over again. Whenever you see a phrase repeated in the Bible as you’re reading through it, sit up and take notice.

Verse three, “And God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’” Verse six, “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters.’” Verse nine, “And God said…” Verse 11, “And God said…” Verse 14, “And God said…” Verse 20, “And God said…” Verse 24, “And God said…” Verse 26, “Then God said…”

Everything in creation is brought into being by the word of God. He speaks and it is. Everything is also sustained by the power of God. We can see the omnipotence of God all over the place. The stars are held in their place by the power of God. The oceans stop where they do by the power of God. The sun and moon exist as they do according to the power of God. The plants grow and the animals eat by the power of God. There are no self-sustaining laws in the universe. Everything here is God-sustained. This is not natural selection at work; this is supernatural provision at work. If God were to withdraw His power and His word for a split second, the universe and all that is in it—including you and me—would cease to exist in that same split second. All the order in all the universe—every single detail you and I learn in science class about how plants grow, how climate changes, how bodies work— all of it is because of the sustaining power of God.

And all of it is evidence of the goodness of God. Just look across a snow-covered Metro DC and see the beauty of God reflected in creation. This is something we see over and over again. You might highlight this repeated phrase. In verse ten, God looked at all that He made and what does it say? “God saw that it was good.” In verse 12, “God saw that it was good.” In verse 18, “God saw that it was good.” Verse 21, “And God saw that it was good.” Verse 25, “And God saw that it was good.” Then verse 31 changes it up a little bit, “God saw everything that he has made, and behold, it was very good.” This is not some standard of goodness apart from God; this is goodness that flows from the very goodness of God.

 Who are we?

The harmony, beauty, order, loveliness here in Genesis 1 are all a reflection of the goodness of God—including you and me. So let’s ask the question: who are we? Genesis 1:27is our memory verse this week: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Memorize this verse and as you do, meditate and reflect on what God is saying. We are men and women wonderfully made in God’s image, so that we might know and enjoy God as we obey God and spread His glory in the world.

There’s so much there. You are wonderfully made in the image of God. This is the verbiage we see repeated. In verse 26, God made man in His own image. In verse 27 we see it again. Then turn to Genesis 9:6 where we read, “God made man in his own image.” What does that mean? It means we are created in a unique way, apart from everything else in all creation. Just think of the beauty and majesty of the Grand Canyon, or a stunning sunrise over the ocean, or a sitting lion, or a soaring eagle. In a far, far greater way, you—right where you’re sitting right now—are a reflection of the beauty of God, the wonder of God, the image of God.

It’s kind of like when somebody looks at my six-year-old son and says, “He’s a spitting image of you.” The reality is that you and I are a reflection of God. Notice, it’s both male and female here. The Bible is speaking from the very beginning about the beauty of gender against absolutely any sense of gender superiority or domination of one gender over another. The Bible is establishing the beauty of both male and female from the very beginning in a way that is obviously questioned across our culture today. So we hear from God in His Word—man, woman, boy, girl—that God created you beautifully, with dignity, inherent dignity, as an image bearer of almighty God, as a man or a woman.

You are a unique, awesome, wonderful reflection of Him, so that you might know and enjoy Him. Do you see this? From the very beginning of our creation, what’s the first word? “God blessed them. And God said to them…” (Genesis 1:28)? God spoke to them. You and I have been created to enjoy the blessing of God and personal communion with God. God is speaking to us and we’re speaking to God. This is unlike anything else in all creation. Mountains can’t do this. The oceans don’t talk. Animals, birds, sea creatures? No. People speak to God, and God speaks to them.

This is the whole picture we see in Genesis 2. We read the account of man and woman enjoying pure, delightful, enjoyable, bountiful, full, free blessing from the Creator poured out on His unique creation. What did God say to them? Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” with My glory. We’ve been created to know and to enjoy God as we obey His Word and spread His glory in the world. See the picture of man and woman from the beginning of the Bible. They’re knowing and enjoying God, and they’re knowing and enjoying one another in perfect harmony with the world.

Don’t you long for Genesis 1 and 2? We long for it, because it’s not our experience. We experience conflict with God, conflict with each other and conflict with the world in our bodies and in our lives in the world.

What is wrong with the world?

This leads to our next question: what is wrong with the world? The answer comes in Genesis 3. Let’s read the first part together.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

We studied this together back in December, so we won’t go as deep here, but here’s a summary of what is wrong with the world, established at the beginning of the Bible. What’s wrong with the world is that we have all sinned against God by rejecting His Word, His authority and His love, causing broken relationships with God, each other and the world, culminating in death—eventual physical death and eternal spiritual death.

Let’s unpack this step by step. What’s wrong with the world is that we have all sinned against God. What does that mean? It means we have rejected God’s Word. This looks different in each one of our lives, but we have all decided at some point—and what Adam and Eve decided—that our ways are better than God’s ways. We’ve rejected His Word and rejected His authority over our lives.

Think about it here in Genesis. God speaks to all creation—to mountains, planets, oceans, clouds—and all creation responds in immediate obedience to His bidding, until you get to man and woman. You and I have the audacity to look at God in the face and say, “No.” In this, we reject God’s love. Adam and Eve doubted the goodness of God. They believed they knew better than God what was best for them and that God didn’t want what was best for them. So they disobeyed Him and doubted His love for them.

The same is true for every single one of us. We actually think we know better than God what is best for our lives—better than the very God Who created us. We think our laws for marriage and family are better. We think our approach to money, finances, and success is better. We think our ways of life and work are better than God’s. So we reject His Word, His authority, and His love.

The result is broken relationships, first and foremost with God, which is what happens in Genesis 3:8 and following. Man and woman used to rejoice in His presence, but now they’re hiding from Him. For the first time they experience guilt, shame and fear before God, then ultimately separation from God. Man and woman’s relationship with God is broken and their relationship with one another is broken.

Marriage, the most intimate of all human relationships, is now marked by strife, conflict, competition and in some ways separation, affecting all human relationships that are now marked by this quest for power, this prideful pursuit of advantage over one another that leads to anger, hate, gossip, division, racism, injustice, oppression, slavery, war and on and on and on. None of this was part of God’s design. Just four chapters into the Bible, a man murders his brother.

Then it’s not just personal relationships, but our relationship with the world is broken. A perfect creation soon witnesses a flood, which we’ll read about in Genesis 6, that wipes out almost everyone and everything on the earth. This was followed throughout history by natural decay and disaster, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and on and on and on. All of these culminate in the ultimate effect of sin, which is death.

We realize in Genesis 2 and 3 that eventual physical death was not God’s design. God said, “If you eat of this tree, if you sin, you will surely die.” So the effect of sin is clear. When you get to Genesis 5 this week, notice how almost every paragraph ends with the same phrase: “And he died…and he died…and he died…” That’s not the way God designed it to be.

But more severe even than physical death is the reality that if a man or woman physically dies in the state of separation from God, then the result is eternal spiritual death. Please, please, please do not miss how serious this picture is in the beginning of the Bible. The same serpent that was lying in Genesis 3 is lying to people all across our church right now: “You will not surely die.” Right now, he’s trying to convince you and me that there will not be eternal consequences for sin against God, that we’re all okay. When we die, we’ll just go wandering off into a happy hunting ground. At the end of a long black tunnel, there will be a bright light and we’ll go to some wonderful happy place. Or maybe when we die, we’ll just go out of existence. It’s not true. We are guilty sinners. God is a righteous Judge and the just payment for our sin is eventual physical death and eternal spiritual separation from God.

God help us in this world of day-to-day trivialities to feel the eternal weight of this. Stop for a minute amidst the busyness of your life and as a sinner, open your eyes to your eternity before a holy God. Your sin, my sin, is eternally serious before God.

What is our hope in this world?

This leads to the last question: Is there any hope in a world of broken relationships with God, with one another and with the world? Before we answer this, I think it’s helpful to at least pause for a minute and realize that atheistic naturalistic answers to this question are utterly hopeless—and I would argue agnostic and ultimately secular answers as well.

I think about Richard Dawkins, a noteworthy atheist, who was commenting on how there is no Creator who made us—we’re all just a natural product of our DNA, living according to it, then then we die and there’s no bigger picture. Listen to what he said:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good—nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is and we are all dancing to its music.

Can you imagine telling the victims of Auschwitz, “Sorry, Hitler and all these Nazi soldiers are just dancing to their DNA. They are neither evil nor good. It’s all a part of blind, pitiless indifference that neither knows nor cares and you’re just unlucky”? Or to make it more personal, amidst the hurt and pain you’ve experienced in your life or in your family, imagine being told that in the end, you really don’t have any hope of justice or redemption or healing. You either get hurt or you get lucky, then you die. That’s life, and there’s no rhyme or reason in it. That is a hollow worldview. I urge you, don’t bank your life on it.

Or think about the religions of the world that almost universally say, in different ways, “Your hope is in getting better, in doing enough good, enough kindness—enough to make you worthy. If you work hard enough at the right things, then you have hope. But you’re never really sure how much is enough.”

Let’s just see from the beginning of the Bible a far, far greater hope than anything else you will ever hear in this world; a much, much surer hope than anything this world will offer you. It’s a glorious hope. Follow this—I’m going to take it one phrase at a time. Our only hope in this world is a Redeemer Who will conquer sin and death. In the middle of the saddest chapter in the Bible—Genesis 3—God gives a promise of One Who would come, born of a woman, who would have His heel bruised, but He would crush the head of the serpent.

Genesis 3:15 is the first promise of a Redeemer. What’s a redeemer? A redeemer is one who comes to make things new, a rescuer, a liberator, who comes to set people free from the curse of sin and death. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus is the Redeemer. He came, He lived a perfect life, totally sinless, and He conquered sin completely. Then, although He had no sin for which to die, He chose to die to pay the price for your sin and my sin. Jesus came to die the death we deserve, to die for our sin in our place. And 11 the good news keeps getting better, because He didn’t stay dead for long. Jesus rose from the grave in victory over death.

Our only hope in this world is a Redeemer Who will conquer sin and death, reconciling us to God. The central message of the entire Bible, from the very beginning, is that all who trust in this Redeemer—all who turn from their sin and trust Jesus to save them from their sin as Lord of their lives— will be forgiven of all your sin. It’s not based on what you can do or if you can be good enough. Jesus has already done what is good enough, based on what He has done for you.

So put your trust in Jesus and you will be reconciled to God, restored to a relationship with God like you were originally designed to have, complete with a new heart. Our only hope is a Redeemer Who will conquer sin and death, reconcile us to God and give us new hearts. The story of Genesis, the story of Scripture, is not that we need to be recycled and made better. The story of the Bible is that we need to be redeemed and made new. Jesus did not die to make us better—He died to make us new.

The Bible is not a self-improvement plan. It is a life-transforming promise that when we trust in Jesus, God will give us new desires, new hearts that want His Word, that want His authority and that experience His love. You can be made entirely new through Jesus. And not just you. Our only hope in this world is a Redeemer Who will conquer sin and death, reconcile us to God, give us new hearts and restore God’s creation. Praise God!

In Genesis 3, God does not end the story with a quick snap. God promises there is coming a day when the perfection of Genesis 1 and 2 will be restored. Here’s a spoiler alert—I’m going to go ahead and tell you how the Bible ends. There is coming a day when sin and suffering will be no more, when pain and hurt and sorrow will be no more, when disease and death will be no more. And all who trust in the Redeemer will be fully restored to God, fully restored to one another, then this world will be fully restored to the harmony and beauty for which it was originally designed. Our only hope in this world is a Redeemer Who will conquer sin and death, reconcile us to God, give us new hearts, and restore God’s creation. In a word, our only hope is Jesus.

This means that over the next ten months, from the beginning of the Bible to the end, the center of this story will always be Jesus. One of my favorite children’s Bible story books that we’ve used with our kids is titled The Jesus Storybook Bible. The subtitle states, “Every story whispers His name.” I just want you to hear it, day after day, week after week. I want you to hear His name whispered over and over and over again in the next ten months, in such a way that you are set free from sin, in such a way that you are set free from the fear of death or anything else in this world. I want you to be set free by hope in Jesus, a hope that far surpasses anything this world can offer you, in a way that you are set free from monotonous, casual, routine religion. I want you to experience the height and depth and length and width and wonder of intimacy with Jesus and communion with God every day of your life, and to trust in God with everything in your life.

As you read this story of Scripture, I long for you to cling to the hope, peace, joy and life that are found in Jesus more and more every day in everything. In the process, I long for you to live to make His hope known in the world. Right around us here in DC, we want more and more and more people to know the hope that’s found in Jesus. It’s why we make disciples. It’s why we multiply churches here and around the world.

I received an email this last week from a brother in Yemen where we work with as a church in the middle of darkness and war. Remember, your giving over and above this last December allowed us to provide food for our brothers and sisters in Christ there. They’re sharing that with unbelievers around them, opening doors in Yemen for the spread of gospel hope. We’re training pastors and leaders there. I just got word this last week that six new believers have been baptized. We have a hope to share in our hurting world.

So here’s the deal. We meditate and we memorize. Let’s memorize Genesis 1:27 this week. Do this individually or with friends or with your family. But we don’t stop there. We apply, pray and share. This Book is not just to be listened to, then we kind of move on with our lives. This Book totally transforms our lives.

Before we do anything else, before you move on with the rest of your day, I want us to pause. God has spoken through His Word. I want to pause for a couple minutes and encourage you, where you’re sitting right now, to identify one, two or three ways these truths will cause you to think and desire and act differently this week. We’ve been talking about head, heart and hands. How does the Word change the way you think, desire and act? How did these truths lead you to us that acrostic PRAY: Praise God, Repent of sin, Ask God for certain requests, Yield to God in your life? Then think about who can you discuss and share these truths with this week? This Word is not intended to stop with you—it’s intended to spread through you.

I want to invite you right now to write down your initial thoughts along these lines. Reflect for a moment. Spend time between you and God. He has spoken and I want to give you an opportunity to respond. As you start writing, I want to say especially to anyone who is not a follower of Jesus, consider that God has brought you here to hear this story. He loves you and He has made a way for you to be reconciled to Him. Right now, while others are reflecting different ways, you can pray to God, asking Him to forgive you of your sins. Say, “I trust in Jesus to save me from my sins. Restore me to a relationship with You,” and God will answer that prayer right now in this holy moment. I urge you.

We had one woman last week who trusted in Christ after she heard the message of the Bible. She said, “I need to be saved from my sins.” I invite you to do that now. Let me invite you just to reflect and pray for a couple minutes, then I’ll close in prayer.

God, we praise You for Your Word. We praise You for speaking to us. We praise You that we don’t have to fumble around in the darkness, trying to figure out answers to the most foundational questions in life. We praise You for answering them from the very beginning of Your Word, for speaking to us—and for speaking to us in a fresh way right now. God, bring life through Your Word. We pray that even now You would bring spiritual life to some, to many, for the first time. And to all of us, we want to experience the life You created us to live more and more and more: peace, joy and hope that are found in Jesus.

Jesus, we praise You as the Hero of the Bible, the center of the story of all history, and we want You to be the center of the story of our lives. So conform us more to Your image as we read Your Word. God, please cause us as a church to love Jesus more as a result of the next ten months and to look more like Jesus as a result of this study together. God, please, move in power among us we pray, through Your Word. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

Question 1. How is the denial of God an unsustainable negation?

Question 2. What does it mean that creation with the Word of God

Question 3. How are humans made in the image of God? Why should this dictate the way we interact with others?

Question 4. Why are the naturalistic explanations for creation utterly hopeless?

Question 5. According to the sermon, what are three things Christ does as our Redeemer?

GENSIS 1

“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. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. And God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night – and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds – livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.’ And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” 

WHO IS GOD?

God is the supreme Creator, sovereign King, righteous Judge, and merciful Savoir of the world.

GENESIS 2:16-17

“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’”

WHO ARE WE?

We are men and women wonderfully made in God’s Image so that we might know and enjoy God as we obey His Word and spread His glory in the world.

GENESIS 3:1-7

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’? And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD?

We have all sinned against God by rejecting His word, His authority, and His love, causing broken relationships with God, each other, and the world, and culminating in death (eventual physical death and eternal spiritual death)

WHAT IS OUR HOPE IN THE WORLD?

Our only hope is a Redeemer who will conquer sin and death… reconcile us to God…give us new hearts… and restore God’s creation. In a word, our only hope is Jesus!

APPLY, PRAY, AND SHARE…

• Identify 1-3 ways these truths cause you to think, desire, and/or act differently this week.
• How do these truths lead to PRAY (to praise God, to repent of sin, to ask God for certain, requests, or to yield to God in your life)?
• Who can you discuss and/or share these truths with week?