Genesis 1-22 Recap

Today's scripture is from Genesis 15, 1 to 6.

After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.

Fear not, Abram, I am your shield.

Your reward shall be very great.

But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me?

For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus.

And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him.

This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir.

And he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.

Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be.

And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

I'll take.

Thank you.

The 20th 19th.

Yeah, I totally put you on the spot.

Yeah, so good morning.

So my heart for this That'll magnify your voice.

Speak into this?

Yep.

Okay.

So yeah, we want to start a girls, ladies' Bible study.

Um, I've been doing it for gosh, up to 20 years.

And I feel kind of lost here in um Denver since we just moved here, and I want to get to know some more women and just by name and get to fellowship with you and just love on each other.

So I'm inviting you personally to God of Creation.

Um, we're gonna be following along with James.

He's gonna be doing Genesis, so we're gonna be following along with him.

Um Jen Wilkins study.

Um so join us starting January 19th, Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

We will have food, we will have drinks, and we will have lots of fun.

So it's a 10-week study.

We're gonna break it up, so we're not gonna do it for 10 full weeks.

We're gonna take some breaks in between for um spring break and also for just other things that come up in life.

Um, so, anyways, we just want to encourage you guys to sign up for this Bible study.

I have started ordering books because it's taking much longer to get them.

So, right now we do have a nice group coming.

Um, but everyone come.

I've got some sweet, sweet ladies coming alongside me to help me out here.

This is gonna be a fun time.

So don't miss out.

Ladies' night out, Wednesday starting um the the 19th.

So leave your kids at home with their dads, off your hip.

Come and have fun.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Give Mona hand.

I told her like 10 seconds before, hey, would you announce this?

Um, I'm just gonna put Mike in Ryan's hands.

Uh the uh yeah, so also husbands, that's an announcement for you as well.

Like you congratulations, you're babysitting that night.

And the uh uh on Wednesdays, and uh yeah, if you uh so here's the thing.

If you you'll have to put the kids to sleep alone, which is a catastrophe.

Uh but then after that you can watch whatever you want on Netflix.

So it's a break-even.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, thank you.

Nope, I got one more announcement.

I'm sorry.

The Bible reading plan this year.

Uh it's not too late to join in on the Bible reading plan.

Here's a great way to think about Bible reading plans.

Uh, you've missed out on the first couple of weeks, so you may be starting in the middle of Genesis for this year's Bible reading plan.

But don't think of the Bible as something like, okay, I'm just gonna get through this book and then I'll put it on my shelf and say, I've read that.

Instead, think of it as uh a Bible reading plan as something that helps you live in the Word for your whole life.

So it's it's one big decision, okay, I'm gonna read this reading plan.

And then you don't have to make a decision for the rest of the year on how you're going to be finding time in the Word.

So uh we are doing a Bible reading plan together as a church.

You can find it on our app if you download the Redemption Church Denver app, search all of that, Redemption Church Denver, in your app store of choice, and you can participate in our Bible reading plan and also sign up to be a part of the group chat, which is facilitated in our Bible reading plan as well.

Um, a lot of cool stuff happening in the group chat.

Uh like, you know, ish.

How do you get in the group?

You go to uh either in the calendar or under connect in the app, and there's a space to sign up for the group chat, and you'll be put in it.

And it's the little top right corner, little like cartoon voice box buttons uh in the app, and then we can you you like ask questions and you know, isn't this weird in the Bible?

And then somebody says, Yeah, and then we can continue reading.

Marshall Sire.

Thank you, Krista.

Um, the so each Sunday in January, we are um partnering with uh Ohana Yoga, which is just up the street on Tennyson, is doing a big drive for uh uh people who lost their homes in the Marshall Fire.

And they're gathering all of their things here in our church.

Uh in this is an old mortuary.

Um and so in like the body prep room, we're we're prepping um hey, take what you can get in this town, Denver Real Estate.

Um you can uh it that's where they're gathering all the materials and they need folks to help sort.

So each Sunday in January, you can go back there and serve and help sort things and organize things from 11 to 1.

So you could stick around today after church and go help, uh, or you can plan on the remaining Sundays in January.

You can just stick around here and head right back and help sort those things uh so that folks in the Marshall Fire can uh receive just basic needs.

Uh sound good?

Cool.

Let's pray for real this time.

Holy Father, we pray that you would attend this morning.

Lord, thank you for this community, uh, the joy of fellowship.

Lord, thanks for a time of confession, the news of our forgiveness in you, Jesus.

Lord, we pray that you would um attend your word and that you would teach us how to respond to and enjoy the promises that you've given to us.

Let those shape our lives.

Lord, teach us how to read your word, teach us how to see you in it.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we've had a uh uh structure to our sermons since 2020 when we began this structure.

Uh we've done Genesis after the first of the year, and then in the fall, we've done a section of Mark.

And so we're just slowly moving through each of these books throughout the year, and then in the summer, we just like pick something and preach through it.

Uh so this is our third year returning to Genesis, the beginning of our third year.

So in 2020, we preached through, and by we, I mean mostly me, preached through Genesis uh one through uh chapter one through 11.

And in that we see things like the creation and the fall of man into sin and the flood and babel.

And it that was pretty timely to be actually the the day that we moved in here, this is just kind of funny, uh, was March 8th of 2020.

I was preaching on the flood, and then that week we uh went into lockdown for COVID.

So it was our first day in the building, and then the next week we weren't able to gather anymore while we were preaching about a global catastrophe.

Uh it was a great object lesson.

Um and then when uh I preached on Sodom and Gomorrah, our church was destroyed in a blaze of fire from the heavens.

In then in 2021, last year, we moved through the story of Abraham and the promises that Abraham receives from the Lord.

And so today, this year, what we're looking at is the second generation of the promise that the Lord was given.

Uh the of the promise that the Lord gave to his people.

And we'll see how this moves through Abraham's offspring, particularly the stories of Isaac and then the story of Jacob.

So that's where what we're going to be moving through this year.

But this Sunday, I wanted to begin with a recap of Genesis chapters one through twenty-two.

So this is our previously on the West Wing episode uh of uh uh of a sermon.

So uh preaching on Genesis chapters one through twenty two is an absurd proposition, but here we go.

Here's what I want us to see in this.

I'm going to give a summary, and like some, like all summaries, it's it conceals truths because so many details are left out, but it also reveals truths that we couldn't see otherwise without a summary.

Uh and in this summary, I I want us to have sort of this larger project for today's sermon, which is learning how to approach and read scripture.

How is it that we approach scripture and how is that different from the ways that we approach another book or another religious text?

Why, how do we read the Bible and how do we read the Bible differently from the way that we would read other texts?

I want to begin with this quote.

Um, this is this quote uh is referenced by Leslie Nubigan uh in a book that he wrote called The Open Secret.

And in it, Leslie Nubigan he died in the 90s, but for his whole uh career, he was a uh he's Scottish and he was a missionary in India for most of his career, and then he moved back to uh Europe and um uh was just became a wonderful asset to the church, teaching the church about missions and mission mission work.

Um and he describes this one interaction that he had with an Indian man who offered this particular critique about missionaries uh in the way that they would uh describe scripture, uh, Western missionaries in India.

He said, He said this: I can't understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion.

It is not a book of religion.

I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation, and the history of the human race, and therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history.

That is unique.

There is nothing else in the whole of religious literature of the world to put alongside it.

So, in this quote above, what this Indian man notices is that missionaries would come and they'd say, Here's a religious text.

Here's this Bible, it's a religious text.

He would read it and say, This is not a religious text.

This is an a complete story of all of universal history.

This is a description of the very reality that we are in and the human experience within that reality.

A religious text would answer particular questions that uh so it might answer particular ethical questions, or it might answer particular transcendent questions, ethical, like what is good, what is right, what is right living, or transcendent questions, like is there such a thing as a God?

If so, is he knowable?

Is there such a thing as a reality outside of our own minds?

And if so, can we prove that it exists, or what reasons do we have to believe that something like that exists?

But this text, the Bible, does not present itself to us as just another religious text.

Instead, it presents itself to us as the very voice of God.

How is it that we relate to, understand, read, interpret a book that claims to be the voice of God?

Well, what we have to see in order to read this in our own way, and what we have to understand is what why is it that the missionaries would present the Bible as another religious text among many other religious texts?

Well, it's because us Westerners, that's the way we read the Bible.

We tend to read the Bible as just another religious text.

And you can see because we read it with a narrow lens on the questions that we expect it to answer.

Perhaps it offers some ethical guidance, it offers uh personal guidance, so a moral sort of guidance, but we wouldn't look to it to describe the universe that we're in.

That would be a scientific project.

And oftentimes we see that it even tends to contradict the ways that we think a human psychology would be best ordered.

And so we develop these lenses that become our true foundations for interpretation, the true ground that we stand on in order to look at the Bible and assess it in its place as a religious text.

So I propose that there are two main positions that we stand in culturally to assess the Bible as just a religious text rather than the voice of God which describes all of reality.

Now, these two positions or these two lenses that we would look through to filter scripture through, call the scientific lens and the therapeutic lens.

Now, there are probably more, but I think that these are most prevalent in our culture now.

So the the you can hear these come up when you would hear someone say, I don't believe the Bible because of this thing.

So someone in the scientific lens might say something like, We can't trust the Bible because we know that the Genesis account of creation contradicts what science tells us.

So now what is what's happening there?

Take whether or not you think that statement is true and just put that on a shelf for now.

Let's just examine the mechanics of what's happening.

What's happening is you're saying I have this pattern of truth, which I believe in absolutely, which is uh, you know, a scientific, materialist, rationalist pattern of truth.

And because I have completely accepted that uh description of reality, I'm able to stand on it and assess scripture through that lens.

And so we might, in a scientific sentence, would be something like uh science contradicts Genesis, the Genesis account of creation.

We would say, because we know that science is the true absolute.

And what's another word for a true absolute?

At least functionally, we could say it's like a that's like a true voice of God.

Right?

The one, it's absolute and unquestionable.

So because science serves the rule as the true voice of God, we would use it as a framework to assess the viability of scripture.

Now, we also do this in our culture through a therapeutic lens.

And I think that this is more um common than it was, for example, when Nubigan was writing in the 90s, as we assess through a therapeutic lens.

And this is nothing, I I I I want you to hear this, it's nothing against science.

Like I'm I love science.

I'm for science.

Um as if anyone's asking.

And this is nothing against therapy.

I go to therapy, I have a therapist.

This is just describing how we interpret scripture.

Okay?

Does that make sense?

Okay.

I don't want to lose anybody because they're like, oh, this is a classic anti-science, you know, anti-helping people church.

I don't know.

People say things like that.

I'm not on Twitter.

I just hear that they say things like that.

Through a therapeutic lens, we might assess scripture in a way like this.

You might hear something like this said.

We see that scripture creates an oppressive framework where a person is not able to express or describe their true uh inner being, who the true, the trueness of their self is.

And so because they aren't able to express that trueness of their of themselves, it creates an oppressive uh way of being that leads to all kinds of dysfunction and pathology.

And so, because we know that scripture oppresses people into these particular categories of sin and righteousness, then and because we see that that leads to all sorts of pathologies, then I can tell you that scripture is not true or Christianity is not viable.

So, whether, once again, whether or not you agree with that statement or not, you see the mechanics that's happening.

So, what we have is an absolute truth of our understanding of human psychology, our understanding of what causes a person to flourish and what prevents a person from flourishing.

And because of the absolute voice of Godness of that pattern of thinking, we're able to assess scripture and say whether or not it is true.

Now, here's my goal is that we learn to read scripture as the true voice of God.

That scripture instead stands as the voice of God and it begins to assess us in our own frameworks that we are taking to assess Scripture.

Do you see?

It's an it's an inverse of the pattern.

We might say something like this, to put it in a more common vernacular, that we would approach Scripture in such a way that we would allow Scripture to deconstruct us.

That is the approach that we would take to Scripture, because that's the way that you would read something if you thought it was the voice of God.

Nubigan says this in that book, he says, My goal is to help you shift from looking at Christianity from the point of view of this scientific world, and instead look at this scientific world from the point of view of Christianity.

So this means we are giving the Bible the authority over the lens that we use to interpret the Bible.

This is an absolute authority.

So if you might think to yourself, science contradicts the Genesis account of creation.

Now, with this frame, you might read the Genesis account of creation and you would think, I wonder why I think this contradicts the scientific narrative.

I wonder what I mean by the scientific narrative.

I wonder what I mean by concepts like a day.

Do I do I mean one revolution of the earth?

Is that the scientific definition of a day?

Do I mean the experience of a human sitting on the earth and seeing the evening come and then night and the morning come after it?

Well, there's a sense in which that is very much a definition of a day.

Is this human experience?

And yet that's not a very objective scientific definition of day, is it?

It's much more subjective, much more personal, much more deeply human.

And so then you you this may just be me longing for you know freshman philosophy classes.

But I don't think it is.

I I think that what's beginning to happen there is you're starting to allow the Bible to become the framework through which you interpret all of reality.

Now, here's the promise of scripture.

If you learn to interpret scripture, you will learn to interpret the world.

Consider that.

This isn't a book that just helps you get your psychology right.

This isn't a book that you just read devotionally to give you a pick a pick me up in the morning.

This is a book that if you learn to interpret it, it is the very voice of God, and it is giving you the ability then to interpret the world.

This is an insane promise.

So, what I want us to try and do as we move through this.

Recap is to practice it, practice gathering these tools for how it is that we learn to give the Bible the ultimate voice, the absolutely authoritative voice in our understanding of the world and understanding of existence.

Because you'll see that when you try and understand it in any other terms, you'll miss it.

You're treating it like a religious text.

It is not a religious text.

You have a category for religious texts.

This is a book that transcends all those other categories.

So are you ready to practice?

Okay, great.

Carolyn, let's do this.

We're going to move through in two sections.

These are the sections that I've preached through it earlier.

So the first section will be Genesis 1 through 11.

And then part two will be Genesis 12 through 22.

Genesis 1 through 11.

Genesis 1-1.

Everybody know it in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Wow.

All right, what do we do with that?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Okay, so what we have here is uh the first thing that the Bible establishes is that God exists before all things eternally, and from him alone all things are created.

God isn't his creation, his creation is separate from him, but God informs all of his creation because it comes from him.

So immediately we're given, we're given a cosmology, we're given a metaphysic.

We're shown the world reality exists in these sort of two tiers.

There's creation, which is all dependent on God, and then there's God who is dependent on none of it.

God eternally existing and creation beneath it.

And so, in order to understand existence, we have to understand it in terms of that relationship.

The relationship between the eternal God and his creation.

Creation is intrinsically relational from the very beginning.

And then God begins to create the world, and he creates it over a pattern of six days.

And what does he use to create the world?

To create existence.

Do you remember?

His voice, that's right.

His word.

He creates the world in a pattern of six days just by his word.

Do you realize what this means?

It means that the world, existence, you know, things like podium and chair and coffee mug and carolin, that existence is imbued with meaning in the same way that a word or a sentence is imbued with meaning.

Why?

Because what is it that creates existence?

Word.

The word creates existence.

So the universe is meaningful, not metaphorically, literally meaningful.

It is made of meaning.

Look at the credence that this gives to something like a scientific project.

What are we doing with science?

We're looking to convert the facts of reality into some sort of a narrative that's intelligible to a human mind.

Well, this understanding of the cosmos shows us that this is a reasonable project.

We can look up at the stars and tell cause and effect stories about them.

You know, we can unfold James Webb telescopes.

Isn't that it, James Webb?

Yeah.

And uh and point them, you know, at the at the farthest reaches of space and expect to find meaningful cause and effect relationships there that are intelligible with words to the human mind.

It's amazing at how much faith a project like that takes, and it finds its reasonability in this reality that all of existence comes from the word.

Do you see that?

It's imbued with meaning.

Then God creates in this pattern, and this is just a helpful pattern that I wanted to share with you, and it's also a quick way to move through the six days.

Um we pull up that graph.

So God creates in a pattern of six days, and what was the problem that's laid out at the beginning of creation?

It's the world, the Spirit of God hovers over the waters, and the world was it was formless and void.

Right?

So this is like a this is the plot device in Genesis chapter one.

There's no form and it's and it's empty.

So it's like God is saying, okay, I'm gonna tell you here by describing the problem exactly what I'm going to do.

I'm going to create form, I'm going to create structures, and then I'm going to fill them.

And so the first three days, that's precisely what God does.

He creates structures.

So on day one, he creates light.

Notice we don't get sun, moon, and stars until day four.

But on day one, he creates light.

And then he separates the light from the darkness.

And he stands back and he says, This is good.

The form of light.

Day two, he separates the sea and the sea and the sky.

And he stands back and he says, This is good.

And then day three, he separates the land from the sea.

He's bringing definition and character to his world.

He's creating these forms.

And then the second three days, he fills the forms that he has created.

On day four, he gives the greater light in the day and the lesser light at night.

And the stars and their purpose is so that we can tell times and seasons.

Don't you see?

He's written meaning across the sky, meaning that is particularly intelligible to humans.

This is something that a purely materialist, purely rationalist scientific framework doesn't even allow for this concept.

Because why should we imagine, what reason do we have to believe that our minds evolved with the ability to accurately interpret the patterns and seasons in the stars?

We have no reason to trust something like that.

Not within that own framework.

The biblical framework instead gives us reason to trust that we can interpret the stars.

On the fifth day, he creates birds and fish to fill what he created on the second day, sea and sky.

On the sixth day, just as he created land on the third day, he fills the form with land animals and creeping things.

And of course, on the sixth day, he crowns his creation with humanity.

In Genesis 1, 27 through 28, it says, 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.

God creates man uniquely in his own image.

And then he blesses them.

And notice the blessing of mankind is a command.

The blessing is to be fruitful and multiply.

Well, what have we learned by God's own pattern of creation?

God loves to fill voids.

He loves to increase the demonstration of his creative glory.

And he calls humanity into that very same project.

How uh Adam and Eve might have asked, how is it that we are to image God?

He'd say, Well, consider what I have done for these six days.

You know, consider the world that I have shown to you.

It is a world in which I have taken things and I have subdued them, and then I have filled what I have subdued with life.

And so God calls humanity to participate in their own intrinsic identity, but as well to participate in the creative project that God had started on these six days.

And so it was a world that was good and meant to continue growing and expressing gloriously this goodness of God.

And humanity was set as king and queen over this creation, so that by our rule it would find a greater and more complete flourishing than it ever could if we weren't here.

Now, this world meant to develop under humanity.

God shows us that the essence of what holds the world together is not something you can see or touch.

The world isn't held together by these sorts of things.

It's not even something like you know, gravitational attraction or something.

But the world is actually held together by a relational fidelity to God.

And God describes this, and he makes this explicit as he makes a covenant with Adam.

He says in Genesis 2, 16 to 17, the Lord 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 it, excuse me, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

This is a command to Adam, but it's also a description of the structure of reality.

When the relationship with God is broken, then there is a deterioration called death that enters into the world.

And this is a promise that God gives to Adam.

And we see the character of God even revealed in this, that he gives abundantly.

How many trees can he eat of in the garden?

All of them.

He is surrounded by this gift of abundance.

And then with discretion, God offers one single prohibition.

And this provides the structure, the framework to make explicit what God knows is true, which is that the structure of the world is held up by his word and by humanity's faithfulness to his word.

Do you see the logic of this?

If the world is made of God's word, then how could we possibly depart from or disobey or break relational fidelity with that word and expect to be able to live in it?

The outcome of that is death.

Of course, you know the story.

Adam and Eve sin.

They do eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

They are deceived by Satan, who comes in the form of a serpent.

And it's important to see the form of the serpent and this evil move in deeply mysteriously.

I wish I had a, here's where evil came from, origin story, but it isn't in scripture.

We see some sort of a fall, a fall in the heavens that becomes a fall on earth.

And what does Satan do to try and deconstruct all of reality?

He goes after the king and queen of the earth, Adam and Eve.

Because when they fall to him, all that was in their dominion would fall as well.

And the kingdom would instead be turned away from the Lord and would be turned toward Satan.

And of course, this happens.

Adam and Eve believe the lies of the serpent, the world falls, and God names these falls by pronouncing a curse upon the world, and he curses the serpent, and he curses Eve, and he curses Adam.

Now, the curse of in the curse to the serpent, this strange thing happens.

God says in Genesis 3.15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

I want you to see the logic of this.

Adam and Eve become enslaved to the serpent because of their obedience to the serpent.

This is the nature of sin.

You become enslaved to sin because you obey sin.

We have words for this pattern, addiction.

You know, addiction is a whole story.

It's not an event.

But it's describing a relationship to something that you don't want to be related to.

But you're related to it by your continued obedience.

We become enslaved to Satan by our continued obedience to his lies.

And that obedience to his lies is simultaneously a rebellion against God.

So the relationship that holds existence together is fractured.

But in this curse, God makes this strange promise, saying the seed of the woman, from the seed of the woman, what is that promise?

We know death is coming.

It means that this story won't end here.

From the seed of the woman, the the head of the serpent will be wounded.

So there's something here about this one who now is in control of us, Satan, by our obedience to him.

One day that master will be dealt with.

Right here, in the middle of the curse, God plants the seed of a promise that will form the trajectory of the rest of Scripture.

That from the seed of woman, of the woman, there will come somebody who will free us from our enslavement to Satan.

Right here, the story of redemption begins.

And it becomes the thread that all of Scripture is built on.

It is a promise from God.

And in the same way that God's word created the world, his promise through the story of redemption upholds the world as we move through redemptive history.

Now we move out of the garden, and as the story continues, humanity's humanity does this sort of double move where we mature as a people and we grow into societies and civilizations and kingdoms and things, and at the same time, we demonstrate our greater capacity for wickedness and evil until it gets to a point where God says this before the flood.

God says that the only intention of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually.

That's about as absolute of a statement as you can possibly make.

The only intention of the thoughts of man's hearts is only evil continually.

This is the result of a world in sin, broken in our relationship with God, broken in our own hearts, and enslaved to Satan.

All of our intentions become evil and just our own.

And so you can picture this, you know, if all of uh all of us, you know, there's this there's this evil that tends in our hearts, and that that would drive apart a society until everybody was just doing what was right in their own eyes all the time.

And so it's a world ruled by a sort of chaos.

And what is it that what is it that God does in the face of this chaos?

Provides a flood.

What is a flood?

It is chaos.

It's it's the the waters that that the spirit hovered over that were formless and void.

The world becomes decreated.

We move back behind the third day of creation into the flood that covers everything, even up to the highest peaks in the world, are washed away.

And all of the intentions and the evil of the human heart is washed away with it.

Because God sees this brokenness in humanity needs to be dealt with.

But there was one man named Noah, and God made something that God called a covenant with Noah, which is a promise.

God promised Noah that by building an ark, he would bring his family through it.

An ark is not a name for a big boat.

An ark is a name for a box that you put on an altar that's full of something holy.

But instead, this ark would go across the waters and it would preserve one man who was given a promise.

And in preserving that one man, we see that there is a preservation of this promise that was given to the serpent in the wilderness that was given to Eve.

The seed would be preserved.

And this seed moves through the waters.

And then on the other side of the flood, Noah and his family get out, and God makes another covenant with Noah.

Covenant marked by, do you know it?

Rainbow.

Exactly.

In June, as a culture, we all celebrate this covenant together.

And there's a, there's a, I think that's what's happening.

I don't get out of church much.

There's a, and uh with the this this covenant that's shown, what's shown here is that there's a the God promises he will never destroy the earth again by a flood.

He will never destroy the earth again by a flood.

Now, what does that mean?

It means that God is saying, I will not unwind creation to fix the brokenness of sin within it.

It's like we could imagine, okay, you know, things have gotten so bad, God might just end creation and start over.

What do you do with something when it's broken?

One of the options is you throw it away.

You get something new.

With his covenant with Noah, God says clearly, God says, I will not unwind creation again.

Which means the only way towards a hope of reconciliation is forward.

The only means through which this hope of reconciliation with God might come is through these promises.

It's only forward.

Now, after a catastrophic event like the flood, humanity rebounds again.

We're fruitful, we multiply, there's many more people on the earth, and we gather together in the most maximal unity you could possibly imagine.

Okay, and everybody speaks exactly the same language, which means everyone all over the world understands each other.

I I often don't speak the same language as the people in my own office.

Sorry, Zach.

This is a Maximal unity.

And they say, we'll get together, we'll make a name for ourselves, and we'll build a tower.

Why do you think you'd want to build a tower?

Well, it's a good way of avoiding rising waters, at least.

We'll make a name for ourselves.

And in this project of absolute unity, God comes down to humanity and he disbands them and confuses all of their languages.

So in this project, what we see happen here, what this ultimately is, is it's a project of self-svation.

You know what we call it when we have our own quests for global unity?

We call it seeking world peace.

Do you know what we call it when other people have their own quests for global unity?

Imperialism.

This shows us that even if all of humanity were absolutely united, we would only dissolve into chaos.

Our only hope is that God Himself would restore his relationship with us.

There is no amount of unity that can compensate for our broken relationship with the Lord.

The story is told in the very beginning of Scripture, and it ought to close this door on a sort of foolish hope that we're so close, if we could just get rid of the people who think like the other side of the aisle, they're the ones in the way of our absolute fulfillment of a paradise.

No, even if everyone was 100% united, speaking precisely the same language, moving towards exactly the same pointed goal, you know, the top of a tower, we would dissolve into chaos.

So here's the position of humanity at the end of chapter 11.

Don't worry, chapters 12 through 22 is very quick.

The position of humanity at the end of chapter 11.

We have fallen into sin in a good creation.

We've been given a promise from the Lord.

The flood shows us that there is no going back.

It will not be unwound.

The promise will move forward with this world, this story.

And Babel shows us we cannot save ourselves.

So here's the situation you find yourself in.

There's no going back.

You can't save yourself.

Now, as we move into chapter twelve, the story moves from this cosmic creation of the stars.

All of civilization united around Babel, global flood.

And then in chapter 12, the story becomes one man that we hadn't even heard of previously, zoomed in on.

His name is Abraham.

And God speaks to this one man.

He says, Genesis 12, Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

What is Abraham given?

A promise.

And then this promise is given to Abraham in this form, which is, it will be your seed.

I will make of you a great nation, land and a nation, you know, form and filling.

We know God loves things like that.

And he makes this promise to Abraham.

And he tells Abraham, Go.

He must go forward.

There's no going back, there's no unwinding.

He must go forward into this promise that he can't see.

And here, through this story, we begin to learn how to relate to the promises of God.

We can see that the whole world is upheld by the word of God and by his promises.

But in the story of Abraham, we begin to see our very lives are upheld, given meaning by the promises of God.

And we see in the story of Abraham's life what it looks like when a sinful man tries to hold on to the promise of God in a world where he can't see it happening, a world that looks like it's just plunging towards death, and he himself can't stop trying to take his own salvation into his own hands.

And we see that pattern repeat and repeat all around this one promise that's as small as a child, but is as large as the world being freed from the dominion of Satan.

Those are the stakes, and the object is just one child being born, and they waver, and they waver.

But God shows his faithfulness.

In Genesis 15, 5 through 6, it says, Abraham is having one of those moments where he's like, We're too old to have a child.

What do you mean by this promise?

And in 15, 5 through 6, God brings him outside, says, and he brought him outside and said, Look toward heaven and number the stars, if you are able to number them.

What were the stars there for?

Look at the meaning God put into the stars.

Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be.

And then look at this, Abraham, and he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

The world is upheld by the promises of God.

This is the nature of reality.

The world is upheld by the promises of God.

Your very life is upheld by the promises of God.

What becomes righteousness in a world that is upheld by the promises of God, to a creature, a human that relates to them.

Doesn't it make sense that it would be faith?

That it would be trusting in the promises of God, trusting in them like we trust in the world to hold our feet up that we don't dissolve into it?

Because it's the same word that holds the stars in place, the same word that holds our ourselves together, that keeps our atoms from spitting apart, or whatever they would do.

That very same word is given to us in these promises that say, I will bless you, I will restore my relationship with you.

Trust me.

Trust me.

This is how we learn to live in the world.

We read our Bibles because we trust his word.

And it gives shape to reality and our lives in that reality.

After much painful waiting, Sarah becomes pregnant, Abraham's wife.

They give birth and they name their son Isaac.

And then God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his child.

Sacrifice the promise.

Sacrifice the child of promise to God.

And Abraham becomes heroic in his faith.

And he goes through with sacrificing Isaac.

His hand is stayed by the Lord.

But he sacrifices Isaac because he believes that the Lord was able to return Isaac even from the dead.

Do you see the glimmers of what this faith leads to?

In laying down a beloved son who is the seed of the promise, perhaps death could be conquered.

This promise becomes what we look forward to and its absolute fulfillment in Christ.

All of this points us towards Christ, the promised one who would come, but it's more magnificent than we could possibly imagine.

Because it is not just that the Lord has revealed the universe to us in ways that are intelligible to human minds.

It is that the Lord reveals himself to us in the way that is most absolutely intelligible to a human because he reveals himself to us as one of us.

And then he rescues us by taking on our death, the wages of our rebellion, so that we, by faith, trusting in his word, his promises, are able to receive the glory that he had designed for us at the beginning of creation, and even more than that, because we are united to his son.

By faith, we become united to Christ.

How is it that Christ could be the center of all of reality?

When you understand the story that you're in, you see how could it be otherwise?

How is it that faith could be the thing that joins us?

Well, what else could it be?

All of existence is held up by this right relationship.

And what is a relationship other than trusting someone?

We trust the word of God from beginning to end.

That's how we read our Bibles.

You see?

This is more scientific than can be measured.

It's more therapeutic than could be experienced.

This is not a religious text.

I want you to become obsessed with it.

To see the world through it.

Okay, let's take one question, if there is one, and then we'll pray.

With respect to the opening chapters of Genesis, is Christianity compatible with evolution?

It depends on the type of evolution that you're talking about, and it depends what you mean by compatible.

That's it.

As so we can imagine ourselves as being someone who uh is seeking an explanation that is compatible with evolution.

By evolution, do we mean that the world can only be explained in terms of materialism?

A way of saying that is the world can only be described from the bottom up.

And that there is nothing that holds the world together from the top down.

Ah, that's too weird, isn't it?

That doesn't that doesn't help at all.

The question the question has to start with what do you think the Bible says?

What do you what do you think, what do you think it's communicating?

Because what evolution is, is an attempt to, at its most fundamental level, it's an attempt to create a unifying theory of life that doesn't require God as an explanatory factor.

So from that fund that's the basis of the project, okay, is to try and create a unifying theory of life that doesn't require God as an explanatory factor.

So in that sense, the Bible is inevitably in contradiction with evolution.

They can't even be, they can't even, they're they're talking, they're speaking in completely different languages, they're describing completely different worlds.

But then let's ask ourselves something like why why would if the theory of evolution is true, why would I want something like a theory, a unifying theory of existence?

What what is there an evolutionary explanation for this desire in me to have a unified theory of existence?

There's no reason to think that anything like a unified theory of existence would even exist.

So it's a foolish thing to even hope for.

And then just my hoping for it in the first place raises this question of why would I why would I hope for something like that?

And so that's why would I hope for something like that?

Oh, probably something like I'm in a Western culture that's so deeply informed by Christianity that I don't even have the mental furniture to be able to make sense of my own life without some grand unifying narrative that it fits into in some way.

And so by going down this evolutionary project, I'm borrowing from a Christian metaphysic for the starting of it.

I want things like a unifying theory.

I want things like a grand narrative that is able to explain these things.

I want to be able to say that my brain can rationally connect with cause and effect stories in the world.

Okay, I'll borrow that from the Christian narrative, and then I'll pretend the Christian narrative doesn't exist, and I'll go over and try and construct a unifying theory without God.

You see, it's a it's a um it's at least disingenuous.

It's pretending to not know things that you know to move down that project.

That's how you begin to let scripture do the dictating, speak to your whole life.

Because scripture answers questions like why would I want to know something like that?

Do you see that nature?

So that's the way we want to learn to approach those questions.

Rather than because what happens typically is uh somebody says science is the only way to really prove anything, science.

And what they mean is philosophy is the only way to really prove anything.

And then we, as Christians, we spent the whole last century saying, you're right, you're right.

We can prove all of our stuff with just science, too.

And you know, we were okay.

Not great.

But what we did is we reinforced this idea that the only fundamental way to prove something is through a scientific, rationalist, materialist framework.

And what we should have said was, what justifies your rationalism?

What makes you think you could be rational?

Is there a rational reason for that?

Is it found in the evolutionary narrative?

No.

See, we should have played more offense.

Instead, we just played defense and we created the the perfect environment for contemporary atheism.

Okay.

I bit off more than I could chew, but I I I I'm Well, anyway, this is kind of a love letter to Genesis 1 through 22.

I hope our minds would be transformed.

We have a truth in Christianity that isn't something we just know cognitively, not just beliefs that we assert, but a whole world that we participate in.

And one of the ways that we participate in it is by taking communion as his church each week.

In communion, we remember that Christ's body, real body, was broken for us, that his blood was poured out for us, and that by our faith in him we can be counted righteous before God.

And the greatest problem in all of existence, this broken relationship between humanity and God, is restored not by what we did, but by what God did on our behalf in sending his son to die for us.

Let's remember that above all.

See that as the unifying theory of the world.

Paul wrote, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal.

Lord, that you would attend to our hearts, and that all who are Christian you would invite up, and that those who are not in the who are with us this morning, Lord, that you might give them a glimmer of what you might offer us, of a whole picture of the world that's meant to show your glory.

Lord, I lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.