Monday, June 6, 2011

June 5 Sermons

AM Audio Link

PM Audio Link

Genesis 1 (AM outline)

A few brief observations:

1. In the beginning: At the start of human history, not the beginning of God's. We accept by faith that God was just, well, always there.

2. Orderly creation: This is no chaotic accident

3. State and restate: verse 1 gives the overview, the rest of the chapter expands, then chapter 2 expands details

II. The grandeur of the Word of God: what He speaks happens

What is this? Who among us carries this sort of power? That we speak and it happens? Not even the Centurion of Matthew 8 had the authority to create his own soldiers. Only to order soldiers that already existed.

We can speak over whatever we want to speak over, but it will not make it happen. We are not that amazing, we are not that powerful.

Yet dealing with a Deity of that type of power should intimidate us a bit. Well, a lot. Does it? If it does not, we have misunderstood this next point:

III. The goodness of the Work of God: what He does is good.

We need to understand this part first: if God does it, it is good. We often question whether God does things we count as bad, but need to understand this: the definition of "good" Biblically is what God does. Nothing else, no one else is good: Mark 10:18.

Only when things are done as God would do them are they good.

So, when God works, it is good. Notice the consistent repetition here: everything is good---starting with the third day. Plants, land, seas, good. Stars, sun, moon, good. Birds, fish, sea monsters (sea monsters? What would you call a whale if you never really met one up close? Willy?): good. Animals, beasts, cattle, humans----creation is complete and "very good."

God is all powerful, yet one thing He cannot do: make a mistake. All that He does is good.

That's not to say we can't ask the question when we don't understand, but simply to say that we may not ever quite get it!

IV. The graciousness of the Will of God: what He gives is grace

When God created male and female, He started showing His grace to humanity:

The ability and mandate to reproduce shows a gracious trust given to mankind.

The capacity to feed and replenish from the other created items shows gracious forethought and provision. Ever think about that? God made rice before he made people that could eat rice, yet rice is a great food for people.

The freedom above the rest of Creation.

The breath of life, the Spirit of God. Being created in the image of God, something not true of the rest of Creation. We as people are important.

We find ourselves defined as being in the image of God...

So it should follow that we live in that manner.

Creation, though, is no longer good, is it? Genesis 1 gives us a world without suffering, without problems, without collapse. There are neither tornadoes nor droughts, diseases nor violence...

We don't live in that world, because ours has been corrupted by sin. Just as one pinch of the wrong ingredient can ruin a meal, one spray of the wrong chemical can wreck a crop or a field, so the first act of disobedience corrupted the world.

That's part of the truth of being created in the image of God: our decisions have consequences....

Yet we are without the innate goodness because of that first error, the introduction of sin.

It takes someone to put us back where we belong.

And that someone is Jesus Christ who came, not as the first created man, but as the Incarnate Son of God: He was and is and will be, and He came, choosing death but not sin, choosing to be the death we all deserved.

 

Galatians 3 (Evening Outline)

1. Derailed from the Gospel

2. Detained by the Law

3. Devalued the work of the Cross

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