The Story begins September 7, 2014 Chapter 1

Welcome to The Story - God's Story

You are about to journey over the next 31 weeks on the grandest, most compelling story of all time: the story of a true God who loves His children, who established for them a way of salvation and provided a route to eternity. Each story in the 31 chapters we will read reveals the God of grace - the God who speaks; the God who acts; the God who listens; the God whose love for His people culminated in His sacrifice of Jesus, His only Son, to atone for the sins of humanity.

What's more: this same God is alive and active today - still listening, still acting, still pouring out His grace on us. His grace extends to our daily foibles; our ups, downs, and in-betweens; our moments of questions and fears; and most important, our response to His call on our lives. He's the same God who forgave David's failures and rescued Jonah from the dark belly of a fish. This same heavenly Father who shepherded the Israelites through the wilderness desires to shepherd us through our wandering, to help us get past our failures and rescue us for eternity.

Our prayer is that these stories will encourage you to listen for God's call on your life, as He helps write your own story.

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Creation: The Beginning of Life as We Know It

Timeline

Sin Changes Everything 

For millennia, people have looked at the suffering, the heartache, and the plain wickedness around them and asked in astonishment, “How could a good God allow this evil to take place?”

The consequences of sin sometimes come in the form of “natural evil,” including natural disasters, disease, and death, or in the form of “intentional evil” – those hurts perpetuated by one person against another. The goal of this lesson is to help us recognize that nothing is as it should be. As much as the creation reveals our Creator, it also reveals our total depravity. The earth itself is cursed because of man’s sin. It is only in light of the sinless Garden of Eden that we can get a taste of the eternal goodness promised and described in Revelations 21-22.

For a brief time, there was no evil, no death, no pain, and no tears. The promise of God is that He will one day recreate the earth. Once again, there will be no more evil, no death, no pain, and no tears. Yet the world to come will be infinitely better than even the garden! In it, we will no longer have an opportunity to sin, Satan will be vanquished, and we will have an understanding of the grace-filled redemption wrought on our behalf. In that day, God will once again dwell among us as He did with Adam and Eve. In the meantime, believers learn to “reverse the curse” by resisting the temptations of the evil one, by representing God in the fallen world, and by striving to restore broken relationships.

From the very first story of the very first family, sin wreaks havoc on humanity. They lived in a perfect environment, yet they sinned anyway. Perhaps “the fall” sounds almost accidental, as though somebody tripped and fell head over heels into sin. As the story makes clear, however, Adam and Eve deliberately chose their path. The rest of us have followed in their footsteps.

But with the first sin came God’s first act of redemption. With each successive story – Cain and Abel, Noah’s family and beyond – we see God’s repeated faithfulness to redeem helpless and hopeless humanity. God is always the pursuer. Man’s default position is always to choose sin. As the cycle continues we are reminded that God alone is our only hope.

Devotionals

Day 1. In the beginning God created humanity to be in perfect relationship with Him. His mission was to have a loving relationship with us in which God and humankind worked in harmony to care for creation together. Have you ever thought of God’s creation story in this way before? Why? If not, what has gotten in the way?

Day 2. Sin enters and Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden. What do you see as the driving factor in their decision to disobey? What things drive you away from God in your life? Have there been times you knew you made a choice opposed to what God might want for you? What was the result and the consequences that followed?

Day 3. Despite Adam and Eve’s disobedience, God sought a way to redeem the situation and their choices. What did God do in response to their choice? How has God responded to you in your life when you have made choices according to your own desires, not God’s? How has God redeemed the situation or offered His grace?

Day 4. Noah and his family clung to the one thing they knew was reliable, trusting and obeying God. How did God honor their desire to be faithful? Think of a time when you were seeking to be faithful to God and made a decision based on that desire. What was the result?

Day 5. Have you seen a theme about God’s desire for His people in the Creation story and Noah’s story? What is it? How have you seen God’s faithful persistence towards His people play out in your life? The life of your family and friends?

Day 6. God gave a covenant to both Abraham and Noah. What were those promises about? In Matthew 28:20, Jesus says “I will be with you always, until the end of the age.” How is this promise related to the first promises made to Abraham and Noah? What does this promise mean to you in your life?

Day 7. Despite all our stubborn ways, God always seems up for a good challenge. When you look at the lives of Adam, Eve and Noah’s family, what do you think God thought of their disobedience? Did it drive God away or drive Him to try new tactics to connect with them? What ways is God trying to reach you?

Sin Changes Everything

Chapter 1

Remember a time when something you had made was somehow broken. Was it worth repairing? Or was it ruined beyond repair? We live in a sin-filled world, everything is at least slightly broken.

I. Sin changes the relationship between God and man

   A. God and mankind before the Fall

1. Man and woman are both created in God’s image, and therefore worthy of dignity.
2. Both to rule over creation and be fruitful and multiply.
3. God and mankind had intimacy, walked face-to-face.

   B. God and mankind after the Fall

1. Man and woman still reflect God’s image, but are fallen.
2. Man and woman hide from God, try to cover themselves.
3. God already pursues the sinner.
4. Man blames God for giving him the woman.

II. Sin changes the relationship between man and (wo)man

    A. Before the Fall, man and woman lived in harmony and intimacy.

1. One flesh, they experienced sexual intimacy ordained by God.
2. They shared common purpose to rule and tend the garden.

 
   B. The rest of the Bible life in a fallen world. Relationships between two fallen human beings become extremely difficult.

1. Adam and Eve were naked and ashamed, tried to cover themselves.
2. They played the blame game.
3. They experienced the curse and consequences of a fallen world - physical death.

III. God has only two responses to sin.      If God is holy and good, He cannot let sin go unnoticed.
      

      A. God covers sin by grace.

1. God sought Adam and Eve while they were in hiding.
2. God gave them the opportunity to repent.
3. God provided the means of salvation for Noah and family in the ark.
4. All human beings still live with the consequences of sin.

      B. God rightly judges sin.

1. Everybody was judged in Noah’s day, except Noah and family.
2. God waited patiently while evil worsened, providing in Noah a righteous example.

The story of creation was the same: God had in his mind a picture, a dream of what He wanted: a creation to be in fellowship with Him. The model was perfect—Eden was the ideal setting, environment suited for God’s creation. God took His time, and didn’t rush anything. All the foundations of earth, sky, water, sun, moon, and vegetation were set in place before man arrived. He created in stages, each day producing a perfect design. All the components were in place—Adam named all the creatures, he and Eve were naked and did not know the word shame.

Reading the first two chapters of Genesis feels something akin to crossing a threshold into another world. God is tending His garden and all is well. God’s masterwork is beautiful, believable, and unfolding all according to His plan. The truth, beauty and goodness of creation were higher than our greatest fantasy, other-worldly, like a castle in the air. Genesis chapters 1 and 2 present a beautiful model of endless potential…and chapter 3 destroys a model of perfect design and form into an irreversible mess, an un-erasable stain that is a permanent reminder of our failure to heed God’s instruction manual; and a stench in the nostrils of God. All of us have seen something ruined, damaged. And, what’s more, all of us have done damage, have been the polluters…all of us have been agents of decay. No one is exempt.

We call Genesis 3 “The Fall,” but that sounds almost accidental, as though we inadvertently trip and fall head over heels into sin; as though it’s not really us to blame, just “Oops, we fell.” But as the story makes clear, Adam and Eve deliberately chose their path; and the rest of us have followed in their footsteps. So we face life in the less than ideal world beyond the garden—in a hardscrabble world where nothing is easy, nothing is as it should be—a world broken until the end of time.

Is there anyone here who has not seen a dream turned to dust? A hope of perfection reduced to rubble?

This what sin does…Adam and Eve tried to make a name for themselves. They believed they could become like God. Cain tried to make a name for himself. He believed there were many ways to God. Those swept up by the flood had just completely abandoned God. What we’ve done is try to fashion our own pathways to God. We share Eve’s sin and make ourselves God. We try to make a name for ourselves. Yet, all our attempts leave us farther from God and farther from the garden than ever. 

The sad fact is: Sin changes everything.

What would you say is the most devastating effect of sin? Of all the things that sin ruins, what is the most costly? What would you say is the worst casualty of sin? 

The most significant change? In one word? Relationships.

In the beginning, God… God is in a perfectly loving relationship as the Trinity. Father, Son and Spirit desire to share this perfectly giving relationship with people. It’s all about the relationships. 

• Relationship with God - God walks in perfect harmony with His creation—He and man speak as perfect community. 

• Relationship with each other - Man and woman extend that perfect community to each other - together they reflect God’s image as community (naked!, no shame, total vulnerability)

• Relationship with the creation - They have a relationship with the earth, which produces its fruit generously, and the animals, over which man has been given dominion. 

No death exists—everywhere there is life. It is all about relationships—with God, with each other, and with the planet.

But here’s the thing about relationships: you can’t force them. Relationships exist because they begin and thrive only with mutual consent. I can’t force my wife to love me, and God doesn’t force relationships either. When we choose to listen to a creature rather than the Creator, the first and greatest casualties are the relationships. 

• Sin severs the relationship with God; 

• Sin infects Adam and Eve’s marriage relationship: they feel shame, and jockey for position with each other. 

• The sin nature is inaugurated by Adam and Eve, and it’s tragic consequences are passed on to their offspring. Cain killing Abel demonstrates that every family relationship is infected with sin. 

• The whole earth is cursed and begins to die—the relationship between man and his world changes forever. 

This first chapter of The Story is vital to understanding God’s Upper Story. The major doctrines of our faith are rooted here: sin and redemption. In the Bible, only the first two chapters of Genesis and the last two chapters of Revelation give us a glimpse into life in a world without sin, a world as God intended it to be. When we compare our world with what the world was like before sin, we learn that nothing is as it should be. Nothing. Sin changes everything. 

And here’s why: it’s infectious. Sin is an aphrodisiac in the worst possible way—sometimes it’s one whiff and that’s the ballgame. Said another way, sin is a communicable disease—it metastasizes throughout your life and your family. Just ask Adam and Eve about the effect of their sin on Cain and Abel. Ask the man who has told himself over and over again, “Just one drink.” Ask the man whose experience with porn began with a magazine or two, and now has metastasized into a 2-3 hour online orgy every night, after his wife goes to bed.

Sin is virulent and noxious, so, here’s the next point on your outline:

Remember: every bite matters.

Sin is a virus that circulates throughout the body. And so while the easiest thing to do sometimes is to excuse a dalliance—to rationalize an indulgence, another drink, a dishonest expense report, an affair, because hey, it’s just this one time…it’s never just one time. Sin is a stench that is distributed through the ventilation system where it penetrates every room, every compartment of our lives. And so, before you blow off the hundreds of small, seemingly insignificant decisions you make every day, think about what C. S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity:

“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, of who you are, into something a little different from what it was before. With all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature; either into a man that is in harmony with God, and with others, or else into one that is in a state of war with God, and with others. To be the one kind of creature is joy and peace; to be the other means madness, rage and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other." –C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

One more quote…this one from Newsweek:

People often rationalize their actions by using the old phrase, “The end justifies the means.” I’ll do whatever I need to right now, and then later I’ll do the right thing. The problem is that usually by the end, you’ve become the means. –Anna Quindlen, Newsweek, May 26, 2008

And so before you take the next drink or a second look, remember: those small, insignificant choices actually define you. As you pluck the apple from the tree, just remember, every bite matters.

But now, the good news.

Immediately after the fall, God begins His plan to get us back into a right relationship with Him; and that Upper Story never changes even to the last chapter of the Bible. 

1. Promise- Evil will not win in the end
2. Covering - Atonement
3. Provision - Salvation

The first step is a promise and a prophecy: “From now on, you and the woman will be enemies, and your offspring and her offspring will be enemies. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Genesis 3:15 

Second, God Himself makes a covering—clothes for Adam and Eve. This signifies two important things: First, He loves them and wants them to be protected, now that the earth is cursed. But second, God clothes them specifically from an animal’s skin — the blood of an animal is shed to cover their sin. God is inaugurating the precept that Blood is required—Death is required—to cover sin. Later, an elaborate system of sacrifices of bulls, goats, and lambs would be instituted to atone for the people’s sins. And then, thousands of years later, to complete the perfect work of the spotless Lamb, blood and death would be required once more…just this one last time…for the finished work of the salvation of mankind. What starts in the garden—blood shed by an animal for covering—ends at the cross, with the blood of a God dressed in humanity. 

God third step is to preserve a remnant of humanity by saving Noah and his family from God’s judgment on the world in the flood.

God provides for his entire creation by saving those faithful to him. And so today, the church represents the Ark. Jesus is captain of the Church no less than Noah was captain of the Ark, because the church is the Ark in which God dwells, where He saves a community of people from a storm-tossed world full of death and defeat. 

We live in a fallen world where people constantly ask the question, “How could a good God allow this evil to take place?” But God has only given us what we asked for: the ability to choose. Sin can come in the form of “natural evil” including natural disasters, disease, and death, or from intentional evil perpetrated one against another. Nothing is as it should be. 

But God has promised that He will recreate the earth in the future and once again there will be no more evil, no death, no pain, and no tears. The world to come will be infinitely better than even the garden, because we will no longer have an opportunity to sin—Satan will be vanquished and God will once again dwell among us as He did with Adam and Eve. 

In the meantime, as the last point on your outline, our mission is this:

We must learn to “reverse the curse.” 

Learn to reverse the curse—break the cycle—by resisting the temptations of the evil one, by representing God in the fallen world, by striving to restore broken relationships, and by remembering that every bite matters. Adam set a sin nature in motion for all of us—but it is possible…not just possible, but critical—for us to reverse the curse by remembering that Every bite matters.

The Upper Story of God is that immediately after the first sin, the final act of redemption was promised. And with each successive story: Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Brad and Bill, Dick and Eric, Jim and Ron…with each successive story, including yours and mine, God shows His repeated faithfulness to redeem both ourselves and our choices. God is always the pursuer—following Adam and Eve out of the garden, following Joseph to Egypt, pursuing his people as they wandered for 40 years in the desert, as they were exiled to Assyria and Babylon, and as they were dispersed in the first century. God is always the pursuer.

So here’s today’s Equipping Point: to be the spiritual leader of your family: Be the pursuer.

We are still His image bearers. In His image. His likeness. You are a reflection of God to your family. As a father, you are God’s designated hitter. YOU are the father figure that represents Him to your kids. And as a husband, again, YOU are the image bearer. You represent Jesus Christ as you love and serve and give yourself up for your wife, because Jesus loved and served and gave Himself up for His church. You were made in His image, in His likeness, to carry out that mission.

And here’s the mission:

The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: “Say to the Daughter of Zion, ‘See, your Savior comes! See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.’” 

They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted. -Isaiah 62:11-12

And if there’s one thing that the entire Bible tells us about God, this “Upper Story,” is that God is in relentless pursuit of man. God is always the pursuer. We will see in the next few weeks and months that there is no place He will not go, literally to hell and back, to pursue and redeem his children. And so let me ask…to what lengths would you go for your family’s sake? How far would you pursue them? 

If the one consistent, never-wavering characteristic of God is that He is the eternal pursuer of mankind, then as His image bearer, I must be the pursuer of my family. I must take the initiative. I can’t be pouty and childish and wait for everybody to come to me. 

Listen to God’s reproof of the pastors in Ezekiel:

Thus says the Lord God to the shepherds: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the flock. The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost… –Ezekiel 34:2,4

I’ve got news for you: You are the primary shepherd, the pastor of your family. May it never be said of us, “The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost…”

Perhaps, just perhaps, if Adam had been more attentive to Eve, if he had pursued her more deeply, perhaps she wouldn’t have been alone when Satan approached her and tempted her. And today, this week, the ONE THING you can do to lead your family well, to be the spiritual leader, to represent God, is to be the pursuer. Listen intently as your wife and kids relate their day…volunteer to read The Story to them…be the first to apologize and pursue reconciliation…stop moping and sulking because she can’t read your mind and open up. 

To lead your family this week, be the first to speak up, the first to confess, and the first to heal. Pursue your family as God has tenaciously pursued you, called you back from sin, called you to a higher purpose. 

Sin has changed everything…everything but one thing: God and His character. Nothing can change that—and as His ambassadors, let us reflect His relentless pursuit of us.

As we consider the beginning of the story and see that it all started with creation we need to remember that everything that was created, including you and me, was created for Him. Here is how Paul expressed this in Colossians 1:16…For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him. Colossians 1:16 (NASB)

That’s because The Story is God’s Story. I pray that seeing God everyday through His creation will help us to remember this. I also pray that you will be content in discovering your story in The Story.

COMMITMENT PRAYER

God, we thank You for the way You created this world and everything in it, including us. We ask for Your excitement as we begin this journey through The Story. You have given us a view that is spectacular. Help us to appreciate the beauty of Your creation. We give praise to You, God for the people in our lives who have revealed Your grace, love, and presence to us. Thank you that You love us and pursue us, even when we are not embracing Your will and desires for us. We seek You God. Amen

See you on Sunday!

In His Love,

David & Susan