The Extraordinary 11/27/16
Genesis 1,
Luke 1:1-25, Psalm 117
Last week, on Christ the King
Sunday, we introduced our multi-year journey throughout the Bible entitled The
Extraordinary. We started at the end
of Scripture, which shows a delightful picture of Jesus Christ ruling over the
new heavens and new earth as King of kings.
This is the direction that history moves toward.
Today, on the 1st
Sunday of Advent, November 27th 2016, we begin in Genesis.
The Extraordinary story of
Scripture starts out with the Creation
narrative. We all know this. Unfortunately, many know this because people
have brought our human dysfunction to this marvelous beginning story. So as we set out, I want to identify three
attitudes that we do not have to live. If
we find ourselves having one of these attitudes, we should discard it as
quickly as possible, in order to encounter the Extraordinary God who predates
the beginning of all we know. We will
then remind ourselves the best way to read this story.
The first dysfunction is
every expression of attacking the Creation story. This shows itself in a variety of ways: the great lengths people go to try to
disprove something, in uglier moments the mocking and name calling. The opposite dysfunction is the need to
defend the Creation story. God doesn’t
need defending. He speaks the truth, and
the truth stands on its own. Third, and
this is especially difficult in the internet age, the dysfunction of having to
know it all right now, every last detail and possible meaning, immediately, so
that we can decide if we believe. God
doesn’t work on those terms. Genesis 1 is about the claim that God is the
Creator. We do not have to perform an
exhaustive search of humankind’s historical understanding of the created. We don’t have enough time, nor the brain capacity
to take it all in. Genesis 1 isn’t a
final exam, it is an extraordinary introduction.
The best way to approach the
beginning of this extraordinary story is simple: Listen and obey. That really is our call as believers: to listen to the Lord, and do his will. If we do this, we don’t have to approach this
text with embarrassment, or a sense of fixing someone who doesn’t believe, or
attempting to understand everything before we believe. We have to listen to what God says, and then
obey him.
But since we’ve already read
the text, and we probably felt an inner impulse to either attack it, defend it
or master it, let’s use a historic and scientific tool that is helpful for
finding out the truth. Let’s call upon
our friend, the Scientific Method. This
is a process used by learners in experiment to test observations and answer
questions.
If you need a refresher, the
basic scientific method is this:
Purpose Why are you doing this? What question do you have?
Hypothesis What do you think will happen?
Materials What did you use?
Procedure What did you do?
Results What did you see?
Conclusions What did you learn?
What I am about to say, I say with great reverence and respect. Let’s put what we know of the Lord in Genesis
1 through the Scientific method. What
will we find?
Purpose: Why is
God doing this creating work?
We aren’t given enough
information in Genesis 1 to know why God created the heavens and the earth. Yes, other places in Scripture tell us why,
but not here, not yet. We simply learn
that at the beginning of all that we have come to sense, there God existed, and
that he created.
Hypothesis:
What did God think would happen when he created?
Again, other Scriptures
inform us more than our morning text.
But we could say that God’s intent was that creation would be good, and
when he saw it, he declared it good.
Materials:
What did God use to make the creation?
Two things: his power, and his word.
One of my favorite
theological sayings was written by a Pastor named G. Campbell Morgan, who,
writing about Genesis 1:3 said: “God
spoke to nothing, and it listened”. What
a wonderful thought, that God is all powerful.
He could have spoken the cosmos into being in a nanosecond without any
effort. He might have taken 7 days, with
24 hour periods, to do such matters. He
might have taken 4 billion years, or 400 billion years, because God is
timeless, and not threatened or bound by time (He is the only one for whom it
literally is true: He has all the time
in the world). The point is, God is
powerful enough to do these things, his way.
And to show that power, his
wonderful majestic power on display, he spoke, “And God said”. God’s word was, and is, powerful and
sufficient.
Procedure What
did God do?
He provided a litany of
magnificence!
On the first day, He created
Light and Darkness.
On the second day, he created
sky to separate waters.
On the third day, he created
land, sea and vegetation.
On the fourth day, he created
the sun and the moon and stars.
On the fifth day, he created
creatures of the sea and the birds. He
blessed them and told them to multiply.
On the sixth day, he created
living creatures according to their kind, and humans. He gave humans, made in God’s image, their
orders for successful life.
On the seventh day, God
rested, and made the day of rest holy.
Results What
did God see?
God saw what he created, “it
was good”, until he looked at the 6th day of work, which was “very
good”.
I find this magnificent. Of all the things we can learn about God, the
start of this story emphasizes that his work is good, yes, very good.
Conclusions What
did God learn?
Now, the Presbyterian in me
is a little nervous, for God in his timelessness isn’t described as learning
new things as history unfolds, but, we could say,
That God’s intent is proven
by his works. And God reserves a day in
the week to be holy, and to rest from work, however good that work may be.
John and Elizabeth had wanted
a child. And when the time is right,
which by the way, was very different than the natural order of things, God
sends the angel to tell this good news to John.
John doesn’t believe, and therefore, he loses his voice. The easiest path would have been for
Zechariah to listen, and obey.
My prayer for the church is
to believe in the God who creates, the one we meet in Genesis 1, right at the
beginning. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. May we not lose our voice because we don’t believe. For the creation story reveals the
Creator. I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth.
One more time, let’s review
the three dysfunctions identified earlier:
If the primary way you read Scripture is as a skeptic, you are invited
into a new and better way: the life of
faith. Faith and truth are friends, not
enemies. As someone with a question, or
something that you want to find out, your job is to use the right materials to
observe the experiment occur as it was intended.
If the primary way you read
Scripture is to prove it to someone else, you can be at rest, and live a life
of faith. Jesus Christ is the
Savior. Our life is about celebrating
Advent, both past and future.
If you have to know, here is
something to know: Only God knows it
all.
Finally, to all of us: may we keep it simple: When it comes to God, listen and obey. For here is a wonderful thought for us.
If we are to be godly (that
is, like God), then what is the first thing that we read of in this
extraordinary story to be like God? The
answer is to Create. We are not called
to be God (impossible), but to be godly, and if we listen to God, and obey God,
we will be creative forces in his world on behalf of all the creation. We will be ambassadors of peace and goodness,
righteousness and mercy, grace and truth.
Even our rest becomes a witness that God alone is able to save by his
power and his word.
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