Sermon Tone Analysis

Bible Storying: The Spirit World Before Creation (Story #1).

Key Scriptures: Is. 40:12, Is. 14:12-15, (Ezekiel 28:11-19), Rev. 12:3-4, 7-9, Ephesians 6:10-12.

Introduction – Today we begin an exciting adventure!

Sometime ago, as we were getting toward the end of our study through Revelation, I began to pray about the next series of Bible teaching the Lord would have me share with you.

As I prayed and contemplated the events of the world around us, seeing religious and political persecution on the dramatic increase here in our country, I sensed the Lord leading me to teach you the story of the Bible with a big picture view of it from start to finish.

Persecution is just one of many reasons why I believe this to be critical for our church family for such a time as this.

This method of Bible teaching is called “Bible Storying”, telling the major stories of Scripture from Creation to Christ in chronological order.

This method of Bible teaching is an exciting adventure through the Scriptures that has been used with great success to teach oral learners the Bible on foreign mission fields where the audience cannot read or they don’t have a copy of the Word of God on their own.

Now I know you can read, but we all have different abilities when it comes to reading.

There is no shame in that because God made each of us differently & there a lot of reasons why it is a struggle to read.

Some people are gifted readers and consume lots and lots of pages of information in a short period of time.

With lots of life distractions and outside noise from TV, radio and life in general, it can make it a challenge to comprehend what you read.

Now I am a pathetically slow reader!

I mean turtle slow.

I still can’t believe the Lord in His grace allowed me to finish seminary - I mean it only took me 5 years to complete a 3-4 year program…tells you a lot about me!

The only reason I made it with the amount of reading was I made a spread sheet with how many pages a semester total I had to read and divided it by the days I had to read so I had to read like 150 pages 6 days a week for a 13 week semester over the course of 5 years so I get it!

Just thinking about how long it took gives me cold chills haha.

It’s interesting the Bible says in Romans 10:17 “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

Our Creator God, our Heavenly Father, places great emphasis on the need to hear the Word of God to increase our faith.

There are also different ways of learning, visual learners (includes reading), and oral learners - those who hear and learn by unwritten means, huge numbers of oral learners!

As a matter of fact, a study in 2018 estimated 2/3 or 2 out of 3 people in the world are oral learners - around 4 billion souls!

So the way to reach that vast host of people is through oral Bible Storying!

The explosion of audio book popularity & podcasts reveals people who can read and write but prefer to learn by listening!

So today we’re going to begin an exciting journey of the story of the Bible from Creation to Christ by sharing in story form the major key stories of the Bible.

The emphasis will be to listen to the story as though you were going to retell the story and apply it to your life.

Before we begin today, I humbly ask for your prayerful patience.

This is new for me and new for you, but I believe the Lord will bless this method of teaching so I want to stick with it for a while and see what God does through it.

(Slide) Before we begin, to lay a foundation of why we are doing this, I need to give you several reasons why the story of the Bible is so important.

1.

It models Jesus’ primary method of discipleship of teaching Biblical truth & principle to teach us about God & His Kingdom.

According to Matt.

28:18, The primary mission of the church is to make disciples.

Jesus told stories and His divine teaching method had power and authority and not like the scribes and Pharisees (Matt.

7:29).

It’s interesting to note, roughly 75% of Scripture is in narrative or story form!

2. Helps us understand the “Big Picture of the Bible” & aid in Biblical knowledge & understanding.

In other words, helps the Bible stick in our hearts and minds b/c we internalize the truth.

3. Aids in evangelism b/c you’re encouraged to tell the story to someone else to introduce them to God.

4. It’s easily duplicatable & multiplies the Kingdom of God! Real Life Ministry in Post Falls Idaho, church plant with two couples in 1998 used this method of Bible teaching.

By 2010, 12 years later, church had 8500 members and 7000 in small groups doing Bible storying.

I want to be clear numerical church growth is not the motivation for using Bible storying as a teaching tool.

But was we teach God’s word, we’ll let God bring the increase as Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.”

5. Bible Storying is an effective teaching tool across all age groups, stations in life and education levels because it only depends on your ability to hear & listen to a true Bible story.

6. Aids in personal application of Biblical truth as you identify with characters in the story.

I can identify with old Peter running his mouth - ready, fire, aim! Finally…

7. Prepares believers for persecution & not having access to the word of God.

If they turn off your internet access and take away your Bible, could you survive spiritually with what you know right now today?

Let’s dive in, if it helps you concentrate, you can take notes, but try to just take notes on the key points I’ll review & the life applications I’ll share at the end.

Story 1 is the Spirit World long before Creation.

This Bible Story is found in several places of Scripture: Isaiah 40:12, Isaiah 14:12-15, (Ezekiel 28:11-19) Revelation 12:3-4, 7-9, & Ephesians 6:10-12.

Before the existence of this tiny universe in which we live, a far bigger reality already existed.

Now, you might already be thinking I’ve lost my mind b/c I called our universe tiny.

I mean, on the one hand, our universe is really big...so big that its limits are still beyond the scope of science.

For example, the “7 seas” as they are called covers 2/3’s of the earth’s surface.

These are the Arctic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans.

As of May 2022, only 5% of world’s oceans have been explored & charted or mapped out.

We still haven’t gone to the bottom of the ocean.

We are still discovering species of fish and animals.

We are still discovering solar systems and planets - in 2017, scientists found yet another solar system & in it are at least 7 planets the size of the earth!!! (Source: https://ww w.sciencenewsforst udents.org/article/n

ew-solar-system- found-have-7- earth-size-planets)

On the one hand, our universe is huge.

[Pause:] But on the other hand it is tiny: (Give them reference points of scope and scale to help them think about how big God is)

1.

The first part of Isaiah 40:12 tells us that God is so big, the waters of the earth fit in the hollow of his hand!

Now let’s think about that.

Do you know the biggest animal that has ever existed is the blue whale measuring 80-100 feet long & weighing in at 170 tons, or about 340,000 pounds!

That’s about 3 school buses lined up end to end, and it weighs about the same as 33 full grown elephants, or almost 10 empty 18 wheelers.

Just its tongue weighs 2.7 tons! Scientists estimate there are around 10,000-25,000 of them swimming in the world’s oceans right now.

Now I want you to cup your hand and imagine the little amount of water you can hold in the hollow of your hand.

Isaiah 40:12 says all the water of the universe fits in the hollow of God’s hand.

That would include all the marine life in the oceans!

Imagine if just ONE blue whale fit in the hollow of your hand.

All of the water of the universe fits in the hollow of God’s hand.

How big is God???

2. The second part Isaiah 40:12 also says He can measure the universe using His thumb and pinkie!

(A “span” is a unit of measure the distance b/w a person’s thumb and pinkie.)

Now I have fairly large hands, for me this is only about 8” (Illustrate using a ruler to keep my hand apart).

Consider the Sun is 93 million miles from our earth, and that’s not even close to the size of the universe.

Our Milky Way Galaxy is just one of millions.

Since the Hubble Telescope launch in 1990, scientists have broadly, and I mean very broadly estimated there are b/w 100 & 200 billion galaxies in the universe.

That’s a scientists way of saying they have no idea haha.

Just our own galaxy, the Milky Way has a radius of 52,850 light years.

Light travels at 186,282 miles per second, or 5.88 trillion miles in a year, so to measure the Milky Way, in light years, it would take 100,000 light years to travel from one end of our one Milky Way galaxy, to the other.

That’s not to mention all the others in the universe and the Bible says all that fits b/w the tip of God’s thumb and His pinky.

I ask again, How big is God???

3. The last part of Isaiah 40:12 also tells us God has calculated the dust of the earth and weighed all the mountains and hills!

It’s safe to say based on that one verse in Isaiah 40:12 that there is no human way possible to explain how big the God of the Universe is.

So, I mean, on the one hand, the universe is huge, but on the other hand it is tiny.

Tiny compared to God.

And heaven is big enough for God to live in.

So imagine how big heaven is!

So before the universe came into being, a far bigger reality already existed God existed & heaven, God’s home existed because God is there.

(Blank slide) God sits outside of time and space, in other words He is not subject to the limits of time and space.

Heaven predates the universe....from our perspective by millions of years.

But that would be incorrect to say because God had no beginning, so heaven has no beginning.

The universe is only a few thousand years old.

Because we think in terms of time, from our perspective God is billions and billions of years old - eternal - he has no beginning and he has no end.

But our perspective that God is billions of years old is wrong, because God has always existed.

That means as far back as you can look into eternity past, God is there, God is in Heaven today, and as far as you can look into eternity future, God is still there!

Let me tell you some things about heaven before the universe came into existence.

I already told you that heaven is really, really, really big.

When I say God, I’m referring to the triune God of the Universe.

And before the foundation of the universe, the Godhead already eternally existed in heaven - God the Father, God the Son, and God the HS.