Interlocked Lesson 8

Faith in Action 1

What are some big questions you have in life?

What will I do after i finish school?

What does God want me to do?

Who will I marry?

What will my family look like one day?

Why do bad things happen?

Why do people get sick with diseases and die?

Couldn’t God intervene and stop all those bad things?

These are good questions to ask.

However, if we don’t have a good frame in our minds on how to interpret the answers to these questions, then we may listen to the world’s answers.

Bad answers to these questions week our trust in God and the Bible.

Imagine you buy a house one day and you decide to take out one of the walls to make your house more open concept.

Upon tearing out the drywall, you find wood that is rotten, black, and barely holding together.

What do you do at that point?

You move out until you know the house is safe.

You get the rest of the house inspected.

You possibly file a lawsuit with the previous owners!

The point is, you no longer trust the safety and comfort of your home because you know the framework is bad.

The same is true with our worldview!

If our worldview isn’t strong, if the framework of what we believe isn’t strong, then we may doubt our answers.

So for the next 5 minutes, I’m going to let you get with a partner and see if you can figure out this sheet.

On the left you’ve got ideas and problems in the world.

ON the right you’ve got biblical truths.

You’re going to try to match up the world’s problems with the biblical truth on the right.

The only problem is some of these are real confusing ok…

Don’t try to get all these right, but do your best

This isn’t a test. There is no grade.

Go!

GO over answers*

A plague of highly contagious disease <- B. God’s curse upon the Ground.

Genesis 3:17 “17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.”

Why is there sickness and plagues in the world?

This is certainly a good question.

1 Timothy 6:17 “17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

God gave Adam and Eve the responsibility to look after and enjoy the world.

However, when they sinned, they not only suffered, the world did too.

Genesis 3:17 said that the ground is cursed because of you.

God created the world, but man messed it up.

The reason we have sickness and death is because of the curse of sin.

Romans 8:20-25 “20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time... 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

With this in mind, man, I’m so thankful for modern medicine, but even the best medicine can’t make you live forever.

Because of sin we will all die, the final culmination of The curse of sin… death.

2. Legalisation of homosexual marriage

G. Divine institution of marriage.

We’ve talked about this alot in this curriculum, but God gave man a few rules.

To rule the earth and fill it were two of the main ones.

Spread out over the earth and have babies so people fill the earth.

Genesis 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and govern it...”

God gave Adam a helper that was just right for this task.

Genesis 2:18 and 21-24 talks about this.

There is no relationship outside of a man and a woman that can procreate.

Women cannot do this with women, nor men with men.

Men and women were created to complement one another, not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally too.

But over time, man has perverted this.

We must be careful not to follow the worlds answers to the institution of marriage.

Love is not just love.

Man-made laws love to overtake God’s laws and purpose.

But we need to remember marriage wasn’t man’s idea… it was Gods.

God gave us the gift of marriage to be enjoyed by husband and wife.

Romans 1:26-27 “26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

Man’s answers to marriage always lead to shame…

Living in the freedom of God’s word frees us from shame.

What other beliefs might we question?

3. The belief that technology is evil.

A. NOah’s knowledge of vineyards and wine-making and his lapse into drunkenness and nakedness.

Some people, myself included look to lots of the problems we face in the world and credit technology with those problems.

For example, smart phones, social media, pornography, cyber bullying, etc…

Genesis 6:14-16 “14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.”

Whatever he had, Noah had enough technology at the time to fulfill this task from God.

This always blows me away.

Think about this… Today if you need to built a wall, just a wall, you go to Home depot and buy the wood for the wall.

Even 150 years ago, you didn’t have that.

You had to go get a tree… Cut the tree down, cut it in pieces, plane those pieces down, smooth them out, create the boards you need… then go from there.

Oh yeah nails?

You had to make those too.

I mean, the process you had to go through just to get the materials you need to even start a project is mind-boggling.

Yet over 100 years, noah built the boat.

God gave him the knowledge and technology he needed to make that happen.

Then towards the end of his life, he gets in trouble for becoming drunk in Genesis 9:21.

It’s a bizarre story.

Ephesians 5:18 “18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit,”

Of all the things the BIble could tell us about Noah, the Bible doesn’t hide this shameful act.

I think one reason we have the Genesis 9:21 story is to remind us Noah isn’t perfect either guys.

We all sin and need God’s grace.

It doesn’t matter how much technology we have or don’t have, we can all mess up.

More than anything we need God’s grace and mercy.

What other questions might we have.

4. A fatal accident that appears meaningless.

E. God’s death sentence on man.

There has been a lot of sadness lately.

Moe Mundy dying.

Nettie Wilkins just lost another son this week.

A young girl, 2 months older than Roman to the day died of cancer this week…

Her name was Riley Faith.

Holy smokes man. Like I can’t even fathom losing my oldest son right now.

What a devastating thought.

We need to remember death wasn’t part of God’s design.

Genesis 1:31 “31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”

What God made was “normal”

Genesis 2:17 “17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.””

This wasn’t normal.

Romans 5:12 “12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—”

When they ate the fruit, they brought abnormal into the world.

Death was the penalty God warned Adam and EVe about.

Death sucks.

One day God will separate all of the abnormal from the normal.

All of the earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, cancers, diseases, tumors, and imperfections of all kind are not part of God’s design.

One day He will separate evil from good forever.

But right now, that is not that time.

2 Corinthians 5:1 “1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.”

So listen I have more questions about death than I have answers but here is one question that really helps me.

I’m not saying God causes all bad things to happen but here’s the question I ask myself.

In all the bad, horrible things that happen around us and to us.

What is more comforting, To think those things happen outside of God’s control or within his control?

For me the answer is simple.

I believe God is in control. I can’t answer the “How” he’s in control of Moe dying or sweet little Riley Faith.

But it is far more comforting to think God has a plan through their deaths than it is to think they just randomly died outside of God’s control.

That’s the question we should ask that will strengthen your worldview.

Even more important, after death, where will you go?

Will you be with God or be separated from GOd.

That’s the questions to ask.

We could go through the rest of these this morning, but we simply don’t have time

APPLICATION:

SO let me help us apply this today.

Psalm 11:4 “4 The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne. He observes everyone on earth; his eyes examine them.”

Have confidence in God.

He is who he says he is. and He does what He say she will do.

Have confidence.

2. Trust His word.

Familiarize yourself with His word.

Lean on it in good times and bad times.

Hebrews 4:15-16 “15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Not only can we have confidence and Trust God, but we can know he’s with us in the trenches of life.

Life is hard man.

God is with you in the good times and the bad times.

Our worldview of Him in the good and bad is so important.

To answer all the tough questions, we need a good framework to answer.

In Christ, we can have confidence and trust.

Go to his throne of grace with confidence.

He will meet you there and you may not even realize it, but he walks with you there too.

He will carry you there.

God is with us.

What a blessing.

I pray the way you think about Him is centered there.

The God of the universe loves you in all your good and all your bad.

He wants to be with you.

Trust Him. Walk with Him. Know Him.

He knows and loves you.