The Story

READ Genesis 1:1, Colossians 1:15-20

So Father, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For the sake of your Son, our savior. Amen.

Introduction: The Author of the Story

Every story has an author, and every good story has an author who poured time and energy into planing and crafting it. And every good author knows that planning a story from beginning to end is essential to its beauty and power.

In the same way, all of life—from beginning to end—is a story that God has planned and crafted to the very last detail. It is history: his story. Hear what God says about himself through the Prophet Isaiah:

Isaiah 46:9–10 “Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’”

This morning, we will begin our series through the book of Genesis—the first book of the Bible—which records the beginning of our world and the foundations of our faith. But as we go through this book, we will take particular care to see how it points us forward in the story to the arrival of the great hero and his ultimate victory in the end.

I. The Beginning of the Story

Every story has a beginning. For us, that is the opening words of the book of Genesis:

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

The first four words of that sentence are loaded with wonder. Before the mountains were brought forth, or the earth formed, from eternity to eternity, God existed. No beginning. No end.

God Has Always Been (In the beginning God…)

I find it difficult to wrap my mind around the idea of living forever. Time never ending, going on and on. But if eternity future is hard to understand, then eternity past is impossible to comprehend. There was never a time when God was not. He has always been, always is, and always will be.

Some people wonder: “If God created everything, then who created God?”.

An understandable question considering how limited our minds are. But to ask the question is actually to answer it. God—by definition—is the source of all things. He is the first cause; the immovable mover.

Think of it this way: the author of a book exists outside the story he is writing. In the same way, God exists outside of time and history. He is not effected by it. Time is how we measure change and God does not change. He has no need of change. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.

God was not lonely

Several years ago, I was in Portland with some friends, walking the streets to have conversations with people about Christianity. And I struck up a conversation with a homeless man and asked him if he knew why God created everything, to which he replied “Because God was lonely.”

This is an interesting answer. Is that true? Was God lonely? Is that why he made everything?

The answer is most certainly no. Listen to the prayer of Jesus that he prayed just moments before he was arrested:

John 17:4–5 “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

Notice what he prayed: “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” In other words, The Father and the Son were together before creation.

The same is true of the Spirit. Genesis 1:2 says: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

This means that before creation, Father, Son and Holy Spirit were together.

C.S. Lewis gave a helpful analogy for understanding how God has always been tri-personal. Imagine there are three books, stacked on top of each other. The middle book owes its position to the bottom book and the top book owes its position to the bottom and middle. Now suppose that those books have always been stacked on top of each other. Even though the bottom book gives the other two their position, you couldn’t say that the bottom book was there first.

In a similar way, God has always existed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is the bottom book: the eternal source, the Son is eternally begotten from the Father: the second book, and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father, through the Son: the third book. This is what Christians call the Trinity: the tri-personal unity of God. One being, three persons. One “what”, three “who’s”.

So God the Father most certainly was not lonely before the universe was created. He existed in joyful fellowship with with his Son and Spirit, who share in divinity with him.

If God was not lonely then, why is it that he created the universe?

Why Did God Create All Things? (…God created the heavens and the earth.)

We learn our answer from a song sung in heaven, recorded for us in the book of Revelation:

Revelation 4:11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

God created, not because he needed to, but because he wanted to. By his mere words, everything came into being. So powerful is he that no raw material was needed to fashion this world. He spoke and nothing gave way to everything.

Why did God want to create the universe? Does he tell us why?

In order to set the stage for his magnificence to be displayed and appreciated by all.

Some stumble at this. If God made the world for himself, doesn’t that make him self-centered?

Yes and no, depending on what you mean by “self-centered”.

Yes, God is “self-centered”, if what you mean is that he is chiefly concerned about his own glory. This would certainly be monstrous and immoral if God were not the greatest being in existence. In fact, the reason we find self-centered people so repulsive is precisely because the world does not in-fact revolve around them. They are placing themselves in a position they have no right to and we know it intuitively. But the world really does revolve around God.

No, God is not self-centered, if what is meant is that God only cares about himself. God is not self-centered because God is triune and exists as Father, Son and Spirit. As we read earlier from the prayer of Jesus, the Son “shared glory” with the Father before the world began. The Father seeks to glorify his Son and the Son seeks to glorify his Father. So when God wants his glory to be displayed and appreciated, it is just as much the Father, Son and Spirit sharing in it.

Now it is also important to point out that God’s love goes beyond the bounds of the Trinity. He created humans to share in his love. But we often jump to that truth too quickly and miss the larger picture. That this universe particularly revolves around the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1:15–16 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”

In other words, the Father created all things through his Son, for his Son. This universe is a gift for his Son.

That leads us to the next aspect of our story: that Christ is the hero.

II. The Hero of the Story

We are Not the Heroes

When I was a young lad, I constantly identified myself with the heroes in the stories I read or movies I watched. When I played games with my friends, I pretended I was Luke Skywalker or Master Chief.

We all do this. When we read accounts from the Bible such as David and Goliath or Daniel and the Lion’s Den, we tend to read ourselves into them. This is our tendency: to see ourselves as the protagonist. Granted, this may partly be due to the fact that we are made in the image of God and have a built-in admiration and aspiration for what is good—despite our inability to fully achieve this. However, I believe the tendency to see ourselves as the hero also stems from our desire to usurp God’s glory for ourselves, just as the Serpent wanted to do.

The reality is, we are not the heroes: we are the simultaneously the villains and the victims. We are victims of the Serpent and his demons and yet we are also villains who serve the Serpent.

We are helpless slaves of that which destroys us; held captive by sin. Making the right choice is often very difficult for us and making the wrong choice is far too easy.

Not only are we slaves of sin, but we are criminals sentenced to death. Death comes up all people. In our day, we are very good about distracting ourselves from this reality. People engulf their lives in entertainment, pleasure, and various activities and have little time for self-reflection upon their eternal destiny. They want us much noise as possible so that they aren’t left alone in the quietness of their own mind, where thoughts of their future death creep in and steal their joy.

But it is hopeless. Death will come for every single person in this room. You cannot escape it. And that is a terrifying thought.

Jesus is the Hero

But we are not left without hope. Listen to these words:

Hebrews 2:14-15 “ Now since [all people] have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through his death he might destroy the one holding the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.”

You don’t have to be terrified of death because we have a hero. The Son of God left his glorious position in heaven, came to earth and took upon himself a human nature, yet without sin. He obeyed His Father, unlike Adam and the rest of us. He obeyed even to the point of a brutal death on a cross. Yet through his death, the death sentence was passed on the wicked serpent.

Then, through his resurrection from the dead three days later, he paved the way to defeat death.

He turned death into a door way when it had been a dead end.

Those who are united to Adam, through natural birth, share in his curse of death.

Those who are united to Christ through faith, share in his reward of life.

Jesus Makes us Heroes

The amazing things is that after Christ saves us from judgement and death, he enlists us in his army and we become heroes with him in rescuing the world from utter darkness.

We get the be the hands and feet of Christ on earth, as his Body, the church.

And once our mission on earth is done and Christ returns, he will bring this story to its conclusion.

III. The End of the Story

Every story has an ending. And the ending of this great story shares a striking resemblance with the beginning of the story.

Revelation 21:1-4“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Notice the parallels between the beginning of Genesis and the end of Revelation:

Old heaven and earth > new heaven and earth

Garden with a tree of life in the center > city with tree of life in the center

The garden was a temple > the eternal city is a temple.

The curse of death is introduced in Genesis > the curse of death is eradicated in Revelation.

Notice also that it says a new heaven and a new earth. In our day, it is popular to view the afterlife as a etherial place in the sky with clouds, angels and harps. Its almost immaterial. But that is NOT the view the Bible teaches. The scriptures teach that once our mission on this fallen earth is done, God is going to resurrect the earth and make it new. He isn’t going to get rid of the physical world—he is going to perfect it.

Those who belong to Christ will live forever on a perfected earth, with all of the glorious joys we experience today, yet magnified to a degree we can’t imagine. We will still eat food, we will sing songs, we will travel, we will being doing things. And none of it will be tainted by sin or boredom, sickness or death.

Conclusion: Your Place in the Story

So now the question I leave with you is this: what role will you play in this story?

Will you be rescued by the hero and serve as a citizen and soldier of his kingdom on earth?

Or will you be a selfish villain that is ultimately destroyed in the end?

Make your choice and make it wisely. What will it profit you if you gain everything that this broken world offers, yet in the end, lose it all?

Listen to the rest of Revelation 21, picking up where we left off before:

Revelation 21:5–8 “And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.””

All of creation is going to be renewed and resurrected. The only thing left behind will be those who refuse to bow the knee to Christ. Those who choose sin over the Son. Instead of eternal joy on the new earth, they will face their deserved judgement in the lake of eternal fire.

Make your choice and make it wisely.