The Journey: in the beginning

Good morning everyone and Merry Christmas! Hey it’s December and we have a great spiritual family right here at LRBC. Today is going to be a great day as we will worship through communion later in our worship. However, for now, I want to welcome all of the kids, up through 4th grade to join your amazing teacher in the back and head back to your class. Isn’t it great that we have an amazing group of people that sacrifice their time to be able to teach our kids about Christ in a way that makes sense to them…I love that so much.

Also, I want to welcome those of you that are joining us online whether you are joining us through a video stream, or later through our podcast, we are honored that you have chosen to join us online, and we hope that today is an encouraging time for you. Also, if you are in Ogle County of course as always, we would love to have you come out and join us on any Sunday morning. We are here at 9:30 every Sunday morning for the full in person worship time, and we would love to have you join us at any time.

Also, I want to take a moment to invite everyone to the Christmas Eve service coming up in a couple of weeks. This will be such a great time, we will have worship, we will have a short message and we will have a great time gathering together with some wonderful hot chocolate and some amazing homemade cookies…It sees like it is going to be a truly great evening for the whole family…I can’t wait. Thats Christmas Eve at 6pm right here in Leaf River…its gonna be an amazing time you will not want to miss, so plan to be here.

With that being said we see that we are in the Christmas season. That is one of the best times of year, 2nd only to Easter, the day we focus on the resurrection. Christmas is great, now I don’t love the cold, but I love the fact that we are celebrating the birth of Jesus, God’s only son. We are celebrating Jesus’ birthday …how cool is that! You know, every birth has a bit of a backstory doesn’t it? I mean, for Collin, our oldest, there is a backstory to his birth. You see, I was a new Christian turned youth pastor in Puerto Rico. Beth came down with her church to serve at the church that I was serving in. Beth and I kind of hit it off as friends and then we continued a conversation after she went back to Indiana. We talked, pretty much weekly, and nightly many times. This was in the early days of the internet chatrooms and private messaging, so we would log into whatever program we were using back then and we could chat online…sometimes over the phone. Well, then Beth moved to Puerto Rico…now, of coarse Beth says that God led her to move to the island to teach and serve the community. However, clearly God led her to move to the island becuase I am an amazing human being and there was not a single person in the mainland that was as amazing as I am. Now, she will tell you another story, but…I mean…really, we all know what is true, right?

Anyway, after Beth moved down to Puerto Rico we started dating and then shortly after than we were engaged and then we got married, and 9 months later, there was Collin…Sure there are some great stories along the way and from time to time you will catch Beth and I share some of those stories. We share those stories becuase they are important …we share those stories becuase they are a part of the whole and they give a little context into why and how certain events take place. You see, if Beth had been sinful and ignored God leading her to move to marry me, then things would be very different…You see, the backstories are important and add to the story…they are all part of

The Journey

That is what we are calling this years Christmas series…The Journey…We are going to look at a little bit of the journey prior to Jesus’ birth and some of the prophecies about Jesus’ birth. We will be looking at the journey that takes us to manger, which also leads us to the cross personally...

So, we recently went through a section of Acts where we looked at the origin of the church…This morning I would like to look at the origin of humanity. You see, just like there is a story that tells about when Beth and I met, there is a story that talks about when God met humanity…that is what we will look at this morning.

In The Beginning...

These are the very first words in Scripture.

Genesis 1:1 (ESV)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning… in the very beginning, (בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים) Bereshit bara Elohim — In the beginning God created. Now, there is something I want to make very clear about this term. This word that is translated “in the beginning----bereshit” is not a word that is referring simply to the beginning of something. No, the sense of this word, in other words the way this word is used, tells us that this is the first of beginnings…this is the beginning of time. You see, God lives outside of time, that is why scripture says in

2 Peter 3:8 (ESV)

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

You see, God is outside of time…that means, at the beginning of the creation of time itself…God created the Heavens and the Earth first. Berashit bara Elohim…in the beginning God created. Now we are not going to spend all of our time together diving into the creation account, although we will one day. For now I want to tell you about what is going on. Now, Im going to give you kind of a paraphrase of what is going on, but I would expect you all to check and make sure I am speaking correctly by looking at Scripture yourself. What I am going to talk about today is the first three chapters of Genesis, which is the very first book of the Bible.

So, what happened here is that God created everyone. In this account we see the personhood of the Trinity which is pretty cool…However, what I want to key in on for the moment is

Genesis 1:31 (ESV)

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

You see, at this point God has created everything that needed to be created. There was every single type of animal, every type of plant, the geography was in place, everything was made, including Adam and Eve…male and female. Right here in the beginning of all things we see what the original design of paradise is. Then look at that verse, it says that God saw everything…and it was very good. Something happened though…You see, we don’t have to read very far in the story to see where things went sideways. Look over at

Genesis 3:1 (ESV)

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

OK, so we have a wrench in the system here…and this is confusing becuase God just said that everything was good…what is this? Well, this is clear as mud, right? I will just tell you, and again, I want you all to hold me accountable to the teachings of Scripture as you read for yourself. The serpent is used by Satan…and Satan brings temptation…and

Temptation leads to sin...

OK, we know that temptation leads to sin…now, I want to be very clear, temptation does not CAUSE sin…meaning, we can resist temptation through Christ, but temptation always leads to sin…it leads to a point of making a decision to sin. We are tempted, we are brought to the point of having to decide…should I sin, or should I walk away. In this case, we see that this temptation did in fact lead to sin. You see, the serpent was sneaky in the way things were said. This led to Eve, and Adam, to be faced with a decision. A decision that they knew was wrong, but it another sense, maybe they were actually a little confused. You see, Adam and Eve may have legitimately been confused by the serpent and thought that maybe eating this fruit would be ok after all. However, if you remember, God literally had an open relationship with them. They could call on him at any time and that means that all they had to do was ask…You know…that actually is pretty amazing isn’t it? Although…I have to say, that’s not that different from what we have today is it? I mean, we don’t have God literally walking through paradise with us, but we do have Scripture and we do have prayer…We can call out to God and we can look at Scripture to see what we should do. Look, we are all faced with temptation of some sort every single day…However, there is a way to resist that temptation, but that only happens, when you rely on your strength from the Lord. Like I have said before, and I will say again…every single question you will every have can be answered within the pages of this book. That means, if you are faced with something today and you don’t think you have the strength to overcome…reach out to me and lets talk. Let’s look at Scripture together so that you can see how to overcome what you are facing this morning.

For now, let’s take a look at what happened here.

Genesis 3:6–7 ESV

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

Sooooo....It’s interesting to see that something happened as soon as they ate. You see, as soon as...as in the moment that they took that bite, something changed within them. The immediately had knowledge…the knowledge that they alone, as they were, are not enough. So, they took leaves and created clothing to try and cover up their inadequacies. That is exactly how we feel isn’t it? When we are faced with our own sin, then we are left feeling inadequate. The thing is…when we are faced with our sin, without Christ…we are inadequate. When we are faced with our sin, we have a choice to make…Will I repent of that sin, or will I continue to live in that sin. For Adam and Eve, they attempted to coverup their sin... You see, the next verse we read about how God came and was walking in the garden calling out to Adam and Eve, but....Adam and Ever were hiding. They were hiding becuase when they ate from that tree and they gained knowledge, instead of this knowledge providing some godlike power they were expecting, the knowledge brought only a sense of human inadequacy, fear, and shame. That is the legacy of sin… sin has always produced that same sense of inadequacy, fear, and shame. That’s why we try to hide it isn’t it…That’s why we are uncomfortable when someone confronts us in our sin. We don’t want to experience that, but the reality is that

Sin has consequences...

Yeah, whether we like to think about it or not, sin does in fact have consequences. Are we all perfect all the time…no way. Should we all be humbly repentant when we are confronted with sin…absolutely. However, when Adam sinned something changed, not just for him, but for all mankind. You see, Adam, being the first man allowed sin to enter all men. This is an important concept. You see, look at what Paul writes in

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

Sin has consequences…that is the bottom line. Those consequences, unfortunately, include death…both a physical death and a spiritual death. We read that in Rom 6, " wages of sin is death”. Now, This story isn’t all doom and gloom today. Yes, things do not look good for humanity based on these circumstances. I mean, this guy failed at the most important job of all time…just don’t eat the fruit…That’s literally all he had to do, but instead Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan and that temptation led to sin which has consequences. These consequences are very long lasting as well. Let’s look at the immediate consequences

Genesis 3:14–19 ESV

The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Let’s look at these in reverse order...

Man: Becuase you did not lead your wife in holiness…work will now be hard and painful!

Woman: Because you listened to the serpent instead of God, Having babies is going to be really hard and painful!

Serpent: You were the greatest, now you will crawl on the earth beneath everything and everyone. Also, becuase you misled Eve, there will always be hostility betwen you are her. Her offspring will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.

It has been said by some scholars that they believe the serpent actually used to be a bit different. I am not going to speak to that specifically, however, clearly there is a change due to these consequences. God cursed the animal that Satan used to tempt Eve to sin. God cursed woman for Eve’s sin and God cursed man for Adam’s sin. All of this happened, becuase their are consequences to sin. Now, while these consequences are annoying…the reality is that the ultimate consequence is spiritual death, eternal separation from God…That is why Jesus had to come down and start this journey to the manger that we will be looking at over the next couple of weeks.

This the beginning of the story…this is the beginning of all the stories. This is the first step in a journey that will lead us to the manger, and ultimately to the cross. This is the first step that will lead you to the reality of making a choice at some point in your life. We have all sinned, just like Adam, and there are consequences to that sin, but there is also hope! Maybe you have already made that decision to rely on the hope of Christ, and maybe you are trying to figure out what that decision looks like for you. Either way, there will come a day when you will be faced with a decision and the consequences of this decision. Every journey begins with a step, so whether you are taking that first step or 1000th step, join us as we take this next step together.

Prayer

Communion:

This morning we will be worshiping the Lord through communion as well as decorating our family tree…While the music is playing I want to invite you and your family to walk through the back of the room and receive the elements of communion and then walk up to the cross and hang your family ornament on the cross taking a moment for prayer as a family, symbolizing that your family is commited to focusing on Christ together this season.

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 ESV

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Let’s pray...