Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning, Gateway!

Scripture: Lam 3:21-26.

God of creation.

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God of the covenant.

You are merciful, and gracious, slower to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and sin, but you are also just, and you sometimes give us what we want so that we experience the consequences of our sin.

Father, we acknowledge our sin before you.

Forgive us for the ways we have tried to be God rather than trust God.

Help us live humble dependent lives before you.

For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, fill us with your Spirit.

Help us walk by faith and trust and help us praise you with all our might this morning.

In your name we pray, Amen.

Welcome Anthony Apeles!

If we haven’t met before, my name is Chris.

I’m the pastor of Gateway Chapel, the church that gathers in the building.

We are a church on mission to plant churches, and make disciples who hear, love, and obey Jesus.

And this morning before we hear from God’s word together, I have a special guest to welcome up, would you guys give a warm welcome to Anthony Apeles, the Director of the Sumner Food Bank.

As you guys know we have moved in next door to the Food Bank, and as we begin to plant roots (Deep Roots, Big Blooms, as the sign says) we want to start to dream about how we can be good neighbors to the Food Bank.

I've really enjoyed getting to know Anthony, a brother in Christ, and I wanted you guys to get to know him, too.

Thanks for being here, my friend!

Who is Anthony?

Why in the world would you want to be the director of the food bank during a pandemic??

How are you encouraged by the way God is using the food bank to serve the community?

What might you recommend if someone walks in on a Sunday morning asking for money, food, rent assistance..?

Other ways to help support you and the food bank?

Ways we can pray?

Intro

Thanks Anthony!

We are in our second month of our Year of Biblical Exploration as we are exploring the Bible together and learning to fall more in love with Jesus through this text which HE loved so dearly and which also points to him.

The goal of 2022 is not to get more Bible into OUR life, but to get more of OUR life into the Bible.

This morning we’re heading into week 3 of our sermon series: The Story of God.

We’ve been saying over the last couple of weeks how essential stories are for determining meaning in our lives.

We can go through the same events, birth, school, marriage, wins in life, failures, loss, kids, jobs...masks, no masks...and interpret these events wildly differently based on the story we believe to be living in.

So the question for Christians is what story are we a part of?

How are we to live in light of that story?

I’ve mentioned a couple times to you a book I’m reading...The Drama of Scripture.

It breaks up Scripture into a 6-act play.

And that’s the framework we’re following in this sermon series.

It’s not the only way to divide up the story of the Bible.

But I find it helpful and I want to share it with you.

So two weeks ago we began by reading Genesis 1.

It is not a story about God vs Science as we’ve made it out to be, but it is a story about a King and his Kingdom.

God made all reality, filled it with inhabitants, including us, humans, his crowning achievement.

We are made in his image to rule on his behalf and take his creation onward.

It’s a beautiful beginning.

What could go wrong?

Last week in Genesis 3 we witnessed Rebellion in the Kingdom.

Humans were deceived by the serpent and redefined good and evil for themselves.

They sinned.

And the consequences were dire.

They were exiled from God’s life-giving presence, and Genesis 3-11 is all about the downward spiral into chaos.

And yet, we saw that God is remarkably patient with us, refusing to give us what we deserve: complete destruction and abandonment, but one day God promises to send a savior who will lead us back to the tree of life and into God’s own presence.

“The whole Bible can be portrayed as a very long answer to a very simple question: What can God do about the sin and rebellion of the human race?

Genesis 12-Revelation 22 is God’s answer to the problem...Genesis 1-11 poses a cosmic problem to which God must provide a cosmic answer.

The problems so graphically spread before the reader in Gen 1-11 will not be solved just by finding a way to get human beings to heaven when they die.

The love and power of the Creator must address not only the sin of individuals, but also the strife and hostility of nations; not only the needs of humans, but also the suffering on animals and the curse on the ground...— Christoper Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 195.

God’s response is to choose a family.

And so this week is about Israel: The People for the King.

If you’re like me, you’re familiar with the texts of Genesis 1-11.

You’ve read these stories - accurately or inaccurately - since you were a kid.

But then there’s this MASSIVE part of my Bible that I really don’t know what to do with.

Leviticus?

Kings?

The Prophets?

Let’s just read Romans, okay?

How do we get from Genesis to the cross?

Can’t I just read my Bible beginning in Matthew or John, because if this is all about Jesus, why does Israel matter?

Aren’t we the people of God now?

How does the history of a small nation-state in the middle east have anything to do with my life in suburban America?

I want to say this: learning about how Israel fits into this story has been more life-giving for me than just about anything in the last year.

I want to share SOME of what I’ve learned with you today.

Why did God choose Israel?

What are they supposed to do?

How does this story play out?

How does it point to Jesus?

Give me 30 minutes.

I can’t say everything.

If ever you were to takes notes, today is the day.

As our good friend Gene Poppino would say, “You can’t do what you don’t remember.

You can’t remember what you don’t write down.”

Why did God choose Israel?

What are they supposed to do?

How does this story play out?

How does it point to Jesus?

Give me 30 minutes.

I can’t say everything.

Pray

Why Israel?

The book of Genesis is all about God and how he takes darkness and turns it into light.

Not only in creation, but in the lives of human beings.

Genesis 1-11 is all about God and the whole world.

It starts out great, and then it takes a sharp decline at Genesis 3, spirals into a full blown disaster by Genesis 11.

Then Genesis 12-50 is all about Abram, who becomes Abraham, and his descendants.

Before we can answer the question, “Why Israel?” we have to answer the question, “Who is Abram/Abraham?”

Abram is a descendant of Noah.

Nothing special about him, but we do learn he’s from Ur, and he’s traveled with his family to Haran and they’ve settled there.

Also, his wife Sarai is barren, which in the ancient world is a horrible horrible predicament.

Then, God shows up and talks to Abram - we don’t know what that was like, was Abram already worshipping God?

We don’t know.

- and says, “Move.