Sermon Tone Analysis

C.S. Lewis captures the language of the curse in his book The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe when he describes Narnia as once being a place of vibrant colors and warmth.

However, since the White Witch cursed the land, it is now always winter.

Through the high fantasy of a mythical world, Lewis was emphasizing the reality of the effects of sin on the natural world

The prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge, the creation of Eve, and the serpent are all inseparably linked together in the same chain for a common assault on the tree of life.

All have come from God the Creator, and yet now, strangely, they form a common front with humankind against the Creator.

Has God Said! (the rallying cry of the cross and the resurrection)

This introductory thought that has now become the rallying cry of sin is placed front and center in the garden narrative.

Adam and Eve had a clear directive from God but doubt is the very thing that caused the fall to take root so quickly.

Remember we ended last week by looking at Pilot and his final words to Christ before sending him to the cross.

“What is the Truth.”

I think this is the same question that is tied to “Did God really say that.”

The doubt of God and his plan for creation has been the very thing that continues to keep people out of the kingdom of God.

But, what drives the narrative of doubt in our lives?

Though they have an original capacity to be incorporated into the divine life God has planned for them however, their impatience got the best of them.

Not wanting to be raised into a gradual life with God, they tried to achieve finality on their own, to graft themselves into the body by force.

The desire to arrive at a speedy solution left them unfit for the glory of God.

Mankind wants to close down when God tells us to watch and to wait.

We push our own way and agenda when God tells us to hold out for an even greater glory to come.

Some believe that it was some 6,000 years from creation in the garden until the death and resurrection of Christ.

You want to talk about waiting a long time for the reversal of the fall.

Then after the prophecies were given in the OT there was some 400 silent years between the Old and New Testaments before Christ’s birth.

It has not been over 2,000 years since the resurrection of Christ.

Generally speaking, we are bad at waiting.

Our tech usage is one way we recognize our growing inability to wait for anything, but as believers looking at the historical arc of God’s story, we can only deduce that waiting has meaning.

The time spent waiting for a message or event can be just as meaningful as the message or event itself.

“Waiting ultimately reorients our stories: We are not the primary actor on a stage of our own making or choosing.

Rather, God is the hero of the story.

Will we be content to wait on his work?

In these in-between times, what character will be formed in us as individuals and as a culture?

Technologies give us the illusion of god-like power and control: summoning up any piece of information with one simple click, purchasing anything with a quick swipe, and expecting others to operate around our own schedules.

But they can’t overcome the limits of our creatureliness—nor should we want them to.

The created order—with its boundaries of time, space, and body—is not an imposition on our freedom but the life-giving water in which we swim.

Limits are part of what makes us human.

They show us more of who we are—creatures, not the Creator”

BIG IDEA: The Resurrection proves what God KNEW all along.

Note: from the very beginning God His perfect plan for those who wait on Him; He knew the plan for the reversal of the Universal sin problem through the fall; and he Knew that he would one day come to earth in the form of a man to secure His plan.

1.

The Resurrection Proves that the best things come to those who wait.

Corrie Ten Boom

“There is no Panic in Heaven!

God has no problems, only plans.”

The fall in the garden took place because man was unwilling to wait on God.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE ARE UNWILLING TO WAIT ON GOD?

Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God.

Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in us.

All these good things, and all our security, are rightly found only and completely in Him.

How God Feels About Humanity

We serve a God who created our humanity, weeps at the fall of our humanity, became our humanity, and is redeeming our humanity.

It has now seemed like an eternity since that first Easter at the tomb.

However, the call for you and me to wait on God is an invitation to trust and hope.

* Waiting on God means learning that we don’t have to know all the answers.

Deserted By God

Have you ever felt deserted by God? or that no matter how hard you pray God is not listening.

That sense that God has somehow forgotten you down here on earth, leaving you feeling isolated and directionless.

Don’t feel as if you are all alone.

If we were all honest many of us have those feelings on a semi-regular basis.

We may not admit it because we don’t want people to think our faith is weak or we have somehow done something to cause these feelings.

But, through faith we can affirm God’s loving presence, even when he seems silent and we feel deserted.

James 4:8 tells us to draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

This is a promise despite how you feel.

The biggest problem I see in the Christian walk is many believers are not walking by faith they are walking by their feelings and emotions.

Several years ago, for no apparent reason I wen through a period of what I can only describe as depression.

I had to learn to trust God for his presence despite how I felt.

Eventually, as I continued to open his word daily and seek his face, while still in that depression, I gradually regained my ability to sense and hear him.

Many of us have walked the Emmaus road.

Overwhelmed by sorrow.

Plagued by questions.

We wonder where God is.

When, all along, he walks beside us.

*Waiting on God means learning to lay all your questions at His feet

GOD’S SHOULDERS ARE WIDE ENOUGH TO HANDLE ALL YOUR DOUBTS!

Have you ever wondered if this is the very best that God has for you?

Or, have you ever cried out to God and said really, “what were you thinking?”

And finally, “Do you really expect me to show up every Sunday and tell everyone how great you are?”

Then, when I became silent, God spoke to my soul.

He had an answer for each and every question.

The Upper Room While Waiting

Have you ever wondered what the room must have been like where Jesus followers waited after they had seen their master brutalized and murdered.

You have to understand even, though only John was at the actually crucifixion they had seen people brutally beat and murdered by the Romans most of their lives.

There must have been many questions running through their minds as they waited and prayed.

Possibly one of the questions may have been is this as good as it gets.

Is this the very best God has to offer.

Trusting God when we do not hear him ultimately strengthens and purifies us.

If our faith is based on a lack of struggles and afflictions and absence of doubt and questions, that’s a foundation of sand.

You remember Jesus of the wise and foolish builders.

One man chose the most expedient which was to build their house on the sand and when the storms came and they will come his house crumbled.

The other man in the story built his house on the rock of the firm foundation of Jesus word and when the storms and wind came his house held firm.

The foundation of the resurrection of Christ and his ability to handle whatever happens to you in this life is rock solid.

It never changes despite the times you may feel that you have received the raw end of the deal in this life.

*Waiting on God means learning to Change our Perspective

Silence is a Matter of Perspective

There is a sense in which God is never silent.

He has already spoken in his word and by becoming man and dying for us on the cross, purchasing our eternal salvation.

What we may perceive as silence may actually be our inability, or in some cases (certainly not all) our unwillingness, to hear him.

Fortunately our short term hearing loss as God’s children is not permanent.

And given the promise of his resurrection, it certainly will not be permanent.

Psalm 19:1 Tells us that “the heavens declare His glory, and the sky proclaims His handiwork.”

So, you see the reality is that God is speaking everyday, as you walk outside and see the very heavens declaring His glory through His creation.

When you can’t hear God what do you do?

You keep showing up and opening His word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Day after day, to look at what he has already said - and done - and contemplate and memorize it until we realize this is not silence but is God speaking to us.