Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO

Good evening!

My name is Ryan… I have the privilege of being one of the pastors at Georgianna Church… over in Merritt Island.

And I’m thrilled to be here with you all tonight!

Have you had a good time today???

Thank you so much for having me here … thanks to Jennifer McDowell for the invitation...

and everyone working hard on stage and behind the scenes to put this on...

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Jennifer shared her heart with me for this event and I immediately resonated with this idea of seeing people set free.

Here’s what I know… we serve a God who CAN… so my prayer tonight is that He WILL.

This is what the gospel… the good news of Jesus is all about.

This is why I’m a pastor… I believe that when we gather at an event like this or every Sunday in our local churches.... that there is the potential for freedom in these places.

When we set aside time to worship and call out to God… we can be set free.

And one reason why I love the church is that these opportunities come around AT LEAST every single week…

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At Georgianna, my local church, we just went through a sermon series exploring the major themes and movements of the Bible… trying to find a way to wrap our minds around the BIG story of scripture.

If you’re like me and you grew up in church… sometimes the Bible just seems like a COLLECTION of stories.

Some are inspirational… some are heroic… let’s be honest here, some are just downright strange...

But I could never figure out how they ALL fit together.

And so at Georgianna we started at the beginning… at Creation in Genesis… and tried to trace a big story throughout scripture.

And here’s what we found out… God IS writing a BIG story… and it doesn’t just stop at the Bible.

It goes on to include you and include me and include the faithful people who have followed Him for thousands of years.

God is writing a BIG story and you are in it.

Which tells me that God is also writing YOUR story… and he wants a good and purposeful story for you.

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So we don’t quite have the time to through all of the movements and trace our way through all of scripture tonight...

But I want to talk about Creation… where we started… where the whole story begins.

Because it matters how our story begins.

How God chooses to begin His BIG story… tells me something important about MY story and YOUR story.

It matters how our story begins.

OPENING PRAYER

Holy Spirit… empower us to live out good and purposeful stories… enlighten us about the story that you have written for us… as well as the BIG story that is being written in your world.

GOD

So Creation… the very beginning of God’s story.

I mentioned that I grew up in church and I’ve heard Bible stories my entire life… but even if that’s not your experience… I would imagine that you’re still somewhat familiar with the Creation story.

Maybe you’ve heard the names Adam and Eve before.

Maybe you know that there is a really crafty snake in the Garden of Eden.

Maybe you’ve heard that there were 7 days involved…

But to those of you who THINK you already know this story… let me ask you this...

What was created first?

Animals or People?

Who says animals?

Who says people?

THE ANSWER IS: “it depends on which story you read!”

Who was created first?

People or animals?

It depends on which story you read.

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Maybe you think you know the story already… BUT

Did you know there are 2 creation stories in Genesis?

When I think of hearing these stories for most of my life… an assumption that I always had was that the Creation story was just one story.

But it’s actually two!

You’ll find that the Bible actually does this in a few places… Maybe you’re familiar with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

They all tell the story of Jesus’ life and ministry.

BUT… they tell it from a unique perspective.

So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell the same BIG story, lots of similarities… but they’re not identical.

If you have read much of the Old Testament you may have encountered a few books known as Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.

Same idea… many of the same stories you read in Samuel and Kings show back up in Chronicles.

Lots of similarities… not identical.

The difficult thing about the creation stories is that they’re back to back and they’re in one book… Genesis … and if you’re not careful you may breeze right through one and into the other without noticing that they’re a little different.

And in case you’re curious… Genesis 2:4 is that hinge point… where one story ends and another begins.

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Let’s take that question for example: what was created first, animals or people…

Let’s look at this together, if you have your Bibles OR PHONES I’d love for you to read along with me… we’re turning to Genesis 1- so that’s going to be page number… 1 in your Bibles.

If you look at Genesis 1:21 you see the creation of sea animals… if you look at Genesis 1:25 you’ll see the creation of land animals.

And then after all of that Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make mankind in our image…”

Animals and then people.

With me so far?

But if you flip over to Genesis 2:7 you see that God is creating a man… and then in chapter 2, verse 19 you’ll see God creating animals.

People, then animals.

There are several other clues that tell us that we have two stories… God is referred to differently in the two different stories.

In one story you’ll see that God is called God throughout the story.

In the other story you’ll notice that God is called LORD God throughout the story.

God creates differently in the two stories.

In one story God simply speaks things into being… in the other story God forms things… he makes a man out of the dust.

REFLECTIONS

But so what right?

A question I want to live in for a little while is probably one that you’re asking yourselves right now…

WHAT’S THE POINT?

Yeah, maybe that was interesting trivia… and you can tell your friends… “Hey did you know the Bible tells two creation stories?”

...but what do we do with these two stories that talk about the same event?

And how does this impact the BIG story that God is telling…

People today see stuff like this and we may have an unfortunate knee-jerk reaction sometimes… to two different versions of something.

Sometimes we want to debate.

Which one is the right one?

What are the facts?

Was creation literally 7 days?

What do we do about dinosaurs?

I didn’t see them mentioned anywhere!

How old is the earth really?

I like debates, I really do (I know that’s strange)… and we can have an offline conversation about all of that…

BUT NONE OF IT IS THE POINT OF THE STORY.

The point is not to deconstruct our knowledge and beliefs about any of those things…

But what does this story teach me about God and God’s BIG Story?

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I gotta be honest… I see people writing books about this stuff and I hear about arguments… and to me… it just seems like it’s all stuff that is impossible to know for sure.

And so it’s distracting… because I don’t think any of that is actually the point.

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Tonight I want to focus on that first story… literally the first words in the Bible...

Because IT MATTERS HOW THE STORY BEGINS...

What is the point of this first story?

The first story has order.

6 days of creation, then rest on the 7th.

Culturally, in the ancient world, 7 was a number of completion.

The first story is repetitive.

We find the same phrases over and over…

***“And God said let there be __________________ and it happened… and God saw that it was good… and it was evening and it was morning, the first day.”