The Divine Crash

Sunday and Monday have been incredible days for me full of connexional ministry.  As a result my Sunday sermon and podcast were not put up and now The typical Tuesday post has become my sermon and podcast.  Enjoy the notes and feel free to subscribe on iTunes or listen at the bottom of this post.

Prayer: God break forth and create something new.

As we look at church and what it is today we are talking about the church’s story, your story, and my story.

Choices make up our story and that story doesn’t have to be one of hurt but one of grace, hope, and new starts.

Scripture: Genesis 1:27-31

Premise: Where and how you begin the story and where and how you end the story shape and determine what the story even is…

How does God start a story?

Genesis 1:11 God said”Let the land produce vegetation”

- Hebrew is Dasha

- Means to produce/sprout

- Gives the idea of progressive growth.  In other words creation is moving, going somewhere.  Creation is dynamic, not static.

- Tomorrow will be different than today

Genesis 1:26-28

- Humans created to rule and subdue the earth

- Kabash in Hebrew is not like”put the kabash on it and make it break to my will” but is to help make creation move forward.

- Gives this idea of responsibility, stewrdship, harmony within hierarchy and everything has an appropriate ordering of creation.

sin then, is when we break the hierarchy to be like god or to worship the created.

Genesis 1:28 and 22

- God blessed.

- Bless is Barak

- Suddenly soil and spirit are united. Heaven and earth are one.  There isn’t somewhere else.

Everything you love about life is right there.

- Making things

- Relationships

- Worship

- Exploration

- Organizing, naming, learning, responsibility.

- All of these things, are found and blessed by God, in Genesis 1

- When you do these things and find joy in them you are connecting to the God of Creation and suddenly it is amazing.

- Examples: Cooking, scrapbooking, music, dance etc…

- god who dances perichoresis and choreography.

That is how the story starts.

The story ends in Revelation 21

- A perfect city where once again heaven and earth are united into something new.  A giant city.

- If you remove all reference to sin from the Bible you get a pamphlet but you get Genesis 1:1 and 2:1 and Revelation 21 and 22

- There is a movement from a”good” garden to a”perfect city.”

Genesis 3

- Disruption, rebellion, lost participation

- This is not how the story begins or how it ends.

- When we find our life in Genesis three, it is not our story it is simply another way to try and live life that ends in death.

- We were created lower than God and higher than the earth.  Sin then is a changing of that.  To be like God or to worship the creation.  This is Genesis 3.

So then, Confession in our admission, recognition, declaration, and agreement that we participate in things that don’t lead to life. And repentance is to return to the things that give life.

The story we are in is about God, not us. It is a story that brings us into the events God is doing.

- It is a story about what God is doing in this world

However, if we start at the wrong place we end in the wrong place.

If you start in Genesis 3 then you are a sinful person and need fixed because you will never be good enough and this earth is falling apart and someday the true believers will leave this place and evacuate before destruction.

If you start in Genesis 1 This world was created with an ordered way and is moving to perfection, you are a child of God and called to move the world towards perfection and at the end peace will come back to this planet when heaven and earth unite once again.

John holds 7 miracles before the resurrection.

- John is telling a very specific story.

- each miracle gets bigger.

- Water into wine

- Official’s son

- healing at the pool

- Feeding multitudes

- Water

- Blind man

- Lazaarus back to life

When John writes these 7 miracles he is referencing creation being 7 days.

Miracle 8 is John 20 and the resurrection.

- The 8th day is the first day of a new week. And if God is starting a new week, God is starting a new creation.

- saying That the resurrection begins a new creation right here in the midst of this one.

- The story of Jesus’ resurrection is about God reaffirming the goodness of this creation and anticipating the coming day when heaven and earth are one again.

So  then, as a community of believers we continually insist that through the resurrection of Jesus a whole new world is bursting forth right here in the midst of this one and everybody everywhere can be a part of it.

So then, part of the jurney in being a christian is learning more and more how to see this new creation in their own eyes.

A christian, and a church, then has hope rooted not in escape but engagement, not in evacuation but in reclamation.  Not in leaving but in staying and overcoming.

A Christian is never surprised when grace, beauty, meaning, order, compassion, truth, and love show up in all sorts of unexpected people and places because it always been God’s world, it is God’s world, and it always will be God’s world.

As a church we are saying we are a community of believers that lives in this world and does everything we can to move this world forward to a time of perfection because that is what we are designed to do.

so then how are you moving the world forward towards perfection? it isn’t always grand leaps and amazing gestures sometimes it is about one person one action and one sacrifice that changes the world one person at a time.

as we pray ask god to show you what to do and for the strength to do it now.

Sermon Audio

 

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