Preparing for the Wedding

Let's pray Lord God as we open up with your word. We pray that you would speak to us help us to understand what we are to believe teaching and confess and embrace it through faith In Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Authority of Scripture and the Historical Question of Genesis

Alright, so here's the question I have for you to start off this morning in our abbreviated lesson. How do you know? How can you be confident that? What we have in the Genesis account is an actual historical account.

There are people out there who claim. Oh, this is what we call Theo poetry now. I Theo meaning God's this is some kind of God poetry. They say so that the Genesis one is like it's like one of the Psalms or it's like that that poem roses are red.

Violets are blue.

How do you know whether or not this is history or.

Poetry.

I'll give you a hint. Scripture interprets care scripture.

That helps.

Okay.

Huh?

Did Jesus oh, that's a good that's a good question. Did Jesus talk about Genesis what you guys think. Well, that's in first Timothy, yes all scripture is God. Second to me second Timothy chapter 3 all scripture is God breathed so.

Yeah, but see that's not quite what we're talking about here. Why would it be important if Jesus actually talks about the creation? What what difference does that make? Okay, we're getting it we're getting there we're getting there let's kind of let's make that smooth that out and make it a little bit Easier.

So here's the here's the idea is is that in today's world? You cannot practice medicine unless you go to school and you go to medical school, right? Now would any of you be willing to have open-heart surgery from somebody who got their?

Medical degree from a diploma mill in Mexico.

No.

It has nothing to do with racism, okay. Because I'm not talking about I'm not saying you you know. Get your you know have heart surgery done performed by somebody who studied medicine in Mexico. I said somebody who got their medical degree from a diploma mill in Mexico.

Okay. Yeah big difference. Okay, there's some good. There are some good doctors who? Who are south of the border? All right, and they've been to reputable medical schools, right? Okay, so we're not we're not making some kind of racist statement here so for to make it even more clear a Norwegian who got his Medical degree from a diploma mill in Mexico.

Okay, we Got kind of like a bubblegum machine. Yes, it's a lot like that. So would you would you want to?

Have.

Your open-heart surgery performed by somebody like that. Nope. Nope. Okay, so credentials kind of mean something. Let me ask you another question here. Are you farmers here? How many of you guys would like me to plan the planting of the crops next year in the harvest for your fields?

Any takers. Yeah, you may do it any takers. Come on. I Can offer my services cheap. I'm telling you I'm really cheap. I'll make it really worth your while and still still no. You you farmers. I mean, what is the deal with you?

I mean, I feel in my heart that I could really be a good farmer. Isn't that enough? Yeah, we're talking about Genesis, but I'm using a metaphor here and using a little bit of sarcastic humor because Robin loves it so much.

To kind of make a point. Okay, well historically speaking yes, there are people there are people that we have we know where they're buried this is true. So we know that that's where they're buried. We know that that's where they're buried.

At least part of the Old Testament is historic. We know this but we're talking about the Genesis account. How did we get here in all of human history? Is there anybody who we could point to and say that?

Person was an eyewitness to The Genesis account in Genesis 1 1 Jesus. Jesus. Right Jesus think about it. Who is Jesus? He's the Son of God. Right. That's his claim. He is none other than God in human flesh.

So wouldn't Jesus qualify as an eyewitness to the accounts in the Old Testament? I Mean a couple weeks ago. We read We read about Jesus having this argument with the Pharisees or the Jews. Regarding Abraham and Jesus spoke about Abraham as if he'd met Abraham and the Jews picked right up on it.

You are not 50 years old yet, and you've met Abraham. They said right. How can Jesus talk that way about Abraham? Well, he's the God who made Abraham, right? So the question then is is this if we were to type kind of tie these themes together.

Who has the credentials? That can speak credibly to whether or not what we have in the book of Genesis is history or poetry.

Jesus.

Okay. Now, what are his credentials by the way? Well, he claims to be the Son of God, but let's work with me here for a second here. I told this joke a couple years ago here, but it bears repeating. Just because you claim to be the Son of God doesn't mean you're the Son of God.

There's a story told about a gentleman who was traveling around visiting different insane asylums in order to kind of check out. You know whether or not they were kind of up to code right and he considered himself something kind of an amateur Psychiatrist type and so he was visiting this one insane asylum and off over in the group room.

There was a gentleman who was walking around with his arm in his coat like this and kind of you know. Proudly and so he walked up to him. He says sir. What's what's your name? He says my name is Napoleon Bonaparte.

All right, and so the guy tried to help him out. He says well, how do you know you're Napoleon Bonaparte says because God told me right and then from across the room another guy Shouts out. No, I didn't.

I never said that. All right.

So.

Jesus yeah, he claims to be the Son of God. But what are what can we point to that backs up the claim and Stephen keep your mouth shut. Yes, he was born of the Virgin Mary. Yes. How does the fact that he the claim is that he was born of the Virgin Mary proved that he is that.

Because the angel said did you see this angel? What color was his hair? How what were the dimensions on his wingspan? Okay, well sometimes I hate to say this elders can be wrong. Okay, I I will respectfully not mention that to your mother.

Okay.

Mark.

That's right. Yeah, this is something we will talk about when we get into the Advent season as we're getting closer to Christmas. One of the things we'll take a look at in our midweek Advent services.

We're gonna take a look at some of the prophecies regarding Jesus. This is in fact when you read the book of Acts. You know when you look at the Apostles and they're traveling throughout the Mediterranean planting churches.

They were always going to synagogues two things. They would argue they would argue that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary As eyewitnesses to the resurrection that Jesus was the Messiah, but they'd also argue from fulfilled prophecy and.

When you take a look at the details of prophecy regarding Jesus, I mean, it's either Jesus or nobody. That's what it comes down to because nobody could have fulfilled these prophecies and we're not talking about the Nostradamus type.

Prophecies you ever seen like History Channel Nostradamus prophet of you know, whatever, you know, and you read if you ever read Nostradamus's quatrains I mean that those things are just Esoteric, I mean, they're so difficult.

They don't even sound like they're written by somebody who's lucid and so you can kind of read into those things whatever you want. But you for instance, okay, you read Psalm 22 who has Psalm 22. Take a look at that real quick open up to Psalm 22.

Let me open up my Bible. I'm at it. You got it. Okay, Janet read to us Psalm 22.

Oh my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so cruel? In you our fathers put their trust.

Yeah, keep going.

He trusts in the Lord, let the Lord rescue him Let him deliver him. Yet you brought me out of the womb. You made me trust in you. From birth I was cast upon you From my mother's womb. You have been my God.

Do not be far from me, for trouble is near And there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me. Strong bulls of passion encircle me. Roaring lions tear in their prey. Open their mouths wide against me.

I am poured out like water And all my bones Are out of joint. My heart is turned to wax. It has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like Hot shirt And my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me. A band of evil men has encircled me. I have cursed my hands and my feet. I count all my bones. People stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them And cast lots from my clothing.

But you, O Lord, be not far off. O my strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver my life from the sword My precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions. Save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

I declare your name to my brothers. In the congregation I will bless you. You who hear the Lord, praise him. All you descendants of Jacob, honor him. Revere him, all you descendants of Israel. For he has not despised or disclaimed The suffering of the afflicted one.

He has not hidden his face from him But has listened to his cry for help. From you comes my praise And the great assembly. Before those who fear you Will I fulfill my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied.

They who seek the Lord Will praise him. May your hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth remember And turn to the Lord. All the families of the nations Will bow down before you.

Okay, all right.

Who's that psalm about? Jesus. How do you know?

Because it says who he was born, how he died.

Uh-huh. How does it say in Psalm 22 that Jesus is going to die? My hand...

Well, they died and they did...

Yeah, they pierced my hands and my... What does it say? Right. Uh-huh.

Yep.

That's right. Now, Jesus, when he's hanging on the cross, does he have the ability to fulfill this prophecy? Did he force the Romans to crucify him? Did Jesus pay money to the Roman soldiers to divide his clothes and cast lots for them?

No.

And by the way, this psalm was written I think at least 400 to 600 years before crucifixion was invented as a form of capital punishment. And yet it describes it as his hands and his feet being pierced, right?

Right.

Okay, so when we talk about fulfilled prophecy, that's just the tip of the iceberg. When you read the Old Testament, you find out it is teeming with prophecies regarding Jesus, both specific and typologically, which is absolutely fascinating.

I mean, the Bible is not like any book out there. So you're right. Fulfilled prophecy argues strongly that Jesus is who he claimed to be. But what's the ultimate proof that Jesus is who he claimed to be?

You remember when Jesus went into the temple and he drove the money changers out, right? And the chief priests basically said, what sign can you give us to show that you have the authority to do these things?

And Jesus said, tear down this temple and I'll build it again in three days. Which means he's right.

Right.

Okay, and they thought he's pointing to the temple,.

Herod's temple, right?

And they said it's taken 46 years to build this temple and you're going to rebuild it again in three days? What does the text say? He's talking about his body. So how do we know that Jesus has the authority to do the things that he did, that he is who he claimed to be?

Well, on the third day he rose again bodily from the grave. Muhammad is still in the grave. Buddha is still in the grave. Hare Krishna, you know, Sun Yung Moon, they're all still in the grave. Jesus rose from the grave.

He claimed to be God and we have eyewitness testimony that says on the third day after he was crucified and killed, he was alive. They saw him physically alive. These are pretty good credentials. So that's the idea here.

So if we were to talk about anyone out there, who is the greatest authority regarding Scripture? It has to be Jesus. It doesn't matter if you get a Ph .D. today from the top theological school. Your credentials cannot trump Jesus' credentials.

Jesus doesn't have Ph .D. after his name. He has Son of God. So the question that comes up is, what did Jesus think about Genesis?

Did he think.

Adam and Eve were mythological people? That the creation was really not that? What did Jesus think? Let's take a look. Matthew 19. We're going to look at verses 3 -6 and I'll read it for you.

Here's what it says.

The Pharisees came up to him, that would be Jesus, and they tested him by asking,.

Is it lawful.

To divorce one's wife for any cause?

And.

Subtext is, yeah, you wish, right?

What is with these Pharisees?

So he says, Have you not read he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? Does that tell you what Jesus thinks about what happened in Genesis 1? He says, he who created them created them male and female.

And he said, therefore, man shall leave his father and his mother, hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So there are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

Have you not read? What was Jesus' view of the Old Testament then? Did Jesus think it was truly the word of God? Yeah, he did. Did he think Genesis is history? Well, he's quoting it here as if it's history.

Is it not? Now, here's a funny thing. From time to time, you may have noticed this if you follow me on Facebook or on Twitter, from time to time there are people who want to, let's just say, have heated exchanges with me.

They want to express their opinions. Well, recently, and this is not the first time this has happened, but this happens with some regularity, recently I had a gentleman who identifies himself as an emergent post-modern liberal.

And.

The gist of his comment to me was that I was pretty much a doofus and a buffoon because I believed that Jesus believed that the Old Testament was the word of God and that Genesis was actual history. And so his response to me, after I responded to him, he basically said, listen, you've got to understand Jesus was a man of his times.

If Jesus were alive today, he'd be an evolutionist. Come on, Jesus being a man of his time, he just didn't have access to Darwin's origin of species. If only Jesus were alive today, he would be an evolutionist.

See, here's the thing. Didn't Jesus rise from the grave? He is alive today, isn't he? Yeah. Now, Scripture by the way tells us that Jesus is God, but also the Scripture tells us that God cannot lie. So if Jesus is wrong here and Adam and Eve were not really created by God like he said in Matthew 19, is Jesus really God?

No, he's not. He's not, because he's giving us false information. So as.

Silly as this sounds,.

As Christians, we stick to our guns. When we talk about the armor of God, you've got defensive armor. What's our only offensive weapon? The Bible, the Word. Whatever you do, if you're sharing your faith with somebody who's skeptical, never allow yourself to be disarmed.

You stick.

To the text and you say, I'm sorry, Jesus said this, and then they come back and they taunt you or say bad things about you or whatever. You say, I'm sorry, but Jesus said this.

Okay?

That's what I mean. Don't let yourself be disarmed. Don't get into philosophy. Don't get into this other stuff. Jesus is the only eyewitness to this that has lived that we know of, and he says that they were created.

It ticks off the person you're.

Arguing with. Yes, it does.

It does.

But let's talk about why that is. Yes, it does tick some people off. Let's do a little bit of Bible though, okay? I'm not going to allow myself to be disarmed by such a statement by David, but it's a good statement, by the way.

The Suppression of Truth and the Christian Response to Atheism

Romans chapter 1. I want to read to you something, and this is also going to give us a little bit of an understanding of then how we share our faith with people. You're right. You say something like that, it's going to upset them.

Watch this. Romans chapter 1, verse 18. Here's what it says. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

You know why somebody doesn't want to hear about Jesus being God, and that he created? It's because it says right here, they're suppressing the truth and wickedness, or unrighteousness. Now, this is an important thing.

There is not a single person on the planet who claims to be an atheist who's telling the truth. How do I know this? Because scripture says so. Let's keep reading. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, and his divine nature they have been clearly seen being understood from what was made so that men are without excuse.

Listen,.

It goes on. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.

And they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

And they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the created things rather than the creator who was forever praised.

Amen.

Now this is important.

This is critical.

When you share your faith with somebody who is an unbeliever, don't argue evidences with them. This text makes it clear there's no such thing as an atheist. There is no such thing. The atheist is the one who has actively suppressed the truth of God that they know is true.

So here's how we share our faith instead. If you talk to somebody and say, well, I don't believe in God. Number one, internally, inside you can say, I know that's not true because Scripture says so. And so here's generally how I handle atheists, and it's a good way to handle them.

You don't have to know all of their arguments. You have to understand this. You are an ambassador of the kingdom of God. As an ambassador, you have a message to give. So when you talk to an atheist, here's what I say to them when they say, I don't believe in God.

I know that what you're telling me is not true. I know that you believe that there's a God, and you know there's a God. So I'm not going to argue this with you. Instead, I have good news to tell you. The God that you're angry at, the God whom you are suppressing the truth in your unrighteousness, he's given me a message to give to you.

And here's the message.

He loves you.

He's unilaterally acted on your behalf to die for your sins. And he's calling you to repent and to believe in him and to be forgiven. It's all a free gift, and I know you're angry at him, but he's not angry at you right now.

He wants you to believe and to live. I've done this with several atheists. One of them was reduced to tears when I did that. Because the thing is that the atheist is all girded up, ready to argue with you.

Right?

Oh, evolution, this and that, and what about these things, and all this kind of stuff. Whenever you play their game on their turf, it's like playing chess, and it's 20 moves to stalemate if you're a good player.

So don't play the game. What does Scripture say about the one who doesn't believe.

That there's a God?

That he's wise, or that he's what?

A fool.

The fool says in his heart that there is no God. Not the wise, the fool. So be merciful. Understand the person is being foolish, but don't call them a fool to their face. The idea is don't play on their turf, and you basically say, you don't believe in God?

That's not true. I know for a fact.

That you believe there's a God.

And when I talk to atheists this way, oftentimes I'll say things like, I have a message to give you from God, here's the message he bled and died for you, and then I usually say this, and you also already know that what I'm telling you is the truth.

And I've never had them challenge me on that. It's weird. It changes the game altogether. You see, the thing is, we're ambassadors of the kingdom of God. We have a message to proclaim, the good news that Christ bled and died for our sins.

And unfortunately, one of the things I've seen, even in my own life, and I've seen kind of take place in the world of apologetics, is that there's these people out there who, their pride is puffed up because they've learned to out-argue people regarding particular things.

They've taken on, you know, Richard Dawkins or Anthony Flew.

Or whatever, right?

And so much of their self-worth is caught up in their ability to be that person who was able to stand his ground against said atheist. That's not what we're called to do. We're called to proclaim Christ.

Now, that's not to say that apologetic arguments don't have their place or that evidences don't have their place, but I've found that evidences are a very good thing to discuss in church because they help bolster our faith.

Because when you're brought to penitent faith in Christ, these things help you so that people don't come in and snatch your faith because those atheists are wascally, right? They're wascally. But oftentimes, if you just take the time to examine their arguments,.

They don't hold up.

So how do we know that Genesis is history? Because Jesus says so. And when we look in the New Testament, Jesus believed that Adam and Eve were historical people. He believed that Abel was a historical person.

He believed that Noah was a historical person. And Jesus believed in the worldwide global flood. Jesus talked like he knew Abraham.

So,.

It's just real simple. The idea, then, is that we have this good news to proclaim, we don't have to play the atheists on their turf, and you just trust in Jesus. See, that's the thing. 1 Peter says to set apart Christ as Lord and always be ready to give an answer and a reason for the hope that lies within you.

But the reason and the hope that lies within you only comes after set apart Christ as Lord. If Christ is Lord, you just stick by him. You just say, I'm just a simple Christian. And I think it's just really simple.

Jesus believed that Genesis was historical because it was. And as soon as you die and rise again from the grave, then you'll have the credentials to talk on the level of Jesus. Until you do that, I'm going to go with Jesus.

It's just that simple. It'll drive them crazy. And they'll accuse you of all kinds of things.

They'll say, oh, that's circular logic.

You're using the Bible to prove the Bible. No, I'm not. Actually, think about this. One book, right? This isn't a book. This is a library. If I quote Jesus to talk about Genesis, am I quoting the same book?

No.

I'm quoting a different book in the same library. It's not circular logic. So you can quote the Bible to support the Bible. You can absolutely do that. Now, of course, we're cheating because there's one common author to every one of the books, and that's God the Holy Spirit.

But the atheists, they don't believe that anyway. So let them work that out. So let's come back now to Genesis. Let's go back to Genesis. Point out some things along the way. And again, my apologies. I'm going to read from my translation.

And it seems like we keep getting nowhere, but we're actually getting somewhere.

Yeah. Okay.

I got you guys figured out.

Yeah.

This is, by the way, there's a term for this in theology. We actually call this the hermeneutical spiral. And here's the idea. Have you all noticed in your own life that when you were young, you read the Bible, right?

And as you were reading it, certain things kind of popped out of it, and there were certain truths that kind of stuck in your mind, right? Well, now that you're older, you go back and you read the Bible, and now that you have a little bit more depth to it or a passage that you've read a hundred times all of a sudden comes crackling to life, right?

And it's not that the Bible has changed. It's that you have. And the reality is that every time you go through the hermeneutical spiral, you're going around and around and around, and we're meditating and learning God's Word.

With each time around the track, you're going to learn more.

And more and more.

And dig deeper and deeper and deeper. I can tell you this. If you think about it this way, is that here in this time-space continuum, think about size and proportion here, okay? If we were to get an electron microscope, we can drill down into the electrons in the carpet, right?

Go all the way down to the point where the visible eye can't possibly see things this small, yet we know that the world is consisted of these things that are tiny, right? Really microscopic. But then as you zoom out, we come to this magnification level, but now let's zoom out the whole planet, the sun, the moon, the stars, the solar system, and then zoom out from here, the Milky Way galaxy, and zoom out from there, the universe as a whole with all of the tens and billions of galaxies out there, right?

So you think about that. There's so much depth in the creation. God's Word is very similar to this. God's Word is very similar to this. You can study this book exhaustively, day by day by day, and you will only begin.

To scratch the surface.

Regarding what's going on in here. This is a deep ocean, a huge universe. And so I never tire of learning God's Word because with each pass, it goes deeper and deeper and deeper. So although it seems like three weeks in a row, four weeks in a row, Chris has been talking about the same passage.

Yeah, I know. It's the hermeneutical spiral. We're going deeper and deeper with each pass. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And see, chapter 1 of the Bible is this 30 ,000-foot overview of creation.

Chapter 2 drills down into some of the detail. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters. God said, Let there be light.

There was light.

God saw the light, for it was good. God divided between the light and between the darkness. And God called the light, or like I pointed out last week, God called to the light day, and He called to the darkness night.

That's what it says.

And there was evening, and there was morning, day one. God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and there was separating between the waters to waters. And God made the expanse and separated between the waters that were under the expanse and between the waters that were over the expanse.

God called the expanse heaven, and there was evening, and there was morning, day two. God said, Collect the waters from under the heavens into one place, and let appear dry ground.

And it was so.

God called the dry ground earth and collected waters. He called seas, and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth sprout grass, plants producing seed, fruit, trees making fruit. And the earth brought forth grass, herbage yielding seed, according to its kind, and trees making fruit, in which it's their seed, according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good.

God Preparing for a Wedding in Creation

The.

18th century Lutheran pastor.

Valerius Herberger,.

Quite a name, it's a mouthful of a name. In his sermons on this text, he talks about.

How.

All this vibrant life is coming, and he says, God is preparing for a wedding. God is preparing for a wedding. I think that's a beautiful context to think about what we're looking at in Genesis 1 here.

You know, we've all, we're all married, right? Or we've all participated, at least in some degree, you know, with someone's wedding. And you think about all the fuss that goes into the event, right? And it's such an important thing.