Sermon Tone Analysis

Week 1: One Story

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Introduction: Let’s open our Bibles together

Happy New Year.

God’s world runs in cycles.

Every 24 hours we get a new day.

Every 365-1/4 days we get a new year.

We measure our life seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, and months that turn into years.

Each new year should bring us to a point of assessment and planning.

We should look back and gauge our progress… or regress.

We should be honest about our success and failures.

My prayer is that this year will be one that is spent in service of God and His kingdom.

I pray that we will be on mission this year to love God and others, to bring God glory in all that we do, and to share the gospel in our daily lives.

If we want to be successful… truly successful as God defines success, we are going to have to live life His way.

We are going to have to be led by the Holy Spirit.

God has given us something that is necessary for our growth and success in 2023.

Without it, we will not be what God wants us to be or achieve all that He has for us to do in this New Year.

Transition - Our lives are connected to stories… Everything we did this past year was connected to our beliefs and goals which spring from our story.

What would it mean for you and your family if you woke up one day and realized everything you believed was a lie?

This happened to Moses.

He was raised believing he was the grandson of Pharaoh.

He was educated in Egypt.

He was taught to worship their gods.

He was indoctrinated with the customs, culture, and beliefs of the Egyptians.

He had access to wealth, comfort, pleasure, celebrity status, and respect as and Egyptian.

We don’t know when or how, but at some point he learned who he was.

He learned that the ones he called family were the enemy.

They were enslaving and oppressing his true family.

He found out that the man he was raised to believe was his grandfather had ordered his death when he was an infant.

This Pharaoh was personally responsible for murdering thousands of newborn baby boys.

Everything Moses believed to be true about his own identity, his own history, and his own God was a lie.

Hebrews 11:24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

A Metanarrative—which literally means “grand narrative”—is a story that provides context and meaning for the lives of an entire group of people.

All cultures have stories that define their existence.

If you believe the wrong story, you will behave the wrong way.

In WW2, people fought and died for Hitler because they believed the story that he told his nation.

People in the American colonies shed their blood on battlefields because they believed a story… they believed they had a God given right to liberty from tyranny.

Stories are powerful.

God gave us a story.

It is a grand story that defines our reality.

God wrote a book.

It contains the truth about our existence.

Today, we are beginning a series through that story.

We call that story, The Holy Bible.

The Bible is made up of 66 books by around 40 different authors - over the period of 1500 yrs - who lived on 3 different continents - from many different walks of life.

These 66 books are not random, disjointed, or unconnected stories.

They tell one story.

They reveal God’s One Eternal Plan and Purpose for our world.

This is miraculous.

How could all these authors across 2 Millenia from 3 different continents who were shepherds, kings, slaves, carpenters, generals, farmers, priests, prophets, fishermen, politicians, assassins, and government agents who spoke 3 different languages tell one unified story?

It is a supernatural book!

I hold a miracle in my hand.

It was miraculously written and preserved.

The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors to tell one cohesive story (2 Peter 1:21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.).

2 Timothy 3:16 says - All Scripture is breathed out by God . . .

& THAT is the Only Way this book is possible.

Only God could tell this story.

Gen. 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

God is the only one who could have written this.

He is the only one who was there.

God is eternal and self-existent.

He is the Lord of time, existing above and apart from it, but free to enter it to accomplish his purposes.

Rom 11:36: “For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever!

Amen.”

God does not have a beginning or end.

God does not change.

God is all-knowing, all-wise, and ever-present.

He possesses all power.

He exists as Father, Son, and Spirit.

He is the Triune God. 3 in 1.

He is perfect in all he does.

He is Holy, righteous, just, He is love, He is merciful, compassionate, and kind.

His ways are higher than our ways.

His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

And He wrote a book.

His book is without error, incapable of failing, and authoritative.

The Bible is a self-revelation of God.

It reveals our Creator, the fall of man, the way of salvation, and God’s plan and purpose for the ages.

He wrote this book for us… for our benefit.

So that we could know Him, understand our problem, receive salvation, and find peace and purpose in our lives.

The Bible tells One Story.

The Bible is not primarily a book about morals.

Though Scripture has a lot to say about how we live and act, it’s not primarily a manual for moral living.

The Bible is not about us.

It’s about God.

Edmund Clowney, who was a professor and theologian, said that if we read a particular story without putting it into the bigger story about Christ, we actually change the meaning of the particular event for us.

It becomes a moralistic exhortation to try harder rather than a call to live by faith in the work of Christ.

In the end, there are only two ways to read the Bible: as if it’s all about us or all about Jesus.

In other words, is it basically about me and what I must do, or about Christ and what he has done?

The Bible is not a collection of fables; it is not a book of virtues.

It’s a story about how God saves us.

That story works out in the four movements of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration.

[https://graysonpope.com/2019/03/18/the-importance-of-reading-the-bible-as-one-big-story/]

“Nothing is meaningful without a context.”

We must understand the context of Scripture if we are to properly apply it to our lives.

Herman Bavinck gave one of the greatest summaries of The Holy Bible that I’ve ever read: “God the Father has reconciled his created but fallen world through the death of his Son, and renews it into a Kingdom of God by his Spirit.”

That’s the story of the Bible in one sentence.

Let’s examine these 4 Movements of The Holy Bible: