Foundation Stone or House of Cards
The Eternal God is the Creator of the Cosmos • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewGenesis 1 -11 is foundational for belief and trust in the Bible
Notes
Transcript
Open: show Andy Stanley video clip (manup.org/starting-point-lesson-1, from 8:55 - 11:04)
Open: show Andy Stanley video clip (manup.org/starting-point-lesson-1, from 8:55 - 11:04)
Transition: This viewpoint is heretical, but is prevalent. Andy Stanley reaches tens of thousands of people with this message. A lot of people think like this. That is why it is crucial for us to know the Bible, to trust it as God’s word, and to know WHY we believe it.
Andy Stanley teaches that present day Christians simply need to “unhitch from the Old Testament” and to focus on the Resurrection of Jesus as told by eyewitness accounts. He states that trusting in the Bible as an organic unity is likened unto a House of Cards. The truth is that the Old Testament is foundational to the Biblical story of redemption and that Genesis 1 -11 is foundational to the remainder of the Biblical account.
Read Genesis 1:1 as the text
God’s special revelation of Genesis 1–11 is the only eyewitness account to the origin of the Universe. In these early pages of Genesis we discover worldview issues that humanity is continuing to deal with in the present.
Consider some of the questions that people ask themselves:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
Do I have value - does my life matter?
Why is the world so broken and full of evil?
What happens to people who die?
All these questions, and others, are addressed in the first eleven chapters of the first book of the Bible. If we simply “unhitch” from the OT as Andy Stanley advises, then we are left without an answer for these very important questions.
God is revealed as the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. He is outside of Creation. He is Eternal and has always been. Before God brought forth time and space through creation of the Heavens and the Earth, He was already present. He was the One who brought about “In the beginning.”
God as Creator is the reason that the Theory of Evolution is NOT valid. Evolution starts out with eternal matter that just randomly developed from a simple system to a complex system by chance over time
Genesis reveals that humanity is a special creation of God. We are a direct creation of God and we are the only beings created in His own image. We are NOT a higher form of animal; we are in a separate category
Genesis reveals that humanity is created in just two genders: male or female (Genesis 1:26). Gender was created by God and it is a biological reality, NOT a social construct.
We discover in Genesis that marriage is a creation ordinance. God is the One who created the family and His design was, and continues to be, one man with one woman.
As a creation ordinance it is binding for all time and all cultures. This truth negates the illusion of homosexual marriage. By definition, the union of two persons of the same gender is NOT marriage.
Genesis three explains what went wrong in the world. God had created everything good (Genesis 1:31) and yet, evil finds its way into the Garden. The origins of evil is not explained, but other sections of the OT give insight into the pride of Satan and his downfall when he decided he wanted to BE God instead of serving God.
In Genesis Chapter 3 we discover how Satan tempted Adam and Eve into rebelling against God’s perfect plan. We read how satan led them to question God’s Word and to question His good plan for them. Adam fell into sin and death entered the world (Romans 5:12)
Genesis gives a reason for the condition of the world as it is. The creation itself is under bondage from the curse of God and is waiting for redemption (Romans 8)
Today is the 20th and final message in the Genesis 1 -11 series - The Eternal God is the Creator of the Cosmos. This series started on June 4, 2023 and if you were present for all 20 messages, you will have received approximately 10 hours of study focused on God’s earliest dealings with humanity and creation