Gospel-Centered Teaching: Showing Christ In All the Scripture (2013) by Trevin Wax, Book Review

Gospel-Centered Teaching: Showing Christ In All the Scripture (2013) by Trevin Wax

 

Thanks for the flight delay, I can finish reading and taking notes from this book. It is concise, practical, and to the point. This Gospel-Centered term, I observed, was once the most popular term in American Christianity to call us back to the role of the power and influence of Jesus in every area of life. It has become popular too in Asian churches. In fact, in many ways, it has become a movement (and I’m afraid, a cliche too). But today, it seems to me, the spirit of it is on the decline. Either we should emphasize more or use other terms, I believe we all must be Gospel-Centered in everything. “You want the truths of the gospel to impact the way you do everything - from theology to application, to any subject you’re discussing,” writes Trevin to the teachers and preachers. He continues, “The way you help your people understand that the gospel is for all of life is not by telling them the gospel pervades everything, but by showing them in how you teach.”

To the author, being Gospel-Centered really matter because:- a) The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It’s not in me or you. It's not in our ability or talent. It's in God as Romans 1:16 declared. “People just keep on believing the gospel. Why? Because the gospel is such an easy message to believe? No. Because the gospel is powerful. The Spirit works powerfully through the gospel to bring us to salvation”; b) Because the gospel is the power of God for sanctification. “It’s the message God uses to grow us in holiness and conform us to the image of His Son”; c) The gospel provides the motivation for mission. I love this point so much. We all know that our church or youth group or Christian fellowship or Bible Study group should make an impact outside our immediate circle. But our solutions are very outward focus such as doing more activities rather than looking inward to our teachings about the gospel. “The root cause of our lack of engagement in God’s mission is not a missions problem but a gospel problem,” highlight the author. “We demonstrate by our inaction that we no longer marvel at grace. We are unaffected by the beauty of what God has done for us in Christ.” We must be Gospel-Centered.

There are lots of insights, challenging statements, thoughtful advice, and reality-check questions that Trevin shared in this book. Some still ring in my mind, “It’s not WHAT’s missing but WHO’s missing”; “Be careful that when you point people to Jesus, you’re not simply demonstrating the cleverness of your own interpretation”; “If all we draw from Bible study are proverb-like teachings for daily living, then we are approaching the Scriptures as if we’re at the center”; and more. Let me end with three questions that Trevin asks and explores in this book - and for teachers to ask themselves - in order to teach a Gospel-Centered message: 1) How does this topic/passage fit into THE BIG STORY of Scripture?; 2) What is DISTINCTLY CHRISTIAN about the way I am addressing the topic/passage?; and 3) How does this truth equip God’s church to live on MISSION? Good questions!

#ServeToLead #LeadersAreReaders #GospelCenteredTeaching #ChristInAllTheScripture #MissionAndEvangelism #LetsMakeReadingCoolAgain

To read my other book reviews/summaries, CLICK HERE

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Ezekiel saw Dried-Up Bones comes to Life (Ezekiel 3:1-6)

“The hand of the LORD was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones… He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘Sovereign LORD, you alone know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD’”
(Ezekiel 37:1, 3-6, NIV).

This is one of the creepiest stories in the Bible (according to my imagination when I read it). The prophet Ezekiel found himself in a valley of dry bones. It was a vision, of course, but the effect is still chilling. It’s a picture of just how far gone the people of Israel were. They weren’t spiritually slow or sick or sleepy – they were spiritually dead! Without God, it’s true of all of us.

But the dead can live.

Ezekiel preached to the bones and there “was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.” Then he “looked, and tendons and flesh appeared to them and skin covered them, but there was not breath in them.” So God asked him to preach again. Then breath entered them “they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army” (37:7-10). They were once only dried-up bones but now they became living beings.

The dead can live.

It happens all the time. Someone speaks the Truth, and a spirit as dead as a pile of dried-up bones comes to life. Life out of death. Beauty out of ashes. Abundance out of emptiness. That’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ! And it has the power to transform every aspect of our lives. Amen.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God the Good Shepherd (Bad News for Corrupt Religious Leaders) Ezekiel 34:11-16

“For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather then from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land… I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice”

(Ezekiel 34:11-13, 15-16, NIV).

It’s always hurtful when religious leaders let us down. It happens all the time – it’s nothing new. The Bible is full of religious leaders who didn’t take care of their flocks (the people), from Eli and his sons to the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. Above, the prophet Ezekiel offered up a special message to religious pretenders – and to the people who have been hurt by them.

Israel’s shepherd had failed them. The priests had not only didn’t kept them from troubles, they had spurred them toward it. Some corrupted their worship with idolatry. Others served only for money, and looked for opportunities to cheat the people.

Only in the text quoted above, God already said “I will” ten times. There are more. God promised to destroy “the fat and the strong” (34:16, NKJV) – to feed them with justice. But the other side of that promise was a promise to the sheep who had been left to fend for themselves. God promised to be the Good Shepherd: He would seek out those who had been scattered for want of a shepherd’s care.

Ultimately, God is our Shepherd, not our human leaders. Our hope is that our leaders will serve us well, but whether they do or they don’t, God is our Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. Remember what the Lord Jesus said when He declared: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:11, 14-15). He is indeed the Good Shepherd. Amen!

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Ezekiel prophesies that God will Give New Hearts for Old (Ezekiel 11:16-20)

“This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Although I sent them far away among the nations and scattered them among the countries, yet for a little while I have been a sanctuary for them in the counties where they have gone… I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again. They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God”
(Ezekiel 11:16-20, NIV).

The people of Israel had a long history of rejecting the Lord. God sent judges and prophets to warn them and foreign kings to punish them. And they reformed… for a while. When the threat was gone, Israel always fell back into their old patterns of sin.

Now in exile, the people finally understood what they had done. But could they ever get back again? Could they reform themselves enough that God would have them again?

The answer, of course, was no. Sinful people cannot improve or clean themselves up well enough to be received by God. But as God revealed thru the prophet Ezekiel, it doesn’t start with us. Even when His people were under punishment, God was “a sanctuary for them.” He will gathered up the scattered and brought them home again. Most important, He will changed them from the inside. He will gave them undivided hearts of flesh to replace their cold, dead hearts of stone. God, do this to us.

We can’t reform ourselves either. We don’t have to. God gives us new hearts in Christ, calls us His children, and brings us home. God, do this to me. Amen.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Ezekiel saw Visions of God during the Exiles (Ezekiel 1:1-4)

“In my thirtieth year, in the fourth month of the fifth day, while I was among the exiles by the Kebar River, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. On the fifth of the month – it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin – the word of the LORD came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the LORD was on him. I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north – an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light”
(Ezekiel 1:1-4, NIV).

The prophet Ezekiel was among the first of the exiles, carried off to Babylon more than ten years before the final siege and fall of Jerusalem. He had been taken away with the King Jehoiachin, the royal family, and the leading men of the land. They were alive and maintained some status. But they were captives in a foreign land (*thank you Bible handbook).

I imagined, what a joy and relief it must have been to Ezekiel to see visions from God. As a priest, he would have been spiritually sensitive to the reasons the Jews had been exiled. He would have understood that their punishment was a direct result of God’s anger (after many warnings) with them. As far as Ezekiel knew, God might never talk to them again. But then came God’s visions to him. God appeared in awesome power, with a windstorm, a flashing lightning and brilliant light.

We all go through spiritual valleys and dark places, sometimes because of our sins, sometimes for reasons we do not understand. Sometimes because we walk away from God. But He is there, even when we don’t see Him. And every now and then – by God’s grace – He gives us a little glimpse of Himself. At that time, listen to Him.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Abram Let God Makes the Decision (Genesis 13:5-11)

“Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. And quarreling arose between Abram’s herders and Lot’s… So Abram said to Lot, ‘Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives. Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.’ Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt… So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east”
(Genesis 13:5-11, NIV).

When there was a conflict between Abram’s servants and Lot’s, Abram extended a graciousness that was similar to the grace he had received from God. The two households (uncle and nephew) would have to go their separate ways. As the elder relative, Abram had every right to dictate to his nephew the terms of the separation. But he didn’t. He let Lot choose which land to take. Wow!

Why was Abram willing to leave that most important decision to another? Perhaps he understood that neither he nor Lot was making the decision. God was at work, and God was the One who would be giving Abram the land he wanted Abram to have.

As it turned out, Lot’s choice to settle in the “well-watered” plains of the Jordan didn’t make him a great patriarch. Life among the wicked cities of the plains – including Sodom and Gomorrah – wrecked Lot’s family (read Genesis chapter 18 and 19). God rewarded Abram’s act of faith, on the other hand, with a renewal of His promise: “All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever” (Genesis 13:15). That land, by the way, included the Jordan Valley, which Abram had just given to Lot!

I like what Ray Stedman writes, “Everyone dwells in a world exactly like that of Abram and Lot. A world in which material values constantly clamor for us to make a choice. We have only so much time to invest, so much life to spend, and we are pressured to try to grab the best for ourselves while we can. We can say with Lot, ‘I want what the world can offer me now, I want the cities of the plain.’ Or we may wait with Abram, content with our tent and altar, enjoying the blessings of the land by faith now, and waiting for God's fulfillment of all His promises in that wonderful age yet to come. The Christian who is content to let God make his choices finds it easy to fulfill the New Testament word: ‘Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Amen.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Abram had a Choice: Faith or Self-Sufficiency (Genesis 12:10-16)

“Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, ‘I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.’ When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels”
(Genesis 12:10-16, NIV).

The journey God called Abram to undertake wasn’t safe. Abram had to pass through the lands of many unfriendly kings. As Abram’s danger grew, his fear grew – especially in the land of Egypt. Pharaoh was the sort of king who took whatever he wanted. Abram was afraid Pharaoh would want his wife, Sarai, and kill her husband to have her. Abram would rather lose his wife than to protect her (Abram was faith-less here; Sarai was very obedience).

Abram had a choice: he could renew his trust in the God who promised to see him through; or he could attempt to solve the problem in his own strength and wisdom. He chose the latter. It was a perfectly understandable reaction; when things feel out of control, our first instinct is to attempt to take control. But in relying on his own shrewdness, Abram made the situation grow worst. He forsook his wife, ‘prostituting’ her to save his own skin.

When we trust in our own shrewdness, we draw a very strict limit around the solutions that are available to us. In my own experiences, many of those solutions are worse than the original problem, simply because I trust myself more than I trust God’s guidance and promises. When we rely on God, we open ourselves to a whole universe of solutions. Now, practically today, how to know God’s will in our lives? How to make God-centred decisions? For Abram, he can just ask God, but he didn’t. For us today, we have the Holy Spirit and the Word of God available and accessible to us. Get serious with the Word. To know God’s will is to have the mind of Christ; to have the mind of Christ is to know God’s Word: God’s will is God’s Word. It is through God’s Word that we can have faith in the God of the Word.

Every day we have a choice: faith or self-sufficiency.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God's Master Plan: To Gather People of Every Tribe and Nation (Genesis 11:4,6-9)

“[Men] said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth’… The LORD said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. This is why it was called Babel – because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth”

(Genesis 11:4, 6-9, NIV).

God’s first command to humanity was: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). In other words, spread out across the earth! When people spread out, after few decades, they will speak different languages and creating different cultures (Yes, I watched National Geography on human languages and cultures). Without human intervention, that seems to have been God’s plan all along – to have not “one language and common speech” (11:1) forever but a multi tribes and nations, each praising God in its own way. The Bible has much to say about “every tribe and nation” coming to God.

But in the generations after the Flood, the people had other plans. They didn’t want to fill the earth and subdue it. They wanted to stay right where they were and become great – “make a name for ourselves” – which can be mean as wanted to be like gods. So they began building the great city and the tower that would reach to the heavens – challenging God’s authority and God’s lordship over the people and culture.

God had other plan for them. He confused their language and scattered them from there over all the earth. Certainly, it was a punishment. But it was also a mercy, for it forced the people out of their delusion of self-sufficiency and self-reliance into something richer and more adventurous. It is amidst of our diversities that God want us to unite under one Christ. In this way, God is more glorified when “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9) worshiping God. Beautiful! This is God’s plan. Amen.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God’s Anger is Always Answered by His Grace and Mercy (Genesis 9:12-16)

“[God] said. ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth’”

(Genesis 9:12-16, NIV).

In the Old Testament (no less than the New Testament), God’s anger is always answered by His grace. The global destruction of the Flood was followed immediately by the promise of hope and mercy. “Never again,” God promised, would He send the kind of flood that Noah and his family had just lived through. And the sign of that promise was a bow in the sky – a rainbow.

FES staffs like to see rainbow. Rainbow is like a giant bow in the sky. It is worth noticing that the bow is aimed to shoot its arrows up toward heaven, not down toward earth. The bow is not against humankind that say: “Behave yourselves or the arrow of God’s wrath are going to shoot at you again.” No, this bow is positioned to shoot at the heart of God. It is as if God is saying: “I promise, cross My heart.” In this covenant, God puts Himself on the hook.

Most of the covenants in the Bible are two-sided, in which God’s people agree to hold up their end of the bargain. But this covenant – between God and the earth – is all about God. God’s anger is always answered by His grace and mercy.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God's Wrath Poured Out on Those Who Want to Have It Their Way (Genesis 6:11-18)

“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood… I am going to bring floodwater on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark – you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you’”

(Genesis 6:11-14; 17-18, NIV).

I observed that we tend to treat Noah’s flood as a children’s story. The ark floats steadily atop the rising waters, a smiling giraffe poking its head through the window, and Noah smiled as if everything was fun to watch. But the story of the Flood is a story of God’s wrath.

God’s wrath is not an easy or pleasant thing to contemplate. But it expresses itself throughout the Bible in the Old Testament as well as the New. God’s wrath is another aspect of God’s love. To use the lesser example: If you love anyone deeply, you already know how your anger burns against anything that would harm that person. God’s wrath – His righteous-anger (not like ours’) – aims for that which seeks to destroy the people He loves. Sin destroys lives, relationships, and happiness. The anger of God is like the anger of surgeon who cut away cancers rather than seek to harm their victims.

God pours out His wrath by finally giving people what they want. The people of Noah’s time wanted to live without God. So God removed His loving hand from their lives and floodwaters poured out. In the end, the people got exactly what they wanted – and it was the end of them.

What’s hope for us today? Jesus Christ, the Son of God. “[God] demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (Romans 5:8-9). Don’t have it your way; wants God’s way - enter the ark of God. 

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God's Grace in Human's Dark Hearts (Genesis 4:3-8)

“In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. And Abel also brought an offering – fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked at favour on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.’ Now Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let’s go out to the field.’ While they were in the field, Cain attached his brother Abel and killed him”

(Genesis 4:3-8, NIV).

The brokenness and the consequences of post-Fall sinful-world reached a new level in the relationship between Cain and Abel, the first brothers. They both brought their offerings to God. Abel, a shepherd, brought the best of animal; Cain brought fruits and vegetables.

God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and rejected Cain’s. Cain was furious – whether angry at God or at Abel or both, the Bible doesn’t say specifically. Nor does the Bible spell out directly why God rejected Cain’s sacrifice, but it seems likely that it was the state of Cain’s heart – and not the technicalities of produce offerings verses animal sacrifice – that stood between Cain and God. “If you do what is right,” God admonished Cain, “will you not be accepted?” God followed the question with a stern warning: “But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Even as He look into Cain’s dark heart, God gave the first murderer a choice. But Cain chose to be a slave rather than master of his sin. His external anger was a manifestation of a deeper sin inside. Each of us has the same choice: what do we do with it is up to us. Remember, now we have Christ and His Spirit. We can overcome sins by His power and grace. In Christ, “You must [can] rule over it.” God is sovereign and we have choices.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God Wants Us to Work, Work Hard (Genesis 3:16-19)

“To the woman [God] said, ‘I will make your pain in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’ To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return’”

(Genesis 3:16-19, NIV).

Before Adam and Eve sinned, the earth offered up its good things willingly. It even watered itself (2:6). I imagined. Everything changed, however, after that first sin. Now cursed, the ground produces “thorns and thistles” more easily than fruits and vegetables. Since the Fall, work has been a struggle – contrast to work before the Fall.

Work is not the result of the Fall. It is sacred. Even before they had sinned, Adam and Eve had the job of taking care of the Garden (see 2:15). From our post-Fall perspective, it’s hard to imagine what such work might have: no thorns and no thistles. But whatever that post-Fall work might be, we can – I can – be confident that it was a work of cooperation with the earth, free from the frustration of the work we experience where the weeds always grow back, no matter how many times we pull them (ask my mother).

Because of sin, everything is harder than it has to be. Have you ever wonder about that Christians? Work is harder. Childbirth is harder. Relationships are harder. And yet this is still our Father’s world, and He still calls us to push through the hardships to gain such rewards as this world yields. God’s grace, yes; hard works, of course.   

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God's Perspective is the Best and God's Intention is Good (Genesis 3:1-6)

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’’ ‘You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it”

(Genesis 3:1-6, NIV).

The serpent promised Eve new “eyes” to see what God sees. Adam and Eve got a new perspective, of course, but it wasn’t God’s perspective. The serpent taught them to doubt God’s goodness. The serpent accused God as having hidden agendas when He commands them the straightforward: “You must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17). God desires for them to joyfully obey Him – to choose life. But the serpent wants them to find misery when God had intended only good for them.

No longer pure in hearts, Adam and Eve hid from God. They believed that the shame they were experiencing must reflect God’s true view of them. The serpent, after all, had told them that eating the forbidden fruit would open their eyes. Lies! The truth is, Adam and Eve already had a godlike view of the world they inhabited. The serpent – the Devil – took away the very thing he promised to give.

Since that day in the Garden, our perspective has been tainted. We find it very hard to believe what may be the simplest, most fundamental truth of all: God loves us, and He wants what is best for us. It is forever be true.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God made Us for Relationship: Not for Self-Sufficiency (Genesis 2:18-23)

“The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’ Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky… But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man’”

(Genesis 2:18-23, NIV).

Throughout the Creation story, a phrase repeated over and over again: “God saw that it was good.” The day was good. The night was good. The seas were good. The dry land was good. The trees, the plants, the mountains, the rivers, the birds, the animals, Adam – God saw all of it and saw that it was good.

So it is a surprised for me when I read God declares that something is not good. “It is not good for the man to be alone,” God says. He was not pleased to see Adam’s loneliness so He created a companion – a helper – for the man out of his very bone and flesh.

“At last!” Adam said (Genesis 2:23, NLT). That little exclamation is telling. The world was freshly made. This was before the Fall, remember. Adam was living in the beautiful Garden. He had the full presence of God. And yet in the absence of another human being with whom to share it all, Adam couldn’t truly enjoy it all. And then, God created another human being like Adam. Thus, Adam exclaimed: “At last!” No more loneliness.

We were made for relationship, not for self-sufficiency.

You’re not alone. You shouldn’t be alone – God wants us to be in fellowship.

It is not good for any of us to be alone.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God Created Us in His Own Image: No Ordinary People (Genesis 1:26-28; 31)

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good!”
(Genesis 1:26-27; 31, NIV).

“To err is human,” according to the old saying. Maybe so. But there’s lot more to being human than making mistakes and errors. We have all been made in the image of God. That urge to create, to bring order out of chaos, to make our mark on the world; the anger we feel in the face of the injustice, the pleasure we feel in the face of beauty, the hope we feel for a better future – all of that is the image of God finding expression in us, human beings.

It is true that the image of God we expressed is distorted, even fractured. But there it is nevertheless, glimmering in this interaction, shining in that choice, bursting forth in our longings. God’s image in us forever calls us back to the One who is its original.

That realization changes the way we look at ourselves. It also changes the way we look at others. “There are no ordinary people,” C.S. Lewis wrote. “You have never met a mere mortal.” Once you start seeing the image of God in yourself and others, the world never looks the same again.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

God and the Word was in the Beginning (Genesis 1:1-5)

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night’”

(Genesis 1:1-5, NIV).

There was only darkness, chaos, and emptiness. There was only nothing. And then there was everything, spoken into existence by the voice of God: “Let there be…” With those words, light shone out of the darkness, order arose out of chaos, and the emptiness was filled with good things, beautiful things – things that gave God pleasure and put a smile upon His face.

It was good, God said. It wouldn’t be long before the perfection of the natural order would be wrecked, but this first chapter of the Book of Genesis reminds us of something we all feel in our hearts already: the way things are is not the way things were supposed to be. The Creation story tells us that everything in this universe – every single things – is of supernatural origin. Every event is an echo, however distorted, of God’s voice speaking, “Let there be…”

It was the Word that set things in motion, and that Word still speaks. For the Word is Christ. He was with God before the beginning; indeed, he was God, shining in the darkness. The Word still speaks. The Light still shines: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:1-5, NIV).

Regardless of what the scientists, philosophers, historians and astronomers told us;

First, in the beginning… God! Amen.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.