9/5/21 Genesis1:26-27, Genesis 3:1-6, 1 Cor. 15:3-8 “Are You Merely Existing??”

03 Sep 9/5/21 Genesis1:26-27, Genesis 3:1-6, 1 Cor. 15:3-8 “Are You Merely Existing??”

9/5/21   Genesis1:26-27, Genesis 3:1-6, 1 Cor. 15:3-8         “Are You Merely Existing??”

We all have our routines that we use to get through life and I am no different in that respect.  I have a routine that I usually use to introduce the Scripture each week.  Well, I’m going to do something a little different today.  Usually, I read the Scripture and then talk about it.  Today, I am going to read our three readings during the text of the sermon.  Hopefully this will work as we try to determine just why God should be so important in our lives.

I would like to begin with a little scenario from David Elvery.  Suppose you are driving along in your car going down a steep hill.  This is a little hard to imagine in this area so you might have to imagine that you are visiting someone in San Francisco or Duluth.  Anyway, you are driving along and your brakes go out.  You have no way of stopping as you gather up speed and go faster and faster.  This would be one of those situations where we learn just how fast our brain works as we scan the area and make a decision in a split second.

You see on the right side of the street is parked a Mercedes auto.  It is worth $150,000.  On the left side of the street is a huge semi carrying thousands of dollars of groceries for needy people.  On both sides of the street beyond these vehicles are very expensive sections of real estate.  Right in the middle of the street is an old woman in a tattered coat pushing a shopping cart that probably has all of her earthly belongings in it.  As a matter of fact, she is probably one of the most pathetic street people that you have ever seen.  One side of her face droops.  She drags on leg.  Her clothes are at best, rags.

Now remember, you are going very fast by this time.  Which object would you elect to hit and you have to hit something?  Would it be the Mercedes, the big truck, the expensive real estate or the old woman?  Now I’m not really looking for an answer here because I know that the object that you wouldn’t hit would be the old woman.  Why is it that we would wipe out anything else but we would leave this street person?  Maybe it is because this woman is such an attraction to all people around her.  But from the description, I doubt that.  Maybe it is because she contributes a lot to society and those around her.  Once again, I don’t think so.

The reason why we wouldn’t hit this bag lady lies in our first reading from Genesis 1:26-27.  Read.  We wouldn’t hit the lady because we were made in God’s image.  In the first chapter of Genesis, it tells us how God made everything.  He made the sky, the stars, the earth, the trees, the animals and finally He made us in His own image.  When we, as human beings, began not to believe that God did all of this for us, then we began to drift into evil.  God doesn’t necessarily bless those who don’t believe in Him or those who kind of believe in Him or those who pick and choose what they believe.  God blesses those who believe in Him 100%.

However, God is at work in us whether we believe in Him or not because He made us.  He made all of us including this dear sweet bag lady.  She would be the last thing we would hit in this little scenario because she is one of us.  She is part of God as we all are, whether we like it or not.  We are innately wired by God not to hurt each other.  This is why people are so stressed when they come back from combat.  We weren’t made to kill each other.  In the same way, if we changed this woman to a dog crossing the street, I would guess that we would get similar results.  We would hit something else and not something living.  We were made in the image of God and we will try not to harm each other or other living things because when we do, we are harming ourselves and God.

Before we move on here, I want you to think about this for a moment.  You were made in God’s image.  That is how much He loves you.  If you were made in God’s image, then He wants you to be just like Him.  He wants you to get rid of the sin in your life and follow Him.  He wants to give you all that He has, everything, so you can be just like Him.  I hope that when you think about this you get all warm with goose bumps.  Usually, goose bumps in church are a sign that the Holy Spirit is with you.

So, what happened to all of this perfection that we find in the Garden of Eden?  Let me read the first six verses of Genesis 3.  Read.  What happened was that sin entered the world through the serpent.  I really get a hoot out of some scholars who insist that this wasn’t the devil.  I have lived a lot of life in my 70 years and I have found out one thing.  If an animal looks like a skunk, acts like a skunk and smells like a skunk, then it is almost 100% sure that it is a skunk.  I don’t think that there is any doubt that this was the devil.  So, this is how sin entered the world.

Then the question becomes, why did God have sin enter the world this way or any other way?  I really don’t think that he did allow this, not directly anyway.  First of all, I think that we have to remember that God is good.  He can only do good and He cannot do bad.  He loves us beyond what we can ever know.  One of the problems we have in our modern society is that we believe that what we perceive to be good or bad are the same things that God sees as good or bad.  Generally speaking, this may be true but because we live in a society that doesn’t know God, our values get turned upside down by the devil.  We don’t read our Bibles; we don’t gather as Christians and pray; and we don’t go to church.  We think that we know more about good and evil than God does.

I especially see this in times of death.  Sometimes God brings people home because He knows what lies ahead.  He knows of all the suffering the person will go through.  We don’t want to face this because in our non-Christian world, we think of death as the end.  Well, it’s not the end.  It is just the beginning.  When we get done in this world, we will be in the most joyous place ever.  We will never be in need again.  We will be happy all the time.  Death is the great beginning.  Also, most deaths are not caused by God but by someone else.  God did not give us all these diseases.  He did not give us car accidents.  And if you read your Bibles, you will find that when God brought death upon his people, there was a reason, a very good reason.  However, it is usually the other side that causes death.

I get a little off track once in a while.  I don’t think that God introduced evil into the Garden of Eden.  What I think happened was that God loves everyone so much that He even gave the angels free will.  Of course, all of this happened long before we came upon the scene.  The angels got some sort of free will and almost all of them were smart enough to choose the right way of life.  They were smart enough to choose God.  Only Satan rebelled.  We see him in the garden as a serpent.  We see him in various forms throughout the Bible.  We see him all about us in today’s world.

This shouldn’t really be too big a stretch to believe when we think of how much God loves us.  He gave us free will.  This doesn’t mean what many people think that it means.  It doesn’t mean that you can do whatever you want.  It means that you are free to choose God or to reject God.  That is free will.  Your whole life revolves around this one decision.  If you have never chosen God, then your life is inconsistent.  It is not what you want it to be.  In many cases, it is a mess.  You are always tired.  Things never go right for you.  Your family life is a shambles.  You drink too much, smoke too much or take drugs of some kind.  You just wish that things would go smoother in your life.  Well, they can.  All you have to do is choose God, choose God and things will change for the better instantly.  The problems may persist but you are better.

But I’m getting ahead of myself a little here.  So far, we have found that we were made in the perfect image of God.  Then sin entered the world and we have lived as fallen people ever since.  We were evicted from the Garden and we had to make our way in a world that was full of bad things.  If we read in the Old Testament, it tells us of all the famous and not so famous people who struggled against sin and some won and some lost.  I am really condensing this now.  Then God in His infinite wisdom decided to send His Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us, teach us and finally he died for our sins.  We find a sort of summary of this in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.  Read.

I could have read just about any place in the New Testament to find things about Jesus and what He taught.  But I chose this passage because it sums up a lot of things.  It shows that the death and resurrection of Jesus were foretold in the Old Testament.  It shows us that when these things happened, there were many witnesses, more than 500 on one occasion.  I challenge you to go to any other religion in the world and find witnesses like we have for Jesus Christ.  What I am trying to say here is that these things really did happen.  Jesus fed 5000 people with next to nothing.  He walked on water and He healed many people.  There were witnesses.

All of the things that we read about in the Bible actually happened unless they are some sort of figure of speech.  The reason that this is all so important to know and understand is that it gives us hope.  It is easy to see that we started in the Garden and we didn’t need hope because everything was perfect.  But then sin entered and today the world is run by sin.  It is everywhere we look and it is nasty.  Therefore, we need someone who is rock solid where we can turn so that we can get hope for our future.  And that someone is Jesus Christ.

Now the obvious question is ‘Why do we need hope?’  After all we have these wonderful lives in this world.  We have obscene entertainment at our finger tips on TV or our computers.  We have more food than we can ever eat.  We can wear whatever we want.  We all have a wonderful retirement waiting for us or we might even be there.  About all I can say about these things is that you will not be satisfied with any of it, ever!  The more worldly things you have, the more you want.  I read an article a few years ago where Tom Brady, the then quarterback of the New England Patriots, asked this question after he had won his 3^rd Super Bowl.  “What’s next?”  He wasn’t satisfied with being world champion 3 times.

None of us will ever be satisfied with the things of this world.  All things of this world are fleeting and have no permanence.  We keep finding out about this as we keep reaching goals and finding that they are not enough.  We have false hope that the next thing will satisfy us.  Well, I have some news for you.  The only goal that will ever satisfy you is in Jesus Christ.

God gave us Jesus so that you could have a personal relationship with Him.  Jesus is God and creator of everything.  And he also wants to be an intimate part of your life.  You do not have a god who is far away and impersonal like so many other religions.  You do not have a god who requires you to work harder and harder at pleasing him.  Our God is the God of love and not a condemning god.  He leaves that all up to us.  If you want to reject Him that is your choice and so are the consequences.  But if you want to accept Him, then all you have to do is confess your sins to Him and not someone else.  Confess to Him that you are a sinner just like everyone else in the world is a sinner.  Then ask Jesus to live in your heart.  Then you can begin a life of hope, hope in Jesus Christ.  This will be the greatest life that you can have.

I know how sometimes things look dark and life seems almost hopeless.  Maybe your spouse has left you and you don’t know where to turn.  Maybe you have been caught in this miserable economy of ours and you can’t pay the bills.  Maybe someone in your family is very ill.  No matter what the problem is; Jesus wants to help you.  Jesus will help you if you just come to Him and listen.  I have never figured out why He is the last person we come to in times of need.  All He will do is help and help and help and that is a promise.

Today, we have seen how God made the world and He made it perfect along with us.  We saw how sin entered and ruined it all.  Then we have seen how our love of Jesus Christ will give us the hope we need to get through all our problems.  Some of you may think that I’m the pastor and I have to say these things.  But I want you to know or remember that for 40 years I didn’t know Jesus.  Since I have known Him, I have had so many blessings and I cannot believe that I have the honor and privilege of standing in front of you today, telling you about my best friend, Jesus Christ.  I know from 1^st hand experience that life without Christ is merely existing.

I’m sure that this isn’t what you want for yourself or your family.  The love that Jesus has for you is one of my favorite topics of conversation.  You will find out how you are the most important person in the world to Jesus.  And when you know that you are this important to Jesus, then your life will change and it will change for the better.  This is what being a Christian is all about.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.