Genesis 1-8

(to listen to a podcast of this sermon, please visit www.pacificviewbaptist.com and click on "sermons" from the menu on the left.)

Intro…The beginning of our journey through the story of the Bible is like the beginning of an action-packed movie.
• If you miss the opening minutes of a movie with its fast-paced scenes, you will not understand the rest of the story.
• It is the same with the Bible’s grand Story. The Story opens with “intense action sequences”.
• If the Bible were a movie…
• The creation of the world, animals, humans, The Fall, Cain and Able, the first murder, Noah, the flood…talk about some action!
• These opening chapters of the Bible introduce us to God who is the main character of the Grand Story.

Big Picture: Our universe was created by a personal, loving God who allowed The Fall but had a plan for our salvation from the start.

Text: Genesis 1:1

The Bible Story opens with the account of creation.
• The creation is not an impersonal accident, but the creative purpose of a personal God.
• Big Bang vs. Personal creation.
• If we came from nothing and have no greater purpose for being on this planet, then life can be shallow and meaningless.

Creation is presented poetically and artistically.
• Genesis 1:3 Day 1—Light and Dark
• Genesis 1:6 Day 2—Sky and Water
• Genesis 1:9-13 Day 3—Land and Vegetation
• Genesis 1: 14-19 Day 4—Sun and Moon/stars
• Genesis 1:20-23 Day 5—Birds and Sea creatures
• Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6—Animals and human beings

The story of creation concludes with God’s core passion: human beings.
• God’s passion is people made in His image.
• Genesis 1:26-27…Adam and Eve

• All the beauties of creation are secondary to you. This truth is
a self-esteem builder.
• God’s supreme passion is to be with us at all costs.
• We are God’s highest creation…believe it or not…..I love animals and all…
• We have an enormous responsibility not only to take care of the planet, but animals and each other!

The Bible Story continues with the story of the Fall (Adam and Eve’s rebellion) in Genesis 3.
• Adam and Eve were created with the freedom and power to choose. God will never force his love on anyone. We have to make that choice.
• Next we have the tale of two trees.
• The “tree of life” and the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” present a choice: Genesis 2: 9 and 15-17
• Adam and Eve rebelled against God and ate from the forbidden “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and God’s vision to be with people was ruined.
• The rest of the Bible is about God’s pursuit to get us back.

The Bible reports the story of sin’s damage to the human race.
• Because Adam and Eve chose a different vision than God’s vision, sin became part of their spiritual DNA and they passed that on to everyone else.
• Instead of getting all freaked out over that…know that this was all part of God’s plan and that he had a remedy to our sin problem…Jesus!

Genesis 3 – 9 show us the consequences of sin.
• Adam and Eve’s relationship with God was strained, pain in childbirth, work the soil, Cain and Able, jealousy, the first murder, punishment, Cain forced to become a fugitive and wonder the earth.


• There was Increased corruption on the earth from Adam to Noah, (about 1600 yrs. and roughly 10 million people) to the point where God’s chooses Noah to build the ark and God does a “do over” of the human race after the judgment of flood waters.
• God regretted that he had made humans…Gen. 6:6
• The flood erased the wicked human race, but did not erase the sin nature from Noah and his family: Genesis 9: 20-23.

The Bible offers a salvation clue even in the midst of the opening story.
• After Adam and Eve sinned and became aware of their nakedness, they made fig leaf clothing to cover their nakedness.
• God took away the fig leaves and covered Adam and Eve with the skins of animals.
• The Clue: For God to restore the vision that human beings are His supreme passion will require the shedding of blood.

Application:
From the creation story we discover the value of all human beings.

God wants to be with you. Think about that. You. God wants to personally be with you.

At great cost to God, God has done everything possible to get you back.

You are valuable. True, lasting self-esteem begins by believing what God says about you.

How we got our Bible

(to listen to a podcast of this sermon, please visit www.pacificviewbaptist.com and click on "sermons" from the menu on the left.)



Intro to “The Story” Heb. 4:12
Intro..
• If you think Genesis is just a band from the ‘80’s . . .
• If you think it was Dr. Dolittle who took two of each animal into a big boat . .
• If you think an epistle is a woman married to an apostle . . .. . . you may need to know more of The Story.

Big Pic: The Bible may seem to be made up of a lot of different, seemingly unrelated stories. But it really is one big, exciting story of God’s love for mankind and His plan for our salvation.

Text: Hebrews 4:12

The Bible can be intimidating… odd names like Jehoshaphat and Nebuchadnezzar. Places you probably never heard of, like Sinai and Samaria.
• The first words found in Genesis 1:1 read: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
• Then, if you turn all the way to the back of the book, Revelation 21:1, you find, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away . . .”
• In the beginning God is creating the heavens and the earth. At the end he is creating a new heaven and a new earth.
• So the big question is this: “What happened between the beginning and the end of the Bible?”
• Through this series, over the next 31 weeks, we will answer that question and uncover the one seamless story of God.

Good things to know about the Bible:
• The Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years by 40 different people (kings, shepherds, scientists, attorneys, an army general, fishermen, priests, and a physician) inspired by God.
• The 66 books of the Bible were written: On three continents, in three languages, on the most controversial subjects, by people who, in most cases, had never met, by authors whose education and background varied greatly.
• Some people think it was merely created by a select few in order to consolidate, gain or maintain power and prestige.
• However, when you consider the adversity faced by the Hebrew people and, later, the persecution suffered by Christians, that couldn’t be true.
• Rather than gaining power or prestige, the early Christians were severely oppressed, while many others were killed – martyred for believing the message of the gospel.

Three key areas regarding the Bible: inspiration, canonization, transmission.

Inspiration
• Is it possible to have an accurately transmitted record that is still just a human invention?
• That's where inspiration comes in. The word "inspire" comes from the Latin, meaning to breathe on or into. Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is God-breathed."
• Inspiration means that human writers were inspired by God and moved by the Holy Spirit to record accurately what God wanted them to preserve.
• It does not mean God took control of people where the writer is in a trance-like state.
• It also doesn't mean the writers of the Bible were simply taking dictation.
• But it does mean that their words were divinely inspired and recorded.
• The Bible was written by real people, living in real places, recording real historical events, and also communicating God's real truths.

Canonization
• How did we get the final 66 books? What was the criteria?
• The word canon originated in reference to a measuring reed or standard by which something is measured. In reference to the Bible a canon has to do with genuinely inspired writings.
• Decisions about which books were "in" and which books were "out" in relation to today's Bible were not made by a single group of people at a single point of history.

• This especially relates to the New Testament, as the Old Testament was already accepted and codified in the books accepted by the Jewish people as divinely inspired. The OT canon was not finalized until a few years before the birth of Christ.
• Following the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ around 33 A.D., the young Christian church found itself struggling for survival and, in the process, writing inspired documents that would later become the New Testament.
• The Church was very methodical in reference to the New Testament canon. Several criteria were necessary in order for a writing to be accepted.
• The document in question had to conform to the rule of faith, "conformity between the document and orthodoxy, that is, Christian truth recognized as normative in the churches."
• The document required some sort of apostilicity, "which as a criterion came to include those who were in immediate contact with the apostles or people with a direct connection to Jesus.
• A document's widespread and continuous acceptance and usage by churches everywhere was taken into consideration.
• In the first and second centuries after Christ, many, many writings and epistles were circulating among the Christians. Some of the churches were using books and letters in their services that were definitely spurious. Gradually the need to have a definite list of the inspired Scriptures became apparent.
• In 367 AD Athanasius first provided the complete listing of the 66 books belonging to the canon.
• He distinguished those from other books that were widely circulated and he noted that those 66 books were the ones, and the only ones, universally accepted.
• The point is that the formation of the canon did not come all at once like a thunderbolt, but was the product of centuries of reflection.
• From God to us, the Bible is true, reliable, and inspired.

Transmission:
• “Transmission” relates to how the contents of the Bible were transmitted through history.
• Obviously, if the record of transmission is poor, then the record we have is highly suspect.
• But if the record of transmission is rich, having a variety of manuscript copies for instance, then we can trust the reliability of the record.
• Transmission of the documents through history is astounding.
• There are over 5,300 manuscripts or parts of manuscripts we can examine today. If you count all the early copies of translations of the New Testament, the number skyrockets to over 24,000. This is about 43 times as much as the second most prevalent writing, The Iliad, with only 643.
• Not only do we have thousands of manuscript copies, as well as thousands more fragments or portions of the New Testament, but in comparing the New Testament copies we have today in various languages with those available centuries ago we can see the message remains intact.
• In ancient times, there were diligent Jewish scribes who spent their entire careers copying material. These individuals were very meticulous in regard to providing an exact duplicate of the original document.
• One group of scribes, known as the Masoretes, set its standards much higher than all the other scribes. The Masoretes counted every single letter, word, and verse of the Old Testament in order to preserve its accuracy.
• In 1948, an Arab boy was looking for a lost goat. As most children would, this young boy entertained himself by throwing rocks as he walked. He threw one of those rocks into a small cave, and heard the sound of pottery breaking. Scampering up the hill and into the cave, the boy found some leather scrolls with ancient writing on them.
• Amazingly, he had stumbled across what is known today as the Dead Sea scrolls. Inside the cave were hundreds of scrolls, most likely written by a group of people known as the Essences.
• Throughout history, errors or changes are slight, known as variants, and do not change any central belief of Christianity. When it comes to transmission and translation, then, we can indeed trust the documents.



Conclusion:
Throughout all this, the 66 books maintain harmony with each other.
• Often new concepts on a subject are expressed, but these concepts do not undermine what other Bible writers say on the same subject.
• Ask people who have viewed an identical event to each give a report of what happened. They will differ widely and will virtually always contradict each other in some way.
• The four Gospels do sometimes differ in the way they report the same event, but they complement each other.
• Yet the Bible, penned by 40 writers over a 1,500-year period, reads as if written by one great mind. And, indeed, it was:
• For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:21
• The Holy Ghost "moved" them all. He is the real Bible Author.

Think about the last time you had a good book and couldn’t wait to read it.
My hope is that we will approach the Bible that way and get a copy of “The Story.”