The Fiery Furnace
Transcript
My name is Matt. I'm one of the pastors with Mill City Church and I'm really excited to share with you our message for today. I got the privilege to open up the Bible Story series and actually get to close it for us this morning. And I think it's been a fun and enjoyable series for us as a church. And the question we've been seeking to answer along the way is, who is the Bible actually about? Is it about us or is it about Jesus?
And along the way we've had to ask other questions like, okay, how do I read the Bible? Am I supposed to learn a moral or am I supposed to learn some facts? Do I insert myself into the story or do I kind of sit off as a third person just viewing what's going on? And as we've walked through this series, what we've been able to see is that the purpose of the Bible is to reveal God to us. It's to tell us about God, specifically through the Revelation of his son, the person and work of Jesus. And that's what we've been looking at.
As we've been walking through this series, we've been trying to answer that question, who is the Bible actually about? And as we've walked through it, another thing that we've been able to see is that because we know the end of the story, it impacts how we read the beginning of it. So since we know what God's ultimately going to do through Jesus, it impacts, changes how we walk through the Old Testament, how we read the Old Testament. It's very similar to the way that you'd watch the movie Titanic. Okay? We know the history of Titanic before the movie in the 90s came out.
We already knew what had happened. And so the whole time you're watching this movie, as you're watching Jack play cards for the tickets to get on the ship, and he's hoofing it. He's hoofing it to try to get on the ship, and he gets on, and you're just like, no, that's not going to end well for you. And he and Rose fall in love. The whole time, you know what's going to happen. You know that the ship is eventually going to strike an iceberg.
It's going to go down. Jack and Rose are going to end up in the water. Well, Jack's going to end up in the water. Rose was on the door that both of them could have fit on. Rose was super selfish. She looks at Jack.
She goes, I'll never let go. I'll never let go. And then she, like, wakes up from her cold stupor and pries his dead hand from hers and lets him sink to the bottom of the ocean. Rose was a liar, guys. But because we know the end of the story, it impacts how we watch the whole movie.
The same thing is true of the Bible. We know the end of the story, so it impacts how we read through the Old Testament. And as we walk through stories like Adam and Eve in the garden, as we looked at Noah's ark, the journey of Joseph, last week David versus Goliath, we've gotten to see how they each give us glimpses into different aspects of the gospel, what God is ultimately going to do through Jesus. We've seen righteousness. We've seen how sin can be taken care of. We've seen grace.
And we've seen victory. And today, as we bring our series to a close, we're going to be looking at one of my favorite stories in the Bible. We're going to be looking at the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. And I'm really excited to share it with you this morning. But before we hop in, I just want to pray that God would use this Old Testament story to reveal himself to us.
So you guys join me. Let's pray together. God, we are asking that you would speak to us this morning. In our own ability, we do not have the capability to look at your word and understand on our own. And so, God, we are asking that by your Holy Spirit, you would speak to us this morning. God, that we would hear from you, that we would understand in a greater way who you are and how we are to live in relationship with you.
In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, our story from today comes from the book of Daniel, chapter 3. So if you've got your Bible, go ahead and grab it. If you don't have one, we've got the blue and white Bibles on the seats. It's going to be page 480. And you're going to want to have it today because we're going to read all of chapter 3.
Scripture is not going to be on the screen. If you're with us this morning and you don't have a Bible, we would love for you to take one of these with you. We have plenty of them. We want everyone to be able to have a Bible. So go ahead and grab one of those and take it with you.
Now, in our series, three out of the five stories that we covered came from the book of Genesis. So we could have called it Genesis plus two more stories, but we went with Bible stories. And last week, we made a pretty big jump from Genesis all the way to 1 Samuel. And I want to take a little bit of time because we're moving even further down the timeline to get from the story of David versus Goliath to the story that we're looking at today. So if you've got those Bible stories handout cards that Raz was talking about at the very beginning, go ahead and grab those.
They're in the seats behind you or directly in front of you. Grab one of those. Take that with you. That's a helpful study resource. Raz is one of our community group leaders. He's a seminary student at CIU.
Just did a wonderful job putting that together so that you could actually see the chronological timeline of the Old Testament because it helps you as you're reading through to know where to actually place the story in the history. So go ahead and grab that. All right. Let's see if I can do this for us. Last week, we looked at David. We looked at David and Goliath.
And David defeats Goliath. And eventually, he's going to become the king of Israel in place of a guy named Saul. And David was a good king. He's known as the quintessential king of Israel. And he had his own flaws. He had his own shortcomings.
But David was a good king that led the people in following the Lord. After David comes his son Solomon. Solomon's known for his wisdom. He wrote several books that we have in the Bible. Solomon also got the opportunity to build a temple for the Lord in Jerusalem where God's presence was said to dwell. So he was very wise.
And he had lots of riches. And he had a lot of wives. And I don't know how wisdom and wives work together. I guess that's where riches came in. I guess he was able to take care of them that way. But after Solomon, that's when things start to go south.
The kingdom splits in two. Splits between one of Solomon's sons and one of the commanders of his army. So we have a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. And as generation after generation passes, the people begin to abandon God. The kings lead them in worshiping foreign idols and making sacrifices to foreign gods. And God in his grace sends prophets like Isaiah, like Micah to come and to warn the people.
To tell them to repent and turn back to God. Or they're going to be conquered by another nation and sent out of their homeland as exiles. That's what the prophets were saying. And while there were some kings along the way that heeded that wisdom, heeded that prophecy, over time they become more and more depraved and move away from the Lord until eventually the northern kingdom is going to be conquered by Assyria. And then after that, all of the known world in that time is going to be conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire. And that's where we find ourselves in the story today is with these exiled Jews in the land of Babylon that survived the destruction and are now living in captivity.
Now, I want to take just a second to paint that picture up for you. Because when it comes to reading the Old Testament, it doesn't seem real to us. It seems tall tale-ish or like it's a fable. This was real. It's not just the Bible that supports this. Historical documents from the time tell us that this actually took place.
This actually happened. So just go there with me for a second. Imagine that you're an Israelite. You're one of God's chosen people in the promised land. And a bigger, badder empire from the east comes in. And they go into your holy city and they destroy the temple where God's presence was said to dwell.
Most of your family and friends, they're killed. And those of you who are left are carried off to a country with a culture you don't understand. A language you cannot speak. And God's that you do not serve. Welcome to Babylon. I swear these exiles are.
They're living in captivity. And the other side of the prophecy did say this. That there would come a time that after these Jews had been exiled from their homeland, there would come a time where they would repent and God would rescue them out. And they would get to return to their homeland. So that kind of gives us a little bit of the background.
And now we can jump into our story a little bit. So now in Daniel, we're going to look at chapter 3. In chapters 1 and 2, what we see is that this, as the exiles are coming into Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar wants to take all the best of the young people, all the elite people, and he wants to bring them into the palace. And here's what it says. This is like his gauge on what he wants coming in. He says, Youths that were without blemish, good-looking, skillful in wisdom, and endowed with knowledge.
So didn't you feel kind of bad that you didn't get to go to the palace? Like, oh no, not only am I not smart, I'm not good-looking either. But the reason that King Nebuchadnezzar wanted these youths was to train them, to teach them culture and language. This was an expansive empire, and he wanted people who knew different areas to be able to rule over them. And eventually what we see is that some of the Jewish exiles actually find favor in King Nebuchadnezzar's eyes. Daniel, who wrote this book, and three of his friends whose story that we're going to look at today, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they rise to power, and they're put over top of different provinces, those three specifically over the province of Babylon.
And while they're in the worst possible scenario for them, while they're in the worst possible situation, we see that God's still with them. God is still with them in this scenario. So Daniel, Daniel chapter 3, verse 1. A lot of setup for us this morning. Go ahead and turn there. Verse 1.
King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold whose height was 60 cubits and its breadth 6 cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. Okay, we don't know a whole lot about Nebuchadnezzar at this point. This is kind of our introduction to him. But what we see is that Nebuchadnezzar has an image set up that's 60 cubits high, 6 cubits wide, and is made of gold.
The most powerful man in the known world at this time is flexing his muscles just a little bit. And we talked last week about what that measurement of a cubit was. It was a rudimentary measurement of fingertip to elbow, and it was about 18 inches. Or if you're me and have T-Rex arms, it's more like 14 inches. But the standard man was about 18 inches, which means that this statue is 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide.
It was made of gold. And this thing was real. There are Babylonian documents from the time that actually talk about this statue. This wasn't just a made-up thing. It was actually real. And those documents nor scripture actually tell us what the image was.
Some people think that it was an image from a dream that Nebuchadnezzar had back in chapter 2. Daniel actually interprets that dream from him. You can read that story. Others think it was an animal, which would have matched up with other religions in that area of the world at the time. But regardless, this image had an intended purpose.
And we get to see a little bit of it in the next verse. Verse 2. Verse 3. Then the satraps, the prefects, and the governors. Okay, at some point, do you feel like Nebuchadnezzar's just giving out titles to all of his friends? I'm pretty sure he made satrap up.
That's not a thing, right? Like he's going around the room. He's like, okay, Frankie and Steve, you guys are going to be counselors. Johnny, you'll be a governor. And Rufus, you'll be a magistrate. What about Carl?
Carl? I didn't forget Carl. See, Carl is going to be a satrap. A what? A satrap. What's that?
Shut it, Carl. You're a satrap. I don't know. There's all these different titles within the provinces. But it continues on.
Continuing on in verse 3. The justices, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces gathered for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. And they stood before the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. So the most powerful man in the known world summons everybody from every part of his empire. And it was huge. This empire would have stretched from the bottom of Egypt to the Persian Gulf.
It was huge. He summoned everybody, even the people with made-up titles. Everybody's coming. And I want you to imagine no expense spared Woodstock style. Because it says he set it up on the plain of Dura. He set this thing up on a level piece of ground so that as many people as possible could get to it, could see this image.
And now they're all standing. They're all standing in the shadow of this image. And it continues on. Verse 4. All right.
Time out. You guys know that I'm a musician. So that any time scripture expressly points out something about singing or about music or about instruments, I'm automatically drawn to it. And so you go back through this list and you're clipping along. Horn. Yep.
Pipe. Yep. Liar. That would have been like a stringed instrument, very similar to a guitar. Trigon. Don't know what that is, but it sounds cool.
Harp. That's an interesting choice. Bagpipe. Bagpipe. In the middle of all these Eastern instruments, who snuck the Scottish guy in? Wes William Wallace.
I'm really sorry. That's a terrible Scottish accent. That was terrible. I apologize. And speaking of terrible, this would have sounded terrible. I'm serious.
If you look, it was a horn and a pipe and a stringed instrument and a harp and a... I guess they were trying to scare them into submission to make them bow down. I don't know what the intended purpose was here. But all these different instruments, and in verse 6, And whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. Therefore, as soon as all the peoples heard the sound of the horn, pipe... Let's just call them the band, the really terrible band.
The band and every kind of music. All the peoples, nations, and languages fell down and worshiped the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. So they assemble all these people, and at the sound of the band, everyone's to bow down, or they're going to get thrown into a fiery furnace. Bow down or die. So all the people, including the Jews who had been exiled from their homeland for doing this same mess, have to bow down at the sound of the music to this inanimate object that's made by human hands.
The herald just said that King Nebuchadnezzar had it set up, which means that the elements would have been melted down and poured out by human hands, cast by human hands, shaped by human hands, lifted into place by human hands, could not move on its own without human hands. Bow down and worship. That's what's facing all the people that are standing beside this image. And it continues on. Verse 8. Therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came forward and maliciously accused the Jews.
Okay, Chaldeans would be similar to southerners. It was a regional designation, so these were people from Babylon. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar, O king, live forever. You, O king, have made a decree. You, O king, have made a decree. Lost my place.
That every man who hears the sound of the terrible band and every kind of music shall fall down and worship the golden image. And whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men, O king, pay no attention to you. They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. Okay, so there is likely some type of jealousy going on here.
Scripture does not tell us that. But these are hometown boys. And they are talking about the Jewish exiles. And this is a slap in the face to the king. Not only are they disobeying him, but these aren't even his people. These are conquered exiles.
These are people that he treated graciously and had them trained and gave them food and shelter and clothing. And now they're not bowing down to the image that he set up. And they're doing it in front of the entire empire. Nuh-uh. Not happening. And Nebuchadnezzar is hot.
Jump back with me. Verse 13. Then Nebuchadnezzar, in furious rage, commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? Now, if you are ready when you hear the sound of the band and every kind of music to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good.
But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning, fiery furnace. And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands? So Nebuchadnezzar brings them in and he's going to give them another chance. But it's an ultimatum. Either you bow down or you're going to die. Bow down or I'm going to throw you into a fiery furnace.
And verse 15, the tail end of verse 15 really gives us a picture of what's going on here. Basically says, if you won't worship my gods, which God do you think is going to save you from the fiery furnace that I'm going to throw you in? And we get to see how they respond. Verse 16. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace.
And he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. And I love that. Don't you love that? That's why it's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. The king says, I'm going to kill you.
And those guys aren't fazed by it. They simply answer the question to which God could save them. And they say, our God, our God can save us. But even if he doesn't, we'd rather die than serve your idol. Don't even bother striking up the band again. You're going to have to kill us.
We won't bow down. You see what these guys are saying here? Don't miss the beauty of what's going on. Here's what they're saying. They're saying, our God can deliver us. He will deliver us.
But if he chooses not to do so, we still trust him. Even if we are to die, he is still in control and has a greater purpose. That in the midst of the worst possible scenario, they have placed their full trust in God. And let me just say this. It's not because these guys had super faith. Nobody's arguing that these guys had incredible faith and courage and trust.
But it's not even that they had faith that everything was going to turn out all right. They have faith in God no matter what the outcome is. They trust him. Him. Period. And that goes so far beyond our understanding of trust and faith.
So often with us, our trust and faith is very circumstantial and can be very conditional. So a lot of times it goes like this. God, I place my faith in you if... Fill in the blank. God, I trust you as long as... Fill in the blank.
We have fill in the blank faith. It's circumstantial. It's conditional. That when things in our lives are going well, when we're up on top, God, I trust you. I have faith in you. And as things take a turn for the worse, as we're like these guys and we're facing death and we're facing suffering, our faith and our trust begin to diminish because we're thinking about our trust.
We're thinking about how much faith we have rather than the trustworthiness and the faithfulness of our God. And that's what we're seeing in the story. These guys look at Nebuchadnezzar and they say, he's completely capable. He's infinitely good and wise. And whatever happens to us, it's inside of his plan and control. We trust him.
Verse 19. Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace.
Now, it looks like Daniel is super fond of lists. Okay? But the Bible doesn't just throw out random facts for no reason. There's a purpose in that. We're going to come back to it. We're going to see it.
Verse 22. Because the king's order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace. Well, that didn't go well. These guys stood up for their God and they still get tossed into the fire. King Nebuchadnezzar was so enraged that he had the furnace heated seven times more than it could be.
I don't even know how they were supposed to measure that. That they had them bound in their clothing with ropes. And the mighty men of their army went to take these guys and throw them into the fire. And it was so hot that it killed the guys who were throwing them into the fire. And they're tossed in. And it seems like that should be the end of the story, but it's not.
Pick it up. Verse 24. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, Did we not cast three men bound into the fire? They answered and said to the king, True, O king. He answered and said, But I see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire.
And they are not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. Nebuchadnezzar's mind is blown because he looks into the burning fiery furnace. And instead of hearing screams of agony, of pain, seeing men riling around in pain on the ground, he sees men walking around. Unbound. Unharmed.
And he goes to count. One, two, three. How many men did we throw in there? And I'm looking at this man. He can't even describe what he's saying because he says, The fourth looks like a son of the gods. He looks like a divine being.
Verse 26. Pick it up. Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the burning fiery furnace. He declared, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out. Come here. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the fire.
What else was he supposed to do? Nebuchadnezzar runs as close to the fire as he absolutely can. And he yells for him to come out. They're walking around inside. What else is he going to do? Come out.
Come out. And this is like a movie. It's like one of those movies where the hardcore guys go into the abandoned warehouse and they wreck shop and they're, you know, killing people. And they're coming out. And the warehouse is like blowing up behind them. And there's fire.
And there's smoke. And they're walking out with the gangster truck. And everything's blowing up. Don't act like that's not the music that's going on in your mind. When you imagine yourself in that story. And they come walking out of the fire.
Verse 27. And the satraps. Good. Carl's back. The satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king's counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not sensed.
Their cloaks were not harmed. And no smell of fire had come upon them. All the fire was able to do was burn the ropes off that they had used to bind them. When they walk out of the fire, they don't even smell like smoke. I think that's why Daniel included those details. Hats weren't messed up.
Garments weren't messed up. They didn't even smell like smoke. God had delivered them. And Nebuchadnezzar's reaction is priceless. Priceless. Verse 28.
Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrath, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and gilded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own God. Therefore, I make a decree. Any people, nation, or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrath, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses laid in ruins, for there is no other God who is able to rescue in this way. Nebuchadnezzar says, Bump that. I'm switching teams. I'm on that God's team.
And anyone who speaks a word against the God of Shadrath, Meshach, and Abednego will be ripped to shreds. Whoa, take it easy, king. Their houses will be leveled. Goodness. Moses. Holes cutting their favorite t-shirts and their favorite goldfish drowned.
How are you going to drown a goldfish? Shut it, Carl. You're a satrap. Figure it out. He loses his mind. He does a complete 180.
The most powerful king in the known world says, Nobody will speak a word against these guys. And verse 30. Then the king promoted Shadrath, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon. And we get to the end of the story and we're pumped. What a story. These three guys in the face of imminent death placed their full trust in either God's deliverance or his providence.
And they're thrown into a fiery furnace. But that's not the end of the story. Nebuchadnezzar looks inside and he can't even explain what he's seeing. He goes to count. He says, one, two, three, four. One of them looks like a divine being.
One of them looks like a son of the gods. And we're getting a glimpse into what God is ultimately going to do in the gospel through his son as Jesus steps into the fire on our behalf. We get a picture of it. Right there. In the middle of this story. What God is ultimately going to do through Jesus.
And Nebuchadnezzar is puzzled and he's looking inside. He doesn't even know what's going on. He says an angel. The translation of that is a messenger. So whether it was an angel or a messenger that Nebuchadnezzar saw or something else completely, entirely different, one thing remains constant.
God is with them. And once again, we get a perfect picture of the gospel in this story. We're once again reminded that the Bible isn't about us. What we see, what we see in the story is that the God of the Bible, the one true God, the God of Israel, the God that these men refuse to dishonor and to disobey, he doesn't just deliver them out of the furnace. He joins them in it. We get a glimpse of his character here.
Why he's so trustworthy. He doesn't just keep them from harm. He walks with them in it. And as we continue to read, as the story of the Bible unfolds, this isn't a God that just calls for faith, that just calls for obedience, that sits far off and expects greatness from his people. No. He would join his people.
That Jesus would step out of heaven and step into the furnace. That Jesus would become a human. That Jesus would face temptation. That he would live and love perfectly. And he would go to a cross. And he wouldn't leave unscathed.
He was brutally murdered. See, what we see in this story is that three men step into an execution, and they're joined there by their God. And they're delivered. What we see in Jesus is that Jesus goes to a cross, and he switches places with us, and he dies. And we're the ones that walk out of the furnace free. We get a glimpse into the gospel in this story.
But the cool thing about it is that Jesus doesn't stay dead. Jesus walks out of the grave three days later to defy the furnace, to defy death and punishment and offer life. What we see is that these men have faith, and they're joined in the furnace, and they're granted life. And we're offered the same thing. We're offered the same thing. That we're offered to join a God who isn't unfamiliar with pain and suffering, a God who died in our place on our behalf, who took our execution.
The character of God is fully revealed to us in Jesus to show us that he is trustworthy, that he is faithful. And the cross ultimately proves that. Jesus stepped in, and through his death and resurrection, he proves that. And just like with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the purpose of their suffering was to bring glory to God. These three guys were in the face of death and suffering. And when they're thrown into the fire, they don't know what's going to happen.
But as they're brought out, Nebuchadnezzar makes a decree that no one can speak a word against the God of these guys. God's name is made known throughout the entire empire. And in the same way, in the suffering and the death of Jesus, God had a greater purpose. That through the sacrificial death of his son, the debt of our sin would be paid for. And that as Jesus dies on the cross, we who are sinful get to walk away. And so, how much more do we, on this side of the cross, understand God's faithfulness and his trustworthiness in the midst of our trials and sufferings?
How much more can we claim, just like these guys, that our God can deliver, he will deliver, and even if he chooses not to, in my present circumstances, we ultimately know that he delivers us from sin, death, and hell through the cross. That as we go through hard times, as we go through suffering, he doesn't sit far off. He joins us in it. And so, since we know that God is ultimately going to deliver, we get to face trials and sufferings, realizing that he might not change our present situation. You see, as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fire, it wasn't the strength of their faith that could save them.
It was the object of their faith. It was that God was faithful. God was trustworthy. And they knew that it might not mean that God would change their situation. And the same thing is true for us. He might not change the present situation that we're going through.
The oncology report might come back and you still have cancer. You may go through the third month and not be able to pay your bills. Work may continue to be a living nightmare because you have a boss that constantly demeans you. And what we see in this story is that God is faithful and he's trustworthy. That no matter what happens, our hope is not in our circumstances, but it's ultimately in the fact that God will deliver us. That he joins us in the furnace to walk with us through it and that in the end it brings glory to his name.
How much more do we on this side of the cross get to say, I know that my God's going to deliver me. It doesn't matter what I'm walking through right now. That I can endure suffering. I can endure trials because I know that he's faithful and I know that he's with me in it. He joins me in the suffering and ultimately it brings glory to his name. Raz, Bianca, and Josh are going to come back up.
The response this morning is to place your faith in Jesus and not in your present circumstances. Some of us in this room are walking through really difficult life situations right now. And you're asking the question, God, where are you? Where are you? I don't feel you. I don't see you.
Everything that's going on in my life is a mess. Where are you? Just like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were joined in the fire. We know perfectly how willing Jesus is to step into the furnace on our behalf. That ultimately Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego show us what it looks like to walk in relationship with Jesus because we have a God that endured suffering for us. And that we don't look at the flames.
We don't look at the furnace. We're not looking at our present circumstances. We're looking to the God who's faithful and who's trustworthy. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego look to the guy on their left. We look to the cross. The cross proves that God loves us.
It settles that so that no matter what we're walking through, we can trust God. And listen, I don't know why suffering and trials happen the way they do. I don't. I don't know why that situation may not change. I don't know why that relationship hasn't gotten any better. I don't know.
But what I do know is that God is good. And He's for our good. And He loves us. And He's got a plan. He's got a purpose in the midst of our suffering and our trials. And we look to Jesus as we walk through it.
Because He's with us. And ultimately, He delivers us. Place your faith in Him because He's faithful. Trust Him because He's trustworthy. We're going to stand and we're going to sing praises to Jesus. And I'm inviting you, if for the first time, to let go.
To stop looking at the flames and to look to the cross. Let's pray. God, we praise You that You are not a God who sits far off, that leaves us in this mess by ourselves, but You join us in the suffering. And in doing so, You swap places with us. That we can place our faith in You for the forgiveness of our sins and for salvation. God, I'm praying that all across this room, Lord, that You would awaken that within us.
Instead of looking at our present circumstances and our trials, God, give us a picture of the cross that proves Your love for us. God, awaken faith and trust within us because You are faithful and trustworthy. In Jesus' name, amen.
David and Goliath
Transcript
So my name is Chet, I'm one of the pastors with Mill City Church, and what we're doing, we're in our fourth week of our Bible story series, and what we're doing is we're walking through Old Testament Bible stories, stories that we've heard, stories maybe we've grown up hearing, or at least in our culture we're familiar with, and we're just looking at them in light of the rest of Scripture. We're looking at them in light of God's full story. So what we know about God is that He declares in the Old Testament, He says, I'm the God who declares the end from the beginning. And so when we think about history, we usually look at what came before an event to find out what caused it.
So like when you study World War II, you're going to look at World War I, you're going to look at the aftermath of World War I, and you're going to see how did this lead up to World War II. But when we look at the story as God unfolds it to us in Scripture, what we understand is that He in some ways is like an architect or like a city planner who is working everything out towards His given end, His desire for how things ultimately are going to work out. So when we look at an event in history, in biblical history, we not only look at what led up to it, but we also look at where God was going to take it eventually, because He's in charge of how everything plays out. And so one of the things we've said as we've gone through this series is that in some ways as Christians who have the New Testament, who know that God becomes a human, that Jesus comes to earth and lives on our behalf and dies and then rises again, that we have the end of the story, and so we can't ever read the Old Testament the same way again.
And so what we've said is it's kind of like the movie The Sixth Sense. Have you seen that movie? It came out in like 1999. If you haven't seen it, it's got a really intense twist on the end, and I'm about to ruin that for you. But the main character, Bruce Willis, is dead the entire time, and the kid can see dead people.
And so you don't know he's dead, though, until the end. And so if you watch The Sixth Sense the first time, it blows your mind. And then when you can never watch it the same way again. And so that's the same way we approach the Bible. We go through the Old Testament, and we're looking at its unfolding, and then we see how God's going to bring everything together. We see the twist on the end of the story.
And we can never read the Old Testament the same way twice. My wife and I, she had not seen The Sixth Sense, but she had seen a movie that talked about the end of The Sixth Sense, much like I just did here, where it says that the guy's dead the whole time. But she didn't realize it was Bruce Willis. She thought it was the kid. So we watched the entire movie, and I told her it was really good.
We watched the entire movie. We get to the end, and I was like, what did you think? She's just staring at the credits like, she looks at me and goes, the kid was dead the whole time? And I was like, no. But it messed up her ability to even watch it.
So it's helpful for us to know what the end of the story is, so that as we go through the text, as we go through these Bible stories, we get an understanding of what God's doing and how we're actually supposed to understand what the story means, what we're supposed to do with it, how we're supposed to understand it. So today we're going to be in 1 Samuel chapter 17. We're going to be talking about the story of David and Goliath. I'm very excited that we get to talk about David and Goliath together today. It's a story I think most of us are familiar with. It shows up all the time, even just in the way people talk about stuff.
They'll say, it's a really David and Goliath story, that kind of thing. And we just really just did the video just for fun. So if Christians can't get together and have a good time, I honestly don't know who can, because we've been rescued and redeemed by Jesus and we're set free. And so we want to have fun together as a church family. I'm going to pray. If you have one of these Bibles that are in the rows with you, it'll be on page 154.
And that's not a typo. We'll go through 1 through 54 on page 154. So, okay, I'm going to pray and then we're going to hop in and look at this. God, we thank you that we get to gather today to study your word. And we ask that you would speak to us. That as we read through the text, as we see this story, we pray that you'd give us the ability to understand more clearly.
That you would help us see vividly how you work in history. And ultimately what you were doing on our behalf. And so, God, we praise you. We thank you. And we love you. In Jesus' name.
Amen. Okay, so chapter 17, verse 1. Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle. And they were gathered at Soca, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Soca and Azekah in Ephes-Demim. And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered and encamped in the valley of Elah and drew up in line of battle against the Philistines. And the Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side with a valley between them.
Okay, we're going to stop there for a second. Let's paint this picture up a little bit and get a clear understanding of what's going on. And the Philistines were a coastal people, so they were kind of near the Mediterranean Sea, and they were kind of where the Gaza Strip is. And they had consistently given Israel fits. And so where we left off last week, we went through the book. But we were in Genesis last week talking about Joseph.
And so we had spent three weeks. We had talked about Adam and Eve. We had talked about Noah. And we talked about Joseph. And so if you were kind of keeping track, we had only been in Genesis as we're talking about. We're going to go through the Old Testament and talk about Bible stories.
So maybe if you were doing math, you're thinking, it's going to be a 92-week series. No, it's only going to be like 73 weeks. I'm just kidding. This is the fourth of five. And so we've jumped ahead in history. And so where we went was Joseph settled his family in Egypt.
They multiplied. The Egyptians enslaved them. And then Moses shows up, and he sings this song about letting his people go. And God moves through ten plagues and sets them free. And then they wander in the desert for 40 years. This is all outlined on those sheets.
If you want to grab one on your way out that we've got that Raz made of the biblical timeline. But they wander in the desert for 40 years, and then Joshua leads them into the promised land. And they do a decent Job of taking over the promised land, but did not completely have autonomy over it. And throughout the course of the book of Judges, they just have people who are Judges who kind of lead over them, rise up at different points to set them free from enemies that have taken over. And you see them fighting with the Philistines throughout the book of Judges. And where we are now, they came and said, we want a king.
We want to have a king. We want to be like the nations around us. And they were really just some tribes that kind of lived together. And God was supposed to be ruling over them as a king. And he says, okay, you can have a king. And so they choose King Saul through a process where a prophet leads them through that.
And what we know about King Saul was he's just kind of a big farm boy. He was about a head taller than everybody else. So they liked that about him. But it wasn't a real, they like rolled dice to see who was going to be king. So it's an interesting process, but God kind of oversaw it.
And so Saul's king. And he's done a decent Job up until this point. But he's not a king the way we think about kings with like a castle and stuff. Because they were just figuring this stuff out. So they were basically like, okay, Saul, you're our king.
Sweet. All right, everybody go home. That's pretty much what they did. And so he wasn't set up with like. And so at this point, all he's done is try to fight a few times, lead a couple of battles. And what we know about the Philistines is that they outman the Israelite army.
They can overpower them. The Israelites didn't want to fight them in open country because the Philistines had chariots. And the Israelites were mostly on foot. But the Philistines had horses and chariots. And so when you got in open country in a battle, chariots would just ride through your ranks and tear them up. So one of the reasons they're up in the mountains in a hill country is because Israel is trying to fight a defensive battle.
We also know that in 1 Samuel 13, we're told that the Philistines would not allow Israelites to have blacksmiths. So they had some authority over this territory. And the reason they wouldn't let them have blacksmiths is because they said that they were afraid that they would make spears and swords for themselves. And it would be easier for them to rise up against the Philistines. And so when the fighting with the Philistines begins, we're told that Saul has a sword and his son has a sword. And everyone else is using farm equipment.
They're outmatched, outmanned, and easily overpowered by the Philistines. And they had won some victories. And so we can assume at this point that they've grown some as an army. More men have joined. They've been able to start getting some weapons together, but not much. And so what we see is the Philistines on one side.
And they're in Israel's territory. It says that they're in Soca, which belongs to Judah. And Judah was one of the tribes of Israel. So the Philistines have marched in on Israel. And Israel is trying to defend themselves. I think sometimes when we picture biblical stories, especially ones that have some fantastic things to them, we always picture them a little bit cartoony.
So it's like there's like happy little cartoon things going on. And so like even when you picture David and Goliath, Goliath walks out and he's like he's mean, but he's kind of cute, like cartoony looking. He's got a big head, you know, and so it makes it easier to hit with rocks. But this is real. This is real events that happen to real people. This was a tense situation.
There's an army on one side of a mountain. There's a valley in between them and there's an army on another side. So picture more along the lines of what you would view when you think about Braveheart, where the English were coming and they were more powerful, had more to them, and there was a ragtag bunch of people trying to defend themselves. That's kind of the situation we find ourselves in. And so there would have been camps set up, campfires, tense conversations, grown men ready to do battle. And that's where we are.
Verse 4. And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath. So a champion kind of is one of their greatest warriors and at times would do what we're about to see that he does, which is he says, I'll fight on behalf of my army. You send someone out to fight me on behalf of your army and I'll fight on behalf of mine. So a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
So a cubit, they didn't have rulers and stuff. Cubits, fingertips to elbows, that's about 18 inches. Span is the width of your hand there. And so six cubits and a span, the guy was nine foot, nine inches tall, roughly, depending on how big the arm of the person who measured him. And you're wondering, how did they measure him? Well, it doesn't go well for him.
So he was just kind of laid out for a while and they were able to walk up and be like, how tall is this cat? How tall was this cat? Somebody put his head back on. Let's see. Let's see how tall that was.
Okay. So anyways, nine foot, nine inches tall. He had a helmet of bronze on his head and he was armed with a coat of mail. And the weight of the coat was 5,000 shekels of bronze. And he had bronze armor on his legs and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam.
And his spear's head weighed 600 shekels of iron. And his shield bearer went before him. This is an impressive, scary man. He was a champion of the Philistines who were good at fighting, had a good sized army, which means that he was good at killing people. And he was a giant. Nine foot, nine inches tall.
So Shaquille O'Neal is 7 foot 1 and at playing weight. So not his Icy Hot commercials, but back when he was playing, he was 325. Andre the Giant was billed at 7 foot 4 and 540 pounds. So assuming that Goliath of Gath had a little bit of weight to him, nine foot nine, he was probably somewhere between 600 to 750 pounds. And he's a massive, scary man who walks out and declares that he'll fight on behalf of his army. It says that he has a shield bearer, which couldn't, I mean, I don't know how tall that guy would have been compared to him carrying his shield for him.
So we don't know if he was like had weak knees or something. Historians have postulated that he had really effeminate legs that he wanted to hide. That's not true. But so he has a shield bearer, comes before him, carries his shield for him. So here's what we see.
This is the situation for the Israelites. They're outmanned. They're in a bad spot because they're fighting against the Philistines who have more armor, more people, more equipment. And now there's a giant on the other team. Verse 8. He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel.
So he walks kind of out into the valley, walks down the hill a little bit, looking up to the army of Israel. Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine? And are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants.
But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us. And the Philistines said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. One of the questions I've always had as I've read this story is, why didn't the Israelites just say, no, not going to do that. We'll just have our army fight yours.
And as I was studying this and reading about this, what I realized is the Israelites didn't want to fight, period. They were in a defensive posture. They're up in the hills. They're trying to defend their territory. They're outmanned by the Philistines. And so the Philistines have the position of power in this whole situation.
And they're basically saying, well, let Goliath fight on our behalf. And then less people will die. We're going to win regardless. But we might as well just let our champion fight and we'll get this over quickly. Less of our people will die and we'll have more servants and slaves on the back end of it. And so that's why they kind of sit in this stalemate for a while.
Because the Philistines are in the position of power and Israel really doesn't have the ability to just fight them and win. At least it doesn't seem that way. Wouldn't it be a real good tactical move? And so what it says is that when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. They knew this was not going to go well for them. They did not have anybody who could go out and fight.
They didn't have anybody that was immediately like, oh, we'll send our champion, Greg Akiah out there. Like that didn't happen. Called him Greg for short. Verse 12. Now David was the son of Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah named Jesse, who had eight sons in the days of Saul.
The man was already old and advanced in years. The three oldest sons of Jesse had followed Saul to the battle. And the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn and next to him Abinadab and the third Shammah. David was the youngest. The three oldest followed Saul. But David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem.
For 40 days the Philistine came forward and took his stand morning and evening. So when the Bible says for 40 days, that's an idiom. It can mean this happened for 40 days. Like exactly 40 days. But it's also just kind of a phrase they use that means a long time.
So like if I saw a friend and I said, man, I hadn't seen you in a hot minute. It actually hadn't been a hot minute. That's just a term I would use that means it's been a long time. Or like when you're talking to a really old country guy and he goes, boy, I've been chewing tobacco since I was knee-hide to a grasshopper. Which just means he started chewing tobacco when he was like six or something. He was never actually that short.
But we need to talk to him about his tobacco issue. That's really early. So it says for 40 days, it just means a long period of time. And so what we see though in this story is that we've now introduced a new character. We're talking about David now in this story. And so we already know about David if we've been reading through Samuel.
David already knows Saul. He comes and plays music for him. And David was musically gifted and wrote a lot of the Psalms that we have in the Bible. At this point though, David had already been anointed king. And so we don't know much about anointing. What had happened was Saul had led well for a time.
And then had kind of turned away from God and done some stuff like directly disobeyed some of the stuff God had told him to do. And so God basically said, well, I'm sorry I made you king. You're not going to be king anymore. And he says, I'm going to pick someone else. And so he chooses David. And David is anointed king.
It wasn't a big ceremony. It was something that a prophet went to his house. He was the runt of the family. They didn't even think he would be one of the ones. Like the prophet shows up and says, one of your sons is going to be king. And Jesse says, cool.
And takes his oldest, biggest boy and goes all the way down the line. He gets to the end. And they're basically just standing around like, you said one of my sons. And so Samuel said, do you have any other sons? And they're like, oh, yeah, David. Totally forgot he existed.
But he's watching sheep. And that probably he's not the king, though. And so they go get David. And he's anointed king. And so he's kind of like a president who's been elected but isn't president yet. But I don't even know if Saul knows that.
So that's who David is. He shows up. He's sent by his dad. So verse 17. And Jesse said to David, his son, take your brothers an ephah of this parched grain and these ten loaves and carry them quickly to the camp to your brothers. Also take these ten choice cheeses to the commander of their thousand.
See if your brothers are well and bring some token from them. So he says, take this to your brothers and give their commander some cheese. I don't know if they're trying to get in with their commander. Be like, hey, man, remember when my dad gave you that cheese? Think I could have a day off? So I don't know.
I don't know what that was. He's just being nice, maybe. So 19. Now Saul and they and all the men of Israel were in the valley of Elah fighting with the Philistines. It means encamped, lined up for battle. And David rose early in the morning and left the sheep with a keeper and took the provisions and went as Jesse had commanded him.
And he came to the encampment as the host was going to the battle, to the battle line, shouting the war cry. OK, so they've apparently been lining up in formation every day for a long period of time. And every day the same thing happens. Goliath comes out and challenges them and they all get scared again. So at some point you think their war cry is going to get slowly more lame over time.
Like the first day they genuinely were like, let's go do this. And then now they're like, ah. Did Goliath die in his sleep last night? He twists his ankle like waiting to see if this is going to work out differently. And it never does. And so they go to the line shouting the war cry, though, getting all hyped up and talking smack, but they don't have any ability to cash that check.
So let me see where I lost my place here. Where are we at? 21. And Israel and the Philistines drew up for battle, army against army. And David left the things in charge of the keeper of baggage and ran to the ranks and went and greeted his brothers. As he talked with him, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines and spoke the same words as before.
And David heard him. All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid. That means every single man who was in the military, including Saul, who was supposed to be defending Israel, did not want to fight Goliath. They each and every one of them fled from him. And the men of Israel said, have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel.
And the king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel. That means you don't have to pay taxes anymore. And David said to the men who stood by him, what shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? And the people answered him in the same way. So shall it be done to the man who kills him.
Now Eliab, his eldest brother, heard when he spoke to the men and Eliab's anger was kindled against David. And he said, why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart. For you have come down to see the battle. And David said, what have I done now?
Was it not but a word? And he turned away from him toward another and spoke in the same way. And the people answered him again as before. So David shows up and he hears Goliath and immediately is like, who's this cat? Who's this guy that's coming out and defying the armies of Israel, the armies of the living God? So David has an understanding of God's on our team and God's not afraid of nine foot nine guys.
He really isn't. God doesn't even need a shield bearer. He's the guy who helps this dude breathe. So God's not afraid of him. Who is this guy? And he begins to ask, wait, what's going to happen for the person who defeats him?
So David immediately is like, I know how God works. What happens for the guy that steps in? And his older brother hears him. And we don't know much about the story between the relationship with him and his older brother. But I always just thought that was interesting.
His older brother hears him and immediately is like, hey, David, shut up. And David's like, what? I just asked a question. It just seems like brothers to me. It was just like, oh, that's cool. Like I remember when I hang out with my older brother in high school and he would tell me, hey, you can come hang out with my friends.
But here's the deal. You don't talk. And I was like, sweet. I can do that. And he actually helped me develop a sense of humor because I would mumble jokes. And if they were stupid, he would go, huh, like that.
And if they were good, he'd go, hey, say that out loud. And so he helped me practice. And since then, so that happened throughout high school. Since then, I've consistently wished that he was still around for me to run some jokes by. Because every once in a while I'll just pop off with something and be like, dang it, I wish Logan was here. He would have told me not to say that.
Anyway, so anyway, so you get to see this interaction between him and his brother. But verse 31 says this. When the words that David spoke were heard, they repeated them before Saul and he sent for him. So Saul, the king knows David, sends for him. And David said to Saul, let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.
David doesn't even bat an eye. He says, I'll go fight. And Saul said to David, you are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him. For you are but a youth. And he has been a man of war from his youth. But David said to Saul, your servant used to keep sheep for his father.
And when there was a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he rose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears. And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them. For he has defied the armies of the living God. And David said, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.
And Saul said to David, go and the Lord be with you. It was a convincing conversation. So David shows up and says, I'll fight him. And Saul says, no, you can't. And David says, I killed lions and bears, which is a really intense story. When a lion would come take a lamb from me, I would go hit him and get the lamb back.
And if that ticked him off, I would murder him. That's what David said. Like, if he wanted to leave, cool. Like, I hit him, get the lamb, we cool, we cool, all right. But if he came at me, I'd grab his beard and kill him.
And he's like, Goliath has a beard. He will die. Like, it's just a very intense conversation that he has. And so Saul says, okay. And David basically is saying that I know that God, I'm immortal as long as God is with me. As long as God's fighting on my behalf.
As long as God's working. He saved me from lions and bears. He can save me from a Philistine. Then it says this, and we're going to take a second here because I think this is often at least depicted incorrectly. So it says, then Saul clothed David with his armor.
He put a helmet of bronze on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail. And David strapped his sword over his armor. And he tried in vain to go, for he had not tested them. Then David said to Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them. So David put them off.
Okay. Every time I've ever watched a David and Goliath, like story, video, cartoon, every time I've ever watched it, I feel like they get this wrong. I feel like this scenario is played out in a dumb way. And so if you've never watched one, then this won't help you. But for the two people who've watched that and been annoyed by it, this is for you.
So when I watch movies and shows and stuff, I get really annoyed with stuff that doesn't make sense. So any of y'all watch The Walking Dead? Anybody see that show? Okay, just me, some nods. Okay. So in The Walking Dead, there's a guy who uses a crossbow to kill walkers, which is zombies.
Crossbows take forever to reload. And he just runs around being like, pating, pating, pating. And the other thing that annoys me the most, though, about that show is not like the never-ending ammo guns that they have, is how often zombies sneak up on people. It's obnoxious. Because every time they show a zombie in the show, they're dragging their feet and going like this. Unless you're in the woods and not looking at them.
Because they'll be standing in the woods, and I guess the zombies behind them are going like this. And as soon as they turn around, like, I don't know. So I watch shows and stuff, and I get annoyed. And every time I've ever seen this, this is what happens. They have this little runt David guy come in, and Saul's like, here, wear my armor. And puts it on him, and he looks like a dad, like a kid, and his dad's close.
Like, Saul puts this ridiculous armor on him. The helmet slides over his face, and Saul's like, go fight. If Saul wouldn't have done that, that doesn't make any sense. Like, Saul wouldn't have outfitted him with ridiculously oversized armor, and been like, best of luck to you, kid, where the sword's dragging on the ground. Like, it annoys me every time I've ever seen that. Saul was actually trying to help him out.
And he gave him armor. Now, if it was Saul's personal armor, they would have tightened it up and gotten it to where it fit. David doesn't say this doesn't fit me. What he says is, I haven't tested them. I'm not used to this. I feel clunky and uncomfortable.
I'd rather go the way I'm used to going. I'd rather go just the way I've always gone as a shepherd when I fought a bigger lion. So that's all he says. So don't picture that in your head. Like, Saul put this ridiculous armor on him, and he, like, fell over. And Saul was like, good luck.
That's not what happened. He actually tried to outfit him, but David just says, no, this isn't going to help me. So David put them off. Then he took his staff in his hands. So he took his shepherd's tool, and he chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd's pouch.
His sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine. Okay, now this just got crazy because they've got these two armies lined up, and the Philistines every day are lining up, walking out with some swagger as they send Goliath out in front of them to defy the armies of Israel. But this day, something different happens. This day, an unarmed-looking shepherd boy walks out. So the ranks of the Israelites separate, and they're like, something's happening.
Men begin to move out of the way, and then a shepherd boy walks out holding a staff and begins to head down into the valley. And the Philistine moved forward and came near to David with his shield-bearer in front of him. And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. So he's mad that he's young, and David was good-looking, which also ticked Goliath off. He's like, you're young and pretty, and I am mad. And the Philistine said to him, am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?
He can't even see how, like, you're not even worthy to fight me. This is ridiculous. And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the fields. So he said, you want to fight me?
I'll feed you to animals. Then David said to the Philistine, you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear.
For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand. When the Philistine arose, the Philistine says, I'm going to feed you to the birds of the field. And David says, I'm going to kill you, and then I'm going to feed all your friends to the birds. It's going to go worse. Like, just so you know, as you die, all your friends are going to die too. That's step two.
When the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, so he got angry. He's like, all right, we're going to fight. He starts charging forward. David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet the Philistine, and David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone and struck the Philistine and killed him.
There was no sword in the hand of David. Then David ran over and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. When the Philistine saw that their champion was dead, they fled. And the men of Israel and Judah arose with a shout. This one sounded good. And pursued the Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron, so that the wounded Philistines fell on the way from Shuram as far as Gath and Ekron.
And the people of Israel came back from chasing the Philistines, and they plundered their camp. And David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put his armor in his tent. That took a quick turn for the worst for the Philistines. So just imagine that you're in the Philistines' army. You're in a pretty nice spot. You're really just waiting for the Israelites to make a move.
If they want all of you to join in in killing them, cool. If they'll let just one person die by the hands of Goliath, cool. At the end of the day, though, we're going to take over some territory, and we're going to gain some slaves. Goliath every day, you just line up. Goliath every day walks out and defies them. And we're here if something fishy happens.
And on this day, a shepherd boy comes out. At least something's happening, and this is not going to go well for the Israelites. Your champion Goliath charges forward and falls on his face, dead, before they've even met each other. They hadn't even gotten into a fight. Goliath is dead. David walks over, cuts off his head, holds it up, and everybody on the Philistines scatters, because they were not ready for that to happen.
And the Israelites pour down the valley and up the hill. Thousands of men charge forward with farm tools and begin to destroy the Philistines. Now, here's the way we're told this story. Here's the way, when you hear this story, when you read this story, here's what happens. Here's what we read, see, think about, and the way we seek to understand this story. We're told this.
You're David. And your problems, your struggles are Goliath. That you're David. And the issues that you're facing, that's Goliath. That's the giant that stands and defies you. You're debt.
You're rebellious children. Your relationship and your marriage that's not going well. Your need to be loved and accepted. Your need to have success in the workplace. That's Goliath. And if you'll trust God, if you'll be like David and have courage and faith and know that God is capable of all things, then you can go be victorious over all the Goliaths.
Whatever your Goliath is, whatever your struggle is, whatever your pain is, you get to be David. And as long as you trust God, the giant will fall and you will raise his head victoriously. The problem with that, when we look at this story, what if that's not what happens? What if your first stone misses? What if your second stone misses? What if your giant of debt doesn't fall and they foreclose?
What if your spouse doesn't repent and they pack their stuff and leave? What if you walk out on the battlefield with courage and faith and your kids don't stop rebelling and you don't even know where they are anymore and they won't answer your phone calls? What if you have courage and faith and it doesn't work out? You don't get your grades up. Your abuser doesn't stop. Did we not have enough faith?
I walked out into the battlefield. I said the stuff that David said. Did I not believe it well enough? I knew that God could fix this situation. I've seen him do it other places. Was my faith not good enough?
Did I not muster up enough courage? Because I stepped into the situation. Does God just not listen? Is he just not there? Is this a made up children's story? See the problem with trying to understand the story that way is that that's not how God's story plays out.
That's not the story of the Bible. Jesus doesn't show up and say come to me all you who are courageous and brave. All you who can be victorious. All of you who are willing to step in to the battle to be great. Now Jesus shows up and says come to me all you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest.
You see in this story we see the Israelites terrified. Outmatched. Outmanned. and unable to fix the situation. And then we see that there's a champion for the Israelites. That a shepherd shows up doesn't look like he'd be able to fix this situation and he marches into the valley on their behalf as their representative and he defeats the giant for them. You see when you line that up with the story of the Bible I have very good news for you.
We're not David. Jesus is our David. Jesus is the one who showed up and slayed the giant on our behalf. He's our champion that goes before us as our representative to face the enemy that we couldn't defeat. You see sin stands in defiance against us. Death laughs in our face and our enemy our accuser Satan mocks us because we have problems we can't fix and we're weak and we're heavy burdened and we're afraid.
And Jesus shows up and says those of you who are weak and those of you who are afraid all you need to do is stand aside as I walk out before you as your champion. See the Israelites moved out of the way David walked down into the valley and he defeated the enemy of Goliath and the victory that he won was applied to them. They got to run behind him victorious and they got to loot the camp. That's us. We get to move out of the way as Jesus doesn't walk into a valley but walks up a hill. David took a staff and a sling Jesus carried a cross.
And Jesus died in our place as our champion to pay for our sin our shortcomings our weakness our failings our fear and then he rose again from the dead victorious. And the victory gets to be applied to us. We just get to run behind him victorious. Do you know what qualified the Israelites to have a champion? Do you know what allowed David to show up and win on their behalf? Weakness frailty fear It's the same for us.
When we see our sin when we see things that we can't overcome when we're faced with obstacles that look like giants to us when we have sin and death staring us in the face it's not muster up the courage to weigh into the battle. It's not go face everything and you automatically win. It's be weak and move out of the way as Jesus steps in who is strong and is a champion on our behalf. Matt, Megan and Raz are going to come back up and we're going to sing together and here's what I know some of us in this room feel like and maybe have even been told this by the church you feel like you're in a room with a bunch of people who are here because we're courageous because we get it right because we're moral because we have it together.
That's not what the church is. That's not the call that Jesus makes. See, we have a champion in Jesus because we're weak and we fall short and we fail because we haven't kept it together we weren't brave enough and we couldn't defeat the giant. That's why we're here. So I have very good news for every person in this room this morning.
Some of you are tired. Some of you are worn out. And the call from Jesus is not keep it together be brave enough. The call from Jesus isn't plan ahead be prepared make good decisions show up and you'll win. The call from Jesus is I already stepped in in one for you. The greatest battle you'll ever face has already been handed to you as a victory.
That's what we have in Jesus. Some of you are tired. Some of you are afraid. Some of you feel absolutely weak to face all that you're facing. You're qualified for a champion. that's all that makes it capable for us to move out of the way and let Jesus show up. And here's what we know.
Stuff doesn't always work out in our favor. Sometimes the quote unquote giants in life beat us. But what we do know is that we do have a champion who has already rescued and redeemed us and made us right with the God of the universe. by paying for our sin. And that nothing and no one can take that away. And that we are right where God wants us as he holds us in his hand as he's rescued us through Jesus. So everyone today gets to come to Jesus who are weak and heavy laden.
Who are burdened and afraid. We get to come to Jesus who's our champion who's gone before us and we get to rest. You get to charge out in a victory that's already been won. So we're going to stand up and we're going to make much of Jesus as we sing. And I invite you if you've never talked to Jesus about following him and allowing him to be your champion and your victor in your place. Do that.
I'm going to pray. God, I thank you that I don't have to be David. I thank you that I don't that the call of the Bible isn't be courageous be bold and you'll win. But that you've called us to step aside and to trust the champion that goes before us. That we like the Israelites don't put our faith in ourselves but we put our faith in the champion the shepherd who's already gone out. God, I pray through your Holy Spirit you'd help us to see that and to feel that today.
We love you. In Jesus' name, Amen. Y'all stay and listen.
Joseph
Transcript
Hey everyone. It's good to see you this morning. My name is Raz. And if you're here for the first time, you've come in at the midway point of a five-week series called Bible Stories. And in this series, we're looking at a bunch of Old Testament stories that everyone's at least vaguely familiar with. And we're zooming out and we're looking at the big picture of the whole Bible and what God's story says about those stories in the Old Testament.
Now, it might be your first time hearing this. If you haven't been with us so far in this series, it might be your first time hearing this. And I'm sorry that I might be the one to break your heart first thing on a Sunday morning. But the Bible was not written about you. I know that it's very easy to want to see ourselves in the Bible. It's very easy to want to picture ourselves as the hero of many stories.
But the Bible isn't about you. The Bible isn't about me. And I think I would be a great main character. But I'm not. And Jesus, luckily, is the main character of the Bible. And if anyone's going to be a better character than me, it may as well be Jesus.
Today, we're going to be looking at the Old Testament story of Joseph. The story is 13 chapters long. It cripples my soul. I'm a perfectionist. And it cripples my soul that we're going to have to skip bits. And it pains me to skip bits.
I love to dig into every individual word to find out what that word means in its context. But we're going to have to skip chapters at a time. We're going to have to summarize chapters. We're going to have to read just certain specific points. But we've got to power through because it's a 13-chapter-long story.
And we're going to cover it all today. So be aware that there's going to be summarized chunks. We're going to be skipping chunks. If you have one of these little timeline aid things that Chet was talking about earlier, if you don't, you can just feel free to go walk and get one now. There's a bunch of them up the back. Like, Joseph is kind of near the top.
Joseph is still in Genesis. And last week we looked at Noah. Noah's right up there under Adam. Joseph is 13 generations after Noah. So we don't know exactly how much time that was, but we know it was 13 generations.
And the biggest, most important thing that's happened between last week and this week, between Noah and between Joseph, is Abraham. Abraham made a covenant with God. You can read about it in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15. God promised Abraham three major things. He promised him he would have a big family, that his family would outnumber the stars. And that was a big promise given that Abraham was super old and had no kids at the time.
He promised the promised land to Abraham, which we know of as kind of the Israel area. And he promised that God's blessing would flow through his family to the nations. And as we look at the story of Joseph today, we're going to see a little bit of that blessing as it kind of sinks down through his family. Before we jump into the story of Joseph, I'm going to pray for us and then we can open up to Genesis 37. Let's pray.
Father God, we thank you that you have a great main character of your story and that we get to learn about him week to week in our community groups and on Sundays as we gather together. We pray in thanks that you love us enough to send a savior in the form of your son. And we pray that you can teach him, teach us about him today. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
Now, this first bit of the story is probably the most familiar. We're going to be looking at Genesis 37 to begin with. And this is, for you musical fans, the section where the whole Joseph and the Technicolor dreamcoat kind of kicks in. It doesn't stick around for very long, though, as we'll learn. We're going to start in 37 verse 2. It's on page 20 if you've got one of these Bibles.
If you don't own a Bible for yourself, these Bibles are kind of scattered around the place. You're free to take one of these. We want you to have a Bible. So if you don't own one, just grab one of these and go home with it. We won't mind. We're going to start in verse 2.
It says, These are the generations of Jacob. Jacob is Joseph's father, and he also has the name Israel. So in a moment, he's going to turn up and he's going to be called Israel. It's the same guy. It's Joseph's dad. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers.
He was a boy with the sons of Bilhar and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Okay, so we've got a weird family already. There's multiple wives. Joseph has 10 older brothers, and they're spread across all the different wives. And Joseph, our boy, brings a bad report of them to their father.
He is a tattletale. He's got 10 older brothers, and he rats them out to their dad. He's not starting well. Verse 3. Now Israel, that's his dad.
That's Jacob. Same guy. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made for him a robe of many colors, also known as a technicolor dreamcoat. But when his brothers saw that his father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.
So we've got a frustrating family. A family that most of us would not want to be a part of. There's actually four wives, four mothers. That would be tough. He picks favorite sons and gives them gifts that the other sons don't get. And the sons hate him for it.
This sibling rivalry playing a part. Joseph doesn't help his cause by being a tattletale. Kind of shoots himself in the foot there. He's probably not the most popular kid around, and we're going to read just now about how he makes his problem worse. Verse 5. Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers, and they hated him even more.
Good Job, Joseph. He said to them, Hear this dream that I have dreamed. Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field. And behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around my sheaf and bowed themselves down to my sheaf. His brothers said to him, Are you indeed to reign over us?
Or are you indeed to rule over us? So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words. Nice one, Joseph. Crushing it, playing the younger brother card, and telling your brothers that they're all going to bow down to you, metaphorically from a dream. Killing it, Joseph. You're working yourself up.
It's just kind of sad to see him dig a hole that he's already dug even deeper. Now, Joseph, he has a second dream after this. We're not going to read about it. He does have a second dream. And the second dream is similar to the first one, except he dreams that the sun and the moon and 11 stars all bow down to him. And then he doesn't tell it just to his brothers.
He tells it to his whole family, including his moms and dad. And they complain to him. And they say, So what? You think that our entire family is going to bow down to you? And they rebuke him, tell him to can it, and to sit in his hole and be quiet. Now, time passes, and the ten older brothers are out.
They're shepherds. They're pasturing the flock. That means that they're out sending the sheep out and looking after them out in the wilderness or whatever. They're not necessarily close to home. They didn't really have fields like we do. And so they're out shepherding the flock, pasturing the flock.
And Jacob, which is the dad, sends Joseph out to check on his brothers, to see that they're doing okay, to bring back a report, let him know if everything's going okay. We're going to pick this up in verse 17. It's at the top of page 21. In these Bibles, anyway. It says, So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan. They saw him from afar.
And before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him. They said to one another, Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him. And we will see what will become of his dreams. But when Reuben heard it, Reuben is his eldest brother, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, Let us not take his life.
And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood. Throw him into this pit here in the wilderness. But do not lay a hand on him. That he, that's Reuben, might rescue him, that's Joseph, out of their hand to restore him to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the Technicolor dream coat, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him in a pit.
The pit was empty. There was no water in it. Then they sat down to eat, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing gum, balm, myrrh, and they were on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him. For he is our brother, our own flesh.
And his brothers listened to him. Then Midianite trainers, Midianite traders passed by, and they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit and sold him to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt. Joseph's brothers, his family, hated him so much they were ready to kill him. But as soon as the opportunity arose, they decided they weren't going to kill him.
Instead, it would be better to make money off of him instead. And so they sold him to be a slave in a faraway country. This is sibling rivalry to the absolute extreme. Joseph is stabbed in the back, square in the back, by his brothers, his older brothers, ten of them. The guys who are supposed to love him the most are the ones who betrayed him. Can you imagine what it feels like to sit in the bottom of a pit after your brothers have just beaten you and thrown you there and overhear their conversation about how and when they're going to kill you?
And then they pull you up out of the pit and decide not to kill you, and you're relieved. And then you're heartbroken again when they tell you you're going to be sold as a slave and sent to Egypt. Well, the brothers, they've committed this crime. They've committed this sin against Joseph. But they've got to do something about it to cover it up.
Joseph is the favorite child. Jacob is not going to be happy about his disappearance. So they take his coat, they take the coat of many colors, and they cover it in animals' blood. And they take that home to Jacob and they say, look, Joseph has been killed by a wild animal. And they convince their dad that Joseph is now dead. So they hate their brother, they betray him, they sell him as a slave, and they cover up what they've done by convincing their dad that he's dead.
And we're going to pick the story up with Joseph. He's now in Egypt. And we're going to skip to chapter 39. It's at the bottom of page 21 in these Bibles. He's now in Egypt, and he's been sold to a guy called Potiphar. Verse 1 says, Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had brought him from the Ishmaelites, who had brought him down there.
The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. Okay, that's important. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, even though he was a slave. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became successful. Now, Joseph, as a successful slave, impresses his master, Potiphar, and we're going to pick it up at verse 5. It says, From that time he made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had.
The Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake. The blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field, and he left all that he had in Joseph's charge, because, and because of him, he had no concern about anything but the food he ate, which is kind of interesting. You elevate this guy, who was a slave, and you say, You can control everything over my house, but you better not tell me what to eat. I'm going to eat candy for breakfast, and you cannot stop me, Joseph. That's what he says. Now, the plot kind of thickens.
It gets a little weird. Potiphar has an interesting wife. We don't learn her name, but she plays a pretty significant part of the story. In our society, we've kind of got a crass name for ladies like this. Cougar. Potiphar's wife is an incredibly blunt one at that.
Read on. It says, Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. He's 17. And after a time, his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, Lie with me. Subtle, right? But he refused and said to his master's wife, Behold, because of me, my master has no concern of anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge.
He is not greater than I am in his house, nor has he kept back anything from me except you because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her or lie beside her or be with her. Joseph is turning out to be an incredibly awesome dude. He's standing up under tough circumstances and sexual temptation, and it's possible that Potiphar's wife was hideous and that would be a good reason to reject her, but probably not. Potiphar was a rich guy.
He was influential. He had Pharaoh's ear. He probably had a cute wife. He was probably able to substitute her out for a younger model whenever he kind of got bored. What we see here in Joseph is actually that he's standing up righteously under really tough circumstances. Joseph's motivation might seem pure, and it is, and we read on.
Verse 11, But one day when he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house were in the house, she, that's Potiphar's wife, caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me. But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. So the cougar sets up a trap and pounces, and then Joseph bails immediately. But he leaves his coat behind. And this is a side note. This isn't important.
Joseph is the only guy in the Bible to lose two coats. Do not lend coats to Joseph. It's not important, but I noticed it, so I thought I'd tell you. Well, Potiphar's wife, she doesn't like getting rejected. She doesn't handle rejection well, and she actually accuses Joseph to her husband of sexually attacking her. And she's got his jacket, so she shows him his jacket as evidence.
And so she accuses Joseph of sexually attacking her. And so Joseph gets thrown into prison as a result. So we're going to read from verse 20. And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined. And he was there in prison. Now, that's got to suck.
Because Joseph didn't do anything wrong. In fact, Joseph did everything right, and not just to impress Potiphar, but he actually did it for the right reasons because he feared God. Now Joseph finds himself in jail for not committing adultery. It doesn't make any sense. Can you imagine how it feels at that point in time to be Joseph? Betrayed by your brothers and sold as a slave.
Finally, things look up and you're elevated to a reasonable status in that house. And then you get accused of something you haven't done when in fact you've done the right thing by your master and by God and you end up in jail. Verse 21. But the Lord was with Joseph, and he showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it.
The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph's charge because the Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed. When anyone else would be swimming in their well of bitterness, Joseph finds success. He seems like a trustworthy dude. He finds himself in prison, and even as a prisoner, the prison guards put him in charge of all the other prisoners because the Lord is with him. He's a prisoner with integrity, and especially for one who ought to be a bowl of tears, who is crying and whining because life has it out for him. Now this next little section, it all happens in chapter 40.
I encourage you to read it. I'm going to summarize it for us because it's a little bit wordy. Two guys end up coming to prison with Joseph. Joseph's in charge of the prison. Like, he's still a prisoner, but he's in charge of everything that happens in there. And two guys get thrown into prison.
One of them is the cupbearer to Pharaoh. A cupbearer's an important Job. He makes sure the Pharaoh doesn't get poisoned. And the other guy's a baker for Pharaoh. So the cupbearer and the baker get thrown into jail with Joseph.
And they start having some weird dreams. They're having funky dreams, and they don't understand them. They don't know what it means for their lives. And Joseph, who's in charge, notices that they're distressed. And so he goes up to them and asks them, and they say, we're having these dreams. We need someone to explain them to us.
And Joseph says, all right, I can explain them to you. So the first guy, the cupbearer, says, I've been having this weird dream. Tell me all what it means. And Joseph says, actually, the interpretation of your dream is positive. We really, this is good news. You, you're going to be reinstated as the cupbearer to the king.
And the cupbearer is stoked. He, he gets to go back to his job. He gets to go back to being in Pharaoh's good books, and he doesn't have to be in jail anymore. And Joseph says, hey, make sure when you get out there and you have Pharaoh's ear again, remember, remember what I've done for you. Remember me. I'm kind of wasting away here in jail.
Don't forget me. And then he turns to the other guy, and the other guy, the baker, tells him his dream. And, and things get awkward pretty quick. The baker tells him his dream, and, and Joseph suddenly starts like, loosening his collar, standing out of the sun, and says, hey, bro, I've got some bad news for you. Just as the other guy was elevated back to his position, your head is going to be elevated from your shoulders. And for some reason, he tries to make a weird, poetic kind of illustration of that to be a graceful way to tell the other guy that he's going to have his head chopped off.
Nice, Joseph crushing it again. He, he tells the other guy that he's going to, that he's going to be executed in three days. And lo and behold, everything that he predicts in three days times happened. The cup bearer gets elevated back to his status, and the baker gets killed. And then we read in the very last verse of that chapter, 40 verse 23, it says, yet the chief cup bearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. And it really begins to start feeling like Joseph is life's punching bag.
Because he does everything right all the time and gets the tough end of the stick. He's following his dad's instructions, gets sold as a slave by his brothers. He follows Potiphar's instructions righteously and chooses not to commit adultery with his wife and gets thrown in prison. And he does right by these two guys and explains everything correctly to these two guys and then he gets forgotten. Even though he said, don't forget me. Two years go by.
Joseph has been in jail for two years. And the pharaoh himself, the ruler over all of Egypt, he starts having weird dreams. And you would think the cup bearer who's right next to him would be like, hey, I know a guy, but he doesn't. The pharaoh calls all of the wise men of Egypt, he calls all of the magicians in Egypt, anyone who might be able to tell him about his dreams and calls them all into himself and he says, guys, tell me what these dreams are all about. And they all say, we don't know. And then at that point in time when Pharaoh's losing his mind, his cup bearer says, oh, yeah, there's this guy that I promised him I wouldn't forget about him.
It was a couple years ago. Pharaoh, he's chilling in the jail. Maybe he can help you out. His name's Joseph. And so Pharaoh says, all right, give him a chance, brings Joseph up and Joseph comes before the pharaoh himself. Pharaoh explains his dreams to him and Joseph says, I can tell you what they mean.
He says, you're going to have seven good years. Seven years of plenty is what he says. And in the seven good years, you're going to have lots of crops, going to have lots of water, going to have all your animals and cattle and livestock are going to do really well. Seven really good years. And then, after the seven good years, throughout all the land is going to be seven bad years. Seven years of famine is what they say.
So there's going to be no crops, no animals, no water. There's going to be seven bad years. And what you need to do, Pharaoh, this is what Joseph said, what you need to do is put someone good and wise and knowledgeable in charge during the seven good years so that they can store up food and they can prepare for the seven bad years that are going to come later. You need to be prepared for that, otherwise everyone's going to die. And Pharaoh says to Joseph, this is chapter 41, verse 39. Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, since God has shown you all of this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are.
You shall be over my house and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, see, I have set you over all the land of Egypt. So Joseph has gone from favored child to slave to ruler over Potiphar's house to prisoner to ruler over prison and now he is set second in charge over all of Egypt. It's a bit of a rollercoaster of a story but it's actually only now that the story gets super interesting. We're going to sum to summarize the next couple of chapters actually.
The next couple of chapters tell the story of Joseph's family. They're back in Israel. They're back in Canaan, kind of the area on the eastern bank of the Mediterranean and they've run into this seven years of famine. No one was prepared for it. They just had seven good years and then suddenly famine hits and no one was prepared. So his family, which is quite big at this stage, Jacob is still alive.
He's the father. There's about 70 descendants in the family. So his kids have had kids, have had kids and there's 70 people in total and he's trying to look out for his family and he's trying to buy food off his neighbors but no one in the area has got food and they hear that Egypt has some food. So Jacob sends the ten older brothers of Joseph down to Egypt in search of food. And then they come down to Egypt and Joseph is in charge. And so they come before Joseph himself to beg for the right to be able to buy food.
They beg Joseph for the privilege to buy food from him because Egypt is the only place that was prepared. They walk into a room with the younger brother they betrayed years ago and they don't even recognize him. They have no idea that he's the one standing in front of them. He's a whole lot older. He's probably decked out like an Egyptian. They sold him as a slave.
They think he's either dead or serving some master in a house somewhere. And they don't even recognize that this man in front of them this powerful man who has the ability to let them die or give them food they don't recognize that's their little brother that they betrayed. But Joseph recognizes them. Joseph was never going to forget his older brothers. The ones who betrayed him and sold him as a slave. How could he forget them?
I can only imagine what would be going through my head if I was Joseph at that time. Revenge. Look at these guys. They've come in and they're bowing before me just as I had predicted. They're weak. You're weak and you're pathetic.
I should crush you. I should do back to you what you have done to me. You have made my life miserable and here's my chance to pay you back. Now I'm strong. Now I have power.
You're weak and you're pathetic. I should crush you. I should do back to you what you have done to me. You have made my life miserable and here's my chance to pay you back. Now I'm strong. Now I have power. Now I have influence and I can do whatever I want to you and I can repay all the evil that you did to me. And we read we read about Joseph and the situation that he's found him in this bizarre tone of events where he can now crush his brothers
And we're cheering for him saying get him Joseph get him lay into him get him back they betrayed you man they stabbed you in the back kill him and then he he doesn't at exactly the point in time when you would expect Joseph to repay evil for evil he chooses not to and in fact he has nothing but forgiveness and mercy and compassion
For them he sends them back to get their whole family bring the whole family down to Egypt where he can set them up for life he hooks them up he not only forgives them he sets them up so they can have the good life from there on out we're going to skip a couple chapters we're now in chapter 47 starting at verse 11 it says this is now on page 27 in these Bibles it says then Joseph
Settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt in the best of the land in the land of Ramesses as Pharaoh had commanded and Joseph provided his father his brothers and all his father's household with food according to the number of his descendants Joseph had the power he had the authority and he would have been completely justified in that moment in punishing his brothers for what they'd done to him and yet instead
He does everything that he can to look after them now soon Jacob that's the father of the whole clan Jacob that's Joseph's dad he dies and with the death of the dad suddenly all the brothers get this renewed sense of paranoia they know that Joseph was Jacob's favorite child and so Jacob loved Joseph Joseph loved Jacob back and with the death of the father
They get this renewed sense that suddenly Joseph's going to change his mind and want to punish everyone and so they send him a letter the letter's not truthful but they send him a letter and we're going to skip to the end of chapter 50 this is now on page 29 this is right at the end of Genesis in verse 15 it says when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead they said it may be that Joseph will hate us
And pay us back for all the evil that we did to him so they sent a message to Joseph saying your father gave this command before he died say to Joseph please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sins because they did evil to you and now please forgive the transgressions of the servants of the God of your father so they admit that they had done a whole lot of evil
To him and they expected it to be paid back Joseph wept when they spoke to him his brothers also came and fell down before him and said behold we are your servants but Joseph said to them do not fear for am I in the place of God as for you you meant evil against me but God meant it for good
To bring about that many people should be kept alive as they are today so do not fear I will provide for you and your little ones and thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them now Joseph Joseph has perspective Joseph has righteous perspective and what I mean by that is that Joseph is able even in the midst of everything that's happened to zoom out
And see the entire story for what it is he sees the bigger picture and we get caught up in the details we get caught up in the pain and the hurt and the betrayal and we want we want to be justified in him taking that out on them we want justice in that and Joseph sees the bigger picture because he has perspective we would completely expect Joseph
To want to repay that evil that's our mentality we have this mentality of an eye for an eye and that's justice and yet Joseph has this higher perspective the bigger picture and he says you meant evil against me but God meant it for good it doesn't matter to Joseph that his brothers sold him as a slave because he realizes that that had to happen for him to end up in Egypt and he realizes
That once he gets to Egypt he had to rise to power and then end up in jail so that he could meet the king's cupbearer and he had to meet the king's cupbearer so that someone could tell Pharaoh that Joseph knows how to interpret dreams so that when Pharaoh has bad dreams Joseph gets to meet Pharaoh and he had to meet Pharaoh so that he could become second in charge of all of Egypt so that he could save everyone he doesn't get caught up
On the little details he sees that everything happened so that he could come to power in Egypt and keep everyone alive and this idea of perspective zooming out and seeing the bigger picture that's kind of our goal in this entire Bible stories series we want to zoom out from each individual story and see it in the grand scheme of God's story because the Bible is God's story and each one fits into it and so if we look at this story
With perspective it changes the picture see we're tempted at every stage in the story to want to be the hero we want to be we want to be like Joseph we want to stand up under sexual temptation even though that's not a reality for us we want to we want to be patient in affliction like Romans 12 says and yet that's not at all us we want to be merciful we want to have forgiveness we want to do all of these things
That we see in Joseph but it doesn't really reflect us at all and that's because that's not at all what's going on in this story if you think about it with some perspective if you zoom out like we've been talking about you see the bigger picture Joseph he suffered at the hands of those who were supposed to love him so that he could eventually save those people
Who betrayed him Joseph was able and justified in administering punishment to those people and instead shows mercy and kindness and grace to them Joseph was condemned but God required that for good and while we want to see ourselves as Joseph we want to see ourselves
In this story it doesn't sound a whole lot like us instead it sounds a whole lot more like Jesus but we still want to play a part in stories even though we shouldn't force our way into stories we still want to play a part but if we see it with this perspective if we
See it in this bigger picture we kind of play a role in the story if anyone in that story is us it's the brothers the ones who betrayed the guy who's ultimately going to save them that's us and it's it's sad it's not fun
To think about but we're we're Joseph's older brothers we betray the guy who saves us but chapter 50 verse 20 it's a game changer it's going to come up here it says as for you you meant evil against me but God meant it for good
To bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today is there a clearer picture of the gospel than that but Joseph and this whole story is just one little man in a little region thousands and thousands
Of years ago who saves his family it's kind of a small story on the grand scheme of God's story what Jesus does for us is infinitely bigger than the story of Joseph as Joseph's brothers meant evil against
Joseph mankind as a whole meant evil against Christ to our very bones we are rebellious we consistently place our own desires our own wants and our own thoughts above that of
God and we betray him day after day after day it was mankind that crucified Jesus it was under mankind's hand that Jesus suffered unrighteously unjustly sorry not
Unrighteously and and yet God uses all of that evil that mankind did to Christ so that he could eventually die on the cross to save mankind the evil that mankind did to Christ had to happen so that
God could save everyone to bring about the many people should be kept alive that's how God's sovereignty works that's what God's plans do they happen the way that he means them
To happen and sometimes in the case of Joseph and in the case of Jesus and in the case of many others suffering has to happen for them to get from A to B suffering is the way that God gets them from Canaan to Egypt to slavery to ruling over everyone so that they
Can save everyone else's lives Joseph he he mercifully rescued his own family from starving and Jesus is completely different he's completely bigger Jesus rescues all of humanity from the consequences of their own
Sin eternal death Matt's going to make his way back up here and as we kind of land the plane there's any number of beautiful responses that we can have to a story like this
This story is a massive picture of the gospel and we can respond in many ways but I want us to zoom out and see the bigger picture I want us
To respond in light of God's plan for all of salvation you see I think we're so exposed to the idea that we are
Sinful and that God forgives us and that Jesus paid for our sin on the cross we're so exposed to that it kind of
Just washes over us in a way where it doesn't hurt anymore we don't feel the pain we don't feel the betrayal we don't
Feel the agony of it and yet we read a story like Joseph's and suddenly it's a human character it's not God anymore it's
A human and we can relate to how it feels to be betrayed we relate to how it feels to be punished when you
Don't deserve it and then we suddenly understand how crazy it is to receive mercy we understand how crazy it is to receive mercy from the
Person that you betrayed most and yet we zoom out and we realize that our situation before God is immeasurably worse than the brothers
Before Joseph we've separated ourselves from God and creator who made us to live in perfect relationship with him and we sin against him
Daily and yet he offers the same mercy to us our sin and our betrayal is immeasurably worse and his mercy and love is
Immeasurably greater and so when Joseph's brothers are given blessing and freedom even when they don't deserve it how much greater is the blessing
And freedom that we receive even though we don't deserve it how much more blessed are you in light of knowing Jesus mercy know
That he has every right just as Joseph did to punish you for your sin every right to punish me for my sin every
Right to punish all of mankind for sin yet he chooses not to instead he chooses to free you from your guilt to free
You from all that you are struggling with in life there's no more pain there's no more burden and there's no more guilt because
Of the mercy that he's shown you and you get to live a life that is set up for success you get to live
A life as he plans as you respond to him the same offer that Joseph gives to his brothers Jesus gives to us and
I pray that we can accept his offer let's pray father God we know that we know that you are powerful beyond measure and that we've sinned
Against you we pray we pray we pray that we can live according to your will for our lives we pray in thanks that
You show mercy to us when we don't deserve it we pray we repent of our sin and we pray that you will continue to bless
Us in this life so that we can become more and more like Christ who pours himself out for us so that we can
Live and so that we can live the good life we praise you we thank you and we love you amen
Noah
Transcript
Good morning. My name is Chet Phillips. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to see everybody. We are in the second week of our Bible stories series. And so what we're doing during this series is we're looking at Old Testament Bible stories.
And we're looking at them in light of the totality of Scripture. We're looking at them in light of what the Bible says overall. And the reason we do this and the reason we get to do this is that in the Old Testament, God says that he's the God who declares the end from the beginning. And so if we were actually just looking at history, so when you're studying history and you want to see why something happened, you only look at what happened before that. So you look at what precipitated that, what led up to it.
But in Christianity, we actually get to look because God is the God who declares the end from the beginning, who's actually leading history. We actually get to look at what is he doing. So when we look at the Old Testament, we get to look at the New Testament to help us understand where God was moving history, where he's taking it, where he's guiding it, because he's in control of what happened. So when we look at the Old Testament, we know God ultimately has a plan. He's ultimately working to accomplish something. And so we get to see the New Testament to help us understand what God was doing in the Old Testament.
And so one of the ways that Matt talked about this last week was if you watch like the movie Titanic, you know the ending before you even start watching the movie. And so Jack gets a ticket onto the Titanic and you're like, that's not going to go well for you. And then you're watching and like the rich people are being super jerks and you're like, yuck it up, you're going to drown. Hope you know how to dog paddle. This isn't going to go well. And another example of that is The Sixth Sense.
So if you've seen the movie The Sixth Sense, and Matt totally ruined it for us last week. He just told us how it ends, that Bruce Willis had been dead the whole time. Really, I don't think it's fair because it only came out in 1999 and we really need some time to be able to see these movies before Matt just gives us spoilers. But if you've seen the movie The Sixth Sense, when you watch it the second time, you can't watch it the same way. You know the whole time the twist at the end. And so you're going, oh, okay, so that only makes sense because of how this was going to work out.
And the Bible is the same way. Once we've read about the fact that God's going to become a human, that he's going to die on our behalf on a cross, we can't see the Old Testament the same way anymore. We can't view it the same way anymore because we know ultimately what he was coming to do and going to fulfill and accomplish in Jesus. And so what we're doing is we're just going to take a few weeks to look at some Old Testament Bible stories, one that we're familiar with, one that maybe you grew up in Sunday school hearing. Maybe you had a flannel graph Noah that got stuck up on. If you know what flannel graph is, like our kids get to, in Kid City, they get to watch videos.
They get to do some stuff. They don't know anything about flannel graph. Flannel graph is just sticky things, I guess. It's like Velcro Noah. And so if you never got to enjoy flannel graph, you really missed out on not a whole lot of anything. But even if you didn't grow up in Sunday school or grow up around these stories, our culture is familiar with them.
And so today we're actually going to be looking at Noah's Ark. And so we'll be in Genesis chapter 6. There's a bunch of Bibles out on the rows. If you don't own a Bible, that's our gift to you. Take that with you. And it'll be on page 4, I think.
Page 3 and 4, but we'll start on page 3. And so we'll be looking at Noah's Ark. And here's the funny thing about Noah's Ark. Children's ministry has kind of hijacked Noah's Ark and made it like a fun, lovable, cute children's story. And it is not cute or lovable, really. It's terrifying.
The story of Noah's Ark is that God looks at Earth and sees that humans are evil, and we'll talk more about that, and then has a flood that drowns everyone and all the animals except for Noah and the animals that made it onto the Ark. But because there's animals, we make it a children's story. So it's like, hey, boys and girls, we're going to talk about Noah's Ark. And there's rabbits, and there's squirrels and chipmunks. And the reason that there was a giant flood is because humans were evil. Can you say, I'm evil, Timmy?
Yes, that's good. That's called total depravity. Yes. And so on the Ark, there were elephants and giraffes, and there were all these floating dead bodies. Like, it's not a cute story. Even though we've made it cute, it's not cute.
And so we're going to spend some time today looking at Noah's Ark, and really what happens in the story of Noah's Ark. We talked last week about Adam and Eve, and here's what we see in the Old Testament. Here's kind of the tension throughout the Old Testament. God creates everything, and He says that it's good. He says that it's right. It's the way it ought to be, and that Adam and Eve are living in relationship with Him, and then they rebel.
They sin. They want to be like God. They'd rather have themselves be God rather than worship God as God. And what happens after that is it gets progressively worse. So that they sin and rebel, and then their sons, one of their sons, kills the other one over jealousy.
Like, immediately. Our first parents sin, fall short, and then it just keeps going. And so that by the time we get to Noah in Genesis 6, it says that everyone is corrupt. And the tension and the story that we see throughout the Old Testament is, what is a holy, just, and righteous God going to do about sin? That's the big question throughout the Old Testament, is what is He going to do about sin? How is He going to remain holy?
How is He going to remain just? How is He going to remain righteous and allow sin, allow pain, allow death, allow rape, allow murder, allow genocide? How is He going to be okay with that and remain holy and good? How is He okay with His creation completely rebelling from Him and destroying each other? That's the question throughout the Old Testament. So we as Westerners read the Old Testament, and God throughout the Old Testament doesn't immediately crush people.
So there are people who do evil and wrong things, and they may deal with consequences, but He doesn't immediately just eradicate them. And so what we're seeing throughout the Old Testament is grace and grace and grace and grace. And then we'll see in the Old Testament some spots where God speeds up the death of everyone, where God does enact into history. He opens up the ground and swallows people, which has got to be super intense. He has a flood and drowns people, and we see the moments where there's justice, and we have a problem with that. But the bigger question, that's not the problem that the Hebrews would have had as they walked through this.
The problem is, what is God going to do about sin? And why hasn't He destroyed everyone yet? That's the bigger issue in the text. Not that God sometimes steps in and Acts justly and righteously and defends His holiness. The question is not that. It's how on earth are all these evil people still here?
What is He going to do about this without just destroying us? And so we get a picture of that in Noah's Ark. How God responds to sin. What God does when creation rebels against Him. So I'm going to pray, and we're going to hop in.
God, we thank You that we get to open Your Word. That we get to study it together as church family. God, I thank You that we stand where we stand in history, so that we know the end of the story. We know ultimately that You're going to join us in the suffering. That You're going to go to the cross on our behalf. And so that we get to look at the Old Testament in light of what we know about Your nature and Your character.
Your love and Your sacrifice. We ask that Your Holy Spirit would speak to us today as we study Your Word. In Jesus' name, Amen. All right, Genesis chapter 6, verse 5 is where we'll start. It says, The Lord, so that's God, the Creator God of the world. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Okay, theologically, that is called total depravity. And what that means is that humans are fundamentally off. That we're broken when it comes to how we ought to relate to God and creation and how we actually do. It does not mean we are as evil as we could get. It just means that we're all fundamentally broken. That the thoughts of our hearts are wrong.
I'll give you an example of this. My wife is pregnant. She's halfway there. So she's 100% pregnant, but also half pregnant. And I don't really know how that works. But she's halfway there.
And here's what we don't really know the sex of the baby yet. We know they said that they thought it was a boy, so we think it might be a boy. But they were like, don't paint anything blue yet. This isn't your official response. So it's like, okay.
So we think it's a boy. But there's really only two things we know about our unborn child. It will be a human. And it will be a sinner. That's what we know. That humans are born sinful.
No one is going to have to teach our child how to sin. He's going to do that all on his own. That will be ingrained in him. I won't have to sit him down and be like, let me explain to you how selfishness works. I won't have to tell him that his favorite word is going to soon become mine. He's going to do that on his own.
I'm going to have to explain to him what sharing is and why that's good and why that's helpful and why he shouldn't hit other children and take things from them. That's the way that's going to work. I'm not going to have to explain to him how to lie. I'm going to have to try to instill in him the value of honesty. Kids are automatically, fundamentally going to be born sinful. For any parents in here, parents of young children, I hate to break it to you.
Your child is sinful. I know you think they're an angel and that one time that they bit that person, that was a fluke. No, your child is sinful. There's something fundamentally off in them. That's what that means. That's what since Adam and Eve fell, that's been ingrained in us.
We have been born sinful. We'll actually have to take our son and train him in how to love what is right and good and holy and just. We are a little bit afraid that we'll have a son that takes after my wife and a daughter that takes after my side of the family, which will be really terrible and terrifying. That's what that means. And so here's what happens. Even as we continue to grow and we continue to learn what is right and good, there's still something wrong with us.
There's still something that's off in us. I'll give you an example. I, the other day, decided to, this is really weird, I had a little extra money, odd, and decided to do something nice with it. I know, it's crazy. And so I just went to Krispy Kreme and I bought donuts and I was just going to ride around and give some people donuts in the area that I just was trying to just bless with carbohydrates. Because I feel like that's how you bless people.
It's like, here you go. Eat this. Fall asleep at your desk. Like, that's, that's, that's, I was doing that. And so I'm just genuinely was like, I want to do something nice. And I think this will be fun, a fun way to do something nice.
And then I'm riding and I realized that I just had the thought, I wonder what they'll think about me after I give them donuts. And I was like, that's really messed up. Like, I genuinely was thinking I was doing something nice and have immediately turned it into, I'm the guy who gives out donuts. That's best friend material right there. Like, like immediately I had turned it into something selfish. I had turned it into something that was going to make me, and realized, I was like, Lord, help me.
Like, that's, that's wrong. And so that's, that's, that's what God looks down. And it says that he sees, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it says, and the Lord was sorry, this is verse 6, the Lord was sorry that he made, had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. Okay, that's a very interesting thing that the text says there. It says that the Lord was sorry that he made man, and it grieved him to his heart.
The Hebrew word there is used later in the Old Testament as the way a woman feels when her husband leaves her. It says that God looked at earth and was heartbroken. He was shattered over the way that humans were treating creation and treating each other, and how quickly everyone had gotten evil and selfish, and had no desire to honor him, to worship him, but wanted to be chief among all things. And it grieved him to his heart. Now, here's what's interesting about that. God doesn't need us.
He is completely and perfectly self-sufficient. He has existed since eternity in a Trinitarian relationship with himself, which is really weird, but it's hard to understand. But God has existed as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit since eternity. That's why one of the reasons the Bible says that God is love is because in his very nature he is loving because of how he relates to himself inside of the Trinitarian Godhead. He doesn't need us. He didn't make humans because he was bored or lonely.
He made it because of that's what his nature is like, that he is loving, that he is good, that he is a creator, he is creative. And so he creates humans. He doesn't need us, but he chooses to intertwine his life with ours in such a way that when we're hurting, when we're causing problems, when we're wreaking havoc, it hurts him and grieves him. An example of this, a small example of this, would be like the relationship between a husband and wife. I was in high school. I was coaching powder puff football, which is when the football players coach girls on how to play football-ish.
You get the gist of it. And I was doing that, and there was a girl on our powder puff football team who was going to be playing wide receiver, and I was helping coach the wide receivers. And when I met her, I thought, she's cute. I bet she'd be fun to date. I was really deep back then, guys. So she's cute.
I bet she'd be fun to date. And I had a girlfriend at the time, and so that didn't bode well for that relationship. And so that was my first thought. I later found out that this girl that I thought was cute and would be fun to date, that her first thought about me and her first words that she said about me out loud to a friend was, I don't like him. And those of us who have met both of us would agree that that was a good assessment of character off the bat on both of our parts. And so I started trying to talk to her and follow her around and eventually got her to go on a date with me.
And we kept dating through college and got married five years ago. And I really, as one of my high school coaches told me, outkicked my coverage on that. Like I really won that deal. So, and here's how this works now. We did not have a relationship prior to us choosing to have one. We were not, it wasn't like we were having to be around each other, that we were forced into this relationship.
We chose to intertwine our lives. We chose to give love to one another. And so the way that works now is that if something happens to Anna, it's like it happens to me. If somebody says something insulting to Anna or if someone says something mean to me, Anna feels hurt and offended if someone says something mean to me in the same way I would feel for her. Like you want to pick a fight with Anna, you just pick the fight with me as well. That's just how that works.
So that like someone could ask me, and this had happened recently, this is a perfectly normal way to respond to a question. Hey man, how you doing? Doing okay. Anna's been sick, you know, with being pregnant, but she's feeling better. And so I'm doing pretty good. And all I did was respond as to how Anna was doing, but because of our relationship, it's the same for me.
If she's doing well, I'm doing well. If she's doing poorly, I'm doing poorly. And that's what the text just said about God. That he looks at his creation and he feels what we feel. That he chooses to care about us. And so sometimes we feel like God is distant and God's far off.
He is not. He has chosen to love us and to intertwine his life with us. So here's what it says. We'll start back in verse 5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intentions of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth.
And it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land. Man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. For I am sorry that I have made them. So God's response to sin is justice.
His response to rebellion is justice. So we're getting a picture here because the question in the Old Testament is how is God going to respond to sin? What is he going to do about this problem? And his response is justice. Now here's the thing.
We love justice. We do. We love it. There's a commercial on TV. I don't even know what it's about. But this woman's like cooking and she goes, honey, what do you want for dinner?
And he pops up behind her wearing a Batman outfit and goes, justice. Like we love justice. And you know this by like the shows that we watch. So you got Bones and NCIS and CSI for every place in the United States. And you've got criminal intent and criminal minds. And I mean all of these shows.
You got Law and Order. And there's like different Law and Orderers. And you got all of these shows. And what they are is basically a bad person does something wrong. Good people hunt them down and bring them to justice. And we love it.
It happens inside of 40 minutes and we're like, get them. Get them. We love it. There's just something in us that craves for wrong to be punished. And for righteousness and for goodness to happen. And for justice to take place.
That's one of the reasons that we love superhero movies. We love the idea that some supernatural being would show up and bring people to justice. My wife and I have recently been watching the show Arrow. Which if you get the chance to watch it, it's hilarious and terrible. But we thoroughly enjoy it.
Because it's like getting to watch people learn how to act and read lines and stuff. And so we like it. But the whole point of that show is this guy shows up in the city and he's super rich. But he's mad at all the other rich people because they're doing bad stuff. And so he runs around. And when I'm watching this show, he's got a bow and arrow.
He shoots henchmen all the time. He'll just pop into a place and shoot like four guys into the chest and they just all die. And I don't care because they were henchmen and they deserve to die. There's nothing in me that was like, maybe they were living under the poverty level and they really needed to have that job. I don't feel that. Maybe he's got kids.
I'm like, get him. Justice. How you like that arrow, son? That's the way we feel. There's something about us in the Avengers when Hulk picks up Loki and just smacks him on the ground like seven times. You're just like, that's beautiful.
That's how the world should work. Bad guys should get smacked on the ground. And so we feel that. We feel the need for justice. If you were watching one of these shows like Law and Order and they had open and shut case, caught the guy, red handed, had all the evidence, took him to court, presented their stuff. You know, it's like Law and Order.
Dun, dun. And they present everything to the judge. And the judge said, yeah, obviously you're guilty. Everything here. I mean, there's no way that this wasn't you. Cool.
Case dismissed. You guys go home. Have a nice day, man. And then the credits roll. We would lose our minds. Like what on earth just happened?
We were right there at justice and we missed it. Like people would be calling. They would cancel the show. Like it would, the internet would shut down. Like there's something in us that craves it. And here's what happens though that gets really weird.
We read the Bible and God gives justice. It's the Bible says that God loves justice. That he loves what is right and what is holy and what is true and what is good. And he brings justice to those who have rebelled and broken his creation. And as soon as that happens, we go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I like Batman.
I don't like God doing that. I want God to only be loving, only be good, and only in the way that I define that. I want him to fit into my grace box. The way I define love. I don't want him stepping into the realm of justice. I love justice, but I don't want God there.
And here's part of why I think that's the way that works. We like Batman because we feel like we're on his team. The only person who doesn't like Batman is like the Joker. Doesn't like Batman. He's not a big Batman fan. We like Batman because we're on his team.
But when we start reading the Bible, we realize that God is set apart. That he's holy and right and good and just. And we're not on his team. That we're fundamentally flawed and broken. And so when he steps in and says, I'm bringing people to justice, immediately we go, that doesn't sound like a good idea. Because I don't feel like I'm on your team by the nature of how I act, feel, think, worship, follow, serve, love.
This isn't good. But here's what happens a little bit. I just want to point out some of how we, when we push back on the idea of God being just. So we read the story of Noah's Ark and we go, is God allowed to do that? I think you'll hear people say, how on earth can you worship and follow a God who just kills people? So I just want to, I want to help us see a little bit of where that's inconsistent in our thought processes.
First of all, what we're saying is, I can love justice, but God can't. I can care about what's true and right and good and holy. I can have moral indignation. I can be outraged, but the God of the universe cannot. And that does not make any sense. To assume that my idea of justice is greater than his falls really short.
Let me show you this. The reason we hate things is because it comes against what we love. So the reason I will get furious over things, and sometimes it's good things that I love, and sometimes it's bad things that I love, but my ability to love is what helps me hate. So that when I was in, doing some training stuff with Midtown Fellowship, which is in downtown, and was in the recovery program, and sat in a room, and we went around a circle where guys were there talking about what it kind of brought them there and why they were seeking to walk with Jesus. And multiple times, guys in the room said that they had been sexually assaulted by a family member.
And as we came around the circle, I was growing more and more furious. And I wanted punishment. And I wanted justice. And I didn't want that to have happened. I didn't want someone to have taken advantage of a small child, an eight-year-old boy. I didn't want that to happen.
And I was angry. And I felt perfectly right and justified in that. And then when we say that God looked out on earth and saw all of the murder, and all of the rape, and all of the hatred, and all of the human hearts, that every inclination of their heart was towards evil all the time, and he brought justice, and we say, no, no, no, no, no, that's not okay. What we're declaring is that it's okay for me to love justice, but it's not okay for him. Or that my sense of justice is greater than his. And that is not true.
He perfectly loves all of his creation, which makes him most capable of hatred, wrath, and anger of the things that seek to destroy it. The second thing that we're a little bit confused on, I think, a little bit inconsistent, is that to assume that we have a sense of justice without God isn't logically coherent. It doesn't make any sense. To think that the way we believe justice works comes without a foundational, actual justice, a true justice. So when we talk about math, and I say two plus two is four, and you say, no, it's seven, I get to say, no, it's four.
Because that's how math works. Math is real. It's a true thing. There's actual math that works that way. We get to have that discussion. When it comes to justice, if we remove God from the equation, if we all just exploded out of chaos, then there is no set and true justice.
There is no set and true right and wrong. It's just us arguing over opinions. So in this room, we would say, you're supposed to protect children. You're supposed to care for animals that are under your care. You're supposed to take care of the elderly and show them respect and love them. And we all know that's true.
That's why we throw a fit when Ray Rice's and Adrian Peterson's have this stuff going on. Because we know that's true. You shouldn't do that to women or children. We know that, right? They don't, in other parts of the world, know that. In China, male boys are worth more than female boys.
And they know that. They know that's true. In the Middle East, women are property. They know that's true. And so all we can say about our sense of justice, if we remove God from the equation, if we don't believe that our sense of justice and moral indignation comes from the actual true one, that it's derived from God, then all we're arguing about is our opinion. And we at least have to admit that.
You at least have to admit that your argument over what's right and true and good, if it doesn't come from God, comes from you, and it's valid as your opinion, but don't bother trying to change the world and say sex trafficking is a bad idea. Because they think it's a good one. So you can be angry all you want, and you can raise some money if you want to, but you can't say that you're right. You can argue that you agree with yourself. Cool. The third thing I just want to point out is God has the prerogative over his creation.
He has creator rights. So I like drawing periodically or painting. I'm very artsy, for those of you who don't know me. That's not actually true, but I do like drawing and painting periodically, and sometimes I'll be working on something, I have a picture in my head of what I want it to look like, and it just doesn't happen. So it's like, I'm going to paint something, and it's going to be beautiful, and it's going to change the world, and people are going to see it and cry.
And I'll start, and I'll be like, this is terrible. I get halfway through, I'm bored, and I'm just like, this is a bad idea. And so I have the ability to just throw it away. If I don't like it, if it doesn't live up to what I wanted it to be, I just get to throw it away. I can do that. I've been drawing things before, and I'll be like, this is stupid, and throw it away, and have people be like, you can't do that.
I say, yeah, I can. I drew it. I didn't like it. I'm throwing it in the trash can. That's what I get to do. Now, if I was working on something, and you walked in, and said, that's terrible, and ripped it up and threw it away, you would be a jerk, and you're not allowed to do that, because I have creator rights, and you do not.
That's just how it works. It's the same rule of like, you can't spank other people's children. They're their kids. You don't agree with how they behave. Okay. But you can't just be like, I'm sorry, ma'am.
Time out. I know we're in the line at the grocery store. This is terrible. I'm just going to take your kid out for just a second. I'll be right back. I'm going to fix this.
Well, you can't do that. They have like parental rights over their children. God has creator rights over his creation. So when we look at the Bible, and we ask the question, is God allowed to speed up the death of everyone on earth? Yes, he is. He is allowed to speed up death if he decides to.
Because God has the ability, he has creator rights, the prerogative over that. So here's what we see. God looks out on earth, and he sees brokenness that's wreaking havoc on his good creation. And he decides to bring a great flood. His response to sin is wrath and justice. But that's not the end of the story, thankfully.
Also, just spoiler alert, we're all here so he doesn't kill everybody. Okay. So, yeah. I know, right? Verse 8. We'll do verse 7 again, sorry.
So the Lord said, The word favor there is the Hebrew word chen. We don't make that noise in English, so it's kind of hard. It's like hen, but you got something stuck in the back of your throat. Like chen. It is the first time in the text that the word for grace shows up. The word there means that a greater party gives unmerited, unearned favor to a lesser party.
So what it says is God decides he's going to destroy everything, and then he gives grace, unearned favor to Noah. And Noah is a human inside of the greater group of humans who are all evil. So Noah is one of the all evil humans that God decides to give grace to. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. So he was given grace by God, unmerited favor in the eyes of the Lord.
And these are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Jepheth. So it says that he was blameless, he was righteous, and he walked with God.
The way the Old Testament uses that, it does not mean he never sinned. We see later that that's not true because when he gets off the ark, so like they go on the ark, flood comes, he gets off the ark when the flood subsides, and he plants a vineyard. And then in Genesis chapter 9 goes like full redneck. Like gets really drunk and naked. He's in his tent, but he's drunk and naked. And that's a sinful thing to do.
I don't know what it is about alcohol that's like, this tastes good. This is wonderful. Oh my goodness, this is so good. Pants are terrible. They're getting on my nerves. They're really slowing me down.
Like I don't know how alcohol does that. But it happens to Noah so that he gets drunk and naked and then leads to sin in his family. Even when the flood subsides in Genesis chapter 8, 21, God says, I'll never again flood the earth even though man is evil even from their youth. So it did not fix the problem. We'll talk about that in a second. Noah was still sinful.
His family was still sinful, but they were given grace by God. What it means when it says he was righteous, blameless, and he walked with God, it means that he agreed with God about his sin. So God comes to him and says, I'm going to flood the earth. You need to do this. And Noah agrees. Okay, I will follow you.
I understand I'm sinful. And God grants him through his grace, righteousness, blamelessness, as Noah walks with him. So verse 11 is, Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. Its length of the ark is 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. A cubit is about 18 inches. Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the ark in its side.
Make it with lower, second, and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breadth of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die, but I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female, of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, and of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind.
Two of every sort shall come into you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. And so his righteousness, again, comes from God talking to Noah and Noah agreeing and obeying.
Hebrews chapter 11 says it was his faith that saved him, that God spoke to him, said this is what we're going to do, this is how I'm going to bring salvation to you and your family. And Noah said, I agree with my sinfulness, I agree with my need for your grace, and I will obey and follow you as you bring salvation. So God loves goodness, righteousness, peace, and he hates everything that comes against it. As he goes through and it says, the whole world is corrupt, what God says is, it's a play on words in the Hebrew, God basically says, they're destroying my good creation, I'm going to destroy them.
He uses the same word. He says, basically, I'm going to destroy the destroyers. Those who are tearing this apart, I'm going to do the same thing to them, but you and your family, I'm going to save. And here's how I'm going to save you. And he gives specific details on how that's going to play out. So we say a lot, you'll hear the phrasing, love the sinner, hate the sin.
That's true. It's incomplete. It's true. It's not a Bible verse. Although people say it is. Gandhi said it.
And it's a good thing to say. And the Bible does say that God loves sinners and he hates sin. But the Bible also says that he hates sinners. God is capable of loving and hating someone at the same time. He hates sinners that bring about sin and destruction and pain on earth. I'll give you one example of this.
Psalm 5, verses 4 and 5. And we're going to show it on the screen. It says this. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes.
You hate all evildoers. We say, no, no, no. God's supposed to love everyone. He does. But he also hates evil and he hates sinners who destroy his good earth.
And he looks at Noah and he says, the earth is corrupt. It's broken and they're destroying it. And I'm going to destroy them but I'm going to make a way for you. Okay. So here's what happens.
God makes a way and Noah follows. And here's how we usually tell this story. What we usually say is Noah was good so God saves Noah from a flood. God saved Noah but the text says that everyone was corrupt and that when Noah gets off the ark he and his family are still corrupt and that Noah sins and leads his family into sin. And so what actually the story is is that Noah was evil but God gave him grace. And God didn't save Noah from a flood.
God saved Noah from God. God saved Noah from himself and his righteousness and his justice towards sin. So here's what happens. We see this story and what we're completely is outlined for us in the Old Testament is how is God going to respond to sin? When they get off the ark sin is not finished. It continues.
Noah multiplies and there's still sin. There's still brokenness. There's still pain in the world. But we know how God's going to respond to sin. We see in the New Testament Jesus shows up and God is actually responding to sin in the same way. In Matthew 24, 37-39 Jesus says this For as were the days of Noah so will be the coming of the Son of Man for as in those days Son of Man is Jesus for as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
So Jesus says when he returns it's going to be like when Noah was on earth. There's going to be a return of Jesus and there's going to be justice just like what happened with Noah. But here's what's beautiful as we get to see this picture and as we get to see it play out in the New Testament God's response to sin is the same justice wrath and grace God provides a way for people to be saved. It's a greater wrath as it is an eternal wrath not just the speeding up of death and it's a greater Savior and a greater salvation. That God does His response to sin is the same in the New Testament and what we get to do is be like Noah.
We get to agree with God about our sinfulness and the salvation that He has provided is not an ark that will save us from a flood of water it's a cross that saves us from the flood of God's wrath. That Jesus came and went to a cross on our behalf to pay for our sin and corruption to pay for our rebellion and where we fall short so that we can have salvation given to us freely forever. It's a greater condemnation it's a greater justice it's a greater wrath because it is final and eternal and it's a greater Savior and a greater salvation. Jesus took on the flood of God's wrath on our behalf so that we can have life and salvation and hope in Him.
And that's what's freely offered to us. And so the truth is for us today it's the same as if God when He went to Noah and said I'm giving you an opportunity I'm going to spell out how salvation will work for you. Build an ark. I'm telling you what to do and this is how salvation will work and how I'm bringing by grace salvation to you. It's the same thing that's offered to us. That we like Noah get to hear what God does to bring salvation through the cross as Jesus pays for our sin through His death and when He rises again He takes our sin with Him so that we can have His righteousness applied to our account.
We get to respond like Noah does. We get to receive grace because it's not about our ability to earn it or our ability to be good or our ability to accomplish something and we get to step into what God has provided for salvation that Jesus took on the flood of God's wrath on our behalf and that we like Noah get to agree about our sin and follow Him into the salvation that's freely given to us. That's where we sit. That's what we get to do. And it's beautiful that God is a just God. If God does not punish sin we have to.
If God does not bring wrath we have to. See, most of the people who have a big issue with God being just have not faced a whole lot of injustice in life. Have not faced a whole lot of people wreaking havoc and oppression and genocide. There are other places in the country where other places in the world where people wake up and go, oh, they're cutting everybody's heads off today. And it's beautiful that God is a just God who stops that. It's beautiful that He takes up the sword so that we don't have to.
And we have a just and good and righteous God who both punishes sin and makes a way for sinners through the cross. So that we can place our faith in Him just like Noah places faith in God and followed. We get to do the same thing. So we're going to continue to sing. We're going to make much of Jesus who offers us free salvation through the cross. And I would invite you to respond as Noah did.
Agree with God about your sin and follow Him in faith. Father, we thank You for how good You are. We thank You for the grace that's freely offered to us through the cross. God, I pray that You would help us to appropriately see our sin so that we can agree with You. That we can know that we have fallen short and that we have been active participants in the rebellion and the destruction of Your good creation. That we haven't loved as we ought to.
We haven't been generous as we ought to. We haven't been good and right as we ought to. We haven't loved justice as beautifully as You have. And God, I pray that through Your Holy Spirit You would help us to see the salvation freely offered to us through Jesus. We love You. We praise You.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
Adam & Eve
Transcript
We're really excited about this new series. I'm Matt. I'm one of the pastors of Mill City Church. And so I hope you enjoyed the video. If you came in late and you weren't able to see the whole thing, we will be putting it up on Facebook and we'll send it out through Twitter so that you can view that. And you've got the handout, so you want to keep that handy.
You can stick it in your Bible. Or again, we've got the paper copies for you over there on that table. For most of us, we grew up with some type of familiarity with the main stories of the Bible, right? So whether you grew up in church or you didn't, these stories are not even unfamiliar to our culture. So even in our culture, there's TV shows, there's movies that are made, there are even musicals.
So an example of that would be Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. If you've seen that, I'm sorry. If you haven't, don't Google it. It's interesting. And then they just made a movie about Noah starring Russell Crowe, who was the main actor in Gladiator, which I've heard that's an amazing movie, but about the only thing it has in common with the story of the Bible is that there's a guy named Noah. There's a flood and a boat.
And then we're all kind of familiar with the story of David and Goliath, which I love that story because I played defensive line in college, and I'm kind of short. And so I was always going up against guys who were like 6'4", 6'5", and so it was always like, I've got a channel on my inner David, and I can take all of these guys down. But that's what we're going to be covering in this series are some of the main stories of the Bible. And most of you know this, but I grew up as a part of a church, and so I heard these stories all the time. I heard them in different places. One of the places I heard them was in Sunday school.
Some of you might have grown up in Sunday school, which is the worst name ever. Like, kids don't like going to Monday through Friday school. I don't know how Sunday school is going to make it any better. And then you had the week-long adventure during the summer called Vacation Bible School. Again, words mean things, so I don't know who got to come up with all of these names. But one of my favorite places to study the Bible and to learn Bible stories was on Wednesday night, and this group met in the gym, and it was called the RAs.
Oh, some of you are nodding your head. Yes, the RAs. That stands for Royal Ambassadors. Fancy, I know. No, for real, we had a pledge. You look at me like this isn't fancy.
As a royal ambassador, I will do my part to help old ladies with liberty and justice for all. See, I even remember the pledge from when I was in the RAs. So I heard these Bible stories in all kinds of different places, and I don't think this is going to surprise any of you, but growing up, I was referred to as a husky child. And so there was always some kind of incentive to pay attention when the teacher was talking. And in fourth grade, I had a Sunday school teacher that had this big brown bag full of flavored Tootsie Rolls. Let's just say I learned a lot in that class, got a lot of questions right, and my fourth grade picture tells the tale.
I mean, it's just... And even in RAs, the best one in RAs was, if you guys will listen for 10 minutes, we'll go outside and we'll play football. Deal. I'll listen for 10 minutes if we get to go outside and play football. And most of the time, we were studying the main stories from the Bible. So basically, the teacher would begin.
He would tell the story, or we'd read the story from the scripture. And then he would ask us questions, and the aim of the questions was to take us towards some kind of moral application. So you may be familiar with the story of Job and all the terrible things to happen to Job. Well, the moral of the story in Job is that we just have to have patience and wait on God no matter what's going on. Or maybe you've heard the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These three guys were thrown into a fire because they refused to bow down to a statue.
And they walk around in the fire, and they aren't hurt by it, and they come out. And so, of course, the moral of that story is you need to keep your faith in God no matter who picks on you. That's kind of the moral application. And then the one you're probably most familiar with is Jonah and the whale. And so the moral of that story is if God calls you to do something, you better do it or you can get swallowed by a fish. And nobody wants to get swallowed by a fish.
And so I grew up hearing these stories, and here's how I was taught to process them. What's the story? What's the application? And so I get in conversations with people sometimes, and they ask me, How am I supposed to read the Bible? Am I supposed to glean some kind of moral truth from it? Or am I just supposed to be kind of learning the facts?
Am I supposed to insert myself into the story? Or am I supposed to kind of like step out and be a third person and just learn stuff? How am I supposed to read the Bible? And the aim of all of those questions is what leads us to what we'll be addressing in this series, which is how do we properly read and understand the Bible, especially when it comes to some of these big stories. So we're going to be beginning, if you want to grab a Bible, we're going to be beginning in Genesis chapter 3, which is on page 2 in the Bibles that we have for you on the seats.
But before we do, I just want to pray that God would speak to us during our time. Let's pray together. God, thank you that we don't have to wing this, that our faith is not dependent on our ability to somehow figure out who you are, but you've actually chosen to reveal yourself to us through your word. And God, we praise you for that, and we thank you for that. And what we ask for this morning is that your Holy Spirit would open us up to understanding who you are and how we relate to you as it comes from the story of Adam and Eve. We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. So again, our story is going to be in Genesis chapter 3, which is on page 2. But since we're at the beginning of the Bible, I want to give you a quick back story of chapters 1 and 2 to kind of get us to the main story that we'll be talking about today. So you can kind of follow along in your Bible if you want to. But what we see in Genesis chapter 1 is that God speaks and things begin to happen.
God says, let there be light. The God of the universe speaks and creation begins to happen so that light separates from darkness and land separates from water and he creates plants and animals and ultimately humanity. And he does it over the course of six days. And at the end of six days, he says that it's very good. And then on the seventh day, God rested. And as it moves into chapter 2, what we get is just a zoomed-in picture of part of God's creation.
So in chapter 1, we see that God speaks creation into existence. But when it comes to humanity, we get a much different picture. As you can kind of see in verse 7, it says that God with his hands takes dust and he forms man and he breathes the breath of life into him. And I want you to get that because it's really cool. God speaks creation into existence except for humanity. God sets the stage for the intimate relationship he desires with humanity, even in creation.
It's just a really cool picture. And Adam exists in relationship with God. And God takes Adam and he puts him in the midst of a paradise in a garden called Eden. And Adam gets to live in relationship with God. God gives him things to do. He has dominion over creation and he's to work in the garden.
There's even parameters to how he relates to God and the things that he does within the garden. God says you can eat the fruit of any tree in the garden except for one, just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat that or you'll die. And Adam's like, that's a sweet deal. I can do that. I can handle that.
And in relating to God, God wants to find a helper suitable for Adam. He doesn't want Adam to be alone. It's not good for Adam to be alone. And so God gives Adam the responsibility of naming all of the animals. I mean, you got to picture that for a second. The Adam gets the responsibility of naming all the Adam.
So go with me there for a second. First animal. Adam's ready. Okay. First animal comes in. Rhinoceros.
Sweet. Got it. Nailed it. Next one. Keep them coming. Flamingo.
Next one. What in the duck-billed platypus? We'll call this one. And I guess Adam got bored after a while. There's so many. It's just kind of like cat.
Next. Dog. Next. How many of these things are there, really? I mean, how many animals? And obviously, Adam was speaking English.
Duh. So that's what he called those things. So just erase all of that from your memory. Because obviously, he wasn't speaking English. But at the end of naming all of the animals, there's not a helper found suitable for Adam.
No helper is found among the animals that's suitable for Adam. And so what we see in 21, if you've got your Bibles, it's the same page that you're on. So we might as well read it. Starting in verse 21. It says this. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.
And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And they shall become one flesh.
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. So what happens is that God puts Adam to sleep, takes the rib, with it creates a woman. And he brings the woman to Adam. And in the original language, Adam sings. That's what that is. Adam is so pumped up about the creation that God had just brought to him that he, homeboy, sings.
He's so excited. And it says that they became one flesh together and they existed in this garden. And I love that God paints the picture from creation of what biblical marriage gets to look like. One man and one woman joined together in covenant relationship with God and with each other. And it was perfect. In the midst of a paradise, there's Adam and Eve enjoying each other, enjoying God's creation.
And they were naked and not ashamed. Amen. Let's pray. I think that's the end, right? That's where we want the story to stop. It's like, oh, don't go further.
But the problem is we actually have to go further because the Bible does. So while we want to stay in paradise where everything's good, we're going to move on to chapter 3. So now I want you to go ahead and grab your Bible. The verses are not going to be on the screen. So I want you to have it in your hands.
It's looking at Genesis chapter 3, verse 1. I'll give you a second to flip there. Verse number 1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman. All right, it's already getting weird.
We've got talking snakes. Hang on to that. We're coming back to it. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.
But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now, we don't get this right off the bat. We don't, but we should have known something was up when Eve starts talking to a snake. And what we find out from context is that this is Satan in the form of a snake. And what we see in scripture is that Satan was a created being who rebelled against God.
And it's going to use descriptors like the father of lies, deception, schemes, tricks. And so we shouldn't be surprised that when Satan shows up in the garden, he does so in the form of a disguise to talk to Eve. And he comes to Eve and he says, did God say that you couldn't eat of any tree that's in the garden? And Eve responds, no, just not the one that's in the middle, because if we eat of that one, we'll die. And Satan deceptively says, you won't surely die. At least not immediately.
And the reason that God doesn't want you to eat of the fruit is because you'll be like God. You'll be like God. And God doesn't want that. He doesn't want you to be like him. So, so yeah, yeah. It's just the knowledge of good and evil.
He just wants you to be like him. It's really not that big a deal. It seems like Eve takes the bait. Okay. Verse six. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And see, now you understand the reason why I wanted to stop at the end of chapter two, because humanity made it two chapters and then blew it. That's what we see in this story is that Eve falls for the deception of Satan and takes the fruit and she eats. And then she gives some to her husband who is standing passively by while she's talking to a snake. That's another sermon for another day.
And he eats of it. And it says immediately their eyes were opened to the fact that they were naked and ashamed. Have you ever had that dream where everything's going good? And then all of a sudden you look down, you're no longer wearing clothes and you're in front of all your friends and families. You ever had some of you are squirming in your seat like, no, that's the worst dream ever. However, they feel that shame for the first time.
And here's why. Because when they, God had commanded Adam, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So that when he ate, he knew the difference between good and evil. And for the first time, humanity felt the weight of rebellion against God. Adam and Eve knew that they had sinned. It wasn't just that they were naked and ashamed.
They knew the depth of their depravity at that moment because they had rebelled against God. And so they made loincloths for themselves. Pick it up in verse 8. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?
And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit. She gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done?
The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. So God shows up again. He walks in perfect relationship with his creation and God's looking for his creation. And he calls out to them. And Adam says that he's hiding because he was afraid because he was naked. And God says, who told you?
Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to? And Adam just dodges the question. In fact, Adam has the audacity to say, the woman that you, the woman that you put here to be with me, she gave me the fruit. So Adam actually blames God and he blames the woman.
And then God turns to the woman and he says, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. And what we're going to look at in the rest of this story is that because there has been sin, because there was disobedience to what God commanded, there's ultimately discipline and punishment. And so what we're going to see in successive order is the punishment that's handed down to the serpent, that's handed down to Satan, that's handed to Eve, and then it's handed to Adam. Jump back with me to verse 14. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.
On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.
And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return.
So there is punishment. Because there is disobedience to God's word, there is punishment. And the punishment for the serpent is that it would be the lowest of all creation. And we see that with Satan. That he is cast away from God. The furthest from God.
The woman would have pain in childbearing. Yes, ladies, you get to thank Eve for that. That she would have pain in childbearing. And ultimately there would be struggle within the marriage relationship. Where the man would abdicate his God-given role of leading in the family. And the woman would fight him for it.
There would be struggle within the marriage relationship. And for men the curse is that he would work his entire life toiling, struggling by the sweat of his face. And very little would be yielded from it. And what we see in the rest of the story is that God makes clothing for Adam and Eve. And he walks them out of the garden. And that's the end of the story.
Now, I want us to time out for a second. And just zoom out. Take a breath. Because the room got heavy. Because we feel the weight of the story. I want you to take a breath for a second.
Remember, the point of this series is to figure out, What am I supposed to take away from this story? So growing up, again, the way that I began to read the Bible was this. What's the story? And what's the moral application? And more often than not, whether it be in Sunday school or RAs or even hearing it preached, This is the way I was taught this passage. Here's the moral application.
The first part is this. The way that we exist in relationship with God is by our actions. The things that we do. That's how we relate. Our actions. The second part is the actions that we can choose.
So we can, God has rules. The second part is we can either choose to obey those rules or rebel against those rules. And the third part is this. If you accept God's commands and you follow his rules, you'll be blessed. And if you rebel against his commands, you will be punished. So let me break it down just a little bit shorter.
God has rules. We obey them. Or there are consequences. And so in the story of Adam and Eve, what we see is that God has rules. They disobeyed God. And so there were consequences.
Everything was going good until they screwed up. And then after they sinned, it was never the same again. And so the application for me was that God has rules. And I have to do good. And I have to be good to exist in relationship with God. Because it's on me to do what I have to do to be in relationship with God.
That's what I got from the story. And so I grew up scared. Scared that I was going, that not if, but when. When was I going to screw up? Scared that I had to earn God's favor or to face his punishment. That in the end, God actually cared more about my behavior than he did about me.
So I started looking at life like it was all a series of tests. Tests to see that if I would honor God. And so that if I was doing well, if I was doing the things that I was supposed to do as a Christian, that God would be blessing me and that I would have an overall good life. But when I screwed up, when I messed up, there would be punishment. And life as I know it would begin to diminish more and more each time. That in the end, I was going to let God down.
And some of us feel that. Some of you, that's the way you understand Christianity to be. So that you feel this burden that you'll never be able to achieve what God has set forth for you. That you're going to screw up. You're going to mess up. You think that the way that you relate to God can only be through your actions.
And if you sin and you're disobedient, that ultimately, you're just going to be punished and cast out. And the truth is, if we read the Bible like it's about us, that's what we'll get out of it. But here's something that's absolutely beautiful about the Bible that we get to see this morning. The Bible is ultimately to reveal God to us. So that the aim of Scripture is ultimately to point us towards Jesus.
The truth that can set us free this morning is that the Bible is about Jesus, not about us. And so from the very first story in the Bible, God's going to set the stage for how we understand Him. And understand how we relate to Him. And I know you're thinking, yeah, but what we just saw was that it's based off of our action. That's how we relate to God, right? So if we're doing good, we're in good stead with God.
If we're doing bad, we're not. I want us to jump back into the story and see the good news that's actually here. So grab your Bibles again. We're going back to the story, to verse 14 and verse 15. Now what we're about to look at is referred to by theologians.
This actually has a name. It's called the Proto-Evangelion. All right, I know, big word. Proto meaning first, like prototype. Evangelion meaning good news. So theologians, guys that study the Bible refer to this as the first good news.
And I know you're already looking at it going, wait, wait, wait. This is the curse of Satan. This is the curse to the serpent. How in the world is this good news for us? How does this teach us about how we relate to God? Jump back there with me.
Verse 14, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. So again, this is the curse of the serpent.
It starts off, it says you're going to be cursed. You're going to crawl around on your belly. Dust you're going to eat all the days of your life. So in comparison to Satan, the lowest of all creation. And then in verse 15, it begins to take a turn. Look at it again.
It says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. So it says enmity. Enmity between you and the woman, between the serpent and the woman. Enmity, another word for that would be hostility. Yeah, we would agree with that. We would agree that there's hostility between us and Satan, the offspring of Eve.
But it seems, if you keep reading, that it's being a little more specific here. Look at the last little bit. It says, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Who's he? I thought we were talking about the serpent and Eve. But now all of a sudden, there's this he.
And if you jump back in the verse, it says that there's going to be enmity between you and the woman. Okay? Between your offspring and hers. And what we begin to realize is that it's not just talking about any offspring of Eve. It's actually pointing towards a very specific descendant of Eve. And if you think about this, what it's saying, it says, you will bruise his heel, but he will bruise your head.
And if you think about it, if a snake were to strike at the heel of a man, it could hurt. But the heel of a man to the head of a serpent would kill it. And what we see is that this very specific descendant of Eve is going to do this thing. And here's what's cool about the Bible. It works together. It connects.
And what we see in Luke's gospel in chapter 3, he's given us a little family history of Jesus. And he's tracing Jesus' line back and back and back. And this is how it finishes. Son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God. So it traces Jesus' lineage all the way back to being a descendant of Adam and Eve.
A very specific descendant of Adam and Eve. And what we see in Isaiah chapter 53 is this. When Isaiah is writing about what he sees, what is to come with the Messiah, the one who would save, the one who would redeem, it says this, he would be bruised for our iniquities. It says he would be bruised for our sins. And as we begin to put the story together, it's like, wait, no, no, this isn't just a curse. God is setting the stage for what he's ultimately going to do.
That Jesus would go to the cross carrying our sin and carrying our shame. And Satan thought he had won when Jesus went to the cross. He thought he had killed him. But Jesus would walk out of the grave three days later conquering sin, death, hell, and Satan stomping the head of the serpent. And what we see is from the very beginning, from the first rebellion of man, that God is setting the stage for what he is ultimately going to do. That this story is not ultimately about the fact that we're going to screw up, that we're going to mess up, we're going to be punished and cast out.
It is ultimately pointing us towards what's true about what Jesus is going to do. This story tells us that it's not about our action. It's not ultimately about our action. It's ultimately about what Jesus would do on our behalf. And it sets the stage for the whole scope of the Bible to be able to point us towards what's true about Jesus and the gospel. And since that's true, that becomes the lens by which we read the entire Old Testament.
It's not what is this story, where do I find myself in the story? It is what does this story ultimately teach me about Jesus and the gospel. It's not how do I need to act, behave, respond, work it out on my own to earn God's favor. It is how do I grow in understanding what Jesus has already accomplished for me and how does that impact the rest of my life as I live with him. Because if we read the Bible without Jesus as the main character, we'll miss the point. And as Christians, we get the benefit of knowing the end of the story before we ever start reading the beginning of it.
And that's a little bit of what we're starting to see in this story. I want you to think for a moment about the movie Titanic. Okay? We all know about the story from history, and you've probably all seen the movie before. You cannot watch the movie Titanic without knowing that the ship at the end is going to sink. Think about it.
So you're watching Jack in one of the opening scenes. Jack's sitting there. He's playing cards. He's playing cards, and they're all throwing in their bets and stuff. And then two White Star Line tickets hit the table. And you're watching.
You're going, oh, no. Uh-uh. That's not good. Jack wins, snatches the tickets, throws everything into a bag, and heads out the door. And you're like, oh, man. Oh, no.
No, that's ain't good. Maybe he'll trip. I don't know. Maybe he'll get hit by a car. Oh, maybe he won't make it to the ship. Maybe the ship will pull away.
Ship, go. Go, Titanic. Go. Oh, he's on the ship. Okay. Great.
Because we know the end of the story. And all along the way, as Jack saves Rose, as Jack and Rose fall in love, as there's betrayal, as the ship strikes the iceberg, all along the way, you know the end of the story. And it informs how you watch the beginning of it. And you know that ultimately, Jack and Rose are going to end up in the water. And Rose is going to say, I'll never let go, even though she does let go. And really, Rose was super selfish.
Because if you watch the movie, there was room for both of them on the door. It's absolutely ridiculous. A little selfish. Right, Rose? I mean, maybe both of you could have made it. But you can't.
You can't watch that movie without knowing the end of the story. The same thing is true of the movie The Sixth Sense. When you've watched the movie The Sixth Sense, you realize that the character that Bruce Willis was playing the entire time was dead. He was dead the whole time. And if you've never seen The Sixth Sense, I'm sorry. I just blew that for you.
But you can't watch it the same again. And the same thing is true for us as Christians. And I want you, let that seep in for a minute. You cannot read the Old Testament without knowing ultimately what Jesus is going to accomplish on our behalf. And we get a picture of it, even in this story. A story where we think that it's all about our action and what we've done in condemnation.
And we get this beautiful picture of ultimately what Jesus is going to accomplish on our behalf. And so as we flip the moral on its head, what we see is this story isn't. This story isn't about the fact that God has rules. And that Adam and Eve sinned. Therefore, they had to be punished. And even though there was this vague forgiveness type thing, that life was never the same.
Chapter 3, verse 15 tells us that the ultimate idea of Scripture is this. In the end, Jesus is the hero. Jesus steps in and through his life and death and resurrection forgives us of our sins. Takes away the debt of our sin and offers us a way back into relationship with God. In fact, it's his perfect relationship that's applied to our account. Paul's going to pick up on this in the New Testament.
When he's writing to the church in Corinth and to the church in Rome, he's going to draw this comparison between Adam and Christ. This comparison between Adam and Jesus. And he's going to say that through one man came sin. Through Jesus came grace. Through one man came death. Through Jesus came life.
So much so that when you begin to think about it, you begin to understand that Adam's disobedience in the garden led to sin entering the world through a tree. And that Jesus ultimately would accept his father's will in the garden and would take our sins with him to a tree. And there he would pay for them. And what we begin to see is that the grand narrative of scripture is to point us towards God's redemptive act that he accomplishes through Jesus. Raz and Josh and Bianca are going to come back up and we're going to spend some time responding and thinking about what we've heard this morning. If your understanding of Christianity has been that it's about your action, that the way that you relate to God is through your action, whether good or bad.
So whether that's you doing really good things, really moral things to earn God's favor, or sinning and rebelling against God, therefore facing his punishment. My encouragement to you this morning is to let the truth of what we've talked about set you free from that. Realize that the story of Adam and Eve isn't ultimately about our behavior and God's punishment. It's about the fact that though we are sinful and rebel, Jesus steps in and saves us. And it's not about our ability to do good things or to act right. And so my invitation to you this morning is to surrender.
To stop. To realize that you have a God that loves you so much that he would send Jesus to take your sin to a cross to die for you so that that could be the way that you get to relate to God. So the invitation this morning is to realize that you get to place your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and for salvation. And so I'm going to pray for us and we're going to stand and sing and respond. Let's pray together.
God, thank you that that's true. Thank you that ultimately it's not about us. God, knowing, you knowing that we were going to rebel, that we wouldn't be able to follow your commandments, you step in and save the day. And so that when we stand before you, we're not pleading our case, we're not pleading our morality or our ability to do things well, we're not condemned because of our actions. But this morning we get to stand and we get to place our faith in you for the forgiveness of our sins and for salvation.
God, and I know in this room people come with all kinds of different backgrounds and experience. And so God, while we may know that the gospel is true, that Jesus saves, that even we live our lives in a way where we don't believe that to be true, where we still think we've got to earn it, or when we mess up we feel condemned. But God, ultimately, we are brought into relationship with you by Jesus. And we thank you. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.
Amen.