Welcome To The River. City Church podcast and a
message by our lead. Pastor Jason Powers our prayer
is that this message would Inspire and encourage you, build
your faith and point you to the life-changing love Jesus, may
you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow him today?
Before we jump into the message, I want to kind of acknowledge
something today. So Jesus said in Matthew 5 6 or
7 and remember exactly what was said.
Matthew Chapter 5 he said, blessed are the peacemakers.
It's an important distinction because there are peacekeepers
and there are peacemakers and what Jesus didn't say.
His blessed are the peace Keepers, right?
The Peacekeeper changes the subject when it gets
uncomfortable so we can talk about something else, right?
You talk about something and he's oh let's have peace makers
instead. When we since division or
separation, or hurt, or pain, they weighed in cautiously
gently and they bring out truth and they do what they can to
bring people together. And Jesus said, blessed are the
peacemakers has, they'll be like God.
So in the church, our role in our responsibility is to be
peacemakers. That's what God is.
Like, that's what forgiveness is the way he makes peace between
us and him is through forgiveness.
Okay, so none of us come to God on our own merits.
And so that's a real quick. Want to take a look around and
you'll notice a couple things and the room aside from there,
not being any empty chairs, which reminds you should come to
our annual meeting this Tuesday at the video at the venue over
in freiheit Village, it's church.
It's a building that we're going to buy.
We're looking at it. We'd love for you to see it and
see what it's all about. Nonetheless, that's not we're
talking about today. There's a great opportunity for
the church to make peace in the world but we have to acknowledge
that in order to be peacemakers we have to walk into difficult.
Territory are you ready for that today?
Day. Today some of you are like, tell
me and then I'll let you know whether we're ready for today's
sanctity of Life, Sunday. Oh now there's that silence,
right? I want you real quick.
Look around the room and see if you can identify the evil
people. The people are here.
So as to thwart the will and direction of God, I don't see
you. That must have been first
service. They were all in here.
So our calling, as a church is to be peacemakers to enter into
territory where we are separating, where we are divided
in to make peace. And I think on this subject on
this topic, there's no greater opportunity for the church to be
peacemakers in our world. So what is sanctity of Life?
Say it's changed a little bit because last year because
Happened with Roe versus Wade this year.
And so what I want to know, despite the fact that we are in
this room, not good and evil people.
We are on different sides of this issue and so how does the
church be a peacemaking force on this issue?
What we do is we pray. Now, here's the thing.
We are Jason Powers. Here's what I believe.
Psalm 139 the psalmist says to God.
You knit me together in my mother's womb before Or one day
was formed. You knew all of them, all of the
days of my life were written before.
One of them existed, my belief is that God creates life and
Life Starts early. That's my belief and my
conviction and I know some of you in this room disagree with
me. So how do we make peace on this?
The first thing we have to do is we have to understand the
objections of those who disagree with us.
By and large the large percentage of people who
disagree, this idea, what do they care about?
They care about the life of the woman.
They care about the life of the child in this world Watson at
with and go. And here's what I can say.
I care about that too. You know what I care about when
I think about women and abortion.
I care about all of those women since 1973, who for whatever
reason have had an abortion and want to deal with it.
And have felt like the church is not a safe place for that
lesson. I say as a pastor of a church
church we have to repent for that.
The fact that the most broken people in society seem to be
drawn like a magnet to Jesus, but not to the church as a
problem, it is a problem. So, I advocate for the life of
women and I want you to know, I want you to hear me clearly on
this, the statistics outside of the church, say something like 1
in 3 1 and 4. Women have been through this, we
are foolish. If we think those numbers don't
come into this room. So here's what I want you to
say, here's what I want you to know if you are in this room and
your life has been touched by an abortion either yours or someone
else. This is a place where you don't
feel shame. You are welcome here.
You do not have to hide from me. You do not have to hide from
this congregation and the reason is because you don't have to
hide from Jesus. That is our stance on pro-life
now. Church we ready?
We got a lot of work to do. We had a lot of going on right
here because guess what, right? Like we had this big thing, we
celebrate. Hey, and the church, if you
celebrated this robe, you would, if you didn't celebrate Roe v--
Wade. That's Hawaii, right?
Because you're worried about all of these, terrible hard
difficult things right on for all these mothers, right?
Well here's the deal Church, guess?
What if you were pulling and praying and cheering for Roe v--
Wade to be overturned. Guess what you got it?
Guess what? Our job started that day because
guess what? We were in a foster crisis
before, now, what Church. This is our moment and we will
either gain and maintain credibility on this issue or we
will not. And so our prayer as a piece
making church, is that all life? The life of mothers, the life of
children, the life of unborn pregnancies, the life of women
who are caught and don't possibly see a way out.
Our prayer is number one. They would no hope number two
that they would find. And Jesus.
And number three, that this, the church would be a gathering
where they feel welcomed and loved and able to walk out even
the most difficult. But if there is a sense of shame
or hiddenness, that'll never happen because they'll just live
in secret, this is not that place, right?
Let's pray. Jesus.
We thank you that you created us here.
You, thank you, that you love us.
Thank you. That you have a purpose for our
life and Jesus we acknowledge that we need you.
And we had knowledge even in this room that we're divided and
we acknowledge that. Nobody on either side has a
position and believes that they are against God's desire.
So father, I pray that you would give us humility in that.
And I pray that we would choose to battle together over what we
agree on that life matters to you and I am Jesus.
I'm pro-life. Help me to have Grace and
compassion with people who are different from me as they seek
to follow. You may we talk about our our
ideas and our beliefs but may we gather together around you.
We thank you for this day to remind us that they're that in
difficult and uncomfortable situations we pray and we come
to you and we thank you. Jesus, I thank you that we have
this great opportunity to walk this out and I pray Jesus that
you would be glorified by the way that we treat each other the
way that we talk to each other, by the way, that we advocate for
your life. So we asked Jesus, all these
things in your name and for your glory.
Amen. When watch a quick video and
then we'll start. It's really okay to disagree.
It's hard. It's hard because we want our
disagreements to be right and wrong good and bad.
Right? If we want our disagreements to
be how we evaluate and how we how we judge people but I think
our disagreements are just an opportunity for us to go.
Lord, let us have Grace with ourselves and Each other as we
follow you. There's a powerful phrase that
I've learned that I don't use often enough, but I should it
says, I think I'm right, but I could be wrong.
It's pie thing I'm right, but I could be wrong.
And the more I live in that space and the more I live in
that and that tension the more it causes me to see you beyond
just the sum total of your ideas and your beliefs.
We just kind of started talking a little bit.
Last week, we're in a series called blueprint.
We started talking about started this series.
I looking at John chapter 3 and Jesus said to Nicodemus, and
Nicodemus, had made it, right? He was like the kind of top of
the social food chain at the time in Jesus like, listen,
unless you're born again you cannot see the kingdom and
Nicodemus like what that doesn't make sense.
But the idea behind this whole John 3 and really we're going to
talk about Genesis 12 and 3 over the next couple of weeks.
The what he says this idea that there's no new life without New
Birth, which is confusing because we've already been born,
which really gives us a clue. Right.
Re means again And right. So, it's life again, born again,
right? And when you think about rewrite
like like, say a car, you want to restore a car, the idea
behind restoration of a car as you take a car that is and you
get it back to what it looked like when it was new and it's
fresh. And so maybe you do a paint job,
maybe you restore the interior, maybe you put a new engine in it
and there's all kinds of restoration.
Some of it is completely faithful only Factory original
parts on that. Some people say I'm going to
take a 1949 in a soup, it up. I'm going to make it all kinds
of new ways, but if we're talking about new life, that
Jesus comes to give us new life to be born again to be reborn in
him. It raises the question.
Well, what was the original supposed to be?
If I'm restoring a 1950s Corvette, I got to know what a
50s. Corvette originally looked.
Like so when we talk about rebirth, the question comes,
what did the original birth look like?
like, If we are created new in Christ Jesus, what did the
original creation look like that?
We're getting back to what are we going back to in that?
And that's what Genesis is, Genesis is an account of the
first things and I think especially particularly in
Genesis 1 2 and 3 we can find unique in the account of God's
creation. We can find a metaphor in a
picture of what it looks like us to find and to follow him but I
do. Have to say Genesis one, maybe,
one of the most difficult controversial, even divisive
texts, and all of scripture what's happening?
What does it say? What does it mean?
What's going on? Was it six literal days or is it
figurative days is the earth, 6,000 years.
Older is the earth, a billion years old.
Are you raised at 13 billion years old?
You want to know the answer? I don't know.
Do you know why? I don't know?
Because it doesn't say and some real God.
Yes it does. This is what we have to figure
out. So here's what we're going to do
today. We are going to take a rocket
ship and spend our time on to versus.
So the next week when we start unpacking day 1 Day, 2 Day, 3
Day. 4 day, 5, day 6, we've got a better sense of what's going
on. So how are we going to
understand Genesis chapter 1? The first thing.
Understand is Genesis chapter, 1 is an ancient near Eastern
creation, text. And all that means is that
Genesis 1 is a text about creation.
That was written in the near East during ancient times.
And here's the thing, you know, okay, so this is this is where I
get really nerdy. OK.
Because like I'm a nerd about the Bible but I'm really a nerd
about literature cake. That's my deal literary
criticism and all of that. And so what that means is that
Like, there are other ancient near Eastern creation texts that
we can look at and compare. And I just want to pause real
quick and just acknowledge you might right now be real nervous
about Pastor. Talking about Jenna's chili
would park rat. Let's see, I get it.
I understand. Hey I'm going to acknowledge
people get weird about this. Hey sometimes weird is just
weird right? Sometimes the Lord's going to
call us to do things that people can do that.
Funny, he's forgiveness, that doesn't make any sense.
But sometimes weird is just weird, and I think some of the
things that we've done with this, passage are just weird,
right? So let's look at some other
ancient near Eastern creation text.
And let's see what we can learn. And see, we have to find out
about Genesis chapter 1, if you go all the way back to kind of
Babylonian times, right? And there's this creation myth
is called the uh Numa eilish, right?
And so what we want to do is we want to see kind of these these
Myth and see what elements kind of pop out.
So in this in nuuma, eyelashes ancient Babylonia thing, what we
have is the beginning of the story, what you'll find in a lot
of accounts is swirling Waters, right?
Like dark, primordial Waters and some manner of God rising out of
the waters. That's what we find Indian Uma
eilish, right? This God.
Marduk this Babylonian God, Marduk?
Who's always there. Always, like associated with the
elements, he comes out. And the first thing he does out
of the swirling Waters, you take the A spear throws it right
through the heart of this other God, interesting.
A lot of violence. A lot of kind of do that.
But what we find here is we're looking for similar is ready.
Creates comes out out of the waters.
And one of the first things in creation is marred.
It begins to separate this from that, that Chris has several
over here and you go over here and he's creating any
separating. We get to the Mesopotamian
creation, myth of how do you say it attra.
Hey, sis epic, right? And what's interesting about
that is the gods here. At Races, they take clay these
elements of earth and they form them together to create mankind
Out of the Dust of the earth if you will out of the dirt and
they form and they fashion if we go to interesting one for me, is
this myth, this Egyptian myth out of heliopolis, right?
And the reason it's interesting to me is because the Israelites
for 400 years were slaves, in Egypt, their entire worldview,
would have been shaped and formed mush by these Egyptian
myth, these Egyptian ethos, they were surrounded by them.
What's interesting about this Egyptian myth and again, a lot
of the same elements that come out, right.
You got Waters, you've got elements, you've got, you've
got, you know, all these kind of things registering on the
separation. What you have in the Egyptian
myth is this God, a tomb and what he does that's really
interesting. Is he creates himself with
presents a logical problems, right?
Creating of oneself, is difficult to create.
Sloshed, Problems but we're kind of not going to get an app.
But so through all of these myths you find these elements
right. Primordial Waters rising out and
you find separation creation by separation and calling it right.
Like this is that and that's it, creation of mankind from the
elements and then we come to the scripture, we come to the Bible
and it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the
Earth and the Earth was without form.
It was void and darkness was over the face of the deep.
And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the
waters. There's you see the similar
elements in this creation account in the Book of Genesis,
obviously, there are certainly some differences to and what I
would say is those differences are what significant the
differences are. What to me, gives veracity to
the story, but here's the question, right?
Does it cause difficulties to you to find out that there are
these common elements in? Extra Christian extra biblical
stories out there, and it makes you nervous, like, oh my gosh,
maybe we just borrowed this and it's not real mess.
Exercise saying, we all walk outside the door right here and
we go out and hear, Boom. And you look out and there was a
car accident in the police come, right?
And someone that was standing over the corner of the buildings
like that guy, come flying this way, it is going 100 miles an
hour and there is danger, personal reasons.
No, got turning left out and went what we can agree on there
was a car accident that Car got T-boned that car did the
t-boning and really, for some things that's enough.
So when we find stories from all over the world that have common
elements rather than making us doubt those what they do to me
as they caused me to believe them, there must be a nugget of
truth that keeps showing up and cultures all around the world,
regardless of background, regardless of their kind of,
ethos, and mysticism, whatever they all seem to have.
Flood myths. They all seem to have swirling
Waters and gods rising out of the waters and creation through
separation and all of that. And so the question, obviously
comes Pastor, are you saying that the Bible is just a myth
and that it's not literally true?
You want to know that. So where did Genesis come from?
I'm going to answer it directly and plainly everything that
you're wanting Genesis is not an eyewitness account, that's
really important, okay? And we know it's not an
eyewitness account because before the creation of mankind,
we know what we know it happened, right?
So where did Genesis come from? The people of Israel, God comes
to Abraham says, I'm gonna make a blessing of you and all the
people in the world are gonna be blessed through you.
A neighbor has a son called Isaac and the promise goes from
God to Isaac, and from Isaac son, to Jacob.
And God tells Jacob, I'm gonna make a nation out of you, the
promise continues. And so Jacob has 12 sons and
they become the nation of Israel and for 400 years to talk about
this there in Egypt being formed and being shaped by the Egyptian
ethos and by Egyptian religion and by Egyptian culture.
And then God comes to a guy named Moses and says, Moses go.
Get my people. And so the people of Israel
trapped in Egypt for 400 years, they hear a man comes to them.
And says, I am Moses and the god of your father's, the god of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has sent me to get you, okay?
So, now, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
This is the god who is calling out and he goes and God wins and
beats the Pharaoh and all these people come out.
And so now, the question of the people of Israel in the
wilderness far away from Egypt, far away.
Pharaoh far away from that whole thing.
The question on the Israelites mind is who is this, God, the
god, of Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob.
Who are we, who is he, and how is he different?
The story of Genesis 1 is a story told to an ancient people
in the wilderness. The point was not to fix their
cosmology. God, we're going to come next
week, right? We're going to read on day two,
right? It's going to say and he
separated the waters above from the waters below.
Glow. And you look at me like there's
not really Waters, right? And so the idea behind the
waters above is firmament, which means she'll so Genesis, one
talks about, there's a shell around the earth, right?
And some of you are like, no, we have rocket ships and airplanes
and weather balloons and we know there's not a shell.
Okay. So now I want you to imagine
that God comes down to an ancient.
Prehistoric people who have just spent 400 years in slavery in a
pagan, you know, barely prehistoric.
How do you They come out Homestead and God's not gonna
sit down to them and go. Okay, let's talk about light
years. They're like, 200 miles is the
other side of the universe to them.
What do you talk about light years, right?
Like, okay, like to talk about quantum physics right?
Know, God doesn't change, he doesn't say there's not really
any primordial waters, you know what God says?
Hey, you know how you think it all comes out of those
primordial Waters. Listen, if you were to go back
to the primordial waters, you know what you'd find.
God was there. And God was doing it and God was
making it. See that thing that you believe
about the creation, you think raw did it, and then Marduk got
it and then all these other people did it, what he's saying
is, yeah, I know you got the basic flow override.
Everything came from Seminary happen but really it was our God
who did that. So let me be very clear for you.
Or you ready, I believe that there is nothing in this
universe that you have seen. Seen touched tasted or heard
about that. Did not immediately proceeded
from the mind and the will of God.
Let me say it differently. God created everything.
I believe that about been clear, God created everything.
And I believe that the story of Genesis 1 is not the account of
the material creation of the world.
I believe something different is happening in Genesis chapter 1
and again something like yeah but it's not literal right.
Here's I want you to know reading the Bible literally
means acknowledging, the genre of the text, I have to read the
poems of Wordsworth differently than I read A Brief History of
Time by Stephen Hawking, which I read differently from a history,
the history of Lewis and Clark, right?
Here's an example, say we go to Psalm R19 and Psalm chapter 19
begins in Psalm 19 verse. One writer says the heavens
declare the glory of God, for talk about the skies and the
stars and the space, right? This and listen.
What verse for the heavens, right?
Their voice goes out through all the Earth and their words to the
ends of the world. Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever literally heard the sky speaking words to you?
If you walked out on your way to work today and it came up and
said, Sean. You'd freak out.
Listen in them in the heavens, he has set a tent for the sun is
there really? If you were to chase the Horizon
for enough, would you find a tent where the sun slips into
each night? It had to be a big tent
heatproof fireproof for sure or is Psalm 19 trying to poetically
convey. Something that is significant
and Especial far beyond where the sun goes at night time.
Psalm 19 is a poem to be read as poetry.
With imagery and with metaphor and we don't have a problem with
that, we read that and we look at it and we know, let me read
you Isaiah 6:1 in the year that King Uzziah died.
I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and
the train of his robe filled the temple.
Now this is different than Psalm 19, right?
You know how it's different because it has a date in the
year that King Uzziah died. I can go back and find the year
647 BC and the King Uzziah died. And so, what this does is it
places us in a time and in a space This is not written like
mythology. Well, they didn't have Harry
Potter as a literary genre, right where you play Smith and
time space, right? This isn't given an account as
time and space and it looks different.
It reads different. We have to read history
differently than we read poetry differently than we read
letters. So it's important that we know
what's going on in here. So Genesis 1 and I'm gonna
unpack way more. This next week is a literary
genre that we called elevated Pros.
Lots of poetry. Lots of repetition.
Lots of metaphor and simile, you getting nervous yet.
God created everything God made you.
Another thing happens, if you look at, if you brought your
Bible, if you didn't, you can look on your phone, right?
So I read this sign right here means that this Bible is the
English Standard Version translation, okay?
Your Bible may say, NIV New International Version or New
American Standard or the ryrie study Bible or or whatever New
Living Translation, whatever all the things.
The Bible wasn't written in English, by hours in Hebrew and
Greek and Aramaic and along this.
And what that means is that the Bible that you read today and
the Bible that I read today has been translated and translation
is an act of interpretation. Every time we come to a Greek or
Hebrew word, a person, or a group of people have to decide
what that word means and what it means in context and sometimes
those Those people come to different conclusions.
Sometimes those people see something, or they read a Nuance
into a word, that means something.
So what does that mean? When we deal with something as
significant and important as the text, as the scripture, what it
means is I believe I'm right and I could be wrong which is the
word humility. We approach the scripture humbly
with Grace because again I look around and I just go you may
interpret this passage of scripture differently than I do.
But that doesn't mean you're evil.
Let me tell you a few things that we don't have to fight
about, but they just mean we're doing different things.
Right there are a few theological Hills that I will
die on, okay? You can find those things in
Creed's. If you go look up the Apostles
Creed, the Nicene Creed. A Phoenician create.
There's all these Creed's right. These are important.
These are General Orthodoxy. Here's what I believe and I'll
fight you over like not really fight you because I'm not a
fighter, but everybody I believe in God, the Father Almighty
creator of Heaven and Earth and in his only begotten, son,
Jesus, who was tempted, suffered under Pontius.
Pilate, crucified, dead and resurrected.
He's coming again. We don't I'll have to agree on
those things, but those are the Christian things outside a
spiritual gifts, maybe the clothes Cannon, maybe six
literal days, maybe a billion years.
Maybe Jesus Christ loves me and died for me.
Yes, 100% 1000%. Yes, those are the things that
we can fight and we can downright.
The Bible is too important not to be taken.
Literally. And I think, unfortunately, the
problem is we hear that And so, what that means is we get this
wooden literal reading that doesn't leave any space for
humility, for greater context for realizing, they were reading
a text that is thousand years old and not thousands of years
old and not from our context. So what's the story?
What's the thing behind it? What do we do with all this?
What is the story that we say here's the story of Genesis
chapter 1? Are you ready?
Genesis 1 is is a good God's blueprint for life and a desire
Universe lead outside of they want to talk about it.
Real couple things Genesis chapter 1, that's we're going to
be this week and next week it is a good God because what I
believe Genesis 12 and 3 reveal is the absolute astounding.
Overflowing overwhelming, eternity shaping goodness of our
God. I think it is evident in
creation and I think we're going to see it.
Hopefully starting today. Hopefully definitely sing it
next week. It is God's blueprint listen!
We find Genesis chapter 1, we find a tree in the middle of a
garden to trees. In the middle of a garden fast
forward to the end of the story to Revelation, 21 and 22.
You know what we find trees and Gardens multiplied.
Spread out, filling the whole earth.
The Bible is one story with a beginning.
And the beginning of the story is in the beginning, God created
the heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was formless and void
and darkness over the waters and the spirit of God hovered,
right? So I lost my train of thought,
so that's the story, right? That's, that's, that's our goal.
It's a good God. It's his blueprint.
That's what you say. When we look at the end of the
story, it looks a lot like the beginning of the story which
means that we're now in the middle.
We can reference back and go. Okay, that's where it's getting.
I gotta get dare I gotta get that gotta have that right for,
what else did it say? For a designer Universe.
You know what's crazy to me all of the qualities that make life
habitable on this Earth. Also make observation possible,
wouldn't it be terrible if the conditions for life on Earth
meant that there had to be a solid dense layer of clouds?
Covering the whole earth and we couldn't see anything else.
Are we grateful that the kind of atmosphere that we breathe is
clear and open so we can look into the Kuiper belt and look
Beyond, isn't that great? It's almost like God wants to be
discovered. It's almost like God wants to be
found out. So next week, we're going to get
real specific but I want to stay General this week for just a
minute. Okay?
Because this is the deal. Genesis one is probably my
favorite. It may be my favorite.
Chapter in the whole scripture because it's Ritz poetry and I
like literature and I like to do all that but it's rich and it's
full of Hope and it's full of very practical, hope for your
life and for mine. So let's look at the story and
let see where it leads us the story and I'm going to work
backwards through Genesis chapter 1 and 2.
So it begins with good creation begins in chaos.
The problem with it is we hate chaos, we acknowledge Castle.
What we try to do is we try to I to stuff it or we try to cover
it, we try to put up, we try to order it but deep chaos.
Well, it goes deep. Right.
Listen when it says the spirit of God was hovering over the
face of the waters and if we go back to the first part of to we
find that there was Darkness around the water.
So in the beginning God created and what we're told is that the
Earth was empty and it was confused and there was Darkness
but the spirit of God was there and this is From other account
epics, right? Like the new Milas finds these
Gods kind of like, coming out of the water, like, born in chaos,
right? Like rising out of this.
All right, at no point. Do we find these turbulent
Waters, creating or issuing forth our God, from the
beginning? Our God is hovering over the
waters. Now, hovering is one of those
words. What is hover mean, right?
Like, we live in a day of hovering parents, right?
Don't wear that Mom, I'm 27 years old.
Let me wear the shirt. I want to wear, right?
Write all of the things that were that were, you know, we're
working on and we're covering. Oh, right?
Well, When we read that out of cash, I let me get to the book
of Deuteronomy Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy.
It's the end of the Torah. It's into the first five books
Jenna, Deuteronomy chapter 32, okay?
Because here's the deal that it says, right in the in the
ancient near Eastern creation myths, we find these Gods rising
out of the water here. It says, there's hovering over
the water, but what does that mean?
Well, let me give you a description where those words
and again, a lot of this is linguistic, right?
Goes back to the Hebrew. What is the Hebrew mean?
How is it used? So here's how those Hebrews
words are translated. Okay?
Deuteronomy chapter 32 starting in verse 10.
He found and he's talking about Israel about the people.
He's personifying this nation okay?
He found him in a desert land and in the howling waste of
wilderness. Do you sense the chaotic
similarities, right? Swirling Waters dark, formless
and void. He found Israel in a desert land
and Howling ways of wildness. He encircled him, he cared for
him. He kept him as the apple of the
eye it. Now listen here's where that
idea of hovering over Waters, come from verse 11, like an
eagle that stirs up. Its nest that flutters over its
young spreading out its wings, catching them.
Bearing them on. Its pinions the Lord alone
guided him. No foreign God was with him.
So now we go back to this creation of Israel.
And what does it says, hovering over the waters isn't hovering
to go, you're wearing the wrong shirt to hover over the Waters
is a picture of a mother bird tending to her chicks covering
them. Keeping them warm, bringing them
safe, they can hear her heartbeat.
She can feed them all of those things.
The spirit of God, hovering over the waters is a picture of grace
of love of compassion of presence of God's goodness, in
our space. The primordial waters are scary
and our God is present and hovering and watching and what
that means is that God redeems, what that means is that the
chaos in your life, the spirit of God is hovering so where's
your chaos? If you have a relational chaos,
is your relationship with your kids, or with your spouse, or
with your parents, or with your co-workers?
Is it breaking down? Is it chaotic?
You don't know where it's going. You don't know where it's
coming. What I would say to you is
that's always where God's good creation begins.
That's also the problem church. When we pretend that we have it
together more than we do when we make our acceptance to God based
on our behavior before others. The problem is we hide our
Brokenness, we hard our confusion, we hide our pain, and
our hurt. And the problem with that then
is how do we talk about Grace? If we don't talk about
Brokenness, how do we talk about forgiveness?
If we don't talk about our sin, how do we talk about God being
good? If our whole story is that we
are good. What I want to say for you is
that very spot in your life where you're struggling or your
wrestling where you feel lost and out of control.
You feel hopeless and scared and Afraid.
What? Genesis 1 tells me is there is a
spirit of God, the Holy Spirit hovering over that place
Desiring to me. So what happens when the Holy
Spirit hovers over the place, good creation begins in chaos
and IT addresses, the problem of confusion and emptiness.
We're going to have some fun with with Hebrew here in a
second. But first I want to read Genesis
1. The first part of verse 2, it
says the Earth was without form. Form and void, and darkness was
over the face of the deep that word without form and void.
It's two words in Hebrew. Those two words I want you to
say them with me, right? We don't do this often but these
are fun words. Sato who good word?
Righto who say wha boo hoo, hoo hoo, woo hoo.
You can say with any inflection that you life, it rolls off the
tongue, right? Tohu and bohu are the two words
that are translated here Without form and void.
Okay, so this is that this is a question in Creation in Genesis
1 God created everything in Genesis 2, everything is without
form and void some translations say without substance, right?
Like that's the whole idea that interpretation is translation.
So if we're going to find out well how what do we do with
this, what does it mean, what we want to do is we want to find
where those Hebrew words show up in scripture.
The problem is, I don't have a Hebrew new text to Testament,
but I do you have the internet and I can go to a Bible site
called Blue Letter Bible dot-org and they'll have all of these
Greek and Hebrew translations and you can look them up and
they'll tell you what it is. But here's what's more
important. They'll tell you where else in
scripture, you can find that word and what it does it shows
how its translated it lets you know what that word means.
So, as fun as tohu Wabo, who is to say, if we wanted to make any
sense, we have to say it in English, right?
So, Let's go, another place, where tohu Wabo, who is its, you
can't stop saying it. Once you say it verse 34 and I'm
gonna read a passage of scripture just so you can get
the, the flow, right? You can sense, what's going on
here and I'll cue you in on tohu.
And bohu ready? Isaiah 34 starting in verse 8,
this is a prophecy for the Lord, has a day of Vengeance.
A year of recompense for the cause of Zion, Zion means
Israel. And what's he saying?
Here is we were at a place where got were people God's people?
Israel have been oppressed and what we find is God's getting
involved. So the question now is, what
does God do when he gets involved?
Okay, verse 9 and the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch
that star. So I want you to imagine you go
down to land of Park tomorrow and you know, where the streams
of the the Comal River, it comes, there's that place,
right? Don't you go tomorrow?
And instead of the streams of the Comal River coming out of
that place, it's par thick black tar and it's just going to keep
coming and it's going to fill all the river.
That would be gross, right? It would certainly change the
economy around here, wouldn't it?
It would Bad thing, let me ask you this question.
Very important would the Comal River turning into tar?
Would it cause all Life as we know it to cease existing?
Would we all vanish? Would we like d like
dematerialize or we just have like a hard time and we had to
figure it out right? Okay good.
You think it through this well night and day it shall be
quenched it's smoke. Shall go up forever from
generation to generation and shall I waste None Shall Pass
through it. It forever and ever, he's
talking about their enemies. And he say, it's gonna be
terrible, but the hawk and the porcupine, Pine shall possess
it. And the ow, and the Raven shall
dwell. It, he shall stretch the line of
confusion tohu. He shall stretch the line of
tohu over it, and the Plumb line of emptiness, wobbu, confusion
and emptiness. If the Comal River turned to
Tar, it wouldn't cause life to cease to exist immediately, but
it would sure cause confusion, and it would cause life and that
River to be empty, wouldn't it? So the picture of creation is
not nothingness. It is Not a materialism.
It is materialism without purpose.
It is material without form. It is material without.
What now does that mean that God didn't create everything.
Does that mean that I just said that it didn't exacerbate the
problems. No, I said, God created
everything. There is nothing that exists
that doesn't exist and Genesis chapter 1 is a different story.
We're going to find that story next week.
You should come next week. We're going to talk about that.
I mean good, right? So here's a question are here.
The thing, right? God gets involved in places of
confusion and emptiness. What does that mean for your
life? Are you confused about your
purpose parents? I have teenagers so hard time
with parents of teenagers, your teenagers ever confused about
things about identity about sexuality about relationships.
I want you to know where there is confusion the spirit of God
hovers over Waters. If you try to beat and
discipline your kids into compliance, you may get a
compliant kid but you won't find a kid.
That's not confused. Get your kids to Jesus, talk to
him about the truth, talk to him about love, and grace, and
design, and purpose, and show him the scriptures.
Show him Genesis chapter 1, but when you find confusion and
emptiness, listen, you can't fill their emptiness.
Do you know why? Because you're empty, too.
I mean, you got stuff. You got more stuff than your
kids, because kids don't really have much, but it's up to us to
give it to him, right? But what I'm just saying is you
have your own emptiness that you need the Lord to hover over, you
have your own confusion that you need the Lord.
To clarify and that doesn't mean I don't point my friend Scott
and go Scott, you're confused about God's purpose and plan for
your finances, but I do that as a person with my own confusion
about finances in life and purposes in d.c. the humility.
That that brings when we realized, right?
That's why we say our confession every week.
We're badly broken. We need that because if we're
not broken the very best that God's love will ever be for us
is an idea because until I know that God loves me where I'm at,
it doesn't feel like love or it won't feel like but like love so
God is searching and he's confused.
And so here, what I want to say if you're here today and maybe
somebody drugged you here and you're not sure you're not even
sure you're like, oh my God, I can't believe in a six day
creation. I can't believe all that right?
Whatever. Great.
Here's why I want to ask whatever you feel like let's
resolve that later. Let's talk about that later.
Do you believe that there can be a solution for your confusion?
Because what I have is, Someone saying they can deal with it.
Here's what I'm saying. I got a guy.
If your car breaks, I got a guy, his name's Billy, I'll give you
the phone numbers. Great fixes all kinds of stuff,
right? Do you have a confusion problem?
I've got a guy now, if you want Billy to fix your car, you're
going to have to drive it to him.
You're going to have to leave it there.
You're probably have to give him some money.
You're going to have to answer some questions.
You're gonna have to do some stuff, it's not going to be
easy, but when you get it back, it's going to be fixed.
What if God came to you today and just said, hey man, I can
fix that confusion, I can fix that emptiness but I need you to
do is I need you to give me your ideas about sex.
X, I need you to give me your idea about security and I need
you to realize that your job is not your security that your job
is not your identity. But I am and I need you to let
go of all that I need you to give that to me because unless
you give me your life, you're just going to run around
confused and someday you're going to come to the end and you
can go, is this what it was for? So I could die and Hospital.
That's not that's not what God created life for, but he has to
enter into that space. So he comes to confusion and he
comes to emptiness and he addresses these problems, this
is the problem with our creation but he does this when God begins
speaking and this really, this is it, this is the Pinnacle.
Man, I'd just gotten married not today like long time ago, and I
came home one day, and my father-in-law was at my house
and he was fixing my fence, and I almost passed out, man.
I walked in an allen as like, what is your dad doing, bro?
I can take care of my own household.
I know, I know what he's doing. It was like, Anna friend.
The guys are knowing, right? The guys know what happens,
right? And I was like, man, get your
dad, fix it but stopping is a sit-down.
I'm foul fix. I'll take Care of my wife, I'll
take care my family right that God could get involved like
that. He could just come around and
start doing some. But you know what he does, he
does Jason I'm walking around. I'm lonely.
And I'm sad. I'm mad at my kids.
I'm mad at the co-worker. I'm mad at somebody.
I'm not get him in that way. You know what?
Jesus comes me. And I just like Whispers in my
ear and in my heart and just gives me this thing and goes
Jayson, they don't get to Define you, I had to find you and I
love you. Or when I lay on bed at night, I
just want to cry because I'm so ashamed.
At that thing I did again, I can't believe I said that's my
wife. And my kids.
I can't believe I did that thing again, and I hear Jesus
Whispering my life is Jason. This whole thing is about
forgiveness, man. This isn't About you earning it.
See, creation begins, when God speaks our God is personal, do
you know how, you know, what's on my mind?
Because you can't get me to shut up because it just keeps coming
out, right? Do you know how you can know
what's on God's mind because he speaks.
And you know what? He says, listen, In the
beginning was the word and the Word was with God.
And the Word was God. He was with, he was in the
beginning with God and how he's talking about the word is this
like personification, right? It's Jesus.
He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through
him. And without him was not anything
made that was made in him was life, and life was the light of
men. See what happens when God starts
speaking into your life, you start coming alive.
But you know what, he's a gentleman.
And there's sometimes I wish he wasn't.
I wish you'd just like kick the door and I'm like force himself
on me, so then I can go. Oh yeah, this is so much better,
but it's not he comes. And he says, will you give me
your live and just go know? He was.
Okay, I'll wait. And then when you have a moment
and you get confused and you get in, you get a loan and you come
and you're like, all right, I'll try and he goes, great says, I
want you to give me that relationship.
Oh my God, I'll be so alone. I'll be a so afraid I'm gonna
hand. You know what God says, listen,
are you listening? Because you think that our
relationship that you give up, you can't go on without it and
you know what God says is I'll be there.
You won't be empty. I'll be with you but God you're
not like them is like I know I'm Eternal and I know you and I
knit you together in your mother's womb and before one day
was formed for you. I knew it and I created and I am
for you and I'm on your side and I'm better.
But God willing to say, yeah. I want you to know, I don't know
where you're from. I don't know where you came, I
don't know. There's a lot of you that I
don't know in here. I don't know where you came
from, but I believe with every fiber of my being, I'll stake my
job, my life on this. You are here today because God
is calling your name and he wants to create something in
you. That is so rich, and full and
beautiful and fragrant and abundant and blooming.
We have say, yes. We have to let him hover over
our water. Now, next week, we're going to
talk specifically about how that goes and how that looks.
So you should come back next week and we can talk about that
but real quick, right next, we're gonna talk about the days
of creation, but until then, here's a couple things.
I'm just going to hammer these real quick, right?
First of all, confess your confusion and emptiness to God
and ask him for new life. This is if you're in here in
this, Jesus thing is new to you. Maybe you heard that God was mad
at you or that God wanted to make your life boring or doing
whatever. What I want to tell you, are you
listening, please listen to me just a few minutes.
I promise we'll be done in. The second God wants to give you
life and he wants to give you the kind of life that looks like
Jesus. And you know, what's remarkable
about the life that Jesus lived? No matter what they did to him,
they couldn't crush him. They didn't stop doing things to
him. He just finally one.
And what we're told is that he sits at the right hand of God,
the Father, reigning and ruling today, and that is real.
And that is eternal and that's what he has for your life but it
begins with Confession. I'm confused and I'm empty and
repentance that says, I want your way and guess what?
You don't know what his way is yet.
But it's trust and it's fake. We invite him into tohu Wabo who
of Jason. If that's you today don't leave
without that and it is this simple.
God, forgive me lead me into life as you have it, if you do
that, it says that he will. If you did that right now, I
want to do this, send me a text message, I won't Buzz or
anything like that. You'll be fine.
Text the word, follower to the number 9400.
I'm not going to show up your house.
I'm not going to do anything weird, right?
I just want you to go on the record or someone just say, hey,
I asked God to hover over my Waters.
Today, I ask God to bring peace to my chaos today.
The second thing I want you to do is I want you to write your
creation story. I want you to write about the
confinement. You write your confusion.
Where was the confusion your life?
Where did you find the spirit of God, hovering over your Waters?
And when did it come? Like, here's the thing that's
important, right? We live in the 21st century,
want to make our creation story all about us.
I just picked up my bootstraps and I did that know, you didn't?
No, you didn't. The story of creation is the
story of God. Getting involved in places where
mankind couldn't get to your creation.
Story is the story of God. It's the story of John 1:1 in
the beginning of you was the word and the word brought life
and Grace and peace. So write your story.
Where was their confusion? Where did you find God?
And what difference did he make? Where do you find your peace?
Where do you find your fullness? And if you Find your story.
If you write your story and you find that you can't identify
those, that's okay. To start asking Jesus to fill
the emptiness to fill the space, last speak to confusion, and
emptiness. In Jesus name, when you talk to
your neighbors and you hear their life is confused taught
them, it's great to talk to them about church, but talking about
Jesus. Talking about your story and I
got all, I'm not a theologian. Good, they don't want a
theologian. Do read theologians they don't
care about theologians they want to know that it works.
They want to know your story. They want to know where you find
Jesus. They want to know where you find
God. They want to know what God is,
creating all around us and as his church, that's our story.
So next week, we're going to mention that next week.
Going to talk about the specific days.
I wasn't sure if I said that enough, you should come back.
It's going to be good. It's going to be neat, but
listen, here's the deal, if you believe the story of Genesis, 1
means that there was absolute nothing.
And then God said, and suddenly from a material nothingness into
full right. Guess what?
Yeah, I think I'm right. You may be right.
I could be wrong. We'll find out someday.
We're not going to divide over that, because here's what I know
whether he did, it six days or a million years, that all came
from God. And without him, without him,
there is still only confusion and darkness.
And Chaos. That's what he came to remedy.
So Jesus, we invite you into our lives to remedy those things in
US. I do pray for anybody in here.
That doesn't know you yet. Maybe they're maybe they came
today because of the confusion, maybe they came today because of
the emptiness and they're looking and they're searching.
And if that's you and here, will you just pray that father,
forgive me? Jesus, fill my life.
If you do that, he said he'll put his spirit in you to lead
you and guide you and redeem you and restore, you and Lead You In
to New Life. And Jesus.
I pray that you would show us all the area.
We don't just have one story of chaos and emptiness, we have a
million of them. I pray that you would show that.
I pray that you would give us the ability to put words to it
and I pray, father, that your church would be active in
aggressively addressing the darkness and the sins, and this
world is sins of racism. The sins of Poverty.
This sins of all of them. Forgive us set us free.
Let us be alive in you. Jesus, we ask these things in
your name and for your glory. Amen.
Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about
experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and
community. And we hope that you've been
able to experience that today as grateful.
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May the Lord bless, and keep you in all Grace and peace.