FEB 2 2020 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain E2 | Creation

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "Creation" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · February 2, 2020
Genesis 27:30–38
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

This is a reading from Genesis 2, 4 through 9. My name is Johanna Stearns. This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth, and no plant had yet sprung up. For the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth, and there was no one to work the ground. But streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living being. Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The word of the Lord. It's tough to get you out of your husband's class over here, so that's awesome. I really appreciate that, yeah. Oh, going back? Okay, well I know how I stand. Fine, fair enough. Second service. Okay, good. The cafe, by the way, today is free. So go over to Alpha Cafe. The hibiscus tea with half and half and vanilla in it is phenomenal. The mocha, the macchiato. Try it all today. It's all free. Go over there and get it.

Just a little plug for the missions cafe. All the proceeds go towards our missionaries. Super cool. So when you drink a coffee, it goes towards changing the world. So that's super cool. And with that, we're going to pray. Jesus, we want to thank you, God, for this day, for the scripture. We love the scripture. We love you. And speak to us today in Jesus' name. Amen. We are in the Genesis Behind the Curtain series. And the key is not just to look at the story as much as it is to look at the actors behind the story.

To get a look at these different actors, these different subjects within the story. Kind of doing a character study on five of these actors throughout this creative narrative. Rather than looking at all the details of is it a 6,000-year creation or, you know, since creation and all these different things. There is a lot of that online. But what I'm interested, like I said last week, is the relationships. First was our relationship with God.

So last week I spoke about God and the creative nature of God. How he just has to create and how he wants to create with you. And he wants you to join into a collaborative process of creation. And that what you are creating is good. That what you are creating is life-giving. The second actor that we are looking at today is actually creation itself. And if you look at the Bible, the Bible actually portrays creation as a living and active being that we work alongside and work with.

Now, a lot of people in the New Age movement understand this a lot better than people in the church. And because they've grabbed on to this, which Romans talks about, they've grabbed on to this so intensely. A lot of Christians have said, well, there must be something wrong. And so we have kind of lost our ability for creation care. And we've kind of lost our ability to really embrace what God has called us to as believers.

And not only caring for the creation, but worshiping alongside of the creation and realizing that we are a part of it. Today I was talking to somebody that's been coming to the church recently. And I mentioned about how I was a little bit saddened when somebody I saw on a comment section online. Where someone said, I want to thank the universe for sending rain to Australia. And it really hurt my heart because, like Romans says, and we'll see it in a moment.

They're actually worshiping the reflection of the creator. They're actually worshiping the reflection of the creator and calling it the creator. And they're missing a father God who loves us deeply. So I was sitting on the beach with somebody yesterday. And as I was sitting there, they said, hey, I've been coming to the church for about six weeks now. And I want you to know I've changed. I'm no longer blessing my house in the name of the universe anymore.

I'm actually, and not even using God. I'm actually blessing my house and my children in the name of Jesus. So I'm going to try that and see how that goes. I'm like, so cool. Let's go for that one. Because creation as an actor in this story is meant to go, look. Look who created me. Look who created me. And we're not supposed to miss it. We're going to look at a few things about this connectedness and about how we are supposed to be connected.

But we're going to jump right into it now and go to verse 7. Verse 7 says something that shows our interconnectedness with creation and shows the differentiation. God is big about definition. God is into defining things and having things have a purpose and a reason. Things have meaning to God. And when you start mixing meanings, you have chaos. And so we see here in verse 7, we see a very big difference between creation and the highest form of creation, which is mankind.

Which, as we know, was created not as a reflection of God, but in the image of God. And as we'll see in a little bit at the end, that we are actually becoming the image of God. We're not just a reflection. We're becoming the image of God. And I'll show you that in a New Testament scripture, which is powerful. But verse 7 says, Now this is important. Because the word ex nihilo, which was a Latin word we learned are new, or reminded you of last week, means to create out of nothingness.

That God can create out of nothing. So he created the universe. He created the stars. He created everything out of nothing. He just created it because he's powerful. But for some reason, when he created mankind, he didn't create mankind out of nothing. He created mankind out of something, out of a substance, in order that mankind would be connected to that substance. Mankind was created out of the dust of the ground.

That is very different than be created out of nothing. And I believe that God did this because he wants us to be connected to the earth. There is an interconnectivity, as you'll see in a moment in the notes. There is a pragmatic and existential relationship between mankind and the creation. And if we're going to seriously follow Christ and seriously follow God, we need to understand creation and work with creation, care for creation, and glorify God with creation.

And hopefully this sermon will show you how to do that. It says that man was created out of the dust of the ground. And then God did something. Remember, God spoke creation into being. Remember, he spoke it into being. He gave a word and he spoke it. And he spoke and it became alive. And we know that it says that the animals of the field have the breath of life in them. But actually, when it speaks about God, when it speaks about God creating mankind, he didn't speak them into being with a word.

It said that he formed mankind out of the dust of the earth. And then he breathed life into him. He breathed life into mankind. And it is the breath of God that animates mankind, which is different than the word of God. Now, there seems to be, and if you do a study, we can't go into this deeply today, but something about the breath of God, where he is breathing his very nature into mankind in a different way than he does the rest of creation.

Man differentiates the rest of creation. One of the problems that Christianity has with some of the evolutionary thought is it shows that we are all just a connected one. We're all just one. And one is perhaps no greater than the other. One is higher, more higher evolved than the other. But we're all just one. And it's all just one piece. Whereas the scripture would say that mankind, because it has a soul, because mankind has a soul, is the highest form of creation in the image of God.

And while the rest of creation will pass away, mankind will go on. And it shows a differentiation. God, as we'll see in a moment, differentiates for a reason. Now, this is a hinge pin for Christian theology. That things have meaning. That things are meant to be different. And that it doesn't disparage one thing from another because they're different. We see there that God breathed the life into them. So once again, God breathed life into mankind.

Very different than he animated creation. And the man became a living being. He became from something. You'll see in the notes that it says, Creation is a megaphone to the nature and the existence of God. Creation, the actor of creation, was the Bible before the Bible existed. Creation was meant to stand and point to God and point us to God and let us know that he exists. It is a love letter from God. It is grace and we can see him.

But God understood that we would have a more difficult time finding him. So then he introduced himself. He gave us his word. He gave us Jesus. He gave us the Holy Spirit. Going in more and more circles of relationship in more and more of an intimate way. Romans 1.20. A core verse. If you have 20 verses that you build your theology upon. I believe one of them could possibly be. One is for me. Romans 1.20. In your notes you'll see it or maybe on the screen.

For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, and his divine nature have been clearly seen. Being understood from what has been made. So that people are without excuse. So in creation, when you look at creation, you will see three core things. That creation is crying out. It is a gospel. It is a gospel of creation that tells you who God is. It says, when you look in creation, you will see his eternal power.

You look into the stars. You look at the sun. It speaks of his power. You will see God's power. Now once again, we want to be careful that we don't misinterpret. Misinterpret. Misinterpret. There we go. The creation for the creator. And Romans, after this, if you want to study it later on, if you go on just a couple verses later, it tells that many people have done this. They've missed the mark. They've heard it yelling out as a beacon, as a siren to who God is.

But instead, they've never looked to God. They've looked to the creation. And it says they've even formed idols to worship the creation. It says, for a sense of creation is his eternal power and his divine nature. That if you look into creation, you can see the divinity of God. You can see things that he tells you about himself have been clearly seen. The Bible here is just basically punking people. It is saying, this is so clear.

And one day when you stand before me, there's going to be no excuse. But there will be no excuse, the scripture says here in Romans. It says it's clear. It is so obvious. It actually says in other places that you're a fool to not believe in these things. It's so clear. But people miss it. And it's funny, the more educated the person, it seems the people that claim to be or seem to be the most educated people, are the people who miss it the most.

I don't know if you've seen that in culture. Now, creation is alive and an active participant in history and in humankind. I'm going to give a couple of verses that aren't in your notes, and the team upstairs does not have them, but you can write them down to look at a little bit later. A couple, the scripture is resplendent, is full of verses that talk about creation being anthropomorphic, being alive and living. It's not alive and living like us, because God does not breathe his very image into us and have a creative soul.

But in Isaiah 55, 12, maybe you've heard this. You will go out with joy. Remember this song, if you were a Christian in the 80s? You will go out with joy and bid forth with peace. The mountains of the field will what? The trees of the field. Did I get it wrong? That's because you're the worship leader and I'm the preacher. Right. It's a hymn. You're going to go out with joy, led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Jesus says, if you stay quiet, the stones will cry out. Leviticus, you know, well, let me just start with those two. It's very easy to look at those two verses and say, well, maybe that's just metaphor. Maybe it's not really alive. There's no life to it. And God doesn't really mean that. He's just using metaphor to kind of get his point across that, you know, these stones might cry out themselves. What is interesting, if you continue to peel back Scripture and look at the ways that Scripture interacts with humanity, there's a couple other verses that are interesting.

Romans 8, 19 says this. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. It actually says that all of creation is waiting. It's like ready to burst forth. And when the children of God are revealed, when Jesus comes back, that creation itself, like I can just imagine, you know, things in the middle of winter beginning to bloom. Maybe you've seen the Chronicles of Narnia where, you know, things start to bloom in the winter.

All of a sudden creation, you know, I can imagine just swells coming out of nowhere and waves and stars shooting. You can imagine creation when Christ comes and the children of God are revealed. The creation celebrates this thing. Why? Because we are connected to creation and creation is alive. And if creation left by itself will give birth to life. If you remove humankind from the earth right now, the earth will sort itself out.

The earth. If you remove all of humankind from creation right now, it isn't going to be like, what are we going to do without the humans? No, it's not going to be like that. It will figure itself out. And so when we live a life that is alive, when we live a life that brings life to others and joy and peace, the very creation has momentum pushing us into that. It says that it is waiting in eager expectation. But it also, when it is disparaged, it has something to say about it.

Leviticus says this. This is really interesting. It says in Leviticus 18, 28, And if you defile the land, and it has a whole list of abominations that actually cause the ground to be defiled. That our sin causes the ground to be defiled. Creation is defiled because we are connected. We are born not from just a word, out of ex nihilo, out of nothing, but because we are connected to the earth. And God meant from dust to dust.

That when we sin, it affects the world. It says, and if you defile the land, it will do what? It will vomit you out, it says. Now that's a harsh, that is a, Leviticus, it's not, not, not for sissies, right? Leviticus is like legit. It says, it'll vomit you out as it vomited out the nations before you. The reason people say, you know, they're, they're, they're very concerned about, there's a lot of things happening where that, you know, Israel came in as a nation and kicked these other nations out.

It actually said the reason God kicked them out, and that's just because he decided that Israel was better, was because they were defiling the land. They were killing their children. They were doing all these types of different things, offering their children to Molech. All these things were happening. And it says that actually it was the land itself that was trying to kick it out. Now, this is interesting because I do believe that when we don't take care of creation, it, it will, it will speak back to us in ways.

But sometimes I wonder, as I see things changing in our climate, if how much of that is actually tied to creation vomiting us out. I wonder how much of that is tied to human sin and mankind's sin and the things that we accept that defile the land. Is it possible? Well, according to Scripture, it's very possible. According to Scripture, it's, you know, and obviously if we're destroying the rivers and doing these different things that we've done since the Industrial Revolution and times before that, it is obviously going to have a natural climactic effect, I believe.

But is it also possible, because of how we are tied, that we can actually cause things to vomit us out? We can cause the land to rebel against us? I believe the Scripture says, and it's pretty clear, that it is possible. This is why it's important that as believers, one, we begin to live in harmony with God in regard to God's laws, but we also begin to live in harmony with creation, because creation will back our act.

It's like if you got into a fight with somebody, you know, and you're being bullied, and a big bully comes up, and your big brother shows up. You know what I'm saying? They show up, you're like, whew, so glad you're here. Creation is the same way. At least this is how we see it in Scripture. This is why creation care. This is why us being connected to creation, worshiping alongside of creation, but not worshiping creation, makes a difference to us.

And I believe that really, and this, spoiler alert, this is the end of the sermon, that it's one of the greatest opportunities the church currently has to affect people for Christ and win people to Christ. That as a church, there should be no other organization in the world that cares as much about caring for creation, I believe, than the church. And that it is one of the greatest opportunities right now, because people care more about the earth right now than they care about each other.

Is that true? People care more about the earth right now than they care about each other. And the church, it is, whether you believe in any of the theology behind it, it is an open door. It's one of the reasons I want to do things like plant 100 trees this year, have our church plant 100 trees. I said 1,000 at first, but I want to plant 100 trees. But something like that, it is an opportunity. So do something in your neighborhood or something, and I'm kind of killing the end of my sermon, my practical points at the end.

But nonetheless, those are there. Now let me just restate, as you'll see in the notes, God creates a pragmatic and existential bond between mankind and the rest of creation. I hope those four verses I shared, hopefully you wrote them down, share that. But because we're connected doesn't mean that we're the same. God is big about definitions. And when you use something outside of the created meaning, when you take sexual relationships outside of the created meaning, they end up saying something else about God than God intended them to say, and it creates a lie about God.

We've spoken about that before. This is really, really important. We see God as a God who separates. In the creation narrative, God separates for purpose. He separates because he's telling a story through all of creation. The waves tell a story. The atoms tell a story. The sun tells a story. The way he created man tells a story. The way he created woman tells a story. And when we start changing those meanings, it tells a different story, which speaks against who God says he is, and actually is a lie.

It says this in the New Testament. I'm sorry I don't have the verse reference. But it says that we actually begin to agree with a lie. And so we see that God separates for a reason. And he separated us from creation. He separated us in a way that we are created, as I'll see in a moment, in his image. Now, in the creation narrative, we see multiple times, maybe you've never noticed, that God loves to separate stuff. It says that he separated the day from the night.

He separated the sea from the land. He actually separated the waters. He separated the heavens from below, from the earth, and created a space in between. He separated woman from the man, from out of the man, to have that connectivity. Because you see, do you see how he brought it from man being created from something, mankind being created from something, from the earth. And then woman, he just doesn't create her ex nihilo out of nothing and set her beside Adam.

He creates out of Adam, so that they will have that incredible connectivity, that they are supposed to live in this harmony. We'll talk about that, because Adam is our next character next week. God separates for a reason. He separates and he does this, and he brings meeting. Genesis 127 says we are created in his image. Now, this is a key point right here. Because creation is a reflection of his image. But we actually are becoming the image of God.

We're not going to become God. We will never be God, okay? But he wants to be so close to us, that he has created us in his likeness, so that when people see us, we used the scripture last week, that we will shine like stars. But actually, if you look in 2 Corinthians 3.18, you want to write this one down. I don't think it's in the notes. And study it later. It actually says that we are becoming, in more and more increasing glory, the actual image of God.

Not a reflection of the image of God. The earth is a reflection. But it says that we are becoming the image. In 2 Corinthians 3.18, it says, And we, all, with unveiled faces, the title of C.S. Lewis' classic work, are being conformed into his image, are being changed into his image, with ever-increasing glory. You are not just becoming a reflection of God. Like I said last week, when Moses walked around, the Shekinah glory, the glory of God would go on him like a glow-in-the-dark toy that I would give to my children so they wouldn't be afraid at night.

You know, but eventually that fades away. But it actually says that our glory, according to this, actually is not fading away like the Shekinah glory on Moses. It's actually ever-increasing. And that glory is increasing in a way that we are actually not becoming God, but becoming the very image of God, where it says, I believe it was in Philippians, where we will shine like the stars. This is so powerful to see that interconnectedness and what God is trying to do through us and through creation.

And we've got to make sure that we don't miss the point. That we continue to talk to people who are worshiping creation because we are in a, I believe that we are moving back for such a society that educates itself and is so against myth and fable and faith and all these other things. I believe we're moving into a society that is beginning to worship the earth again. As the earth is crying out, as the earth is perhaps rebelling and reacting against us, you actually see people treating creation in a way that creation is being worshipped.

Now I want to worship the God of creation and I want to tend for creation as though I was called by the God of creation to that task, which is really important. And once again, it's a great job for the church. But I don't want to worship creation. Let me just encourage you, where are you using creation, creationism, caring for creation to leverage it to win influence and care for people in their lives? If you are not aware of the open door of creation worship that is happening right now around the world and especially in Western societies, you are missing out on an incredible opportunity.

Go get a bag, invite 10 of your friends on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is. I know nobody, none of you have TikTok. Trust me. None of you do. Maybe. Raise your hand if you have TikTok. Sean, Pastor Sean in the back. Erase that off your phone, buddy. Right. So all my daughters and all the kids have TikTok. Call your friends and say, hey, on Saturday, I've got some non-plastic bags, some burlap bags, and we're going to go to the beach and we're going to clean the beach up.

I was in England not long ago and they had a beach clean. At the end of the beach clean, they had desserts, wine and cheese and beer. And there was like 100 people and I thought, that's not the one we're going to put on, but I thought, no, why wouldn't you come? And there's 100 people and they all cleaned the beach and then they had beer and wine and cheese on the beach afterwards. Whatever, maybe that is your jam, but whatever it is, it is such a wide open door that you can use right now and people will fall in line.

The problem is, is believers have been seen to be against creation because we see that anything that the world picks up, we have to be anathema to it. It has to be anathema. If the world starts being really into creation, then we got to be against it because they're into it and they're doing some wrong stuff with it or whatever. We want to care. Continuing on, God charges mankind with creation care and as we come in for a landing before communion, Genesis 128 says this, God blessed them.

Now I love this, this idea of blessing and when you get blessed, blessing has, should have some consequence. Blessing has a landing place. We see that God blessed them and the result of the blessing was fruitfulness and an increase in number. Now those aren't separate things. God blessed them and what he blessed them with brought fruitfulness and increase in numbers. He says, fill the earth, subdue it, rule over the fish and the sea and the birds and the sky and over every living thing that moves on the ground.

The whole point being that God has charged us with a blessing to care for creation. God has charged us with a blessing to make a difference. If you're a surfer or you're a walker or you're a hiker, you understand these things and hopefully what you see happening in the world today is causing your heart to break because it's something that God has charged us with. He has charged all of mankind to care for creation and what that means.

We have to decide for each of us what that means. Coming for a landing here at the final bit, there's Colossians 1, 15 and 16. This talks about where this is supposed to land. It says, Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created, things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him.

Now, Christ being the firstborn of creation does not mean that Christ, I can't get into all the theological understanding, you can look it up, but it doesn't mean that Christ was born in a way that he was a created being. Christ has always existed. Jesus, one of the classic doctrines, is eternal. He was from everlasting to everlasting. He was not created, but he's the firstborn. And what they mean by that is that he is over it all.

And he has also given us authority. The authority over creation that God has given us has not that offer to care for creation and the authority and also all the spiritual structures that come with it, all the physical structures that come with us has been granted to us and he's given us the keys to that and that has not been rescinded. God has given us that and one of the ways that I think empowers us as believers is to take the keys that God has given us and say, I want to look at my entire life.

The way I eat, the way I tend my garden, the way I care for creation, the way I contribute my money, the things that I do, the way I care for the earth, you know, all these different things and I want to start looking at this in a holistic way to realize that God has given me power and if I enter into these, according to scripture, according to how I feel the Holy Spirit is leading me, whether it be a beach cleanup, whether it be something else, that God is going to put the momentum and creation will back you.

Not only that, the Holy Spirit will back you and begin to say, how can I leverage this calling? How can I leverage this blessing to change the world? We ultimately, we care about the earth, but we don't care about the earth more than we care about people. I was, I was, a friend of ours went on vacation and they hire, he's got somebody that works for him and he asked the guy, hey, can you stay at my house and care for my animals and they had these animals they love and they've got avocado trees and they're just really into like, just creating a sanctuary of life and that's something my family, we've tried to do, is just create, even if you have an apartment, you know, whatever it is, just create life, have living things around you, just create life around you and so he said, the guy says yeah and so they go away and they, you know, they come back two weeks later and they see that their beloved cat no longer exists and like is not there and he's like, oh, so they go back, they happen to have the little video cameras and they go back and they see that the person who was staying at their house was leaving at like eight in the morning, coming back at like midnight and then they were supposed to let the cat in and then the cat came to, oh, it's so sad, the cat came to the door and scratched and then it looked at like midnight and went over the back fence and they never saw it again and the cat never came back.

He actually fired the guy. The guy's a Christian and he fired the guy. He goes, I want to let you know why I fired you. He goes, I fired you because if you can't care for a cat and a dog, how can I trust you to care for people? He says, we are in the people business. He goes, you didn't even care enough about my animals. How can I trust you with the flock of people that I care about? He goes, you're not working for me anymore until you can learn to get the basic things right.

You know, I think that's a really interesting and a profound story for us. I think it tells us that we want to care about creation but ultimately the highest order of creation is us, is humankind. But it starts at a base level where we start interconnectively caring for all of creation. And so, this is what I want to send you out. More is a challenge this week as opposed to like I'm just going to build you up and you're going to feel great because we touched all the places you were wounded and you needed that.

today's a challenge. Today is a challenge to you to like have you taken creation seriously? Have you taken your opportunity seriously in creation? And do you actually need to maybe change your life to come in alignment with things that are actually fruitful and good? How can you realign your house? And besides that, how then can we care for people? I really believe that what I said is true. The world right now cares more about creation than it cares about each other.

And the enemy loves that. Satan loves that if you will kill each other in the streets but make sure you're planting trees at the same time. He just absolutely loves that. We want to be the exact opposite. We want to be a church that cares and we want to be a house, a group of people that go out. So the challenge this week, I want you to reassess what it means for you to live within creation. And are there open doors where you can be in creation, share, and win people to Christ?

This is an incredible open door and if you weren't aware of it, I wanted to share it with you. And as a church, this is an initiative that we want to start doing. We want to start moving towards ways of, even with our cafe manager, Melissa, who you'll meet with your free drinks in about five minutes. You know, even we said we want to get to where we're, you know, we're not using things like plastics. We're trying to do these different things that matter.

It's so easy to feel like nothing matters, but it does. Amen. And with that, let me pray and we'll end. Lord Jesus, we want to thank you, God, for your goodness. We want to thank you for scripture, this character of creation, that we are, we are pragmatically, existentially, and intimately connected to God. You are calling us as a church with open doors to change the world. And God, as a directive for ourselves, what we are supposed to do in our lives today.

Let us be more aware of you, because you were speaking to us in the breeze, you're speaking to us in the stars, in the sky, and the earth is speaking to us as well. We repent, God, for the brokenness of our own sin, and we ask, God, that you would repair this earth and repair this world. In Jesus' name, Amen. Let's stand. We're going to sing, and then we'll close with a blessing.