Family Day Sunday, October 28, 2007
What happened?
World Series –
Indianapolis undefeated, BUT Virginia
Tech, 33 dead, 29 wounded!
2 years ago
August Katrina: 1800 people, 275,000 homes
Less than a
year earlier Tsunami 300,000 dead, millions still homeless.
6 years ago
9/11, 3000 dead, war has left 1000s more dead
In the future:
war, collapsing bridges, natural disasters, abuse, greed,
criminal behavior; gangs, drugs, corporate and political
scandals
Doctors and
pharmaceutical companies will describe new diseases with no
known cure,
Politicians
will campaign that the sky is falling – they can fix it
Eventually
everyone will face their own personal Tsunami. Everything we
love, counted on, needed, looked forward to, will be stolen,
killed, destroyed, and we’ll be rocked to our very core.
AREN’T YOU GLAD
YOU CAME TO CHURCH THIS MORNING?
Baptists to Buddhists to Jewish
leaders wind up saying, It’s just the way it is. Hindus see law
of Karma – misdeeds in former lives justify punishment in future
lives – just the way it is. Some conservative Christians
explain it as God’s will and it’s not up to us to challenge it –
God doesn’t have to explain Himself to anybody so just accept it
and move on!!
People try to help by saying,
“God didn’t cause this, He just allowed it”. That’s not helpful
– If I was standing on a cliff
(about to fall) and you could help me but you don’t; you might
as well have pushed me!
Or they’ll say, it’s not God’s
fault, it’s because of the free will of man. That leaves me down
here, on my own, at the mercy of what you might do to me. What
good is God then?
I grew up being taught that God
is all loving and all powerful – BOTH!
Either He’s all loving but not
all powerful; can’t do anything
Or, all powerful and He’s not
all loving and He refuses to help
“God loves us,
He does care, he’s as heartbroken as we are but He can’t do
anything about it. He’d help if He could but He can’t
-but He sure
loves you!!!
►SITUATION-If
God is great AND good, why doesn’t he do something?
►CAN
I TRUST GOD?
►Can
you trust a God who would help if He could but He can’t?
►Can
you trust a God who could help but won’t?
►WHERE
IT ALL STARTED
Genesis1:4:
the light was►
“good”; vs. 10 land and seas-
►“good”,
vs. 12 plants and trees, seeds and fruit, all according to an
organized plan of reproduction –
►good,
etc.). Vs 31 God saw all that He had made and it was QUOTE
VERY
GOOD – exactly what I had in mind; human relationship – that’s
perfect! IF YOU COULD GO BACK YOU WOULD RECOGNIZE IT
►Genesis
2:16 – To Adam: This is
good – TAKE CARE OF IT!
►ONE
SIMPLE RULE
Genesis 2:17
YOU MUST NOT EAT OF THE TREE OF THE
KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL, FOR WHEN YOU EAT OF IT YOU WILL
SURELY DIE…
You’ll have knowledge of the way
it could be good, should be good, used to be good, and then
you’ll have knowledge that it’s not that way anymore!
Eventually it will kill you
Andy Stanley:
“If you eat of this tree you will get something that will drive
you crazy for the rest of your life.”
►WHAT
HAPPENED?
►(Genesis
3:1) Now the serpent was more crafty
than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to
the woman. “Did God really say. ‘You must not eat from any tree
in the garden?” (Is that what God really said?)
►3:6
– When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for
food and pleasing to the eye AND ALSO DESIRABLE FOR GAINING
WISDOM she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her
husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
“I WOULD HAVE!”
►GOD’S
REACTION
(3:16)
To the woman he said, "I will
greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will
give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
REMINDER: NOT THE WAY IT’S
SUPPOSED TO BE!
Her need to be valued; His need
to be respected
►17
To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from
the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you
will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce
thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the
field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until
you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust
you are and to dust you will return."
Because God is true everything
He promised would happen DID!
Everything he was told to take
care of stopped cooperating!
TO REMIND US IT’S NOT SUPPOSED
TO BE LIKE THIS!
If something’s evil how do you
know? When kids get shot in school
you say that’s horrible, that shouldn’t be. Why not?
Bugs smash on
the windshield of your car and you don’t think a thing about
it. Why? “I’ll bet you don’t have the guts to do that again!!!
How do you just know that human life is different from bug life?
HUMAN LIFE IS GETTING LESS VALUABLE ALL THE TIME? What happened?
Don’t be too hard on Adam and
Eve – I do it every day.
Hey God, don’t tell me what to
do. Don’t tell me how to run my life. I know what I’m doing
and it doesn’t line up with what you’re telling me. Butt out!
Don’t tell me that’s the way it ought to be; don’t tell me
that’s right ‘cause I disagree! That way is not the right way.
It’s close minded and bigoted, narrow and confining – it’s not
for me. I’ll be my own god.
God is great and good because He
gave us the ability to choose his way or our own
Andy Stanley: “God is great and
God is good IF ONLY WE HAD BEEN!”
Because God is great and good He
looked at sin and judged it. He had to! …had to
judge the thing that separated us from Him and cut us off from
him, that made it possible for us to say “Butt out!” The one
thing that messed up what He had made good, a right, and
perfect!
►GOD’S
SOLUTION
Because God is great and good,
He already had this plan in place to defeat sin, crush it and
burn it and get rid of it forever
►One
verse earlier - Gen 3:16: I will put
enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and
hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
AND knew what it would cost Him
to fix it –
because he’s great and good, He said, “it’s worth it. And I’m
going to do it!”
I wouldn’t let
you in my house – If you came and broke things and stole stuff
and told me to get out of my house, I wouldn’t let you in the
yard, especially if I knew what it would cost me.
I know this isn’t very
emotionally satisfying, it’s just TRUE!
Until we get our arms around
this, until we come to terms with how bad it is, (AND WHY!)
we’ll never learn to appreciate what it took to fix it!
DENIAL: Hypochondria is the only disease I haven't got!
You may think you’re good but
you’re not good enough ---
I may think if I live a certain
kind of life – judgment doesn’t apply to me
God’s gonna put judgment aside
because of the good stuff
There’s no
connection between your goodness and your health, no connection
between your goodness and the bad things that happen to people
like us.
e.g., Billy
Graham is sick: however good you are, he’s gooder!
Mother Teresa:
died (her abilities, eyesight, health broke down)
My Dad, my
father in law, got sick and died. My mother is struggling with
dementia, living her life in isolation, unable to do anything,
why doesn’t God just take her home and fix it all – NOW?
If you’re so good, don’t get
sick anymore, stop the fires in So Cal, get all the good people
in Louisiana to link arms and say, we’re going to be so good
that no more hurricanes are going to hit our city.
Then imagine that God’s gonna
look down and say, okay, you’re all good enough, thanks for
being so good – I’ll change all the weather patterns as a
reward. And you say, “that’s ridiculous!” You’re
right! It is!
Sin is evil, God is good, He had
to judge it – otherwise he wouldn’t be a great and good God.
He’s great and good because He
judges sin and then immediately goes to work to fix a problem
that He did not create.
Adam went to a tree and screwed
up the whole world and Jesus gets nailed to a tree and fixes it
all.
Romans 5 – to martyrs in Rome…
Therefore, …sin
entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in
this way death came to all men…
►15
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by
the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and
the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ,
overflow to the many! …
►17
For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through
that one man, how much more will those who receive God's
abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness
reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
►OUR
RESPONSE
When you see bad stuff, cry, get mad, punch the wall but
remember, THIS IS NOT THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.
Grieve, but not as those who have no hope
Tragedy reminds us that this is
not the way it’s supposed to be and the cross reminds us that it
won’t always be like this
EVERY TIME YOU
SEE SOMETHING THAT’S BROKEN – IT OUGHT TO REMIND YOU – THERE IS
A GOOD GOD WHO LOOKED AT SIN AND JUDGED IT
EVERY TIME YOU
SEE A CROSS IT OUGHT TO REMIND YOU THAT IT’S NOT ALWAYS GOING TO
BE LIKE THIS
►A
SIMPLE FACT:
IS JESUS THE ONLY WAY TO GET TO GOD: YES!
John 14:6 Jesus
said I am the wtl, no one comes to the Father except through me
Who else is like Jesus – arrogant? Arrogant is saying something
you can’t back up! If he had said anything else he would have
been lying – He’s not just right for me – He’s just right!
I didn’t say it – Jesus did. Not
an ABC belief – Jesus belief.
He’s judgmental – but he’s not
judging you, he’s judging sin!
CHOICE: What have you got that’s
better? Go with it! Dead, buried, 3 days, resurrected – I’ll
believe anything you say
Two women met for the first time since graduating from high
school. One asked the other, "You were
always so organized in school. Did you manage to live a
well-planned life? "
"Yes," said her friend. "My first marriage was to a
millionaire; my second marriage was to
an actor; my third marriage was to a preacher; and now I'm
married to an undertaker."
Her friend asked, "What do those marriages have to do with a
well-planned life?"
"One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and
four to go."
