The Country Church Bourbon Indiana

Announcements:

• Current Monies toward Elevator
• Reminder of Men’s Breakfast 8:30 – Teel’s

Introduction:

“Missing the forest for the trees.” – or – “Getting lost in the forest looking at all the trees.”

I never enjoyed math much and I think this is a big part of the reason. Me and other classmates were always asking about math, year after year, what is the point of this? What is the use of this? “Passing tests and maybe you’ll become an engineer someday” were the best answers given to that question. Of course, those answers aren’t very satisfying to a lot of young people.

Not knowing the big picture killed my enjoyment and understanding of math. To me, math was an unrelated batch of complicated exercises and the explanations were in a foreign language.

Have you ever heard the joke “don’t pray for patience, because it will be sorely tested when you do?” Well, I don’t think we should be saying that. Do pray for patience. It’s good for us. However, I understand why people say that. Shortly after I became a Christian, I prayed for patience and the Lord gave me college algebra. I came out of that a much more patient man, but I don’t intend to take algebra ever again.

Anyway, I think the larger part of my struggle with understanding math goes back to not seeing the big picture. What is math? What’s it for? How’s it fit? Where are all these number going? Not knowing the big picture made it frustrating and even harder to understand.

I think that for a lot of Christians, unfortunately, the Bible can be like that to them sometimes. At times, the Bible can appear like a collection of unconnected stories, some of which we fail to see how they relate to the whole at all. The experience of many Christians reading the Old Testament is probably not so different from my experience trying to learn math and that’s terribly unfortunate.

Not being able to see the connection, there have been Christians who have looked at the book Ecclesiastes and said “this is too cynical; it shouldn’t be in the Bible.” And there are Christians who have looked at Song of Solomon and said “this is too romantic; it shouldn’t be in the Bible.” But there’s a lot of good we can learn from both.

I think part of the reason for this is that many Christians have never read through the entire Bible. And of those who have read the entire Bible, the vast majority of them have done so slowly. The fastest that I have ever read through the entire Bible was over the course of a year.

Our current Bible reading plan will probably take us around 3 years to go through the entire Bible.

That’s not in itself a bad thing. There is a tremendous plus side to the slow approach, and that’s all the depth and personal growth that you draw out of that. Each verse you go to, you allow God’s Spirit to work in you for change. I think taking it slow and steady is, in general, the best way to do it.

The downside to the slow approach is that very few Christians know how it all fits together. They don’t know what Exodus has to do with Revelation. They don’t know what Abraham and David have to do with Jesus. They don’t know what Leviticus has to do with Hebrews. They don’t know what Genesis has to do with Romans. They don’t know what purpose the Mosaic Law was given for and what it should mean today, if anything, for Christians.

The typical format of preaching is another reason we miss the big picture. Most of my preaching, and most preaching in general, has a narrow focus. That’s good! We need to know how to love God and love people in the context of family. We need to know how to have a good Christian witness in our workplace. We need to know how to pray to God and how to worship God. We need to look in detail at books of the Bible to understand their message – like Ephesians on grace, and Romans on the Gospel, and Galatians on freedom from the Mosaic Law.

But It can be easy for us sometimes to forget the forest as we look at all the trees.

There is an ambitious series that I have been thinking and praying about for a while. I think now is the right time to do it as we are emphasizing personal Bible reading. I want to tell the story of the Bible in just a few Sundays. The fewer the better because the goal is to help us see the forest and get an idea of how different trees and patches of trees fit within that forest.

Link: So what is that story? What is the story of the Bible? What is the story of human history? What is and has God been doing in all of this? What’s the point of it all?

Well, the quickest way to understand the big picture of any book is to know the beginning and the end.

The structure of most stories is this: the protagonist, or main character of the story, is introduced at the beginning. Not long into the story, some conflict or issue is arises. By the end of the story, the conflict or issue that was introduced has been overcome. What occurs in the middle is the protagonist’s heroic efforts to overcome the issue.

Here is another apologetic thought for you for the morning – I believe that the reason that all the most good and enjoyable stories follow this structure, and stories that don’t follow this structure are strange and unappealing, is because this is the structure of the story that God is telling in History. HISstory. The God of all time is writing throughout all time the story of all time and we play a part in that story. So something inside of us reverberates with the rightness and beauty of a heroic protagonist overcoming disaster to set things right in the end. We admire heroic protagonists because we were made to admire THE heroic protagonist, God. Because that is the story that God is writing and God is the protagonist in that story. The disaster is the rebellion of Satan and mankind. God’s triumph is the assignment of the adversary to the lake of fire and Him setting up His dwelling place on the earth amongst a rescued people.

Link: Let’s look at the beginning and the end of the Bible to help us see this framework:

Text: Genesis 1-3; Revelation 20:7-21:27

Genesis 1

Note: The story that God is writing begins with God. He is the protagonist of the story, not mankind. He is the first one on the scene. He existed before the beginning of the story even, and His actions are driving the story. And do notice God is the one performing all of these creative acts, not evolutionary processes. The Bible begins with God and it ends with God. He is the central character, not us.

Soon we will see the reason that mankind is so apt to think that they are the central characters of the story. And we will come to understand why every time mankind tries to make themselves the point of the story, it turns out badly.

The opening scene of the story, like so many of the best, is idealic. Everything that God makes is declared “good.” The light is good. The land and seas are good. The plants and animals and celestial bodies and birds and mankind, they are good. Everything is delightful, happy, disease free, sin free, overflowing with life and beauty and vibrancy. There is nothing but pure and constant satisfaction and delight. It is very good.

Unfortunately, it does not stay this way.

Genesis 3

Here the antagonist, or adversary, is introduced. He takes the form of a serpent, but he is actually a fallen angel, which we learn from the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. His name is Satan.

The problem that this adversary creates is a rebellion against God and the introduction of sin into God’s creation. After being seduced by his own beauty into becoming prideful, he sets out on a mission to be worshipped. He first convinces a third of the angels to join with him in his rebellion. Then he succeeds in deceiving the first woman, later named Eve, into disobeying God.

Adam, her husband, was not deceived. He was there to see this take place and he knew firsthand the command of God not to eat from the tree. When he took and ate, mankind was confirmed in their rebellion against God.

The results of all of this can only begin to be described as terrible. The perfect world, perfect heaven, perfect people created by God have now been corrupted. The idealic creation where everything is good has fallen. The man and woman created to oversee all of this beautiful physical realm have chosen a new master, and that master is God’s enemy.

Instead of only knowing good, they now know both good and evil. They become cursed and wretched, lose their immortality, lose their relationship with God. They long for the idealic world once again, but they now have natures which are sinful and choose the evil, making them disqualified to be in God’s presence. They have followed after the way of Satan and chose to try to rewrite the story to be about their glory instead of God.

The rejection of God means death, because God is life. All that comes with death is introduced into creation – sorrow, disease, untruth, hatred, strife, impurity, envy, pride, and of course the physical cessation of life and eternal separation from God.

This is THE problem. The problem that trumps all other problems out there. The source of all other problems out there. From our human perspective, it is such an enormous problem that it can never be fixed. How could you ever make it right after this? But the One and only God, the all-knowing, all-powerful, ever present, ever good God – He has a plan to bring salvation and make things right.

That plan of course, as we have mentioned so many Sundays, is the Gospel. The plan for God to send His One and only Son to become the perfect sacrifice and to save us from our sin. Through faith in what Jesus does for us on the cross, to die in our place, we are saved and our relationship with God is restored. We’ll talk more about that in the days ahead.

Link: For now, I want to turn to the end of the story so we can complete the framework.

Revelation 20

So, here we are at the end and doesn’t it look remarkably similar to the beginning? The adversary is still active. And Satan is still working to fight against God. He is restrained for a time while Jesus rules over a kingdom on the earth with His saints. Satan is released and immediately creates a new rebellion against God amongst those living in that kingdom who do not love God.

You have Jesus walking with mankind again, just as He did in the garden. Mankind is ruling over the earth once more in a kingdom of righteousness. But as soon as Satan comes back onto the scene, ugly problems come with him.

There are definitely some differences this time, though. Not all of mankind joins in this new rebellion against God. Only some of them do. And this final rebellion makes clear that, for Satan and those allied with him, there can be no peace. It is now clear that Satan, his angels, and unfortunately some people too, will never accept God. After living in a kingdom with Jesus and perfect righteousness, they still don’t want Him. In the first rebellion, God mercifully withheld eternal punishment from mankind and allowed Satan to continue.

In this final rebellion, it is clear that these adversaries cannot abide with God peacefully, the sin they once chose they will always choose. They won’t turn to Jesus as their Savior. And so they are consigned eternally to a place of judgment, pain, and undying death.

This is the climactic final confrontation in HISstory, God’s story. Although, the ultimate victory was won earlier, at the cross of Calvary. This is when the consequences of that victory are fully realized, in a happy ending for God and His people and a tragic ending for His enemies.

Link: Then we have the epilogue.

Revelation 21

The eternal state is like the starting state – but even better. Eden was lost but God is working toward establishing His dwelling place with man. He will make a new heaven and a new earth. Something unclean did enter into Eden. But nothing unclean will ever enter into the new heaven and the new earth. The Tree of Life is there, but we aren’t prevented from eating from it. We can eat from it as we will forever. There is no need for sun or moon for God is with us. There are no more tears or mourning.

This is the end that the story God is writing is working towards – an eternal kingdom of life, beauty, joy, and righteousness, where He and people dwell together forever and nothing bad ever happens again.

Genesis 1-3 are at the beginning of time. Revelation 20-22 are at the end of time. God is present at both points in time and outside of time. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. He is the central character of the story, and the story is of Him rescuing us from disaster so that we can live with Him in joy forever.

If this can be compared to putting together a puzzle, this would be the border of the puzzle and the rest of the pieces and groups of pieces find themselves inside of this border. A bit of an oversimplification, but helpful way to look at it.

Now, probably most or all of you either already knew that or knew something like that. And you are probably still wondering: well so what does Abraham have to do with that? What does Song of Solomon have to do with that? What does the Mosaic Law have to do with that? Etc., etc. You might read Ecclesiastes and say “I’m not sure what this has to do with God’s big plan.”

Just real quick, because I’ve brought it up a couple times and to give you an example of how this works, I’ll talk about Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes is the book that has the famous phrase “Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity.” The majority of The Beatles song “A Time to Love” comes from this book too. The writer tries to find meaning in wealth and says “it’s vanity.” He tries to find meaning in wisdom and says “it’s vanity.” He laments that both righteous people and wicked people die. He laments that he isn’t guaranteed any kind of legacy after he dies and has no control over what his children will do with his stuff. Christians read the book and say “it’s too cynical; I don’t see how it fits.”

He makes two statements in the book, that help us see its relationship to the bigger story. In Eccles. 3:11 Solomon says “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

And then Ecclesiastes ends with this in 12:13-14 “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

When you know the beginning and end of the story that God is writing, Ecclesiastes actually makes a whole lot of sense. We have been made for eternity. The duty of man is to fear God and keep His commandments. God will bring every deed into judgment.

It makes complete sense that trying to find your purpose and meaning in wisdom is vain. Trying to find your eternal value in wealth and a legacy is vain. Trying to find purpose in hedonism is vain. God created us for eternity and to obey Him. We were created to live life like we did in the beginning in Eden – in an obedient relationship with God, overflowing with life. And at the end of time that’s how it will be again. So we should live with that as our whole duty. Any other purpose is vanity.

In fact, to live contrary to that purpose is what Adam and Eve chose to do in the Garden of Eden and is why everything got so messed up. It says Genesis 3:6 “so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.” They did the very thing that Ecclesiastes says is vanity – they said “here is wisdom, here is pleasure, here is delight.” They traded God for that and found it all vanity. Solomon repeats the same mistake and writes the book of Ecclesiastes to say “It really is vanity folks, pursue God instead!’

What’s the purpose of Ecclesiastes? What’s the purpose of Abraham? Those are the kinds of questions that I believe this series will address. Next week I want to trace promises that God made to Abraham and reaffirmed to Abraham’s son, and Abraham’s son’s son. And then reaffirmed again to David. Promises that find their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus and His people reigning with Him in the millennial kingdom and then on into eternity.

*Prayer*