KNOW GOD
So many of the debates today about the universe center on how it all came about. To be honest, it's an endless one. As long as people are curious and hold truth as relative, no amount of facts or information will change what they believe.
To be sure, the discoveries of quarks and quasars are amazing! But the how doesn't tell the whole story does it? What God offers through the pages of the Bible is the why.
What the beginning is about
Genesis is about intention. In the beginning... is purposeful. The God of Creation brought forth life from himself not out of need, but from the overflow of his own love and joy.
And the way he would lead it forward would be through Adam (lit. humanity). A creature made in his image and likeness. That's what truly makes us unique among the other inhabitants of planet earth. Then he placed humanity in a garden of delight that expressed his grandeur called Eden.
A marriage of Heaven and Earth. God's good and sovereign intentions fully expressed throughout creation. But something went terribly wrong.
The book of Genesis. Love it. Mock it. Address it. People argue the days of Creation to be literal, figurative and more. For many, it's either-or. Darwinism. Creation. Evolution. Big Bang. A Cosmic Pool. Random Accident. Design.
What you need to be aware of is that Genesis isn't a play by play of what went down in ancient history. And giving it a number of over 14 billions years ago doesn't remove the figures of speech "as of old" or "Ancient of days."
WE DID.
HISTORY
Humanity blew it. Crowned with the authority to rule, we could take this world into new territory. But this authority is on behalf of another.
And so, through very odd circumstances, humanity decided not to trust God's way of moving forward and seized the power of determining what's right and wrong for itself.
The rest is history.
The Bible keeps a record of this decision from the macro of human civilizations down to the micro of the individual. We have all failed to recognize our need to trust the One who started it all.
This not-so-new idea of relative truth has its roots traced back to the Garden of Eden. It sounds good to the mind, but always is willing to malign and sacrifice others to achieve this "good."
Adam and Eve suddenly can't trust one another. Cain murders his brother Abel... It all ends up one big downward spiral.
But not without hope. Though humanity turned away from God, he didn't turn away from humanity. A word was given. A promise made. A vow decreed.
God would provide the way, through humanity, to destroy the works of evil and restore his good world to the joyful place it was always intended to be.
The rest of what is collected as the Old Testament or the Jewish Bible, ends on a cliff hanger — centuries have passed and no Messiah has appeared to usher in God's sovereignty on the earth.
SALVATION
God could have left humanity stuck in the choice to reject him, but he didn't. The centuries passed and his promise to redeem the world, left undone.
However, throughout the centuries he did reveal himself many times and even bound himself to one particular family — that through them he would bless the nations by bringing his rule in full.
So, the New Testament picks up the story with a man from that Jewish family named Jesus, from Nazareth. And not just any man; he's the God-Man.
Jesus is the God of Creation and when he came, he came as One to take away the sins of the world.
He came to be the kind of human we all perpetually fail to be — full of love, compassion, kindness, grace and truth. He utterly lived to love God and from that love others.
He ushered in God's Kingdom rule by letting us know to turn away from our crooked ways of life, because God's promise is finally at hand.
He came healing, restoring, loving, caring and dying on behalf of those whom He would save — to those who would see his life and trust him.
His way of life is so counter to what we see today, that he was hung up on a crucifix to die after being being so broken down he hardly resembled a man.
But God wasn't done. Jesus lived a perfect life of faith in God. So God raised him from death and he's now seated in heaven, awaiting the time to come and bring full restoration to all of creation and our lives.
But in the meantime, he's still healing, still restoring, still saving to all who will hear his message and call upon his name.
Heaven and earth will be reunited. It already is in progress. And you are invited follow Jesus.