Origin Stories
Starting in the right place is important. You’ve heard the old joke, “well, you can’t get there from here.” Where we start has a large role in determining our destination. When it comes to understanding Scripture, God’s plan for his people, and what it means to live a Christ-following life, origin stories are foundational.
In the worship services over the past few weekends we’ve been looking at the opening pages of our Bibles—the first few chapters of the book of Genesis. These chapters are important because they lay the groundwork for the rest of the story of Scripture. I’ve called the first few sermons in our series on Genesis “Origins.” God created the world good. Humans in our rebellion against God brought sin, brokenness, and death into this good creation. God was ready with a plan to restore his creation. The rest of the Bible is the unfolding story of God’s cosmic restoration project which is calling us to participate in with him.
To be a follower of Christ is to be a part of God’s reconciling work. Paul says it this way:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:17-21, NIV 2011).
The gospel isn’t only that we are rescued from sin, but that we then become a part of the work of reconciliation as we extend God’s invitation to others acting as his ambassadors. There is enough work for all of us to do in using our gifts, but we all have opportunities in big and small ways to point people toward Christ. We can also support the work of others as they share the gospel in contexts around the world. For example, our congregation has the opportunity to support the work of the Lowell and Sheri Glick in Mexico.
Remember there will NOT be coffee this Friday morning because of the God’s Little Acre Preschool Grandparent’s breakfast. Don’t forget we will be having a potluck next Sunday.
Hopefully we can all enjoy some nice weather this week!
God bless,
Brian