June 20th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Image from visualbiblealive.com

Throughout this summer we will be doing a fast-paced overview of the “Big Story” of the Bible – the underlying plot that ties the smaller stories of Scripture together. If you’ve missed anything, you can find all the posts indexed here!

After Babel, people scattered over the earth and largely stopped believing God yet again. Generations later in the affluent city of Ur there lived one man named Abram who was singled out to follow God in a unique way.

“The LORD had said to Abram,“Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

So Abram left, as the LORD had told him…”

Genesis 12:1-4

God calls Abram out as His own and then He makes three distinct promises:

1. Land – “…go to the land I will show you…”
2. Nation – “I will make you into a great nation…”
3. Leader – “…all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

God promises that Abram, currently childless, will one day have offspring that will comprise an entire nation. This nation of people would occupy their own land, and one day, all nations would be blessed through Abram.

So, why are we calling this the “Leader” promise? In Galations 3, Paul makes a very interesting statement about this passage.

The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

Galatians 3:8

So, where is the Gospel in the promise of God blessing the world through Abram? In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve have a glimpse of Jesus in the promise that one day the serpent would be crushed. In Genesis 12, Abram is given another glimpse – his future son would become a great nation, and through that nation would come the Promised One – and through that Promised One, the serpent would be crushed and the entire world would be blessed.

Adam had responded to God’s promise by naming Eve.

Abram’s response?

So Abram left, as the LORD had told him… (Genesis 12:4)

Three simple words. So Abram left. God communicates with him these unbelievable, incomprehensible promises with eternal ramifications. Did Abram ask for clarification? No questions are recorded. Did he hesitate, did he long to continue his life in Ur? We’re not told. All we know is this: God said go, and so he left.

When God tells us about the Redeemer, real faith demands action.

Friends, we cannot say that we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, claim to love Him, and then cling to our past and our physical comfort and our own dreams for what life should be like in our “Ur.”

Jesus Christ is the Promised One. Through Him, all the world has been and will be blessed. He is the promised offspring of Eve who crushed the serpent. This is truth.

Have you left your “Ur?” Real faith is willing to leave it all behind.

Because God’s promise is better than Ur.

June 17th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

mage via Wikipedia

Social media is a fascinating phenomenon to me, as those of you who have followed my recent posts have probably figured out. With a few strokes of the keyboard, I can broadcast myself to the world – pictures, status updates, tweets, blog posts. I can fill these online spaces with me, me, ME. Those of us who are serious bloggers/ writers/ speakers face an additional conundrum – we are constantly told we need to “brand ourselves.” We need to create an online image, market ourselves, make our names recognizable and meaningful.

We human beings have always had a desire to make our names great.

Welcome to Babel.

“Then they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’”

Genesis 11:3-4

God is not anti-sky-scrapers. So, what’s really going on here?

One of the first things God says to Noah and his sons after they exited the ark was, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. (Genesis 9:1) As Noah’s family increased and multiplied, they were supposed to spread out. They were supposed to fill the earth! They had been chosen and spared from worldwide destruction, but it was not for the purpose of making themselves look special. They were chosen people on a mission – to know God, walk with Him, spread the glory of His name, and bring up future generations that would walk with Him and through whom the Promised One would come.

But instead, they chose to band together. They refused to be scattered abroad, choosing instead to make “a name for themselves” and seek their own peace and prosperity and prominence apart from God.

The spirit of Babel is subtle and sinister, and it is alive and well in our day.

The spirit of Babel rears its ugly head anytime we seek our own significance and sense of worth apart from God. The spirit of Babel lives on when we attempt to make our own names great, rather than losing ourselves in Him and making His name great. Babel subtlety sneaks into our thinking when we want good things, a good life, even to do good works apart from God.

God’s response is swift.

So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11:8-9

They refused to scatter, so He forced them to do so. One of my favorite things I’ve heard Beth Moore say was, “You can bow your knees or I’ll break your legs, but either way, you’re going down!”

God’s will always prevails!

Obviously the Tower of Babel has far-reaching implications, even to the fact that our letters to our sponsored child in Guatemala have to be translated into Spanish for him to understand our words. But beyond language, we must be on guard against this sin of attempting to live independently from God, to find our worth and significance apart from Him, to refuse to bow the knee and seek our own way in our own wisdom.

I must ponder:

• Whose name am I seeking to make great? God’s? Or mine?
• Am I seeking to have “good things” apart from God – trying to find significance and value apart from His presence?
• Are there clear commands of God that I am choosing to ignore, relying on my own human wisdom and plans for prosperity rather than obeying Him in faith?

The spirit of Babel is alive and well – in our facebook status updates, in our tweets, in our blogs, in our homes, in our workplaces, in our churches and ministries, in our hearts. But the real secret to significance and a life that matters is this: He must become greater, and I must become less.

I was not chosen and set apart to make me look special. I was not spared from judgment and shown the lavish grace of God for my own comfort and happiness. I am a woman on a mission – to spread His fame in the earth. 100 years from now, no one will remember me – but will the world know more of our great God because of the way I lived these days I have been entrusted? May I gladly bow my knees rather than waiting for God to break my legs! :)

It really is all about Him.

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here!

June 16th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here!

God’s holy judgment of sin makes us uncomfortable, doesn’t it? If it doesn’t, perhaps we haven’t really pondered all that it means.

I’ve been listening to the audio version of R.C. Sproul’s Holiness of God. One of the things in this book that has been echoing in my mind this week is that we are simultaneously drawn to and repelled by the holy. People in Jesus’ day were drawn to Him as a teacher, a healer, a prophet. Some listened to Him like little children going to a parade – enjoying the spectacle and hoping someone throws some candy their way. The disciples loved Him, but were also puzzled by Him and at times even afraid of Him as He displayed power over the wind and waves. The Pharisees hated Him – He was threatening to their image, holier than they could ever be, and scathing in His assessment of who they really were. They hated Him enough to kill Him.

We are drawn to holiness, and then repelled by it. He is intriguing to us, but makes us deeply uncomfortable as our sin is laid bare, our unworthiness exposed, and our meager garments of hypocrisy torn away and shown for what they really are.

The account of the worldwide flood is one that I believe we have sanitized and reduced in order to make it more palatable for us. We decorate children’s rooms in Noah’s ark themes and give them little wooden boats full of small stuffed animals that look like huggable cartoon characters. {I can bring one down from BW’s nursery as an example if you’d like- I bought it for him for Christmas because it was so cute!} We focus only on rainbows and doves sent out and turn our minds away from pondering the full reality explained in Scripture.

The truth is, the world had become unfathomably bad. You think we live in a scary and corrupt world now? Consider this.

The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.

Genesis 6:5

Think about those words. Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.

Noah was the only man on the face of the earth who found favor in the eyes of the Lord. One lone man surrendered to God – surrounded by an entire world of people completely surrendered to their depravity.

God decides to wash the earth clean of all the filthiness mankind had filled it with and start over again.

“I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.”

Genesis 6:17

Think of the worst natural disasters you have ever seen footage of. Tsunamis. Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Think of those natural disasters killing not thousands of people, but millions. In fact, killing every single human being, every single animal – the entire earth covered above the highest mountains with water. One boat, an ark that had looked huge on land but now looked like a tiny cork floating in a vast ocean, bobbed in solitude among the wages carrying eight people and a sampling of the animal species God had placed on the earth.

Doesn’t seem as much like a children’s story anymore, does it?

Why? Why would God do this?

While I cannot fully fathom all the reasons why God decided to do this [and why in this particular manner], I believe that God was preserving this tiny faithful remnant and keeping them from being outnumbered and swallowed up in the utter wickedness around them. He was protecting the line of Noah – who fathered Shem, who would have many children of his own… and one day a child by the name of Abram would be born in this family. And through Abram, the line of the Promised One would come.

Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. It is what we have earned. Any amount of sin, large or small, makes us deserving of his wrathful judgment. If I lived in Noah’s day, I wouldn’t deserve to be on the ark. I would deserve to be washed away in the floodwaters. Noah didn’t even deserve to be on the ark – but his faith in God’s character and promises allowed him to find favor in the eyes of the Lord. Grace, at its core, is unmerited favor. Favor we could not earn, but is bestowed on us freely as a gift.

In Matthew 24 and Luke 17, the second coming of Christ is paralleled with the sudden, complete judgment of the flood. The flood is a sobering reminder that salvation is through Christ alone. We cannot earn ourselves a ticket to safety by our good behavior. Even one wrong thought, attitude, action makes us worthy of God’s cataclysmic judgment. No matter how hard those people tried to swim against the current, they didn’t make it. And no matter how good our lives look or how hard we try to live a good life, we can’t make it without Christ. He’s our only hope.

You cannot earn God’s favor. All we can earn is death. But when we place our faith in Him alone, we find safety in His grace.

Are you repelled by the holy judgment of God? Have you reduced this picture of God’s judgment of sin in your mind, making it more palatable, less disturbing, less damaging to the veneer of righteousness you cling to?

Lord, show us how big and how holy you really are! Forgive us for making you less, for reducing you to a more understandable size, a cute cartoon instead of an unspeakably holy God. We are drawn to you, we are amazed by you, and we stand in fearful awe at who you really are. Open our eyes to the depth of our sin and unworthiness – lay us low in gratitude before you in deeper realization of the fact that your grace is unmerited favor we can never earn.

June 15th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

[God speaking to the serpent] “And 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.”Genesis 3:15

On Monday and Tuesday of this week we looked at the salvific aspects of this verse – God was promising a Redeemer, and as Adam placed his faith in that promise he was forgiven. But there’s also something else to observe here before we move on, something that we must understand if we are going to comprehend the rest of what the Scriptures tell us and even what is happening in our own daily lives.

Enmity.

The world is at war, and there are only two sides – those who belong to and serve God [the offspring of the woman], and those are at war with Him [the offspring of the serpent]. Real faith eventually shows up in our behavior, as the book of James teaches us in the New Testament. Looking through these early chapters in the Bible, we discover clear distinctions between these two groups.

The enmity first rears its ugly head in the lives of two brothers – Cain and Abel [see Genesis 4:1-15].

People have long discussed why Cain’s sacrifice was rejected and Abel’s was accepted. Most likely Cain knew that a blood sacrifice was needed (God had established that pattern by covering Adam and Eve with the skins in chapter 3.) But, no matter what the reasons were, Cain obviously knew what God required. Notice what God says to Cain in Genesis 4:7-

“If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Cain was clearly deliberately choosing not to obey God. He wasn’t just mistaken about God’s requirements. He had a choice that he understood: obey, or sin. Abel’s obedience and acceptance before God was infuriating to Cain, and instead of submitting to God’s authority, acknowledging His worthiness to reign, he lashes out and murders his obedient brother.

Enmity. In this generation, there is a clear distinction between one who will follow God, and one who is at war with Him and His people.

Later in chapter four, we find a short record of Cain’s line. In just a few generations, Cain’s willful spirit seems to blossom and grow in his great-great-great-grandson, Lamech.

“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.
If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”

Genesis 4:23-24

Cain was murderer. He killed his own brother in cold blood and then tried to cover his own sin while talking verbally with God himself! But, at least Cain had the sense to know that his actions were not good. He tried to hide it. He was afraid of the consequences, and God in his unbelievable mercy promises to protect Cain and avenge sevenfold anyone who tries to hurt him.

Now think about Lamech. He’s taken two wives (a violation of the clear order established by God with Adam and Eve), kills a man, boasts about it, and then says if anyone tries to hurt him back he will avenge himself far beyond how God would avenge Cain.

I have heard it said that “whatever walks in one generation will run in the next.” Sin has a tendency to grow when left unchecked. Cain’s line of descendents stands in opposition to God and His purposes – battle lines are being drawn. Enmity.

But notice what comes next:

Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, “God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh.

At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.

This is the written account of Adam’s line.When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them “man.”

When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.

Genesis 4:25-5:2

The repetition in the text seems to prompt us to conclude that we are starting over. Abel, the son who believed and obeyed God had been killed. And God provides Seth.

Keeping Lamech in mind, notice who is Seth’s great-great-great-grandson.

Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Genesis 5:24

Enoch’s great-grandson is another familiar name – a famous sailor by the name of Noah.

A line of rebellious murderers. A line of God-fearers; tomorrow we will discover that Noah’s family is the only righteous remnant remaining on the earth.

Enmity.

What walks in one generation tends to run in the next. So today, a simple question: what type of legacy are you leaving?

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here!