God's World Created: Human Limitations

Preached by Alec Krause on 4/21/24

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We're startup church. We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together. And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect. Be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more. You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that. We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today. Super fired up to be a part of it. Um, this is the first thread Sunday I've actually been able to preach on. So I'm like really, Josh has gotten two of them. This is my first one. So I'm a little, I'm not going to say I'm jealous, but it's exciting to be a part of it. You know, and as we've been going through this thread, if you don't know what we're doing, we're basically starting at Genesis one and we're working through the whole Bible and it's like a three year plan to go through the whole Bible basically. And, and what's really neat about it is the very specific focus on story and spirituality, and that's kind of what we're doing. I like it because I think it's very often, it's very common for us, at least in our body of the churches, we'll go through, we'll look at this book of the Bible, or we'll might look at a theme that might weave itself through the Bible over the course of a month or so. But what we're doing now is we're actually looking at the story of the Bible, the narrative and how it plays out. And today we're looking at Genesis three, which is commonly known as the first sin or the fall or something like that. And so often we look at this story through the context of the whole Bible, looking back at it. And I think there's a lot of great reasons to do that, right? That's one of the reasons why God gives us the whole Bible. What I want to do today is I would like to look at Genesis three within the context of Genesis one and two though, and kind of watch how the narrative of the Bible from Genesis one and two, what we can learn from just those three chapters, looking back at it as if we're pretending that we're reading it for the first time, right? So that's what we're planning on doing today. You can turn over to Genesis two. We're going to be there in a couple of minutes before we jump right into the scripture though, there's a brief, I guess, story or memory or something I'd like to share that I think gives a little bit of context to where I'm coming from with this scripture. So from the time I was about 19 or 20 years old until I moved to Michigan, which is when I was 24, I worked at this place. It doesn't matter what it was called, but I worked there for a couple of years. And over the course of time, I developed a friendship with one guy specifically. He, we shared a desk and it was an interesting relationship because he was, you know, quite a few years older than me. He was way more educated than I was when it came to like a post high school education and stuff like that. And, uh, and I grew up going to a Christian school. And even though I wasn't following what the Bible was saying for most of my life, um, I would at least identify myself, myself as a Christian. And he very specifically identified himself as an atheist, actually. Now I got baptized when I was 21 years old. So over the course of time that we knew each other, he saw me not living as a Christian, then go through my conversion and then live as a Christian afterwards. Right. So he got to really see that transformation of my life. And one of the things that I think was really helpful for me, and this is somewhat of an aside, but if you don't have an atheist friend who can challenge your faith, I would say get one, because there's not very many things that'll like challenge your faith more than that. And it actually helps you think like, why do, why do I believe this? And what do I think about this? And what, what, what does the Bible really mean about this stuff? And I think it really helped me in my walk with God because we would get in these discussions often about, about the Bible and theology and spirituality and stuff like that. And obviously it had a profound effect on me because it's however many years later, and I'm still talking about it on a Sunday morning. And then there was one day specifically where we were kind of going back and forth talking about whatever theology or religion or something like that. And he asked me this question and he said, Alec, there are thousands of different religions that have been around since the beginning of human history. How can you sit there and tell me that your religion is the right one? And I was about 21, 22 years old, and I rebutted in this way, and I thought it was really clever at the time. I said, well, let me ask you a question. Over the course of all of human history, there's been thousands of different people that have believed in all these different deities. How can you sit there and say that there's no stock in any of it? How is all of it not true? Where does religion come from then? And what he said to me, it hit me really hard actually when I was that age. And he said, well, Alec, let me explain this to you. People are very afraid of things. And there's these small tribes of people and they're isolated. They look out at the world and they see death and they see destruction. And what they do is they come up with these theologies to help them cope with death, especially when they're so much more exposed to it than we are now. And I remember hearing that and I was like kind of taken aback at the time. I'm like, wow, I don't really know what to say to that. That's not a very satisfying answer to me, but I couldn't really figure out why. Why is this not a satisfying answer? And I thought about it for a long time and I still think about this often now, years later, why do people, why are there so many religions? Why do I believe in Christianity and stuff like that? And over the course of the past couple of years, I've actually spent a lot of time mulling over that conversation in my head and thinking about it. And like, where does this come from? And I can pretty safely say now, like where I'm at now, that I can identify why that statement is wrong and where it went wrong. When I look at the Bible, I don't believe that most of what the Bible is talking about is life after death. Now, I'm not saying that it's not there, right? Obviously, there's conversation about heaven and resurrection and stuff like that. But I will say it doesn't seem to me to be the primary focus of the Bible. When I go and I read the Bible, I feel like there's two, maybe three questions that the Bible really is trying to address. And it's these two questions right here. Who is God and who am I? You know, when anybody comes to the Bible or starts studying, studying out the Bible or tries to become a Christian, those are the two questions that they generally are asking themselves. Who is God? Right. And we're looking at the Bible from Genesis one to Genesis three. So I think that we actually learn a lot about God in these opening chapters of the Bible. Who is he? Well, God orders chaos, right? We looked at that. He created the world. He's the creator. And he took this chaotic nothingness and he turned it into something beautiful and he did it out of love. We know that. We know that from Genesis one and two. And OK, well, then who am I? Well, we're the created, right? That's what we know about ourselves so far. We were created by God and we were created in love. You know, Josh put it so well last week. What is my purpose? You know, and we look out at the world and we see we see stars just above us, right? Stars and clouds and the vastness of the universe. And we look out at the world around us and we see mountains and we see oceans and we look and we see cities full of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. It's like eight billion people or something on the planet. It's just the natural question. Philosophers and psychologists have been trying to identify this. What is my purpose? Am I important? Am I not important? Are we just ants here on some cosmic ant farm? And what the Bible says is that we are God's creation and we were created in his image and we were created very good. Those are the words used in the Bible, created to be God's partner here on Earth. Josh used a reference here that I thought was really helpful last week. He referenced the Lion King, right? When Simba, he looks into the water and he sees a reflection of his father, right? And that's what God created us to be here on Earth. We are created to reflect our father to each other and how we act and how we love and how we live and reflect our father to the world out there, like the creation itself and how we cultivate it and take care of it and nurture it. That's what we were created for. So then, okay, so if God is good and God orders chaos and I am created in God's image, then the natural question that follows is what happened? Why are things the way they are? How come, right? I'm going to go home today. How come I, when I go home today and I flip on the news, I'm going to see war. I'm going to see death. I'm going to see chaos and destruction. How come during the course of this week, I'm going to be driving down 131 and some guy is going to cut me off and start honking his horn and flipping me off. Why is that going to happen this week? How come I'm going to go home and sometime this week, me and my wife, we're going to have some disagreement about doing the dishes and then we're going to kind of be snippy with each other. And then there's going to be like this feeling in the house for about 20, 25 minutes until we actually sit down and address it and pray about it. Why is that happening in this world? And that's what we're going to be addressing today. And so now if you've been following along, you're probably thinking, yep, I knew we were getting here. This is the sin day. We're talking about sin today. Yes. All right. I've been rallying, trying to get myself there. And if this is your first time here, you might be thinking to yourself, great. I picked a great first day to come to church, right? We're doing the sin thing today. I just want to stop and pause for a second. Here's the thing. You might not know this, but the word sin is actually not used in this story. The word sin actually doesn't appear until probably next week when we talk about Cain and Abel, so whatever sin is, we need to be looking at it through the core, through the lens of whatever is happening today, whatever's happening in this story, right? Through, let's let the narrative of the Bible teach us as we go along. Amen. So the title for today's lesson is human limitations. And the first point that I have is reframing limits, right? We're in Genesis chapter two. It says, starting in verse 15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it, you will certainly die. We looked at the scripture a couple of weeks ago, right? And there's a couple of things that really jump out to me that I want to talk about real quick. You know, God gives man direction, right? He gives them a task. He says, take care of the earth and work it. You know, and we've talked about this, but what he does is he puts guardrails off, right? He gives them this tree. You know, he says, Hey, do this thing, but don't do it this way. And I've heard a lot of discussion through my life about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And I've heard people say, okay, hold on. If God is all knowing, then why would he put this tree there in the first place, if he knew what was going to happen? And I've even heard people who are a lot more, um, maybe frustrated with, with the Bible and the biblical story. And they think, what kind of God does something like that? How does a God who apparently loves his creation sets people up for failure? And I just want to talk about actually how much of a blessing this tree is for a second, before we even jump into the, the meat of what we're talking about. One is, I think it shows that God's not a tyrant, you know, and this is so fundamentally and foundationally true to our understanding of who God is. Over the course of the whole Bible, you see stories that people love to have a lot of flair and people love to latch onto about, um, God destroying cities or sending a flood or tying himself to this people group to conquer this, this, this area. Right. But what we, what we must understand about God's character when we read the Bible is that first and foremost, fundamentally to God's character, he is not a tyrant. He is not a tyrant. God gives you, me, all of us the ability to not follow him. We all have the ability to eat from that tree today. Every one of us does. God's not a tyrant. And the second thing that I think I want to, that I want to point out here is have you ever actually been given free reign over anything? Um, like maybe you're at work, right? And your boss says, Hey, I want you to do this thing. And he doesn't give you any direction, no guardrails or nothing. It's actually not very helpful. You know, it's, it's, it's not like, it doesn't bring a whole lot of security to me. Like, like, okay, is this important? Is there a wrong way to do this? Is anybody going to follow up with me? Does anybody actually care about what I'm doing? But what God does here is he's, he gives them a task and then he shows, Hey, there's weight to this. It's actually really important, you know, and I want you to do it. There's a way that you're created in a way that the world is created and I want it to be done in a right way. There's, there's guardrails, right? He gives a live, uh, direction with limitation. What's really interesting to me about, about this story and about humanity as a whole, and I think it speaks a lot to humanity as a whole, is we love the idea of limitless possibilities, right? You know, a couple of goofy examples or a goofy example is the smartphone, right? You look at the smartphone and over the past 10 years, how many versions and updates has have come out, right? And we, you know, like these engineers, these scientists, and they, they take this technology and they just try to, you know, squeeze every little bit of progress out of all of these things. And we, we're consumers. We love it. Every year we're like, or every couple of years we're like, Oh, I'm going to update. I'm going to update my phone because we want to, we want the, we love the AI. We love the, we want to inject the next big thing. We want to be able to just tap our phone and pay for stuff instead of paying for paying with cash, you know, or I don't even have to swipe my card anymore. We haven't had to do that in years, right? I'm going to pull my phone out, tap it and move on. I don't even have to talk to a person when I check out at the grocery store anymore. It's insane, right? We love it. We love progress. We love limitless possibilities. You know, money is another thing. No one is ever like, you know, I totally have enough money. I don't want any more. We want, we want our selves to have more money. We want our families to have more money. We want our nation to have more money. If you're a business owner, you want your business to have more money. You would need to generate wealth. We love to generate wealth. It's so important to us. We put so much stock in it. It's how we survive. A little bit more serious is sex. Over the past 100 years, 150 years, how much have we as a Western culture pushed the boundaries of what's considered appropriate sexual behavior, right? A hundred, 150 years ago, it was something that was known and well understood to be something that was holy and remained within the confines of marriage, and now it's just understood how that, but if you're like a young person, you're going to be going out and experimenting with people. That's just what our culture is. We're getting touchy now. The newest thing in the Western world is gender, for all of human history has been male and female, and now modern science pushes this, now we can give people hormones, we can try to use psychology to try to like, we can kind of weigh this a little bit more. We push the limits of what's considered, of our limits. We push limits. We push boundaries. That's what we do as people, and we love it as a humanity. Turn over to Genesis chapter three. Oh, it's a little bit longer of a scripture. It says, now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat from the fruit, eat the fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die. You will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 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. Then the eyes of both of them were open and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. This is the overarching limit that we as humanity break is that we are not God. We are not God. There's this appeal from the serpent as we read it. He says, you will be like God. And there's layers to this. And I think there's a couple of problems with this that I want to just point out here. One, man was already created in God's image and likeness. We know that. It says in Genesis chapter one, God said, let us make mankind in our image and in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over livestock and all the wild animals and over all creatures that move along the ground. Right. We're given, we're created in the image and likeness of God. And, and then we were given authority over God's creation. And then we were given this ability to actually generate life through children. So yes, we are, we are made out of dirt, but being made out of dirt, we're actually as close to being like God as we possibly can be. Also, what do we know about God so far as God actually stopped creating. God actually limited how much he was going to create. He put a limit on himself, right? He created for six days. And then on the seventh day, he, he ceased. He rested. You know, God could have kept creating forever. He totally could have, and it was well within his rights to create forever. But instead what he does is he creates for six days, then he stops and then he gives authority to other people and lets them do the creating and the cultivating and the caring of the planet that he created. He gets, he gives it, right? So when we look at the story, it actually, to me, doesn't really seem like Adam and Eve are at all interested in being like God. It actually seems to me what that, what they really want to do is they want to replace God and there's a fundamental truth here that there are certain things that only God can do. And there are certain things that only God ought to do. You know, when we, we look out right at the, at our lives and this is something that I struggle with, you know, and when I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm fearful, I'm fearful at the world and I decide, Oh, maybe if I picked up extra hours at work, or maybe if I got another job and I could, I could spend my time doing this thing, then, then, then I, then I'll be safe. Then I'll create safety for myself. And then what I do is I neglect my family and I neglect my church and I neglect God, right? So often we look out at the world and we see someone and we're like, Oh, I should reach out. I should share the gospel with that person. But you know, that person's not interested. He looks this way or she looks this way. They, he's got a tie on, he's got, he's got better things to do, or he's got a face tattoo. He's not interested in doing this. Right. And what I'm doing is I'm passing judgment on that. That's not mine to pass on someone. God gave me the, the responsibility of sharing his word. And instead I'm seizing his job and passing judgment on someone, or I'm seizing his job to take care of, of myself instead of trusting in his portion. Right. And why, you know, so why, why do we do this? Why do we seize the opportunity to take God's place? In verse six, it says that Eve saw that the fruit, the fruit was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom. You know, you get this feeling that Eve felt like she didn't have enough, you know, that she thought that maybe even God was holding out on her or maybe even God was slighting her in some way. The other day I was, uh, I was at work the other day and we got done with this job early and with this guy, the guy that we did the job for, he wanted to buy lunch for us actually. So me and the three guys that I, the two other guys that I work with, and then this guy, we went out to Jack's pizza actually for the lunch buffet. I don't know if you've been there for their lunch buffet. It's actually pretty good. And, uh, you know, we go and I get my plate and I go up to the lunch buffet, you know, and I'm all excited cause I really love Supreme pizza, you know, with like the olives and stuff like that. I don't know why I love it so much. And I, I go up, Lorraine's shaking her head at me. I go up and I'm like, Oh man, there's no Supreme pizza up here. And then I was like, really, really? There's no Supreme pizza up here. And then this like movie started playing in my head that they're like, you know, they're in the back, they're goofing off. They're not paying attention to what they're like, how dare they? I felt so slighted by Jack's pizza for not having the Supreme pizza that I wanted. And I had to settle for four meat pizza. Meanwhile, there's a whole nacho bar right in front of me, eight full pizzas in front of me, and I have the audacity to feel slighted by Jack's pizza, right? What, what's wrong with me? You kind of get the same, like the feeling that that's what's going on in Eve's mind right here. She has, they were given the whole world, every good tree that was had good fruit. Right. And then they see this one and it's like, I want, I want that one. She sees that it's good for wisdom, desirable for food, right? And if God, if God really had my best interest in mind, he would want me to have wisdom. If God really had my best interest in mind, he would want me to have that, to be able to feed myself with that. If God really had my best interest in mind, he would give me that job. If God really had my best interest in mind, he would give me a boyfriend. He would heal me from this disease that I have. If God really had my best interest in mind. And what does Eve do, right? What does humanity do is they, they look, they see an opportunity to seize control and they take it for themselves because they're not satisfied with the portion that was given to them by God. You know, and why, why, why do we do this? Why is this something that we struggle with? I don't know. I think oftentimes it can be fear. It can be, uh, you know, greed, right? There's a scripture. It's in James. Oh, there's a picture. There's a scripture. There's a scripture in James chapter four. It says, what causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire, but you do not have. So you kill, you covet, but you cannot get what you want. So you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God when you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures, you adulterous people. Don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. So how do we combat this desire to seek Godhood for ourselves? And I think a lot of it boils down to our understanding of God's limits. We really need to redefine our understanding of God's limits on us. And we need to see his limits as love. And our second point here today is limits as love. It can turn to Psalm 23. I know we're turning around a lot here. I'm going to read the whole thing. It says, This is one of the most well-known Psalms in the Bible. It was written by King David, who was at this time, I believe he was king of Israel. He spent a lot of his life running for his life from Saul and then later from his son. And he was in war a lot. And he wrote this Psalm and it's really incredible to me. Like he, again, he's the king of Israel, but he sees that there's still authority greater than himself. Right. And he defines this authority as a loving shepherd. Right. And he says he lacks nothing. He doesn't see scarcity in his life. You know, he loves being led by God and sees God's leading as a path to flourishing. And even though God might lead him through the darkest valley, some translations say the valley of the shadow of death. He doesn't act out. He doesn't, he doesn't buck. He doesn't try to go a different way. Instead, he says, I'm comforted by your rod and staff. He's comforted by God. And even with these limits that God is putting before him, he sees a feast laid out for him. You know, when he stays within the confines of this house that God has built for him. I think it can be very easy for us. I don't know. I don't know if it's a Western American thing, if it's a generation thing, maybe, or I'm not a hundred percent sure. Maybe it's a guy thing, but we love lists. You know, I think we look at places like Galatians 5, right? Where it says, no, we love lists, right? Where it says the acts of the flesh are evidence, right? Sexual impurity, fits of rage, anger, dissensions, jealousy. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience. And we think, great, I can do these things. I can not do these things and I'm golden. But it seems like there's a little bit, there's a heart that those lists are trying to get us to very often. And I think it's described very well in this psalm. And that's how God created us to be originally, right? It was this heart of following him and loving what he's doing for us. When I was in Milwaukee, there was a guy, his name was Dustin Wood. I don't think he's there anymore. I think he's in Minnesota or something now. But I remember he was giving a lesson and I think it was on Genesis 3. And he used this analogy and it's kind of goofy, but it really helped me to be able to see what's going on here. He said, we as people are free. We have the freedom to fill the gas tanks in our cars with toothpaste. But when we treat them the way that they were meant to be, we have the freedom to drive across the nation. And I think that's really what's being communicated a lot in these stories here, right? God's limits are a path to freedom that he gives us. You know, when we look at our own lives and we look at God's word and we see that there are, actually there's limits that God is giving to us, but they're really helpful for us, right? Resting versus work, you know, feasting and fasting, ambition versus contentment, shrewdness versus generosity. These are all things that the Bible lifts up at different points. They're all great things. But when we don't have wisdom and we don't have limitations, they all become folly. You know, but, you know, nevermind, not but. When you look at your own life, are there areas where you're pushing past the limits that God has put before you, spiritual or physical? Genesis 321, it says, The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Even though humanity pushed past the limits that God put before them, and before us, really, and tried to seize godhood for ourselves, he lovingly covers their shame and clothes them. We're going to kind of start wrapping up here. There's a scripture in Philippians chapter 2 that I want to share with you guys. It's starting in verse 5. It says, In your relationship with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant. Being made in human likeness and being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. It's ironic, I think, that Adam and Eve, they became less like God by trying to become God, and Jesus, who is God, showed us how to be like God by understanding our own human limitations. You know, despite Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, his temptation in the garden, his temptation on the cross, he took on these human limitations so that we could be saved, right? And what that does for us is, I think that gives us a lot of hope. And I like to end every lesson with this word, hope, because I think it's so important to our understanding of who God is, right? What Jesus does here is, it gives us hope, and it gives us hope for a future, a future resurrection, and that is absolutely true. But I think it also shows us that when we love and honor God's loving limits for us right now, we have freedom now. We have freedom now that God gives us. And so I have two questions to kind of take with you guys as you're going through the week. One is, how is God limiting you right now? And how can you find comfort in those limits? Amen? I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna close with a prayer. And I think I really liked what Paul did when he closed with the Lord's Prayer. So I'm gonna do that real quick, and then you guys are dismissed to pick up your kids. Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Amen, guys. You can pick up your kids. You're dismissed. Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast. If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected. Please go to kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on. In any case, you'll be hearing from us next week.