Breaking Babel
Genesis 11:1-9 | A group of people set out to build a city and a tower to make a name for themselves.
God wants them to scatter in faith to multiply His image. They want to stay together, comfortable, and safe. God wants them to live lives making His name famous. They want to make their names famous.
The story of Babel is a story of God's grace to intervene in the lives of a people who want to preserve self and exalt self. We need the Lord to intervene in our lives in the same way. This message is an investment in us running from lives of safe, comfortable, self-exalting disobedience and toward lives of faith-filled, uncomfortable God-exalting obedience.
More from this series:
Genesis 11:1-9 | A group of people set out to build a city and a tower to make a name for themselves. God wants them to scatter in faith to multiply His image. They want to stay together, comfortable, and safe. God wants them to live lives making His name famous. They want to make their names famous.
The story of Babel is a story of God's grace to intervene in the lives of a people who want to preserve self and exalt self. We need the Lord to intervene in our lives in the same way. This message is an investment in us running from lives of safe, comfortable, self-exalting disobedience and toward lives of faith-filled, uncomfortable God-exalting obedience.
Genesis 7:1-9:29 | There is something subtly dangerous that can happen with the "big stories" of the Bible. You know, those ones you'll find in every children's Bible, David and Goliath...Daniel and the lion's den...Joseph and his coat of many colors...
The subtly dangerous thing is to get so caught up in the acts of the people of God that we lose sight of God's actual work in the story. This week we continue in one of those famous "big Bible stories," Noah and the Ark. What we need to see in this is God's character and God's power on display. He is the hero of the Bible, and He is the hero of the flood account, and we need to see that and respond to it properly.
And so we walk through Genesis 7-8 and see what we need to understand about who God is, how He works, and how we as His people are to respond with our lives to these truths.
Genesis 6:1-22 | It seems like the world is getting worse by the year. More compromise. More sin. Fewer and fewer people following God. Even those who used to follow God have been falling away.
Sound familiar?
This is the world in Genesis 6. We’re now 10 generations after creation and the world is getting worse with every passing one. What is God going to do? And how should we respond? Come this week as we dive in and continue our series in the book of Genesis.
Genesis 4:1-26 | Once sin starts things get ugly. Sin unchecked gets brutal. From the story of the very first sin last week, we now see the evil escalate as the blood of a murdered man at the hands of his brother cries out before the Lord.
As the people multiply on the earth, the image of God does not. And this was not God's intent. What happens in this gruesome scene? How will God deal with multiplying people who are not multiplying His image? Where do we see His redemptive heart come out, and how is that good news for us?
The murder of a brother in Genesis 4 teaches us more about our own hearts and the heart of our redeeming God.
Genesis 3:1-24 | Genesis 3 is ugly. Humans rebel against God. That never goes well. Rebellion against God never makes life easier, better, simpler... it always makes life more painful.
As we watch the first-ever sin unfold this week, we will be able to glean important things we need to know about life in this broken world. Where does sin originate? How does sin work? How is sin defeated?
And yet in the midst of the ugliness of Genesis 3, there is beauty. We get the first glimpse of the gospel. Good news. It's there, so clear, all the way back in Genesis 3. An arrow of God's grace pointed perfectly at Christ.
Let's worship our way together through the gruesomeness of sin and the graciousness of our God.
Genesis 2:1-25 | We can get out of balance so fast on the topics of work and rest. On one side, we can begin to worship work as God, instead of seeing work as worship to God. Out of a desire for more, to make a name for ourselves, or to run from other responsibilities in our life, we can become workaholics to our own demise.On the other side, we can tend toward laziness or complaining about work and fail to see what a good gift from God work is.
What should the rhythm of our week look like as it pertains to work and rest? What do I, as a Jesus follower, need to understand in order to honor God in my work? And just as importantly, how do we receive God's gracious gift of sabbath rest each week?
Let's seek a worshipful rhythm to our weeks of work and rest.
Genesis 2:1-25 | The human being is unique to all other created things. Only the human was made by the very breath of God breathing life into his nostrils. Only the human being was made in the image of God. Humans (men and women) are made in a unique way with a unique purpose in creation.We must understand how God made us so we can understand what we were made for. In Genesis 2 we will look at 4 identity-defining truths for image-bearers. It is my prayer that these truths will free us into a rich and wonderful understanding of who we are and what we were made for.
Genesis 1:1-2:3 | "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The greatest story ever told begins with these words: In the beginning...
Beginnings matter.
Understanding the beginning of the world matters.
Understanding how the world was created matters.
Understanding why the world was created matters.
And most importantly, understanding what the Creator created us for matters.
This Sunday, we embark on a major series through the book of Genesis. Like all good stories, we will start at the very beginning. We'll worship our way through the Creation account and why a right understanding of it matters deeply for our lives as created ones.
Check out our resource on the historical nature of the book of Genesis HERE.