Genesis – People relating to God
Part 9- Final
Wrap up
Recap
One of my favorite movies is actually 2 movies
Monte Walsh
The original started Lee Marvin
The newest one Tom Selleck
I would hate to choose between them
Both tell the same story
Both have the same characters
Both Lee Marvin
And Tom Selleck
Are convincing as the Character Monte Walsh
There are many lines from this movie that I use often
Many situations in my life mirror the story of this man and his friends
But today
I want to focus on the scene where
Monte
Rides down the bay
If you have seen the movie
You know Monte is a well know as a Bronc Stomper- he is good at breaking horses
But he has aged a bit
Slowed down a little
And it seems early in the movie that he has finally meet his match when it comes to breaking horses
A big
Rank bay horse
That seems to be unbreakable
But
Late in the movie
Monte
Struggling with his identify
Struggling with a changing world
Mourning the death of his friend Chet
Lamenting the fading away of a life style
A whole culture
Gets a chance to prove he still has what it takes
He meets back up with the bay in a little town
And the ride is historic
This old bronc does everything
And I mean everything to throw Monte
Without success
He falls on him
Bucks through a wooden fence
Through a house under construction
Though the general store- scattering the dry goods
Out the huge plate glass window
Finally the horse submits
He surrenders to Monte
And
Monte
Calmly, coolly steps off
Steps to the head of the horse
Strokes his muzzle
With the love only a true cowboy can feel for a horse and says to parphase as not to cuss in church
Heck of a ride son
Heck of a ride
I can tell you Kind of like Monte
I had no idea when I bit off our study in Genesis
Where it was going to go
I struggled each week to teach in our bible studies life lessons
Lessons we could use in our personal lives
Patti and I tried to study and prepare and teach you and ourselves in the progress
How to use the lesson and examples from the first book of the bible
In our own lives
We have strived to look at
I mean really look at with a discerning honest eye
An eye grounded in scripture
The lives of these great people of the bible
And prayerfully
We can see ourselves in both their strengths and weaknesses
Their situations and circumstances
Then I continued the ride with
Preaching from the same passages or stories
From a slightly different of completely different perspective
I can tell you it has been quite a ride
I know this study has caused Patti and I to study and prepare together
And it is my prayer that by
Getting the church
The whole church headed in the same direction
We
I mean
You and I
And those to come will continue to grow spiritually
We will do as God’s word says
In 2 Timothy 2:15
“ Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.”
Other versions of God’s word say
Study to show ourselves approved
That is what this is all about
Studying to learn
And
Learning so we can teach
Learning so we can
Grow ourselves
But
Learning so we can show the world the Love of Jesus
The book of Genesis starts off with the words
“In the beginning”
It is not accident that the book of John which we will begin studying next week
Starts with almost exactly the same words
In the beginning
It has been my goal with guidance from God
Hours of prayer
Reading
Study
And meditation
To Show you the relevance of the Old Testament in our lives today
It has been my desire to show you Jesus in the bible and in our lives
From the beginning of time
I have prayerfully showed you that
The bible is not some Old
Out dated
Writings by a bunch of dead people
But
It is the living
Life changing word of God
Just as real
Just a present
And just a relevant in our lives today
As it was to those who wrote it so many years ago
Just a real as it was to the first readers
And
Just as real as it will be to how ever many generations follow us
While we wait patiently On Jesus’ return as scripture describes
It is our duty as followers of Christ
As disciples
To proclaim God’s word to the world
And
In order to do that we must learn God’s word
We are on the right track
In our first study
Prayerfully we gained insight to the fact
That God- Jesus – and the Holy Spirit
The Trinity existed from before creation
We see all three in the beginnings of the book of Genesis
We see god the father early on as well as the Holy Spirit
Then we see Jesus
We see him as in the animal sacrifice that hid Adam and Eves nakedness and shame
And then again in the curse of the serpent
Where god gives Old slick a picture of what is to come
From Genesis 3:14-15
Because you have done this, you are cursed
more than all animals, domestic and wild.
You will crawl on your belly,
groveling in the dust as long as you live.
15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will strike[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
We also saw
That all of our actions’ good or bad
Have consequences
We saw how a decision to Sin caused separation from God for Adam and Eve
And were learned that this is true for us as well
In our first sermon from this series
We looked at a few of thousands of ways that Satan tries to trick us
How he tries to deceive us- whisper to us
And how his ultimate goal is to cause or keep separation between us and God
In our next Lesson
We learned more about Adam and Eves sons
Cain and Able
In our classes we saw how God’s judgments also shows us God’s mercy
How he judged Cain
But even in Judgment he protected him
Proving that he is a God who loves us
In Spite of us
And that he has provided protection for us through his Son
In the sermon series
We look at where sin often starts
We learned that many times sin in our own lives starts with a thought
It begins in our minds
And how those thoughts often
Lead to actions
I told ya’ll how
As Romans 12 states
We must change the way we think in order to change our Actions
Be renewed
Transformed by the renewing of our minds
We saw once again
That although God is a God of Judgment
He is a God of mercy
Leading us to Jesus as a way to avoid the Judgment and truly receive his mercy
The next week in lesson three we began studying Noah
We learned in the study that
Without righteousness in this world
Wickedness will take over
We saw that the actions of Cain
The murder of Able
The mind problem of Cain
Lead to the whole world becoming contaminated by sin
But once again we see God’s deliverance through one man
Noah
A righteous man
Not a perfect man
But a sign of the one to come
One that would deliver us
Jesus Christ
The perfect and righteous savior
In our sermon series
I looked at the ones who did not get on the boat
A different way of looking at the passage
But a clear symbol of those in the world today that refuse to hear the Good News
Those who can’t or won’t hear God because of the mud of this world
And we saw how hearing is the first step to believing
And it is believing will change us
The next week we began studying Abraham
We saw how once again
In spite of the wickedness of the world
God’s plan of redemption marched on
Once again we see God working through one man
Making promises to his children – the whole world
And
We see God living up to those promises
We saw Abraham take hold of these promises in spite of his doubt and in spite of his own imperfections
He shows us that a life of obedience is what God wants
And that he blesses those who are obedient to him and do what he says
In our sermon series we saw how God extends a call to all of us
First in Salvation
Accepting Jesus
Then in service and blessings
Through a relationship with our savior
And we saw how when we answer the calls
We get greater and greater and blessing
And greater and greater calls
The next week
We Studied about Abrahams other half
Sarah
We saw that through the
God honoring marriage she had with Abraham
That the promises that God made to Abraham were made to her as well
She was part of His plan
We saw how her doubt and her laughter
Turned to belief and joy
First
She laughed at God because of her doubt
And then she laughed with joy because of his promise
In our sermon series
I asked the question from Genesis
“Is there anything too hard for God?”
It is my prayer that we learned that
With man lots of things are impossible
But though God
Though his Son Jesus
Through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives
Nothing is too hard for God
And that
Salvation
Which is absolutely impossible by our own deeds and works
Impossible by our own hand
It is not only possible
But
Easily accessible by simply asking for the gift
It is God’s desire
His great joy
That we come back into fellowship with him as he designed
That we get to spend eternity with him as he planned
The next week we began our study of Jacob
In our study on Sunday morning
Jacobs’s life showed us that God can use
Anyone for his glory in spite of their owns faults and weaknesses
And that he will with obedience
Bless and use us and uphold his promises to those who obey in spite of their shortcomings
He shows us that he will use those he chooses
In addition
Jacob’s life and his choices
Often painfully show us our hidden selves and our hearts
But we also saw Jacob overcome his own character and cry out to God
Accept God as his God
No longer did he refer to God as the God of my father
The God of my Grandfather
He cried out MY GOD – a cry that we all need to make ourselves
In our sermon series
I went just a little different route and focused on the older brother Esau
We looked at his bad trade and his actions and attitudes that followed his bad decisions
In doing so
Prayerfully we shed some light on how we often trade the good things in life for things that will not last
We looked at what Jesus- did-was and is willing to trade for our old lives
And we saw that what we see in ourselves as of little value
Jesus placed enough value on to die for
To deliver us form the junk of our lives
Then we began a 2 week look at Joseph
Jacobs’s favorite son
In our fist bible study
We bit off the topic of temptation
And saw how we like Joseph
Like Jesus are going to be tempted
Not if
But when
We looked at how to fight against temptation
By
Using God’s word
Praying
Resisting
And running
We also learned that giving in to temptation is a sin against
Ourselves
The people in our lives
But more importantly a sin against God
Most of us learned that it does matter where we go and what we do and that our actions. Words, attitudes and beliefs affect those around us
As well as our witness—our integrity and our Lord
And that we should always strive to lift up ----not trip up those we have the chance to impact
In the sermon on that day
We
Looked at how we are to live when we feel life has ripped us off
Joseph had all his plans changed
All his hopes dashed
His future looked dim
But
He continued to look up
He continued to look at himself and make changes in the way he thought and acted
He continued to trust God
And
God fulfilled his promise
To his Great Grandfather Abraham through him
We saw how when we focus on Jesus
And
Make honest assessments about ourselves
And
Trust, Worship and Praise God though the storms
While in the pit
He will deliver us and bless us
Last week
We finished up with Joseph and took our last look at People relating to God from Genesis
In our Round pen studies
We saw how we fit into the puzzle of God’s purpose
That each of us has a part to play
And we saw how our obedience once again brings blessings on those around us and on ourselves
In the sermon series
I finished up with
How God’s plan will always outweigh the plans of the world’
And the plans of Old slick
We learned and reinforced how God can use
Anything and Anyone
For his glory
He can make the bad things of this world into good things
Sow’s ears into silk purses
When we let him
I pray that you have been blessed by these studies
And I pray that you have developed a desire to learn more
And
To truly apply God’s word to your life
I pray that you have maybe for the first time been able to see the importance and relevance of the entire bible Old and New Testament
Mostly it is my prayer that you have seen Jesus through this study
Seen Jesus in the bible but more importantly in your life and in the world
And
That you have either accepted him as your savior
Or that you
Made a commitment to make changes in your life in order to grow closer to him
Or that
The stories and lives that we have preached and taught has inspired you to more and greater service in the Lord
It has and always will be my goal to show you Jesus
He and he alone
Lived a perfect life
And
He and he alone
Can change your mistakes
Attitudes
Beliefs
Into something good
The Apostle Paul writes in Romans Chapter 7:15-24 and this really hits home with me
And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[d] I want to do what is right, but I can’t. 19 I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. 20 But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.
21 I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. 22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power[e] within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. 24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
My life to The T
Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?
25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Close from the heart
Pray
