Matt Chandler - The Genesis, Creation and Fall

If you have your Bibles, why don’t you go ahead and grab them? We’re going to be in Genesis 1 through 3. We won’t read all of that; in fact, we’ll spend the bulk of our time in Genesis 3, which is the least happy of those three chapters. This series, my hope and prayer, should be pretty spectacular for us as we begin to reorient around the idea of the gospel and what the gospel is. We use that word a lot, so let me just flat out define it. The word «gospel» is from the Greek word «euangelion,» which means «the good news.» But here’s something to consider: if we’re talking about good news, for news to be good, it has to invade bad spaces. Are you tracking with me? For good news to occur, it has to invade places where there’s some anxiety or fear, where there may be some bad things going on, so that, oh, that was good news. When you get the report from the doctor that you’re healthy, woo, that’s good news! If you ask someone to marry you and they say yes, that’s good news, right? But why is it good news? It’s good news because there’s a chance something could go wrong there. In order for us to fully understand the good news, we have to first understand that there’s bad news. So just for your information, we can adjust everybody’s expectation: today is bad news day, right? If you came in thinking you’d really like to leave happy and chipper, wrong weekend, all right? We’re going to lay down what the bad news is, and then from the bad news, I think the good news will look all the more glorious. Plus, the reality for everyone, where we actually live, is in the bad news. Now, the world is busted up. It’s busted up, and some people are really tuned into this, primarily because of what their jobs are. So I’ll give you some examples. Three weeks ago, my wife and I visited a covenant member of ours named Dan Leel. Dan works at the Denton County Children Advocacy Center, and all day long, five days a week, they counsel, interview, and work with law enforcement around sexually and physically abused kids. Every day, eight hours a day, this is his job. His whole staff, this is what they do. Do you think they’re not dialed into how busted up the world is in a way that you and I aren’t? What about parole officers or social workers? I could go on and on. There are people that are really tuned into a reality that it’s a mess out there. Then, if you want to get beyond just men and women being depraved and get into the brokenness of the natural order, can I tell you, being an oncologist is a crummy job. If you have kids, I apologize for saying that. I don’t care what they get paid; it’s an awful job. Here’s how I know: after my surgery, I went out of rehab into a meeting with an oncologist, and there were other brothers and sisters there with me who had just as much spunk as I do, just as much vitality. They have families like I do; they have a will to live like I have. Most of them, over the last four years, have wasted away and died, but I haven’t—I’m an outlier. And listen, their job is awful; to see someone full of life, with all these things going for them, and then to fight for them and watch that person deteriorate— the oncologist has to decide whether or not to detach, not have good bedside manner, and not actually care for people, or to actually care for people and just know we’re going to lose a lot. It’s a terrible job. Don’t you think they’re dialed into the brokenness of the world? Listen, you know cancer doesn’t care how much spinach you eat, right? We’re all cramming our faces with blueberries, hoping it works. You’ve got to know that our oncologists know this. They know there might be, yes, it’s better than a Big Mac, but ultimately, it doesn’t have the ultimate authority over disease. The world is broken. Oncologists are dialed in; detectives are dialed in; undercover police officers are dialed in. The world is dark. For most of us, we’re not dialed in like that. We have two things that work for us regarding the brokenness of the world. Every once in a while, there’ll be an event that makes the fog lift. Every once in a while, someone will go in and shoot a school or shoot up a theater, and we’ll go, «Oh my gosh, it’s awful out there.» Every once in a while, someone we love will get sick, or we will get sick, and the fog lifts, and we’re like, «It’s busted. It’s busted.» But primarily, how we operate regarding the world’s brokenness is that we have this kind of low-grade longing in us, this desire for more while not quite being sure what that more is. There’s something deep in all of us that senses there’s got to be more than this. And if you’re saying that’s not true, Matt, if you’ve severed that and not satisfied it, you’ve simply served to damn yourself because…