The Gift of Being Human (Part 1) | Genesis 1:26-31

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Scripture: Genesis 1:26-31

Key Takeaways:

+ Every human being possesses dignity as an image bearer of God

“But human rights are just like Heaven, and, like God, it’s just a fictional story that we’ve invented and spread around. It may be a very nice story. It may be a very attractive story. We want to believe it, but it’s just a story. It’s not a reality. It is not a biological reality. Just as jellyfish and woodpeckers and ostriches have no rights, homo sapiens have no rights, also. Take a human, cut him open, look inside. You find their blood, and you find the heart and lungs and kidneys, but you don’t find any rights. The only place you find rights is in the fictional stories that humans have invented and spread around.” – Yuval Noah Harari, TED Talk

+ You Matter

+ All People Matter

+ Christianity Matters

+ Every human being is fully dependent upon God

Image: I make a sacrifice to the God → The God gives me what I want

Acts 17:24-25

Image: God reaches down in unmerited grace → We respond in joyful and obedient thanks

Ephesians 2:8-9

The Gift of Creation | Genesis 1:1-2:3

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Scripture: Genesis 1:1-2:3

Key Takeaways:

“Today as I read Genesis 1–2 my thoughts go to high school biology and physics. How does the biblical depiction of creation relate to the big bang theory and evolution? No doubt, Genesis 1–2 has bearing on our evaluation of these modern scientific accounts of cosmic and human origins. But a moment’s thought will jar us into remembering that this comparison would not have occurred to ancient authors and readers. It is certain that the biblical account of creation was not written to counter Charles Darwin or Stephen Hawking, but it was written in the light of rival descriptions of creation...Since God’s people were constantly tempted to worship the deities of other nations, we shouldn’t be surprised that the biblical accounts of creation were shaped in such a way as to provide a clear distinction from those of other nations.” – Tremper Longman III, How to Read Genesis

+ Creation is God bringing cosmos out of chaos

+ Creation is framing and filling

+ Creation is God revealing himself

Romans 1:20

  • Declares the glory of God

Psalm 19:1-2

  • Displays the wisdom of God

+ Creation is God’s good gift to us

+ God brings about the new creation like he brought about the first creation

2 Corinthians 4:4-6

In the Beginning God... | Genesis 1:1

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Scripture: Genesis 1:1

Key Takeaways:

Psalm 33:6

Nehemiah 9:6

Revelation 4:11

+ God Exists as the Eternal and Transcendent God

            Aseity

Hebrews 11:6

+ God Exists as the Good and Personal God

“There is a philosophical fissure between fundamental impersonalism or fundamental personalism. First of all, there is the difficulty of deriving ethical values from a nonpersonal source. If the universe is most fundamentally matter, time, and chance, then it becomes very hard to argue that one combination of those three is necessarily and of itself better than another combination  - for example, that life is better than death or kindness better than selfishness - in any way that gets deeper than a feeling or an unjustifiable decision… the impersonal cannot create obligation. From looking at the natural world, we can tell what is but not what should be. We can tell that hot is different from cold, drought from moisture, lightness from heaviness, and good from ill, but we cannot tell in any of those cases that one is better than the other in any way more profound than we happen to prefer it. Philosophers try very hard, sometimes very hard indeed, to derive something resembling commonly accepted human ethical principles from a radically impersonal universe, but such valiant and well-meaning attempts tend to be unconvincing or rely on the goodwill of the reader in granting contestable assumptions.” – Christopher Watkin, Thinking Through Creation.

+ God Exists as the Triune God

John 1:1

John 1:18

John 17:5

John 17:24

1 Peter 1:18-20