Order, Words, & Voices
06.04.23, Genesis 1:31
Order
Pre Worship Music
Opening Song Billy/Linda
Lord I Lift Your Name on High
Morning Has Broken
Call to Worship Response/Lord’s Prayer Rick
Songs Billy/Linda
God Will Make a Way
Change My Heart O God
Message Everything is Good Rick
Music Billy
Change My Heart O God
Community/Peace Rick
Benediction/Closing Peace Rick
Post Worship Music
Slides Note: There is a blank title slide between each Section – except for message/sermon slides.
Music (slides) – Billy/Linda
Lord I Lift Your Name On High
Verse
Lord I lift Your name on high
Lord I love to sing Your praises
I’m so glad You’re in my life
I’m so glad You came to save us
Chorus
You came from heaven to earth
To show the way
From the earth to the cross
My debt to pay
From the cross to the grave
From the grave to the sky
Lord I lift Your name on high
Morning Has Broken
Verse 1
Morning has broken
Like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word
Verse 2
Sweet the rain’s new fall
Sunlit from heaven
Like the first dew fall
On the first grass
Praise for the sweetness
Of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness
Where His feet pass
Verse 3
Mine is the sunlight
Mine is the morning
Born of the one light
Eden saw play
Praise with elation
Praise ev’ry morning
God’s recreation
Of the new day
Call to Worship (Slides) – Rick
Leader: Today is the day that the Lord has made.
Response: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Leader: The heavens declare the glory of God in a glorious technicolor light show.
Response: They shout in a wordless language declaring that the Almighty God, created all.
Leader: “Morning has broken, like the first morning, blackbird has spoken, like the first bird. Praise for the singing, praise for the morning, praise for them springing, fresh from above.” (Eleanor Farjeon)
Response: May the melody of both be heard around the globe.
Leader: Look at how God cares for the birds of the heaven, may we take a lesson from their message of life.
Response: The ostrich spreads her feathers to laugh at the horse and rider.
Leader: “The universe lies before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are letters addressed to us to make us ponder the invisible things of God.” (Belgic Confession)
Response: May the lilies reveal God’s providential care and love for all creation.
Leader: When Jesus walked the earth, his feet were dirty with the dust and His sermon illustrations were about flowers and trees and seeds and vineyards and birds and fish and sheep and goats and pigs.
Response: May we lie down in green pastures beside still waters and find peace.
Leader: We are gathered this morning to worship the creator of the universe. Response: God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was good.
Leader: God sees all of creation and declares, ‘It is good.”
Lord’s Prayer (Slides) ‘Join me in the prayer of Jesus’ – Rick
Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, On Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, while 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. Amen.
Music (Slides) Billy/Linda
God Will Make A Way
Chorus
God will make a way
Where there seems to be no way
He works in ways we cannot see
He will make a way for me
He will be my guide
Hold me closely to His side
With love and strength
For each new day
He will make a way
He will make a way
Verse
By a roadway in the wilderness
He’ll lead me
And rivers in the desert will I see
Heaven and earth will fade
But His Word will still remain
He will do something new today
Change My Heart Oh God
Chorus
Change my heart oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God
May I be like You
Verse
You are the potter
I am the clay
Mold me and make me
This is what I pray
Message – Everything is Good (Slides)
I stood in our front yard recently looking over at my neighbor’s truck sitting in his driveway. I thought how, to most that drove by, it must appear to be junkie and even trashy. In the bed of the truck there was a large piece of tin, the type that was probably the covering of someone’s patio or carport, folded and cut up but still too big for the bed of the truck. To me, however, it was evidence and proof of the good person that lived in the house attached to the unruly looking truck. I thought this for many reason, but at that moment, my reason was that the trashy piece of tin was officially my trash. That tin had landed in my front yard a couple of nights earlier as my family, neighbors, along with myself, sat in our tornado shelter while hearing the loud winds and nearby tornados, and in the midst of all of that, we heard a loud bang which we would later be the tin crashing on the street and our front yard. The next day it was obvious that the tin did not come from any house on our street so it became my responsibility. I was a bit overwhelmed. I asked Dave, my neighbor with the truck, if he had any ideas of someone who could deal with the tin and before I knew it, he had his adult son over and the two of them were folding and cutting it up and eventually squeezing in the truck. The son also felt that my Berkenstocks were probably not the appropriate attire for folding and cutting tin so I stood back grateful for people who had the appropriate shoes. Good people.
It got me thinking about the good people on my street. Our Jewish neighbors up the street, son of a rabbi, who, in our first year on the street, brought us Christmas cookies during the holiday season. Or another elderly neighbor who attempted to join me on our ice covered roof when I needed to cover up holes created by a falling tree. In addition there is Tom, the banker, who went out of his way to help Grace Fellowship find the best return on our investment when the church sold the 60th Avenue building…even when his findings was that his back could not help us as much as another bank, also there is Jim, who helps me with, or honestly takes care of, any snakes I find in my yard – another task I don’t have the appropriate shoes to deal with. He says they are all fun to let wind in and out of your fingers, I say they are all Rattlesnakes. Good people.
I look at the fruit growing on our apple trees which will eventually be lunch and dinner for the squirrels, the pollinators beginning to attract the Monarchs and Humming Birds, and see the intricate threads throughout God’s good creation enable it to function.
As God, at the end of the sixth day of creation, looked over all of creation, everything that had taken place throughout the full six days, he took a careful look, evaluating every element, then God, with a confident and satisfied look on his face, said, “this is good.”
This word ‘Good’ is a lukewarm type of word. “How was your day?” “Oh, it was good.” How is the food?” “Oh, it is good enough.”
At the close of my first day of Seminary, I sat down at a cafeteria table filled with a group of students. We were mostly all strangers and were quick to introduce ourselves and asked questions seeking to know the other students. When I said I was from Oklahoma, two students, from Arkansas chimed in “Oklahoma is Okay.” I knew that they were talking about our Liscence Tags, which, at that time, had the slogan ‘Oklahoma is OK’ – I also knew that, by the tone of their voices that they were belittling our state. Obviously they had never heard that slogan when proclaimed by an orchestrated and choreographed groups of cowboys and cowgirls on near a train depot in the middle of a wide and dangerous terrain. I smiled at the sacrcastic comment all the while telling myself, “They are from Arkansas, what are you going to do?”
And God looked at the whole of his creative work he said, “This is good.”
[Slide – Leave Screen Share until note to end]
This word, ‘towb’, translated in Genesis 1 as ‘Good’, is translated elsewhere as:
- [Slide] Pleasant – as in ‘God, the grand architect and the builder of creation says to the others, “Every detail of what I we have created pleases me.”
- [Slide] Agreeable – as in, ‘God, the grand architect and the builder of creation looks at the blueprints and engineering specs of creation and says, “Every detail of what we have built agrees completely with the specific details, demands, and looks of the approved blueprints.”
- [Slide] Good – as in, ‘God, the grand architect and the builder of creation looks at the blueprints and engineering specs of creation and says, “This is exactly what I envisioned creation to be.”
- [Slide] Finished – as in Jesus hanging on the cross and saying, “Into your hands I commit my Spirit because I have completed the plans, I have done what was required of my life, there is no more for me to do in regard to this part of my Journey.”
[Slide] “This Looks right, this Feels right, this Is right, this is Complete, it is Finished – let’s rest.”
[End Screen Share]
It is vital that we, as believers, understand the work of creation. Not to prove it as a science book or to persuade our version, for that causes us to miss the mystery. Not as a fairy tale, because that causes us to miss the majesty. But, to recognize all of creation was, and is, good. Every aspect, every creature, every provision, every surprise – it is all to point us to the creator. It is the stories told to allow us to see God’s compassion and mercy played out from the beginning of our story.
Now, lest we consider ‘good’ to be a naive fairy tale, let’s look as reality collides with this ‘good story’.
[Slide] ‘The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
[Slide] Then the Lord God said, “it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
[Slide] The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept;’ – and as the man slept, God created a partner for the man. (Genesis 2:15-21)
[End Screen Share]
So, God gave creation to the man, Adam, was given the guidelines to take care of the earth, to take and use God’s provisions, and to always allow God to provide wisdom and insight (‘do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil – do not look for and find what is counter to holy).
Man begins on a good path, he names the animals – a monumental task. Then God gives man a partner, and then, we see man disobey God. The first act we see of man is obedience – he takes care of creation. The second act of the man is to disobey God.
God, then confronts the serpent, Adam, and Eve. To the serpent there is a pronouncement of enmity and strive. To the woman there is the pronouncement of the pain of bearing and caring for children in a world of disobedience and the effects of disobedience. And, to the man, God says,
[Slide]
“cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
(Genesis 3:17-19)
[End Screen Share]
Cursed. This is not an action of God toward the ‘good’ creation he has just made. This is not a fairly tale antagonist. This is a pronouncement of fact of what the impact will be on the earth because man is no longer listening and following God’s instruction on how to care for creation. This is what happens when we do not do what the creator says about caring for creation.
However, none of this annuls God’s pronouncement that the creation is ‘Good”. In fact it is just the opposite, paves the way for us to see God’s character. Even though man himself has cursed the earth, God continues to provide good to good. God has given the seed, now God will continue to to leave the sun in the sky, the water above and below. In a way, even the eventual great flood is a continual display of God’s provision and water is allowed to come down on the earth.
[Slide] What does Creation, and ‘It is Good’, teach us?
- [Slide] God sees us as good even though we bear the brokenness of our struggles and pain – Jesus came to heal us.
- [Slide] God sees us as good even though we are battered and bruised as a result of living in a tarnished world – Jesus came to give us hope.
- [Slide] God sees all of creation as good even though it has been neglected and abused – Jesus came to call us back to our opportunities to till the soil and to respect the gift.
- [Slide] God sees all of creation as good even though it has been scarred and dismissed by our egos and entitlement – Jesus calls us to pray “God, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
- [Slides] God calls us to see that all of creation is good, everything from day one through day six.
[End Screen Share]
God still sees creation, including us, as good – which is why “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life beginning now.”
Order, Words, & Voices 