The One True Story - Created for Good. My Purposes. - Teach the story... so that it becomes out mental map. Introduction. It is a story from:

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1 The One True Story - Created for Good My Purposes - Teach the story... so that it becomes out mental map Introduction Had a great time at Exponential Then whole family got to spend a few days with Charissa in Durham Missed a sermon due to snow. Will do it at the beginning of May Beginning a new series which leads up to and includes Easter The One True Story It is a story from: Creation - Corruption - Restoration... through Redemption - Teach to evangelize well using this (comes on Easter when I put it all together) So, this morning, I want to share with you a new way of sharing the Good News of Jesus. It is a narrative approach to sharing the Good News of Jesus The approach Paul used in Acts 17 when in Athens Beginning with Jesus and the cross is like showing someone The Lord of the Rings trilogy beginning part way through the second film, "The Two Towers" (they are lost and have no context) I began to understand why Paul always began sharing the Good News by going all the way back to Genesis 1 and talking about Creation. Give you a good way to share the Good News of Jesus with people that I find much richer and compelling and that I believe will whet their appetite and draw them in to further discovery This approach is based upon story. So, we call it "The One True Story." - Invite a friend! < POSTCARDS > - Deep look into the whole story March 17 - April 14 - Do the whole story on Easter Sunday

2 Tangled If you ve never seen it, watch the Disney movie Tangled during series at some point if feel ok about it. There will be a payoff!!!! Not Myth When I say "story," in this series I do not mean a "myth" or a "fairy tale". I am talking about a true story. I mean story as in if we went and had a cup of coffee and I asked you to tell me your story Much as I have a story that I could tell of my life, and much as you have a story that you could set and tell me. Kudos Before beginning, I need to give kudos to James Choung who came up with this basic approach. He gave me a basic visual framework for the way I was beginning to share the Good News of Jesus. A few years ago, Jason Huebner, Russ Bauck, Tom Rees, Scott Youngman, and Andrew Bell who all helped me in further honing my adaptation of it. If God were to tell us His story and the story of what He is doing in this world We All Have A Story This idea of story is very important. The truth is that everyone here believes a large, overarching story of the universe (a meta-narrative, we could say) Carl Sagan s story was: "In the beginning was the cosmos. The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Perhaps you are not aware of it, but if I sat down with you, we would discover it. This story shapes everything else you believe, everything you value, and everything you do

3 Story of God So, I want to tell you God s story! Remember, the Bible is not a book of teachings with stories that illustrates the teachings. Rather, the Bible is a singular, unified story with teachings that illustrate and inform that story! X The Bible is to me the most precious thing in the world, because it tells me his story. George MacDonald Story - The power of story Here s why this is so important: We are storied creatures We are storied creatures. We find meaning and are shaped by stories. More than ever before, a Storied Generation/People Story has unquestionably become the dominant means of understanding our world, ourselves, and each other.. God s story is the narrative through which I see everything in life! And if we want to speak the truth of God into this time and place and into this generation, we must know the story of God! This is the large, overarching story of the universe that I, as a follower of Jesus, believe and cling to. It is not just God's story, but it is my story (for He has invited me into His story and given me a part in His ongoing drama). This story shapes everything I believe, everything I value, and everything I do George Lucas once said, He who tells the best story will win! Andrew Peterson: If you want someone to hear the truth, you should tell them the truth. But if you want someone to LOVE the truth, you should tell them a story. The world needs a better story... we need a better story. And we have the best story... the one TRUE story...!!!

4 Like any good story: Beginning of the Story: The Set Up Crisis or Conflict: A problem is introduced Rising Action: The main conflict is addressed in the form of action Climax or Turning Point: Often the protagonist's most difficult challenge in solving the problem Falling Action: The consequences of that turning point Resolution: The end of the story And it is the greatest story every told! And as we shall see, this story is Good News!!! No... the BEST News!!! Dorothy Sayers: The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man. So, let s begin!!!! Note: It is on one page but in four parts (explain the quadrants) Beautiful but Broken Can t begin at the beginning. Like many great movies, we must begin somewhere in the middle of the story! Some movies start with one scene and then suddenly move back to the real beginning of ths story, explaining how we got to that opening scene. And then the movie shows us all the narrative steps to that opening scene, and we say, Oh, that s how we got here. Film and literature critics call this story telling technique in media res. It is a Latin phrase that means in the middle of the action. But somehow we ve lost the story. So, we will start in media res... It is time to reclaim it! One True Story I call it the one true story. If you want to know why I call it that, you have to hang with me until the end... all the way through.

5 Let s start with the world as we know it now. We live in a beautiful world, don't we? Where do you see beauty in this world? To answer those questions, I have to tell you the Story of God!!! And we must go back to the beginning: And we see great beauty in people, don't we? Where do you see beauty in people? But we also know, and feel very deeply, that we live in a VERY broken world. I know we would all agree. Where do you see brokenness in this world? And we see great brokenness in people, don't we? In the Beginning In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth Genesis 1:1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... <DRAW THE WORLD AND TREE> Where do you see beauty in people? (Specifically, where do you see brokenness in yourself... in your own heart?) We live in a very beautiful world filled with beautiful people... a world that is terribly broken and full of desperately broken people We all have a sense that something is off, amiss, and broken in our world So, I have a few questions: - How did we get here? - Where did that beauty come from? - What about all of the brokenness? - Is it simply an inherent part of the world (always been here and always will be here)?

6 God s Glory - Greatness and Beauty It was a place with His full, unfiltered, unfettered abiding presence. Isaiah 6:3: The whole earth is full of His glory! It was a place full of the radiance of His glory John Piper: What is this universe but the lavish demonstration of the incredible, incomparable, unimaginable exuberance and wisdom and power and greatness of God! Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God. Humans And at the pinnacle of it all was His creation of human beings Genesis 1:26-28: Then God spoke again. Let us make human beings in our image and likeness. And let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky. Let them rule over the tame animals, over all the earth and over all the small crawling animals on earth. So God created human beings in His image. In the image of God He created them. He created them male and female. And God blessed them. <DRAW PEOPLE> The ones created as His image-bearers (stamped with goodness and great beauty) They were the crown of God s creation! God s Reign A place where God was King! Psalm 8:3, 5: I look at your heavens, which you made with your fingers. I see the moon and stars, which you created. You crowned human beings with glory and honor. You put them in charge of everything you made. You put all things under their control. A place under the direction of his love reign and rule

7 And He called upon that first man and woman to rule upon the earth... cultivating it and caring for it...ruling and reigning with Him all the while living under the loving reign of God in intimate relationship with Him. <DRAW CROWN AND HEART> You see, it was a place of intimate communion with God... where God and man can dwelt together with no separation. GOOD AND NO SHAME I want to show you two very important things the text tells us about God s creation! 1. God s creation was good! Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25: God saw that it was good! Genesis 1:31: God saw all that He had made and it was very good! When God had finished creating that he said "it was very good". The Creators response to this is delight It was a place that was the overflow of God s perfection, beauty, and goodness! Every aspect radiates the goodness of God. Tim Keller, The Reason for God: The Bible depicts a world that is brimming with dynamic, abundant forms of life that are perfectly interwoven, interdependent, and mutually enhancing and enriching. 2. No shame Even more specifically, he says a key thing about this place at the end of Genesis chapter 2. Genesis 2:25: The man and his wife were naked and they felt no shame. There was no shame" in His creation.

8 Shame Shame is a relational word: relationship to others and relationship to myself Broken relationships - shame is a relational word. If I have a broken relationship with someone and run into them in Wal-Mart, I can t look them in the eye. I avert my gaze, out of shame. But shame also speaks of the internal feelings and state of a person who is not right. Broken relationship with self - The feelings which accompany shame are feeling defiled, polluted, corrupted, contaminated, defective, impure, irreparably broken, and unlovable The Four Relationships For this speaks to the totality of who we are as humans in our four key relationships. My relationship with God, with myself, with others, and with the world around me The spiritual, emotional, social, and physical Now, the key relationship being the relationship--the one that impacts all of the others relationships--between myself and God <MAGNET DEMONSTRATION> To have no shame means that all relationships are right and properly ordered. To have "no shame" is also a word that speaks of my heart... for to have "no shame" means that I am perfect, clean and unspoiled, faultless, flawless, pure, healthy and whole, and most importantly... lovely and acceptable No shame! This is very, very important! The were God-focused and hence other-focused And there was no shame in any of those key relationships! In every relationship, the humans were living in perfect

9 intimacy and perfect trust! Full of God s Shalom Can you imagine that?! The word the Hebrews used to describe God s creation at this time is Shalom It is the word we translate as peace <WRITE SHALOM> Cornelius Plantinga: In the Bible shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight a rich state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom is: A state of wholeness and well-being! A state of universal flourishing and delight! A place of absolute goodness permeates and prevails! Everything is rightly ordered and related! Everything is in perfect harmony! Everything is exactly as it should be! So, in the beginning, all four relationships were in perfect harmony... filled with God s shalom! The man and woman had perfect relationship with God, with themselves, with each other, and with the natural world around them... they cared for the natural world and it was a safe place for them

10 It was a perfect world created exactly according to His design specifications! It was a place filled with God s shalom! A place full of the shalom of God... the natural abundance and thriving and flourishing that comes from His glorious presence Everything was good and right and everything was rightly related. It was filled with God s blessing. Signposts You might say, "Oh, that's just a pipe dream. Only children believe in such fairy tales. Adults know better." But I want to argue that deep inside we all know that this is true. Our present world contains hints and clues of another, lost world Created For Good Movie - Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost. For none now live who remember it... And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend, legend became myth. Deep in our souls, we all long for a perfect world. We dream of it... we think about it. We write songs about it and Imagine it. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz sings about it: Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. There's a land that I've heard of, once in a lullaby. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

11 A lot of philosophers and musicians and poets have written about this over time. A nameless, soul longing. C. S. Lewis: an inconsolable longing The unnamed something we long to have. A memory trace a dim echo a faint shadow... A glint of something... Something is hinted at The desire for a better place; a better world. The longing for some lost paradise. It is this longing for something we remember but that we ve never had. The feeling that not everything is right in this world, and so we long for another world. The desire for a better place; a better world... a perfect world The longing for some lost paradise. It is often expressed in terms of mystic and distant lands... El Dorado or Shangri-La A desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience... that never seems to be satisfied. There is a German word for this. It is: Sehnsucht Sehnsucht is a yearning, craving, or sensing that something is profoundly wrong or missing. A longing for something we remember but that we ve never had. A sense of an irretrievable loss.

12 Why is that desire there? Where did it come from? C.S. Lewis would argue that this desire is rooted in reality. Let me explain. How many of you are hungry for mo-mos right now? Can t wait to get out of here to cook some... eat some? Probably none of you. Why? Because you ve never experienced them! And C.S. Lewis would say that the universal human longing shows that somewhere in the past humans experienced this perfect world and it is written on the human soul and we all want to get back there. Does a fish every think about dry... longing for dry? No, because he s never experienced it. Lewis gives the example of two men who lives their whole lives from birth in utter darkness. Do they have conversations about a longing to see blue or green or red? No, for all they ve ever known is the darkest of black. You never dream of something that s not in your experience. In Walt Whitman's closing lines to "Song of the Universal": he writes of this perfect world we all long for... Is it a dream? Nay but the lack of it the dream! Look at what these authors have to say about this: C. S. Lewis:... this is a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been. C. S. Lewis: Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. J. R. R. Tolkien: Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature is soaked with the sense of exile. Matt Chandler: At some level, in the deepest part of our soul, our soul remembers, however that happens, what life was like before the fall. At some really deep level, our soul has this impression cut into it by the finger of God, like the grooves on a record, encoding the memory of what it was like before sin entered the world. Our souls are groaning to get back. That is a strong clue that this perfect world truly did exist at one time.

13 Gospel Summary While typing this, I kept tying Created for God instead of Created for Good. Then I realized there was great truth in my error. He created the humans to live in relationship with Him and under His loving reign. Preview This is the world we all desperately desire but can t seem to create on our own! But as in any good story... there is always the entrance of a crisis... of conflict. We were created by God and for God. We were created by and for God. And as our Creator, He desires a real and intimate relationship with us.