All Roads Lead To Jesus - Genesis

Today on July 6, 2020 I am starting a 66 day journey. I plan to share how Jesus is found in every book of the Bible for the next 66 days. I’d love for you to join me. Feel free to comment, ask questions, share and encourage others. This series of posts is an expansion from a sermon I preached in April. I hope that no matter where you stand or what you believe that you will find some comfort, hope and peace in Christ. Here is Day One:

Genesis - Jesus is Creator and Redeemer

We laid there on the beach on a hot August summer night in the Outer Banks. There were millions of stars in the sky. Forever Young was playing on the radio as we stared into the sky.
My younger brother’s girlfriend, my cousin, a few other family members and the woman who would be my wife in the years to come were all there staring up into the night sky. It would have been a perfect night except that my younger brother Mark had died in a car accident just a month ago. Forever Young was a cruel irony in that none of us were young any longer. “Forever” didn’t apply to us. We were kids grappling with adult sized grief.

We were looking into the sky for a sign amongst those millions of stars. A falling star. A sign from God. Anything. My memory is hazy but I’m sure we told one another that we were all looking for a sign together. “Please God, give us some kind of hope in your creation.”
And then, there it was. As we were remembering sitting on this same beach watching for falling stars the previous year when my brother was alive, the brightest meteor we could have ever hoped for burned across the sky as it made its way through the atmosphere. We cried. We laughed. But we definitely cried. We were amazed at the beauty of God’s creation. And we found hope in brokenness even if it was as brief as the brilliance.

God has been speaking through His creation since the beginning. In a letter Paul wrote to the Roman church he said that God is clearly seen from His creation. If you listen to God’s Word close enough you will see that even in the darkest times, Jesus has been there.

One of Jesus’ closest friends was John. When John set out to write about his best friend Jesus, he opened up with these words, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” It must have blown John’s mind the moment he realized that he had been sharing life on earth with the same person who had been the power in the work of Creation. John had heard the creation story from Genesis since he was old enough to understand language. John realized that Jesus was there in the Scriptures at the start of the story.

In the very first book of the Bible called Genesis, Jesus is Creator God. We hear this clearly as Paul echoes John’s words in his letter to the Colossians when he writes, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” When Genesis tells us that God created the world by His word alone it is speaking of Christ! The Christ was there at the start and by the power of His word, this world came to be.

This was good news for those grieving kids on the beaches of the Outer Banks that night as they stared into God’s starry night looking for a sign in that same Creation. Likewise, this is good news for you today.

Jesus is not only our Creator God in Genesis but he is also our Redeemer. Creation was full of life when mankind brought sin into this perfect world. We rebelled against our God and we broke His covenant. Those kids on the beach in the Outer Banks were suffering the effects of that first sin as it continued to reverberate throughout time and history. Every time you battle evil or grief you share in that struggle against the broken world.

At the darkest moment in that ancient and short history, God promised that He would be gracious to His people. They would not suffer endlessly. Even as He announced His curse upon all of humanity and creation for their disobedience and cosmic treason, he made a promise of redemption. He promised that a Redeemer would be born from Adam’s race. What the first Adam couldn’t do, this Second Adam would accomplish - redemption.

My grieving and broken heart would find hope in the days of grief that lay ahead of me once I left that flash of brilliance in the sky. My hope would be found when I realized that Jesus, the Creator and Redeemer, would not allow his Creation to be handed over to the forces of darkness. No! This King is coming back for his people. Everything bad will be wiped away. And everything good will remain. Redemption has been accomplished and it is being accomplished.
At the start, he was there. He was there. In the end, He’ll be there. He’ll be there.