Embracing New Beginnings: Hope and Redemption in God

god of the Bible the Living God is a god of new beginnings never do we see that more than what we look at today so right now take a deep breath that is the spirit Breath of God in you let go of yesterday let go of your inadequacy weakness sin guilt Embrace this day as God's gift you lift up your hearts lift up your hearts toward Heaven be filled with hope and anticipation we're going to find God and the word for today is help [00:00:31]

so after the fall God comes and he questions the man and he questions the women and there's pretty limited uh uh expression of agency so next comes what is sometimes called the pronouncement of the curse say a couple words about this uh the language is very interesting in Genesis it talks about God directly blessing blessing is an act of God's will uh He blesses the fish He blesses the human beings uh it doesn't say God curses what God does is to observe the curse or pronounces the curse he Will's blessing he observes cursiveness that comes when things are not as they are supposed to be and he pronounces this on the serpent that is the agent of evil and Temptation he pronounces it on the earth the ground he does not pronounce the curse over the man over the woman all that's showing us the nature of a God who is a good God who wants to bring about Redemption [00:16:22]

and then a sense of alienation and deep frustration you will labor by the sweat of your brow that's part of why when we talk to somebody and they want to let us know I'm doing really well can you do this project no sweat or I'm cool cool has become a big thing cool baby no sweat baby why because I don't want to be thought of as somebody who is under the curse and yet I am and yet God is up to something in this it is reflecting on this that causes Paul in uh he's loaded the church at Rome Romans 8 he says for creation itself was subjected to frustration the ground thorns and thistles there's a curse things are not as they're supposed to be creation itself was subjected to frustration not by its own choice but by the one who subjected it that is God in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the Glorious freedom of the children of God there is a great story at work God is doing something nothing is the way it's supposed to be [00:32:56]

there is a goodness and a blessing that we did not put into the world and there is a Brokenness inside me and with other people that I can't fix uh God also speaks to the woman I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing with pain you will give birth to your children your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you and I have talked before about the fact that the husband ruling over the wife was not God's original intent for humankind is part of the curse that Jesus came to Deliver Us from it's interesting that right after this in the 20th verse of Genesis 3 it says Adam named his wife Eve he doesn't name her before the coming of the curse and some Old Testament Scholars will say naming often implied a kind of authority over another being the man names the animals and now he names EV he didn't do that before because he was not yet trying to rule over her before [00:45:54]

and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your Offspring and hers now what's the Serpent's Offspring God is not talking about little snakes they're going to be crawling around the idea here is that there are two great forces in life there is evil and there is good and to be a child of evil or to be a child of good is to be characterized by that and of course the reality for all of us is with this combination of them God says I will put enmity as a really good thing to say I don't want evil I don't want to be that kind of person and uh when Genesis goes on to talk about uh Cain is a picture of The Offspring of evil of murder but then it says between your Offspring and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel somebody's coming help is coming and he will crush he will destroy he will bring an into the curse and Evil [01:04:04]

and this is sometimes called Old technical language for it is proto-ethangelium the the first or embryonic picture of the Gospel the promise that help is on the way that The Offspring of the woman would be born one day and in the early church they came to understand that this offspring of course was Jesus this is the first promise of Jesus Paul when he writes to the church at Rome I think it's chapter 16 verse 20. he says and the God of Peace will soon crush the Satan under your feet and so we cry out for help this is the promise we Face somehow a life and forces death alienation sin Brokenness that is too much for us [01:14:58]

when the authors I love is Norman McLean the son of a Protestant Presbyterian minister and uh he taught for his whole career at Northwestern when he was an old old man he wrote his first book his first Novella called A River Runs Through It and one of the themes in that book is help it's the story of Two Brothers Norman and his brother Paul and Paul struggles with demons addiction and and attraction to gambling um Norman is never able to give his brother the help that he knows that he needs his dad isn't his dad his dad's this wonderful Presbyterian minister at one point Norman takes up with a uh girlfriend who's a Methodist and Norman writes my father did not think much about methodists he considered them Baptists that could read [01:24:10]

but he's reflecting in one of his sermons about the nature of help he says help is when you give a part of yourself to another person that accepts him willingly and yet Norman and his father was never able to do this for Paul who was a person of great grace and beauty very skilled as a fisherman and yet unable to overcome his demons at one point they're talking about trying to help somebody else and Norman says to his brother you know I just don't think he wants to be with us he doesn't want us to help him and Paul's responses maybe he just likes the idea of somebody trying to help him and Norman realizes maybe that's the longing of his brother Paul [01:31:39]

after Paul is killed his father in his final sermon is reflecting on the nature of help and he talks about the pain he says all too often what happens in this world is um either we are unable to give to the other person the help that they need or the help that we are able to offer them is not the help that they want and there's great pain I know and having somebody in your life where you want so much to help them and they will not or having somebody who would receive help if you're able to do it but you can't and so we take our broken lives and our broken stories and our broken relationships and we put them into God's hands we put them into his story [01:40:08]

Norman McLean wrote another book he was still writing it when he died as an old old man young men in fire it's about a man goes fire back in the 1940s and these young smoke jumpers who tried to put it out 13 of them died lots of controversy around that he talks about it was the story of young men like there's another story of a young man who descends from the Heavens to the Earth to try to save people who are in Peril and McLean writes that he he wrote that story to see if he could take what was a catastrophe and understand it as a tragedy because a catastrophe is just a random event but a tragedy is a story and if it's a story it has meaning and if it has meaning it could have Redemption and if there is redemption there is hope and there is hope and there is hope [01:50:59]

so today that's the prayer God help me God help the people that I love that I'm unable to help in the way that I wish I could how many know how to carry the burden of love me to know how to speak as well and wisely as I'm able helping to make decisions the best I can I can't God you can I want to let you and then God how can I bring help to the people I'm with today who needs help right now where I might be able to do something maybe I can't help the person I most want to help but there's somebody that I can help maybe in doing that somehow Grace is set free where help will come to the one that I love as well we're part of a great story and there is yet hope [02:07:27]