A couple years back, I led a pair of Bible studies (which I later consolidated into one) upon the Lord’s leading. I was going through some challenges at the time in which it was becoming really easy to fall into despair. Gathering with other believers to encourage one another was the way out of that trap, and every time we met it was a blessed time.
At the same time, a friend and I were reading through the Bible chronologically (at least, I was attempting to). I unfortunately wasn’t faithful to the program, even though I kept up the meetings, by midyear I had completely fallen off the daily program. But early in the year, when I was reading faithfully I was also examining which passages to highlight for the month’s meeting. January’s was simple: Genesis 1 (the creation story) and Genesis 3 (the fall of humanity into sin) are critical passages for understanding key aspects our faith. For February, it was the Ten Commandments. And as I continue to go through the Bible, whether it’s the Law, the Prophets, or the New Testament, it all boils down to sin and where we need to ask God for forgiveness.
When thinking of people to witness to, I’ve never gravitated towards people who grew up atheist or followed some other religion. The simple reason is that I could never relate to them. How can I preach Christ to them if they don’t even have a frame of reference for Him? Similarly, how I can effectively preach Christ to them if I don’t have a frame of reference for their system of beliefs that prevent them from taking that first leap? However, the group of people I have felt a desire to try to reach are those who grew up in the church and have at least a basic knowledge of Jesus and the Word, but for some reason either fell away, or still attend church but feel disillusioned, or attend church and even have an interest in their faith but lack certain critical knowledge.
I think back on my salvation story: I grew up in the church. I knew about Jesus, about His birth, His crucifixion, His death, and His resurrection. But nothing about a personal relationship with Him, not until I was in college, and even then it took almost another decade before I realized that following Christ was an actual decision, a commitment. (Back then, I thought believing simply meant agreeing factually the things I knew about Christ.)
When I left my most recent former church for my current church, there was another critical layer that I realized regarding living the Christian life: the message of Christ needs to be in everything that we speak, preach, and believe. Social injustice as a general concept is wrong – the Bible even makes that clear. But our response as Christians to social injustice needs to be seasoned with salt. (Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. Colossians 4:6, NKJV) I didn’t see that with folks from my previous church. When they expressed outrage over what they called “wrong,” their outrage was purely emotional and rooted in the flesh, and not at all rooted in Biblical moral standards. (To be clear, a case could have been made for the object of their outrage; they simply chose not to go that route.)
I have a longtime friend that I do believe God has put on my heart to witness to. He was part of my virtual Bible study for the first half of the year before his schedule made it unfeasible for him to continue attending. I still remember being led to set up the focus passages for the first two meetings in part because they are foundational to our faith, but also because of him. He’s a lifelong churchgoer. But God revealed immediately in our first meeting why I needed to focus on the foundational passages to our faith. For that meeting I had focused on the following passages:
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Genesis 1:1-5, NKJV
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. 31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis 1:26-31, NKJV
1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Genesis 3:1-6, NKJV
I had the group take turns reading through each of the passages out loud, one verse at a time. In this group, I invited a second friend who is a believer, 1. Because I wanted this Bible study to bless him, and 2. As I would come to discover, my first friend was likely unsaved, and I wanted to have a second friend in the faith to come alongside as support if needed. As it turned out, right after reading through the above passages, my first friend commented something along the lines of “God created this world with evil in it.” In retrospect I should have spoken up right away and corrected him. I wasn’t expecting that comment, especially considering what we had just read and studied together. As believers know, God did not create the world with evil in it. Genesis 1 repeatedly comments that “it was good” every day that God saw what He had made. It’s only when Satan tempted Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the knowledge of good and evil, that evil entered the world.
What’s remarkable too, as I am attempting to go through this chronological reading program for the third time, that on the very first day out of 365, we cover the entirety of creation and the fall of humanity all in one day! Even though God did not create evil, nor did He create the world with evil in it, right away we go straight to, the world and humanity are corrupted. We don’t even get to enjoy only the first two chapters of Genesis for a day before finally moving into the horrible reality of sin on Day 2. It goes to show (me, anyway) how critically important it is to understand the reality of sin in our lives. In my two main previous churches (the one at which I grew up, and the one at which I finally received Jesus as an adult and was water-baptized) what proved to be missing was the reality of the Bad News. Yes, the Good News is that Jesus loves you and me and everyone else. But: if we don’t receive Him as our Savior and especially as our King and Lord, we’re basically rejecting His love, and we’re rejecting His blood sacrifice on the cross in our place due to, yup, our sins. The Bad News is that God hates sin so much that no one can enter heaven unless by Jesus’ blood our sins are blotted out and we are thereby purified. And yes, the Bad News means that any person who has not allowed Jesus’ blood to cleanse and purify them will be cast in to hell for Satan and his demons to devour and torment.
The Bad News is not: this racial injustice is so bad that we need to punish all the descendants of the purported perpetrators until we get the payback that we deserve. (Excuse me?? Who is judge here: you, or God?)
Note of confession: I have my own version of this feeling of outrage, less so regarding racial injustice, but more so with what I’ve experienced in my life as personal injustice against me. And the Lord has made it clear to me that He is to be Judge, not me. I say this to point to God’s justice: He holds the same exact standards for you and me both. I will explore this further in Part 3 when I share what God has been pointing out to me through the Book of Exodus.
I do believe that the creation story and the fall of humanity are foundational pieces of our Christian faith 1. Because this is reality, regardless of whether a person wants to acknowledge it or not, and 2. Because without these pieces the impact and necessity of Jesus Christ as God the Son who was sacrificed as a sin offering in our place (not to mention rose again from the dead less than 48 hours later, thereby conquering death itself!) is nullified. After all, if everyone really made it into heaven when they died, no matter what, then what’s the need for Jesus? The answer is, we need Jesus because without Him we all are lost and without hope. But with Him, we get to enjoy eternity with Him, with God the Father, in heaven, with new resurrection bodies that will never die nor fade away.
After all, eternity lasts a long, long time. Where would you rather be?
