OCTOBER 11, 2020 SUNDAY MESSAGE
JOIN US LIVE AT 10 AM ON SUNDAYS!
Transcription Notes:
Welcome people that are here and those of us that are joining this morning service online. My name is Dwayne Williams. I am one of the elders here at Common Ground. My family and I have been a part of this Church for a long time, about 17 years, so I will be bringing the talk, the sermon, wherever you want to call it. This morning, we're going to start it out with a quick video clip that should be keyed up.
The more I look at the universe, just the less convinced I am that there is something benevolent going on. So if your concept of a creator is someone who's all powerful and all good, that's not an uncommon pairing of powers that you might describe to a creator, all powerful and all good. And I look at disasters that afflict Earth and life on Earth. Volcanoes, Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, disease, pestilence, congenital birth defects. You look at this list of ways that life is made miserable on Earth by natural causes.
And I just ask, how do you deal with that? So philosophers rose up and said, if there is a God, God is either not all powerful or not all good. I have no problems. If as we probe the origins of things, we bump up into the bearded man, if that shows up, we're good to go. Okay, not a problem. There's just no evidence of it. And this is why religions are called faith collectively because you believe something in the absence of evidence, that's what it is.
That's why it's called faith. Otherwise, we would call all religions evidence. But we don't for exactly that reason. So I'm given what everyone describes to be the properties that would be expressed by an all powerful being in the gods that they worship. I look for that in the universe, and I don't find it. So I remain unconvinced. But if you got some good evidence, bring it, bring it. Okay. And so I don't lead with that information, because what I believe should be irrelevant to anyone. It's not about me.
It's about the real world.
So I don't know if you guys know who that is, but Neil Degrasse Tyson. Hopefully I pronounced his name correctly. Very smart scientist. And he asked some great questions. Now I disagree that there's no evidence there's faith either way, whether or not you believe in creation or evolution, you're putting your faith into something. And so someone once said apologetics, which is if you're not familiar with that, that is a portion of Christianity that argues for the evidence of faith right in the God of the Bible. So you're not going to argue someone into the Kingdom.
But you also need to have an answer for the hope that you have. So in light of that, we're doing a little bit of call in response. If you're taking notes at home or if you have anything to write with or even just think about or converse with the people that you're sitting with. The main questions that he asks about the world being awful bad, disease, pestilence. It's a rough scenario at times. How do you guys answer the question of why is the world the way that it is?
I'll give you about 30 seconds to answer that. All right, Time's up. It probably wasn't 30 seconds. I know there's still some conversations going on. Hopefully you answered all of life's hard questions in 30 seconds. If you didn't, then you fail. No, I'm kidding. Obviously, I don't know how you answered that question, but the one thing that he doesn't talk about is sin, right? Sin affected the way things have gone and what things look like today. There should be an image of a gentleman. Do you might know who that is?
That's my cousin Steve. I'm kidding. I have a cousin, Steve, but that's not him. And to my knowledge, that's not anyone famous. I don't know who that guy is. The reason I'm showing you this picture, though, is I want you to be thinking in a Middle Eastern way, right? A Near Middle Eastern way. So there's a gentleman named Dr. Michael Heizer who says that you should put on your Second Temple Jewish mind, your Second Temple Jewish hat, if you will, as you start to engage scripture.
Okay. And so that's the only reason I'm showing you this guy. This guy was not a Second Temple Jew because he was alive much later than that. But when I say Second Temple Jewish mind, what am I talking about? Well, the First Temple Solomon's Temple that was built in around 950 BC. It was destroyed by the Neo Babylonian Empire. Right. And then you can read about it. Nehemiah and some other books. When the Second Temple was built, the Second Temple was built about 516 BC and
destroyed around 70 Ad.
So when Jesus was born and came into existence on this planet, the way that we know about or talk about, at least he was a Second Temple Jew. So Second Temple Jews would have been Paul, Peter, Jew, James, John, Jesus. All of these individuals, right. And they knew things. They knew a lot of things. They weren't illiterate, cave dwelling, bumpkins. They knew a bunch of stuff. They were multilingual. They were smart people. They knew about their history, right. In order to really engage this book in a way that's robust in a way that I think will help all of us.
We need to know some of what they knew, right. And or a lot of what they knew. Got one more image for you real quick. You might remember this from school, Sunday school. Whatever. This is the Fertile Crescent, right. I was going to have a pointer this morning. I don't have it. But down there kind of in the right corner, if you will. There's you are. There's anybody that knows anything about Genesis, you will recognize Er Abram, who became Abraham came out of the Caldes or of the Chaldeans.
Right. So Abraham father, Abraham came out of this area, and I don't care if you're secular or you're religious. You can't deny that human civilization came out of the Fertile Crescent. You'll also see the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers there. We will recognize those from the Garden of Eden. All right. Put on your seatbelts. We are going to be moving through a lot of scripture this morning more than normal, but it's important because we're going to be connecting a lot of dots. And it's important when you
read the Bible again, you want to connect dots from Old Testament to New Testament.
And if you don't, there's a lot of things that are going to fly over your head, and it's just a much easier and or better way to engage scripture. So again, I don't know how you guys answer that question about why the world is the way that it is. But if you were a second Temple Jewish person, you would answer that question with the story that's in Genesis three. Now, if you're following along with the gospel story timeline, Eric has been preaching on creation for the last few weeks.
We are now talking about rebellion. Okay. And so we are all very aware, I would imagine of the rebellion in Genesis three. The Garden of Eden, right. Eve and Adam were tempted. They ate of the fruit and they were kicked out of the garden and then death entered into the human race and we're suffering for it. A second Temple Jewish person would answer that question with Genesis three, but it wouldn't only be Genesis Three. They would answer it with a couple other rebellion stories in Genesis.
Ok. The next story we're going to take a look at right now. So should be on the screen. Jude chapter. Well, there's only one chapter in Jude Jude verse up there, verse one, six to seven. I'll read what's on up there versus my Bible and the Angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling. These he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting change for judgment on
the great day. In a similar way. Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual morality and perversion.
They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire. Okay. Jude's talking about something. He's talking about an event. We're going to quickly one key word in there limits of authority. So no matter what we look at this morning, understand that God is sovereign, right? God's in control. But there's some limits of authority. Keyword two, Peter two, four through five. It should be up there now, for if God did not spare Angels when they sinned but sent them to hell, putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment.
If he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness and seven others. Is there more after that? There may not be. But either way, Jude and Peter are talking about something. They're talking about an event. Now, do you have Jude 14, verse 14. Here we go. Enoch the 7th from Adam prophesied about them. See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his Holy ones. Now, the reason I have this up here a couple of things.
Sometimes people will talk about the genealogies in the scriptures they'll talk about. Obviously, there's one that takes Jesus to David and then David to Adam. Along Jesus's stepfather's line.
Joseph. Right. And along Jesus mother's line, Mary. Sometimes people talk about these genealogies as allegory or that they're not real. I will argue that they are very real. These are real people, and they speak to it right here talking about Enoch the 7th from Adam. They would not be painstakingly talking about these people if they weren't real individuals.
That being said, the Book of Enoch did not make our Canon. So I'm not going to argue that it's scripture. But I am going to say that the Second Temple Jews knew about what Enoch wrote about and talked about. Right? They were aware of it. Peter talks about it. Jude talks about it. So if you want to know what the Second Temple Jews knew, maybe check out the Book of Enoch. Okay. What event are Jude and Peter and even potentially Enoch? What are they talking about?
They're talking about a rebellion in Genesis Six. That should be up here, too, when human beings began to increase in number on the Earth and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful and they married any of them. They chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal. Their days will be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days. And also afterward, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them.
They were the heroes of old men of Renown troubling passage, no doubt. But we can't skip over it, right. You need to know what's in here and you need to know it in context, inside of context. You've got the rebellion in Genesis three. We just talked about and we're going to call this the second rebellion. Genesis six. Limits of authority. Right. Think back to when God created Adam and when he created Eve. When God created Adam, he gave him a job name. These animals cultivate the land, created Eve.
Work with your husband, be fruitful and multiply. God can accomplish any and everything he wants. But he enjoys giving created beings jobs, right. And having them help and lead and do things. I'm going to tell you a quick story. So there's a guy that I work with and I helped hire him and phenomenal resume and so he starts the job and super guy really nice. We're working with him. There's some holes. There are some things that we need to see improvement on. He takes correction very well.
But we're just not seeing the improvement that we need. And this is over a period of time. So I'm speaking with one of the other leaders at work and not quite sure what to do. And then we find out through conversation with him that, unfortunately, his wife is battling cancer. Well, that piece of information changed everything, right? I mean, it illuminated the whole story. And the reason I tell you that is if you don't know the whole story, you're going to read things. You're going to understand things in a limited fashion.
What we're talking about this morning, some of us are old enough to remember these old black and white TVs that were portable. You could take them around. They had an antenna on them. You could set them someplace and you could watch a show. Now it wasn't great. But you still had TV. Okay, well, if you only know part of the story and you're not able to connect some of these dots, you're watching TV like that versus going to an IMAX theater. You've got surround sound, you've got color, you've got all this amazing stuff.
Okay. So that's essentially what we're attempting to do this morning. Second response, if you will, if you have a second. Well, you have 30 of them. Let me give you 30 seconds to discuss with the people around you and or write down how tall do you think Goliath, if it was that's about 30 seconds. Excuse me. I'm not going to answer that question, but he was a tall guy, right? Many times people don't think about that. They don't ask that he wasn't an individual that had a pituitary gland problem.
He could move. I would imagine an NFL linebacker that was very large, right? Could move, was fast, was strong. All that. If you get a chance, we don't have time to look at it. This morning in Deuteronomy 311 talks about King Aug of Bashan and the dimensions of his bed and the fact that he was the last of the giant refites connected to Goliath look at that when you get a chance. All right. Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Okay. This is leading us into the Third Rebellion. Okay.
Third rebellion. Who here remembers Job? I'm sure everybody does. We're going to look at a passage from Job. One day the Angels came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came with them. So this is a short passage. But it illustrates the fact that there is something more than God just sitting up on his throne, twiddling his thumbs disengaged from the world. I don't know that we have it.
I don't think that we have the first Kings passes. One Kings 22. So I'm going to read it for you real quick.
Remember I told you that we're moving through a lot of scripture this morning. So First Kings 22, 1923. Then Makaiah continued, Listen to what the Lord says. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the armies of heaven around him on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, who can entice Ahab to go into battle against Raymond Gilead so he can be killed? There were many suggestions, and finally a spirit approached the Lord and said, I can do it. How will you do this?
The Lord asked. The spirit replied, I will go out and inspire all of Ahab's prophets to speak lies. You will succeed, said the Lord. Go ahead and do it. So the Job passage. That passage I just read in First Kings talks about what some scholars call a divine counsel talks about heavenly court again. Remember, God engages created beings. He doesn't just create beings and have them not do things. He creates beings. He created us to do things. I've often said, if you are a follower of Jesus, why are you still here?
The only reason you're still here is because you have work to do. You have a job. I'm not talking about what you do for a living. I'm talking about letting people know about the Kingdom of God. Right? So we all have jobs to do. We have things to get done. Every created being does. So let's look at Deuteronomy 32, eight through nine. All right. When the most high gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the Peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.
That is one passage. I'm not sure what happened there. That's okay. I can read it. I have it here. So Deuteronomy 32, eight, nine. And you guys honestly are really quickly going to see a difference in translation. So Deuteronomy 32, eight, nine. When the most high assigned lands to the nations, when he divided up the human race, he established the boundaries of the Peoples according to the number in his heavenly court. For the people of Israel belong to the Lord. Jacob is his special possession. The difference is that one divided the nations up according to Israel.
What I just read is divided them up among the heavenly court. Israel wasn't created yet when that happened. Okay, so when did that happen? What is being talked about? I don't know if we're having technical issues. If we are, I will read from my Bible. But if not, we're going to go to Genesis eleven. Genesis eleven. Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plane in China and settled there. They said to each other, Come, let's make bricks and Bake them thoroughly.
They use brick instead of stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole Earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, if as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the Earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there, the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole Earth. There's only one time in Scripture that is described a separating of the nations, a dividing of the nations. And it's in Genesis Eleven. The reason that Israel doesn't work for the previous passage is because Israel, like I said, wasn't created yet.
Israel didn't happen until after Genesis Eleven. Right? Until after the people were scattered. Now is God just against people coming together? Does he not like people working together? No, of course not. But hearken back to the initial call right on Adam and Eve. Be fruitful and multiplied. Go out. God
does not want us to just even hear in Church, right? It's good. Our close friends need to be Christians. But we also need to be friends with people that don't know the Lord right. That's how you witness that's how you tell people the good news.
And if you're not doing that, you can either do that on your own or God can do it for you. But trust me, it's much better if you do it on your own. So God divided the nations. He divided people to protect them, to protect us. Now they weren't building a ladder. It's called a tower. In the Bible. I understand that there should be an image of really what it actually looked like, what they were doing. Do we have that image? There we go. So that's a ziggarat.
And it's from Er. Remember, Er, from earlier, about 2100 BCE. That's more of what it looked like, what they were doing. And there's a lot going on with this structure. This structure isn't just some building. This structure is a worship full structure, but not to Yahweh, not to the God of the Bible. We're not trying to commune with the God of the Bible. We're trying to connect and commune with other things again. God is about protection. He is about protecting us. All right. So you had the people speaking one language coming together and doing some things that God was not in favor of.
And so he protected them. But he also connected them with his heavenly court. How did that go? Let's look at Psalm 82. Here we go. God presides in the great assembly. He renders judgment among the gods. How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked. Defend the weak and the Fatherless, uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. The gods know nothing. They understand nothing. They walk about in darkness.
All the foundations of the Earth are shaken. I said, you are gods. You are all sons of the most high. But you will die like mere mortals. You will fall like every other ruler. Rise up. O God. Judge the Earth for all the nations are your inheritance. So obviously it did not go very well. Right. Has not gone well. We have all kinds of nationalism now. People claim to be Christian, but yet they are more interested in nationalism than they are following God. Right? Didn't go well, didn't go well for humans, didn't go well for other divine created beings.
God calls down judgment. Why is any of this important? I'll give you three reasons. Is anything that I've been talking about this morning a salvific issue? No, it's not. You can know Jesus. You can be saved. You can get to heaven. You can do all of those amazing things and know nothing of what I've talked about this morning. But as I said earlier, Peter says, we need to always have a reason for the hope that we have right. It would be nice. This clip that we saw earlier, it would be nice to have a pretty robust understanding of this book if you sat down with someone like we saw in the video clip or a friend or a family member that's like, you know what?
What about this or what about that or what about this? I am always encouraging people to have a very robust understanding and to be able to connect the dots from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Secondly, it helps to bring clarity to what Jesus talked about, what Paul talked about, what Peter talked about, what John talked about because remember, they were Second Temple Jews. They knew things. They knew a lot of things. We're never going to know everything that they knew because we're not Second Temple Jews, but we can do better about our knowledge and help illuminate what is in the Bible.
And the third reason, I would suggest just fun, right? Who doesn't want to know and have a better understanding of what's in this book? I'll give you an example, and I don't think I have it on here, but in Luke ten and I'll run to it real quick. Luke ten. Jesus sends out the disciples. Okay? And he sends out 70 disciples. Here we go. This is one of my favorite passages in scripture. So here it is. Luke ten. The Lord now chose 72. So some manuscripts say 70.
Some say 72. I'll get to that in a minute. The Lord chose 72 other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places. He planned to visit. These were his instructions to them. The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord, who is in charge of the harvest. Ask him to send more workers into his fields, so he sends them out. Right. And he gives them a job as God
always does. And they come back. Right. They come back.
And it says in verse 17, when the 72 disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name. And Jesus goes on to say, look, that's great. I'm glad you guys are hyped. I'm glad you're excited, but be really excited that your names are written in heaven.
Now that Luke Ten passage harkens back to Genesis Ten. So we read Genesis Eleven about the Tower of Babel. What happened in Genesis Ten. Genesis Ten is what's called the table of nations.
Right. So you had the flood and we looked at part of why the flood happened in Genesis Ten. It gives a list of the sons of Noah, Shem Ham, Jpess, right. And their children and the nations that their children help to start. Guess how many 70. Some manuscripts say 72 in Luke Ten, what Jesus is doing is he's engaging his audience and his disciples and saying, I am taking back and I want everyone to know that you can see and that you can't see. I'm taking that cosmic geography.
I am in control. And I'll give you a heads up. As Christians, we know the end, right? We know who wins. We honestly know who's already won. Jesus does right on. So I don't want anyone to think or be concerned about some of this subject matter. It can be a little not scary. I don't like that word, but it can be different. We don't talk about supernatural stuff like this very often, but I think that we should understand. And remember, God gives us all leashes, and he gives us long leashes.
He really does. He gives us very long leashes. It's almost like that frog analogy, right. The frog that's in the water and the heat is slowly getting turned up. And maybe the frog is not even by him or herself. Maybe there's other frogs in there and they're just having a good time. They're looking around. They're like man, everything's good. And the water is slowly being turned up and slowly being turned up. And before they know it, they're cooked. It's interesting what Serena said earlier. She talked about allowing God to be in control.
My encouragement to everyone this morning is to not be involved in an inadvertent rebellion. Right. We talked about three macro rebellions, but we are all under some sort of rebellious thought process or heart condition every single day. And so my encouragement to everyone is, check yourself. Don't be like those frogs and slowly get cooked in rebellion because you're not paying attention. All right. I'm going to say a quick prayer. I thank you guys for engaging with the service this morning. Lord God, we thank you for who you are.
We thank you for giving us your word. We thank you for giving us the ability to understand your word. We thank you for giving us hearts and minds that want to know you more and know you better. Thank you for who you are. Thank you and ask that you would bless and protect the people that showed up to Church this morning and those that weren't able to come be with common ground. I pray this prayer in Jesus Holy name Amen a couple of references to I didn't mention so the books.
They might be up on screen. There are two books I would recommend The Unseen Realm by Dr. Michael Heiser. A lot of the information that I was talking about this morning came from that book. And then there's another one called The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. Those books have been incredibly powerful as I have studied God's word.
Get your Guidebook Here!
COMMUNION:
(1 COR. 11:23B-26)
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
SAVE THE DATE: The 2020 Marriage Retreat is scheduled to be Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and November 8!
PRAYER REQUESTS:
We are hosting prayer team meetings for both the congregation at large and individuals to sign up for individual prayer.
SUGGESTIONS FOR WORSHIP:
Coty Miller’s own “Praise & Worship” Spotify playlist and “Praise & Worship” YouTube playlist (slightly different from each other), both of diverse music that are being constantly updated!
Bethel Music :
Bethel Music’s hours of live music YouTube Playlist, also being constantly updated
Bethel provides chords to most (if not all) of their songs here (just have to register email, but free!)
Live worship moments from the Upper Room YouTube Playlist
Journal writing! (I’m a writer too, so sometimes creative writing and writing my thoughts to God is my form of worship.)
Declare and worship with truth by singing and praying scriptures.
WORSHIP NIGHT! Dedicate a night to worship with friends and family, your house church or neighbors, those who need prayer, love worship, or just enjoy music through a video chat platform like Zoom. You can have one person leading at a time (switching off to whoever else wants to lead) while others sing along, pray, or prophesy, etc.
Serving your community, both online, in person, or both, is a great way to worship God, from spreading encouragement and God’s Word online to physically serving food to others. If you are able to go out and serve, click here for opportunities.
COMMISSIONING:
As Jesus said in John 20:21,
"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Go, be the Church!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.