Principles Of Significance
Tom Shrader examines the creation and fall accounts in Genesis to address the fundamental human need for significance and self-worth. He demonstrates how sin entered the world through Adam and Eve's disobedience, creating shame, fear, and the tendency to hide from God. Rather than seeking identity in possessions, relationships, or achievements, true significance comes from understanding our creation in God's image and our reconciliation to Him through Christ.
“There is something so valuable in my mind, to a person who knows Jesus Christ, and who's walked with Him for an extended period of time.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Principles (2009)
Recorded: 2009 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 58 min
Themes: identity, shame, fear, worth, significance, sin, creation, reconciliation, struggling with self worth, feeling insignificant, new believer, questioning identity, dealing with shame, seeking purpose, young adult, parent
Scripture: Genesis 1-3, Genesis 2:16, Genesis 3, 2 Corinthians 5:17-19, John 13:34, 1 Corinthians 13, 1 Thessalonians 5:16, 2 Corinthians 1:3
Theological Themes: imago dei, image of god, fall of man, genesis, redemption, christology, anthropology, original sin
Full Transcript
Yeah, well, just so you know, your night goes downhill from here, so you just saw the highlight. John's going to sing every time we're together, so it'll go like this: the curve. Judy will get it started, John will take it up, and then I'll bring it down to a close every time.
So it's good to be with you. Susan and I came in today. If you have Bibles, go ahead and open them to the book of Genesis. Let me set up a couple of things about the nature of our time together. You're going to learn a whole bunch about me, good or bad, and I probably am not going to spend a ton of time with each one of you. That's going to be the way this is going to go. That's the nature of a weekend like this.
A Little About Me
Let me tell you a little bit about me, and then we'll get into what we're going to do tonight. I was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa. So you're from Iowa? Really? Oh my golly, well let's spend a second here. What did you do in Davenport? Okay, maybe we won't spend much time on this. How old were you when you left? Okay, good. Why did you leave? Okay, well there you go.
Well, it's a great place, it's a wonderful place. I love Iowa, we go back all the time, it's a terrific place. I just don't want to live there. It's a wonderful place. Susan and I live in Phoenix now. We met down there, and we've been married 31 years in June.
We have two daughters. The oldest one's name is Sarah, and she has two children, two girls, Gracie and Reagan. Then Hailey is the younger girl, and she has two boys, Brayden and Yale. So that's the grandkids, that's the family. It's really kind of interesting. My oldest daughter never dated this guy that I'm going to mention, but it's my old business partner's son. They never dated, and then just kind of one day were sitting around, and they were friends, and thought maybe being friends would lead to being a good marriage, and so they decided to get married.
Then my other daughter never dated anybody. She never had a date her whole time, all through high school. She just never had a date, and it wasn't because—she's a very, in my view, she's a very attractive lady. She was a cheerleader and all that. She just was really picky. So I used to say to her, "You know, Hailey, look at that, look at that guy," and she would go like this. She goes, "Look at his socks, dad, he's a geek." And I would say, "Geez, Hailey, the standard's a little high," and then she would say, "I'm just going to find somebody just like you, dad."
She didn't quite do that well, but she did find a guy. Actually it was a guy that I hooked them up together, and it was the only guy that she ever dated. He works for me, and both son-in-laws were born on the same day, same year, which is kind of weird. That's kind of a weird deal too.
My Background and Transformation
So that's really the background. I was raised, born and raised in Catholic grade school, high school, college. Then John said he wandered away. He took kind of the look with the—he could pull it off probably with the platform shoes. I actually, and this is my relationship, I actually then had an afro. I would take my hair, I'd get a perm, and when I first met Susan, I'd get a perm, and then I'd pick it out at night, and then I'd be styling. So yeah, it didn't work so well.
But anyway, I came out to Phoenix to have fun and to party, and that was my deal. That's all I really cared about. Susan and I met, we got married, and then right about the time that Sarah was being born, there were a couple of things that happened in my life that caused me to say there must be something more to life than this. So I said to my friend, "What's the answer?" and he said, "Jesus is the answer." And I said to him, "Do you have anything else? Do you have a pill I could take, or dust I could throw on me or something?" He said no.
It was about four months later that I went into a Bible study down in the Phoenix area, and there was a gentleman by the name of Larry Wright. Every once in a while there was somebody who knew Larry. Sure, John, that's how I met John was through Larry years and years and years ago.
The Influence of Larry Wright
Larry was just this incredible man. There's never been anyone quite like Larry, and he is by far, outside of my immediate family, the most influential person in my life. He was a little bitty guy, he was littler than me. We were similar. People used to think that perhaps he was my father.
He had rheumatoid arthritis, very sickly. From the time I knew him, he had been saved and prayed for humility, and the next day he got rheumatoid arthritis and hemorrhoids. The hemorrhoids went away, but the arthritis didn't. It just got worse and worse and worse, and he was so crippled up that just the gravity was starting to pull his hands out. He would come like this, and John would remember, that's how Larry would walk. He would walk like this, and he would walk up just about like this, and he would get up to about here, and then he would drop this Bible down on his hip, and he would sling it up like that. Then when he opened it up, it was like he was a whole different creature. You've just never seen or heard anything like it. Then when it was over, he would just shuffle back off.
He was an unbelievable guy. He and I did—and we did—Jeff mentioned pro sports, but we did a lot of pro athletes outreach stuff. John did a lot of music, and Larry did a lot of teaching, and I did a lot of teaching.
So one year we were doing an NFL conference, and Larry had—Larry thought he was cool. He had this crushed baby blue, crushed velvet suit that he had. It was like an athletic suit, but there was nothing athletic about it, but it was crushed baby blue. He walked in, I'll never forget this, and all these guys are in there, and I'm intimidated. It's Mike Singletary—
The Impact of Larry Wright
It's all those guys that used to come, big guys, and Larry came in. He's got his crushed blue velvet, and so he gets all up, and he hoists his Bible up, and he said, "There's nothing—" and they're kind of looking at him, because they didn't know who he was. This is one of the first times, they're kind of looking at him, and he said, "There's nothing I like better than when a bunch of us jocks can just get together and hang out." He was incredible. I mean, there was nothing like Larry, and he was my favorite guy, he was so special to me.
He would address—we had a Paul-Timothy relationship, and he would sign, I just opened a book the other day, "To my Tomothy," he would write, and it was just incredible. And he died with the boots on, he died at church waiting to go up and preach, he just fell over, had a heart attack. It was a great way to go. And so he was an amazing guy.
Well I walked in, and he was teaching that day, and he opened up the Bible. I'd never read a Bible in my life. I'd seen one, I'd never spent any time reading it, and he was in the book of Romans, and I had no clue, really, what he was saying. I just knew that God was doing something.
A Phone Call That Changed Everything
I went back to my office, literally shaking. Got out the phone book, W-R-I-G-H-T, where there's pages of Wrights, and there's columns of Larrys and Lawrences and all that, and I went like this, and I called that number, and I said, they said, "Hello," and I said, "Is there any chance, are you Larry Wright?" "Yep." "Is there any chance you're the Larry Wright that taught a Bible study this morning?" And he said, "That's me."
And so that began a relationship. That was a Thursday, I met with him the next Tuesday. I said to him, "You know, I'm really serious about this, I've never seen anything quite like what you do, it was amazing to me, and I'd like to just explore this whole idea of God and who He is." So I'm going to read the great books, I'm going to read the Koran, and I'm going to read the works of Buddha, and I'm going to do all these things. And he said, "Well, that sounds like a big job." And I said, "I'm going to read the Bible too," and he said, "Why don't you start in the Gospel of John?"
That night I read the Gospel of John, and it made absolutely no sense to me at all. I love these stories where somebody said, "I read it, my eyes were open," and I didn't get it at all.
A Prayer in the Car
And so the next day, I'm sitting in my car waiting for a client, and I cried out, and I said, "God, here's what—that I'm a sinner is something for which I have evidence, empirical data to support, that Jesus died, I believe." I believe any reasonable person would say that Jesus was here. I mean, I can't imagine somebody denying His existence, and that He died seems evident. There's no 2,000-year-old man walking around, and most people believe He died on a cross. But why He died on that cross, we really don't know until we get to the Scripture, and that that was for my sin.
And I cried out that day, and I said, "God, if that's true, and I believe that it is, I've had 30 years of this life, I can't imagine that You would want it, it's Yours, if You want it, go get it, tiger, because I've screwed it up for 30 years." And that day, from that day forward, Jesus has been a central part of my life, and has taken me into places that I never thought possible.
The Journey He's Taken Me On
And I don't just mean geography. It blows my mind, we have been up at Cannon Beach now at least once a year for a long time now. It's terrific, and it's not because of me, by the way. It's because Janet likes my wife Susan, so that's the only way that Susan can get up here, and I just have to tag along. And God has taken us to a whole bunch of places.
But where He's taken us that I never thought possible, is that He's given me a love for Him, and He's changed me. Now it's a work in progress. I'm not even sniffing being close to it. I'm still a pretty self-absorbed, selfish, prideful, arrogant fellow. But the fact that you can even say that, is a tribute to His grace and His mercy. And so you begin to see the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control, and you see that God has done that work in my life.
A Fascination with Older Believers
Now in my life, one of the things that's fascinated me—I don't know how to say this gently—is old people. I'm in the right joint, huh? So I mean, when I was a little boy, and we used to have paper routes, and then you had to collect—they don't do it this way anymore, you had to go and collect—I would go out for hours on end, and maybe get to three houses, and I would just sit and talk for hours with people. I always had a fascination for people who were older than me, and that still holds true in so many ways.
There is something so valuable in my mind, to a person who knows Jesus Christ, and who's walked with Him for an extended period of time. You can bring the scripture alive, you can take the songs that He sang. We know that we can entrust these things to You—that's the song you sang. What have you entrusted to Him? Your whole life, your soul. And then to have the testimony of that is so powerful.
So I am now moving in that direction myself. I'll be 60 in November—now that's a pup to some of you, but it's starting to get up there. I can get a good deal at Denny's, that's where I am now.
Starting a Church
Here's one, and I'm in this church, I can't even imagine this, but a few years ago we started a church, and it was really based on the fact—this is not exactly the most dynamic call in the life—but we just couldn't find a church we wanted to go to. Every church we went to, the music was great, the teaching was awful, the teaching was great, the music was awful, and we said, "Let's just start a church." And so we did, we started a church that we would want to go to.
And in the process of this, one of the things, and we tended to attract younger families and...
You Can't Keep Up With a Changing World
One of the things that were deficient in our church has been older people. We've become a place now that has a good chunk of older people around. Here's what I've learned from hanging with them, and I don't know what's representative of you, but many of the older people I know have prematurely put themselves on the sidelines. They've come to this false notion that the world's passing you by.
The world is passing you by, by the way. It's just blowing by, and the chances of you keeping up are zero. The chances of anybody keeping up is zero. Which makes you even more important, because you can talk about not the things that are transient that are moving along and changing, but you can bring in wisdom that's timeless. A timeless God does not produce dated material, and so these materials that God's given us in His word are timeless in their nature.
One of the things I see about our generation is that you have—I was trying to join with you and separate myself from you at the same time—we got a ton of young people who are dying for people like you to pour into their life. Now you may not think that. They may intimidate the snot out of you, but let me tell you, it's the other way around. You intimidate them. There is a resource in the church that is so powerful that is untapped, and it's you all sitting in this room.
The Focus on Legacy
So one of the hardest things about coming to Cannon Beach or any place like this is to try to figure out what to talk about. We're going to have six sessions together, and Susan and I are back in July for the full week with 12 sessions where I'll teach the book of James. But I was trying to figure out what to do with you all, and here's what I decided. We're going to talk about legacy. We're going to talk about passing on a legacy.
Here's what I want you to see: you are passing on a legacy right now whether you intend to or not. It can be a lousy legacy. I can just give you names—I can say John Wilkes Booth and he has a legacy. I can take the other side of that and say Abraham Lincoln and he has a legacy. You are having a legacy.
Typically we think of passing things on in a material sense, and I'm not that concerned about that—you figure that out. But what are the things that you need to pass on to the next generation? I was very careful there. I did not say grandkids and kids and great grandkids. They could be part of your legacy, but there could be a whole group of people who are not DNA related to you at all but for whom you could be a hero in their life.
Building on What You Already Know
Now let me tell you the obvious here: you can't pass on something you don't have. So our assumption here is that you are going to have these things, if not that you're going to want them by the end of the week.
Let me also say this to you: much of what I'm going to teach you is stuff you already know. Samuel Johnson said, "I need to be reminded more than I need to be informed." For some of you all, if you've been coming to Cannon Beach and your hand's been up and you've been in this room for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, you've heard message after message after message from some of the best Bible teachers in the whole wide world. I think it's presumptuous to think I'm going to come along and add something to that that you haven't already heard.
So what I want to do is remind you—maybe inform some, but remind most—of those truths that are so important to you that have to be passed on to the next generation.
The Speed of Change
There's a little clip called "Did You Know?" that's four minutes and 17 seconds long. If you get onto YouTube and type in "Did You Know?" you're going to see this incredible presentation with all different versions now. It just goes rapidly through one fact after another, and they just come at you.
How long did it take to get to 50 million participants? Radio took 37 years. Television took 17 years. The internet took 2 years. Facebook took 60 days, something like that. It just goes on. The largest English-speaking country in the world? China. These facts just start coming—bam, bam, bam—and by the end of it you're just saying stop.
I'm telling you, if I played this for you, I guarantee you would say stop early on, and at the end of it you'd say there's no chance. That's why I come back and say you can't keep up. There's a statistic that's really interesting: other than literature, history, and those things that don't change, everything that they teach a freshman in college is outdated by the end of their junior year. Anything that's changing is changing that fast.
That's what I'm saying—keeping up is silly. You're not going to keep up. Now I think there are some cultural things you need to do and some practical things that can really enhance that legacy. But I want to talk about the legacy itself.
Back to the Beginning
So I want to be really basic and perhaps teach you about things that are so familiar to you that they ought to just jump off the page when we talk about turning to Genesis chapter 1. That's kind of where it all began, right?
If we were to break down the Bible—this Bible has 1,268 pages in it—page 1 and 2 is about creation.
Page 3 is about the fall. And pages 4 through 1,268 is about God fixing it. That's a very interesting way to look and timeline this. If you begin to look at human history, you have essentially four things, four components. You have creation, and then you have the fall, and then you have redemption, and then you have restoration. That's what you have as you begin to work your way through Scripture.
The Problem with Cultural Self-Esteem
What you need to pass on, and this is the first thing that we want to talk about, and I don't use the term much, but since the culture uses it, we'll go ahead and use it, though it's kind of a bunch of hooey. It's this idea of self-esteem. Let's talk about it another way, or of real significance. The culture comes along and says, you will find self-esteem in a certain place, wearing a certain thing, looking a certain way, living in a certain house, going to a certain school, whatever those things are. So that you need to feel good about yourself.
And we've gone goofy with this. You have kids playing baseball games where they don't keep score. What is the point of that? Where everybody gets a ribbon at the end. No, I want a loser. I want somebody to win and somebody to lose. I want to understand what's going on here. Now I understand being sensitive to people, but all of a sudden we are obsessed with somebody's self-worth, self-esteem, in terms of it relating to just what we would look at humanistic things.
The Real Source of Significance
Well where do I find real self-esteem? How did we get the way we are? Why do we have the problems that we have? Well right here's the answer. In Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2, God creates. And when He's done creating, He creates Adam and Eve. And Genesis 2 ends with the man and his wife, and they're both naked and unashamed. Skip Genesis 3, and you go to Genesis 4. And by the time you get to Genesis 4, you have hatred, strife, murder, anger. What in the world happened? And the answer is in Genesis 3.
It's the same thing as you look around the world. We look around and we see some horrific things that are taking place in this world. We see the same thing. We see strife. We see siblings who don't speak to each other, except through attorneys. We see, roughly, 50% of those who say, "I will love you for better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness, health, till death do us part," say, "Eh, I was only kidding." We see nations who are determined to annihilate one another.
A Generation in Crisis
We see a whole generation, an alarming generation. The dropout rate among high school students in the United States of America, now think about this. For every 100 people that start high school, the ones who are graduating right now, 50. You have 50% of high school students who are dropping out. You had, in 2007, the largest birth rate we've ever had in the history of the nation. And of those births, around 43% of them were outside of marriage. So it goes on and on and on and on and on. You see athletes who sign contracts for millions of dollars and then snort and smoke and just give it away. The lure of this stuff.
How did it happen? Where do I find my identity? Well the whole idea of self-esteem or worth is wrapped up here in the idea of God's creation.
God's Creation and Original Design
If you look at Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, it simply says this: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving." And then God says, "Let there be light." And we have this story of creation. And God creates and He says, "It is good, it is good, it is good, it is good." And then He creates man.
And as He creates man, He says, "It is not good." It's the first malediction in the Bible. "It is not good for man to be alone." So God creates male and female. And then in chapter 2, verse 16, "The Lord commanded the man, saying, from any tree of the garden you may eat freely, but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat from it, for the day you eat from it you will surely die."
Then God says, "It's not good for man to be alone, I'll make a helper suitable for him." And God creates woman. He puts the two of them together. God originates marriage. That's God's plan for marriage, is that it would be lifelong, that it would be monogamous, and that it would be heterosexual. That's God's plan for marriage.
The State of Innocence
And then He says this, "The man and his wife were both naked and not ashamed." Now that word naked plays a huge role in the end of Genesis 2 and in Genesis 3. It's representative of innocence. There was an innocence there.
I was talking to a young guy the other day, and he's got this three-year-old kid, and he said, "It's amazing. This kid loves to take a bath. He'll take a bath, and when he gets out, you get him dried off, he will just take off running, not a stitch of clothes on. He's not embarrassed about it, he doesn't think about it." And he's certainly not innocent like they are, but there are no inhibitions there. He'll grow out of that. But they were in the garden, they were naked, they were unashamed. There was no reason to be ashamed. God had created them. They were in union, they were in harmony with Him. They were healthy.
The Fall Begins
And then Genesis 3 comes along. In Genesis 3, what happens is the fall. "The serpent is more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God has made. And he said to the woman, 'Indeed, has God said, you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?'" And the woman says, "No, no, no, that's not it. From the fruit of the tree of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God said, you shouldn't eat it or touch it lest you'll die."
The Nature of the Test
So for a long time I got a picture that the test was this, that there was one tree, and God says don't eat from it, so it became a test of endurance. That's not it, is it? They're in an absolute garden, they're in paradise, right? They're in this absolute picture of paradise. There's no sin, there's no tears, here you go. Here's what really makes
it paradise, right? What is it? One law, no lawyers, it's perfect. They're in paradise. It's absolute paradise.
Well, in the middle of this is a tree, in the middle of paradise. He says, not from that tree, don't eat from it. And so the serpent comes now, and Eve then responds. Now Eve had heard this, probably second-hand, because God had commanded the man, and I understand that God didn't say you should touch it, so some people make a big deal out of it and say, here she is adding to the Word of God, but it seems reasonable to me that she was going to have to touch it if she was going to eat it, and I don't want to get sidetracked with that argument.
And the serpent said, direct contradiction of God, you shall not die, for God knows that the day you eat from it, your eyes will be open, you'll be like God, you'll know good and evil. And look what happens now. And we don't have any time frame here, by the way. We don't know the distance, time distance, between the time that she was created and now. We don't have any sense of that.
Satan's Threefold Temptation
My sense is it was probably some level of immediacy to it. Don't have a clue right now where Adam is in the midst of all of this. And now, Satan has done his thing, verse 6, and the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and a delight to the eye, and it is desirable to make one wise. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. That is the way that Satan always works.
It's the same thing that he does, right? When you get to the New Testament, and Jesus goes into the desert, Satan comes against Him and says, turn these stones into bread, jump off of this. It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life. He comes head on against her.
And now it appears that he's gone. And there she is. Now, I acknowledge here that we're reading a little bit into the Scripture. But she's just looking at this thing. And she's just thinking about this thing. And there's that fruit. Don't know, again, how long. Don't know if it's a few minutes, don't know if it's hours, don't know if this took place over a period of time, but she just looks.
It was good for the food, and it was a delight to the eyes, it looked good, but here's the big thing, the tree was desirable to make one wise, she'd be like God. Here's the hook. And she took it and she ate it and she gave it to her husband and he ate it.
The Immediate Effects of Sin
Now if you want to talk about self-esteem, look at how fast significant and self-esteem moves away. Look at verse 7. Then the eyes of both of them were open, and they knew they were naked. End of chapter 2, they were naked, no big deal. Now they know they are naked. Now there is guilt who's entered in to the human consciousness.
And they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves loin coverings. They began to cover themselves up. Remember? They were naked and unashamed, but now they are naked and they realize this. Here's what you're starting to see, right? What is it? The effects of sin. Sin comes and immediately we see the first instance of abnormal behavior in all of human history.
How did we get this way? How do we respond? Why are we like this? Sin! And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.
And the Lord God said to the man, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. I'm exposed now. And God said to him, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you?
Why We Hide
How did we get the way we are? Sin! How did the world end up this way? Why do we hide? Why are we ashamed? I'm not going to ask you to answer out loud, but I'm going to certainly ask you to think about this yourself. There are just things in your life that nobody knows, right? There's things in your life that you wouldn't even say out loud. There's things in your life that you'd even be embarrassed, even with a best friend, to be able to talk about, because they're so dark.
How did that happen? Why is it so difficult to even have a relationship, one person with another? Because we're all hiding something. Sin.
Thinking About Heaven
You ever think about heaven? I would assume you all do. I did a funeral. I love to do funerals. I don't like to do weddings, but I love to do funerals. And I did a funeral about two months ago for a guy I knew, but I didn't know any of the other people. He was 85. So when you're 85, the funeral is typically populated with a lot of old people.
So I walk in, I thought, well, I wasn't really sure what I was going to say, but I kind of figured out, well, let's do this. What happened to Ed, that's the guy's name, what happened to Ed a week ago is going to happen to you all, right? Some of it, maybe in the next 15 or 20 minutes, based on how some of you look, I don't know. But you all ought to get ready for this moment. You better be ready about this. You better be figuring this thing out. You better be prepared, right?
How do we get this way? And then talk about heaven. Well, when I think of heaven, let me do it a different way. When you think of heaven, what do you kind of think about? Well, I think of Jesus. I think of no more tears, no more suffering. But I've been thinking lately about the absence of sin.
Heaven has in it the absence of sin, which means even my relationships, let's just go back to my relationship with Susan. So my relationship with Susan will be absolutely as pure as it could possibly be, because there's all sin wrapped up in it now. She's all sinned up, okay? And I have a sin, and then she has a whole bunch of sins, and then together we have a problem, right? So that makes this relationship tough. It makes doing business tough. It makes life tough.
This whole thing that we have as humans is this desire to hide and to be afraid. Isn't it? The frequent prohibition that
Jesus gives us in the New Testament two more prohibitions than anything else: do not be afraid. And do you see it right in here? It's all wrapped up right in this passage. Verse 7, they knew they were naked. Verse 8, they hid. Verse 10, they were afraid.
They were afraid of what? They were afraid of righteousness and holiness. They were afraid of God. It was the sin that had generated that in their life.
God's Penetrating Questions
God comes along in the midst of all of this, and God moves in a great, dramatic way. He asks them, do you see it? He asks them the question, "Where are you?" Verse 9: "Where are you Adam?"
Do you understand that that question was not asked of Adam for God's benefit? God knew where he was. God understood that he's hiding. He's not asking that question because God lacks information. That question is asked for Adam's sake. Adam, where are you? And wrapped up in that is, how did you get there?
If some friends are coming over to your house, and they're supposed to be there at 8, now it's about 8 o'clock, the phone rings, and they say to you, "Hey, we're lost." The very first thing you say to them is what? Where are you? Because if you know where you are, I can tell you how to get to me. I can give you directions from there.
That's what He's saying. Where are you Adam? How'd you get there Adam? Why are you there with these leaves all over you, trying to protect yourself? Why are you hiding in a bush Adam? What in the world happened Adam? Who told you you were naked? Did you eat from this?
Do you see the fundamental problem that you have Adam? The fundamental problem is you took your will and you put it over mine. You took your agenda and you put it over mine. You decided to live life your way, not my way. And look where it's got you Adam. You're hiding in a bush. And we've been hiding in a bush ever since.
The Fall and Our Futile Attempts at Self-Repair
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a big fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men, they couldn't put old Humpty Dumpty back together again. And since we fell in the garden, we have through religion tried again and again to put ourselves back together, but we can't do it.
See, that's why it is so amazing that here is God, as soon as He confronts him, as soon as He begins to have Adam try to contemplate who he is and how he got there, as soon as God becomes really the prosecuting attorney here. Verse 11: "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from this?"
And the man said—you've got to love this—"It's the woman that you gave me. She gave me the fruit from the tree, and I ate."
You see another human, typically human reaction here? It's not my fault. It's her fault. She's the one who did it. Now, I always felt a little bad for these people because they really didn't have, like you and I have, our socioeconomic backgrounds and all sorts of other things to complain about and blame. They didn't have that. But boy, are they creative.
The Blame Game Continues
And then the Lord said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" And the woman said, "It's the serpent that deceived me." Now she, in a sense, almost takes it a step further. It isn't me. It's the serpent that deceived me, and oh, by the way, you created him.
Look at how we are. No creativity in our life in about any area until it comes to sin. You can take the biggest stiff in the world, and then when it comes to sin, we become extraordinarily creative.
Now, here's what's really cool. One verse later, by the time he gets to verse 15, we see a prophecy of the virgin birth and the promise that's to come. "I will put enmity between you and the woman"—He's now speaking to the serpent—"between your seed and her seed"—there it is, the virgin birth—"and He shall bruise you on the head. You'll bruise Him on the heel."
The Contamination Spreads
And then there's this time now where He goes and He deals with the serpent and He deals with the fall, and now we look—this is so important to get this, this is really key—it's not just Adam and Eve that are contaminated by the sin, it's the whole world that's contaminated by the sin. At this point, there had been no death in the world, no sickness in the world.
But now, God says, you know what, that covering you have, that's not enough. And He drove them out of the garden, but He didn't do it until He'd given them animal skins to cover themselves up. The shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sin is the picture there.
Understanding Our Condition
As you are contemplating, not just your life, but you're beginning to deal with the young people who are going to come around and give you an opportunity to pour into their lives, square one is this message right here. Square one is how did we get this way? Because that's what they're constantly looking for. You have a whole generation that's finding its identity in a person or a place or a thing. And that's not age-graded; that just continues all the way through life.
There's some amazing statistics—this is one of them that I love. Second marriages fail at a higher rate than first marriages. Third marriages fail at a higher rate than second marriages. Fourth marriages fail at a higher rate than third marriages. Wouldn't you think somewhere along the way you'd get this figured out?
Wouldn't you think—I can, you know, I'm a reasonable guy—so you get into this, it wasn't exactly what you thought it was going to be, and she changed a little bit, he changed a little bit, just didn't work. Well you would think you'd learn from that. So when you came into the second one you go, "Man, you know, I've been down this road, I'm much wiser for all this, I'm not going to make those same mistakes again." But the statistics say, no, more make the mistakes there. Why is that?
I'm talking to a guy not long ago, and he's just coming out of his fourth marriage.
The Common Thread in Our Searching
I know a man who has been married four times. One was tall, one was short, one was thick, one was thin, and he married a Latino, and he's got all these different combinations. He said, "Man, I can't figure it out. I can't figure this out." I said, "Well, I don't know the girls, but it appears to me that all four marriages have one thing in common. You. The only thing I see in common is you. You've done with all shapes and sizes and nationalities, rich, poor, you've done it all, man. The problem is you."
You live in a world where people go from person to person to person, job to job to job, house to house to house. I remember sitting with some people, and we just moved them into their house. They're sitting around, they're having Pepsi and some pizza, and they said, "We could live in this house forever. We are so happy to be in the house, we could live in this house forever." Two years later, they're getting ready to move again, and they're moving up.
There's something in the soul that will never be filled with a person, place, or thing other than Jesus. Why is that? Well, because you were created to commune with Him. You were created to be in this wonderful, beautiful relationship with the One who created you.
Understanding Our Different Needs
We have these longings, we have these needs, and we can categorize them. We need food. You got here this afternoon, you were hungry, had a little snack. Then Jeff got up tonight, and he said, "Look at what's in front of us. Here's all of this stuff, and chocolate's coming out of a fountain, and you got all sorts of stuff. And you want coffee, we got decaf, we got regular, we got the creams we can put in it, we got tea, we got whatever you want." You just fill up, and you just eat until you can't eat anymore. But sometime soon, you're going to be hungry again. That need can be met with food.
You need a place to live, and that can be met with a house, a home, an apartment. You have a need for clothing, so you get some cool stuff. But you have a need, this crucial need, that can never be met with a person, place, or thing. That's the very idea of self-esteem or significance. That can only be met with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Paul says it this way, and we're going to build on this. What we're going to talk about tomorrow morning, and what I try to always do in the first night is kind of set the table. I assume you've had a long day, and you've traveled, and you're a little bit tired, and weary, and so I understand that. So what we'll do is just build on all of this. Tomorrow we're going to talk about faith.
Let me have you turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. In verse 17, Paul talks about if anybody's in Christ, he's a new creature. I want you to look at verse 18: "Now all these things are from God." Look at the key word. It appears five times in these three verses, in one form or another. It's the word reconciliation, or reconciled, or reconciling, all essentially the same word.
"Now all these things are from God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation." God has reconciled us to Himself. The vehicle was Christ.
If I say to you, "John and I have been reconciled," what do you know? What can you deduce from that sentence? You had a big fight. There was some sort of pre-existing hostility that took place here. Here's what Paul's saying: you and I have been reconciled to God. What can we deduce from that? There's been a pre-existing hostility. What is that? That's what goes all the way back to the garden. That's the sin.
God's Work of Restoration
God has reconciled us to Himself. Not through religion, that's where we're going tomorrow. Not through religion, but through relationship. Not only did He reconcile us, but He then has committed to us, in verse 19, the word of reconciliation. He's got a big job for us, because He's made us ambassadors, as though God were making an appeal through us. "We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." That's what He's left us to do.
God has reconciled us to Himself. He did it. We were, in the beginning, mankind healthy. We disagreed with God. We had this view of Him. We've walked away. We've sinned. But now, through Christ, we can be restored.
Five Principles for Significance
As you're beginning to look at your own life, and then those things that you can pass on, we're talking about where do you find significance? Let me give you five things here that are important for you to understand in this whole idea of significance.
Number one, you need to cultivate your relationship with God. You need to nurture this relationship with Him. We might use the term, and Paul uses it, walk. The word walk there is not a primitive mode of transportation. The word means a lifestyle, that we need to cultivate this.
Cultivating Your Relationship with God
How do I cultivate this relationship with God? There are a couple of things that are really important. Number one, it's through studying His Word. God has spoken to us. He's spoken through creation, but He's spoken through this Word.
I went to the bookstore today. I love that Cannon Beach bookstore. They always have this interesting group of books down there. So I went down there today, and there was a bookstore here, and the used bookstore over there. I spent a little time today looking around. You'll see all sorts of books, but there's one book that's different than everyone else, and it's this one. Because the author of this book, though it was penned by men, the author of this book was God Himself. God communicated to us.
So in a world that throws all sorts of confusing scenarios and situations at us, we don't need to be confused, because God has either spoken directly to the situation, or He's given us principles that we can apply in this life. I cultivate my relationship with Him through His Word. So when Judy's talking about this passage of scripture, and I begin to unpack this, and this is God, and if I have Him, I don't need anybody else. And here's that verse that's been a key part of her life now for decades. God speaks to her in new ways through those six verses that she already knows.
The relationship is also cultivated through prayer, through speaking to God openly and honestly. That's really what prayer is. Prayer is just honest communication with God. And by the way, you ought to be honest with Him, because He already knows it. There's nothing He doesn't know. So when you pour your heart out and say, "God, I'm really sucking gas here, and I'm in real trouble here, and I don't know if I'm going to make it," He already knows that.
This is about you honestly communicating to Him, praying openly, honestly about big things. Pray in big ways. It's that idea of adoring Him and confessing my sin, but coming to Him and not being afraid to come to God with big requests, huge things. He's a big God, and if He doesn't want it to be that big, He'll downsize it for you. But you can come to Him. You can cultivate that relationship. And then it's through His people.
Recognize Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Here's the second thing you need to do: Recognize strengths and recognize weaknesses. Come to Him and understand who you are and what you do well, and encourage those things that you do well, those areas of giftedness, those areas where God has wired you.
I had a guy that used to come to the Bible study that I did, and he would come early. He would set the whole room up, he'd turn the air conditioning on, he'd set all the tables and chairs, he'd get a little bottle of water for me, he'd have all the stuff ready. One day he called me and said, "I want to meet and have lunch. I want you to help me figure out what my spiritual gift is."
Well, this guy's got the gift of service all over him. Just service, bigger than Dallas. So we go in and he says, "I'd like to talk about my spiritual gift." I said, "Well, I've been thinking about this, and you've got the gift of service." Here's what he said: "No, I don't." I said, "Why, yes, you do." He said, "Well, no, I don't."
I said, "You come early, you set the tables up, the chairs, you get the water." He said, "I don't have the gift of service." I said, "Well, you do have the gift of service." He said, "It can't be the gift of service." Listen to this. This is so cool. Here's what he said: "It can't be the gift of service because I enjoy doing it so much."
He said, "It can't be the gift of service because I enjoy doing it so much." So he had in his mind that if he was going to do something from God it was just going to be real torture to do this thing. No, that's what it is. God puts you sometimes like an athlete. Athletes talk about being in the zone. They'll talk about being set, and they'll see that ball come in. They can almost look at the threads on the ball.
The Distinguishing Mark of Disciples
Jesus has the boys together in John 13, and He's getting ready to go to the cross. They're saying we're going to go with you and all the drama that's there. Jesus says this in John 13:34: "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another."
Jesus could have said a whole bunch of things there. Jesus could have said they'll know you're my disciples if you study the Bible together. He could have gone through a whole bunch of things. But He says the distinguishing characteristic is simply this: you will love one another.
Love Does Not Seek Its Own
What does that idea of love mean? In 1 Corinthians chapter 13, Paul spends what we identify as four verses talking about love. But in the middle of it is really the key to the whole thing: Love does not seek its own.
All of a sudden if you're passing on this legacy and this legacy of significance and cultivating this, it's having the mindset, the attitude—we're going to talk more about this on Wednesday—the attitude in you that was in Christ Jesus who came not to be served but to serve. It's a whole new approach. It's contrary to the very way the world itself sees itself and operates.
The world says you look out for number one, you take care of yourself, you preserve yourself because nobody's going to fight for you.
Express gratitude for who you are. When we're talking about significance and others come to us saying they don't do this or that, we thank God for who we are. We thank God for the way He made us.
We deal with this a lot as we work with junior high, high school, and even college students. You thank God for the background that He's given you. It's amazing to me how screwed up these kids are, and it isn't their fault they got screwed up families. It's real easy once they start to see normal - it's real easy to get angry and bitter and judgmental and say, "God, why would You put me through that?" We're able to say to these kids, "You even thank God for the goofiness in your life because God uses that."
There's this attitude in us that's to be expressive in thanksgiving. Paul says it this way in 1 Thessalonians 5:16: "In all things give thanks." That doesn't just say when everything's going well. It's not just when the x-ray comes back and it's clear - it's when the x-ray comes back and says, "No, there's a spot there, there's cancer there." It's not just when the deal closes - it's when the deal blows. It's not just when the marriage is tight - it's when the marriage is strong. In all these things we give thanks.
Thanking God for How He Made Us
If we're talking about significance now, we say, "God, I want to thank You for who I am and the way You've made me. This is the way You wound me up. This is the height You made me. This is the background You gave me." God is a sovereign God.
There's one last thing here. Take those gifts that God's given you and utilize them and invest them in others. By the way, I think that includes the hurt and the pain as well.
Using Our Experiences to Comfort Others
Listen to this. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comforts, who comforts us in our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted."
You know what he says? He says you thank Him for the comfort He's given you, so now you're a source of comfort in other people's lives.
We had in our little church - our church was just starting, really small and really unusual. We had three or four hundred people, and we had three ladies who lost children at birth, just in a period of six months. I remember going down to the hospital for the first one, and I really didn't know what to say or how to say it. I'm sure I just stumbled and bumbled and was inept all the way through.
When we got to the third one, I was on the way to the hospital. I got there, and in came that lady who had lost the baby six months before. Where I was talking to her about God and how He was working, this gal came in and said, "I know what you're feeling. I know where you've been. I know what this is like."
The Legacy We Leave
See, that's that whole life experience that you can bring. You can sit down and talk to people about hardship and pain and broken dreams. I'm going to guess in this room you can talk about the pain of losing a child or losing a spouse. You can talk about the way that God provided in ways you never dreamt possible, because He's not theoretical to you. You all got half a century of walking with Him.
You have a legacy, and you're passing it on - good or bad, you're passing it on. I'm suggesting to you, we ought to be proactive. I don't care if you've got another month to live or you've got another twenty years to live - you ought to be about this.
This all begins with understanding that we find our worth not in a person, place, or thing, but in Christ. That's what's wrong with us fundamentally - sin. No car, or house, or new spouse, or new job is going to fix that. We start with that.
There's something that comes right along with that, and that's this idea of faith. I want to take that and really jump on and build on that tomorrow. We'll do that, then Jude's going to come and close this.
Father, help us see these amazing, wonderful truths. Listen now, rain out there and we understand that that's a gift from You, a provision from You. You are a wonderful, mighty God. We sin and You save us. God, thank You for that amazing truth. We pray to You and worship You in Jesus' name, Amen.