The Noah and flood story are great stories for children, but they are also great stories for us because they are true. Yet, the story also makes for one of the reasons Christianity isn't believed. A flood of this proportions just seems, well, too supernatural. It's for this same reason that many Christians are set on proving it happened. Yet both of these positions are wanting certitude while the Bible is inviting faith.

Noah and the flood. 3 whole chapters of the first 9 chapters of the Bible. What we've been seeing is that these first chapters of Genesis are laying foundations for how we understand God, others, the world about us and our place in it all. But three chapters about a Christian truth that people find offensive - God as judge. Yet, at the beginning of this story we have three key ideas that we have to keep in mind: 1. Sin is worse than we think, (2) God is the only truly just judge and (3) Grace is on the table.

Genealogies, "accounts", are the chapter headings of Genesis. Even so, their significance can be lost on us. Genesis 5 tells the Genealogy from Adam to Noah in the line of Seth. While it stands as incredibly different then genealogies we would tell (boy they were old!!), it is packed with meaning and encouragement to find life in the offspring to come and in calling on the name of the Lord. It stands in stark contrast to the genealogy of Cain in chapter 4. Pitted against each other, we are to find our life and our hope in the family of the Lord and our hope in him.

Cain and Abel. One of the more well-known stories from early in the Bible. It continues the Adam and Eve narrative and it concludes the real beginning of Genesis. Taken with Genesis 3, it tells us very clearly that the progeny of Adam and Eve were in the same sinful state as Adam and Eve after their fall into sin. But it leaves us with a question: will we walk in the way of Cain who defied God's corrective word to him, or will we "call on the name of the Lord." Those are the two options. One leads to life, the other to death. And as the Scriptures tells us again and again, all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

There are 150 Psalms. They cover the gamut of the human condition, but how are we to understand them? What would God have know so that this very broad book can guide our understanding of Him in our lives? See Psalm 1 and its partner Psalm 2.....

There are many ways that one could summarize a good story and there are many ways one could summarize the Bible. Creation, fall, restoration is a good summary. As we have sat in the beginning of Genesis, even in these first few chapters, we've seen the importance of confessing the true God as the creator God and also we have seen his commitment to his creation despite sin and rebellion. In this sermon, Pastor Peter suggests this as a quick summary of the Bible: The creator God covenanted with his world and people and makes good on his covenant in Jesus.

Right at the end of Genesis 3, after the consequences for sin and rebellion are given to the serpent, Eve and Adam, we have reiterated for us the big ideas of human existence in these origin stories. Eve is named as the mother of the living - a reaffirmation of the "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" of Genesis 1. But while the creation mandate has this echo post-sin entering the world, the consequences of sin continue: God has to cover them and gives of his creation to do so and they are banished from the Garden. So, human dignity and worth are put forth right next to the severity and consequences of sin. Beauty and brokenness. Sin, the flaming sword, and the cherubim and the east of Eden would have evoked for the people of God the Tabernacle and Temple that we the great invitations and hope of God's commitment to life with in the world we were made for.

Genesis 3 tells of our first parent's rebellion from God and it does this in a way where we can see these dynamics of sin continuing in our lives today. The apple doesn't fall far. Sin is still alluring and it still has massively detrimental effects in our lives together, with God and with creation. But thanks be to God that he promised the seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent! In Christ we are a new creation, brought back to what God had originally intended.