The Sermon in a Nutshell: August 30

Our sermon this week kicked off a five part sermon series entitled, “Finding Ourselves In God's Story.” This week's sermon was called, “The Story Begins.” The Scripture text for our sermon was taken, appropriately enough, from the first three chapters of Genesis. I tried to focus on the way that when we find ourselves in God's story, we find ourselves both broken and mended. In the first two chapters of Genesis we see that God had created the world to function in an orderly, harmonious way. Originally, there was harmony in humankind's relationship with God, with their selves, with others, and with creation. After Adam and Eve sinned against God in Genesis chapter three, disorder entered the world and the harmony God intended for us was broken. We can still see the evidence of these broken relationships today, both in our lives and in the world around us. The Good News about Jesus is that God is restoring these broken relationships through the death and resurrection of Christ! The invitation to move from being broken to being mended is extended to everyone through Christian baptism. After we looked at the beginning of God's story, we considered Jesus' command to make disciples in Matthew 28:18-20 in light of this. Although the thought of evangelism can be intimidating to us, when we think of it in terms of telling God's Story and our story and inviting others to enter in to this Story, some of the intimidation goes away.