God is Contagious
I’m trying to imagine all of you sitting out there in front of your TVs or computers, holding your phones or tablets—singing along, confusing the dog. Cats are either under a bed hiding or oblivious to the whole thing. I’ve always wondered why musicians are called “cats” when clearly it’s dogs who dig music. I guess “Cool cat” just sounds better than “yeah, that singer’s a real dog.
This is weird for me, too. I’m used to being able to gauge how interested you are in what I’m talking about by how deep some of the older dudes are snoring. I’ve got like nine people in the room this morning—I might need to add a laugh track. I wonder if we’d be the first church to add a laugh track. Nah, no way… that we’d be first one’s to do that.
I called this morning’s message “God is Contagious.” I’m hoping that will make sense by the time I’m done today. God is contagious.
Let’s pray as we get started: Father in heaven, I’m used to not seeing You when I’m talking to You, but this morning… I’m preaching a sermon to a congregation that’s not physically here. You are here, You promised to be with me no matter where I go. You’re also with all the people who are listening, even the ones that’ll listen later. Time is no obstacle for You. Please soften their hearts to hear Your Word, open their ears to hear You and their eyes to see Jesus in all of it. Bless this less than ideal situation and give Your good gifts to all of us. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’re gathered in the name of Jesus. May my words be pleasing to You. AMEN
Okay, a few weeks ago we started looking at the first few chapters of Genesis. We’re calling this series, to absolutely no one’s shock or surprise— “IN THE BEGINNING.” So far we’ve seen that the opening sentences of the Bible include the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We considered that everything in the Scriptures points to Jesus, is fulfilled in Jesus, and that Jesus is the fullness of the whole Bible. It’s not about us, it’s about Him. This morning we’re looking at the days of creation and especially the 7th day and how all that points to Jesus.
First, I’ve had a couple people ask me to clarify something. It seems to have kinda hit a nerve when I said that the primary point of all the Bible characters is to point to Jesus—like, we’re not supposed to look at the stories of David and Noah or whoever, and think “Okay, Frank, be more like David. Have faith in God and go slay the giants.” Instead we’re supposed to see that David finds his perfect fulfillment in Christ. Jesus is the greater David who had perfect faith in God and slayed all the giants for us.
So does that mean we can’t be inspired by David’s faith in God and hope that we can live our life with greater faith—trusting that He’s gonna slay all of our personal giants?
No, of course not. Of course we can be inspired by David’s faith and obedience—but here’s the thing I don’t want us to miss. Don’t skip the Jesus part and go straight to yourself. All the Bible characters point to Jesus in one way or another, so read the Scriptures as a Christian, always find how they are made complete in Him—and THEN feel free to make an application for what that might mean for you AS A CHRISTIAN. Which is always going to look like, how does Jesus do this for me? How does Jesus complete me. Make me whole. Our life flows from His kindness, grace and mercy.
Alright, so back to Genesis chapter one. The days of creation. Today we’re gonna look at how when God made everything, He did two things: Each day He would create something and then separate one thing from another. On the first day He made light and then separated the light from the darkness. One the second day He created the waters, then He separated the waters from the waters—making the atmosphere and the oceans. On the third day He separated land from seas, and so on.
The other thing He did was create in concentric circles, going from the expanse of time and space, the universe and the heavens, moving in layer by layer, until He got to the point of why He was creating all this to begin with. The focus of His creation, the purpose—the king and queen of creation: were Adam and Eve. Mankind.
Why did God create the heavens and the earth and everything in it? I think this is the reason: So He could bestow His blessings and gifts on someone—on us. So He could love us. You have to understand that we have a very lopsided relationship with God. He gives and we take. We have nothing to offer Him that wasn’t His already.
By the way, this is very different from any other religion’s creation account. There is no other creation account that puts human beings as the delight and purpose of the gods creating the universe. In all the other creation epics, mankind is kinda an inconvenient afterthought.
But the Bible tells the story of a God who made all this as a gift to give His crown creation—He wanted to bless us, love us, and He wanted in return, is for us to be thankful and reflect back who He is. The worst sin in the whole Bible is to be ungrateful.
So we’re cruising along in Genesis chapter one, 1st day, 2nd day, 3rd day, always ending with the phrase “evening and morning”—6th day, “evening and morning.”
Then we’re rudely interrupted by an arbitrary chapter division. Some people don’t know this but the chapters and verses were added much later, just to help us find our place and keep everything straight, and memorize stuff—and they’re certainly helpful—but whoever divided it all up, sometimes they didn’t really seem to think it through. And in this case, going from Genesis chapter one to Genesis chapter two, it’s not because they were tired, because this is the very first one, you’d think they would have been, like really fresh and put some thought into it—get off to a good start. But no, I guess they wanted us to know right off the bat—yeah, we’re not gonna try too hard with these.
All they had to do was go three more verses, and they would have wrapped up the first week.
Chapter one verse 31,
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
Then there’s chapter two verses 1 and 2, which would have made a really nice ending for the first chapter of the Bible:
“So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.”
You know, if you were to read the Bible in the original languages, there not only wouldn’t have been any chapters or verse, there wasn’t any capitalization, punctuation—or even spaces between the words. Thank God for English. This is kinda hard to read:
ANDGODSAWEVERYTHINGTHATHEHADMADEANDBEHOLDITWASVERYGOODANDTHEREWASEVENINGANDTHEREWASMORNINGTHESIXTHDAYCHAPTERTWOVERSES1AND2THISWOULDHAVEMADEANICEENDINGFORTHEFIRSTCHAPTERSOTHECREATIONOFTHEHEAVENSANDTHEEARTHANDEVERYTHINGINTHEMWASCOMPLETEDONTHESEVENTHDAYGODHADFINISHEDHISWORKOFCREATIONSOHERESTEDFROMALLHISWORKANDGODBLESSEDTHESEVENTHDAYANDDECLAREDITHOLYBECAUSEITWASTHEDAYWHENHERESTEDFROMALLHISWORKOFCREATION
Anyway, there’s some things about the 7th day that are really special. It says that God rested on the 7th day and blessed it and called it holy. He sanctified the 7th day. The 7th day was called the Sabbath because Sabbath means rest—God Sabbathed on the 7th day.
Okay, answer this out loud, just say the first answer that comes to your mind: What day is the 7th day?
Don’t feel bad if you said “Sunday.” That’s pretty much the way we treat it. It seems like Sunday is the last day of the week and Monday is the first, right?
But the 7th day, the day that God rested, the Sabbath, was Saturday.
Here’s something else that’s special about the 7th day. For all the other days of creation it says there was evening there was morning the first day, the second day.... But not the 7th day. It just says that God declared it holy and rested. It’s like the day was just left open ended.
The early church leaders noticed this and ran with it. Remember, everything points to Jesus and is fulfilled in Him—so they noticed this open-ended day and they said that day finally came to evening when Jesus rested in the tomb. That was a Saturday. A Sabbath. And when morning came, when He rose from the dead on Sunday, they said that wasn’t a repeat of the 1st day, they called that the 8th day. It was a new day. A day the world had never seen before. A brand new thing. An 8th day. The Lord’s day. The way they looked at it, the 7th day finally had its completion in Christ, and now there was a new open-ended day. That’s why they started treating Sunday as the new Sabbath. This 8th day was a day that would never end. A day where the people of God are living forever in God’s blessing and grace—eternal Sabbath.
This is how Jesus’ followers would have heard that wonderful verse from the Gospel of Matthew, they would have been reminded of the 7th day of creation when He said, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He will “sabbath” us. He will give us the rest we need. Rest that’s free from oppression and shame and the bondage of trying to earn God’s love. Come unto me, trust me, and live in this eternal new day, this 8th day where the night and darkness will never come again.
So that’s all really cool, right? But I still haven’t explained why God is contagious.
We’re all quarantined from school and church and our favorite restaurants—because there’s this highly contagious virus that’s threatening to stop the world in its tracks. All we have to do is breathe the same air as someone who’s infected and we become infected. It’s silent and invisible and kinda terrifying.
God blessed the 7th day and called it holy. Another word for “holy” is “sanctified” or “consecrated.”
Holy is a word that I think gets a bad rap. We hear “God is holy” and it’s like we think that means He’s uptight. Stern. But “Holy” is a beautiful word. It’s a word that’s full of hope and life and grace.
God was happy with His creation, so He rested on the 7th day and blessed it, declaring it to be holy. Meaning He set that day for Himself. It’s like He had 7 M&Ms and He gave 6 away and then kept the 7th one for Himself. Made it special to Him.
Sometimes we think of the word “holy” and we think it just means “set apart,” and in a way it does, but not like “set apart, over there”—more like “set apart, brought into Himself.” He makes something intimately connected to Himself.
God made the 7th day holy, He separated it from the other days just like He separated light from dark. God does this, He makes things holy, makes places holy—but He’s always the one who makes whatever it is holy.
Sometimes we think it’s our job to make ourselves holy. We think we gotta straighten up. Start doing what’s good for us. Do certain things, don’t do other things, be holy. Right?
But we can't make ourselves holy. Only God can make us holy—because only God is intrinsically holy in His essence. If we get confused about this and try to make ourselves holy, we put ourselves in the place of God—we trust our ability to do good and not do bad, and we make ourselves very unholy in our idolatry and self righteousness and critical judgmentalism.
Oh, my ears are just buzzing with some of your objections.
Be Holy But didn’t God say to consecrate yourselves. To be holy. To be perfect even as the Father is perfect? Didn’t He say those things?
He did. And it’s a very good thing for us that He did.
Now, when we hear “Be holy.” The first thing we think is, “but I’m not.” “I can’t.” We hear it as condemnation.
And God says, “I know that. That’s why Jesus came into the world and did it for you.”
We do have to be holy. God does demand that we’re holy. Here’s the awesome thing, though: He supplies what He demands. He provides all the holiness we’ll ever need. And just like with the 7th day, He blesses us and declares us holy. He calls us to rest in Christ. To “come unto Him all you who are weary and heavy laden” and He will GIVE us rest. He will Sabbath us.
So Jesus says, “It is finished.” “It was done for you—you do nothing.”
And we’re like, “how do we do that?”
God says “Be holy.” And then we are holy. God says “Be perfect” and we’re perfect. It’s His Word that does it. Just like “let there be light” and there was light—”Be holy.”
God makes us holy. His holiness is a gift. It’s almost a physical thing. It’s like it’s... contagious.
God’s holiness is contagious.
Leprosy and other infectious diseases were a big problem back in Bible times, too. The book of Leviticus says that a person who was infected has to stay away from other people and if they saw anyone coming near, they not only had to practice social distancing, they had to say, “unclean, unclean” until people walked away. No one was allowed to touch an unclean person.
But when Jesus touched unclean people, what happened? Anyone else touches an unclean person, and they become unclean, too. But when Jesus touches an unclean person, they become clean. His holiness is contagious. It’s like His germs make you well.
This is good news for you and me, because we were born unclean. Unholy. God gives us Jesus’ holiness as a gift. We contract it by faith.
So when Jesus gives us His authority to go around telling people about the hope we have in Him, we’re not supposed to go around saying, “Be holy, you dirty dog sinner. Shape up or ship out! Be good!” You are unclean!
No, the words He wants us to speak to an anxious and fearful world sound more like this: “Be holy. Be blessed. Be clean. Find your rest, your sabbath, in the One who did it all for you. I have saved you for myself. You are mine.”
People are talking about how many Coronavirus babies there’s gonna be in 9 months. I want to know how many Coronavirus Christians there could be if we used this time of panic and fear to talk about the peace and hope that can be found in Jesus.
May we live in this new creation, this 8th day, a day that will never end, where the darkness will never overcome the light. May we be contagious with His love and grace and mercy. Thanks be to God. AMEN