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A BIOGRAPHY of ADAM – 'Six Men & Six Women' Series

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A BIOGRAPHY of ADAM – 'Six Men & Six Women' Series A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series It was J. K. Rowling who said, “There is always room for a story that can transport us to another place.” There is power in stories. And I am excited to be able to kick this series off today called ‘Six Men & Six Women.’ I remember when I first began to fall in love with learning about Biblical characters. As an early Christian I was so ignorant about the Bible that I had no idea about many of the characters in Scripture. In fact as a new Christian, at the ripe old age of about 19, my buddy who led me to the Lord gave me cartoon videos of Daniel and the lion’s den, Noah’s ark, and so on and so forth. And I would watch these little cartoons and learn about the characters. But as far as a preacher goes, someone gave me some cassette tapes by Chuck Swindoll teaching on Nehemiah, and I heard this preacher teach biography in a way that captivated me. And then Swindoll came out with a biographical series, and I started cutting my teeth on David, Esther and Joseph. And he came out with the story of Moses and other different biographies that he had written. And then my first semester at Dallas Theological Seminary was Chuck Swindoll’s last semester as president there. And after he spoke in chapel one day, I went up to him and I told him how much his biographical series had meant to me. There is power in stories. And that is what I want us to get in this series, to see how powerful it can be for us to learn about different life stories. In fact I have established for this series five goals that I want to share with you. So if you are here and you are thinking about coming back and hearing this series, if you are checking out Life Fellowship, here is what I would want you to be able to know that I am going to strive to accomplish with this series. First of all, I would hope that we will be familiar with these Biblical characters in a manner that helps us to look back to them throughout various phases of our lives. You and I are going to meet different circumstances along this trajectory we call life. And there are certain characters in the Bible that we need to meet and become familiar with, and to hear how their story relates to our story. In fact, by learning the Bible you will find, as I have found, that there are some characters that you will resonate more with during different seasons of your life than with others. Not only that, there are certain characters that you will identify with just at large, probably at any given time. Secondly, my goal is that we will appreciate what God wants to say to us through these peoples’ stories in the Bible and through our own stories. What is it that God is saying about these characters, and what is it that He wants to say in our own stories in listening closely to them? A third goal for this series is that a DNA would set in at Life Fellowship for the passion of listening to and sharing stories. It is my goal that we would be a culture of story tellers, that we would value narrative, and that we would value biographies. That Page 1 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series we would value where God is at work in the stories of the lives of those in our church. And that we would look to tell those stories. And that we would strive to do a better job of capturing and sharing these stories. A fourth goal of this series would be that we will be motivated to figure out our own story, and then be inspired to share it. I want to help you think carefully about God’s story in your life. Where is God at work in your life? What is it that God is up to in your life? What is He trying to communicate with you? What is it that He wants you to know? And by understanding what it is that He is up to in your life can help you. And not only that, but it will help you to share your story, to be aware of how to narrate what God is doing through the script of your life. And the fifth goal of this series is that we will obtain a post series tool for detecting and developing what God is doing in our lives, so it will be available to help us and we can better grasp what God is seeking to narrate through our lives. And so that you can create a tool that you can utilize, like maybe online. It will help you figure out and detect what God is doing in your life. So there it is – a fivefold purpose of this series that we want to help you to see. Now let’s meet the cast. We are kicking off with Adam, the first human to ever live. I thought that was apropos and quite fitting to start with him. Then we are going to look at Deborah who was a judge. We are going to look at Mary Magdalene and her character. Who was this person known as Mary Magdalene? We are going to study Nehemiah. We are going to do a biographical sketch on Mary, the mother of Jesus. We would be remiss to not look at her life that I think is undermined, or not featured enough in Protestant circles, and we are going to look at this great lady, Mary. We are going to study David and Esther. We are going to look at Philip. Did you know that Philip is the only person in the Scriptures called ‘The Evangelist?’ We are going to look at Daniel. We are going to talk about the unknown woman on Mother’s Day because the unknown woman is the noble wife of Proverbs 31. We are going to look at Moses and we are going to look at Ruth. And after this series, these six men and six women, hopefully you will be able to draw strength from their lives. And I will say this, whether we are studying a man, like today it is Adam, and you are a female, there is a lot we can learn from him. And whether we are studying a female, like Deborah next week, there is a lot we can learn from her. So this is going to be a series that is action packed with 12 different actors that will be a part of this series, and this is the cast. We are going to learn about their lives, and we are going to look at their strengths, and we are going to see the foils that they meet. And we are going to see the struggles that they had. We are going to find that we are challenged by areas where we can grow because of the way they lived. But we are also going to find that we are Page 2 of 17 pages 3/13/2016 A BIOGRAPHY OF ADAM – ‘Six Men & Six Women’ Series comforted because misery loves company. And we are going to see that these people were jacked up just like us. We are going to start today with the first man, Adam. In Acts Chapter 17 and verse 26 we learn this: “And God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” Now when it comes to Adam, a lot of questions ensue. For example, was he a historical figure, a literal figure, or just a figurative figure, a metaphorical figure. And if you are a non-believer, outside of maybe the Jewish Christian or Islamic belief system, then you would be tempted for sure to say that Adam is a mythical figure. But the faiths like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, they will take Adam as a historical figure. Now within Christianity you will have people who will have different viewpoints as it relates to Adam. For example, you will have some who would describe themselves as theistic evolutionists. And theistic evolutionists would say that evolution and God are complimentary. And what they would end up doing is they would look at the science of evolution and they would say that mankind did evolve. And then with Adam, it is not that Adam was the first man, so to speak, they think there would have been other people that existed before Adam, but that Adam was the first one with the divine imprint. It would be like when you see Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and you see that Adam is lifeless, that he just lies lingering in a kind of limp state. And as we see this image of Adam and Eve coming up on the screen, we can see this is Michelangelo’s work, and that here Adam is being portrayed as lifeless. So what is it depicting? God is reaching out because we know that God created man in His image. So Adam would have been the first ‘image bearer’ of God according to theistic evolutionists. They believe that Adam was the first man that reflected God’s image.
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