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Houston's First Baptist Church is a relevant biblical community where we gather our hearts, grow our souls and give our lives as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). This podcast provides weekly messages from Pastor Gregg Matte and others. Visit us at HoustonsFirst.org to learn more about HFBC, and visit us in person the next time you're in Houston!
Now I want you to turn to the 36th chapter of Genesis, and there we find a rather strange thing occurring, as God has so beautifully flowed through the teachings of the Word of God hitherto, now we come to an abrupt change in approach and style in the writing of the book of Genesis, the 36th chapter. Now these are the generations of Esau, who is Edom. Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan, Ada, the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholabamah, the daughter of Anna, the daughter of Zibion the Hivite, and Bashamath, Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebajoth, and Ada, bear to Esau, Eliphaz, and Bashamath bear Reul, and Aholabamah bear Jeush, and Jalem, and Korah. These are the sons of Esau, which were born unto him in the land of Canaan. And it gets worse as it goes on. Now, the book of Genesis, this wonderful, grand, important basis that we are studying for these eight or ten months as a foundation to all of the Scriptures and all of the Word of God, and as you know, I shall begin about a 12 -year preaching program of Jesus Terry's in September, word for word through the New Testament, is divided in two basic sections. First of all, Genesis 1 through 35 is the story of the beginning of just about everything, the beginning of time, the beginning of creation, the beginning of the world, the beginning of the home, of man, of life, of death, of society, of judgment, and democracy, and sin, and salvation, and on and on. Genesis chapter 37, which I shall begin next Sunday morning, through the end of Genesis, is the entire story of the life of Joseph, perhaps the greatest Christ type in the Old Testament. Now, between these two divisions, a very strange thing. The roll call of the names of a lot of seemingly unimportant, at least, if not at least difficult to pronounce names. And so the obvious question of why, for what purpose does the Spirit of God, who never wastes any words, and never puts anything in unimportant, and never makes any mistakes, to give us the breakdown that he does of the names of just the names of a lot of people. Verses 1 through 8 are the recount the wives and children. Verses 9 through 14, the descendants of Esau. 15 through 19, the history of and record of the Edomites. 20 through 30, the Horites. 31 through 39, the kings. And 40 through the end of the chapter, a reclassification of the chiefs and kings and dukes of the Edomites. Now, why? Of what earthly value, of what spiritual help could that be to one trying to gain strength and insight and sufficient help by reading the Word of God? Why put this seemingly unimportant record of the names of a lot of people in between these two great divisions in Genesis? Why not just make Genesis 49 chapters? Well, the reason to me is an obvious one, and that is simply because people are important. Aloha Boma is just another name to me, but it is a person to God. It is someone that God knew, someone whose ways were ordered by the Lord. Our society has created a syndrome in which people are so pressed into the mold and so pressured to conformity. Everything that we do destroys individuality and denudes human personality and deludes the incentive to be a recognized person. And yet there is so much in our society that demands that we fit in to the image of one person. Television, perhaps the greatest force in the history of the world for forming thought, has created images and heroes and idols that we like to be like and are pressured to identify with, and yet are constrained by the very nature of our society into an irresultant insecurity because we are so categorized and so numbered and so legislated into being one of the glob, yet with the desire to be individuals that our frustration begins and insecurity develops. There's something in all of us that says, wait a minute here, look at me, I'm somebody too, I'm a person too, look at me too, I don't want to be just one of the little boxes all in a row, neatly bundled up with a beautiful ribbon and just scratched off as a number. We have numbers for everything, they're going to, and it's going to get worse. We have street numbers and box numbers and zip code numbers and social security numbers and seniority numbers and insurance numbers and retirement numbers to Washington, to our government, we're just a lot of numbers, and it's going to get worse. People are going to be born with numbers, and they will die with a number, and yet there is something in all of us that craves and drives and desires to be not just a number, but a real person. Now to me, these are just some funny names. To be sure, there is a historic teaching there, but for us this morning, I think the grand application that God is trying to get across to us as he makes the transition from a story of the beginning of all people to the story of perhaps the most important single person in the Old Testament is that he wants us to stop and remember that people are not just people as such, they are persons, not just nameless, faceless, insignificant, unimportant nobodies, but individual, responsible persons with problems that need solving, with difficulties that need resolving, with a God with whom they can communicate. People are important to God, and you are important to God, and God is important to you. A census taker in a little city in Arkansas went into the outlying area, and there was a little lady that lived in the home. There were dirt floors and very little of the niceties of life. Indeed, there was hardly a door on the place where the door should have been. He scratched his head and looked around and saw so many kids. He was confused and said, Lady, could you possibly give me the number of your children? And she said, Mister, they ain't got numbers, they got names. Well, I think sometimes that we must remember that that boy in that Sunday school class, that neighbor next door, a part of the latest census population, that individual with whom we communicate and come in contact every day, is not just a number, they got names. They are people. The sweetest name in all of the world, to my ears, is my own name, and yours is to you, and don't tell me that it isn't. We like to be somebody. There is something in all of us that is normal and good and God -given. Three things I would suggest to you this morning. First of all, it is normal to desire an individual identity. Our Lord Jesus said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself. He did not put us down for having a self -love. To the contrary, the individual who has lost all of his self -respect, who has no confidence in himself, no respect, no ego structure left at all, is the one who has totally lost his mind and is in a helpless mental state. A good old -fashioned dose of self -worth is one of the healthiest, if not the healthiest mental attitude in all of the world. Jesus Christ was confronted one day with a woman who, wanting her two sons to be first and second vice president, sitting on the right hand and the other on the left hand, did not put the woman down for the kind of drum major instinct that she had wanting to lead the parade of life, wanting her people to be someone. He did not put her down for that. He didn't say that's bad. He said that's good. He said I want you to be somebody. The worth of the individual is never more amplified than in the Word of God. When Jesus Christ came and loved and created and redeemed, dying for the individual of whom it has been said so many times, if I, if you, if we were the only individual in the world, Jesus would still have come and died for us, is taught again and again in the scriptures. He did not say to her that's wrong, that's bad. He said that's good. He said I want you to be somebody. You are important to God. You are important to the world. Your little light is important in spreading the light of the world. But he said I want you to understand that you do not become somebody by seeking your own, but in that right relationship to God and your fellow man. In other words, it was not the desire to be noticed, not the desire for individual, individuality that Jesus Christ rejected. It was the way they were going about it. The apostle Paul, perhaps the biggest schizophrenic in the New Testament, perhaps the most filled with complex. He was a man who tradition says and scriptures infer was probably hunchbacked and short and ugly and squatty and very nervous and nearsighted and who perhaps stuttered, who had more reason to have a self bad image, a bad self image than any man in the New Testament. When he met Jesus Christ, when his weakness was oriented and integrated into oneness with the Savior, when he became a man, when he became his own man, a real man, a complete man by union with Jesus Christ, when he exchanged his deficiency for his all -consuming sufficiency, then he was able to say, I am more than conqueror through him that loved me and gave himself for me. And I can do all things through Christ which strengthen of me. In other words, Paul was saying, because I am in Christ and Christ is in me, I'm somebody too. Look at me world. And unless you have a good, not egocentric, but a good normie, normal, healthy self image, you are destined for mental problems. And don't let anyone else tell you differently. It is normal and it is imperative that you have that. The worth of the individual is acknowledged again and again in the Word of God. You are somebody in the sight of God. God loves you. He cares for you. He plans your days. He numbers the very hair on your head. He plans your next move. He has a wonderful plan for your life that will be revealed to you through daily relationship and communion and fellowship with the Spirit of God. And then secondly, the individual worth, the importance of people is demonstrated to us in that we are made in the image of Almighty God. Think of it. One of the grandest thoughts in this world to me is that man made in the image of God is the highest creation in the universe. I have said before that if there is life on other planets, it's no higher type than ours. It may be as high, probably not, but not higher because we're made in God's image. And you just can't do any better than that. God made man in his image. Like God, the face of God, the countenance of God, the image of God, rests in the face of no beast, resides in the personality of no animal. But in the face of man, the face of God is revealed. The likeness, the stamp, the image of eternity is all through human personality. Not after the form of a beautiful rose. Not in the image of the gorgeous dying sunset, yonder in the west as it gills the wonderful horizon, illuminating with a thousand colors. No, no, above and beyond the dignity of man. Man is made in God's image. Man is like God. Paul Tillich, liberal theologian, states that God is no person. He is merely the ground of our being, the basis of our existence. But he has no personality. It's very astute and very collegiate these days to depart with the concept of personality in deity. But the attempt to jettison the concept of a personal God is to depart from biblical religion. The Bible teaches nowhere that God is an abstraction, but that he is a person. And as a person, I as a person can know him and be like him and fellowship with him. The only reason I can imagine that Tillich would deny a personal relationship with a person of God is because he's never had one. If a man has experienced God, he will not deny to whom to know is to have him, whom to know is to have life and have it more abundantly. Jesus Christ came to bring personality out of abstraction. The thought of a personal God was above the comprehension of the Jewish people. It was a total new revelation when they, Jesus Christ, taught men to pray, Our Father, which art in heaven, that God was a person, a warm, noble personality who indwelled me by the Spirit of God, who revealed himself in the loving, warm personality of Jesus Christ. Their minds, tealed in the tradition of the centuries, could never comprehend. But that's what it's all about. He walks with me. He talks with me. He tells me, I am his own. The astronauts made the startling discovery the first time to the moon, that from the moon, the earth shines more brightly than does the moon from the earth. And I theorize. And it's just a theory, just a guess. And it's probably as good as your guess that one day when man gets to the farthest, most remote corner of all the universe, if he ever goes there, it may be that this earth shines more brightly than any planet because this is God's special earth made for special creatures, man in the image of a very, very special God. The fact that man's image is stamped out in the image and likeness of God gives sufficient support to the dignity and worth of the human individuality. You as a person are important to God. The last thought is this, that history bears out the worth of the individual. John Quincy Adams was elected through the Electoral College to the Presidency of the United States by one vote. Thomas Jefferson was elected to the Presidency of the United States by one vote. And on and on the story goes. Yonder, in a little southern Indiana county in the mid -1840s, a man was going to work at a water mill. His friends on the way to vote stopped off and invited him to go with them to vote. He declined, saying, but sirs, my vote is not important. They insisted him and encouraged him and finally he went to vote. Later it was discovered that that one man for whom he had cast his one vote had won that election by one vote. The man in turn was elected a state senator by one vote. That man was selected to replace, because of the death of a United States senator, his place in the United States Senate by a vote of the Senate involving a majority of one vote. And when Edwin Allen Hennigan became United States senator by one vote, he was elected President Pro Tem of the Senate. And when they were deadlocked over the admission of the state of Texas to the Union, it was the one vote of Edward Allen Hennigan, the President Pro Tem of the Senate that broke the deadlock and admitted the Longhorns into the Union. One vote is important. One man is important. You are important to Almighty God. Napoleon's soldiers in secret had a name for him. They called him Sint -Milai. Sint -Milai. The Roman expression for a tenth of a million, which meant simply that the presence of Sint -Milai, the presence of Napoleon on the battlefield, was worth a hundred thousand troops. And the personality and the leadership and the charisma and the inspiration with Napoleon and a hundred thousand men made them the equivalent of two hundred thousand without Napoleon. The worth of one. Was it not one man, Abraham, to which our great gospel truth began first to bear its seed planted in the Old Testament? It was through one man, Paul, that God delivered the faith once given to the saints, the blood -bought redemptive gospel that the church loves and heralds and holds dear through the centuries. Through one man. One man. One is important. You're important to God. And in a day in which we are so characterized by desire for numbers and saturated into the mold of numbers, let us remember that we are not just dealing with people, but with persons, individuals, who are not nameless little nobodies, but men for whom Christ died, men about whom God is concerned, men in whose lives God is involved. You're somebody in the sight of God. God loves you. God wants you. God needs you. God knows you. God cares for you. God in Christ died for you. You say, Preacher, what can I do? I'm only one. This world is so wicked. The church is so large. The needs of my home and my city and my world and my society, so vast, so very vast. Well, you may not be able to do everything, but you can do what you can do. You can do something. Your dollar, your tithe, your little gospel light, your presence in Sunday school, your witness in the office, your light on that football field, your presence in prayer meeting collectively makes an impact on the world. You can be God's people. You can be God's man faithfully in God's place, fulfilling God's need in your life and in the life of this world. There is a tremendous pressure from society to socialize into great unity, everything among us. The theologians would solve all of our problems with a grand social application of the gospel, and we must do more and more and more good for society. But never let it be forgotten that society is made up of people, of persons, of individuals. All their high -sounding phrases are so grand, and we have listened to them, and they put down the gospel and evangelism and individual conversion to the extent that far too many churches have turned from individuals witnessing for Jesus Christ to a grand reconstruction of the social order on a mass basis, which is doing so little. Oh, it sounds good. It is so lofty. It is so impressive. It sounds so fine. But what have they say to say to people? How does it affect persons? How does it change the lives of the individuals and make up society? I do not pastor. I don't know of them, but I do not pastor a great glob of numbers. I pastor individual people. My people, what are they to say to them? People with problems. People with specific individual need. I see a young man. He is wrestling with a problem, a habit pattern established from you that is about to take him under. I see a young woman smoldering with passion, one moment of surrender, of temptation, and who will know? Who will know? What have they say to her? I see a young businessman, a tweety, corpulent, horn -rimmed individual we sometimes call man, a professional dollar chaser. I see him on the go. He is wrestling with honesty, wrestling with cheating, on that income tax, wrestling with personal problems. He can make by one pin, slip of the pin, an accident, a mistake. The world will never know, but he will know, and he will be rich, and people will never be aware of it. And what are they to say to him? I see a big businessman. He is a 12 -cylindered, five -altered success. About him, his office filled with flattery and big charts and a mahogany desk and cigar smoke. I see this man wrestling with the problems that are his and all of the general abstraction applied of life through all the grand themes of social reform. How will they affect him? How will they give him inner peace? How will they give him sufficiency? I see America's forgotten woman, the housewife, whose family seems to think of her as she is little more than a scullery maid who cleans up one set of dishes and starts in again. And what have they to say to her? I see a business. I see a working man, an open -shirted, hairy -chested steelworker coming home. He is filled with grease and grit and grime, and he goes into a house to a hag of a nag of a wife, and then spends himself in a few minutes out into the night air to go from bar to bar, where some sultry woman is waiting to listen to him blubber out his story again, pretending to be interested, so he will buy her just still another drink. And I say to them, what have you to say to people? What is our government to say to people? What do the high theologians say to people with personal problems? We must remember that people are important, that people have problems, that people are important to God. Oh, listen to me. Let them, if they will, sit in their high -sounding pseudo -intellectual towers of ivory. Let the high churchmen mock, if they will. Let the liberal theologians scoff, if they must. Let them hold their theological noses, and condescendingly call it the old -time religion and slaughter's trail theology. But I say to them, to every philosopher and theologian among us, that the answer to the needs of the individual is still come to Jesus Christ. Come to Jesus Christ. Bring you to Jesus. And what in the warp and woof of your personality, integrated into his, he is the great burden bearer. A man called me this morning at 1035 from Maryland. He asked me to tell you of himself. His name is Doug Mosier. He had read a book that I had written on prayer. He said, my wife has been operated on 17 times in the last four and a half years. I have lost my job. I have a gun. I am considering blowing my brains out. Ask the people to pray for me. And I say, what does all the theology of Barth and Bultmann, that God is the ground of our being, have to say to that man in Maryland? What does, what does, do the great grand social reforms say to the individual? And I say to them simply, they may scoff as they will, but there is no solution. There is no drink for thirsty hearts. There is no meat for hungry souls. There is no bread for heavy people than for the heavy hearted to come to Jesus Christ and eat the bread of life and drink of the water of life. You say you mean Jesus is the answer to everything. I mean to say that Jesus Christ is simply the answer to everything. God loves you. He knows you. And by faith and surrender and submission to the one who is our burden bearer, giving our weakness up for his strength and our sorrow for his sufficiency and our inheftness for his power, you will find in surrender and faith in Jesus Christ, the indwelling spirit of God begins to bring about the resolve to problems. There is help in Jesus. Jesus, God loves you. God knows your name. You're important to God. God cares about you. Open your heart and let him in. God will remove all your sorrow and sin. And if you know him, remember what a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. What needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. When life comes down to the place that nobody knows and nobody helps and nobody cares. Let Jesus be your friend. Let him bear your burden. Give it up to him and let his sufficiency be made perfect and his strength made complete in your weakness. You are important to God. You're somebody to Jesus Christ. And he's just waiting to move in and help you with your problem. May we bow our heads together.