Curry's Chapel Church
20260531 2 - God Who is Already There
  • SLIDE: Scripture Psalm 90:2
    Psalm 90:2 NLT
    2 Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God.
    SLIDE: Title

    Every “Why” Leads Somewhere

    If you’ve ever spent more than ten minutes in a car with a four-year-old, you know exactly where I’m going with this.
    Picture it. You’re driving home. It’s been a long day. Your little one is buckled into that car seat behind you, legs dangling, sippy cup in hand... [slowly] — ...and then it starts.
    “Daddy, why is the sky blue?”
    And you think, Okay, I actually kind of know this one. “Well, sweetie, it’s because of the way sunlight scatters when it hits the atmosphere.”
    “Why does it scatter?”
    “Because there are tiny molecules up there, and the light bounces off them.”
    “Why are there molecules?”
    “Because… ...that’s how God made the air.”
    “Why did God make the air?”
    [PAUSE]
    And at that point you turn on the radio.
    But here’s what’s beautiful about a child’s relentless why. They’re doing something that most of us have stopped doing. They’re following the thread all the way back. And every chain of “why” — every single one — eventually leads you to the same place: the beginning.
    And at the beginning, there’s either Someone… ...or there’s nothing.
    [PAUSE]
    Last week, we started this series called Standing Firm, and we talked about worldviews — those invisible lenses we all wear, whether we know it or not. The lenses through which we interpret everything:
    our purpose,
    our pain,
    our politics,
    our parenting
    — all of it.
    And we said that everyone has a worldview. The only question is whether yours is built on something that can hold up.
    This week, we put on the first lens of the Christian worldview. And it starts with four of the most powerful words ever written.

    Main Teaching

    SLIDE: Title
    [Read the title:]

    I. “In the Beginning, God” — The Foundation of Everything

    I want us to read these words together, and I want us to read them slowly. Don’t rush past them. Let them land and soak in. Genesis chapter 1, starting at verse 1.
    SLIDE: Scripture Genesis 1:1-2
    [Read SLOWLY]
    Genesis 1:1–2 NLT
    1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
    [PAUSE]
    Now, I want you to notice something.
    The Bible does not begin with an argument for God’s existence. It doesn’t open with a defense. There’s no footnote that says, “Before we get started, here are seven proofs that God is real.” No. It begins with an assumption — the most audacious and world-shaking assumption in all of literature:
    God was already there.
    [PAUSE]
    Before there were stars burning in the dark.
    Before there was time ticking forward.
    Before there was a single atom spinning in a single molecule — there was Someone.
    And that Someone was not sitting idle.
    And that Someone chose to create.
    Now, think about how different this is from every other starting point the world offers.
    Naturalism — is the worldview behind most of what you see on the Discovery. Channel — starts with matter and energy. Just stuff. Particles. No mind, no purpose, no intention. Just raw material doing raw-material things for billions of years until, somehow, you and I showed up to argue about it on the internet.
    [PAUSE]
    Secular humanism starts with us. Humanity is the measure of all things. We decide what’s right, what’s true, what matters.
    Eastern religions often start with cosmic forces — an impersonal energy flowing through everything.
    But the Bible? Well, the Bible starts with a Person.
    Not a force.
    Not a principle.
    Not an energy field.
    A Person...
    with will,
    with creativity,
    with intention.
    And that changes everything.
    You might know the old watchmaker illustration. Imagine you’re walking along the beach. The sand is warm. The waves are rolling in. And there, half-buried in the sand, you spot a wristwatch. You pick it up. This watch is designed so you can see the inter workings, not just the hands. You see the tiny gears interlocking. You see the hands ticking in perfect rhythm. You see the crystal face catching the light.
    Now — does anyone, anyone, look at that watch and say, “Wow, the waves really put that together nicely”?
    [PAUSE]
    Of course not.
    Design implies a designer.
    Precision implies a mind.
    Purpose implies a person behind it.
    And friends, the universe is not a wristwatch. It is infinitely more complex, more elegant, more breathtaking than anything on any jeweler’s shelf.
    And the Bible tells us who the craftsman is.
    “In the beginning, God.”
    SLIDE: Title

    II. Creation Reveals Order, Beauty, and Purpose

    If Point 1 is the foundation — God was there.
    Then Point 2 is the evidence hanging on the walls. Because creation is not silent. It has a voice.
    Listen to what David wrote three thousand years ago:
    SLIDE: Scripture Psalm 19:1
    Psalm 19:1 NIV
    1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
    Declare. Proclaim. Those are active words. David isn’t saying the heavens whisper. He’s saying they shout.
    Every sunrise is a sermon. Every star is a sentence in a story God is telling.
    [PAUSE]
    And we see it everywhere, don’t we? When you look closely at this world, really closely, what you find is staggering.
    For example:
    A single DNA molecule contains roughly three billion letters of genetic code — a language so precise that one misplaced letter can change everything. That’s not chaos. That’s a library.
    The planets in our solar system orbit the sun with mathematical precision, year after year, millennium after millennium, never crashing, never drifting. That’s not luck. That’s engineering.
    Monarch butterflies travel up to three thousand miles to migrate to a forest they’ve never seen, guided by an internal compass scientists still don’t fully understand. That’s not random. That’s a gift.
    And then there’s this: You hold a newborn baby. And that tiny hand wraps around your finger. And you feel a grip so firm, so instinctive, so full of trust — and something in you knows. This was designed.
    [PAUSE]
    I heard someone say once that believing the universe came from nothing is like believing a dictionary is the result of an explosion in a printing factory.
    [PAUSE]
    Now, I’m not trying to be unkind. But I do think that takes more faith than what I’m preaching this morning.
    The apostle Paul puts it plainly in Romans:
    SLIDE: Scripture Romans 1:20
    Romans 1:20 NIV
    For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
    Clearly seen. Not hidden. Not buried. Not locked behind a seminary degree. Clearly seen — by anyone willing to look.
    Now, here’s a key theological distinction, and I want us to hold it carefully.
    Creation is not God, but creation points to God.
    We don’t worship the sunset. We worship the One who painted it. We don’t bow to the mountain. We bow to the One who raised it. This is what separates the Christian worldview from pantheism, which says everything is God, and from materialism, which says there is no God at all. We walk right down the middle: there is a Creator, and He is distinct from His creation — but His fingerprints are everywhere.
    SLIDE: Title

    III. Because God Created, Life Has Inherent Meaning

    Alright, now here’s the “so what.” Because theology that doesn’t touch your Tuesday morning isn’t doing its job.
    If God created everything on purpose — with intention, with design, with love — then you are not an accident. You are not a cosmic afterthought. You are not a random arrangement of carbon that got lucky.
    The late physicist Stephen Hawking once described human beings as, and I’m paraphrasing gently here, “chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet.” And I say that with respect for his brilliance — but friends, that is the logical endpoint of a worldview without a Creator. If no one made you, then no one meant you. And if no one meant you, then meaning is just something we invented to get through the day.
    [PAUSE]
    But the Christian worldview says something radically different. It says you were thought of before you were formed. Listen to how David puts it in Psalm 139:
    SLIDE: Scripture Psalm 139::13-14
    Psalm 139:13–14 NLT
    13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
    Knit me together. That’s not an accident. That’s art.
    [PAUSE]
    And this changes everything about how we live. It changes how you see yourself on your worst day — when the mirror isn’t kind and the voice in your head is cruel. You were made on purpose. It changes how you see the person sitting next to you this morning — with their struggles you don’t know about, their story you haven’t heard. They were made on purpose. It changes how you see the stranger at the gas station, the coworker who drives you crazy, the family member who’s hard to love. Every single human being bears the image of a purposeful Creator.
    Think of it this way. Imagine a painter — a master — who pours weeks of her life into a single canvas. Every brushstroke is deliberate. Every color is chosen. And then imagine that canvas gets knocked off the wall. It gets scuffed. The frame cracks. Maybe someone spills coffee on the corner. Is it less valuable?
    Not even a little. Because the value of a painting isn’t determined by its condition. It’s determined by who made it.
    [PAUSE]
    You may feel crumpled this morning. You may feel damaged. But you were painted by the Master’s hand. And that makes you priceless.
    SLIDE: Title

    IV. The Word Was There from the Beginning

    Now, before we close, I want to take you to one more passage. Because Genesis 1 isn’t the only place in Scripture that talks about the beginning. Turn with me, if you will, to the Gospel of John 1:
    SLIDE: Scripture John 1:1-3
    John 1:1–3 NIV
    1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
    Do you hear the echo? “In the beginning” — Genesis. “In the beginning” — John. It’s the same music in a different key.
    And John is telling us something extraordinary: the Word — the Logos, the divine expression of God — was there at creation. Not as a spectator. But as the agent. “Through him all things were made.” Every star. Every ocean. Every strand of DNA. Every four-year-old in a car seat asking “why.”
    [PAUSE]
    And then, a few verses later, John drops this thunderbolt:
    SLIDE: Scripture John 1:14
    John 1:14 NIV
    14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
    The same God who spoke creation into existence is — the same God who stepped into creation to save it. The hands that flung galaxies into the void — are the same hands that were nailed to a cross. That’s where this series is heading. That’s the arc of the whole story.
    But we’re not there yet. We’re in chapter one today. And oh, what a chapter it is.
    Creation isn’t the whole story, however. It’s the opening scene. It’s the first brushstroke on a canvas that stretches from Genesis to Revelation. And next week?
    Next week, we’re going to talk about what went wrong. Because if you’ve ever looked at this beautiful world and thought, “Something isn’t right” — you’re not crazy. You’re paying attention.
    [PAUSE]
    SLIDE: Title

    Look Again, with New Eyes

    So here’s my challenge for you this week. It’s simple, but I think it might change your Tuesday.
    I want you to look at creation with new eyes.
    Step outside tonight and look up. Really look. Don’t glance at the sky on your way to the car. Stop. Stand still. Let the stars do their preaching.
    Watch a sunset this week. Not through your phone screen. With your actual eyes.
    Hold a child’s hand. Feel the weight and beauty of your favorite fruit or vegetable. Listen to the rain on the roof or let it hit your face, if it rains.
    And instead of scrolling past a beautiful scene from nature, instead of letting the miracle become wallpaper, stop and say: “God, You did this on purpose. And You made me on purpose, too.”
    [PAUSE]
    Remember our four-year-old from the beginning? The one in the back seat with all those why questions? I think that child is onto something. Because the deepest question any human heart can ask is:
    “Why?”
    Why am I here?
    Why does anything exist?
    Why does it matter?
    And the Christian worldview — starting right here, in Genesis 1:1 — gives you the most beautiful answer possible:
    Because a good God wanted to.
    [PAUSE]
    He wanted stars, so He made them. He wanted oceans, so He filled them. He wanted a
    birdsong and
    laughter and
    thunderstorms and
    the smell of rain on warm pavement.
    [PAUSE]
    And He wanted you. Specifically you. Not a version of you.
    You.
    SERIES CAPSTONE VERSE IS
    SLIDE: Scripture 1 Corinthians 15:58
    1 Corinthians 15:58 NIV
    58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
    Next Week — Sermon 3
    We continue in Standing Firm: Building a Christian Worldview   with The Fall: “Something Went Wrong”
    SLIDE: Title

    Closing Prayer — “The God Who Was Already There”

    Let’s pray.
    [PAUSE]
    Father God, we stand in awe this morning. We have rushed past Your creation a thousand times this week alone — and we confess that we have treated miracles like ordinary things. Open our eyes. Restore our wonder. Remind us that before there was anything at all, there was You. And You chose to make us, to know us, to love us. We are not accidents. We are not afterthoughts. We are Yours. Help us to live this week as people who know where they came from — and who they belong to. In the name of Jesus, the Word who was there at the beginning and who came to bring us home, we pray. Amen.

      • Psalm 90:2NKJV

      • Genesis 1:1NKJV

      • Genesis 1:2NKJV

      • Psalm 19:1NIV2011

      • Romans 1:20NKJV

      • Psalm 139:13NKJV

      • Psalm 139:13NKJV

      • John 1:1NKJV

      • John 1:2NKJV

      • John 1:3NKJV

      • John 1:14NKJV

      • 1 Corinthians 15:58NIV2011

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