We Are The Church: Part 1

We Are The Church: Part 1

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

This morning we are doing a first part in a series called We Are The Church and I'm going to get to the sticker on your seat there in a moment for this series, but I want to give you a little peek behind the curtain, okay? Can I do that? As a pastor, let you guys understand a little bit here. There are times when being a pastor is a real struggle. And there are times when I first started studying to be a pastor in college and I moved across the United States. I grew up here in Northern California, Carmichael. I packed up a truck and I moved all the way to Indiana, thousands of miles away from anybody that I knew. At the time, my lovely girlfriend came with me, my now wife. She was there. I had a buddy from high school. He was there. So I had some people, Lauren, she had family in the area, but no family that I knew or that she knew. And it was kind of a struggle. And when we started, when we got to college, we both made a promise to each other that we were going to find a church and we were going to plug into a church and we were going to get connected. And this began probably, I don't know how many months of going and attending a church and then going out to lunch afterwards and going, "Okay, what did we think?" Because honestly, the reality was that we both grew up in really awesome churches and the bar was set so high for us that we found it a struggle to find a church. And as we went around to different churches and we got to know a lot of really cool people, I'm not saying these churches were horrible, it just, it was hard. Midwest church versus West Coast church is a lot different. Way different. And so we would go to a church and we'd go out to lunch and we'd be like, "Okay, we love this about this." We're like, "This is like, oh, that one, that one, that. Not too sure about that. Could we go there?" We kept going. We eventually found a church and we said, "We're not going to just attend until things got weird.”

Because here's the reality. When you go to attend a church, the church isn't batting a thousand every single Sunday. Like, let's be honest. Church isn't perfect every Sunday. The church isn't perfect. So newsflash, if you're searching for a perfect church, welcome, we're not perfect. But as we started attending a church, we said, "Okay, we're committed. This is where we're going to go." And so we started serving. I started serving on the worship team. My wife started serving in youth ministry. And we said, "We're committed to this church." And as we went through college and as I studied the Bible, I felt this hypertension because I realized when I read about scripture and the church and the Bible, the modern church of today didn't look the same. There were some big differences. And as a pastor, we spend a lot of time, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, okay? As a pastor, Pastor Andrei, myself, Pastor Lauren, we spend a lot of time during the week preparing for a weekend service. And we spend a lot of intention and thought and we try to do our best to think through all the details and we figure out the right songs. Andre spends every year, at the beginning of the year, he spends a good amount of time looking through, reading scripture, helping direct and plan our series for the year. We sit down together. We talk through these series of what each week is going to be like, what part of the scripture we focus on. What is the theme here? What do we want you guys to walk away from after you come to church? And I sit here and I still continue to look at the scriptures and I see, I go, "This church is different than what I see at the church and the Bible." And I think we do what I would hope, I think, a really good job here at Spring Valley, working to teach truth and teach theology and to teach the Word of God.

But when I look at, maybe, let's say outside of the church, I'm going to say Big C Church. You guys mean when I say Big C Church? I mean just the church in general. Let's say just the church in North America. I see churches that are sometimes playing it safe. Churches maybe that are disconnected. Some have slipped, maybe I dare say, into being boring. And I look at the calling of Jesus and the life that He lived. And as Christ followers, meaning we are to emulate Christ in our lives, there is nothing safe about Jesus, right? He touched lepers. He hung out with prostitutes. He called tax collectors to be on His team. There's nothing safe or comfortable about Jesus. And yet when I look at the church, sometimes I see comfortable. I see safe. I see not the picture of what the church was at the beginning. The church that Jesus established, that the Holy Spirit led, that brought down onto the disciples who became the apostles, who became the first pastors in the beginning when Jesus left and went back into heaven. I see a difference there. I see Jesus who was radical. He loved those who hated Him. He blessed those who persecuted Him. Jesus welcomed those who religion of the day had rejected. And this is where I struggle as a pastor sometimes. But not only as a pastor, but also as a disciple of Jesus as I read the Bible and I look at the church today, it pales in comparison to what once was. Jesus didn't come to condemn, it says, but He came to save the world. He came to bring life. And not just simple life, barely getting by life, but life that is full. Life that is vibrant. Life that is attractional to the outside world. And today, the next two weeks after, we're going to take three Sundays and we're going to seek to begin to please God as His church. Because here's the reality, it's not my church. It's not your church. Pastor Andre's church. Not the pastor who founded this church way back in the day. It's not their church. It's God's church. His church. And I want to look at specifically the beginning version of the church in Acts chapter 2 and to give us three mindset shifts. Mindset shifts. Easy for me to say, I speak for a living. For us to think about and walk away today and begin to really think through as we seek God and His church today.

I want to pray real quick. Jesus, we thank you for another wonderful Sunday. God, we thank you for today. God, a day to worship you, to give you praise, the honor and glory. Couldn't think of a better day of the week than right now, God, to gather together to worship you, to give you the praise. And everybody said? Amen.

Well, it says this, Acts chapter 2, if you want to flip there, it's going to be on the screens. You've got a Bible in front of you, a lot of people on your phone. That's awesome. But Acts chapter 2, we're going to start in verse 41, and it says this, "Those who accepted His message were baptized," being those that believed what people said were baptized. And they added to the church that day about 3,000 in all. Peter gathers together a giant group of people, and he begins to preach who Jesus was to these people. And 3,000 people that day say yes to Jesus. Whoa. I wouldn't even know what to do. Let's be honest. You have a program management pastor problem day one as a church. Don't get caught in that. Sorry, side note. "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions and gave to anyone who had need." Every day, every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes, ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. The Lord added to their number weekly, monthly, yearly.

What was it? Shout it out. Let's go daily those who were being saved. Maybe I could just stop the sermon right here. A little bit different than today, right? A little bit different than Peter saying, "Hey, guys, we're going to meet temple courts Sunday 1030. Get your kids there at 1015. We'll check them into the side yard. We'll get them taken care of. And then service is over. You want to hang out. We're going to have some food. You can bring something to share. But we're going to be at Mary's house on Wednesday for a Bible study if you want to be over there." No, they met together daily. That's pretty awesome. Daily they're hanging out. And then they're Sabbath-ing together. They're having meals together. They're encouraging one another. Someone comes to them and says, "Hey, I need some help. I got it. What do you need? I'm here. Titus over here, he wants to hook you up. He'll take care of you. Just go see Titus." There's just this beautiful picture of this community in Acts chapter two.

So I thought it might be fun. Maybe look at the Big C church today and do today's translation or a modern-day version. This is me. I wrote this. Okay, I'm not saying. I'm not putting this in the Bible. But what if we wrote this about today? It may be something like this. Today's church, it says, "They devoted to their comfort, their happiness, their personal goals, their dream, their bucket list. No one really noticed the Christians because they were focused on themselves. Very few of the believers were together. And when we were, they fought over stupid things. If they sold anything, they used the money to buy something better for themselves. They claimed to love God, but they didn't even love each other. So they felt empty, alone, depressed. As a result, most people disliked them and very few lives were changed.”

Obviously, this isn't the picture that God has for His church. He wants something better for what the Scripture calls His bride, His love. And I think for us, there's been a lot of awesome, great churches and pastors. I don't want to discredit any of that. Okay? I'm here to just like, "Oh, church is so bad." But there has been a lot of things where we've gone astray in the church, right? And the only way that we can become better and to recognize where we can grow is to be honest with where we are at. If we want a different result, we have to have a different mindset. We have to change the way that we think, the way that we do church, the way that we live our lives because the reality is, as your sticker says, we don't just go to church, but we are the church. Say that with me. Say it. We are the church. The church isn't a building. The church isn't a campus on the corner of Sunset and Fairway or wherever in 123 America Boulevard USA. That's not where the church is. We are the church. They didn't have a building. I mean, they had 3,000 people and they didn't have a building. And yet what? God added daily those who are meeting Jesus and His saving grace for the very first time. So for us to become the best version of ourselves as the church, I see three things in this scripture about how the church operated, who they were, their priorities, and what they did. We will have to have three things changed in us to become more like the perfect version of the church from Acts chapter two.

The first thing we will have to be is we will have to be devoted. I just said we don't go to church. We are the church. There you go. You guys are catching. I'm proud of that. We will be devoted. We just don't go to church. We are the church. Oh yes. I love it. I love it. Acts 2:42, it says this, "They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, the teaching of Jesus and to fellowship, to community, to relationships, to breaking of bread, to food, to caring for one another, to loving each other, to prayer, to practically praying over each other by the power of the Holy Spirit, lifting one another up, going before God." And what the big fancy word would be, "intercession," which just means you're praying for somebody else so that God hears you praying for somebody else and that you love one another in the way that you care by taking time to think about them to say, "Hey God, I want to think about this person right now and what they're going through in their life." This is what the early church did. And when we look at this, I want us to focus in on that word, "devoted." I practiced this Greek word last night. My daughter came out. She's getting ready for bed and I'm literally online playing this Greek word to try to learn how to say it. So I'm about to butcher it real bad for you. But the Greek word for devoted means proskartereō. Yeah, see, you guys don't even know the difference. I love this. Proskartereō. And this word means devoted. It means to live in a constant state of relentless pursuit to be persistent, ongoing, obstinate, devotion. It's an imperfect tense. Ongoing action means it was and it is and it will be. Any English teachers in the room? I think I said that right. English was not my strength. But here's what this is. They were devoted. They were striving every single day to become more and more and more and more like Jesus. To be devoted to something is to strive to keep working at something. Consistency, repetition, habits, one after another after another becoming better and better and better even if it's an incy-binsy teensy-winsy little bit.

This weekend is the start of the NFL season. Okay, you knew I was coming here. You were waiting for it. And so for the past eight weeks, teams have been gathered together in what they call training camp. It's this ramp up period before the season actually starts. We started last Thursday night. And for the last eight weeks, players have done everything that they could to prepare for the season for one goal. One goal. To win a championship. And so for the past eight weeks, they have been obsessed, devoted, persistent with learning a playbook, developing their own personal strength, sharpening their skills, growing themselves hopefully to one time in February, I believe it is, to raise the Vince Lombardi trophy in victory with no other team standing. That's their obsession. And every day, they are persistent with their reps, repetitions. One rep after another after another. Because each rep builds on itself. Because then that begins a habit. And a habit develops a skill. And a skill will eventually show itself on the field when bullets are flying. They talk about some of these players who are just obsessed to a level that is probably unhealthy. Rep after rep after rep. Mental reps, not just physical reps, not just on the practice field or a preseason game or against a scrimmage against another team in a joint practice. But mental reps, too. On the field, off the field, in the classroom, with their coaches, in the weight room, at home, working out, studying their playbook on their own, watching videos of practice. Watching videos of practice. You guys realize that? They film all their practices and they go back and watch their practices again. Obsession. Each day. Because the most devoted, the most persistent are usually the players that are the best players. And they're the ones that can step up when their team is down, the game is on the line, and have ice in their veins and just go. But the players that settle never last long in the NFL. They just don't. Just don't make it. They might have all the skill in the world. I've seen some amazing football players come out of college that have all the skill in the world. But they're not devoted to the game.

And I think for us, it's easy to sit and to point at them and go, "Oh, look at them." But it's easy to settle, right? No, it's just a me thing? I think it's all of us in this room, if we were honest, deep down inside. We settle. But we don't think about settling. We think of just being too easily satisfied. We get to a point and go like, "Okay, I'm good. Life's good. Jobs, nah, not too bad. It's been worse. I'm doing okay. House is good. My marriage is fine. My finances are good. Life's good. I'm set. I don't need to think about anything." We get to a point where we're okay with just living life as it is in front of us, right? Here's the thing. We often settle for too little of God. We're good with a little bit of change of God in our life. And we're thankful for God's grace. Don't get me wrong there. We're thankful for God's grace, His love, and His mercy. Yet we become spiritually satisfied long before the grace of God has completed its work in us. See, I'll tell you today, right now in this moment, there are people in this room that have met Jesus very recently. And there's people in this room that have been following Jesus for a very long time. The truth about both of those people is God's not satisfied with where they are. He's not. And when I look at the early church and I see the apostles and those who follow Jesus and their devotion, their obsession with God and everything that God had for them, it wasn't like they had this big moment. Peter had this big Billy Graham crusade and prayed and 3,000 people came to know Jesus and he just gave them a high five and said, "Go with God." No, it didn't end there. That was just the beginning. And that's the same for us. That when we think about whether it was yesterday or a lot of yesterdays, the moment that we accepted Jesus in our heart, in our lives, we brought His salvation upon us, that was just the beginning. That was just day one of eternity. See the fact that God loves us so much that yes, He sent His Son to die for us on the cross, to give Himself for us so that we would have our sins forgiven. But God also loves us so much that He won't leave us as He found us. God is in the business of transformation, sanctification, and redemption. Now, I'm not talking about earning our salvation by the way that we live our lives and we have to do good and it outweighs. No, no, no, I'm talking about that. Your debt has been paid for eternity. But God's still got work to do in us. And when I look at the early church and I see this and their devotion and their commitment and their striving every single day as they met together in the temple courts, praising God and sharing everything that they had, breaking bread, loving one another, praying for each other, being with each other. I see a "proskartereō" see I said differently their time. I should have done that. Their whole selves in the early church was dissatisfied that they were looking and relentless pursuit for God to have more for them. This should be us too. This should be us. Church, I want to encourage you today, don't quit on the grace of God. It is not complete in you yet. Has God saved you, set your eternity in stone forever? Yes, your name is written in the book of life. You're good. But if you're still here, there's still work that God has for us. And I want us to be grateful for this. This isn't a discouragement thing. I want you to see that. It's just a mindset shift. It's not that we've done something horrible. It's a mindset shift for us to think about as we go forward that God is still working on His grace in our lives. And we are thankful that the Savior through the Holy Spirit continues to work even when we don't necessarily want the work. Okay, I'm done there. I'm done there.

The other thing we have to change is our mindset is that we will be generous. We will be generous. We are not spiritual contributors. We are spiritual contributors. We are not spiritual consumers. Acts 2:44-45 says, "All the believers were together and they had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need." It then says a couple chapters later, further on in the development of the early church. This wasn't just a moment in time right at the beginning. But it says, "And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all," okay, "continuing to work in them powerfully that there were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned land or houses sold them and brought money from the sales." See during this time in the Roman Empire, there were no government programs. There were no food stamps. There was no healthcare. There was no Section 8 housing. There were none of these things, which I think are good things. But those things that actually are now today actually originated in the church. They started in the church. Think about that. Could you imagine today that if the church came to the point where they stepped up, that they actually got rid of all of the welfare programs and all those things because they weren't needed anymore because the church was meeting all those needs? Whoa. That's why the church shined so bright. Because the reality was if you didn't have those things, you were probably homeless on the street and you probably died. That was the reality. Maybe you got sick. Maybe you never got any food. You're begging for your life. And the church shows up and says, "We got you." Everybody contributed. Big, small. And I want to be careful here because we think, "Oh, he's just talking about money.”

No, I'm talking about everything. I'm talking about our all. Yes, I'm talking about money. Let's just call it what it is. Talking about money. I'm also talking about time. You know, these early apostles and people in the church helped other people. Maybe it was fixing something in their home. Maybe it was going out to their farm. But they took time to do that. Maybe it was a skill, a talent that I believe the Holy Spirit gives each and every one of us. He's created us in a unique way to give back in that way. And together they all contributed in a way. They contributed with their money. They contributed with their time. They contributed with their gifts. And when I look at the church today, I don't know if we're all doing that. I don't know if we're all into that point because this idea at this time was completely countercultural. You think life is hard today. Think about life back then. Roman Empire was dog-eat-dog. It was kill the person next to you so you can take whatever they have so you can scrape by. It was ruthless. And the church comes along and says, "We got a better plan for that. The Holy Spirit, Jesus, has a better life for us to live together in community." To the point that no one ever had a need that went unmet. But I want you to catch some things here in these Scriptures. It wasn't that just a few of them had some resources in common. It was everyone. All the believers. Yes, it says in Acts 4 that some had their stuff. They had houses and land that they sold to give. That's great. But all the believers contributed in some meaningful way. Money, clothes, food. This is what it means to be a church. And that also means that all the believers went with less. Because this stuff just doesn't pop out of thin air, right? The extra clothes, the extra food. I don't know. It says they sold houses and land. Was that a second home? A vacation home? Was that development property that they inherited? I don't know. Maybe it was their only thing. And they said, "The gospel is more important than my property." Did I just say that? And because of that, they were able to provide tangible needs to the point that nobody was needy among them. Can I ask you a question today? I'm going to ask it anyway. If someone looked at the way that you spent your money, would they know that you're a Christian? Would they know that you're just a steward of what God has blessed you with? Would they see how you spend or give away or contribute? Would they go, "Yep, that person's a Christian. I can tell." How they spend their money shows their heart. But Chris, you don't get it. You've seen the cost of things lately. Inflation, the housing market. Have you seen everything going on? Yeah, I have. I'm living here too, guys. Did you see the economy and the world and the cost of things in the Roman Empire? The taxes? You think taxes are bad here. Taxes, like Roman Empire robbery, aka like... But they still had generosity. This past year as a church, we had some real financial struggles. I think you guys follow along in the program. But at the bottom on the back, we talk about our finances. And we want to be honest with you. We have budget presentations. We talk about how we spend all of our stuff.

And this last year, unfortunately, we were not able to contribute to certain things in ways that we had previously. Times where there were new churches starting that we knew about and they were planting. We wanted to contribute, but we weren't able to. They were contributing to education of future pastors and church leaders, and we weren't able to. There were times with missions. You guys remember Vivek from India. He came. We've had Shane and Sarah who are doing gathering of nomads. We wanted to contribute to them, but because financially, things were too tight. Here, we did not have enough. We weren't able to contribute to those. And I wrestle with this because I think, okay, it doesn't matter. We still need to contribute, right? We still need to give. Things are tight. Who cares? God's got it all. He's going to take care of it. But it's an us thing. And I will tell you, we have some incredibly generous people in this church. Gosh, guys, I am blown away. I don't know all the details of everything, but I know that there are people who give so much. They give the way the early church did. They go with less so that the church can have more, and they give, and they give, and they give. And it blows my mind. It's amazing. But all of us have a role to play. All of us have a peace to contribute. All of us probably are spending money, myself included, on ourselves in a month that should probably go towards the work of God in His kingdom rather than the work of Chris's kingdom. Relentless devotion. It's hard. I know it is, guys. I get it. But I also get on the other side of eternity, a lot of stuff that we're chasing after just doesn't matter. And the kingdom of God matters. God's work matters.

Final thought for us today as we close is that we will share the love of Jesus. We will be devoted. We will be generous. And we will share the love of Jesus. We are the church, and we exist for ourselves. No, we are the church, and we exist for the world. Acts 2:46-47 says, "Every day they continue to meet together in the temple courts." They're having Bible studies all day long. "They broke bread in their homes. They ate together, glad and sincere hearts. They praising God and enjoying the favor of all God's people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." See, here's the reality of Spring Valley Church. Spring Valley Church exists here for now, for this moment, for today, and for tomorrow, and for any other day that God continues to allow this church to be here on earth. But you think, "Oh, the big church right over there, big one. They got all the money. They got all the resources. Have you seen how many campuses that church has?" They're the ones that's going to be here. They're the ones that's going to reach everybody. No. There's people in your life that only you can reach. There's people that God has placed next door, the next cubicle, in that staff meeting, at that restaurant you love going to, a coffee shop, your family. Your best friend. God has placed them in your life for you to share Jesus with them. And you are the only person that can do that. You are plan A and there is no plan B. So when we think about why we exist, no one else is you. It is our desire to see our community saturated with the glory of God. But here's the thing about saturation. See, that was a very critical word we put in there. Saturated. Water. You guys remember probably back in the day, it's been a while, I might do the sponge sermon again. Let me bring that one back. But I had a sponge up here and I had this bucket of water and I splashed the sponge and I still got the water spots in my Bible from it. But I had this sponge and I took this sponge out and I squeezed it and all this water ran out. I said, God has given us for us to absorb who He is into us, so as we go through life we leave a little wet mark of Jesus with everybody that we meet. But here's the reality. That bottle of water that I poured over that sponge, I have to open that bottle to get the water out to saturate the sponge. Some of us are bottling up Jesus in our life and we're keeping Him on the shelf and He's great. We go see Him, we hang out with Him, we maybe drink a little bit, put the cap back on, send Him back on the shelf. God wants to rip that bottle off the top and dump it out in your life. Dump it out in the lives of your family, dump it out in your friends. He wants to flood their lives with His love to where things they have no idea are coming for Him. He wants to knock them down like a wave of the ocean with a kid not paying attention. That's what He wants to do to them. He wants to just all over them with His love. And you're the only person in their life to share that Jesus with them, to saturate them with His love and His glory.

Heard this quote this week from Paul David Tripp. He says, "This is your mission and every relationship in your life to make the grace of the invisible king visible." Spring Valley Church, we are going to be a faith-filled, big thinking, bet the farm risk takers we will never insult God with small thinking or safe living. Are we a small church? Absolutely. Are we the average in America? Absolutely. Does God have more for us than that? Absolutely. God is moving in this church in powerful ways, but it's gonna have to take all of us. It's gonna have to take all of our devotion. It's gonna have to take all of our generosity. And it's gonna have to take all of us sharing the love of Jesus with our worlds. We got a pretty cool group of pastors here. Can't do it all. God has that calling on your heart and your life. So what do you want me to do about it, Chris?

Here's the final closer here. I want to give an open invitation for each and every one of you to change the object of your devotion with one step. Change the object of your devotion with one step towards Jesus. What does that look like? Well, for you, it may be reading God's Word. You're gonna say, "Pastor Chris, I'm gonna commit. Every single day I'm gonna start reading God's Word." If you haven't, okay. No shame, no guilt, no nothing. Change. Do it. Go forward. But I want to give you a warning. You gotta be careful. Because the Word of God, as it says, is alive and is active and is living. It's gonna begin to change who you are. So be careful.

Maybe you need to start stepping up and serving in church. We just launched three classes today. It's awesome. We got three classrooms rocking. We have an amazing team back there, but we still don't have enough volunteers. We got other slots where we got holes and we're kind of putting things together. We're trying to make things happen because God's doing some amazing things here. And we don't want to just sit and wait for everything to fall into place perfect and then step forward. We got to step forward in faith. But I want to warn you, if you start serving in church, it's addictive. You start loving on people. You start loving on them. Start loving on people. Start helping kids. Start talking to people on a Sunday morning saying, "Hello, you want to talk to more people? You want to see how they're doing? You want to serve in a tangible way?" It'll be addictive.

Maybe some of us need to start tithing. When you start with our finances and our time and the talents that we've been given, we need to start tithing into God's church. But we got to be careful because your heart follows where you give. You start giving, you might want to start giving more and more. And you might hear about this need over here and go, "God, I want to take care of that." You might hear about this need. You might see this person in your life. "I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to do that." We gather up the ties and the offerings every week. We have the envelopes. You guys put your stuff in there. There's a guy in church he writes down, he says, "For God's work." Every week. And I love it. For God's work. Sometimes you think about, "Oh, the church just wants my money for the church to have my money." It's for God's work. It's for other churches to start, for more people to find Jesus. It's for more pastors to have the call, to be developed, to go out and to do more churches and to lead churches better. It's for God's work around the world and missions and missionaries putting their lives on the line in some of these places where they can't even talk about where they are. One of those is Vivek. We don't know where exactly he is. He can't tell us. Because he's had police show up on a Sunday morning and shut their church down. It's happening around the world, guys. What if together with our generosity we could change the world for God? That's something that's worth investing in, right?

Maybe you need to start praying daily. You go, "God, sometimes I just come to you when I need something. I need to come to you when I went just to be in your presence. I want to lift up my brothers and sisters in this family who are going through some really tough times right now." But I want to warn you, God, be careful. Because you're going to start seeing miracles and you're going to start praying more. And you're going to start seeing more miracles and more miracles and more things. You're going to see God moving in his church and in his family in powerful ways. You see lives transformed. Maybe you've seen some scary spiritual stuff happen in this realm. Maybe you start praying more. One thing I want to ask of you is the saffron of the Bible.

One thing I want to ask of you is this afternoon you're going to get a text from the church. And it's going to be an invite to answer some questions. And this is going to be what we call our church pulse assessment. And what it's going to do, it's going to take about eight to ten minutes of your time, maybe a little bit more. But it's going to ask you some questions about your personal focus with Christ. But it's also going to ask you about the church health. And this is going to be a critical tool for us as a team to be able to help lead and guide this church into the next seasons. And it's going to measure across seven dimensions. Not like weird matrix dimensions, but just like seven different ways. That makes sense. Seven different perspectives. We'll say perspectives instead of dimensions. But you're going to get this text. I'm going to ask of you. And the expectation is here. And this is what we want. We want each and every person in the church to answer this 100%. Honestly, there is no right or wrong answer. There isn't. But for us to be able to become forward and grow and to become the church that God, that He wants us to be, we have to address where we are and how we become better and areas of growth that we see in ourselves. And so you're going to get this text. You'll probably get a couple of these texts. We're going to bombard you over the next three weeks. I don't know about all apologize right now, but I'm not really apologetic. I want you to fill out this survey. So that we can help become the best church that God wants us to be.

The church is not a place to go. It is who we are. We're here to proclaim the good news that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. And I want to be honest. Come with your doubts. Chris will never go there. We'll never be there. Okay. God's a little bit bigger than that. But bring God your doubts. Bring Him your fears. Bring Him your anxiousness. Bring Him your brokenness. Bring Him your sin. Bring Him whatever. He's not too scared of it. He's not going to be pushed away by it. I want people to come to this church and when they come that they see Jesus. That's what I want. And I read the early church was the church that came and saw Jesus. I think we're doing a good job. But I know we can do better. I know we'll become better. I know we have places to grow.

Close with this scripture. Love the scripture. Ephesians 3:20. I'm just going to close out Pastor Andre if that's okay. We're just I'm just going to close this out. And I want us to just really look at this scripture. Can we put that on screens? Ephesians 3:20. And this is my prayer for this whole series, this whole time, for all of us that we're doing right here. And if you want to receive this as a benediction and just kind of a blessing as you go today, do that. You want to see receive this as encouragement. You want to receive this as like, let's go. I'm ready to go. I'm pumped. Get me out there, coach. I want to do this thing. Read it as that. But it says this, actually, let's read this. Just read this all together. Okay, here we go. “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, according to His power that is work within us. To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.”

Amen. Amen. Go with God today. Excited to see you back next week, part two. Answer that assessment with the text later this afternoon, sometime this week. I love you guys. Go with Jesus. Amen. Thanks for listening. And if you would, please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week.

Genesis: Part 3

Genesis: Part 3

Genesis 3:1-24

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We're going to continue in our series and we are going to be jumping in. We've got a lot to cover today, so I want to get going. I'm so excited for our sermon this morning. We are in our patterns, Genesis series, where we look at different themes and patterns that repeat throughout Scripture that begin here in Genesis. And as we've mentioned each week, we're looking at how biblical authors were intentional in the way they wrote the Bible, where readers could pick up on some of the deeper currents moving in the story that are beyond the surface. And so these patterns and themes clue us into maybe the tone of the story, they remind us of who God is and what He does, or maybe if the people involved in the story are prone to follow God or to rebel against Him. And something that we're covering each week is how these patterns that we see not just in Scripture, but also pertain to our lives and how these patterns might still be around today. That's certainly going to be the case in our sermon this morning.

So far in our series we've covered in the first week in Genesis 1 in the Creation account how God's words have power, and we saw how He, with His words, created order out of chaos. Last week, Pastor Lauren talked about the imago Dei, the dignity of human life being made in God's image, and our responsibility to share God's image accurately with the world around us, and also the desire we should have to better reflect that image, to be as close to God's image as possible. Today we're going to continue in Genesis, and we're looking again in Genesis 3, and after creation, after God has given order to the world and set up structure, including who is to co-rule with Him, which is Adam and Eve, things quickly change. And they change forever, and they change for the worse.

So in Genesis 3, this is the story of when sin enters the world. It's one of the darkest moments in history, where humanity, after God again had set up everything for the better, humanity invites chaos and darkness back into the picture, a moment where they ignored the imago Dei within them, and they chose rebellion instead of obedience to God. So the pattern we'll see here in Genesis 3, I want to tell you up front, is the fall and humanity's need to be rescued. We're going to see over and over again in Scripture this pattern. I think we have a slide here. So the first one is humanity chooses their own way. This is the first step of the pattern. Humanity thinks that they know better, that they know enough, that they can do it on their own. They think that they have what it takes to be God, in a sense, as God is the one with the perfect wisdom, who knows right from evil, who can discern and decide what is evil and what is good. Humanity thinks, "I can do the same." Then we have the subsequent fallout and the consequence of those actions. That's the next part of this pattern, is God often says, "Okay, if you want to do that, go ahead and do that," and then it doesn't work out. And then the third part of our pattern is God rescuing humanity. He continues to give grace. So this happens over, just keep that up there for a bit, this happens over and over again. Humanity's rebellion, constantly thinking they know better, and then God's provision of grace, where he continues to love and rescue and redeem. You can almost flip page by page in the Bible and just see another example of another person in history thinking, "I got this. God, thank you for getting me this far, but I got it from here," or whatever it is, that whisper that they have, that they hear of, "I'm going to do this my way." And then we see, again, just the fallout of that and them getting themselves into trouble and the consequences they have to face, and then God continuing to rescue, continuing to redeem whatever situation it is. So this morning, I want us to see how this theme plays out and where it really begins.

So if you want to open your Bibles or you can follow along on the screen, look for this pattern as I walk through this dark, dark moment. And just to recap us, if you haven't been here yet, in Genesis 1 and chapters 1 and chapter 2, we have God creating the world, and he created Adam and Eve, and he gave them purpose and he gave them opportunity. He gave them purpose in ruling over the earth with him, and he gave them some parameters, but it was very much set up for success. And it's this place, this Garden of Eden is this place where God dwells on earth with his creation until chapter 3, verse 1, which reads, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?'" I'm going to stop right there. I'm going to be reading and just expounding as we go along. Satan gets crafty immediately. There's no polite introduction. He just automatically, right from the beginning, is starting to twist some things that God had told Adam and Eve. In chapter 2, verse 16, God says, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die." And we hear Satan say, "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree?" So you just notice the subtle difference there. And he's just priming the pump. He's softening the ground so that his lies can get further and further in.

Verse 2, it says, "The woman said to the serpent, 'You may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, so far so good, and you must not touch it.'" Huh. Don't know where that came from. "Or you will die." The woman corrects Satan, but not precisely. And instead of echoing God's words specifically, she kind of generalizes what God said. Not just that, but she adds to God's words. That's not today's pattern, but that is a pattern that repeats throughout Scripture of adding to God's words, thinking, again, this kind of ties into our pattern, that, "God, you kind of said it, but I have some better things to add. So I'm going to add some words to what you say." One of the most famous people that we see in the Bible, an example of people adding to God's words, are the Pharisees. The Pharisees in the New Testament, Jesus has explained that, "You have added so much to my commandments that you've lost track of the heart of God." And so already we see Eve kind of adding to God's words. She says, "If you touch it, you die." God has not said that. Galatians 4-5, "You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman, "for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Satan continues to twist, continues to turn, the lies, God's words. And he's using this ambiguity of the penalty, his warning, to make the woman less fearful and more prone to follow where Satan is leading. This phrase, "knowing good and evil," this does not mean choosing right and wrong, choosing what is good and choosing, because as we'll see, they already have that power. Eve demonstrates that that is already in existence. Rather, it speaks to this idea of becoming like God in His divine wisdom. A lot of the phrase in the Old Testament, you see someone is wise or someone, God is described as having divine wisdom. It's this ability to discern and to decide what is good and what is evil. So Satan is saying, "You will certainly be able to do this," meaning you will certainly be like God, thinking that they will be able to know enough to define what is right and wrong in the world. He's saying like, "Hey, I know God said you wanted to rule, and He's ruling with you, but I think you can pretty much rule by yourselves. You'll be able to do this without God." He hasn't said that explicitly, but you can see that that's in the background of what he's saying, and that's what's turning in Eve's mind.

Verse 6, "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom," she's like, "Wow, this is a win-win-win," "she took some and ate it, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it." Hold on, let's just stop right there. Did we catch that? I know that Eve catches a lot of flack for being the one who was like, "Ah, she made the decision, and Adam was off doing his cool thing, and she's the one." She gave some to her husband who was with her. So we can deduce from this that Adam was there the whole time. He was there the whole time. He heard the conversation, and he did nothing. He didn't do anything to stop it. So Eve, you're not off the hook because you still sin, but it's definitely Adam and Eve who are sinning in this moment. Verse 7, "Then the eyes of both of them were open, and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." They experience now this new knowledge of rebellion and the reality of sin. This phrase "eyes being open," we still use that today, right? Seeing the truth now, or the new reality. And this is the step in the undoing of the order that God had brought about. This is a step backwards towards darkness and disorder and chaos.

Verse 8, "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord as he was walking in the garden the cool of the day." That is just such a cool, awesome phrase. Walking in the garden, the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord among the trees of the garden, hiding after sin. That's a natural thing. I think we can all relate to that. You've done something wrong, and immediately you do not want to be seen. Maybe you see that in your kids right now, or your grandkids. When they do something wrong, and you come across a scene of something broken or something that was not supposed to be touched, and it's there, and the kid is nowhere to be found because they are hiding. And they know that what they did is wrong, and so they are ashamed. And it's right here from the very first moment that sin entered the world. Hiding because of your sin is natural. It's not good, but it's what we do. It could be something as simple as avoiding eye contact. We don't want to be seen by the person who is in authority. We just had, I'm not going to call on any kids specifically, but we just had a family fun night at our house this last Friday, and all the kids were there, and there was someone who was like, "Hey, can you not do that?" And immediately they didn't want to look me in the eye. They were just like, "No, okay, yeah. No, I didn't do anything. That wasn't me. That wasn't me. That wasn't me." The avoidance of being seen by the person who has the authority to decide what is right and wrong, it's very real. Also what we see in this verse, I just want to point out, it says, "Heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day." The Hebrew word here for the cool of the day is translated for spirit or wind, and the words for Hebrew spirit and wind are also often associated with God, the Holy Spirit. And so we lose kind of some of the scene that makes sense to us in English, but in the Hebrew, what they would hear is that the undeniable presence of God was in the garden. That's what that is saying, is that God was right there, and the whole garden knew it. Adam and Eve felt it. They were hiding, but they knew God was there. And already we begin to understand that sin and God do not mix, like water and oil. God shows up, and all of a sudden the people who are sinful are gone. Adam and Eve are finding this out live as it's happening to them. Verse 9 says, "But the Lord called to the man, 'Where are you?' And he answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'" I just want to note here that nakedness is not the sin here. It's the recognition that they are naked, their awareness of that, and the shame they feel that exposes their guilt from the sin that they did of eating from the tree. Before their disobedience, Adam and Eve had no reason to be ashamed, but now they feel that shame. Their innocence is gone.

Verse 11 says, "And he said," God speaking, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" I love this. This is so good. First of all, if we were reading the story again in Hebrew, God is right there. The way that it is written and the way the story unfolds is meant to convey that God, in far as proximity, he was close. He already knew what happened. And so God isn't asking because he doesn't know, "Hey, did this exact thing happen?" He's asking to elicit a confession. Right? I'm sure we've all been in that situation. Again, I think so much of parenting right now, of God with his firstborn, Adam and Eve. And we've all been in that situation, whether on the receiving end where someone has asked us a question or we've been the one asking the questions to someone, but it's cool to see here where this parenting strategy originated, right here in Genesis 3 with the first sin, asking the question, "Hey, did you do that exact thing that happened?" I already know, but I want to hear it from you. By the way, this is another repeating pattern in Scripture, not ours today, but I'm just going to give you these clues as like if you are liking this series and you like seeing these patterns, this is another one where God or Jesus asked a question they already know the answer to and just look at how people respond. See if their guilt drives them to confess or whether they keep going down their path of a lie and hiding from God.

All right, verse 12 says, "The man said, 'The woman,'" oh, this is good, guys, "'The woman that you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.'" Again, Adam is not looking good, right? Like we always think that it's all Eve. He was there and he blames God. God, it was, you put her here. You are the one that's not, you can't say that to God. Bold attempt, Adam, and it does not pay off. He blames the woman and he blames God. Verse 13, "Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?' And the woman said, 'The serpent deceived me and I ate it.'" Eve now blames the serpent. I want to pause here to address this common question. Who is the serpent? Which also leads to who is Satan? Because we know that this is the enemy, this is Satan. And so I just want to explain, Satan is this creature whose entire existence is a state of rebellion against God's creation, against the good of God's creation. Satan is on a mission to ruin God's good world for everyone, for all creatures. And Satan, we know this from other passages in the Bible, he did not want to live under God's wisdom and authority. And if anything, he wanted to be God. And that's the very temptation that he puts in front of Adam and Eve. I want to be like God and I have rebelled. Do you, Adam and Eve, also want to rebel? He doesn't say it that way because that would be too obvious. So he says, "Hey, I think you guys are pretty good. I think you can do this on your own. I don't think you need God." When we read this passage, I want to encourage us to think less about like the zoological, there's probably a more official word for that, but less about the snake and the details of like what kind of snake it is and are snakes inherently evil because they're always associated with Satan? Not the case. The story is describing Satan as a snake. And just focus more on what's happening for creation, what's happening to Satan. Because as we'll find out in the verses to come, God is taming Satan, the enemy. He's making the snake more docile. That's the big takeaway is that God is the one whose power is supreme over everything, even those in rebellion against him. God is more powerful. There's a lot of ancient Eastern context that the story is written into. And so it may sound fanciful. If you're reading the Bible for the first time, you're like, "Wow, there's a snake talking to humans. What is this?" It's meant to sound like that. The snake is talking to people, but to the ancient listener, these implications would have come through vibrantly that the snake always represents something sly, something evil. So just keep that in mind.

Verses 14 through 15, "The Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offsprings and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.'" So the serpent's offspring that he's talking about are those that will follow in rebelling against God. And the woman's offspring is very specific. It's the people of God, but also it says, "He will strike you on the head." And that is specifically talking about Jesus. So guys, already on what is page four of my Bible, chapter three, we have the hope of Jesus entering the story. As soon as sin enters the story, God has a plan and God has hope. And he gives that hope to humanity. I love it. It's amazing. God has a plan to deal with Satan. And that promise is still alive. And as mentioned again throughout the Bible, Romans 16, 20 says, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you." Revelation also talks about this, of what God is going to do, the final steps of his plan. So again, God from this very moment promises an answer to the problem of sin. And his grace, remember our pattern, we've seen humanity rebel, think that they can do it on their own. We see the fallout of those consequences of their actions. They're facing that right now. They're getting explained those consequences. But we also have God providing grace.

And now he talks to the woman and the man in verses 16 through 18. To the woman, he said, "I will make your pains and childbearing very severe. With painful labor, you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." To Adam, he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat from it." God's clarifying, by the way. He's like, "I know you tried to blame me, but I definitely told you the rules. You definitely did not listen. Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you. And you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food." Oh, we'll stop right there. Hold on. So again, the original task that has been given to Adam and Eve from Genesis 1, Genesis 2, to tend the garden, to be fruitful and to multiply, those commands are still there, but now it is so much more difficult. It is now true labor that they are going to have to partake in. God says to Eve, having kids, what was going to be just a blessing for you, this gift that I was giving you and this part of reigning with me to multiply, now it's going to include a lot of pain. It's going to be very severe. And to Adam, he says, the work that you will have to do for food and survival, it's going to be brutal. It means serious effort and overcoming of obstacles will be necessary to make the earth produce what humanity needs it to produce, to live, and just to do what they were created to do. And he's emphasizing what once was freely given to them, the food that was available for them at any point, at any time, they didn't have to do anything, it was just there, God created it for them, now it's going to be backbreaking work. This reality is something that we still live with. If you live in Rocklin, you know why it is called Rocklin. And if you've ever had to dig and plant a tree, you come to a certain layer and it is so hard and the shovels that you have may not, I mean, I've broken tips of shovels trying to get through that hard pan. And if you've gone through walks and you've gone off the paved trail and you walk around, you will have thistles and thorns in your socks and your shoes, and you can, next time you do that, you can be like, thank you Adam and Eve for bringing that about.

Verse 19 says, by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you will return. You might have heard that before, from dust you are, and to dust you will return. It's a line that, in some context, provides a little comfort, but in this moment it's absolutely devastating. Because it's not what God intended for his creation. It's not what he intended for his co-rulers, Adam and Eve, and what he had envisioned would be an eternity in the Garden of Eden with his creation in the way that he intended it to be. So we have this consequence of sin, which is lifelong toil and then death. And death is unique. Only death is the release from the lifelong toil that he will have to do, but also death is a natural consequence of their sin. And so you just see this bleak outlook for humanity now, juxtaposed to what God created, which is something full of life, holy opportunities, and good work to the world that Adam and Eve brought about, which is full of pain and life-dependent toil and death. And it's just so saddening to see, just for a few moments in the Bible, two chapters, the Garden, to now the reality that we are all a part of and we're born into. But in verse 20, "Adam named his Eve wife because she would become the mother of all the living." In 21, "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them." Even now, in just that small verse, God is being gracious to Adam and Eve, and he's meeting them where they're at, and he's giving and providing and sustaining them. And he's saying, "You're going to need this from now on, and I'm going to give it to you. Here's something for you." But things do have to change.

In verse 22, "And the Lord God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.' So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken." This is the dilemma. Adam and Eve, if they were to stay in the Garden, now knowing good and evil, meaning they can rebel and they can choose to continue to rebel, they can also take from the tree of eternity, of eternal life, never facing the penalty for their transgressions, never facing death. So God says that we can't have that. And unfortunately, we have to banish you from the Garden. So they are cut off from the full presence of God, and immortality was made unavailable. They would eventually die. Something that doesn't seem to be intended when God created the world. I think that's why death is so hard for us. Whether accepting it for ourselves when we come to that point, or watching someone we love pass away, there's something in us, in our imago Dei, that pushes back against the idea of death. I think from that and from this verse, we can deduce that it's not what God intended. It's the result of sin.

Verse 24 says, "After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden, cherubim and a flaming sword, flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life." So that's a lot. That was a lot. We covered how sin entered the world. Honestly, we could do a whole series on Genesis 3. I spent a whole semester in the first three chapters of Genesis in seminary, and that felt really quick, so I can imagine in your seats right now. This was like a flyby at jet speed, but I want to remind us to focus on the pattern. And if you also want to encourage you in your own time to go back, read Genesis 3 and over and over again and just see what plays out here, see what Adam and Eve chose to do, the lies that Satan said. But our purpose today is to see the origin of this pattern. Can we put that pattern back up on the screen really quick? Again, humanity choosing their own way, thinking they can be God, the consequence of that decision, and God being gracious and redeeming and rescuing them, despite the fact that they rebelled against him. And so, in this scene, we saw that Satan tempted Adam and Eve that they can define good and evil, which we know is a God task, not a human task, but Satan says, "You guys can do it." He's tempting them to be in the place of God, to live in a garden and rule without God. And Adam and Eve succumb to that temptation. They give in, they rebel. And sin enters the world and it now plagues humanity.

Every single person from that point forward is born into sin. Romans 3:10 says that no one is without sin. And then we see the fallout, the sadder, new devastating reality that humanity and the world now exist in. Because of sin, there is now devastation and death, broken relationships, battles and violence, disease, slavery, power struggles, selfish perversion, where there was once beauty, nothing but beauty within us. Now there is some ugliness within us. But we also see God be gracious, letting them live, clothing them, and even giving a clue to a major redeeming moment in the future, where the enemy will be defeated. That's our pattern right here. The authors were intentional. They wanted us to see, this is how it starts, but as I said, you just flip page after page, you're going to see it over and over again. And always, the last part of that pattern is God rescuing. God having the final say, saying I know that you keep straying from me. You keep going in your own direction. And it's almost like he picks us up and says, all right, back to your spot where you're supposed to go. Now see if you can go in a straight line. And then eventually humanity wanders off and he's always picking us up and saying, no, right back here. I've got a plan for you. It doesn't take long for us to see the pattern over and over again. The Bible Project, by the way, has some really cool videos on making this connection. But the next culminating moment is the Tower of Babel. I'll just quickly touch on how this is seen throughout the Bible. And the Tower of Babel, if you don't know, is a story of all of humanity, which speaks the same language, coming together and saying, let's be God. Let's try this again. And so they build this tower to literally be at the height, the same height as God. They say, God's up there. We'll go be up there too. And we're going to build this tower and we're going to decide we're going to be the rulers. We're going to say this is what's right, this is what's wrong. And God has to intervene and he scatters them as we know, and he gives us different languages. And so there's mass confusion. But he still is redeeming. And we get, we know this because even in Revelation at the end of the Bible, it says there's a promise that people from every nation, tongue, tribe, and language will be praising God in heaven. So God is going to use what humanity was trying to do for their own selfishness. He's going to, that's still a part of his plan. He's like, don't worry, you guys did that, but I still have you as a part of what I'm doing. I'm going to redeem you. There's more. We can go, Abraham has his own story. He tries to have a child by his own methods. God says, hey, I have promises for you. You are going to be the father of many nations. And it's not happening. Abraham is very old. And he says, you know what, God, I got this. I'm going to choose my own way. I think I figured it out. The first part of the pattern is right there with Abraham and Sarah thinking, okay, we'll take control. And as you may know, they have Ishmael instead of waiting for Isaac. And it causes a bunch of messy division in the family. But God still blesses them. He blesses Ishmael and he provides Isaac as the son who would be the father of many nations. We can also go to the Israelites. They are in the desert and they begin worshiping a golden calf. God has brought them out of slavery into the desert. He's bringing them to a promised land. But in the midst of that, they say, God, I think we got a better idea of this golden calf, which we hear now are like, that's ridiculous. But in the moment, Israel was thinking, this is great. We have gold. We have, we can make up our own God and we're going to define what is right and wrong. They end up having to wander for 40 years, but God still redeems and still rescues and he brings them to the promised land.

You can get to the book of Judges in the Old Testament. And this is story after story of literally God's people. This is what it says in the Bible, doing what is right in their own eyes. That is exactly the language from the garden story right here. Doing what is right in their own eyes, defining what is good and evil. And the nation, all of Israel would get into trouble with other nations and God would provide a judge, a kind of hero or a leader to bring them back out of that and say, no, come back to where you're supposed to be and there's a peaceful time. And then the next chapter you read again and they were doing what is right in their own eyes. So this over and over again, you get to the Kings, Saul and Kings, the people wanted their own King, even though God was their King. And they said, no, God, I think we have a better idea. We want an earthly King. And again, we read this and we're like, Israel, you are so dumb. But we make the same choices. So be careful on who you're judging. But they come up and God says, this is not going to work out. And they say, no, we want it. We really want an earthly King. He says, fine, I'll give you an earthly King, but it will not work out. It will lead to your own destruction. He says that at the very beginning, but he gives them Saul. And besides a few Kings like David, and there's a few others that are good, the rest of the Kings are terrible and they lead Israel farther and farther away from God until they are in captivity. Last one in the Old Testament that I'll mention is Jonah, thinking that he knows better than God. God has called him and said, hey, I want you to go reach the people of Nineveh. And he says to God, again, bold move, kind of like Adam, it's not good. God, they're not worthy of being saved. You should just destroy them. You should just judge them. They're terrible. They're terrible, terrible people. I think I know better than you. I think I know your ways better than you know your own ways. There's a lot of interesting, bold things that Jonah says to God. And then, as we know, Jonah gets swallowed up by the near-death experience. He is in that storm where he thinks his life is over. But then God redeems and he rescues and he says, and Jonah goes and the people of Nineveh hear the gospel and for a time they believe in God. So there are many, there are so many, those are just some of the major ones, but there are all these mini episodes of a fall and redemption within the bigger story.

But then we come to the New Testament, and this is where the main theme comes to the forefront again. In all of humanity's sin, and the fall is addressed. Excuse me. And salvation arrives in the form of Jesus Christ. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus brings eternal life and undoes the effect of sin. We see Jesus live the perfect life. He is the perfect Adam, the Son of Man. He resists all the temptation. He has his own moment with Satan, where Satan tempts him in the desert. But Jesus succeeds. And through his death on the cross and his ascension to heaven, he defeats sin and death, and he provides a way for eternal relationship with God. A way for us to be in the full presence of God again. What was taken away at the garden is now restored. So through Christ, we know that the pattern of rebellion against God will come to an end. But we still struggle with this pattern today in our own lives. We still encounter the same temptation that Abam Eve faced, thinking that we might be able to live this life better without God. We think, "I got this. I can do this on my own. What I'm doing is working. I'll decide what's best for my life, for me and my family." And it's never really that bold. We don't think, "God, I got this." But our actions say that. Our heart, what's really in our hearts, reveals that that's what we're thinking. And Satan doesn't often mention God when he's whispering things to us. He's like, "Hey, you're better than God." Because we'd be like, "Absolutely not. I'm not better than God." But he likes to twist the truth. "Hey, you're really good. Hey, you've got this." He's trying to fill us with this false sense of confidence to then make steps on our own that are apart from God. And so he, again, he's twisting the truth. It's never really at first a flat-out lie. It's something that we can believe in to some extent. And then after a few of those decisions, we see that we are really truly far apart from Jesus. And we have to face the consequence of our actions. And we are, just as we began, in need of rescuing. And Jesus rescues and he forgives and his mercies are new every morning.

So I want to quickly just mention three lessons from the fall, from Genesis 3. And the first is to live with humility. Humility is this proper view of self, which begins with a proper understanding of God. It's why we preach so much here at Spring Valley, who God is and what he does. When we better understand that, when we better understand God, we better understand ourselves. So once we understand God and his place, not just in our own lives but over the entire world, we better understand in a good way how small we are. That we don't know everything. That God does. And so we should really follow his ways and his wisdom and plan for our lives. This is counter to what the world often says. We often hear that knowing more will lead to more power and influence and opportunity. Knowledge equals power. Have you guys heard that before? There is truth to that. But where it gets dangerous is more knowledge and less reliance on God. More knowledge and you become independent and you don't need God. And that's not good. Pastor Matthew McCleary, he's a pastor in Sacramento, says, "Rarely do we see in Scripture someone get more knowledge and it works out for good. In fact, it's mostly the opposite." What he's talking about is living with humility. Recognizing and acknowledging that we need Jesus to live the best life here on earth. So I invite you to reflect in your own heart and mind, are you living with humility?

Secondly, live on guard. We know from our passage in Genesis 3 that in all the other passages throughout Bible we see this pattern that the temptation to rebel against God is always lurking. We must live intentionally and fervently to fight to live aligned with God's heart. It won't happen by accident, it won't happen passively, just like, "God, I hope that I live according to your ways." No, it doesn't happen like that. We need to be on guard for temptation, to be on guard for when Satan will want to whisper in your ear, "You don't need God." "You have a better plan. You have it figured out. Just go ahead and act with what your gut is telling you." Again, Satan will twist and turn the truth ever so slightly at first before you realize you are living in complete rebellion against God. So be on guard, be vigilant, be ready. Know that Satan is trying, he's desperate for God's creation to rebel against God. He's out there trying to ruin God's good creation and the order and beauty that God is trying to bring, and as co-rulers, we are also trying to bring into the world. And as we are intentional, as Pastor Lauren preached last week, to model the image of God, to reflect the image of God, that means that Satan is out to ruin us too. Be ready to fight, arm yourselves with the truth of God's Word. Jesus showed us when he went to the desert and defeated Satan in that moment and overcame the temptation, he showed us how. With every twisting temptation that Satan threw at Jesus, Jesus threw back at him with the truth of God's Word, properly interpreted and saying, "This is what God said. This is truly what God meant." And that's the blueprint for us. That's how we are to live, to knowing God's truth, and so that when we are faced with temptation, we can speak the truth of God right back at that temptation. So ask yourselves, are you living intentionally and ready to fight against the temptation of the enemy? And do you know God's truth?

Thirdly, live in God's grace. God showed us in Genesis 3, from the moment that sin entered the world, that God's grace is more. His grace covers all that he continues to love and provide for us. He reaches across the divide that sin puts between us and him, and he wants us to live with him. We must choose to accept God's free gift of grace. As Christians, those of you who are in this room who believe in Jesus, we still struggle with sin. We know this. None of us are living perfectly. But if we want the pattern of sin to stop in our lives, we need to live into God's gift of grace. We need his love that endures all, his mercies that are new every morning, his grace that covers all, his forgiveness that forgives all sin, his salvation that rescues us from sin and death and gives us eternal life with him in heaven. So are you living in God's grace every day? Are you choosing God's grace? Are you accepting that? Are you wanting it, desiring it? If you call yourself a Christian and believe that Jesus is your savior, again, you're still going to be struggling with some of these patterns in your life. But I pray that today's sermon is a reminder of the life that God has called you to, that the Spirit would use it to speak to you and make apparent things that might need to change in your life, patterns that might need to be addressed. And if you haven't yet made that decision to follow Jesus, to surrender your heart and control of your life over to him, to confess your sins, I want to invite you to do that right now.

So we're going to go ahead and bow our heads and close our eyes. We're going to pray. And if that's you and you realize you don't want to go another moment without Jesus in your life, without his love and grace, and you want to accept his salvation, I'd encourage you to do just that. With everyone's eyes closed and heads bowed, just silently to yourself, if you want to pray this prayer, "Lord, I believe Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for my sins and rose again. I receive him as my Lord and Savior today and ask for the forgiveness of my sins." Let's all pray. God, thank you so much for your Word. And even though we live in this reality of sin, we have hope. From the very moment that sin entered the world, you were good and gracious and loving. You continue to reach out and rescue us daily. God, without you, there is no hope. But in you, there's more than hope. There is salvation. And with that hope and promise of eternity with you, thank you for sending your Son Jesus as the answer to the problem of sin. And God, I pray that for us who are fallen, we be encouraged in our faith, that we be renewed in our fight against the enemy, that we would live on guard, that we live with humility, that we would live in your grace. And God, I pray for those who are not yet believers, God, that you would continue to soften their heart, open their eyes to see their need for you. God, I pray that you would help us to be able to see the patterns in our lives that are unhealthy, moments and areas in our life where we are choosing our own wisdom. We may not even see it that way, but God, I pray that you would reveal that to us through your Spirit, that you would convict where conviction is needed. And you would say, "Look, you're choosing your own way." And God, I pray that our hearts would be softened to say, "God, I'm sorry. Please guide me and show me the way to live." God, we cannot do this life without you. We need you. We're thankful for you. And we give you all the glory and praise. Amen.

Genesis: Part 2

Genesis: Part 2

Genesis 1:26-28

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So today we are going to talk about the theme or the idea of the imago Dei. Imago Dei means the image of God. And God created all of us in His image, so we all have the imago Dei. And also we're going to talk about how because we have this imago Dei, we are called to reflect God to the world. So we're going to read our passage together here. We're going to dive in. We're just going to be in Genesis 1 again, but we're just going to hit a couple of verses

If you would turn to Genesis 1, verse 26 to 28, we're just going to read that together. “Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in His own image. In the image of God, He created the male and female. He created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. God made man and woman in His image and in His likeness.”

This use of both the word image and likeness is important because they're very similar meanings. And so when things are repeated in the Bible, when they're said in multiple times, it's a cue. It's a literary tool that the authors use to clue us in that this is important. And also it is true. It is very, very true. If it can be more true, this is when it is more true because it was repeated. It was said again, the image and likeness of God. It also indicates that of all the things that were created, man was the one thing that is made most like God. We are made in His image and likeness. We take after Him. It's interesting because everything we see in all creation before mankind was created with a command. God said, Let there be light. And there was light. He said, Let there be fish in the sea. And there was fish in the sea. Let there be moon and star. There were moon and star. It was a command. It was spoken and it was so. But one commentary said that the creation of humans or with the creation of humans, the word of command turned into a word of consultation. The Trinity, God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit consulted each other. They conferred on the making of man. See, man wasn't just one more thing that God made, but humanity was the pinnacle of creation. God had already made a really good world and now it was time to put man in it. So He wanted man and woman to be made in His likeness, in His image. So what does it mean to be made in the image of God? That sounds nice, but like, what does that actually mean? Well, the ancient readers and listeners would have understood this within their own context because they, there were so many gods, little g gods, that the surrounding countries followed and worshipped. And often there would be some sort of human representative of that god, often a king or some other ruler or authority figure. But they would be the representative of this little god. And so this wasn't unusual to have some sort of representative for Yahweh as well. It would be considered usual. But how can we be made in the image of something that has no physical body? Now, we know Jesus does have a physical body and that's not what we're talking about. He does have a physical body. But God, especially at the time of creation, did not have a physical body.

So how can we be made like Him? How can we be made in the image of something we can't even see? Well, I think there's three main ways that we can look at that we are made in His image. The first is in the ruling and reigning. We have given, as Pastor Andrei said last week about our purpose, we've been given a role and a responsibility. We are called to have dominion over the earth. Just like God is the king of the universe, He's given us a role to almost be like royalty, to rule and to reign and have dominion over the earth. We're also like God in reference to some human-like qualities. Things like moral awareness, rationality, spiritual capacity. Things that kind of separate us from the animals and trees. They can't rationalize. They don't have the spiritual awareness that humans do. So we're like God in that way. And thirdly, it's in our ability to have relationships with God and others. God is in relationship with Himself as the Trinity. And so He created us like Him in that to be in relationship with other people, to be in relationship with Him. He made us for community. He made us for relationship. And He gave us the capacity to do so when He made us in their image. Now, just to be clear, this is not this idea of being made in the image of God. This is not like we are little gods. We are not. We don't have like God did not just like put a little bit of God in all of us. We are not gods. We are made in His likeness.

So this passage here in Genesis and this understanding of imago Dei, the image of God, establishes two truths for us that we can see here in the passage and then also we can see repeated throughout scripture. The first one is that it establishes the status, value and dignity of human life. If we are made in the image of God and we are, then every human being has value. This naturally brings up some big issues. You know, things like sanctity of life, life at conception, things like the death penalty or medically assisted suicide. These really big, hot button issues that I'm sure many of you in here have personal experience with. But the reality is that we have to let the Word of God inform our stance on these issues because a lot of these issues aren't directly mentioned in the Bible. But our value is, our dignity is, as humans, we all have the imago Dei. And so the Bible and the biblical view of the dignity of human life must inform our beliefs, not the other way around. Each human, every person, no matter how small, no matter how sinful, no matter how wrong they are, they were made in the image of God. Beyond these supercharged topics, there's more of those everyday type of situations. When we have hate in our heart towards someone, Jesus said that that is if we are murdering them. Because they are an image bearer as well, even having hate towards them is not treating them like they have the imago Dei in them. When we choose to treat others with respect, despite disagreeing with each other, that is acknowledging the image of God in someone else. When we choose to forgive someone, even though that they have made, maybe they've hurt us terribly, but we choose forgiveness that is acknowledging the image of God in them. A little caveat for us, this does not mean that every person who has ever hurt you needs to be within your bubble. Not every person gets the same access to you. Boundaries are good. We are pro boundaries here. You can still acknowledge the imago Dei in someone else from a distance. It is your heart posture that we're talking about. You don't ever have to see that person to forgive them. You don't have to see that person to respect them. They don't have to have access to you for you to have to acknowledge the imago Dei. It's your own heart we're talking about here. It is your own heart. Amen.

This idea, when we live with this biblical view that every human has dignity and value and status as a child of God, it changes, or it should, it changes how we interact with others. It changes how we treat other people. It changes how we see them. There are several scriptures we could point to with this, but we're going to go over a few here, kind of bullet point style. First one is Genesis 9, 6. Just a few chapters later here in Genesis, it literally says that humans are made in the image of God, and that life is sacred and has value because of that. Psalm 8, 5. It says that humanity is crowned with glory and honor. That royalty verbiage again. Crowned with glory and honor. Psalm 139, one of my favorites. Verse 13 through 16. For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Jumping down to 16. Since your eyes saw my unformed substance, in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. We're fearfully and wonderfully made, and we have value, and we are known by God before we were ever conceived. Before we were ever born, we had dignity because we had the imago Dei. Again, Jeremiah 1, 5, along the same lines, we are known and we are called and we are given a purpose before our conception. It says before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you. I'm going to pause right here because I think that some of us have no problem seeing the imago Dei in other people. We have a problem seeing it in ourselves. I feel like there's some people in here that are struggling with that truth. That maybe you have no problem forgiving, you have no problem respecting other people because you know that they're God's children, you know they're made in the image of God, but you don't believe in it about yourself. You may believe God's good, but you don't believe He's good to you. He is. He knew you before you were conceived. He knew and loved you before the day that you were born. You have the image of God. You were made in His image and likeness. I love the story in Luke 1 of the newly pregnant Mary, pregnant with baby Jesus, goes and sees her cousin Elizabeth, who's pregnant with John the Baptist. And when Mary greets Elizabeth, the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaps. He was the one who, when he got older, was going to make a way for Jesus and point to Him. But he was doing his job in utero. He did it before he was even born. He acknowledged, "That is the Messiah. That is my Jesus." He had purpose, and he was set apart for that purpose even before the day he was born. Matthew 10, 29 through 31, "We are so valued by our Lord that He knows the number of hairs on our head." Nothing we do goes unnoticed by our Father. John 3, 16, "God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son." He wouldn't have sent His Son if we weren't worth saving. If we didn't have value, He wouldn't have sent Him to die a gruesome death on the cross in order to bring us back into a reconciled relationship with Him. In Ephesians 4, 24, "We are made new and fashioned after the likeness of God." We are made holy and righteous. So not only were we made in the image of God when we were created, when we were born, but we are also remade in His image when we chose to walk in His way, when we chose to make Him Lord. We were given His righteousness and holiness.

So it establishes the status, value, and dignity of human life. The second thing it does is it establishes the call to reflect God to the world. If we are made in His likeness, and we are, then we are also called as His followers to reflect that imago Dei to those we come in contact with. 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, we'll have it up on the screen. It says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the ministry of reconciliation. Therefore, you are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

We are His ambassadors. We represent Him to the world. We are the ones who've been entrusted to take the ministry and message of reconciliation, reconciliation, so that the other image bearers we encounter will know that Jesus wants a relationship with them, that Jesus wants to save and redeem and restore them. We get to be His ambassadors and reflect His image out to the world. In high school, multiple people, it was kind of a running joke between family and friends, but several people said, "It looks like Daniel Fishel who played Topanga on Boy Meets World." Anybody familiar with that? It was a big show when I was a kid. Love it. But people would joke. I even went to school with a girl who, I don't think she knew my real name. She would just call me Topanga when we passed in the hallways. It was just an ongoing joke. But while I could pass as looking like her, no one would think I spoke for her. No one would think I was her. No one would mistake me for Daniel Fishel or think that I represented her in some capacity. I resembled her, but I didn't represent her. But I also looked like my dad. And I was literally made in his image. I looked like him. And my dad is fairly well known in our community where our church was and even in our greater network of churches. Several people knew him. And as I got older and would encounter these people, apart from my dad, I felt this responsibility that, "Hey, they know my dad. I better be on my best behavior because they know I'm his kid. I represent him." I looked like my dad, and so therefore I represented him to the world. They knew I was connected to my father. They knew I represented him. And just like my dad, we represent God the Father to the world. We were made in his image, and so we must show the world who he is. The reality is that we are all, and I say we all as in all of humanity, are image bearers. But not every image bearer reflects the imago Dei. We reflect what we worship. We reflect what we value. We reflect what we love. There are going to be people who, although they're made in the image of God, they reflect the things of the world. They reflect what they value. They reflect what they think is important or what they are worshiping. But as followers of Jesus, we are called to reflect our father.

We are called to show the world who Yahweh is. Some scriptures that we can point to throughout the Bible. First in Leviticus 19:2. We are called to be holy as God is holy. So as we grow in our relationship with him, as we grow in our holiness, we reflect that holiness to the world. God is holy, and so therefore we must be holy so we can show that holiness to the world. Micah 6:8. We're called to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Those things are nice, but it's also because it's who God is. God is just. God is merciful. God is worthy of our humility towards him, so we reflect those things because we reflect the character of God. Matthew 5. Jesus talks about how believers are the light of the world. We reflect God's light to the world so that we can light up the darkness. There's a lot of darkness in our world. There's a lot of darkness in our own spheres of influence. But we are called to be the light and to reflect his light to others. Colossians 3:9. We are a royal priesthood. Again, more of that royalty language. We act as priests to one another. Pastor Andre talked about this several weeks ago now, but this idea that we have this role of priest where we represent God to others and people to God. We reflect who God is to those around us, and we represent people to God through prayer and intercession. We are a royal priesthood. John 13. It talks about how we are commanded to love others just as Christ loved us, so we reflect his love. It says we will be known by our love. They will know that we are a follower of Jesus by the way that we love because if we're doing it right, if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, we're reflecting the love of God. Not in our own strength or lack thereof, but we're reflecting the love of God. And the reality is that the best way that we can reflect God is to be made more like Jesus. Colossians 1:15 says, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." Jesus literally put on flesh so he could model what it was to literally reflect God to the world. He was the firstborn of all creation to do this. He was the image to show us how we can reflect God to others. And 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, "We are being transformed into the image of Christ."

Every day we are being made more and more into the image of Christ so that we are giving a much clearer reflection to the world. When you get out of the shower and the mirror is all foggy, it's not a very clear reflection, right? If our actions and our behavior and our lives are not looking like Jesus, it's going to send the world a really blurry picture. So the more we are transformed, the more our minds are renewed, we are going to send the world a much clearer picture of who God is. So today I want us to understand the importance of living intentionally as image bearers, not only of acknowledging the image that we are made in, but also that in others. And then reflecting God's character to the world, His justice, His love, His mercy, His holiness. Reflecting that to the world.

So I have a few questions for us. First one, how can you better acknowledge the imago Dei in other people? What are some things that you can do that would help you be better at this? Maybe it's just praying for your own heart, praying that God would give you self-control, patience, respect for other people. But what does that look like for you? How can you better acknowledge the imago Dei in other people? Number two, in what ways can you intentionally reflect the image of God in you to the world? What do you need to do to be a better reflection of who He is? Or what do you need to allow Him to do in your own life to be a better reflection? And kind of tacking onto that, what areas in your life need to be transformed to make you more into the image of Christ? We all have something. We are all on this journey to be sanctified, to be made holy, to be made more and more like Jesus. I don't know what it is for you. Maybe it's a sin issue. Maybe it's needing healing from some past hurts or wounds. Maybe it's just surrendering to God, things that you keep trying to hang onto. But what areas in your life need to be transformed to make you more into His image?

Genesis: Part 1

Genesis: Part 1

Genesis 1:1–2:3

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Very excited to be here with you. As Pastor Lauren was saying, Pastor Chris, lead pastor, and Lauren and myself, we're very excited about the upcoming fall and what's in store here at the church, and particularly about Sundays and what we're going to be covering in our series. And so this new series, it's a part of Scripture that really excites me. I love being able to talk about this and it piques my interest in understanding God's Word. And so I just want to give a little background as to what this series is about, if that sounds good with you guys. This series stemmed from a desire for all of us to be able to approach Scripture the way that it intended to be approached. And what do I mean by that? Well, we have to recognize that the Bible was written to a specific audience at a specific time within a specific culture. As well versed in the Bible as some of us may be, it always requires a little bit of work and effort to approach and understand the text in the way that it was meant to be read. If we don't do that work, we run the danger of misinterpreting Scripture, misapplying Scripture to our lives, and building an understanding of God and what He does that doesn't align with who He truly is or what He actually does do. And so while we believe here at Spring Valley Church that God's Word is for all people for all time, that does not mean that we shouldn't do the work to understand its meaning and its original context. And so we want to take some time through our series to sharpen our Bible comprehension skills, to give us tools in how to approach the Holy Scriptures, and to teach us how to read Scripture that requires our engagement. I think sometimes there is a place where we just read and we just let the Word wash over us, but the way that the Bible was written was meant for us to be engaged with it, to wrestle with it, to ponder it, to think about it, to think more deeply. And so we want to make sure that we're doing that to the best of our ability.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been reading your Bible and you came across a passage and you're like, "That sounds really familiar. That sounds like another passage that I've read at some point." And maybe you are thinking like, "Wow, this verbiage or this situation, this is very familiar to something else in the Bible." Maybe something like, "Hey, when I read that Jesus spent three days in the grave, that reminds me of that Jonah story where he spent three days in the belly of the whale, and they both live." And maybe sometimes we're just like, "What a coincidence. That's pretty crazy. Two people spending three days near death or in death." And some of us may be like, "That's got to be something." And then you think, "But I don't know what it is. I don't know why it's something." But that seems too much of a coincidence to be coincidence. And I want to encourage the detective within all of us to say yes. It's probably not coincidence. There's probably some kind of meaning there, something for us as readers to pick up on. The Bible was written by some brilliant scholars and authors, absolutely brilliant, with the help of the Spirit. And there is so much intentionality and purpose and layers that build upon themselves as you read the Bible. And so when you read what's on the surface at some point in Scripture, if you were to be able to look into and kind of un-surface that, look deeper down, you'd see the richness and all the layers that it references from before. We want to encourage this, teach this, develop this skill and tool within all of us by walking together through Scripture and showing some of what this looks like. And we thought there's no better place to start than in Genesis, where so many of these patterns and repeating motifs and themes begin. Bible Project, who we reference often as a great source, maybe you guys have watched their YouTube videos, they say this. It says, "The literary design gives us a clue as to how to understand the message of the book as a whole, as well as how the entire story of the Bible comes together." So we're saying, right, what's here in Genesis at the beginning gives us a clue as to how to read the whole book and also how the whole entire Scripture, all the Bible, comes together. So our goal is to identify these literary designs, these repeating patterns, motifs and themes that happen over and over again in order to see how they reveal God's character and how God interacts with His creation and His people.

Each week we're going to look at a different passage in Genesis and see the origin of those biblical themes and motifs and then point to where else in Scripture they reoccur. And we're just going to, that sounds like a lot on a Sunday, we're just going to reference. We're going to say, here's the theme, here's where it starts, and we'll just say, in Exodus, in Judges, and you see it in Psalms. And we're just going to give you an idea of how often it happens and just really help you discover and want to read the Bible in a way that is engaging and be like, oh, this is good, I want to remember this, I want to remember what I read so that as I read the rest of Scripture I can kind of build up this memory of how God is working and what He does. Sometimes these patterns are as specific as reoccurring words or a series of words. Like maybe you've read in the Bible when God's favor is upon someone. And that's a reoccurring theme that God's favor is upon multiple people in the Bible. Noah, Abraham, and Genesis, and Samuel, and David, and we know that, oh, that means that that person is holy, set apart for God's purpose. If the Bible's mentioning it, it's important, and so we want to pay attention to that. And already we don't have to know the story of that whole person, but as soon as it says that person had God's favor, or that person was a righteous person, we just know, okay, we're in for a good story. This person is God's person in this time. Maybe it's like a situation, like I said before, about three days. This phrase of, or the situation of being three days in a near death is a reoccurring thing. So it first happens with Joseph in Genesis where his brothers cast him into a pit for to die. And then we come across to Jonah who's in the belly of the whale, or Daniel who's in the pit, or Lazarus, or Jesus. And so these reoccurring things of someone being left for dead in a situation where death should have had them, but then they live, and for God's reason, and for God's purpose. And so sometimes we can, you might be able to read like, oh, this person just got left for dead. Is God about to do something? Because I know that he's done it before. And we want to be able to read the Bible in this way that we're engaging with Scripture, we're tracking what God is doing in multiple people through his story.

So that's what we're going to be doing today and for the next couple weeks. Anyone here, this is going to be a movie reference, National Treasure? Anyone love? I see some nodding of heads. Yes, it is a favorite. We all like a bit of adventure. If you have not watched National Treasure, it's about a guy who, unlike anyone else in the world apparently, can recognize secret patterns on like maps and stuff like that and put it all together and he finds hidden treasures around the world, mostly for the USA because it's on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Just kind of gave the movie away, so if you want to go watch it, he finds treasure. But it kind of reminds me of that a bit where we're looking at things and there's some deeper meaning. Now, I don't want to go to the, we want to be careful. We don't want to connect things that aren't there. We're not looking for the Bible for secret meanings that no one else knows. That's not what I'm talking about. We just want to be able to connect the right dots together in putting a picture together. And this is where commentaries can be helpful because scholars have been studying this for thousands of years. Pastors can be helpful, but this is a helpful skill set to just question is, here's what's on the surface. Is there anything underneath that helps me understand better what this story is about? We don't want to obsess over the wrong thing, be missing the point of Scripture. We just want to refine our minds to focus the lens of how we see Scripture and to encourage being intentional with reading the Bible, to engage with the Word of God the way that was meant to be engaged with. So we don't want to be trying to create, I guess I want to leave this, this is a huge warning because I think we can go down a dangerous road of reading the Bible but missing the relationship with Jesus. We're reading this to better understand God for our relationship with Him. We're not trying to become, see like amazing scholars that know all the right things but have zero relationship with God. It's not what this is about. So I just want to give that warning before this whole series. But I do want to encourage us, don't just, when we read, don't just, it's not a checklist of I read my Bible and I'm good. Engage with it. God wants you to sit there and this is how we get to know Him is by mulling it over and meditating on His Word. All right, with all that as our background for our series, are we ready to start our first passage? Yes? Sweet.

Let me pray really quick. God, thank you again for our time together. Thank you for what you've put on our hearts and this desire to know you. Thank you for your Word that we, one of the best ways, the best way to get to know who you are and what you do. So I pray that through your Spirit you would open up our minds to the truth that you have in your Word and that you would instill in us in our hearts a desire to read the Bible often and in a way that it was meant to be read. And so we give this time to you, God. Guide us this morning. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right.

So in the Bible, you're opening, if you have your Bible, God's story, our story, all begins with God taking disorder and darkness and creating out of it order and beauty and goodness. God creates a world where life can flourish as well as creatures who inhabit that world. And within that, He creates humanity to partner with Him. He creates order to the universe, He breathes life in, and He gives purpose. And at the beginning, the authors help us believers by beginning some themes that will help us see God more clearly and understand who He is and what He does. So if you're not there yet, we're going to be in Genesis 1. I'm going to read for us through all of chapter 1 and the first couple of verses of chapter 2. And as I read this, I want you, you have some work to do right now. Do your best to imagine yourself as an early Hebrew and whether you're reading or listening, thousands of years ago, not knowing any of your elementary science that you have learned and grow up knowing now, but just you have some questions. Who are you? Where are you? Why are you here? And how did everything come to be? So as you just kind of go back to the rudimentary questions that we have, let's listen as I read this aloud.

It says, Genesis 1, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Now that's kind of Genesis 1's title right there. So we're just, that's a summary of what's about to happen. Verse 2, "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." There's a lot happening right there. Come back to that. "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. And God said, 'Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.' So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it, and it was so. God called the vault sky, and there was evening, and there was morning the second day. And God said, 'Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.' And it was so. God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.' And it was so. The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the third day. And God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate from the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years.'" I love that intentionality already, to mark sacred times. "And let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on earth.' And it was so. God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness.

And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day. And God said, 'Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.' So God created the great creatures of the sea, and every living thing with which the water teems, and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the waters and the seas, let the birds increase on earth.' And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. And God said, 'Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, the wild animals, each according to its kind.' And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. Then, God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea, and the birds in the sky, over the livestock, and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.' So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea, and the birds in the sky, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.' And then God says something amazing, he says, 'I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.' And so all the beasts of the earth, and all the birds in the sky, and all the creatures that move along the ground, everything that has breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food, and it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating all that he had done." Woo, amen?

So I asked some questions, maybe as you were hearing that or reading it, you kind of got some answers. Who are we? Where are we? What did we hear? How did everything come to be? And again, as a Hebrew listener, reader, I think it's pretty clear that God is at the center of all those things. God is the source of life. One of the big themes in our series, repeating patterns and themes, motifs in the Bible, something that starts right here at the very beginning, that repeats all throughout Scripture, is that God's words have power. If you're taking notes, that's like, you could take that note and be done. God's word has power. Might be obvious to some of us, well yeah, God's words have power, but again, when we read our Bible and we're engaging with the Scripture, we can know every time God speaks, it's powerful. Something big is happening. There's power in his words. People listen. The world listens. Everyone listens. I think we've all been in situations where our voice has had some power. Maybe as parents, you're speaking to your children and your voice carries authority and power. Maybe at work, you're in a position where you say something and maybe there's some people that work for you that have to listen and obey your instruction. If you've ever coached a team, your words to your players, they carry weight, they carry authority. If you're a leader of a band, maybe you give the instruction, you give the one, two, three, or the five, six, seven, eight, whichever one. That's dance. That's dance. Okay. One, two, three. Maybe all of us were using Alexa and Siri, and so more than ever before, our voices carry power. We can just say something to them and lights turn on or something's ordered on Amazon for you. In whatever situation you're thinking of, the power that you have had, the most power, if you think of like the most powerful situation you've ever been in and the most authority you carried, it pales in comparison to the power of God's words and the power that his words have. When God speaks, planet and stars arrive. Oceans and mountains are made. Plants and animals and all their ecosystems and habitats appear. When God speaks, all of creation is under its authority and listens. God's word has power. That's not the only theme or pattern that begins here. When God speaks, it evokes certain things. And so I have three things, three other patterns that we'll see throughout Scripture.

The first one is this, when God speaks, his words bring order out of chaos. This one is probably one of my favorites. I love this theme in the Bible, and I think it's one of the more recognizable patterns that we see throughout Scripture. Where there's... Oh, I'm about to sneeze. God bring order out of this chaos. Where there is chaos, God can bring order. So where do we see this in our passage? If we go to verse 2, it says, "The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." We see that the earth was chaotic, formless, and darkness. It's an interesting image that I don't know if we can really imagine, but the Hebrew words here are "tohu va'vohu." If you want to learn some Hebrew today, this is probably one of the easiest Hebrew things you can learn. Tohu va'vohu. And if you say that, you can just be like, "It's chaotic. This is a chaotic situation." Well, this is... I'm in an absolute tohu va'vohu situation with my kids right now. It describes a chaotic wilderness environment. The same phrase is found in Jeremiah 4, describing a non-functional and barren land. And so it's formless and void, and the seas... All of this language to the Hebrew listener thousands of years ago meant chaos. It's not an okay place to be. It does not sustain life. It is chaotic. And this is a story about how God brings order and beauty out of chaos. God created order and beauty in a garden out of a land that was chaotic and uninhabitable. God is bringing order out of the chaos. So we see it in our passage here. Well, where do we see it? Throughout the Bible. Where does this repeat? Taking that scenario, not necessarily the Hebrew words of tohu va'vohu, but the scenario of chaos and God bringing order out of that chaos.

We can go to Genesis 3, just a couple chapters later, when sin enters the world and the chaos that that brings for humanity. And God brings about an orderly situation that doesn't yet see fruition until Jesus, but He brings order to that situation. We can go to Genesis 6, 6 through 8, in the flood and the chaos waters that take over the earth again and having the recreation starting over, a new form of order. We can go to Genesis 11 in a tower of Babel and how everyone was speaking different languages and the Bible describes it as a very chaotic scene. And then God gives order to that situation. We can go to Genesis 41 in the chaos of Pharaoh's dream in Egypt at that time and the land being in famine. And God uses Joseph to bring order for the present situation and for the future of God's people. You can go to Exodus and this theme is all throughout Exodus. Chaotic situations, you can think of Israel and the chaos waters going through the Red Sea and out of that God makes them into a nation. Brings order by giving them the commandments, He brings a culture to them. He brings order. Isaiah, many of the prophets speak to what is a chaotic time in Israel's history and the hope that God will bring out of that chaos. We can go all the way to the New Testament in Mark 4 and the chaos waters of the sea threatening the lives of the disciples on the boat. And Jesus brings order. He speaks to creationing. And again, for them, with this understanding of the Hebrew Bible, hearkening back to the only other person who ever spoke over creation and creation listened to God. For them, that would have been a connecting point, like the only other person we've seen do that was God and Jesus just did that. And Jesus, I'm sure hoping like, are you making the connection here, the authority and power that I have, as you've seen, when God speaks, there is power. And when there is chaos, and when God speaks, order comes out of it. God's words have power and the power to bring order out of chaos.

Secondly, God's words have power to bring life. Where do we see this in our passage? Well, all over in verse 11, he brings vegetation. In verse 20, the birds and sea creatures. In verse 22, we get the mandate to make more life. And then in 24, we get the land animals. And then famously in verse 26, he makes humans, makes people. So our passage is full of God's word bringing life. Where do we see this repeated throughout Scripture? Well, God does not create again, like he does in Genesis. This is the one creation he does. He does bring life into certain situations. In Genesis 15, God's covenant with Abraham. He promises Abraham and Sarai, or Abram and Sarai at the time, "I will give you life. I will give you a son." Later that would be Isaac. In the prophets Ezekiel 37, there's a vision that Ezekiel has. And God says to him, "Speak," these words, "over the valley of dry bones." And those bones become an army. It's a very interesting vision that Ezekiel has. And the Bible literally says, as he speaks, the bones kind of join together and sinews and tissues come back over those bones and they become alive again. And it's a vision of what God is going to do for Israel. How Israel is dead now, or in chaotic terms, or in...they're not what they're supposed to be, but God will bring life to them. And we can read that. It's a vision also for what God does in us, making us new. As we are dead in our sins, He makes, He brings life to us again. We go to the New Testament in Mark 5, verse 41. Jesus raises Jairus' daughter by telling her with His words, "Little girl, I say to you, get up." And that girl is raised from the dead, brings life back to her. In John 11, 43, you guys know the raising of Lazarus. When Jesus speaks and His words, the power and authority of God, Lazarus come out. Lazarus is raised from the dead. Those verses in the New Testament have weight and significance and show that Jesus is God when He speaks and brings life, again, because it's harkening back to what God did in the Old Testament. The only other person whose words had the power to bring life were God's. So when Jesus does it in the New Testament, we're automatically connected to say, "Is this person God? He's doing the same things that God did." Again, intentional and purposeful, these patterns that we're supposed to be developing to recognize, "Oh, this is a God thing. This is God who's doing this.”

The third thing, God's words have power, and they have power to bring a purpose. We mention this often in our preaching. It's because it's a pattern that started here in the garden. It's brought up over and over again. And so when we preach on Sundays from different passages, we've referenced this verse before, and it's that we are created and made for a unique purpose, set apart from the rest of creation to co-rule and co-reign with God. Our role intended by God from this passage was to rule over His creation. And not in the domineering way that takes advantage and is selfish and all about ambition and selfish gain. That's not until sin enters the picture later that that kind of ruling starts happening. But to bring life and order and flourishing, our priestly duty is to fill the earth, to bring life, and to rule over it, to bring order. Where do we see this in our passage? Well, verse 26 says, "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image and in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" And then in verse 28 says, "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over every living creature that moves on the ground.'" We had a purpose. God created humanity with a purpose. God's words instill purpose in those who He speaks to. Well, where do we see this repeated throughout Scripture? Well, this specifically, this idea of God's purpose for humanity is repeated many times. Exodus 19, verses 5 through 6, this is God telling Moses up on the mountain, this is what you're going to say to the people, "If you obey, you shall be My kingdom of priests and a holy nation." That kingdom of priests and the holy nation, that's ruling language. It's the same language that we're seeing here in Genesis. You're going to do, you're going to be set apart for what I had intended you to do. Psalm 8, verses 4 through 8, the psalmist is saying that God made humanity rulers over the works of His hands. Even the psalmist recognized, God, you had humanity as a special part of your creation, that they would have similar authority that you have, not the same, but a God-given authority to rule over creation. And then in the New Testament, 2 Timothy 2, verses 12, Paul is writing to the early church and saying, "If we endure, we will also reign with Him." So now the focus goes to the future in heaven and the reigning that God always intended us to have on earth and in the future. Paul is saying that our purpose is not just now, but forever. And then Peter says in 1 Peter 2, 5, "You also, like living stones, are being built up to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God and through Jesus Christ." And then in verse 9, he continues, "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light." God's words, which are all powerful, give purpose to humanity.

I want to close with some questions for us this week. I want to be thinking about the following. In regards to chaos, think about whatever in your life, if you're going through a chaotic situation, how you might need to bring order to that situation. I can tell you many chaotic situations in my life right now, one of them being our daughter's toy area, very chaotic, and I feel called every night to bring order to that situation, lest my feet suffer from stepping on all those toys. Sometimes I get in the mood, these are very practical, to like clean a closet or a cabinet. I just see chaos. Maybe you guys can relate. You see chaos and you're like, "I can't stand it anymore. I got to bring order to this whatever it is." Or maybe you're a gardener and you see your garden, you're like, "I let it be overgrown and it's chaotic and I got to start trimming the bushes and mowing the lawn and pruning." Maybe some of you, maybe this will hit home, dishwasher. Maybe your spouse or partner loads it in a certain way and you're like, "That is absolute chaos. Who puts the plates over there and the bowls over there?" Let me bring some order at the end of the night before I turn this dishwasher on. Whatever situation, however lighthearted it may be, or physical, relational, emotional, there's chaos, you're sensing chaos in your life. How can God's words from Scripture through the prompting of His Spirit bring order to that chaos? How can God's words in this book bring order to the chaos in your life, can help you bring order? I want you to think this week about how God's words bring life. Is there a part of you that needs the breath of life from God to breathe into your soul? Is there a part of you that's feeling dead or withering and there's no life in you when it comes to certain parts of your life? Maybe it's all of you right now, you're just feeling like there's nothing there. Maybe it's with parenting, maybe it's with relationships, maybe it's a relationship with God, maybe it's with a passion or a hobby that you used to have and it used to, like, when you participated in that and engaged with it, breathe life into your soul. Maybe it's at work and you're just feeling like work is just draining, there's no life there at work. Where in your situation do you need the words of God to breathe life into that situation, to help you? Do what you were meant to do, be who you were meant to be. So ask yourself this week, how can God's words bring life to that which is dead within me? And then thirdly, talking about, I want you to think this week about God's power and his words bringing purpose to your life. Do you need to be reminded of the purpose you were created for, to co-reign with Christ? Are you living life with that purpose? Are God's words constantly at the forefront of our minds helping us live missionally in whatever we're doing at work, around other parents, with our kids, even by ourselves? Do we have it on the forefront of our mind that we live for Christ? That our purpose, our existence was made by God with a purpose to partner with him in what he is doing here on earth? And instead of having to try to create that purpose ourselves or just willing things to be better by our own strength, where can we search God's words and find the power where the Spirit moves to find that purpose? Instead of feeling lost or wandering around in life, where can scripture help us be more intentional and live with that purpose? How can God's words bring purpose into your life? So I hope this was helpful.

Again, the hope of our series and each week is to build within us the tools to better read and understand scripture, to recognize certain themes and motifs that the author has intentionally included to help us readers and followers of Jesus better understand God's message, who he is and what he does. As you read your Bible this week, look for any parts where there is chaos and see if God brings order at some point. Look for moments where God brings life and look for moments where he speaks and it brings purpose to that passage. And as you do, trust that God's creative power to bring purpose to the chaos in your life is alive and he wants that for you. We can read this and think, great, this is going to happen elsewhere in the text, but we can also think this is going to happen for me. What happens here, what I read about is the same God that I worship today. So what he did then, he can do now. I also want to open up from this Sunday for all the other Sundays, understanding that we're asking you to engage with scripture, maybe in the way that you already are or maybe in a new way. And that can be difficult or challenging. You may have questions. We would love to walk alongside you as you read your scriptures, as you read the Bible.

So if you ever have any questions, please text Pastor Chris, myself, you can text the church number, Pastor Lauren, email us, however you want to get ahold of us. Don't let those questions go by the wayside. Offer them up and say, hey, I'm thinking this, I'm seeing this, is that true? Because again, we don't want to be connecting dots that aren't there and all of a sudden we have this misunderstanding. But as you engage with scripture and as God is revealing things to you, share those things. It's so good. It's so encouraging to hear what God is doing in your lives through the reading of his word. All right, you guys pray with me? God, thank you again for your word. Thank you so much for a text that is alive and living and is powerful. God to see and read what you have done in the past and what you continue to do. Just give such encouragement, such joy and is so reassuring for our faith. And so I pray that as we read this morning, as we read in our day to day lives, this point forward, God, that you would speak through your scripture. You would speak to our hearts, that you know exactly where we're at in life and what we need. And so if it's order, God, if we're in chaotic situations, God, I pray that you would use scripture to see how we might make steps to bring order to that. If we are feeling dead or withering and our souls are just not thriving, God, I pray that your word would speak life into us. And God, if we're wandering and feeling lost, God, I pray that your word would speak purpose and give us steps to take. God, that we would cling to you in these times and that we would cling to your word as our guide. We ask that you would speak to us this week, God. We love you and we give all that we have to you. In your name we pray. Amen.

Summer Playlist: Part 11

Summer Playlist: Part 11

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I want to introduce Phil Stevenson who's going to be wrapping up our series this morning. At this time our ushers are going to be coming around giving you a card. Phil, thanks for being here.

You're welcome. It's always a privilege and I feel very honored when your pastoral team invites me to share with you. When you hand out those cards, if you can make sure I get one, I'd appreciate that. In fact, I'll walk over here and just grab one. Thank you very much. We'll refer to this later, but I just want you to have it now. Several years ago, okay, a lot of years ago, I was a youth pastor down in Southern California. This was back in the day when in youth ministry you did a lot of competitions to try to get kids to come to church and the whole thing. So we did this big competition and we had teams, we had co-captains for those, and the award or the result if your team won was the two captains got to go on a hot air balloon ride. I had a friend who was a balloonist. This is back in the day when you used to go to North County, San Diego, an area called Temecula. If you went there now, you would say there's no way they flew balloons around here. You would have been right because there were lots and lots of housing. There is now, but then there was a lot of open field. So we got there early in the morning. Had to go early in the morning. So the basket wasn't that big, so there was enough room for my friend Paul, the balloonist, and one other person. So what he did with the kids is they did what they call box ballooning, I guess. And what it was was fascinating. They understood the currents and so they would get in the balloon, they'd go up to a certain height, and the current would take them over. I think they would take them north. And they'd go for a certain distance that way, then they'd let some air out, whatever they do, and they'd bring it down to another area, and then the balloon would come over to the way where we were waiting, and he would set that balloon right down where we were at. Interesting. So that's what the two kids got to do. And so when the second kid came back, Paul looked at me and he said, "Now, do you want to go on a real balloon ride?" And I said, "Absolutely." So no more of this box stuff. So we went up, and of course they had a car. I remember it was an El Camino. Is that the kind of car that looked like a truck when it was a car? Yeah, El Camino. And they had to track us. They had to follow us. So we went up and he said, "First, we're going to do what's called skimming." He said, "What that is is that we're going to go and try to stay" -- that word "try" was a little iffy at that time -- "but try to stay 10 to 15 feet above whatever the terrain is." So there were some rolling hills over those. Trees would come up, you'd pick that thing up, you'd go over the trees, and we would keep going. So we did that for quite a while. And then at some point, of course, we just sat down. He brought the balloon down. I don't know where. We were in the middle of nowhere. It was just crazy. But it was so fun.

So what I'm saying is that what we're going to do this morning, we're going to take a look at Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 through 17. If you have a Bible app with you or on your phone you have a Bible or it will be on the screen, I'm going to be using a new living translation. And what we're going to do in the first 15 verses, we're going to kind of do a flyover. We're going to skim over that to get ready to go into the last two verses, 16 and 17, and there we will set down and spend a little bit of time there. So if you have your Bibles or you see right there, first of all, I want us to know this. The big idea of Colossians 3, 1 through 17 is that we have a new identity in Christ. We have a new identity in Christ that we need to live that identity out. When we gather in community like this, we need to live that identity out. We go out into the world where in reality we spend most of our time in our work, in our school, in our playtime, our recreation, that kind of thing. We also need to live that identity out daily.

Now, verses 1 through 4, Paul talks to us about that if we're going to live out this new identity, we need to change our focus. He says in those first four verses, he says "since." Now, what that implies is that it's happened pretty soon, not when this happens. He says, "since right now you have been raised to new life with Christ." Then he says, "set your sights or change your focus from what it's been to something else." He goes on and talks about on the realities of heaven where Christ sits in the place of the honor of God's right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth, for you died to this life and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. Now, when he uses that phrase, "hidden with Christ," he's referring to our security in Christ. He's referring to our identity that is in Christ. So he says, "if you want to live out this identity, change your focus." Focus on your identity in Christ. Focus on your security in Christ. Walk closely with him. And then he says, "change what matters." Verses 5 through 11, he says, "first of all," he says, "so put to death the sinful earthly things lurking within you." Put that stuff to death, he says. Be done with that because you have a new area that matters more than that. So that's where you need to be living. He says, "have nothing to do with them." The old you, he says in verse 7, the old you, in other words, the things that used to be, you do not do those things any longer, but now is the time. The new you, put your new nature on, verse 10. That no longer matters what you were before. What matters is what Christ is doing in you as he lives in you and through you.

Now, right at the hill here, actually buried behind safe credit union, there is a, I know it's not really a fitness gym per se, but it's called plyometrics. And I got involved in this exercise method a year in September. And I got involved in it through my oldest grandson who plays football and he got recommended to that, so I took him on his first day, watched what they were doing and I said, "I think I'll give that a go." So I've been giving that a go for almost a year and here's what happens. Dave, who's the coach, drives me nuts. So we'll be doing some things and all of a sudden he'll say to me, "Phil, I want you," and he'll give me a certain amount of reps to do or a certain weight to use. And then I always say, "well, you know, Dave, the last time I did this," and I give him a lower weight and a lower number of reps. And then Dave says, "Oh, yeah, but that's the old Phil. This is the new Phil." And I said, "Well, a lot of times I just feel like the old Phil. If it's okay with you, I like to do this." And he never lets me do that.

But that's what we're talking about here. We have an old us and then we have a new us. And Paul is telling us that old stuff, that's gone. Don't live in that any longer. Be the new you that Jesus has formed and is making you into. Then he comes back and he talks about having to change your clothes. And he talks about the fact that when he talks about clothing, he's suggesting it's putting on our new identity. It's an intentional action. Usually when we put on our clothes or change our clothes, we do it intentionally. And he talks about what we should clothe ourselves with in verse 12. And then he tells us more about verse 13 and 14, how to clothe ourselves. I'm going to tell you a story. You're going to say, "That is not right." And I'm going to say, "It is and it's sick." I'm going to tell you. So again, before we had kids, our kids are all in their 40s, got grandkids, three teenagers. But before we had any of that, I had this buddy, and he had a new baby in his home. And his wife did the first trip away from home, like shopping or whatever, not like a long trip, but for a big chunk of the day, and left him in charge of their infant baby. And he was telling me this. He said, "Of course, what happens when you have an infant, sooner or later they poop." And they just poop. And he didn't want to change the diaper. You know what he did? He put a new diaper over the old diaper. "Thank you, yes." I said, "You're kidding me." He said, "No." He said, "Then they pooped again and I put another diaper." So he had his wife come home, and this baby's got like five diapers on her. And she said, "What are you doing?" And he tried to explain to her. By the way, that did not go over well. So we talk about having new clothing on.

We're not talking about taking new stuff and putting on the old stuff. It's disrobing, taking off the old clothes, and putting on new. When Christ rules in our hearts, we are at peace and thankful. It says in verse 15, "And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your heart." Now, Burger King--I don't go to Burger-- I don't go to Burger King very often, but they got this new little tagline. Maybe you've seen it on advertisement. Talk about Burger King, what they have, and they say, "You rule!" That's their thing. My oldest son was telling me about this before I ever heard an advertisement. He said, "You know that Burger King has a new tagline?" I said, "No." He said, "You rule." It's supposed to be like the response to Chick-fil-A. You go to Chick-fil-A, and you ask them for something, and they say, "My pleasure. My pleasure." And they do it for you. Evidently, I should go just to see if this happens. If you go to Burger King and you ask for something, they're supposed to say, "You rule." Now, wouldn't that be fun? Give you a little crown, you realize you rule? Well, you know, you and I, we may rule if we go to Burger King, but Christ rules in us. Christ rules in us, and we need to know that He's in charge of our life. So that's the flyover. We kind of skimmed over those first 15 verses to talk about our new identity in Christ and what that means for us.

Now we're going to just kind of set down, if you please, in verses 16 and 17. And take a look at this, because the name of the series is, I think, is--it hits? What? Ah, Summer Plays. Okay, good. And we're going to talk a little bit about that and how it applies to us. We're going to talk about inside out Christianity. And the first part is verse 15. It talks about the inside part of us as believers of Christ. What does it mean to come together, worship together, celebrate God together? And as we do that, what does that-- what should that do? Prepare us to live outside. As I already mentioned in the beginning of my sharing is that we actually spend more time not here than here. So as we're here, we need to be preparing for out there. And when we're out there, we begin to understand the need for us to gather together on a consistent, regular basis. And so we're going to take a look, first of all, about the inside part of it. Verse 16, it says, "Let the message about Christ in all of the richness fill your hearts. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom He gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts." Now, when Paul writes this phrase, "in all its richness," he's talking about the abundance, the depth, and the generosity of Christ. The gospel ought to saturate every aspect of our life, not just our church life, not just our community of faith as believers, but all of our life.

I have a friend, I've just gotten to know him the last, I'm going to say six months. His name's Roger. And I like Roger because he's older than me. That's kind of a commodity now for me, people older. He's in his mid-80s, so he's a lot older than me, frankly. But I love being around Roger because he is an encourager. He has got energy. He has the kind of appearance and energy that I hope tomorrow I'll have. But definitely when I'm in my mid-80s. And so we started this thing. You know, when you're younger, you might get to know somebody and you find out you have a common interest. And so you might go do that. Oh, we find out, oh, we like racquet ball. Go play racquet ball. Oh, we like to run. You go run. There's something like that. Or like cars. We go to car shows. You know what Roger and I have found that we like? Donuts. So we go get donuts together. And so when we were out -- actually, we went out this last week. Thursday we went to a donut shop out in Lincoln. And over there I said to Roger -- and I think some of you know this. I think I might have shared a little bit about this before here. I said, you know, Roger, when I was in college, one of my many jobs was to make donuts. I said, I was a donut maker. He said, really? And I said, absolutely. And I said, here's what's interesting. The guy who taught me how to make donuts was Vietnamese. And he did not have a lot of English skills, except for he knew two English words very, very well. And here's what they were. Not good. That was his primary English. And so I learned from him how to make donuts through negative reinforcement. He would show me something, and then I would try to do it, and he would either go -- or more often than not in the beginning -- not good. So I went through this whole process. So finally I got my first day making donuts. Now, this donut shop was not a 24-hour donut shop, and so I would go in 10 o'clock at night, make donuts all night, 5 o'clock in the morning, open the shop, handle any customers that might come in for that first hour while I'm cleaning up. 6 a.m., the morning lady would come in to deal with the rest of the morning. So this is my first evening alone making donuts. And somewhere in the not good conversations, I never picked up that when you make raised donuts, of course you have to put them in a heater area, it would kind of warm the -- so they'd rise a little bit. But if you leave them in there too long, I'm going to tell you what happens. They become a sponge. And therefore when you drop them in the grease to deep fry them, they just -- my first shift making donuts by myself was not good. These donuts were completely saturated with grease. They were terrible. I'm surprised I kept my job. But the analogy for that is that we, as followers of Jesus, need to be saturated. We need to absorb the gospel into our life so it impacts all of who we are and all of what we do. That's what we need to do.

And then we go on and let's break this down a little bit. He says to teach. That's not only understanding and hearing about truth, but it's instruction in truth. And then he says there are times that we need to have counsel and admonish one another, which is correction and exhortation when someone strays. Sometimes when, as followers of Christ in the community of faith, there are times that we have to confront one another in love about some of the lifestyle things that you might have seen or been aware of and help each other and encourage each other in those areas. Then he says with all wisdom. That's taking the idea of truth and applying it to our lives with grace and discernment. And then they talk about Psalms. A lot of the commentators will say this probably refers to the Hebrew Psalter, of course. And so I would put that in our parlance. That would be the traditional music of the church. So there needs to be some of that in the worship. And then they talk about hymns. And again, commentators would say this could be early Christian composition that's focused on Christ, person, and work. Or what we might say today, the contemporary worship. So you have traditional worship, contemporary worship. And then they talk about spiritual songs that suggest spontaneous praise and worship that begins to bubble up. So the up and coming things that we see, just trying to apply it to our day. So we have traditional music, contemporary music. We have new, new kind of music that's starting to come on the scene. And the thing is, worship should never be for us as entertainment, although it should be done with excellence. And that it should be word-centered, spirit-led response to the truth of God's gospel in our life. Singing as we sing together is not necessarily designed to elicit an overly emotional response, although it can result in emotions. Every time I hear the song, he has been faithful. I've sung that song for years. And usually I've just sung that song. But I've got to tell you, most cases now, because I'm in my 70th year, as I sing that song, I am reminded of the faithfulness of God throughout my life. It's almost like a near-death experience. You know, they say, "It's not even getting near-death yet." Your life flashes before your eyes. For me, when I sing that song, sometimes my history flashes before my eyes quickly, and God reminds me of his faithfulness throughout my life. It's incredible. All that he talks about there, hymns, psalms, spirit-led worship, is designed to have the community of Christ become a singing, worshiping, learning, loving family. I heard this pastor who pastors a church in the Scottsdale area. His name is Mark Driscoll. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. I don't agree with him on all things. But he said a statement that I think is wonderful. He says, "If anybody comes to their church and says, 'I don't like your worship,' and he's aware of it and he's able to talk to them, he simply says, 'That's okay, because we're not worshiping you.’"

And here's what I know about worship. All of us have preference, don't we? Some people love the hymns, older songs. Some people love contemporary music. And some people love a certain format and style of worship. We all have our preferences. But here's the thing. If you're in the celebrating of God, if you're together as a faith community, and on that particular Sunday, your preferences aren't being met. Here's what I would say to you. Your question should not be, "Why are we not doing fill in the blank?" Instead, the only question you should be asking is this glorifying God. And it may not be in your area of preference, but if it's glorifying God, you should participate and be with that. That's the inside stuff. And that inside stuff begins to, or hopefully should flow into the outside part of our life.

Inside, outside Christianity. And then they come back in the same passage in verse 17. It says, and I love this, "And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father." And whatever, that's pretty wide girth, isn't it? "And whatever you do or say." Paul is breaking down sometimes the self-imposed barriers that you and I put up. The barrier between the sacred and the secular. We might say it that way. The church and the world. And Paul says, "No, that's gone. And whatever you do, whatever you say, do it all for the glory of God." When we say whatever, we live our life by His authority in alignment with His character. And we give, as a result of that, what we begin to do, we give thanks for all things. We give thanks for all things. We learn to live a grateful lifestyle. It says in Psalm 32:8, these words. The Lord says, "I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you." Galatians 5:25. "Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives." See, the outside part of our Christianity, it's living in the whatever. Whatever we do, whatever we say, we do it all for the glory of God. And His Spirit will guide us in what that looks like. He will watch over us and teach us our pathway as we go forward. You know, in Ephesians 2:8-10, we begin to understand that whether it's our beginning point of our relationship with God, our walking point with our relationship with God, that sooner or later we understand it's all by grace. Ephesians 2:8-10. "God saved you by His grace when you believed." And you can't take credit for this. It's a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. Verse 10, "For we are God's masterpiece." He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago. It's by grace we have been saved. It's by grace we have entered into a relationship with God. It is by grace we live out that relationship with God. Grace cannot be earned. It cannot be repaid. The response to grace is to live a life of thankful obedience. That's what the response to grace is. Not how can I earn it, not how I can repay it fully to God, but can I live a life of thankful obedience to God, the grace of God. And I can't remember if we'll have these up on the screen or not, but I have a couple things about things to ponder or think about as you go into this week. How can I cultivate daily thankfulness to God for His grace? What can you do? What can I do this week to cultivate this thankfulness? How can I honor Jesus by my actions in words this week? What needs to change in my habits so my life better reflects His name?

Now, that card that was handed out just before I came up here, it's a prayer that was written by Susan Wesley. Susan Wesley was the mom of John Wesley. John Wesley was not the founder of the Methodist Church, but he was instrumental in the Methodist Church coming to light back in the day. This church, Spring Valley Church, is part of that history of the Methodist Church/Wesleyan Church. And what I have in this prayer, I want you to have this card, and I want to encourage you, actually I want to challenge you, that this next week you will put this someplace where you will literally see it every day. It may be someplace where you go to spend the time quietly reading Scripture. It may be just in your car because you're in your car regularly early in the morning on your way someplace. Maybe in the refrigerator. Maybe wherever you put it so you'll see it every day, and then I want you to not just see it. Ideally it can be done in the morning. It doesn't make any difference. Maybe at lunchtime, maybe in the evening, but ideally in the morning, that you will simply read this prayer. And as I wrap up, I want to take this prayer, and I'm going to frankly read it, but I'm going to make it more generalized and just specifically so you'll just take a moment and just pause, be quiet. “Help us, Lord, to remember that religion has to be confined to the church or closet, nor is exercise only in prayer and meditation, but that everywhere we are in Your presence. So make our every word and action have a moral content. May all the happenings of our life prove useful and beneficial to me. May all the things instructed us and afford us an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily leaning and growing toward Your likeness." Amen.

Summer Playlist: Part 10

Summer Playlist: Part 10

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I am really excited today to jump in and talk through the very first song that was ever recorded in the Bible. This is pretty cool. And this was one that's kind of been on my heart this whole time in this series. And God led me other places. And then this week I was like, "Hey God, how about, how about can I do this one?" And he's like, "Yes, you may do this one." And so we're going to jump into the book of Exodus this morning. But I got a question for you. When you think of God, and I want to just audible response here. When you think of God, what do you imagine? Or how, how might you describe Him? What would be a word that you would use to describe Him? What was that? Glorious. That's awesome. That's good. That's good. What else? Powerful. What was that? An infinite. Yes. Everywhere. Always. Forever and ever. What was that? Loving. That's a good one. Any other words you might, maybe something, maybe personal to you. What was that? Genius. Yeah. Savior. Good one. There we go. Savior.

Have you ever thought about God as your warrior? Have you ever thought about God as a warrior-like figure with His warrior-like power? Well, we're going to come this morning to Exodus chapter 15. And before this, I'll give you a little recap, really short recap of what has happened. The Israelite people for so many generations have been enslaved in Egypt under Pharaoh's reign. And he has kept them oppressed. He's abused them. He's used them to build everything that he wants in his mighty name. They are being killed. They're being just absolutely destroyed as a nation. And God raises up a leader by the name of Moses. And he calls Moses, who actually grew up in Pharaoh's house through a whole other miracle, if you want to read about. And he calls up Moses to come in and to free his people, God's chosen people, from the power and the reign of Pharaoh. And Moses comes in and begins to have a series of 10 different plagues. There's locusts. The Nile River turns to blood. The livestock died. Just absolute chaos over these 10 plagues. And Pharaoh's like, "I'm not going to let him go." And Moses says, "Okay, here comes another plague. If you won't let God's people go, he's going to send another plague." And Moses finally gives up and he said, "Fine. Take you, the Israelite people, just get out of town. I'm sick and tired of all of this stuff happening that's centered around God being your God, being angry at me. Fine. Just go." So begins this journey of all of these millions of Israelites traveling east out of Egypt. And after a while of travel, Pharaoh goes, "It's too quiet around here. I don't got anybody to be building all my temples and pyramids and doing everything that like, I don't want to have to lift a finger. I need to go get those people." And so Moses sends his entire, or sorry, Pharaoh sends his entire army after Moses. It says in Scripture, he sent 600 of the best chariots and all the other chariots and every single person who was in the army, Pharaoh sends after Moses. And by this time, the people of Israel have kind of gathered along the Red Sea. And God has led them by day, by a cloud and a pier of fire by night. It's been this amazing moment for the, that God's deliverance. And then all of a sudden they realized, here comes Pharaoh's army. And they're kind of pinned in at this place with their heels on the waters with no way to escape, no place to go, and they start freaking out. They're crying out, they're screaming, they're yelling at Moses, "How could you lead us out here in the desert just to die? I wish I would have died in Egypt."

And God calls Moses. He says, "Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to split this Red Sea in half." And Moses is like, "Are you kidding me right now?" God's like, "Yeah. I'm going to split the sea and you and all of my people are going to walk on dry ground and cross the sea." Moses is like, "There ain't no way, dude. Bro, this isn't happening." God goes, "Yeah, watch." God splits the sea. Israelite people walk through on dry ground. Can you imagine? You're walking through and you're just like this wall of water. Like the original walk through aquarium is like right here that they're experiencing. Dry ground, they're not getting stuck in the mud. Just God makes this miracle and then they get to the other side, but then here comes Pharaoh's army. Keep saying that. Pharaoh's army. And they're like, "Sweet. Thanks, dude." And they start churning through and all of a sudden the dry ground ain't no dry no more. The chariots start getting stuck. Men start falling down. And as the Israelites make it through, God closes the water in on Pharaoh's army. Every single man in Pharaoh's army drowns in the Red Sea before the eyes of the Israelite people. Can you picture that? You're standing there on the side, the other side of the Red Sea, where you just came through and Pharaoh's army just disappears. And the Israelite people begin to realize who God is. In that moment, they realize what God has done for them on the banks of the Red Sea. A miraculous moment has happened right before their own eyes.

And then we come to this first song of Moses and the Israelite people here in Exodus chapter 15. The song itself is divided up into three sections. The first of which rejoices in who God is. And the second part goes into rejoicing in what God does for his foes. And then it finishes with jubilant celebration talking about what God does for his friends. The song of Moses reveals that God is a warrior who fights for his people and demonstrates his unmatched power, his justice, and his salvation. And calls for his people to respond in worship and to continue to trust him. This praise recorded here is just a beautiful picture. As the spirit of inspiration records this so happy song with elaborate care.

Before we jump in, would you pray with me one more time? Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, thank you for our worship and praise that we already had. God, as we learn about the praise and worship that happened the first recorded in the Bible. God may our hearts join in unison and praise with your Israelite people. God, we thank you for the miraculous work that you did thousands of years ago. And that God, we too get to share in that same miracle today. And you saving our lives when all hope seemed to be lost. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

It says in Exodus 15, starting in verse 1, it says, "Then Moses and the Israelites sang the song to the Lord. I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my defense. He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him. My Father is God, and I will extol him. The Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name. Pharaohs chariots in his army he has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaohs officers he has drowned in the Red Sea. The deep waters have covered them. They sink to the depths like a stone.”

The Israelite people are celebrating with everything that they have for the victory that they had just received at the hand of God Almighty. The power of God's victory over the Egyptian army and the sea showcases his sovereignty, his strength in the day of battle and song and victory. In the ancient world, the sea symbolized chaos. The sea was untamed. The sea was wild. There was nothing that could control it, and anything that was on it or in it just fell to the will of the waves. Tossed to and fro. Nothing could control it. Nothing could have power over the sea. And yet God. And yet God parted the waters for Israel's salvation, and he used it to destroy Egypt. It's pretty impressive. That one singular moment, God changes the world's power in a moment. He is the God of our fathers and our own. The mighty champion of his people. This reminds me of the story that we would read just a few books later in 1 Samuel. Of a boy that would show up and face a Philistine giant. The Israelite people at that point were in battle against the Philistines, and the Philistines had this Goliath dude. Over nine feet tall, just a massive human being. And every day he would come out and he would taunt the Israelite army knowing that there was no chance that the Israelites were ever going to defeat him. And this kid, this boy by the name of David shows up. And God brings him onto the scene. And he, by the leading of God, say, "I am sending you out to defeat this giant." So David goes, he grabs a handful of small stones. He is a marksman when it comes to a slingshot. And he comes out and he says this to, "I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty." David whips his sling. God guides the stone. And he kills this giant. Chaos ensues. David cuts the head off of the giant. The Philistines go fleeing to the hills for their own lives. Knowing that all they had was this bro. And God just knocked him down like nothing. Pharaoh's best officers and warriors and fighters went after the Israelite people. And yet God goes. And they're gone. There's no match for our God. And this song sung by God's people reflects of this power of God's triumph. And reassures us that in our chaotic and threatening circumstances, that we can claim His strength as our own in the battles that you face. So church, today, claim the power of God in your life. Be reminded that when you might be facing the biggest battle of your life, your heels may be back against the wall. You might be stuck against the waters that are trying to take you down. I don't know what you're facing today or what you will face this afternoon or tomorrow or the day after that. But know that the power of God's triumph leads you to a declaration of His unique greatness.

Continue on. Verse 6. “Your right hand, Lord, was majestic in power. Your right hand, Lord, shattered the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger. It consumed them like stubble. In the blast of your nostrils…" That is a sweet line right there. “In the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up. Surging waters stood like a wall. The deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy boasted, "Ha ha ha! I will pursue! I will overtake them. I'll divide their spoils. I will gorge them. I will draw them. My sword and my hand will destroy them. But you blew your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who among the gods is like you, Lord? Who is like you? Majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders. You stretch out your right hand, and the earth swallows your enemies.”

The power of God's unparalleled strength and majesty distinguishes him as salvation each and every single time, always and forever. And all the while, his foes are covered by the engulfing waters of destruction. The power of God's majesty for all to see. Everybody standing on the shore thinking, "I just made it through the water just to die on the other side of this sea." And God performs a miracle. This word or this phrase, "Yahweh is a man of war," emphasizes God's warrior-like power. His right hand shatters the enemy. His majesty is unmatched. All human efforts that oppose or resist God are ultimately futile. It highlights this overwhelming power and sovereignty of God. Think of another story from the Old Testament. This picture Elijah on Mount Carmel. He's standing against 450 prophets of Baal and first kings. He's remembering back to this moment for 10 generations. His great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents have passed down this story, this moment of God allowing them to cross the Red Sea and to deliver them from the hand of Pharaoh. And this nation of Israel is watching Elijah, and the King Ahab is looking at Elijah, who has challenged this false god Baal. And in these false prophets, they begin to shout, and they're dancing, and they're cutting themselves. They're trying to call for Baal to bring down fire from heaven and to light this altar of sacrifice on fire. And they're screaming, and they're shouting, and nothing is happening. And Elijah, when they finally get exhausted and fall over, it's Elijah's turn. He comes up, and I don't know if you know, but water isn't something you put on something you're about to try to catch on fire. And Elijah, by the direction of God, pours water all over the wood and the altar and everything. And in his unwavering faith, he prayed. And suddenly, fire from heaven came down, lit the wood, the wet wood, lit the sacrifice, burned the altar, and took out all the other water that was on the ground surrounding that. And the people fell down before God and worshiped, knowing that everything that they could have done in their perfect world with Baal had just been outshined by God Almighty. The people fell on their faces, these prophets of Baal, changed their tune. They realized, "Who's God?" And proclaimed, "The Lord, He is God." Baal's prophets were defeated, just as Egypt's army was swept away, providing that no one can stand against God's majesty. Church, trust in the power of God's majesty over your own strength. Sometimes we like to think that we got it all figured out, right? Right? No, I'm the only guy in the room who thinks we got it all figured out. No? We come up with these plans. We come up with these agendas. Five-year, 10-year, 12-year, 15, 20, 30-year plans. You got it all figured out. Trust in the power of God's majesty over your own strength. Recognize God's salvation in your life. And this foundational truth that will always shape how we respond in worship and how we live our lives in confidence of God's child. The power of God's majesty not only defeats enemies, but also secures His people's future.

Keep reading in verse 19, or excuse me, verse 13. "In your unfailing love, you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength, you will guide them to your holy dwelling. The nations will hear and tremble. Anguish will grip the people of Philistia. The chiefs of Edom, they will be terrified. The leaders of Moab, they will be seized with trembling. The people of Canaan will melt away. Terror and dread will fall on them. By the power of your arm, they will be as still as stone until your people pass by, Lord, until the people you have brought pass by. You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance, the place, Lord, you have made for your dwelling. The sanctuary, Lord, your hands established. The Lord reigns forever and ever.”

The power of God's warrior-like strength leads His people to safety. This wasn't a thing where it just happened and then God said, "Peace out, guys. Enjoy the other side of the Red Sea." No. This was the beginning of a journey. God was taking His people to what we call or know as the promised land or the land of Canaan. God was delivering them out of Egypt to take them to their home He had planned for them, guiding them, establishing them. God's steadfast love leads forth the people He has redeemed, guiding them in His strength to His holy abode. See, His victory causes other nations to tremble. Did you guys catch that in there? And that His reign is forever and ever. God had a place and a purpose for His people. They weren't to remain in Egypt. They weren't to remain under the slavery of Pharaoh. They weren't to remain on one side of the Red Sea. They weren't to remain on the other side of the Red Sea. They weren't to remain on the other side of the Red Sea. God had a plan and a purpose for them.

This journey to the promised land, I think, is awesome that it's kind of bracketed by crossing water. At that moment when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, little did they know that about 40 years later they would have to cross the Jordan River as well to enter into the land of Canaan. And after their journey, they came to this place where the Jordan River was at flood stage. There's no way you could pass it. There's no way you could go around it. They had to go through it. The enemies against them were coming after them, just like Pharaoh coming after them. And Joshua, who had walked through the Red Sea himself, was leading the Israelite people at the edge of the Jordan River. And the priests were at front, and the tabernacle, and the Ark of the Covenant was right at the front of the procession. And God told Joshua, the priests have to get into the water. And I can imagine Joshua going, "Hey God, could you just do like the whole like part of the Red Sea that we did with Moses? Can we do that one again? You mean my guys carrying the Ark of the Covenant have to get into the raging waters?" And God goes, "Yeah, that's how it's going to happen this time." Joshua goes, "Okay, you've never failed me. I trust you, God." And they step into the waters, and the waters part in dry ground, just like God did with Moses and the Israelite people years before. And as they crossed through the Jordan River, the Israelite people stepped into the land of Canaan, the promised land that God said, "This will be your home." I find it amazing that God shows up in such powerful ways when we are at our wits end. Right? I think there's something about being at the end of our rope that allows God to shine through even more. Right? Because if we're not there, then who can take credit? Right? We can take credit. We can say, "Oh yeah, God, you know, I was running out of some time, but you know, I still had that last plan. I had that last idea in my back pocket." But God sometimes leads us to a place where we ain't got nothing left. And He goes, "Watch me now." He says, "Watch what I'm going to do." I want to challenge you today that the same God who brought the Hebrew people out of their slavery in Egypt, brought them through the Red Sea, brought them through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, brought them through the flooded Jordan River into the land of Canaan, is the same God that we serve today. Okay, I don't think everybody heard that. Let me say it one more time. The same God who brought the Hebrew people out of their Egypt and brought them into the promised land of Canaan is the same God that we serve today. Come on. Let's go. I love it. That's it. So I want to say, whatever you might be facing in your life right now, it's probably not a Red Sea. It's probably not a flooded Jordan River. I don't know. Maybe it is. But I know that I, the God that I serve, the God that cares for me, the God that loves me, has a promise to pull me through. It might not show up the way that you think it's going to show up, right? Joshua wanted the Red Sea parting of the Jordan River. And God said, "No, I'm gonna put a little twist on it. I'm gonna do water part in version 2.0 for you." But you can trust in that power, in His guidance, when we face uncertain times because He is a faithful God. Amen? He is a faithful God. And this power of the God's guidance calls us to respond with an unfiltered, unified worship and celebration. That's what the people did.

It says in verse 19, "Pharaoh's horses, chariots, and horses went into the sea. The Lord brought the waters of the sea back over them. But the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron's sister, took a tremble in her hand, a tambourine. And all the women followed her, and the tremble and the dancing of Miriam, saying to them, 'Sing to the Lord, for He has highly exalted both horse and driver. He has hurled into the sea.'" They have an impromptu worship service break out on the banks of the Red Sea right after God performs His miracle. This is the only proper and true response when God moves in our lives. It should let out praise from our hearts. We should shout with celebration. We should worship our true God, both personally and corporately. It's not a coincidence that we gather once a week. We gather to celebrate. We gather to praise God for what He has done in our previous week. We gather to encourage one another for the raging waters that are coming for us this coming week to look back and to remember what God has done through our lives, through our hearts, time and time again so that we can face those raging waters that He is going to guide us through tomorrow. Amen? The celebration shows the importance of communal worship in response to God's victories. Miriam leads the people in this song recorded here in Scripture, the very first worship song recorded in Scripture. And we, too, in 2025, get to celebrate and worship with that very same song. I don't know how the song goes. Nobody has any music to it. You could probably write something yourself, come up with a melody line and some chorus.

But these milestone moments are times that we celebrate what God has done. In the Old Testament, you might read as you read through these times where people would have a milestone moment and they would build an altar to God, wherever it was. They would stack stones and they would create something to signify that something happened here. And I think it's twofold. I think it's one, for that person who would ever walk by again, they would see that stack of stones and they remember, "God did something here in my life." But two, it would also be a witness to others that as they would pass by, they would say, "God did something here. I may not know what it was, but God did something right here." A milestone moment, a milestone marker to show the world that God had moved. I remember back the times in my life growing up, maybe it was youth camp, maybe it was a youth conference. I remember times in college where there was hundreds of people gathered together, sometimes thousands, and we would break out in worship. And sometimes all the instruments in the band would just stop and you would just hear these voices being lifted up in praise to God. These incredible milestone markers in my life to remind me of the times when I feel all alone by myself and lost. God goes, "Remember that time? Remember that milestone where you stood with 2,000 other people and you praised God together and the Holy Spirit swirled in that room in such powerful ways? Lives were transformed. People were called into ministry. Lives were changed. Salvation happened. Rededication. People were healed. Amazing things happened." God says, "Don't forget those times." A professor in college, he had this great way of saying, you call them thin moments. A moment when the space between heaven and earth and God's throne and our hearts felt so thin. Because the reality is sometimes it can feel really far away, right? God can feel so far away, so distant, maybe like he doesn't even exist at times. But it's these milestone moments in response of worship that remind us of the power of God, his warrior-like strength in our lives, these thin moments where we feel like God is right there. God's always right there. We're the one that makes the space.

I want to give us some questions as we close out. First of which, just think through these, maybe write these down, and maybe this week just kind of talk with God about them. But how does the power of God's triumph, majesty, and guidance encourage you to claim his promises in your current battles? Maybe you can look back on a battle that you faced before and you think about how does God's triumph, majesty, and guidance build your trust in him? That you can look back, you can remember what God had just done to know that God's going to move here and now. That God isn't just going to disappear. He's not here one moment and gone the next. That he's there faithfully every single time.

And then two, what milestone moments of God's rescue and redemption can you celebrate through the power of worship just as Israel did? Or maybe say it another way, what moments of God's deliverance can you celebrate through worship? What can you maybe write down right now? You're thinking about what's God done in your life? How has he rescued you? How has he split waters in your life? How has he pulled you through? That you then can, this week I encourage you, take a moment and pause your life. Put on a worship song, maybe a song you know, maybe it's got words on the screen. And think about those times and just sing a song of praise to God. And then make this a habit going forward as you have those milestone moments where God comes through. And instead just going, "Hey, thanks God. Just going on with your life." But pause, worship God. Maybe write a song. I don't know. My daughter came into our room last night. She knows I was talking about this and she's like, "Hey, Daddy, have you ever written a song?" I said, "Yes, I've written one song in my life." And she goes, "No more?" I said, "Baby, songs are really hard to write. I just don't have the gift. I know people who can just like pop one out. I can't. The only song I ever wrote was to my wife when I proposed to her. That was it." Oh yeah, I know. But then she and her sister, they go into the garage, the only quiet space in our house, and she literally goes and writes a song. And she comes in and her and her daughter, it was just a precious moment. Her sister, sorry, there's daughter, my daughter, her sister. And they just start singing the song. And it's literally like two chords on the guitar. That's all she feels comfortable playing. But their heart of praise shine through. And I know how proud I was. I could only imagine how proud their Heavenly Father was. Looking down on them, seeing them give praise to God.

The power of God's triumph over chaos, His majesty, His salvation, always against His foes, guiding His people, bringing them home, call to corporate worship. Trust the power of God in your life today as your warrior. The one who fights for you, the one who stands tall, the one who has unmatched strength. And claim His promise to lead you to your promised land of Canaan. And to celebrate His victories through your worship. If you find an opportunity this week, share with somebody what God has done in your life. You don't have to sing to Him. That's okay. Maybe you would. Maybe we have some theater people in the room. Maybe you want to just do a little theater production and sing to somebody. But share. Maybe it's a family member, a friend, a neighbor, a co-worker. Don't keep inside what God has done in your life. Boast about this amazing God who deeply cares for you.

Let's pray. God, we thank you for how incredibly amazing you are. And I pray for us, God, today that we would recognize your power, your strength, your love. That we would trust you in our battles and that we would worship you wholeheartedly, Jesus. God, the reality is that maybe some of us, we kind of struggle with this warrior, God. We don't understand and we have questions that this side of heaven we just don't understand of why does a loving God allow so much bad in life and why doesn't God answer our prayers when we pray or questions about heaven or hell or evil or pain or suffering, God. I pray that your grace would overcome those. Not in the sense that you're not willing to wrestle or to answer them, God. But I pray that as they worship you, they spend time with you, they commune with you, they spend time in your word, they spend time through worship, they spend time in prayer, God, that you would begin to reveal those answers, you would begin to soften their hearts, you would open them up, God, for who you are in their lives. And Jesus, I pray for those of us who who need to invite you in as our warrior. For those of us who would say, God, I need you. I'm all alone, I'm by myself, I'm lost. I need you, Jesus. I need your strength, I need your triumph, I need your guidance. God, I don't have a heart of worship. I need you. I need you to put that worship into my heart, God. I'm backed up against the wall, my heels are in the water of the Red Sea. I don't know how I'm going to make it through. I don't know how I'm going to serve I've got God, I need you. I'm at the end of my rope. God, I pray that you would speak to their hearts, even right now. God, that you in this moment right here, right now, this is a divine appointment. We're not here by coincidence. We're not here by chance or happenstance. You're here, God, because you want to speak to their hearts. So if that's you today, you'd say, Chris, I need you to pray for me. I need Jesus in my heart. This is the first time I've done this. I've tried to figure this whole God thing out. I need you in my life. You just look at me and just make eye contact so I can pray for you. Thank you.

God, I pray for those who are needing you so deeply right now. God, I'm praying for those who are exhausted from trying to fight on their own. God, I also pray for those who are just celebrating in your victory. God, we're all at different seasons in life and that's okay. Sometimes we find victory and sometimes we feel like we're getting beat up. That's the amazing picture of a family. That we not only have you to encourage us, but we have one another who can pray for us and care for us and love for us. And so for those of you who would say you want Jesus this morning, just pray a simple prayer after me. And I would ask that nobody prays alone, that everybody who has accepted Christ in their lives, you would say this prayer out loud along with me. You would say, Jesus, thank you for your salvation. Thank you for your triumph and guidance. Thank you for your victory in my life. Jesus, I'm sorry for the sins that I've committed. I'm sorry for the way that I've chosen my own. God, I ask you, Christ, to come into my life. You would make me whole again. You would make me Lord or make you Lord and leader of my life. And I will live for you from this day forward in worship and celebration for the milestone moments where you delivered me. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Summer Playlist: Part 9

Summer Playlist: Part 9

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are in the end of our series, towards the end, not the very end, we're nearing the end. I wanted to shift gears this week a little bit. So far, we have talked a lot about music and songs, but mostly in the past, how God created it originally, what it's intended for, how Israel used songs to worship God, also for lament. And so, I want to look forward about music in the future. Not like, far future and like techno synth type of future music, but music in eternity, music in heaven. Have you ever wondered what role music plays when we get to heaven? We're going to take a look at that today. We're going to be in the book of Revelation. How many of you are intimidated or just like, Revelation's a little, yeah, I'm putting my hand up there. It's always kind of a book that's like, "What is going on? I'm a little intimidated." Well, we're going to break it down today a little bit. So hopefully that this chapter at least is just more palpable. You're easier to understand. That's the goal afterwards.

So, Revelation, a little bit of background, is written by John. He received divine visions and instruction from the Spirit, and he writes as an authoritative prophet, kind of like a prophet from the Old Testament, giving instruction and calling God's people to follow him in the midst of whatever's going on. The book's genre is a mashup of apocalyptic, prophetic, and an epistle. So it's got futuristic scenes. It's got John calling God's people back, and it's got instruction for the churches at the time. It's a book that helps us remain present in the midst of whatever circumstances we face because of the certainty that we have in Christ and the hope we have of the future with him. Outside of the teachings of Jesus, when Jesus is walking the earth and all the parables that he talks about, outside of that, this is the book that we get to learn most about heaven. So it's got a lot to offer, a lot that makes us think and ponder about what it's saying, but the picture and message are clear. It encourages and strengthens believers to hold fast in their testimony about Jesus, to steadfastly endure trials, and to resiliently hope in God's present and future reign. I want to repeat that because if you want to take anything away, if you're a note-taker, jot this down. Revelations, this is the point. To encourage and strengthen believers to hold fast to their testimony about Jesus, to steadfastly endure trials, and to resiliently hope in God's present and future reign.

Today we're going to look at one of these scenes about Jesus' reign. So we're going to be in Revelation 5. If you turn there, it'll be on the screen, but before we do that, would you pray with me one more time? God, thank you again for your word, for your truth, that we get to study it and learn it, and God, I pray that through your word today that we'd be drawn closer to you, that we'd have a deeper understanding of who you are and what you can do, and the future that we have to look forward to. God, I pray that we would be filled with hope and encouragement and joy. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right, so Revelation 5, this is John's second vision. We skipped all the first. You can read that if you want. Revelations 1, 2, 3, 4, and then we come to John's second vision, and I want to go verse by verse, and I want this to play out like a movie in your head. So if you guys want to, if it's helpful, you can close your eyes as I'm reading or if it helps you imagine, I guess we can say that you get a pass. If you're falling asleep, I won't know. I'm just going to be assuming that you're envisioning the movie of heaven playing out. I'm going to look at you and be like, "Oh my goodness, look at them. They're so into it right now as their head is down. They're complete." No. Just this one Sunday.

We'll start in verse 1. It says this. This is John's vision. It says, "Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals." We'll stop right there. We're going to literally go verse by verse to help us understand. All right, so the sealed scroll is God's plan. It's got seven seals on it. Seals on the scroll mean that it is an ancient document, authentic. It's been unaltered. There's no change to it. Once it was written, nothing compromised it. And then seven, if you see seven in the Bible, in the New Testament, Old Testament, that is the number of completion. So a lot of things that are described as being seven or have seven means it is whole. It is not lacking anything. And so if we're to translate this into words that help us understand, we see in your movie so far that you're envisioning, God sitting on the throne and in his right hand is a scroll that is perfect and it's a plan of judgment and redemption for humanity. Judgment of sin, redemption for humanity. So there he is. We got God sitting on the throne with the perfect plan. Verse two says this, "And I saw a mighty angel," this is John envisioning, "I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?'" So he makes this call out to everyone there, "Who's worthy?" Everyone is needed to open the scroll, to reveal and carry out God's plan. And it's assumed and implied that whoever can open the scroll is the one who will carry out God's plan. So we kind of have a sword in the stone moment. I don't know if you're familiar with sword in the stone. If you've been to Disneyland, there's that sword and you can, I've never been able to do it. I'm not worthy. But in the movie, you know, in all the land of England, you have all these nobles and knights and all these strong people trying to pull out the sword and no one can do it except for pure-hearted, in the movie it's a little boy, little Arthur. Well, we kind of have that. In our passage, there's a similar dilemma.

Verse three, it says, "But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it." So we're made aware of the problem now. No one is worthy to be the mediator of God's plan. And if you're, John, envisioning this of heaven, just imagine how disheartening this might be, getting to understand what's at stake. This is God's plan. And then comprehending that no one can do it. No one can open up this scroll, can carry out God's plan. No one on the earth or under the earth. So what does John do? He cries. Verse four, "I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or to look inside." The opportunity for redemption seemingly right there, but it's impossible in this moment to acquire it. He's weeping like an Old Testament prophet too. These Old Testament prophets oftentimes in their writing, they said, "I cried for Israel." Seeing the answer so close, seeing what had to be done, but then no answer there. It's for no one's doing it in the Old Testament. And here, no one's able to do it, it seems.

We get to verse five, "Then one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep. See the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.'" The elder tells John to look up, to see that there is someone that can open the scrolls, that can do what God says needs to be done. And he references some prophecies from the Old Testament from Judah and David to help give context as to who this is. Now that word in verse five that says "see," there's other translations use "behold." And I like that a little bit better because I think it conveys what's really happening. But in Revelations, there's often a stark and meaningful difference between what John hears and then what he turns and sees. And so in this moment when the angel said, or the elder said, "Behold," we could also translate that to "hear." Hear the lion. He is able to open the scrolls.

But then when John turns and sees it's not a lion, verse six, "Then I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth." Now, maybe at this point we're starting to feel overwhelmed because this is getting weird. We have a weird-looking sheep. And let me break it down so it's not going to be so weird. So he turns, and at this point the slain lamb is the conquering lion. The lamb imagery relates to Jesus' death on the cross, the tradition of viewing his death as a sacrifice, like the sheep's sacrifice in the Old Testament. The early church applied the title "Lamb of God" to Jesus, understanding that his death was the substitute for their sin. So the victory spoken about in verse five, it says, "He has triumphed," was brought about, we know that that triumph was brought about through sacrifice. And so imagine being the persecuted church in the early church history, what hope that this would build, knowing that persecution might bring about more victory through sacrifice. Being like Jesus and what he went through would have brought hope to them. And so, okay, back to our movie, there's a lame, slain lamb who is the conquering lion standing at the center of the throne, encircled by four animals. All right, what are these four animals? Well, they are four animals that represent four things. One, the noblest animal, which is the lion, the strongest, which is the ox, the wisest, which is the owl, and the swiftest, which is the eagle. So the best of the best in their regards in this moment. You're saying, "Andre, how do you know that?" Well, I too had a vision last night. No, I'm just kidding. It says in chapter four. You read chapter four, it's there, it explains all the animals. So John's just carrying on saying, "The animals that I talked about earlier, they're there now." So four animals, and then we get to the weird lamb, right? The seven horns, seven eyes. So seven, again, do we know now? The number of completion. So horns, throughout the Bible, they mean power, they represent power. So we know that this is complete, whole, or all-powerful. And eyes represent wisdom. Being able to see everything is this imagery of being wise. And so we have this lamb who is all-powerful and all-wise. See, a lot less creepy. This lamb is not weird. It's just an all-powerful and all-wise lamb, who is Jesus, right? Makes sense. Now we have the seven spirits that are sent out. Well, at the beginning of Revelation, there are seven churches. Seven again, meaning complete. So some scholars believe that this is just another... There were seven specific churches, but it's also just a way of saying that this is all the churches in the area, Asia Minor, that this is written to. And so again, meaning complete, that this is John's way of saying that the spirit, God's spirit, is complete. It's enough for all the churches, for all the believers. All right. In our movie scene, you guys are following along, we have God on the throne with the seal scroll in his right hand, his perfect plan for redemption, and at first, no one on earth could open it. And then you kind of see, like, you can see this in the movie, like, the camera's panning through the crowd and there's no one and everyone's kind of downcast, it's like no one can do it. All of a sudden, there's like a spotlight and it's like working your way through the crowd and there is the lamb. The slain lamb, who sounded like a lion, surrounded by the four animals, and this lamb is special because it's the all-powerful and all-wise lamb.

Verse 7, "He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne." So the lamb approaches, takes it, verse 8, "And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God's people." So a harp is a common temple instrument, so that's kind of clueing us in that this is a very worshipful moment right now. And the incense, like it says, symbolizing the prayer from God's people. And so then the four living creatures and the 24 elders bowed down in worship, and now we get to the good part. It's so good, all right?

Verse 9, "And they sang a new song saying, 'You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.'" This is so good. This is like that hero scene where the hero has entered the movie now. We know that everything's going to be okay, because Jesus is here. Jesus steps forward ready to serve God, to carry out the plans, to open the scroll, and to do what needs to be done. Jesus is the only one who is worthy, the only one who could do it. The Lamb of God steps forward to the explosive praise of heaven, prepares to break the seal and carry out God's redemptive plan. By his sacrifice, with his blood shed on the cross, through Christ's death he redeems. He bought with his blood souls from every tribe, language, people, and nation. He sacrificed himself for us and for a purpose.

Says in verse 10, "You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth." Church, this is to you today. You have been made, you have been redeemed for a purpose, to be a kingdom and priests with God, to serve God. I was talking with a pastor friend of mine, and we were talking about this, our role as Christians. And he said, "The human task is one of partnership with God. We continue the work that God was doing back in the garden, Genesis 1 and 2. And that work is to bring order into the world and to bring life. God says to subdue the earth and to fill it. Subdue another way of saying that is to bring order and then to fill it, to bring life. So in our lives, as we are partnering with God, how are we bringing order to the situations we are in? How are we bringing life to the situations that we are in? And that task of doing this is a priestly task. We are doing what God intended us to do. This is the purpose that you have been redeemed for, to be a part of the work that humanity was originally made for, to reign with him. We're going to get to more of that in a little bit. But this is the song that is being sung to Jesus. Jesus is worthy. Jesus has made us to be a kingdom and priests. Can you feel the hope in this moment? Can you feel the joy, the relief, the newfound purpose, the awe and wonder of this heavenly scene? Well, it continues. It gets even better.

Verse 11, "Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands and ten thousands times ten thousand." That's the Bible's way of saying innumerable. "They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying, 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise.'" So heaven is joining in. "Then all of earth joins in. Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea and all that is in them saying, 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb to be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever.' The four living creatures said, 'Amen,' and the elders fell down and worshiped." Oh man, this is so good. If you're imagining this scene, I mean, it's filled with light, it's filled with the echoing praise of all of creation and all of the angels. It is a glorious, glorious scene. And I wish we could all have been there. I think this would have been the coolest thing for our faith and for our souls to have been present in this moment, to see Jesus step forward, do what he was made to do, give us hope and life. I hope this chapter makes better sense. I hope it's less intimidating. The creepy lamb is no longer creepy. That's Jesus you're talking about, so be careful there. But John directed our attention to God's heavenly throne room where the living creatures and elders declared Jesus the slain Lamb as worthy to execute God's plan of judgment and redemption and to the praise and glory of all of heaven and earth. It's a scene where Jesus is acknowledged and revered and praised and honored as he should be for who he is and what he's done and what he is still doing in our lives today. It's a scene that gives hope and is cause for the biggest rejoicing that we can offer. So now that we've covered this entire passage, I would, by the way, this scene continues if you want to in your week read chapter 6. It just keeps going. And it's, I mean, there's more that you might have questions on and that's okay. Feel free to ask. But hopefully this makes a little bit more sense as to what's happening in this vision. But now that we've covered this entire passage, I want to focus on just a few things, bring them back before us, especially about music and how songs play a role in our lives now and in the future.

So the first thing, first point, is that Jesus is him, as the youths say. Look at my youths in the room. Or for the generation below that, my generation, Jesus is the goat. Except he's a lamb. But he's the goat. He's the greatest of all time. Okay, some people are laughing. But for everyone, Jesus is the only one. That's the point. We should have had that on the slide. Jesus is the only one. In a scene that is a bit mystifying, kind of strange, I think even for John this would have been very different. It is so clear that Jesus is at the center of this scene. That Jesus is at the center of God's plan. That Jesus is the world's only hope. And therefore our only hope. And it reminds us that this plan of God is as good as done. Jesus who is all powerful and all wise is the only one who can carry this out and he does and he will. We don't have to wonder if this will actually happen, if he's going to figure it out. No, it's done. There's no mystery. We know that Jesus has defeated sin and death. Jesus is the only one who can carry out God's perfect plan. He's the only one who can save us from our sin. Jesus is the only one who can give us eternal life. Who can restore us into right relationship with God. Jesus is the only way to heaven. Jesus is him. It's a simple truth yet profoundly deep in its meaning and what it conveys. He's the only one worthy of our praise.

Secondly, is this reminder that you were made to partner with God. We're meant to partner, to be a priesthood. And you might have heard that before, but do you know what that means? To live it out in your everyday life. Do you know what it means to partner with God? This idea of priesthood is throughout Old Testament and New Testament. I think Peter says it best in 1 Peter 2, which says, "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." Church, he called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light and for a purpose. Not just so that you can be out of darkness and be in the light, but so that you can work with him. I mentioned this earlier that our task is to continue the work of God, which again, he says is to bring order to the world, just as God did out of the chaos, he brought order and to bring life to those around us and in the situations that we find ourselves in. Again, just as God did, he brought life into the world. And this task, when we do it, it's always a priestly task. Priests are people who represent God to people and people to God. It's a two-way street there. And so how do we look at what's in front of us in our lives as a way to partner with God, to do one of those things, either to represent those that were around to God or to represent God to the people around us? So if you're a parent, you might be wondering, how do I fulfill my priestly task in bringing order to my life, to my family? Well, as you do that, in whatever way you do that, you are partnering with God. It might be simple as keeping a clean house. If I keep order in my living situation, some of that might be partnering with God. Think of your friendships, your relationships. How do I bring life? Maybe by pushing for peace and unity rather than gossip and division. By doing that, you're fulfilling the task of your priestly duty. The other part of that that Jesus talks about or that God instilled in Genesis is to fill the earth. That's part of our duty. And if you're parents, you're like, "I did my part. I filled the earth. I made more life." Good job. But how do you help them flourish? How do you continue to bring life to them? How do you continue to help and encourage them to have a good life? How do you encourage what God encourages, bringing joy, being a source of goodness and of truth? And again, this doesn't have to be the biggest things in life. It could just be whatever is in front of you that day, what's in front of you with that hour. How do you partner with God in that moment and bring order or bring life? Here at Spring Valley, you can ask the same thing. How do you continue the work of God? By representing God to others and others to God. Well, one way we do that is by praying for each other, bringing others before God, saying, "Hey, I know this person. I've been talking with them. I know what's going on in their life. And I want God on their behalf. I'm coming before you. Can you intervene in what they're going through?" Maybe it's by volunteering in kids' ministry. Thank you to everyone in the room who volunteered. I know there's so many of you who volunteer in kids' ministry. You are representing God to those kids. You are teaching them by the words you say, by the way you act. You are being God to them. I want to say this too. Our time as volunteers and serving the church is not about making the church a better experience for people. I think sometimes we think of, "Oh, we just want more volunteers so that the church can look really good to a newcomer." It's not what it's about. It's not at all what it's about. Everything here at this church is about, it's an opportunity to partner with God and to have spiritual formation take place inside of us, in our hearts, as we serve as Christ served. Again, if you're a note taker, maybe this is the second thing you're writing down. This is important. I want us to make sure that we're not have this jaded heart and thought about why people serve at the church. It's just so that Spring Valley looks really good. No, it's not what it's about. If that happens, that's great. We're very thankful for that. That's not the reason. The reason is we want to provide opportunities to partner with God so that you, the Holy Spirit, is forming within you a heart that is more like Christ's. Because as you serve, you are going to need God. We are going to run out of strength, of patience, of compassion, of grace, of love to have with other people, and so we rely on Him. And as we do that more and more, as we serve and as we rely on God, our hearts are being formed like Christ's. So we want those opportunities here. That's why we encourage. Get involved. Be serving so that you and God can start working together and partnering. You were made to partner with God. You don't have to wonder about what calling that might be, what grand thing that might be. You can just do it in your everyday life and the decisions that are right before you. And you can do it here at this church. So partner with Him and His kingdom work.

Thirdly, respond with worship. When confronted with the truth of Jesus and what He has done for us, we worship. When we feel like it and when we don't feel like it, but in the midst of a scene like this, where Jesus steps forward to carry out and fulfill God's plan, the only right answer, the only thing left to do is to worship Him. To sing our hearts out. To give Him all the praise that we have. A little aside here. I think it's really cool to know that there are going to be new songs in heaven. I think that's awesome. We've made a lot of songs. There are a lot of songs that have been written on earth. A lot that we don't sing anymore. But there's going to be new ones. I think that's just to know that there is opportunities for creativity and for newness in heaven is awesome. I think some of us have this idea that heaven is just like we sing like the one line over and over again for millennia. And it's like, that's kind of boring. But no, there are new songs. There are going to be cool new songs in heaven, new opportunities to be creative, new opportunities to worship God, new ways to respond in worship. And we're going to be in God's full presence like never before. We don't have that down here on earth. We get glimpses of it. We have moments of seeing part of His presence. But we will be in His full presence. And how much more are we going to worship Him? So respond with worship. It's natural and good. We're going to have a chance to do that in just a second.

But this week, you've had multiple encouragements throughout this series of what to do with music. I want to offer you another one. This week, I encourage you to respond in worship, specifically through song. You've already had the encouragement to listen to worship music on your way to work or on Saturday night and Sundays before church to listen to worship music. So let's, another one is when you see God work, when you feel His presence in your life, or when you just have a moment of recognizing Him and how worthy He is to be praised, give praise. Take a moment. Put a song on, sing a cappella, whatever you've got to do, but actually give praise back to God. And then continue to give your whole life as a means of worship to Him. That sound good to anyone in this room? Sound like possibility? Yeah? Okay. If you do it this week, do me a favor. Text the church. Chris and I are going to see this. We're going to praise with you. And we just want to, this is going to be awesome. We're going to rejoice with you. And whatever moment you have where you were like, "Hey, this happened and I just thought of God and I wanted to praise Him really quick and I was on my way home from work, I popped on this worship song and I was just singing." Like, we would love to know that. We'd love to know when God is having a moment with you, we want to share in that moment with you. If we get no text this week, we'll be a little sad, but we'll be okay. Chris and I will just text each other, like, "Hey, I'm worshiping again." Okay. We're going to chance to respond in music here as the team comes up to finish. But before, they're coming up, but before we actually worship, we're going to partake in communion together as a church. So you guys have the elements at your table. You can go ahead and start serving yourselves. I have to serve myself. I'm going to take with you. So go ahead and pour the cup. Make a cracker. You guys can listen as you're doing that. I want to say this, as we see how worthy Jesus is, it's natural to see how unworthy we are with all of our sin, with all of our rebellion, pride and selfishness. And that's humbling to be in the light of Jesus and to see how amazing He is and to see how short we fall. But it's humbling to know that God still loves us, that God still wants us, and there's no better way to come to the table of Jesus than with humility and gratitude. So let's humble our hearts as we recognize what Christ did on the cross for us, taking on our sin and the death that we deserved and shedding His blood to give us eternal life, that by His grace, we might be saved. And let's be grateful for the opportunity to be partners, co-heirs with Christ until He returns and for our lives that we're being redeemed now and we're going to be made perfect in heaven.

Summer Playlist: Part 8

Summer Playlist: Part 8

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

There are so many songs out there. It is wild to think about how many songs there are. Typically, at least for me, when I want to pick a song on a playlist or when I'm going through the radio, I want something that is uplifting, that makes me feel good, that maybe gives me energy to clean the house, or that we can have a little kitchen dance party too, or gets me out of a funk. We like the uplifting, the feel-good music. But sometimes, you're like, "That is not what I need right now. That is not what I'm feeling." And we have, at least what my generation calls emo music, right? We have the more emotional music that elicits these raw emotional responses that, you know, maybe it's depression or anxiety or grief even. And these, what the Bible would call, are laments. And so we have both. In music, we have both the upbeat, energetic, feel-good songs, and we have the hard, emotional, expressive songs. And so does the Bible. There's all different kinds of songs in the Bible.

Now, last week, Pastor Andre talked about a lament. He talked about Psalms 42. And we had it originally intended to do two laments back to back. We were like, "That's kind of a downer, right? Let's not do two laments back to back." But the more we talked about it, the more we realized that our sermons, although very different, were kind of a part one and part two on the topic of lament. Now, if you weren't here last week and you didn't hear his sermon, that's okay. You're not going to be lost today because it's very different. But it's really hitting on two important key things with lament. He touched more on this idea of lamenting when things are hard, when the world comes at you, when life is just hard and the circumstances are maybe even out of our control. And today, we are going to be talking about lamenting when it's our own fault, when we are the problem. Sounds a bit like a downer. I know. Okay. But hang with me. There is good news. There is hope. Okay. We'll get there. But I think this is a really valuable and important thing for us to talk about. There is hope, even in the lamenting. And there's hope because we don't grieve like the world grieves. First Thessalonians says that we don't grieve like those with no hope. We grieve with hope. And that's really what a lament is. It is a form of grief and we grieve because of our sin. We grieve because we sin against God. We grieve because it puts a rift in our relationship with God. Maybe because we hurt others in our sin. And because the things that grieve or break the heart of God should break our hearts too. But because we know the end of the story, we know Jesus came and is coming back again, we can grieve and lament with hope. So we're going to be in Lamentations today. It's only five chapters, but it is dense. It is a lot happening in that. And we will not be covering all of Lamentations today. Don't worry. We won't be here till 4 p.m. We are going to be really focused in on chapter three.

So the Book of Lamentations is made up of five poems or songs. And it's believed to be written by one author. And we think it's Jeremiah who wrote the Book of Jeremiah. It was written as a lament regarding the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. when they were attacked and the city was destroyed and the people were taken into captivity. So the first four of the poems are actually written in an acrostic, which is a cool literary way for the author to do it. But we don't actually see that in our English Bible because it was written in Hebrew. But if you look at the Hebrew of it, the first word of every line in the first four poems or songs is their Hebrew alphabet. So if it were English, the first line would be A. The second line would start with B. The third line would start with C. And so it's a really cool fact about this song. But one commentary mentioned this about it being in an acrostic. It said that the use of the alphabet symbolizes that the completeness, the A to Z of grief is being expressed. And I love this because lament is just not one thing. It's not just stating facts or it's not just complaining or crying out to God or it's not just praising Him and asking Him for rescue. It's all of those things. It's the completeness, the wholeness, the A to Z-ness of it. It was often sung by the Israelites, usually on a yearly basis as a remembrance for the destruction of their city. And to remind themselves of the sin and the choices that got them there, as well as God's faithfulness during that time. So Lamentations kind of builds a little bit. The first couple chapters are really just about the destruction of Jerusalem. The pain, the consequences of their actions. But in chapter three, it shifts a little bit. The narrator turns more to a personal voice, talks more individually, and speaks more of God's justice and His mercy in the hope that we find even in the darkness of it. Books of the Bible, like Lamentations, are really hard to read because we see the destruction. We see the pain. We see the reality of the ramifications of our sin. It is plain as day in black and white. We see that the destruction came on Israel because of their own choices. They chose to disobey God and live in their own way. And that brought consequences. Now for us, on this side of the cross, we have to remember that Jesus already paid the price. He paid the debt. Justice has already been served. Praise God. But this is not a reason or excuse for us to keep on sinning. We know that we're forgiven, so we should live in that forgiveness, not just think, "Oh, well, I can keep on doing what I'm doing because God will forgive me." We don't have the license to keep doing that. And we have to understand that while we are forgiven and we live in freedom, we're gonna mess up. We're gonna fail. We're gonna fall. And there will be ramifications to those sins. So Lamentations is brutal and it's beautiful. It's brutal. It's a tough one, guys. But there's hope. Paul David Tripp writes, "The Bible never denies reality. The Bible never plays it safe. The Bible never offers you a cosmetized view of the fallen world. The Bible never tricks you into thinking that things are better than they are. The Bible is straightforward and honest, but not void of hope. While it is very candid about the hardships of life in this broken world, the Bible is also gloriously hopeful. The honesty does not crush the hope, but neither does the hope negate the honesty." The Bible pulls no punches and we might step on some toes today, but we're gonna see the hope too. So instead of going verse by verse through chapter three, we're actually gonna kind of jump around and we're gonna go more topically through this. And we're gonna pull out what we can learn from this lament, from this song.

So first we're gonna talk about the ramifications of our sin. So turn with me to Lamentations 3. We're gonna start in verse 13 and pull it up on your phone or your Bible. It'll be on the screens as well. So verse 13, "He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. I became the laughing stock of all my people. They mocked me in song all day long. He has filled me with bitter herbs and given me gall to drink. He has broken my teeth with gravel. He has trampled me in dust. I have been deprived of peace. I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say, 'My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord. I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I will remember them and my soul is downcast within me.'" That can be really hard to read. And it may seem obvious, it probably is, but I think it's important for us to understand that our sin has consequences. The author here lists a few, that his heart was pierced, he had no peace, there was bitterness, his soul was downcast. And those are just personal, internal consequences. That doesn't even account for external consequences. Things like broken relationship, financial hardship, a variety of things that can cause consequences outside of ourselves, physical consequences. Our sin has consequences, even if we don't think it will. And the reality is that we don't sin in a vacuum. So our sin also has consequences for other people. It affects those around us. If you flip back to chapter 2, verse 19 says, "Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children who faint from hunger at every street corner." The kids of Jerusalem weren't the ones sinning. They weren't the ones going after other gods, but they still suffered the consequences of their parents' sin. That's hard to hear, but it's true. Because we don't sin in a vacuum, other people will experience consequences of our own sin. And I guarantee you, everyone in this room can think of a consequence they suffered because of someone else's sin. And vice versa. I bet you can think of a consequence someone else suffered because of your own. Sin has consequences and not just for ourselves. All the things that we think of in sin that maybe are the struggles we have, we think maybe are just personal. But it's not. There are far-reaching consequences. I think of extramarital affairs that they think, "Oh, it's just between me and this person." But what about your children? What about your friendships? What about your co-working relationships? I think about addictions, things like porn that it's done in secret, but it has ramifications beyond what maybe we can even fathom. Sin has consequences. Second ramification is that we become unfit for use. That's a tough one. Limitations three, we're gonna jump down to verse 44. It says, "You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through." He's talking to God here. "You have made a scum and refuse among the nations." When we are choosing to live in sin, our prayers become ineffective. Now, when we are crying out to God from our sin and asking God to restore us, that's different. But when we are actively choosing sinful behavior, our prayers will fall on deaf ears. They become ineffective. They can't get through because you're intentionally separating yourself from God. The Hebrew word here for the scum, he says, "You have made a scum and refuse." The Hebrew word here, it's a descriptive term that in context really denotes anything that is rejected as unfit for use. The Lord, hear me on this, the Lord can use anyone. And the reality is he wants to use people. That's how he designed it. He wants to use us as people and everyone is a sinner. So his only option is to use sinners. So he can use us. But it's our heart posture. When we are choosing to live in sin or ignore sinful behaviors, we become unfit for kingdom use. And when I say unfit for use, it's not that God can't use you, it's that you're making yourself unavailable. I said that intentionally that way. You're making yourself unavailable. It's a choice. Our sin puts a rift in the relationship. It hardens our hearts and makes us unavailable for kingdom work. It makes our prayers ineffective. So God can't use us for kingdom work.

So we must lament these things. We have to grieve them because they grieve the heart of God. And when we take the time to lament, we become aware of our sin and of God's justice. That's the next thing we're going to look at today. The reality is of God's justice. The first thing I want us to understand, though, is that God doesn't delight in punishing us, but wants to restore us back into right relationship with him. God is not some vengeful God maniacally laughing at our pain or circumstances or the consequences that we are suffering. He is a loving God who understands that the consequences of our sin can bring us back into right relationship with him if we allow them to. If we are open to that. Sometimes we go through the valley of the shadow of death. Pastor Chris talked about the Psalm 23 a couple of weeks ago, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And Pastor Andre talked about last week walking through and lamenting when life is just hard. But sometimes we walk through the valley of the shadow of death at our own fault. Sometimes we go through that. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death because God led us there in order to bring us to repentance. Repentance is just a church word that means to turn. To turn away from your sin. Do a 180 and go the other direction. Sometimes we're too stubborn or stuck in our sin or too comfortable in our sin that we need to be led through that dark valley in order to be brought to repentance. Praise God we serve a God that goes through that with us. He doesn't leave us alone. He walks through it with us and he delivers us from it. But he doesn't delight in punishing us. He just allows justice to be served and for us to experience those consequences in order to restore us. The second thing about God's justice is that just the fact that God is a just God. And so it would be against his nature to leave sin unpunished. It would be against his nature to leave sin unpunished. This is why we see the punishment of Israel played out in these verses. God could not leave their sin unpunished. That would not be just and he cannot be anything but who he says he is. That's also why he sent Jesus. To take on our punishment for our sins that justice required. In order for God to be who he says he is justice had to be served. It had to be served by either by the person who sinned which would be us or by a perfect sacrifice which was Jesus. Thank God for his loving kindness that he chose his son to serve that sentence for us. But the penalty had to be paid in some shape or form. It had to be paid because he is a just God. And it's good news. That's good news that Jesus paid that price for us. This is hard stuff. It's heavy stuff to confront our sin, to confront our our natural human nature, to go against God. But like I said, there is hope. We're getting to the good part guys. Okay? We have the hope of God's mercy and restoration.

Read with me Lamentations 3:21-26. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope because of the Lord's great love. We are not consumed. Amen? For his compassion never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, the Lord is my portion. Therefore, I will wait for him. The Lord is good to those who hope whose hope is in him. To the one who seeks him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. First thing we can draw out here that gives us hope is humility. Humility brings hope. If you back up a little bit into verse 19 going into 21 it says, I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I will remember them and my soul is downcast within me. I am turned down. I am humbling. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Jeremiah humbled himself in order to call to mind the things that were hopeful. We've talked about humility before and it is having a right view of ourselves and a right view of God. It is putting us in our proper places that he is God and we are not. But more than that, it positions our hearts in such a way that we can actually see the hope. When we are humble, we are not blinded by our pride. We are not blinded by our sin and we can actually see hope for the future. We are at the beach this week and I was hanging out with my mom and the kids were off in the water with Chris and my dad. We were just chatting and I took some pictures and I was looking at my phone and my mom says, "Sis, you're missing the sunset. Turn around." 37 years old and she's still telling me what to do. Okay? But she was right. I had taken some pictures and I was looking at them but the real thing was right there. The ocean wasn't different. It wasn't gone. It didn't change because I wasn't looking at it. The sunset was just as beautiful whether I was looking at it or not but I had to turn around and look at it to enjoy. And I did. And the sunset was beautiful and the light was like crystals on the water and I got to enjoy it. But I had to change my position to see the view. We have to change our hearts position to see the hope. We have to humble ourselves to see the hope. The second thing to give us hope is that God is merciful and compassionate.

Verse 22 says, "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, although we should be." Romans 6 23 says, "For the wages of sin is death." That's the cost of our sin. We should be consumed. But it goes on to say, "But the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." Because of his love, we are not consumed. One commentary said, "There was still a remnant." As in referring to the Israelites. There was a small group that was left in Jerusalem. Most were taken into captivity or killed. But there was a small remnant that was left in Jerusalem that eventually took part in rebuilding the city and rebuilding the temple. He says, "There was still a remnant and a remnant with a promise of restoration." Wherever God leaves life, he leaves hope. If we're not dead, he's not done. There is hope. So we are not consumed and his compassion never run out. Some translations say mercy, some say compassion, but they never run out. Verse 23 says, "They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness." His mercies are new every morning because we need them to be. They don't change or expire every night at midnight. Like they don't run out. But because we are sinful and forgetful, we need his new mercies every single day. We need them to be freshly available to us. And they are. Because he is merciful, because he is compassionate. They are freshly available to us. The third thing that gives us hope is God's covenantal love compels him to redeem and restore. That's why he made a way for the Israelites to make things right through sacrifice. He gave them the law. He gave them the sacrifices that they could do in order to atone for their sin and get into right relationship with God.

It says in verse 22, "His steadfast love." This is a covenantal love. It's covenantal language because he made a covenant with his people back in the Old Testament. And because he did that, he was compelled to make a way to redeem and restore them. He did that personally through their sacrifices and atonement, but then he also did it corporately when he restored the city. But it's also why he sent Jesus to be the ultimate sacrifice for us. He brought in a new covenant. We are under a new covenant through Jesus' death and resurrection. His steadfast love, his covenantal love continues to redeem and restore to this day. That gives us hope. So we know this sin has consequences. We know that God is just and that he must serve justice in order to be who he says he is. And we know that there is hope. We see that through these verses that there is hope. So how do we move forward now? How do we walk in that freedom and walk in this truth and walk in that hope? Well, the first thing is we must reflect on our behavior, confess our sins and repent. We have to reflect and ask the Lord to search our hearts to identify where sin may be taking root. We have to be honest with ourselves about what's really going on in our hearts.

Verse 40 says, "Let us examine our ways and test them and let us return to the Lord." That's reflecting. That's confessing. That's repenting. That's turning away from our sin and back to him. We have to identify the sin and die to it in order to return to the Lord. See, sometimes sin is sneaky. We think that if we're not murdering someone or robbing a bank, we're good. We're not doing the big ones, right? We're okay. But the thing is, Satan knows that if we're trying to actively follow Christ, we're not going to do the really obvious illegal things. He's going to be more sneaky about it. Do you have anger, pride, selfishness in your heart? Do you covet what others have? Do you let your thoughts run wild instead of taking them captive and submitting them to the authority of Jesus? We have to reflect and allow the Lord to search our hearts, and then we have to confess and repent. But we can't just stay on the reflection piece, right? I heard one teacher, a preacher, talk about this. She said, "So often I would recognize the sin, the Lord would identify in my heart, and then I would learn all about it. I'd read the books and listen to the podcast and read the Bible about it, and I would know all about the sin. I would intellectualize the sin, but I wasn't putting it to death." We can intellectualize our sin. We can know all about it. We can know why it's there. We can know how to combat it. We can know all about it. But unless we are putting it at the foot of the cross and dying to it, we haven't done anything. We haven't truly repented. So reflect, confess, and repent. I fully believe that revival comes after confession and repentance. Not before. Revival in our own hearts, in our homes, in our church, in our communities. Revival won't come until we confess and repent. The second thing to move forward is remember that He is our portion.

Verse 24 says, "I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.'" I think that the main reason we sin is to fill something in our lives. Either something we think we need that we're lacking or something we think we deserve. But when we operate from the truth that the Lord is our portion, that He fills us with what we need, then we won't have to go looking for those other things to fill that need. Those sinful behaviors, even the good things, the friendships, the relationships, the stuff. Those aren't necessarily sinful, but if we idolize them or we turn to them without turning to God, then they become a problem. He is our portion. He is enough. He is so good. He is our portion. And lastly, we must put our hope in Him and seek Him. Verse 25 and 26 says, "The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord." We have to keep our eyes on Him. The Israelites took their eyes off Yahweh. They put them on the culture around them. They turned to the lesser man-made gods. They turned to the sinful practices of the nations around them. They didn't live in the law of the land that God had given them. They chose their own way. Scripture says over and over again that they were wise in their own eyes instead of keeping their eyes on God. So we put our hope in the Lord. We keep our eyes on Him. We lament the things that break God's heart. And then we move forward in the redemption and the freedom that we can only find in Him. Amen.

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for your covenantal love that compels you to redeem and restore. Thank you for your gift of salvation, for the hope of a future that we have with you. God, open our eyes to the reality of our sin. Convict our hearts and help us to move forward in repentance. God, we pray for revival in our hearts, in our homes, in our church, in our communities. But God, we have to go first in confessing and repenting of the things that go against you and your word, that break your heart, break those in us, Father. We thank you for your goodness, that your compassion and your mercies never run out or expire. They are new and freshly available to us every day. Help us live in those graces. Father, we love you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.