Genesis: Part 4

Genesis: Part 4

Genesis 3:15

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We’re excited to be continuing in a series. We just finished up our "We Are The Church" series. If you've been around for the last few weeks, you've heard that three-part series. "We Are The Church," if you've missed it at all or any part of it, we would really encourage you to go back and listen to those. It really helps unite us in our mission and vision here at Spring Valley Church to hear each week of those different aspects of church life. Again, we encourage you to go back on YouTube or podcasts, however you listen to sermons, and catch up on those. But we're going to jump back into a series that we started before "We Are The Church," which is our Genesis series, where we're looking at different patterns and themes that are repeated throughout Scripture that find their origin here in Genesis. And so far, we've looked at the themes of the power of God's Word, where he brings order out of chaos and creation. We've talked about Imago Dei being made in the image of God, and how we are called today to reflect that image to the world around us. We've also talked about the Fall, where sin entered the world, and then the human tendency that we see throughout Scripture, where humans rebel against God and choose their own way. You may be wondering, "Well, if I remember correctly, we only got through Genesis 3. Are we going to cover all of Genesis?" No, we're not. We're not going verse by verse in this series. We could be here forever, and I would love that. But this series, we're just highlighting some of these main themes. And again, the work that the biblical authors did in writing Scripture the way that they did was extremely intentional, as they weave these themes into the fabric of the text that we can notice them. And so that as we read more and more of Scripture, we're going to see these themes play out. And so that's part of our goal, is to help equip you with the tools that as you read the Bible on your own, as you study the Bible on your own, you're going to notice some of these patterns, like, "Oh, I've seen that before. I've seen this motif, or this theme, or I kind of know what happens here. This is a good thing." Or, "Maybe this is a bad thing that happens." There are so many, yeah, we won't have time to go into all of the reoccurring patterns, but the big ones happen here at the beginning of Genesis, and so that's what we're highlighting in our series.

Now that we're all caught up, jogging your memory of our series, I want to ask you a few questions as we begin our morning. First one is this. Can you think of the first time, do you remember the first time that you heard the gospel? So you think of that time, were you a child? Was it when you were an adult? A student? Where were you when you heard the first gospel message presented to you? Who did you hear it from? Was it a parent, a friend, a co-worker, a pastor? All right, you got that memory up in your mind. Follow-up question, can you think of the first time you knew that you had sinned? A little bit different. Can you think of the first time you remember feeling guilty over something? The first time that you recognized that I am responsible for the wrong that just happened? The last question, did these two experiences, the first time you remember hearing the gospel, the first time that you knew you had sinned, did those two experiences coincide with each other? I would say probably not. Maybe they did. Maybe the first time you sinned someone was like, "By the way, let me share Jesus with you right now." That would have been really cool. I think oftentimes we know that something's off and something's wrong and we're doing something we don't want to do. I think that comes along usually first, and then at some point someone brings about Jesus and the gospel. Everyone's experiences are a bit different, but again, you've probably had that moment. You can remember where I remember doing this in my life or this pattern in my life, and it just wasn't good. And then hopefully you can also remember the first time that you heard the gospel address that problem of sin in your life. Today we're going to revisit a passage that we've covered a couple weeks ago in our Genesis series. We're going to take a deeper look at a moment where sin entered the world for the first time and the first gospel message of hope was given, all in one.

So we're going to be in Genesis 3. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there now, Genesis 3. It'll be on the screen for you in a second. But just to give some context of what's happening in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are in the garden, the snake is there, he tempts Adam and Eve and they sin. They take the fruit from the tree, and this is what is known as the fall. And sin is introduced into the world. Adam and Eve rebelled against God, thinking that they could live life without God. They didn't need God, we're going to do this on our own. And so now, because of that, all of humanity since then deals with the problem of sin. And we learn from that moment what sin did in the garden. On a human level, it's us thinking that we have the wisdom to run our own lives without God. But all that leads to is selfishness, pain, murder, abuse, slavery, failure, and the list goes on and on and on. It does not end in anything good. It's where we act out of our own selfish desires and urges that compel us to act for our own benefit at the expense of others. Sin always affects us, affects us with God, and it affects us with others. Between God and humanity, sin put a distance where there was no distance. There was, it was relationship, God was walking in the garden with Adam and Eve, and it was great, but now sin put a distance between humanity and God. Paul writes that humanity became slaves to sin. We can't help it. Sin is this failure to be the humans who fully love God and others like God intended. And it's this inability to judge whether we are succeeding or failing. It's a deep and selfish impulse that drives much of our behavior. And this problem of sin, it's a problem that humanity cannot address on our own. We cannot save ourselves from sin and the consequences of sin. But something must be done. If humanity is to be with God and dwell with God forever in heaven as God desires, then something has to happen. And thankfully, just as we find out in Scripture that we have a sin problem, we also find out that God is going to intervene and do something about that sin problem. After the fall, after that moment, God and Adam and Eve and Satan, they have a conversation. And he tells Adam and Eve that life is going to be different. He talks about the pain and toil, that working and childbearing and the death that they will have to face. And so their reality is flipped upside down overnight, banished from the perfect garden of Eden to enter into the world marred by sin. And then to Satan, he says this in Genesis 3:15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

It's one of the most important verses in the Bible. Because in the midst of judgment, this is a very heavy scene where God is handing out the judgment of sin. In the midst of that, God promises that one day someone will come, a descendant who will do what Adam and Eve should have done, just crush the serpent and destroy him. And this promise that we get from God right here cuts through the darkness of death and sin and gives a glimmer of light, a little bit of hope in this moment. It's a promise of redemption. The first gospel message, the first glimmer of hope that would be found in Christ is here in Genesis 3, 15. So today, we're going to be focusing on redemption, redemption that is promised here in Genesis 3 that comes later and is woven throughout all of Scripture. We're going to talk about that today. I want to answer this question, what does it mean to be redeemed? Because understanding this will really truly affect so much of the story found throughout the Bible. Redemption comes up over and over and over and over again. So we want to make sure we understand what does biblical redemption mean. We don't often use the word redeem in our everyday language. I think most often we're talking about coupons. When we say the word redeem today, I have a coupon, I'm going to redeem it for a free burger or 20% off. Things aren't really free anymore, so it's like percentage off. You get to redeem a code, right? That's pretty much what we use, but that doesn't, if we were to just take that and put that over the Bible's definition of redemption, that's not the full picture. That's not the whole thing of what's happening. In the Bible, it describes something being transferred back to its rightful owner. So when you have something, when you own something, it belongs to you. And somewhere along the line, someone else ends up possessing that thing that was yours, whether they stole it, took it, whatever, however that happens, but they have something, someone else has something that was yours. So that's why already the way we use redeem does not really work fully with the Bible definition of redemption. We never had the burger, then gave it back to the restaurant, and then we're going to redeem that burger. No, it doesn't work like that, right? So in the Bible things, it once belonged to someone, someone else ends up with it. How do they get it back? Well, they can show proof of ownership, say, "Hey, this is mine. I have proof that that belongs to me. Can I have it back, please?" You can purchase it back. "Hey, you have that. What is it worth to you? I'm going to pay you. I want to get that back." Or you can take it back by demanding it. "That's mine. Better give it back to me right now." However it happens, the transferring of that thing back to you, to the rightful owner, is what the Bible calls redemption.

The Bible Project says this quote, I think it's really helpful, it says, "The story of the Bible begins with the idea that all creation, and especially humanity, belongs to God. But tragically, humans have been corrupted and enslaved by death. God wants humanity back. And the story of the Bible is about how God transfers us back into his possession. He redeems us." You may have heard those Christian phrases before, maybe in songs, but something like, "Purchased by the blood of the Lamb," or "Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb." This is referring to exactly that quote right there, where God is getting what was his back. What sin and death and Satan took, he's getting it back and it belongs to him. So we're talking about humanity being redeemed. This is about God taking humans back from evil and sin, redeeming us out of that into the life that he created us for.

Being redeemed by God is our only hope. The salvation that he gives is the only hope to the problem of sin. There is no other way. The world around us says that there's a lot of ways to deal with the pain and sin, and there is only one, and it's through Jesus Christ. And while we don't get all of that here, that huge definition of redemption and Jesus Christ, we don't get all of it per se in Genesis 3:15, we get the first building block of God's plan of redemption. We have the fortune of knowing the rest of the story. We can look back on this verse and understand that all that God is saying and implying in Genesis 3.15. But what's said right here is just a glimmer of faint hope. "He will crush your head and you will strike his heel." And if you know the Bible, you're putting together already, when you hear that, you know. We're talking about Jesus, we're talking about Satan, and we're talking about the death on the cross. So God is already saying, "I know what just happened here and how unfortunate this is, how devastating this is. I've got a plan. I've got a plan." Well, as we've also been doing in our series, I want to take time this morning to show how this theme shows up throughout the rest of Scripture. And just again, highlighting things, this is kind of just an overview, because each of these things I'm about to bring up could be its own sermon series in a way. But I want to show us how redemption is woven throughout Scripture. And it's a slow reveal. More and more of the plan becomes known over time. But what do we know right now? God tells the snake, despite this apparent victory in the garden, it's destined for defeat. The snake will be crushed. But the snake will deliver a lethal strike to the crusher. And so we have this mysterious future victory, but it gives us a clue to God's rescue plan.

He's got a plan to take what's His back. And the next part where we get more is Genesis 12, 15, and 17. You see, Genesis is divided up kind of into two sections. Genesis 1 through 11 is God interacting with the entire world. Genesis 12 through the end of Genesis is God interacting with one family, Abraham, and his plan to redeem, this plan of redemption being put in place through Abraham and his family. And so in Genesis 12, it kicks off with a covenant made to Abraham for a people, a land, and a blessing. It says in Genesis 12, 2 through 3, "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." So again, if we put on our lens of knowing the whole story, we look back at this and we say, "We know that God is talking about Jesus right here." And then in Genesis 15 and 17, he expounds more on that promise to Abraham. But God is saying, "Through your family, Abraham, I will bring a Savior that will be a blessing to the entire world." So now our picture of God's redemptive plan is filling out some more.

Now are you ready for even more? I got a lot of information. If you're a note taker, I'll let you know when to write something down. But I want to show some specifics here. So the first thing, this is God unveils this redemptive plan and there's a lot of different aspects. I don't know if you guys have ever played like Cranium or is it... Is it that game that you have little pie pieces and whoever gets the... It's like a trivia game? Anyways, this is Trivial Pursuit. Thank you. And if you ever played Trivial Pursuit, there's different categories. And if you get it and you fill out your little pie, that's kind of what's happening here. Don't... a little bit. So we're giving all these different pictures and pieces of God's redemption and how it works in the Bible. So the first one is this. First specific of redemption plan is redemption from enslavement. If you've read your Bible, you know that pretty soon after Abraham and his family gets going, they're in Egypt and they become enslaved. Exodus 6, Deuteronomy, God establishes a pattern of redemption by rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and bringing them back into his family. This is the part of the framework of redemption. It's not his entire plan, but he's letting the people know, he's letting us know more about him, about God, and his plan is he reveals this piece that, "Hey, when you get in trouble, when you are in some stage of consequence of sin, which is slavery, I have the power to redeem you and bring you out of that." So the redemption from enslavement.

We also have the redemption of the firstborn. Another part, Exodus 13 and Numbers 3, after the tenth plague, so where Israel is in Egypt and Moses has been sent and he says, "Hey, you got to get my people," and Pharaoh's like, "No," and so then the plagues happen. That's God saying, "Hey, I have the power to bring my people. Will you let them go?" And he sends the plagues and the tenth plague brings death of the firstborn of Egypt and Israel. Israel was not exempt. It wasn't just the Egyptians' firstborn. It was everyone in that land. All their firstborns were going to die, and God instructs Israel to redeem their firstborns by sacrificing a perfect lamb, painting that blood over the doorpost, and when the Holy Spirit would come through, he would let the firstborns live. If those people who show that they believe in God and trust in God, this is where Passover comes from. So he knew who to let live, and this is the redemption of the firstborn. This is another sign of where certain death is there. God is saying, "I have the power to redeem you from that situation and bring you back into life.”

The next one is redemption of land and enslaved relatives. It's found a lot in Leviticus, and this is where this happens because Israel experienced God's rescue and redemption from slavery. So now we're fast-forwarding in our story. Again, if you haven't noticed, we're just working our way through the Bible here in order. And God has brought them out of Egypt, and he's giving them instructions about how to be a nation. This is why I want you, Israel. This is how I want you to run as a people. Because of their past experience and being redeemed from slavery, God calls Israel to do likewise by redeeming family land and relatives sold as slaves due to poverty. So what would happen is they had a seven-year cycle. I'm just going to give you a little history and context here. And if your business was going so bad or your crops were going bad, you'd have to go to someone and say, "Hey, I need to borrow some money. It's not going well." And if that happened so much, you would give of yourself. You'd offer yourself into slavery and say, "I'm just going to work for you." But God said that's not going to be forever. We saw that happen in Egypt. We saw how bad that was and how the selfishness of humanity would take over and just run that slave into the ground and just use them and abuse them. And so he says, "We're going to have what's referred to as the year of Jubilee." Every seven years, the land was restored. Slaves were set free. Debts were forgiven. It's this amazing system that God created. And he said, "Look, we're going to put a cap on these unfortunate situations and give back." If you had to give up your land to make it, you get that land back at the end of seven years. If you had a debt that was racking up and you're working, it's just not working out, well, that debt is forgiven at the end of seven years. And so there's a redemption of land and enslaved relatives that's built into God's plan and God's people. The Israelites receive these commands from God. Again, they likely had that fresh and painful memories of the brutalities related to their experience in Egypt. And so God calls them to never perpetuate that kind of oppression again. Instead, they are to live according to his own pattern of redemption, refusing to let any Israelite stay trapped in poverty or bondage forever. Beautiful. Again, another piece in our pie puzzle of what redemption looks like and God's plan of redemption playing out in the people and in the Bible.

The next one is the redemption of blood. This is found in Numbers 35. And the Hebrew Bible describes not only the redemption of land and people, but also the redemption of blood in the wake of a murder. So what God instituted were these cities of refuge. Where if someone accidentally killed someone, accidentally killed someone, they could go to this city and be safe until they stood trial before the assembly. And these regulations about the redemption of blood are about preventing the spiral of violence. That people, when even if it's an accident, people get angry. And they might want to act out and say, "I don't care if it was an accident. I want to get back at you. I want to take your life." And God says, "We're going to have moments where we have opportunities for people to escape that, go to have a safe place to be until they stand trial, and we'll see what happens then." But it's about preventing the spiral of violence and upholding the supreme value that God puts on human life. So another piece of our puzzle. God continues to reveal more about his plan of redemption.

And we see it next in the Bible in Boaz's redemption of Naomi and restoration of Ruth. If you've heard of these people, you know the story. If you haven't yet, these are Israelites except for Ruth. And you should read the book of Ruth. It's really short. But it's all foreshadowing what God is doing in this bigger picture of redemption. Boaz acts as a kinsman redeemer for his relative Naomi, buying her land and restoring her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth back to the family through marriage. And so we see again, this is all the... In the book of Ruth, they follow the laws that God had instituted. And it creates this beautiful scenario. And it also foreshadows what Christ will do through his sacrifice. Redeeming us back into his family.

We next have the redemption from distress or death. The Hebrew Bible describes many situations where people are redeemed from situations of distress or death. That first Samuel passage is a passage in the Old Testament where Jonathan, who's the son of the first king of Israel, King Saul. Jonathan is his son. And he goes against his father's words. And the punishment for going against the king's words was death. If you disobey the king, you die. But he's saved from that outcome because of his character. And he follows God and all the men vouch for him. And he was not put to death. And again, this just foreshadows. This is a moment of redemption where he was bound. He should have died. But God has the power to do something about people who should die. That's foreshadowing the power that God displays through Jesus on the cross. And the eternal punishment we should face for our sin but that God saves us from.

Continuing on, if you know the story of Israel and through the Bible after the kings, the kings were not a good thing for Israel. And they get into exile. And other nations come and they take Israel. And so then we have this theme of the redemption from exile. And a lot of the prophets talk about this, but specifically Isaiah 43.1 says, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you." So God is telling the people through the prophets, "I have a plan. I will bring you back." God promises to redeem the Israelites from Babylonian exile, just as he earlier redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. And when God redeems his people, he not only frees them, but also forgives their sins that led to their exile in the first place. God says their wrongdoing will be removed like a heavy mist that vanishes. That's Isaiah 44 and 22. And as he redeems them from exile, God is also inviting them back into loving relationship with him. I love this picture, how loving God is in the prophets. When you read it, it's very dark, it's very heavy. It's a sad message because Israel's reality is so broken. But on God's side, it's such a picture of love. He's saying, "I forgive you, come back to me, and I love you." We know, having been in life where people have wronged us, how hard that is, we know we often want to say, "Sure, we can come back." But there's going to be some stipulations now. And we got some distance now, we got to build some trust again. But God in his infinite love says, "I forgive you, come back into my family. I love you just the same." I hope that we're getting the picture. All these pieces and the parts of redemption that God is playing out. All that sin has distorted and the pains and tragic realities that sin has caused for humanity, God has the power and his redemption redeems all of it. In the end, at the end, God will redeem all that sin has touched. Sin touched everything in the world, from the earth that we work with, to our lives, to the death that we face. That's all the cause of sin. And God is going to redeem all of it. God is doing work to redeem his people.

Then we get, at the end of the prophets, now in our Bibles, we're in the New Testament. And so we have redemption anticipated through Jesus. And this is going to be through his ministry, through his life and ministry. Israel awaited the fulfillment of the prophetic promise of redemption for centuries. But Jesus' way of fulfilling that promise surprises everyone. We've talked about this in many series. At this part in Israel's time, they're expecting a certain king. A king that would free them from the political landscape, that would bring them up to be a kingdom, an earthly kingdom, where they could rule over the other kingdoms in the world. But the way that Jesus fulfills the promise of redemption is so different than what the people were expecting. I want us to hear this today. We need to hear this today. Jesus is trying to tell the world at the time that the people's real enemies are not Romans, or other flesh and blood people, but the cosmic powers of sin and death. And Jesus redeems people from those powers so that he might restore them to life with God. That's what Jesus' mission was. I want to read this again. This is so important that we hear this, and I want to let you apply this in our context today. Jesus is trying to tell the world at the time that the people's real enemies are not the Romans, or other flesh and blood people. The enemy is the cosmic power of sin and death. And Jesus redeems people from those powers so that he might restore them to life with God. Church, we need to understand who our enemy is today. The word enemy is thrown around a lot, and we need to remember the words of Jesus and who he says our enemy is, who his enemy is, and therefore as Christians who our enemy is. And it's Satan, it's the enemy. It's the enemy. And the way that his sin and the power of death works in life, that's what we are fighting against. He did not speak into and affirm the people's desires to have an earthly king, to see their earthly enemies, who they thought were enemies, destroyed or killed. He doesn't do any of that. He doesn't speak to that. He redirects them to the real enemy, the cosmic power of sin and death, Satan. And we too need to be reminded that the flesh and blood people in our world are the ones that we need to love, that we need to reach with the gospel. Your enemy today is still Satan. Jesus is the only one who can redeem from those powers and restore us to life with God. If you are a Christian and you believe and you are in the family of God, then you too have the same enemy as him.

In the New Testament, we anticipate the redemption at the end of the gospels, the redemption is accomplished through Christ. And that's the final piece of our puzzle here, as we filled out what redemption looks like through scripture, we come to redemption accomplished through Jesus. Jesus redeems people from the corruption of sin and death. And there are so many passages, I only listed three here. I want to read Romans 3, it says, "The righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are all justified freely by his grace through redemption that came by Christ Jesus." God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. After the gospels in the New Testament, every letter, every book in the New Testament talks about the redemption found in Christ. 1 Peter says, "Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, so your faith and hope are in God." There's just so many more. But it talks about the accomplished work of Jesus. So by teaching us to relate rightly with God and neighbor, Jesus restored us to the kind of people God made humanity to be. He repossesses, he redeems us back into God's family. So we have a slide of everything listed up here. This is all the full picture of redemption throughout the scriptures. And all of it helps us understand the power of God, who he is, different aspects of how we see redemption. Even today, we can see some of these happening. All of these fill out God's redemptive rescue plan. They all show a different facet of God's redemptive work in the world and in our lives. There's another quote I want to share with you. It says this. I think we have a slide. Maybe we don't. "God's redemption aims for his people to be restored to his family, living as his children. Ultimately, God's redemption aims at healing people, making them whole and setting them free to be truly human so that they can live in ways that bring life for themselves, for others and for creation." He's bringing you back to the garden and say, "This is what I meant you to do. Do this now. I'll bring you back to the purpose that I created humanity for." Healing people, making them whole, setting them free to be truly human in the ways to bring life to others, for ourselves and for creation. All that sin touched, the ground that Adam had to work, the death that Adam and Eve and humanity faced, the pain, perversion, the slavery, the stealing, all the sin, God's plan of redemption rescues it all. So hearing all that with the context of all this in the Bible, we read Genesis 3.15, and it means so much more. "I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers, and he will crush your head and you will strike his heel.”

We understand that God had an incredible rescue plan from the beginning. I just want to have some very brief exhortations for us today in light of our message. The first is this, trust in God's redemptive plan, even when it unfolds over time. This book covers thousands of years, and the moment that hope entered is in the first few pages, and we don't get the fulfillment of that redemption until way over here. Trust in God's redemptive plan, even when it takes a long time. It can be hard to wait. It's so hard to be in the waiting, to not have everything restored and rescued right away, when we know that God has the power to do it right away. Some of us want to be perfect, we want to be better. And so we're like, "God, just make me, like, do the work quickly. Can you just microwave this whole process and, like, make me perfect?" But the work of the Spirit is a slow one, and it takes time. And it goes on for our entire lives. And so how does this affect your day-to-day faith with God? God's redemptive plan taking place over time? Where in your life do you need to rely on God, even in the waiting, and trust in his redemptive plan and work? Whether for you or for someone else in your life, how can you trust in God's redemptive plan?

Next is, remember God's redemption plan covers everything. Nothing and no one is beyond God's redemptive plan and power. We may not understand how that's possible. We may see someone and be like, "There's no way that God can save them. They are way out there." But God has outlined in his Word that his plan of redemption reaches everything that sin has touched, including the person that we don't know how they're going to get to God, but God has a way to get to them. How does that affect the way we view others? How does that affect the way we view the tragedies and chaos of the world? Remember the power of Christ's sacrifice in his heart to see everyone come to be restored into his family. And that leads us to the last one. Desire God's redemptive work in the lives of others. Pastor Chris, last week at our celebration Sunday, introduced the new vision for this next year, which was the 167. We have 168 hours in our week. One of them is spent here at church every week, hopefully at Sunday here in Spring Valley. And so what are you going to do with the other 167 hours to be intentional in partnering with God in his redemptive work in the world today? Who in your life would you love to see God's redemptive work take place in? Are you a part of God's redemptive plan for that person then? If you're like, "Hey, I know that I would love to see this person come to Jesus." Are you partaking with God and pushing that along in that plan that's taking place? Who do you need to talk to about Jesus or invite to church?

We need to be people who desire to see God's redemptive work in the lives of others, to take joy in it, to be eager to partner with God and say, "God, put me in." Is this the conversation you want? Spirit, are you prompting me right now? God, I'm going to keep praying. There's no conversation. I'm just going to keep praying for this person. Trust in God's redemptive plan. Remember his plan that covers everything and desire God's redemptive plan in the work of others. I hope that this pattern of redemption in scripture is more visible to you now, that when you read scripture, you go to your Bible, you see this plan of redemption more clearly, and that you can rejoice in the work that God is doing.

We Are The Church: Part 3

We Are The Church: Part 3

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, we are on our last week of our series for We Are The Church, and I'm really excited for what we're gonna talk about today but before we dive into that, I just wanna give you guys a reminder that at the beginning of this series, we talked about the Church Pulse Assessment that has been sent out to you through our email list and I believe there's even a text going out this afternoon as another reminder, but we would just really appreciate if all of you would take probably 10, 15 minutes to just go through that assessment. It'll help us as a leadership team to know where we can grow, what areas of weakness and strengths that we have, what you are looking for in your church body, but this is just something that we are going to have you go through, have everyone go through so that it will help us as we focus in on this next year. So if you would take some time to do that, we would really appreciate our goal is to get everyone to do that, so we would love for you to help us out with that.

We as a leadership team have a desire to see Spring Valley Church, really the global church, but specifically for us here at Spring Valley, for it to be your third place. Now, what is the third place? Well, in our culture, we often have three places. We have our home, we have our work, and then we have a third place, wherever you spend a lot of time. So for some people, maybe it's a coffee shop. I actually think Starbucks is the one who coined this term, who started this idea of a third place 'cause they wanted you to come be at their stores. But maybe it's a coffee shop or a bookstore. Maybe it is the library. Perhaps it's a really close friend's house or the home that you grew up in that your parents still live in. Wherever it is that if you're not at home or work or school, you are at this third place. And we just, we kind of have this dream or this vision that we would be your third place. Now, even if it's not the church building itself, although we have a lot of events and things here, obviously we hold our church services here, even if it's not here specifically, that the body, the people, our SVC family, wherever you may be gathering would be your third place. We hope that it's a place that when service is over, you stay and you talk, you linger. That's why we got the picnic tables outside. That's why we try to have an all-church meal regularly so we can stay after and fellowship and be with each other. Maybe it's this idea of when the check has been paid, maybe you've gone out to lunch after service or you meet up with some church friends on a Friday night, that after the check has been paid, you don't rush off, but you stay. And you continue to be together. We want it to be a place where we are in each other's business, we're in each other's lives regularly. That is our hope. And honestly, that's what a big part of what we're celebrating today, is the fact that people have chosen to make Spring Valley their church family or their third place. And we are so excited about what God is doing here. So we're gonna look more into that, about what that means for us individually and corporately as a church body.

There was a Harvard study done that said that one in three people believe the following. It says that, they said, "You have needs in your life "and no one to meet them. "You have hurts to share and no one to listen to them. "You have love to give and no one to receive it." So one of the 36 of Americans are enduring ongoing feelings of loneliness, isolation and longing to be loved and to love. 36%. Honestly, I would imagine that's actually kind of low, to some degree. 'Cause it's not God's design or His intention for His kids. That's not how He made us, to be enduring feelings of loneliness, isolation and wanting to love and be loved. We're actually on a pause from our Genesis series for this We Are the Church series, but I'm actually gonna take us to Genesis again. 'Cause I think it's a really good reminder of why we are built for community. So in Genesis one, God, we see creation. God made order out of chaos and He created the world. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and He said, "It is good." Let there be light, light was good. Stars, planets, fish, plants, birds, animals. All of it, He said, was good. But then God said something wasn't good. After He made man, made Adam, and He saw that Adam had no one to do life with, had no one to laugh with or cry with or spend time with or share experiences with, He said, "This isn't good." Genesis 2:18 says, "The Lord God said, 'It is not good "'for the man to be alone. "'I will make a helper suitable for him.’"

And then moving on to 22, "Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib "He had taken out of the man "and He brought her to the man. "The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones "'and flesh of my flesh. "'She shall be called woman "'for she was taken out of the man.'" It wasn't good for him to be alone. God designed them to be together, to be in community. We know this because of what we've also talked about in our Genesis series of what came before man was made. What did God say before He made humans? Genesis 1:26, "Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness. "Let us make them in our image." That's plural language. So we see that the Trinity exists in community. We have Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. There's this perfect community that exists, distinct persons, but united as one. Now, God didn't create us because He was lonely. We see that because He was in community. He wasn't lonely and God doesn't need anything. So He didn't create us because He was lonely. He created us because He is love. Love isn't what God did, it's who He is. And He wanted to make us, to be in relationship with us. That's where we get the greatest commandment. Matthew 22, Jesus says, "The greatest commandment "is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, "and love your neighbor as yourself." So out of His love, He created us and then He gave us each other so that we can love Him and love each other. We were made for community.

The early church that we see in the book of Acts is really embraced this idea. They understood it. They knew that they needed each other. If you'll turn with me to Acts 2 in your Bibles or your phones, we'll also have it up on the screen. Acts 2:46-47, we see this picture of the early church embracing their community. It says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching "and to 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 to give "to anyone who had need." Verse 46, "Every day they continued to meet together "in the temple courts. "They broke bread in their homes and ate together "with glad and sincere hearts, praising God "and enjoying the favor of all the people. "And the Lord added to their number daily "those who were being saved." Every day they were together. They met together, they spent time together, they made food together, they ate and did life, they took care of each other. It was more than just physical proximity, although that was very important, but it created a spiritual intimacy and an emotional unity.

Why did they gather so often? Well, they needed each other and they knew they needed each other. They were aware of it, so they did something about it. Many believers, all believers, need that community too, but I think, especially in our modern day, we've forgotten it. We have forgotten how much we need each other. Maybe we have our immediate family, maybe we have our best friend or our spouse, but then beyond that, we forget that we need other people. A lot of us have embraced this, an isolating existence, maybe not even intentionally, but with the way of technology and advancement in conveniences, we work and shop and play online. We have social media that's not actually that social. We think it is, we pretend it is. And don't get me wrong, you can make real, I have made friendships with people online, but it's different, it's different when you are in person. We watch sermons, we listen to podcasts, we listen to audiobooks, all online. We think we don't need anything else, we don't need to go out or be with people. These are not bad things, please hear me on that. I do all of those things myself, these are not bad things. But I think we've lost the thread when it comes to truly living in community with other people, of seeing others and being seen by them. You can't do that when you're alone, you can't do that when you're just behind a screen, you can't do that when you're choosing to live in isolation. The reality is that as we all know, relationships can be messy. It can be scary to be vulnerable, to open ourselves up to people, to risk being hurt, 'cause we're all imperfect, we're all gonna mess up. And honestly, I think sometimes it's just inconvenient. We have work, we have our homes, we have our families, we have things we've gotta do, and so to put those on pause, to go be with other people can be really inconvenient, or even to invite people into that can be really inconvenient. So we don't, or we limit it. But see, being with each other is so good for us. It's good for our mental health, as science shows. It is good for the joy of our lives, it adds so much joy. It provides opportunity for encouragement and accountability. It helps breathe spiritual growth like nothing else does. You need each other, we need each other. Acts says that they met together daily, in person, in their homes, they went to each other's houses. They were all up in each other's business. They saw each other parenting, they saw their marriages, they saw what happens when they were stressed. And the thing with those kinds of relationships and that kind of community, it doesn't stay at surface level for very long, it can't. When you see who someone is when they are stressed out, you know who they are. I mean, if you think about what do we do when we have a loved one or someone we care about that suffers a tragedy or a loss? Maybe we send a text, hey, thinking about you, praying for you, let me know how I can help. Maybe we send flowers or drop off a meal on their porch. These are all good things, don't stop those things, do those things. But may I encourage you to pick up the phone. I think I'm probably more talking to my generation and younger, we have like an allergy to phone calls. Right, pick up the phone, let them hear your voice. Or, and hang with me here, go to them. Go be with them. Show up on their porch with a hot pizza and a hug and you are just ready to practice the ministry of presence. You are just there for them. You're a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry in, you don't have to say anything.

Sometimes people just wanna know that they are seen and they are known and they're not alone. I think sometimes we don't feel like we've maybe built up the relational equity needed to do that, needed to step into someone's space or to invite them into ours. But do you know where that relational equity is built? In regular, intentional community. When we are intentional about being with each other, it builds that relational equity so that we can show up for each other. Having Christian community, being the church, having this be your third place will not happen by accident. It has to be done intentionally. But when it is, it's what combats the loneliness. It's what fights against the things we talked about earlier from the Harvard study. It says, it's gonna provide someone who can help you meet your needs. It's going to give you someone whom you can share your hurt with, who will listen to you and pray for you. It's gonna give you someone to love and who will love you. When we commit to being in relationship with others, it combats the loneliness, it pushes it back in our own lives, but also in the lives of others. When we are committing to Christian community, we're creating the opportunity for ourselves to be in community, but also for others. What if, at least to some extent, God is asking you to live in Christian community, not for yourself, but for someone else? Maybe you're one of the two out of three that isn't struggling with loneliness or isolation right now. You still need community because other people need you. Someone else may need you to be there, to show up. And I promise you, one day, you're gonna be on the receiving end of that, but you have to be engaged consistently and intentionally in the body of Christ.

Our leadership team here has worked really hard to try to create some of these spaces and places for you to come and be a part of that. Our monthly men's and women's events, the guys just had an awesome time at ax throwing on Friday night. Yeah, I heard it was so much fun. Ladies, should we go ax throwing, maybe? No, okay. I'm just saying, the guys had so much fun. Well, we have our men's and women's events, we have our weekly Bible studies, we have youth on Monday nights for our students, family fun night we got coming up on Friday, and we want to create more. We're working to gather more opportunities for us to come together in addition to our Sunday morning. But we do this because like the early church, we know that we need each other. But here's where I might step on some toes. We can provide the place, but you have to choose it. You have to prioritize it. Just like we often choose things that cause us to live in isolation, sometimes we choose things that prevent us from engaging in that Christian community, from being there when we know we should be. And sometimes it's as simple as we over schedule. We say yes to too many things, not necessarily bad things, but we just say yes to too many things. Maybe we have all the kids' extracurricular activities or sports, maybe we take all the overtime shifts that we can. Maybe we just are hiding. Instead of opening ourselves up to other people, we would rather hide. We'd rather stay isolated. We'd rather protect ourselves. We don't want to be inconvenienced. 'Cause it is, it can be inconvenient. But it is so vital to our Christian life, to our spiritual growth and to our walk with Christ to do so alongside other believers. That is why we gather. The early church knew that and we can model our life after that. So what do we want our Christian community to be like? Well, I think there's many things, but we're gonna look at four things that we want our Christian community here at Spring Valley Church, your third place to be.

Number one, we want it to be full of grace. Acts 20:32, Paul is talking to the believers in the church and he says, "Now I commit you to God "and to the word of His grace, which can build you up "and give you an inheritance among all those "who are sanctified." We are given God's grace for the purpose of our sanctification, which means we are just being more, made more and more like Jesus. But because we have been given His grace, we can extend that grace to other people. So when someone walks in, it is not a place of judgment. Everyone is welcome. Come as you are. Jesus called people to Him. He didn't say, "Go clean yourself up first." He said, "Come follow me." So just like we have been given so much grace, we live in that grace and we extend that grace to other people. So we want our community to be a place that is full of grace. And all of these things require your participation. I can say these things all day long, but all of us have to embrace these practices so that we are all participating in this community, in this way. So we gotta be full of grace.

Number two, we want our community to be a place of healing. I read a pastor's quote this week. He says, "Confess to God for forgiveness. "Confess to people for healing." Now, we can be healed. God is the one who does the healing. But there is something supernatural that happens when we confess to someone else. James 5:16 says, "Therefore, confess your sins "to each other and pray for each other "so that you may be healed. "The prayer of a righteous person "is powerful and effective." I've said it before and I'll say it again, revival will not happen without confession and repentance. We cannot have revival in our own hearts or in our church until we confess and repent and turn away from what breaks the heart of God. Now, confessing often just means confessing your sin, admitting the sin you've had. You take it to God and you ask for forgiveness. But when I talk about confessing to other people, I'm talking about sharing that with someone, expressing that struggle to them so they can pray for you, so they can hold you accountable, so that they can be there for you. But it can also mean confessing something else that you are going through. Maybe it is a struggle, maybe it is a past hurt or trauma that you've never shared with anyone and you can't experience healing because it is keeping you in bondage 'cause you've never told anyone. When we practice confession with other people, when we surround ourselves with people that will pray for us and will intercede for us on our behalf, we experience freedom from bondage. Chains are broken, supernatural and spiritual healing comes through confession. So we wanna be a place of healing.

Number three, we wanna be unified in our mission. We wanna be on the same page when it comes to what we are called to as a body. Acts 2, again, 46 through 47 says, "Every day they continue to meet together "in the temple courts. "They broke bread in their homes "and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, "praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people "and all the Lord added to their number daily, "those who were being saved." Our mission is to spread the gospel. That's our number one goal, is to point people to Jesus and make heaven crowded. We want to see our community saturated with the glory of God. That's our mission, is to be filled up here and then go out and overflow to the world. When we are operating in community regularly, we become more unified in that mission. Are we adding to our number daily, those who are being saved? No, but we are growing. And again, that's something we're gonna celebrate this afternoon. That we are seeing numbers being added to us daily. And we don't celebrate them just for the sake of bigger numbers and seeing those numbers grow. We are celebrating souls that were lost that have now been found. Lives that have been surrendered to Christ. People that have joined our Christian community and chosen to be part of our Spring Valley family. That is what we are celebrating. But again, it's because we meet together regularly that we build up the body, that we become clear in our mission. That we're in it together, that we're stronger together and that it builds our faith and it builds our relationships so that we can be more effective for His kingdom.

Number four, it is where we become battle ready. Our time and community makes us ready for the spiritual battles that we face every day. In the church in America, I think we really downplay the spirit realm, spiritual warfare. And I think part of it is we're afraid of sounding a little crazy or even of running the risk of over spiritualizing things. But at the risk of over spiritualizing it, I'm gonna tell you there is a spiritual battle. We all face those battles. And so when we come together, it is an equipping of the saints. It is getting us battle ready for when we go out and we face those spiritual battles. The Bible says we don't fight against flesh and blood, but against powers and authorities and principalities of the dark world. We're not gonna be very good at fighting spiritual battles if we have not become ready, if we have not armored up and been prepared. So we come together and we're equipped through worship, through the teaching of God's word, through fellowship. Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, "so one person sharpens another." You can't sharpen something without contact. It has to come into contact in order to be sharpened. But when it's sharp, we become dangerous to the enemy. Through community, we are given the tools we need to combat, to combat the enemy, to combat in spiritual warfare, and we are just stronger in numbers.

Paul talks about this in Ephesians when he tells us to put on the full armor of God. When he's writing this, he's referring to the Roman soldier's armor. And he talks about the shield of faith, that that is the main form of protection. And the Roman soldiers would have a giant shield that would, basically big enough to hide behind. But when the enemy was sending flaming arrows arcing over into their territory, they would circle up and lift up their shields to create a shell. So not only was it protecting them, it was protecting their fellow soldier. So when we become battle ready, not only is it going to help us and prepare us to fight a spiritual battle, it's gonna protect our brothers and sisters. We have a couple guys in our church who are ex-military, and they have tattoos that say I-G-Y-6 And I asked them about it. I said, "What does I-G-Y -6 stand for?" And they said, "I got your six." Meaning, I've got your back. Paul talks a lot about soldiers and being ready and armoring up and military language. So just like our men and women in uniform, we as the body of believers, we have each other's backs. We can say that because we are operating in community, I got your six, I've got your back. But we can't do that if we don't know each other, if we aren't spending time together, if we aren't with each other.

When we live life together and have real conversations, when we open ourselves up to vulnerability, when we get equipped, we're gonna be more prepared to defend against the devil schemes. Friends, there's a lot of darkness in this world. We are not ignorant to that. We've seen that time and time again. More school shootings than I'd like to count. Oh, immigrant woman being brutally murdered on public transportation. Charlie Kirk being assassinated over and over. There are stories of terrible things. Evil is rampant in our world. But I'm here to tell you that the church of Jesus Christ is alive and well. But we have to get ready. When we are full of grace, when we are a place of confession that leads to healing, when we are unified in our mission, in our battle ready, we will together be able to push back that darkness. We'll be able to stand firm with clarity and courage against the lies of the enemy. We can push back against tribalism and division. Then we get to offer peace to the world, the peace of Christ. We get to be the peace bearers that go out and point people to Jesus. Our loneliness will be our downfall. Our isolation from each other will be our downfall. But Matthew 18:20 says, for where two or three gather in the name of the Lord, He will be there with us. So maybe loneliness and isolation will be our downfall, but victory through Jesus will happen and be found in community. So we are the church. Who's ready to commit to being a part of the body of Christ, to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Sign me up for that. Sign me up for that.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you that you made us for community, that you made us for relationships, that you put us together so that we can make each other better, so that we could sharpen each other, so that we wouldn't be lonely or trying to do this life in isolation. God, thank you for our church family. Thank you for this place that we can call our church home, that we can come together and fellowship with each other, that we can be with each other in the lows and celebrate in the highs. We praise you for designing us this way, for knowing that we would need each other. Help us to lean into that. Help us to be vulnerable. Help us to be open. Help us to be committed to where you have placed us in the body of Christ. We praise you. We thank you. We love you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

We Are The Church: Part 2

We Are The Church: Part 2

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, my name is Andrei, I'm one of the pastors here and we're glad that we're all together this Sunday. We are taking a break, as was said, from our Genesis series. We're doing the We Are The Church series. I want to remind you that we sent out an assessment, a church assessment via text, via email this past week and many of you have taken it, we really appreciate that. If you haven't yet, don't you worry, you're getting another text and another email and another opportunity to take that church assessment. And again, it's all to help us as a church and our leadership to understand where we're at and to move forward with the best steps possible. So if you could take some time this week, if you haven't yet, to take that church assessment, we would really appreciate that.

Last week, Pastor Chris started off our series, We Are The Church, and he had three mindsets for us, to be more devoted, to be more generous, and to share the love of Jesus, which we're going to talk about more today. But he ended with the encouragement to change the object of our devotion by taking one step. And he said maybe that is to begin tithing or to increase your tithing, to begin volunteering at church, to pray daily, and whatever that step was for you, I pray that God has been stirring within you clarity over what the step is to take and that you guys are taking those steps every day and these weeks ahead. So we are excited about what this series is going to mean for us individually and us as a church.

Today we're going to be talking about a question, why are we the church? Why are we the church? And while the verbiage may be different from every church that you go to generally, there are two things that are hidden in every kind of mission statement or vision statement for a church, and that is to bring glory to God and to bring people to Jesus. So those two things, to bring glory to God, to bring people to Jesus, this is why the church exists. We say it, it's on our wall here at Spring Valley, to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. So you can see in there we're trying to bring glory to God, and we're also trying to bring people to Jesus. Sometimes that can go from the forefront of our minds to the back, and we tend to forget why we are the church, why we're Christians and what our purpose is and why we gather together, even when it is a huge font on the side of our sanctuary. Sometimes we forget.

This reminds me of a story. When I was a pastor at a former church at East Parkway, there was a group. As I was pastoring, the group started coming to church, and it was eight to ten people, and they all came in this big van, this big 12-passenger van, and they were people who were in recovery or homeless, and they all came from a shelter up the road. They came from a long ways away, men and women, all dealing with, again, some point in their recovery, and they would drive over an hour to be here because someone, the person who was bringing them, had gone through recovery and seen the importance of church. They had a family member that went to that church, and so he was like, "Hey, I'm going to church now, and I think all these other people should also go to church." In order to be on time, I can give you the setting here, they would get there really early because they were driving far away, and so they'd often just be there in the parking lot for more than a half hour just chilling. For those who didn't know their story, it kind of looked a little odd. There's a group of 10 or 11 people, eight to ten, whatever, people sitting in the parking lot, smoking a lot of cigarettes, and not looking maybe like everyone else at the church. They were dressed in their best, but sometimes you go to a certain church setting, and there's just like, "Oh, well, we all look like this, and these people don't look like that." And again, it was a little off-putting for those who didn't know the story of why is there a group loitering in the parking lot and just smoking away, and then they come and they take all our brownies and cookies in the morning, and they keep drinking all the coffee. But for those who did know, it always put a smile on our faces to see that they were there. Why? Because we knew that this is why the church existed, to bring glory to God and to bring people to Jesus, and the person driving those people was bringing people to the house of God to go to church on Sundays. And as their story kind of came out over Sundays after Sundays, and people were asking, "Who are they? Who are they?" And then eventually the whole church knew, and the whole church, even if they didn't at first understand and see, but they were coming as they were, just love them as they were, and so the church had to learn to do the same.

And today we're going to be in a passage in Scripture where Jesus accepts someone just as they are, and the example that it is to us of why the church is the church. And so we're going to be in Mark 2. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along on the screen or on your phone. So we're going to be in Mark 2, and just to give a little background, Jesus has returned to home base, Capernaum, and he's teaching in a home, and there's no room left. As you can imagine, Jesus has quite the following, and when he comes into town, people want to hear, and so he comes to this house, and it is packed. It's like if Jesus showed up to one of your life groups, and you'd just be texting, like, "Hey, he's here, and you should get here," and your house was full. And this group at this house has got some pretty important people. You got everyone from the next-door neighbors to religious leaders who showed up to hear Jesus talk. From our passage, I want us to see the types of people that we see in this story and remind us that it's the very same types of people that we see in church today. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to read. If you guys could bow your heads one more time with me. God, thank you for the chance to gather. We do not ever want to take this for granted. We can gather on a Sunday freely and worship you and hear your truth be preached. God, we pray for this message that you have prepared. I pray that it would reach our hearts, that it would draw us closer to you, that it would encourage us to give you everything we have and to live for you every moment of every day. And God, I pray that as we have a deeper understanding of who you are, we would have a deeper understanding of who we are and why we as a church exist. So be with us this morning. We give this time to you. We pray this in your name. Amen. All right. Let me go ahead and read our passage, starting in verse 1, Mark 2. A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Now some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Immediately, Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier, to say to this paralyzed man, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat, and walk?' But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." So he said to the man, "I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home." He got up, took his mat, walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone, and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this.”

Another pastor, Pastor Greg Crochell, has some helpful insights into this passage, and I want to share some of those this morning. So we are going to look at five different types of people. In every church, you see five different types of people. The first is, you walk into a church, every church, you see someone in need. In our passage, it's the paralytic, in need of healing. Obviously, he has his friends there, but he needs something. He is living a life where he is not whole physically. And for that culture at that time, someone who was paralyzed, it was often associated with a generational sin. His parents must have done something, that he is now living a life like this. We won't get into all that right now, but this man is in need of physical healing. Today that could be in our church, someone battling depression, dealing with financial struggles, a single parent, someone feeling alone and hopeless, fighting anxiety. You come to church, and you are in need. There are people in our church today who are in need, in this room, who are in need. Sometimes that's us. We walk in, and we just need Jesus, and we need those other Christians in our lives. Other times, you go to church, and you're in a good place, you're experiencing a good season, God's blessing you, and you're able to think outside of yourselves, and you're aware of the needs around you, and that brings up our second person.

In every church, you will find someone who cares. In our passage, we see the four friends of this paralyzed man, who took it upon themselves to bring the man before Jesus. And they don't just stop once the house is filled. They didn't take him there like, "Hey, look, we couldn't get through. So sorry. Maybe we can meet Jesus next time, next week, at the Life Group, at this house." They care, they cared enough to keep going, determined to find a way to bring their friend to Jesus. Come back to that in a second. Today, in our church, there are people who care deeply for others, who have the capacity to care deeply. They are mindful of the lives that we are living, and people in need, and they want to do something about it. And maybe that's as simple as connecting with a person, sending them a text, "Hey, I know I was talking to this person on Sunday. I know they're going through a hard time. I'm going to reach out this week and just let them know that they're not alone. I'm thinking of them. I'm praying for them." Maybe that's meeting up for coffee and saying, "Hey, I know that they have a hard time getting out of the house. I'm going to go invite them to coffee. We're going to spend some time together." Maybe it's providing meals. Someone who's, "Hey, meal prepping is the thing that is very difficult right now. We're going to provide some meals for that person." Or maybe it's someone that we all cringe at, helping someone move. A classic, classic church help. And it's still good. We should all do it. We should help people move. It's a tough one. Maybe it's giving some money to someone who is in need and say, "Hey, I'm having a hard time this month. I'm doing my best, but it's just things aren't there." And there's someone who has the means to provide help. Whatever the need is, there are people in church who care. And I know, and I know that you guys know, I want to encourage us, there are people at Spring Valley who care, who have the capacity to care.

So you see, in church, you see someone in need, you see someone who cares, you also see someone who is preoccupied. In our passage, there's a whole house full of people, wall to wall, so full that four people could not get through. They had to dig a hole in the roof. I want to show, do we have the picture? There's a picture of a house. Can we put that up there? This is what they would have, something like this would have been what they were working with. So there's a kind of a courtyard, that was all full, just imagine that whole place packed with people. And the roof was made of some wooden beams, some straw and clay manure mixture, and then when it rained or if there was water put on top, that clay would kind of seal and harden. And so when it said they had to dig through the roof, they literally had to dig through some very hard materials to get through. And there was also like grass up there and people would work up there and just relax up there maybe after, I don't know. But there's, you could walk up on that roof, it was very strong. And so it was not a small thing to say, hey, we're just going to like put apart some straw. It was no, it was a whole material that they had to dig through. That's how committed these friends were, to get through all of that. And the friends could not get through that house. It was so packed. Even with, I imagine they were whispering, hey, we have someone here who needs to see Jesus. They're not just like, hey, we just want to go to the front. There's like, hey, we got something going on. Can we get through? And no one will let them through. They were all preoccupied. They had their backs turned to the person in need. I like how Pastor Craig says it in regards to how it can look today. It says there can be Christian circles that love Jesus. They have their Christian bumper stickers. They have their Christian language. They say, praise the Lord, hallelujah. They listen to KLOVE radio. They have their favorite podcast. And without knowing it, and without meaning it, just because they were preoccupied, their body language, their posture essentially says to people around them, you can go to hell as far as we're concerned, because we're doing our Jesus thing. They didn't mean to, but they can just have their little Christian thing going on, and it's a good thing. They all liked each other, but they didn't realize they were preoccupied and had their backs turned to someone who was in need. Are we too preoccupied that we don't see people in need? We all have our own needs. We're not denying that. But there's also, we need to be aware of the people that are sitting around us in this room that we encounter outside these walls in our lives that are needing Jesus. And even something good, like our own personal walk with God, should not deter us from lifting up our heads and saying, "Who's around me right now that may be needing Jesus? And can I participate in them seeing Jesus, meeting Jesus, hearing Jesus?" Those four friends, they didn't give up. They didn't let those circumstances stop them from getting their friend to Jesus. That's the kind of attitude and heart and action that we need to have as a church, willing to do anything short of sin to reach people who don't know Christ. Pastor Craig says to reach people no one is reaching, we'll have to do things no one is doing. Let's sink in for a second.

To reach people that no one is reaching, we might have to do some things that no one else is doing, to have the conversations that no one else is having, to go take the time and sacrifice our time to go spend it when no one else is doing it. The friends of the paralytic do that. They say, "You know what? We can dig a hole through the roof. No bad ideas. We are determined to get this man to Jesus. How are we going to do it? We're going to go up to the roof, we're going to dig a hole, we're going to lower our friend down to Jesus." Imagine the scene inside. You're sitting there, probably standing there, standing room only, shoulder to shoulder, trying to hear Jesus. All of a sudden, some dirt starts falling down from the roof. What is going on up there? And then a man, this gaping hole opens up, and there's a man being lowered down in front of Jesus. And I imagine Jesus with the biggest smile on his face as he sees what's happening. I think we know that Mark 2:5, it says, "When Jesus saw their faith," saw their faith. For those friends, faith wasn't just an internal belief. It was a strong enough belief that it led them to action. You ever know someone that had such a strong faith you could see it in their lives? I know I have. I've said this to people. I can see their faith in the way they serve. I can see their faith in the way they pray. I can see their faith in the way they love people who are really hard to love. I can see that person's faith in the way they give. I can see a person's faith in the way they have compassion with people. I can see a person's faith in the way they love, in the way they talk to their children as a parent. I can see a person's faith when they're talking with people who they disagree with, and they are loving them like Jesus. People can see the way, they can see our faith in the way that we live. And in moments throughout life when we are choosing to be like Jesus, those four friends had a faith that you could see. And Jesus says, "When I saw their faith, something amazing happened." I imagine the paralyzed man through all of this hoping and praying for physical healing. That's why he's there. His friends, that's why they're bringing him there for physical healing. I no longer want to be paralyzed. I want to walk. I want to be whole. And yet Jesus didn't just give him healing. In fact, he does something else first. Even though the man brought the paralytic to be healed, Jesus sees a need that is more important because Jesus can do that. He can see what we want but knows exactly what we need. Pastor Craig says it this way, "Sometimes God gives us what we need before he gives us what we want." The man is lowered down. It's probably clear what the situation is that he cannot walk. And before healing him, the first thing that Jesus says to him, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Sometimes God gives us what we need before he gives us what we want. The man wanted his body to be healed, but Jesus knew that his heart needed to be forgiven. Praise God that he can see what we truly need, not just what we want. And it's at this point though, there were some people in the house have issue with what's happening. And maybe it started with they got dirt in their face and they're a little upset by that. But definitely the healing of someone and claiming to be God, forgiving sins, is where some people got really upset.

And that brings us to the fourth type of person that we see in every church. It's the uncomfortable one. Brace yourselves. Someone who is critical. I don't mean like vitally important. I mean someone who is always critiquing what is happening in the church. Verses 6 through 7 say, "Now some teachers of the law were sitting there thinking to themselves, 'Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" They're saying, "Jesus, you can't do this. That's not how this is going to happen. It's not how this is done." In churches today, there can be...that is present. There can be a lot of that. Someone who is critical, someone who is unhappy with things in church that aren't aligned with their preferences. They might not call them preferences. People who never seem to say anything positive, only negative, and complain and choose to see things through a critical lens. People who choose to ignore the work of Jesus that is happening in a church and instead make it about themselves and how they think, "This is not how I would do it," which means this is not how it should be done. But Jesus doesn't stop for the critics. Verse 10 says, "But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the man, 'I tell you, get up, take your mat, and go home.'" Take up your mat and go. You don't need it anymore. Jesus continues his work. And he might be saying today, "Maybe not take up your mat, but hey, leave your struggles here. Leave that financial struggle behind. Leave that anxiety here. Let go of your bad habits. Leave behind the shame. Go and follow me in your day-to-day life." That's what the paralytic did. Who's no longer a paralytic, a healed man. He gets up, healed by the power of Jesus, walks out in full view of all of them, and everyone's amazed. They've never seen anything like it before. This man's life was changed when he encountered Jesus, both internally and outwardly. And his physical, his body was healed, but his heart was forgiven. His sins were forgiven.

So, we'll see. In every church, someone in need, someone who cares, we have them all listed up here, someone who is preoccupied, and someone who is critical. Which one are you? Take a moment here. Look at that list. Assess your heart, where you're at in life. Maybe you're more than one. That's possible too. Maybe you go through different seasons, and so at one season you were this, but now you're in a season where, hey, now I'm this person. You might be someone in need. And if that's you, if you've said, hey, I'm the person in need, then this is the perfect place to be. You're exactly where you need to be, because in every church is someone who cares about your need. You are around people who care about what you're going through. Unfortunately, there are also those of us who are preoccupied. I've been there before. We put our heads down. We go to church. We say, hi, hey, hey, nice to see you, great, great. We go on with our day. We go on with our week. Yeah, I've got to go to church. And we're just going through the motions. We're in a rut. We're not bringing people to Jesus. We're kind of doing our own thing. We might have our backs turned to the people in our lives who need Jesus. And we may need Jesus to help us a bit more, to enable us to be considerate and caring to the people around us. Maybe there are those of us who are critical. Maybe we woke up on the wrong side of the bed one Sunday. Or maybe we need a good look at our heart, at what's going on inside of us. We need to ask Jesus, why am I thinking these things? Why am I saying these things? Which one are you? Someone in need, someone who cares, someone who's preoccupied, or someone who is critical? There's actually one more type. I said five types of people in every church. The last one is this. We in every church, we are all someone who can be changed. We are all someone who can be changed by the grace of God. All of us, every single one of us in this room, changed by the grace of Jesus. When you walk into a church, whether this church or you've been visiting other churches, you've been to other churches, when you walk into a church, who do you see all around you? But people who can be changed by God. Scripture tells us that if anyone, it doesn't matter who or what you've done, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old is gone and everything is being made new. If you are in Christ, you have freedom. Says he who the Son sets free is free indeed. We don't come here as perfect people. We don't come here as a social event. We don't come here to top off our spiritual tanks and be like, "I was just missing a little and now I'm back to being perfect again. I'm good to go out throughout my week." It's not how this works. We come here, whether you've known Jesus all your life or you just accepted him yesterday, we are all in need of Jesus and the life that he gives us and the grace that he bestows on us. We are all someone who can be changed by Jesus.

Now let me shift gears here. Who do we not see at church and who do we not see in this passage? Sounds tricky, but it's really simple, I promise. We don't see the people who aren't there. Gotcha. See, you see what I did there? We don't see the people who aren't there. Maybe in today's circumstances, maybe it's the woman who almost went but was too afraid because she had so much going on in her life and she was afraid that if anyone were to find out anything, that shame would keep her from making connections and being a part of that church. Maybe it's the guy who was interested but didn't want to miss the Sunday morning football games. I was just like, "Hey, no one's really invited me. I kind of thought about it, but I don't want to go." Maybe it's someone who before COVID was interested in going to church and then COVID happened and afterwards they never re-sparked that interest of going to church and no one's talked to them about going back to church. The list goes on and on and on about people and why they're not here. But what's needed is people who care, people who will invite them to church or invite them to have a conversation about Jesus. People who will care about not just what that person wants but what that person truly needs. I think of that group at my old church. They were only there because someone cared and because that person took action, they had a faith that led to action, said, "I'm going to get a van. I'm going to load all you up. I'm going to take you there every Sunday." This is why the church exists, to bring glory to God and to bring people to Jesus.

You guys should have got a card on your seat today. I want to pull that card out right now. It says, "I'm praying for an opportunity to share Jesus with someone." There's space for you to write a name down or a few names down. Just take a moment and think about who in your life needs to hear about Jesus. Write those names down, there's pens in the seats in front of you. I'll give you a moment to think about that. Who in your life needs to hear about Jesus? Family member, friends, neighbors, co-workers? Hopefully by now you've thought of someone, someone's come to mind. You guys should do me a favor. If you know someone who has not yet given their life to Jesus, who does not yet believe, would you guys mind raising your hand? If that's you, if you know someone who does not yet know, take a look around. Almost everyone in this room knows someone who needs to hear about Jesus. Every single one of us has someone in our lives who doesn't know him yet. We are called to be the church, to partner with Jesus in His kingdom work. We are the people that can share Jesus with others. You may be sitting there saying to yourself, "Yeah, but I don't know what to say. I don't have all the answers. What if they ask these really hard questions? And what am I supposed to say to that?" Well, I want to say this. It's okay, I'm giving you permission to say, "I don't know." That's a great question. I don't know. That's a really, I see what you're saying there. It's a really hard question you're asking and I'm not sure. I'll let you in on a, it's not a secret. I have a Bible minor, a Masters in Divinity, I'm ordained in the church. I don't know all the questions about the Bible. I put years and hours and I don't know. And I still say I don't know when I come to certain people and I have certain questions and I say, "That's a great, I don't know." And I lead them to what I do know. And this is the encouragement to you. You lead them to what you do know. So you have experience. If you are a believer in Jesus, if you've been following him in your life, then you have experience with Jesus and you share your experience. I don't know that answer that question, but what I do know is I've seen God work in my life. I've seen him provide for me. I've seen him work a miracle. I've seen him heal. I've seen him answer my prayers. I've seen him and how he loves me and I think he wants to love you. I know he wants to love you too. That right there, that's all you say, that is sharing Jesus with other people. And they may come back with, "But why did this happen?" I don't know. I have no idea. But I know that he loves you and he wants a relationship with you. That is sharing the gospel. It's what we're called to do. So the band comes back up for worship.

Hopefully you have someone on your card. And so, yeah, a couple of things. You have that card. You take that with you this week and put it somewhere where you're going to see it. You're going to be praying for that person, where it's going to be in front of you to say, "Hey, I'm praying for an opportunity." And maybe you're as bold as to walk right up and be like, "Hey, we haven't had a conversation yet. I need to talk to you about something." Or maybe you're just praying and you're waiting for the right opportune moment. And then maybe this week, it may be months from now where you have a chance to share. You may also be sitting there thinking, "This person's pretty hopeless and I've tried and I don't know if I'm going to be able to reach them." I want to say this. Sometimes those who look farthest from God are actually the closest because God is doing a work inside of them that we can't see. And sometimes it's at the lowest of lows where they're most open to hearing about Jesus. Even when people we'd love to see come to Jesus seem far away, we need to have hope and believe that God is the God who can do anything. And so you have those names. So I exhort you to look for an opportunity to share what you know, your experience of God with them. And we do this because we are the church. We exist here at Spring Valley to bring glory to God, to bring people to Jesus, to see our community saturated with the glory of God through making disciples in the everyday stuff of life. Do not forget your purpose. Don't leave these doors and this sanctuary thinking, "I just go back and I leave church behind me." No. You go into your life. You go into the people, your neighborhoods, your family, and you carry with you the burden and the desire and the urgency to say, "When I get the chance, when God opens that door, I'm going to share the truth. What's so important to me and what I want someone else to value too." We are all someone in need and we can all be someone who cares about someone by sharing Jesus with them. We're going to head into a time of prayer. We've done this once a month now and Pastor Lauren's going to be on this side. I'll be on this side. And in this next song, we want to invite you to do a couple of things. If you want to respond to what you've heard today in singing, we invite you to stand and sing and praise God. You have those names on those cards. If you want to just pray for those people and take this moment to pray for them and that opportunity to share them, I encourage you to do that. We're going to be on the sides here. If you want to bring those people up and we can pray with you about reaching those people. And if you just have stuff going on in life and you're like, "Look, I barely got here today. I got a lot of questions about what's going on in the world today and I would love some prayer." And please join us up here and we'd love to pray for you.

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.