In The Beginning

How are you doing Summit Church? Welcome at all of our campuses especially. I want to say a welcome to most of our college students who have come back this weekend. We are grateful that you are back.

We know that you had an awesome break but it's good to see everybody back here. Last weekend at the Summit Church we began a new series going through the entire Bible. The Bible intimidates a lot of people.

There is so much in the Bible that seems hard to understand and sometimes even more difficult to apply. I heard a true story this week that I think completely encapsulates that. Rupert Leary who is one of our college pastors told me that a guy serving in campus outreach befriended this past semester a graduate student from China studying abroad here in the United States.

We'll just call this graduate student Lee. He showed lots of interest in the faith. He literally had never heard about Jesus before last semester. So he dove right in and began to learn the gospel. To make a long story really short, he came to faith in Christ right before Christmas break last year. Well, just before he left to go home back to China for the Christmas break, the college pastor gives him his first English Mandarin Bible. He never owned a Bible before his life. The first time he puts one in his hands and just says read this on your own while you're back home. Well, at New Year's this college pastor gets a text from this Chinese student regarding Genesis 17 where God tells Abraham the sign of the covenant between me and you is that you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin. Lee believed that this was a step of obedience that Christians were supposed to take. He read it that morning. He walked into a clinic in China that afternoon and then sent this college pastor a text that night to tell him that the deed was done. So I have two thoughts here. Number one, you have to admire this kid's commitment to follow Jesus.

In fact, I might make for a good rallying call on campus. How far are you willing to follow Jesus? Will you go with him to the gauntlet?

Lee did. Number two, it is possible to misunderstand or misapply parts of the Bible. Hopefully any misinterpretations that you have made as you've begun to read the Bible this past week are not that painful. But needless to say, it can be intimidating to just pick up the Bible and say, I'm going to read it and I'm going to obey everything that I see.

By the way, if you don't know what circumcision is, your campus pastor would be absolutely overjoyed to stick around after service and explain to you everything there is to know about that. Furthermore, while many of you have learned little bits and shards of Bible knowledge over the years, you've never really brought it together in one unified whole. And we're going to try to change that this year. We're going to take a whole year, about 50 or so messages, and just go through the whole Bible. We're calling this series the whole story because that's what we're going to see. And all the stories, all the commands, all the genealogies, all the characters, there's really just one story that's being told. And it's a story not about you and your life. It's a story about Jesus.

I want you, I told you last week, to really take this seriously. And so to that end, we've given you a number of resources to use. The first one here is this Jesus Storybook Bible.

If you are in a family, I would encourage you to get this. And just once a week, read one of the stories in here. And if you do that, you'll stay pretty much right along with me as I work my way through the Bible. If you're not in a family and you're just like, I'm a young professional or something, it looks like a kid's book, but I'm telling you there's hardly anything better that gives you the picture of what's going on in the Bible.

I understand we were out of them at our campuses last week, but they have restocked themselves and so should have them. We've also got one of two reading plans for you to choose from. The JV plan, we'll call it, is in the newsletter.

You can tear it out. It's one or two chapters a day that will keep you pretty much right in line with what I'm going to be doing. And then there's the varsity plan, which is every single verse of the Bible that you could read in a year. And then one other thing I want to encourage you to do is to get into a small group. Small groups are going to be, most of them will be studying right along with me as I go through and you'll be able to go deeper into this stuff that we're learning. Small groups is the way that we connect and do community.

Many of you know that you need to be a part of one and this provides a perfect opportunity for you to do that and you'll hear more later on in the service about how you can do that. So if you have your Bibles, I want you to take them out right now and I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis 1-1. Genesis 1-1. Last week we established that the Bible is not a book about you. This is often people's first and biggest mistake about the Bible I explain. They approach it like a manual on how to fix your life. It's like a Christian version of Aesop's fables or something like that.

Practical advice for living. But I explain to you that the Bible is not a book about you. It's a book about Jesus.

Every character, every genealogy points to Him. Or as the Jesus storybook Bible states, every story whispers His name. And I explain that the irony is when you see that, that will fix your life. Or we might say it like this, the point of the Bible is not to tell you how to fix your life. The point of the Bible is to fix your eyes on Jesus and when that happens, His power will begin to fix your life. Well you're going to see this central message introduced in the very first verses of Genesis. Genesis 1 verse 1.

Here with me as I go through it. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light.

And there was light. Tim Keller says that in these three verses, you can see three things that were present before creation began. Each of which that has profound implications on how we live. Three things present before creation. Here we go.

Number one. Before the creation, there was God. There was God. In the beginning, God.

You say, well duh. But you may not realize how unique this is in creation accounts. In most other ancient creation accounts, the universe comes from something. There are usually multiple gods and our universe is the result of some cosmic battle. According to one myth, for example, the human race arises from the blood of a slain God. In another one, they're created from the remains of a dead sea monster. In these accounts, humans are typically an accident or an afterthought, the result of larger cosmic forces that have nothing to do with them. Yet in the book of Genesis, everything starts with one God who creates all by himself out of nothing.

Theologians call this creation ex nihilo or in Latin creation out of nothing. Isaiah 44 24 says that when God created the earth, he stretched out the heavens all alone. He was all by himself.

Nobody was with him. He took counsel with no one, not the angels, nobody. It all comes from him and it all exists for him. And then Genesis says something else. It says that God made man and woman in his own image. Genesis 1 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Verse 27, so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

Here's what all that means. If all things come from God and God made us in his image, there are two things that we will only ever be able to find in him. The first is the measure of our lives.

And by measure, I mean what is good, what is bad and what life's purpose is. Atheists you see have a problem and many of them know it because it's been pointed out by many of the best atheist philosophers. Guys like Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean Paul Sartre. Nietzsche and Sartre by the way are my favorite atheist of all because they forced their atheism to its bitter logical conclusion. Sartre said that the atheist problem starts with good news. The good news, he says, is once you dispense with God, you can do whatever you want. Guilt-free with no dread of retribution.

If you get away with it on earth, you'll get away with it for forever. The bad news, he says, however, is that when you get rid of God, you lose all intellectual bases for declaring anything to be inherently right or wrong. You see, in order to say something that is something is right or wrong, you have to have a standard to which you are comparing it.

To say something is against the design, you have to know what the design is. And if the universe is simply randomly colliding material particles, then there can't be any design or purpose and thus there can be no right or wrong. You might argue, practically speaking, that certain things seem more useful for the human race based on your vantage point, of course, but that's different than saying that something is inherently wrong or evil. You may feel that genocide is wrong, for example, but why? Just because you think it's more useful to the human race for there not to be genocide? Well, the Nazis had a different opinion and you might argue that they were wrong in that calculation, but that is different than saying that the strong targeting the weak for extinction is evil. And what's special about the human race anyway? Why should it survive? Why not let survival of the fittest do its work on us? You say, well, whatever the majority of people think is right, that's what's right and that's what should be the law.

Really? Well, where does that leave the slave living in the American South in the 1840s when the majority assumes that their oppression is what's most useful for society? Where does that leave the Jew in the 1930s in Europe?

If the Nazis had won and convinced everyone of the superiority of the Aryan race, would that have made Jewish oppression right? For the atheist, there is no such thing as true beauty. Again, just things that we have become programmed to believe are useful for us. Let me now quote from my least favorite atheist, Richard Dawkins, because he's the soundbite atheist. He says this, and I quote, when you look at certain scenery, you think it is beautiful because your ancestors believed that there was food out there.

And that particular neurological feature that helped them survive has now come down to you. And that's the reason that you see certain things as beautiful. Honestly, just ask yourself, do you buy that? Do you buy, if you do, I mean, you really do, then I've got a lot of respect for you because that just doesn't make sense with life. That feeling that you have looking out at a sunset or out at a starry night is just about finding food. Well, you look at the stars and remind you of a Twinkie or something.

I just don't understand that. No, there is something in us that says that's absurd or that love that you feel for your kids or your spouse. Do you honestly believe that it is only what Richard Dawkins says that it is just a conditioned response that our genes have programmed us to make in order to propagate our DNA faster than our neighbors can? Try putting that on a Hallmark card, right? My genes think you are useful for the propagation of my DNA.

All right, let's make out. It doesn't have quite the romantic zing to it, does it? For the atheist, things cannot be beautiful in themselves.

Things can only be useful. But you see, Christians believe that things are good and beautiful because they reflect the image of their creator. The sunset is beautiful because it displays for us a beautiful God and it makes us yearn for Him. So when you see that beauty of the sunset, your heart is supposed to cry out, God, you're amazing. You're amazing.

You're amazing. How majestic is your name in all the earth. How you have set your glory above the heavens, which was in Psalm 8 that you should have read in your Bible reading plan yesterday. The reason we long for justice and the reason we cherish love is because we are made in the image of a God who is just and whose love is never-ending. So because we come from God, God provides the measure for our lives. And then because we come from God, we also find our meaning in Him.

That's the second thing. You see, the human heart is designed so that it only works when God is at the center. The way the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible said it is that God has put eternity in our hearts. And what that means is that every man and woman, boy and girl has this yearning in them that says there's something more than just what I see here on earth. A philosopher I quote a lot named Blaise Pascal said it and you've probably heard this before. He says in every human heart there is a hole, there's a vacuum, a void. He said we spend all of our lives trying to figure out what goes into that vacuum. He says at first when you're a kid you think it's the love of your parents and you think if mom and dad approve of me then I'll be happy. He says as you get older that you turn to romantic love, sexual love, and you get older still and you think now it's going to be in money, it's going to be in the praise of people, it's going to be a success.

You know a lot of people end up turning to alcohol, drugs, some kind of sensual pleasure. He says but no matter what we try in life nothing ever seems to work because that hole is in the shape of God himself. It's a God-sized hole, it's a God-shaped hole and until we get God in the right place we always think that happiness is just around the corner.

I'm not happy yet but I know I'll do it when I achieve this. But until you find God you haven't found the purpose for your life. Until you find God life is like a tool, a tool that you just don't quite know what it's for. When Veronica and I moved into and our family moved into our house, you know the previous owner had obviously taken everything out but there was one key sitting on the mantle. It was a very odd shaped key but we could not for the life of us figure out what it went to. So we spent the three months just going out sticking that key into things seeing what it would would work and nothing worked.

And you know Veronica eventually was like well should I you know should we throw it away? I'm like well it's got to go to something. It's not just there randomly, it's got to go to something. Well you know so we kept well winter comes and it gets cold and we want to make a fire and how do you open the flu? The key, the key goes to the flu. Honestly I was a little disappointed because I was hoping it would be some like treasure chest.

I would pull up some board and like launch my own national treasure and I get to be Nicolas Cage or something like that but alas it was not to be. But the key had a purpose. It didn't make sense until you found the purpose.

You see that's what life is like until you find your place in God. You know that it's designed for something but you're just not quite sure what it is yet. C.S. Lewis says that this is one of the most powerful arguments there is for the existence of God. Now when I quote C.S.

Lewis there's some of y'all that are like I love that and others are y'all like oh he makes my head hurt. Just hang with me this is an easy one okay. Here's what Lewis says, a baby feels hunger. Well there's such a thing as food.

A duckling wants to swim. Well there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire.

Well there's such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures can satisfy that yearning. Well earthly pleasures were never never really meant to satisfy it but only to arouse it.

Only to suggest the real thing. You see what the Bible teaches you is that that beauty that you yearn for in a sunset that sense of peace that sense of eternity when you look out into the stars is there because God made it and God made it as a whisper and an echo of him because you are made in the image of God you will never find your place in life until you have found yourself in God. Everything is from him it finds its measure and its meaning in him everything is for him it all exists for his glory. You were created for God's glory.

You exist for it and one day you will be measured by how much you lived up to that and I can promise you you will only be fulfilled to the measure to the extent that you embrace the fact that you were created for God's glory. You weren't created for you you weren't created for sensual pleasures you weren't even created for romance you were created for God and the arms that you were searching for in romance were actually his arms and when you figure that out life starts to make a lot of sense. Number two before the creation there was love before the creation there was love. Let me show you this in verse 26 God says let us make man in our image. You read that you say well who is us right I didn't see anybody else in creation in fact remember Isaiah 44 says God was all by himself who else has slipped in there that's a great question go back to Genesis 1. What you see is that in the first three verses of Genesis what Christians call the trinity that God one God one essence of God existing in three persons is there in the very first verses of Genesis watch in the beginning God the father created the heavens and the earth and the spirit of God there's your Holy Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters literally in Hebrew it's like a dove was fluttering over the waters and God said God spoke that's the word and the word is the means by which God's going to create everything you say well I can see God the father and I can see spirit of God but where do you get like God said and that equals the word another great question John chapter one when the author John the apostle is going to introduce Jesus Christ to you he starts by going back and recoding Genesis and he just substitutes a few things here we go in the beginning was the word that's right and the word was with God the word was God there's your trinity God he is God but he's also with God he was in the beginning with God all things were made through him without him was not anything made that was me so the word that God used that the father used to create everything was Jesus from the very first chapter you see evidence that God is a trinity three persons existing in one being and I know I know that's hard to understand now I know when you feel think about it your mind feels like it's either going to explode or implode and you can't figure out which one the best we can do is come up with analogies and the problem with analogies is they all break down when you press them very far but here's what it means for us in God's very essence from the very beginning he's existed in relationship God didn't create us because we he was lonely he created us as an overflow of his love the apostle Paul in fact will say that the best analogy that we have for the trinity is marriage that's what the apostles says marriage God created marriage as a depiction of the trinity in marriage you got two persons that come together in one new essence and by the way out of that new essence comes a child in a good marriage you don't have kids because you're lonely if you do have kids because you're lonely in marriage you're going to screw up the kid you're supposed to bring the kid into a loving union that the love between the man and the wife spills out into that relationship well that's what we see in genesis God's love in the trinity spills out onto the canvas of the universe and then he invites his creation into that love that's why one of the phrases you see repeated throughout genesis one is the phrase and God saw and God saw you know why that phrase is all through there because God is like a good parent what do good parents do they watch their they watch their kids all the time that's why some of you ladies have your nanny cam right now and you've already checked it three times right you just want to know everything that's going on hopefully not now hopefully your kid's not at home um but you you know what I mean you just you want to see you want to know oh they're gurgling oh they're look at this they smiled God loved his creation he was like a daddy that just was watching everything that was going on by the way I got the most comfort and just depth of just meditation just thinking about that phrase this week God saw God sees are you going through financial difficulty God's not distant God sees it have you gone through a heartbreak if somebody betrayed you are you worried is your body in pain God sees it he's not a distant father he is a God that is close you have not been forgotten so at genesis one screams at you genesis one is an overflow of the love of God you can see that even in the literary structure of the chapter you see genesis one is not just a straightforward recounting of the facts genesis one is a very artistically written piece there's all this repetition and pattern each of the days of creation is told with this pattern where and God said and then God saw it and it was good and the evening and the morning were the first day it's something like a poem or a song maybe the best equivalent we have in English is a spoken word repeating and it was good at the end of each phrase is like saying come with it come come with it in Hebrew that's how you should hear that in the chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis presents creation happening as Aslan the lion representing Jesus singing the song of joy and intimacy in the trinity and creation just spills out of that song here's what that means for you practically listen because we are created in the image of a God who exists in love just like our lives will never be complete until God is at the center our lives will also never be complete until we are living in love and community with others the path of godliness always leads toward community always the path of godlessness always leads toward isolation the path of godliness leads toward relationships and commitment and things like small groups men let me talk to you for a minute um specifically because as we get older as men men tend to get more and more isolated and I just starts with an absence of friends think about your dad for a minute can you name his friends if you're average you can't you knew who your mom's friends were but you don't know who your dad's friends were because you probably didn't have any eventually we pull inward from our wives that always leads to destruction and unhealthiness proverbs 18 24 an isolated man seeks his own desire and rages against all sound judgment or I always give you the quote from david palace and things that grow in a secret garden always grow mutant whenever you're isolated whenever it's secret it will grow mutant not because you're a bad person but because that's how god designs you to be was in relationship and when that's not there you deform god created our hearts and lives to work only when we are in deep committed community with others you know that by the way you you know that instinctively just ask yourself how much different would your life have been if you had grown up in community what kind of difference would have made in your home growing up if your your parents and your family had been surrounded by godly community would it have prevented your parents divorce what would your dad's life have been like if he had close friends who were speaking into his life supporting him in difficult times speaking wise and godly counsel how much different would your life be if you had been in community as you got older what stupid mistakes would you have avoided if there were just people around you that were saying don't do that that is dumb don't do that i know it looks right don't go that path how much better would your life be in the days to come if you had community that was walking with you through every situation you go through speaking words of comfort and strength and power don't you inherently know that community leads to life don't you know that the reason that you know that is because it's an inherent part of god's life too and you're made in god's image and that's why your life will never be complete until you're in that deep committed community i realize that things like small groups can be messy i realize that sometimes it's easier people don't know the junk that's going on in your life but i'm just telling you that your life will always be deformed it will always be unhealthy when you're not in the kind of relationships that god created you to be in before i go on to number three let me stop here to answer the two biggest questions that i get on genesis one and two because i have to answer them and because they seem of all the places in the message they seem to fit best here all right here they are first for some people they point out that there appear to be two different creation accounts there's one in genesis one and there's a second one in genesis two and some of the order of the details is different between genesis one and genesis two and they say well is this a contradiction well like i pointed out just a moment ago genesis one is an artistic rendering genesis two is like an essay genesis one is not meant primarily to be a historical documentation of the facts genesis one is meant to be a poetic celebration that doesn't mean that it is unfactual just that its purpose is celebration not documentation this is actually a really common pattern in scripture for example in exodus 14 we have the narrative describing israel's escape from egypt to the red sea but in exodus 15 you have the celebration of that event through a song that miriam wrote in judges chapter 4 you have the documentation of a battle that deborah and a guy named barack had over the caninites in judges chapter 5 you have a song the song of deborah celebrating that victory it doesn't mean that judges 4 is history and judges 5 is a myth there's the history of judges 4 the documentation and then the celebration of judges 5 that fit together the same is true with genesis 1 and genesis 2 genesis 1 is the poem that celebrates the who and the why of creation you're not supposed to line the two up and try to compare details as if the author who put genesis 1 and 2 back to back was so dumb that he didn't know what a contradiction was you see you have to interpret scripture the way that it's written which leads to an even bigger question and that is does genesis 1 teach that god created the world in seven literal 24-hour days or does each day maybe represent millions of years and maybe god used things like evolution as a part of the creation process or maybe it's some mixture of the two and what about the dinosaurs where do they fit into this whole thing right now a lot of christians get really passionate and been out of shape on this question i put this question in in the jesus democrat or republican category of questions and i do not want to disappoint you but i'm not going to answer those questions in detail here not because i'm a wimp or not just because i am a wimp but listen because speaking solely from the realm of bible interpretation solely from the realm of bible interpretation i don't think you can use the text of genesis 1 to come to a rock-solid conclusion on that question you see again whenever you interpret something in the bible you have to ask why it was written before you press it for answers genesis 1 is an artistic expression celebrating creation it's pretty obvious that the author of genesis 1 did not have in mind the scientific nuances of creation and evolution in debate when he wrote genesis 1 the focus of genesis 1 is not how he created but that he created the age of the earth is a question for scientists and theologians to explore together but i don't think you can use genesis 1 to slam the door shut on either option listen i know godly god-fearing scientists who think that god used the processes of evolution to accomplish just about everything and i know some others that are are are very well educated went to some of the finest institutions in the land who say that god specially created the big things and then let the processes of natural selection develop develop a lot of it from there and to note by the way both those positions have been held throughout church history you go back to the early church fathers and by that i mean the guys who live in the first 500 years of the church guys like iranius athanasius augustine they believe that the days of genesis 1 were not literal days but represented long periods of times not a literal week i would encourage you is to get into the questions study it out with an open bible and an open mind and not look at others here's a key part with disdain who are struggling with the question like you are you see people in our church who believe in literal 24-hour days some times look at those who don't and say compromiser you're an enemy of the faith you don't really believe the bible and that's not always true and on the other side people who believe that it's not literal 24-hour days will say back to them with disdain you primitive knuckle dragging neanderthal you prove the existence of cavemen because you're as dumb as one but that's not true all the time many of them are very well read and are just wrestling with the implications of science and theology the point is to have this discussion charitably and not turn into dogma a question that scripture did not intend to settle and for the 12 of you out there who are thinking well fine he's not going to answer this question now i'll just email him and ask him later and i'll get the real answer then i have two things to say to you number one i know who you are and i've already got filters on my email set for you okay number two this is my real answer and number three my email address is hankmurphyatsummitrdu.com y'all what we know genesis one takes off the table is this idea that everything in the world was created through some blind random forces where nothing times nobody equals everything by the way science takes that off the table also but for sure genesis one does all right so in the beginning that was god in the beginning it was love and for those of you like i hate these intellectual sermons point three is really touchy feely so you can come right on back in okay so we're done with that number three before the creation there was god there was love number three there was darkness before the creation there was darkness genesis one one again in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth the earth was without form it was void empty darkness was over the face of the deep and then god says let there be light and everything began in like the second phase of creation now that's kind of odd because it seems like god has intentionally intentionally first created a dark empty mess and only then after creating this dark empty mess only then does the word go to work that is so significant because god is trying to show us two things that are so important for us here's what he's showing here's the reason god did that on purpose letter a because the word brings order out of chaos that's what god is trying to show us through the word of god god brings order to the chaos of creation why did god do it that way to show us in the same way our lives are a formless dark void until god's word comes in to bring life and peace and beauty and order and when his word departs from our lives our lives descend back into chaos i showed you this just a couple months ago then um the writer of genesis moses second book exodus shows you this process in reverse in genesis one you've got god's word bringing order out of chaos in exodus you've got pharaoh rejecting god's word and so god sends to egypt the 10 plagues i told you at first you may be tempted to think of the 10 plagues it's like 10 really bad you know mad tricks that god did to punish pharaoh but if you look deeper that's there's more to it than that there's a very logical natural progression to the plagues and the first play denial turns to blood so out of the nile that's turned to blood come the frogs from the frogs come the gnats from the gnats come the disease from the disease comes the boils then the sun darkens it's as if listen creation is unraveling and there's a point that's being made it's not just that god has power if god had just wanted to prove to pharaoh that he had power you know moses could have come in and said i have a word from god and then levitated right or he could have put the darth vader choke hold on pharaoh or something that would have proven it but the point is not simply that god has power the point is that sin de-creates in genesis one god brings order out of chaos and the plagues of exodus sin causes order to descend back into chaos the word of god creates sin de-creates and the same is true in your life right sin has destroyed some of your lives that's why you're bound up in an addiction that's why your family's all messed up that's why your self-image is is all torn apart it's because sin has come in and brought chaos and disorder and it's messed you up emotionally and it's messed you up relationally and it's just torn your life apart which is why there's a letter b that you're supposed to learn from it the author is showing us that the word will one day redeem what sin has destroyed now i showed you this already but where this story gets really good is john chapter one when the apostle john starts with creation and then puts a twist on it john 1 1 in the beginning was the word the word is going to be jesus that's the word in the gospel of john the word was with god the word was god all things were made through him without him was not anything made that was made in him was life and the life was the light of men and that life and light stepped into a world of darkness where sin had caused chaos and destruction and what you see is that jesus's ministry is a series of him putting creation back together again so he begins to heal diseases he begins to heal diseases and opens blinds eyes literal dark eyes and he makes the lame walk and then he's going to walk on top of water showing that he has got power over a chaotic dark world he's going to forgive adulterers and thieves and remove their shame and transform them into new people so greedy thieves like zacchaeus become excessively generous people and people that are bound up in impurity and adultery they become people who live with generosity and character he's going to raise the dead and what you see is that wherever sin had left a dark void jesus stepped in and said let there be light and life again but then at the end of his life at the end of the gospel of john the strangest thing happens the one who is the life and the light goes back into darkness and chaos when jesus dies the earth literally shakes it's like it's coming unraveled again and a midnight light darkness falls upon the earth in the middle of the day the spirit of god quits hovering above him in fact jesus will look up and say my god my god why have you forsaken me because god had turned his face away and it's the greatest mystery jesus the architect of the most beautiful creation is put into the darkness and void of sin so that we who had rejected the word could have light and life again through his death and his blood jesus allowed himself to be decreated on the cross so we could be recreated in the resurrection by the way here's like the best part the end of the gospel of john he points out a few things that just look to us like details but they're really important in light of genesis one john points out that jesus died on the sixth day of the week of friday all right what else happened on the sixth day that's when man was created it's like jesus is bringing an end to the curse of that creation but then jesus is resurrected from the dead on the first day on sunday of the new week so when he is beginning a new creation and then when jesus and the gospel of john first sees his disciples he does something that's really really odd and you probably just dismiss it when you read it as like oh that's just a you know weird hebrew custom and jesus finds his disciples he walks up in their face and he breathes on them you're like well i don't know what that's about but we don't do that anymore um they didn't do it then either he is breathing into their nostrils the breath of life so that man can again become a living soul and he says to them receive the holy spirit jesus is beginning the new creation see what that means is that if your life has been destroyed by sin if you're bound in an addiction if you walk in darkness if your family is unraveling if you turn to god by faith in christ he'll make all things new and that just happens by the process of him putting his word back inside of you it's a gradual process it doesn't happen all at once but as the word comes into you life and light enter you again i'm not saying that immediately when that happens that all your family's going to get put back together i'm just trying to help you see that your real problem in life is not your family your problem is not your job your problem is not annoying people your problem is not even your addictions your problem is you have a dark heart that is dead and separated from god and that has colored everything on your life and jesus can come and make it new when you receive his power through his blood to resurrect you and forgive you and save you so the first three verses of the book of genesis shows you what god is up to in the world it shows us that we're made for him that we're created for relationship and that his word brings life and order out of darkness and chaos let me conclude all this by showing you what that means for you in your role in life you see you and i are made in his image if you were to only answer the question of what does it mean to be in god's image based on genesis one what would you answer what is god doing in genesis one he's creating 12 times in genesis one he he creates so if you were saying i'm in his image and he's a creator it means that we are co-creators what you find in genesis one and two this is really important is that god puts us into a world that is incomplete it is imperfect he puts us into a garden a garden needs to be developed plants need to be planted and cultivated that's why the word the phrase that god used over and over again in genesis one is god saw it and it was good that's right now good is good but good's not perfect perfect means cannot be improved upon good means raw materials good but there's still some work that could be done the way i've illustrated to you before is this when you guys see my wife she comes to broad creek campus 10 o'clock when you guys see her the woman is perfect right her hair her makeup her clothes literally a perfect tan you cannot improve upon that woman when i wake up next to her in the morning she's good okay she's good raw materials are all there but there's development right god puts man into an imperfect world that's good now listen to this it says you're a co-creator and i'm going to make you in my image so that some of you are going to be skilled as contractors and you're going to take the raw materials of sand and cement you're going to make buildings that people can live in and some of you are going to take the raw materials of music and color and you're going to put together beautiful art and some of you're going to take the raw materials of justice and you're going to put together codified laws and you're going to be lawyers and i'm going to make you in my image and you're going to go throughout the world created in a way that blesses other people y'all and then as christians we are also bearers of his word which means that we go into the darkness and the chaos and the void of sin and wherever there is darkness and chaos we speak light and life wherever there is brokenness summit church there ought to be members of the summit church they're speaking that means in impoverished neighborhoods that means in racial tension discussions in prices of oppression wherever there is poverty or disease or the devastation of war in every refugee community in the triangle in every refugee community around the world in unreached people groups we we are bearers of the word that bring light and life and recreate what sin has destroyed you see that's how you understand what you're supposed to do in life those two that just gave you the two-part calling of every christian here's how we say it at the summit church whatever you're good at do it well to the glory of god right because you're made in god's image he made you good at something whatever you're good at do it well to the glory of god and do it somewhere strategic for the mission of god and that just means being a place where there's darkness and chaos so that you can speak light and life are you living out that calling you see genesis one asks you these questions do you know god because he's why you were created it's why your life doesn't make sense are you in community you need to get into a small group is his word present in your life is it transforming you is at the center of your life have you received his offer of salvation because that's how he makes you new are you extending that word to others are you going into the places of darkness and preaching his light who are you supposed to be telling about jesus whose empty dark life are you supposed to be speaking life into why don't you bow your head to it with me at all of our campuses if you would and let me encourage you before god for you to ask those questions do you know god do you you see the gospel the god will always say the gospel here the gospel is that your sin your decisions have separated you from god and that's why you're in darkness but jesus god's son loved you so much they didn't want you to perish in darkness he came to earth to die in your darkness and in your punishment for you and then he offers the free gift of salvation to all who will receive it you can't earn it you just have to receive it as a gift have you ever received it if not you can just use this prayer say god i surrender myself to you and i receive your offer of salvation you in community maybe that's the decision you need to make is this year i think it'll be different for me and my family we're gonna not just even attend church on the weekend we're gonna become a part of this community maybe your kids need to be more involved here you join a small group you're living out your calling you're preaching the gospel to others who should you be telling about jesus father we pray that you would have your way as we see who you are in genesis one we learn who we are and we thank you god that we are in your image we thank you for your word we pray in jesus name you keep your heads about at all of our campuses and our worship teams will come and they'll lead us