Good morning. Nice to see you guys.
If we haven't met, my name is Cole.
I'm the lead pastor here. If you've got a Bible, go ahead
and get that open to Genesis chapter 1.
Genesis is the first book in the Bible.
It's at the very beginning and we are on verse 2 this morning
and we will be covering A spanning and spawning 3 verses.
We're going to be verses 2 through 5 as you are turning
there. I'm excited.
I'm excited this morning. I was, I was looking at my
sermon notes. It's a lot.
I'm be, I'm be, I'm be very explaining this morning.
OK, very explaining. I'm going to break my own rules.
People who know the way that public speech functions really
well generally say that, you know, if you've got like a 40
minute sermon or message, generally about the load of
information that you can pack into that in terms of
explanation is like 50% of that. So people tend to tap out at
explanation around 20 minutes in and then you need a lot of
proclamation and illustration and application.
I'm going to break that rule today is very explaining, very
explaining. But honestly, I kind of always
get like offended when I hear from pastors who feel like they
need to treat the church as though they can't handle
theology. So we can, we can do it like
high school teachers teach kids, like advanced geometry so the
church can do advanced theology. Amen.
God deserves the best of our thinking, the deepest of our
intellect. And so we're going to do that
this morning. So if you're able, let's go
ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.
In verse one, God creates the heavens and the earth.
Verse 2 explains the nature of the heavens and the earth at
their conception. Verse 2 says the earth was
without form and void and darkness was over the face of
the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering like a dove
hovering over the face of the waters.
And then God said that he said he opened up his sovereign
divine mouth, and he said, let there be light, and there was
light. And God saw that the light was
good, called it good. And then God separated the light
from the darkness. And then God called the light
day and he called the darkness night and voila, there was
evening and there was morning the first day.
Heavenly Father, bless the preaching of your word this
morning. I pray that it would be
challenging, but also helpful and also comforting.
I think we all need all of those elements on a Sunday morning.
I know I need to be challenged and woken up and stretched and
kind of pushed around, and I also need to be comforted and
reminded of the good news of the gospel that Jesus Christ was
crucified for me and I am made righteous and sinless in his
sight because of faith alone, apart from any works.
And so I pray that our people would get all of that, not just
some of it, all of it. So it's in the precious name of
God and his Son that all God's people prayed.
Amen. You can have a seat.
All right, what I want you to do right at the beginning, I want
you. If you've got a Bible and if
you've got a pen or a highlighter, I want that out
right away. If you don't just do this, make
it all mental work, OK, visual visualization, visualize it.
What I want you to do is I want you to circle 3 words in the 1st
5 verses of Genesis, circling these 3 words.
I'm going to sound dramatic when I say this.
It's probably the most important thing you're going to do all
morning. Circling these three where it's
probably the most important thing you do all morning.
And in my opinion, what I want you to do in verse one is I want
you to circle God in the beginning, God, circle God.
Then in the second part of verse 2, I want you to circle spirit,
hovering over the depths, circle Spirit.
And then in verse three, I want you to circle the word said, God
said. So as you look at that or
visualize it, you should imagine or see three word circle, God
spirit and said, I got misnamed at a coffee shop a couple years
ago. I maybe I brought this up in a
in a sermon, but it was such a jarring experience for me that
like I'd still kind of think about it sometimes.
I was at a coffee shop, not going to name names my my
barista. And she was a great barista.
She was nice, but but she, I made my order and she said,
what's your name? Because she wanted to call it
out And I said I'm cold. And she looked at me and said
no, I was like, no, my name is Cole.
And she says, Are you sure? I was like, kind of unless you
know something, I don't know. I'm Cole, right?
And the reason why I bring up the silly story is because it's
this is a this is a logical rule.
The reason why the story matters is because it points to a
logical rule. Unless a person is a liar, the
best revelation of a person is that person's own self.
And the reason why that matters is because people are like that.
But that's also what God is like.
That's what life with God is like.
Sometimes as Christians, we can be like coffee shop baristas
standing before God's word where he reveals himself to us, and we
can sometimes say no, Are you sure?
I don't think God would ever do this or ever do that.
But God is the best revelation of God.
His words explain God better than our words.
And So what is God like? How does he reveal Himself in
his words? And one of the first things that
God tells us about himself is that he is.
This is big self-sufficient theology Bros.
Theology nerds always talk about the self-sufficiency of God.
What we're talking about when we're talking about
self-sufficiency is that it means that God has no needs, 0
needs. The reason why God has no needs
is because God has everything he needs within his very own self.
He's self-sufficient. Consider this in these first 5
verses. What does God need to create the
heavens and the earth? Nothing.
He didn't use anything to create the heavens and earth.
He needs nothing besides his very own self.
He doesn't create with pre-existing materials.
He creates with his own self, his own word.
He opens his mouth, speaks and boom, creation explodes into
reality. This is again, this is with a
theological revolution. When Genesis was written, you
have to understand that up and to that point, the way that
ancient people viewed their gods was they viewed their gods as
needy, right? The Babylonians for instance,
the Babylonian gods, they famously created human beings in
order to meet their own needs. The Babylonian gods, they were
described as hungry. They demanded human sacrifices
in order to feed them. Famously, the Babylonian gods
would sometimes faint out of hunger when the human population
was too reduced in order to feed them.
They were not self-sufficient. But let's enter into the realm
of philosophy for a moment. There is a logical problem here
that I want to I want to address it with you guys.
If there's only one true God, like the Bible claims, how could
that God be self-sufficient? It seems like a logical
impossibility. For instance, if there's only
one God, then he would need human beings in order to feel
and experience love. He wouldn't know what love was
like unless he created human beings and depended on them to
love him. The problem with that is that
would make God not self-sufficient.
That would make God needy of his own creation.
If there's only one God though, then it would seem that he would
need creation to look at and enjoy in order to not be bored
all the time. So he would need creation to be,
to experience the feelings of joy and being thrilled, right?
So how do, how do you, how do you solve this?
How could a singular God, one God be self-sufficient?
Of course the gods are needy. Of course this God is needy.
And here's where the uniqueness of the Christian faith shines
with so much beauty in depth. Because one of the first things
that God reveals about himself in Genesis is that he is 1 God
and not, but he is 1 God and he is Trinity.
Let me hear your beautiful voices say Trinity.
He's Trinity. What that means is that God is 1
God, but he is 3 distinct persons, one God, but he is God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.
Each one, one God, but each distinct from one another.
The Father is God, but the Father is not the Son.
The Son is God, but he's not the Spirit.
They're distinct and yet 11 God because he's one essence, but
Trinitarian because each of the three persons are distinct.
And this is actually not the invention of the New Testament.
Some people will try to like that argument.
It's like, oh, the Old Testament's about God the Father
and then the New Testament just kind of springs the Spirit and
springs Jesus on us out of nowhere.
But that would be a poor reading of the Old Testament.
For instance, it's one of the first thing that God tells us
about himself in these first 5 verses.
You circled God in verse one, right?
When you look at that, what you see is the mind of God the
Father creating, mapping and ordering.
Easy to see you also circled Spirit.
In verse 2, we see the Spirit hovering like a dove or like an
eagle over the face of the deep. The Spirit is like brooding over
these dark waters. He's shaping them according to
the word of the Father, molding them according to the word of
the Father. But you also circled said in
verse 3, God said creation comes out of God's saying.
And so the creative engine of creation is God's word, his
speech, his speaking into creation.
And here's where things get really interesting.
The word of God, God saying things, the word of God isn't
actually just sound bits. Like sometimes we kind of
imagine this as like God just doing verbal utterances or like
maybe God's word is like his writing in the sky.
That's actually not how the Bible presents the word of God.
Consider this, this is Old Testament, this is Psalm 33.
Psalm 33 says for the word of the Lord is upright.
So the word of the Lord in the Old Testament, it has virtue and
uprightness, almost like the word of God is a character.
Keep reading. Word of the Lord is upright and
all his work is done in faithfulness.
And so the Word of God does work almost like he's a person.
Look at this. The Word of God is done in
faithfulness. He loves righteousness and
justice. Whoa.
The word of God has affections and emotions.
The word has the capacity to feel and love and approve,
almost like a person goes on to say.
It goes on to say he loves righteousness and justice.
The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the
breath of his mouth all their hosts.
What I'm trying to say and what I'm trying to show you is that
this is not a later development in the Bible.
The word that was present in verse one is portrayed in the
Old Testament as a person, as a character, not as something, not
as riding in the sky, but as someone, someone who lives,
acts, feels as a character. And of course, here's the nail
itself. The New Testament makes this
unmistakably explicit. And John one obviously
referencing Genesis 1, John says in the beginning was the word.
Yeah, you see that clearly in verse 2.
And the Word was with God. Well, of course it was because
it came from God's mouth. And the Word was God in the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. And John tells us later on in
John that this word was and is Jesus.
So why did I have you circle the word said?
Because right there in the first couple verses of the Bible is
Jesus, the word of God and the Son of God.
One of the first things God wants you to know about Himself
is that He is Trinity. He is Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. And that is my long roundabout
answer to why God can be 1 and still be entirely
self-sufficient. He doesn't need us to experience
love. He has love within himself.
The Father loving the Son, the Son loving the Spirit, the
Spirit loving the Son. He doesn't need creation to
experience joy. The Spirit rejoices in the Son.
The Son rejoices in the Father, the Father rejoices in the
Spirit. And the reason why this is so
important is because it means that God doesn't create the
world because he needs something from it, which is like really
like freeing. Because if that were not true,
then God would be like, God would be like a, like a, like a
helicopter parent who refers to creation like a peer that he
needs approval from. Like some parents are right.
And that puts an incredible amount of stress and anxiety on
on the child. In that same way, God is not
like that. He is self-sufficient.
He has everything He needs within himself.
And that means that creation in Genesis 1 is not out of need,
but it's actually out of an overflow of love within himself.
He does not need anything and that's why He needs nothing to
create besides himself. And what does He create with
verse 2? 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 boom, there was light.
God says light and there's light.
God creates with his very own word.
Words create worlds. That's the way reality is.
But notice something creation doesn't explode into being
already perfect. So when God initially creates
the world ex Neil or out of nothing, Genesis actually
describes it in a primordial condition.
It is. Look at the words there without
form, void or emptyish, and there's darkness over the face
of the deep. None of these words mean evil.
This doesn't mean that creation was bad right here it's closer
and Hebrew thought to chaos. God creates the heavens and the
earth. At first it's chaos, it's
unruly, it's a messy room. It's good, but it's not put into
place. The cosmos at this point are
like primordial soup, nasty, spilling over everywhere like a
messy canvas that begged to be painted.
It was. If we look at creation in verse
2, it's beautiful chaos with potential.
I like, I like that. So nice.
I'm going to say it twice. It would make a beautiful man to
name. What's up?
We're beautiful, careless, but potential.
Now that's a little mouthy. It's beautiful chaos with
potential and how does one face that if you're a parent, your
kids are that if you're at work Monday morning is that if your
room is messy, your room is that how does one face beautiful
chaos with potential? How does one order chaos into
potentiality? And verse three, I keep on
hammering it is the answer. God said this is huge.
The way that God orders and organizes the chaos is with
words or language or the Greek interpretation of it was logos.
The logos was an ancient but important idea that was shared
across several different religions.
But ancient religions believed in the logos.
They looked at an orderly universe and naturally believed
that it must be upheld by the word of logic.
That's what logos means. It means word or logic.
They noted, rightly, that order cannot proceed from
unintelligence. Order cannot, does not proceed
from unintelligence. To phrase that argument in a
really Iowan way, they noted that humans had the ability to
create tractors, but they had never witnessed a tractor
creating a human. Human beings can create
tractors, order proceeding from intelligence, but a tractor will
never create a human, no matter how long you give it.
Order will never proceed from on intelligence.
And so the orderly world when they looked out to it with its
laws and logic, seemed to proceed from intelligence upheld
by the Logos. Again notice 1st 4 got creates,
it's unruly and then God said let there be light and boom this
good thing comes into the chaos and God saw that the light was
good and God boom separated the light from the darkness.
What we're witnessing here is the creation of time itself.
Notably, God creates time by separating the two categories,
separating, boom, the light from the darkness.
Notice that God does not annihilate the darkness, at
least not yet, Or destroy the darkness, at least not yet.
What he does, what does he do to it?
God doesn't destroy the darkness, He organizes it.
He sets up appropriate boundaries for it.
Gives it couple hours in the day, more than a couple hours in
the day. He distinguishes it from the
light. And in doing this, God is
creating an orderly, predictable universe, one that's
characterized by patterns that are dependable and measurable in
a way that points careful observers to an intelligent
designer. Alistair McGrath.
I don't know if you guys have heard about him, but Alistair
McGrath was a famous young atheistic scientist at Oxford.
Can you famously believe that Christianity was intellectually
hollow and shallow? But while McGrath started
studying molecular biophysics, what happened was that his
atheism collapsed under the scrutiny of biophysics.
He, after he started studying biophysics, he didn't have
enough faith to be an atheist, collapsed underneath that.
He became a Christian. And what McGrath said was I
thought that Christianity was wishful thinking, a comforting
delusion invented to help people cope with life.
But I discovered it was far more than that.
It was actually intellectually compelling, and it made sense of
things in a way that my atheism could not.
Science explains how things work, but it does not explain
why they exist or why we should find them meaningful.
And so I came to see that Christianity offered a deeper
and richer account of reality then my atheism was able to
provide. Why is he right?
He's right because within and behind and underneath all of
creation is an artistic God at work, speaking, ordering,
separating this from that, and creating an intelligible and
knowable universe. And This is why ways of thinking
like postmodernism are so utterly incompatible with
Christianity. Postmodernism, if you're not
familiar with it, we live and breathe it's airs, even if we
can't define it. But postmodernism is a
relatively new worldview that claims that truth is just
relative, and there's no such thing as some real objective
truth out there. It's all subjective.
And what this worldview does is it operates in the opposite way
of God. What God does is he orders, he
names things. The darkness is not the light.
The light is not the darkness. This category is different than
that category and it's universally true.
What postmodernism does, is it like it?
Like attempts to throw the universe back into Genesis one
verse 2, It attempts to drag the universe back into chaos and
formlessness. It blends categories until there
are known categories whatsoever, which creates chaos and anxiety,
right? Postmodern says postmodernism
says what? What is truth?
Is there really such a thing as truth?
What morality is just made-up? If this society over here wants
to make human sacrifices and kill human beings, who's to say
that they're wrong? We shouldn't do it right over
here in our time and space. But it's not like there's not
like this moral law out there. It's a blending of of of
categories. What is gender 2 separate binary
categories are so unhelpful. No, mix it.
Mix it all together and create a big spectrum.
And that what the desire of postmodernism is, is it desires
to create freedom. It does not do that.
Postmodernism doesn't create freedom, it creates anxiety
because naturally when we see a rejection of truth and a
rejection of categories, what we feel internally is a pull back
to Genesis 1-2 without form and void, A collapsing end of the
universe. And God loves clarity, clarity's
kindness. God loves order, structure.
He loves art. Notice verse 5.
He loves them. God called the light day, and in
the darkness he called night. He's calling them things.
He's naming them, which is more words.
God continues to use words. In the ancient world, naming was
an act of authority. That's why we practice naming
our children because the parents are the authority over them,
right? The state doesn't name our kids.
That's rooted in this understanding that naming means
authority over that thing. So when God names the day and he
names the night, he's telegraphing something big to
us. He's telling us that he's both
the God of the day and the night.
He's sovereign over all of it, which is another theological
revolution. The gods of the ancient world
were, they were territorial, they were merely gods over a
certain area or a certain geography.
And what God is showing us in Genesis 1 is no, no, no, no, no,
no, no. What God is showing us here is
that he is the God over all. He's not the king over some
certain little geographical area.
He's God over the heavens. He's God over the earth.
He's God over the night. He's God over the day.
Speaking, saying, talking, naming.
This is how chaos is overcome through words.
Through words, Words create worlds.
It just it makes so much existential sense when you think
about it. It's such a satisfying answer to
where did the world come from? Of course, the only thing that
could face the beautiful chaos of potential and bring it into
its potential and beauty is the eternal word, the eternal logos.
Theologians say we live in a logo centric world or a word
centered world. That's words that it's how you
govern. Have you ever noticed that?
Like it's the way that you govern through politics, it's
the way that you govern a country, it's the way you govern
and lead a family through words, stories, laws, rules, policies,
all words. And that's why 1 philosopher who
gets some things wrong, but he also gets some things right.
So I'm not like a big fanboy, this guy, but I like most of
this stuff he says. Quote Who should leave?
Come out anywhere? Who should lead?
Not the person capable of wielding the most force.
Not the person who is richest. Not the person who can
manipulate most effectively in some Machiavellian manner.
Who should lead? I love this answer.
Who should lead? The attentive, visionary
communicator? The person who watches closely
and tells the best story. It's true.
This is why I'm not saying right or wrong or it should be this
way. I'm just saying that's why
organizational leaders tend to be people who are really,
really, really good with words. That's why in the business
world, the person who gets paid the most tends to be the person
who's really, really, really good with words.
It's because God is the organizational leader of the
cosmos, and he governs and up holds it with the word of his
mouth. How are you guys doing?
Are you OK? Good.
You cool with moving forward? Words are how you govern.
You don't really notice this though, until until you can't.
Like last last Tuesday, I had this experience where it was
like I was like hanging out with the pastors at like 10:30 or
11:00 and all of a sudden in the middle of conversation, my voice
cracks, right Joseph? Like, like it was there and then
it cracked and it was gone and all the guys were like, oh bro,
Oh no, you, you have to preach a, an intro sermon this weekend
and also lead a wedding ceremony.
And I was like, I'm good, I'm good.
My God, it's going to come back tomorrow.
So I went to bed. I was like, I'm a sleep it off.
I went to bed and I woke up and it was gone entirely.
I was like, oh, no, Oh no. But here's what I noticed
because I, I, I literally had to do like because I wanted to
knock Ben and Emma's wedding ceremony out of the park, I had
to not talk literally for like 3 days.
So I was like doing honey and like steam breathing and like
taking like 3 baths a day and more honey and hydrating in the
saltwater gurgles. Oh, I gurgled so much saltwater.
I'm doing all that stuff. And so I literally can't talk
for like 3 days. And what I noticed is that with
the loss of my voice, it wasn't, wasn't just like the loss of
some tertiary aspect of me, like I just, I didn't lose like just
the ability to express myself. No, I did.
I lost for those three days my ability to govern and lead.
I literally, yeah, I was, I was worthless at home for those
three days, absolutely worthless.
My entire family, our little, we've got a A5 person
organization at home, five person business.
It all descended into chaos around me, like when I was at
home because I couldn't say anything.
Have you ever tried to parent without saying anything?
It doesn't work. I was sitting at the table
eating and I'm looking at my 2 year old and I'm just like, man,
I just love that kid so much. I'm like looking at his eyes and
his face and I'm like, I just so badly wanted to open my mouth
and just be like, I love you buddy.
And I just sat there and admired him and he looked up at me and
when he locked eyes he goes. I was like, that's not what I
was trying to say. You lose your ability to govern
because like, kids are, they're doing some stuff right.
And you know, it's just like a regular day.
Like Russell goes over and he pushes Jack and Jack just starts
swinging haymakers and, and all I can do is this.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work and so like they
would keep on doing stuff and I couldn't say hey, that's good,
that's bad. Don't do this do that, don't
talk to your mom that way. Good job talking to your mom
this way. Do more right?
That's how you govern. That's how you that's how you
lead. And instead my leadership was
reduced to and like I did this for like 3 days and Della would
just turn and be like, why does that keep climbing out of us?
You can't you can't govern that way.
The The loss of my words was the loss of my power.
It's gone. Who is the loss of my power?
To govern To parents, To lead to Father.
And Genesis 1 is so profoundly true because if you think about
it for just a moment, the only rational decision I think you
could come up with is like, yeah, of course the world is
upheld by God's word. So everybody in our leadership
position governs and could think God never loses his voice.
Amen. Could if, If God ever got
laryngitis, the entire world would collapse back into
formlessness and void and cease to exist.
He upholds the world by the power of His Word every moment
of every day. And if God's voice even just
cracked for millisecond cracked, all the cosmos would collapse
back into formlessness and void and chaos.
But God is sovereign and in control, so we're good.
We're good, But words do create worlds Like I don't even know
where to start on making this practical.
Even this morning. I had a tough night last night.
I'm not whining, I'm not complaining.
I had like this headache that just like radiated through my
skull and like my jaw was throbbing and I couldn't go to
sleep until like 4:00 AM. Like at 3 AMI was finally like,
I'm done. I'm going to take a hot bath and
I passed out on my couch at like 4:00 AM.
Again, I'm not not whining, I'm not complaining, but I I told
Joseph that story and he must have told, did you tell the
leaders, did you tell the group that I had the headache thing?
Really. Oh, never mind.
This example won't work because suddenly all of a sudden at like
845, I had people like showing up at my door with like
ibuprofen and a black coffee and someone showed up with AC4,
decided to try that. And I was like, Oh my gosh, the
world is literally being reshaped around me because
Joseph said something to our leaders which he didn't.
Hypothetically that would have been true.
What through the Lord? That's right, Sometimes he even
then he's governing through words, but words do create
worlds. And I guess I wouldn't even know
where to start on making this practical, but I would say
probably the lowest hanging fruit that we could reach for.
If this is true, the lowest hanging fruit would be don't be
a liar. We could start there.
One of the reasons why the Bible
is so brutal about the way that Christians talk is because words
create worlds. Have you ever noticed how
brutal, how much of the Bible and how much of its ethic is
saying don't talk like this and don't use words that way?
The Bible's brutal about not gossiping, not slander, not
bearing false witness against your neighbors, not tearing down
with your speech, not lying. And it's not just a matter of
morals. God has given you the ability to
speak and use words so that you would use them like him.
So you would use your words to govern well, to push that chaos
to shape and mold and participate in the construction
of reality. So don't say things that aren't
true. Don't say things that aren't
true about God. Don't say things that are not
true about people. Maybe you've never been lied
about. That'll change.
Probably. Maybe you've never been lied
about and so you've never felt what it's like to invest
yourself in a person and spend time praying for them and step
away from Christmas family parties to field hour long
conversations, helping out with them and feeding them and then
having that person turn around and say things that aren't true
about you. But when that happens, it makes
your life a living hell. It does.
What does lying do? It does the opposite of Genesis
1. Telling the truth.
Order shapes, creates the world. What lying does is it pulls the
cosmos back into chaos. You tell a lie about somebody,
you spread it, it's going to reshape reality around that
person. People be like, I don't know if
I I don't know if she's that way.
I don't. I mean, maybe she's that way.
And then you start to interpret that person through the filter
of the lie. And when you've got a new
hammer, everything looks like a nail.
So last sudden you're like, maybe she is this and and that
it makes life a living hell for that person.
It's chaos. Don't do that.
Use your words to create a beautiful the world.
Notice again. Notice the relationship between
words and the world. I'm not a manifest guy.
You know what I'm talking about. Like you got to manifest the
life you want to live in. Manifest it, right?
I'm not a manifest guy. That's for people who drink
machos. Actually, I like Machos, but I'm
So what I'm talking about the relationship between words in
the world. I'm not saying like manifest
like I'm not saying look into the mirror and say you're going
to be the next Taylor Swift, You're going to be the next
Taylor Swift and then somehow God is liable to make you into
the next Taylor Swift. So I'm not saying that.
Are you guys with me? If you're hearing me say that,
shake it off, shake it off. You guys can argue about that in
community Group A lot there, but so I'm not saying manifest, but
I'm saying that the boundary between the world and our words
is just a lot more porous than you think.
It's a lot. The boundary is a lot thinner.
Words create worlds. I thought one of the first times
I really noticed this was as a teacher about 10 years ago, You
know where I noticed that parent teacher conferences.
It was like a revelation to me. All of a sudden I started to see
a theme. There was a huge parallel
between students who performed poorly and parents who talked
poorly about their kids. Huge parallel.
A lot of times kids with D's and F's, their parents would sit at
my table. I would be prepared to tell them
the things that I admire about their kids, the things that they
do well. A lot of times they would sit at
the table and they would say things about their kid that
you'd never imagined. My boy Jazeel know his right
hand from his left. Sorry, my girl.
She's an idiot. It's always been that way.
People talk about their kids like that, and of course it's
because that's all they ever hear from you.
Your words created the world that these kids live in.
You can only hear yourself called an idiot so many times by
the person who's supposed to love you and care for you before
you start to believe that that's what you are.
And you start looking for evidence everywhere that you're
an idiot. And you try to fulfill their
prophecy by living into an idiot.
Words 11 philosopher talks about how words are living spirits.
I don't believe that in a mystical sense.
I I believe it's true in a practical sense.
Words are living spirits practically, words embedded into
politics, embedded into ideology, embedded into religion
and spirituality, to education. What words do is they operate
like living spirits that possess people and then change the way
that they live their lives, their living spirits.
So you just got to be really not careful with your words.
Use them powerfully and truly. Like again, let me be practical.
Consider parenthood for just a second.
If you're not a parent, you can apply this to most of your
relationships. But, and this is what I'm about
to say is true for both parents, but I'm going to speak to the
more statistically probable parent to struggle with this
problem. We've got a lot of dads in the
room. We've got a lot of young dads in
the room right now like fresh dads.
So let me, let me, I'm just going to aim it at you.
Listen really carefully to what I'm saying the.
Least masculine thing you can do as a dad is withhold your spoken
blessing to your family. I got to say it stronger if your
dad. The most feminine thing you can
do as a dad is withhold your spoken blessing over your
family. That's fragile.
Do not make your children anxious about whether or not
they have your blessing and your approval and your love.
Bless your family and do it often.
That's why God gave you words so you could bless people with it,
especially your kids. Don't be the guy.
Don't be the dad who never says I love you to the family and
then huffs and puffs. It's like I don't need to be
their therapist. Well, I put a roof over their
house. Isn't that enough?
Of course it's not enough. Especially if you put a roof
over their head and act like a snake under that roof.
Makes it feel like a all you did was create a mousetrap for them.
Of course it's not enough. Fathers, your masculinity is
derivative. It comes from God.
You only have it in the proportion that your fatherhood
reflects the fatherhood of God. Notice God blesses his creation
often. Verse four, He creates the light
and he says it's good. He creates the first day, it's
good. This becomes a pattern, right?
So if you're wondering like, OK, I need to use my words to bless
my family as a dad, how often should I bless my family?
A lot. I'll be precise and I'll be
aspirational, precise. We can be precise about this.
God blesses his creation seven times in seven days in Genesis
one. Sorry about the spoiler alert.
Every creation of the day. Good.
So let's say to be precise that the bare minimum as a dad is
once a day. Once a day you lick your kids in
the eye, maybe even put your hands on their shoulders.
You pull them in and you say, good, I love you, proud of you.
I think you're awesome. The Lord bless you and keep you
whatever your style is. New dad, start doing it right
now. The temptation is, well, my kids
only two months old, so he's not going to understand it.
Always outpace their maturity with your parenthood.
Always outpace their maturity with your parenting.
Always outpace it. Because the problem is that dads
who wait to say I love you to their kids who wait to say it
until their kids can understand it.
What you end up doing is you end up building a relational dynamic
where it's normal for the dad not to say that.
So you know what he does? He doesn't say it because you
develop these communication patterns and then it feels
awkward to inject something new into it, and so you got to start
saying it right away before they can understand it.
If not, the kids going to grow up.
And at age 55, he's going to implode with workaholism until
his loving pastor helps him see that subconsciously he's been
working himself to death because deep down, he's still trying to
earn his dad's blessing. I want it to be impossible to be
a dad at Frontier who doesn't say I love you to your kids.
True for moms too. It's just statistically you
don't struggle with it as much. I want it to be impossible to be
a dad at this church who doesn't say I love you to his kids.
It's not going to happen at this church.
It's not going to happen here. Words create worlds.
Notice this literary pattern. God speaks, creation responds.
God says good. That word good is profound.
It's God's assessment and blessing over His creation.
That pattern happened 7 times in Genesis 1.
God speaks, creation responds, and God says good.
You know what's going on in the Bible.
If you see a pattern repeated 7 times, the Bible's trying to
say, hey, wake up, this is important.
This pattern. God speaks, creation responds.
God says good is the pattern of reality.
It's how reality is. It's what life is like.
The way things are is the way that He is.
Note, creation does not perform to gain God's blessing.
Creation doesn't even earn to gain God's blessing.
What does creation do to gain God's blessing?
All it does is respond to God's word and exist and boom, God's
gushing over. Love it.
It's good, that word good. Telling you that word.
Good is what you're living to hear, whether you know it or
not. You've been chasing that word
like your whole life. That's why you got so nervous
and anxious at school, right? You so badly wanted your teacher
to look at your work and say good.
That's why even though it's been 20 years since your first crush,
that's why it still effects you so much.
You're obsessed with that girl or that boy when you were a
teenager because you wanted so badly to have him or her look at
you, assess you and say good, good.
That's why some of us are workaholics and we can't rest
and we beat ourselves up like perfectionist because deep down
you're still trying to earn your mom or your dad's approval
because they never looked at you and said you're good.
Everybody is living for that word.
I just want somebody to look at me and be like, dude, you're
good. And I have really good news for
you today. It's the gospel and it's the
good news that you can have God's good.
You can be made right with God, you can be cool with God, you
can be good with God on the basis of faith alone because of
what Jesus has done for you. It's right here in these first
few verses. Here's the gospel according to
Genesis chapter 1, verses 2 through 5.
God speaks, creation responds. God declares it good.
The good news is that God has spoken to you.
You might not feel like it. Some of you.
Maybe you're waiting to hear His audible voice from heaven, and I
hope you do hear it. I do believe God speaks that
way, but some of us are waiting for a handwritten letter to drop
from the heavens with God's autograph and our name on it.
But if that has not happened to you, hasn't happened to me, you
still need to know that God has spoken to you.
How? Hebrews 1 Long ago, at many
times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the
prophets. But in these last days he has
spoken to us by his Son. He has spoken to us by Jesus,
whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom He also
created the world. God has spoken to you by giving
you Jesus. That's his speech to you.
That's him talking to you. The life of Jesus Christ is his
perfect life of obedience, His death on a cross to atone for
sin, His resurrection from the grave.
That was not just a historical event from 2000 years ago.
That was God speaking to you, to you, speaking to you, pleading
with you, whispering to you, shouting at you.
God speaks, creation responds, God says good.
And so if you would respond to God's worth with faith, right,
if you would look at the perfect life of Jesus, his death on the
cross, and embrace it by faith, simply respond to God's word,
then when God looks at you, you know what he'll say to you.
Do you know good, good gosh over you?
By faith alone, apart from works of the law, you're good.
You're good with God. You don't need to hear from Mom
or dad. I hope you do.
But someday you're going to stand before your creator God,
the one who spoke the universe into existence, the one who
makes mountains crumble in the hands of the trees for choice.
And this God will look at you. And if you are in Christ, you
will finally get what you've always wanted.
The lover of your soul will look at you and say, good, you're
good. Welcome the person you are
today. You're just beautiful chaos with
potential. Just like Genesis one verse 2.
One of the cruelest things you can do to yourself is believe
that the person you are today is the finished product.
You're not the finished product. That's the essence of
hopelessness and despair. To look at yourself and say, Oh
gosh, the man I am today is all I'll ever be.
I guess I'll never be a better wife.
I guess I'll never be a better man.
This is all I am. I'll never be more like Jesus.
This is the finished product. Wrong.
Your Genesis 12A little formless, a little void, a
little shapeless, and your job for the rest of your life is
just to listen to God, to hear God's word, to submit to God's
word, to believe God's word. And what does God word, what's
God's word do the same thing it does in Genesis 1.
God's word will shape you, form you, mold you and bring you into
an orderly, fruitful Christ like version of yourself.
Guys, the triune God of Genesis is at work in you right now.
The mind of God the Father looking at you and beholding
you. The Spirit of God hovering over
your soul as he hovers over the deep shaping, molding the word
of God, Jesus himself indwelling within you, remaking you moment
by moment. Thank God that words create
worlds. Amen.
Especially when God says, and let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I pray that people, I pray that we would
hear your word this morning. There would be something in the
preaching, something in the singing, something in the
liturgy, something from somebody else's mouth, some word that we
look at and say, oh, that's God's word to me.
But even if we don't get that this morning, we still have
Jesus and He is God's word to us.
Pray that we would look at the crucified Christ and know how
deeply we are loved and how deeply we are treasured.
So it's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people
prayed. Amen.
Let's stand and worship this triune God.