Good morning. Well, if we have not yet met, my
name is Cole. I'm one of the pastors here.
I get to preach here more Sundays than not.
And if you've got a Bible, go ahead and get that open to
Genesis 1 verse one. We are in a new sermon series
that we're starting today and like you guessed the, the book
of Genesis and I, I woke up on Wednesday without a voice.
So it was like a massive week for me.
Obviously, I've got this sermon, I've got other stuff going on.
I, I, I helped with a wedding yesterday and I woke up on
Wednesday without a voice and I was like, oh, no, I am
absolutely toast. And I'd say like a good 60 or
70% of it is kind of back. But like there's, I don't know
if there's a good chance I'll blow through it this morning.
So if my voice gives out, I'll just stop preaching.
Sound good If it goes again, if he dies, he dies, right.
So whatever happens happens. But maybe pray for me as I'm
preaching through this Genesis 1.
Where to start with this new sermon series?
We'll we'll start at the beginning.
Okay, look at verse one. This has this is the first book
of the Bible. It's got 50 chapters in it.
So if you try to calculate, man, we don't.
We work really slowly through books.
This book has 50 chapters. When in the world are we going
to be done with it? I actually have an answer for
it. You might not like it.
Currently, we are slated to end this sermon series on April of
2028. That's the soonest we'll get
done with it. OK.
There's a likelihood that the length changes as we bump into
some stuff where I'm like, OK, I think we need more attention
over here. So it might get longer.
It's not going to get shorter. OK, So I'm, I'm going to count
it as a win. If we finish this sermon series
by the time that Malachi graduates from college.
All right, we can pull that off. We'll we'll call it a win.
Genesis 1. Here's the way that Luther
describes Genesis. Luther said, quote, Genesis is
the source of all theology and so whoever understands Genesis
properly will have no difficulty with the rest of Scripture.
Gerhard von Rod said there is scarcely another book in the Old
Testament which speaks in such a powerful and elemental way as
the book of Genesis. I really like this one by John
Salehammer. Sale Hammer says, quote, the
book of Genesis is the seed plot, the seed plot of the
entire Bible? Heck yes.
So here's how to think about this.
What Sale Hammer is saying is right.
The book of Genesis is the seed of the other 65 books of the
Bible. So the same way that the entire
oak tree and everything that's going to grow out of it is
present within the the teeny tiny sea when it goes into the
ground is the same way that all 65 books of the Bible are
present in the Book of Genesis. So yes, we're going to be in it
for a couple of years. It's going to feel long, but it
won't feel like that because of the diversity of the book.
Genesis has so many different characters, so many different
genres, so many different stories and subplots that it's
really going to feel like we're preaching through the entire
Bible over these next couple years.
And when April of 2028 comes, or April of 2029, when that date
comes around and we finish the 50th chapter of Genesis, there
is no reason why you should be the same person then as you are
today. It should transform you.
It should Jack up your life. Genesis should stretch you,
deepen you, challenge you. It'll keep you up late at night.
It'll be the first thing on your mind in the morning when the
alarm clock goes off. Some of the stories will comfort
you. Some of the stories will tick
you off. But if you continue to bring
your whole heart before the book of Genesis, Sunday after Sunday,
after Sunday for the next couple of years, it will transform you.
So I'm going to do some what teachers call a scaffolding.
You taught me that powers. What I'm going to do is I'm
going to set up some scaffolding for the rest of the sermon
series. So I'm, I'm putting structures
in place that are going to guide you through these next couple
years. The big question that people
love to argue about is how do we read Genesis?
Great question. Let's make some enemies right
away. A lot of people get hung up on
the debacle and debate of do we read it literally or do we read
it figuratively? I would encourage you to not
engage with that debate. I find it unhelpful.
I don't think those terms are even helpful.
What I would encourage you to do is to read it literally.
So within Genesis, it's not just one genre.
Within Genesis, you've got poetry, you've got history,
you've got narrative, you've got genealogy, you've even got legal
literature. So the best way to read it is in
correspondence to its current genre.
So rather than getting hung up on literal or figurative, let me
give you 3 actually helpful words to coach you through how
to read it. Word #1 is it is inspired the
doctrine of inspiration. Actually, I'm losing my voice.
Let me hear yours. Can you say inspired?
Inspired? The doctrine of inspiration
means that God himself has written or inspired this book,
even though it's written through an inspired person, in the case
of Genesis, Moses. So what God does is God uses
Moses, Moses's story, Moses's personality, even Moses's
writing style. But it is God himself riding
through Moses, making it entirely appropriate and right
to call Genesis the Word of God. It's inspired.
Second, it is inerrant. Let me hear that one from you.
Inerrant. The doctrine of inerrancy means
that in its original language, there are no errors within the
text. That means that Genesis is true
and reliable in all of its aspects.
Inerrancy and #3 is authoritative.
Let me hear you say authoritative.
Authoritative means that what the Bible says is more important
than what Cole says about it. What the doctrine of authority
means is that the Bible and the Bible alone, the Bible itself,
is the ultimate standard for what's true and what's false.
So if you feel that God is a certain way, and that certain
way is different than the way that Genesis portrays God,
you're wrong and Genesis is right.
Genesis is the authority, the ultimate standard for what's
true and what's false. So the words of Genesis
themselves are more important than my or anybody from the
preaching team. Any of our interpretations or
explanations of it are, even though we hope that it's
helpful. So let's look at the actual text
and if you're able, let's go ahead and stand for the reading
of the word of God. I was talking to Peterson this
morning and Peterson was like, how many verses you preaching on
this morning? And I was like, why?
And he's like as me and Kara had a bet on the over under of how
few verses you're going to preach on.
And so I was like, well, what was the over under?
And you said what 3 verses? And did Kara take the over or
the under? The under?
Carol wins. So this sermon is brought to you
by DraftKings. No, I'm not I'm kidding.
You know what I'm talking about. Spade one verse this morning,
the Word of God. Where does the Bible begin?
The Bible begins where reality begins.
Not with you, not with us, not with me.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
That's going to be enough for us over the next 30 minutes.
You can have a seat. OK, so while we're making
enemies, let's just make a few more enemies.
There's a lot of debates that pop up around Genesis, so I just
want to, I don't want that to be background noise that distracts
from the actual preaching. So I'm going to jump into
another thing right away. How about the age of the Earth?
Let's do that. Christians, they, they are very
passionate and they love to argue about the age of the
earth. The way that some Christians
argue about the age of the earth would make a person think that
the first question God is going to ask us at the pearly gates is
not did you trust Jesus? But how old is the earth?
People get really passionate about it.
There's people in here who have a very strong conviction about
it. I think that's a wonderful
thing. What I would encourage you not
to do is make enemies over this. And so when it comes to the age
of the earth, there are essentially 2 big views.
OK there, there are more nuanced positions than these two
positions, I get that. But the two big positions are
old Earth creationist and Young Earth creationist.
Let's start with you, Young earth creationist.
A young earth creationist believe that the world is
roughly 6 to 10,000 years old. This comes from a literal rating
of the 24 hours of days that we see in Genesis.
Old earth creationists are also creationists, but they have no
problem affirming the possibility that maybe the age
of the earth is older, maybe even much older than 6 to 10,000
years old. The most important thing about
old earth versus young earth creationists is not their
differences, but their similarities.
They're both creationists. They're both Christians, right?
They're both lovers of of Jesus. OK?
They've got a big similarity. They both believe that God
created everything ex Neilo or out of nothing for his very own
glory. So I think it's a wonderful
thing to have a strong view on old or young earth creationism
be convicted. Don't poke anybody's eye out
over your opinion on that. I mean, the question, though, is
like who at the end of the day, who has more scriptural support
for their case? You're probably not going to
like my answer to that question because my answer to that
question is both young Earth creationist versus New Earth
creationist who has more scriptural support for their
case. I think that there's a case to
be made for both of them. Young earth creationists take a
literal approach to the six days of creation.
So when we read about the six days of creation in Genesis 1,
we're reading about 624 hour days.
I think that's great. I heard somebody in our church,
I think, I can't remember who it was.
I think it was Christian. Christian said, you know, I, I
don't really have a strong opinion on it either, but at the
end of the day, I would rather look like a fool in the eyes of
the world for taking God's word too literally.
And when I heard him say that, I was like, that's good.
So I I really do like that position.
I do, I like it. I tend to lean towards an old
earth creationist view. I'll give you one simple reason.
I personally think it has more in common thematically with the
rest of the creation story. For instance, Adam and Eve were
created by God as mature people who are ready to bear fruit
sexually. They weren't created infantile.
So it makes logical sense to me that God would or perhaps
possibly would create the heavens and the earth in that
same way. Not infantile, but mature, old
enough already to bear fruit. And what that does for me is it
puts me in a position where there's no scientific discovery
that could possibly scare me. If science discovers that the
earth is 6000 years old, that's great.
Wonderful if they decide that it's 10 bajillion years old,
that's fine. It doesn't really bother me.
I'm indifferent to it. The scientific consensus, which
is fun to keep up with, it tends to shift so much that it just
kind of feels like sand compared to the rock of God's word.
And so that stuff is it's fine. It just like it's just like
nobody's ever like sprung that on me and I've been like, crap.
How do you know I'm a Christian now?
I just the word of God is a rock compared to all of that.
So listen to me. The primary function of the book
of Genesis is not to teach the age of the earth.
It is to teach about the character and nature of our
Creator God. Amen.
Personally, I think Moses would probably be shocked to discover
that Christians were dividing themselves over this issue on
the basis of his writings. So Genesis is not, it is not a
modern scientific textbook. If you treat it that way, you're
not going to see it clearly. And if it's not a modern
scientific textbook, what is it? Here's the answer.
It is a theological revolution. That's the right way to read the
book of Genesis. It's a revolution in the way
that we see, think about and know God.
OK, so let's go deeper into this.
We got to go. We got to go deeper into this.
Even just a lot of things to say.
Even if you just look at this one verse, there are so many
things that are revolutionary about them.
OK, in the beginning, God, The idea of an eternal God who
existed before there was a beginning.
You know where that began? With the book of Genesis.
In the beginning, God, not Gods. The idea of monotheism was a
radical idea that had its roots only in Genesis.
In the beginning God created or but ah the Hebrew but ah is only
attributed to God. Humans are creators but we don't
Bara. All we can do is create with
pre-existing materials. The Hebrew root Bara, it means
out of nothing. So this idea of God creating out
of nothing, you know where that idea started?
The book of Genesis, even the other ancient near Eastern
worlds, their gods when they built the world they did it from
pre-existing materials. So everything about this one
verse in the beginning God created the heavens of the earth
is revolutionary. And this might be the most
important thing I say this morning.
I think yes, if you have studied literature out there, a lot of
the literature is correct. There were other similar
creation myths from other religions during the time when
Genesis was written. That's demonstrably true.
However, sometimes what skeptics will do is they'll compare
Genesis with a Near Eastern creation myth, and they'll say,
look, the writers of the Bible are just stealing and
repurposing other creation myths from their Babylonian neighbors.
And this means that we can't trust the credibility of the
Bible. And here's what these skeptics
miss. Yes, Genesis is stealing and
repurposing from other creation myths in its day, but it's doing
that on purpose. The way that Genesis uses other
creation myths is the same way that Saturday Night Live
repurposes the news. If you were like, man, I watch
Saturday Night Live and I I noticed that they stole a lot
from the president, you would be like, yeah, that's the point.
And So what Genesis is doing is a theological revolution.
It's correcting and criticizing the other creation myths of the
day. So the point of repurposing
these creation myths isn't to imitate them.
That's not what Genesis is doing.
Genesis is not saying, yeah, the God of the Bible is exactly like
the gods of Babylon. Wrong.
It's doing the exact opposite of that.
It's not to imitate them, but to show how the God of the Bible is
unique and differs from the popular ideas about God at the
time. We have to understand that from
every era of history, there's always been a popular culture of
ideas that's developed around what God is like.
And sometimes these popular ideas about God are not rooted
in any objective grounds of truth.
For instance, the popular idea of God among the ancient people,
it was actually the exact opposite of the popular idea of
God in the modern world. So if you look in the ancient
world among non biblical religions, so non Bible
believing religion, the ancient world, the popular idea of the
gods was both pluralistic and brutally angry.
They had a polytheistic view of the gods, that the heavenly
realm is a heavenly heavily populated with these competing
gods who are like human beings. They're petty, they're easily
angered. They don't care for creation
very much. And what the ancients were doing
is they were following their gut.
So the ancients looked at the world around them.
They saw famines and wars and bloodshed.
They saw hatred among different tribes, and they followed their
gut. And they said, OK, the gods must
be angry and violent. And they were wrong.
We've made like the opposite error in the modern world.
Modern people have done the opposite thing.
We've shifted. Now the world is filled with
more order and structure and polity, thank God.
And so modern people have assumed that, well, God must
just be a divine teddy bear, right?
And you hear this come through whenever somebody appeals to the
human heart rather than the objective reference point of the
Bible. So whenever you hear somebody
say I just don't think God would ever or I could never believe in
a God who did X or Y, usually in reference to something
conflicting their desires. When you hear statements like
that, you are hearing what the popular cultural ideas about God
coming through. And what Genesis does is neither
of those things neither it presents us with a God who is
the ground of our being, self-sufficient, loving and the
very truth itself. And to disagree with him, no
matter what your gut tells you, puts you in the wrong.
So what Genesis does is it helps us fight off the popular ideas
about God and gives us a theological revolution, an
objective true vision of God. How we doing this is a lot.
OK, It looked like less on paper.
Now that it's coming on, that's a lot.
OK, you guys are with me. So let's go deeper.
Take the ancient Babylonian idea of the gods.
They were really close neighbors with the Israelites.
So this is actually a really good contrasting point.
If you take the ancient Babylonian idea of the gods and
compare it to the biblical vision of God, it's
breathtaking. So the Babylonian creation myth
was called the Anuma Elise. Like Genesis, it has the gods
creating the heavens and the earth.
That's true. Does that invalidate Genesis 11?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Oh, is Genesis just stealing from the Anuma Elish?
If it is, it can't be trusted for everything in life and
death. Wrong.
What Genesis is doing is it is specifically showing how
different the God of the Bible is from the Babylonian gods.
How? Because how do the two different
gods create heavens and the earth?
This is crazy. The first time I learned this, I
was like, I can't believe. OK, so the answer that the Anuma
Elish gives is radically different.
The creation myth in the Anuma Elish has that the gods in the
heavenly realm were violent and at war with one another and
rivals with one another. And there was this war in heaven
that went on and on and on until the Babylonian God Marduk, who
was the chief God that Babylon worship, he ended the war.
Marduk ended the war by defeating and slaughtering the
other gods. And I swear to you, this is in
the Anuma, a leash to create the heavens and the earth.
He split the corpses in half and made the heavens and the earth
from the corpses of the other gods.
Why does that matter? Because in Genesis 1, the God of
creation, the God of the Bible, has no equals.
He has no peers. He has no rivals.
Creation in Genesis isn't the result of bloodshed.
It's not the result of violence. What's it the result of?
It's the result of poetry. This is a radically different
vision for creation in Genesis. Creation is effortless.
The biblical loving God speaks the word of his mouth and
creation explodes effortlessly into reality.
A theological revolution, a massive shift in ideas about God
and it's day. And This is why this matters so
much. It matters because what you
believe about creation shapes your everyday life.
Because everyday life is about creation.
That's what we do. We're we're trying to
participate with a million different little new creations
every day. Our daily lives are filled with
small acts of creation, trying to create new relationships,
better relationships, trying to create goods to be purchased or
teaching lessons for students or financial plans for our
consumers. The question is what creates?
And the Babylonian myth says violence is the engine of
creation, end of violence. As the engine of creation,
violence is what you get. So that's why the Babylonians
were notoriously brutal. It didn't come out of nowhere,
it came out of their creation story.
There were public acts of brutality and enslavement and
constant never ending war mongering.
When God's people were in Babylonian exile, there were
brutal acts of barbarism, cutting off hands, gouging out
eyes, cultural erasure. Why?
Because of their creation story, violence is how we move the
world forward. So do you see how Genesis is a
theological revolution, right, That the question that Genesis
poses is what if violence isn't the creative engine in in the
world? Genesis is God's way of saying
I'm not like that. Don't buy the pop ideas about
me. Genesis says poetry is the
creative engine and This is why the Christian ethic is love,
care, submit, sacrifice, die to yourself, serve.
This was radical in a world where violence explained
everything, politics, law, religion.
Genesis 1 opens. It was something unheard of.
No violence, no battle, no corpses, just a God speaking
poetry. Why?
Look at Genesis 11. In the beginning, God but ah,
created the heavens and the earth.
Why? And of course, the answer to
that question is why does anybody create anything, whether
it's art, music or children? Mekoto Fujimura, a Christian
artist, he said this about painting, Quote art is created
out of the overflow of our hearts, and so we cannot
separate what we make from who we are.
So you take Picasso, right? And you look at Picasso's wild
artwork. That's a reflection of Picasso's
inner turmoil. Picasso's creation is a
reflection of Picasso's nature. In that same way, all of the
universe, all of creation, exists to display the nature and
character of God. Colossians one says this
perfectly. For in him all things were
created. Things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible. Thrones, powers, rulers or
authorities, all this stuff, it's all been created through
him and for him. He did all of this to reflect
who he is. Jonathan Edwards.
Who can say it better than that guy?
Edwards famously said, quote, God's ultimate end in the
creation of the world is the manifestation of his own glory.
Think, I mean like, think about how Genesis starts it.
Like it doesn't even start with us, it starts with God.
I don't even, I don't even notice this before.
We don't actually enter the picture until verse 26.
Even the birds show up on verse 23.
We come after the birds. It's not God.
How does it start in the beginning God?
It begins with God. Why?
Because all things have been created through Him and for Him.
That's the purpose of all of creation.
If you don't get that, you don't get it.
That's why. That's why the Bible is so hard
on apathy, right? That's why apathy is a sin,
right? Apathy is essentially saying to
God, you've created nothing of value or worth in this world.
That's what apathy says, right? You've created nothing that
sparks my wonder and nothing that sparks my adoration.
So I'll go through life bored. And of course the main mistake
of apathy is that it's profoundly man centered.
Creation exists from my consumption.
And so if there's not an immediate benefit, then I don't
care about it. I'll look at creation with
indifference because I feel like it.
It's a creation is not man centered.
Creation is God centered through and for God.
This is key. Genesis is not it.
Genesis is not trying to convince you in the existence of
a God like atheist. Like when this was written,
atheism had not yet been invented.
There was no such thing as an atheist.
Genesis is not trying to convince you that there's a God
out there who probably exists. Everybody.
When Genesis was written, everybody believed in the
existence of the gods. Everybody.
What Genesis is trying to convince you of is not just that
God merely exists, trying to convince you that all of
creation is God centered, and that this God is not distant and
indifferent, but intimately and lovingly involved with all of
creation. That's what it's trying to get
you to see, that everything that atoms in the molecules, the
sunsets and the seas, the black holes and the star
constellations, everything, it all exists for the chief
purpose, displaying the invisible glory of God and
making it visible. Like the only way you could ever
look at a sunset and yawn is if you think more about yourself
than you think about God. That's the only way you could
look at a sunset and be indifferent.
The proper responses. What the proper responses?
Worship. Worship of God Who created it?
Genesis one. In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth. I wish you could see my notes
because there's a massive typo. My notes say in the beginning
God created the beans in the earth, which is actually true
and serves the point that all of creation from the biggest stuff
like the heavens and the earth down to the smallest stuff, the
beans are His creation. So yes, He did create the beans
in the earth. But here's what made me worship
God about this moment this week. Have you ever wondered what the
look on God's face was in Genesis 11?
Like when he created the heavens and the earth and laid his eyes
on it for the first time? Like what do you think the look
on his face was? The truth is that Genesis
doesn't tell us, but the revelation of Jesus does tell
us. So like what was God's look on
his face when he created the heavens and the earth?
Look, I don't know. Here's my best guess.
A couple weeks ago I was at Mars Cafe.
I was about to meet with a couple different church planners
throughout the US. So I'm, I'm on my laptop working
at Mars Cafe and suddenly even though I'm, I'm staring at my
laptop screen, but suddenly I I felt like I was caught up in the
tension of something like the air just got thick.
So I looked up from my screen and I looked over and there was
this elderly woman. How do I describe this?
She was staring longingly with tears in her eyes at me.
And I was like, how do I know this woman?
And then it hit me. She's not looking at me, she's
looking past me. And I was like, that makes more
sense because I don't know this person.
And so I'm like, what? What could she be looking at
that way? So I turn around and a couple
tables away there's this young married couple who are obviously
very happy but also very frazzled with bags under their
eyes that had just formed. And it's because on top of the
coffee table, they had this kicking, wiggling, burping
little baby that they were caring for.
And the mom was clearly frazzled but also in love, trying to pick
boogers out of this kids nose and the kids swatting back,
right? Because it doesn't know any
difference. And the woman who was staring
longingly at the baby, she was an elderly woman, which means
that this wasn't like a naive look on her face.
She been through it. So she knows.
She knows that what that baby is going to do is that baby's going
to grow up to annihilate her. Because that's what children do.
They annihilate their parents. They annihilate their sleep,
they annihilate their social life.
They annihilate all of your attention.
And this elderly woman knew that.
She knows that babies grow up to destroy their parents in the
most loving way. And still she was just beaming
longingly at the baby. I could like I could tell in her
eyes that she would do anything to descend back into that season
of life and let the child annihilate her.
And what is that? I think that has got to be very
close to the look of God's face when he created the heavens and
the earth got to be close. God knows.
He knows in Genesis 1, He knows that the the heavens and the
earth just this helplessly wiggling baby of the heavens of
the earth in Genesis 1, He knows that the heavens and the earth
are going to grow up to annihilate him.
He's not naive. And what's he do?
He still creates it and delights over it.
And then when the time is right, He willingly descends into His
creation, the very heavens and earth themselves in the person
of Jesus Christ, and is willingly killed and crucified
by His own creation. All of creation humans
definitely. Look, the wood of the trees that
he creates in Genesis 11 was repurposed into a cross to kill
him. The thorns in the bushes he
created in Genesis 11 were jammed into His head.
The humans he's going to create to pay for their sins and to
cover us in righteousness. He dies on a crossroads.
Like, Can you imagine? This is when I say theological
revolution, I mean that there's no other idea about God that has
ever been posited. Like the Christian manifestation
of what kind of God creates a world that he knows is going to
crucify him. Only the God of reality, only
the God of Genesis. And so Genesis 11, we're not
even in the picture yet. We're still 2627 verses away.
But already in Genesis 11, the gospel is here.
There's no fall, there's no sins yet, but the gospel is still
present in here. OK?
So I want you to hear the gospel through the lens of Genesis 11.
Last point. Then your butts are out of the
pews and we're singing. Genesis 11 is not only a distant
story about how God created the heavens and the earth.
Yes, it's that, but it is also the story of your own salvation.
Check this out. How does the Bible describe your
salvation? The New Testament describes your
salvation by calling you. When you turn to Jesus and
faith, it calls you a new what a new creation, right?
Paul says anyone who is in Christ is a new what a new
creation. So that means that God has
created your salvation the same way that he created the heavens
and the earth. Your salvation is second
Genesis. This is profound.
That means that God created it the same way as He created the
heavens and the earth. Ex Nilo, out of nothing.
What did the universe do to earn its creation?
Nothing, It didn't exist. What did the universe do to
merit its creation? Nothing.
It didn't exist. The same is true of your new
creation. This is an exact parallel with
your salvation. What did God see in you to earn
your salvation? Nothing.
You'd do anything to earn it. How did you muster up the faith
to believe in God when your neighbors don't?
You didn't. You didn't muster up your faith
even. That's a gift of God.
Even your faith. That conscious decision where
you said I'm going to trust in God.
God created that ex Neela out of nothing.
It was not there. He spoke and boom, it was there.
You are as responsible for your salvation as the heavens and the
earth are responsible for their creation.
Which is to say not at all. You did nothing.
All you did was receive the gift.
And so let me ask you a question.
Are you, are you a Christian this morning?
Don't ever think to yourself I'm a Christian because I'm morally
superior than non Christians. No, never think to yourself I'm
a Christian because I'm spiritually more in touch with
other people. Wrong answer dad, wrong answer.
Never think to yourself I'm a Christian because I at least had
the good logic to add up all the stuff and say, oh, trusting
Jesus is the right choice with my life.
That's not why you're a Christian.
Maybe it felt that way to you. That was an illusion.
Why are you a Christian? Because of Genesis 11?
Because God created your faith, ex Neilo, the same way he
created the heavens and the earth, ex Neilo.
And so you know what the proper response to that is A lifetime
of worship and adoration to this creator God.
So let me pray and we'll do that together.
Heavenly Father, thank you for being our creator.
It's amazing to live in this crazy cosmos of heaven and earth
and sunsets and seas and galaxies and black holes and
beans. All of it is just wild.
I remember, Lord, it blew my mind the first time I read
Jonathan Edwards and he talked about this silkworm that was
crawling across his lap. And as he looked at the
silkworm, he said, what is this but a revelation of the person
of Christ? And I was like, who would ever
see that in a silkworm? That's crazy.
And he goes on to say the same way that this silkworm will be
crushed and it's materials would be used to create the finest
garments. Silk is the exact same way that
Christ would be crushed and that.
That his righteousness would cover us.
And when I read that, I thought, Oh my gosh, there should never
be anything in the universe that I look at that doesn't remind me
in some way of Jesus. And so I pray that you would
give us that type of faith and imagination, point us to Jesus
in all things, and help us believe in the theological
revolution of Genesis. So it's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
Amen. Let's stand and let's worship
this God together.