Main idea: Get your thinking straight about God’s creation of His Kingdom
Chance
Pleasure
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All right, we're continuing on in our study of Genesis and the the big idea that we looked at last week, which will continue this week, has to do with getting our thinking straight about God's creation of his kingdom. What's happening in Genesis, one is God building a kingdom with a an expansive, massive universe, a planet, and it's set now for its first king and queen, Adam and Eve, who will represent God's world and and God is going to do it so that he can dwell with them. It's a glorious story. Stand with me for the reading of God's Word. And as I read 24 through 31 we could ask this question every time we come to this like Israel asked when they were crossing into the Promised Land, getting this book, what kind of God redeems the people for himself? We could say it this way for us today. What kind of God saves sinners? What kind of God saves sinners? This kind? This is the one who does Genesis, 124 and God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God, He created him, male and female. He created them, and God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed and its fruit, you shall have them for food, to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens, to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw that everything he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, there was morning, the sixth day. This is the word of the Lord our God in heaven. We praise you and thank you. We are mere creatures, little creatures, at that needy, helpless creatures, dependent on all your provision, and yet with a glorious task to exercise dominion, and we know more of the Bible, to bring this gospel to the world and see spiritual awakening, see new creations in Christ made. You are a great and glorious God, providing all that we have, all that we have needed, Father, I pray that You would help us see you in your glory, and we would be in awe and wonder of you. We would worship you. As a result of this, we know that this isn't the whole of the story. We know that all too well, with the fall came a cursed world, and we're watching a second hurricane ready to pound the East Coast, and we would pray that you would, by Your grace and mercy, protect those who have already experienced devastation, pour out compassion, pour out mercy, bring rescue, help and the aid of our country and the churches especially, to Lift high the name of Christ, the Savior. We have war going on in the Middle East, and it appears to be escalating, we pray that there would be peace in Israel and the surrounding nations, Lord Jesus. As we look at what's going on in the world, we say, Come Lord Jesus, come quickly. But if you do not, and this is remains a time of mercy and forgiveness, make all of us, all who are in those lands preach the gospel of the forgiveness of Christ before judgment day comes, pray for our ACBC counselors, some 25 men and women who are in Texas being equipped and trained and celebrating what you're doing. We thank you for their faithful labors. Bless them now continue to bless. Us the work of the gospel and the churches of our city. This one right here, Christ's name, Amen.
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Well, the origin story of atheistic evolution in 2024 presents three gods, so to speak, as it were time chance in nature. They are the gods of lucky and unlucky organism in this philosophy. And if we took a selected set of data, humans, with their reasoning abilities, have been the most lucky. We are lucky organisms on a lucky planet, on a luck in a lucky solar system. And that's that's how an atheistic scientist has to reason through chance, time and nature. But if you look at the data fully, you'll find something different. It shows up in a cancer diagnosis, a car crash, a hurricane, a school shooter, a war in Ukraine or a war in the Middle East. It doesn't feel very lucky at all. Evolutionary scientists agree that the Sunday Sun will one day supernova, that's their hope. One day the sun will supernova and destroy all life as we know it, no purpose, no direction, no meaning, no morals, No justice, no future, just physics, chemistry, biology and then eternal silence and nothing. That's the origin story and the future story of atheistic evolution. What we find in the Bible is something as counter that story as any possible where does that leave us? If you believed in that story, if it was true, those gods were true, what does it leave you with? Well, it leaves you with the demigod of pleasure and power. I mean, for those of you who have children or grandchildren, you've got Maui, the demigod in Moana, if you got the Norse gods with Loki, the god of mischief all the mythologies, not unlike, not unlike, the mythology set up by atheistic evolution has a set of capricious gods. I mean, they just move at moods and whims for no good reason, the demigod, god of pleasure, is also a cruel demon. I mean, some of you here might be investigating Christianity, and you're you're looking for something better than luck. If you were like me, you could be asking questions like, Is the family that I grew up in with all its conflicts, all its addictions, its dysfunction, part of some cosmic, cruel joke? Is it up to be to make my own luck? I mean, it's a common thing that basketball teams, football teams say it, but I don't watch football that much basketball teams like you know, we make our own luck. It's actually not luck when you make it.
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And it really leaves us with this. Should I just try to get a few nice things and find a few places with good vibes and enjoy them until somebody lowers me in a box into a grave. Is that what I should do, the God of the demigod of pleasure, is that what I should bow to you pleasure as a god is a wicked and capricious master. Look at the addictions, the power struggles, the fallout of wars. All of these things are devastating what we have here is something wildly different. Victor Hamilton says this about Genesis, one what we what we find is quote one God who is himself, uncreated, merciful, sovereign. Versus the belief in multiple gods and demons who are capricious, unpredictable and often immoral if you're added to the atheistic Pantheon, amoral Genesis, one declares Yahweh, the creator of unfathomable power, wisdom, goodness, making the universe with mankind as the apex of His creation, and He charges them to rule his planet as his representatives. Why did God make it? Well, it wasn't that he was lonely. He's not lonely. We find in phrases like Colossians, 117 all things are made by Him and for Him. Romans, 133 from him to Him and through Him are all things. What we actually find at the creation account is the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. According to the whole of Scripture, we find this out, so abundant, radiant in glory, that outbursts a creative power. If you're speaking of God being in need, which you really can't do, the only thing he needed to do using that word is to overflow with it, and the creation is made. Mankind is made. Representatives of his image bearers are made for an expression and display of His glory and grace. And what does that evoke in us? What do we do with Genesis? One many things according to Scripture, but it at least gives us these two things, awe and purpose. Awe and purpose. I've said for a long time, anybody who deals with an addiction, because the demigods of pleasure then take form in sexual pleasure, control pleasure, the dopamine hit on your device from getting to another level of whatever game it is. Like those things, they become culturally, we call them addictions. They're enslaving sins. And I've often said whether it's whether it's pornography or whether it's food, the problem is an awe problem. Paul Tripp wrote a devotional called awe, because it's our problem. Is an awe problem, and there's nothing like Genesis one to give you awe. Nothing like it to give you awe. Genesis one opens the Bible and its countercultural revelation of a soul satisfying God who made the universe to dwell with us forever. It's a glorious beginning. What? What kind of God saves sinners? This kind of God? It's a glorious picture at the beginning. This is part two in the series. Same outline applies from last week. We get to finish the days of creation. We're going to examine God's creation of his kingdom. We're going to exalt. We're going to go a little more depth of what we exalt about that. And we're going to take a Preview of next week, which is establishing our life and purpose. These three these things come out of this today. Let's take this first one and finish out the days of creation, examining God's creation of his kingdom, and why I say this kingdom is because this is not some random thing for God. God is creating a kingdom with his first king and queen, and then it's going to be people who are going to fill the hole of it so that he can dwell with them. He is creating his kingdom. When we looked at it last week, Genesis, one one through two, we could summarize as God forming created the heavens and the earth. The Spirit of the Lord was over the face of the deep. Then there's the framing days one through three. And in that framing, Genesis one, three through 13, we have day and night. There's a framework. We have land and sea. There's a framework we have night and dark, day and night. We have this framework of land and sea and all these various parts. Then we have the frame that we have the filling of it in the filling of it, 14 through 31 we have those other days, four through six. We go from the heavens being filled with planets, stars, galaxies, the seas and skies being filled with fish and birds. Day six, we have the animal life, and we come to the creation of man. That's where we are today. Okay? Genesis 126 says, Then God said, Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Let's unpack this. What's going on here in this, this day, we have all the animals made. There's there's a blessing given to them. They're going to be fruitful. They're going to multiply. Now you need someone to rule over it. There's a lot made of this little phrase, let us make the US in this. Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. Is this the royal we? A person who is an exalted majesty, uses the US just to describe their greatness. Is it a plural of majesty? Is it simply God talking to himself like I talk to myself in my house to keep track of my thoughts. Or is this a conversation between the members of the Trinity? Is that what this is? We do know this. The Spirit of God is hovering over the waters on day one. We do know that one of the other members of the Trinity is here. We do know that in John one, one through three, we have the word Jesus, being in the beginning, being with God, not identical to the father, being deity. We have that. So we have we have Father, Son, Spirit. Colossians 115, through 19 gives us more detail. It's through Jesus that all things are brought into existence, and he is preeminent over all things. A deliberation between the members of the Trinity is, in my view, the most plausible answer. And if it's still unclear in Genesis one, it won't be unclear for long. God, who existed in community from eternity past, is creating community on the earth. That's what he's doing, making man in his image. If God is plurality in perfect, functioning, glorious community, making man and woman and a people is reflective of the community that is in the Trinity, one God, three persons. What does image and likeness mean? Again, there is a lot said about image and likeness in the ancient world. The world image, the word image and likeness is applied to paintings, carvings, statues, occasionally reflections. There were brass mirrors polished bright and shiny. Today, when we think of image, we almost naturally go to the reflection off of a mirror. Idea, and it wasn't that it wasn't there, but here's what it was more likely like in the ancient Near East, the time Moses is writing this an emperor, let's say, of Babylon, or Egypt, the great king. He would have statues commissioned at his likeness, and he would either have them made and shipped, or he would have them made in location, so that at every town center, every Piazza, as it were in Italian, every place where there was a government building, you would know who the king was. That's an image. It's in His likeness. It's obviously not the king. It's just a piece of stone, but it represents and here we have this image, but God's not making other gods. God's making likenesses, and especially when we add it to the fact that they're going to exercise dominion.
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We have this in our in our world today, every federal building that you go into is going to have a picture of the most current president. This is who your president is. You can see his face. And so here tying this idea to exercising dominion is what we have. God is making mankind to represent his rule over all things. So they are like him. They are not him, but they're like him. They bear his image in multiple ways. You want to think about the multiple ways you could talk in terms of personality and reason, or various attributes of God that are like that we copy. You could do that. It's making a lot of a little text to do that. I have a great book on the image of God by hokkima. If you ever want to do a deep dive on what the image of God means, but we can at least summarize it this way. Every one of you. Has been made to represent God to the world, to represent his rule, his loving and good rule to the world, his just rule to the world. That's what he's made mankind for, as if to say, seeing the perfect Adam, the perfect Eve, the perfect man, the perfect woman, the others say, what God must we have? Makes them amazed. The exercising dominion which is tied to this is the idea of ruling leadership, mankind's to represent God's rule on earth. And remember, this is before sin. So there's no selfish rule. A ruler, a leader, made in the image of God to exercise dominion, is not exercising selfish dominion, not exercising sinful dominion, not exploiting the greatest in the kingdom, even in the unfallen Kingdom is still the servant of all Jesus outlines what leadership should look like. If we fast tracked into other parts of the Old Testament, other parts of the New Testament, we would find that mankind is to rule in justice for the flourishing. Go to the end of second Samuel and Second Samuel 23 three and four, you find that good, godly leadership's main aim is to help God's people flourish in serving Him and in the world. That's what effective leadership is. If you go to Psalm 72 which was the writing about Solomon's coronation. What is a good and godly king? He upholds righteousness, he stands up for the needy and the poor. This is the kind of Dominion, a good, perfect rule. Now notice what follows. Notice what follows. We're talking about this creation mandate. And there's three parts to the creation mandate. There is the Dominion, there is the multiplying, and there's the filling we're going to get to. Each of these started with the Dominion. So God needed, or wanted to have a planet, a world ruled by men and women exercising his rule in his stead. Verse seven, verse 27 says, So God created man in His own image, you can't get a greater impact. What's man like man is in the image of God. Look at the repetition. So God created man in His own image. The image of God, He created him. God made mankind to rule as his image bears. Look what's next, male and female, He created them. There's no question in the Bible's account about sex and gender. They are one in the same. There is not a separate thing called Gender from biological sex. That's a modern concoction. They're made male and female. They're going to be need to be fruitful and multiply. They're going to need to be able to need to be able to have children. Male and female counterparts existed in all of the animal realm. Male and female counterparts to to carry this mandate out is here.
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And yes, this is countercultural to our day, our day, we have separated sex from gender. You could be have biological sex, but a different gender based on what how you feel. Remember, I said that feeling is the modern God. Pleasure is the modern God. We have one significant piece of evidence in the created order about this. It's called genes, genetics, chromosomes, DNA. There, there are male and female. They are distinct at a biological level. And uh, so God has made mankind. What else is different is what God's making people for. It's something radically different from all the creation accounts of other mythologies. Mankind isn't made servile as base slaves for the whims of Yahweh. I mean, let's, let's contrast it to the engineer east, one of the most contemporary mythologies, to Moses, one of the contemporary mythologies that has this creation of sky. I and Earth was Marduk and Tiamat. These were the Babylonian gods. There were a set of kind of Titans, like the Roman and Greek gods. And out comes Marduk, the god of stone. And there is a God of the sea. Marduk goes to battle with the sea god. And in going to battle, he slays the sea god, pictured as this serpent, sea monster, Dragon, after slaying, cuts the body in half, and the one half of the body becomes the heavens. The other half of the body comes the earth, and all the blood from Tiamat that has been shed now becomes the stuff to make humans, and the humans are slaves of Marduk. That's the origin story, and it's pretty close to the origin story with different names and different creatures in Greek. Mythology, Egyptian mythology, mankind are just forced labor for the gods. That's not this story. We find man and woman with dignity and as royalty. As royalty, the first king and queen, there's no commoner Royal. There's no noble commoner distinction in the creation account. There's not two classes, one of men, one of women. Doesn't mean there won't be order and structure in all of creation and under leadership. But here they both equally bear the image of God. We have to pause and soak up the modern significance. Modern evolutionary thought sees man as the chance development of chemical processes with no purposes but for the race to survive. That's That's it. No purposes, therefore, no morality, nothing but bear survival. I'll unpack the Dominion mandate next, next week, when we talk about what it means to exercise dominion, I've given you a little bit, but what I want to do is just carry it on just a little bit farther. Verse 28 I want you to notice how gracious and good God is. Verse 28 says, And God bless them, and God said to them, now, remember when we see this? We saw it earlier with the fish and the birds, when God blessed and said, when we do this, you can almost read it like this. And God blessed them by God saying to them. Here it is. God is pronouncing with his word, and we know how powerful God's word is. Remember the repeated phrase, and God said, and it was so here we have God's speaking. He says, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. God's blessing this spoken word is his gracious empowerment for them to succeed and prosper. It means that I should delight in having grandchildren be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. God wants us to be fruitful, multiply, like the rest of animals, they were to procreate. They would have children who would take on this mandate. Now notice there's words added here. The words are, subdue and have dominion subdue it. Have dominion over it. There's no sin. So we're not talking about the kind of subduing that's subduing an enemy. What we are talking about is a world so verdant, so full of life, so grand and glorious that we would almost call it wild, so much, in a sense, competing life without sin, that it needs structure and order. This subduing is to provide structure and order to make it more beautiful and more productive. I would summarize the creation mandate for every single person this way, you're given a little piece of time, a little piece of life, a little place on earth, and the creation mandate calls you to make it more productive and more beautiful, to benefit the people around you. I love that picture, whether whether you've got a custodial job or a tech job, or you're you're investing. In the little ones, schooling them at home, you're making more productive, more ordered, more beautiful for its flourishing. This is the subduing chapter two. We're going to see the call to cultivate the earth and keep it it's going to be putting that into more concrete terms. It needs structure. God made the world to need structure to maximize its possibilities. He placed mankind in the world to do that verse 29 and God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth, and every tree with seed and its fruit, you shall have them for food, everything that you need to carry out that mandate, it's going to be in abundance. The wheat is going to grow, the barley is going to grow, all the seed plants that could be ground and made into flour that can be roasted and eaten all of the fruit with its seeds in them, from almonds to apricots, you name it. Now notice this, what's the food, vegetables and fruit. Apparently, some of the vegetables or fruit tasted like meat because it was perfectly satisfying. That may be a little reading back into my preference. I Jesus, so God's given this commission, get married, have babies spread out and fill the earth, make everything like the Garden of Eden. And I will give you every seed from the vegetation and every fruit from the tree, and it will be food and abundance, so much abundance that a lot of it will just fall to the ground and grow another set on into eternity. What a glorious picture. What a good God. What kind of creator do we have? A God who provides everything his people need to fulfill His mission. This is not a demanding slave master, exacting everything he can with little effort to help them. This is a glorious King giving his princes and princesses all they need to rule for him. He does it for the animals, verse 30, and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens, to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so the creators provided everything his royal representatives will need. He has provided everything His creatures will need. Verse 31 says, And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good. We've seen good five times now, very good. Very good. Beautiful. This the word, all by itself, means complete, whole, beautiful. Much of the time in Scripture, good implies a moral perfection and order. There's a moral perfection and order here. Now it's very good,
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abundantly, good. What kind of God saves sinners? A very good God with a very good creation. There was evening, there was morning, the sixth day, the end of the week, after making Adam and Eve giving their their mission, he says it was very good. You and I have a significant job to represent a good King's loving and gracious rule on the earth. And we all know this is the start of the story, and we all know we're going to get to the fall in very short order, because the world you and I live in is not this. But it's really important to say the reason why there are bad things is not random chance and decay from entropy. Everything started with a good God with a good order and a good creation with good purposes. Mankind is going to rebel, and in an introduction of the curse, we are going to find a. Other things about God and our need for redemption. What do we do with just Genesis one? Well, we should at least exalt this, the glory of the king. There is something about stepping back and taking some long, healthy thought of this extraordinary creation that makes us want to exalt the king man's the apex of creation, but he's not the apex of the story. God and his glory are the apex of the story. God as creator, we are creatures. The first place we need to start in our relationship with God is him being creator and us being creatures. We need to humble ourselves. One of the most famous atheistic objections to the Bible's account was given by Carl Sagan, and he mused about how big the world was, how big the universe was, assuming an evolutionary mindset that there must be other life out there, if there's not other life out there, what's going on in in the movie adaptation for the book that Sagan and his wife wrote, The Jodie Foster character is speaking to grade school children looking out at the universe, imagining the Day of first contact with the aliens, and she says, if it's just us, it seems like a lot of wasted space, which was sagan's critique of the biblical account. Here's how we need to look at the biblical account. If I had a couple of little army men and I set them on the stage and we said the army men represented humans and the stage represented the Earth, we would have proportions that are wildly out of they're wildly out of proportion. Why? Because the army men would be way too big. If I took grains of sand and put them on the stage, and we said the grains of sands were people and the stage were with the Earth, it would be wildly out of proportion, because the grains of sand would still be way too big compared to the size of the Earth. If I were to lay down and I would try to put my arms around the stage and try to grasp around the stage. I couldn't get my arms around it. The universe is the size that it is, which which? By the way you look, every time we build a telescope to look out, and we build bigger, build a newer, bigger, better one. We send it closer to space. They find out that the universe is even bigger than they imagine. I think a few people are finally giving up thinking that we'll ever see the end of it is that empty space. It is not empty space. It is the visual illustration that God is always beyond your reach, whatever, you'll never get your arms around it. You'll never get your mind around it. That's called mystery. God is transcendent. He is above and beyond all that you could think. And every time you try, there's more. And that's true at the micro level, we try to get as small as possible, and we keep finding smaller things and forces. We try as big as possible, and it's farther away than we could ever imagine. God is unfathomable and immense and transcendent. Which speaks to a glorious power which is set on his loved ones, set on his loved ones. This
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is written as the foundation of our exclusive worship and service to God. The end of the Bible, Revelation, 410, 411, the basis of all angelic worship is the same. The angels, these set of 24 elders bow before God, saying, Worthy are you our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power? For You created all things, and by your will they existed and were created. The universe was not only made for mankind, but for God to dwell with mankind, God is far greater than we can possibly imagine or think, and we creatures need to humble ourselves and give him worship. The glorious thing about Genesis one is God will stoop, so to speak. Gets this picture into the garden, and take dirt, red dirt, and fashion Adam, and he will give Adam life. Give him a few rules, give him a job to name all of the animals. He finds out he's alone. God puts him back to sleep, and God intimately opens up his side, takes out a part, and fashions Eve our God, who is beyond imagination in size and power eternal. Immortal is imminently involved in this creation. He is, he is close, intimately involved you.
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God made the world for mankind at the pinnacle of this part of the creation, He is going to dwell, he's going to stoop. But ultimately, as we find out how the story unfolds, it ultimately isn't made for Adam and Eve but for the second Adam and his people. As the story progresses, we find out more. The Israelites psalmist wrote a psalm that they would sing repeatedly. You're familiar with some of the language. Psalm 95 verse six says, Oh, come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep of his hand. What kind of God is in Genesis? One, the One who loves his sheep and cares for his pasture, cares for them. And then they say so today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. You have a good God, omnipotent Creator, who is a shepherd caring for his sheep. Don't harden your heart against him. If we went through Genesis one and we detailed out various characteristics, we call them attributes of God, we would see his power. God has that power of self existence. He has power to bring things into existence, and he did it all by words. His words have power that phrase God said, and it was so you can get simpler but more exhilarating than this. He is wise. The moment God speaks, we see a plan, a purpose. Upon observation, we see living complexity that even today astonishes scientific observation and the tilt of the earth just so the elements in a periodic table for chemistry, and certainly there are doctors and scientists that are not Christians, but there are a lot who are, and the more they study, the greater their wonder is.
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And this God blessed his world, and he saw that it was good. Lastly, notice this, he is a God of life. He's a God of life, creating and sustaining. Life is such a part of God's being that it simply keeps springing back after loss, after the fall, life was not eradicated. Was it? No after the fall, there was a curse, and it was difficult, but life still was abundant. After the flood, God reestablished life over all the earth. God continues to bring forth life after death. God has planned resurrection and after God himself, and the person of Jesus Christ, came into this world to die for sinners. This is the kind of God that's in Genesis, one the kind that's going to take on human flesh and die for sinners. We have life from the dead. Michael Reeves heard a message from Michael Reeves this summer, talking about the first third day, and he's talking about First Corinthians 15, in which there was death. Jesus was crucified, but then there was resurrection. He's the first to be resurrected, and then later on, others are going to be resurrected. Michael Reeves Muse this way, do you think that God had in mind resurrection on the first third day? What's the what happens on the first third day in creation? You. It's not a trick question. He makes vegetation with seeds, and he makes fruit with seeds. What do seeds do? They fall to the ground. They end their existence as seeds die and they begin their existence of a new plant. Paul uses that illustration in First Corinthians 15, from the creation, God had a plan to resurrect life. It's as natural as a seed falling to the ground and dying and becoming new life. He muses is the first scripture, First Corinthians, 15, four, and that he rose the third day, according to Scripture, is the first scriptural Day. Day three. It's fun to think about you've got to hear this. God wants your life. God wants you to live. God wants you to live now. He wants you to live in service of him now, and he wants to provide for that, but he wants you to live forever. So if you are here today and you are estranged from God, you know you have a sentence of death, you know you're in guilt of sin, or you're just tired of being what you feel like is the victim of luck, there is a God who wants to give you life. He is here calling you through Jesus Christ to turn from your sin. He is offering new life. Trust Him. Do not harden your hearts. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. Finally, as a teaser for next week, establish your life purpose and activity under his kingship. We'll unpack a few things next week, but at least we could say this God has given us a Dominion mandate. So each of you has a little peace in God's big and glorious plan. I mean, this kind of thing fires me up to get up every day. I've got a little peace for a little time in God's big plan. We'll unpack what is called the creation mandate, or the cultural mandate, when we see what Adam was called to do in the garden, till and keep it because a picture that sets up what out what is, what else is going to happen, taking the resources of the world, the raw natural resources, reordering, rearranging to make them more productive and more beautiful. We'll look at how that applies to family, culture and society, but at least these three things start first, how do we establish our life under this first is with submission. Submission. God is a good creator. God is a good owner. Whatever he creates, he owns. We have just been given a slice of Earth and a slice of time to serve Him, and the creator always has the right to do what he wants with his creation. Remember, God is good. Second is stewardship. We want to make the most of what God has given us in this time. And there's two interesting things about stewardship, one from creation, one from Jesus' return. Jesus is going to return, and he is going to ask us to give an account of the stewardship we were given here on Earth. There is a stewardship you of the things we're going to ask next week from this, Be fruitful and multiply. Does that mean everybody needs to get married and have kids? And if you have to get married and have kids, do you have to have as many as possible? That's a question that comes from here. Wait till next week, you'll at least have one thing you're curious about when you come back
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with the coming of Jesus Christ, God has provided An updated version of the Creation mandate for believers, we find the progress of it, the update of it in Matthew 2818 through 20. It's the theme verse for our church. We say we're a loving community making disciples of Jesus Christ. And making disciples of Jesus Christ comes from Matthew 2818 through 20, All authority. In heaven on earth has been given to me. Go therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age, you have a stewardship that anybody who is in your sphere, anybody that you can raise a conversation with, anybody willing to listen any opportunity you want to tell them about Jesus and His glorious recreation work, that he can offer new life and offer forgiveness. This is the time of forgiveness, and he can offer that. So wherever your slice is as many as there are unbelievers, we are bringing the Great Commission, and then as people become believers. We're helping them grow and mature. You all have a slice and a time and a place to bring order out of chaos, to bring grace, to bring mercy and time of trouble. This is the mandate. And finally, there's satisfaction. There's satisfaction. The king provides for his creatures everything that they need. He's gracious, he's compassionate. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that we don't need to worry. I referred to it last week a little bit, but with sin coming into the world, making our living is harder, surviving is harder. And Jesus wants us to know. Jesus wants us to know that the same good Creator God is still a good sustaining God for all who are seeking to advance his kingdom. Matthew 626, Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns. Here your heavenly Father feeds them.
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Do not be anxious saying, What shall we eat? What shall we drink, or What shall we wear? For the Gentiles, seek after all these things. And your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. What is the purpose of God in creation? Salvation is to populate a new heaven and a new earth filled with royalty. Men and women will not marry or have babies then, but they will rule the earth, making it more productive and beautiful. This is where you're headed. This is where you started. It's the glorious vision that God has set for us. Let's pray, Father, thank You for this awe inspiring word, God. You are above and beyond all that we can ask or think you're beyond comprehension, and that mystery is so necessary for our soul. We already battle with pride. We already battle with wanting you to be our slaves, accusing you of evil when we see evil in the world. I pray that You would help us see your glorious wisdom and grace hear from creation that shows up in keeping your promises throughout the Bible and that brings us to an eternal end that's glorious in heaven. Give us the wisdom. Give us the grace to believe it and act on it. Christ's name. Amen.
Dr. Dan Jarms is teaching pastor and team leader at Faith Bible Church in Spokane Washington, as well as associate dean at The Master's Seminary in Spokane. He has been married for over 30 years to Linda, and has three adult children. He earned his B.A. in English at the Master’s College, B.Ed. at Eastern Washington University, M.Div and D.Min in Expository Preaching at The Master’s Seminary. His other interests include NCAA basketball, woodworking, and art.
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