Speaker 1: 1st Baptist, baptist El Dorado, will you join me now in listening to our sermon from this week?
Speaker 1: The beginning words of any good story can sometimes transcend time.
Speaker 1: There's probably lines of books, the first lines that you know, though you've never even, maybe, read the book.
Speaker 1: Call Me Ishmael, moby Dick.
Speaker 1: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Speaker 1: A Tale of Two Cities.
Speaker 1: It was a bright, cold day in April.
Speaker 1: The clocks were striking 13,.
Speaker 1: That's 1984.
Speaker 1: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Speaker 1: Probably guess which book that is?
Speaker 1: In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 1: What's interesting?
Speaker 1: Four of those are fiction.
Speaker 1: One of those is absolute fact, and yet the one opening line there, that's absolute fact, is actually the most fascinating of them all, the most transcendent of them all.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 1: I want to begin really just the first four words in English, the first three in Hebrew in the beginning, god.
Speaker 1: In the beginning God.
Speaker 1: Just from that phrase we can draw a lot of theology about who God is, about what he's up to, about his power.
Speaker 1: In the beginning God.
Speaker 1: What does that tell us?
Speaker 1: Well, from the start, it tells us this that before the beginning began, there was a God who began the beginning, that before any of this started the history of you and I, there was a God that preexisted all of that.
Speaker 1: And so when we read in the beginning, we should never do this.
Speaker 1: We should never consider it the beginning of God.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear there is no beginning of God.
Speaker 1: This is the beginning of God's work in this world and what we call humanity, but it is not the beginning of God, because God has no beginning.
Speaker 1: We know God is eternal.
Speaker 1: Let this hurt your mind a little this morning that if you and I were to load up today into a time machine, we got in this morning and we just pressed the arrow forward into the future.
Speaker 1: We pressed the arrow forward and we pressed go, there is nowhere we could get out into the future, that we could step out of the time machine and God would not be present.
Speaker 1: But let this hurt your mind even more.
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to not even say it because you'll probably spend the rest of the service thinking on that and not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But if you got in that time machine and you press the arrow backwards and you just started going backwards, there is no place into the past in which you could step out and God would not be.
Speaker 1: If God is eternal, god is eternal into the future and God is eternal into the past.
Speaker 1: And yet even these phrases break down because God is outside of time.
Speaker 1: God doesn't need time.
Speaker 1: God is God all by himself.
Speaker 1: We've talked about that a few times.
Speaker 1: But in the beginning, god, there was a God who began the beginning.
Speaker 1: And what did God do?
Speaker 1: In verse 1, we see that in the beginning, god created First.
Speaker 1: From that I see this that God delights to create.
Speaker 1: Again, as we've said, god is God all by himself.
Speaker 1: God is God if he doesn't create.
Speaker 1: God is God if he doesn't create the earth and the mountains, and the rivers and the streams and you and I.
Speaker 1: God is God all by himself.
Speaker 1: And yet what did he delight to do?
Speaker 1: He created, and the mountains, and the rivers and the streams, and you and I.
Speaker 1: God is God all by himself.
Speaker 1: And yet what did he delight to do?
Speaker 1: He created.
Speaker 1: And how did he create?
Speaker 1: He created from nothing.
Speaker 1: You and I, we are creators as well.
Speaker 1: We create things, but we don't create out of nothing.
Speaker 1: Things, but we don't create out of nothing.
Speaker 1: If my family this afternoon were to maybe head to the kitchen and we were going to bake something.
Speaker 1: We're going to drop something off at your door today.
Speaker 1: We're going to bake cookies together.
Speaker 1: We're going to create those incredible chocolate chip cookies, but the reality is we've created the cookies, but how did we create them?
Speaker 1: From ingredients that already existed?
Speaker 1: We got the sugar, we got the cookies, but how did we create them?
Speaker 1: From ingredients that already existed?
Speaker 1: We got the sugar, we got the butter, we got the chocolate chips.
Speaker 1: The ingredients were there.
Speaker 1: That's how you and I create.
Speaker 1: When God creates, he creates from nothing.
Speaker 1: There were no ingredients.
Speaker 1: God created the ingredients he needed to create anything he creates, and so it's not as if things were pre-existing and God formed and fashioned them together.
Speaker 1: No, god created everything and formed it into the world.
Speaker 1: So there was only God.
Speaker 1: And then God delighted to create.
Speaker 1: He chose to create.
Speaker 1: What did he create?
Speaker 1: The heavens and the earth is what verse one says, which really a summary statement of everything we're going to see.
Speaker 1: Verse two 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.
Speaker 1: The spirit of God, the active workings of God within creation.
Speaker 1: That spirit was hovering over the deep, as it was forming and filling everything we see.
Speaker 1: And we see in verse 3 that God says this.
Speaker 1: God says let there be light.
Speaker 1: That next phrase and there was light.
Speaker 1: So not only does God create, we learn that he's a creating God, a powerful God, but then we see this how does God create?
Speaker 1: He creates by his word.
Speaker 1: He spoke, he said let there be light.
Speaker 1: And then what happens next?
Speaker 1: He said let there be light.
Speaker 1: And then what happens next?
Speaker 1: Light just obeyed.
Speaker 1: There wasn't even light before that.
Speaker 1: And not only has light been created, but it has been created, obedient to the one who created it.
Speaker 1: He said let there be light, and it obeyed.
Speaker 1: God did not have to flip a switch, fire up a generator.
Speaker 1: I've been up with Craig Bonzel in the attic of this building and taken out some of these light bulbs and put some of them in.
Speaker 1: God didn't have to walk that terrifying catwalk up to the attic there.
Speaker 1: He just said it and it was.
Speaker 1: And so if you knew nothing about scripture, if this morning we could erase our minds and pretend that and maybe for some of you that's the case, praise God, you're seeing this for the first time, if we could walk into Genesis knowing nothing else.
Speaker 1: Already we're three verses in and we already know this.
Speaker 1: We serve a God who is a creating God, an all-powerful God, a God who has been around for a while, actually forever.
Speaker 1: We also serve a God who is a powerful God only has to speak the words and it's done.
Speaker 1: And over the next seven days, god continued to create.
Speaker 1: I've got a chart I want to put up on the screen.
Speaker 1: We see day one, two, three, four, five, six.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating how God does it.
Speaker 1: On days one through three, you have God forming.
Speaker 1: On four, five and six, we have God filling.
Speaker 1: So over these six days, you see day one God created light forming.
Speaker 1: Day four he's filling sun, moon, stars.
Speaker 1: He creates water and sky and then animals and mankind to fill that land.
Speaker 1: Three days of forming, three days of filling, and then day seven.
Speaker 1: We see in scripture that God rests.
Speaker 1: Why Does he need a nap?
Speaker 1: God has never needed a nap, god has never been tired.
Speaker 1: But God rests why?
Speaker 1: Because God sits back one to delight in his creation.
Speaker 1: He calls it good.
Speaker 1: He creates mankind.
Speaker 1: He calls it very good.
Speaker 1: He delights in his creation.
Speaker 1: I believe he gives us a model for our own life and a way to, in our own life, to take time to rest, to take that Sabbath for ourselves.
Speaker 1: But God sits back and rests and enjoys what he's made.
Speaker 1: We serve a good creator who has created all things good, and the God who creates is the God who delights, delights in his creation.
Speaker 1: So this morning we have a reason to worship.
Speaker 1: We have a reason to worship as we think about our creative God, as we think about our.
Speaker 1: When there was nothing, god spoke it and there was.
Speaker 1: This is the creator who we serve.
Speaker 1: This is the power that he holds.
Speaker 1: As we continue, we see that not only is there a creator, there is a creator, but it goes deeper than that.
Speaker 1: Next, we see this that we are made in the image of that creator.
Speaker 1: There is a creator and we are made in the image of that creator.
Speaker 1: Look with me now in chapter 1, verses 26 and 27.
Speaker 1: We've walked through creation.
Speaker 1: We saw seven days, three of forming, three of filling On.
Speaker 1: One day, god rests.
Speaker 1: God sees his creation, he calls it good.
Speaker 1: But within that sixth day, something fascinating happens, as he's creating, he's created the land, vegetation, he creates these animals that creep across the earth.
Speaker 1: But now, in verse 26, something different happens.
Speaker 1: As he creates mankind, it says this 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.
Speaker 1: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God.
Speaker 1: He created him Male and female.
Speaker 1: He created them First of all in verse 26, you may see something interesting at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Then God said look at this language.
Speaker 1: Let us make man.
Speaker 1: Then God said let us make man again in our image.
Speaker 1: What is this us and our language that we see here?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a few ways people think about it.
Speaker 1: I think the best way to think about it is simply we see an idea early on in the book of Genesis of the plurality that exists within the Godhead.
Speaker 1: You and I know we serve God, one God, three in one Father, son and Spirit.
Speaker 1: Already we've seen God working and even in verse 2, you see the Spirit that hovers over the water.
Speaker 1: In the book of John at the very beginning.
Speaker 1: The gospel writer is going to tell us that in the beginning was the Word, capital W Word.
Speaker 1: This is Jesus, who is with God in the beginning, at creation.
Speaker 1: We know there is Trinity.
Speaker 1: Present our God in Trinity, even at creation.
Speaker 1: I see a little piece of it here.
Speaker 1: Let us create man in our image.
Speaker 1: As we're reading through Genesis, if again we wipe our memory and we're seeing it for the first time, I don't think we have it fully fleshed out yet of what that plurality within the Godhead means.
Speaker 1: But scripture is going to make that clear.
Speaker 1: But right now we already see the bricks that are going to make up the home.
Speaker 1: That is the Trinity here.
Speaker 1: But what's astounding here is the sun and moon didn't get this, the fish didn't get this, the birds didn't get this.
Speaker 1: But mankind, what do they get?
Speaker 1: Let us make man in our image after our likeness, made in the image of God.
Speaker 1: That's what God says about mankind.
Speaker 1: Now, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: Does it mean that somewhere up in heaven there's a mirror image of me up there, who is the God of the universe?
Speaker 1: I pray that's not the case.
Speaker 1: I pray it's not the case.
Speaker 1: No, it's not that there's a mirror image of any of us, as if we're made in the image, in that kind of way.
Speaker 1: But I believe it's this that, in a sense, we are God's representatives here on earth.
Speaker 1: We are God's representatives here on earth.
Speaker 1: We are God's representatives.
Speaker 1: We are God's creation, set apart to serve him, to be his representatives.
Speaker 1: We'll see in a moment that God is going to give mankind work to do.
Speaker 1: God is going to give him responsibility.
Speaker 1: God is going to give him commands.
Speaker 1: We are made in the image.
Speaker 1: We are God's representatives.
Speaker 1: We are God's ambassadors here on earth.
Speaker 1: And that tells me there is dignity for everyone who has ever walked on earth.
Speaker 1: Do you understand the worth of every human that has ever walked on this earth?
Speaker 1: That everyone you see as you look around this room is someone who is made in the image of God?
Speaker 1: Let's take it a step further.
Speaker 1: Everyone you see when you walk out of this room is made in the image of God.
Speaker 1: That person at your work that you've got to pray to the Lord for some patience with, that individual is made in the image of God.
Speaker 1: The person that cut you off on the way here this morning is made in the image of God.
Speaker 1: Your children and your grandchildren, your friends, your family, everyone you come into contact with students when you come back from spring break and you step in your first class, back in your classroom.
Speaker 1: Everyone you see in that room made in the image of God.
Speaker 1: Do you understand the worth of everyone who's walked this planet?
Speaker 1: Now, let's make no mistake.
Speaker 1: We may know what's coming next week in chapter three.
Speaker 1: We know, as mankind, we are marred in sin, but yet even more, there is worth and there is dignity for all people because all people are made in that image.
Speaker 1: I love CS Lewis in his sermon the Weight of Glory, preached in the summer of 1941.
Speaker 1: He said that there are no ordinary people.
Speaker 1: You've never met a mere mortal.
Speaker 1: There are no ordinary people.
Speaker 1: There's not one in this room, there's not one in any room you can be in.
Speaker 1: There are only people made in the image of God.
Speaker 1: We can take it a step further as we turn to chapter two.
Speaker 1: Just how special this is.
Speaker 1: It's interesting as Moses is writing.
Speaker 1: It's interesting what happens here in chapter 1 and chapter 2.
Speaker 1: It's as if in chapter 1 of the creation story, what we get is almost this view, as if we were almost sitting in some stadium, seating in outer space, watching the earth from this 10,000 or 10,000 mile foot view and seeing God's creation.
Speaker 1: And then chapter two.
Speaker 1: We get the same story, but instead of our stadium seating in outer space, the author brings us down on the ground level.
Speaker 1: We get the same story, but we get to see it now from a different perspective, sitting in the garden, seeing what has taken place around us.
Speaker 1: And look with me in chapter 2, starting in verse 4.
Speaker 1: These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 1: When they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, there was no man to work the ground and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.
Speaker 1: Look at this, the whole face of the ground.
Speaker 1: Look at this.
Speaker 1: Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Speaker 1: And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about the dignity and worth of every human who has ever walked the planet?
Speaker 1: Look at the reality that in this moment, to create the first man, god reaches down into the ground and grabs up the dust of the earth and we'd be tempted to say, yeah, is there a lot of dignity in the dust of the earth?
Speaker 1: Is that all that impressive?
Speaker 1: We come from dust, but then look at what God does With his own breath, the very breath of God, from his own breath.
Speaker 1: This is the mouth of God that has just spoken everything, that just said the words and everything came in to being.
Speaker 1: But he just had to speak and it happened.
Speaker 1: But this he gets a lot closer from his very breath, he breathes the breath of life into mankind.
Speaker 1: You and I are created in the image of God, formed by God.
Speaker 1: We have our life because God breathed his life into us, causing us to live.
Speaker 1: We are reminded of the psalmist that reminds us that this is the God who knit us together in our mother's womb.
Speaker 1: You and I have infinite dignity and worth, and everyone you come into contact has infinite dignity and worth because there is a God who delighted to get close and personal with us and to create in his image, for his glory.
Speaker 1: And there's the most important part why does God create For his glory?
Speaker 1: So I do announce our dignity and our worth, but I don't necessarily do it so that we can walk out and think more highly of I mean, I hope you do think highly of yourself just as made in the image of God, but not in a way that we'll walk out of here and just show off around town and tell everybody just how impressive we are.
Speaker 1: Look at me, aren't I something?
Speaker 1: No, we are created in the image of God.
Speaker 1: I praise God for that.
Speaker 1: We have dignity, but why?
Speaker 1: So that we can glorify our creator.
Speaker 1: It all happens so that we can point back to him.
Speaker 1: So, you and I, this morning we have reason to worship because God created us and he formed us out of nothing.
Speaker 1: He knit us together in our mother's womb before we were even thought of.
Speaker 1: God had us on his mind and this creation on his mind, and he formed us with dignity, with intentionality and with delight.
Speaker 1: And now, as his creation, we get to turn around and worship the creator.
Speaker 1: We haven't been created so that we can worship the creature.
Speaker 1: We've been created to worship our creator.
Speaker 1: So not only do we have a creator, we do.
Speaker 1: Not only are we made in the image of our creator we are, but we were made to honor and serve our creator.
Speaker 1: We were made to honor our creator, creator, we were made to honor our creator.
Speaker 1: Look with me chapter 1, verses 27 through 30.
Speaker 1: We'll read 27 again.
Speaker 1: So God created man in his own image.
Speaker 1: In the image of God, he created him male and female.
Speaker 1: He created them and God blessed them.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: And God said behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth and every tree with seed and its fruit.
Speaker 1: You shall have them for food to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life.
Speaker 1: I have given every green plant for food.
Speaker 1: And it was so.
Speaker 1: So God created mankind.
Speaker 1: It says male and female.
Speaker 1: He created mankind, he placed them in the garden and he gave them a job to do.
Speaker 1: He gave them work.
Speaker 1: Genesis 2, 15, kind of our closer up story.
Speaker 1: The Lord, god, took the man and put him in the garden of Eden.
Speaker 1: Look at this.
Speaker 1: To work it and to keep it.
Speaker 1: God gave mankind work to do to keep it.
Speaker 1: God gave mankind work to do that.
Speaker 1: From the start Adam and Eve and all mankind they had work.
Speaker 1: They had work within the garden.
Speaker 1: God delighted that they would subdue, that they would have dominion over that.
Speaker 1: They would work it and they would keep it and they would protect it and it would be a place that would prosper and grow.
Speaker 1: Because of the work mankind is doing.
Speaker 1: God desired them to be fruitful and multiply, so quite literally expand, grow.
Speaker 1: This people made in the image of God that there would be more God worshipers here on the earth.
Speaker 1: They had work.
Speaker 1: Now, many times maybe you're tempted to say that work in and of itself must have been a result of Genesis, chapter three, when sin entered the world.
Speaker 1: Surely that's when work entered the world.
Speaker 1: But the reality is God gave mankind work to do.
Speaker 1: Work is a really good thing.
Speaker 1: A job and command from the Lord is a beautiful thing and just a quick little side note as we take a quick exit ramp.
Speaker 1: I want you to think about your work right now, whatever it may be, and by that I can mean your career, I can mean your work as a husband or wife, I can mean your work as a mother or father, I can mean whatever you want to define your God-given work.
Speaker 1: As there's a temptation we have when we think about work.
Speaker 1: We think this that here's the spiritual work, it's the work that Dustin goes to every day and Colby and Brian.
Speaker 1: That's the spiritual work, that's the ministry work, that's the special high and lifted up calling.
Speaker 1: That's what they do.
Speaker 1: But here's the work I do.
Speaker 1: It's just work.
Speaker 1: It's just the Monday through Friday, nine to five work Now.
Speaker 1: Now I wanna say this I praise God for the call of ministry and Dustin and Colby and Brian, and humbly myself, that God has given us a certain calling to serve you all as best we can and under God's leadership.
Speaker 1: But I wanna tell you, every one of you who works, in any and every category, what you do is God's calling and God has placed you there specifically for this moment, for this time, and there is value in work, in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: There's value in what you do, and God-given value.
Speaker 1: And what a gift that is.
Speaker 1: Work, to work the land to honor God's command existed in the Garden of Eden, existed within the perfect Garden of Eden.
Speaker 1: But also, not only do we work, we read chapter 2, verse 16 and 17,.
Speaker 1: The Lord, god, commanded the man, saying you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
Speaker 1: So not only did God give mankind work, God gave them commands and we were created so that we might obey.
Speaker 1: God has given us a calling to live in obedience.
Speaker 1: God has given us a calling to obey him.
Speaker 1: But this calling to obedience is a calling towards freedom.
Speaker 1: Where do we find freedom?
Speaker 1: We find it in the life that Christ has given us through obedience to him.
Speaker 1: We find it in salvation and based on that, in response us, through obedience to him.
Speaker 1: We find it in salvation and based on that, in response to that, we obey.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating to me that we read verse 16 and 17 and if we're not careful, we'll see God's command, we'll see our need to obey.
Speaker 1: And we'll look at verse 17 and we'll see this.
Speaker 1: But God said there was this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that you shall not eat.
Speaker 1: And we'll see that if we're not careful and we'll say isn't God restrictive?
Speaker 1: You know, isn't God restrictive?
Speaker 1: Isn't that just like God to throw a rule and a regulation and a restriction upon us?
Speaker 1: But we skip verse 16.
Speaker 1: You may surely eat of every tree in the garden.
Speaker 1: God had given mankind all things, the entire garden was open to them, and we'll talk more about that next week, as we see Genesis, chapter 3.
Speaker 1: But God had given mankind this true freedom in the garden and had given one command, and wouldn't you know it next week?
Speaker 1: We can't obey it, but we were created to honor and serve and to obey, and that's the course towards freedom, that's the life we find of freedom.
Speaker 1: Verse 24 and 25, I read, therefore, of chapter 2, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.
Speaker 1: Here, in this moment, we see somewhat the first marriage ceremony in all of scripture, as God has now created Eve, man and woman, husband and wife, in verse 25.
Speaker 1: And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Speaker 1: What you see in the garden is the picture of freedom, living under the sovereign authority and sovereign care of a creating God.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: In verse 25.
Speaker 1: Man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Speaker 1: We'll see next week that once they commit their sin of disobedience, the first thing they do is what?
Speaker 1: Try to cover up their nakedness.
Speaker 1: You see, in chapters one and two, nakedness, it wasn't a thing.
Speaker 1: A fish doesn't realize he's in the water, he just realizes he's alive.
Speaker 1: That's just where fish live.
Speaker 1: They're not thinking about the fact they're in the water, they're just living their lives.
Speaker 1: And we too were in the garden, in in in the full beauty of freedom before our god, in the full, uh, created order of a creative god living to work for him, living to obey him, to live in the freedom that our sovereign God had provided.
Speaker 1: This is who we are.
Speaker 1: This was the air that we were breathing in these first two chapters.
Speaker 1: We were made to honor God, and here's the problem we couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: We didn't do it.
Speaker 1: God, and here's the problem we couldn't do it, we didn't do it.
Speaker 1: There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible Across 66 books.
Speaker 1: There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible and we got through two of them before we disobeyed our creator.
Speaker 1: Two of them, and I think about the bookends of the Bible Genesis 1 and 2, and then another bookend on the other side Revelation 21 and 22.
Speaker 1: You have perfection in the garden in Genesis 1 and 2, and then you have a restored and new and even greater perfection in the new garden city, the new heavens and the new earth.
Speaker 1: Perfection on one side, perfection on the other, and you've got all of these chapters in between the two of them.
Speaker 1: And what happens here?
Speaker 1: How in the world do we get from one perfection to a new and even greater perfection, especially when considering the fact that mankind, we were the very ones who destroyed that perfection, who disobeyed our creator?
Speaker 1: How in the world do we get there?
Speaker 1: We get there because the creator, god, entered his creation.
Speaker 1: God entered his creation and that everything in between those two bookends is the story of how our creating and loving and redeeming God delights to bring us back to himself At the cost of who?
Speaker 1: His very son, god himself, coming to us in creation.
Speaker 1: That's what scripture is all about.
Speaker 1: That's what we're gonna see throughout this Easter series.
Speaker 1: That's what we're surely gonna see on Easter morning as Christ gets up out of the grave.
Speaker 1: That everything in between is the story of God redeeming a broken people and moving us from Genesis 1 and 2, in the first garden, where we ruined creation through our own rebellion, to the new heavens and earth, where all things are made right once again, when all things are restored, and in that new garden city, you and I, who are in Christ Because of the work, the death and the resurrection of Christ, can live in that new garden city, fully restored, fully glorified for all eternity.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because we earned it.
Speaker 1: Why, because of our good works we've earned that new creation?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, because of our good works we've earned that new creation.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, Because Christ Jesus did what we couldn't do.
Speaker 1: Because the garden of Eden will lead us to the garden of Gethsemane, will lead us to a cross made of wood from that tree, made of the tree that was in a garden, lead us to the garden tomb, which will lead us to the garden city that is to come.
Speaker 1: This is the beauty of our gospel that we are about to march over, these next few weeks from garden to glory.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do it together and we're gonna do it as we worship the very one who has made this possible.
Speaker 1: And so this morning we have reason to worship.
Speaker 1: And maybe you're here this morning and, for the first time, you want to come to that place of worship.
Speaker 1: For the first time, you want to realize not just that you have a creator, but that my creator knows me, knows you.
Speaker 1: Please come down and talk to me.
Speaker 1: Our pastors will be down.
Speaker 1: We'd love to talk to you about that.
Speaker 1: Maybe you want to join this church.
Speaker 1: We'd love to welcome you into this family of faith.
Speaker 1: Maybe you want to come, let one of us pray over you.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to sit right where you are and just pray and just worship your creator.
Speaker 1: However, you need to respond.
Speaker 1: I hope you will respond this morning.
Speaker 1: I'll pray and then we'll respond.
Speaker 1: Lord Jesus, thank you for the garden, thank you for creation, thank you that you are a creating God.
Speaker 1: But not only did you create us, you love us.
Speaker 1: Not only did you make us, but you redeemed us.
Speaker 1: And so, lord, if there is one in this room that doesn't know about that redemption, I pray that they would not leave this room without knowing that you are a savior.
Speaker 1: I thank you for the gospel.
Speaker 1: I thank you for Easter and the hope of the resurrection.
Speaker 1: We love you, lord.
Speaker 1: We pray this in Christ's name Amen.
Speaker 1: Would you stand now as we worship?