SPEAKER_00: Hey family church, Pastor Jimmy here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm standing in our brand new campus in North Palm Beach.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: These stained glass windows really speak to the ancient nature of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Which is different because everything in this life moves fast.
SPEAKER_00: One day you're bringing your baby home from the hospital, and the next you're helping them move into a college dorm.
SPEAKER_00: One day you're listening to cassette tapes and then CDs, then you're streaming music from your watch.
SPEAKER_00: One day you're Googling everything, and the next you're asking AI to help you write papers, plan your trips, and answer all of your questions.
SPEAKER_00: Well, styles change, technology changes, culture changes, but some things never actually change.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian faith isn't a new idea.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian faith is the oldest story ever told because ours is an ancient faith.
SPEAKER_00: This year, Family Church celebrates 125 years of ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Now a lot has changed since 1901.
SPEAKER_00: We've met in different buildings, sung different songs, used different technology, and reached people in lots of different ways.
SPEAKER_00: But the faith we proclaim today is the same faith that has been handed down to us from generation to generation for nearly 2,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: Over the next five weeks, we're going to study one of the greatest summaries of that ancient faith, the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the creed is not scripture and it does not replace the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it helps us remember what the Bible teaches.
SPEAKER_00: It gives us a concise, beautiful, memorable way to confess the essential truths of the Christian faith.
SPEAKER_00: Christians have recited these words across continents, across cultures, across languages, and across denominations for literally millennia.
SPEAKER_00: The Apostles' Creed reached its present form around the 8th century, but it grew out of an earlier confession known as the Old Roman Creed that dates to the 2nd century.
SPEAKER_00: And it isn't called the Apostles' Creed because the Apostles wrote it.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Apostles' Creed because it faithfully summarizes the apostolic teaching that those apostles proclaimed.
SPEAKER_00: There are those who would say that our beliefs are out of date, that it's time to move on and get with the times.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible says exactly the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: In the book of Jude, we're urged to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
SPEAKER_00: So, we're not inventing something new around here.
SPEAKER_00: We're holding firmly to something very old.
SPEAKER_00: We're standing on the truth that has transformed lives for centuries and will continue to transform lives until Jesus returns.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, let's all recite the Apostles' Creed together right now at Every Neighborhood Church.
SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00: I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried.
SPEAKER_00: The third day he rose again from the dead, he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the universal church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: My challenge to you is simple.
SPEAKER_00: Memorize the creed for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Teach it to your children and your grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: Talk about it with your Bible study group.
SPEAKER_00: Let it shape the way you think about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, about the church, about salvation, and about eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you know what you believe in, why you believe it from the Bible, you'll be prepared to stand firm no matter what.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, your neighborhood pastor is coming to unpack that first phrase, I believe in God the Father Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: So open your Bible, turn your Bible on, lean in, and let's discover why our ancient faith is still changing lives today.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Family Church Downtown.
SPEAKER_01: My name is Derek Simpson.
SPEAKER_01: I serve as one of the pastors here at our downtown campus.
SPEAKER_01: It's great to see all of you here today.
SPEAKER_01: That was Pastor Jimmy.
SPEAKER_01: Pastor Jimmy is our lead pastor.
SPEAKER_01: He's normally our Bible teacher here at Family Church Downtown.
SPEAKER_01: He'll be back in the pulpit uh next Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: Uh he's up in Palm Beach Gardens this weekend.
SPEAKER_01: So we're installing a brand new campus pastor at our Palm Beach Gardens location.
SPEAKER_01: Pastor Bernie Cueto will still do the most of the Bible teaching up there.
SPEAKER_01: But uh Pastor Zach Thurman and his wife, Jen, and their family are new to our church, uh coming from Colorado.
SPEAKER_01: And so this is his first Sunday, so Pastor Jimmy's up there with him.
SPEAKER_01: He'll be back next Sunday for all the things that Pastor Zach talked about.
SPEAKER_01: So we have uh Back to School Sunday and Group Connect and Leadership Rally.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that Pastor Jimmy's excited to be back here uh teaching and preaching God's word for us.
SPEAKER_01: I'm really, really glad uh about excited about all the things that have already happened in the room.
SPEAKER_01: Like you sang so great this morning, and our team did such a great job leading us, having Pastor Ben uh and his family up here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited for you to get to know Pastor Ben and get connected to him.
SPEAKER_01: He's he's a he is a uh fantastic uh pastor to children of family.
SPEAKER_01: A great job uh complimenting our our already great team.
SPEAKER_01: And um and then I love seeing all the baptisms on the screen today, and then just uh meeting a ton of new people.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're brand new to Family Church, I'd love to have the chance to meet you afterwards, as soon as we're done here.
SPEAKER_01: My wife, Megan, and I will be through these doors to my left and to your right in our meet the team area.
SPEAKER_01: If we haven't had a chance to meet face to face yet, I'd love to do that.
SPEAKER_01: But right now, let's go ahead and have our Bible study.
SPEAKER_01: Let's turn our Bibles on, open our Bibles up to Isaiah chapter 40, Isaiah chapter 40.
SPEAKER_01: And uh this morning we're jumping into this uh study that's based off of the Apostles' Creed, and we're trying to answer the question: what is the essence of Christianity?
SPEAKER_01: That is uh that is the the the question that the creed tries to uh answer.
SPEAKER_01: And uh there's a lot of talk these days about the essence of things, the nature of things.
SPEAKER_01: We're moving into uh an election season here in the next uh several months, and there's a lot of debate and a lot of discussion on big important topics.
SPEAKER_01: Questions like what is uh what does it mean to be an American?
SPEAKER_01: Uh this past week, the last several weeks, the uh WNBA, the Women's National Basketball Association, has had a lot of conversation about what it means to be a woman and who can play in the WNBA.
SPEAKER_01: And that's a fascinating conversation to uh to watch play out.
SPEAKER_01: Uh some people in culture are confused about some of these things.
SPEAKER_01: At family church, we are not confused about what it means to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: We're not confused about what is the essence of Christianity, in part because we have tools like the Apostles' Creed that help give us a framework for what we believe and why we believe it, because it's connected to the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostles' Creed, like Pastor Jimmy said, it's a summary of essential doctrines.
SPEAKER_01: And um, you can and you should, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you should believe more than what is stated in the Creed, but you cannot believe less.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostles' Creed summarizes our core essential beliefs.
SPEAKER_01: It excludes, and there's some there's a lot of people around the world that can't say it with integrity.
SPEAKER_01: Uh if if uh if you ascribe to the Buddhist religion, if you ascribe to the Islamic religion, if you ascribe to Orthodox Judaism, you can't say the Apostles' Creed with integrity.
SPEAKER_01: Uh even uh even some like American, American kind of centric uh cults and different religions that claim aspects of Christianity to be true, like Mormonism and like Jehovah's Witnesses, can't say the Apostles' Creed because it says things that they don't believe, and we believe things that they do not.
SPEAKER_01: However, all of the Protestants around the world throughout time have expressed something like this.
SPEAKER_01: All the Catholics around the world uh throughout time have believed something like this, never said the apostles' creed.
SPEAKER_01: All the Orthodox Christians around the world across time have expressed something similar to the Apostles' Creed.
SPEAKER_01: Now, normally at Family Church, we preach through books of the Bible, and we're gonna continue to preach the Bible every single week, but we're gonna base our Bible study on the scriptures that support the aspect of the creed that we're talking about on this day.
SPEAKER_01: So uh today we're looking at Isaiah chapter 40.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah chapter 40.
SPEAKER_01: So we've got five weeks of kind of intro to theology 101 as we head back to school this this year, and I think it's gonna be a fantastic Bible study.
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to jump into it with you today.
SPEAKER_01: And so the first line of the creed, the first thing that we're studying is this statement I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: So this is Isaiah chapter 40.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna start in verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: To whom then will you liken God?
SPEAKER_01: And what likeness compare with him?
SPEAKER_01: An idol.
SPEAKER_01: A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains.
SPEAKER_01: He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot.
SPEAKER_01: And he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.
SPEAKER_01: Do you not know?
SPEAKER_01: Do you not hear?
SPEAKER_01: Has it not been told you from the beginning?
SPEAKER_01: Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
SPEAKER_01: It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and who spreads them like a tent to dwell in, who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
SPEAKER_01: Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
SPEAKER_01: To whom then will you compare me?
SPEAKER_01: That I should be like him, says the Holy One.
SPEAKER_01: Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these?
SPEAKER_01: He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, no one is missing.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel?
SPEAKER_01: My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.
SPEAKER_01: Have you not known?
SPEAKER_01: Have you not heard?
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is an everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: He does not faint or grow weary.
SPEAKER_01: His understanding is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_01: He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength.
SPEAKER_01: Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.
SPEAKER_01: But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.
SPEAKER_01: And they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord, and all the saints at Family Church said, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, we received God's word at Family Church.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give you some observations from Isaiah 40.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to write some of these things down, there's some blank spaces at the bottom of the program.
SPEAKER_01: You can write some things down.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah begins this little passage of scripture talking about how the one true living God is no ordinary God.
SPEAKER_01: You can't compare the God of the Bible to the idols that we construct for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Even the most impressive idols that we fashion, even the temples, the grandest temples that we build for our own accomplishments that we construct ultimately are in vain.
SPEAKER_01: They ultimately pale in comparison to the Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 21, he says, Don't you know, can't you hear?
SPEAKER_01: Isn't it obvious to you that there is a creator?
SPEAKER_01: A God that is so big that he sits above the sphere of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Notice he doesn't say the rectangle of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, if you're a flat earther, don't at me, don't email me, don't text me.
SPEAKER_01: Just keep it to your YouTube channel or whatever you got.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: The whole of the cosmos, all of creation bends to the whims and to the will of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible for us to even come up with a scale, a ratio of how much larger and how much more supreme He is to us.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 23 says, His power transcends the most effective politicians and the most strategic generals.
SPEAKER_01: The comparison between God's power and the most powerful of all humans is incomparable.
SPEAKER_01: The scariest, most successful rulers of the world, all of their intelligence, all of their might, all of their savvy, all their military genius, they are impotent compared to Almighty God.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 26, it says that he knows the names of all the stars.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, in verse 27, we question his presence.
SPEAKER_01: We question his plan for our life.
SPEAKER_01: We question his protection over us.
SPEAKER_01: One of the effects of sin, one of the ways that sin mars even our own image and the way that we relate to God is that we are prone to either falling into the temptation of the trap that we can hide from God.
SPEAKER_01: That somehow he can't see us, somehow he doesn't know us.
SPEAKER_01: Or that we need to.
SPEAKER_01: That we need to hide from him.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Adam and Eve did.
SPEAKER_01: That's what King David did.
SPEAKER_01: It's what you and I do often.
SPEAKER_01: But he ends in verses 27 to the end.
SPEAKER_01: He ends by saying the key to understanding God's strength.
SPEAKER_01: If you really want to unlack this unlock the strength of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God in your life, you have to admit that you need it.
SPEAKER_01: Because he and he alone is an everlasting God.
SPEAKER_01: He and he alone has wisdom that is unsearchable.
SPEAKER_01: It's his power and his might that we live.
SPEAKER_01: And so Isaiah is asking the question Who is this God?
SPEAKER_01: That's the topic of our Bible study today.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the creed, I think, helps us to answer.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're going to write some things down, take some notes.
SPEAKER_01: Here's some things you can write down.
SPEAKER_01: What the Apostles' Creed means for me.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, on your notes, it means that I was made to worship God.
SPEAKER_01: I was made to worship God.
SPEAKER_01: One of the great temptations in life is becoming so convinced of our self-sufficiency and so confident in our self-reliance that we forget that we are actually creatures.
SPEAKER_01: If we're not careful, we can construct a world for ourselves where we become the center of all of it, and everything that happens in my life is because of me, my intelligence, my good looks, my portfolio.
SPEAKER_01: I become the center of everything.
SPEAKER_01: Not only, though, does the Bible say are we creatures, we're creatures that live in a creation that we didn't make.
SPEAKER_01: The complexity of our own bodies and the fine-tuning of the universe are things that we explore and discover.
SPEAKER_01: They're not things that we invent.
SPEAKER_01: We learn about them.
SPEAKER_01: We did not make them.
SPEAKER_01: You and I are not the result of some kind of primordial lottery ticket that just magically came to be and evolved over time.
SPEAKER_01: The God of the universe, the Bible says, made you and made the world that you live in.
SPEAKER_01: The intentional creation of God and the design of the universe and all of its complexities is the best explanation available for why it is that you feel like you have significance.
SPEAKER_01: It's why you love your children.
SPEAKER_01: It's why you believe and you search for meaning in life.
SPEAKER_01: It's why you desire meaning from relationships and experiences.
SPEAKER_01: It's why all of those things matter, is because the complexity and the design of God made you to feel that and to believe that.
SPEAKER_01: It's the only explanation possible for why you can go out to Palm Beach on an early morning and watch the sunrise and find beauty in it.
SPEAKER_01: Why you can be in the Everglades in the evening and watch the sun set and find beauty in it because it's good.
SPEAKER_01: Because God made you, and God made the world that you live in, and we're made to worship God.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 1.10 says that everything in God's creation was good.
SPEAKER_01: There's a moral connection and a moral fabric and fiber to the creation of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: And not only is it good, but the mercy of God is that he restrains the chaos and the world.
SPEAKER_01: My sin causes the world to fall into chaos, but God, because he loves us, because he is gracious to us, gives us order, allows us to retake in dominion some of the creation.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're made to worship God.
SPEAKER_01: One theologian said it like this: Man is not his own maker.
SPEAKER_01: And so he cannot be his own master.
SPEAKER_01: Man is not his own maker, so he cannot be his own master.
SPEAKER_01: You have to acknowledge that if you were created, you are indebted to your creator.
SPEAKER_01: Our worship is not directed at some kind of unknown God.
SPEAKER_01: We don't worship a spiritual energy.
SPEAKER_01: We worship a God with a name, a true living God who's revealed himself graciously to us in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: He exists, the Bible says, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: God, the Bible says, names himself and he's passionate about his name.
SPEAKER_01: He talks about himself and he defends his name and his honor and his glory in the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_01: One of the commandments, the third commandment, is prohibits us from taking his name in vain.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord's prayer teaches us to hallow the name of God.
SPEAKER_01: That means to make it holy.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because the name of God is holy.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Leviticus chapter 11, verse 44.
SPEAKER_01: I'll put it on the screens.
SPEAKER_01: It says, For I am the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_01: Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.
SPEAKER_01: Now you might expect, or you might have been taught, or you might have seen model for you an idea that the bigness of God, the reality of God, the creator nature of God, that that means that God is cold or judgmental.
SPEAKER_01: When in reality, the Bible presents him as quite the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: Number two on your notes.
SPEAKER_01: The creed means to me that I am loved by God the Father.
SPEAKER_01: I am loved by God the Father.
SPEAKER_01: The most frequent way that the Bible talks about God is in this aspect of Father.
SPEAKER_01: It happens in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says that we relate to God as Father in really two kinds of ways.
SPEAKER_01: There's one way, in a universal sense, in which every single person on planet earth has a fatherly relationship with God because God created them and God continues their existence.
SPEAKER_01: Paul mentions this in Acts chapter 17.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking, he's preaching to people, trying to get them to worship the one true living God.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, hey, listen, we're all offspring, in some sense, we're all descendants of Adam and we're all offspring of God.
SPEAKER_01: But he goes on in Romans chapter 8 to say there's a special fatherly relationship that you can have with God that's only available to those who are believers in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 8, 14 says, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
SPEAKER_01: And if they are children, then they are heirs.
SPEAKER_01: They are full inheritance.
SPEAKER_01: They're full inheritance of God and fellow heirs with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm blessed, Megan and I am blessed.
SPEAKER_01: We have six beautiful, six awesome kids.
SPEAKER_01: We are experiencing parenting in all of its stages.
SPEAKER_01: This week, we uh we take Carly's uh the jean jacket.
SPEAKER_01: We're taking Carly uh to uh to Ohio to drop her off to go to college.
SPEAKER_01: So this week we'll have a kid in college, we'll have two kids in high school, one kid in middle school, and we have a kindergartner, Hudson, and he's there in the shorts, and then we have a kid who's in potty training, and Wyatt.
SPEAKER_01: He's getting really close.
SPEAKER_01: It's really awesome.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna be a big day at our house.
SPEAKER_01: Um I have experience in almost every stage of parenting.
SPEAKER_01: I know there's a few left that we got, they're they're coming.
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't have any experience with perfect parenting, though.
SPEAKER_01: Even my own dad, my dad is an awesome.
SPEAKER_01: I wish he could get to know my dad.
SPEAKER_01: I'm awesome, his name's great.
SPEAKER_01: He lives in Kansas.
SPEAKER_01: That's where these pictures were taken.
SPEAKER_01: His little farm there out there in outside of Wichita, Kansas.
SPEAKER_01: He is an incredible human.
SPEAKER_01: And he taught me to love Jesus, taught me to prioritize the church.
SPEAKER_01: My was just, I mean, he was present at all my stuff.
SPEAKER_01: He's a fantastic dad, but he's not perfect.
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to be a good dad to all these kids.
SPEAKER_01: Four of them are sitting on the front row this morning, trying to be a really good dad to them, but the the reality is definitely not perfect.
SPEAKER_01: They'd be the first ones to tell you.
SPEAKER_01: They're awesome kids, and I've had to apologize to them for being short-tempered with them.
SPEAKER_01: I've hurt their feelings from time to time.
SPEAKER_01: I I've I've given my time to things that I should have been given to them that weren't as important to them, but I've given my time to other things that weren't nearly as important in the moment.
SPEAKER_01: And the reality is none of us have a perfect father.
SPEAKER_01: As good as your dad may be, as good of a dad that you might be, not perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you don't have a story like that.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you, some of you, the idea of dad is a lot more difficult for you, but the reality is none of us have an experience with a perfect earthly father, but all of us, all of us through Christ, have access to a perfect heavenly father.
SPEAKER_01: And how much does that perfect heavenly father love you?
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says in Romans 5 8 that he loves you so much that he sent his only son to die on the cross for your sins.
SPEAKER_01: But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died.
SPEAKER_01: For us.
SPEAKER_01: That is not the action of a cold, detached, impersonal, judgmental God.
SPEAKER_01: You could doubt him, but he's not.
SPEAKER_01: That's who he is.
SPEAKER_01: Number three, on your notes, you can trust, means I can trust God Almighty.
SPEAKER_01: I can trust God Almighty.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty is a theologian kind of summary way of saying all of the attributes that can only be true of God, all the things that can only be true of God, that's who he is.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Let's be very clear about who we are believing in.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord God Almighty, Father Almighty.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty is a summary of all the attributes that can only be true of who he is.
SPEAKER_01: Attributes like omnipotence.
SPEAKER_01: That's a fancy word that means he's all powerful.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing in nobody more powerful than God.
SPEAKER_01: Omniscience, that he is all-knowing.
SPEAKER_01: Our God is all-knowing.
SPEAKER_01: He is omnipresent, meaning he can be everywhere all at the same time.
SPEAKER_01: Our God is self-existent.
SPEAKER_01: He was not created.
SPEAKER_01: There's no end to him.
SPEAKER_01: There is no beginning.
SPEAKER_01: He has always been and he always will be.
SPEAKER_01: Our God has immutable characteristics.
SPEAKER_01: His attributes are never going to change.
SPEAKER_01: He's never going to change.
SPEAKER_01: He is constant, so you can trust him.
SPEAKER_01: You can depend on him.
SPEAKER_01: You can build your life around him because he will not change.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 135, verse 6 says it like this: Whatever the Lord pleases, he does.
SPEAKER_01: In heaven and on earth, and in the seas and all deeps.
SPEAKER_01: This means that the God of the universe is sovereign.
SPEAKER_01: The sovereignty of God should be cause for great joy and great celebration for us.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a believer in Jesus, you should lean into the reality that God is ultimately sovereign over all things.
SPEAKER_01: It's not something you should negotiate.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a controversy for you.
SPEAKER_01: You should lean into it, and it should give you great hope and great joy.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's what the sovereignty of God means: it means that you and I can make real decisions, real choices that really matter for eternity, and we're not going to disrupt, we're not going to disorient the master plan of God.
SPEAKER_01: Man's free will is not a threat to the sovereignty of God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not going to compromise the sovereignty of God.
SPEAKER_01: Created things don't compromise the creator.
SPEAKER_01: We're not living in some kind of uh some kind of AI test platform that has a chance to like get out of itself and somehow corrupt everything around it.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what's taking place with us.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 1.11 says it like this: that God works all things according to the counsel of his will.
SPEAKER_01: But somehow, in a mystery that I can't fully understand or fully uh explain to you, the sovereign will of God allows for us to make real choices that really matter in a way that doesn't deflect or or mess up his plan for how he wants the world to go.
SPEAKER_01: And you might say, Well, I don't know if I'm comfortable living in a world like that.
SPEAKER_01: And I would say to you, I'm not comfortable living in a world where I can comprehend everything that the God of the universe is trying to do at all times.
SPEAKER_01: I'm okay.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm comforted by the idea that there is a God of the universe that somehow is going to work all the things that I can't understand.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to work it together for good for those who love him and call it according to his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: I would rather that be the case.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not comfortable with the world that I can fully understand.
SPEAKER_01: Because I know my own limitations.
SPEAKER_01: I need to live in a world where the God of the universe is in charge of everything.
SPEAKER_01: Number four on your notes.
SPEAKER_01: I will flourish by following God's design.
SPEAKER_01: If the God of the universe made you on purpose with intelligence and with design, and if that God loves you like a perfect father, and if you submit to his all-knowing plan, then doesn't it make sense that you would also follow his design for your life?
SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't you listen to the scriptures when the scriptures say, hey, this is a better way for you to live?
SPEAKER_01: We don't start with behavior modification because it's not about behavior modification, it's about worship.
SPEAKER_01: You're made to worship, and God says, hey, this is the way that you can honor best the world that I've created.
SPEAKER_01: God has an established order and design for the way that his world is supposed to work, it's supposed to operate.
SPEAKER_01: There's an order for how moms and dads are supposed to interact with one another in the home and how children's are supposed to interact with moms and dads.
SPEAKER_01: God has a design for stewarding, for how we're supposed to steward the creation, the world around us.
SPEAKER_01: We're not supposed to worship it, but we're supposed to respect it and to use the resources that God's given us to the good and the flourishing of all the people who live in the world.
SPEAKER_01: God has a plan for our finances and how we order our finances and how to strategically redirect the worship of our heart through our money to other things so that our resources and our wealth don't become an object of our worship itself.
SPEAKER_01: There's a success sequence for how we're supposed to order our lives and build our families.
SPEAKER_01: How we're supposed to remain pure until we meet the right kind of person and then uh get married at the right kind of time and then begin to build a family the right kind of way that honors God.
SPEAKER_01: Last night, we had to see a beautiful picture of that.
SPEAKER_01: Chris Kiss is a minister on our team.
SPEAKER_01: He leads all of our young adult ministries across our campus and across our family churches, and he married Christy uh last night.
SPEAKER_01: They had a beautiful wedding.
SPEAKER_01: Man, it honored Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It was so great.
SPEAKER_01: It was a great picture of everything that's supposed to happen when two young people put God at the center of their lives and their relationships, and they submit to their parents who have loved him and tried to raise them in the fear of admission of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And it was a beautiful celebration of the success sequence succeeding.
SPEAKER_01: The reality of God's design in your life is kind of like a current.
SPEAKER_01: It's been said that, hey, if you just like a current, if you swim against the current, you're fighting uh tooth and nail, you're fighting against the flow and the current of how God established the world to work.
SPEAKER_01: The better and the easier path is for you to swim with the current.
SPEAKER_01: And so the living your life like God's design uh puts you in an umbrella, puts you puts you in a in a in a way where you're a pattern that you can experience all the flourishing that God has for you.
SPEAKER_01: I just ask you, how are you doing with that?
SPEAKER_01: Are there some areas of your life, some segments of your heart?
SPEAKER_01: Are there are there aspects or pockets of your life that you've tried to fence off and keep from the sovereignty of God?
SPEAKER_01: Are there are there are there aspects of who you are, parts of your business, parts of your family, something on your computer, where you just said, hey, I'm gonna I'm not gonna submit to God's design in that part of my life.
SPEAKER_01: How's it going for you?
SPEAKER_01: And all this works best when you submit everything that you are, every part of who you are, to God's good design.
SPEAKER_01: Number five, when you know, it means that I must believe in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: At some point, um, at some point, whether you whether you formally answer these questions or not, all of us construct in it for ourselves, we construct what's called a worldview that helps us answer the big kind of metaphysical questions of life, the big existential questions of life.
SPEAKER_01: Questions like, who am I?
SPEAKER_01: What am I made of?
SPEAKER_01: What am I here for?
SPEAKER_01: What's my purpose?
SPEAKER_01: Where's all this headed?
SPEAKER_01: What's gonna happen when I die?
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 11:6 says it like this it says, without faith, it is impossible to please him.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
SPEAKER_01: The reality is, all of us answer those questions with some form of faith.
SPEAKER_01: Faith in what?
SPEAKER_01: That's the question.
SPEAKER_01: Faith in what?
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says if you draw near to God and you believe that he exists, that he rewards those who seek after him.
SPEAKER_01: The word faith there in Hebrews, it means to believe into something.
SPEAKER_01: It means to believe into something like you would show faith.
SPEAKER_01: If you're showing faith by sitting in a chair, at some point you have to take your feet off the ground and trust that that chair is going to hold you up.
SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna get on an airplane, you have faith that that airplane is gonna actually get off the ground and take you where you need to go.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to get the most out of your faith, you want to get the absolute most out of your faith, you have to believe all of it.
SPEAKER_01: You can't pick and choose, you gotta believe all of it.
SPEAKER_01: You want to get the most out of life and go all in with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Go all in with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's the only system of belief.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the only answer that makes sense to all of those bigger questions of life.
SPEAKER_01: Most people spend most of their life trying to make themselves into God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, though, the Bible says, did the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, the Bible says, uh, was in heaven with God and he left God.
SPEAKER_01: He left heaven to take on the constraints of humanity.
SPEAKER_01: Philippians 2 says, though he did not account equality with God, a thing to be grasped for the joy set before him.
SPEAKER_01: He humbled himself.
SPEAKER_01: Took on the constraints of flesh, humbled himself even to death on a cross.
SPEAKER_01: Every week at Family Church, we take the Lord's Supper because the Lord's Supper reminds us of the essence of Christian belief.
SPEAKER_01: It's an opportunity for us every single week to restate the things that we say that we believe, that I am a sinner in need of a savior, a belief that God the Father loves me and sent Christ to die as a substitute for my sin, and that Jesus, Jesus takes all of my sin and all of my shame, and all of my guilt and all of my blame.
SPEAKER_01: And he pays the penalty that I owed and he gives me instead.
SPEAKER_01: In exchange for my repentance, he gives me forgiveness and new life for all who would repent and believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: I would submit to you, if you've never ever been become a believer in the Lord Jesus, today would be a great day to do.
SPEAKER_01: What a great day, what a great moment to give your life to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: A lot of us in the room, we've done that before.
SPEAKER_01: A believer in Jesus, the Lord suffers an opportunity for us to reflect, to confess any unconfessed sin and to think about today, where is the object of my faith?
SPEAKER_01: We have an object of faith that is Jesus of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_01: At this time, we're going to uh reflect in just a moment.
SPEAKER_01: The way we think and teach about the Lord's Supper here at Family Church is if uh you're a believer in the Lord Jesus, if you've been baptized, believers baptism by immersion, we encourage you to take the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a guest with us today and you would normally take the Lord's Supper where the church that you attend, you can take it today as our guest, as part of the worldwide family of God.
SPEAKER_01: But if you're not a believer in Jesus, you can baptize believers' baptism by immersion.
SPEAKER_01: Encourage you not to take it right now.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, it'd be best if you just uh think about your own relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can talk to one of our next steps team in just a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Talk to you about how you can take the Lord's Supper with the technology.
SPEAKER_01: But right now, let's reflect, let's think, let's confess, let's pray as we sing, and then just momentum take together.