Speaker 1: I had to look around and kind of figure out all right, what are the rules here, how does this place work and how am I going to survive?
Speaker 1: And, on top of that, part of my story at that time is my parents had recently gotten a divorce and they did a.
Speaker 1: Really you know, they we were.
Speaker 1: We were in the middle of it in a lot of ways, and thankfully, god's worked through that and healed it, but it was just a tough situation, and so there was this emptiness that I was trying to fill as well, and so I started to look around and think well, everybody around here looks happy, so let me try to do what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And so the first thing I started to try and chase was a relationship, because it looked like everybody either lived or died on whether they were in a relationship.
Speaker 1: If you're in a relationship, things are great, if you're not, that's a problem to be fixed Like.
Speaker 1: That's how I saw the world around me at that time, and so I pursued a relationship and eventually I got in one, and then realized the same thing we've all probably realized at some point that time goes on, uh, that shine wore off and what I thought was going to provide happiness or fulfillment didn't do that, and so then I thought maybe sports would be the solution.
Speaker 1: So I chased football, uh, got on the team, made varsity eventually.
Speaker 1: Problem is, we were awful, like absolutely terrible, like 0 and 20 from sophomore to junior year, like, no joke, horrible.
Speaker 1: They're great now, but back then.
Speaker 1: And so we?
Speaker 1: You know practice would start to get hard and you know, I wanted that Letterman jacket for so long.
Speaker 1: And you get it.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden you realize that's going to get old too and I thought, all right, maybe it's grades.
Speaker 1: Right, I need to get into the right college, I need to get the right test scores and, praise the Lord, by the grace of God, I was able to get the test scores.
Speaker 1: I got into some dream schools and ended up getting to go to Dallas Baptist, but even that, though it was a good thing, didn't fill that hole that I was trying to fill.
Speaker 1: And what I finally realized when I got to DBU and I'd walked through all of this, is that I wasn't looking for girls or sports or grades, but there was this deeper thing that I was searching for, and that was fulfillment.
Speaker 1: It was this hole that was inside of me that I was trying to fill and try to give my life some meaning, and the problem was everywhere that the world told me to look to try and find that had nothing to offer.
Speaker 1: And so why am I telling you this story tonight?
Speaker 1: Well, because, if I had to guess, had nothing to offer.
Speaker 1: And so why am I telling you this story tonight?
Speaker 1: Well, because, if I had to guess, many of you here tonight are on the same journey, the same search, and, like me, you found that everywhere you look might offer some temporary happiness, some temporary fun, but that well, eventually runs dry.
Speaker 1: You've watched the one who you told if I could get in a relationship with this person, then my life is gonna be perfect.
Speaker 1: You've watched that relationship turn into deleted pictures and an unfollow.
Speaker 1: You've watched your sport turn from something that you love and have fun doing.
Speaker 1: You've watched it turn into a job.
Speaker 1: Or you've watched school turn from something that you're good at into something you're never good enough at, and I could go on and on with the examples.
Speaker 1: But what I want to share with you tonight is that there is something better.
Speaker 1: There is a better way.
Speaker 1: You can find happiness and fulfillment in this life, but you have to look in the right spot.
Speaker 1: But for me to show you that right spot, we have to go back to the beginning, like the beginning of everything.
Speaker 1: And so last week we talked about how we're going to be walking through our Eden series.
Speaker 1: This fall we're going to look at the first 11 chapters in Genesis to find answers that the Bible has to give about who we are and why we're here.
Speaker 1: And so tonight we're going to start in Genesis 1.
Speaker 1: And as we do that, we're going to see that God created the world with order.
Speaker 1: He gave it a purpose, he made us in his image to reflect him, and in Jesus, god made a way for us to live his way and not our own.
Speaker 1: And so our life actually works the way it was designed to.
Speaker 1: And so what we're going to see I'm giving you the ending at the beginning is that true life is found only in living through our God-given purpose in Jesus.
Speaker 1: And so, that being said, we're going to jump into the text.
Speaker 1: We're going to start literally first page of your Bible.
Speaker 1: This is the easiest verse you're ever going to have to find.
Speaker 1: Open up the cover, flip a few pages Genesis 1.1.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a big chunk of reading up front and then we'll be done with a lot of the readings.
Speaker 1: So just hang with me.
Speaker 1: It'll be on the screen if you don't have your Bible.
Speaker 1: So everybody take a deep breath, exhale Perfect.
Speaker 1: Let's start.
Speaker 1: Genesis 1.1.
Speaker 1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 1: And now the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Speaker 1: And God said let there be light.
Speaker 1: And there was light.
Speaker 1: And God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness.
Speaker 1: God called the light day and the darkness night.
Speaker 1: There was evening and morning the first day, and God said let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.
Speaker 1: And so God made the vault and separated water from the water under the vault, from the water above it.
Speaker 1: And it was so.
Speaker 1: God called the vault sky.
Speaker 1: And there was evening.
Speaker 1: There was morning the second day and God said let the water under the sky be gathered into one place and let dry ground appear.
Speaker 1: And it was so.
Speaker 1: God called the dry ground land and gathered the waters.
Speaker 1: He called seas, and God saw that it was good.
Speaker 1: Then God said let the land produce vegetation, seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit, with seed in it, according to their various kinds.
Speaker 1: And it was so the land produced vegetation plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.
Speaker 1: God saw that it was good.
Speaker 1: There was evening and morning.
Speaker 1: The third day we're almost done.
Speaker 1: And God said let there be lights in the.
Speaker 1: God saw that it was good.
Speaker 1: There was evening and morning.
Speaker 1: The fourth day, verse 20.
Speaker 1: And God said let the water team with living creatures and let the birds fly above the earth, across the vault of the sky.
Speaker 1: And then skip down to verse 22.
Speaker 1: God blessed them, yeah, god blessed them, and said be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas and let the birds increase on the earth.
Speaker 1: There was evening and morning.
Speaker 1: The fifth day.
Speaker 1: Then, finally, last two verses.
Speaker 1: And God said let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground and the wild animals, each according to its kind.
Speaker 1: And it was so God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds and God saw that it was good.
Speaker 1: All right, let's pray real quick to get back into this.
Speaker 1: Lord, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the opportunity to just live in it tonight.
Speaker 1: I pray that you would change us and shape us, that we'd leave here looking more like you, that we would leave here finding hope and healing and freedom in you, the only true place that can be found.
Speaker 1: We pray these things in the name of Jesus and everybody said amen.
Speaker 1: So that first line of the Bible that you've probably heard before.
Speaker 1: God created the heavens and the earth.
Speaker 1: And when you think about that, what do you think about?
Speaker 1: When you hear the word heaven, let me shout it out the place you go where you die, right Like heaven, up in the clouds, right Like that type of heaven, this happy place that you go when you die.
Speaker 1: But here the word that's being used is not actually really talking about that idea of heaven.
Speaker 1: This that's being used is not actually really talking about that idea of heaven.
Speaker 1: This Hebrew word that's being used really means more like skies.
Speaker 1: He's talking about the air right.
Speaker 1: And then when it says the earth, it's not so much talking about like the globe, but it's talking about like the physical ground that we walk on.
Speaker 1: And so what's being said in this first verse?
Speaker 1: It's really summarizing what's about to happen for the rest of the chapter it's kind of like setting up the story.
Speaker 1: Think about in Star Wars at the beginning, like once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away.
Speaker 1: So this first line is saying, hey, god created everything.
Speaker 1: And then the next word describes, or the next line describes, what the world was like before he created anything.
Speaker 1: It was formless and empty.
Speaker 1: And those words formless and empty could also be translated unordered and uninhabited, meaning it was completely chaotic, there was no structure and there was nobody living in it.
Speaker 1: And that's important to know because the rest of this passage is going to be dealing with how he solves those two problems, because he starts to bring order over those next six days, and these days aren't random, there's actually a structure to them.
Speaker 1: In those first three days he brings order, he separates the dark from the light and he creates day and night.
Speaker 1: And so this is God creating the order of time right Day, night, hours, months, years, like this is time being created.
Speaker 1: And day two, he separates the waters from the sky, and there's a whole nother sermon on how they would have viewed this and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But this is creating the order of sky and seas.
Speaker 1: And then on day three, he separates the seas with land that comes up, he establishes dry land and then he puts plants and vegetation on it.
Speaker 1: So he's bringing order and creating these spaces as he shapes the universe.
Speaker 1: And then, days four through six, he inhabits them.
Speaker 1: There's a pattern here.
Speaker 1: So in day one he creates the darkness and the light and creates time, and in day four he fills the space with the sun, the moon and the stars, and these reflect his light and they track time right.
Speaker 1: And then, day five, he separated the seas and the sky on day two.
Speaker 1: And then he fills the sky and he fills the seeds with birds and fish.
Speaker 1: You see the pattern here.
Speaker 1: And then, lastly, in day six, he fills the dry land with land creatures and we didn't read this but as a bonus he creates man and he gives man the vegetation that he brought on day three.
Speaker 1: So what's the big point here?
Speaker 1: Right, you could do a whole sermon series just unpacking that.
Speaker 1: But what I want you to see is that Genesis is not just some random fairy tale about how the world came to be and we talked about this a little bit last week that Genesis is also not trying to be a science textbook telling you exactly what God used to create the universe and how he did it and what timeframe.
Speaker 1: Genesis is trying to tell you the meaning and the purpose of the universe.
Speaker 1: That's what's being conveyed in these paragraphs.
Speaker 1: In fact, the point is that God is the artist and creation is his masterpiece, and he designed the world with order, meaning he designed the world and he designed our lives to work a certain way.
Speaker 1: There's truth behind everything we see, which is so important, because every popular voice we hear in the world that we live in says that there is no capital T truth, that you can define your own truth.
Speaker 1: You can live however you want.
Speaker 1: We're just a bunch of mammals on a rock floating through space and so nothing really matters.
Speaker 1: Live how you want to live and since there's no universal truth, you can just make up your own.
Speaker 1: But the problem is and the Bible is so clear about this and you'll experience it that if you try to live in the world that God made by your own rules, it's never going to end well.
Speaker 1: Live in the world that God made by your own rules is never going to end well.
Speaker 1: For example, let's say that I decide my truth is that I can live off of Bloom and Nerd's Gummy Clusters.
Speaker 1: Like, that's all I need for life.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to.
Speaker 1: Bloom is the popular one, right, like Celsius is out, and Bloom is, yeah, she, literally that's a Red Bull, but that's Haley is a big Red Bull girl.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, right, so I live on.
Speaker 1: Pick your poison on caffeine, right, celsius, whatever, whatever your favorite flavor of battery acid is, and nerds gummy clusters right, I can do that for a little bit and it's gonna taste good.
Speaker 1: Is anybody in here currently on that diet plan?
Speaker 1: Maybe not nerds gummy clusters, but candy in general?
Speaker 1: Yeah, perfect, a lot of you and the rest of you are liars.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I can live that way for a while, but eventually it's going to catch up to me and my body will hate me.
Speaker 1: Like my body will try to shut down because man cannot live on caffeine and sugar alone, like God designed my body to need real nutrients.
Speaker 1: Or maybe my truth is that I don't need to sleep.
Speaker 1: Like, laying in bed and watching Netflix is basically the same thing as sleep, and so I can stay up and binge the secret lives of Mormon wives and doom scroll, brain rot TikToks until 3 am for weeks on end.
Speaker 1: And how do you think that's gonna end for me?
Speaker 1: It might be fun for a little bit, but eventually my body is going to shut down because I need sleep.
Speaker 1: And in the same way, you can try to live out whatever truth or whatever rules you want to set for your own life, and it might work for a little bit, but eventually you are going to crash and burn into the capital T truth the way God designed you to live, designed your life to work, designed this world to function, and eventually you're going to run into that.
Speaker 1: And now I know those examples don't seem like huge deals, but here's the thing we have beliefs about all other sorts of things in the world that are much more important.
Speaker 1: We have beliefs about money.
Speaker 1: We have beliefs about our relationship, about school sports, our parents, and God's designed all of these things.
Speaker 1: They don't have to be bad, but he designed them to fit in their proper place in life and if we try to remove it from that, it never goes well.
Speaker 1: For example, god designed relationships to be a blessing, to be a good thing.
Speaker 1: But if you take another broken, sinful human being and this is a whole nother sermon series on relationships If you take that person and you try to make them your source of life, that relationship will be an anxiety-ridden dumpster fire because another broken human being is not made to hold the weight of your worship.
Speaker 1: It's not going to work.
Speaker 1: You're going to sabotage every relationship before you start it.
Speaker 1: You've got to have a source outside of that person, right?
Speaker 1: Or if you believe that your personal worth or actually let me back up If you think that achievement in sports and school is your thing, like achieving things is not bad, but if you think that that determines your self-worth, your life is just going to be this hamster wheel of anxiety and fear and comparison, because for you to have value you got to be better than her no-transcript, and it's eventually going to crash.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on and on.
Speaker 1: And so let me ask you tonight what part of your life are you trying to live outside of God's design?
Speaker 1: Is it how you handle dating?
Speaker 1: Is it how you chase popularity, thinking that likes and follows are gonna somehow fill that hole?
Speaker 1: Is it how you treat your parents?
Speaker 1: Be honest with yourself how is that going for you?
Speaker 1: Not how are you telling yourself it's going, but how is it actually going, because at some point you will crash into that capital T truth, whether it's happened yet or not.
Speaker 1: And the truth that you're gonna run into is that the only life that really works, the only life that is life to the full, is the one that's within God's order for things.
Speaker 1: But the question remains like, what is that order for us?
Speaker 1: It's one thing to know about day and night and fish and birds and the Genesis creation story, but what about me, a human being, in 2025 in Bernie, texas?
Speaker 1: What is my purpose that I'm supposed to live in?
Speaker 1: Well, god shows us that in verse 26.
Speaker 1: We're going to hop back into the text and so we didn't read it in this verse.
Speaker 1: We read it earlier.
Speaker 1: But after everything God makes, he says it is good, it is good, it is good.
Speaker 1: But then, after God creates humanity, he says it is very good.
Speaker 1: In verse 31, he says it is very good.
Speaker 1: There was evening and morning in the sixth day.
Speaker 1: It's almost like humanity is this crown jewel, like this pinnacle of creation.
Speaker 1: It's the main event.
Speaker 1: But why Like?
Speaker 1: Why are humans so special.
Speaker 1: Well, god explains that in verse 27.
Speaker 1: So God created mankind in his own image and the image of God he created the male and female.
Speaker 1: He created them, and so we hear that term a lot.
Speaker 1: But how many of you let's be honest, just raise of hands how many of you have been confused by the term made in the image of God?
Speaker 1: Before I know, I was like, probably up until a couple of years ago, I don't think I fully understood what that phrase meant.
Speaker 1: And to understand it, remember, the Bible was not written in English, and so a lot of times it's very helpful to go back to the original language it was written in, because it will give us a lot more of the intended meaning.
Speaker 1: And that word in Hebrew for image is Salem, and it's often used to refer to physical representations.
Speaker 1: A lot of times in the Old Testament or other writings during that time, it's talking about a statue.
Speaker 1: Okay, so God's saying we're statues.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Well, you have to understand what statue meant that time.
Speaker 1: A lot of times in that culture, statues were a part of a temple that they would build to a random God.
Speaker 1: There were lots of different gods that they would worship back then that weren't necessarily the true biblical God, but this statue was seen to be a representation of that God, not that literal God, but it was supposed to show people who went to that temple what that God looked like.
Speaker 1: That to represent that God's presence and authority and character.
Speaker 1: It was a visible representation of an invisible God to show the whole world what it was like.
Speaker 1: So let's tie that back in.
Speaker 1: To be made in the image of God means that we are supposed to represent him within the world.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be a visible representation of an invisible God.
Speaker 1: We're to reflect who he is to the world around us and to show us, to show it, what he is like.
Speaker 1: And so fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 1: I know I talked about playing football at Red Oak.
Speaker 1: One thing that they similar to Bernie is we would get to wear like our jerseys on game day, right, and it was really nice because we got to feel cool until about seven thirty, and then we get like fifty hung on us and then we come back to reality.
Speaker 1: But for a little bit we felt like kings, right.
Speaker 1: But one thing that I remember from when coach would let us wear our jerseys, we were told very clearly do not act like idiots.
Speaker 1: Don't do anything stupid, and if we did, it would not go well for us.
Speaker 1: I'm talking like barrel crawls, barrel rolls, snakes, bleachers that we were ever forced to do.
Speaker 1: Is our lineman coach, who was certifiably insane like, ended up getting fired Like he was a psychopath.
Speaker 1: Uh, he made all the linemen stand in the weight room and when he would call out a flavor of ice cream we had to do up down.
Speaker 1: So imagine, like this big, like pudgy lineman coach, like cookies and cream, and we're all like down on the ground trying to stand up like for literally 25 minutes.
Speaker 1: But why was it such a big deal that we acted like fools while we're wearing this jersey?
Speaker 1: I never really realized it until I realized that those jerseys had the words red oak right here across the front.
Speaker 1: And so when we wore those jerseys, whether we thought about it or not, we were wearing a name, we represented a school, and how we talked and behaved told people something about the team in the school that we were representing.
Speaker 1: And, in the same way, we were created to carry the image and name of God in the world that he made to show everyone what he's like.
Speaker 1: That's our purpose.
Speaker 1: That's what we were made for.
Speaker 1: That's why we're here to bear the image of God.
Speaker 1: And so you aren't just practicing your sport, you're bearing his image.
Speaker 1: You aren't just studying you're bearing his image.
Speaker 1: You aren't just hanging out with your friends you're bearing his image.
Speaker 1: You aren't just dating, you're not just texting in a group chat you're bearing his image, whether you realize it or not, every moment of your life school, sports, home, online you are showing people something about God, and the only question is are you showing them what he's really like?
Speaker 1: And the only question is are you showing them what he's really like?
Speaker 1: Is the image you bear accurate that God is compassionate, he's patient, he's not quick to get angry, he's full of love, he's merciful, he stands up for what's right and against what's wrong?
Speaker 1: Or is the image you put forward twisted, quick-tempered, flaky, distant, selfish?
Speaker 1: And now here's the thing no one on this side of the fall represents God perfectly, and we're going to talk more about this next week.
Speaker 1: The image of God has been twisted, but we're still.
Speaker 1: If we claim to follow Jesus, we should want to bear his image well, and so you have to ask yourself what might need to change in my life to do that, and the question is how?
Speaker 1: How do I?
Speaker 1: Is it just like praying out loud?
Speaker 1: Is it going to church?
Speaker 1: Is it wearing a cross necklace?
Speaker 1: Well, thankfully, and we're going to land the plane here.
Speaker 1: God tells us.
Speaker 1: In verse 28 says God blessed them and said to them, talking about Adam and Eve humanity, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.
Speaker 1: And then God said I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.
Speaker 1: They will be yours for food.
Speaker 1: And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food.
Speaker 1: And it was so.
Speaker 1: God said all that he made and it was very good.
Speaker 1: And there was mourning the sixth day.
Speaker 1: And so in this passage you see God give Adam and Eve the first command be fruitful, increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.
Speaker 1: Rule over the creatures.
Speaker 1: He's telling them how to bear his image Be fruitful and increase, have children, grow families, fill the earth, go, spread out.
Speaker 1: Like the garden of Eden wasn't supposed to just stay in one spot, it was supposed to expand.
Speaker 1: And that word for ruling over the earth doesn't mean like how we think about ruling, like harsh and mean, but it's this idea of subduing and creating from raw materials to not just destroy and use the word the world for our own advantage, but to turn soil into farms, turn trees into homes, sound into music, words, into poetry and into work.
Speaker 1: It's an invitation to work and a lot of times when we hear about God calling us to work, we kind of get like I don't like work.
Speaker 1: But you have to remember work has changed on this side of the fall and we'll talk more about that next week.
Speaker 1: But work is a good thing, it's what we were made for and, despite what the world says, god works and he's kind enough to let us work with him.
Speaker 1: I think one of the best pictures I got of this a little bit back.
Speaker 1: Leighton, my daughter, is adorable.
Speaker 1: She's three and a while back she got like one of those playhouses for her birthday.
Speaker 1: I think it was her birthday and so my dad was in town and so we built it for her and you know, you put all the things together and you try to decipher the instructions and none of it makes sense.
Speaker 1: But she wanted to help, right?
Speaker 1: And so I get the drill and I'm putting a screw in and she's like, daddy, can I help?
Speaker 1: I'm like, of course, like you're the cutest thing ever.
Speaker 1: And so I hand her the drill and I let her pull the trigger, which you think no big deal, right, it's not, you know, it's just pulling a trigger on a drill, but to her that was the biggest thing ever and she still, to this day, like, loves her house because she helped build it.
Speaker 1: And it might seem like kind of a far-fetched example, but that's how I believe God wants us to view work.
Speaker 1: It's how we bear his image.
Speaker 1: And so how does this apply to you as student at Bernie or Champion or Voss or North or South, or homeschool or wherever?
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of you are deciding what you want to do one day, apparently, because they make you pick in like third grade these days.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, right.
Speaker 1: But what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, as you're deciding, whatever you're thinking about, is it something that you can view as a partnership with God.
Speaker 1: And now I'm not saying that you need to be a pastor, I'm not saying that you necessarily have to go be a missionary.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you're not called to, don't.
Speaker 1: But is whatever, it is something that you can partner with God.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it.
Speaker 1: Songwriters they take sounds and they create music to bring joy and happiness to the world.
Speaker 1: Athletes discipline their bodies for glory.
Speaker 1: Teachers take curiosity and bring understanding.
Speaker 1: Doctors and nurses they learn the body to take sickness and bring healing.
Speaker 1: Engineers take mathematics and ideas and they create roads and buildings.
Speaker 1: Designers they take these colors and these images, mathematics and ideas and they create roads and buildings.
Speaker 1: Designers they take these colors and these images and these patterns and they make something beautiful.
Speaker 1: Chefs they take raw material for food and make something delicious that people can enjoy together.
Speaker 1: Mechanics they take these broken parts and they put them together to form a machine that helps us to get places and do things.
Speaker 1: And photographers they take these moments and they turn them into memories.
Speaker 1: And, like I know, like those all sound like mundane jobs, like oh, I'm just a chef or oh, I just serve food.
Speaker 1: But when you think about how it can be a partnership with God.
Speaker 1: It changes everything, and that is so helpful for those of you who are stressed about the future, trying to choose the right thing, because so often I have students come up to me and ask like, hey, how do I know God's will?
Speaker 1: How do I make sure I don't choose the wrong thing?
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If you want to know God's very clear will in your life, I will tell you right now right, it's this.
Speaker 1: God's will is that you know Jesus, become like Jesus and show Jesus to the world.
Speaker 1: Like that's it.
Speaker 1: That's clearly stated in scripture and I personally believe that you have a whole lot of freedom within that space.
Speaker 1: A lot of time we think about God's will is the straight line that I'm just walking down, step after step, and if I accidentally make a wrong move, like I'm off it and I've ruined my life.
Speaker 1: But more often, I think we could think about it like a hula hoop, like here's the boundaries for God's will.
Speaker 1: This is what he wants for us.
Speaker 1: It's clear things not to do Don't get drunk, don't murder people, don't do these things and love people.
Speaker 1: Love God, love your neighbor like yourself, like those are the big things that are very clear in scripture, and you can do a lot of things while doing those and be in God's will.
Speaker 1: And so whatever gifts God has given you, and however he's wired you, whatever you like to do, do it.
Speaker 1: If you're good at it, run in that area, go to school for it, or don't go to trade school, join the military.
Speaker 1: Wherever God has gifted you and wired you, whatever passion he's put in your heart, if it can be a partnership with God, then do that and do a good job, because as you do, you will show people things about the God who made you.
Speaker 1: You will bear his image.
Speaker 1: And so we've walked through this whole narrative and I hope you now see just how crucial even just the first chapter of Genesis is for how you understand everything in life.
Speaker 1: And so there's this last thing that we want to close on, and it's how the verse closes.
Speaker 1: There's this interesting thing that happens Genesis 2, 1 through 2.
Speaker 1: Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array, and by the seventh day God had finished the work he'd been doing.
Speaker 1: So on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
Speaker 1: God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he'd done.
Speaker 1: So this verse 1 of chapter 2 is a callback to verse 1 from chapter 1.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is, like after every single day days 1 through 6, god says there was evening and morning and it was over, but there's no end to day 7.
Speaker 1: There's no evening or morning.
Speaker 1: It's like day 7 has kept going on and on and on for eternity.
Speaker 1: And what it is is.
Speaker 1: This is showing that God has created, he's finished creation and this is his ideal world.
Speaker 1: We go back to that picture of a temple.
Speaker 1: Like God created the world as his temple for him to dwell in with us, his people, forever, and that we get to live in relationship with him and walk with him in peace.
Speaker 1: No death, no sickness, no sadness Like.
Speaker 1: This is ideal creation, this is utopia, this is paradise.
Speaker 1: But if you turn on the news today, it doesn't look like that right.
Speaker 1: You spend any amount of time on CNN or Fox or TikTok or Instagram.
Speaker 1: There's war, there's death, there's cancer, there's all these sorts of terrible things.
Speaker 1: So what happens?
Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna learn in this next chapter, chapter three, that there's something called sin that comes in and wrecks the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But even then God still has a plan for redemption.
Speaker 1: And so we see that in Jesus.
Speaker 1: Colossians 1.15 actually has this interesting line about Jesus.
Speaker 1: It says that Jesus was the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
Speaker 1: Do you notice that word image?
Speaker 1: It's that same word for statue, just in the Greek.
Speaker 1: And so Jesus is the perfect, visible image of the invisible God.
Speaker 1: Like we were created just to reflect God, jesus was God with flesh on right, and so when Adam failed to faithfully reflect God, which led to death, jesus reflected it flawlessly and it led to our life.
Speaker 1: Scripture said he died for our sins, that Jesus lived a perfect life, never did anything wrong, did everything he was supposed to do, but on the cross he became our sin and the punishment that we deserved for all of our lives.
Speaker 1: For those nights you wish that you could forget the ways you've treated people, that you sit in bed and cringe at night and just wish you could take it back.
Speaker 1: All of that was poured onto him, so that we could receive life and forgiveness in Jesus.
Speaker 1: Second Corinthians 18 says but we all, with unveiled face beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as the Lord, the spirit.
Speaker 1: So notice the word image again.
Speaker 1: So you see this beautiful picture of all of this being set up.
Speaker 1: We were created to bear the image of God, and we failed, we screwed up, we decided to do it our own way.
Speaker 1: But God didn't want us to be separated from him, because we deserve death for that, we deserve separation.
Speaker 1: And so he sent his son, jesus, who bore the image perfectly because he was God, lived a perfect life, died on the death, died a death on the cross for our sins, and if we believe in him with our hearts and confess with our mouth that he's Lord, we will be saved.
Speaker 1: And then, on the other side of that, we're slowly transformed back into the image of God, looking more and more like Jesus.
Speaker 1: And so let me land us here tonight.
Speaker 1: A lot of you guys are here for different reasons.
Speaker 1: Maybe you want to know Jesus, maybe you're excited, you're ready to dive into the series.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're here for a girl, maybe you're here because your parents drug you here.
Speaker 1: But I know that, deep down, a lot of you came in here tonight on the same search that I was years ago looking for something to give your life meaning looking for some reason to get up in the morning, to go through the grind of school, something to feel like you're doing something in this world that matters.
Speaker 1: And, just like me, you've run to all of those wrong wells.
Speaker 1: You've run to a relationship, you've run to grades, you've run to sports, you've run to even, maybe, your family, and every single one has run dry.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you there is something better in Jesus that there is life, and life to the full, and a relationship with the God who made you and I could testify to it, all of our leaders around the room could testify to it that it is what you were made for.
Speaker 1: And so I just want to encourage you here tonight that if that's you and you're in that struggle, you're in that wrestling, I'm glad you're here and maybe you need to for the first time.
Speaker 1: Hey, I get this whole thing, this whole Jesus thing.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of checking it out, but I've never made that decision.
Speaker 1: I'm not following him.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe that's the first step.
Speaker 1: Maybe tonight you say God, I wanna surrender for the first time.
Speaker 1: I wanna you say, god, I want to surrender for the first time.
Speaker 1: I want to believe in my heart and confess with my mouth that you're Lord and be saved, and I want to start to bear the image I was made to bear, to live life to the full in you, jesus.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you gave your life to Jesus long ago and some way along the way you got distracted, stuff came up, you got into a relationship that took you away, you got busy with school, something happened in your family and you just realize I'm not where I need to be.
Speaker 1: Scripture says that God is faithful and just If we confess our sins to him we'll be forgiven.
Speaker 1: That you have the opportunity tonight to step into the light and be free.
Speaker 1: You know what we all really want at the bottom of it.
Speaker 1: We all want to be fully known and fully loved.
Speaker 1: We want somebody to know all of our junk, all of our mess ups, all of our screw ups, and love us anyways.
Speaker 1: But that's why we hide, because we're afraid that if people ever find out the real me, they're gonna run.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna like what they see, if they see my search history, if they see how my family was growing up.
Speaker 1: But here's the offer the God, who knows you better than you know you, sees all of that and loves you enough that he sent his son to die on a cross for you.
Speaker 1: So if you place your faith in him, you can be fully known and fully loved for the first time in your life.
Speaker 1: No more hiding, no more shame, no more guilt, and that's the offer that's on the table tonight.