SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
SPEAKER_00: Have a seat and happy Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And welcome to the last day in the month of May.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it is June tomorrow, and it feels like it is June tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Holy moly.
SPEAKER_00: Hope you guys enjoyed a hot Texas summer weekend and are ready to jump in because we are starting a brand new series that I mentioned last week.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a Bible, let's go to Genesis today, because we are starting a series called The Heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it is a unique series in a lot of ways, but namely because this is not going to be a three-week series.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be a summer-long series, a semester-long series.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: The way we have this mapped out, it's going to be a 66-week series through every book of the Bible where we're going to ask and answer, hopefully, what is the heart of God revealed in every single book of the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Austin Elaine, welcome back.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, good to see you.
SPEAKER_00: Um, go Hoosers.
SPEAKER_00: Um, guys, here's the deal about the series.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, they've been in Spain for the last six months.
SPEAKER_00: They helped us start this, I think Spain, Portugal, Prague.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Can we welcome them back to the country?
SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, wow.
SPEAKER_00: Austin, my bad.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, anyways, we're not gonna go 66 weeks straight.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we envision this as a summer A kind of series, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Five to six weeks at a time, because the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time or a chunk at a time.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so here's the math.
SPEAKER_00: If you do it, okay, we're gonna try to do five or six or so books a summer.
SPEAKER_00: We may take some summers off.
SPEAKER_00: Don't hold us to it.
SPEAKER_00: That means by my math, we're gonna finish in about 14 years.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so 2040, okay, 2040.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine what life is gonna be like in 2040, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Oh goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, we're gonna have some grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: Nick, you're gonna be a grandfather by then, probably.
SPEAKER_00: EJ's gonna graduate, Keen, we got people graduating high school by then, probably, right?
SPEAKER_00: Come on, it's gonna be a wild time.
SPEAKER_00: By the time we make it to 2040 to the book of Revelation, it might look a lot like Revelation in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we're gonna do it, okay?
SPEAKER_00: The next five gatherings, including today and not including next week, we're gonna make it through the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch as it's known, and we're gonna keep this train moving uh next summer.
SPEAKER_00: And we're excited about this.
SPEAKER_00: And there's kind of two core beliefs underneath doing a series like this.
SPEAKER_00: Why do a series kind of like this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first the first belief is this that the heart of God is both endlessly rich and meant to be increasingly known.
SPEAKER_00: That God's heart is not shallow or simple.
SPEAKER_00: No, it is deep and it is complex, and there's always more to know and experience about the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if you've been walking with Jesus twice my lifetime, there's still more to know about God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: We're meant to know him.
SPEAKER_00: He is both incomprehensible but also comprehensible.
SPEAKER_00: You can't know him fully, but you can know him truly.
SPEAKER_00: His heart is like a diamond, and the more you turn it, the more angles and beauties you're gonna see.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to turn that diamond 66 times and look at the new beauties and wonders and glories of the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like walking with somebody you love, a spouse or a kid.
SPEAKER_00: The longer you walk with your spouse, the more you discover about their heart.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I've been married to Mally for eight years.
SPEAKER_00: There's a there are things I know today that she loves and about her heart that I didn't know when we got married, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Like post-dinner walks and ice cream after the kids go down, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just exploring and understanding new things about my wife.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same in your relationship with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over again, as we walk with the Lord, there's more to learn.
SPEAKER_00: And that is our prayer for this series.
SPEAKER_00: That we wouldn't just learn more about the heart of God, but we'd experience it.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's one thing to know God is gracious.
SPEAKER_00: It's another thing to experience his grace the night after you have a mass of sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's one thing to know God is forgiving, but it's another thing to know his forgiveness in real life.
SPEAKER_00: And that's our prayer for this series, that this series wouldn't just inform us, but form us.
SPEAKER_00: That the more we know God, we'd be changed as we follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first core belief in doing a series like this.
SPEAKER_00: The second one is very simple.
SPEAKER_00: That the whole Bible is the revelation of the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: That if you want to know God's heart, honestly, ultimately, and fully, you have to look at the person and work of Jesus, but also the whole Bible shows us the whole heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what this means: that if you want to know who Jesus is, you don't just read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John or the red letters in the Bible, but also the truth is Genesis to Revelation all add weight and color and different texture and depth to who Jesus is and what he came to do.
SPEAKER_00: All scripture is God breathed.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, which means that the law and the prophets and the wisdom books, the gospels, the letters, and revelation all come together to show us the beauty of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm convinced there is something to learn about our God from every book.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's a theme, a verse, a passage, or a character, we're gonna look at the heart of God displayed.
SPEAKER_00: Sound good?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's the intro of the series.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Starting at the start or beginning at the beginning, let's go to the words in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter one is where we're gonna be.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know, Genesis literally means origin or the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to begin to understand the heart of God, we should go to the origin of creation and time and everything in it.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of words and ideas you could use to describe God's heart in the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we could use the word creation or the world.
SPEAKER_00: We could look at God's heart for multiplication, his heart for blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we could go to Abraham, Noah, we could look at Joseph and God's heart for the downcast.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot we could see and do and understand in the book of Genesis, but if we're going to understand God's heart in Genesis, we have to go to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And today I want to look at God's heart for humanity, his heart for humans.
SPEAKER_00: And each week in the series, we want to summarize the sermon with one word, or maybe one hyphenated word.
SPEAKER_00: And today we're looking at humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a few questions about humanity in God's heart that I want to look at today for humans.
SPEAKER_00: Questions that have been asked for thousands of years, but also been asked maybe increasingly the last few years.
SPEAKER_00: One of the oldest and most important questions humans have ever asked.
SPEAKER_00: What is a human?
SPEAKER_00: And what does it mean to be a human?
SPEAKER_00: You see, that's a question a lot of people are asking these days because of where we find ourselves culturally.
SPEAKER_00: We're living in a time that is deeply confused about what it means to be a human, and it's, guys, it's only going to get more confusing.
SPEAKER_00: We are confused about the body, about sexuality, about gender.
SPEAKER_00: We are building machines that can talk, so-called talk better than us, write better than us, they can create images, imitate voices, and just last week they solved math problems, an 80-year-old unsolved math problem solved by a machine last week.
SPEAKER_00: And people are looking around and asking the question: what separates mankind from the machines?
SPEAKER_00: Or is our value as a human based on our intelligence or usefulness?
SPEAKER_00: Is our identity found in productivity or creativity?
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just AI, it's automation, virtual reality, transhumanism, gender technology, fertility labs, and guys, there are some really, really powerful robots coming, and that sounds like a sci-fi movie.
SPEAKER_00: And in one direction, the world is treating humans like machines.
SPEAKER_00: We're only valuable if we're efficient, productive, and useful.
SPEAKER_00: And in another direction, the world is treating machines like humans.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, with people like Richard Dawkins a couple weeks ago saying that AI is sentient and conscious.
SPEAKER_00: And there are even rights, agencies fighting for the moral rights and personhood of AI, more so than the rights of the unborn humans.
SPEAKER_00: The point is this we live in a very upside-down world, and it is only gonna get more strange.
SPEAKER_00: So this morning, I want to ground us a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: The church is going to need answers for the world coming.
SPEAKER_00: And I think Genesis 1 and 2 are gonna give us the core of the answer to all of this.
SPEAKER_00: And so today, I want to look at God's heart for humanity by asking three questions, very basic, that I think we get answered right here in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Here they are.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, what is a human?
SPEAKER_00: Number two, why do humans matter?
SPEAKER_00: And number three, what are humans for?
SPEAKER_00: So, what is a human?
SPEAKER_00: Why do they matter?
SPEAKER_00: Like, are they unique?
SPEAKER_00: Are we unique in any way from creation?
SPEAKER_00: And what are humans for?
SPEAKER_00: Or in other words, what are they called to do?
SPEAKER_00: Do we got purpose in this life?
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to look at.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's super basic, but super important for us theologically.
SPEAKER_00: This is like a sermon on anthropology, the doctrine of what does it mean to be a man?
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're doing today.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna start with that first question.
SPEAKER_00: What is a human?
SPEAKER_00: Fundamentally, how are you going to understand what a human is?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it.
SPEAKER_00: You guys know how things start.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing, and now there's something.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the stars, the moon, the land and sea, night and day, the birds and the bees, and the fish and the frogs.
SPEAKER_00: Creation has been flung into existence by the word of the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: And all of that is building up to verse 26 of chapter one and verse 27 of chapter one.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what it says.
SPEAKER_00: We're on day six.
SPEAKER_00: And then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.
SPEAKER_00: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 27, so God created man in his own image.
SPEAKER_00: He created him in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: He created them male and female.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, stop right there.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot there.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, a lot of cultural confusion can be set straight right there, and those two massive verses.
SPEAKER_00: And it's where we're going to start to build the answer to our first question.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, a lot's here, but zoom in on a couple of words here.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Let us make man.
SPEAKER_00: And in verse 27, it says, So God created man.
SPEAKER_00: Those are two important words.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what is man?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the answer I want to work through this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Human is an embodied soul intentionally created by God.
SPEAKER_00: What is a human?
SPEAKER_00: I'm building my answer with this one.
SPEAKER_00: An embodied soul intentionally created by God.
SPEAKER_00: That humans, we are embodied creatures made by the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we're going to begin our answer.
SPEAKER_00: I want to explain it a little bit going backwards.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, first of all, humans are intentionally created by God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what these verses show us.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what this means: that humans are not the result of an accident.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't get here by happenstance, okay, or the result of human macro evolution.
SPEAKER_00: No, we're not evolved apes.
SPEAKER_00: We are intentionally designed by God.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_00: He knit us together in our mother's womb, which means we have a creator, which also means that if you're going to understand what a human is, you first must understand human in relationship to God.
SPEAKER_00: That we are creatures, which means we're not self-made, self-created, or self-owned.
SPEAKER_00: If we are creatures, therefore we have a creator, and we belong to our creator.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's the first thing you have to understand.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what Genesis does for us.
SPEAKER_00: The picture in Genesis is not a creator who's distant, casual, or far off, but one that is close and cares and is intimately involved in the creation of mankind.
SPEAKER_00: Go to Genesis 2 now.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at one verse in the creation account.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 2, verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: One verse is gonna show us something very unique about how God created mankind.
SPEAKER_00: It says this.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, which is this incredible picture.
SPEAKER_00: No other creation or animal gets this kind of detail or closeness in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: It says that God created mankind by bending down and getting his hands dirty, by taking the dirt or the dust of the ground and breathing his life into mankind.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, which is going to be good for you to think about at least for four seconds on a Sunday morning, because Genesis is going to refuse to let you and let me have too low of a view of ourselves, but also too high a view of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Humans are unique.
SPEAKER_00: We are the dust of the earth, but we're also the breath of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are humble yet glorious at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: There is something remarkable about the creation of humans and how we were made that is far more impressive than anything Chat or Claude can make.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I love this quote from an old Puritan guy who's dead.
SPEAKER_00: His name is John Flavil.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote this in 1685 on this verse.
SPEAKER_00: It is a most astonishing mystery to see heaven and earth married together in one person, a man, the dust of the ground, and an immortal spirit clasping each other with such dear embrace and tender love, such a noble and divine guest to take up its residence within the mud walls of flesh and blood.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what a human is.
SPEAKER_00: It is dust and breath, earth and heaven, in a sense, or sometimes referred to as a body and a soul.
SPEAKER_00: And that matters a lot more than you might think when it comes to your definition of a human, that we are embodied souls.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's two ditches, two misses that people in our culture get wrong, and we're gonna get wrong a lot coming soon about humanity, two ditches.
SPEAKER_00: The first ditch is a ditch called materialism.
SPEAKER_00: Materialism, one that says you humans are just biology, that you are simply the makeup of chemicals and appetite and matter.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, one that says, you are what you eat.
SPEAKER_00: Did your mom ever tell you that one?
SPEAKER_00: You ever heard that one?
SPEAKER_00: You are what you eat?
SPEAKER_00: See, most people think the idea is this you eat a donut, you're gonna look like a donut, I think, or you eat fat, you're gonna get fat.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, that phrase, you are what you eat, it did not start as a health rule.
SPEAKER_00: It started as an objection to Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: It's a worldview that says there is no God, there is nothing outside of the physical world.
SPEAKER_00: You literally are what you eat.
SPEAKER_00: Or, in other words, you and what you're eating are the same matter.
SPEAKER_00: What you eat for lunch is no different.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing more, nothing less than what you eat.
SPEAKER_00: That's a ditch here in the world.
SPEAKER_00: But also there's another ditch, which is a hyper-spiritual ditch when it comes to humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And it says this that your body doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the real you, that the real you is somewhere inside of you that needs to be freed.
SPEAKER_00: This is where the confusion of sexual, sexuality, and gender comes from.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible is going to say that neither of those are true.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, you're not a soul trapped in a body, and you're also not just your body, you are an embodied soul, that your body is part of who you are, and your body always tells the truth about who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is why there's good doctrine on exercise and treating our bodies like a temple, because you are your body, but you're also a soul, because God didn't download Adam into a body, he breathed his life into Adam.
SPEAKER_00: We're both.
SPEAKER_00: And there's more that we can talk about here, but that's going to give us enough to at least start our definition of what a human is and what a human isn't in the days to come.
SPEAKER_00: Because humans are not just a collection of matter and biology and machine that can reason.
SPEAKER_00: Humans are an embodied soul created intentionally by God, formed by his hands, filled with his breath, and we belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we stop there with that definition of humanity, um, we're likely gonna leave off the most important thing about humans.
SPEAKER_00: And also the answer to our next question not just what is a human, but why do humans matter?
SPEAKER_00: Like what makes humans different and unique from other creatures, animals, or even machines?
SPEAKER_00: Well, right there in Genesis, a few words from each of the words we just looked at, there's a key phrase that will drive the rest of our discussion this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Genesis 1, 26 again.
SPEAKER_00: God said, Let us make man in our image.
SPEAKER_00: Underline that if it's not already underlined, according to our likeness.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 27 again, so God created man in his own image.
SPEAKER_00: He created him in the image of God, he created them male and female.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there is not a lot of phrases that have changed the world, quite like that phrase right there: the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Well, theologians for years have called this the doctrine of Imago Dei, which is just Latin for the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: And this right here is where the Bible is going to ground all human dignity, worth, and value.
SPEAKER_00: The question, why do humans matter?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is this, because humans uniquely bear the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: That humanity, you, congrats, uniquely bear the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that mean practically?
SPEAKER_00: The image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it means some of the things that might come to mind initially.
SPEAKER_00: To be made in the human the image of God, it means that humans have things like intelligence, reason, language, creativity, moral awareness and self-consciousness and the ability to have relationships and life.
SPEAKER_00: Yes and amen.
SPEAKER_00: All those things matter.
SPEAKER_00: But the image of God is not, it's not less than those things I just said, but it is certainly more than just the ability to have intelligence and reason and create.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you just think about it for five seconds, if the image of God was just about intelligence, then smarter humans or a smart machine would be more valuable and more worth than someone who's not as smart.
SPEAKER_00: Or if it's just about the ability to reason, then adults would have more value or more of the image of God than babies.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's just about creativity or language, then AI could theoretically qualify someday.
SPEAKER_00: But listen, Genesis does not ground human dignity in ability, the ability to do.
SPEAKER_00: Or in other words, our worth is not rooted in what you can do or how smart you are or how productive you are or how independent you are, attractive, healthy, or capable you are.
SPEAKER_00: No, your worth is not earned.
SPEAKER_00: Your worth is given by God.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a difference.
SPEAKER_00: This is a doctrine of the Imago Dei that undercuts so many moral evils, so many things in the world that you want to say that is evil.
SPEAKER_00: It is driven by this doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: Slavery, abortion, racism, ethnic hatred, all of that is undercut by the Imago Day, because all humans have inherent worth and dignity and value.
SPEAKER_00: But there's more to the image of God than that.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not just a doctrine of dignity, but one of direction.
SPEAKER_00: Or in other words, it points us in a direction to do something.
SPEAKER_00: And theologians in church history have primarily thought about the image of God in two ways.
SPEAKER_00: That to bear the image of God, it means that we are supposed to reflect God and represent God.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the two ways that we have to understand the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, that we're called to reflect Him to the world around us, to your workplace, to the city, to your campus.
SPEAKER_00: Not that we are God, but we're called to display and reflect and mirror something true about God, that we bear his image.
SPEAKER_00: And so when people see you or hear you talk or watch you live, they should, in a way, see God, like a child does to his father.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you look at my kids so far, the illustration breaks down.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, my wife has got some strong genes, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Blonde hair, blue eyes.
SPEAKER_00: My poor son looks nothing like me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, though we are curious, we have another baby coming in August.
SPEAKER_00: If it's brown hair, like brown hair and brown eyes, uh he or she's gonna look adopted, okay, but look just like their dad, okay?
SPEAKER_00: But here's the point, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Caden, in a sense, as he lives the world, he bears my image and he carries my name, which means he resembles and reflects me, kind of, into the world.
SPEAKER_00: And we are called to do that as well.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the best way to think about this when it comes to reflecting God is we're called to reflect his character.
SPEAKER_00: Or in other words, his holiness, his love, his justice, his mercy, his goodness, his wisdom, and care to the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: That all humans bear God's image.
SPEAKER_00: But not everybody does this rightly.
SPEAKER_00: Like the image is on everyone, the image of God is on every person, but in a sense, sin has fractured that image.
SPEAKER_00: It's a mirror that has a crack in it.
SPEAKER_00: But if anybody should be doing this well or doing this better, shouldn't it be the people of God?
SPEAKER_00: Like, shouldn't we be the ones who grow in likeness, one degree of glory to the next?
SPEAKER_00: If anybody should show the image of God to the world, it's not just average humans, it's the ones who bear his spirit, the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: So we're called to reflect the Lord, but also, number two, we're called to represent.
SPEAKER_00: Represent God, to be his representatives in the world, or his ambassadors, his royal stewards.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's this idea that God has sent us into the world to live under his rule and his care, but also to extend his rule and care into the world.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, which leads me to our final question.
SPEAKER_00: What are humans for?
SPEAKER_00: Or what are we called to do?
SPEAKER_00: But before we move on from this, I don't want you to miss the weight of this.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you're coming in here and you're not a believer, you are, you're discouraged, or you feel uniquely like unworthy, no dignity, no value, can I speak this over you?
SPEAKER_00: If you are a human, you bear the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Male and female, born and unborn, young and old, strong and weak, healthy and disabled, rich and poor.
SPEAKER_00: Every human in this room, C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says, carries a weight of glory that if you could see it as God sees it, you would fall on your knees, tempted to worship.
SPEAKER_00: Because we have the worth of God imprinted on our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Be encouraged, believer.
SPEAKER_00: Why do humans matter?
SPEAKER_00: Because we got the image of God baked into us.
SPEAKER_00: But let's end with a final question, one that's super important for us to understand, especially in the days ahead.
SPEAKER_00: And it's what are humans for?
SPEAKER_00: Like what would he do?
SPEAKER_00: You know, the other day I was with my kids in the car, EJ and Kaden, and Mally was off doing uh errands, and it's like right at nap time, which I didn't realize as a parent, like a kid falling asleep in the car right before nap time is like the worst thing in the world, but it is, trust me.
SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, Caden's about to fall asleep, and I'm getting stressed out of my mind.
SPEAKER_00: And so I said, EJ, she's in the back next to Caden.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I got a mission for you.
SPEAKER_00: And she says, I had to explain mission, but then she says, What's my mission, Dad?
SPEAKER_00: And she didn't say dad, I think daddy or something.
SPEAKER_00: Anyways, what's my mission?
SPEAKER_00: I said, EJ, your mission is to keep Caden awake until we get home.
SPEAKER_00: And so she did it.
SPEAKER_00: She's yelling, screaming, singing, and she keeps, well, she keeps getting awake, and I get to put Caden down, we had a great day.
SPEAKER_00: Well, anyways, now I'm not kidding.
SPEAKER_00: Every single time we get in the car, we strap her in, and she looks at me, she says, What's my mission, Dad?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you guys say that, but each time I'm like, your mission is to be quiet and sit still.
SPEAKER_00: And I and she fails miserably at her mission.
SPEAKER_00: But she says it every single time.
SPEAKER_00: Dad, what's my mission?
SPEAKER_00: What's the mission?
SPEAKER_00: And that's the question, right?
SPEAKER_00: What's the mission?
SPEAKER_00: What are we called to do?
SPEAKER_00: It's a really important question, and it's a frequently asked question, especially among college students who come to college.
SPEAKER_00: What am I made for?
SPEAKER_00: What do I do with my life?
SPEAKER_00: What's the mission?
SPEAKER_00: What's my purpose?
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe people between jobs looking for jobs?
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe moms who spent 18 years who are now empty nesters, or dads hitting a midlife crisis.
SPEAKER_00: What's my mission now?
SPEAKER_00: Who am I and what do I do?
SPEAKER_00: It's a great question to ask, looking for direction.
SPEAKER_00: And it can be expressed in a lot of different ways, specifically, but foundationally, we do have an answer here, and it's baked into what it means to be human.
SPEAKER_00: And we find it right next in our text in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show it to you.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1.
SPEAKER_00: God makes humans in verse 26 and 27.
SPEAKER_00: And without skipping a beat, he gives them a mission.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: It says, God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.
SPEAKER_00: Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now that verse right there, Christians throughout church history have called the cultural mandate, or the original commission, the first mission, as it were, that God gave humanity.
SPEAKER_00: And it can be summed up in two general points: to multiply life and to cultivate creation.
SPEAKER_00: That we're called to fill the world and then form the world.
SPEAKER_00: First, you can see it says be fruitful and multiply, to literally have babies.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's what it's saying here.
SPEAKER_00: Humans are called to fill the world with little image bearers of you guys and also little image bearers of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what makes humans unique.
SPEAKER_00: We alone can procreate other image bearers of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so Genesis is going to give us a general pattern here that promotes and encourages both marriage and having children.
SPEAKER_00: And especially in a culture that sees children as a disruption or an interruption, God sees it as a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: Can you see it?
SPEAKER_00: He blessed them and said, Go make babies.
SPEAKER_00: And an assuming for another time, but in the world where people are having babies less and later, Genesis gives us a different vision that life is good, that children are good, and fruitfulness is good.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the first part of this command to multiply life.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to hear me say it's it's not less than biological reproduction, but it is more than that if you factor in the New Testament and the realities we see here, because if you read the New Testament, not everybody gets married, and not everybody has children, and yet Jesus seems to take the original cultural mandate and lay another mission on top of it.
SPEAKER_00: We call it the Great Co-mission, where he lays it and he borrows it and he expands the original mandate for humans to multiply life, and he says, don't just do it physically.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just have physical children, but no, have spiritual children as well, to multiply disciples and churches, as it were, and expand his kingdom into the world to fill it.
SPEAKER_00: That's another way to be fruitful and multiply here, to multiply spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: But the second aspect of the cultural mandate is just as important.
SPEAKER_00: And it's to cultivate the creation or to form the world under the rule and reign of God.
SPEAKER_00: And guys, this one's unique.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this one I didn't really understand until college.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 1 says to fill the earth, and then it uses this weird word.
SPEAKER_00: Look what it says.
SPEAKER_00: It says subdue it.
SPEAKER_00: And then it uses another word right after it that we generally don't like.
SPEAKER_00: It says rule over it, to subdue and to rule.
SPEAKER_00: And then Genesis 2, go to Genesis 2.15.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna add to it and try to like uh summarize it a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis 2.15, back in the garden with Adam, it says this the Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden to do what?
SPEAKER_00: To work it and to watch over it.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe your translation says to work and keep it.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe your translation says to cultivate and care for it.
SPEAKER_00: If you take all those words together to subdue and to rule and work and keep, you get this idea that humans were created to work.
SPEAKER_00: That part of what it means to be a human is to be a worker.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where some categories shifted for me in college, and it might need to shift this morning.
SPEAKER_00: A few things.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, work is not a result of sin.
SPEAKER_00: That work existed here before the fall of mankind, before thorns and thistles, there was this calling to work.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, work can be frustrating now, but work is good.
SPEAKER_00: This is why laziness and being a sluggard is a sin.
SPEAKER_00: Because it goes against what it means to be a human.
SPEAKER_00: We're called to work.
SPEAKER_00: But the second thing about work that shifted for me is that when we talk about work biblically, we ain't talking about a nine to five.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we usually think about work as a synonym with job.
SPEAKER_00: That is a terrible synonym, or career, or paycheck, or office, or w four, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: But again, Genesis gives us a bigger vision.
SPEAKER_00: See, the definition of work biblically is to take what God has made and cultivate it for his glory and the good of other people.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, literally to take the things around us in our orbit, the raw materials.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have enough time, but Genesis 2, that's what it describes, prior to verse 15, to take all the things that God has given us metaphorically and to cultivate it, to bring order, beauty, chaos into order to create and to develop, okay, which means work includes a lot more than just your job.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's things like mowing the yard or making espresso coffee or landscaping.
SPEAKER_00: I'll list some more.
SPEAKER_00: Needlepoint, raising kids, homeschooling kids is work, organizing your finances, engineering a bridge, building Legos is work, designing a room, writing music, starting a business, cooking dinner, fixing a sink, planting a garden, writing a sermon, teaching a class, all of these things are creating beauty and order into the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means to be human.
SPEAKER_00: That we are created by a creator to create, that we are made in the image of the king, to steward and rule.
SPEAKER_00: We are made in the image of God who brings order and beauty, and that's what we're called to do.
SPEAKER_00: And it can look specifically in different ways.
SPEAKER_00: You should talk about it at lunch.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the deal: when people talk about the future, and when they describe a future where AI and robots do everything for us, and we can kind of just kick back and put our feet up, guys, that's not a dream.
SPEAKER_00: That is a nightmare.
SPEAKER_00: Because to be a human is to work.
SPEAKER_00: And there is real satisfaction in a project completed, a meal made, a room cleaned, a yard mode with the lines looking real nice.
SPEAKER_00: The satisfaction that you feel, it's not random, it's given to you by God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's his heart for humanity.
SPEAKER_00: That he created us as embodied image bearers to fill the world with the fruit of our womb and the fruit of our word.
SPEAKER_00: And before we pray together, I I want to end the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: And I have to say this before we wrap up.
SPEAKER_00: It would be, if you think about it just for a moment, it would be impossible to talk about God's heart for humanity generally without seeing God's heart for his people specifically.
SPEAKER_00: Because, guys, the heart of God displayed for humans, it's not just displayed in him creating you.
SPEAKER_00: It's ultimately displayed in him dying for you on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And that all this human stuff, humanity stuff, if you just think about it, it all leads to Jesus, who is, just think about it, certainly, the true and better human.
SPEAKER_00: And he came to us, think about it, not as a machine and not just as a spirit.
SPEAKER_00: No, he came to us embodied with a soul.
SPEAKER_00: And notice he wasn't just an image bearer, though, maybe in a sense, no, God's Colossians 1 says he is the image of the invisible God.
SPEAKER_00: And where Adam fails in the garden, and he does, and where we fail every day to reflect and represent God rightly, Jesus comes and he does it perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: And even Jesus worked, did he not?
SPEAKER_00: You ever wonder why Jesus worked as a carpenter?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a lot of reasons, but one is because he was a human and he came to work.
SPEAKER_00: And then he came to complete the work that the Father gave him to do, not to build with wood, but to hang on wood.
SPEAKER_00: And it was on the cross that Jesus finished the work that God had for him to redeem us, his body pierced for embodied souls like us, and then his body raised, fully and finally showing the heart of God for the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: And now, even this morning, his spirit is making us truly human.
SPEAKER_00: What it means to be human.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're here this morning looking to fully embrace the limits of being a human, but you don't know Jesus, but you want the freedom of what it means to be human, come to Jesus, believe in him, believe in this gospel we preach, and you will become all that God has called you to be.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're a believer this morning, likewise in the days ahead, let's embrace our calling as humans.
SPEAKER_00: Let's build families and build lives, and yes, embrace our limits, but also embrace the high calling.
SPEAKER_00: Because humans find their ultimate purpose in glorifying God and praising God.
SPEAKER_00: And what we're about to do after I pray, we're about to sing from the heart, no machine or AI, even though we can imitate song and come up with the best lyrics, it can never praise God, truly, as we can.
SPEAKER_00: So let me pray and let's do it together.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm so grateful to be a human, to be made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I'm thankful for your scriptures that teach us what it means to be a human.
SPEAKER_00: That in a world that we're becoming so attached to devices, phones, and just more coming, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00: And dependent on machines and artificial intelligence.
SPEAKER_00: God, would you, at least in this room, help us be more and more dependent on you, on prayer coming to you as our first impulse, not our phones.
SPEAKER_00: God, we confess that it is easy to Google things or search things than it is to pray.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning we collectively repent, Father, of that.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that as we live in this world that you've designed us to live in in this time, God, would you give us courage and sober mindedness to display to the world what it looks like to be human and to declare our praises from the heart, not just from our lips.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta stand and let's do what we are called to do.