Creation

Amen Chapel family. How you doing today? Good, happy New Year. Good to see you. Welcome to The Chapel. My name's Jonathan. If you're new, we're glad that you've made it here for this first Sunday of 2025. And we're gonna start a new series today called "The Drama of God." Over the next several weeks, we're gonna be looking at this book really from cover to cover. And though we're not gonna look at every single verse or every single chapter, we're gonna be looking at this grand story that God has told in his scripture. And this book is so unique, it is worthy of this close examination. It's really unlike any other book. In fact, within this one book, there are 66 shorter books that comprise the Old and New Testaments. There are 1,189 chapters in this book. There are over 31,000 verses. And depending on the translation that you use, there are at least 780,000 words somebody counted. Now, if you were gonna read this from beginning to end, it would take you 70 hours. Now that may sound like a lot, but here at the beginning of New Year, do you recognize how many hours you have in this upcoming year? I'll tell you, it's okay, but you can fact check me later. You have 8,760 hours in 2025. Do you think you can squeeze in some Bible reading? Yes, there was one, yes. All right, I appreciate that very much. Do you think you could fit that in, right? So people who'd say, you know, Jonathan I would, but I just don't have the time. You have 8,690 other hours this year. And that's just to read the Bible once. But that's another story. But unlike all other books, this scripture was not written by one human author at one specific time in history. In fact, there are at least 40 unique human writers of the scripture writing over a time period of 15 centuries on three different continents, writing in three different languages. And yet, in spite of all of that, it tells one main story. When I say the drama of God, I don't mean drama in the sense that we sometimes use it today. Like they're so dramatic, right? Like steer clear them, too much drama over there. That's not what I mean, I mean that in the literary sense of the word that there's this beautiful story that's unfolding and it takes different acts, if I could say it that way, as if it were a play. And so what we're gonna do in this series is look at act one, this creation, we'll see the fall as well. And then act two, the promise and act three, the redemption. And then in act four, the ultimate restoration of all things. But as we begin this drama today, maybe a fitting analogy would be if you had, suppose you had tickets to Chas to see a play. And you were driving downtown and you were on your way there and it was running close to the start of the show. The show started at 7:30 and it was already 7:25. And in spite of your spouse's encouragement, pleas, appeals where maybe she said, take that $20 parking spot right over there, that lot right there. But you were insistent that there would be a closer spot opening up for free any minute. This may or may not be inspired by true events, but since that spot never came, you did end up paying $25 at a further lot and you were late to the play. And so they held you at the doors because of the opening monologue and the opening number. And so you finally took your seat about 15 minutes in, and you were lost for the first act. Which one is Hamilton? You know, you're trying to figure it out as you go. And then by the time intermission rolled around, or as my friend Jason calls it, halftime, we're working on him, you ask someone next to you, how did the play begin? And I wanna invite you to the beginning. So if you will turn with me to Genesis 1, which is on page one. So you should be able to find it. As we get to Genesis 1, Before we do, that word Genesis is just a Greek word that means origin or beginning. The Hebrew word for this book of the Bible is Bereshit. And it's the first word in the Hebrew text that we'll see in just a moment as it's translated. This is the beginning. So look with me in the first two verses of Genesis 1, our text says this, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters." These are packed verses. In the beginning, God. The first thing that we see in our text is God is previous. He's first. When this all starts, he's already there. So he is not subject to the created world. He is the author of the created world. In the beginning, God created, he's first, he created the heavens and the earth, but heavens we shouldn't look at this use of heavens as interpreting as the residents of God, like God resides in heaven. Now this is being used to describe the sky, the heavenly host if you will, and Earth gets special attention here. God created the heavens and the earth. He made the whole universe. But Earth is called out in singled out here because as we'll see, earth is the special focus of God's creative energy in Genesis 1. God has a unique purpose for earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. That is a Hebrew phrase that's just really fun to say. Tohu vavohu, tohu vavohu is just a pleasure, really, if I'm being honest. And it means exactly what it says. It was empty, it was formless, it lacked order. Or some maybe a fitting paraphrase would be, it was wild and waste. That's how this began. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and void. Tohu, va bohu and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. In the ancient world, certainly Israel's neighbors considered the sea, the abyss, the ocean as the place of chaos, as the source of evil, in fact. And it was to be avoided at all costs. And you can maybe understand why in the ancient world, but here in this text we discovered that the spirit of God is super intending over this chaos. That he is over, he is circling it, he is hovering over it and around it. He is not subject to it. He is in complete control. This is how the story begins. But then look at verses three through five. In Genesis 1, it says, "In God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light, God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day." So here in our text, we see the beginning of God's creative work, let there be light. Now, I'm not gonna read the entirety of Genesis 1, but we are gonna pull out some things that are important for us to notice. So we saw already that God was first, that he was really creator, he's source. So are you ready for your very first Hebrew lesson?

- [Congregation Member] Woo.

- Yeah, there's one excitement again, the same guy who said yes before. All right, so the name for God in Genesis 1 is Elohim. Let me hear you say Elohim.

- [Congregation] Elohim.

- That was pretty good with a little more gusto and zest like you really mean it. And like you're excited about today, Elohim.

- [Congregation] Elohim.

- That was beautiful. All right, so I'm gonna write it in English because that's how I know how to write it. But this is the Hebrew word, Elohim, and this is the word for God that's used in Genesis 1. Now we'll see some of God's other names as we progress through the drama over these next several weeks. But this is what's used here in Genesis 1. Now in verse one, we saw in the beginning, God created, so this God, he's connected to being a creator. See how we found that? That was in verse one, in verse two, this God, he's revealed as spirit. This spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water, right? So you got that, but now in verse three it says, "And God said," we're only a handful of verses, really a handful of words into the Hebrew scripture so far. And we have God communicating. God said, he spoke. He is uniquely, somehow, uniquely tied to his word. This is important for us as we understand we're on the first page, but we're trying to learn who is this God? Well, in verse one, we saw he's creator. In verse two, we saw that he is spirit. And now in verse three, we see that he is somehow uniquely tied to his word. This will be important as we go along. So as God says, he speaks, let there be light. And there was light by the word of his mouth, creation results. By his own word he makes the universe. "God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light. And then God saw that this light was good." That's the Hebrew word, tove. So there's your second lesson. Let me hear you say tove.

- [Congregation] Tove.

- Tove. Very good. He saw that the light was tove. This word appears seven times in Genesis 1, and it means exactly what it sounds like it means. It's good, it's fitting, it's fulfilling it's design. It's doing what the Creator wants it to do. And seven times that appears in Genesis 1, that's important. In fact, maybe some additional context would be helpful for us, because who was writing this and to whom they were writing is helpful for us to understand this text even more deeply. So conservative scholars agree with Jesus, that Moses authored Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And so Moses is the author. And the occasion for this writing is as the Israelites are leaving Egypt, this took place roughly around 1400 BC so quite a bit of time ago. And Moses is writing to the ancient Israelites as they're leaving Egypt. But it's helpful to remember that for the previous four centuries, the Israelites had been in slavery in Egypt, that they had been slaves who worked for Pharaoh, and they were mistreated and they suffered, right? So they were largely an illiterate, uneducated, mostly a peasant class of as of this writing, a recently emancipated group of slaves. This is the original audience for this text. They're illiterate, they can't read by and large many of them. Moses had received quite an education. If you press in on his story, which doesn't surprise us that he's able to compose and compile all of this work, but his audience illiterate, uneducated, peasant, former slaves, that's who's receiving this. So for them, you can imagine repetition was helpful for them because they had really, when they were delivered from Egypt, they had quite a weak view of God. You know, it doesn't take long for them to be like Moses, why'd you take us out here? Why did God do this? Right? Take us back to Egypt. They had a pretty weak view of God and Moses is giving them, listen, their origin story. He's telling them where they came from. And in this pre-literate society really, they are dependent on repetition. So tove, tove, tove, seven times, seven times. And God saw that it was good in our text, seven times and it was so. 10 times in our text, the word for made is used. 10 times the phrase, according to their kinds is used. 10 times, and God said, 10 times, let there be, six times. And there was evening and there was mourning. What you're getting from this is that this is a brilliant poem about how God made the world. Repetition was helpful for them to remember where they came from. But it wasn't just repetition, it was also structure and order of this chapter. Let me explain, as I said, we're not gonna read each of the days of creation in succession, but the first three days of creation looked like this. That on day one we already saw that God separated the light from the darkness. On day two, God separates the waters above from the waters below the sky and the water. And on day three, God separates the land, the dry ground from the seas, from the water. This is what happens on days one through three. But on days four through six, it looks like this, that there was the creation of the sun, the moon, and the stars. On day five, there's the birds and the fish. And on day six animals and people are made. This is kind of the order and structure of this poem in Genesis 1 that's telling everybody how they got to be where they are. But what's of note for us is that the primary work of God on days one, two, three is you look at this text, 'cause that's what I'm interested in. What does the text say? The primary work of God in days one through three is that he separates. He separates light from dark. He separates sky from water. He separates the land from the seas. But on days four through six, God's primary work is that he fills. He fills, so day four actually corresponds to day one because as God creates the heavens and the earth and he separates light from darkness, the sun, the moon and the stars, day four corresponds to day one. And when he makes the birds and the fish that day five actually corresponds to day two because the birds go in the sky and the fish go in the water and the cow says moo and I passed kindergarten, all right? Still with me. Good. And day six, God makes animals and people to fill the land in the seas. So do you see that on the first three days there is a structure of God separating. And then on days four through six there is God filling. He prepares this world and then he populates this world. That's what's going on in this beginning Genesis 1 So that these ancient Israelites who couldn't read, were uneducated would be able to remember where they came from, would be able to remember their origin story. So what started out as formless and void at the end of six days is well-formed and filled. What started out without form and empty, by the end of what God did by day six is now formed fashioned and it is filled. You get the idea from this text that God is like a master craftsman and he's preparing this world for some unique purpose. We discover what that is in our text. If I could skip ahead from the six days of creation and go to verse 26, look what this says, "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 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." This is the crescendo of creation. Human beings are the apex of this chapter in what God is making in the world. He's been preparing this place and now he's going to fill it with these image bearers. Now, if you were hearing this for the very first time, if you were an ancient Israelite who was illiterate, uneducated, and a recently emancipated slave, stay with me. If that was you, and you heard this for the very first time and you heard, let there be, let there be, let there be, 10 times. And then you heard verse 26, "And God said, 'Let us make." You are paying attention to a shift in the poem. There's a transition, instead of one more let there be. Now there is let us make and let us make mankind. So here's what we understand. All of creation, all of creation bears God's signature. It's all his He's the creator, he's the source. All of creation bears the signature of God. I think the place is not on the screen, but I think of places like Psalm 19:1, that you know, the skies proclaim your handiwork, that kind of a thing. All of creation bears his signature, but only human beings bear his image. There is something unique that God is doing in humanity that the author Moses is drawing our attention to in this beautiful beginning to the scripture. And then after that, we look at verse 31. This is how chapter one concludes. Look what this says. "And God saw all that he had made and it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day." I told you there were seven appearances of tove in Genesis 1. This now is the seventh of those seven. And it is not alone. It has a modifier. God saw all that he had made and it was very good. God saw all that he had made and it was very tove. It was exceedingly tove, abundantly tove beyond your imagination tove. And I'm fine if that's so tove becomes our new vernacular for 2025. Demure was last year. We're going on to tove in 2025. All right? So it is very tove. God steps back from his creation and announces that this is off as fitting as he has designed it to be. And in the beginning of chapter two, this is a continuation chapter two verse one says, "Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, he rested from all the work of creating that he had done." God blesses this seventh day. Because he has carved out a kingdom out of clay, if you will. This master craftsman, this artisan has created this kingdom and he's going to place human beings in this kingdom. That's gonna be a theme that we'll need as we journey on in the scripture. And he rests, literally the text says he Sabbath, God, Shabbat he sabbath. But unlike us who rests because we're tired, he rests from his work so he can enjoy it. And you can sense his pleasure all over this page because he steps back and sees that this is all as he designed it to be. What a fascinating way to begin a very long book. But what does it mean? I mean we come to this and we understand the words that are spoken, but what does it mean? Now I need to pause us there as we're thinking about that because we may by default want to jump ahead to, so how do I apply that to me right now in January 5th, 2025, living right here. But we will short circuit the process of understanding scripture rightly when we jump to but what does it say to me? Our first task, and this is an important principle for Bible study as we examine the scripture. This is an important principle, not just for our series, though it is in this message for sure, but really how we read the Bible ourselves on our own and in our community groups, this is important that the text can't mean now what it never meant. In other words, we have to do the work, the study, the diligent examination of what did the original audience hear when they heard this chapter. That's what I've been trying to even tease out a little bit as we've been going on, giving you that additional context. But what did it mean to them? We have to understand the original audience. 'Cause here's the thing, this scripture is for us, but it was not written to us. We are not the original recipients of the scripture. Like you know, you get to the New Testament and you get to the book of Colossians, right? Well, that was not written to you. You are not a Colossian, unless you are. And please accept my apologies. All right. But I'm pretty safely sure that you're not a Colossian all right? So it is for us, even though it was not written to us. So we have to understand what it meant to the original audience. If ever we are going to discover how to rightly handle the word of truth and interpret it for our lives today, that's a really important principle that we need to have in our toolbox as we study. Because all of us bring lenses to the text, every one of us. And I'm not talking about the corrective lenses that some of you put on to consult the pages today, all right? I'm talking about we all bring a filter, we all bring a preconceived notion. I could maybe even say we all bring a bias to the text. We bring them with us. And to understand the scripture rightly, we must do our best both individually and in community. That's why we need each other to lay those lenses aside and allow the text to say what it says. Then we will be on sure ground. But I would venture to guess that there are some who have a lens already locked and loaded of a naturalistic view of the world. And you've been waiting for me to prove the scripture to you, waiting for me to give you a reason why you should believe. You've already got this naturalistic. There is no supernatural kind of view, and you're waiting for me to give you a reason to believe. That's one lens. Another may have locked and loaded already an anti Darwinian lens that's just waiting for me to show you why you're already right. And those other people are wrong. Some of you're just happy to be here and I'm glad for that as well, right? But these are some of the lenses that we bring. Here's the thing, listen, Moses did not write Genesis 1, to pick a fight with Darwin. You know why? He had never heard of him. That wasn't on his radar, he wasn't interested. So while we may have questions, legitimate questions that we wanna understand and learn about this world, we have to let the text say what the text says. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a botanist, I'm not an ecologist or a geologist. I did terrible in earth science honestly, I'm not a marine biologist. I'm a biblicist. I wanna know what the text says. You with me? Alright, so we're gonna let the text say what the text says. So what would the original audience have understood this text to be saying that will give us some sure ground to stand on, right? I think there are five things that we can safely say. This is what the audience understood. Number one, God is the only creator. I don't think there's any dispute about that. God is the only creator. I already told you his Hebrew name, which was Elohim. That's what we learned in Genesis 1. In Genesis 2, we see his covenant name Yahweh. But regardless of the name that is used, the understanding is the same. All of creation finds its source in the one true God. There's only one creator and he is God. Unlike the neighbors of the Israelites who were polytheists, they had a God or goddess for just about everything. The scripture begins this way. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Second thing, God is transcendent. I'll define my terms, transcendent above his creation. God is transcendent above his creation. There's so much here. I wish I had time to show it all to you, but let me just give you one example. God is transcendent above his creation. So in Genesis 1, there is actually no explicit mention of the sun or the moon. Now you're thinking, is he telling the truth? And it's okay, you could fact check me. I won't be offended. If you look in the Bible, that would actually be great. There's no explicit mention of the sun or the moon. Instead, what did Moses write? How did he document this? By the inspiration of the spirit, he said God made a greater light to govern the day and a lesser light to govern the night. Well, why did he do that? Why did Moses do that? Did he not have Hebrew words for sun and moon? He did. he had words at his disposal that could be used, proper names, sun and Moon, shemesh and yareach. That these would work, and he could, and he employs them later in the scripture. But why not here? One possible reason is that shemesh, son and yareach, moon. Were also the names for false gods, lowercase G, that people who worshiped the sun or the moon would worship shemesh and yareach. And these Israelite, illiterate, uneducated, recently emancipated slaves had just spent four centuries in Egypt. And you probably, even if you've seen the Prince of Egypt, you know the son God was Ra. That's the Egyptian title. So why does Moses not even use these names? It's as if he's saying they're not even worth mentioning. They're created things. They are not gods. They are not deities, they are not worthy of worship. Instead, like we sang today, sun, moon, you worship God. 

So why does Moses not even use these names? It's as if he's saying they're not even worth mentioning. They're created things. They are not gods. They are not deities. They are not worthy of worship. Instead, like we sang today, sun, moon, you worship God. All of the created world is ordered to worship the creator. And so Moses demythologizes, that is a word, he demythologizes, the ancient world to show them that whereas other nations have attached deity to these created things, he's showing in Genesis 1, God is transcendent above his creation. God is not a part of his creation. He authored his creation. So he stands above it. That's what transcends mean. He is transcendent above his creation. He rules over it. And I could say a bunch more, but I gotta keep moving. Number three, this world is the result of joy, not conflict. This world is the result of joy, not conflict. These are the conclusions that the original hearers would have come away with in hearing or reading Genesis 1 for the very first time. And this is important for us to understand if we're ever gonna apply this to our lives rightly, okay? So if you'll humor me like a $10 word for a minute, okay? This is relevant. I'm not just flexing here, all right? The this word is cosmogonies, okay? And a cosmogonies is a theory about the origin of the cosmos. You can hear that, an origin of the universe. So there are many ancient cosmogonies that have actually survived and we can study them in the ancient world, many of the neighboring nations around Israel. And most of the cosmogonies that existed if not all but one, told the story of divine conflict that resulted in the creation of the universe. So this god was mad at that god and they got in a fight and the result was the universe. I mean this is a common thing. I mean you can even think about the founding of Rome, right? Like Romulus and Remus, their little battle that they had there. Okay, so cosmogonies often told the story of the history of the universe as a result of conflict. One example, just one example from the Israelites neighbors the Babylonians remember them? In the Babylonian mythology that described the history of the universe, the cosmogony. They said that there was a god Marduk who killed another goddess Tiamat. And he killed her and split her in two. It's a romantic tale. He split her in two and took half to make the sky and the other half to make the earth. And then another god Enkey, he killed a friend of Tiamat's, Kingu. And took Kingu's blood and made humans from that. This was normal. The universe is the result of divine conflict. So people thought. But Genesis 1 tells the story of God making the world out of joy. And he saw all that he had made and it was very tove. You can sense the divine pleasure. God is pleased with what he has done. That's why he rests, as I said, so he can enjoy it. It's not out of conflict and the battle in the skies and this god that god, no it's one God who is transcendent above creation who makes this because it brings him divine joy, which leads to a fourth thing. God made everything good. We've said this enough already, but he made it all good. All of reality is not just good in the sense that it's perfect or complete or lacking nothing. Certainly you could go down that path, but it is infused with his goodness. It is all of reality is permeated with God's own goodness. It is ordered exactly as he intended it to be ordered. And then fifthly, the fifth conclusion is that humanity stands within the created order. Humanity stands distinct within the created order. We see in Genesis 1 that human beings are image bearers who are told to rule over the created order now in the ancient world, and it was not uncommon for rulers and pharaohs and kings, royalty. To be thought of as bearing the image of their gods. That was not uncommon. But what was absolutely jaw on the floor never saw it coming is that in this story God makes humanity and says, you are my image bearers. Let us make mankind, all of humanity in our image, to bear that image and to rule as we would rule, as I would rule on this earth. This is unique. This was earth shattering. And if that wasn't enough for this group of illiterate, uneducated, recently emancipated slaves to hear that not just Pharaoh bears the image, but you bear the image. If that wasn't enough, this is crazy. He says male and female, he created the image bearers to be male and female. Now, as I've told you, I became way too familiar with ancient near Eastern cosmogonies this past couple weeks, more comfortable and more familiar than I really wanted to be. But I had to chase the rabbit hole. Okay? So I've taken a deep dive. And many of the cosmogonies in the ancient world, spent plenty of time talking about where or the origin of males. But as you probably could guess, the origination of females was an afterthought. In the ancient world. And then Genesis 1, male and female bear the same image of God. And every lady said, amen. Like really? Are you guys here? Like, come on. And men can say that too, like amen, awomen, I mean I guess whatever you want, right? And everybody said.

- [Congregation] Amen.

- Thank you. I mean this is in... Is this not the, please don't tell me the Bible is outdated and antiquated. This is the most progressive idea in the history of the world that men and women, this was unheard of and here's the problem. We're so far down the rabbit hole of 21st century post-enlightenment thinking that we can't even grasp how beautiful this is anymore sometimes. This is incredible. Men and women bear the same image, the image of the creator. Folks, that wasn't a post-enlightenment idea, that was God's, he got there first. I'm sorry, you're just copying him. Humanity stands distinct in creation. So how do we apply this? I've tried to stay parked in Genesis 1 intentionally, but we have additional revelation. We've got further revelation places like Psalm 100:3, that says, "Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us and we are his." Or Isaiah 43. "But now this is what the Lord says. He who created you, Jacob, he who formed you Israel, 'Do not fear for I have redeemed you. I've summoned you by name and you are mine. My premise, my concluding application is, if God made the world, two things I wanna show you. If God made the world, then number one, then you and I, everything in this world are his. If God made the world, then you and everything in it are his. It's all his. If he is the maker of the world and he is, then we all belong to him. So for me, like the question is, if God made the world, what claim could I possibly make on my own life? Like that I am somehow in charge of my own little kingdom. If God made the world, what claim do I have on my own life? And maybe you would ask the same question of yourself. You see, the ownership issue is probably one of the hardest ones to learn. Yet it settled on page one. It ought to be at least. If God made the world, then we are his. About a 100 years ago a Dutch pastor named Abraham Kuyper he said, "There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ who is sovereign overall does not cry mine!" There's not an inch in the whole world that God in Christ cannot rightly claim as his. If God made the world, then you and me and everything in this world belong to him. So this world, it's his. It's resources his, you are his, your money, it's his. Your relationships, also his. Your own identity, it's his. You see, Genesis 1 is so important for us to get the ownership issue settled. He's the creator of heaven and earth and everything in it. Therefore it belongs to him and he determines how it best should be used. Stewarded. We are not the owners, folks. Brothers and sisters. We are simply the managers. We are not the source, we are just the stewards. We are not the founders. Okay? We didn't start this thing. We just have the unique joy of being his image bearers. So I could say more and you could press in further and apply this to each strand of your life. And maybe that's a good time to do this in the beginning of a year. Lord, this year is yours. My decisions, my business, my family, my parenting, my purchasing, my vacationing. I want it all to be for you. So I could say more, but the Holy Spirit will tell you how exactly to apply that. Number two, the second conclusion is informed by the Apostle John in the beginning of his gospel. And it says this in John 1. It may sound familiar. "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. The word became flesh." This is verse 14, "And made his dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the Father full of grace and truth." God the Creator, he stepped into the story. So my second point for us is if God made the world, then we should not be surprised that he visited it. We should not be surprised that he came here. This was his creation, though he had no origin story of his own. He was there to author ours, in the beginning was the word. So now as we read Genesis one with John 1 in view, we see that all along God the Son, the living word, Jesus the Christ was there to be the agent of creation as God spoke and the spirit hovered, the Son created. I mean this is incredible that God the Son would make this world and then he came to it. He prepared this world for human beings to bear his image and spread his glory. And though I won't spoil the story as it goes on from Genesis 1, though you have had a few thousand years to read it, the world does not remain tove, because of sin. So God steps in to the story. He visits this place that he made. But what's so beautiful about this is he wasn't just there in the beginning, but Paul says in Colossians 1:18, "He is the beginning." Everything is from him and through him, for him and by him, he is the beginning. In 1960 or '61, there was a Russian cosmonaut, we call them astronauts, the Russians called them cosmonauts. There was a Russian cosmonaut who was the first to travel into outer space and have a view of the earth and then come back. And he was asked, when you were in outer space, what did you see? What did you find? I'm paraphrasing. And he said, I looked for God but did not find him. Thankfully C. S. Lewis was still alive when this happened. And he felt compelled to respond. And he wrote a story that you can look up and read. He wrote an article and he compared this to Shakespeare and "Hamlet," one of Shakespeare's most famous plays. And he said The idea of looking for God in outer space would be like like Hamlet looking for Shakespeare in his attic. In other words, looking in the wrong place. And so what C. S. Lewis said is, if Hamlet were ever to meet Shakespeare, it would not be Hamlet's doing because he's just a character in a story. If Hamlet were to ever meet Shakespeare, Shakespeare would have to write himself into the story. Friends, we can look at the created world and it testifies to God's glory. That's enough general revelation to know that God exists, but he has not stopped there. He wrote himself into our human story. He did that so that he could reach you, reach me. 'Cause if we would ever have hopes of meeting the Creator, it wouldn't be our doing. It would be only because the Creator wrote himself into the story and in the person of Jesus Christ, that's exactly what he did. The creator stepped into the creation to save the creation. This is the beginning, but the beginning of the drama of God. Let's bow together for a word of prayer. So with your heads bowed in your eyes closed, if you don't have to move around right now, I'd ask you not to. I know some of our team is getting into place to be able to serve those who are here today. But if you're here and you could just put aside the distractions for a moment and just ask God to speak to you, prayerfully, my prayer has been that he's been speaking through his word through the songs today. But just ask him in the quietness of your heart, without even uttering an audible word, say, God, I'm listening. Tell me what I need to hear today. Just give him space for that. Just while you remain in a posture of prayer for those who are disciples of Jesus, followers of Christ. If God made the world, then we are His. Man that's discipleship, that's living as a disciple. God all that I am is all for you. Maybe this is a recalibrating for us today, on this first Sunday of the new year, to look at this life as a stewardship, not as a right, but really a privilege to serve our God. Maybe you're here and you don't know God personally. Perhaps you know about him, but never had that personal connection by faith. Our prayer team is coming down and they'll be right in the front, right in the front of this room. So as everyone else goes, to leave out the back, you can come forward and any of these men or women would love to pray with you, talk with you, give you a Bible if you don't have one. And what a great day this would be for you to begin a journey of faith. The beginning of this year. God, we trust that all that you want us to retain and remember, your spirit will call to remembrance as we walk out of here. All that we need to obey you, to live for you, to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. God, we have it all here. I pray that you would write your truth upon our minds and our hearts and our hands. That we would serve and love you and others. Thank you God for your word, that you have revealed yourself. You are not hiding. You are not far from any of us, that you wrote yourself into the story. We love you, but we recognize that's a response to your love, your great love for us. And so we say thank you in Christ's name. Amen.