I want to start with a couple questions, if that's okay. We're gonna sort of take a poll and find who this applies to. I'm sure I think it's gonna be a lot of us actually. So, how many of us in here use Netflix or Hulu or some type of streaming media service? Okay. Those of you who just raised your hands, when you find out about a new show, either through the grapevine or you just stumble upon it yourself and it looks really good, and let's just assume you see this show and it's got eight seasons, so you know there's a good bit to watch. How many of us start on season one when we decide to watch it? Anyone start on like season seven? Go, okay, one person? Um, that's interesting. He's like, I love to be confused. I just love to be bewildered. Okay, those of you who who said you start on season one, what episode of season one do you start on? How many of you start on season one, episode one? Anyone go right ahead to the very last episode of the first season? Think, man, I want to make sure this ends well before I invest some time into it. No? Because it would be confusing, right? It would be confusing to have to jump into something when you've already missed a lot. We've all been in experiences like that, though, and in situations different than like a show on Netflix. It's a situation we can't control, and we just have to, we just have to jump in and figure it out. I remember whenever I was in the seventh grade, we moved to Wisconsin, and uh, and the school that I got to was way ahead of where the school I had had moved from was math-wise. And so, like this was in the the early middle school days of algebra for me, the first time they started putting letters in math, and I'm like, why is there an X? What does that mean? Up to this point, that's meant multiply, and now that's a different thing, and I don't know what's going on. And I remember having to like try to figure it out as I went along and fill in the gaps and try to just pick up whatever I could to feel like I was caught up. That's a very frustrating place to be. And we've all been there, we've all been in situations where we're just sort of winging it, trying to catch up because we weren't there from the start. I think that's a situation we find ourselves in often when it comes to our faith. Because let's be honest, we're not really beginning in our lives at the beginning. I mean, we're pretty far down the line. Here we are, 2,000 years after Jesus lived and died and rose again, and it's not even like Jesus entering the story is one of the first things that happens. There are thousands and thousands of years of history and developments where God has been writing this epic and amazing story that we're all part of. But for most of us, we're we're kind of always playing catch up, we're just trying to figure it out. Some of us grew up in church, and maybe that was a really good thing for you. Maybe you grew up in a church that taught you the Bible, and so you feel like you have a pretty good grasp on the story. Maybe your church even went beyond teaching you the Bible, but actually taught you God's heart. So you understood not only what God did, but why he did it, and so you have this wealth of knowledge, but you also have an understanding of why God has done the things he's done. And if that's you, that's actually a very rare case. Some of us maybe grew up in church and we we were taught all the lessons and we were we were taught all the major plot points, but we weren't taught God's heart, and so we actually got really confused on who God is and why God does things, and maybe we've had to unlearn a lot that we learned just to be able to approach God with a fresh perspective. And some of us have come into this relationship with God and we just don't know much at all. And so we sit here confused a lot because even though I try my best to present the Bible in a way that is easy to relate to and easy to understand, I mean, there's just a certain amount of knowledge you have to have to get the most out of it. Like when we sing worship songs, there's a lot in worship songs that is directly referencing the Bible, and sometimes it's fairly obscure things. Like this morning, we opened with a song that said, you know, God, I want to run after you, essentially. I'm chasing your heart, just like David did. And if you know the Bible and you know the verse in the Bible where it says David was a man after God's own heart, you're like, oh, I get that. But if you don't, you're like, what does God want to be chased? Is it good to chase God? Is that okay? I'm chasing his heart, what I'm chasing his heart, what does that mean? And and again, we're all intelligent. We we can fill in the blanks as best we can, but sometimes it's just nice to not have the blanks that need filled in. Because sometimes we're trying to grow, but we're we're confused, and confusion is not a good thing. Don't get me wrong, to a certain degree with God, there's always gonna be some confusion. There's always gonna be some things about God we just don't know, we can't know. Even in heaven, if you see in the Bible the moments where we get little glimpses into heaven, the angels seem a little bit taken aback by God. Like they've they've been there from the beginning, as far as we know, and and and they've been around God, like they're in his presence all the time, and when you see the angels, they're sort of just like, whoa! Even the angels don't even know how to process God. There's always gonna be that, but at the same time, as much as we can, we want to understand the story that we're part of. Because how can we play the part in the story that God wants us to play if we don't even understand the story that we're in? Confusion is our enemy. It can actually be really dangerous in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 14. The Bible's talking about the importance of us growing in our maturity as followers of Jesus. And talking about this time when we we hit a moment of maturity, it says, then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. In other words, we will not be susceptible to being led in some direction we don't want to go in because we know and understand the story that we're part of. In my role, I see this happen a lot. I see people get excited about God. But they're they're entering the story late in the game and they're trying their best to pick up the pieces, but maybe they'll open up the Bible and they'll read something, they'll read the Old Testament, they'll read something that God did, and they'll be like, whoa, this doesn't seem like it fits with Jesus. I don't understand this, and it can even become a crisis of faith. And it's because they don't understand the developments, they don't understand what God is doing and why he's doing it, what it's leading to. I have a great friend who was in a leadership role in my life for years, and he had this quote he would use all the time. He would say, It's hard to be aggressive if you're confused. It's hard to be aggressive if you're confused. I don't know about you, but I would like to aggressively grow closer to God. I would like to get as close to God as humanly possible because one day in heaven, I would just like to pick up where I leave off here, and I'd like to pick up at a as close of a place as I can when I get face to face with God. I want to grow as close to God as a human being can grow in this life. So I don't want things standing in my way. If there's a hurdle, I want to get over it. If there's a wall, I want to scale it. I want to grow as aggressively close to God as a human being can, and confusion is my enemy. And so, because I believe that that's a place many of us find ourselves in, many of us sometimes feel confused, we don't really know what's going on, we're we're trying our best to pick up the pieces, I thought it'd be great. I really believe this is something God wants us to do. For us just to spend a few weeks making it our point to eliminate confusion, making it our purpose to understand the story that we're in. So we're going to go through pretty much the whole story of the Bible in about eight weeks. And and, you know, trust me, we're not gonna be able to hit every story and every character. In fact, we're gonna be able to hit very few of those, but what we're actually gonna do is hit on the major developments in the story so we can understand what God is doing, why he's doing it, what it's leading up to, because we are part of this story, you and I. We're part of the greatest story that's ever been told, a story God is writing out right now in our lives and in the world around us. We're gonna call this series the gospel. The word gospel means good news, it means the message of Jesus, and what we discover when we read the Bible is that the message of Jesus did not start the day that Jesus stepped foot on this earth. The message of Jesus has been a message that's been being told since the beginning. The whole Bible is the gospel. It's the message of Jesus. It's just that some things have to happen before other things can happen. That's how stories work. So here's how we're gonna break this down we're gonna start with creation, because I think it makes sense to begin with the beginning. From creation, we're gonna go to the crash, the moment when things got off track. From the crash, we're gonna go to this thing called a covenant, this agreement between people and God on how things are gonna work in light of the crash that has happened. From crash, we get to Christ, we get to Jesus. And in his story, there's this really important thing called a cross that we're gonna talk about. And from the cross, we get to creation again, but it's a different creation, it's a new creation, and from creation we go to covenant, because it's a new covenant. So we go creation, crash, covenant, Christ, cross, creation, covenant. Make sense? Okay, here we go. We're gonna go through that. We're gonna do that. All the words begin with C. We did that on purpose. So I'm actually really excited about this. I'm really excited about the idea of us as a church being able to focus on what's happened, what's happening. Because what's happening today, what God is doing now, is greatly informed by what he's done before. And I want us to be a family of people. No matter where we're at with God, no matter if we've been following him for 30 years or three months, or you're just still figuring that out. I want us to be a group of people who can say with genuine authenticity, God, we are coming. We are we are running after you. We want to eliminate any confusion, anything that stands in the way, so just help us understand as best we can. I think that is a worthy endeavor. So we're gonna start today with with creation. Like I said, it makes sense to begin with the beginning. So here's here's the beginning of our story. Genesis 1.1. First statement in the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Very direct, very easy to follow. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And I want to take a quick detour. So this is a small, small rabbit trail. Okay, it's not the main point of the morning, but I think it's worth talking about. That statement is probably the most discussed and debated statement that's ever been uttered. Right? It's kind of a big deal because there's a lot of people who will look at that and say, yeah, that's not true. And if that's not true, then pretty much everything that follows isn't true either. If that's not true, then we should all be sleeping in today. We're wasting our time being here. If God did not create the world, if he's not the author of life, if he's not the one who makes everything what it is, this is this is a waste of time. Growing up as a as a kid, I remember this fear that I had, especially when I got to high school, maybe college to a certain degree, and it was the fear of what if I'm wrong? What if what if I'm wrong? What if all this God stuff is made up? What if God did not create the world? What if it's like what some really smart people have said? And the worst, it's when really smart people who have British accents disagree with the Bible. Then you're like, whoa. Because you sound way smarter with the British accent. You just you just do. Okay? What do you even do there? Because there are a lot of people to this day who will say, I mean, a lot of smart people with with PhDs will say, that's ridiculous. God didn't create the world. Come on, you're you're like believing in a fairy tale. And there's this dynamic that we feel sometimes. It's faith versus science, and we believe that those two are opposed to one another, when in reality, I just don't think that's true at all. That's a huge misconception. I'm not saying there aren't people in the scientific community who are opposed to faith. There's actually people in the faith community opposed to science, which is weird, because science actually backs up the Bible time and time again. And this statement is actually the perfect example of that. See, from like the mid-1800s until about 1930, the scientific community as a whole laughed at this statement, not because of the God part, but because of the first three words in the beginning. Because the major view of science and any scientist worth their salt was that there never was a beginning. There was no origin. The origin of the universe was that it didn't have an origin, it has always been. And I'm talking like famous scientists. There were a lot of famous scientists in that era, people like Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein, until about the 1930s, did not believe that the universe began. And so science will look at that statement and go, like, before you even get to God, you guys are already wrong. There never was a beginning. The idea of the universe was that it's always been. But then in the late 20s and the early 30s, this new theory emerged because a dude named Edwin Hubble, who loved telescopes very much, Edwin Hubble discovered, through some really observable and provable science, that the universe appeared to be expanding at an ever-increasing rate from a central point, almost like debris from an explosion. And that became a major, major crisis for the scientific community because if everything is moving out from a central point, logic would hold that if you just rewind time, all of a sudden everything is together at a central point, and that is called a point of origin. And that theory is now known as what? The Big Bang Theory. If you've ever thought that the Big Bang Theory was a problem when it comes to faith in God, it's actually not. It was such a crisis that the scientific community resisted it so hard because the implications meant that, ah, if there's a beginning, what does that mean? We've got to delve into that now. They didn't want to. So we have this quote from a really well-known scientist from that time, Sir Arthur Eddington. They called him Sir, so he probably did something right. He said, philosophically, not scientifically, notice, philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant to me. I should like to find a genuine loophole. So for about the next 20 years, that's what science was trying to do. Find a loophole, find another way to explain the universe that does not require a beginning, but it could not be done. And today the Big Bang Theory is pretty much universally accepted as being somewhat accurate. And so science changed its tune. Science went from saying there never has been a beginning to saying, okay, in the beginning, something caused all this to be. And if the Bible could talk, which it actually sort of can, it said, Yeah, I've been saying that for a long time. Like 5,000 years ago, I wrote this down. That's kind of how I started the book, right? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. I just want you to understand, as people of faith, that it's not nonsense. Hopefully, your faith is strengthened by that. It's amazing how often, time and time again, science actually backs up the Bible. That's because God made all the things that we observe. Okay, so in the beginning, that that wasn't the main point. The main point is not that. So, really, if you were asleep for the last five minutes, that's somewhat good time management. Good job. Um so let's let's let's actually get to the point, because there should be a point when we get together and talk. See, we we get very fascinated on how. That's that's kind of human nature. We always want to know how things work. That's why discussions about the origin of the universe are so fascinating because we're talking about how everything happened. We always want to know how, but how is not the most important question to ask. The most important question is always why. I learned that from a lot of people in life. One of those people is Steve Craig, who started his hands, he's been my mentor for a long, long time. I remember when Steve was leading the church, I was in a meeting with him one time, and we had this piece of equipment that broke. And to fix it, it was going to be very expensive. It was a piece of equipment that Steve and Susan had purchased for the church when the church first started. We hadn't really used it much, but we were told we might need it, so they bought it, and now it broke, and it was gonna cost a lot to fix. And so this person was telling Steve that we needed to fix it, and here's how much it's gonna cost, and here's how we gotta do this, and all this stuff. And Steve just stopped and said, Well, why do we need it? And they're like, Well, you know, I mean, it's a it's a really nice piece of equipment. And uh, you know, there might be a day when we're doing all these things, and and theoretically then we would really need it. He's like, Yeah, but we don't need it now, and we haven't really used it, so let's just be good stewards of our finances and not fix it. Because we don't really need it. He asked the question, why, and that kind of opened everybody's eyes. Why is always the most important question? And so, as fascinating as it is to talk about how the universe began and how everything got started, it's more important for us to know why. Why did God create the world? This is actually a very, very personal question, very relevant to your life, because God did not stop when he created the heavens and the earth, he kept on going and he created you, he created us, and we need to understand why, why we were created. If we don't know why we were created, we can never live a fulfilled life. Because you cannot be fulfilled if you don't know what purpose you're trying to fulfill. So why are we here? We're basically trying to figure out the meaning of life in the next 15 minutes. And if we do that, I think we can treat ourselves to a very nice lunch. We just should, because we've conquered something. Have you ever noticed that when something is used for a purpose it was not originally intended for, things can get off track pretty fast? If you lose sight of the original intent that a creator had for something, I'll give you an example from my life, and it's one that will definitely cause you to lose some respect for me. Um, but I don't know how much you have for me, so that's okay. So I'm gonna share a detail and then something else that seems completely disconnected, that it'll all come together, I promise. My son Judah loves music. He is one year old, and we we bought some musical toys for our other kids that they never really played with. And now Judah really seems to like these things, so it's it's great. I mean, he's the third child, he gets the hand-me-downs. Um, one of these toys is this drum. Judah really likes this drum. He likes to bang on the drum, he likes to make music, he just enjoys it. It's loud, it's fun. Okay, so we'll we'll take that picture down, lock that away in your minds, because here's the other detail that seems to be completely disconnected. Last year, I had a very severe case of athlete's foot in my right foot. It was it was intense. Have you ever seen a dog try to chew its own leg off? You ever seen that? I now relate to those dogs. I get it. Because I had had athlete's foot before, on account of my obvious athleticism, and uh but but maybe my athleticism has just exponentially increased as someone in their mid-30s because this was intense. This was bad. Like I put stuff on it, I got medicine. If you don't know what athlete's foot is, it's a fungus growing on your feet. It's gross, but I'm just gonna own that. And uh, and I think my hygiene is adequate, so I don't know why it happened, but it happened and it was awful, especially between my toes. The itching sensations that I would feel between my toes was terrible. Some of you are so disgusted right now. I can just see it on your faces. I forgot that the nine o'clock service wasn't about to go eat lunch. I apologize, okay? I apologize. Thankfully, nothing is named, it's chicken fingers, not chicken toes, so you're okay. All right, you're fine. So, so one day I'm at home, it's the kids are gone, Megan's gone, it's just me and my foot fungus at the house. And uh, and it was it had flared up. I mean, it was bad. It was so bad, it was on fire, and I'm in our basement, and I look on the ground and I see the drumstick to Judah's drum. And this is that stick. And for the first time, it sort of spoke to me. And I noticed the curvature of it. It's like it's got some kind of like cool grooves, and the sides of it have these little raised like bumps, and it was literally like it spoke out to me and said, put me between your toes. I will change your life. Like that's what I earned. And this is my son's toy, okay? This belongs to him. So I resisted the temptation for 10 minutes. But then I grabbed that thing and I ripped off my sock, and it was incredible. It was incr it was so good. It was so good. I even gave it a name. I called him Mr. Happy Toes on account of the smiley face at the very top. Now, two things you need to know. Number one, I did not give this toy back to Judah. That that drum is just a bongo drum now. That's okay, okay? You can still make music. Number two, I think number two, and by the way, he my kids take all my stuff and use it for things it's not intended for. Like, I don't really care that much because if I have something, it just gets destroyed or taken and messed with. So it's just the way things work. But the second thing you really need to know is that I I kept this a secret because for like obvious reasons. I didn't broadcast this to the world, but then I got caught. I got caught. Not red-handed. Megan didn't like come into a room and I was I was rubbing it between my toes. She just found it in our bathroom and she said, Why is Judah's drumstick in our bathroom? And I was, I didn't know what to say. I was like, oh. And so what came out of my mouth was, and I don't know why, this is what I first said, but I went, You mean Mr. Happy Toes? She just had this look of confusion and disgust because she put two and two together. I basically begged her, I said, please don't take this away from me. I need this. He's the only thing that helps. Please let me keep this. Mr. Happy Toes. See, when you when you lose sight of the original purpose of something, things can get kind of weird. I'll give you, I'll give you a real-world example of that that's that's a little bit less ridiculous. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution is one of the most incredible things that has ever been invented in human history. It has changed society. The fact that that we have shows like Saturday Night Live that can just make fun of our world leaders and those people not get thrown in jail is an incredibly novel thing in human history. It's actually a pretty novel thing today. It really is. Which is crazy that some people want to limit the First Amendment because it's like, do you not realize the freedom that this gives us? This is not normal. This is this is amazing. But sometimes we'll see great things used for a purpose that they were obviously never intended for, and things can get off track really fast. So, for example, online pornography. Okay, about 10 years ago, This bill was introduced that attempted to make any pornographic website have a.xxx domain name instead of a.com. The purpose of that was that no one would actually stumble onto these websites accidentally, like children, because that happens all the time. A famous case of this actually, in fact, a lot of sites do this on purpose. A famous case of this was something that's actually changed since then, but it used to be that Whitehouse.com was a pornographic website. Whitehouse.gov is the official website for the White House. So how many fourth grade kids were doing a report on the White House and typed in Whitehouse.com to get the information they needed and then were exposed to that. That shouldn't happen. And so this bill said, hey, like we live in a free society. We may not agree with the morality of that. In fact, we don't, but but we're just saying that you should have a.xxx domain name so that third grade kids don't stumble upon your site exposed to that. Clearly you don't want that, do you? But intentionally most probably did. Because the earlier they can get you addicted, the better. That's why cigarettes used to market themselves exclusively to like young kids, and they can't do that anymore, right? Same kind of thing. So that bill makes a lot of sense to me. It really does. It seems pretty cut and dry, but it was shot down because the claim was made that that would violate the First Amendment rights of pornographic website owners. And I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not one of the founding fathers. But I just would imagine that if one of the founding fathers were to overhear that, they'd be like, yeah, so that's not exactly what we had in mind when we came up with the First Amendment. See, when you lose sight of the intended purpose of something, things get off track. When we lose sight of our intended purpose, if we lose sight of why God created us, we get off track. It is vital for us, it is necessary for us to understand why God made us, why we were created. So that's what I want to talk about for just a few minutes. Why did God make you? I want to look at it from two different angles. Number one, why did God create us in relationship with him? Number two, why did God create us in relationship with the world around us? Because both are important, and the answer is sort of the same. Okay, so why did God make you in relationship with you? Did God make you to worship him? That's kind of what religion teaches, right? God made us so that we would worship him. God made us so that we would love him. My purpose in life is to love God. I think many people would agree with that. But that's actually not what the Bible says, our purpose is. That's not what the Bible says is the reason God made us. We actually find that out by exploring the beginning. In fact, we have to go a little bit further back than the beginning. We get there in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 4 through 5. I've shared these before. They're some of my favorite verses in the Bible. Ephesians 1, 4 through 5 tells us about God's intentions before he created the world. And it says, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. I love the way the message puts it. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, this is before the beginning, he had us in mind. He had settled on us as the focus of his love to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago, he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ, what pleasure he took in planning this. So, according to this, God did not make us to love him, God made us so that he could love us. God created you so that you could experience his love. Yes, it is good for us to worship him. Yes, it is good for us to love him, but our worship and our love is meant to be a response to his love. Not the other way around. See, religion teaches us to perform. So you've got to love God with all you have, and you've got to worship him with all your might. And if you love him enough and if you worship him enough, he will love you back, and that's a lie. We can't even begin to fathom how much he loves us. But he created us so that we could experience his love. And I'm telling you, when we experience his love, when we actually open ourselves up on a day-to-day basis to living in the love that God has for us, conscious of the love that God has for us, it has this tendency to make life super enjoyable. It takes away the pressure, it takes away the striving. I believe that a lot of the dissatisfaction that we experience on a day-to-day basis in our lives personally, I'm not talking about the big problems that we have to deal with. I'm talking about those everyday frustrations that we walk around with simply come from a disconnect between us and the love of God. And that if we could stop and realize how loved we are by God, that would change. Like Jesus, he lived that. Jesus lived his life aware of the fact that God loved him, and he knows that because God told him he loved him, and Jesus believed God. Sometimes the simple thing to do is just believe what God says about you. So when Jesus was baptized, God spoke, and other people heard it, and God basically said, Hey, if you're paying attention, I'm really pleased with this one. He brings me great joy, I love him. And then Jesus went and started his ministry, and all these people who were supposed to be experts, experts on God, told Jesus that God was not pleased with him, that God was angry with him, and that he was God's enemy, and Jesus the whole time was like, Nah, I know how God feels about me. I know the way my father feels because he told me he loves me. And Jesus enjoyed, enjoyed that love. Jesus actually enjoyed life. That's not the picture of Jesus that religion paints. Like, let me give you an example. If we put a picture, we're not going to do this, but if we put a picture of Jesus on the screen, an actual photograph we have of Jesus, and and he happened to be in a lazy boy recliner, like kicking back, there are a lot of people that would get very angry at that. Not people in this room, I hope, but but people in the world, because that would be viewed as sacrilegious, that would be viewed as blasphemous. I mean, come on, it's Jesus, the creator of the world, the guy that died on the cross, kicking it in a lazy boy. Preposterous. Religion would tell us that if Jesus were to sit down, which he probably didn't do very often except to pray, he would probably sit down on like a cold stone, you know, tablet of some kind, like some bench. Or he would sit on the dirt, but he wouldn't get dirty because he's Jesus. He's holy. He's too holy to get dirty, right? Because it's just really hard for religion to wrap its mind around the idea of God having a good time. But the Bible says frequently that Jesus reclined. There are moments in scripture where Jesus is at a party, like he's at a party, and he's reclining. He has his feet propped up. I mean, that's that's that's Jesus. He's enjoying life, and he enjoyed life because he knew he was loved by God. He enjoyed life because even though he had all these problems to deal with, even though he had this huge mission, even though he dealt with all this drama from all these different people, Jesus day by day lived in the knowledge that the God of the universe loved him and it put him in a good mood. And if you want to live life in a good mood, if you want to get rid of like striving and performing and trying to constantly measure yourself against other people, measure yourself against your past, and just recognize the fact that you're a child of God and he created you not so that you could love him, not so that you could impress him. Like, seriously, impress God? Try. He didn't create you to do that, he created you so that you could experience his love for you. That's why he made you. That's what the Bible says. You were created to be the focus of his love. So be that. Seriously, be that. And I'm not saying use that as an excuse to do less good in life. I'm just saying that cut yourself some slack. Like if you're at home and someone comes to you and says, Did you forget to do this? Yes, I did. But I am loved by God. I mean, I'm I'm being serious. Just enjoy it. Enjoy it. He created you so that you could know what it's like to be loved. But number two, why did he create you in relationship to the world around you? That's very important too. Because, like we said earlier, you're part of a story. It's a story that's still being told. There will be a day in heaven when the story of this earth can be told in totality. Where beginning all the way to end, it will be a story where the chapter, that chapter at least, has closed. And you are going to be part of that story. Your life will be a page in that story. That's amazing that God has invited us to be part of the story that He's telling, that He's creating in this world. He created you for a purpose with Him, but He also created you for a purpose with the world around you. And that purpose is actually really simple: to look like God. You're supposed to look like God. You're supposed to resemble Him. Genesis 1, 26 and 27, God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. I think that means bugs. So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. Now, when you read this, there's kind of this tragic truth because you're like, oh man, I don't really feel like I'm reigning in life. Especially with bugs, because like the ants keep coming into my house, they do not respect my property, they keep trying to take my stuff, like this isn't working, and that's actually what we're going to talk about next week when we get to the crash. Something goes wrong in the story, and then God begins this process of reconciliation. But we see that the original intent, the moment of creation, God says, Let's make people to be like us. And the us is God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Let's make them to be like us. And see, we live in this world that's so beautiful, right? We look at the stars and the sky and the ocean and the mountains, and we go, wow, how beautiful that is. There must be a God. But in actuality, it should be the ocean and the stars and the sky and the mountains that look at us and go, wow, there's a God, all right. Look at them. We're supposed to be what reflects God. We are his image. That's what he said. Let's make man in his image. So how in the world do we do that? How do we look like God? He knows everything, he has all power in the world. How can we even begin to resemble the love of God, the God that we serve? And the answer, I just kind of gave it away, Freudian slip, is love. That's how we look like God. We love like God. 1 John 4 8 says that whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. It's really clear. We have this tendency in religion, and by the way, if you're new here, we talk about religion a good bit because we're not religious. Religion is not a good thing. Religion is something that replaces relationship with God and makes it a contract, not a relationship. We don't want to have a contract with God. We want a relationship with God. He doesn't ask for religion. And so, religion, like it elevates things like righteousness way above love. So love is great, yeah, we need to love each other, but we really need to live a righteous life. Righteousness is so much easier than love. It is so much easier to live your life by some arbitrary set of rules to make you feel good about yourself than it is to actually go love people. Like it's a lot easier for you to come to church every Sunday and check that off the box than it is to go to whatever restaurant you might go to and be nice and kind to your server and the people around you when they get your order wrong. That's way harder. So we talk about love a lot because love's the big thing according to God. It's the main thing according to God because it's the only thing that God is. There's only two things in the Bible that God is, that He's not like. And we just read earlier in Ephesians that we're made holy by his love. So love's kind of important. And it's when we love like God that we look like God. It's when we love the world the way God loves the world that the world sees who God is. That's our purpose in the world around us is to love in such a way that people recognize God. And so I'll just ask this: do you want to see the world change? And the world's kind of big and it's hard for us to wrap our minds around what would have to happen to change the world, so let's just make it smaller. Do you want to see your world change, your circle of influence? Do you have anyone in your world that you would love to see change, their life turn around? You have you have something that you're part of. Maybe it's your business, maybe it's your family, maybe it's your school that you want to see change for the better, you want to see it transform into something beautiful, something incredible. Do you want to see anything in your world change? And if the answer is yes, God would say, then love it. Like, like, love it. I'm part of the church world. And so I have this tendency to, anyone who knows me really well, and you guys experience this from time to time, I can get a little soapboxy sometimes. Especially when I'm talking about the church. And what I mean that, like the church in America. I can get a little bit like, you know what's wrong with the church in America? I'll tell you what's wrong. I can get like that sometimes, more than I'd like to. I just have strong opinions. Some of it I'm just wrong, some of it I'm inexperienced. Some of it, though, I do think that there are these things that I really want to see change. Things that I love about our church, and I want to see it spread, the authenticity and the love and things like that. And we talked about that a few weeks ago. A few years ago, I was I was praying and I was talking to God. I was I was giving him some great pointers and um telling him about how things need to change. I do that. And God, like, he kind of wrecked me. He does that pretty often. Most of the times that God speaks to me, and this should not make you feel nervous about God speaking to you. That that could happen, I could see that. But like when he speaks to me, oftentimes it's it's to get me like back on track. Like I start drifting and he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, and he puts me back here. And in the moment I'm kind of like frustrated by that, but then in the end, I'm very grateful. And so I'm praying, I'm telling God about how the church is this and the church needs to change, and the church and church and church. And God just said, Justin, I will not let you change the church if you don't love the church. God does not allow us or empower us to change what we do not love. And so if you want to see something change, love it. That's why politics never works. Because they hate each other. Right? That's just the truth. That's why no Democrat will ever change a Republican, no Republican will ever change a Democrat because they hate each other. They just spew hate. And all that causes is the other side to get more emboldened and to spew it back, and it's just entertaining to watch. If you want to see your world change, love the world you're part of. Love it. Love it like you have to love a child. Love it through all the frustration. Love it through all the disappointment. Because it's when you love like God that you look like God. You were made by God. Created by God to be part of this incredible story that He's been telling since the beginning, even before the beginning. You're part of the gospel. He's included you in this. And before we get to all the rest, before we get to all these other developments, you you've got to understand, we've got to understand that we are created by God. According to God, we are his favorite part of creation. That makes us incredibly special. We're like the prized possession of God. And that should both fill us with joy, but it should also fill us with an incredible sense of purpose and responsibility. Say, wow, that's how God feels about me. I encourage you today to be who you're supposed to be. Be the created image of God. Designed by God to be loved by God. Let God love you. Sometimes we have a hard time with that. It's not hard to see that in humanity when you go give someone a compliment and they start like deflecting. Anyone do that? We all do that, right? Oh, you did so well. Yeah, but you know, I don't know. Oh, you look great today. Yeah, well, I wish I could lose if you manage. You don't look really good. We all do things like that. Because there's something in us that wants to resist love. Don't resist it from God. I mean, walk out of here today, beaming from the recognition that you are loved by God. And he created you not for you to love him, do that, that's good. He created you not for you to worship him, do that, that's also good. But he created you to be loved by him. Do that, and the other two take care of themselves. Just be loved by him, receive it. And then go out and love. There is a deficit of love in this world. And we're meant to fill it. So let's go love. Let's go love people. Love what it is you want to see changed. We're gonna wrap up with worship. We're gonna pray. I'm really excited about the next several weeks. I'm really excited about this series. I say that every time we start a new series. And that's a good thing. I should be excited because I'm asking about it. I actually didn't plan for us to do this series now. I was gonna save this one for later. It's something that I really felt like God gave me an idea for probably three months ago, but I had something else I was really more excited about. And as I got ready to plan things, I just really felt over and over again, like, no, do this one first. And if you know me well, you know that I'm not some master organizer or planner. I don't have this calendar that uh I don't have this calendar that I'm like managing and I everything's in its place and everything lines up. It's it's a pretty normal experience for me to have someone show up and go, hey, I'm here for our meeting, and me go, yep, let's do this, because I completely forgot. Um, and I just sort of wing it, I go with it. That's just how I am. And so I don't I don't plan things out in this amazing way. Here's one of the reasons I know that this is so perfect that God wants us to be in this conversation right now, is that when I finally decided, okay, we'll do this series, and I put it down and I put it on the calendar, I was like, oh man, Easter, it's right in the middle of that. And I'm thinking, oh, I mean, I wasn't disappointed in Easter, it's a pretty big day. But but I was like, oh, I didn't think about the fact that we're gonna have to take a break because Easter sort of deserves its own thing. But then it was so cool because I look at where Easter is on the calendar, and Easter comes the week after we talk about the cross, which is so cool. That is so cool, because that's not me, I did not plan that. That's just like a little God confirmation. You know, if you're new here, we always want his hands to be a place that's accessible. That no matter what your background is, no matter where you're at with God, even if you're just sort of thinking about God, you're not sure if you believe, we we want you here, your family. And we're gonna do our best to make sure that that following God is something that's not harder than it needs to be. At the same time, we never wanna, we never wanna sell ourselves short and forget the fact that we can grow, that every single one of us can be a mature, developed, passionate follower of Jesus. That every single one of us can have a depth of knowledge in us, a depth of wisdom and experience in us that is useful to the world around us. We're all meant to grow. We're all meant to be mature. And I really believe that this series is gonna be a big part of that for many of us, a big part of many of us for the first time ever, maybe going, oh, okay, I get it. I see what God is, I get it now. I'm really, really excited about this. And so with that in mind, let's pray. And let's continue worshiping. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for this amazing group of people. God, one one day I will finish on time. And when that happens, there will be confetti and uh and a party afterwards. But I am grateful for this patient, incredible group of people that at the end of the day, Lord, look, we're we're not here so we can get in and get out. We're here so we can get in and get you. We want to experience all you have for us. We want to grow. God, I want to grow. I don't want to stay where I'm at. If I need to stand still so I can grow some roots, that's fine. But but I just I want to move as passionately and just laser-like focused close to you as I can. I I want to grow, God. I want to be near you. I believe we all do. So, Lord, we pray that as we begin this series together, that we would all that we would all expect to grow. That we would all get excited about understanding the story we're part of a little bit better, so that we can understand our part in that story. And Lord, this week I pray that you remind us over and over again why you made us. You created us to love us, and you created us to be your love to the world around us. So help us live that out. Help us enjoy and experience your love, and help us walk out of this place and take it to the people who need it. Because that's everybody, Lord. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.