We are starting a new series on Sunday morning for the next few months. We're going through the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. After that, after we get up until around right before Easter, then we'll have our Easter celebration. And after that, we'll be going into the book of Revelation for only God knows how long. But as we go into this new kind of series through Genesis, there's inherently a lot of baggage that comes with this book, or any book, in particular the first few chapters. What I will be attempting to do, what we will be attempting to do through this is to get all of us to look through these kind of foundational chapters and really see how it shapes everything. We're talking about creation of all things, but in particular, as we'll be talking today, the pinnacle of that creation being those who were made in the image of God, humanity. and all of the inherent meaning that comes with that. And then chapter one is just kind of this general creation account. Chapter two is specific, it zeroes in on that creation event as it pertains to humanity. And of course, chapter three deals with the fall. And in all of these things in that chapter three, we have the promise, the promise of a future redemption in light of the fall. And so as we go through this, some of you might be hoping that we'll particularly stick on or talk about evolution versus creation. Now certainly that will be addressed, but that's not the focus. Some of you might be hoping that we really focus on men and women and their roles so your spouse will finally get things right. And certainly we will talk about that, but that's not the focus. I want you to understand who the main character is. It's not you. It's God. The author of Genesis, Moses, was giving this to a specific audience for the purpose of not asking the how. How did these things happen? How does it work? The question that they're wanting to answer is who? When the Israelites were in exile, which is the audience that Moses is writing to, and they're coming out of one set of belief systems in Egypt as former slaves. And then one day we'll be going into exile to another nation of Babylon, which has its own set beliefs. And in those time periods, Moses is giving the law and all of the law is pertaining to this idea. This is the one true God and all other claims of other gods outside of this one are false. There's no common ground to be had. There's no ways in which we're supposed to try to find a connection point. There is one truth and all the other ideas out there about these specific truths are false. And the law is replete with this warning of what happens when You intermarry with another group of people who believe these other beliefs and why is that forbidden? It's not because God was racist. It was because God was letting them know these foundational understandings of who I am have to drive every decision that you make. So everywhere you go, do not bind yourself one to another with someone who believes other than this. Paul, of course, repeats that in the book of 1 Corinthians when talking about a phrase we often use about unequally yoked. It has to do with someone being bound together with an unbeliever or someone who believes in antithesis or the complete opposite of faith in Christ. And so Genesis introduces these ideas that we hold fast to today. because this book also was not written in a void. It was written in the backdrop of numerous ancient Near Eastern creation myth stories. In fact, it was suffused throughout the culture. And there's commonalities between the Genesis account and other accounts, whether it be Babylonian or Egyptian, things like the waters or the canopies above or the waters below, or there being some type of primordial chaos and how do you deal with it. The uniqueness of the Genesis account in all of ancient Near Eastern literature is utterly unique. And we have that with multitudes of examples. I'm not going to talk about all these examples as well. But what we are going to kind of, I want to point you to, is this isn't a purposeful scientific document. It's a theological argument. It's a polemic against all of the other beliefs that were around Israel at the time. And so when we see these things that contrast, these Moses is using through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in a way to say, you know what it's like when the Babylonians say that this is how the skies and the land and the waters became this way? Well, in the same or similar language, Moses is going to describe how all of those ideas are wrong and the actual truth is this is how it was made. This is an argument for God, not a recording of something where we look at it and go, oh, this is a historical thing that happened in the history or the religious life of Israel. You're reading the Old Testament wrong if you're reading that way. We're reading it as God making an argument for himself to his people. This is your God. He's the only one who's done all these things and the only one that can do all these things. Understand how important that is and how you view yourself because at the very stake of what the argument is about is in fact God infused human dignity. And if you look at the world around us today, or even maybe think of yourself or family or friends or coworkers. If there's one thing that the world is drowning in, it is a lack of human dignity or a belief that there's such a thing as innate worth because something other, something transcendent has bestowed worth on humanity. That's what Genesis is about. So as we read through these weeks, we're going to be reading the entirety of each chapter, each week that we're in that particular chapter. So this morning, the reading will be all of chapter one of Genesis. And as I go through all of chapter one and it's reading, after that, as always, give you an opportunity to take a time to pray. In silence, pray to God through the Holy Spirit to open your mind to the truth of the word, to lay bare the idols and other places of your heart that you have not given over to God. And in order to take this time to prepare yourself for the word. After a time of silent prayer, pray for us corporately, and then we'll enter into the ministry or time of reading the word. Reading now. Genesis chapter 1 in its entirety. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was out without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw the light was good, and God 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. And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning the second day. God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas, and God saw that it was good. And God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth, and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their kinds, the earth bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning the third day. And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars. And God set them in expanse of the heavens and give light on the earth to rule over the day and over the night and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. And then there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. God said, let the water swarm with swarms of living creature and let the birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens. So God created the great sea creatures And every living creature that moves with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind, God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply. fill the waters and the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth. And there was the evening, and there was the morning, the fifth day. And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock, creeping things, the beast of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so when God made the beast of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image. after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and every bird of the heavens, and everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath, the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so. And God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. This is the word of God. Please take this time to pray. Heavenly Father, as the church gathers here on the Lord's Day, we come to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, and the great Redeemer, whose blood, the elect, have been purchased out of sin and death, into blessed new life and a future hope of the resurrection of the dead and the new creation. Lord, as we now are here, I pray, as we continue in our time of public worship, that through God, the Holy Spirit, who those that are yours have a shared and equal portion in, uniting us in a shared union with Christ. Lord, strengthen your people through the instruction of your word. May our minds be opened, illuminated to the truth of the word. Lord, may we be challenged in the areas of our life. where we have set other things before you. Lord, where we've idolized things of the world, where we've set up conditions in our lives so that we may receive glory rather than you. God, where we believe we've hidden things from you, secret sins we believe, Lord, shatter us with your word and God, the Holy Spirit. Lord, that all of these high places in our lives would be toppled. And that we would look to Christ, our Savior, our example, our Lord. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, you would strengthen us. We would pursue holiness. putting to death sin in the flesh in our life through the sanctifying work of God, the Holy Spirit. Lord, may you strengthen this local fellowship and our continued time of worship. And may you strengthen the church universal as we gather on the Lord's day. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. When we're talking about the creation of all things Genesis, we should immediately begin asking certain questions. And some of you who have studied the Bible for a long time know all of this, but I believe it'd be remiss to at least not go through a quick review of this book. Meaning, who is the author of this book? The author of this book traditionally has been attributed to Moses all throughout the history of the Old Testament canon, as well as the New Testament authors calling and pointing out quotations from the book of Genesis with words like, when Moses wrote. So Moses has always been attributed to as the author of Genesis, there is no critical theory or anything that's come along in the last couple of centuries that made any real doubt about the authenticity of the Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis being the first. So if we establish or we hold to the tradition and see that it is both testified in the rest of the Old Testament canon and the New Testament, and we believe in the inspiration of the word and the truthfulness found therein, then doubting Mosaic authorship doesn't really leave us anywhere. So Moses has always been attributed as the author, the Moses who were introduced to in the Book of Exodus. And so this is around the 15th century BC. And during that time, we're introduced to Moses in Exodus as a son of Israel from the tribe of Levi during a time of 400 years of slavery that at the end of this particular book introduces you to a scant few Israelites moving to Egypt to avoid a plague. And then we're introduced 400 years later in Exodus that as the number have grown in the population, they've been enslaved by Egyptian pharaohs since the one that rose up who no longer knew the tribe that belonged to or Joseph was a part of. Moses was in that generation. And within that time, God will reveal himself to Moses as I am, or Yahweh. He'll introduce himself to Moses and through the power of the Holy Spirit, give him the law and present it to him in a fabulous ceremony after freeing of the slaves on Mount Sinai, where he receives the law. The law is given to God, to Moses as an intermediary between God and the congregation of Israel. within the law and the giving of all the law that then is passed down and Moses gives to the people in subsequent generations. Leviticus, Numbers, Exodus, and Genesis all happening with a generation that leaves Egypt in slavery, from slavery, and is redeemed during the Passover and given a land that will be their inheritance. And then he gives it again in Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy is a retelling or an encapsulation or a summarization of everything that's taken place to the generation that will actually take the land. So all that to say, Mosaic authorship and Moses as author has very little to be refuted for it. But one of the more important questions, even more important than the author is who is the audience? Because one of the things that we like to do in a postmodern, well, it's not really a postmodern age anymore, but what postmodernism introduced to people is everyone being the star of their own story. And so what happens in the way people have been taught to read the Bible is to look at any particular in text and go, this is probably about me. And then find a way to fit when they realize that they're reading something that was written in the 1500 or 1400 BC, that they don't fit in there very well and they don't understand very much of what's being said or why it's being said in that way. So the audience is the generation of Israel who's been released from captivity in Egypt. So this is like if you read the main story in Exodus or you lived it, now you're reading about the prequel for all the movie people. It's probably because one of my sons is that. This is a retelling of something God gives Moses to the people who have been told and shown all the power of God. And God has shown himself superior to all of the Egyptian gods through the 10 plagues. Each plague was, if you didn't know this, in fact, a god of Egypt. Each plague represented a deity that was celebrated in polytheistic Egypt, polytheistic meaning they had many gods. And ultimately the way God deals with the Egyptian just to show that Yahweh, the one who's revealed himself to Moses, the one true God has power over all of nature. He can break everything dark when there should be light. He can make frogs, flies, gnats, and all these natural things do weird things they shouldn't. He can make the Nile do and be whatever He wants it to be. He can do all of these things and bring all of these things on the people while at the same time, on a tiny little hill community in the same land, nothing afflicts the people of Israel. Why? Because the one true God is warning the Egyptians, you worship false gods. I'm the true God. Listen to Moses and release my people. And when all of these things play out all the way to the Passover, and Moses then goes and leads the people out of Egypt, and they're told, your land is over there, a land I gave to Abraham. And during that time, during those 40 years, this is written. And it becomes central to the idea or the thematic understanding of just how different the one true God is over and against all the other gods narratives that Israel will hear. Egypt, Babylon being the two main. And coming out of Egypt, they knew that the Nile was worshiped as a god. Animals or some kind of amalgam of animals and humans were made to be gods, whether it's a jackal or a lizard or whatever it might be, or an eagle. They all were represented in form that looked like man, just like they will experience all throughout the history of Israel, interacting with other nations who don't believe in the one true God. And so why am I saying all this as we come in just this Genesis account is because all of these things that have happened that Israel has experienced and now they have the actual mythos behind everything that God has done. The story of creation. Both Egypt and Babylon had myth accounts of creation and both went very similarly. There was water that was chaotic. Within the water that was chaotic, there were evil gods. And then other gods came and challenged those gods. And in one way or the other, those gods waged war or had really disgusting relationships with each other that formed the land And then out of the leftovers of the gods that were defeated, all the animals and humanity came into being. So if you read like the Babylonian account, which is a little bit more famous, the Enuma Elish, you'll see that humanity was really the leftover body parts of the defeated gods. And one God in particular named Marduk became preeminent. But then as that myth went through different kind of people groups, when they actually get to arrive at Canaan, Marduk will just be one amongst many gods. The Egyptians had similar accounts of how the world came into being. It almost always has to do with in this kind of world that had to do with war against the gods or war amongst the gods, people being essentially leftovers. of the conquest of the gods. And then the people were to be dealt with or to look the gods as capricious, as cruel and humanity as their slaves. And so the worship of these gods differed all over the place. How do we please them? Well, according to their writings, some you had to sacrifice your own children for if you wanted to actually your cows to live. or others it was to make sure that you conquered other nations to prove them powerful and eat your enemies. Now, by the way, some of these things still happen in the world today in untouched people groups, but this was the world that this was birthed into. And so when we see here, God's fighting other gods, leftovers being the people and all these things, it's within that backdrop, it's within that culture that Moses and the Israelites are now wandering where they're told the following. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void. Darkness was over the face of the deep. The spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light. Now, there's one thing I want you to take away from today. There is no other gods to have conflict with. There is no equals that he's having to contend with. There's no war to be waged. There's no female goddess he needs to marry and have children with. There's simply an indescribable other being who transcends the full understanding of humanity. And how he does reveal himself through his word and his character is that all things were created with the greatest of ease. Let there be light. And there was. Let there be animals. Let there be plants. Everything was simple. This completely other transcendent being speaks everything into existence. By his word, all things are held together. By his word, all things are created. And by his word, all things are sustained. And as he continues with all of these things, let there be light. And the light was good. And he separated the light from the darkness. He called the light day, and he called it night, morning and evening the first day. And as each day progresses, it's God making divine pronouncements of the way things will be, and it is so. And when he sees that it's as he has said it will be, and that it is so, he announces it as good. Now, understanding all of this, and this is where some of you I might rub the wrong way, and that's okay. As always, contact Bo, and then so. What you have here is not an emphasis on when we see things like, and there was light and there was day, and he called them day and night. And then he made the seas, he separated the waters and did all these things. The natural question for the audience of this time and for the audience of all time is not to say, how do you do that? Because I know, according to science, that there is no water up in the atmosphere. There's kind of moist. So what was that really? Was it some type of dome of moisture that surrounded the earth, and that's the water he's talking about? Or was it some other means? The author is uninterested in telling you the how. I can give you one example from what I'm talking about in this one. The canopy, or the water separating the waters, we know this in the ancient Near East, is because the sky was blue and the water was blue, they believed that in the sky where the stars and the moon and the celestial bodies were, was a body of water. And so they would say, that's water up there. And so the way the language was used was to show that the water below was separated from the water above, and that's where the Earth resides. But there wasn't an actual extra canopy of water. It was how they viewed the world. That's blue, that's blue, that's water, that's water. It's no different than what we know now in terms of why the sky is blue or why the water is blue and kind of these effects. The author of Genesis, Moses, and the true author of Genesis, God, is not interested in giving you those details. It is no different than when it says, and then the land produced plants. Well, how did that happen? Was there rain? Did Adam spread some seed and it doesn't tell us? I think I should figure it out. You don't need to figure it out. No one needs to figure it out because the author isn't interested in those details. The author wants you to go look at everything around me. The stars, the sun, the majesty of creation. When you go to a high mountain or you go to the ocean and there's not a lot of people there and you're in silence and you get to just kind of take it in. Who? Who did this? It's why nature in particular and the greatest beauty of nature has always lent people to ask that question. Who did this? In a similar manner, God is letting us know who did it. There was no war. There was nothing that looked like things that humans do naturally, and then attributing it to made up idols as them having done it, and then the gods look just like me and you, and they act just like me and you. Rather, this transcendent one is simply going light, dark, grow, move, multiply. Everything is good. Everything he creates is good. Everything is there. And there's an understanding of this account as it's going forward through all of chapter one. This is a summary account in contest with other accounts like it that Israel will encounter. And it is a polemic or an argument against over all of them. Every single other idea that Israel will come in contact with. And that's why there's so many warnings about other nations, other gods, other belief systems. Do not entertain it. Do not be yoked to them. Understand the importance of true faith in the one true God. that the swarms, swarm of the living creature and the birds, he's showing people who are already sitting there looking at their creation, imagining how it works, the majesty of nature, the majesty of everything that they see going, who did this? Who made something so amazing and so complex and so beautiful? And then he says the following, Let us make man in our image after our likeness. And this is so important. Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his image and the image of God, he created him male and female, he created them. Do you want to know how this is so important is in the Hebrew, the way that it's written is all points lead to Genesis 1 26. Everything is before where it's talking through, created this, spoke this in existence, created this, did all these things. You're like, wow, okay, there's the animals, there's the plants, there's the land, there's the water, there's the sun, there's the moon, there's all these things. And all of a sudden you're like, this really lengthened narrative to describe the uniqueness of the creation of man. What did I say at the beginning? The creation of man and all these other accounts was by accident. and man was no different from everything else that lived or breathed. In here, God is going, no, the uniqueness of humanity is that they are made in the image of God. God takes something different and goes, this creation will have dominion over all of the rest of creation. Everything else that comes in and has just been created, God puts humanity, and in particular, when we get into chapter two in a few weeks, as Adam, as representative head of humanity, is to have rule and dominion and stewardship over every other created thing as God's representative in his kingdom on earth. Adam represents God and has his authority over the rest of creation as the head of humanity, the one who God has placed specifically. So then the Israelites and all people for all time who have to contend with this, the creation account here in Genesis isn't as interested in The animals, the fish, whether they're fish, birds, land animals, is not as interested in how the trees grew or how big they are or anything like that. It's not interested in all those things other than to say this transcendent, unique and only true God spoke them into the existence with the greatest of ease. And then he put in the midst of them something different, something unique that bears his image. And as that is his representative, that's where all of one is leading us to. That's what all the Israelites who've come out of slavery are now going to a promised place in the wilderness. They're all hearing and reading. We are unique. We are not the offspring of a weird jackal-human and eagle-human hybrids, as Egypt told us. Nor are we the goop of leftover Tiamat, as the Babylonians would have us believe. We are uniquely created. And in that uniqueness, we have great dignity. The highest dignity in the created order comes to humanity from the one true God. By the same words that said, let there be light. He said, let us create them in our image. And if you're wondering about all the stuff like male and female and yeah, we're gonna get to all that. Right now we're talking about the uniqueness, the dignity. of this supernatural being who spoke humanity into existence, placed them at the pinnacle of his creation, and said, rule over it. steward over it. And we know as we get to the fall, what Adam and then Eve and all of their descendants, their purpose was, was to be fruitful, multiply, and in their sinlessness, and in their love of their creator, in holding his word and not eating of the one fruit that they could not eat, they were to multiply over his kingdom, over the earth, and in such a way, and with such faithfulness, follow Him, love Him, and obey Him, that His glory is a reflection to all of the cosmos. That was the main focus. How do I know that? Well, in Revelation, that is the description of the new heavens and the new earth under Christ. All of creation will see the glory of the resurrected in Christ through Him. the new heavens, and the new earth. The kingdom of God is beginning here, and he's placing humanity in the midst of it and saying, rule and represent me. And then in 28, after the prose in 27, and God blessed them and God said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over the fish, over everything. Behold, I have given you every plant. And he's going on about how they will eat. And then everything that has the breath of life will eat it as well. And he looks at everything and he says, now, now, now it is very good. This completed aspect of all the things that I've created, that God has created, it is very good. This is called supernatural belief. If you believe, What this says, that a divine being in some unknown time in history past simply said, exist, be, work this way, grow this way, be fruitful and multiply. And now I'm going to create humanity to rule over it. If you believe that, that's called supernatural belief. It's actually the most prominent way of thinking throughout all of human existence. It means you believe there's something that transcends the imminent. There's something that is transcendent or wholly other than you can see or that you can fully explain. It's why we have things like general and special revelation. What do we know about God? What he's revealed about himself in his word. That's what we know about God. Do we know about God comprehensively? No way. In one way, in one day here, we promise that we will know him kind of comprehensively. It seems that way, but now he's revealed himself in his word. But if you believe the creation account, you believe in supernaturalism. If you believe that you are born again in Christ because he died on the cross and rose again, and God the Holy Spirit came and you believed and had faith, and now God the Holy Spirit resides in you and has recreated or made new birth in you, that's supernatural belief. And this is where the message differs for us than for the Israelites. We live in an age where supernaturalism has been put to the side. and naturalism that sees humanity, ironically, as the Babylonians saw them in the second century BC, I mean, second millennia BC, as primordial goop that came from the dead body parts of a dragon. Except we've gotten rid of the supernatural stuff. But naturalism in the 19th century brought about a shift in Western civilization of how we believe the way the world works. Darwinism. One author said, God died in the 19th century and man died in the 20th century in terms of their belief. So along came this idea that there is no God. It's all animals. It's all instinctual. And it takes away all kinds of things. But the most important thing it takes away is the God-given dignity of humanity. All equal across the world. The squirrels in your backyard morally have just as much high ground as you do. How dare you slingshot them? Those are their acorns, you're no better. I don't like squirrels, sorry. Naturalism gave birth to all types of horrors in the last century. Whether it's Karl Marx, where everything becomes political or economic need. Whether it's Freud, where everything becomes libido driven. Whether it's Jungian, it doesn't matter what it is, they all begin with this idea of the supernatural doesn't exist and is not real. So it's all natural. It does away with sin nature and everything is reflective of simple interactions just like animals. There's no morality. It's given rise to euthanasia, abortion, all kinds of horrors have come out of foundational belief. And that's my point, which I hope is being made, is if you do away with the foundation that a supernatural God loved and created people in order to rule and reign over his creation for eternity and replace it with naturalism, dignity, truth of course is lost, but humanity has no dignity, no purpose, and if you look at the world today that is no longer postmodern, there's no thing that you really can call it other than naturalistic world. Meaning, why? Why are young people committing suicides at rates exponentially higher than ever before? Why are adults? Why is there so much that we have in terms of information and still people are in utter dread of existence? Why? Because when you rob people of the understanding of their God-given purpose and dignity, what it's replaced with is naturally something far worse. The dignity of creation calls the church to at all times be reminded who we are in God's scheme or in God's redemptive plan. Creation is attributed to Christ. You want to know your value? You want to know dignity? There's two verses I'm going to read from Paul. The first is in Colossians. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him things, all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. Listen to this. He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. If indeed you continue in the faith stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister." Christ is not just attributed with creation. It's saying that all of that creation is held together by Christ. And that same Christ also gave himself for you. And who are you? Here's Paul again, this time in Ephesians 1. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he, listen, chose us in him, meaning in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in Christ. the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. Who are you? You are specifically created by God for the purpose of being in Christ. The one who we just read created all things. That same one, his blood was given specifically, specifically for you, the elect. So the same God who spoke all things into existence in Ephesians tells us prior to that moment had each person who is his individually in mind in the council of the triune God and said, your name, mine, mine, mine, mine. If you struggle with the idea of your worth, if you struggle with the idea of dignity, it's more than likely that you focused on circumstances that have nothing to do with the who. You look at things that have happened to you, things that you've done, scars, traumas, or whatever it may be. And you've allowed those things to be the loudest voice in your life. That's who I am. And so my worth is nothing and my worth is less than. But God shouts from the creation account, you're who I say you are. And if you are in Christ, your value is found in the who, who created you. David knew how children were made. Yet in one of his most famous Psalms, he's not thinking about how his parents took part in his creation. He's rather going in my mother's womb. He's going to the first cause. I know that before my parents existed, you had me in mind and you knit me together in my mother's womb. Your value, your worth, your dignity isn't based on the lies of the world, the lies of your flesh, and whatever effects sin in your own life has had. Your value is found in Christ. the true creator, the true God. And then that means, as Paul says in Colossians towards the end, that means that you have to contend with that. What's happening in my life? I have to contend with it by the fact that I have the utmost value in the eyes of God. How will I face the sin in my life? With the understanding that I have the utmost value in the eyes of God. Therefore, I have to turn from that and turn to Him. What about when people have said this and they're doing this and this is happening to me? You turn away from that and turn to Christ in all circumstances, in all ways. In slavery, out of slavery, in the wilderness, in the kind of difficulty of dealing with the effect of their own sin as the Israelites are told, you will not see the promised land because you have made idols and because you've rejected me. Yet in the midst of it, remembering, let it be so. You have been given the utmost of understanding of the height of dignity in human existence. Don't let any other ideology creep in and tell you otherwise. is that is what's going to be your life. That was the life of the Israelites, that was the life of the church, the early church, that's the life of the church now, and it will be until Christ returns. All other competing ideas that seek to crush the dignity out of humanity, to take the supernatural, to take God out of everything, you have to contend against it with the truth that who you are in Christ. A holy, created, image bearer of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We ask now as we continue in our time of public worship, Lord, that you would bless us, that you would strengthen the church. Lord, that we would see in our own lives the need to view you greater than you are. Lord, in all circumstances, may Christ be made more beautiful. in our hearts and our minds. And now, Lord, as we enter the time of the table, may you bless it. In Christ's name, amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.