Good morning. You may be seated and join me in reading Genesis 1, 1-2, then Genesis 2, 4-8. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and the darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day of the Lord, God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east. And there he put the man whom he had formed. This is the word of the Lord. All right, good morning, everyone. I'm Matt, and it's my privilege to introduce a new series this morning. And you can see the title up here on the screen, Questioning Christianity. I want to begin on a more personal note. Over the past several years, like many of you, a number of friends and even family members have gone through this process of questioning and then walking away from the Christian faith. As a follower of Jesus, let alone as a pastor who's trying to introduce people to Jesus, that is an exceptionally painful thing to walk through with people. I also want you to know, and I think it's fair to say up front, I am not personally wired for credulity. I like evidence, I like proof. When someone tells me something or asserts something, I like to question them, not in a rebellious or I'm not listening sort of way, but in a sort of way that's like, I wanna understand why that is true. I wanna understand as I like literally and figuratively take things apart, like how does this work and how does this fit together? Because I genuinely want to know. And if you're an authority in my life and you tell me like, you should believe this, I think most of my life I've kind of had this personality or character or whatever it is of saying, again, don't just tell me that what I should believe. Tell me why I should believe that. Tell me how that's true. Okay. And it's really those two things along with some other factors that are some of the major impetuses behind this particular series right now. The rapid rise of deconstruction and then just a desire for evidence and explanations. So here we come to this series and I want to acknowledge up front the reality is that our peers are questioning Christianity. Boomers are questioning Christianity. Gen X is questioning Christianity. Millennials are questioning Christianity. Gen Z is questioning Christianity. Alpha will soon be questioning Christianity. Some of you are questioning Christianity, and I have sometimes deeply and thoughtfully questioned Christianity. Over 20 years or so of pastoring, I would say I've talked to literally hundreds of people who have questions, who have doubts, who have criticisms of our faith. And some of them are somewhere on this spectrum of like, do I deconstruct this whole thing and pick something else? Do I pick a subset of Christianity that I personally agree with and that works for me? Or am I just completely out? And I actually want to begin by saying that I empathize with, I understand many of the reasons why my peers and many conversations that I've had are questioning Christianity. Because I often hear things like this. Someone will say, I'm disgusted. over Christianity's close association with intolerance, abuse, political extremism, conspiracy theories, narcissism, cult-like behaviors, hypocrisy, the whole nine yards. Disgusted, because this doesn't look at all like Jesus that we say we follow. I've talked to others of you who would say, I actually have trauma. like wounds and deep pain and scars from the way a spiritual authority treated me or treated someone very close to me, or I have scars from the way the church in general has treated me. Some of you would say, I have disenchantment with overly simplistic answers to very complex issues. And some would almost say the opposite, that I'm tired of there being nuance everywhere, that the Bible is just really clear on things, and it's a turnoff. to over-nuance everything with all these explanations and all these caveats, instead of just saying, like the Bible does so often, like, thus saith the Lord. Some of you may be frustrated with dogmatism, everything being black and white, no shades of gray. Frustrated over gross misrepresentations of how life is gonna go for you if you just trust Jesus. Some of you are there probably even this morning, you'd say, my life has not gone like the radio preacher, like the TV guy said, and I think I believe in Jesus. And that's a turnoff that causes me to question. And then finally, I hear often that interpretations of scripture that people are teaching force the Bible to contradict itself. And so you're like, I don't know what to believe because it sounds like the Bible is just full of contradictions. And I just want to begin by saying, if that's you, or if you're coming from a completely different category that I didn't even mention, I am truly sorry. I empathize because I've had the same experiences all the way down to spiritual abuse, disgust, trauma. So I understand. And if you came to me with some of those doubts, some of those questions, some of those criticisms of Christianity, I would never tell you just believe. I and our church would take time to listen to you. to try to understand some of this history that has led to either pain or just frustration, throwing up your hands with the whole thing and trying to reconsider or reconstruct some kind of faith system. So I wanna say at the outset, it's okay to question Christianity. It is okay to approach scripture and life and church and say, if I'm being honest, I have questions, but it's important to question with humility and with integrity. And what I mean is something like this. Over the next six weeks, we're gonna look at six major questions that Christianity answers, but also that every other worldview answers. They're questions of origin, identity, purpose, morality, pain, and destiny. Or to say it a different way, where did I come from? Who am I? Why am I here? How do I decide right from wrong? Why is there so much suffering in this world? And where am I ultimately headed? And I believe as a follower of Jesus, the Bible addresses those six major questions. with very clear answers. And my hope is that you'll come on this journey with me and say, like, I trust God. And I marvel at his wisdom in how this biblical narrative answers such important questions. But if you don't accept the Bible's answers, and if you don't kind of come with me. I'm going to ask you just in the integrity of your heart to do two things, okay? Number one, I'm going to ask that you recognize that everyone must answer those six questions. Okay, these are not Christian questions. These are human questions. Everyone has to have an answer. If it's fair and reasonable to reject the Bible, it's not fair and reasonable to not answer the questions. And I actually have a number of friends, and at least a family member or two, who have rejected the Bible's answers and have landed nowhere. And they will not discuss their own answers because they don't have their answers. I think a way to question the Bible with integrity is to say, I don't believe that because I believe this instead. And I say these are human questions because you all came from somewhere and you're going somewhere. You are someone. You will determine right and wrong somehow, not only for yourself, but also for other people in general. You've got to answer the questions. And secondly, I would say, feel free to evaluate how the Bible goes about answering these questions. I invite you to do so. But the honest thing to do is to critique your own answers as well. And I kind of have two requests here. Ask two things. One, do my answers correspond to reality? And number two, do my answers form a cohesive and coherent story, or do they simply contradict each other? And what I mean, just to quickly illustrate, If you were to say, what's the origin of humankind? I believe a stork flew us down here in that white diaper and just handed me off to my parents. And I would say, well, that's scientifically, historically, and biologically inaccurate. And we all know that. And I use a funny example to say, don't hang to something that just doesn't correspond to reality. But we also do something like this. And this is a very common worldview that I hear in our culture today. See if this is coherent. There is no God, we simply evolved. I think the purpose of life is to be a good person. I determine the rightness or the wrongness of an action based on whether it benefits the oppressed. And I think I'm going to heaven when I die. Those things don't hold together. Those things are self-contradictory. And I want to just admit up front, everybody know what Tetris is? Like the game with the different shaped blocks, and they're falling from the sky. And as you play the game, they're falling faster and faster. And you've got to keep stacking them together. Well, all of us have at least these six blocks. And I would say there are a lot more, but we're going to talk about six. And they're falling from the sky and you've got to stack your pieces together and they need to fit. Or you're not laying a proper foundation and you're erecting something. You're erecting a life. You're erecting a life story that is ultimately going to fall down. It's going to crumble. It's going to fail you. And I don't want it to fail you. Like whatever you walk in here this morning believing to be true, I want you to have a foundation that sets you up for success, and I wanna define that success in terms of what honors God and what brings you true satisfaction. Okay, so today we begin this series, that's all introduction. Now, today we begin in a logical and chronological place. We begin at the beginning. That's why Micah read the very first verses of scripture. We're gonna answer questions like, where did I come from? How did I get here? And what is the origin, particularly of human life? And this is a great place for me to pause and say, caveat, I don't have time in this series to stand up here and present to you the dozens of theories and opinions about all of these things. But what I'll do is share a couple key or popular opinions. Okay, so I can acknowledge, for example, that there are many ancient myths about the origin of the world and the origin of human life that are animistic or polytheistic in nature. For example, like the famous Enuma Elish, which is the Babylonian story of how things came about. Marduk, the chief god, kills other gods. He splits Tiamat's body in half. Half is the world and half is the sky. And then he murders this other god and the dripping blood of that god becomes humans. Okay, we're just not gonna go there, because that is not a commonly held belief, and again, it doesn't correspond with reality. There are also some pantheistic Eastern and New Age religions that would say, we are in fact not actually here, it's all a big illusion. Like we're all living in the matrix. Okay, and I wanna just come, my frame of even starting this conversation is what I think are self-evident truths that I'm here, you're here, we are not an illusion, So where did we come from? And I'm gonna unpack this with these kind of four parallel points. Number one, the who or what of origin. Number two, the how of origin. Number three, the why of origin. And number four, the so what. of origin. So I say, number one, the who or what of origin, because really as you look at dozens of different theories and beliefs, they boil down to two options, either a who or what originated us. A who, like a person, or a what, like a process. But those are the two ways that you can basically reduce all these different theories of how we got here. I'll begin with the process. Most people call this process evolution. And I wrote up two paragraphs here consolidating what some of the leading experts who believe evolution, and I mean macroevolution, and it goes something like this. Billions of years ago, the only thing that existed was an infinitely dense point of pure energy. Somehow that thing flew apart. As it scattered in all directions, atoms and molecules, you've heard of this as the Big Bang, everything's emanating out from one point. We can look at, like scientists, really cool, astronomically you can look at stuff and realize our entire universe is expanding from a single point of origin. Now, eventually some of that inorganic material, which means non-living, somehow some of it became living or organic. Somehow the basic building blocks of life started to form, amino acids, RNA, Proteins. Those proteins went on to form microbes and bacteria. DNA came about somehow. Cells were formed. Cells started figuring out how to replicate themselves and differentiate themselves. So you have a certain kind of cell for like an eye versus like a bone cell. Scientists will say that probably the first multi-cell organisms were something like tiny sponges that lived in the ocean. And from those, over 800 million years, every other life form developed. So the highest life form so far in this process is us. Good for us. But theoretically, over millions of years, that'll keep going and we will not any longer be the highest form. It's been pointed out we are 99% genetically related to chimpanzees. So I would just summarize this as you came from pond scum and by a series of happy accidents, now you're next level monkeys. I have a lot of questions about that theory. Where did that original dense mass of pure energy come from? How did that get there? What acted on it to cause it to explode? Why did that explosion cause the potential for life instead of destroying the potential of life? How did inorganic material ever become organic material? If we are simply and nothing more than the process of unguided evolution, How is it that humans got intangible qualities like self-awareness, differentiation, ethics, and an awareness of the future? And by the way, reading a lot of secular, like even atheist scientists, they readily admit there are many, many gaps in this theory that cannot be answered by science. And they will even admit, many of them, do you know what they fill the gaps with? Faith. They simply believe, and they connect dots so they can go on in the story. I'm not making fun of you if you believe that. I'm saying that's basically a presentation of how this happened over billions of years. Then the first life forms approximately 800 million years ago, and now here we are. The Bible's explanation for the who or what of creation is a who, it's the person of God. Micah read this verse, Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Isaiah 45, 11 and 12, thus saith the Lord, I made the earth and created man on it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens and I commanded all their host. By the way, stretched out the heavens, that's interesting. John 1. 1 through 3, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. So the Bible says, where did the universe come from? God made it. Well, where did He get the raw materials from? He made those too. I mean, the Bible just explicitly says that, okay? So God made us then, human beings, not as an accidental or eventual derivative of some previous creature. The Bible says God deliberately, specifically made humans, and this is important, in his image. So out of everything in creation that declares something about him, human beings were made in his image and likeness to declare something of what he was like. And if I were to summarize this, basically there are two options. Either the origin of life is personal or it's impersonal. Either there's a creator God or we're here by a series of random accidents that were billions of years in the making. One scientist literally said, human life is a statistical impossibility and we're just really, really lucky. Or is human life God's design and God's doing? So going on here with the how. And by how, okay, if it was either personal or impersonal, with how I'm kind of talking about what was the process behind each of these possibilities? What was the mechanism? And first of all, like evolution, the process will say this happened by natural selection plus unexplainable gaps. So let's back up to the 1830s. You know, when Darwin famously went to the Galapagos Islands and observed those now famous finches, probably read about that in a biology class, and he noticed accurately that the sizes and shapes of the beaks of the finches were different depending on which island those various finches settled down. So same species, but why do they have different sizes and shapes of beaks? And he surmises, well, each evolved the kind of beak most suited to its environment so that it could live and reproduce and be healthy. And from that micro evolution, he extrapolated that all living species could have done the same thing over hundreds of millions of years and all come from an original species through the process of natural selection. If you don't know, natural selection is the idea that a positive mutation is one that promotes life and health and flourishing, and so those tend to, by nature, reproduce themselves. A negative mutation is something bad, like the introduction of a missing chromosome or a failure that introduces disease, and that just tends to die off if left alone to natural selection. Okay, so this is where the term survival of the fittest comes from. Basically, only the strong survive. Only the strong will reproduce. And if you extrapolate that out over millions and millions of reproductive cycles over millions and millions of years, you get something totally different. By the way, I think this is interesting. What we actually know now, and this is, you can read about this in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, There's variations in Finch's beaks that Darwin noted. I mean, it was real, but it was caused by DNA methylation. So, basically, the methyl in the genes, like, turn off or turn on these tabs that do enable a creature to adapt better to its environment. Like, some animals could grow thicker fur because it's colder. Somebody else could shed that because it's lighter. And they're responding to their environment through DNA methylation, not evolution. But I would admit, like, there are absolutely genetic mutations. That's why we have hundreds of breeds of dogs and cats and horses and birds and all of that. And breeders, I mean, by definition, breeders can actually do this. And it's not natural selection, because it's not happening on its own. It's forced selection. But we can say, if I want to breed a dog that has these certain traits and not these other traits, over several generations of dog, I can breed in certain traits that I want and reinforce over and over again certain breeds. And that's how we get, like, we literally get new breeds of dogs, and I suppose cats, though I don't know that anybody knows anything about cats. But we get new breeds all the time, every so many cycles of breeding. And so there's nothing wrong with being a follower of Jesus and believing that God created and saying, we see this kind of, you could call it micro evolution all the time within species or what the Bible refers to as kinds. What we don't see is a fence evolving into a dog or a horse or a human, let alone them at all evolving from a sponge. So we, and scientists, admit there are massive gaps in the science, there are massive gaps in the fossil record, there are irreducibly complex organisms and mechanisms that the gradual process of natural selection could not really have created. It's almost like they were designed, like a bunch of parts designed all at once, and only if they're all there does this thing work together. Okay, it's what we would expect to find if the Bible is correct. So that's kind of the how of evolution. Very simply, what is the how of this personal process that the Bible talks about? And the answer is by the word of God. By the word of God. Over and over, Genesis 1. And we didn't read through the whole thing, but you can read this beautiful Hebrew poem, that by the way, it is a poem, okay? I don't read Genesis 1 as this eyewitness account, like someone sitting there taking notes and like, day one. Day two, it's a poem that says basically in poetic form to tell a story of like where we came from, this is kind of how God did it. And over and over in Genesis one, you see God simply spoke, let there be light and there was light. Let there be dry land and there was dry land. Let there be sea creatures and there were sea creatures. Let there be mammals and there were mammals and so on. Psalm 33, six and nine says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and by the breath of his mouth, all their hosts, for he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood firm. I love this Hebrews 11, three, by faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. And I just kind of conclude this couple points and just say, pick which miracle you believe in. Did an infinite, eternal, all-powerful, benevolent creator God make you or are you just the result of billions of years of impersonal processes? And by the way, I'm one of those that doesn't think that science and the Bible are actually as at odds with one another as some of you have been led to believe. For example, that infinitely dense point of energy that was there at the beginning of time before anything else, could that have been personal instead of impersonal? The fact that it all seems to have originated from that one point and expanded outward? Again, what if that infinite dense point of pure energy is actually the power of God? Again, it's personal, it's a personal God. and he casts everything into being by speaking. By the way, that formation of inorganic matter into life that science can't explain, doesn't that follow the pattern of Genesis 1? Where the Bible actually says, like Genesis 1, 1, and 2, God made matter. And then later he comes back and he shapes it and he fills it up. Do you know Genesis 124 literally says, and God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, and it was so. So the Bible has an explanation for something that we observe. It's right there in the first chapter that helps us start to make sense of where we came from. And so again, just pick your miracle and admit that you're receiving it by faith. Your narrative requires faith. And I wanna give you a couple reasons here in closing. Besides the fact that I think the Bible is the word of God and it proposes a personal origin for the universe and human life, let me talk to you for a few moments about the why, the why of origin. And this is a really interesting contrast between the major worldviews. Because if the world just happened, Like eventually there was human life by some undirected, impersonal combination of time plus chance, then why are we here? And what I mean is, what is the reason for our lives? What is the purpose of the physical universe? What is the purpose of humanity if we got here by an impersonal process, or as a scientist who believes this stuff said, a series of happy accidents? And I could wait for a long time because if something is truly random or accidental, it doesn't have a why, okay? A number of years ago, I think I've shared this story But a number of years ago, I had kind of one big family accident in the car. The road turned, and I didn't, long story short, kind of did this Dukes of Hazzard thing off this embankment. And one of the kids from the back seat, when we landed and the dust settled, was like, did we just die? If Marty had looked over me and said, why did you do that? what I would have said is, because the sun was in my eyes and I didn't see that the road turned, that's why. And she was like, no, no, no, I don't mean that kind of why. I know the sun was in your eyes. I mean, like, can you explain to me the purpose behind what you just did, the reasons? Like, what are you trying to set up and accomplish? And I would be like, there was no reason. There was no purpose. It was an accident, okay? And I'm just proposing to you that if we are here by accident, the question about the purpose for your life, the reason for being here, kind of goes away. It's hard to build a coherent, like, here's what I'm living for, why that? Well, just because. Okay, and I think this is where the Bible does an amazing job because where the Bible doesn't really focus on the exact mechanisms of creation. So I'm not super freaked out about you believing a number of different things that for all of Christianity have fallen within this scope of different beliefs that are orthodox or potentially orthodox. But the Bible does say a lot about the purpose of creation. So Genesis 1, again, the idea there is not eyewitness account, former chronology, boom, the world is 4,000 or 6,000 years old and this is how he did it. That's not the ultimate point. But the Bible does say here's why. God designed it. And that design and that purpose is to glorify him. Psalm 19.1, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Isaiah 43.7 says, you were created for God's glory. If we peek ahead at the end of this story and go to the apocalypse in Revelation 4, and we could peek into heaven, it's like, what are we doing for all time? Well, this is the cry of praise in heaven. Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created. And by the way, when we look at this world, we see all kinds of evidences of what? Like God's immense power, his creativity, his beauty that just overflows. Like last night, Marty's pointing out the sunset off our back porch, and I run out and take some pictures, and just like that, is amazing artistry, and I believe, of God. But you go specifically to humanity and you see even more that if we're created in His image, and that image is broken, that image is marred because we're sinners, we're now broken, but these vestiges of His image are still there, and you see things like love, and compassion, and grace, and forgiveness, and mercy. See, what I'm saying is our creative purpose is that number one, we display God's glory, and number two, that we delight in it. For like, okay, we're laying a foundation for these other five topics. And it's like, well, if I'm just here by some happy accident, what's the purpose of my life? And you can be like, well, I don't know, or it's whatever I choose, but I hope I choose right. How would you know you even chose right versus wrong? But if the foundation of life is what the Bible says it is, then you're like, ah, I know who I am. I know whose I am. I know at least a major purpose for my life. I know who gets to set the rules in my life because he's the author of all that exists. See, and we're often running understanding our why because it's actually not an accident. We are designed, we are purposeful, we are the intentional creation of a God who loves us deeply. And so point four, the kind of application that I say this so what? Okay, and I'm gonna give you four becauses, and I'm gonna say because creation is finite, because creation is designed, because creation is good, and because creation is God's, what are some implications for our lives? Beginning with creation is finite, and everyone agrees with this. Scientists agree with this. The world as we know it has not been here forever. And at a baseline, this reminds us we are not ultimate. Like life is not all about us. Like in a Christian worldview, life is about God because he is infinite, he is eternal, he is all powerful, he's present everywhere. He's all these things that we're not. We, by the finite of creation, are reminded like, hey, we are limited and we are dependent on our creator. We're designed to live in dependency on God. That's not an accident. Look, many aspects of creation are marvelous, are beautiful. And I mean beautiful to like go dig in and research like geology or like meteorology or astronomy or like whatever the sciences are, or just to look at it and be like, we live in Colorado and it's like the most beautiful place on earth, like everywhere we go in the mountains. And I know why people go out there and they're like, if I didn't worship God, I would worship nature. And I'd be like, wait, wait, wait, don't worship nature, like the paganists and the animists because This is not Mother Earth and Father Sky. There is a Father God who made this and blessed our lives with it. It's all finite, okay? So enjoy nature, but don't worship it. Don't let it become your greatest treasure. Creation is finite. Number two, because creation is designed, And I'll say everywhere we look in our universe, there are very clear evidences of, and some will call it, intelligent design. That is, that things didn't just randomly or haphazardly happen, as you would expect by some process of evolution. There are laws. There are principles, there are ratios. Like the Fibonacci sequence, like go study it this week and have like the most amazing time of worship. Just being like, wait, mathematically, this is built into so many things in the universe. Why? Why is it that way instead of like chaos and randomness and disorder? By the way, I mentioned laws. You know that the first two laws of thermodynamics, energy can't be created or destroyed, like matter you study. Something can go from one form to another, but you can't just have stuff that didn't exist there before unless you posit God. And the second law of thermodynamics, if there's a random undirected process, guess what it tends toward? More order, better design, mind-blowing mathematical sequences. No, it's the law of entropy. If there's an undirected process in nature, it causes things to fall apart over time. But we look at our world and we see this purpose, we see this order far beyond what we expect. Even scientists will say, unlike every other celestial body we know of so far, it's like this planet was designed for life. because it was. That's an opportunity for worship. And I think even looking at the human body and realizing like all these parts of my body were designed for a specific purpose that in amazing ways, complex ways, work together with these other systems. And if I recognize that I'm designed, I also recognize I'm not here to manipulate and make myself into whoever or whatever I want to be. I'm meant to discover God's design and God's purpose for my life. By the way, these purposes that God built into creation, that is the basis for ethics and morality. Because if there's no design, no intentional design, how can you ever evaluate the use of something and say that's a right use or a wrong use? If it's just here, who's to say that any way you use anything is the right use of that or the wrong use of that? And we'll talk about that in a few weeks when we come to morality and ethics. So I would say study science, you know, both hike in the mountains and go for that swim and get your hands in the dirt and plant your gardens and marvel at all of it. Study in your laboratories. I am not afraid at all of what science will reveal, not at all. And I absolutely agree with Francis Collins in his book, The Language of God, when he says the God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshiped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. You can be worshiped in your vocation because you're designed. Number three, because creation is good, and Genesis one says this over and over again, right? God makes something and he looks at it and says, that is good, that is good, that is good, that is good. It's morally good, it's right, it works, it's beautiful. And he gets to the very end of creation, he looks at it all and he says, behold, it's all very good. And that's an important point because if we just got here by chance, we cannot say it's good. And I don't know that we can really say it's bad, it just is. But God says it's good. It's not neutral, it's good. And so the dualist is wrong when he says physical matter is evil, but the soul, you know, the immaterial parts of you are good. So thank goodness at the end of time, some God or gods or spirits or whatever will release us from the bondage of this flesh. And we can go be these ethereal beings playing, I guess, also ethereal harps because you couldn't have matter and play something, right? And the Bible's like, no, no, no, it's all good. It means everything and everyone has value. And don't ever forget that the Bible says our God at a point in history took on flesh, was clothed in matter, therefore it's good because he's only good. And also remember that our Bible says at the end of time, you are not separated from your body, but you get a renewed body that will live forever. So creation is good. Finally, because creation is God's. And family, because God made everything that exists by some mechanism or another, he has rights over everything that exists. Like not one of us would be here apart from God's plan, God's design, God's kindness, God's love. Okay, this is not the kind of God that you're like, All right, you can have an hour on Sunday morning. Or I read my devotions today. Or I have really big plans for my life, God, and I'd like to call you in as a sub-consultant. Or worse yet, as a rubber stamp to the plans I've already made. If it's true that creation is God's, we belong to him, he loves us, and his rule and care over us are incredibly loving, are incredibly purpose-filled, and are incredibly satisfying. So we put all these things together and we realize God rules over and cares for His creation. He's called us as followers of Him to help Him in that, to partner with Him in that, and say, I will use my mind and my hands not just to throw up on my hands at the brokenness, but to partner with him in planting and maintaining and harnessing rather than exploiting and stripping bare. I think an implication of what I'm saying this morning is that on some level or another, we would be wise conservationists and stewards of what God has entrusted to us. Because this world is God's and because we are God's, we must seek to find our identity in Him, find our purpose in Him, find His will, not just ours. And I wanna say this, because we fail to do that, and you'll see this when we come to identity and purposes, like, did anyone live that out the right way? No, we fall, we make mistakes. But I love this, if the word of God has power to create you, then the word of God has power to recreate you. So we're not dependent on ourselves. Like, well, God made me. He's like, well, there you go. Don't mess it up. And it's like, well, we messed it up. Before we left the garden, we messed it up. So what now? And God promises throughout his word, by my word. And I don't mean like just words out of my mouth, but what is Jesus called in John 1? We read it earlier. Jesus is called The Word, capital W. The Word who comes to remake you by his power. And because he has authority over all things, nobody can stop him from doing the salvation that he wants to do. It's great news, okay? And this is where I want to end, is that with this foundational stone of like, where did I come from? Which you'll see, it will domino into everything else we talk about for the next five weeks. We all settle on some belief. I love science. I'm encouraging you to study science. But we settle on some belief. about a something or a someone, does your faith lay a foundation of a story that is beautiful and meaningful and true? Take like one minute more. Let me go back to the car accident, okay? There's a little detail I left out. Yes, the sun was in my eyes, and yes, the road turned, and no, I did not. Where was I? Y'all lived in Denver long enough to remember the old I-70 viaduct, that hideous raised platform that was way up in the sky, and there were roads underneath it. And our favorite little app, Waze, we're going to the mountains on a Friday night, getting out of town. It's gonna be great. And Waze is like, oh, I see that the traffic on the I-70 viaduct is stopped. So I'm going to route you down off the viaduct, around, and under the viaduct. There was a road that ran parallel right under the viaduct. Many of you have driven on this road. So Waze took me down there. And now we're driving along, and I'm under the viaduct. westbound lanes of I-70 viaduct. And there's a gap in between. And it was like right through that gap that the setting sun was directly in my eyes. And I was like, man, it's really bright. And like, do I take my sunglasses off? Because it's dark under here. Or do I leave my sunglasses on? And I'm looking down at Waze. And it's like, go straight. And you know how it like maps ahead of you? Go straight. Because Waze messed up. Like Waze forgot it took me down there, and it thought you're up here because the I-70 keeps going straight, but the road underneath it does not. It takes a sharp right turn. So with the little bit of information I have, I'm like, well, I can't really see really well. And this says go straight, and it kind of looks like it goes straight. And before you know it, we're flying through the air. What's my point? My point is, your narrative in life may very well be leading you into a place that has no ability to get you out of. Waste took me there, then was like, I'm washing my hands of this whole thing, I don't know. I think you're up here, good luck. If we start with origin and we get it wrong, then the main foundational thing is just taking us on a route with our beliefs, our understanding of identity, our understanding of like, why am I here? And how do I know anything's right or anything's wrong? How do I know where I'm going? It will lead you down there and it can't rescue you from that place and you will crash your life. Because the answers that we're looking for are found in the word of God that is true, that is beautiful, that is filled with love. God made the world and everything in it to live under his loving rule and care. He invites us into this story.