Well, hello church, if you would open to Genesis chapter one. Genesis chapter one. We will actually be looking at chapters one and two today. I will not read all of that right now, or there will be no sermon. I'll just be reading the whole time. So I'm gonna read a few highlights of things we're gonna focus on, and I'll tell you the verses as we jump through. This is the word of God, Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was 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 then we have the six days of creation, and God resting on the seventh. And let's jump down to verse 26. 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 all 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 and 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. Let's move to chapter two. And start in verse four. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant in 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 watering the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed the man of 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. And out of the ground the Lord God made spring up every tree that is pleasant for sighting, good for food. And the tree of life was in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. And it divided and became four rivers. And the name of the first was Pishon. And it was one that flowed around the whole land of Helva. And there was gold. And the gold of the land is good. Delium and Onyx stone were there. The name of the second river is Gihon. It was one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third was the Tigris, which flowed east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And so Father, there was nothing but you. And even nothing wasn't a thing, it was just you. And then you decided to create and display your glory. And then there was time and existence and heaven and earth. And everything that we've experienced on this earth that is physical and living. And you made us. And Lord, we want to marvel at what you've done and we want to understand what you've done rightly. God, give us understanding of Genesis 1 and 2 this morning. And God, would you come and help us through this. Lord, that we would live lives that would give you glory and that we would do the very thing you made us to do. And so God, we turn to you. We rely upon you. Come, Holy Spirit, work through your word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, last week we started a 17-week series working our way through the Old Testament, kind of hitting some of the major themes that make up the Old Testament leading up to Christ. And so we will end this series the week before Christmas, so it's kind of a long Advent series. And y'all remember last week we didn't start in Genesis, we started in Psalms 90 and tried to get a bigger overview of the Old Testament looking at that text. And I just kind of beat, you know, the whole week one central point that God is a God who does not need anything, nothing. And I believe that, and I believe the Bible teaches that, that God is not more glorious if He decides to create everything, and He is not less glorious if He creates nothing. That He's God. eternally existing as Father, Son, and Spirit, fully satisfied in all the blessedness of being God, that that's who He is. And we see right here in Genesis 1.1, it says, chapter one, verse one, in the beginning, God. And that's how it starts. No argument that God exists. No reasons why we should believe he exists, just a statement of fact. You notice the Bible does not argue for the existence of God. It just says, in the beginning, God. And it's like the burden of proof is on anyone else who wants to try to disprove God. Like, I am who I am, I don't have to defend who I am. You wanna try to argue against me? Do so at your own danger. It's like, to argue against God's existence is like standing on a train track, covering your eyes and saying, I don't believe in trains. This is why Psalms 14, one says, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. Romans 1.19 says, what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. So people say, no, it's not plain. I don't see God. What do you mean it's plain? And God says, it's plain to them. I've shown it to them. It's plain. It says, for his invisible attributes, invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so they're without excuse. And I know college professors may laugh at such an argument, but our creator says it's enough. It's enough. And so people say, well, how do we know what happened at the beginning? Nobody was there, Moses wasn't there, how did he know what happened? Right, and nobody was there, that's true. And so what Christians believe is that God revealed, this is called revelation, God revealed, he made himself known to Moses by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Moses wrote it down, and we put our faith in it. And people say, well, that takes faith, right? And what people don't often realize is every view of how the origins of the universe came about takes faith. The theory of evolution is a theory that you must put your faith in. All right, so Psalms, or I'm sorry, Hebrews 11 three says, by faith we know how the world was made by God. We weren't there. Nobody was there. Everybody's putting their faith in something. We put our faith in the revelation of the scriptures. And I would say many of y'all know how Genesis 1 and 2 are often taken and treated by Christians. Genesis 1 and 2 basically become this boxing match, this debate between evolution and creation. That's often how this is treated. And you know, there's a time for polemics and apologetics and all of that, but that's not the purpose of Genesis 1 and 2. So we're not gonna go there today. And I had to kind of try to decide early on this week, what direction are we gonna come at with the creation? Because there's a lot that could be said here, way more than we can cover in a sermon. And so are we gonna talk about who created Isaiah 44 24 says, I the Lord and the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself, spreading out the earth all alone. And so when it says God did that, it's meaning God as in Father, Son, and Spirit. So we could go back to the New Testament and we could look at where Jesus was there creating and all the places it teaches that. Or we could look at how the Holy Spirit was there in Genesis 1-2 and He was there in creation. We could look at how the Trinity together did this. It says in verse 26 of chapter one, let us, us, make in our image. So we could talk about all that or we could discuss how God created and just marvel that He did this with His mouth, His words. Like Psalms 33, 6 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. And it not only, He didn't only just create with the word of His mouth, He sustains the universe with the word of His mouth. Every atom molecule, every hurricane, every raindrop, created and sustained by His mouth, by His command. That would be a great sermon to preach, but that's not what we're going to talk about today. There's so many ways we could come at this. I mean, just thinking about our bodies. What is a human body? How did God actually make us? What are these things? It's cells. Millions and millions of cells. How many cells are in the human body? If you were to get a pen and put a dot on a paper, just one dot, about 10,000 cells would fit in that dot. No two cells are the same. Everyone is unique. And they operate like this little city, like pushing out materials, bringing materials in, recreating themselves. It's absolutely amazing. The brain tells these cells, Act like hair, and they act like hair. Act like eyes, and they act like eyes. Act like skin, and it acts like skin. It's amazing. I mean, seven years ago, you had materially a different body than you have now. A different ears, different eyes, different nose, different fingers, different skin, different brain. Literally, your body materially is different than it was seven years ago. Completely different. I mean, I'm no engineer, but that's a complex machine right there that can remake itself every seven years on its own. I mean, Daniel Franklin, I don't know if Daniel's here today, but he broke his leg in half a few months ago. He's already walking on it again. That's amazing. Mary Ann, broke her wrist. It's already healing back. What kind of structure has God built here in our bodies that the thing can be broken and it's self-repairing and self-replicating? It's an incredible complexity. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And we could take, we should take way more time marveling at that than we do. That's amazing. Here's what I wanna do today. Here's the direction that I think is best for us to take, to ask this question. We're gonna ask two questions today. Here's the first one. Why did God create? What's the purpose? What's the purpose of creation? That's the natural question that comes from last week. So, somebody actually asked this in our city group this week. It's a good question. Okay, if God doesn't need us, that was last week, God doesn't need anything, then why did he create? If God didn't need to make us, why did he make us? Those are good questions. We need to be able to answer that. And Genesis will help us. But if somebody were to come up to me, if someone just randomly comes up to me and says, John Mark, why did God create? My knee-jerk reaction would probably be this, because He wanted to. Because He's God. Because He wanted to flex and display His power and make everything. And so He did. It would be something like that. And that's not a sloppy answer, that's actually a very theological answer. Psalms 115.3 says, our God is in the heavens and he does all that he pleases. Psalms 135.6 says, whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and on earth and in the seas and all deeps. So why did God create? Because he wanted to, because it pleased him to create. Revelation 4.11 says you created all things and by your will they exist and were created. So why does everything that is everything exist? Because God willed it to exist, he wanted it to exist, it pleased him for it to exist, and so it exists. That's a right answer. That's a correct answer. And we need to think about this. Why would God make anything and everything, this planet that we're on, this ball of lava, basically, that's suspended in space, it's mostly lava, but with a thin crust of earth, three, what is it, two or three thirds of it, fourth of it, or water, and it's spinning at 1,000 miles an hour? Why make that? And then put all these people on it? This is like the most basic questions we could ever ask. Most people never even ask that stuff, but why did he do that? Why make billions of other planets, millions of other galaxies, and then we're one planet? And we're here. What are we doing here? Why did he make all this? These are massive questions. And we could say, we can give answers. It's not wrong to say, because God wanted to, because it pleased Him, because it was His will, it glorified Him. These are correct answers. Psalms 119 says, the heavens display the glory of God. Those are biblical answers. But like, I was watching a nature documentary Friday with the kids. They were talking about these jellyfish that live, like they can't get anywhere close to the shore. They're like miles and miles out in the ocean, and then they're miles down. And they're discovering these things, and they showed video of them with the light shining on them, and the colors were just beautiful, the designs of these things. And they're saying, we're continually discovering these. There's like whole species of these jellyfish that no one's ever seen before. We're continually discovering them. You think, why would God do that? No one's even seen these things before, and the only people seeing them are probably people who don't even believe that God made them, but they evolved over time. Why would God even create like this? And there's a place for big, broad answers, like because he wanted to, for his glory. But when I pick up the Bible and I start reading Genesis, you know, pretend you know nothing about anything, right? And you just come to Genesis for the first time and you read, in the beginning, God. And you're like, okay, there's a God. He was there in the beginning. And then you read on, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And you think, well, why did he do that? And then you keep reading and it says, and the earth was without form and void. Tohu wabohu is the Hebrew phrase. Uninhabitable wilderness. He created. but it was uninhabitable, it wasn't ready for people to live on, and then you keep reading and you go, okay, day one, let there be light, and then you read these six days of creation and you begin to see God filling out this world, making it habitable, and so day one, let there be light, and there was light, and then day two, three, four, and five, let there be ground, and mountains, and trees, and sun, and moon, and stars, and fish, and birds. And because he commanded and told them to be, they were. And then day six, God said, let there be animals. And then later that day, He made man. And then woman from man. And then on the seventh day, He rested. And in one week, everything is going from this uninhabitable wilderness to this beautiful paradise for people to enjoy. And here's the key, I think. that we need to see here, a repeated pattern in these days of creation is this phrase, God creates something and then he looks at it and goes, that's good. And then he creates and looks and he says, that's good, that's good, that's good. And that's really good, that's very good. And so what I want to drive home for a minute is that God did create everything for His glory. That's true. But He also clearly created everything for us to enjoy with Him. Creation is good because it glorifies God and creation is good because it's for us to enjoy with God. And he made it good for us to enjoy with him. So look at chapter one, verse 29. God said, behold, I have given you every green plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth and every tree with seed and its fruit. You shall have them for food. A gift to us. First Timothy chapter four says this, there's this teaching of demons Paul talks about. What is that? It's a teaching that forbids marriage and requires abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving. And then it says, everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is made holy by the word of God in prayer. Some of y'all know the Bushes, Jordan and Sarah Bush. We pray for them. They're missionaries we sent out a few years ago to plant a church in Uruguay. They'll actually be here next month. We want to love them well. And one way you can do that is you could make Jordan Bush a key lime pie. He loves key lime pie. And you could make him give thanksgiving to God if you make him a good key lime pie. And I believe that this passage is teaching though, that both these passages are teaching that there is a sense in which God created limes and then enabled someone to put these together with other ingredients and make key lime pies for Jordan Bush because Jordan Bush is his beloved child. It's for us. Food is for us. He made it for us. Plants are for us. I was just in Brazil and Priscilla's father owns a big farm and they have hundreds of cattle there and usually when we go they'll kill a cow and we'll eat amazing steak. But this time he killed a lamb and we ate lamb and it was really good. And post Genesis 3, after the flood, God actually gives red meat as a gift to people. It's a gift to be enjoyed, to be received with thanksgiving, and if we receive it with thanksgiving, we worship him through eating it. Acts 14, 17 says this, he has not left himself without testimony of his goodness. He gives you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and fills your heart with food and gladness. See, a lot of Christians think we can only worship God if we get alone in our room and read our Bible for a long time or if we come to church. God said food is for worship. And he commands us to worship him through food. He says, eat, drink, and whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. That's a command to worship God through your meal or meals every day. The problem is often we flip it, right? We don't worship God for creation, we worship creation like God. That's what Romans 1 says. that God's wrath is coming on humanity because we've turned to worship the creature rather than the creator. And that's coming next week. At this point, God's just given these gifts. He's just given food to man. He's giving numerous pleasures for Adam to enjoy with God in the garden. And so when we think about this garden, okay, it's better than we think it is. Maybe we should just start by saying that. What do really wealthy people do when they get a lot of money? They buy huge houses, really nice cars, and down the road somewhere, they're buying big, expensive gardens, right? This is an incredible luxury. People who have the ability to do it usually buy one. I read a CNN article numerous years ago, and it was talking about what can you do with $60,000? Like for one night, if you stay somewhere, a $60,000 a night place to stay, and you think maybe it'd be this really modern place in this big city or something. Here's what you can buy for $60,000 a night. It's a huge house with no walls. in a secluded tropical island with waterfalls and rare animals and rare plants. That's what you buy for $60,000 a night. Like the nicest place you could stay in per night is basically a recreation of Eden. Matthew Henry said this, Adam's residence was a garden, not an ivory house or a palace overlaid with gold, but a garden. Furnished and adorned by nature, not by art. What little reason have men to be proud of magnificent buildings when the happiest man needed none? As clothes came with sin, so did houses. The heaven was the roof of Adam's house, and never was any roof so beautifully painted. The earth was his floor, and never was any floor so richly inlaid. Solomon's gardens and all their glory were not arrayed like his. And it said that there's water coming through this garden. And obviously you could drink this water, it would not have been polluted in any way. It says in verse 10, a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. You know, we spent, Americans spent 14 billion dollars on bottled water last year. 14 billion. 14 billion dollars. I think we may have been fooled by the pictures on a lot of those bottles. You know how the bottle companies, they don't, it's not like they show you a picture of the Gulf of Mexico on there or, you know, the bottling company and manufacturing plant that they made it in. It's like a picture of Eden. They basically want you to think you're drinking from the Garden of Eden or something and you throw down $3 for a bottle of it. This thing had pure water. So you've got the best tasting food and water that keeps you alive forever, you're living forever, you've got the most comfortable, beautiful shelter to live in, you've got perfect scenery, the weather's not too hot or cold, there's no bugs, all the things that we would not want to live outdoors now, we're not there. What else would you need? And then what does God do? He says, how about some gold, Adam, you want some gold? Chapter two, verse 12, the gold in that land was good. You see, and there's reason for the gold. We'll come back to that in future weeks. And there was a forbidden tree there. And again, we'll talk about this next week, but one lesson that we can get from this tree is that even though all these pleasures of his creation are to be enjoyed, they're to be enjoyed within limit, that God gave Adam complete freedom and one law. Law is good, not bad. Law protects us from what is deadly and destructive. Law promotes peace, joy, and life while allowing even more room for enjoyment and happiness. So there's a law given. And many people actually reflecting on this garden, they call it a garden temple. Because in this garden, God is with man. And Adam's enjoying this unhindered, perfect fellowship with God. He's walking with Him through the garden. So, God made creation for man to enjoy with Him. With Him. Now here's the second question, where I want to linger for a moment. What do we do here? What was the purpose Why did God make us? And go back to chapter one, verse 27 for a minute. It says, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. So why did he make you? What's your purpose? Page one of the Bible, it says, to image God, to reflect God. Man, there's been a lot of books written trying to figure that out. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? There's a lot of right answers because people are complex and we image God forth in many ways. Some people say being made in God's image means we're social, we have desires for relationships like God. Others say being made in His image means that we have emotions that mirror God's emotions or that we have a mind and we can think and we can reason. Animals can't do that, people do that. And some say being made in God's image means we have language and we can communicate. Or it means that it's not even just something we do, but it's something we are. Therefore, all people who are made in God's image have dignity, value, and worth. Simply by the fact that they've been made in the image of God. Which is why we care about abortion. and fighting against it, and the human dignity of life, and racism, and many social issues we care about because people are made in God's image. They're image bearers of God. So all that's true. But I think there's a more basic meaning laying on kind of the surface of this text without really even having to think much about it. It's right here. So why did God make you? What is your purpose? Here's the answer. To image God. to image him, to reflect him. Humans are designed to display God, that's what images do. Why do you ever set up an image of anything? It's created to image something, to picture something, to represent something. That's why you would put a statue in front of these football stadiums of a great coach they had or something. You want people to look at the statue and then think about all the great things that coach did for that team. All right, why would you put a statue of George Washington up? Because you want people to look at it and think about all the things that George Washington accomplished for our country. That's what images do. They image forth a reality, they show off and reflect the reality of a person whose image they're after. So that we look at it and we go, people look at us and go, God is great. God is great. Because of how they act, because of how they think, because of how they feel, because of how they desire. Because of how this person is, God must be great. That's the purpose. And God wanted to fill the earth with His image. And so what did He say? Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth. So his image would be all over the earth. Now, post-fall, images are marred and they're ruined and they're not what they should be. But something of the image of God does still remain. And this is the purpose of parenting. You say, what's the big purpose of parenting? Parenting isn't trying to get your kids set up to make good money one day. Parenting is helping your children be conformed back rightly to the image of God, to rightly image him forth. That's what missions and discipleship is. Helping someone who because of the fall is not rightly reflecting God to be restored to do what they were originally created to do, to image him forth, to be conformed back into the image of their creator. That's what discipleship and missions aims to do. Look at verse 28. It says that God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and 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. Many of y'all know that's been called the creation mandate, that we are commanded to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, that means to procreate, make many replicas of God, many images of God on the earth, and then have dominion over the earth, so to rule over it in ways that are according to God's will. And so think practically for just a moment about your responsibility to cultivate, to beautify the earth, what this dominion looks like. So some here may be social workers, so you want to cultivate by taking someone's life who's not doing what it should do and helping it do what it should do again. Doctors take a body that isn't working correctly and fix it, that's cultivating. Teachers cultivate the mind, they help people to think rightly so they can live productive and fruitful lives. Engineers take metal or steel or concrete or some product and create and maintain structures that are useful for humanity. Some work in factories and they take raw materials from the environment and they mix and refine them in ways that benefit culture and civilization. Employees sometimes are asked to take over a broken department or a segment of the company and to make it prosper, to restore it again. This is a cultivation of the earth. Some make food and they prepare it and we eat it and it sustains human life. Yesterday, my kids cleaned their room. We worked in the yard. That's cultivation. Some women here, probably most of you, put on makeup this morning. You cultivated and beautified. All of that is in part obeying the creation mandate. To take something God created and to refine it and beautify it and cultivate it for other purposes to serve other people in ways that would please the Lord. Martin Luther and John Calvin spent a lot of time arguing that so-called, in light of all of this, that so-called secular work was as high a calling of God as ministry, some kind of vocational ministry, missionary or pastor. And Lutheran theology historically has this phrase, we are the fingers of God, meaning we do the work we do as agents of God's providential care for the world. The Reformers, men like Abraham Kuyper, would say we work not only to care for creation, but also to direct and structure it in ways that honor God and bless others. This is a problem in America, in my estimation. Many people have pointed this out, but how individualistic we've gotten and self-centered in our view of work. I don't know how true this is of our church, but probably pretty true when you say, how do we judge if someone has a good job, a good job? Usually it's like this, how much money do they make? If they make a little bit, maybe they can get a better job, and if they make a lot, they have a good job. It's purely based on money. That's how it's often discussed. Well, Robert Bellas, who wrote a book about Western culture and how individualistic it is, he basically made this argument. He said, Western culture, we hold the individual up as so sacred that it's ruining our culture and society. And he says, the most healthy cultures and societies have a bigger view of work than just what's benefiting them. But they see the bigger picture and think what is best for this culture, this society at large, rather than just their own personal advancement. These are questions worth asking and reflecting on. Not, what do I want to do? What am I good at? What makes me happy? What type of work do I want to do? What's fulfilling for me? Not that being your primary question. But what if we begin to ask, what is best for my family? What is best for this city or culture? What is best for the advancement of the gospel? What job would enable me to spend more time with my family or to spend more time with the local church? Or this one, how can I leverage my work to help people created in God's image to begin to reflect Him again? That His name be hallowed on earth as it is in heaven. Church, think about this. Who was this originally written to? Genesis 1 and 2. It was written to Israel. They had come out of the wilderness. It was right at the tail end of coming out of the wilderness that they received this. And I think they should have seen and probably did see a lot of what I just said. That's on the surface. We're not reading anything into the text to get that meaning. I think Israel should have seen that thousands of years ago. that God is a self-sufficient God who creates everything, who displays it for His glory, that we are reflectors of His glory and cultivators of what He's made. They should have got that. That should have been quite clear. I wanna press on this, kind of moving toward closing for a minute because we aren't Israel. And it's been a long time since Moses gave this to them, and we have the whole Bible now. And there's things that we can see, having the whole Bible, having all of redemptive history, that we can look back at Genesis 1 and 2 and say, this is something that was happening here, and they probably couldn't see it at the time, but we can see it. We can see it now. And so you say, what do you mean? I wish I could give credit to the right person. I think Augustine said it, don't quote me on that, but he talked about how everything in creation is like a bread trail of breadcrumbs that's ultimately meant to lead us to Christ. Everything in creation is that. And so God created sheep so that he could teach us how he's the good shepherd. He created birds so that his redeemed people would live less anxious lives. He created camels to teach us how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter heaven. God created beautiful lilies and roses so that he could compare himself with them. He created water to explain how he revives the thirsty. These are types, pointers to Christ. Some of them are even clearer, like the Exodus from Egypt that teaches us how God delivers his people from slavery, or the Passover that teaches how God saves through a blood sacrifice, or the temple that teaches how holy God is, made our bodies that now possess the Holy Spirit, or marriage to teach us something of Christ's love for the church. And then we see Jesus, like in Matthew 6, Jesus says, there are some things in creation you just need to think about. He says, consider the lilies. Consider the birds of the air, how they fly. Think about the lilies, think about the flowers. In Proverbs 6, it says, go look at the ants. What can you learn from an ant? All these things are types, they're shadows, They're teaching points, they're pointing us to something. There's divine lessons in seeds and fields and sand and rocks and wineskins and fig trees. There's a verse that I was thinking about. It says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. And you think new creation. If you're in Christ, you're in new creation. What does that mean? It makes you think back to the original creation. And a lot of people have pointed this out. This is really interesting. In the order of creation, there's progression, there's order to it. Day one, day two, day three, they build on each other. It makes sense why he did it in the order he did. What people have pointed out is that that's the same order in which God recreates and remakes a person in salvation. So God, Genesis 1, like salvation, starts with God, a life-giving spirit that's moving over the face of the earth before anything or anyone does anything. And then God separates them from darkness to light. And God takes something formless and void and He makes something fruitful and beautiful and useful. He's conforming us back into His image and then He rests as a picture of how we find our only true rest in Him. And then He gives marriage as a picture of our relational union to His Son. And God's giving us, in the very end, rule and dominion over creation again in the new heavens and the new earth. The order follows. The order of creation is the same order in how God saves and recreates. And look, I'm not making this up, I'm not just reading into it. Colossians 1.16 says this, all things were created through Him and for Him. All things. All things. It's not only that Jesus created all things, He did. It's that they're all for Him. They all point to Him. They all, in some way, if we'll sit and think about it, God, help us see how everything He made is an arrow to Christ, is a pointer to Christ. We should pay attention. Let me close with this thought. Many people read Genesis 1 and 2, and they get excited about Eden, and rightly so. It's certainly better than what we've got now. But they look at the tropical paradise, and they look at the innocence. There's no sin. And they look at the marriage relationship that had, I mean, it was a perfect marriage in the garden. And they look at the food and all of these pleasures that God gives to Adam. I wanna be clear about something here. I wanna be really, really clear on this. Eden, the Garden of Eden, was not perfect. It was paradise. It was not perfection. There was still the capacity for sin. And that serpent, was in that garden, tempting them. That's not perfection. That's paradise. It's not perfection. A lot of people think that basically what God's doing in the gospel is he's doing all this stuff so he can get us back to Eden again. He is not taking us back to Eden. It is better than that. It is better than going back to Eden. He is taking us to a place where people have no capacity for sin. No devil, no serpent, because Christ destroyed these things and established a new heaven and a new earth. The garden was paradise, it was not perfection. Don't long for Eden. And look at the creation that He's made. And let it point you to Him so that you can find out how to get where He's going and where He's bringing all of this. It's meant to aim us somewhere. We didn't evolve, this world didn't evolve from chaos and randomness, it was designed with purpose and order and beauty and love. So much love. So much love. The God who created trees. Created trees knowing. that He Himself would suspend Himself on one to die for our sins. And He made metal knowing that that metal would be used to hang Him on that tree so that He could die in our place for our sin. There's design, there's purpose in everything He made. Let me take it one step further. This table that we go to and we're about to go to, There is a sense in which He made bread and He made grapes so that His people could gather together every week and eat these things and celebrate and remember what He did on the cross to save us. All of creation serves His glory in some form or fashion. Lord, help us see it. Let's pray. Father, oh Lord, Lord, maybe the first thing we should say is just we're sorry for taking so many good things for granted that You've done for us. And for not recognizing their beauty, for not recognizing their worth. Lord, we complain about heat, when if You let the sun come a little closer to us, we'd all burn up. And if You pulled it a little farther away, we would all freeze to death. Lord, help us to look at the way you created things and to marvel at their perfection and their goodness and how they serve us and how they glorify you and how they point to your son. Lord, help us with these things. Bring the application, Lord, and help our hearts to worship you in light of these things. And we pray it all in Jesus' name, amen.