In the Beginning

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning.! We're going to go back to the beginning in the beginning, and that's the book of Genesis.

We recently as a church finished, we went through the book of Acts and now we're going to start off God willing in the next few months to go through the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the beginning of the Bible. And why are we going into Genesis? It's the first book and it lays the foundation. Genesis lays a foundation for how we read the Bible and not just how we read the Bible, but how we understand this world. When we look out, we see the mountains, the oceans, the skies, the stars, who we are, where we came from. Genesis lays a foundation for that. You can't start a movie midway through and expect to know the whole plot of it. Who hears, who hears watched the movie up the Pixar movie with the flying house and balloons, right? Well, if you miss the first 10 minutes, you miss that montage of him and his wife, the life that they lived. Then the movie, you miss something. It doesn't quite make sense. Then Carl is just a grumpy old man who hates kids on a crazy adventure.

Unless we know the backstory, what happened to this with his wife. We don't know why he's trying to get there to paradise falls. Or if you're assembling a closet from Ikea, if you start from page 10 of the instruction manual, then you might assemble a few drawers. You'll have a few shelves, but there's, there's no frame to put anything in. You don't know what to do with the dressers and, and all, and the coat hangers you're holding without that frame.

And it's the same if we read the Bible, um, or we try to make sense of what we see in the world without the foundation, without the beginning, where, where this all came from and why God made it all. And so, yeah, that's, that's what we see in Genesis. The Bible is one big story of God fulfilling his promise to redeem people who don't deserve it. And that's ultimately, as we celebrate it last week at Easter, that's through Christ's death and resurrection. His, Jesus' death on the cross and his resurrection, but Jesus didn't just come into the world in a vacuum.

The climax of the cross, what happened last week at Easter, it's set up all the way from the beginning. In Genesis, we see God's good creation broken by Adam's sin and that brought death and suffering into the world. We see throughout Genesis. We'll see in the next few weeks, sin is pervasive in Cain, Cain killing Abel in Noah, the flood in Sodom and Gomorrah, and even all the patriarchs in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, everyone sins. But the theme going through is that God shows grace. He constantly shows grace, patience, faithfulness to people who don't deserve it. And God promises redemption to Adam, to Abraham. We can trace these promises, these covenants that God makes throughout all the Bible from Genesis to Christ and to us. That's why we're going to Genesis. And on top of that, we all have questions. We all come with questions, big life questions. What's the meaning of life?

Where did I come from? Why am I here? The answers to these questions, they start in Genesis because that's the beginning. If we want to know our purpose, we need to know, we need to look to the one who gave us purpose, who gave us life and meaning in the beginning. And so to answer those questions, we're going to, we're going to go back to page one of the Bible. And the Bible is clear on this.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Everything was created by God, designed by God and declared good by God. And this shapes how we see the world. It's all built in the foundation that in the beginning, God created everything and it was good. The heavens and the earth were created as a theater to put God's glory on display, his majesty on display. Genesis one establishes that God is the absolute foundation for all reality. There's nothing that exists apart from what God has made apart from who he is. And so we can only find answers to life's biggest questions by looking to our creator.

When we ask questions like, what's my purpose? How do I navigate our lives, our jobs, our relationships, our marriage? What am I here for? Ultimately, every answer is found in God because he's the one who made it all and designed it all. And he did it with purpose. It's intricate and purposeful. And so today we're going to go back to the beginning in Genesis one, and I'm going to invite me up to read the word for us. Let's stand together. Let's stand as we read the word of God together.

Genesis chapter one should be easy to find right at the beginning of the Bible. Let's stand for the word of the word of the Lord together. Genesis one. 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 God said, let there be light. And there was light.

And God saw that 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 the 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. And 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 there is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed in according to their own kinds and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its own kind. And God saw that it was good. And 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 into the expanse of the heavens to give light to the earth, to rule over the day and over the night and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

And God said, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures and let 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.

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth.

And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. And God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.

And it was so. And God made the beasts 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 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.

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 every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth and everything that has breath of life.

I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that 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 the Lord. Please take a seat. Thank you, Mihi. And God, we just want to see your glory in your word.

Help us to know that you are the eternal God, that you created us. And yeah, we have purpose and meaning in glorifying you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Okay.

Yeah. Since we're starting off in Genesis, in the beginning of this book, I just want to give some background briefly on Genesis. Genesis was written about, we think, 3,400 years ago.

And the book itself, Genesis doesn't say who wrote it. It doesn't say in there, so-and-so wrote Genesis. But for thousands of years, both Jews and Christians traditionally considered Moses the author of Genesis, along with the rest of the first five books of the Bible, which we call the Pentateuch.

Moses is, of course, the one who split the Red Sea and said, let my people go to Pharaoh. So Jesus, we know this because Jesus himself referred to other books in the Pentateuch as attributed to Moses.

For example, in Mark 12, verse 26, he says, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him? That's Exodus, saying, I'm the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

And so Jesus seemed to think that Exodus was given to Moses, and we think probably the other five books, the rest of the Pentateuch, including Genesis. And so God likely gave Moses either direct revelation about what happened, because Moses wasn't there in the beginning, but God could have spoken to Moses and given him direct revelation about what happened, or Moses compiled together other oral written testimony into this book under the inspiration of the Spirit about 3,400 years ago.

And I bring this up because that means that Genesis was written with a very different culture and audience in mind. One of life's biggest questions that everyone asks is, where did we come from?

Where did we come from? And this is a universal question, because everyone who's looked up at the stars in the sky has asked that question. But we have to keep in mind that we asked this question from a very different viewpoint from Israelite farmers 3,000 years ago.

Yesterday, four astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after taking a trip around the moon in Artemis II. We live in a day and age where we can send people to the moon and see photos from the other side of the moon.

We live in a society with telescopes and microscopes and DNA sequencing and radiocarbon dating. The people of ancient Israel didn't have any of that.

Humans didn't figure out that the earth was round until 1,000 years, probably after Genesis was written. And meanwhile, today we can see pictures of people orbiting the moon, see the earth, that the earth is round from the other side, from the dark side of the moon.

We live in a culture that's looking to explain where we came from, from a very different perspective with science. The Israelites weren't looking for these sorts of answers. They were surrounded by other cultures in the ancient Near East who believed in many gods, who understood that the world was created when the plural gods, they fought and struggled and killed each other.

And through conflict, the world was created. Or these gods, they were lazy and they wanted to create humans so that they could have slave labor and they wouldn't have to work.

That's why, that's what some of these cultures believed about where we came from. And that's what Genesis, that's the context, that's the culture that Genesis was written to address.

And so when we read Genesis, we need to ask the right questions. Put it this way. If you had a time machine, you went back 3,000 years to ancient Israel, and you asked one of them, can I pay by octopus card at Café de Coral?

How do you think they would respond? They stared at you like an alien. They'd ask, what's an octopus card? Or actually, what's a restaurant? I've never even heard of that. And we're talking about concepts that are so foreign to the understanding.

And you may also get the same questions if you're asking questions like, where does cosmic microwave background radiation come from? Or what do you make of these carbon-14 atoms?

And DNA and geological records? These are questions that we have, but they wouldn't have crossed the minds of these ancient Israelites. Genesis wasn't written to be a detailed scientific record of exactly what happened when God created the world.

Now, just because Genesis isn't a modern science textbook, it doesn't mean that it's a fairy tale, that it's all made up. It's just myths like what they had in the surrounding cultures. Genesis describes real events, real history, but it's not written to answer all our exact 21st century questions.

What God wrote in his word is true, and it will match up with the world that he made. Some people have put it. God wrote two books. He wrote the Bible.

He wrote his word. And he wrote creation. He wrote the world that we live in. Both of these books reveal the truth, the same truth about who God is. And yet, we have the responsibility to rightly interpret both of these books, both the Bible and the world that we see, the scientific evidence.

And Christians do that in different ways in Genesis 1. There's a variety of views within the church. There's the young earth view that God created the world in six periods of 24 hours, 6,000 years ago.

That's one view. Or there's a day age view where the six days in Genesis, the seven days in Genesis, they might not be literal 24-hour days, but could be longer periods of time.

So perhaps God created the world in longer periods of time. Or some think that since God is eternal, the way that he created, it transcends our understanding.

And so the days are just analogies. They don't perfectly correspond to days that we understand. Some see Genesis 1 as a literary framework, and the days are just more figurative or symbolic.

These are just, that's just a survey of some different views that faithful Christians have held over time. I don't mean to say that all interpretations are valid, or that finding the right interpretation is not important.

How we interpret Genesis 1 is important, because it affects how we look at the rest of the Bible. And also how we view creation, impacts how we see the goodness of God and the horror of sin.

For example, if you hold to evolution, does that mean animals suffered before the fall? They competed, they died in the very good world that God created. Now there are some Christians that hold to evolution, and our church doesn't have a stance in our statement of faith about this, but these are questions we have to ask.

These are questions opened up by that. And there's also some interpretations that I can't accept. Some people think that Adam and Eve were figurative. They were symbolic.

They weren't literal people, literal people that walked on earth. But if Adam didn't sin, then what does that mean for us in the fall of man? Then maybe if Adam didn't sin, there wasn't one man that sinned, then maybe we aren't ourselves stained by sin.

Maybe we can just be good people and save ourselves. And there's no need for the good news of Christ. So how we interpret Genesis 1 is important, but I don't want to get too bogged down to the details today.

I don't want us to miss the forest for the trees today. Because the main point of Genesis 1 is to tell us that God created the world and it was good. If 21st century scientific questions distract us from that, and from believing and loving that truth, then I think we've totally missed the point.

We've actually just totally missed the point of what this passage is trying to tell us. There's answers to those questions, but they're not the main point. Genesis is not as much about how and when God created the world, how and when, but it's answering the questions of who, what, why, who created, God did.

What did God create? Everything. Why did he create? For his glory. Those are questions that Genesis is written to address. What Genesis tells us is that God did create the world.

He created everything. Creation is a theater in which the glory of God is put on display. And we as mankind have a special purpose as created in God's image, to care for his creation and to glorify God and enjoy him.

That's the main point in Genesis one. From the beginning, Genesis tells us that the foundation of everything is God. It's all about God. Creation reveals the glory of God.

And so we'll start there to see that all creation, to see what creation says about God. Who is it that made all of this? Who is God? And the Bible opens with this in verse one, Genesis one, verse one.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The Bible is clear on this, that there is one God who made everything. The world wasn't a mistake. This world wasn't a meaningless cosmic accident.

God created the heavens and the earth. Now let's notice a few things about what it doesn't say. Genesis one, verse one doesn't say in the beginning, God was created.

It doesn't say in the beginning, someone created God. And that's because God was not created. In the beginning, there was God. Before there was anything at all, God.

Before time and space, God. God is eternal. Every now and then, kids will, someone asks, where did God come from? Who made God?

Those are some questions our kids ask. And the answer is simply this, nobody. God came from nowhere. No one made God because God simply is. He was and is and is to come.

He is without beginning and end. And that's reason to be in all of God and worship him. As it says in Psalm 90, before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

God is eternal. He was in the beginning before time began. He has no creator. He created everything. Also verse one doesn't, verse one also doesn't say, it does not say this.

In the beginning, God and a bunch of his friends created. Or in the beginning, the gods plural created. Or in the beginning, God and Satan fought and God won.

It doesn't say that. It says in the beginning, God created God and only God. And this is radical when you compare the Bible with other ancient Near Eastern myths, where there are many gods.

And creation came by fighting and conflict. One God cutting another God in half. That's a, that's a one Babylonian myth that the sky and the ocean were created. When one God is cut in half and the top half became the sky, the bottom half became the oceans.

But that's not how God put it. God is the one and only God. And he alone created everything freely, joyfully, purposely. He created the world without any struggle or competition.

And that's part of what we mean when we call God holy. To be holy is to be different and set apart. And God's eternal nature is one thing that sets him apart from everything else. God is different because he is the only one who was there in the beginning.

He's the only one who is eternal. Anything else you point to in creation, there is a time when that thing was made. Even chaos, even Satan, even you and me, but not God.

God is the only one without beginning. And that's why in heaven they sing always, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty who was and is and is to come. There is no one else like that.

And this is the foundation. God, he is great. He is magnificent. He is worthy of all glory. He is eternal, uncreated, sovereign, separate from everything in creation.

And what that means for us is that when we look at the world and try to make sense of it and ask life's big questions, what is my purpose? What is my meaning?

Well, every answer has to circle back to God. Maybe we're looking from the wrong beginning point. What is my purpose? God is, it all depends on who God is because God made it all. He's the one who created and defined reality.

And we're not the main characters. We're not the main characters of this world. God is, but he gives us an important part to play as we'll see later. In the beginning, God and God alone created the heavens and the earth.

And let's see how God does that. In verse three, God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. Look at how God creates.

He doesn't use his hands. He doesn't use tools. He doesn't go to the hardware store and buy some nails and wood. God spoke. God said, let there be light.

And there was light. He spoke. And what he said happened, what he said came into being. God created the world out of nothing.

The term you'll hear sometimes is ex nihilo. God created ex nihilo. That's just a fancy word, a way of saying that God created out of nothing. He didn't use any preexisting material, any preexisting matter or substance because there was none.

God is the ultimate creator and origin of everything that exists. As it says in Hebrews 11, 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.

God spoke and things were made. He did it. God created out of nothing by speaking. That's the pattern in the six days of creation. As God speaks, things come into existence.

Things happen. Lights light up the sky. The oceans come into existence. Dry land, plants, fish, birds, animals, mankind. They are created by the power of his word.

As he speaks, he calls things into existence that do not exist. And this is the display of the power and authority and sovereignty of God. God. And just two quick implications of this.

Number one is that if God speaks and things happen, we can trust in this God. We can trust in a sovereign God. He said, let there be light.

And there was light. He said, Lazarus, come out. And a dead man walked out of the tomb. The sound of his voice. We worship a sovereign, powerful God.

Our God is in heaven. He does all that. He pleases. We can trust him. And number two, we see that sin is just mind blowing rebellion. It's crazy to think about the fact that we rebel against God.

We rebel. We actually have the ability to rebel against a sovereign God. When God speaks things that don't even exist, obey him.

When Jesus said, peace, be still the wind and the waves obey him. When God says to us, trust me, we say to him, no, I don't want to.

All creation obeys, but we don't. Cosmic rebellion, that's what sin is. But we've gotten a bit ahead of ourself because in creation, so far in the Bible, there is no sin.

It was all good. That's what God says about his creation every day, except for day two. Not sure why he doesn't say it in day two, but aside from that, every day after God works, every day, he sits back, looks at what he's made and says, and God saw that.

It was good. What God made was good. God's design was perfect without defect or flaw. He's a master artist, not like me. So I'm not, I'm not good at drawing or doing crafts.

Okay. When, when I was a kid, I'd always, I'd always color outside the lines. It was not good. When in eighth grade for art class, I had to make this paper mache sculpture of Bill Gates. And trust me, it was, it was not good.

What I, what I made with my hands, I think we might have a picture of it. You can ask Jojo, but yeah, what I made, it was not what I had pictured, but also what I pictured wasn't too good either.

Cause when I close my eyes, I don't, I don't see anything. I just see black and some people visualize things that you can picture things. I just see black, nothing, nothing. Um, but that, what I made, but that Bill Gates sculpture was worse than nothing.

But, but when God steps back and looked at what he's made, he's proud of the work that he made. He was pleased with it. God saw that it was good. The world was just as he drew it up, just as he imagined, just as he designed every blade of grass was in the right place.

It was beautiful. It was intricately made because God is good. And all that he does is good. And that's part of God's purpose in creation. God created the world out of love to share his goodness, to show his goodness with us.

Psalm 145 says, the Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that he has made. God created us so that we can taste and see that the Lord is good.

Creation displays the glory of God in the beauty of the sunrise. We see the glory of God in the vastness of the universe. We see the glory of God.

When you see a picture of the earth coming up behind the moon, that's the glory of God in the oceans and the mountains. We see the glory of God in birds that sing and flowers of the field.

We see the glory of God. God created the world and it was good. That's its purpose. Creation reveals the glory of God. And what makes creation so good and beautiful is that also it is incredibly orderly.

God didn't just throw the universe together randomly, haphazardly, but he created it with order and purpose. God created the world in verse one. As we read, God created something.

But verse two tells us this. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. See, God created the raw materials in the beginning.

God created, but the job wasn't finished yet. In verse one, it was like a lump of clay that was waiting for the potter to shape and mold it and give it purpose. The earth was formless and void.

It lacks shape and it was empty. And the rest of Genesis one is God finishing that job. He takes this chaos, this unformed substance, and over six days turns it into a beautiful orderly masterpiece.

We won't go through verse by verse through all six days, but just want to give an overall structure of what God is doing. Because first, because we see in verse two, the world was without form. God uses day one to days, one to three to organize creation.

He gives it structures and structure boundaries and order. And second, because the earth was empty and void. God uses days of four to six generally to fill those spaces that he created and structured with fruitful life.

That's a basic framework structure of the six days of creation. In day one, God created light and he separated light from darkness. And some people think in addition to creating light on day one, God also created time.

God, because it says God called the light day and the darkness night. There was evening and morning the first day, even though the sun and moon stars were only created in day four. But in separating and naming night and day, that could be God creating time and ordering time.

Next in day two, God created the sky. God separated the waters above from the waters below. And God called the separation above our heads to be heaven or other translations say sky. In day three, God created dry land, separating land from sea.

God called the dry land earth and the waters gathered together. He called the seas. And so in days one to three, we see God separating and bringing order to what's formless, creating light, time, the spaces of sky, sea, earth.

And now God moves on to fill the creation that he's formed. After separating out the dry land, God fills it with plants, trees, vegetation, each yielding seed.

And now look, remember that God separated day from night in day one. On day four, God fills day and night with sun, moon and stars. Remember on day two, God separated out the sky from the sea.

And now on day five, God fills the sea with fish, great sea creatures. And he fills the sky with birds. On day three, God had separated out the sea from the earth from the sea.

He created dry land. And on day six, God fills that space, that dry land with livestock, creeping things, birds and beasts of the earth, all sorts of land animals. We see in six days, this is God's creative work.

He brings order into what's formless, into chaos, life into what's empty. And he does that in an ordered and structured way. In six days, God takes what is formless and void and makes it functional, full of purpose and meaning.

That's what God did. Now, there's one more thing that we're missing that we haven't gone over on the sixth day. One thing that God created on the sixth day, after everything else, God created one thing that's special and different and created them different from everything else in creation.

And that's this. God created man in his own image. God created man in his own image. And by that, but when I say man, I mean all of mankind, both male and female. He made us, he made mankind different, special, distinct from the rest of creation.

And what separates us from everything else is that we were created in the image of God. That's verse 27. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created them.

Male and female, he created them. Actually, just before that, in verse 26, 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.

He made us. He made mankind in his image on the sixth day. Now, what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Let's think about it. What is an image?

What's an image? What's a picture? An image is something that looks like something else, right? If I pull out of my phone, there's a picture of me and Jojo, right? It depicts us.

This is an image of us. If you see this image, you know what we look like, even if you've never met us or seen us. And so it is with us and God, as people bearing the image of God, we represent God and depict God to all creation.

That's what images do. And it doesn't mean that we ourselves are God. That picture, that image is not me. And that's why God clarifies in verse 26. Let us make man in our image after our likeness, not as God, but after our likeness to be like God, not God.

But we're made to look like God. And to be clear, God is a spirit. He doesn't have a body until Jesus took on flesh. Then the son of God took on flesh.

But yet God made us with some of his attributes. For example, we can love. God is love. And we have the ability. We can love. We can show mercy. We can show grace.

We are relational. We have wisdom and intelligence. And sometimes we have creativity and we can be, we can be kind and caring and understanding this, understanding that we were made to be like a creator.

That's the key to understanding some of the big questions that we have. Who am I? And why do I matter? Well, the image of God means that our identity and significance is found in God.

We are created by him. And as children of God, every person has value and dignity given to them by God. And this is something we, this is why we believe in human rights, in fundamental human rights.

Everyone has worth. Not because of anything that we do. Not just if you're rich. Not just if you have a certain race. Not just if you're a certain gender, but we all have purpose, worth, dignity, value, because we were all made in the image of God.

If a king commissioned a painting of himself, that image is valuable. Because it's his image. It's the image of the king. And that image would have to be treated with respect.

If you took a portrait of the king, you spat on it, you ripped it up in front of him, you stepped on all the pieces.

That's an offense against the king. Any attack on his image is an attack on the king. And in the same way, all of mankind bears the image of God.

That's who we are. That's why we matter. That's why in Genesis 9, even after the fall of man, God says, if you shed the, if you kill man, shed the blood of man, that requires death.

That requires a payment because we were all made in the image of God. That's why we have value. We matter because God matters. That's our identity. We can also ask, why am I here?

What's the meaning of life? Well, notice what God says in verse 26. He says this, let us make man in our image. Us plural. In verse 26, let us make man in our image.

There's ways to understand that plural. Maybe God is speaking as a plural of majesty. Like sometimes the queen or king might say, we did this as someone high and respected.

But later in the Bible, we know that God is three in one. That's not revealed exactly in Genesis 1, but we know through the rest of the Bible. There's three persons, father, son, and Holy Spirit existing internally in one.

That's the Trinity. Perfect in love. Before, in the beginning, before he created anything, God was happy. He was in relation. The father loved the son. The son loved the father and the spirit.

And so made in his image, we're made to be in relationship too. We were made to be relational, like God is relational. To love others.

To love all the fellow image bearers that God created. To love and care for the creation God created. But ultimately, we were made to know God and enjoy him. To be in relationship with him.

That's one reason we're here. And also in verse 26, after God says, let us make man in our image after our likeness. He continues. He goes on and says this. Let them have dominion over the fish of the earth, 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.

And also later in verse 28. 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 heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

God reigns over his creation. God, he created everything. He is, he's king. He's reigning, ruling over his creation. But yet his design is for us to take part in it.

He made us, people made in his image to reign and rule with him. But we are to be representatives on earth to care for his creation, to subdue it, to continue working and turning, continue to order his creation and work for the good of creation.

And this has implications for what we do day by day. This means that we work. God created us to work. Work is a good thing. He created the world in six days.

He gave Adam things to do and said, this is very good. Work is good. God worked also in six days in creation. He worked hard. And part of God's design is for us to work alongside of him.

In creation, God brought order to chaos. He turned what's formless, he took what's formless and turn it into something that's ordered with function and purpose. And when we work, we work as his image bearers, as people like God exercising dominion over the earth.

God wants us to work for the good of creation. Work for the benefit of others. Because God didn't need the world. God, he was eternally happy. But he created the world.

He ordered it. He made dried land. Without dry land, we wouldn't be able to be here. So when God worked on the third day to separate out land from sea, that was for our benefit.

So we didn't, we don't need snorkels all day. He made vegetation for us to eat, animals for us to have dominion over. And so that's, that's the work that we take part in.

See God's glory is shown in the mountains and the hills and the oceans. But God's glory is also shown when construction workers take glass and concrete that aren't formed and turn them into apartments that people can live in.

Spaces that people can inhabit. God's glory is shown in the flowers of the field when we look at and see the beauty of that. God's glory is also shown when artists take paint, just buckets of paint, and orders them on a canvas to create something beautiful.

God's glory is shown not just in how intricately he designed ecosystems and created our human bodies. That's also shown when lawyers pour through pages of legal code and pages of evidence to produce a structured argument to bring about justice.

God's glory is shown when teachers take unformed students' minds and shape how they think and fill them with knowledge. God's glory is shown when, when you bring order to the chaos of your messy room, when you vacuum the floors and move clothes from that laundry chair and fold them and put them into your closet.

We just finished the book of Acts and we know that we're called to scatter. That's, that's one theme we've been emphasizing. We're called to scatter. Go make disciples of all nations. Go to our workplaces.

Shine us lights. Share the gospel in our workplaces. And that's a good thing that we're called to do. That is true. But that's also not the only reason we go to work.

That's not God's only calling for us. That's not the only reason we scatter. That's what we see here. We are going to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth as his image bearers, to scatter as God's representatives to our workplaces.

When we go to our offices, we reflect God, bringing order into chaos for the good of others, working hard for the good of others. And sharing the gospel is very important, but also not our only job.

That's not the only reason work is good and has dignity and value. There's purpose in doing an honest day's work. And so God, he forms the world, fills it, crowns it with humanity, his image bearers, us equipped with purpose.

And with that final piece in place, the stage is set. God's work is all done on the sixth day. And at the end of all this, he says in verse 31, God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.

And there was evening and those morning, the sixth day and other days, God said that his creation was good. But now that everything's done, humanity is made.

There's people made in the image of God, the crown jewel of creation is there. It's complete. God calls it very good. It was very good. And that's important to keep in mind because when we look at the world today, it's hard to say the same.

That the world is good, let alone very good. Because we see things that are not good. It's not good that there's war in Iran that's killing thousands and causing economic shockwaves around the world.

It's not good also for the ongoing civil war in Sudan that killed hundreds of thousands and plunged millions of Sudanese into famine. In our jobs, we know it's not good.

When we work so hard, sometimes the work is fruitless. It's frustrating. When we work overtime and our bosses don't recognize and criticize even the things that we do.

It's not good to be frustrated when you really want to work. You really want to find a job, but that's not happening yet. And you're worrying about that, about paying rent.

It's not good to have conflict in our family. We're made for relationship. It's not good that those relationships break down. Relationships between husband and wife, brother, sister, between friends.

It's not good for us to be fighting coughs, wearing masks. That's not how God designed it. And that should make us think, man, look at how far we've fallen.

Look at how far we've fallen from God's good design. Look at how we've twisted God's creation. God said it was very good, but that's not the case now.

How will this all be made right? That's the tension set up in Genesis. That the world wasn't meant to be this way. When we look at this world, the worldview in Genesis that we see is what we see now, that wasn't God's design from the beginning.

It wasn't meant to be this way. But there's hope. Because the God who said, let there be light, also brought light into this broken world.

He sent his son, Jesus. That's the storyline set up by in Genesis. Everything in this Bible, it's one story pointing to the cross. How will this all be made right?

God sent his son, Jesus, light of this world, to point us back to God. We've all sinned. God is the sovereign God, creator of everything. He's the main character. But we've turned that world upside down.

We've made it about ourselves. We've taken our eyes off of God and look at what? Look at the result of that. Jesus came to redeem us, to point us back to God.

Jesus died to free us from the curse of sin and rose from the dead so that he can make all things new, to create the new heavens and earth, to make us new, to be the people that God designed us to be, to restore to us the perfect image of God that God made us to be.

People who look like him, bearing the image of God perfectly, not as a flawed image, not as a broken image, an image that says God lies, God cheats, God hates people.

He is quick to anger. That's what we are now. But Jesus died to make us new. The world isn't our home. We were made for more than this. We were, we, we, we, we long for hope of redemption for new heavens and earth.

When Christ returns, where he wipes away every tear. That's what we've set up. That's, that's what's set up in Genesis. This is the good world that God's made. Look at what we've made it.

And as we wrap up, we started by asking big questions of life. Who am I? Why am I here? What is it all for? Genesis gives us, tells us that the only solid foundation we can build our lives on is God.

Because he is the one who is there in the beginning. He's the eternal, uncreated king. And if there is a God who speaks and galaxies come into existence, blood vessels form intricate trees, then I want to listen to what this guy says.

I want to listen to what God says because he is good. When he speaks, it is good. What he says is good. And when God is the foundation, we can rest also in our identity.

That we are made in his image. We don't have to earn our worth in our careers, our grades, and how much we are liked by others because we all have value and dignity.

We are loved, created in the image of God. And God's our foundation. We have purpose in our work. God is a God who brings order to chaos. He works to bring order.

Every time we sweep the floors or organize a messy spreadsheet, we're acting out of God's creativity. As people made in his image, doing the work that God did.

When God is our foundation, we also have hope to face this broken world. We know now this world is not very good. But good news is that the God of Genesis one is also the God of revelation 21.

And he says this, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with him and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their, as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's where we're heading. This is the beginning, but that's where we're heading.

Hope where everything will be made new, restored, and made even better than how God designed it in the beginning. Because now we see Christ. We see the hope that we have in Christ.

The redemption we have in Christ. That's what we're looking forward to. That's the end of the story set up in the beginning. That's the hope that we have. Invite the worship team up now.

And let's pray together. Let's thank God for what he's done. God, we praise you. You are the only holy, sovereign, eternal God.

Made heavens and earth. Everything is from you, through you, to you are all things. To you be the glory forever. That's what all creation cries out. If we didn't praise you, even the rocks would cry out.

The heavens declare the glory of God. Lord, help us to just see your beauty. Worship you. And Lord, we confess we've fallen short.

We've fallen short of your design for us. We bear your image, but we misrepresent you to all creation.

We have sinned. And we repent. And we look to Christ who died for us to restore your creation to how you've designed it and better.

Thank you for what you've done. Help us to fix our eyes on you. You are the foundation of everything. The foundation of all reality.

Help us to keep you in mind as the God that you are. Father, you deserve the glory. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Lord, we thank you that you made creation.

And that you wanted to be in relationship with us. Right from the beginning. And that you continue to want to be in a relationship with us. So we pray that as we go forth, as we carry our day to day, Lord, that we will have you in mind.

That we will learn to love you more every day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right, please, can we take a seat just to quickly finish the service?

Yes. Yeah, I was just reflecting on what Gabe was sharing. And I admit, yeah, I was having a face show yesterday.

And this is all relevant, I promise. I was having a face show yesterday. And my facialist just said to me, she's just recently moved houses, right, to somewhere that's further than where she works.

And she said, oh, every day I am just going to work and going home and I sleep and I wake up and I go back to work. Life is so meaningless. Right. And I, like, my heart just kind of sank.

I was like, ah, like, there's actually people out there who don't know their purpose. Right. And they don't know that there is a God who created them, that there's a God who loves them.

And I was also reminded that even for me sometimes. And when you're, you know, kind of at work or doing kind of the mundane tasks, you forget that as well. And so, yeah, why don't we just take a moment to reflect on the sovereignty of God and how, you know, He, yeah, He loves us.

And how He created us to be in a relationship with Him. And after a few moments, we could make our way.