[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Good morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a Bible turned to Genesis chapter 1
[SPEAKER_01]: And we will be in a handful of verses in this chapter and other places in scripture this morning as you're turning there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to do two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Introduce myself, my name is Jayman.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm one of the pastors here.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're new to citizens or you're visiting citizens welcome, it's an honor to have you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I want to ask you if you would take a moment and pray with me for a family in our church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yesterday, we celebrated the life of Becky Jacobs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Becky's a...
[SPEAKER_01]: Dear member of our church who courageously fought cancer for four and a half years and last week went to be with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Becky was a remarkable, remarkable woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as her body wasted away from awful disease, what we saw in her was the process that Romans five talks about, that there's a suffering that produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put to shame.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she embodied that.
[SPEAKER_01]: One example of that is Becky had two favorite sweatshirts.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one said, God is still good.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second one said, God is still good.
[SPEAKER_01]: She had two of the same ones so that if one was dirty, she always had one to wear so that she could always declare God is still good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And her loss is painful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that we're a large church, and so we can't all know each other, and we can't all know what's going on in all of our lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we are a family, in part of what it means to be a family is to carry burdens with one another, to rejoice with one another, and to weep with one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'd ask that you would take a moment and just pray with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: We grieve, but we don't grieve as those who have no hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pray church for Jeff?
[SPEAKER_01]: Becky's husband?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pray for Becky's daughter's Katie and Megan?
[SPEAKER_01]: For her sister, her mom, her nieces and nephews, her home group.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just ask that the risen Christ would be an ever present comfort and help to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We love you, Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a day coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our death has no sting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we anticipate with great hope that day when you come and make all things right, Lord God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I give you thanks for a life well-lived.
[SPEAKER_01]: I give you thanks for the kind of just sacred privilege it is to bear witness to a life that deeply believes the gospel, even in the midst of profound pain, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It strengthens my faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just asked Lord that you would be a comfort to the Jacob's family, be with them, be near them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We love you, Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis 1, 1.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you would stay with me, please.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were starting a new series today, and I would like to hit the ground running in the beginning, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the beginning, God means that before the beginning, there was God.
[SPEAKER_01]: before anything was made, God eternally existed as an uncreated divine being.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I love in life, maybe this is just me, I might be alone in this, but one of the things I genuinely love in life is I love long, wordy definitions of God written by old people who are always smarter than me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's one from a 19th century Theologian named Adam Clark.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is the eternal.
[SPEAKER_01]: independent and self-existent being, the being whose purposes and actions spring from himself without foreign motive or influence.
[SPEAKER_01]: He who is absolute and dominion, the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences, infinitely perfect, eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that he's made, illimitable in his immensity, inconceivable in his motive existence, indescribable in his essence, known fully only by himself, because infinite mine can only be fully comprehended by itself,
[SPEAKER_01]: a being who from his infinite wisdom cannot air or be deceived and from his infinite goodness can do nothing but what is eternally just and right and kind.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the beginning, God, that God, the one described with a bunch of words I had to Google to understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is who we're introduced to, in the very first pages of Scripture, at the very beginning
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the most well-known images of this God is what we get in Exodus when God appears to Moses as a fire, and then he tells Moses his name, his covenant name, this is Exodus 3 2, stay with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the angel of the Lord appeared to him and a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush he looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then verse 13, Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, what is his name?
[SPEAKER_01]: What shall I say to them?
[SPEAKER_01]: God said to Moses, I am.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who I am?
[SPEAKER_01]: And those two things are connected.
[SPEAKER_01]: The name of God and the fire, a fire, it reveals something about the nature of God that the name defines a fire that burns without consuming
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's another very wordy quote.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's worth our time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fire that burns and does not burn out, which has no tendency to destruction and its very energy is not consumed by its own activity, is surely a symbol of the one being, the one being, who can only say, I am that I am.
[SPEAKER_01]: You and I have to say, I am that which I have become, I am that which I was born.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am that which circumstances have made me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, I am that I am a flame that does not burn out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, his resources are inexhaustible, his power, unweeried.
[SPEAKER_01]: He needs no rest for recuperation of wasted energy.
[SPEAKER_01]: His gifts diminish not the store, which he has to bestow.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives and is none the poor.
[SPEAKER_01]: He works and is never weary.
[SPEAKER_01]: He operates unspint.
[SPEAKER_01]: He loves and he loves forever and through the ages, the fire burns on, unconsumed and undecayed.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the beginning, God, this God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one who's very name, speaking to who's eternal self-existence, like a fire that burns on its own self-supplied energy, is our inexhaustible needs nothing, self-sustaining self-giving God, who is the source of everything that exists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what Scripture says is true about this God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before he made anything, before he spoke creation into being, here's what was true eternally about this God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
[SPEAKER_01]: God has always been God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs 822, this is wisdom-speaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Lord acquired me at the beginning of His creation before His works of long ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was formed before ancient times from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before the earth began, wisdom marked the pre-creation life of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no folly in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of his ways are wise, undisrupted by foolishness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Acts 17, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is not homeless.
[SPEAKER_01]: in need of human help.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did not make the world because he needed a place to stay.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gives to what he has made and has no need to take from what he has made.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus in John 17 says a few things, and now Father glorify me in your presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed in verse 24.
[SPEAKER_01]: Father, I desire that you also whom you've given me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe with me where I am to see my glory that you've given me because
[SPEAKER_01]: before the foundation of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus gives His disciples a window into the pre-creation life of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Glory and love forever shared among a personal, trinitarian God in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: The everlasting God, the God of wisdom, personal relationship, Father's Son and Spirit, who forever eternally shared glory and love together.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what is meant when we read in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I keep saying that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a rhetorical device to let you know that I know this is a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: 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.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, the one we just described, sees earth empty, and without form, and he acts.
[SPEAKER_01]: He spends the next six days forming and filling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Days one through three, he forms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Days four through six, he fills.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me just summarize it for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Day one, God said, let there be light.
[SPEAKER_01]: He separates light and darkness.
[SPEAKER_01]: He creates day and night and then in day four, he fills the space he created in day one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sun, moon, stars.
[SPEAKER_01]: Day two, God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters.
[SPEAKER_01]: He forms the heavens and the sea.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in day five, he fills what he created in day two.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sky, he fills with birds.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sea, he fills with everything that lives in the sea.
[SPEAKER_01]: Day three, he forms the land.
[SPEAKER_01]: He calls forth trees and all kinds of green life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Day six, he fills what he created in day three.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let the earth bring forth all kinds of creatures.
[SPEAKER_01]: He fills the land with animals.
[SPEAKER_01]: One commentator said it this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And days one through three, he makes the form.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's good."
[SPEAKER_01]: What was chaotic, disordered, empty is now a sky full of light.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stars and planets force full of trees and plants that produce food and an ocean teeming with life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's order in God's creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sun rises, things grow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything follows the command of the
[SPEAKER_01]: There's diversity and beauty.
[SPEAKER_01]: All trees look like trees.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's order to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't look like stars, but no tree is the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are, there's all kinds of fruit, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just one kind of fruit.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all kinds of fruit.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's variety.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of one kind of vegetable, it's all kinds.
[SPEAKER_01]: And before the fall, they taste it good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Creation isn't made in black and white.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's made full of color.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a kaleidoscopic beauty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christopher Watkin wrote a book about Genesis
[SPEAKER_00]: I just love this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The world in which we live has been created to be aesthetic as well as productive, lavish as well as functional, beautiful, as well as good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not only good that creation functions, it's also good that it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: a gratuity is hardwired into the fabric of creation, a gratuity that makes un-missable one important truth about God's world.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has not created a modernist functional machine for living, but an excessive lavish riot of color and diversity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Its function, its beauty, its order, and diversity, not just that, creation is good, but incomplete.
[SPEAKER_01]: God creates in a way that what He created can keep creating.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's hidden potential in God's creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's intrinsic possibility in God's creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: That seed in that fruit can become an orchard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those two animals can become a herd, if they fall in love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those grapes can become a vineyard, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Think about it, think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything you have ever enjoyed in a righteous way has its beginning here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your house, roller coaster, skis, Apple Watch, candles, poptarts, your favorite movie, your favorite song, your favorite painting, your favorite vacation spot, your favorite drink, your favorite restaurant.
[SPEAKER_01]: The resources used to create that first began and what was created here, because what was created here was created to keep creating for the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: God created it to part of creation's goodness is its ability to become more than what it is to the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the beginning God everlasting in extinguishable fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: wise eternal relational father's son in spirit, eternally sharing love and glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: That God, that God takes disorder and chaos and he forms and fills, he's like an artist, a composer, an author, an architect, and he creates this beautiful world full of potential that can keep creating for his own glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as the crowning moment of creation, that God does this, let us make man and our image.
[SPEAKER_01]: after our likeness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God created man and his own image.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the image of God, he created him male and female.
[SPEAKER_01]: He created them God blessed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: God spoke to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds, the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: To confusing time, to be a human, at best, maybe many of us are unclear about what that means, at worst, many are deceived about what that means.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of it is just, you know, we say this because of where we are in the uncharted waters of technology, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: A friend of mine runs a company.
[SPEAKER_01]: He told me a few months ago the company was trying to decide which jobs can be done by AI and which ones require an actual human.
[SPEAKER_01]: A parent, I don't know if you experienced this, but as the kids go back to school, you get those emails from the teachers about
[SPEAKER_01]: their AI policy and what happens if they discover that a paper was written by Chad and what the penalty will be and all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: More and more people are talking to AI for relationship, for friendship, as a counselor, and so others are asking is that okay, is that the same as a person?
[SPEAKER_01]: And look, I'm just naming what we know.
[SPEAKER_01]: This wasn't part of the conversation in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were bracing for Y2K and listening to Creed, but that was about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's forced questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's forced quote, just that, the presence of that has forced questions around what can a human do that is distinct from what an artificial mind can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those questions have to take you into deeper questions about what it means to be human, what makes a human a human.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just confusing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we are just trapped in all of these ironies that mark what it means to be a human right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me name some of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can connect with almost anyone in the world at any time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Loanliness is such a problem that governments are calling it a public health crisis.
[SPEAKER_01]: High-preconnected, deeply lonely.
[SPEAKER_01]: We say that you can be whatever you want to be, only to watch a generation paralyzed by indecision and anxiety.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unlimited options has not led to us chasing our dreams but running in circles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do what's right for you, find your own truth, determine your own morality.
[SPEAKER_01]: If that has not led to a culture of moral freedom and moral flourishing, it's made us all legalists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's always yelling about who's breaking the rules and we can't get anywhere because nobody agrees on who's rules are right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's a fairer seat now.
[SPEAKER_01]: As it religious as we claim to be, everyone's a fairer seat trusting in their own righteousness, but no one knows whose righteousness is the right righteousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can be anywhere, travel anywhere, or just discover other places through our phones, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sites and scenes.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have so much access to the world, and yet we have the hardest time being right where we are.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can not sit still unhurried, content, and fully present right here right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can be anywhere we want, struggle to want to be where we are, right in article the other day saying that churches have to rethink the viability of the sermon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Attention spans are diminishing so quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Preaching is no longer an effective way to disciple people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Large, wordy paragraphs about God just don't work, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you might be here physically, but it is not long before you are somewhere else in your mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a 30 to 40 minute God talk on Sunday morning is just not a realistic way to bring change in people's lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I read that, I'm like, I'm not telling anyone about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hyperconnected, deeply lonely, unlimited options, discontent, and undecisive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Moral freedom, a new kind of legalism.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be anywhere, but where you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe one way to make the point is just to repeat the adage that you have heard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our kids are growing up in a different world than the one we grew up in.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is true.
[SPEAKER_01]: But to say, our kids are growing up in a different world seems to hint that the adults are immune to that, or haven't figured out, and if that is true, I haven't met those adults yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a definition of all of this by a pastor named Brett McCrack, and you've heard it before, but I've yet to find a better, more accurate critique of our moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says this, our world has more and more information, less and less wisdom, more data, less clarity.
[SPEAKER_01]: more stimulation, less synthesis, more distraction, less stillness, more pontificating, less pondering, more opinion, less research, more speaking, less listening, more to look at, less to see, more amusements, less joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is more, but we are less, and we don't feel it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're starting a new series this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm halfway in.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not just beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're starting a new series this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll go to an event it's called Made and here's the hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I were to say the hope the big words way, the hope of the series is to recover a biblical anthropology.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I were to say it the simple way, the hope is to see from God's word what it means to be human.
[SPEAKER_01]: To get clarity, to discover
[SPEAKER_01]: in a culture that is just so given over to deception, discover what's true and beautiful about being a human to recover who God made us to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's two things that we need to that end.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need an origin story, and we need a true human.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need Genesis, and we need Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll spend the rest of our time on those two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I took a class in Bible College called Cinematics Theology,
[SPEAKER_01]: we watched movies and talked about the theological messages in those movies, which is what I think a lot of people think when you say you're going to Bible College and I go you just watch movies and talk about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: A major theme in film, you know this, a major theme in any story or film or novel or anything like that is origin story, a character's origin story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was one of the things that as we watched these movies, we had to try to name and listen for and what role did that origin story play in the character's life and actions and all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We watched one of my favorite movies.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a Christopher Nolan film called The Dark Knight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the movie, I did not know this before I watched it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The movie is a tale of two ordinary stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so many ways, you've got Bruce Wayne, Batman.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's the flawed hero.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's far from perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's brooding his relationships are complicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's mean to Alfred.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like he has seasonal allergies, the whole movie.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, but, he lives a life of purpose.
[SPEAKER_01]: His parents died violent death when he was young, right in front of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And throughout the movie, the story returns to his origin and explains, this is why he is the way he is.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why he's committed to making his city a place of justice where little boys don't lose their parents at the hands of criminals.
[SPEAKER_01]: His origin makes sense of his present.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other character, Heath Ledger's character, the Joker.
[SPEAKER_01]: He tells his origin story throughout the film.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to know how I got these scars?
[SPEAKER_01]: and then he explains what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: His dad was a wicked man who hurt him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you hear that early in the movie, and you think, okay, that doesn't excuse his behavior, but at least it explains him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then later on in the movie, he says it again, you and I got these scars.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he tells a completely different story.
[SPEAKER_01]: His wife abandoned him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every time he tells the story, it changes.
[SPEAKER_01]: He lies.
[SPEAKER_01]: He deceives, he's telling false stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's the point, it's so brilliant.
[SPEAKER_01]: The point is he is chaos without an origin story.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is evil without an explanation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some men just want to watch the world burn and you get all of this evil without the why.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an extreme example.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's an example of life without story.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is left, what is left without the origin
[SPEAKER_01]: of our confusion in our moment is that we are a people who have lost, rejected or falsified our origin story.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have chaos with that explanation or beauty without reason or evil or desire or love all without the why.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we believe, you know this, you know this, what we believe about the past dramatically shapes our present.
[SPEAKER_01]: The stories we tell about the past shape how we live today.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's an example, here's an origin story.
[SPEAKER_01]: In
[SPEAKER_01]: multiple gods existed in conflict with one another.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the earth was formed by the dismembered parts of defeated gods.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the competing creation story when Genesis was written.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the nation's surrounding Israel believed about where the world came from.
[SPEAKER_01]: Creation is the result of conflict and chaos.
[SPEAKER_01]: The gods are violent, the gods are power hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that's your ordinance story, that's going to impact how you handle and so on wrong you, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's an origin story.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the beginning, nothing in no one, all that exists exists by accident and chance, so morality and purpose and meaning, they're all self-created.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can believe what you want, but it doesn't really matter because it all came from nothing and it is all going nowhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that's your origin story, that's going to shape how you respond when your loved ones die.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to shape how you feel, if you ever visit a children's hospital, or if you're
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's an origin story, in the beginning God.
[SPEAKER_01]: The everlasting inextinguishable fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is eternal, relational, Father's Son's spirit who forever shares glory and love that God, the God it takes disorder and chaos and forms and fills its function, its beauty, its order and diversity created to keep creating and in the crown of his creation.
[SPEAKER_01]: God created man in his own image and the image of God he created in male and female he created them and God bless them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the good news.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the true story of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, you were made by this God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not an accident, not an afterthought, not a mistake.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were intentionally before time began thought of and created by this God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to find clarity on what it means to be human, we have to look back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's how I hope to unpack this together over the series.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a slide, I ask chat to make it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just kidding, there's a human.
[SPEAKER_01]: God's design, Israel will start.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll look at Genesis 1 through 3 and see how God originally designed humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: His intentions and his good purposes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's what will happen is what we see if we look for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things that we experience now, we can trace back to the origin.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can trace back to God's design for our life.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know why we crave relationships, but having followers online doesn't cure loneliness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because in our origin story, we read before the fall.
[SPEAKER_01]: We read, it is not good for mankind to be alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what God does, is he doesn't give everyone an eye phone, God creates embodied face-to-face relationship to be present together in a local place.
[SPEAKER_01]: A relational God creates a relationally dependent people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you were made for others.
[SPEAKER_01]: We learned that by looking back.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know why we can't just run at non-stop pace seven day work weeks, always on, never off, we can't do that without burning out, diminishing emotionally spiritually and physically, because in our origin story we read, God rested from all his work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even God takes breaks, according to theologian force frame.
[SPEAKER_01]: Made, we were made in that pattern after a God who rests.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were made, you were made for rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one says, no one says.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope to do nothing, die in obscurity and be remembered by no one.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to live a life of matter and consequence.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to be a part of something that contributes in ways that are consequential and we want that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We desire that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because in our origin story, we read that we were made in God's image, and there is a lot packed into that, lots of what that means, part of what it means is there is intrinsic sacred purpose that you were made for, to reflect a holy God as God's holy people in His very good world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were made in His image.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know why we can accumulate stuff and we can achieve our goals and we can fill our life with comfort and we have access to anything that money can buy and still be discontent and restless and unsatisfied.
[SPEAKER_01]: God saw all that he made and behold it was very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were made as part of very good creation but not the point of very good creation and your heart will only rest as it satisfied in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were made to worship Creator God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're hanging on these words together in this series.
[SPEAKER_01]: See God's good design and purposes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we cannot stop there.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have God's design.
[SPEAKER_01]: You also have sins distortion.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a reason, all of these things that we've named.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a reason that's not natural for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: God's good world has been marred by sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Humanity is sick with sin, and there's a lot of ways to talk about what sin is.
[SPEAKER_01]: The effect of sin is that it is dehumanizing.
[SPEAKER_01]: As we work without rest, as we worship creation instead of Creator, as we isolate from God and others, as we depend on self, instead of trusting in God, all of that is the result of fall, it diminishes and it distorts what God designed us for.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we'll look at these things topically, we'll look at work and we'll look at worship and we'll look at relationships and we'll see that we were made in a world that's confused about why we have bodies and what to do with them, we'll look at how we were made body and soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll look at male and female, why we were made now, how that glorifies God, made for rest, made for others, made for purpose and mission, but it won't do, to just get understanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: You and I, we are not a solid Genesis study away from being perfected people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Knowing our origin is not enough to fix our present.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives us clarity, but it does not bring healing and restoration.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we need is we need a true human.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need one who is perfectly, wholly human without distortion.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: God's design, since distortion, we need Christ's redemption.
[SPEAKER_01]: A deeply, deeply held belief here at Citizen's Church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus did not live and die just to make a way for us to escape earth and get to heaven.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus does not offer forgiveness of sin and then sin this on our way to live how we want until we die.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus came to be the human that we were meant to be, to die the death that sinful humanity deserve to defeat death which is humanity's greatest enemy that through him our humanity could be recovered.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen, you don't need Jesus only if you want to be a religious person.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need Jesus if you want to be a whole person.
[SPEAKER_01]: In him, in him, and only in him, we receive the grace and mercy for who we fail to be, and in him and only in him, we imperfectly but faithfully can become who God made us to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the beauty of our God is that even before the beginning, even before the beginning, our humanity being recovered and restored through Christ was always the plan.
[SPEAKER_01]: The everlasting, wise eternal God, relational father, son and spirit who forever eternally shares glory and love creates the crowning achievement of his creation as humanity before that even happened, he had already planned your redemption in Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before the foundation of the world, Father's son and spirit had salvation planned for you and for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sincrithians 4-6 says this, for God who said
[SPEAKER_01]: Let light shine out of the darkness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let there be light.
[SPEAKER_01]: Has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: The God who speaks creation into existence speaks new creation through Christ into our life.
[SPEAKER_01]: my hope in these weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: My hope in these weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, clarity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, understanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: My hope is to get a picture, a clear, heart-changing portrait of the best human who ever lived, Jesus the Christ, that we would see our great need for Him, and we would be changed into His likeness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Father, we love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I thank you, Lord God, that you have not left us confused in this world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've not left us Lord like ships without an anchor or a lighthouse, but you've spoken.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not just why we are here, but we get to know the I am that I am behind all of existence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the great climactic moment of world history, is when you wrapped yourself in human flesh, body and soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: in in a world that has failed to image you faithfully.
[SPEAKER_01]: You came as the image of the invisible God.
[SPEAKER_01]: First, pour over all creation that we might know you receive mercy and grace and forgiveness from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: For, and I wonder if you just take a moment to pray in response to God's word, and I understand that there was
[SPEAKER_01]: a lot said.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I were to just grab a couple things for you to consider and pray with God, would you hear that you were made?
[SPEAKER_01]: You are a part of God's creation, a holy good
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, on the stake, your life is not an afterthought.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not a soul that just has to tolerate a body.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are not just a body.
[SPEAKER_01]: where you cease to exist when you take your last breath.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is nothing, nothing, has wonderful and holy and sacred as God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And next to that, there is nothing as precious and worthy as a human being.
[SPEAKER_01]: You made us Lord, and we, friend, we need Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't just need Jesus if we decide we want to be a religious person, we need Jesus to be a human, a whole human.
[SPEAKER_01]: So did you confess your need?
[SPEAKER_01]: Trust the provision he has made for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Confess again, confess for the first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: We love you, Lord God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to live lives of passionate affection for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Faithful obedience.
[SPEAKER_01]: sacrificial love for others, and we need you, we need you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.