October 2, 2022 / Origins / Day Six

Welcome to Walk in the Truth podcast.

Today John Metter, lead pastor of Cross City Church, brings a message in the Origins series

that helps answer the five most important questions in life.

How you live today depends on how you answer these questions.

Here's John Metter with the teaching on the five questions.

Well welcome back to our Origins series and we're in day six today.

So take your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter one.

And as you turn, we'll be looking at the last part of the chapter.

We've been walking through each day of the creation account beginning in Genesis one,

verse one, all the way through verse 23.

And now we're in verse 24 through 31 and day six.

You know the other day I was reading about a medical doctor named Paul Brand, he's best

known for discovering the cause of leprosy and also developing a treatment for it.

He was reflecting on creation.

And this well studied doctor made this statement.

He said, the more I delve into natural laws, the atom, the universe, the solid elements,

the molecules, the sun, and even more, the interplay of all the mechanisms required to

sustain life, I am astounded.

The whole creation collapsed like a deck of cards if just one of those factors were removed.

Some people really believe that all the design and precision in nature came about by chance

that if millions of molecules bombard each other long enough, a nerve cell and sensory

ending at the exact right threshold will be bound to turn up.

To those people I merely suggest that they try to make one as I did and see what chance

is up against.

And he concludes with his statement.

He says, original design is incredibly perfect.

Now when you walk through the Bible, you see the perfection of God's original design and

day six is the pinnacle of that creation week.

Let's stand together as we read day six, beginning in verse 24 of Genesis chapter one.

Then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping

things and beast of the earth after their kind.

And it was so as it was all the days of creation.

God spoke and it was so.

Verse 25, God made the beast of the earth after their kind and the cattle after their

kind and everything that creeps upon the earth after its kind.

And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

I'm going to pause for just a moment.

Remember last week we looked at the word Elohim, which is the word in Hebrew for God.

Used in a singular sense, it's a plural word and it literally means God in a plural sense.

God the father, God the spirit was hovering over the face of the deep.

Later on we learn about God the son.

So we have this God, this triune God who's speaking into creation.

And that's why we have the word us or we.

It says, let us make man in our own image according to our likeness and let them rule

over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all

the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image and the image of God, he created him male and female.

He created them.

God bless them.

And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule

over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that

moves on the earth.

Then God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface

of all the earth and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for

you.

And to every beast of the earth and every bird of the sky and to everything that moves

on the earth, which has life, I have given every tree or green plant for food.

And it was so God saw all that he had made and behold, it was very good.

And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.

Father, in Jesus name, thank you so much for this account of creation.

Father, thank you for creating and Lord, thank you for creating us.

You've given us life and you've given us so much that we want to look at today.

I pray that we might understand why you've made us the way you have so that we can know

you.

Father, may we know you today.

We ask this in Jesus name.

Amen.

And you may be seated.

But everything you do when you walk through the Bible teaches you more and more about

God.

And so I want us to learn some of the lessons that the scripture tells us about God so we

can know him fully, so we can understand who he is and what he says and what he does and

why he does what he does.

And as we dove into the Genesis account, we looked at five questions that were all encompassing

the most important questions in life.

And the first question that we looked at was who is God and what is truth.

And every day of creation tells us a little bit more about who God is.

And once we know who God is, we know the source of truth.

You can't have truth apart from the God who creates everything that we have, including

truth.

God is the source of all truth.

So we answer that question this way.

After learning about the God of creation, God is the almighty, eternal, and all-powerful

creator who alone has the authority to define truth.

He's the only one.

We can have an idea of what we want, an idea of what we like, something we hope for or

wish for, but only God gives us the truth.

And he only gives that because he is the creator of God and he alone is able to do that.

So it's really a pretty simple thing.

Once you learn what God says, that's truth.

That's a simple way to live, even though it's very clear, very narrow sometimes about what

God has said.

But that is what truth is.

And then we have another question that we ask, and day six really answers this question

well.

And here's the question, who was I created to be?

Now there are all kinds of secondary answers to that.

We can talk about personality.

We can talk about skills and gifts and things we enjoy doing.

We have all kinds of secondary answers, but there's one overriding answer to who we were

created to be that God gives us in the creation account based on the design that God had when

he created man and woman and placed us on the face of the earth.

But before we get there, we have the creation of all the other animals, the creation of

beast and cattle and creeping things on the earth.

And all through the creation account, God said it was good, it was good, it was good,

but not till he gets to day six does he say it was very good.

Not till he creates mankind and places us in that garden.

And once he creates us in the unique way he does and places us in the garden, that's

when God said it is very good.

And he says that because we are unique from all the other creatures on the planet.

You are unique.

And you have a unique place in creation and a unique place in God's plan.

So as we look at this day, day six, understand there's some uniquenesses about you and I

as members of mankind that no other creature has.

We are unique in so many ways.

First of all, let me tell you, we're unique because we're created to relate to God.

You are created to relate to your creator.

God made us so that we could know him.

And he made us so that we could know him, so we could fellowship with him in a way no

other creature could.

For example, look at verse 26, it said, then God said, let us make man in our own image

according to our likeness.

No one else or no other thing on the planet was given that title in his image.

That is given four times in these few verses.

When God says something over and over and over in scripture, it's calling attention

to it.

And it's calling attention to it because this aspect of creation means that this is

the biggest part of your identity.

This is the most important part of you.

You are created in God's image.

No matter how tall or short you are, no matter how old or young you are, no matter what your

interests are, bottom line is God has given you this unique image of God characteristic

that nothing else on the planet has.

And you and I need to understand what that is, why that's true and what that means.

So let me give you three things that this means at least.

There are many, many more, but let me tell you three reasons why and how God made us

to be in his image and what he gave us that allows us to be in his image.

First of all, superior capability, superior capabilities.

God created mankind in a way that he did not create the rest of the world with a capacity

to do things and think things and plan things and create things that all the other animals

and the beasts and the birds of creation did not have.

As a matter of fact, one of the authors I read this past week said this.

He said, if you think that you're not much different from the animals, then go to the

zoo and try to have a conversation with a chimpanzee and see how that works out.

It's not going to work out well because we have superior intellect, superior conversation

communication skills.

We try to communicate things that are both abstract and solid and animals cannot do that.

We have superior capabilities and God placed us on the planet in a way that we're required

to have those things.

He said, I want you to subdue creation.

I want you to rule over creation.

I want you to manage creation.

God never tells us to do something that he doesn't give us the power to do it with.

We are created with superior capabilities.

In the book of Psalms, there's this great psalm where the psalmist is talking about

creation and man and he's wondering, he's marveling at all that God has done.

He makes this statement in Psalm 8, verse 3 and 4 and 5.

Psalms 8:3

He says, when I consider the heavens, your heavens, the work of your hands, your fingers,

the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you have taken thought of

him and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than God.

You crown him with glory and majesty.

You make him rule over the works of your hand.

You have put all things under his feet.

The psalmist said, it's amazing to me that you create all these animals and birds and

fish and the sea and everything else and then you took special attention, special care to

create us in such a way where we would be just a little lower than the angels and where

we would be able to rule over everything on the planet.

God, this is amazing what you've done for mankind.

We have bodies like animals that we use our minds to think, to communicate both concrete

abstract principles.

We use reason.

We use logic most of the time.

We design.

We build.

We invent.

We write music.

We create things.

I'm amazed at how gifted and how capable the human species is.

If you think about it, you will know just like I do, people who can create amazing artwork,

amazing crafts, amazing music, they can calculate incredible amounts of numbers in their mind.

They can understand and build complex machines and buildings and systems.

They can solve nearly impossible engineering challenges.

Animals can do none of those things.

We're given superior capabilities and because we're given superior capabilities, we're

more like God than any of the other creation that God has made.

We can converse.

We can communicate across creation.

We can even communicate with God.

We have the intelligence and mental ability to reason, to make choices just like God does

and we have a will unlike all the other animals in creation.

We have a personal will just like God does.

It just doesn't always line up like God's will is.

How many of you have had little children in the house and you know from early on they

have a will of their own?

Would you raise your hand?

Every one of our kids had a will of their own.

My wife and I read The Strong Will Child by James Dobson many times because they all have

strong wills.

They all want to do things their way when it would have been better for them to do it

our way because we were the parents and they were the children.

That just makes sense to them at the moment.

It's just testimony to the fact that when God created mankind, he gave them a will.

That is remarkably like God because God has a will in all things and a will for us, his

creation.

First of all, superior capabilities.

Secondly, God made man with a sensitive conscience.

The ability to know right from wrong.

We don't always exercise this, but we have it built into us.

The conscience is this inner wiring that lets us know right from wrong.

Again, it's unique in creation.

The animals don't have this, but it has a resemblance of God.

When you think about God, one of the most unique and defining characteristics of God

is his holiness and his righteousness.

He always does right.

He always speaks truth.

He always does holy things because he's a holy God.

He determines right and wrong.

He defines it.

Adam and Eve were originally created to be morally innocent.

They were righteous.

They were innocent.

They were just and they were pure, just as God created them to be like him.

That's why God said it was very good after Adam and Eve were created.

These are creatures that I made in my own image and they have the conscience that I

have.

They know right from wrong, but when sin entered into the garden with Adam and Eve, a story

we'll look at later, then everything became marred.

You still have the image of God in your life, but it's marred.

It's damaged.

It's not in alignment with God.

It has to be fixed.

It has to be restored.

We learn later through the gospel of Jesus, only he can restore that.

God created us with that perfect innocent image.

When we sinned in Adam and Eve, it was marred.

Years ago, I had a car that I loved a lot.

It was a 1976 Firebird Trans Am and man, did I love that car.

I was 19 years of age and my parents allowed me to buy that car because I'd gotten a basketball

scholarship and they weren't going to pay any money to college, so they said, maybe

you can buy a nice car.

That 1976 Firebird was my nice car.

I felt like at 19 years of age, it was the perfect car for a young man to have.

It was fast.

It was really, really fast.

It handled really, really well.

It took the curves in a great, great way.

I had no qualms about going all out on the highway as often as I could, but a couple

of years later, a truck pulled out in front of me and I ran into the rear end of it and

nearly totaled that car.

The insurance company said, we almost totaled it out, but we know you like the car, so we're

going to go ahead and try to restore it.

They rebuilt the car.

I got it back and it looked just the same on the outside as it was before.

It was that beautiful, deep, rich blue and had a white vinyl interior, which I cleaned

with a toothbrush and that spray wash every week.

It was clean.

After I got the car back, it never was quite the same.

The engine didn't run quite the same.

The suspension wasn't quite the same and I never had the same kind of confidence in its

alignment.

It wasn't as accurate as it was before and it was not aligned well.

It was not as accurate as it was before because it had been damaged.

It had marred the integrity of that particular car.

Later on, I sold it.

Never was happy with it after we got it back.

You know, you and I are born and made in the image of God, but marred, different from Adam

and Eve who walked in innocence and purity.

We have trouble coming into alignment with the God who created us, even though we have

the potential of doing that, even though we have a sensitive conscience to know right

from wrong, we sometimes miss the mark over and over because of our sinful nature and

it must be restored.

That sin was passed on from Adam even to this day.

But, you know, even people that don't follow God have a sensitive conscience.

They may just be ignoring it.

Paul is writing in the book of Romans chapter 2, he's writing about Gentiles who did not

Romans 2 · chapter mention

know God.

Here's what he says about them.

They show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and

their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.

Where did they get that conscience?

They didn't know God.

They got that conscience from the capacity that God gave them in that sensitive conscience.

The capacity to be aligned with God, but the inability to actually do it.

To be aware that they were out of sync with God or in sync with God according to that

verse.

So we have this amazing sensitive conscience, but more than that and really above everything

else we have a spiritual nature.

You and I are not just body and mind, will and emotions, we also have a spirit that lives

inside of us, don't we?

The human spirit that God breathed into Adam in Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, the life giving

Genesis 2:7

spirit that he breathed into him.

But also today as believers we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, but the whole idea of

having a spirit in the first place is that we connect with God on the spiritual realm.

You and I connect with each other by conversation in a handshake.

We connect with common interests that we have with each other.

I enjoy going to football games and yelling myself hoarse with other people that have

similar qualities that I have and similar interests that I have.

But I connect with God on a spiritual level and you connect with God on a spiritual level.

And that spiritual nature is part of the image of God in your life that lets you know God

and walk with God and understand God in a greater way.

But even more than that, this spiritual nature means that you yearn for God.

It means you want to know God.

That's why people search for God because they know something is missing in their life if

he is not present.

I've said often we all have a God-sized hole in our heart and when we are not filling that

with God we try to stuff everything else and they are hoping to fill it, hoping to satisfy

that emptiness that is something that is missing in our life, but only God can fill the God-sized

hole.

In our bodies and in our being we have a space for the Spirit of God to be and when that's

empty nothing else will fill it except the Spirit of the living God.

We interact with God because God created us in his image.

God is Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

When we don't relate well to God we are always, always miserable, but when we walk with him

the scripture says that we are one spirit with him.

First Corinthians 6 verse 17 says that, but the one who joins himself to the Lord is one

1 Corinthians 6:17

spirit with him and from the very beginning God designed that we would be able to walk

with him and know him and that's how we thrive.

If you want to know how to be happy, you want to know how to thrive in life, you want to

know how to have the joy that sometimes others seem to have, you'll have that when you connect

with God the way you were designed to connect with him, with a spiritual walk through Jesus

Christ and through the Holy Spirit living in your life.

So I don't know if you knew this before, but you have superior capabilities, you have a

sensitive conscience, you have a spiritual nature and that makes you be able to connect

with the God you created in his image.

Now the sixth day has a great deal more than simply being created in the image of God.

We could spend a lot of time on that one subject.

But it also tells us something else about what happened on that sixth day and that is

that we were created to reproduce and rule over creation.

Look at verse 28, God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and

fill the earth and subdue it and rule over and he names all aspects and then says every

living thing that lives on the earth.

So just like every other living thing that God created, we have this responsibility to

reproduce after our kind and after man began reproducing and multiplying after his kind,

then we filled the universe with other human beings.

That's why we're here today.

Someone gave birth to you.

Someone was blessed to follow the Lord in that way and multiplied and the miracle of

birth took place.

Now we've taken a little bit of time to talk about in creation how each seed of each tree

and all the vegetation had all the DNA in each seed to create a new plant just like

itself, identical to itself.

And of course that's true of the animals as well.

But I want you to pause for a moment and think about the miracle of the conception that takes

place inside of a human being.

The miracle of knowing that inside the womb of a mother, a baby human being is conceived

and from that moment on has life in the eyes of God and the eyes of those who no conception

brings life and from that moment on is a baby human being.

And when that mom gives birth, there is that little human being that is made after her

kind or after his kind.

Now we began having children about the time they let dads go into the birthing room.

And I think my father had to wait out in the other room and in my era they said, okay,

you all can go in.

And some dads didn't want to go in but I was one of those ones that wanted to go in.

And I can remember when our first little girl was born.

I mean I loved the miracle of conception.

I loved watching my wife grow that baby inside of her.

I enjoyed so much of that.

I enjoyed every time the baby moved talking to the child.

All those things that a dad and mom should love.

But man, I was not prepared for the birth of my first child.

And when that baby came out and they put my daughter in my hands, I mean I was both terrified

and exhilarated at the same time.

She is a miracle.

She is perfect.

I mean all those things were going through my mind.

I also thought, I've never held a baby in my whole life.

I thought I might drop her like I would drop a football or something but I didn't.

The miracle of birth.

Sometimes we just need to step back and say what an incredible idea God had that he would

do that.

He calls us to reproduce, to multiply after our kind so that there would be many like

us who have the image of God created in their lives to interact with God.

And we are to reproduce, we are to populate the earth.

We are also to rule over the earth.

The word rule sounds kind of harsh but what it means basically is to be a steward to manage

all that God has created.

And that's what Adam did.

Adam and Eve took care of the garden.

They named the animals.

They cared for the creation that God had given them.

Can you imagine the beauty of Eden?

Can you imagine being placed in the garden?

You were the only man and the only woman on the planet and you were placed in this garden

that had everything necessary to sustain you for life and everything that God had created

was there and you were told to manage it, to care take it, to take care of it.

I kind of think that we all have that kind of built into our lives anyway.

I mean when you get a piece of property, when you buy a home or even when you have an apartment,

first thing you do is maintain it, take care of it.

You paint it, you put everything in order.

You try to make it as nice as possible.

You fix it when it breaks.

Just all that's kind of built into our lives and that's what God did for mankind except

with the whole planet.

And we have this concept given to us.

The earth is the Lord's and we're just managers of it and we need to manage it wisely.

Psalm 24 is a great Psalm.

It says the earth is the Lord's and all that it contains, the world and all who dwells

in it.

So we should use the resources that God has given us on the earth but not abuse the resources.

We should live off of them but we should not live for them.

There's room for a theology of environmentalism but not for worshiping the creation.

We worship the creator and God created the heavens and earth for us so we should take

care of it.

Ken Ham made this statement in one of his books.

He said much of the modern evolutionary movement places animals in the environment over man.

And that's not what God did.

The animals and the creation and the plants and all the other aspects of the solar system

and the earth were not placed above man.

They were placed to serve man.

So we're placed into this garden.

We're to eat of the fruit of the trees.

We're to take care of the animals.

We're to do all the things that God said.

But sometimes we can get that messed up just a little bit in our culture and we can worship

creation instead of the creator.

That's why sometimes we have people willing to save whales but not save babies.

That's why people want to elevate something else other than a human being.

But God says these are all important and you have this idea of taking care of it all and

not being out of balance.

But we also have a theology of work here.

Does you know that God put Adam and Eve in the garden to tend it and take care of it

for his glory, for his honor before sin came in?

After sin it got really complicated because of the curse of sin but your work is important

to God.

God has placed you on the planet to serve him well with all the resources he gives us.

So we're created to reproduce and rule just like we were created in God's image to relate

to him.

And there's a third thing in this text that's important.

It says we are also created to be male or female.

Look at verse 27.

God created man in his own image and the image of God he created him.

Male and female he created them.

Now at this point it becomes very simple.

Our culture is confused about how many genders there are and what sexuality is all about.

But it becomes very simple to those who believe that God is the creator and the one who speaks

truth.

How do you find it right here?

God made two genders, you're one or the other.

The cells of the male have two XY chromosomes and the female have a pair of X chromosome.

That's a biological and scientific fact.

A male cannot become a female and a female cannot become a male.

Your DNA, your features, your ability or inability to bear children is gender specific.

Now remember God is consistent in everything he does and that's true of all the rest of

creation too.

There are birds and fish and animals on the planet and it's true of human beings as well.

We're male and female called by our creator to lean into that biologically given role

that God has given us.

Now today we have all kinds of questions about sexuality and gender and you might ask, but

what about the gender confusion we hear about today?

What's the Bible's perspective on gender fluidity?

Finding numbers or types of gender or transgenderism?

I have to tell you today the Bible says a great deal about sexuality.

It doesn't take long when you get into Genesis to read through it and all the way to Revelation

over and over it addresses the different sexual questions of our day.

Here's the general answer that you'll find in the Bible and that is any deviation from

God's design is the departure from his plan and we'll bring grief and sorrow not peace

and joy.

The Bible is clear that any instance of gender confusion or sexual deviation from God's created

order of one male and one female in marriage is sin and it violates God's intention and

God's purpose.

There's a statement that will help us see what's going on.

Our sinful nature has a tendency to worship the creature and his desires instead of the

creator and his design and that's really where things part and where we begin to depart from

all that God has done.

I know we live in a world with increasing technology and decreasing theology where we

don't think much about God's design but we think an awful lot about changing it but we

do have an incredible number of things hitting the headlines today with sex change operations,

people who really strongly feel like or want to be like the opposite gender in which they

were born.

We have increasing cases of children who are caving to what I would call the lies of culture

asking their parents for life altering surgery and these are kids that are not old enough

to go to high school to drive to vote, buy alcohol or anything else but is it really

wise to let them make decisions about their gender in the future with permanent surgery

that will alter them forever as children?

It's a strange world we live in but it's strange because we depart from God's design,

his logic, his plan and we must come back to that.

Say well what are we supposed to do as Christians when this is happening around us?

Should we warn those who consider such things?

And the answer is of course.

We should warn anybody that's moving away from the direction of God.

Like every instance of a person who's committed to sin or anything else we are called by Scripture

to pray for them, to love them, to encourage them to come to Christ.

One of the great websites out there is GotQuestions.org and it's a website that's devoted to answering

things biblically, any question you might have and it's pretty solid.

And here's what it says on this subject, no matter if the gender distortion has a genetic,

hormonal, physiological or psychological or spiritual cause, it can be overcome and healed

through faith in Christ and continued reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit.

Healing can be received, sin can be overcome, lives can be changed through the salvation

that Jesus Christ provides even if there are biological or physiological factors.

When you read the letter of Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, it's a great chapter of an example

of that.

The Corinthians were deviant sexually, their whole culture was.

In fact, in that day and time to Corinthianize was literally a term that was used for people

that had lost their moral compass.

And so they began coming to Christ when they heard the gospel.

And when they began coming to Christ they had questions about their sexuality and Paul

writes to them in the first century, 2000 years ago with the same advice that's true

now.

He writes to people that have been sexually deviant, moving away from God's plan and their

sexual practices and here's what he says to them after they come to Christ.

He said, such were some of you, but you were washed and you were sanctified and you were

justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God.

In other words, you can change.

You can change because of the power of Christ to bring you back to his perfect way and his

perfect will.

And there you'll find the peace and there you'll find the encouragement you need.

But I will tell you this, once you depart from God's will in any part of your life,

sexuality or not, you're always going to find misery and difficulty.

And for all of us in the room, Christ is the only answer for forgiveness and healing and

a joy-filled life.

I call you to it time and time again.

It's the answer for me, it's the answer for you, it's the answer for everyone.

It's not complicated, it's Jesus.

And when you come to him and let him have control of your life, it's amazing.

So say it clearly, but say it in love.

Make sure people know we love them.

You know there's no room for hatred, there's no room for disgust.

There's only room for the love of God to be exercised for people who struggle in this

or any other way, all the while pointing out that Jesus brings the answer to their lives,

to our lives, to my life, to your life.

Love them, grieve them, talk to them, witness to them, point them to Christ.

So God did all this in the sense of creation.

And then he said, God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good.

Not good, but very good.

The phrase means completed.

It means that God completely finished the creation and set it in motion so that the

earth, the stars, and the solar system, so that the plants, so that the fish, the birds

and the air, so that human beings on the earth could be sustained and fully function until

the end of God's time and purpose.

God will come back one day and he'll interrupt that, but until that time will function just

as he called us to and it will continue to function as he's designed it and it will

always work best the way he designed it originally.

In your life and in the lives of those around you.

I want to pause for a second and just reflect.

Isn't it amazing?

Amazing that we can know the God who created all this.

Amazing to know that we're loved by that God.

Amazing to know that only when we have alignment with him, when we have the joy and the peace

and the satisfaction and fulfillment, but that we can have that through Jesus.

I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me after walking away from God

in one way or another.

Sometimes they've walked away sexually.

Sometimes they've walked away in other parts of their lives.

Sometimes they've walked away from relationships that they should remain in.

Sometimes they've just walked away from obedience and begun to do things their own way.

I can't tell you how many times people have come back to me and said, you know, I was

miserable and looking for something.

I never did find peace.

I never did find fulfillment, satisfaction until I came back to Christ, until I came

back to his design, his way.

And I just want you to know that I'm back.

And they always, when they said that, had a smile on their face.

I'm so glad to be back in alignment with him.

That's what I call all of us too.

That alignment that also brings you the joy and the peace that only God can give you.

You're made in his image.

You won't be satisfied until you walk with the one who created you.

Isn't that important?

That's a powerful thing.

Today I want to ask you to consider some things.

First of all, we have decision stations that will be at the back.

I want you to decide to have a conversation with someone today.

Just be willing to talk to someone that may answer questions that you have about your

specific situation.

Stop by on the way out if you want to know what it means to have Christ in your life.

If you want to know what it means to turn from whatever direction you're walking in

and go in his way, then we want to talk to you.

Because we can bring hope, we can have joy, and we can introduce you to the one that you're

created in his image and created to be in alignment with.

We can help you find that alignment.

So stop by at the decision station.

I also would invite you to come to guest reception.

I'm there at the end of every service.

I want to share a few things with you about our church.

Love to invite you back.

Finally, I'd also like you to pick up a card, an origins card on the way out today.

Take that origin and invite card and invite someone to come back with you.

Because Genesis 2, if anything, gets more exciting than Genesis 1, and that had to do

with the creation of all of the earth.

Genesis 2 is amazing.

Each week that we walk through this, you'll learn more and more.

Invite someone to come with you.

Would you stand with me as we close today?

Would you bow with me in prayer?

Father, thank you so much today for every person in this room, for every individual

that came in to worship, to see others, to hear this message.

In every person's life, there's a need, a need that only you can meet.

My prayer today is that they will open the door of their heart, allow you to meet that

need, whatever it is.

Father, I pray that they would sense your love, that they would sense your desire to

walk with them, to give them all that they need to be right and aligned with you.

Father, I pray today they would have the courage to lay down all the things that hold them

back from following you and choose you over everything else.

Thank you, Father, for your design, your plan for our lives.

Today, let us make the choice to walk in them in Jesus' name, amen.