What is Man - God's Design for Mankind

How's it going. It's good to see you. I'm sure

if you brought children with you today, praise God. But

also i'm sure that maybe some of your kids were

out late like mine was last night and then the

night before that. So they're doing fantastic. And so if

it is squirrely, I just want to reiterate, it's okay.

We're all expecting it, and like God's grace, we're gonna

get through this somewhat decently at a decent pace, and

then we'll eat some good food with one another. But

first what I want to do is start by reading

some scripture. So actually, if you open up kind of

the middle of your Bible, we're gonna be in Psalm eight.

And if you do not have a Bible, we actually

have some bibles in the back for you out at

the connection booth. You can go out there grab a Bible.

If you do not have one that please take it

for yourself. They're really awesome, but it's really important. We

regularly go through books of the Bible here and so

you should have one that you can follow along and

also go read at home. We are gonna be in

Psalm chapter eight. We're gonna read the whole thing. Pray

and get into today's word. Psalm eight says, Oh Lord,

our Lord, how majestic is your name? And all the

earth you have set your glory above the heavens. Out

of the mouth of babies and infants. You have established

strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and

the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work

of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you

have set in place. What is man that you were

mindful of him? And the son of man that you

care for him? Yet you have made him a little

lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory

and honor. You've given him dominion over the works of

your hands, and you've put all things under his feet,

all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,

whatever aasses along the paths of the seas. Oh Lord,

our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

Let's pray, Lord Jesus. We just asked that as we

open your word, that it would not return void, that

you would start to put things in our hearts, clarify

our minds, that you would soften our ears if they

are deaf, that you would soften our hearts if they

are hard, that we would hear your call, and that

we would respond accordingly in faith. So Lord, please give

us those things now, as we spend this time with

one another, gathered in Your name and Jesus name. Everyone

said amen. All right, So I'm gonna kind of start

today off, maybe a little bit more interestingly than normal.

I have a couple questions for you guys. The first

question is, what is that? What is this? What could

this be? Could be? What about this could be? Could be?

What about this? Could be a lot of things. It

could be a lot of things. You guys might have

pretty good ideas of what you think it is. The

person next to you might disagree with you. You guys

might have a lot of good reasons of why you

think your answer is the best answer. You might be

able to use reason and logic to make your argument

of like, well, look at his pen stroke and exactly

how he did that was obviously a nine. It was

obviously a six. At the end of the day, your

best attempt and your best answer is still only a guess.

Maybe you're right, you could be right. You could feel

pretty convinced that you are right, But how would you

in fact prove that the other person is indeed mistaken?

How would you prove that. The only way that you

could have definite proof that you are correct is if

the creator of those works of art told you what

they were. That's the only way you could have confirmation

that you're right or confirmation that you are wrong. That

unless in fact I tell you what I meant when

I draw or drew those pictures, you will be guessing

and left in the dark. Again. You might have some

good idea, but you won't be able to know for sure.

Much like how without God we can't know who we

are or what we're for. Let me say that again.

Without God, we can't know who we are or what

we're for. Without God, the best we can do is guess.

Are we from monkeys? Are we from the dust? Are

we born good? Are we born bad? Are man and

woman just an accident? Or were we made for a

specific purpose. The only way that we can know that

is if the one who did make us has spoken

to us. If you don't have any standard by which

to make your judgment on, then at best and at worst,

all you're doing is making it up and a life

in a life that is too short, with brains that

only weigh about three pounds, we don't we can't afford

to just make it up. As God is the one

who made us, we need him to tell us why

we are here, what we are for, who we are,

How did he make us? What is this marriage thing

truly about? In four? How and why do we raise kids?

How do we relate to God? How can we have

a relationship and know God? Why are things in the

world terrible? Why is the world broken? Why am I broken?

Why am I not the way that I ought to be?

Can these things be fixed? If you go to the

world for answers, the best they can give you are guesses.

That's the best that the world can give you, a guess,

and they might feel pretty confident about their guess, but

it's still just a guess. But if you go to God,

who made everything, then we can actually rest and be

certain that what He has said is in fact true,

or what we think is true is in fact true.

Which is why today we're going to be starting a

brand new series. You can see it's been up here

on the screens on the side. But we're starting a

brand new series called What is Man? What is Man?

When we say what is man, we're not just talking

about dudes, We're talking about what is mankind? How did

God make us? So that's why we have as a subtitle,

God's Design for Mankind. So we're gonna spend the next

nine weeks looking at who God has made us to be,

why He's made us to be those ways with the purpose.

So we're just gonna be kind of exploring a lot

of these different topics. Our anchor text for this series

is not the entirety of Psalmate, but it's actually just

a couple verses found in the middle of Psalm eight.

It's verses three and four. It says, when I look

at your hands, the work of your fingers, the moon

and the stars which you have set in place, what

is Man? That you were mindful of him? And the

son of Man that you care for him. So not

only do we need God to tell us who we

are and what we're for, it's that when we look

at God's creation, which is an incredible thing, like like

yesterday we were blessed with blue skies, right and then

as as we're all waiting for fire works, the stars

start to come out, and we just get to kind

of wonder, and we gotta be walking home from the

fireworks and be like, there's the Big Dipper and you

get to point that out to your kids and you

get to talk about that. It's really exciting and it's

really beautiful. And that's only one thing. But when we

look at how expansive this universe is, and then we

actually think about the fact that we live on a

tiny little rock floating through it all, that we can

actually be humbled and ask the question why would God

care about us? But not only do we wonder why

does God care about us? But there's actually a fact

in which we can stop wondering why God would care

about us, but we can actually marvel at the fact

that he does. That we can be like, wow, he

does care about me. It's an incredible fact that I

even am here in the first place, and it is

not in fact an accident. So as we even see

farther down in that text that we see that God

had made man for specific purposes and in specific ways.

So here in this series we're hoping to understand exactly

what God's word has to say about God's purposes and

designs are for mankind. But furthermore, we should be seeking

to ask the question are we in line with God's design?

It rhymes are we in line with God's design? So

as we look at what God has said this is

how it ought to be or this is how I

made it, we should be asking ourselves. Rather than like, Yep,

that's a true thing, we should say do I match that?

Am I in line with that? Have I been living

contrary to that? Do I just agree with that in

my head or do I actually believe it in my

heart and live it out. So the next couple of

weeks we're going to be covering everything from how God

has made us, what we're supposed to do, what marriage

and family is, how we're supposed to relate to God,

why things are broken in the glorious future that the

Lord has for those who are called by his name.

So it's gonna be a really fun and I think

helpful series for us to get into. But today I

want to lay the ground work for the series that

in fact that God as the creator gets to define

his creation. God as a creator gets to define his creation,

which means that we need to look to the Creator

to truly understand his creation. Many of us in the

world do this backwards. And if you want kind of

an idea of that, like look at like a lot

of the false gods that are out there, and they're

like just a weird mix of animals. We're like, oh,

I don't know, I've kind of seen things like this,

and so maybe maybe God is some is something like this.

And so we try and use the creation to understand

the Creator. Rather than going to the Creator and saying,

what have you told us about your creation? We need

God to tell us who we are and what we're

forward or else. Like I said, all we're doing is

making it up. If you're taking notes, I want you

to write down. God is the creator. God is the creator.

And at the very beginning of the Bible, which is

God's word, this is what he tells us. In the beginning,

God created the heavens and the earth. So the Bible starts,

God is taking credit for everything he made the heavens

and the earth. That is a God is a creator.

Everything that was made was made by him. Look again,

Psalm eight, verse three. It says, when I look at

your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and

the stars, which you have set in place. Here we

can kind of actually get an idea. We can see

three things that help us understand what God, being the

creator really means. It calls the heavens God's heavens. He

says they're your heavens. It calls the moon and the

stars God's work, and it affirms that God is the

one who established the things as they are. That is

to say that creation belongs to God, was made by God,

and is established by God. It was it belongs to God,

was made by God and established by God. This entire

world belongs to God. And I just want you to

think about that for a moment, Like everything belongs to God.

Every rock, every tree, every banana, every cow, every ocean,

every forest, every mountain, every cloud, every person belongs to God.

The world belongs to God because he made it. One

of the best ways to know that your child is

your child is that we're like, they came from you,

that's yours. God's creation is his because it came from him.

And here's the deal. No matter how far back you go,

you're like, no, no, no, God did make me. My parents said, okay,

well we just keep going back far enough, and eventually

there was a time when there was a whole lot

of nothing, and then there was a whole lot of something.

You can go back that far, and the only person

who could have been there is the only person who's

qualified to tell us what actually happened. Otherwise we're guessing.

But God tls us that he made something out of nothing.

The God breathed out galaxies that God spoke, and there

was light that God commanded, and it came to be.

Look what the verse and Psalm says in that verse

three says the heavens the work of your fingers. It

was funny when I was thinking about this, I was like,

it just made me think of children and how much

they love finger painting, And I was like, I wonder

if there's some innate design where they want to reflect

their creator. And so they sit there and they paint

these beautiful things and get paint all over their hands,

and come and show us their creation. But God here

as the work of his fingers, has made these starry

skies that we can just be in awe of these

gorgeous sunsets and these beautiful and glistening mountains that we

get to see all around us are all God God's work.

Creation belongs to God because he made it, and also

because he made it, God actually gets to establish how

things ought to be. The moon and the stars are

right where God wants them to be. So why would

we think that that is the case. There isn't the

case with everything else that God made the world to

work in a specific way. It belongs to God because

he made it, so he gets to decide how it

should be. He defines red, yellow, and blue. He set

these parameters light, darkness, land, see male female, and ultimately

our purpose. God has a design for all of his creation,

which means that God has a design for all of us.

God made you to belong to him, and he has

a design for how he wants you to live. And

I really want you to think about that. I mean,

how much how often do we actually think about that?

I was kind of like, I woke up today, I

got the things to do, and now I'm off on

my way to do the things, like God made me

for something, And that's real. God made you. You belong

to him, and he has a design for how he

wants you to live. But here's the truth. Many of

us may feel far from what God wants us to be.

Many of us might, like the world, try to just

reject God's design and do things our own way. Should

also raise some hand for that, but God has spoken

through his word to call all of us to come

into alignment with God's design, to no longer go our

own way, but to follow his clearly defined way, which

is very gracious. Because I was thinking about it, and

I was like, if I had, like a picture I

was drawing, and all of a sudden my picture went

rogue and was like, I'm just gonna it started just

becoming its own thing and rejecting me. I'd probably just

crumple the paper up, tear it to pieces, and throw

it in the garbage, so what I would do. But

God is way more gracious than I am. And God

and his grace has not done that with us, which

leads us to the next part of the text, verse four.

It says, what is man that you were mindful of him?

And the son of a man that you care for him.

If you're taking notes, you can write down. God hasn't

left us alone. God has not left us alone. Again.

This is crazy when you think about it. God made

the starry sky mountains, the depths of the ocean, and

the weird creatures that are there. He's made everything, the volcanoes,

the palm trees, the sand, the crabs that hide under

the rocks at the beach. He's made all of those things. Elephants, whales,

he's made rainbows. He makes everything that we see, and

yet he has special regard for mankind. This should blow

our minds, like, really, do this, think about it? What

is man like? You like? It's it is a cheesy example.

I didn't put it on my notes, but it's just

like you go to the Grand Canyon and you're just like,

I am not that important, I am small like what.

I'm just a little like speck that exists here. And

yet the Lord cares for us. The Lord considers us

little old us, we who can feel so little, so

ignificant and significant. Yet the Lord puts air into our lungs.

The Lord keeps our hearts beating. It's incredible. God didn't

just like kick us out of the house and say, like,

go figure it out on your own. The God has

spoken to us. He's revealed to us who he is,

what he's done, and how we can follow his ways

in his world. But in our pride we treat God

like we don't need him, thinking we can try and

live life by our own design. And my only question

that I really would have for you is like, how's

that going? How's that been? Because if you anything like me,

when I try and do things my own way, it

tends to not work out and it's awful. But the

fact that God has given us a design to tell

us who we are and what we are for should

encourage us to seek after what he said, to seek

after his word, go like, what has the Lord actually

said about this thing? Has the Lord said something about

this thing? And then to be humble in our hearts

and submit to it, trusting the designs of our creator,

because you might go like, Hey, what did God say

about this thing in marriage? Hey? What did God say

this about this thing as a man or a woman?

What has God said this thing about raising children? Hey?

What has God said about how the family should operate? Hey?

What has God said about how we should relate to him?

And we might go look at what he said and

go like, oh, I don't know if I like that.

Who's the creator you? Who's the judge you? But we

love to play the part we love to act like

where the job much that we're the creator. So that's

why when we go to that, we also need to

go like, like, we have to put this in our

heads that God is the creator. God defines how things

ought to be, so that when we go to it

and we go like, ooh, that's gonna change my life

in a way that's uncomfortable. Ooh, I'm gonna have to

change some things up or have some difficult conversations about

how we've been letting things go. But Lord, I'll honor you, Lord,

I'll put you first in this place. Lord, I will

do the hard things that it requires in order to

live in line with your design, which requires humility in

our hearts and trusting and having faith in the Lord

and his plans, his design and how he wants things

to be. Because I don't know if you've ever tried

to bake something without following the instructions. Not much of

a baker, so I'm pretty reliant, and even still I

still find a way to mess it up or maybe

building ikea furniture, And you're like, none of this is

in English. I'm just supposed to follow the pictures like

you might be stubborn, like I can tend to be

and just go like, I think I can figure this

one out. It seems simple. I mean it's a dresser, right,

it should be simple. It's a chair, Like, how hard

can it be? And you're like, this is a lot

of pieces and I'm missing some, right, And so you're

going around and eventually you might scrap the whole thing

or humbly have to go like, hey, babe, can you

grab the instructions and bring him over here please. Eventually

we'll have to go to the Lord for his design

if we want to know how things truly ought to be.

God has given us a design for mankind. God has

not left us in the dark, just as he spoke

to bring creation, and like God has spoken to us

so that we can actually have light to guide us

in our life. We're as we're gonna see in the

coming weeks, that God didn't make us like the rest

of creation. There's a reason He has special regard for us,

that we bear his image and that he has set

us up to have dominion over the earth. And we

may have grown up hearing that or like kind of

hearing that, or maybe you've heard that, like you're just

a far off, distant cousin of a monkey, and so

like get after it and kind of do you like

you might have heard a lot of different things, but

we're gonna open God's word and go like, what has

he really made us to be to do? To look

like that God didn't create us because he's incapable or lonely,

but because God loves us and out of his good

pleasure that he decided to share that with his creatures,

which is crazy. Like then you start you start thinking

about those things, and you're like, I mean, but I'm

just a creaky I'm just something you made, and you

love me so much that you would share this thing

with me. You'd let me take part in being an

image bearer. You'd let me take part in serving you

and being your representative here on earth to take care

of the world. What is man that you're mindful of him?

What is man the son of Man that you care

for him. The more that we think about this fact,

the more it should make us marvel, like David and

the psalm, God is mindful of us. Like, let's just

look at a couple verses in the Bible. This is

to kind of just paint this image speaking in the

way that God cares for mankind. The Matthew six Jesus

is speaking. He says, therefore, I tell you, do not

be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or

what you will drink, nor about your body. What you

will put on is not life more than food, in

the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of

the air. They neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns,

and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Listen to this,

Are you not of more value than they? It's a

rhetorical question, by the way. And which of you, by

being anxious, can add a single hour to his span

of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider

the lilies of the field, how they grow? They neither

toil nor spin. Yet I tell you even Solomon, in

all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field,

which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,

will he not much more clothe you, oh you of

little faith. Jesus saying, if God just takes care of

his creation, how much more will he make sure to

take care of you? And I think it's fair that

Jesus is like, oh you a little faith, because a

lot of times we're just like we don't actually live

like that. We're pretty stressed. We're envious of the flowers

instead of being like, hey, the Lord has taken care

of them, he'll take care of me. How much more

value about I? The Lord, my father will not have

me be taken care of. He will look after me.

Look at Psalm one thirty nine says, for you formed

me in my earth. For you formed my inward parts.

You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise

you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are

your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame

was not hidden from you when I was being made

in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Listen to this. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In

your book. We're written every one of them, the days

that were formed for me. As yet there was none

of them that God made you wonderfully that he's written

out your days. He's formed your days for you. You're

maybe wonderful or maybe terrible. Day that you had yesterday

was formed, was written for you by the Lord. Do

we think about that every single day? We're just like, Ah,

get me through this, instead of going like, Lord, you

made this day for me, and I don't get it.

I don't understand it. But it's not an accident because

you care for me, You're mindful of me. You're doing something.

God is mindful of each and every one of us,

and God truly cares for us beyond what we could fathom,

which is so heartbreaking. It's so heartbreaking because we live

in a world that is so broken and so fallen,

where people's hearts are so hardened against God, his ways,

his designs. Listen to this. This is Paul writing in

His Day Romans, chapter one. It's a little bit of

long text, but you'll get the picture. For the wrath

of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and

unrighteousness of men by who their unrighteousness suppressed. The truth

for what can be made known about God is plain

to them because God has shown it to them. For

his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature,

have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the

world in the things that have been made, so they

are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did

not honor him as God or give thanks to him.

But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish

hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools

and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images

resembling mortal man, and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore,

God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts

to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie,

and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,

who is blessed forever Amen. For this reason, God gave

them up to dishonorable passions. For the women exchanged natural

relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the

men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were

consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts

with men and receiving themselves the doue penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God,

God gave them up to a debased mind to do

what ought not to be done. They were filled with

all manner of unrighteousness, evil, conveteousness, malice. They're full of envy, murder,

strife to see maliciousness, their gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful,

inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice

such things deserve to die, they not only do them,

but give approval to those who practice them. Sound familiar.

It's like Paul picked up a headline. It's like Paul

was scrolling her Facebook or whatever social media. People rejecting God,

seeing his creation, his evidence of his presence, but rebelling

against his design in order to worship the creation rather

than the Creator, to do whatever they define, whatever they

think is right, and in so doing, the world has

just become darker and darker in those regards. Now. Ironically,

many times throughout history people have tried to claim that

as we become more modern, as we get farther into

the future, that we will have no need of God.

We won't need anyone from above telling us how we

are to live and how things ought to be, you know,

because we're just so educated, and we're so progressive and

we're so forward thinking. They're so modern, we're so sophisticated

that things are just eventually we're all going to kind

of get it and things will just work themselves out

that we don't need God to tell us those things.

We live in modern times, some say postmodern times, and

the question is how has that been working out? Pretty

fair you can look at it and go, like, I mean,

not the best. The world has gone so astray. The

world is out there just making it up as it

runs farther and farther from God's design, and many of

us may wonder why God hasn't just torched the whole

place and started over. Yet, if you read your Bible,

you know that there has been times where He's done

things kind of like that. He's brought judgment on the world.

He's brought judgment on nations. He's brought judgment on cities

for their unrepentant sin, and one day he promises to

do it again, set everything right. And I do feel

actually to say, like, it's not just the nations that

he brings judgment on. He'll bring judgment on families. He'll

bring judgment on individuals who were rebelling against him. That

God is one day going to set a day and

has set a day where he's going to return and

set everything right. He's going to punish those who have

gone astray, and he's going to redeem those who have

followed the design that the Lord has given us. And

we could go like sick. So all I have to

make sure I'm doing is following God's design and then

I'll be good. And then you look at your life

and you're like, uh oh oh, no, I don't measure up.

I fall short of God's design for my life, which means,

as it stands, all of us deserve judgment on that

day to be torched. It's awful, it's just well, it's

just crazy, is that even in this God has considered us,

and even in this, in this sinful state that we

find ourselves in, God has shown care for us. Because

God hasn't left us to die in our sins with

no way of hope. He could have. He could have

been like, you know what, I'm done with you. If

you want to do that, fine starting over, not with you,

though you need have been justin doing so. But that's

some what he did. God made the only way for

us to be saved from the wrath to our sins.

God has made the only way for us to now

be made a new creation, to be able to be

set free from sin and now start living according to

His design, and that through Jesus Christ. God. God's ultimate

act of showing us his love and care for mankind

is in Christ. Jesus, look at our texts again, Psalm

eighty four. What is man that you're mindful of him?

And the son of Man that you care for him?

That God cares for mankind so much. God cares for

you and I so much that God, the son Jesus

Christ get this, took on flesh. He became a man

so that he could live the righteous life that we couldn't,

so that he could die the death that we deserve

to die, and three days later be raised from the

dead and promising eternal life for all who turn from

their sin and put their faith in him. That God

entered into his own creation to fulfill what was lacking

in us. God cares for us so much that he

sent the son of man to live perfectly and die

and rise for us. That's how much the Lord cares

for us. And as we meditate on this fact. It

should lead us to the same marveling and wonder that

David has here in the Psalm. How amazing, how glorious

it is that Jesus would love and care for us

so much that he would come and die for us,

your Maker. How amazing is that we can find everything

that we need in Christ, that he shows us the

way that we are to live and to walk. He

set us an example. We can then turn and give

him glory for being so caring and so mindful of us.

This Claussians one thirteen says He has delivered us from

the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom

of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the

forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things

were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,

Whether thrones or dominions, or rulers or authorities, all things

were created through him. And what for him? What does

that mean? Who are you made for him? Jesus Christ

saved us. Jesus Christ made us, and we are made

for him. Which is why I love it so much,

and I think it's really beautifully put in the Westminster Catechism,

and it's a method of teaching Christian doctrine and faith

and belief. And the question is what it's the first one,

which is awesome. What is the chief end of man?

To glorify God and enjoy him forever? That sounds pretty good.

Glorify God, and it's not just like glorify God, but

then enjoy Him forever. It's amazing. I need the bandic

come up these. So as we've seen, when we look

in our text, we see that God as the creator,

he made it all, it all belongs to him. He

gets to define what things are. We see that God

has it left us alone, that he considers us, that

he cares for us, and we see that the best

example of that is Jesus Christ himself. And this sets

the stage for the rest of the topics that we're

going to be looking at, that we're going to be

diving deeper into over the coming weeks. But now and

even still, there is a way that we can't apply

today's word. And the first is this, stop making it up.

Don't make it up. Ask yourself what has God said

about this? If you don't know Ask a friend who

knows their Bible, not just someone who's also going to

make it up. Ask a pastor. Read your Bible regularly,

use a study Bible that has notes that explain passages

about these topics. But please, for the love of everything,

stop making it up. Don't be like the world. If

your kid asks you a question, don't make it up.

Tell them what God has said and make sure I

think this is really a really really big one. Make

sure what you think God has said is actually what

he said. There's a lot of us were like, yeah,

I kind of get it. I know what the Bible says,

you know, so then you just and then you say

something like crazy or you say something wild, and you'd

be like where is that, and you're like, I don't know,

I just thought it was in there. Stop making it up.

We need to know what God has actually said, is

it not. We just we just end up confused and

wrong about topics. We think, oh, well, I mean, obviously

marriage is just a way for us and not get

in trouble, So we can have say, like, just a

way to not get in trouble. What has God said

about that? Some of us think like, oh well, I

mean my life. I was given my life as a gift,

so it must just be to be all about me,

so that I need to make sure that I get

my best life now. But what has God said? Some

of us might think that humans can be good with

God if they just do enough right things. But what

has God said? We might think, oh, well, everyone's just

born innocent, and we kind of go astray eventually. What

has God said? What are you teaching yourself? Is what

you have been taught about the world aligned with God's word?

And it's hard you're gonna like, I mean, I have

to ask a question about everything I know? Yes, yes,

start reading your Bible and have it be the lens

and the thing that informs your life and how you

view topics and how you ought to live. That's what

it means to be a Christian and follow His way,

to follow His design. Do you know where to go?

Do you know where to look? Could you show another

person where God has defined that thing? What are you

teaching your kids? What are you teaching other Christian brothers

and sisters? Are you pointing to scripture or are you

just making it up? We need to stop making it

up and instead we need to be a people who

ask and or know what God has said about these

topics in our life. Because, like I said, many times

throughout history, but more recently, people have thought that as

we get more modern, we will have less of a

need need for God to define things, and also we'll

just kind of have less of a need for a

God period. Many thought through that time and also just

try to kind of declare that God is dead. We

don't have a need for God anymore. And we've seen

time and time again what this leads to in a

society chaos, confusion, destruction, wickedness, so much loss, so many

lost people, so many originally created good things destroyed, torn apart, redefined,

and led to the destruction of many. But in a

world that is living in the dark like God is dead, we,

as God God's people, need to bring the light of

the good news to say that there is in fact

hope because the God Man Jesus Christ has risen from

the dead. We need to walk into a world as

God's hands and feet to bring the light of God's

design for mankind to those who are perishing in the darkness.

In a world where people are living like God is dead,

we need to say no, God in fact, lives, and

the Lord cares for us, and he loves us. That

because we have God and his word, we can know

exactly who we are and exactly what we are for.

And equipped with God's word, we can know and remind

ourselves and others of God's design for mankind. Amen. Would

you please stand