Genesis as Theological Revolution (Genesis 1:1 )

Good morning. Well, if we have not yet met, my

name is Cole. I'm one of the pastors here.

I get to preach here more Sundays than not.

And if you've got a Bible, go ahead and get that open to

Genesis 1 verse one. We are in a new sermon series

that we're starting today and like you guessed the, the book

of Genesis and I, I woke up on Wednesday without a voice.

So it was like a massive week for me.

Obviously, I've got this sermon, I've got other stuff going on.

I, I, I helped with a wedding yesterday and I woke up on

Wednesday without a voice and I was like, oh, no, I am

absolutely toast. And I'd say like a good 60 or

70% of it is kind of back. But like there's, I don't know

if there's a good chance I'll blow through it this morning.

So if my voice gives out, I'll just stop preaching.

Sound good If it goes again, if he dies, he dies, right.

So whatever happens happens. But maybe pray for me as I'm

preaching through this Genesis 1.

Where to start with this new sermon series?

We'll we'll start at the beginning.

Okay, look at verse one. This has this is the first book

of the Bible. It's got 50 chapters in it.

So if you try to calculate, man, we don't.

We work really slowly through books.

This book has 50 chapters. When in the world are we going

to be done with it? I actually have an answer for

it. You might not like it.

Currently, we are slated to end this sermon series on April of

2028. That's the soonest we'll get

done with it. OK.

There's a likelihood that the length changes as we bump into

some stuff where I'm like, OK, I think we need more attention

over here. So it might get longer.

It's not going to get shorter. OK, So I'm, I'm going to count

it as a win. If we finish this sermon series

by the time that Malachi graduates from college.

All right, we can pull that off. We'll we'll call it a win.

Genesis 1. Here's the way that Luther

describes Genesis. Luther said, quote, Genesis is

the source of all theology and so whoever understands Genesis

properly will have no difficulty with the rest of Scripture.

Gerhard von Rod said there is scarcely another book in the Old

Testament which speaks in such a powerful and elemental way as

the book of Genesis. I really like this one by John

Salehammer. Sale Hammer says, quote, the

book of Genesis is the seed plot, the seed plot of the

entire Bible? Heck yes.

So here's how to think about this.

What Sale Hammer is saying is right.

The book of Genesis is the seed of the other 65 books of the

Bible. So the same way that the entire

oak tree and everything that's going to grow out of it is

present within the the teeny tiny sea when it goes into the

ground is the same way that all 65 books of the Bible are

present in the Book of Genesis. So yes, we're going to be in it

for a couple of years. It's going to feel long, but it

won't feel like that because of the diversity of the book.

Genesis has so many different characters, so many different

genres, so many different stories and subplots that it's

really going to feel like we're preaching through the entire

Bible over these next couple years.

And when April of 2028 comes, or April of 2029, when that date

comes around and we finish the 50th chapter of Genesis, there

is no reason why you should be the same person then as you are

today. It should transform you.

It should Jack up your life. Genesis should stretch you,

deepen you, challenge you. It'll keep you up late at night.

It'll be the first thing on your mind in the morning when the

alarm clock goes off. Some of the stories will comfort

you. Some of the stories will tick

you off. But if you continue to bring

your whole heart before the book of Genesis, Sunday after Sunday,

after Sunday for the next couple of years, it will transform you.

So I'm going to do some what teachers call a scaffolding.

You taught me that powers. What I'm going to do is I'm

going to set up some scaffolding for the rest of the sermon

series. So I'm, I'm putting structures

in place that are going to guide you through these next couple

years. The big question that people

love to argue about is how do we read Genesis?

Great question. Let's make some enemies right

away. A lot of people get hung up on

the debacle and debate of do we read it literally or do we read

it figuratively? I would encourage you to not

engage with that debate. I find it unhelpful.

I don't think those terms are even helpful.

What I would encourage you to do is to read it literally.

So within Genesis, it's not just one genre.

Within Genesis, you've got poetry, you've got history,

you've got narrative, you've got genealogy, you've even got legal

literature. So the best way to read it is in

correspondence to its current genre.

So rather than getting hung up on literal or figurative, let me

give you 3 actually helpful words to coach you through how

to read it. Word #1 is it is inspired the

doctrine of inspiration. Actually, I'm losing my voice.

Let me hear yours. Can you say inspired?

Inspired? The doctrine of inspiration

means that God himself has written or inspired this book,

even though it's written through an inspired person, in the case

of Genesis, Moses. So what God does is God uses

Moses, Moses's story, Moses's personality, even Moses's

writing style. But it is God himself riding

through Moses, making it entirely appropriate and right

to call Genesis the Word of God. It's inspired.

Second, it is inerrant. Let me hear that one from you.

Inerrant. The doctrine of inerrancy means

that in its original language, there are no errors within the

text. That means that Genesis is true

and reliable in all of its aspects.

Inerrancy and #3 is authoritative.

Let me hear you say authoritative.

Authoritative means that what the Bible says is more important

than what Cole says about it. What the doctrine of authority

means is that the Bible and the Bible alone, the Bible itself,

is the ultimate standard for what's true and what's false.

So if you feel that God is a certain way, and that certain

way is different than the way that Genesis portrays God,

you're wrong and Genesis is right.

Genesis is the authority, the ultimate standard for what's

true and what's false. So the words of Genesis

themselves are more important than my or anybody from the

preaching team. Any of our interpretations or

explanations of it are, even though we hope that it's

helpful. So let's look at the actual text

and if you're able, let's go ahead and stand for the reading

of the word of God. I was talking to Peterson this

morning and Peterson was like, how many verses you preaching on

this morning? And I was like, why?

And he's like as me and Kara had a bet on the over under of how

few verses you're going to preach on.

And so I was like, well, what was the over under?

And you said what 3 verses? And did Kara take the over or

the under? The under?

Carol wins. So this sermon is brought to you

by DraftKings. No, I'm not I'm kidding.

You know what I'm talking about. Spade one verse this morning,

the Word of God. Where does the Bible begin?

The Bible begins where reality begins.

Not with you, not with us, not with me.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That's going to be enough for us over the next 30 minutes.

You can have a seat. OK, so while we're making

enemies, let's just make a few more enemies.

There's a lot of debates that pop up around Genesis, so I just

want to, I don't want that to be background noise that distracts

from the actual preaching. So I'm going to jump into

another thing right away. How about the age of the Earth?

Let's do that. Christians, they, they are very

passionate and they love to argue about the age of the

earth. The way that some Christians

argue about the age of the earth would make a person think that

the first question God is going to ask us at the pearly gates is

not did you trust Jesus? But how old is the earth?

People get really passionate about it.

There's people in here who have a very strong conviction about

it. I think that's a wonderful

thing. What I would encourage you not

to do is make enemies over this. And so when it comes to the age

of the earth, there are essentially 2 big views.

OK there, there are more nuanced positions than these two

positions, I get that. But the two big positions are

old Earth creationist and Young Earth creationist.

Let's start with you, Young earth creationist.

A young earth creationist believe that the world is

roughly 6 to 10,000 years old. This comes from a literal rating

of the 24 hours of days that we see in Genesis.

Old earth creationists are also creationists, but they have no

problem affirming the possibility that maybe the age

of the earth is older, maybe even much older than 6 to 10,000

years old. The most important thing about

old earth versus young earth creationists is not their

differences, but their similarities.

They're both creationists. They're both Christians, right?

They're both lovers of of Jesus. OK?

They've got a big similarity. They both believe that God

created everything ex Neilo or out of nothing for his very own

glory. So I think it's a wonderful

thing to have a strong view on old or young earth creationism

be convicted. Don't poke anybody's eye out

over your opinion on that. I mean, the question, though, is

like who at the end of the day, who has more scriptural support

for their case? You're probably not going to

like my answer to that question because my answer to that

question is both young Earth creationist versus New Earth

creationist who has more scriptural support for their

case. I think that there's a case to

be made for both of them. Young earth creationists take a

literal approach to the six days of creation.

So when we read about the six days of creation in Genesis 1,

we're reading about 624 hour days.

I think that's great. I heard somebody in our church,

I think, I can't remember who it was.

I think it was Christian. Christian said, you know, I, I

don't really have a strong opinion on it either, but at the

end of the day, I would rather look like a fool in the eyes of

the world for taking God's word too literally.

And when I heard him say that, I was like, that's good.

So I I really do like that position.

I do, I like it. I tend to lean towards an old

earth creationist view. I'll give you one simple reason.

I personally think it has more in common thematically with the

rest of the creation story. For instance, Adam and Eve were

created by God as mature people who are ready to bear fruit

sexually. They weren't created infantile.

So it makes logical sense to me that God would or perhaps

possibly would create the heavens and the earth in that

same way. Not infantile, but mature, old

enough already to bear fruit. And what that does for me is it

puts me in a position where there's no scientific discovery

that could possibly scare me. If science discovers that the

earth is 6000 years old, that's great.

Wonderful if they decide that it's 10 bajillion years old,

that's fine. It doesn't really bother me.

I'm indifferent to it. The scientific consensus, which

is fun to keep up with, it tends to shift so much that it just

kind of feels like sand compared to the rock of God's word.

And so that stuff is it's fine. It just like it's just like

nobody's ever like sprung that on me and I've been like, crap.

How do you know I'm a Christian now?

I just the word of God is a rock compared to all of that.

So listen to me. The primary function of the book

of Genesis is not to teach the age of the earth.

It is to teach about the character and nature of our

Creator God. Amen.

Personally, I think Moses would probably be shocked to discover

that Christians were dividing themselves over this issue on

the basis of his writings. So Genesis is not, it is not a

modern scientific textbook. If you treat it that way, you're

not going to see it clearly. And if it's not a modern

scientific textbook, what is it? Here's the answer.

It is a theological revolution. That's the right way to read the

book of Genesis. It's a revolution in the way

that we see, think about and know God.

OK, so let's go deeper into this.

We got to go. We got to go deeper into this.

Even just a lot of things to say.

Even if you just look at this one verse, there are so many

things that are revolutionary about them.

OK, in the beginning, God, The idea of an eternal God who

existed before there was a beginning.

You know where that began? With the book of Genesis.

In the beginning, God, not Gods. The idea of monotheism was a

radical idea that had its roots only in Genesis.

In the beginning God created or but ah the Hebrew but ah is only

attributed to God. Humans are creators but we don't

Bara. All we can do is create with

pre-existing materials. The Hebrew root Bara, it means

out of nothing. So this idea of God creating out

of nothing, you know where that idea started?

The book of Genesis, even the other ancient near Eastern

worlds, their gods when they built the world they did it from

pre-existing materials. So everything about this one

verse in the beginning God created the heavens of the earth

is revolutionary. And this might be the most

important thing I say this morning.

I think yes, if you have studied literature out there, a lot of

the literature is correct. There were other similar

creation myths from other religions during the time when

Genesis was written. That's demonstrably true.

However, sometimes what skeptics will do is they'll compare

Genesis with a Near Eastern creation myth, and they'll say,

look, the writers of the Bible are just stealing and

repurposing other creation myths from their Babylonian neighbors.

And this means that we can't trust the credibility of the

Bible. And here's what these skeptics

miss. Yes, Genesis is stealing and

repurposing from other creation myths in its day, but it's doing

that on purpose. The way that Genesis uses other

creation myths is the same way that Saturday Night Live

repurposes the news. If you were like, man, I watch

Saturday Night Live and I I noticed that they stole a lot

from the president, you would be like, yeah, that's the point.

And So what Genesis is doing is a theological revolution.

It's correcting and criticizing the other creation myths of the

day. So the point of repurposing

these creation myths isn't to imitate them.

That's not what Genesis is doing.

Genesis is not saying, yeah, the God of the Bible is exactly like

the gods of Babylon. Wrong.

It's doing the exact opposite of that.

It's not to imitate them, but to show how the God of the Bible is

unique and differs from the popular ideas about God at the

time. We have to understand that from

every era of history, there's always been a popular culture of

ideas that's developed around what God is like.

And sometimes these popular ideas about God are not rooted

in any objective grounds of truth.

For instance, the popular idea of God among the ancient people,

it was actually the exact opposite of the popular idea of

God in the modern world. So if you look in the ancient

world among non biblical religions, so non Bible

believing religion, the ancient world, the popular idea of the

gods was both pluralistic and brutally angry.

They had a polytheistic view of the gods, that the heavenly

realm is a heavenly heavily populated with these competing

gods who are like human beings. They're petty, they're easily

angered. They don't care for creation

very much. And what the ancients were doing

is they were following their gut.

So the ancients looked at the world around them.

They saw famines and wars and bloodshed.

They saw hatred among different tribes, and they followed their

gut. And they said, OK, the gods must

be angry and violent. And they were wrong.

We've made like the opposite error in the modern world.

Modern people have done the opposite thing.

We've shifted. Now the world is filled with

more order and structure and polity, thank God.

And so modern people have assumed that, well, God must

just be a divine teddy bear, right?

And you hear this come through whenever somebody appeals to the

human heart rather than the objective reference point of the

Bible. So whenever you hear somebody

say I just don't think God would ever or I could never believe in

a God who did X or Y, usually in reference to something

conflicting their desires. When you hear statements like

that, you are hearing what the popular cultural ideas about God

coming through. And what Genesis does is neither

of those things neither it presents us with a God who is

the ground of our being, self-sufficient, loving and the

very truth itself. And to disagree with him, no

matter what your gut tells you, puts you in the wrong.

So what Genesis does is it helps us fight off the popular ideas

about God and gives us a theological revolution, an

objective true vision of God. How we doing this is a lot.

OK, It looked like less on paper.

Now that it's coming on, that's a lot.

OK, you guys are with me. So let's go deeper.

Take the ancient Babylonian idea of the gods.

They were really close neighbors with the Israelites.

So this is actually a really good contrasting point.

If you take the ancient Babylonian idea of the gods and

compare it to the biblical vision of God, it's

breathtaking. So the Babylonian creation myth

was called the Anuma Elise. Like Genesis, it has the gods

creating the heavens and the earth.

That's true. Does that invalidate Genesis 11?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Oh, is Genesis just stealing from the Anuma Elish?

If it is, it can't be trusted for everything in life and

death. Wrong.

What Genesis is doing is it is specifically showing how

different the God of the Bible is from the Babylonian gods.

How? Because how do the two different

gods create heavens and the earth?

This is crazy. The first time I learned this, I

was like, I can't believe. OK, so the answer that the Anuma

Elish gives is radically different.

The creation myth in the Anuma Elish has that the gods in the

heavenly realm were violent and at war with one another and

rivals with one another. And there was this war in heaven

that went on and on and on until the Babylonian God Marduk, who

was the chief God that Babylon worship, he ended the war.

Marduk ended the war by defeating and slaughtering the

other gods. And I swear to you, this is in

the Anuma, a leash to create the heavens and the earth.

He split the corpses in half and made the heavens and the earth

from the corpses of the other gods.

Why does that matter? Because in Genesis 1, the God of

creation, the God of the Bible, has no equals.

He has no peers. He has no rivals.

Creation in Genesis isn't the result of bloodshed.

It's not the result of violence. What's it the result of?

It's the result of poetry. This is a radically different

vision for creation in Genesis. Creation is effortless.

The biblical loving God speaks the word of his mouth and

creation explodes effortlessly into reality.

A theological revolution, a massive shift in ideas about God

and it's day. And This is why this matters so

much. It matters because what you

believe about creation shapes your everyday life.

Because everyday life is about creation.

That's what we do. We're we're trying to

participate with a million different little new creations

every day. Our daily lives are filled with

small acts of creation, trying to create new relationships,

better relationships, trying to create goods to be purchased or

teaching lessons for students or financial plans for our

consumers. The question is what creates?

And the Babylonian myth says violence is the engine of

creation, end of violence. As the engine of creation,

violence is what you get. So that's why the Babylonians

were notoriously brutal. It didn't come out of nowhere,

it came out of their creation story.

There were public acts of brutality and enslavement and

constant never ending war mongering.

When God's people were in Babylonian exile, there were

brutal acts of barbarism, cutting off hands, gouging out

eyes, cultural erasure. Why?

Because of their creation story, violence is how we move the

world forward. So do you see how Genesis is a

theological revolution, right, That the question that Genesis

poses is what if violence isn't the creative engine in in the

world? Genesis is God's way of saying

I'm not like that. Don't buy the pop ideas about

me. Genesis says poetry is the

creative engine and This is why the Christian ethic is love,

care, submit, sacrifice, die to yourself, serve.

This was radical in a world where violence explained

everything, politics, law, religion.

Genesis 1 opens. It was something unheard of.

No violence, no battle, no corpses, just a God speaking

poetry. Why?

Look at Genesis 11. In the beginning, God but ah,

created the heavens and the earth.

Why? And of course, the answer to

that question is why does anybody create anything, whether

it's art, music or children? Mekoto Fujimura, a Christian

artist, he said this about painting, Quote art is created

out of the overflow of our hearts, and so we cannot

separate what we make from who we are.

So you take Picasso, right? And you look at Picasso's wild

artwork. That's a reflection of Picasso's

inner turmoil. Picasso's creation is a

reflection of Picasso's nature. In that same way, all of the

universe, all of creation, exists to display the nature and

character of God. Colossians one says this

perfectly. For in him all things were

created. Things in heaven and on earth,

visible and invisible. Thrones, powers, rulers or

authorities, all this stuff, it's all been created through

him and for him. He did all of this to reflect

who he is. Jonathan Edwards.

Who can say it better than that guy?

Edwards famously said, quote, God's ultimate end in the

creation of the world is the manifestation of his own glory.

Think, I mean like, think about how Genesis starts it.

Like it doesn't even start with us, it starts with God.

I don't even, I don't even notice this before.

We don't actually enter the picture until verse 26.

Even the birds show up on verse 23.

We come after the birds. It's not God.

How does it start in the beginning God?

It begins with God. Why?

Because all things have been created through Him and for Him.

That's the purpose of all of creation.

If you don't get that, you don't get it.

That's why. That's why the Bible is so hard

on apathy, right? That's why apathy is a sin,

right? Apathy is essentially saying to

God, you've created nothing of value or worth in this world.

That's what apathy says, right? You've created nothing that

sparks my wonder and nothing that sparks my adoration.

So I'll go through life bored. And of course the main mistake

of apathy is that it's profoundly man centered.

Creation exists from my consumption.

And so if there's not an immediate benefit, then I don't

care about it. I'll look at creation with

indifference because I feel like it.

It's a creation is not man centered.

Creation is God centered through and for God.

This is key. Genesis is not it.

Genesis is not trying to convince you in the existence of

a God like atheist. Like when this was written,

atheism had not yet been invented.

There was no such thing as an atheist.

Genesis is not trying to convince you that there's a God

out there who probably exists. Everybody.

When Genesis was written, everybody believed in the

existence of the gods. Everybody.

What Genesis is trying to convince you of is not just that

God merely exists, trying to convince you that all of

creation is God centered, and that this God is not distant and

indifferent, but intimately and lovingly involved with all of

creation. That's what it's trying to get

you to see, that everything that atoms in the molecules, the

sunsets and the seas, the black holes and the star

constellations, everything, it all exists for the chief

purpose, displaying the invisible glory of God and

making it visible. Like the only way you could ever

look at a sunset and yawn is if you think more about yourself

than you think about God. That's the only way you could

look at a sunset and be indifferent.

The proper responses. What the proper responses?

Worship. Worship of God Who created it?

Genesis one. In the beginning God created the

heavens and the earth. I wish you could see my notes

because there's a massive typo. My notes say in the beginning

God created the beans in the earth, which is actually true

and serves the point that all of creation from the biggest stuff

like the heavens and the earth down to the smallest stuff, the

beans are His creation. So yes, He did create the beans

in the earth. But here's what made me worship

God about this moment this week. Have you ever wondered what the

look on God's face was in Genesis 11?

Like when he created the heavens and the earth and laid his eyes

on it for the first time? Like what do you think the look

on his face was? The truth is that Genesis

doesn't tell us, but the revelation of Jesus does tell

us. So like what was God's look on

his face when he created the heavens and the earth?

Look, I don't know. Here's my best guess.

A couple weeks ago I was at Mars Cafe.

I was about to meet with a couple different church planners

throughout the US. So I'm, I'm on my laptop working

at Mars Cafe and suddenly even though I'm, I'm staring at my

laptop screen, but suddenly I I felt like I was caught up in the

tension of something like the air just got thick.

So I looked up from my screen and I looked over and there was

this elderly woman. How do I describe this?

She was staring longingly with tears in her eyes at me.

And I was like, how do I know this woman?

And then it hit me. She's not looking at me, she's

looking past me. And I was like, that makes more

sense because I don't know this person.

And so I'm like, what? What could she be looking at

that way? So I turn around and a couple

tables away there's this young married couple who are obviously

very happy but also very frazzled with bags under their

eyes that had just formed. And it's because on top of the

coffee table, they had this kicking, wiggling, burping

little baby that they were caring for.

And the mom was clearly frazzled but also in love, trying to pick

boogers out of this kids nose and the kids swatting back,

right? Because it doesn't know any

difference. And the woman who was staring

longingly at the baby, she was an elderly woman, which means

that this wasn't like a naive look on her face.

She been through it. So she knows.

She knows that what that baby is going to do is that baby's going

to grow up to annihilate her. Because that's what children do.

They annihilate their parents. They annihilate their sleep,

they annihilate their social life.

They annihilate all of your attention.

And this elderly woman knew that.

She knows that babies grow up to destroy their parents in the

most loving way. And still she was just beaming

longingly at the baby. I could like I could tell in her

eyes that she would do anything to descend back into that season

of life and let the child annihilate her.

And what is that? I think that has got to be very

close to the look of God's face when he created the heavens and

the earth got to be close. God knows.

He knows in Genesis 1, He knows that the the heavens and the

earth just this helplessly wiggling baby of the heavens of

the earth in Genesis 1, He knows that the heavens and the earth

are going to grow up to annihilate him.

He's not naive. And what's he do?

He still creates it and delights over it.

And then when the time is right, He willingly descends into His

creation, the very heavens and earth themselves in the person

of Jesus Christ, and is willingly killed and crucified

by His own creation. All of creation humans

definitely. Look, the wood of the trees that

he creates in Genesis 11 was repurposed into a cross to kill

him. The thorns in the bushes he

created in Genesis 11 were jammed into His head.

The humans he's going to create to pay for their sins and to

cover us in righteousness. He dies on a crossroads.

Like, Can you imagine? This is when I say theological

revolution, I mean that there's no other idea about God that has

ever been posited. Like the Christian manifestation

of what kind of God creates a world that he knows is going to

crucify him. Only the God of reality, only

the God of Genesis. And so Genesis 11, we're not

even in the picture yet. We're still 2627 verses away.

But already in Genesis 11, the gospel is here.

There's no fall, there's no sins yet, but the gospel is still

present in here. OK?

So I want you to hear the gospel through the lens of Genesis 11.

Last point. Then your butts are out of the

pews and we're singing. Genesis 11 is not only a distant

story about how God created the heavens and the earth.

Yes, it's that, but it is also the story of your own salvation.

Check this out. How does the Bible describe your

salvation? The New Testament describes your

salvation by calling you. When you turn to Jesus and

faith, it calls you a new what a new creation, right?

Paul says anyone who is in Christ is a new what a new

creation. So that means that God has

created your salvation the same way that he created the heavens

and the earth. Your salvation is second

Genesis. This is profound.

That means that God created it the same way as He created the

heavens and the earth. Ex Nilo, out of nothing.

What did the universe do to earn its creation?

Nothing, It didn't exist. What did the universe do to

merit its creation? Nothing.

It didn't exist. The same is true of your new

creation. This is an exact parallel with

your salvation. What did God see in you to earn

your salvation? Nothing.

You'd do anything to earn it. How did you muster up the faith

to believe in God when your neighbors don't?

You didn't. You didn't muster up your faith

even. That's a gift of God.

Even your faith. That conscious decision where

you said I'm going to trust in God.

God created that ex Neela out of nothing.

It was not there. He spoke and boom, it was there.

You are as responsible for your salvation as the heavens and the

earth are responsible for their creation.

Which is to say not at all. You did nothing.

All you did was receive the gift.

And so let me ask you a question.

Are you, are you a Christian this morning?

Don't ever think to yourself I'm a Christian because I'm morally

superior than non Christians. No, never think to yourself I'm

a Christian because I'm spiritually more in touch with

other people. Wrong answer dad, wrong answer.

Never think to yourself I'm a Christian because I at least had

the good logic to add up all the stuff and say, oh, trusting

Jesus is the right choice with my life.

That's not why you're a Christian.

Maybe it felt that way to you. That was an illusion.

Why are you a Christian? Because of Genesis 11?

Because God created your faith, ex Neilo, the same way he

created the heavens and the earth, ex Neilo.

And so you know what the proper response to that is A lifetime

of worship and adoration to this creator God.

So let me pray and we'll do that together.

Heavenly Father, thank you for being our creator.

It's amazing to live in this crazy cosmos of heaven and earth

and sunsets and seas and galaxies and black holes and

beans. All of it is just wild.

I remember, Lord, it blew my mind the first time I read

Jonathan Edwards and he talked about this silkworm that was

crawling across his lap. And as he looked at the

silkworm, he said, what is this but a revelation of the person

of Christ? And I was like, who would ever

see that in a silkworm? That's crazy.

And he goes on to say the same way that this silkworm will be

crushed and it's materials would be used to create the finest

garments. Silk is the exact same way that

Christ would be crushed and that.

That his righteousness would cover us.

And when I read that, I thought, Oh my gosh, there should never

be anything in the universe that I look at that doesn't remind me

in some way of Jesus. And so I pray that you would

give us that type of faith and imagination, point us to Jesus

in all things, and help us believe in the theological

revolution of Genesis. So it's in the precious name of

Jesus that all God's people prayed.

Amen. Let's stand and let's worship

this God together.