Made to Multiply

[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Good morning everybody

[SPEAKER_01]: It's good to see you.

[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Scott, and I serve as one of the elders here.

[SPEAKER_01]: If citizens is new or you call citizens home, you're welcome.

[SPEAKER_01]: Truly is a privilege to be before you to share God's word.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a privilege, thank you, United students.

[SPEAKER_01]: For being here, it looks like everybody's getting baptized today.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're all dressed in white, but you look great.

[SPEAKER_01]: So glad that you're here.

[SPEAKER_01]: I thank you for being awake.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know that you've had a big weekend, and so that you're here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ready to listen to God's Word is not lost on me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being here.

[SPEAKER_01]: To you who are in the overflow rooms.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening in from home or the road.

[SPEAKER_01]: We want to dive into God's Word together.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask you a big sort of ultimate question as we get started this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're in this series.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have been for a number of weeks on made, recovering our humanity through Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're really flying at the 30,000 foot level to understand this huge concept of what does it mean to be human?

[SPEAKER_01]: What does it mean to be humanity and how are we made?

[SPEAKER_01]: And so here's the question for this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: What is it that brings purpose to your life?

[SPEAKER_01]: What is it that brings purpose to your life?

[SPEAKER_01]: Michael's stottard is probably not a name that you know unless you're from Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just outside of Portland, Maine.

[SPEAKER_01]: Michael's stottard.

[SPEAKER_01]: Michael, tragically, passed away this last week.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was just 65 years old.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know him personally.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I was introduced to him through his obituary.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a brief read, but in that obituary, where this is just the sort of summation of his life that's posted to tell people about Michael, what he did for work, what he did to earn a living, takes up less than a sentence of that obituary.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the rest of that sentence deflects away from it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It reads Michael enjoyed a successful career in banking, but his impact extended well beyond his professional life.

[SPEAKER_01]: It goes on in the obituaries full of information about his wife of 43 years, Lisa.

[SPEAKER_01]: His kids, his grandkids, the Christian business leaders association, he started for the state of Maine.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it concludes this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: and says, Michael leaves behind a legacy far greater than professional accomplishments or titles.

[SPEAKER_01]: It can be seen in the family he loved, the marriage he cherished, the faith he lived, and the example he set for those who came after him.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was a devoted husband, a loving father, a treasured papa in a man whose life pointed others towards Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I learned about Michael because one of those people that he pointed to Christ is my friend Gary.

[SPEAKER_01]: Gary was over for coffee yesterday afternoon at the house and was telling me about how he was going to go to this funeral for this man who led him to Christ at a young age.

[SPEAKER_01]: Michael, a banker in a town of 8,960 people at the 2020 census, Michael was a man that lived a life of purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: lived a life of purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: What about you?

[SPEAKER_01]: What is the purpose that you're living for?

[SPEAKER_01]: What animates you?

[SPEAKER_01]: What animates you to do the things that you do.

[SPEAKER_01]: In this series on recovering a biblical understanding of what makes this human, we've been trying to answer some of those questions, as I said, about what makes this human.

[SPEAKER_01]: What we've been talking about so far is mostly in the realm of the who.

[SPEAKER_01]: Who are we as humans?

[SPEAKER_01]: What does it mean that we're made in the image of God, the Emago Day?

[SPEAKER_01]: What does it look like that we are loving and worshiping people?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's more of the who.

[SPEAKER_01]: But is there also anything inherent to our humanity that speaks to the what?

[SPEAKER_01]: That speaks to the what are we supposed to be doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: What are we supposed to doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: What are we here for?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what we're talking about this morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Each week, we're going back to the first chapters of Genesis.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing God's design.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing sins distortion.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing Christ's redemption.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do that this morning as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's design sins distortion.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christ's redemption.

[SPEAKER_01]: In those verses that were read for us already, we saw God's design for our purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: We see the increation in the very act of creating man.

[SPEAKER_01]: He creates man with a purpose, look at verse 28, and God blessed them.

[SPEAKER_01]: God blessed them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air of the heavens and everything living that moves on the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is what, that verse is what commentators theologians they call it, the creation mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: The creation mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's this authoritative charge from God to the man he's creating.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's in the very act of creating.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in that act of creating, he embues into their lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: It fuses into their being a sense of purpose in this creation mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Look at the characteristics of it real quick with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: What it looks like, what he is calling them to do, first and foremost, is founded in a blessing to catch that at first, the first phrase of the verse in God blessed them.

[SPEAKER_01]: So before he tells them what they're going to be doing, he tells them who they are in him, they're blessed.

[SPEAKER_01]: They have his favor, they have his acceptance, they have his joy, he is blessing them, he is bestowing unto them good things, and that first good thing that he gives to them is a mandate, it's a purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: The mandate is this, that they are to be fruitful in multiply, that are replicates, that reproduce, that are to be in new places, and those new places all over the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: The scope of the completion of this mandate is that the whole world is full of people just like them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Image bears of the King, people that are reflecting God's glory, basically we can say, the mandate is world wide worship of Jesus Christ, of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And uniquely, for mankind, because if we had read a few verses earlier, you would have seen in Genesis chapter 1, he actually tells the animals to be fruitful and multiply as well.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: The idea is that the God's world is to be teaming with life.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's to be a place of abundance, to be a place where new life is taking place.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's true for animals, it's true for mankind, but uniquely for mankind, he calls mankind to have dominion.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your translation might say to rule.

[SPEAKER_01]: The idea is that humanity as we're fruitful and multiplying, what we're doing is we're bringing a representation of God's creative work, but of his authority as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are caretakers of his creation.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are bringing flourishing and thriving in joy and blessing that we have been given.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are multiplying it out to others, spreading it across the entire world, and leading and ruling in a way that gives God the glory.

[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty good vision, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like a world I want to be in, that sounds like a world I would love to spend time in.

[SPEAKER_01]: A people blessed by God to multiply, blessed to be a blessing, made to multiply, humanity flourishing and thriving.

[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Inextricably connected, you can't take it apart.

[SPEAKER_01]: Inextricably connected to your humanity is you are calling to participate in God's purposes in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to say that again so you catch it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Inextricably connected, to your humanity, is your calling to participate in God's purposes in the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have a purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've been talking so far in this series and we've used the phrase, Emago Day.

[SPEAKER_01]: You remember that?

[SPEAKER_01]: Emago Day?

[SPEAKER_01]: the image of God that we're made in the image of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in this creation mandate, what we see happening is that the image of God who we are to reflect his glory is being combined with the misceo day, the mission of God, the Amago day, and the misceo day come together in who we are as humans.

[SPEAKER_01]: Reflectors of God's glory on his mission and his purposes.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's God's design for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if that's true, if that's true, the part of what it means to be a human is that we have this sense of mission and purpose baked into who we are as a man and woman.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then why is it so often so many of us feel purposeless?

[SPEAKER_01]: That there's a sense of purposelessness.

[SPEAKER_01]: Read a couple of polls this week.

[SPEAKER_01]: that weren't super encouraging.

[SPEAKER_01]: They never are.

[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever read a poll that was that great?

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_01]: A Gallup poll, Gallup in June of 226.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just a few months ago, reported that 43% of Gen Z adults, ages 15 to 30.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's Gen Z. Gen Z, 15 to 30.

[SPEAKER_01]: This poll says 43% of them claim little or no sense of purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: That means half of Americans, age 50, 15 to 30, around half, have little or no clear sense for why to get out of bed in the morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: And is this just for young adults?

[SPEAKER_01]: No, Gallup also did another discouraging poll.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they found that in 2025, in 2025, working adults.

[SPEAKER_01]: So this is across ages, if you're employed over at the age of 18, working adults, that only one in five of them, 17%.

[SPEAKER_01]: strongly agreed that they believe their life had a purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: One in five employed Americans believe that their life has a purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the researchers, Ryan Stower, said, people's sense of purpose is in short supply these days.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, those are the studies, that's what's out there in the world, uh, enough to be discouraging, but to take it home for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we were being honest, isn't it true that at times, for each one of us, whether it's looking in the mirror or staring at the ceiling as we go to bed, we all look back and think, is this really worth it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this really what I was created to be doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: Students, you've got the unspoken pressure of people wondering what you're going to do with your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you're thinking, I don't know, what is my purpose?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why am I doing this?

[SPEAKER_01]: For those of you like me, in middle age, your calendar is full, but your heart so often is empty.

[SPEAKER_01]: The days are flying by.

[SPEAKER_01]: The weeks are whizzing by.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you stop sometimes and think,

[SPEAKER_01]: What is the purpose of all this?

[SPEAKER_01]: What has gone wrong?

[SPEAKER_01]: What happened here?

[SPEAKER_01]: Where did we go from this beautiful vision to where we are now?

[SPEAKER_01]: The story in Genesis tells us the why behind that.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's design for this blessed people, this people full of purpose, that would be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with good authority and flourishing in all of that was distorted by sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: Adam and Eve violate God's mandate, and they violate his rule for them in sin enters the picture.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what we have in Genesis chapter 3 to 11 is a quick downward spiral of humanity.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: Not fulfilling the creation mandate, but bucking up against it and saying, no, we're going to do it our way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let me just give you two examples of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: This will be super discouraging for about 10 minutes, but it's going to get better, I promise.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Genesis chapter 3 to 11 is just this drum beat of wickedness, provading God's good creation.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to tell you two stories, Canin Abel and the Tower of Babel.

[SPEAKER_01]: Canin Abel, so this is in chapter 4 of Genesis.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know this story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Canin Abel, the two sons of Adam and Eve.

[SPEAKER_01]: Their brothers.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain makes a sacrifice, able makes a sacrifice.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're seeking to worship the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Able sacrifice is received.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is seen as good by the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain's sacrifice is not.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the problem wasn't the content of what was on the altar.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was the substance of their heart.

[SPEAKER_01]: How they approached the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Cain was angry.

[SPEAKER_01]: C. and verse 5, so Cain was very angry in his face fell, and the Lord said to Cain, where are you angry?

[SPEAKER_01]: Why is your face fallen?

[SPEAKER_01]: If you do well, will you not be accepted?

[SPEAKER_01]: If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's desire is for you, but you must rule over it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Remember the convict creation mandate?

[SPEAKER_01]: What was it that separated us from the mandate to the animals?

[SPEAKER_01]: We're all told to be fruitful multiply, but there was one unique thing that we as mankind were to do, to rule and have dominion.

[SPEAKER_01]: God is telling Kain that he's be setting up sin in this way, that it's like sin is an animal, crouching at his door, ready to eat him.

[SPEAKER_01]: It says sin is crouching there, but you need to rule over it.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's saying the cane, can you need to be faithful to the purpose I created you for it?

[SPEAKER_01]: You need to be faithful to the mandate that I gave to your parents.

[SPEAKER_01]: You need to rule over sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: What was true of the animals?

[SPEAKER_01]: You need to do in the spiritual realm.

[SPEAKER_01]: Rule over sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain doesn't do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cain gives in, he doesn't do the right thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: He allows him, into the house, he allows him to take over him.

[SPEAKER_01]: He kills his brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: And what came then proceeds to do is not only violate that creation mandate for himself, but to multiply that out into the generations.

[SPEAKER_01]: Before the end of chapter 4, we see the legacy of Cain with his children and his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren, to the point where one of his descendants is a serial murderer who is so boastful about what he's doing that he brags about it to his wife.

[SPEAKER_01]: Really depressing stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: How about one more story along those lines?

[SPEAKER_01]: Chapter 11.

[SPEAKER_01]: In Chapter 11, we have the Tower of Babel.

[SPEAKER_01]: Tower of Babel, again, a famous story, maybe from Sunday school or your other readings.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in the Tower of Babel,

[SPEAKER_01]: We have some people and they get together and they're going to build a tower Or eat it for you here and they said to one another come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly For they had brick for stone and bit them in for mortar and then they said Chapter 11 verse four come let us build ourselves a city in a tower with his talk to the heavens And let us make a name for ourselves less we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth

[SPEAKER_01]: So at first, this kind of starts off good.

[SPEAKER_01]: You think, hey, these people are coming together.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're using the tools and resources available to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're exercising creativity.

[SPEAKER_01]: They're building something meaningful.

[SPEAKER_01]: This starts to feel a bit like creation mandate faithfulness.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then we hear their hearts.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then we hear why they're doing this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let us make a name for ourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: God's repeated command to His people from Adam and Eve to Noah is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth for His glory.

[SPEAKER_01]: The people in Babel said, no, no, no, we're going to stay here for our glory.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're not going to multiply.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to do our thing for our purposes and our glory

[SPEAKER_01]: and so the Lord confuses them and through the confusion of their languages sends them out into different places.

[SPEAKER_01]: I bring up these two stories because they so powerfully illustrate from this early chapters of Genesis, these two twin thieves of purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: Two twin thieves of our original clarity of purpose, think of the Kain and Abel story.

[SPEAKER_01]: Rather than being fruitful and multiplying goodness throughout the world,

[SPEAKER_01]: There's violence, and there's strife, and there's disunity, and there's competition, there's a horizontal fracturing of what it means to be human together.

[SPEAKER_01]: Think of the Tower of Babel.

[SPEAKER_01]: And instead of right worship of God that looks up to God and says, God, how can we follow your purposes?

[SPEAKER_01]: What is it that you would have for us?

[SPEAKER_01]: It says, we don't need God.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna make a tower to the heavens for fill our own purposes for our own glory.

[SPEAKER_01]: fracturing the vertical relationship with God.

[SPEAKER_01]: These same things happen in our world now.

[SPEAKER_01]: The sin of cane, it looks like your co-worker succeeds, but you feel diminished by that.

[SPEAKER_01]: A friend gets recognition for something.

[SPEAKER_01]: You see something going really well for them on social media, but you whisper to your other friends why they don't deserve that recognition.

[SPEAKER_01]: Another person's blessing becomes a threat to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Another person's blessing is a threat to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Senate Bible looks like you make a good decision.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're leading really well.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're serving.

[SPEAKER_01]: But you're doing that out of a growing need for your own importance.

[SPEAKER_01]: You want people to acknowledge it.

[SPEAKER_01]: You want people to affirm what you're doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: And when they don't, you're crushed.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a sin of Babel.

[SPEAKER_01]: See, sin has distorted our world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Made to multiply, built to be flourishing, fruitful, ruling and reigning with God's good authority for a world full of the worship of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: We hate and despise one another.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're in competition with one another.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are after our own sense of importance, and we wonder why we lack purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: I told you there was some good news.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go to that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christ redeems all of this.

[SPEAKER_01]: In this world of sin, there was the follow-on and the carry-on from what Adam and Eve brought into the world through that fracturing of their relationship with God, we inherit that and we're born into that reality.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a struggle of sense of purpose, where we know it should be better, but we don't know how to do it and we don't know how to get there.

[SPEAKER_01]: but to Noah into Abraham, in all throughout the Old Testament, God promises that there would be a better way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Enter Jesus or enter Jesus to the story.

[SPEAKER_01]: God made man.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's miraculously born.

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't inherit Adam's sinful tendency.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's miraculously born.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's fully God and fully man.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he fully fulfills God's mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: It laws to the end of the degree.

[SPEAKER_01]: He fulfills the law in every way, fully faithful to the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus Himself says that greater love

[SPEAKER_01]: has none than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends.

[SPEAKER_01]: And he himself does that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus dies on the cross for our sin, not because he deserved a punishment, but because we did, because we violated his purpose and rules for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: He dies for us, bearing our punishment.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then rises again, proving power over death, offering life to all so that we could be reconciled to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: He rises again, and then

[SPEAKER_01]: a few days later, after appearing to the disciples, he gathered some of them together.

[SPEAKER_01]: He gathered some of them together for his final words.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you've been a reader of the Old Testament, you would have recognized this kind of scene.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you think of Moses, you think of Joshua, you think of Jacob, you think of David, towards the end of their life, their final days, they bring together the people most important to them, and they share with them,

[SPEAKER_01]: that they're most important thoughts, a blessing, an instruction, a prophecy of what's to come.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is what Jesus says in that moment, in Matthew chapter 28, this is what Jesus wants them to be left with before He ascends to heaven, to wait the final coming of His kingdom.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hear the echoes of Genesis chapter one.

[SPEAKER_01]: Matthew 28, and Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have committed to you, and behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.

[SPEAKER_01]: Very well known, verses, I hope to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is what we call the Great Commission.

[SPEAKER_01]: The great commission, Jesus, gathering His disciples together, commissioning them with a sense of purpose to go and do.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now think to yourself, is this a new thought that Jesus had?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is this something different that He's doing?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it something that traces its origin back to the first thing that God gave to His people, the creation mandate,

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus was inaugurating a new humanity in himself.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have the old humanity in Adam, born and sin, violating the creation mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have a new humanity in Christ, given a new mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: The creation mandate called for humanity to be fruitful and multiply.

[SPEAKER_01]: The great commission calls for a new humanity in Christ to make disciples.

[SPEAKER_01]: to multiply disciples, followers of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: The creation mandate called for humanity to fill the earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: The great commission calls for the new humanity and Christ to make disciples of all nations.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to see no limit to the worldwide worship of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: The creation mandate called for humanity to have dominion, to rule over with God's authority, to bring about flourishing and thriving

[SPEAKER_01]: calls the new humanity in Christ to go out with the authority that Christ has over heaven and over earth.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has dominion.

[SPEAKER_01]: It were invited to exercise that dominion through teaching about him, through speaking of him, speaking his truth.

[SPEAKER_01]: So don't you see, great commission is not a new thought.

[SPEAKER_01]: The great commission is the creation mandate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Restated and recast for the world that we live in now in the new humanity that we are in Christ.

[SPEAKER_01]: Before Adam's sin got had a purpose for his people.

[SPEAKER_01]: Adam's sin distorted that purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: But in Christ, we are invited to once again take up that purpose to inherit our new humanity and join with God in his worldwide mission.

[SPEAKER_01]: What a grace that is.

[SPEAKER_01]: What a grace that is that not only are we saved in Christ, reconcile to Him, but we are restored to a purpose and a privilege of walking in the ways that He's prepared for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: So what does this mean for you?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's been a lot of Bible, a lot of theology, I hope, helpful.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what would this mean for you to embrace this and for me?

[SPEAKER_01]: But following in this, this would change how we view salvation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, if you've been here, you've heard us talking about this and this, wouldn't necessarily change this for you, but I hope it's a change that you've embraced.

[SPEAKER_01]: And for some of you, if you're new to Christianity, new to the gospel, this would be a change.

[SPEAKER_01]: We all need the reminder that God's purpose for His people came before their sin violated

[SPEAKER_01]: The cross, our debt paid, came before our commission.

[SPEAKER_01]: God blesses, he is the first mover.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is the one who approaches us and has a foundation built that we are not working for our salvation.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are not doing things for him and hopes that he's pleased for us and says, hey, here's your gold star, you got it.

[SPEAKER_01]: God bless them and he made.

[SPEAKER_01]: New Testament tells us why we hear his enemies Christ died for us.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is a good place for a Tim Keller quote.

[SPEAKER_01]: Religion says, I obey, therefore I'm accepted.

[SPEAKER_01]: Christianity says, I'm accepted, therefore I obey.

[SPEAKER_01]: You see the difference?

[SPEAKER_01]: You see the difference?

[SPEAKER_01]: The gospel isn't keep the rules, do the stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe God will approve of you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's that God is a God of gracious love.

[SPEAKER_01]: These offering to you in Jesus Christ, and there's a follower of Jesus Christ, you have the high calling of a restored humanity to fill the earth with followers of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: It also changes how we think about sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: It changes how we think about salvation, it changes how we think about sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a stereotype of how some people might think about the Christian message.

[SPEAKER_01]: might go like this.

[SPEAKER_01]: You believe a couple of principles, some things that we say about what the good news is.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you believe those principles.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, just, like, please try to not do bad things until you die.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's sort of a message as some of us might hear in my receive and a church.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just don't do bad things.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is not the substance of the gospel message.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is true.

[SPEAKER_01]: We must put half sin and put on righteousness.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is true that we pursue the Lord and holiness.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that pursuit of holiness has a purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are called to so much more than sin management.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are called to a Christ likeness that is full of purpose and full of joy because God Himself has given

[SPEAKER_01]: Before the Great Commission, this illustrates what I'm saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: Before the Great Commission, but consistent with this line of thinking straight from the creation mandate to then King David.

[SPEAKER_01]: Psalm 51, he's sinned with Bashiba, horrifically.

[SPEAKER_01]: The fallout from that is terrible, which still talking about a thousands of years later.

[SPEAKER_01]: In his song, 51, he's confessing what he's done wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's confessing his sin.

[SPEAKER_01]: He's confessing his, his, his, his, transgression.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what it says in verses 12 to 13.

[SPEAKER_01]: Restore to me the joy of your salvation.

[SPEAKER_01]: Grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Then I will teach transgressors your ways so that sinners will turn back to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did you catch that turn?

[SPEAKER_01]: David's not just after the cessation of sin in his life, he's not just after warm and good feelings of forgiveness.

[SPEAKER_01]: He wants both of those.

[SPEAKER_01]: But what he's after is that he might be used of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: He might have a purpose in this that he could teach other people to avoid the folly that he himself has fallen into.

[SPEAKER_01]: He longs for the joy of his salvation and that forgiveness so that he might teach others.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what we see in the great commission.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is what we see in the great commission.

[SPEAKER_01]: For given so that we might bless others and do them, spiritual good, changes how we think about sin, two more, changes how we think about serving, changes how we think about serving.

[SPEAKER_01]: There is a way to serve.

[SPEAKER_01]: the commits, all of the problems of Genesis 3, Genesis 4, Genesis 11, a way to serve that's seeking glory for yourself, seeking acknowledgment for yourself, a way to serve that is actually in competition with others.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why should you serve in kids ministry?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not being paid to say this by the staff.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why should you serve in kids ministry?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it because,

[SPEAKER_01]: only because, is it only because there's a need?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's one reason.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is it because, only, they could save the church some money.

[SPEAKER_01]: We wouldn't have to hire outside help.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's a reason.

[SPEAKER_01]: What if your motivation, your reason was, I am created by God with a purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that purpose is to be fruitful and multiply and teach other people about Jesus Christ and the joy that's in him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this church is putting that up on a platter for me and saying there's hundreds of kids like that, a hundred feet away that would love for you to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: That is a good reason to volunteer for kids ministry.

[SPEAKER_01]: You'll hear more about that later.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm using that as an illustration to talk about all the things that all the ways that we serve in life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why should you serve your family at home?

[SPEAKER_01]: Not just so that the obey you in respect to you as a parent, but because you have a higher vision for them than being good kids.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have a vision for them to know and love Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why should you be a servant at your workplace and do you work well into the Lord?

[SPEAKER_01]: Not just because you want your coworkers to like you, but because you believe in their humanity and you want them to know love and trust Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: Changes how we serve.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lastly, finally, it changes how we think about our schedule.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our salvation, our sin, our serving, and I just needed another S word, and so schedule.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm using schedule to just talk about everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: It changes how we think about everything.

[SPEAKER_01]: The calling to make disciples is not just for superpeople.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just for seamless people.

[SPEAKER_01]: The invitation to participate

[SPEAKER_01]: and making disciples of Jesus is an imitation to be fully human and to live a flourishing life of purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so eager that this not fall on you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I know that any time you hear a message about the great commission or about purpose, some of you that's gonna land with a sense of guilt.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you're just gonna feel like, I know I know I should serve in kids ministry, I know I should be doing better, I know I should do more, and that's not what I'm trying to give to you today.

[SPEAKER_01]: What I'm trying to give to today is an imitation of be human, to be fully human, that God has a purpose for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as you're raising up your children and pulling them to Christ, you're living into that purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: As you're doing your work excellently as unto the Lord, you're living into that purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a different sermon from every moment holy.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is the same, and it's to animate that, and crystallize that in your mind, that what we live to do is to be fruitful and multiply the blessings that we have been given out into the hearts and minds of the people that we're entrusted to be with.

[SPEAKER_01]: One of the reasons I love being at this church is that this church is a church that believes that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm seeing that individually, the disciples made in this church, the disciples made in this community, by people in this church.

[SPEAKER_01]: The way that we're seeking to multiply corporately through campuses and church plants, this church has this vision in this purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope it's not just true for the church, but it's true for you as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's pray to that end.

[SPEAKER_01]: Pray with me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our Father, what can we do other than, say, thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for creating us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for creating us to be in relationship with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for creating us with purpose.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, in your grace, you have blessed us, you have loved us, and you have entrusted to us to participate with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Through our foolishness, through our failures, through our inadequacies, to participate with you in the glory of Jesus being worshiped across the entire world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Father pray that a outcome of this morning would be an imagination for what that might look like for each one of those present here.

[SPEAKER_01]: to think of their life, think of their schedule, think how and what ways could you be offering them the opportunity to make disciples, to speak of Jesus, to be His very hands and feet in every place they go to His glory.

[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.