JAN 26 2020 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S1E1 | God

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "God" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · January 26, 2020
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning. I'm Kai. My wife and I, Beverly, do marriage ministries. We love helping couples to have amazing relationships. We've had one for 30 years, so we'd love to help you in just enjoying life. This is the Word of the Lord, and it's Genesis 1, 1 through 10. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light was good.

And he separated the light. And he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening. And there was morning the first day. And God said, let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from the water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault sky. There was evening. And there was morning the second day.

And God said, let the water under the sky be gathered to one place. And let the dry ground appear. And it was so. And God called the dry ground land. And the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. The Word of the Lord. Thank you, Kai. Lord Jesus, I want to pray that you would just bless this Word now. As we love the Scripture, God. And we want to know more about you in it. We want to find you in the midst of it, God.

Come alive now and create in this moment, God. A power that reaches to our hearts and our minds. Changes this world. In Jesus' name, amen. What is God creating in you? I guess if you had to sum up the Genesis chapter 1. What is God creating? God is a creative God. But we really want to make, we want to be able to land this passage in your life. One of the things that we're trying to do with this new series, it starts today on the book of Genesis, called Genesis Behind the Curtain, is to look at the actors behind the story.

It's really easy to get lost in the story. Or if you're a theologian, to begin to argue about, well, is the world 6,000 years old? Or is it 13 billion years old? Or why did he create the, you know, the birds, you know, before this? And why did the vegetation? And why did he do what he does? And we can get lost in all that. And all those things are important. But what we can tend to miss in the midst of the creation story is what God is trying to say about himself in the Genesis story.

And so all those things are important. But what we want to do when we read the Bible is to see it as a book of God's, about God's love for his people. The Bible, as you'll see in the notes, a little bit further down, is a book, is a story about God and his love for his people. And so in one week, I am going to explain everything there is to know about God. No, I'm not going to do that. It's a little bit difficult. I pulled out chapter one, and this is going to be a five-week series.

We're going to be going through Genesis all year, on and off in different seasons. In the first season, we're going to look at five characters. The first character being God. The second character being creation. Creation is part of the story, and creation is living and alive. Creation says, Jesus said, the stones will cry out. It says that the waves worship as they speak. Creation is alive. And so we see it as a character.

We're going to talk about creation. And the importance of creation care. So next week, we're going to look at creation. And the importance as believers of really tending for the garden and what that means to us. The third character is going to be Adam. The fourth character is going to be Eve. And then we're going to talk about Satan as the fifth character. So that's going to be five weeks looking in the first three chapters of Genesis.

We'll continue to move on in Genesis and look at Joseph and Abraham and all these other stories over the next year or so. About every six to eight weeks, we'll take a break, and we're going to study some other passages and some other books in the Bible as well. But we're going to be making our way through Genesis. So if you don't have a reading plan, I encourage you to start digging into Genesis as that's where we're going to be throughout this year as a church.

What we want to do as we look at it, and I'm the kind of person, I like the systematic theology. I like the structure. I like all the nuance. But more than anything, I like the relationships. The Bible was meant to be a love story about God to his people, about his heart for you. And so when I look at the Bible, I tend to look at the Bible in the terms of relationships. I don't look at the Bible so much as a textual criticism and these different things that we've learned in school to tear it apart and look at the dating and the age.

All that matters. And there are people that are much better at that than I. What I tend to want to look at is the relationships because it's a story about God. And so today, as we kind of pull back the curtain, because my daughter is in drama. She's in the drama class and in some of the plays at La Jolla High. What I always thought was cool is you see the play and you get overwhelmed by the play. It's like, great, you go to the play.

But then afterwards, you go backstage and there's all this, the life of a play happens behind the curtain. It really does. I mean, they're eating, they've made food, they're laughing. I mean, it's just this huge, the production behind the production. Going behind the scenes of what is happening. That is what we want to do. We want to look behind the curtain. We want to look at God. And I want you to see this creative story as having actors that are in the story that are saying something beyond just what is so easy to see in the scripture.

And so we're going to look at the orchestra that God does and what he orchestrates in creation. Now, maybe you've seen Fantasia. I don't know if you've seen Fantasia. I've always found Fantasia like super creepy. I don't know about you, but I watch it. I find it super creepy. And Mickey Mouse, at one point, he puts on this like wizard, like this Gandalf outfit and he just starts orchestrating all these colors and he's just running around and he's doing all this cool stuff and bringing stuff into being and things are marching and colors are dripping all over the place.

It's a total trip. And when I think about creation, I think about God in the same way. God, as we'll see in this text, is creative. And creation, being creative, not just that he created it, but God is creative. He's creative by nature. That's very different than just seeing the scripture as well in the beginning, God created. He just made this thing. Not only did he make it, he's creative. As you'll see in a moment, creation is when you take a thought and that thought is birthed into action.

You can have a creative idea, but until creation actually becomes something, we have a chemist here I just made eye contact with, and he has created things, made things. It is an idea, the genesis of an idea that you create. God had thoughts in his mind before he ever created. He had thoughts in his mind, the scripture says, outside of time and outside of space where he was thinking, it actually says that he was thinking about you before there ever was a space-time continuum.

And in the midst of that, God is bursting forth. God has to create. One of the people I met with this week, I've been sharing with a lot of friends, inviting lots of people to church, lighting Alpha Cafe is going on. Some of them are here right now over in Alpha Cafe. And I went with a friend of mine to lunch and we were sitting at Duke's and he said to me, I'm really close to accepting Christ. I really want to accept Christ, but I have questions.

And I said, okay man, hit me. Let's go. Let's do this thing. He said, space aliens. And I was like, whoa, whoa, left field, what are we doing? And, you know, I want to tell you where I stand on space aliens. Just quickly, as we move into this. Because there are some structural things we need to talk about it. I think God's creative. And I don't think there's any reason why God, being creative, he has to create. He didn't just create this one time.

Why God couldn't have created multiple times, perhaps a billion different creations. Maybe there's a whole universe somewhere that God has created. There's nothing in scripture that would deny that this has an ability of just color and sound. Imagine God just creating a whole universe based on color and sound somewhere. God is creative and there's no reason why he couldn't have created in different places in a different time and in different realms.

God's creative. He has to create. Do you think he sat around for eternity doing nothing before he's like, well, I'll just do that one thing. I'll make the earth and then we'll just do it. No, God's creative. And so, I have no problem with that. You actually see a form of this with the angelic beings who live in a different plane in a different way. They have a different, they're different beings. They're kind of extraterrestrial in a way.

I'm not going to go too deep down this rabbit hole. You can read C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton if you want to get into it a little bit deeper. You can find out more about this out of the silent planet. These are things that fascinated people before. But these are just some of the questions and going back to the idea of not trying to get too much into the nuance of that, but we serve a creative God. God is creative and he thought about you before he ever created space and time.

I love that, that you were a thought, a seed in the mind of God. A seed in the heart of God that he couldn't wait to create. I'm currently working on writing something right now and I'm in that flow state. I don't know if you know what the flow state is. I didn't know what it was until Pastor Harry told me. One day I was kayaking and I got a hold of him. I said, dude, I'm just feeling the ocean and I'm kayaking. It's amazing.

He goes, dude, you're in the flow state. I was like, what? You're in the flow state. That's like when everything comes together and it's all working for you. And I was like, yeah, flow states. So that's my new thing though. I just want to be in the flow state. And so I have this thing I'm working on writing and I just can't wait to get home this afternoon to start writing on it. You ever been like that? You have this thing you want to create, this art or a song you want to sing or something you want to do and you just can't wait to get there to make it happen.

I think this is how God is with us. I think God had this thought in his mind in eternity and he's like, man, I've got to make that happen. I've got to make, you know, I've got to make that person, you, put your name there, exist because I love you so much. God is a creative God. And God, as you'll see, there's a little box that's kind of in the wrong place. I moved it to the right on your notes. It says God's spirit and I would say animates creation with a word.

Now there's so much happening with that when God speaks. If you look at the word of God, how words, I want to, now we're going to have to do this together by the way, because I'm doing this entire thing on God in one week, which is about a 31 minute sermon top. You're going to have to go home and take the baton to go a little bit deeper. And I want to encourage you to Google verses in the Bible about the word, about the word, the word and check into it because when God speaks, he uses words in so many ways and he speaks creation.

The first act is with a word. God has a word and he speaks it into being and then it is created from that. The Bible says that words have the power of life and death. Words are so important. But we see that God is animating creation through a word. And this is a theme, this idea of the word. Jesus says, in the beginning, John, the book in John says, in the beginning was what? John 1. The word. And the word was God. What does the word mean when Jesus says word?

It isn't like when we were saying it in the 1980s, like word up. It is like he is the totality of everything. Of every word that could be said, of every thought that could be thunk, of every single, you know, of every single idea that could be had, God is it. And so when you ask God who he is, he just says things like, I am. I just is. I is what I is. I am. I just, you can't explain it. I am. And he speaks with a word.

And this word is so powerful. It is a creative word. And let me just challenge you because we want this entire passage to find roost in your life. We want it to find a runway where it can land in your life. How are your words? What are you creating with your words in the way that you speak? Now, before we do move into this, I want to say that when you look at the scripture, there is multiple ways to look at it. But two that have been important to me is one, as I spoke a moment ago, is systematically.

Looking at the systems that God put in place. Looking at scripture systematically. Breaking it down. This is sentence diagramming. My wife said the worst grade she ever got in college was she was begging the professor for a C. And she's a great writer. But she said it was diagramming sentences. And she just hated it. Now she said she would love it. But when I look at systematic theology, it's the diagramming of the word of God.

It is systematic thinking about God in a way that is systematic. And we're going to do some of that. But then there's also this like relational component. And I think if I'm going to err on either side, I really want to err, if that's the right word, on the side of relationship. I believe that God put these systems in place. But the ultimate reason he did so is that we can know him and know him deeply and know that the God of the universe loves you.

I told you I was a little saddened last week during this fires in Australia when somebody I saw on a comment section wrote, I thanked the universe for the rain that was sent. I was like so saddened because the universe is arbitrary. The universe is not a loving God. And one of the things that is a stumbling block for many is that the Christian faith, Christ's following, says it's not just this arbitrary universe where things are just happening with A plus B, it's a clock and it's working.

There is actual loving God who cares about you deeply. The heart of God, that God has a heart, and that heart thinks about you individually, and God creates that. But we also want to think systematically. Now, I have one systematic thought for everyone who wants to know this question. Because whenever you're in Genesis, the last time I spoke on Genesis, I did a workshop, and the first thing, a guy walks up to me at the beginning of class.

6,000 years or 13 billion? Which is it? And I was like, uh, uh, because he wants to know. If you do the, you know, the Hebraic timeline through the scripture, then the world is like 6,000 to 10,000 years old. That's it. And if you're going to be a biblical purist, so to speak, you have to say that. And there are many people that say, if you remove that component, then it is a hinge pin and everything else falls apart.

And so, I was trying to read which side he was on and give him the answer he wanted. No, I didn't want to do that. So he's like, you know, 6,000 or 13 billion. I actually, to tell you the truth, just to be honest with you, I am what you would call a mature creationist. They also call it old age creation. Let me tell you what that means. And I think it solves a lot of our issues on this one structural problem before we get back to the heart of God.

I was driving up to Big Bear with my daughter Lucy, and it might have been Yosemite, and Lucy said to me, Dad, why wasn't, she was like seven, six, and I just love, I love kids' questions. She said, why wasn't Adam created a baby? And I was like, he would have died in the wilderness unless he was raised by wolves? I don't know. I didn't know what to answer for her. And I thought, that's a great question. And she goes, and she was like seven or six, and she said, and this is the way Lucy thinks, she is just like in another dimension in so many ways.

And so she says, so if Adam was created as an adult, wasn't the earth then created as an adult also? And I thought, and I'd heard the argument, but she said it in a way that I had never thought about it through a child's lens. And so I believe in what it is, old age creationism. So if you were to ask me, is the world, do I believe that about six to 10,000 years ago that God started, according to the chronology that he started, that God started this whole thing and the world is very young and everything is only 6,000 years old, six to 10,000 years old, I would say yes.

But, hold on, wait for it. But, if you came up to me and said, is the earth 13 billion years old? I would say yes. Because when God created, he created a mature creation because God is outside of time. So he created the stratosphere of all the different layers of sediment. He created all those things like fossil records. He created because he is a detailed, systematic God that tells a story about himself and about creation.

He didn't just start it in that moment. I believe both. That's called old age creationism or mature creationism. That we have a young universe, but it is also an ancient universe because God has the ability to do that. That's actually where I stand and I don't just do it as an easy out. You actually have a biblical record of it that when you read the creation story that Adam is actually created, like my seven-year-old said at the time, as a mature adult.

He was 22 years old, 18 years old, 26, whatever he was. And if you would have said, is he, you know, 30 seconds old after the creation, you'd say yes. And if you would say, what is he, if you checked him and did a record on him or did a physical, is he, you know, 22 years old? The answer is yes, he's both. So there's a systematic thing that we can continue on and maybe that will help some of us kind of land that issue.

It really works for me. Moving into the passage now, there's just a few things I want to look at before I send you out to our new coffee house and hanging out with each other and the rest of your day. We see a few things about God. I want to read through this. In the beginning, we'll talk about that in the moment, there was a beginning and there was a time before our beginning. God created, circle the world creative.

I've talked a moment about creation, but what are you creating? If you want to, once again, I want to create landing places for this text to land in your life. And I will say that it's very possible there could have been some things that you didn't do, but for the most part in our lives, the life you are currently living, you have created. We can blame everybody else. We can look at all the other reasons and there are difficult things that happen to us.

People are victimized, all types of things and we have to deal with those things. But for the most part, for most of us, I would say that the life that you are living has been a self-created life of your own personal choice. Now God has blessed it. You've had difficult times and there's all of that in the story of that. But the reason this is an empowering thought, because some people look at that thought when you say that and they say, well, that might not be true for me, but I find it an empowering thought because it gives me the ability to self-create in the moment.

What are you creating? And if the life you're living right now, if the marriage you're in, if the relationship with the children you're in, if your job, whatever it is, is not working at the moment and you need to have a Mexit and get out of it and move to Canada. Let me follow the news. Mexit? No? No? Yeah, right? And you want to self-create a new life. That didn't really work, did it? You guys just looked at me. Nonetheless, I'm a little too into the history of the Royals at the moment than the rest of you, I imagine.

If you need a moment where you step out of that and create a new, you can create life anew. I'm not telling you to walk out on your family to start your life anew, which is a lie. We can talk about Satan and his lies in a couple weeks, which he will do. He will offer lies like that. You know, you're being held back, so we're going to, you know, and he offers you this way out, which really isn't a way out, but what I'm saying is God is creative and he's self-creating and what are you creating and he wants to create with you.

The earth was formless and void and maybe there is a formless and void part of your life where you're like, I want to give that thing shape. I want God to speak in and to animate that. Darkness was there and maybe you have surrounded yourself in some areas in darkness. There's some relationships that are in darkness and we'll talk about at the end, spoiler alert, we're going to look at Philippians at the end, where it says, we should shine like the stars, that we would become resplendent with light, that we become so creative with God our entire life.

You become like, you become light and not only, as you'll see in the scripture in a moment, not only is it God shining light upon you, it says that you become the source of the light or God within you. Actually, you walk around, you go to Pete's Coffee, you go to La Jolla High School, you go to these different places and it isn't just like you're radiating with the Shekinah glory of God like we talked about with Moses last week, remember?

He had a radiant light that was affected from God, he spent time with God, he would have a radiant light that would blind other people, he had to put a veil on his face, we read about that last week. This was a light that came from God, but now with the Holy Spirit, you actually, the Holy Spirit within you, you become the source of that light, that you can create a life of light and hope and joy, God is doing that and there was light and God saw that the light was good, circle good.

Look around in your life, it's not hard to see what's good and what's not good. We can convince ourselves that good things are, bad things are good and we do a lot of that, but knowing what is good and understanding what it is and then we see God doing all these creative things, he says, let there be, I love that, what could you say to your life? Let there be, let there be joy, let there be hope, let there be this in life, let there be, what could those let there be statements and then God made.

What can you make? What can you create? We are created in the image of God which gives us the ability, one of the things that means is you have the ability to create through your free will. You have the ability to create and invite God into that creation in a mutuality of invitation. We had a whole series of invitation where God is inviting you into something but you're like saying, God, come to my house. I want to invite you into this and you were inviting each other back and forth that you were creating something in your life.

What do you want to create? Maybe you've waited too long. Maybe it is time to create. He made it and then it said that he called it. He gave things value. He gave things worth by what he called them. Words are so important. Words are so important what we say to one another. The words, the scripture says, have the power of life and death. So important. Words are so important. It says, and then it goes on to talk a little bit more and in the end, it says that it was good.

God wants to do good things. I want to promise you this. God wants to partner with you in good things. He wants to partner with you in bringing life and what God creates, what God breathes into, lives and becomes more creative and you begin to get into this momentum of life. Soren Kierkegaard, I believe he's the greatest, I said the greatest mind of the last century or two in the first service. I want to qualify that.

I believe he's probably the greatest philosophical mind. I believe there's other minds that are mathematical and have a different kind of thinking because I believe there's different types of brilliance. But his brilliance in regard to philosophy and theology, I personally think is unmatched. He put, when speaking about the creation, is what I'm really trying to get at as we read the Bible. That we look behind the curtain.

This is what he says. God creates out of nothing. Wonderful, you say. Yes, to be sure. But he does what is still more wonderful. He makes saints out of sinners. You see, once again, this brilliant mind that could have just feasted upon its own ability to think. You see that with a lot of people that are very smart. You see people that are very, especially in academia and when it comes to like knowledge and knowing and education and all these things are important.

But sometimes we get to a place where we just start feasting upon our own ability to think. Our own ability to think of thoughts and to think of new ways to do things. And we get fascinated and we miss what is happening in the midst of the story. This is one of the most brilliant minds ever. And what he comes, what he boils down to. A person who could have thought so far beyond most any of us in this room. I mean, like in realms, like, you know, Einstein did.

Somebody asked Einstein one time for a simple equation. It was like, hey, what's this times this? And he says, I don't know. And they said, you're Einstein. You don't know? He goes, no. He goes, I don't have space in my mind for that. I'm trying to figure out and understand the cosmos. He believed that he didn't want to fill his mind with menial things to miss the understanding of the totality of the purpose. Kierkegaard had the ability to.

He limited what he could think. How far he could go and he brought it down to the base idea that God loves people. That God wants to save people and God can take a sinner and turn them into a saint. And as we'll see in Philippians in a moment, make you resplendent with life. A couple building blocks of our faith as we move through this. First is God existed before time. As I said a moment ago, God, there was no such thing as time.

Like in heaven, watches won't work. They will have no meaning. They'll just be blank. There's no time. You don't get old. There's no, like, hey, I'll see you in five minutes. Everything just is. Because for God to be in time means God would have to be limited. There is no limit to eternity. God is just outside of this thing. And so when God created, he had to actually create a limitation, a space. He had to create a space and time continuum that has boundaries to it.

And God is still outside of that, but he's within it as well. But he's also outside of it. It says God existed before time and God created the beginning. This is really, really key because the scripture, when it says that he created the Latin word, says he created out of nothing. The Latin word is ex nihilo. Ex nihilo means you don't need any matter to create. Now I love this for our own personal lives because sometimes it's so easy to feel desolate and barren and like we have nothing.

He has nothing to work with anymore. We've lost perhaps a relationship. We've lost our finance. We've lost our health. We've lost, you know, we've gotten old and become obsolete. You feel? I was watching The Crown this week and she said, you know, one of the queens or the kings of Philip's mother says in this one scene, around when I was 70 years old, I realized that no one cared what I thought anymore and I was just a spectator.

And she was told that that was not true and the scripture obviously says that that's not true, that you will produce fruit in your old age. It goes on and on. So the scripture doesn't say that, but it is easy to feel like you're working with nothing. You have barrenness. You have nothing to work with and the enemy loves to pile on to that. And what is so beautiful about this passage is that God creates out of nothing.

He creates light out of nothing. He creates everything out of nothing. God doesn't need anything to create and God doesn't need anything to create in your life. God, well, maybe the willingness for change, but sometimes God is even, you know, gracious enough to change us when we're not looking for it. But God would say to you that he wants to create and if you feel like you have nothingness in your life, that you're in a barren place, I would say that God wants to meet you in that place and to create out of that place.

Let me give you a couple of scriptures that are important. Psalm 92. It says, before the mountains were born, you gave birth to the earth and the world. Even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Now, I love this word everlasting to everlasting. This means, because time is going to end. This space can time continuum. The scripture says it's going to end. It is going to dry up and end in some way and then the eternity, the eternality is on both sides of it that is encompassing in it will fill in the void of that space.

But what it says is that God, you are in eternity to eternity. You are in the place. Now, actually, that sentence doesn't actually work because it's putting eternity into a timeline but we cannot grasp eternity. This is why we cannot grasp God. This is why when you get to heaven it won't be boring because you will continue to learn and understand God in new ways as he paints new canvases and pictures for you. It says, he is from everlasting to everlasting and the thing that that says to you to once again land something in your life is that God is not, he's not bound by this moment.

God is not bound by this space. He's not bound because you're too young or you're too old or you don't have enough money or he's not bound by any of it. He created it all and he rules over it all. The question is are we going to let God rule over us? Letting God rule over the totality of your life is one of the most difficult things you can do. To say that you are not just a friend, you're not just Jesus my bro, but you, and you're my father as well, but you're my Lord.

There is a component of following Christ that necessitates us bowing a knee and saying you are the Lord. He wants to be your father ultimately. He wants to be your father more than he wants to be your Lord. But do we bow our knee in every area of our life from everlasting to everlasting and we will become everlasting. You see, God will take us out of this space-time continuum and we are eternal because God put something inside of us that is outside of the realm of the space-time continuum.

It's called your soul. You see, we believe in a soul and souls are eternal. And so within the space-time continuum when God illuminated, when he animated humankind, he breathed life into them and life exists in the soul and once God creates a soul, it can never be snuffed out because God created it. And this is why we'll see that either hell or heaven or whatever side of that we end up on based on our choices is eternal because God creates this and within this, you are there and you have eternity within your hearts.

The scripture says we have eternity within our hearts. That's powerful. Do you realize that you have eternity? That you have something within you, the scripture says, that is outside of the space-time continuum ! That can reach beyond and touch heaven and the throne of heaven! That when you pray, it's like a wormhole to heaven. Scripture is so mind-blowing if you look at what it actually says from everlasting to everlasting.

Number two, as we kind of circle in the tower and we're going to land here in a moment, the nature, as I said earlier, of the divine is creative. Creation is the bringing of thought into action. Jeremiah, these are God's thoughts. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and before you were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you to be a prophet over the nations. I love that. I love that before space and time, God was dwelling upon us.

God was thinking about us with all of his heart and because he's God, he can think about each one of us individually with an equal amount of ferocity, of ferocious love and care. He isn't like, well, I've got to think about Ted for a while but then I can't think about too many at once. He can think about us all. We were birthed in his imagination and his creation that he created you individually just as you are and he loves you as you are.

We live in a world that's constantly telling people they need to change. They constantly need to fix something, become like something, look like something, be something else, do all these things to yourself so that you can be accepted. You know what? You never need to have your original creative, the idea that was in God. You have to fight for acceptance of that. God accepts that because he creates it. You don't have to change and if you're on that treadmill of trying to prove yourself to someone or some place or some group, we need to step back from that and realize that you were a thought in God's mind and he created you just as you were meant to be.

Whether you feel it is in a desert or in fullness, God wants to meet you in the midst of that. God is, in Ephesians 1.4, it says, he chose us in him before the creation of the world. That's powerful. He chose us in him. Who's him? Jesus. He chose us in Jesus before the creation of the world. How can he choose us in the world from before the world because Jesus came into the world and he was before time and when Jesus comes in, it is he is the road through which we are chosen out.

It says that I am, he chose us in him, in Jesus, before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight and in his love. Then this brings us to understanding the fullness and this is the end. This is where we land. God wants to bring fullness into your life. He wants you to partner with him, he wants you to create with him, he wants you to take time away from the distractions to sit. Some, I got a great email this week and a gal said, I've been coming to church, it's been amazing, she's in her early 20s and she said, I need to, you know, I've gotten off social media because it's poisoning my mind.

I thought, dude, that's so, dude, you speak 20 year old, go, because the world poisons us and so what God is saying here is he wants to bring you fullness. I'm going to say, where are we finding fullness? It's very hard to find fullness in the midst of distraction. Not throwing out the baby with the bath water, I'm not saying we shouldn't have social media accounts and all these other things but where are we finding fullness and what is making you alive?

This week, I just made a decision, I just want to get back to being creative. I want to write poetry. I wrote the worst poetry ever yesterday morning. It was awesome. I sat and wrote it. I thought, I'm going to do something creative. I was reading Yates yesterday and just reading through him and reading all these different, you know, medieval poetry and Shakespeare and I just like, I just want to, I just want to, I got to wake up.

I got to wake up, you know? I want to create in fullness and be filled with light. A couple of verses and then we're done. John 8, 12. After it says that light is the revelator of truth. John 8, 12 says, I am the light of the world. That's Jesus. Once again, this all harkens back to the Genesis passage. The entire New Testament is built upon these three chapters. First three chapters of creation, you can find them all the way through scripture.

Everything Jesus says about creation and light and truth. All of these things are just over and over again as it replicates itself over and over again preaching the same word. I'm the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness. That doesn't mean sometimes. It says never. That if you are following Christ that you will never walk in darkness. Now that's, that is a definitive term, never. If we feel like we have darkness, sometimes it's because we've chosen darkness.

You know, even, you know, if you're a Lord of the Rings fan, even when Frodo gets there by Shelob, that spider, remember? He was able to pull out the light in the midst of a dark place. Even if you're in a dark place, you can pull out the light in the midst of that place. It was called the light of Gladriel. We have the Holy Spirit. Bringing out light. It says, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Now, this is really important because what it shows is that the light, as I said a moment ago, isn't something that it's like a glow in the dark. I remember when I, when my kids were small, we would get the little glow in the dark stars on the top of the ceiling. Those are super cool. I used to get in there. It was almost like as cool as looking at the real stars. I'd be so like amazed at these lights. And it gives a little bit of light to the room if they're afraid or whatever.

And I remember, you know, how do you get those things to be bright? You go and you put them in front of the light and then they suck the brightness in and then like it kind of fades away. This is what the Moses, the Shekinah glory of God is. But once again, to say this, that if we are following God to illuminate us from within, if we were walking in the light, you actually become the light. I have a scripture that I love out of Philippians.

It's not in your notes, but it's, it'll be on the screen. It says, become blameless and pure. Become blameless and pure. It means you're fighting for blamelessness. You're fighting. We're blameless in the love of Jesus and in the blood of Jesus. You're completely saved. But at the same time, we need to get rid of the old deeds of the past and not walk in darkness. It says, become blameless and pure. Children of God, without fault, in a warped and crooked generation.

Now, I would agree we're living in a warped and crooked generation, but I don't think that it's the worst it's ever been. I regularly hear, it's never been this bad. You know, and I'm like, really? Have you read about first century Rome? Like, that's pretty bad. I mean, that's kind of, you know, killing people in the, you know, the arena and temple prostitution. Well, nonetheless, it's the worst it's ever been. I agree.

Um, and it says, then you will shine among them like the stars in the sky. Isn't that beautiful? It's so beautiful. To use the word again, my favorite word of the day, resplendent. To become blameless and pure, children of God, without fault, in the warped and crooked, in a warped and crooked generation, then you will shine among them like the stars. Wow. Imagine that. Imagine getting to campus in the morning or to your job or to the coffee house and there's just something different about you.

You start shining like the stars. You become different. Now, it's, look, it's really hard to live in that all the time. I mean, I really, I mean, seriously, it's like, you know, obviously we are in a, the froth and bubble of life and I don't expect us to constantly be living, you know, like it's a euphoric light of God. But is, are there moments? Are there moments because we've taken the time to steal away from the distraction, to steal away from that which poisons our mind, to once again become resplendent in his light and remind ourself of how much he loves us and to begin to create with God and to say, when I go to this campus, when I go to this class, in this relationship, I am going to create something.

One of the things I love about working here alongside of you, I'm just a member of the church, basically. I am. I'm just a member of the church. I happen to be the head pastor and you, they voted me in as the head pastor, so I'm doing what I'm doing. But we have such an incredible ability to create life and watching marriages get saved, watching children come back to their families, watching people get free. I've seen in the last six months, in the last month, I've seen three people get sober.

One person told me they were 28 days, two days ago, so they're probably at 30 by now. I've seen people get freed from opioids. I've seen children come home, leave places where in the darkness of the world they no longer wanted, leave everything behind and come back home and start afresh and anew, over and over again to create and as we work together to create the love of God, to create one place in the world, one place on this corner where we're going to make a difference, where when you walk on this campus, it's different and the people that leave here, they go to their homes.

You become our multi-campus. We don't have a multi-campus strategy. You're the campus. You are the multi-campus. We're not going to staff it with pastors. You're the pastor of your home. You are the pastors of your home. You are the pastors of the coffee shops that you go to. You are the ones. You are the light of the world. You are the light of the world. Jesus is the light in you that you will go out and shine like the stars.

That is what Genesis is about. That is what this story is about. We can, you know, parse all the meaning and what it means and all that's cool and all that's amazing but if we miss God's heart for you in the process of doing this, then we've missed it all. Amen? Amen. We're going to have the band come forward. They're going to lead us in the heart of worship one more time. Let's stand if you would. Maybe your heart needs to be rebooted.

It's funny. Sometimes the best way to fix a computer is just unplug it, right? Seriously. You can go spend $100 but all you got to do is unplug it and start over and reboot it. And maybe it's time to reboot today. We're going to pray for that rebooting in a moment but let's have the band lead us. So your life's a canvas and it's open to you this week to make some decisions of what you want for you. Where you are is not where you have to be.

Where you want to go can be created with the mind of God to sit and think what do I want? What do I want in my life? How much hope do I want? How much joy do I want? How much difference do I want? So if you extend your hands I want to bless you now and send you out in a world full of curses. I want to bless this group of people Lord Jesus. That you'd cover them God with creative thought. God that you would orchestrate and animate within them Lord God and take thought and turn it into action Lord God.

You would send them out with joy and with peace and with hope and in places that even feel desperate and wandering right now. I know in a room this size God there's people that are desperate feel broken, lost they're here maybe it's their last hope God but in the midst of that Jesus that they would find you and you would heal them and heal their brokenness and come along and say I've thought about you for so long. Before long existed I was thinking about you.

I care about you. I want to have a relationship with you. I want to call me into your life. Let's invite each other with a mutuality of invitation. I invite you out of the world invite me into your life. So I bless you now with God's hope and with his peace that the word of God would come alive and that like it says in Philippians that you would begin to be resplendent with the light of God making a difference where you go.

In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.