Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons

If you are visiting with us this morning, you should know that we are a few weeks in to a series “You Are Here: Finding Our Place in the Biggest Story Ever Told.” And what we’re doing in this series is exploring the idea that the Bible is one story, Jesus Christ is the main character, and we are still in that story today.

So far, after a couple of weeks of introduction, we’ve considered creation and the fall. Today, we come to the story of Noah.

If you’re like me, and have been hanging around the church for long enough, you’ve probably heard the story of Noah a fair bit. This is another one of those stories that has become familiar to the point of humour. So let me ask you some  questions: based on what you’ve heard, what you’ve read, what you’ve been taught, what is the main point of the story of Noah? Why is it in the Bible? What is God telling us in this part of Scripture? And how does this story fit into the bigger story of the Bible as a whole?

I think it’s safe to say that in most of the books and Sunday school lessons I took in as a child, I was taught that the main point of this story is that we should obey God even when it’s hard, just like Noah did. If God tells us to build a boat, we should do it, even when it doesn’t make sense.

But I’m not so sure that’s really the main point of this story. And today, as we consider the story of Noah as it fits into the storyline of the Bible, I think we’re going to see an account that is far more rich and meaningful and relevant to us today than maybe any of us had imagined.

Did This Actually Happen?

So that’s where we’re headed today. But before we dig in, I want to quickly touch on a big question that many people have on their minds when we come to this part of the Bible: did this really happen? Is this part of God’s word a historical account? Was there really a global flood as described here?

My answer to that question is, “Of course it happened.” Throughout Scripture, Noah is repeatedly referred to as a real person, and the flood is repeatedly referred to as a real event. So Scripture is pretty firm on this point.

And the interesting thing is that when we look outside of Scripture, we see a lot of confirmation of this as well.  Dozens of ancient civilizations from all different parts of the world have a story about God or a god who judged the wicked world through a global flood but saved one man by telling him to build a boat. This all suggests that this really happened, and the memory was preserved around the world.

And then there’s also some good evidence from the realm of geology for a global catastrophic flood like the one described here. We learned after Mt. St. Helens that many of the things that they thought took millions of years can actually happen in mere weeks, given a major catastrophe. And so the whole realm of flood geology has some fascinating insights on how a global flood can help explain how the earth can be much younger than it supposedly looks.

All that to say that yes, this part of God’s word is history. This really did happen. But today, we’re going to focus on asking what it all means, and how this story fits in to the big story of Scripture, and sets the stage for everything that happens afterwards, including the fact that you and I are alive.

Longing for a Savior

To begin understanding the story of Noah, we really need to pick up on where we left off last week. We saw in Genesis 3 that after Adam and Eve fell from innocence, God cursed His creation, and promised Adam and Eve that their lives would be filled with pain and struggle because of their sin. But right in the midst of that, He also promised a Saviour. He promised that there would be an offspring of the woman who would crush the deceiving serpent.

And we shouldn’t be surprised to see that form that point on, people were eager for this offspring, this saviour, to come.

We see this in Eve’s optimism in Genesis 4:1, when she gives birth to Cain, and says “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” Eve’s words here might suggest that she was hoping Cain, her first child, would be this promised serpent-crusher. And why wouldn’t she have hoped for that?

Oh, but how disappointed she must have been. Cain was the opposite of a saviour. He gave in to sin’s power and crushed his brother instead of the serpent.

But then when she gives birth to Seth, she says “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him” (Genesis 4:25). You hear that word “offspring,” taken right out of God’s promise about the serpent-crusher? It sounds like she’s hoping that Seth is going to be the saviour.

Just take that in. We’re headed for the Christmas season in a few months where we’ll sing “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.” Did you know that we’ve been expecting him for this long?

But Seth was not the saviour. We read in Genesis 5 that Seth had a son, and other children, and then he died. The curse took him down. And Seth’s son had a son, and other children, and then he died. And on and on it goes throughout the rest of that chapter, recording generation after generation, until we get to a man named Lamech.

And at the very end of the chapter, we read this: “When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, ‘Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands’” (Genesis 5:28–29). 

This is the very first place we meet Noah. As a baby. And his father naming him a name the means “rest,” in hope that this baby would be the one who would deliver them from the curse. Lamech hoped that his son would be the saviour.

And it’s with this in mind that we turn to chapter 6 where we read, in verse 5 and following, 

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. 

“These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:5–9).

A Second Adam

And so the story goes on from there, and I’m sure you’re familiar with it. God tells Noah that He is going to destroy all flesh in a flood, but that He will save Noah and his family and two of each animal in a boat that God is going to create.

God is going to press reset. God is going to start over, and He’s going to start over with Noah. 

And so that’s what happens. Noah and the animals go into the ark, and then God covers the earth with water again, just like it was in the beginning.

Genesis 1:2 says that in the very beginning, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

So God brings the world back to that spot. And then, in Genesis 8:1, it says that the He made a “wind” to blow over the earth. “Wind” and “spirit” are the exact same word in Hebrew. The wind blowing over the watery earth is intentionally making us think about the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. This is all painting a picture of God starting over, re-creating His word like He did in the beginning.

And then God causes the waters to recede, and divides the water from the dry ground, and causes plants to grow again, just like He did in the beginning.

And when it’s time for them to leave the ark, God tells him to let out the animals “that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth” (Genesis 8:17), words that again sound just like God’s words of creation in Genesis 1.

And then in chapter 9:1, we read that “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Again, almost identical words as the ones spoken to Adam and Eve. 

There’s more connections that we could explore, but I’m hoping you’re getting the picture here. The flood was an act of re-creation. And Noah is a second Adam. Noah is the new father of all of humanity. Noah is the new ruler over the animals and the world. Noah, by the way, is also a prophet who hears directly from God, just like Adam, and in a minute we’ll seem him performing the work of a priest, just like Adam. Noah has taken on each of Adam’s roles and become a new Adam.

And so if we put all this together, we should be asking, was Lamech’s hope realized? Was Noah the promised offspring, the saviour they had been looking for? Has the curse been washed away, and things are finally back to happily ever after?

If you were reading this story for the first time, it would be easy to think so.

“Evil from His Youth”

But then you’d be really disappointed when you got to the end of chapter 8, where we read about the very first thing that happened when Noah got out of the ark. Listen to these words, beginning in chapter 8 verse 20:

“Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man—” (Genesis 8:20-21).

Stop right there. Is sounds good, doesn’t it?  God says that He will never curse the ground again because of man. And we could easily jump to the conclusion that this is because man is never going to do anything again that deserves God’s curse.

But not so fast. Read the rest: “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease’” (Gen 8:21–22). 

God is promising that He will never again curse the ground because of us, not because we’ll never deserve it again, but because we’re going to deserve it again. God knows that in spite of the fresh start, nothing inside of us has changed. Our hearts are still given over to evil. He knows that it won’t be long until we deserve a flood just as much as the people He just destroyed. And that’s why He is making this promise.

And sure enough, as we keep reading the story, our high hopes for Noah get dashed. Noah plants a vineyard and then gets drunk and humiliates himself. And his son Ham mocks him for it before his brothers. And when Noah is sober again, he curses his son in language reminiscent of God’s curses in Genesis 3. And the very next story we read is the Tower of Babel.

So much for a fresh start. So much for Noah being the saviour we hoped for.

We Are the Problem

But what we need to see is that our disappointment in Noah is a crucial part of the unfolding story of redemption. Because Noah’s failure to make things right shows us something we couldn’t have learned any other way. It shows us what our problem is.

You see, our problem is not just the serpent. It’s not even just the curse. The problem, like we saw last week, is inside of us. The problem is us. The problem is that, like it or not, we are all born sinners because of what we’ve inherited from Adam and Eve. And even people like Noah, who trust God and walk uprightly—even they have sin that they need to be saved from.

So the problem with the world isn’t out there somewhere. The problem with the world is us.

I think that we need to hear this message today. Our culture today is awash in the assumption that people are basically good, and all of our problems can be blamed on things outside of ourselves. We’re trained to not take responsibility for ourselves, but to blame our problems on other people, on our parents, on society, on whatever. And we’re led to believe that if we can just fix all that stuff out there, and give people enough good opportunities, then they’ll turn out ok.

There are also many people who have the opposite set of assumptions. They don’t blame the world for their problems. Instead, they sort of view themselves as the solution to the world’s problems. “If people were only more like me, if people would only listen to me and my opinions,”—or even—“if I were in charge of things, then this world would be way less of a mess.”

The story of Noah completely destroys both of these ways of thinking. If God were to wipe out the rest of humanity and start over just with you, and there was nothing to blame your problems on, and you got to be the king of the whole world and decide how things would work, guess what: you wouldn’t do any better than Noah. You’d make a mess of things too. And even if you didn’t, your kids or your grandkids or your great-grandkids would.

Because, the problem with the world is us.

I’ve always appreciated the story about the newspaper which asked some important authors to write in and give their diagnosis on what the problem with the world is. And it’s reported that G.K. Chesterton wrote back this reply:

“Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”

What Chesterton was pointing to there is the same truth as we’re seeing in Noah’s story. We are the problem. The intentions of our heart are evil from youth.

The Covenant

And so with all of this in mind, we come back to what is perhaps the most important part of this story, and it’s God’s covenant with Noah.

We started to see this above, when God stated that he would never destroy all life like that again, and that while the earth remained, He would continue to uphold the pattern of seasons.

And God makes this formal in a covenant, which we read about in chapter 9:8-11:

“Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’” 

A covenant, you’ll remember, is a special relationship between two parties that’s held together by promises and commitments. Like marriage. Marriage is the one covenant that most of us are familiar with.

And as we are going to see in this series, covenants are incredibly important in the storyline of the Bible. In fact, the covenants are really the frame on which the whole story hangs.

And God’s covenant with Noah is the first of these covenants explicitly mentioned in Scripture.

That doesn’t mean it’s the first covenant, period. There’s good evidence that God had made a covenant with Adam, and that what God is doing here is making good on that covenant by establishing it again with Noah.

And one of the ways we see that is by looking at the terms of the covenant, and seeing how God’s covenant expectations for Noah are so very similar what God said to Adam in Genesis 1 & 2. If we look at the beginning of chapter 9, we see that God expects:

Noah and his sons are to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (9:1)

They are to have dominion over the animals (9:2)

They are to eat what God provides for them (9:3), which now includes animals (9:4)

They are prohibited from eating blood (9:4)

They must not murder each other like people did before the fall (9:5)

They must exercise justice in holding murderers responsible for their crimes (9:6)

Finally, God repeats the command for them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (9:7)

So that’s Noah’s end of the covenant, and again, it’s really just a modified form of God’s covenant with Adam.

And then, in verse 11, God outlines His part of the covenant: what His obligations will be: “I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

God promises that He will never again destroy the earth with a flood again. Now just think about this. God is promising that he will never destroy the earth again. And the fact that he needs to make the promise assumes what we’ve seen already, which his that we are going to get into a spot where we’re going to deserve another flood. Right? If we were never going to deserve another flood, He wouldn’t need to make this promise.

And He makes this even more clear by describing the sign of the covenant, which is a rainbow. “And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth’” (Genesis 9:12–16). 

The rainbow is like a wedding ring—It’s a sign and a seal of the covenant, and every time He looks at that rainbow He’ll be reminded of His promise not to destroy us.

We know that God doesn’t forget, and so this sign is really more for us than it is for Him. But it’s all pointing to the fact that human sin is going to continue, and we’re going to deserve destruction again, and we need the rainbow as a reminder of God’s promise that He’s not going to do that again.

And so what God is really promising here is grace. He’s promising to not destroy us all, even though we deserve it. He’s promising to uphold His creation and to keep bringing the seasons, one after the other, even though we don’t deserve it. He’s promising grace. 

And so what this means is that human history can move forward, in spite of our sin, without us constantly being worried that God is going to wipe us all out again.  As one pair of authors have written, “the covenant made with Noah creates a firm stage of history where God can work out his plan for rescuing his fallen world.”

So when we see it this way, do you see how big the covenant with Noah is? Everything that’s coming depends on this. All the other covenants still to come- with Abraham, and Israel, and David, and then the New Covenant through Christ—they all depend on the covenant with Noah. They all depend on the fact that God is going to keep the world going and keep us going despite what we deserve.

Application

So God’s covenant with Noah is massive. It’s the reason we’re alive today. Our generation, just like many generations before us, have deserved destruction just like Noah’s generation did. Just think about abortion. Our hands are dripping with more innocent blood than perhaps any generation before us. And the only thing keeping us alive is this promise made, thousands of years ago.

As a kid I always thought this thing with rainbows was a bit cheesy. It’s not. Every time we see a rainbow we should remember, “I’m breathing right now because of that promise.”

And so I think that’s one of the big truths we should take home from this story: thankfulness. Thankfulness for God’s grace. And isn’t that appropriate today, on thanksgiving?

We don’t deserve another harvest. We don’t deserve the seasons to keep coming after each other like this. We don’t deserve the sun to keep rising and the earth to keep spinning around the globe. All of this is being directly upheld by a gracious God who today—right now—is choosing to not give us what we deserve.

This adds a very important dimension to what we considered last week. Yes, the world is cursed. But it’s also upheld by grace. 

So this weekend, don’t shrug off Thanksgiving. Don’t take it lightly. Remember just how much grace God has shown the human race to keep us alive up until today, to keep this world working up until today. It’s all just hanging on God’s grace.

And as you go throughout the rest of your week, don’t forget about this. It’s hard to feel grumpy and to complain when you remember that you deserve death, and God is graciously keeping you alive. Even just think about complaining about the weather. The fact that we have weather is God’s pure grace. That perspective changes things, doesn’t it?

One more thought as we wrap up. Let’s not forget what’s probably the most important part of this story. And it’s the way that Noah shows us what kind of a saviour we need.  

Noah was an almost-second-Adam who was the father of an almost-new-humanity on an almost-new-earth. But his failure to break the curse and crush the serpent points us forward to look for a real second Adam who will be the father of a truly new humanity, Someone Who will pay the price for our sin and make us new from the inside out, who will really crush the serpent and break the curse and cancel death create a truly New Earth where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13).

And so the story of Noah is about Jesus. Jesus shines all the brighter against the backdrop of this story. And so this story should make us all treasure Christ in a fresh way.

We’re going to stand and worship together now to close, celebrating the great and gracious faithfulness of the God who planned this all out and keeps His covenant and sent His own son for us and has promised us a glorious future. Let’s praise Him now.

Well as you may know, we are a few weeks into a sermon series called “You Are Here: Finding Our Place in the Biggest Story Ever Told.” The big idea of this series is that the Bible is one story, and the main character of that story is Jesus Christ, and we are a part of that story today.

We began by considering all that God was and was doing before the story itself began. Then last week we explored creation. We saw that God created the heavens and the earth for His glory. And then He created Adam and Eve in His own image, so that they would rule this world as God’s representatives. We explored how Adam was the first person to bear the roles of prophet, priest, and king, and began to see some of the implications of all of that for our lives today.

Today we come to the part of the story that we all know is coming: the Fall. When Adam and Eve are the forbidden fruit and plunges themselves, and all of their offspring, into the depths of sin.

There’s a real danger here for us this morning, because so many elements of this story are familiar to us—even to the point of humour. How many jokes have been made off of the scene in the garden with the serpent and the forbidden fruit? But in the process of becoming so familiar with the story, I fear we loose touch with the way this story should impact us, the way it should kick us in the gut, the way it should cause us to evaluate ourselves and the world around us.

So as we continue on our journey this morning through the biggest story ever told, we’re going to need to set aside some of our assumptions, and pay close attention to the way that the Scripture itself tells the story. And we will find a story that is masterfully told, and more powerful than any cliché. And, a story that is familiar in perhaps uncomfortable ways.

Because Adam and Eve’s story is really our own story. This is the story of our own innocence lost. And yet, as we’re going to see, a story whose heaviness is shot through with powerful hope.

The Serpent Enters

So let’s turn to that story now. It picks up not long after where we left off last week, in a place of absolute perfection. Adam has just met Eve, and the first marriage has taken place, and the chapter closed by telling us that “the man and his wife were both taken and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25). Adam and Eve were living in a state of child-like innocence. If there was ever happily-ever-after, this was it.

But then, without missing a beat, the very next verse—3:1—tells us that “the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.”

If we were able to read Hebrew, we’d understand that there’s an intentional play on words going on here. Because the word for “crafty” sounds almost identical to the word for “naked.” It’s almost like it’s saying, “The man and his wife were totally nude, but the serpent was very shrewd.” It’s not supposed to be a joke. We’re supposed to see a contrast here between a man and his wife who are so innocent they are clueless that they are naked, and on the other hand a serpent who is the opposite of clueless.

What’s interesting is that the word for “crafty” or “shrewd” doesn’t necessarily have a negative meaning in the Hebrew language. It just means wise, clever,  even prudent.  So in other words, even though we’re supposed to see a contrast between the serpent and the people in terms of craftiness, we’re not told right away that this serpent is evil.

We’re not told that this serpent is the embodiment of Satan himself, here on an evil mission, as we find out clearly later on in the Bible (Rev. 12:9). We’re not told anything more than Eve herself would have known. Nothing obvious told her the serpent was evil. There was no scary music that played as he made his way towards her.

Some people wonder why Eve didn’t freak out by a serpent talking to her, but keep in mind that likely took place not long after she was created. So in terms of life experience, she’s still a child. She doesn’t know that that fact that this serpent is talking means it’s indwelt by an evil spirit and she should run in the opposite direction.

And so this subtle and unassuming serpent finds Eve. But right there is the first red flag. He doesn’t say, “Is your husband around?” Notice that he is attacking God’s leadership structure from the very beginning.

And then he asks an unassuming question: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1). 

This sounds innocent enough. Just a simple question. But did you see what he did there? His question intentionally twists God’s words. God didn’t say not to eat of any tree in the garden. God told them not to eat from one specific tree in the garden- the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And He said you are free to eat of the rest.

And the serpent knows this. And so he’s intentionally asking a misleading question: “Did God really tell you something that unreasonable?” And by simply asking this question, he’s suggesting that maybe it’s possible for God to be unreasonable. That maybe God’s commands aren’t in our best interests. But most of all, by questioning God, he’s assuming that God is someone we are in a position to question.

So how is Eve going to respond? Will she say “get out of here? Who are you to question my Creator?” No, she says this: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die’” (Genesis 3:2–3). 

Notice two things here. First, Eve calls this tree by a different name than God did.  She doesn’t call it “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” If she had called it by it’s real name, that name would have reminded her of why she wasn’t supposed to eat it, and this whole thing might have been finished.

And then she adds to God’s command to them. “Neither shall you touch it.” God never said that. Do you see how Eve is being very liberal in her use of God’s word here? She is not displaying a respect for His word. And this suggests that she is already buying the serpent’s twisted thinking, and is vulnerable to what comes next.

Because what comes next is the Big Lie. “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (Genesis 3:4–5).

There it is. He’s moved past twisting God’s word to out-right denying it. “You will not surely die. What God said would happen, will not happen. God only told you that because he’s jealously guarding His status, a status that could be yours.”

Just a Bite

Now at this point, if Eve had been thinking clearly, what should she have said? She should have said so much. We literally could spend the rest of the morning looking at all of the layers of the truth she should have remembered in this moment, the things the should not have ignored.

Did Eve have any reason to believe that her Creator was less than completely trustworthy and less than worthy of her full obedience? What was Eve thinking?

The answer is that she wasn’t. It was not careful thought that led Eve to take her next steps. Listen to what verse 6 says it was: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6).

Eve was not thinking. She was desiring. She was craving. She was wanting. She was overtaken by what 1 John calls the desires of the eyes, the desires of the flesh, and the pride of life. This is lust. And this, according to Scripture, is what’s was at the heart of her sin and all of our sin ever since. We want other things instead of God, and so we shove the truth about God out of the way in order to get at them.

We all know what that’s like, don’t we? Where all we can think about is what we want, and we take it, and it’s only then that we actually start to think, “What did I just do?”

Eve’s desire for the fruit made the serpent’s ridiculous lie seem believable. So she reached out, perhaps with hands quivering in anticipation, and she took the fruit, and she held it up to her mouth, and she took a bite. And she chewed it. And she swallowed it. And, as verse 6 goes on to say, she gave some to her husband, who was there with her. And he ate.

When did Adam show up? Had he been there the whole time? Did he stumble in at the end, shocked to see the juice stains on Eve’s lips? We don’t know.

But whatever happened, Eve convinced Adam. He listened to her instead of God. He took the fruit from her, and he ate too.

Eyes Wide Open

And in that moment, everything changed. We don’t have to wonder how Adam and Eve felt in those moments. Because each one of us has felt what they felt in those moments. The sinking sensation in your gut and the burning fire in your conscience as you realize you’ve done something that you can’t take back, and you know that nothing will ever be the same again. 

V. 7 says that after eating the fruit, “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

We don’t have time this morning to explore the full significance of what’s going on here, but what’s plain to see is that Adam and Eve’s innocence is lost. The innocent, perfect Adam and Eve died in those moments. Things would never be the same again.

And then, God came. And once again, don’t we know this experience? It’s the feeling we had as a child when we’d done something wrong, and after hours of agonizing silence, mom or dad pulls into the driveway and opens the front door, and discovers the mess, and tries to find us. And each of their footsteps sounds like thunder. And we try to run and hide. 

Verse 8: "And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?' And he said, 'I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.' He said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?' The man said, 'The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.' Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?' The woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate'" (Genesis 3:8–13).

We’ve been there, haven’t we? Guilty and knowing it, and unable to hide anymore, so we try to blame someone else. Adam blames his wife. Eve blames the serpent.

The Curse

But God sees through it all. He knows that both Adam and Eve sinned, full stop. They had nobody to blame but themselves.

And this sin of theirs is going to have powerful and heartbreaking consequences. It begins with Eve, in verse 16. “To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.’”

God had commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. And the consequence for Eve’s sin is that her pain in this process is going to multiply too. Ladies in this room, you know that the process of bringing forth children—and in fact the whole system in your body designed to do that—is a process filled with pain. And that pain is a God’s chosen consequence for Eve’s sin.

And along with that, her relationship with her husband is going to be filled with tension and struggle.

And next, God speaks to Adam. God has more and more significant things to say to Adam. And that’s because Adam’s sin was worse than Eve’s. Adam was more responsible. He was the one who had heard directly from God. He was the one given responsibility to lead his wife. He was the one given the job of keeping the garden, of making sure it stayed a safe place. We see later on in Scripture (1 Tim 2:14) that unlike Eve, Adam sinned with eyes wide open.

And so it’s to Adam that God speaks these crushing words of curse, beginning in verse 17:

“And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return’” (Genesis 3:17–19).

Do you notice what God curses on account of Adam’s sin? Not Adam. But the ground. The earth itself. From this point on, the earth itself is going to fight against Adam, and one day the earth will win. Adam will die just like God promised, and in a final stroke of painful irony, he will return to that ground he had struggled and worked so hard against his whole life.

It’s not hard to see that behind these words is a bigger truth. In cursing the ground, God has changed something fundamental in the way nature itself operates. God has cursed the entire creation in response to Adam’s sin. 

In Romans chapter 8, the Apostle Paul describes things this way: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it…” (Rom 8:20). And in the next verse he talks about the fact that creation is “in bondage to corruption” (Rom 8:21).

In response to Adam’s sin, God cursed the creation itself by subjecting it to futility and bondage to corruption.

Those are big words, but we know what they mean, because we see this futility and corruption and curse all around us every day. We see this world is falling apart. We see how our bodies are falling apart. We see how everything we build or make or plant always falls apart. Farmers, you are struggling with this right now. Those crops that you worked hard to plant still sitting out in wet fields? That’s the curse. 

And all of this curse and futility and corruption did not just happen. It wasn’t like Adam and Eve sinned and—Bam!—the universe started to fall apart. God steps in to make this happen. He personally cursed the ground and the creation with pain and futility and struggle and corruption.

How many times have I been in a conversation where someone has just experienced some tragedy, or there’s been another natural disaster like the tsunami in Indonesia, and someone says, “we just don't know why these things happen.” Yes, we do! We know exactly why these things happen. They happen because our first father sinned, and God has cursed the whole creation in response.

Was This Fair?

So let’s ask an important question: was this all this unfair of God? Was God over-reacting? Doesn’t this seem a little harsh?

To answer that, let's consider what would have happened if He had given Adam and Eve what they deserved. What did He tell them would be the consequence of disobeying Him? “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). That's what they deserved: instant death.

And yes, they experienced inner, spiritual death that day. But God did not give them what they deserved in their bodies. He let them keep breathing. He let them see the sunrise the next morning. He let them live to hear the sound of their baby's cry and grow old together. And all the while, the universe around them—still beautiful, still showing God's glory—was constantly reminding them of their sin.

Because that is what’s going on here. God cursed the earth because of Adam's sin. Every morning that he woke up to go plow the fields, his work said: “your sin.” Every drop of sweat that came down his forehead and stung his eyes said, “sin.” Every time he bent down to pull a weed, and pricked his finger on a thorn, and felt the pain and saw the drop of blood- that all said, “your sin.” And as he struggled in his relationship with Eve and felt death slowly take over his body, it all said, “this is your sin.”

In cursing the ground, the Lord was using the physical universe to show Adam and Eve the horror and the significance of their own sin. They were seeing the ugly realities within their own hearts displayed all around them in living, breathing, painful reality.

And so, this is grace. The curse was an act of grace. If God had done nothing, and let them get away with thinking their sin was no big deal, that would have been cruel. Because they would need to face His justice eventually. But if, on the other hand, God has killed them right away like they deserved, there would be no hope.

So instead God gave them grace. He kept them alive and let them taste the awful truth about how serious their sin really is.

And let’s be clear here: God was not overreacting. The problem is that we under-react. Adam and Eve and you and me all try to think that disobeying God and doing our own thing is no big deal. We don’t want to realize that sin, the smallest sin, the littlest bite of forbidden fruit, is cosmic infamy against an infinitely, eternally glorious God. The smallest sin deserves all the fury of God’s wrath and all the pain of an eternal hell.

And so when God brings His perfect creation crashing down around Adam and Eve in a smoking wreck, He is not overreacting. He is mercifully extending to them the opportunity to recognize just how how serious their sin really is. He is giving them, and us, opportunity to repent.

So isn’t it so sadly ironic that when tragedies happen, people tend to question God, and question why He let that happen, as if we deserve better? The truth is that we deserve so much worse. And the whole point of tsunamis and car accidents and cancer is to tell us this and warn us and give us a chance to turn and repent and trust in the Saviour before it’s finally too late.

“In Hope.”

Now this has been a lot today. This has been heavy. But we have one more stop to make. Because we can’t miss the fact that this is not all there is in the story. You may have noticed that I skipped over some verses earlier on. We didn’t hear God’s words to the serpent in verses 14 & 15. Here’s what those verses say:

“The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.’”

Do you notice the irony that the most crafty one is now the most cursed one? And while there’s so much here we can see, lets lean into verse 15 and see how the climax of this curse on the serpent is actually a promise. God promises that there will be an offspring of the woman who will come and bruise or crush the head of this serpent. The picture here is of the serpent being stepped on, and even though the women’s offspring will be hurt in the process, the serpent will be fatally injured. Finished forever.

Don’t miss this. Because this is the very first time in the Bible where we find out that a saviour is coming. There is an offspring, a seed, a descendent, who is coming, and who will finish off this deceiving, death-bringing serpent once and for all.

And so here, at this extremely early stage, we are already being told to look forward. To look for a saviour to be born. And these words had already been spoken when God pronounces His curse on the creation to Adam and Eve. The curse is painted on the backdrop of hope.

God cursed the earth in hope, as Romans 8:20 says. He had already planned the day when the offspring of the woman would walk the earth and break that curse through His death and resurrection. And He had already planned the day when He would make all things new and the woman’s offspring would rule as a second Adam on a New Earth with His redeemed bride.

Today

And that’s all that I’m going to say for now, because there’s a lot we’re going to need to wait for later on in this series. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything here for us today. There is.

As we think about what this means for us today, we can start by remembering that when Adam sinned and fell into sin, so did we. Romans 5:12 says that “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin.” 1 Corinthians 15:22 says that “in Adam all die.” Adam fell, and we have been fallen ever since.

And so the curse on creation which we still see all around us is a reminder not just of Adam’s sin, but also of our own. Like Adam, we’ve all sinned. Like Adam, we’ve all bitten our own forbidden fruit and turned our backs on God and chosen other things instead of Him. Like Adam, the worst suffering we can experience in this world does not compare with the ugliness of the sin that each of us have committed.

And so we should respond to the curse with humility. We deserve it, and so much more. And so we should not complain. We should respond to our experiences of the curse with humility and repentance.

But there’s more than that. Because if you know Christ, you know that the promised offspring has come, and bore our sins in his own body on the cross, and paid for them in full. We know that He rose to life, and that we will rise with new bodies just like His. We know that our aching longing to return to Eden, to return to innocence and paradise, is going to be satisfied as we reign with Him on a New Earth someday.

And so our experience of the curse is transformed. Our suffering becomes hopeful suffering. It’s like the pain of birth. It hurts, but we know that on the other end is new life.

And that’s why we’re going to end this heavy morning by worshipping. We’re going to sing that song we learned last week, celebrating creation, and celebrating that the serpent-crushing offspring of the woman has come, and celebrating the way that, through Jesus, every experience of pain and suffering is just one more reminder that we have a new creation to look forward to.

Today we come to our third week in our series called “You Are Here,” where we are exploring the fact that the Bible is one story, and the main character of that story is Jesus Christ, and we are a part of that story today.

Last week we considered the prologue to the story: everything that was going on before the beginning. We considered how God is a trinity who has existed forever in perfect relationship of love. And we saw the incredible truth that the whole story that we are a part of—the creation of the universe and the redemption of humanity—is all one big gift of love from God the Father to God the Son.

The Father created us and chose us and gave us grace so that we will bring glory to Jesus by loving Him forever with the very same love that the Father has for Him. That’s what this whole story is about, and it was all laid out before the beginning.

But then, there was a beginning. And that’s where we are today. With promises made and His people chosen and the plan of redemption already fully laid out, God put the plan into action and began to tell the story.

And so we read in the very first verse of the very first book of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

The story begins with creation: with God making everything that we see.

Maybe you’ve read Genesis 1:1 so many times that you’re used to it. But this morning, I want us to notice just how important this verse is. Just think about what it’s telling us: God, the God of redemption who communicates with us in the Bible and hears our prayers and sent Jesus to save us—this is the same person who made the universe.

God is not just one actor on the stage of space and time. He built the stage itself.

This is why in the book of Acts, when Paul was talking to people who didn’t know the Bible, He always began with creation. Because knowing that God created everything is absolutely essential to establishing His identity. “This world that you’ve living on? That food you’re eating? That air you’re breathing? That body you’ve been given? It was all made by someone. And so it belongs to Him. And so you owe everything to Him.”

Psalm 24:1 sums this up when it says that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1).

When I was camping with the Young Adults back in August we set up camp on some Crown land north of the Torch River. And we talked about the fact that that parcel of land is actually owned by Her Majesty the Queen. As citizens of Canada, we’re free to use it, but it’s not ours. It’s hers.

The truth is that all of planet Earth is crown land, owned by His Majesty the King of Kings. God made everything we see, and so it belongs to Him.

Made to Display Glory

Why did God create this universe? The answer shouldn’t surprise us given what we saw last week. God made the heavens, and the earth, and us, for His glory. God built this incredible universe to showcase His power and creativity and majesty., which is another way of saying, He made this for His glory

Romans 1 tells us this when it says that God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). 

Everywhere we look, we are clearly perceiving the invisible attributes of the majestic God who made this. You don’t need to be a scientist to know that a glorious God created this world. You just need to watch the sunrise. You just need to look around you and look up.

Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1–2). 

God made this physical universe to preach. To pour forth speech about Him, constantly, every day and night. Like we sang this morning, creation sings the Father’s song. It’s all communicating truth about Him. And so it should make us worship Him.

While I was on vacation this summer I watched some worship DVDs with my sons. These worship DVDs are part of a worship series made by the BBC called “Blue Planet.”

And maybe you’re thinking, “That’s not a worship program, those are nature documentaries.” But when you know God, there should be no difference. Nature documentaries should cause us to worship, because they are nothing less than a spotlight on the power and creativity of the God we know.

And you don’t need to be a scientist to see this. But if you do look deeper at this world with the eyes of science, what you’ll see is further and further levels of a world that is shouting it’s creator’s name. God has created a universe incredibly complex and beautifully structured.

I wish we could spend a whole morning talking about things like the precise mathematical system underlying all of the physical universe, all the laws and constants that are fine-tuned in incredibly specific ways, the fact that you have 20 GB or more of carefully-written information stored inside each one of the trillions of cells in your body, and on and on.

Whether we look up with a telescope, or look down with a microscope, or look around with our own two eyes, we should see a universe that is preaching about the glory of the One who made it. 

Adam as King

Genesis 1 goes on to show us that after making everything else and declaring it to be good, God then created the capstone of His creation- us. Verse 26-27: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” 

There’s so much in these verses and the ones that follow, so much that we could spend weeks studying. But for our purposes this morning, we’re focus in on three aspects of the creation of Adam and Eve.

The first thing we need to notice is that Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, after His likeness.

This whole universe displays God’s glory, but humans—Adam and Eve and you and I—were made to reflect God by being like him in an absolutely unique way. We were made in His image, after his likeness.

But what does that actually mean? We know that God doesn’t have a body. So been in His image can’t mean that we look like him physically. So what does it mean to be made in His image?

Something that’s been exciting to learn in the past few years is that this language of being made in God’s image and likeness would have been familiar to the original readers of Genesis, the Israelites coming out of Egypt. In Egypt, they believed that the Pharaoh was the image, or “a living statue,” of one of their gods.

And it wasn’t because of how he looked. It had to do with his behaviour or character. He reflected the character of that god or goddess. And so he was their image, and as their image, he represented their authority here on earth.

The Pharaohs believed this about themselves, and they went a step further by actually doing this for themselves: they made images of themselves to represent their rulership and authority over other places.

So there’s an example of a pharaoh who conquered some new territory far away from Egypt, and he wanted to demonstrate that he ruled over that territory. And the way he did that was by making in image of himself in that place, almost like a mini-Mount Rushmore. And his image represented him there, and was meant to show that he was the king of that land.

So when Moses wrote that God made the earth and then created man in His image, the Israelites, who had just left Egypt, would have a background to understand what this meant.

They would have understood this to be saying that, first of all, Adam and Eve were like God in some important ways. Not in how they looked, but in how they behaved like God and reflected His characteristics God. And second, they would have understood this to mean that Adam and Eve were created to represent God here on earth as they ruled under Him.

Being made in the image of God meant that they were a king and a queen, ruling under the authority of the great Heavenly Emperor.

We can actually see all of this right in the text, in the way that Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” and then right away it says, “And let them have dominion.” It’s not changing the subject when it does that. Being the image of God means having dominion- ruling here on earth as God’s representative.

And that’s why God gave Adam and Eve a royal mission in verse 28: “And God blessed them. 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 over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” Do you hear those words? Subdue, have dominion. Adam and then Eve were created to rule.

Adam as Priest

So the first thing we should see about Adam and Eve is that they were created to be a king and a queen who ruled here on earth as God’s representatives. There’s second important angle to the creation of Adam in particular. In addition to being a king, Adam was created to be a priest. And we see this if we turn over to chapter 2, beginning with verse 8.

“And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:8–15). 

Once again, as we consider this passage, what’s important to recognize is how this passage would have been read by the original readers, the children of Israel coming out of Egypt. And this might surprise us, but to them, this passage would have been full of imagery of the tabernacle. You know the tabernacle, right? The tent that they built in the desert, like a portable temple, where the priests served him and where God met with them.

This description of Eden is full of connections to the tabernacle. There is a parallel between the tree of life in the centre of the garden and the 7-stemmed lamp stand in the tabernacle. There’s a reason Moses drew attention to the first branch of the river coming out of Eden, and how it flowed through a land rich in materials that were used in building of the tabernacle.

When it says that God put Adam in the garden to work it and keep it, those are the exact same two words used later on to describe the work of the Levites in the tabernacle.

Later on in Genesis 3:8 we read about God coming to walk with Adam in the garden, which is the exact same Hebrew word that’s later used regarding God’s presence in the tabernacle. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, it was guarded by two angels, just like the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies.

There’s more connections, but that’s all I’ll mention for now. The point is that to the original hearers, they would have understood the Garden of Eden to be a God’s sanctuary, like the tabernacle, and they would have understood that Adam was put there in the presence of God to work it and keep it just like a priest.

Adam as Prophet

There’s a third and a final element to God’s creation of Adam in particular, which you can see if you read Genesis 2:16-17, where God told Adam which trees he could eat and which ones he could not eat. Don’t miss the fact that God spoke to Adam. He revealed His word to him.

And it was after this the Eve was created. So Adam would have told Eve what God told Him.

What’s the word for someone who receives God’s word and then shares is with others? A prophet.

So do you notice here how Adam had these three roles: prophet, priest, and king? These are the three offices of Christ, which should not surprise us, because Jesus is the last Adam.

Celebrating All This Today

And just mentioning that does bring me to the fact that this is a hard message to wrap up and apply. There’s so much more we could say about creation, and there’s so much that I want to say about Adam and Eve and their relationship to us and to Jesus, but those are all things that we’re going to talk about at a later point in this series.

But for this morning, without diving in to the rest of this series, I think we can take home some important truths to apply to our lives as we think about the fact that God created this world for His glory, He owns it, and He created Adam and Eve to rely on His word, have relationship with Him, and rule this world as His representatives.

So I want us to think about five main ways we can take these truths home with us this week.

1) We should celebrate that we were made in the image of God. We were created to be like God. And what do we read about God in Genesis 1? That He is creative. He makes things. And in creating, He brings order out of chaos. He organizes things, separating the day from the night and the waters from the earth.

It shouldn’t surprise us to see those same traits in us. And when we see them, what we are seeing is the image of God.

I see the image of God in my boys, who can’t help but make things wherever they go, whether it’s with dirt, or crayons and paper, or Lego. That’s what they do: they build and make. And it doesn’t stop when we grow up. Each of us reflects the image of God as we build things and fix things and plant things and clean things and organize things. And the satisfaction we get when we do all that is a sign that we are made in the image of God, after His likeness.

There’s many reasons why it’s important for us to celebrate this, and one of them is that we’re often told today that humans are the problem with our world. Human creativity, human industry, has wrecked everything, and our planet would be better off without us.

It’s true that humans have done and continue to do some pretty nasty stuff to this planet. But that doesn’t erase the fact that God made us in His image, with this drive to create and bring order, because He created a planet that needs us to do that. God did not design the world to work best without us. Even the Garden of Eden needed Adam to work it and keep it.

We learned that lesson this summer as we planted our first garden. Those of you who garden know that things don’t work best when you put some seeds in the ground and just let things happen. Aimee and I have been blown away this summer by how much specific knowledge you need to make a garden grow well. It’s so obvious that God designed things to flourish best under the care of wise humans.

So within Biblical parameters, we should celebrate human accomplishments. We should celebrate things like art and culture. We should celebrate engineering and technology. We should celebrate the way that farmers have figured out how to get such incredible yields out of a piece of land. We should celebrate the way that we’ve figured out how to take sand and carve it into microchips and melt it into glass and create marvels like the iPhone.

These are examples of us doing what God created us to do: creating and cultivating and having dominion over this planet. And like we talked about at family camp back in June, these are examples of the kinds of things we will get to do forever for the glory of Jesus on the New Earth. And so, in a measured way, within biblical parameters, these are things we can celebrate and enjoy today.

2) We should also celebrate what these passages teach us about work. Really, all these things we’ve just been talking about involve work. And I hope you noticed that even in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had work to do. Work is not a necessary evil for us to get out of the way as soon as we can. Work is a huge part of what it means to be human, what it means to be in the image of God.

That’s all I’m going to say on that for now, because we’ve got a whole sermon on work coming in the second half of the series. But you can start thinking about that now.

3) We should celebrate that we were created for relationship with God. We were created to need God’s word. Things like reading the Bible throughout the week and praying and being here on Sunday—these are not just rules we tack on to our lives. These are deeply connected with what it means to be human. We were made for relationship with God. And so as we go in to our week, this knowledge should cause us to be very intentional regarding our relationship with God

4) We must also celebrate that we were created male and female. We can’t miss that while Adam and Eve were equally created in the image of God, they were created with different roles and functions. We saw a little bit of that today, in that Adam was created first and given a job, a mission, and if you read the rest of Genesis 2 you’ll see how Eve was created second, to help Adam with that mission, because he couldn’t do it alone. 

Because He was created first, Adam, as a man, had the unique responsibility of taking leadership to make sure that God’s mission was fulfilled.

And this pattern extends throughout the rest of the Bible. If you read passages like Ephesians 5 or 1 Timothy 2, you can’t miss the fact that especially in the home and in the church, God expects men to carry the primary responsibilities for leadership and protection and provision.

Men, please hear this today: you are not just a human. You are a man. And that is nothing to be ashamed of. It is good that you are a man. And as a man, God expects you to shoulder the heavy burdens, to use your strength to protect and nurture those around you. God expects you to take responsibility for yourself and for those around you. God expects you to lead, to take the initiative in fulfilling the mission he gave us.

And just like Adam in the next chapter, far too many Christian men today are content to fade into the background while others around us, especially the women around us, takes the full brunt of Satan’s attacks. Far too many Christian men are content letting other people lead while they play around with hobbies and sports and video games and pornography.

So men of Emmanuel Baptist Church, let me ask you: what are you doing to take the initiative in fulfilling God’s mission for your life, for your family, for your church? What are the heavy loads that you are carrying so that others don’t need to? What are you doing to protect the weak? What kind of example are you setting? Where are you leading?

Please, if you don’t have answers to those questions, don’t rest until you do. Choose to start somewhere, today, to begin being the kind of man that your family and your church and your world needs you to be.

Ladies, I hope you don’t feel left out by this discussion. There’s so much I could say to you today as well. Your part in the biggest story ever told is massive and crucial.

But I hope you know that everything I just said to the men is actually for you. I have never met a woman who, if she was really honest, didn’t want the men in her life to really be men. And I think your heart resonates when you turn to the Scripture and see that you were made to flourish under the sacrificial leadership of strong men who serve you by shouldering the heavy loads and taking the bullets and being what God called them to be so that you can be what God has called you to be.

Once again, I need to stop there, because that could be a whole sermon series, which I again hope we get to do sometime.

5) And finally, we should celebrate that all of this is about Jesus. Because we know that none of us have done any of this perfectly. We’ve all failed, starting with Adam. There is only one man who has perfectly done what God called Him to do. This is Jesus Christ, the second Adam, prophet, priest and king, the One who died as our sacrifice to pay for our sins, and the one who is working right now to bring us home to the New Earth, where we will work and walk with Him like we were made to do at the beginning.

So today, let’s go out from here with His grace resting in our hearts, eyes open to His glory around us, eager to know Him more and represent Him well to everyone we meet.

Passage: Genesis 1:1, John 17:24-26 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: You Are Here

Passage: Luke 24:17-27, 44-47 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: You Are Here