All right, well, today we're gonna go to the preaching of the word. We're not going to put a picture up here for you. I'm going to bring the word of God to you this morning. So shall we do that? Let's get into God's word. Genesis chapter one. Today we start at the beginning of the revelation of God. Please stand with me and hear the word of God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and the darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Then God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Thus God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven, so this evening and the morning were the second day. Then God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself on the earth. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the third day. Then God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. Then God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Then God said, let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens. And so God created great sea creatures, and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind, and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters and the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth, each according to its kind, and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them. Then God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, see, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree, whose fruit yields seed to you, it shall be for food. Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food, and it was so. Then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Amen. This is the very word of God. Father in heaven, we pray you open up this word to us this day. Teach us. Father, these are fundamentals that we would know you better and believe, Father, believe. We pray for faith today for all of us, and then to respond to your great goodness, your wisdom and power exhibited in your creation. Father, help us to see it today by your Spirit's work in us. In Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. I want to give a short series on the foundations again. It's important to know the basics. We need to come back to the basics over and over again. It doesn't matter how many times you've been through God's Word, you're never beyond the basics. And today, the foundations have been assaulted. The foundations of our faith have been very much assaulted. Children, let's say you have a great big building built upon a good foundation. then somebody standing in the building takes a sledgehammer and begins to pound out the foundation. What would you say? You would say that's a very dangerous thing to do, wouldn't you? Because if you're standing in a building that is built upon a good foundation, and you're taking a sledgehammer and you're pounding, or maybe a wrecking ball, and you're pounding and pounding away at the foundation, what is going to happen? Of course, the building is gonna fall down upon you. That's why it's a very dangerous thing to do that. Don't do that. But that's precisely what the universities have been doing in this country for the last hundred years. It's a very dangerous thing to do. It's insanity. Who in their right mind would receive the heritage of Western civilization, all of the science and all the learning and all of the Culture that we've received over a thousand years stand in that building and for a hundred years Take a wrecking ball to the foundations of that civilization. What's going to happen to the civilization? Of course it's coming down most of it has already come down This worldview of naturalism or materialism or anti-supernaturalism which doesn't allow for God to is extremely destructive. You need to understand that it's more destructive than Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam. It's very destructive. The worst possible thing you can do is start universities that deny the existence of God and the importance of God, the relevance of God, especially in creation. Now it's important for us that we have strong foundations, even within the Christian church. I believe that the Christian church has been affected very much by this destruction that's come upon the foundations, largely because pastors go to the colleges, and even the Christian colleges, which have been working hard to destroy the foundations as well. And most of these pastors are educated in these universities and seminaries, and they become part of the destructive force. So you can talk about the gospel, you can talk about Jesus, talk about all these things, People talk about, we have a Christ-centered ministry. We're gospel-oriented. But that doesn't mean very much because they don't have strong foundations. The foundations have been largely destroyed. So one of the most interesting statistics has come out in all of my life, and you know that I follow statistics. I don't know what it is about me, but I like statistics. But one of the most interesting statistics of all was the George Barna conclusion that only 1% of American Gen Zers hold to a biblical worldview, while 54% of them believe they are Christians or think they're Christians. So you have 54% of young people, 18 to 25 years of age, that think they're Christians, only 1% think like Christians. Which means probably 98% of these kids attending churches are not Christians. because they don't hold to a biblical worldview. They'll say, well, yeah, but I still believe in Jesus. The problem is they don't define Jesus well. They haven't defined sin well. They haven't defined God well. They don't understand their origins well. And so because of all of that, it doesn't matter the kind of Jesus they talk about. They're just not Christians. This is the shocking thing about the modern church, is the foundations have been so terribly destroyed that even this tertiary discussion about somebody named Jesus doesn't really mean anything to the average Christian in America today. That's why it is so important to relay strong foundations. When I say keep the faith or guard the faith, the scriptures tell us to guard the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And so much of the faith is this foundation. We want to be sure we've got solid foundation and that we jam more rebar into the foundation of our faith. And I hope that this short series will help you to do that. Now what we're talking about is ultimate questions. Ultimate questions. Humans tend to be self-aware. They're not like dogs or cats. Dogs and cats don't sit around saying, why am I here? How did I get here? Humans do. Humans ask those questions. They are ultimate questions. But increasingly, modern man has moved away from this. Philosophy no longer asks the ultimate questions. They've gone off to existentialism and pragmatism, which basically has set all the ultimate questions aside, because they don't want to deal with it anymore. and that's the last hundred years of philosophy. Science doesn't answer the ultimate questions. It can't answer the ultimate questions. And science, of course, is the new religion of the day. And so all you do is take whatever science tells you and ignore the ultimate questions because they're not interested in the ultimate answers. Only the Christian faith has the ultimate answers to the ultimate questions. So the strategy in a post-Christian age is to stop asking the questions and don't even come into a service where the questions are being asked and answered. So we want to deal with these questions. We want to deal with ultimate questions. We want to come face-to-face with them, boldly. It's critical that we do so. We want to know the answers to the ultimate questions. We are Christians. We are those whose eyes have been enlightened by God's Word. The Holy Spirit has worked in us already. Most people put their heads in the sand. They distract themselves. They don't want to face the ultimate questions. They refuse to face reality. They run away from it. They're looking for the quickest exit ramp off the highway of truth, and they're just pleading and hoping and begging to be distracted in a service like this because they don't want to face it. They don't want to come face to face with the ultimate questions. But for believers, this equips us, this strengthens us, this enables us. We can build the superstructure of our knowledge upon a stronger foundation. So we go back to the 101 of the Christian faith, and before we go to the 4,567 other things you need to know about the Christian life, we wanna be sure that we're rooted and grounded on the basics and the foundations of our faith. Moreover, when we get out into the world around us, the world out there, it's like swimming in an ocean of false ideas. And they press in on us at 16,000 pounds per square inch. So it's very powerful. And one of the reasons that we don't witness to others when we walk out into the work world or when we're out at the grocery store is because the pressure of false ideas. Every discussion assumes that God is not relevant. And so when we get out there, two problems. One is we have not been rooted and grounded enough in the preaching of the word of God on a daily basis. And I believe right now we need preaching on a daily basis, not a weekly basis. We have not been rooted and grounded. We're not swimming enough in our own worldview before we get out there. So we have to begin absorbing ourselves into our own worldview Otherwise, we will absorb the other world views that are pressing in on us at 16,000 square inches, pounds per square inch. And I want to present this series of messages as a means of giving you a solid foundation of basic faith propositions that come to us from God's Word. So let's begin with Genesis 1.1. Start right there. It's what I want to do this morning. Let us hear God speak. When I say that, of course, you say, good. I don't want to hear you speaking, Pastor Kevin. I want to hear God speaking. Now, Pastor Kevin can convey it to you through the airwaves as best as he can, but we want to begin with what God says. What does God say? Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So let's take a look at this single verse this morning. I want to pull this apart. Take a look at it. Bring in the antithesis. Set the thesis against the antithesis. There's going to be a bit of an argument against evolution, evolutionary naturalism. And I want you to be solid in your understanding of God's truth in relation to these questions. How did we get here? We woke up to the reality that we exist, and now we're asking the question, how did we get here? How did everything get started? Now, first part of it, in the beginning, what does this mean? This is at the beginning of time. Before Genesis 1-1, there is no time, there's no light. At least as we configure it here in the created universe. No time, no matter. No light. In the beginning. Now, this is history. So, Genesis 1 is history. The book of Genesis is history. It's not poetry. It's history. First mistake that many seminarians make is they say, Genesis 1 is poetry. No, no, no. It's history. We find out what happened first and then what happened after that. That's what we discover in the book of Genesis. And it's God's history book. and this is the only possibility of knowing history from the beginning, staring at bones buried in African sands and constructing some ape-like creature like Lucy doesn't get to truth about history. You need to understand that. We don't pay attention to this pseudoscience. It's not science. Staring at a pile of bones and trying to tell what happens in the future, I mean the past, is what witch doctors do. These paleontologists are witch doctors. They're not scientists. They are staring at a pile of bones and trying to tell you something about the past or sometimes the future, but there's no possible explanation of how those things got there. No possible way of knowing what the origins of life was like by staring at a pile of bones in the African sands. Potentially, there are billions of explanations. Science is what? Experimentation, observation to determine relationships of one thing to another in the present. History is different. History is what happened in the past. It's events that occurred in the past as recorded by eyewitnesses. So science is not history. And paleontology is not history. Looking at bones and current radioactive decay rates and telling us what happened in the past is not science. It's not history. It's simply guesswork. So what we have here in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. is an eyewitness account of what occurred, and it's the truth of God. Now, a lot of eyewitnesses, even when criminal activity has happened, an eyewitness comes forward. A lot of times, they didn't see it right. They're biased. They missed important details, et cetera. So oftentimes, eyewitnesses are not accurate. That's one of the struggles we have with studying history. It's difficult because it's hard to rely upon the eyewitnesses that viewed what was happening. But here we have an absolutely accurate eyewitness, somebody who's personally involved. God knows all things, understands all things, was there when it happened, was the causal factor in bringing it all about. He tells us what happened. Now, if these are ultimate questions, which they are, it seems to me that these would demand certainty. Again, if these are life and death questions, if these are the foundational issues which will determine how we live our lives and how we perceive ourselves and how we interact with others, it seems to me that what we need is certainty. That's not what you get with witch doctors considering a pile of bones in the African sands. What matters most to us is that we have some certain sense of origins, of who we are and how we got here. So that's precisely what the Word of God gives to us. The only possibility of knowing anything certain, especially when it comes to these important matters of life, is God's revelation itself. Now, there are lots of facts in history. There are billions of facts throughout history. I've been reading a secular history book, 1,000 pages, written by the premier classical education historian for homeschoolers today. She writes an extensive history of the world in its secular history from a secular humanist worldview. Now, what is it all about? What is history all about? I've read 1,000 pages, maybe more. It's extensive. It's about 99.9% war. assassinations, coups, people going up against each other, the grappling for power, pyramids, empires, technology, usually in order to accommodate more war, and of course the cultural works of man. Now, this is not a Christian view of history. This is the works of man. This is not what Christians read and not what Christians teach their children. This is the wrong worldview. Completely wrong worldview. Most secular history includes almost nothing of what God would provide in his history books. So as we choose our emphasis, you see, when you're looking at billions of facts in history, You can't give your children everything. That would be a million pages. That would be a billion books. So what do you do? How do you narrow it down? This has been a challenge for me as I'm trying to bring a world history and an American history into curriculum. What do you do? How do you siphon it out? What do you do? I can't go for 3,000 pages for a ninth grade book. So what do I do? How do I sift through all this? What is the emphasis? Go with God's emphasis. You see, a biblical worldview emphasizes what matters to God, not what matters to the secular historians, which will give you 99.99% elections and wars, technology to provide for more war, and the cultural works of man, the pyramids and the empires. God's approach to history is far different than the secular mindset, which worships at the temples of man, which typically is the state. There's one mention of iron working in Genesis 4. There's not one mention of the pyramids in all of the book of Genesis. Only Joseph and the people of God. No mention of the 500-foot pyramid in Egypt. Only a mention of a five-foot altar built by Abraham for the worship of the true and living God. Not impressed by the pyramids, but check out most secular history books. They don't mention much about Joseph. Not interested in what happened with Abraham building the altars. Completely different emphasis. Why? Because it's the wrong religion. And so my encouragement to you is don't give your children the wrong religion. Give your children the emphases that God brings out in his history books, and that is primarily the work of God and the church, or the people of God. The wars of the nations, by the way, it's again, probably 92%, maybe 97% of all the history, it goes all the way back, four, five, 6,000 years, is the wars of the nations, and suffice it to say that they wipe each other out, they kill a third of the world's population routinely, and that is the judgment of God upon the nations, They kill each other off, they cut off each other's legs, which prevents them from gaining too much power. It's just God's work of cutting off the legs of the great empires, and he'll do it again and again, next time, no doubt, with nuclear warheads. But that's what he's been doing for 6,000 years. But this is the work of God. This is the judgment of God upon the nations. So history is God-centered. That is, we're focused upon God's works, God's covenant with man, God's relationship with man, God's special people, the Church of Jesus Christ. That's 95% of history from a Christian perspective and a few mentions the wars of the nations so God writes the history book in the beginning God that's the second point in the outline this morning it's the fourth word in God's revelation in God's history in the beginning God that means that God was there from the beginning God was there in the beginning God before anything else was there before time before light before mass before God was there, the invisible God, who is a spirit, was there. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all show up in this first chapter of Genesis. And we'll get to that a little bit later. But children, what is God? It's one of the questions in your outline today. What is God? What is God? What does the word God mean? God is the ruler. That's the word, the word means ruler. So when we pray dear God, we pray dear ruler. For some reason, people have lost the definition of God. It's very odd that we use the word Lord and don't realize we're talking about our master. Talked about this last night. Jesus said, why do you call me Lord and you don't do the things I tell you to do? You won't forgive your brother, you won't go to your brother. You'll have conflicts in the church, and there's no resolution to that conflict over three, four, five, six years. What's wrong? Why do you keep calling me Lord? And you don't do the things that I tell you to do. Why? When you say Lord, you mean master. When you say God, you mean the ruler. That's what it means. Again, these are the basics this morning. I want to be sure that we don't just have some religious language going on here and we don't pay attention to what we're saying. Be sure you understand what you're saying. God is the ruler. God's the authority. He's the ultimate authority over all things. Now, I think everybody knows authority. In fact, this is one of the interesting things I've noted from all of my studies of all of these world cultures, going all the way back to the Slavs, and out to the Mongols, and then down into the Chinese, and et cetera, all the way back 5,000 years. And what you find is that every society is all about authority. That is the deal. It doesn't matter how small the tribe. It doesn't matter if there's 30 Indian braves coming together. They're going to have a ruler. They're going to have authority. Man knows what this is. Now, the difficulty is that man turns himself into the ultimate authority, and that's, of course, what the pharaoh did in the Japanese Tenno Heika. All these people have made themselves into the god on earth, and that's the whole idea of the state. The state is supposed to be god on earth, as far as the humanists are concerned, as far as the Chinese and the Japanese and others are concerned. It's all about man turning himself into the ultimate ruler or the ultimate god over all the earth. Perhaps the Pope did that as well. But the point is that God is God. God is the ultimate authority. He is above all. He dictates what should be and what will be. 1 Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 5 brings this out in very simple terms. Apostle Paul is talking about knowledge here, but he immediately turns to the question of authority and rulers. He says, for even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, Yet for us, so there it is, God and Lord, ruler and Lord, okay? You have all these gods and lords around. Everybody knows this. Every Gentile nation knows this. Everybody knows about authority. That's the most obvious thing. If you don't obey authority, you get shot in the head and you get buried within two days. That's happened for five, 6,000 years. Anarchists never survive, et cetera, et cetera. We all know that. But the point is that God, once you recognize authority, you need to understand there is authority above all authorities. There is a God above all things, and He dictates what should be and what will be. Governments. Now there's the should be and will be, okay? So governments They have legislative law, and that is what should be. And then they have administrative law, which is what needs to be, what should be, and what will be. They're taking what should be and try to make it what will be. So human governments are extremely limited in taking what should be legislative law and perfectly administrate that law such that what should be turns out to be what will be. You follow me? There's always going to be a distance between the the thing that is legislated and the thing that is administrated. And so because man is not able to bring about perfect justice and doesn't understand everything that's going on, isn't all seeing, etc. But God is. And human governments are extremely limited, but God is absolutely sure that what should be is what will be in His universe. That make sense? God or ruler is in charge of what should be that's God that's his law then man breaks his law and so God realigns This this breaking of the law with with his ultimate standard of righteousness in his administrative law He does that by his judgments upon the earth Okay, so that's what God is just to explain to you. You've used the word before so what is it talk about God a lot? Why do you talk about God so much? Well, this is what God is. God's a ruler. God's in charge. God makes sure that His will is accomplished in the earth. He legislates it, administrates it. That's who God is. He's also the source of all authority. which means he quickly dispenses with all illegitimate authorities. Somebody tries to pop up, he crushes that right back down. He can't be challenged. There's no competition with him. God is God. He's authority over all the heavens and the earth. He's also quite sure that even the enemies are accomplishing his will and bringing about the ultimate good by means of even their evil actions, as we see in so many instances throughout scripture, whether it be Joseph's brothers or what happened at the cross of Jesus Christ. Now, all this to say that atheism is the ultimate foolishness. There is nothing stupider than atheism. And I'm not trying to be insulting here at all, I'm just simply saying the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. So when you walk into a university and they're pretending that God doesn't exist or that God is irrelevant, that's extreme foolishness. That is far more foolish than the pagans. The ancient Slavs worshiped the sun, as did the Japanese and others. The pagans worshiped the sun. Now, why did they worship the sun? For the obvious reason that the sun is bigger than they are. See, pagans are very, very smart as compared to post-Christian apostates in American universities. They're very smart in comparison. They got their own issues of foolishness. But the atheist is the ultimate fool because, I mean, even the demons are wiser than atheists. Because the demons recognize they have to ask the permission of Jesus before, you know, they can get into the pigs. Jesus is the authority. They don't understand this. Atheists are extremely stupid because they will not recognize that there's something more powerful than they are. That's the problem. So there's obviously just an insane level of pride that goes on with atheism today. Atheists are like the old man in the sea, shaking their fists at the stars. Hemingway was excellent at presenting the insanity of atheism in the old man in the sea. Picking a fight with the lesser gods, picking a fight with powers greater than themselves. You pick a fight with a son. Come on, come on, I'll beat you. I can beat you. You crawl out into the desert sands of the Sahara for a week and a half. We'll see who wins. We'll see who wins. It's just insanity. There is only one God of whom are all things. That is, God is the derivative. He's the source of it all. There's only one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things. See, it's of God, the Father, and through Jesus. That's why Romans 11, 36 brings the Trinity to bear there, because of Him, through Him, to Him are all things, to Him be glory forever. So of Him, of the Father, then through the Lord Jesus Christ is all the creation, the Trinity there at creation, God, the Father, the Source, Jesus Christ, the Word, the mechanism through which all things appear, then the Holy Spirit, ever-present overseer. just like he is with us, ever-present overseer of the church of Jesus Christ, hovering over the creation, now hovering over the church. So the trinity there at the first of the creation. Now let's get back to Genesis 1 verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. All right, so God created the heavens and the earth. He did it all in six days. According to the biblical data, here's what happened. The first thing that happens is God creates the heavens and the earth, and it is without form and void. It's mass and space. I believe very simply it's mass and space. Mass is introduced to the creation initially, and then there's space around it. So these are the heavens and the earth, but without form and void. So now, what's step two? Step two is the rest of the chapter. He formed the mass and space and filled it with everything you find in Genesis chapter one. And it happened in six days, six 24-hour days, using the words morning and evening, words we're all familiar with that define or describe what a single 24-hour day looks like. I don't think it could be put more plainly, more simply, outside of maybe using the term 24 hours. But also Exodus 20 is very clear on this. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Therefore what? you work for six indeterminate lengths of time, could be a year, could be two years, could be five years, could be 20 years, could be 100 years, could be a millennium, who cares? But work six indeterminate lengths of time and then rest another indeterminate length of time. No, no, we cannot equivocate. We cannot present a different description of the word yom in the same sentence. Don't do that. That's one of the worst things you could possibly do logically. You're not allowed to do that. It's off limits. If God worked six 24-hour days and rested a seventh, then we have an obligation to work six 24-hour days and rest a seventh. That's the pattern that was set for us from the beginning, and we cannot equivocate or redefine the word day. You cannot make an exception to that. You're not to do that. That is, you can't come up with the idea of, I am gonna work for six weeks and then take a seventh week off. You're not to do that. That's against God's law. It also counters God's example that he set for us in creation. Okay, now, fourthly, let's hit the fourth basic point this morning, and that is the mechanism. We want to know the mechanism, and that's, of course, what evolution is about, is to present a mechanism. How did it happen? How did it come about? How did we get this complexity of of organisms that are walking around the earth, very, very involved. Look at the complexity of the human being as compared to a chair, a rock. You're like, whoa, a human being can do more than a rock can. You know, we see there's a lot of complexity to human life, and that's impressive to us. So we say, how did it come about? What is the mechanism? And the Word of God is very clear on this, not 1 John 1, 1, but John 1, 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Speaking of Jesus, because in verse 14 we find the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. So we know that this is Jesus, the Word becomes flesh. It's Jesus, takes on flesh, lives with us, walks with us, talks to us, that's Jesus, that is the Word, that is the personality of the second person of the Godhead. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and then, verse three, all things were made through him and without him. Nothing was made that was made. That is, it came, the creation came through the word of God, the word logos. I believe it's best translated, not so much the word, because it has a more active sense, and it's not logic either. The word logos in John chapter one has got to mean a spoken word. Jesus is effectively the speaker. In the beginning was the speaker. He is the one who communicates by this action called speaking. And so the way in which this all came about was by the Word, or the spoken Word of God. We get that also in Psalm 33 and verse 6. And this is a very, very key passage, so you might look it up. Psalm 33 and verse 6. By the Word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and all the host of them, by the breath of His mouth. Let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. But why? Why would we stand in awe of God? For He spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. That's impressive, that's awesome. Let all the world stand in awe. Let the chemistry classroom, the biology classroom, the professor is speaking for the front, stand on his desk, praise God, lift his arms, sing How Great Thou Art. Let the entire world be in awe and wonder of God at every encounter with God's creation around us, at every single point. Let us be in awe of God because all of this came about by him speaking He spoke, and the fish were there. He spoke, and what wasn't there flying in the sky is now flying through the sky. They are birds, and they are so impressive, such that man cannot emulate what God did in flight until the Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright brothers in the early part of the 20th century. And of course it came about by them studying the birds over and over again. Their takeoff and their landing. Their takeoff and their landing. Studying every little piece of what they did as they were able to create just the right amount of drag in order to have a smooth landing. They examined those birds. They were sons of pastor. Their pastor father gave them the books, and that's where they were schooled, for the most part, with their father, in their library. And they came upon this amazing invention of human flight, but only because of the genius of God that created it at the beginning, and there was no process except for God speaking, and it happened. God says, let there be light. and there is light. He purposes it, he intends it, he speaks it. Let there be the concept of light as I have purposed it, imagined it, created it in my mind. Let there be light and there is instantly light. When Jesus stands up and says to the storm, peace, be still. The elements obey. The power of his words bring about the change in nature as well as the establishment of nature at the very beginning. In order for a dead man to rise from the grave, what's the mechanism? What has to happen? Lazarus, come forth. and the dead man came out of the grave. It is the power of the voice of the word of God that brings about the reality we see around us today, and it is awesome. Now let's take a moment and consider the heresy of naturalistic evolution. This, I believe, is the dry rot and the catalyst that brought about the deconstruction of our society. I believe it's what bringing about the dry rot, the destruction of the Christian church to a great extent. The doctrine infiltrated the seminaries almost immediately. Yale University, which maintained somewhat of a conservatism until 1880, brought it in hook, line, and sinker. Yale University. Interesting, a president of a well-known conservative Christian college called me several times. very interested in my support for his college. He said, we are one of the most conservative Christian colleges in America. We need your support. He said, there's one little thing though. A lot of homeschoolers are upset with our university because we don't teach biblical creation or 6-24 hour day creation. We teach evolution in this college. He said, but we're the best. We're among the five, six, eight best Christian colleges in America. The point is that 99.9% of colleges in America teach evolution or some form of naturalistic evolution. Reformed Presbyterians like Charles Hodge and Benjamin Warfield gave way to it right away. We were concerned with the previous conservative denomination with which we had something to do. They allowed for a fairly broad scale of evolutionary perspectives for their pastors in that denomination. Again, one of probably, you know, the 0.1 to 0.5% most conservative denominations in America. So here's my question, here's the $100,000 question I have for you. As far as academia is concerned, as far as the systems are concerned, as far as the ecclesiastical structure in America is concerned, we are in the 0.1% minority. Not 1%, we're about 0.1%. So what I'm saying today is extremely the minority position, especially in academia. So I guess my question is this. Is this that big of a deal? I ask myself that question quite a bit, I do. It's a fair question. Is this that big of a deal? Is an acceptance of the naturalistic evolution of the species really all that dangerous? Well, a couple of things, big picture issues, I want you to think about. One is we live in an anti-supernaturalistic world. I said this at the beginning, we live in the worldview of naturalism, which means that they're opposed to the idea of supernaturalism having really anything to do with the world, whether it be in creation, providence, redemption, or any other thing. That some kind of supernatural, something beyond the natural, would have any influence upon the natural. The naturalistic evolutionary theory has had a huge psychological effect on all of us. such that we have a hard time even imagining miracles. Darwin's evolution, I think, was the key. I really do. The two of the most influential men in all the surveys, two most influential men of the last 150 years is Karl Marx and Charles Darwin. They're always at the top of the list. Charles Darwin, Karl Marx. Did you know that Karl Marx, in the introduction to his Das Kapital, dedicated the book to Charles Darwin? He himself bowed his knee to the temple of Darwinism, and that's what everybody was doing, or all the movers and shakers were doing in the 19th century. Virtually all the great scientists who brought about the sciences we have today, the technology we have today, were Christians, were faithful Christians, godly Christians, amazing. I dedicate a whole chapter to that in my book, Epoch, because it was such an amazing thing. I never found a non-Christian. Now my understanding is there has been one or two non-Christians, but out of the hundreds of scientists, I read their journals, their biography, their final words, et cetera, et cetera. I just studied their lives. I couldn't find a single scientist who is not a Christian or didn't fear God and acknowledge God behind it all. And do you realize that in 1900, only 0.2% of the world was atheists in 1900, 0.2%. Today that's 21%, that's a hundredfold increase on the percentage. Somebody's gotta say, well, that's pretty significant. And by the way, the world is now run, our institutions are run by atheists. That's the difference. So in a hundred years, you have a massive increase in the number of anti-Christians and atheists that have stepped in to run almost every one of our institutions in all of the most powerful nations in the world, in just a hundred years. So I just ask you, has Charles Darwin made a difference? I'm just asking you the question. Has Charles Darwin made a difference in 100 years? And what's really interesting is that 93% of the National Science Academy members are professing atheists. 93%. So you go from 0% to 93% in 100 years among the scientists. That's pretty impressive. What happened? Darwin happened. Charles Darwin happened. So, should we take a stand? Should the last .1% of American Christians take a stand? Should we preach these messages? Should we raise up some concern among Christians about this particular issue that's been so destructive, the catalyst to break down an entire civilization? Should we raise The issue, should we throw some flags on the play? But when you do stand against these doctrines, you stand against the major impetus behind the spirit of the age. You are barbecuing the sacred cow of all sacred cows. And that, of course, is why our church receives, I think, a fair amount of persecution. And we will. And I think we'll have spiritual pushback. I think we'll have demons trying to split each other apart from each other. We'll have internal conflicts develop because of messages like this. Because the demon world's not happy about it. And neither are the principalities and powers that rule our governments today. They're not happy about this message. And yet I think we must not be silent. I think we need to stand and speak. The Supreme Court of the United States in 1988 outlawed the teaching of creation in American public schools and required what they called secularism to be taught in American public schools in 1988. And there has been no reversing that, not even the inkling of anybody ever wanting to reverse that. But here's my point. I think there's a problem with a whole world that has been programmed to believe a big lie. Does anybody see that? That there's a problem when you have 99.9% of the universities, 99.9% of the media, the movies, I guess Fox News or CNN is looking at different things. It's all evolution. There's not even a sense that creation plays a part in the news, in the media, in the movies, in the universities. We are so marginalized on this particular issue But here, the whole world has come to believe a really, really big lie. And I don't think we should live by lies. Rod Dreher is right on that. We should not be living by lies. and the craziness of transgenderism and the self-definition of man at every level and the self-creation. Ignoring the creation, now self-creating us through transgenderism is just one more insanity that comes out of this particular insanity. Brothers and sisters, can we stand up and speak the truth on this? Shall we stop living by lies? And to the extent that naturalism and a refusal to acknowledge God's creation as the miraculous, amazing work of God at the very beginning, to ignore that day by day, to see the beauty of God's creation and not give Him the glory for it, and not rush in here and come in and sing at the top of your lungs, all creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing. Brothers and sisters, there's something wrong with that. Naturalism has crept in on all of us, to some extent or another. And we need to stand against it. Oh, I'm gonna go through a fair amount of this as quickly as possible, but what is Darwinian evolution? Not a theory, not a hypothesis, a wild guess, was never a hypothesis, was never a theory, it's not a theory. Nothing theory about it, in terms of the scientific definition of theory. Basically, A rock turned into a human being over a long period of time. A frog turned into a prince over a long period of time. Okay, now any rational person would say, that's insanity. I don't think I need to go any further than this. Unless you've been brainwashed. Unless you've been in the mental institute for too many years. I don't think I need to go any further. In fact, I'm tempted to skip all the rest of this. I mean, if you believe this stuff, man, a massive metanoeo, a change of mind, renewal of mind needs to happen to us. Inanimate dust becomes a human being over roughly four billion years. Mass disorder turned into a phenomenal high order of organism by some unknown natural mechanism yet to be identified. The phenomena has never been observed and has never been replicated in laboratory. And 99.9% of universities teach this. There's something wrong with that. There's something really wrong with that. Wake up, brothers and sisters. There's a gigantic lie that's been foisted upon our societies. This whole thing happens by genetic mutations, natural selection, survival of the better mutants, and its adaptability to its environment, all by trial and error. Natural process, no supernatural process. By chance mechanisms, the frog turns into a prince. Not by a kiss, but by some other mechanism, but we're really not sure what it is. And you're gonna say, oh, I believe it. Where have you been all my life? Oh, I'm not worthy to be in your presence, Mr. PhD. Is that what you're gonna say to him? He says, well, I'm telling you, a frog turned into a prince, and we don't know how it happened. What are you gonna say to that? What are you gonna say to that? Mutations are at least 1,000 times more harmful than helpful in a sinful world. So what happens in a world that's fallen? Kids, let me explain this to you for a second. Mutations are internal things that change a little bit in the DNA code that results in slight differences in the creature itself. So let's say you write a book and let it mutate for 20,000 years. Your book starts out pretty orderly. By the way, with books, there's always a few mistakes in it. I can guarantee you that. But you say, well, maybe if I just let the book kind of mutate, it'll turn out really good over 20,000 years. Well, the problem is you get thousands and thousands upon thousands of bad mutations. And so in 20,000 years, how does the book read? Like it doesn't. It doesn't read. You know, is that any good? Does that help your book? Did the book fix itself? Did the book improve itself? See, I think we understand these sorts of things. The attempt to witness evolution, by the way, has been attempted in a laboratory ever since the theory got very popular. So for the last 40 to 50 years, Richard Lenski, University, I think in Michigan, he patiently cultured 40,000 generations of E. coli. And that would have been equivalent to about three million years, or maybe two and three million years of human evolution. So he's watching. So that'd be just about the same number of mutations as what you would see in the development of a human or some aspect of the human over three million years. Well, okay, 60,000 generations of E. coli. Not one helpful mutation in the bunch. Not one. They tried it in a laboratory. They haven't seen it. Haven't proven it. In fact, it proved just the opposite. over the last 40, 50 years. Paleontology, reconstructing fossils, that's a total disaster. Again, guesswork. Who knows what bony animal gave birth to some other animal and who knows the date at which the thing went extinct? Nobody knows that. Impossible. One more assumption that evolutionists take to studying the fossil layers is they assume that animals with similar features are related to each other. And so you get a duck-billed platypus that lays eggs and a chicken that lays an egg. And they say, oh, they both lay an egg. They must be related to each other. Or is the duck-billed platypus related to the beaver? Which is it? They don't know. They have no idea. So even the evolutionary tree becomes a total guess. Then the evolutionists, of course they depend upon the transitional forms of the rock strata. But the sheer number of iterations needed for a creature to evolve from an ape to a human would be just impossible to calculate. It would be at least hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. But after 200 years of searching has come about with nothing for a rational person to believe in the evolution of amoeba to a man, you need hundreds of thousands of transitional forms marking the development of land animal, from bird, from amphibian, from fish, etc, etc. But there's almost nothing in the fossil record. It's been a total disaster for evolutionists. And I think the average person can understand this. Now, I'm going to go through some stats just for a moment. You need millions upon billions of transitional fossils just to begin a proof for evolutionary speciation. So what do you have? Okay, let's go into it. There are some 250,000 species uncovered in the fossil record so far. 250,000. Well, that's nothing compared to the 9 million species walking around on the Earth today. Only 250,000 species? And there's 9 million still alive today. That's nothing. That's not evidence. That's the opposite of evidence. That's a ratio of 2.5%. Also, the vast majority of the fossils found are skeletal remains of species that are still alive, still living, still walking the Earth. The Darwinists were hoping to find millions upon billions of transitional forms. Instead, what did they find? Forms of animals that are still alive. Unbelievable. This is a total disaster. You ever found a fossil? Anybody, any children ever found a fossil? You know, when you look at it, what do you say? I know what that looks like. That's a shellfish. Right, you look at it, you go, that's a clam. I got some of those down at the seashore this last summer. Well, now wait a minute, where's the transitional fossil? You need to find something weird if you're gonna prove evolution. See, that's the idea, children. If you go and find a fossil, you say, I know what that looks like. These things are already alive today. Absolutely. Another conundrum that evolutionists are stumped over is the high percentage of species still alive and well on planet Earth, appearing in the fossil record. One would think the species would go extinct as they are displaced by more robust and advanced life forms. One study found that 88% of the mammal species now living in Europe today are present in the fossil record in Europe. 99% are present in the fossil record somewhere on the Earth. Another study found 76.8% of marine mollusk species currently swimming around the California coast are found in the fossil record. So assuming for a moment that every species in the fossil record had gone extinct, which is not the case, we would have to conclude that 97.5% of species that ever existed are still alive today. Well then where are all the transitional fossils? How do these things transition from one species to another? How did that happen? Now I hope this isn't too complicated for you brothers and sisters. I'm just looking at this as a layperson, as somebody just, this is obvious. The dude's nude, the guy doesn't have any clothes on. It's the emperor's new clothes situation. And yet 99.9% of the universities are like, we're not worthy to be in his presence. The nude guy's presence. So brothers and sisters, there's no proof for evolution. There's no proof for evolution. And by the way, kids, how about this? A 500 pound clam on the top of a 14,000 foot mountain in the Andes. You tell me how that thing got up there. That's a big hike for a 500 pound clam. Had to take a lot of water bottles with him. Keep him alive as he made the hike. Foolishness. Evolution is pure foolishness. And the sooner we say it, the better. And I know you're up against 99.9% of the PhDs and all the rest. Who cares? The purpose of evolution, naturalistic evolution, was to distance man from God. It's to make God seem more distant, not really connected with his world. It's to remove man from ethical responsibility to God, to move Christians from a constant sense of the supernatural to higher levels of deism. to practical atheism, then eventually to atheism, which so many of us, we're tempted to practical atheism day by day. We act like we're atheists. We act like God's not relevant, God's not present, et cetera. Oh, so many problems with it. Prostitution of science for the purposes of defending a weak, unprovable hypothesis. It's destroyed science. Ultimate purpose of evolution is to suppress the truth of God. It buttress the arrogance of man. It came at the expense of reducing man to nothing but cosmic dust. So man kills God, but then the collateral damage was he killed himself in the process. Man was dehumanized. Man was devalued, as if he was never created in the image of God. Here's the irony. Humanist man stepped out to say, here, I'm gonna determine what's true and what's surreal and what's right and wrong for myself, but then naturalistic evolutions hampered the vision, reduced man to nothing but cosmic dust. Terrible, terrible theory. and evolutionary theories cannot answer the most important questions of all, and that is, what is man? Where did I come from? And what is the origin of life? And then worst of all, man has lost a sense of wonder. I think this is the biggest problem. Thank God for my brother over here that is constantly using his camera and other things to try to bring our minds and hearts back to the amazing beauty and complexity and wonder and wisdom of God's creation Praise God for you, brother. But we lose a sense of wonder. As we've said before, you throw a can of paint on the ground, it's a big accident, nobody says, oh, what a wonderful artwork. You are so talented, Pastor Swanson. Nobody says that, it was an accident. That's not, and to study that kind of stuff, you know, to have a class, a biology class, where you study paint on the floor, total accidents. What a boring class. Science has become so boring in our universities, in our K-12 schools, because it's all an accident. Who wants to study an accident? I don't. That's just boring. The human was built for a capacity to wonder and praise. Remember up at Mount Rushmore a few years ago, watching the mountain goats, and the game warden came in and explained how their hooves were made to cling onto the cliffs. Brother George was standing right there with us, and George said, Made it that way? Made it that way? The hooves were made that way. Why don't you explain how they were made? Who made them that way? See, man is built for wonder. Man is built to see the awesomeness, the functionality, the wisdom, the creativity of God's creation, to step back and be in awe of what God has done, and yet they deny it, they suppress it, because they don't want to come face-to-face with a living God. Brothers and sisters, we were made for this. The greatest tragedy of the modern age is the absence of wonder. It causes so much diversion. endless seeking to escape reality, despair, purposelessness, hopelessness of the modern age. I think it starts right here. The reason we have this with so many of our kids is because of this worldview, a refusal to see God's amazing creation. And so may God help you to look outside and see the trees and see these wonders of what God has created. A tiny little seed in the ground just expands into a beautiful creation of God. Amazing, amazing. the metamorphosis of a tadpole into a frog. How does that happen? What's the instruction manual? The DNA that is constantly instructing every cell to recreate and to produce this amazing frog out of this tiny little tadpole. How does this work? Step back. Express a little wonder in what God has done for a moment. Get your head out of the sand and see what God has done. This is marvelous. This is a miracle. This is a supernatural work of a creator God. See it, recognize it, respond to it. I don't like to spend too much time just cutting down the wrong theory. I think we need to get to the point where we're saying with the people of God in Revelation 4.11, thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for thou hast created all things for thy pleasure. They are and were created. What about the Christian seminaries and universities, most of which allow for evolutionary theories? Well, I've got six points there. You can take a look at it. Nothing must diminish of the glory of God, the genius of God, the power of God. Nothing must undermine our commitment to the epistemological authority of God speaking through His Word. We must interpret rock layers by the revelation of God's Word. Three, nothing must erode the actual historicity of the key events of Scripture. Number four, nothing must disconnect God from the world in our minds. Number five, nothing must challenge the doctrine of man's creation, the image of God, as distinct from the animals. Number six, nothing must allow for the undermining of faith in God or in his scriptures through the transfer of faith to scientism or man's reason. Okay. In conclusion, brothers and sisters, God has a relationship with his creation. and he absolutely is opposed to this deist theory that he has distanced himself. No, no, his hand is upon his creation at all times. His fingerprints are seen everywhere, and they're up to the moment. He always acts according to what he wants to accomplish with his creation. He is the potter, the creation is the clay. He does whatever he wants with it, and he always achieves the best and the highest good with it. Either the creation may willingly submit itself to God, or it will be submitted to God one way or the other. He is intimately involved with his creation. He's concerned with every sparrow that falls. God loves his creation. That's the last point here. God loves his creation. He said it was good. Verse four, verse 10, verse 12, verse 18, verse 21, verse 25. He said it was good. God saw that it was good. He loves it. Last verse 31, then God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, It was very good. God delights in His creation. Proverbs 8, 30. Then I was beside Him, that is Jesus, the Word. I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in His inhabited world, and my delight was with the sons of men. This is Jesus speaking. He says, I'm delighting in the creation, delighting in the sons of men. Psalm 104, verse 31. May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in His works. He takes such good care of His creation. But here's the bad news. We ruined it. We ruined it. We ruined God's creation. And I'm gonna get to this later. But it was our fault. We sinned against God. So what did He do? He said, I'm done with it. Just burn the whole thing up. I'll go somewhere else and start over. Is that what He did? No. No, He loves His world. In fact, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. God so loved the world, God so delighted in His world, that even after we messed it up, He came to save His world. He didn't leave it, He wanted to save it. And even all creation right now is waiting for the redemption. crying out, groaning, laboring with birth pangs together until now. And not only they, but we also have the first fruits of the Spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for what? The redemption of the body. The redemption of the physical universe. The redemption of our physical body. The things that are breaking down. I'm getting older and older. I don't know, this may be my last sermon. Who knows? I say that from time to time, right? Because it's almost over for me. I'm waiting for the redemption of the body, are you? I'm waiting for the salvation, the saving, the redeeming of all of the things that are messed up in the world around us. And then you say, well, what's the application? Last application. Evolution rejects the invisible. But this is where faith begins. You see, where evolution says, I'm not gonna trust that which I don't see. Where atheism says, I don't trust a God I can't see. The Bible presents just the opposite. Hebrews 11, one more time. Faith is a substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. That is, where did all this come from? From God, who is not visible. So, faith begins right here. And one of the reasons why some of you young people are struggling with doubts, about all of this is because you haven't made it this far. These are the basics. You've got to believe that God the Father created heaven and earth. You have to believe in the creator first. This is where faith begins. Faith begins with that, believing that thing we cannot see, believing in God we cannot see, believing all things visible were made by that which we cannot see, which is God. This is where faith begins. It begins right here. The Christian thinks and lives by faith. We cannot think, we cannot live before we believe. We have to believe this first. Believe what God tells us. Believe God, believe in God, believe God exists, believe his word, and believe that he made all of this by the word of his mouth, by the Lord Jesus Christ. If we don't believe what God tells us here, everything else is worthless. You have no knowledge, you have no certainty of anything whatsoever. And this is where doubt begins. It begins right here with whether God made all of these things we see all around us every day, including ourselves. Whether we believe that God made us, we are accountable to him. and that we have sinned against him, and that he has sent a son to save us from this sin. These are the basics. Let's believe it. Brothers and sisters, I call you to faith today. Believe these things. Believe in God. Believe God's word. Believe that God made all these things. Amen. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for these great insights, and oh God, your truth, you speak. God, you have spoken. Oh, may we not harden our hearts to this at all, but Lord God, embrace your truth. God, in the beginning, you created heaven and earth, and we worship you now, praise you. You have made all these things to worship you, to announce your praise, and we, your people, this is our highest duty. Oh, God, raise us to praise now, to worship you. every day, every minute of the day, to recognize you. And oh God, may this heresy of naturalism and evolutionary materialism be completely obliterated in our mind. That every day we open our eyes and see the beauty of your works and to recognize your fingerprints on everything you have made. to give you the glory and the praise for it. Restore wonder. Restore faith to us. Oh God, this day, bring a revival right now into this room. In Jesus' name, amen. So we come to the Lord's table now. Those of you visiting for the first time, take a peek at the back of our bulletin. We have a little piece on how we do the Lord's table here at the church. So I ended with this statement that God so loved the world. He loved his world at the beginning, still loves his world, came to save his world. And this world is pretty messed up, and I think everybody can agree with that. What would you do? Make a list of the things wrong with the world, how would you fix it all? Think about that. I mean, how long is a list? It goes on and on, doesn't it? all the things wrong with the world. You talk about it a fair amount. Maybe you even complain about it. I don't know. But there's a lot wrong with the world. So if it was up to you, what would you do? How would you fix the world? Where would you start? I'm just asking you, what would you do? If you were in charge of fixing this world, I guess we could ask unbelievers the same question. They're concerned about certain things. Death is an issue, other things. So how would you change the world? How would you turn this into a perfect place? Well, three things. The first thing is this, and this should be obvious. This place is so messed up, we're gonna need God to fix it for us. That's number one. We need God to come down here and fix it for us, okay? That's basic. You know, and Jesus said this. Again, this kind of shocked me in a couple of places in the Gospels. This isn't a hyperbole, this isn't fantasy, but Jesus said clearly in John 12, 47, I have come to save the world. You say, I think that's Superman's job, isn't it? Yes. It is the job of a Superman, the Superman, the super God-man, to save the world. And all fantasy characters need to be obliterated from your mind. I'm not sure I support any of the superheroes for this reason. I think it's somewhat blasphemy. Because in order to save this world, it will take the super God-man to bring it about. And Jesus said, I have come to save the world. That's what he says in John 12. 1 John 4, 14, we have seen and testified the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. So this world needs saving, and Jesus is the one who has come to do that. God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. So that's number one. Number two, we need God to do it, and we need a recreation. Somebody else already mentioned this, stole a little bit of the thunder, but that's precisely what happens this morning. We need a recreation, a redo, a creation 2.0. In other words, sometimes your computer program is so messed up, you need to throw it away, and you need to get a 2.0 going. Talk to the computer programmers about this. They'll tell you what a 2.0 looks like, okay? We need a creation 2.0. Man, that 2.0. Everything 2.0. Jesus is making us new by a recreation. Here's what he says. He's sitting on the throne, Revelation 21, verse five. He sat on the throne and said, behold, I make all things new. Isn't that beautiful? I read that last night. I go, yeah, that's what we need. We're at the point now, I just can't kind of make it work. My car is all broken up. I tried to fix it for my wife. She came out and said, no. It's not fixed. The body is, I mean, it was about the best I could do with what I had, but she says that still looks pretty messed up. Basically, we need a new car, I think is what she's saying. But Jesus is doing something new for us, and he's starting with you and me right now, and that's Ephesians 2. We've been already recreated in Christ Jesus under good works, right? Recreated in Christ Jesus under good works. That's a recreation, and that's already happened. It's a point made here. Colossians 3, we put on a new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. It's a new self. It's Kevin 2.0. It's the new person. Same thing, Romans 6. We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism to death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Okay, so what do we got? We got God needs to come down here and save us. Secondly, we gotta get a new recreation going. And then thirdly, we need a reconciled relationship with God because the fundamental problem is the God-man relationship was messed up at the fall. so we get that. Colossians 119, it pleased the Father that in Jesus all the fullness should dwell and by Jesus to reconcile all things to himself by him whether things on earth or things in heaven having made peace and through the blood of His cross. In other words, all of this reconciling of all things back to God has got to come through Jesus Christ and by the shedding of His blood. So how do we fix all of this? You can't do it. I can't do it. God did it. He brought new life. He made all things new. He brings reconciliation, redemption, and salvation through the death of Jesus Christ, through His blood, and only through Jesus and His blood. So as We receive this token, this sign, this sacrament of his body and his blood. Remember, that is what it took. That was the gift. That's what God gave to us to bring about this great redemption. Let's pray. Our Father, oh, what a beautiful thing, that God, that you did not leave us. You didn't abandon us. You cared so much for us. You had mercy upon us. That you sent your Son to save the world. What a beautiful story. Nothing could have helped. Nothing could have stepped in the way. Nothing could have brought about our salvation. Like your son, the Lord Jesus, to bring about the Creator recreating. The Son of God Himself bringing about a reconciliation with God. Jesus Christ, our Savior, bringing about this great salvation in this new life. that now we receive by faith, as we believe by faith, worlds were framed by the Word of God, we believe now that we have been recreated by the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. We receive this token now as a token of your love, and indeed, your salvation for us. In Jesus' name, amen.