So breaking out of the study in the Gospel of John for one Sunday morning here to address the kind of new beginning, new year that we have, and I desire to just kind of put before you in my own thinking what I see as needful for any kind of restart, any sort of re-centering and figuring out where to go forward as Christians from here and how to go forward. And so in your outlines there on the little handout, you find a little structure that I'll be following. And in my own thinking, I've titled this kind of Resolutions Towards Living as New Creations in the New Year. And in many ways, I kind of struggle with New Year's. I think it's like it's just the next day that follows the other day. So it's sort of an artificial celebration in many ways. But in other ways, it's kind of a point to recenter, to capture, and to make sure that we're off on a trajectory that's truly pleasing to the Lord. So, I do want to put before you this broad structure of the Scriptures and the broad plan of God that unfolds in the Scriptures. In the very first book of the Bible, as you all know, Genesis, in chapters 1 and 2, it describes God's creation account. And in that Genesis 1 and 2, it paints a picture of how God intended his creation to function. It's God's initial creation in its first state. And then interestingly, the very last two chapters of the last book of the Bible, in Revelations, That last section of the Bible speaks to God's new creation and how he has restored fallen creation and will restore it ultimately to be in a consummate eternal state. And when you read Genesis 1 and 2 and then read Revelations 21 and 22, the beginning and the end of the scripture, you see an uncanny and truly intentional structure. And God is described in Genesis 1 and 2, His creation, and then in the center of the Bible, because of the fall, He describes his promises and his purposes to restore fallen creation. And at the end of the scripture, we see him give a picture of what his final restored new creation looks like. And in between the bookends of those descriptions, we have the kind of the working out of God's restorative purposes and his restorative plans. And there's one scripture that I want to keep holding before you as we go through today, and that's from the New Testament in Paul's writings in 2 Corinthians 5.17. Keep in mind that first creation and the new creation. And Paul says, Paul living in the time of Jesus and his ministry and writing these things after Jesus has ascended to heaven and given his Holy Spirit, Paul says this, he says to the church in Corinth, he says in 2 Corinthians 5.17, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature or a new creation. The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come. And he doesn't say that new things will come. in some time in the future, to Paul, he realizes that what God has done in Christ has had a real and substantive effect. So much so that Paul can speak to people and say that they are new creatures, new creations in Christ Jesus. Old things have passed away, new things have come. And my thinking about bringing this forward here is this. If we are to use God's gift to each of us of new creation life, if we're to use that wisely, that means according to Him, then we must do something, and that something are those three points on your outline. If we are to use God's gift of new creation wisely, then we are going to first of all have to know God as He is by knowing Christ Jesus as He is. And you know that this has been a kind of a major focus that the Lord has put on my heart over the last year and a half, maybe even two years. That there is in our minds a knowledge, a form of knowledge. We know Christ to a certain degree. We know him in a certain way. We know him under certain conceptions. But what I'm putting down here as this first part of what we must do is that we must know God as He is by knowing Christ Jesus as He is. And what I mean by that is that, as you know, one of the big obstacles to knowing Christ Jesus and to knowing God as he is, is or can be what we think we know about him already. The knowledge that we hold, and that's of course because some of what we know is faulty. Some of what we carry with us in our conception of Jesus, in our conception of God, Some of that's right and some of that's wrong. And it reminded me when I was writing my notes down here of just even the journey of mankind from ignorance to enlightenment, if you will, and take it in our awareness of the natural world even. People used to think the world was flat. And that the sea fell off the edge of the world like a waterfall off a cliff. You may have in your mind some pictures of people, ancient pictures drawn of a flat earth, water careening off like a waterfall, not smoke but mist coming up from the sides. So people used to think that, and that thinking, that knowledge that they held, that, I know the world is flat because I can tell it's flat, I see it with my eyes, that knowledge informed their life decisions. Imagine it unnecessarily constrained, for instance, how far they would sail. If you thought the world was flat and it bordered on the end there and it chipped off into a waterfall, well, you're going to hug the coast, aren't you? You're going to stay close to what you know is safe. Well, careful observation and courage played a part in the early discoverers rightly knowing that the world is actually a sphere. And this led to the discovery of, among other things, the new world. And it was a real world. They couldn't see it from the vantage point, but it was there, even though it couldn't be seen. At any rate, I bring that forward just to say that what one person knows at one time, what one person knows at one time isn't necessarily reality. It's just what they understand reality to be. And we're not exempt from this as Christians. We have a knowledge of Jesus. We have a knowledge of God. And some of it is right. And other parts of it maybe are misinformed or under-informed. So it seems necessary to me to cultivate the attitude of discovery, to cultivate within yourselves, within ourselves, an attitude of discovery. It also seems that we need the courage of explorers because to go where we haven't been, to even to think about things in a different way than we thought about them, that takes some courage. It's unsettling often. And we also need the humility of learners. We need those three things, the attitude of discovery, the courage of explorers, and the humility of learners. And all of those can be helped in us in our journey. And what I'm putting before you here is obviously on a spiritual while grabbing hold of of Christian truth, grabbing hold of the truth that is, as opposed to the truth of what we know. We can be helped by just realizing simply the fact that we're looking for something that God has actually revealed to us. It's not like this is some dark secret that's been buried and intentionally hidden from us. Actually, we live in a time when significant mysteries of God's dealing with man have been revealed to us. And they have come to us, obviously in the person of Jesus, and we have record of them in our Bibles. So this isn't some kind of cryptic, mysterious, out-of-reach pursuit. It's just simply knowing God in the scriptures that he has given us to reveal himself. So I think that when we want to know God as He is by knowing Jesus Christ as He is, I also want to remind us that Christ, Jesus Himself, is the supreme manifestation of God. In John, we've already seen at the beginning of John, in John 1.18, the scripture says, no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. So the only begotten God, Jesus, who is in the closest proximity to God, is intimately related to God, he has explained him. So, we want to know God, we know Jesus. And Jesus is, by God's grace, has made himself available to us, and we can know of him through the preaching, through the ministry of the people who know him, through the word, and as Christians, through the power of his Holy Spirit revealing him to us. Paul said this in Colossians 1, he said of Jesus that he is the image of the invisible God. So he's the image, he's the picture, he's the reflection of the invisible God. You want to know God? Know Christ Jesus. Hebrews says this, and as it begins, the New Testament book of Hebrews, it says, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets, in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in his Son. So God has spoken to us in his Son. whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world." So our Lord Jesus is the manifestation to us, the showing to us of God. And I think that the record of our Lord Jesus is in our Bibles, in our Scriptures. And those, of course, as you know, are trustworthy. I won't develop the case for the trustworthiness of Scripture, but even their own testimony that all Scripture is inspired by God indicates the trustworthiness of it. Paul the Apostle, though he was very learned in the scriptures, he too continued to value them. They were not a book that he read and put down. Oh yeah, I read that one. The scriptures were to Paul a source of ongoing unfolding of who his Lord Jesus was. And the scriptures that Paul had available to him were the Old Testament scriptures. So Paul looked into the Old Testament scriptures and he got to know the New Testament Jesus, of course, because the New Testament Jesus is nothing but the fulfillment of the Old Testament promised Messiah. Paul says this in a passage that I can't get away from on New Year's message. In Philippians chapter 3, Paul says this, the learned Paul who knew his scriptures says this, he says, whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted loss for the sake of Christ. The things that were gained to Paul, if you read ahead of this passage, Paul was, he was a Pharisee. He was of the tribe of Benjamin. He had a pedigree. He had a good resume. They would open doors for him in the Jewish circles. But Paul says, whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as lost for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, so that I may gain Christ." To Paul, if you want to say, Paul, what is the greatest pursuit? And the greatest pursuit for Paul, according to this, that he sees value in, is the value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. And so I put that before us to say this, that the New Year, first things first, and what's first is knowing God by knowing Christ Jesus, the incarnation, as John has taught us, of God, of the Word of God who was God. So, knowing God by knowing Christ Jesus. If we don't know God as he is in Christ Jesus, if we don't know them, then when we go to kind of live out our Christian lives, we do so in a sort of random way that from time to time may crisscross with the purposes of God. in kind of a by chance way. But we don't live with any degree of purposefulness that is well-founded in the reality of who we are and who God is. So I think that the less we know our Lord Jesus, the less likely it is that we live our lives in a way that is pleasing to Him and contributing to His glory by manifesting who he is. To glorify God is to manifest who he is. And if we don't know who he is, then we're living our lives kind of trying to display who he is, but we're displaying someone who isn't really even that person. So anyway, it seems to me that knowing is first. Knowing God by knowing Christ Jesus is first and foremost. And with Paul, I hope that we can count all things lost in view of that surpassing value of knowing him and that we pursue a knowledge of him with bent knee, heart reliant on the Spirit, Bibles open, pursue a knowledge of him in our independent study and in our study together in the corporate body of Christ. We'll talk about how to do this in our times together this week, and I want you to be provoked to that discussion. How do we, as the body of Christ, help each other know God by knowing Christ Jesus? And I'll leave that for discussion for the week in our times together. But the first thing is this, know God by knowing Christ Jesus. The second thing I believe that we must do if we're going to live out the new creation lives that God has given us in Christ is that we must live in conformity to what God has done in Christ Jesus. That's the second point on your outline. We must live in conformity to what God has done in Christ Jesus. And of course, which is sort of another way of saying, walk in sync with God and what He's up to and what He's done. But if we're going to live in conformity to what God has done, obviously we must know what it is that He has done. So I put the question to you, I'm going to answer it, but I put the question to you to get you thinking, what has God done? What has God done? And I'm going to phrase the answer this way, broadly stated, he has fulfilled what he's purposed and promised from the beginning, as we have that recorded in the Old Testament. And I want to ground the answer, what has God done? I want to ground it in the way the Bible presents it to us. What has God done? Well, the movements of God in history go like this, and you could organize them probably in different ways under different headings, but the main movement follows this thought, that there's the act of creation. There's the act of creation. And then that is done by God. And then there is the fall of man, which happened. And then there is a series of steps towards restoration. I see that the scripture organizes God's activity as his restoration promised, his restoration advanced in the Old Testament. his restoration fulfilled in substance in Christ, and we still have a restoration that is finally consummated in the eternal state of the new creation that yet still even future to us. So what has God done in history? Let me give you the bookends as I started in my introduction. He created, okay? What has God done? He created. In creation we see, I want to bring this forward, this may not be the way you normally think about what God has done, but in creation we see God's kingdom, that word there, we see God's kingdom as he first intended. Because I think that we can read the creation account without necessarily thinking of the order of the created order. And the order is a kingdom order. In Genesis 1 we read in the very first verse, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. That takes us to familiar turf for many of us. A little bit later in Genesis chapter 1, the first book, the first chapter in verse 26, we read this, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. We have the creation of man and of creation, but now I'm reading you the creation of man Let us make men in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle of all the earth and over every creepy thing that creeps on the earth. Let them rule over the rest of creation, in other words. God created man in his own image, the Genesis account continues, and in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them, and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. God saw all that he made and behold it was very good. If your mind is in the children's rendition of creation right now, I want you to step back and think with an adult mind of what is being communicated here. What is being communicated in these passages in this passage, is that God is the creator of all things. That God uniquely, out of all things, created man in His image. That is, as a picture of Him, reflecting Him. And God commissioned man. There is a mission, a commission already given in the very first chapter, and that was to fill the earth, to fill the earth, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over creation. So God gave mankind a mission. And that's significant as I start a new year and go, what are we going to do this year as a church? Well, I don't want to come up with a bunch of good ideas. What I want to do is tap into and remember the mission God has set mankind on, that we want to participate with that. Well, God gave them a mission. He phrased it here as fill the earth. Fill the earth. But we've got to remember who it is that's filling the earth. image son of God, image reflecting his presence in all the world, in a structure of a kingdom. Okay, these start getting a little more complex, but if we don't see those things, then we are often running in a direction that's on some other mission, a mission of our own. And may we not do that. A thoughtful look at God's creation in Genesis 1 and 2 sees a kingdom where the external, excuse me, I'm sorry, I misread my notes, where the eternal, pre-existing God is king. Who's king in the kingdom of God? God's king. And man, bearing his image, is his son and sub-king or vice-regent. We've used that language here, vice-regent. And what is he doing? According to Genesis 1, he's exercising dominion, rule. He's exercising dominion or rule and he is representing God shining his image back, reflecting who he is to the rest of creation. I ask you to put your big people head and think about that because that goes beyond kind of a cute picture of God creating everything and saying, oh this is good, this is good, this is good. God did create everything and he did declare it good. But there's an underlying structure of the kingdom. There's a relationship between his image son, man, son, man, unto his father who is king. And that's rich and informative and necessary, I believe, if we're going to go forward as the church of God's intention. Let me go a little bit farther. In Genesis 2.8, the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden and there he placed the man whom he had formed in his image. And again, I want you to kind of go beyond the physical images you may have seen in the cartoons or the picture Bibles. and realize here that God, we see here a garden, Eden, and God placed man there whom he had formed in his image. Eden, if you read the account in Genesis 1 and 2, Eden had an abundance of everything that man needed. and everything he needed for his life. And particularly it had the tree of life. And it had a river that produced life. And the river produced life both in the garden and then as it left the garden into the lands outside of the garden. So, huge imagery of garden providing abundance and life. And that's where God placed man. Eden was also the place of God's dwelling with man. This is really significant. If it doesn't sound significant, write it down because it is significant. Eden was the place of God's dwelling with man. Genesis 3, 8 talks about the Lord walking in the garden. So what we're doing here is the author is putting, is indicating God's presence with man in this garden-like setting. And to explain it, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit, but to explain the garden in terms that we can kind of get our heads around more, is Eden was the first temple, the first sanctuary. It was the first place where God was with man, and they interacted in relationship. Now, it is not the only temple, but it was the pattern upon which God made other places of being with man. Eden was the place where human life was lived. I'm going to give a phrase here and ask you to hold on to it, was lived as worship. Because worship was mankind living in the presence of God and interacting with him as a son unto a father in communion. We're going to celebrate communion, in communion, in intimate communion. So we have tremendous paradigm laid out here in the scriptures. In Genesis 2.15, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. Again, it's funny how the images that we can carry can prevent us from going farther, but go farther than the image of a storybook Bible you might have in your mind. God put Adam and Eve in the garden to cultivate it, specifically Adam, and to keep it. And Adam was seen, I think it is clear and I won't argue the details of it, but Adam is seen by other language of the scripture looking back on this account as a priest, okay, in the garden temple. of Eden. And Adam was given this charge when God said, took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. He was placed a charge from God to keep and work the garden, to guard and protect the garden. And in a book co-authored by a guy that I respect, Greg Beal, he says, the imagery of Eden indicates the satisfaction of human desire in God's presence. And I want to say that I think it is a universal thing to have longing for something, for longing for life as it's supposed to be. And people talk about that differently. But there is a universal human angst and longing that desires to have things right when we know things are wrong. It desires to connect with purpose, with meaning, and so forth. And in the world that we live in, those things are pressed upon and frustrated. So we search for them, we long for them, and some authors, some people attribute that universal human longing to a longing for this, for what we're talking about, for how God initially created us, longing for Eden. and the presence with God. Beal says, again, the satisfaction of basic human desire in God's presence is met in this image of Eden that is placed out. So I'm trying to grasp all this together that we've said so far. And if we try to put it all together, I kind of come out with this. We see that God has purposed and created and promised, we see in Eden, what he has purposed and promised from the beginning, and that is life with him. Life with him. And what is the meaning of life? What's the purpose of life? What's God's intention for us in life? It's actually that we would live with Him, that He would be present with us, that we would be His people and He would be our God and so forth. And let me flesh that out, bringing some of those other elements I mentioned today, that we would be with Him. But serving as vice regents and priests, okay? Interesting, we'll see that Peter calls Gentile people, Gentile believers in Jesus later, the New Testament Peter, will call them priests. So, and it's not a role that I want to necessarily even think of myself in, because I think of priests as sort of a mediatorial role, and Jesus is the mediator, so it's almost not something I want to shy away from. But interesting, the scripture calls New Testament believers priests, okay? At any rate, we're picturing what God has initially formed in the garden here. We see ourselves serving as vice-regents and priests, filling the earth, ruling over the rest of creation, and representing him by living lives of worship. Now, I know this is kind of a lot, and I'm not defending it all here, but this is sort of the summary of what I'm gleaning from Genesis 1 and 2. And God, maybe new to us, certainly that I want to focus on and bring to the front of your mind, God purposed to expand the place of His dwelling outside of the Garden of Eden, to fill the whole earth. And the later prophets speak significantly to that. Isaiah and Habakkuk speak to the coming time when the knowledge of God will fill, will cover the earth as the water covers the sea and so forth. And I'm misquoting that a little bit, but you get the, what I want you to hear is expansion, filling, going out from the locale of an initial sanctuary garden out to an expanding presence of God with an expanding number of men, all the way out to the end time new creation reality when the entire cosmos is the temple of God. That picture is given at that other bookend that I told you in Revelation 21 and 22. And I'm going to let the scripture speak for itself there and just read some of that to you. But with my kind of extended discussion on Genesis 1 and 2, listen to the other end of the book, and hear the imagery, because I believe that what you'll see, and I know that this is the case if you study Genesis 1 and 2 in juxtaposition to Revelation 21 and 22, you find in Genesis 1 and 2, the initial, and in Revelation 21 and 22, the final. And this is significant because for us as people, how do we live our Christian lives in a way we want? Well, we want to live on purpose. We want to live participating with God as he moves things towards his final destination. His final destination is given to us in a glorious, exalted picture in Revelations 21 and 22. And I'm going to read some of those verses to you. They're familiar to most of us, but look at Revelation 21 and verse 1. John, in a vision, is looking and says, he says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth passed away. and there is no longer any sea, any darkness and chaos is what that represents. If you're good with your Bible, flip back to the beginning and look at the very first line of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep. Now back again to Revelation 21, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. There's verbal parallels. It's talking about heaven and earth in both, but in Revelation 21, it's the new heaven and the new earth. This is the end product of God's restorative activity in history. For the first heaven and the first earth passed away. Look at your verse 2 of Revelation 21. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride, adorned for her husband. And the rest of Revelation 21 talks about this new Jerusalem. Interestingly, New Jerusalem, Jerusalem was the place of the city. Jerusalem was called the city of David and the city of God. It was the place God chose for His temple to be built. And now in the end picture that we were given of God's ultimate plan, He sees a New Jerusalem coming down. Look at verse 3, And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men. Do you catch that? According to Genesis, the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God, is now among men. And he will dwell among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be among them. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will no longer be any death, there will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away." Verse 5, And he who sits on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. And he said, Write. For these words are faithful and true. Then he said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of water of life without cost. Again, remember the water and the river of life in the Garden of Eden. Again, overlapping imageries. Why? Is it by happenstance? No, it's God saying that the initial creation that was described in Genesis 1 and 2 finds its ultimate fulfillment and its eternal state in this kind of a glorious, exalted, new creation, new heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem. Let your eye go all the way over to verse 22. It continues to describe the New Jerusalem. I hate to cut any of it out, but I am going to cut it out. Verse 22 says, I saw no temple in it, in the New Jerusalem. Interesting? No temple in it. Why not? For the Lord, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. Somehow, in the new heavens and new earth and the new creation, there is not a temple built with human hands. There is a temple that is described here as the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and the lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it." Kings of the earth. Look at the perspective. This is the global perspective. It's greater even. It's a cosmic perspective, but it covers the kingdoms of the earth. Not the garden, not the localized, but it expands. In the daytime, for there will be no night there. Its gates will never be closed, and they will bring, the nations, will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. Verse 27, nothing unclean and no one who practices abomination and lying shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. Flow on into chapter 22. Then he showed me a river of the water of life. There's that river, water, abundant life feature again. Clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God. Note the source of the water of life is coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb in the middle of the street. On either side of the river was the tree of life. I'm going to stop there. God created there was fall and I will give you some more of this but in here is the bookend is the picture of his restorative work and the final eternal state of God having created not a localized Eden for Adam and Eve but the cosmic place of His dwelling, which incorporates all of His creation. It's glorious. It's big. For me, it speaks to God's program, including expansion to fill. Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. Expansion to fill. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the remotest parts of the earth. Expansion to fill. The rest of the Bible, in between those bookends, we have those broad categories that I mentioned, and briefly, let me give you a couple anchor point scriptures. In between creation and consummation of the new creation, we have the fall. And you know the story of Adam and Eve's disobedience to the word of God. And I say it that way because God told them there was a word spoken and a choice not to live in conformity with that word. The word was spoken by the serpent, and without going into that, there was what you know of as the fall. And I think I want you to see in that, relying on your prior history there, That Adam failed, in the context of what I've said today, he failed to be the vice-regent, son, image-bearer, protector, guardian, priest of the temple. He failed to be those things. Hence, the fall. And the result? You know the result, too. Estrangement from God. Expulsion from the presence of God. No longer intimate close, but a relationship with God, but one that suffers estrangement. Mankind took a hit, went from image-bearing son in intimate communion with God to tarnished image-bearer in estrangement from God. And that was the state into which God brought right on its heels, brought a promise. He brought a promise of restoration. And we know here the Genesis 3.15 passage that we've called the first telling of the gospel or the proto-evangelium, the first telling of the gospel. We know that God is talking and he says to the serpent, I will put enmity between you, serpent, and the woman, Eve. And between your seed, serpent, and her seed, between Eve's seed and the serpent's seed, and he, the serpent, excuse me, the woman's seed, he shall bruise you on the head. Speaking of a fatal blow. and you shall bruise him on the heel." This has long been regarded in the kind of course of interpretation through the church fathers and all the way into our time, this has been regarded as a shadowy first telling of the gospel, the hope that God is giving them, that even though you have fallen and rebelled against me, I will bring through the seed of the woman one who will, in effect, reverse the curse, one who will indeed destroy the destroyer and restore order. That's sort of an unpacking of that verse. But restoration here and restoration elsewhere as you go through the Old Testament is promised. God promised to restore the fallen creation, the fallen place of his dwelling with man. And then restoration was advanced through Israel. The promise was advanced and clarified through Israel's patriarchs. You know these stories too. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But to Abraham, God said, all nations of the world, all families of the world will be blessed through you and through your seed. Genesis chapter 12 and verse 3 makes that initial, what we call it, the Abrahamic covenant. It's the unconditional promise of God that through Abraham all the families of the earth will be blessed. Abraham and his descendants, his seed. And we see that promise reaffirmed and reiterated to Abraham's descendants. And those people we call the patriarchs, Abraham's son Isaac, and then Isaac's son Jacob, who God eventually renamed Israel. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs, Jacob being renamed Israel as a name for a person, then that name branched out and stood for a whole people. God's chosen people, if you will, the people of Israel. But then the progress of restoration is advanced through God's dealing with Israel as a nation. God made a covenant with them. Hang with me. God made a covenant with them, which was mediated by Moses. These are the broad strokes. It was mediated by Moses and it was summarized in what we call the Ten Commandments and it's found in what we call the Law. The Law, Old Testament Law. And God instructed, interestingly, I'm being very picky here about what I'm talking about, because obviously I've gone all the way back to Genesis, I can't say it all, but I'm being picky here, hear this, God instructed Israel to construct a tabernacle, okay? And the tabernacle was this place where his presence could be with them wherever they went on their journey, their wilderness wanderings, and their crossing over into the promised land that he was calling them to. And importantly, and here's what I want you to see, the design of the tabernacle incorporated many of the features of the Garden of Eden. And the tabernacle, like Eden, was to be the place of God's dwelling. and it is further to be the place of God's dwelling with his people. And it was to be attended by priests and provision was made for the atonement of sins so that God's people could be with him. The tabernacle was a part of God's advancing his program of restoration of fallen humanity and he was doing so with his people Israel. Later in Israel's history, a temple was built in Jerusalem using the same design features that was found in the tabernacle, which once again mirrored the images that were found in the Garden of Eden. And so we really do see a progress from Eden to tabernacle to temple, all of which were God's way of creating a place for him to dwell with his people. And once again, in the temple, it was more solid, if you will. It was not portable. It was in Jerusalem, on a hill, and that was a permanent dwelling place for God. In the temple too, had all the same imagery of the tabernacle and of the garden that we have spoken of so far. And it too was attended by priests and it was a place of atonement according to the prescription of God, the place of dealing with the sins of God's people. But Israel's many failures to keep the covenant with God and their failure to live out lives consistent with their status as the chosen people of God, as sons of God, that's what Israel is called by God, my son Israel. Their failure to live in a manner consistent with that identity and with that covenant led to God's discipline. In very broad stroke, it led to God's discipline, led to the Northern Kingdom's overrunning by Assyria and the southern kingdom's exile into Babylon. And once again, we see that kind of as in the fall from the garden, we see the provision God has made for dwelling with man thwarted by the rebellion of man. But, and once again, we see God promising to restore and rebuild, even that the glory of the later temple, because he promised that he would rebuild even the temple, the temple, he said, would be greater than the former, because in that exile the temple was destroyed, if I didn't mention that. But the second temple that was to be rebuilt, as they rebuilt it, it became clear that the glory of that second temple actually wasn't greater than the former, and it wasn't greater because the presence of God never returned to the Holy of Holies, so we did not have the manifestation of God dwelling with his people in that period of Israel's history. There was no Shekinah glory in the Holy of Holies during the Second Temple. And though God promised that the glory of the latter temple would be greater than the glory of the former, It wasn't the case, and that not being the case made everybody look forward to and expect, rightly, a temple of another form. A temple where the glory of that temple and the glory of God in that temple would indeed be greater than the glory of the first temple. God did not inhabit the Holy of Holies in the second temple, so as a place of God's dwelling, it was empty. But the greater glory of God had promised to reside in a temple was to find its actualization in another temple, right? We all know here that temple was the temple of our Lord Jesus. Jesus himself was the temple. And in this, I mean, the more I study scripture, the more it becomes clear that Jesus stands at the center point of God's restorative purposes with mankind. and whatever element, and I'm not sure if I know of an element, that doesn't find its ultimate fulfillment in Christ Jesus. The ultimate and truest seed of the woman that was promised back in that Genesis 3.15 scripture that I read, well, that's Jesus. The ultimate, truest seed of Abraham, through whom all the families of the earth will be blessed? Well, that's Jesus, born as a descendant of Abraham. The ultimate, truest Son of God in the Scripture? Well, that's Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, the only begotten Son of God. The ultimate and truest Israel, the corporate son of God, well, that's Jesus too. He's the true Israel. The ultimate and truest vice-regent, well, that's Jesus, the ultimate and true king. The ultimate and truest high priest, well, that's Jesus. The ultimate and truest temple, the dwelling place of God, well, that's Him. So you have all of the richness of God's partial provision and restoration of his dwelling place with man, finding its locus and its grandest fulfillment in the person of Jesus. And I know you guys know this, but be reminded of it this morning. He was the seed of Abraham through whom God would bless all the families of the earth. he would represent God to the fallen world and restore them into relationship of intimate communion. The communion that God intended. It was through him, that passage I referenced earlier, it was through him that the earth would be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the water covers the sea. That's from the Habakkuk. Jesus, is said to be the cornerstone of the final temple in our New Testament writings. And the church comprises the stones of which the final temple is constructed. There's a reason I'm saying this. It's directly applicable to our life together moving forward. In Ephesians 2 we see this, then you are no longer strangers and aliens. Paul is speaking to Ephesian Christians, many of whom are not Jewish in their lineage. He says, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household, of the dwelling place of God. Okay, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. I want you to picture our Lord Jesus as the cornerstone in this new temple that is personified in himself. Christ Jesus being the cornerstone in whom the whole building Being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord. Temple imagery is growing into a holy temple, growing into a holy meeting place of God with man. In whom you also, he says to his listeners, are being built together into a dwelling of God. You are, he says, you Christians are being built into, built together That's important. Built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. And we know of this concept, Paul says it more explicitly in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 19, he says, Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, that you are not your own, Paul says. But the concept of the human body, and the human body that is the body of Christ the Church, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. Peter says it this way in 1 Peter 2, verse 4, he says, and coming to him as a living stone, that's coming to Christ Jesus as a living stone, which has been rejected by men but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus. Peter is talking to people who are Gentiles as well. So coming to you, coming to him, Jesus, as a living stone, which has been rejected by men, that was the plot, what's it called, the lot of Jesus, he was rejected by many, rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, okay, I'm just rereading this, you also, he says to his Christian non-Jewish disciples, and Jewish listeners, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, a temple, a dwelling place, okay, for a holy priesthood. This is the element that I want us to start moving and seeing ourselves as, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus. And he goes on to say what those are. You can read 1 Peter. I get the context there. But indeed, Paul saw all of God's intentions for mankind as summed up, he says in Ephesians 1.10, as summed up in Christ Jesus. Everything in God's creation finds its fullest and truest expression in the person of Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man. Those titles are applied to him. This is all asking the question, what's God up to? Well, this is what he's up to. He's up to building a temple with Jesus as the cornerstone and us and all believers as living stones built alongside him. God's about restoring and he continues that restorative work after the time of Christ in the church. In union with, okay, you guys, in union with and empowered by and representing him, his church, and think back to the time of Christ forward until today, his church, his church past, from the day of Pentecost forward, has advanced the kingdom of God has filled the earth, advanced the kingdom of God by participating with him, filling the earth with the knowledge of God as the water covers the sea. I say that and I offer yourselves as proof of this. You have been the recipients of the gospel message that has come to you, that God has used to bring you into his kingdom, that you might have his spirit, that you might live in communion with him, that he is your God and you are his people. So, as you look back at the Church, what you see the Church has been doing is it's been advancing the Kingdom of God. It's not just the advancement of the Gospel message, okay, that we know. It's not, when I say that God is advancing His restorative purposes in the Church, It's not just the advancement of a particular message. And where we get the message popularly today, you've heard us try to differentiate between a shallow gospel and kind of a fuller gospel. It's not just the advancements of the gospel message of personal salvation by faith in Jesus for personal forgiveness of sins that individuals might escape the wrath of God and live happily ever after. Those elements are there. and not to be dismissed, but rather and more fully, it's the advancement of the kingdom of God, okay? It's the advancement of the kingdom of God, it's the expansion of the dwelling place of God that I ask you to stretch your minds a little bit about and see it's not just the children's creation, it's the expansion of the dwelling place of God It is the ingathering of Jesus' sheep into an expanding flock, using the John 10 language that we looked at a couple weeks ago. It's the extension of the church to incorporate new creation, that is people bearing the Holy Spirit, new creation people from every tribe and every tongue until the earth is filled with the glory of God and his sanctuary reaches the full scope of all creation that we read about in Revelation 21 and 22. That's what God has done in Christ. He has inaugurated the kingdom of God and set its people on mission to complete What Adam failed and what Christ Jesus fulfilled, filling the earth, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, Adam failed. Christ met the same tempter and prevailed. filling the earth with the presence of God, dwelling with his people, living lives of worship. Living lives of worship. I want to say that this is how our lives should be marked. Our lives should be lived in the presence of God, which naturally brings forth our worship. of God. God's presence exists now, not in a temple built with hands, but at the ultimate temple of Jesus himself, who gives ultimate life, by sharing his resurrection life with the church. I'm speaking carefully because at each point I feel like we can get off track. I've come to believe very strongly that the life, the abundant life God has for us is not just life as cool as we can imagine. It's life in communion with Him in His presence, worshiping Him in relationship of a son to a father in intimate communion. That's life. And that life? That life? It's just the sharing in the resurrected life of Jesus, who is the ultimate Son. If it sounds awkward, that's alright. I hope it stretches. That's what God is doing, and I say to us that we are to live in conformity to what God has done. That's the second point on your outline, and all that that I said over the last 20 minutes was just saying, well, what has God done? Well, He's done that, and He is doing that. And we're supposed to live in conformity to what God has done. But there's a problem. It would appear that we have a propensity to live in conformity not to what God has done, which requires faith, but to live in conformity to how we see the world apart from what God has done, which is by sight. Our default mode is walking by sight and not by faith. We call this natural thinking, and it comes naturally. It's thinking that comes so naturally to man because it does not take into account or give credence to what God has revealed to us in His Son as recorded in the Word, our scriptures. Eve didn't heed the word of God in the garden. Israel failed to heed God's word via the prophets and the covenant and most ultimately failed largely to heed God's word as it came to us most ultimately in the person of Jesus. Humanity's common experience attests to this truth that it's easy to live as if Christ had not. It's easy to live our lives as if Christ never did live his. But history attests that he has indeed lived. He lived and died and has risen and has appeared, risen from the dead to multiple people. He's ascended to the right hand of God. where he now sits reigning and ruling forever in the never-ending kingdom of God, and he has sent his spirit to us, his church, birthing new creation life. Very broadly speaking, if we're to live in conformity to what God has done in Christ, then we're to live as new creations, sharing in His life by means of His Spirit, faithfully bearing witness to the Kingdom of God that He has inaugurated. That's a lot of big words. We are to bear witness in what we say, When I say we're to live in conformity to what God has done in Christ, the shorthand for what God has done in Christ, that's the gospel. We're to live in conformity to the gospel. And we're to bear witness, sorry, I got some stuff here, Leslie, that's all right. We can bear witness in what we say, that's the gospel spoken, okay? And in what we do, that's the gospel lived. In what we say and what we do, we are to witness, we are to be his witnesses. By living out the new creation resurrection life of Christ, which is the life of worship, in his presence, by living out this life of worship and this life of love according to His nature. That's how we are to bear witness. We're just a bee in the world. But we're not to be forgetting what God has done and the mission He has placed us on and the relationship that we bear to Him and the worship that we are to live in. So we're not to be aimless forgetting what God has done, we're to be purposeful remembering what he has done. I'm not going to flesh out all the particulars of living in conformity to what God has done in Christ, but I want to ask you this question. Do you share the general desire and intent to do so? Is it your desire to live the life that God has given you as new creations in Christ? I hope that you can say it is. Do you intend to use the life God has given you for the purpose for which he gave it to you? And I know that most of you kind of think, well, yeah, of course, I want to, but I ask that question, I ask you to think about it, because I think that the real answer to that question, and I'll give it to you again, the real answer to that question is that most don't. Okay, let me ask the question again. Do you intend to use the life God has given you I'm not talking about the life that you were born with, the biological life. I'm talking about the new creation life that you share by faith, sharing in the life of the resurrected Christ, that life. Do you intend to use the life God has given you for the purpose for which He gave it to you? Because I think most don't. I think most people don't think about it, but I'm asking you to think about it. I think most people choose to set their own goals and objectives and order their lives according to what they want, independent from God. And I don't even slam those people. I think that's just the natural way of thinking. Some pursue the maximization of wealth. Right? And call it successful life if they die with more money than their peers. I mean, I hate to say it, but again, I don't mean to even demean it. I just state it as I think it is. Some pursue the maximization of fun and consider their life a success if they've had a really good time. Some pursue the maximization of power. and consider life a success if they could control others. Some pursue the maximization of health and long years and consider life a success if they've lived pretty healthy and pretty long compared to others. but none of those take into account what God has done in Christ by inaugurating and expanding the kingdom of God. God has given us new creation life. If we are to use that gift wisely, that is, according to him, then we must do these two points on your outline that I already told you. We must know God as He is by knowing Christ as He is, and we must live in conformity to what God has done in Christ. And finally, and more particularly, and I will give it to you briefly, we must participate in what God is still doing. I ask you what God has done. I ask you, what is God still doing? What is He doing? What's His program now in our lives? What's He up to? Some of us ask that in points of despair as junk comes down on us and we go, Lord, what are you doing? It doesn't seem like you're doing anything good for me. Others of us don't ask that question because we're so busy with our own lives, just doing what we do and making enough money to put a roof over our head and so forth and managing the problems that come to us, putting oil on the squeaky wheel and so forth. But what is He doing? What is He still doing? Because that's what I want to participate in. That's what I think we need to participate in with purpose or otherwise we're not going to participate in it by just not being purposeful. We must participate in what God is still doing according to His will and His plans to accomplish His purposes in our time. And I frankly see that there is an end to that time. There is a brevity to life that I am aware of. Some of us in this room are more aware of it than others. But we're all running out of time. We're not getting any younger. And the question is, are we going to use our lives for His glory, giving ourselves to His task, accomplishing His purposes? Or are we not? We're gonna kind of use them for our purposes. If God has inaugurated the kingdom of God and restored fallen creation in Christ and his church, then what is he still doing in our time? Do you guys have an answer for that? What is he doing in our time? I'm gonna answer it, but I'm asking you to think. Do you know what he's doing? I'm gonna give you three words that kind of try to capture that. The first word is ingathering, ingathering. In Matthew 9, verse 36, we read, seeing the people, he, Jesus, felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. But what do harvest workers do? They gather a crop in. God is gathering people to himself, calling them to share in the resurrection life of Jesus, calling them into the kingdom of God, calling them to be a part of Christ's flock. God is gathering people to himself. But I see a problem. The problem articulated here, the harvest, the ingathering, that needs workers, using the words here. Needs workers. What if God's workers don't want to go into the harvest? I'm going to give you another word without answering that question because it's too sad. Another word is leavening. I asked Pastor Kit the question, how do you describe to people what God is up to now? What's he still doing? And Pastor Kitt suggested that we can see what God is still doing in our time in Jesus' words, likening the kingdom of heaven to leaven, okay, yeast, spreading throughout a whole lump of dough. Jesus' words in Matthew 13, he spoke another parable to them, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three packs of flour until it was all leavened. Kit volunteered that the Christ event is the introduction of leaven. The Christ event, Jesus' life, death, resurrection, ascension, enthronement, and giving of his spirit. The Christ event, he said, is like the introduction of leaven to a lump of dough. The leavening process is what's going on now as leaven spreads throughout the whole lump. That's helpful to me. Levin spreads as we live, Kit says, as we live authentic lives. Levin spreads. The progress of the kingdom goes forward as we live, not just any lives, but as we live authentic lives of witness and word and deed before, that is, in the lump of the world, if you will. The lump of dough, this stands for the world of all people. The world gets exposed to the resurrection life we share in our union with Christ when it sees and interacts with us living authentic new creational lives. Now this is a little different than saying that one person sees another person without any reference to who that person is. What I'm saying is the leaven is spread in the kingdom of God when people see authentic Christians living authentic Christian lives. God is expanding his dwelling place, the new creation, the kingdom of God, the final temple, and he's doing so through the leaven of Jesus and his church. as it comes into contact with the world. In Christ, okay, that is sharing in the life of Christ, we are that leaven, or we should be that leaven. He left us, if you will, and gave us his spirit so that we might leaven the lump. We're lump leaveners, all right? If you want a lofty title for yourself, you're lump leaveners. But I see a problem here. Our leaven only spreads to the unleavened lump of the world upon contact. We don't leaven if we don't have any contact with the world. You guys who have baked bread picture the yeast in the one bowl, but in a separate bowl is the lump. If they are not together and come into contact with each other, there is no leavening of that lump. Likewise, I'm putting before you that if there is no contact with spirit-filled Christians living authentic lives in the world in front of and in contact with the world, there is no leavening, there is no expansion of the kingdom. We don't leaven. if we don't have contact with the world. I see that as a problem. Another word I want to give you is loving. Loving. I see God's ongoing activity as his love in action. The love of God is not of this world. I want to point it out. It's different. John says, in this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. What does that speak to? It speaks to a divine, otherworldly, self-giving, life-giving love. God is love, John says in 1 John 4. Because we share, I say, because we share his life, we share his love. And as we live authentic lives of love, we bear witness to him. John 13, 35 says, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love, interestingly, for one another. Christian to Christian, if you have love for one another. But once again, I see a problem. Love is only seen by the world when Christian live lives of love in view of the world. Now I'm getting really practical. How do we participate with what God is still doing then. If it takes being seen by the world, if it takes contact with the world. How do we participate in what God is doing? Jesus says also in Matthew, you are the salt of the earth, and you are the light of the world. He continues to reason, the city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. And then Jesus issues an exhortation that I believe is an exhortation that should fall on our ears, okay? Let your light shine before men in such a way that you may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." Which is an interesting thing to me because we don't want to be doing what we do to be seen by men on the one hand so that men would think well of us, but we do want to be living our lives in such a way that they are seeing our love, and that is attracting them and pointing them to the one who is love, whose life we share, and thereby bearing witness to the reality that God has broken into the world. So it puts us in a little bit of a conundrum. If we are to participate with God in what he is still doing, we have to live authentic Christian lives of Christian love before the world in such a way that they can see them and glorify God. And historically, I'm going to really rain on our parades here, historically that has required suffering and sacrifice. Do we have it in us to sacrifice our time, our comfort, our desires, our resources in order to live lives of love and worship in the world? Do we have it in us to sacrifice? Because I do believe that it takes that. It's my conviction going forward and participating with what God is doing in 2017 that we must live out what God has given us in Christ. We must get out into the non-Christian community and let our light shine in the darkness. We must welcome people into the Christian community so that people can see our love for one another, somehow that has to be seen in order to be used in an evangelistic way. people welcomed here in our worship service, we can help them know Him more, we can help them grow in the fullness of Christ, as this Paul read from Paul the Apostle in Ephesians 4, and we can labor with them to see Christ formed in them. But we really can't do that to the people that we don't welcome in, can we? So we must get out into the outside community and somehow, we'll talk about that this week, somehow letting our light shine and our leaven spread, we must welcome new people in, we'll talk about that this week, and we must also train disciples and train leaders from and for the church. Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2, these things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trustees to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. I speak in broad outline here, but I think you get the gist. We have to go out, we have to welcome in, and we have to train up both disciples and leaders. Those are broad statements without anything, but it's for us to work that out, and I believe we must in the year ahead. Let me conclude where we started with 2 Corinthians 5. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God. who reconciled us to himself, not who might someday, but who reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God were making an appeal through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. I don't know if you see yourself this way, but I believe God sees the Christian body this way. You are ambassadors. You have been given the message of reconciliation. Greg Beal and Mitchell Kim who wrote a book I've been reading say this, they say, as we witness faithfully despite suffering, okay, as we witness faithfully despite suffering, we join in God's work in bringing about a new creation. It's my hope and prayer that as a church, we will resolve this year to know God as he is, point number one, by knowing Christ Jesus as he is, to live in conformity to what God has done in Christ Jesus, and to participate in what God is still doing in our time. Let's pray together.