As we begin a new year this week, we're going to begin a new sermon series going through the books of the Bible. Now, there are 66 books in the Bible. If we were just to take one book a week, looking at it in overview, what's the essence, that would take more than this next year. But I think it would be a wonderful challenge for us in this next year to go through the whole Bible, read through every page. It'll just take four chapters a day and we can go through the whole Bible in this year. The 1,187 chapters in the Bible, four chapters a day will get you through it in less than 365 days. So we're going to start with Genesis. Genesis is the book of beginnings, it's the book of origins, it's the book of foundations and generations. Ultimately all biblical doctrines find their roots in Genesis. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Christianity starts with God, it starts with creation. There is an entire ministry, one of the biggest ministries in the world today, answered in Genesis, which has been founded on the whole principle that all doctrines flow from Genesis and the attacks on Genesis today by evolutionism and humanism is actually the root of all rebellion against God. and getting back to Genesis and back to our foundations in Genesis will give us good, solid foundations for all areas of life. Now how do you tackle such a big book? Genesis is one of the biggest books in the Bible. It's a really massive, important, vital, it's got so much in it. Well, journalists are taught the five W's and an H. Who, what, why, when, where, And how? You've got to answer those five W's and that one H. Those are the six key questions for any investigative reporting or any research that you might have to do. The W's and the H. Well, how do we summarize? What is Genesis all about? If I can summarize Genesis, it's first and foremost about generation. Then degeneration. Then regeneration. Generation, degeneration, regeneration. Generation, creation. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and it was good. God created a good and a perfect world. So people may say, then why is there evil? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is good, how can there be so much evil in the world? Why does God tolerate all evil? Why doesn't God stop all the evil in the world? And of course the answer to this comes from Genesis. Degeneration. The fall. Mankind chose to rebel against God, to break his laws, to violate the covenant with him, and in this way, although God made a good and perfect world, and he made people good to start with, and Adam and Eve were living in a perfect environment, yet they succumbed to temptation, the devil's tactics was doubt, unbelief, leading to disobedience, which led to great degradation. But it doesn't just stop with degeneration, we go on to regeneration. There is new beginnings, there is restoration. God judges evil, but God raises up a new plan of redemption for mankind. And so we see, in the beginning God created the heavens and earth generation. Christ is the ground for your sake. So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fully receive regeneration. Now, who? The who is answered, Moses is the author of Genesis. It would have been written after the exodus from Egypt but before entry into the promised land. So roughly around 1445 BC the book of Genesis would have been written. That's the first who. There's a lot of other key who's in the book which we'll look at just now. The next important thing we've got to say is when. Genesis covers more history than all the other books of the Bible combined. Genesis covers a sweep of over 2,000 years. Now the rest of the Bible covers only about 1,400, 1,500 years from Exodus to Revelation. you're getting, well certainly we should say acts, the history books of the Bible is covering only up to another 1,400 odd years. The Revelation of course is going way past. So the book that covers more history than any other book in the Bible, in all other books combined, is Genesis. Genesis is a book of firsts. The first man, Adam. The first woman, Eve. The first marriage, The first sin, the first promise of redemption, the first family, the first murder, the first worldwide judgment, the first laws for society, the origins of nations. There are so many firsts in the book of Genesis. Of course, it is the book of beginnings, it's the foundation, it's the book of origins. The first man, Adam and Eve, and the first marriage. And God makes it clear why marriage is established, for hopeful companionship, For raising godly children, it requires a public commitment, a leaving one's parents' household, a cleaving, a unity, a lifelong commitment, partnership and unity. And so the model for marriage is made. And notice God made Adam and Eve. He didn't make Adam and Steve. He didn't make Eve and Genevieve. It was Adam and Eve. And He didn't make Adam and Eve and Genevieve and the whole of... It's not polygamy, it's not homosexuality, it's one man, one woman for life. One. I mean, that's the model. Even with regeneration, Noah has one wife. And the son of the promise, Isaac, has one wife. And so, we can see God's pattern for marriage is laid firmly, although there are those who break away from it. And we know that polygamy starts With Cain who commits the first murder, and with Lamech who is another murderer. So not very good origins for polygamy. Polygamy might be in the Bible, but so too is murder and so too is a whole lot of other evil things. What the Bible records is not always recommended or commanded. So people who want to go and say, oh well I see polygamy in the Bible, yes, but it wasn't so in the beginning and Jesus rebukes it. He said this was only because of the hardness of your hearts. There's theological foundations in Genesis. Genesis covers every major Christian doctrine. The doctrine of God. God is a holy God. God is a just God. He gives us laws. He requires all his people to live by those laws. God judges evil. God is a God of wrath. He hates evil. And if you doubted that, you just need to look at Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by fire from heaven. God is serious about sin. The flood destroying all life on earth except those preserved in the ark. God judges sin. Sin is serious. God is a holy God. But God provides redemption. He provided for an ark. For salvation for his people. And so you see the doctrine of God. You see the holiness of God. The righteousness of God. How God is eternal. In the beginning was God. He was before time, before space, before any other of the creator things. and he is from eternity to eternity. We see, not in the doctrine of God, we see the doctrine of man. Man is fallen creation. We are made in the image of God and so there is good in the worst of us because we are created by God. But there is bad in the best of us because we are fallen creation. And so you see the balance. So that's why there can be good in the worst of people, there can be bad in the best of people because we are fallen creation. The goodness comes from the creation of God, the evil comes from the fall of man. And so we are that paradox. It's a doctrine of sin. God created a good and a perfect world where there was no death. No animals died, no people died before the sin of man. Adam and Eve's sin led to the fall which led to death which led to decay and aging and all the other things of life which are burden. It's part of the complex of God's judgments on the sin of mankind that we have sin and disease and suffering today. Death came through sin. God punishes sin. Sin separates us from God. We also see that beginnings of the doctrine of judgment, how God judged the world through the flood, how God judges evil nations such as Sodom and Gomorrah. But you see also the beginnings of redemption, in fact you see the very first promises of redemption, right in Genesis 3 verse 15, that God himself will initiate a salvation which will come through the seed of the woman, singular, the seed of the woman. There will be a specific Messiah born who will be born of a virgin, who will be a suffering saviour. Satan will bruise his heel, but he will crush Satan's head. He will suffer, but his victory will be decisive. A mediator initiated by God to bring about redemption and to reverse paradise lost into paradise regained. And that's why Genesis may begin with man being pushed out of the garden and kept from the tree of life but revelation ends with paradise regained and with the tree of life in the centre of the garden. So we see these firsts. We see also the beginnings of covenants, how God makes a covenant with Abraham. He reveals himself as a burning torch and he proceeds between the separated carcass of the sacrifice and basically swears by himself that if He does not keep the covenant that he would die, which of course is impossible for God, the Creator, the Eternal God, who is from eternity to eternity. But this means God's covenants cannot be broken, not from God's side. So God, man, sin, judgment, redemption, covenant, all these foundational doctrines are there in Genesis. Many things on Genesis. Ken Ham points out that even modest clothing comes from Genesis. People say, well why do we have to wear clothes? Well, Adam and Eve fell into sin. God clothed them. We read how God is clothed with righteousness and justice and judgment. God himself clothes people. He provided a garment. You know, not some flimsy kind of bikini of leaves as they might put in some object, but the scripture speaks of a garment provided by God for Adam and Eve after they fell into sin. We see so many things which answer our questions as to why in Genesis. Genesis explains a lot of why's. You can see with the first family the basic building block of society. Right in the beginning in Genesis chapter 2 and 3 we see the family established even before government which is established much later on in Genesis. The family is the first government. The parents are the first government. The father is the first prophet, priest and king so to speak over that small family. Every family is like a small civilization. A divorce is like the death of a small civilization. A civilization is built on families, healthy families. We see the first murder. But notice, after Cain killed his brother Abel, God did not ban all the rocks or knives or clubs or whatever weapon was used. In fact, the scripture doesn't even tell us what weapon was used by Cain to kill Abel. The weapon obviously wasn't the issue. The issue was the evil in Cain's heart. God banished He murderer. Who could execute him except his own parents? And that would be asking too much. So the first murderer was banished. But God didn't deal with a weapon because evil does not reside in inanimate objects. Evil resides in the heart of man. Cain was the problem. Cain was mocked. He was ostracized. He was banished. And we see the first worldwide judgments in a flood. As the world became so evil, and so degenerate, and so depraved, and so immoral, and that every thought and inclination of man's heart was only evil continually, God sent a flood. But before he sent the flood, he called his righteous, faithful servant Noah to build a massive ark. An ark as big as a Second World War aircraft carrier. A massive, multi-storied ark that could accommodate millions of animals, every kind of bird, every kind of creature, from the smallest to the biggest, from the smallest little hedgehogs and insects all the way up to dinosaurs, elephants, giraffes, the whole lot, they're all there. And if animals didn't matter, Noah wouldn't have had as big a job to build something just big enough for his family and a few farm domestic animals. The importance of creation is seen right there in how much work has to be put in for how many decades to build this colossal ark. But notice there was only one ark and there was only one door to the ark. So we see in this first worldwide judgement where God destroyed every living breathing thing on the planet but he preserved his people and his animals in the ark. We see the first laws of society when They came out of the ark, God gave capital punishment for murder. If you show contempt for the rights and life of others, you forfeit your own rights and life. Just like a diseased limb, a gangrenous limb must be amputated, so too those who show disrespect for the life of others, they forfeit their own lives and they must be amputated from society through capital punishment. The first laws of society. You also see the structure of society, the seven day week. The 7 day week is established in Genesis because God created the world in 6 days and He rested in the 7th. Revolutionaries in the French Revolution, Marxists in the Communist Revolution in Russia, they tried to change it to a 10 day week. It didn't work. We're still stuck with the 7 day week. Even rebellious mankind who hates God, by the very structure of our calendar, has to acknowledge God. Every time they write the date they've got to recognize that Jesus Christ, the central event of all of history, but dating it effectively from his birth, is incarnation. But they're also just part of the structure of the weeks, much as they would like to change it, and have tried, and failed. The seven day week points to the fact of creation by God. And the day of rest, which is under attack, but the fact that many millions still observe the day of rest on the Sunday, the first of the week, reminds us that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. In the Old Covenant it was on the Saturday to remind us of the truth of creation. Now we focus on recreation in Christ. Again explaining why we are BC and AD, before Christ and Anadomene in the year of our Lord. But Genesis lays the foundation for our calendar. Genesis lays the foundation for our work week. It lays the foundation for families, for laws, for society and of the origin of nations. Notice when man wanted to create a centralized super states under Babel, very much symbolised by this Tower of Babel. They all wanted to be united. God judged it. He confounded the nations. He confused the languages. He dispersed the peoples. He set the boundaries of the nations. He enforced the creation mandate which was to fill the earth and subdue it and to be fruitful and to multiply. You see, it is always Satan's plan, it is always the plan of those who are against God, to centralize. But it is always God's plan to decentralize. Not one state of Israel, but twelve tribes of Israel, very much geographically decentralized. Not one super state around Babylon, Nineveh, Egypt, but decentralization. And so today when you see the United Nations and the European Union and the African Union trying to centralise, you can see the hostility to God even in the symbolism. How in the EU they will literally build their parliament in a circle like the Tower of Babel, even with the incomplete structure, even with the incomplete scaffolding, built into the structure of their Parliament, showing we are rebuilding Babylon. They even put out a picture of it, exactly modelled on the famous Reformation picture depicting the Tower of Babel, and said, Europe, many tongues, one voice. They have a picture, a statue right outside the Brussels headquarters of the EU, of a woman riding a beast, which again is a biblical symbol of rebellion against God, and Something that's in league with the Antichrist. And again and again you can just see the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, these are rebellions against God, trying to reverse God's judgments in Babel and go back to centralization, even though God calls us to decentralization. We must have decentralization. Because power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. People are sinful, depraved. You need checks and balances. You need to divide the power. You must have these checks and balances. Otherwise, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And all this we see in the book of Genesis. So you can sum it up in five C's. There's creation, corruption, condemnation, confusion, But it doesn't end with the confusion of Babel. It goes on to the call, the missionary call of Abraham. The creation in the garden, the corruption of sin, the condemnation in the flood, the confusion that God judges, the attempt at centralization in Babel. But then you get God's kingdom striking back in Genesis 12. In Genesis 12 God calls Abraham. Leave your parents' house. Leave your home country. Go to the country I am going to send you to. I will make you a blessing. You will bless all the families of the nations of the earth. Abraham becomes the world's first missionary. He is called to leave his home and to go to the countries he is sent to and he is going to be blessed by God in order to be a blessing to all the families of the nations of the earth. And this is the beginning of all missions. Genesis chapter 12. And the great missionary psalm of Psalm 67, you can see the same pattern that you have already seen in Genesis 12, where God speaks about, I will bless you, so that you might be a blessing. We are not called to be buckets, storage. We are called to be hose pipes, channels. We are to be those who are blessed and to be a blessing. To whom much is given, much is required. To whom much more is given, much more is required. You get the very first messianic prophecy in Genesis 3 verse 15. The Proto-Evangelium they call it. The Gospel in seed form. Salvation is initiated by God. Salvation is achieved by God. I will. Salvation comes through a mediator who is related to mankind. He is the son not of man but actually of woman because he comes to the seed of a woman. Without any male agency this is God in human form. The seed of the woman. literally of the Virgin. Salvation will involve the suffering of the Redeemer. The enemy shall bruise his heel. He will suffer. But salvation will destroy Satan because he shall bruise Satan's head. It's a decisive defeat. To have your heel wounded is one thing, but to have your head or skull crushed is a symbol that you get throughout Scripture. You can see the crushing of the serpent's head being an ongoing theme all the way through Judges through to Revelation. But we see all nations and God's purpose. The call comes to Abraham to leave his family, his home, his country, go to the land I will show you and you shall be a blessing and you all the families of the nation shall be blessed. Now we've also got the where. The where of Genesis is primarily the Middle East. The Garden of Eden in what today would be Iraq. You've got the mountains of Ararat in what today would be Turkey. We have also travelled across what today would be Syria and Jordan and Lebanon to what today is the state of Israel, Canaan. Ur is mentioned in what today is Arak. Egypt of course is very important. In fact the book ends in Egypt and a vast amount of attention is given to Egypt in the book of Genesis. So it's very important. as we look at all of these. Ultimately, what we see in Genesis is how God is laying the foundations for all the other books and every other book in the Bible will refer back to and be built upon the foundations laid in Genesis. If we don't understand Genesis, we undermine our understanding of all of the rest of the Bible. Evolution is the basis, the root of all abortion, pornography, promiscuity, homosexuality, lawlessness, atheistic governments, secular humanist education all of that presumes on in the beginning there was no beginning and there was no God a whole lot of time and a whole lot of nothing made everything and just a whole lot of time and a whole lot of nothing made everything from goo to the zoo to you and that's the justification for how you can change the definition of family you can change the definition of government you can change the definition of law you can change everything because there's no eternal God, there's no right or wrong, there's no heaven and hell, there's no judgment, there's no absolute moral standards and therefore we can have rule by the majority, we can have 50% plus one, the sides and so on, tyranny of the majority. Evolutionism, a rejection of Genesis is the root of just about everything evil in our world today. Notice there's also the seeds of the Middle East conflict. laid in Genesis 2. Today's and tomorrow's newspaper is deeply affected by the very foolish attempt of Sarah to secure a descendant by having her husband Abraham take his servant Hagar for a concubine. This was foolishness. God had promised Abraham and Sarah they would be the parents of many nations. Their descent would be as the stars of the seashore, stars of the sky as the sand of the seashore. They would become those through whom would come not only nations but a company of nations who would possess the gates of the enemy. And this is repeated over and over to Abraham and later to Isaac and to Jacob. God was taking a bit long, they decided to help God along, they decided to interfere and Hagar seemed to be the solution and Sarah has her husband sleep with her servant girl Hagar and Ishmael is born and what does the scripture say in Genesis 16 verse 12 Ishmael shall be a wild man his hand shall be against every man and every man's hand shall be against him does that not describe the Arab world and the Muslim menace to this day And we should remember, if people say, my private morals and what goes on behind closed doors is nobody else's business. Really? Well, it seems that an unwise domestic solution decided here with Sarah and Abraham continues to curse us to this day. Every continent in the world is afflicted by the curse of Islam and the menace of the Arabs. Wild man, his hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against everyone else. Because they are always the victims, it doesn't matter even if they are the ones who just hijacked aircraft and thrown it into buildings, murdered a whole lot of people, chopped people's heads off, but somehow they are the ones at stake. And they might be killing a whole lot of people but it's someone else's fault because somebody apparently posted an offensive film on the internet. And we're meant to believe this. They're peaceful and tolerant. They're the only religion described as peaceful and tolerant. Even though they're the most violent, intolerant religion in the history of the world. The greatest curse and threat to civilization in history. And yet, they will still portray themselves as a victim. And it's always someone else's fault. See, the problem isn't the Muslims. The problem is everyone else. according to them. So the seeds of Middle East conflict right there, back to Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Marriage is between one man and one woman for life, concubines are not a good idea and if anyone dies to death they can just look at the world and see what went on with Hagar. Who are the main patriots? So who in Genesis is Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. These are the big names. These are the main people that you see over and over. Noah who built the ark and his sons Shem, Japheth and Ham who are the beginners of the main streams, the main races of mankind came out of the sons of Noah. Abraham the father of the faithful called to be a blessing to all the families of the nations of the earth and anyone who is a true believer is a child of Abraham, because he is the father of all the true faithful, as Galatians reminds us. Isaac, the son of the promise, who was born miraculously, the only legitimate son of Abraham. But Abraham is called to show his love for God, that he loves God so much he is even willing to sacrifice his own son in obedience to God's word. But it's a test. That's a type of cross, it's a foreshadowing of the cross. As they are going up the mountain, Mount Moriah, Isaac asks his father, Father where is the lamb? We have the fire, we have the wood, but where is the lamb? His father says, God himself will provide the lamb. and God did provide a ram then and Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world when John the Baptist pointed to Jesus on the banks of the Jordan River he said behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world Jesus is the Lamb and Isaac was a picture we can go to Muslims and say to them that there in the Quran you see a picture of salvation because Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son his first born and as he is willing to show his love for God by offering his son, his son given through a miraculous birth how could he be asked to do this when God has promised him that his son will be the means through whom he will become the father of a great nation and a company of nations who will be as many as the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea shore Abraham believed that his son would be raised from the dead that's what we read in Hebrews 11 in the hall of faith Abraham looked forward to the resurrection of his son who is given by a miraculous means that he is giving as an offering to show his love for God is even greater. Is this not a picture of the salvation God has provided in Christ? God who asked Abraham to sacrifice his son but prevented him from doing so. It was a test. God himself has sacrificed his own son. given through a miraculous birth, and he has raised him from the dead as a testament to all nations. So we see the gospel typified in the sacrifice of Isaac, the son of the promise. Jacob, whose twelve sons formed the twelve tribes of Israel, a community of nations who will possess the gates of the enemies. And Joseph, who was betrayed by his brothers into slavery, But his integrity lifted him from the prison to the palace. Joseph gets a lot of space in Genesis. Joseph gets an enormous amount of space, so he's got to pay attention. When there's so many chapters about Joseph, Joseph is described as a dreamer by his brothers. But he wasn't just a dreamer, he was a doer. He organized the fruit and the produce of the seven years of plenty to prepare for the seven years of drought that were coming, of the seven years of famine. He was an imaginer but he was also the engineer who not only saved the civilization Egypt but he saved the 12 tribes of Israel as well by providing a place of refuge where there was food during the famine that was coming, the severe seven years famine. Joseph was a man of such integrity and yet he was hated by his brothers, he was betrayed by his brothers, he was thrown into a pit, he was sold to slave traders He was betrayed, falsely accused, put in prison. Joseph in many ways is actually a type of Christ. In fact there are six types of Christ in Genesis, at least six. He is the seed of the woman who will crush the serpent's head. He is the door to the ark, the only door, the only way of salvation. He is also Isaac's sacrifice. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But he is also Jacob's ladder. He is the way to heaven. When Jacob dreamed of this ladder that led to heaven, Jesus is the ladder. He is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to father except through him. Joseph, when he was betrayed by his brothers, thrown into a pit, is that not a type of how Jesus the Messiah comes to his own people? and his people betray him, reject him, betray him to the Romans, cast him down, lift him up, seek him to be crucified in disgrace, have him flogged, spit in his face, rip out handfuls of his beard. The abuse of Joseph by his own brothers in Genesis is a type of Christ, the Messiah, who was also thrown into the pit, cast into the prison, sold into slavery, and yet he was raised from the dungeon to the palace and he became the means of salvation to his brethren who had betrayed him. So we see in Joseph a type of Christ. And he is Judas Sceptre who will reign forever. All kings will bow down to Christ. All authority has been given unto Christ. His dominion shall stretch from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. All of this is in the book of Genesis. It's the gospel in seed form. It's the whole Bible encapsulated. Just like the seed of a great oak tree might not look very impressive on its own, but when that seed has grown into that mighty oak tree, then you can see all the potential is in that seed, all the potential is in Genesis. In Genesis you've got the rest of the Bible in seed form. The dominion mandate must be the most important verse in many ways in Genesis if you are to single out a single verse. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the earth. This is the great commission in the Old Testament so to speak. The creation mandate or the dominion mandate. Respect for life. This is God's world and this is God's earth and the animals are God's animals. We have liberty of movement. Fill the earth. Be fruitful and multiply. We are meant to be good stewards of creation. We are meant to care for God's creation. The first job God gave Adam and Eve was to care for his creatures in the garden, to tend the garden, to be gardeners and to be game rangers, to care for the earth, to make the world better, safer, more productive, more fruitful. So respect for life, liberty of movement, stewardship of creation and work ethic. They had to work six days and rest one and seven. They were to be productive. They were to treat the family as the basic building block of society. Living in a good world surrounded by God's animals and God's magnificent creation. Improving the trees and the plants and the crops and the fruit trees and everything that God has given and making it better. And so we see God communicates with His creation. He calls us to fellowship. He calls us to walk with Him. Adam and Eve walked with God in the coolness of the day in the garden. Enoch walked with God, Enoch pleased God and he was taken up to be with God. Noah heard the voice of God tell him and he responded in obedience. Abraham is described as the friend of God. Joseph was a man who dreamed the dreams of God and who did the work of God and who became the means of salvation to his brethren. and so you get in Genesis so much and I would hope and pray that this message would just create a hunger and a thirst for you to read in the next two weeks before we get to Exodus because next Sunday we'll be in the Great Commission camp in two weeks time we'll go on to Exodus but in the next two weeks that's enough time, 14 days is enough time to go four chapters a day to get through the 50 odd chapters of Genesis God communicates to this creation. He wants us to understand these are the fathers of the faith. These are the great patriarchs of the faith. These are the great foundation stones and building blocks of the rest of the Bible. And when we have a good solid foundation of Genesis, we will not be impressed, confused or deceived by the evolutionists and the secular humanists of this world. Yes, we will have solid foundations. That's why they want to wage war against Genesis. This is the waging of war against God. Genesis is the foundation for not just our faith and our civilization but the foundation for all the rest of life as well. Let us pray. Lord God we thank you and praise you for the book of Genesis. We thank you Lord God that you're a holy God, that you're a righteous and a just God, a God of wrath who hates evil and who judges sin. We praise you Lord God that you created a good and a perfect world and we repent Lord that we have been part of a sinful humanity that has rebelled against you. but we praise you Lord God that you are also a redeemer who restores we praise you for the generation and we praise you for the regeneration Lord that you have provided an ark for Noah and the animals and that you have provided for us in this day your church the body of Christ through which we can be saved from the judgment that's coming on the whole world we pray Lord God that you make us faithful to you faithful to your work, the dominion mandate and caring for your creation, being good stewards of what you have entrusted us to. We pray Lord God that you would help us to be faithful members of our families which are the building blocks of civilization. We pray Lord God that you would help us to build strong families and that each young person when it comes their time to build their family would build it solidly on your word. faithful to you faithful to your creation mandate and in communication with you we thank you lord that you call us to fellowship that you call us to walk with you we thank you lord god that you are the lamb who takes away the sins of the world that you are the door the way the truth and life that you are the king of kings and the lord of lords may bless and guide us this week and through this year we pray in jesus name amen