The Glory of God's Creation

This is one of those passages in the Bible that once you begin to look at it and study it and teach it and preach it, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And every time I come to this text, I realize that the biggest struggle in teaching this is what you don't say. There is so much here. I'm going to read the first chapter of Genesis. The first section of Genesis is actually chapter 1, verse 1 through chapter 2, verse 3, which is the account of the creation. Let me begin reading with verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Then God said, let there be light and there was light. God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness. He called night and there was evening and there was morning one day. Then God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate waters from the waters. God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse and it was so. God called the expanse heaven or in some of your translation the sky and there was evening and there was morning a second day. Then God said, let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear and it was so.

God called the dry land earth and the gathering of the waters he called seas and God saw that it was good. Then God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning a third day. Then God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and it was so.

God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and to govern the day and the night and to separate the light from the darkness and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning a fourth day. When God said, let the waters team or swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves with which the water swarm after their kind and every winged bird after its kind and God saw that it was good. God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let birds multiply on the earth.

There was evening and there was morning a fifth day. When God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind and the cattle after their kind and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind and God saw that it was good. Then God said, 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 and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female, he created them.

God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Then God said, behold, I have given every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth and every tree which has fruit yielding seed. And so every beast of the earth to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food and it was so. God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their hosts.

By the seventh day, God completed His work which He had done and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done and then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. The seven words that opened this book and the entire Bible in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The seven Hebrew words are a foundation for the whole Bible. For everything that follows really the purpose of this statement is threefold. First it to identify the creator. And remember we talked about the context of Genesis. This book was given to the covenant people of God and their wilderness journeys to let them know who this God was that had called them out of Egypt and formed them into a nation and was leading them through the wilderness.

And He identifies the creator. In fact in Psalm 96 it says, all the gods of the nations are simply idols. But Yahweh, the Lord, is the one who created the heavens. This is who this God is that we serve. He is the creator and the sustainer of all things. And second purpose is to explain the origin of the world. And finally to tie the work of God in the past to the work of God in the future. When it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth it implies very distinctly in the Hebrew language that there is an end to all this. There is a goal to which all of this is moving. In the beginning of this movement of God this whole plan and purpose of redemption was this creation of the heavens and the earth.

He announces that the God of the covenant community, the God that we call Lord is the God who created all things. He is the king of this cosmos, the king of this universe. And He makes everything in it for us. He makes provision. He establishes order. He commissions vice regents to rule over his earth. He provides air and water and land and everything that we need to live before him and to glorify him. This God-given life support is provided at creation in abundance, great abundance. And that's the picture you get of this description that an apple tree doesn't bear one apple. It bears a multitude of apples. Everything God creates, pro-creates in abundance. And the earth becomes the stage on which the drama of redemption under God is played out.

Some people think that Christians are foolish because they think the earth is the center of the universe and we know that it is not physically the center of the universe, but it is the center of God's attention. This is where God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into His creation to the earth. There's a clear implication here that those who submit themselves to the Creator's rule as God unveils it here in Genesis 1. The person who submits their life to the rule of the Creator is assured that their history, that their life and that the end of all that they do is not going to end in tragic darkness and chaos, but it's going to be fruitful and it's going to be something that is beautiful in the eyes of God.

There's an amazing truth in the New Testament that says, when God is through with you, when He has finished transforming you into the image of Christ and you stand before Him, every man, the Bible says, every person is going to receive His word of praise from God. Now I don't think you're ready yet, are you? Are you ready for that yet? I don't think so. I know I'm not ready yet, but that's His promise. And there is a parallel here that, as God unfolds the story of creation in successive days, these six successive days, He's building to a climax. And the same thing is true of His entire plan and purpose that's unveiled to us throughout the scriptures. So this compact description of God's creation of all things in these six successive days, imagine that, that God tells us He creates the entire universe in a week.

You know, it really doesn't matter to me whether you take those days to be 24-hour periods or something else. The point is, in these six successive, orderly days, God creates a universe and an earth upon which we can dwell and prosper and live under His rule. The order of this creation is going to undergird God's later revelations regarding humanity's social order and how we are to live before Him and how we are to be fruitful and obey Him and rule over His creation, this is what He's called us to do. Let's take a look at some things, kind of an overview of Genesis 1. First of all, the process from darkness and chaos to life and fruitfulness. And as you know, throughout the scriptures, many of the prophets and the biblical writers point back to the creation to give us evidence that God is able to do the same thing in your life.

Some of you are experiencing a bit of chaos and darkness and you have in the past and some of you are in the present. And the picture here, the clear implication is the God who brought this universe out of and this earth out of chaos and darkness is able to do the same thing in our lives. This is the Creator. And notice the process, this account is very, it's really highly sophisticated. It's not a scientific document, it's a narrative. He doesn't bother to give us second causes. He talks about the Creator and His activity in creation. The creation is divided up into six days and each of them follow a basic process of creation. There's order here. There's an emphasis, God's omnipotence and His omniscience and His presence and His power.

His creativity is unveiled to us as He gives this description of His creation. God is the actor here. He is the primary one and if you stop and think about it, there was no one there to observe this upon the earth. And yet we have a narrator who is giving us an earthly perspective of God's creation. Everything is described for us from the perspective of the earth as it is described for us. God says, God separates, God names, God sees, God evaluates. It is God who is the hero of this story. He is the one who is acting and there is a pattern here. The pattern goes like this. First of all, there is an announcement. In every day, there is an announcement. Each day begins with an announcement and God said, this narrative is driven and shaped by the direct speech of God.

It is through the word of God that this universe comes into existence and that this earth is molded and shaped for us. This is though God is the soloist and the narrator is the accompaniment. God is the one who is speaking and acting and the narrator tells us about his speech and his actions. The hero of creation is God. Every event occurs according to his expressed will. It is a response to the will of God that things come into being and that they are shaped and separated and ordered as God speaks and God's will and God wills. Secondly, there is commandment. Each announcement is followed by a commandment. Let there be. God speaks His word and conjunction with His Spirit is irresistible and creative and it overcomes chaos and emptiness.

It is a puzzling thing to us at times. We read in the first words of this text in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the very next verse it says in the earth was tohu wa bohu. It was void. It was empty. It was chaotic. Darkness covered the face of the waters. Why does he do this? Well, there are all kinds of theories about this. There is what is called the gap theory. There are those who say that the first verse is not speaking of the creation of the universe but rather of this ordered system which is described in the following verses. I believe the simplest understanding is the verse one describes God's creation next in the helo. He is creating this universe out of nothing and then as God begins to shape the earth, he begins with his creation of the earth, with his ordering of the earth, with the earth in this condition to show us and to demonstrate to us that he can do the same thing in our lives, in our community.

In fact, here with me back to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. And notice Paul's allusion to this very thing, this act of God working with the darkness and the chaos of the earth as it is described for us in Genesis 1 verse 2. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 6, you apostle Paul writes, in verse 5, for we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus is Lord and ourselves as your bond servants for Jesus sake, for God who said, light shall shine out of darkness. That is simply a translation of this of God's word, let there be light and there was light. He says, the God who said this is the one who is shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. You know, if you're serious about sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ and you're serious about sharing that gospel, you have, and if that's been true of you for very long, you have experienced the fact that there are many people that you want to tell them the good news.

In fact, perhaps the people that you love the most and you care the most about, you want to share with them the good news of Jesus Christ about life and forgiveness and salvation. And yet, you discover that their minds are closed, that their hearts are darkened, that they cannot see and they will not receive the message. No matter how chaotic their life gets, until the Spirit of God, as he hovered over the darkness that covered the face of the deep, until this, because the Spirit of God hovered. In fact, the word that's used there is used one of the places in the Old Testament to describe an eagle hovering over its nest over its young, attentive, involved, engaged, and then God speaks. The same thing happens when you witness to people.

The reason that we pray about sharing the gospel, the reason we don't pray to the people that we share the gospel with is we understand that if God doesn't act, a person can hear the gospel over and over and over and over again and it will never penetrate the darkness of their heart until the Spirit of God brings the Word of God to bear upon their heart until light comes into the heart and eyes are open and all of a sudden, there is light. In fact, it's an amazing experience to be with someone who comes to the knowledge of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's like walking down the street with someone who is practically blind. They can barely see in every image that comes into their sight.

They interpret it as something else. So you're having to guide them and interpret to them what's really there and all of a sudden their eyes clear up and they begin to see perfectly. That's what happens when the Spirit of God comes, when the Word of God penetrates the heart and eyes are open and people for the first time see who Jesus Christ really is and the Word of the living God penetrates the heart and the Spirit. Eyes are opened. You see, He gives us a beautiful picture of this in this account of creation. The Spirit was hovering and God commands let there be light. And then third, there is a separation. There's a dividing of day and night, light and darkness, waters and land, fish and foul, over and over again.

There is separation. In other words, boundaries are important. That wasn't invented by Minereth and Meyer. These are important. God is laid out the boundaries and He teaches us here and shows us here when everything keeps into it. It's a lot of place and does not transgress its limits. There's order and not chaos. And so God puts everything in its place, in its proper place. He separates the waters from above, from the waters that are below. He separates the waters from the land so there is dry land upon which man can live and exist before the living God. And so there is separation. And then fourth, there is the narrator's report. He reports to us what God has done and so God made. He affirms that everything that exists, exists by God's expressed will and purpose and word.

He shows God to be the supreme ruler. I want to tell you this morning that the thing that you need to know the most, every single person in this room, the thing that I need to know the most is that God is the supreme ruler, that He is sovereign over all. He sovereign over the darkness in your life. He sovereign over the chaos. He sovereign over the waters, the deep waters of the experiences of life, but no matter what you're going through, whether you face challenges that feel like they're going to sink you and overwhelm you and snuff out your life, God is sovereign over all. There's a story this past week, Palmer Robertson told about his brother-in-law, a man came to him and was telling him in this Sudan that these rebels had broken into his house with guns and they threatened to kill the whole family and they told him if he didn't shoot his wife, that they were going to kill both him and his wife and his children would be orphans.

And so his wife pleaded with him to kill her and he did. He shot his wife and he survived and he had his children, but this man was telling Robertson's brother-in-law, but I can't live with what I have done. I want to tell you, a believer can understand and know you will never be forced to sin. There will never be a moment in your life where the sovereign God of the universe will put you in a situation where you will have to sin against Almighty God in order to survive. And you say, well, wait a minute. What if I'm threatened? What if my life is threatened? And if I don't sin, I'm going to be killed. I have to live, don't I? No, you don't have to live. You simply have to obey because the sovereign God of the universe is sovereign over death, hell and the grave.

There's nothing that he is not sovereign over. He is the ruler. And we see him speaking in this context and he is always obeyed. Have you ever noticed the only things in creation that disobey God are volitional beings like people and angels, the animals obey, the creation obeys, the storms obey, the clouds obey, it's only man and fallen angels who disobey the living God. And then there is the naming God names, especially the first three days. Actually, he sovereignly names the elements. He calls things by a certain name. Now, this has significant because naming indicates dominion. When you name something, you own it. You ever notice this when you get a new dog and they tell you what his name is, Skipper.

And you decide, no, we're going to call him George. We're going to name him. He's our dog. That's ownership. Remember the three Hebrew children in Daniel when they went down into Babylonian captivity and they had their names changed. Why? Because it showed ownership. When you bought a slave, you changed his name because you owned him for God to name these things. And for God to give man, in fact, we'll see in the weeks to come that he gave man the atom this responsibility to name the animals. That has great significance. It shows his position before God. What God was doing was making him a vice-regent under the authority and rule of God to rule over God's creation. God names the elements. Even the darkness and the chaos.

Of the waters are under his dominion and his restraints. He rules over everything. I think that's really significant. I was reading this past week about ministries and local churches to disabled people and parents of children with disabilities and I was reading and I was trying to find everything I could find. And man, it was overwhelming. I was so emotionally exhausted after a couple of hours of reading these letters and articles and Bible studies and descriptions. But one thing that was impressed upon me that everybody said is that we have to understand that God is sovereign over our disabilities. This is not an accident when he brings things into your life. When he brings people into your life with great needs, it's opportunity.

If the sovereign God puts people before us and we get to see the Lord Jesus Christ being manifested through us, you've ever noticed the way Jesus treats disabled people. Read through the New Testament. Again, read through the Gospels again and notice how Jesus treats the disabled. He doesn't dismiss them. He doesn't avoid them. He calls them by name. He touches them. He responds to them. And ultimately, he heals them. That's what he's going to do. And then sixth, there is evaluation. God evaluates. He evaluates what he has created. He evaluates his handiwork. God saw that it was good. Everything, including the darkness and the sea, they all satisfied God's purpose. Because God is completely benevolent as well as all powerful humanity has nothing to fear from creation.

There's a term that's used about something that is threatening to the life or hostile to the life of people, but it's not morally evil. It's called surred evil. It means that there are things in this world that are dangerous and they can make life very difficult. God is sovereign over that. God is sovereign over the darkness and over the deep and over everything that you face as well. And then finally, there is chronological order. Now it's confusing at times. God creates the light on the first day and he doesn't create the greater and lesser light until the fourth day. And how do we make sense of that? How do you have a day without the sun and the moon? So there's some things in here that are challenging, but there's order.

And every day builds upon another, as we'll see in just a moment. The progress of this story of creations characterized by detail and movement, shouldn't go to it. It's building to a point. There's more time and space given to each day until the climactic apex of creation when he creates man on the 6D day, when the motion of God ceases and God rests. In fact, that's where everything works toward. It works towards the completion of God's work and God's rest. What a picture that is, because you see that's what salvation is. It's God calling you into His rest. The Christ has done a work. His work has been completed. He has set down at the right hand of the Father. He has completed everything necessary for you to be restored to a relationship with the living God, for you to be a child of God, for you to be reconciled to God.

Christ has done everything necessary. And now the gospel comes and it says, Interim to my rest. Rest from your labor. We're in Matthew 11, Jesus said, coming to me all, you did labor in our heavy laden. He was talking to religious people. People who were working so hard so they could feel like they had done everything they needed to be right with the living God that God had favor on them because of their life and their activity and their work and their religion. And some of them were so tired. And Jesus has come to me, all you that labor in our heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my oak upon you. Internet of the oak with me. What does that mean? Interim to my work. Why? Because my oak is easy.

My burden is light because I've done the work. See, the invitation, the salvation, the reason it is so distasteful to us, who are fallen is because God says, you can't make it on your own. You've made a mess of your life. You've ruled your own life and you've shunned my rule over your life. I created you to submit to my rule, to fulfill my will. And yet you wanted to rule your life your own way. You wanted to ignore my authority over your life. Isn't it hard? The Bible says the way of the transgressor is hard. It's so hard. Over the years, I've heard so many stories of people who work so hard. And they have such a difficult time coming into the rest. The Christ is provided. See, that's what this creation is headed for.

It's headed for the day of rest. Now, this creation account is divided up into two triads, day one, two, and three, and then day four, five, and six. I want to show you a little chart. The first three days respond to this condition. The earth is in this condition of the Hebrew expression, Tohu wa Bohu, without form and empty. It's chaotic. It's uninhabitable. Man could not live on it. Its surface was covered by the deep and darkness. It was no place to live. It wasn't even a good place to visit. And God began to do something. We have these two problems. It's without form and it's empty. The first three days, the response is to the fact that it is without form. The last three days are the fact that it is empty.

That's why we have this little chart. The resource and the utilizer. He first creates the resource and then he inhabits the earth, inhabits his creation with the utilizer of that resource. It's a response to these two things. It's formlessness and the fact that it's empty. Now let's look at these one day at a time real quickly. First of all, on the first day, God creates light. The earth was in a condition of darkness, and so God speaks and says, let there be light and there was light. It's so simple. It's such a simple statement, and yet so incredibly profound. You know, one of the things about this text, and I'm not going to dig into that, but if you study this book, you will discover there are some things about it.

They're amazing. It's not a poem. It's a narrative, but the structure of it is amazing. The first two verses in the Hebrew have seven words in each verse. At the end of the account, the very last part of it, the introduction of the last seventh day, you have multiples of seven, every verse. So many of the things that are spoken here by God are said seven times. Obviously, there are six days of creation, but seven expressions. Now the Bible, clearly, what God does in giving us this revelation is he uses the number seven to speak about completeness and fullness. When something's complete and full, it's described in seventh. That's why you have sevens in the book of revelation, the book of the end.

This is a masterpiece, and yet it's so simple. There's such an economy of words here. God said, let there be light, and there was light. You know, sometimes I have found that people's lives get so messed up. It really does remind me of a nest. What do you call it when a bird's nest in a fishing reel? Sometimes the only thing left to do is just to cut the line, isn't it? Sometimes the solution to our problems are so simple. We just need to have God speak into the situation, and the fact is God has spoken. God said, let there be light, and there was light. Day two, there was firmament. That is, there is this division of the waters above and the waters below. There's this sky. There are the heavens.

And so there's a separation of the waters. On the third day, dry land. There needs to be dry land in order for us to exist. And so he separates the waters on the earth from the land, and there is dry land, and he creates a vegetation. Now here we have the response to the formlessness of the world, that God creates the light, separates the water from above from below, and separates the water from the dry land, and the land against the sprout vegetation. He creates abundance, productivity. It's incredible the productivity of God. We live out in the country, we've got farmers all around us, and I have been amazed these last few years, that I watch the kind of crops that come out of an acre of land.

It is unbelievable how fruitful this earth is, and how fruitful he wants to make your life. The second set of three days correspond to these first three. That's why some look at this, and they say these aren't literal days, this is a framework. Now I don't believe it. I believe these are days, six days of creation, but notice the correspondence. On the first day, he creates light. On the fourth day, he creates the greater and the lesser light. He creates the sun in the moon. Have you noticed, he doesn't mention the sun or the moon? The reason he doesn't call them sun and moon is because this is, along with everything else, a polemic against the idols of the nations. The nations worship the sun, and if he would have used the Hebrew word for sun, it was also the name of a God, among the nations.

The name of the moon was the name for the God of the Babylonians. And so he calls them because he is God, the creator. These are not gods. These are gods, creation, and so he creates the greater light and the lesser light. And then on the fifth day, because on the second day, he made the firmament separated, the waters above, and the waters below, he inhabits the air, the firmament, and he inhabits, he creates the inhabitants of the waters, the birds in the sky, the fish, and the sea, and the waters. And then finally on the sixth day, he corresponds to this dry land and the food that he has provided, he creates those that will inhabit the earth, land animals, and human beings. The movement and development of each one of these triads reveals a progression within creation.

For example, if you look at the first triad, the light and firmament in dry land, there is separation. The formless chaos is separated into three static spheres, sky, water, and land, exactly what we need. In the second triad, the spheres that house and shelter life are filled with the moving forms of the sun, the moon, and living creatures. The inhabitants of the second triad rule over the corresponding spheres, the sun and the moon rule over the darkness. Humanity, which is created to be the vice-region over God's creation, rules over the earth. The rule of the sun and the moon are poetic in Scripture and in the Psalms, Psalm 136. It describes how the sun and the moon rule over the darkness, the light.

What a grand thing. I had saw some pictures this past week. There's a CD, a DVD that you can get called the universe. It's a picture, it's a download of all the photographs of the Hubble Space Telescope. It is incredible. This creation that God spoke into existence, it is massive and glorious, astounding. What God has created, it is so glorious, and each triad progresses from heaven to earth to the land. It ends with the earth bringing forth something. In the first triad, the land brings forth vegetation. You see the end of that first triad? It brings forth something, vegetation. In the second triad, it brings forth animals. The number of creative acts increases with every triad. If you notice this, in the first and day one and four, there's one creative act.

In day two and five, there's one creative act and two aspects to it. You have the sky in the sea, in the second day, in the birds and the fish in the fifth day, and then finally in day three and six, the end of each triad, you have two separate creative acts. He creates the dry land and he creates the vegetation. He creates the land animals and he creates humanity. In the action in this creation increases. There is a progression here. It comes to a head. In the first triad, there's this simple movement from light to darkness, from firmament and seas to the growing vegetation, but in the second triad, there's an eruption of energy. It just explodes, sun and moon, go across the sky and birds and fish swarm the sea in the and the sky.

The land animals roll about the ground. In the second triad, there's a pattern of movement and it goes on progressively. This is a masterpiece, this description of the creation of God, such an economy of words. If somebody says you, well, I want to study the universe and you hand them a chapter out of the Bible and say, read this. Here's where you ought to start. Now this is in a scientific document. In fact, next week, maybe I'll show you the different thing. It's scientific document and this narrative description of God's creative work. Oh, this is glorious. In art scientists, lucky, I should say, isn't it a providential wonder that people get to study this creation? They get to look at it in this grandeur and its greatness through telescopes and they get to look at it through a microscope and look down at the smallest little part of it and it's got the fingerprints of God all over it, doesn't it?

Just like your life does. Just like your life does. Everyone who invested your faith in Christ, some of you feel like total failures in the Christian life, but the fact is the fingerprints of God are all over your life and people see it. It's unmistakable. God is doing a creative work in you. The entire count is a unified work by a basic week-time structure. In six days, God creates everything in such a way that He can say at the end of the six day and it was very good. What a wonderful creation that we inhabit and one a wonderful God that created it. God's creation reveals His immeasurable power, His might, His bewildering imagination and wisdom. We look at it and we wonder and we laugh. We're amazed at it.

His immortality. This must be an immortal God that could create such a thing. His transcendent. He is above and beyond it all. Who can be above and beyond this creation? The Bible says that when Jesus came out of the grave and ascended to His Father, that He first of all ascended through all the heavens. In fact, Heber says He went above all the heavens and then He came back and sat down at the right hand of the Father. Why? A demonstration that this God who became a man, who came in the likeness of sinful flesh, who was so really human that He got hungry and tired and weary. And yet when He was racing the dead, He showed that He wasn't bound to this creation, this Creator God, the very person of the Trinity who said, let there be light and there was light.

I believe there was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. The earth endures in part because it is brought into existence through God's wisdom which shows His righteousness because of God's character. When He made an apple tree, it doesn't bear one apple. It produces thousands and the grain of wheat multiplies itself 100 fold. That's what kind of God He is. Hasn't He worked like that in your life? Has any multiplied His blessings in your life? Isn't He a glorious God? What a God it is that we serve. The implication I think of all this, only to take a moment here because I've run out of time, but for Colossians chapter 1, for He rescued us from the domain of darkness. The domain of darkness, the domain is a place where there is a ruler, an absolute ruler over it.

And He says, that's what our life was like. We were in darkness. The Bible calls Satan the God of this age. He ruled over us. Second Corinthians chapter 4 says, He blinded our eyes so that no matter how many times we heard the gospel, our eyes were blind to the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And one day, one day, do you remember the day? Do you remember? You remember that day when God said, let there be light. Remember, Frank? When God said, let there be light. And all of a sudden, you saw the truth about Jesus Christ. And it changed your life, didn't it? It changed your life. You begin to bring order and fruitfulness, begin to bring things together. And I know some of you are thinking, man, my life is a mess right now.

But I want to tell you, God uses messes. He uses darkness. He uses chaos because it all belongs to Him. And He's working as good work in your life. And in the end of this process, when you stand before Him, He's going to say, if He's very good, it is very good. You know, there's going to come a day that you're going to be so changed that you will love God the way you should. And you know, you don't know. That's one of your greatest disappointments in life as you don't love God like you ought to. But one of these days, you're going to be able to. You're going to be so changed. You're going to be able to love God the way you ought to. And He's going to say, it is very good. It is very good. What a God.

The God of light. The God that speaks into our darkness. I want to say, I'm going to pray in this thing one last song. But I want to pray for you and for some of those in the church who are going through some difficulties. As I pray, I hope if you're here and whether you're a believer or an unbeliever, I have no doubt at all that you need the God who created this universe to also be creative in your life today to really speak to your heart and your life situation. Denise Gleason is, as you know, she's scheduled for back surgery. They're living down in Southern California these months and she takes care of three small children. Her back is gotten severely bad now. I don't even know if she can get out of bed at this point.

So they're really in a bind at this point. So I want to pray for them and others. Why don't you take hands with the people close to you? So we just pray as a church. Pray for these needs and for one another. Pray along with me. Our Father, as we approach you, our hearts are encouraged and emboldened to speak to you because we otherwise we couldn't. If it wasn't for the truth that we know about Christ and how he has paved a way for us, that he has opened the door so that we can enter into the very presence of God and speak with boldness, how could we open our mouths to the God who spoke this universe into existence? How could we boldly speak to one who was so powerful and almighty that all he has to do is speak the word and our breath would be gone.

And yet we do believe, Father, just as you described in Genesis 1-2, the Spirit of God hovers over the darkness of every life here. And all you have to do is in the power of the Spirit to speak the word and that word penetrates hearts. I pray for those that are here this morning whose eyes have never been open to the glory of Christ. They know about him. They've heard so much about him, but their eyes have never been open. Their spiritual eyes are closed. Open their eyes, I pray. We pray that you would speak the word that light would come in. I do pray for these that are suffering in our flock for Carol Fleckenjeren. For Denise, I pray your hand of healing would be upon him. I pray, O God, that you would help them in this great trial.

I pray that you would bring people around them that they need to give them help at this time, that you would show your power and your grace in the midst of this trial. I pray for Annie that should recover well from the surgery that your hand would be upon her. And all those in our flock and our church family who are going through great difficulties, we ask you, O God, to minister to their hearts. I pray that the oil of the Holy Spirit would just run down their spirits and let them experience the soothing wonder of the ministry of the spirit in the midst of the greatest difficulties of our lives. When we face things that we don't have an idea how we're going to get through, we thank you that we know the one who is the way and the truth and the life.

Help us to cling to him because we know he has ahold of us and nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. We pray that as we leave this place we would leave with our hearts encouraged. We would leave believing the truth about your great power, your great artistry, your great compassion, that you were so compassionate on this humanity, that you would order an earth in which we could live in abundance no matter how badly we've treated it, it is still so productive and glorious. And we thank you for who you are and what you have done in the name of Christ. Amen.