I started writing a series for going through the entire Bible and it was going to be who knows how long and then it was going to be 50 weeks. Well, that was dangerously close to 52. And as it turns out, a couple things popped into the schedule. So it ended up being a one year thing divided into nine different units. But I'll tell you, I've got somebody that was super excited for it last week to start and I was like, I got bad news for you.

It doesn't start until this week, you know, so anyway, Tom, if you want to get us started off, that's the one. So if you guys are even half as excited as Tom was, he called me, he's like, this is so great. He's like, I've never had anybody like walk me through the whole Bible and explain it. I'm like, I'm sorry, I haven't started that yet, you know. Well, so anyway, like we, we do different parts, but it's like we're now, as a disclaimer, we're not going through the entire, I mean, we're going to cover like parts of it, but there's no way we can cover everything that's in the Bible in a whole year.

So what we're doing is we're looking at how at different points along the way and we're just taking little snippets and showing you that it's all about Jesus. So this book that you've received is what I'm calling a sermon companion. And you need to bring it with you every week. There's a place on the COVID for your name. That's my microphone for your name and your, your phone number just in case you like lose it.

And, and it's something that you can use here in service. There's a page like we start on page seven today, that's the first week. But there's some fill in the blanks that may or may not be directly covered in the sermon. You have to like really listen and sometimes you have to read like if you don't get it, if you read the little supporting scriptures on the, the first page of the week, those might have the answer to those questions. Or sometimes it's right in the text that I wrote about the big idea or the section that says it's all about Jesus and you still might not get it because some of them might have been written late at night and it doesn't make much sense.

So blame that however you want. I spent a lot of days where I just got straight up out of Bed, wearing my shorts and T shirt, and went out to, like, I've got this office kind of in a. It's a shed. I told somebody I was writing in a shed. They're like, why would you do that?

I was like, well, I set it up as a podcast studio a few years back and didn't just keep doing that like everyone else around the pandemic, they're like, let's just start recording ourselves. And so we started doing that, and then it just kind of fizzled from there because it's a lot of work and, you know, anyway, so it's like, it's got, like, a drop ceiling in it and air conditioning and carpet and a table and a nice computer. So that was my, like, that was my zone where I could be with the only distraction being every couple hours, my daughter would come in, give me a hug, and walk back out, usually. And that was sweet. And so that's where a lot of this was drafted and written.

And it's. So, like I say some of those, I would just go straight from bed to go work on it a few hours, come in for lunch, come back out and work, you know, and then be like, oh, I need a shower. You know, like, it's just. I've been in here too much. So I felt like some of those video gamers had just been a long time.

But I didn't turn the hoodie around, put Cheetos in the hood. And if you've never heard of anybody doing that, like, I've never done it personally, but it's just brilliant. Like, that is a food holding device right there. Like. Like those buckets that a horse eats out of, you know?

So, anyway, good times. Well, today we're. We're starting as Tom let us off in the beginning. And. And that.

That is. That is this unit. And today our sermon title is Creation at the Word of God. So Creation at the Word of God is the idea that the creation, the place that we live, was created by the Word of God. But John's going to introduce the Word to us as a person.

And so we're going to look at that. We're going to look at that scripture. And I want to mention a couple things as we just to kind of lay the groundwork on this. Oh, and one other thing that I wanted to say is for anybody that happens to catch this either live on Facebook or online later, we appreciate you guys. I'm glad you're there.

Love for you to not just, like, lurk like some kind of stalker, you know, but actually be like, in the comments and say hello and all that kind of stuff. And I want you to be able to participate as well with one of these books. But, like, there's, you know, the post office keeps raising prices on stuff. So, like, find a way to get us like 12 bucks and your name and an address and we'll send it to you. Seems pretty fair to me.

Right? Cool. All right, good stuff. So we got that settled. If you want that, you can find our contact info online.

You found a video, you can find a way to get ahold of us. Probably don't put your address in the comments, you know. Okay, cool. Oh, yeah. The other thing I was going to say was the Old Testament is one big arrow that is pointing us to Jesus.

Like. Like, if you're not. If you're reading the Old Testament and you don't see Christ in it, you're missing the point. If I write a sermon out and don't somehow find a way to point you to Christ, I've missed the point. That's the way it is.

Now. If the Old Testament is a big arrow pointing us to Jesus, the coming of Christ, then you have the Gospels, which is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, by the way. In one of the first pages of your sermon companion, there's a list of all the Bible books if you kind of need them in order to where you can find them. I use a app on my phone a lot. I use a website on my computer to read the Bible.

But a lot of times you just can't beat a paper Bible and like, flip through it, you know, and find it. You just get a tactical feel for it that way. So the Bible, the Old Testament, is an arrow pointed to Christ. The Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are telling us about what Jesus did, who he is, who he was. And then after that, you've got the rest of the Bible, especially the book of Acts, tells us what Jesus was doing by the power of the Holy Spirit through his believers.

And then after that, you've got some writings telling. Giving instructions to the churches, to the church leaders about how to live as Christians and how to carry out the work that Jesus has called the church to do. Something. I was reading this week and I found some time to read something and not just write was okay. I'm just kidding.

I was listening to an audiobook as I drove. But anyway, I call that reading. And I. I was reading this book and something that the guy said just struck a chord with me that really helped kind of put some of this into focus that Christianity is a world religion that is primarily concerned with eternity. Now a lot of people say, well no, it concerns here and now. Whoa, if all it did was concern here and now, there's no point about thinking about heaven or hell or anything with it, with eternity or with the afterlife.

For sure, Jesus focus on our eternal residence, our eternal resting place or destination definitely has an impact on how we live here. It definitely impacts our life here and it impacts how we live towards others. But primarily it also impacts how we share the love of Christ with others and in wanting to do that, to bring them into faith, that will save them for eternity and, and that will provide for their walk with Christ on this earth. So having said that and kind of saying what the scriptures are about, you would think in the beginning we would start like on page one, like Genesis 1, but we're not, we're starting in John 1 and John 1. I'm just going to read the first five verses now.

This is part of what's called the prologue of the Gospel. And sometimes you're reading a book and it really needs the author to say, this is what I'm talking about. This is my purpose for writing this. Or this is what I mean by this. And John does that for 18 just absolutely beautiful verses.

In fact, those, those 18 verses, I memorized them a long time ago and that really saved my tale in a class when I was in college for a couple years. Everybody just does a couple years at college, right? Nobody actually stays for like four or six or more, do they? You finished five years for a four year degree, right? You crammed it in there really tight.

So I'm in there for a couple years and there was a class about the books that John wrote. John was an apostle, a follower of Jesus, and he wrote the Gospel of John. He wrote the letters that are called first, second and third John and he wrote the book of Revelation. And John was one of the closest disciples to Jesus. We think he was maybe perhaps the youngest of the disciples and maybe just a teenager.

And John, writing as an older man, writes some of these things. And John needs to give us a view of what he saw when he lived with Christ, when he walked with Christ. And so he starts this out, he gives us this. Well, I was in this class studying John and I hadn't read the books I was supposed to, the textbooks, you know, I hadn't read them very well at all. And I'm doing the final and it was all about something that John said and what the authors thought about that And I had no clue.

So on the back of the essay, I thought, maybe there'll be a hint. And I just started writing down what I had memorized as the prologue of the Gospel of John. And the professor gave me like 25 points for that on this grade. So I did not fail that. It was a final for that class.

So I'm just saying, at minimum, you know, you might get a better grade if you memorized or got familiar with the prologue of the Gospel of John. But what will really happen is you'll begin to see the beauty and depth of what God is doing here. So John says this. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God.

In the beginning, all things were created by Him. And apart from him, not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life. And that life was the light of mankind. And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it or has not overcome it.

Now, Matthew, Mark, and Luke were three other gospel authors, and they wrote their gospels, each with a bit of a different beginning point. Like, Matthew was a Jewish man writing to a primarily Jewish audience. And he starts writing about the. The family tree of Jesus, like who his ancestors were going back and saying, like, he's sitting on the throne of King David to fulfill the Jewish prophecies that there would be somebody that was in the. The lineage of David on the throne.

He fulfilled the promise that God had given to Abraham and Sarah that one of their eventual offspring would be the one through whom blessings would come to the whole earth, to all peoples on earth. And so Matthew starts out that way, and then he starts talking about how Jesus was born and that he wasn't just an illegitimate kid, because that's what it appeared to be. Mary was not yet married. She was espoused to be married or engaged to be married, and she was found to be pregnant. And so Matthew deals with that stuff.

Matthew deals with a few other things that relate Jesus to some of the prophecies in the Old Testament about him. But then you've got, you've got you. You've got Mark, who kind of just starts out like. He just goes like, hey, here is the Gospel of. Of Jesus as preached by John the Baptist.

He just jumps right into John baptizing people and saying, here we go. Repent and be baptized and all that stuff. And so then you've got. You've got Luke starting from a viewpoint of saying like, hey, these angels came and visited. They Said, you know, here's what's going to happen.

He's here. He's born in this town. You know, they traveled for the census. Like, he just begins there. John goes back to, like, time, eternity past.

Like, he goes back to way before anything, before creation has come into existence. He goes to eternity past, and he starts there. And so he says. He says in this prologue, he says that. That Jesus is the full expression of God, the Logos of God.

When we see the word, Word that we read, translated in our English, it comes from a Greek word, logos, L, O, G O, S. And logos is probably a lot more complex to define than I'm capable of doing. Again, I only did two years at college, right? They didn't get to that part, like, the language studies. You know, I didn't get there. And I haven't found, like, biblical Greek on my Duolingo app, so I'm not learning it yet.

But I do know this logos kind of can be translated as the full expression of something, something being expressed. And so if you want to see who God is, if you look at Jesus, he is the expression, the logos of God. He's. So we get like, how do we translate that? We just put the word of God.

You express something with words. Word is an expression of something. So Jesus is the word of God or the expression of God. But yet then we see that John, he's telling us that Jesus was with God and he is God. So what we're seeing is foundations of the Trinity here.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy spirit in verses 32 and 34. Later in this chapter, you'll see the Holy Spirit showing up. And so we start to see, like, oh, this is what the Trinity looks like. The three in one, the triune God. And that's something that the word Trinity doesn't explicitly appear in Scripture, but we see it explicitly spelled out, although we still have a lot of questions of what that looks like.

And so you see that happening here. And John is laying that all out here in his prologue, and he says that Jesus had always existed, but he didn't always exist as the man we know, Jesus. Jesus is how the second person of the Trinity was born. As 100% human and 100% divine or 100% God. We call that the hypostatic union.

For, like, you theology nerds, anybody know? Okay, hypostatic union. That's God. Man in 1, 100% God, 100% man in 1 unit. And so he was born on this earth as Jesus.

But before that it wasn't like he never existed. He has always existed. And so John is trying to connect the Jesus we see on this earth to the. The second member of the Trinity all the way from, well, forever. That.

That he was not created. He wasn't born, he wasn't made by God, that he always existed. But at his birth on this earth, it was because he was born as a human to reach humanity, to save humanity, to die for the sins of humanity. And so John is setting this up in just these few beautiful verses in his prologue. And he's showing us these things.

Other places. We see Jesus showing up sometimes, what's called the angel of the Lord, coming to earth with a human body for a specific engagement or encounter with somebody to do a specific thing. But he wasn't living for all time here. In fact, there's this verse in John 1. It's John 1:14, I believe it is.

It's one of my favors. And it says the word became flesh and dwelt for a while among us. There's a word for that that's dwelt. I'm not trying to give you too many, like, language words, but it's actually really cool. It's is tabernacled among us.

Maybe today we would translate that. Tented among us. Like, he put up his tent and hung out for a while. But he didn't just hang out as the angel of the Lord. He was born and dwelled among us.

He lived among us. The tabernacle in the Old Testament, before Solomon had built a temple, the tabernacle was a tent that they would set up and they would move it when the camp moved, they would move the tent around. But it was the place where. Where you would go to meet God, the place where you could see God, the place where you could offer your worship and your sacrifices to God. And so when Jesus tabernacled among us, it was the indwelling presence of God in the midst of the people.

The question, though, might be, if you're thinking about it, if I gave you enough time. Sometimes when I'm thinking about something and then somebody suggests something, I'm like, yeah, that's what I would have thought of if I would have had the time to think. If you would stop talking for a minute, you might want to say, that's great. Where Jesus was born, what was he doing all this time for, you know, ever before that. You were going to think that, right?

Okay, I'm glad you're with me on that. So Jesus, what was he doing before he was born as a human. And God, well, one of the things he was doing, and John tells us this in those couple verses, was he was at work creating the world. Not just Earth, but everything that exists. And you might think, like, wow, there's like.

They keep telling us that there's like so many, you know, billions or trillions of planets, the universes are expanding and all this stuff. And we think, what in the world does it all. Like, what does it all have to do with anything? And you look at all that and you think, really, Did God create all that? Like, just for our existence here?

Like, is there other life on another planet? I don't know. Maybe, Maybe not. It really isn't germane to the discussion. It doesn't really change my life too much at all.

At least at this point. Like, until they, you know, like Independence Day or some. One of those movies where they come and invade. But, you know, like, I don't think we're a threat to anyone right now except ourselves, pretty much. It seems like we're our own worst enemy sometimes.

But Jesus, he was. He was. He was at work creating. And he didn't just create all that for us, although God does create, have things about creation that are for our enjoyment, but he created it to display his power and his might and his glory. And.

And he did that. And God the Father, it was his will to create everything. But it was through the power of Christ, through the expression, the Logos of God, that creation came into existence. If you look at Genesis says. And God said, said something.

God expressed something. We see a picture of the. The Trinity, the three in one, working in complete fellowship and unity with one another. And. And through their fellowship, through their love, through their.

The. The. The beauty of their holiness and purity, we see creation come into existence by the will and word of God. So Jesus was at work in creation. And so when John later says in his prologue, he says, Jesus came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

He's got a double entendre there. He's got two meanings to that. One thing is, Jesus came to that which was his own, the earth that he created. But the people of earth didn't receive him so well. The other thing was, he came to his own people.

He was born as a Jewish boy. He grew into a Jewish man. He was born into that family through his mother Mary. And so even though that was where he was born and how he was raised, his own people didn't receive him. He was rejected as the Jewish Messiah, as the hope of Israel that had been prophesied.

And so in two ways, Jesus came to that which was his own. But in both those ways, his own did not receive him. But yet God welcomed him back home as he ascended into heaven. And so Jesus reigns as the king of this earth. He was the force behind it.

He's the king of it now. And so John's gospel starts here. He starts talking about how this God man came and he brought light and life. He says that the. The light of Christ is the life of all mankind.

The light of Jesus is the life of all mankind. See, Jesus, if you look in Genesis 1:3, is the first thing that God creates. What does he say? Let there be light. Now, to be clear, he did not create Jesus at that moment.

That's not what that's saying. What he is saying is he is a God of light, and he wanted to share with his creation light. But when Jesus comes, he says that he is the light. We sang that little song in, like, grade, you know, Sunday school, right? This little light of mine I'm going to let it shine.

And we're talking about the light of Christ that's in us. But it's so much brighter than just some little candle that we could hide under a little basket or something, which I always wondered why you would hide it under a basket, like a bushel basket that just seems like it might catch fire. You know, if you put it in a jar and seal the jar, it snuffs it out. But. But they're like, saying, why would I cover up the light that's within me?

Why would I let something snuff it out? No, Jesus is the light of mankind. Like, his light is what gives us life. We start to realize that Jesus came not just to be like, hey, if you want to see God, look at me, and you've seen what the Father is. He wanted to give us.

He wanted to be the light in the darkness. He wanted to give us light. He wanted to give us life. And so John is beautifully telling us this, all this stuff in just 18 verses. And he's given us all those things.

You see, God's life that he gives us is through the light of Jesus Christ. And so we see today that there's a reality in this world, like here where we live.

I try not to get too bogged down in some of this stuff. It's like, Elaine, we've talked before. Like, you know, you're like, I had to turn off news for a while. You know, like, you know, I'm like, yeah, I just. I don't watch that, but that doesn't mean I don't see what's going on in the world.

I. I have a couple emails that I signed up for that are, like, daily news things. I watch different podcasts that talk about stuff going on in the world. I get on, like, Twitter. X has been called for a long time now, which is still a dumb name. Like, it just seems more than one letter for a name, you know?

Like, just let. What was wrong with Twitter? Anyway, so I get on X and I read stuff that people are saying, and, like, for a while, like, some of these people's like, yeah, we're getting, like, to the bottom of stuff. And now they just devolves into this whole, like, big, huge, just mess of. It's like, oh, my goodness, you guys are the worst.

I'm not getting anything real from you either. It's just all shams. It's lies. It's. It's mistruths and all this stuff.

Like, I. I want to know, like, what Epstein was into. You know what I'm saying? Like. Like, this has been going on, and it's like, you can't gaslight me and say that that wasn't true. You know?

Like, I. I voted for this to come out. You know what I'm saying? But of course, with any politician, like, what you vote for isn't what you get. You know what I'm saying? And so it's like, I wanted.

I'm thinking, like, disclosure, you know, I want to find out about this stuff. Like, tell us what you have on, you know, on. On, like, the Kennedy assassination. I've been into that for a long time. Like, I really wanted to know, like, what really happened there, because you can't tell me that one bullet from one gun from one idiot took all those.

That damage, you know? Like, it didn't happen. You guys are like, pastor Nick's going crazy now. Look, I don't own a tinfoil hat. I own a cell phone.

I already know that they're hearing my thoughts, right? Like, you know that, right? Like, that phone hears everything. And so. Okay, anyway, you don't have to have a tinfoil hat to keep their thoughts out, you know, Keep you out of your head.

Keep them out of your head. They're there. But no, what I am. What I am, though, looking at is I'm like. I'm seeing this darkness in the world.

It's like, I know that was. Was Epstein a bad dude? Of course nobody's arguing that, but there were victims. There Were people that were, that were, that were harmed, people that were killed, people that killed themselves or were murdered to cover up what was going on. There's Diddy.

You know, his stuff's in the news and it's like, seems like he was into some really weird stuff, some bad stuff. Probably should go to some, you know, prison time, maybe all of it, you know, the rest of his life. I don't know, like I'm not there. I can't, I can't know what the truth is on some of these things. But I believe what I'm saying is that there is darkness in the world.

Like evil darkness, like, like life choking darkness. And Jesus is the light of the world. He's like life giving light. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness can't conquer the light. Like if we had blackout windows and we shut off all the lights in here and then just lit one match or lighter, a candle or something, you would kind of be able to see around enough just to get through.

Might take a couple minutes for your eyes to adjust down, but you know what I'm saying, like just that one little flame of light is enough in a room that you can see maybe not clearly. Might not be able to read and follow along, but you would at least not trip in the dark. But the light of Jesus is so much more immense than one candle. He. His light snuffs out the darkness wherever it's going, but there are people who try to keep him out.

And these are the things of darkness. And it's not just like people like Epstein or Diddy. I mean, there is like local stuff that goes on where children are taken in harm, where children are sold by those who are supposed to be caring for them. There's women that, that happens with too, sometimes men. There's sure all the deep state.

You hear the deep state talk about, you know, the power that goes on regardless of who gets elected. And they probably control them, manipulate them and blackmail them. I'm concerned with all those things. I'm concerned with the darkness, the evil, the sin that's going on. It would have been easy for me to sit here writing this sermon and just list a whole thing of like all this sinful darkness that I see in the world, because those are some really big things.

But then when we get down to it, yeah, Jesus, his life and death, his resurrection and his ascension into heaven, all is to combat against that darkness. But if I just jump to that and don't also focus in on the darkness and the sin that's in me and recognize that Jesus came to deal with that. I've missed the point. You see, if we're really saying that this scripture is all about Jesus, and then we start making it on this darkness that we see and like, oh, Jesus, you should take care of that. You know, why is all this bad stuff happen?

Why are all these wars going on in the world? You realize that they threaten me and steal my money? I mean, by they, I mean the irs. Like, they're like, if you don't give us this much money, bad things will happen. Like, you might go to jail there.

Might just. We'll charge you more. We'll start taking your money. So they. They steal my money from me.

I didn't vote for that. It's theft, if you ask me. And sure, there's some good things that they do with it. Like, I like roads, but I also buy gasoline and that. Like, they say, oh, well, infrastructure is like, that's what that expensive gas tax is, you know, like, don't fool me, you know, so anyway, but it's like, I do like, some things, like if my house catches fire, I want a fire department, you know, to come put it out.

That's nice. I like some things that taxes do. You know what I don't like? Like, I don't like whatever. The small portion of my little bit of taxes that goes to buy bombs and guns that destroy people around the world that I don't have a problem with, but somebody that's elected or unelected does, and they decide that those people need to die.

I've got issues with that. As a Christian, I've got issues with that. I don't get a say in these things. And it's easy for me to get hung up on stuff like that. All the while it's just like a distraction in my own soul saying, like, what about the darkness that's within me, the things that I did decide to do, the evil that I decide to perpetrate, the things that I do that are against the will of God for.

For my life. Jesus came to deal with those. Jesus came to deal with that. He came to take care of your darkness and mine.

So, like, Jesus is eternal, right? He's always existed, even though they killed his body on this earth. You know, the Bible, when it talks about Christians dying, it doesn't say they died usually it just says they breathed their last. Like their body expired, Their body quit breathing. They weren't dead.

You know, their body quits breathing, but their spirit goes on, so will yours. And so as that's happening, as that's going on, Jesus, his body breathes his last, but he's not dead. His body's dead. His body's in the tomb, his body's in the grave. And three days later, he's back to life.

His body's back to life. He comes back to his body. He lives for 40 days. Then he gives the disciples instructions. We'll cover all this later on.

Like months from now, he ascends into heaven. And before doing that, he gave his people a commissioning, like, here, go do this. And he gives them that. We're going to talk about all of that stuff. It's going to be so much fun.

Like, I love it. But Jesus, his goal that the thing that he's calling us to, since he's eternal and he didn't just die and then like he rose again, he ascended into heaven. As he did that, he lives eternity into the future. Like from eternity past to eternity future. He never ends and neither do we.

The scriptures tell us that there is eternity for us and that the way we live these few short years on this earth impacts how we live forever and the beautiful thing. And like, I don't want to wait until one of the last lessons that, that we have less sermons that we have in this, in this series to talk about it. I wanted to lay that out for you right here and now. There's two options for eternity. I'm gonna.

There used to be a joke like smoking or non smoking, but nobody gets anymore because like, we don't have smoking and non smoking sections in restaurants anymore. Where were we? We were in a restaurant, I think it was in Texas on our trip where like, they, I, I must have been like, you had to be a certain age or something to be in there. Which didn't work because we brought our daughter. Nobody told us we couldn't be there.

I don't know. But they were smoking in there. Like at the restaurant. I was like, I remember this. Like the smell of like food and cigarettes, you know, doesn't really match that well.

But like that it was a memory from growing up. Like, oh yeah, every restaurant smelled like this. Like, including McDonald's. You know, like it was like, there was like, you could say this is a smoking section. It's like, no, it's all the smoking section.

If you smoked over there, it's over here too. You know, that's, that's kind of how smoke works. And so, or at a campfire, if you sit next to me, like, it seems like it's All I can move. And it's like, nope, now it's over here too. But in the room now it's all there.

And so no, it's not like heaven is smoke or eternity is smoking and non smoking. That really makes a joke out of it for sure. There are two options for eternity. The full like unmasked, unveiled presence of God in all of his goodness, beauty and glory forever, or the total absence of God forever with all of the darkness that the most evil beings could ever devise being free reign, just doing everything they wanted.

I don't care if there's any flames or worms or gnashing of teeth or whatever, it doesn't matter what the situation is. The full and total removal of the presence of God, no matter what other elements are added, that is hell. And for people that say, oh well there's hell on earth, oh, there's some really evil stuff on earth, no doubt about that. But this is the closest what we see, the bad things we see on this earth, this is the closest to hell that believers in Christ will ever see. Like he is saving you from that hell.

He is saying, I offer you eternity in my presence. For people that don't receive Jesus Christ, the good things that we experience here on this earth, that is the closest to heaven that will ever see. Now we might say God, why that doesn't sound very loving. Oh, there's people that don't come to this church because they didn't like me. You know, like how would, how would they feel to be forced.

No, you're coming every week and listening to this guy talk. You got to give him a hug at the door, you got to shake his hand. They don't want that. How much more so for people that can't stand the idea of God, he's not going to force them to be with him. He's not going to force them to say, well, you got to be in my presence worshiping me for all eternity.

He allows them their own choice, but their choices, our choices on this earth matter for our eternity. And so pray for people that aren't walking with God, as I was here yesterday for just a few hours printing these with a wholly unqualified printing machine like under performance is what we're talking about here. It's just a little desktop, but it's a color printer and it'll do two sided sort of like it did it. They look nice. It took so long.

I, I had no idea. I mean I did, but I just couldn't have known. I couldn't have Calculated. It took a long time. So some of that time there was a lot of folks here, we were having a good time together.

Then when everybody was gone and my family had gone home, and then I was here for a few more hours printing. It's like you just hit print for a few copies, which at 115 pages divided by two is like, you know, 58 sheets of paper. Every time two sided, you know, it takes a while. And so after a bit it was quiet and I just. I would just come up here and I was just praying.

And I'll be honest, I did fall asleep at one point. But anyway, I was praying and there was people that God was bringing to my heart, that I know, that I know are rejecting him right now with every decision they make. And it was breaking my heart. And I don't cry a lot, but I seem to be doing it a little bit more than I used to as God is softening me in some areas. I just started.

It wasn't a lot. Like I could have hidden it if like my wife walked in the room. Like, no, no, it was just. The floor was. There's dust, you know, but like there was tears in my eyes.

For the souls of these people. I mean, for their life today. Like their life is a mess right now. I just. For one of them is obvious.

And for another one of them, I. It's like everything looks pretty good, but I know what's going on in their life. And it's like God, these. There's more for them. I know there's more for them right now.

And I also know that the road they're on and where it leads for eternity, and both of those things broke my heart. I'd be missing the point if all I cared about was what they're doing right now. But I'd be missing the point if I only, if I, on the other side, if I just wanted to see their life fixed right here and I didn't care about their eternity. You see, in the beginning, what God was doing was he was setting things up for the creation of humanity. God wanted to make us.

Not because he was deficient, not because he was missing anything. Not because, like, there's a perfect love and there's a perfect beauty in the relationship of the Trinity. And don't ever underestimate how much that impacts your life and mine. Like the unity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The love bond that they share is such a beautiful thing.

Don't ever underestimate how much that matters to Your life and mine as followers, as believers. Because what that means is because of the perfect love of God, he has decided to share that with us. Because when you receive Jesus Christ, you. He offers to bring you into his family as the children of God. We are adopted sons and daughters of God.

Because of the perfect love within the Trinity, we can become children of God and share in that. But don't ever think that all God wants to do is just fix your problems on this earth. Don't ever think that that's all it's really about, is like, well, I just. My stuff is better now and I'm doing pretty good. Yay.

No, God wants to be with you in eternity as well. What. What John was setting up in this gospel, what he's trying to tell us is that God had planned that all the way through that he planned on creating us not because he needed us, but because he wanted to give his love to us. And that as he did that, that not only did he plan all of creation as a habitable place, like this earth is a habitable place for us to live, but he also planned to send his Son. We're going to see that unfolding through the pages of that scripture, through the pages of our Bible, as we study through this.

We're going to see that God planned from the foundations of the world. It tells us in Revelation that Christ would be crucified from the very foundations of this earth. He told us he planned for his Son to die. And Jesus knew that that was part of the plan going through that. The Word of God that was with God, and that is God, that He also knew that as they're creating this earth and as they're creating the light and the waters and the plants and the animals and the humans, that he says, one day I'm going to be one of those.

The Word of God became flesh and made his dwelling. He tabernacled among us and that one day those same humans will reject me and I'll die for them.

We've said it before, maybe to somebody in your life. I would die for you. I heard a Pastor Joby Martin, talking about the love that he had when. When his son was born. And he thought, there's no way I could ever love, like, another person.

Like, I have so much love that I have for this. This child. And then his wife's pregnant again, and they're going to have a baby girl. And he thought, I don't know if I'll be able to love her. I've given all my love to this child, he says, and then I had more, more love when that little girl was born, and I held her.

And he says, I would die for you and I would kill for you. That's the love that a father has. The love that God the Father has for us is that he allowed us to kill his only son for us, for the darkness that's within us. We killed the light of the world. And he brought him back to life because death couldn't hold him, because darkness can never overcome the light.

So as the light of the world was crucified by the darkness of humankind, he did that not because he couldn't avoid it, but because from the foundations of the world, he planned on that for us.

The other question you were about to ask, if I gave you time to think about it, is how do I respond to that? Many of you, most of you are probably saying, I've given my life to Jesus. He is my Savior. He is my God. One of the ways you respond to that is allowing him to continue making you holy.

Some people give up on holiness because they say, God could never do that for me. God could never do the work of making me holy. You're like, I've tried. That's the problem. You can't.

I was just listening to a guy this morning on a podcast. Like, he's talking with Joe Rogan, and this guy is sharing the gospel in such a beautiful way that I've never heard somebody do so well in one setting. And he says, like, I looked it up, because I saw this guy on YouTube, and I was like, I need to hear what he said to this guy. He says. He says to Joe Rogan, he's like, joe, God, he left nothing to man.

He's like, what does that mean? He didn't leave anything for you to do, to be saved. He did all the work for you. Jesus Christ did everything for you, not only to be saved, but to be made holy. All you have to do is allow His Holy Spirit to live and work within you.

And he does that work. It's a beautiful thing. Our response to the Logos, the word of God, to who created the world and who also died for us, is to allow him to make us holy, to turn us into the people he wants us to be, to create within us his holiness and his righteousness. We'll see in some other weeks. The other thing that Jesus calls us to do is to share that light with others.

He gave us a job to do, and it's our job to do that. It's our job to share that with others. And so as we look at it today, and I wrap up right now with this, I want to draw attention to the at home challenge that I put on there at the bottom of page seven. Spend some time, I say meditate, whatever you want to think of it. Just spend some time dwelling on the power and glory of Jesus.

Read those scriptures that are up there at the top, the supporting scriptures. See, look at your life and see. Is Jesus the way you live? Is Jesus shown as worthy of your love, your devotion and your focus or what areas do you idolize something else? What areas do you put something else on a pedestal saying, you know, I'm going to give my time and my devotion to this rather than to Christ.

Is there some place that you need to repent of that and allow God to continue making you holy because he is the light of the world that wants to do that? Pastor Kendall's going to come and close us out.