necessary to justify them before
Himself. We've learned that the picture
of Genesis in the creation and the fall is an established outline
for the totality of the Bible, the entirety of the Old Testament
specifically. And then as we see the apostles
teach in the New Testament, we see that they point to this reality. So it's not something that scholars
have discovered in their genius, nor is it something that I in
any sense have come to understand because I'm smart. but that it,
in and of itself, is just the revelation of God. That God reveals
Himself through His Word, and His Word reveals His Son, and
the Son is revealed in all the types and shadows of the history
of God's people. And that out of it, that God
is not showing us the mythological tales of old so that we may learn
life's lessons, but God is revealing Himself in a sovereign way to
show that what He is doing, He is producing, what He desires,
He is fulfilling, what He has decreed has come to pass, and
no one shall thwart His plans. For the world at large, they
look and they seek and they grow in understanding and knowledge
and power. But for the believer, we rest
in a childlike faith of simply knowing who He is because of
what He has revealed concerning Himself. And we grow to understand
Him more and more as we grow in grace. We realize what grace
is all about. And beloved, there are many ways
in which I could take this text, but I'll tell you this morning,
I want you to understand that God, as He has created a place
called the cosmos, as He has created time, as He has created
everything, and then even in the world, created a location
for life, we know that He has also created a place for His
people. A place for His people. I'll come back to this at the
end of my message this morning, but Jesus says to the disciples
in John's Gospel, when they're worried about His talk about
going, and they say, well, where are you going? And of course,
He talks about going to the Father, and some of them say, well, we
want to go too, and Jesus says, well, you can't. You can't go
where I'm going. but be of good courage, have
the joy, not the world has, the joy that I give you, the peace
and understanding that I give you. He says, behold, I go to
prepare a place for you that where I am, you also will be.
Beloved, that is nothing except what the Genesis account is showing
us. That God is in the business of preparing a place for His
people that where He is, they shall also be with Him. But unfortunately,
in our academic endeavors, we have come to the place where
we think that Genesis is to teach us something of a theonomy. Teach
us something that we ought to be doing as human beings or as,
quote, God's people, that we should be creating a world in
which God rules. Beloved, God rules the world
already. God rules the devils of this world, the winds of this
world. God rules the governments of this world. Our sovereign
God, Jesus the Christ, rules all things in this world. And
there is nothing outside the power of His hand. There is nothing
outside the scope of His sight. Nothing. He causes all things
to happen according to His purpose. And if we are in Him, if we are
found in Him before the foundations of the world, then all these
things that may seem so terrible are nothing but good gifts for
us. And what the world may see as a good gift is just a reprieve
of justice. It is a difficult conversation
to have. And it's so interesting to know
that, you know, here we are in the eighth month, about to be
in the ninth month of this calendar year, and it's just like blown
by. And I have friends who've been,
you know, they read the Bible every year in a certain way,
and, you know, they usually quit in Kings. Some people quit in Deuteronomy.
Some people quit in Leviticus. Some people quit Genesis 5. So,
I mean, I was like, whatever. But for some, they just go through
it and it's really interesting to see that people read through
the Bible year after year, they read through all of these books
and letters, all 66 of them, and they come to the conclusion
that, wow, that's cool, I finished the Bible again. But yet, we're
not looking at the picture of Christ. We're not looking with
the right glasses on. I'm just now used to these glasses.
I've nearly broken my foot and bumped my head and torn everything
in my life apart, run off the road, but now I'm getting used
to this thing called progressive lenses. I get used to it. I never thought I did, and I
still find myself looking pretty buggy every now and then. But
everybody said, just give it some time, give it some time,
give it some time, you'll get used to it. But now without these
on, I can't read anything. I can't see anything. Now I've
conditioned my eyes to need these. Well, beloved, and the same thing
is true in the spiritual sense. We must condition our spiritual
eyes to need the lens of the gospel of free and sovereign
grace that when we look at the narratives of the Old Testament,
when we look at the letters of the apostles, when we look at
the genealogies of the text, we are not looking to discover
something that is not there. We are looking through the lens
of Christ and Christ alone so that we may see His glory and
understand redemption is found alone in Him for His people.
This is how we read the Bible. It's simple. And to think that
I've got almost 86 hours of hermeneutics under my belt academically. Somebody
just told me that in the beginning, I could have saved a whole lot
of time and money. Not necessary, beloved. It's not necessary. Interestingly enough, there are
not addendums. Yes, I love the patristics, for
those of you who know church history and the academics of
church history. I love to read people. I love to watch people.
If I find a letter on the ground, I'm going to read it. If somebody says, I've got something
to tell you, I'm going to listen. I love to learn what people think
and what people are saying. Superpower, there's a lot of
them out there that I could choose from. Invisibility would be the
best one because you could be the creep that snoops Listens
in and watches people without getting into fights. What you
looking at your mama? I mean, you know how that works That's what
it was when I was a kid anyway And so I love to read but I You
know what? Only the Bible makes the impact
that's necessary for my salvation. Only the Bible teaches me to
worship. Only the Bible fills my soul.
Only the Bible, through the Holy Spirit, gives me hope in the
midst of hopelessness, light in the midst of great darkness,
power in the midst of weakness. Our testimonies and the testimony
of man and the theologians of history are not necessary for
salvation, nor are they necessary in any sense whatsoever for any
joy that the Christian is seeking. But when we come to these things,
what we do when we come to the joy of other people, when we
come to the theology of other people, we are living vicariously
through their relationship with the Word of God rather than living
with Christ in the Word of God who is the Word of God today.
And so, beloved, I pray that as we continue to walk through
this text, and in a couple of weeks, Lord willing, we'll start
Timothy as well, and we'll just be going back and to between
Genesis and 1 Timothy, As Paul would teach young Timothy
that the Word of God is breathed out by God and is only and only
profitable for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for instruction
in righteousness, that the man of God may be successful, prosperous,
and true in all of his work. It is a fool's errand. It is
a fleshly imposition against the authority of Christ when
we argue and debate doctrinal things that are not contextually
driven in the journey in which we have been given. Now let me
break that down into simple terms. If you haven't thought of it
and learned it from the Bible, shut your mouth about it. If
you Googled it, you didn't learn it. If you read it from a James
Tippins archive, it's not yours. Soak it up, sit in it, and be
a Berean and test it. Be a Berean and test it. I've
got about a half a dozen YouTube channels that I watch every day. They're not theologians. They
are not Christians. It has nothing to do with ministry
whatsoever. It's a specific thing that I'm
into right now that I'm watching and researching and looking.
And you know what? In four months, it'll be something
else. But I found that there are other experts in the field.
And someone sent me a video yesterday. I said, listen to this guy. He
knows what he's talking about. And I'm listening to this guy.
He's talking about some economic things. And I'm going, hmm, hmm. Let me listen to my guy. And
when my guy came on, his voice was so familiar, I just felt
at home. Like he was just sitting there
with me. That's what we do, isn't it? Well, people that's listened
to Tippin's for so long, when Tippin's voice is heard, they
feel comfortable with what's being taught. Oh, we've listened
to this guy, we've read this person, and we hear that tone
and that timbre. Beloved, listen to the voice
of Christ. My voice will cease one day. I am not Christ. Matter of fact,
I am so far from inerrant, it's laughable. Do not come to hear what I have
to say. Come to see what God's Word has
to say. Let me be a slave for you through
it. And then when my time is done,
let another person take this role. But beloved, read the Word
of God through the lens of the gospel of free and sovereign
grace. Because only then will you understand that which is
incomprehensible. As I read this morning in Philippians
chapter 4, and we're going to go back there, is that the drive
of every believer ought to be to that end, that we are sitting
in such a place of rest that we have the peace that surpasses
all understanding. Now let me tell you something,
beloved. There is no such peace in this world. None. No such peace in this world.
There is nowhere for it to be found. There are tiny little
minuscule breaks. There are small little pockets
that seem peaceful. There are opportunities and things.
There are chemicals that we can use in this world that can simulate
peace. But beloved, it is not peace. Peace is only found not in the
experience, not in the environment of life, but in the giver of
life. in the person of Christ. And I'll tell you right now,
of all the people in our world who profess to be in Christ,
we all know that a majority of their so-called Christ are not
the true Christ of Scripture because they're just going on
what they've been taught, not what God has shown them. Therefore
we are to say to them, these people have never been shown
the truth. They don't know peace. They don't know life. They just
know a version of some alternate gospel that's not a gospel. And so they therefore have no
peace. But beloved God's true children,
those who are truly born of Him, are also in that same place.
Because the world that we live in is not peaceful. Now, if we
didn't have news and publications and things of that nature, I
was going through some old journals from the 80s yesterday morning,
cleaning out some stuff, going through some old stuff. And I
mean, you wouldn't believe the number of newspaper clippings I have saved. I thought,
what am I, a pack rat? I have an Evernote software that
I pay for premium every year and I've had it for 12 years.
I got more clippings in that thing than could ever be held
in a house. So I'm a collector of information. I'm a collector. But back in the day, you had
to look, you had to go, you had to buy something tangible, you
had to talk to someone on the phone. The communication, the
information flow was just, and so to learn meant to look for
and seek out something and really pay attention because you didn't
have time to just stuff a whole bunch of junk in your mind and
in your ears. You had to be very selective
and very picky. Today, you can just take your
phone out if you carry one with you. And you could say, hey Google
or hey Siri. It would be funny if everybody's
phone went bloop, bloop, bloop. You could search anything you
want. The problem is you're not finding what you're looking for,
you're just finding what's available and most, what? Popular. But look, that's not what the
Christian life's all about. Christian life is not about riding
the waves of pop culture, riding the waves of politics, riding
the waves of things, and inserting Christian values and worldviews
into these things. The Christian life is to be out
of the world because we're not of the world, to be separate
from the world, and to live in a manner with such a joy and
with such a peace in the midst of great turmoil that the world
looks at us like we're fools. I find it very interesting. friends
that I don't know if I'll ever hear from them again because
they live in Kabul. Can't get in touch with them.
It doesn't matter. I'm burdened, I'm grieved for
what's happening there, and I'm very sad and I wish it would
change and I pray against that circumstance like I do with the
pandemic and like I do with our politics and do with our economy
and do with my neighbors and do with you and our health and everything
else. But ultimately the end of it all comes to God's sovereign
purposes. And so I can rest knowing that
no matter what the outcome is, it is for my joy and for my good
as well as it is for you. For God causes all things to
work together for those who love Him and are called according
to His purpose. James says that all good gifts come from above. The psalmist and some of the
prophets would write about all things that take place come from
the hand of God, as I've already expanded upon this morning. Beloved,
we can find the joy of Christ. We don't need to look up Scripture
that talks about joy. It's sort of like that. It's
platitudes. Just be thankful. For what? You see, thankfulness by definition
has a double object. There's a reason to be thankful
that sits with you, in you, or around you. There's something
tangible or intangible, but it's tangible in the context that
it can be measured and shown and talked about, and then there
is always a recipient of things, and then there is always someone
who gave it. Thankfulness always has a dual
object. the thing we're thankful for and the one who gave it to
us. I remember as a kid I wanted
a computer so bad, you know, 1984, 85. I want a computer. When you bought a computer back
in those days, especially the Tandys or the Commodores, it
was just a keyboard and you plugged it into a TV and it had a little
slider thing on it. It was just a keyboard and it was basic.
And all you got when you turned it on was a cursor. That was
it. And you got a cassette player,
and the cassette player, you got the tapes, you put them in,
and you could write code, but you had to record what you wrote,
the code. And then they graduated from
that to the big floppy disks, about like this. Hard drive, you know, the biggest
hard drive you can get, like 100 kilobytes. Good golly, we'll
never fill that up. I remember saying that. And I
remember in the 90s, late 90s, after Katie was born, throwing
away boxes of media, tapes and floppy disks, and then they went
to the little small ones. Oh, dude, I thought we were in the
money. I had more money in floppy disk cases than did floppy disks,
you know, just sitting there. Crazy. What's the point? I wanted
a computer. But computers were expensive.
And I wanted a computer and I was told by my parents, nope, you're
not getting a computer, you're not getting a computer, you're
not getting a computer. And then I woke up one Christmas morning and there was
a computer there and I could not contain myself. I saw it
as I opened it up and I was so excited and so thankful I dropped
it. And then I ran down the hall because I was crying in joy and
I didn't want anybody to see what a wimp I was. You see, I
remember that vividly. And I'm like, wow. And then I
spent the next, what, three years learning how to program. And
then the programming language that I learned was antiquated
and it was worthless. And then Apple came out with
something that could be afforded. No different, just new. I was
thankful for that computer. It's what I desired. It's what
I wanted. I couldn't think of not having it. And then when
it was given to me, I was thankful for the computer. And then I
was so thankful to the one who gave it to me. You see? That's our lot in life. That's
what we are to be thinking about every single day, not the computers
that we have. Because we buy a new one every year or two now,
don't we? This thing's slow. Buy another one. Not the stuff that you've been
given. Not the house that you have or the relationship that
you have. Though we should be thankful for these things, to
whom are we showing our gratefulness? It should be the God of the Bible.
It should be the Christ of Scripture. But what happens when all of
this stuff that keeps us focused on, wow, I'm so glad I have this,
I'm so thankful. Thank you, Lord. Where is the
Job gratitude? The Lord gives and the Lord takes
away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Thank you, Lord. Shut my mouth that I may praise
you. Job said these words, he gave this idea of praise in the
midst of complete loss. Not because things were good,
because things were horrid. And Job said, blessed be the
name of the Lord. Beloved, you want the peace that
surpasses all understanding, you have to recognize what it
is that God is truly doing. And that all these temporary
trinkets of which we all dance a little jig and are excited
about, are also blessings from the Lord, but do not the wicked
also have these things? Do not sometimes the wicked even
seem to prosper more than we? And doesn't that ebb and flow?
You know what I've found in the writing of Paul as he talks in
Philippians? When he says, I've had much and I've had little
and I've learned to do much more with nothing. Why? Because when he's had nothing,
he's been in the best place he's ever been to realize all that
he had was everything. Because he had Christ. He had
Christ. You're thinking, what has this
got to do with Genesis 2? Everything! It's got everything to do with
Genesis. This is why Genesis was written, so that we may know
the author of our joy. that we may know the power of
God unto joy, and that we may know the purpose of our life
here is to be joyful, which is to be thankful, which is to celebrate
the God of glory and His salvation for His people, which is why
He created the world and everything in it. And that everything that
comes, everything that comes, the 80-something people that
I've deleted out of my phone in the last 15 months, who have
perished through this pandemic. And as of last week, six family
members who have perished during this pandemic. It's a time of
mourning. It's a time of mourning. But in the sovereignty of God,
it's a time of thanksgiving. It is a time of praise. It is a
time of blessing. It is a time of joy. You see,
you hear that and you go, that don't make no sense. It surely
doesn't. It makes no sense in the context
of our human reason and rationale. But it makes perfect sense in
the picture of glory. Chapter 2 of Genesis, verses
15 through 17. Look at this. The God, the Lord
God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work
it and to keep it." Important words. Lord English has ruined
our culture. And the Lord God commanded the
man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat, for when you eat of it on that day you shall surely die. And that's all we're going to
do today. Because in that text right there, and we're going
to be here, we're going to come back to this next week as we continue in this
chapter, but what we need to see here is that as the Lord
has taught His people the gospel, as I've already tried to show
you this morning, we have not looked at the Old Testament with
the right lens. Now some people would say, well,
Tippins, how do you know that the way you look at the Old Testament
is correct? Because I just mimic Paul and John and James and Jesus. The apostles create the theology
of the Old Testament, its purpose, its meaning. When we get to the
marriage, the two becoming one flesh here in a little bit and
all, and we see that relationship between Adam and Eve, man and
woman, the first and the life giver. We'll start to see that
we can't interpret that based on what we read. We interpret
that based on what Paul has taught us. In Colossians chapter 3 and
Ephesians chapter 5, we see also in Jesus teaching in Matthew's
gospel to the Pharisees and the religious leaders of the day
who are trying to trap him and their understanding of Old Testament
theology and Jesus just blows them out of the water. They can't
answer it. So it's not an interpretive issue. It's not, well, that's
what you think. No, it's what the disciples, it's what the
apostles are saying. It's what John's gospel is all
about. Why does John use, in the beginning, in the beginning
of his gospel? Because he is going to tie the
creation of the world with the purposes of Christ and all of
His majesty and the fullness of everything that God ever could
reveal Himself to be in the God-man, Jesus Christ, and then show that
the power of God in creation is a shadow of the one true Creator
coming to the earth that He made in the man, in the flesh. and
His humanity, and that everything that He does in power, even raising
Lazarus from the dead, is just a temporary shadow, a picture
of the reason that we have joy in the midst of everything else.
Because Christ is enough. He is all in all. And so if we're
not looking We'll continue to look in ourselves.
We'll continue to look in that why am I not joyful? What can
I do to be joyful? Why can't I change my attitude?
I mean, going through my old journals, it was really fun.
In seventh grade, I wrote down my life's motto was attitude
is everything. Now, my mother would probably
say, well, you should have lived by it, son. I was highly optimistic during
those days. Leadership was new. Public speaking was new. Forensics
was new. That's attitude. They go, well,
I'm just having a bad day. That's because you choose to
have a bad day. No, it's not. Then I became an
adult, right? Here's your adult diploma. You're
having a bad day. Welcome to life, buddy. I mean,
that's what it was like. It's like, oh, wow. Biggest problem was hitting my
100 kilobyte hard drive. It's been full for 10 years. No. It's the fact that things
aren't good in the world. And as long as I seek a way to
find joy in me or the things of the world, what does John
say in his first epistle? Do not love the world or the
things of the world, for the things of the world are not of
God, but are of the world, and the things of the world are passing
away. It's like going to a restaurant, and instead of going in and ordering
an exquisite meal prepared by a chef who can taste things with
his mind, is to go out to the grease catch and dip a spoon
in and just eat that garbage. Not that you would, you would
not succeed. There's a challenge for TikTok, go ahead. How many
spoons can you take? You can't. Yeah, the restaurant
owners are going. You don't do that. Going into
the world, going into oneself to try to find peace, joy, comfort,
solidarity, foundation, focus, greatness, attitude, is like
going to the grease pile. It's like going to the garbage
bin to find food and sustenance and joy and pleasure in its purpose. And see, most folks like to learn
a few things in life. Some folks like to learn a lot
of things in life. When it comes to doctrine, the Bible, some
folks like to learn large things and nothing more. They like to
really be heady and they just stay on these high doctrines
and they can only trace them back in their current vernacular,
you know, a couple hundred years. But they skip right over the
Scripture. They don't learn anything else. And some people like to
just learn the little things. Jesus loves me. This I know,
for the Bible tells me so, and that's enough for me." And they
don't ever want to read the Bible any further to learn some of
the bigger, deeper things of Christ. And all in all, those
who aren't learning at all times lack wisdom. Pastors who aren't
learning lack wisdom, because they think they know everything.
That's why the Scripture teaches never to lay hands on a young
man, because his zeal will outpower the truth. You don't ordain a young man,
no matter how good he is at exposition, no matter how powerful he is
in oratory, no matter how good he is in leadership, no matter
how loving he is, because his zeal will pump him up. Now, there
are exceptions to that. They say, well, you're not old
enough. No, there is an exception to that. And that is what we
see in 1 Timothy, where Paul says, and this young boy, he
put his hands on him, and with power of the Holy Spirit, he
ordained him to be a minister of the gospel, and not just a
minister of the gospel, but the elder and the overseer of the
totality of the Greek culture of Ephesus. And he says, do not
let people look down on you because you are young, but let me tell
you something, boy, don't you live like a boy, you live like
a man, you put away childish things, you don't play anymore. You don't do silly stuff anymore.
This is not the life for the elder. You've got to grow up
because your youth is against you already, 80%. There's older
men who you're going to have to serve and you're going to
have to speak to as a father. You have authority over them
by the call of God, but you cannot lord over them as though you're
their boss. You must guide them and teach them with all patience,
gentleness, and humility. I learned that quick as a kid.
You don't talk sharply to your father. Some of you may have,
but you wouldn't have talked sharply to my father. You wouldn't
talk sharply to my mother. Fly, flap, flip, flop, any other
two-syllable thing that wiggles, it'll hit you. Didn't matter. Didn't matter. I learned not
to do it. So here's Timothy. Timothy learned
to learn from the Scripture. Paul appealed to this truth.
Those things that you learned as a child, the Holy Scriptures,
that are profitable for you unto salvation. Timothy, remember
Moses, and remember Isaiah, and remember David. Those things
are profitable unto salvation. God showed you the Gospel through
these things. So see, this is the doctrine
of the theology of Old Testament. Reveals Christ. It starts here
in Genesis. It starts here with God creating
a man and putting him in the garden that He created. And we
see it and we begin to sit in that reality and then all of
a sudden everything begins to, pun intended, grow around us
to maturity. Timothy, you keep that in front
of you and then you entrust this very thing, this wise, humble,
slow, constant learning Not only for yourself, but you keep learning,
and then you teach other men to learn to keep learning. See, that's one of the misapplications
of pastoral leadership, is they think that people think, well,
the pastor knows it, he's gonna teach what he knows. No, the
pastor teaches people how to learn, not what to learn. That's doing the work of the
ministry. Anybody can get a lot of information, but it doesn't
mean it's doing anything. Information is a pariah in the
world today. It's too much. And everybody's so smart in their
own fallacies, so belligerent with anything that's against
them. Beloved, that is not the nature of Christ, nor is it the
nature of Christ. So we need to realize that God
is faithful to teach His people concerning Christ. How is He
going to do that? Through His Word and His timing. So God alone can create good
and call good what He chooses because only God has the authority
and the power to establish the goodness that is required by
His own image. And in this text, as we'll see in the weeks to
come, a lot of theologians come and say, OK, here is the covenant.
Here's the beginning of multi-covenants. Now, what is a covenant? We've
learned as Grace Truth what a covenant is. A covenant is a contract.
A covenant is a promise contract where there is a condition and
the meaning of that condition in order to result in the outcome
of that. We live in a day of covenants. We have covenants
that are laws, we have covenants that are this, we have covenants
that are that. We have health covenants, we have housing covenants,
we have neighborhood covenants, we have marriage covenants. Anytime
you've got a contract or you've got a conditional obligation,
that is a covenant. And theologians have systematized
the covenants of the Bible to such a degree that we have pieced
God out. We have sliced Him like a Christmas
pie and we've placed Him in five different houses and put Him
in five different places and five different dispensations.
And beloved, I'm not going to get on that boat of just knocking
people's theories. But theories don't bring you
to truth and theories don't give you joy. Theories aren't powerful to say
and theories aren't powerful to produce solidarity and rest
in the life of the believer. Only truth is, and Jesus Christ
is that truth. So I'm not going to teach the covenant of work,
because I don't believe there is one. I believe that's a man-made
establishment. Oh no! Oh no! You just destroyed
600 years. I didn't destroy anything. God's
Word destroys everything. Now, if you are a theology nerd
and you love historical theology, then by all means, learn these
things. But these things are not biblical
exposition. There's a huge, huge chasm between
the two. Huge chasm. And if you're going, I don't
have a clue what you're talking about, then you're in the best place
in the building. Because now you can learn. Me
too. God commands things and God purposes
things. And the one thing we need to
focus on today in these few verses is that God has commanded His
people to worship Him. And God has purposed His people
to worship Him. And until we get that right...
Why don't you listen to this, beloved? Listen very carefully.
And for those of you who've been walking with us in John's writings
and we went through John's epistles, you know this is not new. This
is the same old stuff we've been teaching for ten years here. Until we get this right, beloved,
we ought not move on to anything else. Until we worship rightly
and love the Lord rightly, we should continue to work in that
way and not do anything else. I want
to be used by God. God doesn't want us to be His
banner men. We're not Nehemiah. We're not
David. These people have been used and
now they're gone. They're worthless. We have an exit door on this
door, exit sign here, and an entrance there, and then a couple
of months from now we decide, nope, you're going to come in
here and you're going to leave that. We're going to swap it, say entrance and exit. And that
door is no longer the way out, it's the way in. And one day
we may decide we're going to seal that off and put a door
here. That door's gone. This is what we are. We're just
tools in the hand of our God to be used for His purposes.
And beloved, our job here is not to be great among men, but
it's to be nothing so that Christ is everything. 1 Corinthians
chapter 1. I'm not making this stuff up. Jesus, when the sons
of Zebedee, when their mothers come and say, oh, can my sons
sit one at your right and one at your left? Remember that?
They're really working hard for you, Jesus. And Jesus is basically
saying in a paraphrase, ain't nobody working for me. I'm working
for them. And if they want to be great
in the kingdom, they're going to be nothing. They're going to be nobodies. This is
the God of creation, born into a person, into the womb He created,
into the world He created, into a body He created for Himself,
so that He could create, so that He could save and redeem His
people justly that He created for Himself. So God commands and purposes
His people to worship. We need to look at that. So,
specifically in this little phrase here, this one sentence, if you
will, the Lord put the man in the garden to work it and to
keep it. To work and to keep. Now, I want
you to not do what most people do. Well, work means this. Keep means this. When I'm at
work, I'm doing this. When I'm keeping things, I'm
doing this. That's not how you read the Bible. This is like
the will of God in Romans chapter 12, the good and perfect. There
are several different wills, the good will, perfect will. This is philosophy. Let's quit
doing that to God and just read it. Soak it in and eat it. When
I eat food, I love food, guys. I'm telling you, I love exquisite
food. You know, champagne taste on grape juice budget type stuff.
You know, but I love good cooked food. I don't sit there and wonder,
mm, a little thyme, mm, a little basil, mm, writing down the recipe. I close my eyes, I chew, I swallow,
repeat. Mmm, delicious. Taste and see
that the Lord is good. You see that analogy? See and
rest. Behold and worship. Thank Him.
This is the application of the Bible a thousand percent over
everything else you've ever been taught. The Garden of Eden is
a picture of God preparing not just the world through which
He would create redemption and give life, showing that He is
sovereign in all of it and that nothing exists outside His power,
but the Garden of Eden is now a special reality, a special
shadow of what He would do in Christ. That if man wants to
walk with God, God alone is going to have to drag man into the
place where God can be. That's why Paul uses that type
of stuff. Snatched out of the domain of darkness. The Father
will draw them. That's a forcible yanking. It's
not a wooing. Oh, come on. Just come to me.
Come, please, come. What do we see? No, it's a snatching,
it's an arresting. God is overcoming and overpowering
death and destruction and chaos and He's creating order out of
it. He's separating dark from light and land from sea and the
water from the ground and the water from the atmosphere. And
He's building these places to put life and He puts life in
the sky and life in the sea and life on the land and out of that
land He creates life, particularly in humanity, to bear His image. And that image is the shadow
of the true glory of God, which is Christ Jesus alone. 2 Corinthians
4, John 1, Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, and so on and so forth. And
this is the glory of God revealed, and now God then in creation
creates a special little place out of the whole place, out of
the whole cosmos. Here's a planet, and out of the
planet, there's a tiny little place. where God meets man. I can show you, if I drew it
out on a whiteboard, I can show you that the way the temple is
laid out in worship in the Old Testament will perfectly lay
out the way Eden is laid out in the world of creation. God creates a place for His people
to worship Him in spirit and in truth. and the words there
in the original language to work it and keep it. There's a lot
of things that we could talk about here, just like we could
talk about the poetry of Genesis 1, verse 2. But it's not necessary. So I'm
leery to even teach it, because then what happens in our minds,
we go, ooh, headiness. I'm going to grab that. I'm going
to become a Hebrew scholar. I'm going to become a poet. I'm
going to parse words. No! Read words. Eat words. Live in the presence of the Word
of God and rest in those words. But don't take my word for it.
Just know that in this context, God is saying, work it and keep
it. And if we go through the New
Testament, there are three other words that are translated to
work and to keep. And they are work and serve and
worship. And all three of those words in the Bible, especially
the Old Testament, are established in such a way that the work that
it's talking about is preparing the temple for worship or the
persons or the body for worship. To keep is to prepare and continue
the maintenance of the place of worship of God so that God's
glory is always manifest in its pictures like the showbread and
the sacrifices and the incense and the candles and everything
else. There's always a picture. and to worship is to give God
praise and to thank Him for who He is and what He has given us
in Christ Jesus. He's created a body for us that He might live among us and
that we might be His people. We see the idea of working and
keeping in Exodus chapter 20, verse 8, where the word of the
Lord says, remember the Sabbath? Keep it holy. What's that mean?
Keep it separate. So the idea of working and keeping
is to separate, be separate, to make it where it is no longer
a labor for you, but a labor for God. For six days you shall
labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath.
It is the seventh. To your Lord your God. On it
you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter
or your servant, male or female. nor your livestock, nor the sojourner
who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made
the heaven and the earth, the land and the sky, the sea and
all that is in them. And he rested on the seventh
day that has no end, for it is the rest of Christ. Therefore,
the Lord has blessed the seventh day and has set it apart from
all other days. But what do we do? I'm going
to create me an Eden. That's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to get me a garden. I'm going to make it in Eden.
I'm going to get me a temple. I'm going to make it in Eden. I'm
going to get me a church. I'm going to make it in Eden. I'm going
to get me a practice. I'm going to make it in Eden. I'm going
to create a spiritual discipline in my household. I'm going to
make it in Eden. We are always in the business of creating idols
in our own flesh. Beloved, God is not pleased with
that. Paul says to the Hebrew people,
it is impossible to please God without faith. Actually, he says
it the other way around. Well, I've got faith. Look at
it. Faith sits still when it's faith
resting in the sovereignty of God. And then as we are in midweek,
Lord willing, this week I will be teaching in James again, we
see that faith that rests loves. So we are to worship and part
of that worship is to love one another. And that is what James
means when he says faith without works is a dead faith. But never,
ever, ever, ever, ever, ever should we ever be working to
establish a sense of righteousness or to establish a sense of pleasure
to the Lord, thinking that He will show us favor in any salvific
way because of how good we're doing. We don't need to create
a place of worship for the ones who are true worshipers. Jesus
says in John chapter 4, worship in spirit and in truth. God in
Eden has shown this picture to keep and to work. Work. That very word is used in resting
on the Sabbath. It's an act of worship. The word
serve in Genesis 27. Let peoples serve you and nations
bow down to you and be Lord over your brothers and may your mother's
sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses
you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Serving. is an act of worship. And you
say, well, this is so hard. I've never seen that. Yes, you
would. If you just read Romans, you would have seen that. If
you just read Ephesians, you would have seen that. Therefore,
let us, because of the grace of God, He has transferred us
into the domain of life, because He has given us life, because
He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Because, therefore, then
do these things. Let malice and malcontent and anger and rage
and all these things love one another with an intimacy. Sit
still and know that I am God. You see how the Old Testament
prophets and the psalmists, in their experience, they're the
only theologians we need. But we prove what we think we
see them saying by the apostles' teaching in the New Testament
writing of Jesus. To work and to serve and to keep
the garden is to work by setting apart, knowing that it is by
grace alone. To serve by worship, to serve
one another. In Exodus 3, verse 12, And He
said, but I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for
you that I have sent you when you have brought the people out
of Egypt. You shall serve God on this mountain. That word serve
there is worship. Yeah, worship. We ought to worship. What is worship? Thanksgiving.
So our job, beloved, is to praise. I've not been on social media
much. I don't have it on any of my devices anymore, so I have to
log in on the browser. Old school stuff, you know. But
it's been such a blessing because I'm not inundated by all the
fodder and the silliness and the constant barrage of questions. I mean, I think we got like 140
questions for Theology on Call, so I don't know what we're gonna
do with this. But, you know, I just, it's been
so much more peaceful. To be able just to exist, to
be able just to pray about what's on my heart, about what's in
your lives, about what's needed for our intimacy. to read the
Word and to read a book and to read the newspaper, if you want
to, and not be so inundated and finding all of a sudden now that
my job ultimately is to praise the Lord. In Ephesians chapter
1 and 2, we see several times where Paul talks about the gospel
in an incredible way, a very myopic way. In other words, very
narrow. He doesn't, the gospel of God,
the love of God is not this. I mean it's a very myopic, narrow,
precise, laser-esque reality. God loves His people in Christ
Jesus and He gave His Son for them that they may be His righteousness.
And we see this. We see the election of God as
the whole purpose of His sovereign grace, that what God has decreed,
it will take place. And we declare that gospel, and
Paul has declared that gospel, and God has saved His people
in the place of Ephesus. And as he gets through, he reminds
them in Ephesians 2 about who they were and now who they are,
and more importantly, whose they are. And he says this phrase,
to the praise of His glorious grace. The reason God did this
is to the praise of His glorious grace. The reason you are saved
is to the praise of His glorious grace. The reason you have been,
by grace, drawn out of darkness is to the praise of His glorious
grace. So what are we working toward? To praise God for His
mercy. That's what grace is, for His
kindness. For His effectual, loving kindness toward His people.
Who are not Jewish, but who the selection of the Jews pointed
to. of all nations, and all tongues, and all tribes, of all men, in
every generation. So our job is to praise. Because
remember, as I've said already this morning, from nothing God
created a place to live, and in that place He created life,
and in that life He created humanity, and in that humanity He created
a garden, and He put man in the garden as a picture of being
with Him. Life and the power of God's provision
As we talked about two weeks ago, out of the ground came the
trees and out of the ground came man. God takes whatever He wants
and creates whatever He wants with it. And then the picture
of the trees are like God's sustenance, God's provision. Without the
tree, man would die. Without Eden, man will die. Think about that. That's next
week. And because this is all by grace,
we know that eternal life is sovereign and free. Living things
exist by the sovereign and free purposes of God. From water,
if we take out the fish, they die. If we take the birds out
of the air and put them in the water, now there's examples,
there's anomalies. Generally speaking, you take
a bird, put it under the sea, it will drown. Take it out of the
place where it's supposed to live, it will die. That's why
habitat is such an important thing in the ecosystem. That's why if you come across
some rare bug or rare bush or rare bird and you're building
a shed, you don't get to build a shed anymore. You just get
to see the bird. You take things out of the ground
that should be in the ground, they dry out and die. You take things
out of the life-giving hand of God, it perishes. You take man
out of Christ, he's damned. And as creation set forth the
order from chaos, everything necessary for life, so eternally
in creation, God set forth His people in His Son. Christ has
had a people before there were a people. reckoned unto him that
at the day the Lord had determined, he would die on the cross and
justly and righteously and judicially pay for their sins. And he proved that he is the
giver of life, for he raised himself from the dead. There
is our joy, beloved. And this is all of grace. Life
is found in Christ, the God-man. And when man is outside of the
place of God, he is dead. And because of God's life-giving
grace, we don't need to work to get to God. I want you to hear that again.
Because of God's life-giving grace, we do not need to work
to get to God. Matter of fact, there's only
one way to God, and what is it? Christ. I am the way and the
truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through
me. And what did the disciples say? Well, how do we get there?
You know, that was the reason he said that. Let me go with
you. We can't join God in His purposes. We can't join God in His power.
There is no what we would call synergy when it comes to salvation.
God is either the Savior of His people wholly and fully and freely,
or He isn't. And beloved, it is a false gospel.
It is a false narrative. It is a false plea. It is a false
proclamation. When people come out there and
tell the world, what you've got to do is you've got to get your
life right, what you've got to do is you've got to come to Christ, what you've got to
do is do this. It's not a problem to quote what the Bible quotes,
but what we've done is we've then said, well, how do we do
that? What must we do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus gives
the answer to the rich young ruler in His love for him. He
says what? He says, you must be as God is
in all perfection. And we know that the law is a
picture of Christ. That's all it is. And when we try to come
to God, we are nullifying grace. When we try to find our way in
which we can be right before the Lord through any effort,
any work, any action. But what about saving? What about
believing? Believing is not an action. It's stopping the actions.
And Paul says in Ephesians 2 that believing is a gift of God for
us to be able to just take a deep breath and sit down and stop.
It's like shutting off the car in the middle of a highway, throwing
out the keys, popping the hood and kicking the engine out, and
laying in the road. But even that's not the right
picture because it requires us to do all that. Faith is in the midst of all
these religious opportunities, in the midst of all these things
that we think we're doing to establish some sense of goodness
in our life. Even if we say, oh, it's God
doing it in me, in the middle of that, saving faith is like
God immediately, like some kind of a matrix-type stuff, or fantasy-type
stuff, this brick wall of grace, and we slam into it, and we peel
down it like a Looney Tune. God has captured us. We can't
move. We can't breathe on our own. And everything then is, we realize,
wow, God is the life breather. He is my breath. Christ is my
hope. Christ is my life. Christ is
my movement. We don't need to work to get
to God. God has come to us. Because of God's life-giving
grace, we cannot make this place a place of worship. We cannot
make this world a place of worship. It's not a place of worship.
The places of worship are temporary shadows. And the true worship
is the one who worships by the power of the Spirit to rest in
the Sabbath who is Jesus Christ and all the work of creation
unto eternal life that He has already finished. And we praise Him for it. And
as we're together, we praise Him together, and as we're together,
we serve one another and give to one another. We can see God's
sovereignty in this life-giving grace. We can see it in the picture,
as we'll see over in chapter 4 with Cain and Abel. We can see it in Jacob and Esau.
We can see it in the story of Ruth. We can see it in David. We can see it everywhere we look.
We can see the picture of Christ. We can see the picture of God's
sovereign Grace. Therefore, we can stop laboring
for glory. And as Jesus would say in John
chapter 6, when the people say, what must we be doing to do the
work of God? And Jesus says, this is the work
of God that you believe, and I'm going to use our words there,
that you rest upon the Son whom He has sent. Do not labor for the bread that
perishes, but labor for the bread that endures to eternal life.
How do we work for that bread? By believing it is enough. How do we do that? By the gift
of God. Where do we know? Through the
reading of the Word. Now we're back to the very introduction
of the sermon, aren't we? The Word alone shows us this truth. And beloved, the philosophy part
of my brain goes, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but oh, there's
so many other things. Yeah, but yeah, but this and
that and the other. And then when I do that, I dissect the
Lord and all of His goodness and glory into so many ample
bite-sized hors d'oeuvres that He's worthless. God cannot be divided. Just sit
and see. Behold. You know that word we
use in the Bible? We don't use it in today's discussions,
do we? Check out my new car. What if
your friend said, Behold, my new car! Are you trying out for
Shakespeare here? Behold, my new shoes! You know. No, look at this. Look at that.
That's all it means. It means look. And when we look by the
power of the Spirit, it's because we've been given eyes to see,
we've been given the vision of knowing the mind of Christ. It's ours, beloved. And we can stop laboring for
that which perishes and rest in the eternal life of Christ.
We don't need to find Eden. Some people have told me that.
How do we establish Eden? We don't need to find. People
are looking, archaeologists are looking for Eden. It's like looking
for the end of the cosmos. It doesn't exist until you see
Christ. Because He's the beginning and
the end of all things. Now let that roll around in your mind
with the 2021 understanding of physics. We don't need to plant certain
types of trees to get to Eden to grow back. We don't need to
establish certain types of righteousness. We don't need to come up with
certain types of water and have some spirit movements. We don't
need any of that. God has already established all
of these things. We don't need to weed the garden as though
some type of progressive righteousness will really help God get on track
this world. God has done all that is necessary
and He alone is able to make righteous all that He declares
to be good. Because God is in the business
of overcoming the will of man. I want you to hear that. He didn't set up Eden like a
real estate agent and say, Yo, Adam, check out this new... Behold! A new place! What do you think? Live it here on the seashore,
up in the mountains, or the Garden of Eden? Tell you what, come
sheep, I'll do good. No points, no closing costs. There's one thing, you've got
to maintain it. What is the maintenance of the
garden? Worshipping God. That's the work of God. That's the work
of the garden. That's the work of man in the presence of God
is to worship Him. And there were a lot of doing
and doing and doing and doing in the precepts of Moses. And
why? Because the holiness of God cannot be displayed and measured
in the precepts of humanism. It's all these pictures and all
this stuff. It was never-ending. It was laborious.
It was unbelievable. just the tabernacle of setting
up and tearing down and setting up and tearing down. I remember
a church plan I was a part of years and years ago, and it was
just like, where are we meeting this week? We don't know. We don't know. Let's just go
there. Let's go here. Let's set up.
Oh, you bring this, you bring that. It's a pain in the butt. I couldn't
imagine rolling out tents, traveling with animals, setting up all
this stuff, doing these things. But it's still, when the temple
was built, it was still laborious. It was still constant work, day
and night, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All year long, the
priests worked, the Levites tended and served. Why? Because it was
their duty to worship God. It was the preparation and the
service and the worship of God. But God is in the business of
not offering options. He didn't say to Adam, check
out this cool real estate, would you like to live there? The Bible
says He took the man and put him in the garden. put him in the garden. Paul undergirds
this reality in Colossians chapter 1. He who has snatched us out
of the domain of darkness and has qualified us to be inheritors
of light. There's no offer of salvation,
beloved. There's a declaration of God's salvation, and then
there is a command to believe it, and no one can believe it.
That's why we create a new Eden every time we turn around. We're
doing something. We're doing something out of our own will. God is in the business of overcoming
the will of man. He's also in the business of overcoming the
understanding the ability and the power of man. We see that
established throughout all of the Old Testament, right? Man
was not an actor in the creation. He wasn't an actor, he's not
an actor in his salvation. Man is just the object, the recipient
of these things, a created thing. We see it in Cain and Abel, where
Cain and Abel both present perfectly good sacrifices, but God does
not accept Cain's sacrifice because He does not accept Cain. He does
not accept Esau as the firstborn because he hates him. He loves
Jacob. He does not let Babel grow. He confuses them all. He doesn't
let the king stand haughty. He makes him act like a cow naked
in the field and eating grass on all fours. There is no such thing as sovereignty
outside of God. He can do all that He does. And
so our job in all of this is to worship God, to rest in the
supreme power and the promises of God through Christ Jesus. We should be about praising Him,
thanking Him, being glad in Him, telling others as we're able
about Him and meeting their needs in His name. As I said in the
beginning, Jesus says to the disciples in John, Behold, I
go and prepare a place for you, that where I am you shall be
also." This is proof positive in the theology of creation and
God preparing a place. Eden is that place where God
meets man. The Holy of Holies is that place
where God meets man. Who is the Ark of the Covenant? Who is the Holy of Holies? Who
is the blood of the Lamb? the Lamb that takes away the
sins of the world, Jesus Christ the righteous. Paul says to Timothy,
he cannot deny himself. I didn't get to Philippians,
but I did read it in the beginning. Philippians 4 sort of expresses
this, where Paul says, Therefore, beloved, my brothers, whom I
love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm thus in
the Lord my beloved." Every time Paul wrote to the church, the
New Testament church, he always expressed his love for them,
his desire to be with them, his desire to grow in their understanding,
to grow their understanding of the gospel, his desire for them
to be united in their love for one another. You notice that.
He always put their actions to be unified in their service to
the Lord, which is an act of worship. then in that moment
when they would come together, He would then instruct them.
Those who wouldn't come together in behavior, He would expel them. But Paul's desire was not to
be an academic theologian, though he was, he was by the power of
the gospel, and what he wrote was sufficient for all theology
to ever be written. But his heart was for the church,
because this was his worship. I want to worship the Lord face
to face, so if I die, I get Christ. But if I live, I get you for
Christ. So I'll live, for that is far
better for you. You see that? That's the mind
of Christ. Then he says, I entreat Euodia and Seneca to agree in
the Lord. I'm telling you now, help these
people who have served, labored side by side with the gospel,
with Clement and others who helped me, whose names are in the book
of life. Paul wasn't worried about them not being true believers
because now they were fighting and fussing and arguing over
some doctrinal issues or over some personal issues. He was
saying, these are our sisters in the faith. They were helpful.
Please, tell them they must get along. And then He commands us in Philippians
4, verse 4, "...rejoice in the Lord always." When? Always. Good times? Yup. Bad times? You
betcha. Always. And again, I will say rejoice.
Let your reasonableness. Where is that in today's economy? Where do you buy it? Where is
it for sale? Where is it on display? It's
not there. Beloved, it ought to be in the
hearts and mouths and minds and actions and attitudes of the
church. Attitude is everything in the context of the gospel,
because if we are not displaying the attitude of Christ, we are
fleshly. Let our reasonableness be known
to everyone. The Lord is at hand. What causes us to be unreasonable?
Anxiety. It's my middle name now. James
Anxiety Tippins. Never dealt with it as bad as
I have over the last year. And the crazy thing is, I'm not
scared of anything, but I'm constantly gnawing in the sense of my heart
and mind about everything. It's like, oh, is this going
to come out? Is this going to come out? And now I'm physically ill because
of it. Ta-da! The Lord is at hand. The Lord
is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything. It sounds just so silly. It sounds
so ridiculous. So what am I supposed to do if
I'm not gonna be anxious? Well, I'm putting my brain on those
things. See, I'm letting my mind think about these things, and
instead of that, Paul says, in everything, by prayer, so I should
be talking to God, and supplication, I should be praying for other
people, with thanksgiving, praising to His glorious grace, let your
requests be known to God. And in this prescription, verse
seven, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." We've talked
about the gospel and the power of the gospel and the reality
of the gospel and the knowledge of the gospel and what it does for the life
of the believer, but now we see the parallel here with God creating
the garden, putting His man in the Garden of Eden with Him in
the presence of God. Yet even in the presence of God,
where Jesus, the Son of God, walked with His created beings
in the cool of the day, these people were still anxious. There was a snake in the garden.
What woman wouldn't be anxious at the snake in the garden, right? But at that very place, the Lord
was at hand. In this very moment, in you and
me right now, the Lord is at hand. Don't be anxious. Just worship. And if it were
easy, we wouldn't even have to be here, would we? So what am I supposed to do?
How am I supposed to focus my mind on Eden? There's nothing I can
do to get there, nothing I can do to create it, nothing I can
do to really reestablish it in me. Where is that peace? The
peace is Jesus Christ. And Paul explains that in verses
8 and 9 of Ephesians 4. Listen to these words. Finally,
brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things. And think about what you have
learned and received and heard and seen in me. Look at me, look
at my life, look at how I deal with my stress and my pain and
my suffering. Because all Christ's power is
great in my weakness. When I try to work, I fail. When I am nothing and can do
nothing, Christ is everything. And my joy is complete. And I
can focus my mind on you when I'm in chains because Christ
has given me this heart. What you've seen and heard and
learned in Me, practice these things and the God of peace will
be with you. The Lord is at hand, He is with
you. He has promised to be with us, beloved. This is the prescription. This
is what Genesis 2 is supposed to show us. And that when it's left up to
us, when we do our own thing, what happens? We die. That's what we'll see next week.
But beloved, Christ has now died in our place, and nothing can
separate us from the love of God. Yeah, it sounds like platitudes. Yeah, it's an easy one-off just
to tell people, just rejoice. For God is good. But it's another
thing by the divine power of the Lord through each other to
encourage each other in the faith to rest in this. Nothing, nothing
is outside the sovereign hand of our Savior. Especially us. And He will not let us go. Let's
pray. Thank you, Father, for the peace. It's so illogical that I want
to rationalize it. And when I do, Lord, You know
that it's just circular. I just go from here to there,
and it's this whirlwind of hope that makes no sense to the unconverted
mind. And even with us, Your regenerate
children, Father, it is a very hard struggle. One with which
Christ is very understanding and sympathizing. For He knows
what it's like to be in this flesh. He knows what it's like
to experience fear. He knows what temptation to doubt
and to not believe your promises is. And so, Father, in Him we
have a perfect Savior who can sympathize with us in our weakness,
but also is the greatest power of all in the midst of our powerlessness. And, dear Lord, Your promises
are that You cannot fail, for You cannot deny Yourself. And
so, Father, teach us the true reality of Eden, that we are
with You and that You are with us. And that as Jude would say,
to keep ourselves in the love of God, Father, we do that not
in ourselves and not in any reality, not in any real way, Lord, but
we do that because You have kept us. And so we wait upon You,
we look for You, we worship You, and we love one another as we
continue to grow each other and to serve each other. Thus, we
are serving. In the least of these, we are
serving You. And I thank you, Lord, for this
church and for its families. And I pray for us, Lord, for
many of us are hurting and ill and emotional and fearful. Father, many who have not been
able to come back for months and months and be in fellowship,
Father, I pray for us all that we would be mindful of one another,
that we would labor before You, that You would cause us to remember
one another in prayer, and Lord, that we would, as much as we're
able, Lord, help us to serve each other. The smallest things
can often make the biggest difference. But Lord, in all of the service
and all the application of gospel living, Lord, let us never forsake
the gospel on our tongues. Let us always remind one another
of your free and sovereign grace, so beautiful and powerful. Father, as we continue to worship
this morning through Psalm, we thank you for who you are and
that you have called us to yourself. And where you are, Lord, you
shall one day take us to be. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you,
beloved.