Preacher: Michael Foster,
Text: Genesis 1:1-2
East River Church (Batavia, OH)
Creator & Creation
Good morning. Welcome East River Church. Glad to see you all today. Well, we're going to continue our study in the book of Genesis. So please turn to the first book of the Bible. Hey, again, we do have that conference coming up at the end of this month. Wait, the end of next month in August, and you can use East River only or half off as a promo code to get like everything half off. There's a date. There should be a day pass on there. It's just 33 bucks. So it'd be like 15, whatever dollars for you to come if you can't come for a full day. So do join us. Well, we're going to look at two verses today. We're answering our way through Genesis. It's really like a verse and a half. But Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 through verse 2, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, lead us in worship now. You are above all things. You are before all things. You are forever and ever, and we have a beginning, and our beginning comes from you, Lord. Keep us humble. Keep us close. We ask this the name of Jesus. Amen. So last week, we started our study of Genesis 1 through 11. So we'll go through that part, and then we'll take a break, and then we'll come back and finish the book of Genesis. And really, last week was kind of an overview of sorts. So Genesis was written by Moses under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Its original audience was the Israelites during the Exodus, which refers to the period of time when God, through Moses, led the people up from slavery in Egypt into the land of promise to that God had promised to them through their forefathers. So Genesis was in part God giving the Israelites background that explains why he redeemed them and the special purpose he has for them. So first, Genesis explains how mankind, add up particularly, but the nations broadly, fell away from God into a state of sin and rebellion, and that's the focus of the first 11 chapters. So there's four major events, creation, fall, flood, and the Tower of Babel, and they explain mankind's descent into a way from God. Second, Genesis explains how God called out men from the rebellious masses to be in a special covenantal relationship with them and gave those men often referred to as patriarchs or fathers, promises of a future redemption. And that's the focus of the rest of Genesis 12 through 50, really four major patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then Joseph or Judah, depending on how you want to look at that. So that's what we'll get to. But just to kind of connect it all, Genesis 12, it begins with this, "Now the Lord said that Abram, go from your country, your kin red, your father's house, to land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed." And this is kind of re-stated with a slight difference in Genesis 22 now to Abraham. He says, "I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as a sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice." So the great nation promised to Abraham was Israel, right? Israel that now is being led up out of Egypt back to this land promised to Israel. And Israel had a mission to the nations for God. It says in Isaiah 49, we read God's purpose for Israel. He says, "I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach the end of the earth." And you go look at Isaiah 49, it's kind of interesting how it switches back from kind of broadly speaking to an individual. And that's because it has, he and I, both the nation of Israel, but specifically the person of Christ and anyone who brings his message forward. So God redeemed Israel from Egypt because of the covenant he made with their fathers and his purpose for them was to display like a shining city on a hill, and salvation for all the nations to see. That was the purpose of Israel. And ultimately Israel fails to do that, at least national Israel. So it's ultimately fulfilled through Christ who himself fulfilled all the promises made to the patriarchs, which is connected in Romans 15. For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, "Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name." And again it is said, "Rejoice to Gentiles with his people." And again, "Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the people extol him." And again, Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse will come, even he who arises to rule the Gentiles in him the Gentiles hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope." So basically what Genesis is doing, it's laying the groundwork that explains the promises, but also this battle between two seeds. There's this line that's tracked all the way from Eve to Jesus, right? So Jesus is this promised seed that will come and destroy the works of the devil. And the works of the devil, you see them work out through people in the Old Testament. So you have men like Cain, who's compared to the devil or like the devil. You have men like Ham, or you have Ishmael, and from all these people come to Gentile nations. All the people that are around Israel, and part of the beauty of the gospel is that dividing walls broken down in time. Both the Jewish people and the Gentiles are all brought together. So all the nations are brought together through the ministry of Christ. So the Tower of Babel is erected to make the name of man-grade in one language. And at Pentecost, all the nations come together to worship God, to make his name great, even though they have different languages. And so the gospels is ultimately reversing all the destruction that came in these first 11 chapters. And that is what Genesis is doing. It's laying out the background of man's fall, the nation's descent, and God's plan of redemption. To quote the Bible commentator Gordon Wynnum, again, he says, "If the message of Genesis is essentially one of redemption, Genesis 3 through 11 explains why man needs salvation and what he needs to be saved from." Genesis 1 and 2, in describing the original state of the world, also describes the goal of redemption, to which ultimately the world in humanity will return when the patriarchal promises are completely fulfilled. So this morning, we turn our attention to the beginning of the beginning. In it, Moses helps the Israelites understand the most important thing. The God who saved them from Egypt is not some local deity. He is God Almighty, the one and only true God. So verse 1, Moses says, "In the beginning." This is the ultimate once upon a time. Time is a creational reality. It's an aspect of creation. All our experiences are experienced in time. God, being uncreated, is not time-bound. He's eternal without beginning or end. It's been claimed that upon being mocked by a skeptic with regards to his doctrine of creation, the church father Augustine was cynically asked, "What was God doing before he created the world?" And Augustine looked at him and supposedly said, "Creating hell for curious souls." It was a good warning, especially for any age, given to endless speculations. That being said before, we existed. God did have an eternal plan, sometimes referred to as the covenant of redemption. Ephesians 1-1 says, actually, this must be, I think this is Ephesians 1-4. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. So before, there was any foundations he chose us. Sproul, R.C. Sproul writes, "The Bible speaks often of God's eternal counsel, of his plan of salvation and the like. It is a matter of theological urgency that Christ does not think of God as a ruler who adlips his dominion of the universe. God does not make it up as he goes along. The God of Scripture has no plan B or plan C. His plan A is from everlasting to everlasting. He is both perfect and unchangeable as a rest on God's eternal character, which is among other things holy, omniscient, and immutable. So before there was anything including time, God had a plan that included us being found before him as holy and blameless. He chose us, says 1 Peter 2, that we might proclaim his excellencies. He made us to worship him. So man's chief purpose or chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. But not just man. All of creation is made to give God glory. I like to say that all of creation is doxological. It's helpful to think about it. The Greek word doxah means glory or honor or praise. So in the context of doxological, it relates to the expression of glory or praise. Everything that is made gives glory and honor and praise to God. In Psalm 19, David says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. Then in Romans 1 verses 19 and 20 Paul says, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, had been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that had been made. So all of creation declares God's glory and reveals knowledge about his divine nature. Part of that knowledge is that he is eternal without beginning. So everything that was made from nothing by the power of God was made by his word. So before there was a beginning, there was God. So that's what is called a creator creature distinction. The triune God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable in wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. The creature made by God's sovereign will is temporal or temporary, finite and mutable. This distinction holds in the creator creation relation. So God remains infinite and unchangeable with or without his relation to the creature. He's a non-contingent being. He does not need us. He does not depend on us. But all of creation depends on him. Hebrews 1,4 says Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. So Moses is telling the Israelites that the God who saved them is the same eternal God who made everything from nothing by the power of his word. He's not some local deity or some lesser God that only ruled over a portion of creation. Moses says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." So that phrase there is referring to everything, every created thing. It means the universe. He made it all and God is distinct from his creation because he is timeless, not so, with the Egyptian gods. They worship a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Ra was the sun god, Horace was the sky god, Isis was the goddess of fertility, Hathar was the goddess of music and so on. The god who saved Israel is the only eternal god. He rules over all creation perfectly and he will not share his glory. There's an interesting book by Dr. Peter Jones called One or Two. It's a pretty short read. It's like 10 bucks on Kendall. I recommend it. In it, he argues that all worldviews and all religions can be summarized by either one-ism or two-ism. I know the world doesn't need more-isms, but I think this is helpful. He writes, "One-ism believes that all is one and shares the same essential nature. In one-ism, everything shares the same essence. In word, everything is a piece of the divine. Two-ism believes that while all of creation shares a certain essence, everything apart from God is created, the creator of nature, namely God, is a completely different being or who determines the nature and function of all creative things." He explains that you see these two options laid out by Paul in Romans 1, 25. It reads, "They exchange the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever." Jones explains. Here Paul identifies only two possible kinds of worship. Worship of creation or worship of the creator. Behind each is a consistently worked out, timeless worldview. Either one-ism or two-ism. Paul calls one-ism the lie and two-ism the truth. All humanity falls into one category or the other. There is no third way. It's a helpful way to think about things. Like all false religions, every last one of them. The Egyptians ultimately worshiped a deified creation. They practice one-ism. Basically, you either have an eternal creation or an eternal creator. People ask, "Well, who made God?" They'll say that. "Look, something was not made. Something has been forever, which makes more sense." An eternal creation? How can you even use the word creation, right? We're an eternal creator. Something has always been. Modern man rejects the creator in the name of science or scientism. We're forced science, right? Knowledge. Knowledge is good. But scientism, they worship the creation as if it is eternal. One of the guys incredibly honest about this was Carl Sagan. He captured it well. He was popular and influential back in the 80s and 90s. I read a lot of Carl Sagan. I read a lot of Arthur C. Clarke. They were atheists that kind of laid the groundwork for new atheism in the late 90s and 2000s. When I was an atheist, they were very influential in my life. I grew up an atheist. Here's what he says. He says, "The cosmos is all that is, or everwise, or ever will be. Our contemplations of the cosmos stirs us. There's a tingling in the spine. I hate the word tingling. You can use it, but it always makes me, I don't know, something about it. There's a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory of falling from great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries. The size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding lost somewhere between immensity and eternity. There's our tiny planetary home, the earth. For the first time, we have the power to determine the fate of our planet and ourselves." Me here, it's like a hymn. It's a hymn to the cosmos. It's very religious. It's all that's ever been. It's eternal. Oh, it gets worse. It gets worse. He also says, "The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean." Can you imagine his friends? Imagine the headaches they had from rolling their eyes every time he spoke. The cosmic, cosmic ocean. On this shore, we've learned most of what we know. Recently, we waited a little out, maybe ankle deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can because the cosmos is also within us. We are made of star stuff. This is just one-ism. It's neo-paganism. That's all it is. He says, "The cosmos is all that is, wherever it was, wherever it will be, and the cosmos is also within us, we are made of star stuff." He's saying, "We are part of the eternal cosmos. We are divine." Made of star stuff. You can slightly put up with that in a Moby song, but not in theology. There's a little difference between this and Hinduism, where the concept of ultimate reality is captured in the term Brahmin. Brahmin is the supreme, unchanging, infinite, imminent, and transcendent reality, the divine ground of all existence. It is eternal, and yet impersonal. Everything that is is Brahmin, according to Hindus. We are the manifestations of the divine. However, individuality is an illusion. We're all divine. We're all part of the one. Part of the goal of Hinduism is to see past the illusion of duality, of two, and realize you're part of everything. False. Only God is divine. He is a creator God, and we are His distinct creation. Jones, Peter Jones, again argues from Romans 1, that when you exchange this truth for the lie of creation worship, you descend into moral and sexual depravity. Listen to Paul again. It's kind of a long passage. This is Romans 1, 21 through 27. For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, a gift thanks to Him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. Think back to Sagan's words. Claiming to be wise became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and heirs and creeping things. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worship, and serve the creature rather than the creator who's blessed forever. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. If you had the misfortune of watching the opening of the Paris Olympics, you saw this displayed. They mocked God by having a partially nude stomach churning bunch of transsexual perverts, reenact Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. It was disgusting. Now, I don't watch the Olympics because who cares? Like, I said something about online, they're like, "Don't watch it. Like, I don't." But it was so evil, even the non-Christians were like, "What is this? That's what you get. That's what you get when you toss off God." When you throw off the right worship of God, you will worship creation and descend into sexual depravity and moral chaos. Europe has thrown off westernism in all its forms increasingly. Westernism was the combination of Christianity and the best parts of classic thought. They've thrown it off and they've become pagans again. They're onus again. In these first few words, Moses is warning Israel not to worship the false gods of Egypt, but rather the true God who made all things. And we know that they don't heed this warning. We know that they fall into it immediately as soon as they leave Egypt. In 1 Corinthians 10, 6, writing in the Old Testament, a record Paul says, "Now these things took place as an example for you that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were." So as we read the Old Testament, we have both positive and negative examples. The negative examples of these people giving themselves over to idolatry is there to warn us. When you give yourself to idolatry, you descend into depravity. That is the logical consequences. That is the moral consequences. That is the spiritual consequences of false worship. That's why worship matters. That's why God's like, Cain, I do not receive your offering. You come to me on my terms. Worship is a big deal. So we should look at this and learn. We should look at, I'll get to this in a second. I'll come back to the Olympics. Now, verse 2, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep." There's a controversy that happens in between verse 1 and 2. It's a theory called gap theory. It's actually really old. It goes all the way back to the 1500s, but it got really popular about 20 years after Darwin published the origin of the species, which is the book that was used to popularize the pagan idea of evolution. So essentially, gap theory claims that between verse 1 and 2, there were millions, perhaps even billions of years. The key motivation for this theory is sinking the evolutionary claim that creation has to be very old. The reason it has to be very old is that key to the idea of gradualism, that one type of being gradually can shift into a whole another type of being. They also claim that it explains the fossil record. Some go so far to claim that Satan's rebellion happened in between these verses. They'll claim that there was a previous creation even populated by pre-Adam humans, which Satan also corrupted, which led to this Lucifer's flood, is what they'll call it, that destroyed everything. That's why in this second verse, there's like this chaotic mess of things. That's what they'll say. And that comes from the Dake Study Bible. If you have a Dake Study Bible, it's okay. Throw it away. I'll forgive you, God will forgive you. Throw that thing away. That thing is terrible. Now, the Scofield Bible, which is incredibly popular and also full of all sorts of problematic ideas, also supports the gap theory. It's not as wild or out there as the Dake Study Bible, but it teaches a lot of dangerous ideas, and I highly discourage using that study Bible. Honestly, I don't like study Bibles personally. I couldn't imagine ever putting my words next to the Word of God. I'm not going to be a legalist about it, but I just have always used a Bible. If I can get it without cross-references, I do that too, because some of those cross-references are like that. They aren't as connected as you guys are making it, but just be careful when you use study Bibles to at least make the distinction. These are just dudes telling you their thoughts, all right? It is not the Word of God. As a side note, this comes up more. Every time people get caught up with angels, weird interpretations ensue. Every time throughout history, people are like, "Whoa, where were the angels created?" That's a fine question, but when they spend too much time on it, when they ponder it, weird nonsense comes out of it. That's why some questions you ask like, "When did that happen?" You think about it a little bit, and you're like, "All right." And then you go on with life. You don't spend too much time on it, because the revealed things belong to us, but the secret things, they belong to the Lord. Now, I reject the gap theory for a simple reason. Moses wrote Genesis, and he also wrote Exodus. In Exodus 2011, Moses writes, "For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that's in them, and rested on the seventh day." Now, this is the basis for the Sabbath. So all that was made was made in six days, in the space of six normal days. Here, Moses is using the Hebrew word for day, which can mean many things. Even when we speak of days, we'll talk about the day of the Lord, right? It was a particular moment in history when judgment happens. So day can mean epoxy, it can mean a lot of different things. But it can certainly mean, what it means to us usually, which is 24 hours, when it comes to liberal theologians, it seems that often words mean everything except what they normally mean. So here, though, it's in the context of the week. Six days, the Sabbath. You rest on the Sabbath. It's talking about a week. So the meaning of the word is a 24-hour day. So God made everything that is in the space of six normal days. That, of course, means that the universe is much younger than we've been taught, perhaps less than 10,000 years old. Now, I struggled with this idea for a long time. I was what they call an old-earth creationist for many, many years. So if you're struggling with that, I get it. I did not know until high school that people rejected evolution. It blew my mind. I was in my sophomore biology class, and my biology teacher, who was also the manliest dude I ever knew. His son was one of the best wrestlers in the state, and his other son was one of the best football players. And him and his football playing son would go out and run into each other with pads on, and his son broke his back. But they went back to doing it. He was so tough, and he was a man of science. And that's why I grew up taught to respect science. And he skipped the first chapter of the biology book on evolution. And I was like, hey, why are you not teaching this first chapter? He was like, oh, we don't have time for it. I was like, well, look, man, if we don't have time for this, maybe skip something at the end. This is where we come from. He said, well, I'm not so convinced of that. I said, excuse me. And I was going to be really hard for you to believe this. I was kind of argumentative as a teen. Well, I just couldn't, what are you talking about? You don't believe it. Believe what? Evolution? I didn't know people didn't believe it. He said, Michael, if you want to talk about this more, we can talk after class. But that's all for now. All right. All right. So after class, I talked to him, and he was like, well, here's all the problems I have with it. And I just can remember staring at this guy thinking, what is happening? Like, I just had no clue. So I struggled with this for a long time. I grew up as an evolutionist. Now part of my struggle early, I was an evolutionist for the first three or four years as, oh, two or three years as a Christian. No, no. Yeah, about two years. And it was partially due to the bad arguments of some of the creationists I knew that there's some whack jobs out there that are claiming to be scientists because they got some sort of diploma off like some website mailed to them. And they would make all these arguments. And I'm like, man, that doesn't sound right at all. But what did it for me is the more I studied Genesis and the more I studied Romans 5, there was no way around the text of Scripture. This is without a doubt, zeroed out what Scripture teaches. There is no way around it. Trust me, I tried everything I could do to escape this. God made the world in everything else in the space of six days. This, of course, affects the theory of evolution. It requires millions of years. What was it? I was gold, Stephen Gould. He taught it punctuated equilibrium. So basically, like gradualism, part of the problem with gradualism, there's just not enough fossils to support it. And so being like, he's trying to figure out how to maintain evolution. So he would teach things like, well, it's because the changes happen super quick. And that's why we don't see the fossils, right? But the main point is that they have a commitment to evolution and they build their theology. That's what it is. Their ideas are rounded. But Scripture just doesn't allow millions of years. And these guys are making up stuff and changing stuff all the time. And they get grants and to say, hey, everything that we've been teaching for the last 80 years is wrong. It could cost them a lot of friendships and jobs. So this idea that it's all just pure science is silly. Their evidence and our evidence we use for the same thing. So you can get like the Grand Canyon with a little bit of water over a long bit of time or a whole lot of water in a little bit of time. Maybe like when there's a big flood or something. So evolution though, here's another reason to reject it, is ultimately the product of a godless worldview. That's what it is. And then they try to sync it with Scripture. Now, I don't mind people looking out in natural revelation, general revelation, and observing things and saying, how does this fit with Scripture? That's a good question to ask. Matter of fact, the God has made the world for us to explore and to understand. So Christians should love true science. But this isn't science. This is philosophy. It's religious. It's more the oneism. They claim that matter is all that is. And somehow, time and chance, working on matter, can magically make life appear. That is a religious claim, one which has never ever been seen or observed. So this is oneism. This is paganism. And that paganism leads to cultural chaos. Funny enough, a few months ago, this is an article I have here, Richard Dawkins. He was one of the so-called four horsemen of the New Atheists. Some of you younger people don't remember this. Count your lucky stars, I guess. But these guys were really annoying. And he would always argue against Christianity. He just was a terrible at philosophy. But he made this confession to a Rachel Johnson of the LBC News. The Oxford biologist, says the article, an author of the God delusion, expressed concern after seeing Islamic Ramadan lights on a street that once featured Easter lights. He says, "I call myself a cultural Christian. I'm not a believer, but there's a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. I love hymns and Christmas carols. I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. Most not preach much repentance over there. We in the UK are a Christian country in that sense." So I guess Dawkins is a Christian nationalist. I don't know. His things are getting weird, right? So Dawkins then told the Johnson, the interviewee, that he's horrified to see Islamic holidays in mosque taking the place of Christian feasts and cathedrals in Europe. He said, "If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I choose Christianity every single time. It seems to me to be fundamentally a decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not." Dawkins, he wants the world that Christianity produces without its God. That's paganism. That's all it is. I want to enjoy the things of God but have no place for God in my life. I want to worship myself. I want to worship the creation and all the beautiful things that come from service and worship to God. I want all those things, but I will not bow my knee. The pagan gods are always gods who can be manipulated and controlled by man. They can be bought off. They can be bargained with. They can be channeled towards your enemies or your friends. So paganism is again a way for men to have worship while ultimately remaining autonomous. So because creation is doxological, it's not whether you'll worship. It's which God you will worship. It's inevitable. You're going to worship something. That's why Peter Jones is right to say it's one ism. All is part of God, especially me. Or two ism. God is distinct. And since he's distinct and timeless and above his creation, he is the highest and deserves all worship. So it's really nothing more than a way to worship yourself. Everything is divine, that world view, and we're part of that divinity, a little spark of God in you. A man like Richard Dawkins is finding out the cost of that lie. When you remove the truth of God's word, the inevitable truth of all creation that we all intrinsically know says Paul in Romans, then what happens is chaos. It's either Christ or chaos. They like to say you either worship the Creator or descend into destructive depravity. That's why at the heart of setting things right is worship of the triune God, the right worship of the triune God. We come to him not in our own power, but we come to him in the fulfillment of all the promises, that great light to the Jews and Gentiles, Jesus. And then Jesus changes our entire life. Just as paganism leads to depravity, when you bow your heart to Jesus, it renews everything. Some of you used to be idolaters. Some of you used to be fornicators. Some of you used to engage in unnatural things. But now that you've been washed in the blood, you belong to God. Not only that, what we need to know is that if we don't fight this paganism, if we don't call it for what it is, wicked, destructive, evil, it's going to destroy everything. So one thing you should do is every Sunday, prep your heart. I am coming to worship the eternal Creator. God, come here, worship him, give him everything, let him change you through his word in sacrament, and then go out and be the reflection of the light of the world and call darkness, darkness. Now is not the time for PC. We did that for years. We got all this gay stuff in the name of the Olympics. It is disgusting. We should be willing, when we see some dude with a beard wearing a dress to say, gross. That is disgusting. This is ranked the filement. It is terrible. And it's happened because we as a people have disregarded and thrown off the right worship of God. And that's why at the heart of all cultural renewal is worship. It all starts by prioritizing the gathered worship and worshiping God on his terms. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much that you have made us in your image and that through Christ, your son, that we can be fully returned, that image that was marred by the fall and our descent into a state of sin, death, and misery. Because of what your son has done, we can be brought into a new estate, a new status before you. We're no longer enemies. We're no longer dark in hearts given over to depraved lusts. But we are beloved children. We're new creations with new appetites, not perfect, but growing and holding this day to day. We thank you for this, God. And we ask you that you would strengthen us to stand in such a dark time as this, to preach the gospel, to declare the truth, and not to bow the knee, the false gods. God lead us in repentance and also lead our country in repentance. And we pray for revival and renewal. In the name of your son Jesus, amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]