You Were Made to Worship

Good morning. It's a blessing to be with you here this morning and bring greetings from Southeastern Seminary. My heart's been moved over the last few minutes, has had the opportunity to come into a congregation that is centered around the word of God. congregation that understands that worship is more than just singing a song. It's evident in this place this morning that you understand that you are made to worship. And that's what I'm going to be talking with you about this morning from God's Word. It's the fact that we were all made to worship. And so in some respects, hopefully, Through our time together this morning, I'll encourage many of you along in that, that you will have a fuller understanding of what it means to live a life of worship. And for some of you who worship has become more something that you do rather than who you are, your identity, then I pray that God's Word would speak to you this morning in that respect and help you to realize that your identity is that of a worshiper by virtue of the fact that you were created by a God who made you for Himself. So let's pray together. And then we'll open up God's Word to the very beginning, to Genesis chapter 1, and we'll look together and see what it means that we were created to be worshipers. Father in heaven, we come to you this morning and we thank you for the blessing of the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, your Son, who enables us Lord, as broken and fractured individuals, Lord, enables us to be reconciled to you so that we might live out the purpose for which you created us. And that is to worship you and to give you glory. And so, Father, I pray this morning that as we open up your word, that we would all be edified by your presence here, Lord, that your Holy Spirit would guide us. Lord, I do pray that you would guard me from error as I'm teaching your Word, and that you would help me to encourage and to exhort, Lord, through your Word. Let my personality, Father, my person, be humbled in your presence, Lord God, but let your message be bold and be clear. And Father, I pray that you would do the work that only you can do, that you would strengthen our hearts through the Gospel of our Lord and Savior. And we pray in His name. Amen. So open up your Bibles this morning to the very beginning, to Genesis chapter 1. I'm going to talk to you this morning about what it means to live as a worshipper. You know, it's interesting coming here. This is my first time to come to Charlottesville, the first time to be around the UVA campus. My family and I drove in last night and we saw the throngs of people teaming down around the mall area. And one of the things that I noticed as we walked through that area last night is that everybody is searching for something. In fact, if you think about it, I was talking with some of your leaders this morning. It seems that this entire city is built really around the culture that emerges from UVA. And as such, what that entails is that people are coming literally from around the world to this town looking for a way to live out their purpose in life. And yet, As I looked at the people last night in the downtown area, I couldn't help but think that the vast majority of those people are looking at the purpose of a career or education first and foremost before the purpose for which they were created. And our purpose that we live out in a career or in our relationships with one another, will never be fulfilled until we first understand that we were created, our identity, we were created for the purpose of worship of our great God and Savior. And you see that when you open up the Bible from the very beginning. In fact, what I'm going to do, I'm just going to kind of lay this out for you. What I'm going to do this morning is I'm going to talk to you really about what it means to be living life as a worshipper this morning and some of the problems that we face in that. And then tonight, I'm going to come back and build on what I talk about this morning and share with you how you can talk to others about their purpose in living as a worshipper of our great God and Savior. So you look at Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1, right there at the very beginning, you find that the story of the Bible, this narrative story that we hold, that we call our Bibles, has its very roots in the identity of God, of who God is, because the first couple of words here says, in the beginning, God created. Everything that exists is rooted in the person of the Godhead. Everything is. And so oftentimes in our world, people and they're looking for their purpose and they go somewhere other than God. They're missing it. I like to call that yearbook theology. Oftentimes people come to church and they'll look at the Bible and they'll want sermons that tell them how to be a better person, or how to be more effective in business, or how to have better relationships, or better marriages. And all of those things are good things. But unless they're rooted in your identity as a worshipper, then they're superficial at best. But when you open up God's Word, you find that at the very beginning, before you and I were, before anything existed, God was there. He is the Creator of all. You know what? I said something I refer to as yearbook theology. Oftentimes, when you open up your Bible, you're looking for stories that affirm you and who you are. In fact, if you think about it, for you when you were in high school. You remember the day in high school at the end of the year when they would hand out the yearbooks. We called them the annuals, the yearbooks. And what's the first thing that you did when you got your yearbook? The very first thing that you did, you would open it up and you didn't start on page one and go to the end. The first thing that you do when you get your yearbook is you open it up and you look for who? You look for yourself. In fact, you flip through your yearbook and you identify every single page where your picture or your name is there and you remember those pages and you keep going back because what the people in your school didn't realize is that everything there revolved around you, right? They just didn't understand that, that you were the center of the story there. It's your school. And so for that reason, we open up our yearbooks and we look for ourselves. We need to be careful. Because our propensity is fallen and fractured humans is that we would carry that same mentality into the Scripture, and so we open it up. And like we would with a yearbook, we begin to look at the stories in the Bible and we look for ways to affirm ourselves rather than ways to be humbled in the presence of the Almighty God who created us. Yet, it's very clear who the author of this story is. In the beginning, God. Now, we don't show up until verse 26. So let's look there and we're going to read. There's much description about the creation There up until this point, but I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to show you at least where your image is in this book, or at least the first occurrence of it. Verse 26. And then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And so God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them. And God blessed them. And He said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And then skip down to verse 31 and it says, And God saw everything that he had made. And behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning. And this was the sixth day. So the first thing that I want you to note here this morning is that we were made to worship and obey. So wait a second, I didn't see that explicitly in the text. It's there. We were made, you were made, I was made to worship and obey this God who created us for Himself. You say, how do you see that? Look in verse 26. It says, let us make man in our image. The phrase there is imago Dei. In the image of God. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? are being made in the image of God says more about who God is than it does about who we are. When we look around at one another, we see broken individuals. We see people who are not reflecting the image of God very well. And part of that's because you think about an image. This morning, as we were getting ready to come here and to worship with you all, we looked into a mirror. And a mirror exists to reflect an image, right? And so long as that mirror is clean and that mirror is unbroken, that mirror reflects accurately the reality of our identity. God created humanity to reflect His glory. God created us to worship and obey, and that's how we reflect His glory in this world. We live as worshipers. And yet, if you look around at the people that exist on this earth, whether it's here in Charlottesville or in Mumbai where I was just a few months ago, and you see broken people that are not reflecting the image of God very well. If you take a mirror and it's clean and it's clear, it will accurately reflect the reality of the image. But if that mirror becomes fractured, It still reflects. But what reflects says more about the mirror than it does about the image that's being reflected, because the fracture and the brokenness is what changes the look of the image. We were made in the image of God. We were made to reflect God's glory. And so if you look here in the Scripture, In verse 31, the last verse that I read, it says that God looked at everything that He made and He said, it was very good. Now think about that for a moment. People have a tendency to read through Genesis chapter one very quickly and don't take time to soak in what it's saying. God looks at the creation and He says, it's very good. Now, in my understanding, God alone is the standard of that which is good. In fact, when someone came and talked to Jesus one time, he said, good teacher. And Jesus said, hold up now. What do you mean good? Because God alone is good. And what Jesus was getting at with that young man was that, are you referring to me as God? Because if I am good, then that means that I am God. God looks at creation in verse thirty one and he says it was very good. It doesn't mean that creation was God, but what it means is that creation was doing that for that purpose, fulfilling that purpose for which God had created it. God created. So that His glory would be reflected. God specifically created humanity in His own image that we might be able to worship Him and have an intimacy, a relationship with Him in a different way. The trees can't have a relationship with God. The animals don't have a relationship of intimacy with God, but you and I, being made in the image of God, we have the capacity to communicate with God. And so God looks at His creation in verse 31 and He says, it's very good. In other words, God says, it's doing that which I created it to do. It's fulfilling its purpose. You say, well, wait a second, George. What is the purpose? Where did you find the purpose? Look back in verse 28. Typically, this verse is read and it's referred to as the cultural mandate. We were praying for the culture a while ago, but I want to argue a little bit differently in terms of this verse. Chapter one, verse 28, it says, and by the way, this is the first recorded words of God speaking to humanity. So you would think that if If God spoke these words to humanity, and these are the first recorded words, that this is pretty important. This says something about who we are, our identity, and what we were created for, the purpose. Chapter 1, verse 28 says, God blessed them. God's a blessing kind of God. And then God said to them, listen to this, be fruitful. and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. You say, wait a second, so our purpose is to have lots of children? Because that's typically the way that we read it, that humanity was created and was supposed to fill the earth with people and we're supposed to rule over the fish and rule over the animals and that's the cultural mandate, that we are supposed to expand human culture to the ends of the earth. But that's missing the point. By virtue of the fact that we've just seen God said that humanity was adequately and accurately reflecting His glory. It's good. He says it's very good. They're doing what He created them to do. Now He says to them, you're doing what you were created to do. Now be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. implicitly with worshippers. With worshippers. If our identity is rooted in the presence of God, if we were created to worship Him and to obey Him, and the first words recorded to humanity say, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, then the purpose of humanity is to literally fill this globe with others who were reflecting the glory of God, who were living as worshipers. And if you look around today at the earth, the earth is filled and it's filled with worshipers. But there's a big problem. Our worship has been misdirected and instead of worshiping the one who created us for himself, We've become, as Romans 1 says, the Apostle Paul, we've become worshipers of ourselves. We've redirected that worship and we have become idolaters, and that's a problem. Turn over to Genesis chapter 2. In verse 15, and you say, George, I'm still not following you on. The fact that we were created, our purpose is to worship and to obey. Genesis chapter 2 verse 15 is interesting because, first of all, let me explain this. When you look at Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, there are two accounts of creation. A lot of times people get confused with this, and the way I like to describe it is that Genesis 1 is kind of the flyover view of creation, the big picture, what I call the telescope view. You look up at something massive, and a telescope allows you to focus in and to see some of the details. But Genesis chapter 2 goes back, then, with creation, in particular with the creation of humanity, and begins to fill in some of the details of exactly how that happened and what manifested itself as a result. And so Genesis 2 would be the microscope view. It hones in. And this is a very characteristic way for Hebrew storytelling. This is the way that Jewish people would tell stories, is they would oftentimes give the big picture and then they'd go back and fill in and tell the details subsequently. And so Genesis chapter 2, what we find is a retelling of that same story, but now we're focusing in on humanity and the details of humanity. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, it says, Now the Lord God took the man and He placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. And some of your translations may say to work and to till or to work and to keep. Now, my wife has just this past week spent the week planting a garden. She's been out with the tiller tilling up the ground and planting the seeds. And every evening we walk out there and we are watering the garden because we're trying to grow it. But the bottom line is. I don't think that God created humanity to be gardeners. That's not our purpose. In fact, Dr. John Sailhammer, who is a Hebrew theologian, just an amazing mind, he says that if you look at the Hebrew and the words work and keep, or work and till, that those same words are translated elsewhere throughout the Old Testament as worship and obey. The exact same words. And so you say, what are you saying here? I'm saying this. The Lord God placed the man in the garden to worship and obey in his working and tilling, in his working and keeping. You and I, the people on this campus at University of Virginia, they do have a temporal purpose in life. If you're a teacher, then teach to the glory of God. If you are a scientist, then do that to the glory of God. You have a purpose. You can worship and obey no matter what it is that you're doing. If you recognize that your identity is that of a worshiper, then what you do flows out of that, becomes an act of worship if you're reflecting the glory of God in it. That's exactly what we find here in the garden with Adam. He was placed in the garden to worship and obey in his working in tilling. Now, turn to Genesis chapter 3 and you say, OK, well, we've got the picture here. God says it's very good. He places the man in the garden. He tells him his purpose. He tells him he needs to fill the earth with worshipers. So what went wrong? Genesis chapter 3. And we'll hone in and spend the rest of our time here, because this explains the problem that you and I see in the world today. Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 and following. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, And that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. And then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. And so they sowed fig leaves together and they made themselves loincloths and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. God said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat? And the man said, the woman that you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. And then the Lord said to the woman, what is this you've done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. So what we see here is an account that we call the fall. This is where purpose was lost. man and woman created by God, for God, to worship God, to live as worshipers, to live in obedience to Him. And right here in Genesis 3, verse 1, what we find is we find the introduction of another character into this story. In the form of a serpent, he comes and he asks a question. And it's a question that you and I hear and respond to every single day of our lives. The serpent said to the woman, did God really say? That question is the foundation of every temptation that you and I face. Every temptation that we face, every time that we face some temptation, in reality, it's rooted in the question, is God good? Am I really responsible to this God? Is God trustworthy? Is God holding out on me? Did God really say? And the interesting thing here is that the question was posed by a serpent who was more crafty than all of the other animals that God had made. Adam had been given in chapter 1 and chapter 2 dominion over all of the creation. He was a vice-regent. He was a priestly king in the Garden of Eden. He was ruling over it, and he had dominion over all of creation. And the serpent comes into the garden, and oftentimes when we talk about the fall, the men will sit back and they'll say, yeah, well, it's her fault. Careful. Be careful there, because there As the serpent approached the wife, you find over in the shadow the husband who's sitting by passively and not asserting the authority that God had given to him to rule over the creation. He's not protecting his wife. He's not guarding his heart. One who was created to be an awestruck worshipper of God. In a matter of a moment, as they mistrusted the character of God, became an idolater, a brazen idolater. You look there in Genesis chapter 3. Did God really say to you? We have to be careful when those questions come because they display the fact that we are misdirecting our worship and becoming idolaters. What happened as a result of the way that they answered that question, the fact that they ate of the fruit, they disobeyed God. What happened as a result, it says, the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. We use the phrase an eye-opening experience. Normally, we use it with a positive connotation. But if you think about this, their eyes were opened in this moment. It was not a good thing. They thought, and the serpent lied to them and deceived them into thinking that God was withholding something good from them. But God withholds nothing good. In fact, the Scripture says, every good and perfect gift comes from above, flowing down from the Father of lights. He is the source of all that is good. And He was withholding nothing from them that was good for them. And yet, in that moment when they questioned His character, their eyes were opened. It wasn't about the fruit. It was about the root that was developing in their hearts. And their eyes were opened in that moment. And it was not a good thing. It's kind of like, have you ever seen those animals that live in the depths of darkness and when they exist in darkness for multiple generations, their eyes will gloss over and they'll be completely blinded? They're unable to see. That's the kind of eye-opening experience that they had. In a moment, they went from being able to see the goodness of God reflect the goodness and the love of God. And in that moment, the mirror was shattered. It was fractured. The image of God was not lost, but it could no longer be displayed to the world accurately. something horrible was lost in that moment. They went from being awestruck worshippers to being brazen idolaters in that moment. And it says here, look, it says in v. 7, "...and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths." This is what I believe is a description of the first act of religious devotion in the history of humanity. You say, what? Religion is man's attempt to undo what's gone wrong. It's our attempt to try to fix our brokenness. But God desires a relationship, not religion. We can't undo what's gone wrong. And the man and the woman desperately, they recognized that something had been lost, and so in that moment, they tried to cover up their shame. They tried to cover their nakedness. And you can't do that. I work with Muslims all over the world, and Muslims, they go to the mosque five times a day, and they pray, and if they can afford it, they make their pilgrimage to Mecca, and it's nothing but fig leaves. It's an attempt to cover over their nakedness. They recognize that they're not related to God in the right way, and they're trying desperately to undo it. But you can't. I was in Mumbai working with Hindus, and I watched them go to the priest and they would get the puja, the blessing from the priest, and have their forehead painted there. And they would make sacrifices there in the temples. And it's religion. It's a fig leaf. It's ineffective. It can't cover their nakedness, their brokenness, their fallenness. And the sad thing is, this is not just a reality among the other world religions. We find it creeping into Christianity itself, into cultural Christianity, where people can come to church on Sunday mornings, and they can sit in a pew, and they can open the book, and they can sing the song, and they can go through the motions. But if you go out of here this morning, and you go back into your life, for some other purpose than to worship and obey God, then you have done nothing but covered yourself with a fig leaf. And it will not undo what's been done wrong. We're fallen. We're fractured. And we can't fix ourselves. And in the next scene, you see, says that they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And listen to this. This is tragic. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of God. They were made for intimacy and relationship with God. And now you find them, because of their sin, They're no longer rushing to the presence of God to reflect His glory and to worship Him. Now they're hiding from Him because they're broken and they know that something is wrong. They're desperate, hiding in the bushes. Some of us here today are hiding in the bushes. God is speaking to you. He says to the man there, where are you? God is omniscient. He knows all things. God is omnipresent. He sees and He is in any place He wants to be. Creation is outside of Him, but He can place Himself at any point, at any time, in any location. God was not confounded as to where Adam was. God spoke so that Adam, who was now spiritually blinded, could see where God was and see where He was in relation to Him. Children, you may recognize the game or remember the game called Marco Polo. You know what I'm talking about? In a swimming pool, get in the swimming pool and one person closes their eyes and they say, Marco, and then what? What are the other people in the pool say? Polo. And why do they do that? Because you're temporarily blinded and you're disoriented. You don't know where the others are. And so they say Polo. And simply by hearing that voice, what happens? You get your orientation and you turn and you start to move towards them. When God spoke to Adam in the garden, He says, Adam, where are you? He was speaking to a man who was now spiritually blind, a man who was broken, and He was giving him orientation. Adam, do you know where you are? Do you realize how far you are from Me now? You were created to worship Me. You were created to find your fulfillment in My presence. And Adam, you're hiding from Me." And it goes on. And Adam responds, he says, I heard the sound of you walking in the garden and I was afraid. made Adam for himself. There was no fear existing in that relationship. And now, because of the fallenness, Adam's afraid of the One who has provided all that is good to him. I was afraid. God responded and said, who told you that you were naked? And so the blame game goes on and it emerges and Adam blames his wife and the wife blames the serpent. You see, what's happened here again, is that these people who were created for the glory of God, to reflect His glory through a life of worship and obedience. They were created as awestruck worshippers, but now because they've questioned the character of God, they've disobeyed God, they are now brazen idolaters. They are self-worshippers. They're trying to fix themselves through futile religious acts. And here in this moment, God does give and display the consequences of their sin. There are always consequences to sin. God goes through in the following verses in Genesis 3, and He lays out consequences for the serpents. He gives consequences for the man. And He gives consequences for the woman. But what most people typically miss in Genesis 3 is that God reserves the gravest consequence for what's transpired here in the garden for Himself. Look at Genesis 3, verse 15. God is speaking here to the serpent, and He says to the serpent, I will put enmity. That's a fancy word. It means I will make conflict. I will make war between you and the woman. in between your offspring or your seed and her offspring or seed. And he, the offspring or the seed of the woman, will bruise your head, serpents. A head bruise is a death blow. And you shall bruise his heel." Listen. In the moment that sin entered into this good, very good creation that God had made, in the very moment, God was not caught off guard. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a knee-jerk reaction by a God who was surprised. The gospel has always been. God is a gospelling kind of God. He's a good news God. And so, he had a response immediately for the sin that entered into the world. And it's found there. In fact, theologians refer to Genesis 3.15 as the Proto-Evangelium. That means the first mention of the Gospel. It's there. You say, George, how in the world is that a mentioning of the Gospel? It's here. It's found in this. That from this point forward, The rest of the Old Testament is one long answer to a very simple question. Who is the promised seed? Who is the one who can undo what's been done wrong? Who is the one who can fix us? God said, you can't fix yourself. I'm going to send one. I'm going to send one who will destroy the works of the devil God made a promise that He would send a Savior who would crush the head of the serpent. And yes, the serpent would strike his heel. It would look as though all is lost. I don't like snakes. It doesn't matter if it bites me on the finger or the ankle. It's going to hurt. But in the process of the striking, the serpent, his own head would be crushed. And so the rest of the Old Testament is an outworking, an explanation, an answer to that question, this promise that God has made that He would send one who would make war with the devil, who would destroy the devil. Who is this seed? And then you find God giving just a glimpse to the man and the woman at the end of this story. verse 21 of chapter 3. After these pronouncements, the consequences of sin are displayed. You see in verse 21, it says, And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin to clothe them. You say, what's significant about that? There is no word in this book that's insignificant, by the way. This is the living and the active Word of God. And when God made for the woman and the man, covers of skin. Remember their problem. They recognized they were naked and they were ashamed. And so what did they try to do? They went and grabbed fig leaves to try to cover themselves. It is a vain act of religion. They can't undo what's been done wrong. But God takes them and He graciously and mercifully promises, I will send one who is going to undo this. I will send one who will be a rescuer. He will deliver you from your sin. And then God pulls them aside and God takes one of the animals that he had made and God slays the animal. The first instance of physical death and creation is recorded. I believe it is the first instance of death because the interesting thing, Genesis chapter 2, you found God placing Adam over all of the animals and it says that God actually brought the animals to Adam and Adam named them. Adam knew the animals. He cared for the animals. He was a shepherd of the garden. And so, Adam was close to this animal that God pulled aside and slayed. And as the blood poured out there in the garden, and that animal lay there, And in the silence of that moment, Adam knew. Adam understood how awful this exchange he had made was. Because that animal was not the one that sinned. And Adam looks as God takes that skin and covers his nakedness. Adam looks and says, it was my fault. And Eve the same. It was my fault. Him for me. This one died to cover me. And here we get a glimpse and a picture of how God would one day, through the seed of woman, send One who would cover our sin, who would cover our nakedness. Though He who knew no sin became sin for us, in Him we might become the righteousness of God. God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were the sinners, Christ died for us. It was Him for me. And it was Him for you. And if we're ever going to live out the purpose for which God created us, that is the only way we come to God through repentance and faith in the perfect Lamb of God, the substitute sacrifice, Jesus Christ, the seed of woman, who God brought into the world as a rescuer. And the amazing thing, the Scripture says, He came to destroy the works of the devil. And in that last, final moment on the cross when Jesus cried out, Tetelestai, it is finished. What is finished? His suffering on the cross? No. The works of the devil. He had conquered sin in that place. He had conquered death. He had finished it. The wrath of God was poured out upon Jesus, though He was innocent. He willingly laid down His life in the most brilliant act of worship for the Father that there has ever been or ever will be. Jesus worshipped and obeyed the Father. And by virtue of what He did, we now can be reconciled to God. And our nakedness can be covered. Our sin has been dealt with. But it must happen through repentance and faith. And you say, Well, you started by talking about living as a worshipper. What does all this have to do? Well, the only way that you can go from being a brazen idolater, which we all are, left to ourselves, we are brazen idolaters. We may religiously try to undo this sin problem, but the only way that we can be reconciled to God is through the blood of Jesus Christ. then we are again enabled to live as worshippers. So this morning as we gathered together and I listened to the Word read and I listened to you sing and I participated in the prayers, the worship that was going up here this morning was by virtue of the fact that we who have repented and placed our faith in Jesus Christ. We have been reconciled to God. We are enabled now, though brazen idolaters, God has provided a way to make us once again awestruck worshipers of Him. And going back to chapter 1, verse 28, those first words that God spoke to humanity, He said, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. implicitly with worshippers. You see, I'll talk about it tonight, I believe Genesis 1.28. It's the Great Commission. Our purpose, those of us who have been reconciled to God, we are now Christ's ambassadors. We are to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that He's commanded. Same thing. We're to fill the earth with worshipers. And right now, this morning, some of you here may be hiding in the bushes. Right now, this morning, I am confident that in this neighborhood around, there are many who are hiding in the bushes. They're trying to cover their nakedness in ways that will never work. And this church, God has placed this church in this community, in this town, in this time for you to first and foremost live as worshipers and then to fill the earth with worshipers. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the gospel. that gospel that says that Christ died according to the scriptures. He was buried. And on the third day, he raised again according to the scriptures. We praise you that though fallen, though fractured, not reflecting your glory as we were created to do, you have made a way through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ for us to be reconciled to you, for our hearts to be regenerated. for us to live out a life of worship. And Lord, you have also commissioned us to fill the earth with worshipers. And so I pray, Father, for Jefferson Park Baptist Church. I pray for the leaders here that you would help them to lead this church not only to worship here in this place on Sunday mornings, but literally throughout the week in all that they do, Lord, to worship and obey in their working, in their tilling. So that through the week, as people see them living differently, as people see them Reflecting your glory accurately as worshipers, Lord, and the questions are asked, what is different about you that they can tell the story well? Father, I pray that you would use this church to spread your glory through this community and to the ends of the earth. And Lord, if there's anyone here this morning. who is still hiding in the bushes, I pray that they would take the time at the end of this service to come to find me, to find one of the deacons, Lord, to talk with them about that and to come out of hiding and to be reconciled to You. I pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.