Who Are We Supposed to Be? - Genesis - January 11th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

The other day, we were at Oliver's in Cotati, and we were doing a little grocery shopping, and we were standing in the checkout line waiting to pay, and I glanced at the magazines on the rack. I was kind of surprised to see that they're still there.

Like growing up, going to grocery stores, there's always the checkout aisle with the candy and magazines and stuff, but I don't know if anybody buys magazines anymore or not, but there's still a rack with them there, and I noticed one was called

Oprah Daily Magazine. Oprah Daily Magazine. And the headline on the cover was Find Your Purpose. It seemed to be all about finding your purpose as a human being, discovering who you are and what you're meant to be doing.

In the corner, there was a quote from Oprah herself. I always like to call her Orpa, the false prophetess, because truly she is a false prophetess teaching a lot of false things to a lot of women in America.

I know her influence has probably waned a lot in more recent years, but there were a lot of women for a long time, I think, who actually looked to Oprah for advice and wisdom and how to live their lives.

And she built this commercial empire out of it. And there was a quote from her in the corner and said, we have to keep transforming ourselves to become who we ought to be. Let me say that again.

We have to keep transforming ourselves to become who we ought to be. And let me ask you, have you ever tried to transform yourself? And how did that go?

It's the new year, and we are 11 days in to our New Year's resolutions, and how many have already given up on transforming themselves? This whole idea of New Year's resolutions is proof of just how powerless we are to really change ourselves.

Year after year, so many of us try to change one little thing, and we fail within a week. Feel like, I'm gonna read 10 pages a day and be a reader this year, and within like four days, we failed. It's so hard to transform ourselves.

We simply do not have that power, and who decides who you ought to be? Oprah? Who put her in charge?

Do you decide who you ought to be? Well, what if you're wrong? What if you decide incorrectly who you ought to be and you make a mess of your life?

Here's an idea. Maybe we should let God decide who we ought to be. After all, he's the one who made us.

He knows everything about us. He knows everything about everything. He has all wisdom, all knowledge, all power, and he is perfectly good.

Is there anybody more qualified to decide who we ought to be?

I mean, whether it's a human being or a car or a paperclip, if you want to know about a thing's purpose, if you want to know how a thing is supposed to work, you need to ask the person who made it. So that's what I want us to do this morning.

I want us to go to the Word of God and see how and why he created us, so that we can understand who we are and who we should be and what we're supposed to be doing with our lives. We are so lost without this.

Truly, without this, we could be buying Oprah Daily Magazine and flipping through it to see what Oprah says about who we ought to be and how to change ourselves.

Truly, without this, we could be scrolling endlessly through social media to see what the algorithm feeds us about who we ought to be and what we should be doing with our lives.

Without this, we could be buying any number of books, watching any number of documentaries. The world is filled with people who have no idea who they're supposed to be and how to be that way.

But by God's grace, you are here this morning, and you have the words of God to tell you directly, plainly, who you are and what you're supposed to be doing.

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Godʼs Creation Account

We're going to be in Genesis 1 verses 26 through 31, and it's the sixth and final day of creation. And it goes like this. Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us. Genesis 1 verses 26 through 31.

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. 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 God 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 God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

And every beast of the earth, and every bird of the heavens, and everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, and have given every green plant for food. And it was so.

And God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated and join me as I pray for us. Fathers, we come to your word. I pray that you would help us to truly be amazed by it.

These words are divine. They are filled with supernatural power. They are monumental in their truth and significance.

They are life-giving. They are soul-feeding. They are so profoundly important.

So, I pray that you would help us to receive them that way this morning. Pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

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Made in Godʼs Image

Now, there's a lot of really wonderful and important truth in this passage, but there's one particular truth that stands out. God made it stand out for us in inspiring by His Spirit. He inspired Moses to pen these exact words just like this.

And as he did so, he intentionally highlights a certain truth for us repeatedly in a number of different ways.

The big emphasis, the big headline over this whole passage is this, human beings are created in the image of God, are created in the image of God. Verse 26, God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.

And then verse 27, there's a poem where this point is repeated multiple times for emphasis. And in the midst of all this, there's this interesting switch from singular to plural to singular, as God describes his creation of human beings.

Notice in verse 26, how God refers to himself in the plural. Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

And this isn't part of the main emphasis of the passage, but we should talk about it briefly, because it's part of the passage, and because the only reason us being made in the image of God has any significance at all is because of who God is.

We get our value and our worth from being made in the image of God because of how valuable and worthy God is.

I think one of the biggest problems in churches today is a man-centered focus, where a lot of preachers preach focused on themselves or focused on the people in the congregation without giving enough attention simply to God and who he is.

There's man-centered preaching and there's man-centered Bible studies, and there's man-centered worship songs, and we can make everything all about us and our own personal happiness and fulfillment and all of our problems, and we practically forget

about God. People come to church and they hardly even think about God.

And so as we talk about us and how God made us and what our purpose is, I think we need to recognize right here at the start, we are made in the image of God and that makes us valuable, that makes us worthy, it gives us significance because of who

God is. If there's an image of something and that image is valuable, it's valuable because of what it is an image of, right? So let's focus first on God, and there's some very important truth about God right here at the beginning.

This mysterious switch from plural to singular and back to plural, and there's quite a few theories out there. Why does God say, let us make man in our image? Is God talking to like the angels or something?

Some theologians have envisioned like a heavenly court where God is, you know, before all of the angelic beings in heaven and saying, let us make man in our image.

Or is God referring to himself in the like a royal we like a king who says we decree when in reality it's just the king himself making the decree, but he makes it plural to give himself honor and dignity? Or is this about the Trinity?

Ultimately, I think the evidence points strongly to this being a reference to the Trinity. We should notice that immediately after using the plural our, God goes back to referring to himself in the singular.

So how can God be both plural and singular?

By existing in Trinity, by being one God, but three persons, by having one fundamental essence or nature, but three people who share that fundamental divine nature, three people, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Right here in verse 26, God is giving us a little glimpse at the Trinity. So if God exists in Trinity and he creates us in his image, does that mean that we are triune as well? Right, we're made in the image and likeness of God.

And we learn right here, God exists in Trinity. So are we triune? No, we are not.

That's not what the text says. When you make an image or a likeness of something, it resembles that thing, but it's not exactly like it in every way. So when we say that God created us in his image, that doesn't mean that God cloned himself.

We are not identical copies of God, but we are like God in certain ways.

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Unique Human Value

So that's the big question. How exactly are we like God? This is the most fundamental fact of human beings, the most fundamental fact about you.

You are like God. But how? Well, this passage actually spells it out for us.

Verse 26 goes on and says this, 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.

This is the primary way that we, as human beings, are like God. We are created to be in charge, to oversee the world. We are called to organize and cultivate and help everything on the earth to flourish and thrive.

God made us as human beings to be kings and queens over all of creation. That's the headline here.

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Dominion as Stewardship

That's who God created you to be. The text is emphasizing that we are the pinnacle of God's creation. Notice how human beings are the last thing that God creates.

There's five or six ways that this text is subtly shining a spot light on how we as human beings are the pinnacle, the peak of God's creation.

One of those ways, I'm just going to share a few with you, one of them is that we are the final thing that God creates. This is day six of creation, the end of the creation narrative. So we are like the grand finale of God's creation.

It's like the firework show where they save the best for last. That's us in terms of creation. God saved the best for last.

And we are given dominion over the creation. So we are put in charge of creation. Again, emphasizing, we are the pinnacle, we are the peak.

Monkeys were not put in charge of God's creation. The trees are not given authority over creation. We are.

And we are the only part of God's creation that is made in His image. The Book of Genesis describes how God made space, and time, and water, and mountains, and plants, and animals, but none of those things are made in the image of God. Only you.

Only me. We are the only ones. So we can look around at creation, and we can recognize mountains are awesome, trees are awesome.

These things teach us about the power and majesty of God. Flowers and plants are beautiful. They teach us about the beauty of God.

Animals are amazing. Monkeys and lizards and bears and lions and birds and insects. All of these things are amazing and wonderful.

They teach us about the creativity of God. But they're not like God. Only human beings are like God.

And we are like God in that we are created to rule and reign on His behalf over the creation. And there are other ways that we're like God, too.

These other things are not spelled out here in Genesis chapter 1, but I think we can see them in other parts of the Bible. We can also see them by simply observing the world around us.

For example, we see in the scriptures, and we see using observation and reason, that humans are uniquely rational and creative. We are uniquely rational and creative. Like God, we possess the ability to reason and analyze and plan ahead.

We don't act merely on instinct and appetite. We can evaluate. We can make complex decisions.

We can do advanced mathematics. We can write symphonies. We can write poetry.

Nothing else in all creation can do these things. They don't have rational capacities and creative capacities and moral capacities. They're not like us.

There was an experiment put together by scientists at the University of Plymouth in the early 2000s. This experiment featured six monkeys in a room with a computer for an entire month. Maybe you've heard about this before.

If you haven't, it's quite interesting. These experimenters, these scientists, wanted to see what these monkeys would create with a keyboard and a computer, typing away.

They wanted to test out the limits of random chance because surely, given enough time, six monkeys for a whole month, given enough time, they're gonna produce something, right?

And the thinking goes that if they had an infinite amount of time, hypothetically, eventually, they would produce Shakespeare. Eventually, time plus chance will produce everything, every possible option.

I mean, that's the standard non-religious view of the world, isn't it? The standard evolutionary picture of the world.

Given enough time, you take the chaos of the universe, particles colliding, seemingly by chance, eventually, given enough time, that chaos will kind of coalesce and organize and lead to, well, to you and me.

That's the standard non-religious view of the world. And this experiment with the monkeys was a way to kind of test out just a small microcosm of that. So they put the monkeys in the room, the monkeys, six of them, spend a whole month in the room.

And guess what happened? They failed to type a single English word. Not one.

Not even the word a or a, like space bar a, space bar. Not even the word two, just two letters. They failed to type a single English word, let alone produce Shakespeare.

They didn't write a single story or poem. The vast majority of the pages were filled simply with the letter S. That's it.

The experiment proved the opposite of what many people hoped. Time plus chance cannot account for the organized world that we see around us. Only God.

And monkeys are not like us. They're simply not. They are not rational like us.

They are not creative like us. We are unique. We are far more valuable.

Every single one of us. Here's the truth. Maybe you aren't very successful.

Maybe you're not a doctor or a lawyer or somebody famous or significant. Maybe you're not doing a lot with your days. Maybe you're not producing a lot of good for the world around you and making a big impact and changing lives.

Maybe you aren't very rich or beautiful or super smart. But the truth is you are made in the image of God. You resemble the all-powerful creator of the universe.

You have the ability to reason and create and make morally significant decisions. You are like him, therefore, you are valuable and nothing can change that. Some people need to know that because they don't feel valuable.

They don't feel significant. But the truth is that we are. We are not an accidental product of a mindless evolutionary process.

We are not highly evolved animals. We are made in the image of a holy and righteous and creative God. And our sin may obscure that image, but it does not erase the image.

Our sin does obscure that image.

The thing that gives us the most dignity and worth, the only thing that truly gives us dignity and worth, we can obscure that thing in us through our sin, through our choice to disobey God and what he tells us in his word.

But by God's grace, we cannot erase it. The only way to erase the image of God is to erase yourself entirely. And that's not even possible.

So by God's grace, even through our sin, we still possess his image in us. And if you're a Christian, the truth is even more powerful. You are not simply made in the image of God.

The New Testament says that God dwells in you. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? Think about that.

Think about the glorious temple that they created in the Old Testament, Solomon's Temple, and all of the gold, and all of the jewels, and all of the meticulous craftsmanship, the decades that it took to build it.

They built something magnificent like that because God was going to dwell there. And now God dwells in you. This applies to you.

It applies to me. It applies to everybody. Regardless of our height or weight or accomplishments or race or gender, it applies to everybody.

Everybody is valuable because they are made in the image of God. And if that's not true, we don't have any reason to believe that everybody is equally valuable. That's a treasured truth in our world, isn't it?

Whether you're politically on the right or politically on the left, atheist or Christian or whatever, everybody in the Western world today wants to say, yes, all humans are equally valuable.

But if you don't believe that humans are made in the image of God, what reason do you have to believe that all humans are equally valuable? What is it that we all have in common?

What is it that's the same about all of us that gives all of us equal value and worth? If we're just highly evolved animals, what reason is there for treating everybody as equal? There is no reason.

There's no way to make sense of human equality without the truth of Genesis 1. You see, this has profound implications for our lives. As always, CS.

Lewis said it best. He said, there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit. Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

That is who we are. That's who God created us to be, and our passage spells out what he created us to do. Verse 28 says, God blessed them.

And God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it. And we have to ask again, what exactly do those words mean? What exactly does it mean to subdue and have dominion over the earth and everything in it?

Well, in 1967, a very famous scholar named Lynn White Jr. wrote a paper about this. It became one of the most significant and influential papers in the environmental movement today.

And in the paper, White makes the argument that all the problems in the environments, pollution, climate change, all of it, all the problems come from right here in Genesis 1. I mean, look at it in verses 29 through 30.

It says that God made the plants and the trees to provide food for us, like they exist for us. By the way, this was totally unique in the ancient world.

All the other religions in the ancient world made essentially us subservient, like we existed to provide food for the gods.

There was a lot of Ancet mythologies that followed themes like that, where it was like, you know, God gave us creation, and now we go and we work creation in order to provide food for God.

But notice here in Genesis, God gives us creation to provide food for us. It elevates us in a way that other mythologies simply do not. And it elevates us in a way that Lynne White Jr.

and others have thought is very inappropriate. Like all the plants and animals, like they all exist for us. And Genesis teaches that humans are separate from the plants and animals.

The creation account makes us very unique, very different in our own place. It teaches that humans are superior to the plants and animals. We're made in the image of God, and they are not.

And so White argues that all of this creates an attitude that has led people to ravage and destroy and pollute the earth. After all, God gave us to, you know, to subdue the earth, to have dominion over it.

And we're separate from the earth and we're different than the plants and animals and we're better than the plants and animals. So let's trash the place. That's what White argued.

You see, the problem is the Bible. Christians are the ones at fault. And that has become a bedrock belief of the environmental movement ever since.

I remember when I was doing graduate work at San Diego State, one of my friends there was an undergraduate.

And he's the one who originally told me about this paper, because he had gone to his environmental ethics class, and he was a Christian, and he goes to his environmental ethics class one day, and they assign this paper, and he reads it, and he's

like, what is this guy talking about? Christians are the ones responsible for destroying the earth. The book of Genesis is the one at fault.

And he goes to class, and sure enough, that's what the professor teaches, and that's what all those students come to believe. This is a fundamental belief of many people outside of the church today.

This past Thanksgiving, my cousin had some cousins over from her dad's side, so not my cousins, but her cousins on the other side of the family, and all of them are non-Christians, and she's a Christian, and she ended up getting into some pretty

significant conversations with them, and all of these young women expressed their conviction that Christians are just bad. Christians are just awful, in a whole bunch of different ways, but I'm sure they would include this.

Christians, among other things, are responsible for all the pollution, and the climate change, and all the trashing of the earth. That's what White argued, and that's what so many people today believe. But here's the problem.

Lynn White did not know how to read the book of Genesis. That's not what the text is saying. When God says, take dominion, subdue the earth, does he mean we should just take it and run with it and trash it?

No, of course not. Here's what the text is actually saying. It's saying that God, the glorious creator of the heavens and the earth, he made the world and he made it good, and then he gives us the keys to the kingdom.

He gives us the honor of taking care of his good creation on his behalf. For humans to have dominion over the earth means that God gives us the honor of taking care of his good creation on his behalf.

If a great and glorious king gives you a wonderful gift like that, are you gonna abuse it and trash it? No, of course not. You're gonna take care of it.

You're gonna carefully follow his instructions for how to use it. That's what it means to have dominion. It's almost like a CEO putting you in charge of the most important department in the company.

Imagine in your workplace, the boss, the big boss comes and says, I want you to take over this department.

It's the department that he built, the one that he used to run, the most important department in the company, and he's giving you the honor of running it now that he's the CEO. So are you going to run it like a tyrant?

Are you going to abuse your authority? Are you going to destroy the department because you're the one in charge? No, of course not.

It's an honor to have that position. And it's an honor for us as human beings to take care of God's good creation. That's what it means to have dominion.

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Be Fruitful Multiply

So God blesses us, and He commands us to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. Traditionally, historically, this is one of the reasons that Christians have children. We're commanded to be fruitful and multiply.

It's a fundamental part of who we are and what God calls us to do. But notice first how He says, And God blessed them. And God blessed them.

And the God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. The being fruitful and multiplying part is the content of the blessing from God. So we could say that God blesses us with the ability to have kids.

God blesses us when we have kids. The Bible says that children are a reward from God.

This is a fundamental part of the purpose of human beings, to have kids and to teach them to know God and love God so that we can fill the world with people who cultivate and create and build and bless everything around them. That's the vision.

That's the vision for us as Christians to fill the world with people who cultivate and create and build and bless everything around them. That's what God made us to do.

The Bible talks about how you can know a righteous man by the way that he treats his animals.

It's an interesting thing, and it comes up multiple times in the scriptures, and the big picture truth is that righteous people, people who are following God and doing what God wants them to do, they are a blessing to everything around them.

To everything, not just their kids, even their dog, even their house plants, even the house itself is blessed by their presence.

We are called to create and cultivate and make beautiful things, whether you have kids or not, you can participate in this. So if you don't have kids or if you can't have kids, or if your kids are all grown up, is there anything left for you to do?

Of course there is. The Bible is teaching us that this, this being fruitful and multiplying, is a fundamental part of human existence, but it's not the only part of human existence.

The overall impression we get from the book of Genesis is that the world is a giant playground, a giant, magnificent playground for humans to fill and enjoy and cultivate.

Whatever leads to human flourishing, whatever leads to flourishing of plants and animals, whatever leads to the creation being used for the purpose that God created it for, we are blessed and we are living within the will of God when we contribute to

those things, whether it's keeping a garden or building a company or building a house or starting a family or cooking or making art. We are called to contribute to the flourishing of human beings and all of God's good creation.

We are called to honor God's creation. We are called to do everything for the glory of God. We honor God by making positive contributions to his creation.

We honor God by having kids and raising them to know the Lord. Again, having kids isn't the only thing, but it's one of the fundamental, ultimate things that God calls us to do as human beings.

So it's not surprising that as the world becomes more secular and more anti-God, the world becomes more anti-children.

I've noticed, I think I might have shared this before, but I've noticed the more secular the place, the less interested they are in kids. So, and I can see this like traveling to certain places with my family.

I go with the dog and with the kids usually, and the more secular the place is, the more interested they are in the dog, and the less interested they are in the kids.

The less secular the place, it's always like, oh, you have such a beautiful family, look at those girls, they're so cute and so on. And then the more secular the place, they don't say anything about the kids.

The more secular the person, sometimes you can tell how anti-God a person is just by the way they look. Though they inevitably look right past the kids straight to the dog, and they're only interested in the dog.

That's not surprising that the more the world drifts from God, the less interested they are in kids over the past 50 years, we have seen a dramatic decline in the number of kids that people are having. Isn't that kind of crazy?

Like a dramatic, like the projected population of the world, when you look at the charts, goes like this, goes straight off a cliff into the abyss.

In order for a society to continue to exist, in order for an economy to continue to function, each couple must have, at least on average, 2.1 kids. It's kind of common sense, right? They have to at least replace themselves.

But Americans today are only having 1.6 kids on average. That's a 31% gap. A 31% deficit.

We in America are operating, in terms of our population, at a 31% deficit. In Europe, they're averaging 1.2 kids. And in South Korea, they're now below 0.7 kids.

That's a 70% deficit. So here's the situation. Because people are not doing what God created us to do, the Western world is rapidly collapsing.

We say that again. Because we humans are not being fruitful and multiplying, the Western world is rapidly collapsing. People do not view kids as a blessing.

They view them as a burden. People think that having kids, it's going to ruin their careers. And what's more important than a successful career?

They think it's gonna make it harder to travel and indulge in all the selfish things they wanna indulge in. And worst of all, kids are expensive. They cost a lot of money, and there's nothing that people love more than money.

I know it's harsh, but it's true. Kids cost a lot of money, and people really, really love money. So in rebellion against God, in opposition to all wisdom and common sense, as a result of their idolatry, people are not having kids.

And if they accidentally get pregnant, they kill their kids before they can be born. Just to make sure their careers are not affected. Just to make sure their financial plans are not affected.

Even the mainstream media is sounding the alarm about this. Not about abortion, of course. The mainstream media loves abortion.

Because the enemy loves abortion. But some people in the mainstream media are sounding the alarm about not having enough children in general, and how this is gonna lead to the collapse of Western civilization.

This is what happens when we don't listen to God. This is what happens when we try to live without regard for who God created us to be. The collapse of Western civilization.

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Male Female Creation

And it's just like the rebellion against God's good design for men and women. Notice in verse 27, he created them male and female. So where does gender come from?

This idea that there are two genders, that women and men are equal but different, and they have different roles. What kind of evil person made up that garbage and forced it upon society? It comes from the Book of Genesis.

You see, gender is not a cultural convention. It is a divine creation. It is at the very core of who we are as human beings.

Genesis 1 conveys maybe 12 facts in total about human beings. Think about this. You read through this passage, and it's short but sweet, right?

This is the creation of man. And it's short but sweet, and we learn maybe 12 things in total about human beings, and the fact that God created us male and female is among them. That's how fundamental that fact is.

That's how core that is to our identity. If we deny that fact, it will destroy us.

When humans deny God, when humans deny the truth about God and how he made the world, when humans rebel and refuse to live in accordance to God's design for us, the results is men acting like women and women acting like men, and men thinking they can

become women. The result is the idolatry of creation. It's a psychotic environmentalism. It is loving animals more than people.

It is the denial of man's unique place in the world. Outside of the church in the world today, everybody wants to believe that we are no better than the plants and animals.

Going back to that paper by Lynn White, think about this mentality for a second. Why do people want us to believe that we're no better than the plants and animals? We're no different from the plants and animals.

Well, Lynn White says it's because of that belief that we've destroyed the plants and animals. He's wrong, but that's his theory, right?

But if you think about it, why do people want to deny our humanity and deny our uniqueness and deny the value, the ultimate value of human beings? Why do people want to deny that we are the pinnacle of all creation? Because they want to deny God.

People deny humanity. People denigrate humanity because they want to denigrate the ones or the one in whose image we are made. To be anti-human is to be anti-God because we are made in the image of God.

Let me say it again. To be anti-human, to lower the view of humans, to denigrate humans is to denigrate God because we are made in the image of God.

The result of all these things, as I said before and I'll say again, the result of all these things is quickly becoming the destruction of civilization. The denial of Genesis 1 is directly responsible for destroying civilization.

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Hope for Creation

We need help. In verse 31, it says that God saw everything he had made and behold, it was very good. When you look at the world today, it's hard to believe that it's very good.

We have done a lot of damage, but Jesus came to save the world. God made a very good world.

We've done a lot of damage to that very good world, but Jesus came to save the world, not just to save our souls, not just to redeem individual people, but Jesus came to redeem all of creation.

That's the one thing I keep coming back to as we go through the Book of Genesis. I mean, the Book of Genesis, these first few chapters, this is the blueprint for God's creation.

And when you look at the world today, it's like we're standing in a construction zone and everything is a mess. Have you ever been to a house that's, you know, 20% built?

You go into the construction zone and there's piles of trash everywhere, scrap wood all over the place, half-finished walls. That's like the world today.

Then you read Genesis 1, and it's like going back to the drawings, to the blueprint, and it's hard to believe that what you're seeing has anything to do with the original design. But it does, because God doesn't make mistakes. God's plans never fail.

His promises always come true. So reading Genesis 1 should ultimately lead us back to Jesus and the hope that we have in him. He is coming again, not just to save our souls, but to restore all of creation.

So let me leave you with Romans 8, verses 19 through 24. The apostle Paul writes about this hope. He writes, The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope, we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope.

For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. We wait for Jesus, with patience, to save us and not only us, but all of creation.