The sermon discusses the battle for the inerrancy of Scripture in the 1970s and the importance of believing in the inspired, inerrant Word of God. The speaker also emphasizes the need to work on the supremacy of God's Word in our lives. The sermon explores the implications of God being the creator of the world and the need for individuals to submit themselves to His authority. It highlights the concept of God's sovereignty and the blessing of living in fellowship with Him. Overall, the sermon emphasizes the importance of living our lives according to God's laws and bringing glory to Him.

Right, dear brothers and sisters, please open with me your Bibles in the first verse. And I'm not going to read it, but I want you to have it open, because I'm going to ask anyone who knows what the first verse in the Bible is to scream it out for me. What does the first verse in the Bible say? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It starts with in the beginning, God created.

So That's the text for today. We're not going to do a lot of reading, but I want us to have this verse firmly established in our hearts and minds as we look at the topic that we will be discussing today, and that is that our Lord Jesus Christ, our God the Father and our God the Holy Spirit, He created us and therefore this world is His and everything in it. Now I don't know how much you know about recent church history, when I say recent I'm referring to the 1970s. In the 1970s, the great battle among Christians in the world was the battle for the inerrancy of Scripture. And it gave rise to what is called the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy.

They signed the document in October 1978. And it was important because at that point in church history, as it were, liberal theologians who were at the universities and at seminaries were starting to attack the very nature of the Word of God. They said that the Word of God is full of errors, that the Word of God was written by men who had faults within them and therefore the inspiration of God's Word was in doubt. And we can see even still today the results of this liberal ideas on the word of God. I remember in South Africa we had a very well-known professor who was always called upon, you know, how the media always find the one who they shouldn't find to defend that which he's not defending.

It was interesting and when we lived in England as well, every time they wanted someone to speak about religious things, they asked Richard Dawkins. It's funny how the world always go to their disciples to explain it. But anyway, in South Africa as well, we had a professor Spannenberg and everyone would always go to him to ask him about the word of God and theology and this man did not believe in the resurrection of Christ. He did not believe in the virgin birth of Christ. He did not believe in the inspiration of God's Word, and yet he is teaching theology lessons to students who would then one day go into churches and be pastors.

So that was obviously of significant importance back then and even today for us to realize that what you have in your hand right now is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. But I also want to say that I believe with my whole heart we have a different battle on our hands for this generation. I think the battle of inerrancy at least within conservative evangelical churches has been settled, but I do think we still need to work on the supremacy of God's Word in our lives. The fact that above everything else, above every law, above every ideology, above every philosophy, above every authority, stands God's Word as supreme over all things. We struggle with that.

I hope that you can say with me that you joyfully want to submit to the supreme authority, the absolute authority of God over your life. Because that is what we learn here in Genesis chapter one. And there are many reasons why you should be willing to submit yourself to the authority of God. And a few of them is what we will be focusing on this morning. First of all that God is creator.

Secondly that God is the proprietor or the ruler over his creation. He didn't just create and then put someone else in charge. He's still ruler and Lord over his creation. And then God is the one to whom we therefore, as those who were created in his image, that we need to give an account to him. So that's why we started Genesis 1 verse 1.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And when you look at this verse, it introduces us to the foundations on which all other truths are built upon. You cannot think anything else if you don't go back to Genesis chapter one, verse one. Nothing in this world makes sense unless you go back to chapter one of Genesis. It addresses, at least in the verse, three simple facts, and by answering these three questions we will see what they are.

We can ask the question when, we can ask the question who, and we can ask the question what. The answer to the question when is when did the world come into existence. Our texts tell us when, in the beginning. Secondly, who. The answer to the who question is who is responsible for the world's existence and the answer is God.

And then what? What did God create? Well, He created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. So this verse unequivocally states that God who is eternal, He created the heavens and the earth at a very specific moment that was the beginning of time, and from that moment on the world exists under his rule and care. And when we read on in Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two, we learn that this creation is beautiful, this creation is orderly, This creation is done in order to glorify the creator.

And then we also need to go on and we need to deduce from verse one of Genesis what does it now mean to us. If God is the creator and he created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, we cannot just read that verse and say, well that's wonderful, we all now know how the Bible starts, but we need to ask ourselves, well What is the implication of the fact that God created the heavens and the earth? So firstly it is, I think, one of the implications is that God transcends the created world. He stands above it. He's not part of it.

God was present before creation. He is the eternal God who creates. He's an eternal being. He's not like us. He is self-existent.

We are not. We don't exist on our own. We exist by God holding things together, by creating us. God is not created. God is all-powerful.

We could see that in creation. He just speaks and the world becomes what it is. He's the source of everything that exists. Nothing exists without God creating it. There's like my favorite saying of Mr.

R.C. Sproul. You remember when he said, there's not one maverick molecule in this universe. Nothing is out of place. It cannot be out of place because someone has to hold it all together.

We also learn that God is one being and yet three persons. We learn that in the first chapters of Genesis. And all three persons of the Trinity as the Spirit hovers over the expanse and God says let us create man in his image and then later in the gospels we see that Jesus Christ is the very means and agent through which God creates the world. We know that God is a personal God. He's not just a force that worked upon this universe that didn't exist and now exists.

How foolish the whole idea of that notion. But secondly, we deduce from this verse is that if God created this world, then by default this world must belong to him. It is his world. And I love how everything that we've done in this worship service so far, right from the beginning at the call of worship, we acknowledge that fact that this world belongs to God. There can be no argument over the ownership of the universe.

If God created it, it is His world. He owns it, He sustains it, He loves it, and He rules over it. In the Bible's expression of the Trinity or the triune God, we see that it is the triune God who creates and the means and the purpose of creation is closely linked to the very nature of God, Him being three persons. The world is created by Him, He's the agent, and the world is created for Him, He's the purpose. And those dear brothers and sisters, He so beautifully described for us in the New Testament.

If you want to turn to John chapter 1 verse 1 to 3, Have you heard that lately? For about three and a half years you've heard that. In the beginning was the Word. When? In the beginning.

It's a close link to Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. Obviously a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 2 says, he was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. The whole universe exists because God created and the agent of creation was his son Jesus Christ.

Now turn to Hebrews chapter one. It's good that all these references are in the first chapters of these books. In Hebrews chapter 1, from verse 2 we read, but in these last days, He, that's God, has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things. In other words, the purpose of all things is for him to inherit it. Through whom he created the world.

He's the agent. He's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. He sustains his word, his world. And then if you want to turn to Colossians chapter one, another first chapter, verse 16. Colossians chapter one verse 16, We read, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord of Glory, the King of Glory, is the agent through which the triune God created and he is the purpose for which God created. That should probably be disappointing to some of us who think this whole world is about me. It's not. You are there for the glory of Christ. So the universe exists through him and for him, and therefore he's not only the creator but everything in this world, its laws, its storyline, its movements, everything about this world finds its meaning in the Lord Jesus Christ including your life.

This then leads us to the next conclusion on the matter and that is that only God can justly and rightfully prescribe then how we should live. If He's the Creator, If this world belongs to him, if it is for his purpose, then he is the only one that has the right to say this is how you should live your life. This should not be disputed among Christians. God who created the world has the sole right to set forth by which laws the created matter and beings that he created must abide by. Now you and I who might have studied science in school, we know that science is just the exploration of things that exists in the universe that God created.

And in science if you study physics you might remember in physics class how many formulas you needed to learn. You remember those? I don't remember any of them. I know there were many And all those formulas were formulas that you can replicate because those are laws that exist in nature. Whose laws?

God's laws. It is God who puts the universe together. It is God who decided gravity. I remember this conversation with my little sister when she was little and I was little. And I remember having this conversation, she said, I wonder what will happen if the earth will turn a little bit faster.

You don't just see people, you know, the outsides and those in the middle will just go, you know. Well, it doesn't happen. Why not? Because this world is ruled and governed by God's laws so that you can have just enough oxygen to breathe this morning, just enough gravity for us not to be floating up in the air, God set the rules and the laws that governs his wonderful creation. Let me quote to you here a man called John Brown.

His book is called Of God the Author, Object and the End of All Religion. He says as he, God is infinitely more perfect than they, speaking of his creation, and hath brought them into existence, he has an undoubted right and all sufficient fitness to uphold and to govern it. In other words, if God created it, he has the right to tell us how this world should function. So right off the bat then, if you this morning accept the supremacy of God's Word over His creation, then you must accept the fact that it is His rules and his laws that are over you. Amen?

If we believe that God is the creator of the world and then deduce from that, that this world belongs to him, then every creature must be governed by his laws. And this in turn means that every individual man and every individual woman, every institution that exists in this universe, every church that exists in this universe, Every government that exists in this world, every family that exists must joyfully submit themselves and align themselves to God's revealed will. If you can remember that, I know it's a mouthful, that'll be it. If God created us then all of us need to submit ourselves to His Lordship and His Kingship. In that sense man does not really have untethered freedom, do we?

We cannot just go around and do whatever we think we want to do. We cannot just go and choose our own destiny. Why? Because the destiny of this world has already been set in the person of Jesus Christ. The purpose of life is Him, His glory.

We cannot go around and make our own moral laws. We cannot set our moral values for ourselves. And every time we do that we will be we will be violating God's created order and we will be held accountable by God so the only true freedom that we as human beings have is to live our lives with the secure boundaries of God's blessings in his world with his laws. We are used to that kind of living. If you are a family, within your family there are rules, aren't there?

Mom and dad will tell the little kids when they should go to bed. I know they like breaking the rules, but that doesn't mean the rules don't exist. We would have special times when mum have prepared the meal that we expect the family to be at the table to eat together. There are rules, there are boundaries that we set. When your children grow older, we say to them, well, you can go out and be with your friends.

But at a certain time, I want you back home, or at least I want a phone call saying that, dad, sorry, I'm a little bit late. Why? It is because there is joy and there is freedom within the boundaries. Step outside of the boundaries and you have lost the wonderful freedoms that existed with the blessings associated with them. And what happens with those who live outside the boundaries?

Well, they find themselves in a spot of bother. There is disunity. There is now conflict. There is distrust. And that's exactly what happens to us if we don't live within the boundaries of God's creation.

We live in a world with boundaries and within those boundaries we find joy and we find satisfaction and we find the blessings that the Lord allows us to have. So any expression therefore of man's freedom outside of God's parameters, especially the freedoms that we express in our own definitions of what we believe therefore now is right, what we have now decided is wrong, what we have defined as good and what is evil, what to believe, what to reject, cannot at any point contradict that which God has revealed as what is good, what is evil, what is right, what is wrong, what it is for us to believe and what it is for us to believe and what it is for us to reject. You get that? God sets his world in place and we need to play by his rules. This is his world created for his purpose.

He's the proprietor. We need to obey. As a matter of fact, it was this very desire of man to reject God's lordship over him that got us into the place where we are sinners. In Genesis chapter three verse one, we remember well how the serpent who was more crafty than all of the other beasts in the field came to Eve and he said what to her? Did God actually say?

In other words, he is challenging her to change her affections that was firmly said on the God who created her, to put her affections away from him and to trust first of all the serpent, but also to trust her own heart. You shall not die. Just play the game according to your rules. Forget about God who created the world. Do what you want to do.

And in listening to Satan, that's how sin entered the world. Man rejected God. Man rejected God's Lordship, his rule over them. And then they willfully disobeyed the simple commandment, do not eat from the tree in the middle of the garden. They chose to define for themselves what is good of evil.

That's why they went to that tree. So that now man can decide, I want to know what is good and evil. I want to define how I want to live my life. I don't trust God who created me anymore. I want to be king of the castle.

So they rejected God's rule and they ended up in rebellion against God who created them. Now the right way for us to live then as Christians is to live our lives as created beings under the lordship of God our creator. And I want you maybe during this week, read as much as you can about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. He's Lord over your life. He redeemed you.

Well, first of all, He created you. You belong to Him anyway. But He redeemed you in a very special way so that you and I can look at Him and say, you are my Lord. I belong to you completely. All my faculties are yours.

Therefore, it means I am acknowledging God as my Lord. It means I am willing to submit myself in all things to him. Did you hear that, all things? It means you young people who are looking for a spouse and you get maybe frustrated or or impatient and and you think well I can't find anyone in the Christian Church so maybe I must just go out into the world and find someone who kind of likes me and I'll bind myself to them while I am bound to the Lord Jesus Christ. No, You trust in the Lord who is your Lord, who cares for you, who sustains you.

He's the one that will hear your prayers. Do not compromise. Do not do things that are contradictory to his commands in your life. Now to drill a little bit deeper into this concept, we need to embrace another word that is so often used among us as Christians, and that's the word sovereign. To be sovereign means to possess supreme, unlimited, unrivaled power, and the freedom to act upon that power without restrictions or outside limitations.

It means if you say someone is sovereign, it means that that person literally can do whatever he can and wants and he has the power to do so. That's what sovereignty, true sovereignty, means. Now we have a king right now and we call him the sovereign. Now Even King Charles has limitations on his rule. That's why they have a parliament, is to make sure that Charles don't do things that disagrees with parliament.

His sovereignty is not true sovereignty, he's in check. But God is sovereign over his creation. He is Lord over all. He is all powerful. He can do whatever he wants to do and he has the power to do it.

Now usually when we Look at the word sovereign and sovereignty. It can be a terribly bad thing if it's in the hands of man. Where do all the tyrants come from? It's those who ascribe to themselves sovereignty. They act with the power that they have and they destroy lives.

So maybe that's part of the reason why so many Christians don't like the word sovereignty, even if it's describing God. They're afraid that if God is sovereign, that God will do us harm. That God will use his power to hurt us. Well, if you are one of those who think like that, let me comfort you this morning, that is not God. God's sovereignty is linked with his character, which is full of love, full of grace, full of mercy.

We don't have a tyrant God. We often use this word sovereign then as it relates to our salvation and rightly so. God has the power, He's got the will to save sinners. And if you are here this morning as a saved sinner, you are saved because of God's sovereign action upon your life, nothing else. His power and his authority to save sinners wasn't linked to the permission that you gave him.

He saved you very often despite yourself, like the apostle Paul on his way, before he was an apostle, on his way to Damascus. God acts sovereignly on the matter of salvation, but I think we often miss the fact that it's not only in salvation that God acts as the sovereign. He acts as the sovereign God over all of his creation. Everything that happens in this world, everything that you read in the history books, everything that happens in your small little individual life has been decreed and is being exercised according to the sovereign will and power of God. Let me read to you again what Mr.

John Brown says. He says, God's sovereign Lordship embodies his authority. What the Lord commands his creatures therefore must do. Therefore we have the 10 commandments, the Decalogue, the covenant which Moses delivers to Israel after God sovereignly redeemed them from Egypt. And God begins the 10 commandments by identifying himself as I am the Lord your God.

He's Lord. He goes on and he says this now therefore means and he has three things here. First of all, that we should not waver in our obedience to Him. If God is sovereign and He has the right over His creation, do not waver in obedience. Pursue obedience.

Ask yourself, how can I obey God in this situation? How can I obey God in my family? How can I obey God in this situation? How can I obey God in my family? How can I obey God in my choice of a new job that I'm pursuing?

How can I obey God within the church family? Secondly, His Lordship transcends all other loyalties. I like the word loyalty, because loyalties tell us something about where our hearts are. It speaks about our affections. If your loyalty is to the world, you would listen to the commandments of the world over the commandments of the Lord.

But if your loyalties are with Christ, you would listen to him. You would obey him. Not out of a slavish, you know, oh yeah, here I go again, you know, oh life is so tough and God is a horrible tyrant. No, you know him, you know his love, you know his grace, and you joyfully come to him and you say, my loyalty is with my savior, Jesus Christ. And then thirdly, that this authority over us exists in all areas of human life, not just in the areas that are arbitrarily called religious or sacred.

Because we often think that God is only sovereign over the things that relate to religion, only sovereign over the things that relate to religion. Only sovereign over the things that relate to my faith and my walk with God. Do you know that the Lord is sovereign in bringing you from your home in the car in the wet rain to this place here this morning to worship Him? It is His power that sustained you. Is He who woke you up?

Is He who gave you air to breathe? Nothing in this universe exists or can function without God who created it, who owns it, and who has the sovereign power to exercise his will over it, including everything that happens in your own life. Now, I can point all of these things out to you, as I have to myself, But at the end, the word of God must confront you personally. You need to take Genesis chapter one, verse one, and I want to ask you a couple of questions, only two questions that I want you to answer personally here this morning, to your own heart. First is, it's very simple, do you believe Genesis 1 verse 1?

Do you believe that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth? And be careful how you answer, Because for some of you, that answer is already mixed with the idea that God used the Big Bang to bring the world into existence, so therefore we can connect our scientific understanding with the words of God. Some of you might say that I do believe that God created the heavens and the earth, but you don't truly believe that he now owns it. The second question is, if this is God's world, if God created it, so in other words, you believe in Genesis one, verse one, and if you are in this world that he created, then the next question is how must we then live? Well, the answer to the first question will obviously dictate how you respond to the second question.

If you do not believe that God created the heavens and the earth, then you will have absolutely no reason to live according to God's decrees and laws. You and I can understand atheists. Those who reject God, we can understand why they live their lives the way they do. If you don't believe in God, then God is not your moral standard. So it is perfectly understandable that man will continue in his path of rejecting God, making laws for himself, applying those laws, those new morals that we have suddenly found because we have taken God out of the picture.

He's not our Lord, he's not our creator. We live as we want and as we please. If you don't believe in Genesis chapter one, verse one, I can completely fully understand how you can end up there. It doesn't take you off the hook though. Not believing that God created the heavens and the earth doesn't make God really disappear.

You might have parked him on this side and live your life with your back against him, but there will be a day of reckoning. But say you do profess to be a believer. Say you actually do believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Is this truth actually directing your life? So now I'm speaking not to the atheists who reject this, I'm speaking to those who say, I actually do believe in Genesis one verse one.

Could it be then that many professing Christians already fail in their living at the very first verse of the Bible. I'm not talking about those who utterly reject God, but I'm speaking of professing Christians who kind of believe this. Their hearts resonate with this truth, but they live as if God has no rights over them. They still live just like the atheist. They still have other authorities that they would much rather listen to than the Lord Jesus Christ.

They do not make the connection between the fact that if this world is created by God, I am in it as one of those who've been created, then I have no choice but to look at him and say, I willfully, joyfully submit my life to you, my Lord, my God, my creator. You see, you and I, we sometimes struggle to plant this banner in our lives. Because as much as you and I want to be discipled by God's word and his Holy Spirit, you and I are also discipled by this world. Don't think the world has got nothing on you. Every time you switch on the radio, or you read an article, or you go to school, or you go to work, you are being confronted with the things of this world, many of them in direct contrast to the will of God.

And somehow we try to navigate our lives through this and we say, well, I still need to live in this world. I still have to be able to function at my work. We struggle to plant the banner saying that we have one God and one Lord and him alone I will obey. Colossians chapter two verse eight, the apostle Paul warns the Christians and he says to them, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy or empty the seed according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ. In other words, we have opposing forces playing on our lives.

What is trying to drag you that way, let's call it the way of Adam and Eve, a way rejecting the Lordship of Christ, telling you that bow down before Baal, bow down before Haman, bow down before this God, Bow down before this philosophy. And the other one is simply saying in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, it's mine. Bow before me. They are confronted with the current gender issues. You're being discipled.

You are being confronted with the pronoun dictatorship, the LGBTQ XYZ alphabet. It is pure sexual perversion. You are confronted constantly with the notion of abortion being right and good and a right for women. You are constantly being confronted with the redefining of what marriage is. You are being constantly told what social justice should look like.

And a thousand other ways that this world wants you to order your life according to their law, their design, which is in contrast to God's law and God's design. If you live your life there, you will have no anchor to keep you safe. You will be drifting down the rapids to fall over the waterfall and down at the bottom of that waterfall are rocks that will crush you and destroy you. It will shatter you. Because you need to play this game according to God's rules.

It's his world. They are carried away by the currents of the time with this insistence upon them to live their lives contrary to God's law and because they do not have Genesis one verse one as a banner in their life and I'm talking to us as Christians it has to be the banner of your life. It must be planted in your hearts. If you don't, you will be like snow white and you bite into that apple. It's poisonous, just as Adam and Eve bit into some fruit.

So let me call on you this morning to start here, take Genesis one, verse one, memorize it. I know most of you know it, but then you put yourself under the implications of this verse. God is your creator, he's your proprietor, he's your sovereign God, and he's the one who will take to whom you would need to give an account. And when you firmly put that in the bank, the bank of your heart, then the next question is easy to answer. And by the way, the answer as you shall see is such a blessing.

Because do you now, as someone who take Genesis chapter one verse one, knowing that God is the creator, I need to obey him, Do you find it easy? Or let me ask the other question. Do you find it even possible? Psalm 24, I will read the Psalm and just make a few comments you might wanna turn there. Psalm 24 starts with this verse, a Psalm of David, the earth is the Lord's, amen.

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, everything in it, the world and those who dwell within them. David is writing down the psalm and he's saying, I acknowledge the fact that this world belongs to God and I'm in it. Verse two he goes on and he says, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers, Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? In other words, who is the man or the woman who can live his life in this world that I have created and see in this world that the Lord God is enthroned on high, on a hill, holy.

How can I get from this place where I struggle? How can I get to him? How can I be in his presence? Associated with David's knowledge of God being the creator comes his understanding that man is different from God. God is holy, we are not.

And the very nature of God is the revelation of his holiness, his differentness. And there's this boundary between us or this fence that here I am in this world that God created me, I love Genesis one verse one. I want to obey him and yet I find myself always falling short. Does that resonate to your heart? This God who is clothed in splendor and majesty, who is thrice holy, so utterly different and highly exalted above his creation, he then comes and he says to us, come to me.

But who can come? Verse four, he who has clean hands and a pure heart. You have clean hands and pure heart? Be slow to answer. You lift up your soul to some of these false things that are influencing your lives right now?

Who does not swear deceitfully? He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of our salvation. After Adam's sin, we all become unclean, we're all impure. This world has so made us so dirty that we cannot enter the presence of God who is holy. We are in complete rebellion against God.

Even when we want to be with him, we can't. But we have Genesis one verse one, believers, don't we? And the same God of Genesis one, who created the heavens and the earth, reveals to us that after we have rejected him, he made a plan, he sent his son, Jesus Christ. And he therefore is now described for us, Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the Lord God of Jacob. And then verse seven, lift up your heads, oh gates.

There's someone who will enter into the presence of God who is holy on the hill. Oh ancient doors, open up, Why? So that the king of glory may go in. Who is this king of glory? It's the Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, oh gates, and lift them up, oh ancient doors, that the King of glory may go in. Who's the King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he's the King of glory. Who's the King of glory? Jesus Christ.

And you know what? As Jesus is the man who can finally live properly in humble obedience to the Father, he lives his life and then dies on the cross, is raised from the dead, and we know that as he is raised from the dead, he takes you and me with him into the most holy of holies, there where the high priest fearfully entered once a year, but he takes us in with a curtain torn forever so that you and I can be here this morning worshiping the Lord, the God who is holy, holy, holy. You're in his presence. And at the end, you and I will try to live our lives in accordance to God's law. We will fail, but we do not fail like those without hope.

We have the King of Glory on our side. And that's where the blessing is for us as believers. I don't only live my life trying to obey a God who is holy. I live my life knowing that I will never be able to obey him completely, but someone did. He vicariously obeyed the Father for me.

In him I'm free. In him I'm here to enjoy the blessings of living under the Lordship of God who created me. So this is the blessing to you and me. In Christ, I can be in sweet fellowship with God who created me. This is huge.

Sound like Donald Trump. This is huge. Brothers and sisters, this series, therefore, is aimed at those who already professed to know Christ. And now they ask themselves, but how should I, saved by grace, by sins forgiven, how can I, united with Christ Jesus, how can I now live my life, knowing that I am his creation, knowing that it's possible for me, in Christ Jesus, to live a holy, godly life, how can I now do it? What must I do?

Let me sum it up for you and with this I close. Every one of us here this morning, oh, our existence, And I want you to say amen, because you need to acknowledge this. Secondly, every one of us here this morning need to live our lives according to God's laws. Amen. We all find ourselves trying to navigate our lives in this world, God's world, but our eyes and our ears and our minds and our hearts are constantly bombarded with contradicting ideas.

This is the reality. And God tells us about life in the womb. The world tells us how to destroy the life in the womb. God sets out for us what marriage should be. The world tells you that it's outdated, that it's restricted, that it's unnecessary, or it's even redefining the whole concept of what marriage is.

God says something about sex, the world says no, God's got this wrong. God creates us male and female, image bearers of the living God. The world says, God got this wrong. They are a multitude of genders, and we will decide what they are. God describes for us how we should raise our children.

The world tells us no God has got this wrong. He doesn't know anything about raising kids. We can go on and on and name many of these clear examples where we are confronted with God's view and man's view. And you and I, if you believe in Genesis 1 verse one, have this one decision to make. If I believe this, I need to organize my life to bring glory to the one who created me as Lord.

So go back to Genesis one, verse one, and ask yourself maybe in the quiet time as you come before the Lord. Do I actually believe it? In the beginning, God created Esther, Kali, Joshua. Put your name in the blank. He created you for his glory.

And your glory is found in the purpose for which God created everything that is the Lord Jesus Christ so that Esther and Joshua and whoever you are and your life will be complete in Christ Jesus.