Genesis 1-3 | Embedding the Story
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1–2 ESV
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and to the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22–24 ESV
Introduction
How many of you know what I mean when I talk about an “easter egg” from a movie? Thanks to Marvel and its post-credit scenes, almost every moviegoer is more aware of this idea. An easter egg in movies is an intentional, hidden message, an inside joke, or a reference placed by the filmmakers for attentive viewers or fans to discover.
At its best, it is so subtle that you really don’t notice it until the director wants you to notice it. One of the most iconic easter eggs of this type in our last generation is the entire movie The Sixth Sense. Bruce Willis, the main character, is playing a dead person the entire show, with small clues that you only get to see stitched back together at the very end of the show. (And I’m not sorry for revealing that…that move is now 27 years old! And while we are at it, Darth Vader is Luke’s father! Similarly, Demer and I were talking about the movie The Usual Suspects, starring Kevin Spacey, their hunt for “Keyser Söze,” the whole movie, and the final scene reveal. That one isn't as well-known, so I’ll leave you to discover it if you want!
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are amazing at this. In the Indiana Jones series, in the background of Raiders of the Lost Ark, there is an image of R2D2 and C3PO from Star Wars on the wall, creating continuity with the Star Wars universe that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away with ours today with Harrison Ford and fictional Nazis. Similarly, in the prequel Star Wars series, we have an entire planet of ETs represented in the Senate, showing us that the ETs are engaged with all these other civilizations in addition to ours!
Writers are also excellent at this. JK Rowling masterfully weaves many clues into her Harry Potter series from the first book, prepping you for the boy who needs to die. Authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were incredibly invested in the idea of a consistent, well-stitched-together world with hints and clues everywhere. Tolkien was so invested that he made entire languages and lore for his worlds, some of which is in his book The Silmarillion. Mentions that are deep and connected throughout their books and worlds.
I think our human creativity is only now beginning to catch up with what we see our great God doing throughout his Scripture. Our God has been masterfully weaving a consistent story, with Easter egg drops throughout this world and history, even from the very beginning in Genesis.
Genesis 1-3: Embedding the Story
That may be a weird way to think about it—as Scripture having “easter eggs”—but I think it is helpful. Remember, we believe and know that our God was not surprised by anything that we saw happen in these last three chapters of Genesis. God says:
For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,”
Isaiah 46:9–10 ESV
In fact, we should believe that God created everything we know, every element of this story, our history, and our reality from the first moments of creation in Genesis one KNOWING that humanity was going to sin and that he wanted to make sure that the story, from the very first pages, laid the foundation for everything to come.
That is not a small tweak to our mindset. I think when most of us come to Scripture, and we see God create, and we imagine him just like us with a lot more power. That he is more like Superman or Thor (to stick with our movie theme today). God is a being with superhuman powers. But we don’t always think of him as God. God who stands outside our time. God, who not only can create all things but sustains all things, knows all things, and is guiding and directing all things. God has set up our world, our lives, our reality in very specific ways that he might demonstrate through all of this, through the amazing story of Scripture, exactly who he is, exactly who we are, and how much he loves us!
That is the God we see in Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1–2 ESV
God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—perfectly content with himself, DECIDES to create and in doing so, starts from the very beginning to embed the story he wants us to see. That is the title of our sermon today, “Genesis 1–3: Embedding the Story.”
I want to take a moment today and not miss the forest for the trees. We have been going slowly through Genesis 1–3 to see many amazing aspects of our God and what he has done. We have seen many trees, as it were, very clearly. But I don’t want to miss some of the grand storylines that are starting here, in seed form, that will continue throughout the rest of the Bible. Seed form, little easter eggs, planted in God’s creative acts, that we might be amazed as the entire story unfolds.
I want us to see this grand forest of a story that God has put together that we might see him consistently throughout all of Scripture, and then marvel at him! This morning, I want us to look at and briefly trace four themes that we see start here in Genesis. Again, easter eggs, if you will, that were planted at the beginning that we might marvel as we see this all stitched together in Jesus Christ and finally in the New Heavens and the New Earth.
This morning, we are going to look at the themes of:
God
Place
Sacrifice
Men & Women
All images embedded from the very beginning of God’s creation in Genesis 1–3.
God: Easter Egg?
We start with God. And God may seem like the easter egg that isn’t really an easter egg. If we have been taught one thing, it is that Genesis is not only teaching us about ourselves but also (and more importantly) about God. But that idea is something we often only apply to Genesis 1 & 2. God as creator. God, who has a plan. God, who declares everything good. God, who purposefully made us and everything we see. God, who lovingly brings man out of the ground, woman out of man, and who gives us a job to do in the garden, with only one rule.
Yet when we turn to chapter three, I think we often stop reading the story to understand and know God, and we think only in human terms. How bad it would feel to be Adam and Eve. The shame in failure—failure we all know too well in our own sin. The pain of hurting God. The sorrow, additional shame, and guilt of being kicked out. I think that in feeling shame, pain, and additional guilt, we struggle to see our God beyond our own human interpretation. Frankly, we tend to see God as our angry parent disciplining us—an image many of us have a hard time shaking throughout our lives.
But as we have seen already in Genesis, and as I have tried to go to lengths to remind us, that is not the main way we see God here in Genesis. He is not the only God who is angry with us and our sin. Yes, we see him discipline, and there are consequences of sin through pain, separation, and death. But we also see GRACE. Punishment is the right response of a just God, but we don’t see justice to the full degree we would expect in Genesis. We see so much kindness, seeking, and care. Additionally, we see a God who provides for us even amidst our sinning. A God who provides ways forward with him, a God who provides sacrifice for us, a God who provides us with a place.
That kindness of God is not something I’m just reaching for in Genesis to make God look good, or to give the “right” answer. This is how God thinks of himself! When Moses is on the mountain, and God passes before him, we are told that:
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…
Exodus 34:6–7 ESV
God’s core character is one of never-ending love and faithfulness to his people and his plan. It’s exactly BECAUSE this is God’s character that Jonah flees from his call from God and tries to avoid going to Tarshish, as Demer recently taught us. Jonah says to God:
O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
Jonah 4:2 ESV
Jonah didn’t want to talk to the Ninevites because he DIDN’T want them to find out God was this God, a God who would forgive them and love them.
Sadly, there are entire veins of theologians who spend their lives trying to prove and show that the God of the Old Testament—Yahweh, the Father, however they try to divide God—is a mean God. A vindictive, ruthless, and even a hateful God. They go through the Bible and try to split verses and books into the types of God the writers understood and were writing about. And then, they talk about the gracious, kind, loving God we see in Jesus. As though we could split God?!
Everything we read in the Old Testament, even some of the hardest passages about death and destruction, must be read through a lens that tries to understand those truths, knowing our God who is loving, gracious, and long-suffering. Yes, as the passage in Exodus 34 ends:
…but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.
Exodus 34:5–7 ESV
God is defined by steadfast love, mercy, and grace, and he will make sure justice and righteousness happen. But not because he isn’t loving. He will make sure righteousness and justice happen because he is also willing to take that same justice upon himself. Only those who won’t allow HIM to take the punishment for them will receive what they truly deserve. HE will ensure that righteousness happens for all who have faith in him through his own life and then his death on the cross.
God, the Son of God, standing there in the garden and creating, loving, and interacting with Adam and Eve, is the same God who knows that, through all their sin and lies, he will be the one to come to solve this problem forever.
Friends, the God we see is consistent throughout all of Scripture. Even in the flood, at the tower of Babel, at Sodom and Gomorrah, and at the conquest of Canaan, this God is a God who, at his core, is full of steadfast love and graciousness for his people. That is the unexpected but right-out-in-front Easter egg that many people are not expecting, even in Genesis 1 through 3.
Application
Are there ways you still don’t want to believe that? I am not saying that you and I, this side of the new heavens and the new earth, will not have any doubts or questions. God tells us that now we see as though in a glass dimly, but then, as face-to-face with God in 1 Corinthians 13:12. But are you willing to accept that Scripture shows us from the beginning through the entire account of Scripture that God is loving and gracious? How would that change how you think not only about the accounts in Scripture, but also about your life? He is a God who is writing even YOUR story that you might see that same grace, that same love, and that same steadfastness in YOUR life. That you and I might be like Moses, that when we realize that justice does happen, that our God is good and loving. That it might be written of us:
“And ___________ quickly bowed his/her head toward the earth and worshiped.”
Exodus 34:8 ESV
God wants us to see and know his loving and gracious nature from the beginning, throughout history, and throughout OUR history.
Place
And if God is the easter egg hidden in plain sight—loving, gracious, joyful—then this idea of place may be the easter egg you still might not have had anyone show you much about yet. Surely many of us know that the depiction of the New Heavens and New Earth in Revelation 22 is meant to show us a recreation of the first Eden:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Revelation 22:1–5 ESV
God is with his people again. A river, the water of life flowing through the city, and the trees of God to bring healing. We will see and walk face-to-face with God again!
But there is even more going on here in Genesis than just that. These images from Eden flow throughout the story, reminding us at each step that we are not yet home. They exist to always point us forward to what home will be like.
In the beginning, Eden is brought out of the waters of the earth:
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.
Genesis 1:9 ESV
This becomes a consistent image of God’s provision throughout the rest of Scripture. The God who provides through the water.
God cares for and provides for his people as he brings them through the flood in the Ark in Genesis six through nine. He brings his people, Israel, out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea in Exodus 14 and then again as they cross through the waters of the Jordan River into the promised land in Joshua 3. Jesus promises that he himself is the living water we all need in John 4:10. He is the God who can sleep peacefully on the boat even when the waters rage because he is the God of Job 9:8:
Who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea;
Job 9:8 ESV
Our God is the one who saves us THROUGH the flood of our sin in our life through faith, symbolized in the waters of baptism, where we all go under the water and symbolically die to our life of sin and are raised again through the waters to life through faith in Jesus. In the end, as we just saw, the living water is there again in the new creation, flowing from the very throne of God, just as the Spirit hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation.
And there is even more! Eden is on a hill, with four rivers flowing from it. It is a mountain, as Ezekiel says:
You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire, you walked.
Ezekiel 28:14 ESV
A mountain, where God is. We see God calling Abraham to climb the mountain to be with him and to sacrifice Isaac. God meets with Moses on the mountain in the burning bush and again on Mount Sinai, where he gives him his laws. God establishes his place in Jerusalem on the mountain, the place where the tabernacle first sits, and then the temple is built. Jesus meets with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus prays and meets with God on the Mount of Olives. Jesus is killed on a hill, outside the town, on a cross. Jesus ascends to heaven from the Mount of Olives.
Even this place and space that God has given us across the whole Earth is part of the pattern of God's story and his goodness and love toward us all. As Paul says in Romans 1:
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:20 ESV
But even more than his power and nature, God has been showing us, beginning in Genesis, what our place with him will be like. A new heaven and earth, a new city and place prepared for us by God. A mountain where we will meet and be with God. A place exactly like he provided in Eden, where God prepared it exactly for us that we might be ready to do the work God gives us. It is the same images that God gives to Israel as they head out of Egypt toward Canaan.
And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Deuteronomy 6:10–12 ESV
We are shown throughout Scripture a future where our place is provided entirely by God. Just like Eden. Just like Israel. From the very beginning of Genesis through Scripture, God gives us image after image of what our future holds and of the place where we will be with him. We are destined to be back in a place with God, where everything about that space has been perfectly provided for us that we might, once again, take our place without sin to do the work God has made us for.
Application
You and I are destined for the very place of God. A place brought out of the chaos and turmoil of the floods of sin. A place shown through each meeting with God on the high places of this world. A place imaged in the land already planted with vineyards, trees fruiting, houses built. A place like the first Eden. This world, this temporary version created by God from the beginning, is meant to point us to a final version where we will finally be with God again, sinless because of his sacrifice for us. Do you notice and worship that in every spring flower, every sunny day, every butterfly that flitters past us in our back yards is meant to make us think about the more perfect provision that is coming? Do we sing the praises of our God who gives us this wonderful place to point towards the even more wonderful place to come?
Sacrifice
And all of this is possible because of the sacrifice of the Son of God. We see that prophesied in the punishment of the serpent:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Genesis 3:15 ESV
But as we saw last week, it is also evident in God’s temporary provision of earthly sacrifices to cover his people. Garments of skin for Adam and Eve to be rightly covered as they left the garden.
Sacrifice is the image we are meant to see in the Passover Lamb before the Exodus, it is the imagery embedded in millions of animals killed over thousands of years as Israel longed, and waited, and longed, and waited for the one true and final sacrifice that would let them stop attempting to cover each sin with a regular sacrifice of a perfect, spotless, lamb. They longed for THE Lamb of God to come. A once and for all sacrifice.
Application
As you read Scripture, you may wonder what you are supposed to take from the rules for sacrifices in the Old Testament, accounts of festivals, and animals being slaughtered. We are meant to feel what our brothers and sisters from thousands of years ago felt all the time—the exhaustion and sadness that a never–ending process or a temporary sacrifice would entail. There could not be enough lambs, not enough blood here on this earth to atone for our sins. We sin every day, in many ways, more than any lamb could ever help us with. You and I, we live on the other side of what at least one of these images from Genesis was pointing towards—we see and now know the true sacrifice of God in Jesus Christ. This easter egg has been fully revealed.
Do you treasure that when you think about sacrifice? We are meant to see, love, and worship the God who provided for us through the sacrifice of Jesus. One who did what we could not do and provides what we no longer have to try to provide ourselves. Sacrifice is meant to be a joyful glimpse of what Jesus did for you and me on the cross.
Man & Woman
And it is in addition to these images, these easter eggs of God in Genesis, that we see at least one more image from the beginning. One more image that would run from Genesis through our day and into the future. We see one man and one woman in a marriage.
Jesus tells us that relationships won’t be like this in heaven. He says:
For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
Matthew 22:30 ESV
Just like these other images we have looked at—God’s very nature, the place and spaces he makes for us, and the temporary sacrifices leading to a permanent sacrifice—we see God embedded in Eden, in perfection, an image that would not be permanent but rather was there so that we could begin to see, from those first moments in Genesis, something about this story we are all in. Something about us. Something about our God.
There we also see one man. Created out of the ground and put into Eden. No good partner was found for him among the animals. A perfect partner created by him. Through him. From his very side. The woman was made, fully in the image of God, like the man, yet distinct from the man and complementary to him. Someone to help him complete the project, they both now had to serve God, expand his kingdom, and guard and protect what he had given them.
Adam, made first, was given the right to name and the commands of God. It was his responsibility to share those with Eve and to serve her in his position as husband. Eve, made second, was called to serve and love her husband as well as help him with their shared task. The same but complementary. The same but distinct.
We see the man held responsible as the focus of the punishments in Genesis three for failing to love his wife rightly. I think we are even meant to wonder, especially now looking back, if Adam should have been willing to sacrifice himself for his wife. To take the blame rather than blame her, the snake, and God. We also see there a woman who similarly was deceived, but blamed Satan, not her own desires. A woman who didn’t look to her husband to help save her from the wrath of God.
God didn’t have to do it that way. He could have made both Adam and Eve out of the dust of the ground immediately and identically. He could have given them identical paths and held them identically accountable. But this way, though a process, through distinction, through genders, through broken love, was meant to embed within the grand image of marriage something bigger than just us. Something that would point us forward to God through the very relationship we are all meant to be created within. One man, one woman, in a marriage, spreading people and the knowledge of God over the entire earth. Sacrificial love from the man. Serving love from the woman.
It seems much of this image was lost in our fall and sin. Men who didn’t love and serve their wives sacrificially. Wives who didn’t want to love and serve their husbands and did it begrudgingly. Husbands with multiple wives that cause nothing but difficulty and brokenness in Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, up through David and Bathsheba, Solomon, and his hundreds of concubines. Broken marriages that pulled people away from God in ways that encouraged them to forget and run from the original purpose of marriage. We are meant to see in those broken images how far from God things had really gone. These are not examples of what God wanted, but examples of what breaks when the image isn’t maintained.
It seems to me that God’s people, in part, saw the easter eggs of God’s true nature and character as a gracious and loving God, as we see in Moses, Job, and Jonah. A loving God even amidst the hard times they saw around them and in their life. It seems the people, especially through their prophets and the Psalmist, saw the ways that the very nature of God’s creation in Eden, with water and mountains and provision of God, was pointing them to the new heavens and the new earth one day. It pointed them to God’s provision where they couldn’t provide for themselves. It also seems to me that they clearly saw in the perpetual blood of sacrifices (more than we tend to realize) the need for a once-and-for-all sacrifice of God’s Messiah and Christ.
But it seems they were often boggled by marriage. They saw marriage as God-ordained, but they struggled to recognize the image embedded in it. They lost sight of the real purpose of marriage in many ways. We get the beauty of the Song of Songs describing much of what marriage should be, and we get a glimpse of a redeemer kinsman in the story of Ruth and Boaz—but we rarely see marriages lived out well among God’s people.
Then, in Jesus, it all became clear! It was the easter egg that finally had an explanation! Like a masterful storyteller, God pulls all the pieces together about marriage again and reminds his people what was going on there in Genesis, in the creation of image bearers who are the same but distinct, the same but complementary. As Paul says in Ephesians 5:
In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I mean it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Ephesians 5:28–33 ESV
From the beginning, Adam and Eve were created the same but complementary, given distinct roles, to image Jesus and his Church.
Jesus, the one from whom you and I are created and made new because of HIS life. WE are created from HIS side, through his wounding on the cross. Jesus, the one who has the very words and commands of God, wants us to see and know him rightly through his loving service to us. Jesus, the new and better Adam who WAS willing to sacrifice himself for us that we might have life.
Eve, the image of the church, and an image of all of us. The church, us, the ones who love our husband, our provider, our sacrificial lord, with everything we have. The church that comes alongside our God—similar but distinct—that we might take the privilege of working alongside him in his work of spreading the glory of God everywhere!
Clearly, from this image, we don’t believe that men save women. We are all saved by Jesus Christ alone through HIS love for us and HIS sacrifice for us. Both men and women come to know, see, and exhort others about God because of what we know through HIS word and HIS spirit in his.
But for those of us called to marriage, most of you here in this room, we believe we are still called to look for ways within this relationship between one man and one woman to image Jesus’s relationship with his church, and the church’s relationship with Jesus. We look for ways for men to lead sacrificially to love their wives, to only do what is good for them, and to bring the word of God to them continually. For wives to love the ways their husbands lead them like that, the ways their husbands would be willing to die for them, the ways they constantly bring them to God through the very word of God, the Bible. To sacrificially serve them. To continue to live out the image, still today, in our marriages, that others might see and know Jesus, and love being part of his people, the church.
He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
Ephesians 5:28–29 ESV
Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Ephesians 5:24 ESV
Marriage was and is meant to be an image of Jesus and his Church. Walking, living images all the time showing us that through the two working together, God gets glory and praise as the knowledge of God spreads over the entire earth!
This is why we don’t believe marriage is between two men or two women or three or four or more people. Not because there can’t be a type of love and care there, but because it breaks the image God embedded there from the beginning. It is no different than if we try to think that atoning sacrifices can be from grain without blood, like Cain, or if we think God is divided and angry with us all the time, or that his place is something we can create instead of receiving from him one day. A marriage in which a man is unwilling to sacrificially love his wife, and his wife, similarly sacrificially and lovingly, partners with her husband, misses the image.
Application
Even if we see the brokenness of marriages, do we still believe there is an image meant to be embedded there, between one man and one woman, so that others might see and know God? What a great calling! As we saw last week, there are tremendous advantages to being single. But in marriage, even today, we get to imagine Jesus’s sacrificial, serving love for his church, and his church’s sacrificial, serving love of her God. What might need to change in your marriage to demonstrate this? Do you really believe that you—one man and one woman—have the privilege of showing this embedded image to your family, your children, and to a watching world in how we live out our marriages even today?
Conclusion
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1–2 ESV
Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and to the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:22–24 ESV
From the beginning of Genesis chapter one through Genesis three and even into the rest of Scripture, God embeds many images that we might see that how his plan was already made, how he infused that plan into our world, and that he created everything we see and even in our relationships with one another in marriage—all of them pointing to images of what is to come.
Friends, God has embedded his very love, his promise of a place and space, his sacrifice, and even the very nature of his relationship with us in our world and in our lives with one another.
What an amazing God! What amazing images, implanted in reality, from the very beginning of the story! What amazing easter eggs that we should have been looking for all along, and that we should still gaze at and marvel at today.
I imagine if we dwelt on this more often, our faith would be strengthened. If weIf we looked for these images, saw in them the beauty of God, and recognized the glimpses of hope they point us towards, we would more naturally praise God, we would see the REAL God more quickly if we saw God’s true character more quickly, if we saw the glimpses of our future place with him even now, if we saw in the sacrifices recorded for us the nature of God’s true sacrifice, and if we saw in men and women the image of Christ and his church. If we dwelt on these more, I believe we would find ourselves in awe and praise every day!
Response
I want to encourage you to do something simple today as your response. Simply dwell on and ponder these amazing images. Replay in your mind the ways we described how these unfold throughout Scripture and throughout your life.
God
Place
Sacrifice
Men & Women
Take just a moment this morning to let God expand your view of the world through these images. And find, maybe, that you worship him more today because of that!
