WEBVTT

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 Again, I want to extend a very warm welcome this morning to the Church of the Advent.

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 If we haven't met before, my name's Kevin, I'm one of the pastors here, and I'm very glad that you're here.

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 This is a special morning for the month of July. I think it might just be through the month of July.

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 Our kids are going to be with us, and so I want to extend a really warm welcome to our kids who are worshiping with us

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 throughout the entirety of the service.

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 It is a joy for us all to be together. It might get a little loud and noisy, and that's okay.

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 It's great to be together as one big, happy, messy, noisy family.

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 One of the things that we like to do, as Susan and I do our best to wrangle our kids at the breakfast table to do morning devotions,

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 is actually a prayer that we got from a book of prayer that Jane—what's your title now, Jane?

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 Children's Director Emerita? Is that—sure.

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 Mere congregants.

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 Okay, mere congregants. So there's a great book called Teach Us to Pray,

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 and one of the things that we do with our kids, there's some hand motions that go along in preparing to hear from the Lord.

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 So I want all of us to do the hand motions this morning, not just the kids, but I invite all of us to do it together.

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 So it's really simple. It's just you put your hand over your ear like this.

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 Everyone do this and say,

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 Spirit, help me to hear.

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 Spirit, help me to hear.

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 Now put your hands like this and say,

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 Spirit, help me to see Jesus.

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 Spirit, help me to see Jesus.

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 You guys are doing great.

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 And then put your hands over your heart and say,

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 Spirit, help me to love you.

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 Spirit, help me to love you.

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 And as I like to do before I preach, I want to give us a moment of silence and stillness

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 so we can prepare our hearts to hear from the Lord.

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 So take a moment of silence together.

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 You hear that? It's amazing.

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 It's quiet.

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 We're all in here quiet.

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 It's great.

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 So Psalm 100.

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 Let's see if I have it memorized.

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 One of the challenges to the month of July is for everyone to memorize it together.

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 So let's see how I do.

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 Make a joyful noise to the Lord all of the earth.

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 Serve the Lord with gladness.

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 Come into his presence with singing.

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 Know that the Lord, he is God.

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 It is he who made us and we are his.

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 We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.

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 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

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 Give thanks to him.

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 Bless his name for the Lord is good.

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 His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations.

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 Psalm 100, a psalm for giving thanks.

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 Is it up there?

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 Okay, so I think I did it, right?

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 It's about time.

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 So this is a particularly meaningful psalm to me and to Susan.

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 As we're doing our best to raise our kids so that they might never know a day apart from God.

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 This is the first passage of scriptures that we've tried to get them to memorize.

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 And they're pretty good at it.

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 Billy pretends like he doesn't know it, but he really does.

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 And I love this psalm because it's incredibly joyful and I need more joy in my life.

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 It's a great psalm for children.

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 It's a great psalm for adults.

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 It's incredibly simple, but it's profound.

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 It's incredibly accessible, but it's also very challenging.

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 And this is what we're going to spend all of July studying together.

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 So if you think about last week, Tommy preached through four chapters of Revelation, which was amazing.

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 For the month of July, we're going to take basically a verse a week.

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 So a bit of a change of pace.

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 I think it'll be a little easier for all of us, especially with the kids in here.

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 So I encourage all of you to memorize it.

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 It's just five verses.

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 You really have no excuse.

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 We have a month to do it.

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 So we'll be reciting it all together like we did.

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 Not responsibly, but all together so that we can work towards doing that.

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 So we're going to look at verses one and two this morning.

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 But before we do a deep dive into those two verses, I want to do a big overview of the entire psalm.

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 So we don't know who the author is.

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 He's some worship leader.

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 It's not, we don't have a name ascribed to it.

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 But the author, the voice is a person who is inviting God's people to worship God.

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 And the first thing you'll notice about the psalm, the first thing I notice, is just how joyful it is.

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 It is an enthusiastic call and invitation, even a command to worship.

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 It's bright.

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 It's happy.

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 It's effusive.

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 It's exuberant.

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 It's an amazing psalm.

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 It's a feel-good psalm in many ways.

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 And not all psalms are this way, right?

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 The psalms are amazing because they help us process through the whole range of emotion.

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 But this is a joyful psalm.

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 And so we're going to spend some time talking about joy.

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 There's a really simple structure to the psalm.

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 Basically, the rhythm is an invitation, really a command to worship.

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 And after that command, it's followed by the reason why we ought to worship.

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 And it repeats that.

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 A call to worship and the reason why.

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 A call to worship and the reason why.

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 So we are to make a joyful noise to the Lord.

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 Why?

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 Because the Lord is the creator.

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 He created all things and he created God's people.

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 We're to enter his gates with thanksgiving.

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 And why are we to do that?

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 Because the Lord is good.

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 So it's really simple, really accessible.

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 And we're going to be talking about worship this morning.

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 This morning, we're going to sort of do some self-reflection on why it is that Christians worship.

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 Specifically, what worship does.

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 So we're not going to necessarily look at what worship looks like.

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 Or the various reasons why we ought to worship.

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 We ought to worship God because he's worthy.

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 What we're going to focus in on is what worship does to us.

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 So we gather every Sunday morning.

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 That's what Christians do.

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 And we worship God.

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 We sing praises to God.

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 We confess our sins to God.

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 We pray to God.

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 We listen to God through the reading of his word and his word preached.

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 And we celebrate the Eucharist.

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 And the question I want to look at this morning is, what do all of these things do?

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 When we're engaging in these things week in and week out, what do these things do?

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 What effect does worship have on us, God's people?

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 And there are a lot of answers.

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 But because we have just a short amount of time today, we're going to look at just one answer.

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 So the question, what does worship do?

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 The answer I want to argue is that it gives us access to our full humanity.

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 When we worship God, we become more fully human.

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 When we don't worship God, we don't have access to who we really are.

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 St. Augustine, a famous Christian from the 4th century, famously said in the beginning of his book,

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 What he means is that apart from God, if we're not in relationship with God, we are incomplete.

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 There's something missing in our lives.

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 We're restless.

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 There's something lacking.

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 If we don't know Jesus, we're alienated not only from God, we're actually alienated from ourselves,

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 and we're alienated from other people, and we're alienated from the rest of creation.

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 But when we do know God, when we worship Jesus in spirit and truth, our full humanity is restored.

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 We're reconnected with God and our very selves and with our neighbors and all of creation.

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 That's because worshiping God makes us into the people that God created us to be.

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 And so I want to look at verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 100 and explore how these two verses show us this.

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 Now, one of my favorite things about the Bible is how interconnected the Bible is.

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 Every verse, practically, is connected to every verse.

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 I was looking at this really amazing diagram.

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 I don't have a picture of it, but apparently there are over almost 67,000 cross-references in the Bible.

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 So 67,000 connections from verse to verse.

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 Everything is very interconnected.

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 And there's a great analogy that N.T. Wright, one of my favorite teachers, uses to explain how the Bible is all connected.

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 So he uses this analogy of a window.

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 So imagine a house on the countryside, and you're in one of the rooms,

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 and there's a really small window on the far side of the room that you're standing in.

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 If you're stepped pretty far away from the window,

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 all you can see is a really narrow snippet of the countryside,

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 if you're pretty far back from the window.

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 But if you get really close to the window, and if you press your nose up against the window,

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 you get to look into it, and you see the entire sweep of the countryside from the window.

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 And N.T. Wright says that every single passage, every single verse of the Bible is like that window.

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 If we press our noses up to it, we can see the whole story of the Bible through the lens of that particular passage.

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 And so I want to look at that this morning in Psalm 100.

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 When we press our noses up against verses 1 and 2, we see the whole story of the Scriptures.

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 We see why God created the world.

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 We see how it went wrong, and how God is going about fixing it.

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 So in verses 1 and 2, if we can have that on the screen, it's right there, that's great.

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 There are three words, as I was meditating and studying this passage,

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 three words that jumped out to me that reminded me of Genesis 1 and 3.

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 Can anyone guess what those words are?

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 Okay, yeah, just throw it out there.

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 Earth, yeah, earth. What else?

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 I heard make, yeah, make, earth.

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 Anything else jump out, remind you of Genesis 3?

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 Presence, yeah, noise is a thing, sure.

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 These are all right answers.

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 You're all doing great.

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 Serve, yeah, that's right.

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 Okay, so the three words that jumped out at me, and all of those were correct.

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 You can find them in Genesis 3.

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 Earth, serve, and presence.

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 Each of these three words are really important in Genesis 1 through 3.

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 And I don't think it's an accident that these three words are here.

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 And I think what we are to see is that when we worship God,

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 worship ends up being a reverse of the curse of Genesis 3.

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 And that worship is actually how God restores humans to their original vocation.

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 That's how God restores the entire earth to how he created it to be.

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 So I want to look at that this morning.

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 In Genesis 1 and 2, as I'm sure you're familiar with the story,

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 God created the heavens and the earth.

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 He created everything, and he created everything to work rightly,

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 to be a massive symphony where when everything is ordered rightly in the world,

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 the Psalms and other places in the Scripture describe creation poetically as singing God's praise

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 when it is functioning as God created it to function.

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 And the way it was supposed to function,

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 the only way really that it was going to function as it ought to,

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 is if humans were serving God in the way that they were intended to serve.

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 If humans were serving the Lord with gladness.

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 If they were ruling over the works of God's hands as God intended them to serve.

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 We see in Genesis 2 that the Lord God took the man,

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 and he put him in the Garden of Eden.

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 And it's the same word to, most of our translations say to work it,

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 but really it's the same word to serve.

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 To serve the ground and to keep it.

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 We serve God by serving the ground in the Garden of Eden.

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 When humans fulfilled their vocation to be God's image bearers,

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 reflecting God in the world and ruling over the world,

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 all of creation would sing praises to God.

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 And we were made to be with God, to live in God's presence.

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 And when humans rightly served under God and over the world,

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 the world was created to come to full bloom.

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 That's when the entire earth would make a joyful noise to the Lord.

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 And as David powerfully read for us this morning in Genesis 3,

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 our original parents, Adam and Eve, they did not serve the Lord with gladness.

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 God gave them a command and said,

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 you can eat of any tree of this garden,

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 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

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 you cannot eat.

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 He gave them that commandment and they disobeyed.

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 In Genesis 3, 8, we read that after they had eaten the fruit,

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 they heard God walking around in the garden in the cool of day.

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 Presumably God did that often.

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 And Adam and Eve enjoyed being in God's presence

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 because they were rightly related to him.

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 But when they disobeyed, they were alienated.

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 And we read that the man and his wife,

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 they hid themselves.

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 And this is the first mention of presence in Genesis.

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 They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God

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 among the trees of the garden.

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 Now, there's this really powerful painting.

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 If we can go to that, Worthy.

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 There's a painting I want to show you

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 that captures this scene incredibly well.

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 Do you have it there?

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 It's by an artist named Francis Hoyland.

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 He's a British guy.

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 And this is Adam and Eve hiding from God in the garden.

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 I think this is a really powerful image

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 that captures the scene.

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 That's God on the right.

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 And he's looking for Adam and Eve.

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 I think that's the serpent there in the middle.

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 And the scene looks chaotic.

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 It looks marred.

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 There's all of this darkness

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 where there would have been light.

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 And Adam and Eve are hiding from God.

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 I want you to take a look at that.

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 And I think this painting

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 is where every single one of us is

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 who does not know Jesus.

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 If you don't know Jesus,

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 you are alienated from God.

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 You're hiding from God's presence.

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 You're alienated from him.

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 And the Bible says

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 we're not just separated from God's presence

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 if we are not in relationship with Jesus.

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 The Bible actually describes

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 those folks as God's enemies.

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 And that would describe every one of us

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 before we knew Jesus.

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 If you're separated from God,

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 if you're alienated from God,

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 the Bible describes you as God's enemy.

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 But it's amazing.

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 The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ

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 is that God solves the problem

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 that we created.

00:14:49.899 --> 00:14:51.879
 Even though we are alienated

00:14:51.879 --> 00:14:53.019
 and enemies of God,

00:14:53.079 --> 00:14:54.019
 while we were enemies,

00:14:54.500 --> 00:14:56.439
 we were reconciled to God

00:14:56.439 --> 00:14:57.600
 by the death of his son.

00:14:57.659 --> 00:14:59.679
 That's what Paul writes in Romans 5.

00:15:00.679 --> 00:15:02.039
 There's a really powerful scene

00:15:02.039 --> 00:15:02.879
 in the gospels.

00:15:03.579 --> 00:15:04.639
 All of the gospels,

00:15:04.740 --> 00:15:05.480
 except for John,

00:15:05.539 --> 00:15:07.480
 they describe the moment

00:15:07.480 --> 00:15:09.679
 when Jesus was on the cross,

00:15:09.699 --> 00:15:10.559
 when he died.

00:15:10.899 --> 00:15:12.179
 Does anyone remember what happened

00:15:12.179 --> 00:15:13.960
 when Jesus died on the cross?

00:15:14.319 --> 00:15:15.299
 What are some of the things

00:15:15.299 --> 00:15:15.779
 that happened?

00:15:15.779 --> 00:15:18.039
 in the story?

00:15:19.199 --> 00:15:19.939
 Can anyone remember?

00:15:21.759 --> 00:15:23.579
 Yeah, the temple veil is torn in two.

00:15:23.699 --> 00:15:24.360
 There's an earthquake.

00:15:24.659 --> 00:15:25.839
 Lots of crazy things happened.

00:15:26.299 --> 00:15:27.339
 Yeah, dead people were rising.

00:15:27.419 --> 00:15:28.740
 There's some wild things going on

00:15:28.740 --> 00:15:29.419
 when Jesus died.

00:15:29.600 --> 00:15:30.860
 The thing that I want to focus

00:15:30.860 --> 00:15:31.779
 our attention on is

00:15:31.779 --> 00:15:33.379
 the temple curtain,

00:15:33.579 --> 00:15:34.919
 which was the curtain,

00:15:35.039 --> 00:15:36.740
 the veil that separated God's people

00:15:36.740 --> 00:15:37.699
 from God's presence.

00:15:38.059 --> 00:15:39.459
 When Jesus died on the cross,

00:15:39.559 --> 00:15:41.179
 that tore in two from top to bottom.

00:15:41.939 --> 00:15:43.819
 And what we are to understand

00:15:43.819 --> 00:15:44.620
 that to mean

00:15:44.620 --> 00:15:46.740
 is that now God's people

00:15:46.740 --> 00:15:48.980
 have access to the presence of God

00:15:48.980 --> 00:15:50.299
 because of what Jesus did.

00:15:50.940 --> 00:15:52.480
 When we trust Jesus Christ

00:15:52.480 --> 00:15:53.759
 and his death on the cross

00:15:53.759 --> 00:15:54.440
 on our behalf,

00:15:54.580 --> 00:15:56.200
 we can enter into God's presence.

00:15:56.299 --> 00:15:57.340
 We're no longer alienated.

00:15:57.440 --> 00:15:59.639
 We're no longer enemies of God.

00:16:00.539 --> 00:16:02.039
 So through the cross of Jesus,

00:16:02.259 --> 00:16:03.480
 God made a way for us

00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:04.919
 to be in his presence.

00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:07.340
 And as Psalm 1611 says,

00:16:07.460 --> 00:16:08.360
 in God's presence,

00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:10.639
 there is fullness of joy.

00:16:11.240 --> 00:16:12.379
 And I think that's why

00:16:12.379 --> 00:16:14.439
 joy makes an appearance

00:16:14.439 --> 00:16:15.159
 in this Psalm,

00:16:15.259 --> 00:16:16.240
 why this Psalm

00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:19.159
 is saturated and dripping with joy.

00:16:19.259 --> 00:16:20.720
 This is where joy comes from.

00:16:21.299 --> 00:16:22.679
 We can't take for granted

00:16:22.679 --> 00:16:24.279
 that we can just be in God's presence.

00:16:24.840 --> 00:16:26.259
 Christ had to die for us

00:16:26.259 --> 00:16:27.639
 to be in God's presence.

00:16:28.799 --> 00:16:29.600
 And this is,

00:16:29.740 --> 00:16:31.539
 if you understand

00:16:31.539 --> 00:16:33.320
 Christ's forgiveness

00:16:33.320 --> 00:16:35.059
 and the love that he has for us,

00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:36.440
 this is where joy comes from.

00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:37.879
 It's not something that we manufacture

00:16:37.879 --> 00:16:39.360
 or make up

00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:40.860
 or pretend to exist.

00:16:40.960 --> 00:16:42.720
 It's a gift of grace.

00:16:42.919 --> 00:16:44.179
 It's only when we experience

00:16:44.179 --> 00:16:45.139
 this kind of forgiveness

00:16:45.139 --> 00:16:46.059
 do we experience

00:16:46.059 --> 00:16:47.159
 this kind of joy.

00:16:48.399 --> 00:16:49.179
 G.K. Chesterton,

00:16:49.659 --> 00:16:51.460
 a Catholic author

00:16:51.460 --> 00:16:52.700
 from the 20th century,

00:16:53.500 --> 00:16:54.759
 one of my favorite writers,

00:16:55.159 --> 00:16:56.620
 argues that human beings

00:16:56.620 --> 00:16:57.639
 were made for joy.

00:16:58.360 --> 00:16:59.539
 On the very last page

00:16:59.539 --> 00:17:00.019
 of his book,

00:17:00.120 --> 00:17:00.720
 Orthodoxy,

00:17:00.759 --> 00:17:01.899
 many of you may have read it,

00:17:02.399 --> 00:17:03.159
 he writes this

00:17:03.159 --> 00:17:04.160
 about human beings

00:17:04.160 --> 00:17:04.980
 and joy.

00:17:05.880 --> 00:17:06.700
 Chesterton writes that,

00:17:06.700 --> 00:17:08.019
 man is more himself,

00:17:08.759 --> 00:17:10.819
 man is more manlike,

00:17:11.140 --> 00:17:13.660
 when joy is the fundamental thing

00:17:13.660 --> 00:17:14.220
 in him.

00:17:15.019 --> 00:17:16.400
 This is because human beings

00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:17.920
 were made for joy.

00:17:18.380 --> 00:17:20.000
 When we feel joy,

00:17:20.380 --> 00:17:22.039
 it's when we feel the most alive,

00:17:22.220 --> 00:17:24.039
 when we are the most human,

00:17:24.420 --> 00:17:25.360
 most ourselves.

00:17:26.180 --> 00:17:27.140
 And worshiping God

00:17:27.140 --> 00:17:27.759
 through Jesus

00:17:27.759 --> 00:17:29.220
 is the only way

00:17:29.220 --> 00:17:30.700
 to access the life

00:17:30.700 --> 00:17:31.840
 and the joy

00:17:31.840 --> 00:17:33.100
 that we are made for

00:17:33.100 --> 00:17:34.259
 as human beings.

00:17:34.259 --> 00:17:36.819
 We worship God

00:17:36.819 --> 00:17:37.819
 because he's worthy.

00:17:38.039 --> 00:17:39.079
 As Psalm 100 tells us,

00:17:39.119 --> 00:17:39.519
 he's worthy

00:17:39.519 --> 00:17:40.660
 because he is the creator

00:17:40.660 --> 00:17:42.819
 and because he's good.

00:17:43.440 --> 00:17:44.839
 And when we worship him,

00:17:45.559 --> 00:17:46.920
 worshiping gives us access

00:17:46.920 --> 00:17:49.279
 to who we are in Christ,

00:17:50.059 --> 00:17:51.759
 who we're becoming in Christ,

00:17:51.819 --> 00:17:53.119
 and who we will one day

00:17:53.119 --> 00:17:54.640
 ultimately be in Christ.

00:17:55.160 --> 00:17:57.720
 People full of life and joy.

00:17:58.220 --> 00:17:58.819
 Let's pray.

00:17:58.819 --> 00:17:59.879
 Josephine

00:17:59.879 --> 00:18:00.019
 Josephine

00:18:00.019 --> 00:18:00.939
 Zambo

00:18:00.939 --> 00:18:01.700
 Josephine

00:18:01.700 --> 00:18:02.359
 Josephine