In the Beginning: It All Falls Apart (Part 1)

Great. Good job, y'all. You'll notice that the screens we usually have for displaying words are not working this morning. We added a gigantic TV outside—you are outside and should be enjoying the fruit of some scary work that several of us did this week trying to hang that. But as a result, we don't have these working today for some reason.

I'm going to ask you instead to find Genesis chapter three on a device somewhere. I'm going to read this aloud. This is the ESV English Standard Version, and I'm not going to make you read with me since I know a lot of y'all probably don't have a device on you that will pull that up. So would you look for that if you have one, or an old-fashioned Bible if you have one of those, as this is not printed in your bulletin.

I'm going to be reading out loud from Genesis 2:25 through 3:24. Listen as I read from the book that we love.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree of the garden?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die." But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the sound of you walking in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself." He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate." Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me and I ate." The Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and thus you shall eat all the days of your life. 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." To the woman, he said, "I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." And to Adam, he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return." The man called his wife's name Eve because she was mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them. 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 at 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. This is the word of God. Thanks be to God. — Genesis 2:25-3:24 (ESV)

Probably lots of you are familiar with the story by Hans Christian Andersen, "The Emperor's New Clothes." It's a story about a vain emperor and his courtiers. One day two weavers show up at the palace and they offer to make the king an incredible set of clothing like no one has ever seen before. Here's the catch to the clothing: the clothes will be invisible to all who are either incompetent or stupid or unfit for their jobs.

The king loves this. He's a vain king, so he's like, "I'd love for you to do that."

And so he hires them and immediately they set up their looms and they begin to do the work of weaving. Now, when people look in on the weavers, it looks like they're moving around and doing the work of the weaver, and yet nothing is on the loom. But nobody wants to say anything about this. Of course, because of the catch: they will be called out for being stupid, incompetent, or unfit for their position.

So the weavers work and work. And at the end of this, they present to the king, the emperor, his clothing. And everyone believes the clothes are invisible to them only. So the king puts them on and he parades before his subjects in his new clothing for all to see. But no one says anything, even though the king is naked walking around in front of his whole court. Because of fear that somebody will think that they are stupid.

And you know the punchline: finally, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"

Now I love that story. And I love it also because of how it shows the honesty of children. And when we're looking at God's word, I think we've talked over and over in this series about the lullaby effect of having heard these passages over and over again—so much so that we don't really hear them anymore. We sort of know what's going to happen and we anticipate the next thing. And you probably even know what I'm going to preach about this morning. And yet, I think that there's something of the little child who's willing to speak up and say, "Wait a second, what's going on here?" that we need as we look at these passages.

So this morning, we're going to look at this passage from chapter three, and I want to do so through the eyes of a child. I'm going to ask questions about three problems in this passage: the problem of the snake, the problem of being naked, and the problem of the fig leaves. And I want to do so because we love this book and we want to hear what God has to say to us from it. So let's look at this together.

The Problem of the Serpent

Now, what's the problem of the serpent? This serpent seems very human. I don't know if you noticed this, but this serpent seems incredibly similar to Adam and Eve. Isn't it remarkable that as you read this passage, no one seems surprised that there's an animal that's talking right now? No one seems shocked—not Adam, not Eve, not God—when the serpent speaks.

And then we also get this commentary that when the curse happens at the end of this chapter and God curses the serpent, He tells the serpent, "You're going to, from this point forward, crawl on your belly and eat dust all of your days." And the implication is the serpent is not crawling on its belly and eating dust. This serpent is presumably walking around.

And there's one more thing: the word in Hebrew for serpent is almost the same word, sounds almost the same as the word for naked. "Arum" is serpent, "anum" is naked. So let me summarize what's going on. There's a little play on words here, and this is what's happening. This is a serpent who looks like a person, walks like a person, talks like a person, is naked like Adam and Eve—and then, until the curse later on in this passage. In other words, I think what's going on here is the serpent is really challenging us to ask this question: What does it mean to be a person made in the image of God?

This is a serpent that looks like the image bearer, walks like the image bearer, talks like the image bearer, but is not the image bearer. In other words, this is a counterfeit. This is a forgery. This is a copycat or an impostor. And it sort of begs the question: will Adam and Eve, if bearing the image of God is not something on the outside but something deeper, will they do that when they're tested? Will they bear the image?

Let's apply that for us here this morning. We need to wrestle with this because there is a way for you and I to act as less than image bearers of God all the time. Sin is at its very substance—this is the first picture we get in the Bible of how sin affects people—and it works this way to dehumanize them. Adam and Eve build their reality around a deception, around a lie, and what happens? They become less than what they were made to be, less than the image bearers that God has made them to be.

And look, here's just a brief application: if you want to degrade yourself, if you want to distort God's image in you, in your life, give yourself to things that are lies and deceptions. Live a lifestyle of deception with yourself and other people. This is how sin works in us. This is a really important thing for us to understand—this image of the serpent. Not very snake-like, is he? Much more a picture for us of what sin does.

The Problem of Being Naked

All right, the second problem in this passage: the problem of being naked. Now, have you noticed how often the word naked comes up in this passage? It's sort of all over the place.

At the beginning, they're told we're naked. Chapter two, they eat from the tree, they realize they're naked. They hide from God. And when God confronts them, the main point Adam feels compelled to bring up is his nakedness. God makes skins to cover their nakedness. And as I just told you, the word for serpent and the word for naked are almost the same word. What's the big deal with being naked?

Let's talk about what this doesn't mean. You know what the difference is between naked and naked? All right, this is for free. So naked is when you got no clothes on. Naked is when you got no clothes on and you're up to something. That's East Tennessee for you.

So what's going on in this passage is they're not naked. They're naked. That's what's happening in this passage.

The Significance of Nakedness

Here's what's interesting about this, within the ancient Near Eastern context and the biblical context, nakedness was not a desirable condition. Notice this today—even if you go to Middle Eastern countries, these are cultures in this world that emphasize clothing and covering. It is a high value. And we know some of that too. Don't we all have nightmares about showing up somewhere like a classroom or at work or preaching a sermon naked? All of us have those kinds of nightmares, and there's something in us. It's like, this is undesirable.

The nakedness of Adam and Eve at the end of Genesis two actually poses a question. It's not whether or not they're going to remain naked, but how and when God will clothe them. That's actually what's being set up here. There is very good evidence to show that it was God's intention all along to clothe His people. The fact that they felt no shame doesn't mean that this was meant to be a permanent condition for them. You know that both from experience and from scripture.

Let's think about this in experience. Little kids love to be naked and they feel no shame about that. But no parent, at least in our congregation that I know of, takes their cues from their toddler like, "Oh, you're a no pants kind of kid. We're just going to go with that." Children are naked and feel no shame, and we don't take that as like, "Oh, that should be a permanent condition for you." Well, the same thing is true in scripture. The Bible associates clothing, and particularly being clothed, as an honor, as actually a symbol of inheritance and dignity.

Clothing as a Symbol of Honor

When Jesus describes the Sermon on the Mount, he makes a comparison between flowers in the field and King Solomon, and he says,

Adorned in all of his glory

Jesus is making this comparison—clothing is a sign of adornment. In the story of Joseph, Joseph is given a coat that is different, all these different colors, and it's meant to symbolize his elevated status within his family. This is a sign of honor.

In the book of Esther, when Mordecai was being honored, he was honored with a royal robe which the king put on him. Daniel in the book of Daniel was clothed in purple, a chain of gold was put around his neck, a proclamation was made concerning him that he should rank third in all the kingdom.

And then in the New Testament, very famously the prodigal son—when he returns home after living among pigs and feeding the pigs, do you remember what the father gives him? He tells the servants, "Come, I want you to put the best robe on him, clothe him."

I could go on and on, but what we may have missed, the first readers of Genesis would not have missed this. That being naked was not a desirable condition and begs the question: when is God actually going to ordain or clothe these image bearers? This is particularly important to remember that image bearers have a regal aspect to this. We're going to watch sometime when the Queen of England passes on the throne to someone else. When that happens, Charles will be given the robe, given the crown. Kings and queens are meant to be robed and clothed. It's a sign of honor.

Now this may sound weird—like I'm saying Eden wasn't perfect. Of course I'm not saying that. I'm saying actually the word that I want to use, that we talked about last week, was unfinished.

Eden was a beginning, but it wasn't meant to be the end. It was a beginning and it was unfinished. There's unfinished business going on in Eden. So on the seventh day, God finishes His work of creation and rests in that. And when I say this is unfinished, I want you to think about two different images. One is a puzzle and one's a board game.

So if I say this puzzle is unfinished, it means you've put everything together and there's a piece on the floor somewhere you need to go crawl around and find, right? That kind of unfinished. And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying it's more like an elaborate board game where God sets up the elaborate board game, puts all the pieces and the cards and the money and all those things out, and everything is perfect and ready to go, but the playing hasn't happened yet. That's the sort of unfinished business that I mean when I talk about Eden. There's something that needs to be worked out, that needs to be played, that needs to go on from here.

So this nakedness problem is just like Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Emperor Who Has No Clothes. The nakedness of the king was a problem there. The nakedness of the image bearers was a problem here. And we're going to see how they resolved it and God resolves it.

The Fig Leaves

So the third problem this passage is the fig leaves. The fig leaves taking matters into their own hands. This is after the fall. Adam and Eve, it says they fashioned together for themselves loincloths sewn together out of fig leaves. Now what's the problem? I mean, what's the problem with fig leaf clothing? Was it a problem that they made clothes for themselves? Yeah, it was. There was a problem with that. God Himself was going to clothe them if they'd remained obedient. And we talked about this last week, the covenant of works, where had they continued in this, they would have gone on to a position of glory. And we'll come to that in a second about how that would have played out. Instead, they take plants and make them into clothes and clothe themselves with it.

So here are the image bearers of God. This is the problem. Here are the image bearers of God, the very pinnacle of God's creation. The one thing over which God says, "very good," and they're clothing themselves to look like vegetation. They look like trees. That's the whole kind of joke of this. That's the problem. This is the very height of creation. Not only animals, they're now vegetation. They look like they're dressed up.

Remember the comedy Zoolander that came out several years ago? Zoolander is about male models, and it's a ridiculous movie starring Ben Stiller about the runways and the fashion and all that stuff. So in the movie, Ben Stiller's character Zoolander is modeling a particular brand of clothing called Derlicht, which is made out of trash, right? So it's the word "derelict," right? And so they're modeling in trash and essentially that's what's going on in this passage. Adam and Eve, the height of creation meant to wear royal clothing look like they're wearing garbage. They're looking like vegetation.

In C. S. Lewis's book, The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis retells the story of creation in this fictional world of Narnia. And in that story, there's a lion, Aslan, the God character, who's singing into being all the animals and all things that are being made in this world. And there's this song as he's walking around singing and things begin to pop out of the ground. Well, early on in that story, just like in this story, there's an impostor who comes into that world bent on malice. His name is uncle Andrew. His name is uncle Andrew because he's an uncle of one of the main characters of the story. And uncle Andrew, for our purposes this morning, all you need to know about him is he's really tall, and he has this immense head of bushy curly hair.

So as uncle Andrew is watching all this happen, all this creation, suddenly the animals—who are of course talking animals, this is Narnia, of course—they see uncle Andrew and they want to rush over and meet him and figure out what he is in this newly created world. And so he looks up and sees coming from a distance all these animals rushing toward him, running toward him, and of course, he doesn't believe in talking animals, and he faints clean away. He's afraid he's going to get killed. The animals come up around him and a debate ensues, the first debate in this world.

So they're debating what is uncle Andrew? And some of them think he's an animal that's asleep. Some of them think he's a tree because he's very tall and he's fallen over and that group actually finally wins the debate. And so what they decide to do as a group is to dig a hole and plant him. He needs to be planted back again. So the moles dig the hole and the elephant picks up uncle Andrew, and he almost gets planted upside down. They can't decide if the hair are roots, or if the hair are branches. They finally decide the right way.

They put his legs down into the ground up to his knees, and they pat the soil down around, and then the elephant gets some water and waters Uncle Andrew, at which point he wakes up horrified that he's been planted in the ground, and faints again dead away. This passage has that same kind of comedy tragedy. Lewis is capturing this really well. This is a silly scene about this man who is not what he was supposed to be.

Adam and Eve, in the same way, it's this comedy tragedy. Look at them. They look like walking trees at this point. They're wearing leaves for clothing, and it's meant to be comedy tragedy. This is not what God intended. This is not how it's supposed to be. God's very good looks like a couple of trees and bushes.

God's Solutions for Sin

What is God's solution? There are two solutions God gives His people: a near solution, which means the immediate one, and a far solution for how He handles this.

God's near solution is this: at the end of chapter three, God makes garments for them out of animal skin, and then God clothes them. And that's both tragic and gracious. Here's the tragedy of this. There's a pun there in the Hebrew. I can't read Hebrew anymore, but commentators point this over and over. There's a pun in the passage because the word for animal skin in Hebrew is oor—we'd spell it O-O-R. Oor. That's animal skin. It's also the word with a different silent consonant at the beginning for light. Do you get the tragedy? God had intended to crown these people with light, with glory. That was what would have happened if they had obeyed the covenant of works. They would have gone on to a position of glory, and instead of being crowned and decked out in ore, they're crowned and decked out in ore. The same sound. The first people who listened, who received this, would have received it orally. They would have heard this. It's a tragedy, but it's also incredibly gracious.

God clothing them in animal skins—the word for garment and the word for clothing are actually words that imply something where a subordinate is being honored in a way by somebody who's above them. So God is not just taking care of their physical needs like, "Oh, you guys are going to be cold tonight." That's not what's going on. God is actually redeeming something in a small way that had already fallen apart. God in His graciousness could have said, "Naked, and you're done." Instead, God clothed them. It's an act of incredible intimacy. It's an act where God says, "Not vegetation, I'm restoring something. I'm redeeming something here, even in a small way that's been broken."

I want you to see this as a little snapshot of how God deals with all the sinners in the world. This is an early snapshot for us in the Bible of the character of God toward people. God is over and over again incredibly gracious and kind. God's Word says He causes the sun and the rain to come on the just and the unjust. Theologians call this God's common grace. It's different from His saving grace. Saving grace is Jesus on the cross bringing you salvation. But God's common grace is God's kindness that limits the effect of the damage of sin in this world. People are not as terrible as they could be, not as horrible to one another as they could be. This world is not as broken as it could be. And this is the character of God toward all sinners. This is the kindness of our God. The way that he approaches these two fallen people in this moment of tragedy is incredibly compassionate, incredibly kind.

But notice this: God's solution for them is also still bloody. This is the first killing in the Bible. This is the first death. An animal is sacrificed, is killed so that they can wear the skins, so that they can be clothed in this. This is the first bloodshed in the Bible. It's the first sacrifice for the sin of a person. And of course, it points us to God's far solution for sin.

God's far solution: another image bearer. Colossians one tells us that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the perfect image bearer, and He comes bearing that image and in that is not only obedient like we spoke of last week. He's not only the one who fulfills the covenant of works that Adam and Eve failed to do—He's perfectly obedient to God in every way—but He also becomes the sacrifice.

Remember the passion of Jesus? He walks the paces here of this chapter. Notice: here's Jesus and first He's stripped naked. He's stripped naked like Adam and Eve. And then what do the soldiers do to Jesus? They dress him up in vegetation. They take a crown of thorns, they press it into a skull. They give him a scepter made out of a reed.

Vegetation, he's taking on the very clothing of our first ancestors. And then what do the soldiers do? They put a robe on him and they mock worship him as the king. They mock worship him, hail, king Jesus, and they beat him. Jesus, what is he doing? He's taking on the derelict, the trash. This is what he's adorned in going to the cross. He's humiliated. He's walking the paces of Adam and Eve.

And again, what is this for? God is going to do just what he did in Genesis three. He clothed them in the sacrifice and he clothed us in the sacrifice. The true sacrifice, the holy one, the Lord of glory. God Himself nailed to the cross so that you and I—what does the Bible say?—we are in Him. We are clothed in His righteousness. We're robed in the righteousness of Christ.

This isn't visible on the outside. There are a lot of people who look at Christians like we're the emperor in the emperor's new clothes, walking around, parading around like we have something really great that we don't. But the reality is that if you are a Christian, if you've owned Jesus by faith, you are robed in him on the inside. You can't see it. It's invisible to others, but this is how God the Father considers you and deals with you. When he considers you, he considers you on the basis of the righteousness of Christ. When he looks at you, he sees Jesus in all of his perfection and glory. That's true on the inside of who you are. Nobody can take that away from you. That's incredible good news for us.

And the Bible tells us at the end of time, at the last judgment, what's on the inside of you will be visible on the outside of you. Revelation 19 has this amazing call to worship where all these people are gathered around:

Heard the sound of a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters, like fans in a stadium. And shouting, hallelujah, for our Lord, our God, the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory for the wedding of the lamb has come and the bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean was given for her to wear. — Revelation 19

Adornment, God's investiture. This is God placing the robe and the crown. This is what God has intended for all time.

Some of you love clothes. We have certain members of our family that we call clothes horses. Anybody ever been called a clothes horse? Some of you, your motto in life is from ZZ Top: "Girls go crazy for a sharp dressed man." But look, that love of clothing, your love of fashion and clothing and looking good, that is deep in the spiritual DNA. That's not just some kind of character flaw on you. That's actually a deep whisper of the divine in your life. Wanting to be clothed and look good and be put together. This is what God's designed his image bearers to be in Christ and what will be.

I'm not trying to justify your shopping addiction. But look, there is nothing wrong with enjoying clothes. It is a taste of what you're made for. Our temptation, however, is sometimes to focus so much on the outside in this life that we miss the inside. On what's seen rather than unseen, to focus on outer beauty rather than on our souls. That's a temptation in this moment. To worry about how much you weigh and what your BMI is—and all those things can be good, but they can also be taken the wrong way. The Lord's focus for us would be to cultivate that inner beauty that's in keeping with what He has already made for you as a person who is robed in the righteousness of Christ.

Are you developing? What kind of time do you spend? Are you spending time working out? Are you spending time on the internal life? Are you cultivating the internal life? Because what's on the inside will one day be revealed on the outside. And that is what the Lord cares about. The Lord looks at the heart, not on the outer appearance. And we're such people of superficiality, looking on the veneer, looking on the outside.

An Invitation

I want to invite all of you this morning, all of us, to respond to this in a couple of different ways, to respond to God's word. If you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have unfinished business with the Lord, just like in the Garden of Eden. You have unfinished business.

What I want you to hear is this invitation from the Lord to come and let Him clothe you in the righteousness of Christ. Only in Jesus do we find a place to take our shame. Only in Jesus do we have a place to take all the things that we know are off on the inside and bring them to the Lord so that they are clothed in Him and we experience shame no more. If you have not done that this morning, I want to invite you to receive Jesus, to take Him as your own and let Him clothe you.

Let Him cover over your shame. Let Him cover over the places of deep injury in your life. If you are a believer this morning, my invitation for you is this: to live into what it means to be clothed in Christ. To let go of the outer and the superficial and the vain. Just like that emperor. Let go of that and look to the inner life. What does God want to cultivate in you that's in keeping with what will be true at the end of time all over on the outside for God to display.

The other thing I want to ask you: if you're a Christian, I want you to bring all your shame to Him this morning. This morning, I'm not going to lead us in prayer at the end of our time. I want to invite you to talk to the Lord. There's something in this for all of us to come to Him, the one who clothes us, the one who gives us the fullness of Jesus, the one who crowns us with glory and honor. Let's go to the Lord in silent prayer together.

The Lord's Supper

The high point of our worship every week is that we get to come around the table together and remember the death and resurrection of Jesus for us and lay hold of that by faith. It's such a gift that God gives to us in this very tangible, visible, tactile meal we call the Lord's Supper. And it's an invitation for His people to gather together and recognize the unity of His people and what God has done for us in Christ.

So listen as I read this passage from First Corinthians chapter 11:

I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread. When He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also, after supper, He took the cup and He gave it to them and said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. — 1 Corinthians 11

I, gathering in His name, get the great privilege of inviting you, baptized Christians to this table, to remember the fullness of what God has given you in Christ this morning. You get to come. You get to celebrate. You get to partake just as those disciples did in that upper room with Jesus on that last night. When they, not even understanding, received from His hand His body and His blood—and you, you get the same thing. You get to come gather around this table with His people and receive and remember and taste and see that God is good.

This is a meal that's given for God's people, for Christians. If you're a baptized Christian and you've made that known and made that commitment to Him at this or another church, we invite you to come this morning and receive. Come and remember that you are robed in the righteousness of Christ. It's not based on what you've done or your merit or your performance, your goodness, your righteousness—your failures, all those are covered in Christ's righteousness. We invite you to come on the basis of that.

If you're not a Christian, we're so glad you're here with us this morning, but it would be wrong for you to come and partake in something that's a symbol of a deep spiritual reality in our lives. We instead ask you to stay where you are and watch.

Just a moment. I'm going to invite you to come forward. We're going to sing. You can come up the side aisles here. If those helpers can come on forward at this point, I'll have these folks ready up here and there'll be two stations. You can come up and they'll have a loaf of bread and a tray with cups in it. The clear cups are wine and tinted cups are grape juice. So you can come up and tear off a piece of bread and take a cup.

If you don't want to partake of that loaf or you have a gluten allergy, or if you'd like the prepackaged communion, I'll be holding a plate with gluten-free crackers as well as the prepackaged communion supplies. So any way you want to receive communion, we've kind of got it covered here this morning. You're good.

But we have this opportunity to continue our worship and deepen our joy, and I want to encourage you to sit in this moment and remember what God has done for you. As we sing, come when you're ready and come and partake of the body and blood of Christ given for you.

Giving

We're going to sing one more song in our worship, and with this is our opportunity to respond to the gospel in generosity. And I want to encourage this congregation: I've seen the giving numbers for this summer, and I've just been so encouraged to see the way that this church has supported the ministry of this church. And in a time when a lot of people are living out of fear and being clutchy with what we have, seeing generosity come out of this congregation—I just want to encourage you to continue that pathway. That's an act of faith in a world that looks at everything as if we're always looking at the glass half empty. And I want to encourage you to continue to do that.

God is worth all of our giving and all of our serving, all that we have. So let's recognize Him as we sing and pass these baskets during this last song.

A Word on Sunday Hospitality

Hey, one thing before the benediction, I want to really encourage our congregation to return to a practice that we did pre-COVID and that was Sunday hospitality after our services. I want to encourage you after we come together for worship, not to rush off into a busy day of doing. This is a day of Sabbath rest for God's people and I just want to encourage you to put yourself out there a little bit and extend an invitation. Even if you're not ready today, plan for next week of going on a picnic with somebody, inviting somebody over to your house, meeting up and continuing fellowship with God's people throughout this day. This is the day He has made and we should rejoice in it.

Benediction

Look up and receive this benediction.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom of the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments, how inscrutable His ways. From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory now and forever.

Go in peace. Amen.