An Introduction to Year of the Word

Good morning, Watermark. How are we doing today? Happy 2025. I'm so glad you made it. If this is your first time ever with us here at Watermark, thanks for trusting us with your Sunday morning. I hope this place can feel like home for you very quickly. I know we have people sitting outside of this room in overflow today. Thank you for being with us. I'm so glad you are here.

Several years ago, a friend of mine asked me to fly to New York City to videotape his proposal. He was planning to propose to his wife in New York City. I was happy to have a free trip to New York, so that was great. But he asked me to do something very important. He asked me to transport his engagement ring from Dallas to New York. We organized it in such a way that we would meet up when he was having dinner with his soon-to-be fiancée. I would meet him in the bathroom of the restaurant and give him the ring.

Hey, look. I can already hear it in the room. The ring was fine. All right? Just know that's not where this is going. But his engagement traveled around the city, which meant I was traveling around the city. I was walking the city. I rode on the subway, I rode on a bus, and I carried this engagement ring all around Manhattan. I had it in my backpack, and I was carrying it all over the place. I will never forget sitting on a bus in Manhattan with an engagement ring in my backpack and that backpack just sitting on the ground of this bus in Manhattan.

I remember looking down at that bag and having this realization: "Man, I have something that is worth thousands of dollars, something that is life-changing in my possession, and I just have it sitting on the floor of a bus in Manhattan." When I had that realization, everything changed. I picked up that backpack, I put it on my lap, and I Spider-Man gripped that thing for the remainder of the time until I met him in the bathroom of Tavern On the Green and gave him the ring he would then give to his wife.

I tell you that because I wonder if our relationship with the Bible is a little bit like the relationship I had with that engagement ring. I wonder if we don't realize that what we have in our possession every single day is something life-changing. I wonder if 2025 is the year where our relationship needs to change. The Word of God doesn't need to go from the floor to our lap, but it needs to go from the nightstand into our hearts, and our relationship needs to change.

Do you know what's interesting? If I had done what you thought had happened, which was lost that ring, it would have been devastating. It would have ruined plans. It would have dramatically changed my trip and their trip. Something good for you to process is if you lost your access to the Word of God, would it devastate your life? Would anything change or would it just be life as normal?

For Watermark Community Church, 2025 is being called the Year of the Word. It's the year that we have invited every person here to journey from cover to cover of the Bible. We want to be a people who read through the entire Bible. Only 20 percent of Americans have read through the entire Bible at some point in their life. Think about that. Are you in that 20 percent? Our goal here at Watermark is to put a massive dent in that statistic in 2025.

But what we're talking about is not just completing the Bible; what we're talking about is being transformed by reading the Scripture, because we do have something in our possession that is actually life-changing. As I was preparing this week, I came across some statistics about how reading the Scriptures actually is transformative. Listen to some of these stats.

Regular Bible readers report feeling 30 percent less lonely than those who do not engage with Scripture frequently. Couples that read the Bible together at least four times a week are 35 percent more likely to describe their marriage as very strong. Bible readers are 32 percent less likely to experience depression compared to those who rarely read the Bible. Bible readers are 228 percent more likely to share their faith at least once a week.

Individuals who read the Bible at least four times a week have significantly lower odds of participating in behaviors such as getting drunk, sex outside of marriage, and gambling. Daily Bible readers are 45 percent more likely to express gratitude regularly compared to non-readers, and those who read the Bible four or more times per week are 61 percent less likely to view pornography than those who read less frequently.

Do you see it? What we have in our possession transforms. It's life-changing. How is that possible? It's possible because the words of this book are God's words to us. When we open it, it's like we're opening God's mouth. God wants to speak to us. He wants to be heard, and when we hear from God, it is life-changing.

So, like we do every single Sunday, I want to give you an opportunity to ask God to speak to you this morning through the teaching of God's Word. So, pray really quickly for yourself. Just say, "God, would you speak to me this morning?" Then would you pray for the people around you and ask God to speak clearly to them as well? Then would you pray for me and ask God to speak clearly through me to you?

God, we praise you and thank you that you've given us your Word and you've given us your Spirit who leads and guides us into all truth. God, I pray that right now you would give us eyes to see you and ears to hear from you and hearts to receive all that you have for us today. In Jesus' name, amen.

I want to invite you to think about the Bible like a puzzle. In some ways it is a puzzle. It's 66 books. I don't know if you know this, but it's 1,189 chapters comprised of 31,102 verses. That's a lot. Reading through the entire Bible is no joke. If you were to look at the duration of the Bible on Audible, it would be somewhere between 65 and 75 hours. That's how long it would take you to read it if you sat down, started reading, and didn't stop until it was over…65 to 75 hours.

Now, I want you to imagine. What if I handed you a puzzle without the box top? Like, no picture of what the puzzle was. What if I handed you this box and all you saw were the puzzle pieces? For a lot of people, that's what the Bible feels like. It feels like a box with no box top. You don't even know what you're supposed to picture. You don't know what picture the Bible fully paints.

So, reading the Bible can feel a lot like picking up a puzzle piece, looking at it, and being like, "Well, that's a nice puzzle piece." Then maybe you get lucky and two of them are stuck together. You're like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see that. That's amazing right there. That's fantastic." This is what it's like. We have 31,000 different puzzle pieces.

Some of us just find a couple of puzzle pieces we like. We're like, "Man, this Philippians puzzle piece… I just love it. It really helps my attitude." A few months later… "Let's go back to Philippians. Man, I love this puzzle piece." You get that Leviticus puzzle piece, and you're like, "Nope. Hard pass on that one. That one is ugly." That's what it is. You never see the picture.

Now, when you look at this… This is actually a picture of the state of Texas, and it's pretty busy. It's the state of Texas, and Willie Nelson is down in the Austin area. You have the Alamo down in San Antonio. You have Big Tex right here in Dallas. It's busy. There's a lot going on, but you can see the full picture. That's the Bible. The Bible has a lot going on in it, yet there is one complete picture.

My goal this week, next week, and all throughout the year is to show you the box top of the Bible. It's to show you the picture the Bible paints. My goal is for every person who journeys with us through the Bible this year to get to the end of 2025 and be able to say, "I've read through the entire Bible. I understand it more than I've ever understood it in my life, and I enjoy it more than I ever have." Today and next week are especially about showing you the box top.

So, let me tell you this. If you want to take some ground really quickly in terms of understanding the Bible, what you need to understand is one word, four movements, and one question. Okay? One word (one name), four movements, and one question. The Bible talks about a lot of people, but from cover to cover, the Bible points to one person, and that person is Jesus.

The Bible tells a bunch of stories, but the Bible, from cover to cover, is actually just telling one story, and that story is made up of four movements. If you want to understand the flow of the Bible, it's just four movements. Here they are: creation, fall, redemption, new creation. That's the story flow of the Bible. There are four movements.

So, one name (Jesus), four movements (creation, fall, redemption, new creation), and one question. The Bible answers a bunch of questions, but ultimately, the Bible seeks to answer only one question. Here is the question the Bible, from cover to cover, seeks to answer…How can sinful human beings be acceptable to and together with a holy God forever? That's the question.

Anytime you come to reading the Scripture, you should ask the question, "How is this passage seeking to provide information to answer this question?" So, if you want to see the box top…one name, four movements, one question. This week and next week, I'm going to show you how those things fit together.

I want to invite you to turn to the first page of the Bible. Today, we're going to journey through Genesis, chapters 1-3, three chapters, in very little time. I'm going to be reading a lot of Scripture, but my goal is to show you one name, four movements, and one question. A book that is really helpful if you want to take your understanding of the story of the Scriptures to a new level is a book by Trent Hunter and Stephen Wellum called Christ from Beginning to End. It's a fantastic book.

We're going to start with the first movement, which is creation. The movement of creation is found in the first two chapters of Genesis. If you look at the first verse of the Bible… It's a famous verse. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Some of you have never been able to get past that first question.

If that's you, I want you to know we have a ministry right here at the church called Great Questions. It would be amazing for you to check it out. All of the questions you have about the Bible's understanding of how the earth came into existence… You should totally go to Great Questions and ask those great questions.

What I want you to see right now… "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The first character we get introduced to in the story of the Bible is God. Why? Because the entire Bible is about God. The Bible exists for us to know and understand God. God is trying to communicate to us. Right out of the gate, we see in Genesis 1 and 2 what God wants us to know about himself.

So, what are the things in Genesis 1 and 2 that God is trying to clarify for his people? First, he wants us to know he's the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." You need to know the book of Genesis was written to the nation of Israel after they were freed from captivity in Egypt and were going to enter the Promised Land.

Think about it. They had been in captivity for 400 years in Egypt. Egypt was a polytheistic society where they attached different gods to different aspects of creation. God, through Moses, is writing to the Israelites, saying, "Hey, let's just be clear. 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'" Psalm 24:1 is very fitting. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein…" God wants all of humanity to know he is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

The next thing he wants us to know is he's a God who speaks. Right there in verse 3 it says, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." Ten different times in Genesis, chapter 1, we see God speaking. Why? Because he wants his people to know he's a God who speaks. He's a God who communicates. He wants to be heard. He spoke at the beginning of creation.

Jesus, then, is considered the Word of God, because God is communicating to his people in the person of his Son. The Bible is referred to as the Word of God. Second Timothy 3:16 tells us all Scripture is God-breathed, because God wants us to hear from him. That's why we treasure the Word of God here at Watermark. We believe God has gone to great lengths to speak to us. We get to hear from him. If you want to, you can hear from the God of the universe every single day of your life. Do you believe that? He wants to speak to you.

Thirdly, God is showing us that his creativity and power are limitless. God just speaks and the universe comes into existence. That's power. But he also creates, and the only inspiration he has is himself. Just think. God doesn't have Pinterest. He's not like, "Well, you know, I'm thinking about creating something I'll call earth. What should I do?" God has never been influenced; he's only an influencer. He is the original influencer.

Anything in creation is a product of his limitless creativity. Stars, land, mountains, all of the different species of animals and marine life, all of the different plants, all of the different colors… God didn't have something to help him create something. No. He himself is the inspiration. His creativity and power are limitless.

The next thing he wants us to know is everything he does is good. Seven different times in chapter 1, what God makes is described as good, and what God makes is good because he himself is good. That's why David says in Psalm 34:8, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!" What God made is good because he himself is good. When we look at chapters 1 and 2, God wants his people to be abundantly clear that his goodness is especially tailored toward humanity. In Genesis 1, we see that he created humanity to be royalty. Chapter 1, verse 27:

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"

What does that mean? Just think about it. It means God created us to be like him. He created us to reflect him, to represent him, and God created us to rule for him, to have dominion over the earth. He created us to be royalty. So, as you read, you get the sense that Adam and Eve were created to have this special relationship with God. They were to experience God's physical presence in the garden of Eden.

God's goodness to humanity is seen in the fact that he created humanity to enjoy freedom. God creates Adam and puts him in the garden, and God only gives Adam one rule. Genesis 2:16: "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'"

He's saying, "Look. Eat whatever you want. Go explore. You should taste fruit from all of the trees…except one." There is freedom. Then God begins to parade animals in front of Adam. He's like, "You can name them. That's your job. What do you want to call that? You want to call that a pigeon? Fine. Sure. Pig? Sure. I don't know where you got that from, but okay." Freedom.

Not only that. We see God created humanity for intimate relationship with one another. God creates Eve and brings Eve to Adam. He introduces them, and what's Adam's response when he sees Eve? Verse 23 of chapter 2: "Then the man said, 'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.'"

Do you know what that is in the Hebrew? That's poetry. That's how you know when a guy is really in love with a girl. His automatic reflex is to start spouting poetry. If you're a dude and you're just rattling off poetry, you're done, man. Good luck. You know, I've said this before. I'll say it again. Adam and Eve have the best "How did you guys meet?" story in the history of the world.

You know, if you're a newlywed, you're probably answering that question all the time. "Hey, how did you guys meet?" Just to be clear, if it takes longer than three minutes to share your story, people regret asking. Okay? I'm just letting you know. But just think about Adam and Eve's story. "Hey, how did you guys meet?"

"Well, it's the craziest thing. God introduced us."

"Yeah, I know. God introduced my wife and me."

"No, he really introduced us."

"Okay. Tell me more."

"Well, I was the only man on the planet. God put me to sleep. He formed a woman out of my rib. He introduced us, we were naked, and the rest is history."

That's a pretty good story. That's their "How we met" story. Then, watch how chapter 2 ends. Verses 24-25: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." That means they know each other fully. They're fully known. There's nothing to hide. There's no shame. They're fully known. They're fully loved with one another.

So there it is. There are only four movements (creation, fall, redemption, new creation), and we have just completed one full movement of the story of Scripture. Genesis 1 and 2 is the movement of creation. Here is the movement of creation summarized: an unfathomably good God made a good world with good people who were meant to enjoy God's presence and overwhelming goodness forever. That's the movement of creation. Everything is as it should be. Adam and Eve are flourishing, only knowing the blessing of God by being with him.

Then you turn the page to chapter 3, and we enter the second movement of the story of Scripture…fall. Genesis 3 might be the most important chapter in the Bible, because Genesis, chapter 3, is what prompts the rest of the Bible. Genesis 3 unpacks the fall of humanity. It explains why this world is the way it is. It explains why there are things like mental illness, natural disasters, chronic pain, cancer, disabilities, terrorist attacks, and abuse. All kinds of evil find their origin in this chapter.

So, let's read some of it together to get acquainted with the movement known as the fall. Verse 1: "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made." A villain is introduced into the story. "He said to the woman, 'Did God actually say, "You shall not eat of any tree in the garden"?'"

Here's what you need to understand: Satan, in the form of a serpent, isn't asking a question. That's not what he's doing when he says, "Hey, did God actually say…?" He's really not asking a question. He's mocking God right now. He's saying, "Is God that ridiculous?" Put this in the language of a teenager. "Shut up! No way. Did God actually say that? Are you kidding me? That is so ridiculous. Is God that ridiculous and idiotic and dramatic that he would say you can't eat of any tree in the garden?"

Watch the girl's response. "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."'" Did God actually say that? Did he say, "You can't touch it"? No. That's nowhere recorded in God's command.

Do you see what's happening? The villain introduces doubt. And what does it produce in Eve? Eve begins to diminish God's provision and the freedom he provides. His prohibition is actually expanded. It's not just "Don't eat it." Now it's "Don't touch it." Watch how Satan waters the seeds of doubt. Verse 4: "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.'"

Satan's message is "God is lying to you. He's actually holding out on you. He's trying to keep you from something good. God is kind of insecure, and he kind of wants the whole 'God' title to himself, but if you eat of the fruit… Do you know why God doesn't want you to eat it? Because you'll actually be like him."

Here's the crazy thing. Satan is saying, "You can be like God," but God made them to be like him. They were made in his image. What does that mean? It means God made Adam and Eve, humanity, to be like him, to reflect him, to rule in his place. Satan is like, "Yeah, but there's still more to experience." Satan's deception led to Eve's distrust in God's goodness.

Look at the result. If you want to understand why this world is so broken, here it is. Verse 6: "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."

What's so important for you to see here is that Eve saw the tree was good for food. Up until this point in Genesis, God has been the one to declare things good. God has been the one who has decided what is good. Now Eve is deciding for herself what is good, and Eve decides the tree that was to be avoided is now the tree to be desired.

People think humanity is the answer to the problem of the brokenness of our world, that we just need to be better people. No, we're the problem. The reason we're the problem is we consistently look at what God says is good, and we're like, "You know what? Actually, the opposite is what's good. You're holding out on us. You're lying to us. You're stealing from us." So, Eve comes to a conclusion. "I'm not going to die. I'm actually going to live more fully." Verse 7:

"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."

What's the fallout? Don't miss it. In that moment, the world got flipped upside down. Paradise was lost. Everything was fractured. Trent Hunter and Stephen Wellum put it this way: "Adam and Eve experienced firsthand the fourfold effects of sin. Vertically, they experienced alienation and condemnation from God. Horizontally, they experienced alienation from each other. Internally (and schizophrenically), they experienced alienation within themselves. Cosmically, they experienced alienation in the world they were created to rule."

What does all that mean? How does that actually play out? How do you see that in the text? Well, think about it. Instead of God's presence bringing joy, it brought fear. That's why Adam and Eve hid from God. Chapter 2 ends with Adam and Eve naked and unashamed, and in chapter 3, we see them full of shame and trying to cover their nakedness.

Chapter 2 ends with Adam and Eve coming together in marriage, and they're one. What do you see in chapter 3? They're divided against one another. Adam is looking at Eve, saying, "She's the one who gave me the fruit." There's division now. It's the first marital conflict in history. God has made Adam to be over the ground, to work the ground, to rule over the ground, and now, because of his sin, a day would come where the ground would be over him in his death. He would be put back into the dirt he was created to rule over.

See, everything just got turned upside down. Everything became fractured in the world. If you want to know why the world is broken, it's because humanity is the one who chose his own way. How does chapter 3 end? Verse 24: "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."

So, chapter 3 ends with Adam and Eve being driven out of the garden, driven out of God's physical presence. And now what do we see? For the first time in history, we see separation between God and man. Man no longer knows God's blessing but now experiences his curse as well. Here's why Genesis, chapter 3, is very important. It's very important, yes, because we get introduced to the sinfulness of humanity, but the reason Genesis, chapter 3, is ultimately important is because humanity gets introduced to the holiness of God.

That's what's happening in Genesis, chapter 3. Humanity is being confronted with the holiness of God. What is the holiness of God? We talked about this a few months ago. We're going to talk about it a lot over the course of this year. If I were to sit down with you and ask you, "What does it mean that God is holy?" I think our tendency is to say, "It means God is perfect." That's a part of it, but that isn't ultimately what it means for God to be holy.

The holiness of God is the otherness of God. The Hebrew word for holy is the Hebrew word qadosh, which means to cut. It's to separate. It's how separate God is from the rest of humanity. The holiness of God is the unfathomable or incomprehensible degree to which God is distinct from humanity in all of his attributes.

So, holiness isn't just one of God's attributes; it's what informs all of his attributes. God is holy in his love, his purity, his justice, power, forgiveness, wrath, grace, and on and on. What that means is God is so other, or extra, in all of these things that our finite minds can't even begin to scratch the surface of understanding.

Let me explain it this way. If I were to go to my three boys and say, "Hey, man, I want you guys to clean your room. Go clean your room. Ready, break," what do you think I would find? Their definition of clean would be different than my definition of clean. Their definition of a clean room would be just better than it was previously. My definition would be different.

Their definition of clean might be, "Hey, let's just take the comforter, and let's move it over the entirety of the bed and cover up whatever is on the bed under the comforter." It might mean just clearing a path, like, pushing the things on the floor to the sides so the floor, at least, is more visible. If there's any trash, it might mean taking that trash and putting it into the trash can. My definition of clean would be different. I could explain that to them, and I think if I did that, my boys would be like, "Oh, that's what it means to be clean."

I'm talking about, like, "You don't just take the comforter and pull it over; you straighten out the sheet under it, then you put the comforter, and then you pull it tight so the thing is flat. If there are dirty clothes, you don't just put them to the side; you actually pick them up and put them in the hamper. Hey, and we can actually vacuum the floor. Here's a vacuum. That'll clean things up. You know what? Let me introduce you to something called dusting."

If I really wanted to go in on being clean, I'd be like, "Let me talk to you about right angles." That might be too far, but I could give them a vision for it. I think they would understand. I think they'd be like, "I had no idea, but now I've realized, Dad, that there is a whole other level to the word clean."

Now I want you to think about a 6-month-old sitting in a high chair with a full diaper and his shirt drenched in drool because he's teething with baby food caked between his fingers and in his hair. Now imagine me looking at this 6-month-old and saying, "Hey, man. Go clean your room." What do you think the result would be? No understanding. That 6-month-old does not have the capacity to begin to scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg of what I even mean when I say, "A clean room."

That's the holiness of God. It's the otherness of God. It's the fact that you and I don't even have the capacity in our finite minds to even begin to scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg of who God is. In his purity, in his love, in his grace, in his justice, in his wrath, in his forgiveness, he is so other than anything we can begin to comprehend. He is holy, holy, holy.

Now, I want you to imagine looking at that holy God, who is incomprehensibly good, incomprehensibly pure, incomprehensibly loving, and incomprehensibly all-knowing and powerful, and saying, "I know better than you. I can do your job better than you. I don't respect you. Your rules are lacking. Your judgment is lacking. You're holding out on me, which makes you a thief and a barrier to what is good. I don't need you because I can be you."

That's what Adam and Eve did when they ate the fruit, and that's what we do anytime we sin. We can't begin to fathom how offensive even the smallest careless white lie or word or the smallest impurity is to a God who is holy, holy, holy. R.C. Sproul said, "Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in his sovereign authority."

A holy God can't just overlook sin, because it's a direct offense toward him. He must execute justice. The consequence for sin is separation from God. Adam and Eve, at the end of chapter 3, are driven out of the garden, because sinful humans are no longer acceptable to and cannot be with a holy God.

So, if you want to summarize the second movement… There are only four movements. We're already done with two of them. We're only three chapters into the Bible. We have already completed two of the four movements of the story of Scripture. What's the fall, the second movement? Here's the fall: sinful human beings cannot be with a holy God. That's it. That's the end of the second movement.

I can already knock out an entire third movement in two minutes. I'm just going to skip to the fourth movement, which is new creation. If you fast-forward to the end of the Bible, what do you find? Let's just read it. Here it is. Follow along. This is amazing. Revelation 21: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." At the end of the Bible, you see a new heaven and new earth. That's why we call this movement new creation.

"And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.'" So, what do we see at the beginning of the Bible? God speaks. "Let there be light." What do we see at the end of the Bible? God is still speaking. "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God."

So, what do we see? We see a holy God living together with humanity. It's the restoration of what was lost in Eden, but it's so much better, because the garden has given way to a city. "'He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.' And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'"

Somehow, a way has been made for sinful humanity to be acceptable to and together with a holy God forever. We have now completed three full movements of the whole story of Scripture. What are they? Creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. How do you go from creation and fall to new creation? It's solely through redemption.

Now, from here on out, the question the Bible will seek to answer right at the end of chapter 3, as Adam and Eve are driven out of the garden… You end chapter 3 like that, but then, in Revelation 21, you have God and humanity back together. The rest of the Bible will answer…what question? There's only one question. How can sinful human beings be acceptable to and together with a holy God forever? How is that possible? Well, the answer, we already know, is found in the one person the entire Bible points to: Jesus Christ, who is the better Adam.

See, Adam was made in God's image; Jesus was the image of the invisible God. Adam was driven out of paradise; Jesus voluntarily left paradise. In a garden, Adam rejected God's will; in a different garden, the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus would pray, "Not my will but your will be done." By taking from a tree, it would produce death in Adam's life; Jesus Christ went to a tree and hung on a tree and died so you and I can live. He's the better Adam.

So, how do we respond? How do we respond to the story of Scripture, creation, fall, redemption, and new creation? Well, I want to invite you to personalize the question. If you're just visiting church, checking it out, just personalize the question. "How can I be acceptable to and together with a holy God forever?" It's the most important question you'll answer.

How can you be acceptable to and together with a holy God forever? The answer is one name: Jesus Christ. If you don't know Jesus Christ, there's no better way to start 2025. All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. First John 5: "Everyone who has the Son has life. Those who do not believe in the name of the Son of God do not have life."

When you think about God being holy… Maybe you're a Christian here, but there's sin you've been letting linger in your life. Maybe there's sin you need to confess. Maybe you're realizing today just how offensive even the most acceptable sins are to a holy God. Knowing Jesus doesn't mean God just ignores it now. It means Jesus Christ had to endure the wrath of God so you wouldn't have to for those sins.

So maybe you need to confess. Maybe you just need to express gratitude to the Lord. Let me just say this. It's Year of the Word. We're journeying through the Bible together. We're journeying through the story of Scripture together. We're pointing all of our gaze at the person of Jesus Christ. It's not too late. If you resisted starting the reading plan with us, jump in with us tomorrow. Forget catching up. Start tomorrow in Genesis 23. Jump in with us. It's not too late.

I want to invite you to journey through the entire Bible with us. Forget getting behind. Start every Monday with us. If you get behind, wherever we are, every Monday, just start with us. Invite your friends, family, and community to do it with you. Reading the Word of God leads to meditating on the Word of God, which leads to, by the power of the Spirit, being changed by the Word of God. So let's do it together.

I want to invite you right now to pray for yourself. Here's what I want to invite you to pray. Just say, "God, may 2025 be the year of the Word for me." Just pray that you would understand and enjoy his Word more than ever. Pray that you'd be changed, you'd be transformed this year because of the reading of his Word.

If you're here this morning and don't have a relationship with Jesus… Right now, you're realizing it is impossible for you to find a way back to a holy God on your own. Jesus Christ declares that he is the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through him. So I encourage you right now. All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.

Right now, you can pray, "Lord Jesus, would you come into my life today? Thank you that you died for me. Thank you that you rose from the dead for me. Would you come into my life? Would you forgive me of my sins? Would you lead me in a new life?" For the rest of us here, I pray…

God, you are holy, holy, holy. You are unfathomably good, and you've created us to be in relationship with you, yet sin has fractured that relationship. We just thank you, God, from the bottom of our hearts that you would send Jesus and that you, Jesus, would faithfully endure the cross, you would absorb the wrath of God on our behalf, and you would make a way when there was no way for us to be right with God. We need you. We love you. In Jesus' name, amen.