Why Did God Create Humanity?

What I want to do today is I actually want to pick up on something we covered in the Public Appearance Campaign. It covers some of the same ground, but also brings out some other points.

We had mentioned for those who went, and I do appreciate how many people from here did go and participated. We had 45 people show up. We had 150 that signed up, but for some reason, they just didn't come, although we do know an advertising agency told us a while back, oh, you'll get more people to come if you charge them. If they have to pay money, they'll come. And we said, nah, if they don't come when it's free, that's okay. We're presenting this material free. But one of the things we talked about is why God created us. And when you get down to the most important questions we can ask as human beings, the first one, of course, is, is there a God? But then it's why am I here? In fact, that's usually the one that comes up first. What am I doing here? Do I have a purpose? And one that a lot of thinking people really struggle with, okay, if there's a God, why does He got to allow evil? Why does God allow pain? Why does God allow suffering? Why does God allow horrible things to happen? I mean, what human beings do to other human beings is just atrocious. Why does He allow this? I'm working on a new Beyond Today program in which we're going to talk about atheism. And I've spent hours over this last week in the evenings, especially, watching debates and speeches by atheists. And their constant theme is, what kind of monster God would allow someone to rape a child? What kind of monster would do that? And so their argument is, if God in the Bible is God, He's not worthy of worship. He's a monster. And so it leads them to atheism. It leads them to a whole different viewpoint of why humanity is here. So if I ask, why am I here? And I must ask, what is the purpose of humanity if there is one? And then if there's a God, why does He allow all this mess? Well, let's begin by going to Genesis chapter one. Genesis chapter one. We spent a little time in Genesis. If we believe that the book of Genesis really is inspired by God, it gives us an outline of how all this happened, how He created the universe. You know, all the details aren't here, but we have an outline of what He did. We have a very, very important set of statements made here in Genesis one, starting in verse 27.

Verse 31 is very interesting then.

Now there's a lot in that couple of verses there. We can talk about what it means to have dominion. In fact, before now in the Passover, we're going to talk about what that means that God gave dominion to humanity. We'll talk about that some. But today I want to talk about to be in the image of God, and when God created the first human beings, He didn't say, oh, this is rotten. This is evil. He said, this is good, and we are made in the image of God, made in the image of God. Now, we're physical human beings, but how are we in the image of God?

This is something I want to talk about here today. Here are some of the ways that you and I are made in the image of God. One is that we have reason, the ability for self-conscious thought. The very fact that we ask, is there a purpose in this, is remarkable. Right? I really doubt if a group of cows sitting around chewing their cuds, mooing, or having a discussion on the purpose of life. We are so unique in all of the animal world. And of course, atheists believe that we are just the higher form of animal world.

And that our purpose is to find out how to live in nature. And I think we should take care of nature. We'll talk about dominion here in a couple weeks, but that's not the point. The point is, you and I, there's nothing to explain. And even atheists have a problem with this, to explain the difference between us and animals. We're in the image of God. Now, they are finding there are some differences in our brains that allow us to have religious experiences.

Allow us to contemplate the fact that there is a God. But there's something else that has to do with the image of man, and that's another subject, or the image of God, and that we are in the image of God. So we have reason. We have emotions. Now, we can see certain emotions in certain animals, but there's something unique about our ability to experience joy, empathy, grief, and sorrow.

Our ability to have love. We have choices. Another thing about reason is the ability to have free choice. Free choice is the great gift of God, and it's the great curse that you and I live under. We get to choose. You get up every morning, I get up every morning, we make all kinds of choices. Including, we choose the difference between good and evil. Made in the image of God, He either had to give us all instinct, so that we simply operate it as a higher form of animal, just a hairless ape, or if He was going to give us these abilities that are like Him, we had to get free choice.

It's the funny thing about love. I really do believe that love requires choice. I can't learn to love unless I choose to love. And if I choose to love, I have to be able to make choice, which means what? I can choose not to love. Here's the great problem. We are human beings in the image of God in this little realm we live in, so we have to make choices. We have imagination and creativity. This is amazing to me. The ability to have abstract thought. I watched my one daughter, as an architect, make up blueprints.

Those are in her head. That's the reality to that. She can hand that to a builder, and he can go out and build a building. And that's all reality to us. When the builder gets it, it's not reality. It's abstract. It's lines on a computer screen. That's all it is. Abstract thought, art, architecture, literature, music. I love to listen to birds chirp, but you'll never hear the right of symphony. They never get together and work out harmony. Up here before services, we had the choir up here, they were practicing, and I was listening to the harmony. They work and work to get that harmony. You're never going to see a bunch of robins get together and work out harmony.

There's something so unique. Our uniqueness has to do with the fact that we are created in the image of God. We also have this free will. That's why I was getting into the free choice. This is the big problem we have. And then we are designed by God to have relationships. Relationship with God and relationships with each other. So we have all these abilities. We go back to creativity, mathematics. You can understand calculus because God made calculus and then made you in His image. And that way I'm a very flawed image of God because I can't figure it out. We all have different abilities, right? We're all individuals. But you can do scientific research. You can do geometry. Why? Because God invented geometry and then He gave you the ability to work that out. You were in His image. You can't get a horse to understand geometry. You can't. It's not possible. I don't care how smart it is. I don't know how smart...you know, they've taught gorillas up to 200 words, which is amazing. But I've never seen gorillas sit down and teach human beings words. We have dominion over this because we are in the image of God, and He gives us all these abilities. Now in Adam and Eve, or first created, and you see them in the garden, there is no conflict between them. There is no sin. Now when you give people choice, they're sort of neutral. As long as they were exposed to God, they were good. God looked at Adam and even did say, what a mess these people are. They weren't. He said, this is very good. This is special. This isn't my image. These are my children. To give them the ability to choose, He let them be exposed to Satan. This is very hard for human beings to accept. Why did God not protect them? Well, Satan must have snuck in. Like God didn't know that. No, the issue is God allowed him to come in so they could choose. It means nothing to give you choice and not let you choose. And He told them, if you choose not to do what I say, it will be a mess. He told them. And so they chose wrongly. And we've been doing that ever since. You know, as they used to go back and say, oh well, Adam and Eve, they got us in trouble. All human beings do this. If you and I were there, we would have made the same decisions. We all end up making evil choices. And the problem is it changes our nature. And that's the thing about sin sometimes we don't understand. Sin isn't just what we do. Sin, you know, we talk about the nature of something. Human nature, dog nature, fish nature. I have a nephew who has a doctorate in studying fish. I'm not sure what it's called. And every time I have a conversation with him, all he talks about is the nature of fish. Because he puts little, you know, mechanical devices or electronic devices on fish and sends them out and then tracks them where they go all over the world. You know, what they do. They study them and he says, you know what's amazing? We still can't figure out some fish.

We still can't figure them out. So they're studying the nature of different kinds of fish. We have a human nature, our nature, the core of who we are as human beings. And the entire human race became corrupted. We have to come to grips with, sin isn't just a list of dos and don'ts. It is corrupted nature. Now what happens once our nature gets corrupted? Our reason?

Every one of us, every single one of us at the core of who we are has a faulty reasoning process.

The way you and I think doesn't work, it just doesn't. And you know what? The longer I live trying to interact with the Bible and interact with God's Spirit, the less I trust my own thought processes. Because we naturally trust our thought processes and they don't work. So humanity is just a history of people making the same mistakes over and over again. Emotions. Here's where we really get messed up. Adam and Eve had no faulty emotions. There was no uncontrolled anger or wrath or envy or jealousy. They had no lust. There was no faulty emotions until they chose against God. And you and I, our emotional system is totally messed up. I remember counseling someone one time and I asked the person, how do you know if something's true? And the person said, I feel it. That's when I know it's true. I said, I don't know how you respond to God. Because many of the things that God teaches us is directly opposite of how we feel. The opposite. The exact opposite. So hatred, envy, at the core of all of us. And this is where God has to change us. And this is, we're getting into now, we're going to move into what we covered a little bit at the PAC, or at the Public Affairs campaign, on how we have to go through this process and understanding why we are here. You and I are here because we were made in the image of God to be His children. And we're not what we're supposed to be. What we're supposed to be.

We're killing each other. We ruin each other's lives. We run around on this planet, selfishly doing things. And this isn't anything what God designed us to be. You see, why doesn't God stop it? Why doesn't God do this and that? Because God said, you will choose, and I will fix it.

There's a point where He sends Jesus Christ back to stop it. But right now, God's not the God in this world. We'll read that in a minute. He's letting this happen. We all want to be the masters of our own fate. Well, guess what? He said, go ahead and try that. It's worked out real well, hasn't it? Imagination of creativity. You know, we take our creative energies, and we can produce literature, and we can produce art, and we can produce all this stuff. We also produce war. We'll produce a chemical that is very helpful to mankind, and then take that same chemical and twist it around and make a weapon out of it. And we can kill millions of people with it. Same process, same mental process, same genius. The same genius produces things that are good and things that are evil. Free will, well, that's all messed up. We have a hard time making decisions, good decisions about almost anything. And then relationships. You and I live a continuing set of patterns that destroy relationships. We destroy them over and over and over again, and then think, what's the problem? We keep doing this to ourselves. Jeremiah says, the heart is desperately wicked. Think about that. Desperately wicked. There's a desperation about us to be selfish. That's why we're always so amazed at people who give up their lives in service to others, because it's so hard.

So we mess up our relationships. We destroy our marriages, and then blame it on the other person. Well, both people are doing it, usually. We destroy relationships between children and parents, and both children and parents hurt. You know, I talked about that. I've given two sermons here on the Fifth Commandment. How parents teach honor, and then children honor parents, and how we all want—I don't care what age you're at— you want a relationship with your parent.

We're designed that way. We're designed to want to have friends. We're designed to have deep, meaningful relationships, and yet, for most people, life is what? A struggle to have deep, meaningful relationships. Failed relationships. Why? Why do we keep making the same mistakes over and over again? Well, it has to do with our nature, and changing our nature.

I'm going to give you three ways—or three basic motivations, core motivations of all human beings. There are things that are very individual about all of us, and there are certain things that are same in all of us. Someone may be an extrovert, someone introvert. Maybe somebody works in their part of their brain where they work with their hands. Other people work with ideas. We all have different abilities. Some people are visual. Some people learn, and what they do is through audio. Some people—I mean, we all have these different abilities and personality traits, and we're designed that way. But there are certain things about us that are all the same. And I'm going to just go through three of them very quickly. What I do, I want you to think about how these core issues create in us conflict. The conflict between us as people is really two things. A conflict with you and God, and me and God, and an internal conflict within ourselves. And since we can't fix our relationship with God, and since we can't fix what's happening inside of us, guess what we do? We beat up each other.

We'll never solve the conflicts of the world until we solve our problem between us and God, or let God solve that one. And we solve the internal problem, and God solve that one. Now, here's the first core driving thing. Now, there's other things, but these three really hit on core issues that all of us have. We are relationship beings created to have meaningful interaction with God and other human beings. Our deepest core, we need that. I don't care how hard a person is. They need to feel loved. You know, sometimes a child will act up why they don't feel like they're getting enough love or affection. Because the child sometimes doesn't, they don't reason out. They just act. You can have a little child that doesn't feel like they're getting enough attention. They don't feel like they're getting enough love, so they go do something bad so that they can get some attention. I watch children do that all the time. Right? Why are you doing that? They just emotionally don't even know why. They can't even explain it. We as adults are the same way.

We have a deep need for relationships. And that at the core is the one between us and God. Now, that's interesting when you start to think about how much time do you spend every day in your relationship with God? Usually, for many people, unfortunately, our relationship with God is an afterthought. It's a Sabbath activity. So the most important need that's designed inside of you, and understanding, you are designed with an incredible emotional, spiritual emptiness. You're designed with it.

I'm designed with it. We're designed to need God. Now, that is at the core of all of us, which means we're all a little bit dysfunctional. We're all a whole lot insecure, right? Because we're designed with this need.

The other thing about us that is remarkable because of free will is that we will do almost anything to exert independent self-determination. With my grandchildren staying for a couple of weeks, it was hilarious to watch them do something bad because I'm going to do it. No. And then something bad would happen. Then they would be upset, and then they would get corrected for it. And then what do they want? Hugged. First of all, they're bushing you away saying, I do it. And then when it doesn't work, you're supposed to come clean it up and hug them. That's perfect. That shows we need love, this need for relationship. And at the same time, we're driven by no self-determination is what I do. I am the master of my fate. So I'm not going to go to God because He can't be the master of my fate. I'm the master of my fate. But I need God. We're all insane. We're all insane.

At a core level, we're all nuts. That's what you have to realize. This is humanity, folks. This is who we are. But we never get better until we realize what's happening. You realize the sickness.

Which means, by the way, we all have a hostile nature towards God's solutions. Because they don't involve our self-determination. It involves letting God do it. Well, I don't like that answer. God's solutions are the answer you have.

If you don't do it this way, you'll be a mess. Well, I want it to do it this way, and then I want you to fix it so it's not a mess. Right? God, here's what I want. I'm going to do it by way. God said, that won't work. Well, then if you love me, you'll make it work. What? Don't marry that guy. He's a rotten guy. No, I want to marry him, and then I want you to change him.

This is the problem between this need and the second need for self-determination. Last point.

Well, let me get to the last point here.

I think I ran out of battery. Well, I'll read it. I'll read it. I'll read it. Listen to this one, since it's not going to pop up. We will do almost anything to avoid emotional pain or bad emotional feelings. And we will do almost anything to have good emotional feelings.

Right? Think about it. Even physical. I don't want physical pain. Right? I want to feel comfortable and good. So we will do almost anything to avoid bad emotional feelings, bad physical feelings. But we will do almost anything on the other end to experience good emotional feelings and good physical feelings.

The result is we're ping-ponging back and forth because we'll do something because it makes us feel good, but the consequences make us feel bad. So then we'll do something to try to erase the consequences.

It'll make us feel good. This will just create another set of bad consequences. You understand what I'm saying? This is the ping-pong. I need God, but I want to be independent. I want to feel happy and good and wonderful all the time, and I'll do anything to avoid that.

So the husband and wife lay awake at night, arguing and screaming at each other because they can't figure out which one's going to get up and take care of the baby.

Because the baby's crying, the baby needs a diaper changed, and neither of them want to do it because it's uncomfortable.

So we're stuck. And we're stuck in all this conflict. I just want to go through that to give swell. It turned off, but we'll go off. Okay.

So we're done with that. So all these things are in conflict inside of us.

All this is a conflict inside of us. And we're in conflict with God. No wonder we're in conflict with each other. This is the problem with corrupted human nature. We were made in the image of God, and then Satan just took a hammer and beat us to we don't even look like God at all. Yeah, so they sort of look like, sort I guess God would look like. But not really. And then we blame God for the mess. We blame God for the mess. Well, when Adam and Eve sinned, the moment they sinned, there were some things that were determined. And I wanted to just go through a few things that were determined right away when they sinned. So let's go back to Genesis 3.

I'm going to tie it into a few other scriptures. Genesis 3.

I mean, we have to understand this. You're never going to get better. We're never going to get better until we understand, this isn't just, thou shalt not steal. Oh, good, I don't steal. I'm a righteous person. It has to do with the whole corrupted nature. Thou shalt not steal is just the first step in being converted. It's not the final product of being converted. We have to be restored back into the image of God so that we can be His children. His children by nature.

Look what it says here. Genesis 3.14.

Now, God says to the serpent. This is both the serpent, but it's Satan. And Satan, of course, used the serpent to talk to her. And as I mentioned in a sermon a couple of months ago, where we went through a little bit of Genesis, don't be too hard, because I believe this is a reality. This actually took place. Don't be hard on her. She was brand new. How did she know snakes didn't talk? There's no way for her to know that. She was a child in many ways. But she would have the intelligence of a woman, but she was a child. Everything was new. So the Lord said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, more than every beast of the field. In your belly you shall go. You shall eat dust all the days of your life, and I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. And you shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. So the first point is, they were going to end up living under the control of their kidnapper. Satan came in and kidnapped humanity, and they chose it, and God said, go live with him. Go live with him. Satan is real. He's a real being. Just because we don't see him doesn't mean he's not real.

And he influences all of us. I know the scientific mind doesn't want to agree with that. So we come up with an evolutionary reason for evil. You know, if we could just shoot everybody's head with the right chemicals, we wouldn't be evil. Now, it's a whole lot more complicated than that.

Our nature is a mixture of good and evil, every human being. It's a corrupted nature. And Satan is the one who corrupts it. So we are in the middle of a giant spiritual warfare. Satan is influencing us. Go down to verse 19.

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

He told them, your life is going to be very hard. I skipped over some verses if you read through this whole chapter. He said to Adam and Eve, now your life is going to be very hard because you're going to live under the rule of your kidnapper. He's going to abuse you. And you're going to become abusers yourselves. And in the end, this life is going to be hard. It's not going to work. And you will die.

So the second thing is, human beings were going to experience death because of our choices.

Verse 21. He says, Also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made two dicks of skin and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, Behold, a man has become like one of us, to no good and evil. And now lest he put his hand to also take the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden and eaten to till the ground from which he was taken. And he drove him out. He placed caribim at the east of the garden of Eden in a flaming sword.

He drove them out and said, You cannot have eternal life.

We can discuss what those verses mean, but the importance of it is, God said, You leave this place I made for you. Adam didn't walk out of Eden with their head held high. They were kicked out by God who said, You now do no longer have eternal life. You're gone. It's not given to you anymore. You're out of here. And you're going to go out there and you're going to live hard lives. He even tells them the relationship between husband and wife is going to be messed up. It's all going to be a mess. And then you're going to die. That's all there is to this. This is real discouraging. Wow, big deal. What are we coming to church for? Right? If you remember about six months ago, I gave a servant on the proto-Evangelium, the first prophecy in the Bible, which is verse 15.

Verse 15, And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Now he's talking here about Satan. In other words, there was going to be a seed of the woman, a human being that would come, and this human being would conquer Satan. That's the first piece of good news in that whole mess.

That becomes the center of all prophecy. That's how we get out of this. Now, we understand that, and you talk to any Christian, they're going to tell you, well, it's the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins that allows us, that that substitute for us allows us to come before a just and holy God who requires our lives for what we've done. Unique concept that we have is in Christianity. That God sacrificed His Son, and that's what we all deserved, because God demands justice, and God has Islamic. Both of those seeds came together in that one act.

All the prophecies of the Old Testament talk about that. And I'm going to look at one, and then we're going to go into the New Testament, the sea, though this isn't just about forgiveness. And this is one of the great problems with Christianity today. You're forgiven. Everything's okay. Now remain with a corrupted human nature. You're forgiven, and your nature doesn't matter anymore.

And that's not true. Let's look at Isaiah 52. We'll look at a prophecy in the Old Testament. This prophecy will, I'm sure, be read probably by someone either before or during the Passover. It's coming up next month. It is one of the most profound prophecies in the entire Old Testament. It starts in verse 13. If you read through all of this, Isaiah 12, 13, and then all of chapter 53, you will find these verses quoted in the New Testament, clearly stating this refers to Jesus Christ. So we have a prophecy that starts with verse 13. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. He goes on and explains it, but he's going to look just like everybody else. People are going to look at him and say, well, he's not special. He's just an average guy. But he really isn't. Verse 4, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we have seen him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was woted for our transgressions. This is a remarkable concept that somebody else can take somebody else's sins. Think about that. I can't take your sins away from you. I can't do that with somebody else. I can't even take my own sins away. The concept that God says, I can take your sins and give them to somebody else who doesn't deserve it, is a concept that I can't find in any other religion.

Even Jews balk at this. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. He takes our sins. This is why every time Jesus said, I forgive you of your sins, they wanted to kill him. How could you take somebody else's evil on yourself and suffer for it? See, God could have done away with evil. He wasn't going to do that. He's a just God. Goodness is what He determines. He is good. Since He won't do away with goodness, we all deserve to die. It's brilliant. I still can't wrap my mind around it. Okay. So my son will die and take your evil. God says, I'll take your evil. I'll suffer. My son will suffer for your evil. And that way, justice and love will be perfectly balanced. I don't get that. That's beyond me. But I sure am glad for it.

Without that, there's no hope. I can't make up for my sins. What am I supposed to do? I can't dance fast enough. I can't do enough stuff. I can't be good enough.

But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him. And by His stripes we are healed. The last part of this chapter, 53, verse 10 says, He had to please the Lord to bruise Him. I find that amazing. This, God said, this is good. This works. That means the Word who became Jesus Christ said, yes, this works. Whenever Christ didn't say, you could take my life, He says, I'm giving my life up. You couldn't do this if I don't let it happen. Yes, this works. Yes, my suffering works for you.

He goes on, He says, verse 12, God says, therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, divide the spoiled with the strong. Because He poured out His soul into death, He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. So I just picked out that prophecy there. Say, okay, now we have a bridge. We have Genesis 3.15. We have this bridge. We go into the New Testament. We find that Jesus Christ, of course, is that suffering servant.

So we have to go to how we receive forgiveness. But that's not the whole story. That's why, as we go through this, okay, we understand what human nature was. We understand why we were designed to be in the image of God, to be His children. We became corrupted children of God. It's been a mess ever since. From the very foundation of the world, He had a plan, and what Jesus Christ would bear our sins, be resurrected, and then come back to establish His kingdom on earth. But it doesn't explain how do we stop being corrupted?

How do I... Okay, I'm forgiven. What would you say? Okay, a person goes out and shoots someone. Okay, you're forgiven. So they go out the next day and shoot someone. Okay, you're forgiven. They go out the next day and shoot someone. You know what? That's meaningless. That's meaningless. No society can survive. How could a Christian say, okay, God forgave me, so I'm going to go kill somebody else today? Or I'm going to go steal. I'm going to rob another bank today because, well, God forgave me of the bank I robbed yesterday. See, there's a problem with we accept God's forgiveness and then just say, oh, good, it's great. Something else has to happen to us. That's part of what God is doing. Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2. The Apostle Paul, who had an enormous understanding of this and struggled to explain it, just wrote paragraph after paragraph trying to explain this thing. This is the first one. He's talking to the church in Ephesus, so these are Christians. It's very important to understand he's already talking to Christians here about something that's happening in their lives. He's talking to them about a process they're already involved in. And you, he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. That's Satan. He went right back to, you lived just like everybody else, controlled by the kidnapper, thinking that this faulty reasoning, these faulty emotions, you know, being filled with anger and envy and hatred, that's just normal. That's what we all do. You thought it was normal to be that way. The Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. This is real important. God did not create sons of disobedience. He created sons of God.

All this is is a bunch of wayward children who've just taken over the playroom.

And the parents said, okay, well, I'm out of here. For thousands of years, the children have destroyed the playroom. And so it's a world filled with the sons of disobedience, the daughters of disobedience. That's what this world is. That's what you and I have been. This is what we're supposed to be coming out of.

Then He says, notice verse 3, among whom also, remember He's talking to Christians here, we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. Now that's real important because we're going to read a bit where He talks about grace, but I want you to understand Paul would have never thought the idea of cheap grace that has passed out today. God forgives you and just loves you just the way you are and you stay just the way you are. At the pack I said, God may love you just the way you are, but He's never going to want us to stay just the way we are. We can't stay just the way we are because we would stay children of wrath. Think about it. If we stay children of wrath and sons of disobedience, we have not become the children of God. So it's by His grace that He invites us in. But then something must happen to us. Something must happen to us. That statement right there is amazing. In the past, right? In the past we conducted ourselves in the lust of the flesh, the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature, our very nature. The core of who we are, our motivations, our thoughts, our emotions are driven by wrath, what is against God. That's who we are or were, and that's still who to a certain extent in some ways we still are because none of us are totally converted yet. If you feel uncomfortable, good, because Christianity should make us feel real uncomfortable on a regular basis, it should. It should make us feel a little uncomfortable on a regular basis because we're into the core of who we are. Oh, is it a whole lot easier to say, well, God's happy with me because I go to church on Saturday and that's keeping the Sabbath? Well, you should do that, but it's more than that.

So we say, well, how about this? I stopped doing this. I used to run around with my friends and get in trouble all the time. You stop and say, that's good. It's more than that. Well, my wife and I don't fight like we used to. That's good. It's more than that. Whatever you and I come up with, God's going to say, that's good. Now it's more than that.

Because our nature has to be changed.

Or we're going to stay the sons of wrath, the children of wrath. Look what he says next. Verse 4, In other words, when you and I were His enemies, as it says in Romans, He said Christ would die for us. We were His enemies. So while we were dead in our sins, we were absolutely, by nature, children of wrath, disobedient children, destroying the playroom, killing each other, hurting each other. In the midst of that, He gave us some attention. That's what grace is.

People must understand grace. It's like in the midst of a riot, where everybody's violent and destroying property and stealing and hitting people. God picks this person up and says, hey, you want to live a different way? That's grace. In the midst of all this, He picked you out. That doesn't mean He doesn't love everybody else. It just means you got a favor, which is really how grace should be. In modern English, it should be translated favor. God gave you a favor. Hey, you, would you like a better way? If not, I'll put you back in the riot.

Made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places of Christ Jesus. Then the ages that come, the future, what God holds for us as His children forever. Then in the ages that come, He might show the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Now people stop there. In fact, people read starting in verse 4, but remember what the first three verses are. You were children of wrath, but you don't do that anymore. So it's not like, oh, I received grace. It doesn't matter what I do. It's the opposite. This is how you got to where you are. Grace is how God gets us there. We must follow. We must submit, because you can't have your nature changed without choosing to allow Him to do so. We're back to free will. You and I have to choose this. Look at the next verse. You see what I mean? For we are His what? Workmanship. God's working in us to do this, if we are giving in to Him. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

It's not enough to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. It's not enough. You say, well, does that mean His sacrifice wasn't enough? This has nothing to do with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in terms of its greatness or effectiveness. It has to do that if the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has been given to you by the grace of God, and you must respond to it, we must move from being the children of wrath to the children of God, and only He can take us there. I can't get from here to here. I can't. I must submit for it to happen. I must submit for this to happen. That means I must obey. It means it's a struggle. It means it's hard. Why is it hard? Well, we just looked at all the reasons it's hard, because we're all messed up. I'm amazed humanity hasn't killed itself off before. I think God has just kept us from doing it. We really are... We're just so messed up. I'm always amazed that there's still a little bit of goodness in people. And there's some people you look at and think, wow, that person's got a lot of goodness in them. But how much poison does it take to kill you?

There's the problem with goodness. A little bit of evil kills you. It doesn't take much.

So here we are. From here to here, it takes God's Spirit in us. It takes repentance and baptism and God's Spirit in us. There is no way to get from this point to this point by ourselves. It's only when we empty ourselves before God and say, do with me what you will. I no longer wish to be by nature a child of wrath. I wish to be your child. That God starts that process. It is a lifetime process.

And it's wonderful. It's amazing. I don't think it's easy, but it's amazing to live a life following God, stumbling down, getting up, moving forward, moving backward as God changes your nature. That's why we can keep the letter of the Ten Commandments perfectly and still not have our nature changed entirely. God always says, ah, there's a little more. There's something else as we grow. And what is the reason? Well, let's go beyond the millennium, when Christ comes back. Let's go beyond the great white throne judgment. Well, let's go beyond the point where humanity, those who have turned to God are resurrected and changed. Let's go beyond the point where there's a lake of fire and all the incorrigibly wicked who won't repent or destroyed. Let's go beyond all that. Let's go to Revelation 21, because here we see why God is doing this.

Because there is a result that is produced through all this suffering. You and I live in a world of suffering because we live in a world where billions of people are making choices. I mean, my choices are bad enough. So let's add all our bad choices together.

Right? My choices produce enough badness in my life and other people's lives. Your choices produce badness in your life and other people's lives. And we're all just doing this, billions of us. So it's a mess. Plus Satan is the God of this world. Paul calls him in other places, the God of this world. We know Christ comes back and removes Satan. He changes everything. God's Spirit is poured out on humanity. But what happens after all that? What is God's end game? What is it? He's saying, oh, this is what I'm shooting for. This is the purpose. This is why I made them to begin with. Revelation 21, verse 1, I saw a new heaven, John says, and a new earth. This was a vision he received. The first heaven and the first earth had passed away. There was no more sea. The night John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. And God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There should be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. God says, I'll fix this, but you have to change. The moment we chose evil, the smallest child, the first time you chose a temper tantrum, you were changed. The first time you stole something, the first time you got mad and punched somebody in the nose, you know, your brother in the nose, it changed you.

And so we all got changed in this process. He said, the reason is the point where God changes us back, and we have to choose to go back. God will not make you become His child. He will destroy you in the like of fire, because it would torture you to be forever a son of a disobedient son. He loves you too much to let you torture yourself forever. That's the problem with the modern concept of hell.

People get to choose that. But for those who choose to have their nature changed, to have God live in them, the sermon that was abiding, right, living in me, so that my nature becomes like what? Oh, like God's nature. Our nature becomes like God's nature.

After all is said and done, this is what it's like. Of course, there's no more pain and no more suffering. There's no more sin. There's no more Satan around. There's no more corrupt human nature. There are spirit beings who have been changed and have God like nature. Verse 5, And he who sat on the throne and said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. So he says to John, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. And him who overcomes shall inherit all things. Now what's left out of all?

They want everything God's created. And he says, My children receive all of it. So what part of God's creation does His children not receive? All of it. I don't even know what that means. It's got to be good.

All of it. And then the next little phrase.

He overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my Son. There it is. There it is. When it's all said and done, he says, I have a family. I have a family of beings who chose to be this way. And they went through a hard time to do it because they had to choose between good and evil, and they became a mixture of good and evil. But they chose. And I save them. And Jesus Christ will be there, and Jesus Christ will say, I suffered so you could be here. I want you that much because someone had to take your penalty, or you had to take it, and we will be changed so that our nature, he's not going to have a family that spends eternity fighting each other, hurting each other, destroying each other, because the very nature of human beings will be changed. Why do I exist? You are created to be a child of God. Why does God allow evil and suffering? Because we're in the period of time where human beings choose.

Choose between being a mixture of good and evil, which is destructive and doesn't work, or becoming like God, of having our nature changed by having God live in us. Does God have a plan for my life in humanity? It's more amazing than anything we can make up. It's more amazing than anything we can make up.

And this is a truth that almost nobody knows. That's what's so amazing about it. And yet it's so apparent in the Scripture. It's all there. It's all laid out. And we just touched on it. I started with the question, why did God create humanity? And it's a civil answer, because God is creating a family.