Today, we commissioned our River of Life volunteers. It’s an important ministry God will use to bless homeowners in our community. It will bless the adult and youth volunteers as we serve too. The mission starts in just a few days, but we’ve been preparing for this mission for a long time.
We have another mission that is coming up July 13-17 called Vacation Bible School. So today, I begin a new sermon series that will help us prepare for VBS. Each Sunday, I will share a message based on the themes from VBS. And I think the theme today relates to River of Life as well. Because it’s about our origin story.
It’s about why we are called to serve one another and treat each other with dignity. It’s about how a person’s worth is not valued by how much money they have, what talents they possess, or even what they can contribute to society. We are all priceless treasures because we were crafted by God’s ingenious design. We are the crown of His whole creation. And each one of us bears the image of God.
Psalm 103:22
Praise the
Lord, everything he has created,
everything in all his kingdom.
Let
all that I am praise the Lord.
The
Theme of Day 1
The
lesson for Day 1 of our upcoming VBS is about the origin story of all creation &
humanity. It takes us all the way back to Genesis 1 and creation and encourages us to
praise God who created it all. This is
an important lesson for kids and for all of us, because it reminds us when we
believe in God we can also believe in ourselves. Remember the creation story in
Gen 1?
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.[a] 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
There was a time nothing existed. But God took nothing and He made something special. I was blessed as a child to be surrounded by people who encouraged me to believe in myself. My mom would often tell me, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” My Grandma said, “God loves you and I love you.” And though there were sometimes mean people who tried to put me down saying “You’re stupid” or “you’re nothing,” I had enough people I trusted saying “You’re something special!" that I didn’t let the mean people get to me.
I think about that when I see kids nowadays. You don’t ever know what they are going through or how the people around them make them feel. What message are they getting? Do they know they’re loved? Do they know they are one of God’s most precious creations? Or do they think their value is tied up in how well they perform, how pretty or handsome they are, or what grades they make in school or how fast they run?
How about you? What do you believe about yourself? Do you realize you’re one of God’s greatest treasures? I don’t mean do you know that up in your head. I mean, do you know it deep down in your heart. I mean look at how beautiful is God’s creation.
On the first day, He said, “Let there be light. And there was light.”
On the second, He created the sky.
On the third Day, He made the seas and dry land with all the trees, plants, and seed-bearing fruit.
On the fourth day, God created the heavenly bodies to mark the seasons, days, and years and to govern day and night.
On the fifth day, God created fish and birds to govern the sea and the sky.
And it was all good. God said it was good. And we see it is so, so good. So beautiful!
But then something was still missing. Something else was needed. So on the sixth day, God made people, male and female, in His image, to be like Him.
He made us to be caretakers of everything He had already made–the fish, the sea, the birds, the sky, the animals, the earth.He
said, reign over it all (on His behalf).
And
then, and only then, did God say, “it was all very good.”
It was so good, God decided to take the seventh day off just to rest and enjoy it all.
Now, I don’t know if you realize just how special you are, but you are. As beautiful and precious as creation is, you are the crowning jewel of it all.
God loves you. In Genesis 2:7, it says he made the first man from the dust of the ground–imagine the mighty hands of God sculpting a human out of clay. Then, it says, “He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” Oh my! The Creator God who formed a billion trillion stars and carved out the grand canyon, knelt down to earth and breathed His spirit breath into the nostrils of His dirt man! That is how we–God’s image bearers–came to be.
And when I look at you today, that’s what I see. I see people who bear the image of God. I see people God loves so, so dearly. He loved you so much, as Jeff preached last Sunday, “He sent His one and only Son so that whoever believes in [Him] will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
But
we don’t always see ourselves the way God sees us. Even though we hear His Word. Even though we may have people–preachers or teachers or parents–who tell us: “You're precious. You're a
treasure. You’re not nothing,
you’re something special!”
And the people we serve this week at River of Life, they’re something special too. That’s why we serve them. They are made in the priceless image of God. God loves them so much, He sent Jesus to die on the cross for them too, just like us. And so we go to serve these precious people and I pray God gives us eyes to see them like God sees them.
And in a few weeks, we will host Vacation Bible School here. And we have the wonderful privilege on the very first day, to tell the kids how God created us, and how they can find confidence in knowing they are crafted by God’s ingenious design.
Kids often hear (we all do) we need to make something of ourselves–be smarter, cooler, more successful. But God’s Word flips that script. Before we ever tried to prove our worth, God already designed us with purpose and love. This truth changes everything! We don’t need to chase approval or compete for value. We already matter because the creator of the universe formed us intentionally, in His image.
So you can walk with confidence, knowing you belong, you hold value, and you have been created for something extraordinary. And whenever you look around and notice how wonderful is the world God created, you can give praise and celebrate God’s goodness and creativity. You can join with the psalmist “Praise the Lord, everything he has created, everything in all his kingdom! Let all that I am praise the Lord.” (Psalm 103:22)
So first, I want you to realize your precious worth as a bearer of God’s image. Let this sink in today, like you never have before. You are loved. You are special. You are important to God and this world. You are a person of priceless worth who bears God’s holy image.
Second, I want you see that the people all around us–the pretty ones, the ugly ones, the young and old, the rich the poor, and even the ones who smell bad, are also made in God’s image. He loves them and wants them in His eternal Kingdom. And He is sending us to serve some of them this week at River of Life.
Third, I want you to be thinking ahead to VBS. We will have the great privilege of serving those kids and telling them and showing them that they are precious and special and that God loves them and so do we. It's something really important we need to do. VBS isn't just a tradition we do every year. And it's not just a way for us to attract more kids, more you families to our church (though that would be nice). But what we're doing is so much more. We get to tell these kids, show them, God loves them and we do too. Not because they're cute. Not because they're smart. Not because they're young. They are special and they are loved because God made them with His own hands, in His image.
And
you need to know that today too. God loves you. Not because of whatbyou have or
what you can do or who you know or what family you came from or your history or
your heritage or anything like that. God loves you because you bear His
image. You're His son, His daughter. You're His masterpiece. And that makes
you special.
So, Praise the Lord, everything he has created, everything in all his kingdom. Let all that you are praise the Lord.
