Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome to Sonrise Church, I’m Anthony Delgado, the Lead Pastor.

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Welcome to Sonrise Church, I’m Anthony Delgado, the Lead Pastor.

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Today we are having a VBS Sunday.

If you’re not sure what that is, we do a kids day camp every year called Vacation Bible School, and I like to wrap it up with a Sunday morning presentation for the church and all the parents who didn’t get to attend.

This year our theme was ‘Discovering the God of the Universe.’

The idea comes from a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote one of the early churches in Colossae.

Paul wrote this:

He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

(, ESV)

In this passage, we see that Jesus is not just a man, but he is the image of God Himself.

In other words, Jesus is what God looks like within the created world.

And we see these amazing claims.

First God created everything we can see—the entire universe, the heavens or space, and the earth, from planets and galaxies, and stars, to the earth itself, all the way down to the tiny molecules that make up all matter.

Jesus created everything in the physical world, everything that science can test and everything that you can observe either through a telescope or under a microscope.

He made it all.

But, Jesus also created everything in the spiritual world.

That’s what Paul means by thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

He isn’t talking about earthly rulers.

He is talking about the spiritual beings—sometimes we just call them angels—that God created to rule over the earth.

The spiritual realm is the realm that cannot be put under a microscope.

It’s the supernatural world.

It’s the world that everyone knows exists, but many people reject because they can’t see it under a microscope.

But, it’s a very real part of creation, and Jesus created the spiritual world alongside the physical world for a very specific reason.

Everything that Jesus created was…

Created for Relationship

You probably know the basic story of creation from the Bible.

You know that Jesus spoke everything that is into existence and declared it good.

But, I want to show you where this claim comes from, that God created humankind for relationship.

In the book of Genesis—which means beginning—we read this:

Then God said, “Let us make man[kind] in our image, after our likeness.

And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

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.”

(, ESV)

Notice this passage is not talking about the first man, Adam.

It says ‘Let us make man’ or better, mankind.

This is about the creation of all humanity.

All humanity was created to image or reflect God’s goodness.

And all humanity is supposed to be like God in having dominion over the whole creation.

Humans were created to be moral, just, righteous rulers over the earth, possibly the entire universe.

And a huge part of that is the relationship that men and women have since within God’s created order it takes a man and a woman to make children.

It’s clear in the verse that the way humankind was supposed to subdue the entire world was by multiplying, having children.

So, relationship was an important part of the creation in the beginning as well.

Humans are supposed to work together; men and women work together in marriage.

But, also, we are all supposed to work together regardless of heritage, age, skin color, because we are all created in the image of God.

And we are all created to be like God.

We are all essentially the same.

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Imagine that you went on a lifelong journey all over the earth in search of the one person who is the least like you in all the world.

You search for decades, and you find someone who doesn’t look a thing like you.

And they don’t speak anywhere near the same language.

And this person doesn’t like to do any of the things you like to do.

And their personality is just polar opposite than yours.

Well, take that person’s arm and your own arm, and I guarantee if you cut them both, they both bleed.

And they will both bleed red blood.

And if you take that blood and you put it under a microscope to analyze the DNA structure, you’re going to find that you both share 99.9% or more of the exact same chromosomal structures.

That’s because chromosomes are the structure that God designed to make a fish a fish, a banana a banana, an oak tree an oak tree, a gorilla a gorilla.

And chromosomes are what God uses to make a human a human, created to image or reflect God’s goodness, and to rule over creation like God.

You see, we’re more alike than we are different because we were created to relate to one another.

We were created for relationships with people.

And more, we were created for relationship with God.

Writing about Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, says,

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day… (, ESV)

This may not be a clear inference, but I want you to see what God was doing.

When he created the garden for humankind, he created it not just for them to multiply and expand over all the earth.

He created it so that he could meet with the humans in the garden.

God created us for relationship with each other, but God also created us for relationship with Himself.

Adam and Eve got to speak to God face to face.

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God wasn’t just creating humans to fill the earth, but he was creating humans to fill the earth to build His own Kingdom.

When God created humanity, God was building a Kingdom for His glory.

There’s an interesting disconnect here.

We live in a society where 89% of people believe there is a god—whether that’s the God of the Bible or the Koran or some other god.

And yet, only 36% of our society prioritizes weekly worship of their god.

A full 30% of people who say they believe in a god have almost never even stepped foot inside a church or other religious institution, except for maybe a wedding or a funeral.

So, I want to say this.

If you’re here today and you understand what the Bible teaches, that humans were created for relationships with each other and for relationship with God, then I want to urge you to consider the relationships that you are forming around you.

Are you truly forming relationships with neighbors and co-workers who may seem unlike you, because of culture, ethnicity, or age?

We all bleed the same blood.

We’re more alike than different.

And further, are you prioritizing relationship with God?

I realize that church attendance is not the only gauge of your relationship with God.

But, historically, it’s the first and most important piece of your relationship with God, because it is where the community of believers gather to worship God together.

We learn to worship God through reading our Bibles, through obedience to Him, through prayer and through song, when we gather to do those things together.

So, if we prioritize our relationship with God, that begins with prioritizing church attendance on a weekly basis.

What we say we believe says little about our relationship with God.

It’s what we do that really says what we care about.

So, maybe you don’t think you’re so far off on your own, and you don’t feel like you need to prioritize a relationship with God.

Well, the next major point from VBS was that you are…

Destined for Restoration

…with God.

Now, I’ll need to explain that a bit, because if you are content believing in God and not prioritizing a relationship with God, that might just be because you don’t think you need God so much.