Well, thanks for coming out on Saturday morning, we're a little bit late getting started and I apologize for that, part of it's my fault part is not, but I'm glad to be with you. And I appreciate the concern you've expressed already about this week, for me, just to let you know so you'll understand if you see me faltering or running to myself or something. What's happened this week is my parents were visiting us in Orlando from Virginia and from Rona, just by home. And I thought it came very ill and we expected him to be in the hospital this weekend, back when we were promised to be in the hospital this weekend, which is why I went ahead and came. But you can imagine, Friday afternoon, I got this phone call from the caseworker at the hospital saying, your father, you're calling for a taxi to bring your father to your house and I was in the Atlanta airport. So you can imagine, there are lots of things that are up in the air at this point. My wife's there happily, my wife was able to cancel her plans and be able to be there. But it is a difficult thing. So if you see me on the cell phone, screaming at doctors and nurses and things, that's what that's all about, okay? But I appreciate your concern and your prayers for us this weekend as we deal with this new stage in life. Yeah, big stage in life. We're supposed to talk about the Holy Ghost, that's what I like to say. I'm from a Baptist background, yeah, most of you are too, I know, most every person I know was once a Baptist and that's a good thing because we make the best person's experience so don't worry about it, okay? But the way we used to say it in our church was we used to say Holy Ghost, not Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, but of Holy Ghost. And so you can really tell if somebody has been in the Holy Ghost that they say Holy Ghost rather than Holy Ghost, okay? So every once in a while, I'll get into that. If I start really getting into it, I'll start talking about the Holy Ghost and they'll go, wow, that's really weird sounding, but that's the reason. But that's what we're talking about and I think, you know, when you think about relationships and things like that and on a human level, I think we sort of know how we get to know people that we don't know very well. And I think we'd have to start off by just sort of admitting that for a lot of us, the idea of having a spiritual life conference basically probably meant to us as we think about it generically where we're going to think about the Bible a little bit in a little extra kind of church. But when you see on the sign out there, it says the gift of the Holy Spirit. Maybe that's been in your bulletins or something like that and you knew that this was going to be about the Holy Spirit, you probably wondered how in the world could a church like this talk about the Holy Spirit. And we don't really talk about them all that much. Having to have a conference about somebody, you don't talk about that much. The fact is that we don't talk about Holy Spirit very much. And we don't think about them, we don't live with them, we don't focus our attention on it. It's in many respects our lives of faith are very much oriented toward the other persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son. Now that's not true of every Christian tradition. That's not true of every branch of the church, but it certainly is true of us. In fact, if I were to say the West Minister confession of faith, would you know what I'm talking about? That's the summary of Christian teaching that summarizes what we believe in this kind of a church, a press security in kind of a church. And in that thing called the West Minister confession of faith, it came from England, West Minister Abbey, all that business back there. In that long document, there is a chapter on God the Father and is a chapter on God the Son. But guess what, in the original West Minister confession of faith there was no chapter on the Holy Spirit. Now he's mentioned from his understanding, he's mentioned, but it's always in connection with something else, okay? And never a chapter given to his ministry. Now there are some churches that, since the original time, actually added a chapter on the Holy Spirit. Maybe some of you have heard of the associate reformed press security in church, have you ever heard of the ARPs? They actually have a whole chapter on the Holy Spirit, pretty good, huh? And the evangelical press security in church, the EPC, they've got a whole chapter on the Holy Spirit, but you know, it's very strange, but we don't have that. And I think, I don't know if it's just sort of chicken and egg kind of question here, but I think it reflects something about us. And that is that we just really aren't into the Holy Ghost. Now we like God the Father, and we'll talk a lot about God the Father, we'll pray that way, Father this, Father that, and we like the fact that God is our Father. We focus on that a lot. We like Jesus a lot. We think in terms of, you know, Jesus pays for my sins, he's my only hope, he's my Savior, he's my Lord, I'll serve him, basically I'll die for him, all this information is, we'll talk about it and we'll think about it a lot, but as soon as somebody starts talking about the Holy Spirit, all of a sudden our minds go blank. It's just, it's amazing if we could start this weekend by admitting that it would help us a whole lot, that we just really don't have much to say about the Holy Spirit. Now, when you don't know somebody, a human being very well, one of the first things you do is, of course, you shake hands, you know, and say, hi, my name is, it's changed names. Let's say that the relationship goes beyond that and you're actually going to go out on a date or something, okay? And so you've gone on a date, and if you're trying to get to know the person, what's one of the first things you start talking about over the meal? What if you get past the name and the job, what's next? Especially if you're a southerner. That's right, tell me about your family, that's right. Tell me about where you come from, where's your home, when did you grow up? Well, tell me about your early school life, tell me about where did you go to high school and where did you go to college and say what kinds of jobs have you had, what have you been doing? And you know why we do that, it's not just because we have this morbid curiosity about this person, it's because you know people by knowing where they've been. You know people by knowing what they've done. It gives you a sense of their role in life, their things that are important to them, what they're bringing to you, what they have to offer to you, what they need from you, it gives you a sense of whether you want to have that second date or not. Well, the first 10 years of my life I was an ax murderer, the second 10 years of my life I was a bank robber, well, pretty soon you're not going to want to have three years of prison. I've probably nothing to go on on second date with this person, but if the person has a very fascinating history, well my father was president of the United States, oh really, yeah. And I've been in the ambassador of the United States for the last 15 years and such a special person who has gone, wow, this person is going on a date with me. I think I'm going to have another date with this person and that's sort of the way it is. And I think in some respect, if we can think of this weekend as sort of dating the Holy Spirit, okay? It would be a good thing to do. Because what we're trying to do is much like remember the Realty and I, not Anna and the King, but remember the Realty and I, remember the song and she meets the children for the first time, getting to know you, getting to know you, getting to know all about me, getting to life here, hoping that you, right through, right? That's what we've got to do with Holy Spirit. I'm just really convinced that's true. Not because he's absent, not because he's hasn't been present, not because he hasn't been working with us and ministering to us and doing his work in us, but rather because we just sat down with him and gotten to know him. And I think the way to begin that process is different than what I think he would find many times in a situation like this happening. Let me tell you what a normal spiritual Holy Ghost conference is like, okay? And a church like ours. What they'll do is they'll take a personality profile. Every person comes in and they start checking off. Yes, I can play the piano. Yes, I like basketball and yes, I can teach. Yes, I can do that. And then they'll say, you see, these are your gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the spiritual life conference, everybody start using your gifts. And my line, that's about what attention to Holy Spirit means for us in our circles many times. It's just the first checklist of what your capabilities are, what your aptitudes are for church life. And we're going to do that kind of thing a little bit, not a whole lot, but a little bit. But I'm more interested in you and me approaching this much more like a first date. And trying to get to know the Holy Spirit. And we're going to do that first by asking the question, what's he been doing? Where's he come from? What's he been doing all these years? And even before we even existed on the first. So this morning, what I'm hoping to do is give you big picture stuff. And then this evening to move a little more toward, okay, so what? What's that got to do now with me? And then tomorrow morning you're saying sort of thing. What's that got to do with us? And the big picture that we need to start thinking about is the story of the Holy Spirit's work, the history. It is life story as it were, that first date where you come from, what's your family life, what he's been doing for the thing. And to do that, I think we need to sort of back up, just take one step back from talking specifically about the Holy Spirit. And first about the big picture of the whole Bible. Because the role of the Holy Spirit really is one of, I love it. I love when people use a permanent marker on these fours. I'm going to be able to use those lines, I'm sure. But it's really great. Who did that Rick? Did you do that? Somebody really experienced it, but I'll show you a trick. It often works. Let's see. Pardon me? Look at that. I love that. Just use the real marker on the permanent marker. It often takes the permanent marker off. So let's start talking about the really big picture of which the Holy Spirit is a part. And I'm going to talk about something here that some of you, especially people of many classes of mine, have heard me talk about before. But this will be a quick overview where, given sort of the parameters or the patterns that the Holy Spirit will fit into. This theme right here is the theme of the Kingdom of God in the Bible. The Kingdom of God in the Bible. And if we were to summarize what the Kingdom of God means in the Bible, we were just trying to put it in one sentence. It would have to be what Jesus says in his Lord's Prayer. By Kingdom come, and then he tells us what that means. By will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The Kingdom of God is the extension of God's reign from the heavenly realms to earth. So that, when the ideal of the Kingdom of God is reached, everything on earth obeys God, just like everything in heaven obeys God. They will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In some ways, when people ask what is the purpose of this whole thing we call history, the answer to the Bible is just that. It is that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven, or in other words that God's reign will be extended. All over this earth and realized and honored all over this earth like it is in heaven and has always been in heaven. And that picture is a very important one for us to get because that is the goal of why everything exists. In Romans chapter 11, the Apostle Paul says the summary statement of everything you can possibly imagine. He says from him and through him and for him are all things to him be the glory forever and ever. That really is the purpose of history. And if we can get a sense of that history, that story, that background, that sort of family story, we can begin to get an idea of where the Holy Spirit fits into all of this. What role does the Holy Spirit have? It is not just giving you a gift or making you able to play the piano or teach a Sunday school class. The Holy Spirit story is much bigger than that because he has a very special role, many roles in fact, in just thing of bringing the Kingdom of God. So what we need to do is sort of spell out what the Kingdom of God was in the Bible and how it develops in the Bible. And to do that, you have to realize that, and I don't know why he did this, but God decided that he would bring this goal of his will being done on earth as it is in heaven by a long process, a very long, long process. And the goal was that one day he would be present on earth as he is in heaven and that everyone would acknowledge him on earth as he is in heaven. But he didn't snap his fingers and say, okay, we're doing it today. That's the way it's going to be. Instead what he did was he created a drama and that drama we call history. And how does that history start out? It starts off with the world like this in utter chaos. That's the way the world begins. Remember how Genesis chapter 1 describes the world, that the earth is formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep and that whole world is covered in this massive, inking duke and God looks at it and is really not the kind of thing that he wants his world is creation to be like. And we know that by looking at the end of the story, that it's found in the book of Revelation, of what the world looks like there. What the world looks like there? How would you describe the world as a post of chaos? What would you say you have at the end of all time, the picture of the future? How would you describe it? A perfection, maybe that's a real good word in the use of a perfect world. It's perfect. And rather than being a world full of darkness, what's the world full of in the end of time? Light, food's light, the light of God. Remember I told you that he'd be present on earth as he's present in heaven which means that his glow, his radiance will fill the whole world. It's like it fills heaven. Not only that, but here you have the deep, the deep or the sea covering the whole world in the very beginning. This life-threatening inhospitable deep that covers the whole world. And if you try to live in the upi dupi of the primeval world, you couldn't do it. Right? And Solomon is like living in a volcano or something, or living in the darkest, deepest ocean of the earth. But in the end, what does the Bible say is true of the world? No revelation, 21 verse 1, behold, a new heavens and a new earth. And what can you say? There was no longer any sea, no sea, no deep anymore. No chaos, no upi dupi, no darkness, no life-threatening. None of that stuff, okay? And the issue that we have to think of when we start moving from this idea of the creation in the beginning, to the new creation or the new heavens and the new earth and the end, is how do you get there? Because you see, this is, this is, I can't even come by, we'll be done on earth as it is in heaven. Where every single person in the whole world is worshipping and serving God perfectly without any kind of hesitation, without any kind of variation, everything is absolutely magnificent. But how do you get from here to there? That's the story of the Bible. And it's the story in which the Holy Spirit fits. Does that make sense to you? And so, as we were on our first date with Holy Ghost, and we were saying to him, well, tell me your life story. That's the very one though your life story. It had to start off with this kind of background. Well, it all began when the world was dark and formless and void. And at the end, with the world as full of light, it would be perfect. Without any voice, without any formlessness. That's like going on the days of years, like going to get married or something. The perfection, the gold, the end of it all. And the question, of course, that we need to think about is how you get from one of these to the other. And if we can get that, we begin to get the picture of the Holy Spirit. And trust me on this one, though with me this far, that whatever personal role the Holy Spirit has for you and your personal life, whatever ministry he does in your work and how he empowers you and how he comforts you and how he encourages you, all the sorts of things we normally hear about the Holy Spirit. It's because of this. It fits into this and you really can't tap into the power of the Holy Spirit and tap into his comfort and tap into his personal ministry to you without understanding the story. The better you understand the story, the better your relationship your date is going to be with him. So what we're going to do is we're going to kind of put this thing up into a variety of stages and we'll see how this happens. Let's just, let's start off by just saying that one of the first stages here, we could call the early history or maybe even the primeval history. This is a sort of technical word, but we can do it. Primeval history and by that I mean the world of the Bible from the creation of the days of Noah or up to the days of Israel. Then you have in the Bible this period of time where the focus of the Bible is on the nation of Israel. And then you have this period of time where the focus is on what we'll call the New Testament. And that's a, you know, you can cut a pie in a thousand different ways. You can cut the Bible in a thousand different ways. But this is good enough for what we're trying to do and that is just to get a sense of where the Holy Spirit has been and what the Holy Spirit is doing. First, the primeval times, then the life and the history of Israel and then the New Testament and all of this leading up to this great and glorious end. And of course, you know where we are in this story. Yes, where wouldn't you stand in this story? Yeah, somewhere in here. Yes, some people think here, some people think there, but somewhere in there. Okay. Somewhere in this period of time that we called the New Testament and it's really a sad thing. And I think this one of the things that impoverishes our relationship with Holy Spirit that our understanding of who he is is really limited to this one little dot right here. And that's sort of me and my shadow. Me and the Holy Spirit. Okay. When the picture is much bigger than that, if we can start getting a sense of what he's been doing, we might actually be even more amazed that he would be our shadow, that he would be with us wherever we go, and that he would be identified with us, that he wouldn't dwell on this Holy Spirit who did all these other things in the past as well. To start where we should start. And that's at the beginning in that time, these were history. And I think we need to do that by looking at the Bible. Genesis chapter 1, he noticed already, Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Let me know that story. Well, this is a fixed day of creation, stories. Listen to verse 2 now so we can get a sense of the picture here. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was over the surface of the deep. That's the upigupi chaos, right? The deep sea and all that, the primeval yuck. Now darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the water. There you get the picture, the first mention of the Holy Spirit. It's very interesting to me that if all the persons who are mentioned in the Bible, that the first person that's identified is the first person of the Trinity who's identified separately from all the others is Holy Spirit. Not God the Father. You might think, well, wait a minute. Verse 1 says God the Father know it doesn't just God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And as we'll find out, and as we all know from our Sunday school classes, I'm sure, all three persons of the Trinity are meant when it says God created the heavens and the earth. But he's something Father, Son, and Holy Spirit did. Yes, the first person of the Trinity that is identified separately from all the others is the Holy Spirit. And what is it that the Holy Spirit does? Well, the Holy Spirit, as it were, I don't know how to draw it because I wasn't there, but let's just think of it as kind of like a hurricane map, okay? That's the picture of the hurricane as you see on the weather as coming your way soon and I'm sure as they keep on skipping Florida and coming your way, sorry. I always pray that it will hit Florida. And that's what I always do. I don't know. I think I always think we should pray that the hurricanes hit us rather than the Caribbean and the islands because I feel you can take it better than they can. But I can't convince anybody else about all the people, all the Christians of Florida. Oh Lord, please let it hit Puerto Rico and let it hit Haiti and let it hit the Dominican Republic and not us. I got what? Our buildings will stand up. But anyway, but you had the picture here of the Holy Spirit, much like a hurricane hovering over the face of the deep. Now, to get into this and to understand what's going on here, you have to understand that there is a little bit of a ambiguity, a purposeful ambiguity here in the Bible. When it talks about, or when it uses the word spirit, you will notice sometimes in the Bible that you'll find different translations going different ways. Sometimes it will take the word spirit and they'll capitalize it, both in the New Testament and the Old Testament. And then another translation won't capitalize it. For strings, I know, but it's just because this word spirit is a little bit ambiguous, whether talking about the spirit of a person or the Holy Spirit in the person that sort of often, often not really altogether clear. Now, in this case, the ambiguity is not between capital ester and low ester, but between what we would say in English, the spirit of God versus the wind of God, W-I-N-B, because the same word that's used for spirit here in the Hebrew is the same word that you would use when you're talking about the wind blowing. And you'll remember in John chapter 3 when Jesus is talking to Nicodena, remember what he says about the birth of the spirit, he says just like the wind comes this way and then blows that way and blows that way, you never know where it's going to be, where it's going to go, because that's what the Holy Spirit is like. That's what birth by the Holy Spirit is like. It's like the wind, and you'll also remember on the day of Pentecost, what did they hear when the Holy Spirit was poured out on them? The sound of a rushing wind. And that's because Holy Spirit's presence in the world is a wind, what it is. It's like a gigantic hurricane. And Holy Spirit is the wind of God. Now you know the picture here, remember the Bible always talks about God in human terms, so remember this is what God is like, but remember this is not exactly what God is, but get the picture here. As we tried it with baby talk to talk about that which cannot be described, our God, get the picture, you've got the world in this chaos, oopie goopie mess, and suddenly the wind of God appears covering over the oop and the doop. Well what is this wind of this spirit of God? It's God breath into the world. It's God blowing his breath against the chaotic deep. You see, this is the dramatic tension that sounded Genesis chapter one, the darkness of the deep and the opposition of the powerful wind and spirit of God about to work against the chaotic deep. Does that make sense? Because it's by the power of this wind, this hurricane, this spirit of God that something's going to happen to this chaotic deep. And what is it that's going to happen? Not creation because the world is created in Genesis chapter one, verse one. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, that's when creation happened, like that. So what happens for the rest of the chapter of Genesis chapter one? That's right, the Holy Spirit brings order. Does that make sense to you? The power, the force, the electrical current that causes the world to take the shape that it takes is this wind spirit of God that's hovering over the face of the deep. So that in day one God says let there be light and there is light. Why do you think all three of Genesis chapter one God is speaking? He doesn't say, now you guys over there, you guys still make the heavens and the earth. You guys don't make light. He doesn't say that, but he says let there be light. What do you think is, again, speaking as human terms about God, what's happening there? When you speak, what happens? Breath comes out, yes, this is the wind. Let there be light and the worlds are taking the shape that it takes. And you see Genesis chapter one with the creation of light, with the creation of the waters above and the waters below with the dry land and the vegetation and then the filling of those spaces, light and darkness, filling that with the moon and the stars and the sun, and filling the waters above with birds and the waters below with fish and sea creatures and then the dry land with this vegetation being filled up with animals and the climax of it all, humanity. This is the work of the spirit of God, the breath of God against the great chaos. And when God looks at this, several stages along the way, he looks at it and he says what, that's good, that's good truth, that's really good. Isn't that lovely? So what you begin to see is that Holy Spirit is the breath, the power, the wisdom of God at work in the world bringing the perfect out of the chaos, bringing things into the shape and into the form that pleases God, that's right for the world to be, that honors God. And God sits back on the seventh day and rests on his work because what he's done is very good. Now frankly, to say the truth, what that does for me is it gives me a little bit different picture of Holy Spirit than what I'm used to. When you think of the Holy Spirit as the one who makes you able to teach, for example, okay, whatever. Holy Spirit may be able to teach, well, maybe even I guess I've got to believe it because the Bible says it. Or the Holy Spirit is the one who makes you able to heal. Well, okay, I can buy that, that's a little extraordinary. So yeah, maybe that's really true, maybe it really is the Holy Spirit. In other words, when you start talking about the personal gifts that you have, it seems to come and go and seem to do okay sometimes and not okay other times. It's very easy to think of those kinds of things in very ordinary or personal or very small tiny little ways. But what this background begins to let us see is that the work of the Holy Spirit is to bring God's desired order into the world. Into a world of full of darkness and full of the chaos. The Spirit is the power that brings about the order of the coming of the kingdom of God. For God to sit back and look at His world and say, that's very good. Does that make sense to you? So that your life then and the work of the Holy Spirit in your life is not just you having a talent or two that you check off on a personality profile. Well, I'm a high A or I'm a high A E or whatever those different categories are that you've done in your personality assessment. Instead, what it is is the creative activity of God, shaping the universe into the pattern that God wants to have. His kingdom, having come and His will be gone on earth as if you haven't and you become a part of that. This is why the New Testament tells us that when we become Christians, we enter into a new creation. Remember 2 Corinthians, chapter 5 or 17, if anyone is in Christ and told you a new creature the King says or is a modern translation site correctly, there's a new creation. Old things have done away using the come. You see the work of the Spirit is not just some small little thing of giving you a gift or talent or something like that to make you a little happier. Instead, it's the creation of a new creation of which you're a great part. This climax is in the perfect world to come. So we're starting off with a very basic outlook on Holy Spirit that His role in life, His role in history, His role in the kingdom of God is to be God's active power in this world, bringing about the order that God has designed for His creation for His own worship, for His own adoration. It's the power of God that worked in this world against the chaos, against the deed, for the perfect that God designed. Now, to say the truth, I think that's absolutely magnificent and I think it's going to set the stage for us to understand the Holy Spirit a little bit better than they have in the past, especially when it comes to you and me figuring out who we are and how we are to relate to Him. But I think that's where we need to begin, that the Holy Spirit is the creative, ordering power of God at work at the very beginning, because that role never goes away, is the role that He has all through the Bible. Now, just to sort of take you through the, again, the Holy Spirit story, the funny thing about the Holy Spirit is that as God's way of dealing with the chaos, the darkness, the evil of the world, and bringing about His perfect order, the way He does that is not the way you and I probably would have done it. If we were God, we probably would have done it a different way, but God, in His wisdom, infinite beyond our ability to understand, chose to do this in a very, I don't know, surprising way, I guess. I think of it as strange anyway, and that is, that right after the flood, because in some respects, the prime evil history is sort of a false start in many respects. You remember what God does in the prime evil history? He establishes a special role in this world for people. People have a very special role in this kingdom. And I guess we have to talk about that a little bit, too, as we start to move towards what He does as His strength. But what God did was He decided that the way He would bring about His kingdom was not just by His Holy Spirit working, not just by this hurricane floating over the water and shaping everything, but that He would put a special creature in the world. And this special creature would have a remarkable role in bringing about the kingdom of God, or bringing out this perfect world, making it happen. Do you know who that special creature was? Us. Us. We are called in the Bible, the image of God. And the reason we are called that is, again, the Bible is talking in very human terms about our God. It is because God ordained human beings to have a very special role in the development of His kingdom. And it starts off in the prime evil history in this, what I call the false start, or the restart. And remember what that role was. Remember what God commanded Adam and Eve to do in Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 and so on. Do you remember what he said to them? God blessed them and said what? Yeah, they were between the garden that is bigger than that. That's not what he said to them. You're right. That's where they started. Yeah, listen, you know, the verse, and God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply, build the earth, to do it. You have dominion over it. Those are the things that God says as human beings are supposed to do. We're the only creature that He told to do all of those things, to be fruitful and multiply, build the earth, to do it and have dominion over it. Animals, birds, and bees, multiply. That's true enough, but they don't have dominion over the earth like we do. And let me tell you why that's the case because until you understand where you fit into this, you won't understand why Holy Spirit works in you the way that He does. So this is part of the picture here. Remember, we've already said Holy Spirit is the power of God, the hurricane that's going to shake the world into the form that God wants it to be in. But there's a special creature that God uses to do this as well, and that's you, human beings. How are we to do that? Be fruitful and multiplying, build the earth, to doing it and having dominion over it. Image of God is supposed to do that. Well, okay. What in the world does being fruitful and multiplying, having dominion over the earth, have to do with the kingdom of God, and what does that have to do with us being the image of God? That's the question. Because only when we catch what we are as the image of God that we're going to catch why this Holy Spirit would come with a new rather than that tree out there. Why doesn't the Holy Spirit fill this chair? It may actually have more economic value than users.
Maybe there's a note that all that mineral down there is now the chemicals down. I have more chemical value. Why is it that the Holy Spirit does not fill a mountain, or fill a cloud, or why is it that He chooses to dwell in you? The answer is because you're the image of God, so now we've got to back up and explain that. So what does it mean to be the image of God? Again, speaking of human terms. God is savouressing His kingdom, which means that God's role in all of this is what? That He is the king. Does it mean so far? Okay. Well, when kings in the ancient world of the Bible, when kings would want to establish their kingdom, they would do it in a very special way in the ancient world of the Bible. And if you've been to a museum, you know this because you've seen it. How would they establish their kingdom? Do you have any idea? Maybe some of you went to the Ram Jesus River when it was passing through this country. Anybody go to that? I saw it in Memphis, okay. If you saw it, here's what happened. I do remember it's very surprising. Everybody's experience. First thing you do is you would walk up the stairs, and I remember in Memphis, they had to sit up really nice and you walked up and you turned and spun me. Now you've got to look at your friends on and spun me and said, walk up to the top of the stairs. You walk up, you turn, you look, and spun me, this is a 30-foot statue of Ramsey. And you go, wow. And then you turn on the tape and you go, there's this, you know, 20 meters tall and you know this weighs as many pounds. It's just, you know, six years to make, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you go, wow, that's really interesting. That's your Ramsey. Now, I don't know what he looked like. So then you turn the corner left and say, you know, you turn off, you go to station two and turn, you know, turn the tape back on and you leave station two. So he turns, they're around the station two and that's station two. Well, I'm the whole, what's the station two? Another statue of Ramsey, okay. They turn off and say, well, this one's one meter high and it's made out of silver and it was made in such such a year. And you notice this, that's the other, you just, you know, that's pretty interesting. Wow. You know, it's these statues of Ramsey. Turn off the tape and now go to station three and turn the tape back on. So you go to station three and learn to hold with the station three. Another image of Ramsey, because that's what King's did in the evening. Why did they do it? Why did they have so many images made of themselves? It was because this was the way that they established their kingship. This is the way they established their authority in their kingdom. It was by making images of themselves, multiplying these images and spreading them out all through their kingdom and giving their images, representatives of authority over certain areas. So they would send, they would have their artisans make images of themselves at this border and that border, this town square and that town square, the head of the river, the mouth of the river, those kinds of things. Everywhere you would go into kingdom of Ramsey, there would be images of Ramsey. Why? So you could know who was the king, the way they did it in the ancient world. So when the Israelites are hearing Moses talk about the image of God, they know what he's talking about. They know that he's talking about God as the king who's establishing his kingdom by what means. By having his image, that's human beings, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, but do it and have them in and over it. Does that make sense to you? That's why the picture of the Bible is that human beings will one day fill the world up. Because as human beings fill the world up, what they're doing is representing the reign of God over all of the world rather than just one little piece of it. Because where did it start? You just told us. In the garden, you see the kingdom of God started in the garden. In many respects, even was Utah Beach for the kingdom of God. What does that mean? It's a World War II metaphor, so what is it? It's the beach head. Easy was the beach head.