Matt Chandler - In His Image

Well, how are we doing? Well, excellent! If you have your Bibles, let’s go ahead and grab those. Genesis chapter 1 is where we’re going to be. While you’re turning there, I want to wish our Dallas campus a happy anniversary. It was five years ago this weekend that The Village Church Dallas Northway launched, and in the last five years, they’ve grown to several thousand people and have done profound gospel work down in Dallas. The thing I want to keep ever before you is that they are us; we are them, and we are woven together as family. We sit under the same word, and we are engaging with the same gospel message. This was a time when one of the things I’m constantly pressing on us is the gospel’s ability to jump over hurdles. When Dallas Northway approached us, we began to have conversations about what this might look like. The predominant age group at Dallas Northway was 70, 80, and 90, while the predominant age group at The Village Church was 20, 25, and 28. So, could we mingle—could we, to use L. Level’s word, in Denmark, marinate 70, 80, and 90-year-olds with 20, 25, and 28-year-olds and see a type of synergy and togetherness that would push back what was dark and herald the good news of Jesus Christ, while celebrating the different generations? The Lord has done a good work in marrying that family together down there and then marrying our family together as The Village Church. So again, I want us to always celebrate and be glad in the good works that the Lord is doing, even as we continue to move toward rolling our Denton campus off into an autonomous church. And as we planted Plano last week, we want to keep ever before us that God’s grace upon us as a church is that we’ve been able to multiply at a very quick rate—both the numerics in our auditoriums all over Dallas, but also the churches we’ve been able to plant and the campuses we’ve been able to establish, all with the end goal of allowing those churches to be autonomous. God’s been good and gracious, and I just wanted to wish Dallas a happy anniversary.

Now, this is week two of our fall series, which we’ve entitled «A Beautiful Design.» What we’re talking about—if I could just take the title and move it over to the side—is manhood and womanhood and what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. We said last week that while that sounds simple, it’s far more complex than we would like to believe. In fact, I used the predominant illustration I referenced last week on the subject of confusion, which was Mount Hoolio College. One of the examples I had that I crossed out after spending all my time on it was that on Facebook, there are 72 identifiers: there’s male, female, and 70 other ways to define how you see yourself regarding gender. Entering this space is confusing, so we want to try to bring clarity. Last week, we covered one sentence: the most profound sentence ever written in the history of the world: «In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.» That’s all we did—50 minutes on «In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.» What we said is that embedded in that sentence is every philosopher’s dream, the theologian’s playground, and the scientist’s foundation. If in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth, then all of life’s questions around origin, purpose, and design are rooted in that sentence. The questions of «Who am I?» «Why am I here?» and «How do things work?» find their root in that sentence. So last week, when we talked about origin, I simply said very briefly that we are created, and because we are created and not the Creator, we are not the measure of anything. I pulled back on that and simply said we’re not the point. That’s hard for us because if we can be honest—it’s church, so I’m not pretending we can—but if we could be honest, we’d like to be the point. We want to be the center of attention. I like to be the point; I like everyone to defer to what I want, what I need, and what I desire, and so do you. Don’t judge me; I can feel you judging me. You’re just like me! We want to be the point, and when we feel like we’re not the point, a lot of conflict has birthed out of that. I want to continue to tease apart our origin today.

Here’s a sketch of my home: I have a wife; I’ve been married for 15 years and we’ve been together for 17, married for 15. I have an 11-year-old daughter, an 8-year-old son, and a 5-year-old daughter. We also have an Australian Shepherd named Gus, and my daughter has a quarter horse named Gypsy. Now, whether you’re a believer in Christ or not, whether you have a religious background or not, the question I’m about to ask…