The First Man and Woman
Transcript
Well, good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab your Bibles, go to Genesis chapter 2. We are walking through the book of Genesis. Genesis is the first book in the Bible, probably on page 1, no matter what Bible you have, whichever which Bible you have.
If you do not own a Bible, we have blue ones in the row next to you. We'd love for you to grab one. We'd love for you to take it home. We want you to own a Bible. We want you to read it often. I have been married for, it'll be nine years this year, and I have gotten fairly competent at building things out of particle board.
There's not much in our house that is made out of any kind of solid material, but we have a lot of particle board. And I have built bookshelves and tables, and we've got a three-year-old now, and he'll jump up on particle board like coffee table, and I'm like, yeah, that thing's days are numbered. Like, this isn't going to last long. But we don't have a whole lot of real stuff, but there's different times when you buy something, and it looks nice in the store, it looked nice on the box, and then you pour all this stuff out, and you have no clue who originally wrote these instructions, and then even less of an idea of who then translated them, but they don't really match.
The pictures aren't great, and there have been times when I've been building something that I hit, you know, step seven, and all of a sudden I'm like, I just have to, like, step back away from it and stare at my creation, and it's like, I think something's wrong here. I think something's out of place. This picture doesn't look like this. I'm not even sure these instructions go to this. I think I'm missing some pieces. This isn't great, and since having a child, I've built even more things that don't even get me started on, like, train tables.
Like, there's just these moments where I have to step back and go, okay, I don't know if my instructions match. I don't know if I'm doing this the way it's meant to be done. And I think for a lot of us, life feels like that. I think for a lot of us, there are moments in life that kind of feel like that. Like, it just started happening. You just started making decisions.
Maybe for you, this kind of starts, I think really kind of starts, people actually start making some decisions in middle school. We've actually encouraged you before to reevaluate all your middle school decisions because some of us made decisions in middle school that we've just stuck with, and maybe we need to think back through those. But there are these decisions we make in middle school and high school, and then we kind of get out of high school, and we kind of pick, we're going to go to work, or we're going to go to college. We date some people. Maybe we get married. Maybe we don't.
Maybe like, and there's all of a sudden, there's these moments in life where you just kind of step back, and you look at your life and go, have I done this right? Is this built correctly? Did I miss a step? Am I missing some pieces? What is going on here? And so as we look at the beginning of Genesis where God is creating humanity, what we want to see today is kind of the good gifts that God places around the first man and the first woman, what he gives them, what he equips them with, so that we might better understand what is our life meant to have?
What are the pieces that are supposed to be involved? What order are they supposed to be in? How are we supposed to understand what's meant to be a part of life, and how do we live well in all the good gifts that God gave us? So that's kind of what we're doing, that as we zoom back on life at times and try to figure out, oh, I have everything here, we're going to hopefully see in God's original creation what he said, no, you need this, you need this, you need this, in order to be designed the way he designed humanity, to flourish and to be healthy. So let's pray, and then let's read the text together.
God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for how helpful it is, and we pray that as we see the beauty of your creation in Genesis 2, that you might help us to rejoice, and you might help us to worship, and that we might leave today grateful for Jesus and his good work on our behalf. Lord, we love you, and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to pick up in verse 4, and we're going to kind of throughout the day walk through the rest of this chapter, but it says, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
This is the first of 10 times that we'll see this phrase, these are the generations, in the book of Genesis. Every time we hit that, we kind of know we're hitting a new section, a new kind of idea is being opened up, a new chapter in the book, and so it's saying, these are the generations, meaning these are the people, this is the stories we're going to tell kind of in this time frame, and so he says, in the time when God was creating and his beginning of creation and him in the time frame, that's what the day means there, in the time that God was making heavens and the earth, these are the people, this is what happened, and so verse 5, when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground, then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. So in the opening of the Bible, we have Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, and both of them are giving an account of some of the same historical things that took place. They're giving an account of some of the same events.
So Genesis 1 is going to give this big, cosmic account of creation, how God, the God of the universe, exists before everything else. That's why it starts in, in the beginning God, like he was here before everything else was here, and that he speaks everything into existence, and it's this orderly account of God's creating and kind of the way that he created. And then Genesis 2 is going to start back up, kind of in the middle of that, and zoom way in. So Genesis 1 is this big, cosmic picture of who God is and how powerful he is and how glorious he is and how he speaks everything into existence.
And then Genesis 2 is going to jump right in, and the main character is man fairly quickly. It's saying kind of nothing was ready yet, nothing was going on, and then God creates man. And some people will read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 and say there's some conflict there. There are some places where if you just do a straightforward reading of each, it seems like they're in conflict. I don't believe that they are. I think the purpose is different so that Genesis 2 is telling the same story but in a different way.
And you know this. You meet some people who both were in on the same event, and you ask them how it went, and maybe your granddad says it like just real matter of fact and real logical and real in order, and it's not the best story, but you got some of the facts there. Well, this happened, and then this happened, and your grandmother and I at that time were, and like he tells it that way, and maybe your grandma's chaotic. She's all over the place. She's like telling this part of the story, and you're like, wait, I didn't think y'all had kids then. She's like, oh, well, we didn't, but they came later, and she just mixes it all up, but her story's way better, and it's from the same events, and they're both true.
That's kind of what we have here where Genesis 2 is going to zoom in and say this is the main point of the story. So when it talks about trees, when it brings up these other things, it's just kind of saying God did that, but it's not trying to tell you an order. It's not trying to make this a big, it's saying let's focus in on the main part here. So that's what we have in Genesis 2, and so let's look at as God creates humanity, and as Genesis 2 zooms us in on this, let's look at what God places around man. So go back to 5.
When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. So in Genesis 1, God speaks, and it is. God speaks, and it is. God speaks, and he sees it. It immediately happens, and then there's this, in Genesis 2, we see that God pauses, and we saw this last week as we looked at the man was formed in the image of God, that God pauses when he gets to humanity, and he approaches it differently.
That he forms, and he breathes, and there's this intimacy that is seen with humanity that is different, and in contrast to the rest of creation. That as the biblical account tells it, the stars have glory, but not compared to the glory of man. That God's good creation, animals have glory, but that God's poured extra distinct beauty and creative work and connection into humanity that is wholly different from the rest of everything else. And the Lord God, this is verse 8. So this is the first thing we're going to see that God kind of gives man.
So he makes him, and then we're going to start seeing kind of what he puts in place. And the first thing is a place, or place. God gives humanity place. Let's look at this idea. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Those two trees are going to play a very important role in the history of humankind, and we'll get more to them in a minute. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and onyx stone are there.
The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush, and the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man, and he put him in the garden of Eden. And we'll stop there. God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden. So the first thing that God gives humanity is a place, and it is a specific place.
Some people will try to argue, and they're like, Genesis 2 is kind of this, it's an allegory, it's a picture, it's like, it's this, it's just kind of a story, but there wasn't like a real first man, real first woman, and we're going to see next week, we'll argue this out a little more. But yes, there were, because Eden is a very specific place. It didn't just say, once upon a time in a garden. It goes, no, in the east, and there was this river that ran into this river, and went to this land, that's not a part of this story, but that place has gold. Like, it just kind of keeps going, because it's telling you, it's a specific place on earth, and God takes Adam, and places him in a specific place on earth.
That we're designed to inhabit space. None of us can teleport. You had to wake up this morning, and move your body, and work really hard to get here. And some of us didn't make it here. There's some people who tried, and they're not here, you guys. They're in another place.
They inhabit other space right now. This is how this works. Some of you left family members at home. You were like, you're ruining this. I'm going. I will be there.
You will not. But we were designed to have a place that is ours, that is a home. And this is one of the beautiful things that God gives man. A place to belong. A place to be where he's meant to be. See, we're looking at just one man here, but this is actually what God is going to do for humanity.
He made earth this way for us, and that we're all only able to live in one place at a time, and only able to be in one place at a time, and that is a gift. It doesn't feel like it when you're at the DMV, but it is a gift that God designed us to inhabit space and to have places where we feel at home. You ever had those moments? I mean, it's not all the time, but there are these moments where you're just like, this is my place. This is where I belong. This is where I'm meant to be.
This is my home, and I don't know for you what that is. For some of you, it's the places that you, as you live in a place, maybe it's the restaurants and kind of your local haunts. I have restaurants. I had a Japanese restaurant when I lived in Lynchburg, Virginia. There's a Chinese restaurant that when I walk in, if I wasn't there the week before, there's a lady who's like, oh, I walked in the restaurant recently, and she went, it's not Thursday. It's like, yeah, my schedule changed.
I'll be here on Tuesdays, though. There are these places where you feel like, this is where I'm supposed to be. Maybe it's when you've come back from vacation, or maybe you joined the military, and when you got to come back from being downrange, there are these moments when you were like, yes, this is my home. This is my place. Maybe it's with family over Christmas or something where you're gathered together and you just have this moment. You can't describe it, and it's one of the things that C.S.
Lewis talks about in his book, Surprised by Joy, where you have this moment and you feel it, and as soon as you try to capture it or as soon as you try to look at it, it disappears. But there are these moments where you just feel, yes, I belong. I'm here. I'm meant to be here. I'm home. That's the first place that God gives it.
I want to point out something about this place that God gives. And I love that it talks about Havilah, and I love what it says about Havilah. So it says, God plants this garden in Eden, and then it starts talking about this river. And in verse 12, it says, in verse 11, it says, the name of the first river is the Pishon, and it is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold. Verse 12, and the gold of that land is good. What does that have to do with the Garden of Eden?
As far as I know, it just helps place where it is, but this whole little, like if you were writing this, your teacher would circle the like, why are you talking about gold in Havilah? This has nothing to do with the rest of the story. Does Eden have gold? No. Does Havilah have gold? Yes.
Is it good? Yes. Where did God put Adam? In Eden. To work in a garden. What I love about that is that so often we long for other places and maybe you're supposed to be here where there is no gold.
That God placed you in a place and so often we get so, we wander and we convince ourselves that some other place should be our place. That we don't inhabit where we're meant to be and we don't enjoy the good gifts that are here. Some of you are so bothered by the fact that, you know, Charleston has the coast and they have these good types of food. And it's like, yeah, are you enjoying the river and the barbecue that's here? You've been to the zoo lately? Because if you were in Charleston and you wanted to see a lion, you're out of luck, bro.
And if you see a lion in Charleston, I got bad news for you. Something bad has happened. Like being in a place and enjoying the good things that God put there. That's a good gift that God gives humanity. He keeps going. We're going to see this in three spots.
It shows up in three spots, but we're going to hit it here. The second thing that we see that God gives man, it says this, verse 15, and the Lord God took the man and he put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. So God placed man there and he wasn't just like, hey, here's a beautiful garden. Take a nap. He says, hey, here's a beautiful garden. You got some work to do.
Because if you don't keep this up, it will not be a beautiful garden anymore. Isn't that crazy? I think we have this idea that prior to the fall, prior to sin, like back then, there was like, he just got to nap. That was it. God was like, here's green grass. Take a nap.
You know, he puts him there and he says, you got work to do. Later, he's going to have him name all the animals. Earlier, I love this. Verse five, it says, when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground. God designed certain plants to not exist if humans don't exist. Without humans, without us tending and toiling and working, it doesn't exist.
He designed it from the very beginning to need us to be involved, that God made the world that way. I heard a story one time of a pastor who used to ride by this plot of land and it was just overgrown. It was a big mess. He'd ride by it every day to and from work. Eventually, he saw there was a for sale sign in front of it and then the for sale sign was gone and then at some point he rode by and he saw that some of it had been cleared and then slowly over his trips he just kind of kept seeing it getting cleared and cleared and cleared and then things started being planted and it became this beautiful part of his drive.
He was driving by one day and he sees a tractor out there and he just gets out and he's staring at it and the guy kind of stops and gets off and they start talking and he goes, isn't it wonderful? Because he's a pastor so he pastors it up. He says, isn't it wonderful what man and God can do when they work together? And the farmer's like, you know, you should have seen what it looked like when just God was in charge of it. Every time I heard that, like it bothered me but that's actually how God designed it. From day one, there are things that were meant to only be good as humanity got involved.
Do you see the elevation and the purpose and the joy that God brings humanity in on his good work? That's the second thing he gives us is work. Good work to do. That he designed us to have a purpose. That none of us are meant to be here and just inhabit space but we're meant to be here and in the space that we are and in the place that we're put, we're meant to make it better. We're meant to add into it.
We're meant to do something with our hands or our intelligence or our ability to speak to others and love others and work together but we're meant to be a part of God's good work and that's a blessing. And you've had moments like that where you're doing some work, you're involved in something and you just have this glimpse of, now this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is it. You have days at work when you come home and you're riding home and you're like, yes, that is what work is supposed to be like. I crushed it today. I am a worker and you liked it.
You don't always have days like that but there are days like that. There are times like that when you're doing something, when you finally, you were trying to cook the perfect breakfast and it just worked. You actually flipped the omelet and it landed and you thought, yes, from now on, I am the chef of the house. It was that one day, you've never done it again but you had these moments where it worked, where you felt your purpose and God gave us that as a good gift that was meant to be felt for humanity. It was meant to be a part of how we lived prior to the fall, prior to sin. Let's pick up the third gift that God gives is He gives us Himself and He gives us His Word.
Let's pick up in verse 16. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden. Okay, that's part of place. He gives us food. That's just a blessing but it comes along with the provision of your place. I didn't want to add in food because I would talk forever about that.
I'd have way too much to say but food's good, you guys. Later He gives us meat but that's not until later. Right now it's just trees and like vegetables and stuff. I realize we don't really eat trees. All right, let's go.
And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. I find this part of the passage so interesting. It told us earlier that God plants a garden in Eden and in the middle of the garden He plants tree of life, tree of knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden, in the middle, somewhere in the middle. It doesn't necessarily mean it was the exact center but it's in the middle. Now, I have a question. If there's a tree that they will eat of and it will kill them, why plant it there?
That's my, I was like, I'm not like a botanist or like an arborist or whatever but why when you were designing the garden did you put it like if I said, hey, I'm making my backyard perfect for my three-year-old and there's going to be a swing set over here and this area's just going to be kind of wooded and I'm going to have kind of where you can hang out and I'm going to put a pit with spikes in the middle and there's going to be a tree house. Like, you'd be like, what's with the pit of spikes? And I'm like, no, I'll tell him it's there. It's like, no, there's this question I have when I read this text.
It's like, why is that there? You want to know the text, the answer the text gives us? Unfortunately, it doesn't give us one. It doesn't tell us why he put it there. We have a lot of people who've made guesses and I think some of them are reasonable and some of them are intelligent but we don't know why God placed it there. We know that God is infinitely wise and infinitely good but I want to point out one thing about this that I think changes the minute that God says, don't eat of that tree.
See, the moment that God looks at Adam and says, you can eat of every tree except that one and if you eat of that one on the day you do, you'll die or in the time you do, you'll die. what happens that moment is Adam now has to trust God in a way that he never had to before. He has to believe God in a way he never had to before. He has to relate to God in a way he never had to before. That God is inviting Adam into a depth of relationship that is beyond what would happen if God had just put Adam in a padded room. We also see that it seems like that death and this kind of this interaction was going to be a part of creation somehow.
God had not designed it for humanity. It was not meant for this to be the way it worked but God places him there and he says, you're just going to have to trust me. And the moment he does that we're invited into humanity's invited into a relationship where we are more dependent on God and more have to believe him and trust him over and against our own desire and over against our own wisdom and over against everything else so there's this moment now where the relationship has changed and God has said you're just going to have to trust me. Those of you who are parents especially parents of older children maybe you've had these moments where you're trying to explain to them why they cannot do a thing you're trying to tell them that they should not act in such a way and their answer is why?
Their question is why? They want you to convince them. They want to be on your team. They want to agree with you and at some point you just land on because I am your parent because I love you because I have wisdom things you can't just you're going to have to trust me. Maybe you didn't say it that way maybe you said because I said so. Maybe some of you said because if you do they will be like I'm coming after you like I don't know how you worded it but there was these moments where the reason they're supposed to do or not do a thing is because you have told them and they're supposed to bank on the relationship and the love and the connection and your wisdom and lean into you in a way they can't lean into themselves and as soon as God says don't touch that tree he invited Adam into that.
That he gives us himself and his word and the truth is we need God to do that. We need God to enjoy life. This comes third in the list but it's first we need God. In the way humanity works we see that God's at work before he begins everything that humanity needs God. We were designed to relate to God. We were designed to enjoy God.
We were designed to walk with God. We were designed to have conversations with God. You ever had that moment I wish God would just tell me. That's how it was supposed to work. He still gives us his word in scripture but we were meant to have this relationship where we listened to him where we understood him where we knew what he wanted from us where he gave us wisdom we couldn't have otherwise. And it's a good gift that God gives us and it's the way it works best that we were designed to be in a relationship with God.
The way that children were designed to have parents and that's the way that it works best. We were designed as humans to be in a relationship with God and that's the way that we are most free and most flourish. There are things about the world we do not understand. There are spiritual aspects to the world we don't understand that God wove in who we are and how it works. We see it in glimpses of things like when you become depressed you also get physically sick. You can be actually sick.
What made you sick? I was sad. It's like how does that work? That there's more to us than we understand. There's more that God's put in the world and we need him to explain it to us and show it to us and we need to trust him and we were meant to. Prior to the fall we were meant to trust God and his wisdom over our own.
The next one we're going to see is that God gives us each other. Let's keep reading. Verse 18 Then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. We've spent a decent amount of time talking about this in the past couple years. The first thing that God says isn't good is for him to be alone.
He looks at the man he's created in all of his creation so far in Genesis chapter 1 he said he saw it it was good he saw it it was good he saw it he ends by saying everything's very good. This is the one moment where God was like no it's not good for him to be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. Real quick just to try to for anybody that this is a hurdle for the word helper while having kind of diminutive connotations in the way we use it like oh you're my little helper. like if Archer's helping me do work I'm like oh you're being such a good helper. He's not he's just hitting things with a hammer but it's like yeah good Job buddy.
And so it's like God looked at man and said oh I'm going to make you a little helper. And then that's where women came from. That's not that's that's that's why sometimes it seems like it reads the word helper in the Bible is most often used for God. There's only two instances where it is used to mean someone who is of a lower status. Every other time it's someone who shows up as like a rescuer. So it is not in the text and in the original Hebrew it is not meant to be diminutive.
Helper fit means that phrase really just kind of means a like opposite so he's going to make something that's similar but very different so that he's actually helped. So now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. This does show Adam's dominion over creation and God's place that he's put him in and whatever the man called every living creature that was its name. And the man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
So Adam you just think he's got a job and then at the end it surprises you because it was like a weird dating game because it's like but he didn't like any of them. None of them worked out. I think God was really putting that on display for him was like everything else is different from you. You are in a different category. So it's like zebras are neat but they're not like cute cute.
They're cute but not like I'm attracted. So that's what he's doing there. He's just kind of saying like this isn't going to work for you. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and he brought her to the man. Then the man said this is at last this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
This is the first bit of poetry this is the first bit of song that we see that existed in human existence. Adam had the urge that every high school guy has had who had a guitar at a party which was to sing and look at a girl. That's what he did. He saw her and he was like I want to write you a poem. That's what happens. This is the last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she should be called woman because she was taken out of man.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Alright so in this part of the text there's a lot going on here and we're going to zoom way out but there's a lot of things happening here. Adam specifically Adam the one man that God had put on earth did not need to be alone and so God brings him Eve. So what the text is telling us is that Adam needed a wife specific to Adam. It also means that masculinity is incomplete without femininity. That God's distinct way that he displays his glory and himself through masculinity is not going to accomplish what the world needs so he also has a distinct way to display himself and his glory through femininity and they were meant to be complementary like opposites that come together to make a beautiful picture.
It means on another level that humans were meant to procreate and they're not going to be able to have dominion over the earth and be fruitful and multiply and accomplish all that God's meant without males and females but on a very zoomed out level one of the things that God is saying and completely writing into how he designed humans was that we were not meant to be alone and that does not just mean romantically that humans were meant to have relationships. This is why if you get trapped on an island you will start talking to a volleyball because we were meant for other people. We were meant to have relationships. We were designed and so in this moment God says no, no, no, no, no.
Humans need friends. Humans need relationship. Humans need love. That we're made in his image and God's existed in a trinity so that he's been forever loving and relating and being a friend and all of this. God did not make humans so that he could relate to us but he did once he made humans say no, y'all need to relate to each other. And if you think about all the ink that has been spilled all the film that has been used all the song lyrics that have been written about the beauty of friendship and love this is a good gift.
That God did not design you to just be alone but he designed you for family. He designed you for relationships. He designed you for friendship. And how much joy that brings to life. How we were designed to relate to one another and bring things out of each other. It's one of the things where you know like maybe you have a friend and when y'all hang out it's really enjoyable and there's a lot of fun but there's a third friend that when they add in you all of a sudden see a whole other side of this person that you'd never seen before and like you get more out of them because there's more people involved and God designed that to be a thing that happened for humanity that we had friends and enjoyed it.
So God in his goodness to us and his love for us intentionally made it to where you inhabit a place and you're meant to be there to be home to enjoy it to be content there. He designed you to have a purpose to have work to do. He designed you to relate to him and to know his word to trust him and he designed you to have relationships. We don't believe that everybody has to get married. We don't believe that the Bible teaches that. We don't believe that you're an incomplete person without a spouse.
We don't think that jives with the rest of the scriptures. We think that Adam was an incomplete person without a spouse because God specifically brought him Eve but we don't think that this means everybody has to have a wife but we do believe that everybody has to be in relationship. You were not designed to be alone. I'm going to be honest with you. You alone is scary. You need help.
One of the things that I know that is true about me when I'm alone is I let myself get away with a lot of things that aren't healthy or helpful. I convince myself of a lot of things that are harmful to myself and I also believe a lot of lies about myself like that I'm really easy to get along with and I'm the smartest person in the room. When I'm alone I'm super easy to get along with and I'm great you guys and then I get around my wife and she's like you're not that great you got some stuff to work on and I'm like what is wrong with you and I hang out with my community group and they're like why do you do this repeatedly? We've been hanging out in a group with you for years and you haven't fixed this and I need them to grow and to be healthy and to see my sin and I need them to enjoy life.
We're meant for relationship. God in his goodness gave us each other and I have really bad news. We're not going to end the sermon here and it's going to get way worse next week but I'm going to give you a little hint about what happens next week. Y'all remember that tree that God talked to Adam about? Well next week they decide not to trust God and that humanity is more intelligent than God that we know a better idea of what's good for us than God and they completely mess up all four of these things for us. They get derailed they get stolen they get corrupted.
And that humanity is more intelligent than God that we know a better idea of what's good for us than God and they completely mess up all four of these things for us. They get derailed they get stolen they get corrupted. We still long for all four of these. Every single person in this room wants a place where they belong wants a purpose that makes them feel fulfilled wants a job that is great for them
Wants to have a relationship with God even if you don't understand that even if maybe I always want to point it out to you you're in this room some of you think you have no desire for God whatsoever but he's been drawing you he's been pulling on you he's been claiming you he won't let you get away you're here because we know we were meant for we don't understand why but we know that it's missing and we need each other some of you
Think you hate people but you know you're way worse off without them you're like people are the worst and oh my goodness I have to have them I don't understand see what happens is this they sin and all of this good gift that God gives them they lose they're removed from Eden the good work that God had given Adam to do
In Eden is now just kind of dispersed and he has to move and try to try to patch it together everywhere he goes to work the ground but it's going to be harder the relationship they had with God where they walked with him intimately knowing him where he could just speak to them and they trusted him is completely corrupted and their relationship
With each other you know this line at the end of this where it said they were naked and unashamed which is like that's weird to put in here but alright good for y'all as soon as they sin as soon as they rebel against God both of them go I don't feel right they cover themselves up they feel naked they lose the relationship with each other so let me explain what happens let me explain us in this story
You kind of like your house if you just moved in it you think it's great we'll give it some time we have this idea that like this house is great but if my kitchen just and we pick weird things if it was just a different color I'd be happy I'd be settled if our floor looked a little different if maybe we were in a different part of town if maybe our house was a little bigger I realized that I wanted this but now I really kind of want that because the reason is
We were meant for a place and we really wanted to work for some of us we do this with cities you liked it when you were first discovering what Columbia has to offer but now that you're going for the third time to the same place and you realize that the best restaurant near you is like an Applebee's like that hurts you inside and you're thinking man if I could just move to Savannah if I could just move to Denver if I could just go somewhere
Where weed was legal and we need to talk to you we do this we convince ourselves that some other thing would be better some other thing would fill us up some other thing would make us more whole and we have these glimpses of it where I'm home and then it's gone this is my place no it's not because we've lost this and we long for it this happens with work any of y'all ever had the perfect Job just the perfect Job is it still the perfect Job nope
Because that's how it works you get in it and you're like finally I'm at my place this is where I belong and then it turns out this boss is an idiot like your last boss everywhere you've gone your boss is an idiot and it's not your fault it's the boss's fault you don't know how idiots keep getting promoted you have those days where everything worked you remember that day I was talking about you're riding home and you're like yes this is how everything was worked how many more days have you been sitting in traffic
Like wanting to bang your head on the steering wheel like this is I don't even understand how everything broke I don't understand how this all went sideways because we long for work we long for this to work and it's twisted it's broken it's corrupted our relationship with God this is a room full of people who are trying trying to read trying to pray trying to listen to God how's it going you have those days where you're like I don't even know how to pray I don't even know
If I've ever done this right I have days I'm a pastor you guys don't get rid of me I'm going to tell y'all something I have days where I go to sleep I'm about to go to sleep and I'm like did I even pray today? like I have this deep longing for God and this paired with this absolute inability to bridge that gap and we were meant for each other you guys for every beautiful love song just Taylor Swift has written a breakup song
How many people used to be your friend? we can rewind a little bit to the moments where you're like oh we're going to be best friends forever and where are we now? it's broken we hurt each other how many people that you care about have you done some serious wicked harm to evil we're going to talk more about that next week I want to tell y'all something beautiful the story starts off where God says I'm going to make
Everything good for y'all and it's going to be beautiful and he puts Adam here and he equips him with everything he needs and then Adam and Eve mess it up it breaks apart it falls down and the story does not end after chapter 3 see we're here the rest of this is about God fixing the problem and here's what he does he loves humanity so much that the God of the universe leaves his place see he was meant to be on a throne he was meant to be elevated
He was meant to be glorified we sang a song about this earlier that he comes here and he's a baby he's mute he's weak he's helpless he's laid in hay he leaves his place he was meant to be the ruler of the universe and to do all good work and to pour life into everything and his good work that he's sent here to do is to die the author of life the creator of life life itself is going to die
He was meant to have a perfect relationship with the father and every time we see in scripture that Jesus prays he calls him father until he's on the cross and then he says my God my God why have you forsaken me this beautiful relationship this beautiful connection with the father that has existed since eternity passed in a trinity is severed because God poured our sin on Christ
And then poured his wrath on him that the sky turns black because God is pouring his wrath out on Jesus as a human and as God Jesus was meant to have this beautiful relationship with us he's despised he's rejected he's hated humanity gathers together to kill God and he does all of that so that he can
Swap places with us Jesus does that so that we can have a place so that we can have purpose again so that we can have him again so that we can have each other again that's the story of the gospel that everything's been lost and we have this ache and this longing for it and no ability to get it except through Christ if you're here today
And you don't know Christ you haven't accepted Christ I want you to understand that this longing is in you this desire for this to work for you to have a place for you to have a purpose for you to have each other for relationships to be good and I want to tell you definitively you will not get those outside of Christ swapping places with you taking the punishment for you and granting you what only he deserves now which is love
And acceptance belonging and purpose and here's what happens our place all of these get to be twofold now we have a home we're citizens of heaven you will eventually get to heaven and go this is why I liked every little place that I kindly had this is why I liked all the little things I liked on earth are here because I was meant for this place you'll get to heaven and be like yes this is finally home
But it also means that we get to enjoy the place we are now your kitchen gets to be a weird pink you're okay you get to enjoy it you get to live in the neighborhood you live in you get to drive the traffic route you drive you get to enjoy Columbia that's God's grace through Christ for us you get to do good work here and Jesus has given us all a new purpose which is to see people
Come to know him so it doesn't matter where you work there are people that don't know Jesus there that need to know Jesus there and maybe God's already sent in a missionary to work there so that you might know them and pray for them and long for them to know Christ we get Jesus we get a relationship with him we get to be welcomed back into the beautiful relationship with Christ beautiful relationship
With the Father because Christ bridges that gap for us and because Jesus forgives us of our sin and we can have the gap between us and God reconciled then we get to reconcile with everybody and we're given a new family that we will be brothers and sisters in the new heavens in the new earth for eternity that heaven for us will be a place of purpose
Of belonging of family and of love towards Christ and the Father the band's going to come back up we're going to take communion in a second and what communion is is for us a celebration of what we just talked about that Jesus Christ gave his life for us he shed his blood for us his body was broken for us so that we might have life
And we might be forgiven and if you're a Christian in here what I would encourage you to do is prior to taking communion prior to getting up and celebrating that Jesus' body was broken for you and his blood was shed for you I want you to think through place and work and your relationship to God and your relationship to others and I want us to repent I want us to repent
Where we've begun to convince ourselves that we don't belong here that we have to be somewhere else to be happy I want us to repent for all the times that we've begun to convince ourselves that if we just worked this job if we could just move our job if we could just get that we lost our purpose and our meaning for mission for seeing people come to know Jesus and for just doing good work
But God to put us here to do I want us to talk to God about our broken relationship with him and ask Christ to help us to commune with God to pray to rest in him to enjoy him and if you have a conflict with somebody and they're in this room I want you to get up and go talk to them I want you to begin the process of reconciling of repenting of asking them
To forgive you of telling them you forgive them if they're not in this room you have a magic box in your pocket and Verizon through God's good grace and somebody's good work will connect you to that person and I'd love for you to step up step out and go call them here or out there and then come back in and take communion and celebrate the fact that Jesus shed his blood so that we can have
Each other so all around the room we're going to start praying we're going to start repenting we're going to start celebrating the good gift that God gave us through his cross and then when you're ready if you're a Christian we encourage you and invite you to come take communion if you're not a Christian you can be all you need is Christ so you can repent of your sin and you can say I need a place I need good purpose I need to belong
I need you and I want to repent of my sin and where I've run and where I've rebelled and where I've like Adam and Eve chosen to listen to myself over you you can repent and then you can celebrate communion as well let's pray God we thank you for these beautiful gifts that you gave us and we thank you that when we lost them you redeemed them so that we get an eternal family we get a place to belong a home
We get good purpose here and with you and ultimately God we get you back that we might be restored I pray that you would help us to see where we've gotten this twisted and where we've been believing lies you'd help us repent and then celebrate well that we're redeemed by a good God who loves us in Jesus name Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen
Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen 音 Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Rema
Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen Amen