Potter, Gardener, Director, Matchmaker

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

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This is a message from the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filsick.

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If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.

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Here's Pastor Don. Well, good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. We're going to get started here, and I'm Don Filsick.

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I'm the lead pastor. Just be sure to check out the worship folder that you received when you walked in. There's different announcements and different things going on here.

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You can take advantage of that. You also received a connection card when you walked in. If this is your first time with us, you fill out that connection card and turn it in in the black box back here, either during the connection time or at the end of the service.

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If it's your first time turning that in, then please take a free coffee mug, too, that's on the desk back there, just our way of saying thanks.

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Just be reminded that those of you who are here routinely, some of you are here on a regular basis, but there is a place for you to put prayer requests on the back, and there's different check boxes for different things that you could be involved in.

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I always love getting these connection cards. It's a good way for you to communicate with the leadership, and we do pray through these as the elders get together and meet on Tuesdays.

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So take advantage of that, especially if you're going through some difficulty or some things are going on in your life. Feel free to put those prayer requests down there, and we can pray for you and know how to be praying for you.

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We pray for you anyways, but it's very beneficial for us to know, to be able to pray for you specifically.

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And then also you received an offering envelope when you walked in. Those go in the black box back there if you choose to give this morning.

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If you are not going to be giving this morning, then there's also a white basket next to that to recycle these so we can just be good stewards and use these again next week.

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So that's available to you. We don't pass an offering plate or anything like that, but if you choose to give, that's what's available for you there.

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This morning we're going to continue on in the account of creation looking at Genesis, and we're going to zoom in on the specifics of day six.

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So if you were with us last week, we talked about Genesis chapter one, and we went day one through seven, the first six days of creation, and then seventh being the

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Sabbath day that God had established. But some have looked at this text in chapter two. Are you guys getting some kind of a...

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I think maybe I've got this. We'll see if that works. Some have seen here what they've appeared, they've thought of this as an alternate account to creation.

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Like you have Genesis chapter one, one account of creation. Genesis chapter two, a second account of creation.

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And some compiler, some editor tried to bring these two together, but that's really not the way that Hebrew works in the

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Hebrew literary style of ancient times. What we actually see here in chapter two is a telescoping in of information.

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So we saw the full six days of creation before, but now we are getting down to focusing on day six, the culmination of creation, the main focus.

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And as usual, I want to encourage you to keep your eyes on what God is doing as we read this text.

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I want you to think about him and see him in the text. As we read it together, consider what he is doing and how he is doing it.

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Because the author is writing to us about what God did, and he is being intentional in this text.

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There are some things that we can learn about our God as we come to the pages of scripture. And I think you will find, like I have, glimpses of his special care and concern for his crowning achievement, humanity.

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We will see God in this text act as the title of the sermon is Potter, Potter, Gardener, Director, Matchmaker.

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And we'll see him acting as a potter, gently forming the first man. We're going to see him as a gardener, carefully crafting a royal park for humanity to occupy.

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We will see God as a generous director, giving bountiful freedom to humanity, except excluding one tree, and we'll get there.

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And lastly, we will see God as matchmaker, bringing relationship into the only situation that we see from the beginning of creation that is declared in our text to be not good.

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What was kind of the mantra, the thing that kind of set the tone for last week? It was good.

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God saw that it was good. It was good. And now we're going to encounter something that God says is not good. And that's going to be very important.

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That's intended to grab our attention as we look at the text. So open your Bibles, please, to Genesis chapter 2.

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You can take that paperback Bible out that's in the seat back in front of you and turn to page 2 in that, an easy way to find it.

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And follow along, though, as I read Genesis chapter 2. If you don't own a copy of the Bible, I'd encourage you to please take that paperback home with you.

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It's our desire for everybody to have a Bible. In the three and a half years that we've been going, we've given over 200 of those away.

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It's amazing to me. But we've given 200 of those Bibles away, and we've got a couple boxes of those in the back room to replace the ones that are taken this morning.

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But follow along. Genesis 2, starting in verse 5 through the end of the chapter.

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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.

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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.

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And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

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And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

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The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

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The name of the first is the Peshan. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.

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Bedalium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush.

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And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,

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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.

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For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

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I will make a helper fit for him. 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.

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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field.

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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.

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And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the

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Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

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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.

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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.

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Let's pray. Father, I ask that you would open our eyes to you to see who you are.

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In this text, we see you moving. We see you as the primary source of life. We see you as the one who is causing things and working on our benefit and our behalf to bring about life and to bring about humanity.

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And that as we look at this text, we would not get so caught up in the questions and the intrigue of this or that, but ultimately to get caught up in you and see the way that you began this thing and what attitude and what heart you had of joy and excitement and enthusiasm for creation, the way that you intimately were involved in the creation and fashioning and caring for the first humans.

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Father, the way that you are, you shaped us, the way that you provided for us, the way that you have blessed us richly with an amazing habitat to inhabit.

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Father, the way that you have carefully and cautiously set out laws and rules and things for our benefit.

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But Father, we have broken those rules and so we are in need of you day in and day out. Father, I rejoice in salvation through Jesus Christ.

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And as we look at this text and we see something so good and so awesome and such a great relationship with you and your joy and delight over creation and just to see the rebellion over the years.

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Father, I delight in knowing that you are one day taking us back to that place of paradise, taking us back to a place of wholeness and completeness and right relationship with each other and with you.

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And Father, we lift up our voices before you in praise this morning. I ask that you would receive the songs that we sing with the joy that we sing them.

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Father, that we would genuinely open our hearts and that this would not be a matter of just opening our mouths or speaking some words that we read on a screen, but that you would move in our hearts to take and transform the words on the screen through our hearts into genuine praise and worship and adoration of you.

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For you are worthy and you are great and you are our creator in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thanks a lot for leading us in worship.

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I appreciate that. If you can just make sure you have your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 2.

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I know that probably in the shuffle you've got them closed again or whatever, so just reopen those to Genesis 2 so you can have that open while we walk through this.

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Kind of look at, obviously what we're looking at is the creation of humanity. That's the focus of this text and that's why it exists here.

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But as we walk through, I'm going to just kind of take it point by point and we're going to look at different things that God is doing in the text and hopefully walk away with a better understanding of who our

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God is as a result of coming together, hearing from his word. But one thing that we encounter right away in verse 5 is

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I told you we're zeroing in on day 6, so right away we might encounter an issue.

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Right away in verse 5, when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up.

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If we're talking about day 6, what problem does that pose? When were the plants created? Does anybody know?

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On day 3. On day 3. So if the plants were created on day 3, then if we're zeroing in on day 6, does it not appear at first blush that there's no plants yet from looking at verses 5 and 6?

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Would you agree with me on that? So it's a legitimate question that we have to ask. Okay, are we talking about day 6 or what are we talking about here?

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Are we talking about a different account of creation as some have posed? Okay, so you've got an account of creation in chapter 1, one in chapter 2.

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I think it's a legitimate question, but what you need to understand is the nuances of the language to really get down to what's going on in verse 5.

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Verse 5 and 6 are concerned with what the world was like on the days preceding humanity.

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No humans yet. No people. The world is here. There are plants. There are animals. There are some things going on.

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But coming into day 6, there was something missing, and that was an important part of the created order.

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Someone to cultivate. And the terminology in verse 5 for bush of the field and small plant of the field are

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Hebrew agricultural terms for plants. So it is cultivated plants.

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It is the notion of agriculture, and what we have here is an absence of agriculture happening. Are there plants on day 6?

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Yes, but there are wide open spaces ready for farming, ready and they're just not cultivated and they're not irrigated.

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And we see that those are the two problems yet. There was no rain yet, and there was no man to work the ground yet.

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So there are plants, but no farms. There are places ripe for farming, but nobody to farm it yet.

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And at this stage, the ground was primarily being watered by heavy dew and not by rain. It says that in the text.

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So there was some supply of water to the area, but it was not yet cultivated. Into this environment that is ripe for a cultivator,

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God formed the man from the dust of the ground. Now, if we reflect back to the way that God created everything else in chapter 1, what was kind of the order of creation?

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What did he do before something burst into being? He spoke and it came to pass, right?

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It was almost kind of, in one sense, it was somewhat detached compared to what we encounter here.

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What we find is very different. There he speaks and it is so. Here we see

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God forms something for the first time. This is a word for pottery.

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And if any of you ever watched a potter, have any of you ever worked with pottery? Have any of you ever watched somebody who is a potter, like actually making a clay pot or something like that, spinning?

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It's a tactile thing. It's a hands -on process. It's something that you have to get your hands a little dirty to accomplish, right?

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Can you imagine that? Can you picture that in your mind, the spinning clay pot and you've got to keep your hands wet and you're forming it and you're fashioning it?

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That's the word that's used here. It's the same word for fashion or for creating pottery that is used of God in our text.

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The image here is not a distant, disengaged deity who speaks to the dirt and a man forms, but one who scoops up the earth and molds it and shapes it and is involved in this process in the detail.

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What a parable exists in these two facets of creation. What is it that he scoops up and makes us out of?

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Soil. Dirt. What does that make us? Dirt.

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Dirty. We are connected to the soil. We are made of dirt, but the second part of that is that we are made by God.

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Those two things kept in tension are important for us to understand who we are and what we are as beings who think about things like who we are and what we are, right?

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At least we ought to. We are connected to the soil. One poet called the dirt our cradle, home, and grave.

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Is that accurate? Yeah, that works. We are earthy creatures made from earth, meant for earth, sustained by earth, made from the elements of the soil.

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I've heard that roughly if you were to take the components of the human body, the elements that we are made out of, you could purchase them at a chemical store for about a buck eighty -five.

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Is that the worth then of a human? How much is a human worth? The component chemicals that make up our body, is that what we're worth?

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Or is there something more that's going on here in the creation? Created from stuff, material stuff, yes, but created for something a little bit more than just being stuff, occupying space, having mass, being made of matter.

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I think there's more that we're going to see here in just a moment. Our worth is implicit in the design and intimacy of our creator.

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He formed us from the dirt, took us in his arms, and blew his life into us.

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He shared a portion of himself in this act of creation, his own breath into humanity.

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And the breath of life mentioned, look at verse 7, do you see the word there? The Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.

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The Hebrew word for breath of life is never ever used of animals in the entirety of scripture.

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That's a phrase that is unique to something that God possesses and he gives to humanity and it is never declared that he gives this word to anyone else, ever.

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It is something unique to God and unique to humanity. This is something that he gives to us that we share.

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So some of you may have in your mind a Hebrew word for spirit or for soul.

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Maybe some of you have heard this, maybe a handful of you have heard the word ruach. Have any of you ever heard the

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Hebrew word ruach? That is the word for spirit. It almost kind of sounds like breath. Ruach, that's the way it's pronounced.

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I'm the only one apparently. Okay, maybe a couple people. That word is really common for spirit but it's a very generic term for spirit.

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It's actually the word that's often used for the spirit hovering over the waters and things like that. There's a different Hebrew word that's used uniquely here.

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It is nefesh and the word nefesh has the concept of soul to it.

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Something that is unique that God is breathing into humanity that he has not breathed into the animal kingdom.

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What distinguishes us from the animals? This nefesh, whatever it is, however we define it, however we describe it, that is what makes us different from animals.

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That is the soul that God has given to us. He has breathed that into humanity, something unique and different.

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So he takes this clay, this dirt, and forms it and fashions it and then picks it up and breathes into it a part of himself, this nefesh, and that which was inanimate, that which was lifeless, that which was dirt.

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This is like asking a rock to live or asking the dirt that you tilled up from your soil to come alive and that's what he has the power to do.

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It was inanimate, lifeless, molded dust. Have any of you ever seen a really cool sand sculpture of a person laying down?

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Have you ever seen that over at the beach or somebody sculpts something and it just looks... that's the image of what we've got here. God kind of fashions it, forms it.

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Now would you be pretty impressed if the guy over at South Haven and it lived?

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That would only be because he buried his kid in there and then covered him with sand. That would be a really fun trick, actually, if you can really freak some people out there.

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Really cool sculpture, dude. So he's able to make that which is not living alive.

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And God is seen here in this first movement as the potter, fashioning, shaping, molding, breathing life into his image bearer.

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And he who breathed life into that first man is the one who breathed life into the body of Jesus Christ in that grave

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Easter morning, 2 ,000 years ago. And he is the one who will breathe life into our inanimate, lifeless bodies years from now when we are dead and gone and Jesus comes back for us.

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And that is the hope, by the way. That almost kind of sounds like a sci -fi novel in one way.

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And that is Scripture and that is truth and that is reality. And Paul the Apostle says it this way, if the resurrection is not so, we are to be most pitied among mankind.

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If there is no resurrection, then we are all in this room living a lie. That's what

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Paul says. He says the resurrection is that crucial that if you're not trusting in the resurrection, come and talk with me and we need to walk through this and work through this because that is fundamental and central to our faith.

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That when we look out those windows right there and we look at that graveyard, that one day people will rise up from the grave with their bodies and be reunited with their souls that have gone on before them to new life.

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That is our hope. Resurrection. Now, here's a fundamental question.

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If you can believe in a God who can take dirt and make it alive, then it's not much of a stretch for him to put you back together again later.

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Would you agree with me on that? But this is a fundamental issue of faith. This is fundamental and central to our understanding and it is fundamental to this book.

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It is a central tenet of this book that Jesus Christ did rise from the grave three days after he was crucified and ascended to his father's right hand.

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And that's part of my hope. I look at this passage and I see ties to my hope for resurrection that this

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God who can take dirt and rocks and make it live and breathe life into it will one day breathe life into me once again and bring me back.

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I look forward to that day because that means Adon Filsack without sin.

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Any of you looking forward to that day? The day of ultimate restoration? The day of ultimate reconciliation where everything is brought together to the way that it's supposed to be?

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In verse 8 we're going to see a different movement. So we've seen God as potter but now we're going to see

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God as gardener in a land east of Israel called Eden. It's important to understand that Eden is a land.

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It's a territory. We don't understand its boundaries. We don't know where it expanded to or how big it was.

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But it's a land. It's not a garden. The garden is in Eden. Eden being a territory. So that's important for you to understand.

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But in that area of Eden, God planted a garden. Now obviously the land is not identified and will not be identified and we can speculate about the rivers mentioned in the text and the

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Gihon and Pishon and Tigris and Euphrates and scholars debate this stuff and fill up volumes in books and I got a chance to read a couple over the last couple weeks and just an overwhelming amount of information about things that people don't really know.

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You know what I'm saying? Have any of you read any of those books where you're like, okay that was really an intriguing prospect but where's the sources and are these just your thoughts and speculation?

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So scholars debate this stuff but by the end of chapter three next week we're going to see that we are not going to find

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Eden. We are not going to find this garden again and I'm going to let that stand. That's basically what

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God tells us by the end is that that's a protected area that is removed from us now.

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But there's still enough symbolism in the names to be worth noting. The name Eden means luxury or pleasure.

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That's what the word actually means in Semitic languages. Eden isn't, in other words, it's an awesome place.

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The word paradise is not a stretch for Eden and this garden. And within the boundaries of that land of Eden God fashions this specific garden.

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Now when we think of garden we have to stretch our understanding of that word because it's become a very narrow word in our culture.

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What did you have in mind when I mentioned garden? Probably the majority of you had vegetables in mind.

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A little patch in your backyard to plant some vegetables and maybe grow some cucumbers or some tomatoes or something or whatever.

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That's not the picture that we should have in our mind. Maybe a couple of you actually had flowers in mind like a flower garden or something like that.

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But this is like a royal park. That's what we need to have in our minds.

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During the time when Moses was writing this it was very common. Have any of you ever heard of the seven wonders of the ancient world? One of them being the hanging gardens of Babylon.

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This is a privilege of kings to possess a park like this. Picture like Millennium Park or Central Park or a huge territory, a huge area with trees planted in specific places for a purpose, with intention, with order, with organization.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? It's like a park not like a garden. It was cultivated with a variety of trees, plants, it had irrigation.

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It was designed to be lush and it was designed to be organized. And God selected which trees he wanted to populate the garden according to verse 9.

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He set fruit trees, nuts, berries to grow there and in the middle of the garden the master gardener placed two unique trees.

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These are trees that I do not believe exist today. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

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I don't think we can identify. You know people will ask oh it's the apple. Don't eat apples because the apple is the evil fruit or it's the orange or peach or whatever.

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I don't think it's a fruit that we eat on a regular basis. It's not one that still exists today. I think this is the creation of two unique species of tree that were for a particular purpose.

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The tree of life has been banned from humanity after chapter 3. We don't have access to it.

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So we know right away that we certainly don't know what that tree is like. As a side note the tree of life shows up later in scripture as a matter of fact at the end of time on the new earth and it's declared that the tree of life, the leaves of the tree of life will be for the healing of the nations.

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I believe that it's a unique tree that will one day again exist on earth, on the new earth and it will have a purpose.

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But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was also there in the middle of the garden. We're going to get more on that tree next week but we know a couple of things kind of looking forward about this tree and it might be beneficial for us to understand it now because of the prohibition that's going to be given here in a minute.

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But the result of eating this tree is that it will bring death, it brings curse and it makes humanity in some sense like God according to later texts.

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By its name it's obvious that it gives the knowledge of good and evil. Do you agree with me? I mean does that seem to make sense?

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It's called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I believe that regardless of what the actual fruit was, it was the knowledge of what it means to be morally self -guided that came through eating this fruit.

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That they come to understand what it means to be moral or immoral, they understand delineation, they now understand what it means to guide their own destiny regarding morality.

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Prior to eating it they possessed the knowledge of good. They had never tasted the other side of moral decision so they were in essence a one -sided creature.

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Knowing good, not knowing evil. And consider that being tempted is not the same as knowing evil, right?

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So that there was a garden, there was a tree planted there that was prohibited from them. Did that bring temptation to the human race?

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Yes, it brought temptation but is temptation in and of itself sin? Not at all. Temptation isn't knowing sin.

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God himself is the ultimately self -guided being. Would you agree with me on that?

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It's a pretty decent definition of God, the ultimate self -guided being. His moral character, his character is what defines right and wrong.

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The way he rolls defines right and wrong. And by eating the fruit they have attempted to be self -guided like him.

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But without, and this is important, they've attempted to be self -guided without his moral, divine character.

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Without his righteousness, without his holiness and so therefore they choose wrong.

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I'm really getting ahead of myself and a lot of that's going to end up being next week. I don't want to give the impression that verses 10 through 14 are not important but I am going to kind of breeze past them pretty quick.

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They explain the rivers that float out of Eden. I think the primary reason they exist is to identify that there was ample water source, this was a lush paradise that God had created.

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Sources of gold and precious stones were present. It's unclear but I wonder if the current rivers, the

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Tigris and Euphrates, were not named after these ancient pre -flood rivers.

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I don't know if it's talking about the actual Tigris and Euphrates that we have now or if it's talking about a pre -existing

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Tigris and Euphrates or if the flood totally changed the geology so much that the

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Pishon and the Gihon no longer exist but the channels of the Tigris and Euphrates still exist somewhat in the same location.

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It's kind of hard to determine. Are you getting what I'm saying though? We don't know where the Gihon and the Pishon are. As a matter of fact we really struggle with that and archaeologists struggle with that and of course wouldn't it be really cool to find the

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Garden of Eden so everybody's kind of like wondering where is it and is it down in the Persian Gulf or is it in Kuwait or is it buried under the sand or whatever.

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How many of you think that's really significant that we figure that out? But some people dedicate their lives to that kind of thing and are trying to figure out where exactly is the

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Garden of Eden. We come to verse 15 and the gardener shows off his garden to humanity and as gardener he has created a glorious habitat for us to live in.

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But now in the next few verses God shows himself as director. So we've seen potter, gardener, and now director.

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He gives the man a role. He's assigning roles here. He's telling us what to do. He gives him bounty and gives him one prohibition.

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God is in charge and God is the one calling the shots. How many of you think that he has the right to call the shots in this circumstance?

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So you have the right to give us guidance, the right to give us direction, the right to tell us how to live.

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And here as the director he gives the first specific outworkings of what it means to be made in the image of God.

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First he declares that the purpose of humanity is to work the garden and to keep it, to work it, to keep it, to tend it.

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This shows a command, a desire on God's part for us to improve, to retool, to reshape that which he has created.

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Now just think for a moment on the calling of God to humanity. What did he say consistently about creation all the way through?

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It's good. It's good. It's good. And then he places the man in the garden and says now make it better.

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Think about that. Have you ever thought about that? God incorporates us and enlists us in this process of creating a world.

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Have we improved on it? In a lot of ways? Have we improved on it? Are you guys asleep?

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Three of you think so. Have we not improved on it? Is anybody getting the opposite side here? We have improved on it.

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I would say yes, absolutely. We have at least gone forward in culture. Would you agree with me on that?

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We've gone forward in culture, we've gone forward in technology, we've gone forward in agriculture, we've gone forward in taking care of animals, all different kinds of things.

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I would suggest to you that iPhones, skyscrapers, man -made islands, toilets, coffee, radio, these are all some of the logical outworkings of God's command for us to subdue this creation, to ultimately improve it, to tend it, to care for it.

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And have we done that? Yes, we have. The development of culture, the development of technology all comes from the working of the land that God has given to us.

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I notice that work doesn't come after the fall. Some of us, it depends on where you're working right now, what's going on in your life.

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You might tend to disagree with me on this, but look at the text. There is work before the fall.

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Have you considered that before? Calling, vocation, a God -given role for each human to play, that is part of what it means to be a human, is to have a role to play in the improvement of the world around you.

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And each one of us in this room, each one of you has a part to play. Whether you work in sales, whether you stay at home with the kids, design stuff, teach people, are currently in the process of searching for a job.

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Each one of us has a role to play in advancing culture. Just because you're unemployed does not mean that you cannot carry forward this mandate to work.

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Would you agree with me on that? Unemployment, we're not talking about employment, we're not talking about salary, we're not talking about compensation or working for compensation.

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We're talking about a God -given vocation and calling to improve the world around you. Whether you're working for pay right now or not, do you have a responsibility to improve the world around you, whether that's through relationships?

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And by the way, speaking as a pastor, not everybody in this room works in a vocation where at the end of the day you have a product in your hand to hold.

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That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about work. It's not like, well, when I'm counseling somebody, I'm not really working because that's not work because there's no product, but when

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I'm building a birdhouse, then I'm working. You know how we can have in our minds some different types of weird notions about work?

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If I'm sweating, then I'm working, but if I'm not sweating, then I'm not working. Or if it's really hard and miserable, then

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I'm working, right? No, working is the God -given vocation and calling on your life, and he has given you specific gifts and abilities and talents to improve the world around you.

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And here's another thing for you to consider. Your vocation might not be, I mean, let me back up.

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Your job might not be your primary vocation. You might be making money, and this is acceptable.

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I'm not saying that this is wrong, like, oh, you gotta quit your job and find... You might be going and making money doing one thing and find that really your fulfillment and your calling to improve society is through your family, is through a variety of different channels, that that's where your real impact is being felt in the world.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? It's okay to work a job. That's okay. And to work it for the glory of God, that's awesome, but your biggest impact in life might be through one of the children that God has given you to raise, or through the impact that you have on your spouse, or through the impact you have on others around you, or a friend that you encourage, or something like that.

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You getting what I'm saying? Improvement of the society and the culture and the world around us is a calling, one of the things it means to be a human.

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And a lot of that was not in my notes, so let's see where I was. It's not just to work, though.

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That's not the sum total of what it means to be human, fortunately. But to be human is to be delighted in the good provision of God.

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In verse 16, we see the permission of God as the director to enjoy His vast creation.

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It is to be a delight to us. However many trees were planted in the garden, we don't know how many trees were there.

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It's declared that they were all good. They were awesome. Good fruit, good stuff to eat.

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All of them were permitted, all of them were permitted, save except for one.

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And sometimes we miss that. I would go so far as to say that I think sometimes we miss the forest for the tree.

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You see what I did there? Miss the forest for the tree.

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Miserable? I didn't even get a groan, you guys. Come on, are you guys asleep? At least either laugh or groan.

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Do me a favor, okay? Miss the forest for the tree, okay? But it still didn't work.

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But really, yes, thank you. Just work with me here, okay?

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So there is a forest of permission, but a tree of prohibition.

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A forest of permission and one tree of prohibition.

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And where does our focus go in the story? As we're listening to the story, as we're telling the story to our kids, as we're reading kids' stories and we're reading the kid's

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Bible and we're going through it in our daily devotions, where does our attention go? Does it go to a God who gives us plenty and abundance and lavishes stuff on us?

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No. How come he won't let us eat from that tree? That's what it means to be a sinner.

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All of a sudden I'm hungry for some knowledge of good and evil. Do you know what

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I'm saying? Can you relate to that? That's what's going on in the text here. Abundant provision for us.

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Abundant blessing. And what do we want? The thing that he says no to. He delights to give us good things.

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And I'd encourage you, if there's anything that you take from this message, I hope that this shifts anyone in this room who has the belief that God is a killjoy, that he is out to defeat your enjoyment of life, to defeat your pleasure, to go against you, to recognize and realize a forest of permission to you.

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So many good things available to you and I, even still in this fallen world.

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We'll get there here in a minute. He delights to give us. He's a

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God who delights to give us good things. But lastly and finally, as director, God gives us a prohibition.

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He does give us that. He sets up a relationship with humanity as the rightful giver of law. He is the one in charge and there is to be no question of that.

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He sets the rules. He is the director. Now, is he a kind director? Is he a kind director?

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Yes. Is he a fair director? Yeah. But he is the director, right?

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He is the director. Humanity, in light of this prohibition, is meant to be a

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God follower. And I suggest to you that these three roles, worker, recipient, and follower, that are given to humanity in this text are to be balanced in a healthy human.

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A healthy person has a good balance on those three God -given roles, worker, recipient, and follower.

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Too often we leave one out and if we give up being a worker, now I'm not talking about having a job or not having a job,

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I'm talking about vocation and impacting the world around you. If we cease to work to improve the world around us, to reflect our purpose, we are no longer reflecting

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God. If we give up being a recipient, if we give up recognizing the grand provision of God, then what are we going to see

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God like? We're going to begin to see Him as a taskmaster, a rule giver, and one who just makes us work for Him as a servant or a slave.

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If we cease to be a follower of God, then sin will have its way with us and we will be consumed by our sinfulness.

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The image of God is found in this calling, worker, recipient, and follower.

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And the prohibition comes with a significant warning, in the day you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.

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Now this is a phrase in Hebrew that's difficult for us to translate into English, and so it has the appearance of immediacy.

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On that day you will die, and the Hebrew allows room for it to be translated differently, and what it really ought to read is something to the effect of certainty.

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Certainly on the day that you eat it, death will be your end. Without question you will die if you consume this.

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It's going to happen to you. It's not saying on the very day that you consume it, you will die. But if you consume it, on the day that you consume it, death will own you.

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You getting it? And that's an appropriate translation of that. Pretty significant warning to them.

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Yeah, but that fruit looked good. Lastly, from verses 18 through 25, we're going to now see

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God as matchmaker. We just got done talking about Him as director. God said it is not good. What?

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Look at the quote there. God said it is not good. Something in the good creation of God is not right, is not good, and that is this, that the man is alone.

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That is not good. But notice something about what is not good.

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It is in the context of relationship. The lack of community. The loneliness of Adam is the problem here, which is interesting because you think about, wouldn't our natural, like maybe more highfalutin spiritual thoughts be, well he's got

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God, what more could he want, right? Is that the way that you might tend to, your mind might tend to go?

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But God is the one addressing the issue here. Adam is not the one complaining. Do you see that in the text?

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Adam's not complaining, but God is the one bringing this up. He's the one bringing this to Adam's attention.

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And I think the text seems to move to create a desire in Adam for something more. He has given authority over the animals and he names them, but they all have partners.

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He doesn't. And no, dog is not a man's best friend, okay? He named the dog and still that wasn't enough.

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The role God is creating here is helper. A word that I think can tend to be misunderstood a lot in our culture.

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It's worthwhile to note that this word helper is used of God in Scripture more than anyone else in the entirety of Scripture.

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He is a helper, a companion, a friend. It is not slave. It is not servant.

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It is not go make me a sandwich. It is, oh let's get some coffee, great.

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It is life partner, companion. A being capable of community, a being capable of unity of purpose, unity of calling, together sharing the role of reflecting

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God as together his image bearers. Together in relationship reflecting the relational aspect of God in Trinity.

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Something that God was able to express before he ever created. He was able to express community with unity and he brings that forward into his created order.

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So in verse 21, God anesthetizes Adam. First case for anesthesia.

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Performs the first surgery to remove his side. This is the only place in the entirety of Scripture the word is used multiple times, dozens of times.

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The word side here and for whatever reason we wanted to translate this rib all down through the ages, the word is always side everywhere else you see it in Scripture.

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Okay, so we just suddenly decided well we'll just call it a rib and I think that some of the medieval thoughts got into the translations and we just kind of said well we'll just call it a rib, it's on our side.

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So whenever you hear anybody getting dogmatic, if you do a Google search for how many ribs does a man have versus a woman, you're going to get tons of feedback and Yahoo questions everybody because every

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Christian wants to know like does a man have more ribs than a woman because then that would be like proof.

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Okay, now we got it. There's the smoking gun. No, we don't. Okay, we all have the same number of ribs.

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So if this is a side, this calls into question what

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Adam might have looked like before the surgery happened. What did

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Adam have on his side that the woman is really honestly we don't know but I mean before the surgery happens he has something and now after the surgery he doesn't.

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So I'm not sure that there was, I don't know what, I don't really think so but I don't know you know.

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Hey, let me out. But something is removed and then

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God fashions a woman out of that. Sorry. I want to go back for a second because I didn't deal well with this word helper and this is a little off the fly.

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I want to point out that the problem that is resolved by the creation of woman is alone.

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Alone was the problem and our culture and our society is going to tell us all kinds of things that are the problem between the genders.

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Would you agree with me that you can get on talk shows and you can read books and you can even evangelical

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Christians and you can find 16 different perspectives on gender issues and different Christians who believe in Jesus that would say different things.

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But one of the predominant things that many women would say in our culture and many on the more liberal side in our culture would say is that the problem that woman solves is that man's an imbecile.

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So man's an imbecile, he can't quite, where would Adam, who would take care of Adam if he wasn't for creating a woman and so he's an imbecile.

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Or that the problem, some evangelicals I've heard say, well the problem is overworked. So he created

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Eve to solve the work problem because Adam's not going to be able to take care of this all himself.

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But the problem is relational. Alone is the problem that is declared in the text.

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Do you see what I'm saying? It is not good what? That the man be alone.

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He needed companionship, he needed community and that is the problem that's being solved there.

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Whatever was taken from the side of the man we just don't know, but we know the significance of it. Male and female are intimately tied together in both origins and need.

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The first woman came from man and every man since has come from woman and that kind of is a unique cycle isn't it?

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That demonstrates the mutual dependence that we have on one another. And I don't have time to delve into the depths of the different roles of gender here, but I think it would be a wise man who would pick up the scriptures and look and see what does it mean to be a masculine bearer of the image of God.

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Let's go here, go here. There's all kinds of pop psychology about what man is and isn't, what does it mean to be masculine, what does it mean to...

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let's go here. And if you're sitting here and you would like some resources to be, if you'd like some help in digging out from scripture, what does it mean to be a man who reflects the image of God?

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Come and see me, come and talk with me. I would love to interact with you, but equally for you women, it would be wise of you to figure out from scripture, what does the

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Bible say a female, what does it look like to in a feminine way reflect the image of God?

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And I know I talked with Linda about this this week, she would love to sit down with any woman in the church who would be interested in kind of going through biblically, what does it mean biblically to reflect

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God as a woman? And I would love to talk with any of you men who would like to just talk more about that.

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I know that our culture is just confused, would you agree with me on that? There is so much confusion in our culture, what does it mean to be a man, what does it mean to be a woman?

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And there are tons of people who are willing to give you a quick answer, their opinion.

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I don't really care about their opinion, what I want to know is what does God, what did God design me to be?

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And then go do that. And if you want to talk more about that,

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I would love to sit down with you and talk about that. There are so many good resources out there that will help you get into the word about those things, and then there are others that will take you completely in another direction.

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The man comes to, he awakes, and God presents this gift to the man, and Adam launches into a song, he says, and this is

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Hebrew poetry, it's very clear in the text, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, this one, she shall be called

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Isha, for she was taken out of Ish, the Hebrew words, Isha, woman,

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Ish, male. God brings, in the text, God brings a naked woman to a naked man, and this was his idea, this is what he's doing, this is what

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God has chosen. Now sex has been abused, sex has been misunderstood, given way too much power in our culture, in our societies, in our minds, and often maligned is the central problem for many

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Christians down through the ages. They've seen that as the main problem, when the real problem is a heart issue, right?

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The real problem is idolatry of self, but we always want to cast it off on the symptoms, and our complete crazy culture centered around sex is a byproduct of an inner heart problem of idolatry and self -worship.

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It's a side note, but is it a significant problem? It is a problem, for sure, but I want to point out it was

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God's idea, God's design, and it's all part of a world that is finally declared very good on the end of day six.

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Remember it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good at the conclusion of day six when he solved this problem that was not good.

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What is it declared? Very good. It's important to understand that they were naked and unashamed, but fortunately, that was because all the plants covered up the private parts just at the right place and the right time, so there was no shame involved.

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You've seen the kid stories, right? You've seen the children's Bible, so you know exactly what

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I'm talking about. Fortunately, those plants just moved in the right way, but really, there was no shame in this perfect unity that God had created, and that's the point.

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He played the role of divine matchmaker, and he brought together the first husband and wife, and this becomes the foundation for any biblical theology of marriage.

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As a matter of fact, it's declared outright in the text. Verse 24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

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The centerpiece. Early on, we're only in chapter 2 of the entire

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Bible, and we already have marriage. Marriage being expounded and exposited and declared that it is in God's good creation, the way that he meant it to be.

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In verse 24, therefore because God made females as the counterpart to male, a man is to sever his loyalty to father and mother and to cling to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

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Now, there's a mysterious union that occurs at marriage. What God has brought together, let no man separate.

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Who has brought together? What God has brought together, let no one separate.

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I believe by faith that you who are married in this room have become one in the eyes of God.

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As a matter of fact, I go so far as to say that I think that when God thinks of Don, he does not think of Don without thinking of Linda, and he does not think of Linda without thinking of Don, because he has brought us together to reflect him, and that is his intention for marriage.

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He perceives us together. So, there are so many application points here. We come to the end of the text, and it's been like a fire hose, right?

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I mean, how many is a little bit overwhelmed? There's a lot in here. There's a lot going on. We could talk about marriage vows.

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We could talk about the inherent value of those of you who are here and are single, because you are still created in the image of God to be workers, recipients, and followers, and sometimes

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I fear in a text like this, the singles could feel completely left out, but you have intense value given to you by your creator.

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We could talk about a whole list of things that we should do differently, but I've grown in my conviction that the best vision that I can offer you at the end of a sermon is a picture of who

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God is in scripture. He is the potter who is gently and carefully forming the human frame and breathing soul into us.

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He is the gardener who has given us a bountiful place to flourish, and even the fall could not squelch the bounty.

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How many of you enjoyed something in nature this past week? Just something natural, just something that's God created, or maybe just some food or a piece of fruit that he gave you or whatever.

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I mean, he made that grow. He's given us those trees. We didn't invent those trees. Those trees were his idea.

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He's given us bounty that even in the midst of a fallen world, we still enjoy this amazing blessing that he has given to us as the master gardener.

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He is the director giving us purpose, calling us back to follow him, and he is the matchmaker creating relationship and the foundations of community for his creatures.

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God begins like a father in the maternity ward. Now, my babies, Adam, Luke, and Leah, hours after they were born, they could do no wrong.

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I would buy them anything that would help them get a good shot at life and get a good chance.

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I cherish them, and I think God was that way with us. But over time, we rejected following him.

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Now, some of you, some of us, did you ever go through this? Like when you had young children, there was a perspective that like, how could any wedge ever be driven between me and my daughter?

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How could any wedge ever be driven between me and my son? I just cherish them, just hug them, and oh, they're so cute.

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And then over time, over time, is there a sense where you go, oh, I see where that wedge could come from.

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Oh, I'm getting it. I'm seeing how it could come to the point where I'm a 60 -year -old estranged from my son.

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Can you imagine that? And I think that that's what's happened to the human race with God. We're going to see a point next week where we broke this relationship.

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We messed it up, and we rebelled against our Father who did nothing but good for us.

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He cherishes us. He delights in us. He gives us good stuff. He has treated us so kindly up to this point in the text.

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And then God, our Father, made a plan to win us back. He has never forgotten that joy from that new, from that beginning, and he is in the process of bringing us back there to a new beginning.

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And anyone who is trusted in Jesus has been promised a new start on the new earth without sin, without death, and without destruction, a place where we can be in delight again with our

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Father and we as his created. We take communion every week to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to cover our sins and to bring us back to that sense of being back in his family.

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If you have not placed your trust in Jesus, then I'd ask you to please skip communion this morning. But if you are all in with Jesus and have asked him to save you, then rejoice as you remember the death he suffered to secure hope for all of us.

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Let's pray. Fathers, we walk through this text.

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I was in awe this past week of you and just seeing your delight and your joy and your lavish blessing upon those first humans.

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And to see the way that we have rebelled against you and turned against you that we're going to look at next week.

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And Father, I'm in awe of your pursuit. I'm in awe of you continuing the fight for us, even to the point of shedding blood for us.

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Father, I pray that you would be honored and glorified through this communion service as we take the cracker and remember the body of Jesus that was broken in our place, a substitute for us, for his blood that was shed to cover our sins, a death that we deserved and he took it for us.

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You and your awesome, amazing wisdom have made a way for us to be reconciled with you.

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You're created, your sons, your children, your daughters and rebels each one.

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You have made a way for us to come back to you and I praise you for that in Jesus name. Amen.