We're going to talk there again
this morning. I remember being in middle school,
and that's when you first start getting some philosophical chops. You start asking existential
questions like, what's the meaning of life? Why am I here? Why do I have to do homework?
Stuff like that. That's what it really boils down to. You
start having to do homework, you think, why do I need to learn this stuff?
Why is it gonna have any practicality in my life? But I do remember thinking about
purpose. To what end? What's the good of all this?
Is it, I've always sort of been a fatalist. Because I'm melancholy. That's my temperament. I'm a
melancholy. I'm a very, I'm an introverted person. The greatest
time for me is 20 feet up in a tree in a hammock where nobody
can find me, but no longer. For some reason, the bugs are
worse than they were 30-something years ago, so I can't figure
that out. There's no place to hide anymore,
so now it's inside with the AC with a picture of the outside.
That's how it works. And so I've always tended to
lean toward the negative. Pessimism. But I learned to put
on the positive attitude on the outside. Smile. Yeah, things
are great. How are you doing? Good to see you. Why? Because
you can sell more cars that way. I'm being serious. It's a salesman
thing. It's what you're taught. Put
on a smile. Put on a happy face. I mean,
you think about it. You walk into a place of business
and the person sitting there, welcome to my business. I mean,
you know, you think you're going to work with the mob or you're,
somebody's in a bad mood. But when the gospel is at the
center of our focus, that stuff really does fade away. It doesn't
change our temperament. It doesn't change the way we're
wired, but it does change our outlook. And I'll be straight
with you, without getting into all of these things that don't
really matter, the word of God helps me see that life in its
totality is worthless outside the glory of Christ. I'm gonna
say that again. The word of God helps me see
that life in its totality is worthless. Every aspect and experience
of life is worthless if it's not found within the glory of
Christ. Now, sadly, we live in a culture
where, quote, Christian living and Christianity is mainstay,
for the most part. I mean, I do have friends that
are just staunch atheists and agnostics, and I do have people
who are really rigid in some of their historical ideologies
concerning faith, religion, deity, et cetera. And they're very intelligent. They have a lot of good arguments.
But for the most part, everybody I know has some sense of, yeah,
I believe in God. Yep, I believe in Jesus. Don't
know which one, if you were to ask them, can't really define
it. The God of Grandma, the God of Gandalf, the God of whoever,
but everybody smiled when I said that. but not the God of the
Bible. So the God of the Bible, His
revelation to His people is the Word of God. The revelation of
God comes only through the Word of God, and the sight to see
Him through that revelation is a spiritual thing. It's not an
academic endeavor. It is something that God does
in the mind called regeneration and repentance. that God makes
new and changes the disposition of the thinking inside the person. And so when we are able to look
at the Word, and you've heard me say this, if I go a day, if
I go a half a day without contemplating Scripture, I find myself sinking. I sink because I'm observant. I'm very observant. I'm hypervigilant.
It's a disease. It is a mental condition. It
is not something to say, oh, James is very observant. It's
not good. I see everything. And because
I see everything, I can find nothing. Ask my wife. Catch it right there in the left-hand
drawer. It's everything in here. Can't find anything. But only when the Word of God
is in front of us are we able to truly become myopic, narrow-minded,
put blinders on, and see. But the problem is we're not
in the Scripture enough to see over and over again to the point
and to the depths that the Spirit of God is carrying us and our
worldview. Our worldview has been developed
by the culture of Christianity, by the culture of evangelicalism,
by the culture of religion, not the culture of divine revelation. Because there is no such thing
as the culture of divine revelation. Divine revelation is given to
the individual and then to the individuals collectively as the
church. And it doesn't change. Theological
ideas change. Theological interpretation changes.
But beloved, if there's a manifold expression or if there's numerous
ways to look at things, they could all be wrong. And we're all looking for joy,
we're all looking for purpose. Beloved, why are we even here
this morning? Are we here so that we can feel like in our
heart, you know what, I'm doing my spiritual duty, I'm doing
my Christian duty, the Lord's gonna bless me, the Lord's gonna
bless my family, the Lord's gonna bless... because I'm in the building.
But beloved, before we used this as a place of worship, we had
a tenant in here and she sold wigs. It was a wig shop. And before that, they sold bras
and shoes. When I was six years old, you
could go upstairs to get last season's shoes. My father, when he was a boy,
came here with his mother to get shoes. This place has nothing
to do with your standing before the Lord. This people, however,
have an equal standing before the Lord, if we believe the gospel
because of the grace of God, if we belong to Him, we have
a unity in the truth. And as long as we are holding
fast the scripture without the cliff notes, without the footnotes,
without the expressions, without the commentaries, without all
the ideologies that are pressed upon us, bothering us from the outside,
we will all come to the same understanding of who God is and
who Christ is, and in that focus, as we keep each other on task
to that focus, we will joyfully serve one another, and in doing
so, this is our spiritual act of worship. Why do we get together? So that
we may encourage one another in the faith, and meet each other's
needs in the process. We're so backward in the United
States of America, whether you're rich or poor or somewhere in
between, whether you're pretty or ugly or who knows, it doesn't
matter. We're so backward in America
when it comes to the Christian faith and life as the church
of Christ that we fake it. Some of you looked at me weird,
what does he mean puts on the smile? You put on the smile.
Don't pretend that you're putting on a smile. that you're not putting
on a smile, rather. Because if you really get to
the, I mean, yeah, I can laugh at something funny in the midst
of something real. I mean, I tell jokes at funerals, folks. It's
the only way I can get through them. So we can laugh in the midst
of great pain. But we come to the table of being the church
and we're so backward that we lie to ourselves and we lie to
one another that we're afraid to make our needs known. We're
afraid because we look weak. We're afraid sometimes to tell
people what we're really going through or what we really have.
what we really have or don't have or what we really need or
don't need or what we really think or don't think because
we're scared of the backlash of people thinking differently
from us because we put the idea forward that we're great and
everything's awesome and life is perfect and the person's looking
at us go, man, I wish my life could be as perfect as theirs
and I wouldn't have to pretend. And we're all just actors. You
know what the Greek word transliterated into English for actor is? Hypocrite. That's what it means, actor.
Beloved, let's not be actors. Let's not pretend that we know
the joy of the Lord. Let's not pretend. Let's be honest. Peter
was honest when he wrote his first epistle. He was honest.
John was honest when he dictated the angst of Jesus Christ. In
the Last Supper, Jesus didn't say, you know what, guys? Everything's
good. I'm gonna take a little trip. Gonna be a little bumpy.
but it's gonna be great. Alright, see you on the other
side. Y'all hold out now. Here's some hot dogs. No, he
says, I am overcome with angst. I am burdened beyond imagination. Now here's the crazy thing. I
get nervous going to the dentist or to the doctor or to the tag
office or to the DMV or wherever I have to go stand in a line.
I get nervous thinking, oh, what's gonna happen? What's the worst
that could happen? I have to wait. I mean, you know. Why does that
cause us anxiety? Jesus knew everything that was
about to come upon his shoulders. He knew the burden of wrath,
eternal and divine wrath that was about to be shaken over his
body. He understood, because He is
God, He understood the totality of what the prophets talked about
when it said from Isaiah, when God said through Isaiah, I will
crush Him. I will destroy Him. He knew what
it meant. When He was taken into custody,
He knew what it meant in the prophets when it said that He
would be unrecognizable as a man. You understand that? He was beaten
so badly He did not look human. And that's not to draw upon our
sympathy. Jesus doesn't look for sympathy. He knew. And He expressed it
in the fact that I'm full of angst. What did He
ask His disciples to do? Pray. What did they do? Sleep.
Why? Because that's all they could
do. That's all they could do. Sleep. So Jesus didn't lie. So what
is the lie? The lie is part of our sin nature.
The lie is part of establishing some sense of righteousness in
our own understanding of ourselves that, you know what, I don't
want to admit that I'm having trouble. I don't want to admit
that I don't know. I don't want to admit that I was wrong. I don't want
to admit, I don't, you know, so then what's our purpose? That's
what I'm coming back to. What's our purpose? Our purpose
is to see the picture of perfection in the face of Christ. And our
purpose is to understand that our whole reason for being together
today as the body of Christ is to be reminded of the perfection
of Christ, and to be reminded that everything in the Bible
points to that, and everything in the Bible, including the imperatives,
including the things that we must do because we are in Christ,
are to show us two things. One is to bring us to the understanding
that there is no perfection in us of our own doing. because
we could never make it work. I'm gonna show you that this
week and next week in the fall. And then secondly is to show
us the perfection of Christ is our only joy. And when we strive
to understand this more and to grow in this more and to be honest,
we're able to do the work of the ministry that God's called
us to. So the story's not changed. And
I know that some of us think, is he preaching the same? Is
this the 10th week of the same sermon in Genesis 1 and 2? Sounds
like that, doesn't it? But beloved, I'm not a creative
person when it comes to exposition because I am too creative. And
I can put a 40-point outline together with illustrations,
jokes, and anecdotes all day long. And you would be entertained.
And you would leave going, I really enjoyed that. I don't want you
to say, I really enjoyed that. I want you to go, wow. Not, that was amazing oratory. I want you to go, wow, my God
is awesome. Wow, thank you for your grace. Wow, I need to share this with
my brothers and sisters. I need to share life with my
brothers and sisters. You know you can't fabricate
life together, right? People try to do that all the
time. You just create life together. You can't make people intimate. They have to desire it. Beloved, we don't want to be
intimate with God. He has to cause it. He has to be intimate with us. Chapter 2, Genesis. I just want you to hear the text
again, the whole text, starting in verse 4. 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. When no
brush 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 formed the man.
I want you to see this picture. Listen to these words and see
this picture. The Lord formed the man from
the dust of the dirt and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted
a garden in Eden. Eden's the land, in the center
of that is a garden. He planted a garden in Eden,
in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. He
put them in the garden, 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 the knowledge of good and evil. Any descriptives? All life flows out of Eden. Remember
last week, the presence of God and the power of God. This is
the picture here, even in creation, of God's absolute power as the
life giver. A river flowed out of Eden to
water the garden, and there it divided, it became four rivers.
The name of the first is Pishon. It is the one that flowed around
the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. Gold is important
in the worship of God in the temple and the tabernacle. And
the gold of that land is good. Delium 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 God put him in the garden to work it and to keep it. And
we learned that two to three weeks ago, that that is a reference
to worship. Just like the temple, just like
the priest, they worked and kept the tabernacle, the presence
of God. They worked and kept up the ability to have the presence
of God in symbol, in shadow, and that is worship. And we looked at the Old Testament
references of how that is worship in its context. And the Lord
God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree
of the garden, but 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. And that is a prophetic word,
by the way. Then the Lord said, It is not
good that a man should be alone. 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. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was
its name. The man gave names to all the
livestock, to the birds, and to the heavens, and to the beasts
of the fields. 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. And while he slept, the Lord
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
woman. and brought her and gave her
to the man. And then the man said, this is
at last the bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, ye shall
be called woman, for 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. Now, we went through
this text last week and the week before, and there's some things
that just need to be pulled out. First, as I want you to understand,
that nothing's changed. I've said this already, but I'm
gonna say it again, nothing's changed. This is a picture of
the creation of the world and everything in it. This is a story,
a short little tiny story of this magnificent, powerful reality
of God speaking into being all things. And it is written so
that we may have the outline of the entire Bible. That God
is the one who is, and who alone is self-sufficient and eternal,
and that God in all of His power has caused all things that are
to be, and that only God has the power to do that, and only
God has the power and the authority to call or to make what He makes
good, that in and of itself it is not good except that He calls
it good. And then everything else that
we see in creation, God separating darkness from light, separating
waters to land, creating in the separation of these things a
fit habitat for life, creating life and separating life according
to its kind that it may flourish and thrive and reveal His glory.
And then creating out of that ground man, distinct, purposeful, powerful. And so here, we see
the gospel. That's why it is written, the
gospel. To see the gospel and to understand
exactly what we're supposed to do when we read the rest of the
text, the rest of the Old Testament, and looking into the New Testament,
we are able to see that this is a picture of perfection in
a continual way. We continue to see the picture
of perfection. And so I'm going to walk through
this. The perfect creation. God is not changing His story
here. God is not coming to a place where He's all of a sudden deciding
to share some new information. He's still revealing Himself
in the gospel. He's still revealing Himself
in the way that the Word is showing His power and the gospel of Christ
in everything that He's made. And that God alone will take
and make and put things where He wants them to be. And that
only if God, and in His presence, puts people in His presence,
shall they live. So this perfect creation reveals
that a part of it is a perfect humanity. A perfect humanity. Some people argue that Adam and
Eve in their creation were righteous. That's not true. Only God is
good. Only God is righteous. They were innocent of evil. They
did not know evil. They had not sinned. They had
not fallen from, if you will, the glory of God, but they were
to fall. That is why they were made. to show that everything that
is created, when left to itself, will choose itself over the promises
of God. And that only the power of God
can overcome that. Only the power of God can keep
life. Only the power of God can maintain
goodness. And that God never intended to
create something righteous. He is righteous. So that what
God credits His righteousness to something, that thing also
is righteous. Some people would argue, if Adam
and Eve, and I used to believe this, I remember being a kid
thinking, man, if they had just not eaten that fruit, how good
the world would be, you know? That's a logical thing. Some
of your children have probably come to you and said something
like that. But that wasn't the intention.
Let's be careful to understand the sovereignty of God and His
unchangeable nature and the fact that God has purposed all things.
God created the world that He would redeem a fallen people
for Himself through His Son who would become human and substitute
Himself for them as the object of wrath and the object of righteousness,
to impute His righteousness to us and we impute our guilt to
Him. This is the exchange that Paul
talks about in Romans. This is what Jesus says, I lay
down my life for the sheep, and I take my life up again. I give
it willingly. So this picture here, we see
this perfect creation continuing. We see this perfect humanity
that God has made and called good. Innocence. We see this
perfect place that we really emphasized last week had a good
and useful purpose. Eden had a good and useful purpose
in its practical, substance. It was a good place to walk with
the Lord. It was a good place to eat. It was a good place to live.
Out of this garden came all life for the world. Rivers and trees
and everything that is necessary. God created out of dust the vegetation,
the animals, and the humans. But yet God's purpose from the
same dust is different for all things, but they all point to
one common truth, and that is God Himself is the author and
the creator of life, thus God in Himself is the only one who
can grant and give eternal life. A perfect place. A perfect place
like the garden in Eden is where we can see God's power and eat
of His provision and live forever. And in doing so, we are thankful
and this is the picture of perfect worship. What is worship but
walking with God in thankfulness? What is worship but to the praise
of His glorious grace? This is review. We've seen this
in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And some people say, well, I
don't understand how the fall and all the wicked things of
the world, I don't understand that all this stuff was the purpose
and the plan of God. You don't have to understand
why, the Bible just says that it is, you see? The Bible just
teaches that it is. So let's not divorce the gospel
from the narrative of the Old Testament. Let's keep things
together and congruent. This is a perfect place of worship.
Even in Ephesians, Paul says that God in His electing grace
and His sovereign love and His power has created a people for
Himself who He has foreknown. The word there is foreknown,
is to be loved eternally. Before we were, God loved us.
And the love of God is demonstrated one way and only one way to His
people, and that is through the death of Jesus Christ, His Son.
And that is revealed to us by the word written down from the
prophets and the apostles, and that is caused in us, we believe
that because the Spirit of God gives us understanding and the
resolution to know it. Not become experts on the topics,
but to rest in the person. See, salvation is not resting
in the topic of salvation, of grace, of redemption, of atonement.
Salvation, faith, is knowing and resting in the person who
has done all these things. Life is not being in the place
of Eden. Life is being in the presence
of the one who is the Eden maker, the life giver. to this perfect
worship, here in this perfect garden, in this perfect world,
in this perfect people, innocent, without stain, without blemish,
without wrinkles. Starting to sound familiar now.
God had provided it all. Why? Why did God provide Eden
as a picture of showing His presence is the only place of joy? It's
what I talked about in the introduction. How do we find that presence?
Where is this Eden? It's right here in the written
word. And then it's multiplied when we're together. I want you to hear that. So many
times it was, I just don't see it. I just don't see, I don't
see how the church is supposed to grow my joy. Sit under the word together and
you see it. You'll see it. If it's taught
rightly, you'll see it. If the Word of God opens itself
up to you by the Spirit, you'll see it. And you realize that
our worship is supposed to be done together. That our joy is
supposed to be experienced together. That gratitude and praise is
supposed to be done together. God purposed it all. Why? So
that we could have a good place to live? So that we could have
an incredible life? No, that He would be glorified
in it. Why? Because He alone is worthy of
all glory. Like Brother prayed this morning, you know, after
the singing. It is about Him. It is about His name. It's about His glory. It's about
He being the only one worthy of praising and worshiping. God promises life is only found
in himself. Now imagine being Adam in the
garden for a moment and being told by the Lord, this is the
ground you will work and keep, and this is your act of worship.
And from it, my power will sustain your life forever. You see this
picture? And we believe, by faith, this
is a literal place that God made. But we know also, just like the
promises he made temporally throughout the entirety of the Old Testament
history, they always had two purposes. He promised Abraham
a boy, but that promise was Jesus ultimately. Fulfilled temporally in the Son, but eternally in Christ, through
whom the nations will be blessed. Because through the Son comes
the Son of God. But imagine working this ground.
Imagine knowing from where you came and then being told to tend
the very ground that you came from. Now that's a humbling experience. Yeah, I just made you out of
this dirt. I want you to take care of it for me. I want you,
creature, to take care of the source of your existence. Now,
this is something to think about. What a constant reminder for however long it was, a few
hours maybe, I don't know. I don't know. But what a reminder
to be working. Now, when's the last time you
dug in the flower garden and thought to yourself, this is
where I'm headed? This is where I came from. To dust I shall return. Never. Now, I've had thoughts of that
before during funerals and things of that nature, but I mean, it's
not something we just do. Oh, look at this new plant. Yep,
I'm going to be plant food one day. But being there in the garden,
This command to work and to keep is a command to worship, to constantly
be reminded of where we come from and where we're headed.
And the fact that God has created us from the dust and that we
have, as we'll see in chapter three, the promise to return
to the dust, that we will die, except that we are connected
to the life giver, to the Eden bringer, to the presence of God
and Jesus Christ himself. And beloved, I believe that that's
a great opportunity for worship. I believe it's a humbling. Now
see, a guy like me, I don't need to think about that a lot, so
I shove it off. My mortality is not something
I want to consider. I like to consider it in the
context of glorification. Can't wait. Let's go be with
Jesus. When I feel stressed, good Lord,
help me. But if you come with a knife,
I'm gonna hurt you. Or try, anyway. I'm gonna fight. So I try to push that away. You
know what, my mortality, when I think about it, I'm already
80. I time travel, do you know that?
That's it, everybody's leaving now. But I do, I can sit down
and in just a few minutes, I'm 80. Just a few minutes, I mean,
here I am. Lost a lot of friends who are
my age and just a few years older than me and some that are 15
years. Listen, the last 10 years of my life, have gone by like
that. Literally feels like a year.
Ten years ago this October we met in our living room over on
Park Avenue and Grace Truth Church started ten years ago. And it feels like yesterday.
So I don't focus on that But when I read this and I think
about Adam and I think about his command to work the soil,
I'm confronted with the reality that when I think about my mortality,
I shouldn't time travel and fall into despair. I should remember
and thank God for His life-giving power. I should be reminded of
the good news that this life isn't what it's about. I should
be encouraged to live life to the fullest this very moment.
This is the only moment that matters right now because this
is what reality is. And every second that passes
brings another reality. What we think or want or desire
or worry about is going to take place is not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is here, this
moment right now. And if we worry about what did
happen just a few minutes ago or what was said, rather than
the now, we'll never be alive. And the moments that we have
in this life are best lived in the knowledge of grace. best
lived with the people of grace, best lived with a clear and sober
understanding of our existence and understanding that only by
the power of God's amazing creation and redemption and grace are
we able to even have hope. And it doesn't matter. Of course
we pray things will go well. Of course we encourage one another.
Of course we try to work to better our circumstances. If we're hungry,
let's try to get some food. But it's not the point of life.
It's not the point of life. The point of life is Christ,
His name and His glory, which is revealed in the salvation
of His people, which is pictured perfectly in the creation of
the world. What an opportunity to worship
when we think about the frailty of life. But imagine thinking
about the frailty of life without the gospel. Then we time travel. We either
go back or we go forward. And we never live, we just sit
in a state of someplace else in our mind, and it affects everything
we do, and our joy is obsolete. Beloved, there's one thing that
destroys the joy of the creature. God said it
here. You have everything you need
to live. But there's a tree. There is a tree. And from its
fruit comes death. When you eat of this fruit, Adam,
your joy is gone. When you eat of this fruit, Adam,
your life is gone. When you eat of this fruit, Adam,
I am gone. When you eat of this fruit, Adam,
this glory is gone. When you eat of this fruit, Adam,
you will no longer see me. When you eat of this fruit, Adam,
your progeny and everything in it shall decay to the dust. When you eat of this fruit. See, that was prophetic. I say
that because God told Adam what would happen. When you eat of this, you will
die. So sin destroys the joy because
it destroys the ability to be in the presence of God, and the garden of life is cut
off. And the only one who can restore
that connection is God Himself. Man couldn't keep it, and man
can't reconnect it. You see the point? And we'll
talk about this more in detail when we get to chapter 3. But the power of sin is disastrous. You ever thought
about that? See, I think we've watered down
the idea of sin. missing the mark of righteousness,
missing the mark of trusting in the promises and the power
and the provision and the purposes of God. We've missed the mark.
Why? Because just like I started out
the sermon today, we are inundated with all these external pressures
of ideas and philosophies of religion and Christianity and
theology and all these other things, and we're not in the
text of Scripture. And we're not together in the
text of Scripture enough to be fed enough I have a friend who
years ago, when she was in business, she and her husband would go
to the mall. They were very, very, very frugal
people. And he's passed away now, and she's retired. But they
would go to the mall, and she had a business meeting or something.
She'd go to the food court in the mall instead of going to
a restaurant. Let's just go to the food court
and have tea. And if you were hungry, you didn't buy food there. She would just go around, and
she'd get the free samples. So she'd get the free sample
from all the different places and come back with a little hors
d'oeuvre tray. And that worked for them. And they never, you
know, the people there never called on that they were just
eating off the free samples three days a week, but that's what
they did, and it was fine. So I thought, you know what,
I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna go get me some free samples at
the mall. And I got my free sample, and I put it on a plate, and
I got my other free sample. And by the time I got to the end, I only had
like seven pieces of chicken. And when I say pieces of chicken,
you know how it is. It's the same chicken, seven different
places, seven different seasonings, same chicken. It's probably the
same bird, you know? But I got to the table and I
thought, this is cheap, but it's not filling. So then I had to
go spend $10 to get a big plate of chicken. Five pounds of rice,
uh-huh. You know how it is. Doesn't work
for me. Because when I nibble and dabble,
I'm hungry. Beloved, sometimes I believe
we nibble and dabble in the Word of God and we wonder why we're
starving. We've forgotten that sin has taken us away from the
food and the sustenance of God's presence. And so, in an attempt
to try to reconcile that, we make little of sin, we don't
do a whole lot of thinking, and we should not be just, oh! How do I say this without sounding
off? We should not forever consider sin constantly. We should consider
grace constantly. But grace, by definition, means
what? That sin no longer counts. But
sin has destroyed life, and the power of sin is defeated by the
eating of the bread of life. And how in the world is the bread
of life going to be ours again? When
as we'll see in chapter 3 that God has separated us from His
presence, from that food, because Jesus came to be food. John chapter 4, John chapter
6. You know I'm going to bring John into everything. John chapter
4, Jesus talks to the woman at Sychar and He tells her that
He is the water that she so desperately thirsts for, that the rivers
flowing from Eden are still flowing and they're welling up to eternal
life. Woman, open your eyes and see! And what does the woman do in
her humanity and her religion? She goes, oh, I'm trying, I'm
worshiping the hardest I can, I'm even Started going to the
temple at Mount Gerizim, which is an exact replica of the temple
in Mount Jerusalem And we're doing the exact same thing that
you guys are as Jews, but it's still I am still thirsty You see it you see the gospel
She argues theology, she argues doctrine, she argues the extent
of redemption, she argues genealogy, she argues historicity, she argues
all the precepts of Moses, she argues and argues and argues,
and Jesus basically says nothing. He basically says nothing you
do is going to satisfy your thirst. until you drink of me and the
water that I bring." And then she tries to figure
out how she's going to get water from a man who doesn't have a
bucket to dip it. Such is the plague of humanity,
always trying to be prepared. against that which is sovereign
and all-powerful. Beloved, you can't be prepared
except that God has prepared you for life. And when the woman goes back
in the midst of that conversation At the end of that conversation,
she says, well, she resolves all of a sudden. She goes, I
have no hope but Messiah. And all these things that I've
been trying to work through and prepare myself to understand
and all this stuff that I've been trying to do to perfect
my way into the presence of God, the only hope that I have is
Messiah is going to teach it all to me. And then Jesus says, the one
of whom you speak, I am. And immediately her eyes were
opened. And she passes the disciples on her way back to Sychar, screaming
and going nuts, going, oh my goodness, I met a man, could
he be Messiah? He told me everything I've ever
done. And the disciples come back because
they went to get food. And they come back and they sit
there with Jesus, and they don't say anything because they were
really, I mean, that was wrong of him to be sitting there with
a Samaritan. And it was wrong of him to be sitting there talking
to a woman. Socially, it was wrong. But he's their rabbi. We don't talk back to teacher,
but oh my goodness, around the campfire when Jesus went off
to pray, can you believe him, you know? Can you believe he
did that? But they come back, hey teacher,
we got you a sandwich, we got you something to eat. He says,
I have food that you know not of. And what does John write? They talked amongst themselves,
who brought him food? And he answers them in that same
statement, he says, I came to be food. Don't believe me, read it. I came to be the bread. John
chapter 6, he says the same thing again. Unless you eat of my flesh
and drink of my blood, you will not have eternal life. Unless
you're in Eden forever, never eating of the fruit of the knowledge
of good and evil, you will not have life. I am the righteousness
of God. I am the God of creation myself
in human flesh. And what I will do in my power,
and what I will do in my justice, and what I'll do in my righteousness,
I will save you. My people, from your sins. The point of creation is that
God, throughout all of His work, would save His people from their
sins. The power of Eden was destroyed
by sin, but the power of sin is destroyed by the bread of life and the
living water in the Garden of Gethsemane. Think about that
for a second. Think about these parallels here.
We've got the Garden of Eden, the presence of God, the presence
of life, the state of innocence, and then we've got the Garden
of Gethsemane where things really come together. Things go crazy
and fall apart. The order and the purpose and
the power and all the focus falls apart in Eden because man is
in charge of it. But in the Garden of Gethsemane,
God, in sovereign God in the flesh, is in charge of redemption,
and the true Eden is standing there, sweating blood. And the Lord Jesus Christ in
the Garden of Gethsemane stands up and says, Not my will, but
yours. And He walks out and says, Behold
my accuser, who kisses him. to show the authorities who to
arrest. And these knuckleheads are asleep, right? They wake
up. Peter's going to try to make
up for the fact he wasn't praying. Pull out a sword and whack off
in the ear. Ha! You're not taking Jesus. Cheesy
B movie, right? Old kung fu movie from the 70s. I know what I can do. I can stop
this. No, you can't stop this. Because the death of Christ is
the point of creation. Without Christ, there is no life. The power of sin is defeated
by the Son of God. God bestowed all things good
before the first humans. He showed them everything. He
gave them everything. Then God burdened all things
upon the second Adam, Jesus Christ. All things, all things for the
sake of the elect. Adam, when he saw everything
that God had offered, all life, all perfection, all glory, he
traded all these things for his fleshly interests. And Jesus
Christ traded glory and became flesh in order to satisfy the
wrath of God. Adam, in all of his innocence,
could not keep righteousness, could not stand before God. Adam
fell, as you'll see. He fell. Eve fell. Humanity fell. And Adam could not keep himself
upright, even in innocence. But Christ, who was innocent
and also righteous, could not be. You've got to listen to what
I'm saying here. He would not succumb to death.
He laid down his life in death and then he took it up again
because he is the righteousness of God. Death cannot hold him. Death is the sentence of sin. Christ had no sin. Christ died
in the place of sinners. He himself was not sinful. So
he came back to life. Adam was lost. He lost everything. He lost life
and all of his progeny, everyone else. Christ, the second Adam,
found them all. found all for whom He died, bestowed
His atoning work to His people. To their account, He gave them
righteousness. We see in Romans 5 where Paul would say, through
one man, all men die. Through the second man, through
the second Adam, and through one man, all might be made alive. This perfect redemption. See, when we look at the garden,
when we look at Adam and Eve being created, there's some things
we need to just really grasp as we close today. Some things
that will put the gospel in perspective. Why do we need to know this?
Why do we need to know? And I've seen people try in biology to
deal with the rib thing and all this. Listen, it's a picture
here. It doesn't matter how God did it. The point of God revealing
this is to show Christ. And there's a thousand pictures
here. And it's not my creativity, beloved. Read the scripture.
It'll pop out. It'll pop out so quickly. Creation
was insufficient for Adam. It was insufficient for Adam's
joy, as we'll see. It was insufficient, but moreover,
there was nothing that God had created that was like Adam. So as God gave Adam the task
of looking and observing, as the first biologist, looking
and observing at all the creatures that existed and coming up with
names appropriate for their character and purpose and movement and
things of that nature, at the end of it all, it's sort of like
Adam turned and went, am I the only one like me? Am I the only
one like me? Because there was no beast or
creature in all of creation that was sufficient to be a pair for
Adam, to be a mate for Adam, to be a helper for Adam, to be
a soulmate for Adam, to be like Him. And in the same way, when
we look at sinful humanity, there's no one in all of humanity that
is like God except the God-man who is God. Even in all their goodness, no
animal would do. Out of Adam, then, must come a suitable companion.
If we're going to have something that is like Adam, then of his
essence, then it's going to have to come out of Adam. So God puts
Adam to sleep, takes a rib out of the rib. He forms woman. Woman means out of man. And then
he puts the two together, puts them in the garden, gives the
woman to the man, not as property, as flesh of his flesh and bone
of his bone, as his own body. equally. So Adam, out of himself, by the
power of God, Adam couldn't do it. God puts Adam to sleep and
out of Adam comes a suitable companion, one who can help him,
one who can multiply with him, one who can look like him, one
who can love him, one who can know him. A man and his dog That's
a tight relationship, but it's not his wife. A woman and her
cat, pretty equal. Her husband and the cat, eh,
it's a toss up, right? So God made Adam to sleep. In
his slumber, God tore open his flesh and out of his body created
a woman. Adam was prepared for his bride
in sleep. He named her Eve. He called her
flesh of His own flesh. He called her His own body. This is the great mystery of
Jesus Christ and His bride, beloved. This is next week's sermon. I
won't get into a whole lot of it today. This is the mystery
of the gospel in marriage. This is why marriage exists.
This is why creation exists. This is why the world exists,
so that we can see it. Jesus Christ calls His church,
His body, His bride. For out of His body, broken and
blood spilled, come her, living forever. Jesus laid down His life and
in His death, His slumber, a glorious and Great goodness came from
Him for His people. His perfection, His spotlessness,
His righteousness. So in order for God to have a
people for Himself in humanity, He had to become humanity. And out of His body is born His
people's righteousness. His people's forgiveness. So
the church was created for Christ as Eve was created for Adam. Christ was prepared for the church
just as Adam was prepared for the church. And Paul tells the
Corinthians in chapter 11 of his first letter to them, or
what we know as 1 Corinthians, the head of every man is Christ
and the head of every woman is man and the head of Christ is
God. So there's this picture of God giving the Son who gives
Himself for the church. Now we've already gone to Ephesians
5. We've already seen that. We were there last week. We know
this picture, but we're going to see this picture so clearly
next week that it's going to almost numb us. Because we need
to take away all of this overwhelming prior learning about man, woman,
and husband, wife relationships. We need to understand the simple
grace of Christ and the gospel in the picture of the creation
of the first wedding. The first wedding is here. The
first marriage is here. And it's just like the creation
of light. See, John in his gospel makes
it clear, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was God, the
Word was with God, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In
Him was the light of the life of men. Jesus says the light
has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than
the light because their works are evil. So to see Christ is
to see the light of the glory of God. Paul says it in 2 Corinthians
4 that the light of the The glory of God is in the face of Jesus
Christ, that God shines it into us in His power, in His creative
power. So we see all of these pictures
through all the apostolic writing of this first few chapters of
creation as the point of it. flesh of my flesh and bone of
my bone. In that redemptive sense, we
are told that we are the body of Christ, that we are the righteousness
of God, that we are a royal priesthood, that we are the children of God,
that He is proud to call us brothers, sisters, siblings, that we've
been adopted, that we've been raised to life with Christ, that
we await in the consummation of glory. We will be together
forever with our husband, the word there, andros, which means
head. We'll be together with Him. We
will share in His glory. We will share in His stature.
We will share in His righteousness. We will share all things as one
body. All things. This is the point of this text.
But don't miss it. Don't bog down in all this other
mess that has usurped the revelation of God in Scripture. If my biology textbook is necessary
for me to understand Genesis, Genesis is trash. I want you to hear that. As much as I love science, as much
as I love the amazing knowledge of how intricately things work
in life, I don't see the gospel except when I see the Lord through
the pages of Scripture. And if I don't know the Scripture,
nothing else I look at is going to undergird that joy. Perfection
is proven to be only by God's provision and power. This picture
of marriage, this picture of creation, this picture of perfection
is as old as time. And it is Jesus Christ who is
the image of God in humanity. It is Jesus Christ who is the
Creator. It is Jesus Christ who is Eden. It is Jesus Christ who
is life. I am the way and the truth and
the life, he says. So rest in this knowledge. This even establishes how we
relate to one another and how we relate to other people in
life, how we relate to unbelievers and believers. This gospel message
sets the tone and the outline for the life that we live today.
To the praise of His glorious grace as objects of mercy, unmerited
favor through the life that we have to live and the life that
we have eternally promised through Christ. So in that we rejoice,
in that we sleep. Let's pray. Father, help us to make clarity
on these things. Help us to see the gospel. Help us to see Christ
more and more and more and to look at Him. Father, help me
to not be so downtrodden so quickly. Father, help us to realize that
the burdens that we carry are to be carried to You, because
Christ has bore the burden of Your justice and Your wrath. He's bore the burden of temptation
in His flesh like none of us ever have, for He never sinned,
He never gave in, He never desired to. He always wanted to fulfill. His your perfect plan. And fulfill his perfect life.
For the salvation of your people. His sheep. His bride. So Lord, no matter what is happening
inside of our minds or around us in our homes or in this world,
Lord, help us to put our hope and our focus on your revelation
and not to let this world do its thing, for you have orchestrated
that for your purposes. Lord, help us to not get caught
up in these things. Teach us humility. Teach us quietness. Teach us to work with our hands
without getting noticed. Teach us to interact intimately
and to quit trying to be the answer or the opinionator of
all things. Lord, give us peace. Rekindle in us a peace that is
ours in Christ. so that we might live this day
in joy, that we might be able to worship without all these
other things weighing us down. And Lord, as we look at the world,
as we grow to understand its complexities more and more and
get excited about it, Father, remind us of the simple story
of a true creation that You have made. so that you could have
your people justly in your presence forever. In Christ Jesus. Amen. Thank you, Church.