how to just read it and to sit
and to hear it and to understand that it's not about our astuteness,
but rather it is about God's divine work in us to understand
it and apply it to our lives. And then together as the church,
we are able to encourage each other in our learning, to encourage
each other in our living, and most of all, to encourage each
other as we love the Lord by loving one another. There's not
any place for pride in the Christian life. There's no place whatsoever.
There's no place for being right. There's no place for having one's
own way. And we can learn that in the
context of Genesis as we see in the creation of the world
that there is nothing that God did to inquire from anyone about
what He was going to do. God did not ask the creation
what it thought. He did not ask for its participation.
It was not, then it was, and all that is, He calls to be.
So remember, beloved, we're not here. The Bible is not a textbook
for history. The Bible is not a textbook for
science. The Bible has nothing to do with
these things. The Bible has everything and only everything to do with
the revelation of God to His people through His divine power.
in every aspect. And so before we move into the
temptation, and before we move into the fall, and before we
move actually even into the real purposes of the creation of Eve
out of man who came out of dirt that was created by God, and
so on and so forth in these pictures, I want us to understand that
the whole point of this, and I've said it again and again
and again, but I'm gonna say it this morning with emphasis,
is that the point of Genesis 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, is to
clearly see the gospel. It's not a hidden message. It's
not something that you have to study for years and years to
see. It's something that really we have to sit still and understand
the simplicity of God's grace. And that is part of what faith
is. That is what God-given faith
does, is it sits still and sees the simplicity of God's grace.
It's not a mystery to the believer, because we're the believer. We're
the believing ones, so it's no longer a mystery, it's just,
But at the same time, it is a very complex, supernatural, divine
work that has justice at the center of it, and righteousness
at the center of it, and atonement at the center of it. Imputation
is the reality of grace and the gospel. Good news, good news,
good news. This is where we sometimes fall
apart, is that we take the pieces as the principle rather than
seeing what they point to. Who is Jesus Christ the good
news bringer? The life bringer? The creator
of life? Understand the world was created
so that God's glory would be seen in the salvation of His
people through Jesus Christ His Son. That is why the world exists. That's what the scripture teaches
us about this. There is no other purpose. There's
no other purpose in the world whatsoever except that it exists
that God may be glorified in salvation of His people. He created
the cosmos in its infinite inexpressible, eternal way to be a finite picture
of His infinite power, of His infinite redemption through Jesus
Christ for a particular people that He created for Himself.
We've learned a lot. Whether we sit in that learning
and understand it is up to the Lord. It's up to the Lord. It's
not up to me, it's not up to you. It's very easy to bog down
in commentary. It's very easy to bog down in
cross-references. It's very easy to bog down in
historical things. It's very easy to bog down in
popular ideas. The idea of philosophy, when
we talk about philosophizing, what that means is that we hear
something, this is a ring, and the ring is silver, we think
about it, and that thinking, that thinking and coming to conclusions
is part of philosophizing. That's the simplistic reality
of what it means. And you'll see here, especially
going into next week, that man's been in the business, humanity
has been in the business of philosophizing since the very beginning. We
see, we experience, We understand, we comprehend data, we get information,
we gain knowledge, and then we begin to mull it around and think,
hmm, hmm, hmm, and there are a lot of intelligent people.
Intelligence doesn't mean wise. Beloved, I want you to hear that.
Intelligence doesn't mean wise. As a matter of fact, when we
see Paul teaching to the Corinthians who were known for their great
wisdom and their ability to parse life out into equal portions
of reason and logic, Paul says that God doesn't use that. Now we see historically, for
those of us who are hobbyists for historical theology and church
history, of which I am, we see the fodder and the foolishness,
the folly, if you will. There's been arguments too, but
we see the folly of how man has always come to great conclusions.
And then wise minds, supposedly, knowledgeable minds, softest
if I can be. truthful, have all sat down and
go, yes, we agree with these things. And then when they fight,
matter of fact, I had a professor one time tell me that the thing
that I should focus on most in my studies, theologically, are
the things that people debated and argued over. I'm like, that
makes sense. You know why it makes sense?
Because that's what we like. That's what we look to, to figure
out, have we got the right information? You see, salvation is not about
the right information. Salvation is not about the right
understanding in our humanity. Salvation is about the sovereign
gift of grace, which is believing the simplicity of grace in all
the things that the Scripture teaches. The Garden of Eden,
as we talked about last week, is a type of temple that's a
picture of the temple, it's a picture of where God meets man. And beloved, I just want us to
be careful not to dig into this. I mean, I've got books from archaeologists
who feel like they have found the location of Eden. No, they
haven't. They have not found the location of Eden. That's
as dumb as me saying, I just went to the sun. The location
of Eden was clearly marked on the cross. Jesus Christ is Eden. Jesus Christ is the resting place. Jesus Christ
is where God meets man. And we'll close our service today
with that understanding. Let's remember that what we've
learned thus far in the creation of the world and everything in
it, that God has created everything. He made the dirt, He made the
water, and out of the dirt, He made everything that lives, that
walks upon the land. Out of the dirt, He made the
beasts, He made the trees and He made man out of the same dirt. You want to see the substance
of things? Why is it that when we see historically the use of
these very phrases, from dust you came and from dust you shall
return? What does that show us about our lives? That we're just
a vapor. James has been teaching this
and in our midweek we started back the book of James this past
Wednesday and we'll be teaching a little bit continually through
that. We see that it's just a vapor. Life is a vapor. It's not important
that we build legacies in this world. It's not important that
we establish some long-term genealogy of our name. It's not important
that we create pyramids so that thousands of years later
people can say, oh look, look what he built. Okay, it's impressive. I can't make a snake out of Play-Doh.
So it's impressive to see people of antiquity build things that
modern day engineers marvel over. Yes, but it's nothing. It's nothing, we're not here
except to understand, beloved, as the body of Christ, that we
came from dust and we will return to dust, and the only way that
our life accounts for anything fruitful or worthy is that we
live it unto the glory of God, and the glory of God is revealed
in a singular and myopic way in the scriptures for the believing
ones, and that is the person of Jesus Christ who redeemed
his people from death. He redeemed us from the dust.
He gives our life purpose and meaning and center. Because to
be in the presence of God together, to be called the children of
God, to be called the body of Christ is the point of life.
And let's remember, just like I said last week, is that in
the New Testament especially, that if we're not connected with
a biblical body, elders and deacons and believers, the wheat and
even the chaff are going to be around, beloved. It's always
going to be the way. If we're not connected to the
body, there is no division in our Christian walk. There's no
such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian who has any application of the
New Testament in any significant way except theological study.
And the scripture doesn't call us to theological study. The
scripture calls us to what? Worship. In the good and in the bad. In
the book of Genesis, in the creation account, this teaches us these
principles. We are called to worship. We
learned that last week. To work and to keep the garden
is the preparation of the heart in the presence of God to worship
Him. And the picture, if I had time,
I could show you. I could show you. I could show
you in Moses. I could show you in Abraham.
I could show you the tabernacle and the temple and the worship
of the Jews throughout all of the Old Testament and show you
that it's just the same picture of Eden and eventually God takes
away that because Christ is the fulfillment of it all. God made the dirt, God made the
trees, God made man, God made a garden where man can live with
Him forevermore. Who's the actor? God. Who else
is doing anything? Nobody. God has done it all.
God makes the commands and He tells man what He's supposed
to do. And the Scripture teaches us
very clearly, if man is not in the presence and the power of
God, he will not live. He will not live. So out of God came man and out
of man then, as we'll see, come woman. And God the Father sends
the Son just as the woman comes from the man, etc. and so forth.
And we'll learn these things over the next few weeks. And
the Son dies for the elect and out of the body of Jesus comes
life for His people. Let's go to the Word this morning
and let's look. Let's just read chapter 2 all
the way down. So verse 20, let's just read
the whole chapter. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,
and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished
His work that He had done, and He rested on that day from all
the work that He has done. So God has blessed the seventh
day and set it apart, because on it God rested from all His
work that He had done in creation. 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 bush
of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field
had yet sprung up, for the Lord God did not cause it to rain
on the land, and there was no man to work and to keep the ground,
and the mist was going up from the land, as was watering the
whole face of the ground, then the Lord God formed the man from
the dirt from the ground 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, in the east, and there He put a man whom He had formed.
And out of the ground the Lord made to spring up every tree
that is pleasant to the sight and good to eat. The tree of
life was in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil also. A river flowed out of Eden toward
the garden and there it divided and became four rivers. Now get
this picture in your mind, beloved. Out of the garden flowed the
rivers, not into the garden. Out of the garden. And the name of the first is
Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah,
where there is gold. And the gold of that land is
good. Delium 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. And the name of the third river
is the Tigris, of which we're familiar with that name, which
flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates,
which we're familiar with that name. The Lord God took the man
and put him in the garden of Eden to keep it and to work it.
And the Lord 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 it. For when you eat of it,
you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, it is
not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for
him. Now out of the ground the Lord
had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air
of the heavens, of the sky. And he brought them to the man
to see what he should call them. And whatever the man called every
living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all
livestock and to the birds of the heaven and to every beast
of the field, 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, God took from
the man a rib and closed it up with flesh. And the rib that
the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and
brought the woman to the man and gave her to the man. And
then the man said, 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, which is what the word means. Therefore man shall leave
his father and shall leave his mother and shall hold fast to
his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his
wife were both naked and not ashamed. Now there's a lot, I'm
probably gonna be here for three or four weeks in this. But before
we move to the nuts and bolts or the bones and flesh of the
circumstances here, I want us to get to the doctrine. I want
us to get to the picture that is continuing. This is not a
new story. This is the same story that we
started out in the beginning when God created the heavens
and the earth. It's the same story. Now, it's continuing. God is continuing to create.
He created man. He created woman. He created
Eden. He put them in the garden. He gave them a commandment. He
gave them a promise of life that was conditional. And the condition was not meant
to be kept by man. I can't tell you how many times
I've heard that, and I don't want to really get into it until we get into
chapter 3, Well, if Adam and Eve had just not eaten from the
fruit, everything would have been perfect. No, everything's
perfect now. Everything is perfect now because
if you want to define perfect by the way you think it should
be, rather than the way the Scripture commands it to be, God said all
things are perfect according to the counsel of His will. Horror,
disease, death, destruction, these are perfect things because
God has established them and decreed them. No, it's not utopia,
but I don't want utopia, I want righteousness. I want absolute
divine perfection. God has promised that and decreed
that and secured that in the creation of the world, which
points to His absolute power to create a people for Himself,
showing that He will accomplish ultimate perfection, ultimate
peace, ultimate rest in Christ Jesus. And the work is finished. We're waiting for the consummation.
We're waiting for the one flesh moment. which is what marriage
points to. That's the only point of marriage. So out of God comes all life. He creates all life. And we see there, and I don't
want to go through every particular verse, but let's just take the
theme here. We see this idea that Eden is the center of creation. that in the center of all creation,
God then established trees that give life, sustenance. Then He put man in the garden
so that man could continue to prepare worship for this life-giving
sustenance that God has given him and that in doing so, he
will remain forever with God. God, as we'll see, walks in the
middle of the garden. and outside of the Garden of
Eden, or in the center of the Garden of Eden is the Tree of
Life. Outside the Garden of Eden, if we see in verse eight there,
away from that, then the Garden is the Land of Eden. And then
if we go back to chapter one, we see outside of that is the
dry land. So I want you to picture this for a second. Here's the
land, here is the Land of Eden, here's the Garden of Eden, and
in the center of it is the Tree of Life, where the Lord dwells.
The temple is a picture, or the garden is a picture of the temple.
The temple is a picture of redemption, of God's sovereign and free,
gracious work to save his people for himself. And so when we look
at this stuff, there's a lot of things that we need to understand.
I mean, people have decided, oh, I know where this stuff is.
Nobody knows In the context of this description
here, nobody knows anything about the land of Cush. Nobody knows
anything about these other two rivers that we've never heard
of. Nobody's heard of them. These scientists and these academics
who say, oh, it's ridiculous. We're not supposed to know. We're
not gonna find Eden. We're not gonna go to Israel
right now and find the temple. It is not there. There's not some mysterious place
that God's hiding from our eyes. I mean, look at the reality of
the way religion has bankrupted kingdoms in the attempt to find
the cup that Jesus drank out of, or the robe that Jesus wore,
or the nails that pierced His hands, or the place where He
might have cried. or the alabaster box that might
have been broken. People are always looking for
a relic. People are always looking for some tangible souvenir. And
beloved, we have to be careful not to philosophize to the point
that we're looking for a tangible souvenir to undergird our faith.
Beloved, faith is not by sight. It is by the Word of God alone
through the Spirit of God who grants us to rest in what we
cannot see. and what we cannot see. Though
we love Him, we have not seen Him. We love Him. What is Peter
saying, 1 Peter? We love Him. We have not seen
Him. We now do not see Him, but we
love Him. And we rest, and we serve, and
we suffer with a joy that is often, I love his words, inexpressible. We look to that which is unseen,
not to that which is seen, Paul says. Now, what's the difference maker?
See, some people like to argue, well, you know, the Bible and
everything in it is evidentiary, supported, and blah, blah, blah. And then you end up with this
incredible field of apologetics that is absolute ridiculous.
Well, we can prove archaeologically that the Bible is true. We can
prove scientifically that the Bible is true. Whoop-de-doo!
I've got philosophy books in my house. I've got mathematical
books in my house. I've got science books. I've
got medical books in my house. I've got books on neurosurgery.
I've got books on cardiology. I've got books on cellular reproduction. And you know what's crazy? Some
of those books that I have were printed in the 1910s, 1920s,
1930s. And the science has changed.
The knowledge has changed. The wisdom has changed. The things
that they do to understand The body has changed, even from the
1960s. Medicine has come a thousand
percent above and beyond where it was then, especially mental
health. And so, am I supposed to prove
these things because they... We don't use the Bible like that. There are laws of nature that
are absolute. There are laws of mathematics
and physics and things that cannot change. That's why we call them
laws. But our understanding of those things are so finite in
the depth of all that they are, we are not going to prove God
through any of it. And proving God is, is not salvation. Because Paul says in Romans 1
that all people know They know, but not all people believe. And then people would say, well,
what about all the other types of religion? What about all the
other sects of Christianity historically? What about all the other cults?
What about all the other things? What about mysticism? Everybody
else has a simple faith. Yes, but where is the faith?
Where does the faith lie? It lies in an experience, it
lies as an action, or it lies in some book just like the Bible. So we can prove the Bible. See,
the Bible is the better book. No, the Bible is the revelation
of God to His people. If you're not God's people and
you haven't been born of the Spirit, you won't sit and rest
in the knowledge of what the Word teaches. And we're not called. Evangelism is not convincing
people. Evangelism is declaring the very thing that I've been
talking about this morning and letting God deal with the fruit
of it. As a matter of fact, is God not the one who created the
Garden of Eden? Is God not the one who created the Tree of Life?
Is God not the one who reproduces all things according to the counsel
of His will? Are all these things not pictures of God's ability
and sovereign pleasure to replicate His people in His Son? to grow them, to birth them,
to sprout them, to mature them, to teach them. It's God's business. I think I closed my sermon out
on that last... No, that was Wednesday. It's God's business. It's God's business to grow His
people. It's God's business to regenerate
His people. It's God's business to save His
people, and He's done that already. He's done, the salvation is over.
It is finished. Jesus Christ has saved all the
elect forever and ever in His death. They are all saved. They will not perish. And in
the time of the Lord, as He sees fit, He will teach them this
truth and they will have a rest in the reality that sounds ridiculous. That sounds ridiculous. But see,
what we like, though, what we like in our day is we like to
sound intelligent. Because what I just explained
to a person of great intelligence sounds weakly stupid. You're
just a religious zealot. You're just one of those idiots.
Friends, I would say raise your hand, but we block each other's
view if you know a religious idiot. But to some people, we're
the religious idiot. Depends on what you're looking
at. Depends on how you're filtering it. Depends on how you're defining
stuff. Depends on perception. So I am a religious idiot. I'm
the fool. It's ridiculous for me to believe
the things that I teach. But not by the power of God. We're not the intellectual superior
people, we are the humble servants, the objects of grace. We're the
ones who have been granted great understanding into an incredible
mystery that makes no sense to anybody else. The highest scholars
of Judaism who will know the Bible in a technical sense more
than any of us could ever know, because we haven't lived that
life. Yet we know the truth. His name
is Jesus Christ. And we can peer through the pages
of history. We can go back and see in this Old Testament. We
can see all of the actions of God's people, but really it's
the actions of God using His people to bring about revelation
of His redemption. And we can understand all of
this stuff and then have a better appreciation for the gospel in
a mental way. But these things don't save us. Only God saves us. God the Father sent the Son into
the world and the Son dies for the elect. And the Son has saved
His people and has raised Himself to life. And the trees that give life,
we have a greater life than the trees can give. The intimacy of the Garden of
Eden, walking with the Lord in the cool of the day, as we'll
see, We have a greater intimacy than Adam ever had. To behold all of that early creation,
to behold the beauty of the Garden of Eden. If I could just see
it. We have a greater beauty that we can see right now in
the face of Christ. See this. Beloved, it is idolatry to go
back to the Garden and want that. To miss what it points to. It
is idolatry to undergird sovereign and free grace with apologetics
that are evidential. It is idolatry to think that
if we learn enough stuff that we might come to a better grasp when it is the fool, when it
is the unlearned, when it is the lowly things that God uses. Now,
don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying we aren't to study
the word because the Bible, the New Testament teaches us to study,
to show yourself approved. But what are we to study? That's
what we're doing. That's what we're doing here
this morning. We're studying, but we're reading the old in light
of the new as it was intended to be understood. Simply. And you might think to yourself,
I'll never get this. Yes, you will. You will get it, beloved. The problem is we're so ingrained
and we're so rigid in our ability to freely listen without the
infusion of prior learning and experiences that we are having
a hard time unlearning these things. Well, God has commanded all things
into existence. God has commanded that the man
work the garden, and God has given a command that he shall
not eat of the knowledge of good and evil. And the commands of
God, as this is reviewed, as we know them, are good. But then
the scripture says it is not good for man to be alone. Is this something new? Is this
a new doctrine? Is this a new teaching? Is this
some new, now added reality that God is imparting to us on His
Word, from His Word? No, this is the same story. God
created, there was nothing. God created everything. God made
good and orderly everything. Then all of a sudden, in the
end of it all, God has created all these creatures and given
them all life. He's created plants and given them life. And there's
also all neat things that we don't even know, we've never
even seen yet in this world that lives. And he created man and
he created a place for man to meet with him. And without this
place, man is dead. Without this tree of life, man
does not exist. And the only significance of
this is that God is there in the center of the garden. So
the tree is representative of the presence of God, just like
the Ark of the Covenant is representative of the presence of God, and so
on and so forth. And so when man leaves the presence
of God, he is alone, he is forsaken, he is dead, he shall die. The presence of God can be understood
in some of the commands and some of the promises and all of the
decrees of God. And we'll see that as we continue
to unfold these next few chapters. But it's not good for man to
be alone. And so the picture of this reality is that God then
has to do something different than He's already done. Why not
just out of the dust take and create woman? Because that's
not a gospel picture. Because that which was created
out of the dust will return to dust. That which was created
out of man, see the picture, is from man. So when we are in
the presence of God, when we are created in Christ Jesus,
when we are found in Him, we don't return to dust in a spiritual
sense. We live forever. Yes, this body will die and we
know that is the purpose of God. We know that we will decay and,
you know, but we will be made new. It's about eternal life. Eternal life is only found in
God. And the picture of God creating woman out of man is a picture
of Christ creating a church out of His body. Simple. His body was torn in two. The
temple curtain was torn in two. The temple was destroyed. Eden
was sealed off and we were taken away from it because we're not
fit for the presence of God except that God Himself takes us out
of Himself and creates us anew. This is rebirth. This is what
baffled Nicodemus in John chapter 3. But see, we like to technically
try to affirm the reality of regeneration. Regeneration is
this, and then this happens, and then this happens, and it's
all experiential. It's all whatever our culture
has taught us to look at, and we miss everything else when
we look at certain things. The Bible says that regeneration
is being born of God and His divine power in a new way, not
the old way you were born into the world by creation and through
the progeny, as the progeny from your parents, but being found in the Creator
Himself, being put in the center of Christ forever. Life is in Christ alone. Man
cannot be alone lest he perish. You think, you know, I've never
heard this before. Yes, you have. You just haven't
made the connection. You've heard this before. You know this. If
you go to Ephesians chapter 5, you see Paul clearly teaching
this. Go there. Let's look at it. Ephesians chapter
5. This is mysterious. I've never heard this before.
Pastor, what are you teaching now? You need some more sleep. Stop drinking coffee. Ephesians chapter 5, starting in verse 15. Look carefully
then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise. making the best use of time because
the days are evil. Therefore, don't be foolish, but understand
what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine,
for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing
one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing
and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks
always and for everything to God the Father." The whole reason
Eden was created, to praise Him for His glorious grace. This
is Paul's theme. This is his drum in his writing
to the Ephesians. giving thanks always and for
everything to God the Father, gratitude always has an object,
the one to whom we are thankful, in the name by the authority
of the Lord Jesus Christ who grants us this intimacy, submitting
to one another out of reverence for Christ. And that's why I
started there, because if I start at verse 22, it's disconnected.
Verse 22 is a continuation of this teaching. Submitting to
one another out of reverence of Christ, wives also submit
to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his
body, out of his body, he himself is its savior. by His blood,
by His flesh, if you don't drink of my blood and eat of my flesh,
by His blood, by His death, by His being crushed by the Father,
He has set apart His people forever. To the uttermost, He has saved
us. This is Paul writing in Hebrews and Colossians and other places
like that. Now, as the church submits to
Christ, so also wives submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, also, love your wife as Christ loved the church. He
gave Himself up for her that He might set her apart, having
cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that
He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without
spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy, might
be set apart and blameless and perfect, without blemish. See,
if we are not found in Christ's death, in His burial, in the
crushing of His flesh, we are not birthed out of Him, we will
die. If we are out of Christ, we will
live forever. For the body of Christ was crushed
once for our iniquities, and then raised forevermore as a
promise of the life-giving tree of life, who is Jesus Christ.
We will live with Him forever in the true Eden Himself, in
the presence of His glory. In the same way, verse 28, Ephesians
5, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He
who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own
flesh, but takes care of it, feeds it, bathes it, nurses it,
and cherishes it, just as Christ does His own body, the church,
because we are members of His own body. Therefore, and you
might say, well, you're stretching it. No, Paul basically quotes
Moses. He quotes God, actually. Therefore
a man shall leave his father, and shall leave his mother, and
hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This
mystery is profound. Oh, Lord! But I am saying it
refers to Christ and His assembly. However, let each one of you
love his wife as you love yourselves, and let the wife see that she
respects her husband as she does the Lord. What is the leaving? The leaving of father and mother
is to forsake the natural birth. The leaving of the father and
mother is to forsake the familial bond, is to forsake the attachment
to the world, is to forsake our connection to Adam and the picture
of becoming one flesh as husband and wife is to show what Christ
did in creation and what He promised in Eden to the end of time for
His people that He would be one with His people. And we're going to have an entire
sermon on that in the weeks to come. Entire sermon on the picture
of the gospel and the marriage. Because I've made a lot of comments,
I've made a lot of points through the years, but I might teach
two weeks on that. Because I think we have gone
back in a lot of ways in our understanding of relationships
in the home and marriage, husbands and wives. I think we've gone
a lot of ways to a relic mentality. We've let history dictate what
those relationships should look like rather than the gospel.
We've told women that they're not as important and that they're
not as precious as they're not as able. What's that? We've taught
men that they are to lord over people. But that's garbage. It's
sinful. Nobody's in charge. There's a
picture to fill. The very fact that somebody feels
like they're in charge is sinful. Are you in charge? Are you in
charge of your salvation? No, that's sinful. Are you involved in your salvation?
No, except as a recipient of it. Do you have anything to do
to affect your salvation? No. Were you there when Christ
died on the cross? No. Did you jab Him with the spear?
No. So you weren't there. You didn't
kill Him. You didn't put Him on the cross. So you had nothing
to do with it. Who put Him on the cross? The Bible says the
Father put Him on the cross. Through every natural means. How does
a man get acquitted? And then people cry out for His
death. How does a man like Jesus be so gentle and teach so clearly
and be beloved by the majority, yet the majority fear Him? Because
they fear their rulers by the will of God who affects those
types of things in the sinful flesh of humanity for His purposes. We weren't there. Does that sound
familiar? What's the oldest book in the
Bible? Job. Isn't that what God asked Job? Where were you, Job, when I said,
poof, and there was a universe? Where were you, Job, when I named
and numbered the stars? Where were you, Job, when I put
things in the abyss that you would poo-poo your pants if you
saw? Where were you, Job, You'd die if you saw some of
the things that I have created in the world. Just by looking
upon them, you'd die. Where were you, Joe? Where were you, Christian? Where
were you, saint? Where were you, child of God?
We had nothing to do with our existence. We had nothing to
do with our redemption. It is a free gift of God. Sovereign
gift. And that is where faith rests.
First and foremost, saving faith, if we can call it that. That's
a cliched term. I'm getting sick of it. Saving
faith is knowing God's sovereignty and power in redemption. And you say, well then how? And
then it tells us something. Scripture tells us He created
a body for Himself and became like the creature, that He may
die in the place of the creature, thus justice is fulfilled and
righteousness reigns. And then His perfection, His
obedience, His sacrifice, His life, all that He is, is imputed
to us to our credit that we might be the righteousness of God.
And there's so much more there. See, man cannot be alone. If
we are out of the presence of God's power and life-giving power,
we die. We die. I mean, we've been through
John's Gospel, right? We were four years in John's
Gospel and we heard, Jesus, I am the living water. Go a week without
water, what happens? You dehydrate. Matter of fact,
if you have a stomach bug or a flu and you have some problems
and you're not supplementing and reestablishing your hydration,
you could die in a week. I mean, you could die in a day.
An infant could die in a matter of four hours without water. Dehydration. Jesus is the living water. You
can drink all the water you want, but you can't live if you're
not attached to the living water. John 4. John 6, we can go without eating
but eventually the body shuts down. When our stores Body fat
go, we begin to decay, we begin to die, our system shut down,
our kidneys shut down, our liver shuts down, our lungs shut down,
our brain shuts down, we die, because we don't have the nutrients,
we don't have the energy, the carbohydrates and things like
that to keep our body working, we die. Jesus says, as they labor
to get more food from him in John chapter six, Jesus says,
do not labor for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread
that endures to eternal life. I am the bread that comes down
from heaven sent by the Father to give life to all men. So that if anyone is going to
live, he must live by eating of the flesh and the blood of
Jesus. You see how silly we are? How relics can become so important
that we think the body and the blood of Jesus can become physically
present with us? We think that there's some special
magic power if we could just find that trout of Turin or whatever
it might be and get the DNA of Jesus off of it? See, people
understand logically what the Scripture is teaching, but they
can't rest spiritually unless God gives them eyes and a heart
and a mind to just sit still and know that these pictures
point to the finished work of Christ and Him alone. It's not
about what we do to grab hold of Christ. It's what God has
done to snatch us out of death in Christ. This is what's called
good news. God's spell. God's speak. The evangel, the good news. Seeing
clearly the gospel is to see clearly the gospel of sovereign
and free grace. Imputed life. Imputed righteousness. Imputed atonement. We didn't
atone for our sins. Christ atoned for our sins. Man cannot be alone. So as the
bride in a marriage is a picture of the church, so the husband
in the marriage is the picture of the life-giving Savior, just
as Adam in the garden is the picture of God's sovereign rule
over creation. But the only true man who is
in the image of God is Jesus Christ. And then one day we will be made
like Him. We fret too much about understanding
these things rather than sitting simply and worshiping God for
them. So in Genesis 1 and 2, God is
the one who created all things and has given all life He's given
the picture of the garden, the picture of the trees that sustain
life. These things will recreate after
their own kind. Humanity has been called to subdue
the earth and procreate after its own kind. And so we realize
that what we see going into this idea about these trees, and we'll
know this more next week, this is not magical fruit. It's about the presence of God. God is the one who is the life
giver. He is the life bringer. He is
the one through whose presence all life will be sustained. So
proximity to the tree of life is truly meaning to be with Christ. Because we eat of God's provision,
Christ. And if we do not eat of God's
provision, we die. So God gives a command. Conditioned
upon the creature, Do not eat of this tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. Now what is that? We'll talk
about that. But in a nutshell, it's the experience of sin. It's the experience of being
outside God's promises. It's the experience of the inquiry
of human philosophizing. Because that's what Adam did,
and that's what Eve did. And when we look at this, we
see that the condition given to the creature, and we know
what chapter 3 happens, right? The serpent, the enemy of God
in the form of a serpent. We're not supposed to figure
that out. It doesn't matter. It's just, you know, snakes are scary. Tempted Eve. tempted Adam, Eve
tempted Adam and they ate of it and their eyes were open.
The last thing we said today was they were both naked and
they were not ashamed. I'm sure all of us have had dreams where
we show up without pants on somewhere at school or at work or at church or something. It would be a very
shameful situation unless we're extremely proud of the way we
look. And then we're going to end up
getting arrested for it. but they were ashamed. And when something is conditioned
upon the creature, the creature will always yield to the senses
and to their own interpretation of the experience. I am with God, I am His new creation,
He has out of me given me this woman, and now there's these
trees and everything I need for life, I'm to worship Him. Thank
you, Lord. Don't do this. What? And all
of a sudden, that's where my mind's at. My senses are... I wonder why. The doubt was there. The sin was in the heart already.
Because that's what the senses do. Because we are not righteous,
except that our righteousness is alien. And the creature will always
give in. God must remain the sovereign life giver if there
is going to be any life at all. For eternal life to exist, God
must be the sovereign life giver. He must be the sovereign life
keeper. Jesus says that, all that come to me, the Father will
give them to me. The Father will drag them to
Me. They will come to Me. I will
never cast them out. No one can pluck them out of
My hand. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God. Nothing. Nothing. Unbelief cannot separate you
from the love of God, beloved. The love of God for His people
is secured and finished in Christ, so therefore, everyone whom Christ
has loved in His death, in His atoning work, will not die in
unbelief. He will bring them to the knowledge
of His grace. So like the trees in the garden,
At the center of the garden, the place where life is, the
place where man will not die, is to be in Christ. To be in
the garden is to be in Christ, near the life-giving tree. And
those conditions that we'll see when we get into chapter 3 are
given and the creature proves his ability. Proves his ability. And what is the ability of the
creature? To die. That's what we do. The law was
given to show us that no matter what, no matter how hard the
consequences may be, we are guilty and we will die. The law was
given, do not eat of this, because when you do, you're gonna die.
You're gonna die. Why would we ever consider that?
Because in our flesh, we are dissatisfied with the presence
of God. We are dissatisfied with the promises of God because we
would rather look at the clear, logical knowledge of what it
means to be like God. And I'm getting ahead of myself
a little bit. Of understanding God a little more, of judging
the way God judges, of ruling the way God rules. Starting to
sound like humanity, isn't it? Well, we better set up our government.
to bring the presence of God. Why do you think all these different
millennial ideologies exist? Because of man creating their
own Eden. People are trying to rebuild
a temple in Jerusalem. Why? Because man wants to create
their own Eden. Man wants to create their own
tree of life and call it Jesus. He's going to put the name on
it, but it's not the person. Because the person of Christ
has already fulfilled righteousness. The person of Christ has already
established justice for the elect, for the children of God, for
us, and we will be the believing ones. So new life is, it's not a real
word, but it's regenerative, it's regenerational. New life is only that which is
regenerated. And that which is regenerated
is that which comes out of Christ, that comes out of the death of
Christ, that comes out of the body of Christ, that comes out
of the presence of Christ. Not as in separated from it,
but lives from it. The work of Christ. And that
new life is always alive. God is always giving this new
life. He is always gracious. He is always the one who keeps
us in Himself. But humanity, what do we do?
Humanity sometimes determines what we constitute as good, what
we constitute as life, what we constitute as divine, rather
than the God-spell, the God-speak, the gospel, the good news of
what God has done, wherein and through which and by which we
are able to sit still and rest in the knowledge that God has
sovereignly and freely declared that He alone is the one in whom
we find life. His provision is the only place
we find life. Now when we think of Eden as
a picture of the temple, we think of Adam and Eve as priests in
the temple serving and doing, etc., but specifically Adam and
his commandment And we're gonna talk about covenants in the next
few weeks somewhere in a way that you probably never thought
about them, because we have to do it exegetically rather than
historically. But I wanna just make some assertions
real quick to land our plane today. We understand the priesthood,
we understand the priesthood of believers. We could literally
say to one another, if we introduce somebody to someone else, we
could say, hi, This is Dave, a royal priest. Nice to meet you. John, a royal
priest. Isn't that weird? That would sound weird, right? People would be like, there's
a new cult in town. You know, we're the royal priests. I mean, could you imagine? We
call ourselves priest James, priest Julie, priest so and so.
I mean, it'd be a priestess, sorry. I mean, that would be
weird, right? Of course it'd be weird, because
we're not, but we are. We are in that we are able to
be in the presence and the service of God as worshipers. We are
in that we are in as the body of Christ as Christ. Christ is
the true and only royal priest. He is the one. He alone is the
one who is in the presence of God, sitting down, having completed
all the works and all the conditions necessary for the covenant and
the promise of life eternal for God's people. Jesus Christ is
the true and only priest. So we are just little pictures
of priests. Just like I may be a shepherd
in the context of my calling and the work that I do as a New
Testament overseer, but I am not the shepherd. I'm an under-shepherd of the
shepherd, but I'm really a sheep. You want to be a sheep, beloved.
If you're not a sheep, you're in charge of it all. If you're
not a sheep, you are looking for your own eating. You're going
through a different door. You're eating tin cans, painted
green, thinking it's grass. The only thing I know that does
that is a goat. Jesus is the only image of the
true God. The Imagio Dei, Jesus Christ, that is it. That's the
point. We have some way of looking at the New Testament before the
fall that this is an illustration of this promise. That God, one
day, through humanity, will bring the perfect true image bearer,
Jesus Christ. Where do you get that stuff?
John's Gospel. Hebrews 1, Colossians 1. Just keep looking. He is the
image of the invisible God, the exact imprint of His nature,
the essence of all that God is. Jesus is the glory giver. He's
the revelation. Paul tells it to the Corinthians.
All that we can see concerning God we know and clearly see through
the face of Jesus Christ. We're not looking through veil
like Moses. We're not looking at the essence
of God's ethereal robe as it walks by. We're not looking at
the shadow and seeing the wind. We're looking at God in the face
through Jesus Christ. He is the true image of God.
And because of that, Jesus Christ is the true presence of God.
If you have seen me, Jesus says, you've seen the Father. And I'm
going to prepare a place for you that where I am, you will
be also. You will be with God if you are
with Me. When He walked upon the earth, those who walked with
Him walked with God in the cool of the day. Eden was not rediscovered
in the first century. Eden came from heaven and tabernacled
with us. And we have seen the presence
of God. We have established the permanence of God's presence
with His people, Jesus Christ the righteous. This is what the
Garden of Eden represents. This is what the first Adam and
the first Eve represent. This is what the new reality
of the world represents in the gospel of grace. Jesus is the
true water. As in the center of the world,
the garden of Eden, and the land of Eden, and the dry land, and
the world, and the earth, and the cosmos, everything exudes
from that place as the center of life. All the water comes
from nothing in that place out to water everything that lives.
Jesus Christ is the center. He is the true place from which
the rivers of life flow. The river and the well of the
water of life wells up and boils over. It cannot be contained. Jesus is the center. Jesus is
the true center. We're the picture of the center
of the Holy of Holies inside the holy place, inside the courtyard,
inside Jerusalem. Jesus is the Holy of Holies.
He is the place where God makes man. He is the Ark of the Covenant.
He is the place where the blood is poured to cover the law which
brings death. See these pictures? Jesus is the true Eden. Jesus
is the true God. In closing, Jesus is the point
of it all. He is the glory of all things, the purpose of all
things, the point of all things. He is the one eternal resting
place for God's people. And if we are not resting in
Him, we are seeking out our own understanding and our own place
and making conditions that He Himself has not promised will
bring anything but frustration, fear, death, and destruction.
And beloved, the believer can turn his back to look to Eden.
The believer can turn his back to look to Sodom. And Sodom and Gomorrah are pictures
of man's doing. And it's no different than the
temple of Jerusalem. See, that's what made the Jews
mad with Jesus. That's what made them mad when
He would preach in the synagogues. And he would talk about God's
destruction upon the wicked and God's blessing upon his people. And they would say, yay, this
man speaks peace to us. He speaks life to us. We are
Israel. Those Samaritans, they're about
to get their due, and Jesus would say, I'm not talking about you,
I'm talking about them. These people have never been
in the presence of God. These people have never served in the temple.
Jesus says, I'm the temple, buddy. You want me to show you something?
Tear it down. In three days, I'm going to show
you what life is all about. I'm going to build it back. I'm going to build
the temple back. What did he do? He got up out
of the grave. It's real easy for us to look
at debauchery and wickedness and evil things and ideologies
and philosophies. and worldviews and go, yeah,
they're evil. It's a lot harder for us to look
in the mirror of our own soul and realize that our religion
oftentimes is just as vile. Beloved, that's why a gift of
God's grace brings about faith that rests not in what we can
come to and what we can be and how we can work it out, but it's
how God has finished the work in His creative power, His divine
power. See, it's puzzling, isn't it?
Because it rocks. It's like marbles in your head.
It rocks against the very nature of our flesh. But seriously, hear me. It is
the only place of true rest. The only place of true rest.
I've felt personally over the last year or so that I have been
in the midst of the deepest sea. And on the hottest of days, I
don't know, I've never been in the sea, I'm not going to go
in the sea, but I can imagine having been under freshwater, you know,
shallow freshwater, 10, 12, 15 feet. When the sun's up, you
can see it. You can look up and you can see
it. You can see the light shining down. But I imagine even the
depths of certain places of the ocean, when the sun is right
over here, you can see it. But you're so far away, you'll
never get up. You'll never get to the surface.
And I felt like I've been in the midst of the deepest part
of the sea and I see the light and I think, oh, here I come,
I'm floating to the surface. No, I'm not floating to the surface
at all. I'm not getting anywhere. And as long as I'm trying to
get there, I just continue to get weaker and weaker and weaker
and weaker and what I need to do. These are the images that
go through my head when I'm sitting still. As I need to sink to the
bottom and I need to take the deepest breath that I've ever
taken. I need to realize that God in
His sovereignty has everything. And if the sea represents this
world and this life that I live and all the garbage that I'm
having to deal with and the stress and the good times and the bad
times and everything else, just sit there and quit trying. Drown
that we might quit trying to serve ourselves in righteousness
and that we would rest completely in the righteousness of God and
His power. And that is the hardest. It's counterintuitive, isn't
it? It's like a buddy of mine when he was in pilot school saying
how when your instructor would put the plane into a tailspin,
you know, and it's doing like this. He said, it's counterintuitive. You're pulling up, you're pulling
up, you're pulling up and it's spinning harder. He said, you push into
the spin, you push into the ground and it will level itself out.
That's why I've never done that, because I probably would kill
myself accidentally. It's counterintuitive to let
go of the reins. It's counterintuitive to let
go of the steering wheel. It's counterintuitive. Beloved, we are not in charge
of our redemption. So why do we work so hard sometimes
as believers to try to take back the reins? What does that prove for us?
It proves we're fleshly. The tree of life is life. And what would we do if we had
the tree of life? We would pluck its fruit, wouldn't eat it, and
I would put it under hydroponic conditions and try to replicate
it. And I'd try to give trees to everybody, you see. We're
gonna have a whole forest of life, not just a tree. And that's
what I would do. We'd capitalize on it. Beloved,
it's done. It's a finished work. Jesus Christ
is our resting place. Sit still and breathe deeply
in the grace of God. And my metaphors, my examples,
they're not really helpful. It's just my thoughts. I'm crazy.
I'm just crazy. What matters is what the Scripture
teaches us. The man and his wife were naked. They had nothing. They were vulnerable. But they were not ashamed. They
needed nothing. They didn't need clothes. They
didn't need protection. from anything. They had life
with God, with them, in the center of all things. Rest in that. Let's pray. Father, only you can make a simple
resting place out of all of our thoughts. Only you can bring
the chaos of our imagination to the center of Christ. Lord, you alone can rest our
souls. You alone can give us the peace that we need in our
minds. And Father, this world is upside down and it has been
upside down since the very beginning. Since the very beginning. But Lord, that is our perspective.
It's not upside down. It's not backwards. It's not
out of control. It is completely in your control.
And you've established all the purposes and all the means through
every condition that you have desired perfectly without changing
one way. to bring about the redemption
of your people, Lord. And we stand here today not because
we have come and found You and dug through all the thoughts
of our hearts and world to come to discover who You are, but
Lord, because You have grabbed us out of darkness and You have
presented us to Yourself in great splendor and glory with all the
light of the revelation of Christ. And You have given us peace in
our heart by Your Spirit to know that rest is only in Him. But
Lord, O Lord, You know us. We're frail and we're weak, and
we try so hard to establish things to be in order. We try so hard
to bring about conditions that would make us at peace. But Lord,
we know that You are the only peace giver. So if nothing more,
Father, help us this day that we may encourage one another
in this peace. that we may surely be able to say that things are
well with our soul because Christ has been raised from the dead.
And that in His life, we find our greatest intimacy, and our
greatest purpose, and our greatest peace. In Jesus' name, Amen.