February 9 Sermon: Family Foundations

Consider these questions from this message from Genesis 2:4-25:

1. How does the concept of God's intimate involvement in creation challenge the idea of a distant and uninvolved deity?

2. What does the covenant of works in the garden of Eden reveal about God's relationship with humanity and the nature of obedience?

3. How does the establishment of marriage and sexual morality in Genesis reflect the nature of God and provide a foundation for human flourishing?

Transcript:

Why? I think every toddler has a phase in their development where that is the number one word coming out of their mouth. Even when you give the answer they may still ask why again. At some point I think every parent has made the statement whether with a toddler or with even their teenage children where they say the phrase “Because I said so”. Sometimes, you just need to go there, right? If ever there was someone who could say “Because I said so” and have it be the best possible answer, it would be God. His word is truth. His word is absolute but at the same time his commands for us are not just arbitrary or out of nowhere. The commands in holy scripture that God gives to us have a deep rooting in his very nature. They have a root in how he intended his creation to be.

‌As I’ve shared several times before when I travel back and forth for hospital visits I like to find good ways to redeem that time. I like to listen to theology podcasts or find books that are on my reading list that are available as audio books which becomes easier and easier to do as the internet and smart phones have made audio books a much more common thing. Well, recently, I found something that was available that I remembered hearing about as a child and so I found them and put them on my phone so that on my next solo journey in my car I could receive the finest mental stimulation from the studious content. Actually, it wasn’t anything like that at all. It was the BBC Radio Drama performances of the original Star Wars Trilogy. It was a fun listen because obviously without the screen in front of you they have to describe things that are happening. The story telling needs to be done in such a way as to produce a strong mental image for you. It was a fun relaxing listen but at one point something stood out to me because I was listening and not watching. I had noticed it before in the movie but it stuck with me because it was audio and because I was alone in the car thinking about what I had heard. Young Luke Skywalker asks Jedi Master Yoda a question about the nature of what is being taught and how he can use his powers. The response of Yoda is what got my brain going. He said “There is no why”. There is no why? What a terrible statement. He was asking about questions that matter and the best that his master could give him was that there is no why?

‌By God’s grace may we never be a people who answer the deep, heart-felt questions of people with there is no why. The commands of God are not subjective or random. They are a reflection of who he is and how he designed us to be.

‌That is why it is so important that we end up in the passage that we are in this morning. As I have said our series through the first eleven chapters of Genesis we are calling Foundations because Genesis establishes where we came from and why the world is in the condition it is in.

‌We come to our second week in Genesis and we again are coming to a pretty big chunk of text. Our goal is to see the big picture and understand who God is and who he made us to be.

‌From the text we are going to find three main points.

‌The first is that God is intimately involved in his creation. In Genesis 1 we see God creating but it is from a distance. I don’t know about you but I imagine that story from an aerial view but this perspective on creation gets us down on the ground and seeing things from a different angle and we see just how involved God is with his creation.

‌Secondly, we see that God setting boundaries for his creation. There are two trees in the garden one brings life eternal and the other will bring death into the world.

‌Lastly, we see that God establishes the foundation for the family and human flourishing. There is a way that God has designed us and in this he lets us know not only how we are to live but he reveals his nature to us.

‌And so we land in this important passage right where we left off the last time we were in Genesis. We read that God has established that his creation is not only good but it is very good. He created in six days and rested on the seventh. Now we are going to see just how intimately God is involved with his creation.

‌‌We start out with a phrase here that we are going to see a few different times in the book of Genesis. These are the generations. It is another way of saying here is the history and it is used in Genesis to introduce the next part of the story. We are getting more details than what we saw in the first part of Genesis. Like I said I always imagine the first chapter as a aerial view where we are watching from space and then we get in a little close and a little closer but it is always more of an above the action type of view. Here we are zoomed all the way in. It feels more like we are on the ground. Walking around and exploring what god has created and we are getting to know this creation in a new way.

‌This is what we are meant to feel. This is not a separate account of creation. This isn’t something different. It is to let us know the details and to better understand the nature of God.

‌Right away we see that this happened early on in the creation. Things were just starting to come together. This is a detailed account of what happened on the sixth day of the creation week. The idea is that the whole creation is new and notice that it is God who causes all of this to happen. We are seeing an intimate image of God. He is more than just a powerful cosmic being who speaks and the universe comes to be. He is a God who is in control of his creation. We are given a few different images of God here and the firs tone that we see is that he is a potter and sculptor. He does not just conceive of the creature made in his image in his mind. He gets dirty and is near to his creation. He formed us. He formed the ones he made in his very own image with the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into us. That is an unbelievably intimate account of how we came to be. The eternal, almighty Lord of heaven and earth stooped down and formed us and breathed life into us. With that single breath the dust of the ground came to be what we are. All of the complexities of human life were breathed into us by almighty God. What a contrast to the pagan ideas of how life came about. Random chance and life springing forth from things that did not have life within them. God is showing his loving creation to us. We matter. Human life matters and in that we get a big answer to one of the why questions that come at us. Why does God tell us in the 6th commandment that murder is wrong? Because God is life. He is the creative force behind it and at the base level of his very nature he is life. So we don’t play God and take life. He is God and he is the one who establishes the order for his creation.

‌And we see that a part of that is that he is not only a skillful potter and sculpture. We are given another description of God as a nurturing gardener. He plants a garden in Eden as a place for the one made in his image to thrive. We see that all of the vegetation is pleasant not only to our eyes but he provides for his creation with food. We also see a glimpse of the future because among that vegetation there are two trees. One we always seem to remember because it’s the source of our problems but the other I think we tend to forget is there in the garden too. It’s the tree of life and we are meant to understand that God is loving creator who is close to his people and provides for them.

‌Before we move on to our next point I want to make sure to address a question that a lot of people have about the garden of Eden and the next part of our passage for today helps us with that.

‌‌We wonder where the garden of Eden was and we try to pinpoint its location with the information that we get in these verses. There are some familiar river names in there and so we assume that the location of the garden is close to where we have those today. The truth is that we can’t pinpoint the location because of an event that we will see in just a few chapters in Genesis. The global flood was a complete upheaval of the way the earth would have looked. Chances are that after the flood Noah and his family renamed the rivers after names they were already familiar with. Perhaps the Garden of Eden was in the middle east where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are but with the complete change that would have come from the flood there is no way to know.

‌And so we have seen that God is intimately involved in his creation and that he establishes order. And now we are going to see what the initial expectation of his creation was there in the garden.

‌‌The man created in the image of God is placed in the garden and notice that this is not just for him to sit and enjoy the good creation God has given him. Eden was not a perpetual vacation for Adam. He was to work and keep the garden but it is important to understand that this was not work like we know it. Before the fall work was not a burden. We will see that is a result of the curse next week when we are in Genesis 3.

‌What we see most importantly here though in this section is that God establishes a condition on which humanity could remain in the garden. In Reformed theology we operate in covenants. We see two distinct types of covenants that God makes with humans. There are covenants of works where people remain in the covenant by keeping the conditions themselves. Then in scripture we see covenants of grace where we are kept in the covenant by the work of God. We see here a covenant of works where there is a condition put on the first humans where their staying in the garden is conditional on their obedience.

‌The question always comes up why does God put a condition on their staying in the garden? God was not trying to keep knowledge from humanity. Instead, they are given a choice. Will they trust God for what he has provided and will they trust that his nature is to bestow upon his creation all that they need or will they desire to be autonomous? Will they desire to be like God themselves? Humanity is free to be content with what an all-loving and gift giving God provides or they can rebel and trust that he isn’t enough. Once again, we learn so much about who God is from the provision he gives in the garden. His commands are not fickle or random. They reflect his nature.

‌And God is very clear. If they rebel there will be consequences. They will surely die. This did not mean that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a poison that would strike him down immediately. The form of the word die here in the original language could easily be rendered as in dying you shall die. To eat of it would not mean instantaneous death but it would mean that they would live in a state where they would eventually die. This was the condition on which humanity would remain in the garden, by keeping this covenant of works.

‌What is important is that we understand that God is not only creator but in his holiness and because of his nature he is a good law giver and has the authority to establish boundaries and limits for his creation. We see this more clearly as we come to the last part of this chapter and we see that God establishes the standard for marriage and sexual morality.

‌As God surveys his very good creation he sees that something that isn’t finished. in all of the creation story this is the first instance where we read that something in not good. While God has filled the earth with many creatures and he gave the man dominion over them to the point that he even names them, they aren’t a suitable helper for him. The word helper can be problematic for us because it seems as though the man needs someone to help him. We have the idea of a servant or someone inferior but that isn’t the idea being put forward here. The idea is that he doesn’t have someone to compliment him. He has no mate appropriate to him and there is no way to procreate. There is no implied inferiority here because the word used in the original language has a sense of being and ally. That what God sees that the man is missing is one who works together with him but is yet different than him. They are different but they are fit for each other. We often bemoan the conflict that comes about from the differences between men and women but the Bible lets us know that God designed us to be different so that we are a compliment to each other. Now, in a fallen world that can lead to problems but the ultimate design is for our good and we can still see that in the ways in which our relationships make our families work. This is a huge part of the foundation that God put forward as he established the foundation of the family.

‌We see even deeper details about the design of God as the last part of this text concludes.

‌​We see how God created the woman and we see that this is to be the mate that the man has. The covenant of marriage is designed to be between one man and one woman for life. God created with not only a design for procreation but for men and women to be different to compliment one another. This is more than just God making a suggestion it is a design that shows his very nature as a God who creates good things and establishes things for our good and his glory. And it even goes deeper than that. We look to the future and it is also seen in the New Testament as a picture of Christ and the church. God gives Adam a bride and unites them together as one. The bride of Christ is the church and she is giving to him and it is our union with Christ that ensures our salvation because he is faithful to us we are one with him.

‌This is why we value marriage so highly. It reflects the nature of God. It points to salvation in Christ. It also shows us that sexual immorality is more than just the breaking of some random rules given by God. It shows that sexual immorality of all kinds is rebellion against the very nature of God. This applies to all areas of sexual immorality. We naturally go to this passage for understanding that homosexuality is sinful and rightly so. It stands in contrast to how God complimented his creation and designed them for one another. Homosexuality is sin because it stands in contrast to how God designed marriage but that same design also shows us why all types of sexual immorality are sin. Adultery is sin because it breaks the one flesh design that God has for his creation. Marriage is designed for one man and one woman for life and it is rebellion against the very nature of God to go outside of that good design that God has ordained. Fornication goes against the nature of God in that it doesn’t trust that God has designed the relationship to exist within the parameters that he has ordained. When we are confronted with the hard question of why something is a sin we can answer because God said so and it is a correct answer but we do well to understand why God has ordained these things as sinful. It is because at the core they are rebellious against his holiness and the very nature that he put in place for his creation.

‌What have we seen today? That God is intimately involved in his creation. He also sets boundaries for his creation. We also have seen that the character and nature of God provides us with the boundaries that establish the foundations of the family and provide for human flourishing.

‌And so as we step come to the end of this passage today we have two very serious challenges as we step out into the world this week.

‌First be aware of the provision that God has provided in your life. We have seen that God is not distant. He didn’t wind up his creation and let it go to see where it would end up.

Genesis 2 zooms in on the creation story and shows us his love for us. We see his good gifts in our families, in his providing food and homes for us, he shows his provision in our vocations and in our schools. These are the visible gifts that we see but don’t forget his other important provisions for us. He gives us his law so that we have boundaries and understand his holiness and how we can live a life in line with his will for our lives. He also has given us the greatest provision of all, his gospel. The truth that through faith in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus for us we are forgiven of our sins and we have a sure promise that will be provided for with the gift of the eternal life. Dwelling on the gifts God has given us drives us to see the mercy and grace of God on display in our lives.

‌And secondly, our challenge is to look at our lives and ask ourselves whether we value what God values. We have a God who gives us his good law and that law is not just a list of rules that come out of nowhere. When we ask the question why about the commands of God we can go to his nature and see that they reflect his very nature. Each and every day we go out into a world that is hostile to the law of God and because of that we see that the world is hostile not only to rules but to the very nature of a good, loving, and gracious God. Temptation is everywhere we turn and so we need to look at what we value and see if what we love and what we desire is in line with the nature of God or if it is shaped by the desires of the world that run contrary to God.

‌The book of Genesis shows us so much about God and so much about his love for his creation and so we step out into that creation this week to love and serve God by desiring to conform our lives to his word and in doing so showing the world the very nature of the God who has saved us by his grace.