ARCC Sermons

As the creation narrative comes to a close our Good Father has set the stage for a redemption that will display the glory due His name. As the garden is officially closed off with a cherubim guarding with a sword on all sides. Adam and Eve, newly clothed by the Father, will set off on a journey of faith in waiting for the TRUE Light of the World who would show us the Way to Life everlasting.

We have a Good Father!

We have a Good Father.

The world did now know God through wisdom and it pleases God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. Our first parents fell because they believed the lie that more “wisdom” would make them like God. In the process they were puffed up in their own eyes and God was belittled. In the end they worshipped the created thing rather than the creator and their eyes were opened not to see themselves as more like God, but to the shame of their nakedness.

In this section the author describes God’s explanation of the relationship into which Adam will enter into with the woman who has yet to be named. We call this “one flesh” union marriage. This ends with the crescendo of creation: the man and the woman both naked and unashamed. God was showing Adam that in loving union with another there was to be found unparalleled joy and freedom.

There is something profound to consider that in the garden of Eden “very good” and “not good” were realities taking place at the same time. This paints an incredible picture of the fact that “very good” could be used to describe the things around us and yet our deepest longing not be satisfied. It seems that we as sinful humans will do just about anything to avoid addressing this issue. God addresses this for Adam, giving incredible insight along the way, into the greater reality to come that would ultimately fulfill this deep longing in our hearts.

What if Adam could speak to us today? What if he, as the one through whom sin entered the world, could give us some insight that could help us not fall into the same trap that he fell into? In a very real sense, Jesus, the second Adam, does this very thing. If we listen closely, Jesus speaks in His day as One who was there in those days. Jesus, as the One through whom righteousness would enter the world, speaks the heart and wisdom of God to those bound up in Adam’s failure.

This is the beginning of mankind’s existence in the world God created. As the crowning achievement of God’s creation, how would this omnipotent creator relate to man? In our day there are those who do not believe in a creator. They believe all that we see and know is the result of time and chance. Others believe there must be a “higher power” who created it all but is like an absentee landlord—a creator who wound it up and turned it loose to see what would happen. Holy Scripture, however, describes Him not only as the sovereign creator and sustainer but as the One who is actively involved and personally concerned with all the affairs of man.

It should absolutely grab our attention that the day the Lord blesses and sets a part is the day that God rests from His work. It is a wondrous thing that God would want us to know that rest was a part of His created order. May we see the goodness of God for us in His mandate that we join Him in it. This section is written in such a way that we realize that the kind of rest that God has from His work is not simply the absence of work, but that which comes at the completion of it. How then are we to join honor Him in such a rest? Praise Him that the kind of rest that we enter that truly honors and glorifies Him comes through belief that His work is ultimately sufficient. Christ, whose work is finished, is our rest. By grace alone through faith alone we enter His rest!

Oh that we would live considering all that it means for us that we were created in the very image of God. The Imago Dei. How would encouraged and strengthened we would be to live life believing God! And yet, how humbled we would be so as to truly live life considering others as more significant than ourselves! May this truth forever and always dictate the way we view God and man…and ourselves. This week we will consider several of the implications for our life as creatures who share in the very nature of God. We will celebrate the fact that it was, is, and always will be God’s nature to rescue and redeem us, through Christ, from all the ways our sin has marred that image!