Nimrod and Nebuchadnezzar make names for themselves by building with baked bricks. Jesus invites us to become living stones built into a building that actually connects heaven and earth, and will last for eternity. 

Don't be a Nimrod. 

Noah's Ark is a re-creation story; and an Exodus story — where the ark, then the dove, hover above the waters as God acts to judge and save. 

The story of the Nephilim starts a thread of Sons of God, and giant enemies in league with the serpent, who oppose God's plans for fruitfulness. The Old Testament sets us up to expect a serpent-killing son of God who'll defeat this opposition and marry heaven and earth together. 

Cain and Abel both make bloody sacrifices at an eastern gate, hoping to find their way back to life with God. Jesus enters an eastern gate to lead the way back to Eden like life with God forever. 

Adam and Eve's fall in the Garden of Eden becomes a pattern repeated by humans everywhere. The hope of a seed who'll crush the serpent flows through Isaiah's promise of a 'branch of Jesse', to Jesus, who is arrested in a garden — where people come wielding tree-clubs — crowned in thorns, and nailed to a tree. It's treason against the tree-son; who becomes a new tree of Life and a new tree of knowledge of good and evil for us. 

Genesis 2 introduces us to God's heaven on earth place, the Garden in Eden, and God's earthlings — his image bearing gardeners. 

The story of the origins of the world is the beginning of the Bible's big story about God bringing the heavens and earth together through his image bearing son Jesus. This big story becomes an origin story that shapes how we understand who we are and what fruitful life in the world looks like.

In the Great Commission, Jesus — who now has all authority in heaven and on earth — sends his disciples to bring heaven with them to the ends of the earth as we join his kingdom of life, teaching and obeying all he commands.

In his words on the cross, Jesus evokes not just the cry of Israel's Messiah — David — as he suffered — but the whole of Psalm 22, as he fulfils its picture of God's kingdom being restored from.