[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church Podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] and now the end is near so I face the final curtain my friends I say it clear I'll state my case of which I'm certain I've lived a life that's full I've travelled each and every highway and more, much more than this I did it my way do you know regrets I've had a few but then again too few to mention I did what I had to do and saw it through without exception I planned each charter course each careful step along the byway and much more than this I did it my way yes, there were times I'm sure you knew When I bit off more than I could chew but through it all when there were doubts I ate it up I spit it out I faced it all I stood tall and did it my way for what is man?
[00:01:14] What has he got if not himself Then he has naught to say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels the record shows I took the blows and did it my way that is a song I'm sure you know. I wasn't going to sing it.
[00:01:35] I wouldn't do it justice. I'm sure that you've heard those words before. My famous. By the recording of Frank Sinatra.
[00:01:42] My Way, which encapsulates a lot of current culture, doesn't encapsulates the whole.
[00:01:49] Be who you are, express your feelings, be authentic to yourself, expressing who you are inside. That's current culture. But also in the sense of don't bow to anyone else.
[00:02:05] You've got to make your own way in our culture, you've got to make your own way, you've got to be bold and be enthusiastic and break new grounds.
[00:02:17] That's the thing that our culture says that we should do.
[00:02:21] And so we look to those people, you know, those people that we celebrate in culture are those. Aren't they? They're the kind of entrepreneurial leaders that do new things, that aren't timid, but they speak their mind all the time.
[00:02:37] Do you know, they're divisive, aren't they?
[00:02:40] They divide culture. They're like Marmite people, aren't they?
[00:02:45] But to the extent of, you know, these people are so bold, we've encouraged it so much that the only way to do it now is to be antagonistic, to say things that other people don't like in order to create a following do you know? And we look at these leaders. These leaders are celebrated in culture despite their moral failures.
[00:03:08] We kind of gloss over that. That's not important.
[00:03:11] It's important that they're doing things their way.
[00:03:15] And that's what we look up to.
[00:03:17] But is this God's will for us?
[00:03:21] Is this who God wants us to be? Is it the kind of person that you aim to be?
[00:03:29] Now we've started our new series going through the whole Bible. There we go. So we're going through it all, but we're going through to look at the big story of the whole Bible, how the narrative of the whole Bible holds together. And last, last week I looked at Genesis 1. We looked at Genesis 1, the creation of the universe by God. We looked at how God is the sovereign king. He is the one that creates the world. He is the one in charge. And he creates kingdoms and fills them with life in these kingdoms. So the sun, moon and stars are the rulers of the light.
[00:04:07] And then we get the sea and the sky and the fish and the birds are those that populate these kingdoms and fill them. And then we had the animals and humans who are given the land to fill. But humans specifically are given this rulership, this dominion over the earth to care, nurture cultivate the earth as God would in God's place.
[00:04:35] And we are sort of co creating, we've got continuing God's creation command and we get to fulfill that on Earth.
[00:04:43] And this week we're going to have a look at Genesis 2 and 3. We're going to zero in on the beginnings of humanity specifically.
[00:04:52] It's quite a big passage. I'm going to jump about a little bit. I'll put it up on the screen, but follow through if you've got your Bibles.
[00:05:00] And I'm going to really zero in.
[00:05:03] You know, there's so much that could be said about Genesis 2 and 3, but I'm going to really zero in. I want to talk about the relationship between, between humanity and God. And I think this story could be told by talking about three things.
[00:05:18] Talking about rivers, talking about trees, and talking about clothing.
[00:05:25] And you go, really?
[00:05:27] We give it a go. We give it a go. Okay, so let me read out some Genesis 2, 5, 2 8.
[00:05:36] It says now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground. But streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living being.
[00:06:01] Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the eastern Eden and there he put a man he had formed.
[00:06:08] And let me just jump down to verse 10 and I'll come back to nine later. It says a river watering the garden flowed from Eden and there it was, there it separated into four headwaters.
[00:06:22] So we start here with a kind of retelling of the story from the perspective of mankind. And it says no plant life has sprung up, right? So there's no life around, you know, the land is bare. And why? Because there was no water.
[00:06:42] And so God creates springs of wells that come up, springs of water that come up from the ground to water the ground.
[00:06:51] And what happens? Life appears.
[00:06:54] This river, this spring is a sense of God's life giving power.
[00:07:00] And this life breaks out.
[00:07:04] It's in a kind of relationship with what God, the design that God had put in the ground, you know, scattered across the ground. So the water comes out and then life appears because it's co creating with God, it's continuing on this journey.
[00:07:21] I don't know if you're a green fingered person, you might have seeds in a shed somewhere. Is there many green fingered people? Do you know what I'm talking about? Green fingered people?
[00:07:33] Some, there's some.
[00:07:35] It's a kind of English pastime I think, isn't it?
[00:07:38] But yeah, you can have seeds in the. You buy little packets of seeds, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. And you know, you might forget about them. They're in a shed, you know, you've not planted it, but you can come back to them years later and get these seeds many years later and plant them in the grounds. And then suddenly a bit of sun and some water specifically and they germinate and you've got life out of these seeds.
[00:08:04] Do you know the oldest seeds that has successfully been germinated?
[00:08:11] The oldest seed that has successfully been germinated is this, the Judean date palm.
[00:08:18] These seeds were excavated from Herod the Great's palace when they were excavating that in the Middle East.
[00:08:28] Palace near the Dead Sea. And this is from excavation. These seas were dated to 2000 years old.
[00:08:35] 2000 years old. And they planted it, watered it, and that's one of the trees that's come from it. But even older than that was a team that found some plants, pulp, fruit pulp.
[00:08:53] They had some seeds as well that were buried by ancient squirrels in the ground in The Siberian, you know, tundra frost out there in tunnels under the ground.
[00:09:04] And they found this, when they found it, they managed to create, get a plant from this fruit pulp and they dated this fruit pulp to 32,000 years old.
[00:09:20] Isn't that amazing how the design and imprint of life that God has put just needs some of his life giving water.
[00:09:30] And this river is a symbol in the Garden of Eden, the start of creation. This river is a symbol of God's providence. It's his goodness flowing out to creation and humanity. And we see that all the way through the Bible. This is a story that starts here in Genesis and continues through, right? So we see rivers. We see if you read through Psalms that many of the psalmists, the authors, they write about how life, how water is life giving, how water is refreshing to the soul, that they sit down by quiet waters and they feel the presence of God.
[00:10:10] There's a prophet, the prophet Ezekiel, and he's writing in a time when God's people, Israel had been exiled, they'd rebelled against God, they were exiled. They were in a foreign land that had been conquered by someone else. And he describes this vision of the temple of God, the presence of God. And out from this temple, this water flows from underneath it. And as the water flows and grows, he sees trees of all kinds growing to the banks, life bringing out where they were in a dead land, a dead experience.
[00:10:46] And the water continues down into the a sea or a lake that is salt marsh that is all dead, there's no life in it. And it turns it into fresh water.
[00:11:00] And they find fish appear and life appear in it. And then we get all the way to the end of the story. We get to Revelation and this amazing picture, Revelation 21 of the End of times when we see of heaven come down and God's throne room. God's a throne upon the earth and out comes from it the river of the water of life.
[00:11:22] That's the expression, flowing out from the throne of God.
[00:11:28] So that's the story, that's the story of rivers in there, the story that God creates. This river comes out and life appears. And Adam and Eve get to stay in this garden that God has created. And Feasts get to have anything that they need. Everything that they need is provided for them through this river.
[00:11:51] But then let's start to turn to the trees. I want to turn to trees. And I'm just going to jump back to verse 8 and 9 and then onwards to 15 and 17.
[00:12:02] So it said now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden. And there he put the man he had formed. And it goes on. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground. Trees that were pleasing to the eye and, and good for food. And in the middle of the garden with tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And let me jump down to verse 15, says the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat it, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.
[00:12:44] So this garden has got everything. It's got peace, it's got harmony, everything that Adam and Eve needed. But they could not eat of this one particular tree.
[00:12:57] And our question, my question when I come to it is why? What's this tree doing there?
[00:13:03] And what's this role? Why is it there?
[00:13:06] What does it represent?
[00:13:08] And firstly, let's say, I think the stories tell us that this is a tree, a chance of obedience.
[00:13:15] This is an opportunity to trust God and believe that he has our goodness at heart, that he knows right and wrong.
[00:13:28] Because you say you take the tree out the garden and what opportunity does Adam and Eve have to trust God and to put him first over their own desires?
[00:13:40] And maybe that's a philosophical question that better people than I could answer in more fuller things, but we see this tree and we see, hey, this is an opportunity to say, not my will, but your will, God, you know what you're talking about. So I'm going to follow you and not do that thing.
[00:14:00] And when we look through the Bible, we see loads and loads of examples of this happening. Loads of loads of examples of people having to choose to obey God and not follow what they want to do and when they do it, in this opportunity, this chance to action, to take action, you know, that faith isn't a head thing, it's an action thing.
[00:14:26] And as choosing and deciding to take an action, I'm not going to do that thing. I'm going to walk away from it.
[00:14:33] That's where faith matures.
[00:14:36] That's where trust and obedience in God matures.
[00:14:41] And maybe we might take the thing of saying, hey, is it morally wrong for God to test Adam and Eve?
[00:14:49] Do you know, have you ever asked that question?
[00:14:51] Like, if God didn't put the tree in the garden, then Adam and Eve wouldn't have sinned and we'd all be right. Right.
[00:14:59] But there's a difference between, hey, maybe test and tempt.
[00:15:04] In James, the Book of James in the New Testament, James says, when tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire. Enticed. God's never whispering, go on, have a bite.
[00:15:24] That wasn't his role.
[00:15:26] That's nothing in his character.
[00:15:29] Someone else was doing that. Right.
[00:15:33] And the presence of a test is not the presence of God trying to encourage us to sin, because he never does that.
[00:15:43] But the presence of a test is an opportunity to. To cultivate our obedience in God.
[00:15:51] But we know the story. This tree of obedience becomes something else. Adam and Eve didn't choose to trust God. The story continues in Genesis 3. Let me jump there and read a few verses.
[00:16:04] It says now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden?
[00:16:15] And the woman said to the serpents, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden. But God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not touch it or you will die.
[00:16:28] You will certainly die. The serpent said, sorry, you will not certainly die. The serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from it. Good and evil.
[00:16:42] And when woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, and she took it and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
[00:16:57] And this is the tragedy, isn't it, in the start of the story, that this tree of obedience becomes a tree of rebellion from the sovereign rule of gods?
[00:17:07] It's not I did it God's way, but it is I did it my way.
[00:17:12] And Adam and Eve decided that they had moral authority or moral autonomy that we're not going to trust. What God decides what's right and wrong. We're going to decide what's right and wrong ourselves, independent of God. So that tree of obedience becomes a tree of rebellion, becomes a tree of consequences.
[00:17:34] Adam and Eve suffer the curse and the punishment of their rebellion from God.
[00:17:41] Both of their labors become painful.
[00:17:46] Eve's in the labor of childbirth, Adam's in the labor of cultivating food from the Soil and their relationships with each other and with God suffer people. We go through the Bible and people do not live in harmony. They do not live in openness and authenticity to one another.
[00:18:07] They forever in a power struggle with one another, wanting to get one up from one another. Not only that, they live estranged from God.
[00:18:17] They're no longer allowed to walk with God in the call of the day in the Garden of Eden, but they're now outside of the garden, having to come through different ways to God.
[00:18:30] And finally, they suffer the curse of death.
[00:18:33] And I'm not going to say that Adam and Eve were going to live forever because only God is eternal.
[00:18:39] But forevermore, life ends prematurely.
[00:18:43] It ends before it should do.
[00:18:47] And we suffer that life is cut short.
[00:18:51] So we got rivers, we've got trees.
[00:18:55] But let me finish by talking about the story from the point of clothing.
[00:19:00] Okay, you're going. Ian, what are you on about?
[00:19:05] Genesis 3, verse 7, it says, Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked. And so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
[00:19:19] Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said, where are you?
[00:19:34] And he answered and said, I heard you in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.
[00:19:40] And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
[00:19:47] And the man said, the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.
[00:19:54] And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate it.
[00:20:03] Now, just before this verse, we find that Adam and Eve walked around and they were naked and they were unashamed.
[00:20:12] There was no problem with them being naked. But after eating the fruits, they realized they were naked and sought to provide coverings for themselves. And we have to ask the question, what happens?
[00:20:27] Did it suddenly just get a bit chilly?
[00:20:31] Was there a cool easterly wind that blew in? And I thought, oh, it's got a bit chilly in here.
[00:20:38] It's maybe not the weather, it's the atmosphere that's got a bit frosty, right?
[00:20:45] And so previously, in verse 24, it said, they were naked and they felt no shame.
[00:20:53] And shame here is not over. I don't think about the physical bodies here. We See this connectedness between the physical reality and the spiritual sort of realization of spiritual connectedness with what happens physically.
[00:21:10] I like to say the author of Genesis traditionally is known as Moses, who wrote the first five books of the Bible.
[00:21:19] Moses is not living in a culture when he writes this or to the culture around that. Nudity is fine. He's not trying to promote a culture of nudity.
[00:21:29] Nakedness was shameful in the culture.
[00:21:33] Right to be uncovered in the culture. And you read this through Genesis and into the stories of the people of God together. Nakedness before one another and before God in the temple was shameful. You can't do that. You're supposed to be covered up.
[00:21:50] So previously they didn't need any covering. Why? Because they didn't have anything to cover up. Not by their physical bodies, but because they didn't have any guilt or shame to cover up.
[00:22:06] They hadn't done anything wrong.
[00:22:09] They walked in the garden with God freely.
[00:22:13] And yet the first thing that they did after eating the fruit was to go, I need to cover myselves and to cover myself from one another and from God.
[00:22:24] They were hiding in the garden.
[00:22:28] And connected with that feeling of guilt and shame was that buck passing, isn't it, that we see?
[00:22:36] Adam tries to blame both Eve and God.
[00:22:42] Eve did it, the woman you gave me.
[00:22:47] And then Eve says, the serpent did it. It was the serpent's fool.
[00:22:53] And despite claiming, I did it my way, despite saying, I want the rights to choose what's right and wrong, when they did it, when they chose and they experienced a consequence of it, what did they try and do? Pass it on to someone else?
[00:23:11] I did it my way. Apart from when it goes wrong, I'm going to shove it somewhere else, someone else's fault.
[00:23:19] But while they try to distance themselves from God, God draws close to them.
[00:23:27] He is the one that went and sought them out.
[00:23:32] He comes to them, says, where are you?
[00:23:37] Like it's possible to hide from God, says, where are you?
[00:23:43] What are you up to?
[00:23:45] What are you doing?
[00:23:47] And yeah, there's consequences.
[00:23:50] We know there's consequences for things that we get wrong.
[00:23:53] But what did God do?
[00:23:56] It says verse 21, says, the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and he clothed them.
[00:24:05] Adam and Eve did not go and ask for forgiveness.
[00:24:09] They didn't apologize in any way.
[00:24:13] Neither is it God's. Does you know, God have to forgive them?
[00:24:20] It's not mandatory that God has to. He's not required to.
[00:24:25] But what he does is an expression of love. And so rather than Adam and Eve's really dismal attempts to cover themselves with some leaves that surely going to just disintegrate in a short amount of time.
[00:24:39] God gives them a proper covering for themselves.
[00:24:45] He expresses his grace to them.
[00:24:49] And this is their story. This is the story of Genesis 2 and 3. And this is not only their story, it's our story.
[00:24:58] We see the beginning of humanity and the provision of God, his grace, his goodness expressed through the rivers. This is everything that you need.
[00:25:09] It is from me, I have given it to you.
[00:25:12] You can live in peace and harmony, but here's this tree because I want you to obey, to trust me, that I know what I'm doing.
[00:25:23] And we see through creation, we see through the Bible, this life giving, this provision of God all the time. But this question to say, I want you to choose me, not another way.
[00:25:40] And humanity tries to choose their own way, but we see also the covering, that covering of clothing over the guilt and shame.
[00:25:52] And so we recognize that this is our story, isn't it?
[00:25:57] Like life is a gift. It's not a riot. It's been provided for God for us to enjoy, to enjoy creation, to enjoy humanity, to enjoy one another in relationships. We get to experience all of creation, all of the food and the delights that it offers.
[00:26:15] To cultivate the ground, to make houses, to make buildings, to express ourselves through art and creativity.
[00:26:24] That's something that God has put on us and we get to enjoy that.
[00:26:29] But we recognize that we have also all sinned.
[00:26:33] We are in Adam.
[00:26:36] We have all rebelled and rebelled from God, just as Adam and Eve done. We've wrestled that right to autonomy, that right to choose good and evil.
[00:26:47] And so we all live under that same curse.
[00:26:50] Do you know, life is hard, labor is hard, it's painful.
[00:26:59] And we all suffer death and return to the ground.
[00:27:04] But the story of the Bible is that it doesn't just stay there.
[00:27:09] The story of the Bible continues through the story of the Bible says that hey, that curse upon us doesn't stay because God brings his grace into it.
[00:27:23] And so the curse and the punishment is exchanged for blessing.
[00:27:30] We get to go back to the river again.
[00:27:33] We get to go and receive from it.
[00:27:36] Our rebellion from a tree at the place of a tree is exchanged for obedience for someone else that obeyed God perfectly and made that decision on a tree, on a cross.
[00:27:55] And our shame and our guilt gets exchanged.
[00:28:01] We get righteousness, we get clothed with righteousness.
[00:28:07] That's the story of the Bible.
[00:28:10] And it is so overwhelmingly, it's just amazing who am I?
[00:28:19] Who am I that God might love me, that Jesus Christ might go in my place, do all the things right, obey perfectly, take my sin and and my shame and nail it to the cross once and for all. Amen. How Hallelujah.
[00:28:38] How amazing is that that the story doesn't finish in Genesis 3, that Jesus comes and does everything, even though man, through the whole Bible does it wrong again and again and again and again. That's the cycle. That's the cycle again and again.
[00:28:56] But Jesus comes and says no more.
[00:29:00] This is the plan. This is the plan. It is the plan from the beginning. We see it in Genesis 3. This is the plan that I would come and take your place and that you would get to. We experience all of the blessing of God in the future.
[00:29:18] Amen. Let's stand. The worship team would like to come back. It.
