Genesis 2

^18a-b Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone…”

Last week forty-three of us spent spring break on a mission trip in Chicago. It was an absolutely amazing and powerful week. God moved mightily, the team was unified, and great work was done! It is always interesting to me to observe the community dynamics at play in a trip like this. You take a large group of people, almost all of whom attend the same church, and put them together in close quarters for a week and tell them to figure out how to do life and ministry together. In the case of last week, what happened was truly awesome. One team member commented that she expected to get along with everybody but did not know she would come to love everybody as she did. It was telling to me that one of her takeaways from that amazing week of ministry was the great work that God did in binding us all together. There is something profound about the experience of authentic family and community in the midst of our fractured age.

Our age is indeed fractured. Oddly enough, through the advent of social media, we are more connected than ever before and simultaneously more isolated. We have more contacts but less real relationships. We have more access to others but less deep and healthy friendships. Because of this, the book of Genesis, and, specifically, Genesis 2’s account of the creation of Adam is more timely than ever.

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Genesis 2

⁴ 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. ⁵ 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 had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—⁷ then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. ⁸ And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. ⁹ And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ¹⁰ A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. ¹⁵ The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. ¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

My wife and I love Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beautiful story, The Secret Garden. The Wikipedia article on the book offers a nice summary of the story.

…Mary Lennox is a sickly and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and make an effort to ignore the girl. She is cared for by servants, who allow her to become a spoiled, aggressive, and selfish child.

After a cholera epidemic kills her parents and the servants, Mary is discovered alive but alone in the empty house…[S]he is sent to Yorkshire, in England, to live with Archibald Craven, a wealthy uncle whom she has never met, at his isolated house, Misselthwaite Manor.

At first, Mary is as rude and sour as ever. She dislikes her new home, the people living in it, and most of all, the bleak moor on which it sits. However, a good-natured maid named Martha Sowerby tells Mary about the late Mrs. Craven, who would spend hours in a private walled garden growing roses. Mrs. Craven died after an accident in the garden, and the devastated Mr. Craven locked the garden and buried the key. Mary becomes interested in finding the secret garden herself, and her ill manners begin to soften as a result…

As Mary explores the gardens, her robin draws her attention to an area of disturbed soil. Here Mary finds the key to the locked garden and eventually the door to the garden itself. She asks Martha for garden tools, which Martha sends with Dickon, her 12-year-old brother. Mary and Dickon take a liking to each other, as Dickon has a kind way with animals and a good nature. Eager to absorb his gardening knowledge, Mary tells him about the secret garden.

One night, Mary hears the cries once more and decides to follow them through the house. She is startled when she finds a boy her age named Colin, who lives in a hidden bedroom. She soon discovers that they are cousins, Colin being the son of Mr. and Mrs. Craven, and that he suffers from an unspecified spinal problem which precludes him from walking and causes him to spend most of his time in bed. Mary visits him every day that week, distracting him from his troubles with stories of the moor, Dickon and his animals, and the secret garden. Mary finally confides that she has access to the secret garden, and Colin asks to see it. Colin is put into his wheelchair and brought outside into the secret garden. It is the first time he has been outdoors for years.

…Colin and Mary soon spend almost every day in the garden, sometimes with Dickon as company. The children and Ben conspire to keep Colin’s recovering health a secret from the other staff, so as to surprise his father, who is travelling abroad. As Colin’s health improves, his father sees a coinciding increase in spirits, culminating in a dream where his late wife calls to him from inside the garden. When he receives a letter from Mrs. Sowerby, he takes the opportunity finally to return home. He walks the outer garden wall in his wife’s memory, but hears voices inside, finds the door unlocked, and is shocked to see the garden in full bloom, and his son healthy, having just won a race against the other two children. The servants watch, stunned, as Mr. Craven and Colin walk back to the manor together.[1]

It is a profoundly biblical notion: a garden in which a death occurred is reduced to a wilderness. In time, the garden is restored and begins to be a place of life instead of a place of death. The weak are healed, the bitter are given joy, and the despondent are given hope. I could not help but think of The Secret Gardenin reading our text. We live between the two gardens: the first Eden that has been lost because of our sinfulness and the death it brings and the new Heaven and new Earth in which God will have His garden once again.

In The Secret Gardenthe garden is restored through the tenacity of Mary Lennox and her friends. But, of course, in reality, God’s garden is being and will be restored through the person and the work of Jesus Christ. It is important to understand the significance of the garden of Eden and what it tells us about who we were created to be and who we can become again in Christ Jesus the Lord.

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Genesis 2

¹ Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ² And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. ³ So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

I have long had the feeling that most Christians simply do not know what to do with the seventh day, the Sabbath, the day on which God rested from His labors and called us to do the same. I have both felt and seen this inner tension in Christians most of my life. Many of us have in fact grown up with a kind of schizophrenic legalism surrounding this day which leads us (a) to think of this day in terms of what we can and cannot do on it and (b) inevitably to feel inconsistent and unsure about our own behavior in light of this assumption. For instance, when I grew up it was not ok to mow your grass on Sunday but it was ok to go out to eat and pay somebody else to work on Sunday. It was considered bad form and inappropriate—maybe some of the hardliners would have called it sinful—if a man went to the office on Sunday, but not bad form or inappropriate if he watched a football game. This kind of inner conflict has followed me to this day. For instance, every now and then it turns out that I need a haircut and Sunday afternoon turns out to be the best day for it, or so I tell myself. If ever I get my haircut on a Sunday I feel deeply conflicted about it. Have I violated the Sabbath? But then I did it on Sunday and not Saturday, right? But how does thatwhole dynamic work? Is Sunday the Sabbath or is Saturday? Etc. etc. etc.

These are the kinds of inner dynamics and psychology that many of us who have grown up in church have dealt with when thinking about the Sabbath. But what if this is all profoundly wrong-headed. What if reducing the Sabbath to these kinds of legalisms misses the main point of the matter in spectacular ways? I would like to suggest that it does and that the account of the seventh day, the Sabbath, in Genesis actually provides us with a profound and powerful and rich picture of our great God and of what life with Him looks like!

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Genesis 1

^{24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26} Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.²⁸ And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. ³¹ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

For some years in South Georgia I taught a high school Bible class. I developed a habit in that class of asking the students to answer a question anonymously on paper. The question was this: “If you were in a boat and in the deep water beside you were your favorite pet as well as a man you did not know…and you could only pull one of them into the boat and the other would drown…and nobody would ever know about the one that drowned…which of the two would you save?” Time and again I was stunned by how many students answered, “I would save my pet.” I wonder what kind of responses we would get here in this sanctuary if I asked the same question on an anonymous form?

The problem, of course, is that these answers represent either a lack of awareness of the supreme value and dignity of human life, of its qualitative distinctiveness against the rest of creation, or a knowing disregard for it. For this reason, it is extremely important to know what scripture says about the nature of human life and its relationship to the rest of creation.

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Genesis 1

³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. ⁶ And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. ⁸ And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. ⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. ¹¹ And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. ¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. ¹⁷ And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. ²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” ²¹ So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

Somewhere around the year 1224, Francis of Assisi wrote his famous “Canticle of the Sun.” It reads:

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord! All praise is yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To you, alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms, and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance.

Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten the night. He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of you; through those who endure sickness and trial. Happy those who endure in peace, for by you, Most High, they will be crowned.

Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing your most holy will.

The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks, and serve him with great humility.[1]

Around 640 years later, in 1864, Folliott S. Pierpoint was so struck by the beauty of creation that he took up his pen and wrote these words that many of us will remember singing at some point in our lives:

For the beauty of the earth,

   For the beauty of the skies,

For the Love which from our birth

   Over and around us lies:

Christ, our God, to Thee we raise

This our Sacrifice of Praise.

For the beauty of each hour

   Of the day and of the night,

Hill and vale, and tree and flower,

   Sun and moon and stars of light:

Christ, our God, to Thee we raise

This our Sacrifice of Praise.[2]

It is striking to see how creation can move men and women to great praise! It is as if creation is a work of art that is so beautiful, so overwhelming, that it leads us to want to praise the artist who made it. Indeed, that is the right and biblical way to think of creation, and Genesis 1 bears this out in striking ways.

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Genesis 1

² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Genesis 1:2-3 is a fascinating text. It takes us back to the first movements of creation. It presents us with a primordial picture of pre-creation and then the first words of creation. It moves from the terrifying image of a watery deep, a black void, and then into the divine pronouncement of light. All of this is beautiful and awesome and soul-stirring!

Then we find the New Testament writers taking these very images and applying them to Jesus in a way that magnifies His person and work powerfully and provocatively. In doing so the New Testament writers show that these words do not deal only with the murky distant past but also with the nowand with our encounter with Jesus today.

Once again we see the abiding relevance and transformative power of the amazing book of Genesis. We, too, yearn for light in darkness and dare to ask if the words of these verses might be actualized again, here and now, in our lives. We therefore turn with great expectation to Genesis 1:2-3.

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Genesis 1

¹ In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Last Thursday night I missed a connecting flight in Atlanta, Georgia, and had to spend the night there and catch a different flight the next morning. The next morning I came down a little after 6:00 to grab some breakfast before the 6:30 shuttle. Just as I was sitting down with my plate the shuttle pulled up, so I quickly threw the plate away and went to get on. I took my seat and the driver said he would be back in a few minutes. There was just me and a young lady and an elderly Irish lady sitting in the van waiting for the driver to return.

I made the comment that perhaps I could have eaten my breakfast after all, given the wait, and this prompted the young lady to explain, with exasperation, that she had missed her flight. She then had some choice words about Delta that I will not repeat here. She was clearly agitated and irritated at the delay and had had quite a negative experience with the airline that day, at least to hear her tell it. It was a bit awkward to hear this great irritation in a van in the dark and cold with an elderly Irish woman sitting there! But then the Irish lady spoke up in her beautiful accent and said, “You know, I know it can be frustrating, but just think about this: we are alive and here and today will be better.” The young lady agreed, as did I, and she seemed to calm herself a bit and even became pleasant as we talked further.

It occurred to me in that moment that the Irish lady had diffused the situation by making an appeal to the most amazing miracle of all: the miracle of existence. Yes, your travel plans have been disrupted. Yes, the days greet us with a thousand irritations. Even so, above it all, we exist! We are here! We have life! It was a beautiful reminder.

I believe that a proper grasp of the first verse of Genesis can bring joy to us in the midst of the living of these days by reminding us that no trial we will ever face is as big as the miracle of our own existence! And when we get this right—the amazing and astonishing fact that we exist—we can then rightly praise the God who made it so while seeing our trials in the proper light.

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Genesis 1

¹ In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis can save your marriage.

Genesis can help you become a better parent.

Genesis might just even save your business.

I mean it.

In the book of Genesis we find the foundational truths of scripture and are equipped thereby for the living of life. I agree with the 16^th/17^thcentury reformer Christopher Pelargus who said of Genesis:

Genesis itself, explained methodically, encompasses a mirror of all of life, or rather is rightly called a theater of life, whether one wishes to consider divine matters, or politics, or household affairs.[1]

All of this is so, yet to put these things first—our needs, our success, our families—is to risk missing the whole point of Genesis, which is this: we have a great God who has created everything, who holds the whole world in His hands, and who has made us for Himself. That is, to put your marriage or your family or your business as the main point of Genesis is to risk ultimately harmingyour marriage or your family or your business. However, to get the main point right does indeed open the door for renewal in all of these other areas. Which is simply to say what Jesus said in Matthew 6:

³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you

So let us do that. Let us seek first the kingdom of God and God our King! There is no better place to do this than at the beginning.

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I cannot speak highly enough of James Earl Massey, the famed preacher and homiletician who went home to be with the Lord last year. I was privileged to get to know him a bit during my Doctor of Ministry studies at the Beeson Divinity School and was honored to have him sit on my final project committee. I consider James Earl Massey to have been a great scholar, a true gentleman, a uniquely gifted preacher, and, most of all, an example of what a Christian should be. He was a model of humility and integrity and will be sorely missed.

I entered his name into Amazon a few weeks ago and noticed the Kindle version of his 1960 book, When Thou Prayest. I’m so glad I did! It is vintage Massey: beautifully written, wise, insightful, not derivative, and evidencing a life of practice behind it.

I recall once at Beeson an interesting moment in which a young lady asked Dr. Massey if he would share some of his own devotional practices. He responded kindly but a bit, to me, surprisingly, that he preferred not to at that time, given the personal nature of the topic. It did not strike me as rude. On the contrary, it struck me as strangely refreshing in our day of over-exposure. Even so, it was an interesting moment. I thought of that exchange when I saw this book because it occurred to me that I would now get to hear the answer that the young lady who asked the question, and that all of us who were in that room, wished to hear.

The book is brief, but profoundly impactful. Let me just share a few highlights to give a sense of what the book is like:

One of the teachings of Jesus on prayer begins with the words, “And when thou prayest. . . .” Thus we understand from Jesus himself that prayer is a necessary and normal action for men. No man is truly normal who does not pray. The Christian who does not take time regularly to hold communion with God by means of prayer is not at his best. (Kindle Locations 123-126)

During prayer, we are critically searched in the light of God. But that searching is necessary to lead us to strength. The feeling of emptiness is necessary to create hunger for the needed filling. It was to this that Jesus referred when he stated, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matt. 5:6). Here in large part is both the pain and the pleasure of prayer: the encounter always includes an examination of us. But as the needed searching takes place, the fact of God’s fatherhood assures our spirit. (Kindle Locations 156-160)

Without a forgiving spirit, prayer is but failure. We must not presume to hold a moment before God when we act in meanness toward others. (Kindle Locations 542-543)

One thing I appreciated about this book was the balance between theology and practice. It was at some points poetic and theoretical and other times imminently practical. For instance, consider Massey’s advice on how to fight distractions when we pray:

Step 1. Plan your prayer period to grant sufficient time for the quieting of your mind. Do not always rush into prayer. Silence should help to settle you; then the tensions of the body can subside and the pressures in the mind diminish.

Step 2. Find a place that lends itself well to prayer. Jesus had this in mind when he instructed, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray . . . .” (Matt. 6:6).

Step 3. Set yourself to pray. Let your purpose be stronger than any pressures that you feel. The reach of the soul should finally subdue any initial rambling of the mind.

Step 4. Assume a bodily position that will not soon cause you to be fatigued. The position of the body is often a distracting feature itself.

Step 5. Follow some creative procedure. Use some reliable guide for the mind during the time before God.

Rehearse some Scripture verses; read until you feel the thrust of the whole occasion. Softly sing some hymn or meditate over some Christian poetry until its message fully captures your attention. Then give that centered attention to God.

Step 6. Develop the ability to concentrate. Concentration is the ability to be attentive. It takes concentration to reduce mental images to a minimum for attentive prayer. (Kindle Locations 381-394).

The book also contains some memorable turns of phrase. For instance, Massey encourages the Christian who is struggling with the inadequacy of his or her words in prayer to remember that “even when we are disturbed because our plea is not fully sound, he looks beyond our statements and answers our state” (Kindle Locations 178-179). Beautiful! Also, I was struck by Massey’s two references to prayer as “a privileged tryst” (Kindle Locations 139-140 and 207). What an evocative and profound image!

When Thou Prayest is a tremendous and insightful little introduction to prayer that will challenge, encourage, and guide the reader into a much-needed reflection on this important aspect of the Christian life. Highly recommended!

Let us conclude our consideration of the church covenant with a challenge. Our final statement is one of commitment to engaging in missions.

As a body of born again believers,

We covenant to become an authentic family by

loving one another as Christ loves us,

praying for one another,

speaking truth to one another in love,

being patient with one another,

protecting one another,

considering one another as more important than ourselves.

We covenant to embrace the whole gospel by

studying God’s Word faithfully,

learning the gospel together in family worship,

giving ear only to sound doctrine,

living out the gospel in our lives,

embracing the whole counsel of God.

We covenant to bring glory to God by

gathering for worship faithfully,

singing to the glory of God,

joining together in fervent prayer,

doing good works to the Father’s glory,

living lives that reflect the beauty of Christ,

giving offerings to God joyfully and faithfully.

We covenant to reach the nations by

sharing the gospel with those around us,

reaching out to the poor and the needy,

praying for the cause of missions in the world,

giving to the financial support of missions,

being personally involved in missions as God leads and as we are able.

In order to unpack the mindset and heart-set that must be in place for us to be involved in missions, we will consider Philip’s engagement with the Ethiopian Eunuch inActs 8.

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