God’s Perfect Creation

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We’re going to be in Genesis chapter 2, and we’re going to look at a couple other passages as well. But we’re going to start out in Genesis chapter 2. Over the next few weeks, I want to take you through and hit the highlights of the story of God’s redemption.

The story that is thousands of years old and yet is no less powerful than when God. . .

You know, sometimes it can seem like the stories from the Bible, we’ve heard them so many times. Yeah, of course, the garden, the snake, we get it, Jesus rose from the dead, everything. And it seems so routine because times before, but the fact is, it was a true story.

It is a true story. And it’s a story that still has implications for life today. So no matter how familiar we are with it, no matter how familiar we are with it, It never hurts to go back and look at it with fresh eye.

And yes, part of this, part of the purpose is to reinforce what we’re doing on Wednesday night, to give you a little taste of it, and maybe those of you who have not started coming to the evangelism training, maybe you’ll want to come, it’s not too. But also, whether you come on Wednesday nights or not, it’s something you need because God’s story of how he created us, and how we fell, and how he rescued us, and how he restores us to a right relationship with him, is at the center of everything we do. That is the gospel.

And if we ever cease proclaiming the gospel as a church, if we ever cease proclaiming the gospel as a people, God ought to just take us home because we’re good for nothing anymore. And so the next few weeks I want to talk with you about these elements of God’s story. And it’s not that that’s the only, that’s not to say that the things we’ll cover in the next four weeks are all there is to God’s story.

God’s story encompasses the entire Bible. It really fits together as one story. I’ve been writing a book about how this all comes together as one story.

Just to give you some idea, it’s a 25-chapter book. I’ve been working for 10 years in. There is a lot of stuff to cover.

The point being that these four lessons, these four messages on Sunday mornings are not going to be all that there is to God’s story. and do some of the highlights of how God’s plan fit to us. And so we’re going to start this morning with creation.

We’ll talk next week about the fall. And I realize it’s Mother’s Day. Do I really want to talk about the fall of man on Mother’s Day?

That just seems out of place. But a few years ago, I preached a series on how different people perceive God and their relationship to God. And I ended up, without any planning on my part, preaching a message called Ignorance and Irrelevance on Father’s Day.

So, sometimes these things just be helped. But next week we’ll talk about the fall. The week after that we’ll talk about God’s plan to rescue us.

And then the fourth Sunday in May we will talk about God’s plan to restore us into a right relationship. What happens as a result of what Christ did. And then the fifth Sunday in May is the Lord’s Supper as Christ did for us.

But today we’re going to start with the creation because where else to begin us but at the beginning? and in Genesis chapter 1 you go back through there and before there was anything there was God. Now my son has been asking a lot of questions about this the last couple weeks.

Had lunch with a friend yesterday who said his kids have been around the same age have been asking these kinds of questions and and it’s good to know that these questions are coming up and having an opportunity to be answered but I don’t care how smart you think you are when a five-year-old asks you made God. That’ll send you groping for answer. And of course I know the answer is nobody made God.

He was always there but how do you explain intelligence to the breaking point to try to come up with a way to things. We know that before there was anything there was God. And God came and out of nothing he created.

And then he took the stuff that he made. He took the atoms and the subatomic particles. He took all of those after He made them to be, and he started putting them together in the right combinations, in the right bonds, in the right molecules.

Just by the words of his mouth, he spoke things into existence, and suddenly you have planets leaping into existence. You have stars, you have moons on these planets, and not only is everything coming into existence, but it’s coming into existence in the right spots, and in the right orbits, and it’s just in the exact right places that God said, this is where you go. and then he looked at this one rock out in the middle of everything and he decided I’m going to make water.

I’m going to separate land and water. And then he said I’m going to create plants on it. Then I’m going to put together a big burning ball of gas, a big sun there to nourish this planet.

And then I’m going to put animals on it. He made water animals and he made air animals. And then he came and he made land animals.

And God looked at all of it and said it was good. And this is just me paraphrasing. Where is he?

He looked at it all and said it was good, but it was missing something. It was still missing something. And so he came in the crowning jewel of creation.

He made man. The Bible will make sure we don’t think more of ourselves than we ought to. It’s very clear about our sin and about how short we fall in comparison.

But lest you think yourself too insignificant, keep in mind that the Bible says that you are created in the image of God. Everything he created. After he created everything else, you’re sort of the cherry on the earth.

And so God created man, and it says in chapter 2, verse 1, Thus the heavens and earth were finished, and all the host of them, and on the seventh day he had his work, which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had. . .

I think it’s very important to note, too, that God created rest. He created the nap. The top list of things to do. He created.

Growing up, my pastor, you say, sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap. I agree with that. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created.

And some people have said, why are there two stories in here? Did he create once and then come back and he had to do it again? And some people have said, well, no. He goes through in chapter 1 and explains all of his creation.

And then he goes back in chapter 2 and says, Now let’s shine a little bit more light on this sixth day where he created man and goes into more. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth. And when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, and the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth.

And there was not a man to until the ground. So God creates this perfect paradise, and then he says, I think I’ll make care of it. Now, did God need somebody to take care of it?

Did God need anybody for anything? No. But God had this perfect paradise and said, I think I would like to have somebody to take care of this place and until the ground and live from it and enjoy it.

But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of it. And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward, and there he put the man whom he had made.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became a defect.

The name of the first is Pisan, that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good, there’s Bedelium and the onyx stone, and the name of the second river is Gahan, the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. These Hebrew words, I can get through, it’s the English words after.

And the name of the third river is Hittikel, that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria, and the fourth river is Euphrates. And God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely.

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And when the Lord said, It is not good that man should be alone, I will make him and help meet for him.

So God looked at all creation and said, It needs something else, I can do better. And he created man and he looked at man and said, Well, I can do even better than that. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them, and whatsoever Adam called the living creature, that was the name thereof.

And Adam gave names to all the cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not an helpmeet found for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam.

And he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof, and the rib which the Lord God had taken, man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, one flesh. So God has created in this earthly paradise. He has created all of the heavens.

He’s created all the stars and the planets and everything else that floats around out there. And he’s created this one special rock where he’s made water, and he’s made land, and he’s made animals. He’s made land animals again, and he’s made birds, and he’s made plants.

And there’s this abundance. And on top of it, he says, make somebody who sort of knows what’s going on. I’m going to make somebody to until the ground and take care of this place.

And I’m going to even make a special garden in the midst of this whole earthly paradise for the man. and I’m going to make a woman to be his wife, and it’s just going to be a wonderful arrangement. And so God created them.

He created this place for them, and he walked with them, and it was good. It says in chapter 3 that God was in the habit of walking with them in the garden in the cool of the day. They spent time with God, and God loved them, and God provided for them.

And it’s hard sometimes to imagine what life must have been like for Adam and Eve. It’s hard to imagine what that would have looked like because our world is so much different today. And we’ll talk about the fall and the reasons why things are so different today.

But it’s so incredibly foreign to any ideas we have of the world. We do live in a world full of sin. We live in a world full of disease and death and violence and suffering.

They didn’t have any of that. You know, the book of Revelation talks about the lion being able to lay down with the lamb and do what he wants. The lamb being able to lay down by the lion.

The Bible talks about that in the end time. And yet that’s exactly what I think took place beginning. Before sin messed everything up, before there was death, before there was violence, before there was this dog-eat-dog world that we live in now.

It was a place of perfect peace. There was peace among the things that live in nature. Nothing was trying to do.

There was peace between the man and his wife. There was peace between the people of God. And that may sound boring to some people, but that’s because we live in a world where there are people around us who aren’t happy unless they’re hot, unless there’s some drama going on.

Take yourself out of that for a moment. Try to take yourself out of that mindset and imagine what it would be like just to live in a world of peace. Peace between you and your loved ones.

Peace between you and your neighbors. Your community. I wouldn’t be having to try to kill the snakes because I don’t know if they’re good or bad.

They’re just, they’d be good. And I have to believe I might not be scared of them. Nobody’s fighting each other.

Everybody’s got a good relationship with God and we walk with Him. Folks, that is what God created. That is what God’s plan A was for the world.

That’s what God intended the world to be and said it could be. We came and messed it up. Now, by the way, that didn’t catch God off guard.

God knew that was going to happen. For the world and God’s desire was to live in this world of perfect peace. Why?

God didn’t need us. God doesn’t need us now. I have to be very careful about saying things like that.

It’s not unusual for people. Like, well, God needs us to carry the gospel to their. .

. No, God doesn’t need us to carry the gospel. If God wanted to, He could appear before the people in some other continent where they’ve never heard and tell them.

He chooses to use us. So it’s not that God needed us. God didn’t need our fellowship.

Say, well, God was lonely and He wanted some. . .

Okay, God might have wanted someone to fellowship with. God didn’t need us. If you read back to Genesis chapter, he said, let us make man in our own image.

Now, be careful. Don’t fall into the Henry Channel interpretation of that, that it’s a group of aliens talking amongst themselves. I swear that.

. . Folks, that is the Trinity of God.

That is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit before there was anything else talking amongst themselves. themselves or themselves, which one is it? Both.

But God talking amongst himself and saying, let us make man in our. . .

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit already had perfect fellowship with one another before them. They didn’t need us. They didn’t need us to.

. . God didn’t need us to glorify him.

Whether we existed or not, he’s already worthy of all the glory that there is. He was to glorify him. it seems like he wanted someone who would choose so we need to get away from this idea that God needed us and really get to the biblical idea that God wanted us now how’s that for a realization God wanted to create you have you ever thought about that before God wanted to his arm held him at gunpoint and said you’re going to do this I told my wife a while back before.

She was my wife. I said, I guess she was my wife. I need you.

And she, at first, I forget how the conversation even came up, but she looked at me funny and like I just said something. And I didn’t just tell her that out of the blue. It was in the midst of a conversation.

But I said, I’m not married. She wants to be needed. I said, no, I’m perfectly capable of human terms. Obviously, God takes care of, you know, I can, I can cook for myself.

I can cook for my children. I’ve done all this. I can take care of a household.

I’m not marrying you because I need someone to marry you. I said, and that should be a good thing. If I was just marrying you because I needed help, I mean, that would be out well.

Folks, the same feeling I had I think is how God looks at wanted you. You were not, in the terminology that we sometimes use of people’s children, especially and you were not an accident. God knew you before you were born and He loved you in spite of what He knew you were going to do.

And He chose who loves you. You serve a God who loves you. So why did He create us?

Why did He create us? Why are we even here? What is it?

Folks, we were created to have this kind of relationship with Him that’s what God’s desire is for us and that’s what God will restore us to one day we cannot have the perfect eating like life and relationship in this fallen sin world but one day God will receive this God’s plan for us was to have this we were created because he desired us and because he loved us really for three reasons for three reasons that I can see from the scriptures First of all, you were created to love and be loved by God. You were created to love Him and to be loved by Him. Now, God, again, doesn’t need you to love Him, and He doesn’t need to love you.

But God is love. And because He is loving, He chose to create and chose to love. I don’t know why.

I say that all the time. I say that sometimes even in prayer. God, I don’t know this.

I know me. I don’t know why you love me. I wouldn’t love me.

And when you think about all the things that we as mankind do to ourselves and to one another, it is hard to see why God would look down on us and say, I love them. I’m not sure I love that much. Along with all the other things that God is, we need to have a balanced view of God.

He is love. He is also holy. He is also just. He’s merciful.

He’s all these things. But God is love. And just because of His capacity, He wants to love us, and He wants to be loved by us, and He wants us to be His.

It says in the book of Ephesians, chapter 1, starting in verse 4, According as He has chosen us in Him for the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, where he hath made us accepted. And now some people will look at that passage and take a few different from it. Some people look at that and say, God picks some before the foundation to be saved and other than.

If there’s a Calvinist in the room, you’re more than welcome to dismay and I’ll still love you. But that’s not my understanding that I picture. When he’s talking about the predestination, I don’t see that he’s talking about individuals yet, the predestination to it.

And that tells me that before the foundation of the world, it was God’s plan for children. It was God’s plan that through Jesus He would forgive us, and not just forgive us and make us servants in His, He would forgive us through Jesus Christ and adopt us as. And before He ever created, He knew that we would fall.

He knew that we would reject Him, and yet He knew that He would send Jesus to die for us. So that He created with the design that we would be Him. Even though God knew that we would reject that and we would walk away, God’s plan even before then was to be His again.

It has always, always, always been God’s plan that we would be His children, that we would walk with Him as a lover, that we would love Him and be loved by Him. Again, I can’t explain for you. I know, preacher, you’re supposed to have all the answers.

I don’t. Maybe I should have told you this where you called me. There are some things.

As I get older, I realize there are more and more things I don’t. One of those things is, as I said before, why does God even love us? Explanation I can give you.

But He created us with a desire to love you, to love Him. We were created to serve God. We were created to serve Him.

We were created to obey Him and follow Him. You can do both. hey I know we get the idea of servanthood and and loving him being loved by him those those sound like they don’t together well as servant or or you can be both anybody who’s ever called their child in from the other room to bring them their feet away have any of you ever done that am I the only one who’ll fess up to that I’m so tired I’ve been out mowing I don’t want to chair Benjamin Okay, just me.

I’m the only horrible person. I have done that. But, you know, he calls me into the other room.

You know what? I can love my children and still ask. I can love my children and still tell them to do things.

I love you, but you are going to clean them. It’s not even a question. You are.

It’s just a question before I think. You’re going to clean that room. God tells us that.

God gives us command. You know, it’s interesting. God gave them.

One of the first things God did was give Adam a job. We like to think times that work is one of the curses. It’s not true.

God gave Adam a job to do before there was ever even. You’re going to take care of the garden. Now, after the fall, it just got much, much harder.

He has things to deal with. But he said, you’re going to take care of the animals, and you’re going to have dominion over all these things. Take care of the animals.

And Adam did it. It said in chapter 2 that as animals came by him, Adam called him a name, and whatever name he called him, we see him doing the job that God called him to do. Folks, God didn’t create you just to sit.

Did he need you to serve him? No. God can speak the words, and anything he wants leaps into existence.

God created the angels, and God could have just used the angels. But there’s something about somebody who has a choice to do things, who will choose to love you, who will choose your commandment. I would much rather, any parent would much rather, tell your children to do something and they’re grumbling.

Now, if my kids clean them and they’re grumbling the whole time, I’ll take it. But I’d much rather them go in there and do it with a happy heart. Wouldn’t you?

To serve Him. You were created with a purpose bigger than yourself. He says in Psalm 100, verses 2, Serve the Lord with gladness.

Come before His presence with sin. Know ye the Lord, He is God. It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.

We are His people. He made us. We didn’t make ourselves.

We are not responsible for our existence. And why? So that we could serve Him and serve Him with glass.

Come before Him with sin. You were created. It might sound to some people like, Oh, He created us to do whatever.

No, God created us to serve Him. He created us with a perfect name bigger than just our little lives. He created you to do the things that He called you for, the things that give life meaning.

You were created to love God and be loved by God. You were created to serve God. You were created to glorify God.

That word glorify is a hard one sometimes to define. So we use that word, but we really don’t talk about what it means. It’s just to give Him all the honor and all the praise that He’s doing.

You know, if you love the food, then it glorifies the cook. The quality of the meal reflects on the cook. Yesterday I tried to grill hamburgers, and I never burned the food.

They turned out to be shriveled up little charcoal patties. I was apologizing all through the meal. It was eating. It did not reflect well on me.

I prefer it when it’s good and everybody’s like, oh, this is wonderful. Just guess there’s a little bit of a pride and an ego thing. It makes me feel good.

It reflects well on me. If somebody’s a good cook, if the meal is good, it reflects well on them. If the meal is not good, you know, cooking skills.

Same thing with a painting. We can look at the Last Supper or the Mona Lisa and what an incredible painter da Vinci is. My garage and say, it’s not a good painter.

on the one who made it. And when we serve God and the things that He’s called us to do and we do the right things in the right way and we’re in a right relationship with Him, it reflects well on God. It doesn’t.

To see this look no further than you’ll hear people say sometimes, so-and-so is supposed to be a Christian and they act like that. We’ve not brought Him glory. He said in Isaiah chapter 43 verses 1 and 7, But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not, for I have redeemed thee.

I have called thee by thy name. Thou art mine. Even every one that is called by my name created him for my glory.

I have formed him and made him. He told the people of Israel, I am to bring me glory. Now that’s especially true for Israel, but it’s true as his handiwork so that we would show forth the praises of our God.

And so to fulfill the whole reason why we were created, we need to be living glory. Now I realize that a lot of this you may have heard before, but it’s worth remembering that God created us for the purpose of a relationship with Him. God created us for the purpose of this intimate one where He loves us and we love Him, we serve Him and takes care of us.

And through all of this, through all of this, that we’re reflecting all the honor and praise back to Him at how good He is and how great He is. In a perfect world, unmarred, untamed sin.

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