This sermon explores how God designed his people to create communities of order, beauty, worship, and mutual care — and how the cross enables the church to resist division, extend grace, and become a welcoming spiritual home for others.

Good morning. So good to be with you today. I’d like to draw your attention to Genesis chapter two, which was just read. You can keep that open if you’d like, and we’ll go through a bunch of different things in Genesis two and three. As we work toward that, one of the surprising things to me about relationships is how hard they can be sometimes. You might feel similarly, you think about family relationships or team, work relationships or church relationships, and sometimes you can have a relationship that’s very close. And then all of a sudden you find yourself in a conversation where there’s hurt feelings and somebody’s crying and stuff, and you’re like, how is it possible that this relationship got so tangled up? I’ve been thinking about that with famous bands. A couple of us were talking about this last night that bands like The Beatles or Pink Floyd or whatever, lots of different bands that at one time were like making great music together, and then they couldn’t get along with each other and they stopped. And you might have similar stories in your family. There might be some kind of an estrangement or a divorce. If you’ve been around church circles for a long time, then you’ve probably heard stories of church splits or a group of people that decide, oh, we don’t like this anymore, and they go start another church somewhere else or something like that. When relationships are close, I mean, it’s just the best thing in the world, isn’t it? You’re sitting around each other’s houses, and you get to that point in relationship where you don’t have to clean the house anymore when that person comes over. You can have some dirty laundry, this and there or whatever, and they’re there and it’s great. And you get your inside jokes and you feel seen and you feel cared for. And, marriage is intimate, you know, you’re holding each other’s faces in bed at night, talking sweetly to each other. And then all of a sudden, you know, something happens. It’s like, why did you why did you say that? Why was I excluded from that thing that was important to me. Why was this decision made? And nobody asked me about that. And this place of order and beauty and happiness, uh, becomes a place of pain. And people disappoint each other. And you might even get upset with God in scenarios like that. The Bible’s opening chapters explain both sides of this. Genesis shows us why sometimes we love being together, and why sometimes we have a hard time being together, and that matters. It matters for parents, as you’re raising kids, to figure out how to get along with each other and share and use nice words and things like that. Matters for business owners trying to get teams to get along and work with each other so that you can achieve some kind of goal. Matters in churches, elder boards, small groups and all that kind of thing.

And those of us working on making disciples and establishing new churches in different places. Our team has an inside-out philosophy where we talk about how important it is that we as individuals are loving God and loving other people, and that our teams are taking care of each other so that when we’re drawing people into Christian community, that we’re drawing them into something good. I mean, if we’re not getting along, and if I’m all disheveled and can’t find contentment and all that kind of thing, what are we inviting people into? So the Bible, in its first few chapters, helps us understand this. It shows us our purposes in working together. So we’re going to go all the way back to Eden to see what God designed human beings to do. What were we made to do? In the beginning God created people and he put them in Eden. And Genesis tells us what these people were supposed to do in Eden. So Genesis chapter one, verse 26, Then God said, let us make mankind in our image and our likeness, so that…. So here we have some purpose statements that are about to follow. So that they may rule. So there’s a verb we should pay attention to. So that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock, and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them, male and female. He created them. God blessed them and said to them….Here comes some more purpose statements. Said to them, be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule. There’s that word again. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, and over every living creature that moves on the ground. So let’s look at those words. These are not passive people that are just sitting around in Paradise, like they’re at a resort and grapes fall in their mouth and that kind of a thing. Sometimes you might think in the old Genesis stories or in old paintings, that Adam and Eve are just kind of lounging around this beautiful place. But that isn’t what happened. God gave them a job. And so first of all, be fruitful and increase in number. This implies multiplication. They were supposed to grow. Eden wasn’t made for two people. It was made for civilization. There were borders of Eden that were meant to be expanded at some point. Subdue the earth. Which implies wild forces being brought under control. And to rule over the creatures. Rule over the creatures. Some kind of domestication, some kind of let’s keep certain animals over there or whatever, so that babies playing on the playground don’t get eaten by lions and things like that. So that people are safe when they’re walking around this garden.

And notice the kind of place that God created for them. God entered this dark, chaotic cosmos and he carved out a habitable space. A habitable space. And it was habitable because it was ordered, it was beautiful, and it was a place of communion with God. It was ordered in contrast to the chaos outside the garden. It was beautiful, which is a really important thing for us to know in terms of the symbolic beginning of mankind. It wasn’t, you know, it didn’t begin in a seminary classroom. And I’m not anti-seminary. Of course that’s important, but, the symbol that God used for how he wanted us to be ended up being a garden, a place of beauty. That’s really interesting. And then rule. Rule over the creatures and so forth. It was an ordered and beautiful place of communion with God. They walked with God in the cool of the day and this kind of thing. Kings all over the world, all through time, have constructed gardens with channeled waterways and cool trees and animals from all kinds of collection places and brought together and little paths along shaded, you know, waterways and stuff and pools. That’s what kings do. And so here you have the King of kings, and he created this amazing garden where he could live with his people.

And again, God didn’t create Eden as just a beautiful place for them to be. Or like a Disney World where, you know, the biggest work you have to do is figure out where are we going to have lunch now? Or are we going to stand in this line for an hour or something like that. This wasn’t a vacation place of lounging around. And then we have a couple more words in Genesis two that give Adam and Eve responsibility over Eden. And you heard that in the scripture reading earlier. Verse 15 of chapter two, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. To work it and keep it. We know what work means. They’re supposed to work. This is the kind of thing where Adam and Eve are getting dirt under their fingernails and things like that. Let’s move this rock over there today and this kind of a thing. It’s work. They’re getting, you know, calluses on the hands and those kinds of things. Keep is an interesting word, and it implies a sort of protection. It’s kind of like you say, hey, can you, can you look after my kids for an hour so that I can go to the grocery store or something like that? It’s not just work, but it’s taking responsibility for it.

It’s not just, okay, I’ll sweep this room or that kind of a thing, but it’s like I’m looking out and I’m making sure and I’m ready and taking care of stuff. So let’s put all of this together here. Human beings were designed to rule a well-ordered, beautiful sacred space. And in that place, we were designed to multiply and expand into the darkness and chaos outside. We were made to expand the borders of Eden into places that needed to be subdued. And bringing order and beauty and worship to new territory. And that required work. The kind of work that takes responsibility for managing and expanding and protecting a valuable space. And imagine if they had done that. Imagine if the first few chapters of the Bible were different. If the fall hadn’t happened, and what the next few chapters would have been as they had kids and as they added a desert or added this mountain range to Eden and so forth. And if they’d had done what they were designed to do what a different story it would be. Presumably Eden at this point would have at least encompassed the whole globe. And now this is a big job, what they’ve been asked to do. It’s hard work. This is the sort of thing where you kind of flop into bed tired, the good kind of tired, you know, at the end of the day. Work becomes toil after the fall where it’s just, you know, you get to the end and you’re like, man, I could never finish that.

I can’t figure out what’s wrong with this spreadsheet or whatever. So work can become toil at some point. But you know, when you just worked and it’s a good kind of work and you flop into bed at the end of the day and you’re the good kind of tired. And it’s a big job. And Adam cannot fulfill this human vocation alone. It’s this ultimate vocation is not something to do by yourself. And so Genesis 2:18, the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone I will make a helper suitable for him. A helper suitable for him. Now, this, you know, sometimes rubs people the wrong way. You think, oh, the helper, I guess. Or okay, the lady is just supposed to be the helper. Like the lady just bakes the cookies while the guys have a serious conversation about something or whatever. But that is not what’s happening here. That is, I mean, different cultures and even sections of the church might do that to ladies. But you know, the word helper, there’s a Bible character that this word is most often used to describe. And guess who that Bible character is? God. God coming to the aid of people. Or an army that comes to the aid to help in a certain situation here. What we’re talking about is a very serious and important work that needs to be done.

And Eve was designed to be a full companion who shared in the hard work of multiplying and expanding the borders and bringing order and worship and protection. It is a shared vocation. So imagine you’re them, or their kids or friends or whatever, and you’re standing at the border of Eden and behind you, you have a beautiful, orderly, safe place where people are living together and worshiping God together and those kind of things. A place of civilization. And in front of you, you’ve got this untamed wilderness, maybe a dark forest. And you’re thinking, okay, let’s add this forest. But we need to figure this out here. Because there might be some berries, if we eat them, then people die. Or there might be a weird animal in there, we need to figure this out and that kind of a thing. And I just heard kind of a creepy sound. What are we going to do about that? And okay, let’s figure this out so that we can add some new territory. Your job is to figure out. And, you know, different people are gifted in different ways. And so some people are really needed back there to make sure the roads don’t have potholes and all that kind of stuff. And other people are really designed for, man, we got to go over there and wouldn’t that be really? I wonder what’s over there and this kind of a thing.

And we bring that all together in order to make Eden what it was supposed to be. Now, to really do this work, this great vocation that we were designed to do, Adam and Eve would need to learn something very important about working together. Under pressure, they would need to learn to trust God. They would need to trust God’s instructions, his timing. It turns out that’s really hard to do. Pressure, which is those hard circumstances, temptations, confusion. Pressure makes it hard to trust God. And when we don’t follow God’s ways carefully, partnerships collapse. In the middle of the garden we find two trees:. The tree of life, which had some kind of healing properties that put off death, so really important to keep eating from that tree. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And this is like a question in the middle of the garden. This is like a question. Will Adam and Eve trust that God’s ways are best? Two trees and a simple rule. Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You can eat from anything in this garden and particularly important that you eat from this tree of life. But do not eat from this tree. Eat anything else. And it becomes a question. Will they obey that simple first rule? In the rest of the Bible it’s interesting that that phrase good and evil is used positively. It’s used as a way of describing mature discernment, like the stuff your grandma knows, you know. Children aren’t stupid but we don’t make them judges, we don’t make them cops. They typically don’t know what’s best for them. And their discernment is basic and developing, and they don’t need to know some things about the world. Young children, we don’t even read some parts of the Bible to them because they’re not ready to think about that yet. They don’t need to know about that yet. Which reminds us that Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed, also a characteristic of children. It may be, just wondering here, but it may be that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a good tree, not an evil tree. Everything God made was called good. It may simply be a question of timing. They weren’t old enough. It wasn’t the right time for them to eat from that tree yet. It’s possible that God would have eventually allowed the leaders of civilization to gain knowledge and healing, so that they could do their work of working and keeping the garden. Maybe. Now, whether or not that idea is correct, the main thing is clear. They wanted something that God told them they couldn’t eat. Maybe now, maybe not ever. And they had to decide if they were going to trust God or not.

And you know, that kind of thing goes way beyond Eden. Later in the Bible Israel faced a really similar temptation. One of Israel’s biggest problems in the wilderness was complaining that God didn’t give them good things immediately when they wanted them. You remember, one of the complaints in the Garden of Eden is why can’t we have leeks and onions? And I don’t know, have your kids ever complained about not getting leeks? I don’t know if that’s something you’ve ever complained about, but they were complaining about that. And those are good things. Leeks are good things. Nothing wrong with leeks. But God gave them manna instead. And Moses said to them much later in Deuteronomy, after they had had 40 years of wandering around, he said to them, he let you hunger. God. He let you hunger, and he fed you with manna, which you did not know, and your fathers did not know, so that you may learn that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. He let you hunger. Isn’t that interesting? Hebrews talks about this too, that he disciplines those he loves. Did you know that about God? That if he loves you, he’ll intentionally do that kind of thing to you? He let you hunger. Not getting what you want. And he fed you with manna, getting what you don’t want. So that you would learn to trust God.

Adam and Eve had to learn to trust God’s timing. The Israelites had to learn how to trust God’s timing and stop complaining about not getting what they wanted exactly when they wanted it. You know, one of Satan’s oldest strategies is to make something God created, make something even very good, seem so important that we’re going to break God’s rules to get it. This is why the New Testament so often talks about contentment. Paul says this incredible thing. He says, I have learned the secret of being content in all circumstances. That’s an amazing sentence. You know, and can you say that? I’ve learned the secret of being content in all circumstances. I think I’ve learned that, but it’s also kind of like a class I took that I learned, but I don’t always apply. My wife and daughter are here today. They like. Yep. He knows that. He doesn’t always do that. Have you learned the secret of being content in all circumstances? Do you know how to do that? You know how to arrest yourself under pressure and just kind of like, hang on, I gotta trust God. I gotta love people. So back to Eden. Adam and Eve took something they wanted because they didn’t think God was right to withhold it. And that caused trouble immediately between Adam and Eve. Genesis three, verse six. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

So you might think, if you’re thinking, what was she thinking? She was like, what’s wrong with this? I mean, it looks perfectly good. It looks actually really good. Why wouldn’t we be able to eat this? It seems to me that if I was in charge, we’d be able to eat this stuff. So she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her. That’s an important phrase there. He was with her. He’s standing right there. It’s not like he’s on the other side of the garden and they get back at the end of the day. Hey, honey, how was your day or whatever? It was like you ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What? Oh, he was with her. And he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Seems to be some kind of a shame situation. 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. Another sort of shame behavior. They hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid, I was afraid. So fear comes into the situation. I was afraid because I was naked. Perhaps some kind of vulnerability or embarrassment or whatever. I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. And God said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? And the man said, the woman that you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. And notice what happens here. Distrust of God doesn’t stay between us and God. It starts to spew on the people that were next to. The woman. Do you hear the contempt in that? And contempt is a killer in relationships. The woman, that you. So now we got blame and defensiveness and playing the victim. And they hid. And they ate, and they immediately felt shame. And Adam was afraid. And when questioned, he blames. Do you recognize any of those words? I do. I see that stuff in my heart. Very common between us. Shame and fame, flame, oh, for goodness sake! Shame and fear and blame. Writing a poem up here, I guess. So there they are in this beautiful garden. And they can’t live in it together. I wonder if that’s ever occurred to you. Where you’re surrounded by beauty and blessing and you’re impossibly unhappy.

Disorder takes its toll. And why did this happen? Why did this happen? Why is it that you’ve got two people that probably really love each other, and they’ve had clear instructions and they’re surrounded by all this awesome. And these two people, and they eat and they do exactly the opposite of what they were supposed to do. I mean, the Bible gives a lot more instruction. They’ve got one thing that they’re supposed to not do. Why did this happen? And I would say it was a spectacular failure of friendship. Not just a failure of obedience. It was a failure of friendship. Their basic purpose was to watch out for this kind of a thing. To work together. You’ve got a talking snake. Saying sinful things. I mean that you’re supposed to work and keep. I mean, that we are supposed to chop the head off of that kind of a thing together. And if one of us is like, oh, maybe the snake, the other one’s like, hey. A spectacular failure of friendship. Neither of them is protecting the other one. Now, not every relationship breaks down exactly like this. There are, you know, betrayals and injustices and abuse and things like that. There’s the need for boundaries and sometimes even removing someone from a church and those kinds of things. So those are all, those things are all true. But Genesis shows us a pattern that runs through human relationships and human hearts.

Distrust of God becomes distrust of each other. But even with this sad beginning, God doesn’t abandon the project. The rest of the Bible is a story about God gathering people together and tasking them to build a community. We see that in Israel. Beginning with the family and moving toward a whole nation. And we see that with the church. Starting new churches is like recreating Eden. It’s a similar work. Which is why we rely on God’s power to do it. And is why we go together in teams to do it. We go into places of spiritual darkness and brokenness, and we work hard to bring order and beauty and worship to those places. Church leaders are responsible and parents and all kinds of different leadership positions are responsible for guarding communities from the forces that pull us apart. Good parents do this. Good governments do this. Confronting chaos so that people can live together in harmony. That is hard work. And it is so beautiful when it works. And yet we always have this threat in the middle of it all. The devil attempting to tear it all down with lies. And friends we easily fall for those temptations. Temptations mainly to unhappiness. Why can’t I have this or that? It’s like a perfect thing. Like, why can’t I have that? She has that. How come I can’t have that? And it’s so easy to blame each other for our unhappiness instead of trusting God and loving people.

It’s so easy to blame the woman you gave me instead of looking in the mirror. Genesis three is repeated over and over throughout time, which presents us with a challenge. Will we replay this spectacular failure of friendship, or will we stand firm together? Will this family stand firm? Will this church stand firm? What does the opposite of Genesis three look like? What does it look like when people really do take care of each other? Richard Baxter, the old Puritan preacher, he was writing about the duties of husbands and wives to each other. Now he’s a Puritan, so it’s a couple hundred years ago. And so the language, there’s like almost a language barrier speaking English, but it’s, you know, older English and stuff. But if you can get over the if you can get through the cultural and language barriers like we do when we interact with any different culture and language, like get past some of that and listen to what this old wise pastor says. He says that one of the duties of husbands and wives to each other was to help each other in the knowledge, worship, and obedience of God. That’s really interesting. I did not know that at 24, when I was first married. I didn’t know that. That one of my duties was to help each other in the knowledge, worship, and obedience of God.

Now, Baxter was writing specifically about marriage, but this applies to other close relationships as well. He says this. Consider also that you live not up to the purpose of marriage or of humanity if you are not helpers to each other’s souls. Helpers to each other’s souls. What a beautiful phrase of what we’re responsible for to each other. Helpers, to each other’s souls. That’s the opposite of Genesis three. Instead of helping each other under pressure, they move away from God and they move away from each other. Genesis three is a tragedy. It’s a situation that we don’t want to repeat, and yet we so often do. We build little Edens and precious friends, and we love our groups and our teams, and we worship together, and we laugh together and we eat pizza together and all of that, and it’s awesome. And then, very predictably, the serpent comes and deceives us with discontent in some respect. Genesis three is painfully, painfully familiar. That ancient temptation slithers into our minds. Why does it have to be this way? Why did he look at me like that? Why wasn’t I invited to that party? Why was this decision made without my input? Why can’t I have what seems perfectly good to me? Like any obvious thinking person would know that I need this. And how did you not know? And our sin nature and the demonic realm makes us crave what we think we should have.

And then we feel justified in our resentment. And we stop trusting God and we stop loving each other. When Genesis three repeats itself in the middle of our most precious relationships, will we notice and arrest ourselves and find a better way? Will we recoil from Genesis three and take care of each other instead? That’s difficult, isn’t it? That’s hard. Because you’re actually really sad that you don’t have this or that or whatever. And you’re actually really frustrated. Or, you know, people say, don’t take it personal. It was personal. I mean, we know what we need to do. We need to forgive, we need to reach out, we need to turn toward each other. And our hearts want something different. We need a power beyond ourselves, maybe, you know. And this brings us to Jesus, the friend of sinners. There is a healing tree in the midst of us. The cross of Jesus Christ, who died while we were yet sinners. In other words, having earned nothing and having only committed cosmic treason, he died for us and adopted us into our family. And he’s like, hey buddy, come sit on my lap. You’re going to be all right. In the middle of Eden stood a tree associated with our rebellion, and at the center of Christian family and church and community stands a very different tree. The cross where Christ suffers the punishment that we deserved and makes us his friend.

Genesis three produces hiding and shame and fear and blame, and we all know that. And the cross deals with all of them. Our shame is clean and there’s no need to hide. And judgment is suffered by Christ and resolved. And this makes it possible for us to be vulnerable with each other and really care for people, even under pressure. And we begin to see our roles then in community as one of bringing order and beauty and worship to places that haven’t earned it. As we face the rough and tumble of real relationships, keep returning to the healing tree and savor the fruit of grace and share it with the people that you’re around. Many times the New Testament tells us to love each other as Christ. Ephesians 5:2, walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. I’m glad that he added that because as Christ loved us, he could have just stopped with that. And then you have to know some theology. Well, how did he love us? He loved us by dying on the cross and he blah blah, blah. No, but Paul wants to be more clear. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, which connects then with what Jesus said to take up your cross and follow me. And Paul says, as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. A little bit like just being flame broiled on a barbecue. Death. In order to make it possible for other people to live. We are told to love people, especially people who haven’t earned it. So you think to yourself, you know, my husband is always cranky, so why would I make his favorite cookies? Good luck with that. Because you know what? He’s thinking the same thing. And those kind of decisions add up through the years. What if we turned it upside down? You know. What if God put you in a situation with a cranky, cranky husband on purpose so that you would have the honor of demonstrating what the gospel looks like and given unearned, gracious cookies to the dude. With a smile. What if the gospel was infused into these vicious disordered cycles that we create? When that gracious tree is planted in your heart and it really takes root. Everything changes. It’s not a competition anymore to who changed the most diapers and lost the most sleep and gets to feel sorry for themselves the most. No no no no no no no no. It’s a totally different competition to outdo one another in showing honor. That’s a different kind of competition. When we establish that kind of a habitable space, that is possible because grace is being infused, ideally by several family members. Maybe you’re 12, 13, 14 years old, has it occurred to you that you play a very important role of not just receiving whatever it is that you need, but contributing to the order and beauty and worship of the family.

And you spread and extend this habitable space for different people to learn, to give learning, to give the fruit of the spirit to people that haven’t deserved it. And then you know what it’s like to walk with God in the cool of the day. Friends, relationships are hard, especially over the long term. It’s hard to stay close. Families get cold. Relationships get tense. Sometimes relationships end. Sometimes churches divide. God made us for a purpose. It is a creation, ancient purpose to create places of order and beauty and worship together. Genesis three shows us how quickly those places break down. We distrust God. We feel justified about that. You feel discontent, and then we turn away from other people. And at the center of Christianity stands another tree, the cross of Jesus, where undeserving people like you and me receive grace. And then we spread that to the people that are standing next to us. Relationships are hard. Keep returning to that healing tree. Receive the grace of Jesus Christ, and then lavish that grace on the people that God puts in your path. Recreate little Edens in your constellation of relationships. And when you do, then you will truly know him and honor him. And may the beauty of those stories and those sacrifices multiply to the ends of the earth. Let’s close in prayer.

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