Genesis 1:26-31; Genesis 2:15-17
Please turn in your copy of God’s
Word to our Old Testament scripture reading. Today it is from Genesis
chapter 1. verses 26 through 31, and then chapter 2, verses
15 through 17. Let me just give a quick plug
or public service announcement for a particular Sunday school
class while you’re flipping in your Bibles to Genesis 1 and
2. The elective class, which meets in the Fellowship Hall
classroom, has begun a series called The Marks of a Healthy
Church. And it’s a video series produced by Ligonier Ministries
And it’s taught by Mark Dever and Jonathan Layman. And so today,
this morning, our study in there was expository preaching. And it reminded us that through
the reading and the preaching of the word, when God’s word
is faithfully read and preached, it is God, it is Christ himself
speaking to us, feeding us, nurturing us, guiding us, showing us our
sin, encouraging us along the way. And so it’s why Protestants,
it’s why the Reformed Church has such a high view of the preaching
of God’s word because we believe that God himself through his
minister faithfully at work is speaking for God. And so let’s
give our attention to both the reading and the preaching of
God’s word that shows that we believe by faith that that is
what God is doing. uh… in this particular time
in our service so we read together from genesis chapter one beginning
at twenty six where it says these words 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. So God created man male or in
his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and
female he created them. 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. And God said, behold, I have
given to you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the
earth and every tree with seed in its fruit. you shall have
them for food. And to every beast of the earth
and to every bird of the heaven 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. And God saw everything
that he made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening,
there was morning, the sixth day. Then to chapter two, beginning
at verse 15. Then the Lord God took the man
and he put him in the garden of Eden to work and to keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat
of every tree of the garden, 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. This is God’s word. Let’s pause now and ask for his
help that we might hear it. Pray with me. Our gracious God,
we thank you that from the beginning of creation, you have been a
speaking God. You speak and from nothing the
world exists. The New Testament tells us by
that same powerful word, Christ upholds the universe, the world
and everything in it. We remember that Jesus stood
at the tomb of Lazarus, and though Lazarus had been in the grave
for many days, Jesus simply called forth his name, Lazarus, and
he awoke from the dead, and he lived again. And each of us knows
that At a particular point in time, you called our names and
you brought us from death to life. You took us from darkness
to light. You took us from being dead in
our sins and trespasses. And by the powerful word, you
made us alive in Christ Jesus. And so we pray now that in this
moment where you are a speaking God in the church, where you
speak through your red and proclaimed word, where you speak to your
servants, your saints, through preachers, We pray that you would
remove every human encumbrance and that you would speak clearly.
In fact, that you would speak with thunder clarity as you did
from the mountain to the Israelites at Sinai. And that we would know
that we have been in your presence, that we would have fear and trembling
and that we would leave this place knowing that we have been
in your presence and we have heard your voice. So now as we
hear Lord, give us ears that hear. As we see things, give
us eyes that see clearly. And as we desire to do your holy
will, help us to leave today with wills and even bodies desiring
to do what you ask of us. This we pray in the name of Jesus,
our great savior, the one who speaks to us even now. Amen. This past summer, many of you
know that my wife’s grandmother turned 100 years old. And so
from all across the country, even some had to travel from
overseas, they descended upon her little apartment on a farm
in Tennessee to wish her well and to celebrate her birthday
with her. Well, as we were spending time in our family with her,
uh, before and after her birthday, our, our children had opportunity
to sit with her and speak with her about what it’s like to live
a hundred years. I mean, after all, they only
know about eight years and 10 years and 12 years. just a fraction
of the time that she has lived. And they asked her, they asked
her one question in particular that was interesting. What is
the greatest invention that has brought benefit to your life
during your 100 years? And her answer, they couldn’t
really fathom because they’ve never lived without this particular
thing. She said, it was one of the greatest days of my life
when the power company brought electricity down the dirt road
to our farm and we had electric lights. They couldn’t wrap their
minds around it. And so the conversations that
we had over the coming days were these, that in the last hundred
years, surely the last 150 years, the levels of innovation in our
culture, the levels of technology and the blessings and benefits
of modern life to us are quite amazing. It’s as almost as if
150 years ago, the dark ages were over, caveman eras were
over, and we had electricity and air conditioning and gas
furnaces and automobiles and airplanes and all sorts of wonderful
modern inventions. But you know, if you really think
about it, people throughout human history have accomplished many
and great things, always in electricity, wonderful. Don’t we love our
smartphones? Oh, I couldn’t live without air
conditioning. I’m thankful to the man or person who invented
that. But you think about 3,000, 4,000
years ago, the Egyptians were able to engineer and build the
Great Pyramids. Or you look on a PBS show and
you read about catapults and ancient warfare or how the people
of old learned about fire and cooking and pottery and metalwork
and all sorts of innovations that I’m sure amaze them at their
time in their lives. Well, how does all this talk
fit into what we’re studying these last several weeks and
in the weeks to come with Christmas and Advent? Well, we’re looking
at God creating the world and everything in it. He’s making
a stage, if you will, for the drama of redemption where God,
the chief actor and the chief director, has set about to show
us through the unfolding of the drama of redemption in the pages
of scripture on the real stage of a real heaven and earth that
he really created by the word of his power. We saw how God
has made man in his image. He’s made man in his image to
be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth with sons and
daughters who fear him and worship and serve him. And today we want
to look at a second part of God making man after his own image. The first command God gives us
is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But the second
part of that command is to rule the earth. And ruling the earth
is what we want to consider today. Have you ever thought about your
marching orders on earth? You’re marching orders as a created
being, created by God. Have you ever thought that God
said to you, to each of you, to all of you, rule the earth?
He calls you by name, rule the earth, serve the earth, have
dominion, be a little lord, a little king, under God the great king,
but be a mini king, a small king, a small lord, an under lord,
if you will, over the earth. Well, that’s exactly the dignity. That’s exactly the task that
God has given us. He’s told us to rule the earth.
We read in Genesis chapter two, and many of you men who have
been in our masculine mandate study over the last year will
recognize these creation commands, these cultural commands. God
has put us in a garden. just as he did Adam and Eve.
And he’s put us in that garden to work that garden and to keep
that garden. Now we read in Genesis chapter
one and two that God made a real garden, a garden of Eden, a place
of beauty. And it was God’s temple where Adam and Eve could worship
him, where they could have fellowship with God. And just as we’ve spoken
of moments ago, God is a speaking God. And where did God speak
to Adam and Eve? It wasn’t through a preacher
standing at a pulpit. as it is in our era. No, he walked
with Adam and Eve in the cool of the garden, and he directly,
face to face, as they walked in the coolness of the garden,
he spoke to them of his will and desire. In fact, in chapter
two, we just read of, and next week we’ll consider his first
admonition to them. You can eat of everything in
the garden, all the trees that are in the garden you can eat
from except one. Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat, or if you do, there will be the pain of
death. You see, God walked with them
in that temple garden. He fellowshiped with them. But
God also put Adam and Eve in there to work and to keep the
garden. So I want us to consider today, as we consider and look
at the themes of Advent, the themes of Christ redeeming the
world, I want us to consider what God has asked us to do as
Christians and how that relates to Jesus. and give us a big picture,
a long look at what God has called us in the world to be and do.
First thing is this, God gives us jobs or callings. He put Adam
and Eve in the garden and said to work and keep that garden.
And God has given you gardens, if you will. Some of you have
gardens that are a home. Some of you have gardens that
are a workplace. You have a marketplace. You have friendships and networks.
You have several gardens, you might say. Elders have the garden
of the church. Moms and dads have the garden
of the home. If you own a business or work
for a marketplace, you have a garden where you are called to serve.
And God puts us in these gardens. And he expects us to work them
and to keep them in such a way that they bear fruit. Now I was
thinking this week of what many of you in this congregation have
done for a living over the years. And it’s quite amazing to think
about the little gardens God has put us in. Oh yes, many of
you have had children and you’ve had the garden of home. Many
of you have served the church faithfully. And this church has
been your garden of service. But just thinking about your
work, your day job, we have helicopter pilots and programmers and authors
and teachers. We have mothers and fathers,
fabricators, carpenters, people who have been in law enforcement,
ministers, lawyers, bankers, engineers, accountants, knitters,
those in sales, those in management. We’ve had realtors and those
who’ve designed things. You’ve been in all sorts of commerce
and stores and businesses and supply chains. Some of you can
fix anything. Some of us can break everything.
But we are able, by God’s grace, to serve our gardens in the world,
gardens of the home, gardens of the church, but even gardens
of the marketplace. And some of you little ones who
are sitting in here this day, you think from time to time about
the question, what do I want to be when I grow up? Oh, Lord
willing, you’ll serve the church. God willing, you’ll have a home
and you’ll be able to serve and nurture it. But God tells us
to rule the earth and to have dominion over it, to exercise
lordship, to exercise leadership, to exercise dominion and power
and authority. He calls us to be innovative.
He calls us to be thinkers, to be creative. If you go downtown
today where our little downtown area is being revitalized, which
happens to be a sign of having dominion, there’s a little place
down there called the Steam Junction. And it’s a place where you can
go and collaborate with others. You can put your ideas out there.
And you know the rule about an idea. No idea is a bad idea for
five minutes. Now, after five minutes, it could
be a terrible idea. But after five minutes, it could
also be a glorious idea that with the help and conversation
and discussion and the synergism of others, it could become a
wonderful idea that turns into something amazing, like an airplane. or a cell phone or a computer
or a world financial system, something of the like. But God,
when he made us in his image, and remember, we are made in
the image of the one who creates. We are made in the image of the
one who takes what is chaotic and he forms it, he fashions
it. We’re made in the image of the one who took what was empty
and he filled it. Remember last week we considered
the command to be fruitful and multiply. We are to imitate God
and be God-like in a special way. God formed the earth and
He filled it with everything in it. And He tells us to form
and fill the earth with our offspring and with our children. And so
He tells us in this second command, in our jobs, in our callings,
in our gardens, to bear fruit, to work, and to do what we have
been uniquely made and called and gifted and even and especially
redeemed in Christ Jesus to do. So in our gardens, in our spheres
of influence, in our spheres of lordship and dominion, God
calls us to serve him in his glory and to serve others. And so there’s just a little
about our jobs and our callings. Let’s think now about work. God
calls us to work as he did Adam and work in the Old Testament
work in the context of the Garden of Eden is this idea of making
something happen. We want our work to be productive.
We want our work to cultivate. We want our work to grow into
something fruitful, something that can benefit not only the
glory of God and our own good, but the good of our neighbor
as well. You see, we serve the God who
took nothing and made something. And he tells us to take something
and make something better with it. I mean, where in the world
did we get airplanes from? I mean, Adam and Eve had the
same dirt. and the same rocks. They had
the same trees and the same leaves and all this other stuff. Where
in the world did we get airplanes from? Well, it’s man following
God’s command to work in their particular garden where he’s
called and made and set them apart and gifted them to serve.
And he says, I made nothing or something out of nothing. You
take the something I made and you make something better out
of it. And we’re God-like, we bear his image very well. Wouldn’t it have been amazing
for Adam to see this day? And to look up from the garden
and see an airplane flying through the sky, a big hunk of sheet
metal or aircraft aluminum with fuel in it that was mined from
the earth and processed in a very special way to do what it does
do. That’s how we should stand and
look. We should stand and look in awe at all that man made in
God’s image is able to do. Some from the mind of Christians
redeemed by Christ, others by God’s common grace from the minds
of those who will never bow the knee to Jesus until the last
day. Nevertheless, made in God’s image, cultivating and working
and making something better out of the something that God created
out of nothing and has given to us. So let me encourage you
in this way. Whatever your hands find to do,
do it well. God has put you in these gardens
and he puts you there and intends for you to stay there and to
be satisfied in the work he gives you. But cultivate work. Make
Make something happen. Be fruitful in your lives. And it may be in marriage, with
friendships, with children. It may be in the work of the
church, and it may be in the school system. It may be in law
enforcement, or the legal system, or the banking industry. Who
knows where it may be, but wherever you find yourself in the providence
of God, go and work, and don’t stop. There’s a third area where
God gives us dignity in being made in his image. Yes, he puts
us in gardens and tells us to work, but he also tells us to
keep the garden, to safeguard it, to protect it, to put our
arms around it in such a way that it can be preserved for
the generation that is to come after us. Oh, we live in an era
with locks and fences and weapons. We do live in a world where there
are physical dangers. We must protect our crops from
blight and from pest. We must protect our homes from
bugs and our bodies from predators and diseases. So God calls us
to keep. He calls us to guard. He calls
us to keep safe that which is sacred to us. He calls us to
keep our homes, to protect our little ones from the outside
influences of the world until we can get them on their feet.
And after having grown up in the greenhouse of the home, after
being nurtured in the spiritual disciplines of the Lord, they’re
able to stand on their own two feet and succeed. The same with
the church. The elders are charged to guard
and protect. to keep the church, to protect
it from other doctrines and heresies that would harm us. They’re called
to protect us from Satan and his influence. And they’re even
called to protect us from our own within who’ve fallen off
the way and have given themselves over to Satan to serve his purposes
and not Christ. But we guard, we keep, we protect,
we defend, we keep watch over ourselves. We protect from the
weeds and the bugs, from the world and the devil and the flesh. We are many kings, if you will,
exercising dominion and lordship, not only by working, not only
by staying in our gardens, but keeping and protecting. Think
about Adam for just a moment. We’ll touch on this next week.
Adam was to work and keep the garden. He was to prune it. He was to pick the fruit. He
was to nurture it along, but he was also to keep the garden.
And we don’t know what sort of weapon Adam had to keep the garden,
but there was a day when he needed to use that weapon. And that
was the day that was sort of dark and stormy. And it was the
day the serpent entered the garden, and it questioned It questioned
God’s authority and said, did God really say, do you really
have to follow his rules? Does God really want you to be
happy? No, he doesn’t. He’s taking away all your fun. What should
Adam have done? He should have protected that
garden and said, this is the sanctuary of almighty God who
made heaven and earth and everything in it. And he should have taken
that sword and slain the serpent and said, you don’t belong here
for you are unholy. You do not belong here for you
seek to destroy God’s people. and he should have protected,
but he didn’t. And it’s a reminder to us, dear brothers and sisters,
that in Adam, there’s failure. In Adam, there’s failure to keep
that which is sacred. We’re to live life to the glory
of God. We’re to work and keep our gardens. We’re to protect,
we’re to nurture, we’re to cultivate, we’re to make fruitful all that
God has entrusted to us. We’re to live a righteous and
wise life. Psalm 8, the psalm we read for
our call to worship today, King David says these words, O Lord,
our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth, when I
consider all that you’ve made, the stars which were above, the
beast of the field, all the plants and animals, the ecosystems,
the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, when I consider it,
and maybe put it in modern day terms, those of you who look
through microscopes, some of you who examine the skies through
telescopes, from the tiniest little amoebas and cells to the
great big galaxies that extend far beyond what we can imagine
and everything in between. It says to us, God is amazing.
How majestic is his name in all the earth? And then David says,
why did you make me? Why did you make little old puny
me? Now this is David speaking. This is not David the shepherd
boy. the runt of the family who gets left out on the field. This
is now King David. David who rules over the greatest
kingdom of all the earth that it’s ever seen. Greater than
Egypt, greater than Babylon. He’s saying, little old me, I
look at all you’ve made, why me? And he says, but you’ve given
me dignity. You’ve given me dominion. You’ve
given me power. You’ve given me authority over
all that is in existence. And it’s David’s job to work
and to keep it, to cultivate it, to make it productive and
to make it fruitful. And that’s the attitude we should
have, brothers and sisters. We should look at the world and
everything in it, the stars and the cells and everything in between,
the things we can see with our eyes, the things we can see with
telescopes and microscopes. And we should say, oh God, why
would you even think on me? Well, but you did, and you gave
me dominion over my family. You gave me dominion over my
church, dominion over my workplace. You gave me dominion over a certain
market, a certain task, a certain vocation or job or business or
calling. God has given us dignity and
duties. Let us not be like Adam. When
faced with a challenge to protect and faced with the challenge
to keep what was sacred, he failed. But let us be like Christ, who
when confronted by Satan in the wilderness, not in a luxurious
garden, when confronted by Satan in the wilderness, he used scripture
and sent the devil away from him. We are born in Adam, born
in sin, born in the struggle to do anything good. In fact,
we cannot do any good. But thanks be to God that through
the coming of Jesus, through the coming of Jesus at Christmas,
we are remade into the image of God through His mighty power. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, we
are being transformed into the same image of Christ with an
ever-increasing glory. Every day as you grow in Christ,
as you grow in grace, as you are washed with the Word, Every
day you are being transformed into the image of Christ. And
that image of Adam is being erased. It is being removed from you. That tendency not to work. That
tendency not to keep, not to guard, not to protect, not to
be a blessing to others. You see, Christ, Christ kept
the law. Christ kept the commands of God. Where Adam failed, Christ stood
the test perfectly. And Christ is the great man,
and He rules the earth perfectly. He keeps the earth perfectly. We are sinners, and He is our
Redeemer. And we are being made into His image, remade into His
image through the power of Christ. Think about your Savior for the
next moment. It is Christ who is working and
keeping His church. He is working you through the
Word. He is working you through the Spirit. He is plowing your
soil, he is planting seeds of gospel, and he is nourishing
it and fertilizing it by his word and spirit through the ministry
of the church, but he also keeps you. What does the Bible tell
us? He who keepeth Israel does not
slumber, nor does he sleep. What does the writer of Hebrews
say? I will never, never, never leave you or forsake you. He keeps you. He works you over,
yes, and makes blessings and good things grow in you, but
he keeps his church. The apostle Paul says it well
in Romans chapter eight, there is nothing. Absolutely nothing
that can separate us from the love of God, nothing in life
or suffering or death. No great evil in the world, no
power can take you away from God. Almighty Christ works and
keeps the garden, his church, and we are thankful for it. Let’s
pray together. Our gracious God and master, we thank you this
day that you’ve made us in your image. You’ve made us to rule
over the earth. You’ve given us the charge to be fruitful,
to multiply, to fill the earth. And to fill the earth with little
ones and big ones who have the knowledge of the Savior, we do
ask and pray that you would also help us to work and keep the
gardens you’ve given us. May we make them fruitful for
your name’s sake and for the sake of others who see the fruit
and want to know the God who has made us and even remade us
in Christ Jesus. Of this we ask and pray in Jesus’
name, amen. Let’s respond to God’s holy word
as we sing number 141, A Little Town of Bethlehem.