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 e
