Fall

January 15, 2023 · Ben Hoyer · 31:04

Continuing the Genesis series, this message moves into Genesis 2-3 and the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, beginning with the unwatered, virgin ground before God forms man to work it.

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So for the rest of us, we're going to talk about that story too a little bit. Last week we talked about the story of creation. And from now until Ash Wednesday, we're going to move through some of the major storms in the book of Genesis. And last week, one of the big pieces, we didn't break down the whole creation story, but one of the big takeaways for me was like, the story of creation has

given direction, hope, purpose, to our people through every scientific theory about the beginning of the world that's existing. And as those have evolved, this story has endured. And so for me, it's like I like the world better when I understand that it's gotten made it for me. And also when I believe that God

made the world, it's easier to understand and make me that I'm not an accident but a result of intention and forethought and destined for and eternity. So we talked last week about the story of creation. And this week I want to look at that story of added and eased and regarded and the next half of the garden. Really in Genesis, the end of Genesis 2 and through Genesis 3 if you want to find it in the copy of Genesis 2.

Let me pray for us and then we'll look at that. O good Lord, thank you for bringing us here today and for making us your church, life is better in the midst of a group of people and it ends together as your church. Old security present here. Love us and conditions only you can. And Jesus and the present. I did talk a little bit last week about like where this book of Genesis

comes from because these stories are so primordial and so they weren't writing them down in the garden though that would have been cool. These stories come to us from Moses who spoke with God as an answer to another man face to face in the tent of needing. And they have been copied by hand and re-poppied from one generation to the next. They endured in like

in clay bases, sealed up in the desert. Thank God in the desert, not in Florida where a matter of months the moisture would have disintegrated it. But in the desert, buried, lost in closet, you know even in the time of the Old Testament the scriptures are lost and found, written, lost and found. They're translated, they're written in Aramaic and Hebrew and Greek and Latin.

Most of our texts are English translations of the Hebrew text that's from the 10th or 11th century but exists in this poem from this hyggeic. Israel is here like a community called the Malgore, so that had a thing to vow which are not written in the Hebrew symbols just to count on it. I tell you all this just it reminds you that it's so sort of miracle that you can pull your computer out of your pocket and type in a passage and that this ancient unique and ancient

occult appears before you. So that it's not some mere myth but the narrative that has animated times and nations of people for thousands of years about how we got here and what we are caught up in. It's not some near children's children but a powerful into narrative about the world that we died into here. And so there's some solemnity in it even though we might, the story

of Adam and Eve, we could approach pretty casually because we see it drawn more in cartoons than we imagine it in reality right? They have a little book about Adam and Eve that the kids have written, it's lovely cartoon pictures. We see it more like that more than we ever see it in its reality. But there was one line that got me to think about the reality of it this morning, it's a story that I come back to a lot of Genesis in the Garden of Eden but this was a line that I have noticed before

oh boy let me see if I can put my eyes on it now. Oh yeah, in Genesis chapter 2 and starting at verse 5 I'm reading in the English Standard version it says yeah. When no bush in the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet thrown up with the word God had not paused its terrain on the land and there was no man who worked the ground and missed

was going up from the land and was wandering the whole face of the ground. Oh I never caught that before this this virgin ground unwatered by rain as far as you can see nothing coming up yet and Moses writes it hadn't come up because no rain had come down

and no one was there to work the ground and no plants it come up but across this like original barren landscape and this is rising up out of the dirt kind of amazing. I was talking to a family relative just yesterday and he was telling me that October he's finishing his career he's done almost 50 years working for Icyft out of the University of Florida studying ponds and lakes

and we were talking about water keeping our ponds and lakes and natural water systems cleanly and he was saying one of the things that I thought was interesting was he was saying that we have these systems in developed areas to keep our ponds within a few feet and he said you wouldn't think of it but the natural flooding of the pond when it would come up eight, ten, twelve feet and then receive that helps cleaning the water because when it comes back it leaves all that sediment

but now it will go into homes and I think about lake data flooding ground for during hurricane, right? So we have to come up with different systems between the water because you have a set amount of water and that's why I remember water this like vinyl that we live in has just the right amount of water that keeps perulating around and around and around it's not adding water to its system it's just here the water cycle and at the very beginning it was just getting started barren ground no plants mist coming up out of the ground

and the God of the year goes the creator that speaks life into this system walks among the myths and takes humanity out of dirt and says breathe that original brush of life and animate the dirt into human right? For the Lord God and not yet the dead pog will drain and there was no man to work the ground and mist was getting up from the land and watering the whole face of the ground

and the Lord God formed the man from the death of the ground and breathed into its mouth for the breath of life and the man became a living creature, amazing one of the things that's so compelling is what goes on next right? where God and Adam start doing the work of but in the place of the Lord God, plans to the garden and eat in the east and there he puts a man who he had formed and out of the ground the Lord God made a screen of every tree that is pleasant

in its sight and good for food and the tree of life a couple years ago a group of us read C.S. Lewis Space and he has this story in the second book there that's quite mind-blowing to imagine being present for a place of creation what's it like to move through and God's calling up every tree that is pleasing to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the world and to the

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