God's Goodness in Creation

[0:00] All right, well, please turn your Bible to Genesis chapter 1.! We're continuing our sermon series in the book of Genesis.!

[0:30] Verse 26 through 31, and then the following Sunday, verses 1 through 3 of chapter 2. But what I want to do this morning is I want to read all of those verses in one sweep so that we can get the full account of creation and its completion.

[0:56] So we're going to be reading this morning from Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, through Genesis chapter 2, verse 3.

[1:07] If you're using a church Bible, it's on page 1. And I ask you to follow along as I read. The earth was without form and void.

[1:23] And darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light.

[1:37] And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

[1:50] And there was evening, and there was morning the first day. And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.

[2:03] And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse heaven.

[2:19] And there was evening, and there was morning the second day. And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place.

[2:31] And let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas.

[2:43] And God saw that it was good. And God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit, enriches their seed according to its kind on the earth.

[3:06] And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, in which is their seed, each according to its kind.

[3:22] Its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the third day. And God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.

[3:39] And let them be for signs and for seasons and for seasons and for days and years. And let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

[3:54] And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the stars.

[4:06] And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.

[4:20] And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day. And God said, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth, across the expanse of the heavens.

[4:38] So God created the great sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

[4:54] And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.

[5:07] And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.

[5:25] And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind.

[5:42] And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let us make man in our image and 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.

[6:00] So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them.

[6:14] 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.

[6:28] And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.

[6:43] You should have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every grain plant for food.

[7:03] And it was so. And God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.

[7:19] Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them. And on the seventh day, God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

[7:39] So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it, God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

[7:53] Let's pray together. Father, we bow our hearts this morning, asking that you would speak to us through your word and from your word.

[8:09] Lord, I pray you grant us illumination, and I pray that you would cause our eyes to behold wonderful things in your word.

[8:22] And Lord, I pray that the effect on all of our hearts of reading about your amazing creation will be that we worship you, and we will praise your glorious name.

[8:40] And so, Father, would you now bless the preaching of your word to the glory of your name and to the good of all of our souls.

[8:51] We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, if you were here last Sunday, you hopefully recall that the sermon focused on the foundational claim of the opening verse of Genesis, which is also the opening verse of all of Scripture.

[9:11] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And last week, I pointed out that Genesis makes a foundational argument that it is good and right and logical for those whom God has created and placed in his world to love him and obey him and worship him.

[9:37] That is the argument that Moses has in this book that he was commending to the nation of Israel. Indeed, it's the argument that is commended to us as well.

[9:49] And this argument that Moses makes is even clearer when we take the account of Genesis together with the other four books that he has written, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

[10:03] Because what we see is that God demonstrates his care for his people as we see this amazing story of how he created and how he then focused on a particular people and how they ran into bondage and how he brought them out of bondage and was taking them into a wonderful land that they could not have purchased and gotten on their own.

[10:33] And so this morning what I want us to do is I want us, building upon this foundational claim, I want us to consider Scripture's account of creation. And I want us to think about the reason that Moses actually gives us this account of creation and the way he gives us this account of creation.

[10:54] And I believe that the reason that Moses records this account of creation the way that he does is he wants us to see that God's goodness in creation magnifies his grace in redemption.

[11:10] creation. And those of you who are perceptive would probably note that in your handout the title of the sermon is different from what I believe is projected on the screen.

[11:25] And that is because very late I made a decision to change the title because as I studied the passage I really believe that that is the argument that Moses is making from this account of creation that he gives us and the way he gives it to us.

[11:45] He wants us to see God's goodness in creation because it magnifies his grace in redemption. And I think this is a point that's easy to miss if we read the creation in a vacuum.

[12:01] If we read the account of creation in a vacuum we will just see it as information but we won't connect it to the bigger message of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

[12:15] And indeed the bigger message of all of Scripture because the message of all of Scripture is the message of redemption. The storyline of the Bible is the storyline of redemption.

[12:30] And it begins here in this account of creation. And so what we have, what we've just read this morning is the inspired words of Moses inspired by the Holy Spirit that he gives to the nation of Israel and by extension he gives to all of God's people.

[12:55] And again, it is not to be read in isolation, it is to be read as a part of the big story of redemption. And so I pray this morning that we're able to see from this passage how God's goodness in creation magnifies his grace in redemption.

[13:16] So the sermon has two very simple points. Number one, God's goodness in creation and number two, God's grace in redemption. But before we consider these two points, I want us to, I want to make four observations from this account of creation that I think will better help us to appreciate how it is that we have this account of creation in the way that we have it and for the reason that we have it.

[13:52] So four observations. The first two observations are about what this creation account is not. And the first is the creation account is not a scientific account.

[14:05] In other words, Moses did not write the account of creation to provide us with scientific details about how God created the world. That was not his goal as he wrote these words to the children of Israel and certainly not the goal as God has preserved his word for us over the generations.

[14:26] And I really think this is perhaps the most important observation that we need to make about this account because many people come to it looking through scientific lenses asking it to provide what it was not intended to provide.

[14:48] And I think the large message that comes out of it out of the whole creation story is that God is the creator of everything and God is the creator of everyone.

[15:01] But it is not with scientific eyes that we are to come to this passage. The second observation is that the creation account is not a detailed account.

[15:17] Look at Genesis 1 verses 2 again. 1 and 2 again. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

[15:29] The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Notice that although we are told that God created the heavens, the vastness of the heavens and the earth, we're not told how.

[15:49] We're not given the details of how God did that. So we're not told how God created the planets. We are told in verses 3 through 25 how God created many different aspects of his creation.

[16:08] How he created light. How he created birds and vegetation and so forth. But when we come here in these opening verses of Genesis, first notice that we're introduced to waters.

[16:24] waters. And there is no account of God bringing water into existence, although we know he did bring it into existence. And the waters are covering the earth.

[16:42] And we're not told in these details how God brought the earth into being. We also see this condition of darkness and we have no details about it.

[16:55] Now it's reasonable to assume that God created the heavens and the earth in the very same way that we see him doing all the other aspects of his creation that he spoke.

[17:08] Except for man, he didn't speak man into existence, but the other aspects of creation, what we see him doing is he brings them into being by his spoken word.

[17:20] But what we can say about the creation of the heavens and the earth from the account that we just read is that God brought them into being within this six day creation window that we have accounted for us here in Genesis chapter 1.

[17:42] We see that in the summary. In the summary in verse 31, it says, And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good, and there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.

[17:56] So the heavens and the earth were created by the sixth day, but Moses does not give us the details about it. It doesn't say, and God said, and then we saw this, and we saw that.

[18:11] And here's the reason we don't have the details. The reason we don't have the details is because we don't need the details. God gives us every single thing that we need, and the mere fact that these details are not there, the children of Israel did not need these details, and we don't need these details as well.

[18:35] We're able to also see another reason why we know that this account in Genesis 1 is not a detailed account because when we go to chapter 2, we're able to see some details that certainly are connected to chapter 1, but aren't mentioned in chapter 1.

[18:56] And so, for example, God created man. You see, we read, he said, let us make man in our image, and he made them male and female.

[19:07] But it's not until we get to chapter 2 that we see how God formed Adam out of the dust, and how he created Eve out of a rib that he took out of Adam's side.

[19:17] So, the point is that this is not a detailed account. What it is instead, it is a crafted account of creation. And it is crafted in a way, and here again, Moses is not off in some corner being creative with creation.

[19:36] Now, Moses is crafting this account under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So, he's not only reporting creation to us as God inspires him to report it, he reports it in the manner in which God inspires him to do.

[19:51] So, he crafts a particular account. Are we able to see the crafting of this account just by how he has written it? He uses a consistent, repeated, literary style to record the six days of creation.

[20:11] It's a pretty consistent pattern for each of the days as he records them. There is an announcement, and God said, there's a commandment, let there be, or something like that.

[20:25] And then there's some type of separation, like he separates the light from the darkness, followed by a report by Moses, and it was so.

[20:39] And then there's a naming, especially in the first three days where God names the day and the night and the heavens and the earth and the seas.

[20:50] And then there's an evaluation. God says it was good. He evaluates his work and says it is good on each of the days. And then there's a chronological framework or a time frame that's given that stated that it was morning and it was evening and then the number of the day is given.

[21:09] This is a crafted account of creation. And it is crafted for a particular reason. It's crafted because it is part of a bigger story.

[21:24] Moses is not just spilling out some details to us, but he's telling a message to us through this crafted account of creation.

[21:37] So those are the first two observations. What the creation account is not. Not a scientific account, nor is it a detailed account. And now the third and fourth observations.

[21:49] These are what the creation account actually is. First, the creation account is a historical account. Yes, it is crafted.

[22:02] Yes, it is not detailed. But it is a true historic account of what God actually did in creation. creation. I want us to quickly summarize the six days of creation in verses 3 through 31.

[22:21] And I'm not going to draw attention to it, but remember that apart from man, God created everything else by actually speaking it.

[22:35] But when he came to man, he formed him. Formed him out of the dust. And then he made Eve out of his rib.

[22:48] And it shouldn't be lost on us that this powerful God could say, let there be man, but he doesn't do that. He forms him. And so, on the first day, verses 3 to 5, God created light and separated the light from the darkness calling the light day and the darkness night.

[23:12] Then on the second day, verses 6 through 8, God created the sky or the expanse by bringing a separation in the midst of the water.

[23:22] So there's this big watery deep water everywhere and in the middle of that, God just separates the waters and there's waters above the expanse and there's water actually below.

[23:34] Cause the dry land up above, it's the sky or the expanse. And then on the third day, verses 9 through 13, God commanded the waters to be gathered in one place.

[23:51] The dry land appears, he calls the dry land earth and the gathered waters he calls seas. And then he commands the earth to bring forth vegetation and plants come forth and fruit trees come forth.

[24:05] And what we can see is on these first three days, it's a kind of, if you're kind of building a house, it's kind of like putting the infrastructure, putting the superstructure that God forms at this particular part of his creation.

[24:22] He's forming things. And then in the next three days, he's going to fill what he has actually formed. And so on the fourth day, verses 14 to 19, God fills the heavens with lights, sun, moon, and stars.

[24:38] And then on the fifth day in verses 20 to 23, God fills the waters with living creatures and the sky with birds and he commands them to be fruitful and to multiply.

[24:50] And then on the sixth day, this is the largest sweep in creation, on the sixth day, from verses 24 to 31, God creates the animals and all the land creatures and then he makes man in his own image.

[25:09] And here again, we get the general details of how God made man, but we don't get the specifics. We get some specifics when we come over to chapter two, but we see that God blesses them and God tells them to be fruitful and to multiply, and he actually sets them over the whole of the creation.

[25:34] He tells them that they're over all the birds and over all the creatures of the earth and they're to subdue the land and they're to have dominion over everything. And then Moses ends his account in verse 31 with these words, when God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good, and there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

[26:01] Now one of the questions that often arises is whether the six days of creation, the morning and the evening days, are literal 24 hour days, or just long periods of time that could have been millions of years, and some say billions of years, some four billion years is pretty much what some people say this duration of time really, really is.

[26:36] Now before answering that, let me just say this. There are faithful, sincere Christians who differ on both sides of that question.

[26:51] There are some who believe that it's six literal days, and there are some who believe that the days are not literal, but the days are just periods of time, and they're very long periods of time.

[27:05] Those who believe it's a literal six-day window would say that the earth is young, the earth is around 6,000 years old, but those who believe these days are not literal days, they would put the earth into millions and even billions of years.

[27:22] But the point this morning, before I share with you my own thoughts on it, is that this is not a yardstick of orthodoxy. This is not a yardstick to be determined whether a person is a true Christian, whether they're saved.

[27:36] It doesn't measure that at all. So genuine believers have different views on this particular aspect. Now for my part, I believe that the six days are a literal six-day, 24-hour period, morning and evening of creation.

[28:02] And the reason I believe that is because the natural reading of the text communicates that. I don't think that Moses' original audience would have thought about it any differently.

[28:14] I believe that they were taking it just as they received it, that it naturally seems to be communicating 24-hour days, literal days.

[28:28] And when you really look at the crafting that Moses gives us, he goes, there was evening and there was morning the first day, evening and morning, and he does that straight up to the sixth day.

[28:40] And then also, in Genesis 2, 1-3, which we looked at, we read that earlier, where it tells us that the hosts of the heavens were finished, and on the seventh day God rested from all the work that he had done.

[28:59] And he blessed the seventh day, and he made it holy, because he rested from it, rested from his creation. Now, I think if we were to take this as just a very long period of time, it doesn't seem to fit the idea of a seventh day on which God rested, and which he is going to commend to his people as a day of rest.

[29:23] And that becomes very clear when we read the actual commandment concerning the Sabbath day that God gives in Exodus 20, verses 8-11.

[29:36] It should be projected for you. This is what it says. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

[29:51] On it you shall not do any work you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates.

[30:06] for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day.

[30:18] Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. I think you would agree with me, hopefully, that it would be a sleight of hand for Moses to be talking about two different periods of time, one for God and one for the people.

[30:36] It would be a sleight of hand if Moses is calling the people to observe this rhythm of six 24 hours day of work and then a day of rest and referencing God's work in these six days and God's resting on the seventh day if he has two different time frames in mind.

[30:56] And so this seems to fit the natural reading of the text. This happened in six, the creation happened in six literal days.

[31:12] I don't want to distract us any further than I have already with this this morning, but if you are interested in this and you want to read more about it, one website I would recommend that you look at is answersin genesis.org.

[31:30] It's a wonderful trustworthy website headed up by Ken Ham and that's a good place to start if you're interested in looking at things like carbon dating and how they go about dating different things and what are some of the fallacies that are involved in how approaching dating the earth and dating fossils can be.

[32:00] the fourth and final observation that I want to make is that the creation account is a theological account. The creation account is a theological account.

[32:17] Genesis gives us a historical account of creation. It actually happened. But this historical account is not given to us in a vacuum. It is given to us in a theological framework because Moses intends to teach his hearers about God and man.

[32:40] And I believe any faithful reading of the creation account will help us to see that God is the ultimate subject of creation and man is the ultimate object of creation.

[32:54] God creates everything, including man, creation, and then he blesses man, male and female, and puts them over his creation.

[33:08] And Moses is showing in this crafted account of creation, this theological account of creation, Moses wants us to see that God is good and God's creation is beautiful.

[33:22] And he wants us to see how he did all of this and he created man and placed him at the highest point in all of his creation. Moses wants us to see that God is sovereign and powerful.

[33:36] He speaks and things happen. He wants us to see God as this gracious, powerful, sovereign king and men and women as his subjects on the earth.

[33:52] And the earth is the domain where he has placed them to live and placed them to obey him. This creation account is an account of the kingdom of God.

[34:09] It is a theological account, a crafted account to help us to see the kingdom of God. This is the higher reason that we have this account.

[34:21] Not so much to give us details about creation, but to help us to understand this foundational aspect of this big story that Moses is telling us.

[34:34] And again, this, what we find in Genesis, this weaves through the rest of Scripture straight down to the book of Revelation, and all of this is one big redemptive story.

[34:44] And so we must think about the creation story through the lens of redemption. I guess you don't think through lens, but you see through lens. We need to see the creation story through the lens of redemption.

[35:00] Yes, it's historical, but more importantly, it is theological. And that's not the sermon, that's the introduction to the sermon.

[35:17] But, hopefully, that introduction makes the sermon brief. two points. Again, Moses crafts this account of creation for his readers to see that God's goodness in creation magnifies his grace and redemption.

[35:43] First, God's goodness in creation. God's goodness in creation is displayed in the way this account is given to us.

[36:01] In verse two, in verse two, he represents the earth. He tells us the earth was uninhabitable. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep.

[36:15] Now, let's remember, God created everything. He created the heavens and the earth, but what Moses does in his presentation of creation to us is he brings us the earth at this particular stage of God's creating.

[36:32] and he says the earth was uninhabitable. It was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And then God sets about to bring order to it all.

[36:44] And in his creation, he makes the earth a habitable place. He makes it a place where creatures and man, human beings, are able to live.

[37:02] And then unlike all of his other creatures, he makes the man in his own image and in his own likeness. And he places him over everything that he had made.

[37:16] He made them male and female and gave them dominion over everything, commanding them to be fruitful. And then he provides abundant food for them. Abundant food.

[37:29] Not one or two little things or six things you're going to have one every day. No, he gave them abundance of food. And while we're not considering it this morning, because we will consider it later, God even plans a special garden, a place in Eden where he puts Adam and Eve.

[37:55] and he gives them one prohibition. Among the abundance of trees, including the tree of life that he placed in the middle of the garden, he says, there's one tree that you're not supposed to eat of.

[38:12] The tree of the knowledge of good and evil because eating of it would lead to your death. God and Adam and Eve disobeyed this good God.

[38:28] This good God who did that. Now, when you think about it, it could have been sufficient for Moses to say to the children of Israel, God created everything. No, but he details it and he shows how God went about with this creation and he does it in such a way that God's goodness comes out.

[38:47] the God who is perfectly good assesses every single thing that he does and he says, it's good, it's good, it's good.

[38:58] And when he was all done, he says, it's very good. And he takes this man and he places him over it all. Now, while the creation account demonstrates God's goodness, forgiveness, it also serves to magnify God's grace, God's grace of redemption.

[39:26] See, because again, this is a story and Moses is telling a story. Moses knows the story that he's telling. He is telling a story first about Israel's redemption, but in the purposes of God, it serves the larger purpose of God for his larger redemption.

[39:46] And so this brings you to my second and final point of the sermon, God's grace and redemption. Now, I know I'm going ahead of the text that we have properly come to this morning, but I thought it was necessary to do this because again, our whole Bible is open to us.

[40:07] And we, I believe we benefit more understanding creation by connecting it to the larger story that is being told in the pages of Scripture.

[40:23] And this will become clearer when we get to chapter 3, where it covers the fall. And I want us to think about it just briefly this morning, because when we think about the fall, in light of God's amazing goodness displayed in creation, amazing goodness towards Adam and Eve, amazing goodness towards mankind, we're able to see how His grace is magnified in the midst of all of that.

[40:55] God gave them everything they needed and more, and yet they rebelled against Him. I think if we ever want an example of iconic ingratitude, it must be Adam and Eve.

[41:18] God was merciful to them, even after they rebelled against Him. After they sinned, God was the one who went looking for them.

[41:31] You know, sometimes we sweat people when people have done something, we know they've done something wrong, we know they need to come to us, and we sweat them, and we make it hard, and they have to take that long way to come to us. No, not with God.

[41:43] God went to them. He went looking, this God who was so gracious to them, so generous to them, so kind to them, and they rebelled against Him, and He goes looking for them.

[41:59] and in the encounter, He promises that He was going to send a Redeemer. He was going to send a Redeemer who was going to crush the serpent's head, and then we see God graciously killing at least one animal, taking the skins, and taking off the sewn figs that Adam and Eve were wearing, and He properly closed them with these sewn figs.

[42:33] In the book of Deuteronomy, as the children of Israel are preparing to go into the promised land, Moses is repeating the law again for them.

[42:45] He's reminding them, this is what God has said. Deuteronomy is a repetition of the law. But there's a very interesting part of Deuteronomy in chapter 32, where Moses is singing a song, but he's prophesying to the nation of Israel about how they will relate to God when they get into the land, how they will not be faithful.

[43:12] And it's very interesting because Moses uses very similar language to describe the condition that the children of Israel were in, that it's the same language that describes the state of the uninhabitable earth.

[43:35] I'm going to read this for us. You don't need, it's not projected, but just try to listen. Deuteronomy chapter 32, starting in verse 10. I'll read to verse 18.

[43:47] talking about Israel, singing about them, prophesying about them, this is what Moses says. He found him.

[43:59] He found him. Israel often is referred to in singular. He found him in a desert land in the howling waste of the wilderness.

[44:14] He encircled him. That should sound familiar how the spirit was hovering over the waters. He encircled him. He cared for him.

[44:25] He kept him as the apple of his eye. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, burying them on its pinions.

[44:38] The Lord alone guided him. No foreign god was with him. He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he sucked him with, he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock, curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat lambs, rams of bashan, and goats, with the very finest of the wheat, and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the great.

[45:15] But Jeshurun, this is a poetic name for the nation of Israel, but Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, stout, and sleek.

[45:28] Then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the rock of his salvation. They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods and abominations.

[45:39] They provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to the gods that they'd never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.

[45:58] You were mindful of the rock that bore you, and you were unmindful of the rock that bore you, and forgot the God who gave you birth. Again, this language of this howling waste where Israel was, this uninhabitable place, and God had mercy on them and brought them out of that place and brought them into a habitable land that they were able to live in.

[46:27] And it's a contrast. It is a reflection back to this, to the condition of the earth, the snapshot of it that Moses got for us.

[46:40] And so if you want to think of it like this, imagine Moses with a video camera, and he chooses different scenes that he brings to us about God's creation, and about God's creating the earth, that's the scene that he chooses to bring to us.

[46:56] The point at which the earth was just uninhabitable, and dark, and void. that's the point that he brings to us, and how God set about, and just making that a wonderful, beautiful condition and place where Adam and Eve would be able to live, where mankind would be able to live.

[47:26] You know, it is one thing to rescue a person out of a dilemma that they find themselves in. When a person is in a dilemma, and we go and we help them, that's a kindness.

[47:42] Brothers and sisters, it is a completely different thing to rescue a person out of a dilemma, towards whom you've been unreservedly good, and that person turns his or her back against you and spurn your goodness and winds up in trouble, and you go and you rescue that person, you help that person.

[48:07] That's not just an expression of human kindness, that's an expression of divine grace. And Moses wants us to see this gracious, generous God, who created this for man, this earth in which we are.

[48:29] And the issue this morning, brothers and sisters, is not just Adam and Eve. It's not just that Adam and Eve rebelled in this land that God had given to them.

[48:42] The issue for us this morning is despite whatever trials we face in this life, whatever hardships we face in this life, the issue is that God has been amazingly good to all of us.

[48:55] And yet, we are just like Adam and Eve. All of us, we go our own way, we are like sheep going astray, and we do just what Adam and Eve has done.

[49:12] And we're not serving God, we don't serve God, left to ourselves as we should in his world with his gifts and with his goodness.

[49:28] Moses crafts this creation account to tell the story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. But we only appreciate it when we bear in mind first God's goodness in creation.

[49:49] That's the first unnecessary chapter of the story. And the question can be asked, what else could God have done for mankind?

[50:02] mankind? What else could have the perfect, wise, all-powerful God have done for mankind? And yet, all of us, like sheep, have gone astray.

[50:19] All of us have turned our own way. All of us have turned our backs on God and his world. God has shown amazing grace by sending Jesus Christ to rescue those to whom he had been amazingly good.

[50:50] Sinners like you and me, who, like Adam and Eve, deserve to die. Deserve to die because we were rebelled not just against God who is holy and powerful and all that he is, but God who is good, God who's been good to us.

[51:13] If God has simply said to us, obey me, and he just put us in a lean place just to survive, we would still be wrong to rebel against him, but we rebelled in the midst of amazing generosity and amazing goodness.

[51:39] And so brothers and sisters, the call to us today, the call to us this morning is to be mindful that we are still in God's good world, though broken in many ways. It's still a good world filled with many good gifts from our God.

[51:55] God. And I pray that God help all of us to live as grateful people and as obedient people for all that he has done for us.

[52:09] But this account that we have here in Genesis is a theological account that is designed to help us to see how God's goodness in creation magnifies his grace and redemption.

[52:27] We didn't deserve anything in the beginning and even more so in the end, after rebelling, we didn't deserve the grace that we received.

[52:42] Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you would help us all to be amazed and the grace that you have displayed by redeeming those who rebelled against you in your world, spurned all of your good gifts, and yet you were merciful and gracious to save.

[53:18] Will you help us all this morning, I pray, to remember that we are called to serve you in your world for your glory, because you are king.

[53:37] Oh Lord, would you convict our hearts this morning, where we are living with our backs to you, and we are spurning your patient, consistent goodness that you give us day by day.

[53:58] Would you help us, Lord, would you work in our hearts as only you can. In Jesus' name, amen. God