The Life of Faith 2 

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Brothers and sisters, do pray for us as we begin the exposition of the Old Testament which should conclude in about 25 years’ time when Tim’s little boy will be about 29! Because you remember when we started Romans about 15 years ago God began to create a beauty in his own body here among us.  I feel that he wants us now to get 10,000 of us abroad for him and it’s in connection with that that we ought to begin expounding the Old Testament chapter-by-chapter.  Not quite as slowly as verse-by-verse as we’ve been doing Romans, but chapter-by-chapter.  And even though we may miss certain Sundays and it may take us longer than the 25 years, I think we should set out on the journey with a view to learning how to live the life of faith together.  That’s what God showed me he could teach each one of us, to live the life of faith; that when we saw the greatness of him himself we would ourselves live more the life of faith day-by-day. 

So that’s the purpose in doing this.  And last Sunday we talked about Genesis 1 and about the great work of creation and how it took place in three mighty steps.  You remember that there was a dividing of one thing from another; dividing the light from the darkness, and then dividing the air from the water, and then dividing the sea from the land.  Then he followed that with great works of filling and they corresponded exactly to these, because he divided the light from the darkness and he then filled the darkness with the stars and the sun and the moon.  Then he filled the air and the water with birds and fish.  And then he filled the land with plants and with animals, and then finally with the crown of creation; man himself.  And we said that that was a great panoramic view of God’s creation of the world. 

And you remember we tried to bring home to our own minds again the massiveness of that creation and its tremendous extent.  We talked about how so many things were so large -- man’s buildings on the earth take up 93 cubic miles but the earth’s size is 260,000,000 million cubic miles and this, God made in a moment.  This is our God that we often wonder -- can he take care of our finances this month, or can he take care of our jobs, or our marriages?  The size of the sun is actually equal to a million and a quarter earths and the distance from the earth to the sun is 93,000,000 miles and yet the sun is only one of 400 such stars.  And then I just thought as I read something in the New York Times today, so often we wonder, “Well, God’s timing -- sometimes I think it’s a little off.  I mean, I should have married or met my girlfriend by now -- I am 28,” or, “I am 23,” or, “I am 46.”  Or “I should have got into the job he has for me by this time.” 

This is from the New York Times this afternoon and it might be interesting: “The Romans thought it heralded the death of Agrippa.  A few centuries later the Chinese thought it was connected with an Emperor’s demise.  A few centuries after that it supposedly meant Attila the Hun’s defeat.  Along about the 11th century a host of needlewomen worked its likeness into the Bayeux Tapestry.  In the 13th [century] Philip Augustus seeing its blazing trail figured his time was up.  In the 15th a Pope may have excommunicated it.  In the 17th an astronomer named Halley said, ‘It shows up every 76 years.’  The 18th Century proved him right.  This week, on a schedule that would make a subway rider weep, Haley’s Comet was glimpsed for the first time since 1910.  In February 1986 it will swing around the sun, pass within 29 million miles of earth, and give all of us a crick in the neck.  The crick suffered by the Romans, and the Chinese, by Attila, and Philip Augustus, and, and -- civilizations come and go but Haley’s Comet just keeps on rolling along.”

 Now you see your own wonderings about God’s timings in the right proportion.  This dear Father of ours that can keep Haley’s Comet coming around on the button every 76 years from the time of the Romans -- ah from way beyond that -- he surely will be able to manage the details of your marriage, and your profession, and your job.  And it’s good loved ones, to see it in that light, and not get lost in the apparent massiveness of your problems and mine.  They’re nothing to this dear Father who is able to manage all kinds of planets and stars that we can’t see ourselves. 

So loved ones, that’s the background in Genesis 1.  Now maybe you’d like to look at Genesis 2 and I’ll try to expound some of this so that you see the greatness and the faithfulness of our dear Creator and expound some of it so that you may understand it better because in these early chapters of Genesis there are questions that have come up down through the years.  The first paragraph of Genesis 2 is really an explanation of the conclusion of the creation of the whole world, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.” 

It may be good to see verse 1, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.”  They were created and finished; they were completed.  They aren’t the continual emanation of God himself.  They aren’t synonymous with the deity.  They aren’t what the middle eastern religions say is just an expression of God himself; a continuing emanation of God.  No; when you deal with the earth you deal with something that God made and created therefore it is something that can be studied and it’s something that can be mastered and conquered.  And you remember I mentioned last day that one of the problems in places like India or the places where the distinction between the Creator and the creation is not very clear, people feel the creation is divine itself and you can’t upset it, and you can’t do anything with it to bring it into order.  So you find in countries like India tremendous chaos, because you feel you can’t do anything about it -- “whatever will be will be” -- its fate.  And this is completely different of course, from the view of science and the view of bringing the world into order that comes from this presentation of creation.

It might be good too to deal a little with the Seventh Day Adventist because it is true that at the end of the first creation God did hallow the seventh day.  But do you see that that was the first creation and the second creation, or the recreation took place as recorded in John 20:1.  Those of you who aren’t quite sure how to deal with the Seventh Day Adventist or the loved one who says, “Oh, but it was the seventh day.  God made the Sabbath the seventh day.”  Well, that was the old covenant Sabbath and it was the old creation Sabbath, but the new creation Sabbath occurred in John 20:1, “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.”  Because the old creation had been destroyed and the new creation had risen out of the tomb and we were created new.

And that’s why loved ones, in Acts 20:7 you find that the early Christian church began to meet on that same day when the new creation took place.  It’s Acts 20:7, “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the morrow; and he prolonged his speech until midnight.”  And that was the new Sunday.  That was the Son’s day.  That marks the resurrection of the Son and the resurrection of all of us in the Son.  So it’s important to see that God hallowed the seventh day because that was the creation of the natural world, but Jesus hallowed the first day of the week because that was the death of the old creation and the recreation of the supernatural world in him.

So that’s part of the explanation of the seventh day.  Then you see verse 4, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.”  Some people think that that applied to the previous account in Genesis 1 where God talks about creating the light and the darkness, the sea and the land, the fishes, the plants, and all that.  But many people think, “No that refers to what follows.  God has created the natural world and now he’s going to zero in on the heaven and the earth -- the things that happened in heaven and the things that happened on the earth.  So that’s why he says ‘These are the generations -- this is how the heavens and the earth began to develop’ because he’s going to zero in on the family of man and man’s relationship to his Creator.”

The account continues in verse 4, “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field,” you say herb but I can’t get used to it, “And no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.”  Now, do you see that doesn’t mean that God did not make the vegetable world?  I don’t know if you ever faced in college what I faced in the kind of liberal seminary where I went, the whole theory that there is one account of creation in Genesis 1 and there is a contradictory one in Genesis 2 and there was a poor dumb soul that put the two (chapters) together, and was supposed not to have noticed that [contradiction] and just sewed the two together – he wasn’t as enlightened as we 20th Century sophisticates! 

Well, that isn’t the case at all.  Genesis 1 is a panoramic view of everything that took place while Genesis 2 is zeroing in on man, and particularly his relationship to God. 

Genesis 1 sets man in relationship to the creation of other things; the land, and the sea, the stars, and everything else.  Genesis 2 zeroes right in on man and centers him on himself like a large photograph of all of you and then focusing in on Ted and just dealing with him.  That’s the relationship between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

So of course, when you come to the mention of the plants here, it’s not that God didn’t make the vegetable world back on the third day if you look at it in Genesis 1:11.  “And God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.’”  Many of those were not flowers or plants of the field as are mentioned here in Genesis 2:5, “When no plant of the field was yet in the earth.”  But many of them, too, were simply in their seed form and God arranged it with just a little mist to keep the whole thing alive until man himself should come upon the scene.  That’s why he says, “And there was no man to till the ground.” 

So the plants that grow in our fields, the crops and the fruit that we eat, depend on a combination of human culture and God’s own rain and sun. God held the whole thing in abeyance until man came upon the earth and then of course, he began to rain rain upon the earth.  That’s what that means loved ones; it doesn’t mean that there was no vegetation on the earth at that time but that it was all held in abeyance with that mist that kept things alive.  But there was no growth because if there had been growth before man came the whole thing would have turned into chaos.  You’ve probably noticed that yourselves; that once you get man out of the picture again, the wildness takes over and begins to overcome any order that he has created.  

Then in verse 7, “then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”  Loved ones, the word for dust is “aphar”.  “Aphar” means ordinary earth; dust.  Now it’s interesting that when the earth is talked about it is the same word as Adam: it is “adama”.   There’s another word for it “erets” but adama is the word for earth or dust also, and that’s where you get the meaning of Adam.  When you get, “And God breathed into his nostrils the breath,” it’s “ruach” which is really the word for spirit, or breath, or wind.  And actually in the Hebrew it’s “the breaths of lives”.  So it’s in the plural -- lives. 

You remember Watchman Nee says, “Now, that’s part of the explanation.  Man was made of the earth and then God breathed into him the Spirit of his own life and then as a result man became “nephesh”, in Hebrew, which is “Man became a living soul.”  So people like Nee will say that God breathed into the body the Spirit, and the result was like when you put instant coffee into water and it becomes coffee, so the combination resulted in the soul which he would say is what makes man, man:  mind, emotions, and will -- that’s what makes man peculiarly man.  The angels are spirit, the animals are just body, but man is the combination, and the soul is the unique possession that he has.

So that’s one of the explanations; that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breaths of lives.  Now Delitzsch and I hope that some of you will do a little study when you get to know some of these things -- Delitzsch is an old German that has a very detailed commentary on Genesis and he says, “Well yes, it can be this but really the primary thing is that God breathed his life into man.”  And it’s very interesting he says not that he [God] breathed air into man, air is what man breathes, but God breathed into man life itself.  That’s why the test tube thing is kind of silly.  It’s very hard to produce any life -- create life -- and nobody claims to be doing that.  The best they’re talking about with the test tube babies is taking something from a living human being and putting it into a test tube and then transferring it to another body, or maybe they’ll discover a way in which they can, in the test tube, grow it -- but they start with life.

And it’s important for us all to see that; that only one being can create life and that is God himself.  That when he breathed into this dust his own life, life began.  Do you know that the doctors can’t explain why the heart beats?  They can’t.  They can tell you where it starts from, and they can attempt to start a heart after it stopped, but they can’t really tell why life continues or why life even begins.  Now that’s the miracle you see; that God took and he started man as a unique human being.  That’s why – we can go along, maybe there’s an evolution of moths, maybe moths get dirty the longer they’re in New York, you know, and have to put up with that polluted air.  And maybe all kinds of species, they’ve all been all different kinds of butterflies, but what we do see Genesis teaches is that there came a stop there: God made the animals then he made man and man is a different kind of beast.  You know, he’s a different kind of animal.  He’s a different kind of being. 

God did not breathe into the animals for instance, in Genesis 1, his life -- the breath of his life.  He just created them.  He created plants that can’t walk, then he created plants that can walk, something like C. S. Lewis’ creatures you remember, but that’s virtually what animals are; they’re really plants that can walk or can eat.  And some plants can eat too you remember, so really there’s great similarities between plants and animals and their creation is detailed very quickly in Genesis 1.  But when it comes to man God goes to great trouble to point out, “Now I breathed into your nostrils the breath of life.”  And so even when Schweitzer says, “All life is sacred and therefore we ought to take care of human beings because all life is sacred,” even he isn’t getting the whole of it, you know. 

The great thing is loved ones, you’re different.  You’re vitally different from any animal and so that’s the problem with the evolution from the apes.  Oh, let the apes evolve as far as they want, let them get bigger brains and bigger brains, but praise God there is a missing link and the missing link is not only there in the geological and anatomical history but it’s right here built into this history, of what took place; that it was a definite stop and a start when God made man.  And then do you see Verse 8, “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” 

Loved ones, it seems that all that means is that God set up a model world.  Can I remind you of the other theory held by some great men and women?  The other theory is that if you go back to Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  And then the theory is that Satan who was in charge of that earth rebelled against God and took the earth with him and it all fell back into savagery and wildness.  And between verses 1 and 2 there was a great pre-adamic fall and then you see, as a result of that in verse 2, “The earth was without form and void.” 

Now first of all, the Hebrew words “form” and “void” do not mean a deteriorated emptiness and a deteriorated wildness, they simply mean something that had no form yet; but more than that -- it’s very tricky to fill in between the silence of two Bible verses a centuries old massive fall that God says nothing about in any other place.  But often the theory is, you see, that therefore God put man into the world to redeem it and restore it again and that’s why in the middle of the savagery and chaos in verse 8 he had to plant a garden.  And so the theory is that all the rest of the world was chaotic and God simply had to cull out a little bit of it and make it filled with order and then put man in it and tell him, “Now, you spread that order throughout the rest of the world.” 

It does seem to me that it’s unwarranted and that there are many indications that in fact what we have in Genesis is the truth; that God made the world and at the beginning he made it just without form and void, then he began to put shape into it, and then he put man into it and he gave man a model city as it were.  He put him in Eden in a garden.  The word for Garden is “paradeisos” and comes into the Septuagint which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament as Paradise, and that’s where that word Paradise comes from. It can be translated, “God made a paradise in Eden,” or, “A park in Eden.”  And so it’s a beautiful place where everything was perfect and where all the food that man wanted was there, and all the water was there, and it’s really a picture of heaven.  And God put man there saying to him, “Now, I want you to spread this throughout the world that I’ve given you.”

And you see, God put in verse 9, “And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”  We’ll come to that in a moment or two but you remember, Sauer and you might be interested loved ones, if you want to do further studies in Sauer who is a German professor who wrote The Dawn of World Redemption and it’s that paperback and it’s just great The Dawn of World Redemption, if you want to begin to study especially, these early chapters in more detail.  And Sauer says, “That for mankind in its childhood God presented the choice of depending on him or depending on himself as two trees, a tree of knowledge of good and evil and a tree of life.”  Really, we have no reason to question that.  There’s nothing about an apple, don’t get caught up in apples.  There are no apples mentioned.  And don’t get caught up with the importance of the trees; the trees symbolize for man they were real, they were what man understood at that time in his development, but they symbolized a choice between two ways of living.  And we’ll talk about them a few verses later. 

Where was Eden?  Well it’s interesting, you know, Genesis indicates, as we shared last day, that it’s to be taken as history.  It’s not written like Revelation which is fully of allegory and full of images, and obviously indicates that it is visionary and it is mystical.  But Genesis is very historical, very geographical, and so go gently yourself if you want to be fair and just Bible exegetes, that’s people who interpret the Bible as it’s meant, then be careful see that the Bible indicates the way that it ought to be taken.  And Genesis undoubtedly indicates that it’s historical and of course, comes right down to geography here.  “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden,” this is where the Garden of Eden was, “And there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.  The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which flows around the whole land of Cush.  And the name of the third river,” and here you’ve come into present day rivers, you know, they’re still there, “Is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria.  And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” 

So those two rivers, the other two have probably changed their names and we have various interpretations of which they are, but the Tigris and Euphrates, just turn back in the black RSV there and you see them on the map inside the cover.  And you can see them on the right hand page there right up running along the desert there.  Euphrates, just along the green you remember, or you see, where it touches the light brown, there’s the river Euphrates.  And then trace it right down to the sea there and then follow back up the Tigris.  So you see the Euphrates and the Tigris and it’s where those rivers began.  And the Euphrates you can see breaks and then connects up again because of course there was a great change in the topography of the world after the flood and so great mountain masses were moved.  But even then you can see roughly that the Euphrates and the Tigris joined together back up there near Tubal and its modern Armenia.  And there are two other rivers that are thought to be the other two of the four that are mentioned that flow into Caspian Sea.  So it’s reckoned that somewhere around there was the original Garden of Eden even though huge mountain masses have been changed since that time.

But it is good to see that the Genesis is not just a fairy story.  God’s word insists on putting itself on record and that’s good, God always put himself on record he doesn’t play around or bluff us.  Look at verse 15, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.”  And that’s important, to see that we’ve to keep the Garden of Eden and that is what man was to do; he was to keep the order that God had created, to preserve it.  And you’ll see that in your own life.  Remember, that we mentioned that God gave man dominion.  Remember, God made man in his own image in several ways.  He made him with an indestructible image, gave us some things that can’t be destroyed.  That old DeLorean used because the indestructible image man was made with a personality and it doesn’t matter who you are, whether you believe in God or not, you have that.  He gave man free will, gave him conscience, gave him reason, and judgment, and the one I was thinking of with DeLorean gave him a vocation to rule. 

And that’s what made every guy go out and ride the fence in the old days.  That’s what makes everyone try to bring a new world into order.  That’s what made – there were other things I’m sure, but that’s part of what made DeLorean want to bring the car company into order when he created it at the beginning.  And so all of us have that vocation to rule, even people who don’t believe in God at all and so you remember, Red Adair – the guy that flew in and then dumped all the stuff on the oil flares and put them out -- men like that were given that desire to bring the world into order by God and God has given that desire to us. 

And so there is something worse about an untidy room than just that you annoy your mother or your husband, and there’s something worse than you just being in a little bit of chaos not keeping your check stubs organized.  And there’s something worse than just being kind of an untidy person leaving your dirty socks lying around.  There is actually; you’re not keeping the garden.  You’re not keeping the garden, and in that sense you’re actually throwing in his teeth part of this indestructible image that he has  to you  because actually, you have a vocation to rule.  If you don’t keep your socks in order you’ll start keeping your husband in order, you know.  You’ll begin to expand the vocation to rule over something that isn’t legitimate. 

So it’s interesting, never think – Freud is right here in a suppression system.  You know, you put the pressure on one end of the pipe and it bursts out the other.  Well, that’s right, if you don’t enter into the vocation to rule that God has for you in your life, you’ll find yourself unbearable to live with.  So it’s quite important to find out where is God’s legitimate place for you to exercise that because believe it or not, you’ll exercise it one way or the other; either the right way or the wrong way.  And so some of those qualities God has given and we need to keep the garden in order in our own lives.  And may I just emphasize that again even though we talked about it last day, many of you loved ones, can’t find what Jesus wants you to do in the future because you won’t do what he is telling you to do today.  That’s right.  And many of you can’t hear what he’s telling you to do today because you won’t do the ordinary things that are plainly before you like duties and responsibilities in your job and your home.  And so it all falls in, you know. 

We keep on saying, “Oh yes, yes, but I’ll do that when I get to it and I’ll do all this when I get all the rest done.”  But God is saying, “Do this.  Bring this into order today.”  I’d just ask you about that, is there anything in your own life that isn’t in order today?  Keep the garden, keep the garden, and then God will show you what to do next.  Then the destructible image, you remember, is the inner image that was lost by the fall and it’s called the destructible image, the spirituality.  And the liberty of spirit, freedom of will -- where you’re able to do what he wants you to do and the blessedness, the happiness of God’s own presence.  And those are the things of course, that we lost by the fall and that we only regain through the Holy Spirit.

It might be good to think of those things loved ones, in keeping the garden.  And then in verse 16, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may freely 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 die.’”  And of course, every tree of the garden meant loved ones, back there in verse 9, “The tree of life also in the midst of the garden.”  You see go back to verse 9, “And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” 

Now what do those mean?  Well, there are two ways to go in this life: you either walk by sight or you walk by faith.  You either walk by your own knowledge or the world’s knowledge of good and evil, “Ah that’s good.  That’s evil,” or, you walk by God’s life coming into you.  You either walk by intuition from God, or you walk by trial and error.  You either get together with the Father and get close to him and snuggle into his arms and get to know him and hear him call you by your own name, and begin to live from within sensing what he wants you to do with your life and what he wants you to do from day-to-day in which case you grow more and more sensitive to him; you either walk that way, by that life that comes from him, or you walk by a knowledge of good and evil. 

In other words, you find out what Basic Youth Conflicts teaches, or you find out what Billy Graham teaches.  You find out what the moral majority think is a good thing to do in your life.  You find out what Watchman Nee teaches.  In which case you begin to run your life by the knowledge of good and evil and it dries up.  You do in fact, die.  That’s what the Bible said, you would die if you lived that way, or you keep alive you appear to be a very moral person but all freshness and vibrancy have gone out of your life and you have actually died inside and you’ve become a member of the moral majority, a Watchman Nee follower, a Lutheran or believe it or not, a Christian.  They were first called Christians in Antioch but it was more a Christ-tian: one in whom Christ lives.  But you become one of a party membership if you live by the knowledge of good and evil.

In other words loved ones, there’s a fresh living way to live first hand, original, close to the Father from the tree of life, or there’s an old worn way that is dead, by the knowledge of good and evil.  One of the problems with the knowledge of good and evil is that it never goes far enough.  You know that stealing is wrong but you have nothing to tell you that the harsh tone in your voice that you’ve used to your wife is just as wrong.  You may know it’s wrong to commit adultery but you don’t know that it’s wrong to buy that car, or to take that job.  So the knowledge of good and evil is never enough where it really counts in life. 

What you need most of all is a voice behind you saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it” 

but that will only come if you snuggle close to the Father, if you spend time with him before him in prayer each day, beginning to sense his Spirit and his life.  It’s a whole different way to go loved ones.  I could show you the problem on the diagrams as long as you won’t go to sleep when I show you!  But it does show you it very clearly.  We were meant, in communion with our Father, to know by intuition what he wanted us to do.  That’s where all great poetry comes from and everything new that is created comes from that. 

Do you understand that we were all made to be poets?  Do you know that?  That is, we were made to live poems, new poems, beautiful lives, and works of art that people have never seen before.  We were created for that.  And through the intuition of your spirit you become an individualist as God made you and your conscience constrains your will to obey that and while your will obeys your conscience that life flows through you.  Now, living by the tree of life means living like that.  Living by the tree of knowledge is filling the mind with all the things we Christians are supposed to do.  “Oh yeah, now let me see; I’m against abortion and I’m for creation, I’m against evolution and I’m for state’s rights, I’m against stealing and I’m for giving to the poor.”  And you fill your mind with all the things that you’re to do.  And then you add to those the particular criteria or recommendations of your group, “I shouldn’t go to the theater.  I shouldn’t smoke, I shouldn’t drink, I shouldn’t dance.  This crowd here, what do they allow me to do?  Yeah, in Campus Church you speak very quiet if you’re really a good member of Campus Church -- pray quiet, talk quiet – everything.  And you sing these songs out of this song book.  So your whole life becomes filled with things that you should do and things you shouldn’t do and you die.  You die; you become a stereotype version of all the other poor copycats, none of whom are looking at the original Jesus and none of whom are living their original lives.  

Loved ones, there’s a total difference between eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.  But having presented it that broad way could I point out to you that day-by-day you and I are facing that choice.  We’re facing it day-by-day.  And you’re coming into situations, such as I am, where the quick fix can be got by the knowledge of good and evil. That’s right.  You’re the same as me; we’re meeting situations in business, and in home life, and in our personal life where a decision is required and we can get it immediately by going the easy way -- either the way that the worldly wise men recommend, or the way that the sacred churchmen recommend.  But we can always find a knowledge of good and evil that saves us going to God himself.

Loved ones don’t do it.  The more you do it the coarser you’ll get, the harsher you’ll get, the more a stranger to Jesus you’ll become and the less freshness will come into your life.  Somebody has said that the problem with Christians today is that they spell God with two Os and they spell the Devil without the D.  I think that’s not too far wrong.  Too many of us are trying to do the good and avoid the evil, but we’re not realizing that what we should be doing is clinging to God and seeing that anything else is the Devil.  So there is a vast difference, you know, between walking by the knowledge of good and evil and by the tree of life.  The tree of life is warm and fresh and vibrant and is a personal relationship to your loving Father.

You’ve a different way to go tonight, each one of you -- you have a different way to live tonight.  You who are husbands and wives, you who are brothers and sisters, you who are roommates, you’ve a different way to live tonight and the Father can show you that.  If you look up by faith tonight, the Father can show you; show you a whole attitude that will bring life and light to your friend, light and life to your dear partner.  And when you’re walking like that [living from the life of the Spirit within] all complacency departs from you, all self-sureness, all boredom and deadness, and you become lively and living and vibrant -- like a child.

The way of life loved ones, is an “I -Thou” relationship with your dear Father -- knowing that he has a different way for you to take each step this night.  That’s of course, what makes life exciting.  Life gets very old when you walk by the knowledge of good and evil, it gets very boring and you die young.  In fact, you die before you’re 18 usually, if you go that way.

Loved ones, would you look at Verse 18, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”  Maybe the best translation of that is, “I will make him a helping being in which, as soon as he sees it, he may recognize himself.”  And that’s something beautiful about this:  “I will make him a helping being,” not a helper fit for him, not somebody that can catch the nuts and bolts that he throws them but “I will make him a helping being in which as soon as he sees her he’ll recognize himself.”  You husbands might not like it and you wives might not like it, but you’ve married a lot of yourself in the other person and that’s part of why you married, so that you’d have to look at yourself all through life until you allow Jesus to make you like himself so that you’d understand each other -- and yet in different ways you’re very different from each other. 

But making him “a helping being in whom he may recognize himself immediately he sees her” that’s a beautiful thing.  That’s a helper who will help him to not only fill the earth but will help him to bring the earth into order.  You remember when we shared in the marriage series that the glorious position of husbands and wives here tonight, or the glorious position of us brothers and sisters, because we’re to be husbands and wives to each other, and really celibacy or not, we’re husbands and wives to each other here in Jesus’ body.  But our relationship to each other is in connection with the commission that God has given us to subdue the earth and bring it into order, and bring thousands into his kingdom.  

Let us pray. 

Note: tape ended  abruptly at end