Sermon Tone Analysis

Bible Reading

At last, we are here – at the end of our series.

We have walked from the Garden of Eden, and now 52 messages later, we arrive at the gaden city.

The city of God.

And having walked through this journey together, I think we can now say what the golden thread is that ties the story together.

It is the story of God coming to live with his people by dealing with their sin in his Son Jesus Christ.

And that is what the whole book, the whole Bible is about.

It starts with God, walking and talking withhis people in the cool of the day.

There way back in the garden of Eden, God was with his people.

They felt no shame, there was no sin, no curse.

They were completely open with each other, and with God.

And God looks as this situation and declares it very good.

But then sin enters the world.

Adam and Eve chose to reject the good life God gave them, and want to be their own God, to decide right and wrong for themselves.

They take of the fruit God had forbidden them to eat from, and they eat, and in so doing they bring a curse to this world.

A curse that ultimately separates God’s people from God himself.

And in Genesis 3:8 all of a sudden we read – then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, at the time of the evening breaze, and they hid from the Lord God…”

This is what had to take place.

Because if God met them in their sinful state they would be destroyed.

And this is the main problem that drives the narrative of scripture.

How will this situation be resolved?

How can a holy God come together with his people.

How can he live among his people.

Because God is stubbornly committed to living with his people.

126 times throughout scripture, God or one of his spokes people declare that God will live among his people.

Here are a couple of examples.

Gen 17:8 – after God makes the covenant with Abraham, he says, I will give the people the land of Canaan as their permanent possession and I will be their God”.

I will be their God.

Exodus 6:7 God says to the Israelites.

I am going to bring you up our of Egypt, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.

Then later on, Israel as a people agree to this – they covenant with God and say, yes we want you to be our God.

And God says, If you obey my Covenant, you will be my own poseesion, and I will be your God.

Exodus 19:5-6

And to show that indeed he was with his people he tells them.

Make me a dwelling place, the tabernacle.

This was to be a perfect cube shape.

And it represented the perfection of heaven, and God would send his presence to live in the tabernacle.

And the tabernacle would be in the middle of Israel’s camp.

And God would come to live with his people.

But of course the Tabernacle presence is kinda flawed.

God was with his people, but not really.

They still had to make sacrifices, they still had to atone for their sins.

God was with them, he was their God, but his presence was fearsome and terrifying.

If you entered into his presence, without being pure you would get burnt up, destroyed.

But this is a real problem.

Because the issue with people is not that sin is out there – out in the world.

Sin is inside here, inside our heart.

Sin follows us from our conception to the day of our death, and we cannot escape it.

It is for this reason, that while Israel still lived in the dessert, in the tents with the tabernacle, God instructs that when a woman has given birth, she is to offer a sin offering.

The very act of reproduction has been tainted by sin.

(Lev 12:1-8)

And so despite God’s insistence that he will be present among his people, the problem of sin remains.

God cannot be with his people fully, because sin remains.

And yet still, he promises again in Lev 26:11 – I will live among you, I will not reject you, I will walk among you and be your God and you will be my people.

And as the story progresses, problem is explored.

The solution isn’t good leadership – the book of Judges makes that clear.

Every leader, when they don’t have the Holy Spirit living in them will be worse than the one before.

Because sin is in here – not out there.

The solution isn’t good government – King Saul was a good king, but he turned to the idols that his wives brought with them, and he started worshipping other Gods.

Because the issue is in here, in the heart – not out there.

The solution isn’t even a good King – we have David, the best king, and yet he fails horribly.

When he takes his eyes off God, he turns to adultery and murder.

Because the issue is in here, not out there.

God can’t live here, because we have an issue in here.

And yet even in the midst of telling us about David, the author of scripture, the Holy Spirit reminds us – this story is not about David.

After David becomes king, in 2 Samuel 7, and Israel is finally at rest and it seems as if the kingdom is finally taking shape, David says to God “You have established your people Israel to be your people forever, and you O Lord have become their God”.

David highlights this promise that God would be with his people, and live among them, and he looks at all the good that has happened to Israel, and he can’t help but think.

This must be it.

God is with us.

But he isn’t there.

Not fully.

He is still living in the tabernacle – separated from his people.

The people live around the Lord, not among him.

But God’s will is set.

He will live with his people, and so when Solomon starts building the temple for God (1 kings 6:13) God again makes this promise.

I will dwell among the Israelites and I will not abandon my people Israel”.

But the problem is not out there, the problem is in here.

And so despite God’s dogged insistence that he will be their God, and they will be his people, and that he will not abandon them, they abandon him.

Israel turns from God, chases after foreign Idols and again and again worship other Gods.

Finally they are carried off into exile.

And in the middle of exile, while Israel reaps the reward for continually rejecting God, God’s promise comes again.

In Isaiah he promises, one day “I wil create a new heaven and a new earth, and the past events will not be remembered or come to mind.

The sound of weeping and crying will no longer be heard in Jesualem”.

And in Jeremiah he says that the way this will happen is because God himself will fix this issue we have in here – he will fix our broken hearts.

He tells us in Jer 24:7 that he will give his people a new heart, a heart that will know him.

And again the promise comes.

And they will be my people, and I will be their God because they will return to me with all their heart.

In Jeremiah, this promise that “They will be my people and I will be their God” is repeated.

5 times God declares this.

In Ezekiel he promises this 6 times.

He promises it in Hosea again, and 3 more times in the book of zecheria.

And then, at last God comes to dwell with his people.

Matthew 1:23 – The virigin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel – whis is God is with us.

And as we have seen, Jesus shows people exactly what it means when God is among us, when God is with us.

The dead are raised, the sick are healed, the brokenhearted are restored and the downtrodden are lifted up.

Sickness flees from him, Demons scatter and submit to him, even the wind and the waves obey him.

And when God with us is born, the world changes forever.

But again the problem was not out there, the problem was in here.

And so what did we do with Immanuel, with God with us?

We killed him.