Abide, Listen, Do, Live
Genesis: Foundations of Our Faith • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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How much of your day, your week, can you accomplish successfully if God didn’t show up? If most of us are honest, we can take care of most of our day and our week without God showing up at all. We know how to do our job, or do our homework, make our dinner, we’d rather not have Him see what we watch on tv anyway, so it’s okay if He doesn’t show up then. What if He showed up and wanted to change everything? Would you welcome that?
Are you desperate for Jesus, or just glad He’s around? Do you hunger to know Him deeply, or is it a chore to spend time with Him? Where in your day do you open your life to Him, let Him examine you, know you in the deepest places you’ve hidden in shame? Are you hungry for His word like a man starving in the desert? Do you thirst for more of the Holy Spirit, or are you not sure what to make of Him, or maybe a little afraid of Him taking over?
Wherever you are in your journey with God, I’d like to take you for a walk through the Bible back to the Garden and we’ll see a pattern by which we can live life. We’ll see that Jesus has become the new garden of Eden. When we abide in Him, listen to Him, do what he says, we live fruitfully in His kingdom.
Jesus restores us to the Garden. The Garden in Genesis 2 is sacred space. It is a depiction for the Israelites of the promised land to which they are heading. It is a place to commune with God, listen to His voice, and partner in His kingdom as we do everything we hear.
Genesis 2 and 3 paint a vivid picture of the beginning of mankind’s relationship with God. We begin on a mountain, where we tend a garden with God. When the earth was unfruitful wilderness…
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.
The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed 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 the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
And then God speaks a command
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely 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 surely die.”
This was the garden test: In union with God and with one another in that mountain garden, we would cultivate fruitfulness in our world, in our relationships, in our work, bringing the blessings of God’s kingdom to the waste places of the world. All we had to do was listen to His voice and live by His command. His word would be a tree of life to us. A river of blessing would flow from that mountain garden, down to the nations of the world. If we fail the test, destruction. That’s the picture in Genesis 2.
We learned last week that the picture turns dark in chapter 3. The humans fail the garden test. Rather than listen to the voice of God, they listen to the voice of the serpent, the tempter, to be their own gods. The result is hiding in shame, from God and each other. And God pronounces a curse. Because God is a God of justice, the consequence of our sin was exile in the wilderness, outside the garden. But God also makes a promise. A snake crusher would come and end to the curse. That one could restore us.
The rest of the Bible is the story of generation after generation looking for the snake crusher, who will restore us to the garden. God begins with one family, one nation. When He redeems Israel from slavery in Egypt and brings them to the promised land, they are being restored to mountain garden in Eden.
You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode,
the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.
The Lord will reign forever and ever.”
This pattern emerges. Abide with God, listen to His teaching, do whatever He says, and you live in His kingdom.
“And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.
For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?
They will be planted on the mountain. They receive God’s commandments. If they listen and do all He says, they will live in His kingdom, and they can be a blessing to the nations. But from that new beginning, there is a problem. When God begins to speak,
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”
the people are afraid to draw near to God and listen. They want someone to go between, to listen for them, a mediator. In fact, the people of Israel never pass the test. For six hundred years, even in the Promised Land, the new Garden of Eden, they corrupted themselves with idolatry. The prophet Isaiah depicts the people as a vineyard God planted
Let me sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
They bore corrupt fruit: idolatry and compromise. They need a cleansing. And God did something surprising. He provides a cleansing.
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
The answer comes in the next verse,
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.
Where are the people with clean hands and a pure heart? Those who honestly seek the Lord,
He will receive blessing from the Lord
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah
There are people all over the world right now that are saying, “I’m tired of the deceit, I’m sick of the false. I’m done with compromise. I need a cleansing. Is Jesus the answer?” They are the generation of those who seek Him. If that’s you, this is how the psalm ends.
Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle!
Lift up your heads, O gates!
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
he is the King of glory! Selah
We look to the King of glory. The King of glory can ascend the hill of the Lord and enter the holy place. If you truly seek Him, you will receive blessing and righteousness from Him.
Last week, Greg clearly preached the gospel that the snake crusher was Jesus, who brings together all these images from Genesis 2 and 3. He passed the garden test, facing the tempter in the wilderness using God’s word, and He passed it again in the garden of Gethsemane through prayer and surrender, and He climbed the mountain of God’s temple in Jerusalem and cleansed it, then the mountain called Golgotha, “the hill of the skull”, and passed the garden test through obedience to God the Father, and paid our debt of sin on the tree of the curse, the cross.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—
Jesus took on the curse and broke it, and He redeems those who believe in Him. Jesus restores us to the fellowship, the union, we had with God before the Fall.
The gospel writers want us to see clearly that Jesus is king of glory who ascended the mountain, passed the garden test on the tree, and now if we will ascend to meet with Him, listen to His word, He will send us out to bless the nations.
Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
But then Jesus says impossible things like this.
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
If you’re paying attention, you’ll realize you can’t do it. He’s teaching us dependence. Jesus is not just a good man or a good teacher. He is God in the flesh, commanding us to partake in His word, no compromise, no idolatry.
And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
The Living Word is teaching the written word in a new way. This is not the watered down version of God’s word people were used to. It was not filtered through their teachers who had distilled God’s word down to catchy slogans and neat application points. This was the powerful, dynamic word of God, living and active, carrying the weight of authority, and cutting them to the heart. Have you had this experience with God’s word yet?
How are you hearing God’s word? Is it filtered to you through John MacArthur or John Piper or John Mark Comer or John Eldredge or John Hagee or Steven Furtick? I think we need another cleansing today. We have created a whole new set of idols. We have Bibles with the names of people on the cover that aren’t Jesus.
But Jesus said that if we believe in Him, this is a sign that God the Father is drawing us, and God himself will become our teacher.
Jesus describes how that works this way,
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
This is the Christian life: love Jesus and do everything He says, and the Holy Spirit will unite you with the life of God. No more white-knuckling life. No more flying solo. No more trying harder and being racked with incredible guilt when you fail. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth. When the Holy Spirit resides in us, He uses the truth of God’s word to help us and guide us. He uses the teachings of Jesus to instruct us.
“These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
When you open your Bible, is the Holy Spirit your teacher, or have you been filtering God’s word through someone else? The Holy Spirit can bring to mind the teachings of Jesus or some other part of scripture. This presupposes that you are reading His teachings for yourself. Here’s a pitch for the discovery Bible study, “The Commands of Christ”.
As you ascend the mountain to be with Jesus, as you listen to His word, and do everything He says, the Holy Spirit is deepening your union with Jesus Christ. Jesus is the true vine, He is our return to the garden.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Jesus has become the new mountain garden for us. Ascend the mountain and tend the garden in your heart with Jesus. Abide in Him, listen to Him. The Christian life doesn’t work when you start doing more for Jesus. It only works when Christ lives His life in you.
Ken Boa says it this way, “too often we try to draw from our own accounts rather than rely on his resources. We ask him for his help and strength so that we can live better lives and serve him more effectively. This may sound good at first, but on closer analysis it reveals a misguided strategy to live the spiritual life in our own strength, supplemented by a measure of divine assistance. It was never God’s intention to give us a hand in living the Christian life. It is impossible for people to live on a level of Christlike perfection. Christ lives his life in us when we walk by the Spirit. Jesus is not our helper; he is our very life. Instead of making us stronger, God brings us to the point of weakness so that Christ can be strong in us (“power is perfected in weakness” [2Corinthians 12:9-10]).” Kenneth Boa, Conformed to His Image
Have you been drawing on your own accounts? Or worse, drawing on the accounts of some preacher? Are you aware of your dependence? Are you encountering the unfiltered, powerful, effective, sin-destroying, Self-crucifying, resurrection life-giving, all-consuming, soul-piercing, wound-healing, living word of God that does surgery on your heart and gives you both peace with God and a holy dissatisfaction with the world as it is? Do you open your Bible expecting God to speak to you, to change you?
When you read the written word of God, are you encountering the Living Word of God, Jesus the Messiah?
As Greg left off last week, I want to ask, where are you? Are ascending the mountain and tending the garden in your soul with Jesus? Are you desperately seeking Him because He is your life? Do you long for power to overcome the corruption of sin, idolatry, compromise, and anything that would come between you and God, and to bear fruit? Is the Holy Spirit teaching you how to live by the teachings of Jesus? Where have you left Him out of the process?
I would ask the same of us as a church. The church in the U.S. has been a great test case for where the power in the Christian life comes from. No church in history has had more money, comfort, or freedom to accomplish the work of the kingdom. And much can be done. But the decline of the church in the U.S. through the twentieth century shows us that the power was never in our money or civil liberties. The power to do the work of the kingdom is always only in our weakness, our dependence on the love of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. If we will repent of our idols, money, comfort, and civil liberties, and learn to listen and do whatever Jesus says, this is our path to fruitful ministry.
Pitch triads with the Commands of Christ study.
Communion
