Sermon Tone Analysis

Garden of Gethsemane — “Not my will but yours be done”

Will you pray for me?

What does the Bible say about ______________?

What is God’s will for my life?

Those are the 3 questions most frequently posed to me.

Perhaps the better, and potentially more frightening question, is this question:

What is God’s will?

This question shifts from application in the first question to implication in the second.

Because if we can discern, discover, decipher God’s will, then maybe we can come to some insights by implication first, rather than by application first.

On Mother’s Day, we come to the first essential passage of the Summer in this series, Lumley’s 12.

This passage offers great clarity and insights around the question:

What is God’s will?

Gen 1:

This passage, the summary of Day 6 of creation, offers enormous clarity as to God’s will as it related and relates to God’s GOOD CREATION in God’s GOOD WORLD.

God wants the male and female to be GOOD STEWARDS OVER GOD’S GOOD CREATION.

(1.26)

God is a “work through humans” kind of God.

God gives us tasks:

Create a good environment for the animals

Create an environment of justice and mercy as God is just and merciful.

Expand and multiply other males and females on the earth.

While this observation certainly includes some looking back on my part, the sense I get from this essential passage is that God wants to come and dwell within this world God has created… and this becomes a more powerful option for God in light of 1.27.

What does this mean?

To be created in the image of God — male and female — God created them in God’s image.

It may mean: creates, speaks, stewards, reigns...

“We do that as God does that...”

But what if there is another way of considering what is happening in this verse that actually clarifies the implications of the text?

The Bible and numbers… 12, 40, 1000...

The first culminating number we come to in the Bible is the number 7. We see it through the Bible in a number of places.

For example: and we see the Temple being dedicated.

The Temple took how long to build?

7 years.

It was dedicated in the 7th month.

In the ancient world, as you read stories of temples being built to the many deities of the ancient world, you will find those temples built… you guessed it… in 7 days.

In the 7th month of the 7th year, God takes up residence in the Temple constructed for Him to dwell.

We see something similar — and I am arguing identical — in .

Resting isn’t napping… it is ruling, inhabinting, and enjoying.

When you buy a house and set it up, you don’t do that to nap in it… you do it to inhabit it!

Would you like to take a guess at what happens in the ancient world on day 6 in the construction of temples?

The image of the deity is placed in the temple.

Man made and man constructed and man placed...

What if the temples of the ancient world took their cues from the one true and great story of the creative work of God?

What if it is not only appropriate, but necessary, for us to read the creation narrative of — not primarily through the lens of God creating a world in which his Temple will one day sit — but that this world that God created is the FIRST Temple God created… that on day 7 He comes to REST and DWELL and REIGN… and on day 6… on day 6… well...

God installs within his temple… God’s image.

NOT made by man with their hands from wood or gold or stubble.

God places in His Temple of creation those in whom and with whom God will dwell… and by whom God will be worshipped… and through whom God will be glorified.

So whoever you marry… wherever you work… whatever house you buy… whatever car you drive… however you confront your neighbor… however you raise your kids… whether you stay in the marriage… whether you tell the truth, consider adultery, want what your friend has… THE GUIDING IMPLICATION IS THIS:

YOU AND I ARE THE IMAGE OF GOD, PLACED IN THE TEMPLE OF GOD, TO DISPLAY THE GLORY OF GOD AS WE ENJOY AND LONG FOR THE COMING OF GOD TO MAKE GOD’S DWELLING WITH US.

On that last page of the Bible… as the final and new Temple of God is constructed,

Rev 21:1