SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter two, beginning at verse four.
SPEAKER_00: These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.
SPEAKER_00: For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
SPEAKER_00: But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God formed man in the from the dust of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
SPEAKER_00: And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that it pleased to the sight and good for food.
SPEAKER_00: The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads.
SPEAKER_00: The name of the first is Pison, that is, which compasses the whole land of Habilah, where there is gold.
SPEAKER_00: And the gold of that land is good.
SPEAKER_00: There is Delium and the Onyx stone.
SPEAKER_00: And the name of the second river is Gihon.
SPEAKER_00: The same is it that compasses the whole land of Ethiopia.
SPEAKER_00: And the name of the third river is Hittakel.
SPEAKER_00: That is it which goeth through toward the east of Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth river, and the fourth river is Euphrates.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God said, It is not good for that man should be alone, and I will make and help meat for him.
SPEAKER_00: And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the earth, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.
SPEAKER_00: And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
SPEAKER_00: And Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowls of the earth and to every beast of the field.
SPEAKER_00: But for Adam there was not found and helped meat for him.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept.
SPEAKER_00: And he took the one of his ribs, and clothed the flesh instead thereof.
SPEAKER_00: And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
SPEAKER_00: And Adam said, This is now a bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
SPEAKER_00: She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of the man.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
SPEAKER_00: And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reason to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Twenty-nine minutes and count.
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so we begin at the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: The great covenants of scripture.
SPEAKER_02: The long road God has walked with his people, the promises he has made, and the astonishing patience that he has shown.
SPEAKER_02: Covenants are not a museum piece.
SPEAKER_02: They're not something that the church has talked much about, and it's something that it's important we know about.
SPEAKER_02: They are the backbone of the Bible story, and they map out the method by which we understand our own story and in many cases our failed relationship with God.
SPEAKER_02: And just to show you how important this first one is, this is a nine-part sermon.
SPEAKER_01: Normally you have a three-part sermon or a five-part sermon.
SPEAKER_01: I've got a nine-part sermon for you tonight.
SPEAKER_02: Not that you're going to be here very long.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not, I don't plan to keep you here till the cows come home or whatever.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it is a long sermon.
SPEAKER_02: Not a long sermon, it is a nine-part sermon.
SPEAKER_02: But you know me, my parts are all very short and very good.
SPEAKER_02: And as the every good story starts, we start in the beginning.
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to use the phrase once upon a time, but we use that for myths and things that don't exactly.
SPEAKER_02: But it's actually right, once upon a time, this is what happens.
SPEAKER_02: The world as God intended it to be.
SPEAKER_02: Not what Eden was.
SPEAKER_02: What God actually had planned for us.
SPEAKER_02: Genesis 2 gives us a slower, more intimate picture of creation.
SPEAKER_02: God forms man and woman.
SPEAKER_02: He forms man from the dust of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Breathes into him the breath of life.
SPEAKER_02: He brings it to life.
SPEAKER_02: And he forms woman out of man to be a helper.
SPEAKER_02: Not to be second, not to be a slave, not to be a chapel, but to be a helper.
SPEAKER_02: God plants a garden in the east.
SPEAKER_02: He calls it Eden.
SPEAKER_01: And God places the human in it to work it and keep it.
SPEAKER_02: This is the world of the gift.
SPEAKER_02: But it's also the world of order and of beauty and of purpose.
SPEAKER_02: At the center of this world, God places his greatest creation, humanity, male and female, made in his image.
SPEAKER_02: That means, many people get this wrong, that means we are created to reflect the character of God.
SPEAKER_02: We represent his rule.
SPEAKER_02: We are stewards in his world.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, this is his world.
SPEAKER_02: It's his rule, not our world and our rule.
SPEAKER_02: We are stewards in his world.
SPEAKER_02: A steward is somebody who cares for that of the owner.
SPEAKER_02: In plain English, we are meant to show what God is like and to care for what God has made.
SPEAKER_02: Here we see the first covenantal moment.
SPEAKER_02: God blesses humanity and gives them a vocation.
SPEAKER_02: Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, steward it.
SPEAKER_02: You've certainly done the first three.
SPEAKER_02: We seem to have failed sadly at the last one.
SPEAKER_01: Then God actually gives us a boundary, a single command.
SPEAKER_01: A single command.
SPEAKER_02: You may eat of every tree, but not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he says.
SPEAKER_01: This is what theologians later call the covenant of works.
SPEAKER_01: That is a covenant based on obedience.
SPEAKER_02: But the heart of it is simple.
SPEAKER_02: God gives freedom.
SPEAKER_02: God gives dignity.
SPEAKER_02: God gives responsibility and a choice.
SPEAKER_02: You see, a world without choice is a world without love.
SPEAKER_01: And the second point I want to talk about is this choice, this love, the gift of a relationship.
SPEAKER_01: The Adam Covenant is not merely about rules.
SPEAKER_02: It's about relationship.
SPEAKER_02: God walks with Adam in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_02: There is intimacy.
SPEAKER_02: There is trust.
SPEAKER_02: There is joy.
SPEAKER_02: And God sees that it is not good for Adam, the first man, to be alone, so he creates woman.
SPEAKER_02: Not as an afterthought, not as a subordinate, but as a partner and a co-image bearer.
SPEAKER_02: Together they form the first community, the first family, the first society.
SPEAKER_02: This then is the world as God intended it to be.
SPEAKER_02: Harmony with God, harmony with one another, and harmony with creation.
SPEAKER_02: The serpent enters.
SPEAKER_02: And he enters with a question.
SPEAKER_02: He goes, What did God rarely say?
SPEAKER_02: Why did God rarely say that to you?
SPEAKER_02: He's saying the same thing today.
SPEAKER_02: What did God rarely say that?
SPEAKER_02: And many people are going, well, no, I think it's this.
SPEAKER_02: You see, he he gets people to doubt the word of God, his word, his very instruction.
SPEAKER_02: He challenges, he doesn't challenge it directly.
SPEAKER_02: He's too clever for that.
SPEAKER_02: You can't blame the servant.
SPEAKER_02: He just goes, didn't you rarely say that?
SPEAKER_02: Didn't you rarely mean that?
SPEAKER_02: And of course, people nowadays go, well, I don't like that.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't fit him as my worldview, therefore, it must be wrong.
SPEAKER_02: It must be of the time, or it must be because it was a patriarchal society, or it must be something else.
SPEAKER_02: Did God rarely say that?
SPEAKER_02: It is the seed of doubt that has echoed through every human heart since the fall of man.
SPEAKER_01: Since Eve at the fruit and gave it to Adam, and notice in the Bible it says no has nothing about an apple.
SPEAKER_02: Since Eve at the fruit and gave it to Adam, that has been the cause.
SPEAKER_02: The doubting of the word of God.
SPEAKER_02: Adam and Eve grasp at wisdom on their own terms.
SPEAKER_02: They choose autonomy over trust.
SPEAKER_02: And the consequences are immediate.
SPEAKER_02: Shame, fear, blame, alienation.
SPEAKER_01: They know they're naked, so they hide from God.
SPEAKER_01: And God goes around asking, where are they?
SPEAKER_01: Not that God doesn't know where they are.
SPEAKER_01: Don't get that into your mind either.
SPEAKER_01: He knows exactly where they are.
SPEAKER_02: What he's asking is, why aren't they out in the open?
SPEAKER_02: He knows they're ashamed.
SPEAKER_02: Because they've sinned.
SPEAKER_02: And he's hoping that they're going to repent of that sin.
SPEAKER_02: So he could forgive.
SPEAKER_02: But no.
SPEAKER_02: The covenant is broken.
SPEAKER_02: Not because God is petty, but because humanity has severed the relationship on which the covenant depends.
SPEAKER_02: This is a thing you'll hear over the next seven weeks.
SPEAKER_02: Humanity severs the relationship on which the covenant depends.
SPEAKER_02: The tragedy of Genesis 3 is not that God is angry, it is that humanity hides.
SPEAKER_01: The God who walked with them now calls, Where are you?
SPEAKER_02: Not because he doesn't know, but because they no longer want to be found.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a human condition today, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: People don't want to be found.
SPEAKER_02: They're scared of facing a just God, knowing that they are full of sin.
SPEAKER_02: They are a dirt in the ground.
SPEAKER_02: And there's consequences, and there's mercy.
SPEAKER_02: The Adamic covenant includes consequences.
SPEAKER_02: Now these are not arbitrary punishments, but the natural outworking of broken trust.
SPEAKER_02: Work becomes toil.
SPEAKER_02: What was pleasant in the garden becomes necessity out of the garden.
SPEAKER_02: Where the weeds have to be dug out and the brith and the bramble, and by the sweat of the brow, Adam has to plant to eat.
SPEAKER_02: Where they could just pluck food off the trees or out of the ground and eat.
SPEAKER_02: Not anymore.
SPEAKER_02: That's gone.
SPEAKER_02: Childbearing becomes painful for the women.
SPEAKER_02: Relationships become strained.
SPEAKER_02: They don't become any more strained than Cain and Abel.
SPEAKER_02: The ground resists.
SPEAKER_02: And death enters the story.
SPEAKER_02: God said, if you eat up the fruit of good and evil, you will surely die.
SPEAKER_02: Did he really say that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, yes, he did.
SPEAKER_02: And surely Adam and Eve both died.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe not immediately.
SPEAKER_02: But where they had been immortal, they suddenly became mortal.
SPEAKER_02: Where they had eternal life, suddenly they had a finite life.
SPEAKER_02: God may not do things now, of course.
SPEAKER_02: He does punish.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, even through all of this, mercy shines.
SPEAKER_02: God clothes them.
SPEAKER_02: We get the first spilling of blood.
SPEAKER_01: God protects them from the tree of life.
SPEAKER_01: God promises that one day the serpent will be crushed by the offspring of a woman.
SPEAKER_02: The first whisper of the gospel in the second chapter of Genesis.
SPEAKER_02: The proto-evangelism, the first good news.
SPEAKER_02: Even as humanity falls, God promises redemption.
SPEAKER_02: And why then does this m covenant matter today?
SPEAKER_02: The Ademic Covenant tells us three truths that shape the whole of Christian life.
SPEAKER_02: Firstly, we as God's creation are created.
SPEAKER_02: We are created with dignity.
SPEAKER_02: Every human being bears the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: And this is why Christians should care.
SPEAKER_02: Should care, because I know some who claim to be Christians that don't, should care about justice and compassion and the worth of every individual human, including the unborn child and the elderly.
SPEAKER_02: Something that seems to be being thrown away in our day and age, with abortion and euthanasia laws coming into play.
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, we are called to take responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: Creation care, the care of the Planet, is not a modern idea.
SPEAKER_02: It's a biblical vocation.
SPEAKER_02: Our work, our relationships, and our communities are places where we reflect God's character.
SPEAKER_02: Let that one sink in.
SPEAKER_02: I want to say that one again.
SPEAKER_02: Our work, our relationships, and our communities are places where we reflect God's character.
SPEAKER_02: So the next time you look in the mirror in the morning, or whenever you go out, and you go out to meet friends, or you go out to a meeting, or whatever, do you reflect God's character when you're there?
SPEAKER_02: Do you treat people with respect?
SPEAKER_02: Do you treat people with love?
SPEAKER_02: Do you treat people as image bearers of God even if they don't know yet?
SPEAKER_02: Even if they're falling and still in their sins.
SPEAKER_02: Because even though we have a broken image in a sinner, we still an image.
SPEAKER_02: A broken mirror don't reflect.
SPEAKER_02: It just reflects badly.
SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, we are broken and we need grace, which goes well with a broken image image.
SPEAKER_02: The fall is not just Adam and Eve's story.
SPEAKER_02: It's our story too.
SPEAKER_02: We all know the pull of distrust.
SPEAKER_02: We all know the shame.
SPEAKER_02: And we all know that it makes us hide.
SPEAKER_02: We all know the pull of distrust because somebody says something to us, or I don't like something, I'm as guilty as everybody else on that one.
SPEAKER_01: We all know the shame of it when it's us that cause that distrust, and we like to hide from the realization instead of being brave enough to stand up and go, my fault.
SPEAKER_02: It makes us hide from those who we should be with.
SPEAKER_02: The long road God walks with us is a covenant.
SPEAKER_02: The covenant sets a stage for everything else that follows.
SPEAKER_02: Sorry, this covenant sets a stage for everything else that follows.
SPEAKER_02: Noah, God preserves creation.
SPEAKER_02: Abraham, God blesses the nations.
SPEAKER_02: Moses, God shapes his people.
SPEAKER_02: The priest, God's providing mediators.
SPEAKER_02: David, God promises a righteous king.
SPEAKER_02: And in Christ, and in Christ alone, God fulfills every promise.
SPEAKER_02: And these all flow from this first Adamic covenant.
SPEAKER_02: But none of these covenants that we will discuss over the coming weeks makes any sense unless we begin, like everything else begins in the garden.
SPEAKER_02: With a God who creates, call, and cares.
SPEAKER_02: And with a humanity that bears his image and breaks his heart.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he must have broken his heart so often.
SPEAKER_02: And the honesty we need with this, with the Adamic covenant, tells the truth about us, about all of us, even in this day and age.
SPEAKER_02: And it tells us an absolute truth about God.
SPEAKER_02: He does not abandon his creation.
SPEAKER_01: No matter how bad we were, he's never abandoned.
SPEAKER_01: The promise of the Bible is that there will always be a remnant.
SPEAKER_01: There will always be some.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't give up on this.
SPEAKER_01: He tries and tries and tries again.
SPEAKER_01: Until he gets to the point of going, mankind is useless at keeping his part.
SPEAKER_02: I've got to do both parts of the covenant.
SPEAKER_02: And Christ comes in.
SPEAKER_02: And only when God is one side of the covenant and Christ is the other is the covenant secure.
SPEAKER_01: Does not give up on us as image bearers, even when that image is fractured and broken.
SPEAKER_01: Even when we think it doesn't even exist, he does not give up on us as image bearers.
SPEAKER_01: He does not leave us in our hiding places.
SPEAKER_01: He comes looking for us.
SPEAKER_01: We talk about the Holy Spirit being the one that comes and tells us and convicts us of our sins.
SPEAKER_01: Not, we don't go, we're sinners, God, we need Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit comes and goes, you're a sinner.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the fix.
SPEAKER_01: A man named Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The Adamic covenant is the story of a God who comes looking for us.
SPEAKER_02: That's an amen statement.
SPEAKER_02: Because without God looking for us, we would still be in our sins.
SPEAKER_02: And the hope we carry, and I want you to hear this really clearly.
SPEAKER_02: You are made in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: You are called to reflect his character.
SPEAKER_02: You, and I'm pointing at you because you're about to be uh confirmed.
SPEAKER_02: You actually, we all are broken.
SPEAKER_02: But the great thing is, we're not abandoned.
SPEAKER_02: The covenant ends with exile.
SPEAKER_02: But it doesn't end in despair.
SPEAKER_02: It ends with a promise.
SPEAKER_02: A child would come who would crush the serpent, restore the image, and open the way back to God.
SPEAKER_02: We know who that child is, and we know what his name is, and we know how to claim him.
SPEAKER_02: Because God does that for us.
SPEAKER_02: For new believers, the covenant explains the world we live in.
SPEAKER_02: Beautiful and broken.
SPEAKER_02: For the seasoned believer, it reminds you how patient God has been and how faithful he remains.
SPEAKER_02: We are all children of Adam.
SPEAKER_02: But in Christ, we are being remade.
SPEAKER_02: And as we walk through these seven covenants, see not ancient history.
SPEAKER_02: But see your own story.
SPEAKER_02: A story of dignity, of calling, of failure in grace.
SPEAKER_02: A story of a God who keeps his promise, even when we break ours.
SPEAKER_02: A story that leads us to the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.