Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity - Gen 2:7-17

                                                                                                            Trinity 7

                                                                                                            Gen 2:7-17

                                                                                                            8/4/19

            When we moved into our house in 2006, Matthew and Abigail were a little over one year old.  It was, of course, a time when I was in the process of getting to know Good Shepherd.  In 2008 Michael was born, and a life that was busy with Timothy, Matthew and Abigail, became even more busy.  As the kids got a little older there was the involvement in all the various sports seasons that are part of youth life in Marion: softball and baseball, soccer, basketball, and track.

            For thirteen years we have lived in our house.  The kids have gotten older.  They have tried different activities and settled on the ones that are for them.  That has shaken out in ways so that summer has actually become a time when things aren’t that busy at our house. And in those years they have grown up and become people who can actually help us do things.

            So this summer we decided to take on a major project.  The majority of the landscaping around the front and side of our house had been covered with stone.  The bushes were things that either we didn’t like, or weren’t doing very well.  We had never liked the stone, and wanted mulch instead.  Amy and Abigail had a vision of flowers and plants that they wanted.

            So we undertook of the project of shoveling out and removing the stone – some thirty five wheel barrow loads of it. We dug out the bushes, which proved to be an exhausting chore.  We brought in dirt to fill what was needed, and better soil for the plants.  Abigail and Amy planted various flowers and plants.  And we brought in and spread bag after bag after bag of mulch – because, of course, you never have enough mulch.

            We are very pleased with the result – with our own little “garden of Eden.”  Amy and Abigail will tell you it’s not done – they will add more plants and flowers as the seasons and budget allow. But I will tell you that it was hard work.  The results are very nice, but there was nothing enjoyable about doing the work.  It has exhausting, hot and sweaty. 

            In our Old Testament lesson this morning, we see a completely different picture. There is a garden, and there is work to be done there, but there is nothing hard or bad about it.  Instead everything is very good.  And as we follow in Genesis chapter two just a little after our text, we learn that things just keep getting better.

            In Genesis chapter one, God gives us the “big picture” overview of his act of creation.  Simply by speaking he calls creation into existence as repeatedly he says, “Let there be." We learn that God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 

            In our text, in chapter two, we get a close up look at how God created the most important part of his creation – we learn how he created man.  We are told, “God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”  Chapter one described how God had made a very good world – a material and physical world.  And here we have the ultimate confirmation that God made man as a material and physical creature.  God created his body from dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. He created us as the unity of body and soul. 

            Then we learn, “And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.”  We are told that this was a wonderful place in which was “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”  In addition, there were two unique trees identified as the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

            This is the setting in which the words at the end of our text occur as we hear:  “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 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.’”

            We learn in our text this morning about the worship of God and about vocation. God told Adam that he could eat of every tree of the garden except for one.  By holding back the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God placed a located means for Adam by which he worshipped God.  Adam worshipped God has his Creator – he feared, loved and trusted in God – by not eating of this tree. The act of not eating was one of faith and trust in God.  It was the way that Adam acknowledged that God was God, and he was not.

            Adam was also given a vocation – a calling.  He was placed in the garden to work it and keep it. This was work that was not work as we know it.  There was nothing hard or bad about it.  Instead, it was Adam joyfully fulfilling what God had given him the privilege to do.  The closest we can get to understanding what this was like is probably when you are doing your favorite hobby or activity. You are working and doing, yet there is enjoyment and fulfillment in doing so.

            And since I have mentioned vocation I really can’t stop at verse seventeen where our text ends. For in the very next verse we learn, “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”  Adam could not be man as God intended him, without a helper who corresponded to him.  And so God created a woman from Adam.  He created Eve.  In doing so, God instituted marriage – the union of man and woman. Genesis tells us in words that our Lord Jesus later quoted: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”  God created the vocation of husband and wife, and Adam and Eve lived in the blessing of perfect correspondence with one another.

            Now I hardly need to tell you that things didn’t stay that way.  You know that Adam and Eve disobeyed God.  Tempted and deceived by the devil they thought could become more than they were. They could be like God.  And in so doing they lost what they had.  The tree of the knowledge of God and evil that was to be the located means of their worship became the means of their sin.

            You live with the consequences of that sin. God told Adam that his livelihood would now be one of pain and sweat.  God said that the relationship between husband and wife would be marked by conflict.  And God said that death would be final outcome for every single person.

            Those are your experiences.  You know the vocation of our work – your job – to be exactly that. It is work.  It can be hard, and boring, and exhausting.  And so sometimes you don’t do your best.  Sometimes you just do things well enough to get by.

            You know that the vocation of marriage is a place that can be marked by conflict.  Husbands and wives say stupid things that hurt the other person. They act in selfish ways, that don’t put the well being of their spouse first.

            For some of you the death caused by sin is not an abstraction because it has already taken away the spouse you loved.  Death has taken away family and friends.  And death is the enemy that stalks us all.  Even in life, you are in the process of dying. That can be the only outcome for every one of us.  And for some of you that fact presses in on your thoughts because of the cancer or the congestive heart failure in your body.

            But in his great mercy and love, God has not left us there.  Yes, by the tree in the garden Adam and Eve had plunged human beings and creation itself into sin, corruption and death. But in his first Gospel promise God told the devil, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."  He promised a descendant of Eve who would defeat the devil.

            And then he did it by a tree.  In the fullness of time God sent his own Son into the world.  Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, Jesus Christ went forth as the One who had come to defeat sin, death and the devil. Though without sin, God made him to be sin on the cross.  He made him to be your sin. And there God judged and condemned your sin – your every failure in the vocation of your work; your every failure in your vocation of marriage; your every failure in every vocation where God has placed you.

            After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, Peter stood before the high priest and declared, “The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him”

            By the tree of the cross God condemned your sin in the Christ.  But then, the Father raised him from the dead on the third day and exalted Christ to his right hand.  In repentance and faith in Christ you have forgiveness. But you also have even more that results from God’s saving action.

            It was the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead.  And now through water and the Spirit you have been born again.  The Spirit has made you a new creation in Christ. Already now, the resurrection power of Jesus is at work in you.  This means that because of Christ we forgive others in our work place.  It means that because of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us, we now forgive our spouse for the wrongs he or she has done.

            Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for you; because of the work of his Spirit in you, you now look at the vocation of your work differently.  Yes it may at times be hard, and boring, and exhausting.  But in faith we now recognize that God is using us to serve others.  More than that, we recognize that in our vocation we are serving the Lord.  In fact Paul could tell slaves in the first century world: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” Yes, because of the risen Lord we see things differently.

            In the vocation of marriage, the work of the Spirit of the risen Lord leads us to love and serve my spouse as Christ loved me. The Lord draws us back to see and embrace his will for marriage as the lifelong union of husband and wife.  He leads us in ever new ways to see the great blessing that God has given us in our spouse so that we love and cherish him or her.

            And in the face of the death of loves ones or the threat of death caused by sickness and disease, we have the confidence of knowing that Jesus Christ has defeated death. By the tree of the cross and his resurrection the Lord Jesus has ended death’s power to hold on to us.  The apostle Paul told the Romans, “For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.”

            In our text this morning, God shows us his will for human life and for his creation.  He has not allowed sin to deny this forever.  Instead, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ he has begun its restoration – a restoration that will be accomplished completely when Jesus Christ returns in glory on the Last Day.

            When he does, things will be very good once again.  God’s intention will not be thwarted.  It is not by chance that the end of book of Revelation describes this future as a kind of Garden of Eden restored.  For the apostle John declares: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”