“The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
So, God has made this final new creature—a man—much more intimately than all the rest. He has made him in His image in a way nothing else in all of creation was so designed (and though the woman was created differently and separately, she was equally made in His image). When you have created something so carefully as this, the first thing you do with it conveys an awful lot about what you made it for. That’s what we see here.
“And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)
This morning we wrestled a bit with the question of why God would have put a tree in the garden of Eden and then immediately told us not to eat from it. I let you in then on a secret about that question: The most honest answer is, “I don’t know.” But, I don’t know isn’t very satisfying and I did promise you two answers.
“Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
The story of creation has attracted its fair share of attention over the years…probably more than that actually. Most of the focus is on how to understand what the “days” mean and whether we should understand them literally, figuratively, or in some other way. There’s certainly a time and a place for those discussions, and they aren’t without significance importance, but I don’t want to go there in this post. Instead, for just a minute, let’s set aside the technicalities and look at the beauty of what was happening here.
“Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth! You have covered the heavens with your majesty.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Last night my family and I got the chance to take in the truth of these words in a way it may be a very long time—or ever—before we get to again. We saw the majesty of the Lord through the splendor of creation. It was one of those moments where nature boasts loudly of the fingerprints of God, but which only those with the eyes to see will truly appreciate. The pictures you see here were all taken by my good friend and excellent photographer, Heather Perry.
Yesterday was Resurrection Sunday! We celebrated our risen Lord together by telling the incredible story of which we can be a part if we will receive Him as our Lord. We celebrated our part in this great story as individuals, but also as a whole community as we finally put together the three key pieces of our identity into one clear and compelling idea: First Baptist is a place where people can connect to grow in Christ and reach out for His kingdom. Keep reading to see how this all unfolded.
Telling Our Story
Three weeks ago, we started a journey together. It was a journey that came out of a conversation about who we are as a church; what our God-given identity is. The idea here is that while each individual person has a unique, God-designed identity, so do whole churches. The church is the body of Christ and we are individually members of it. That means we each have a specific role to play in the body, but one local church does not by itself comprise the whole body of Christ. That means that each individual local church is itself part of the larger body of Christ and thus has a specific role to play as a community in that larger body. Read the rest…
The Nexus 