A Community of Relationships

5th sermon, Genesis 1 & 2
10/21

As the creation account shifts focus, humans are on the centre-stage of the divine production.
God glorifies himself by…
a. Declaring his pre-existence.
b. Inventing time.
c. Establishing order.
Today
Central Idea: We reflect the glory of God by relating to one another in community.

Kidner It is misleading to call this a second creation account, for it hastens to localize the scene, passing straight from the world at large to ‘a garden…in the east’; all that follows is played out on this narrow stage.

Introduction
When God created Adam and Eve, he was making MORE than a family, he was reproducing Community, the same sort of community enjoyed by the Father, Son, and Spirit in the godhead.

Of course, this community experience will overlap with family life; but much more later, when we consider Gen. 3 & 4.
Here, the dynamic of the Trinity is the ground of all our relationships.

Transition: If God is a God of order, most of us feel this way about our relationships:
Slide: CHAOS

Paradigm Shifting: Children’s drawings in response to the question—“Draw something about RELATIONSHIPS.”

This is what relationships look like from our children’s perspectives!

Our need for community is deep-seated; most are conscious of this, some are not.

Adam was hungry for such a connection:
Naming the animals: in order to recognize his needs for Eve.
Each one of us has to do that! We must comprehend our need for community.
Adam found a connection with someone who was both…
LIKE him and NOT LIKE him.
1. Like him: another human being; Eve’s similarity RELIEVED Adam.
2. Not Like Adam: another human being of a different kind; Eve’s distinctions DELIGHTED Adam.
Transition: From the beginning, God intended community; at time’s end, we will experience community, relating to God, as we interrelate with one another before God.

I. We reflect God’s glory as we broadcast his image.
Creation: everything God created has the potential for creation/reproduction.
The first human community was Adam & Eve.

Gen. 1:26 ¶ Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

A. The mere fact that we have the image and likeness of God in our makeup brings glory to him as we allow others to see that reflection.
B. This is why we exist and why we live on the earth.
Kidner After the Fall, man is still said to be in God’s image (Gen. 9:6) and likeness (Jas. 3:9); nonetheless he requires to be ‘renewed…after the image of him that created him’ (col. 3:10; cf. Eph. 4:24).
Likeness in this sense survived the Fall, since it is structural. As long as we are human we are, by definition, in the image of God. But spiritual likeness—in a single word, love—can be present only where God and man are in fellowship; hence the Fall destroyed it, and our redemption recreates and perfects it. ‘We are God’s children now; …when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 Jn. 3:2).

C. We reflect God’s glory in numerous ways, by using words, practicing creativity, by working, etc.

Today we give ourselves to one of those means…

II. We reflect the glory of God by relating to one another in community.
a. Community may seem an alien idea today when we live out our lives in our cocoons, but humans have long recognized its importance.

SLIDE: John Donne
Bryan Wylie…a reading from John Donne: NO MAN IS AN ISLAND.

b. The story of Scripture confirms the centrality of community.
i. We reflect the community of the godhead as we thrive in community ourselves.
Gen. 1:26 ¶ Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

This is a unique self-reference in the Creative Week, LET US. The Community of the godhead is the context for creating humans for Community.

ii. We fully express our humanity in Community.
1. We are made for this.
Gen. 2:18 ¶ The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.”
a. We were made for God, but… “it’s not good for man to be alone”
Even in paradise, where God walked daily with God, it wasn’t enough. God made Adam to belong to a human community; “it is NOT GOOD for man to be alone.”
God one-on-one, did not address all needs.

Keller Why is the first human unhappy in paradise? We are made in the image of someone in relationship and community.

b. We are made with self-consciousness; we value time alone, but not absolute solitude…
Solitude can be good, God pronounced absolute solitude NOT GOOD.

c. We were made for work, but…
Work alone is not all that we are made for.

d. We were made for pleasure, but…
Gen. 2:16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely…”
But, Pleasure alone is not an end in itself.

2. Being made for community, Does NOT mean…
a. That we must be married.
Jesus was the first religious figure to teach that SINGLENESS IS OKAY; we cannot teach that all men and all women must be married to fully obey God the Father, nor can we say that each person must be married in order to find personal fulfillment.
Jesus restated the truth of Genesis: by our life in community, we most clearly reflect God’s glory.
OR,
b. That the family is the only setting for community.
Transition: Or, That we must all be alike…
iii. We experience Community in corresponding, yet distinct relationships.
1. We cannot adequately understand God alone.
2. We cannot fulfill our personal destiny alone.
Gen. 2:18 ¶ The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.”
Alter “sustainer beside him”--…notoriously difficult to translate. The second term means alongside him, opposite him, a counterpart to him. “help” is too weak because it suggests a merely auxiliary function, whereas ‘ezer elsewhere connotes active intervention on behalf of someone, especially in military contexts, as often in Psalms.

3. We cannot adequately reflect God’s image by ourselves, by our families alone, by our culture alone.

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves [p. 92]
In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.

They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, “Here comes one who will augment our loves.”

For in this love “to divide is not to take away.” Of course the scarcity of kindred souls—not to mention practical considerations about the size of rooms and the audibility of voices—set limits to the enlargement of the circle; but within those limits we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another (Isaiah 6:3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.

Application:
1. “People” people—many of you feel guilty about this; it is a strength, not a weakness.
2. Non-people people—our lack of interest is a weakness to be addressed, not a strength to revel in.
3. Community as a reflection of shalom:
I was given glasses in Grade Eight. That impacted by life, especially in baseball.
As I ran across the outline, chasing a batted ball, every part of me had to work at its optimum, shalom expressed or failure to catch the ball.
God’s desire for us is shalom: all of us relating ideally
4. If you are a loner, not responsive to this aspect of the story, you need to get ready now for heaven/the kingdom. Get into a community now!

Tim Keller
Time together
Permission to speak
Outside community, you don’t know who you are! You can’t see yourself or hear yourself as you are (you can’t tell how you sound from inside).
Transparent—not in a group, not in the church!

5. Welcome others into the community:
What the new Canadians bring to us, sheds new light on the character and person of God; all of these new people expand our understanding of God and amplify our reflection of God to the world.

Transition: How can we experience this sort of community?
iv. We experience community in nakedness.

Gen. 2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
In this world, we cannot live naked and unashamed.
1. Adam and Eve were physically naked.
2. The first couple were also emotionally and spiritually transparent.
3. This nakedness seems not to have lasted long!
4. Their later shame is our own shame.
5. How can we have community then, when we are embarrassed about our deepest selves?
6. Later on, there was another naked man, exposed before the world and before God. God the Father looked down at him as he was splayed out and strung upon another Tree. All the shame of the world was displayed in him.
7. God the Father turned away; he allowed his unique Son to pay the ultimate price for all shame of all people of all time.
8. When you hear the call to community and know that you have too much to hide, too much shame to expose, Look to the Cross.
9. Because Jesus became naked, our shame is removed in him, by him.
10. We can experience community now, without shame, because we have been fully forgiven and are being forever cleansed. Exposure of our hearts now brings healing and shamelessness, rather than embarrassment and pain.

Bono:
You broke the bonds
You loosened the chains
You carried the cross
of my shame
of all my shame

Transition: How we can extend our experience of this sort of community?
v. We expand our experience community through words, by working together, by creating together, by loving one another, etc. [More of these later!]

Next week…
By our words.

CONCLUSION
It is not good for man to be alone.
It is not good for us.
It is not good for God’s plan;
*We cannot adequately understand God alone;
* We cannot adequately reflect God’s image alone, by our families alone, by our culture alone.
We find fulfillment in such a place.
We enter community without fear of being exposed and vulnerable because our nakedness is covered by Jesus’.