This is why a man leads his mother and father and bonds with his wife and they become—they become one flesh... both the man and his wife were naked but they felt no shame. A lot of our core doctrine comes from this Genesis 2 relating to marriage, family, and authority—authority at home and authority in the church.
From a world's perspective, to be helper, to be submissive, to be a servant is seen as something inferior. It's seen as something less, isn't it? But who was the greatest server of all time? Who was the greatest helper of all time? If you just read from Matthew 20, 25 to 28... Christ came as the greatest demonstration of a servant, as a helper. The kingdom of God is upside down to the kingdom of the world.
The faith that God wants us to have is a substance of faith. You know, blind faith isn't biblical. It's actually to have a substance of faith that can actually be found in knowing the person of Christ. But we can actually know him even through creation—well, especially through creation.
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We can actually, we can see God through creation and actually God wants us to see him through creation. I know a number of people that have—they're looking at creation, they're like, if there's a creation there must be a creator, and they see God and they find him because the Bible says whoever seeks him finds him. It's not God's desire to hide from us.
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God wanted us to know creation. Man didn't exist when God created the world, obviously, but he made a point of telling Moses so Moses could write it down. So it's there for a reason. He wanted us to know. How does knowing what God's created and how he's created it, how does it change the way we live?
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A lot of people think of God as the one behind the clouds. If you speak to people that have come through religion, and have never known God, they see God as maybe, you know, the God behind the clouds that may or may not be happy with you. That's how I used to see God before I knew him, right? No one's got any idea of who God is until you meet him. That's when everything changes, and you find out he's personal.
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He formed the man out of the dust from the ground, and he breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. Well, we got created out of dust. But we know that, don't we? Because what happens when we die? Our bodies go back to dust. In fact, everything really goes back to dust over time. But something happens there that makes us much more than dust. God's breath. He breathed life.
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Science can observe life; they can't explain it. God breathes. Doesn't that redefine the way we see the importance of life, ourselves? It's just talking to someone that said they came to revelation that God knew about her before the beginning of time. We plan. The life itself was planned. We're more than just a bunch of molecules gravitating around each other to go back to dust.
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We're born of dust, we're obviously made out of this world because we're designed for this world, but God breathes life into us and as born again believers we actually become the image of him, the image of God. The moment our bodies die, yes they go back to the ground, they go back to dust, but we're promised a new body, a heavenly one.
[01:05:47]
You guys are infinitely more precious to God than what you can imagine or I can imagine and I don't thank God but the word does give us a little insight into it and the classic one that most Christians read and find it hard to believe because it seems too good to be true is Psalm 139 that says this: the psalmist is saying for it was you—this is God—who created my inward parts and you knit me together in my mother's womb.
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Life that Jesus—God is—God is that life and he has breathed himself into us. Where does depression and worthlessness fit into that story? It's from the pit of hell. It's a lie from the pit of hell.
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If you remember back to Genesis 1, he created and then he said it was good, and then he created something else and he said it was good, and he created something else and he said it was good, and he traded—then he created the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and said it was good. Yep, I threw that one in just because a lot of people think back to this evil tree as an evil tree, but it can't have been an evil tree, can it? Because everything that God created was good.
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There was a boundary he set down that he said, don't eat, don't eat of this tree. The tree in itself, there's nothing wrong with the tree, so it was a nice tree. It said that the trees were pleasing to the eye, so it was a good-looking tree. It was created just the way that God wanted to create it. So where was the problem? If it wasn't in the tree? It was what? Someone's going to speak louder. Rebellion. Disobedience. But what the problem wasn't in the tree that God created as good, it was in the fact they disobeyed God's instruction.
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If we're not choosing life, what are we choosing?
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Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper, corresponding to him. At just a point, this is at the first time in the Word of God that God has actually seen something that's not good. It's not good for man to be alone. Was creation good? Creation is great, but it just wasn't complete. In relationally complete, and God's a God of relationship.
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The Bible actually says we're equal. In 1 Peter 3, I don't know if I have that up there, actually, it actually says that we are co-heirs in Christ. Us and our wife, men and women, are co-heirs in Christ and sharers in the gift of life. We're co-heirs. And then it goes on to say, here's a warning. It says, men, make sure you treat your wife right or it'll hinder your prayers. He's probably saying that for a reason. We're co-heirs. Adam and Eve were created as co-heirs in the gift of life, but with different roles.
[01:21:54]
So it actually never happened. The children that were supposed to be procreated and brought into this perfect relationship with God, we never saw that. But sin entered the world, and things have got a whole lot more complicated since then, haven't they? We have children, but God's plan has not changed. God's plan is still that we're reconciled to God, but things are a whole lot harder now. Because we need to bring our children into a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
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But yet God jealously desires us and our children. So as we procreate now, God's will hasn't changed. We're still to bring our kids to the Lord. But they need the gospel. They need to know the love of God. That's discipleship. Just like we've come into an individual relationship with God, so does our children.
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If you think we can have a marriage of any sort of success or meaning or purpose without God, we're fooling ourselves.
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Christ came as the perfect servant—yeah, but he was also the head of the church and we're the body. But Christ never went around saying to the church I'm the boss, you must follow me, you must submit to me, he never said that. How many people misuse that scripture to go oh God's given me the—they're seeing it from the worldly perspective that if you're the head it means you have some sort of power or control or whatever—that's an abomination to the Lord because he demonstrated it perfectly by coming in the flesh and giving his life on the cross for his bride.
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God made us one flesh, husband and wife, co-heirs in the gift of life—that's an amazing idea.
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That's the love that separates us from this world, but it's the love that gives our children an opportunity to be reconciled to God. Because there's no logic, there's no religion, there's no words, there's no Bible study that can do it. Because without the love of God, we're just sounding gongs.
[01:41:14]
God created life. He created marriage. He created these covenants. He has the instructions for life. If today you go away and you just go back to the basics of covenant relationship with the Lord and know that God's a God that loves you, that wants to bless you, that wants you and many others to be reconciled to him before he returns, it's been a good day.
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