The Whole Story #3 :: Made for This // Chris Holm

This week we opened Genesis 1 and 2 not as a science debate or a piece of poetry, but as something more specific: a temple-building text. Using the work of scholar John Walton, we traced how the six days of creation follow a forming-and-filling pattern, and how day seven is the moment God moves into what he has made. The cosmos is his temple. His rest is not exhaustion. It is delight. He settled in to be with his people.From there we looked at what it means to be made in the image of God. In the ancient world, kings placed statues throughout their kingdoms to announce their authority. Genesis says God did something similar, except his images walk around, eat breakfast, and drive to work. We are royal representatives, image bearers placed in the world to reflect God's rule into every corner of it.Genesis 2 zooms in close. God kneels in the dirt, forms a man like a potter works clay, and breathes into him face to face. The first human's lungs were filled with the breath of God. Then God plants a garden and places his image bearers in it with a commission: cultivate and spread it. Eden was the seed. The whole earth was the field.Three practices came out of this: receive your identity from God before the world tells you who you are, take the gardening commission seriously in whatever corner of life you have been placed, and understand that the whole story is moving toward one thing: presence. God with his people. That longing we feel for things to be right is not nostalgia. It is the image of God in us remembering the garden.Scripture references: Genesis 1-2, Psalm 132, 1 Kings 8, Colossians 1, 2 Corinthians 3, Revelation 21URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship