Better Together - (Guest Speaker- Skip Wallace)

Our speaker today needs no introduction.

As a matter of fact, I'm sure 99% of everybody here knows Skip.

He was here so much that we were thinking about putting a picture on the Wall of Fame down there in our chapel.

As you know, he's been a blessing.

His real title is that he's the field strategist for this area.

Keeps him very busy.

Of all the things that Skip has been to so many of us in so many ways, the best thing we can say, he's our friend.

Skip, would you come forward?

It's good to be back.

Always good to be back here.

I was noticing and preparing that it was almost a year ago, just a couple of weeks over a year ago, that I was here last July of last year.

So grateful to Michael for inviting me back and letting me be a part of the congregation today.

New seminary student was wanting to really impress in his sermon on his first day in his church.

And so he was preparing and wanting to kind of preach through the Bible.

He thought I'm going to begin at the beginning and preach about Adam and Eve.

And so he was getting started, and he had his sermon manuscript out with him, and he was preaching along.

And as he was getting further along, he was getting more animated and more excited about it.

And he came to the bottom of one of his pages and he said, And Adam said to Eve, and he turned that page over and he stopped.

He kind of froze.

You could see he was looking around and he's frustrated now.

And he says, and Adam says to Eve, and he turns his page again, and nothing.

And he says, and Adam says to Eve, somebody stole my leaf.

Now, let me say for those of you who are younger than some of the others of us, we used to call these pages loose leaf notebook paper.

So that's where the word leaf comes from on that.

This morning I'm going to uh talk through first and second and some of third of Genesis.

So those are some of my passages.

But later in the service, we're going to get to Philippians chapter one.

My title today is We're Better Together.

I'm going to talk about relationships.

And I noticed in your bulletin you have a place to do outline or sermon notes.

And also in the back, there was a page that had my sermon notes for today.

So I hope you're able to see that as well.

We all know that Genesis chapters one and two are the creation chapters of the Bible.

They seem to be a little bit different, but I don't think they really are because they talk about two different aspects of creation.

You see, if you read chapter one, chapter one order it outlines the order of creation, how it happened.

And then chapter two talks about the relationships of creation, how we're related to each other and to God.

Now, throughout chapter one, the author points out that God is the primary actor.

If you were to read chapter one, you'll see over and over, God is the one who does something.

As a matter of fact, 33 times, if you go through that chapter, just chapter one, 33 times you can count it and find that God did something.

God creates, God speaks, God hovers, God separates, God makes, God calls.

Over and over, God does something.

And so I think that the main point of chapter one of uh the creation account is that God did it.

God is the one who created.

He is our creator.

And it's very interesting that in a number of those verses that that it indicates that whatever God created, those things God created were good things.

In verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25, they all speak about the goodness of creation.

And then the chapter ends in verse 31, where it has this statement.

It says, God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

Very good.

God is the actor, and what God does is good.

And then we move to chapter 2, and the author retells the story of chapter 2, but he, I mean, the restory of creation in chapter 2, but he has a new emphasis.

He emphasizes relationships in chapter 2.

Primarily relationships, again, between humans and God, and between humans and each other, and between humans and the animals.

Chapter 2 reveals that God created humans, you and me, for two special purposes.

First of all, to have a unique relationship with him, and then second, to care for his creation, to care for that which he created in chapter 1 that was good, that was good, that was very good.

He put us in charge of that, to take care of.

Adam and Eve were to love God, they were to obey God, they were to act as his children, children who love and obey their parents, and they were to work, they were to take care of God's creation.

And so at this point of the story, sin had not yet entered the world.

And we see that there are three things that God created for us to do.

Work was a good thing in God's original design.

Then we enter chapter three and we find the fall.

Sin makes its entry into the world, and much of what was good.

Well, it becomes unpleasant or even bad in people's eyes.

Obedience and work, they become corrupted and disagreeable.

Obey God?

No way.

Work?

I don't want to work.

Fear and enmity comes in between humans and humans, between Adam and Eve, and between the animals.

A beautiful place to live becomes off limits.

But most importantly, relationships are affected.

Our relationship with God and our relationship with each other becomes damaged, becomes strained, becomes splintered when sin enters the world.

Adam and Eve, they become stressed with each other.

And their unencumbered communion with God is broken.

And so we see in chapter three, folks, that the greatest tragedy of the fall, the greatest tragedy of sin entering in the world is broken relationships.

Now, if we go back to chapter two for a minute, and again, I'm not looking at any specific verses here and there, but but this is one, chapter two, verse 18 is going to be one of my key verses for this morning.

I'm going to point out something that often goes unnoticed.

Before we ever get to Genesis 3 and the introduction of sin, there's a statement in chapter 2 that I think should capture our attention.

I mentioned earlier that in chapter 1, everything's good, right?

It was good what God created.

It was very good what God created.

But in chapter 2, we hear God saying, it's not good.

And you can see if you've got your Bibles open, what is not good?

What is it that's not good?

It's not good for the man to be alone.

Now listen, you understand this.

Sin hadn't entered the world yet.

Disappointment, disagreement, hatred, bitterness hadn't entered the world yet.

And yet we find God saying in chapter 2, verse 18 that it's not good for the man to be alone.

From the very beginning, separation, broken relationships are not good.

Now I want to point out something else here.

Christians often say things like, well, all you need is God.

And that's real, sounds really good, doesn't it?

It sounds like the good Sunday school answer that you're supposed to give in church.

But it's not a biblical answer.

You see, from the very beginning, it wasn't good for the man to be alone.

And here's what's interesting to me Adam had God.

I mean, if you read through chapter two, you'll see there was this kind of special relationship between God and Adam that God said, name the animals.

God says, This is what I want you to do.

So there was God and Adam alone.

And yet Adam was still lonely.

And God still realized it's not good for this man to be alone.

And so, even though we say things like, Well, all you need is God, the truth of the matter is we need each other as well.

We're better together than we are alone.

And we find this thing called aloneness not good.

It just doesn't work.

And so the foundation of humanity is set in this very first story of the Bible.

The foundation of humanity is this relationships.

Relationships.

Relationships with God, relationships with each other.

Now listen, I understand that sometimes it's good to be alone.

Sometimes it's good to be away from each other.

Sometimes it's good to be out hiking on your own and being with God.

I I get that.

Sometimes we need to be away from other people, but not for long periods of time.

And not for most of the time.

That's why isolation, isolated uh confinement is no longer legal because they realize what it does to the people.

And God realized that life for Adam needed something else.

And so he created Eve, another person, another relationship, so that Adam would not be alone.

Now, go back to chapter 3.

Here comes the serpent.

He enters and provides the first temptation.

And the temptation was really to live outside of the way God intended for them to live.

Remember, I said there is three things obedience and relationships and work that God created us to do.

So the tempter comes along and he tells us, first of all, I want you to disobey God.

You know, God said this is what you're supposed to do, but nope, don't want you to do that.

Eve takes the fruit and eats it, gives it to Adam, and he eats it.

And then we see in verse 7 of chapter 3, the eyes of both of them were opened.

And they realized they were naked.

So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

I thought about going out to a fig tree and pulling off some leaves and trying to sew them together and bringing and wearing fig leaf clothing this morning to do this sermon.

But I decided against that.

Aren't you glad?

Now this is interesting.

It says they realized they were naked.

Had they not realized that before?

They were naked before this.

As a matter of fact, if you go back to chapter 2, verse 25, it says this the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

And so what happened between chapter 2 and chapter 3?

Sin came into the world, and shame came into the world.

And we have to understand this idea of nakedness on different levels than just physical nakedness.

Adam and Eve, before they were nakedly honest with each other, and now they're becoming dishonest with each other.

They were nakedly vulnerable with each other, and now they're no longer living in that vulnerable state.

They went from nakedly accepting each other and validating each other to rejecting each other and blaming each other for whose fault it was.

Before the fall, there was unconditional love and acceptance.

After the fall, there was disobedience and loss to innocence.

And all of a sudden, they realized they were naked.

The fig leaf was more than just a fig leaf, it was symbolic for the fact that there was now a barrier between Adam and Eve, and a barrier between them and God.

So in chapter 3, we see that the result of the choice they made was disobedience by eating the fruit, choosing to live outside of the way God intended to live.

And we find the first the first place that a wound appears is in relationship.

Broken relationship.

The first thing to fall affected was how two people got along.

And the first and primary effect of the fall is a wedge driven in relationships.

Broken relationship.

And that still affects us today, doesn't it?

Let me ask you this question.

Should be an easy question.

How many of you have ever had broken relationships with another person?

Anybody?

I'm glad somebody laughed at that.

Everybody should be raising your hands on that one.

And that's a result of the fall.

That's not the way God intended for us to live.

It's the oldest type of conflict that's ever existed, and it still exists today.

But it wasn't in God's original plan.

It was a choice that Adam and Eve made.

And unfortunately, it's still a choice that we make today.

Now, sometimes we're shocked when the relationships go bad.

We're like, wow, what happened?

And sometimes we truly shocked.

We're like, I don't know where that came from.

But it's as old as the garden, it's as old as the fruit tree, it's as old as the first human being.

Broken, splintered relationships.

Go back to the beginning.

And so here's what we try to do.

At least here's what I've noticed some people try to do, maybe not everybody.

When a relationship breaks, somebody says, Well, that's it.

I'm just not getting close to anybody again.

If I'm going to have to deal with broken relationships, it's better for me not to have any relationship.

But when I've noticed people who try to live that way, I've noticed that they don't really become happier.

They don't really become more contented.

They don't really become more fulfilled.

Over time they become and continue to be bitter.

They continue to be resentful.

They continue to be hurt.

And I would suggest again that this is the central problem of the world today.

You see, God created us to have open, honest, sometimes painful, sometimes hurtful, but open and honest relationships with each other.

And there's no place that should exist more than in the church.

We all realize that we are broken.

We all realize that sin once broke us and separated us from God, and Christ brought us back together.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

He brought us back together together to himself, and he brought us back together to each other.

And so here's the lesson I think we should learn from the story of Adam and Eve.

Living life together in community is God's design for us.

It's God's design.

That's the way he wants us to live.

And I would suggest that we find this true throughout scripture.

There were 12 tribes of Israel, not just one tribe.

Jesus called 12 disciples.

And as you read the scriptures, there are many other disciples.

He called 12 apostles.

There were many other disciples besides just the 12 apostles.

Jesus was Jesus.

He was God.

He could have done it all by himself.

And he chose not to.

He chose to have relationships.

Sometimes that relationship hurt.

I'm sure Jesus was really hurt when Judas betrayed him.

Can you imagine the pain that must have been?

But he chose to have the relationship anyway.

And I believe as a local congregation, as we choose to live together and work together, and I noticed in the uh third page or fourth page of your uh bulletin where it says who we are.

I love that you've written this in here.

I love you that you've written we are a Baptist tradition connected with the Baptist General Association of Virginia, a network of churches committed to cooperate to cooperative missions and sharing the love of Christ in our communities around the world.

Now listen to this, I love this part.

Though we are an autonomous congregation, we choose to fellowship with larger organizations, recognizing that God's work is multiplied when his people join in mission and in purpose.

What a powerful state! What a wonderful state.

You choose to work with other congregations to advance God's kingdom.

Thank you.

Thank you for doing that.

Now, as Christians, we are people who go on our spiritual journey together because we're better together than we are alone.

And I love Philippians chapter 1, verses 3 through 6 and then 27.

Philippians 1:3–6

And I'm sorry, they're all not going to be on the screen behind me because there's a lot to try to fit in there.

If you've had your Bibles open, uh you can follow along.

But listen to what Paul wrote to the church at Philippi.

He says, I thank my God every time I remember you in all my prayers for all of you.

Now, I was going to say this afterwards.

Let me say it before.

Every time you hear the word you in here, you're going to hear the word you a lot.

And we miss this because somehow in English, what we've done is we we have you as as singular and we have you as plural.

And you know, I really wish the Bible would write itself in in um Southern, right?

Because in Southern we have you as singular, and what do we have as plural?

Y'all.

So so I could be reading this when but Paul could be writing this like this.

I thank my God every time I remember y'all.

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of y'all's partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in y'all will carry it out to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

And then in verse 27, he says, Whatever happens, conduct yourselves, all of you, in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Then whether I come and see y'all or only hear about you in absence, I will know that you stand firm in one spirit.

And here's the last sentence, and it is on the screen.

Striving together as one for the faith of the gospel.

Wow, isn't that a great statement about how we're to live together in this thing called Christianity in our faith?

I like that phrase striving together, that two-word phrase.

It's interesting.

If you read that in the Greek, it's probably best symbolized by tag team wrestling.

It really is.

They used to have wrestling.

You know, Paul was a sports person.

You see a lot of sports stuff in Paul's writings in the epistles.

And this striving together was like tag team wrestling.

Like, man, I got it now.

I'm going.

You can cheer me on.

And man, now let me tag you and let's do this together.

That's what that striving together means.

Purposeful, directional.

We're doing this together.

In the New Testament, there are 46 instances of what some people refer to, or most people refer to, as the one another passages.

I love these one another passages.

Let me give you some examples.

Here's six examples of what I mean.

Galatians 5.13 says this, serve one another in love.

Ephesians 4.2 says this, patiently bear with one another.

Ephesians 4.32 says, be kind and compassionate, forgiving one another.

Hebrews 10.24, this is kind of like the striving together.

It says, spur one another on to love and good deeds.

James 5:30 5.16 says this, confess your sins one to another.

And then 1 John 3.11 says, love one another.

And for 19 of those times, there are different things.

Now, sometimes like love one another is in there more than once, but 19 things we're to do as Christians.

That the New Testament says, do this to one another.

Folks, when the Bible talks about church, it means much more than just showing up on Sunday morning.

Oh, wonderful.

I'm glad you're here this morning.

I'm glad you woke up and said, Man, this morning I'm going to church.

I'm going to First Baptist.

I'm going to be there to work.

Man, church is much more than this building.

As a matter of fact, church isn't a building.

I think I've preached this here before.

Church is the people.

You and me.

And we're supposed to do these things one to another.

Because we're better together than we are alone.

I would suggest to you the greatest witness of Christ's followers to a lonely, isolated, splintered, shattered, hateful world right now.

And unfortunately, that's kind of the world we live in.

But listen to what Jesus says in John 17 to his disciples the night before he was crucified.

He says this I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one, as you and I are one, I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity.

Then, listen to this, then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Man, Jesus said, evangelism happens.

People notice when they see us truly loving each other.

We live in a world that doesn't love each other.

We live in a world that says mean things about each other, hurts each other.

Whoever can speak the loudest and most boisterous and meanest seems to be the winner.

That's not who we are as Christians.

That's not what the gospel has called us to do.

That's how the gospel has called us to act.

And when we love each other, the world will know to be folks from Adam and Eve to the families of Israel to the earliest church and churches today.

God has had one vision for the kingdom.

And that's what Jesus prayed the night before he was crucified.

Father, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And one of the most important things we can do to make that happen is to have good relationships.

We find throughout scripture that life is better together.

We're better together than we are alone.

We're better together than we are alone.

Relationships can be messy, relationships can be harmful, but man, they can be wonderful and powerful and good as let's do the best we can to live life together.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this powerful passages from Genesis into Philippians about the importance of relationship.

Thank you that you created us as relational creatures, relational humans, to be able to love each other and care for each other and serve each other.

Father, thank you for this church and the way they do love each other.

Father, I pray that this community will be able to look at this church and say, wow, we want those types of relationships.

Lead first Baptist to be a church that really reflects your love for each other and for this community.

Father, we thank you for loving us.

Lead us and guide us in all we do.

And I ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.