Not Alone in God's Garden

Well, good morning.

You've already got your Bible open to Genesis chapter two, keep it that way.

Uh it's the word of God, not my words, that's what's important here.

My goal is to try to bring what God said to the fore, to help us see it, perhaps in a different light than you might otherwise, or maybe exactly in this light, but for you to see it in his word, and then for us to wrestle with what does this mean?

What do we do with this today in our culture, in our society, in our lives?

And for that, we desperately need God's help, and I'd like to pray together.

Father, we need you to cause the word to be quickened in that old-fashioned term, made alive this morning in our hearts and in our minds.

We pray that we would listen to you, that we would respond to you.

I pray that you would help me to rightly communicate and apply what you have said.

Heavenly Father, we need you.

We need what is in this passage for us to live.

So help us, I pray.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, chapter two of Genesis, we're we're looking at the first couple of first three, perhaps four chapters in Genesis.

And we're seeking to gain from them what God is saying to us, and it is my conviction that what he wants to have us understand is in the beginning, God.

It's pretty simple, really.

That's the the theme that I'm taking.

It's real original.

I came up with it, of course.

In the beginning, God.

If we miss this, we miss everything in this sense.

If we fail to see reality, finding its origin in God, being defined by God, what God has said, if we miss this true north, if we miss this solid point in the compass in reality, then we will miss everything.

We will misunderstand it, we will stumble, we will bumble around.

And God says, here's an anchor, here's a fixed point, here's a compass.

And then he goes on, helping us as we orient ourselves to life, to the world that we're in, to the world around us, to the world within us.

He gives us some fixed points.

And at the heart of what he says, and we saw it especially in chapter one, in the beginning, God, I created all that is, everything that exists, find its origin in me.

If we miss that, we're missing reality.

And God created evening and morning the first day, evening and morning the second day, and so forth, and we saw the beautiful way this was unfolded of how God created all of this.

And at the high point of his creation was his creation of man, man, and God placed man in a garden, in a perfect environment, the place he was intended to be, in the situation that was intended by God before sin came into the picture.

As we turn to Genesis chapter 2, we see something very important about man.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Last time we we noted that he was placed at home in God's garden.

And today we learn an essential truth that God has never intended us to be alone.

So what I hope to try to do is, on the basis of this, draw out what I believe is really the central thought.

We were made in God's image and God's likeness.

That's essential for us to understand about who we are.

All of us.

Sinner, saved, redeemed, wretched, whatever, all human beings are created in the image of God.

We have seen that he designed and destined us to have dominion over this corner of the universe, to rule, not as a despot, not abusing creation, but tending and preserving and maintaining it as a steward of God, a vice regent of God.

We have an assignment in this world, we have a mandate.

We learned that he created us both with a physical being, a physical part of our nature, and a spiritual part of our nature.

And that beautiful picture that we saw last week of God didn't stand at a distance, he reached out, it was not quite like the potter and the clay.

He had been creating man, and then he reached in and came near.

And he took the clay and he breathed into it the breath of life.

He got his hands dirty and he breathed on man with the kiss of God.

Such a precious picture there.

Didn't stay at a distance.

Not only Elohim, the great creator God, but also Yahweh, the one who craws near, the one who brings us into relationship with himself.

And as we see, especially today, how he brings us and intends us for relationships with one another.

Today's passage helps us learn some essential things about man.

Many more things that I'm going to have time for us to really touch on.

It talks about the fact that we are only truly human when we are in relationship.

The marriage relationship is a central teaching here, but what he says goes deeper than simply the marriage relationship.

It goes to the essence of who mankind is, which reflects something about who God is.

And he says, it is not good to be alone.

We will only be fully human and the people that God intends us to be when we are in thriving relationships of profound intimacy.

And I'm not talking about erotic intimacy.

I'm talking about profound interpersonal relationships with the creatures, creatures that God has around us, with the human beings.

We are only fully human.

The image of God is only manifested in us in its most fullest part when we are in thriving, healthy, intimate, joyous relationships with other human beings.

It is not good to be alone.

That's not what we were made for.

So I want to touch on a number of aspects of this thought.

This section talks about marriage and the covenant of marriage.

We're not going to be focusing on that specifically this morning.

It also talks about the nature of biblical manhood and womanhood.

It also talks about the divinely intended roles, complementary roles, because no one is complete on their own.

We need others who complement us and fulfill us.

And it talks about the centrality and the goodness of human sexuality and sexual intimacy.

Things that we ought to talk about.

Yes, in church.

We ought to actually talk about those things in the right way.

What I want us to begin as we look at the text is verse 18a.

Very good place to begin.

Let's begin in the beginning of this passage.

The Lord God said, not good.

Not good.

That's the focus of this first part of this verse.

It is not good.

What is not good?

Aloneness.

Now let's just think about that for a minute.

It is not God's design for us to be alone, to be isolated, be cut off from other people.

It's not God's design in the marriage relationship.

It's not God's design in the local church.

It's not God's design in community.

We are not fully human when we're isolated.

It is not good to be alone.

If you hadn't read this before, and if you were just beginning at chapter 1, verse 1, and reading up to this point, this verse would startle us.

This would be startling.

It would be shocking.

Evening and morning, a first day, God did this.

Evening and morning a second day, and God did that.

Evening and morning a third day and so forth.

And then man was created.

Now, what we're reading here took place on the sixth day of creation.

We had an overview of creation.

On the sixth day, the high point of creation was man.

And after that, God said, Very good.

Up until this point, God has given himself an A plus, if I can put it that way.

Very irreverently, I suppose, to put it that way.

In all of his accomplishments, there was light and it was good.

And there was the animals and so forth.

It's good, good, good, and finally very good.

So when we read here, not good, how are we to understand that?

It ought to stop us a little bit.

It should probably shock and startle us more than it than it really does.

Not good! And this is before sin came into the world.

What do we what's that all about?

What we have is a statement about man before God was comp had completed all that he was going to do in the creation of man.

See, just Adam by himself was not good.

That's very meaningful for us, or it ought to be.

We ought to think longer and harder about that than we probably do.

It takes male and female, more than one person, people who compliment, who are different from one another, to fulfill and reflect the image of God in us.

Man alone is not good for man.

And this is traced back to the image of God.

If you go back to chapter 1, verse 26 and 27, God said, Let us make man and mankind, generic term, this point, in our own image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the flesh of the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and livestock and all the other creatures.

Verse 27.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them.

And now it's that thought that is picked up and we learn more about.

The reality is that whatever terms we use, fellowship, relationship, community, communion, interpersonal intimacy, something other than just isolation and aloneness.

It's necessary for us to be fully human.

Male and female, he created them.

Adam alone was not good in the sense that not that God had created something wrong, but he wasn't done with his creation.

Creation of mankind was not done until what we're reading about here.

This has profound significance.

It's very difficult for us as Westerners in the 21st century to not think individual, because that's what our culture and our mindset is.

We are children of modernity, of the Enlightenment, 1650 and following, where there was a philosophical movement that moved us in the wrong direction.

And at the core of the Enlightenment was the idea that man is the measure of all things.

So man was placed central, and that is not true.

God is central.

But the philosophy was man is at the heart of all things.

That was modernism, modernity.

We have moved to post-modernism, where it's not just man who is at the center of all things, but I'm at the center of my reality.

It's a me world.

It's not a we-us kind of a world.

So we begin to make decisions based on how I feel and how what I want and what pleases me and what meets my needs.

That's because we're children of this modern and now postmodern era.

And the rugged individualism of the American frontier, which is deeply ingrained within us, you just kind of do it.

You pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you just make it.

That doesn't help us see reality.

We were never meant to be alone.

The me focus.

There's a popular movement in evangelical circles that's been called the me church.

That the church is all about me.

And so there's churches that promote themselves of it's the me church.

Come and you can be you.

Well, of course you can be you, but that's not what the church is.

In other words, just pick whatever version you want.

It's all about you.

There's a subtle message there.

That's not what the Bible says, but the Bible app is, you know, a meat.

So we choose churches based upon what we like.

We change churches because you can get something better down the road.

We have as much loyalty to a local church as a culture I'm talking about, modern American evangelicalism, as we do to a grocery store.

So we moved into Grand Forks and I discovered the Hugo's is a big deal.

That's our grocery store.

My grocery store.

However, if Hugo's doesn't have what I like at the right price, then I'll go to Sands Club or I'll go to Target or someplace else.

Because after all, I want certain things.

I have goods and services that I want, so we've learned to select whatever meets our needs.

And we do the same thing with church.

There's something wrong with this.

We had the privilege of living in other cultures for many, many years.

Unfortunately, still Western cultures.

You get away from the Western culture and it's not so individualistic.

People don't identify themselves as kind of me, but they identify themselves often in a larger context with a tribe or an ethnic group or the larger culture, so that I only make sense in this larger world around me.

That is a far more biblical understanding of reality than me, me, me, me, me, this individualistic focus.

In our setting, the concept of family has almost dissipated, so that now family is basically a group of people who have some kind of a relationship with one another who happen to live under one roof.

They don't even necessarily eat at the same table.

How often do families actually gather around the table?

Well, some, but it's a huge change.

And at least they share a television set.

Oh no, wait a minute.

Everybody has their own TV set, everybody has their own remote, and with DVRs, you can have multiple channels being shown and played all at the same time.

So, honey, we don't even need to fight over the remote anymore.

Life is good.

And so the Little House on the Prairie idea of family is nostalgic and it's cute, but it has little correlation to us.

Where there was cohesiveness.

What I want to say is there is something inhumane about loneliness.

And God wants more from us than just that.

Isolation and alienation are the awful fruit that we we reap from individualism and loneliness.

We live in an isolated society, people who barely know one another, barely know the people in the class that you're sitting next to, the cubicle down the hall.

Well, there's that's not totally true, but that's the direction we've gone.

That is inhumane.

We were not, it is not good to be alone.

So the the second half of this verse is that God has a solution for the not goodness of aloneness.

Sorry, that's just the way my mind works.

The not goodness of aloneness.

God has as intended from the beginning, there is a solution for that.

And it is not only in marriage.

That's we'll talk more about that.

But what he does in verse 18 is um, well, what does he do in verse 18, second half?

It's not good for a man to be alone, so I, God, will make a helper fit for him.

God takes the initiative, and it was only after Eve was created and Adam and Eve were in relationship with one another, that it was very good.

And it was only then that God took his Sabbath rest of satisfied achievements.

Up until then, creation was not complete.

So from a he makes also a she.

Interesting play on words.

Have you ever noticed he and she, e- is in the middle of that, or man and woman.

And in Hebrew it was Ish and Isha.

Clear connectedness.

Not clones of one another, not clones, different, but but intimately related, of the same basic stuff, different and yet interlocking.

Now, in this passage he uses two terms.

Verse uh 18b, I will make him a helper, fit or suitable for him.

Now we have all kinds of problems with this because when we think of helper, we think of some little peon who's around and exists to pick up my socks and make sure that the dishes are clean, guys.

If we're not careful, that's what it degenerates into.

As somehow or another, Eve is down here.

A helper is inherently down here, not in the biblical world.

Do you know of the 19 times that the word helper is used in the Old Testament?

Sixteen of those times, you know who the helper is with a capital H?

God Himself.

Oh God, our help in ages past, our hope of things to come.

God is our helper and our shield.

There is no inferiority in the concept of a helper.

That's our culture, that's our society.

It's wrong.

Who is inferior when God is helping us?

Who's inferior?

The helper, no, the one needing help.

If there's an inferiority, uh, it's not the helper who is inferior.

So we we our culture and our thinking doesn't help us much in this regard.

Um fitted for or suitable.

Uh the idea is corresponding, and I meant to come up with a picture of a of a square with two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle where it just fits together perfectly, and they're not mirror images of each other.

Men and women are not fundamentally, they're fundamentally the same, but in significant ways there are really differences.

Gender is part of this, male and female.

But it's not just physiology.

There is a difference.

And aloneness is not fulfillment of God's purpose for us.

Beautiful picture of complementarianism.

The whole big discussion we won't get into this morning about marriage relationship, egalitarian or complementarian.

If egalitarian means of equal value, absolutely.

But if it means everybody just does their own thing and has a right to be whoever they are, that's just not the picture.

We're complementary.

And that's true in the church as well.

That's true in the community as well.

You're not like the person sitting next to you, and the body of Christ is richer for it, and you and I are richer for it.

A complementarian kind of approach, not clones of each other.

So in verses 19 and 20, we have this fascinating account of God naming the animals.

Let's just look at that.

Now, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

That's a strange thought.

Why did he bring the animals before Adam?

Did God not know what they would be called?

Was this for God's benefit, or was this for Adam's benefit?

Well, clearly it was for Adam's benefit.

And whatever the man called, every living creature, that was its name.

The man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the heaven, the beasts of the field.

Now, some interesting facts.

I'd like to take about 30 weeks to go through Genesis, not 10 or 11.

Adam begins what theologians I think have rightly described as the creation mandate to exercise dominion over the world, not as a dictator, not using and abusing, but as a vice-regent of God, an assignment to investigate the world around.

Now, this assignment had a purpose, and it was for Adam to realize of all of the created realm, there's no one that meets, that corresponds to me.

We're not just other animals.

Part of what's going on here is in the ancient world, names had meaning.

They weren't just labels that you would stick on someone.

So when Adam brought the animals before him and gave them a name, in uh in the Hebrew mind, the idea was there's a correspondence between the name of someone and their character.

So that when people went through a major change, oftentimes their name changed.

So Abram, Abraham, Peter, Cephas, etc., it goes all the way through, Saul, Paul.

And what this required, Adam was sent on a search, an investigation of the created realm, and he needed to investigate, differentiate, categorize, reflect the very things that are at the core of learning and intellectual pursuits and all true science.

This is, the first chapters of Genesis is a seedbed for all kinds of things.

And I think it's correct to say that we have the very beginnings of part of what makes us human.

We're able to understand the world around us to some extent, able to make some sense out of it, under God and pursue, and that's part of our mandates.

So I again I won't take the time, I'd love to go further, but 21 to 25, uh Adam and Eve were made for each other.

Um so after discovering that there was no one suitable for him, which God put into words, um, so the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up the place with the flesh.

By the way, the word ribs does not necessarily actually talk about the bony structure we call a rib.

It could have been a rib.

It was something from his side that God.

Parenthetically, guys, um, you do not have one less rib than women.

Um I had to Google that to make sure, but uh now, if this was a physical rib, and it may well have been, then Adam had one mid rib missing.

But that's not the difference between men and women, parenthetically.

I don't know if you've noticed that, but uh so um he took one of his ribs, closed it up with flesh, and the rib that God, the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and brought her to the man.

And the man said, This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

This shall be called woman, because she was taking out of man, Isha, because she was taking from Ish, she because she was created from he.

Therefore, man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, she shall become one flesh, and man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

All kinds of things here.

Um I'm not gonna go into detail because I want to get to another part of this, but let's just realize that this is at the core of our understanding of marriage.

And uh the leave, cleave, become one.

That becomes a paradigm for understanding what how you enter into marriage.

And I and many pastors use that thought leave, cleave, become one as part of premarital counseling.

It's certainly true about marriage.

But at this point, we're talking about humanity.

There aren't multiple people out there, it's Adam and Eve, and it's talking about humanity.

Um this idea of uh of being made, woman being made from the rib of a man, guys, there's a lot of lousy thinking, and some of our marriage seminars don't help us a whole lot here, I'm afraid to say.

Um it's so easy to for men to and women to kind of take this idea that woman was made second and and a helper and so forth.

What in the world does that mean?

Uh you know, men are inclined to say uh all kinds of silly things.

I'd I'd rather not even go into it, what men say about that.

Uh women can look at that and say, well, God took a look at Adam, and obviously he hadn't done a good enough job, so he had to make Eve, and then it was good.

That's not, those kinds of things is not what this is about, whatsoever.

Um the idea of um of taking from the side, I think it was Matthew Henry in his commentary, um, why the side?

Why not the head?

Why not the feet?

Um and the comment was made, and I think it's a good one.

She didn't come from his head to lord over him, nor from his feet to be trampled on by him, but from his side to be cherished and valued as a complimentary person.

Just interesting speculation, but I think there's a lot of truth to that.

And then this idea of here at last, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, this is not because she was stunningly beautiful.

I just can't tell you how many books on marriage treat this like, wow, was she dynamic?

Was she beautiful?

That's what I want.

Men, if you are looking for a beauty, you are looking for the wrong thing, at least the way we define beauty.

It wasn't, she just blows me over.

That's a contemporary Western romantic idea of love that has virtually no foundation in scriptures.

No, without this woman, I am not complete.

Without this husband, she is not complete.

Wow, this is what I've needed.

I've looked all around the other animals, and there's nothing that makes us complete.

But now with each other, at last, this is what I needed, and this is very good.

It is not good to be alone.

Naked and not ashamed, we'll come back to this in chapter three.

And clearly there's a reality here that sin brings a barrier between us.

And so Adam and Eve, when they realized they were sinful, they covered themselves up, fig leaves.

A reality and a picture of that which separates us because sin causes intimacy, human interpersonal intimacy to be dangerous and threatening.

And God always brings together and sin always separates.

And the fig leaves, I think, is really a picture of the isolation and the separation, interpersonal separation, the walls, the threat that we are to one another.

And the closer we get to other people, the more we have to open ourselves up to possibly being hurt.

Nevertheless, nevertheless, it is not good to be alone.

With the couple of minutes that we have here, I want to touch on something of particular significance in our culture that I think is very important to find in Scripture an understanding of.

And in chapter 5 and in chapter 9, after sin comes into the world, and we will see that when we get there, after sin came into the world, they were still image bearers of God.

We saw when we looked at verse 26 and 27 from chapter 1 that the image of God in man was defaced but not erased.

Very significant.

You are an image bearer of God.

Every human being is an image-bearer of God.

Every human being is a creation that God loves and values and esteems.

There is human dignity for all men.

Mankind, not just men and women, but mankind.

I don't think we focus on that sufficiently in our evangelical circles.

I would say it this way: all human beings bear the image and likeness of God, not just the redeemed.

That's a pretty significant statement.

It's not just the saved, the one on whom God places special grace and love and mercy as we respond to the gospel and come to faith in Christ through the work of Christ on the cross, it's not then that we become image-bearers, the lost bear the image of God as well.

How does that, what do we do with that thought?

Well, I would say in any case, failure to recognize and extend dignity to all men, listen to me, regardless of race, creed, lifestyle, or sexual orientation, failure to recognize and extend dignity to all men is dishonoring to God.

It is the very essence of man, mankind, fallen as well as redeemed, to be image-bearers of God.

If that doesn't express itself somehow in the way that we relate to people, then we are missing that which is perhaps central to who that person is.

That person need not be seen by us as being defined by their lifestyle, but by being a creature of God, whom God loves, whom God values, for whom Christ died.

Now, there is for those of us who come to faith in Christ and experience regeneration, there's a new nature, there's a restoration of that which is lost.

And that's not saying everybody's all on the same footing, but let's think about how we think about people whose lives don't match up to what God wants.

I am not suggesting that we condone or agree with sin or sinful lifestyles.

Don't get me wrong, don't hear me wrong.

I'm saying with what attitude do we look at people and how do we relate to them?

If we're not careful, our attitude towards people who agree with us theologically, socially, culturally, and a whole bunch of other ways, we relate to them differently than people who are very different from us.

And if we're not careful, we give preferential treatment to the one and we become demeaning and disrespecting and prejudential, presidential, not presidential.

Prejudiced.

Thank you, dear.

Um do you view how do we view people who have very different lifestyles than what we agree with?

Heart check here.

I'm asking myself, what's our heart attitude to the LGBT community, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community?

If you don't think that's an issue today, you're living in a hole.

How should Christians relate to people whose lifestyle is to us utterly unthinkable and inappropriate?

That's a really hard question.

We need to ask ourselves that.

A heart check.

What I find, uh maybe you're made of different stuff than I am.

I find that I tend to get very irritated.

That's a polite way of saying I get angry.

Or irritation, we we it's only a matter of degree, you know.

Uh I tend to find myself getting really upset with people who live what I believe is an inappropriate, sinful lifestyle.

I tend to experience a measure of disgust.

What happens when you sit, step on an airplane and you're seated next to somebody who is obviously having uh has a different lifestyle, is homosexual, lesbian, transgender, or whatever?

Do you want to scoot over this way and not have anything to do with them?

How do we, as Christians, is the anger, disgust, and revulsion over certain sins, sins that we may not have, is that inherently righteous indignation and righteous anger?

Well, I think there is such a thing as righteous anger.

The Bible makes it very clear, be angry, but sin not.

The problem is, I don't know much about righteous anger.

My righteous anger is never very righteous, to be very honest.

So perhaps there is a righteous indignation about different lifestyles, but how does that play itself out?

Um if we are revulsed and don't want to be around people who are fundamentally different in their lifestyle and are making what we believe are horrible life choices, and they will pay a consequence for it.

That's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm saying is, how do I relate to them?

Do I treat them differently?

Um couple of uh verses here, James I, uh, we saw this several months back.

Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

When you see somebody and they are living a way that you find incredibly distasteful, what happens?

What's going on in your heart?

Perhaps we should leave issues to God.

The the anger of God does not accomplish the the anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God.

That's just a fact.

Let God deal with them, and you deal with your own feelings that are perhaps not right.

That's what I'm saying.

I think we need a heart check.

There is a dark side to the way we feel about people with other lifestyles, and it has no place in the heart of a believer.

Oh, it has a place.

It has a place in my heart.

Not a good place, not right.

And we need to say this out loud.

We're not condoning sin.

But before we start throwing stones, what about the sins in your life, the things that are not the way they should be?

Do you grieve as much over your own sin as you grieve over the sinful lifestyle of other people?

Are you as bothered by your own sin?

I'm not saying, I'm just saying, first get this right.

And we have a pretty hard time getting this right.

It's very interesting to me.

Jesus was very comfortable with people I would have been very uncomfortable with.

And those people were very comfortable with Jesus.

Are lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender people comfortable with us?

It raises a thousand questions, but we can't even begin to approach those questions unless we deal with our own heart.

Saints and sinners are image bearers of God and are due dignity and value.

This is a practical matter.

So you have a family gathering.

Do you gather your family?

Or do you only gather the family that you're comfortable with the way they live?

I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to me.

So how do you relate to a homosexual partner of one of your family members?

Do you welcome them?

Or do you treat them as outcasts and sinners?

Well, they may be sinners, they are sinners.

But so am I.

I've been saved by God's grace.

They may not have been.

But is that how I relate to them?

Can I or can I not embrace the homosexual partner of one of my family members and give him a hug with integrity?

It's not a theoretical question.

I may be the only person in that guy's world who really knows Christ.

And how do I relate to him?

Now, this raises zillions of questions.

It's nothing simple about this.

This is incredibly difficult.

But we're not even talking about it as evangelical Christians.

We live in a hostile, polarized world, and what I'm saying is Christ, it matters how we feel and how we relate to people whose lifestyle we may detest.

And somehow or another, the Church of Jesus Christ needs to be a place where not just the righteous are welcome and comfortable, but the unrighteous, the lost.

And God loves the sinner, hates the sin, loves the sinner.

How do you live that out?

How do we live that out in community?

Well, I had a whole bunch of other things that I wanted to talk about this morning.

Humanity is male, female, sexuality is relational by God's design.

Marriage is but let me just uh take a minute with this.

Marriage is but one solution to the not goodness of aloneness.

The church and the fellowship of the church is to be part of God's solution.

So someone who Who is not married, or someone whose marriage is not what it should be, or someone who used to be married but no longer is married?

Do they fit here?

Are they really welcome here?

Do they feel welcomed?

Is there a place here for somebody other than couples?

And couples, don't get me wrong, I love you, I is one.

But do you know how hard it is as a single to walk into a church like ours?

Where do you sit?

Who do you sit with?

It's not, there's nothing simple about that, and we're oblivious to it.

If we're not careful, the church becomes a click of couples.

Oh, God forbid, God forbid.

Um intimacy in relationships that is healthy and right and not erotic.

Ever thought about that?

Guys, can you do more than give a North Dakota hug?

I know I'm stepping on deep waters here.

David and Jonathan.

They loved each other.

The horrible thing about David and Jonathan is that has been picked upon by the homosexual community, Christian homosexuals, and saying, see, they loved each other, and that was a homosexual relationship.

There's no indication of that in Scripture.

The only reason we're open to that kind of criticism is that guys don't know how to love guys very well, and women as well.

Can you imagine having an intimate, I don't mean erotic, but an intimate relationship with someone else besides a spouse?

If not, we're in deep trouble, folks.

The church ought to be a family, a family in which there is love and acceptance and embracing and intimacy.

Where are we, folks?

Are we a group of isolated individuals who happen to like or not like the worship this morning?

What's that all about?

Do you have here in this congregation someone that you are really close to, intimate with?

They know your heart, they share and care, and you share and care, and your relationship with a Christ is at the core of that friendship.

If we don't have that happening here, we may be teaching the Bible, but we are failing to be the people of God.

So I'm preaching to myself, I'm preaching to you.

I think at its core, we apply Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 to 24, and we only think about marriage.

Genesis 2:18–24

It goes far beyond that.

It goes to the core of what it is to be human.

The not goodness of aloneness God has a solution for in marriage, in the church, in the community, in society.

And somehow or another, that's got to be reflected here.

God help us.

God help us.

Would you stand, please?

Today is Sunday, the 26th of February, 2017, and God is still on the throne.

Therefore, my friends, go into the world in peace.

Have courage.

Hold on to that which is good and honor all men.

Strengthen the faint hearted, support the weak, help the suffering, restore the wandering, comfort the grieving, and share the gospel.

And may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.

God bless and God help us.

Amen.