Edenology | The O.G. - The Original Gospel | Abe Matos

Hey, I want to take a moment to welcome everyone from all our different campuses or gathered here this morning.

I want to take a moment to welcome the folks obviously here in person at our Richmond location.

Also, everyone down there at Missouri City with Pastor Chad Harold.

I want to take a moment to welcome those at West End where I typically am week in and week out down there in the city.

I'll be back next week.

Can't wait to be back with uh West Enders.

Also, everyone joining online, and uh last but certainly not least, can we give a warm and friendly welcome to all of our fellas at God Behind Bars over there at the Ramsey Unit?

We're so glad that we get to do church uh with y'all.

Hey, uh, my name is Abe, and I'm one of the pastors here at River Point and West End Church.

And uh today we're bringing home this series, this week three of a series that we started obviously a couple weeks ago called Edenology, where we've taken a moment to uh take um just take a closer look at Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3, and literally study the Garden of Eden and really take stock of what we can learn about God, what we can learn about mankind, and by default what we can learn about ourselves by just looking and pouring over carefully just the very first three chapters that we're given in the Holy Scriptures.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And uh the tagline, the reason that we're doing this series, the taglines for this series is from Eden to Easter, uh, because our intent as we planned it was really to connect the dots for us as we prepare our hearts and our minds for the culmination of everything we celebrate, everything we know to be true as followers of Jesus, which of course is Easter Sunday, the celebration of not just the death and the burial, but more importantly than that, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What we're wanting to do is to bridge the gap between what we learn about God, his nature, what we learn about man, our nature, and what God did with that and the road that he paved from Eden all the way to the miracle on Easter Sunday morning.

And uh Chad said something last week that if you're if you're coming in and maybe you're jumping in in the middle of this series or towards the end of it, uh, because we're ending it today, and you really are trying to figure out, okay, like what's so important about this.

One way to catch you up on the importance and the priority on the first three chapters of the scriptures, he said this, which I thought was quite profound.

He said that if we don't, as followers of Jesus, as believers in God, if we don't get Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3 right, then we get so much else wrong.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And I'm ashamed to say this, or not ashamed, actually.

We we talked about shame last week.

Not ashamed to say this.

Might be a little embarrassed, but the truth is if I'm not careful, if I don't constantly revisit the first three chapters of the Bible, if I don't constantly revisit the Garden of Eden, the way that God meant it to be, the world that he originally created, which week one we learned uh Chad Harrell talked about the fact that God made it good.

That he made it good.

If I don't revisit that constantly, if I don't remind myself that one of the greatest threats to my relationship with God is shame.

It's whenever I keep myself from being fully known and fully loved.

If I'm not constantly revisiting these truths, then so much of my understanding, so much of what I believe to be true about God and the way that God thinks and treats me ends up being way off.

So today, what I want to do is I want uh to take us in the very last half of Genesis chapter 3, and I'm just gonna give you, if you if you miss out on anything else that is said this morning, I want you to, well, actually, let me tell you the story because I thought this this was pretty funny.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Uh I can't remember how long ago, but a few months ago I shared with you guys that whenever I teach, get the opportunity to teach here at the Richmond campus, I'm done I gotta come down Highway 6, and down Highway 6 is a Dutch bros.

Okay, and uh I don't know what it is, but like on these Sundays when I'm teaching at five something in the morning, I have the taste of a um a middle school white girl in my drinks.

And I got there and I was like, I want a golden eagle, all the sugar.

I want the soft top, I want all of it.

And and I've joked around before about how I'm the pastor showing up with the privilege of preaching God's word, and somehow the 17-year-old at Dutch Bros has more joy than I have.

And this time I was greeted by another one, um, a different girl than last time, and she was just so cheery, and she uh noticed that I had a box of Shipley donuts in my car.

And she was like, Oh, I see that you just picked up donuts from Shipleys, and I'm like, haha no, girl, that's from two weeks ago.

Uh but sure, and I'm I am ashamed to say this.

I lied to her.

I said, Yeah, I picked up some donuts for co-workers.

I just like just like, you know, trying to like, girl, leave me alone.

And and she's like, oh, great, where do you work?

Because you know they're experts in follow-up questions.

Oh, where do you work?

Uh I work at a church.

Oh, what do you do at the church?

Uh I'm a pastor.

Oh, oh, hi, father.

Not lying, not lying to you.

This is a verbatim.

I'm repeating the conversation.

So she says, What are you teaching on this morning?

And I told her, I was like, Oh, we're talking about the book of Genesis.

And she was like, Oh, what about the book of Genesis?

And it's five something, maybe six something in the morning at this point.

And I was just like, uh, by the time I kind of got my thoughts together, she was giving me the drink, and I was like, God bless you, have a great Sunday.

And on the way here, I was like, how come I couldn't answer that question easily?

And I've been thinking about it.

And here's what I wish I could go back and tell that girl.

And it's what I'm gonna tell you this morning.

If you miss out on anything this morning, don't miss out on this.

You have no freaking idea how much God loves you.

You can't even begin to comprehend how much God loves you.

You can't, and here's the sad part.

Well, we're getting to read this morning, we're gonna walk through it verse by verse.

What we're getting to read this morning, if we're not careful, it will be corrupted.

And what we walk away from hearing and reading in Genesis chapter 3, in this tragic scene when God uh takes Adam and Eve outside of the Garden of Eden because of sin.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

If we're not careful, what we walk away with is God is mad at us.

God's got a bone to pick with us, God is bitter at us, God is resentful with us, God is looking to judge us.

And none of that could be true, could be further from the truth.

If we're getting to read, when we get into it, it will prove the point that we can't begin to understand the depths of God's love for you and for me.

So, again, we're gonna pick up at Genesis chapter 3, verse 14.

Genesis 3:14

This is after we're picking up right where Chad left off last week.

Uh, Adam and Eve have sinned, they were deceived, they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

God has uh shown up to walk hand in hand with them on this day.

They are hiding, they are naked and they feel ashamed.

That wasn't their original state, that wasn't how God created it to be, but they've now tried to cover their shame as best as they can with fig leaves.

God shows up and he says, Where are you?

And they come out of hiding and they explain to God.

They kind of play the blame game.

Eve blames the serpent, Adam blames Eve, and we're picking up where we left off last week, and in light of everything that's happened, God is about to speak.

And in verse 14 of chapter 3, it says this the Lord said to the serpent.

Okay, the Lord said to the serpent, I need you to catch this.

In light of Adam and Eve's disobedience, in light of their deception, in light of what they've just done to breach the trust, to go at it their own way, God first addresses the serpent.

He doesn't address them first.

Chad said this last week.

He said that uh we, mankind, which, if you don't know this, you should be reminded of this.

God's soft spot is for mankind.

We are the apple of his eye.

We are the object of all of God's affection and love and mercy.

God takes joy in us, he takes pride in us, he created us in his own image.

So when God gets ready to deliver judgment on Adam and Eve, he first talks to the serpent.

Because here's what you need to know: we've been dragged into this beef between God and Satan.

Chad said it last week, he said we have been caught up in a celestial civil war.

And if we're not careful, if we're not careful, our enemy, Satan, the serpent, will deceive us into thinking that God's wrath and God's anger and God's ire is against us.

And of course the enemy wants us to think it.

Because it's actually with him.

So God turns to the serpent first.

God knew who the real enemy was.

And he turns to him and he says, This, because you have done this, speaking to Satan, cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals.

You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity, right?

The root word there being enemy.

Enmity is like, I'm gonna put you at odds.

So he says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers.

Your offspring, speaking to the enemy and hers.

You guys will forever be at odds, God says.

And he, pay attention to this, he, the offspring of the woman, he will crush your head.

And you will strike his heel.

I want you to catch this.

God is doing two things at once.

One is very obvious.

One is he's cursing Satan, he's delivering judgment.

But don't miss out on this.

While God is speaking to the enemy, he at the very same time, as he's delivering judgment, which is the final judgment, as he's delivering judgment, he's also at the same time speaking a message of hope and redemption and restoration and love to Adam and Eve.

Don't miss this.

If you're a church nerd, if you're a Bible geek, if you like to take notes, if you're taking notes, write this so you can flex on your friends that go to other churches later.

My pastor's deeper than yours.

Let them know that what we're witnessing here, what we're reading in real time, is what scholars call the proto-evangel.

Proto as in prototype, right?

Proto-meaning first, evangel meaning gospel.

We just read the very first gospel message ever taught, delivered by God, because he is saying, Hey, this woman's offspring, the future generations, from her bloodline will come the one that is going to crush your head.

And yes, you're gonna wound his heel, but he is gonna be the end of you.

So God, sure, he turns to the serpent and he's declaring judgment, but he's also at the very same time speaking hope and life, and he's telling Adam and Eve, hey guys, don't worry about it.

This is not the end.

I got you.

Tell me, tell me how what we're reading has somehow been corrupted into God mad.

That's what so much of us walk away from this part of the story.

And we'll continue to dig into why we walk away with this misconception of God's character and his disposition towards us.

But so far, so far, what we've read is a God who number one knows who his real enemy is, and it is not mankind.

And number two, from the moment that sin entered to the world, he was already working on restoring it.

Already working on restoring it.

This is the first gospel message ever delivered.

So finally, after God gets through this, he turns to the woman.

Verse 16, he says this to Eve.

I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing.

With pain, you will give birth to children.

Guys, can we celebrate Mother's Day a little bit early and can we give it up to all of our moms in the room?

Because my gosh.

Did this verse is it true or is it true?

It's true.

It's true.

I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing.

With pain you will give birth to children.

Goes on to say, Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

To Adam he said, Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it.

Because of that, cursed is the ground because of you.

Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are, and to the dust you will return.

There are some of you who walked into this room this morning, and maybe you've never read the Bible, maybe you're not familiar with the message of the Bible, but you can already know, you can already sit here and say, Yeah, every bit of what you just read as the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin, every bit of that checks out with the reality of my life.

We read about a few things here, right, that are just obvious to all of us, regardless of whether or not we're people of faith, that the consequences of sin as God issues it to Adam and Eve are pain and childbearing, conflict and marriage, hello, exhausting work, and at the end of it all, death.

Right?

From dust you came, and to dust you will return.

God, of course, insinuating there what we all know happens when our physical bodies die.

Right?

All of our bodies partake in this process called decomposition in the ground of the same organic matter from which God spoke us into existence.

And can I say something that needs to be said?

I need you to know that, again, this is one of these misconceptions that comes from this portion of scripture.

I need you to know that this is not God being cruel.

This is not the result of God's cruelty.

This is something that's so important for you to understand.

This is not the result of God's cruelty.

This is the result of living in a world that is dysfunctional in that it was not meant to function the way that it currently does.

I need you to hear this.

This world, this planet, this physical world, the physical realm that we occupy, our physical spaces, our hearts, our minds, our spirits.

Places like these where people are gathered all together.

These kinds of places were never, there's not a corner on this planet that was meant to be void of the presence of God.

And sin brought separation from the presence of God.

Scripture tells us, this is why it's so important to go back to the Garden of Eden to understand how it is God meant for it to be.

Because what we see again, when Adam and Eve have eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, what happens is that God shows up on the scene in the cool of the day to do what?

To walk interlaced, hand in hand with his creation, with his son and with his daughter.

And sin broke that.

And everything that happened thereafter, to everything that we watch on the news, to everything that plays out in your living room, everything that you know is wrong, just instinctively.

Not even necessarily because someone taught you, but just because it feels wrong.

All of it is a result of an existence that was never meant to be without God.

And I want to acknowledge that because some of you are sitting beneath the weight of that this morning.

And you're thinking, is God mad at me?

Is God punishing me?

God must be bitter.

He must be resentful.

Because this this is this is awful.

And I it may not sound encouraging, but I just think that it's okay to acknowledge that this is life east of Eden.

It is.

It is.

But I'm here to let you know that it's not the final verdict.

It's not the final verdict.

If this is where Scripture ended, if all we had of the holy scriptures of God's inspired word were Genesis chapter 1, 2, and 3, all the way up to verse 19, I would tell you, yeah, you'd probably have reason to feel helpless and hopeless.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

But I want you to know that every page thereafter is God's attempt to restore what was lost in Eden.

And it is by no means his final word or his final verdict over your life.

And the reality of living east of Eden does not equal God's abandonment of you.

God has not disowned you, it is simply the reality of a world that is groaning from being without its creator.

But there is hope.

There is hope.

Even before God communicated the reality of what life would be like for Adam and Eve, from that moment forward, he was already preaching a message of hope.

We pick up in verse 20.

This is where we start to see that hope.

Chapter 3, verse 20.

And this right here, where we're getting ready to read, is the most romantic verse in all of the Bible.

Husbands, sharpen your pencils.

Because Adam gets a really bad rap.

But look at what Adam does, look at what he says.

Adam, after hearing all of the consequences for his sin and his wife's sin, Adam named his wife Eve because she would become mother of all the living.

So this is kind of a unique, cool biblical detail.

When Adam was created, God gave him dominion over everything that was in the garden.

One of Adam's responsibilities was to name all the animals.

And up until this point, this woman named Eve, we know her as Eve.

We've been referring to her as Eve.

Up until this point, but Eve didn't become Eve until this moment in verse 20.

You know this from last year.

Week, if you caught last week's sermon, but God sees that Adam was alone, and it was not good for Adam to be alone, so God created for him a suitable helper.

And when Adam meets this woman for the very first time, he names her what?

Woman.

Creative, right?

But Adam actually doesn't give her her name, her given name, until verse 20.

And he names her Eve, which is in the Hebrew is Chava, which means life.

He names her life.

Husbands.

Dads.

Men in general, husbands to be, fathers to be, grandfathers.

This is not the sermon, but this is the sermon within the sermon.

God gave Adam the unique responsibility of naming things.

In other words, he gave Adam a very distinct privilege of how he used his words.

And men, I need you to know that one of your responsibilities is your words.

And it's not just a responsibility, it's a privilege.

And Adam, here's why I got mad respect for Adam.

Because Adam, had I been Adam, to be honest, I would have named that woman, girl, what did you just do to us if it hadn't been for you?

Her name would have been the longest run-on sentence ever.

And Adam, after hearing the consequences of his sin, in light of all of that, he says, I'm gonna name you life.

And this to me gives me a template for what it looks like to be a person of faith.

Because there wasn't one part of Adam's reality by which he should have named Eve Eve.

But you know what Adam did?

You know what Adam was holding on to in that moment that didn't cause him to name Eve death, or to name Eve nothing but trouble, or to name Eve a host of other things.

You know what Adam was hanging his hat on?

He was hanging his hat on the one promise that God had already delivered, and Adam was still stuck on that gospel message.

And all Adam heard was from this woman will come the promised one, the Messiah, the one and only Son of God, Jesus Christ, who will put an end to all this mess.

So I'm gonna choose to name her mother of all the living because all of mankind's hope lies in this woman's womb.

From her bloodline will come the promised Savior.

It was an act of faith.

So I say again, men, we have the distinct responsibility of how it is, what it is we say, how it is we use our words to bless our wives.

Not because of what they've done in the last 24 hours, but because of who we know them to be, because of who God has said they are.

We have a responsibility to name our children, to bless our children.

A blessing is a blessing.

Let me tell you, in layman's terms, what it means to bless someone is just to say out loud what God has already said to be true about them.

You don't even have to be that creative.

You just have to figure out what it is God has said to be true about your wife, about your children, about your coworkers, about the world around you, and just repeat God's words.

And by repeating it, you're blessing them.

That's what it means to bless.

Adam was just repeating what God had already said to be true about Eve.

And guys, we've got we've got to take that responsibility seriously.

And whether it be through our silence or through our harsh words, which I'm responsible for, I'm responsible for it.

I've done it to my wife.

We've got to take accountability.

And Adam, my dude, Adam.

So much respect for Adam.

He looks at that woman and he says, you know what?

Girl, I'm going down with you.

But I'm gonna call you life.

I'm gonna call you life.

I'm gonna call you life.

What an act of faith.

In general, apart from just men, I need all of us to know something.

That how we name things reveals what we believe to be true about God.

How we name things, how we talk about our coworkers, how we talk about our jobs, how we talk about the world that we live in, how we talk about our neighborhoods, how we talk about our kids' schools, how we talk about our kids, all of it reveals what we believe to be true about God.

And here's something that's fascinating.

God spoke the world into existence.

He said, Let there be light, and there was light.

And one of the ways that all of us have been created in the image of God is that God has given us the power to speak.

Not by what we see, not by sight, but by faith.

We've been made in the image of God that way.

Sure, we can't materialize a donut if we wanted it.

But by faith we could speak life into every space we inhabit.

God has given us that power, not because of what we see to be true, not because of the reality, but by faith.

Because of who we believe God, because we believe God to be who he says he is.

So where we speak hopelessness over our marriages, maybe we should start speaking this way about our marriages.

We're under construction.

We're undergoing renovation.

Pardon the dust.

How we speak about our kids, right?

I've given up on them.

I don't know what else to say.

What if we said, you know what, God?

They were yours all along, anyways.

They belong to you.

There's a difference.

There's a difference.

How we name things, it matters.

And Adam teaches us this that faith, sometimes it just looks like speaking something that doesn't feel true.

But saying it anyways, because God has promised it.

Verse 21.

Verse 20 is the most romantic verse in the Bible.

Verse 21 is the most beautiful.

Look at what God does.

It says that the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

See, here's how the narrative of what happened in the garden after Adam and Eve sinned has been corrupted for so many of us.

So many of us have this image of God chasing Adam and Eve out of the garden because of what they did.

We see God in hot pursuit, and Adam and Eve running half naked with their fig leaves flying all over the place, and they're trying to dodge this angry God, and he's like breathing fire out of his mouth, and they're out of there.

Right?

That's what so many of us, that's how we view our relationship with God.

But can I tell you something?

Can I point out a really important detail?

Can I point out the fact that God did not hurry Adam and Eve out of the garden?

You want to know how I know that God did not hurry them out of the garden?

Because he made them clothes.

He made them clothes.

He didn't send them out there half naked with their inadequate fig leaves.

He made them clothes.

And furthermore, he sacrificed an animal.

We don't know what animal, but he sacrificed a living thing so that they could be okay.

So that they wouldn't have to walk into this cruel reality of what life was going to be like moving forward, inadequately prepared.

All you moms who spend so much time the night before getting your kids ready for the next day at school, those thankless hours that you spend pouring over your kids' uh supplies, their materials, their book bags, their clothing, their lunchboxes.

This is the image there.

This is a loving father that says life's gonna be hard for you.

And you and your ignorance and your shame, you've tried to cover for yourself.

And I'm not gonna send you out there in that condition.

I'm gonna make sure you're ready for the elements.

And this is a foreshadowing of Easter.

It's a foreshadowing of what Jesus would do on Calvary, where he would be willing to part ways with his one and only son and literally sacrifice his one and only son in body, lay his life on the line, blood shed for you and I for our sins, for the atonement of our sins, so that we could be reconciled from him.

I want you to know that what happened on Easter was not some half-baked plan, that God did not build the airplane while it was in the sky.

From the moment that they were still in the Garden of Eden, God was already preparing a plan by which something else would take the wrath and the pain and the punishment for what should have gone on Adam and Eve.

God had to take this precious innocent creature.

We don't know what it was, but something that God created in perfect innocence in the garden had to shed its blood so that Adam and Eve would be covered from their sin and shame.

Tell me what part of that leads you to believe that God is angry and bitter with you.

Those of you who have walked into this place heavy burdened under your sin, thinking and dwelling on every mistake you've ever made, thinking that somehow by being here, that maybe you can get into good graces with an angry God, I want you to be set free of that.

God's not waiting for you to clean up your act.

He's not waiting for you to cover yourself up, he's not waiting for you to get your life together.

He's the one that does the covering, he's the one that does the healing, he's the one that does the restoring and the reconciling.

You just have to be willing to sit there long enough with fig leaves to say, God, can you help me out?

That's the tender love that God has for us.

And it's been there since the very beginning.

Tell me how somehow other people have convinced us into believing that the God of the Old Testament is this old, cranky, get off my lawn God that somehow goes to therapy and comes ready to love us in the New Testament.

No, God has been loving mankind from the very beginning, since the garden.

And in verse 22 through 24, as we wrap up this chapter, says this, and then the Lord God said, This man has now become like one of us.

By the way, this is a glimpse of the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, from the very beginning.

The Lord God said, Man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.

The tree of life in chapter 2, the Bible says that at the center of the Garden of Eden was the tree of life and the tree of knowledge and good and evil.

And God says they can't eat from the tree of life, or else they'll live forever.

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Where we get, where so many of us get this idea of God being angry in this part of Scripture is we we hone in on these words, on this terminology.

We hone in on when God says he must not be allowed.

We hone in on, so the Lord God banished him.

We hone in on he drove man out.

We focus on the angels, the security and flaming swords back and forth.

And all of this, we look at and we're like, man, God must be so angry.

He's kicked us out, he's disenfranchised us, God has abandoned us, he's broken up with us.

None of that is true.

You got to go back to why God does that.

And I want you to see God's compassion and grace as He is ushering.

God's not kicking Adam and Eve out, He's walking them out, He's showing them the way out.

Why?

Because He says if they eat from the tree of life, they're gonna have to be in this broken, sinful condition forever, and that's not what I want for them.

This is a message of grace.

He loved them too much to let them eat from the tree.

He's like, this is not what I had envisioned for you.

So by grace, you are going to perish in this state.

Because from this moment forward, I'm going to pave the way back to Eden so that you can one day enjoy the life that I originally envisioned for you.

And by my grace, by my love, by my mercy, I'm gonna give my one and only Son so that all of us could opt into the life that He had originally had planned for us.

God's been working on Eden, on getting us back there this whole time.

And don't miss out on this.

Like I said before, every page after I joke around and I say Leviticus is where Bible reading plans go to die.

The book of Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, where we're just like, oh my god, what is this?

How, what does this have to do with Jesus?

I want you to know, take my word for it, but if you want, go do your research.

In fact, you should all do your research.

There's not one letter in this book, there's not one punctuation in this book that isn't setting the stage for God to get us back to Eden.

It's all about Eden.

He's been working on it from the very beginning.

From the very beginning.

And in the book of Revelation, in the book of Revelation, this is what we see.

The last book of the Bible.

What we read about there, the book ended.

Starting with what we see in Genesis to the very end.

In Revelation, we see that God reestablishes a new heaven, a new earth, he restores the tree of life.

The gates are never shut, every tear is riped away.

And we finally get to interlock arms with God, hand in hand, and walk in the cool of the day.

I'm gonna end how I started.

And what I wish I would have told that annoying girl at Dutch Bros.

God forgive me.

I'm still praying.

God, would you would you put something in Dutch Bros drinks to make me half as cheerful as they are?

But what I wish I could go back to tell her is you have no idea how much God loves you.

But God gave me a mulligan where I get to tell thousands of people, you have no idea how much He loves you.

You have no clue.

He loves you so much, so much.

We're gonna have prayer partners at the edge of every stage here, Missouri City, West End.

They'd love to pray with you.

But let's pray together.

Father, I thank you.

Because, God, we have evidence and proof, God.

You've left us so much just over the top information and knowledge that you are loving.

And God, I pray that our view of you would be restored and redeemed to what we learn about you in the garden.

That from the very outset of sin, that you were already working on a plan to reconcile the relationship between us and you.

God, we thank you.

I pray, God, that this would serve as encouragement for those who are here today and are struggling.

God, I pray for those who are struggling in their home life, in their work life.

God, I pray for that woman that's expecting, that's going through all kinds of hardship.

God, I pray for men and women that are going to work and they're getting beat up at work and they're struggling to provide.

God, I pray for those whose bodies are failing them.

God, I pray that they would recognize that though we're east of Eden, you've not abandoned us.

Father, we pray all these things in your name.

Amen.