In the Beginning | Genesis 2 | Jarryd Cole

Last week you guys uh talked about the creation story and the how of creation.

You answered this question, how did God create the world?

And Micah did a great job coming through that, talking about how God declared and he designed and he delighted and he delegated as he put himself to work to create the world.

And so this week what we're doing is not talking about the how, but we're talking about the who.

Okay, who did God create?

If you want to know what chapter two of Genesis is all about, we can see chapter two is the people chapter.

And what Genesis 2 wants to do is set the pace for the flourishing of the human race.

In Genesis 1, this is the creation account.

But Genesis 2, this is kind of like the creation account magnified.

And what we're gonna see is the camera kind of zoom in on the creation of man and the place they live and what their experience is to be like while they live there.

But the ironic thing you're already there in Genesis chapter 2, and what you're gonna see is it doesn't really start quite yet.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Man.

Okay, it starts with a really unique thing.

It starts with the Sabbath.

If you're in the word, I'm gonna start reading here in verse one.

Here's what it says it says, So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed.

On the seventh day, God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work he had done.

God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.

So those of you who are new to the word Sabbath, Sabbath just means like rest on a deep level.

And you're looking at this part of the text, and what we see is this kind of capstone to creation, and that uh you guys heard last week, and it's so unique because it feels like this part of the text should be back in Genesis 1, and yet we're here finding in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

And so we have to ask why.

If this is a capstone, so all God had created, it ended in in day six, and now we're in day seven, and it's now this rest day.

That should be in chapter one, but it's in chapter two.

Why?

Here's what I've come to know the Sabbath is about God's power and authority in creation as he rests on this seventh day.

But here's what's true it points to humanity's dependence on him, and so it fits in Genesis chapter two.

Like the world had already been created on day six.

God made his crown jewel of creation and humanity, he created man, and he clearly had something planned for us.

But instead of getting us straight to it, he allowed man's first day in the world to be a day of rest.

Why?

So that we would know that God's main purpose for man isn't to just get up and work, but it's primarily dependence on him.

It is to know him and is to love him and find ultimate rest and satisfaction in his glory.

So I want you to know that we as people don't live primarily to please God, but we live out of the pleasure that God already had for us, and it should cause us to want to experience and draw near and worship him even more.

So this is why Sabbath at the end of chapter two, this is why it kicks off right here, because it highlights the chief purpose of man, which is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

So these few verses kind of act like the conclusion to a busy and action-packed opening scene to a movie.

Creation here, creation there, then all this kind of stuff.

You flip the pages to Genesis 2, and it's a Sabbath, you can kind of feel it come to this abrupt stop.

You can feel like the the panic kind of come to a stop.

You feel the calm among the creation, and then now we pick up in verse 4, zoom right back in, right around the events of the sixth day.

It's the creation of man.

Look at this.

Verse 4.

These are the records of the heavens and the earth concerning their creation.

And at the time that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, no shrub of the field had yet grown on the land, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted.

For the Lord God made it rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.

Mist would come up from the earth and all the ground.

And the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground.

Here it is, and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.

This is the creation of man.

And the man became a living being.

And as we think about the creation narrative, this can kind of be overlooked.

Why?

Because you can have in your mind that when you think about man being made from the ground, you can think like mud, right?

Water and dirt and all this kind of stuff.

And you could be thinking, hey, man had this kind of glorious beginning because we were made from some of the greatest water and ground that ever existed.

But no, the Bible doesn't tell us that.

It tells us that man wasn't made from mud or this glorious water and ground, but it was made from the dust.

The dust of the ground.

Do you guys know what dust is?

Like dust is that kind of stuff you have in your dorm room, right?

Maybe you have a roommate and you're just like, you just wish they would clean up a little bit.

So the nasty stuff all over the place, right?

You're just like, this is annoying, it's insignificant, it's stuff you want to just package up and throw in the trash, right?

This is dust.

I remember when I was young and I would like look at my windows.

You remember that?

Like the sun would come through these kind of these blinds, and sometimes these little particles would just dance in this in the sunlight, right?

Like the stuff that would just dance afloat in the air here, like here, and then garlic.

You can't even follow it because it's so fine and so insignificant.

Like, this is the kind of stuff that the Bible is saying that man is made out of.

Like we're made from that kind of stuff.

It's insignificant, and yet look back at verse 7 how it gives us the image of what God does with this dust.

He somehow carefully gathers up this dust, and what he does is he takes his time and he forms man out of it, and he doesn't just form man out of it, but he delicately breathes the breath of life into him.

So here's a question for the room: Aren't you grateful that God is God and we're not?

Because where we see something that is disposable and insignificant, God sees an opportunity for his greatest creation yet.

In whom he gives ultimate significance.

So if you're wondering what God thinks about you, if you're wondering what he thinks about humanity, you need to know this that before you ever do anything, the Genesis 2 creation narrative tells us that you already matter to God.

You already matter.

I'm a terrible potter.

My family and I like to take a trip to the Dells uh once a year, every year.

And if you've been to the Dells before, maybe when you were young as a little kid, right, there's this thing that you can do in the Wilderness Hotel.

Anybody been to the Wilderness Hotel before at the Dells?

It's amazing, okay?

And when you go upstairs, there's like a second floor, you go upstairs and there's a spot where you can actually make pottery at the Dells.

My kids love to do this.

And my kids every time we go, they're like, hey dad, I want to do the pottery, I'm gonna do this kind of stuff, and I try to do it with them, and my stuff ends up just trash, okay?

But theirs is actually pretty cool.

And so they love doing it.

They'll take the time and press it and massage it and mold it and seal it.

They would toss it into the kiln, they come back the next day, and it's this beautiful creation, at least it's beautiful to them, okay?

And they still keep a lot of the stuff that they make from the devs.

If you were ever to come to my house, maybe Lil' Willie, you would someday, right?

And you would see this kind of stuff, maybe it would look insignificant to you, but you want to know what to them is.

They cherish it.

And I want you to know that that's how God views you.

Like you might see yourself as like this really unkept pottery type of thing, but God says, No, no, no, I've created that, I breathed life into that, and so you matter to me.

So, what you need to know is that in a world where we can try to find our worth and dignity in so many different things, our sports, our relationships, our family, our academics, our reputation, here's what I want you to remember from Genesis chapter 2 when God created humanity is that God gave you value first.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

He put value in you with his breath.

And I know in a room like this there's gonna be some people who are struggling with this right now.

Like maybe you came in tonight feeling like you're dust, you feel insignificant.

Maybe you're new to college, you're a freshman, maybe you just transferred from some other school or whatever, and college is really just kicking you in the teeth right now.

I know it just started, but it can feel like that sometimes.

Or maybe you're down because of a failed relationship that you thought would last much longer than it did.

Listen, I want to remind you that you don't get your worth and value from your surroundings or anything that you do, but you get your value because you have the breath of God in you.

You get it from the start.

You already matter.

And so God created man out of dust.

Let's look at the rest of the narrative.

Look at verse 8.

Says the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man that he had just formed.

The Lord God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of the life in the middle of the garden, as well as the knowledge of good and evil.

We'll talk about that a little bit more.

A river went out from Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided and became the source of four rivers.

The name of the first is Pishon, which flows from the entire land of Habilah, where there is gold, and gold from that land is pure.

Bedelium and onyx are also there.

And the name of the second river is Gihon, which flows from the entire land of Cush.

And the name of the third river is Tigris, which runs east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

How teeming and beautiful and flourishing with life that this place is.

The fruit-bearing trees, the amazing water sources, there's several of them, there's gold, all these resources, bedallium, there's onyx, rich and valuable.

And so if we can sum it up, he puts it, he puts man right in the middle of it.

And so if we can kind of sum this up, how God has created this garden, how God has created Eden, we could say he created Eden for the enjoyment and the wonder and the flourishing of humanity.

So the question we have to ask is what part did humanity play in this kind of grand, perfect, and beautiful world of creation?

So for the rest of my time, there's three things I just want to kind of unpack from the rest of the text about what part does humanity play in this beautiful, beautiful creation.

The first thing is this they were to work and manage the creation.

The second thing is they were to obey the commands of God, and third, they were to find relationships with one another.

So the first one, they were to work and manage creation.

Verse 15, look at this.

Like literally, man was created, life breathed into him, dignity worth value, all that kind of stuff.

So he's not working for value, he already has it, but now he's to work the ground.

Literally, man created to be a ground keeper in the garden of Eden.

God was like, hey, created you, you want purpose, great.

Here, mow the lawn, right?

It was a little more important than that.

Obviously, their like they did their work was to not only mow the grass, trim the branches.

Like this was unkempt garden we're talking about.

So what they were doing was literally bringing order into chaos in accordance to God's design.

We got to know this work was good.

So for some of you, you needed this need this note that work is not a product of the fall.

Maybe the thing you know about work in the Bible is that it talks about work being hard and sweaty and all this kind of stuff.

You know, work by the sweaty your brow from Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Yes, that's true, and we're coming to that, but that's not how work was intentionally designed.

Work is not a product of the fall, contrary to popular belief.

And I know it can feel like that, like there's some of you in the room, maybe you've never worked a day in your life and you're dreading that time when you're gonna actually have to wake up every day and go punch in and go to work.

And some of you, you're working right now and you're counting the days until you can get to retirement.

That's just the nature of kind of how we are on this side of the cross, and you're struggling to love it.

But work isn't a product of the fall.

However, the pain and the toil that you experience from your work is a product of the fall.

Maybe Micah would touch on this a little bit more next week in Genesis 3.

But I want to go in just a little bit on the theology of work here for a moment.

Because the way we often experience work now is that work is tedious, it's demanding, manual labor is tiresome, work with your mind is draining.

But you need to know that this doesn't mean that work is bad.

Work is really good.

Like work is an opportunity for us to reflect the hard work, the intentionality, and the care of God in the same way that He worked to create creation.

And even if it's painful, even if it's tiring, it's still good.

And we have to believe that.

Like some of us are trying to find the ways to make the most amount of money doing the least amount of work and the least amount of time.

And this is kind of what we have in our minds.

We want to graduate, we're gonna leave our parents' houses, we want to do whatever, we want to start doing work.

It's like, what's the easiest thing I can do to get me the most amount of money so I can do it for the least amount of time and just be on my merry way?

How fast can I just ride off into the sunset in my life?

Listen, I'm not dogging on retirement, I'm not dogging to make a lot of money.

You should pursue those things.

That's that's fine.

But don't begrudge the work that you're able to do in this life because your main purpose is to help cultivate God's creation to align more with his design.

And I know this even from my own experience.

And I'm in a relationship with a lot of older men and women in my life, and what I come to find is as you get older, you actually start desiring to put your hand to some of the work around you.

And so I'm in a relationship with 50, 60, even 70-year-olds who, yes, could retire, maybe are even retired, but they're like, Man, I want to do something else.

I want to take a victory lap.

Like, I want to do it again.

God, give me some meaningful work to put my hand to.

And some of us are doing this because they have found that kind of enjoyable and meaningful work for them, but part of it is that they really think that work is a phenomenal way to honor and glorify God.

And I think that would be a good thing for us to know in our minds as well.

So I need you to hear this.

What if your view of work actually changed?

What if your mindset on how you view work from the way it was created in Genesis 2 actually changed?

What if God is setting it up right now in your place of work, maybe in your internships, or the internships that you desired at some point, maybe even in your classrooms, that it is to be an agent for the gospel to help cultivate the place and the people around you to align more with his good design?

Like while you're sitting there wondering, when is this gonna be over and how long is this gonna take, and why do I gotta study for that, and why do I gotta go here now?

Why are they calling me to do it?

Why didn't they call Shayla?

I don't know, whoever else.

Like, why do they gotta call me to do it?

Like, what if your mind shifted?

And man, what an opportunity for me to help cultivate the places and the people that I'm in, how, according to God's good design for work.

What if the job that God blesses you with after college isn't just a means for your provision, but a chance to be on mission to do your best work and to give him credit for it?

Like, I believe Christians should be the best artists in the world.

I think they should be the best doctors in the world.

They should be the best accountants, the best teachers, the best mechanics, the best engineers, the best scientists.

Christians should just do really good work.

A lot of young people always ask me, like, post-college, like man, how like how can I glorify God on what I'm doing?

Am I doing enough?

Am I doing enough?

I'm like, well, what do you do for work?

I'm a doctor.

I'm like, well, be the best doctor to the glory of God.

It's simple.

You know how you glorify God with your work?

You do good work.

You do good work.

This is a way to glorify God.

Not because there's so much special or gifted on you, which I'm sure there is and you will be, but because you value work to agree because of God that is different and healthier than the people that don't know him.

Like, what if this was your view of work?

What if you work from a place where you work on the orders of the creator that made you, and you do so skillfully and joyfully for a heavenly reward, not an earthly one?

Pre-fall humanity understood this as they received one of their first orders to work and manage creation.

And so, humanity's place in creation is to work and manage creation.

Secondly, humanity's place in creation is to obey the commands of God.

Look at verse 16 and 17.

The narrative continues, and the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on that day you eat from it, you will certainly die.

So humanity was to obey the commands of God.

And I know as I say the word obey and obedience, right?

This can have a negative connotation in our culture right now.

This is a bad word in our day.

Why?

It sounds restrictive, but we need to know that the commands of God are worthy to be obeyed.

Amen.

Because we can trust that God has our best at heart.

This is why.

You can look back at all God has created.

We just talked about it in these first two chapters.

You have to do a lot of gymnastics in your mind to get to a place where you're thinking, like, a God like this would do something that would be detrimental to the creation that he loves.

If you look at all things he's already done, just in the first couple chapters of your Bible, it would be insane to be like, I can't trust this dude.

I can't trust him.

We can trust God.

And the thing that God wanted man to obey was that there was something he created that was off-limits, namely the tree of knowledge and good of evil.

And so a question has to pop in your mind.

Maybe you had this question before, like, why would God put a tree like this in this perfect, beautiful garden?

Why would God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden?

And here's the reason, y'all.

It's because he wanted to give man a choice.

And here's why man needed a choice.

Because without choice, there is no freedom.

No choice?

No freedom.

Like you can't live in a real world with real freedom without having the freedom to make the wrong choice and have the potential to sin.

Like without free will, a person cannot choose to freely love, and God cannot go against that because God believes that the highest virtue with the highest value in the world is love.

And so he wants a creation that loves him, not that is enchained to him.

So, in reality, this tree sitting in the middle of the garden was arguably the kindest thing that God did in the creation narrative.

He made all this beauty, a perfect world, and then he set it up in such a way in which he didn't want to create robots who just bowed to us every beck and call, who were just chained to him in his voice.

But no, he wanted to create real humans with real heartbeats, with real flesh that had to choose to worship him.

And trust me, y'all, like you want it like this.

You want it like that.

Think about it in your own relationships.

Like, do you want people to like you and want to be around you because they have to?

Or do you want them to be around you because they want to?

Like, I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a person where my relationships are genuine.

I imagine you would too.

Like, I don't want people around because they're afraid of what I'd do if they weren't, or because they're so conditioned to think I need their presence.

I want genuine relationships where time is spent with me in love, mutual why?

Because they want to do it, not because they have to do it.

I'm a grown man, I have a wife and four kids who I love and who love me dearly.

And if I could, listen, I would spend every waking moment I have with them.

And I think they would do the same with me.

Most days I go home, I get home from work, and I have to fight my kids to keep them from climbing all over me after I get home from work, okay?

But it would break my heart if they only wanted relationship with me because they felt like they had to.

I want them to have relationships with me because they want to.

And your heavenly father, God who created all creation, this is what he wants from you too.

And that's why there's this tree of the knowledge of good and evil right here in the middle of this perfect garden, and putting this tree in the garden was actually kind.

And even in his kindness, he made it as easy as possible not to take from it.

Like I don't know what else he could have done.

He basically put like a big flashing red sign.

And said, hey, don't eat from this tree for your own good.

And he gave even gave instruction.

He says, because if you do, I'm telling you up front, death is coming.

Like, dude made it as easy as possible to avoid the thing, to help them be obedient, to obey the command he told them not to do.

So when it comes to the reasons to be obedient to God, Genesis 2 is exhibit A.

Man and woman in the beginning should have obeyed God.

We should be people who obey God too.

And this is part of what humanity's place is in creation.

And so humanity's place in creation is to work and manage it.

Secondly, humanity's place in creation is to obey the commands of God.

And lastly, they are to find relationship with one another.

Look at the rest of the text.

In verse 18, the narrative continues, and the Lord God said, It is not good for the to be alone.

I will make a helper corresponding to him.

And the Lord God formed out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it.

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

What authority that man has.

And the man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every wild animal, but for the man no helper was found corresponding to him.

And so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept.

And God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place.

And the Lord God made the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man.

And the man said, Here's his response.

Okay.

God goes to man and he's like, yo, here's the animals, name all the animals, all this kind of stuff.

Like, I wonder how many animals man got through before he was just like, God, are you saying you're saying like no helper from any of the animals?

And God's like, all right, had enough.

Go to sleep.

Time to make a helper.

Here's woman.

Like, I love this part of the creation narrative because it talks about how good so many things are, but the thing that God says is not good in his perfect creation is that man was alone.

And so God's antidote to the loneliness of man was to provide from him a helper.

There was none suitable for him, and so he creates woman to be a helper for man.

Amen, fellows in the room.

Amen.

If you don't say it, I'm gonna say it for you.

Amen.

Like God puts man to sleep, probably because he would mess it up if he was awake, and he takes a rib from him, and God made woman from the rib of man.

And this is significant in the text because what this means is that God made woman from the side of man.

He doesn't make her from the head of man, he doesn't make her from the feet of man, so to be below him, or the head of man to be above him, but to the side of man to be beside him.

She is co-equal in this creation narrative to do the things that God has set them out to do.

We live in a culture where we tend to be domineering, don't we?

So many cultures in history, you can think about it.

And what we've created is a culture where man has been to the top of the hierarchy, and man is a woman has been on the bottom of the hierarchy.

And many of you in the room, you might be struggling with this reality.

And some of you maybe even have questions and doubts.

Maybe you haven't given your life to Christ yet.

And one of the things that's holding you back is because you think the Bible has outdated views on what it means for men and women to relate.

That women are below men, that women should be subdued to men, that all women everywhere should bow down to all men everywhere.

This isn't what's true.

And you can see it from the creation narrative in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Woman was created from the side of man as a dignified helper.

And we'll talk about helper a little bit more in just a minute.

But not only did God take woman from the river, man from the side, but he made woman for man.

Which means God's design for practice intimate relationships is in the context of man and woman, specifically one man and one woman forever.

Tell me how they become one flesh.

When they find one another, they come together, they get married, we would say, but the Bible says, hey, that becomes one flesh.

And if the Bible is clear that that is for one man and one woman, that means that this is not for one man and one man, or one woman and one woman.

And I know that's contradictory in the culture we live in today, and you will hear many narratives, especially in your college campuses, about what this could mean for humanity, or maybe in some of your families.

Your families might believe something different about what I just said.

But men and women hear this, we're designed biblically to be together because they are the necessary compliment to repair that God created for one another at the beginning of creation.

Man and woman to be a helper to men.

And I love this word helper.

In the Hebrew, this word uh translates to Ezerkinegdo.

Ezer connecto for helper.

And what this means is that woman is a strong helper.

A strong helper.

Like the Bible goes so far to talk about woman's relationship to man, and not only just says, like, this is a helper, this is an assistant to your life.

But no, this is a co-equal, capable partner.

This is what the Bible wants us to see.

A strong helper.

This word, Ezer connecto, is actually used of God all throughout the Old Testament to talk about how God relates to the people of Israel.

The scriptures say that God is Israel's Ezer connecto.

That's wild.

The type of help that woman is to men is the same type of help that God is to his people.

A strong help.

And so, ladies in the room, I hope you hear that.

Because I know in a culture like today, like you tend to fight an uphill battle, and there's things for all you culture and history buffs, like you're probably just battling so many different things.

I want you to know that God instills value in you and he sees all the things that you're capable of, and all of that.

Listen, you are an exercise necko, you are a strong help in the world that God has created.

I want to talk to men for a minute because this doesn't mean that men aren't strong.

And don't hear that.

And we live in a culture now where the attack on men is actually coming.

And you can hear it in so many different narratives, all this kind of stuff.

Listen, men, you are strong too.

And I want you to hear that just because the Bible says that women are strong does not take any of your strength away, we have to know that.

You have to be more secure in your manhood than that.

You have to get your dignity and value just like the women do from what God says.

Here's what God says: you don't have to be shriveled up like that.

No, you can understand that, hey, women are strong, and yes, men are strong too.

Genesis 2 tells us this.

A culture will try to tell you so many different things, but God's word matters more.

So men and women were designed to find one another and be in relationship as they coexist, as complementary pair, as co-equals to co-rule creation according to God's good design.

And so back to the summary of Genesis 2.

Genesis 2 is setting the pace for the flourishing of the human race.

And this is what the flourishing looks like.

But there's a problem with all of this.

There's a problem.

Because we want to bump against God's design, don't we?

The first men and women did it, and we want to follow into their footsteps.

And what's true about that is because we are plagued by sin.

We are plagued by a sin sickness that we think we know better than God.

We think we know better than God.

We can clearly see how God created the world, how God designed man and put man and woman in relationship to one another, how we should view work and what our destiny is supposed to be, and we just want to buck up against all of it.

We want to define our lives and the world that we live in for ourselves.

You know that this is the entire narrative of the Bible, right?

That post this, that the entire Bible is about what it looks like for man and woman to get back into right relationship with God, you know.

After Genesis 3, next week, we're gonna talk about that.

There's a fall of man, and what man is gonna be trying to do for the rest of time, for the rest of humanity, is gonna be like, how do I get back this right and perfect relationship with God?

How we had it back in the garden.

How do we get it?

And I know you're in the room right now, you're young, but I also want you to feel this kind of fractured reality in your life.

Because you wake every up every day wrestling with the pains and the toils of your own life, whatever they might be, whatever demands that there are on you, whatever your relationships look like, whatever your home and your family life looks like, the relationship with your parents, your siblings, I don't know what it might be for you, but you feel this pain.

You feel this fractured reality of your life.

Listen, that is the effects of sin.

In post-Genesis 3, what God tells us about humanity is that our main aim is to figure out how do we get back to this place, how do we get back to Eden?

How do we get back to Genesis chapter 2?

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

And we fail, and we fail, and we fail.

But here's the good news New Testament Jesus comes, and this is the gospel.

Jesus comes and he is the embodiment of Eden.

He is the perfect man, he displays the perfect life.

He is the good and perfect creation embodied into one human being, and he walks around with human flesh on, and he demonstrates what God had always designed to be demonstrated forever.

This is what Jesus does.

And he was sacrificed, he was put on the cross, he was buried in a grave, only to rise again.

Why?

So that Eden could be possible once more.

So here's the hope for the room.

To those of you who believe in and put your trust in him, the promise is you don't have to suffer the effects of the sin sickness anymore.

Like your life might not change.

Immediately on this side of eternity.

But the truth and the promise of the scripture is that one day, one day, one day, all of this will cease.

And one day, the pain and the heartache, the thoughts you have, the ill thoughts you have about yourself and the people around you and the world around you, all that kind of stuff, it will soon die.

And those of you who have your faith in Jesus, you will step back into Eden.

Life as it was always meant to be.

Life in perfection in the created order that God designed it to be.

So my application for tonight is just one thing.

I want us in the room to trust God's design.

Would you be a person who trusts God's design?

And you're gonna have so many things vying for your affection, vying for your mind, vying for your time, vying for the way that you view the world, all your world visits that you're gonna have and be exposed to right now, in this time in your life, you're in the most impressionable time in your entire life.

And I love that you're right here in this room.

Because what you're saying is that you want the Bible to be more impressed on your mind and have an effect into your life more than anything else.

And so my prayer is that the Holy Spirit would honor that.

That the Holy Spirit would actually see you here and honor your sacrifice and your service, actually be in a place like this to honor and glorify God more than you do anything else in this world.

So my biggest prayer for you, Salt Company, here in the city of Milwaukee, is that you would be people, not just 18 to 22, but people who get to 30, who get to 40, who get to 50, who get to 60.

The end of your life.

Trusting in the good design of God.

And so, what would it look like for you to take a step and trust God's good design tonight?

Maybe you came in wrestling.

Where are you wrestling with God where you can fill the gap with trust instead of suspicion?

You know, this is difficult because you need answers.

You want answers.

And trust me, you'll get some.

And some you won't.

So I'm gonna ask you that you fill that gap with trust.

Would you read it?

Would you accept it?

And would you trust it as God says it, even if you don't have all the answers?

Even if it's still unclear to you, how can you begin to operate in the known and unknown as if God knows better and trust that his ways are always good?

This is the challenge of the Christian faith.

This is the challenge of walking in obedience to Jesus.

This is the challenge of trusting in the way that he views relationships.

We need to trust his good design.

And where we don't know, we say, God, you know.

And would you help my heart conform to what's true through your word?

It's my prayer for this room.

Would you pray with me that it be so?

Father, we love you.

And we're grateful for tonight.

I'm grateful for this room full of young people who are pursuing after you.

I remember when I was in their seats.

Now I remember coming into a church.

I know nothing about.

I remember trying out college ministries and all these different kinds of things, and I walked smooth out of there because I did not trust in your good design the way I should have trusted in your good design.

Yes, I called on you.

Yes, I said I was a child of yours.

And yet the thing that was most true about me is I wanted to walk my own way.

I wanted to go my own way.

And I pray if there's someone in here like that tonight, man, if I could go back, God would I say God would I say and I would beg and plead with you to help me bend my will to you.

My mind, my emotions, my desires, all to you.

And I'm not.

And I want to trust you.

I want to walk in your way.

At the end of my life, God, would you help me get back to Eden?

I want to see creation as Genesis 2 says it is.

I want the streets and the roads and the pavedways full of bedallium.

I want it full of onyx.

I want it full of emeralds, all the different kinds of things.

Don't you want that too?

So, Father, we love you.

Will you help us get there?

Will you help us trust in your good design?

Would you carry us to the end?

Father, we love you.

We're grateful, and we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.