I don't know whether I'm right or not,
but I feel the congregation would like to
go on singing tonight.
Well, that's a good sign.
Now, my text tonight is too long to
read.
That's a bad sign.
But I want to bring you a message
tonight which is based upon largely the first
two chapters in the book of Genesis, but
don't get excited.
Obviously, we're not going to take it in
detail.
I think it must be agreed on all
hands that we have been very largely influenced
as Christian people by the critical approach to
the book of Genesis.
We're all aware of various modes of criticism
that have been leveled either against the message
of the book or against the way the
book has been compiled.
And I think it is true to say
that almost all of us have suffered almost
incalculable loss because of the way we have
reacted to such criticism.
Now, one loss, I believe, is this.
I believe that there are very few people
who have really got the message of the
book of Genesis at this point.
Now, I base what I'm saying on periods
I have spent in conference with pastors and
with students, theological students and others.
And it has been made perfectly clear that
whereas many of them have been aware of
what science says or what philosophers say or
what anthropologists say or whatever you may have
at the time, they're not aware of the
message of the book itself.
In other words, we have become occasionally so
obsessed with an attempt to answer criticism at
this point or that that we've really not
sat down and done our homework.
And we are unaware of what the word
of God at a given point really tells
us.
Now, one is not unaware of these various
criticisms that have been leveled from time to
time.
But tonight I'm going to speak as if
there was no criticism at all.
I'm going to bury my head right under
the sand.
And I'm going to close my eyes and
close my ears to every criticism from any
source.
Because what I want to do is this.
I want to ask a question.
I want to come to this passage in
the book of Genesis and I want to
pose the question, what are you saying to
us, accepting for the moment at any rate
the integrity of the book, the divine authority
of the message here?
This is the question.
What is the message of Genesis 1 and
2?
I believe it is fundamentally one message.
There are many parts to it.
But I want us to listen in tonight
for a moment and see if we can
hear it.
It is only in so far, it seems
to me, in so far as we really
get this message that we have got the
vital word to declare to our fellow men
at this time.
If we don't understand what God meant man
to be, we shall never be able to
tell man what he ought to be.
And you know as well as I do
that men are floundering all around us tonight
because they feel that they are like square
pegs in round holes.
They try this, they run after that, they
go after this ism and this latest kick
or whatever it is, or this philosophy or
that religion.
And so often it all comes to nothing.
There is an aching void and a dissatisfaction.
Fundamentally it is because of this.
First of all, we do not know what
man was meant to be in the will
and in the purpose of God.
Or, if we know what man was meant
to be, we don't know how to bring
him back there that he is not there
originally in the first place.
I believe, therefore, that these two chapters have
a message to tell us.
And I want to turn to them and
present you with a kind of outline, a
composite picture, but in outline.
And I trust that God will bless it
not only to our understanding, but that it
will elicit faith in the God who is
here revealed.
Now, the first thing I would like us
to notice is this, the setting which God
prepared for man.
As I understand it, the first fundamental thing
that the book of Genesis tells us following
the original statement about God's creation is this,
that everything that proceeds from the first five
creative days in Genesis is preparatory.
It is God preparing the stage for the
main character, the main actor in the affairs
of life, namely for man.
Now, we have said this in other contexts
and at other times, but I want to
say it again tonight.
God is a great stage manager.
He always prepares the stage for what is
about to take place, and he does it
well.
That is what I believe we have here.
The author of the book of Genesis in
chapters one and two is showing how God
prepared the stage because someone of the profoundest
order and significance is about to move on
to the stage.
Everything that is done, therefore, is preparatory for
the oncoming of man.
Now, this preparation is seen in two ways.
First of all, there is a general preparation,
and then there is a particular preparation.
The general you will find in verses one
to twenty-five in chapter one.
Now, each act of God recorded here is
important, I believe, in its own right.
Its real and ultimate importance lies, however, in
the fact that it is part of the
blueprint, part of the general blueprint, which describes
God's preparation of the world for the coming
of man.
And if we miss that, we miss everything.
The first five days are preparatory for that
which is to take place on the last
of the creative days, on day number six.
That which is to take place on day
six, as man comes into being and he
steps onto the stage, everything else is leading
up to this.
God preparing the stage, and what a stage
it is.
But now, as well as the general preparation,
there is a particular, a local preparation, and
that you have in chapter two, verses eight
to fifteen.
Against the background of the general and complex
activity of chapter one, resulting in the emergence
of light in verse three, the firmament in
the midst of the waters, verse six, the
heavenly bodies, verses fourteen and fifteen, the creaturely
inhabitants of the waters, of the birds of
the air, the cattle and the creeping things,
verses twenty and twenty-four, we must not
fail to see that there is a more
intimate and a local preparation that takes place
in verses eight to fifteen of chapter two.
Now, what is this?
Put in a nutshell, it is this.
The man whom God is going to bring
onto this scene of time is not simply
being put into a world that has been
divinely prepared, but into a garden that has
been divinely planted.
Now, let us get the message of this.
God not only prepares for man in a
general sense, but he prepares for him in
a particular sense.
And I think that the writer of the
book of Genesis, or rather, let me put
it like this, I believe that God, in
inspiring the writing of this letter, wants us
to get the message.
God is not simply concerned about the general
issues of our lives.
He is concerned about that.
He is concerned about the air.
He is concerned about the sky.
He is concerned about all the universe around
us, everything around us.
But there is a local setting where he
has placed us, and he is especially concerned
about that.
He put man in a garden.
God planted a garden.
Now, you will read here that God is
a great homemaker, and my, don't we need
him in the level of home life.
There is no homemaker like our God.
Now, will you notice that the kind of
thing that God thought about for man's home,
man's garden, I can only refer to them,
but I want you to look at verse
9 in chapter 2.
Now to the ground the Lord God made
to grow every tree that is pleasant to
the sight.
Now, how easy it is to gloss over
that.
But you see what it means.
God is concerned that man's environment should be
one of beauty.
Did you ever thought of that?
God was concerned that man's environment should be
one of beauty, something to look at, something
magnificent, something beautiful.
God wanted him to have a home like
that.
Turn again.
I read in verse 9, and every tree
that was good for food and the tree
of knowledge of good and evil God made.
Now mark those words.
Every tree that was good for food God
made.
God didn't want his man, God didn't want
his creature to live in an atmosphere of
starvation, or where everything was bare or barren
or a bleak wilderness.
This was not God's purpose.
It was God's purpose that it should be
a garden, and he put there not only
trees for beauty but trees for fruit bearing.
Every tree that was good for fruit he
put there.
He wanted man to have the best.
Let me add one other thing.
A river flowed out of Eden, we read
in verse 10, to water the garden, and
there it divided and became four rivers, and
the division is described in the verses that
follow.
The preparation for potential prosperity.
God meant man to prosper.
God meant man to live in a garden
that was flourishing, and he caused a river
to flow into that garden and to flow
out of it because the prosperity that he
meant the garden to bring forth, he wanted
the owners of the garden in due course
to share with the population as it grew
and as it emerged.
What a beautiful picture.
A setting in which God would place his
man.
And it tells me in the first place
that my God is a God that wants
the best for his creature.
And insofar as sin has damaged our universe
and made it impracticable for the vast masses
of men and women to enjoy a home
like this, I say, my God is concerned.
He prepared a home like this for man.
A setting which God prepared for man.
Now the next thing is this, the dignity
with which God endowed man.
Now here I'm at a loss for words.
How can one describe it?
How can you bring together some of these
features described in these two chapters in order
to show the amazing dignity of man himself?
You don't prepare so lavishly for the emergence
of a chimpanzee.
What an anticlimax.
There is someone coming on to the scene
of time who bears the very dignity of
his own creator upon his character.
And the lights are on.
And the stage is set.
And the trumpets are sounding because man, bearing
God's image, albeit made of the dust of
the earth, is about to stand on the
stage of time.
The dignity of man.
Now how do we see this?
How do we get this message?
Well now, can I put it to you
in this way?
It seems to me that these chapters are
telling us two very important things, two main
things about man.
Not much else, but two main things.
These two chapters tell us that man is
in the first place the crown of all
God's creatures.
He's the crown of everything.
When man was made, God has reached the
summit of his creative purposes.
Now we've already stressed his emergence as the
climax of the creative process.
First five days, everything else, preparatory for the
sixth day when man was made.
That's what the book says.
But we must now emphasize man's intrinsic glory
and dignity, the way he was made in
himself.
Not just his setting, but himself, man himself.
Look at verses 26 and 27 in chapter
1.
Then God said, Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness.
Then later on, So God created man in
his own image.
In the image of God he created him.
Male and female he created them.
Now this is something altogether different from what's
gone on before.
Though he was made of the dust of
the ground, as we read in chapter 2
and verse 7, man was made after the
image of God.
Now you notice what's happening here.
Two elements are being brought together.
The dust of the ground that has been
made previously, and then the unseen image of
the unseen God.
And God is the artificer.
God is making man after his own image,
so that he is elevating the dust of
the earth to bear the image of the
deity himself.
Now in presenting such a general sketch as
I'm trying to do tonight, we'll come back
to some of these details again.
But in presenting a general picture like this,
it's impossible to explain in any detail or
to enlarge very much about the image of
God, what it means.
But let's say this.
Fundamentally, it couldn't have been physical, because God
is not a physical being.
God is incorporeal.
God is spirit.
And therefore the image of which the writer
speaks here couldn't have been a physical thing.
The image may express itself in a man's
way of looking, even in his facial expression.
But fundamentally, it is not something in the
flesh.
It is not something in the body.
It is not something that we see with
the physical eye.
What is it then?
Well, basically, it is spiritual, and it must
refer to something of this order.
Man, as distinct from all the other creatures,
has self-consciousness.
He's aware of himself.
He can say with the French philosopher Descartes,
cogita ergo sum, I think, and therefore I
am.
I reason.
I know I'm here.
And I'm capable of reasoning my situation.
I know what I am.
I'm in a pulpit.
I can touch this.
I can see people in front of me.
Man has that kind of consciousness of himself,
and of his environment, and of his setting.
He can reason.
Not only that, he has the capacity for
reflection.
He can look back over the course of
his life, and he can remember, he can
bring things up with a long arm of
his memory, and then he can reflect upon
them, and he can put them in their
place, and he can learn from them.
And what is more, having learned from them,
he can teach himself and teach other people
how to live the better, how to profit
from the past.
Not only that, man, like God, makes a
distinction between right and wrong.
Now, of course, there are times when this
thing that we call conscience doesn't function properly
in man, and we call wrong right, and
right wrong.
I'm not referring to the way it functions
for the moment, but just to the fact
that it is found in man.
Men everywhere distinguish between certain things that they,
according to their standards, say is right, and
other things wrong.
In other words, man is a creature who
makes moral distinctions.
That's exactly what God does.
God distinguishes between truth and error, between good
and evil, between moral black and moral white,
and man is made after his image in
that respect.
Now, these are some of the distinguishing marks
in the image of man.
He's so different from the animals.
He's so different from the highest and the
most sophisticated animal, if we may so speak.
Man is the crown and the climax of
the creatures.
And so, later on in the book of
Genesis, we see what a terrible thing it
is for anyone to take man's life away.
We are told that we can eat of
other animals' flesh on certain conditions, but he
that kills man, I read in Genesis 9,
6, is in a different category altogether.
Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man
shall his blood be shed.
Why?
For God made man in his own image.
And that's the first thing.
Man, then, is the crown of God's entire
creation.
God made no creature beyond man.
But now, the next thing.
God made man and chose him to be
the caretaker of the universe.
Two things I want to say about this.
Let me read to you two verses again,
verses 26 and 28.
God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness, and let them have
dominion.
Now, these are the relative words.
Let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the birds of the
air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creeps over the earth.
Then, verse 28.
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,
and subdue it, and have dominion over it.
Now, will you please mark those words.
Have dominion over it.
Rule over it.
Subdue it.
Subjugate it.
Be fruitful and multiply.
Now, what's happening here?
What's happening is this.
Take the message as it comes to us.
Listen to the book of Genesis.
And it is telling us that God made
the whole business and he handed it over
to man as his vice-regent or the
caretaker of the universe.
Man is here given the mastery over nature.
Here lies, of course, the divine mandate for
scientific exploration and experimentation.
Man is to rule the cosmos for his
God.
Man is to subdue everything because he himself
is subject to God.
Then, given dominion over the whole, man is
given special direction over the part.
His garden whole.
Turn over to chapter 2 and verse 15,
and this is what you're told.
Or this is what we read.
And the Lord God took the man and
he put him into the garden of Eden
to till it and to keep it.
God is going to entrust man with a
task of being the caretaker of the entire
universe and especially of a part of it.
He's not going to till the whole.
He's responsible for the whole, but here he
has special responsibility.
Now mark what is happening.
Man is given the dignity and the purpose
of God of being Lord of the whole
creation under his maker.
He is the climax and the crown of
creation.
He's the caretaker of the whole.
And all this he is given by divine
command.
God meant him to have responsibility.
God meant him to be a worker.
God meant him to be a man who
was capable of doing these things.
God meant him.
Such is the dignity that God gives to
man.
He bears his image and he exercises sovereignty
or is called to do it in the
name of the maker of all things.
Now the next thing is this, the sufficiency
with which God surrounded man.
Now again I'm not going into any of
the critical stuff at all.
We're burying our heads under the sand for
the moment.
These first two chapters of Genesis make an
idyllic picture taken at their face value.
Eden has often been referred to as a
paradise.
Milton of course has popularized that imagery.
So have others after him.
In the time at my disposal now I
simply want to underscore some of the features
which point to the bountiful goodness of God.
All the good that God had in his
heart, all the grace, all the goodness overflowing
for man.
First of all God provided him with all
material needs, material plenty shall we say.
Now we've gone over that, we've referred to
it.
The general and the particular outside the garden
and within the garden.
But let's come to this.
God not only provided him with material plenty,
he provided man with spiritual resources that were
equally adequate.
First of all, the entire creation was a
sphere in which man could commune with his
maker.
From any place within that ordered universe man
could call upon the name of God.
More than that, we read that from within
his garden home or rather taking place within
that garden home this man heard the voice
of God in the garden and recognized it
and was able to speak to him.
Now this is not only a vague kind
of mystical communion, this is communication.
This is not just a sense of the
deity listening to me somewhere.
This is communication.
This is talking, this is language.
God calling to man and man answering God.
Then, what is more, his garden home was
a scene of spiritual probation before God.
Man always needs a stimulus in the moral
and the spiritual realms.
If we're left to ourselves without a moral
stimulus we generally go to seed.
God put man in the Garden of Eden
and he says, now there are certain things
for you to do and there is one
thing for you not to do.
Strange, isn't it, the caricatures that we have
of the book of Genesis.
It is as if God had told man
not to do anything.
In other words, everything is prohibitive.
You know, it's not that at all.
There was work for him to do, there
was toil, there was mastery, there was tilling,
there was preparation, there was subduing of the
soil and production.
There was one thing he was not to
do.
Just one.
All the trees that were good for fruit,
they were there in the garden.
There was one tree in the midst of
the garden that he was not to approach.
Now, forget about the details.
Let's get the principle only.
All the trees that were good for food
were there.
He has access to them all.
They're all at his disposal.
There is one.
Just one.
One solitary tree, says the Lord.
Don't touch that.
That's not yours.
It's out of bounds.
You see what he's doing?
God is giving man a moral stimulus to
prove his allegiance.
Show your mettle.
Now prove yourself as to whether you're a
creature that is faithful and loyal to your
Maker.
It was Thomas Akempi who said, No man
doth safely rule but he that hath learned
gladly to obey.
How very well said.
No man doth safely rule but he that
hath learned gladly to obey.
God is making a ruler here.
But he cannot rule until he has learned
to obey.
His life was therefore so arranged that there
was no necessity upon him whatsoever to have
anything at all to do with the fruit
of that one forbidden tree.
He has everything that he needs and access
to all.
And then this.
The entire creation in which to commune with
God.
This moral stimulus to work and to keep
himself loyal to God.
And then lastly, there was a Sabbath rest.
God rested the seventh day and hallowed it.
He put a fence around it as it
were and he said, Now, I've worked for
six days but on the seventh day, no.
What's the meaning of this?
Well, the meaning of it is this, of
course.
Jesus says the Sabbath was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath.
It was made for man's purpose, for man's
well-being.
In what sense?
I'm afraid we've just, we've just either never
known or forgotten the meaning of the Sabbath
day.
On the other six days of the week,
man, God's creature, if he's acting as God's
creature at all, will think of God and
worship God in all things.
And he will serve Him.
But the purpose of the Sabbath day is
this, that to the exclusion of all else
legitimate and illegitimate, man gives himself to his
Maker.
Man waits upon God.
Man lives in the conscious presence of God
undistractedly.
And you and I know what it is
to be involved with our duties from day
to day.
And thank God we can be witnesses and
we can be loyal to Him in our
offices, in our schools, wherever we are.
But we all know that there are times
when our minds have to be hurly upon
our work.
Now, God meant His creature to become lost
with Himself, as it were, one day in
seven.
What for?
Because He wants this creature to be a
ruler for Him.
Not a pygmy of a man, but a
ruler, a giant, worthy of the name, bearing
the image, manifesting the glory of His Creator.
And in order to get there and to
prepare Him and equip Him and keep Him
there, God says, You need this.
You need this.
And I give it to you.
A moral stimulus to keep yourself from me.
And then this whole one day in seven,
materially endowed, spiritually endowed, and socially.
God provided man socially with a helper fit
for him.
Beautiful as that early paradise was, full and
adequate of material things and spiritual possibilities and
provisions, there was one thing lacking until this
point.
Now, I want you to notice that it
was God who saw that one thing was
lacking.
Man's need of a partner and of the
ensuing society that it would provide was divinely
recognized.
I read in verse 18 of chapter 2,
Then the Lord God said, It is not
good that man should be alone.
I will make him a helper fit for
him.
Now, it's God that saw that.
It's God that saw that.
And it's God that said, I will make
him a helper fit for him.
It isn't because there's a grumble in man's
heart and he says, Oh, why have you
put me thus and thus?
It's God that saw it.
How good He is.
You see, He's concerned for the best for
His creature.
That's the point.
But then, man's need could not be supplied
by any other creature.
No other was found a helper meet for
him or fit for him.
Now, in verses 19 and 20 of chapter
2, the wording is such that it suggests
that God let man scan all the existing
creatures and God asked Him to name them,
to give them appropriate names.
He brought all the creatures that had been
made before man and He said, Now you
give them a name and see what you
think of them because names express evaluation, especially
in biblical times, so that He could thereby
prove whether in His own estimate He could
find a partner from among the creatures.
Now, this is the point.
And we miss it if we don't see
that.
All the creatures that God has made are
arraigned before man and He looks at them
and He examines them and He calls this
one that, and so forth, gives them names.
But He can't find a kinship with any
of them.
He's bigger.
He's greater.
He's larger.
He's diviner, may I say.
He acknowledges them all as the handiwork of
His God and His own maker, but no
helper meet for Him.
So we read, There was no helper found
for man, no helper meet for Him.
So what?
Well, this is what we read in verses
19 and 20, So because of that, no
animal, no creature was found a helper meet
for man.
So out of the ground the Lord God
formed every beast of the field and every
bird of the air, brought them to man
to see what He would call them, and
whatsoever man called every living creature, that was
its name.
the man gave names to all the cattle
and to the birds of the air and
to every beast of the field, but for
the man there was not found a helper
meet.
Therefore, God says, I will make Him a
helper meet for Him.
I will make Him.
This need God personally met.
And so we have this most intricate and
delicate operation that is described in verses 21
and 22, whereby God made woman as part
of man.
He didn't belong to the creatures and the
creatures didn't belong to Him.
He needs somebody who can help Him, who's
part of Him, who has kinship with Him.
That's the message of this book.
He can't be in partnership with the creature
that is beneath Him.
God made Him one who belonged to Him,
bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh,
and gave Him woman to be bound to
Him, and they too shall be one flesh.
Now, I don't know what you make of
this picture.
Take a retrospective look.
To me, it's a remarkable thing.
The setting God prepared for man.
Generally, He prepared the whole universe for His
man.
Particularly, He planted a garden for man.
The dignity with which God endowed Him, the
crown of all the creatures, bearing His image,
the caretaker of all creation.
May Lord, the sufficiency with which He surrounded
Him, material plenty, or the possibility of plenty,
spiritual adequacy, and social company.
Now, my friends, that's the kind of God
represented in the Bible.
It's a God who cares for man like
that.
It's a God who's made provisions so lavishly
for His creature.
But now, that's not the end of the
story.
That's the God that we have in the
Bible.
Now, sin, we shall come to that next
time we go to the book of Genesis,
sin has attacked that whole purpose of God
for man.
And if you tell me tonight, as I
try to preach from this pulpit, yes, well,
it's all very well to paint a picture
like that, but it's not true of me.
I don't live in a garden.
I don't have a beautiful home.
I don't have this, that, and the other
that you've described in the picture there.
I want to tell you, you haven't got
it because of sin.
On every front, Satan and sin have marred
and mauled the purpose of God.
And it's the only thing that does this.
This is what sin does.
It mutilates the whole.
Sin makes man careless of the environment.
He can live in a garden and become
bored with it.
Such is man.
Not only that, but sin makes man quite
unaware of his dignity.
So that there are times when he allies
himself more with a beast of a field
and reptiles than with his co-equals.
He uses his material plenty not for the
purpose that God meant, but he misuses it
and misapplies it.
And though the river that flowed out from
the Garden of Eden was meant to carry
the surplus and share it with other people,
man just does not do that.
But he hoards.
And he makes himself a God around which
everything revolves.
And he can't live with his partner.
Sin marrs the dignity of man.
It spoils his spiritual provision.
It spoils the whole understanding.
This is what sin does.
And at some point or other in all
our lives, sin takes away from this.
But my last word is this.
The whole purpose of salvation is to undo
the works of the devil and to make
real what was originally purpose here by God.
Jesus came into the world, says John in
his first epistle, to undo the works of
the devil.
To untie the fatal knot.
To take away the sin of the world.
To make man a beast.
To make man a new creature.
And placing man as a new creature in
the old world to give him the opportunity
again of beginning to exercise authority for God.
First of all over himself.
Then over his home.
Then over his circumstances.
And out into the outside world.
Wherever he has authority.
To exercise authority.
More and more to bring the kingdom and
the rule of God into being right here
and now in measure.
Though ultimately only when the king himself returns
in its full.
Don't you think of the picture?
Will you take it tonight that the God
of the Bible is a God who has
never willed anything but the best for his
creatures.
And in so far as it is not
so, it is the work of an enemy.
God has allowed it.
He is not cornered.
He has allowed it.
And he has allowed it for his own
glory in the last resort.
Because out of it all he will show
that he can master even sin.
Oh, our God is very daring.
He allows a whole wretched thing to take
place because ultimately he will tear the hideous
things off by the roots.
And cast even Satan to the bottomless pit.
And to spite Satan.
Turn to the last book of the Bible.
You will find a city four square.
And a river in the midst of it.
And into it there enters nothing that is
defiled or defiling.
For the Lamb is in the midst.
And all they that dwell in it walk
in garments of white.
Washed in the blood.
For paradise lost is a paradise regained through
Jesus Christ.
My friend, where are you tonight?
Do you recognize this God as your God?
I wonder whether some of us have a
slanted view of God.
This is the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
And he comes to you tonight and says
to you, Look man, look woman.
From the very beginning I purposed grace for
you.
In life, in all its glory and all
its fullness, I did not mean you to
be a slave either to yourself or your
circumstances.
I meant you to be a prince or
a princess.
Not an idyllic dream, but this is exactly
what it says.
And he does.
If you are not found there tonight, then
the way back is to the feet of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And acknowledge your sin.
And ask him to make anew that creation
which is your life.
That the process of undoing the works of
Satan may begin in you.
And one day when he returns he will
finish it.
It will be a tremendous thing.
When he will present his people before the
Father, just think of it, without spot.
This is speaking morally or spiritually.
Without spot or wrinkle.
You good people are afraid of wrinkles, aren't
you?
You know when you pass forty, you look
in the mirror and you say, Oh my,
I must hide these signs of old age
and decay.
Do you know when the Lord Jesus will
present his people before the Father, they will
not have a flawn or a wrinkle in
them.
Because the new creation will be in a
new body.
Like unto his glorious body.
It will all bear the mark and the
image of his own perfection.
Exactly what he meant originally.
Fulfill it.
In and through his blessed Son.
Make him your Savior then.
Yield to him and trust him and let
him begin in you this work of undoing
the works of darkness and evil and to
begin to build the new Jerusalem in your
heart.
Now.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we have been looking at this
remarkable picture from Scripture.
We ask that its impact upon us may
be what thou hast purposed.
We sometimes think of the bits and the
pieces, but we pray thee that this picture
may follow us and that the lie that
men have said about thyself will be countered
by it.
That we may see that all the evil
and the sin and the suffering and the
sorrow of our lives, they were not meant.
They were not in the plan.
But they're there because we have listened to
an alien voice and instead of being sovereigns
in our own right by thy sovereign command,
we have become sleds to an enemy.
O Lord, extricate us and redeem us and
renew us.
Take us like the clay into thine own
hand.
Make us clean even as thou dost make
us anew.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.