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Muskegon SDA Church

Lessons from the Book of Genesis

Kameron DeVasher

The Eden Family

The Fallen Family

The Flood

From Babel to Abram

The Faith of Abraham

Isaac & Rebekah

Jacob’s Troubles

The Children of Israel

Of Joseph and Jesus

We're going through a sermon series this quarter about the book of Genesis.

Our textbook will be, of course, the Bible and the book of Genesis.

Along with that, if you'd like to read portions of Patriarchs and Prophets that correspond, that would be wonderful as well.

Last Sabbath, and I've already listened to it, Dan Friend did a fantastic job holding down Fort, teaching us about creation, and I appreciate that.

And now we're gonna be looking at a message today entitled The Eden Family, what God's ideal was for that institution of marriage and the family in the Garden of Eden.

But before we study God's Word, of course, we need to begin with prayer.

Thank you so much For giving us life at all for giving us safe traveling mercies here and Lord if there are any others on their way Please extend those mercies to them as well And now as we open your word to understand what your idea was for us in the beginning, help us to learn lessons that apply even now that we may reflect your character more perfectly for we pray it in Jesus' name.

You know, there are very few things in this world, today's a good reminder with our weather, that are not exactly as God had originally intended them to be.

In fact, there's very few things at all that remind us of Eden in this world, very few holdovers from that original ideal, but 2 institutions.

2 of God's gifts to man in Eden are still with us today, namely the seventh day Sabbath and marriage in the family unit.

These institutions were given for the health and growth of 2 different but critically important relationships.

The Sabbath was designed to preserve and strengthen man's relationship with his creator.

It was a day set aside for him and their communion together.

Marriage and the family, on the other hand, were designed to preserve and strengthen human society.

And it's fascinating that these 2 distinctions are actually embedded in the law of God.

The first 4 commandments, the first table of law, deal with the responsibility of the tended relationship between man and his creator, and it culminates with the Sabbath.

And then the very fifth commandment talks about honor your father and your mother, it roots it in the home and it opens up all of man's duties to his fellow man.

So you have the relationship between God and man and between between man and man, the human family, and these 2 institutions that God established in creation were designed to protect and grow those 2 important aspects of human life, our relationship with God and our relationship with our fellow man.

Now, both of these 2 institutions need to be remembered and kept holy, for they were both made holy by God in the beginning, but it's ours to keep them holy, And both are the special targets of Satan's attacks in these last days.

Anything that reminds humanity of their creator, of God's original plans, his ideals for them, Satan wants to make a special effort to tear down and distract from, discourage from, and decimate at all lengths.

So we want to give special attention to these 2 institutions.

Now I'm guessing that we hear more sermons on the first institution than we do on the second.

In fact, I've given them about the seventh-day Sabbath, and I know that you've listened in part because you're here.

Clearly, we understand that this is the seventh day as a Sabbath of the Lord thy God, and we are here to fellowship together.

And so while we could give an entire sermon on both of these 2 institutions, that would be monumentally long.

And if 1 were to have been neglected, it is probably the latter, that second institution of marriage and the family.

So that's what we're going to be looking at today.

If you would, please go back to Genesis chapter 1.

Our study begins in Genesis, and it's not just for this quarter, but all good Bible studies usually begin in the book of Genesis.

That was Christ's method, looking at the entirety of Scripture, and especially the original ideals God had established so we can recalibrate our lives to His expectations.

In Genesis chapter 1, we read in verses 26 through 28 these words, Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply.

Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the ground.

Clearly, 1 of the things that comes back in this dialogue that the Lord has with himself, which is only so many beings in the universe can have a dialogue with himself, but of course we understand that there is a plurality to the Godhead.

Individual members make up a singular God.

Thus God can say, let us make man in our image.

And so only a they and a them can reflect accurately an us and an our.

So when God makes man, he does not make a rigid singularity of an individual, he makes a family.

A man and a woman designed to reflect the character and the image of God.

Notice that, and I cannot highlight this enough, that in God's original intent, in his own discussion about the creation of mankind and in his execution of it we see in verse 27, when God created man, it was not just simply Adam, and then later on some other time came along Eve.

Which by the way, she wasn't even called Eve until after the fall, so it was man and woman, but it was God's original ideal that man and woman would function together in unity.

Furthermore, it says that God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea.

Was mankind the creator of heaven and earth?

No, but he was supposed to be the curator of heaven and earth.

When he has dominion, it's not though he had the rights to it by creation, he was given stewardship over this planet and his responsibility was to caretake that which God had already made.

So In this caretaking of the earth, God intended for man, both male and female, to have part in that work.

When God governs his creation, Does it just mean the physical world only, or does he also govern the affairs in the spiritual and moral realms as well?

Likewise, Adam, in connection with his helpmate wife, was supposed to care not only for the plants and animals, but also to tend and keep the world in its moral perfection.

White helps us out in Patriarchs and Prophets, page 46.

Marriage was 1 of the first gifts of God to man, and it is 1 of the 2 institutions that after the fall, Adam brought with him beyond the gates of paradise.

When the divine principles are recognized and obeyed in this relation, marriage is a blessing.

Notice it guards the purity and happiness of the race.

Not just of the family, not just the individuals in that family, but apparently upon the institution of marriage, the entire race is supposed to be protected.

It elevates the physical, the intellectual, and the moral nature.

So again, marriage, while phenomenal for the man and the woman actually covenanted together, is designed to have broader significance.

Marriage was designed to be the laboratory in which the next generation of healthy people were to be born and raised.

The Lord made the first 2 and then he commanded them to make more.

He didn't just make the whole earth already filled with people.

He started them, gave them the principles, and then said, you procreate, and I want you to pass on, not just physically, but morally, this image of God.

And it says to fill the earth and subdue it, And obviously fill it with what?

And he says, fill it, but it also says and subdue it.

Now I don't know if you've ever had this thought pass through your mind, and maybe I'm alone.

But somehow, he says, I've often wondered why the earth, which came from God's hand in Edenic perfection, would need to be subdued.

Is he talking about keeping the weeds in check and keeping the wild animals at bay?

And by the way, we have biblical evidence for that.

For instance, Genesis chapter 3, verses 17 and 18, it's right there in your Bible.

Genesis chapter 3, verses 17 and 18, it specifically states that wild, harmful plants like thorns and thistles and the like, were not part of God's original creation order.

There were plants, but they weren't toxic, they weren't noxious, they weren't harmful.

By the way, we'll have an extended study today.

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Series

Lessons from the Book of Genesis

The Eden Family

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Move Over, Mountain

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Dean Cullinane Weekend

The Resurrection of Biblical Masculinity

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The Family - The Public Enemy No.1

The Family - The Public Enemy No.1- Part 2

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Women A High Calling

Keepers at Home

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The Sacred Circle

The Sacred Circle: A Higher Calling

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Love at Home

What’s the Best Thing I Can Do For My Family

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Building Homes on the Rock

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Avenues for Deception

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The True Education Mindset

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That Woman: Resurrecting the Three Angels

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Restoring the Home

05 Biblical Principles of Parenting

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine