Amen. Good morning, brothers and sisters. It’s a marvelous morning. You are in Christ. I mean, what else? How marvelous—and Christ is in you, the living One, the alive One.
Now, you might not feel too alive this morning, but Christ is alive in you, and we have every reason to rejoice. Sometimes, I know we all tend to be affected by the weather, and it’s kind of a dreary day. But, you know, the Lord Jesus is the sunshine of your heart, and we need to remember that. We are alive in Christ.
Lord, we are grateful that You indeed are Lord of creation, and yet, Lord, of my life. Lord, so be it. Be Lord of both.
Lord, as we come this morning, we desire to just get a glimpse of Who You are—a glimpse of Your glory, Your majesty, Your might. Lord, even Moses said he could not go on unless he got a glimpse of Your glory.
Lord Jesus, we would pray that, as we share in Your Word together, we would see Jesus. Oh Lord, that is our life. Lord Jesus, that is what brings us refreshment.
So we ask, Lord, that You would just take these words today and glorify Your name with them. Lord, increase Your life in all the saints this morning. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, it’s been on my heart, as I’ve begun this series on God revealing Himself, that we really gain a better understanding of God—that the Lord would use these ministries to open our eyes to see Who God really is and how He really is. Often, our concept of God is skewed or affected by various things in our lives, and it’s not always accurate.
It is glorious that God has decided to reveal Himself. He could have chosen to remain a mystery. In a sense, He will always be a mystery, because there will always be more to discover. I don’t think even in eternity we will be able to discover all of Who God is.
But He has chosen, and in fact, I find, as I read the Word more and more, that He seems to delight in revealing Himself. He wants to. Yet we find, in the hearts of men, that so often we know so little of Who He is.
Well, this morning, may God show us more of Who He is, what He is like, what is on His heart, what His purposes are, and what His ways are.
You know, Moses—it says in the Word that the children of Israel knew the acts of the Lord: His miracles, how He led them in the desert all those forty years, and how He took care of them. Their shoes did not wear out. I mean, it was a marvelous time from that point of view. They were in the desert, and that was not a great life, I don’t guess, but He provided manna for them to eat.
It was a marvelous thing, and they knew His acts. But it says Moses knew the ways of the Lord. And that’s what the Lord is after. His acts are marvelous, but He wants us to know Who He is and what His ways are—how He operates and what is on His heart.
I pray that we will be able to get some insight into that. Certainly, I would not be able to cover everything, but we will hit a few of the highlights.
You know, in John 17:3, it says, “This is eternal life.” Often we want to know, what is eternal life? We think of eternal life as just living forever, but it says:
And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
That is eternal life: knowing God, knowing the Son Whom God has sent to us. May we see Him. He delights to reveal Himself to us, brothers and sisters. May we delight in seeing Him and learning more about Him, because this is eternal life.
Often we think of eternal life as a thing—something to be obtained, a passport from hell to heaven. We know that our destiny, even as we are born, is hell, but that was never God’s original design. We know that He has something glorious in view, and heaven is a part of it.
But if we look at eternal life as a thing, it is more like a ticket to heaven. Brothers and sisters, the Lord wants us to be transformed and have our thinking transformed. As long as we see eternal life as a thing, we will remain man-centered—we will remain me-centered, my-centered—instead of being Christ-centered.
If we can really see Who the Lord is, Who God is, it will transform our desires. Our desire will no longer be so much on obtaining a thing. Our desire will be like Paul’s: “That I might know Him.”
It is a transforming thing in our lives, as Christians, to be transformed from looking at the things of God—the acts of God—to the Person Himself. What a transformation that makes in our lives when we are consumed with the Person of God, the Person as we see in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, from past ministries that I’ve shared, we do realize that God has revealed Himself, first of all, as Creator—Creator of this universe. The point that was made was that God is God. He is the Almighty, and He created this universe out of nothing.
You know, scientists are always looking for the origin of the universe, but they always have to begin with something, and generally it is with gas. They say gas was here, and then something happened, and it consolidated, and da-da-da—they go on and on.
Well, regardless of all that science has discovered, it seems like science does ignore the fact that that gas had to get there some way.
As I read the Word of God, though, I think it is clear: God created the universe. As one song says, “He flung the stars into space,” and He made them out of nothing. That is because He is Creator. There is only one Creator.
In Romans, it says that man is without excuse. In other words, any man or woman who looks at the stars, who looks at the nature around us and the universe that we live in, should come to the conclusion that there is an Almighty, that there is a God above them, that He is divine in nature, and that we should submit to His authority.
But, of course, man tends to be rebellious in his nature, and he refuses God. Not only does he refuse God, but he even refuses to believe that there is a God. But we need to know from God’s own Word that man is without excuse.
I happen to be one who, in my later years, has begun to look at the stars, begun to look at the nature around me, and begun to notice the flowers—to smell the roses, as we say.
We can just go through life never noticing all the things that God has made. God uses the universe to reveal His divine power and divinity, and He uses the universe to show that He is a creative God. He is Creator, and He is very creative.
Look at all of the diversity around you. Look out there. You look at a leaf—just look at a leaf and see how it is made. The snowflakes—they say there is not one snowflake exactly alike.
Look at the galaxies, brothers and sisters. We are just one small galaxy, the Milky Way, out of millions of galaxies. They cannot even find the limits of the universe, even with the Hubble telescope.
He is Creator. He is God Almighty, and He chose to reveal Himself to man through His universe. He says, “Oh man, you are without excuse. You cannot say there is not a God. You can say it, but it is wrong.”
He has also worked in another way. We see His creation, but in His creation, when He came to the sixth day, He created something very unique. He created man in His own image and after His likeness.
Man is the only creature God has made that is actually after His image and likeness. You have a spirit within you. That is the vessel to contain the life of God. We are the only creature made that way. We are unique in that way.
God made us that way because man was to become the vessel through which God would reveal Himself more completely. Yes, the universe reveals His glory and divinity, but He wanted to reveal His heart. He wanted to reveal Who He was.
Man was to become that vessel in which He would be able to reveal more of Himself. But we remember that Adam disobeyed God, and he fell short. The Word says that he fell short of the glory of God. In fact, the Word says we all fall short of the glory of God.
Now, what does that mean? Glory is—I don’t know how to describe glory other than to say glory comes from the nature of God, but it is the outglowing of the nature of God. Glory seems to occur when God is completely satisfied.
The example I would have would be the Mount of Transfiguration, when our Lord began to speak to Elijah and Moses. It says a glow began to come from within Him. The glory that was in Him began to shine forth.
We see this glory. Glory is when God is satisfied. It occurs when God is satisfied. Man has fallen short of that glory. Man was no longer able to express the life of God because he had fallen short of God’s glory.
He was no longer acceptable as a vessel to show forth Who God was, to show forth His nature. But praise the Lord: God sent His only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Whom the Word says is the exact representation of Who God is.
All the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in our Lord Jesus Christ. He was the exact representation. He was the chosen vessel, and through Him God is able to reveal Who He is and all of what He is.
In fact, in 1 John 5:20, let me read that:
And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
The Son has come and given us understanding as to Who God is. All the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily, is what the Word says.
But, brothers and sisters, when our Lord Jesus was here, the physical body that He had limited Him. He could only be in one place at one time. He could only share with whoever could hear His voice at the time. He could only be seen by those immediately around Him.
To be able to express all the fullness of God was very limiting to Him because of this physical body that He had. Our Lord Jesus, of course, is the complete representation of God, but the physical body that He had when He was on this earth was a limitation to being able to reveal the fullness of God.
So God had something in mind. On the cross of Calvary, through His death, man—the original man, Adam—being unacceptable as a vessel, was redeemed by the work of Calvary.
But more than just redemption, He did not redeem the old, brothers and sisters. As a matter of fact, we know that the old was crucified with Christ. He says, “You are a new creation.”
When you accept the Lord Jesus Christ, that spirit that you have within you—that human spirit which was dead toward God—is quickened and made alive toward God. The Holy Spirit comes in. The life of God actually dwells within you.
Now there is the possibility in you, as an individual, to reveal something of the glory of God, to reveal something of Who God is, to represent God to some degree.
But God was not through yet. The Lord Jesus did not yet have the body that He needed to express all the fullness that dwelt within Him.
So, at Pentecost, God formed a new body for our Lord Jesus Christ—for our risen Lord. That body He formed at Pentecost was the church. The one hundred and twenty individual believers became one body in Jesus Christ.
Not only, when you are saved, do you become a Christian, but you are also put into this body, joined in this body. Our Lord Jesus does not have many representations on this earth of Himself. He has one representation, and that is the body of Christ.
You are a member of that body and are responsible, as a member, to live the life before the Lord in which you can express something of the Lord’s life.
In Ephesians, it is very clear. It says that the church, which is His body, is the fullness of Christ Who fills all in all.
That is the overall picture of God revealing Himself: from the creation, to the creation of man, to man’s failure, to Christ coming as the full representation of God—yet limited by a physical body. When He is raised from the dead, and at Pentecost, He receives a new body, a spiritual body. That body is the church, the living body of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I need to be clear about this: the church is not like a body. It does not function like a body. It is the body of Jesus Christ. There is a world of difference in that.
The vessel that God was after was Jesus Christ the Head and the church His body, by which He could give a full revelation of Himself.
Now, that is the overview. The Lord has also given something else to reveal Himself to man, and that is this book, this Bible.
I call it the God-breathed Word. He has given it that we might understand more of Him and see Who He is. It is indeed a revelation of Jesus Christ, because that is what the Book is all about.
Christ is the full embodiment of the Godhead, and so if we can know Christ, we can know God. He gives us this Word that we might, through it, gain a revelation of Who He is.
So this morning, I would like to return to the Word—to Genesis 2. I am going to read most of Genesis 2, but not all of it. So, if you will, turn with me to Genesis 2.
Beginning with Genesis 2:1-3:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.
Now let us go to Genesis 2:7:
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Go to Genesis 2:15:
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.
And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens, and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found a help meet for him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
You know, Genesis is the seed for most of the rest of the Bible. In other words, the original principles of the way God operates are found in Genesis and developed throughout the Scriptures.
For instance, in the beginning there is a garden, but at the end there is a city. There is this development that goes on; there is this progression that takes place. So, a lot of the ways of God, a lot of the principles on which God operates, are found here in Genesis.
This morning, I would like to share on three of those principles, because they reveal to us Who God is and how He operates. Brothers and sisters, that is important for us to know.
First of all, from those first three verses in Genesis 2, I would like to share on this principle of work and rest. Work and rest. Isn’t it nice to be able to rest?
Now, we live in a society where that is practically impossible. Even when you finish your work week at work, you have two days, and we spend most of those days scurrying about doing different things. We find rest very difficult.
But God said that He rested on the seventh day from all His work, and He sanctified it. He set aside that seventh day as a special day, and He called it the day of rest—God’s rest.
He worked six days, and on the seventh day He rested. Now, what happened on the sixth day? What did He make on the sixth day? Come on—a number of six. Man. Man was made on the sixth day.
Isn’t that marvelous? He was made on the sixth day, and the first thing that God required the next day of Adam was that he would rest.
God worked. Adam rested. That is the principle. It is a major principle in the way God works and in the life of a Christian. God works; man rests.
The first act required of Adam by God was to rest. Well, what was the purpose of that?
From Isaiah 40:28, it says that the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary. Our Lord did not rest because He was weary from all the work that He had done. The Word is very clear about that.
So what was this rest about? It was the rest—I call it the rest not of exhaustion, but the rest of satisfaction.
I think we all know what that means. You have been doing something, and you finally finish it, and it is exactly the way you wanted it to be. You just want to take a moment to stand back, look at it, and rest in the fact of what you have done and what it looks like.
A good example of this is last week. My wife wanted to plant some flowers. First of all, we went to a dear friend of hers, who is in her eighties and has the various flowers she has grown. We had to dig those up, and then we transplanted them to our yard.
When we finished, I was weary—but the Lord never is. As I looked, I said, “You know, that’s going to be beautiful. It really is.” Now, the plants are all laying kind of down right now because they have not been quickened yet, but it is going to be beautiful.
When that comes, I am going to sit back and look at it and rest in the fact of the work that was accomplished. In other words, God did a perfect work, and He was satisfied.
In His satisfaction, He just wanted to enjoy what He had done, and He rested. He made it a special day. He said, “You need to take this time to rest in what I have done.” He told Adam that.
“Adam, this is a special day. I am just enjoying all that I have made, and Adam, I want you to enjoy it with Me. I want you to appreciate what has been done.”
One of the things about the Creator and creation is, brothers and sisters, we just go through life and we never notice what is around us—how much God has revealed Himself.
I have told this before, but I go out at night, I look at the stars, and I think about God. When I take the little dog I have out for walks in the early morning and the birds are singing, I listen to them. I say, “God made those, and they all have a different voice.”
It is appreciating the Creator. We need to do that. He is Creator. He is Lord—Lord of everything. He holds it all together. The reason you have not spun off the face of this earth is that the Lord holds you here by gravity. It is amazing.
He just wanted Adam to rest in what He had done, to be satisfied with what God had done, to appreciate it, to understand it, and to know it.
The first thing that God calls us to as Christians, brothers and sisters, is to rest. It will always be that way. Let me explain.
In John 6:28, the multitude who had been fed shortly before were seeking the Lord out because they liked to be fed; they did not want to be hungry. They asked the Lord what they must do to do the works of God.
Of course, they were thinking, “Hey, you know, God is so gracious. I want to do something for Him. I want to do something that will please Him. I want to work for Him.”
The Lord’s response was interesting. Christ answered and said:
This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
“This is the work of God, that you believe on Him Whom He has sent.” In other words, they were thinking of works, plural. But the Lord Jesus said, “There is really one work that man needs to enter into.” What is that one work? Believe on Him Whom He has sent—the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, “That is the work.”
Believing—when we believe, when we trust, brothers and sisters—that is when we enter into rest.
You know, it says that the nation of Israel could not enter God’s promised rest because of unbelief. Belief is simply resting in Who God is and what He has done. Belief is resting in Jesus Christ and His work on Calvary’s cross.
That is what the work of God is. That is the work we have been called to: to rest in what Christ has done.
God, our Lord Jesus Christ, through His death on the cross, has redeemed us. He has made provision for every man and woman on this earth that they might enter into God’s salvation.
But that salvation is not made real to us—it is not ours—until we rest in what God has done. In other words, when we believe that the Lord Jesus died for our sins on Calvary’s cross, when that faith comes into our hearts and we truly believe, then we rest in what Christ has done on Calvary’s cross.
That is the work that we are called to: simply to believe on what He has done. When we rest in that, we are saved. Until we rest in that, we are not saved. We have not obtained that salvation.
So this matter of the seventh-day rest is our Lord Jesus Christ, frankly, because God had rest in His Son. He has called us to enter His rest, to simply believe. That is a principle of the Christian life. That is the way God wants us to operate.
God rests when He is satisfied, and we should rest when He is satisfied. He is satisfied in the work that His Son did on Calvary’s cross for your and my salvation, and we need to simply rest in that—believe in it.
Brothers and sisters, the Word of God says that we have been crucified in Christ. That is a work that God has done. We simply rest in it. Until you do rest in it, the old man will run rampant in your life.
It says that we have been raised in Christ. That is something that God has done already, and we are called to rest in that fact—that we have been raised with Christ.
Brothers and sisters, the next time you really are down and out and you feel leveled—in fact, you might feel like you have a mountain on top of you—remember that you have been raised in Christ and have been seated with Christ in heavenly places.
Take your place outside of your circumstances—that ascended life that has been given because of the work of Calvary’s cross. You have the right, as a child of God, to rest in what God has done.
It says, as we have been studying this past month, we have been put in Christ. Do you know what it means to be put in Christ?
I have a simple illustration. I can jump about a foot and a half. When I was younger, I could probably reach two feet. I have never been able to dunk a basketball—never even got close.
As far as I can go, brothers and sisters, I am limited to the power that is in my legs and hips, which becomes less and less, it seems like, each year. But if you put me in the Apollo rocket ship, I can actually go into outer space.
As we know, we had men on the moon. They could not possibly, on their own, jump high enough or powerfully enough to escape Earth’s gravity and atmosphere. But if they were put in the rocket ship, which has all this power, they were able to go into outer space; they were even able to go to the moon.
It is because they were put in the rocket ship. Now, it says in the Word that of God you are in Christ. When you accepted Christ, God did this spiritual, marvelous thing and said, “I have put you in My Son. That is the way I see you.”
“I accept My Son. That is why I accept you. My Son has died for you on Calvary’s cross, and I accept His sacrifice on your behalf. I have put you in Him.”
All that Christ has experienced, you can experience because you are in Christ. It is a marvelous, amazing thing.
You know, this morning, if I had had to on my own come to this fellowship, I would have had to walk fifteen miles. But I was able to get in a car, and I made those fifteen miles in about twenty-five minutes. It would probably take me all day to get here if I was walking.
The amazing thing is, you and I have been put in Christ because we have rested in what He has done.
May I suggest that we learn to stand back, particularly on Sunday morning, as we meet around this table, which speaks of all that Christ is and what He has done on Calvary’s cross. Take that time and rest in what Christ has done.
Allow Him to open our eyes to see that all that has been accomplished in Christ has been made available to us because we have been put in Christ. Brothers and sisters, God works; man rests.
Now, does this mean that man does nothing? No. Adam was still responsible and accountable. In Genesis 2:15, where I read, it said he was responsible to keep the garden, to guard the garden, and to take care of it.
We know that he failed in that responsibility because the enemy came into it. But, brothers and sisters, this principle of first resting in Christ is so critical to our Christian life.
Let me give you a little more explanation, because we are responsible and accountable. We do do works. We are created for good works in Christ.
In Ephesians 2:6, it says that God seated us with Christ. In other words, you are resting with Christ. You are resting in what Christ has done.
But in Ephesians 4, He starts talking about walking worthy of the calling to which you have been called. In other words, we are called not only to rest, but to walk.
Then, in Ephesians 6, He talks about standing. This is spiritual warfare that we are called to. But it all begins by sitting.
If you want to understand more, read Watchman Nee’s book Sit, Walk, Stand. It is a very small book, a powerful book, and it really helps you.
The whole basis of your Christian life—you have to begin by resting, or sitting, with Christ. If you try to begin walking, you will falter and fail because you are not resting on what God has done.
The second thing I wanted to share out of Genesis—a great principle—is found in Genesis 2:9:
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Then the Lord went on to say, in Genesis 2:16-17:
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Another great principle of Christian life is laid out in these simple few Scriptures. It is the way of life for the Christian.
Actually, the Lord planted two kinds of trees. The first trees, He said, were those that were good to look at and good for food. In other words, they were the fruits that man would eat to sustain his physical body.
But there were two other trees, and these you might call soul food—food for the soul. He says, “You not only need to live physically, but your soul needs to be fed as well.”
He said there are two trees in the garden. One of them is the tree of life, and the other one is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He did not say it was an evil tree. He said it was the knowledge of good and evil.
These represent the two ways of soul living—the two ways in which your soul can live.
The first was the tree of life. If Adam had chosen to take the tree of life, he would actually have been feeding on Christ, because Christ is the tree of life. He would have been feeding on Christ, nourished by Christ, living for Christ, concerned about Christ.
That would have been his life. Christ would have sustained him. Christ would have told Adam what he needed to do and what he did not need to do. He would have given him direction. He would have empowered Adam.
But Adam would have had to solely depend on the tree of life for his soul to function and live. His mind, will, and emotions would have been utilized to do the will of God.
His mind would have been utilized to think of the things of God and to do what God asked him to do. His emotions would have reflected the joys of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The other tree by which he could live was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In other words, he would gain knowledge—all kinds of knowledge, but knowledge of good and evil—by eating of this tree. In taking of this tree, he would gain knowledge, and then he would use his mind, will, and emotions to make a decision as to what he needed to do.
He would then live for himself. He would live in self-will instead of the will of God. He would determine what he thinks is best for himself and what he should be doing. Basically, he would become like a god, controlling his own life and controlling what he had to do.
These are two ways of life that were presented before Adam, and God warned him. He said, “If you take of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die.”
Now, of course, eventually they did die physically. But it was really that man’s spirit within Adam became dead toward God when he sinned. In other words, the ability to commune with God was gone. He was out of contact.
God provided a way for them even in the Old Testament. You remember, He provided the skins for the covering. We will go into that next time.
The point I want to make this morning is that there are two ways by which man’s soul is fed and by which man lives. There are only two ways: the way of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the way of the tree of life.
When we accept our Lord Jesus Christ, His life comes in us. The Holy Spirit is in us. The Holy Spirit speaks to us. The Holy Spirit can direct us. We have this unction within that warns us.
We have all that we really need to live and to nourish our souls, that our souls might be transformed as well and fully serve God’s purpose.
Well, we know that Adam—well, actually Eve—was deceived by the enemy and chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam loved his wife dearly, even to the point that he understood what had happened, but he chose also to eat of the tree with his wife.
Brothers and sisters, all of us, when we are born, until we accept Jesus Christ, live by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That is why it is often so difficult, even when we accept Christ, to learn to live the new life of complete dependence on the Lord.
Our tendency is to go back to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tendency is to live for ourselves and not for God. Our tendency is self-will and not God’s will.
Those are the great principles God laid before man. There is something else that we need to notice here: God gave Adam a choice. He gave Adam the right to choose. In other words, He gave Adam a free will.
Adam could choose which way he wanted to go. We all have to make that choice.
Somewhere, I believe, in our lives, the Lord God challenges us with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work on Calvary’s cross—that He died for us. We have a choice to make.
Are we going to follow the living God, serve God, and yield to His authority? Are we going to accept His Son’s sacrifice on Calvary’s cross for our sins? Are we going to live a life dependent upon Him and God, or are we going to live a life dependent on ourselves?
God gives us a choice. You know, that is one of the greatest gifts I think that God could have given, because He did not have to do that.
He did not have to give man a choice. He could have made man like a robot, or a cyborg in today’s terminology. You know, a cyborg is part man, part machine. He could have done that, but He did not.
He wanted man, of his own free will, to choose the way of life—the tree of life—and learn to live by that tree. That is a great principle of living that God shares with us.
In other words, this is God saying to us, “This is the way I operate. I do the work; you rest. I have a way of life: the tree of life. Which way are you going to choose to follow for your soul?”
The third thing is in Genesis 2:18-24. The Lord said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a help meet for him.”
Then we read that the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. Well, it was something out of his side.
Out of his side, which the Lord God had taken from man, He made a woman, and He brought her to the man. Adam said, “This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. I will call her Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
Once again, the Lord God shares with us something that is on His heart. It is this matter of a helpmate and of union life—marriage, helpmate, union life, marriage.
Take note: the one, Adam, became two because Eve was taken out of Adam. Then God exhorted the two to become one—to become one flesh. That one flesh means not only physically, but emotionally, spiritually, mentally. In their soul, spirit, and body, they were to become one.
This is God’s way.
Let me read Genesis 1:27, and I think it will clear up what I want to say:
And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
God created man in His own image. “In the image of God created He him”—singular. “Male and female created He them”—plural.
In other words, Adam was complete. When God formed Adam, made Adam, he was complete as God wanted him to be. Yet there is another sense in the fact that Adam was incomplete.
For Adam to do all that God wanted him to do, for Adam to be able to express God as He needed to be expressed on this earth, Adam as a vessel was not yet sufficient.
God said he needed a helpmate—“male and female created He them.”
We should take note that when He made Eve, He did not make her like He made Adam, did He? He took Adam—He said He took the clay of the earth and formed a man, and then He breathed in his nostrils, and Adam became a living soul.
But here He does something quite different. He puts Adam to sleep, and out of his side He takes something. It does not really say “rib” in Greek, but He does take something out of the side of Adam.
From that, He creates the woman, Adam’s helpmate. So He has taken a different approach. In other words, the great principle here is that Eve came out of Adam.
She is a part of Adam. She, being out from Adam, takes Adam’s nature. Yet she is different. They are now, instead of one, two individuals.
But the Lord said—God said—in order to have the vessel that I am looking for in man, you two have to come into union life, a life of union.
Now, brothers and sisters, I have been married for forty-four years. I tell you what, that is probably one of the most difficult things for a man and woman: to come into real union life.
It does not just happen by osmosis, I tell you that. It is something that you have to work at. But think of what God had in mind.
You have to remember that this occurred before man fell, before he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was God’s heart that these two would become literally one—so one that the only difference you could tell was that they were shaped differently. They were a little different.
But they operated together so well, so much for the Lord, that they were a fuller reflection of the life of the Lord Jesus, of which the tree they were eating.
You see, they were to grow as one. They were to be one. This illustration is so difficult for us, brothers and sisters, because we in our marriages have fallen so short. But this is what God intended for marriage.
We are to be something of an illustration of what God was after. The point I want to make is that though Adam was complete from a spiritual standpoint, in order to be the vessel God needed for a fuller expression of Himself in Adam, Adam needed a helpmate.
Brothers, we need helpmates. Unless you have been called otherwise, you need a helpmate. I need a helpmate. I have a helpmate, and I thank the Lord for her.
Have we reached this level of union life that the Lord has called us to? No, we have not, unfortunately. But the Lord was looking for this glorious vessel.
Well, brothers and sisters, Adam and Eve did fail. They became one physically, but, you know, I will talk about this next time maybe more—they were found being apart. That is when the enemy got them.
They were apart. Something in that union—I do not know how the enemy did it—but they were apart, and the enemy got to Eve. The union life failed.
Union life: something God is after.
Brothers and sisters, this is what we need to see: this great principle of union life, of one becoming two and two becoming one, was really a principle on which the Godhead would be able to reveal itself fully.
So let me say it like this. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the full expression of God—all the Godhead dwelt in Him fully—was put on Calvary’s cross.
You will remember the soldier took a spear and pierced His side. John the apostle said, “Out of His side came blood and water.” We have said this before, but the blood and water became the elements by which the Lord’s helpmate would be made.
The Lord, with His physical body, as I already said, was not sufficient. He needed a spiritual body—a body that God would give Him, a body consisting of the saints of God all built into one.
He did it through the work of Calvary. He pierced the Lord’s side. Water and blood: blood for atonement, water for life. From those two elements, the church came forth at Pentecost.
The difference between Adam and our Lord was that Adam’s sleep was very peaceful because sin had not yet entered the world. But our Lord’s sleep was really dramatic. It was painful because of sin. He had to take care of the sin of man.
But He also made provision on Calvary’s cross for His helpmate. It is His desire that His own—His sons and daughters, brothers and sisters—be brought into union life with Him.
Now, this matter of union life is experiencing the Lord at a level beyond just giving you blessings. This is experiencing the life of the Lord in union with Him.
It is similar to when Paul said, “That I might know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” That is union life.
That is what we have been called to as individuals. But, brothers and sisters, this union life that God is talking about is more than even just individuals coming into that union with our Lord Jesus. That is necessary, but it is not only union in Him and with Him; it is union with one another.
Remember, the Lord Jesus is really only going to have one bride. Some people think that they will be married to the Lord. The bride is going to be married to the Lord, of which you are a part.
So we need to be in union life with the Lord and with one another, through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.
These are three great principles, brothers and sisters, that God lays down. He says, “If you want to know Me, you need to know these principles on which to live and how to operate.”
Lord, we are so grateful that You have revealed Yourself. Lord, I am so thankful that in recent years You have been awakening me to see more of the Creator and the glory of Your creation. Lord, it just reveals how magnificent and glorious You are.
But Lord, when I think of the glory of Christ and His work on Calvary, how much more glorious, Lord. How much, Lord, You have called us to just rest in Christ, to rest in what He has done, to appreciate Him and what He has done.
Lord, You have given us a way of life: the tree of life, the way You always intended. You have made it available to us through Christ, through His work on Calvary’s cross.
Lord, You have made the way open that today we can be partakers of the tree of life and the way of life.
Lord, it is our desire that we would not stop short in our Christian life. But Lord, we would go on to learn what it means to be in union life with You—a life of real union, spirit and soul—and, Lord, in union with one another.
Lord, not for our sakes, but for Your own sake. Lord, open our eyes. May we see the glory of the way You do things, of Your marvelous work. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.