Community

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. So we're in this series called Echoes of Eden and the whole idea is that just the last year or so as I've been studying the scriptures, I'm just, there's so much to learn. It's really literature as I've said for a lifetime, you know. It's unlike any other book. It's not really, it's a book of books and yet it's all linked together and it's amazing how hyperlinked just the first three chapters of Genesis, you know, the story of creation, the cosmic creation of Genesis 1, the intimate creation we're going to be looking at in Genesis 2 today, and then in Genesis 3 the whole narrative of temptation and fall, how they are hyperlinked all the way through the scriptures to the book of Revelation, but I think also just so foundational or archetypical. Is that a word? Archetypical? I think it could be. Archetype is like, you know, kind of a model, okay, and how really these stories are about us in our lives. They run right through our lives too, okay. So, by the way, I did hear that Pastor Carl did an excellent job last week and, yeah, sadly he's not going to be with us too much longer. They're moving. Yeah, they're house sold, so they'll be moving. Yeah, boom, they're house sold. I know. So, I think maybe I'll talk to him maybe March 24th to finish this one up. Maybe he'll do Palm Sunday, Echoes of Eden then. We'll see, because that's the last chance that I get, right? Yeah, because they close on the 29th. So, wow, blessings there. But, yeah, he talked about the first Adam and the last Adam, and I heard this, and I even used it in the podcast this last week. Most world religions, you are at point A and you got to get to point B, whatever you call that, heaven, nirvana, moksha, eternity, and most religions tell you how to get from point A to point B. Christianity is the only faith that I know of as well that brings, that Jesus comes from point B back to point A and brings them together in that. He doesn't tell us how to get there. He comes to us as the second Adam and changes everything. That's amazing. It really is amazing, and I know it's maybe my job, but I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe this stuff, right? I mean, there might be some that do, but no, no, it's amazing. And so, today what we're focusing on, we're going to see an Echo of Eden in Genesis chapter 2, and the phrase, this simple phrase that I think just says so much, where it's fascinating how this even comes up, where God says, it is not good for man to be alone, okay? And I guess we could be talking about marriage today, but we're going to be talking more about community today, because I think that's a more general application. Sure, I could do a whole sermon on marriage, but not everyone is married in our community, but everyone is part of community, okay? And that is what we're really dealing with in this passage. So, we're going to be reading from Genesis chapter 2. When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land, and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust, and from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field, and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave name to all the livestock and the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this is at last his bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." So yeah, like I said, we could do a whole marriage thing on this, and it would be extremely applicable. But we're going to be looking at community today, because I think that's exactly also what's going on in this text in a more general fashion. So the three points that we're going to be looking at are the importance of community, the meaning of it, and also the renewal of it. So it's impor...