Trusting God In The Middle

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. We have been doing this series called Echoes of Eden, and it probably started because I taught the Hebrew Bible class this last fall at FGCU for the first time, and I've been blown away with what I keep learning at my age, and what I keep learning that I thought I knew, but I really didn't know. I think Victor understands this, right? He was in the class, and it's like, you think you know these stories until you read them, and it's like, oh my gosh, it is literature for a lifetime. And the book of Genesis is just amazingly intricate and hyperlinked all the way through the scriptures. This may be a library of 66 different books, but over a thousand plus years written and compiled and put together, but it has this amazing hyperlinked plan all the way through from Genesis 1, 1 to Revelation 21, or is it 22? But anyways, it's the whole story. It's all hyperlinked together. Today we're looking at how the idea of blessing and multiplication and blessing to be a blessing runs all the way through that it's the mandate, it's the original intent that God made for human beings, and it continues to this day. And how often we get distracted from that, but we're going to read. So it's based on this verse in Genesis 1, verse 28, and God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Now I've heard and I've seen some pretty bad interpretations of this to say that we can use and abuse and do whatever we want with anything in creation because it's ours. No, it's not yours. It's not mine. We own nothing. God is the creator of everything, and God is the owner of everything and everyone. Oh boy, does he give us such an amazing, gracious gift and status to be his image bearers, his mirrors to this world, his stewards, his managers of these things. So I don't care. We could talk ownership all we want, but God's the owner, according to the Bible. We happen to be managers of the blessings. And why? To be a blessing to others, okay? So that's just a little tidbit. These are the points that we're going to actually look at today. First of all, that we have a call to multiply, blessing, and expand Eden. Eden was, by the way, it was the garden in Eden. Eden was an area. Outside of it seemed to be wilderness. They went east of Eden and they were kind of stuck in this place of brambles and thistles and thorns and stuff, and things didn't work out. And so God wanted, actually, this garden to expand across everything, from what we can tell. Our retreat from that calling, that's even happening these days, sadly. And then finally, a renewal of hope that we have through Jesus about this calling, okay? So we're going to talk, first of all, a call to multiply, blessing, and expand Eden. And I think Tim Mackey says it well, when he writes about this Genesis 1 account. God gives humans an additional blessing that sets them apart from the animals. Not only are we one of God's creatures that can generate new life, we have also been appointed as God's representative image to rule and oversee this world, whole flourishing world on God's behalf. So part of our blessing is to take care of God's blessing for all creation, okay? God wanted the original garden to be expanded worldwide, creation-wide, really, and we were to multiply this kind of fruitfulness and blessing to everything. So tell me, how's it going? Do you see us multiplying fruitfulness and blessing across all people and places and things? Maybe not so much these days, huh? That's the sad part. Instead, we see quite a bit of violence and division and scarcity and want and injustice across this world. You know, it's just so outside of Eden, and it's not what God has called us to do or to be. You know, so blessing, what's the opposite of blessing? Curse. Well, curse happens. Curse happens when we do what we want. Curse basically is when God says, okay, have it your way, your will be done. Now that can go all the way to forever, but we see even in the Book of Romans, the wrath of God is visible in this world, it says in Romans 1, when he basically gives people over to their own desires. And boy, if I just do whatever I desire, that is not good, actually, and I don't know if you realize that in your lives, but many of my desires don't go in the right direction, and they tend to hurt other people, and they even bring chaos to my own life. The story of the Bible, then, with Adam and Eve basically bringing curse on themselves, in a sense, because they say, we're going to do it our way, God, not yours, that sets us in this path that is almost anti-Eden-like, right, in a variety of ways. And yet God is still faithful to his creation. God does not let go. God does not put it in the trash....