Introduction
Who needs the Instruction Manual?
Completing Creation
• Completing the Work of Creating (2:1–2)
• Concluding that Creation is “very good” (1:31)
• Consecrating (“set apart” or “made different”) the Sabbath, the Seventh Day Rest
Creation: The 7-Day Cycle of Work and Rest (Exodus 20:8–11)
Church: From the Seventh to the First Day of the Week, the Lord’s Day (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Hebrews 4:8–11; Revelation 1:10)
Christ: The Unending (Eternal) Rest (Revelation 14:13)
Crowning Creation
• Formed in the Image of God, in His Likeness (1:26–27)
• Fashioned by God from Soil: Divine creativity and human mortality (2:7a)
• Furnished Alive by the Divine Breath of Life (2:7b)
• Fullness of Humanity: “Male” and “Female” (1:27)
Commissioning Humanity to Royal Service
• To Engage in Servanthood (2:15–16)
• To Exercise Sovereignty (1:26; 2:19)
Committing Humanity to Trust and Obedience
• Be fruitful and multiply (Positive)
• Banned from eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Negative)
Celebrating Life in Family and Society
• Community – No man is an island: …it is not good for the man to be alone (2:18a)
• Sexuality – Different by Design: …I will make him a helper suitable to him… (2:18b)
• Parenting to Empower: leaving his father and mother…(2:24a)
• Sex in Marriage, God’s idea: …united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh (2:24b)
• Transparency: …naked, and they felt no shame (2:25)
Truth for Life:
Listening to God the Life Designer, which aspects of your life do need God’s help to realign to reflect His original intended purpose?
