Eden to the City of God: Episode 1

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We’re taking a trip through the biblical Story. If you’d like to join us, read through Genesis 1:1-13 and listen to the podcast! If you want to go deeper with us, pick up a copy of The Beginning and study along with us.

In this episode, your hosts, Joe Anderson and Ryan Bramlett are joined by Tim Nichols.

Summary:

Most Christians never get the Bible stitched together into a single coherent story. But this is not a nice bonus for those who do; everyone lives their lives as though they are a part of some story. It may be a story that starts with an abusive father or strained relationship between husband and wife, but some story governs everyone’s life. We wrote our curriculum to make the true Story of the world accessible.

Genesis 1 is, of course, the beginning of that Story, so let’s dig in. The first thing God did was create the heavens and the earth; then on day two, He put a barrier between them–an apparently solid surface that separated the waters above from the waters below. Heaven, the dwelling place of God, was separated from the earth on day two of creation, before mankind was even made. Jump ahead to the end of the Story, and in Revelation 21, the sky is rolled back like a scroll and the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven and is planted on the new earth. Heaven and earth are united forever. Of course, the great joy we have now in the present age is that heaven already came to earth in the form of Jesus Christ, and we are now seated with Him where He has ascended to the right hand of God. We presently have one foot in the New Jerusalem and one foot on this earth, and our responsibility is to bring the life of the kingdom into this broken reality.

Continuing through Genesis 1, we see the fourfold process by which God creates. First He commands, then He divides, then names and finally evaluates. This same process is what God did to Abraham to make a great nation through whom the whole world would be blessed, and it is what He does in each of us to make us into the kind of people who bring heaven to earth.

We are God’s people and we are called to imitate Him. God made fruit bearing trees and seed bearing plants. We take those raw materials, exercise the same fourfold creative process to make bread and wine and then offer it back to God on the altar. Man is called to worship God by imitating Him.