We are made in the image of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a community in one.

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man … But for Adam no suitable helper was found … Then the LordGod made a woman from the ribhe had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.(Genesis 2:18-20)

No man is an island. We are made for community. To be in relationship with God and people.

God created a perfect world, one with people who lived in close communion with him. God knew (but did not cause) that man would sin, and God had a plan ready for redemption—Jesus Christ, His Son and our Savior. What grace!

God created us with the ability to choose, and we chose poorly. Man brought sin into the world, and it is still here. Evil not only moved into the hearts of Adam and Eve, but continues to fight for territory in the hearts of everyone, every day. We lost perfect community with God, and with our fellow humans.

The Bible is full of stories that you may have learned and sung about as a child.

• “Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them and so are you…”
• “Only a boy named David, only a little sling, only a boy named David, but he could play and sing…”
• “Zaccheaus was a wee little man, he climbed up in a sycamore tree, the Lord he wanted to see…”

Many of us have grown a bigger pictures of these characters. Abraham heard God’s voice and left his cushy life to wander through hostile wilderness, waiting through barrenness for God’s promise of more descendants than could be counted. David had a tumultuous life as a warrior and musician, a leader of men and a womanizer. He could rule a country, but struggled with familial solidarity. Zacchaeus collected taxes for the hated Roman conquerors and skimmed enough off the top to become a wealthy man and hated by his own people.

Do not miss the most important relationship of their lives, the one that puts their stories into the Bible. Their stories hold the Gospel message of salvation and new life, pointing us to God. This is the main theme of the Bible: God and man in close relationship and how His love and grace made that possible in spite of our sin.

Hebrew writers of the Bible told their histories NOT to entertain us or chronologically explain events. Their bias—the Holy-Spirit-inspired reason for their writing—was to reveal the ways God interacted with men and women in the world. For them, there was no such thing as secular history. Everything happened in a world made and ruled by God.