Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What's God's Calling For Your Life? | Torah | Genesis 2:4-17

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here to grow in your faith this year. What do you think you were created to do? What do you spend the majority of your time doing? In today's episode, Patrick looks to Genesis 2:4-17 to understand what humans were actually created to do. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast Passages: Genesis 2:4-17 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilman. I'm Jensen Holmick-Mir. And I'm Patrick Miller. We are exploring the first books of the Bible. Right now, we are in Genesis. If you're like me, you love email newsletters, but most of them don't bring me closer to God.

Well, it's time to give Jesus access to your inbox. Sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks email newsletter. Once a week, you'll get a blest to you. lessibly short email with guides on spiritual disciplines, inspiring challenges to grow, interesting cultural backgrounds on today's passage, and even quick studies of Hebrew and Greek words. Each week's going to be a little bit different and you're going to love the variety. So stop what you're doing. Click the link in the show notes and sign up today. Now, let's hop into today's episode. Do you know God's calling for your life? For your life specifically, why he made you,

and not somebody else. Why he put you in this time and not some other time. Why he put you in this place, not some other place. Adam never had those questions. I mean, just think about it. In Genesis 2.8, we read that God had a specific place and a specific time for Adam and that God made this place. He prepared this place just for Adam. Let's read Genesis 2.8. Now Yahweh, God had planted a garden in the east in Eden. And there he put the man he had formed. Eden is the Hebrew word for delight. And Yahweh places Adam in a garden that Yahweh himself has built. And he calls it the garden of delight.

Why is it delightful? Well, it's delightful because Eden, it is rich in resources. We read in verses 10 to 14 that multiple rivers flowed through it. Inside of it, there's gold and onyx and resin. Now, I know some of this sounds a little bit strange to modern ears, but if you were an ancient person, those resources, water, gold, all of these things, they would make perfect sense to you. Because they're all the ingredients you need to create a functioning civilization, water to drink, and to irrigate so that you can grow plants and fruit for food,

gold so that you can have an economy and trade goods, stone and other materials necessary to build buildings and to put down roots. In other words, God made the Garden of Delight, but he didn't finish it. He left all of the ingredients there so that Adam could bake up a God glorifying civilization so that Adam could spread the boundaries of Eden until it encompassed the entire earth. In fact, God tells Adam exactly why he placed him in this place and this time. Genesis 2.15, Yahweh God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it. There's two commands here, okay? To work and to take care. of. Now, the Hebrew word for work is avad, and it means to serve something. In other words, Adam isn't

just tending to the garden. He's actually serving the garden by cultivating the garden. The second command, to take care of. That's the Hebrew word shamar. And that normally means to protect, which implies that Adam's calling wasn't just to serve Eden, but also to protect it from outside threats, like maybe talking serpents, but that's for a different day. These two words, Avad and Shamar. They go even deeper than this. These are two things that priests were supposed to do inside of the tabernacle, inside of the temple. They were called to serve and protect God's tabernacle, the place where God resided. And this is exactly what Adam's job is in the garden. It's a holy job before Yahweh himself. Eden, the Garden of Delight is the place of God's presence. And he's

entrusted Adam with serving him there and with protecting this garden from outside threats. And so now, here's what I want to do. I want to add one more layer so that we can get the whole picture of Adam's calling in life. Adam, well, that name, it's actually the Hebrew word for humanity, Adam. And now you might begin to see the entire picture that's being painted here in one of these early stories of Genesis. It's not just about Adam. It's not just about why God placed Adam in a place and what God called Adam to do.

This is a story about Adam, about humanity, about all humans. In other words, do you want to know God's calling on your life? Why he made you and not someone else? Why he puts you where you are and not somewhere else? The answer is right here. Let's just retell this story with all of its rich Hebrew meaning. Yahweh makes humanity, Adam, and he takes humanity to a place he prepared beforehand called Delight. And this place is filled with everything needed to build a flourishing society. And humanity's call is to serve this society and to protect this society and to do it all as a holy calling as a form of worship to the God who lives in their presence. Do you know that that is your calling?

I mean, just stop and think about it. What do you spend most of your time doing? My guess is that it's one of these three things. Either number one, you spend most of your time working at your job or number two, being a student and preparing for a future job. Or number three, number three, three, taking care of children and developing the potential God's put inside of them. And I'm here to tell you that whether you are doing number one, two, or three, you are actually doing Eden work. In other words, you are participating in God's plan to cultivate creation, to make a flourishing society, the very thing God called Adam humanity to do in the very, very first story. Let me just give you some examples. If you're a trucker, you have a part in society. You have a part in

society, you allow trade and the distribution of goods to produce wealth and keep our society running. You have an Eden calling. Or if you're in finance, you're helping financial resources flow to where they can be the most productive. You might be helping businesses or helping people get into homes, but either way, you have a Eden job. You're helping the flourishing of society. If you're in realty, you're helping people find and make homes. Again, you have an Eden job. You're helping create a flourishing society. And the list just goes on and on and on. But all of these things, they all allow for human flourishing. They all allow for society to exist. And that's the key to answering the question, what's God called me to do? He's called you to be where you are and to seek the good of your community,

your family, and your co-workers right where you're at right now. He's called you to do this in a holy way as a service to him. So you do this with kindness, love, honesty, gentleness, and creativity. He's called you to see the delight and the beauty of the place that you've been placed in. And once you see that delight, once you see that beauty, you've been called to cultivate it, to draw it out, to serve the beauty, to protect the beauty. Working at the specifics in your life, that's a challenge each of us has to face. I mean, how is it that I have an eating calling? in my particular job, in my particular place. But the broad outline is right here on the second page of the Bible.

We are all bearers of God's image called to delight in our place, to cultivate it, to serve it, to protect it, and to spread Shalom through our work. Today, I want you to ask God to give you clarity on your calling, on how you can live out this calling we've been talking about in your work, in your neighborhood, in your family, at your school. And then I want you to ask him for the grace to walk in the path he's called you, take with holiness. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter.

Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.