In the beginning…

 September 13 2020

Genesis 2, 3:1-8

         I was talking with Jennifer last week about how Labor Day always marked the beginning of school for us. You had that one last holiday then back to school you went. And it seems that school was such a big part of our life that even now when you get to this point in the year our minds just quite naturally think about the memories we have about school. We’re not the only ones who realize that September is a month that makes us think about school days and learning as those who are responsible for learning in other areas of our life like churches pick up on this and decide this is a good time to start to learn something new. So today we we are starting on a journey through the Bible story, what is called a narrative lectionary. That’s a big name for just saying that we will be looking at a list of scriptures that tell a story, a story of God and a story of us. Why I like this idea is that so often when we read the Bible or just read say a devotion what we miss is the big picture, that all these little stories we enjoy are actually part and parcel of something bigger, something that spans thousands of years and is still ongoing today. What the writers of scripture understood probably better than we do is that the stories we find in the Bible are not just history that we study as people looking back on those events trying to discover their meaning. No, what the writers of scripture want us to do is to step into the stories we find. They comprehended that the human experience is a universal experience and that who we are as people, what drives us, what controls, those longings and fears and loves that we have these remain a constant over time. Likewise, the God we worship love and adore also is the same yesterday, today and forever. So, it just makes sense then that we should be able to see the stories of the Bible as the stories of us, stories that we can connect with the sort of life we are living out today.

         As we begin with this study of the Bible stories there is also another very important factor to consider and that is, just where do we start. Now, that might seem like an odd thing to say because of course we should just start in Genesis and work our way forward. Yet what we cannot forget is the difference Jesus made in the understanding of the scripture story. I learned the importance of this from a book by the author John Behr which really changed my thinking on the matter. His point was that what we should not do is to come to know ourselves as sinful people and then go looking for a Savior who corresponds to what we think our problems are. This is very much what happened with the people of Israel. They thought their problems were all outside of themselves, to them it was the foreigners who were polluting their world that needed exterminated when the truth that Jesus shouted from the cross is that the pollution that needed removed was actually within their own hearts. It was only at the cross that the disciples began to understand not only the diagnosis of what their problem was  but more importantly what the remedy was to set them free from the sin that held them captive. As Peter, in his first sermon recorded in the second chapter of the book of Acts proclaimed, this Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. Peter in his first letter would also write that Jesus was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for our sakes. All of this helps understand that we have to first understand the solution, that Jesus the Son of God came into this world to die upon a cross in order for us to understand just what the problem was.It is not scripture that tells us of our need for a Savior but rather it is our Savior who illuminates the scriptures so that we understand our need for him.We see this so greatly in the life of Paul who writes in the third chapter of Philippians that at one time he thought of himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee; as to zeal the persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.This meant that before meeting Christ having only the scriptures before him Paul considered that he was not a sinner in need of a Savior. It was only when he was confronted by the risen and exalted Jesus on the road to Damascus that Paul began to understand his need and how wrong his understanding of scriptures really was.

         This idea that we only understand scriptures in light of the cross, is especially important as we begin today with our reading from Genesis. We tend to think in linear terms and so begin with God bringing creation into being which was followed by the first human beings Adam and Eve using their God given freedom against their own Creator. This is when the world was plunged into sin and when death entered into the picture. The world then languished in this condition until the work of salvation could be prepared resulting in Christ, the word of God being born in the flesh. There are a lot of people who think that Jesus might not have to come if only Adam and Eve could have behaved themselves but nothing could be further from the truth.Often times people will speak of the Fall of mankind as being the result of an accidental alteration in the life of creation, kind of like a cosmic oops, that resulted from our free human will. This kind of thinking just does not have a clue what to do when Paul writes in the eleventh chapter of Romans that God has consigned all to disobedience so that he might have mercy on all. Or in a similar vein in the eighth chapter of Romans where Paul writes that that the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Paul could only come with this understanding of our world through first understanding that Jesus was the Savior of the world and if Jesus was the Savior of the world then the world has always stood in need of saving. If the world has always stood in need of saving then it also follows that it was God who created it this way. This helps us understand that creation and salvation are not two separate acts but are instead the same continuation of what God started in the beginning. In other words the world has always stood in need of a Savior because this is the way that God created the world.

         So it is in this light that we can begin to read and understand this second chapter of Genesis.This second chapter seems like a different account of the Creation story that we first encountered in the first chapter of Genesis and this sometimes throws people for a loop. But the way I believe that we are to read these accounts in the way that they have been written is that the first chapter portrays the ideal world. There over the course of a week God subdued the chaos and created a world where his highest creation, mankind could flourish. God created mankind in his image and likeness which is an astounding idea when we consider that throughout the Bible God opposes making a graven image of any created thing. Unlike any other created beings, only human beings have a prototype, God himself. In biblical times the ones who bore the title of the image of God were kings who were thought to bear the image of the nations deity.What this meant is that the king had a duty to reveal the righteousness of the heavens to the part of the world that he ruled. This understanding helps us figure out why God in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus told the people of Israel that they were to be to him kings and priests, a holy nation. This idea of kings and priests is very close to the idea of being created in the image and likeness of God. The idea of priest is a good definition as to whaat is meant by being made in the likeness of God because a priest is one who intervenes and intercedes, to bridge the gap so to speak which is what God has always done and this is what we as his likeness are called to do.

         So, at the end of the first chapter we have this wonderful portrayal of humankind being sent out into the world to subdue the chaos just as God first had subdued the chaos. They were to rule over a world teeming with life and every seven days they were to pause and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Now if this was the only account of creation that we had we would certainly wonder just what in the world happened because what we do not see is mankind ruling as a representative of God but rather mankind being ruled over by worldly forces. So, the second chapter of Genesis speaks to the reality of our creation as we experience it. This is where it is important that we do not read this account as history but rather that we read this as the story of us, to help us understand our need of a Savior named Jesus. This second story of creation instead of portraying humankind in the exalted manner of the first account instead tells us that God formed man from the dust. What we are to understand by this description is the the lowliness of our existence. We quite naturally realize how fragile we are made and small we tend to feel when contemplating on our place in this world. This is what we are to pick up from reading that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Knowing that this is our origins it is easy to understand the tension that is formed when we as people of dust realize that we were created for the unique and special purpose of bearing he image and likeness of God. We live between the lowliness of our fragile nature and the heights of our divine purpose. The result of this tension is that we become anxious people. Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom because we are God’s image bearers we are aware of our fragile existence and this results in a sense of fear and foreboding within us. To understand what this worry does to us it is helpful to look at how the Greek word for anxiety, merimnao defines it. The Greeks defined anxiety as going to pieces, to be pulled apart, to be divided. So what our anxiety does is it disintegrates us, it makes us a fractured person. This is what we find as we continue to read on in this second and third chapters of Genesis. There we read of how the serpent, the representative of the beasts of the field came to Eve and questioned her about the instructions God had given to her.  Now, in most transactions what the serpent tells Eve goes something like this: Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?, but if you read the original it reads more like, “Even if God said, don’t eat, so what? What the snake wants to know is this: is God’s word the thing you should be paying attention to Eve or should you instead pay attention to the other voice that calls to you, the voice of your desires. On the one hand God’s voice instructed Eve to not eat of the tree but the voice inside of her, the voice God had installed in her when he created her, this voice of her desire was crying out to her to eat of this fruit.  To the snake, the representative of the animal kingdom, the voice the animals listen to is the voice of desire, the voice of their passions. When an animal is hungry it eats that’s just the way it is. Yet while we are made like animals having desires and passions just like they do, we are created to be far different from them. Only mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. As we said before this means that we are to reveal the righteousness of heaven in this part of the world where we rule. The way this righteousness comes to us is through the voice of God who speaks to us. This is what it means for us to be human that the voice we listen to is this outward voice of God and not the inward voice of our desires and passions. This is what God meant when in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy that man does not live by bread alone, this being the desire we have to eat and survive but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

         Well, Eve gave into her temptation and instead of listening to the voice of God she instead listened to the voice of her desires. We read that when the woman saw that the tree, she saw that the tree was good for food, she saw that the fruit was a delight to her eyes and she saw that the fruit was a delight she should treasure. So Eve did what God specifically forbade her to do and not only did she eat she ate of the fruit of the tree but she also indicted Adam to eat of it as well. The result of their disobedience was as our account tells was that their eyes were opened, they were like God and they knew good and evil. To understand what is meant here by this phrase “good and evil” is that we have to remember that in the Bible, good besides meaning something that is ethically right; good also means that something is desirable. To say that we have knowledge of good and evil then means that this is what we experience is this sorting out in our lives of just what is good, what is it that is desirable to us. In other words from this point forward all the decisions mankind makes will be tainted by our desire. This is exactly what James writes in the first chapter of his letter, “Now each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” This is exactly what we just read in the second and third chapters of Genesis and this is what we must keep front and center of our lives every time we make a decision.

         This is where God finds all of us fighting this battle over which voice to listen the inner voice of our desires and passions or the the voice that calls to us from a higher place, the voice of God.We have to wonder just what is God’s plan to save us from this life of constant temptation of our desires. The answer is that God uses our desire so that we desire him above all else and the way he does this is through his love. It is God’s love demonstrated for us through Jesus laying down his life for us upon the cross that sets us free to be who God created us to be. God’s love hits at the heart of our anxiety because as we read in the fourth chapter of the first letter of John, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear for fear has to do with punishment.” God’s love sets us free from the tyranny of our anxiety allowing us to at last focus not on our own survival but instead to focus on what we were created to be, the image and likeness of God. Now as Paul writes in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians the love of Christ has grabbed a hold of us and it is this love that now controls us not our desires. This love of God we find through Christ makes it possible for us to love God in return with a love where we love God with all of our heart, with all of our life with all that we have; in other words we love God with all of ourselves. So as our anxiety once made us go to pieces Gods love has taken the brokenness of our life and he has united us in a love for him. As God is one and God is love so at last we are one and we love as God has first loved us. In this way we become the image and likeness of God, creation and salvation at last can be seen as but two ends of one process. It is the love of God that creates in us the faith required to listen and obey the word of God and pay no heed to the inner voice of our desires. As God is one he justifies the circumcised and the uncircumcised through faith, a faith that is founded upon God’s love for us.

         So what we find right at the beginning of our scripture story is that God indeed has consigned all of us to disobedience; there never was a time when the world did not stand in need of a Savior. Yet God did so in order that he could show us mercy and forgiveness for as Christ himself taught it is those who know they have been forgiven much are those who love much. And it is this love that sets us free from our disobedience so that we might love God and to make his voice the only voice that directs our steps. The question only you can answer is this: do you know the great love God has for you, the greatest love shown to us by Jesus who laid down his life for you and for me? And only you can answer the question, are you listening to the voice of God or do your desires speak over the still small voice of God? Whose voice is it that controls you? Can you state with Paul that the love of Christ has grabbed a hold of you? I pray that you desire God’s love more and more until the day we see him face to face. Amen!