mpc 9th January 2005.January 9 - Genesis - "East of Eden"
Phil Campbell mpc 9th January 2005.
The faith of religious people all over the world, we're told, has been hit by a massive tidal wave.
I don't know if you've been following it, but it's been one of the angles that the media has been pushing almost every day. The question that Christians are grappling with apparently, is how can a loving God allow such a disaster? And we Christians are - again apparently - struggling, according to the media, to reconcile the Tsunami disaster with our faith.
There are of course other voices who insensitively say, well, it's obviously God's judgement on all those thousands of men, women and children in the wake of the wave. As if they somehow deserved it, in a way we who live on higher ground don't. Which is, I would have thought, not only insensitive... but misses the point of what Jesus says in Luke 13.
He's asked about exactly this issue. There's been a building site collapse in Siloam with a death toll of 18, crushed in the collapse of a tower. Jesus says, do you think they were any worse than you are? Of course not. That's not the way it works. So don't go pointing the finger.
Now you may well be asking big questions in the light of what's been called the biggest natural disaster of our generation. And that's appropriate.
But what I want to raise with you today, is the importance of approaching big questions with a clear view of what the Bible says. Rather than a sentimental view that you've made up for yourself.
Because the thing that bemuses me is that the newspapers keep saying, the faith of Christians around the world has been shaken... as if a Tsunami is some kind of surprise.
When the fact is, the Bible is abundantly clear... that we live in a world that's far from the garden of Eden. A groaning world. That isn't what it should be.
Over the next four weeks, we're going to take a bird's eye view of the Bible. A Bible overview. We're going to look at the big picture... the plot line. As we ask the question where do we live? And as we do that it's an opportunity to build a Biblical world view. That makes sense of what we see on the news.
If you were here back in January 2002, you might remember we did something similar. But it's worth doing again. Because way too many Christians, if they use the Bible at all, use it like a phone book or a dictionary. You maybe learnt a few memory verses at Sunday school, you know a few Bible stories like Noah and the Ark and Joseph and his coat, and David and Goliath and Daniel in the Lions' Den - but how does it all fit together? And what picture does the Bible paint at a time like this of our world and what's wrong with it, and what God's planning to do about it?
So come back with me to the very beginning. Genesis 1. We're going to be doing some Bible flipping, and it's worth trying to stick with it; if only to make sure you stay awake!
Before we start let me give it to you in a nutshell. The Bible... is the story of God preparing a place for his people. A people who want to serve him from the heart. It's a story with a lot of ups and downs. But the goal is always the same. God's people. Serving him from the heart. In the place he's prepared them.
It's a story that starts with Creation. And leads all the way to Jesus. It's a story full of failures. That leads to the only one who doesn't fail. As we'll see.
But let's take it from the top. Genesis chapter 1.
As right from the start God's at work preparing a place for his people. A good place. A designed place. Incredibly built to be occupied by humankind, who are made in the image of God.
Genesis 1. Verse 1. Open up and you'll find it straight after the table of contents. And you'll see you get to meet the main character, right there in the first sentence. And he's the God who creates. "In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
Here we are, face to face with the creator of everything. This is who the Bible's all about. The one who put together the heavens. The earth. Teeming with life.
God makes it with a word. And as you read on through Genesis 1 and 2, you see God forming the world - God speaks. And it happens. He makes and he fills. Water for the fish. Sky for birds. Land for animals. A place for everything, and everything in its place. And over and over again, God looks at it. And sees that it's good. Verse 10. God called the dry ground land, and the waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. A repeated refrain.
The Bible gets off to a great start. And the pinnacle of it all, the crowning achievement of creation, you can see in verse 27. "God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." The creation of mankind is what it's all about. And all of it... is very good.
And God takes the man, you'll notice, in chapter 2 verse 8, and he puts him in a Garden he's prepared. Read what it says:
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground-trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Here's the picture of Eden. A lush garden. A world in balance. God and man in harmony. The tree of life. A great picture.
But let me tell you, not the world we live in. And if you think it is, that's where the problems start in your world view.
I mean, there's still beauty around us; there are glimpses of Eden. And with enough money and technology and cleverness and a good home security system, you can even delude yourself into thinking you can build your own little paradise.
But ultimately, reality is going to hit.
And reality is, we're not in the garden of Eden anymore. And Genesis chapter 2 and 3 tells us why.
Because the temptation is, and it's an overwhelming temptation, the temptation in the garden is to grab for the one thing that's off limits. And that is, to grab for the chance to take over from God.
God says, the garden's yours. All of it. Except for one thing. The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2 verse 17. God says, you can eat whatever you like in the Garden except for one thing. He says, "you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
Which is another way of saying, leave my job up to me. Let me be the one who determines right from wrong.
And yet that's exactly what the tempter is dangling in front of them.
I guess you know the story, the way things unfold in Genesis 3. Verse 5 of Genesis 3: Don't take any notice of God. He's just a spoilsport. He just knows if you eat it, your eyes'll be opened. You'll be just like him, knowing good and evil. Do it - you'll be like God! Which is the very essence of the temptation. Don't let the God who made you tell you what's right and wrong. Make up your own mind. Push the boundaries as hard as you can.
So here we are. To this point, humankind has only known good. That's the irony, isn't it? From now on, they'll know evil as well. They'll be in the driver's seat. What we're being told here is that humanity is by nature humanistic. Right to the core, our desire is that we'll decide right and wrong for ourselves.
So they reach out, and they take it, The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they eat it. And it says in verse 7 their eyes are opened. And suddenly, they're ashamed. Ashamed of their nakedness. And they try to hide from the God who made them; but they can't. Because it's as obvious as the purple juice smeared all over your face when you've been feeding at the mulberry tree.
If you eat it, God says, you'll die. And from Genesis chapter 3 onwards, we're looking at a world under God's curse. The world's a place of prickles and thorns. Not just of the gardening kind. Pick up in verse 17.
To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return."
And verse 23, God banishes them from the Garden of Eden; to work the hard and unforgiving ground. And places on the East side of the Garden an angel with a flaming sword. To keep Adam from the Tree of Life.
And that's life. That's where we live. Humanity wants to rule the world apart from God. And the Bible says, we live with the consequences of that. The very next chapter, Cain and Abel; the sons of Adam and Eve. And in the first recorded case of sibling rivalry, Cain is jealous of his brother... so he kills him.
That's the sort of people humanity has become. As the story unfolds in the next chapters of Genesis. Genesis chapter 6 verse 5 sums it up this way. Take a look. "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil... all the time."
Now that's a pretty black picture of the human heart, isn't it? But over and over again, that's the picture the Bible gives of what's inside us. If you're a humanist, then you say, deep down, we're good. Give your kids all the freedom they want - take away all the constraints, and they'll turn out fine. And if they don't, society is to blame, 'cause it can't be me.
God says - and He can see what's inside - He looks at their hearts. And all they want to do is evil, all the time. In other words, they wanna do what they wanna do. Our nature is to play out the story of Adam and Eve over and over again.
And yet God, in his mercy, starts again. Remember the storyline?
I said before that the Bible is the story of God preparing a place for his people. A people who want to serve him from the heart. Eden ended with rebellion.
And now creation is a mess.
But in Genesis chapter 12, we saw as we looked at the story of Abraham in the last few months a new start. In Genesis 12, God steps in and announces a plan. He's going to bless the world again. He's going to prepare a place. The promised land. A place for his people. Who want to serve him from the heart. And it all starts with Abram.
Take a look quickly at the first few verses of Genesis 12, where God speaks; because these are some of the most important verses in the whole Bible. This is like the springboard that everything else jumps off. These few sentences at the start of Genesis chapter 12 are like the topic sentence of the rest of the Bible. Read from verse 2. God speaking to Abram; he says,
I'll make you into a great nation and I will bless you. (They're going to be known as the people of God.)
God says,
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
And then a little bit further on in verse 7:
To your offspring... I'm going to give this land.
It's going to be like Eden all over again. God's people in God's place, living under God's rule. Or at least, that's the offer. It's restated over a page or two in Genesis 18. God's going to bless every nation through the children of Abraham. Provided, of course, they don't make the same mistake as Adam and Eve. Provided they keep the way of the Lord. And do what's right and just. Turn over to Genesis 18 verse 18, and take note.
Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.
Through you... all the nations of the world are one day going to be blessed again. Through you, the curse of sin is one day going to be turned on its head. The God who made it is going to fix it. Through Abram's family line. A family line that runs right through the whole of the Bible.
By the time you get to the end of the book of Genesis, you'll see Joseph; on his deathbed in Egypt. Great great great grandson of Abraham. We're going to look at Joseph's story in detail in the next few months. But for now, turn over and notice what's on his mind at the end of his life.
Genesis 50. Verses 24 to 26. He's on his deathbed. I was talking to an older lady a few years back, she was living on her own, and she'd collapsed on her steps. She said she thought she was going to die. And she said, the only thing she could think of was that she wouldn't finish the cardigan she was knitting. Well, she didn't die. So she lived to finish the cardigan.
But will you notice what's foremost on Joseph's mind? As his life draws to a close. It's the promises of God. Genesis 50, verse 24 to 26. Have a look.
Because as I've already said, the rest of the Bible's all about God keeping His promise to Abraham. Of a people. Descendants like the sand on the seashore. Who'll have a land of their own. And through them, blessing for the whole world. Reversing the curse.
So what's on Joseph's mind when he's lying on his deathbed? Verse 24.
Then Joseph said to his brothers, I'm about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath, and said, God will surely come to your aid, then you must carry up my bones from this place.
God's going to help these people. God's going to save them and bless them no matter what. Because He's going to keep His promise to Abraham to reverse the curse of sin.
Providing, of course, they live with God as their God. Providing they're committed to doing what's right and just. Which we're going to see over the next few weeks is the big question.
So where do we leave the story?
We leave the story with humanity calling the shots. And because of that, subjected to sin and death.
Living in a broken world. And yet with a promise of better things to come.
We leave the story with humanity outside Eden. And a promise that one day there'll be restoration.
It's a story that we're going to see leads to Jesus Christ. Who in his death and his resurrection brings a future hope for every nation. But we need to follow the story over the next few weeks and see how it unfolds.
But remember for now, we still live in the same fallen world. Which is groaning. The tsunami reminds us of that. Although as one letter writer in yesterday's paper said, it's never any different. Last year, he said, 3 million people died of AIDS. Since 1982, 3 million people have died in the Sudan. We live in a groaning world. Which Paul says, one day will be liberated.
If we get too comfortable in this world, we can kind of forget that. Anaesthetise the pain away. The same page in the paper yesterday that had pictures of the tsunami destruction had a half page ad for home entertainment systems.
The Christian World view, the Biblical picture, is that we live outside of Eden. In a groaning world. And we groan with it. Except we groan in hope... because we know that God's Spirit is at work in us. And we have a future home.
Here's how the Apostle Paul puts it in Romans Chapter 8, verse 22:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
We're going to follow the Bible storyline right through over these next few weeks. But for now, keep in mind... when you're reminded by hard times that we live in a groaning world, don't be surprised by it. Be reminded. We're not in the garden of Eden. But we're saved with a hope that looks forward to a new creation. And we can grieve at what happens, and we can grieve at our frailty, and we can do what we can to help; and we don't have glib answers. We don't have to. Paul goes on to say this: and with these words we'll close...
26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.