Friday, September 26, 2008

Sermon fo September 28

Here is the sermon for this week. Enjoy.


As many of you know by now, we are on a sermon series called “From Creation to Christ”, where we will be walking through the Bible in 12 weeks. For the last two weeks we have been covering Creation, and something called the Fall. What we need to be aware of is that the Bible is a play written in four acts, Created, Fallen, Redeemed, Restored. As we continue in the series all of this will be come more clear. So, in two weeks we covered Created and Fallen. What we will see for most of the remaining semester is that Redeemed is most of the rest of the Bible.

Before we begin this week, I want to say that we are skipping a lot. And we are going to have to skip even more as the semester goes on. It is not that the parts we skip aren’t important, just that we have limited time, and so sacrifices must be made somewhere. I say that this week because we are jumping right to Abraham, about the half way point in Exodus. If you are familiar with the Bible you will notice that we are skipping Cain and Able, Noah, the Flood, and many other things. Sorry. If you really need me to speak to them, then I will say in Genesis 4 the first murderer takes place, the world goes to hell in a hand basket, God finds a righteous man called Noah, and saves him while he wipes the rest of the world out. Many of you may have heard these stories in church as a kid during Sunday School, and you really shouldn’t have, because telling kids about the death of other kids seems very sadistic and wrong somehow. Here is a quick tidbit about the Noah’s Ark story: there are over 450 flood stories around the world, from people groups in China, the Mediterranean, and the New World. Anyway, today we are talking about Abraham, who for most of the sermon is called Abram. Know that these two names are the same guy.

As we read this, we should also try to get a feel for the entire book of Genesis, which I know is hard since we are skipping some. If you were to read the book on your own, what you will find is that it is pushing us toward this man, Abram. We read 1 chapter about all of Creation, 1 about human creation, 1 about the fall, and then 9 others summing up the rest of human history. In the same way that Genesis 1 pushed to the creation of humans, really neglecting the rest, so too does Genesis push to Abram. He is really the main character of the book. We are going to see this literary device used throughout Scripture. Often the Bible skips much of history to get to the next guy. We will see this with Moses, David, and finally Jesus, that being said, lets jump in. We read in Genesis

Genesis 11:27-32

27Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. 28Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. 30Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.

31Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there. 32The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

Now these verse are not the crux of the sermon today, so the question can be asked, why did I read them. Two reasons: 1. It is here that the book of Genesis makes a jump. It is clear from the details given and the grammatical structure that this is a history. Where some of the previous stories could be read as history, or myth, or poetry, the Bible is forcing us to read this as history. We are to know that Abram was a real guy, who really lived, had a house, a job, a family. 2. Sometimes we, as westerners and Christians, tend to skip the genealogies. We don’t see them as that important, the names are hard to say, we so no good in reading them, so we jump to the “good parts”. When we do this, we do a disservice to both ourselves, or faith, and the Bible. Genealogies are going to be very important for the rest of the Bible. Two of the Gospels, the book about Jesus life, start with them. Also, these guys are in the Bible. They did something to get in there, and we should honor that. Finally, we read in the Bible that all scripture is God breathed and profitable. This includes these genealogies. So when we encounter them, we should read them and study them, not dismiss them.

We also find out some about Abram. He is from Ur, for one. He is not Jewish, nor Hebrew. He is from Ur. We also know that he has no kids since we read that Sarai, his wife, was barren. I want to pause here just to say that this has been a very challenging sermon to write. Abram is the central character of Genesis, and the Jewish faith, and we are going to cover him in one night. The only way I found to do this is to tell a narrative. This means that some scripture which is in your program is just for you to look up, and I am going to paraphrase it. It also means you have to trust me until you can look it up, otherwise we would be here for a few more hours. The narrative begins:

Genesis 12:1-4a

1Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

4So Abram went, as the LORD had told him

This is the first interaction we see Abram have with God. And what we see is God calling him to a different country. In a Global society that doesn’t seem like such a big deal. We are all travelling all the time, right. But for the day, it was huge. When God calls him to a new place, he is essentially demanding he leave everything behind. His family, his life, his security. This all takes place about 2000 BC. If you know anything about the time period, you know they didn’t have email. They didn’t even have regular mail. The way you talked with someone was to go to their door. If you left the country, there was large possibility that you would never see your friends again. And your friends at this time weren’t just people to get lunch with at the DC. They were the only protection you had. There was no police, or Interpol, or FBI. If you left the safety of your clan, you were toast. There were also no planes, or cars or trains, so you had to walk everywhere. The roads were extremely unsafe, because as I already said, there were no police. Bandits and robbers and murderers waited to jump upon unsuspecting caravans. I am not exaggerating by the way. It was very unsafe to travel.

This is what God is calling Abram to. When Abram goes, he is taking his life in his own hands, so to speak. He is trusting God to protect him, guide him, provide food for him, since he can’t take his farm with him, and everything else. It would be like God asking you today to go to LA, but you have to walk, could only bring one back pack full of stuff, only as much money as is in your checking account right now, cut up your credit cards, ATM cards, etc, never call home again, and you aren’t allowed to hitchhike, call for help, or pay for hotels along the way, and when you get there, just trust God has the perfect mansion for you- only much scarier and less safe.

We have to also ask the question, “Why does God call Abram?” What I mean by that is what was it about Abram that made him stand out? Was he a perfect Christian? Did he go to church every week? Was he just such a good guy? What was it that made God call him? The only answer in the Bible is a little later in Genesis, and it is that Abram believed God. See, at the time he was called, Abram was a sinner. Lets pause here for a moment. Have any of you heard of the Ten Commandments? Most, good. We can read this as a list of things that make God mad and us sinners. This is not the only or most important function of these commandments, as we shall see next week, but it suffices for now. It is a list of do’s and don’ts. Now the first tow commandments are the real big ones. The first commandment is that we should have no gods before God, and the second that we shouldn’t make idols. They are pretty big deals. So we would surely think that Abram has kept some of these. Now they haven’t been given yet officially, but one would assume that God still digs them, he did just wiped out the entire world for breaking these commandments just a few chapters earlier. I think it is a safe assumption that the commandments are still in effect for Abram.

Do any of you know what Abram did for a living before God called him? He made idols! His job was to carve graven images for people and them sell them as gods for others to worship. He must have had idol upon idol in his home and garage. He is breaking the commandments, but more that this, he wasn’t even worshipping God. God calls him when he is a idol worshipping, lawless, filthy sinner. He is actively breaking God’s rules, even profiting by it, teaching others to do it, and God calls him. This is the first in a number of scandalous relationships God will have throughout the Bible.

Well, you may say, God called him when he was a sinner, but I bet he cleaned up his act, started listening to Christina music only, got a suit, and went to church for the rest of his life, and you’d be wrong. Now I am not saying those things are bad. And certainly Abram becomes a better person as his relationship with God progresses, but he was not perfect before his calling, and we will see, nor is he perfect after. Why am I making a big deal of this? Because God gives grace to the sinner. As we walk through the Bible we will see everyone, and I mean everyone God chooses to initiate with is broken in some way. Church isn’t a place you need to be clean first to enter. You don’t need to be perfect or flawless to enter into a relationship with God. All you need to do is believe and follow him. As we continue Abrams journey we will see him doing many things, changing his life in certain ways, worshipping God. And we will also see there is only one thing that the Bible credits his righteousness with. It is not correct worship style, or a fully holy life, it is that fact that he believed.

Abram is called, and he follows, and we expect the next chapter to be him in the land God promised him. But it is not. What happens next is in Genesis 12. Abram goes to the land, but then continues on, and ends up in Egypt. He went there because there was a famine. Here’s the thing though, God doesn’t tell him to go to Egypt. He tells him to go to the land he called him to. So the first thing Abram does is not trust God. Now we may object and say, well there was a famine, and didn’t you, Nate, tell us last week that the husband is to care for his wife. If she starved he wouldn’t have been a very loving guy. And that is fair, but we also must ask, could not God have given them food, or ended the famine? Maybe the famine was so that Abram could settle the land, since everyone would have been leaving? I say he was not wholly trusting God. The reason for this is what happens next. As they are entering Egypt, Abram tells Sarai to pretend she is his sister and not his wife because she was very beautiful. He was afraid he would be killed by the men of Egypt so they could marry Sarai. God just spoke to him and told him he would bless him, and now Abram is lying to save his own skin. This does not sound like the actions of one who is trusting God.

I also cant imaging the conversation he had with his wife. So, uh, can we, uh, pretend, you know, to not be married, you know, just for a little while? I mean I still love you, but… we could have a super secret marriage. It will make it even more special.

Any way, she apparently is very beautiful because the Pharaoh decides she will join his house and be one of his wives, which, again, I can’t imagine Sarai was happy about. Pharaoh finds out Abram was married to her and kicks them out of the country because marriage was sacred, even to the Egyptians, and they are worried that God is going to punish Egypt for the sin. I image the conversation on the walk back to Canaan, the land God promised Abram, was even worse than the conversation about pretending not to be married.

So Abram screws up. We all do, right. What is God’s reaction to this? If I were God, I would give Abram a talking too about trust and listening and marriage, but that is not what happens. The next thing God does is to speak to Abram again and re-emphasize the promises He made. The pattern so far is God initiates with people he really shouldn’t, they trust Him, but not always, try things their own way, screw things up, and again God initiates with them. This is a God of Grace. God should have kicked Abram out of the family right way, but he doesn’t. Instead He reminds him again of the covenant he will make with him and his descendents.

And then a whole bunch happens that we won’t talk about, some battles, some giving of goats, all very exciting, and then we get to Genesis 15

Genesis 15:7-21

7And he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess." 8But he said, "O Lord GOD, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" 9He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.

12As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. 13Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

17When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, 19the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, 20the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, 21the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites."

There is a lot going on here, and we are going to gloss over most of it. God again is making his covenant with Abram. We have heard it all before. It almost gets redundant as we read the text, trust me. Here is what we need to take away from this passage though. We may be wondering what is the deal with all the animals and the splitting in two, etc.? In the ancient Middle East, this is how one made a covenant. The two parties would bring animals and kill them and split them and walk through them together. It was to show that the promise was expensive and to say that the same may be done to them if they renege on their part. What Abram is doing in setting all this up is what any Middle Easterner would have done if they were going to enter a covenant. It is what he knew. It is akin to signing a binding contract.

And then he waits for God, like he was told. He is back to obeying, so that’s good, but God doesn’t come. He waits all day. He drives away scavengers. He waits. And finally he falls asleep. And then God shows up. We read a dreadful darkness. This is something to be feared. Something otherworldly. And God speaks to Abram and makes his covenant with him, again. And then something out of the ordinary happens. I mean more out of the ordinary that having God speak to you or splitting animals in two. We see God come and the covenant established, and from what I just told you, or from your in depth knowledge of Middle Eastern Covent practice, we should expect Abram and God to walk through the animals together. But that is not what happens. God walks though by himself!

This is extremely important. What God is doing is taking the entire covenant upon himself. He knows that Abram can not fulfill it, and so He bears even Abrams half. Again and again we are going to se this in the Bible. God will assume the burden of both his role and ours, this culminating in the Cross where He will die in our place, assume the sin we amassed, and be our spotless sacrifice so we can once again fellowship with God. And it all starts right here, in book 1 of the Bible. The third act in the Play, Redemption, begins as soon as Fallen ends.

Abram would have picked up the symbolism easier than we. So know surely Abram is good. He has to understand God now. There can be no more doubt in his mind. I mean, how many times does God have to visit someone for them to get it? One of the promises of God is that Abram will have a son and that his heir will bless the world. But we read in the beginning of the Abram story that Sarai was barren, so it seems like this is an impossibility. Abram by this point is almost a hundred, and Sarai ain’t getting nay younger, so how are they going to have a son?

Abram and Sarai had the same thoughts. They knew how the human body worked. Sarai even says am I to feel pleasure again at this age? She knows that she has been through menopause and that is that. So somehow they come to the brilliant conclusion that Abram should take another wife. As if the first marital conversation Abram had went over so great. Has he forgotten how mad God was with everyone when he told Sarai to pretend to not be his wife? Now he is taking a second wife. I wish I heard the logic. You know, babe, I love you, right? Well, here’s the thing, God says I am supposed to have a kid, and who am I to go against God. I am fine not having any kids. You know that right. But he says… its not me really. But anyway, I love you, you know that, but, well, if you can’t have the kid, I was thinking, well, there’s this girl Hagar. She’s one of your servants, and well… Now to be fair to Abram, it was Sarai’s idea, but I know guys, and I imagine he had dropped hints around. And even if he didn’t, he is the husband. How about, Sarai, I Love you. I trust God. I don’t need Hagar. You are all the woman I need. But that is not what happens. He sleeps with Sarai’s servant girl, and she has a kid.

Ladies, how do you think this turned out? Cause some of the guys might be thinking, two wives, awesome. Tell them later. It turned out terrible. Sarai was jealous. Abram was getting it from both ends. The kid he had wasn't the kid God was talking about, and He tells Abram that. It gets to the point that Sarai kicks Hagar and her son Ishmael out of the house. Remember, it is 2000 BC. There is no welfare, there are no woman in the workplace, there is no food stamps. Woman were property to many of the surrounding culture, and women with kids were seen as damaged goods. She couldn’t marry, go to the wells, get a job. It was a death sentence. This is how Abrams second marriage turned out. And, as we shall see, it screws his kids up royally, who also take many wives, have infighting and jealousies, and betrayals, and everything else one can imagine. This is all found in Genesis 16. I suggest you read it. Side note, God finds Hagar by the side of the road crying and comforts here. He also blesses her and Ishmael and tells her he will be a great nation too, but a warring one. Muslims believe they are descendents of Ishmael.

And after all this happens we read

Genesis 18:1-9

1And the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. 2He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth 3and said, "O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. 4Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, 5while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on— since you have come to your servant." So they said, "Do as you have said." 6And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, "Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes." 7And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. 8Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

9They said to him, "Where is Sarah your wife?" And he said, "She is in the tent." 10The LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son."

Again God is giving grace upon grace. And he reminds Abram, who is now called Abraham that his wife Sarai, who is now called Sarah, will have a son. This is the second time since the debacle with Hagar that God has shown up to tell him this. The first time he gave them new names, and now he is just dropping a reminder. Look, I am really going to do it, so stop screwing around. It is like a “Save the Date” card for a wedding, and then the real invitation. What I want to draw you attention to here is the fact that three men and the LORD are used interchangeably. There are other instances where this occurs, and we need to ask ourselves what this means. I think it is fairly certain that there is a trinity without even having to stretch the text.

And Abraham’s story continues. Now, by this point God has shown up at least 6 times, Abe has messed up his marriage at least two, and over and over God has made covenants with him, really the same covenant, and shown Abraham that He will bear the burden Himself. You would think that Abraham is strong in his faith. He has been called righteous for believing God by this point, and so we should see a man who is secure in himself, his marriage and his God. And I imaging you can tell by my set up that that is not what we are going to see next. We are in Genesis 20 by this point in the narrative. Abraham is in a foreign country. And the king Abimelech is very powerful and scares Abraham. So what do you think Abraham does? That’s right, he talks to Sarah again, asking that she would pretend to be his sister. And the king finds out, and God is mad and the king is mad, and I imagine Sarah is mad. Sound familiar. Abraham has still not learned his lesson. This too will have consequences and his sons will do it to their wives. The lesson, men, is that your sons are watching you. They are going to be men the way you are men. Same for the woman. If you are not careful your sins will be their sins.

This story also resonates with me, and I think all of us. I became a Christian at 17 while in Jail after heavy drinking for a few years. After I converted I stopped drinking for quite some time. And then I had some trauma in my life, and instead of working though it I went back to what I knew best. I picked up a beer, and that was that. 6 years later I was in a detox crying out to God that he would save me form myself again. This is Abraham here, is it not? He gets scared and runs back to old habits. And this is all of us at times, isn’t it?

Now by this point surely God has had enough. Abraham has continually invented new ways to hurt himself, God, and those around him, and even repeats his mistakes. Surely God will find someone else, cancel the son that has been promised, and tell Abraham that he has had enough. But that is not what God does. After this God gives Abraham his son, and he calls him Isaac.

And it seems like everything should be all set. God came through on his promise, Abraham is finally obedient to God. The story is over, right? Wrong. After some time God comes to Abraham and the following takes place:

Genesis 22:1-14

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." 2He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." 3So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. 5Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you." 6And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. 7And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here am I, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" 8Abraham said, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together.

9When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." 12He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." 13And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14So Abraham called the name of that place, "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided."

This is another whole sermon, so let’s just pull out a few things. One, Isaac is a proto-Christ. In the same way Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son, so did God sacrifice his. We also see this in the provision of the sacrifice. God himself provided our sacrifice as well. When we were dead in our transgressions, when a knife was literally going to fall, God spared us and provided the sacrifice himself. There is also a lot of theology in the fact that Isaac carried the wood, Christ his cross, etc. If you have been to church before you probably have heard all this. If not, we will be talking about it at house church, and you are welcome to come. We are starting one on Tuesdays at 6:30 this week and would love to have you, as well as to the Wednesday house church, which starts at 5:30.

What is often missed in Christian circles is the sacrifice Abraham actually had to make. This is a guy that has not really trusted God whole heartedly up until this point. He has lied many times, let his wife move into other guys houses so they wouldn’t hurt him, took a second wife to make sure he had a heir. He is not the standard of faith. And now God has told him to take his son, the one promised him, the one who was to fulfill God’s blessing, the one and only heir he is to have, his flesh and blood, to take him, and kill him and then set him on fire. That is what God is asking. Not let him die, or let him move out, or anything else, but literally take him and stab him through the heart and kill him, his son, and set him on fire. Talk about a test of faith! And Abraham does it. He has finally learned his lesson. He knows that God will provide. I imagine he is getting more and more nerous as they climb the mountain. He has said God will provide, and he believes it, but he is still on the look out for the lamb he is supposed to kill. As they climb, he is saying, ok, where is it. I know you God. I know you are good. Where is it. And he keeps going. He gets to the top of the mountain, looks around. No sheep. Ok God, where is it. I love you, I know you will provide. Where is the sacrifice. He ties his son up. A little more frantic. Where is it. He realizes that he has to kill his son. Where is it. He pauses, looks around. Where is the sacrifice. Looks in his sons eyes. Lifts the knife, and an angel of the LORD, says, What are you doing”! You crazy, crazy man. Look, there is a ram right over there. Killing your own son. Didn’t you know God was going to provide? I mean really! Quickly, when we see Angel of the LORD in the Old Testament we should always ask is this Jesus. I am not saying it always is or isn’t, but we should ask the question. Here, I believe it is.

The other quick lesson here is God is seldom early but never late, which sounds trite, and the type of advise one would give to a friend in pain to try to make them feel better, but not really. I mean you want to comfort them, but you know they messed up so you say, well the reason you didn’t get the house you wanted is that its not time. You know, God is seldom early, but never late. And then you walk away self righteous because you sure helped them to understand God a little better, and they shouldn’t be sad anyway. And it is trite, but I can say it is true as well. I have experienced it many times.

Just last month I got my paycheck, paid my bills, like a responsible adult, and then found out I had 14 dollars in my account for the rest of the month. I have 2 kids and a wife, and although I could eat only Ramen for the 30 days, they couldn’t, plus diapers can only be rung out and reused 4 or 5 times before they are gross, so we were in dire straights. And I was praying, ok God. You are going to provide. And nothing happened. And then again. And Again. And again. Nothing. And then, when it was time to food shop, I got two checks in the mail for a few hundred dollars. I was not expecting them, though I was. I know how Abraham felt, sort of. I didn’t have to almost kill my kid, unless starving them to death cause you have no money counts, but I don’t think it does.

Now what is this story all about? As I said before we will discuss it more in house church, but it has some application for tonight. See, we are all Abrahams. We were all unworthy of a holy calling, but God has initiated with us anyway. We all mess up all the time. Maybe we don’t let our wives marry other men, but there is always times when we don’t trust God, when we take back our lives in spite of what we know, in spite of the promises of God. And God continually takes us back. God continually gives us grace. God continually reminds us that he has taken this covenant upon himself. God continually reminds us of His promises. Abraham’s pattern is our pattern. We are all only righteous because we have believed. There is no action or law you need to follow, no worship style or Bible study you need to do to be good. You only need to believe God.

Here is the thing though, at some point during your faith, God will test you. There will be things in your life that he will ask you to sacrifice. He is going to ask you to trust him unconditionally. He is going to, at some point, as for your all. There will be a moment in your walk, a moment you don’t think you can do, when God is going to topple your world and demand you obey Him, and Him alone. God never wanted Abraham to kill Isaac, he had already promised Isaac a nation unto himself. What God wanted was Abraham to unconditionally follow him, to love him more than anything else. He wanted Abraham to know the depth and breadth of his faith. Abraham screwed up many times before, and if was anything like me, he focused on those defeats. He knew he couldn’t measure up. God was showing him he could. He had the faith. He did believe.

When we decide to walk with God, we need to know that his friendship isn’t cheap. He demands we leave all and follow him. We have to go to a foreign country, leave our old life behind. We may have to climb a mountain with our most precious thing, maybe our family, or job, or world view, or social standing, or anything else, and sacrifice it on an altar. We need to be prepared to give God our everything. He demands no less.

But know as we do this, that he too gave us everything. He died so that we wouldn’t have to. He sacrificed himself that we may live. He sent his son as the sacrifice, providing for all of us in a way we never could for ourselves.

There is one more story we need to look at before we end tonight. It is actually found near the beginning of Abram’s walk of faith. We read:

Genesis 14:17-20

17After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). 18And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) 19And he blessed him and said,

"Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Possessor of heaven and earth;
20and blessed be God Most High,
who has delivered your enemies into your hand!"

And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

Abraham at this point has decided to follow God, and as he does, a man, Melchizedek, priest of the Most High God, a priest without beginning or end, shows up. And he reminds Abraham of the covenant God has made with him, and he gives him bread and wine. And we too have a priest without beginning or end who finds us on our walk of faith. He too brings bread and wine.

On the night he was betrayed Jesus took bread and be broke it and said, “This is my body, broken for you. Do this is remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup and said,” This cup is the new covenant of my blood. Do this every time you drink in remembrance of me.”

If you are a follower of Christ, I invite you to this table. Know that there is a Priest who has met you as well. Know there is one who sacrificed all that you might live. I invite you to search yourself and see what you are holding onto. What are the idols you have made? Is it religion, false righteousness, school, money, security. Sacrifice them on this altar. Know that God himself will meet you at the mountain and provide what you can not. I invite you to follow this Jesus once again, having your heart made clean. He knows that you can not do it perfectly. He has taken the entire covenant upon himself. He took it to the cross. Eat this bread, drink this juice, and know, that just like Abraham, it is your belief that has been credited you as righteousness. God has gone to Calvary alone. He has called you while you were still in Ur, and he walks with you today.

If you are here and you are not a Follower of Christ, I invite you to use this time to pray and meditate on what has been said. I tell you God is the same God who called Abraham form Ur. He is still calling. We don’t need to be good to be called his, we just need to follow him. Search Him out. Ask him to show himself. He is Faithful. He is a Good Father. He will provide your sacrifice as well.

Scott’s going to come up and we are going to sing some songs. I invite you, if you know this Jesus as your Priest, as your Sacrifice to come and eat. He has brought bread and wine. Let us remember him. Let us pray.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Book Chapter 3

Here is the third chapter of the book. Check out the new MERCYhouse Nights website too. Podcast to come.



Chapter 3

Global Warming: Mother Earth in Menopause.

Before I begin this chapter I want to get something out of the way. I believe in Global Warming. I even believe that humans have something to do with it. This is not a popular view in some of the circles I travel in, I know, but that needs to be stated before I go on to talk about Environmentalism. This chapter is not an attack of the science. You will not find in these pages a critique of their findings, though I will comment on their techniques (if you don’t know this, many things are modeled on computers). I think that whether you agree or disagree with Environmentalists, what will be valuable here is the philosophy that has latched on to it. There are still scientists who just want to collect data and fit it to curves. It is always philosophers who use the science to promote their ideas, not scientists. With that out of the way, let us proceed.

The Earth has always been studied. Après Post is not unique in this. Scientist have studied everything they could about the Earth. From platetechtonics to sunsets, the reasons the way the Earth and its components function the way they do have always tried to be explained. Weather, the most finicky of systems has always been predominant in mans study. And this is not just true of the Modern man. From the earliest days of civilization weather was of primary importance. Even today the weather controls most of what we do. It even has its own TV channel. This dependence of weather is really how Environmental Science got started. How and when it rained mattered for survival. If there was a way to make it rain more after planting, and less at harvest, all of humanity would benefit. And so people began studying the environment.

Something happened when I was a kid. I remember when everything was thrown out. You put your trash in a waste basket, and it disappeared. And no one seemed to have a problem with this. And then there was a huge marketing campaign, Earth received her own day, and recycling was introduced into schools and communities and homes. I am not saying recycling is bad, or that we should revert back to the old way of doing things. Recycling is probably good. But along with this campaign that was modern in its origins, snuck the Après Post, and the majority of culture still doesn’t know it. Earth receiving its own holiday was the beginnings of paganism. The Earth is now something to be revered and cherished. The Christian notion that God gave man the Earth to tend has been thrown out as archaic and barbaric. Part of this is because of the abuse of that power, but there is hostility to it nonetheless. We are not the gardener anymore. Après Post sees humans at best as a steward, and at worst as a parasite. A steward only maintains what isn’t theirs, and a parasite outright steals. It kills to survive. The Christian idea of ownership is gone.

This reverence for Earth is a new religion. It is complete with priests and followers, some of whom are more devout than the average Christian. But what is truly scary is that we have all been indoctrinated to the religion and follow it without realizing what we are doing. Again, I think recycling is a good thing, but we need to keep it in perspective. We should recycle because the Earth is a wonderful gift from God and as such should be honored. We were given a Divine mandate to keep the garden and subdue the Earth. And just like any other commands from God, we should follow this with fear and trembling. But is that why we recycle? I would say the answer is no, that is not why. Let me give you an example from my own life.

As a pastor, I have very many Christian friends. My wife and I also host a house church at our home twice a week. We have been doing this for years. Part of the house church deal is that different people cook and clean each week. Part of this cleaning is taking out the trash that house church has created. Let me stop here, and make another confession. My house doesn’t recycle. Before you get too mad at me, let me tell you why. Our trash company only gave us one bin for trash (I won’t name them ever for fear they will be blown up). They pick up the bin once a week and empty it. They have never given us recycling containers. Now you may think I should go get them, but then I have to take them to the dump, buy a dump sticker, sort my trash- and I am lazy. We would probably recycle if the company made us, but they don’t, and so being fallen, I take the easy and cheap way out. Whoever cooks and cleans at our house church immediately notices this fact. They ask where the recycling is, and I tell them the same story I just told you, and they have in the past, always accepted it, and thrown out everything. That is until this last year.

This new generation is different. They are all environmentalists. They have grown up knowing nothing else. When I explained to them this past September (2007) about why I don’t recycle, they attacked me. In their eyes I was now unredeemable. I could see my credibility as a spiritual leader falling away from me. It was the greatest offence I could have done. And the reason was that I was killing Mother Earth. Many of these people were new Christians, and I don’t know if they had all their theology down. They were not arguing that recycling was a Biblical mandate. Scripture was not brought into the conversation. They just knew that recycling was a supreme good. They didn’t question this assumption, or why it was so, it just was. What they didn’t see, is that without a Scriptural reason for recycling, they were in fact standing on old pagan truths. The Mother had to be revered and honored. Not to do so would bring her wrath upon us.

The idea that I would not protect the Earth was appalling to them. What they don’t see is that this fascination with, and strict adherence to recycling is a pagan value, or at least the current reasons to recycle are pagan in origin. What has been taught for 20 years now is that the Earth is to be valued above all else. If we don’t value her she will retaliate. The Earth has been anthropomorphized more than anything else in our current culture. She is a living organism. We call the rain forest her lungs. We speak about her wrath. We talk about robbing and raping her. And this is all from the “mainliners”. If we are to talk about environmental anarchists, the view is even bleaker.

The general idea is that if we continue to steal from our Mother, she will crush us. We need to give her homage. The Earth is not ours anymore. She is her own thing. We can’t just take what we want because it already belongs to someone. But Christianity says it was a gift to us. It is pagan culture that has worshiped the Mother goddess, and has always associated her with the Earth. It is no coincidence that Earth’s name is Gaia, or that we still call her mother. She is an ancient god. One full of power and wrath. And this is as true today as it ever has been.

We are told to recycle to reduce trash so that we don’t upset the ecosystem. We need to conserve because Earth has given us her bounty and we are squandering it. This makes her angry. She will stop blessing us unless we change our ways. Unless we reverse course and value her again, the goddess will unleash her vengeance. This is how environmentalists today talk, but I challenge us to listen to how Native Americans who practice their pagan religions also talk. It is hard to tell the two apart. In recycling we are offering our gifts back to the great mother. We are presenting our sacrifice. We have spent time washing our trash to make sure it is acceptable. We have sorted. We have separated. We have taken not just one trash can out, but many. Or we have driven it to the alter ourselves because our trash company didn’t give us multiple bins. We have changed our lifestyle to please the great mother, and hopefully know she will continue to sustain our existence. And this attitude doesn’t end with recycling.

(exapand)

How many people are now paying money to offset their environmental footprint? There are companies designed to do just that. We drive to work, but feel guilty, so we pay someone to plant a tree. Does this sound like a system of sacrifice to anyone else. There are priest who stand between us and the mother. They make offerings in our stead. We have infuriated the mother by driving and wasting her resources, so in return we will give her our money, via the priest’s planting of something, and hope the offering is good in her eyes. If we are real devout, be pay more than we need to. We give of our recourses so she will continue to give of hers. By offering sacrifice we hope to assuage our guilt and her wrath. This is pagan sacrifice.

(expand)

And what about Global Warming? As I already said, I believe the data. We are getting hotter, and it appears that man has something to do with it. But we also need to remember that there is an agenda being pushed. I am not saying we shouldn’t find better sources of energy than fossil fuels, we should. But we also need to remember that humans are not the enemy. If we are to believe some of the propaganda right now, we have doomed the Earth. It well would have been better had we never existed. We have elevated our mother to a higher position than ourselves. She has regained her position as goddess. And we are told that there will be consequences if we don’t change. The way these are phrased though, it seems more like a person’s revenge than a system trying to find equilibrium.

(expand)

Before we discuss any of this, we need to remember that a value system has already been cast when we speak of global warming. We are assuming it is a bad thing. It is immoral to let the Earth warm. We have to stop what we have done. We don’t know that this is true though, it may be better. No one knows, we have never had it happen before. Notice that, again, there are absolutes. Après Post brings its value and truths to the culture. Warming is bad. This is not Post Modern, this is a truth external to our thoughts. This is not to be debated, but rather accepted with blind faith. This is also I would argue, a pagan thought.

Pagan cultures have always operated on the idea of balance. If we push too hard one way, the gods will push back. We need to have yin and yang. Harmony is the highest good. We need earth, air, fire, and water[i]. Very often to day we are told that the Earth is on the brink, it is out of balance, we have moved too far in one direction. This is pagan ideology. There is not this stream of logic in Christianity. Sure, to every thing there is a season, but we don’t need balance per se. There is not a Chi inside us that will get out of whack; we don’t need to realign our chakras. What paganism tries to do is balance all things so that none revolt against us. We need to maintain the earth so it is not offended.

We assume when we talk about global warming that a direction is bad. Getting hotter means we have thrown off the balance. Directionalism is evil. It must be fixed, and if we don’t do it, nature will. To stop her vengeance, we must police ourselves. The pagan world is a see-saw. This is why sacrifice had to be made when things were wanted. The other side of the sales needed to be balanced. We can see this in the tales of magic in our own culture.[ii] There are consequences when people go to far. Scales are always fixed by the universe. Very often we see the tale of a witch hurting someone, only to be hurt herself. To get what she wanted, she had to sacrifice. She pushed, and the god pushed back. Balance was restored. Pagan balance.

And this is the Après Posts ideal today. The Earth must be balanced. For every tree we cut down, we need to plant another. As we take from mother earth, mother nature, Gaia, we must also give. And the idea is that we have taken too much. That is why we are unbalanced. We have not returned what we have used. We drill for oil and offer nothing in return. Nature will soon rebel against this. Our mother won’t be made a fool of for long. She will repay in kind what we have done. That is, unless we stop now. We need to restore the planet before it restores itself. If we maintain balance, maybe the goddess will be pleased and leave us be.

This is so akin to pagan earth cults it is scary. We have the experts prophetic visions, the environmentalist priestly offerings, and the adherents sacrifices and hopes. If we recycle enough, change our behavior to please her enough, drive less, plant more trees, then maybe we will be blessed. We have only stopped short of killing rams and spilling their blood, or having orgies to induce the gods to mate. Nature has become the most esteemed object of Après Post culture. We have given up trying to control it in the Modern sense- we no longer try to make it rain. But in quite another we are trying to control it all the time. The pagan sacrificial system was about control. It was about getting the gods to do what you wanted them to do. This is how we are now trying to control nature. We are giving her what we think she wants. We are apologizing for our previous sins. We are sacrificing our old culture at her alter to have her not wipe us out. Recycling and renewable energy are all about control and worship.

Balance and cycle are at the forefront of the pagan world view. They noticed seasons and lunar cycles, and saw truth in them. Eclipses and comets were bad omens for this reason. It meant things were out of order. Cycle and balance are also the new ideals of Après Post environmental science, and this is not just evident in attitudes about global warming. We see it in all area of this new study. Look at attitudes about forest fires. For ages man has seen forest fires as the enemy. The burned down civilizations and the resources needed for them. Fighting them was paramount in the Modern Mans mind. That is not the case today. Yes, we still fight them when they are close to houses, but our general outlook on them has changed. We see them as part of a forest’s life cycle. They are necessary. We let them burn to keep the forest healthy. We can’t cut down trees because that is bad, before can destroy whole wildernesses and it is good. It is the way our mother cleanses herself.

Fires are not a threat anymore, but a boon. They allow a forest to maintain itself. It is death and rebirth, the same thing that pagans saw in winter. It is not something to be stopped, but rather honored. As good children, we should look on with reverence and awe. Look how the Earth rejuvenates herself. She is so fantastic. Conquering this with human intervention is a vice. How dare we intervene. She knows better than us. And when houses burn, it is always our fault. We should have had more respect. We need to know our boundaries. It is we who have encroached on her, not visa versa. If we only didn’t live there, or were better about brining balance, mother nature would not have had to be so cruel with us. Fire is seen as her retribution for what we have done.

Environmentalists tell us there will be more fire until we have learned. It is the way nature restores balance. When we built houses in San Diego we upset her, and now we are reaping the consequences. The solution is to move out of her way, not fight the fires. The goddess needs her space. We no longer are the ones to bring order. We are pawns in natures game. It is the great goddess that will cleanse the world in fire and water. We did not bring order, but chaos. When we neglected her and did as we wanted, we invoked her wrath. Humans are the ones blamed for the rise in natural disasters, and the reason is that we unbalanced order. We need to begin revering nature, and when we do this properly, things will be as they should.

This reverence of Nature has infected all areas of Après Post culture. In his sermons, Mark Driscoll is constantly talking about Seattle’s love for dogs. In his town he says there are more dogs than children, and even movements to allow dogs to dine with humans at restaurants as co-equals. [iii] And he recognizes this as pagan. But I don’t think he goes far enough. In all areas of higher culture, there is a renewed and eerie love of animals. It is not just Seattle. There are whole industries devoted to clothing pets, massaging pets, grooming pets. People are worshipping nature. This is pagan. Animals have always been revered in pagan societies. Egyptian gods were half animal, as are most of the Native American deities. Cats, birds, wolves and crocodiles have always seen associated with pagan gods, if not gods themselves.

This all changed in Modernity. Animals during and after the Renaissance were dissected alive.[iv] They were seen as lower creatures. I am not condoning this, although we have benefited from it. Medicine and anatomy had it start in these gruesome experiments. At the same time, not even the dead bodies of humans could be experimented on. Throughout the modern age we performed all our tests on animals, sending monkeys into space well before humans. Cosmetics, vaccines, and medicine were all animal experiments first. And no one complained. Humans were better than their animal counterparts.

(expand)

But Post Modernity questioned this assumption. Man was reduced to only an animal with the capacity to make tools. Why should other creatures suffer? The Judeo-Christian truths were cast aside, and along with them the belief that humans were special. Animal rights advocates (a contradiction in Modern term) fought to ban animal testing. We were lowered to the position of ape. But this didn’t go far enough. Like everything else, Après Post picks up where Post Modernism left us. Post Modernity shattered the truth that we are higher than animals, and Après Post filled the vacuum of hierarchy. Something has to reign supreme, and Après Post fills this void in the top tier with the very things that were below us. Animals now reign supreme. And this must be the case where nature is worshipped.

We feed animals human food. We give them human medicine. There are even animal psychiatrics and animal anti-depressants. We need to keep our gods happy. Even science must bow down and worship the creature. The other night I was watching Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe was on[v]. They were in the Arctic studying a Greenland Shark. The object was to get one alive, tag it, and release it, but in the struggle to bring it to the surface, it suffered injuries that were fatal. The animal had to be killed. They had to apologize for this brutal “murder” at least 4 times throughout the show. They explained that they didn’t want to kill it. The entirely of the episode they justified the massacre. But it is only a shark. It is not even endangered. There are plenty. But this was seen, even by the scientists, as a sin. This is not a Modern Perspective. Only when nature and animals have been elevated over humans do we need to apologize for killing them. It is not our right to hunt and study anymore, but privilege, and we need ot recognize it as such. This is akin to our ancestors offering back part of the animal or another offering after a hunt. The spirit of the animal needs to be appeased.

Pets used to be a tool for us. They hunted the mice, or kept the wolves away from our flock. They didn’t live in our house. If they got sick, we shot them. They were below us. Not so anymore. There are now day cares for dogs so they are not lonely, gourmet food, trendy outfits. We buy things with our money and offer them to our pets. This is animalism, a form of pagan worship. Look at India for some perspective. Rats, snakes and cows are revered. They are adorned with beads. They can not be killed. In the temple of the rat, humans who can barely feed themselves, offer the best food in their house to these rodents. And this is far closer to our Après Post culture than we openly admit. Cows are sacred and can not be harmed in India. We laugh since they are food for us, but I dare you to kill a dog and cook it. The very thought huts our Après Post sensibilities, but in most of the world, dogs are food. We would be arrested and labeled a monster if we were to hurt a dog today. This is paganism.

(expand)

I am not saying torture of animals is ok. But if you buy a dog and want to eat it, I say go ahead. It is your right as a human to eat any animal you want. Vegetarianism and Veganism are the height of this pagan animalism. The belief that it is wrong to kill animals is foreign to almost all cultures. If Modern Man were vegetarian, he would have died. Animals have always been food. Veganism is even more extreme. Not using any product made by animals is absurd. It appeals to the animals rights. Only in pagan cultures do animals have rights. Modern Man gave rights only to humans. They were the pinnacle of creation. They were the height. Paganism sees all nature a valuable and worthy of protection.

The outcry against animal testing, an Après Post value, can also be seen through this animalistic paganism. It is almost worse to animal test that to not recycle. All products tell us they are not tested on animals. Movies make sure we know no animals were harmed in the making of the film. But shouldn’t a rat get cancer rather than a human? The answer is only yes if we hold man as God’s special creation. If all nature is sacred and we disturb it, then we are evil. The value of nature has almost taken over in present day America. Après Post’s usurpation of the Judeo- Christian philosophy of creation is almost complete.

(expand)

Even the rise of new, “humane” or no kill traps for pests is a pagan nature worship. Mice and rats are pests. They are not to be ought and set free in a field. They bring death and disease. But today we think they have just as much right to live as you or I. People think that is we who invaded their territory, and so we should show compassion. God gave Man the Earth though, not vermin. Again, I point to Hindu Temples where rats are free to eat of the human priest’s food. Things thought dirty and pests by Modernity have been elevated to the position of rightful owners and co-inheritors of the world. Humans are now seen as the intruders, and intruders are always bad. It is we who invade and disrupt. It is we who hurt the planet. It is we who are the menace.

And science has been pointed to for justification of this philosophy. Biology has shown man to be no different from other animals. It has taken man of his pedestal and placed him firmly at the base of the animal kingdom. Environmentalist show how all creatures are needed for the survival of ecosystems, and then set about to prove how Man’s fishing and hunting has violated the balance. We are not allowed to kill mountain lions, even when they are a threat to us, because our mother needs them. They are more valuable than we. It is the animals who are the order and also maintain it. We are seen as intruders. The previous environment is more important than the people who want to change it. And in a pagan society this is true. It is only by appeasing nature that we can guard against it. We don’t violate the sacred because it will come back and kill us. The cycle and balance must be maintained. The mother goddess is something to be worshiped. Nature something to be revered, not subdued. The Judeo-Christian ethic of filling the Earth and creating society is sacrosanct to paganism. The gods are the ones who create, and we need to obey them.

I want to give one more example of Après Post pagan value of the environment, but at first it is not going to seem it. The current demonizing of cigarette smoking has its origins in paganism. I know it doesn’t seem to fit anything I have said so far, but bear with me. Again, I feel I need to buffer this section by stating I am not pro-smoking. I realize that it is bad for you. I used to smoke, and know its addictive properties. I think there are valid Christian reasons to not smoke, we are God’s Temple, we shouldn’t be controlled by anything but God and his Holy Spirit, we need to not gratify the desires of the flesh, but these are not societies reasons for not smoking.

At the same time, Christianity has always placed a value on the individual. Modern Society, based in Judeo-Christian values, also held the individual over the group. This value was so high the Declaration of Independence, one of the pinnacles of Modern Political Thought, gave the individual the right to throw off society and government if they infringed upon his basic rights. Paganism values the group though, above the individual. And this is the root of non-smoking campaigns. They are not aimed at helping people cope with addiction, or give them a better life. Thy are aimed at giving the groups environment a cleaner feel. Smoking is seen as pollution.

If this were not the case we would not have so many bans on smoking in public. The idea that cigarettes can impact an entire parks air is absurd. However, in an age where environment is worshipped in all other aspects of culture, can we really be surprised by this? I am sure second hand smoke hurts, but outside? Is there not already all the chemicals from cigarettes in the air from a myriad of sources. But smoking is a visual sign of pollution. The smoker is putting his or her pleasure above the environment of the group. This is akin to the disgust at my not recycling. I have put my private desires to be lazy over and above that of mother earth and the group. And remember, if we don’t honor the great goddess, she will punish us. Her punishment will not be just on me though. My pollution effects the entirety of humanity. When she lets loose her vengeance, it will be all of us who suffer. The group must come first. I have to be coerced into recycling or not smoking so that everyone isn’t hurt.

Smoking does fit into the earth cult’s logic. We need to cleanse and purify all so that we all are saved. People must lay down and do as the group sees best to make sure the mother is not aroused to enact her vengeance. When laws are enacted to stop smoking, it is not for the individual. It is for the group and the environment. This trumps all, since it is our god.

Pagan cultures have always been divided into too schools, earth cult and sky cult. These two were typically at war. Some pagans worshipped animals, and some the stars. Both thought the other wrong, or praying to an inferior power. It is interesting to note that Après Post fuses both of them together. Earth cult may seem to have more power at the present, but it is firmly rooted in sky cult creation. They need each other to stand. Cosmology alone can not spread pagan ideals, and environmentalism alone has no cosmic beginning. Together though, they define a new (old) way of seeing this world. Après Post world view combines all paganism together, from astrology, to mother earth cult, to animalism, to form a coherent world view the likes of which will change our country forever. Firmly grounded in science, it touts it new truth around as unquestionable. It holds a new morality that the west has not seen for thousands of years. Nature is held in the highest honor, and humanity cast down as the greatest threat. Balance and cycle are now the norm. From Universes that birth other Universes eternally, to the death and rebirth of forests, circles and cycles now define our culture. The sharp line of Judeo-Christian creation, validated by Modern Science has been replaced. Time is not linear anymore. Progress not desired. Change is bad. The highest ideal is balance. And this is just the beginning.

Over the next few chapters we will leave science behind. It has played it part in this new world view, but it only the base. It is the justification, but the morality is found elsewhere. We will be examining pop culture and politics to find out not only what Après Posts holds as its ideals, but also how it is effectively communicating them to the masses. Film is the new medium for this culture. We will be looking mostly at it in its various forms. Written word had become a thing of the past for effective communication of culture. TV, movies, and the internet are where the current Après Post philosophers reside. And so we will continue to study Après Post culture through what it transmits itself best through. As we look at film we will see clear picture arising of the pagan values that Après Post holds so dear. We will now look at Television in all its glowing glory.



[i] Paglia

[ii] Buffy, the Craft

[iii] Mark Driscoll’s sermons

[iv] Find source

[v] Dirty jobs episode number

[vi] I dream of Genie

[vii] 3’s company

[viii] Simpsons episode

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Second Sermon in the Creation to Christ Series

Here is this weeks sermon. I also blog on MERCYhouse Nights website now, here is the link:
MERCYhouse Nights Website.
It has postings about the new church plant, my podcast, and pictures soon.

Anyway, here is the sermon

Glad to have so many of you back (I hope). For those of you who are new, my name is Nate, I am the pastor of MERCYhouse Nights. We are still at the start of the sermon series for this semester, “From Creation to Christ”, where we will be walking through the entire Bible in 12 weeks, hitting the major points and big themes.

This week we are in Genesis 2 and 3. Let me say before we begin that I am going to be talking about a lot of hard things this week. If you can make it through this sermon, you will make it through anything. This is the section of the Bible known to theologians as the Fall, so we will be talking about some hard things this week. Bear with me. We will be looking at these two chapters in 2 sections, first, there is the special creation of Man, which we won’t spend as much time on, but if you join a housechurch you will have opportunity to discuss it deeper, and then we will get to the bulk of the sermon, which is the Fall. Let’s jump in. The other thing to keep in mind as we read these sections of Scripture is that I had to leave many things out for the sake of time. I also will touch upon some dicey topics, some of which are kind of controversial. If you have questions, feel free to ask me or Scott or any of the Campus Ministers we have her tonight. I would encourage you to do it in fact. I also want to say that people have the freedom to disagree with me. You may be wrong, but you have that freedom.

In Genesis 2 we read

Genesis 2:7-9

then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

This section is very dense, and as such, I am going to give a lot of information in a very little period of time. The first thing one would notice as one reads this in the Hebrew is the way the Bible is talking about God. In Genesis 1 we learned that the word for God was Elohim. This is true. It means God, but it is sort of generic. Here we see something new. In most of your translations it reads the LORD God, with Lord all capitols. When we see this in English, what we need to be aware of is that it is a proper name in Hebrew. This is the actual name of God, in a similar way as Nate is my name. The Hebrew word is YHWH. Notice there are no vowels. This is because the name was so holy the Hebrews wouldn’t say or write it. Consequently, we don’t really know how to pronounce it, Yahweh being what scholars have settled on.

Why am I making a big deal of this? Well, this is a different side of creation than we saw last week. What we see from the first moment is a much more personal God, one who has a name that he calls himself. That is not to say we didn’t see a personal God last week, in fact that was the point of my sermon, but there is marked difference. Some people see these as 2 different creation stories, and the name change is one of the reasons they point to. What I believe we are seeing in the transition from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2 is not 2 different stories, but two perspectives on the same story. Genesis 1 is giving the big picture. It is an overview of all creation. And then, from the Cosmic, the Bible zooms in to explain human creation further. This is in part, because as I said last week, we are God’s pinnacle of creation, we are his crown Jewel, and as such special attention is given us, even in the telling of our creation. So we read a name a creator, instead of a generic God.

Along these same lines, what we see when we look at the creation of man are two things: 1. God formed him with his own hands, 2. He breathed into him life. I am not going to talk here about the first, though, like last week, there are many analogies to artists and creators today to draw, as well as laboring for ones love, etc. But we covered those aspects last week. What concerns us here is the statement, breath of life. In Hebrew this is the word neshema, so God breathed in to Adam, the neshema. So what, we may think. The neshema is important. Earlier in Genesis we read that all creatures have the breath of life.

Genesis 1:30

And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life,

But here the word is different. In Genesis 1, as well as when life of animals is talked about in the Law (which we will get to) and other places, the word is nefesh. This roughly translates into life force. It is like a soul, but not one. It is what people see when they look into the eyes of their pets and swear they have emotions. The fact is, according to the Bible, they do. But they are not the same. Humans have the neshema. This is a soul. The image we need to have of this is God stopping down into the Earth, molding Adam with his hands, and then breathing some of his own essence, the neshema into him. It is an intensely personal and intimate image. It is CPR to the nth degree.

The next thing God does is present Adam with a gift. He puts him in a garden that is lush and vibrant and full of life. Once more we see a God with a plan, the garden was created first, and a God of Grace, who gives good gifts before they are deserved. We see God initiating with Adam after he is created. And there is a tree in the Garden, a tree with a very long name, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are going to be consequences to this later, as we shall see. Let’s move on. We read:

Genesis 2:15-25

15The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

18Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23Then the man said,

"This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man."

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

There is a ton happening here. First, God gives man a job. Today we think of work as evil, and as we shall see, it can be today, but it was in the initial plan of creation. Adam was made to be a gardener- it was his calling. Work is not bad, but a God given gift. That may sound strange today. We have all worked jobs we have hated. So when I say work is a gift, we shirk. But, have you ever done something you love? I have a friend Tony and he loves wood working. He does it in his free time. He had built bowls and boats, and many other things. Wood working is hard work. There is a lot of labor involved, but he loves to do it in his free time. I image we all have something like this, maybe not woodworking, but writing, or painting, or knitting. Those are all work. That is the gift that God gives Adam. Adam was created for this work, and I imagine loved it.

And God also charged Adam to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And the question always is, “Why did God put it there?” And the simple answer is so that Adam had free will. God wanted to love and be loved by creation, but love that is not a choice is not love. Have any of you seen the Stepford Wives. The plot is that the men of the neighborhood turn their wives into robots. They look like their wives, cook like them, etc., but they can never disagree with the husbands. We shudder when we see it and are offended. This is because these robots didn’t love their husbands. Love has to be a choice, so God, loving his creation and wanting it to be free, allows for there to be a choice not to love him back. We can get more into this in housechurch.

One quick aside. For the first time in creation we see that something isn’t good. Did you catch it? It is not good for man to be alone. We will revisit this later.

Then we see God try to create a partner for Adam, and it seems like God is bubbling about. He is making giraffes and manatees and presenting them before Adam and asking him if this is good enough. And they aren’t, so God makes more things. Or is that what is really going on? Remember, God is a God of plan and order. I highly doubt he expected Adam to fall in love with an aardvark. So what is really going on? The tip is that Adam gets to name all these creatures as they pass. To get the full impact of this, we again have to remember last week’s sermon, or know our ancient cultures. I told us that to the Hebrews words had power. More than this, to all other cultures around, if you could know the name of a god, you had power over it. As Adam is naming these creatures, the ancient reader would have heard two things: 1. He has power over them, and 2. That he was allowed to participate in creation. God didn’t make him guess the names he had already come up with. God allowed Adam to partner with him in Creation. He as allowed to name them. God has given some of his authority over to this brand new creation. He is giving Adam a stake. He is also, by contrast, going to show Adam how good the real partner is.

I imaging God telling Adam he will have someone soon, and then God shows him all these animals. Adam is excited, but disappointed that none of them are suitable. Sure they are beautiful and exotic, but they are not right for him. And then God says, ok. I have one more thing to do. He causes Adam to fall asleep, and creates woman out of him. And he uses Adam’s rib to do so. Now, I know it is urban myth that men have one less rib that woman, this is not true, but there is significance to being created from the rib. God, in a symbolic way is saying that woman and men are equal. He didn’t take from the head so she was above Adam, nor from the foot so she could be trodden on, He took for the middle.

And so God creates woman and then brings her to Adam. This is the first wedding in history. We have God the Father walking the Bride to the waiting and expecting husband, Adam. Remember, it is not good for man to be alone. If you don’t believe me, ask any married man how much better his life is now. He has a comb, clean clothes, real food. It is not good for men to be alone. All we would do is play video games and eat junk. Anyway, what does Adam do when he sees his bride? He sings a song! Guys, take notes on this. This is how you woo a woman. I don’t care if you can sing or not, woman can’t resist it. That is why rock stars are so popular. It all stared here. Blame Adam if you thin it is unfair. I also imagine he did a stupid dance as he sang. It probably looked like this:

This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man."

(Imagine me actually doing a stupid dance)

But we have to cut him some slack, it was his first attempt at song writing, and there were not other woman around to teach him how to dance, so he can be a little of rhythm.

Another thing we see in this text. Does Adam say, “Well, she’s nice, but what else do you have?” NO. He doesn’t shop around. She is his, and he hers. He is not pointing out ways other women look, or things he sees as imperfections. Adam is a one woman kind of man so we need to be too. Same for Eve. She is brought to Adam, and then marries him. She is not asking God for another guy. They don’t hook up to see if they are compatible. They don’t do friends with benefits to make sure the magic won’t wear off. They don’t move in together. They aren’t looking for the next best thing. They see each other and get married. I am not saying that you should all marry the first person you see, but we do need to know that shopping around, testing the product, sleeping with people, is also not in God’s plan. He doesn’t create multiple people and let them chose the best, or go for test runs. He brought one woman to one man, and it was enough. And it was good.

There is another lesson here for all of us today. Men, you are the ones who are supposed to court. Eve doesn’t sing a song. She stands there trying to not laugh at the guy, but thinking he is really sweet. He is pursuing her. As I said, men and woman are equal, but there are still gender roles. I know that isn’t popular today, and I actually bet the men are more upset by this that the ladies, but please bear with me as we flush out what this means.

Ladies, don’t you want the guy who is going to buy you dinner, hold the door, sing you songs, write you poetry, make you feel loved. Of course you do. So hold out for it. Wait for the guy who is doing it all for you. Don’t pursue them. Guys, that means you have to step it up. Don’t wait for her to ask you out. You do the work. You sing the songs. We need to think of this as a dance. It only works if one leads and the other follows. But the follower is following voluntarily. The guys asks the girl to dance, and if she accepts he escorts her to the dance floor, guides her in the dance, and protects her from other dancers. This happened naturally and we don’t even realize it. This is the kind of roles we see in the Bible. Remember though, the lady can opt out of the dance or wait for the guy she really wants to dance with. It is not a dictatorial thing. We are going to revisit this in a moment.

Let me also say here, Adam is not the leader to be submitted to unquestionably by Eve. God is the leader. Adam has an authority over him. This needs to be true today also. Guys, you are not the head, Christ is. If you are not being a good guy, God will kick you r butt, because these women here are His children and he loves them and wants them protected. Ladies, this is why finding a guy of good character is important. You don’t want to be submitting to men who are not submitting to God themselves. It is a terrible idea.

Eve marries Adam, and things are great. They are both naked and unashamed. And then the story continues. We read in Genesis 3:

1Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.

He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" 2And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" 4 But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

The serpent enters with his eye set on making Man fall, and he does. How does he do it? The same way he continues to do it- by lying with the truth. He asks Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat of any tree?” He knows God didn’t say that. He is trying to twist the truth; there is a prohibition of eating from one tree, and at the same time start putting seeds of doubt into Adam and Eve’s hearts. The question is really a question about God’s goodness, is in not? He is telling them that God isn’t really providing for them, is He? An Eve answers him, “No, that’s not what God said, but he did say we can’t touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Did God say this? NO.

At this point, I imagine the serpent is touching the fruit of the tree all over and he is not dying. He knows that they were told just not to eat of it. They could touch it all they wanted. It is probably a good thing they weren’t touching it, however Eve needs to know that is their rule not God’s. Here is why it is good. Playing with temptation is a fine line. By playing with forbidden fruit, the temptation to taste it is a lot greater. What Eve had done by having the rule not to touch it was keeping a fence between her and sin. I do this is my life. I have anti-pornography software on my computer. Not because I had a huge problem with it, but because it lessens the temptation. I know every time I go to a website, it is logged and emailed to a trusted friend. Another way I do this is to not be alone with women in my house. I have set up a fence. Now is it a sin to be alone with women, no, it is my rule to keep my life above reproach. It is noble what Eve is doing, but she forgot it was not God’s words. That gave Satan a foothold.

The moral here is: know what Scripture says. If we only have half truths, or partial knowledge, or we make up our own things and add them to the Bible, like God helps those who help themselves- Benjamin Franklin, not the Bible- we walk a very narrow wire. All it takes is for someone to show us what we believed extra Biblically was wrong for us to stumble into sin. Know your Bible. It is the greatest defense. What does the Bible actually say about sin and sins? If we don’t know, how will we know what we can eat, and what we can’t? Take slavery, for example. People say the Bible justifies slavery, but in fact, it does just the opposite. They say this because in some letters Paul tells slaves how they should behave, and one of these ways is to submit to their owners. People read this, take it out of context, and say that the Bible justifies slavery. Now people abuse Scripture to justify their sins, but the Bible itself says that slavery is an abomination, and in 1Timothy lists enslaving with the characteristics of sinners, along with murder and stealing. If you hadn’t read 1Timothy though, how would you know that? Also, if you didn’t have the context of the letter Paul wrote about slaves, knowing that the slavery or Rome was different than American Slavery, and that they were to submit to win people to Christ, that the letter was written when slavery was ok, and was part of culture, and so it needed to be addressed, you wouldn’t know this. Or if you had not read Philemon, you would not know that Paul tells a man to free his slave. And the same is true for most hot button topics. But I digress.

And as the serpent is sitting on the tree of good and evil, touching the fruit, he is again planting seeds of doubt in Eve’s mind. He is questioning God’s goodness. Why would God tell you not o touch this? I am touching it and not dying. He is keeping something from you. And so Eve eats.

Ladies, Eve gets a bad wrap. We all blame her for sinning, and it is seen as Adam being an innocent bystander, right. Now, Eve did sin first, make no mistake, but where is Adam when all this is going down? Right next to her! In the Hebrew text the “yous” the serpent speaks are plural. Adam is right there, not saying a thing. Guys, this is our sin. I see it all the time- passive, weak men who won’t shepherd or protect their woman. Why hasn’t he stepped in and set the serpent straight. Why is he not telling Eve we can touch it, just not eat it, why doesn’t he stop her from eating. Guys, as I talk about gender roles, this is why women get upset. Often we don’t take the lead, and so the woman is forced to. We are passive, letting the woman plan the dates, pick the restaurant, cook the meal. We want to hang out, watch the game, veg, and so we let woman pick up our slack. The reason woman rebel against this is valid. Stop doing it. Be men. Lead, protect, guide. Now I am not saying be a jerk or force woman to follow you. Go back to the dancing. We need to be the ones who ask the lady to dance, make sure her feet aren’t getting stepped on, make sure she feels safe. Not the other way around.

And Eve eats the fruit, and gives some to Adam, and he eats the fruit, cause she told him to, like a weakling with no spine, and the entire world changes. Here too is something I think most of us are guilty off- we sin, and then bring others down with us. I know I do it. I used to be in a Fraternity and loved getting the new members to drink as alcoholically as me. We could share the brokenness and then I wouldn’t be as alone. I don’t think me and Eve are unique in this either. Most of us want others to sin with us, or bring them into our sin, don’t we? If we are not alone, we don’t fell it as bad. We have comradery in our shame. It all started with the first sin too. The story goes on.

8And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" 10And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself." 11He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" 12The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." 13Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

God comes back, and he knows something is up. Where are you, he asks, like the Creator of the Universe is fooled by two people hiding in a bush. And Adam says he was afraid because he was naked. Remember, not a few verses earlier he was naked and not ashamed. He saw Eve naked, she him, and all of it in front of God. God made them. He has seen all their junk before. There is no reason to feel shame, but the universe has changed. And God asks who told him he was naked, knows he ate for the tree, and is giving Adam the opportunity to fess up. What a great time for Adam to be a man. He can say I ate it, I didn’t shepherd my wife and she ate it, we are sorry, etc. But instead, what does he say?


“The woman you gave me! She made me eat! This is not my fault. It is hers, or yours, I mean you brought her to me. What a courageous and stupid thing to say to God!

And then God asks Eve what she has done. What a time for her to be a woman. God, I ate from it, I am sorry. But what does she do? She passes the buck too. It is the serpents fault.

Notice one more thing before we move on. Who sinned first? Eve. Who was blamed? Adam. Again, there are gender roles. Guys, we are the leaders of the house. When things fall, it is our fault. When we die and give an account, and we will, it is not just for ourselves, but for our wife and kids. Hear this. This is a huge responsibility. If you think, “I will just do my thing and let my wife do hers”, or she is working here butt off and you are watching TV, or anything else, know you will be called to task on it. If your wife doesn’t feel loved, guess whose fault it is- yours. If your wife eats of the tree of good and evil, guess whose fault it is- yours. Let’s move on before we run out of time.

Then God tells the guilty parties what is going to come of their sin. I don’t think God is cursing them in the way we think. When I think of a curse I think of a witch who makes evil come upon someone regardless of what they have done. That is not God’s curse. God is more telling like it is. He is not imposing this upon them so much as telling them the consequences Adam and Eve incurred upon themselves. He is telling them how the universe had just changed. We are going to skip over some of this. We read

14The LORD God said to the serpent,

"Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel."

I don’t want to talk too much about the serpent’s curse here, though we will come back to it in a few months. What is important is verse 15. It is called the proto-evangelium by theologians. It is recognized as the first prophecy of Christ in the Bible. The idea that a man will try to be killed by a serpent, but instead Satan will have his head crushed will become on of the things the Messiah is supposed to do though out the Old Testament, and what Jesus did. God goes on.

16To the woman he said,

"I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you."

Here God is telling Eve a few things. First, one of the consequences to sin is that our relationship with ourselves has changed. We are not who we were supposed to be. There wasn’t supposed to be pain, now there is. This is a huge change. I deal with this all the time. I don’t know how many students I meet with, who, because of sin have hurt themselves. In a college town, this mainly has to do with booze and sex. People drink alcoholically and their lives are ruined. They don’t even know who they are anymore. But even more common is the sex. I see people having sex outside of marriage and thinking it is no big deal. And then they are crying in my house. The other person wasn't in to them, or it was just for fun, or had an STD. Today we see things like random hookups or friends with benefits and we believe the lie that it is ok, that there need not be emotional involvement, that it can be just for fun. Here is the truth. It can’t be. I have seen so many people devastated by it, or devastating someone else. My own story has this as well. I came to college, was in a Christian relationship, and we started sleeping together. The relationship lasted longer than it should have, because physicality bonds people together, whether they want to be or not. (A chemical called oxytocin, which is as addictive to the brain as heroine in released when we have sex, and then the body craves more of it. This is a good thing in marriage, because it also bonds people together, stimulating the emotional response center of the brain, but outside can be very damaging, binding people who otherwise shouldn’t be, and creating a need to get more of the chemical the way they did last time.) When we did break up, there was all the added stress of sin and unhealthy bonding. We ended up just sleeping together to get our fix, and both ended up becoming very hurt by the entire thing. I was changed by it. She was changed by it. I still live with the pain and sorrow of the whole thing. Our relationship to ourselves are effect by sin.

So are relationships to others. We read that Eves desire, or woman’s desire, will be for, or against her husband, and he shall rule over her. This is the other aspect of broken femaleness and maleness. On the one hand we had the weak guy who was not protecting his wife, right. The passive, TV watching, let the wife plan everything guy. We look at him, and woman say, there is no way he can lead me, and so they do it. One the other hand is this guy. The one who will rule over his wife. He is abusive, mentally, and physically, controlling. We look at him and woman say, there is no way I am going to submit to that either. And let me say if there is abuse in the relationship, get out. You don’t need to submit, it is not sin to not submit to abuse. Get out. If you are a guy and I find out you are abusive, I will show you why the elders of a church are called to be soldiers, warriors and tough. That is not a threat, it is a promise. A shepherd is supposed to protect his sheep, and I will do it. Shepherds used to have to kill wolves. Remember that.

So we have brokenness on both sides of men. And woman shouldn’t or don’t want to follow the lead of either. Very often what I see is men being passive at first, and then the woman takes over everything, and then they get mad at her for trying to be the guy. Guys, you need to not be either passive or controlling. As men of Christ, we are called to love as Christ loved the church- and he died for it. This means very often, the woman’s needs come before yours. That you are sacrificing to see her thrive. Again, ladies this is why it is important to find a good Christian man who is submitting to God. And guys, you need to submit to God, these ladies are crown jewels of Gods creation. If you are passive or abusive, He will not be happy, and although He is abounding in live and slow to wrath, he also pours wrath out sometimes.

Ladies, this is your curse however, and you are equally as broken as the guys. I see men who want to lead in a Godly way all the time, and independent, self actualized, modern woman won’t let them. I am not saying you can’t have your own life or anything like that. But what I see is woman frustrated men won’t lead them, so they put them down, complain, and then take the lead themselves. Or on the flip side, to find a strong leader, they search out abuse, which seems odd, but happens, or guys who are no good. Hear me ladies. Wait for him to sing you a song, and then respond to it. If he isn’t taking the lead, encourage him to, and don’t do it yourself. This may seem scary. Talk to my wife about how scary it actually is. She handed me the checking account when we got married so that she didn’t have to be involved with money, which was hard because she likes control, and I didn’t pay all our bills for a few months and her credit took a hit. But instead of taking the control back, she let me lead, even when I was terrible at it, and encouraged me when I was good. Today I am the leader I am partially because of actions like these.

I want to give another example of how sin changes our relationships to each other. As I said, I had been sexually active before marrying Sarah. Now after we were married, it brought a lot of pain into our first year. She was always comparing herself to my other girlfriends, wondering if she was good enough physically, if I still wanted the others, if she was beautiful enough. And I don’t think Sarah s unique in this. We may think sex is harmless, or see it harms ourselves, but it harms others more. Guys, do you really want to cause harm to your wife, the love of your life, by making her feel inadequate. Same for the ladies. Do you want them wondering of they would prefer another more, if they just settled, etc.

And finally we get to Adam.

17And to Adam he said,

"Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree

of which I commanded you,
'You shall not eat of it,'

cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return."

And God tells Adam that not only has humans relations to themselves changes, and their relations to each other, our relationship to creation has changed. It is no longer easy. Jobs are no longer fun. What used to be in submission to us, is now in rebellion, in the same way that we used to be in submission to God and are now in rebellion.

And then God does something interesting. He kills and animal and clothes Adam and Eve. We read:

20The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21And the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

This whole interaction is interesting for number of reasons. First, remember what the penalty or eating from the tree was- death. Not death sometime, not spiritual death, although these are definitely true, but real, instant death. Right away we see God giving grace. We also see a sacrifice being made. As we walk through the Bible, what we are going to see is there is always a sacrifice for sin. This peaks at the Cross, where God sacrifices himself for all our sins.

And finally, God gives his kids clothes. Remember, they were wearing fig leaves. I brought some leaves to show you how crappy they are as clothes. I imagine even in His anger and grief, this scene was still funny. So like a good Father, he continues to provide for his creation, even after it revolted against him. This is a God of love and mercy, not judgment and wrath. Finally we get to the end, and we see the trinity talking to each other once again.

22Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" 23therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

And even here there is grace. God blocking the tree of life was grace. Now we may not see it, but imagine living eternally in this world. Places where torture never ended, where we have to bare our sin for eternity, where rapes and traumas must be in our mind for all time. Imaging living in the ghetto, or starving for hundreds of years. Imagine having to toil forever. No, this was grace.

And this is also not the end of the story. It is just the beginning. What happened when Adam sinned, happens when we sin, is four fold. We hurt our relationship with ourselves, others, creation and God. We live today in a broken world where people are abusive, there is murder and sexual molestation. Work is no longer fun, but toil. We try to rule over others, or we are passive aggressive. We have holocausts and genocides and atrocities. We look at the world though, and see something more. We know that we were created for something better. We wonder why this place so jacked up. Here is the answer. Sin has entered the world. But it is not the end.

Yes there is sin, but there is also a loving God who is providing for us through it, who is giving us grace all the time. There is sin, but there is also hope. Although the serpent seemed to win the battle, his head has been crushed. We read in the New Testament that although all sinned through one man Adam, so too can all be made righteous through one Man, Jesus Christ. When Jesus hung on the cross he put himself in the same place that many of us have been in. He was convicted unjustly, beaten, maimed, mocked spit on. He was betrayed by one of his closest friends and abandoned by the others. The men, who just hours before said they would be with him until the end, didn’t even go to his grave. And as he hung on a cross, a word which has been so sterilized we forget that for thousands of years it was the prime way to torture some one, a machine that slowly suffocated the victim and allowed them to be eaten by vultures and other birds and rats and everything else while alive, a device that hung people up by their hands and feet, naked for all to see, he said, “Father forgive them.” In fact, the language is such that it is implied he kept saying it. A man who couldn’t breath kept uttering the words, “Father forgive them.” “Father forgive them.” “Father forgive them.”

The God who created these miserable little wretch called humans, the same creatures who cause so much heart ache and pain to each other, and to him, hung on a cross, dying in our place, so we could be reconciled to Him. This God who formed Adam out of the dust of the earth, who initiated a relationship with his creation, is the same God who initiated in the last way he could, and sent his Son to die that we might live. And through this act, we can be reconciled. We can be reconciled to each other, to ourselves, to creation, and to God.

I invite you now, if you want this reconciliation, to ask for it. God is stooping down from creation; He entered into it, He shared in your pain, and wants to bare the burden for you. All you need do is ask. He is there in the same way he was there for Adam. He made the sacrifice, now let him clothe you with it. He has done all the work. Our fig leaves won’t work any more. Ask for his clothing, for his provision. Ask that you might have a relationship with him again. If you’re here and are a Christina, or are not, I say, ask. We have all sinned. We have all fallen, and God wants all of us to have life once more. He is here with his arms spread wide, waiting for you to accept his embrace. Feel his forgiveness, cry in his arms, love him again.

Let us pray.