You can tell a lot about a book from the way it opens. Listen to these openings from famous books.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The opening of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – a very funny novel about marrying well in the 18th century.
“Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide‑ water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.” The opening of Call of the Wild by Jack London – an adventure story about a dog during the Alaska Gold Rush in the 19th century.
“It
was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston
Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind,
slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly
enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty‑five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features.” The opening of 1984 by George Orwell – a dark and menacing story about life in a totalitarian state in the 20th century.
The beginnings of books are important. They set the scene and let you know what the rest of the book is going to be about. And the Bible is no different.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that the Bible is fiction. I’m just saying that well written material has a lot in common. But when we read the Bible we often do it really strangely. We read it in little bits and pieces; a verse here, a verse there. We jump into the middle without taking the time to find out what the story line is (and there is a story line.) We would never read any other book that way, and it is testimony to the grace of the Holy Spirit that he can still speak to us through it.
We’re going to be in Genesis for the next couple of weeks. Genesis means “beginnings” and it’s at the beginning of the Bible for a reason, to set the scene and declare the theme of the rest of the book. This will be the first of a new series that will run through much of the fall. Since the series is going to be so long, I thought it only appropriate to have a long name, so I’m calling it, “Who are we, and what are we doing here?”
I’m serious! It’s a profound question and one that many people today struggle to answer. Hopefully, by the time we get to the end we will all have a better idea of the answer.
The first three chapters of Genesis really do serve as the introduction of the whole Bible. They set the scene, they introduce the characters and they tell us what the book will be about.
Chapter one sets the scene. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” It goes on to give details of the creation that God made. It doesn’t talk about angels or spirits or fairies or mythical creatures or superheroes flying through the air. In fact it even studiously avoids the names of the sun and moon because they were the names of Egyptian gods. It just calls them “a greater light” and “a lesser light”. This all tells us that the scene for this story is the real world. What happens in this book is going to unfold in the real world of rock and sea; plants, animals and people; not some invisible, mystical realm.
Chapter two introduces the main characters; God and humanity; and their roles. We’ll come back to this in a minute.
Chapter three introduces the problem that drives all the rest of the narrative – humanity turns away from God and suffers as a result. God in his turn sets out to limit the damage and hints at the restoration of the relationship.
There you are; the main topics of the Bible wrapped up in the first three chapters of Genesis. God is creator, we are his creation and we have a problem. That is the beginning of the story.
But the Bible claims to be more than just a nice story, actually a lot of it isn’t particularly nice. It claims to speak about the history and future of the universe. It starts with the creation of the heavens and the earth and it ends with the recreation of the new heavens and the new earth. It isn’t a narrow, local story, like the ones I grew up learning about Scottish heroes, something that can be “true for me” but not “true for you”.
The opening chapters of Genesis have bigger fish to fry – like what it means to be human and what is God’s intention for us all. So we will spend the next few minutes this morning talking about the big picture, what Genesis 2 tells us about God and about ourselves.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden…
[Friends of ours had their first baby a few months ago. For the months prior to the delivery they were working overtime in the house. They had both just recently finished university so the second bedroom upstairs had been used as a study, stacked to the ceiling with books and papers. When they found out they were pregnant they emptied out all that stuff and painted the walls and ceiling pretty colours. They made sure there were no drafts from the window. They put down a comfy carpet and made that room into a nursery, a safe place where their baby could play and grow and, one of these days, sleep through the night.]
In the beginning of chapter 2 God sets up a safe place. It says he planted a garden, full of trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. A place where he could give humanity a good start. When I read this I see God as a parent caring for his new child by placing it in a safe place.
So the first thing we learn about ourselves from this passage is that we are God’s children and that he cares for us.
[That is a powerful thing to understand. There was a great writer called Tolstoy. He was a brilliant man and his friends were all highly educated and though they understood the world. They knew that everything was just chance. There was no God. There was only energy and chance. This kind of thinking brought Tolstoy into deep depression. He finally come out of it when he realised that the only people he knew who were happy were poor peasants whose faith told them that God loved them and cared for them. Knowing who they were gave their lives meaning in the midst of poverty and suffering.]
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden… to
work it and take care of it.
Did you know that Jesus was a technologist by trade? The Greek word that we translate “carpenter” is teknon and actually means “someone who works with hard materials”. So he could just as easily have worked with stone or perhaps even iron and steel like a good Hamiltonian. The son of God obviously didn’t have any problem with working hard.
Believe it or not, work is not part of the fall. It’s not an evil to be avoided. Work is part of our identity as people made in the image of God. When Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees for healing on the Sabbath, he responded, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." (John 5:17) God is a worker and he made us in his image to work and take care of his creation. Part of the problem with welfare is that it tends to actually discourage people from working. If they make enough money to make a difference in their lives they have to pay whatever they make back to the government. It actually encourages people to reject part of their God given identity.
But this text says we have a purpose and a task. We are to work and tend his creation. That means that things like technology and medicine, education and science, woodwork and metalwork, art and music (remember the trees were pleasing to the eye as well as useful) are all valid.
We are here to manage creation. It isn’t ours, and we will have to answer for how we have managed it, but we are put here to work and to tend it. We are responsible for it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from
any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
So much of this passage reflects the process of raising children. Like a good parent, God makes a safe place for us to grow and develop in relationship with him. He cares for us and provides for our needs. [As Jesus said, he makes the rain fall on everybody’s garden, not just the good people.]
Like a good parent he gives us chores around the house, otherwise known as the Earth, so we learn how to be responsible adults.
And he gives us boundaries for the same reason. We have boundaries, so we can learn to be responsible.
You do realise that that is why God gives us rules, because he wants what is best for us? Hebrews 12 says, 10Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.
Although our earthly parents may not be perfect our heavenly father actually does know best and any restrictions he puts on us are for our own good, not his. Hebrews 12 also says that 8If you are not disciplined…then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. I don’t set rules for other people’s kids, only my own. When God laid down some simple house rules for humanity, it was because we are his children.
The social research is overwhelming. Children who grow up in a household where they have clear boundaries, combined with clearly expressed love, grow up much more secure than those who have no rules in their lives.
We have not been left on our own to figure out what could be a scary universe. We have boundaries and we are safe in the centre of God’s care as his children.
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be
alone."
I have never been able to explain the difference between the English words “alone” and “lonely” in Persian. I tried all kinds of ways around it but it just didn’t work. In English, of course, “lonely” means feeling alone when you didn’t want to be alone. It has a negative feel to it. The problem is that Afghans can’t conceive of ever wanting to be alone. They don’t need a word for “lonely” because “alone” is negative enough in itself.
I think they are closer to the Biblical worldview than we are. When God said it isn’t good for man to be alone he was reflecting something of himself. God is a community of persons in the Trinity, and his goal for us is that we experience something of his joy by living in community too. We are made for community! We are made to share our lives together.
What a contrast to this song from Green Day.
I lock myself inside my room, I
WANNA BE ALONE
With you around, you'll only add on, I WANNA BE ALONE
Its been disturbed by my thoughts, I WANNA BE ALONE
With you around, you'll only add on, I WANNA BE ALONE
But we are made for community! God’s desire for us is that we might experience something of the community that he has in himself, and for that we need to build relationships with other people.
Which brings us to verse 20.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air
and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
It’s a comment on our society that I feel the need to point out that the Bible explicitly states that animals are different from humans. We have a special place in creation. We are made to be in community with each other and God.
I saw a sign on one of the downtown churches this week, “Respect the environment and it will respect you.” No it won’t! It will keep on doing what it does by nature and instinct. Giving respect is a moral capacity that the rest of creation doesn’t share with humanity. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect the environment. We should. It belongs to God our father and he holds us responsible for how we relate to it. But it won’t respect us back. It can’t.
We were out for coffee a while ago with a bunch of other students from the seminary. In the middle of a conversation about ecology one comes out with the statement “Animals are people too!” No! Animals are animals. Rocks are rocks. Trees are trees. People are people.
When Genesis was written people worshipped all kinds of things and, as a result, human life wasn’t particularly valued. That is part of the background to this statement in Genesis 2. It seems that we’re on our way back to that way of thinking as a society. There is a novel out called “The da Vinci Code” which has been incredibly popular over the past year. I don’t recommend reading it. Apart from making some really off the wall claims about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and about the church, it is essentially a tract that encourages a return to paganism and the worship of nature and nature goddesses.
We need to hear this word from scripture again, echoing down from at least 4000 years ago. We have a special place in creation. We are God’s image bearers on Earth and he holds us responsible for our actions.
We have rather raced through this passage. It is so rich and it can teach us so much about who we are. I recommend that you take some time to read it slowly and reflect on it. The more we understand about who we are in God’s eyes, the more likely we are to care for others love God with all our hearts.
But in closing let’s just look again at what we’re learned about who we are and what we’re doing here.
- We are God’s children and he cares for us.
- We have a purpose and a task – to care for and manage creation.
- We are have boundaries that God has set for us to keep us safe.
- We are made for community and for relationship with one another and with God.
- We occupy a special place in creation, a place that comes with responsibility for our actions.
This is the beginning of the story. Next week we’ll look at the tension that drives the rest of the book.