Shifting Strategy; Set Purpose

            Genesis 1-11 is the record of God’s dealings with humanity as a whole.  That approach led to the Fall, the murder of Abel, the Flood, and the scattering at Babel.

            In Genesis 12, the Lord changed strategies and began to deal with one family out of the all the families of the earth for the benefit of all the families of the earth.  That is to say, the point of God’s dealings with Abram and his family—dealings that extend all the way to the book of Malachi—is to bring salvation to all humans.  Abraham’s family will be the instrument, the conduit, through which He will bring healing to the nations.

            Too often in Israel’s history she failed to grasp that grand purpose and thought that she was the end in herself.  She held on to the promise about being a great people and she held tenaciously to the promise about her land.  But she missed that she was meant to be a light for the Gentiles.  (One can argue that the Church has the same problem.  When God chooses you for a special purpose, it’s pretty easy to start thinking your special and losing sight of the fact that your ‘specialness’ consists in being used for God’s purpose.)

            Anyhow, look at Genesis 12:1-3 a little more closely:

            “The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

            “I will make you into a great nation

                        and I will bless you;

            I will make your name great,

                        and you will be a blessing.  

            I will bless those who bless you,

                        and whoever curses you I will curse;

            and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (NIV; Genesis 12:1-3).

Notice God’s promise has seven clauses—three pairs of two and a climactic seventh one.  Literarily, it’s clear that the last clause—about the peoples being blessed through Abram is the main point of the promise.

            Then look at the other story in Genesis 12:  Abram goes to Egypt to escape a famine and passes Sarai off as his sister, not his wife.  I think the reason this story is placed right here is to underline the important point that Abram is not the story.  God’s promise is the story.  For Abram’s part, he loses his nerve.  He does not believe the land God promised him will support him; he does not believe God will protect him until the promise just made is kept.  God’s response—to afflict the Egyptians—is probably not meant as a punishment to the Egyptians, rather, I think it’s meant as a goad to get the Egyptians to kick Abram out and get him back to the land he was supposed to be in.

            Abraham’s family will give the Lord as many problems as Adam’s family ever did.  But by placing His promise in one people in one land, He will manage and protect that promise for the eventual blessing of all humanity.  God’s goal and purpose remain the same; His strategy to accomplish that goal and purpose shifts a little.  In the long story of Abraham’s family, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Lord is always moving things toward His eventual goal:  the undoing of Adam’s sin and the damage it has done to His creation.

Genesis 9-11: The Stage is Set

            We had a discussion in Wednesday morning Bible class about what sins we saw particularly prevalent in the first chapters of Genesis.  I said violence; another said adultery; a third said greed.  Today’s reading proves we were all right!  There is violence here:  the fear and dread the animals have for man and the strict accounting for a man’s life.  There is sex here:  the mockery of Ham at his father Noah’s nakedness.  And there is greed here, or said another way, excess:  the drunkenness of Noah.  The flood is merely a postponement of sin’s growth.  It’s all still there in the generation that survived the great flood.

            Things get even worse in tomorrow’s reading about the Tower of Babel.  There humans desire to build a tower to the heavens.  On the one hand, that sounds reasonable enough.  Perhaps they are trying to regain Eden, trying to regain their closeness and intimacy with God.  Unfortunately, that’s not the motivation they claim.  Their motivation is to make a name for themselves, and that desire for fame tells us what’s really going on.  Babel is the sin of Eden all over again.  In Eden, it was, “We shall be as God.”  At Babel it is, “We shall sit in the place of God.”  One of the recurring themes of the Bible is that man never quite knows his limits, that he keeps on pushing to get things his own way, that he is a greedy, violent, undisciplined creature, whose sin has shattered the image of God and made him more like a beast than some of the beasts!

            The Good News in all of this:  God still forbears.  He is long-suffering (a great old word that we should reclaim).  Or, as Jeremiah will put it centuries and centuries after Noah is dead and gone, “Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (NIV Lamentations 3:22-23).

            Genesis 11 brings us to the end of the primeval history, God’s first dealings with man.  Genesis 1-11 forms the foundation of everything that follows.  The keys here are the unique place that humanity occupies in God’s heart and in His creation, the devastation that is human sin, and the incredible determination of God that He will redeem His creatures, not destroy them—no matter how long it takes or how much it costs Him.  (I’ll comment on the first portion of Genesis 12 on Monday.)

NOT Related to Today’s Bible Reading!

            Some of you may know that December 6 is St. Nicholas Day, a day some folks celebrate by placing coins in their children’s shoes or by the giving of gifts.

            It’s all legendary and as such it’s hard to separate truth from fiction.  But St. Nicholas was a fourth-century bishop of Myra, a city in Asia Minor.  The story goes that Nicholas was orphaned at a young age and used his inheritance to help the poor.  One story of his alms-giving has the good bishop tossing a bag of money through a window to prevent three poor, young girls from being forced into a life of prostitution.  Hence, the tradition of gift-giving St. Nick. 

            What I didn’t know was that there is a tradition that says Nicholas attended the Council of Nicea in AD 325.  Legend has it that the good bishop was so ticked off at the heretic Arius (whose false teachings had caused the council to be called in the first place) that he walked across the room and slapped the heretic across the face.  Nicholas was imprisoned for conduct unbefitting a bishop, but Jesus appeared to him, releases his chains, and gave him a copy of the Gospels to occupy him.  When his jailers returned the next morning they were surprised to find him unbound and peacefully reading the Scriptures.

            The moral of the story?  I don’t know.  How does this sound?  Let your faith shine in works of charity and in zeal for the Lord’s truth!

            (For what it’s worth, you can find more here:  http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/home/.)

A Not-So-Cute Story

            Among the worst things we can do to the Scriptures are 1) to tidy them up and 2) to make them ‘cute.’  And the story of Noah and the great flood has certainly endured that treatment!  Many a child’s nursery is decked out in ‘cute-ified’ images from this story—pastel colors, an ark the size of a pontoon boat, and a giraffe sticking his head out the top.

            In that portrayal, we miss some things.  We miss the horror that human sin was working in this story.  I often hear that ‘things are getting worse all the time.’  I do wonder, though, if things are as bad as they were when God flooded they earth.  “Corrupt” is used three times to describe man’s behavior, and “violence” is used twice.  It makes you wonder how bad things must have been, how out of control human behavior was.

            Second, the flood is no spring shower.  The image of 40 days of rain just doesn’t seem like much.  But the story says the springs of the deep opened and that the flood raged over the earth for 40 days.  The waters didn’t begin receding for six months.  I tend to think that the flood is the result of a geologic catastrophe and that rather than think of 40 days of rain showers, we should think about the surface of the earth being ripped apart by earthquakes and of tidal waves that make the worst hurricanes pale in comparison.

            Third, theologically, we should recognize this as what one of my friends calls “the second-worst outpouring of God’s wrath in human history.”  (The greatest outpouring of that wrath is the punishment that Jesus endured in our place on the cross.)  I mean the whole human race, except for 8 people, and the plants and animals, save a handful, were wiped out.

            Once, we’ve “un-cute-ified” the story, we might very well be horrified to read it, and once we’re there, we’re ready to start asking Gospel questions of story.  The Gospel connection is about God’s forbearance.  Driven as He was to anger, He wasn’t blinded by rage.  He recognized that Noah remained faithful.  He acknowledged His own promise that He would redeem and save the human race, not completely obliterate it.  The flood was a devastating punishment, but not a complete one.  And, looking forward to Jesus, when the time came to fully pour out His wrath, the Lord knew that He could not pour that out on us without completely destroying us so He poured it out on His Son, who stood in our place.  The cross became our ark, allowing us to escape the rising flood of God’s wrath.

A Devastating Corruption

            The burden of Genesis 4:1-6:8 is that sin grows like a particularly aggressive cancer in the human race.  The most familiar story of the bunch—the story of Cain and Abel—demonstrates this.  God smiles on Abel’s offering (his gift of the ‘fatty portions’ indicates a gift of the best portions), but not on Cain’s (which, presumably, was not from the best portions).  Jealousy and anger grow, and the Lord warns of the danger: “Sin is crouching at your door.”  Refusing to acknowledge his own faults (either in a second-class offering or in his unfounded resentment), Cain lets his anger burst out into murder.

            Cain’s descendants continue the devolution.  While Cain’s descendants rack up all sorts of accomplishments of technology and art, morally they are bankrupt, as Lamech’s attitude shows.  “Cain, my murdering forefather, is avenged seven times, but me, seventy times that!”  Despite all his accomplishments, man’s violent self-assertion is never far from the surface.

            Finally, there is the devastating note in Genesis 6:5, that ‘every inclination of man’s heart is only evil all the time.’  That seems like an overstatement, doesn’t it?  But that’s what Genesis says.  Sin is not just an occasional misstep, a moral failure, a surface issue.  Sin is a deep corruption of human nature which means that the most basic thoughts of our hearts are turned away from the Lord.  Here’s how the Augsburg Confession, the founding document of Lutheranism, states it:

“Our churches teach that since the fall of Adam all men born in the natural way are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence [that is, an inclination to sin], and that this original sin is try sin, even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit.”

It’s only the grace of God and His love for His creation that stays His hand.  Tomorrow we’ll read about the flood that destroys most life from the face of the earth, but the thing to see is despite the devastating corruption of sin, the Lord refuses to give up on His creatures.

            In this Advent season, it’s important to see the importance of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus.  Human nature is so terribly corrupted, and the solution is a human being who does not bear that terrible corruption, One who is not born ‘in the natural way,’ One for whom God is His only Father so that Adam’s corruption doesn’t touch Him.  I noted on Monday that the Scripture is the story of God’s interaction with humanity, and the climax of that story is the coming of the New Human Being, Jesus our brother and savior, in whose life, death, and resurrection, our very nature is recreated.

Genesis 3: The Fall into Sin

            Genesis 3 also deserves a more in-depth commentary than a single blog post can give it.  Genesis 1-2 are absolutely essential in introducing the main characters of the Bible—the God who is without beginning, who has life in Himself, and humanity, with whom He shares His life and whom He creates to be extensions of His gracious presence into His creation.  Genesis 3 sets up the essential conflict between these two characters, namely, humanity’s willful refusal to own and obey their Creator, their refusal to acknowledge themselves to be the creation.  What to do about humanity’s rebellion—that will be the question that drives God’s plans and purposes from Genesis 3 forward.  The story of the Bible—the story of God and man—is the story of God having to heal what Adam so casually broke.  I can’t emphasize this enough:  if you don’t get Genesis 1-3, the rest of the Bible won’t make any sense either.

            Let me just note some of the terrible consequences of Adam’s rebellion.

            First, Adam and the woman (she’s not named Eve until the end of the chapter) recognize their nakedness and cover it up.  This is not a newfound humility; this is a newfound and tragic sense of deception and hiding.  Previously they had had no shame, no self-consciousness.  It’s only in the aftermath of their sin that they consider parts of themselves as ‘unpresentable.’  I think that this is a significant commentary on the sinful condition of humanity.  We hide our motivations and our desires from ourselves and from those who are closest to us.  (I always think of that great Billy Joel song, “The Stranger,” words here:  http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Stranger-lyrics-Billy-Joel/953DB3F466E12BCA48256870001B45F1; music here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnlvPoDU5LY, if you’re interested.)  This lack of transparency, this desire to shield ourselves from one another, this lack of trust—all of that is a consequence of Adam’s fall.

            Second, they hide themselves from God.  Now, there’s an act of self-deception!  God finds them right away: it’s the most one-sided game of hide-and-seek in history.  But the point here is that they tried to keep themselves separate from the God who had given them life and purpose—another terrible effect of sin.

            Third, they completely threw each other under the bus.  When confronted, the man owned nothing.  Instead, he blamed Eve.  “Not me!  Her!”  Here’s the root of what the hymnist called ‘our warring madness.’

            Fourth, the earth itself is caught up in Adam’s rebellion, “Cursed is the ground because of you.”

            This is a chapter filled with bad news.  In trying to assert their independence from God, Adam and Eve brought a terrible corruption into God’s beautifully designed and executed creation.  It is filled with the brokenness of human relationships and with the deadly consequences of a broken relationship with the Lord.

            The only good news is that there are glimmers of good news.  The first glimmer is that the Lord promises that this situation will not last forever, that the woman’s offspring will eventually crush the head of the enemy.  (That’s not just a glimmer, I suppose; that’s a full-blown promise.)  The other glimmer is the Lord’s uncommented, but significant, forbearance:  had you or I been in charge, we may have just started over, but our God chose the more difficult path of redemption, on which the rest of the story focuses.

Genesis 1-2: Creation

There are so many things that deserve commentary in Genesis 1-2!  What I would highlight as the most important is this:  Genesis 1 and 2 set the table for everything that is to follow by establishing the relationship between the Creator God and humanity.

So, observe first that Genesis simply assumes that there is a God who has life in Himself.  There is no argument about the existence of God nor is there any philosophical discussion about Him.  For Genesis, God is the one unmistakable and unmitigated fact.  "In the beginning God . . . " (And, no, I don't think that just reflects the naivete of an ancient people who don't know any better.  We moderns think we're so sophisticated, but I don't accept that radical skepticism about anything I can't see or touch is sophisticated.  Our constant reliance on our senses actually seems a little childish to me.)

Second, observe that that God who has life in Himself shares that life outside of Himself.  God is under no compulsion to create.  He has no need of creation.  He is full and complete in Himself.  On the other hand, since the Triune nature of God is to share His life within Himself, it is also a natural expression of His loving nature to share that life outside of Himself.  He is not compelled to create, but His very nature is such that sharing the free gift of life is normal.  We do well, then, to consider Creation as the first act of God's grace--reaching beyond Himself in an act of pure gift.

Relatedly, we recognize that everything depends on God for its existence.  Paul speaks about all things having their origin and sustenance in the life of God (Col. 1:16-17).  Too often, we think of the world as having an existence apart from God--a sort of 'God-is-in-His-heaven' thing, which disconnects God and His world.Genesis will have none of that.

Finally, observe that humanity is the climax and culmination of God's creation.  Genesis 1 moves climactically towards Day 6 and, on Day 6, things crescendo into God's deliberation to make man in His image.  God's image is a rich metaphor.  Lutherans have understood the image of God as sharing in God's righteousness.  More than that, I'd suggest that it means sharing in God's moral nature.  So, it is only to humanity that God gives the specific command not to eat from one tree; that is a moral command, a choice to obey.  More than that, humanity has a special task within God's creation, that is, to rule it and to take care of it.  To bear God's image is extend His own care and His own gracious rule over His earth.  Humanity is designed to be an extension of God Himself, a gracious and loving presence.

All together, then, Genesis 1-2 establish the foundation on which everything else in the Bible will build.  Because God's purpose for humanity was always that they would share His life and His work, the disruption that we will read about tomorrow in Genesis 3 cannot stand.  The rest of the Bible will revolve around God's  long, slow work of overcoming that disruption and re-establishing His creation as He meant it to be.