God’s Story: The Drama of Redemption: Creation | Genesis 1:1-3; Genesis 1:26-2:4 | Brian Hedges | February 14, 2010
There’s a great scene in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings when Frodo and Sam have faced the Black Riders on Weathertop, they’ve gone through the Mines of Moria, Gandalf has fallen and the fellowship has fallen apart! And Sam turns to Frodo and asks this question, “I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?’”
Have you ever wondered that? Have you ever looked at your life and the world and wondered, “What sort of story am I in?” — or maybe wondered if there’s a story at all. You want to believe that there is a larger story, a bigger picture, something significant to life larger than you and larger than you realize, but you’re not quite sure what it is.
Somehow, something needs to make sense of the mysteries of life: the pains/the pleasures, both the big-scale cataclysmic events and just the everyday happenings of life. The rise and fall of nations and the delight of family and friends.
Does it all weave together and make sense? Do you ever feel sometimes like you’ve walked into a movie 45 minutes late and you’re trying to figure out the plot? And to make matters worse, you’re supposed to be an actor in the movie?! And you’re trying to figure out, “What’s the plot of the world? What’s the story? What’s the story of my life?”
Sometimes, rather than having a strong sense of purpose and confidence, we resonate with Phil Collins’ song "Hero," which went like this:
“Well it was one of those great stories
that you can't put down at night
the hero knew what he had to do
and he wasn't afraid to fight
the villain goes to jail. . .the hero goes free
I wish it were that simple for me.”
Did you ever feel that way? We love stories, don’t we? But sometimes we don’t perceive our lives to be part of a part of the story. And sometimes, even as Christians, we have not read the Bible that way either.
Most of us, myself included, grew up thinking of the Bible was a book filled with interesting, but often unrelated stories (Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lion’s Den, Jonah and the Whale). We knew these episodes in Scripture, but we didn’t really see them fitting into a whole.
Along with the stories, of course, there were numerous lists of rules, moral instruction, ethical guidelines (the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount).
Then there was also a fair bit of doctrine and theology, especially in Paul’s letters, where we come across big words like “justification,” “sanctification,” “predestination,” and all the other “–ation” words. And then there were parts of Scripture that just seemed strange or boring. (So, all of Leviticus, right? And then most of the prophets and then Revelation, not really boring, but definitely weird and just hard to figure out!)
Oh yeah, and then there’s the stuff about Jesus in the gospels, most of it having to do with miracles and the stories he told (the parables). Does that sound familiar? Somehow, I think we’ve missed something. I certainly did, growing up.
Even though I heard good sermons, even though my parents lead us in family devotions. Even though I’d read the Bible, had to read the Bible every day, because it was the rule in our household, I still missed the fact that the Scriptures were telling a story: the story of God and the redemption of the world.
I recently read a really great book by a man named Brian Godawa, who is not only an author, but he’s also a director. He’s made several movies, one of which is To End All Wars, a really great film! And this is what Brian Godawa says in his book: “The use of narrative and drama to communicate God’s Word and covenant is so prevalent in Scripture that some theologians suggest we approach our theology in dramatic terms rather than the usual modernist metaphysical terms of facts, ideas, or propositions. Kevin Vanhoozer suggests we see the Bible (get this) as "a dramatic script written by God, for the stage of the world, with humans as the actors, God as the author, the Holy Spirit as director, and the church as playing the final act. To become a Christian is to be taken up into the drama of God’s plan for creation”
Because I think that’s essentially true, over the next ten weeks or so, I want us to look at God’s Story: The Drama of Redemption. Someone said to me this week, “You mean you’re going to preach on the whole Bible in ten weeks?!” I think it was said tongue-in-cheek and the answer is, “Well, not exactly. But what I want to do is hit the high points, the big movements in the overarching narrative, the big plot points along the way. And my hope for the series is three-fold, three goals really, that I have for this series.
(1) It’s first of all that both we who are familiar with Scripture, as many of you who have been Christians for many years are, along with those who maybe are new to the Christian faith or just becoming interested in Scripture, would see just what the Story of the world is from a biblical perspective.
(2) Secondly, I want us to see how this story should shape our lives today. Or, another way of putting it is, how Scripture should give us a worldview, a way of looking at the world and just what this Christian worldview is, so that we see how it affects the way we look at God, how we look at the material world around us, how we look at ourselves and at other human beings. . .how we live, and so on.
(3) And then, thirdly, I want us to see that at the heart of this narrative, what we’re calling “God’s Story: The Drama of Redemption”, there’s one central Hero. And I want us to see who this Hero is, namely, Jesus Christ. In fact, I just want to suggest a book for your reading if you want to follow along in the series, this book, The Jesus Storybook Bible. And, yes! It’s a children’s book! Alright?
So, this is a great book. This is the book that my family uses when we’re reading to our children family devotions. And it’s a book that shows that Jesus is the Hero of every story and follows these big movements, much more than I’ll actually do in this series, and talks about how Jesus is the unifying theme of Scripture. So I recommend it to you; there’s copies on the table.
So let’s get started! And the best place to start, of course, is the beginning, so let’s turn to Genesis chapter 1, and I want to read, this morning, Genesis 1:1-3 and then verse 26 down through chapter 2, verse 4.
Genesis 1:1-3: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
Drop down to verse 26:
Genesis 1:26-2:4: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 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, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”
This is God’s Word. Let’s pray.
Holy Father, we want to submit our minds and our hearts to You and to Your Word, now as we’ve read it and as we seek to understand it. We want to come before You humbly this morning, recognizing that many assumptions and presuppositions that we have about the world, and even about Scripture, are sometimes wrong and that they need correction. And so we pray that You would help adjust the way we see things. Even more importantly perhaps, we realize that our lives are not often in harmony with the way the world is, the way You have designed it, the way You’ve made it. The purpose for which You’ve created us. You’ve made us to be people who hear Your Word and live and flourish under Your Word, and yet we sometimes resist your Word. And so, we pray this morning that You would give us hearts to submit to You, to Your revelation, and that You would inform our view of Who You are, of the world in which we live and of who we are as human beings, so that we would come to see the saving and redeeming grace that comes to us through Your Word. So speak to us now, we pray in Jesus’ Name, amen.
Over the past century and a half, much of our thought and discussion about Genesis has been determined by scientific questions. On both the left and the right, people have perceived a tension between science and the Bible. So those on the left have often doubted the validity or reliability of Scripture, because certain interpretations of it appear to contradict the findings of modern science.
Those on the right, on the other hand, are often suspicious of science, for the same reason: science seems to be out of harmony with their interpretation of Scripture. And I want to start here this morning, just to kind of push something to the side. I want to suggest to you that this conflict is a conflict that exists in our minds and not between the actual facts of nature and the actual words of Scripture.
Listen, the facts of nature are true and the words of Scripture are true. Science is simply our interpretation of the facts of nature. Theology is our interpretation of the words of Scripture. When there’s a tension, the tension is somewhere in our interpretation. When there’s a conflict, something is wrong with either our interpretation of nature in science or our interpretation of Scripture in theology. But the conflict is perceived and not natural.
Now, having said that, I may disappoint a few of you with what I’m not going to talk about this morning. I’m not going to talk about the age of the earth or how long a day is in Genesis 1 or the process by which God created the world--whether by divine fiat or through evolution, and one reason for this decision is because I don’t think these are the primary questions that Genesis is seeking to answer. It was written for a purpose; Genesis was written for a purpose. It was written to answer certain questions, but probably not the twentieth- and twenty-first-century questions that we so often bring to it.
And whatever your position may be this morning, I just want to begin with this plea: that we humbly--with openness--consider other viewpoints and that we not miss the main point of Genesis chapter 1, which is not scientific but rather theological.
And I want to just usher this plea, this warning really, from Gordon Wenham, who is, I think, a top-notch Hebrew scholar, Old Testament scholar, who has written one of the best commentaries on Genesis. I thought this was very good, and so I just want to read this to you as we begin this morning.
Wenham says this: “Though historical and scientific questions may be uppermost in our minds as we approach the text, it is doubtful whether they were in the writer’s mind, and we should therefore be cautious about looking for answers to questions he was not concerned with. Genesis is primarily about God’s character and his purposes for sinful mankind. Let us beware of allowing our interests to divert us from the central thrust of the book, so that we miss what the LORD, our creator and redeemer, is saying to us. The Bible-versus-science debate has, most regrettably, sidetracked readers of Genesis 1. Instead of reading the chapter as a triumphant affirmation of the power and wisdom of God and the wonder of his creation, we have been too often bogged down in attempting to squeeze Scripture into the mold of the latest scientific hypothesis or distorting scientific facts to fit a particular interpretation. When allowed to speak for itself, Gen 1 looks beyond such minutiae. Its proclamation of the God of grace and power who undergirds the world and gives it purpose justifies the scientific approach to nature. Gen 1, by further affirming the unique status of man, his place in the divine program, and God’s care for him, gives a hope to mankind that atheistic philosophies can never legitimately supply.”
I think those are wise words, and so I begin there to say we’re not focusing on those things; we’re focusing, rather, on the theology of this passage. And let me just give it to you now in one summary sentence. This is my whole sermon in a nutshell, and then I just want to break it down into pieces as we go.
I think this is what Genesis 1 and, really, Genesis 2 is about. The creation account in Genesis 1 teaches us that Yahweh, the God who redeemed Israel, is the supreme and sovereign God over creation who, through his word, has made the (good) world to be his temple, and has created human beings in his image, for the purpose of reflecting his character and representing his reign in the world.
Alright, let’s take it apart and look at three things. First of all, how Genesis should affect our view of God, secondly how Genesis should affect our view of the world and thirdly, how Genesis should affect our view of humanity. First of all,
I. Our View of God
Alright, this passage teaches us several things about God.
(1) First of all, it teaches us that there is one God and his name is Yahweh. Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and then in chapter 2:4, which is really the beginning of another section in Genesis, this God is named. He is the LORD God. That is, he is Yahweh Elohim. He is the God who redeemed Israel.
You have to remember that this Genesis was a book that was written for the people of Israel after they had been redeemed from Egypt, and so one of the points of this book is to show that it was this God, the Redeeming God, Yahweh God, the God of Israel who is the true God.
You see, Genesis is taking up ideas that were current in the ancient world and giving commentary on them. In the ancient world, in ancient Near Eastern cultures, there were lots of creation myths, there were lots of creation narratives. . .and the other cultures believed that Creation began with the birth of the gods, and there are many gods. This is we call “polytheism,” the belief in many gods.
And that through the warring and the battling and the reproducing of these gods, that the various elements of Creation were formed, the various elements of the material world, and eventually man. In fact, Tremper Longman, in his book How to Read Genesis, which is a book I highly recommend, shows how Genesis was written as a polemic against these creation accounts in the ancient Near Eastern, particularly the Enuma Elish, which was the Babylonian account of creation.
The Enuma Elish (this was recovered, by the way, in the nineteenth century) describes how the god Marduk defeats the goddess Tiamat and how Marduk becomes the supreme god in the universe. Marduk defeats Tiamat, he divides Tiamet in half, and half becomes the heavens and half become the earth. Then he defeats another god named Qingu, the demon-god, and from his blood mixed with clay he made human beings.
Now this story, of course, is fanciful, but you can see that there are certain similarities in ways of speaking between the Creation account in Genesis and the Enuma Elish. But what is striking (and this is probably the main point in Genesis) is the significantly different portrait that Genesis gives us of God.
Genesis is showing us that this God, Yahweh, the God of Israel, is not one god among many. He is the One and Only God, that he is the one and only God who is solitary and supreme! Moreover, he is the one who has made everything else that is including sun, moon, stars, all the astral bodies, along with the sea monsters, which so many other cultures worshiped. This God is the One God, and his name is Yahweh.
(2) It secondly shows us that this God is supreme and sovereign over Creation, this in contrast to pantheism, which identifies all things as part of God. Pantheism looks at everything in Creation and says, “It’s all God; it’s all part of God; everything is God.” And Genesis says, “No, God is separate, he is other, he is distinct, he is transcendent over Creation and he reigns supreme and sovereign over it.”
Abraham Kuyper was the nineteenth century Dutch theologian who said this: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry ‘Mine!’”
God is sovereign, he is supreme, he is over all of it! I think Genesis is telling us that.
(3) And then thirdly, and we’ll come back to this again throughout this message this morning, this passage is telling us that this God is a God who works through his Word. You see it in verses 2 and 3: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
God speaks. . .and when God speaks, He brings order into chaos. He brings light into darkness. Where once there was confusion, now there is order and there’s harmony. God works through his Word. This passage is meant to give us a certain view of God, to show us that God is the transcendent, supreme, sovereign Creator of all things.
It’s not telling us so much the process of Creation as it is pointing us to the “who” of Creation; it’s a theological point that the author is making here. So it shapes our view of God.
II. Our View of the World
Secondly, it shapes our view of the world. And, again, it tells us several things about the world..
(1) It says that God created the world good, alright? You see this in verse 31: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” In fact, the refrain, “and God saw that it was good,” is repeated six times in chapter 1: verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21 and 25. And because God created the world good, it has implications for how we think of the world. Because God created the world good, we should not fear to enjoy the world. Alright?
This is in contrast to dualistic religions, which teach that good and evil eternally coexist, often with the spirit being essentially good and matter, material things--being essentially evil. Genesis affirms, rather, the inherent goodness of the created world, of all that which is “earthly.” Listen? Nature is good. Food is good. Relationships are good. Family is good. Sex is good. Work is good. Recreation and play are good. Rest is good, and we should not fear to enjoy these good things within their God-given context.
But none of these things are ultimate. They are good when kept in their God-ordained place. So we should not fear to enjoy these created goods, but neither should we exploit the material world and use it wrongfully or worship created things and make them ultimate.
Now there’s a great illustration of this in the recent film, Avatar. I don’t know how many of you saw Avatar, but Avatar was a film that was, in my mind, cinematically beautiful and theologically horrible! And the acting and script and everything was kind of mediocre, in-between. So it was an interesting story in a beautiful world. I mean, you just couldn’t help but be stunned by the beauty of this world. . .but it shows two wrong ways of relating to created things (and, of course, in this world, it’s Pandora). So on one hand, you’ve got most of the human beings who have invaded Pandora, and what have they come to do? They come to exploit the planet of its natural resources, alright? On the other hand, you’ve got those who are native to Pandora, the Na’vi. They’re the tall blue people. They are so biologically and spiritually connected to the planet, that they, in effect, worship the planet. In fact, they speak of the planet as their “mother,” and they talk about Eywa, who is this one force or entity or being that binds all things together (kind of sounds like George Lucas, right?). Their reverence for the creation is nothing short of worship.
Listen, Christianity is different from either of those. Christianity shows us that God made the world and its good. We are stewards of it and therefore, we’re to be responsible with it. Listen, no one should be more environmentally responsible than a Christian.
But on the other hand, Christianity shows us that the world is not God. God is God, and he’s not identified with the creation. And that means that, while we use it and we enjoy it, we don’t abuse it and we don’t put it central.
So just think about the created goods God has given us. He’s given us these things: food and marriage and companionship and relationships, and work, recreation. These are all good things that God gave to the original human beings. You see it in the Garden of Eden in chapter 2.
These are all things that Scripture says “God gave us richly to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). But these are things that are given to serve humanity, not master humanity. And the problem comes when we begin to make these things central; we make them into gods.
We begin to abuse them. We eat, but we overeat, alright? We take care of our bodies on the other hand, but we do it in such a way that we’re pinning all of our significance on our appearance. We work, but we overwork to the point of neglecting family or neglecting health or neglecting other responsibilities. Or we enjoy our family, but we enjoy them to the point that we idolize spouses or children. We enjoy sex, but we do it selfishly, or outside of a covenantal relationship in marriage. . . or we enjoy recreation, but we allow it to displace productivity in work. All of those are ways of taking created things and making them ultimate things, then they get out of balance and we become abusers of the creation rather than good stewards of the good world God has given.
But the response is not to overreact, as sometimes Christians have tended to do, and become ascetics where deny the goodness of the created world. It’s, rather, to keep it in its proper place under God. God created the world. He created it good! We shouldn’t fear to enjoy it. We should rather be good stewards, neither abusing it, exploiting it. . .or worshipping it.
(2) Alright, secondly, God made the world to be his temple. There are several evidences for this.
In chapter 2 verses 1-3, you see God, having completed Creation, taking his rest, taking his Sabbath. Some scholars believe that this is speaking of God taking His rest in the divine temple that he has created for himself.
Then you’ve got the description of Eden and in other places in Scripture you’ve got the temple--even Israel’s temple--being described in terms of Eden. So, in Ezekiel 28 Eden is referred to as the garden of God, the mountain of God.
Old Testament scholar Stephen Dempster describes Eden as “a cosmic mountain where heaven and earth (were) united and from which the divine rule (was) exercised.” It was literally heaven on earth, “the throne room of the kingdom.” (Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty, 62)
It was the place where God inhabited the creation, where God lived with man.
There’s a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton, who has recently given further evidence for seeing creation as God’s temple. This guy’s name is John Walton, and he recently wrote a book called The Lost World of Genesis One. And Walton proposes that Genesis was written in a way that was in tune with the cosmology and the cosmogony of the ancient Near East. And this what he says. He says. . . “As in the rest of the ancient world, the Israelites were much more attuned to the functions of the cosmos than to the material of the cosmos. The functions of the world were more important for them and more interesting to them. They had little concern for the material structures; significance lay in who was in charge and made it work. As a result,” in his book he presents “Genesis 1. . .as an account of functional origins” showing how God gave the world the function for humanity and the function as His temple."
So in the first three days, God appoints these major functions of life: time and weather and food, and in days four through six he appoints functionaries for the cosmos, to be assigned to perform these functions. And then, this recurring comment, “it is good,” shows that God has created a world that is functionally fit for human beings, as well as functionally fit for His temple as God rests in it on the seventh day Now, the book is fairly new and, I think, needs further vetting from other scholars, but I would just suggest that it’s something we should have an open mind towards, and I think it’s pretty compelling what Walton is saying, that God made the world to be his temple, that the creation account has to do with the functions of the world.
(3) Alright, third point: God made and sustains the world through his word.
Alright, we can’t miss this. In Genesis 1, ten times it says that, “God said” (v. 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 29). Another five times that “God called” (v. 5, 8, 10 twice). Another eight times that God either “made” (v. 7, 16, 25) or “created” (v. 21, 27 – three times).
The simple refrain of Genesis 1 is in these two repeated lines: “and God said . . . and it was so.” God created by his word. God is an active God. This shows us that God is not the god of Deism. He’s not a blind watchmaker who makes the world and then sits back and is uninvolved. He is, rather, a God who’s intimately involved with Creation, with his world, actively sustaining it, guiding it as the provident carer for it, alright? This is the world God has made. Now, thirdly. . .
III. Our View of Humanity
We talked about how Genesis gives us a view of God, how Genesis gives us a view of the world. Now let’s look at how Genesis shapes our view of humanity. And what we see, supremely, is that God created human beings in his image. Alright, you see this in verses 26 and 27: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Now it’s helpful if we understand something of the context here.
Von Rad, in his commentary on Genesis, says that: “Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear, so man is placed upon earth in God’s image, as God’s sovereign emblem. He is. . .God’s representative, summoned to maintain and enforce God’s claim to dominion over the earth.”
So this is I think what it means to be in God’s image, at least two aspects to this, maybe there’s more, but at least two.
(1) First of all, that God created man in his image for the purpose of reflecting his character. Think of it like this: we’re created like mirrors. We are meant to mirror, to image, the character of God, to reflect his glory, alright. God gives us a certain dignity, a special dignity, as his creatures made in his image and he also gives us particular duties and responsibilities. Supremely, that responsibility is to rightly reflect who he is in our relationships to one another and to the world. This is how we image God.
(2) And then, secondly, God created man in his image for the purpose of representing his reign in the world, we might even say even extending his reign in the world. Alright? God says, “Let them exercise dominion.” How are they to do that? They do that by filling the earth and by subduing it. They fill the earth with people, with descendants, and they subdue the earth as they build civilization.
So when you read Genesis 1 and 2, it looks as if God created the world, and at the heart of everything He created Eden. And Eden is this throne room in the divine temple, where man is placed. But the rest of the world has to be tamed, it has to be cultivated, it has to be built up. There’s the need for the building of civilization.
And I think right here you see two themes, twin themes, that become a key to understanding this whole story: the themes of descendants and land. “Fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28).
Have you ever wondered why in the Bible you’ve just got page after page after page of genealogies. . .these long lists of names that are hard to pronounce? Does anybody skip those when you’re reading Scripture? But you see, they’re there for a purpose; they’re there to show us how God is building a people for himself in fulfillment of this mandate to fill the earth.
And then you’ve got all these passages that have to do with the allotment of land, the nation of Israel. And, again, I think it goes right back here to this original mandate: God told man to represent his reign, to extend his kingdom--so to speak--by filling the earth and by subduing it.
Graeme Goldsworthy gives a great definition of the kingdom of God (we’ll return to this over and over again in this series): The kingdom of God is simply this: “God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule.” Alright? This was the original pattern for human beings. Adam and Eve were God’s people, they were in Eden – God’s place, they were under God’s rule. But, get this: God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule, will only flourish when they live under God’s word.
They will only flourish when they live under God’s rule. Notice again here that God speaks in this chapter. He gives direction. He not only speaks in creation, bringing order to chaos and light to darkness, forming and filling the world to make it his temple. But he also speaks to the human beings he has created, giving them instruction, giving them direction, giving them counsel. If they will only listen to his word and believe his word and follow his word, they too will flourish. If they don’t, we learn, in Genesis 2, they will die.
Paul Tripp says in his great book, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hand, that, “God knew that even though Adam and Eve were perfect people living in perfect relationship with him, they could not figure out life on their own. They were created to be dependent. God had to explain who they were and what they were to do with their lives. They did not need this help (initially) because they were sinners. They needed help because they were human."
They are human. As human beings, we are meant to live under God’s word, his revelation! Now here’s the problem: they didn’t live under his word, and neither do you and I. We resist his word, we reject his word, we rebel against his word, we disobey his word, we disbelieve his word. We put other things central instead of him, we worship Creation instead of the Creator. And what’s the result? Chaos! Darkness! Confusion! Now there’s a really interesting thing that happens in Exodus. You remember the plagues in Exodus? Do you remember what those plagues were? They were all things that happened in nature, right?
- The Water of the Nile Turned to Blood – Exodus 7:14-25
- Frogs – 8:1-15
- Gnats – 8:16-19
- Flies – 8:20-32
- Livestock Dying – 9:1-7
- Boils – 9:8-12
- Hail Coming Down from Heaven – 9:13-35
- Locusts – 10:1-20
- Darkness Covering the Earth – 10:21-29
- Death of the Firstborn – 12:29-32
And I got this point from Tim Keller, and I think it’s right on. What’s going on there is de-creation; it’s un-creation. Pharaoh refuses to hear God’s word and Egypt will not flourish. Instead, everything starts reverting back to primordial chaos, darkness, and confusion.
And that’s what happens; that’s what happens in our lives when we don’t listen to God’s word. God gives us revelation, but when we don’t follow that revelation--when we put things central that should be peripheral while he’s supposed to be central--it’s not like God sends lightning to bring judgment. It’s just that our lives don’t work the way they’re supposed to work anymore.
We’ve refused his counsel, we’ve refused his revelation. We make our jobs central, we make money central, we make sex central, we make our appetites central. . .and what happens? Our lives begin to spin out of control. They fall apart: chaos, darkness, confusion. We’ll talk more about this next week, when we look at the Fall.
But here’s the good news. Here’s the good news for today. Keller points out in his sermon something that happens in Matthew chapter 27. In Matthew 27, Jesus is on the cross, and it says that (Matthew 27:45-46): “. . .from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’" And the curtain’s torn in two in the temple, the earth shakes, the rocks are split, so there’s an earthquake. Tombs are opened up. (Matthew 27:51-54 ESV)
And this is what Keller says (I can’t say it better than Keller can, so I’m just going to read what he says: “What’s going on there? Here’s what’s going on there. Think about the plagues. The chaotic forces of disorderliness and unraveling and darkness and disintegration. They were falling on Jesus.
Remember Moses’ rod? This is the rod of justice coming down on Jesus. Remember the Nile turning to blood? This is Jesus’ blood and water flowing mingled down. Remember the death of the firstborn? This is God’s firstborn dying. Remember the darkness? This is the uncreated, chaotic darkness that sin deserves falling on Jesus. What is it? Jesus was the creator! Nothing was made without him! . . . What is going on? Here is what’s going on: Jesus Christ is the Creator who came here, not to smite us, but to be uncreated so that we could be recreated. Jesus is the Maker who is willing to be unmade so that we can be remade. Jesus is the Judge who came not to bring judgment but to bear judgment, to take what we deserved, so that the Holy Spirit can come into our lives, once our sins are forgiven, and begin to remake us and to get rid of the darkness and to say, ‘let there be light there, and let there be light there, and let there be light there.’
The word, and the Spirit, and the Father, come into the life of everyone who is born again . . . and recreation begins. Why? Because de-creation happened on the cross.”
Well might the sun and darkness hide and shut his glories in
When Christ the mighty maker died for man the creature’s sin.
This is the good news! The good news is that, though God created a world. This is the beginning of the story. And though sin entered in that world and broke the creation, so that it begins to revert to chaos, that God does not leave it there on its own, but he gives us his word.
In fact, his word is made flesh and in his word made flesh Jesus comes, takes the judgment that we deserve so that you and I can be recreated as a people of God, a kingdom of God, God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and God’s blessing. And it only happens through the gospel.
It only happens through this Word, the Word who created all things. John 1 tells us it’s Jesus. Listen, Jesus is the Hero of the story! Even in this first movement, even in this first part of the plot, Jesus is the Hero of the story.
And what we’re going to see in this series is that this story moves from Creation all the way through sin and then redemption, ultimately to new creation, recreation, as God through Christ makes all things new!
Now, let me just ask you this morning. . .think about your worldview, alright? You probably don’t call it a “worldview,” you probably don’t think about having a worldview, but you’ve got a way of looking at the world. You have a way of interpreting reality. You have a way of thinking about God or thinking about spiritual realities, if you believe in them at all, you’ve got a way of looking at the world, the things that you see, the environments, the created world and all of the goods that we share, a way of looking at work and rest, a way of looking at food and family, a way of looking at money and sex.
You’ve got ways of viewing all these things, and you’ve got a way of looking at yourself. You may think really, really highly of yourself and not recognize your sin and rebellion or you might think so lowly of yourself that you don’t recognize your dignity as a person created in the image of God.
You’ve got a way of looking at God, a way of looking at the world, a way of looking at yourself. Does your worldview get informed by what Scripture says, by this story? Or are you kind of living your own story, all by yourself out there alone, and the result--because you’re not receiving the revelation from God--is chaos, darkness, confusion?
Listen, if you want there to be harmony and balance and peace and joy and satisfaction and flourishing, what the Bible calls “shalom,” if you want that in your life, that can only come to you through God’s Word.
God’s Word, given us in Scripture and God’s Word supremely made flesh in Jesus Christ: God’s Word crucified for us so that we can be the recipients of God’s blessing, under God’s rule.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, would you use your Word now to shape our hearts and our minds, and by your Spirit would you put your finger on ways of thinking, ways of perceiving, ways of feeling, ways of living, ways of choosing, ways of organizing our lives that do not receive your Word and your counsel? And maybe the easiest way for us to do that, Lord, is to look right now at places where we perceive there to be chaos: chaos in our thought lives, chaos in our appetites, chaos in our relationships, places where there’s darkness in our emotions. . .and then to trace it back and to hear, “What do you say? What does your Word say? How does this story shape the way we should think of these things?”
So, Father, by your Word and your Spirit, would you counsel us and instruct us and teach us, and would you lead us to Jesus? Lead us to the Cross, where our sins can be forgiven, where Jesus took the darkness that was ours so that peace and life and full flourishing can now be ours through him. We pray that you’d work in our hearts, even as we continue to worship him. In Jesus’ Name we pray, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
