Mid-Lent 1
Gen
1:1-2:3
2/20/13
It will probably come as no great
surprise to hear that the library in my office here at church has a very
specific order. As I sit at my desk and
look at the large book shelf on the opposite side of the room, there all the
books related to the liturgy of the Church.
As you move down and then begin moving to the right there are books that
deal with religions and culture of Judaism, the Near Eastern and Greco-Roman
worlds – the setting in which the Old and New Testaments were written. Next is the Old Testament, New Testament,
early Church, medieval Church, Reformation Church and the church in America. Within each of these section books follow an
ordering depending on the kind of material it includes. Naturally this order
makes it easy to find books. I know
exactly where in the room different kinds of books are located and where to go
get them when I need them.
As we listen to our text for
tonight, one of the features that really stands out is how God’s act of
creation was one of ordering things. God
orders his creation as a harmonious whole.
Things have their place and their way of working. It is this very aspect of creation that gives
us greater insight into what sin is, into why we must repent, and into what
Jesus Christ has done for us.
The first verses of Genesis chapter
one say, “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.” They describe God’s initial act of creation
in which creates from nothing “the stuff” of the cosmos. And we learn that this
created stuff had no order. It was
“without form and void.” The sound of the Hebrew words even captures the feel
of this disorder – it was “tohu webohu.”
There was just this stuff in the darkness, with the Spirit of God
hovering over a watery mess.
And then God went to work on what he
had made. His creative word began to
make things happen. He spoke, and it
was. He starts to separate things out as
he creates order. He creates light and
separates the light from the dark. He
separates the heavens above from the waters below. He creates dry land and gathers the water
together where it should be. He creates vegetation
that is distinct from one another – each one according to its kind. He creates the sun and the moon to separate
the day and the night. He creates the
creatures of the sea and sky that are distinct from one other – each one
according to its kind. He creates the
creatures of the land that are distinct from one another – each one according
to its kind.
And God created humanity in his own
image. He created us as an ordered pair – male and female. And he established
an ordering in his creation. Only
humanity had been created in his image and therefore in the ordering of his
creation humanity was in charge. They
were his representatives in the world.
God separated and ordered what he
had made until at the end of six days he was finished. And he looked upon what he had made and the
order he had given to it and we hear at the end of chapter one, “ And God saw everything that he had made, and
behold, it was very good.”
Scripture teaches us that all of
creation belongs to God because he made it.
And as the creator he has given it a divinely established ordering. God the creator has determined how things
work. He has “wired things,” if you will, to work in certain ways – to work
according to a certain divine ordering.
When we act in accordance with this
ordering, things are good. That is what
it meant for humanity to be created in the image of God. We knew God as God wants to be known and it
was our joy to do all things in ways that were perfectly tuned to the ordering
God had established.
On Sunday, our Old Testament lesson
was the account of the Fall in Genesis chapter 3. Knowledge about the ordering of God’s
creation helps us to better understand what happened. God is the Creator. Humanity is the creature, though it is the
crown of creation because it was created in God’s image. Adam and Eve sinned when they ate of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet note why
they did this. They did it in order to be
like God. They did it in order to step beyond the ordering God had given
to them.
By their action they committed the
first sin. They violated the God given
ordering and by doing so they brought disorder and chaos into all of creation –
including their own lives. Instead of a
harmonious relation with one another, now there is strife between man and
woman. Instead of naturally producing the food they needed, now the ground
would bring forth weeds that harmed the crops. Now, as we have seen over the
last several years, sometimes there is too much rain and sometime there is not
enough. Instead of living in peaceful
harmony, now the animals kill and eat each other.
Yet the most dramatic, the most
permanent form of disorder that came about because of the first sin was
death. In Genesis chapter two, we hear,
“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.” God created
human beings as the unity of a body and a soul. Yet now sin causes the
dissolution of that ordering. As God told Adam. “By 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.”
We sin when we live in ways that are
contrary to the way God has ordered his creation. That’s what the Ten Commandments
describe. They tell us how God has set
things up to work. Christians often call
this “natural law” by which they mean you don’t actually need God’s revelation
to know it. Instead people in all times
and places have innately sensed that things work best if you do it this way –
that there is something wrong if you don’t. The apostle Paul put it this way, “For
when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by
nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though
they do not have the law. They show that the
work of the law is written on their hearts.” We come out of the womb “hardwired” to
understand this is how things work.
But that doesn’t mean that we always
want to do things that way. Instead
human beings often decide that their way
of ordering and doing things is easier, or more enjoyable, or more
profitable. However the fact we choose
do to things our own way doesn’t change the fact that it is not God’s way. It doesn’t change the fact that it violates God’s
ordering. And you know what you get when
you do that? Yet get chaos. Yet get sin that begets more sin. You get societies that destroy themselves
from the inside.
Our text this evening gives us a
great perspective from which we can understand what sin really is. And in doing so it also equips us for one of
the focuses of Lent – repentance. We see the ways in which we break the Ten
Commandments and the ways that this then brings chaos and harm into our lives
and the lives of others. And when we see
this, we confess. We admit our sin to
God and ask for forgiveness.
And God does just that because of
Jesus Christ, the One who never diverged from the ordering God provided. Because of the disobedience in the Garden of
Eden, God sent his Son into the world in the incarnation. Jesus Christ walked
the way the Father had given to him – a way that led to the cross. Not even when he faced agony in another
garden, the Garden of Gesthemane, did he abandon the Father’s way. Instead he prayed, “My Father, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you
will.” Through his death on the cross he received the punishment for all the
disorder that we have worked. And because of him we now stand before God forgiven.
For those who are in Christ, it is as if they had never done anything wrong.
During Lent we are following our
Lord towards Holy Week and Good Friday.
Yet we know that on the other side of Good Friday is Easter. Jesus
Christ will die, but just as he said he will rise on the third day. He will rise from the dead and in his
resurrection he will be the beginning of a renewed ordering – a renewed
creation. He will be the first fruits
that guarantees not only our resurrection, but also the renewal of all things. When he returns on the Last Day the disorder
that sin has caused will be removed forever.
No longer will death reign in God’s creation. Instead we will enjoy the immortality of
resurrected bodies like that of our Lord. Instead, peace will reign in God’s
creation as the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the young goat. And God will look upon his creation and see that
everything is very good once again.
Thank you for posting this Mark! And for the Facebook kinks which remind me.
ReplyDeleteBy nature, man is superior to all things on Earth. We have the ability and intellect to do whatever we please with the things around us. This relationship between man and nature is often referred to as the natural order of things.
ReplyDeleteCameron Silva