Sermon Tone Analysis

Eden - Like No Place on Earth

God does not act without purpose.

He created the Heavenly Host, intending that they carry out His will.

Did He create them to meet some need in Him? No.

A complete, perfect being has no deficiencies.

God has no need of a council, but he uses one.

Similarly, God did not need humans to steward His creation or, later on, to reveal that Messiah had come.

But those were His choices as well.

[be careful here, the common mis-think is that God would not have done it this way; see Darwinism which is flawed in its presuppositions).

God delighted in creating proxies to represent Him and carry out His wishes.

His decisions in that regard have ramifications.

Ideas have consequences.

Earth Was Not Eden

The first thing we should notice is one that is transparent form the text, but somehow missed by many: Not all the world was Eden!

It is important to establish that Eden was, rather than the entire earthly creation, only a tiny part of it.

This will be important as we move forward in this study.

The text makes this clear.

Eden was actually a tiny plot on earth.

Its location circumscribed by geographical markers.

This is enough to be clear that the earth was not Eden.

There are other indicators.

In Genesis 1: 26-27.. God made humankind as His imagers, His representatives in this new domain.

This functional view of the image becomes clear in the commands

Notice that it says the earth needed filling.

This does not refer to Eden.

Eden has not even appeared yet in the story.

It’s first mention is in Gen 2:8

The garden of Eden is said to be in the East.

The directional word informs us that there were other parts of the Earth.

God “planted” this garden.

We know from Gen 1 that the dry land (called earth) already existed.

It had to in order for God to plant a garden in the east.

Here the man God has made is put into the garden for a reason - the man’s job is to take care of the garden.

Earlier it was to subdue and multiply, but he needed a woman for that, and she was not created yet when he is put in the garden.

Cultivation of the garden and subduing the earth are not the same tasks.

Genesis 1 and 2 have a strange relationship, they are not chronological, but they may be some sort of simultaneous, minutes, timeline.

The man’s original task is to take care of the garden, where he lived (Gen 2) After he gets a partner (Gen 1) God says to both of them (commands are plural in Hebrew) to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over its creatures.

We can see then that Earth and Eden are distinct.

The Garden the home of God on earth, is perfect, planted by God, it is what God wants it to be.

It does not need subjection.

That is not something that can be said for the rest of the world.

God called creation very good, but very good is not perfect.

Lastly, they have to be distinct since Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden.

Unless from space, distinct places.

There is a lot of misinformation about the creation, garden, earth etc.

But we are focused on one thing.

The original task of humanity was to make the entire earth like Eden.

And although God could do that, he created imagers to do so.

Eden is where the idea of the kingdom or God begins.

And it’s no coincidence that the Bible ends with the vision of a new Edenic Earth.

Proclamation and Partnership

The working relationship between God and humankind, before and after the Fall, involves genuine, meaningful participation on the part of God’s human imagers.

This is most transparently seen through the Bible … Moses, Joshua, David, the bone carriers, the prophets, the disciples, etc… The pattern extends to us, to all believers.

There is nothing we do that God could not accomplish himself.

But he has not chosen this method.

Rather, he tells us what His will is and commands his loyal children to get the job done — human and otherwise.

The participatory nature of the the relationship between God and his human imagers is no surprise.

God decrees His will and leaves it to his administrative household to get the job done.

So… this is a meeting between God and his divine council.

Verse 20 makes it clear God had decided it was time for Ahab to die.

God then asked the host of heaven standing in attendance, how Ahab’s death should be accomplished.

The death was decreeded but not the means....... I’ll put lying spirit, God … that will work, get it done.

what?

Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and told Daniel that a watcher (a divine being) proclaimed that the tree would be cut down, leaving a stump … terms for the king who would be like an animal… but the decree was by the watchers… but sovereignty belongs to the Most High… but later

but the watcher decreed it, under the authority of God, both are in the decision but it is God’s alone.. HE IS SOVEREIGN

Only God is Perfect

Like the creation story, the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 is one of those episodes that anyone acquainted with the Bible seems to know.

But there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

We will be looking at some of these as they fit our theme of “more things...”

What we have covered in earlier chapters serves as a crucial backdrop for understanding the fall.

Eden was both the divine abode and the nerve center for God’s plan on Earth.

The worldview of the biblical writers was where YHWH is, so is his council.

YHWH announced his intention to create humankind as His imagers in Gen 1:26… the council members heard that these humans, new members in God’s family, would be tasked with overspreading the Earth, and advancing God’s kingdom rule.

They were God’s choice to be steward=kings over a global Eden under God’s authority.

We will soon see that there was dissent, But how could there be trouble in paradise?

How could things go so wrong?

The Book of Job contains some of the clues.

The Backdrop

Job is an odd book.

That’s part of why it is so interesting.

The story opens up with a divine council scene— the sons of God appear before YHWH.

During the council the satan shows up.

His rank is not clear.

The language is ambiguous with respect to whether he is of the same level as the sons of God or is on the scene as a servant official to the council.

The lower status is more likely, given what we learn about his job.

I use the satan deliberately.

The Hebrew means something like “adversary,” “prosecutor” or “challenger.”

It speaks of an official legal function within a ruling body - in this case, God’s council.

When God asks the satan where he has been, we learn that his job involves investigating what is happening on earth

He is, so to speak, God’s eyes and ears on the ground, reporting what he has seen and heard.

The satan in Job 1-2 is not a villain.

He’s doing the job assigned to him by God.

The book of Job does not identify the satan in this scene as the nachash of Genesis 3, not does it identify this figure with the devil of the New Testament.

The OT never uses the word satan of the serpent figure from Genesis 3. It is not a proper noun in the OT.

I am not the Keith.

English doesn’t use the definite article with personal names,neither does Hebrew.

Most of the 27 occurrences of satan in the Hebrew Bible have the definite article, including all the places English readers presume the devil is present.

The satan described in these passages is not the devil.

Rather, he is an anonymous prosecutor fulfilling a role in the council.

the places there is no definite article well.. look at this