Sermon Tone Analysis

Recap

Last week recap

Where are we in the Story?

-Using the Order of Hebrew Bible TaNaKh

The Torah

The Prophets

The Writings

The Gospels

The Acts of Apostles

The Letters

Revelation

So we are right in the middle of the ordering, but what this list does not account for is the length and portion that these sections are of the whole Bible.

The Torah, The Prophets and The Writings are a staggering 77.5% of the Bible!

The Gospels are 11 %

The Acts of the Apostles are 3%

The Letters are 7%

Revelation is 1.5%

So the whole New Testament (NT) is only 22.5% of the Bible.

What are some reflections that you may have right now?

Based on what is said?

So today I want to focus on what has happened in the story so far, there is no way we can talk about something that is more than 75% into the story and hope to understand.

Most of us would not watch a movie that is nearly at the end but we do that with Scripture all the time!

It is my goal with this study to firmly place where everything is in the story.

Think of it like in a series on Netflix…previously on “The Biblical Drama”

We believe the Bible is one unified story that leads to Jesus.

We believe that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever!

We are going to see how God, from the very beginning has been on a path of redemption for everyone!

The Beginning

Historical Backdrop

The Church has historically had a rocky relationship with Judaism, Jews and therefore anything distinctly Jew-ish.

For example letters and books in the NT that had a distinctly Jew-ish flavour were largely ignored or classed as second tier, so Johannine (writings by John, Gospel 1,2,3 John and Revelation) literature, letter to the Hebrews and James tended to not be looked at favourably.

Now this did not happen just because of one singular reason, remember these are real people in a real place at a real time.

Some reason why this happened:

A new movement always seeks to separate from the original.

This was not untrue of Christianity.

Some of the Jewish Leaders of the time were persecuting Christians, this was mainly because of two reasons:

Some Jewish leaders didn’t like the Jesus Movement because they thought it was blasphemy and some because it decentralised their power

Think Paul for the Former and the Sanhedrin for the Latter

Some Jewish leaders thought it would upset the balance of peace between Judea and Rome which was tentative at best.

Remember in Rome, you had to have official permission to worship and you had to worship Caesar as god (this is known as the imperial cult).

Turns out Jews didn’t agree to that and had permission to not worship Caesar but they still had to pay tribute to him for the privilege of having him rule them.

We have to appreciate this would have made a conflict for Christians.

On one hand you want to be separate but on the other if you aren’t Jews…then you no longer have permission to not worship Caesar as god.

It was a dilemma for sure.

There were at the time Greeks who liked the Jewish faith and way of wisdom, they were called “God fearers” but they in no way wanted to experience circumcision.

(This is why Paul struggled on this topic so much because a large percentage of early Greek converts to Christianity were among this group of “God-fearers”) As you can imagine this became a major point of contest.

In 70 AD Rome had enough of the Jews and sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple, so naturally you would not want to be associated with that in any way.

Therefore anything Jewish fell far out of favour in the empire and no one would want to be imitating anything that might make you get killed.

Makes Sense.

This came with consequences, the majority of Christians at this point at the end of the first century were Greek Gentiles (Non-Jews).

So no one passed down the Jewish teachings, the understandings or otherwise.

This was made worse that people did not actively want them.

Once Christianity became the religion of the empire things just got out of hand and quickly.

You had whole tribes of people thousands and thousands being conquered militarily and force converted to Christianity and they were thinking Jesus was now their new war god.

Seriously…this is what the early church had to deal with, but the church themselves disconnected from their Jewish roots and had to effectively make it up as they went.

Further history did not make this better.

However in the last 60 - 100 years due to major finds in Archeology and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls there has been a fresh re-invigoration of reestablishing our Jewish roots and it has been eye-opening (for me personally) but also for all Christians to see that many of our traditional interpretations were just so far off the mark.

So it is from this understanding and perspective that we are going to start into the wonderful world of being students of the Word.

ברוך אתה יהוה אלהינו מלך העולם אשר נותן תורת־אמת ובשורת־ישועה לעמו ישראל ולכל העמים על־ידי בנו ישוע המשיח אדוננו.

Praised are you, Adonai our God, King of the universe, who gives the Torah of truth and the Good News of salvation to his people Israel and to all the peoples through his son Yeshua the Messiah, our Lord.

Any good story worth telling starts at the beginning.

The first eleven chapters of the Bible are called the Primeval Period which just means of the “earliest time”

It recounts the foundational stories or myths.

Myth - a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

So let’s dive into the story

Genesis opens with the most organised chapter in the whole of the Bible.

We must remember from the last session that the Bible is literary art.

It is designed to communicate through multiple angles and means.

We may think that books are just ordered chronologically with the main point at the end.

That is not the way the Bible is organised, designed or otherwise.

Like last week we said Gen 1 is 1 set of seven words then the structure of days with days 1 - 3 giving form and days 4 - 6 filling them fixing the issue from verse 2:

Now the word for deep here is Tehom (תְּהוֹם, tehom)

A Hebrew word often used for the depths of the ocean or with reference to a great and destructive amount of water (see Ezek 31:15).

Tehom may refer to the chaotic primeval ocean (Gen 1:2), to one of the sources of water in the great flood (Gen 7:11), to the waters of the sea (Isa 51:10; Psa 107:26), or to waters that bring death and destruction (Exod 15:5; Ezek 26:19).

A common Semitic word for “sea” may lie behind the Hebrew tehom and the Akkadian Tiamat (see HALOT, s.v.

תְּהוֹם, tehom).

The possible connection is important since Tiamat figures prominently as Marduk’s adversary in the Mesopotamian creation epic, Enuma Elish.

Tehom is sometimes used in biblical contexts that evoke this common imagery from ancient Near Eastern mythology (e.g., the Chaoskampf motif).

Then the Spirit of God comes and now the word for water is הַמָּֽיִם׃ ma’yim which is just neutral water that can be used for an abundance of good and nourishment and otherwise.

So just from reflection from one verse in Torah we can see God’s whole character, He enters into Chaos to Create Peace.

This whole chapter is God ordering chaos into something where life can flourish!

darkness Throughout the Bible darkness represents evil or calamity.

Here, darkness refers to the unformed and unfilled conditions of the material of v. 1.

So there are a couple of things that God is specifically taking care of Chaos Waters (seas), Darkness and so on.

Let’s take a quick look at Revelation.

22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.

John in the book of Revelation is intentionally using Genesis 1 language to illustrate what New Creation was revealed to him to be like.

The fundamental forces that oppose God’s good creation will not be present.

This is just one of a multitude of ways that Scripture tells us the same story using a different strategy so that hopefully we will understand the message.

See the whole story of the Bible was just told by using a couple of verses at the beginning and end of the Scriptures.

What does everyone think about this so far?

This is just one of thousands of references > 22,000 cross references in the Bible of Scripture quoting and referencing other Scripture.

We haven’t even really gone into Chapter 2 yet!

Humanity and the Fall

Genesis 2 really shows creation from the view of the land.

It is like looking at a diamond from a different angle and seeing a different glittering, same diamond, just a different perspective

So what just happened?

God breathed on something with no life (us), created life from death and then put that new life into a beautiful garden that God had made that means Paradise/Garden of Delight.