Great Women of the Bible Eve

Great Women of the Bible

Eve

Genesis 2:21-25

Meal Packing Images

Good morning again and welcome to worship! Well, we all survived last Sunday! I am so proud of our church and the work we did as we prepared meals for over 12,000 people. Now I say that also acknowledging the fact that I learned a little bit about this project for the next time.

Lesson 1 – I need to have some food ready to eat for the group that stays. It took a little longer than anticipated

Lesson 2 – Those of us that stayed need to recruit a few more younger people to join us. Yes we had people from 7 to 70, but I think there were a lot more beyond my age than there were below my age. All that said, the 30 or so that stayed between the two services did an amazing job! Thank you so much. We will never know what these meals may mean to the children of the orphanage across the boarder that receives them.

GWOTF Slide

I also want to say, we survived another Halloween, you all survived my Zombie Faith sermon, we had an amazing Fall Festival with children from the community having a chance to experience a little of our love and hospitality.

Now, we are ready to turn our attention back to the Great Women of the Bible. Thinking back, we have covered the beautiful Abigail – who sacrificially saved her family before becoming the wife of King David. We have looked at the hero Deborah and the real hero of the story – a lady named Jael, who was pretty handy with a hammer and tent stake if you recall.

We’ve considered Ruth and the story of her commitment – and the fact that she is in the direct lineage of not only King David, but also King Jesus! The final two weeks before I left town, we considered Esther the Persian Queen who saved the Jewish people from certain annihilation.

Then, you heard from two amazing women of God, talking about two amazing women of God as Esme and Priscilla talked about Mary of Magdalen and Mary of Bethany.

Sermon Slide

Today I am going a little further back than these great women of the Bible; in fact, I am going all the way back to the beginning. I am going back to a woman of the Bible so great, that arguably none of us would be here without her. I mean, come on – if there had been no Eve there would not have been a human race. So, we are going to take a few minutes to look at the story of the mother of all humanity, a woman we know as Eve.

Turn with me in your Bible to Genesis 2:21-25. There are a few other mentions of Eve by name in Paul’s writings as well as a little more about her in Genesis 4, but for a good start to the story, lets read Genesis 2:21-25. (NLT)

So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the LORD God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening (Some translations of this say that the Lord took a side of the man). Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.

“At last!” the man exclaimed.

“This one is bone from my bone,

and flesh from my flesh!

She will be called ‘woman,’ (isshah)

because she was taken from ‘man.’ (Issh)”

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.

Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.

<PRAYER>

Sermon Slide

It was January 2003, I was 32 years old and a new seminary student at Baylor’s Truitt Seminary. In my mind, I already knew all I needed to know about the Bible. I had grown up in church, had some great Sunday School teachers, pastors, and youth leaders. I had read my Bible religiously – no pun intended… and I had memorized lots of verses. I had even recently finished the 32-week Disciple Bible Study. What am I saying, I knew the Bible! At least I thought I did.

Then, in my first scripture class in big school… I mean seminary… we reverted back to 4th Grade Sunday School, and the professor had us each read 2-3 verses at a time, starting in Genesis 1:1 and reading on through 2:25. Up and down the rows we read, starting over at least once… It seemed like forever before we finished and the professor said, “Good job, now, which story is accurate?”

I, and several other students, were a little upset and indignant, “What do you mean? It’s the same story! One is like the ‘play by play’ announcement and the other one is the narrative account!”

Then she proceeded, in 1 hour to begin the deconstruction of my imbedded theology and to rebuild my faith with a stronger and deeper understanding of Scripture… and it all started with Adam and Eve. I’m going to share a little of that, but I hope I don’t deconstruct anyone’s faith too much.

The story of humanity starts in Genesis 1. After all is created, God’s crowning achievement is humanity.

Turn with me to Genesis 1:26-27

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”

OK, let’s pause right there. Some of your Bibles probably read that God created “man”. That word that your Bible translated as ‘man’ and the NLT translated as “human beings” is the word ‘a-dam’. It’s the generic word in Hebrew for humans. It is neither male nor female, instead, it is a universal term. Ok, going on into verse 27.

So God created human beings (a-dam) in his own image.

In the image of God he created them;

Male (zakar) and female (neqebah) he created them.

In this account, God’s crowning achievement is humanity, male and female. They are distinguished as different, but equal. They were not created one, then the other – they were created together.

We get the idea of them being created at different times in chapter 2, so let’s turn back over to chapter 2 and look at the words of that author.

Genesis 2:7

Then the LORD God formed the manfrom the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.

Now. Here’s the interesting part. I highlighted and put the Hebrew words with the words man or humanity, and ground to help you see a point. A-dam, is not a proper name, it’s a generic term for humanity. Then we get the word ada-mah – the word for dirt.

Have you ever heard someone take a pun out of one language or region and put it in another language or region? Like, here we might say, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Right? Not a pleasant term, but we get the point. There’ multiple ways to accomplish a point. BUT… In East Texas we would say, “There’s more than one way to skin a squirrel.” Because nobody skinned and ate cats, but we definitely did skin and eat squirrels. But over here, when I use that expression, people say, “Why are you skinning a squirrel?” And then get lost in the idiom and miss the point.”

A similar thing has happened here when we took this phrase out of the Hebrew and put it in the English. But, with the Lord there is redemption, amen. I have a way to redeem the idiom for us to kinda hear what the author was saying.

Here is a better translation for us today. I mean, it’s not earth shattering or anything, but it retains the word play but you have to remember what humus is – you know fancy dirt for your flower garden, right.

So, in Hebrew it would be that “the Lord formed A-dam from the ada-mah” You hear that. Now think of it this way… “The Lord formed humanity from the humus…”

Adam from the ground – human from humus.

OK, so, we have made the point that in the first creation story that Adam wasn’t the name, it was the word used for all of humanity.

The next point is that in the 2ndstory of Creation, humanity was made from the dirt… not the man, all humanity was made from humus.

Now, let’s move on to our next point of the creation stories and the story of Eve. The rib.

I have to admit, as a “Son of Adam” as we might say from our watching of Narnia, I felt like if Adam had lost a rib, we must all – all men, be missing a rib from one side or the other. I’ll admit, this was before I had any Biology or A&P classes, but as a child I use to try to count my ribs to see which side God made woman from. Talk about reading the Bible literally, right? Well, it didn’t take long for science to teach me that maybe I didn’t need to read the King James literally all the time. Maybe a little more interpretation needs to go into some of these verses like this.

And that brings us to our verse for the day in 2:21-25.

So the story tells us that God caused the man (well call him Adam, even though he has yet to be named… he’s simply called A-dam, or humanity). He goes to sleep and as I learned, God took a rib and from it God formed a female. This is the first time in chapter 2 that we see a designation apart from a-dam – or humanity. Now, we see that isshahand issh are now two separate beings. Now, I’m not sure how big Adam was, but Eve must have been pretty small if God could make an entire person from that one rib.

I’m being a little sarcastic, but for a reason. The word that has been interpreted for so long to be “rib,” salow, also has another meaning… the side. This interpretation means that what this phrase, “took out one of the man’s ribs” that we read, could mean “took one side of a-dam or ‘the human.’”

Do you hear my point here? If this is the correct interpretation, it aligns with Genesis 1, it does away with the argument that the gender “man” was created first and the woman created second and therefore subservient to the “man.”

Here’s another thing to help make this point. In Genesis 2:20 we get the phrase that God created a helper for Adam. That word in Hebrew is Ezer kenegdo: it has most often been translated as Helper, Helpmeet, or Help-mate… but… it has also been translated elsewhere as “an assistant” (Subordinate) or as “an expert” (Superior). Depending on how you translate this one phrase could determine how we see our interaction between men and women today.

What I’m saying is, there was no and should be no hierarchical relationship between male and female – they were equal co-laborers together, serving God and caring for the creation.

But, there is also another way to translate this word Ezer and I actually like this better. It could mean “strong” or “powerful” … and if we use this translation, it means that the female was created as the strong and powerful counterpart to the male. Now, I’m not going to get into any feminism here, because I don’t want to get into any trouble at home or with anyone in this room. I’m not telling you that the way some of us were raised… where the man is the strong one and the woman is the weak one… is wrong, I’m just going to tell you that there is likely a reason men don’t have babies and women do… I think women have a strength we men just don’t possess… but I’m going to stop right there and get back to eve.

In the story of Creation, Eve is the first human with a specific form of identification. The man was called by the generic “a-dam” all the way until Genesis 4, but Eve is mentioned by name nineteen times throughout the story. I know, you don’t see it in our English translations, you have to follow along in the Hebrew. But, I find it interesting that in the story, Eve is the first name given.

Eve is derived from the root word that means “To Live”

Eve was the one to continue – with God’s help – to create. Neither Eve, nor Adam, had the power to create life on their own… they had to have one another and they had to have God.

Now, as we near the end, I am reaching my final point. Just to remind you:

1) A-dam wasn’t a name initially, it was a title, a designation. A generic word for humanity.

2) From the humus came humanity. (and an aside fitting for today as we remember the saints – to the humus humanity will return. We are not eternal, we return to the material from which we came.)

3) The splitting of humanity may have been more than a “rib” but a splitting of the humanity into two forms.

4) God split humanity into two because we complete one another. I don’t want to get into the argument of complementarianism… my point is God created us in a certain way as social creatures. God splits a-dam into isshah and issh.

Now, finally,

The Fall… I’m not going to get into the argument of why Eve ate the fruit, or whose fault it was… I’m just going to say that a careful reading of the story shows that Adam was with Eve when the serpent said, “here, have this forbidden fruit” and he did nothing. So, whose to blame, man or woman… both. End of discussion.

The point isn’t whose fault it was, the point is that we often fail to follow God’s good plan for us. We often fall short of God’s glory. But, as the psalmist tells us in 103, “Hope in the Lord; for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.”

Yes, we may have fallen, but we are redeemed. We have all fallen, but we don’t have to remain that way.

Romans 3:21-24

But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

Here is the point. In the story of Eve we find God’s good intent for us all to be creative. We are made in the creative image of God to create. And yes, we have marred that image, that perfect image of the creator God. The story of Eve in the Garden is just a glimpse of the ways we have failed God… but God has made a way to be clean, to remove the damage, to be made right.

God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

And that my friends is something to celebrate, this day and every day. That is what we are to remember as we come to this table. That is something to remember as we remember the saints that have gone before us. That is something to remember as we walk out of here into the world, into the life that God created for each and every one of us.

Would you pray!