The Mighty Moving of God

Introduction

As we go through tonight’s lesson, know that I am reteaching what God has shown me through other men. I did not notice this {cyclical pattern} of Genesis 1-11. Different commentators and a ministry group called the Bible Project. I ain’t smart enough to notice things like this…

I might be the sweetest cookie in the jar but I’m not the brightest bulb in the box

Sometimes I take the stairs because my elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top.

Will you look with me at the first few chapters of Genesis and see the divine handiwork of God?

There is a mighty moving of God all throughout the Bible. Even in the first few chapters of Genesis, there is a might movement from God. When you look at the specific moments in these chapters, we see more mighty movements of God.

Often times we take our microscope to look at the stories in the Bible to understand every detail and know the message of God. The microscope serves a great purpose to stay focused on the passage at hand. The microscope does not allow us to see how the stories of the Bible are connected to one another. Tonight I want to take a wide angel view of Genesis 1-11. Don’t worry we are not going to read every verse, but we are going to reference key moments through these chapters. Let’s look at the Might Moving of God from our wild angel.

To start off, lets look at Genesis 8:20-22 (Noah and his family had just come off the ark.

Genesis 8:20–22 (ESV)

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

In His divine sovereignty, God appears to change strategies. God does not change strategies because He didn’t know what was best. His change in strategies emphasizes what He is going to do instead. What God notices in Noah’s heart is that…

He has a surrendered heart through the sacrifice he is performing

The flood did not change human’s heart. We are evil from tour youth.

What is He going to do instead? — This is where we take our wide lense of Genesis 1-11 to see God’s setup. In the end we will find that God is going to work with humans in the state that He finds them and work out a rescue plan.

Before we look at Genesis where it began, let’s pray together…

Setup of the Cyclical Pattern

Let’s go through some highlights of creation together. As we go through the highlights together, you will see the text on the screen.

At the beginning - we find the heavens and earth being created. In this we find dark, chaotic waters over all the earth. The place described is not livable. God chooses to do something to make it livable. [Genesis 1:1-2]

Genesis 1:1–2 ESV

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 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.

Day 2 of Creation — God separates the waters. Some of the water stays on the ground, while some rests in dome over the world.

Day 3 of Creation — Land emerges from the water with plants

Fruit trees are planted

Day 5 of Creation — Birds and sea creatures fill their designed places

Day 6 of Creation — Animals are created. Then God creates humans. We have the blessing of God that was breathed into us that gives us life. He instructs them to be fruitful and multiply. [Genesis 2:7]

Genesis 2:7 ESV

7 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.

We also find that God separates special place called Eden and inside Eden, He plants a garden. He fills is with fruit trees. Along with the abundance of fruit trees, rests the TREE OF LIFE & the TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL.Ge

God places humans in the garden to keep it and invites them to eat of all the fruit trees except for one (TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL). This tree will cause death.

This heavenly garden is setup for Adam and Eve. They are living the in the good times. You know the ole saying, “back in the good ole days.” None of us have experienced these good ole days. But it doesn’t last long. They eat of the fruit of one of the separated trees (TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL). This one causes them to be aware that they are naked and have broken a divine command. FAILURE

As the narrative builds, we move onto the next generation with Cain & Abel. Cain becomes jealous of his brother and kills him. FAILURE OF THE NEXT GENERATION Because of this, God exiles and curses Cain. We have another moment of exile. It was first Adam & Eve, now one of their descendants.

What do we find Cain do in his exile?

Builds a city to protect against the crazy world

Scripture also records Cains family line (seven generations from Adam to a guy named Lemech who is 10x more murderous than Cain.

End of Scene

Now we are back at the new brother who is born, Seth. THE CHOSEN SEED (LEADS TO NOAH)

We follow a family tree that leads all the way to Noah and his sons. But we do not pick up with the story of Noah. In fact, we find a short story about these rebel spiritual powers who don’t stay in their proper realm but invade the human realm. They took wives and had children.

Again we are at a COSMIC REBELLION — humans & the sons of God are in rebellion all the evil with Cain and his family. The Lord saw all of the wickedness and chooses to wipe out all of humanity.

Genesis 6:8 ESV

8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

First Rotation of the Cyclical Patter

The dark, chaotic waters that were separated at creation are now going to collapse back in on themselves. God is going to de-create the world He had made.

Amongst the chaotic waters here, unlike the beginning of creation, we have a surviving remnant (blameless&righteous) related to one man, Noah.

It's interesting this is a little divinely provided refuge and you've got a man and a woman and then his sons and their wives. And then for a whole year, they just peaceably coexist in this little vehicle of salvation, along with who else, who's with him? The animals. The animals. Just a human at peace with the animals in the divinely provided refuge. — — In other words, this is a little floating Eden. Eden was a divine refuge from the waters, on the high ground. In a similar way, the ark is a little Eden.

They are out there floating for a year until God sends His breath [Genesis 8:1] and the waters separate AGAIN! RECREATION & BLESSING

Genesis 8:1 ESV

1 But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.

Next we see the Ark rest on Mt. Ararat with the humans and animals on the high ground. God instructs Noah to take some of the animals from the boat (the ones sufficient for sacrifices) and build an alter. This puts us where we started tonight’s lesson. ——>> “And the Lord said to his heart, You know what? I'm never gonna do again, curse the ground because of humans, because the purpose of the human heart is evik from his youth. So I'm never going to strike all living things like I did.”

This is where we see , from our human perspective, that God divinely changes strategies.

The first strategy: humans are evil, their heart is to ruin God’s good world. The answer to correcting evil humans is not continuing to flood the earth.

The evil of humans is the reason for divine justice. -Tim Mackie

The NEW strategy: Instead, what God is going to do is somehow work with humans in the state that he finds them and allow creation to be a stable environment where he can work out whatever the rescue plan is gonna be.

When Adam & Eve were in Eden committed sin in the garden, they were exiled.

When God saw that humans were still evil after flood & after making a sacrifice, He did not exile them… Next we see that God blesses Noah and his sons. Tells them to “be fruitful & multiply”

So what does Noah do next? He becomes a man of the soil and plants a garden & eats of the fruit of his garden and become naked (FAILURE)… ARE YOU SEEING THE CYCLICAL PATTERN?

As this still soaks in, the common pattern is not finished yet…

We see the three sons of Noah find his father drunk and naked. The first son goes in and looks upon his father’s nakedness. This one son separates off and does evil.

Then his other brothers won't look at the nakedness. So they walk in backwards and cover up their naked dad.

CYCLICAL PATTERN: there is a sin of the next generation and a division of brothers.

Let’s follow the evil son, Ham, that is compared to Cain: UNCHOSEN

If you follow his family tree you find one of his grandsons, Nimrod, who goes East (like Cain did).

He builds a city, like Cain did. What is the name of that city? BABYLON! Oh we know about the wickedness of Babylon

Then the Bible records another family tree of another of Noah’s sons, Shem. The name for Name. Through this family tree you will see God’s CHOSEN seed.

10 generations from Shem we come to 3 sons, one of them being Abram.

Chapter 10 ends with this genealogy and we step into chapter 11 with another COSMIC REBELLION in chapter 11. Here, the builders of Babylon say, you know what we're gonna do, build a city with a tower.

So think after the building of the city before the flood, you had a story of Sin City and then rebel spiritual beings coming out of the heavens onto the dryland.

Here, you have a story about the building of Sin City and humans trying to ascend up into the heavens.

The first time there was a cosmic rebellion, God expelled them from paradise. The second time , God flooded the earth. This time God scatters the people through dispersing them by language. Chapter 11 ends with the finished family tree of Shem. It goes all the way to Abram. (GOD’S NEXT CHOSEN SEED).

And if we would go on into the Abraham story, we could find it goes, again, it goes again in the same order of themes. And the same order is literally the same words repeated in the same order as they appear in Genesis. And then it goes into the Jacob's story and then the Joseph's story and then the Exodus story. Think of how the Exodus story culminates salvation on dry land, through the separated waters as they sing a song about going up to the new mountain of God, to dwell in the temple, just like in Eden or just like into the arc up to Ararat. It's as if somebody crafted this intentionally and really cares about us getting this pattern of God.

Closing

God’s mighty movement has not only been in each story. God’s might movements have been orchestrating a Divine Cyclical Pattern. Besides this just being really cool creative literature, what is the purpose of following this?

God wants us to get the pattern of an ultimate gift from God.

Humans are the ones who bring exile and curse upon themselves

God brings just consequences BUT always with mercy and promise for the next generation getting a chance

The next generation blows it and we get this cosmic rebellion

God sends a leveling act of justice

A remnant is always saved to bring a new humanity

This goes all the way through the Bible. The point isn’t to simply see nice, pretty patterns. The narrative is advancing a theological argument and a set of claims about God and God's purposes in the world.

This narrative wants to tell us it's within God's prerogative and power to bring cosmic justice on human evil. Is God able to do such a thing? Yes, he is. However, if God were to always do such a thing as a response to human evil, you would never get to that ideal picture painted on page one. So somehow, God's going to have to work with a strategy that won't be a complete erasure of justice, but that also is patient mercy working with evil humans as he finds them.

This is the tension driving the biblical storyline.

And we might see them as opposites, God's judgment and God's mercy, but the biblical authors want us to see these playing in tandem with each other, that God is going to fulfill both of these somehow.

And what else is the story of Jesus except the story of God's justice and mercy meeting together in the story of one life and one death and one resurrection?