Made for Relationship

Heliocentrism

For a few centuries before Jesus came to earth, a number of Greek philosophers, including Aristotle, started taking an interest in science and how the world worked. You might actually be interested to know that contrary to popular opinion, even in this time before Jesus, they actually figured out the world was not flat and indeed a big sphere.

Well, during this time, these ancient Greeks developed the theory that the sun, the moon and the stars revolved around the earth. Earth stood still, while everything else moved around it. This model was developed somewhere in the ball park of 300 years before Christ.

It makes sense, and you can certainly understand why they would come up with such a theory.

If you think about it, it makes sense to make our starting point to be the perspective that we view the world. From where we stand, everything does revolve around us. We’re not moving. Everything else is.

Fast forward many centuries, to the 16th Century after Jesus. The scientific exploration continues, and it’s worth noting that at this point in time, it is driven by the understanding that God has given us an ordered world and us the ability to understand it.

One such scientist was Nicolaus Copernicus. He looked up at the stars and started realising that the stars and planets didn’t move quite as you might expect if they were simply revolving around the earth. He came up with a theory where the planets, including earth, revolve around the Sun - something called heliocentrism.

This was quite a radical proposal. Suddenly, we’re not at the centre of the universe. To accept such a view requires us to think beyond our own immediate perspective.

It wasn’t long after Copernicus, that Galileo improved the design of the telescope, and was able to document what Copernicus had said, which essentially proved that we revolved around the sun, rather than the sun revolving around us.

Well, I suspect you know what happens next. The Catholic Church get very upset, and locked up Galileo for some time.

Contrary to popular belief, this was not because the church was anti-science. It was rather a matter that they struggled to accept a new theory over the consensus view, that to be honest, suited them quite well.

You see, the reason I tell this story is because our natural tendency is always to see everything revolving around us.

Child development

Let’s take for example a young child - say a toddler. For a toddler, there is no conception beyond what is immediately before them. From their perspective, their world is the world.

The toddler becomes a child. Their world gets a bit bigger. A bigger school. A wider range of friends. They might start to learn that their actions affects the feelings of others, but their world is really still revolving around them.

Then comes adolescence. The years where they are really figuring out who they are and how they fit in the world. Their world becomes bigger still. But it’s almost like they are the ancient Greeks who figured out that there is this movement all around them, but it’s all from their perspective. It all still revolves around them.

Then comes adulthood.

I’d like to say we all now realise that we’re no longer the centre… that we’re part of a bigger interconnected system… and that when we all work together for the common good, we are all better off.

The reality is, we’re more like that Catholic church of the 16th Century that resists such a notion. We don’t want to consider that actually, there is a better way to understand our place in the world.

Link to passage

This morning, we’re coming to the second chapter of Genesis. It might not specifically teach us about whether the sun rotates the earth, or the earth rotates the sun, but yet, as we delve into it, we will find a better perspective of understanding how we fit into the world.

If we allow it to, we’ll find it challenging some of our natural tendencies.

So let’s dive in...

Two accounts

Now, you don’t have to be a biblical scholar to realise that Genesis 2 reads quite differently to Genesis 1.

In Genesis 1, we had the six days of creation, with the seventh day of rest coming in the first three verses of chapter 2. This first chapter is highly structured. We see an ordered creation. There is a completeness to it. It’s the zoomed out version. And it is nothing short of breathtaking.

Chapter 2, however, feels more intimate. It’s like we’ve zoomed in and we’re seeing the creation up close and personal.

Now, I think it’s quite clearly a separate account of creation… it’s not just a follow on after the six days.

You see, the trees had already appeared on day three, and of course, humanity had been created on day six. But verse 4 effectively starts us back at the beginning.

Now, it’s not a matter of which one is right. We’re not pitting the chapter 1 account up against the chapter 2 account. They are of course both true, it’s just that they’re describing creation from a different perspective.

Man in the Garden

So, on that note, let’s explore the account of creation as given in chapter 2.

We start with a world that is effectively bare. No shrubs and no plants. But God streams come up. This is the start of Eden, which will be named for the first time in verse 8.

Now, throughout the whole bible, life giving streams are going to appear quite a lot. Water brings life.

The streams water the whole surface, and as such, we start to see life come into this world.

Now, there are streams in verse 6, but jump down to verse 10, and we get four mighty rivers mentioned. Four rivers that flow from Eden.

Now, of the four rivers, the Pishon is unknown to history. The Gihon does have some other scriptural references, but it’s near Jerusalem. The Tigris and Euphrates, are certainly known, and in fact, still exist today, although interestingly, they flow out of Armenia, which is not east where the garden is said to be. But I wouldn’t let those details bother you. We’re not trying to get a geography lesson, rather, these rivers are giving a sense of the extravagant, life-giving waters that God supplies.

Formed from dust

These waters might be life giving, but there is a special kind of life that is to be formed.

The Lord God takes some dust (see verse 7). He doesn’t just fashion something from the dust, rather he breaths into it.

The breath of God gives life.

Do you notice already how different this account of creation is. Particularly with the creation of humanity, this image of a breath is really quite intimate.

Now, there is an interesting little word play that is going on here. When it says he takes the dust from the ground, the word ground in Hebrew sounds like Adam. The word ‘man’ is also the word Adam. So when later he gets the name of Adam, well, it all starts to interlink. We start to see the interconnectedness of what God is doing.

Man (or Adam) is placed into this garden called Eden that is in the East.

Beauty

There’s one phrase used of this garden that I want to pick up on though, because it will highlight an important feature of this chapter.

As it describes the trees that God puts in this garden, it describes them as “trees that were pleasing to the eye”.

God is adding beauty.

But what function does beauty play?

As many of you will know, I was an engineer prior to being a pastor. As an engineer, there is a big emphasis on functionality. You’re given a task which has a set goal, and the engineers job is to achieve that task. Now, in one regard, beauty means nothing. Beauty doesn’t help the goal from being achieved. But yet, there’s an inbuilt instinct to try as much as possible to make it fit a style… to make it beautiful as it were.

God has given us that instinct. While beauty doesn’t always provide functionality, it draws us to an extravagant God who makes things pleasing to the eye.

On another note, keep that phrase “pleasing to the eye” in mind, because we’re going to see it come again next week when we tackle chapter 3.

Two trees

But even with all these beautiful trees, our eyes are drawn to the centre of the garden, where we two very specific trees.

The tree of life. And the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now the tree of life, well, this is going to go out of sight for a very long time after this chapter, making a return when we get to the book of Revelation.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, however… well, in verses 16 and 17, we’re going to get a strict command about this. A command that will become the focus in the next chapter.

God says that any tree is able to be eaten from, except this one tree - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eating this tree, is going to end in death.

Now because this is going to have a big focus on what we’ll discuss next week, I’ll leave discussion about this until then.

How we fit in this world...

So, we have man in the beautiful, intimate part of creation that God has lovingly provided.

But with seemingly only one man being created to this point, it’s almost as if the world is revolving around this one person.

But I want to draw out three ideas from this chapter that help us gain a better perspective. We’ll still see that we’re loved and that we are special… but also that we’re part of something bigger.

Work

The first idea comes from verse 15.

The verse repeats what was initially said in verse 8, that is, that God placed the man in the Garden of Eden. But in verse 15, it adds that he was placed there to work it and take care of it.

Now possibly, this might come with a bit of dismay for you when you realise that work was part of God creation before the fall.

God didn’t just put man in the garden and say - rightio, just sit around and do nothing. He’s got to work.In

Now, I don’t know how you feel about that. Possibly you’ve got, (or maybe you had) a job that you absolutely love, and so you have a positive attitude towards work.

For many, though, work is this big drag… something we have to do because we have to earn a living somehow.

But, deep down, I think we recognise that working is a fundamental good.

I want to suggest, however, work actually connects us to God’s creation. When we work, we are brought into a bigger picture.

You see, work is more than just a personal hobby for our own interest.

We work for a good that is greater than ourselves.

Now, I’m using the word work rather loosely here. It can mean your paid job. It can be the chores you do around the house. It can be volunteer work you do for the community. Perhaps ministry roles at church.

It’s easy to grow bitter when you feel you have too much on, and while you do need to be careful you’re not overloading yourself too much, but rather than becoming bitter, remember the privilege it is to know that you are working to enhance God’s good creation.

Interconnection

So, the first point I want to make is that our work reminds us of something bigger.

The next point I want to make comes from verse 18.

Here, the Lord God says: “It is not good for the man to be alone”.

Adam’s world is about to get bigger.

One of the things that our society tends to focus on is becoming independent. We have this aim where we want to do everything ourselves.

But this should not be our aim. It’s a foolish aim.

In fact, I’m going to go as far to suggest that when we take our aim to be independent too far, we’re actually working against the way God intended our world to be.

Now, I don’t know about you, but have you ever got to that point where working with someone else actually just seems hard. Working with other people can sometimes create more work. If you just do it yourself, it will be so much easier.

The problem is, we’re losing sight that there is something fundamentally better when we’re together.

Now, I’m not trying to suggest you should never work solo - there is a time and place for that, but this story of creation should remind us that we should be striving to work together with others, because it is not good to be alone.

Marriage

But when God says that it is not good for man to be alone, this is about to lead us on a path towards the creation of woman, and the institution of marriage.

But it’s interesting the journey this narrative takes us on to get to this point, because it’s going to take us through the animal world first.

Now, I think it would be wrong to suggest that God thought that an animal would be a suitable helper for Adam. But it’s like the narrative is building the tension while it continues to describe creation.

You see, just as Adam was formed out of the ground, so were all the wild animals and the birds in the sky. God brings these animals to Adam who gets the privilege of naming them all.

Now, if you’re having trouble imagining what that might look like, I’m not convinced we’re meant to imagine a literal line of animal marching past while Adam calls out different names for them.

There is certainly something symbolic going on here, demonstrating the rule that man has over animal. It’s the image of God that we talked about earlier in the series.

But in the end, no suitable helper was found.

And so in verse 21, something remarkable happens. Adam is put into a deep sleep. And while he is sleeping, God takes one of the ribs, and from this, God made a woman.

Now, except that this story is likely familiar to you, you could be forgiven for thinking that this all sounds very weird. What’s the go with the rib.

It is worth pointing out here that although it was once thought that men have one less rib than women, this is in fact not true.

I think a better way of thinking about this is that the word rib can also be read as side. Woman is being made of the same essence of man. While women are fundamentally different to men, at the core, there is the same essence.

It is in this woman, that a helper is finally found.

Now, this word helper does warrant some comments. You see, we can sometimes think of the word helper as what we might call someone inferior to us who might be able to offer a helpful tidbit here or there.

But the word ‘helper’ does not necessarily imply inferior. In fact, at other points, even God is refered to as Israel’s helper, and in no way was he inferior to Israel.

The word ‘helper’ rather implies the usefulness of the two of them together.

Man and woman go together.

In verse 24, we then get the first description of marriage. The word marriage might not explicitly be used here, but it is certainly implied.

“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wide, and they become one flesh”.

One flesh is the description of the union they have together. In a physical sense, it involves sexual intercourse, but I want to suggest it is even more than that. In marriage, man and wife become connected in a spiritual sense.

The last verse of the chapter says: “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame”.

This is again going to become significant when we get to the next chapter, but for now, I want to suggest that for the married couple, this pre-fall state can still be found in the privacy of the marriage relationship. A married couple can be naked together with no shame at all.

You see, I’ve suggested that in this image of creation that we find in chapter 2, we’ve already seen how the concept of work, and of seeing our relationship with other people can help us understand that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves.

Well, the institution of marriage is also a reminder that this is not about me. Because marriage is about the other person.

Not all of you are married. But even for those who aren’t, we can still use the image of marriage as a reminder for a bigger plan that God has for us.

You see, in the New Testament, we’ll see Jesus being pictured as the bridegroom, and the church as his bride. This image points to something bigger. There is a purpose to what is happening.

Marriage is a reminder that God is doing something very special.

Conclusion

It is so easy to form a self-centered view of the world. It is easy to get caught up and think that the world is revolving around us.

But this is not how God intended it. Built into creation are reminders that we are part of something special that is far bigger than us as individuals.

He has given us work to see our interconnection with the world around us.

He has given us friends and partners to help us do what we need to do.

And he has given us an institution of marriage to see that there is a bigger purpose to all of this.

This is such a beautiful world that we are a part of.

It is so intricate, and God wants you to enjoy it.

Let me pray...