Sermon Tone Analysis

Some themes never change

In a world of constant change, where what used to be the norm is now seen as intolerant, hateful, or just plain wrong… God’s word still has not changed and that carries even more weight for us than perhaps it did in yesteryear…

We have before us today a passage that will always be the go to portion of scripture when we needs to understand created order, gender roles, and marriage.

And while 20 yrs ago, or even 10 yrs the preaching of this text would not seem to be anything out of the ordinary for a normal Sunday morning in any church in America… In 2019 this is considered controversial.

If anything that is said today makes you uncomfortable, please hear me, our desire is to make much of Christ and to uphold the Word of God in every way we can until the day we are taken from this earth.

This is not hate speech, it does not make us feel better than those who do not understand it, and it will not be a point of contention for us in ministering to people who have never had a chance to believe what we would call absolute truth.

Now why did I give such a big disclaimer at the front end of this?

Because we need to keep in mind that there are a lot of fine sounding arguments out there which would sound loving and almost Christian yet would actually attempt to change God’s word and deny Gospel truth.

Today as we look into this text we are going to see for the first time in scripture, a theme appear.

What do I mean by that?

At face value we have a story before us, but it will be interesting how the various parts of this story seem to point to other areas of scripture where we find similar elements being discussed.

And ultimately a theme will develop.

So what is a theme?

A theme is an idea that recurs in or pervades a work of art or literature.

We will see signposts in the elements of creation be repeated to develop into various themes in understanding God.

Let’s look at the text and break it down as we come across these seemingly random elements of the creation story.

First things first… notice 2 things about the story in front of us today.

First, it seems like the whole creation narrative is given from a high level 30,000 ft view.

There are no real description of how God creates, and the point we are meant to see is that he creates and controls everything.

But as soon as we hit the story takes on whole new feeling.

Like a movie that shows an epic landscape in the opening scene it now zooms in real tight on one specific part of creation… The bible tells us exactly how God made man and woman, along with a good bit of detail around what is going on in the creation narrative at this point.

The second things I need you to understand is that this is a bit of a rewind to the 6th day.

We have covered that there are a literal 7 days spoken of, and last week we talked about the meaning of Sabbath rest which we see instituted by God on the 7th day.

As we continue to read on the story jumps back to the 6th day.

Something majorly significant happened on the 6th day.

And while there is no real detailed description of how God creates everything, other then by speaking, we will now get some detail and a lot of seemingly unrelated things will be told to us.

I would submit to you that some of these seemingly unrelated details speak of a larger story that weave all throughout scripture.

Let’s look at the text.

gen2.4

These are the generations… The author is telling us that the story of creation will now zoom in on a specific family line.

The word generations is meant to begin to point to a specific group of people.

Introduced here in the text to follow we will have the first man and woman.

But first we hear of some interesting facts about the earth, and things don’t seem to be like what we know...

gen2

First thing I want us to notice here… the Land.

A few weeks I made the point that in the creation, God had created the Heavens and Earth and everything in them an on them, including the seas and everything in them… as a way of ensuring provision for the peak of his creation, mankind.

Here we see God tell us how he filled the land, it seems like the earth was somewhat different from the way we understand it now.

Before I attempt to point you to the obvious issues of no Rain yet, I want us to stop and think about Land.

Everywhere in scripture moving forward, Land become something that people will fight over.

Land will represent to a people their ancestors, and is always valuable based on what is in the land and how it can provide for its inhabitants.

Well before mankind fell into sin and a curse was pronounced on the land, it watered itself.

Land is an element that develops into a theme we will see in all of scripture, because people are always looking for the land in which they will rest, land that will provide for them and protect them.

And to this day people are still fighting over land.

The next thing we will notice here is the absence of something… Rain.

It is hard for us in the PNW to envision a world where it doesn’t rain.

Rain will be a more than an act of judgement in and 8, it will be seen only when there are clouds and storms, which tend to give way to imagery of darkness and judgement as well, yet rain will represent blessing from God. Nothing can grow without rain, and it is showered down on as we can easily be caught in an unsuspected storms.

Yet Rain becomes a major component of God’s people knowing his blessings.

In stories like when Elijah prayed that it would not rain for 3 years and again he prayed and it did… In all this rain was used to show God’s blessing and favor.

How crazy is it that storms are seen as judgement, trails in life are referred to as storms and yet the by- product of them is rain which is seen as a blessing?

Before the creation had to deal with the fall of man into sin, there was no need for clouds and storms, no judgement and trials… and the rain wasn’t necessary because the land watered itself by a mist that rose out of it.

For us to get a picture of this theme of blessing Jesus shows us how God uses rain as common grace to all creation...

Jesus was saying God shows his blessings to all .

And in genesis 2 what seems to be little details of a different story, we hear of something that we will see play out in a theme through the rest of scripture in ways of understanding the blessings of God.

Land for provision and rain for blessing, but who will be the recipient of this provision and blessing?

Let’s keep reading...

gen2.7

We do not how God created the heavens and the earth beyond speaking, but we do know how he created Man… Out of the dust of the ground.

It blows me away to think of anything amazing that any man has ever done, and it is nothing more then collected dust that God breathed on.

Can you see how this creation account would be seen as so unique amongst all over ancient peoples?

In a world where we are told to believe that we have evolved as some sort of accident, the Bible is clear that we are created by God.

God creates man

This may not seem like earth shattering information for a bunch of Christians to hear in church on a Sunday morning, but this is foundational to everything we believe.

Man has made a lot of things and takes credit for much of his accomplishments, and nay-sayers will assert that man made up God as a way to deal with moral dilemma’s.

But there is more to this statement than what would seem obvious… There is an order of importance.

God came first and he created us.

The bible is about God, as his special revelation of himself to us as the creator of everything who also controls everything.

We need to understand this if we are going to understand everything that will come after this… WHY???

Because we can take what God said and change it so that we are worshipping a god that we make in our image rather than the God who made us in his image.

If we do not see the importance of God being pre-eminent over us as his creation, we can start to believe false version of the gospel that make us into the main character of scripture, and God becomes our helper.

When we find scriptures that make us uncomfortable with what we would want to see happen rather than what God says, we will change what we see and hear from scripture to fit our ideal description and in so doing begin to worship a different god than the God of the Bible!

So, YES, it is important to say this and repeat this.

God created Man, God created Man, God created man… Well I don’t like the idea of Hell… Well, God created man… Well I don’t like anything that says I am not in charge of my own life… Well God created man… Well I don’t like what you believe about election… Well God created man… God is in charge and we are not… this is his story not ours.

This is his creation, under his plan, within his control… and it is very basic… God came first and God is in control.

There is an other theme of something in the creation of man that I need to point out to you.

The Dust he formed became a living being only when he breathed on it.

Breath is another theme we see all through scripture, and it speaks of something greater than just ordinary breath.

Since the lump of dirt was not alive until God breathed in its nostrils, breath begins to represent life in the scriptures.. and so we see it play out that way in other stories...

Remember in Ezekiel when God shows the prophet a valley of dry bones.

and from them he raises up an army.

But how? by commanding the prophet to prophesy that Breath would come into them...

eze37

The bigger narrative in that story is that it represents something else… A vision of dry bones is meant ton represent death, and the story is about how God can make dead things live.

And he does this by breathing on them, just like he did for Adam in the garden.

The breath of God make things come alive.

From the very beginning of the Bible in , on through the rest of scripture.

We even see this theme in what the bible says about scripture itself...

2tim3.16

Even scripture is Breathed out by God and so it is alive and powerful...

So there are themes in that we must take note since they keep appearing in the rest of scripture… there is a bigger story being told than just the one before us.

Let’s continue.

gen2

So we see here on the 6th day when God created Man, that he also planted a garden and placed the man in that garden.

We see that he makes trees spring up out of the ground.

Again this speaks of the provision that the land God made was for humans.

Trees come from the ground, they provide fruit to eat and make the planet look good too.

But here is another theme that we will see play out in scripture… the tree.

Certainly we are introduced to the most infamous tree in the Bible, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But this isn’t some moot point, because the tree become more than a symbol, it is a theme of provision we see in lots of other stories.

Noah needs to build an ark out of Gopher wood.

Trees are made of wood and wood is cut for fires, fire are needed for sacrifices.