YHVH Shaped

Title: YHVH Shaped

Text: Genesis 2:4-25

Date: August 1, 2021

Audience: Grass Valley Corps

Proposition: God is MORE than just our Creator

Purpose: Be intentional about our relationships

I love trivia. In my odd spare moments, I read trivia books or look up odd factoids about this or that, often for no particular reason. Here’s a little collection of information I ran across. Check this out:

Every day your heart beats 104,178 times. Your blood travels 171,000 miles. You breathe 23,172 times, inhaling and exhaling 438 cubic feet of air. You move 752 major muscles and exercise over 8,000,000 brain cells. And that’s if you just lay there. If you actually get up and start moving you do even more. No wonder everyone is always complaining about being tired!

Can you imagine trying to build a machine that did that much work every day and which could fix itself if it broke down? Then imagine that you need to add to that: emotions, desires, needs, and an inexplicable craving to watch television. How hard would it be to come up with something like that? And then to actually build it and make it work? But that’s what God did when he came up with human beings.

As complex as we are, we don’t even make up a tiny fraction of the whole of creation! Look at all of God’s amazing creation! Did everyone stop at least once or twice this week and look around and think, “Wow!”? However you think the cosmos came to be, it’s amazing. We talked each of the last two weeks about the idea that God created the whole vast universe and that he designed life on this planet in a carefully balanced way to bring about a world of light and order which was suitable for us. If you didn’t pause to be amazed at the intricacies of the cosmos during the week, go ahead and take just a moment right now.

Okay! Genesis! It’s the first book of the Bible and it is made up of a collection of stories about a bunch of ordinary people, just like us, who are going through life, just like us, trying to do the best they can, just like us. In short, these stories aren’t just things that happened back in ancient times, these stories are about all of us right now too. And Genesis has some of the coolest stories – even better than television!

Last week we examined an overview of the creation of everything from time and space to work and time off, but we got it all in a story told from God’s point of view. The rest of Genesis is from our point of view and it all ties together to help us understand God and how we have a real relationship with him that we should be paying attention to instead of taking it for granted or ignoring it.

Now, if you’re not ready to think of God as a being we should relate to all the time instead of a deity we keep in a box and bring out on Sunday mornings, that’s okay. You can stick around and from week to week I’ll do my best to explain why we think that. Or you can sneak out right now while the rest of us are opening in prayer.

Abba-Father, thank you so much for the amazing creation you have built. Thank you so much for creating us to be part of it. Today we’re going to spend some time learning about you through the story of how you made us. Please make sure that each one of us listens with all our heart and mind and strength to be sure that we learn what it is you want us to take from your Word. Don’t let the speaker or the ideas we have created for ourselves lead us away from the truth you have prepared for each of us to learn and use today. Thank you, LORD. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Last week we left off in Genesis, chapter two, so hopefully some of you have flipped to that section of your Bible already. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Genesis, it’s at the beginning. If you don’t have a Bible with you, we have some on the cart at the back for you to use. Never trust anyone to tell you what’s in the Bible – always check it out for yourself! Today I’ll be reading from the 2011 edition of the New International Version. If you’ve got a different translation, you may see different words, but the meaning should be the same. We’ll start in Chapter 2, at verse 4.

Genesis 2:4 (NIV2011) 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.

I’m sorry; I need to stop us already. We’ve got something kind of important that happens right here in this sentence that I want to share with you.

This week I’ve been talking to a lot of people and trying to learn everyone’s names. What you call people matters. I once spent an hour listening to a friend talking about how a lot of people call him Joshua, but he doesn’t consider that to be his name. He’s Josh. Joshua is what people who don’t know him refer to him as, but Josh is the name he uses to introduce himself to people so they can really know him.

Do you understand that? How people might be called one thing, but their name might be something else? When you really want someone to know you, you ask them to use your name, because having them call you something else always kind of leaves that distance between you. Names personalize relationships.

Here in verse 4, God’s name is shared with us. In the whole story we’ve read so far, God is referred to as God – elohim in Hebrew. No name, just a title. Nothing personal. But here, in verse four, he gives us his name! Where the first chapter tells the big story of creation, this one tells the human story, and names help make things personal.

If you’re still looking for God’s name, I should probably mention that it isn’t actually printed here. The translators made sure we could know what it was, but, bowing to a sixteen-hundred-year-old tradition, they have put another word in its place. Do you see how the word LORD is in all caps?

Ancient Hebrew, when it was written down, had no vowels. It was all consonants, and you knew what the vowel sounds would be by the context in which it was written. The name of God was no exception – it was (and is) written with 4 letters, which loosely translate to the four English letters Y-H-V-H and means something to the effect of “I AM”, or “I AM what I AM”, or perhaps “I AM what I will be”.

There are a couple of commands given about the name of God. One is part of the Ten Commandments: Don’t take the name of the LORD in vain. Or, literally, don’t take the name of Y-H-V-H in vain. Another, in Leviticus, says that those who blaspheme the name of Y-H-V-H should be executed by the community. So, to be careful not to break either rule, people stopped saying God’s name.

The fact that neither rule had much, if anything, to do with saying God’s name didn’t deter them. They were trying to be extra careful and just got a little carried away.

Rather than saying God’s name, when people read the scriptures, they would say the word “Adonai” which means “Lord”, as if you were speaking to or about a king. By the time we reached about the Fourth Century, no one said the name. Because we were afraid to say it, we forgot how. Now, to be fair, Hebrew hasn’t changed much over all this time, so we are pretty sure that the proper way to pronounce the name of God is Yahweh. But you won’t hear it spoken in most circles, and even writing it down became controversial. In fact, in Orthodox circles, they often won’t even write down the word God as a proper noun without replacing the ‘O’ with a little dash so that there is no chance of offending or blaspheming even the title associated with the name of God.

Modern Bible translators may not have the same reluctance to print the name of God, but they don’t want to offend those who have a problem with it, so they use the same convention as readers have for the last two millennia: they replace the four-letter name of God with the word LORD, but they put it in all caps so that you can know the actual name of God was used there, as opposed to the word ‘Lord’ with a capital L, which is a title, or the word ‘lord’ with all small letters, which is simply a description. That leads to passages like Psalm 110, where the LORD says to my lord that the Lord sits at his right hand which uses all three forms in English, but is as confusing as all get-out if you don’t take the time to figure it out.

Also, and I think this is a much bigger problem, it’s not very personal. Names help make things personal, and by obscuring God’s name, we’ve made our relationship less than he seems to have intended it to be. Remember that the evidence is that God intended to be and is MORE than an impersonal Creator. He’s trying to make it personal.

Let’s see if we can’t get through the rest of this creation story though, shall we?

Genesis 2:5-7 (NIV2011) 5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

There is a pun here in verse 7, or perhaps a reminder. The LORD God formed the adam (aw-dawm), the man, from the dust of the adamah, the ground. Later, in the next chapter, when there are more humans, he will be called Adam, because he was adam from adamah.

So YHVH took dust and shaped the physical form of the adam and then, when he had created it to be what he wanted it to be, he breathed the breath of life into its nostrils in a moment of divine CPR. It’s not like the rest of creation where it was spoken into being and made by kinds. Instead, this is individual, it’s personal, and there is a level of intimate, knowing relationship established, like an attentive, loving father knows his child.

This is more than the relationship of an artist to the painting his brush has layered onto canvas or to the sculpture he has liberated by his chisel. There is an exchange here that is MORE than just creation, as God’s breath places life into man; the life of God somehow enters and inspires life in the adam. It’s different. It’s personal.

Let’s see what comes next.

Genesis 2:8-14 (NIV2011) 8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Here God provided the proper environment for a human to thrive. He planted a garden which was beautiful to look at and well stocked with the fruits and vegetables that were to be used for food. Just like a salamander needs the right balance of water, mud and plants to live in a terrarium, so we need the same to live on Earth. And more than that, God provided the adam with a hobby. Gold prospecting! That’s how we can know what verse 12 says; “The gold of that land is good!” If I wanted I could make all kinds of symbolic ties between gold and gems and aromatic resins and the Temple that will eventually be built as a place to meet God, but quite frankly I think this may have been as simple as God making fun things for the adam to do and beautiful things for the adam to see while they spent time together.

God always cares for us, and in setting up Eden for the adam he demonstrated that by giving him everything he needed to physically live a good life. It should come as no surprise that he also though to provide what was needed for mental growth and strength as well.

Genesis 2:15-17 (NIV2011) 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

The adam was placed in the Garden of Eden as a caretaker, giving him a purpose to fulfil. We all need a purpose in life. For some, it can be as simple as living out their lives day by day, doing their best to serve people in a restaurant or to run a business or country or to volunteer their time to help others. Humankind is a DOING species. If we aren’t doing, we’re dying. We need some purpose to be truly alive.

Speaking of alive, we have the second mention of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but this time there is a warning attached: Don’t eat from it. If you do, you’ll die. This warning and the tree itself represent the important opportunities we each need to seek moral growth and learning. What is right and what is wrong? God said, “Don’t eat from this tree,” and so there becomes an awareness that eating from this tree is wrong. What will the adam do with that knowledge? Will he learn or will he die? Or, somehow, can he do both?

Well hear more about this next week, for today let’s find out what is still missing.

Genesis 2:18-20 (NIV2011) 18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found.

Part of his job as caretaker is to name the animals. You’re a cow. You’re a horse. You’re Steve….

By the way, did you notice that this was the first thing God has seen that he said is NOT good? “It is not good for the adam to be alone.” Loneliness is not good. And even with full access to every animal, there was no suitable helper for the adam. Say what you will about your pets, the basic truth is that dog may be a beloved pet, but it isn’t another person. Humans need others of our kind.

One more thing. Verse 20 says there is no suitable helper for the adam. Some faith traditions read this and assume that whatever God’s solution to this problem will be, it will be some kind of subordinate to Adam. They point to this word “helper” to bolster their case. They couldn’t be more wrong, though. Throughout scripture the same term is used to describe God – he is our helper and partner in many things – and in no way, in any use of the word, is it ever made to suggest a subordinate.

In this case, with every step of creation we have seen the LORD create something grander, more complex and superior to all that has come before. So it could be argued that this act of creation is one which surpasses Adam. Let’s see.

Genesis 2:21-22 (NIV2011) 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

There is an old story about this, where God comes to Adam and says…

<Tell “What can I get for a rib” joke>

I did see one cartoon that said God just created the first take out rib joint.

On the more serious side, there is a traditional reason given for why God chose to use a rib as the starting point for his latest and greatest creation:

“She was not made out of his head to surpass him, nor from his feet to be trampled on, but from his side to be equal to him, and near his heart to be dear to him.”

Again we see God is treating his creation in a very personal way, looking after more than the basic food-water-shelter needs of the adamas he goes. God is MORE than just our Creator. He is our helper and he is always looking out for our best interests.

Let’s finish our chapter.

Genesis 2:23-25 (NIV2011) 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

One commentator said that, “The woman was created, not of dust of the earth, but from a rib of Adam, because she was formed for an inseparable unity and fellowship of life with the man, and the mode of her creation was to lay the actual foundation for the moral ordinance of marriage.” Another describes the passage this way:

“The phrase “one flesh” or “united into one” refers to their total life together—the physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional union. They came together in body and spirit, sharing everything in common as they enjoyed God’s world together and sought to obey him as one.”

And we see that in the statement at the end. They were naked and they felt no shame. There was a comfort together that goes beyond the physical. There was no fear. There was no chance of exploitation and no potential for evil. At this point, each of the two has been created with integrity and purity and they will continue in this state until something happens to disturb that union. But that’s a story for next week. Let’s wrap up today by asking the big question:

Why do we care? In what way does this ancient story, which some believe to be word for word truth and others believe to be completely allegorical, relate to us here and now?

I think it shows three aspects of the very personal relationship God has with each one of us. First, we can see and acknowledge him as Creator and we should recognize the deep intimacy of that creation. The very life force of God is what drives us as we live and breathe. Take a breath now. Go ahead! Breathe in deeply and feel the life of that breath flow through your whole being. 23,172 times a day you repeat that simple yet complicated act which sustains us and reminds us of that moment of divine CPR where our physical form was given life.

Second, we see YHVH elohim, the LORD God, reaching out, creating a place for us to thrive, giving us his name, interacting with us as an attentive and caring parent rather than as a pet owner or distant, impersonal force.

And finally, in his creation of purpose in our lives, God stands as what we could think of as our King or, in more American terms, our employer. He isn’t just looking after our physical needs, but our spiritual and mental needs as well. He has tasks for each of us which we can apply our strengths to, which we can learn and grow from, and which help us to become better people making a better world under God’s direction and in partnership with him and each other.

In this ancient story we find a personal God who has built us to live in relationship with one another and with him. As a church body, our goal is to live out those relationships boldly, with integrity and without shame.

Is that something we can do? Can we live out our lives with purpose and transparency, in love and in deed? Just as God is MORE than just our Creator, we must be MORE than just people who let the world and other people and all pass us by unseen. We’re all in this together and we need to stop finding reasons to treat others as if they were put here to serve us.

Does this all track for you? Next week we move on into more of the action-type stories as the people God created begin to create their own paths. For today, though, I want you to leave thinking about your place in the world and if you are living up to the potential which is built into you. If you are, then what can you do to help others do the same? And if you’re not, are you willing to make today the point from which you will begin to seek ways to become more than you have been?

Let’s close with prayer this morning before our benediction.

LORD God, YHVH elohim, this morning I pray that you would make your presence known to us today and throughout the week. Give us each encouragement by reminding us that there is purpose in each of our lives. Direct us in ways which will help us see that purpose. Help us to recognize that there is a personal connection you wish to have with each of us. It’s amazing that you could create something so vast and still care for something so small inside of your creation as we are. Thank you for that. Help us to recognize that our actions towards those around us must reflect those you have shown towards us. Teach us to be the people you created us to be rather than squandering our potential. In Jesus’ name.