God's Story - Creation: Genesis 1-4

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you've picked up a current Archangel or the resource guide both available around the church you will see the schedule of the lessons there are occasional days here and there special big feast days where we don't have Sunday school but most of the Sunday's throughout the entire school year we're going to be going from front to back through the entire Bible this is about knowing the story which means we're not going to get in depth into theology and other issues like that we're really going to be trying to make sure you know the entire story and interest you in coming back for more perhaps picking up a midweek Bible study or finding another sort of group around st. Michael that you can plug into and really go deep so to begin this study we're going to start with a prayer the Lord be with you let us pray God we ask your presence upon us this morning empty us of all of our anxieties and worries make space inside us that your spirit may fill us up that we may grow closer to you day by day as we study your word in Jesus name we pray amen so fair warning strap in we're gonna move fast this is the first four chapters of Genesis in about 40 minutes so just hang on in there as we begin the first four chapters I want you to have a few high-level things about the Bible so first off the Bible was written over thousands of years by many different people all inspired by the Holy Spirit that means that even under the best of intentions there will be moments where certain passages don't quite seem right and where certain things seem to contradict one another we're going to kick that off in the first two chapters of Genesis because there are two different creation stories that order things differently and so I the first if you've run into moments like that in the Bible you might think that somehow the contradiction means that it's untrue I'm here to say it is all true however there are points in Scripture that are not necessarily historic and so that's a distinction that I want us to make as we begin this whole year studying that there are points in the scripture that are meant to tell a truth through story it is not necessarily meant to be history the Old Testament is one of those where we can say that it goes through three different phases perhaps the first being these mythic epic stories at the beginning it's not necessarily meant to be historic record it is meant to tell you a deep truth so as we read through some of these things if you think well hold on if God created humanity last and then God created humanity first which is what we're about to do how is that possible and it's possible because those two stories tell two different truths about God and the way that we are meant to relate to God it is not meant to be historic record I was listening to the radio yesterday I wasn't sure if I was gonna say this or not because I don't want it to come off ugly so this is not ugly that's that's my caveat downtown today one church that will go unnamed is having creation Sunday where there are people coming in scientists to talk about how humanity lived with Dinosaurs and the you know scientific record and all that other stuff which as I was listening to the radio yesterday actually made me laugh out loud and I say that not because it's funny that but I want us to as Episcopalians embrace that the Bible is true and that it's truth is so much bigger than any kind of historic record or even science that there is something that the Bible is answering that nothing else answers science asks the question how things happened the Bible faith religion ask the question why did those things happen as we approach this year I invite you to think about why God did all of these things why the story has been maintained for thousands of years and why it's important that each one of us make it personal and invite people to join with us so that is my preamble one of the things that some of you have heard me say is that I do not read the Bible literally I read the Bible literally and I want you all to do the same thing I want you to be literate about the Bible to know what is really there so that as I mentioned in my sermon at 9 if someone says to you well the Bible says X and they pull out half a verse from some random book to create an entire worldview that you're able to say okay that one verse might say that but the Bible's point is something much bigger and my worldview our worldview is based on the whole story not just one convenient little verse that might defend a particular perspective and that takes some effort but together we're going to get there so now we're gonna jump into the Old Testament and aside some people call the Old Testament the Hebrew Bible I do not because the Hebrew Bible is actually a different ordering of a different set of books the Old Testament is a particular ordering of many of those same books but they were put in a different order because we have another one right so for us it's part one of the big story that includes Jesus and so the books were reordered from how they are in a Hebrew Bible in order to point to something that is coming next and spoiler alert the something coming next is Jesus okay so we're gonna start with chapter 1 of Genesis a question already yes yes original language that it was written in is Hebrew mostly there is some Aramaic in the Old Testament as well mostly written Hebrew we're gonna talk a little bit about Hebrew words because we read the English translation of Hebrew text which means that there's not always a one to one word link so it's important for occasionally that we look at the Hebrew word in order to get perhaps a better understanding of what's going on in each verse and we're going to talk about that particularly in the creation stories because there are word plays within Hebrew that make it so much better than just what you get in English and I'll follow that up by saying there are translations of the Bible first off who brought a Bible today I think I saw five hands alright Episcopalians bring your Bibles if you don't have a Bible you can find them anywhere bring your Bible actually open it it's gonna be so fun at the end of this year you're going to have gone all the way through so I one of things I love is whenever I teach Bible studies I remember I taught a study years ago and I said now turn to the book of Acts and someone started flipping from the front and I thought oh man it's it is way back there it's gonna take you well so bring your Bibles you're gonna be familiar with all of these different books you're going to a flip through the whole thing you'll be so proud of yourself your grandmother is gonna love this so bring your Bibles next week even write in them oftentimes what I do it's funny I say that because I don't have a Bible with me right now but oftentimes what I'll do is I'll take a Bible and I'll drop it on the ground and people will go it's a book alright it's a book to use it is not something to put on a shelf to gather dust I want you to bring it and kind of tear it up and write in it and feel like you have used it because it's not meant to look pretty it's meant to help you live better and so go get one get a translation so you can come in here and study it but in addition to translation there are things called a paraphrase the most popular paraphrase is called the message that is a good thing a paraphrase takes what has been written and tries to make it more excessive thoughtfully and intentionally and faithfully makes it more accessible I often like to encourage people to have one of each because occasionally as you're reading a translation which is what we read in church the NRSV the New Revised Standard Version is what we read in church so NRSV is the one that you should grab occasionally as you read through the NRSV it's just too obtuse and you're not quite sure what is happening here and what is being said that's when a paraphrase is really helpful read the paraphrase which is in super simple language you like oh okay I get it and then go back to the translation which is more close to the original language and then you can really begin to parse things out and dig deeper and so grab one of each and that paraphrase is gonna be really helpful to you as we go through this year chapter one in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters then God said let there be light and there was light that's good stuff Genesis begins with a void and into that void comes God God creates out of the void and creates everything that exists in the world the first creation story is the one that we likely know best day one God creates light in the darkness day two God creates the heaven and the earth and separates the waters into heaven and earth day three God creates the land out of the waters now there is land and sea and on land creates plants and trees and living things day 4 God creates the Sun and the moon to regulate the light so there is light and dark every day on day 5 God creates the fish and the birds and on day 6 God creates animals that walk on the land including humanity God said let us make humankind and our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth so God created humankind in His image in the image of God he created them male and female he created them and on the seventh day God finished the work he had done and rested first chapter of Genesis in the first creation story gives us the seven days of creation that we often learn in nursery school that we teach our children that you see in picture books the seven days in order is missing something that you might remember if you were to simply tell the creation story the thing that might be missing is didn't God create a man and then from the man create a woman right is not how you would tell that story not the first one in the first creation story we simply get the creation of humanity and humanity is in the image of God and as you read through this a little closer you will see that when humankind is created God says let us create who's the us mostly people believe that this was an understanding that early followers of the Mosaic law had of God as part of a divine council of beings that God is there with the Angels creating everything that we see that probably makes sense to us we are say Michael and all angels and so there is this divine sense that there are sacred beings in the world that are not just us and that they with God helped bring about the creation that we know creation account number two begins in chapter 2 of Genesis now before we get into the order we should take note that there is a different name used in chapter 2 for God in Chapter 1 God is referred to in the Hebrew as Elohim Elohim simply means God in chapter 2 God is referred to as Yahweh Elohim Lord God the second creation story is believed to be one that relates to people more than it relates to a structure of religion so we're gonna pause right there and before we get into the second creation story the reason there are two most scholars think is because there were two traditions that develop this idea of the beginning of time one tradition is what is called the priestly tradition priests are often concerned with structure and so in creation story number one we get a very structured story day 1 day 2 day 3 day 4 and so on in the second story it's believed it was a bit more from the people or of the people it's a bit more relational a bit softer and less concerned with structure and so what we get there is what the Israelites would have likely created as they were beginning to form their own religion it's important for us to note even though we won't get there for a few weeks these stories were written by the Israelite people as they were creating the Jewish tradition that did not happen in history until after the Jewish people until after the Israelites were taken out of bondage in Egypt to Mount Sinai received the Ten Commandments and began to form religious laws this story is supposedly a long time before that point and so it's the reason we have to is because as those people were form a those traditions they simply told the story differently once it was codified actually created in a book they liked both stories for different reasons and so they kept both because each one tells a different truth and we'll get to those right after we go through the account of creation number two Genesis chapter 2 2nd creation story begins in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no one to till the ground but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being we hear that God made man from the dirt of the ground this is sort of like our own little Pinocchio story right God takes dirt and clay and shapes it into what looks like a man but it's not a real boy until God breathes into that form and creates life and so just like Pinocchio was wood until he wasn't God creates man out of the dirt and until he breathes life it's just simply the shape and once God breathes breath into this man he becomes alive there is a play on words here as I mentioned earlier in the Hebrew the Hebrew word for dirt is adama' which means that God created man which is Adam out of the dirt Adam ah and so the play on word here is Adam ah becomes Adam one quick note as you read through scripture that you could perhaps gloss over is that the man is not named and will not be for many chapters instead a is referred to as the man as we get onto the story the woman is actually named Eve before the man is named Adam continuing on the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to till it and keep it and the Lord God commanded the man saying you may freely eat of every tree of the garden but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die following that story as he sets up some rules and boundaries God creates partners for the man animals to help him live in the world and yet no partner is really good enough for the man and so we get later on the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man the man said this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh we get another play on the Hebrew words here that we don't get an English necessarily man is east and woman is Esau and so from the east is created the Esau and it has a partnership in a completeness with the man and the woman that are created in this story so now that we've heard both creation 1 and 2 what you did not hear in creation 2 is an order of days right God just simply made some stuff and there was no day 1 day 2 day 3 number one creation story number one is huge in its scope it is cosmic starting in the void of all time and space and whenever I read the beginning of creation story number one I hear like 2001 a Space Odyssey right don don don da that's really Genesis number one chapter two very down-to-earth very relational very simple as if you were sort of zooming into a little farming community in a lovely pastoral rolling Hill kind of space both are meant to tell us something true about God in the first one humanity is intended to master the world we get the language of subduing the creation while in creation story number two Humanity is meant to serve the world working hard in the ground to produce food one is not necessarily more true than the other but instead what we get when we put them together as something more complex the point when we hold both these creation stories together is that that we are in a covenant relationship with God God is a real person to us a real person for us to relate to and that we are both master and servant of the creation yes we can control it but we are called to care for the creation as well and to balance those two calls together moving on to chapter three we get the eating of the fruit now I've heard it said that the difference between God and us is that God never thinks he's us that is really what we find here in Chapter three now we get to the good drama everything's been so nice it's so nice for two chapters and then that's it and the rest of the Bible it's over chapter 3 now the serpent appears in the garden and the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made and the serpent said to the woman did God say you shall not eat from the tree in the garden and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden or you touch it or you shall die the serpent begins to weave its way into this perfect little world that God has created and at first the woman sort of resists saying God said no but the serpent comes back and the serpent said to the woman oh you will not die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil did you see what happened there the serpent tempts humanity to be like God that never works out well when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate and what's important here that has been misunderstood throughout a lot of history is that the man and the woman are both guilty all right the woman is guilty by action the man is guilty by his inaction neither one did anything more wrong than the other then the eyes of both were opened and in this moment humanity shifts humanity shifts from being this innocent beautiful perfect creation to being something that can fall that can get lost that can be separated from God and as we see most everything that has been created around the theology of Jesus that we will find in the New Testament is to answer the question how do we get back to God how do we take this perfect world that was lost and get back to the perfect connection with God now the man and the woman are going to be outside of the garden so the woman God said Oh before we get there I'm sorry God comes walking through the garden after the of the fruit and can't find Adam and Eve I shouldn't say that the man and the woman God cannot find the man and the woman because they are hidden because they are naked up to this point we can presume that God just kind of walked around the garden and hung out with them but now he can't find them and the man and the woman say we hid from you because we were afraid because we were naked fear has now crept into this perfect world and it is the fear that will get in the way what is the thing that is said over and over and over again in the Bible do not be afraid it is rooted in the story in this moment when fear creeps in and so God undoes the perfect garden and creation and says to the woman I will now greatly increase your pains and childbirth and in pain you shall bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you and to the man god said because you have listened to the voice of your wife and I've eaten of the tree which I commanded you not in the toil you shall eat from the cursed ground all the days of your life thorns and thistles shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of the ground you were taken you are dust and to dust you shall return in this moment in the disobedience to God the man and the woman and in fact all humanity become separated from the perfection God wants for us like I said at the beginning this is a true story and the truth of this story is such that we cannot on our own be complete only through God's love and grace and our reciprocation of that love is how we become complete and how we reach the perfection that God created us to be and how we actually become the people God wants us to be so in response to this the man named his wife Eve which is kind of funny I'm not entirely sure how you get to this point we're like I haven't gotten kicked out of perfect garden so now I'm gonna name you Eve I don't know how that works but so now she is named Eve God made them garments to cover their bodies and they are sent out of the garden and the sins chapter 12 chapter 3 Eve conceives by the man and bears a son named Cain and then another named Abel now Abel was a keeper of the sheep and Cain a tiller of the ground in the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock their fat portions the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering the Lord had no regard so Cain was very angry the man and the woman are cast out of the garden they conceive and bear two sons Cain first and then Abel Cain works the land Abel tends the flocks and they each offer sacrifice to God Cain gives of the fruit of the earth that he has raised Abel gives something from his flock now in the past this has been interpreted as Abel gave something better than Cain perhaps perhaps the best he could offer whereas Cain held back and somehow didn't give the best to God this comes from a passage in the New Testament in the book of Hebrews it is not what we find in the story in Genesis it is simply that they both made an offering to God and God like tables and didn't like Cain's I will answer the obvious question we have no idea why God did not like a Cain's stuff presumably it was just as good as Abel stuff but it didn't seem to work Cain got angry Cain was angry and jealous and so he invited Abel out into the field and scripture just simply says there Cain killed Abel boom the Lord found Cain and said where's your brother Abel and Cain said I do not know am I my brother's keeper God says that the blood of Abel cried out to him from the ground to receive justice for the wrong and so God comes to Cain and says you now must leave this place because of what you have done and Cain says if I leave the people will kill me and so God puts a mark on Cain that will protect him from being killed by the others and Cain leaves that place and goes to another land in order to establish his family and another place both stories echo the same idea God has this lovely thing going on and people mess it up first the man and the woman II the fruit and they are afraid next Cain and Abel make a sacrifice and Cain gets mad and kills Abel in both instances the wrong that is committed causes the person to have to leave where they were and recreate their life somewhere else and so Cain does just that Cain leaves marries a woman and begins to create a new family in a different land at the end of chapter 4 we get to where Adam is now named and Adam and Eve have a third son named Seth Seth is who produces a line that will ultimately lead to Noah so in the first four chapters of Genesis we've got the seven days of creation in Chapter one then a relational creation story in Chapter two then we have the eating of the fruit that leads the man and the woman out of the garden and once outside the garden they have Cain and Abel Cain kills Abel and is cast out again and so in just four chapters we have a restart for a third time Adam and Eve having a son named Seth and Seth his line will produce Noah and of course we likely are all familiar enough to know that Noah's story is not exactly the best story ever that God destroys the creation again and starts over again and so this theme of restart and restart and restart looking for something to be the best that it can be the most complete that it can be and it continues to not quite realize its fullest potential we've got about five or eight minutes for a little QA before we finish up yes yes Howard okay so the question is the question is where'd these other people come from so as I said in the beginning this is a true story but it is not a historic story which means if we are to believe that God created one man and one woman and then from that came the rest of humanity we have an obvious problem just in chapter 4 where Cain first is afraid of the other people what other people who's gonna kill you Cain there you killed the other one you know so there are some other people out there that Kane is afraid of not only that but then he leaves and he goes to the other land to get married and start a family who are you marrying Kane me no one else is supposed to be there so then we get Seth after that that is one of those examples where if we need for the story to be historic then we miss what I think is a much better truth about the whole story and that is a really I don't say this flippantly this is a complex idea this is not what you will get in almost any other Church most of the time what you get is a pretty simplistic look at God did this XYZ and it was done in real time in a real year and there are plenty of people who have tried their best to actually put a date on this stuff when that happens you have to sacrifice other bits of truth that we get from other parts of our world right science exists and so I'm not gonna ever say to you science is not real or true and so when we see things like an archaeological record of the earth how do you reconcile that and so the easy question of the easy way to reconcile that is that a day is not a day a day could be any amount of time that's that's fine I don't need you to not think that way but I want to offer you at least another way to understand what is really happening with these stories and that is that nobody out nobody intended for these stories to produce a scientific historic record what was really meant to be in these stories is something that is much more profoundly and deeply true it is philosophically true spiritually true in a human sense true and if we make it simply something that is quasi scientific we miss what I think is so much better about these stories and so don't worry if this needs to be something that is works and melds with science for you it's okay what I don't want you to do is undermine what is so great and deep and true about these stories because we're trying to make it fit perfectly with something like archaeological record or something like created record where there are obviously these other people where did they come from you don't it doesn't matter that's not the point the point is not for us to understand some genetic markers that about humanity somewhere the point is that Adam and Eve were afraid when they did what God said they shouldn't Cain was afraid when he did what he should not we in the same way our fallible and we mess up and we get afraid when we mess up and yet over and over and over God does not punish but God seeks to reconcile and we get a better version of that story as we go on it will not always be the kind of reconciliation we would like it to be but that is of course why we are Christian these stories are not the end of God's story it's just the beginning and it gets better and as we go throughout this year we're gonna see how good it can get and we're going to understand what I think is perhaps the most important thing that I want you to get from this entire year which is what happens in the Old Testament is always always meant to be understood through the lens of Jesus Jesus came to clarify and to explain the deeper truth of these stories and so if you ever find yourself in a discussion or maybe internally trying to figure out well if God did that or said that or was okay with that in the Old Testament how can we live than today ask yourself what Jesus would have said about those things that happen in the Old Testament and if the answer is Jesus wouldn't have done that then what Jesus has done for us is given us a better way of understanding a story that was just simply misunderstood years before Jesus gives us that lens to see the completeness and the wholeness of God so that all of these stories that are imperfect on their own become perfect in Christ that's the big one right and we'll hit that over and over and over again throughout this year any one more question really I must be so good okay thank you all very much week one is over tell your friends come again and if you miss any of these lessons they will be online on our youtube channel for you to check out throughout the rest of this year thank you all [Applause]
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Channel: SMAADallas
Views: 3,361
Rating: 4.4666667 out of 5
Keywords: God's Story, bible, creation, genesis, God, Adam, Eve, smaa, dallas, texas, tx, smaadallas, st michael, saint michael, st michael and all angels, saint michael and all angels, eric liles, priest, sunday school, class, adults, formation, christian, episcopal
Id: DdXhlU62t2A
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Length: 38min 17sec (2297 seconds)
Published: Sun Aug 26 2018
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