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A Gospel Presentation: Part 1 (Two-Age Worldview)
"Remember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me. I declare the end from the beginning, and ancient times from what is still to come. I say, "My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish." (Isaiah 46: 9-10)
I used to read a verse like this, or hear someone preach about some similar statement and wonder, "does this mean God foresaw sin? What does it mean that He knows the End from the Beginning?" We all know the story - God creates the Heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1) and every living creature, he spends six days creating everything, including Mankind, and they are placed in the perfect Garden of Eden, given dominion over the Earth and given two commandments: 1) "Fill the Earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) and 2) "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it, dying you will die" (most translations read: "for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die") - Genesis 2:17. He creates Eve after that, as a suitable helper for Adam, Eve is deceived by the Serpent and Adam eats of the tree as well. This is a story believers know well - one we have likely heard since childhood.
What follows this is what is interesting to me. In Genesis 3:8 we read, "Now they [Adam and Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." The thing that sticks out to me here is that God is not outside of His creation. I think too many of us have a view of God as being removed, or somehow outside of what He has made. Scripture does not support this! Very clearly in this passage, God is not only involved with what He has created, but He is in it. A verse we have all heard 100 times, "In the beginning God created the Heavens AND the Earth." (Genesis 1:1) He created not only a place for Man, but also for himself and it stands to reason that at Creation, the two were connected in some way because God saw fit to walk around on the Earth. The way I read it - God wanted a family - he had a Son and that relationship was meaningful to Him and so creating Mankind was a way of expanding that family. Why would a God, who desires to have a big family, create that and then remove Himself from it?
So we have this beautiful garden, a picture of perfection as God intended it. Then very shortly thereafter, the story of Adam and Eve's rebellion against God. I've spoken about this in previous blogposts, but in my reading of it, sin is one thing, and the curses of Genesis 3 are another. Sin was man's rebellion against God and His instructions. The sinful state was not external, or circumstantial either. Eve chose to listen to the Serpent. Adam chose to listen to Eve. There was something that already existed inside of them - it wasn't simply that the Serpent was cunning and deceptive - there was some part of them that was willing to listen and willing to rebel. This distinction between Sin and Curse is critical if we are to understand how God could have determined the End from the Beginning.
God curses mankind and the Serpent in Genesis 3. For the sake of thoroughness, here is the passage quoted in its entirety:
"Then the Lord said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all the livestock, and more than any animal of the field; on your belly you shall go, and the dust you shall eat all the days of you life; and I will make enemies of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel." To the woman He said; "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall deliver children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying 'You shall not eat from it'; cursed is the ground because of you; with hard labor you shall eat from it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; yet you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3:14-19)
Sin is mankind's action. The problem with Creation, however, is not Sin, per se. Even after Adam and Eve sin, there is nothing wrong with what that God had created. Adam and Eve rebelled and put themselves at odds with what God had commanded. Those of us who are fathers can appreciate what happens as a result. A punishment. What we read as 'curse'. This punishment, however, has a purpose and that purpose is that it would cause Mankind to grope and reach for God - to long for the restoration of the Garden and perfect relationship with the Creator of the Universe. The main problem with Creation, at present, is that it is cursed AND we are sinful. The two are tied together, as one precipitated the other, but they are still separate things.
If nothing else I say makes any difference, let this one thing be heard: The Gospel is that God desires a restored relationship with Mankind and desires to restore the Creation He has cursed. As He curses the Serpent, and Adam and Eve and the ground (earth), He also provides hope. Genesis 3:15 is what theologians call the protoevangelium or 'first Gospel'. "and I will make enemies of you [the serpent] and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel." It is a promise that this Curse will not last forever. The important thing for us to know is that God is not only willing and able to give us new bodies, free of sin, but He is also willing and able remove the Curse and restore His Creation to its original perfection. This is our great hope!
After the opening 3 chapters of Genesis, we read 3-4 more vignettes that highlight the proclivity of mankind to rebel against God. In Genesis 6, there is a story about the Sons of God (other created little-g gods?) seeing that the Daughters of Men are desirable and then marrying them. I could go way deeper into this, but at the heart of it, it is still man's rebellion. It represents an effort to circumvent the Curse. Mankind thinks, "maybe, if we marry our daughters to these created heavenly beings, we can find a way to circumvent death and live forever." In response, God again curses man (judgment). "Then the Lord said, "My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years." (Genesis 6:3) So not only has mankind been cursed with death, but they have been cursed with short life as well. Even at this, mankind still does not bow and submit to God. Just two verses later we read, "The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time." (Genesis 6:5)
What does this mean - 'every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time'? Given the juxtaposition with Noah in the following verses as being someone who 'found favor' in the eyes of God and who was a 'righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God', what I think God means by this is that man had completely turned away from God. They had forsaken His design and way, attempting to circumvent God's will, in a very unrepentant way. There was only disobedience and self-centeredness, no desire for God and His ways. So again we see a cycle of rebellion and judgement just as we saw earlier in Chapter 6. Man is rebellious and God sends a flood as judgement.
After the flood story and the re-populating of the Earth, we see one more rebellion/judgement episode, in Genesis 11 with the story of the Tower of Babel. There are many interpretations of this story, but ultimately, it is again human beings trying to circumvent God's will. They say, "Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves..." (Genesis 11:3). God's judgement is the confusion of the language and the scattering of the people.
Eleven chapters, covering ~1,900 years of history, and what is highlighted over and over? Four cycles of rebellion and judgement: Adam and Eve/Death and Cursing of the Earth, Sons of God with Daughters of Men/Short Life, Human Evil/Flood, Tower of Babel/Confusion of Language and Scattering. This is what sticks out to me regarding the beginning of God's story. It is the preamble to the revealing of God's plan in Genesis 12. We will see Him go from dealing with mankind as a whole (generally) in Genesis 1-11 to dealing with one man in Genesis 12. The state of humanity at the end of Genesis 11 is lost and utterly hopeless, literally scattered over the face of the Earth and siloed by different languages. The human heart is fundamentally flawed and its natural direction is away from God. It is a picture of desperate need! And yet God is faithful...God will have what He desires - a family - and so He decides to do something different. God knows the end from the beginning because the beginning is how it will be in the End. Sin doesn't really enter into the equation of how God can know the end from the beginning because ultimately, no matter what happened in the middle, the End was already determined. In the next post, I will explore the beginning of God's story with Abraham and the nation of Israel.
Other areas for further study (Genesis):
- There is a lot of insight to be gained from really digging into Genesis 1-3. Visualizing what is happening in that first chapter with the separation of the waters and the introduction of dry land. Most of us skim over that, but its more complex than it seems. There is clear indication there of the creation of the Heavens and there are many other verses later in the OT that suggest that God has physical form and that His throne is within Creation.
- The tracing of the righteous lineage, within Genesis, of the line coming from Eve, starting with Seth, through to Noah and ultimately to Abraham. Matthew connects Jesus to Abraham so really, that righteous line extends all the way from Seth to Jesus.
- There is a lot to be mined from the idea of there being other 'created gods'. The first commandment is "thou shalt have no other gods before me' (Exodus 20:2) and that rings a little hollow if there aren't actually other gods. The rebellion in Genesis 6 between the 'sons of man' and the 'daughters of men', and the mention of the Nephilim the source of my curiosity. Someone who has done a lot of work in this area is Dr. Michael Heiser.
- The 'table of nations' in Genesis 10, following the flood, is very interesting - I haven't looked into this in-depth, but it does seem to contain a lot of insights into the names we see later on in the Old Testament. I've written about Ham in particular, but there is a lot more there about the descendants of Shem and Japheth.
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