I’ve enjoyed the process of turning the nine sermons I preached on Genesis 1-11 into posts. I thought I’d do a sort of ‘index’ post with links to all nine, along with the passage covered, and mark a transition into a second series.
I’m going to post up my sermons from Revelation from 2021 next, and then from Matthew’s Gospel (start of 2022), because these all became the basis of a big series on being human in 2023.
Here are the Genesis sermons.
In the Beginning (Genesis 1): An introduction to the idea of the heavens and the earth being separate realms created in the beginning, to ancient cosmology, and to the idea that the Genesis story is both literature read through Israel’s history — especially in exile in Babylon, and that it creates themes threaded through the entire narrative of the Bible, fulfilled in Jesus. Genesis 1 presents heaven and earth being separate as a reality that will create tension through the narrative, and the primordial state of being ’empty and uninhabited’ as something God’s representative image bearing humans will join him in overcoming as we fill it not just with the life he creates, but with his rule and presence.
Eden and the Earthlings (Genesis 1:26-2:25): Reading the story of the creation of the ground-man or earthling, and then the woman, in a heaven on earth place as a critique of other stories of how idol statues in the ancient world were made that teaches a very different vision of the nature of God and the purpose of human life, and seeing it fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus and God’s Spirit being breathed into a new humanity to make us heavenly beings not just earthlings. Also noticing that the man and woman were created to represent God together where the woman is an ally in the priestly task of ‘cultivating and guarding’ heavenly space on earth.
Treason against the tree-son (Genesis 3): Reading the story of the Fall as an act of rebellion; seizing the life God offers to us on our own terms in order to rule, as Satan the dragon-beast pulls humans from representing God to beastliness and death — exile from God’s gift of heavenly life; seeing this pattern run through to Jesus in gardens in the Gospels, where, at Gethsemane humans bring tree-weapons and swords to seek the death of the life of God in the ultimate act of rebellion, as God gives his life to the world.
East of Eden (Genesis 4): Adam and Eve are exiled east of the Garden — but it seems, still in the region of Eden, separated from heaven-on-earth life by Cherubim (like those stitched onto the curtain that separates God’s people from God’s presence in the Tabernacle and Temple).
When Cain is consumed by sin — which crouches at his door waiting to devour — and becomes a bloody beast, he is exiled further to the east; to wander around other murderous humans. He builds a city, and a family tree defined by violence and vengeance.
The movement east culminates in Babylon both in Genesis 1-11, and in Israel’s exile — by the end of the Old Testament God’s people are waiting for a king, and for God’s presence to return to the Holy of Holies in the Temple; moving from east to west. Jesus arrives as God and king to bring heavenly life back to his people and end our exile into the wilderness; entering Jerusalem from the East to cleanse the Temple and then tear the curtain.
A Giant Problem (Genesis 6:1-8): The weird passage about the Nephilim; offspring of rebellious heavenly beings; plants seeds for giant opposition to God’s people living in peace in ‘heaven on earth’ places like Eden.
The Ark and the Covenant (Genesis 6:9-8:22): The story of Noah’s Ark is a story of de-creation and recreation in response to violence filling the land as humans (except for Noah) are more like serpents than God. God carries people through death in an ark that anticipates the Exodus and the Gospel.
Don’t be a Nimrod (Genesis 9-10:32): After the flood things go down hill (or down the mountain) fast as Noah’s sons form the family tree of the nations who will feature in the Old Testament story; chief among these descendants is Nimrod, who’s a violent warrior hunter, an anti-Adam, who builds Babylon and Assyria.
Why be a Brickman when you can be a brick, man (Genesis 11:1-9): The story zooms in on the creation of Babylon told in contrast to Babylon’s own mythology, depicting the city and its heaven-on-earth project as a failure in a way that will resonate deeply for Israelite people held in exile in Babylon as King Nebuchadnezzar builds towers to the heavens made from bricks stamped with his name.
Getting outta Babylon (Genesis 11:10-12:20): Abram and his family are called out of Chaldea (part of Babylon) to head back west towards life with God, as his people of promise. They come to a cross roads, and travel through Egypt; where those who mistreat God’s people experience curse in a way that anticipates the Exodus and is a picture of the Old Testament hope that God’s people will be called out of exile in Babylon again.
This is a story we all know, right? There are hundreds of kids book retellings. You can find toy arks with pairs of animals in houses, toy shops, and even public kindergartens and schools around the world. It’s a story that even transcends Christianity; obviously it’s a Jewish story before it becomes our story; but it’s also part of the Muslim world. In fact, many nations around Israel, and even further afield, told stories of a man, and a boat, escaping through a cosmic flood.
I mentioned the Gilgamesh Epic last post; it has a flood story where Gilgamesh goes off to meet Utanapishtim, a man who’d been tasked by the gods to create a ship called “Preserver of Life.” He made a square box out of wood, here are the instructions.
“Make all living beings go up into the boat. The boat which you are to build, its dimensions must measure equal to each other: its length must correspond to its width.”
He took all the living beings; people and animals he could save, and they ended up on a mountain where he sent out birds — a dove, and a raven — before the ground came back, and sacrificed to the gods and became immortal.
“Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing no sway. When a seventh day arrived I sent forth a dove and released it. The dove went off, but came back to me; no perch was visible so it circled back to me… I sent forth a raven and released it. The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back”
Gilgamesh wants the secret of this immortality, but he can’t get it.
And of course, much more recently we had Russell Crowe’s version of Noah; and look, I loved this movie, but it retold the flood story as a story where God responded not to violence and sin on the earth, between humans, so much as violence against the earth; as a parable about climate change and the coming environmental collapse.
It’s a versatile story; and it’s one where all these versions leave us wondering what the point is, and what the truth is. The story creates questions like “what scale was the flood; local, on ‘the earth’ as the readers would’ve understood it, or covering the entire globe as we’d understand it? Did it actually wipe all people out? And we saw last week that there are Nephilim, or their descendants either side of the story. Did all the cultures that have the story also have a hero on a boat? What’s the Genesis story doing in contrast with the Gilgamesh story and others like it — not just how is it similar — including stories about the foundation of Babylon, which we’ll get to in Genesis in the next few weeks.
These are all good questions worth pondering, but they aren’t necessarily the questions we’ll be answering; we’re looking at how these stories are the origin story for the Bible; the origin story for Jesus. We’re seeing how they create thread — concepts and ideas — that run all the way through the Bible, so our questions are a little bit different.
So here’s a 10,000 foot summary of the story so far as we’ve seen it in Genesis that sets us up to understand the Noah story, we’ll go from there to look at the story in more detail, then see how ideas get picked up and woven together and land us with Jesus.
You ready. In the beginning, after God made the Heavens and the Earth; the waters of the deep were a barrier to life — making the world desolate and uninhabited, while the Spirit of God hovered over the waters (Genesis 1:1-2).
God pushed back the waters to make sky — and a cosmic dome, a vault. The waters are held at the barrier between heavens and earth (Genesis 1:6-7), and then separated on the earth; so that land appears (Genesis 1:8-9); which will then be filled with plants and animals — birds, fish, and ground critters (Genesis 1:20-24). We’re told they all have the breath of life in them (Genesis 1:30), and finally God makes people as his living images; living idol statues; who ruled these other creatures, and spread the good garden of Eden across the face of what had been a desolate and uninhabited earth, to be fruitful and multiply, as we represent him. We were God’s answer to the desolate and uninhabited world (Genesis 1:26, 28), made to tend it as gardeners — male and female — who lived with God and ate from the tree of life — working together to bring life, and to resist chaotic forces from the heavenly realm (Genesis 2:15-17), like the serpent (Genesis 3:1). The serpent has other plans. He leads humanity down the garden path, so people turned against each other, and against God, and the environment became increasingly hostile; cursed and turned against us (Genesis 3:17), and humans are exiled; banished, from the garden and the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:22-23).
We saw Noah introduced in chapter 5 — super briefly last week — as a man who would reverse the curse. Noah gets positioned as a new Adam. Notice how he rules over the animals in this story; there’s repeats of the categories of animals God made in Genesis 1 over and over again in the flood story to make this point (Genesis 5:28-29, 6:8). But this new Adam comes as God prepares to begin again; to wipe out all the living stuff not ruled by Adam — and this seems extreme (Genesis 6:7), but we’re told humans were only evil, all the time (Genesis 6:5). And that the earth is full of violence.
Humans are bearing the image of all these beastly violent ‘gods’ and the serpent — so humanity increasing has become a problem because we’re not spreading fruitfulness; the likeness of God; but violence (Genesis 6:11-12). Violence is a real problem in the story, a sign of something gone wrong — corrupt — in humans. God is about to unmake what he has made, and to start again. He promises to destroy the earth; and it’s clear that he doesn’t mean totally eradicate, but there’s a de-creation happening, so he can re-create with his new Adam (Genesis 6:13). Just notice — as we skim by — that there’s a whole lot of seven-day references here; we’re being put in the mood to see the creation week as the background here. Seven pairs. Seven pairs. Seven days. Seven days (Genesis 7:2, 3, 4, 10).
As God sets Noah apart, he gives him a building plan. He’s told to put together this monstrosity that looks nothing like any boat that is actually capable of floating (Genesis 6:15-16); and often our picture books make this look more boat like than it is. This isn’t a boat. It’s a floating rectangular prism. God is going to put an end to all the life on the earth that has the breath of life in it. The breath of God that makes things alive will be withdrawn. There’s an undoing here. All these creatures — animals and humans — will perish without God to give them life (Genesis 6:17). The barrier to life that was there in the beginning — the waters — will return as the floodgates of heaven, the vault, opens along with the ‘deep waters’ of the earth (Genesis 7:11-12).
The water, we’re told, comes specifically from what God has been holding back in the heavenly dome; and in order to separate water and land. The separated waters from Genesis 1 become unseparated, the great deep bursts and the floodgates are opened. We go back to Genesis 1:1. The darkness and the deep; a desolate and uninhabitable world.
Everyone except Noah, his family, and the animals they save will die because God’s going to establish his covenant with Noah; and he’s going to start again (Genesis 6:18-19). And that’s how it happens. After the waters opens up, Noah and his family enter the ark (Genesis 7:13). The animals join him, just as God commanded, and God shuts them in. He’s going to preserve life on this ark. The people inside, and animals, are sealed in by him, and protected from the waters from death. The ark; this rectangle box; is going to be one space on earth where God keeps giving life, when everything else is overrun by chaos waters, this ark where God’s covenant people are held — where the breath of life is still on the earth —will keep people alive, through the de-creation moment, and into a new world when the waters recede (Genesis 7:15-16). And then, once the waters are in place — and once the people and animals are in place too — there’s a throwback to the beginning (Genesis 7:18-19).
The ark is lifted from the earth, up towards the heavens, just have this picture of the reality in mind.
It goes up higher than the mountains; high places where people would meet with God, and this box with the only breath of life left in the world, God’s breath, hovers over the waters. Just like god’s spirit does in chapter 1; it’s the same phrase (Genesis 1:2, 7:18)
The waters are now covering the earth again; and the earth is going to become desolate and uninhabited again; days 2 and 3 of the creation story are undone. The waters and land are not separated. There’s no dry ground.
Then days 4 and 5 are undone; all the creatures die — the listing of animals mirrors the list in Genesis 1. The animals. The birds. And all mankind (Genesis 1:30, 7:21). Everything with the breath of life in its nostrils — think back to Genesis 2 and God breathing life into the human — Adam — into his nostrils. Every living thing is wiped from the earth.
It all zeroes in on one man; a new Adam — Noah — and the people with him on the ark (Genesis 7:22-23).
They’re in the ark for a long time. I love the idea that we get in the Noah movie that while they were in the boat this faithful curse-reverser was telling his family the creation story in the darkness surrounded by the waters of the deep. It’s such a beautiful scene.
Noah — the curse reverser — is the great hope for a re-created humanity; he leads a remnant through this de-creation — through the chaos waters — and into a new garden.
God remembers his people on the ark and sends his breath, or Spirit, as a wind over earth; this is the same Hebrew word as when the spirit hovering on the waters in Genesis 1. He blows back the waters; and the waters recede (Genesis 8:1).
The cosmic floodgates are shut again; this is a new beginning; a repeat of Genesis 1 and God separating water and land to make a place for life. The water keeps receding; dry ground is appearing (Genesis 8:2-3). Starting with mountain tops; like the one the ark comes to rest on (Genesis 8:4-5).
And Noah — like Gilgamesh — sends birds out. First a raven, then a dove (Genesis 8:6-8). In Gilgamesh it’s the same birds but the other way round, and I’m not sure what to make of that. There’s an interesting little thing here where the dove goes out, hovering, flying, over the face of the waters; waters that cover the whole earth, a few times, until it eventually returns after another seven days. It returns with a sign that the earth is no longer fruitless; an olive branch. A fruitful tree. So Noah finds dry ground, the water and ground are separating again (Genesis 8:13). And God calls him out of the ark; onto the dry land, with his human family, and all the animals — so they can all be fruitful and multiply again; it’s a re-creation moment (Genesis 8:16-17). Noah’s family emerges from the ark, onto a mountain. Mountains are everywhere in the Bible story right, as heaven-meets-earth places. Noah makes a sacrifice on a mountaintop, again like Gilgamesh (Genesis 8:20). God smells the aroma of his sacrifice and it pleases him so he makes a covenant with Noah and his family. A mountaintop promise to not de-create quite this way again. Even if human hearts have not changed; even if they’re still sinful all the time, there’ll always be people he preserves from judgment (Genesis 8:21).
There’s a big change in this repeat of the call to be fruitful and multiply. From this point, death becomes part of humans living in the land; specifically our rule over the animals. Where in Genesis 1, people were given plants and fruit — just like the animals were, now they’re given the animals as well. Who’ll be scared of them. It’s not Eden (Genesis 9:1-2). There are some limits to this violent domination, and those limits — around the lifeblood of an animal — build up to the prohibition against shedding the blood of another human. God won’t curse all people, but there’ll be an accounting for those who take up the pattern of Cain (Genesis 9:4-5). Those who turn their hands against an image of God will have their blood shed. Violence against a human is a desecration of the image of God (Genesis 9:6), and God makes a covenant not just with Noah and his family, but the animals too — not to destroy them (Genesis 9:9-10). It all looks so good, for a moment, until our next installment, where things go downhill super-fast.
But let’s look at some threads from here — de-creation to re-creation; through water — water where God provides salvation, while judging the earth for its violent opposition to his design for human fruitfulness. God providing dry ground for people, while holding back the chaotic waters is a type scene that repeats.
It repeats as God creates people for himself through water — little new creation moments happen throughout the Bible’s story. This word for ark gets used in one other story in the Old Testament. It’s different to the “ark of the covenant” though both are a box (and both come with building instructions that are similar), they’re different Hebrew words, but you know what is called an ark? The only other one in the story?
The basket Moses is placed in when the violent empire of Egypt orders babies to be thrown into the waters of the Nile (Exodus 2:3). When we meet Moses; Moses the rescuer of god’s people who is saved from the violence of Pharaoh, he’s placed in an ark, and put in the water.
So that old joke — ‘how many animals did Moses take in the ark?’ — the trick that’s meant to catch kids out… well… he couldn’t fit any. It was just a basket.
Moses’s mum finds a loophole with Pharaoh’s commands as she throws him into the Nile, but he is, in a way, symbolically dead in the water; relying on God to preserve him in his ark. His ark, like Noah’s, is made from plant and pitch (Genesis 6:14, Exodus 2:3). He’s raised to life from the Nile and named Moses because he’s “drawn from the water” and saved from violent forces opposed to God’s rule, and the fruitful multiplication of his people (Exodus 2:10). He’s a new Noah. The flood story is an Exodus story; God creating a covenant people through water.
Moses grows up and he goes head-to-head with Pharaoh, and there’s a fun thing where the plagues are de-creation moments too — but that’s a rabbit hole. His own origin story foreshadows the creation of Israel, God’s people, through the waters as they leave Egypt; the same waters that cover over the Egyptian war machine. The Exodus is a new creation story following the pattern of the flood, salvation and judgement fall, and God’s covenant people are protected and carried into a new fruitful land. God brings this salvation; new life because he remembers his people… Just like he remembers those on the ark (Genesis 6:14, Exodus 2:24). And as they head out of Egypt and are chased by the Pharaoh and his warriors — violent people opposed to God’s plan — Moses stretches out his arms, and just as god’s Spirit — a wind — that Hebrew word again — pushes the waters of the flood apart to make dry ground appear for Noah, God opens the waters for Moses and Israel to cross on dry ground. Israel is preserved; saved from death, brought to life, heading towards fruitful land (Exodus 14:21-22). While the violent army of the violent nation is destroyed under the waters. The chariots, the horsemen, are all wiped out (Exodus 14:28).
As God’s people sing about this salvation they sing about God’s wind — his Spirit — moving the seas; for their salvation, and against their enemies. It’s a flood again (Exodus 15:10). And on the other side of the waters they become a covenant people called to be fruitful and multiply. In Exodus they’re called to be a nation of priests, formed through the waters as god saves and judges; bringing death and life. And Moses leads the people up a mountain — into the heavens; like Noah being up above the mountains. Moses and Noah both build altars on mountains, and make sacrifices. There’s heaps of parallels (Exodus 19:5-6).
Now just imagine, for a moment, that this is your origin story; as a nation — both these stories — the story of Noah and of Moses; of God saving through waters; leading people on dry ground into fruitful life while judging violent enemies of his plan and people. Imagine you’re surrounded by a violent nation, Babylon, with its own flood story. A story where violent gods flood the earth because of noisy humans who are disturbing their partying and rest, and where you’re never quite sure if they’re going to do it again if you get a bit uppity. They’ve got this story keeping them on their toes; keeping them obeying the violent king who represents the violent gods; you’ve got the story of Noah, and Moses, and maybe the idea that god might save a people from this sort of violent empire through water again.
There’s this promise, in Isaiah — the same chapter where we got the branch of Jesse a few weeks back — that looks forward to the waters of Egypt and Babylon being swept back by a wind of God — the Spirit — so that people will walk on dry ground again and a remnant of his people will be saved and walk on this ground towards life, just like Israel in the Exodus (Isaiah 11:15-16).
At the end of the Old Testament Israel is waiting for this new Exodus — and in a way we all are. The world stays violent; human hearts are evil and opposed to God, and violent empires reign… And there hasn’t been a moment when all Israel — not just Judah, exiled in Babylon, have returned to be god’s people like Isaiah promises. God remains faithful to his promise to Noah though; holding back his judgment on a violent world, even if he does intervene in moments like the Exodus on behalf of his people.
And in this world, we get Noah, leading a remnant — a small family of people — through judgment; hoping for re-created life — but nothing changes — we get Moses — leading God’s nation towards the land; but right after he finishes his sacrifices on the mountain; Israel fails — just like Noah’s family — and we’ll pick that up next week — and then we get Jesus.
Here’s some cool threads running from the flood story to Jesus; from Israel’s origin story to ours. At Jesus’ baptism, John is baptising people on the east side of the Jordan —the Babylon side. He’s making a way for people head back into the promised land (John 1:28); announcing the beginning of the New Exodus with language from the Old Testament. As Jesus comes out of the water, there’s the Spirit hovering like a dove — it’s a flood moment and a Genesis 1 moment all at once. Something’s about to happen. New life is about to emerge (Matthew 3:16). John has just said Jesus will bring a different baptism — one with the Spirit, and with fire. He’s come to fix the human hearts that create violence; to lead another Exodus — bringing salvation and judgment — another ark; saving those who’ll listen and find life with god that raises us to the heavens (Matthew 3:11-12). Jesus will say he’s also going to experience another baptism; before he brings this fire, describing the cross as a baptism (Luke 12:49-50). The cross is where God brings judgment and salvation; a path out of death.
If violence against a human is a desecration of the image of God, then this is the ultimate expression of violent desecration of the ultimate image bearer with the ultimate debt now owed to God. At the cross, Jesus is surrounded by the violent forces that oppose god’s plan — like Noah; like Moses and Pharaoh; like Egypt and Babylon. He absorbs the blows.
At the Cross, God provides another timber vessel that saves; that carries us from this old violent world; a world under judgment; and into new life. Water and blood flood from his side, and in that flow we find both judgment and salvation. Those who reject Jesus and side with the violent world that kill him face death, while those who cling to the cross for life will be carried to new life.
We’ll see in a couple of weeks, when we get to Babel, how the baptism Jesus brings — by God’s Spirit coming like fire — brings a new Exodus. We’ll see and how that fire judges and saves, like John says Jesus’ baptism will (Matthew 3:11-12) separating those in God’s family — on the ark — his covenant people — from who choose the violent world.
But remember the Great Commission, where Jesus goes up a mountain and tells his people that God is with us, so we should baptise people and make disciples (Matthew 28:19); that’s a picture of this story becoming our story, through our own baptism.
Because that is what Baptism is; just as Noah’s ark — and Moses’ ark, and his leading God’s people to new life through the waters were Israel’s origin story; our baptism into the death and new life of Jesus is our origin story.
Romans 6 says baptism represents us dying with Jesus, going down into the water, sharing in his death; a death that came at the hands of the violent world; so that we might be carried to new life; raised up above the waters as heavenly people. Baptism is our flood story. Our Exodus. A picture of the old being washed away and new life emerging through death, and the Cross of Jesus is our Ark, raising us up into the heavens and holding us safe as judgment falls (Romans 6:4).
Peter picks up this idea in 1 Peter — where he talks about how we’re now Exodus people; a “Kingdom of priests,“ because we’ve been united in Jesus (1 Peter 2:9). He says this weird stuff about Jesus preaching to the spirits from before Noah’s time — and maybe that makes some sense after last week; especially because there’s this theory these demons (and others) were the ghosts of dead Nephilim. Then he says we’re people who are ‘saved through water,’ not saved ‘by water.’ It’s not that baptism saves, it’s this idea of being carried through death and judgment, like Noah in the Ark hovering over the water, protected by God, ‘put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit;’ saved to be raised up into the heavens; even further than the ark. Unlike in Gilgamesh, where death is the ultimate destiny of every human and immortality is a pipe dream, this divine life is for everyone who grabs hold of the boat (1 Peter 3:18-22).
When we’re baptised in water, this is what we’re representing; a story we make real for ourselves through actions. We’re part of the people of God created through the death and resurrection of Jesus. There’s something beautiful and true about infant baptism. Just like Noah’s family on the ark, and the kids in Egypt, we’re not saved by our own effort, but by jumping on the ark following the ultimate Noah (or Moses), Jesus. There’s also something beautiful about immersion, this picture of going down into the water, covered by flood waters — dying — and coming up made new. Baptism is a picture of death and resurrection.
When we see others baptised we, the baptised community, remember our ark; that carried us through the waters, through death, and into resurrection. We live as the baptised and baptising community; the dead made alive. We live as those who know that God promises he won’t flood the earth again, but that Jesus promises to return bringing judgment and salvation; life or death. We live knowing he came to bring a baptism, of the spirit, and fire, both re-creation and immortality and judgment on the violent and evil world that would kill God.
Life in this baptised community is life shaped by this story; life with new hearts that come by the spirit; life that rejects the violent and destructive world, even if this means stormy weather; but where we cling to the cross; life where maybe, like Noah, we value God’s creation and try to make little pockets of Eden, carrying them through the storm with us and our family. Telling our origin story; the Gospel; in the dark, hoping that it’ll shape us as we seek to point people to the light.
Just as an added final touch, we finished this service baptising a member of our church family who shared their testimony of finding life in the story of Jesus.
This is an amended (and extended) version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2022. If you’d prefer to listen to this (spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 37 minutes.I’m going to be honest, 90% of the reason I started posting these sermons is that I think the title of this post is pretty great.
What’s your utopia?
Your picture-perfect society — not your heaven on earth place, or ‘thin place’ from the last piece, but your idea of a heaven-on-earth people or community?
500 years ago the English philosopher Thomas More imagined an ideal society in Utopia. In his vision kings were generous not corrupt; there was no private property, just abundance, and everyone ate meals together all the time…
Some of you are thinking that sounds like hell.
It wasn’t ‘eu-topia’ — “the good place” — but ‘u-topia’ — “no place” — more knew this was impossible.
Anna Neima wrote this fun book, The Utopians, deep diving into six post-World War One, post-Spanish flu communities that tried to build ‘the good place’ as a response to the combined trauma that emerged out of a pandemic and a war.
She describes utopias as:
“A kind of social dreaming. To invent a ‘perfect’ world – in a novel, a manifesto or a living community – is to lay bare what is wrong with the real one.”
There’s a prophetic function to these attempts to re-order relationships. The catch, she concludes — none of them worked, they promised too much change from the status quo, but couldn’t deliver. She wrote:
“These experiments in living all ended up facing a similar set of problems… There were tensions between the ideals of cooperation, egalitarianism and democracy, and the practice of elitism and hierarchy.”
This can end up being true not just of our view of the perfect society – whether that’s family, or church, or a sharehouse. Our utopian visions often end up no places not good places because they all involve people and end up as a product of the hearts of the people living in them.
We zero in on the first good place today, and the first ‘ideal human society’ where two humans face a choice; a life-or-death choice between eutopia and dystopia; between two trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. There’re plenty of other trees to eat form too, but these two trees represent a choice between loving and listening to God — trusting him as good source of goodness and fruitful life, or rejecting god and pursuing wisdom and life in some other way. To eat from the Tree of Life is life, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is death.
I’m going to go out on a limb here — to suggest humans aren’t pictured as immortal creatures, but dust animated by god’s breath depending on the Tree of Life to live forever. A little later in Genesis, God will say his breath won’t contend with human flesh forever (Genesis 6:3). So when humans are cut off from the Tree that means being cut off from forever life, and facing death as de-creation; becoming dust again.
At the end of Genesis 2, the man, or “earthling,” and woman made from his side are together, united, and things look good. They are destined for oneness; created to represent God, fruitfully multiplying and ruling the world together; based in the garden in Eden, to work it and guard it together; not alone. We’re also told they’re naked and unashamed (Genesis 2:35). This lack of clothing is an interesting point for the author to make; it’s almost unimaginable for us to feel this safe while naked. Imagine feeling safe to turn up to church naked without judgment or fear; was that part of your utopian vision? The reasons we don’t do this are pretty obvious, right? And when we probe these reasons it doesn’t take long to find sin and brokenness in the mix — ours and other’s. The point here is that things are good and safe and glorious. And oneness is a real possibility; oneness in purpose — in rule – in generative life that brings fruit. The oneness doesn’t last long though.
We meet this chaos figure, this serpent (Genesis 3:1). Imagine it with legs, too. Like a dragon. Like this sort of ‘divine’ beings you might find pictured with kings in Babylon or on their architecture.
Image Source: Wikipedia article The Mušḫuššu, Image from Wikipedia Commons.
The serpent’s crafty. It’s a wild animal — a “beast of the field” in Hebrew; the sort of creature humans were meant to rule over (Genesis 1:28), it’s also leading a rebellion on earth that we’ll see echoed in heaven. It’s a threat to the good and fruitful order of the world.
I suspect guarding the garden (Genesis 2:15) probably meant keeping sinister critters out; especially critters the humans are meant to be ruling over. Maybe these humans should’ve crushed the intruder’s head straight up, especially as the serpent speaks with a forked tongue, “did God really say “you mustn’t eat from any tree in the garden” (Genesis 3:1). God says nothing of the sort. Right up front the serpent is reframing God as a miser — as someone who restricts rather than graciously giving — this isn’t the God we’ve met so far in the story who makes and shares fruitful and beautiful life and wants to see it spread and enjoyed. God said they could eat freely of every tree — including the tree of life. There’s just one choice that leads to death.
And the woman does her bit to set him straight, only, she adds some stuff to god’s instructions. She creates a restriction — a boundary — that wasn’t there before. The seed of doubt has been planted.
We can do that too. Create rules that sound righteous, but actually restrict good things God has given us. The trick is actually listening to God’s word; and contemplating his good creation. God did not say they couldn’t touch the fruit on the tree in the middle of the garden.
And so the serpent twists. You can eat. You should eat. God’s holding back. God doesn’t want you to be like him. You won’t die. Your eyes will be opened and you’ll be like god knowing good from evil.
Now, pause, because this bit is important. In our work through Genesis one and two we’ve seen that God made humans with the exact purpose that they be like him. It’s hard to imagine that being like him means being ignorant about what good and evil is. There’s an issue with how we picture knowing as being about the head alone, about information, not about experience, or right relationship — as we worked through the Wisdom literature together we saw that wisdom is actually about right action — action aligned with truth (note: this is a reference to an earlier sermon series I might repurpose as articles one day too, but that you can find on our podcast here).
What the serpent is actually offering is an opportunity for them to make themselves like gods who get to decide good and evil for themselves; apart from God their creator. To speak rather than listen, to be laws unto themselves, to grasp hold of autonomy and be their own images of god, like the kings of the nations around Israel. It’s interesting that these kings — and their gods, like Marduk, get pictured with little dragon gods – serpents — next to them.
Image Source: Wikicommons, 9th century BC depiction of a Statue of Marduk.
I think it’s a legitimate question to ponder why God made this tree; what it’s doing in the Garden — what its purpose is and in what sense it does what it is named after. I suspect the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was a test, but also a teaching aid; providing wisdom to humans who contemplate it as a beautiful gift from God, along with his instruction, rather than grasping hold of it in disobedience to God. It operates just like wisdom in the Old Testament operates; where the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom (Proverbs 1:7).
The question in this interaction with the slippery serpent is will the humans fear and listen to God?
I wonder too if the idea was always that humans were meant to ask God for wisdom; God seems to delight in giving wisdom to his people — like with King Solomon, who’s pictured as a new Adam, naming the animals and plants (1 Kings 4:32), and who asks for exactly this sort of wisdom — not just to know right and wrong — but good and evil — it’s the same words in Hebrew — in a way that pleases God (1 Kings 3:9). Solomon asks for a listening heart because he needs this sort of heart and wisdom to rule as God’s representative.
So long as these humans were in the garden, listening to God, obeying him, enjoying him, and contemplating the tree, they actually were knowing good and evil, and finding life, and being like God, the way the rest of the Old Testament frames it.
Humans should be ruling over the wild animals — the beasts — but the serpent tips the world upside down. They should be co-operating in the task of guarding the garden and representing God as his priestly people — the sort who speak his word into the world. They were meant to be being like God, but they take matters into their own hands
There’s no joint pondering of God’s word and testing it against the serpent’s, just impulsive action in the belief that God is holding something good back and we’re better off deciding good and evil for ourselves. There’s joint action — the woman sees — she sees the fruit is beautiful and pleasing to the eye (Genesis 3:6), which is how the fruit in the garden has been described (Genesis 2:9). And I think we’re meant to believe it is beautiful even that it looked delicious. She’s attracted to it, and I wonder if contemplating its beauty, but not taking something that is forbidden might have been, and might still be, a path to wisdom. But then she declares the fruit that God has said is “not good to eat” is “good to eat” — and she eats it, and she gives some to her husband — the flesh of her flesh — and he doesn’t say “stop,” he eats too (Genesis 3:6). There’s not just one sin here — not just one action — the whole thing, from the moment they let the serpent misrepresent God uncorrected, to the moment they add to what God has said and so present God as miserly and harsh, to the moment the woman takes the fruit — it’s all a failure — a joint failure to be like God.
They eat the fruit and everything changes; suddenly their nakedness is a massive problem (Genesis 3:7). They make clothes out of leaves — dressing themselves like trees; they become what they’ve worshipped. They identify themselves with the bottom of the food chain — the very things given to them to eat (Genesis 1:29, 2:9), but from here on they aren’t going to be as fruitful as they could’ve been. There’s now a barrier between them; and worse — a barrier between them and God; and a loss of this function reflecting his glorious image.
God turns up to walk in the Garden. This word used here is a way his presence is described with Israel through their history — both in the tabernacle, and temple. This walking — it’s part of the Eden-as-temple package. God comes to be present with his people, and they hide from him (Genesis 3:8-9). They’re dressed as trees trying to hide in the trees — the original camouflage — as though God won’t find them. They are ashamed. But God calls for them.
And Adam calls back. “I heard you. I was afraid. I hid” (Genesis 3:10-11).
That’s not how we were meant to respond to God. This isn’t the relationship they were created for as representatives of God’s rule. And God — like a parent catching their kid with a face covered in the chocolate they weren’t meant to eat — asks if they’ve been eating what they shouldn’t. He knows what’s going on… “who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” (Genesis 3:11). I wonder if things could’ve gone differently at this point too, but the man straight up fails to own the one flesh nature of what’s just gone down; the barrier between man and woman becomes obvious. He blames the woman, and he blames god for putting her with him; ‘I can’t be fruitful because of her and you,’ “she gave me the fruit and I ate it.” And she blames the serpent. Nobody takes responsibility. Nobody repents. They shamelessly blame others (Genesis 3:12).
God recognises they’re all complicit, so, as a result, more barriers are put up to fruitfulness. The first two chapters have been about the desolate and uninhabited lands becoming fruitful places inhabited by God’s image bearing people who reflect his rule in the world. This can’t happen without people being like God and listening to him, and pursuing wise life in his presence — trusting his goodness and enjoying his hospitality — his provision of life. And now, this is frustrated. Cursed. The serpent bites the dust. It is cursed “above” all the other livestock by becoming below them; crawling on its belly and eating dust (Genesis 3:14).
The serpent and its offspring are set at odds with humans and their offspring; in keeping with the tree-fruit metaphor the word for offspring here is seed. Serpent-spawn will strike the heel of the seed of the woman, while there’ll be a seed produced from the woman that’ll crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).
For the woman, fruit-producing, childbearing, is going to be frustrated. This word encompasses everything about that process from sex to birth. It’s a breaking of the relationship with the man; they’re meant to rule together, but now there’s a cursed hierarchy (Genesis 3:16). The patriarchy as we know it (and as it unfolds in the Bible’s story) isn’t god’s good design; it’s part of the curse (this doesn’t mean we should accept it any more than we should refuse to fight against weeds and thorns in the production of food). We saw last week that ‘helper’ meant more than servant – it meant ally — where men rule over women like this we see curse at work.
While for earthling-Adam — suddenly the earth is a rival and a destiny. Instead of cultivating a garden from a garden, with god’s life-giving help — the ground is now cursed because of ground-man. Eating will be a result of painful toil. Thorns and thistles will be an expression of curse (Genesis 3:17-18).
And they’re both going to die; to return to the ground. Dust to dust. Earthling to earth (Genesis 3:19).
Now earthling — Adam — exercises rule over eve, he names her like he named the animals. Something has shifted (Genesis 3:20). She’s still going to be the mother of the living — but they’ve become like beasts not like God; and God dresses them up in animal skins — you are what you wear — they’re not trees, but wild things — ruled by the serpent — rather than ruling (Genesis 3:21). And as God declares this curse on humans in verse 22, the Hebrew we get translated as “has become like us” is ambiguous, it can also be “was like us” (note: Old Testament scholar Doug Green as a whole lecture on this idea that he once gave at QTC that was profound for me, and I think, unlike the Serpent, has legs).
I think we’re meant to ask the question of that ambiguity: were humans like God, and now they’re not, or have they in this moment become “like god” as an act of idolatrous or treasonous self-actualisation. The answer is they were like God, or they were meant to be — and now they’ve tried to make themselves into gods, just like the kings of the nations — but they’re actually beastly.
As a result, they’re exiled from the garden (Genesis 3:23). It’s what happens to Israel when they want to become like the nations by grasping hold of power and idols and rejecting God as creator too; they get kicked out of the fruitful land and sent to Babylon. Israel’s story echoes this origin story. Beastly humans don’t get the Tree of Life; they don’t get immortality and life with God in his garden (Genesis 3:23). They’re outside the garden. East. Outside the gates.
God’s still in the picture, but they aren’t in the garden anymore. And now there’s a heavenly being — a cherubim — wielding a flaming sword (Genesis 3:24). A heavenly being, doing the work Adam and Eve should’ve done; guarding the garden; keeping out the beasts; the wild things, the beings not committed to bringing a heaven on earth society as God’s representatives — which now includes these beastly humans.
They can’t live forever as beastly critters, enjoying the Tree of Life. So what do we do with this story?
It becomes a story for God’s people, Israel, to contemplate; both when they’re headed towards a fruitful land again, and invited to choose life in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 30:19-20), and when they’re in the valley of the shadow of death, in Babylonian exile. Where they’re contemplating what went wrong again; how history repeated, as they too tried to be gods on their own terms, rather than being like god; and how this got them there. The pattern of sin we see bring curse into human relationships repeats (internationally or systemically, and individually) through the Old Testament — seeing, desiring, declaring things God has said are not good as good and taking them; pursuing life, deciding good and evil on our own terms, and it keeps leading to exile and death.
And yet — the pursuit of wisdom itself — through listening to god’s word — becomes a tree of life (Proverbs 3:13-18). The person who plants themselves in god’s word becomes like a fruitful tree (Psalm 1:1-3). For the Israelite reading these words in exile in Babylon, surrounded by the people of a beastly king, that path back to Eden; back to life is obvious: listening to God.
The prophets also promise the way back to Eden-life will come through a faithful seed; a branch of a tree, the “root of Jesse,” so a son of David, a tree-son, who’ll delight in the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:1-3), this figure will create an Eden like land where animals are at peace and serpents aren’t a threat anymore, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God (Isaiah 11:8-9).
A fruitful tree will emerge. A king. An image of God who leads us to life with God, while crushing the serpent. Jesus — the branch of Jesse — comes to lead us back to blessing — to fruitfulness — to a pattern of life that doesn’t look like the curse.
At his arrest, John tells us that Jesus enters a garden; Gethsemane (John 18:1), where he doesn’t grasp and decide what is good and evil, but gives himself to God, saying “not my will but yours” (Matthew 26:39), before people storm the garden, wielding clubs and swords (Matthew 26:47). The Greek word for club here is the word for wood and tree that gets used in the Greek version of the Genesis story for the two trees — they come into a garden wielding trees against the branch of Jesse. They come wielding trees, committing treason against the tree-son (look, that’s pretty good).
Jesus is arrested and taken off to face a beastly trial — treated like an animal — he has a crown of thorns pushed into his head — the picture of the cursed ground pressed into his skin (Matthew 27:35). Then he’s stripped naked and crucified — nailed to a cross — publicly shamed as he’s nailed to a tree. The cross is described using that same wood word (Acts 13:28-29). Jesus absorbs the worst the world and the serpent can throw at him. His death on a tree isn’t just him taking on curse — as Paul puts it, but an exchange of his life for ours in a way that secures forgiveness of our sins, our redemption from curse, and our restoration as people of God as we receive his Spirit (Galatians 3:13-14).
Jesus comes to restore us from exile, to lead us towards life and wisdom by being the life and wisdom; the living word of God; and we now choose life or death in our choice regarding one tree; the cross. The cross is both our Tree of Life a way to eternal life where God gives his life to and for us, and our Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, where we find true wisdom; a way of life through contemplation. It’s where we choose to be God’s image bearing children, or to side with the serpent.
We’re invited to stop grasping, to stop trying to be gods, to stop being ruled by sin, to no longer be led by our desires to take what we want in disobedient rebellion against God. So much of my sin is me just repeating that pattern. So many of our utopias — our ideas of the good life — our temptations to sin — involve the serpent’s vision casting — the idea that God is withholding something good from us, or we shouldn’t listen to him, and these visions lead us to grasp and destroy, and they lead us away from god, feeling ashamed, and hiding as our humanity is diminished, and replaced with beastliness as we become what we worship.
Jesus, the tree-son — the firstfruits — gives us God’s Spirit to dwell in us, making us one with God, so we’re no longer hiding from him, but hidden in him; protected, seated with him as his children, and invited to produce the fruit of the spirit in our lives as we give up treason and contemplate the tree-son, as he re-creates us as imperishable humans.
There’re lots of ways the New Testament talks about this re-creation that pick up ideas of what Genesis suggests it means to be human — we become transformed into the image of Jesus; we get clothed with Christ; we become a kingdom of priests and ambassadors of the message of reconciliation; a living temple, and the body of Jesus — united in him, by the Spirit and growing towards maturity in Christ.
We’re invited to a new pattern of life together — we’re not a people who rule over one another, Genesis 3:16 is not our pattern for fruitfulness. So much of church history, like Israel’s history, has involved male leaders operating to protect their power and to lord it over others, and then husbands being told to do that at home. That is curse. Not blessing.
We’re god’s children — with a new way of life we find in the example of Jesus — where we don’t grasp, or give others up, but give ourselves for others in love (Ephesians 5:1). This is utopian. Imagine a world where everyone did this; imagine a you where this was the image you were presenting to the world.
God’s design is for us to rule the world together not by dominating or ruling over each other, but by submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:20). This won’t look like grasping patriarchy, or abusing our power to take what we want, or putting our desires first. This isn’t servant leadership; it’s just service in a body of people who mutually serve. That’s the shape of marriage, and church, it’s a dynamic of loving service.
Our task as “rulers” of God’s world, in whatever context, is to rule together; to lead each other to find life in obedience to God; feasting on our new tree, finding life in Jesus, and so following his example, as we head towards a new Eden, and a new Tree of Life together.
This origin story shapes our life, and our community, so the ‘good society’ isn’t no place, but breaking out in the world as Jesus transforms people and our communities into little eutopias. Even as her book reaches the conclusion that utopian visions fail, Anna Neima doesn’t see them as a waste of time.
She says:
“Utopian living is extraordinarily generative. It creates openings in the fabric of society, inspires change, reminds us that it is possible to reach beyond the dominant assumptions of our day and discover radically different ways of being.”
The world needs communities who live differently — generatively — creating new ways of being that challenge the dominant assumptions of our day and model radically different ways of being.
“where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or… The infinite whatever.”
Where do you go to feel closest to God — like you’re in a heaven on earth zone? A thin place?
That’s what the Garden in Eden was — this paradise garden we read about in Genesis 2. It maybe shows us that all our thin place experiences are a longing for somewhere else. I love the way Tolkien puts this:
“Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile.”
In those thin places we feel closest to God — and while we do live with this sense of paradise lost — these moments might be explained by our origin story, and they might point to an ending of the story.
What would an ideal person in that thin place should look like?
What should they do to cultivate that sense of heaven?
How might they be shaped by the space? Just ponder that with your own pictures of paradise.
Genesis 2 develops some big ideas from Genesis 1 — covering the same creation of the heavens and the earth — while zeroing in on a more local place — this region called Eden, and within it, a garden. And zeroing in on just one human. A human named human, or a human named to sound like ground in the Hebrew language. Adam; Earthling. What we treat as a name — Adam — is really, first and foremost, a pun.
Before we get this human we get a world that is desolate and uninhabited — there are no plants yet, and no rain yet, and no one to work the ground yet (Genesis 2:4-5). There’s also no deep — no dark or chaotic waters in the way. There is earth. Ground. And springs of water that come up from the ground to give life (Genesis 2:6).
In the Babylonian view of the world — which we touched on last time — there’s two ‘cosmic waters’ going on in our map of reality — Tiamet — the bad salty water that doesn’t help things grow — and Apsu, the living water — fresh springwater that comes up through the earth.
That’ll be interesting… If you can keep it in your head as you read.
In the Bible’s story though, the life-giving water bubbles up as the way God brings water to the parched ground — water and life. If you’re an ancient person — or even a modern one — water was a source of life through farming; you’d build cities on rivers to guarantee water supply for people. And here these waters are bubbling up out of the ground.
Next to these waters, God makes a human. He forms the man — shapes him — from the dust of the ground and then breathes the breath of life into his nostrils. And he becomes a living being (Genesis 2:7). Here’s another little thread to hold on to — in the Greek Old Testament (the LXX) this is translated as a “living soul” using the Greek word psyche (from which we get ‘psychology’).
Now. Remember in Genesis chapter 1, we’re told God creates people in his own image, and I said that word is the word that gets used for idol statues and for kings in the ancient world. There’s a fascinating thing going on here where this story of God creating a living image of himself mirrors — or inverts and challenges — the exact story that people in the ancient world, outside of Israel, believed about how idol statues were made.
Here’s some quotes from a translated ritual tablet, this process required:
Water of the Apsû, brought from the midst of Eridu, water of the Tigris, water of the Euphrates, brought from a pure place… in the garden of the canal of the pure orchard build a bīt rimki. Bring him [the statue] out to the canal of the pure orchard…or this statue which stands before you ceremoniously grant him the destiny that his mouth may eat, that his ears might hear. May the god become pure like heaven, clean like the earth, bright like the center of heaven.
They would place a statue in an orchard, surrounded by the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates (rivers mentioned flowing from Eden in Genesis 2), and the water of the Apsu — the living water the bubbles up from the ground.
They would “give life” to the statue through a ritual that involved washing out the mouth, so that in the people’s minds the statue was now a living, breathing, eating, representation of the god in the world; then you would place them in a temple. You’d rinse and repeat this process for all the images of your god that you’d spread around the empire, then everyone involved in the ceremony would have to pretend to cut off their hands with a wooden knife because no real god could be created by humans.
It was especially the King’s job to build these statues to spread the images of an empire’s god throughout the parts of the world where their gods reigned. There’s another description of this ritual where a king, Esarhaddon, re-built Babylon after his dad destroyed it. He gets a few mentions in the Old Testament (2 Kings 19:37, Ezra 4:2, Isaiah 37:38). He repaired statues that had been removed from the temples — ‘restoring’ the gods to these desecrated statues by re-creating them.
He said he was chosen by Babylon’s gods to make images of god and put them in Babylon’s temples.
He took these exiled statues that had been captured by his dad and pulled out of their temples back to an orchard, surrounded by waters (the Euphrates river ran through Babylon), and conducted those same rituals to give life to these statues; these images of god.
Here’s a translation of the inscription from this tablet.
I, Esarhaddon, led the great god in procession. I processed with joy before him. I brought him joyfully into the heart of Babylon, the city of their honour. Into the orchards, among the canals…
The line between God and king was murky. Kings were also called the image of God. There’s a king of the region that became Assyria, Tukulti Ninurta, who has these inscriptions that call him the image of the god, Enlil. These inscriptions using the same letters the Hebrew word for ‘image’ uses (tselem, or צלם). Eventually kings in the Ancient world ended up having statues of themselves placed in temples around their kingdoms.
There was no separation of church and state in the ancient world — the king was chief priest — the image of their god’s rule in the world.
So through Israel’s history, as they retell this Eden story it’s an alternative origin story — it’s not their king making an image of God — a statue — in a fruitful garden where the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates flow — where the image is given life because his mouth is opened by people washing it. A story told before the same people turn round and worship the statues they just helped make. Israel’s story is that their God makes his own statue-man with his hands, and puts him in an orchard where living water flows all round, and breathes actual life into his image so it can eat and live.
There’s a mirror being held up to these foreign stories and the gods they present, just as the story reveals how God sees humans as his Sacred, divinely formed representatives — living, breathing, statues. Royal rulers.
Imagine the way this story played out in their life with these nations as neighbours — or as their conquerers in Egypt, or in Babylon. Humans are god’s living images — so, unlike their neighbours — Israel shouldn’t make statues of god — and we see that in the law (like in the 10 Commandments, Exodus 20). Worshipping those statues that they know are breathless and dead would be dumb, they have no breath in them, they are dead, and we see that in the prophets and Psalms.
The prophets — like Isaiah — even mock the whole process of constructing an idol statue that we now read in these rituals. Where craftsmen shape wood into human form, to put it in a temple, while burning the same wood to cook their food (Isaiah 44:13-15).
The Genesis Origin story shows why worshipping idols is stupid. They’re breathless, uninspired pieces of stone and wood; dirt-gods that leave us with a dirt future.
While the living God shows us that real humanity has life by his breath. We weren’t made to stay as earthlings — like statues of wood or clay — but to live as people who reflect heaven on earth; inspired by divine breath, as we enjoy life in God’s presence. Inspired. That’s a cool word, right (as opposed to ‘expired’). We’re given breath by him so that we might create life shaped by him rather than making our own gods; living as heavenly people, not people who worship stuff from the ground; but the God of heaven.
Ancient Idol statues were made from the ground (dirt or stone) and garden (trees), then decorated with the gold and precious stones that are there in the ground in the regions around Eden waiting to be cultivated and used by God’s earth-man in his task of representing god (Genesis 2:11-12). We can worship that stuff; or we can cultivate it and use it in our God-given task Some of the precious resources mentioned here in Genesis 2 — gold and onyx — become part of the clothing of the priest (Exodus 28).
Let’s pop back to Babylon, or another ancient city for a moment — in these cities the kings — images of God — who crafted images of Marduk the violent god to send out into the world, these kings were also gardeners. If you were an exiled Israelite it’s not just the power of Babylon’s armies that confronts you, and offers an appeal to switch allegiance to Marduk or his king — it’s the beauty of the city. The gardens. The king, as representative of divine order, was understood to be responsible for the fruitfulness of their lands. They’d plant gardens — thing the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon; they would build garden cities on rivers — like the Tigris, or Euphrates. Israel in Babylon doesn’t just have God’s command to plant gardens of their own (Jeremiah 29:5-7), little Edens in Babylon, they’ve got a different story about who brings fruitfulness into the world; the God who plants a garden.
God is the gardener (Genesis 2:8). He brings the fruit. This is what Israel gets told about the fruitfulness of the promised land too. But in the Eden story it’s God who provides fruitfulness — in the form of trees that are pleasing to the eye and good for food, and the tree of life is there too (Genesis 2:9).
He gives human — earthling — the job of working and taking care of the Garden, as a steward of his fruitful provision of trees and life; of this garden space that is somehow marked out as different to the rest of the earth (Genesis 2:15). The word work or cultivate is the word for serve… while the word behind ‘take care of’ has a sense of guard — it’s the same word for what the cherub with the sword is going to do to guard the garden when Adam and Eve get kicked out (Genesis 3:24).
Now these two words get paired together a bunch of times as the instructions for the priests; in the Tabernacle in Numbers (Numbers 3:7), and then the Temple in Chronicles (Chronicles 23:32). They’re the task of God’s priests in these thin places where we see Heaven and earth intersecting. God’s priests are like living idol statues —images —. tasked with guarding and keeping the heaven-on-earth spaces, and that’s the task we find for all humans in Genesis 2… In the Garden in Eden.
Now these two words — they’re the same words used over and over again as instructions for the priests; in the tabernacle in numbers, and then temple in chronicles. They’re the task of god’s fruitful people in the fruitful land in thin places where we see heaven and earth intersecting…
Think back to your thin place, and that little exercise of imagining how you should live in that thin place to keep it doing that job — if it was a beach, you’d be wanting to preserve the water quality, and stop it becoming overcrowded — you’d clean and protect it. If it’s a mountain, you’d stop people building ugly stuff like ziplines or awful houses, and you’d pick up rubbish. If it’s a garden then you’d cultivate it, looking after the trees, and you’d guard it from outside pests and weeds. This is basically what Earthling (Adam) is told to do in this heaven on earth space — keep it doing that job.
Earthling Adam is to enjoy God’s hospitality while he works — to enjoy with God, feasting on all the trees including the Tree of Life — living for as long as he enjoys life in God’s presence — while contemplating this other tree — this tree he is not to eat from; the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (we’ll see more of it next week. But for now we’ll leave it hanging like Chekov’s rifle).
It’s worth noticing that the streams emerging from the ground at the start of the chapter have become rivers (Genesis 2:10-14) flowing from Eden; this water of life flows from Eden out into the world giving life to all these nations that end up, in the story of the Bible, being Israel’s idol-loving enemies. Life flows out of this garden and into the world.
The origin story so far introduces us to Earthling; the living idol statue made from the ground, given life by God’s breath, to represent the fruitful living, breathing, life-giving God. Earthling is created to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and rule it for God by gardening — cultivating and guarding this garden — partnering with God in this work of spreading the garden paradise — where God gives life at his table (or trees) — across the earth as God’s living statue; his priestly king. Genesis 2 unpacks the Genesis 1 idea of humans being made in God’s image, and in Israel’s story (unlike Babylon’s) this role is for all humans living in relationship with God, not just for kings.
And not just for men.
Just as the darkness, chaos waters, and vault were problems introduced by the narrative — so is earthling being alone; we know something is missing from his image bearing capacity. There’s a barrier to earthling’s fruitfulness. In Genesis 1, over and over again, we’re told ‘it’s good’ — but here it’s ‘not good’ — because earthling Adam is alone (Genesis 2:18).
We see a bit of his life in God’s likeness here too; because where in chapter one, God names things and they happen — in chapter two, as earthling meets the animals, whatever he calls them — that’s their name (Genesis 2:19). He’s ruling over the animals and birds, who Genesis 1 says males and females — God’s image — are to rule together. There’s an interesting difference between chapter 1 and 2 here too, where the animals have also been created out of the ground — like the earthling — we’re not told that in Genesis 1; they also have the “breath of life” in them (Genesis 1:30), they are similar, but are not made with this task of representing God in the world and ruling over it.
They’re similar, but none of them are suitable for him as a helper; none of them complete earthling’s ability to do the ‘good’ he was made for. Until God makes a woman — a helper — not from the ground but from his side (Genesis 2:20-21).
It’s worth just pausing on that word “helper” in the context of this human task to be fruitful and multiply. It’d be easy, from the English (and because of history) to think the word helper is subordinate — but that’s not what the word here means, or what the narrative is suggesting. The Hebrew words used here for suitable helper — Ezer Kenegdo — don’t have a picture of a domestic helper in them at all; ‘ezer’ is more like ‘deliverer’ — it’s used of God in the Old Testament, including in military pictures of God holding a shield for Israel and coming to their aid (Deuteronomy 33:29).
Helper is something more like military ally — and her suitability is about the ability and necessity to help earthling function the way God created humanity to function together. Remember how we saw when we looked at chapter one, that in the ancient world a thing is a thing when it does what a thing is made to do. Humanity is incomplete. It can’t represent God as his image — without males and females. Earthling also can’t be fruitful and multiply alone, or make life from the earth; and so God makes a woman.
A woman taken out of man so they can be united as one — that’s going to be important for understanding what happens in chapter 3, where they fail to act as one, turning on each other, and to guard and keep the garden, so that being fruitful and multiplying is frustrated as their relationship is disordered.
The woman is the first creation — plants, humans, animals — not made from the ground in the chapter. Together, man and woman will be fit for their purpose of representing God and fruitfully spreading his rule — his Eden Garden — over the earth. Their union and oneness will be part of that representation, and so will humanity’s fruitful multiplying from their union. Adam couldn’t be fruitful and multiply alone.
This passage might become the basis for how we understand marriage — it’s where Jesus goes when asked about marriage (Matthew 19) — and it’s definitely a pretty big building block for how we think marriage works, but there’s also something happening in the origin story here. The narrative is suggests earthling is incomplete — not good — unable to function as fully human while he’s alone. This isn’t to say we’re half people waiting for a person of the opposite sex to complete us, but that God’s task of producing fruitful life in the world that represents the life-giving, generative, nature of God requires males and females… community, even. The human call to be fruitful and multiply; to fill the earth with God’s representatives anticipates the Great Commission (Matthew 28); Jesus’s call to be fruitful and multiply by making disciples.
By the end of the chapter Earthling Adam and his wife are together, in the garden, and their relationship is secure; they are naked and unashamed. Earthling has not yet named the woman, like he did the animals, he simply says she shall be called woman because she is taken out of man; the language here indicates a unity. The Hebrew word for man is “ish” and for woman it’s “ishshah.” They are united. They have a job to do. They have a heaven-on-earth place to do this job in.
So, imagine you’re an Israelite in Babylon, hearing this story. Babylon doesn’t feel like your picture of Heaven. It’s a violent and chaotic empire built around the worship of war gods like Marduk. It’s ruled by kings who’ve conquered you, and all the empires that came before; Egypt; Assyria; they’re done. It has its own picture of heaven on earth. Its male god-king is claiming to be the image of god who makes images of god. He builds his own garden city as a home for his gods. Babylon’s story (the Enuma Elish) says the city is their resting place on earth. Humans aren’t made in the image and likeness of God, they exist as slaves to the Gods, to feed them with your labour. That’s how Babylon’s creation story views heaven-on-earth space and how humans are to live in it.
As an Israelite, your own heaven-on-earth place — the Temple in Jerusalem — looks a long way away. You’re wondering if God is distant while living in a beautiful and powerful city set up as a thin place for Babylon’s gods. Statues get paraded down its streets and enshrined in its temples, its political order is religious, the architecture of the city — even its parks and gardens — are meant to make you feel like their gods are good and in control.
Genesis would be a subversive story in that sort of environment. A story that told you that you’re as valuable as the king; and images of your God, unlike theirs aren’t dead wood made with weird rituals, but living, breathing, life-making men and women. Earthlings who know we really belong; we truly flourish; somewhere like Eden; a heaven on earth place, enjoying God’s hospitality — and his gift of life; the Tree of Life. The story would create a certain hunger for that kind of place — a sense of longing for home, while also directly mocking, and challenging Babylon’s vision for humanity. This story provides the fodder for Israel’s prophets to undermine the Babylonian stories and its god statues, tipping the Babylonian picture of god and humanity on its head.
You would know, too, that your God is the source of all the life and goodness you see around you — the fruitful trees growing because of the water coming from the Euphrates are downstream from Eden. Babylon, just like the other nations your people have met with through history has been given life by the living water flowing out of God’s provision; his cosmic life-giving water bubbling away in the universe. More radically, you would be shaped to see your Babylonian neighbours as also made to worship and serve your God; the God who gives them life, who created them not to be slaves, but to represent him as pictures of his life in the world. They are captivated images — idol statues — who need restoration to the Eden story. That’s going to shape the way you treat your enemies, isn’t it? Seeing how they were made to be fruitful and multiply; spreading Eden, the real life-giving garden paradise, rather than the deadly and destructive gardens of Babylon.
We’re going to see that this story goes downhill fast; Chekov’s rifle gets fired in the next act. But this picture of heaven-on-earth doesn’t disappear through the Bible’s story even as humans are exiled from Eden.
There are echoes of Eden all over the place; built into the Tabernacle and Temple, where the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of God is set up with tree decorations and fruit imagery everywhere; where a giant Menorah — a candlestick Tree of Life is there as a picture of life in the presence of the God who is light. Echoes of Eden are there in descriptions of the Promised Land as a land flowing with abundant goodness and provision… it’s there in the Prophet’s hope of restoration.
Ezekiel has this picture of God’s garden mountain — Eden — a meeting place between the heavens and the earth (Ezekiel 28:13-14), and a restored mountain top temple, where the waters of life flow out becoming rivers teeming with abundant life that feed the nations, restoring life — living water that creates fruit trees along the banks of this river (Ezekiel 47:1-12). It’s Eden, but better; it’s Jerusalem, but better. It’s certainly better than Babylon. It’s what God’s faithful image bearing people could have partnered with God to create.
This Ezekiel imagery is something John picks up as Jesus — the Heavenly Man — walks on earth. The man John tells us straight up is God tabernacling with his people — Edening with his people (The Greek word for “tabernacle” is the word used behind ‘dwelling’ in John 1:14). John has us read his whole Gospel through the lens of Jesus’s body being a new Temple (John 2:19-22) — he’s a heaven-on-earth human and a ‘heaven on earth place.’
The waters of life bubble up all around Jesus as he comes as the Eden-on-earth man. He says he’s come to bring living water that will satisfy a sort of existential thirst (one that comes as a result of exile from God), and provide eternal life (John 4:13-14). He says rivers of living water will flow from those who believe in him — and John makes it clear that’s about people receiving God’s Spirit so we too become like the Temples that bring life into the world from Ezekiel’s vision — human Edens (John 7:38-39). Then John describes water pouring from Jesus’s side, in Jerusalem, at his death; a new river flowing from a heaven-on-earth space — the human temple — giving life to a new humanity (John 19:34).
John tells us Jesus was both crucified and buried in a Garden (John 19:41). One of his closest friends, Mary — thinks he is the gardener (John 20:15); in a nod to Ezekiel’s vision there’s also an abundance of fish at a post-resurrection breakfast (John 21:6). This is a new Eden moment.
It’s John, too, who pictures the new heavens and new earth as a new Eden — with the Tree of Life and the rivers of living water flowing together as people enjoy life with God for eternity (Revelation 22:1-2) (also, this sort of thematic richness is why I think, despite what some scholars might say, John’s Gospel and the Revelation were written by the same author).
Tolkien is right; we did lose this Garden paradise. Our yearning for heaven on earth — our experience of longing in those thin places where the barrier between heaven and earth breaks down — testify to our exile from Eden. We were made to live with God, enjoying his gift of life forever in this sort of heaven-on-earth place, but desecration, destruction and death got in the way.
We live in our own modern Babylon; we’re surrounded by people chasing and trying to build heaven on earth; garden cities (which was, until recently, the name of a giant Westfield shopping centre in Brisbane). We live in a world that wants to experience or manufacture thin places; we want the garden without the gardener-God and his gardener-king. Eden without the presence of God isn’t Eden. It offers no life. It’s Babylon; a counterfeit Eden, with counterfeit images of counterfeit gods that lead to death; to exile from God.
Earthling Adam was a priest-king who chose dirt over glory; leading humanity up the garden path. We need a king who’ll lead us out of exile in the nations and back to the orchard so we can be restored images who represent God again. Our neighbours, too, are images of God in need of restoration; the restoration we have received through Jesus; God’s presence restored to us through living Water; his spirit. That’s what baptism is a picture of — an image-restoration ceremony. To not simply be earthlings destined for the ground, we need God’s breath; his presence; his Spirit dwelling in us so we are restored to, and restored as, the presence of God.
That’s exactly the story of the Gospel; which becomes our new origin story. The Gospel is the story of all of us being earthlings — those who didn’t just come from the earth, but worshipped the earth and the gods of our making; even other earthlings… who faced exile from God, and breathless death as a result.
Here’s a cool thing Paul does with the Genesis story — about earthling Adam — in 1 Corinthians. And part of what’s cool is I think there’s a pun. The word “icon” is the Greek word for image; there’s an ending for Greek words “icon” that just means “of the” — they’re not directly related, but it looks the same in writing and would probably sound the same. Paul talks about how humans were — like Adam — breathed icons — where we read this bit of 1 Corinthians 15 as “natural” it’s the Greek word ‘psycheikon’ (psyche was that word used back in Genesis in the LXX). We were people given the breath of God to live in these earth bodies; earthlings. But in Jesus we find a new humanity — a Heavenly humanity — Jesus is a heavenly — or ‘pneumaticon’ — that’s the word for Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45-46). In Jesus we’re no longer just earthlings, destined to become earth, but heavenly creatures destined for imperishable life in heavenly bodies that don’t die, that reflect God’s glory (1 Corinthians 15:47-48). Paul says just as we bore the image of the earthly man (the earthling), so, those of us who have received God’s Spirit will bear the image of the heavenly man (1 Corinthians 15:49). In Jesus we become heaven-on-earth places filled with the presence of God; his Spirit; so we might fill the earth with his presence.
There are lots of places you might feel close to God; thin places; eden zones; heaven-on-earth spots, and when you’re in those places they’re a reminder of this story — where we came from, and where we’re headed, but maybe there’s actually no place that you should feel closer to God, or more like a heaven-on-earth “Eden” place than as we gather together with God’s image bearing people to worship him and proclaim the hope of the Gospel together; sharing God’s hospitality at his table eating bread, made from grain that comes from the ground, and drinking the cup, made from grapes, grown from the ground, as we remember the life of the new human given for us, and to us, so that we might receive God’s Spirit and live in his presence forever as his representatives in the world.
Origin stories are helpful if you want to understand the world you live in — and how to live.
If you want to understand why Gotham city has become dark and scary; why the Joker and other over the top villains are running around causing chaos; why they have responded to the Batman’s over-the-top embodiment of fear by fighting fire with fire; you have to find yourself back in a dark alley where that batman’s alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, witnessed his parents being murdered… And an earlier experience young Bruce had with scary bats in a cave.
So many of our fictional worlds are built on origin stories that aren’t just about a key person, but explain why the world is the way it is; it’s not just fictional worlds shaped by an origin story; we humans are shaped by our own origin stories. This is part of what drives the popularity of genealogical research — learning about our family history so we can understand the present on an individual level, while at a societal level the lives we live together are often shaped by common stories we believe about the world. if you believe humans emerged from purely natural processes in a world that is closed off to any god or gods, then that’s going to shape how you use your body and use the natural world world….
In this series we’re going to tackle the way the Genesis origin story does — or doesn’t — relate to a modern, scientific, secular view of reality — whether that’s a young earth or old earth version of that science story. Whatever you believe about the science story, this shapes the way Christians live in the world and how we approach science and decision making (note: there’s an observable link between young earth creationism and skepticism about the science behind anthropogenic climate change).
The Bible’s origin story doesn’t come from a modern view of the world; their concept of the physical world looked very different to the picture we gain from satellites looking back at the earth from orbit; the Old Testament vision of the cosmos has more in common with the stories of israel’s neighbours — the nations they interact with in the Old Testament — like Egypt, and Babylon.
It’s an origin story with a model of the universe at home in the ancient world — engaging with and critiquing ideas about God held by Israel’s neighbours. These were origin stories Israel was tempted to believe and live by as they were tempted by idolatry and the alternative vision of god, and the world, and the purpose of human life, offered by the stories and cultures around them. We have a good idea what these empires believed about the origin of the cosmos, and the purpose of human life, thanks to archaeological discoveries in the last 200 years; we can now read stories like Babylon’s Enuma Elish, or the Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead’.
As we work our way through this series we’re going to consider how this context might shape how we read the story — so that we’re asking the sort of questions the text itself might be answering. This isn’t because the genesis story can’t exist alongside science stories — whether old or young earth stories — it’s just that these stories aren’t what this origin story is about. We won’t get good answers in genesis unless we’re asking the right questions.
Our main guide for reading the Bible’s origin story isn’t going to be these ancient creation stories that are a reasonably recent discovery, but the way these origin stories — these chapters at the start of the Bible, unfold through the rest of the Bible.
Here’s a picture of how hyperlinked the bible is — how many later books build on — by referencing — earlier books.
The Bible is a rich tapestry — a library — that builds an internal and coherent understanding of the other books — not just through quotes — that this picture picks up, but through the building of themes and patterns and imagery that we pick up as we read.
So we’ll try to make sense of these chapters of this book by placing them in this context — and not just of the Old Testament, as though we’re the first hearers and readers of the story – but with the New Testament, as it’s fulfilled in Jesus. Because both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels locate the roots for the family tree of Jesus back in Genesis — tracing the line of seed — offspring — through to his arrival as the Son of Man and the Son of God.
Part of recognising that the Bible unfolds as one story and that this story shapes our lives as God’s people means considering how the story itself worked for people living that story along the way, throughout the family tree (or “genealogy”), considering, for example how the nation of God read, or told (prior to its final compilation), this story from “Abraham to David” (in Egypt, for example), from David to exile (in the land), or then during exile in Babylon. We know the united final form of the Old Testament history running from Genesis to 2 Kings was put together after those events ended. This challenges our modern readings of the text, confounding the categories we want to bring to the debate. The story has its own purpose, and its own context, in this bigger story — God’s story. It’s doing something very different to what we want it to do as modern humans with a view of the cosmos we build from satellite images.
Genesis tells us quite a lot about quite a lot of things; but perhaps primarily it is a story that reveals the nature and character of God to us, and grounds everything else in that act of revelation. We can make try to make it answer our questions, but often we get the subject wrong. Genesis frames our answer to questions around the nature of the universe and the nature of life within in it by placing reality — the heavens and the earth in their place as creations of a god who was and who is — before the heavens and the earth began. This is the scene set in the opening words of Genesis, where we’re told that in the beginning God creates the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).
Now, some people see this as a heading that describes what’s going to happen in the rest of chapter one. For a few reasons, especially the long arch in that picture that goes from the beginning (Genesis) right to the end of the story (Revelation), I think this should be read as a statement that in the beginning god created these two overlapping realities — the heavens — his home, and the home of the spiritual beings in his heavenly host — and the earth —a home for humans and a host of animals.
The other thing to consider is that we jump to thinking of the whole globe viewed from a satellite, when we hear the word “earth,” but it’s literally “the ground” in the imagination of the ancient reader, who hasn’t sent a satellite up into space yet, and who knows that humans are deeply connected to the earth, and our survival depends on the food it brings forth.
The earth can’t produce food yet in verse 2 — it’s “formless and empty,” at least, that’s how our NIV translates these words; but the Doug Green translation, which I quite like because of how it creates threads through the rest of the story of the Bible — is that these words should be maybe understood as barren — desolate — fruitless — and uninhabited by life… Especially living creatures who’ll cultivate it (note: Doug Green, Old Testament lecturer at Queensland Theological College is a member of our congregation).
Jeremiah uses this same language to talk about Israel as the nation goes into exile; framing exile as a sort of de-creation — where the formless and empty involves the people — the birds — and the trees — all disappearing — it becomes desolate and uninhabited.
In Genesis the land is desolate and uninhabited, because it is covered in the chaotic waters of the deep, and it’s all in darkness.
In the ancient map of reality the deep — these waters — represent chaos. People who hadn’t seen the earth through a satellite conceived of reality as looking something like this.
They’re maybe even a spiritual force opposed to life and fruitful living, especially salt waters. In Babylon’s creation story there are two gods who make up the deep — the living water — freshwater — Apsu — and the salty chaos waters — Tiamet — who their god Marduk violently destroys and he makes the heavens and the earth from the material of her dead body.
The deep is a problem. It gets in the way of the land becoming something other than desolate and uninhabited — it stops it teeming with life and fruitfulness.
God does something about this, and about the darkness. His spirit, a word you can also translate as breath — something that needs to be active in order to speak words (try holding your breath for a minute and then speaking) is hovering over the waters of the deep, in the darkness; waiting to bring life. God speaks to create: “let there be light”. And there is, which deals with the darkness. This happens before he creates the sun, and so there’s a cool idea that he peels back the veil — or the vault — between heaven and earth to flood the earth with his glorious light.
Then God starts dealing with the waters. He says let there be a vault — or firmament. This is what gets created on day two — separating water from water — the waters below and the water above — this isn’t how we think of the earth and the atmosphere as modern people, but sit for a bit with this vision from Genesis where the heavens and the earth exist, and they’re held separate by this solid barrier — this domed ceiling. God carves out a space between these waters for life to exist on the earth, by his word, then moves the waters aside so that dry ground — ground that can produce fruit and life — appears. He calls this good, which is interesting because on the previous day, as he creates the vault — this barrier between the heavens and the earth — he doesn’t call it good.
There are lots of reasons this could be the case, but I wonder (with others) if Genesis is setting up a tension that will be resolved in the rest of the story of the Bible. A separation between the heavens and the earth — a barrier — exists and this will ultimately be overcome. In the rest of Genesis 1, God fills the heavens, and sea, and sky with life — heavenly bodies, that for the ancients were a shining picture of the heavenly court —spiritual beings — and trees — and animals (note: I wish I’d paid more attention to this when preaching this series, but my mind has recently been blown by the Hebrew of Genesis 1:21 the ‘great creatures’ he creates in the deep; using a word often translated as monster, serpent, or dragon). It follows this pattern — God says, he makes, and he names. He fills the desolate and uninhabited world with fruitfulness and life.
He does it by speaking, and by creating not so much from out of nothing, but from his word, with his Spirit hovering. This creator god we meet in Genesis 1 is the source of all the things he makes. He’s not like the gods of the nations — whose creation stories do not involve an eternal god who creates life, but gods who are the chaotic waters (Tiamet) and at home in the darkness. The gods from origin stories around Israel bring light and order to the desolate earth by killing each other, and building stuff out of the dead bodies of other gods. That’s the kind of bloody origin story that gets you an ancient Gotham city; heroes — or kings — who embody fear, and employ violence to get what they want in empires that brings order — their own fruitful gardens and cities — through war and bloodshed.
In Genesis, God makes the pinnacle of creation; those who will rule for him on the earth as he rules in the heavens. Those who’ll represent him and bring fruitfulness over the face of the earth as we spread his rule and his presence by spreading his image — reflecting his glorious light and joining him in the generation of life and fruitfulness in the earth. He specifically gives humans the job of ruling over the spaces and the life he has just created — fruitfully, and according to his likeness.
There’s a plural here — the god who is speaking doesn’t just say ‘let me’ — and there’s a bit of debate over who the us is here — for a long time I read it as a divine plural — an intra-trinitarian ‘us’ — the Father speaking to the Son and Spirit who are at work in these acts of creation, but there’s a solid case to be made that God — the Triune god — is speaking to the heavenly realm and those living in his divine court — the heavenly ‘sons of god’ as they’re called later in the Genesis narrative — so that we’re like those heavenly beings, but on earth. Psalm 8 picks up this idea a bit. It talks about God making humans ‘a little lower than the angels’… Only, in Hebrew, it’s ”a little lower than the Elohim” — which is a tricky word — a Hebrew word for ‘god’ (a divine being) where the plural and singular are hard to tell apart. The translation decision here is an interesting one, and angels could just as easily be ‘gods’ — these other ‘Elohim’ — who turn up a bit in the Old Testament, like in Psalm 82, which describes God (Elohim) ruling in the heavenly court room — rendering judgment amongst the Elohim. In our modern view of the world we aren’t necessarily looking for heavenly beings in a heavenly court room, or imagining God talking to this court as he creates humans to do this job on earth.
This isn’t our model of reality, but it is the model the Bible assumes, and the Bible’s origin story tells the story of the creation of this same cosmos.
While i’m still inclined to see the Trinity involved in the us — in the creation of humans — I do think we humans are being made to do on earth what these Elohim — the sons of God — are meant to do in the heavenly realm; be like God; be like his children who represent his rule as we rule for him.
Being made in god’s image is tied to a function; to rule over his creation as those who bring his likeness into creation.
In our secular world, where we tend to be materialists, because of our origin stories, and so focus on physical stuff, we tend to think of making something as making its substance. So we see the idea of the “image of god: being something about our human bodies that is inherent to us, and how we operate physically, but in the ancient world, when you made and named something it wasn’t so much about material nature but about function. The image of god is a job to do, not just a thing we are.
There’s some evidence from the ancient world around Israel that clues us in to this. In the ancient near east the title the “image of god” was a title reserved for kings — who were really more priest-kings who represented their god’s rule on the earth, and guaranteed their worship — and for idol statues — that’s actually what the word here for image — tselem — means both in Hebrew and related languages from nearby countries.
So when god makes humans in his own image — in the image of god he creates us — as male and female — you could think of it as him making us as his living, breathing, idol statues — so that wherever humans doing this job are, there the rule of God; the kingdom of God — is represented on the earth, as it is in heaven.
This is an idea we’ll see more of in the next piece, but it’s also an idea that runs through the story of the Bible, especially as god forbids his people to make dead statues of him — the living God — cause he’s already made his own living images.
One of the reasons I’m still partial to the idea of the Trinity being involved in the “us” — is that I think God making us male and female in his image is significant; not just because it upholds the dignity and function and full humanity of both men and women, but because men and women — a plurality of people — are actually required to carry out the function of being made in god’s image together. There’s a communal reality in the us that we’re to represent in our own us as we take on this job together and generate fruitful life the way god does, in partnership with him.
That’s the job he gives humans — the world was uninhabited and empty — desolate and uninhabited — but now, with the creation of humans — it’s not — and we’re given a job — to fill the earth and subdue it — as we rule over the wild life we find around us; joining God in bringing light and life and his presence over the face of the earth…
At this point god declares things very good. Now, it would be easy for us to think that this is perfect; that the picture we get at the end of chapter 1 is a perfect world — a paradise that humans stuff up as sin enters the picture, but the idea that we have a job to do in subduing the world — and what we see in Eden in chapter 2 — is that not all the earth is Eden yet… It’s not all a picture of god’s heavenly dwelling…
We humans become the answer to the problem of the land being desolate — uncultivated wilderness — by bringing fruitfulness, and we’ll see more of what both image bearing and this task looks like as we explore Genesis 2.
There are other issues unresolved in Genesis 1 that mean we shouldn’t think things are perfect at this point. The cosmic waters — are being held at bay — in the ancient worldview — gathered up and pushed aside, waiting above the firmament to be poured out; as we’ll see in the Noah story. The firmament is still existing as a ‘not called good’ barrier between heaven and earth, which is a problem set up in the Genesis 1 “origin story” that is resolved in the rest the Bible as God’s big story unfolds.
So how should we understand this story in the beginning of our Bible?
For starters — it’s a story that reveals God to us because it shows us how the world — his creation — is an expression of who he is. He makes light and makes life and pushes the forces of chaos and disorder aside to replace that with fruitfulness and order, and he does this in a way that transcends anything offered by any other gods we meet in any other creation story. The rest of the bible picks up this theme. The Psalms use creation itself — its wonder — as grounds to declare the glory of God.
In the book of Acts, Paul talks about God as the one who makes the heavens and the earth — and suggests we should look for God not in human temples, because he doesn’t just create the world by his word — and spirit, or breath. Existence is in him; he gives everyone life and breath and everything else. And in him we live and breathe and have our being.
In Romans, Paul picks up the same idea and says that god’s nature — his invisible qualities — are knowable, in part, from what has been made — the works of his hands; and this actually leaves us without excuse; creation is evidence of a creator.
The goodness of the cosmos — its beauty, its vastness — the flavours of the things God gives us for food — and the nature of the life filling it — these reveal God’s qualities to us, but nothing does this more than humans.
And heaven and earth — and the barrier between heaven and us is a something God sets about removing. Ultimately he does this in Jesus — the Son of God, and Son of Man; the first person to span heaven and earth in his nature. There’s this cool thing Mark does in his gospel called an ‘inclusio’ — it’s a technique where two events are bracketed using the same words and themes. At the baptism of Jesus, the heavens tear — this is a violent rupture type word — and the Spirit of God, who hovered over the waters in the beginning like a dove now hovers over Jesus (Mark 1:10). This ‘inclusio’ is complete when the curtain in the temple is torn from the heavens — up top — to the earth — the bottom; it’s the same word (Mark 15:38).
We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that this curtain was an image not just of the universe, but of the firmament — the barrier between heaven and earth. He talks about how its colours represented the heavens, how the stars and cherubim embroidered on it represented the mystical living creatures in the heavenly realm (Josephus, Jewish Wars Book 5, Chapter 5, Paragraph 4). At the death of Jesus the vault — the firmament — breaks open. The barrier is destroyed. A new creation — a new state of being — emerges.
Paul picks up the language of Genesis to describe Jesus as the firstborn over all creation — the image of the invisible god — the child; the living idol statue; the ruler of god’s kingdom. He says that creation itself — the heavens and the earth — things visible and invisible — the Elohim and the rulers of earth — all things were created through him and for him. He’s the one who will remove the barriers between the good cosmos and the perfect one. Because God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him — and through him to reconcile all things — that means to bring all things together — and it includes the heavens and the earth — by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:15-23).
Paul talks about how we’ve been raised with Christ, and we’re now seated in the heavenlies — but this isn’t meant to make us of no use on earth — when we set our minds on things above it’s on God and his nature as it’s revealed in Jesus (Colossians 3:1-3). It’s on this story where the heavens and the earth are not yet joined and we live in anticipation of his return to make all things new. This is the cosmic good news where Jesus doesn’t just come to reconcile us to god by forgiving our sins — he does that — but to recreate all things. That’s where the big story of the Bible heads. The beginning anticipates the ending: a new heaven and a new earth, where, finally, there’s no cosmic waters (I don’t think this means no beach but no chaotic abyss) (Revelation 21-22).
In this new reality God will dwell with his people; there’ll be no solid barrier between us. No curtain. No separation of realms. This is the end of the story, and the threads begin in the beginning.
The Bible’s origin story shapes how we understand the world — where it came from — and where it’s heading — not in the way science tells us the world works, and not in the way other religious stories — whether supernatural or built from worshiping created things instead of the creator — tell us the world should work. And this should actually shape the way we live in the world — in our part of it.
This was a big deal for Israel; this origin story was the beginning of the story that explained how they should live as image bearers; as a kingdom of priests, not just in the land, with a king in Jerusalem — but in Babylon; in exile, when it felt like decreation had happened and as though the powerful origin story of Babylon — that justified its military power and propped up the regime of its kings — was the better story. The Bible’s story taught Israel to imagine a different humanity; a different purpose as it told the story of a different God.
So let’s, for a moment, re-imagine our world if the Bible’s origin story is our origin story — not just in the beginning, but in the story of re-creation we find in the Gospel; the end of humanity’s exile from God. Let’s imagine we’re reading this story in Babylon; or in Gotham — the world we live in can be pretty dark.
Let’s imagine how our new origin story — the Gospel Story that starts in Genesis — should shape the way we live in our time and place; because it’s different to the stories at work around us…
If you buy an origin story that is all about the material reality, or ‘this is all just chance,’ and ‘nature is red in tooth and claw and we’re just the top of the food chain then you want to be a predator, not prey. You want to be the fittest in order to survive and others become obstacles. This is the world we live in. Often. A world of dominance hierarchies and military industrial complexes and consumerism and climate change induced by our ‘dominance’ of the physical world. You start treating the world as though it, too, is prey — and so we dig things up and pump stuff out, and burn stuff up, and destroy natural habitats and food sources and the water basins. And we leave the land desolate and uninhabitable when we finish. Perhaps, over time, instead of spreading God’s Kingdom — Eden like life — we change the climate and push back towards a formless and empty creation, with only God’s gracious sustaining of life holding back the waters of judgment. It’s possible, too, that what restrains us from fully destroying the joint is that the image of god is still at work in our humanity.
You also lose a certain amount of wonder or enchantment — the idea that we live and have our being ‘in God,’ and that his divine nature and character is revealed in what has been made. Instead of cultivating a fruitful relationship with the world reflecting the God who makes the world fruitful and inhabited.
Sometimes we’re tempted to live in this story. The Babylon story. The story from our family of origin where we make progress through death and destruction bearing the image of beastly gods of death, but God invites us into a new family tree, with a new story.
Our story teaches us that the right use of the world lines up with the purpose of human life — to reveal the nature of god in his world as we rule our lives, and the world, under his rule as expressions of his kingdom; of heaven breaking in to earth. Our story is about God’s design and gift of life, for all people, and his desire to dwell with us in a fruitful world that is full of life…
Our story shapes us to see not just ourselves — but our neighbours — as created to reflect the glory of God; so that we treat human lives — and bodies — as sacred objects, and see those people not reflecting the glory of God not as humans to be destroyed — or captured, enslaved, and bent to our will as we pursue our own heaven on earth projects — but to be invited into relationship with their creator.
Our story teaches us that God’s world is good — but it is not perfect — it isn’t something — or full of somethings — or someones — we should worship.
Our story teaches us that God provides the answer to the longings created by life in a good world that points us to a great God, working out a great story in history — the story of heaven and earth coming together… And that right now, we’re between those two worlds.
Our story is that in Jesus we become meeting places between heaven and earth — restored and re-created image bearers who become children of God who live as living statues, temples of his Spirit, who represent him — his divine nature and character — in the world. This story begins in the beginning.
