“Back to Genesis”
We are returning to the book of Genesis. We left off a few weeks ago at the end of chapter 13, where Abram and Lot had parted ways. Before we continue with the story of Abram I want to review what we have already learned. The book of Genesis provides us with a narrative of how humanity began. The author starts with God creating the heavens and earth. There is a repeating literary design presented by David Andrew Teeter, a Hebrew professor at Harvard Divinity School, which repeats itself throughout the Bible. I have provided an outline in your bulletin that represents his theory combined with input from Tim Mackie of the Bible Project.
As we read through the stories in Genesis we come upon this repeated pattern:
1) Creation & Blessing
2) Failure
3) Failure of the next generation
4) Chosen/Non-chosen = Division
5) Cosmic Rebellion
6) Re-Creation & Blessing
Repeat – Repeat – Repeat
The names change, the roles change, and how each of these topics comes about may be presented differently, but overall the pattern remains. If you are like me you may be wondering, why haven’t I seen this before? I’ve been reading the Bible for over fifty years. The pattern emerges when you read the ancient Hebrew text. Thus, the literary structure was developed by Hebrew scholars. If you know your ancient Hebrew you can see the connections with the words from story to story. Which makes sense because at the time the stories were written on scrolls and read orally in the temples.
The stories had word connections that assisted the listeners in remembering so they could pass them down to the next generation.
The story begins in Genesis with a dark, watery abyss. God seperates the negative from the positive elements. Darkness was separated from light, waters from waters.
God creates a dry land and a garden, in a region called Eden, the Hebrew word for “delight.” In the middle of this garden there are two trees, the tree of life and a tree that will bring death. God starts with a solitary human but humans need many to experience the full blessing of God so the one becomes more than one. Male and female together as the image of God. They are given the choice of life or a choice of knowledge that will lead to death. God then showers His creation and his image-bearing humans with blessings.
These blessings are equated with both life and fruit. In fact, He tells His creation to be “fruitful and multiply.”
Thus we begin with creation and blessing.
Next, comes “failure.”
The humans see what they think is good. They take what they want. They want that knowledge that will help them to become gods, like elohim.
Oh, yeah, let’s not forget the little snakey creature who rears his ugly head throughout the narrative. You know the rest of the story. The humans defy God’s wisdom and find themselves exiled from the land of delight.
Then comes the failure of the Next Generation. Cain and Abel.
Non-chosen, Cain – is jealous of God showing favor on the chosen, Abel, and we end up with the first murder, in cold blood. The narrative then focuses on the blood that is spilled on the ground. We are told it shouts and cries out and God hears it. God does a God thing next, instead of murdering the murderer, God shows mercy, and places a sign of protection on Cain. But instead of trusting in the sign God gave, Cain goes out and builds his own form of protection, a city. He even names it after himself.
Seven generations later, a descendant named Lemek says, Genesis 4:23b-24,
“I killed a man for wounding me,
a young man who attacked me.
If Cain is avenged seven times,
for Lamech it’s seventy-seven!”
It’s as if Cain’s murderous behavior has escalated by a factor of seven causing a crisis of violence in the land.
In the meantime, God has a plan, He provides a substitute son for the first couple, a third son named Seth. So while Cain’s lineage was leading to murder and more cries of blood. Seth’s line goes down ten generations and leads to a guy named Noah.
Cosmic Rebellion – The next story we have contains the cry of blood that is so strong it involves Heaven and Earth. The sons of Elohim come down and make a mess with the daughters of humans.
Genesis 6:5-8
God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night.
God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”
But Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah.
De-creation – God causes a collapse of the entire cosmos. Reality was taken back to the uncreated state of the beginning of Genesis 1. Except for, a man, his family and a bunch of animals floating around in a micro “Eden.” Once the flood waters subsided, they were deposited on a high place, the mountains of Ararat. The first thing Noah does is build an altar. He offers a sacrifice of one of the animals. God responds with a covenant.
“I’ll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I’ll never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done.”
God’s point?
From the beginning God desires that humans rule the land and represent Him. The problem is humans. God is righteous and just to bring judgment, but at the same time He is committed to installing His human images in the land. Therein lies the conundrum.
God has now created a covenant promise that will be carried forward for the remainder of the narrative. We will also see that God will not turn a blind eye when the blood of the innocent rises up to Him.
God will continue to bring justice to human evil while also carrying forward the story of future Eden.
There we have the drama of the biblical story.
Creation and Blessing combined with life, fruit and birth. Followed by death and exile, until things get really terrible, resulting in de-creation, where God steps in to bring back life with new creation.
You can follow this same pattern through the story of Noah.
Noah gives a sacrifice and God responds with,
Genesis 9:1
“Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”
We’ve been here before. Be fruitful, multiply, have babies, work with the animals. It’s going to be great. The first thing Noah does is plant a garden.
The very same words used from what God did in the beginning.
Look out, what’s the next thing in our outline?
Failure!
Oh, Noah plants grapes, consumes the fruit of the garden, ends up naked and exposed in his tent….
Have we been here before?
Noah ate of the fruit, became vulnerable because of it, not exactly like Adam and Eve, but you get the connection. Noah goes into his tent. At this point we are to recognize a connection between tents and gardens, as images of each other.
This means in the following stories the narrator equates tents, gardens and arks, with safety and refuge for your family and animals.
In comes the next generation – Noah, like Adam and Eve, has three sons.
The youngest son, Ham, who doesn’t like his spot in the family tree, goes into the tent and brings down curse and shame and divides the brothers.
The next story tells us about Ham’s grandson, Nimrod, which means “we will rebel” in Hebrew.
Nimrod builds the second city of the Bible, called Babylon. We are told Nimrod is a mighty hunter, he doesn’t slay humans, he’s an animal slayer. Nimrod inspires all the people of Babylon to create the largest tower that would reconnect Heaven and Earth. Humans attempt to create their own Eden mountain, a place where divine and human can be together as one.
If we recall the literary design, we know this is not going to end well. A replay of Genesis 3.
We are now in Genesis 10, a genealogy describing a similar outcome of Ham which is what happened to Cain, who was exiled, separated from his brothers, went east and built a city.
Wait a minute! What about the other brother?
Yes, God chose Shem.
Although God scatters everyone in Babylon, He selects one line of the line of Shem, and out of the scattering comes a guy named Terah, who has three sons.
Adam had three sons.
Noah had three sons.
Terah had three sons.
Which brings us to the stories of this chosen son, Abram.
We first meet Abram in Haran where he and his father, Terah and brothers landed after leaving Ur.
The LORD tells Abram to leave his country, his people, his father’s household and go to a land God would show him.
The Lord promises to make Abram into a great nation, to bless him, to make his name great. Those who bless him will be blessed and those who curse him will be cursed. Ultimately, all peoples on earth would be blessed through Abram.
Abram takes God up on His offer and leaves as the Lord had told him. Sort of, his nephew Lot tags along.
Go back to your Literary Design list in your bulletin. We’ve just read about a blessing. What comes next?
Failure.
Abram fails.
Instead of trusting God, a famine occurs and Abram flees to Egypt, lies about his wife, almost loses the very thing that will provide an offspring, yet God steps in and bails him out.
Abram returns to Bethel, where he had met with God before leaving for Egypt and he built an altar and called upon the Lord.
At this point we should be looking for the separation of a generation.
Lot and Abram aren’t brothers but they have been traveling together like brothers and both of them have gained a lot of wealth. So much wealth, there was strife developing between them. Abram chooses to divide and conquer rather than fight and offers Lot first choice on where he wants to go.
This is where we left off four weeks ago.
The imagery given in chapter 13 has many hyperlinks to the previous narratives of Eden and Noah.
Lot chooses to go east in the valley of the Dead Sea, by the city of Sodom. The narrator tells us that when Lot looked out at the whole plain of Jordan, toward Zoar, it was well watered and looked like the garden of Eden.
Verse 13 describes the city of Sodom,
“Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord.”
Here is a place where the Hebrew language connects. The two words used to describe Sodom, “wicked” and “sinning greatly,” echo the key words of the twin failures of the Eden story.
The people of Sodom were “wicked” the Hebrew word used is translated “bad.” The Hebrew words for “sinning greatly,” means “moral-failures.” These Hebrew words were also used to describe Adam and Eve as they fail at the tree of knowledge of good and “bad” because of the snake’s deception. Then Cain gives into the influence of “moral failure” and murders his brother.
Abram, on the other hand, dwells in what is described as the new Eden. The narrative tells us he sets up his tent by the oak tree of Mamre at Hebron. Each of these elements, tents, trees, divine visions tie into the symbolism of Eden. While there, God repeats His promise to Abram.
But this time God adds both elements of seed and land. Genesis 13:16,
“I will make your seed like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.”
Like humanity in Eden, God will create a seed for Abram that is “like” the innumerable dust of the land. Do you recall that back in Genesis 2 – God formed a human from the “dust of the ground,” then God planted a garden in Eden, where He placed that human.
Clearly Abram is the recipient of the Eden promise for all nations.
Another hyperlink is found where God and Abram take a “walk about.” God walked about with Adam and Eve. God also walked about with Noah. In each of these instances, God had chosen someone to receive divine blessings and to become a conduit of that blessing to others.
And like the two before him, Abram will fail in acts of folly that are rooted in a lack of trust in God’s wisdom and word.
The results in the previous two cases were exile. Abram experienced a self inflicted exile from Canaan. Now in chapter 13, Abram breaks the pattern.
Once the conflict with Lot begins, Abram becomes a mediator for peace and manages to avoid a major conflict with his brother Lot. Lot, on the other hand, ends up choosing a place that is similar to Cain’s city, full of violence.
Check in time.
How does this story make a difference in my life?
Let’s go to the chapter of faith, Hebrews 11 and read what it says about Abraham’s faith, Hebrews 11:8-10,
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country;
he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Like Abraham, we too are immigrants. Remember, this is not our home. Like Abraham, we too should be looking for the New Jerusalem, whose architect and builder is God, not humans.
This literature is trying to train us in how to discern the will of God in our life’s circumstances.
There comes a time in every human life and in every human community when the sins of the parents keep accumulating over the generations, and history reaches a crisis moment.
These crisis moments are usually filled with untold pain and destruction. However, at the same time, there are moments of courage and faith and with God’s help, the human story continues out the other side.
Every time that cycle happens, God’s purposes are revealed only when people choose faith.
We have a choice.
May God help us discern His purposes and grant us courage to respond appropriately, may we choose faith.
So what is going to happen next?
Take a look at the sequence in the literary design of Genesis.
Get ready for a cosmic rebellion.
Next week we will read about an outbreak of horrendous violence among nine kings that creates death galore. While those kings are murdering and plundering, where’s Abram? Genesis 13:18,
“So Abram went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he pitched his tents. There he built an altar to the Lord.”
Let’s pray.
