Romans 15:4

 

I have been away this week so we are going to do an overview of what we have covered so far in the book of Genesis. Specifically we are going to focus on understanding the literary design presented in Genesis that can be seen throughout the entire Old and New Testaments. This design has been developed by Hebrew scholars, John Sailhammer and his student David Andrew Teeter, along with Tim Mackie from the Bible Project. 

 

You can find the literary design in your bulletin. 

 

Let’s go back to the beginning, Genesis 1-9. We have the creation story which begins with too much water. The dark, chaos waters exist and creation begins with separating the waters so dry land can emerge. 

God plants a garden and creates an image of Himself that He places there. Then we get a series of failures within a misguided quest for wisdom born out of believing a liar which created a distorted desire. Otherwise known as “the fall.” There we are in the garden, the forbidden fruit was eaten, resulting in nakedness and hiding when God shows up for their walkabout. All of this imagery will be intensified and replayed in the next generation. 

 

God favors one brother over the other. One brother gets angry, sins in his anger and murders the other brother. The blood of the innocent cries out and the result is a division of the family. 

 

Ten generations follow, through the third brother Seth, that leads to Noah and his three sons. Followed by seven generations that go through Cain and lead to Lemek and his three sons which brings us to the bloody city of man. The ultimate chaos develops with the sons of God and the daughters of men giving rise to the Nephilim and the great head-choppers of old who are out for a name for themselves until, God says, “Enough!” Which results in the flood. 

 

We can look back and see how the stories work.

 

Creation out of water separating

Failure

Failure

Failure

All of which are patterned and linked and mirrors of each other. Then

Judgment from God where He undoes all that He did in the first place. 

In the midst of the flood story we have a pivotal sentence, Genesis 8:1,

“But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.”

 

A replay of Genesis 1. The wind blowing over the waters. The waters recede so the dry land can emerge. Here God goes again, separating waters from waters. The flood story becomes a new creation story. 

 

We will see that whenever we come to an escalating moment of crisis and violence and God does a de-creation allowing things to sink into chaos, there will always be a pivot. The pivot will take the story from decreation to recreation. Out of death and chaos, God can bring life and order. 

In this second creation story we read that Noah gets off the boat, God blessed him, and tells him to be fruitful and multiply. Noah plants a garden and this should cause the reader to think, “Oh yeah, we’re doing the thing again.” The story repeats itself with a failure in the garden, then his son’s failure, the division of the brothers and once again a man with three sons. The design continues with one son being the chosen one and off we go. Until we get to Babylon, the next de-creation moment. Humans try to become like God, instead of eating from the tree of knowledge and evil, this time they try building a tower to the heavens. The scattering of the people is equivalent to the flood. 

 

Don’t forget, de-creation stories are always the beginning of re-creation stories. 

 

At this point we begin the third narrative of the literary design. Out of the scattering of Babylon, God brought one family, Terakh, a man with three sons. Terakh’s failed journey ends in death and infertility, but God offers a blessing of fertility and land. The death of Terakh becomes the new creation story of Abram. 

 

I encourage you to re-read Genesis 1-11 with a look out for three re-creation stories or three walks through the literary design. 

 

The first re-creation story was of Adam and Eve. 

The second was with Noah and his wife. 

The third is Abram and Sarai, whose names happen to mean, “Exalted Father” and “Princess,” images of God. 

 

The literary design begins again in the next section, Genesis 15-17. 

Genesis 15 will draw on every Eden creation beat we have already seen. In Chapter 16 we will read another connection with the story of Hagar. At chapter 17 there will be a covenant with God making peace with His sinful people, who oppressed the Egyptian through circumcision. Instead of cutting them off completely, God chooses to cut off only part of their flesh. This will end another round of the literary design. 

 

What an amazing tool this literary design is once you understand it! It allows you to remember the stories in blocks and bundles all following the same pattern from one step to the next. Remember, that originally this was all oral literature. We should view this as a memory retention device. It also helps us to come into the story without a blank canvas. As we read through the stories we are already primed to understand why things happen and how we should think about them. 

For example, when we read through the story in Genesis 14 we recognized that God wasn’t directly talked about. We weren’t told that it was God who actually delivered the kings into the hand of Abram. We were supposed to just know that because God delivered Noah from the waters of the flood, He would also deliver Abram from the flood waters of the kings. Amazingly, the whole Hebrew Bible is organized this way.

 

I encourage you to keep this Literary Design in your Bible and as you read through the Old Testament and you feel like you are lost in the context, take it out and see where the story fits in the design. As you read through the Prophets or take on the book of Ruth, even in the book of Isaiah, all these themes are presented in this format. 

 

However, as we continue through the book of Genesis let’s remember we begin with two creation narratives. The first is in cosmic scope with the skies and the land and the ordering of everything in a seven-day sequence. 

 

The obstacle in Genesis one is the darkness over the face of unordered chaos waters. Too much water. Human life cannot flourish where there is too much water. So God, in his fundamental act of creation performs three events. 

He separates 

darkness from light,

Waters from waters,

Dry land from the waters. 

God becomes the water tamer. 

He has the power to make the waters do His will. 

 

The flood narrative picks up on that theme and the waters collapse and once again there is too much water. God again becomes the water tamer and separates the water from the waters. 

The problem is too much water. Yet, God reveals He has power over the waters and can cause the waters to serve His purpose. 

 

Genesis 2 has the camera focused differently. It focuses on the dry land and the image of non-order and non-life,

 

Genesis 2:5,

“Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground,”

 

At this point we are focused on the wilderness where there is not enough water. What does God do? Verse 6, “but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.” 

 

He demonstrates a different power over the water. This time He sends water. And what do dirt and water make? Mud. And what does God do with the mud? Verse 7, 

 

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground,”

 

Now we have “adam,” a human. Oh, the next verse tells us this adam can plant a garden. In this perspective creation begins with a desert and God is able to provide water in the wilderness. 

 

This is just the beginning of the differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. 

 

Genesis 1 - humans come last as the crown jewel of creation

 

Genesis 2 - The humans come first

The animals come first in Genesis 1. The animals come last in Genesis 2. 

 

How does one harmonize these details? 

 

By looking at the perspective of the narrator who put these chapters together. Actually they are two ways of talking about the same exact thing. The camera is focused on two different angles as it tells us how God brought about the world as we know it. 

 

Genesis 1 has a cosmic focus, which in Hebrew cosmology it’s all about the water tamer and God controlling the water. 

 

Genesis 2 allows for more of a sacred space and with more of a terrestrial focus. In this perspective it’s about God providing the water. 

Here’s where these perspectives have their importance. 

 

In Genesis 1-9, the main creation image about God is where God has power over the water. We are given a flood narrative that involves a de-creation where God allows too much water to come back. 

 

As we move on, there will be cycles where the focus will shift from too much water to not having enough water. The opposite of the flood. Sometimes characters are lost in the desert. We will soon be reading a story about someone because of violence and selfishness of another, they are driven out into the wilderness where they are about to die because there’s no water. God is going to meet them there and provide water for them. It’s the opposite of the flood, but becomes the de-creation of a character and their new life given to them in the desert. 

 

God is capable of going either way depending on the needs of His people.  

 

Check in time. 

 

Let’s take a moment and reflect. 

 

Have there been times in your life when you have felt like there has been too much water? Where you have been flooded with something in such a way that you have been overwhelmed? Swamped? And have called out for God to help? 

 

Or, on the other hand,

 

Have there been times in your life when you have felt lost in the desert? Seeking refreshment, so depleted you couldn’t take one more step? And God stepped in and lifted you up? Provided living water? 

 

This is what the Bible is all about. It’s the narrative of who God is and how He takes care of His creation from the very first day, now and until the end. Humans are the ones who keep twisting the narrative, yet God is able to respond appropriately regardless. 

 

We need that assurance. We need to be reminded that our faith is built on more than just a feeling or a wish. The Scriptures remind us that we have hope, regardless of whether we are flooded or deserted. Amen.