Genesis 1:1-5

William F. Schnell

October 7, 2007

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and in the process he created man and woman in his own image.  Being in the image of God, the first man (Adam) and woman (Eve) became confused and thought they were God.  That is to say that they thought they knew better than God what was in their best interest.  They ate fruit that had been forbidden them from the tree of knowledge reserved only for God.  That was their downfall, and not only theirs but their descendants who inherited the same weakness--the original sin--succumbing to the temptation to play God.  Ever since human beings have required a Savior, to save them from themselves and their sinful folly.  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.  But we get ahead of ourselves.

Adam and Eve begat children who begat children who begat children ad infinitum until the world was populated with people who needed a Savior but did not have one.  As a result, they were all swept away by a great flood that covered the earth—all except one righteous man named Noah and his family and two of every creature that lived upon the earth at that time.  They survived in a giant Ark until the waters receded and the world was repopulated by humans and animals alike.

Once again, Noah and wife begat children who begat children who begat children ad infinitum and still people were tempted to play God.  They built a tower so that they might ascend to heaven—the seat of the Almighty—but the Almighty confounded their efforts by giving each one a distinctive language that sounded like Babel to all the others.  Oh well, at least it was better than being swept away by a flood.  But something needed to be done to save humanity from itself.

So God called a righteous man of faith named Abram to leave his country of origin and go to a land that God would promise on oath to give to his descendants.  A promise with God is called a covenant.  Abram accepted the terms of his covenant with God and gathered his wife and household and set out for the land God had promised to him and his descendants—a.k.a. the Promised Land.  Sometime after his arrival there God changed Abram’s name to Abraham because he would be the father of many nations.  And so it was that Abraham and his wife Sarah begat Isaac, and Isaac and his wife, Rebekah, begat Esau and Jacob—twin boys.

Esau was born first, but his brother Jacob was grasping at his brother’s heel as he was coming out of the birth canal.  Jacob wanted to be born first.  He wanted the birthright—the right to the blessing that passed from father to the firstborn male.  He wanted it so badly that he eventually tricked his older brother out of the birthright blessing.  It was Jacob’s nature to struggle to get God’s blessing.  He even wrestled with God for it one night, and prevailed.  Henceforth his name was changed to Israel, which means: "He who struggles with God and prevails."  Faith is always a struggle.

Jacob begat 12 sons by several mothers, all of whom ended up relocating to Egypt because of a famine.  While there the 12 sons and their wives begat so many descendants that they grew into 12 tribes collectively referred to as Hebrews (literally: "immigrants").  They became a slave race whose growing numbers became a threat to the Egyptian powers-that-be.  As a result, the Hebrews were harshly treated by the Egyptians.  God heard the groaning of his people in their bondage and remembered his covenant with their father Abraham.  He therefore raised up a savior-of-sorts named Moses, who led God’s people out of their bondage in Egypt and on back to the land God had promised to give them.  This migration out of bondage is known as the Exodus.

Along the way God put into writing some of the stipulations of his covenant with his Chosen People, a.k.a. the 10 Commandments.  Unfortunately, keeping faith proved such a struggle for that generation of the Hebrews that they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until a new generation had sufficient faith to follow God’s lead into the Land of Promise.  Since the Hebrews were no longer immigrants, and since they could now relate to Jacob’s struggle to keep faith, they took his new name and became known as Israelites.  With God’s wonder-working miraculous help, the Israelites took possession of the Land of Promise.

There they set about establishing themselves as a nation among the nations of the world.  But unlike the other nations they had no king.  God gave them judges instead—not the kind of judges who sit on benches, but saviors-of-sorts like Samson who rescued God’s people when they were in trouble with the surrounding nations who were hostile toward them.  The system worked very well, except that it required the people to have faith that God would raise up judges whenever there was need.  Keeping faith, as we have seen, is a struggle and sometimes the Israelites faltered and failed in their faith.

The Israelites clamored to have a king like the surrounding nations.  God acquiesced and gave them a king, along with some warnings about the abuses of power they could expect in the days ahead.  The first king, Saul, was terribly flawed.  His successor, David, was not perfect but he was devoted to God and became the standard by which all the other kings of God’s people would be judged.  David’s son, Solomon, followed him to the throne and turned away from God during his reign.  One of the consequences of his rebellion was that, upon his death, the kingdom was split in two with Israel becoming the Northern Kingdom and Judah becoming the Southern Kingdom, each with it own king.

Subsequent kings of both kingdoms continued to lead their people astray from their covenant with God.  God sent prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah to warn his people about the consequences of their sin, but they would not listen.  Ultimately God could no longer protect them from the hostile nations that surrounded them.  First the Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, who relocated the survivors to Assyria as a slave race.  Next the Southern Kingdom fell to the Babylonians who did a little ethnic cleansing of their own, exiling the survivors to Babylon as a slave race there.  In other words, the people of God were right back where he first found them: in the land of bondage.  This dark period was called the Exile.

While thus humbled the people of God cried out for mercy.  God heard their cry of repentance and forgave them.  He raised up still more saviors-of-sorts like Ezra and Nehemiah to lead his people out of the land of bondage.  He made it possible for the people to return to the Land of Promise to rebuild their homeland, beginning with the temple in the capital city of Jerusalem.  About this time the prophetic voices were stilled and their teachings were preserved in written form.  The various writings were added to other sacred texts such as the Torah, various chronicles and poetic works such as psalms and proverbs to become the Hebrew Scriptures—what Christians call the Old Testament.

Thus we come to the 400 silent years of the intertestamental period.  God’s people had since become known as Jews, from the name for the tribe of Judah (previously the Southern Kingdom, which was now known as Judea).  At first the Jews were under the benevolent rule of the Persians.  But then the Greeks came to power and imposed their language and much of their culture upon their vassal states.  At this point the Hebrew Bible was translated into a Greek language version known as the Septuagint.

But soon the Greeks were conquered by the Romans which put all of Judea under the control of the Caesars and eventually led to Herod being installed as the puppet king.  Once again God’s people were conquered, oppressed and polluted.  Once again they longed for a savior, a.k.a. the Messiah.  Once again God heard their cry and responded.  But this time things would be different.  This time the savior would be a Savior for all people and for all time.

Since people seemed intent upon playing God, God decided to show them how he would appear in human form.  However his coming was not exactly what people were expecting.  He was born in very humble circumstances and raised in relative obscurity.  As a man he was not, in his own time, a leader of a mass movement like Moses or a strong judge like Samson a victorious general like David or a rich and powerful king like Solomon.  He was not like any other savior-of-sorts who had saved the day for God’s people in the past.

So when God came to his own, his own did not receive him. The zealots rejected him because he was not the revolutionary required to throw off the yoke of Roman occupation.  The Romans rejected him because, well, his own religious authorities rejected him and forced their hand.  His own religious authorities rejected him because he did not submit to them and their rules and regulations and their teachings and scriptural interpretations.  Is not that the height of irony?  When God was born into the world, the world did not regard him as godly enough.  Talk about playing God.

But his name was Jesus, which is the Latin form of the Greek Iesous, from the Hebrew Yeshua (or Joshua), which means: "Jehovah (God) is salvation."  Salvation is not from military muscle, or worldly wealth or a charismatic leader.  Salvation is from God alone.  By the power of God Jesus saved those who nobody else could save.  He saved the sick and demon-possessed.  He saved one fellow who had died and been buried.  He saved the day when the multitudes were hungry and the storm clouds were gathering.  But most important of all, he saved people from their sins.

Oh yes, sins, remember the original sin—the compulsion to play God and thereby get ourselves into terminal trouble?  Those whom Jesus saved from terminal trouble could not reject him—at least not for very long.  After the powers-that-be sought to remove God’s physical presence from the earth by crucifying Jesus, God sent his Holy Spirit to continue his saving work.  But his spirit needed a body to inhabit, so he created the Body of Christ, a.k.a. the Church.

The Mother Church was in Jerusalem and pastured by Jesus’ biological brother, James.  It grew so dramatically in numbers and fervor that the same religious authorities that crucified Jesus persecuted the Church that took his name.  This caused the believers to scatter throughout the ancient world, and wherever they settled a new Christian congregation sprung to life by the power of God.  One of the more prominent persecutors of the Church named Saul encountered the living Lord and realized how blind he had been.  He became a new person as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, changed his name to Paul and planted new Christian congregations throughout the ancient world.

Naturally the persecutor became the persecuted but, like the early church, the more he was persecuted the more effective he became at spreading the gospel, a.k.a. "Good News" of Jesus—the Savior of the World.  And so it went with the other Apostles like Peter, who founded a Christian congregation in Rome which continues to meet this very day in, what else, St. Peter’s Basilica and whose pastor is the pope.  And so it went for still other Apostles like John who, while banished by Rome to the Island of Patmos, wrote the Book of Revelation foretelling what was to come.

The letters of these Apostles, especially those of Paul, together with a history detailing the Acts of the Apostles, and of course the gospel stories of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection were gradually gathered together into a collection of sacred texts we know as the New Testament.  Added together with the Old Testament we have the Holy Bible, here surveyed in just under twenty minutes.  Although ancient in its origins, it preserves timeless spiritual truths that continue to be a lamp for our feet and a light for our way.

So while the original sin of playing God continually threatens to undo us, the prevailing power of God continually promises to save us so long as we continually struggle to keep faith.  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.