In the Beginning: Series Intro

Over that whole time. So if you want to look in your bulletin or up on the screen behind me, we're going to read aloud God's word together again verses one through five. You ready? Three, two, one.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. God created the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. — Genesis 1:1-5

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Back in February 2020, there was an article that came out in the New York Times called "Here's You're Not Listening and Here's Why." In it, there's a woman named Kate Murphy who was researching a book that she was going to write on listening, and she found something really profound. She found that with our closest relationships—the people that we work the very closest to in life—we tend actually to not listen to very well. We actually tend to think we know what they're going to say and fill it in. This is where you finish each other's sentences or finish each other's sandwiches. Remember that? Okay, yeah, all right. So you finish these other sentences, you say what you think a person is going to say. You're already ahead of them because you know them. That's really ironic. And she calls this closeness communication bias. And she said, this is really odd because the people that you would say you're closest to—that you listen the best to—actually you often listen the worst to.

Now she went on, and looking at this, she said, this is like when you're driving down the road and you don't even notice where you're going anymore because you're so used to going that way that you just put it on autopilot. And that's what we're doing in our conversations.

She also referenced a guy named Nicholas Epley who's a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago School of Business, and he said this: The reason we do this is we sort of put things in boxes. Our brain is trying to be a little bit lazy, and so we put things in boxes and we stereotype. We're like, I sort of know what you care about and therefore I kind of anticipate what you're going to say.

So his story of this was buying a birthday present for his wife. He's like, this is a real mess because he's like, Oh, I know what she really would like. I remember her saying at one time that she would love to swim with the dolphins. And so he gets her this package behind the scenes tour at Shedd Aquarium, which is in Chicago—really famous big aquarium—and he's so excited to give this to her. And she hears about this and she is not happy. He said she was going to feed the dolphins and get to pet a beluga whale and feed the penguins. And he's like, I just didn't really think about the fact that she was pregnant with morning sickness. So she hears about this gift and all she could think about is dead fish and it makes her want to throw up, right?

So this is his thing. He says, I just didn't stop and think about it. Is this the right gift given where my wife is now in her life? I hadn't been listening very well.

Our Relationship with Genesis

Now, what does this have to do with Genesis? I know you're like, I'd love to know. But I think that we have that same closeness communication bias with this book. Especially if you've been around the church for a while. I mean, I'm betting that even if you haven't come to church in a long time, or maybe never, that's not your first rodeo hearing about Genesis one. Am I right? And we've heard this, many of us, over and over, maybe have read this and studied this, but my question is, do we really hear what it says?

I think that many of us have the same kind of closeness communication bias. We sort of fill in what we think it's supposed to say. Now, this may be from a number of reasons. Maybe you were taught growing up, "Hey, church is not your place for questions. You're not supposed to ask that. Don't you know?" Or maybe you've sort of memorized, "Well, this is what this means. You were taught this," and so you don't really listen to the Scriptures.

But here's my challenge. Man, I'm launching into preaching from Genesis one through 11—some of the most well known passages of Scripture—and I'm trying to do a series in this where we listen to it. That's going to be really hard. So my challenge to you is, can you hear what it actually says? And maybe also what it doesn't say.

So let's go back to this little section we just read and ask some questions. Questions that maybe you don't think are appropriate for church, but I think it's okay to ask these questions. So let's just say this. There's this strange little phrase that's in every day of creation. Do you notice this?

And there was evening and there was morning, the blank day.

Does anybody else think that's weird? I mean, that's not how we talk about days, is it? We say there's morning and then there's evening. There's sun up and then there's sundown. That's a day to us. Even for the Hebrews, they measure days sundown to sundown. So there was evening and morning. What about this one? We'll read this next week, but do you notice that there's no sun yet? The sun wasn't created until day four. So sunrise, sunset, that's a day. Anybody else notice that stuff?

Let's pan out to more of Genesis. Let's ask some other questions. Why does it seem like there are two creation accounts? There's Genesis one, and then you hit reset and there's Genesis two. Anybody noticed this before? Or what about this one? Where'd that snake come from? And why is nobody surprised he's talking? I mean, am I the only crazy one here? Or nobody's like, wait, that's a talking snake. After they get kicked out of the garden, where do the other people come from? What about this? What about other creation stories or flood narratives? Some of y'all have heard that there are some—what do we do with those? What about dinosaur bones? I mean, if you've had a four year old and you've read the dinosaur books, you've already been asked that one. What do we do with those? Carbon dating? Maybe the four year old is not asking that one. Evolution, right? Well, this is the closeness communication bias. And I want us to go back and say, what does this really say and why?

I think that we think we know, but one thing I think is manifestly clear about this is maybe this text isn't answering the questions that we're asking of it. Maybe it's not interested in the things that you and I are interested in from this book. We want to know the answer to how exactly. How exactly did this happen? How exactly did that go down? But maybe the whole point is not to give us a lab report on the creation of the world. Maybe there's something else here.

Let me tell you this: I'm not saying to you that you shouldn't believe in six twenty-four hour literal days. I'm not trying to mess with you with that or debunk that, but I'm just saying maybe there's something more important to the people who first wrote this down and the people who first received this than the things that you want from your Genesis. How do you want your Genesis served up? Over easy? Scrambled? We come to it wanting things from it that maybe are not what's important to how it was given or what it was for.

Genesis: Who, Why, and So What

Here's my big idea: Genesis isn't telling us how exactly so much. Genesis one especially—it's really telling us who and why and so what. Now before you send me that email, I'm going to tell you, I'm squarely within my PCA tradition. In the PCA, there are four acceptable views of Genesis chapter one: a literal six twenty-four hour day, a day-age view, an analogical reading, and a literary structure view. I'm going to be teaching a lot from a literary structure perspective because I want us to hear the text. I want us to really study that and know that. So don't write me an email. We can talk later after you listen more. I'm not trying to debunk any of those things. I just want us to listen. I want us to really hear.

So here's where we're going to start with this question: What is Genesis one? And I know you think the answer is the Bible, but let me back up and ask you another question. What is it? Like, what is it that we're actually looking at?

Genesis as Poetry

The answer to that is that this is a poem. This is a poem. And you know, if you know nothing about Hebrew poetry, you can tell that this is a poem. It's got some of the things that even our poetry has. It has a structure. It's got kind of stanzas and choruses and repeats. It's got a structure to it. I know some of you all are like, I graduated from high school and I never want to think about poetry again. I saw some hands. I know.

But look, poetry is so important because it doesn't communicate in the way that prose does. It's different. It communicates something different. Now it doesn't mean that a poem is not true, but it says things differently. It can say true things differently. Let me give you an example about this.

If I say to my wife, I love you, babe, is that a true statement? Yeah, I hope you would think that I love my wife. Yes, that is a true statement. But there's a difference between saying, I love you, babe, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways. This is how she says, I love you babe. In poetry, she says, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach."

I love thee with the breath and smiles and tears of all my life. Now, is that the same? Yeah. Is that the same as "I love you, babe"? Yes and no. I mean, both are true. It's just said really differently. Right? It's said very differently. Look, this most famous of poems—if you miss the fact that it's a poem, you miss the fact that there's a lot being communicated here that you may not be paying attention to. This is not a lab report, and it's saying true things in a different way.

How Was This Passed Down?

So second, I want you to think about how this was passed down. The first five books of the Bible are called the Books of who? Oh, yeah. The Books of Moses. That is because traditionally throughout the centuries, we believe Moses wrote down for the people coming out of Egypt, going to the Promised Land, the five books that are known as the Pentateuch, the Books of Moses.

Now this material that we're reading right here—Genesis one through 11—is called the prehistory. This and the book of Job are some of the oldest passages in all the Bible and they're mostly poetry. And I want you to think about that because poetry has structure to it and repetition and things that help people memorize this. It helped them to be able to memorize it and therefore pass it on, pass it down. So we hear all this like, "and God said, and it was the first day and it was good." Those things are like little choruses that help people remember this and pass it down. Just like your head is filled with all kinds of dumb songs that you have all the lyrics memorized to that you really don't even know you're aware of. Something comes on like your Spotify, and you're like, "Oh yeah," and you can sing along all the words, right? Did you ever sit down and study that? "I need to memorize this." No, you never did that because it's poetry. You may not have thought about it as poetry, but it's poetry. It helps you remember it. And that's what's being done here.

What Does This Poem Tell Us?

So let me take this poem, and I want to just peel back a couple layers with you this morning. I want to ask: What is this trying to tell us? And the first thing it's trying to tell us is—who? Who is this God?

Let's go back to the text and ask, what do we see in this passage? Who's this God?

First, God is one. There's only one God. This isn't a pantheon of gods. If you grew up knowing anything about Greek mythology or Roman mythology or Norse mythology, they have a whole bunch of gods. This is one God.

Second, God is a spirit. We read the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters. God doesn't have a body like you do. God isn't a supersized version of a human. God is a spirit.

Third, God is an artist. That word barah here for creator is used throughout this, and it's just this picture of God's infinite creativity and imagination. God comes up with stuff that we are still discovering that lives at the bottom of the ocean that nobody's seen. Why is it there? I don't know, for God's enjoyment. He's like, "I just love this weird blind fish thing." God is incredibly creative. God creates with His word. He's not making a snowman like you are. God creates with the Word, and then He does this thing—God evaluates. God renders a judgment. He's like, "How is this? Oh, this is good." He evaluates.

Now why does that matter? Because this poem wasn't dropped down from heaven in shrink-wrap for you in English. It was given to a particular people in a particular time and place surrounded by all kinds of other nations with different storylines of how the world works, and it's trying to tell a story about who this God is compared to everybody else. It's not just a lab report.

The Context of Creation Stories

So let me give you some context. Here are three creation stories that are from nations around Israel, around the Hebrew people that they would have known.

First one: Anuma Elish. It's a Babylonian creation myth from about the time of like February. Now this is interesting. Who else in the Bible was from Babylon? Babylon is also known as Chaldea in the Bible. So there's somebody, a major somebody from Genesis who's from Ur of the Chaldeans. Abraham. Abraham from Ur of the Chaldeans. So this is the story that young Abraham likely grew up hearing around the fire before God called him.

Anuma Elish was found on seven tablets in 1849 in the ruins of Ashurbanipal's library in ancient Nineveh.

The gods are birthed out of swirling waters, which divide into two kinds of water—fresh water that becomes Apsu, and the salt water which becomes the goddess Tiamat. And from those two come all their children, the lesser gods. Of course, the noise of all their kids annoys their dad, god Apsu. So he plans to kill off the younger gods. The younger gods are warned of this, and they strike back by killing the god Apsu. Tiamat, mom, is enraged by the death of her husband and leads to a battle between Tiamat and Marduk. Marduk is the head of all the other lesser gods. Marduk wins and creates mankind or humankind from the blood of the god Quingu, who is blamed for the conflict and therefore executed. That's what Abraham grew up with. People of Israel, they knew this one.

Second, Egyptian creation stories. These are mostly from the insides of the pyramids from the oldest period of the kings—the Old Kingdom, 2780 to February. All the creation stories of the Egyptians center around each town. Each big city has its own local god who's in charge of creating all things, and so everyone has sort of the same story, but it's named different things. At different places—in Memphis, not Tennessee, but Memphis in Egypt—their god was Ptah. In Hermopolis, it's Ogdoad. In Heliopolis, it's Atum. All of them have kind of the same storyline.

The storyline goes like this: the gods create humankind and all things out of a sex act. That's all I'm going to say about that because of little ears. But that's sort of where the genesis of all things comes from in Egypt.

Now would the Hebrew people have known this? Remember what we just said: Genesis, one of the five books of Moses. And Moses was the guy who went to the Egyptians after four hundred years of Israelite slavery and calls the people of God out. They're delivered with all these signs and wonders, cross the Dead Sea, come to Mount Sinai. Would they have known the Egyptian creation story? You betcha. This is where they were living.

Third, the one from Sumeria—the Atrahasis Epic. This is from about the seventeenth century BC. Atrahasis is the primary character, and that's where the name comes from. The tablets of this were found in cuneiform script, but what's interesting about this is they've been discovered all over the place. It started in Babylon, but these have been found all over what was Canaan later—so a lot of modern Palestine, Syria.

It tells the story of the Sumerian gods. There were seven great Anunna gods and the lesser Igigi gods, which is my favorite word to say in the sermon this morning: Igigi. The lesser gods were so burdened with work that they decided to rebel. Before the battle, they have a perfect solution proposed: "Let's create humankind to do all the oppressive work." So they slaughter the god Awu Elu and mix his blood and flesh with clay, and that's how people are made—to do oppressive work.

Again, would they have known this? Remember, they're leaving Egypt, going to the Promised Land. This would have been the stories told in Canaan about how the world came to be.

Does it matter that you know this? Maybe, maybe not. If you go to any religious studies program in any liberal arts college in the country, they're going to tell you these stories. A lot of kids grow up in the church and they're really surprised. They go and take their first religion class and they're like, "Oh, no, this means the Bible is not true." Now that's not really the case because what I want to really point out to you is how different the stories that they were hearing are from what you just read in Genesis one.

What Makes God Different

This is the main point. This is what a lot of what's being communicated in Genesis one is: "No, this God's different. This God is not like any other God you know."

Listen to some of the things we heard. This God isn't a group of gods—this is one God. This God isn't a super sized human who just has a body like you and does things like you. This is God as spirit. This isn't a God who's fighting and doing sex acts. This is a God who speaks, who creates with infinite beauty and then pronounces it good. Something's really different here.

This is the main point I want to propose to you. I don't know how you want your Genesis. You probably want a lab report, but what you're getting instead is: "No, make sure you understand who this God is. This God is different from every other God."

Second thing it tells us is why. Why God made the world. I want you to notice there's all these repetitions in Genesis one. In fact, there's all these repetitions of numbers. Numbers in Hebrew are really, really important.

That was one of the things that they did—just like when we repeat things, we don't always keep track of how many times we repeat some things, but the Hebrew people did. This is a major part of their poetry. So look at this. It's entirely purposeful. There are lots of sevens and patterns of seven in this passage.

Seven days. Seven times it said this was good. Seven times it says there was evening, there was morning. Seven times "and it was so." Seven times it says "and God said." The first sentence of Genesis one, chapter one is seven words long. The second verse is 14 words long—seven times two. The seventh verse of this passage is 35 words long—five times seven. The word earth occurs 21 times—seven times three. The word for God is used 35 times—seven times five.

Now why? Why is seven so important to the Hebrew people? Well, the poem tells us because it's all about the end of the poem. What's the end of the poem? God creates the Sabbath day and He rests.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the hosts of them, and on the seventh day God finished His work He'd done, and He rests on the seventh day from all the work that He'd done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it God rested from all His work that He'd done in creation. — Genesis 2

There's nothing like this in the ancient Near East. Nobody else is talking about a story about a God who rests. That never comes up. Fighting? Yes. Sexual acts? Yes. Jealousy and pettiness and all kinds of stupidity? Yes. But a God who rests? This is something absolutely unique. And then a God who creates the world, blesses it, and then sits back and enjoys what He has made.

Understanding the Midrash

One more thing. The Hebrew Midrash—I'll teach you that word, I'm going to say it a bunch of times over the course of this series. Midrash are the ancient writings of rabbis throughout the centuries as they studied these passages. It's like commentaries by modern people, right?

So the ancient Midrash points out over and over again what a weird thing the bookends of this passage are. The bookends of Genesis one—this little poem—it starts with nothing. There's nothing. God creates something out of nothing. That's the whole point. And it ends with nothing. God does nothing. It begins with nothing, it ends with nothing. The whole point there is that there's something about this nothing that really matters, that God wants to point us toward.

Now I love this. You know when you're driving to the beach during the summertime and you get to the beach, you roll down your car windows even though it's hot? Why do you roll down your car windows? You smell the salt. You're like, "Oh, we're getting close." I feel that right now getting through Genesis one where I can smell it. Can you smell it? We're getting close.

What's this about? Because Genesis one isn't answering questions about dinosaurs, carbon dating, or evolution—and we could talk about that. I'm happy to talk about that. Not this Sunday. Next Sunday. But this is bound up in all of this pointing to seven, all this pointing to this rest, this idea of a God who gives rest. And here's the idea: God made this world and rested. God made this world good for rest. God made this world good for rest with you. He wants to rest with His people, and that is a profound idea.

The Question of Identity

And that's maybe not what you want, but this is what the Hebrew people needed. They needed to be able to answer the question: Who am I?

I'm guessing in this church there's probably a couple people who've seen Moana before—with the talking crab, Jemaine Clement, and the score by Lin Manuel Miranda, and Maui played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. So you can watch this and realize that's a creation story. It's an interesting story about a little girl, Moana, who grows up on a Polynesian island. She's the daughter of the chief, and she grows up with everything being focused on how the island gives us what we need, right?

You know the song: "Where You Are." The island gives us everything we need. That's the whole thing, and the focus of everybody is that the island is awesome and they look inland.

Now Moana is weird because she's drawn to the ocean. She's drawn to the sea. She's like, "That's where I want to be." And she keeps going down to the waves and her family's like, "Nope, come back over here." So she grows up doing her junior chief responsibilities. She learns to help—she helps a guy get a tattoo and she teaches a girl the hula dance and she fixes a roof. But the reality is that she's really focused on the sea and everybody else is focused inland.

Now, the problem of the movie is that there's some kind of rot that begins to happen on the island. There's something that threatens the life of the island, and she goes and searches for a clue for what to do. She stumbles upon a cave filled with boats. In that she discovers: wait, our people were not always inland focused. They were voyagers. They were seafarers. This is not the way we are. This is not actually who we're supposed to be about.

See, the whole point of the story of Moana is understanding your roots helps you understand who you really are. And traditionally, this account of Genesis one, given to Hebrew people who were coming out of four hundred years of bondage—they came up in Egypt being told, "Your entire purpose for existence is making bricks. Your entire purpose in existence is working to death. There's no rest for you. There's no break for you. You've got to do everything. There's no stopping. There's no ceasing." You collapse into bed at night, you get up and do the same thing tomorrow. That was their entire four hundred year existence in Egypt.

And so when Moses shows up, they don't remember who they are. He comes up and says, "This God, Yahweh, is going to rescue you," and they're like, "We don't know who you're talking about. Who is this God?" They've forgotten what they exist for. Life in Egypt had told them, "Follow the Pharaoh line for your life. This is what you're for."

I mean, it's very similar to the Atrahasis Epic, isn't it? Blood of the gods mixed with clay to create people whose entire purpose in living is just work—toiling, slaving away. But God tells a different story: that their day begins with resting.

Did you hear that again? "There was evening, there was morning." It emphasizes the part of our day that we spend in bed. Every part of this emphasizes rest in every day. "There was evening, there was morning." It says, this is who you are. You are defined by what God is like and what God says—God who creates things by the word of His mouth and evaluates them. You are not valued because of your ability to get stuff done. You are the crowning achievement of creation, people made in His image.

This was a song. I mean, just really listen to this. This was a song Hebrew people sang to their babies. They told their kids, and they told it to them every night before they went to bed, and every seventh day they especially emphasized it. They said, "This is who we are. This is what it is to be God's people. We're not defined by what we do. We're defined by who God says we are."

We're invited to live the story that Elohim is writing in the universe, not the false stories of Sumeria and Egypt and Mesopotamia and Chaldeans. We're invited to live a different storyline because of this.

Applying the Message Today

Now, do you think this could apply to us today? Like, we're not what we do? I don't know if that applies to us, does it? Yeah, I can't think of a more appropriate application to you or to me, right? We are people who need to hear: you are not your work. You're not your job. You're not your ability to get things done. Work is good, but God made you for work and rest. You are not a human doing—you're a human being. You're not a work machine. You're not defined by how you make money. You're not defined by whether the world values the things that you're passionate about enough to assign money to those. God says who you are.

And you're not a perpetual motion machine. Just like your cell phone, you have an off button, and you can turn it off. God is inviting you to rest, to have a Sabbath day. There's an application to this for how you live your existence. Are you going to be a person who takes God up on His offer for rest every week? Will you observe the Sabbath? We'll talk about that in a couple weeks. But it's a reminder that this is what we're made for—an ultimate resting with God.

I think that like Moana's people, the Church of Jesus has forgotten what we're here for. Our gaze has turned inland and we rediscover the ships and we're like, "Oh, I wonder what those are for?" I think we've lived without a lot of the beauty and power of this passage for us. We lose the story because, of course, one is "in the beginning," and it's echoed by a later "in the beginning" story that John tells.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through Him. Without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness. The darkness has not overcome it. — John 1:1-5

What's great about what we're reading here is that this is not the end of the story. This is the beginning. We're made for rest, and rest is great.

I mean, Sabbath rest is such a gift, but we're made for even more than that. And what we're invited to read as we start this book is to trace a storyline that goes all the way through that says, "You're made for a rest that's not just ceasing to labor, but to be with God and enjoy Him." He's designed you for this. He's made you for this, and we can rest, therefore, in the finished work of His Son Jesus, the crowning achievement of His creation, His Son come in His own image and the image of people, and rest in the finished work of Jesus on our behalf. There's a cross and there's a resurrection, and this storyline is going all the way to a final resting place where we will enjoy Him forever in a place with no more tears. This is the grand story.

Don't miss the story because you're looking for a lab report. See, here's the invitation that we could become children of God. I mean, think of how important it is that we would learn to listen to the real story, the bigger story, and trust that story. Without that, you live in a world that feels chaotic and broken all the time. You're always looking over your shoulder because you think the shoe is going to drop. You're always living out of, "I've got to hold it all together. It's up to me to make everything work." You can't do that. You're not designed for that.

And if you live out of those other false storylines, you're going to approach life with a scarcity mindset instead of this story, which is an abundance mindset. A God who makes all things, who makes them good and invites you into enjoyment of them. See, if I know a God who rests, I can trust the story and rest.

Would you pray with me? Father, we thank You for Your Word. There is nothing like Your Word. And I pray, Father, that You would help us to really listen to what You're saying to us, to really listen to what's offered to us in Your Word. We pray we would more and more be people who hear Your call, understand the story, and live out of the storyline that You're making in history. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.