Word of Salvation – Vol.44 No.23 – June 1999
My Relational God (2)
(A Shattered Family)
Sermon by Rev G Van Schie
on Genesis 3:5
Scripture Readings: Proverbs 3:1-12; Genesis 3
Suggested Hymns: BoW / Rej: R295/167/153; B164/155/162; R323/326
[The second in a series of sermons on the book of Genesis and the first part of the book of Exodus following the theme of having a living relation with God through Christ as the only means by which we are saved. This series also follows the development of that relationship in grace God has with His people which in Scripture is called the covenant.]
Brothers and Sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are incredibly special! No matter who we are, what our background or personality type, we are as human beings the most important part of God’s creation! This is reflected in God’s command given to Noah after the Flood when He said: “And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” (Genesis 9:5-6)
it matters not whether I ever finished primary school or whether I have a doctorate. It makes no difference that I live in a five-bedroom double brick home with ducted air conditioning, games and family rooms and swimming pool OR my home is a lean-to humpy consisting of a corrugated sheet of tin on the fringe of a Philippines dump. It is irrelevant whether I am above the government $70,000 per year income bracket concerning family support OR l depend on the welfare net: my life is precious in God’s sight.
I could be a mum who has got it all together and who faithfully nurtures her children in the best of environments OR I could be a prostitute at night plying my trade on the city streets. I could be a well-respected leader of the church or a convicted killer in prison. There is no difference. Ali alike are human beings and therefore are immeasurably precious to God.
So it is in the Biblical records that we find God repeatedly bringing down judgment upon His people for the disregard they have shown for Him by ignoring the needs of the orphan and the widow. Even worse, in unchecked wrath God denounced those who took advantage of the weak and vulnerable. Outraged, Christ rebuked the self-righteous religious leaders of His people who grumbled because he mixed with tax collectors, prostitutes and other sinners. Our God rejoices in being known as the Father of the fatherless, and defender of the widow.
Human life is treated as sacred by God. In Scripture, animals and birds could be used for food for man as well as for sacrifice to God, and by the millions the lives of animals and birds have been taken in that way. YET for the life of a human being there is a divine accounting. Where human blood is shed, God demanded accountability – a life for a life.
The reason for this is spelt out in the last part of what we just read: “For in the image of God has God made man.” These words spell out a special relationship with God that we alone enjoy in all of creation. No other living creature has been created by God IN HIS IMAGE. The Lord has personally formed us of the dust of the earth and breathed into our nostrils His own breath that we would become His children. This truth applies to ALL human beings regardless of who they are and the circumstances in which they find themselves. A very special part of that image is that we are created to have a personal relationship with God.
The God who made us for relationship with Himself is a relational God. The Lord whom we worship today is not an impersonal power such as electricity – an unfeeling irrational power that has no personal or intelligent existence. He is not ‘The Force’ from the movie, Star Wars, whose presence is wished upon those who go forth into battle.
The question we face today is: how is it that humanity does not relate to God relationally? How has it come about that God is viewed more as a superior power of some sort? The pantheistic teaching that God is nature, and in this way we are all part of God, is surfacing again in New Age teaching. The Bible reveals something very different!
God has always commanded that our worship of Him is not to be merely ritualistic – a mere turning up and moving through a series of worship practices. Our God has always declared that He is to be worshipped from the heart. The engagement of our heads is not enough. Our God desires that we should fellowship with Him from the heart. Yet so easily we thoughtlessly enter our places of worship and our main concern is, how long the service is going to take. We attend church, as it were, in order to get out! Before the day is over we have trouble remembering what God has said to us through the sermon so that there is little likelihood we are going to put it into practice in our lives.
Why is it that even though we know God to be a relational being, that it is easier for us to come to church and after an hour still not have worshipped? That by nature we think we have worshipped simply because we have come to a place of worship, and have outwardly participated in a number of worship practices? This was the sin Israel of old always struggled with, and it is as much a struggle for us as God’s people today. What went wrong as to what God intended for us when He created humanity in such a personal and intimate way? How can we once more relate to God as we have been created to do?
Let’s be sure that we understand that in the beginning this personal relationship with God did exist. When God created humanity, he set man and woman as His vice-regents over the whole of creation. As His image bearers, man and woman, together, would rule over all of creation and have dominion over it. So it is that the animals came to man, who then gave to each their name. On God’s behalf, man was placed in the garden to cultivate it and care for it.
It was in the context of this perfect relationship that God came to the man and woman He had created in the garden in order to have fellowship with them. As is held before us in Paradise regained, so it was in the beginning, that God and humanity shared face to face fellowship: “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.” (Revelation 22:3-5)
In the beginning we find the perfect relation of man with God impacting the rest of creation. There was no death, not even of animals. It is only after the Fall that we find that man is permitted to eat the flesh of animals as long as the blood has been drained first in the prophecies of restoration, in Isaiah, we find those glorious pictures of those parts of creation now hostile to each other, co-existing in perfect harmony once more: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6-9)
Relating to God as he was created to do, humanity lived in perfect peace. There were no marital problems. Sickness and disease were not known, nor was there any death. Man respected the environment as God’s vice-regent, and cared for it as a faithful steward accountable to his master.
THEN everything was shattered!
In Genesis 3 we find Adam and Eve afraid of God as they desperately seek a place to hide when they hear His call. In acute shame they seek to cover themselves with leaves in order to cover the nakedness which before was a beautiful and natural part of their life. The relationship between man and woman becomes disfigured as Adam seeks to blame Eve for what had occurred in their disobedience in eating of the tree God had forbidden them to eat from. Again, the perfect relationship with God is seen to be shattered as Adam, in blaming Eve, in fact ultimately blames God: “The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” (Genesis 3:12)
Unmistakably, and in a shocking way, banishment from the garden portrays what had become of the relationship God once had with His now rebellious children. Pain will be part of the birth process, and work, which once was a pleasant reflection of God’s creative activity, now becomes a chore as man struggles against a cursed creation. Then, all too suddenly, the horror of the Fall is demonstrated in the jealousy of Cain and his malicious murder of Abel. Soon the world becomes so violent that God in righteous anger sends the Flood and destroys of all humanity, except for the one family of Noah which He had preserved in His grace.
How did this happen? What was really involved in taking that forbidden fruit? it is important for us today to understand what was involved in Adam and Eve’s sin so that we might fight against it in our own lives today. For the essential elements of their sin continues to be found in our lives even now.
When we turn to Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5-7 we find a key as to what it was all about. Let’s turn to that passage again, Proverbs chapter 3, and let’s take a look at especially verses 5-7. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make all your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil.”
Now that’s what Adam and Eve should have done; they should have trusted in the Lord and feared Him. Satan, came along to Eve and said to her “Did God REALLY say that you shouldn’t eat from this tree?” Eve replied, “Yes he did.” Here, already, Satan is beginning to plant doubts. Did God REALLY say that? Did you understand Him correctly? When Eve says, “Yes, this is what the Lord said”, Satan goes on to say, “Don’t listen to what you have been told. The reason why God has told you this is because the moment you eat from it He knows that you will become like Him.” Now if Eve trusted God and moments later, likewise, Adam too, and if they had both retained their respect for Him, their reverence, they wouldn’t have fallen for that trick.
We have all experienced in some way what God endured. We feel badly let down by people who know us well. People that we counted among our friends; who hearing a lie about us, believe the lie and act upon it as though it’s true. When they do that, they are not trusting us, are they? Adam and Eve should have trusted God. They should have maintained their reverence for Him. They had no reason to doubt that what He had said was true, and then told Satan to get lost. The problem to begin with was that they began to doubt God, and at that point they lost their trust in Him.
Proverbs tells us, secondly, that we shouldn’t depend on our own understanding, nor be wise in our own eyes. There were Adam and Eve confronted by Satan having been created by a loving God who up to this point had done nothing wrong to them. He had only provided them with everything good. They hear something contrary to God’s will for the first time and what do they rely on to sort it out? Did they go to God and say “Hey, Lord, do you remember what you told us about this tree that we are not allowed to eat from? Well, this talking serpent came to us and he said we could eat of it without any problems. In fact this talking snake said the reason why you didn’t want us to eat of it was because we would become like you. You wanted to remain ‘king pin’. You wanted to be the only God, when we could have become gods with you. Is that true?”
If they had done that, brothers and sisters, they wouldn’t have relied upon their own understanding. They would have checked it out. They would have checked it with God’s understanding and their wrong thinking could have been corrected by what God would have taught them. I don’t know what God would have told them if they had gone to Him that way. Maybe He would have told them about the fall of the angels and where Satan came from and to be aware of him in the future. The point is they never gave God that opportunity.
They had the Word of God clearly told to them, for Eve accurately told the serpent what God had said. She had clearly understood what God had said. It wasn’t a matter of misunderstanding. Her trouble was that she and Adam were prepared to rest on their own understanding as to God’s motives for what He had commanded. They thought they had the wisdom to work this one out for themselves. They thought they were wise in their own eyes.
Finally in Proverbs, we are taught to acknowledge God in all His ways and to shun evil. We know what it means to acknowledge someone, don’t we? To acknowledge the work that somebody has done may involve giving them a certificate or a gift of some sort. You’re saying, “Hey, we recognise what you have done and we want to give you credit for that. We want to show you that we appreciate what you have done.” That’s what acknowledgment is all about.
“Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways.” What the writer of the Proverbs is saying here is that in everything we do, we must acknowledge that God is God. That He is our Creator. That by grace He has given us this beautiful relationship. Acknowledge that everything we have is a gift from His hand. Everything we have, we have by grace. In doing that, we are to shun everything that is evil – that is, everything that is contradictory to the nature and the being of God. Anything that even sounds remotely different to what God says in His Word, we must have nothing to do with. In failing to acknowledge God, Adam and Eve fell for Satan’s lie and they brought the world into its present state of ruin. By their rebellion evil entered the world.
The heart of the sin which shattered humanity’s perfect relationship with God was the desire to be like God. Adam and Eve didn’t want any longer to be just creatures. They wanted command of their own lives. As Frank Sinatra used to sing, they wanted to do it their own way. They didn’t want to consult God, and instead they chose to ignore God’s Word. And so, the relationship was shattered – not by God, but by humanity.
Like Adam and Eve, we quickly allow sin to mess up our relationship with God. We, too, want to live life our way. In every area of our lives, we know that God has something to say to us as to living with and for Him in Jesus Christ. But we, too, in our sinfulness prefer to lean on our own understanding and do what is right in our eyes, regardless of what we know God says in His Word. When we live this way then we demonstrate a lack of trust in God, and we fail to acknowledge who He is, as we deny His Lordship of our lives.
This is true with our plans for the future. We are a people called in living fellowship with God to seek His will for our lives. It is expected that ministers of the Word think in terms of their work as God’s calling. Before they move from one church to another they prayerfully enter a process whereby they seek to discern God’s will in the matter. This process is one that we all, young and old alike, need to be aware of in all our planning. Whether it is the choice of my subjects in High School or the course I choose in University. Whether it is the trade or career I seek to enter or a move to another city. All of life is worship and in fellowship with God these decisions should be worked out in agreement with His will.
The difficulty is that at times what God calls us to do and where He calls us to go is not quite what we would like. It is when we disregard the Lord’s will and go our own way that we disregard the teaching of Proverbs 3. Such a course of action leads to our relationship with God coming into difficulties.
Likewise, our choices as to places of entertainment and recreation. The Lord warns us repeatedly about the traps of drinking too much liquor. He also points out the dangers of sexual permissiveness and the destructive effects of prostitution. He seeks to steer us away from bad company which would corrupt us. Yet, if we do not trust His Word and lean on our own understanding and go our own way, we should then not be surprised to discover that our relationship with God becomes remote, if at all existent.
It should not surprise us when placing our joy in entertainment which celebrates sexual freedom and rejection of authority – and that in coarse and vulgar language for which a warning label needs to stuck to the outside of a CD – that worship services become dull and boring for us since what we have come to prefer is contrary to God’s will for us.
Living in His image He calls us to consider others more important than ourselves and to honour our marriage partner. The grace and love with which Jesus relates to His bride, the church, is held before us as the example to follow. When we, once again, think we can do better than what God reveals in His Word, then we should not be surprised that not only our marriage enters into treacherous waters and eventually flounders on the rocks, but also our relationship with the Lord suffers as a result of His sons and daughters causing each other terrible mental and spiritual anguish and pain.
The Lord makes this connection plain in Malachi 2:13-14 – “Another thing you do: you flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, Why? It is because the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.”
Indeed, sin has corrupted our lives and broken our relationship with God. We see the evidence, the brokenness of that relationship between God and man, all around us. Governments are at a loss as to stemming the flood of marriage breakdowns which lead to the tearing apart of families. They know that this is a major contributor to the problems of children on drugs, yet the children continue to be found either living on the city streets or making the streets their playground into the early hours of the mornings. Yet, with God’s design for families thrown out the window and everyone living as pleases themselves, what can governments do? At this point all seems lost and it would appear that there is no hope for us.
However, because our God is a relational being, humanity’s fall into sin, and the horrendous consequences we see all around us, is not where the Bible pens the words: THE END.
By chapter 3 of the first book of Scripture, we read of humanity’s rebellion against God, and from there we become witnesses of a record of devastating pain and suffering. Yet, from that very same chapter, the grace of God glimmers in the midst of the evil that had now consumed the earth.
God speaks a curse upon the serpent used by Satan, but in what is said, hope is given to fallen humanity. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). While it is not clear from this passage who this seed of the woman is, what is clear is that the serpent is in for a decisive and deadly defeat. While the seed of the woman will be injured on his heel, the head of the serpent will be crushed.
Not only this, but the alliance that had just been made between the serpent and humanity was not going to be allowed to remain. Hostility was to arise between them. A hostility pictured in humanity’s aversion to snakes of the reptile kind, BUT demonstrated in reality in the person and work of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This hostility would be evidenced in the struggle that would emerge between two lines of humanity, the one which would service God and the other which would oppose God and His people.
While the hostility would for the most part be seen to exist between human beings, Satan would always be behind the hostility directed at the people of God. That opposition is clearly pictured in Revelation 12:17 – “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring – those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”
Not to be missed is where this hostility originates from. Satan who desires to keep humanity as his allies is not going to bring it about. That would work against his purposes! Humanity having made the choice to rebel against God is powerless to draw away from Satan having fallen into his trap and now held in his clutches. In the words of the curse on Satan it is clear that God Himself is the originator of the hostility that would spring up between humanity and Satan and would culminate in the overthrow of Satan by the death and resurrection of Jesus. God said: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers…!”
The rest of Old Testament Scripture is the record of God’s saving activity to bring into the world that One who, being the seed of the woman, would defeat Satan. It is through Jesus, the seed of the woman, that God then fulfils His promise to overcome Satan and end the exile of His children. This the writer to the Hebrews clearly and powerfully bears out when he writes: “Since the children have flesh and blood, ne, too, shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)
The Bible is the story of God’s work of reconciliation in and through Jesus: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19a)
Our God who, in astonishing grace, gave to our fallen parents the first taste of the Gospel, demonstrates His character as a God who seeks relationship with His children, in that it is He who sought out Adam and Eve. it is He who takes the initiative to reconcile them to Himself. In grace and mercy, God refuses to live without His children. So it is in time that he sacrifices His Son, that through Jesus, He may again relate as Father to those who had become ungodly, sinners, His enemies.
Surely this is the beautiful meaning of Paul’s words in Romans 8:15-17 “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
In the beginning there was this perfect relationship between a personal divine being, who is God, and the people He had created to live in personal fellowship with Him. That relationship has been shattered. Now in Christ, this personal divine being is bringing His children home.
The God we worship is not one who is satisfied with empty ritualistic religion. He is the Lord God who grieves when His people behave as though He is some impersonal force or power without feelings and without intelligence. in Christ we are called to live with Him again in such a way that imitates His person: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 4:30 ff).
In amazing grace He has first loved us. By the power of the death and resurrection of His Son and through the inner working of the Holy Spirit, He calls us to now wholeheartedly return His love in all of life as an act of worship.
Amen.