Plymothian

Satan is a fascinating character.  the word ‘crafty’ that describes him in this passage is shrewd and wily.  He knows just what to say, just what to do.  He has Eve recount the words that God has said, but she gets the words wrong.  She implies that God has said that instant death will come to those who even touch the forbidden fruit.  Satan tells the truth when he says that instant death will not come.  Instead the sentence of death will hang over Adam and Eve, they will banished from the nutrient rich Tree of Life.  They will die.  What knowledge is worth giving up life to obtain?  What are you dying to know?  Could you imagine risking everything to find out?

Genesis 3: 1-7

The Fall of Man

 ¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

 ² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”

 ⁴ “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 ⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Questions

1. What did the serpent say to the woman?
2. What did the woman reply?
3. What will happen if Adam and Eve eat the fruit according to the serpent?
4. How is the ordered creation of God broken here?
5. How have your actions caused disharmony in the home, workplace, or church?

Going Deeper

Observation

• How is the serpent compared to other animals?
• How many times are the words Satan and Devil used in the passage?
• Which tree does the serpent suppose is forbidden?
• What will the man and the woman know?
• What did the man and the woman do after they ate the fruit?  Why?

Interpretation

• How did the ancients think of serpents?
• Why do people assume the serpent is Satan?
• Are Adam and Eve juveniles or adults?
• Would humans have access to the forbidden tree in due course?
• Why is a transition from nakedness to clothing highlighted?

Application

• How are you tempted?
• How have you failed?
• How can you deal with your temptation?
• Are juveniles innocent?
• What roles do men and women play in your family?

Now that the heavens and the earth have been created as a temple for God to dwell in, what’s next?  God creates an inner sanctuary.  God creates a beautiful place, a garden, where he can dwell in a similar sense to the sanctuary of the Holy of Holies.  God fashions the garden from the chaotic land structure, irrigates it, and creates people to tend to it.  The function of people is to preserve and serve in the garden of God.  A chunk (the word means more than ‘rib’) is taken from Adam’s side and a co-worker is formed to work alongside him in tending this sacred space.  What a beautiful picture.  How could we recreate the Garden of Eden in our own sphere of influence?

Genesis 2: 4-25

⁴ This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
      When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- ⁵ and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth ^[a] and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth ^[b] and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ but streams ^[c] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- ⁷ the LORD God formed the man ^[d] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

 ⁸ Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

 ¹⁰ A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin ^[e] and onyx are also there.) ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. ^{[f] 14} The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

 ¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

 ¹⁸ The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

 ¹⁹ Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
      But for Adam ^[g] no suitable helper was found. ²¹ So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs ^[h] and closed up the place with flesh. ²² Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib ^[i] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

 ²³ The man said,
       “This is now bone of my bones
       and flesh of my flesh;
       she shall be called ‘woman, ^[j] ‘
       for she was taken out of man.”

 ²⁴ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

 ²⁵ The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

1. Of what is this the account?
2. Who planted a garden in the east?
3. What are the names of the four rivers?
4. What is not good?
5. What is man’s function in the garden of God?

Going Deeper

Observation

• What descriptor is repeated for the particular plants and shrubs that the passage describes?
• What two factors are missing for the production of those kinds of plants?
• How does God provide labour and irrigation for his garden?
• To what tree does mankind have access?
• What does the man say about the woman?

Interpretation

• What kinds of plants exist at the end of chapter one and where can they be found?
• How does this chapter give men and women dignity and purpose?
• To what end are the earth and the Garden of Eden made?
• What is the relationship between the man and the woman?
• Why are we told they are naked?

Application

• What is the 21st century relationship of mankind and vegetation?
• How do you need to rediscover the relationships of Eden?
• Does it matter that we can not locate Eden geographically today?
• Can innocence be rediscovered?
• Why is the New Age religion so fond of images of Creation?  How could a Christian dialogue with a New Ager who loves ‘Creation’?

Is the word ‘rested’ the best translation?  What about ‘ceased’?  Whatever the meaning there is a break from the previous six days.  What we see is God has prepared his creation like a temple to be inhabited. Now he takes time to ascend the throne and take his place.  The lights in the heavens are like the lights of lampstands.  The earth is his footstool.  We are to take a day, one day out of seven, where we cease going about the business of life.  We are to sit with like-minded people in God’s creation and we are to look on in awe and worship.  Do you see the universe as God’s temple?  Do you walk in it appropriately?

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

1. What has happened before the seventh day?  Give a summary.
2. What does God do on the seventh day?
3. Why would God rest on the seventh day?
4. Is one day of the week more holy than another?
5. What is the principle to be applied because of this passage?

Going Deeper

1. Take time to rest:  15 minutes and a cup of tea will suffice to get started.
2. Use rest time to think about what is or should be important to you.
3. See if you can enable someone else to rest.

The purpose of the creation story is to show how God gives purpose to the world.  Mankind is given dignity and authority as God’s representative.  We are the captains of creation, its stewards, its managers.  We have responsibility in this.  However, other ways of thinking have little reason to give dignity to the human race.  Are we really just one species among many?  Are we a helpless effect in an endless chain of causality.  I believe in free will and genuine choice, so I believe that the cosmos was ordered by a preexisting intelligence.  What do you believe?

1. What opening phrase is repeated in verses 14, 20, and 24?
2. What action takes place on these days?
3. Is it necessary that anything is manufactured on these days rather than ordered?
4. What is man’s place in creation?
5. How do you live as a responsible ruler in creation?

Going Deeper

Observation

• Where were the lights?
• What service do the lights provide?
• How does God bless sea animals and birds?
• What particular things is man created to rule over?
• What does God give to man?

Interpretation

• How is God different from the gods of other religions who are tied to creation in some way?
• How is reproduction a blessing and not a command?
• How would you explain the phrase ‘according to its kind’?
• Why is the emphasis on what God says and not on what he does?
• Why does God say let ‘us’ make man in our image?  Is this a reference to the Trinity, a heavenly court of angels, or something else?

Application

• Do you agree with the ‘quiverfull’ movement who believe that families should have as many children as possible because we are to be fruitful and multiply? http://www.quiverfull.com/
• What are the creation stories of other religions that you know?  How are the roles of God and mankind similar and distinct from the Genesis story?
• How does a popular view of a godless universe lead to problems with freewill and genuine choice?
• What is mankinds responsibility with the environment?
• Should a Christian support organisations like Greenpeace? http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/

Day one, as we studied, God created time.  Day two God creates the sources of weather.  Day three God creates the foundation of agriculture.  God’s foundation and control of the world is typically broken down into these three areas.  Genesis 8:22 is an example of how these three divisions of creation play into God’s administration:  “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest [agriculture], cold and heat, summer and winter [weather], day and night [time] will never cease.”  Modern advances in technology give mankind the impression that we are masters of these things.  However, although we can work with what God has created, mankind can not guarantee safety and harmony when working with God’s fallen world.  It is only when God manages creation that agriculture, weather, and day and night can work in the peaceful harmony that we would call shalom.

1. What does the text say God created on day two?
2. What does the text say that God created on day three?
3. What are the purposes of the creations of day two and three?
4. How has mankinds views of time, weather, and agriculture become godless?
5. How would thinking about God as the master of time, agriculture, and weather transform us?

Going Deeper

Observation

• What is between the waters?
• What was the purpose of the ‘expanse’ (NIV)?
• What did God call the expanse?
• What did God command concerning water on the third day?
• What did God want the land to do?

Interpretation

• ‘Expanse’ was perceived by the Israelite audience as a solid dome.  How might that be important?
• How does the Israelite idea taht rainwater is stored above a solid dome and then is released not make this passage inaccurate or wrong?
• How is weather the focus?  Why is the rain important in the Middle East?
• Is the focus on day three the seas or the land?  Explain.
• What is the agricultural importance of plants and seeds?

Application

• If God is master of the skies, why might pollution be sinful?
• How does messing with God’s good creation bring natural disasters?
• Do you pray about weather?
• Rent LEAP OF FAITH which stars Steve Martin as Jonas Nightengale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_of_Faith_(film) .
• How do you take agricultural produce for granted?

The focus of verses one through five is the creation of time.  The first day is created by creating seperate periods of light and darkness.  There can not be evening and morning without this.  The existence of an earth with chaos on the waters has led to a number of controversies.  Are we reading here the second creation story.  Did Satan corrupt a world and send it into chaos?  My perspective is that chaos, although incomplete, is not sin.  Go creates order from chaos like a potter creates a jar from formless clay.
 
Genesis 1: 1-5
 

1. What did God see about the light he had created?
2. What did God seperate?
3. In seperating light and darkness what does God create?
4. Does God stand inside time?
5. What does it mean to you that God created and is master of time?

• What two things did God create in the beginning?
• What was over the surface of the deep?
• What two words describe the pre-creation earth?
• What was moving over the face of the waters?
• What did God call the light and the darkness?

• Are heaven and earth eternal?
• Is there any ‘cosmos’ outside of the earth at this point?
• If ‘waste and emptiness’ describes ‘formless and void’ how does that help you understand the passage?
• Is there a second creation story between verses 1 and 2?
• Is one day a 24 hour period (See Chapter 1 overview for three different views)?

• How can you remember that earth is finite and God is infinite?
• What happens when you forget that God is infinite with respect to space and time?
• If God has created time how does he master it today?
• Are chaos and darkness opportunities to you?
• How can you mimic God’s creativity?

There is so much in Genesis 1 that it is important to read the whole thing before looking at the details.  The chapter does not read like the ancient myths that were generated in the Ancient Near East.  The story is not a scientific text.  By that I do not mean that it is scientifically inaccurate.  Telling us how God did it is not the focus.  The focus of Genesis 1 is to tell us why God made the heavens and the earth.  We only have essential details and broad strokes.  God made the world for his purposes and mankind is the pinnacle of the creative process.

1. Who exists before the beginning?
2. What does God seperate on day one?
3. How does God fill what he has created on day 1 with what he creates on day 4?
4. What kind of God preexists Creation and creates in the way described here?
5. Do you sometimes think that you live in a chaotic purposeless world?  How would this passage give you hope?

 Going Deeper

Observation

• Describe the earth before the first day of creation.
• After the creation of what is there evening and morning?
• What are created on days 2 and 5?
• What are created on days 3 and 6?
• Is there an evening to the seventh day?

Interpretation

• Are chaos and darkness sin?
• How was there something before creation?
• How are days 2 and 5 related?
• How are days 3 and 6 related?
• Are we living in the seventh day of creation?

Application

• Look up http://www.reasons.org/ .  Do you find these people credible?
• Look up http://www.answersingenesis.org/ .  Do you find these people credible?
• Look up http://www.theisticevolution.org/ .  What about these?
• How do you respond to naturalist atheists like Richard Dawkins ( http://richarddawkins.net/ )
• How do you react to being told that Genesis does NOT describe how God created the earth but focuses on why?
• What does it mean for you if God preexisted and created everything?

Find a Study Bible or Commentary and read the introduction to the book of Genesis.  I know I get a little sweaty-palmed when I come to Genesis.  All those famous long-lived people, Noah and the Ark, and six literal days of Creation.  Is that really what the book is about?  It seems that our faith is measured by whether we believe these events and details are literal or whether someone made them up. There is so much more to the book of Genesis than this.  I hope that you will join me as I read the book and rediscover the principles behind the details.

1. What verses or passages do you remember from Genesis?
2. Who is the author?
3. What are the themes?
4. Why is Genesis written in two sections (1-11 and 12-50)?
5. What might you learn from reading Genesis?

I am looking back over The Chapel’s Joyride series.  We have now finished the four week devotions from Sixteen:Nine, the church magazine. 

What have we learned?  Have you checked out Scott Chapman’s website www.scottchapman.org or The Chapel’s website www.chapel.org ?

I have decided to transition to Genesis for my own daily devos.  I’d love it if you came by this site to join me.  I’ll start tomorrow.

Why go to church?

Why do people stop going to church?  I have struggled with church attendance for a number of reasons.  The first was boredom.  I knew that God was not boring, but my little Brethren church in England used to get people to preach who really didn’t seem to have the gift.  If anything came up that gave me an excuse not to go to church, I tended to take that opportunity.  I even went through a phase of attending church and going to sleep during the sermon.  I remember my mother lovingly and tenderly hitting me one morning when I actually snored. 

If we come with a consumer attitude to church we can feel let down easily.  We expect church to meet our  needs and cater to our whims.  I have watched a YouTube clip that promises a wax for your car, tickets to the Super Bowl, or a pony if you attend MeChurch.  Therein lies the rub.  It’s not about you.  Your very life is not your own, it has been bought at a price (1 Cor 6:20). 

My attitude in my boring church changed when I became proactive.  I gathered a group of teenagers around me and we snagged the keys to the church annex.  We prayed with spiritual fervour that God would reveal to us ways in which we could make a difference for his sake.  We saw ways that we could get involved.  We suggested songs, we shared what God was doing in our lives and after a while some of us found ourselves preaching at the church (Col 3:16).  We stopped attending church for what we could get out of it and attended church for what we were called by God to bring to him. 

The Psalms clearly show that David was excited to come to the house of God.  He says ‘better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere (Psalm 84:10).’  Can you imagine David filling a pew and mouthing the words to songs he didn’t care about?    Worship is not even a synonym for singing.  Worship is ‘worth-ship’.  We gather out of a duty to shout, share, and sing about the worth of our God and his work.  It is not essentially an emotional thing, though emotions can be involved.  It is a relational decision.  Our relationship is enhanced when we decide to share in praise to God and ascribe worship in as many ways as we can.

The writers of the New Testament were keen that people would not give up meeting together (Heb 10:25).  Some had stopped gathering regularly.  What kind of ‘church’ had they given up to their peril?  Acts tells us that the early Christians were dedicated to ‘the apostle’s teaching and to the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer’ (Acts 2: 42).  So firstly, the church needs to be a learning community.  Some people think that they learn enough about God from nature and the world around them.  It is great to learn about God outside of the church.  We are called to love God with all of our mind after all.  You need to attend church and find mature people to teach you.  Secondly, the church needs to be a mutually encouraging community.  A coal that is removed from the fire doesn’t burn long on its own.  Thirdly, the church should be a community that remembers.  That is why breaking bread is mentioned.  By  breaking  bread we remember the grace poured out for us through Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.  Fourthly  the church needs to be  a praying community  growing in more meaningful conversation with God.

God designed you to be in a church.  When you don’t actively participate in one you are ‘malfunctioning’.  However, in the end it isn’t about you.  It’s about him.