"In the Beginning"

 

"The LORD had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.' "

 

            My cousin the poet remembered an old saying, "Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening all at once." The story of the Bible is also God's way of keeping everything from happening at once. The message of the Bible does not all come on the first few pages. We must read the whole story, follow its themes, and pay attention to the working out of the will of God.

            But where do we begin? We are going to move quickly, taking large sections each week. The book of Genesis has 50 chapters, and 38 of them tell the story of the family of Abraham. So I am reading Genesis as a biography of the family of Abraham, and seeing that the major themes run through Abraham and Sarah, Rebecca, Jacob and Joseph. These themes are the relationship that God desires to have with his people, the promises of God shown in the Covenant, the need for faith, and the reality of reconciliation.

            If Genesis is the biography of Abraham and his family, why does it begin with Creation? If you wrote the biography of Abraham Lincoln you would not begin with the creation of the world. But Genesis begins with two brief chapters on the creation of the world. Then it moves to nine chapters on the origins of sin. Why would the story of Abraham begin this way?

            We learn in chapter 11 that Abraham's family comes from Ur of the Chaldeans, which is close to Babylon in Mesopotamia. In Joshua 24:2 Joshua says, "Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods." What gods did they worship and what religion did they know? The Babylonian Creation myth has been discovered, and Abraham and his family must have known and believed at least something like what is recorded in it.

            This story is called the Enuma Elish. In it the world began when the salt water, called Tiamat, a goddess in the form of a ferocious sea monster, and the fresh water, a god named Apsu, commingle to produce several generations of gods. But then they become upset and decide to kill these younger gods. Tiamat sets out to destroy them, but the young hero god Marduk slays her in a battle, slices her in two and creates the heavens and the foundations of the earth out of her carcass. Marduk goes on to become king, and later people are created to be slaves of the gods, because the gods don't want to do any work.

            It is a very strange story to our ears, but what it says is not so far from what many people today believe about the world. It says that life is random, chaotic and violent.  Sex is the center of life and its meaning. Human life is of little value, and our lives are determined by fate, by the movements of the stars and by spiritual forces we cannot know and that have no interest in us.

            Abraham meets the Lord God, who creates with purpose and order, who creates a world that is good and forms people in a special way, giving them dignity and value. Abraham meets the God of Genesis chapters 1 and 2, the God who desires to be in relationship with his people, the God who forms human relationships around marriage and family and builds a day of rest from labor into the rhythm of human existence. God creates the stars and places them in space, and they do not control our future. In the creation we see the hand of an artist, and the heart of one who loves his creation.

            God gave to his people a garden to live in, a place to be at home. Violence and conflict did not come from the nature of God, but from sin in people. Sin brought separation from God, loss of place, loss of brother, loss of trust.

            God meets the wandering family of Abraham, a family that carries with it some sin, some issues that will result in violence and deception and rape as the story continues, and God  promises blessing and calls for obedience. God chose a couple with no children to be the parents of a great nation. He chose wanderers to live in a Promised Land. He chose people with obvious moral defects to carry his promises and blessing.

            So Abraham believed God, and went where he was directed, and when he arrived in Canaan he built an altar. Before he settled down he worshiped God, the God he was just coming to know. He put his relationship with God first in his life. And Sarah went with him, even though she could not understand how this was all going to work.

            God promised Abraham that he will bless him. The blessing is first of all the relationship with God. Getting to know God would be a blessing to Abraham and his family because in that way they would change their view of the world and then they would change their lives. That will take generations, and this is where the Scripture begins to point to Christ, to a Savior, because Abraham and his family will not resolve it all themselves.

            When the Lord enters your life, when the Lord blesses you with salvation, your view of the world changes. A personal relationship of faith brings about a new view of the world. You do not just see chaos and suffering anymore. You see the love of God.

A few months ago I mentioned our friend Amy who works in a jail ministry in Washington. She felt called to begin a house for women who were getting out of jail, because she saw how difficult it is for inmates when they are released. So she got a house, and now several women live there, and she has been blessed by the number of people from churches who are helping her. One woman does all the grocery shopping, and pays special attention to the various dietary needs. Amy wrote that one of the residents, who is diabetic, recently opened the refrigerator and saw all the food that was specifically purchased for her. This woman said, "So this is what it feels like to be loved." She had never really seen or experienced love before. When the blessing of God comes into your life, you see the world differently; you experience life in a new way.

            Then the Lord says to Abraham, "You will be a blessing, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you." I felt it was a real privilege to be on the work team that went to Alaska. The people who live in the villages of Alaska are pretty much ignored by most of the world. They are on the margins; they are in a situation that can seem hopeless, especially to young people. The modern secular world seems quite willing to give them drugs and alcohol and R-rated movies and junk food, but not much else that gives them a place and a voice and a hope. But Alaska Christian College blesses them. It provides a place of safety. It offers Christian counsel and Bible instruction and education that provides a foundation for jobs and a place in society. To spend a week there is to feel blessed too. And we also felt we had been a blessing through the work that we did. We really did help them get ready for school and if we had not been there it would have added a significant burden to all they already have to do. That is how it works. To be a blessing is to be blessed. To be blessed leads to being a blessing. It does take faith. The call of God can feel impossible. But God wants to bless us. We must believe His Word, have faith and obey.

            The Lord's Table is a place of blessing, and a place of faith. We are invited to come. We are also called. Here there is healing and forgiveness. There is also the need for obedience. This is a place of security and safety. It is also the starting point for a faith journey. Come to the table.

            Amen.