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Text: Hebrews 1:1 “First, God. God is the subject of life. God is foundational for living. If we don’t have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right, get life right, get our lives right. Not God at the margins; not God as an option; not God on the weekends. God at center and circumference; God first and last: God, God, God”. Eugene Peterson [Message: Intro to Genesis] ● We discover who we are by the stories we tell (or, the stories that are told to us); essentially, we are the stories we tell. Stories ‘place’ us; they locate us in a specific time, interacting with certain people. Stories ‘shape’ us; they provide the context in which we ask such questions as: “Who am I?”, “Where am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “What happened?” How you answer those basic questions will determine your interpretation of life. ● I have discovered that stories are not necessarily meant to be proved or disproved: they are simply to be believed or rejected. One of the rubs against Christianity is that we deal in ‘story’, and the real world deals in ‘facts’. The truth is, even the facts are subject to interpretation. So, the contrast is not between ‘faith and reason’, but ‘faith against faith’ (which story are you believing?) ● That’s why story is simply ‘offered to us’; to enter, believe, live in and tell again. Or, to reject and come up with our own story. Admittedly, this is our tendency. ● The first few verses of Hebrews highlight God’s pursuit of humanity and the myriad attempts at getting our attention. And, it’s not that we didn’t notice, it’s just that there were too many distractions; other stories being told. ● The author of Hebrews seems to focus his attention on some central characters/events which help to establish the storyline. I believe it’s this story, told and understood in a cohesive way, which will allow you to make sense of your life. God… creation… sin… the Son of God (Jesus)… us (Israel/us)… covenant… ‘something better’. ● “A long time ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors…” Okay, admittedly, we’re slow learners! God had, for some time, been offering humanity glimpses of who he was. Glimpses, not just out of a desire to ‘conceal himself’, but out of necessity- due to our limited ability to grasp what was being offered. Needless to say, those glimpses offered were most often misunderstood or, for some reason, caused us to reach inaccurate conclusions about God; developing ‘false images’. The story is told to clear up those misconceptions. ● “A long time ago…(what a great way to start a story) God”. The story, as we will discover, begins and ends with God (God, God, God). It establishes the primacy of God. It suggests that what you are about to read is the story of God: who he is, what he loves (what he hates), what is he up to? Virtually everything hinges on God. ● To start anywhere else would be to tell a different story. Without God at ‘beginning’, the story loses uniqueness; it loses direction; it loses the plot; it has nothing to build upon. To the ancients, the question on everyone’s mind was not,“How did this happen?”, but “Who’s responsible?” ● Our story begins in Genesis with “in the beginning, “God” (Genesis 1:1). God acting; God inter-acting; God speaking- offering us glimpses, letting us in on what was previously ‘unseen’. “In the beginning” also points to an “end”; it sets in motion a series of events which move toward a specific end. There is no lengthy explanation as to God’s origins, just ‘in the beginning’; he was; he is. ● It is most widely accepted that the story is originally being addressed to a people gathered at the base of Mt. Sinai. A people ecstatic over this dramatic deliverance from their bondage in Egypt, but overwhelmed by a feeling of ‘What now?’ ● They had just left Egypt, a polytheistic culture (with a god for every place, day of the week and outfit you chose! Pharaoh was a god, the Nile River was a god, etc.), and were venturing toward Palestine, not surprisingly, another many-godded culture! Many gods… many stories (interpretations of life). To hear the story is to hear it against this backdrop. God wanted this newly freed group of people to be confident that there was only one ‘real’ God, and he was him/it?! He was not to be understood as the real God amongst many competing deities, but the one true God amongst mere idols. “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery. You must not have any other god but me” (Exodus 20:2-3). ● There was no shortage of explanations for the world, but it was this story that the Israelites told which separated them from all the other stories being told in the Near East. One Egyptian creation-myth goes like this… The ancient world included two divine beings, one male (Apsu)and one female (Tiamet). They were believed to be the father and mother of all gods. As all ‘young married gods’ do, they had children who, naturally, grew up to gods too! [actually, almost everything that happened was a result of the gods having sex]. And, as is common with most young married gods trying to raise a cosmic family, quarrels would break out. At one particular point, fighting erupted between the children and their father. The male/father god (Apsu) was killed and fighting broke out between the female/mother god (Tiamet) and her kids. One of her kids, Marduk (the god of Babylonia) was believed to be the creator of the universe and humankind. He rose to such prominence that he had over (50) titles; eventually, he was simply called ‘Bel’ (Lord) (Isaiah 46:1; Jeremiah 50:2, 51:44). The result of the family’s disputes? Marduk kills the mother god and portions her dead body creating the ‘world’. And they all lived dysfunctionally ever-after! ● So, creation was essentially the product of the violent end of some cosmic family squabble! Created things were personalized as divine beings (i.e. astrology: planets were divine beings) [Romans 1 “worship of created things rather than he Creator”]. ● The universe was believed to be in a constant struggle between ‘chaos’ and ‘order’. If the god’s were appeased, one could expect relative normalcy; but, it all depends on how they are getting along! “Would it help you to know that your God has no rival? No co-equal? That he’s not in the throes of some cosmic battle with chaos? And, might it help you to know that he is not only powerful, but he is good?” “Would it help you to know that your God is thoughtful and intentional? That not only you, but the place you live (earth) has been designed especially for you? Would it bring comfort to know that life is not random, fatalistic, or out of control? That God is not subject to any coercion or manipulation? [he’s doesn’t imitate us; we are to imitate him]. That God actually does his best work in chaos? [that ‘out of the chaos’, God brings order]
Would it help you to know
that you need not wonder if God is aware of you; that you need not perform to
get his attention? That you bring him pleasure? |
