Each week I have the job of looking at the upcoming Sunday worship services and choosing songs that will bring it all together. Setting the tone for people walking in (many for the first time), songs of praise, prayer, worship, participation, instruction, lamentation, comfort, and joyful fun. Songs to stir the emotions and imaginations and set up the teaching. Not every week has every element, of course. Ever wonder what some of my personal guidelines might be? I’m so glad you asked. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Ancient’
Ever Wonder What Thoughts Go Into Our Setlist?
Bible Study - A Promise Kept
“these things happened as examples for us so that we would not choose evil as they did”.
My friend Frank makes fun of my bible study beginning in Genesis . On asking, “Where else?”, believe it or not he suggested Deuteronomy! I will leave that for another day.
Bible Study - What is this you have done?
Once again there is a lot revealed to us in these verses. I have a bias, I know , yet I find these verses so deep I can be comforted by them at any and every point of my emotional life. Because both the promise and the predicament - and the depth and power of both - is reveled to us in just the first 3 chapters of this book. We have seen that God created us good, indeed very good, and we have seen how God wished to walk with us in the garden of evening. We were to stroll with God among the creation that he gave us. Somehow, and this really is a mystery, all of that promise was undone by one question, “Did God really say?” Once this disaster comes to light God makes known quickly and clearly the implications of mankind’s foolishness.
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.15 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.”16 To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
So much for Eden, it is gone now. I mentioned in my last post the first word is to the evil one. God says, to the serpent, you shall not win the day. But this battle in Genesis Chapter 3, as far as man is concerned, is lost. Woman is condemned to pain in childbirth and man to a life of toil. If there was a moment when we were not materialistic, not driven by work and consumption it was a moment in Eden that has now passed. From this point onwards we move from innocents who strolled naked at the side of God to workers and consumers who subdue the earth and make a living only by the sweat and toil.
Instead, we are banished from the place of peace and certainty and sent out into the world. We have to make our own way now. God does not walk at our side, behind us angels guard the gate to Eden, and we know for sure that the way back to Eden will not be simple nor will it be without cost. Blood will be spilt or we will remain outside for ever.
It is a dark story with little in the form of light to give a shadow of the hope to come. Only when God warns the serpent that one will come to crush him to we get any glimpse that all will be well. But even as yet we cast lonely shadows that stretch back to Eden as we walk East into the rising sun. Maybe that sun is also God’s promise of a new day and a new way back to Eden. In the rest of Genesis we will begin to see that journey unfolding.
God help us to recognise that we are outside of your care and your purpose. Eden is gone yet we long to be home. We are the prodigal. Strengthen us that we may lay hold of our Saviour Jesus and claim the life he so perfectly offers us. Allow us to live for His glory, allow us again to walk in Eden.
“Where are you?” …..
I chose Genesis for a different reason than my colleague Franks suggests. He thinks I am just not creative enough to think past the 1st book. There might be something in that, but he’s wrong. When someone asks me describe Christianity or maybe ask for some kind of summary of our beliefs I end up at the first three chapters of Genesis. They are first, but more importantly, within them is a world view that encompasses almost everything we need to know about the story of God’s ultimate love for his creation.
Take our verses today.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.15 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.”
Unpacking these verses would take a lifetime. I know I have been thinking about them for a long time. But I am going to point you to just three places where the curtain is drawn back and we see into the heart of God and the heart of man.
First of all, if we read carefully, we can see that God desires to have a warm and loving relationship with us. What could speak more fluently of this desire than the thought of taking a walk with God “in the cool of the evening breeze”. Being in Eden was like that and has not been that way since. Once we have seen this fact then the sheer sadness of God calling out to Adam, “where are you?” hits home. It is from this God of grace that we hid, hiding behind our fig leaves thinking that this would somehow shelter us. But still, remember, what God wanted then and wants now, in other words what God’s purpose for us is revealed to be, is that we would walk with him.
Secondly, we can see the heart of our own sin and the picture of our response. It is child like when both Adam and Eve say “it was not me”. Like their offspring our first parents did not accept their own sinfulness but instead looked for every excuse they could to avoid the inevitable. Alcoholics Anonymous tell us that the first step in the road to liberation from alcohol is to admit one’s addiction. Adam and Eve have a way a journey to travel before they can admit their own sinfulness. It will quickly unfold of course just how tragic a mistake they have made. But that will next week’s study.
Thirdly, when faced with this tragedy, what does God do? First of all he does not wipe man the face of the earth. God is not like the child who when the Lego tower falls decides to crush and destroy the bricks. God decides to make the whole thing new again. The fullness of what God does will be the story which unfolds in the whole Bible story but in the meantime those earth shattering events are foretold in a few key phrases here. And the first word is to the serpent. It is as if God immediately has to be clear to all - evil will not win the day. Yes there will be consequences, yes this is a tragedy but the creation of God will not be thwarted.
Maybe that’s a good place to leave Genesis for the moment. It is a good thought to keep close to us. When God is faced with our foolish choices and broken promises of goodness his response is that evil will not triumph and that his will be done.
God help us to see that you are working tirelessly in our broken lives, healing them by your grace and making them fit again for Eden. Amen
Bible Study - It was good to eat …..
The story of Genesis turns darker now as we leave behind the beauty and innocence of Eden and enter the world shaped by the serpent. We left man and woman naked and unafraid. In other words, they knew themselves and knew their environment and were unafraid. Nothing in their world was a threat, nothing in their world disturbed their peace.
Except for the serpent. Where did he come from, how did he enter this perfect world? Was all this in God’s ultimate plan? I don’t know and I am not sure anybody does (other than God). What we are certain of is that this represents a turning point in our story, from this point forward nothing will be the same. We can wonder at the simplicity of it, a simple question undoes the work of the almighty God, “Did God really say ………..?”
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.
I said at the start of the study, it matters not whether the serpent spoke, it matters more what he said. It is a wonder to me that such a simple question undoes all the work of God, “Did God really say ……. ?” It seems insane that we would risk such wonder and peace. And for what, an apple? No, much more than an apple, to be like God. At the heart of our fall is our inability to be the creature and our desire to be the creator. In so many crimes the real issue is power, who has it, who does not. And in the first crime we were ill-content with our position as the apex of the creation we wanted to share the stage with the creator. We wanted power, we wanted position, we wanted it all.
And what did this achieve? This grasping after God revealed to us that we were not the great creator of the universe we were in stead small naked beings who would need coverings when faced with real power, real holiness, real and true righteousness. We ate the apple and found that it made us not more like God the creator but more like the creatures we were. At the end of chapter two man and woman seemed to be chisiled from marble like Greek sculptures, images of perfection. A mere seven verses later in our story we are a small people wondering about our place in the world. How the mighty have fallen.
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ help us to see that we are a small people, weak and destitute now that we have chosen our way. Help us back to the path towards Eden and peace with you. Have mercy on us Oh Lord. Amen.