And we are back.
Welcome back,
friends.
Interestingly, Clint, we are continuing on
with the same story,
but our chapter versus change,
which is an interesting little facet
of this first chapter,
second chapter story.
Yeah, I wish I knew the history of this.
There
is,
I think, no contention
that this first narrative,
this first creation story
goes through verse four of chapter two.
I don’t think, I mean, it’s clearly
a continuation of the story,
and yet when chapter and verse were added,
they somehow felt led to make this division
before the first story ends.
It is possible that that is an awareness
of the reality of two creation stories and an attempt
to not make them feel completely separate,
to kind of seam them together in some subtle way.
But I do not know the history of how it might have been.
But we’re clearly finishing the first story today.
The language is still the same.
It says, we jump in here at chapter two,
thus the heavens and the earth were finished
and all their multitude.
And on the seventh day,
God finished the work
that he had done,
and he rested on the seventh day
from all the work
that he had done.
So let’s just stop there for a minute.
The word rested here really kind of means
refrained or stopped,
didn’t continue.
So this is twofold.
This is an awareness that the work is finished,
that the project that God endeavored to do is done,
and that it is accomplished.
And of course,
looking back through the lens
of where this takes the rest of us
in the rest of the Old Testament,
this is an affirmation of rest.
This is an affirmation of disconnecting.
It is an affirmation of
having time
that is set aside and designated as time not to work,
but to intentionally withdraw oneself from the efforts.
So what is different about this story
than the days that we’ve had previous is here,
God doesn’t speak as God has done in these other cases.
And therefore,
the things that God had proclaimed,
day one,
two, three,
those things no longer are,
is there any work to be done on this day?
And we alluded to this yesterday.
I think it’s worth just pausing here
as we jump into this story,
is that fundamentally, God had enough of what God needed
to get done in six days that the leftover,
the seventh day, there needed to be nothing,
that God is powerful enough,
God is intentional enough,
and God plans enough
that the order that God makes is complete
in less than a full week.
That is the order process that’s interesting to the writer.
But to your point, Clint,
this is where we really discover
why this shouldn’t just be read as a scientific manual
or a blueprint for creation,
because here we begin to understand the spiritual lesson
that’s intended for us,
the reader.
As we come to it now, we recognize,
wait a minute,
this day-by-day process is reflective of a day-by-day life,
that in our own ordering of our own lives,
there’s supposed to be a rhythm.
We begin to recognize that this image of God business
that we had in day six,
this is now practical and intended to point us
to a different way of living in our own actual lives today.
So the point here is that we’re seeing in this story
not just sort of a building block blueprint
for the way that God made things,
we’re beginning to see that this has a spiritual impact
on the lives that we live and what God intends
for the life that we lived.
If we’re going to be the image bearers of God,
then we too should live our life in a kind of micro-rhythm
that reflects this eternal cosmic rhythm.
Right, so it is important that we understand
God is not resting because he is tired,
God is resting because he is content.
And the tellers of this story will connect that
with our own cyclical seasonal weekly rest.
Rest here is not just a break from work
or the product of fatigue,
rest is an intentional withdrawal,
an act of trust
that we can dedicate a day in the grace of God
and know that we don’t have to engage in work.
We do not have to engage in commerce,
we do not have to engage in subsistence
because God has provided for us.
And as we move to the very last verses of this,
I think we are easily reminded that this version
of the story is rightly called the priestly tradition.
I mean, who are the people who are going to care most
about the idea of Sabbath but the priests?
And so notice that as they bring the creation story to the pinnacle,
it actually includes creation certainly,
but the highest, where it ends, the last word they give
is the word of completion and the word of withdrawal.
So let’s continue here,
verse three.
So God blessed the seventh day.
We’ve seen God bless things.
Here God blesses the seventh day and hallowed it,
made it holy because on it,
God rested
from all the work he had done in creation.
These are the generations,
the account of the heavens and the earth
when they were created.
And so what a beautiful,
connectional piece to say
that what God did in creation has now been handed over to humans,
but what God did in the aftermath of creation,
a holy rest, a sacred withdrawal has also been passed on
to humans and that humans are to continue to practice it
in the form of what will come to call Sabbath.
But here the promise that that day is holy.
And so there is not only a sacredness to creation,
even to the rhythm of the weekly life
that the humans now lead,
there is a sacredness and a holiness.
Yeah, I think this wording here is really important
that God blesses the seventh day and he hallows it
because on it God rested from all the work that he had done.
This is so critical, this idea that
God makes it holy,
not because God waved a wand
or because God made a proclamation,
because God rested therefore this day is a day of rest.
God made it sacred by God’s action on that day.
And notice that God doesn’t declare this day very good.
The last thing that’s gonna be called,
it was good, good, good, good, good, and then we get to humanity,
we have very good.
Now we come to God blesses and hollows this day
when God does not work.
There’s no proclamation needed here.
It’s merely God’s presence,
that’s not the right word, not merely,
it is the vastness of God’s presence
and because of that vastness,
because of that sovereignty,
power, creative strength,
therefore what God does on this day
becomes the thing that hollows it,
the thing that makes it holy.
And so this sort of continuing blessing,
this promise that you speak of here,
Clint, this idea that we now live into the process
and the life of what God shows us on the seventh day,
it creates this new kind of interpretive window
that now our next creation story is going to,
envelop and fit into,
but it’s already setting us up for chapter three also,
’cause notice this idea that God rests,
God has done this creative work,
now it’s starting to spin under its own strength.
God has ordered it, now it’s moving.
And so the next thing we’re gonna discover
is the disordering that happens
when humans step outside of the pattern
and ordering of God’s intention.
And this is, I think, what makes this so powerful
is that we see from the very start,
not just this sort of created order,
that’s once again the biological,
astronomical things that interest us,
but we see God’s
spiritual order, God’s intention that this blessing might remain so much so
that the kind of peace that we saw imagined yesterday
might be the kind of thing that could just be appreciated,
that humans could just live in a world
where that blessing was something that we knew,
but then of course we know how such of a short half-life
this is gonna have in the end.
It’s really fascinating.
Tomorrow, as we get into this second account,
you will find right away that it is much more relational,
it is much more earthy,
it is less systemic,
it’s less categorized,
it is told with less point A to B,
it’s a looser telling.
In this first story,
notice that God has really had no interaction with people.
In fact,
the one exception,
or at least the one movement toward an exception in that,
is the hollowing of that day.
God leaves man and woman,
not only with the call to be fruitful and multiply
and work and caretake
and have stewardship over creation,
but with this idea that there is a holiness,
there is a cyclical holiness,
there is a day on which to participate in rest
is to honor the sacredness of the one who created.
And notice on the seventh day,
on every other day,
God has created by speaking.
Here God creates by withdrawing.
God creates by doing nothing.
God creates rest by not naming it,
but by intentionally creating a space
within the rest of the world
where one can encounter sacredness and holiness.
It’s a very different way to get there.
The second story that’s much more apparent,
there’s a very straight line between God and people.
Here it is more inferred,
and it is hinted at in ways that I think are expanded on
and made much more clear as we move into tomorrow’s story.
Just very briefly, this is the kind of thing
that we miss reading the Bible in English
and not its original language.
It’s a thing that commentary points out here,
and I think it’s just worth noting,
that these are some of the things that add
some of the real,
interesting, sort of thought-provoking moves to Scripture.
So this word that we have here,
where it says God created the world,
that word gets used again in the Hebrew
when God makes the animal skin clothing for Adam and Eve.
And so it’s a beautiful kind of connection
where here God is finishing the good,
very good, perfect creation of this world,
and God will only begin taking up creating again
when he starts reordering that world
to accommodate the sinfulness of the people
that live within it.
So it’s a small thing,
but it’s these kinds of things that I think
point us to how deeply intertwined these texts are.
The people who have cherished this,
who have handed this down to us,
the people who have curated and edited
and given us these Scriptures
have thought very deeply about how these things connect,
and I think it’s things like that
that are interesting to point out.
Yeah, if you all have questions about this first story,
please drop them in the comments or send us an email,
give us a call,
let us know so that we can address them
the best that we’re able.
Otherwise, tomorrow when you join us,
we will move into what many Bibles call
another account of creation.
It’s the second version of the creation story
we have in Scripture,
and I think you’ll find it.
It’s probably in some ways,
it’s the story you think of
when you think of the creation narrative.
There are parts of it that you
probably subconsciously carry with you.
Most of us have mushed in our mind,
we’ve mashed these two stories together in some way,
but there will be pieces of this that you clearly know,
and it will be interesting to see the contrast.
Thanks for being with us, everybody.
Take care.