Edit
| Previous
| Next
S1 1: Trust the Story
The Creation Story of Genesis 1
BEMA Episode Link: 1: Trust the Story
Episode Length: 51:00
Published Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2016 01:00:00 -0700
Session 1
About this episode:
Episode Length: 51:00
Published Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2016 01:00:00 -0700
Session 1
About this episode:
Marty Solomon and Brent Billings talk about the creation story in Genesis 1 and the foundation it lays for understanding the scriptural narrative correctly.
Trust the Story Presentation (PDF)
The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Join the BEMA Slack (I forgot to mention this!)
BEMA Discipleship — Subscribe (Recommended Apps)
Notes
*Note: The following notes are handwritten by me, Adam, and I reserve the right to be wrong.
- The creation story in Genesis 1.
- Everything will build on this lesson.
- Marty has been very influenced by Rob Bell’s first Everything Is Spiritual and this episode is HEAVILY influenced by that teaching.
- This G-d is a creator, a spirit, and word
- Genesis is a poem
- Samaria. mesopatamian, other cultures maybe
- Refrains refer to evening and morning
- Westerners speak about this backwards, morning and evening.
- “it was good”
- This poem might be about something different than what we have been taught it was about.
- Plants are created on day three BEFORE the sun is created on day four.
- Days are being measured before days can be determined by the son.
- This poem is certainly about creating but it’s also about resting
- Looking at day five, fish and birds go in the place that were created on day two. Days one and four correspond, two and five correspond, and three and six correspond.
- To the Jewish, a line is drawn down the middle and this is known as a chiasm OR a chiasmus.
- In the center of a chiasm, there is a treasure buried in the middle. A chiasm is a tool to lead a reading on a journey of discovery.
- Parralellisms are a similar tool to chiasms.
- Genesis 1 happens to be two chiasms in one.
- Paragraph sizes: small (day one), medium (day two), large (day three), large (day four), medium (day five), should be small (day six) if it weren’t for the creation of man. Paragraph size follows A B C C’ B’ A’
- Paragraph content follows A B C A’ B’ C’
- Days one and four
- Days two and five
- Days three and six
- This story is NOT about logic or a science report or how G-d created the world.
- It’s about something far wider/deeper: It’s about the nature of G-d, the nature of the world he created, and the nature of man.
- What patterns are there in the poem?
- If this is a poem, there should be a cadence and a rythm and numbers that jump out at you.
- There is a pattern of threes
- Three days that mirror three days
- Threeness of the creator: bara, spirit, word
- The word Bara, creator, appears three times (beginning, middle, end) and at the end when it appears, it appears three times in rapid fire.
- We would also look at seven days and expect there to be patterns of seven
- 7x1: The first verse in the Hebrew has seven words in it
- 7x2: The second verse in the Hebrew has fourteen words in it
- 7x3: The word earth appears twenty-one times in the poem
- 7x5: There are thirty-five words in the seventh verse
- 7x5: The word G-d is mentioned thirty-five times
- 7x1: “It was so” seven times in the poem
- 7x1: “G-d saw” seven times in the poem
- If we see patterns of three and patterns of seven, the logical question to ask is, “are there patterns of ten?”
- “to make” ten time
- “according to its kind” ten times
- “and G-d said” ten times
- Three times in reference to people
- Seven times in reference to creatures
- “and let there be” ten times
- Three times in reference to things in Heaven
- Seven times in reference to things on Earth
- This poem is FULL of patterns… it is NOT a scientific lab report.
- This chiasm points toward the center
- The center of the chiasm contains the treasure
- The chiasm begins with chaotic nothingness and the chiasm ends with G-d doing nothing–resting.
- The Hebrew word right in the middle of the chiasm is moad which can be translated as seasons.
- Moad is one of four words that we use to refer to Sabbath.
- This is what G-d refers to at the end of the poem and what he will call his people back to throughout the story.
- The reasons Sabbath is so important to the Jewish people is because the Bible begins with a huge poem about Shabbat.
- Why is moad the treasure?
- If we take this back to the people that wrote this story, we would be talking to the Hebrews after they had just come out of Egypt.
- The Hebrews did manual labor making bricks in slavery for 430 years.
- They had been told for hundreds of years that their value was wrapped up in manual labor and making bricks.
- If they cannot make bricks, they are not very valuable to the Egyptians.
- We all know what Egypt will do to your wives, sons, and daughters if you can no longer provide for Egypt.
- Hard labor was a very real hardship for the Hebrews.
- And so, the very first lesson, before anything else, G-d needs his people to know how to take a break.
- A break that will remind you that your value and worth does not come from what you are.
- God calls it good, “very good” after he creates man. Man is the crowning moment of G-ds good creation.
- He stops not because he needs to rest but because he knows there is nothing more he can do to make creation any better.
- Rabbi David Fohrman has influenced this teaching:
- The Mona Lisa and David: at one point Da Vinci and Michaelango respectively had to know that they were finished and one more brush stroke or one more chisel mark would ruin the painting or the scultpure.
- Westerners like to say that creation was “perfect” but perfection doesn’t even exist in the Hebrew mindset.
- It’s not that creation was perfect, it’s that creation was good.
- The evening and morning refrain is missing from the seventh day as if the author is hanging endlessly forever because G-d’s invitation to you and me is to trust the story.
- We westerners try so hard to be better, and work harder, and impress more people…
- God says, you need to know how to stop and just enjoy creation. There is nothing more that needs to be done. Just trust that creation, including you, is good.
- Just trust the story.
- The evening and morning refrain is weird but why is it weird?
- To Jews, their days begin in the evening.
- Why? Because the first thing that a Jew does is not production but resting.
- To Jews, their days begin in the evening.
- All of Genesis 1 is about rest. Period.
- The Solomon children will say about the Sabbath, “we rest. we play. no work. G-d loves us.”
- Jesus will say later in the narrative, “Man was not created for Sabbath but Sabbath was created for man.”
- Sabbath was a gift. A reminder that G-d loves us.
- Marty hates shaving his head and loves to make his bed.
- On Shabbat, he doesn’t shave his head and he doesn’t make his bed.
- Not shaving his head puts a smile on his face as he remembers “ah, i’m just loved.”
- Not making his bed, while it makes his cringe, reminds him that even when his life looks like that, he’s still loved.
- Sabbath should be a day that sets us free.
- If you’re not doing something that reminds you that you’re loved by G-d, you’re doing it wrong.
- This rest is both practical AND big picture, a posture that we carry with us.
- If I believe that G-d loves and cares about me, it shifts my mindset from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance.