Genesis 2:4-25 WHO ARE YOU?

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

If I gave you a pad of paper and five minutes, it's be interesting to see what sort of answers we'd come up with. Why are you here? Because God willed that I should read blogs? Good Calvinist answer. Because it appeared in my in-box? Good honest answer! But if we moved onto the who-are-you question, things get a little harder. It's not as easy for some people to define who they are.
This is one of the most important unanswered questions for so many people today. That fact that they remain unanswered questions goes some way to explaining why there is a massive statistical blip in fatal single-vehicle car accidents involving men between 17-25.

Why cutting and self-harm is such a feature of the culture of young women between 14-25.

Why successful men and women turn to unfaithful sex and excessive alcohol.

Why kids join gangs and do whatever it takes in the hope of forging an identity with this new-found family.
Who are you?
Why are you here?
Simply lacking an answer can have a devastating effect on people.

John Calvin said it really well – “Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”1
We need to have a knowledge of God before we can begin to understand ourselves – but just as importantly we need to have a knowledge of ourselves so that we can see our place in God's world and in God's great heart.

We need to understand something of God's holy justice and righteousness before we can understand why He cannot and will not tolerate our sin.
We need to get a grip on how much God loves us to understand how hurtful that sin is to him. And we need to understand our place in his heart and our own helplessness in sin before we can understand how painful and expensive grace is to God the Father...

We need a knowledge of God to begin to understand ourselves. And we seriously need to have a knowledge of ourselves if we're going to understand God better.
I think we need to hang on tightly to that thought when we read Genesis 1-3.

Genesis 1 gives us some knowledge of God. We see God exercise His power, His authority, his creativity. We saw that last week. There's no chaos, there's nothing random. You are not an accident – he made it all, he controls it all.
Genesis 2 gives us some knowledge of ourselves – as we should be. This is one of the very few places where we see man and woman exactly as they were made by God – sinless, blameless, walking with no barrier between man and woman, no barrier between man and God. Naked, not ashamed. We get to learn some things about what we were supposed to be.

Genesis 3 is where we learn about God and man when evil, temptation, sin and separation rip up the picture. It's where we learn how we blew it all to hell.

Genesis 2, however, hides in a bit of a valley between the mighty picture of creation in Chapter 1 and the blackness of sin's presence in Chapter 3. But it should be looked at on its own terms. Let's go to chapter 2v 4.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up - for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground - then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
For me, this is one of the most beautiful images that I've ever read. It's all virgin land, it's well-watered, even though there's no rain. And God descends upon His newly created earth, stoops low and scoops, moulds and forms with His hands... a human. Back in Chapter 1 we see a change in God's language – instead of let there be..., He says let Us make.... And here He makes.
He formed the man of the dust from the ground. And then God does the most extraordinary thing. He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life... and the man became a living creature. Not like mouth-to-mouth, from one equal to another. This is how you resuscitate a tiny baby... breathe into the nostrils. This is a really tender picture. Man's first-ever breath was the breath of God. The word for breath – ruach in the Hebrew, pneuma in the Greek – is exactly the same word for Spirit. Man's first breath is the Spirit of the Living God.

Think about the sense of smell for a second. Smell is the unsung gift, the unsung sense. It is the sense most keyed to our memory. A baby instinctively bonds – and knows – its mother and father by smell.

My dad has been fixing aircraft all of my life. He'd come home from work, reeking of burnt jet-fuel and hot oil and metal and hydraulic oil... and there's something in that smell that still – all these years later – still stirs me, subconsciously but physically stirs my heart. If I have to drive any of you to the airport, you'll see me do it. I'll wind down the window and get great lungfuls of the air. It makes my heart feel good – that smell of my father still has an effect. Took me ages to work that one out – I just thought I was a mad pyro with a thing for kerosene – but the smell of my father still has an effect.

And with this strange and beautiful act, the first thing that Man ever smelled was the breath – the Spirit – of the Living God. Man is born by the breath of God. And when we read this, our memory should be doing a little tap-dance now...
Flesh gives birth to flesh but Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying You must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is blowing. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.2

Wow. Every time I read it. Wow... Our first birth was when God first filled our lungs – and our being – with His breath, His pneuma, His Spirit, and we became living beings. We must be born again... no longer dead in sin but alive – brought back to life, resuscitated like that tiny baby – in Christ, by the Spirit, to God's great glory. Wow.

Genesis 2 tells us about us. We are most highly treasured in God's heart. We are made – fearfully and wonderfully made,2

and the breath of the Almighty has given us life. Who are you? Nothing less than that. Nothing less than that.
This is how God loves the world, Jesus says to Nicodemus. He sent His only Son... on a rescue mission that would see His only Son murdered, butchered, slaughtered... so that whoever believes in him will not perish.. Don't ever, ever forget that. That's how much God loves you. We are made – fearfully and wonderfully made, and the breath of the Almighty has given us life.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.4
God has already made plants and animals, but for His most precious creation He plants a garden. He does the ultimate Backyard Blitz, and gathers together such a collection of botanical wonder... not just to provide this human with physical provision to keep him nourished and alive, but to please the man. Not just in taste and smell, either - pleasant to the sight and good for food. How strange. I never noticed that before – pleasant to the sight. He didn't make it just for His own pleasure, but for the man's pleasure as well! He designed us to... be pleased, to be able to be happy, to be content, to be stimulated by beauty. I wouldn't have ever thought of that.
But it makes sense, doesn't it? One of the things that I love about being a daddy is when Fiona and I do something (make a wading pool, build a bike, set up the Christmas tree – whatever) and then stand back and let the kids just discover. Their faces tell enough of the story... and watching them totally encompassed in that wheeee!!! kind of joy is priceless. Is that how God feels when we enjoy His goodness? Wow...

Who are you?

Why are you here?

We're here to enjoy every good thing that God has willingly, gladly, generously given us. God has given us the ability to feel happiness, to love beautiful things, to taste and go WOW, to smell and to smile. God's master plan was for us to be a happy people, and to KNOW that we're happy. And that our outrageous happiness brings a pleasure to His heart.

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of tat land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It os the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
We get a little geography lesson here. There are two familiar names, the Tigris and the Euphrates. They both, of course, flow through Iraq – Baghdad is built right over the Euphrates. Doesn't look much like Eden now, does it? What a strange, bitter irony that these two rivers of the Paradise would later be the rivers of Babylon, where the children of God's covenant promise would weep for the memory of a promised home.

The Tigris starts up in the Ararat Ranges, the Euphrates flows through Turkey and Syria before it gets to Iraq. So what's this about the four rivers coming from a common source? And where are the other two rivers? The Pishon and the Gihon are lost to us – either metaphorically or physically, or both. There are lots of opinions in lots of commentaries, but the truth is, we don't know.

What we do know is what we see, and what we're told. We get a reminder that it's not just Eden where the goodness is – nothing has spoiled creation yet, so we get the geographic reminders that there's good gold and onyx and bdellium (a kind of resin related to myrrh). These are all very valuable trading commodities in the Ancient Near East. There are things of great value outside Eden too. Four rivers going out from Eden, downstream of the trees of righteousness, going out into the whole world. And – that said – there's the sad, wistful reminder that we'll never find Eden until there is a new heaven and a new earth; Eden is lost to us.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.7
Before there was sin, before there was labour, before there was slavery and bosses and exploitation and mortgages to repay... there was work. There's an enduring image of Eden being some sort of luxury nudist retreat for people with access to a lot of hair-conditioner. And that is a fiction. Adam gets his hands dirty – but that's okay, because so did his Creator. God makes the earth, God comes to earth, God makes Adam out of the earth, Adam works the earth – he tends it and takes care of it. Remember verse 5? We had a hint – no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain and there was no man to work the ground... The language is actually quite agricultural: fields, work it & keep it – tend and keep would be closer translations. So what does this say?
Adam worked – not for food, because all the best food in the world was at his fingertips; the Lord had surrounded him with food.

Not as God's slave – the God who made the universe and made Adam and made the Garden of Eden for Adam's pleasure doesn't need anything that man can make by work.

Not for a wage, not to repay a debt to his Creator... God gave Adam authority, responsibility and satisfaction. And that's an odd one to talk about, because our society's idea of Paradise is sitting on a cloud eating Philly cheese, or lying on a beach at Surfers... but, either way doing absolutely nothing.
I like mowing the lawn. I love the lawn-mowing etiquette here, too. (I was a bit concerned how early was too early to fire up the Victa – but I figured when the neighbor across started in with an angle-grinder, I was probably right to go...) I'm not a huge fan of having grass being blown up my nose and sneezing like the dickens, or stone-chips whacking me on the shin. But there's a pleasure, a satisfaction, a good feeling inside when I switch the mower off, have a short shower and a long icy-cold bath... then go back outside with a cup of tea and go aaahhh! Watching the birds come and eat, smell the new-mown smell. There's satisfaction in work that we're not remunerated for. Sometimes it's something physical, sometimes it's donating time to help a neighbor or a good cause... and that satisfaction is a gift from God. God's now given Adam authority, responsibility and satisfaction.
The curse that we'll see in Chapter 3 wasn't being made to work. The curse wasn't being turned out of a five-hundred-star lazy-town resort. The curse wasn't being made to work. Adam was a worker from the start. The curse was having to survive by his labour – which we'll see clearly in Chapter 3 – not the work itself. God wanted Adam to be a fulfilled, content, satisfied man.

Almost all of the unemployed people that I've talked to in the last couple of years would give pretty well anything to get employment, and not just for the money. I suspect that one of Satan's dirty tricks is to keep some people from being fulfilled, content and satisfied by denying them the opportunity to work. There's something to think about next time you find yourself muttering about the unemployed.

Who are you?

Why are you here?
We are made – fearfully and wonderfully made, and the breath of the Almighty has given us life. Nothing less than that.
We have been made in God's image, in God's great pleasure to enjoy – to enjoy the good things that God has been so pleased to make for us.
Do we feel like we're getting some answers to these two big questions?
Okay. Last stop.

Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.' Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of he heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whateverthe man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not a helper fit for him.8

Last week we saw that at the end of each phase of his creation, God looked and declared that it was good. 1V4, the light was good. V10, land and sea was good. V12, the veggies were good. V18, sun and moon – good. Birds & fish & animals & creeping things – good, At the end of the sixth day, v31 – VERY good.
So what's this? 2v18 It is not good... It sounds out-of-place, doesn't it? What went wrong? I've made enough things from beds to bikes to rebuilding 747 engines. You follow the instructions, you stop every now and again and check it and say “OK – that's good.” Then you finish, look at it and say very good. Then you find seven bolts, a packet of washers some weird springy things that you swear you've never seen before... you look at the instructions, look at the engine and say, “oh. Not good.”

What had God left behind? What did he skip in the IKEA make-a-world kit?
It is not good that the man should be alone. I think that God is signalling very loudly that he hasn't finished yet. He declared things good in chapter 1 when they're completed – and when it's ALL finished, it's very good.
But at this point, it's not all finished, is it? There's all the plants and creepy-crawly swarmy things, birds, and beasts – all being paraded before Adam, and Adam having to come up with names for them all...
Note that carefully, by the way. That's the first demonstration that God meant it when he gave man dominion over the creatures. We saw it last week – God naming Day, Sky, Sea, Earth, because he had the authority to give things names. He bestows that authority to Adam, and Adam begins to take up that responsibility that God has laid on him.
After he's seen all the animals there is to see, there is still no animal that is a fit companion, no animal suitable as a helper – no animal to match Adam, the human that has been hand-crafted in the image of God and filled with the Spirit.
I think it's a mistake to read it & think that what God does next is... some kind of filling-in a gap in his plan, of God scratching his head & saying, 'I should really do something about that.' No. Adam has just seen how unique he is in God's plan, in his own design, in the authority given to him alone, and now he knows it.
I think that it's also a mistake to think that Adam as getting lonely or bored or in any way dissatisfied. I don't think Adam was going up to God, saying “that porcupine I tried to hug – it's not working out so good. Worse than the jellyfish...”

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of the ribs and closed up the place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

He brought her to the man. Not an afterthought, not an improvement on the original design (despite what the funny emails say). Not made from the clay that Adam's walked on, but made from Adam. Made from the bones that hold his heart. Shaped, like Adam, by the hands of God. And He brought her to the man. Who gives this bride away?
And the man knows instantly who she is, where she has come from, and the words are of such longing fulfilled; This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!
At last! One flesh! One flesh – it's not a yucky kind of morph, it's not a euphemism for sex, it's completion. Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. The two become one flesh. It's completion, it's fulfilment, it's the delight of God to give his most precious creatures this happiness beyond expectation and experience... but such a perfect creation that Adam knows her straight away.

Who are you?
Why are you here?
We are made – fearfully and wonderfully made, and the breath of the Almighty has given us life. Nothing less than that.
We have been made in God's image, in God's great pleasure to enjoy – to enjoy the good things that God has been so pleased to make for us. We have been made to revel in His creation, in His company. There's that great cliché that we're made for relationships, but it's absolutely true – we are! We're made for a relationship with God, we're made for a relationship with each other, we're made for one unbelievably special relationship with another human being.

Genesis Two is a glittering gem. Remember kaleidescopes? I always wanted to get inside it and be surrounded by it all, I wanted to live in a kaleidescope. I was a strange kid... but this is our kaleidescope. I want to live in Genesis Two, I want to go there, I want to stay there. But I can't, can I? Something happened that resulted in Eden being hidden from us. Eden's gone. We'll deal with that next week.
Here, we get a picture of God creating perfection. One day at the end of days, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and they will be made perfect, and those whom Jesus rescued will be with him, praising God for ever and ever. This earth has still got so much beauty, but it is so tainted, so poisoned that it's hard even to hold the image of Eden in our minds without a little bit of cynicism “It can't be that good” “What's the catch?” It is that good. There is no catch. This is what God intended all along, and this is what he wanted us to be, and this is what he WANTS us to be.

I want it.

I keep hearing that phrase “the church is the bride of Christ” and now I finally see its intimacy! Bone of his bone. Flesh of his flesh. Brought to Christ by God, and enjoying each other forever in the love of the Father.

That's who I am.

That's why I'm here. Genesis 2 is where God tells us about us – and it's a love song.

And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.

All Scripture taken from the E.S.V. - the one my church lovingly calls the Eastern Suburbs Version.
1 John Calvin; Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.i.1
2 Psalm 139:14

3 John 3:6-8

4 Genesis 2:8-9

5

6
7 Genesis 2:15

8 Genesis 2:18-20

Photo taken from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTwLCtHDmKjp6_Xh8av3_oPSvPKJWGQ6LRheCghM6lITfqj2v9I7xDCCj_CjE1oV30Un9LQ40t0reXBgcBdgH_dMjzSo8y105-DGUeE1Wsmp42LR6_EmWZDlZVT9yA1xPeXU5bzhjRTw/s1600-h/Lonely.jpg

Mark 4 Mission: Impossible

Mission Impossible. It’s a good phrase, even if the movies were all pretty confusing. I saw the first two, and I honestly couldn’t tell you what happened. The original TV series was really a lie… of course they weren’t impossible missions; the good guys completed the missions, the missions were just hard enough to be over in time for tea, and that there were enough gadgets in the cupboard to overcome the opposition. So really, if I’m paying attention to the movies, there’s no such thing as Mission Impossible. There’s Mission Difficult, Mission Expensive, an awful lot of Mission Unfeasable, one or two hundred Mission Stupid and 3 Missions That Require Tom Cruise Or We’d Simply Lose Interest.

One thing that we get taught in the movies is that nothing is impossible. We don’t even have the expectation of an impossible mission. We know the ending, we just want to know HOW it’ll get done. If you sweat hard enough, pull faces and show off your perfect teeth, have a hard-enough body… you can do anything. If you’ve had a massive car crash, you can still run like a maniac, correctly dial a number on a [product placement] iPhone, and use a pistol. Fall through the roof of a building while having a fight? No problem. I slipped in a bath a few years ago and I nearly snapped my leg in half. Obviously I’m not buff enough, because instead of wrestling my bath with my bare hands and throwing it clear through a wall, I just… fell over and clutched my leg like the wuss that I am. I howled – it hurt! It hurt for a few days! My wife asked me if I was alright, and then she laughed when she thought I couldn’t hear!

I like the real Mission Impossible stuff that I find in the Bible. Things that are absolutely impossible in real life. Things that Hollywood won’t touch, because they’re just so unbelievable.
Mission Impossible for a man named Gideon – he is given the task, by God, of gathering an army to defeat the Midianites. He raises an available army of 32,000 men, going up against an army that is evidently much, much larger. God says to Gideon - “Your army is too big.” Now we know that Israel is probably outnumbered here, because Gideon turns to his army and says “if you're scared... go home.” Twenty-two thousand people ran away. Basically a Super-Dome full of people did the bolt. Gideon is down to ten thousand men, God says to Gideon - “Your army is too big.” Gideon reduces the number of people in his army from ten thousand to three hundred – the details are in Judges 7 – before God is happy with the numbers. Three hundred soldiers. At a squeeze, we can get three hundred people into this building. So – have a look around. You’re up to fight a sellout crowd at the Olympic Stadium. And it’s full of angry Bulldogs supporters.

The story gets even stranger. As Judges chapter 7 unfolds, we see the army of not only Midian, but also the Amalekites – and all the people of the East lay along the valley like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number.[1]

Anybody seen the movie 300? Having 300 soldiers set against a mighty army looked fantastic, didn’t it? Here’s Gideon’s army (a thousand years before the Battle of Thermopylae) – swords and shields at the ready? Here’s what they faced the enemy with… left hand holding a clay jar with a candle inside, and the right hand holding a trumpet. How would the movie look now? Gerard Butler passing out candles and musical instruments, like it was Carols in the Park! Now does it look like Mission Impossible?

We know how the story ends, don’t we? Question – did Gideon complete his Mission Impossible?
Did Gideon defeat the Midianites and the Amalekites and all those camels? No – Judges 7 makes it clear, over and over again, that the Lord alone would have the credit here. The enemy literally chopped itself to destruction, and only when the remnant fled did Israel give chase with weapons.
Sometimes we know the story so well that we miss the Mission Impossible. We remember the story, but we miss the workings of God.
We remember the story, but we miss the workings of God.

I wonder sometimes if we take this attitude with Jesus, with his Gospel, his euaggelion, his Good Message. I wonder if we acknowledge that yes, his mission was a Mission Impossible – but because we know the end of the story so well, we again miss the workings of God.

How do we see Jesus’ early ministry? How do we consider the first year or two of Jesus’ teaching and preaching? I think what often comes to mind is the series of miracles – some spectacularly public, some quiet and intensely private.
I think what often comes to mind is the series of brilliant teachings – Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, Luke 6, John 3 – being born again, Nicodemus, John 3:16.
We often see the high points – and that’s good, because they really are high points. But what we can do is miss how much of a Mission Impossible it was.
· Matthew 8:34 And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him they begged him to leave their region.
· Matthew 12:14 But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.
· Mark 3:6 The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
· Mark 3:21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”
· Luke 4:29 And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.
· John 5:18 This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him
· John 7:20-21 “Why do you seek to kill me?” The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?”
· John 7:25 Some of the people in Jerusalem therefore said, “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?”
· John 10:33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”


Here’s a mission, should you choose to accept it.

Go to a place, as a missionary. Tell people that you are the one that the great prophets spoke about. Tell people that the Bible was written specifically to point the way to you. Tell people that you are THE way, THE truth, THE life. And just to make it all the harder, tell all this to a people who know their Bibles inside out, firmly believe that they are doing the right thing by God, are very wary of false teaching, and have a very real sense of how wrong it would be to take the name and the Word of the Lord God in vain.

In other words, people a lot like us.
If somebody came through the doors at the back, came up to the lectern, flipped open the Bible to Isaiah 61, read aloud, sat down and then announced that he was the fulfilment of that prophecy… how many people here would be likely to go “oh, cool – we’ve been waiting for you”? How would you react? What would you say to such a man?
Mission Impossible – to preach the coming kingdom of God to a people who think they know all there is to know about God’s justice, mercy and wrath.
Mission Impossible – the rescue of humanity from itself.
Mission Impossible – turn hearts around and save them from the wrath that is to come.
Do we begin to fathom just how difficult the task that God gave to Jesus really is? Do we appreciate how hard Jesus worked, how much he preached, how constantly he spoke, appeared, walked, taught, preached, chatted, lectured, told stories, healed, argued, persuaded, debated… for people to begin to understand how his teachings were not only different from all the other itinerant preachers that were also around, but that his words were the words of God? Do we get it?

We sometimes say – very easily and quickly – that Christ died for my sins. We rarely say that he walked, exhausted himself, taught, taught, taught and taught… so that I might understand what it is that he’s saying… so that I might KNOW that he died for my sins.

One thing that we see over and over and over again in Jesus’ early ministry is how much preaching he did, how the Devil got in his way wherever he preached, and how determined he was to keep on preaching non-stop.
Matthew 5:23 And he went through all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Mark 3:20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they [Jesus and the Twelve] could not even eat.
Luke 4:42-44 And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” And he was preaching in all the synagogues of Judea.
No highway, no car, no public transport, no hotels overnight. No marketing campaigns, no radio ads, no guest appearances on breakfast TV.
No microphones, no public-address systems, no pre-recorded messages.

No internet to post blog-notes. No iTunes, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or (gasp) email, no laptops, no typewriters, no printing presses. Just a pair of feet covered by leather sandals, the message of the Lord God to stir up the hearts and minds and souls of men… and this.
The Bible.
This is what Jesus taught from. The Bible – what we call the Old Testament. The Scripture. God’s Word, given to us by men through inspiration.
Paul knew exactly what the Old Testament was for.
2Tim3:16 says… what? All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness. Good – now, what about the verse before it: the purpose of Scripture is to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
That’s what it was for, and that’s still what it’s for.


One thing that we see over and over again, as Jesus preaches and teaches, is that the Scriptures are constantly on his lips – the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets and the Wisdom literature. It’s all through his speech, his answers are rooted in the Scriptures, his wisdom – which all the Gospels tell us is one of the things which is making him famous – his wisdom is recognised by others because it’s embedded in the Word, and he teaches the scriptures with authority.

We’re kinda used to using scriptures to back up our positions, or our arguments, or our moral position on things – and that’s not a bad thing… is it? Here’s the problem. We can have a tendency to concentrate on one verse, and make that one verse the proof-text. Is the verse in context? Is it out of context? How is the person I’m talking to going to be able to tell?
Malachi 3:10 Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. It’s a very popular verse in certain circles, and it’s often quoted before a collection or an offering. And – as it stands – it sounds like a very generous offer: give your tithe, and God will bless you abundantly and more-than-abundantly. Well, that sounds right - why shouldn’t I use that as a proof-text to show that if you give, God gives. It’s there – it’s in the Bible. Why not?

Because of what the rest of the book says. The verse before Malachi 3:10 shows a very angry God – You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. I don’t intend to exegete the whole of that Malachi text – we’re running short on time as it is – but the message of Malachi is that God’s people are not doing what the Lord requires of them [call it disobedience]. Be obedient, willingly obedient, and I will keep the covenant I set with Abraham, the covenant I set with Moses and the covenant I set with David. God had already promised over and over again that he would bless his people abundantly, and that blessing comes ONLY because God is faithful – not because I’ve stopped short-changing the collection-plate. Certainly not because my faithfulness.

And yet it’s being used to encourage people to give – in the hope that they’ll gain some special blessing from God’s hand over-and-above. See the difference?

You see why it’s so important to know this thing as well as you can? Reg keeps saying it until he’s blue in the face. Stu Crawshaw’s been saying it for as long as I’ve known him, and that’s longer than some of you have been alive. Read your Bible every day! Study the Word, and study it well, so that even these words can’t be twisted around. Satan is brilliant at twisting God’s words, getting us to question what we’ve been taught.
Genesis 3 – right at the very start of it, Genesis 3:1 He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” Well, no, God didn’t actually say that, as Eve points out, but it’s enough to get the conversation rolling. And he gets Eve questioning God, and His motives and His purposes, until Eve has actually forgotten what God said in the first place.
Did God actually say “You mustn’t have sex?”
Did God actually say “You must not cheat on your 2009 tax return?”
Did God actually say… you get the idea. As we saw in the Gospel reading – which Tim Beilharz is going to preach in detail on in two weeks – we see Satan using fact and Scripture. We see Satan using the Word of God against the Son of God.

Crazy but true – all of the things Satan tempted Jesus with had a foundation in Scripture. Stones into bread is a clear-cut reference to manna provided by God for His people in the wilderness. When he said to Jesus that the world had been given to him [Satan], there was truth in that - John 12:31 Satan is called the ruler of this world, I John 5:19 the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And finally, Satan quotes a Psalm of David… to the Son of David.

The replies that Jesus gives to Satan all come from the book of Deuteronomy, which is very significant in and of itself. Why is it significant? Tim will tell you in two weeks. Tune in. I’m not going to snaffle his sermon – but go back to the idea of how quickly Jesus turns to the Law. We see it over and over and over again in the early Galilee ministry.
We see it in the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 5-7 – as Jesus firstly declares that he isn’t removing the Law, he isn’t abolishing the Law, he isn’t in any way watering down the Law… he is fulfilling the Law. Secondly he holds up the Laws that cover murder, adultery, divorce, lying, revenge, hatred, charity, prayer, fasting… he holds them up, then holds up the human heart next to it.
He shows how obedience to the letter is useless, because the human heart is too damaged to willingly obey the Law.

We see it as Jesus specifically confronts the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law over two issues – the Sabbath, and the forgiveness of sins. These two are issues of authority, and Jesus has to show them that their understanding of the Sabbath was flawed, and that he has the authority to mend people’s hearts as well as their bodies. Why do you think that Jesus’ healings were often coupled with teachings about the Sabbath and about forgiving sins? He has the authority to mend peoples’ hearts as well as their bodies.

Jesus came to God’s people, those who knew the Law, those who thought that they knew God. And he showed them where they stand in relation to the law, how far away from obedience their hearts truly are, how that even in their rigid obedience to the letter of the law they constantly broke it in their hearts and minds. John nails it absolutely at the start of his gospel – He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Mission Impossible. We know the ending, we talk about it every Easter, we make movies like The Passion about it. We know the ending so well that we can miss the working of God. As Jesus’ mission is terminated, we see eleven men who knew Jesus more than any other men. We see eleven men who should have understood, who should have grasped it all… but fled in horror and terror and let their Master and their Lord be executed and be hanged on a cursed tree.

The Mission is impossible for men, and every man that knew and loved him had vanished. But nothing is impossible for God. Those men who ran away took hold of the saving gospel of Christ crucified and risen. They were given the Spirit, and they went forth. The Jewish leadership tried to beat the Gospel into submission – it grew and spread. The Roman leadership classed it as a dangerous cult and tried to stomp it to death – it grew and spread, and within three hundred years a Christian emperor sat on the Roman throne.

Mission Impossible. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply this. Preach Christ crucified and risen to the whole world.
Preach Christ crucified and risen to the whole world.
It’s impossible. So what?
Two questions – who do we say that Jesus is? Who do people outside these walls say Jesus is? Until those answers agree, we’re on mission. We’re on a mission that is just about impossible. It’s a mission that might take us anywhere. Two years ago, the notion of preaching the risen Christ would have scared me senseless. The thought of preaching Christ in Penrith would have... scared me a lot more. Some of you will be taken further than that, to places that you have no normal earthly desire to go. But you’ll know, and you’ll go, because your heart will burn.
Burn with the love of Jesus
burn fiercely for the hearts of those who don’t know him
burn because the Spirit set it on fire.

That’s when you don’t care about the impossible mission. That’s when the ending doesn’t matter. Mission impossible, should you choose to accept it. Take the saving message of God’s grace and Christ’s love to the whole world.

Your time starts now.

[1] Judges 7:12
Image from http://flickr.com/photos/dragonden/250835204/