Creation, Fall, & the Flood

From Pastor Ky Martin's sermon on September 11, 2022.

Creation

In the beginning, God made everything from nothing.

Like an artist or an engineer, our eternal God gave structure, order, beauty and purpose to our world. Nothing He created was incidental or accidental, but all according to His good purpose and plan.

God’s masterpiece in the Creation narrative was when He made man in His own image. 

Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

This tells that (1) we are similar to God; that (2) human life is sacred; that (3) we have dominion; and that (4) we have instructions.

The instructions God gave humanity were to help operate within His rule and design. Because He created the world, He alone gets to define how things work. He created man and woman; He made marriage between one man and one woman; He gave man work; He gave man authority to rule; He told man to be fruitful and multiply.

God created everything and it was GOOD. Earth was a perfect paradise, just as God intended it to be. God and man had a relationship. Everything was awesome.

Until… man ruined it.

The Fall

Genesis 3 tells the story of paradise lost, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, ‘you shall now eat of any tree in the garden?’” This made Eve resent God’s authority and painted His instruction in a negative light.

The serpent continued to suggest that God was not trustworthy, “...and the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

Adam and Even knew guilt and shame, and they wanted to hide. 

When God walks through the garden and calls to them, He asks, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

This is where the great tradition of blame shifting began.

Even though Eve was the one who took the fruit, Adam was the one who did not lead and take responsibility and dominion over the snake.

In response, God curses the snake along with both Adam and Eve. He curses the snake to slither on the ground.To woman, He curses with pain in childbirth and resentment over her husband’s authority. The irony here is that she will want to resist her husband’s authority, and he will want to domineer.

Rebecca Merkle author of Eve in Exile writes, “The intent of the designer matters. And we, as women, as God’s creatures, are designed by Him to fulfill a particular role. Adam was not brought into the picture to be her sidekick, and she was not brought into the picture to live an independent life, fulfilling her own dreams while Adam did his thing separately.”

Jami Lee Gainey writes, “My nature is fierce independence, I have an opinion about almost everything, and submission does not come naturally for me. But I can tell you that when I more fully embrace God’s sanctification of my own heart through understanding of my role as a biblical wife, joy is found there. Peace is found there. Purpose and abounding fruitfulness are found there.”

Man’s curse is that work will be painful and laborious. The irony here is that the ground is now cursed. Man was supposed to be in charge of the plants and animals, but he failed. So now work is cursed.

Man and woman were also cursed with death. They were proven unworth to rule the earth, so back to dust they must go.

Everything for man and woman became a lot more difficult, and is still. Our relationship with this earth and with our Creator is beautiful, but broken.

The Flood

From Adam and Eve, all mankind inherited a sinful nature. Their sins have been passed down to us and their curses we bear.

Genesis 6 tells the story of The Flood and how one man’s righteousness saved all mankind.

In this story – in the very first chapters of our Bibles – we see the metanarrative of scripture already playing out: Creation - Fall - Redemption - Restoration.

Author John Eldredge writes, “All the great stories pretty much follow the same story line. Things were once good, then something awful happened, and now a great battle must be fought or a journey taken. At just the right moment, a hero comes and sets things right, and life is found again… Every story shares the same essential structure because every story we tell borrows its power from a Larger Story, a Story woven into the fabric of our being.”