Paradox.

That’s what God presented to Abraham in the reading of Genesis 22-23. After a few years have passed, and Isaac grew to become a boy old enough to speak and reason on his own, God called to Abraham to test him and tells him: “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Your son. Your only son, Isaac, for Ishmael is gone. Your only son whom you love.

And Abraham went – just as he had gone from his father’s land in Ur when God called; just as he had gone when famine threatened an only Egypt could feed; just as he had returned to the trees of Mamre to shepherd his flocks after Pharaoh had sent him away. It would seem that Abraham truly was a restless wanderer on the earth.

In going, he obeyed. He brought Isaac, two servants, the wood, and the fire. Father and son left behind the servants for a time, and Isaac pointed out what was missing:

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

Words of faith. Words of prophecy.

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. ~ Genesis 22:7b-10

This was the son of promise, the one God specifically had said would receive the inheritance and through whom Abraham would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the heaves, and through whom all nations of the earth would be blessed.

What must have been going through Abraham’s mind as he grasped the knife in his hand and moved it toward his little boy?

The writer of this scripture, straight-journalism “just-the-facts-ma’am”-style never wavering, does not tell us. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, however, does so centuries later:

Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. ~ Hebrews 11:19

This was the son of promise, given to a couple whose reproductive cycle should have long since ceased. Yet life was given by grace. A word of commendation for Abraham’s faith, obedience, and ability to reason through a paradox in a moment when most of us would have been reduced to a puddle of worthlessness. But praise God from Whom all blessings flow for His merciful intervention!

An angel stopped Abraham in the very act of obedience. A ram, its horns caught in a bush nearby, served as the sacrifice. Through the voice of an angel, God called to Abraham a second time and swore by Himself to confirm His promise.

I believe that God never asks us to do anything that He is not willing to do Himself. It will be hundreds of years, and dozens of generations, but He will raise up a Son from among Abraham’s descendants, a Son of God and a Son of Man, to be given as a sin offering for the healing of the nations.

After a brief account of some family news among Abraham’s kin, scripture then fast-forwards at least twenty years later. Abraham had turned 137 years old; Isaac a century behind him; Sarah a decade. We don’t know how long they were married: fifty, sixty years … maybe a hundred. They had been through the worst and the best of times together – two attempts to wrest them apart by kings who admired her beauty, the challenge of an imbalanced family through a servant-wife and child, the traveling, the staying, the promises, the waiting, the extraordinary request of God to sacrifice their son. When the paradox of this life came to its close for her at age 127, Abraham mourned and wept over her – and went to great lengths in negotiating the purchase of a field with a cave tomb for her near those trees of Mamre which had been their home twice, and for so many years.

And for perhaps the first time, Abraham became a landowner in the land God had promised to give him: One small field.

It was enough.

Does it seem right to you in this reading (Genesis 20-21) that when Abraham lies a second time about Sarah being his sister rather than his wife – this time to his wealthy neighbor King Abimelech – that the same result ensues: Abraham is forgiven and made wealthier still?

It doesn’t to me. But then, I am not a part of that pre-Mosaic law culture, either. To our point of view, Abimelech is the one who has been the victim, courted a gorgeous though elderly woman whom – he has been told – is his good neighbor’s sister, then told directly by God: “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.”

And even though Abraham explains his actions to his royal friend, he never apologizes.

It is Abimelech who pays Abraham and Sarah for the indignity they have suffered, and given land to live wherever they like. And Abraham prays to God to heal Abimelech and his household, who have evidently suffered illness and the indignity of barrenness the whole span of the misadventure.

Then again, we don’t know how forcibly Abimelech may have acted when he “sent for Sarah and took her.”

But we also don’t know the customs of that time and place. It might have been considered a genteel custom to pay a dowry, rather than just taking – and perhaps Abimelech did not offer one to Abraham.

On the other hand, Abraham seemed to have been as much in fear of Abimelech and his forces (20:8-13) as he had been of Pharaoh and his armies (12:10-13). It may have been the custom of that era for the powerful to simply take what they wanted, much as it is in these more civilized times today.

So, rather than judging Abraham by the standards of us current-day ordinary people, maybe we just ought to move on to Isaac’s birth.

I like the phrasing, “Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised.” Simple. To the point. And it’s always true, no matter to whom He says or promises.

Sarah discovers that she is, in fact, pregnant … and bears the son that she and Abraham have yearned for all those years. Twenty-five years since the specific promise. Probably many, many more before that.

I don’t know if all women want to sing like the women do in the Bible when they bear children. Maybe it was just those few that scripture tells us about. Sarah is certainly overjoyed:

Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” ~ 21:6-7

It’s not a very long song. Perhaps it wasn’t a song at all. It just feels like one; a very happy little song.

They joyful couple, of course, give the boy the name God has specified: Isaac (“He Laughs”).

On this note of cheer, Abimelech and Abraham mend fences. Or, at least, they settle a dispute over a water well seized by Abimelech’s servants. Here, Abraham provides a gift of seven ewe lambs to Abimelech, which puzzles him. But he accepts, and the dispute is resolved.

I get the picture that personal pride has a big stake in the transactions of this era: whoever can show the biggest heart by providing the greater tribute, wins. And Abraham seems determined to win. Maybe I’m off-base about that, but it feels like an ongoing pattern.

The remainder of this reading is not really good news. Blended families are a challenge in any age, and Abraham’s clan suffers from bigamy.

A movie moment: Groucho Marx, assessing two beautiful women, proclaims: “I’d like to marry you, and then you, and then you all over again.” One objects: “Why, that’d be bigamy.” He shrugs: “Of course it’d be bigamy. It’d be big of you, and you – it’d be big of all of us.”

When a feast is thrown in honor of the day Isaac is weaned, his half-brother Ishmael makes fun of him. At about fourteen, he’s still not big enough to be that “big.”

You can imagine the ammunition he has – Isaac’s name:

“Eating solid food now, huh, you little gigglebox? I hope you choke when you chortle. When it comes time for the inheritance, we’ll see who has the last laugh!”

Never mind that the tyke probably couldn’t understand the words. His mother could. And she was livid: “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

And, doubtless broken-hearted but reassured by God, Abraham does so.

Once again, God shows mercy to exiled Hagar and her son. As they languish from thirst in the desert – separated because she cannot bear to watch him die – “God Hears.” It is Ishmael’s name, “God Hears,” and God hears the boy crying. My guess is that the selfish little tweenager was not only crying from dehydration in the shade of the bushes, but also out of penitence … sorrow for what his words had wrought: suffering for himself, his mother; separation from his father.

An angel tells Hagar: “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

She looks up; sees a well, fills their wineskin with water and refreshes her pathetic child.

God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt. ~ 21:20-21

And, no doubt, he grew up to be a wild donkey of a man, whose hand was against everyone and against whom everyone thrust their fists, living in hostility toward all his brothers – just as God had foretold (16:11-12).

In fact, most Arab nations – many of which to this day violently oppose Hebrews descended from Abraham’s chosen heir Isaac – trace their ancestry to the son named Ishmael.

Consequences.

Genesis 18-19 goes to extremes: from the extremely hospitable reception Abraham shows the three Visitors, to the extremely inhospitable way the people of Sodom receive God’s messengers, to the extremely effective way God obliterates Sodom and Gomorrah – and even the wife of Abraham’s nephew, Lot.

The Visitors bring news. Perhaps Abraham has been successful in persuading God to move up the timetable on his heir through Sarah; at any rate, the news is that their son will be born within a year. Sarah, listening nearby, laughs at the notion of giving birth at age ninety. Confronted, she lies and says she did not laugh.

But the promise is repeated, along with the question: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

Many people regard the next events by asking the question, “Is anything too bad for the Lord to do?”

They want to believe in a nice, American-Santa-Claus-type-God who loves everyone and wouldn’t hurt a flea and gives gifts to all His children and would never, ever have a dark hooded companion like Black Peter who puts coal in stockings or switches the badly-behaved.

They want to forget that the God of Noah saved eight souls through the baptism of the flood that destroyed the remainder of evil humanity around them (1 Peter 3:20). They want to forget that God punished the purely selfish and violent evil of Sodom by raining down sulfur on its inhabitants: men, women, and children for the lack of even ten redeemable souls there. They want to believe that God is fully (or at least sufficiently) revealed in Jesus Christ – and so He is – but they want to forget that Jesus speaks of judgment and eternal punishment (Matthew 25:31-46); that even insulting anger can lead to a destiny in a fiery hell (Matthew 5:22). They want to believe the first words of 2 Peter 3:9, but ignore the last six.

I don’t know what to say to people who only believe what they want to believe.

Scripture does:

“Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off.” ~ Romans 11:22

But if you only believe what you want to believe in God’s word – about salvation from, but not consequences of, sin – you rob it of half its power.

Though he shows hospitality to God’s messengers, Lot is hardly blameless in this tragic mess of events. Offering his betrothed daughters to satisfy the sexual depravity of the mob at his door – which is demanding the two Visitors as the victims of their homosexual rape – is hardly admirable. He may not look back with longing at Sodom as it is destroyed as his wife does (and turns to salt), but he lives in fear in a cave with those daughters, where he succumbs to wine and their plan for him to father their children.

When that comes to pass, the sons they bear will become the patriarchs of the Moabites and the Ammonites – two thorns in the side of God’s people from that point on.

Consequences.

It’s been a while since God promised Abram several extraordinary things in today’s reading (Genesis 15-17) from The Daily Bible – long enough that God’s first words to him in a vision are, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

Abram reacts as if he’s not afraid at all, but anxious: “O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” (apparently the head servant in his household; perhaps a distant relative).

God tells him that this man will not be his heir, who will come from his own body and his own genes … and his offspring will be as countless as the stars he sees outside his tent. That’s His plan.

That is a very great reward; a promise God seals by what seems to be a custom of the time: a sacrifice of several animals, between whose halved carcasses He passes in the likeness of a smoking firepot with a blazing torch. (Or maybe as an unseeable Person carrying the firepot and torch!)

A very important fact is then shared in the next verse:

“Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.” ~ Genesis 15:6

It is a verse that will be quoted by Paul (Romans 4:3; Galatians 3:6) to illuminate that faith in Christ trumps circumcision and by James (2:23) to illustrate that faith and works of obedience go hand in hand.

For Abram was credited before he obeyed; before he was given circumcision as his part of the covenant to obey; before he was asked to give his own son as a sacrifice before God.

At this point, Abram has no son.

Sarai, still barren and in her seventy-fifth or -sixth year, urges Abram to take her handmaiden Hagar to wife and to bed, since their attempts to bear a child together have yielded no success. Abram accedes to her plan, and Hagar becomes pregnant … and spiteful toward her mistress, co-wife and rival.

Abram gives Sarai permission to “do with her as you like,” and Sarai mistreats her to the point that Hagar runs away. An angel appears to Hagar and tells her to go back and submit to her mistress, promising lesser blessings on her child. She does so, and bears Ishmael (“God Hears”) to 86-year-old Abram.

Once again, it’s worth noting that these are not perfect people. They are not blameless and innocent heroes and heroines of infinite wisdom and cleverness, certainly not of the type that populate Greek myths or Babylonian legends like the Gilgamesh epic. But it’s also worth noting that these are people who live in an era long before Moses’ law. We’re not told that He has commanded them not to lie or not to take matters into their own hands. Their instructions from God so far have been simple. As far as we know, Abram’s sacrifice is the first one God has specifically requested, and it is for the purpose of sealing a covenant – and He alone walks between the halves to accept responsibility for it. There is nothing for Abraham to promise in return. He can only receive the promise as a gift – in God’s good time.

It is thirteen years before the next recorded conversation between God and Abram, to confirm His covenant. No further plans are carried out. Now God has an unusual request: circumcise each male under his authority, eight days or older. The literal cutting off of the foreskin is a sign of what would happen if the request was disobeyed: that man would be cut off from his people.

God changes the name of Abram (“Exalted Father”) to Abraham (“Father of Many”), and the name of Sarai (“Princess”) to Sarah (“Princess”), promising that His covenant will be fulfilled through her child.

(Okay, her name’s meaning didn’t really change. She was still a princess in God’s sight, whether she had tried to make His plans happen through hers, or not.)

“Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” Abraham laughs. (From all we can tell, he’s pushing for immediate fulfillment – God still hasn’t said when!) He may laugh with doubt, with joy, with disbelief, with giddiness, with hope, with persuasive cajoling … we’re not told. It’s one of the many passages of scripture reported with the classic straight-journalism “just-the-facts-ma’am” style of the 1950’s and 60’s. As an adoptive father who lost – in his early twenties – his ability to father children of his own or to give them to the wife he cherishes, I have no doubt that he wanted very, very much to believe.

I don’t know that wanting to believe is enough to be credited as belief, and therefore righteousness. But I do know that believing and doing go hand in hand. That’s what the apostle James said.

So Abraham confirms the covenant with this sign of circumcision, with himself, with Ishmael, with every male under his tents. (But not before pleading before God on behalf of his son with Hagar – and receiving His reassurance of a blessing, though lesser, for Ishmael.)

And maybe – just maybe – Abraham regained the sparkle in his eye, picked a few wildflowers for Sarah, went into her tent and kissed her lovely face and said, “Guess what? I have a new name.

“And so do you.”

Oops! Did we miss something?

There’s an odd tense in the opening verse of the text from The Daily Bible today (Genesis 12-14): “The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” When had He said this? We’re not told the when or the where or the how or – most importantly – the why. Abram was a reasonably wealthy shepherd, son of Terah, son of Nahor, son of Serug, son of Reu, son of Peleg, son of Eber, son of Shelah, son of Arphaxad, son of Shem, son of Noah, son of Lamech, son of Methuselah, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahalalel, son of Kenan, son of Enosh, son of Seth … son of Adam and Eve. (Ever wonder why daughters are hardly ever mentioned in the genealogical tables of scripture?) Perhaps some of Shem’s and Seth’s good blood had found its way into Abram’s veins. Maybe he had demonstrated a devotion to God. Possibly God just chose him out of the blue for this pronouncement: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.”

Maybe the key to God’s choice is in the first three words of the next verse, though: “So Abram left ….”

He trusted God. He left his father’s house, took all of his own assets and servants and even his nephew Lot, plus his babe-of-a-wife Sarai. Even at advanced age, she could still turn heads. And that fact put a limit on Abram’s trust. Fearing that their journey would take them to lands of kings who would kill him to add her to their harems, Abram asked Sarai to tell them a half-truth: that she was his sister. (She was his half-sister; also a child of Terah.)

But she neglected to tell Egypt’s Pharaoh that she was also Abram’s wife. Pharaoh treated him well as he courted her, but only disease and pestilence resulted in Pharaoh’s house. When Pharaoh saw through the ruse as the cause of his misery, he evicted them both, but let Abram keep the wealth given as her dowry.

Abram believed God … but not quite all the way.

Returning to Bethel where God had first appeared to Abram and he had built his first altar, the herdsmen of Abram and Lot quarreled over possessions. Abram gave his nephew a choice of lots for grazing their flocks and herds. Lot chose the choicer lot, which included territory near Sodom – apparently known for its wickedness. Abram separated and settled in Hebron, “where he built an altar to the Lord.”

In time, the chief-kings of local tribes went to war, five against four, and the raiders carried off most of Sodom – including Lot and his possessions.

I wonder if the first thought that went through his head was, “I should never have lied to protect my own life in Egypt. I should have trusted God. I became rich with possessions, but now it will cost me dear blood.” I wonder if he had considered his nephew Lot to be his adopted son, the only offspring he had to inherit God’s promise.

Whatever went through his mind, Uncle Abram quickly mustered 318 trained warriors among his servants and routed the raiders in the night, rescuing Lot and recapturing the wealth of Sodom. Abram seemed to have no desire to accept tribute from Sodom’s king, having sworn before God not to accept more than food, possibly of a feast in his honor.

But there was another king present, neither of the four nor the five: Melchizedek of Salem, who brought out bread and wine. Scripture calls him a “priest of God Most High,” who blessed Abram and praised God, “who delivered your enemies into your hand.”

“Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.”

The legend is that Salem eventually became Jerusalem … that the tribute of Abram the rescuer to the host presaged tithing … and that the priest who was also a king set a precedent for a Descendant of Abram who would praise God and bless all nations.

But at the time, it must have seemed pretty unusual for the rescuer Abram to give tribute to the priest-king neighbor of the rescued kings of the area.

Maybe Melchizedek had reminded Abram of something important; something worth more than all the tribute he could have shared:

That he had not won the battle by his own skill and choices as a shepherd-general. That his 318 shepherd-warriors had not won the battle by their own cunning and courage and craft.

That the battle belonged to the Lord.

That the Lord was not slack concerning His promise.

That the LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.

Genesis 11 recounts the building of the tower of Babel, near what would become Babylon. A lot of folks had migrated to the plain in Shinar, and decided to build a city.

Was that really a good idea?

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not agreeing with Cambodian despot Saloth Sar/Pol Pot in decreeing that “the cities are evil” or advocating the forcible relocation of all citizens to the countryside.

But I’ve gotten the impression that what God really wanted his people to do was not to settle, farm or build cities, but to be restless wanderers upon the earth (Genesis 4:10-12, 17b); spreading over the face of it and caring for its flora/fauna and carrying His name to every corner of it. Citizens of no particular country. Shepherds of flocks and of His people.

Relying on His providence at every turn.

Instead, they built kilns and baked bricks in order to build a tower that “reaches to the heavens.” (Interesting to be writing this on the day that the newest “world’s tallest building,” the Burj Dubai, officially opens. Its shape is reminiscient of the ziggurats built in ancient times in surrounding Mesopotamia.)

God frustrates the building of Babel’s tower-or-ziggurat-or-brick-heap by confusing the language of the people there; multiplying the tongues with which they spoke. Linguists might snicker at this notion just as biologists might chortle at creation, but while both are correct in observing that languages and creatures grow and adapt, languages and creatures also have to have a beginning somewhere, somehow. They’re not, like Topsy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin “never borned; just growed.”

There are lots of interesting aspects of this passage of scripture.

• The ambition of the people. There’s no indication that they’re engineers of any kind, but they are determined to build a tower that reaches to the heavens “so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Paul puts an updated twist on Deuteronomy 30:12-13‘s achievability of God’s will for us through humility rather than ambition when he says in Romans 10:5-13.
• God’s determination to frustrate their plans to gather and build … because they are frustrating His plans for them to disperse and care for His world? Was God’s intervention for their own safety, as well? How tall could these amateur masons build a tower of bricks rather than stone before it collapsed upon them, killing and maiming … how many? Even towers built in the more technologically-advanced Roman era still collapsed (Luke 13:4)
• God’s high estimation of their capabilities (limited, of course, by the limitations that He is obviously aware of as their Creator): “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”
• The royal plural used once again. “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
• The effectiveness of His countermeasure. They stopped building the city. They dispersed. Is the countermeasure still effective? Think about the obstacles to progress in commerce and technology that are still present because we are having to communicate across borders in more than a dozen major languages and hundreds of minor ones. Imagine, for instance, what it takes in order to just communicate the dimensions, weight, voltages, and tolerances of a module for the International Space Station among the partner nations.

The people of the erstwhile Babel intended a tower and left behind a brick heap. They might have avoided the trouble just by listening for – and heeding – what God had been trying to tell us from the very beginning.

Am I off base in perceiving God’s original intent for His people?

Just consider for a moment. Cities collect too many people where there are too few resources. Resources must be transported to them. Farms must be managed to grow food. When cities were finally built, they were walled. Why? For defense. Armies had to be mustered to defend them from raiders. Resources had to be stored there to support people sequestered behind the walls. Farms outside the walls had to be protected. Innocents died. Ambition soared. Self prevailed.

Did Moses boast about striking water from rocks when he was a shepherd in Midian … or when millions were encamped together in Rephidim?

Did ambition trouble David’s life when he was a shepherd in the hills surrounding Bethlehem … or when he was king in Jerusalem?

When pioneer farmers and ranchers settled the American West, were they ever as far from food and necessities as the destitute and homeless in our contemporary cities are now?

There is no question in my mind that there are too many people per square acre of life-supportable land in most of the world today, and nowhere is that more true than in our largest cities. That’s where more people – surrounded by those who should be helping shepherd and care for them – fall through society’s cracks into poverty and desperation and crime and early death.

I believe there’s something in each of us that is ennobled by seeing ourselves not as conquerors but as caretakers; by sharing rather than accumulating; by being aliens and strangers in this world – always in wonder at what God has done and might do eternally through us, rather than proud of the brick heaps we have built by ourselves.

Today’s reading in The Daily Bible (Genesis 6-9) – the story of Noah and the ark – is one that virtually every child who has been to Sunday school remembers. Noah was at least five-hundred-and-some years old and had three sons when the rest of mankind had become so sorry that God became sorry He had made them – and determined to wipe them and, necessarily, the animals and birds off the face of His earth.

All except Noah and his family.

God, expressing His disgust with mankind’s continued predilection toward indulging self, has either cut human lifespans short to a general maximum of a hundred-and-twenty years … or has cut the lifespan of humankind to the hundred-and-twenty years required to build a lifeboat. The language isn’t crystal-clear.

He instructed Noah to build a great watertight, wooden box, half the length and nearly as wide as an iron ship built thousands of years later: H.M.S. Titanic. But unlike Titanic, this ark is watertight for more than a year after forty days and nights of unrelenting rain and unstanched flow from underground springs began.

Inside her is that family and a mated pair of each unclean animal and seven of each clean animal, male and female (with “unclean” and “clean” evidently a distinction which long predated Moses’ law), plus all the food that they will need, and the stamina of people whose only hope is God. Near the end, they could hear a wind blowing outside their craft, and the waters began to recede – for the next hundred and fifty days.

Almost every child remembers how Noah sent out birds after the rain had ceased, to see if there was yet dry land. Almost every child remembers that Noah sacrificed some of those precious clean animals, and the scent so pleased God that He promised never again to exterminate all life with a flood, setting His rainbow in the sky as a reminder of the covenant. Some children will remember that God then gave Noah and his family permission to consume the animals as food, and warned that both men and animals would be accountable for each life they took – and that man should not eat any flesh with the lifeblood still in it.

There’s a very important detail that we forget to tell our children:

The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” ~ Genesis 8:21

The time for judgment against all of mankind has come and gone.

The time for judgment of each man and each creature has come. It is a new era: one of personal responsibility.

What we also rarely share with our children is the rest of the story. It continues the pattern that the Bible has established in those few previous chapters: that God entreats man not to sin, man sins anyway, man is punished, the punishment eventually leads to death, and that God shows mercy to those who want to walk with Him.

The rest of the Noah story is embarrassingly sordid. Noah turned to farming, planted a vineyard, let some of the grapes go sour, distilled wine, became drunk from it, and passed out stark naked. His son Ham discovered him, tattled to his two brothers Shem and Japheth, who took great pains to restore his clothing as well as preserve his dignity. Noah, made aware of the indignity later, pronounced a curse on Ham, whose descendants through son Canaan would serve his brothers’ seed.

So it is Noah, not God, who issues this curse and sets up the consequences that will persist through many, many generations to come … until the prophecy of an era when God’s original intention would be restored:

The word of the LORD came to me: “What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel: ” ‘The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son—both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die. ~ Ezekiel 18:1-4

Today’s reading in The Daily Bible (Genesis 4-5) tells the story of the generations that follow the creation of Adam and Eve, who have been expelled from the fertile garden into a world of hard labor with the soil and hard labor in childbirth.

Cain, a tiller of the soil, is born; and some time after, Abel his brother, a tender of flocks.

But go back with me for a moment to the pronouncement of God’s judgment on their parents in Genesis 3:17-19. I’ll wait while you read.

Finished? We speak of that judgment as “the curse.” Did you notice? When Adam and Eve disobeyed, God didn’t curse either one.

He cursed the ground, to make Adam labor. And since apparently neither of them had chosen to eat of the tree of life, they would have to perpetuate their species through childbirth, and that would be the labor of Eve. It’s not a curse. It’s a consequence.

Cain, as a farmer, inherited the consequence of that curse. He had to work the soil in his chosen profession. His brother Abel probably seemed to have it easier: just let the flocks wander and eat whatever cropped up from the rocks.

There’s no indication in scripture that God asked for an offering from either one. But both offered.

Let me propose the possibility that God’s displeasure with Cain’s offering (“some fruits of the soil”) and pleasure with Abel’s (“fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock”) was based, not so much on what they offered, but on how they offered it.

Abel had it relatively easy. The abundance he enjoyed in his flocks was clearly God-given. Perhaps he offered in a heart of gratitude because that was so easy to see.

Cain had it tough. He worked soil that was cursed. The abundance he offered to God was clearly the result of his labor. Perhaps he offered with an attitude rather than gratitude.

(For some reason, I’m reminded of the prayer Jimmy Stewart delivers as hardscrabble farmer Charlie Anderson in the movie Shenandoah: “Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be eatin’ it if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel. But we thank you just the same for this food we’re about to eat. Amen.”)

This attitude may well be what led Cain to jealousy and murder and deceit before God. And the consequence was that the curse on the land got even tougher for him: it would no longer produce for him, no matter how hard he worked.

Yet there is mercy in God’s judgment. A mark is placed on Cain so that no one will take his life to avenge Abel, lest they be punished seven-fold.

Rather than wandering with flocks like his dead brother had done, Cain turned to settling and building a city. One of his grandsons, Jabal, chose the life of tents and flocks and herds; another, Jubal, the pursuit of music; and another, Tubal-Cain, the forging of metal. (A granddaughter, Naamah, is barely mentioned.) But Cain’s history of internecine warfare persisted; his son Lamech also killed, and felt so justified in killing that he called for vengeance seventy-seven-fold.

Adam and Eve were given another son, Seth, and perhaps it says something of his character that when Seth had a son named Enosh, “At that time men began to call on/proclaim the name of the LORD.” Maybe Seth did not want The Story of God and Man to be lost, so he passed it on to his children.

In the generations that follow, men father children, grow very old, and eventually die – with one extraordinary exception.

Enoch lives a brief 365 years in a time when his ancestors and descendants live 700, 800, 900-and-more years, and the account of each one ends “… and then he died.”

“When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.” ~

In the garden where God put Adam and Eve, they could hear Him walking in the cool of the day. That apparently was not enough for Enoch. He walked with God.

Scripture records over and over that this is exactly what He wants and hopes and plans for us.

“I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.” ~ Leviticus 26:12

“My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.” ~ Ezekiel 37:27

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’ ” ~ Revelation 21:3

“No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.” ~ Revelation 22:3

Isaac Watts wrote the hymn Joy to the World that we’ve heard a few times in this Christmas season now closing:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

And William Cowper’s O For a Closer Walk With God yearns for the same:

So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.

So in five chapters, God has already taught us foundational truths about life. He created; He blessed His creation with purpose; He offered choice; He warned that sinleadstodeath sinleadstodeath sinleadstodeath (Genesis 2:17); He judged and pronounced consequences; He showed mercy; He expressed His desire to walk with us.

And, perhaps, He has hinted that a works-based attitude is never as pleasing to Him as gratitude-based worship.

“And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground — trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” ~ Genesis 2:9

My church family is beginning a year-long study of the entire text of the Bible together, using The Daily Bible (NIV) as arranged and commented by F. LaGard Smith. I hope to blog along with the study, and am posting those thoughts with the tag The Story. Today’s reading (Genesis 1-3) starts, as you might guess, at the very beginning.

In that beginning, God creates. He creates in an order. He creates mankind. And because the more general introductory account (Genesis 1:1-2:3) places the creation of man in a different order than the more specific account about Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:4-25), we have one of our first quandaries about scripture.

(Personally, I think it’s possible that God hand-made Adam (“him” – 2:4-7) in that pre-“third day” time when there was land but no vegetation, then planted a garden specifically for him; then created mankind (“them” – Genesis 1:26-30) in an image of dominion in the later “sixth day” period. Perhaps He wanted Adam to watch Him create.

I hope you’re not hoping to read the definitive, incontrovertible answer to the question of how long those “days” of creation lasted. There isn’t one. God could have created it all in six 24-hour days. He could have taken millions of years of His time to perfect each liquid brushstroke of ocean and each chiseled craggy bluff and each hand-sculpted breathing body. He could have spoken it all into perfect existence in a moment. He did it His way and He described it His way. If you think you have to understand everything about Him to believe in Him and serve Him, you haven’t read Job. Get over it, will you?)

Of course, there’s the matter of God speaking in the royal plural, too: “Let us make ….” I have my thoughts about that, too. He might have been speaking to angels who witnessed creation (Job 38:7). He might have been speaking within Himself, a Personality that is both One (Deuteronomy 6:4) and more than One (Genesis 1:1-2; John 1:1-4) – to a part of Himself, the Word, through whom and for whom He created … and who would later become flesh as His Son (1:14). I can’t explain that. I can’t describe it. I just believe it to be true. (See The Really, Really Big Picture for some of my further thoughts.)

But both accounts of creation agree that man was created to have dominion (Genesis 1:26; 2:15); to take care of what God had created.

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’ “~ 2:15-17

No, I also don’t know why God planted a tree in reach of His crowning creation that would bring pain and suffering and death to that creation. I have some thoughts about it, though, as you might have guessed.

Did you notice that there was no prohibition to eat from the tree of life? What would you imagine that a tree of life would do for you? If you’ve read ahead to verse 22, you know:

“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.’ “~Genesis 3:22

But if you’re Adam, you might not know. We know that God balanced the poisonfruit tree with the tree of life. He offered a choice. After Eve is created, she finds the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil “good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.” Perhaps the fruit of the tree of life wasn’t as good-looking and pleasing to the eye. (Just as life itself isn’t, always.) Perhaps it didn’t have fruit like the groves of the tree of life in Revelation 22:1.

God doesn’t offer encouragement or prohibition to eat from it. One tree is enough for Him to offer a choice: eat or don’t eat.

I’m not going to go into all the ramifications of choice in God’s plan or argue against Calvinism or refute universalism. I’m just saying that God, from the very beginning, even before there was a helper for Adam, offered him a choice.

He also offered life. Perhaps He described to Adam what the fruit of the tree of life would do for him; perhaps not. Perhaps that tree’s proximity to the poisonfruit tree made him cautious about trying it. We don’t know. Of course we’d like to. We’ve always thought the answer to life was the fruit of the tree of knowledge, haven’t we?

When the answer to the questions of life is life itself.

The answer to the questions about God is God Himself.

The point I’d like to make – at the beginning of this new year – is that Adam missed an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He had a second choice.

He never tried to eat of the tree of life.

Perhaps he was too busy living life – working at his job tending the garden; cherishing his new helper Eve – to accept the free gift that was just standing there, arms open and full of the promise of eternity.

Okay, sermon’s over.