Creation and failure

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.  (Gen. 1:1)

It’s hard to imagine more backstory than that!  God is the source of everything.  The story starts with him.

The creation story is not about how God did it.  It is not supposed to give us scientific insight.  Big bang?  Evolution?  7 24 hour periods?  That’s not the point!

Genesis 1:2 (ESV)

2The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

The story is highlighting that God brings order out of chaos. He delights in it!  He creates man to join him in this work, bringing order out of chaos.

He plants a garden where we can meet with him.  That makes it a temple!  A temple is any place God and man meet. We call it the Garden of Eden.

God gives us a job to rule by filling the earth and subdue it.  We are to expand the temple to cover the entire world!  

We  get introduced to a new character, the serpent.  Humanity and God are not the only sentient beings in the world.  The serpent is loaded with meaning.  The Hebrew word could mean shiny, deceiver, or serpent.  The author is probably thinking of all three as it tells the story!  The serpent is loaded with meaning as well.  It is associated with chaos.  

The serpent, representing the chaos, anti-order to God’s plan, brings mankind a choice.  Do you continue to follow the plan?  The choice is represented by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Was it a literal tree?  Was it an apple?  No idea!  That’s not the point of the story!  

Is man going to remain in right standing with God and follow the plan or rebel and do things our own way?

Man rebels.  They choose to go their own way.  God removed them from the temple, the Garden of Eden, He created.  They are cursed to struggle with their job.  Man will struggle with each other, with the world itself, and with their own bodies.  

But God does not leave them in their predicament.  He promises that an Offspring will come.  He will defeat the serpent, though he will be wounded as he does.  This part of the story closes as we look ahead to the offspring who will save mankind.