The King’s English

Genesis 2:8-25

Even the phrase “garden of Eden” should make us home-sick.  “Eden” is taken from the word “delight”.  And “garden” when translated to Greek is “paradise”.

The highest plane humanity has reached thus far was at the outset.  In fact Genesis 2 means to communicate this truth, even topographically!  The four rivers flow down from this hill-top garden to bless the whole earth.  The prophet Ezekiel confirms to us that this was both the ‘garden’ and ‘mountain of God’ (Ezekiel 28:13-14).  The high point for humanity was the beginning.  ‘The fall’ was very literal.

This garden was planted by the LORD Himself (Genesis 2:8).  Again, this is Christ the LORD, (the visible Image of the invisible God).  He doesn’t speak a garden into being, He plants it.  This truly is the garden of the Lord.  Yet He places Adam in charge.  What humility and grace!

Often we focus on the one boundary which the Lord sets (the forbidden fruit) and forget what is most stunning – that the garden itself is freely accessible.  Surely the garden of the Lord would be His own special sanctuary.  Surely He would invite the man in only occasionally and under the strictest of conditions.  But no, man not only has access, but roams freely and in authority over God’s own garden.

This is not a God who loves to set boundaries, but one who grants incredible freedoms.  He says:

Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.  (Genesis 2:16)

The Lord fills His garden of delights with abundant fruit.  All of it was “pleasant to the sight and good for food” (verse 9).

This is profligate goodness.  What need is there for beautiful fruit?  None.  What need is there for tasty fruit?  None.  Yet this is the way with the LORD.  Nothing is necessary.  Everything is desired – wanted – and desirable.

We learn in Genesis 3 that Christ the LORD would come to enjoy His garden and His beloved creatures with an evening walk.  This is His nature, to create a space, to make it home, to fill it with beauty and to give it to His friends.  He lives to invite humanity into His life of freedom, fullness and fellowship.  This is paradise.  And as CS Lewis once wrote, it’s the “inconsolable longing” of our hearts – “the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (The Weight of Glory)

It’s what we desperately want.

And here’s why we can believe in it – in spite of the blood, sweat and tears of our current experiences…

When Jesus came to walk with us in even closer fellowship – to walk with us as one of us – He was on a mission to draw us back.  It was a mission that took Him to the blood, sweat and tears of the cross.  And as He died, He spread His arms to beckon us in and to bear our burdens, our guilt, our shame.  Whatever would keep us from paradise, our Lord would take on Himself.

And as He died He said to a humbled sinner dying besides Him:

Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.  (Luke 23:43)

Paradise is not for the ancient myths.  It’s for dying sinners in a dying world.  The Lord has come into the very depths to offer us all such heights.

Genesis 2:4-7

What does dirt have to do with deity?  Quite a bit actually.

Here’s our verse for the day:

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”  (Genesis 2:7)

It doesn’t get any more earthy than ‘the dust of the ground’.  Genesis is asking us to imagine the LORD God with dirt under His fingernails, so to speak.

There’s no “Let there be a man” here.  Instead it’s hands-on.  So obviously this isn’t the Father we’re speaking of.  This is definitely the Eternal Son since no-one has seen the Father (see John 1:18; Colossians 1:15).  This is Christ before He became dust.  Here he sketches out the humanity He would later assume.  Christ is the Potter, Adam is the clay.

But it’s not even as dignified as ‘clay’, or even ‘mud’.  Instead it’s ‘dust.’  So fragmentary.  And so quickly blown away.  It’s the sense of ‘easy come easy go’.  Plenty more where that came from.

He is dust.  More than that, he is dust of the ground.  Adam is very connected to the earth.  He is made of earth.  Adam has not been flown in by the angels to trouble-shoot in this new-frontier start-up called earth.  The man who will have dominion won’t just stand over the earth, he will be earth.

Here is the man of dust springing up from the ground – just like the trees soon will (Genesis 2:9).  It’s another indication that humanity is a crop.

And yet, notice what happens to this very terrestrial, horticultural, ephemeral pile of dirt – Christ the LORD breathes into his nostrils the breath of life.

The earth-creature is blessed by heaven.  No other creature is formed like this or breathed into like this.  No other creature has their earthiness or their spirituality highlighted in such a way.  In man there is an intersection of creation’s two great realms.

Throughout Genesis chapter 1 the stage was being set.  The heavens and the earth were prepared.  And now at centre-stage stands man – moulded from the earth, kissed by heaven.

Here is man face-to-face with the Hands-On God, freely receiving life from his Lord.  This is man in intimate fellowship with God and, at the same time, at the pinnacle of creation.  He sums up the earth and the whole crop of humanity in himself.

Here at the intersection of heaven and earth lies the operating system of the world.  Whatever happens to this man in his relationship to God will happen to all reality.

When this man turns from the LORD, everything falls apart.

But, take heart.  When Christ takes Adam’s flesh He will turn man back to God… and then, the whole world is raised up and set to rights.

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.  (1 Corinthians 15:21-22)

Jesus makes sense of man.  He is the true intersection of heaven and earth.  Yet He invites us to share in His life and status.  What incredible honours are lavished on us, the creatures of dust!

Genesis 2:1-3

“Work to live or live to work?”  We know how we should answer.  The testimony of our lives is probably another matter.  But let’s ask the question of God – because I would guess that our unspoken assumption is that, basically, God lives to work.

You see, for many people, “Creator” is God’s most basic job description.  If He’s not fine-tuning the cosmological constants, or priming the charges for the big bang, or pulling the heavenly levers, or keeping the wheels of providence well-oiled, then, well, what are we paying our taxes for anyway?!  If His role in life isn’t to keep the show on the road, what could it possibly be?’

I recently read a debate between Richard Dawkins and Ruth Gledhill, the Times’ religious affairs correspondent.  They were discussing Stephen Hawking’s new book – a book that claims we don’t need a Creator.  At one point Gledhill asked “could there be another role for a deity beyond creation?”  Dawkins responded, “I can’t even imagine what that would mean.”  This reflects a very common perception that “God equals Creator without remainder.”

But, as with every misconception we have about God, this says more about us than it does about Him.  We project our own work-ethic into the sky and expect God to play by the rules.  But He doesn’t.  God rests.  And we find that quite difficult to understand.

Yet think of our very first phrase on day 1:  “In the beginning”.  There was a time (a very long time!) when God was not Creator.  Originally God was not in manufacturing.  He entered that vocation in later life.

In our case, we are driven to workaholism because we don’t know who we are apart from performing, producing and providing.  But God has no such identity crisis.  The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have known each other in love long before they knew each other in labours.

So as we enter chapter two of Genesis, we’re again reminded that “Creator” is not the fundamental truth about God.  Here is a God who rests from His work.  And this is not an abdication, it’s a consummation.

God’s activity reaches a goal.  You see creation is not a wheel that must be kept turning.  It is a work that comes to completion.  The seventh day (the Hebrew word is Sabbath) shows that there’s an ‘end’ to creation.  And by ‘end’ we mean, most basically, a goal.  There is not endless work.  There is not cosmic burnout.  There is fulfilment.  There is rest.

Can you rest?  Or is your life all about performing, producing and providing?  I wonder whether your picture of God might be shaping your work habits.

Certainly God works. Indeed Christ’s mighty work of redemption cost Him immeasurable blood, sweat and tears.  But the work was not the point.  The work leads to rest.  More specifically, His work leads to your rest.  And today you’re invited to rest in Him:

Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him.  (Psalm 37:7)

Genesis 1:31; Psalm 8

A good God makes a good world.  Perhaps that should be the banner over Genesis chapter 1.

There are no regrets here.  God doesn’t say “It’s not quite what I’d imagined.  It was better in rehearsals.  I’ve kept the receipts in case you want to exchange it.”  No, Genesis 1:28 – “Behold!  It’s very good!”

… if He does say so Himself.

Perhaps we find it odd for God to be passing comment on His own handiwork.  But actually, to hear the Maker’s own assessment is wonderfully reassuring.  We need to know that God is not threatened by the world, not limited by the world, not a competitor with the world, not shut out from the world.  He is no prisoner of His own divine majesty, as though being Creator keeps Him at an infinite distance from His world.  Perhaps you’re thinking “Of course not, why should we think that?”

In the history of human religion, there have always been such fears about god and creation.  The idea of “something besides god” has thrown many believers into a spin.  Religious folk and theistic philosophers toil at relating the infinite to the finite, the spiritual to the physical, the timeless to the time-bound, and a thousand questions besides.  But the God of the Bible has no time for any of this.  He just gets on and creates a world that He is really very happy about.

And He is most happy when it gets to day six.  You see when He comes to the end of all the other days He calls His handiwork “good”, but once humanity crowns creation – “Behold, it is very good!”  This is what He has always wanted.

The Father has always had His Son and Spirit besides Him – ‘in His bosom’ as John 1:18 says.  He is not socially awkward.  He is very comfortable with relating to others.  He is the companionable God.  So He makes a world with man at the top.  Because the intention is for the Man Jesus Christ to stand upon the earth and draw all things under His feet.  The Father has always wanted the whole creation summed up under Man (Psalm 8; Ephesians 1:10; Romans 8:29).  Creation is not an alien sphere, too grubby for a spiritual God to bother with.  It is a very good world for which He has a very good goal.

There is a lot of nonsense spoken by religious folk; a lot of hatred of things bodily; a disdain of this world and a belief that ‘spiritual’ means ‘non-material’.  Don’t believe it.  Don’t retreat from God’s good creation.  Fear sin, don’t fear the world.  To paraphrase a popular explanation of Christianity:  God loves the world and has a wonderful plan for its life.

Genesis 1:28-30

On day 4 we’ve hit a milestone.  Here’s the first of many King James phrases that have become swear words!  “Be fruitful and multiply.”

It’s God’s way of saying… well… let’s stick to the way God says it: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28)

It’s a phrase that actually gives us a window onto:

—  the character of God;

—  the way of true flourishing; and

—  the heart of God’s gospel (i.e. God’s good news for the world)

First let’s think about God’s character.

In Genesis 1:28, God is speaking about how humanity is to fill and rule the earth.  And He doesn’t say: “Let there be a human race.”  He doesn’t scatter an army of humans over the face of the earth.  He starts with a man.  He makes for him a woman – out of Adam’s own flesh (more on this soon).  And from the union of their love will flow the human race.

This is a window onto the character of God.

God is Persons-in-relationship and He creates a people who are persons-in-relationship.  We thought about this yesterday when we discussed humanity in the image of God.

And so, as humanity is tasked with filling the earth, how will they do it?  Manufacture?  An assembly line?  Cloning?  No.

They will do it like God: in a deeply relational way.  The filling of the earth mirrors the creation of the earth.  It is loving union.  It is face-to-face fellowship which, though intensely intimate, is outward-going in its fruitful creativity.  The human family is to be made how the world was made – birthed out of love.

And this gives us a window onto the truly flourishing life.

We often think the way to ‘make things happen’ in life is to grit our teeth and go for it.  We picture success in individual terms – perhaps we aspire to be the corporate high-flyer or the peerless performer or the champion athlete.  But lasting and true value comes as the organic product of persons-in-relationship.  I’m not just talking about ‘making babies.’  I’m talking about what our verse from Genesis says: “replenishing”, “subduing” and “having dominion” over all the earth.  This is not just about baby-making.  The lessons of being “fruitful and multiplying” are to be applied in all kinds of realms.

What really matters in God’s world does not come from the manufacturing model of success – individual efforts, impersonal tasks, laying brick upon brick.  What really flourishes and multiplies in this world is the organic fruitfulness model – persons united in love and common purpose.

Filling/blessing/replenishing the earth starts small.  It begins with loving that person who God has in your path right now.  Not ignoring persons and performing grand tasks.  Instead it’s about the pouring of person into person in committed love.  This has a multiplying power to bless and replenish the earth.

Finally, “be fruitful and multiply” shows us wonderful gospel truth.  Because – oddly enough – Adam is being treated as a plant.  Humanity is a crop.  But this is crucial, Adam is a plant that will bear fruit ‘according to its kind’.

This has been a big theme in Genesis chapter 1.  Day three of creation was all about fruitful plants with seeds and how they will reproduce ‘according to their kind’ (verses 11-12).  All of this prepares us for humanity.  Adam will be a plant intended to be fruitful.  But the fruit borne will be just like that of its forebear.

Adam and Eve (who was herself a ‘cutting’ from Adam) proved fruitful.  And they multiplied.  But they multiplied a diseased strain of humanity.  Between “Be fruitful and multiply” and the time when “Adam knew Eve” the crop was compromised.  It had been severed from its life-source in the Lord.  As so they bore fruit devoid of the life of God.

Jesus described humanity’s multiplication under these conditions: “Flesh gives birth to flesh” (John 3:6).  We are not born with Spirit-life – life in connection with God.  Instead we’re disconnected, devoid of true life.  And looking for the life of God among Adam’s descendants is like looking for grapes on thorn-bushes or plucking figs from thistles (Matthew 7:16).

What we need is a new kind of plant.  We need a new kind of humanity into which we can be grafted.  And so the Spirit-filled Son becomes flesh and stands on the earth as the true Adam.  Jesus is the true humanity.  The true Vine.  And He invites us into Himself:

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.  (John 15:5)

How will we be fruitful and multiply?

First we come to Christ.  We are grafted into Him and become His fruitful, new humanity.  We make your home in Christ and as He makes His home in us, we will bear fruit.  Fruit according to His kind.

Do you want to lead a fruitful life?  Do you want to flourish as a Christian?  It won’t come through mechanical manufacture.  It will be the fruit of loving union with Jesus.  Enjoy Jesus.  Spend time with Him and there will be an organic, gradual but exponential fruitfulness to ‘replenish the whole earth’!

Genesis 1:24-27

Picture God-like-ness.  How does it look?  What is it to be God-like?

Well Genesis 1:26 speaks of ‘the image of God’ and it’s one of the most discussed verses in all the Bible:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion…”

What exactly is the image of God?  That’s been a question that has rolled on down the centuries.

Humanity is in God’s image.  No other creature shares this dignity.  But what is it?

Predictably enough, misconceptions of the image of God follow misconceptions about God Himself.

So first there’s the Power-God misconception.  This states that the ultimate fact of God is His power – or, to use a technical term, His ‘omnipotence’.

Those enamoured of the Power-God point to the end of the verse.  “Look,” they say, “the image is about ‘dominion’. Being God-like is having power.”

Well certainly the dominion is linked to the image.  But the dominion doesn’t seem to be equivalent to the image.  It seems to flow out of the image.

The other misconception I’ll mention is the Wisdom-God misconception.  This states that the ultimate fact of God is His knowledge (‘omniscience’ for those who like latin words).  For such people, God is an Infinite Mind.  So, obviously, what else would ‘the image’ be except our own rational capacities?  The logic runs something like this:

‘The image’ is unique to humanity

Self-conscious rationality is unique to humanity

Therefore, rationality is ‘the image’.

You can tell they’re clutching at straws can’t you?

But it’s surprising how pervasive this view is.  We readily distinguish our species by the name homo sapiens – “knowing man”.  Philosophers describe us as ‘rational animals.’  We think therefore we are, right?

Well, certainly rationality flows from ‘the image’, but let’s think about what this verse is actually saying.

First, understand that the words ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ are just very basic words for ‘lookalike.’  They’re the kind of words you would use for the statues at Madame Tussaud’s.  God is not making ants He can crush.  Or drones He can look down on.  We are not exhibits for His zoo.  He’s making creatures with whom He can share life.  He wants to invite us to eat at table – to share ‘face-to-face’ friendship.  It would almost seem blasphemous to say such things, but the Bible speaks in these terms time and again.  ‘The image’ has radical implications for how we think of our relationship with God.

Secondly, let’s notice how verse 26 begins: “Let us.”  Here is a conversation happening among multiple Persons.

There’s a joke about bureaucracy that says “a camel is a horse designed by committee.’  Actually the Bible would tell us a horse is a horse designed by Committee.  Creation is designed by a Divine Committee and when it comes to humanity that truth is brought to the fore.  “Let us.”

The Persons of God uniting in common purpose are going to make a special species.  And the verse goes on…

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  (Genesis 1:27)

A multi-Personal God would not be properly imaged if there were just a lot of blokes about the place.  The God who is different Persons united in love creates a people who are themselves different persons – male and female. And, as the end of Genesis 2 teaches, man and woman are to become “one” in committed love.

So it is with humanity, so it has always been with God.

We image God’s life in that God has always been a community of other-centred love.  Whether we consider the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit, each Person has always loved God and their neighbour.  Even before there was a universe!

And this God brings a world into being and places humanity at its head.  He wants these creatures particularly to share His life and so He makes them like Him – persons in relationship, drawn into God’s own relationship.

Now that we’re thinking along these lines, of course the special dominion of humanity will follow.  And of course the special intelligence of humanity is required.  But the image is first a relational truth.  It denotes our special relationship to God and, secondarily, to each other as persons in relationship.

Perhaps then we should ditch homo sapiens.  Maybe homo adorans (loving man) would be better!  Those are the ways we will think when we understand God’s image relationally.

So now… picture God-like-ness.  Does it look like Absolute Power?  Does it look like Infinite Mind?  Or does it look like Persons in loving communion?

Now picture flourishing humanity? What will that look like?

How does ‘the image’ shape your view of God, of yourself and of others?

Genesis 1:3-23

In the beginning was the life and love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Before there was a universe there wasn’t nothing, there wasn’t chaos and there wasn’t a lonely god.  Our origins are not darkness but entirely light.

But when this God creates, the equation changes.  Suddenly there is something else other than God.  The Father, Son and Spirit are radically relativised!  They are not everything.  God ‘makes room’ if you like for something else to be alongside.  In fact, for something else to be drawn in.

But that process is not straightforward.  Here’s what the second verse of the Bible says:

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

This should shock us.  ‘Without form’, ‘void’, ‘darkness’, ‘the deep’, ‘waters’ – here are biblical words and phrases associated with sin, chaos, de-creation.  Darkness is not a good thing in the Bible – it means fearful ignorance, death and judgement.  But these are the very first descriptions of the heavens and the earth!

It’s as if the universe is still-born.  All the excitement of a new arrival in verse 1 turns to anguish.  There don’t seem to be any signs of life.

But take heart – the life-giving Spirit is there, hovering in a motherly, brooding kind of way.  There is hope.  But how will things be resolved?  Genesis 1, verse 3:

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

Here’s what creation needs – the Word of God to be revealed.  And when God’s Word is revealed the darkness must flee.

The Apostle John understood what Genesis was saying.  You see God’s Word is not a what – God’s Word is a Who.  God’s Word is Jesus, who was there creating in the beginning.  It’s Jesus who needs to be revealed, and to shine His light.

John comments on our verse:

“In Him [in Jesus] was life and the life was the light of men.  The Light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not.”  (John 1:4-5)

When the Light shines the darkness can’t cope and new life is born.

We tend to think of light and darkness as equal and opposite powers, but of course they’re not.  A battle between light and darkness is over in an instant.  Wherever light is present, the darkness must give way.  Yet darkness has no power to push back in the other direction.  Light shines.  Darkness doesn’t darken.  It can only have a shadowy existence.  It is not a positive thing.  It is a lack of a positive thing.  And when Light shines, darkness is defeated.

The whole of the first day of creation is given over to the conquering power of light.  In fact, the whole definition of Day and Night is given in these verses:

“God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:5)

Do you notice when a day begins according to the Bible?  It begins with evening, but the evening gives way to the morning.  The Light triumphs.  That’s the Bible’s view of things.

Julius Caesar changed all that for us.  He decided that our days should begin and end at midnight – from darkness to darkness.  That was his view of the world and so that was how he framed his days.

But what do you think?  Is darkness an equal and opposite force?  Is darkness our origin?  Is it our destination?

The Bible has good news.  There is an uncreated and eternal Light.  And His shining dispels the darkness.

Jesus said:

“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”  (John 8:12)

Genesis 1:1-5; John 1:1-5

Right now the whole world is considering beginnings.  But usually they’re the beginnings that we will make.  “New year, new you” and all that.

What about the beginning that God has made?  Let’s think about that for a minute.

Wind back the clock to the time before people and planets and protons, what was there?  What images spring to mind?

Here are some popular answers to the question, “What was there in the beginning?”

Nothing

There was nothing in the beginning.  Just an endless dark expanse of empty space.  (Of course, that’s not nothing, that’s a whole lot of black something, but let’s not get picky).

I don’t know about you, but this was my reflex thought:

‘Before the universe?? What else is there?  What could possibly predate that?  The universe is everything!’

These are the instinctive reactions of a supposed Bible-believer.  But I’m a Bible-believer who, like you, has soaked for long years in a religious story very unlike the Bible’s.

The story we’re told in a thousand ways and from a thousand sources says, “In the beginning, there was nothing.  And then – BANG – something (everything!) from nothing.”

In this story our origins lie in some kind of absolute zero point.  Bring it all back to basics and what do you get?  Nothing.  King Lear said “Nothing will come from nothing.”  But this story says, everything comes from nothing.

Therefore what is life?  It’s trying to work a something out of a nothing.  Forget your origins, we came from nothing – just make it happen.  Forge something, impose meaning, be a self-creator.  Make some resolutions!  But know that ultimately, at bottom, it’s nothing.

Here’s another popular answer.  What was there in the beginning?

Chaos

Many of the world’s creation myths tell of wars in heaven.  Battling gods jostle for pre-eminence and the losers are cast out.  Creation may be explained as the place of exile for naughty deities or the body of a dead god.  Or cosmic storms destroy the harmony of heaven and the universe is the rubble.  Essentially the world comes out of conflict, killing and chaos.

This is a story of struggle and storms and selfishness.  It’s kill or be killed and the strong eat the weak.  The victors will emerge from the cosmic debris.  But only for a season.  Ultimately it’s chaos that reigns.

What was there in the beginning? How about this for an answer…

A lonely god

Here’s one for the pious among us.  Perhaps, this is what you imagined in the beginning.  God.

Well that is how the verse continues.  But here is the crucial question: Which God did you imagine?  There are millions to choose from.  I’m guessing that if you live in the west, you thought of a solitary God.  All on his own.

But actually, such a thought is quite chilling.

Can you imagine this lonely god existing from all eternity?  With no-one and nothing besides him.  Just his own thoughts for company.  He knows nothing of relationship, nothing of back-and-forth or give-and-take.  He only knows absolute power and supremacy.  He’s like an awkward bachelor who’s never had a girlfriend.  For all eternity.

Now just imagine if this god was in the beginning.  Imagine if this god created the heavens and the earth, and you and me.  To be honest I’d rather not live in that universe.

Because what would our lives mean if this were the story?  Well they wouldn’t be nothing and they wouldn’t be chaos.  They’d be slavery.

If the universe begins with the lonely god, then living in tune with reality means living before this god.  And remember, for this god love is not primary.  Power is.  Commands will come naturally, but not companionship.  This god knows how to be supreme, but not how to share.

For the world to correspond properly to this god can only mean one thing: submission. Therefore the meaning of life would be slavery.

You will be pleased to know that the Bible points to something very different when it says “In the beginning.”

What was there in the beginning? Here’s the Bible’s answer…

Love

The phrase “in the beginning” comes up three times in the Bible.  Once at the start of Genesis and then twice at the start of John’s Gospel.

In Genesis it says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  And it goes on to describe God’s creation in plural terms.  The Spirit of God moves upon the waters (Genesis 1:2).  The Word of God brings everything into being (v3ff).  And when this God decides to make humanity, it’s a committee decision: “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26).

In John it says: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  The same was with God in the beginning.” (John 1:1-2).

John is just refreshing our memory of Genesis.  In the beginning there was not a lonely god.  In the beginning there was one Person called “God”, who John later calls “the Father” (v14).  But there was another Person called “the Word”.  He also has the right to the title “God”.  Yet perhaps we know Him by some more familiar names: “The Son of God” (v14) and “Jesus Christ” (v17).  Later on John will also tell us about the Holy Spirit – He too was in the beginning.

So this is ultimate reality according to the Bible.  Before anything else, there was a Father loving His Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit.  We call this Three-Person’d Unity, ‘the Trinity’.  And it means that for all eternity there was give-and-take, back-and-forth.  There was closeness, friendliness, companionship, sharing, interaction, intimacy.  In short, in the beginning there was love.

Now what’s the meaning of life when we understand this beginning?

Well we’re saved from nothingness and we’re saved from chaos.  But wonderfully we are not delivered into the hands of the lonely god, to be mere slaves.  No, this God does not create to display His power but to spread His love.  The meaning of our lives is not to cower before our creator but to be wooed by our heavenly Lover.  We relate to God not, basically, by submitting to His unquestioned will but by receiving His unconditional love.

New Years’ Day is a time to think of beginnings.  Yet, before we resolve to make our own beginnings, let’s remember the good news.  An ultimate beginning has been made – one that shapes everything.  The controlling reality of our lives is not Fate or a Force but a Fellowship.  And His unshakeable resolution is to draw us in.

Genesis 45:1-28

In English we say “the cream of the crop”.  In Hebrew they would say “the fat of the land” (Genesis 44:18).  Not that the ground is particularly oily (they’d also talk about “the fat of the wheat”; Psalm 81:16).  The fat is the best portion.

And this is what Pharaoh offers to Joseph’s brothers:

“Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye; lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan; And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land.” (Genesis 45:17-18)

This is a conversation between the arch-ruler, Pharaoh, and his right-hand-man Joseph.  Earlier, Pharaoh had said to Joseph:

“I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.” (Genesis 41:41)

Joseph rules the whole land under Pharaoh. And through Joseph’s wisdom, the land is first made prosperous (Genesis 41) and then redeemed – bought back – into the possession of Pharaoh. (Genesis 47).

Now the famished and guilty brothers of Joseph are given a life-line.  Much more than a life-line.  They come in on his inheritance.

What right do these foreigners have to the fat of the land?  None.  Except that their brother has made the whole land fat.

What right do these brothers have to share in Joseph’s wealth?  None.  By rights Joseph should have sold them into slavery the way they’d sold him.  Yet he receives his brothers to himself.  And they enter into the inheritance of Egypt’s lord. (Genesis 45:8)

Thousands of years later Jesus stood on a mountain proclaiming:

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5)

He doesn’t say ‘they shall inherit eternal life’, though that would be true.  He says they will inherit the earth.  This future hope is not celestial but very much grounded. In fact it is cosmic.  The whole earth.

Who could possibly possess the earth?  Surely only the bold.  Only the go-getters.  Only those who take life by the scruff of the neck.  But no Jesus says it’s the meek.

How is this so?

Well we are like Joseph’s brothers.  We are desperately guilty, desperately needy and should, by rights, be shut out of the inheritance.  But King Jesus is Lord of this world.  It’s all coming to Him.  And all those who come to Him meekly, He receives as family into the fat of the land.