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Christ and the Monsters of Chaos

Christ Church on January 24, 2021

INTRODUCTION

We do not pay enough attention to foundational myths. This is the case both with the fanciful myths of the unbelievers and the genuine myths that are recorded for us in Scripture. While many myths are false, and Scripture treats the word in that way, with myths being described as pernicious, false, and unedifying (1 Tim. 1:4, 4:7; 2 Tim. 4:4; Tit. 1:14; 2 Pet. 1:16), the phrase true myth is nevertheless not oxymoronic.

THE TEXTS

“So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:21, NKJV)

“In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; And he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1).

“For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness” (Psalm 74:12–14).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXTS

In Scripture, the great dragons of the deep were creatures, and they were formed on the fifth day. They are called tanninim, sea monsters, great sea dragons. Not only so, but God made leviathan for fun. “There go the ships: There is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein” (Ps. 104:26).

But in a fallen creation, these sea monsters became symbols of great wickedness and insolent pride, usually associated with Egypt. And this is why God is described as conquering and defeating them. The exultation over God’s victory over Leviathan in both Isaiah and Psalms is a triumph over Pharaoh. And in a related example, there was another great sea monster was named Rahab. And God describes the crossing of the Rea Sea, and the defeat of Egypt, in terms that are reminiscent of Jehovah’s conquest of that sea dragon.

“Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; Awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; That hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?” (Isaiah 51:9–10).

The defeat of these sea dragons might be a symbolic description of God dealing with Egypt decisively, or perhaps it is using a primal battle between Jehovah and these sea creatures as an image for describing what He also did to Egypt. When Job curses the day of his birth, he calls upon those capable of rousing Leviathan, which would unhinge everything. “Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan” (Job 3:8, ESV).

This is not just some ancient “old covenant” thing. Remember the red dragon with seven heads in Revelation, and which pursues the woman with turbulent flood waters (Rev. 12:3-4, 15)

SOME BACKGROUND

In order to understand all this more fully, we have to grasp the fundamental contrast between the believing and unbelieving mind at this point. For the believer, God is the ultimate and personal starting point. For the unbeliever, the foundation is chaos. Everything began with chaos, and threatens to return to chaos.

The scriptural account begins with God speaking. God speaks, and as a result there was an earth that was formless and void, and then God shaped it according to His good purposes.

But unbelievers do not begin with the Word that was with God and was God, and so they must in some manner begin with the chaos. In the ancient pagan myths, as in the Enuma Elish, it begins with water, and—long story short—Marduk kills Tiamat the watery goddess, and creates heaven and earth out of her carcass. Then man is created to help the gods keep order, and to keep the chaos at bay.

Infinite personal God > Formless & void (tohu wabohu) > Ordered cosmos . . . or
Chaos > Apparent order and design > Ever present option of lapsing

STRUCTURAL DEFECT OR REBELLION?

In the biblical view of the world, when God created all things, He pronounced all of them good(Gen. 1: 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). This would include the sea dragons of the fifth day (Gen. 1:21). Nothing whatever wrong with them. But after the rebellion of man, after we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the whole created order fell with us. Man was the driver, creation the car, and we crashed it into a tree. This is why the whole creation groans (Rom. 8: 22), looking forward to the day when the sons of God are to be revealed. But some parts of this crashed creation order became identified with the great rebellion. It is hard to imagine packs of hyenas roaming the outskirts of Eden.

But it is important for us to distinguish the two visions. For the Christian, the problem is sin, and the solution is the gospel and right worship. Civilization is fragile, but it is fragile because of sin. For the unbeliever, civilization is also fragile, but it is fragile because of the underlying chaos. This whole thing is built on chaos, chaos is the foundation. In addition, because the unbeliever has no ultimate standard of order, his only hope—when things get intolerable—is to drive it all back down into shambolic chaos again, with the desire that we might get luckier next time. Such pagan religion is driven by a gamblers’ hope.

“Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place” (Ovid, Metamorphoses).

THE ORDER OF CHRIST AND THE CHAOS OF SIN

According to the gospel, the problematic issue is what man did in his rebellion. The problematic issue is not the very nature of the created order itself. And this is why our worship is so important.

“For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, He created it not in vain [to not be chaos, tohu], he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:18).

“Let all things be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40). We want nothing to do with those who walk disorderly (2 Thess. 3:6-7, 11). “For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ” (Col. 2:5).

But remember that in and through the church, God is remaking the cosmos. We are the new way of being human in Christ. And that means we are worshiping God here, this morning, as the sea wall that is holding back the raging flood that wants to inundate the world. But God promised—ironically, with a rainbow—that this was not going to happen again.

“And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23).

Building the City of God in a Fallen World

Christ Church on June 10, 2018

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Introduction

In a world gone mad, Christians can become unwitting assistants to the insanity, and therefore, it is incredibly important for Christians to keep the building blocks of civilization straight in their own heads. How are cities built? They are built on the principle of personal responsibility.

Summary of the Text (Genesis 4)

After Adam and Eve sinned, and God spared their lives, Eve bore children to Adam, the first two apparently being Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:1-2). God was pleased with Abel’s worship and displeased with Cain’s, and this made Cain very angry (Gen. 4:3-5, cf. Heb. 11:4). God warned Cain that disobedience and a bad attitude meant more evil was crouching at his door, and he needed to rule wisely, but Cain ignored the warning and murdered his brother (Gen. 4:6-8). When the Lord confronted Cain, he shifted the blame like his parents before him, raising a philosophical question about the nature of responsibility, but the Lord was not distracted and reiterated the curses for Abel’s blood (Gen. 4:9-12). When Cain realized that his actions left him vulnerable to the vengeance of others, he pleaded for mercy and God sent him away with a mark of protection and he started building a family and a city (Gen. 4:13-18). We see the downstream results in his family when Lamech takes two wives and soon admits to murder as well (Gen. 4:19, 23-24), and yet, God also grants his family a measure of cultural dominion over cattle, music, and technology (Gen. 4:20-22). Meanwhile, Eve bore another son to Adam, named Seth, and in those days, men began to call on the name of the Lord (Gen. 4:25-26).

Building Culture in the Ruins

This may seem like a very unlikely passage to discuss Christian culture building. Ultimately, the whole earth was filling with evil, leading to the flood (Gen. 6:5). But there are at least two curious things in this text: First, why did God spare Cain (and later, Lamech)? And why did God bless his family with a measure of cultural success? We know that sometimes God blesses the wicked with success in order to give that wealth to the righteous (e.g. Prov. 13:22), but we do not want to be backed into a corner where we are saying that it’s just inscrutable luck. So, despite the growing disobedience of the human race as a whole, it seems likely that the way God dealt with Cain’s sin was related to his ability to build cities and discover true treasure and glory in the earth. Where did that ability come from? Common grace and the image of God are certainly part of the picture, but the text curiously frames the agricultural, musical, and artistic and technological advances of Cain’s family with the stories of Cain and Lamech (Gen. 4:19-23).

While we may (rightly) note the familial resemblance between Cain and Lamech’s sin, we should not miss the fact that five generations later, Cain’s descendants are still citing God’s dealings with Cain (Gen. 4:24). In fact, Hebrews says, we have come “to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Heb. 12:24). In other words, the murder of Abel was a type of Christ’s sacrifice, and it’s in that context that men are dwelling in tents, raising cattle, making music, and working with metal. The point is that in the midst of the anarchy of sin, God administered a measure of justice, insisting that Cain take responsibility for the bloodshed of his brother, and as he did so, the city of Nod was built, and five generations later, Lamech is also taking responsibility for his sinful actions and his family is cultivating cattle, music, and technology.

Conservative Victim Cultures?

If you have been around here long at all, you have heard and read any number of warnings about the current “sacred victim culture” we live in. This is a false gospel if there ever was one (cf. Gal. 1). It offers justification and holiness to any and all who will claim the status of victim. This is a form of self-justification, since a victim must claim relative innocence, and this is also a form of crowd sourcing your justification – justification by popular vote. But perhaps most importantly, this is a refusal to accept responsibility. There are certain frontal assaults in this war that we must not budge on: insisting on justice for the accused, two and three witnesses, due process, etc. But we must also be aware of certain flanking attempts, where Christians are offered certain victim cards (e.g. religious persecution and discrimination, liberal fascism, the Federal regulations, unjust taxation, Hollywood, porn, etc.), but we must see every offer of victimhood as an offer to join the anarchy, assistants to the insanity.

We must refuse and reject every offer of victimhood, not because real injustice cannot be perpetrated against us, but because we are never totally innocent and we have a better offer. And this is because we have a better victim. Jesus is the better victim because He was completely innocent and willing, and therefore, His sacrifice was an act of taking responsibility in order to present us to God with all glory (Eph. 5:25-26, 1 Pet. 2:24-25). And because Jesus took responsibility for us, we are completely justified by faith. Our sins are washed clean, and the obedience of Jesus is imputed to us (Rom. 4:22-25). This is why Paul says that even when we are victimized, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Rom. 8:36-37).

Personal Responsibility & Culture Building

Satan plied Eve’s moral clarity in order to deceive her: Did God really say? Here, Cain has taken it a step further, asking whether God should really even be asking him about his brother (Gen. 4:9). Moral ambiguity is frequently closely aligned with evading responsibility. People have a bad habit of trying to justify sin with ambiguity and confusion. This can be done by straight- forward evasion and relativism, but this can also be done by claiming that everything is everyone’s responsibility, which means no one is responsible for anyone because you are not infinite, omniscient, omnipotent – in short, you are not God. Be assured that the attempt to do this will always result in various attempts at playing god. But this will ultimately result in apathy and paralysis. Why should anyone do anything? What are you working for? Who are you working for? What are you responsible for?

This is why Christians, in submission to God’s word, have historically insisted that faithfulness means being responsible and sovereign over the sphere(s) that God has assigned to you (and not others). The principle of “sphere sovereignty” comes from God assigning responsibility to particular people in particular relationships: civil magistrate, parent, husband, master, teacher, etc. And God’s law always applies to every sphere: a man may not murder his brother and tell the civil magistrate to stay in his own lane. I suspect that God gave Cain such a light sentence (as well as Lamech) both to display His great mercy (as He had with Adam and Eve) and to lean hard against sphere anarchy. In God’s ordering of things, personal responsibility is the basic building block of culture. Men are tempted to try to trick power out of evasion of responsibility, by blaming others, by claiming to be victims, but that is a black hole of chaos and anarchy.

But the answer to the chaos is the gospel: Jesus has taken personal responsibility for us – for our sin and for our good works – His blood speaks better things than that of Abel, so that one by one, as we call on the name of the Lord, living stones are being built up into the city of God, as we take up the good works that He has prepared beforehand for us to walk in them.

Seed

Christ Church on October 1, 2017

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Weeds and Grains
Genesis 2:4 marks the beginning of a new section in the book of Genesis. However, to many it doesn’t just look like a new section, but it actually looks like a section that contradicts the previous section. Gen. 2:7 appears to put the creation of Adam as after the creation of plants, contradicting Gen. 1, where plants are created on the third day and man is created on the sixth day.
However, a closer read of the text shows that 2:5 is actually referring to a much more specific kind of plant. 1:11-12 refers to “grass” and “herbs yielding seed” (grain). But 2:5 refers to “plant of the field.” The Hebrew for “plant” here is not a super common noun, but one that usually refers to the wild shrubs found out in the desert (Job 21:15). This would mean that 2:4-7 is telling us that Adam was created at a moment in time before there were weeds in the ground and before grain had begun to sprout.

Before the Curse
So why is there a need to specify this particular moment? We have to look at the curse in order to understand this. Look at 3:17-19. When the ground is cursed, the result is that man will now have to work to eat from it. In chapter 2, the author of Genesis focuses on the trees that God provides to Adam for food (2:9, 16 and 3:2). But after his sin, Adam is told that now he will toil to get his food from the ground (3:17). He will have to fight weeds and he will have to sweat (v. 18).

Dust to Dust
Adam having to till the ground for grain was a consequence of his fall (3:23). After the fall, our work for food requires that we work in the dirt. You will eat from the ground (3:18), eating grain (3:18), and eating bread (3:19). God cursed the ground and made us farmers.
Why farming? Adam was made from dust (2:7). And because Adam sinned, he was going to die and return to dust (3:19 and 23).

You Are Seed
But when a farmer cuts open the earth to put the seed in, he doesn’t do so in grim defeat. He actually does so with great hope. He looks to a harvest. And Scripture carries over this hope to us. Yes, we are all going into the ground, because we are all mortal. But we go into the ground as seed (1 Cor. 15:35-37, 48-49). Grain is provides food, just like a fruit tree. But the grain must die first. It must go into the ground to die, before returning in glory. And that is what man, after the fall is. We are creatures that must die first, but will live eternally.

The Seed
But the hope in Genesis 3 is even stronger than that. We always are quick to point out that when God gave the curse, he also gave the promise of the coming Messiah to deliver us from the curse. But how was that Messiah described? The Messiah was the coming seed of the woman (3:15). In fact, all of Scripture points to this one true seed, the seed whose death and resurrection makes possible our eternal life.

No Going Back
Notice that God did not solve Adam’s sin by giving him means by which he could undo the damage that he had done. Death has not been removed, but rather conquered. Our tendency, when we see the consequences of our sin, is want to find a way back to before our sin, to undo it. But that is never an option. The cross was not a time machine. Instead, God took Adam’s sin and all its consequences and turned it into another path for walking into God’s glory.

And We Shall Have Dominion

Ben Zornes on July 23, 2017

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Our Divine Commission to Rule over all Living Things

The Text: ²⁸And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. ³¹And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 1:28-31.

Biblical Reasons to Rule the Living Creation

It is a command. (Genesis 1:28-31; Psalm 8:6-8) – The Dominion Mandate
God values it highly – God created the various kinds of plants and animals… and He said it was very good (Genesis 1:31). Plants and animals do not have to justify their existence by having some use for man to exploit.
He made life to feed us – Plants to eat (Genesis 1:29). Animals given after the flood (Genesis 9:3). Both used for sacrifices (Leviticus).
God wants us to maintain the created diversity. Genesis 7:2-3
God wants us to take good care to animals under our charge. A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel (Prov. 12:10). Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds, for riches do not last forever; and does a crown endure to all generations? (Prov. 27:23) (Psalm 23)
Nature declares the glory of God and proclaims his invisible attributes (Psalm 19, 104; Romans 1:20)
Knowing about plants and animals was considered part of Solomon’s wisdom. (I Kings 4:33-34)
Living things (not just man) bring praise to the Lord (Psalm 148)

Understanding dominion: An analogy from Ephesians 5 shows that dominion is not exploitive or oppressive. Godly headship never is.

Christ and the Church – under Christ’s headship the church is to thrive, be fruitful, and become more lovely
Husband and wife – under her husband’s righteous headship a wife is to thrive, be fruitful, and become more lovely
We have been given dominion over the Creation. If we exercise godly dominion under the Lordship of Christ the living creation will thrive, be fruitful, and will become more lovely. Knowledge and appreciation of our fellow creatures is essential for good husbandry.

Disastrous Acts of Judgment in the Bible: For thus says the Lord God: How much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four disastrous acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast! (Ezekiel 14:21) Three of the four are environmental problems.

What is the cause of environmental problems? Sin (direct or indirect causality)

Hosea 4:1-3 – Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel,
for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
and no knowledge of God in the land;
²there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
³Therefore the land mourns,
and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field
and the birds of the heavens,
and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

Seed

Ben Zornes on May 7, 2017

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You are Seed
But when a farmer cuts open the earth to put the seed in, he doesn’t do so in grim defeat. He actually does so with great hope. He looks to a harvest. And Scripture carries over this hope to us. Yes, we are all going into the ground, because we are all mortal. But we go into the ground as seed (1 Cor. 15:35-37, 48-49). Grain is provides food, just like a fruit tree. But the grain must die first. It must go into the ground to die, before returning in glory. And that is what man, after the fall is. We are creatures that must die first, but will live eternally.