Last week we began this experiment of trying to view the Bible from the way of life.
And we looked at one tool last week that was the tool of the repeated word.
We’re going to look at a few other tools this week, two of them specifically.
But we’re starting this experiment to try to use the Bible to guide our thinking and
to begin to shift our thinking from right and wrong, from morals, from good and evil,
to ideas of life and death, asking questions of life rather than questions of good.
And I realize that some of the things that I’ve said up to this point are probably pretty
controversial and that’s good because the Bible itself is controversial.
It’s a controversial book.
I don’t fear controversy for the sake of controversy, especially when it matters.
I am avoiding some controversial subjects, not because I don’t want controversy but because
I don’t think they matter.
There’s a huge difference there.
So we have to be willing to ask some very difficult questions.
The Bible is controversial and we add a new point of view to the mix and I have no doubt
that it will generate even more controversy.
One of the things that is true is that everyone has their own opinion.
And interpretations usually come down to what we define as good.
What is the good interpretation?
And that’s the right and proper way to really understand this.
If you find yourself disagreeing with me, don’t simply say you’re wrong and that’s it.
Research.
Research what I say.
Even if you agree with me.
Research what I say.
Don’t take my word as the last.
I am the student.
Just as probably most of you are.
I’m the student trying to figure out this thing called life.
So we need to research all we do and when we research we can’t just sound bite.
We can’t sound bite theology.
We have to look to the context of the things that we find that we think might disagree
with certain viewpoints.
So many times when we examine the context surrounding a certain passage or verse we find
that it’s not really saying what we think it’s saying.
As a student, don’t take what I say for granted.
Research it.
I’m just simply asking new questions.
I’ve heard a lot of the questions that are out there.
I’ve asked many of them myself, but I’m trying to shift the focus now.
I think that it could be very helpful to us if we do.
There are others out there doing this.
I mentioned that before.
There are other people out there who are looking for the things of life in Scripture,
but they don’t know that they have conceptualized it as such yet, that they’ve realized that
that’s what they’re doing.
I hear many of them still talking about good and evil, about being moral, so on and so
forth.
And that clues me in that they’re doing it more out of an instinct than out of any kind
of purposeful thought.
Well, I’m going to try to make this purposeful.
Let’s think about it.
Let’s do it.
Last message we talked about looking at Scripture as an image, and I’ll put this picture up
on the screen and we looked at it and we talked about how Scripture mimics life for the patterns.
And we began to look at one of the patterns last week, the mimicking of words in close
proximity and using those as a point or two, some grander idea that’s under discussion
in the chapter.
And we use this pattern the same way that we use art to guide our thoughts, to guide
what we’re doing to a new purpose.
Because the fact of the matter is that art is not somehow blessed in fact.
Art is simply a different way to represent fact when done properly, even many of the great
fictions contain a lot of fact in them, especially facts like human nature. You can learn a lot
from fiction. I’m not saying the Bible’s fiction in any way, I’m not saying that it’s not fact,
it’s not real, but it’s a fact that’s presented in a very artistic manner. And these patterns,
the way that it’s represented, the way that it’s presented by the author, by the artist,
gives us pointers to how to discern the point. One thing that we have to realize is the Bible
wasn’t written to us. It wasn’t written to people who exist after the Enlightenment period.
It was written in a completely foreign language to many of us. It uses completely unfamiliar idioms
that we don’t recognize, filled with people with a completely different social dynamic than
anyone alive today. The value systems were so vastly different. The Bible wasn’t written to you.
It was, however, written for you. Breaking down these factors
who it was written to, how it was written, the way the language is used, idioms, social dynamics,
and play, value systems, so on and so forth. They can help us to separate what’s going on in the
texts and help us to discern what it is that the author’s pointing to.
So, if you think that the Bible is making a scientific point at any time, stop, you’re
missing the point, if that’s what you think it’s doing.
One example is very easy is, in the Bible, there is no word for brain.
You know what ancient Greek doctors thought the brain was for?
Heat sink.
The heat from your body has to go somewhere, so it goes up to this brain thing, and then
dissipates from there.
Thoughts, emotions, will, power, all comes from the heart, and if we go through Scripture
and circle the uses of the word heart and consider them all in context, we’ll say that that’s
exactly what they thought.
So, question, is the heart where things happen?
No, we know that scientifically.
The heart is not where our will is centered, the heart is not where our thoughts happen,
and even our emotions don’t happen in the heart, even though we idiomatically say that
in the West.
The heart isn’t where our intellect is seated.
We know full well, huge body of evidence, intellect is seated in the brain, so if the
Bible says that your heart is wicked, it’s talking about your thoughts.
And so, as we look at this, as we consider this whole thought of the Bible not talking
about science and using the heart as the example for that.
When we get to Genesis 1 through 3, what is it that the Bible is talking about?
It’s not talking about science.
It’s doing something else completely different.
It’s doing stuff through conventions that were understood in ancient cultures, things
like talking animals.
Question, Genesis 1, Genesis 2, what was created first, animals or humans?
They disagree on that, is the heart where thoughts originate?
Because if we make the claim that the Bible is making scientific claims here in Genesis
1, we have to uphold that claim throughout all of the pages of Scripture, which means
that you as an individual believe that the heart is actually, despite all the body of
evidence that we have, the seat of one’s intellect.
It’s where the thoughts occur.
You can believe that.
I don’t.
I don’t think that Genesis 1 is talking about science either.
Either is Genesis 2 or 3.
it’s telling a story. What is it that the ancient cultures would have cared about as
they read through Genesis 1? What would they have picked up on? What is seven days in the
ancient culture? It’s the time of ordinations, it’s the time of cleansing, it’s the time
of being moved from one state to another. So it’s the 7-24 hour periods in all those
other instances it is, and so I think God purposefully uses that convention in Genesis
1 to make the point that he’s creating a place for himself, he’s creating a tabernacle
as it were. He’s consecrating the earth into a place where he can dwell.
What else is significant? It’s only one God who does creation. What?
There’s supposed to be this whole pantheon of gods, or two gods are supposed to mate, or
one’s supposed to kill the other and make the earth out of their skin, or whatever.
The other cultures, that was how the earth was created.
But not in the Bible.
The God of the Bible creates only three words, and all of his words are obeyed instantly.
Physics itself responds to his command.
This God, by creating through words, does not create through violence.
That’s significant.
And nearly every other ancient culture, the creation myths that they have,
violence occurs.
And so many of them, there’s this water monster that must be destroyed.
The God of the Bible, he doesn’t destroy the water monster.
He puts it in the seas.
That’s pretty significant.
And so we see that there’s a ton in chapter one through three that ancient cultures would
have picked up on.
They would have understood that we just don’t because we look at it from enlightenment mindsets.
We look at it in the lens of things that matter to us.
And so what matters to us, well science matters to us, cold hard facts matter to us.
That wasn’t a concern of ancient cultures, miracles matter to us.
So when we see something miraculous, like a talking snake, well that has to be accurate
and true in any way you think about it, or it’s somehow less.
The commands, commands matter to us.
Morality matters to us.
And I think all of these are subset of something else, and that is life.
Welcome to seek life.
Alright, so last week we looked at scripture, we looked at Genesis 1 as well as a piece
of art.
But we looked at it as kind of like this two-dimensional piece of art by looking at just
the repeat of the words.
This week we’re going to go a step further.
We’re going to take that two-dimensional image and we’re going to upgrade it up to
a three-dimensional image.
You remember those pictures that you used to see them all, maybe some of you bought some
and put them on your wall, whereas it looked like a jumble until you really focused on
the picture and you relaxed your eyes.
And as you stared into it, suddenly a 3D image would pop out at you and you could see it.
And then from that point on, no matter what you did, when you looked at that image, you
knew exactly how to get that image to pop out to you.
You could see it again almost instantly, regardless of how long it took you to get there the
first time.
That’s kind of what we’re going to do today.
We’re going to relax our eyes a little bit, as it were.
We’re going to upgrade our pattern search a little bit.
We’re going to include some new tools in our box.
In this medium of screen and sound that I’m doing right now, we’ll stay at the levels
that I’m introducing in these first four messages.
We’re not going to go beyond that.
There is another level of patterned chiasm, which I already explained will be something
that will be part of the pattern’s Bible.
It’ll go much deeper into the whole chiastic structure.
It’s fascinating to examine for this outlet.
We’re going to begin looking at the patterns in other ways that they’re expressed.
We’re going to look at metaphors and scripture.
It’s going to be one of the things we’re primarily going to look at today.
To enlightenment thinking, we get this idea that if something is metaphor, it’s somehow
less than the actual fact, and that’s not true.
Metaphor contains a depth of meaning within it that literally simply cannot hope to contain,
cannot hope to hold.
If we look to scripture, if we look to the Old Testament and try to find Messiah there,
how do we find Messiah?
Especially if we take away metaphor, how do we see Messiah and page of the Old Testament?
We can’t.
I mean, we can maybe in a couple places, catch sight of them if we squint and tilt our head
a little bit, but if we completely remove metaphor as an option, it becomes much, much
harder to see Messiah in the pages of scripture.
So we are going to examine metaphor this week, and we’re going to look at some metaphors
that begin here.
There’s a ton of metaphors through our scripture that begin here.
We’re going to examine three of them today, but metaphor itself is powerful.
But it’s something that ancient cultures used regularly, and so that the ancient readers
of scripture, as they read it, those that the book was written to, not us, it was written
to them, they would have seen it.
They would have picked it up.
They would have understood it.
It’s a method that new converts, as they came in, as they started reading through the
Holy Scriptures coming from their own tradition, they would have seen metaphor.
They would have understood it, and it wouldn’t speak to them.
And so we’re going to do that.
The second pattern we’re going to look at is by looking at clumps of words or ideas
in succession, and then tracking the use of that convention throughout scripture.
I call that word “trains.”
So we’re going to look at metaphors and word “trains” today.
So let’s go ahead and open Bibles.
We’ll start at Genesis 2, verse 4, and we will end at the end of chapter 3.
These are the births of the heavens and the earth, when they were created in the day that
Hashem Elohim made the earth and the heavens.
Now, no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprung
up.
Hashem Elohim had not sent rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.
But a mist went up from the earth and watered the entire surface of the ground, and Hashem
Elohim formed the man out of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils
and breath of lives.
And the man became a living being, and Hashem Elohim planted a garden in Eden to the east,
and there he put the man whom he had formed, and out of the ground Hashem Elohim made every
tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, with the tree of the life in
the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided and became
four river heads.
The name of the first is Pishon.
It is the one surrounding the entire land of Kabbalah where there is gold.
And the gold of the land is good, Badalim is there, and the Shohamstone.
The name of the second river is Gihon, and it is the one surrounding the entire land of Kush.
And the name of the third river is Hidical.
It is the one which goes towards the east of Assyria.
And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
And Hashem Elohim took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to guard it.
And Hashem Elohim commanded the man, saying, “Eat of every tree of the garden, but do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
For in the day that you eat of it, you shall certainly die.”
And Hashem Elohim said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.
I am going to make a helper for him as his counterpart.”
From the ground, Hashem Elohim formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens
and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
And whatever the man called each living being, that was its name.
So the man gave names to all of the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
But for the man there was not found a helper for him as his counterpart.
So Hashem Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall on the man and he slept.
And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place.
And the rib which Hashem Elohim had taken from the man he made into a woman and he brought her to the man.
And the man said, “This is now a bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
This one is called woman because she was taken out of man.
For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh.”
And they were both naked and the man and his wife and that they were not ashamed.
And the nahash was more crafty than all the lives of the field which Hashem Elohim had made.
And he said to the woman, “Is it true that Elohim has said, ‘Do not eat of every tree of the garden.’
And the woman said to the nahash, ‘We are to eat of the fruit of the tree of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden.’
Elohim has said, ‘Do not eat of it, nor touch it lest you die.’
And the nahash said to the woman, ‘You shall certainly not die for Elohim knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil.’
And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and tree desirable to make one wise and she took of its fruit and she ate.
And she also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sowed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves.
And they heard the voice of Hashem Elohim walking about in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Hashem Elohim among the trees of the garden.
And Hashem Elohim who called unto Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’
And he said, ‘I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid myself.’
And he said, ‘Who made you know that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?’
And the man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.’
And Hashem Elohim said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’
And the woman said, ‘The hush deceived me and I ate.’ Hashem Elohim said to the hush, ‘Because you have done this you are cursed more than all livestock and more than every beast of the field, on your belly you are to go and eat dust all the days of your life.’
And I put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed, ‘He shall crush your head and you shall crush his heel.’
To the woman he said, ‘I greatly increase your sorrow and your conception. Bring forth children and pain and your desire as for your husband and he does rule over you.’
And to the man he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you saying, ‘Do not eat of it.’
Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you are to eat of it all the days of your life. And the ground shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you and you shall eat the plants of the field.’
By the sweat of your face you are to eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of
it you are taken, for dust you are, and to dust you will return.”
And the man called his wife’s name “Hava,” because she became the mother of all living,
and Hashem Elohim made coats of skin for the man and his wife and dressed them, and Hashem
Elohim said, “See, the man has become like one of us, to no good and evil, and now lest
he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.
So Hashem Elohim sent him out of the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he
was taken, and he drove the man out, and he placed caravim in the east of the Garden
of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of
life.”
I love those chapters, they are so much packed into those.
So I’ve got a question for you, what was the topology of Eden?
What kind of landscape was it?
We kind of miss it if we don’t understand ancient mindset and ancient culture.
If we think that the Bible is speaking of science, we can completely miss this.
So Bible is not speaking of science, so what is the topology of Eden?
It’s mountaintop, it has a river, flows out of it, how does water flow down?
Hell right?
We’re not talking about watersheds and runoff zones, it’s not what scripture is speaking
of here, it’s speaking of water starting at a high place and moving down to a low place.
And what is the low place that it moves to?
The entire earth.
If we look at those countries that it says that this river was split into, it goes to
Kush and Harala, which are far to the south, south of Egypt, Ethiopia today.
And then it goes north and east to Assyria and to Babylon.
Those are the known world of ancient Israel, that was it, there was no more.
And so in this we see that Eden itself is this high mountain, it’s the highest mountain
in the world and from it flows all life, all life giving water to everywhere on earth.
Nothing else exists without the water from Eden coming out.
But the topology is important to us because in ancient cultures and ancient religions,
even today, mountaintops are the place of God.
Think of the mountain Olympus in the Greeks, we’re all pretty familiar with mythology right?
That the gods live at the top of this big mountain and that’s where they exist.
Assyrian religion has mountains of phone, they had the exact same thing, it was their own
mount Olympus for their religion, Zoroastrian had the holy mountain, it was a mountain
bare as a tie, Hinduism has a mount Kailash, so many other cultures and religions have
a mountain and the gods live at the top of this mountain.
It was just understood that way in ancient cultures that that was the place of God was
the high places and we read of high places in all throughout scripture.
So when we read of these we need to understand that it’s speaking of a place that was thought
where God and man met.
The scripture does absolutely nothing to disabuse us of this idea that God exists at
the top of a mountain and in fact the scripture itself confirms this idea.
It changes the focus from God’s existing at the top of mountain to God singular on a
mountain and it changes from high places to high place, Eden, the place of God.
And so in Genesis 2 Eden is that high place on earth, and it is the place of the top God,
the God under discussion in the text. And water flows from this place down to the rest of the
known earth, providing life, bringing life as it goes. But this mountain top was the place where
God and man met in Eden. And that idea is repeated through Scripture. I mean, we see the idea of God
being on the mountain top, Abraham and Isaac, Genesis 22. Where is it that Abraham is told to
go to sacrifice Isaac to the top of a mountain in the range of Mariah? Where is it that Moses
meets with God? The top of the mountain, Exodus 25 through 32, and in chapters 32 through 39.
That’s where Moses goes. He goes to the top of Mount Sinai. Where is it that Elijah, when he gets
called to go meet with God? He goes to the top of the mountain. Where was the temple constructed?
In 2 Chronicles 3, 1, it was the top of a mountain. Where does the transfiguration happen? Mark 9,
top of the mountain. Where is the first place that Yeshua will return? Or that God will return to earth?
It’s the top of the mountain, 2echariah 14, 4. It’s all through Scripture. You can search it
out yourself. That’s just a couple of ideas, a couple of places where it’s reflected. And so these
ideas in conjunction with each other begin to form in our minds a metaphor. The metaphor of the
temple. How do we get the temple from this idea? We take God and man in unity. Where is it that
God and man meet together? Or they meet together in the temple, the tabernacle? The top of the mountain.
Water flows from the temple and brings life to all of the earth. 3 Ezekiel 47, as it’s talking
about the millennial temple. That’s exactly what it talks about. Water from the highest point
in the temple to the lowest point, closest to God, deferthes from God, from life to the dead sea,
dead sea. And then the river as it goes brings water to everything it touches. From the highest
God to the lowest man. Consider that. I mean, that’s that’s and the death from death to life,
bringing life forth from this dead air wasteland. Yeshua is an example of that as his temple is the
place where living water flows from the water that brings life to all that sea. So when we think of
Eden, we need to think of a sacred mountain. We need to think of temples, tabernacles, new creation,
life coming from death. God, man, perfect communion. That’s just crammed all together into this
word Eden. And then as we read through scripture and we read of any of these other things, we can
think back Eden, Eden, the temple, it’s a picture of Eden, the tabernacle, it’s a picture of Eden.
You see what in the picture of Eden? Ezekiel 43, 48, the discussion of the millennial temple,
it’s Eden. It’s all Eden. And that’s the place where God is trying to return mankind.
So when we read of temples, these thoughts should kill our mind and the mountains or
tops or high places or new creation or the changing of things that are dead being brought to life.
All of these thoughts should be joined together in this picture of Eden. And that’s the beauty
of the metaphor, is that you can take this one little idea, Eden, and you can pack so much meaning
into it in just a few words. That’s absolutely amazing. So let’s move on to another metaphor.
It’s in the very next verse, verse 15, after it discusses Eden and everything that’s in it,
talks about Adam, the man, who was placed in the garden in order to work.
And I’ve read away, we see that before the fall, before everything went south, life
includes responsibility, it includes work. Is it supposed to be difficult work? In a perfect
world? No, well, we don’t live in a perfect world. But even in a perfect world, life means work,
it means responsibility, it means doing stuff. But what was that work? He was given a task.
What was that task? Tend the garden. The garden was the place of relationship. And so it was Adam’s
place to tend that place of relationship within the temple. It would start to catch an idea, a
glimpse of something else. Whose job was it to tend the place of relationship in the temple?
It was the priest’s job. And so we moved from the Garden of Eden and Adam as a gardener in the
garden to the idea of priests being a gardener in Eden. But then we consider whose job was it to
tend the place of relationship in a nation? It was the king’s job. And so gardeners become this
picture of kings and priests. And we see that metaphor then used all through scripture. We
ourselves are called kings and priests, right? We are a nation of kings and priests. And what
does that mean about us? That means we’re gardeners. And where’s our temple? It’s in our heart. So what
is it our job to do? What is it our responsibility? What is our great work to tend the place within
ourselves so that God can come and meet with us? And how do we do that? We make it a place of life.
We make our inward parts a place of life, our spirit, if you will. I know I’m totally trashing
what I just said in the last episode, but you’re all familiar with idiom. So let’s run with it.
And so as gardeners, what is a gardener’s job in a garden? To replicate the fruit,
to bring forth the things of life and to destroy the things of death. But then to extend to Eden,
to take Eden out to the world and extend it everywhere. So simply finding a metaphor like this
and considering it in one simple place doesn’t prove the validity of the metaphor. If you find
a metaphor only once, it’s not a metaphor. It’s your overactive imagination. It’s when we start to
see the metaphor used over and over and over and over again in scripture that proves the validity
of the metaphor. So as you consider gardeners and gardens and temples and creation and all of that,
here’s some passages that you can read to help foster those ideas and find more seriously search
it out. It’s a great study. So as they have five one through seven, lamentations two six, Jeremiah
31 12, numbers 24 five through six, and Luke 29 through 17. You see biblical authors understood
these ideas. It didn’t come upon them as a surprise. What metaphor? No. They understood them. They used
them judiciously. And by their doing so, it packs the few words that are there with so much meaning
that we can grasp onto and mull over and meditate on. That’s something we’ll talk about next week.
But like an artist, they use these metaphors to combine colors so that they can create this picture
that describes something much grander than the sum of its parts. So when we think about mountains,
when we think about Eden, we think about temples, we think about human and divine in relationship,
we think about gardens, we think about tending gardens and gardeners, we think about the garden,
we think about priests, we think about kings, we think about us.
We think about our actions and our responsibility and bringing order to chaos.
All of that, all of that wrapped together in these two metaphors.
This interconnectedness of all of these ideas and thoughts then teaches us about ourselves, about God, about our world,
and how we are to interact on all those levels that’s simply fascinating.
Just sit back and think on that for a while.
Maybe open your journal and start writing on that.
Just exploring the ideas there. Open your Bible and start researching it.
Dig in. Do a word search for gardeners, for kings, for priests, for creation, all of it.
That’s a wonderfully fascinating study.
So Genesis 2 through 3 is way much more than just simply a story about talking snakes and naked people.
Our current worldview of the story is flat and two-dimensional
and without seeing the metaphor that’s here and considering it in all of its scope.
One more real quick and then we’ll run through some really fast.
Genesis 3, 6, right? Adam and Eve.
The serpent tempts Eve, Eve eats from the tree, and then they knew they gained their knowledge, right?
So eating in Scripture is a metaphor for taking something outside of yourself and making it a part of yourself.
And I’m not going to try to really dig in and explain this one.
Simply just show you some places that you can go and search out
and you can begin to define your own ideas on how it’s used and what it means.
And so as you’re thinking about this, taking outside information and bringing it into you.
Consider the Passover meal in Exodus 12.
The show bread in Leviticus 24, 2 through 9.
Also, then consider the metaphor that bread equals the word.
The Scriptures, the word of God.
Consider that as you’re thinking about the show bread in Leviticus 24.
Consider the roles of those who worked in the temple, that’s Leviticus 7.
Consider Yeshua’s final Passover in his command to eat his flesh and to drink his blood.
He’s asking the people to take his way of life into themselves, to incorporate it into your very being.
Peter’s vision in Acts 10 of the animals descending from the sky.
Is it just about food?
Is it not food at all?
No, it’s not about food at all.
Read them to explanation later in the chapter.
It’s not about food.
It’s about people.
It’s about allowing people to come into the community.
And so that’s just the beginning.
There’s so many metaphors packed in here.
Let’s just go through a couple more real quick, where I’m not going to explain them at all.
I’m just going to mention them.
Exile equals death, which equals separation from God.
metaphor, all through scripture.
Sin, hosaton, temptation, is presented as this animal, is crafty, subversive, instinctual.
We’ll actually look at this one a little more next week.
The curse being a difficulty in bringing forth fruit.
The name of Adam, Adam himself, becomes a metaphor for all mankind.
Cleaving, becoming the idea of two separate things being joined together.
But then it speaks to covenant in community and the incompleteness of man outside of community.
If you are someone who is not in community and you are a believer in Yeshua, you need to get into a community.
Whether they agree with everything you think or not, you need to get into community.
East becomes a picture of moving away from God, which is then exile and separation.
But then in some cases, it’s also being on the east as the closest to God.
Especially when you consider the tabernacle and the way that the tribes would camp around the tabernacle.
Those on the east were in some way closest to God because they were right there at the door and could enter in.
Nakedness becomes a metaphor for shame or for one’s own faults being revealed.
There’s so many more. It’s just a small sampling.
Even in this chapter and the pages of scripture are packed and brim with these wonderful, beautiful metaphors that can teach us.
Does that mean that because it’s metaphor, it’s not fact? No, not at all.
It’s the facts that give meaning to the metaphors.
If we didn’t have the facts as the foundation for the metaphor, the metaphor itself would have no meaning.
So don’t think because something’s metaphor, it can’t be fact or because something’s fact, it can’t be metaphor.
They’re interchangeable. Don’t get so caught up on that.
One word of warning that I will give is that metaphors can be misused and they can be turned into an allegory.
Allegory is when everything has to fit.
And with allegory generally, if it’s allegory, it is not what it actually says.
We have to avoid that. Don’t go that far.
My no-pal uses in allegory in regulations, but that word that Greek word also means metaphor.
Okay, so he’s speaking metaphorically, not allegorically, in our understanding of what those mean.
So not every instance of someone eating something, are they incorporating some sort of outside idea?
They’re just eating food sometimes.
Not every person moving east is moving away from God in any method more than simply a walking away from the tabernacle.
I mean, which way did Israel have to go to escape from Egypt? They had to go to the east. Were they walking away from God?
No, they were following God. Okay, so let’s not trying to impose too much into the metaphor.
But the number of times that the metaphor is used proves that the metaphor is in use.
Does that make sense?
All right, so metaphor when used properly, it can be hugely beneficial. When used improperly, it can be extremely dangerous.
So be careful with metaphor, but as you’re using it, it can unlock entire meanings that were completely lost before.
All right, so that was pattern one, metaphors.
Metaphors are all through scripture and they provide patterns of meaning that we can track from one into the other.
Pattern two, these word trains I talked about.
It’s where a series of words or ideas are used in order to explain or expound upon a single idea.
The verse that we’re going to look at for this is the same verse that we used as the last one in the example, Genesis 3, verse 6.
It’s the verse where Eve decides for herself what is good and takes all the fruit and needs it.
And there’s some words in here strung out in order that provide for us a pattern of temptation.
And so those words are, she saw, she defined as good, they were pleasant to the eyes, desirable for something.
And then she takes and she gives, okay?
So those words in that order give us a pattern for temptation.
Again, I’m not going to explain it much further than that here.
But I’m going to give you a ton of places that you can go in Scripture to look at this pattern.
Alright?
So here’s some places in the pattern where we see this thought replicated.
And each time you see one of these, realize that it’s a slightly different take on the idea of temptation.
So Genesis 6, sons of God see that the women were good to look at, and so they took them as wives.
Genesis 12, Pharaoh takes Sarai after his men saw her, and he desired her.
Genesis 13, Lot sees the land to the east, and it is desirable, in fact it calls it Eden.
And so he chooses it for himself.
Genesis 16, Sarah sees that she is barren.
She desires a child because, you know, her husband will be the father of nations.
And so she takes her handmaiden, and she gives the handmaiden to Abraham.
Genesis 19, Lot’s daughters saw that there was no man, and so they desired children.
And so they took advantage of their father after getting him drunk.
Genesis 39, Joseph was good to look at.
That’s actually how the Hebrew phrase is, that he was good to look at.
Potiphar’s wife desired him, and so she took his cloak and accused him.
That’s just a sampling from Genesis.
If we go out further in the scripture, and the Old Testament was seen in Exodus 32, the people see that Moses is missing.
They desire to worship God, and so they take Aaron, and they take their jewelry and give it to Aaron, and he makes for them an idol.
Number 16, Cora sees that Israel is not going to the land of Israel.
He desires to lead Israel to Egypt.
He then takes men from the camp, and he stages a coup.
Joshua 7, “A” can seize the gold that was forbidden. He desires it, and so he takes its contrary to the command.
Judges 16, Samson sees Delilah.
He desires Delilah, and he takes her as a lover.
1 Samuel 8-9, Israel sees the kings of the nations, and they desire a king like the nations, and so they take saw and they set him up as king.
1 Samuel 13, few chapters later, Saul sees that Samuel is delayed. He desires to make a sacrifice, and so he is compelled to sacrifice without Samuel.
1 Samuel 15, Saul sees again a few chapters later. He sees the goods of the Amalekites, and he desires to be honored through the plunder of Amalek.
And so he takes the best animals and the king of Amalek, and he brings them back to Israel.
2 Samuel 11, David sees Bathsheba, he desires her and takes her, and then gives death to her husband.
2 Samuel 13, just two chapters later, Amnon, David’s son, sees Tamar, David’s daughter, and he desires her, and so he takes her, he rapes her, which leads to no end of trouble for David’s family.
Again, that’s just a few through the first few books of the Old Testament, continuing on in the rest of the Old Testament.
We’ve got things like Ahab desiring a vineyard in order to make a garden, and so Jezebel kills the vineyards owner, and then she gives it to Ahab, and he takes possession of it, 1 Kings 21.
Elisha’s servant sees the gifts that name, and remember the name in the Assyrian high official that comes down with leprosy, and he’s told to bathe in the Jordan? Well, that official offers to pay Elisha, and Elisha turns it down.
But the servant sees it, he desires it, and so he goes and he takes it for himself. Xerxes, Ahrashvarosh, and Esther needs a wife, he sees Esther, desires her, takes her for his wife.
Hezekiah, the king of Israel, sees the Babylonians, after the Assyrians have been defeated, and signs have been seen in the heavens, the sundials move back 10 degrees.
The Babylonians see that, they come to question what happened in Israel to find out what happened there, and so he, Hezekiah, desires to be honored by the Babylonians, and so he takes them to see everything that he owns.
You can read that in 2 Kings 20, Isaiah 39, and 2 Chronicles 32, it’s a super important story.
Daniel’s adversaries, they see that Daniel is favored by the king, and they desire to gain honor and to bring Daniel to shame, and so they take a report to the king in Daniel 6.
The prodigal son sees his inheritance, and he desires to party it away, so he takes his inheritance early in Luke 15.
Simon the Sorcerer, he sees the miracles of Peter and Philip, and he desires to have their power, and so he attempts to take the power by purchasing it in Acts 8.
Judah sees that Yeshua was not acting in the way he wanted, he desires Yeshua to act in a different way, he takes money to betray the Messiah, Matthew 26, John 18, etc.
So that’s a whole slew of places in Scripture where we can see this pattern of temptation repeated over and over and over again, and the number of times it occurs is absolutely staggering, and that, what I gave, just a small smattering of the number of times is everywhere in Scripture.
And the repeat of it proves to us that this is actually there, that it’s something that exists, that it’s something that we can look to, and then we can apply to our own lives.
As you go through it, understand, not every one of these examples contains the exact words of the pattern.
The pattern is established through the repeating of the words, but then as it progresses through Scripture, new words are introduced, new ideas are introduced, and then those are then used to continue the pattern, and it becomes repeated through concept and idea later on rather than through an exact repetition.
With the pattern breaks down to this, an idea is introduced into the mind of a person.
The idea is then tested by the person through their experience.
Then through that testing, the person, the individual, defines that as either good or pleasant or evil.
And they usually base their definition on some sort of internal desires, some sort of internal system, perhaps a moral system.
Then, once that’s been deemed as desirable, that thing is taken from its rightful realm.
In the case of sin, usually we’re taking something that belongs to God.
But in many cases, we take things literally through theft or through murder.
There are things that belong in other realms that aren’t ours, and we take those to ourselves because we have defined that thing as good and desirable.
And then sometimes, that thing that is gained, especially in the realm of knowledge,
it is then passed on to others, given to others the seed of death is taken in, and then passed out into the world.
So if this is the pattern of temptation, there’s also a counterpoint to that pattern in Scripture.
I’m just going to give two examples of this. It’s something that is really profound.
And it really doesn’t make its appearance in Scripture all that often.
Because of how seldom it is that humans tend to avoid succumbing to temptation.
First example of that is Genesis 22. Abraham hears a command from God.
He doesn’t take time to experience the idea or to test whether it’s good or not.
He doesn’t try to define it as good. He just knows that he’s supposed to do it.
As he’s going on, when he senses things that are contrary to the command, for example,
he sees the mountain in the future, which solidifies and isn’t gut, that this is really happening.
Isaac sees that there’s no animal to sacrifice.
And he has the opportunity to go, “You know what? You’re right. Let’s go find an animal.”
But he continues on in the command, knowing that what he heard, trumps what he sees.
He ignores that input. And he doesn’t take anything. He simply gives of his own.
This example can be broken down into a simple phrase of being controlled by God’s Word,
being controlled by what you hear. After all, faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God, right?
The other example of this is Matthew 4, the temptation of Yeshua.
The things that are being introduced to Yeshua by the enemy, by Hasatan in this chapter.
They’re not things that he really tries to taste. He doesn’t try to test them or define them.
He simply overcomes what he’s seeing and what he’s experienced by using God’s Word.
He takes what he’s heard since his childhood and allows it to override his circumstances.
Circumstance of hunger, sorry, God’s Word says I don’t live on bread alone.
Oh, circumstance of power, sorry. God says don’t put him to the test.
Circumstance of being accepted in the role that you’ve been born to.
This is what you were here for us to rule.
Oh, that’s a serve the Lord your God, only.
Not serve Satan.
He uses what he’s heard.
He uses what he’s been brought up in.
He has that faith that came through hearing, and then he applies it.
Regardless of what he sees, regardless of how hungry he is, regardless of the circumstances,
regardless of how much he knows he is to rule this world.
He will not step outside of the bounds that have been set for him.
And that’s the example that we need to follow.
That’s the counter-example to temptation.
That’s the example of resisting temptation, and by resisting temptation, overcoming the
enemy, and being elevated to a place of greatness.
The thing is, those two examples of resisting temptation, as I thought about it, considered
even more as I was kind of taking some notes on this, I realized that pattern exists way
before Genesis 22, in fact.
What exists before the chapter we’re in right now?
What?
What chapter are we in right now?
We’re in chapter 3.
Where does it exist before chapter 3?
It exists in chapter 1.
What is it? What’s the order of things in chapter 1? God’s Word comes first.
Then the obedience to His Word and only after the obedience has been carried out is something to find
pretty simple pattern, right? God’s word takes precedence, obedience to the word, and then
definition is good.
Pretty simple when you break it down that way, right?
Command precedes definition.
And so all of that speaks to this experiment that we’re doing in defining life and death.
Because in order to do that we have to read scripture first. We have to understand the word of God first
before we even begin to define life.
We can’t define life based on our own experiences and we can’t define life based on our own desires.
Doing that will only lead to death.
It’s such a fine line to walk.
That’s the one final thing.
What is it that Genesis 3 is about?
We all have this idea of what Genesis 3 is about.
I’ve been told that it’s about the fall of man, the depravity of man, man being kicked from the garden,
exile, fall from grace even, or the prophecy of the seed and of the woman.
That these are the focus of Genesis 3.
Do you recognize the thing that’s in common with all of those viewpoints?
They’re all man centered.
Not a single one of those viewpoints is about God.
I was raised to think that the God of the Old Testament was angry, judgmental, violent.
But what do we see here in Genesis 3?
How does God respond?
We see in Genesis 3 is a perfect example of God’s character in action.
Now God’s character is defined for us in Scripture.
Exodus 34, 6 through 7, one of the most amazing passages in Scripture because it’s God himself speaking his own qualities before Moses.
So in Exodus 34, 6 through 7, it says, “In Hashem passed the form and proclaim, Hashem Hashem a God, compassionate, showing grace, patient, great and loving kindness and truth,
watching over loving kindness for thousands, forgiving crookedness and transgression, and sin.
But by no means leading unpunished, visiting the crookedness and the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation.
Each one of these qualities is in spectacular view here in Genesis 3.
Because how does God respond to the fall, to man’s disobedience?
He’s gracious, he doesn’t kill them immediately, he makes a way for them to be reunited, he’s
compassionate, he offers a solution for the failure, he is patient and kind.
His response to the direct disobedience is to give humanity time to come back, but he
doesn’t leave unpunished, there’s consequences to sin, so he enacts that out, and one of
the things that I think that this viewpoint underscores is our man-centric view of Scripture.
This may be perhaps a side effect of trying to define Scripture by good and evil, but
we’re trying to define it for ourselves, again, man-centric is defining it for ourselves,
but regardless, for too long our understanding of good interpretation of this passage has
blinded many of us to God’s attributes on full and glorious display, those attributes
mercy, compassion, kindness, and grace in full view and we skip right over it because
we’re more concerned about our own faults.
We make ourselves, we make our interpretations in many cases, infallible, despite how much
we focus on our faults in this chapter.
We then take our view of what this chapter is trying to say and make it the litmus test
to separate us from others.
We can’t do that.
We can’t make our thoughts the litmus test for who is in the kingdom and who isn’t.
We are awful judges of that.
There’s a parable about it.
I’m not going to get into it right now.
But there’s a parable about how bad humans are at judging men’s hearts, at judging other
people and determining whether or not they get into the kingdom as it were.
Because for many of us, being in the kingdom means being in our little group.
If you’re in our group, then you’re going to make it.
But if you’re in that group over there, “Oh, you better watch out.
God’s coming for you.”
That is pride, that is faulty thought, and that is man-centrism.
It’s humanism with a theistic worldview.
How messed up is that?
The text tells us, “It gives us our charge.
We are the image of God, and that is one of our roles on earth is to image him.”
One into the world, to take his qualities out to the world.
So as the image of God, what are his qualities?
I just read them.
Go back.
Read Exodus 34.
His qualities are right there in the pages.
He himself declares them audibly to Moses.
What do we know about the Word of God from Genesis 1?
the physics of the universe obey his word. If he declares something audibly, nature has
to respond. So when he declares his qualities, his own nature determines he must respond to that.
How beautiful is that?
Because we serve a God who keeps his word, whose word is powerful, and whose word should
overwrite everything else we think.
His word was Hebrew say, his word is sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting between
the bone and the marrow, the bone and the marrow, the things that can’t be split, and
between the nafesh and the spirit, the nafesh and the rua, the two things that can’t be
split, you can’t take the rua from the person, and the word God can split right through that.
And so, Genesis 3 tells us that we are completely incapable of defining good and evil in our own terms.
We tried it even before we ate it through and failed miserably.
Why do we keep trying?
That’s not the fetus, is it?
Is that a defeatist attitude to say why do we keep trying to find good and evil?
Or is it smarter to say that’s the wrong question?
I don’t know, that’s part of the experiment.
We fail. We can’t define good and evil.
We use our own terms even with a guide and we’ll fail.
We’ll fail a good and evil, but life.
But life we may be able to achieve.
Not perfectly, but as we seek life, I think we’ll see life.
We’ll see its spread.
And as we see it spread, we’ll see the kingdom of God’s bread.
That’s a great commission right there, isn’t it?
So, I haven’t really covered everything that’s in these chapters.
I’ve dug in quite a bit, but there’s so much in these chapters that these three chapters
right here, Genesis 1 through 3, will kind of become a proving ground for many other
things that we’re going to get into because it sets up everything.
Everything is set up here, from the creation to the fall.
There’s so much packed in there that the rest of Scripture speaks on.
So we’re going to be coming back.
This is going to be one of the Foundations of Scripture.
In fact, this is one of my areas of context.
When I interpret Scripture, I consider Genesis 1 through 3 as part of that context.
Add to that that I add Revelation 19 through 21 as part of that context.
Because it’s the beginning and it’s the end, it’s the book ends, where we started and
where we’re going.
And if the way that you’re in Scripture doesn’t speak to that in some way, maybe we’re missing
the point.
Anyway, so I think I’m going to wrap up for today a lot for you to think on.
If you have thoughts, if you have some discussions, if you have some things you’d like to add
to those lists that I did of the metaphors and places where we can see the pattern of
temptation, put them below, put them in the comments.
I’d love to see them.
I’d love to dig into them.
Let’s study together.
Let’s dig together.
Let’s define life together.
Let’s figure out what it is.
But as we go through life, and as you do, all that you do, ask yourself that question.
What is life?
But in order to ask it, we’ve got to seek it.
Shalom.