How Can We Get Back to Paradise? (Abel, Noah and Abraham)
Readings: 10:30
Sermon: 19:18
Genesis 12:1-7, Genesis 22:1-18, Psalm 2
We long for something more. We long for purpose, paradise, eternity and to be like God. But how do we ever get back to the things we have lost? If we look at humanity’s historical attempts to return to such things, we find they are greatly lacking. In fact, when we pursue paradise we often haven’t created it for others. When we seek eternity, we rarely find anything that lasts. When we seek to become like God, we are often only a deformed image of him. This is a bit of a scary reality. It can even seem a bit hopeless. What hope do we have if nothing we do can measure up? Our hope should be where it has always meant to be, not in ourselves but in our creator.
Last week, as we looked at the story of Adam and Eve we saw how we need someone to return us to paradise, eternity, and God. In the midst of our punishment, we also received a promise: there would be a human who would rise up and crush the same snake that drove us out of the garden. So, we should be watching for this promised one.
The next hope we get is Adam and Eve’s son Abel. Abel goes to the edge of Eden and sacrifices animals to God. Why does he do this? Well, Abel knows, as we do, that when a relationship is broken something needs to be done to repair it. Most of the time, we have to give something up, to show our regret and how important the other is. God finds Abel’s sacrifices pleasing and for the first moment, we think, Oh maybe there is a chance humanity can come back. Except, the snake is still lurking. Abel’s brother Cain gives in to the snake and his jealousy and kills Abel. Then Abel’s blood in the ground cries out for justice. It would seem our hope leads to greater sin. God shows immense mercy again, Cain is not killed but banished even further away, with a promise of protection.
Over the generations, people care more about pleasing themselves than God and the world becomes a scary place, full of violence, murder, abuse, corruption, and worse. This leads to Noah and the ark. Here again, we get a glimmer of hope. Noah, the one who God finds righteous, the one who follows faithfully, the one who becomes the vehicle for the salvation of a few. It even leads to a new promise and blessing from God as they become like a new creation. Yet, when his family once again returned to the land, Noah gets drunk and curses one of his sons. Sin and the snake rears their ugly heads again and even the best of humanity doesn’t seem good enough to resist it.
So already, we are looking for someone like a new Adam and Eve who can return us to paradise, eternity, and the likeness of God. We are looking for a descendant who will be the snake crusher. We are looking for someone like Abel who is willing to give and sacrifice to rebuild a relationship with God. We are looking for justice for the blood in the earth. We are looking for someone like Noah who through faith can become God’s instrument for salvation and create a whole new nation, but no one has yet to measure up.
That brings us to Abram today. God calls Abram to do something immense. God calls him to leave his family, his household, his land, and his safety and go into a foreign land where he has nothing other than what he carries with him. We might think about any immigration, but this would have been far different. Abram was leaving a place of comfort, of seeming bounty, of safety, and literally going to a land where people would have been hostile to him, where he would have to struggle. The promise was not in the land or the people it was in who was commanding and directing him, God.
This moment is an interesting contrasting image. We have already heard about many people exiled and banished from paradise, but now God is asking someone to choose banishment and exile from a seeming paradise to find something even greater in him. It is an interesting challenge to each and every one of us, where is God calling us out of the seeming comfortable to seek out a greater promise, even if we know we may have to struggle for it.
Yet as much as Abram is willing to step out, he doesn’t seem willing enough to trust God in this promise because he brings his nephew, Lot. We might think this is rather innocent as God doesn’t condemn it. What is wrong with wanting some family around us, some comfort? God did tell Abram to leave his family and kindred, so already we should have some idea, but the proof is in the pudding. Soon fighting breaks out among Lot and Abram’s people and they divide anyways. Then Abram has to come and save Lot numerous times in the foreign land. It creates division and loss for Lot, Abram, and the nations around them.
This is already in direct contrast to what God wanted for Abram. Remember that huge promise God gives to Abram. I will bless those that bless you and curse those who curse you. Then somehow even though a curse may result, God says to Abram, I will make you a blessing to all nations. After Noah’s blessing, this is only the second blessing after our exile from paradise so many generations ago. Every blessing should remind us of the first in paradise. God is now leading a faithful human to create paradise wherever he goes. This should remind us of growing blessings, the fruitfulness of the garden, the blessing to till and cultivate, and the waters that flowed out of Eden to the nations. We were always meant to create and spread paradise as well as live in it. The important way that Abram begins this blessing of recreating paradise is by following God, even if it means leaving comfort and safety. We often need to step out of these limited comforts to find the greater comforts God has promised.
We actually get some really beautiful images of this in Abraham’s story. We can find so many moments where he is sitting down with Canaanite Kings or leaders, often literally, under a fruit tree, creating peace and living in bounty. Remember these are the Canaanites who would later become one of Israel’s greatest enemies, yet here we see that this never needed to happen.
We also get some very awful moments from Abraham. We see him become a war general. We see him trade his wife, Sarai, twice, probably even sexually to find favor and safety in this foreign land. This becomes a great curse on everyone rather than a blessing. Abraham doesn’t seem to trust God who called him into this new land.
Abraham also doesn’t seem to trust God that God will make him a great nation like he promised, numbering as many as the stars. He was already 75 when God called him into a foreign land, you can imagine how hopeless they might have felt about having a child, So, he and Sarah come up with this plan to make a child by a servant Hagar. So, they use Hagar. The same language is used at this moment as was used for Eve taking the fruit. Abraham sees Hagar is good and pleasing to the eye, he desires after her, he takes her and consumes her. It is a terrifying parallel that makes me uncomfortable, even disgusted every time I read it.
Here is someone who was meant to create paradise, yet he mistrusts God, and his neighbors, and he uses and abuses his wife and his servant all because he wasn’t willing to trust God, but instead wanted to solve things himself.
That brings us to the uncomfortable story of Abraham’s potential sacrifice of Isaac. Something that God seems to command. Up till now, we have seen the disgusting ways Abraham has tried to use sexuality to save himself or create his next generation. It is obvious that something needs to be done. Abraham needs to restore his faith and trust in God, even if he can’t change the evil he has already done. So, Abraham is tested by God, will you be willing to give up what you love, your only child, the child of promise in trust that God will still live up to his promise?
Abraham does trust God. You will notice this continuous refrain from Abraham. God will provide. In Abraham’s trust, we find that God does provide. He stops Abraham and then gives him a ram for the sacrifice instead, a literal scapegoat. God is the one that provides, he is the one that gives us the way out of our own sins and it is not by sacrificing ourselves or those closest to us. If only Abraham had trusted God like this before, it could have avoided much suffering for his and many generations later, but we humans are slow to learn. God ends up having to use fickle, destructive, and abusive people, because that’s who we are and he has always meant us to be rulers, to enjoy and create paradise, but we can’t do it on our own. I don’t like, that God uses people like this to become his people, but that’s who we are. We need to be redeemed.
So, in all of this, we see so many longings and needs. We see a longing for someone who can truly be a blessing to all nations and even turn blessings into curses. We need someone who can overcome fear, but rather trust and find salvation in the difficulties of life. We need someone who is willing to step out of the comfort and peace that this world offers in pursuit of a greater nation and world. Lastly, we need a sacrifice that can truly make up for our sins and restore our relationship with God. How do we get back to paradise?
On a practical level, to return to paradise, we need someone who will faithfully obey God consistently, but we also need God to step in and make up for the evil and broken world that surrounds us and lives in us. Sadly, Abraham, Noah, and Abel weren’t that, but they pointed the way so that we could see what we needed.
Genesis 12
Why does God choose Abram? (Not a lot is said about him before this passage)
Why does Abram have to leave his family?
Who should this include?
Why does he bring Lot?
What results?
Why is God’s blessing the result of leaving his family?
What does it mean that God promises this land to Abram’s offspring? How does this work with the first blessing?
Genesis 22
Why does God command Abraham to sacrifice his son? What good could this ever do?
What error is this correcting? What good is it creating?
What does Abraham say about it? What results?
What is the blessing God gives? How does this relate to what Abraham does?
What do Abraham and God’s actions tell us about what we need?
