Order Born from Chaos

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[0:00] now we go to our sermon and our sermon text is from genesis chapter one we're starting way at the beginning uh and if you want to know what page of the bible is on you can guess it's on page one pretty easy but you could also look at it hopefully it's in you know i did not so here's word to the wise uh i should proofread the bulletin i really should okay yes it is correct in the bulletin but it's also on the screen there so that's good and um so today's in the lectionary in our liturgical year today this sunday is kind of advent advent and christmas is over although we still have the christmas tree up and i feel like it's the last day of christmas but really yesterday was the last day of christmas so we do need your help taking down christmas decorations because as beautiful as they are they can't linger here for another couple weeks we you know get on it but when i was a kid my mom left the christmas decorations up until like the end of january because she just thought they were so pretty you know and it took so much work to get them up but we will take them down today in our lectionary year is the baptism of jesus and it begins his ministry especially in the gospel of mark it's the first thing really that happens in the gospel of mark we're introduced to john the

[1:13] baptist and then right after that jesus himself is baptized by john which is an interesting idea but the corresponding old testament text for this liturgical day in the lectionary is genesis 1 1-5 which is the creation the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth and there's um this is this great parallelism or connection between the beginning of genesis and the beginning of mark and we're going to explore that today and we're going to explore it with a lot of different sites and sounds so just for excitement we're going to listen to some music by joseph heiden because he wrote an oratorio called The Creation. It's really beautiful. And we're also going to be looking at some art by William Blake, who was a Christian poet and artist. And then as we go through our reading of Genesis 1, I'm going to read it in English, but I'm also going to try, and I wish Natalie was here because she's taking Hebrew now, I'm going to try to read it in Hebrew so that you can kind of hear that sort of that just soulful, beautiful way in which it's expressed in Hebrew. You don't have to understand Hebrew because it'll all be up there, but you can hear it in Hebrew. So your sights and sounds are all going to be, this is sort of all the senses. We're going to try to

[2:34] engage as many senses as we can this morning. So that's what we have to look forward to. And at the very end, we're going to try to understand more of this parallelism between Genesis 1 and Mark. Mark chapter 1, and specifically the baptism of Jesus. So let's go to our reading. It's Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 through 5. And it reads like this. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, let them ! Let there be light! And there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day of creation. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this beginning of your word, and for all of your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name. Amen.

[3:51] So the plan is to look at this passage verse by verse. There's only five verses, so we can get through this pretty easily. It's pretty short. And at the end, we're going to see how the baptism of Jesus is a continuation and completion of this work that God does here at the very beginning of the Bible. And we're going to hear each verse in Hebrew as well, because it kind of captures some of the grandeur of the text. And so we'll have Steve put up the very first slide.

[4:15] And as you can see, it's in English and in Hebrew, but it's not written in Hebrew. It's in transliterated, Hebrew transliterated into English. We could have put the Hebrew up there, but it would just look weird to us. I mean, unless you know the Hebrew alphabet. Plus, they read from right to left instead of left to right. Anyways, so here's verse one. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. In Hebrew, it reads, Bereshit is beginning. Elohim is God. Hashemayim is the heavens. The ha at the beginning is a definite article, the heavens. And ha'aretz or ha'aretz is the earth. So God created the heavens and the earth. And what better way to begin a book than with the phrase, in the beginning, right? Isn't this, this is how things start. Just kind of like at the end of a fairy tale you have, and they live together. And then you have the beginning. And then you have the beginning. And happily ever after. But at the beginning of a fairy tale, once upon a time, right? This is very similar. This is how works of literature start. But this is the grandest of all literature. And it says, in the beginning. Now you would say, beginning what? Right? Beginning of the story? Yes, it's the beginning of the story. But as you read just the next few verses,

[5:39] you get the scope of what this is the beginning of. This is the beginning of the creation, of the heavens and the earth. So the scope now is not just the beginning of this story at some point in time. But this is the beginning of all time. This is the beginning of all existence right now. This is the beginning of the universe. And when you say the heavens and the earth, that not only means actually the heavens and the earth, because God creates them both. But the heavens and the earth is another way of saying, sort of an idiom in Hebrew, of saying everything. It'd be like me saying, well, I'm going to say everything. I'm going to say everything. I'm going to say everything. All the odd numbers and all the even numbers. What have I just said? Those are all the whole numbers that exist, right? Up into, you know, not quite to infinity. It doesn't include all the real numbers or the imaginary numbers or the irrational numbers. The irrational numbers don't want to talk to us right now. They're over there going, I'm fine. It's fine. You know, letters, numbers like pi and e. Do you know what I'm talking about? Any of you? Okay. Some of you do. Yes. Don't, don't hang out with irrational numbers, but all the whole numbers can be expressed by saying all

[6:44] the odd numbers. All the odd numbers and all the even numbers. That's all the whole numbers that exist. The heavens and the earth is everything. In the beginning, God created everything. And this is the beginning of everything that we do, right? And so we wonder, well, how? How did God do that? And we're glad you asked because the next verse is verse two, which doesn't quite tell us how, but it's a bit of the backstory. So let's take a look at verse two. And it says this, the earth was a formless void. That's important. We got to pay attention to that. A formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep. We're also going to pay attention to that word deep. While a wind from God or a spirit of from God swept over the faces of the waters. And in Hebrew, it reads like this. That's the formless void. You kind of get that sense of that sort of deepness, right?

[7:51] The heavens and the earth. So we see the God swept over the face of the waters. Now, a few terms here is the deep. As I said, the word here is techom, which is the sea or the abyss or the primeval ocean is another way of interpreting that. And it's a word that means something, so deep that it can't be seen. So we have to use the words available to us. Can you imagine that, you know, if the people who are writing this down and they only have, you know, Hebrew has a limited, it has a limited vocabulary. How do you use words to describe such grand things, the words that you have? What is God doing here? He's looking over this formless void that has the deep in it. It's like an ocean in a way the spirit is hovering. Over the waters, over the deep. What is this? Now, we don't exactly know. Some people think it's sort of undifferentiated mass or matter that came into existence, that God called into existence, and from which then he used almost like a potter would use clay and to break it into pieces to make something. So this, this sort of this undifferentiated mass or this chaotic mass. Now, the word formless void, which was was tohu vavohu. This is sort of, chaos, sort of personified. It doesn't have a shape. It's unformed. It's pre-existent,

[9:22] some people believe. Now, we're going to talk a little bit about this when we talk about God create, saying, let there be light. But as we understand, not everybody can disagree on this as to what exactly happened in this moment, but it's possible that what's being described here is really the Big Bang. If you want to go there, it's okay if you don't. But this idea that Right. Right. Right. God is waiting, in essence, for the right time to speak the word. This is what the universe looked like before God spoke it into existence. It was this sort of chaotic, deep, unformed, possibly, well, we'll get into it a little bit, but possibly even contrary to God, it was trying to resist God's order. But God's word was able to order it. Now, what I'm going to do next is we're going to listen to the opening from Haydn's creation. And it's a little different. You can go to the next one now. Now, go ahead.

[10:45] No, I'm little. And you're going to start hearing some music. And I'm going to talk over the music. And we're going to let it go until about the three-minute mark. But this is the beginning of Haydn's oratorio creation. And it's a little different. This part is different than other classical musics because it doesn't include the cadences, which are sort of these conclusions at the ends of musical phrases. And he did that to symbolize. It symbolizes chaos. So as you listen, you'll hear these notes trail off but not find their resolution. This is the chaotic, unformed mass that Haydn is talking about. And so we'll cut off at about three minutes. And while we're listening, you also see this artwork by William Blake called The Ancient of Days, who's setting a compass to the earth. That V-shaped thing upside down is a compass. And it's part of his book called Europe, a Prophecy, that he published in 1788. 1994 so I'm gonna sit down and listen until you you there you feedback so did you guys hear that as that there you go those musical phrases kind of like build but then they just kind of she's almost imagine like waves in the ocean kind of splashing against nothing in particular this sort of chaotic jumble and mess but yet it was beautiful

[14:01] like all this potential is in there and I want you to really look at this picture of God and now you maybe we shouldn't take pictures of God and take it up with William Blake you know but here he is you he's he's in total concentration he's up here where he is and the the the chaos is that darkness below him DC is wind blow that the wind is blowing his beard and his hair to the side this the wind of the Spirit is blowing and and he's like he's measuring out what he wants the cosmos to look like with this giant golden sir compasser protractor you know like the the had for he's he's he's he everything out well let's go to the to the previous uh scene there where we have the words and we'll bring up verse three now and that's there it is oh yeah he's gonna there it is verse three then god says so that was the backstory was the the whole everything was a formless void and chaotic and the spirit of god was hovering over the deep or moving above the deep right there's something is full of promise full of full of potential but it's not yet completed it's waiting to be acted upon and then in verse three how does god create how does god create god said then god said let there be light and there was light let there be light and there was light the word for light is is uh is or i think

[16:10] he's just he's just he's just he's just he or you know the person who pulls the gun at the foot races and now you're off kaboom and it's it blows up in this the mass of the universe was just contained in the small space but it explodes out in this flash of light and the universe itself began to expand I'm not just talking about like the mass in the universe expand but as we understand that the universe has a set size and it was incredibly small but it itself the fabric of the universe itself began to expand at an enormous speed and now you may you may have heard the Latin phrase fiat looks fiat looks is a translation of this which means let there be light when something is done by fiat it means it's accompanied is accomplished by speaking it all the authority is bound up in the one making the proclamation so if you do something by fiat all you have to do is to do something by fiat all you have to do is to do something by fiat all you have to do is to say I I say that it should be done and it is done so God already we we get early in Scripture the meaning that God's spoken word this is important God's spoken word accomplishes what it intends to it has echoes of Isaiah 55 and my word does not go out empty but it comes back right it's

[17:48] like the rain and this is going to be important later when we look at the baptism of Jesus but even though William Blake's picture showed him memory of the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of Jesus he was just measuring it didn't show him creating he was just measuring Right he he doesn't use his hands to create the universe he uses his voice he speaks it he doesn't use his hands to create the universe he uses his voice he speaks it into existence by saying let there be light and as we keep reading through the creation story he keeps saying let there be this and let there be that and let there be something else and all those things happen because he spoke it this is the absolute power of God that he can speak something and it becomes existence so the word of God is powerful and that's a reminder to us that he is alive us that as we carry the word of God in us and as we read it out loud, it has more power in it than other kinds of literature because it's God's word. And God's word has power to make things happen. We have to always remember that. So let's look at verse four. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. Vayad Elohim et haor ki tov. Tov is the Hebrew word for good. Vayavdel Elohim bein haor uvein hachosheth.

[19:01] That's a toffee. So God separated the light from the darkness. And we're not going to spend too much time on these two verses because they get to the mechanics of how God created, but what he does is he's separating and structuring the matter of the universe. He's differentiating. He's differentiating it one from another, kind of like that potter pulling pieces of clay apart and using them for different parts. Or they stand in contrast, which are the light and darkness. So on this day, light and darkness are separated. On the second day, the world above is separated from the world below. And on the third day, which we're not going to read, the water is separated from the land. So you see at the very beginning, a lot of the creative work of God is separating one thing from the other. And you can even say on the zeroth day of creation, the principle of creation, which is the idea of the universe, which is the idea of the universe. The pre-existing one is God is separating chaos from order, right? Chaos, unfulfilled sort of potential. He's separating that from purposeful design in what he's going to do. And then how does he do it? Light from darkness, the heavens from the earth, and then the water from the land, and so on.

[20:07] And the water is important because we're going to get to that with Jesus. So verse 5, God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.

[20:32] The first day, the first day. So in this verse, we also see that God names things, right? He calls things by their name. He's beginning to call things by their name. He calls the day, day, and the night he calls night, the darkness he calls night. And that points to him as the creator and the Lord of the universe. And that mirrors what job he gives Adam to do when Adam is in the garden. Adam is thus to name all the animals. And so Adam has dominion over the garden, and to the dominion over the garden, he names the other inhabitants of the garden. God has dominion over the heavens and the earth, and so he names things. And so later we'll see he calls the dry land, land. And the ocean, he calls the ocean, and so on. Now, how can we relate this to the baptism of Jesus? And I want us to look at the first verse of Mark's gospel, which wasn't even in the reading that we had before. That was incorrect. But the very first verse of Mark's gospel goes like this. The beginning, I'm going to say that again, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That's how Mark's gospel starts. It starts with the word, the beginning, just like Genesis. Except you're missing the letter, the word in, in the beginning. But that's Genesis. But Mark,

[21:51] it's the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And so Mark is doing this by design. Mark is actually, the first chapter of Mark is kind of designed to look a little bit like the first chapter of Genesis, because he wants to put Jesus in the line of God. But he says, this is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And here's the part of Mark's gospel that we're interested in is verse nine. And this is what we had before. It wasn't printed in the bulletin, but it was up on the screen. It reads this. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, imagine that water like the deep perhaps, right? He saw the heavens torn apart and the spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven. You are my Savior. You are my Son, the beloved with you. I am well pleased. So what do we see? We see the heavens are opening up, separating almost, kind of interesting. We see the spirit of God coming down to the place of chaos. Just in a moment, we'll see more about that. And we hear the voice of God speaking reality into existence. He says, you are my Son. It is good. I am well pleased. It's like similar to saying,

[23:12] I am pleased. I call it good. And so it sounds like Genesis, that he speaks reality into existence and that declares it's good. Now, does this mean that up until this moment, Jesus was not God's Son because God hadn't said it yet? There are actually some theologians who think that. Very interesting. But I think the answer is that other gospels make clear, especially Luke's gospel and the Christmas story, is that Jesus is God's Son from even before his birth, right? But what is happening here is rather that Jesus is God's Son from even before his birth, right? But what is happening here is rather that Jesus is God's Son from even before his birth, right? But what is happening here is rather that creative work at the beginning of time. I think we can see the parallelism here, that God began something at the creation of the world. And here at the beginning of Mark, we see that Jesus is now the means, is now sort of the inheritor of how this is going to happen. Now that word chaos and deep, like I said, sometimes they're neutral, they're just undifferentiated matters, neither good nor bad. But in other places in Hebrew, these words can also point to a darker side, a sinful side, a side that's opposed to God and God's loving and creative voice. So chaos is

[24:53] sometimes neutral, but sometimes chaos is evil because it's almost in rebellion against the order that God brings to the universe. So all of God's efforts to bless humanity have failed up until this point. You remember that from the garden to the flood to the giving of the law, each coming to an end. And so we see that in the book of Mark, we see that in the book of Mark, the covenant really had not worked to make God's people holy. And that wasn't God's fault. That was our fault. That was the people's fault. Those were the people, the people who kept being unfaithful, the people who kept making mistakes. And that really is us. But Jesus, he is here now as this new covenant. And God says, okay, that didn't work. The flood didn't work. I'm not going to do the flood again. The law, I love the law. It's good. It's holy. It's just. But Paul tells us it's more like a school teacher than it is something that can actually make us righteous. It can't make us righteous. It can't do that. In fact, it makes us more sinful because it helps us invent new ways of sinning. Oh, I didn't think of doing that. Well, I should do that. So the law doesn't do it. The prophets were sent, but nobody listened to them or they were killed.

[26:00] So God says, from the last day, I'll send my son. And this will be different. He's going to continue my creative and redemptive life. And I'm going to continue my creative and redemptive life. And I'm going to continue my creative and redemptive life. And I'm going to continue my creative and redemptive work in the world, in the body of himself. So Jesus is the new covenant. God says, they can't do it because they're human. So I'm going to send my son as human so that he can do it. And all they have to do is believe in him. So Jesus is this new covenant. If you read John's gospel, Jesus is called the word, the word. God speaks things into existence. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. He became present to us. And so, Jesus is the one who will finally tame the chaos and the darkness and sin by making a new covenant in his blood and by sending the spirit to guide us. So all of this is kind of working together. I think this is a great way to begin the year. And Jesus vanquishes that chaotic and evil part of this world and the evil and chaotic parts of us. He does that by going to the cross.

[27:10] And so, I want you to be thinking also not just of the beginning of his ministry, his baptism. That's how it begins, but how does it end? It ends on the cross and beyond. But on the cross, he says something. He says, it is completed. It is finished. This thing that was started, this sort of uncompleted, sort of this chaotic thing that finally found its existence and finally found its purpose, it carries through like a thread. It carries through like a thread. It carries through like a thread through all the scripture until it finds its fulfillment in Jesus. He continues the work at his baptism and he begins his ministry. But then on the cross, it's completed and it's done. And it's accomplished in his resurrection then. It's sort of this guarantee for us, the sign for us that it really all is true. So we're going to listen to Haydn one more time. This is an oratorio, so now people are actually going to sing. The words will be up there. But this is the crowning of creation. And the music is different here. The cadences, are actually paid off in the end. So we're going to listen to this for about three minutes and then I'll come up and we'll say a final word of prayer over it.

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