10/5/22

Life gets so complicated sometimes. When I first typed that, autocorrect changed “life” to “love,” making that first sentence read: “love is so complicated sometimes.” While true, that was not my point. . . but it does illustrate my point!

Nothing is easy anymore. Any time I set about doing something - especially a home or car repair – it is never as easy as the YouTube video shows it to be. I was talking to a young newlywed the other day, and he and his wife are discovering the joys of cooking together (neither did much cooking before they married). But he was complaining that when they expect something to take an hour to cook, it ends up taking them four! I promised him that it would get easier. I also sent him a link to a video on how to correctly chop vegetables.

I often find myself embroiled in things that I think SHOULD be easy. Some years ago, I found myself chairman of a non-profit organization. I’ve had some experience with non-profits in years past, so I thought I could build on that experience and help this struggling group. Nope. I finally decided the best thing was to put it out of its misery. And that’s when things became REALLY complicated!

But life wasn’t intended to be complicated. Life was intended to be good.

Last week in our Bible study, we looked at the story of creation in Genesis 1. When God created the universe, at every stage God pronounced it “good” and at the very end we read: “And God saw everything that he had made and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

We hear the word, “good,” and we think “moral goodness.” After we moved back to north Alabama, dad reconnected with an elderly woman he knew as a child. She told me, “Your dad was born good and stayed good.” Dad laughed when he heard that and said there was a bunch of years she didn’t know him. . . The Hebrew word for good, tov, can mean morally good.

Or we think of good in the sense of “high quality” or “excellent.” A couple of weeks ago, I said I don’t like to brag about expensive places I’ve been . . . but I did go to the grocery store last week and actually splurged on some meat. It was good quality and, especially when I marinated it and seasoned it up, it tasted very good! The Hebrew word for good can mean high quality or excellent, and speaking of food, it can also mean delicious, sweet, and savory.

But wait! There’s more! The Hebrew word for good can mean pure, clean, cheerful, glad, joyful, pleasant, agreeable. . . in other words, it can mean all the things we mean when we say the word “good.”

But if it can mean all those things, what does it mean in Genesis 1? When God looks at the birds and fish and pronounces them good, is he saying they are “delicious, sweet and savory”? What is God saying when God pronounces his creation good?

At its most basic, the Hebrew word for “good” speaks of something’s quality and fitness for its purpose. One author speaks of the primary meaning of “good” in Hebrew as meaning “perfectly functional.”

We can also see what God meant by “good” when we look at the first thing God says was “not good.” Everything up to this point has been good, but when God gives the first man his job (“to tend and keep the garden”) God immediately follows it up by saying, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). This has nothing to do with the man’s moral perfection, the quality of his workmanship, his cheerfulness or even his savoriness! Instead, it speaks of his functionality. The gardening job God has for the man is more than he can handle by himself! Man by himself is not functionally complete without “a helper for his partner” - a story we’ll look at more closely next week in our Bible study.

When God created the heavens and the earth, everything was perfect in its kind, so that every aspect of creation could reach the goal appointed by the Creator and accomplish the purpose of its existence. Everything was perfectly functional. Everything was good!

And in doing what it is created to do and being what it is created to be, creation glorifies God. A tree does what a tree does. Same with a rock. A flower can’t help but be beautiful (when the season and the rainfall are right). A bird can’t help but sing. If they do something outside their nature - say if the birds suddenly start massing to attack innocent people, you have the makings for a Hitchcock horror movie! But they don’t because they can only do what they are created to do.

On the other hand, we have a choice . . . and we’ll cover that in this week’s Bible study. We’re the only part of creation that has the capacity to live as something other than what we were created to be (the image of God). Spoiler alert: we chose to do our own thing. And when we chose to do our own thing, that threw all of creation out of whack. Instead of the ground easily yielding its produce for the first gardeners, the ground is cursed (in chapter one, it was blessed), and humans now must toil all the days of their lives, battling thorns and thistles, eating food by the “sweat of your face.”

Nothing is easy. Life is complicated. Why? Because we made it that way by choosing to live contrary to the way we were created to live. It was true then, and it is true now.

I hope you can join us for Bible Study on Wednesday night! We have a special treat tonight: I’ve farmed out part of the lesson to Kim Elliott, who will be sharing what it means to be created in the Image of God . . . so don’t miss it!

Blessings!
Pastor Terry