Gooding, David: 3 - The Book of Genesis

Our first task this evening is to demonstrate to ourselves that in the book of Genesis, chapter two from verse four um onwards, with chapter three and chapter four, form one unit of thought. We shall make our reading serve the purpose of collecting the evidence for that viewpoint, namely that these three chapters stand together as one unit, which I normally designate to myself as the second creation story. But let's begin to read in chapter two and verse four. These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. With that last phrase, we meet a word that we shall find now recurs in all these three chapters in very prominent positions. There was not a man to till the ground, but there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Verse fifteen: And The Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him an help, meat for him. And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them. And whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field, but for man there was not found an help meet for him. Then, for time's sake, let's read in chapter three, taking up the story in the middle of God's solemn and sorry words to Adam after the fall, chapter three and verse seventeen. And unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. And thou shalt eat of the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it thou wast taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. Verse twenty two. And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil, and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. And then some verses from chapter three, Chap- uh, verse two, in the middle of the verse, and Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. The subsequent verses tell us that God refused that offering, and Cain in his anger rose up and slew Abel, his brother. Verse ten: and God said, what hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now cursed art thou from the ground, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground, and from thy face I shall be hid. The Lord help us in our study of his word this evening. Now, it is plain to see from our brief readings from these three chapters that one of the key ideas in this particular part of Genesis is the notion of the ground. You may, of course, say that the word ground is an exceedingly common word, and the stuff ground is exceedingly common stuff, and therefore it's likely to get mentioned rather a lot of times in any particular passage of the Old Testament. That may well be. But I should like you to notice that in these three chapters, this word ground not only occurs many times, but occurs at the major focal point of interest in all three stories. In chapter two, it is a question of the creation of man. We are told he was made out of the ground. It is also a question why man was made anyway and what he was meant to be doing, and we are told that he was made out of the ground in order to till the ground. There could hardly be anything more important in chapter two than the creation of man and the reason why he was created. And in those two major topics of interest, the word ground is the central and operative word. Chapter three contains the sorry story of the fall, and in consequence God's grave sentence upon woman, man, and serpent. But there too, in that solemn and focal point of that story, we find that the word ground is one of the operative and central ideas. Because of Adam's sin, says God, cursed is the ground for thy sake. Yes, certainly there were other elements in the sentence that God passed upon our human race, but this certainly is prominent. Cursed is the ground for thy sake. When now you till it, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you. In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread. But not only so, not only is there this sentence of hard labor passed upon man in his tillage of the ground, but he is driven forth from the Garden of Eden, lest he put forth his hand and eat of the tree of life. He is driven forth with the express purpose that presently he shall return to the dust, for of the ground he was made, and to the ground he returns. So in the second of these chapters, ground is one of the major and central ideas. The final story in the trilogy is the story of Cain and Abel, and in particular of Cain's deliberate rebellion against God and his murder of his brother Abel. Once more, an exceedingly grave sentence has to be passed by the Almighty. At first sight, it resembles the sentence passed on Adam, but, uh, then we notice it is significantly different. With Adam, it is se- was said, cursed is the ground for thy sake. But with Cain, it is said, cursed art thou from the ground. When thou tillest it, it shall no longer yield to thee her, your, her strength. So once more, in this central focal point of this third story, ground is the, uh, major term of interest. And so that you should see that this isn't something that I have arbitrarily fastened on, which no one else ever saw before. You will observe Cain's comment to God, will you not, upon the sentence passed on him. He said, Thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the ground. If the significance of the sentence doesn't immediately appear to us, it certainly appeared immediately to Cain. Thou hast driven me forth this day from the face of the ground. That is my evidence for suggesting, then, that these three stories are meant to hang together. When they are done, we shall return in chapter five once more to the beginnings again, right to the very beginnings and the creation of man. But these three stories hang together. They are fastened on this central idea of the ground and man's relation to the ground. Later this evening, I'm going to suggest to you that this is very significant. In the first place, it will help us perceive the reason for man's creation and the primary occupation that was given him. And if you are interested in man and his creation, of course, one of the things that you will want to have answered right from the begi- very beginning is, why was man created? And what exactly was he meant to be doing? And what was the significance of what he was meant to be doing? There is no bigger question for all humanity. We find ourselves in this world, this mysterious world. We get all too often caught up in the maelstrom of life, going round and round and round and round and round in circles. But in those quiet moments when we have a chance to sit down and think. One of the basic questions that will assert itself is this, but why am I here? What are we meant to be doing? What is this phenomenon of the human race? Has it any significance or purpose? It will then, as I suggest, help us to realize what man's raison d'être, his reason for his existence, is. But here perhaps I must guard myself, though not in this community as in some. I was in a place once when I dared to point to this chapter and mention that man's original reason for existence was in order to till the ground, and somebody thereafter objected to me, foresaw. He said, but that can't be right. He said, look, chapter one, and you yourself, Mr. Preacher, said he, you observed it in chapter one that man was to be given the most glorious position. And you're now telling us he was meant to be a farmer. I had to correct my unfortunately ignorant friend. He had the notion that farming was somehow unimportant. Why, even in nineteen seventy two, it remains the basic activity. There is none more important. We could do without your film stars at a pinch. We couldn't do without your farmers. At a horrible big pinch, we could do without your motor mechanics, but we couldn't do without the farmer. Some people managed to make out for many years even without a doctor, but we can't make out very long without a farmer. Huh. Pity, isn't it, when we get our values all muddled up in life and give far too wa- big a wage packet to the wrong kind of people. But that be as it may. We shall, of course, observe that whereas the individual personal man Adam was made and given his specific job by God to do. It is quite obvious from subsequent scripture that God hasn't given us all exactly the same occupation to do. But whatever our occupation be, we shall find that behind all our occupations there is the same reason. And from the reason why Adam was made and how he transgressed that reason and how Cain rebelled against that very purpose. From all those lessons, we shall draw practical lessons even for ourselves. And finally, for the moment, if you should observe that Adam was made to till the ground, and you say to yourself, but that surely doesn't interest me because I'm not a farmer and never likely to be one. Will you please observe that he was made to till the ground but was taken himself from the ground. He was a bit of the ground. He was responsible to till the ground that lay around him and that bit of ground that walked around on two legs. Unless you think I'm being a little bit fanciful, I call your remembrance to a passage in the New Testament. Oh, many passages in the New Testament. But this in particular, in Hebrews chapter six, where we are warned that people are like ground. And the rain comes down upon some kind of ground, and it brings forth herbs, meat for those for whom it is prepared, and partakes of the very blessing of God. There are others, and the rain comes upon them, and they bring forth thorns and thistles whose end is to be burned. They are nigh unto a curse. That, my brethren, is not a lesson particularly in agriculture. That's a lesson about the kind of ground that walks on two legs. We shall find abundantly enough relevant to ourselves in considering Adam and his relation to the ground. But now for a moment I leave that because chapter two at least, and in their way chapters three uh, and and four, introduce us to a related, slightly different, but very large topic. Chapter two describes for us life, human life. It will answer for us, if we look at it patiently, the question, what is life? And conversely, of course, it will answer the question, what is death? In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, said God. Die? What do you mean by death? Well, that will somewhat depend, will it not, on what you mean by life. What is life? This too, it seems to me, is a very sensible topic for Genesis to discuss. Again, it's a basic question, isn't it? What is human life? So let us fall in with our chapters just at this very point and spend the first part of our session thinking about some of the things, some of the descriptions that are given us of Adam, from which we may deduce what human life is. We are told, chapter two verse seven, that the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. Oh. From which we become aware that man is, at one level, just so much stuff. His basic chemistry is the same as the chemistry of the earth around him. As far as we know, the chemistry of the whole universe is the same, except there are one or two odd elements on the sun that perhaps aren't here. And basically, at one level, man is so much stuff, just like the ground. Oh then, yes, but man is more than stuff. In that sense, more than inanimate, inorganic stuff. For the Lord God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life. Verse seven: And man became a living soul. The first epistle to the Corinthians in chapter fifteen comments upon that, and compares and contrasts Adam, the first man, with our blessed Lord, the second man. Paul's concern there is to show how different our Lord is from Adam. He is concerned, of course, to show us that our Lord is, was, and is still a true man. He's really human. He is a true man. But having said that, Paul is likewise and just as much concerned to show us that while our Lord is truly human, a real man, he is and always was a different kind of man from Adam. And you young folks, don't you forget it. It's a habit of some liberal modern theologians to talk as if our Lord were merely a man. That is not true. He is perfectly a man. But the Bible never pretends he was only a man. And even so far as his manhood went, he was a special and a different kind of man. The first man is of the earth, earthy. The second man is from heaven. It is written, man, that is Adam, became a living soul. The second man, oh, far more than that. A life-giving spirit. And that verse will help us, by its contrast, to understand what this one means. Adam was a living soul, made a living soul, as distinct from Christ, who is a life-giving spirit. Adam could only pass on the physical life he received. He couldn't create life. He wasn't the source of life. He was merely a channel of life. If you ask, uh, the biologists, what is life? Well, I say one definition of it is something that can reproduce itself. Well, Adam was just that. Basically stuff. But then not just in organic matter, he is organic, he is animate, he can reproduce. He was made a living soul. Thank God our Lord was something more than that. He was a veritable source of life. With powers to create new life. He was a life-giving spirit. In which fact he staked all our hope for seeing a better world than this one. But is that all life is? Well, no, indeed not. If you would really spell out life fully and at large, you must add a lot more things to just mere stuff and animate existence. So take the next thing. Out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight. He put them in this garden of Eden, where also he put man, and also trees that are good for food. Wasn't it lovely of God to put in the garden of Eden trees that were good to look at, that as far as Adam was concerned, had no other function for their existence than merely being good to look at. Oh yes, of course, there were trees that were good for food. God didn't forget the man's stomach. But if the order of the remark is anything to go by, there are things in life that God thinks more important even than a man's stomach. That is his mind, and God made trees that were good to look at. It is a very important and a very necessary thing for us to remember, that if on the level of human existence, I'm not gotten around to the spiritual yet, but on the ordinary level as human beings, as creatures of God, I say it is an important thing to remember that we're not just creatures with stomachs, we are creatures with minds, and if we would be healthy, we must have not only satisfaction for our stomachs, we must have satisfaction for our minds. You know, I sometimes think we who perhaps are in the Puritan tradition, or nearly there anyway, have come to think that things of the mind are a little bit, um, doubtful. Should you enjoy painting? Should you? What, and music? And literature too? Aren't those bad things? Are they any worse than sausages? Oh, but you say, oh, literature, isn't it tainted? Yes, it is, some of it, badly tainted. Don't go poking around in that. But so are some sausages. Shouldn't you advise you to eat them either? But just because some sausages are tainted, you don't refuse to eat all sausages normally, do you, Watt? Some art is terrible, will poison your emotions, young folks. And some art nowadays is almost maniacal. Don't you go poking around in that. But true art is a God-given thing to satisfy us at the aesthetic level and to keep our emotions and our minds on true balance. Oh, what a world it would have been, wouldn't it, if there'd been no color. Tell me, my good folks, what use are daffodils? Can't eat them, can't stew them, no good for your stomach. You prepared to say the Almighty made a grievous mistake when he made daffodils? That they're useless old things and a little bit sinful? Why, of course not. For a world that was gray and colorless would send us all, I nearly said bonkers, within a few years. And thus with music and all the arts, an exceedingly important pass- part of our human life. Take away food for a man's stomach, you take away his life. Ah yes, but take away the aesthetic things of life, and you're taking away an integral part of a man's life. You may feed a man like a turkey cop, but if you keep him inside a prison with gray walls and no sunlight and no color and no music and no art or no nothing, you're sentimental. So then the aesthetic side is part of life, and it's a distinctively human part of life. They tell me that cows and perhaps lions can admire the colors o- o- o- o- of their, uh, mates' fur and things, and that, uh, some animals have different kind of eyes than what we have, and they look beautiful where to us they look ugly. Well, I'm prepared to believe the scientists there, but no animal has anywhere near the developed aesthetic sense of mankind, has he? What next? Well, there was, of course, um, his occupation. Well, if man is going to keep saying he'll have to have something to do, there is a vast virtue in work, isn't there? Having something to do. Even in paradise, God gave man a garden to dig and flowers to grow, something to do. Granted, it wasn't the hard labor then as it is now, but even in paradise, God ordained that man should have an occupation. We should have a lot less thuggery round the streets and sheer vandalism, shouldn't we? If some of our young folk could find something worthwhile to do that was creative instead of destructive. Old Christian parent, you will see, won't you, that your child has something to do. Grave cause, cause of subsequent mental unhealth when a young child's childhood is bored because he was never allowed to do anything. Oh, God's a great believer in work. What do you think God has the vast universe for? He doesn't have to have it to grow carrots on so he can live. God doesn't have to work for a living. You say, why does he have it then? Well, for the sheer fun of doing something. When at last we get home and the curse is beyond us and almost forgotten, we shall still be doing things. Not because we have to make money in order to live, but for the sheer fun of doing things. There was a garden to dress, and then there was all sorts of potentials for, for finding out. The historian remarks that around certain of the rivers that went out from Eden, there was some gold, and the gold was good. How'd they find that out? They did a little geological prospecting, don't you? All the fun of finding out the minerals of Earth and what you could do with them. Can you recapture? I hope you can. I hope you're not too, uh, uh, sated and jaded with life to feel again the fun of finding out Earth's potentials. I say a very guarded word. I'm almost afraid to say it, lest I get misunderstood. But sometimes young Christian folks come to me and they say, you know, I'm not sure what to do. Oh? How old are you? Ooh, sixteen. I got saved. Marvelous. I don't think I ought to continue on with my physics course. Why's that? Well, when souls are perishing, why read physics? I mean, why carry on going to school when folks are perishing? I felt like that myself once. I speak with tremendous sympathy. Well, my dear good young per- person, I don't know you, and I'm not your master, and if God has indeed called you to abandon physics and go and preach, well, you abandon physics and go and preach. Only my advice would be this, don't you abandon physics because you think you cannot glorify God in it. It is a part of human life that people shall have a job to do. Not only, as presently we shall see, not only because it produces things that people live on, but because in the very doing it, Adam and all his subsequent descendants were meant, in the very doing it, to have fellowship with God. It was God's world. And like a child with a father, man was put to work and to discover the wonders of God's world, and in fellowship with God, develop it. When we all get to heaven, as the hymn says, what should we do? Well, the answer to that is come back again, isn't it? For the last that John saw in the book of the Revelation was the holy city, the New Jerusalem, and what was it doing? Going up from earth, saying, goodbye, earth, glad to get rid of you now. I was sick and tired of you while I was there. Goodbye, we're now going off to those glorious spiritual realms. Not at all. The motion is in the opposite direction. I saw the holy city coming down out of heaven. So? Towards the earth. Whatever for, you say. Well, to be the administrative center of that new heavens and that new earth. And mark you well, that God is always going to have an earth. So the Bible says. It shall be a new earth, it shall be a different earth. But if terms mean anything constant, there shall never come a day when God will say, now that's the end to earth, let's just concentrate on heaven. The Bible has it, uh, that the first earth and the first heaven fled away, and I saw a new heaven and, and a new earth. God shall always have a physical manifestation of himself and of his purposes, and it will be our high duty and pleasure with Christ to administer a vast universe that shall have this really and genuine material element in it. In other words, I'm saying, I'm ta- I've taken a lot to say that one, haven't I? I'm saying that your physics isn't sinful. And if God calls you to physics, or to be a housewife, uh, organizing a kitchen, or any other, what they are pleased to call mundane jobs, this is not something less spiritual. This is an integral part of life, as God himself designed it. True servants of God work harder than all of us. Let's always beware of the man who thinks he will do spiritual work because he doesn't really like the discipline of doing ordinary work. Having said that, I better add, yes. And as with Peter, James and John, sometimes and still does the Lord call his people to leave their fishing boats and ordinary occupations and concentrate on spiritual work. We need our ears open in that direction as well. But life, we're not yet finished yet. Life, we haven't got up to its, uh, biggest peak yet. It's more than all these things put together. Man is so much stuff. Man is animate. Can reproduce. Man, uh, has an aesthetic sense that is an integral part of his life. Man, to have a full life, must have a job to do, God has provided it. But human life isn't described in toto until you come to this bit. And God said to man, now of all the trees in the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. I don't propose to discuss with you the nature of that tree, at the moment at any rate. I concentrate on the mere fact that when God created man and put him in this garden, God then deliberately defined man and man's life in relation to himself by laying down a command, thy shalt not. This is an exceedingly important part of the definition of human life. By that very fact that God put him in the garden with a command that he was not to do this, man lived all the days he did live before he fell, ever conscious of a God out there that had circumscribed his experience with a command and a prohibition. And every time he looked at the tree, he thought of the prohibition, and every time he thought of the prohibition, he thought of God. It was a way of defining man's relationship with God, and watch you please, that relationship was a moral relationship. You say, what do you mean by moral relationship? Well, if you've got a tree in your garden that you don't want your cow to eat, it's no good going up to the cow and say, Betsy dear, please don't eat that tree. I haven't got any, uh, free will in that sense at all, nor any sense, and certainly no moral sense. If you want them to keep off, you've got to put a fence or a, a, an electrified wire or something around the thing, so that every time the cow goes to go near the tree, it gets a shock, and then it keeps away just because it's, uh, been conditioned to keep away. That's not how God did with man. God gave man a prohibition he wasn't to. But as you observe from chapter three, don't you? God gave man the ability to choose. Now, please understand why I, what I say next. God gave man the ability to disobeyed. God could have made him so he just worked like an old bumblebee out of sheer instinct. But then he wouldn't have been really human, would he? We don't regard creatures like that as human. When they bump into your, to your face, they don't even say sorry. We'll say... You know, they don't understand that kind of language. They don't live at that level, they're lowly creatures. They couldn't sin if they tried, could they? You don't want to accuse a bumblebee of sinning. You know it hasn't got any choice. But you accuse a man of sinning because you know jolly well he has a choice. It isn't a hundred percent choice, but there is a level at which man has a choice, yes. He never would be a moral creature if he hadn't got a choice, would he? Because he had a choice and can choose to do one thing or not to do it, you can hold him responsible, and you can praise him if he obeys the command, and you can blame him if he breaks it. But in order to have that choice, you will see, won't you, what that means. It means that God had to give him the ability, the power to disobey if he chose. But I hasten to add, God didn't give him permission to disobey. Well, that's a different story, isn't it? A free will, a free choice means the power to disobey. Doesn't imply any permission to disobey. And God made it abundantly clear to Adam, thou shalt not. He had no permission to disobey. The very fact he was forbidden to eat it shows he had the power to eat it, and the subsequent narrative tells us he did actually jolly well going to eat it. God gave him the power to eat that tree, but not permission to eat it. You see what's involved in being human? Human life at its highest is relationship with God. And that relationship is a moral relationship. It has to do with responsible behavior, of living a life in obedience to God, loving and willing and deliberate obedience to God. A relationship in which I acknowledge his right, because he is my creator, to lay down the rules. The right to command, the right to prohibit. A relationship in which I humbly acknowledge my responsibility to obey the rules, because they are laid down by a creator, and a creator who loves me. That's life. As you begin to see that if life goes wrong at any one of those sundry levels, then death ensues at each of those levels. You take away man's food because man is an organic bit of stuff and he's animate. If you take away his food from his stomach, he dies physically. And if you take altogether aesthetic things away from his mind, his mind shrivels in that regard, and he's lost a bit of his life. And if man fouls his moral relationship with God, he dies at the highest level of his being. Alas, it is what happened to Adam. Hence it is that the New Testament says that before we were converted, we were dead in trespasses and in sins. Dead. Dead at the highest level of our being, dead in our relationship with God. It is a blessed and happy thing that where some... You know, man isn't just another animal that happened to go out, uh, out, out of his socks and grow up a bit. There is no compatibility at that level. And if God was going to find a suitable help need for Adam, he had to make a human. A rather exalted animal wouldn't do. But that by the by. I have no qualifications to speak on what nevertheless I believe most sincerely, that a man is not complete, human life is not complete, without that fellowship of man and woman. Woman made out of man's side for man. I needn't regale you with the curious aberrations of history, where human life has been distorted by either of two extremes in regard to womankind, treating them as if they were mere things, a domineering over them. And at the other extreme, this curious phenomenon, if a mere male may say so, the extremes of women live that is in fast process of robbing modern woman of the respect to which she is entitled. But then I say I have no qualifications to speak there. Some God calls to be Incomplete. incomplete. I ask your attention to something far less interesting, but still it's in Holy Scripture, that occurs in this very context. God called these animals to Adam, and we are told he named them. Which is a fascinating observation. Where did he get the word? Uh, you say, wasn't he born speaking Irish? I don't think so. You say, did God, uh, well, well, I mean, when God made him, of course he was a grown man, wasn't he? Did God not inject a whole language in his head? What kind of language? Language, whatever its origin, a fascinating thing, isn't it? Again, it is one of those things that markedly distinguishes man from animal, isn't it? All they tell us that porpoises have a bit of language, and some birds do. Yeah, so they do. But limited compared with man. Language, in that sense, in its full, rich development as we know it and use it, is a peculiarly human thing and an integral and exceedingly important part of human life. Oh, you artsmen and women, don't you be ashamed in front of the scientists. If it weren't for us, they wouldn't know how to talk about their discoveries anyway. But seriously, the origin of language is the one thing that the famous French Institution on Language will not allow its members now to discuss when they meet. There have been so many curious theories about the origin of language. The best I've ever read is in Genesis. Yeah? For the secret, as anybody knows, of language, as distinct from grunts and groans and things like that, true language. I mean, even within the human language, there are words that are merely sort of grunts, aren't they? When someone stands on your toe and you say, ooh, that ain't language so much as it is a noise. Convey something. But, uh, true language, its basic secret is this. It is an arbitrary, completely arbitrary selection of an arbitrary sound to represent a thing. How arbitrary it is, you can hear from this. You offer that to a, a, a, a, an English speaker, and he says book. You offer it to a Frenchman, and he says leave. And you offer it to a Hebrew, and he says safer. What do you say? Sounds are completely different. Well, that's right, yes, they're completely different. They're quite arbitrary. I mean, why one chap should say book? That's a funny sound to make anyway. And another fellow say safer, and another one say livre when he sees the same object. Three completely diverse sounds. Why? That is just the point of language. It is the arbitrary use of a sound to represent an object. You'll see little children, when they start to talk, and they haven't got, uh, many words to use, they fall back on a different system. They see a car and they say, mm. Well, that's all right for a child, but moo can represent a lot of things, couldn't it? And it isn't very explicit. Can't tell you what kind of a moo it is, this cow, and thus and thus and thus. And if language had merely stayed at the stage of imitating by sounds the object that a man sees, you wouldn't have got anywhere. It was a brilliant notion, absolutely brilliant notion. Whoever had it the first go, instead of making imitative sounds, to pick an arbitrary sound and to represent a thing so that when now, uh, an English speaker sees that thing with horns and, you know, gives us milk, he says cow, and a Frenchman says vase, and doesn't ask. Completely arbitrary. Who invented it? As far as I know, the Bible says Adam did. It's the kind, as Professor Woodcock said long ago, it's the kind of brilliant invention that is liable to have occurred to one single man. Bible says it occurred to Adam. It is a feature of the human race that we can speak. But, you know, I'm not sure, but what it is deliberately put just here in the Bible, along with this business not only of, uh, naming the animals, but marrying Eve. Ponder it a moment. How important this business is of language that you have in the highest levels of your personal relation with your fellow human being. Can you imagine lang- life without language? Without words? Oh, you say, no, we don't want words, we want deeds. Yes, we understand what you mean. Language can be abused. We can all be a lot of old hypocrites and speak a lot of words that, uh, we don't really mean and are not prepared to back up with language. I know that. But when, uh, you said the best you can, or the worst you can, I'm still going to say that words are as important. Who knows, they mightn't be a bit more important than anything else in human relationships. I'm not being funny when I say if a, if a lion wants to tell his mate how beautiful she is, he's very limited in his vocabulary. Bite her ear or go boo or something, what lions do, but it's all very limited. You think of the wonder of interpersonal communication that is opened in language. I'm a little bit of a reactionary, and you'll forgive me, I'm sure. I'm all one-sided, as I confessed already tonight. I sometimes hear dear Christian folks say, look, all that Bible, it's only words, only words. Oh, only words? They mean, yes, we want some action. Yes, I know what they mean. I've got sympathy. Folks who will sit down and study their Bibles when they ought to be jolly well giving a hand with the dishes in the kitchen or helping with the family business, or doing some good solid, uh, visitation around the houses or something, yeah, uh, perhaps indulging their own selfishness, but come. Is Bible only words? I tell you, words are some of the highest things that is possible for a human to have. Why, if a soldier went to the war and found himself in the trenches, and there came a parcel from home and it contained a kin- tin of cocoa and a love letter from his intended wife, well, he'd be very grateful for cocoa, I imagine. That helped him to go out and fight. I'm not sure that when they found him dead after the battle, it would be the tin of cocoa he had near his heart. More likely those words. Only words. Only words. Here is life at its deepest level. Of personal communication. I remind you all of this wonder, that when God made man, as one of his gifts to humans, he gave them words, the possibility of understanding language, that he might make himself known through him who is the word. God's communication of his own very self to us. Oh, when we get home to heaven, it cannot just be the externalities of gold and silver or whatever it is that heaven is made of that should tell us about God. Still, even then, it will be the word of God, telling us what is in the deepest recesses of the very heart of God and conveying it to the deepest levels of our personalities. Adam named the beast. I didn't understand a word he said. God made him a wife. And apart from God, this was his first experience of talking to somebody. Oh, it was the crown of life. And his ring. Christ loved the church, gave himself for it. For this cause it is that the man leaves his wife and his father and mother is joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery. I speak of Christ and the church. Oh, how wonderful now in our redemption to have been brought back to God and to know his words and the loveliness of his conversation. It is life. Some of us would say it is, well, it's more than life. You could let the lot go, and that would be enough if you had to choose. One day, with perfect use and understanding of the very language of God, we shall enjoy him when he comes forth and takes us to his side forever. That is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourself from idols. So, Lord, we humbly bow to ask thee that thou will take thy written word that we have read and tried to think about with thee. By his power, who is the living one, that thou speak it to our hearts, make it vibrant with thy power and love and presence. We do praise him, same thing with adoring worship, for the gift of life, even physical life. And now when life is so covered about very often with pain, difficulty, and the curse, yet we praise before it in spite of all its pain. It has been the basis for our coming to that higher kind of life, that is true spiritual fellowship with thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. For the wonder of that spiritual life already commenced, we pray to thee, and we thank thee for the prospect of an endless eternity and ever more gifts to be extraordinarily joyful when we meet the Savior and dwell forever. Bless our soul through Jesus Christ our Lord.