Sermon Tone Analysis

Genesis 1-3

 

! Introduction

Where does your thinking begin?

Suppose you had a mysterious pain in your body.

Where would you go?

If you believe…

            In science - to a doctor

            That sickness is not God’s will - to a faith healer

            That sickness is caused by demons - to an exorcist

            That doctors are suspect - to a chiropractor

            That we use too much medicine - to a naturopath.

But where do these belief’s come from?

What is your understanding of the world which has developed your beliefs?

The way we live is based on what we believe and what we believe is based on our worldview.

A worldview is the fundamental truths which form how you look at the world.

All people have a worldview.

I have been reading an encyclopaedia of mythology which describes Egyptian, Greek  Roman and other ancient worldviews.

What is your worldview?

As Christians, our worldview must be formed by the Bible.

Today I want to begin a series on Genesis in which the opening chapters reveal The World According To God.

!

I.

An Ancient Worldview

!! A. Tell The Story

Let me tell you the story of an ancient worldview.

We know about the Assyrian Babylonian mythology from a series of 7 tablets found at an excavation of the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.

The material dates to between 700 and 1000 BC.

Here is the worldview of the people of that time.

“In the beginning when the sky above had not been named and the earth below was nameless there existed only Apsu, the primordial ocean, and Tiamat, the tumultuous sea.

From their mingled waters came forth first Mummu(the tumult of the waves) then a pair of monstrous serpents, Lakhmu and Lakhamu, who in their turn gave birth to Anshar, the celestial world, and to Kishar, the terrestrial world.

To Anshar and Kishar were born other great gods: Anu the powerful; Ea, of vast intellect; and the other divinities.

“Soon the new gods and their turbulence disturbed the repose of old Apsu who complained to Tiamat: ‘During the day I have no rest and at night I cannot sleep.’

The two ancestors argued about the annihilation of their descendents.

‘Why should we destroy all that we have made?’

asked Tiamat.

‘Even though their way is troublesome.’

But Ea, who perceived all things, learnt of Apsu’s design and by his magic incantations was able to seize Apsu and Mummu.

Tiamat, enraged, gathered around her a certain number of the gods and gave birth to enormous serpents ‘with sharp teeth, merciless in slaughter’, to terrible dragons with glittering scales, to tempest-monsters, savage dogs, to scorpion-men, furious hurricanes, fish-men and rams.

To command this troop she chose Kingu, to whom she gave sovereignty over all the gods, pinning on his breast the tablets of fate.

“Meanwhile Ea, who knew of Tiamat’s plans, went to his father Anshar.

‘Tiamat, our mother,” he said, ‘has conceived a hatred against us.

She is gathering an army together, she storms with fury.’

Listening to his son, Anshar was moved.

At first he sent Anu against Tiamat, but Anu lacked the heart to confront the goddess.

Ea was no more courageous.

Then Ea summoned Bel-Marduk, ‘the son who makes his heart swell’, and bade him do battle with Tiamat, promising him the victory.

Marduk accepted, but first insisted that the assembled gods should confer on him supreme authority.

They acknowledged his rule over all the world and accorded him the sceptre… giving him the unrivalled weapon which repelled all enemies.

‘Go’, they said to him, ‘and slay Tiamat.

“They rose up, Tiamat and Marduk the Wise, among the gods,

                        ‘They marched to war, they drew near to give battle.

The Lord(Marduk) spread out his net and caught her in it.

The evil wind which followed him, he loosed it in her face.

She opened her mouth, Tiamat, to swallow him.

He drove in the evil wind so that she could not close her lips.

The terrible winds filled her belly.

Her heart was seized,

                        She held her mouth wide open.

He let fly an arrow, it pierced her belly.

Her inner parts he clove, he split her heart

                        He rendered her powerless and destroyed her life.

He felled her body and stood upright on it.

“Then returning to Tiamat… he contemplated the monstrous corpse, he ‘conceived works of art’.

He clove her body ‘like a fish unto its two parts’.

From one half he fashioned the vault of the heavens, from the other the solid earth.

That done, he organized the world.

He constructed a dwelling place for the great gods in the sky and installed the stars which were their image; he fixed the length of the year and regulated the course of the heavenly bodies.”

Thus the earth was formed.

Then ‘in order that the gods should live in a world to rejoice their hearts’ Marduk created humanity…Marduk moulded the body of the first man using the blood of Kingu…Finally there appeared the great rivers, vegetation and animals, wild and domestic..”

            That is the creation story according to the ancient Babylonians.

The library contains other descriptions of what people believed the gods were like in their relationship to people.

“The essential privilege of the gods was immortality.

But they had the same needs and passions as mortals…They were subject to fear… The gods were also greedy…They were equally fond of sacrifices…like men the gods had wives and families…they would congregate…at the beginning of each year, on the feast of Zagmuk, in order to determine men’s destiny.”

Some of the gods are described in this way: “Anu…presided from above over the fates of the universe and hardly occupied himself with human affairs.”

“Enlil is the dispenser of good and evil.

It was he who in an angry mood sent down the flood to annihilate the human race.”

“On every occasion the goddess, Istar, was irritable, violent and incapable of tolerating the least obstacle of her wished.”

!! B. Worldview Assumptions

            This story describes the worldview of the ancient Babylonians.

There are a number of things we need to take note of about how those people looked at the world.

They believed that there were many gods.

No one of these gods was supreme, but each god had a power over different things.

In some way, these gods were connected with aspects of nature.

They believed in the sun god, the moon god and also sea monsters were seen as powerful deities.

That is the worldview from which the ancient people worshipped the sun and the moon and looked for direction from the stars - they believed they were gods.

Because there were so many different gods, if you needed some help from the gods, you would need to know which god to approach for your particular problem.

This worldview also had a particular view about how the world came to be.

It was believed that matter had always existed and that it was organized by the gods in to the world.

But it was organized out of violence.

It was from a war between the gods, which ended in the defeat of the god Tiamat.

From her body, it was believed that Marduk divided her body in two and made the heaven and the earth.

Although we didn’t see it as much in the little bit of the story I read, they also believed that the world began in chaos and disorganization and has been getting better ever since.

As the gods got organized, things improved.

We also learn about what they believed the gods were like.

They had power, but not all power.

They were seen, in many ways, just like people.

They fought, they were fallible, they got angry and acted according to their whims.

As a result, people could not expect anything for certain from the gods.

If they appeased them, they would help, but they could just as quickly turn on a person and do something nasty.

This worldview also tells us a lot about how people were looked at.

They were created as an afterthought to supply the needs of the gods.