If the Fall Had Never Happened, Would There Be Rap Music, or Thoughts

on the Soul (Part 2)

Theology of the Soul

• Part 1 from Last Week

• What the Soul Isn’t (Tom and Jerry)
• A ghostly presence having nothing to do with who you are.
• Leads to a view of the “soul needing saved” and that’s all that Jesus came
to do.
• Christianity is about getting your soul to heaven, i.e., fire insurance.
• What the Soul Is
• Fully integrated in who you are; the animating spark of life; the life force;
the you that is you that God breathed into each one of us, making us
uniquely us.
• It is the seat, the core, of our emotions and desires; it’s where every
thought, desire, emotion, action, word and deed comes from.
• We closed out last week by talking about how there is something very wrong
with our souls. Something has happened somewhere along the line because
we don’t always live out of this soul, this us that is really us, the person God
created us to be. We live out of this false self, the one that rebels against God,
fails to love its neighbor, fails to love creation, and fails to love even its own
self.
• Where It Went Wrong (Genesis 3)
• Talk about the beauty of Creation.; Genesis 3 mentions that God was walking
in the Garden in the cool of the day, suggesting that this wasn’t a one time
occurance, but something He often did. There was intimacy in the Garden.
There was shalom in the Garden, everything was in it’s right place, everything
was as God created it, everything was in harmony, unity, rhythm with God and
with each other. Adam had meaningful work in the Garden: tend and care for
it, name the animals, eat and enjoy what I have given you. Here’s a wife:
enjoy each other.
• Genesis 3:1-9
• Adam and Eve eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I
always wondered what the big deal about knowing good from evil was. I
always thought that it sounded like something we should know. But if you
understand a couple things it makes sense.
• First, God’s desire was to be our provider, always and forever. Adam and
Eve were living in perfect harmony with God, so there was no need for a
choice to be made. Everything was good. They didn’t have to live under
the strain and burden of trying to weigh out whether something was
good or evil. This was God’s burden to bear for them and he gladly did
it.
• Second, my brother stumbled across a theory that said “good and evil”
could be interpreted to mean “A to Z”, as in, the tree of knowledge of A
to Z. Literally, they would know everything absolutely. Here’s the catch:
only God can know absolutely, only God can know everything. For us to
know anything absolutely would make us God.
 • Something is wrong now. Adam and Eve realize they are naked, they feel
shame for the first time, and they are afraid for the first time. They now
have an awareness that they never should have had; their holy innocence
has been destroyed.
• Shalom, the harmony and rhythm of creation is broken. The harmony
between them is broken, the harmony between them and creation is
broken as God curses the ground because of their disobedience. Death
enters the picture because God forbids them to eat from the Tree of Life,
which would have made them immortal. Worse than all of that though is
the damage to their God-breathed souls.
• God asks a heart-wrenching question to Adam and Eve: “Where are
you?”
• Where It Goes Wrong Today
• The greatest tragedy of the Fall, among the obvious curses, is not just that it
happened, but that it happens…every day.
• Some headlines…
• Blast in the Iraqi capital kills at least 10 people and wounds 21 others
• U.S.-led coalition kills eight suspected terrorists, detains six others in raids
• 200,000 dead, bone-thin babies, no charges
• Sandstorm derails train, kills 4
• Study finds 754,000 living on U.S. streets.
• Teen violence against homeless a trend.
• Third body pulled from giant sinkhole
• GUATEMALA CITY - Emergency crews on Saturday found a third body in
a 330-foot-deep sinkhole that had swallowed a dozen homes and forced
the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City
neighborhood. The body of Domingo Soyos, 53, was carried out of the
enormous fissure and identified by family members, medical crews said.
Soyos was the father of teenagers Irma and David Soyos, whose bodies
were found floating in a river of sewage soon after the sinkhole opened
on Friday.
• Woman accused of using infant as car down payment
• Romans 8:19-23—Is there any hope for ending the groaning?
• Resurrection Follows Death
• We said that not only did the Fall happen, but the Fall happens every day. But
there has to be some way back from that. There has to be something good
and beautiful and transforming that happened and that happens today.
• John 20:1-2, 11-16—The resurrection marks the turning point in history. Up to
this point the effects of the Fall ruled the world. A downward spiral of
humanity began in Genesis 3 and continued on unimpeded.
• Paul in Romans: Death reigned through Adam’s mistake. But life reigns
through Jesus.
• The Resurrection marks a new Genesis, a new beginning for human history. At
the resurrection the Fall is reversed. A New Eden is begun, when Jesus steps
out of the tomb; history moves toward a perfect conclusion.
 • Consider this: God walks in the Garden that he created. In essence then, he is
the Gardener. In fact, in John 15 Jesus refers to God as the Gardener. John 1
tells us that Jesus is the Word of God and everything was created through
Him; that he was there at creation. So we can logically say that Jesus, as the
Word, was in the Garden with Adam and Eve. We can assume this because
when God creates man he says, “Let us make man in our image,” meaning
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This makes Jesus as
much the Gardener as God and the Holy Spirit.
• Who does Mary mistake Jesus for in John 20 when she sees him but doesn’t
recognize him? The gardener. Nothing is in Scripture by accident. Is John, by
including this detail, saying something about the resurrection here? Namely,
that the Garden of Eden, God’s perfect creation, is beginning again?
• Notice something else here, too: we said that the heart-rending question of
God, “Where are you?” marked a breaking of the intimacy between man and
his Maker. When is it that Mary recognizes Jesus? When he calls her name.
What is the most intimate, personal thing you can call someone? Their own
name. We are witnessing here the beginning of a return to intimacy with God
through Jesus.
• What Part Do We Play
• Resurrection didn’t just happen; it happens and it is happening all around us.
• Spring; time of new growth and rebirth.
• We said that creation—you, me, the physical world, the universe—is groaning
for redemption, groaning for a rebirth, for a time of resurrection when all will
be made right again. You and I have a part to play in that. Scripture calls us
co-laborers with Christ.
• 2 Cor. 5:17-20
• Since we are being made new in Christ, being reconciled (brought back,
turned back to) God, we have been given a ministry of reconciling the
world to God, the natural world and humanity. He has given us the task and
the message of proclaiming that God is restoring all things again. That the
Garden of Eden, the perfection of humanity, the New Heaven and the New
Earth are being made right now and that as human beings we can play a
part in bringing that into reality.
• Colossians 1 says that God is restoring everything, turning it back to what
it was in the beginning. The Church is supposed to an agent of this
restoration, existing not for itself, but for the good of others and
for the good of the created world.
• We are to take what is dead and make it alive again, whether it be the lives
of our friends and family, or the devastated created world that we live in.
• Galatians 6:1 says that we are to restore our fallen brothers and sisters
gently. We are to the dead around us and proclaim to them that life is
possible through Christ. We take part in restoring the world to God,
knowing that one day that restoration will be complete and everything
will be as it should have been all along.