Posts tagged Genesis
Bible in a Year – Day 6: God’s Refreshing
Jan 6th
Today’s Reading: Genesis 19, 20 & 21
I’m not even a week into my effort to blog through the Bible and I’ve come to a stark realization. Even three or four chapters at a time, there is WAY too much material to even touch on in a single blog post. I guess this should come as no surprise since I regularly write 5 or 6 pages on just 2 or 3 verses. Even so, I’m hoping to hit the highlights of the reading for each day and, perhaps, skip over some of the items that call for lengthy discussions.
That brings us to a few items – one from yesterday and two from today – that I will mention without any further exploration:
1. In Genesis 18, three “visitors” came to see Abraham – 2 angels and, evidently God in some kind of angelic or human form. They ate, slept and got up and left. That’s unusual.
2. In Genesis 19, the two angels go to Sodom, where the men of the town decide they want to have sex with them. Um…OK. Again, that’s strange.
3. Lot doesn’t want the men to sleep with the angels, so he offers them his virgin daughters! Let that one sink in…
The truly unique thing is that all three of these events, along with the fact that Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt are mentioned somewhat in passing, as if they are normal occurrences. If nothing else, they serve as reminders that when we read the Bible, we’re reading about a different time and place – a different culture and a different way that God interacted with his people – one that we can’t fully understand.
And while all of these unusual things are taking place, there is something else going on that I think most of us can really relate with. It is the strained relationship between Sarah and Hagar. There is a ton of subtext here and a lot that obviously remained unwritten about the way these two women related to each other and to their husband, Abraham. Ultimately, Sarah ends up kicking Hagar to the curb.
So off goes Hagar to wander in the desert with her child and, she thinks, to watch him die. But something happens while Hagar is wandering in the desert. God reveals himself as the one who supplies provision. He creates a well where there wasn’t one before and provides water for Hagar and her child. In addition, he promises her that he will make her son “into a great nation” – the same promise he made to Abraham.
It strikes me that God has some behavioral patterns that are revealed in this passage and will be revealed over and over throughout history:
1. He blesses the discarded. The Psalmist would later say about himself, his country and in prophetic words about Jesus, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.”
2. He refreshes those he finds in the desert. God’s miracle provision of water for Hagar foreshadows his similar miraculous gift to the people of Israel as they wandered in the desert. It also serves as a reminder to us that no matter what kind of dry and barren place we find ourselves in, God is there with us and he’s waiting to refresh us when we cry out to him.
Bible in a Year – Day 4: Family Feud
Jan 4th
Today’s Reading: Genesis 12, 13, 14 & 15
There is a lot of ground covered in these four chapters. Any discussion of Abram would be incomplete without mentioning the covenant that God initiated with Abram (and, ultimately, with his ancestors). We’ll get to that in a moment. But first, I want to take a moment to consider the theme that we’ve been exploring thus far in the book of Genesis – namely that the choices made by human beings continue to lead to a loss of innocence, which then leads to more severe consequences.
Now, at first glance, you may wonder where I’m coming from on this one, but consider this: the land that Abram initially moves his family to is called Canaan. It is a land that is inhabited by people who are potentially hostile toward Abram and his family. That is why Abram didn’t stop there, but moved on. Eventually, because of a famine, he and his family ended up in Egypt, a place where Abram felt so threatened that he had his wife pretend to be his sister so that the Pharaoh wouldn’t have him killed. The question is, where did these ruthless people come from?
For the answer, we only need to back up a couple of chapters to Genesis 10:6:
The sons of Ham:
Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan.
That’s right! The ruthless, bloodthirsty heathens inhabiting these two lands – Canaan and Egypt – were the extended families of Ham’s sons. Egypt and Canaan were grandsons of Noah! Abram, you’ll recall was a descendent of Shem, one of Noah’s sons and the brother of Ham. And so, when God started over with 8 humans and a boat full of animals, it took less than 10 generations for this righteous group to splinter into multiple factions and to begin to be hostile toward each other.
So what in the world sparked this animosity? Well, if you recall in yesterday’s reading, we read how Noah got drunk and naked and how his son Ham essentially made a spectacle of him, while Shem and Japheth covered him up. Noah, in his anger, cursed Ham’s son Canaan (and ostensibly all of Ham’s offspring) saying “May Canaan be the slave of Shem.” What we see in these passages today, then, is the direct result of this family feud and curse. It’s another incredible reminder that our choices have lasting consequences even after we’re dead and gone!
Now, for a brief word about God’s covenant with Abram. While I may only write a few sentences here, this was one of the most important acts recorded in the Bible. Without going into great detail, you should first understand that the splitting of animal carcasses was a common way of sealing a contract or covenant in those days. They would split the animals in half and each party would walk between the halves to symbolize their commitment to keeping their agreement.
This is the initiation of the nation of Israel (which would later be formed by Abram’s descendents) as God’s chosen people. This covenant would last at least until Jesus came and established a new covenant. Some argue that the old covenant is still in place and that the people of Israel (Jews) are still God’s chosen people. Others argue that the new covenant established by Jesus abolished the old covenant and that all who follow Jesus are the “new people of Israel.” Whatever the nuances of your beliefs, most agree that God’s establishment of the initial covenant is one of the most important acts contained within the pages of the Bible.
Bible in a Year – Day 2: The Inevitable Result
Jan 2nd
Today’s Reading: Genesis 4, 5, 6 & 7
In these 4 short chapters (especially short if you removed the genealogies) two very tragic events occur – events that would forever alter the course of humanity. First comes the very first instance of murder – and the murder of a brother at that – and then the ultimate destruction of nearly everything and everyone on the face of the earth.
It strikes me that this series of events is the inevitable result of sin. In my last post, I discussed the choice made by Adam & Eve and how the loss of innocence would ultimately lead to other choices and the stress of doing what was right. That choice would be visited on Adam & Eve in the worst imaginable way – one of their sons would take the life of another son.
That legacy would continue for 8 more generations and would escalate to the point that the world was full of wickedness.
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. (Genesis 6:5)
God had to make the painful decision to start over and yet, this was not God’s fault. We brought this on ourselves and continue to bring it on ourselves. The inevitable result of consistently choosing the wrong path is complete and total destruction. The great flood, then, was the destination on a course that was charted by Adam & Eve several thousand years earlier. It was a course that could have been corrected by any number of people through the generations, but it wasn’t. And so, without any course correction, the human experiment careened off the cliff and God would be forced to go back to the basics.
And consider this about the flood: we understand that God wiped out every living thing from the earth except for Noah and his wife, his sons and their wives and the animals on the ark. But have you ever stopped to consider what that really meant for those who remained.
We are told that Noah’s father, Lamech, had Noah when he was 182 years old and that he lived to the ripe old age of 777 “and had other sons and daughters”. It stands to reason, then, that 600 years later, when Noah and his family boarded the ark, he had brothers and sisters watching him from the outside – brothers and sisters that would ultimately be killed by the flood waters. (Lamech, we’re told, died 595 years after Noah was born, so he witnessed the building of the ark, but was not killed by the flood.)
Then I started thinking: Not only did Noah have brothers and sisters who were being left behind. He likely had nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins, in-laws and friends. His wife had family and friends, his sons had family and friends and his sons’ wives had family and friends. What must it have been like when the flood waters actually came and, undoubtedly, some portion of those family and friends came to the ark begging to be brought on-board? What must it have been like when the waters receded and these 8 people were left with the stark realization that everyone they had ever known was gone?
The inevitable result of the choices made over the course of those first 10,000 years or so landed hard and heavy on the shoulders of Noah and his family – heavier, even, than it did on those who perished in the water. These chosen 8, after all, would be charged with the re-launch of the experiment and with the charge to get it right this time around.
Bible in a Year – Day 1: Unintelligent Decision-Making
Jan 1st
Today’s Reading – Genesis 1, 2 & 3
As I embark on this journey of reading and blogging through the bible over the course of a year, I am confronted immediately with one of the most discussed and controversial portions of the Bible. Perhaps that’s because it involves the creation of the universe, or perhaps it’s because countless others have embarked on a journey to read through the bible and this is as far as they were able to get!
Whatever the case, I have no desire to dive into a discussion or debate about intelligent design. What I would like to point out instead is the very first case of “unintelligent decision-making”. In Genesis 2 and 3, we’re told all about this incredible garden that God had set up for Adam and Eve. The place was perfect – a real heaven on earth where human beings walked with God.
By all indications, this garden had only one rule – do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was as if God, in his desire to offer free will to us, had to give Adam and Eve some kind of choice to make. Therefore, he made it really simple for them:
In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:9b)
Two trees. You choose which one to eat from: the tree of life, which comes with very little in the way of responsibility, a whole lot of freedom and an incredible, eternal life OR the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which comes with all of the stress and struggle of knowing right from wrong and trying to choose what’s right. In other words, we were allowed to choose innocence or to choose a loss of innocence that brought with it a lot of baggage.
Ultimately, Eve, followed by Adam, chose the loss of innocence. Why? Perhaps it was the enticement of power offered by the serpent or the allure of having something they were told they couldn’t have. Whatever it was, that same choice faces us every day…and every day we make the same foolish decision that Adam & Eve made – we choose the loss of innocence.
Our desire for knowledge, power, esteem or whatever else we can get our hands on causes us to make a stupid decision that immediately opens us up to more stupid decisions. That is the history of the human race and we continually feed into it. That is why Jesus told us that we need to “become like little children” in order to experience the kingdom of heaven – to experience life as it was supposed to be – life as it was before that fateful day when “unintelligent decision-making” was born.
