In the Beginning Genesis 1-11
How to write about the first eleven chapters of Genesis in one chapter? It feels sacrilegious! However, I will give it my best shot! Besides the obvious subject matter, this entry highlights RELATIONSHIPS WITH IN-LAWS & AGING PARENTS, OVERCOMING TEMPTATION AND UNITY AMONG BELIEVERS, and includes four days’ worth of reading, so take your time...
Genesis 1 Everything God made was good! God loved man - He loves us now. God loves to give us good things. Am I grateful? Do I express my gratitude frequently? The whole creation and all we get is “and it was very good”. Is God the God of Understatement or what??!! Or perhaps he is teaching us humility? Some of my vegetarian friends believe that when the world was perfect (see verse 29), we were all meant to be herbivores and that meat eating only started after the fall. Hhmmmn.
Genesis 2 There is a section on marriage, quoted in Ephesians – “...a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh.” My first thought about marriage from chapter 2 is - I am to be John's helper - am I helping him? Really? It is so easy to be selfish. Secondly, I am thinking of how many God-fearing folk in Asia, and perhaps other parts of the world, struggle with the practical application of this verse as it relates to their parents, since it is a cultural norm to either stay with the husband’s parents after marriage or to invite the husband’s parents to come live with the young married couple in their home. It seems that there were multi-generational households among the Hebrews, which implies that the “leaving” may not necessarily be a physical leaving but rather a changing of loyalties. When the son gets married, he “leaves” the comfort of dear old mom, and instead clings to his wife, loving her first and putting her needs first. It is clear from other biblical passages, for eg, I Timothy 5, that a sign of our Christianity is taking care of our parents and grandparents in their old age. Therefore, as we all get older ourselves, let us examine this timely issue, in light of how God feels about “the in -law question”, and how we will put the word of God into practice in our own homes.
Genesis 3 Satan was just waiting to have a talk with Eve. Satan is just waiting to have a talk with me. He just wants a little talk. He is deceptive and crafty. He still uses such means to get me to be deceitful and deceived. When I listen to him, I am deceitful, and, in the same way that Eve didn't get away with it, I won't get away with blaming it on the devil!
Genesis 4 First of all, the brothers in conflict is such a sad story. It is always heartwarming to see siblings who get along, who support each other, who are best friends. Conversely, it is so disheartening to see brothers not getting along, being bitter, and especially hurting each other (obviously, Cain took it to the extreme). This should not be. As parents, let’s make sure that our parenting is not exacerbating any sibling rivalry that may already exist. And let’s be hard on this sin – it may be usual that siblings fight, but it should not be normal. On a more personal note, I must remember that sin is crouching at my door. If I do what is right it will go away. DECISIONS MAKE THE MAN!! (or woman.) Sin desires to have me. I make choices in my thought life, in my activities and in my speech. I must be the master and not let sin win!! As a young Christian, I had a friend with whom I would spend the night weekly, and we would confess our sins to each other and pray for each other during the week. This helped me so much in those early years. Other habits I formed to help me stay out of trouble were to start singing a Christian song or quoting a scripture verse when sinful thoughts would enter (especially lust); writing verses down over and over until I had them memorized; reading my bible on a specific topic, writing my sins of the week down during the meditation time of communion, confessing to my small group, and making a pact with someone to confess immediately after doing a particularly addictive sin. Unfortunately, I did not always practice these habits, which is to my shame, and any of the ongoing problems in my life till this day are from sins that I should have repented of much earlier!
Genesis 5 Enoch had a real walk with God! He prayed non-stop. He communed with God. He was friends with God. This makes me feel like I want to have real prayer walks again, not just walking in the park when I pray, but taking walks with God. I was inspired when I read Brother Lawrence, the monk who wrote about communing with God even when he washing the dishes, in the classic, The Practice of the Presence of God.
Genesis 6 When the whole world was sinful enough to give our patient Lord a bad attitude, Noah stood out as being worth saving! What a reputation! What is my heavenly “reputation”? We may wonder about our reputation at work, at church, with our families, or in the neighbourhood, but I have a feeling the only place where our reputation really matters is in heaven!
Genesis 7-9 God shut them in, only Noah was left. God remembered Noah and made a covenant with him. These are examples of how God loved Noah and ultimately all mankind. Think of all the ways God has shown you his love, protected you and “shut you in”, and give thanks! Remember that Jesus taught us to pray to not be led into temptation and to be delivered from evil.
Genesis 9 Several lessons here...BEWARE - when you haven't had wine in a while, or if you are not used to it, even a bit can get you drunk! Also, don’t humiliate your parents when they make a mistake. Lord knows they put up with many of yours. (Not that you shouldn’t speak the truth to them in a respectful way at the proper time – the issue is to speak the truth in love, and remember that love covers over a multitude of sins!)
Genesis 11 God looked at the people of
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ENTRY THREE – JANUARY 5, 2008
The Story of Abraham Genesis 12-23
This entry highlights such topics as HATING/FLEEING SIN, LOVING RIGHTEOUSNESS AND OBEDIENCE, THINKING POSITIVE FROM THE CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE, AND FAMILY ADVICE. By the way, this covers six days worth of reading, so no rush!
Genesis 12 God called Abraham. Later, "Abraham called on the name of the Lord." He was carrying on a tradition that was first mentioned in 4:26, which said, "and men began to call on the name of the Lord." Abe, like Enoch and Noah before him, had a heart for God, a spiritual sensitivity that set him apart from others. He also had a soft conscience. This desire to know God didn’t make him “perfect” or “sinless”, but it set him on the right course. In our lives, we will make many mistakes, but if knowing God and obeying him is our number one value, if it is the basis on which we make our decisions, if it is the “North Star” (to borrow a concept from HOPE worldwide’s Positive Choice Program) by which we set our compass, than we will be all right. Who knows? We, too, may have an impact that lasts through the generations!
Genesis 13 Despite a major slip in chapter 12 (calling his wife his sister!), Abraham still had the courage to trust in God - none of this self-pity stuff where he feared that God would never listen to him again. He exhibited trust and humility by building an altar and letting
Genesis 14 Abe showed an early understanding of what the corporate world today calls, "Best Practices". God calls it "integrity". If this scene were a movie, I can see Abraham being played like the Mel Gibson character in “Patriot” or Dennis Quaid in “Frequency”, otherwise gentle and loving family men who would stop at nothing to do the right thing to save their families.
Genesis 15 Abe's faith was still increasing, and he already had a lot! Do we build our faith in the good times? When we are doing well spiritually, do we continue to push forward? Do we continue to grow more, knowing that one day we will need to draw on our spiritual reserves? Or do we get slack, and then wonder why we gave into temptation when the going got rough? What about when we face doubts? When our prayers aren’t answered as quickly or in the manner in which we think they should be answered? Do we still go to God like Abraham, or do we get discouraged and escape?
Genesis 16 The morals in this story:
- NO marriage relationship has ever been helped by polygamy, whether it was/is legal or illegal. Good grief, what a can of worms!
- When wives get fearful, they make emotional decisions that they later regret!
- When we take things into our own hand and demand our own timeline for God’s blessings, disaster usually follows!!
Genesis 17 God reassured Abe again and again - even giving him a name change as assurance. INTERESTING that circumcision is instituted as a way of Abe keeping HIS side of the covenant and that Isaac is only born AFTER Abe was circumcised. Think about how you keep your covenant with God.
Genesis 18 Abe pleaded with God boldly, but God decided when the conversation would end.
Genesis 19 Lessons from
- Lot was seduced by the sin of
- he liked the comfort and materialism of the city
- he liked the prestige of sitting at the city gates (an "elder")
The
- Don't hesitate to obey, because hesitating may bring death.
- Don't hesitate to do what is right, because waiting may bring disaster.
- Don't hesitate to flee the world, because you only get one chance (or should I say, 18 fleeting years) to be a role-model for your family. They suffer when you love the world. Look at
- Be grateful for friends who save you. Don't get mad or feel sad if your friends challenge you - feel sad if they don't!!
Genesis 20 "There's enough sin to go around", as my friend, Gloria Baird, says. In other words, don’t gossip about others and DON'T BE JUDGMENTAL!!!
Genesis 21 Sarah laughingly had a baby at 90+ and, following God's orders, named him, "He Laughs" (Isaac). God has such a sense of humour!! Abe was so excited, he thought of a new title for God - "The Eternal God". Think about your views of God and meditate on this chapter...
Genesis 22 Ishmael had to leave so that Abe would be free to regard Isaac as his "one and only son". Then God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac! How bizarre! Of course, God stayed Abraham’s hand, but I believe he was teaching the ultimate parenting-for-Christians lesson: does God come before our kids?? Another lesson – Abraham had put his hope in Isaac, his dreams for the future were wrapped up in his son. So, are we willing to sacrifice our dreams for our children if that is what it takes to obey God? And lastly, for all Christians, are we willing to sacrifice our DREAMS for God’s dreams? These are convicting lessons... but Abraham’s life shows that when we do (put God above our kids, sacrifice our dreams, etc), our lives turn out better in the end anyway! So, TRUST GOD! And Abe named the mountain, "Mt The Lord Will Provide" (as opposed to Mt Kinabalu or Mt Everest). Do you have such a mountain? What is it? (By the way, God asked no less of himself - he sacrificed his one and only for me and you on the cross.)
Genesis 23 Here is a beautiful story about marriage. Abe was devoted to Sarah. We all dream of a husband like that, but let’s remember what kind of wife Sarah was to him – see I Peter 3:1-6!! Convicting! The bible holds Sarah up as an example of a woman who wasn’t afraid to follow her husband, but we saw back in chapter 16 that she did get afraid once, and it caused major consequences. I figure the good news here is that God is very forgiving, and one or two mess ups don’t ruin your overall track record! Also, for married couples, let’s try to be Sarah and Abraham for one another – the dream husband and the dream wife, at least most of the time. Remember “for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health...”
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ENTRY FOUR – JANUARY 11, 2008
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: The Patriarchs Genesis 24-38
This entry covers seven days worth of reading, and touches on such diverse topics as God’s funny ways of giving us OUR HEART’S DESIRE, the “LABAN PRINCIPLE”, TRUST, FEAR, RESENTMENT & more PARENTING ISSUES. Happy meditating...
Genesis 24 Abe taught his servants to fear God and to pray specifically. God takes care of the details, if we let him. He loves to give us what I call “little jewels”. He even gave me my favourite music for my wedding! He gives me little "jewels" all the time! Here’s the story of the wedding music (bear with me if you have already heard this...hope you don’t mind reading it – I love telling it!) When I was dating John but not yet engaged, I was at the point in our relationship where I felt he was “it” and one afternoon in June 1987, I allowed myself fifteen minutes to daydream about my hopeful future wedding. (I was trying to be “spiritual”, hence only 15 minutes!) I wasn’t thinking about dresses or gowns or flowers - I was thinking about music! I love all kinds of Christian music, and I am a classical music buff, so I began to think of beautiful hymns and selections for the ceremony. A favourite classical praise piece of mine is “Worthy Is the Lamb”, the closing music from Handel’s Messiah. I love it because the words are taken straight out of the book of Revelation, chapters 4 and 5, which are some of my favourite verses on God, Jesus and heaven. I also love the majestic nature of the piece. However, after I had the thought, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to have that song in my wedding?”, I then thought, “Wow, you are so arrogant! As if you deserve to ask any choir to learn such a difficult song!” Then I put it out of my head and I never told a soul about that episode or that I liked that song. A month later, John proposed to me during a church conference on a Saturday afternoon. Later that night, when the magnificent
Genesis 25 Isaac had to rely on God for his wife to get pregnant. Sometimes God doesn’t let the things that come naturally to others come naturally to us. I don’t know why, but I do know that he knows what we need, so I (usually) trust him. Also, this chapter contains the story of Esau selling his birthright. The book of Hebrews likens this to us selling out our Christianity for pleasures of this world. What is our price? Do we have a price? Or are we “sold out”? No way that Satan can get us with worldly temptations...
Genesis 26 Fear causes us to sin. That's why God says that perfect love casts out fear (I John 4:18). How many times have I sinned because of fear? Lying, freaking out, withdrawing, escaping - these are all sinful responses. Help me, O God, to love you more than to give into my fear.
Genesis 27 PARENTS: We all want and need to feel BLESSED, RESPECTED, ESTEEMED by our parents. Kids who don't feel this will spend the rest of their lives trying to prove themselves, or trying to please their parents (like Esau marrying a third wife just to please his parents) or looking for something or someone to love them.
Genesis 28 Perhaps Jacob was able to now be more God-focused because he felt the BLESSING from his dad.
Genesis 29 More egs of the pitfalls of polygamy!!! After knowing Christians from around the world, I have met several people from
Genesis 30 Years ago, Sam Laing taught a lesson about “the Laban Principle”. He reasoned that God put Laban, who was incredibly sneaky and deceitful and selfishly motivated, into Jacob’s life to teach Jacob to see his own sneakiness, deceitfulness and selfish motivation. Laban had Jacob’s bad qualities but only worse! Do you have a Laban in your life? Is God trying to teach you something? Don’t resent it - learn from it and repent!!
Genesis 31 "There's enough sin to go around" - Part II.
Genesis 32 Jacob is finally humble, sober, grateful and sees his need for God (poor in spirit).
Genesis 33 Forgiveness is sweet. If you are having trouble forgiving someone, or if there is someone having trouble forgiving you, read the Cloud and Townsend books on forgiveness and Gary Chapman’s follow-up to his Love Language books The Five Love Languages of Apology!
Genesis 34 Deceit comes back to haunt, and the many sins that Jacob's sons got involved in testify to what happens when your kids aren't brought up in the fear of the Lord.
Genesis 35 Sadness when Rachel dies. And I bet all of that competitiveness to have babies seemed so petty then.
Genesis 36, 37 There are so many lessons from the story of Joseph, and it is almost everyone’s favourite story in Genesis. For PARENTS, a good lesson is that playing favourites with your children never helps anyone! For EVERYONE, we can certainly learn that discretion is helpful in relationships, since Joseph’s boasting, whether from naiveté or from arrogance, magnified his brothers’ resentment of his favoured status in the family. Another lesson - I read once that a person filled with resentment is like an iceberg - only 10% is above the surface, 90% is hidden. The difference between an iceberg and someone who is resentful is that an iceberg never attacked anyone!! Yet another lesson - Reuben had thought that he could keep quiet and fix everything later... when we think that we can keep quiet about sin and fix something later, we often learn the hard way that it is too late!
Genesis 38 Judah and Tamar's story is a tale of gender double standards, and the woman gets the last laugh (and gets herself in the ancestral lineage of King David and Jesus)! Things for women will get worse before they get better, but praise God for the New Covenant, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ! (Next entry on 18th Jan)
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ENTRY FIVE – JANUARY 18, 2008
Joseph in Egypt
As we finish our study of the patriarchs, we will focus on Joseph in
Genesis 39 Joseph was amazing!! Despite all that had been done “to him”, Joseph kept to his values and the Lord was with him. He allowed God to work in him, which caught the attention of his boss (much like the prophet Daniel during the exile many centuries later). This is an upward call for all of us who work or study - are we shining at work? Do others around us see our attitude and get inspired? I know of one Christian who was retrenched during an economic downturn, but was immediately offered a job by someone else also leaving the company. When the Christian asked, “Why me?” his colleague replied, “Because I have never worked with someone who was so humble.” Now THAT is a great example!
Look at how Joseph handled himself in the midst of almost unbearable temptation! He fled the scene! He did what Paul would later advise Timothy, “Flee the evil desires of youth!” or as we might say to a friend in temptation, “Get the heck out of there!”
Have you ever done the right thing for God, and then had something bad happen? There are few things that rankle more than being falsely accused, but that’s just what happened to Joseph! Oh the temptation to blame it all on God! But he kept his spiritual integrity, and was blessed even in jail. (If you haven’t seen the Dreamworks movie about Joseph (Joseph, King of Dreams) which was their follow up to the “Prince of Egypt”, you MUST see it! Watch it for a bible talk or over several days for a family devo and then do some spiritual “movie therapy”!) More cynical types tend to say nowadays, “No good deed goes unpunished.” With spiritual eyes, Joseph was able to wait on God, and even help others.
Joseph was pure, spiritually minded, godly, and on top of that, he was handsome. Some of you singles may be thinking, “Wow, I hope I find a guy/girl like that!” As the Proverbs say, “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman (or man) who fears the Lord is to be praised. ” It’s not what’s on the outside that is important - we’ll read about Absalom in later chapters - he was the most handsome of all of King David’s sons, but he was rotten on the inside. When you are thinking of who you want to marry, looks and attraction will matter to an extent, but for your sake I hope they aren’t the number one pull factor...sorry, couldn’t help but throw that in!
Genesis 40 Do the right thing no matter what the reward. You not only please God, but you also may get blessed in the future - after all, God is always watching!! And when you are practicing doing the right thing no matter what, you are training your character, so that when God calls, you will be ready!
Genesis 41 Don’t you know when Joseph was shaving and getting changed that his knees were shaking and he was praying (while trying not to cut himself!) and saying, “God, what on earth do you have planned now?!” If you close your eyes and put yourself at the scene, you can actually feel Joseph’s heart pounding! I bet he could hardly contain himself when the Pharaoh was recounting his dream. Joseph continued to be spiritual after he was given a high position. He even honoured God with the names of his two sons. He is truly a living example of the lyrics from "Humble Yourself in the Sight of the Lord, and He will Lift you Up!!"
Genesis 42 Now if you think the last chapter was emotional, what about this one - he sees his brothers for the first time in over twenty years! The part where Reuben spoke up about how they shouldn’t have treated Joseph badly 20 years earlier, thinking that Joseph couldn’t understand them, and then Joseph turned away and wept - oh, it Kills Me every time I read it! Joseph had a plan to help his family prosper physically and spiritually...
Genesis 43 It is obvious that the guilt the sons of Jacob felt over selling Joseph off twenty years before had caused them to not only be miserable but to fear God and start to be men of their word. A warning to all of us who are prone to giving into our anger and doing rash acts - the consequences can be grave, and last far longer than you would ever imagine. Not to mention you may not sleep so well afterwards...Joseph’s emotion at seeing the only other son of his mother is very touching. He must have given up hope of ever seeing them again, and now he was able to meet all of his brothers! And he wasn’t planning revenge, but blessings...What a heart...
Genesis 44 This time the brothers really proved their repentance.
Genesis 45 This part always makes me cry! Joseph couldn’t hold back his emotions anymore. He revealed everything and had true forgiveness - he was even comforting his "former enemies" (his brothers)! Don’t you know that his servants were totally confused by this point! He helped them to have spiritual understanding of how God had been planning things ahead for years. What a family reunion! Verse 24 always makes me laugh - when his brothers were going back to
Genesis 46 As if to make Jacob feel better about the long journey he was about to take, God spoke directly to the aging patriarch one last time and told him that Joseph would be with him when he died. Then they arrived in
Genesis 47 Joseph introduced his new world to his old, and God blessed the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, just as he promised he would.
Genesis 48 Jacob, about to die, gave the blessings of the father to Joseph’s two sons. For more understanding of how blessings relate to parenting, read the Smalley and Trent book called The Blessing.
Genesis 49 Jacob also gave specific blessings to his own sons, and told them that he had been aware of some of their sins even though he hadn’t done anything about them at the time. Unfortunately, this is rather a negative example for parenting – what good do you do your children by sweeping things under the rug and not dealing with their issues right away? Praise God that we live in a different era and know more about what to do then Jacob.
Genesis 50 Jacob had demanded to be buried in
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