Jan 1: Gen 1-3
Chapter 1. Genesis begins with the early history of things in general, and a teaching that the earth is the creation of a personal God who communicates with His creation (and soon that gets spoiled per the original intent). The world was without form and void and God created the world ‘ex nihilo’ - Latin for ‘out of nothing’ - which we as humans cannot do. We cannot create something out of nothing. For example, if I want to build a house, I need materials and a mind, neither of which I have created, but God did. The Creation account debunks all of the other theories on how earth and humans came to be by explaining that it was the desire of the God who wanted to create, spoke it and it came to be. God progressively created the world and all that is in it, as full grown items and He made them good. God sets forth the structure (1:26-27) of man over animals and everything else (also, this is the first mention of the concept of the Trinity where God is the 3 in 1, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all together by uttering the words ‘Us’ and ‘Our’). Another big fancy word displayed here is Imago Dei, or we were created in the image and likeness of God and therefore we have intrinsic value as humans and therefore are valuable to God. God tells us that the land and resources are for us to benefit from, not to exploit it.
Chapter 2. God starts out by resting on the Sabbath and He set the day apart as Holy (consecrated or set apart). Here, the example is set by God Himself, for us to rest in God’s Holiness and to sabbath (or to rest). If God can create the world out of nothing in 6 days and rest, I think that we should be able to get our tasks done and follow his example. Historically speaking, Sabbath used to be on a Saturday, where people would rest from their work in order to remember what God accomplishes without us. We will learn later that when Jesus comes to earth as a man, He transforms the Sabbath to a lifestyle and not just one day a week. The creation account continues with setting forth obedience by God to man for our own good and how God sets apart the tree of knowledge of good and evil to not be eaten of. We then are told how God sees that man is not good alone and He creates a helper for Adam, and that is his wife Eve. Helper is not at all a disrespectful term for women, as the Holy Spirit is also called our helper. And God knows that men need them both! So, we are still reading about moral goodness and how everything was good, and then comes the famous story of the ‘Fall’ of man. Here we are introduced to free will. My best definition of free will is our ability to chose to obey God or to disobey God. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s Word. The enemy (Satan used the serpent as a tool) twists God’s Words and deceives them. After they had eaten the fruit, Adam and Eve realized that they were naked, as they had always been, so they covered themselves and tried to hide from God. Lets not be too quick to judge them here, we often try to hide our sin from God and others as well thinking nobody sees our sins. We also, like Adam, blame shift our sins onto others - but God is not fooled.
Chapter 3. We find out in chapter 3 that disobedience doesn't go very well for them, just like it doesn't go well for us. Every action has a reaction, and the reaction to their sin is they now have brought sin into the world and the consequences are horrible; man and woman will now die and be buried in the ground, which wasn't the case prior to the fall. The serpent’s (vs 14) curse is that he go on his belly. Satan’s (vs 15) curse is that he will have continual hostility between those that follow Satan and those that follow God. This Scripture shows that both the earthly and spiritual realms are under God’s domain, control, and judgement. The women will have hard child bearing along with a struggle for wives to want to dominate in the household for leadership over their husbands. To Adam, who did not protect his wife, his curse is that his work will be harder - work is not the punishment, just that work will now be harder and more frustrating. The chapter ends with Adam and Eve being kicked out of the garden to never return to that place. As followers of the One True God, we are never kicked out of God’s Grace, but our sin has real life consequences. Both for the here and the now and also eternally.
As a side note, in Genesis 2:4 we are introduced to God’s personal name, Yahweh. Which most Bibles translate as LORD (notice how they are all capitals in your Bibles…)
To Sum it all up:
To Sum it all up:
- God literally created the world and it was good
- We are to live a lifestyle of obedience to Him
- Disobedience to God does not bring about the results that Glorify God or better us
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