Genesis 6-8: A new ‘covenant family’

There is a strong theme of ‘family’ that runs throughout the bible. Here’s the big picture so you can see the pattern of things.

We can consider that Adam & Eve are the first family which God created to be with Him. Things go really bad because they rebel against God and they give in to sin & injustice (the forbidden fruit and Cain’s murder of Abel, and things get worse from there). God banishes them, and when things get worse, He punishes the wicked through the flood. But because of God’s grace, He starts a new covenant family through Noah.

Spoiler Alert! Things go really bad again after that (the curse on Canaan, tower of Babel, Sodom & Gomorrah etc) so God punishes those guilty of injustice, and starts a new covenant family through Abraham.

Then things go really bad again, Jacob’s sons sell their brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt, the nation then itself ends up in 430 years of slavery in Egypt, then God frees them from Egypt, and starts a new covenant through Moses.

Then things go really bad again because of the hardness of their heart, they rebel against God in the wilderness, refusing to enter the promised land that God has prepared for them. Everyone in that generation dies in the wilderness except Joshua and Caleb who remain faithful. Israel renew their covenant vows through Joshua and enter the promised land.

You guessed it, things go really bad again, and Israel’s rebellion towards God and injustice (as told by the prophets) causes God to punish them with captivity in Assyria and then Babylon. Then they return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.

The Jewish temple leaders (the Pharisees) become full of corruption and injustice, but because of God’s grace, He then starts a new covenant family through Jesus which is where we find ourselves today in the new covenant family we call ‘the church’ under the headship of Jesus.

So through this, we see How patient God has been with humanity through the ages. As we discovered in the previous blog post, throughout that time, sin and death was reigning, because Satan who held the power of death had (limited) authority on the earth because of the fall, and there was a lot of carnage as a result. That was the case until Jesus came and declared “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18).

We also see two seemingly contradictory aspects of God’s character at work at the same time, both His judgement and punishment of sin & injustice, and His grace (undeserved favour) because of His love for humanity and His desire to be in family relationship with us. Although, these Old Testament stories of God’s attempts to enter family relationship with humanity eventually fail because of the hardness of human hearts where they keep giving in to sin, these stories serve to point forward to Jesus, in whom through faith we are given the right to be adopted to Sonship (male and female) into God’s family, and we are given new hearts that are capable of saying no to temptation and sin, and instead be faithful to God with the help of Holy Spirit.

Let’s go back to the Noah narrative for now with a couple of questions and reflections.

Why was Noah and his family saved? He is described as “…a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” Genesis‬ ‭6:9‬ ‭NIV‬‬.

Why was nobody else saved? Genesis 6:11-13 says: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭6:11-13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Some people ask shouldn’t the other people have been given a warning like Noah was? The apostle Peter in his 2nd Epistle describes Noah as a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5) so it is possible that Noah was warning the others.

Some people say “but if God is love, why would He kill all those people?” Well Peter has obviously also been pondering this when he wrote the above verse in 2 Peter. In the context of his epistle, Peter is saying that there are heretical false teachers and false prophets, and God will bring judgement and punishment on them. He says “If he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others” he then continues in verse 9 “if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.”
‭‭2 Peter‬ ‭2:5, 9‬ ‭NIV‬‬.

Some people have a belief called ‘Universalism’ which is the belief that God will save everybody and nobody will face punishment, but these scriptures show us that this belief is not supported by the bible.

So this portion of scripture leaves us with a thought to ponder at the end of chapter 8. Noah builds an alter and sacrifices clean animals on it. When God smells the pleasing aroma, He is reminded to be full of grace and mercy towards humans even though ‘every inclination of the human heart is evil.’ This is clearly a reference forward to the substitutionary animal sacrificial system under Moses, which in turn points us forward to the ultimate atoning sacrifice of Jesus Himself on the cross which reconciles us back to God.

“Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.””
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭8:20-22‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Genesis 4 & 5 – The beginning of the age of a new ruler?

Genesis 4 & 5 take us through the generations from Adam to Noah.

Here’s the plot so far. In Genesis 1 & 2, God created the Heavens and the earth, including all the living creatures and He creates mankind (male and female) in His image to rule and to reign on the earth. In Genesis 3 we meet the serpent and discover that there is a back-story of spiritual beings in rebellion to God, led by this serpent, who is Satan. The Psalmist in Psalm 8 considers this scenario when he writes:

“what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:”
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭8:4-6‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The thing is, Satan and the fallen spiritual beings appear to be unhappy that God has ‘crowned them (the human beings) with glory and honour’ and ‘put everything under their feet’… the humans are lower than the angels after all! So fuelled by jealousy and pride, the serpent deceives the humans in Genesis 3, and the humans eat the forbidden fruit as a result.

You may find it useful to read Genesis 4 & 5 again to refresh your memory of these chapters, then come back here to read my reflections on what is going on next.

It doesn’t take long in Genesis 4 to realise things have gone seriously wrong! Things are not as God planned and created them to be. Adam & Eve in the previous chapter have already hidden from God and cast blame on each other; and now their first children are also against one-another, resulting in Cain murdering his brother Abel out of jealous rage. As we read through the generations we see that death has entered into humanity just as God said it would.

The humans are behaving really badly; there’s even a guy called Lamech who has the first polygamous marriage, and he sings a song boasting about how he murdered someone! We know that ‘sin’ has entered into humanity through the fall, but does the bible offer us any way we can understand this better, and why all the subsequent generations were so badly affected by Adam & Eve’s mistake?

The apostle Paul has evidently been pondering this in Romans 5 (New Testament) when he considers how sin entered humanity and affects us all through Adam, and he contrasts it with how righteousness is available to all through Faith in Jesus. Let’s read what he says because it helps us understand what is going on:

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned— To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam…”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:12-14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Did you notice the phrase “death reigned?” That is kingdom language and we should take notice of these things because the humans were created to reign. And it sounds pretty odd, how can death reign? Is death a person? Well, no; but let’s see what Paul says elsewhere in Hebrews 2:

“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too (Jesus) shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—”
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭2:14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So… ‘death reigns’ is to say that he who has the power of death reigned during that period in time… that is, Satan. We know that sin and death are connected, which is why God said they must not eat the forbidden fruit or they would surely die. So we know that the generations after Adam are under the power of sin, because they are also under the power of death; this is what theologians would call ‘original sin.’

There is so much we can say and unpack about this, but in the interests of keeping this blog short we will continue to explore this as we go forward on our journey through scripture. But let’s just establish 2 brief, but important things before we move on from this.

Firstly, Satan did not have unlimited authority & reign, even during that time period; that would make him equal to God and that is not the case. It is made especially clear in the book of Job, which we will get to eventually, that Satan can only do amongst humans what God allows him to.

Secondly, humans at least in theory have the ability to resist, master and overcome Satan’s power over them. Remember God tells Cain before the murder “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” (Genesis‬ ‭4:7‬ ‭NIV‬‬). Cain obviously did not resist or rule over sin, and neither did the subsequent generations to Noah, which is how we end up at the story of the flood which we’ll discuss next time.

Thanks for reading. Please leave comments below or on the Facebook page or discussion group.

Genesis 3: the fall (watch out for the deceiver)

In what way did the serpent/enemy deceive Eve?

Adam and Eve both clearly knew and understood that God had commanded “you shall not eat of it.” (Eve – 3:3, Adam – 2:16-17, 3:17). So how did the serpent deceive Eve and Adam to completely go against this and eat? It seems bizarre at first when you think about it.

The verse in context:

On the first page or two of the bible, God has been creating everything in our material world. He speaks everything into being, separates things and puts them into their place, and importantly, He has been defining what is ‘good.’ For example:

“And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.” Genesis‬ ‭1:3-5‬ ‭NIV‬‬

In addition to the light, God defines the following as ‘good’ in Genesis 1: dry land & seas (v10); Grass (v12); Seed-bearing plants (v12); Fruit-bearing trees (v12); Sun & moon (v18); Sea animals & flying animals (v21); All land animals (v25); Then after God has also created humans to rule over creation, he sees that it is all ‘very good.’

Notice that the things that God defines as ‘good’ are not things that He Himself needs, God doesn’t need any of these things, but they are ‘good’ because they are good for others, even the lowest of the living creatures need these things to live. God is not self-focussed, but others-focussed.

Adam & Eve redefine ‘Good’ on their own terms:

Genesis 3:6 is the key verse here:

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”

God had clearly said that the fruit of this tree was not for food, but here is Eve redefining it as good for food… what happened?

Remember in the last blog post, that we established the serpent is actually a spiritual being that had his own ‘fall’ due to pride and ‘self-will’. What the serpent has done here is to appeal to Adam and Eve’s selfish desires in such a way that they were prepared to directly disobey God’s command, and go through with it in order to satisfy their inner desire… here we have the first human sin, or the first human rebellion against God. It was an act of ‘self-will’ or another word for that is selfishness, which is putting ‘my own needs or desires first.’ I often say that: ‘“I” is at the centre of SIN’

Without going off track, let’s look quickly to a New Testament verse that helps us unpack this a little. I think the Apostle John is clearly thinking about the Gen 3:6 verse, and referencing it, when he writes his warnings in 1 John 2:15-17 about living a Christian life that is carnal or worldly. Let’s look at that verse:

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” 1 John‬ ‭2:15-17‬ ‭NIV‬‬

If we put John’s statements alongside Eve’s this might appear a little clearer:

Eve – saw that it was good for food; John – Lust of the flesh

Eve – Pleasing to the eye; John – Lust of the eyes

Eve – Desirable to make one wise; John – The pride of life

So the serpent was encouraging Adam & Eve to go after their own desires and to put their own needs first, ahead of what God has said to them. As a result, they redefined ‘good’ on their own terms.

Let’s leave it there and ponder that this week, and ask God if there is any way we are to apply this in our own lives & situations.

I think it would be good to close with Paul’s message from the end of Romans, who is warning his Christian friends to watch out for deceivers (do you think he had Genesis 3 in mind when writing this?)

“I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice because of you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” Romans‬ ‭16:17-20‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Genesis 3 – ‘the fall’ (and the fall before the fall)

This chapter is packed full of things that are really important to the story of the bible as we journey through it. The Bible has this great way of coming back to these first 2 or 3 pages as a way of grounding us, or adding revelation & understanding to some of the things that are happening here that might not make much sense straight away. We have this saying, “the bible interprets the bible” so don’t worry if some of the things in this chapter are puzzling at this point, we just have to stick with it on our journey and we will keep coming back to this point and hopefully things will become more clear. Chances are, I might have to stay in Genesis 3 for a couple of blog posts in order to highlight the different things that are going on here, whilst also trying to keep it ‘bitesize!’

Let’s start with verse 1:

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?””
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭3:1‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So if anyone here is reading the bible for the first time… yes, we just met a talking snake… or so it would appear at first glance. What we need to acknowledge here, is that later verses in the bible show us that this character is not just your regular talking garden snake, it is in fact a ‘spiritual being.’ We know this particular being as ‘the enemy’, ‘Satan’, ‘Lucifer’, or more commonly as ‘the devil.’

“Wait! what is a ‘spiritual being’ and why is there an evil one in the garden?” I hear you say. Good question! What is going on here, is that we realise there is some kind of ‘back-story’ that has been going on behind the scenes, and we’re not told much about it at this point in the biblical narrative. If we want to find out more about this ‘back-story’ we need to keep reading for quite some time. When we get to a collection of books within the bible called ‘the prophets’ we will see that Ezekiel and Isaiah in particular, offer us windows into what happened in this back story.

I know, you don’t want to wait that long! Ok so we can come back to it in more detail later on, but the Bitesize version for now, is that it appears that God created certain ‘spiritual beings’ before He created time and space and the world that we live in. Furthermore, it turns out that there was something of a rebellion in the spiritual realm (led by Lucifer, who we will find out more about later), and many of these spiritual beings were cast out; the word we use to describe this is that they are ‘fallen.’ So that is the reason there is an evil spiritual being in the garden, there was ‘a fall’ of spiritual beings in the spiritual realm, before what we refer to as ‘the fall’ of Adam and Eve. That’s what I meant in the title when I said ‘the fall before the fall.’

How we end up getting to Adam and Eve’s fall, let’s come back to next time, but for now, whilst we have been introduced to spiritual beings, check out this animated video from ‘The Bible Project’ that I found really useful in getting my head round understanding the bible’s view of ‘spiritual beings’… I’m sure you will find it helpful too, don’t skip it, it’s only 5mins!

Clicking the image below will take you to the first video in their series on YouTube called ‘intro to spiritual beings.’

Click the blue image above to follow link to video

The Garden – Genesis 2

The image of the garden helps us to see the big picture, because it gives us ‘bookends’ to the bible story… literally!

On the very first page of the bible, God is happily living amongst mankind here on earth in the garden. We often call the garden ‘paradise’ but don’t get that confused with meaning heaven, because the word paradise comes from the Greek ‘parádeisos’ which simply means ‘garden.’ In fact, what is happening here in the garden is very profound and we need to acknowledge it… heaven (God’s space) and earth (our space) are actually overlapping and existing together in the same space freely. After ‘the fall’ (which we’ll read next time) God is desiring to live amongst the people, but because of the problem of ‘sin’ which we will discover later on, the only way He is able to do that is through a temple/tabernacle… more to come on that another time, back to the garden for now!

We are told that in the middle of the garden is the tree of life and a river that waters the garden… remember that for later.

If we turn to the very last page of the bible we see this: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭21:2-3‬ ‭NIV‬‬

And then this passage is also on the last page:

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life…”
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭22:1-2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

So do you see the big picture? By just taking the first and last page we can see that God is restoring His original plan, where He dwells amongst mankind in a restored garden, and Heaven and earth are united once again (although the image has developed a bit by this time because there are presumably a lot of people, not just Adam & Eve, so it’s a kind of garden-city).

The ‘bookends’ of the bible reveal that in the past, God freely lived amongst the first Humans, Adam & Eve. In the future, God will live freely amongst humans again when the new Jerusalem comes ‘down out of heaven from God’ as we have seen. In the present world that we are living in, Heaven & Earth are able to overlap in places called ‘temples’ or ‘tabernacles’. Through the Old Testament, God dwelt in man-made temples & tabernacles, but now in New Testament times, our very own bodies have become temples as believers and followers of Jesus; so we say that God ‘indwells’ us.

Our world is still far from perfect though, and God does not presently dwell on Earth in the same way that He did in the garden. This is because of the problem of ‘sin’ that has been corrupting the earth since ‘the fall’ and it’s this subject we’ll read about next time in Genesis 3.

For now though, we can see that God’s plan, as revealed in the unified story of the bible, is restoring what was lost in the garden; here’s that verse again from Revelation which is our hope for the future:

“God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” ‭‭Revelation‬ ‭21:2-3‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Genesis 1:26 – Made in His image

One thing that’s pretty cool about this verse is the use of the plural “let US make mankind in OUR image” which shows us that God is 3-in-1, the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s a really neat detail, but let’s look at what this verse is actually saying, because it’s important to the unified story of the bible.

God has been busy making everything in the world, and filling it with all the things needed to support life: dry ground, daylight, food, water etc. He makes all the living animals & plants, then He decides to make humans, and we’re told that there’s something very special about us which is different from all other life on earth.

We are ‘made in His image’… but what does that mean?

Well, it probably doesn’t mean we literally look like him in resemblance… long, curly hair, white beard etc, because when you think about that, we all look different don’t we? Let’s look closer at what the verse says… “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may RULE…” This is Kingdom language and it’s very important to the story of the whole bible which we’ll see as it unfolds.

God makes humans with a purpose, the intention is that he wants us to share in His authority and rule on the earth. When you stop and think about that, it’s remarkable! God could have ruled over all that he made by Himself (and things would have worked out better for sure without us messing things up), but He chose instead to give humans free will, and to entrust humans with a share in His authority, with the purpose of caring for, and protecting this world. That says something about how much God loves us and thinks highly of us.

And how do humans do at using this authority to care for and protect the world?… erm… not very well, as we’ll see as the story unfolds.

It is worth noting here, that the very next verse (v27) says “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

So if verse Gen 1:26 is saying that to be made in God’s image means to have Kingdom authority, to rule and reign, then Gen 1:27 is saying that includes both males and females.

Here’s something we can all ponder. What does it mean for me personally to have Kingdom authority? Understand that to rule and reign in God’s Kingdom doesn’t mean to have a high profile role or position. Jesus came to establish the Kingdom from the least to the greatest. He taught it and He modelled it. Each of us has been effectively ‘placed in the garden’ or the part of the garden that God has chosen for us. We all have different spheres of influence. We may have a calling to rule & reign in the home within a family, in the workplace, in church, in the community, and for most of us a combination of some or all of the above. The way that we actually go about that ruling and reigning is the important part of course! The Old Testament is fascinating because it reads a bit like a ‘How-Not-To-Do-It’ manual. Then in the New Testament, Jesus comes to establish His authority as King by doing it right, and also teaching us how to rule & reign properly according to the Kingdom of God.

We can all ask ourselves ‘who are the people, and what are the things that I can take care of and protect?’ It doesn’t matter if we start off with something small like putting food or shelter out for wildlife in your back garden, donating food or items to a local charity, or cleaning up a part of your city, or caring for friends or loved ones or strangers. We can ask ourselves, how can I rule & reign in life in a way that is pleasing and honouring to God, so that I can make the world around me a better place for others, even if that is in only a small way to begin with. And we will discover more, as we journey through the bible, about the Kingdom of God, and it’s King, Jesus. As we learn about the King and His Kingdom, and as we participate, we begin to fulfil our God-given purpose as established here in Genesis 1:26.

Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 – a poem/song?

Click image above to read passage

When you read Genesis 1 to 2:3, it sounds like poetry… and it probably is!

I say probably, because many people do not like to call it poetry through fear that it will make it sound untrue or made up. In my view nothing could be further from the truth. The medium of poetry/song is a fantastic creative way to begin the bible. There are so many examples of song/poetry that speak of real events including most of the Psalms and the amazing ‘song of the sea’ in Exodus. In fact, it might surprise you to note that approximately a third of the bible is written as poetry! But of course that doesn’t mean that a third of the bible is not truth!

When reading the bible it’s really important to understand the different literary styles that are used. If you read this section as though it were an entry in a scientific journal, you could be frustrated and distracted looking for details that are just not offered. I’m sure the author is not entering into debates such as Big Bang theory, old earth theory, how to explain Dinosaurs etc. I think that they are just trying to creatively express how God brought the world, as they see it, and as they understand it, into being.

Watch this awesome short video from ‘The Bible Project’ on the art of biblical poetry: https://youtu.be/q9yp1ZXbsEg

There is so much more that can be said about the specific contents of this section, but for now, why not make a conscious effort to put the science debates aside for the time-being, and to read again and listen to the ancient song of creation that is Gen 1:1-2:3.

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

I love reading and studying the bible, but, as with many of these things, it’s much more fun to do together.

I’ve met so many people that really struggle with reading the bible for a variety of reasons, or would like to start, but don’t know where to begin. Many, when being truly honest, say they find the bible… “hard work!”

So hopefully this blog will help. I’m hoping that by reading and interacting, we will all enjoy it more, and have a better relationship with the bible (and also encourage each other along the way too).

So I’ll post the passage that I’ve been reading, and add some thoughts and reflections. Why not add your own comments too? That would be very encouraging.

I’ll start in Genesis 1 and maybe some day make it right through to Revelation… who knows?!