A Savior From Before Eden
I introduced this SERIES about our savior, Christ Jesus, who had confirmed to the religious authorities:
“Before Abraham was, I AM!”
Disaster From Disobedience, A Savior From Before Eden points back toward Jesus, who was here before the first adam.
We examined Adam’s relationship with God both before and after original sin. Disobedience, then consequence of sin follows.
Brief glances at scripture confirm man’s disobedience to the Lord God. Our Scriptural series includes: Exodus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Gospels and more.
Study & Application of Scripture
We have spent nearly a month [June 2018] just scratching the surface of man’s disobedience to God. Although I have touched on topics preceding the narrative of Genesis, we have much more to consider.
Our most recent look at Noah brings us only to Genesis. Now we must move quickly through the generations moving upon a cleansed earth.
Before Israel, Before Abraham and After Noah
Moses’ five books do not and cannot explain everything.
Yet in addition to creation, good and evil, sin, law and some subsequent history, parts of the Pentateuch provide God-given foundation to scripture’s purposeful truth. So I would point you to a handful of concepts not to be missed in these scriptures.
Noah demonstrates one principle on dry land related to knowing good and evil, after the Lord’s cleansing and re-creation of mankind. Although related to worship by Abel and Cain, this principle of good remains more important than any historical detail of the flood.
- The rainbow becomes symbol of the Lord’s agreement.
- Sacrifice by Noah to the Lord is man’s continuing evidence of faithfulness, gratitude and obedience.
- Worship of the Lord always requires sacrifice.
- And right relationship with the Lord becomes a most-personal committed relationship.
The principle of this solemn agreement is known as covenant.
Covenant, consequential promise to inviolable truth.
A covenant always connects a sacrifice to an action with a sealed approval.
(We cannot take time here to study it in detail.)
Disobedience and Disbelief
There is no good without God and no disobedience without disbelief.
Therefore, inviolable truth always relates both to the Lord and our relationship to others of mankind.
Truth has no foundation without God
AND human life no purpose without relationship to both our loving Creator and also our fellow man.
Israel, Abraham, Joseph and other Jews
One concept important to our understanding of the Lord and His promise involves: the who, what, where and why of God’s chosen people.
Israel is a promised land, but the LORD also confirms, ‘you are a chosen people.’
Again, although these concepts are too important to slight, our SERIES focus is on broken promises by God’s chosen people, followed by inclusion of others in the Lord’s redemptive plan.
(You can learn much more about God's redemptive plan by study of adoption; an inclusive personal demonstration of God's love we will not explore here.)
Let’s move on from Noah.
Moses explains nations and outlines their genealogies. Israel had been redeemed by the Lord from Egypt, where Joseph became powerful in the land. Understand that Joseph’s father Jacob holds promise of the Lord’s inheritance for his twelve sons.
Jacob’s new name given to him by the LORD you will recognize — Israel.
Genesis 28:
Isaac summoned Jacob, blessed him, and commanded him: “Don’t take a wife from the Canaanite women…
May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you so that you become an assembly of peoples.
May God give you and your offspring the blessing of Abraham so that you may possess the land where you live as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.”
Doesn’t this blessing sound somewhat familiar, like the Lord’s command to Adam and also to Noah?
But Jacob is a liar and a deceiver.
For he had purchased the blessing of the firstborn, Esau, who had no regard for the LORD. Now Jacob fears he may inherit the fate of Abel, murdered at the hands of his brother.
Although the Lord will drive his descendants into Egypt from the promised land, Jacob will receive an inheritance.
The Egypt from which Moses and the Hebrew chosen fled had once been administered(under the authority of Pharaoh) by Joseph, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, the chosen son of Abraham.
A seemingly abandoned covenant of the LORD with Jacob had not been broken, perhaps as the Hebrews saved from Pharoah had imagined, and was yet to be fulfilled.
As the covenant of the LORD with Noah shall never be broken, so too, Moses recalls for the Hebrews:
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran.
11 He reached a certain place and spent the night there because the sun had set. He took one of the stones from the place, put it there at his head, and lay down in that place…
“I am Yahweh, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.
I will give you and your offspring the land that you are now sleeping on.
14 Your offspring will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out toward the west, the east, the north, and the south.
All the peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
Look, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.
I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
God’s Promise to Israel
There it is:
God’s promise, as Jacob flees this ‘promised land,‘ —an oft-repeated scenario in Israel’s history.
Does it seem a familiar story, a middle-east refugee fleeing danger in one land and living as an alien in another?
Israel’s Serial Soap Opera
So Jacob’s story gains in complexity (once again, not examined here) and the drama continues. He has four wives (not recommended) and twelve sons. (Daughters receive no inheritance and seldom receive mentions in these genealogies).
Many years pass and a married Jacob with children hears of and fears Esau’s approach.
Once again Jacob hears from the Lord. In fact, he wrestles with the Lord (a most personal encounter).
Genesis 32:
Here is first mention of "Israel," because the LORD makes Israel Jacob's new name.
27 “What is your name?” the man asked.
“Jacob,” he replied.
32:28 וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא יַעֲקֹב יֵאָמֵר עֹוד שִׁמְךָ כִּי אִם־יִשְׂרָאֵל כִּֽי־שָׂרִיתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁים וַתּוּכָֽל׃
28 “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” He said.
“It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.”
To be continued…
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