Category: Pentateuch Genesis-Deuteronomy

IN THE BEGINNING… Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy – Pentateuch [5 books] It’s the LAW of GOD!
Forgive us our trespasses. Jesus teaches many lessons from these books of the Bible and we have forgotten MANY of the issues and applications to our 21st century life. How can you SHARE from the beginning of the Bible with your SOCIAL ‘Friends’ and talk of Jesus as Lord? Please TITLE your post by the topic, not the verse. Include links to scriptures and helpful references. — Please post or tell us in a COMMENT how you talk of Jesus through this topic and these Old Testament scriptures.

Reflections: Eden

Genesis 2 English Standard Version (ESV)

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

18 Then the Lord God said,

“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

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Examine the Biblical text from ‘in the beginning;’ for before the beginning, GOD IS.

The LORD יְהֹוָהYĕhovah GOD אֱלֹהִים‘elohiym

made adam אָדָם ‘adam

in his Image צֶלֶם tselem.

First: LORD GOD, Yehovah elohiym; not Allah, not any other NAME. The LAW, or first five books of the Bible are a narrative written by Moses for the Hebrew people – God’s Chosen people. It is not an eyewitness account – Moses was not a reporter in the garden of Eden – yet Moses spoke directly with Yehovah elohiym. GOD told Moses!

Second: The LORD God put Adam in Eden to work it and keep it.

Third: The LORD God had not only created Man, God created everything in the heavens and the earth and made man in His Image in this place to glorify Him.

God met with, spoke to and had a personal relationship with man in this special unspoiled garden. It was a place where the LORD God walked and talked with His beloved man of His creation, Adam.

Think about it: the ALL-POWERFUL CREATOR of ALL, walking in a place with a creature of His creation – GOD carrying on a conversation with adam, enjoying the good of His creation with His personal friend, Adam.

Would one made in the Image of a good God, a loving friend, not want to do all the Lord commands?

Adam is an innocent sinless child of God! The first man and the first woman have no father and mother. They were both created by the LORD God!

Does it matter if the LORD created them in His Image?

Yes.

Does it matter if the materials were dust or rib?

Does it matter where an archaeologist might dig up this garden paradise?

Could it possibly matter to a generation gorged on the tree of speculative knowledge when all of this took place?

What, then, is important from the Biblical account of Genesis?

The LORD raised Adam and raised Eve in the garden as a Father raises his innocent children.

God provided. God gave them their purpose. God gave them love.

And as a good father will do, God gave them a rule for their own continued good (as ones made in the Image of the God of Perfect Good).

The LORD God did this for the perfect pleasure of the man, of the woman and of the LORD!

(Note: If you haven’t followed the links to root definitions, you ought to – especially this last one.)

To be continued…

March 18, 2015
But if…

“But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. – Deuteronomy 30:17-18a NLT

God’s love for us is unconditional; yet God’s blessing is conditional – dependent on our obedience to His command.

God speaks: in Person, through Christ, through scripture, through the Spirit — God shows us his will. We are free to choose. What will it be?

God makes a covenant, God confirms a promise, God confers a blessing and what does it imply?

Will the LORD not surely do what He has said?

Yet we have a part to do. We have an action in the agreement. We have a choice.

We sometimes pray for blessing, while we often live for curse. For we act knowingly against the will of God and the promise of our own mouth. We stand before heaven and earth making our vow, giving our word and pledging our allegiance before the Living and loving God and human witnesses. Then we sin and would hide from heaven and earth and witnesses the sins of our disobedience.

We may even say (on Sunday occasion): Jesus is Lord.

Yet is Jesus YOUR Lord?

When will we repent and return to the Lord our God? It would seem by some of our witness on many occasions that we are no different than our Chosen forefathers.

Deuteronomy 30

English Standard Version (ESV)

Repentance and Forgiveness

30 “And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, 2 and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you…

11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off…

14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

If you obey… by loving the Lord your God…, then… the Lord your God will bless you…

17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.

You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.

19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

God charges Moses, as the Lord has charged His leaders – His Kings and His Priests, His Prophets and His angels:

This is the will and word of the LORD.

Will you not do it? For IF you do, I will bless you.

BUT IF you refuse to obey, I must curse and not bless the one I would love.

Moses once more sets before us the blessing and curse:

Follow the LORD or perish without blessing.

We know how soon God’s own chosen ones did turn against the Lord even after many reminders of blessing and cautions of consequence.

Years later…

1 Samuel 1:3 Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord…

1 Samuel 2:12 Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord.

27 And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him,

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh?

The Lord speaks here of Levi as Eli’s ancestral father of the house of the priests of the Lord.

28 Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel…

30 Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed…

31 Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house… 34 And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day… ”

Then Samuel faithfully spoke the word of the Lord to Israel as had Moses generations before.

Hear his witness as Priest anointed in place of his Eli’s two evil sons. Samuel would anoint Israel’s Kings; Saul here and David later.

1 Samuel 12

6 And Samuel said to the people, “The Lord is witness, who appointed Moses and Aaron and brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt.

7 Now therefore stand still that I may plead with you before the Lord concerning all the righteous deeds of the Lord that he performed for you and for your fathers. 8 When Jacob went into Egypt, and the Egyptians oppressed them, then your fathers cried out to the Lord and the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and made them dwell in this place.

9 But they forgot the Lord their God… 11 And the Lord sent Jerubbaal and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and you lived in safety. 12 And when you saw that Nahash the king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ when the Lord your God was your king.

13 And now behold the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; behold, the Lord has set a king over you. 14 If you will fear the Lord and serve him and obey his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the Lord, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well.

15 But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king.

Now both Priest and King are representatives of God’s chosen people before the LORD.

20 And Samuel said to the people, “Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil. Yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. 21 And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty. 22 For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.

Two generations (& 3 Kings) later

1 Kings 9

The Lord Appears to Solomon

6 But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them,

7 then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. 8 And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ 9 Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster on them.’”

To be continued

July 19, 2014
Sanctuary

Some refer to the ‘place’ where the church shares in corporate worship as family of Christ Jesus as “the sanctuary.” (Of course, the “church” is the worshipers.)

Exodus 25:8 KJV And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.

The place may be worthy of the grandeur of the Living God or the place may be so humble as a servant’s living room; never-the less, where two or more are gathered in Jesus’ Name, we gather together in His sanctuary.

Let the worshipers of Jesus our Lord come to the sanctuary of His Holy Presence.

Sanctuary is a peaceful word for souls distracted by sin, hearts gathering safely into the worship of our Savior, Christ Jesus.

Sometimes (like Jesus: in the wilderness… in a place away from the crowds… in a garden or olive grove… in Gethsemane…) we must get away from ALL of the DISTRACTION and noise of the world.

Let the faithful enter into the sanctuary of our Father’s rest.

It may be an empty sanctuary; perhaps a prayer closet; maybe a place in the woods where few feet tread. Maybe you just drive to a place where the lights and noise of the city fade from your rear view mirror into unending scene of mountain or seashore, stream or meadow.

Peace. Sanctuary. A place and a time with God alone: we must find it. We much make a place for it. We must take time for it.

Some crave the sanctuary and relationship of this time with God.

It is more than just meditation. It is more than just talking to yourself. It is more than memories and more than planning ahead. It is much more than just asking what… or asking ‘WHY?’

Sanctuary is our place of PRAYER.

Sanctuary is that HOLY PLACE where God’s Presence hears and answers our prayers of faith.

I was once one of many Christian tourists surprised to discover that many first century Christians in Rome worshiped in the sanctuary of the catacombs, burial places of the dead.

There they could not only meet safely out of sight of their persecutors, but there too (when corporate worship was no longer safe in their homes, as is the case in MANY places in 21st century China, most Arab countries and much of the continents of Africa and Asia), no doubt Christians found in this place to where our dust does return: a sanctuary.

After having spent some hours of several days for many years praying to God in the ‘memorial gardens’ we call the ‘cemetery,’ I find sanctuary and peace in knowing that this is NOT the place where our soul will reside, but a time of rest for our wearied flesh.

Will the dust of your wearied soul bow down to worship the Lord? Will your aching bones and soiled flesh be cleansed in His overflowing love?

Will you invite His peace to dwell in your heart?

Would you have sanctuary in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior?

I pray for this: for you and for others of His dear loved ones.

Turn from our distractions of the flesh and embrace the peace of Christ Jesus.

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

John 11:25-26

April 8, 2014