Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: Genesis

What do I do with this?

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

– 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV

Daily we must remind ourselves that God IS. Daily we must recall that Jesus not only died on the cross for our sins (and oh so many of them), but that Christ rose from death in the body and spirit and Christ Jesus IS. Daily we must seek relationship between our living spirit breathed into us by God with the Holy Spirit sent to us as our counselor by Jesus. The Holy Spirit of the Living God near to our soul, IS.

All of this seems well and good as we carry our Bibles into a worship service or open the Bible in the privacy of our homes. Yet once we return from worship or Bible study we encounter the woes and trials of everyday life, the challenges of everyday relationships.

Don’t we ever-so-briefly ask of our Bible verses and stories: “What do I do with this?”

“All Scripture is God-breathed” or “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” or “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

We know it. God said it. But what do we do with it?

Think of our everyday life as a brief journey to a place of which we have only dreamed.

How do I get there? (I don’t even truly know where I am now?)

I know God wants me in a different place today than where I failed so miserably in sin yesterday. I am lost and have no GPS. In fact, once I leave church or the security of home (though I know this place is a brief shelter for this breathing, decaying flesh of mine), I not only have not sense of God’s direction, I can not even find weak signal of God’s voice speaking direction into my daily life.

Genesis 12:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. ³I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

⁴So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

Just suppose you have retired comfortably in your hometown or near to your family and making an amazing promise, GOD asks you to just pick up and move. Will you go?

I have little understanding of Abram and his lifestyle millennia ago. Yet what same application do I see to my own life when it seems everything must change from how I have always seen my life?

Everything must go forward in some new direction. How do I get there? Who will help me along the way? What will I find in this new place? I am blind to any knowledge of the challenges ahead, the place where I will go and what I will do when I get there. (And what does Abram have to do with me in this fast-paced life even two millennia after the Cross of Christ?)

Again scripture provides an answer and encourages us to apply scripture to our every day life.

Galatians 3:4-6 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?

7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

Sure, I can teach someone scripture or sit under some teaching to the church which I like; but can I apply to the lesson of my life the Voice of the Lord’s Spoken Word?

If God asks me to leave everything behind for the unseen promise of hope, will I have the faith of Abraham to hear and obey the voice of the LORD?

How many times has the LORD asked you to do something after you were in the comfortable place?

Or again, how many times have your own misguided plans brought you to your knees before the LORD asking, ‘Where did I go wrong? What do I do now… Lord? Where do I go with this? Show me the way… please… Lord?’

And ALL is silent… No answer. And again we cry out to the LORD.

And the Lord is faithful in His answer. Yet we do not like it. It is not the ‘comfort’ we expected. In fact, it makes us even more uncomfortable and will require even more faith than we believe possible – faith to ‘believe God’ and have it counted as righteousness.

What next? (Isn’t that always the question from the comfortable place or the house of desperation?) What next, Lord?

To be continued…

May 4, 2015
Reflections: Israel – a people
Genesis 32: “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”

²⁸Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

When you hear ‘Israel,’ think ‘Jacob.’

When you read Jacob after Genesis 32, remember GOD has renamed him Israel. When you read of the sons of Jacob, recall appropriately that we refer to the generations of the man Israel, born to one of his wives. (We won’t get into all that here.)

Jacob’s Children

[partial list]
- Genesis 29:32And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben
Genesis 29:35 And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing.
- Genesis 30:5 And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son.
- Genesis 30:10 Then Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son.
- Genesis 30:17 And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son.
- Genesis 30:21Afterward she [Leah] bore a daughter and called her name Dinah.
- ²²Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. ²³She conceived and bore a son and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” ²⁴And she called his name Joseph, saying, “May the Lord add to me another son!”
God made a covenant with Abram and renamed him Abraham. God saved Isaac, son of Abraham from the human sacrifice of blood on the altar of faith. God provided the substitute offering to be slain on the mountain of God. The LORD chose Abraham from among all tribes. The LORD chose Isaac, son of Sarah, over Ishmael, son of Hagar. And the LORD chose Jacob over his twin brother Esau, son of Isaac and Rebekah. The LORD renamed Jacob, Israel.

The LORD chose Joseph, son of Israel and Rachel, to save God’s chosen people along with saving the people of Egypt (of Hagar) and many other peoples. The LORD chose Joseph over Reuben or even Judah, oldest sons of Israel; sons of Israel’s first bride, yet sons of Leah, bride given to Jacob by deceit of Laban, father of Leah and Rachel. Along with their servants, it was the LORD’s will to make Israel father of many nations in a place contested until the end of days.

Whether Judah, Benjamin or sons of Joseph, remember Israel is a people more than a place: chosen sons and daughters of the LORD.

We have already explored the rebellion of the Hebrew people even as Moses led them by the Hand of the Almighty from the slavery of Egypt. We have already witnessed their covenant to obey God’s Law: the Ten Commandments.

We have heard a later warning of Elijah to divided nations of Israel and Judah of the consequence of disobedience to the LORD their God.

What happened to God’s chosen Kings? What happened to God’s chosen Nation? Why did Israel become divided? Why did their Kings suffer defeat?

Why did they not follow the Law and obey God? (For that matter: are we, sons and daughters of adoption, saints of Christ’s church, so much better in these last days?)

What happens when the LORD chooses His family and we become prodigal sons?

To be continued…
March 24, 2015
Reflections: Knowledge vs. Life

Man – adam, and woman made from man to be one with man and with God – Eve: now have knowledge of good and evil.

NO more Paradise on earth – NO more Eden; no more garden of pleasure hedged in by the boundaries of righteousness. We must judge good and evil for ourselves (rather than simply obey God’s command).

James 1:23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

Man is no longer the perfect, sinless mirror image of the Living God. Sin has clouded our vision and our judgement.

Yet the Lord is still near to those who will seek Him. Remember, the Lord God is a loving Father of all mankind; Creator of all that is good, corrector of all that is evil in the rebellious child.

+

Genesis 4: ⁶The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? ⁷If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”

+

The relationship has changed because of evil. Man is no longer naked in paradise, but revealed in our sinfulness to our Father of righteousness. And the loving Father advises those who would hear. Yes, obedience to God remains our option of doing what is good in the eyes of the Lord.

Yet we fail. As in Adam, so also in Cain and in the deceitful hearts, sinful flesh and rebellious spirit of every Adam… the misled heart of every Eve.

Our willingly broken relationship with God leads us further and further from Eden.

Genesis 6: ³Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” …

⁵The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ⁶And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. …

Do your intentions and choices of your heart ever grieve the heart of your heavenly Father?

Genesis 6: ¹²And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. ¹³And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

What is God’s judgement of the wickedness of these last days?

Will God much longer endure sinful men without love and sinful women with callous hearts toward the love and righteousness of Christ Jesus?

God continued in faithfulness to those faithful in love and worship of the Father of all that is good. The LORD gave man a new hedge of protection in the Law – the Law of Moses, as it is called – The Ten Commandments.

Deuteronomy 4: “And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live…”

⁶Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ …

¹¹And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. ¹²Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice. ¹³And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone…

+

The LORD no longer walks beside Moses or the leaders of God’s people. The LORD appears to the Hebrew people as an awesome and fearful sight! The LORD speaks from the darkness of what they cannot see and commands obedience.

The people confirm their faith; they make their solemn promise – a covenant not unlike the covenant of marriage – with the Lord their God.

Yet do they obey?

Is it so hard for us to NOT commit adultery?

Is it so difficult for us to follow even TEN clear Commandments of the LORD God?

To be continued…

March 23, 2015