Reading: Reading Assignment: Devotional
January 1
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In the Beginning, God
Genesis 1:1–2:3
Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
Psalm 102:25 (ESV)
Religions of the ancient world typically thought that their gods were just part of the world in which they lived, a very important and powerful part to be sure, but not with an existence before or outside of the world. The Bible, however, makes the radical claim that the world and all that is in it is the creation of one—Almighty God—who has an existence distinct from the universe he created. But we can know something about God, for the works of his hands reflect his interests and character.
Beyond that, we have God’s own revelation of beginnings in the book of Genesis. Without the Creator everything is formless, empty, and dark. But with the progressive work of God a world appears; it is populated with beings who live and interact with each other and their Creator in orderly, dynamic, and purposeful ways.
From the very beginning, therefore, we see that God is not simply a supernatural Incredible Hulk or Force, blindly wielding power, but one who demonstrates consummate artistry, ultimate power, and tender care. This knowledge is a starting point to help us understand our own personality and purpose. It also serves as a firm foundation for lives prone to fear and anxiety. This foundation is strengthened immeasurably by the unfolding story of God’s continuing involvement with his creation, and especially with humankind.
Praise God that, despite the rebellions that threaten to undo his good creation, the one who made us still wants us to come to know him. As the apostle Paul told the people of ancient Athens, God wants us to “reach out for him and find him” and to know that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27–28).
January 2
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The Creation Declares the Glory of God
Psalm 19:1–6
Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory
and honor and power, for you created all things,
and by your will they existed and were created.
Revelation 4:11 (ESV)
The opening verses of Psalm 19 not only testify in poetry to the truth that God created the universe, but also say that he deserves all honor and praise for it. We cannot help but notice that the universe is incredibly intricate and orderly. But every day new things are being discovered that stretch the limits of what we previously thought. Lord Kelvin, brilliant mathematician and physicist of a former time, said in an address at the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” That seems foolish now, but is it any more foolish than the claim with which the late astronomer Carl Sagan opened his book “Cosmos”: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be”?
To the contrary, there is strong evidence of order and design in the cosmos, evidence to all but the most closed minds that what we see cannot be simply the result of chance. Some people think that everything can be explained scientifically by evolution, and therefore, that this impression of purposeful order is a mistake. But the notion of the sufficiency of science is itself an expression of faith. Nor can any amount of scientific investigation nullify the sense of order and design in the cosmos. And where order is present, there is purpose.
Native intelligence can’t tell us much about this purpose. But it is sufficient to leave us unexcused from seeing in the wonder of creation, a Creator who is above and distinct from it and who deserves our worship (see Rom. 1:20). In addition to that, we have the self-revelation of God in Scripture, which confirms that the whole creation declares the glory of God.
January 3
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Image Bearers of the Creator
Genesis 1:26–30
When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
Male and female he created them, and he blessed them.
Genesis 5:1b–2a (ESV)
A popular notion today is that humans are nothing special in the world of living beings, but that we are merely one expression of the animal world and do not deserve special consideration, responsibilities, or privileges. However, God’s Word has a different message; God gives special blessings and responsibilities to only one of his creatures, to his male and female image bearers.
While all that is involved in this may not be entirely clear, we can see ways in which humankind uniquely reflects God’s image:
· We are creative beings, called and equipped to use our abilities to serve and honor God by fulfilling our God-given mandate in his world. Creativity misused in the pursuit of other ends becomes a curse both for ourselves and for God’s world.
· We are moral beings with a clear sense of right and wrong. Therefore we can be held accountable for choosing the wrong.
· We are able to be purposeful in our thinking, reflecting, communicating, organizing, governing, and forming relationships in ways that are exponentially greater than any of God’s non-human creatures are able to do.
· We know, deep in our hearts, that death was not meant to be. It is natural in the sense that it is pervasive; every living thing eventually dies: plants, animals, and humans. Yet, only humans reflect on the strangeness of this. Even though we have never experienced things any other way, and in truth can’t even imagine how things could be different, we see death as foreign and intrusive. Ecclesiastes 3:11 sheds some light on the reason for this: “[God] has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Together, these aspects of the image of God in us compel us to seek to live in ways that are both temporally and eternally meaningful.
January 4
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Giving God the Worship He Deserves
Psalm 8
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
Psalm 95:6 (ESV)
This Psalm attests to what Genesis says about humans being created in God’s image by identifying humankind as the crown of God’s creation. With the exception of angels, we, of all creatures in the universe, are the highest representatives of conscious life. One consequence of this is that God has given us authority to rule over the rest of creation. This, of course, is only by the permission and according to the will of the one who gave us this responsibility; our task is to manage and develop God’s creation.
To do that properly, we need to know something of our master’s desires. Here is where we see a most important aspect of what it means to be an image bearer of God—the need to worship. Psalm 8 was written for worship but, particularly in the way it begins and ends, we see the correct focus of human worship: “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
From the beginning, human beings have been incurably religious, manifesting in every time and place the desire to worship someone greater than themselves. Humans alone have the desire and ability to do this. We serve our Creator and offer him thoughtful and wholehearted praise because of who he is and what he has done, continues to do, and promises for the future.
Jesus said that such worship was essential to pleasing God; hence his emphasis on the Great Commandment (Mark 12:30–31): “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And what follows from this is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” These two parts of the commandment are inseparable; those who truly love God must also love and support others who are in his service.
January 5
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Male and Female
Genesis 1:27; 2:18–24
But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast
to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
Mark 10:6-8a (ESV)
The way Genesis 2 tells the story, the only thing that bothered Adam in Paradise was his loneliness. When he talked, there was no one who could understand or communicate with him. He could train a dog to help manage the sheep, but there was no one who had his own intelligence and who could help him with his oversight and development tasks in God’s good world.
That’s when God created Eve as Adam’s partner, someone suit-able to work with him to manage God’s world. Man and woman were essentially equal before God, with shared authority. They both realized their accountability to God and their call to work together under him.
In Eve, Adam found what he had not been able to find anywhere else, a partner in work and play. We see this by Adam’s response to God’s gift. He said, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” In other words: “She is as dear and important to me as is my own life.” And Scripture implies that Eve had similar sentiments. You might call these the first wedding vows.
It was a good partnership in the beginning, characterized by communication, cooperation, and commitment. Jesus pointed the Pharisees back to this original harmony as God’s norm (Matthew 19:8–9). Divorce, he told them, was an accommodation to hard hearts. He continued, “It was not this way from the beginning.”
God made us male and female, responsible to and for each other, meant to be in loving partnership not only with each other, but above all to our Creator who gave us life and put us together for service to him.
January 6
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Marriage Essentials—Communication
Genesis 2:18–25
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.
Colossians 3:12 (ESV)
Adam and Eve recognized that they were uniquely suited to be together. Each could understand and be understood by the other, able to communicate in a way that they could do with none of the other creatures that God had given them to care for. They probably had some puzzling moments with each other; after all, men and women are neither physically nor emotionally identical. But any mystery was a delight rather than a problem.
Their communication was not simply the ability to pass information back and forth; it was also their ability and willingness to do that with love and respect. In the beginning there was nothing to hinder this communication, no guilt or shame, and no selfishness, insecurity, or distrust. Still today, at the best of times, marriage partners experience something of that loving and respectful communication.
It wasn’t long, however, until problems showed up—problems that began in Adam and Eve’s lack of communication with their Creator. The unexpressed doubts about his perfect goodness led to disobedience and, then, to feelings of distrust and anger for each other.
Ever since then, how quickly good communication in marriage is hindered by misunderstandings, distrust, anger, and competition. In such a context, spouses stop listening to each other. And what communication occurs is characterized by frustration and anger rather than love. Such talk actually makes things worse instead of better. If you are married or in a relationship, make it your goal to communicate in the ways for which you were created. And don’t fail to keep in touch with your Creator, without whom all communication leads to misery.
January 7
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Marriage Essentials—Cooperation
Genesis 2:18–25
Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Matthew 20:26b–28 (ESV)
Besides good communication, another marriage essential is that the exercise of authority needs to be cooperative rather than competitive. Eve was created to be Adam’s partner, someone suitable to work with him to manage God’s world. Their equality didn’t mean they looked the same or that they had exactly the same duties in the relationship. Perhaps one was better at something than the other. They weren’t identical but they were equal, joined together in service to God.
That doesn’t sound quite like the war between the sexes, does it? In our experience, women and men, wives and husbands often fight for power. Married people can make it miserable for each other by their attempts to assert authority over each other. Such power plays started after Adam and Eve messed up their relationship with God by their disobedience. Then they started blaming each other. Adam said, “Her fault.” And Eve said, “The serpent’s fault.”
God described to Eve the way things would be from then on: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Vying for power, that’s the result of sin. It’s not the kind of partnership God has in mind for men and women. He still urges another way: the practice of mutual love and cooperation rather than competition and control.
There is wide agreement about the difficulty of obeying the Scriptural admonition to “love your neighbor as yourself.” But it may be that the most difficult neighbor to love consistently is a spouse, if only because the more time we spend with people, the more we see their faults. But marriage can school us in the art and practice of love.
January 8
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Marriage Essentials—Commitment
Genesis 2:18–25
To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord):
the wife should not separate from her husband…
and the husband should not divorce his wife.
1 Corinthians 7:10–11 (ESV)
God gave Eve and Adam to each other to be permanent companions and partners in managing his world. Jesus confirmed the permanence of marriage: “What God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt. 19:6).
Jesus did allow for the possibility of marriage breakup because of the disorder and sin in our world, but he clearly wanted people to make their marriages work.
If that is to happen today, those who marry must commit themselves to follow through on what they promise in the ceremony. Commitment is not just an ability to live with pain and a dogged determination to stay together. It is rather a determination to do what it takes to make marriage work as God intends it to work. It is a determination to be faithful, to be kind and loving under stress, not to take advantage of the other’s weaknesses, and in cases of failure of any of these, to be forgiving.
A commitment to marriage is a commitment to keep communicating and cooperating in loving and respectful ways. A certain amount of competition or control games are inevitable in any marriage between two sinful people. But commitment means that they watch for these and reject them when they appear. Marriage partners neither seek to control each other nor submit to unhealthy control, remembering that they are to encourage each other in answering God’s call to wholehearted service.
Marriage at its very best is a little taste of how good it will be to be with God in heaven. The communication, cooperation and commitment it requires help us see what God has planned for everyone who loves him and serves as his agent in his world.
January 9
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Meaningful Work
Genesis 1:26–31; 2:15
Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.
Luke 12:48b (ESV)
From the start, the Bible makes clear that humankind has a very special part to play in God’s creation. God gave the earth to Adam and Eve to care for. He told them to populate, subdue, and rule over it. The cultural mandate, as this command is called, gives men and women permission and responsibility to use and develop the creation.
According to some people, that’s where God went wrong, for too many humans through the years have used this mandate as a license to ravage and exploit rather than responsibly develop. However, that irresponsible development is not biblical servanthood or stewardship. After all, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1). Jesus illustrated proper stewardship in several stories about faithful and unfaithful servants. And the apostle Paul also emphasized human accountability for how we use the resources that God has trusted us with. He asks, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7). And he declares, “Each of us will give an account of ourselves to God” (Rom. 14:12).
So then, God’s instructions to Adam and Eve made clear that they were to be his agents in caring for his whole creation and everything in it. Ever since, all of humankind is likewise called to represent God’s good and sovereign control over his world so that all his creatures might benefit and that the harmony in creation might serve to praise and honor the Creator. All of our time, money, and opportunities are to be used in such a way that no one in all creation can say that they have seen no evidence of God. And so that, in the end, we will be commended by God as good and faithful servants and invited to be at home with God forever.
January 10
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The Kind of Religion God Wants
Genesis 1:26–31; 2:15
God is spirit, and those who worship him
must worship in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24 (ESV)
In the beginning God called humankind to an intimate relationship with himself and a life that honored his desire for his whole creation to continue to experience the goodness that it originally enjoyed. This is true religion.
There are several varieties of religion that are unacceptable to God:
· Religion that has little to do with everyday life. Some who are Christians in name only give Christ just occasional attention or neglect their accountability for what they do in their personal and public relationships and responsibilities. In Jesus’s day, Herod was by all accounts a believer in name only.
· Religion that attends merely to a personal relationship with God and moral interactions with people while neglecting what Scripture calls the weightier matters of the law. Many Pharisees of Jesus’s day were very moral but had too small a god and too small a concept of what it meant to care for God’s world.
· Religion that focuses on building a tolerant and just society but neglects the one who is at the center of the Scriptures, the one who is the only way, truth, and life and apart from whom there is no salvation. The Sadducees and Zealots of Jesus’s day labored for political and social reform but forgot the prerequisite for their participation in God’s kingdom: a personal encounter with God and total devotion to him.
Jesus himself is the most excellent example of one who was not only personally above reproach but who, through study of God’s word and fellowship with his Spirit, had a good sense of what the Creator had in mind from the beginning—what he wanted from his whole creation and especially the people in it.
January 11
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The Trees of Paradise
Genesis 2:8–17
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good.
Isaiah 55:2 (ESV)
There were two special trees in Paradise, the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve were prohibited from eating the fruit of only the second. Why? Because the tree of life in the garden represented communion with God, who was shown by his activity in creation to be the one and only source of life. By contrast, the other tree represented rebellion against God and an attempt to establish independence from him.
As long as they ate from the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve showed that they agreed with the conditions under which they lived, namely, that their life could continue only as they continued to depend on the one who created them. To eat from this tree showed gratitude to God and ongoing obedience to him.
If, on the other hand, Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would thereby deny their complete and utter dependence on God, saying in effect, “We have just as much right as God does to decide how things will work in the creation.” To eat from this tree would show ingratitude to God and rebellion against him.
This was not a period of probation for Adam and Eve, a brief test, which once passed, allowed them to eat of whatever tree they chose. The two trees were mutually exclusive. No one could eat from both; to eat from one was to give up the fruit of the other. These were the conditions for Adam and Eve in Paradise, but they also remain the conditions for every person who ever lived or will live. The trees of the Garden thus reinforce the message of the whole creation story: “There is no life apart from the Giver of life.”
January 12
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Satan’s Alternate Message—Part 1
Genesis 3:1–5
There is no truth in [the devil]. When he lies, he speaks
out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
John 8:44b (ESV)
Satan is merely called crafty when he is introduced into the story of Paradise. However, his alternate message about the boundaries God imposed upon Adam and Eve was that they were restrictive and life denying rather than permissive and life enhancing. This was an outright lie by the one whom the apostle John would later call “the father of lies.” Notice in verses 4 and 5 the lies by which Satan tempted Adam and Eve to distrust their Creator.
- “You will not certainly die.”
- “Your eyes will be opened.”
- “You will be like God.”
- “[You will know] good and evil.”
The first lie directly contradicted the ultimate result that God had said would follow disobedience. Satan promised immortality. Adam and Eve apparently believed it. Since then, of course, we have learned about the death that awaits all living creatures. Nevertheless, Satan’s promise of immortality, slightly revised as the doctrine of reincarnation, still seduces many people in our world. This hope of reincarnation, however, is a poor substitute for personal immortality and has no foundation in Scripture.
Satan’s second lie was a promise of knowledge that would be better than the knowledge Adam and Eve had already been given by God. This was a temptation for them to believe that God was holding out on them and that they were missing out on something. It was a lie that survives today in the search for esoteric wisdom and religious experience through various occult practices. Many such practices are scams worked on gullible people. But others actually solicit the help of demons to transgress the boundaries God has laid down in his Word—a so-called opening of eyes that leads inevitably to death.
January 13
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Satan’s Alternate Message—Part 2
Genesis 3:1–5
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness.
Isaiah 5:20a (ESV)
Satan’s third lie was that Adam and Eve would be like God. Essentially, Satan was denying the Creator-creature distinction, instead advocating the pantheism that is at the heart of all pagan religions—the idea that the creation itself is divine. If there is such a concept as sin in pantheism, it has nothing to do with disobedience to God or separation between him and humankind. It is rather that one does not realize the divinity in oneself and everything else. Pantheism claims that one of the biggest sins is the failure to worship self. I doubt that there’s a bigger temptation that confronts humanity. By nature we love to exercise control over our own lives and actions. Our first parents couldn’t resist the temptation; many people today can’t either.
Finally, Satan promised that Adam and Eve would be like God specifically in the ability to know good and evil. While it was true that they would come to know something about evil that they did not then know, that knowledge was not at all beneficial. More to the point, Satan’s reference to being like God in knowing good and evil was an invitation to moral relativism—the denial of absolute standards for life and morality and the affirmation that people must decide for themselves what is good and what is evil.
A letter posted in a local newspaper affirmed that perspective in this comment: “Parents who impose their morality on their children are abusers.” As Satan knew, however, the denial that there are standards of morality, which is really the denial of a distinction between good and evil, is destructive of the very basis of civilization. Under such lawlessness, the very idea of law and lawful behavior or authority becomes unthinkable. This fits perfectly with the goals of Satan, whose desire for humankind was and remains, not paradise, but hell.
January 14
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Paradise Lost
Genesis 2:15–17; 2:25–3:7
Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.
Romans 5:12 (ESV)
Adam and Eve believed the serpent rather than the one who had given them life. Their sin was not that they wanted to be something like God; after all, God had made them in his image. But it was sin for them to pursue independence from their Creator and the conditions he had established for their happiness.
Satan is not finished with his temptations; he wants all people to repeat this sin in little and big ways. He tempts with half-truths rather than outright lies, suggesting that in following God’s way, we’re missing out on something. People fall for it every day, swallowing the lie that belief in sin is a mythology that people ought to outgrow, or that it is like breaking the silly and arbitrary rules of some teacher, or that it is the fun things in life that God and self-righteous people don’t want us to enjoy. Sin is always made to look like much ado about nothing, that is, until the truth comes out in the end.
The difference in life before sin and after it is pictured in the contrasting images of Genesis 2:25 and 3:7. Adam and Eve began life naked and without shame, and ended up shamed, covering up their nakedness. They began with nothing to hide, either from each other or from God, and they ended up trying to hide everything. Their nakedness became a symbol of their loneliness and fear and recognition of their huge error in reaching out for independence from their Creator.
But for God’s grace, we would all remain separated from him in this state of shameful nakedness. But, as the apostle Paul says, “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Christ reestablishes our connection with our Creator—the paradise for which we were created.
January 15
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Blame Games
Genesis 3:8–13
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye,
but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
Matthew 7:3 (ESV)
Adam was overjoyed when God gave Eve to him. And we have no reason to believe that Eve’s feeling about Adam was different. They were together, both because God had made them “one flesh” and because they had the same desire to do the work to which God had called them. But then they agreed to seek independence from their Creator. And after they got caught, the blame games began. Adam blamed Eve, who in turn blamed the serpent. In fact, Adam even implicated God, telling him that the woman—he referred to her impersonally, not as “my wife” or “Eve” but as “the woman”—”The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Gen. 3:12). In other words, “It’s not my fault. As a matter of fact, God, it is partly your fault. You gave me the wrong partner, and she tempted me to sin.”
Unfortunately, for much of history Eve has been portrayed as the human villain in the Garden of Eden story, and her sex has suffered considerable discrimination and oppression as a result. In reaction, others have sought to excuse Eve because, after all, she was only Adam’s helpmate. Neither of these is true. Eve was more than a helpmate; she was Adam’s equal, as the NIV correctly puts it, “a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18). And she was not more to blame than Adam; he ate with full knowledge just as she did. Adam and Eve both were accountable, and both were culpable for their sin.
And so are we all, although from early childhood we instinctively shift the blame to others for our own sins. But Jesus and all of Scripture makes clear that the first step of repentance and the first step toward the mending of our relationships, both with God and each other, lies in taking responsibility for our sin.
January 16
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God’s Gracious Initiative
Genesis 3:8
But God shows his love for us in that
while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (ESV)
After Adam and Eve consciously disobeyed God and broke communion with him by eating from the forbidden tree and simultaneously ceasing to eat from the Tree of Life, they desperately tried to protect themselves from the presence of God. They were sure that they would die. However, whether they saw it or not, they had an initial sign of God’s grace in that they did not immediately return to the dust from which God had formed them. As a further sign of grace, although they doubted at the time that it was grace, God came looking for the sinners.
Of course God knew where they were and why they were hiding, and could have asked them accusatory questions: “How dare you?” Or, “What were you thinking?” Instead, he asked a question designed to let Adam and Eve (and all of us) know what they needed to do now that they had sinned against their Creator. God’s “Where are you?” was an implicit call for Adam and Eve to come clean, return to believing and trusting in him, and make a new commitment to obedient living.
To be sure, there would be a price to pay for sin and rebellion. Yet, God was not willing to give up the partnership of caretaking and governance into which he’d installed Adam and Eve at the beginning. Nor was he willing to give up the relationship with himself and each other that he’d created them for.
Today too, God pursues men and women into whatever hiding places sin has led us. He wants us to own up to what we’re doing, and then to stop it and walk with him. He wants to restore us to the paradise-relationship from which our first parents fell. In fact, our only hope for forgiveness and our only prospect for life and a future begins with coming out of hiding. Where are you?
January 17
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The Aftermath of Sin
Genesis 3:14–24
There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.
Proverbs 14:12 (ESV)
God had made very clear to Adam and Eve that any rebellion would lead to death. It could not have been otherwise. Separation from the generator and sustainer of life has to result in some form of death, even if God in mercy lessens the sting of it in some way.
For the serpent, whom we’ve learned to identify as Satan, the result would be eternal alienation from God, represented by the crushed head forecast for him in Genesis 3:15.
For Adam and Eve and the rest of creation the result would be living with continuing signs of the fractures that had occurred in their relationship with God, with each other, and with the cosmos over which God had given them responsibility.
Human procreation would be affected, as would the procreative ability of the ground. Childbirth would be painful, and instead of fruitful plants eagerly sharing their produce, it was the weeds that would effortlessly grow. All work would be so much more difficult and discouraging.
From then on Adam and Eve would vie for power more than cooperate with each other in fulfilling their continuing roles as servants of the Creator. God did not prescribe the woman’s unhealthy desire for control or man’s unhealthy rule over her; he simply described the damaging effect of sin on human relationships. God’s prescription had been given earlier; it was a prescription for full partnership with mutual love and cooperation rather than competition and control.
By God’s grace, Adam and Eve still had a life, but it was far different than the one God had planned for them—the life they had previously enjoyed.
January 18
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Signs of Hope
Genesis 3:14–4:2
I, Jesus…am the root and the descendant
of David, the bright morning star.
Revelation 22:16 (ESV)
Although Adam and Eve did not recognize it immediately, they had a sign of hope even at the height of their rebellion. Neither they nor the rest of God’s creation disintegrated into the nothingness from which they had been made. Eventually, however, they had other reasons for hope: God’s reconciling question for them regarding their whereabouts, the clothes God made for them for life outside of Paradise, and the children God eventually gave them.
Their greatest hope for their future, however, was given in God’s curse of the serpent in Genesis 3:15. There God promised that the one who had successfully tempted Adam and Eve to overstep the limits of their freedom would forever after find himself at odds with the offspring of the woman. Not only that, but one day her offspring and the serpent would be locked in mortal combat—a combat in which the woman’s offspring would be injured, but the serpent would be killed.
In the light of the rest of the biblical story, we understand this to be the first Scripture prophesying the coming of Jesus, whose death Satan would celebrate prematurely. Jesus’s death and resurrection delivered a mortal blow to Satan and ensured Christ’s final and ultimate victory. In Jesus, therefore, paradise lost has become, and is becoming, paradise regained.
In Jesus the homeless now have a home. And because of Jesus, we can have the power to reject and stay far away from the continuingly forbidden fruit of independence from our Creator and Redeemer. Instead, we may eat from the Tree of Life, thus ensuring our communion with Almighty God and our faithfulness to him.
January 19
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Cain and Abel
Genesis 4:1–7
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
Hebrews 11:4 (ESV)
The children of Adam and Eve, who had never known intimacy with God in the garden, still felt the internal call to worship the Lord and bring offerings to him. No doubt, Adam and Eve coached them in this. But their desire came from another place too—the image of God in them, damaged but still present, which compelled them to acknowledge their Creator.
Cain and Abel came with different gifts. Each one, naturally, brought to God part of the results of his labor. However, while Cain brought some of his harvest, Abel brought the best of his. In biblical terms, fat pieces are the choicest parts of the animal, and firstborn are the choicest individuals of the flock or herd. Cain brought his second best; Abel brought the best of the best.
Cain attempted the very same thing that his parents had tried in Paradise—to get by in his service to God. He tried to serve God while at the same time trying to be his own god by establishing his own terms for service. So then, when God looked at Cain he saw a person pretending to worship. Cain’s sacrifice was not from the heart, as he himself knew. God reminded him of this with a question, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?” (Gen. 4:7).
This is just the first of many times that the Bible makes this point. God doesn’t care about pretend sacrifices. No one can fool him with acts of worship that are not real. True sacrifice comes from a heart that genuinely loves God, and then tries to show that in actions that please him and help others he cares for. In other words, real worship begins only when you give God yourself.
January 20
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Mastered by Sin
Genesis 4:8–16
We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one
and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him?
Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.
1 John 3:12 (ESV)
Cain’s sin against God developed into sin against his brother. God warned him about what would happen if he continued down this path: “Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7). The original problem was one thing; the secondary problem exacerbated it.
Cain’s mastery of his sin would have meant self-control at the least. However, in the long run, self-control is not possible where there is no repentance. Self-control can certainly help alleviate fighting among people, but it can never reconcile. Self-control is a product, a fruit of repentance. And so God was really urging Cain to get right with him; if he got his worship right it would also help him to maintain right relations with his brother.
But Cain did not take steps to correct his attitude. Rather he indulged himself and let his anger harden into murderous rage. That’s the way sin always goes unless repentance breaks the vicious cycle. The root sin is prideful rebellion against God, and that one sin leads to all others. Cain could not stand it that his worship practices suffered by contrast with those of Abel who conducted himself as a proper imagebearer of God.
Afterwards, God asked Cain, “Where is your brother?” That question was an echo of the “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9), which God had directed to Adam and Eve after their sin. Cain pled ignorance. Had he been around today he may have claimed temporary insanity. But it is impossible to hide or rationalize murder; the taken life of the victim cries out to God who gave him life. For that matter, no sin or sinner is safe from the eyes of God. Sin must be punished.
January 21
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Cain’s Harvest
Genesis 4:10–24
You show steadfast love to thousands, but you
repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them.
Jeremiah 32:18a (ESV)
What horrible consequences resulted from Cain’s refusal to yield himself to God. This was no ordinary murder, as horrific as premeditated murder always is. Nor was it like other murders that happen in our time and place, whether they result from random shootings, domestic violence, burglaries gone bad, or even terrorism. This murder of Abel looked like the end of righteousness on earth. We later learn that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters, but to this point Scripture mentions only two of their children: Cain, the pretend worshiper, and Abel, the real worshiper. And now that the pretender killed the other, what would become of the world?
As bad as things get in today’s world, I’m not sure they ever look this bad. Sometimes Christians may feel entirely alone and forgotten, as probably some in Syria or North Korea do today. And yet, we know that there are places in the world where there is much more hope and evidence of true faith. It was not so in the time of Cain and Abel. The battle between God’s people and the serpent’s people seemed to be over. So what would now happen?
Cain could have repented. But, apparently he felt sorry only for himself and was content to live apart from the Lord’s presence. Cain’s offspring were like their father. As imagebearers of God they still had the intelligence and skills to take advantage of the rich resources that remained even in a fallen world; they inventively imitated their Creator in certain ways. However, as exemplified by the actions and boasting of the vengeful bully Lamech, they were morally bankrupt, using their tools and abilities for the wrong purposes. Cain’s line followed his example, taking matters into their own hands rather than living as God’s servants.
January 22
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Servants of God versus Giants of Wickedness
Genesis 4:25–6:8
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death,
and he was not found, because God had taken him.
Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.
Hebrews 11:5–6 (ESV)
God’s gracious answer to the continuing disobedience of Cain’s descendants was a sort of re-creation. He reestablished the righteous line through Seth, whose descendants, unlike Cain’s, wanted to serve God. The fifth-generation descendant of Seth was Enoch, who walked with God, while Lamech, Cain’s fifth-generation descendant, insisted on acting as his own god.
Over time however, even most of the righteous line went astray—at least partly because of the intermarriage between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men.” There is much debate among commentators as to the specific meaning of these terms, but we know this much: wickedness on the earth increased so that people became ever more like Cain and Lamech than like Seth and Enoch. Genesis 6:4 speaks about the heroes of old. But these heroes, no matter what they did to impress their world, were judged by God to be giants of wickedness; they excelled in the art and science of godlessness.
God decided to “uncreate” his world, not as the heartless and cruel act of an uncaring deity, but rather as the logical consequence of his unswerving devotion to his original goal. God had to destroy the polluters of his creation and social order in order to restore it to its original goodness.
In fact, God’s judgment is always both the harvest of wickedness and the preparation for righteousness. God’s judgment means death for the unrepentant. But for the remnant that is loyal to God, it is preparation for a new life in which sin does not exercise its terrible dominion—a life in which all are the servants they were created to be.
January 23
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God’s Message in the Flood—Part 1
Genesis 6:9–7:24
As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming
of the Son of Man…Therefore you also must be ready,
for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Matthew 24:37, 44 (ESV)
The story of the flood is only somewhat the story of Noah. It is more the story of God’s actions to preserve his creation, and particularly, his imagebearers. It is a story both of God’s righteous judgment and gracious salvation. As to righteous judgment, it tells us these things:
· God hates wickedness and does not take it lightly when his intentions are disregarded. He is in charge. Since God created the world and its inhabitants, he has the right to judge it for its rebellion.
· God will not yield his will to the desires of those who rebel against him. People often change their minds, especially in the face of opposition. God never does, but always remains committed to his perfect plans and intentions.
· God is powerful enough to have his way. What he created by the force of his will, he can just as easily undo. He who brought order from chaos can just as easily let order degenerate into chaos.
· God does not rush to judgment, but provides adequate opportunity for repentance. As grieved as he was by Noah’s generation, God graciously postponed judgment for a time while Noah, whom the apostle Peter calls a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), gave a word and deed testimony to his world.
· God means for this and every judgment to stand as a warning for future generations until the day of Final Judgment. At that time the faithful will receive honor and position, but the unfaithful will be “cut to pieces and assigned a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 24:51).
January 24
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God’s Message in the Flood—Part 2
Genesis 8:1–9:17
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events
as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the
saving of his household. By this he condemned the world
and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Hebrews 11:7 (ESV)
Although the flood means judgment for the wicked, it is equally a gracious story of salvation for the righteous:
· Salvation is by God’s initiative. He comes to Noah to instruct him how to escape the coming judgment.
· Salvation is not merit-based, but grace-based. Although Scripture calls Noah a righteous man and says that he walked with God, Noah knew, as did Enoch before him and Abraham after him, that anything good in him was only because of the help and goodness of God who invited him into a relationship with himself. Salvation is always by grace.
· Salvation always comes as God’s answer to extreme need and in the midst of judgment; it is not even necessary in any other context.
· Salvation is not merely the saving of individuals from destruction, but the reestablishment of something like the original community that God intended. It puts people in touch with God’s original purpose: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). Among other things in this post-paradise world, this means that the grace of God which blesses you is also meant to bless both fellow believers and those who have yet to come to a personal knowledge of the saving power of Christ.
· Salvation is a story of grace that endures. The world has deserved flood-style judgment many times since Noah’s day. But God has promised to delay such awful judgment until the end, in the meantime preserving his people and giving the world more chances to repent.
January 25
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New World—Old Sin
Genesis 9:18–29
Nimrod…was the first on earth to be a mighty man.
He was a mighty hunter before the LORD. Therefore it is said,
“Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.”
Genesis 10:8–9 (ESV)
In the course of responding to God’s directive to reclaim and cultivate the earth, Noah misused the good products of it. He became drunk and made a fool of himself. Although we don’t know whether this happened regularly or it was the only time, Noah’s drunkenness was not proper in his role as the new Adam.
However, it is not Noah’s action that is primarily in view in this passage; the focus is the response of Ham who chose not to cover up his father’s nakedness, but instead to spread the news of it. The implication is that Ham made a joke of it; in any event he showed gross disrespect. Such behavior had been more typical of life before the flood. Ham’s behavior was inconsistent with continuing to enjoy the blessing of God.
For disdaining the gracious covenant of God, Ham brought God’s curse down upon himself and his descendants. The severity of the curse reflects the severity of the offense against God and God’s appointed servant, Noah. Ham had become like another Cain in this world. And his descendants would become like Cain’s. As Lamech was the sinner extraordinaire in Cain’s line, so was Nimrod in the line of Ham. In fact, Nimrod’s name means “let us rebel.”
Matthew Henry, relying at least partly on extra-biblical evidence, says in his concise commentary on Genesis 10:8–14: “Nimrod was resolved to lord it over his neighbours. The spirit of the giants before the flood, who became mighty men, and men of renown (Genesis 6:4), revived in him.” While the world had been cleansed by the judgment of God, it didn’t take long for the same old sin to reappear.
January 26
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The Tower of Babel
Genesis 11:1–9
Man in his pomp will not remain; he is like the beasts that perish.
This is the path of those who have foolish confidence;
yet after them people approve of their boasts.
Psalm 49:12–13 (ESV)
Nimrod was apparently the leader of the group who built the city of Babel; one of the centers of his kingdom was Shinar (Gen. 10:10), which was the very location of Babel. The story of what happened here clearly illustrates the return to wickedness in the world that the flood was supposed to have purified.
On the surface there would seem to be nothing wrong in building a city. Such a project might foster a good sense of community. And there’s nothing to indicate that God dislikes skyscrapers. But what God does oppose is any attempt to build another kingdom in opposition to his. Yet that’s what the builders wanted: a city with its top in the heavens “so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Gen. 11:4).
God is not willing that people should prefer making names for themselves over being his good servants. Nor did he intend for them to fail to take possession of the whole earth in obedience to his command to “be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it” (Gen. 9:7).
Moses would later criticize the Israelites for a similar failure on their way to the Promised Land: “When the Lord sent you out from Kadesh Barnea, he said, ‘Go up and take possession of the land I have given you.’ But you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You did not trust him or obey him. You have been rebellious against the Lord ever since I have known you” (Deut. 9:23-24).
Even if disobedience is less out of pride than out of fear, God is not pleased by it; he expects trust and obedience.
Last modified: Thursday, August 9, 2018, 3:08 PM