Genesis, the first book of the Bible, is God’s great introduction.
In the beginning, there is nothing. Then into the nothingness, God speaks, creating a universe that’s beautiful and good because He is beautiful and good. He fills His magnificent world with a myriad of life, and patterns one honored creation—people—after Himself. He crafts human beings, us, like Himself for a very remarkable reason—so that we can know Him & experience His love. connecting with God is seen in the very beginnning.
But God has a vile Enemy—Satan. This Enemy hates God and sets out to sabotage everything. Satan creeps into God’s perfect, innocent creation in the form of a serpent. Then, he introduces evil to the first man and woman—Adam and Eve. Deceived by Satan, Adam and Eve disobey God. Their sin has disastrous consequences. The fatal disease infects God’s masterpiece, and the deadly curse captures it, succumbing to Satan’s kingdom of darkness. But the worst thing is that they—and all of the generations of people who are born after them—lose their close connection to God.
With great compassion and patience, God zealously begins the long journey to rescue us and draw us back to Himself.
Generations of people are born sick with sin, under the authority of an evil tyrant, enslaved to a curse of death in a world of sickness & pain. The world is in a sad, sad state and people are becoming more and more wicked. It breaks God’s heart. In His sorrow, God destroys everything on the earth with a flood. He then begins to fill the earth with people again through Noah, a man who walks with God. A few generations later, a group of people at Babel attempt to reach God through their own efforts. But the people God has created are helpless to save themselves and disown connecting with God.
Into this mess, God begins His great rescue plan, and He chooses to do it through a family. The God of the universe speaks to a man, Abraham, telling him that He will make his family into a great nation, He will give them a piece of land of their very own, and He will be their God. God informs Abraham that he will bless all of the people of the world through him. Abraham chooses to follow this God whom he barely knows, and after many years, God honors Abraham’s faith in Him & takes a step in fulfilling His promises. He gives the 100-year-old Abraham a son, Isaac, just like He promised.
God makes the same promises to Isaac, and to his son, Jacob. God will raise up a nation from their families, He will give them a home, & He will be their God. Jacob has 12 sons, including his favorite son, Joseph. Joseph’s jealous brothers sell him into slavery, but what his brothers intend for evil, God uses for good. After time as both a slave and a prisoner in Egypt, God elevates Joseph to second-in-command in Egypt and gives him insightful dreams predicting a coming famine. When the famine devastates the entire Middle East, Joseph is in a strategic position to provide not only for Egypt, but also for his estranged family. After a beautiful reunion, all of Joseph’s 11 brothers and their families—including his elderly father, Jacob—move to Egypt. God has protected and provided for His people, and they survive the famine.
Through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, God begins to show His captive people who He is. Broken and living in a broken world, they’re unaware that they’ve lost their connecting with God—or that they’re even meant to connect with Him at all. And while God’s people are getting to know Him, He’s setting the stage for His masterful and very personal plan to rescue the world.
Genesis shows us who God is, where we came from, and why the world is the way it is. We are deeply broken, yet we are all deeply loved. Through this first book in our story, we find that the foundational plotline of human history is one that’s written in the aches & longings of our hearts. Life doesn’t feel quite right, yes, but that’s because we’re captive. And our God, who loves us deeply, is coming to set us free.
*** © 2023 by Walk Thru the Bible
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