Imagine
that you are an Israelite child, living in Babylon in 570 B.C. Seventeen years ago your family was deported
from Jerusalem when the Babylonian army laid siege to the city. While you yourself have never stepped foot in
Jerusalem, your parents always speak of the city with awe and reverence. They tell you stories about how God created
the heavens and the earth, and everything contained therein. They speak of God’s goodness to humanity, and
of humanity’s mistrust and disobedience to God.
They speak of a covenant God made with your ancestor Abraham, promising
that through his family God would bring blessing to the whole world. They recall that God promised the land of
Jerusalem as an inheritance to Abraham’s family.
As you
listen, you feel in your heart that these stories are your story. While you weren't there when the world was
created, you believe that you too were created by God. While you never met Adam and Eve, you can
relate to their mistrust of God and inability to keep God’s commands. While you never met Abraham, you feel a
kinship with him and a desire to be faithful to the covenant God started with
him centuries ago. You are a member of
the people of Israel, and while all you have ever known is life in Babylon, you
feel like your heart is in the Promised Land.
The book of
Genesis was written so that the people of God from all generations might know
where they come from, and their reason for existence. Genesis – which means beginning – tells the
story of God’s creation of the heavens and earth and of the beginning of God’s
people, Israel. The book is divided into
two parts. Chapters 1-11 tell a
universal story about the creation and crisis of humankind. They speak of humanity’s call to live in God’s
image, how human sin distorts that image, and how the effects of sin spread so
far across the earth, that God grieved the earth and laid waste to it by flood.
By the end
of chapter 11, the story of Genesis has come to a major impasse. A good and gracious God has created a good
and beautiful world, but human sin continues to spread and disrupt God’s
design, bringing death and destruction.
What will happen to world? Will
it die away, a victim of its own sin, or will God do something to rescue the
creation?
The second
part of Genesis, chapters 12-50, tells the story of what God does to redeem the
world. Rather than destroy the sinful
world, God chooses to enter into relationship with a man called Abraham,
promising to bring blessing to all the world through his family. The story continues through four generations
of Abraham’s family, showing how God remains faithful to the promise of
blessing, even amid the continual failings of Abraham’s family.
This is the
story of Genesis. As the ancient Israelites knew from the beginning, the purpose of Genesis is not to provide a detailed
historical account of the creation of the world. Neither is it to provide scientific
explanations for the various phenomena of the universe. None of them expected Genesis 1 to be a literal
account of the creation of the world, nor did they expect to be able to locate
the bones of Adam and Eve in Mesopotamia.
Rather they knew that the purpose of Genesis is to convey the truth
about the human condition and the good news about the God who loves the world
too much to let it go.
As we enter
into a summer long immersion in the book of Genesis, it’s important that we
know what Genesis is for. If we want to
read every detail of the story as historical or scientific fact, we will
quickly get frustrated and miss the point.
Many of the stories of Genesis, particularly in chapters 1-11, are full
of symbolism and imagery that is not meant to represent what actually happened,
as much as to convey truth about who God is and who we are.
As you read
Genesis, pray that God would help you find yourself in these stories. Pray that God would open your eyes to see God
as he really is. Pray that these stories
would convict you of your own frailty and brokenness. And above all, pray that these stories would
become your story, that you too would believe that the same God who created the
universe and called Abraham, is the God who created and called you.
No comments:
Post a Comment