Category: Genesis

Too many Christians think of all the OT figures like George Washington.  Everything they know of them they learned before puberty.  They have a flannel-graph, romantic, idealistic picture of them.  We wouldn’t say they were without flaw, but they must be very close.  We think of Abram like we might think of Papa, or the image we had of our fathers in kindergarten.  The only OT icon to escape our airbrush is David.  Poor David, he is the only one in the bunch to be seen for what he really is, a justified sinner, simul justus et peccator.

If 12:1-9 provides the air to puff up our inflated balloon idea of Abraham, 12:10-20 provides the needle to pop it.  Our eyes are necessarily directed to the hero of this book.  For sure, Abram is a hero, worthy of emulation, but he is not the hero.

Abraham will threaten all three promises made to him, promises concerning land, offspring, and being a blessing.  As you read this narrative you should realize that all your hope of redemption, the hope of reversing the curse has been funneled into this one man.  If Abram destroys these promises, we are destroyed, we are cursed.  Each time he threatens one of these promises I think a “Nooooo!” should be on the verge of bursting out of our heads through our mouths.

Yet the promises come out of this fire unscathed.  In this entire passage God does not speak, nor is he spoken to or spoken of by Abraham.  The only mention of God at all is inserted by the narrator.  God was working subtly, sovereignly, and faithfully.  This is how He works most of the time not only in our lives, but in all of Scripture.  In the 2000 plus years of history covered so far God has manifested Himself only sparingly, like Aslan, He leaves you in suspense, wondering when He will show up.  But just as you should not mistake silence for absence regarding Satan’s efforts throughout the book of Genesis (he is only mentioned in one chapter of the book), don’t think God is vacationing.  He preserves and protects His promises, subtly, sovereignly, and faithfully.

This section of Genesis gives you whiplash.  Up to this point roughly 2000 years have passed.  Centuries breeze by like seconds as you read this opening portion of Genesis.  What figure do you have a head on collision with substantially slowing down the pace… Abraham.  Larwence Richards says of him,

Abraham stands as the greatest figure to be found in the ancient world. Three world religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, revere him as the father of their faiths. But what makes Abraham important to the Bible student is not the reverence in which he is held. It is not even the belief that the The National Geographic once expressed that ‘Abraham, the patriarch, conceived of a great and simple idea, the idea of a single Almighty God.  Abraham’s importance is not even found in the fact that he is today a prime model of saving faith. No, the importance of Abraham in Genesis is that through Abraham God reveals His purpose and goal for the universe. In promises to Abram, God revealed that he had a plan.

Abraham is huge – for you.  The Old Testament is not throw away.  Everything that will follow in the Bible, including the New Testament is an outworking of what is promised here.  Up to this point we are expecting a Redeemer, born of a woman, to reverse the curse.  Here God sets His plan in motion to bring that about.  The promises are expanded, your promises, and the place from which all blessings will flow is further refined.

This is your story, not just in how it impacts you, but in how it mirrors how God works in your life.  God comes to you, idol worshippers (Joshua 24:2-3), and calls you out of darkness into light (I Peter 2:9-10).  It is a costly call – “leave all!”  But it is a rewarding call – “gain more!”  If you ever read the Old Testament and wish you could experience God like they did – you have.  God’s powerful call comes to you in the same way, in the gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:14).  If you have treasured all Christ is for you in this gospel then your life is a page in the universe on which God has revealed Himself.

So enjoy the change of pace, check out the scenery, God is all over it.  And as you stare at Abraham’s world, though you are 4000 years removed from it, and you stand on the other side of the cross, you will see the same strokes of grace all over it.

Man’s prideful sin is not more powerful than the grace that comes to us through the humble obedience of Christ.  The glory of Christ is so transcendent that the sinful origin of the nations is turned into a beautiful harmonious mosaic of colors, tongues, cultures praising the Lamb who ransomed them to God (Revelation 5:9-10; 7:9-10).  Diversity is not erased in heaven, it is harmonized.

Our sovereign Lord allows sin only for His eternal glory.  God ordained the sinful origin of the nations to abound eternally for His glory.  Why the nations, peoples, languages?  John Piper gives four reasons:

1.  First, there is a beauty and power of praise that comes from unity in diversity that is greater than that which comes from unity alone. … I infer from this that the beauty and power of praise that will come to the Lord from the diversity of the nations are greater than the beauty and power that would come to him if the chorus of the redeemed were culturally uniform. The reason for this can be seen in the analogy of a choir. More depth and beauty is felt from a choir that sings in parts than from a choir that sings only in unison. Unity in diversity is more beautiful and more powerful than the unity of uniformity. This carries over to the untold differences that exist between the peoples of the world. When their diversity unites in worship to God, the beauty of their praise will echo the depth and greatness of God’s beauty far more than if the redeemed were from only a few different groups.

2.   Second, the fame and greatness and worth of an object of beauty increases in proportion to the diversity of those who recognize its beauty. If a work of art is regarded as great among a small and likeminded group of people but not by anyone else, the art is probably not truly great. Its qualities are such that it does not appeal to the deep universals in our hearts but only to provincial biases. But if a work of art continues to win more and more admirers not only across cultures but also across decades and centuries, then its greatness is irresistibly manifested.

3.  Third, the strength and wisdom and love of a leader is magnified in proportion to the diversity of people he can inspire to follow him with joy. If you can only lead a small, uniform group of people, your leadership qualities are not as great as if you can win a following from a large group of very diverse people.

4.  By focusing on all the people groups of the world God undercuts ethno-centric pride and puts all peoples back upon his free grace rather than any distinctive of their own.  – From Let the Nations Be Glad!

The nations do not exist becuase of sin, they exist for His glory – forever.  The “why” the nations exists (for his glory) is bigger than the “how” they came to exist (sin).  God ordained the sinful “how” only to accomplish the glorious “why”.

Oh God, grant us to taste now the beautiful spectrum that will be heaven.  Keep us from cultural stagnation.  How different, how gloriously different will heaven be from the monotony I so often taste?  God rescue us from the unvarying scenery of the great plains and add forests and hills and waterfalls, and mountains.  God undo Babel in our churches.  May we be unified again, not in sin, but in Your redemption.  May you be glorified in that the only person who could unite such diverse cultures is the universal King of transcendent majesty  .

I cannot remember who I heard say something to this effect, “Do not be impressed with the missionary of God but with the God of the missionary.”  Beware of making idols of holy men.  We should have heroes in the faith, but not evangelical superstars.  Noah is a hero, but he is not the star of this account, God is.  Noah is admirable because of how God is glorified in his life.

Noah’s task was daunting.  It was impossible.  We shouldn’t read Genesis 6:19 without Genesis 6:20.  If Noah’s work is read in isolation, with no mention of God’s work, Noah gets all the glory.  He is superhuman.  How could we ever measure up?  But what Noah did was impossible (Matthew 19:26).

Our God is a two handed God.  With His hard hand He comes to us with commands that are impossible, with His soft hand He comes to us with empowering grace.  Augustine said it this way, “Give what you command and command what you will.”  The story of Noah is a story of the fierce terrible wrath of God.  It isn’t flannel graph, nursery décor, kid’s song friendly.  But more than God’s wrath, this is a story of the amazing grace of God.  The account does not neglect that God hates sin, that sin arouses his judgment, nor that all men die, but the narrative is arrested by God’s grace on this one man.  What is astounding as we read this account is not that all humanity is blotted out, but that one man finds grace.  Noah was not favored because he was righteous, he was righteous because he was favored (Genesis 6:8-9).  We work out because He has worked in (Philippians 2:12-13).  We work because He is working (Hebrews 13:20-21).

What emerges again and again is that what he is commanding is a life that displays the worth of his person and the effect of his work.  His intention is that we not disconnect what he commands from who he is and what he has done.  …On the basis of who he was and what he accomplished, Jesus made his demands. The demands cannot be separated from his person and work. The obedience he demands is the fruit of his redeeming work and the display of his personal glory. That is why he came— to create a people who glorify his gracious reign by bearing the fruit of his kingdom (Matt. 21:43).  – John Piper in What Jesus Demands From the World

God repents?  If you are packing old school (KJV) that’s what verse 6 says!  And it is a legitimate translation.  It can also be translated relent, sorry, or regret.  Does God change His mind?  Did He fail to think through this human experiment all the way?  Is He now just improvising hoping to make the best of this mess?  To amplify the problem, this is common language in relation to God (I Samuel 15:11, 35; Jeremiah 18:10; Exodus 32:12, 14; 2 Samuel 24:16; Amos 7:3-6).

Yet in Numbers 23:19 and I Samuel 15:29 God states that He does not repent or change his mind like man.  Are we now in a worse position?  Have we gone from a God who makes mistakes to a God who is confused and tells lies of Himself?

Notice God never changes in and of Himself.  He eternally remains holy, good, righteous, just, and sovereign.  He is immutable.  Eternally His stance toward sin remains the same.  It is man who has changed, thus God’s stance toward man is different, it has changed.  Yet God’s “changes” only happen according to his plan.

I think Jeremiah 18:7-10 help to clarify.  There we read:

If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.  And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.

God’s acts differently in response to man’s condition.  This is illustrated in the story of Jonah and Nineveh.  After the people of Nineveh repent God relents (Jonah 3:10) of the judgment (Jonah 3:4) Jonah pronounced on them.  God said He was going to destroy them.  Did man change God’s plan?  No, it was God’s plan to change man.  From a temporal perspective God is reacting to man.  From an eternal perspective God ordains means to bring about His ends.  If you think God is simply reacting and revising you make Jonah out to be more brilliant than God, for Jonah knew this would happen (Jonah 4:1-2).  God sent Jonah to pronounce a message of judgment that would bring about repentance according to plan.

The flood was part of God’s plan.  The world was destroyed once by water, it will be a second time with fire (2 Peter 3:5-7).  It’s so symmetrical it’s as if it were preplanned?  Though this segment of history is dark, against it the glimmer of God’s grace shines all the brighter (Genesis 6:8).  This is the velvet backdrop against which God’s redeeming love shines.  Why plan such an awesome demonstration of His wrath and justice?

It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all; for then the effulgence would not answer the reality. For the same reason it is not proper that one should be manifested exceedingly, and another but very little. It is highly proper that the effulgent glory of God should answer his real excellency; that the splendour should be answerable to the real and essential glory, for the same reason that it is proper and excellent for God to glorify himself at all. Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired, and the sense of it not so great, as we have elsewhere shown. We little consider how much the sense of good is heightened by the sense of evil, both moral and natural. And as it is necessary that there should be evil, because the display of the glory of God could not but be imperfect and incomplete without it, so evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect; and the happiness of the creature would be imperfect upon another account also; for, as we have said, the sense of good is comparatively dull and flat, without the knowledge of evil.  – Jonathan Edwards, Works Vol. 2

Our kindergarten teacher told all of us that we were “special”.  If we are all “special” doesn’t that mean that none of us are?

In our text we have two genealogies; one marked by common grace the other by saving grace.  John Murray defined God’s common grace as:

Every favor of whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin cursed world enjoys at the hand of God.

The reason we call it common is because it is shared among all men in general.  It is familiar, popular, ordinary.  It is upon all men in general (Matthew 5:43-45).  This is not to say it is not amazing and great.  That we are not all justly suffering in hell is owing to the benevolence of God.

Jabel, Jubal, and Tubal (parents notice that this naming phenomena begins in the line of Cain.  Homophonous child naming is of the devil) make great strides in cultural progress, but it is only owing to God’s common grace.  God disperses talent, gifts, materials, and time to such individuals.  This doctrine allows us to accept gifts from the secular world form the hand of God and make them sacred.  The issue isn’t if it has a “Christian” label, but if you receive it from the Christian God or the god of Apple.  Despite all the advancement, there is no mention of special grace anywhere in the line of Cain.  “In the history of salvation,” writes Derek Kidner, “the line of Cain is an irrelevance.”

It is in the line of Seth that we see marks of special grace.  Here men call on the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26).  Here we are reminded of original creation before the fall (Genesis 5:1-2).  Here the death formula is broken (Genesis 5:24).  This is the lineage of Christ (Luke 3:23-38).

You may invent the self-microwaving pizza – common.  You may come up with the ultimate clean fuel solution – common.  You may replace George on the one dollar bill – common.  You may dwarf the dynasties of Google, Apple, and Microsoft – common.  But to be evidence of the reclaiming of the imago Dei, to walk with God, to break the somber rhythm of death, to be part of God’s plan in making much of the Messiah, this is special.

Growing up I had two Collies named Charlie and Linus.  They were brothers.  They were different.  Early on Linus tried to off Charlie like Cain did Abel.  They were riding in the back of the pickup and Charlie fell out the back; we are pretty sure we saw Linus push him.  From that day on Charlie had a slew of health issues.  Charlie chased cars.  He was ‘bumped’ so many times we quit counting and was straight up ran over once.  This messed up his back legs such that if you would slap him on the rear on a cold day he would just gently fall over on his side.  He had a tumor on his back and three ears.  Some varmint got a hold of one of his ears and split it down the middle.  Oddly though death seemed to follow Charlie he lived a couple of years longer than his brother.  Linus was lazy and loved to eat.  He loved peanuts.  He would crack the shell himself, spit everything out, then eat only the peanuts.  They gave him gas.  Same litter – very different.

Cain and Abel, same parents – very different.  Too often we read this ‘little story’ of sibling rivalry and fail to see ourselves in it.  This text smells of heaven or hell – for you.  You are one of these brothers.  My contention is that unless Jesus has done something to you, you are Cain.

You are the spawn of Satan.  Two seeds make up all of humanity, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.  They are opposed to one another.  Don’t flatter yourself that you are the humble, pious worshipper who is a victim.  Everybody is a victim these days anyway, it doesn’t make you special.  If you really want to stand out today and be unique, fess up that you are the villain.  You are Cain.  Oh, you may look very religious, so did Cain, so did the Pharisees (John 8:34-47).  Yes, you bring your offerings, but like Cain you are not after God, but after some kind of blessing.  And when you don’t get it, you get angry just like Cain.  Your anger, just as powerfully as your love, will show your true gods.

But there is hope.  Everything that Cain failed to be Jesus was.  He is the true and better Elder Brother.  His blood cries out salvation instead of condemnation, even though we are guilty of it all the same (Hebrews 12:24).  Instead of taking our lives, which He unlike Cain, would be just in doing, He gives His life in order to give us life, and in such a way that He remains just (Romans 3:26).  Jesus is cursed, but not for His sin, he is cursed for ours.  He is driven “away from the presence of the Lord” crying out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” so that we might enter into His presence where there is joy evermore.

My wife loves the game show network.  This is ok with me until a certain dude’s voice comes through the speakers.  A man should not sound like that, it makes me cringe.  Really it makes me want to vomit.  My response is an alloy made with more sin than grace.  Here is likely another man who never had a real father and has likely never had the gospel radically revamp his idea of manhood, and rather than feeling sorrow and compassion I just get angry.  The gospel he needs I deny him in my self-righteousness.  Nevertheless, for illustration purposes, his voice is irritating; to me.

In contrast I love Morgan Freeman’s voice.  He really should be the only one allowed to do TV and radio commercials.  If an audio Bible ever comes out with Morgan as the voice, be assured I will buy it.

Still greater is God’s voice, His Word.  ‘Greater’ is an adjectival understatement of colossal size.  His voice is majestic.  It can come to us in awesome thunderous booms (Exodus 19:19), or in the softest whisper (1 Kings 19:12-13).  His voice both causes (Psalm 29:3-5) and calms (Mark 4:39) storms.  No one talks like our God (Psalm 33:6).

Sadly sin causes us to run from His voice.  Adam hides when he hears the sound of the LORD God.  The word translated sound here is more often translated voice.  It is dense in the Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 5:25; 8:20; 15:5; 18:16; 26:14; 27:10; 28:1, 2, 15, 45, 62; 30:8, 10).  In Deuteronomy we see that the voice of the LORD is something to be obeyed.  When Adam hears it he is further disobeying.  He does not come forward in broken repentance, he hides.  Sin makes us to vomit with fear at His Holy voice, its purity makes us cringe.  How evil is the evil that could make me hear such a golden tongue in this way?

But Adam is not allowed to hide; the divine words confront and interrogate him.  Yes, they expose his nakedness and his guilt, but keep listening, they also hold out promise.  The thunder of judgment turns to a whisper of promise.

God has thundered against the Son, so you might hear the whispers of His eternal love for you.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.  – Genesis 3:6

She took… and ate: so simple the act, so hard its undoing.  God will taste poverty and death before ‘take and eat’ become verbs of salvation.  – Derek Kidner

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’  – Matthew 26:26

Dating without any reference to marriage is as dangerous as shooting a gun without any reference to a target.

Genesis 2:18-25 gives us the context for intimacy between a man and a woman, it is marriage.  Do not decontextualize the intimacy of marriage and place it in dating.  Courtship should correspond to marriage the way a Nerf gun corresponds to a handgun, there will be similarities, but they are drastically different. 

Please don’t carry the analogy too far though.  Dating may be the Nerf gun, but it is still serious.  Be faithful with the lesser Nerf gun of dating, and you will be prepared to be faithful with the real gun of holy matrimony.  Date with purpose, not for leisure.  A marriage that expounds the mystery of Christ and His Church is the target – AIM!