This summer while the women of Christ Church have been studying Theresa Roth’s powerful book, “Facing Your Fears: Biblical Insights for Hope and Healing,” the men have been studying some of the Patriarchs found in Genesis. We covered Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. Now that the study is over, I’ve been reflecting on it and thinking through the big lessons learned from Genesis 1 all the way to Genesis 50. Here’s a few I think are important for all of us:
- We are created in the very image of God, which means we are image-bearers and ought to be living as such! I think we often we get so caught up in the Fall of Genesis 3 that we forget the glory of Genesis 1-2. As JD Walt says, “Our vision of humanity has been so ruined by the reality of original sin that it does not even remotely occur to us to revisit the vision of original glory.” The Fall is real, and its aftereffects leave us broken and in need of salvation and redemption, but that redemption will bring us back to creation as God intended it to be!
- God is with us, even when we can’t see it. Time after time in Genesis God’s people experience trouble or difficulty or challenge, and we wonder why God doesn’t step in or act. Only later do we see that God has been there all along, achieving His purposes in us and through us in ways beyond our understanding. God is with us in the good times, yes, but He’s also with us in the bad times. CS Lewis writes, “God whispers to us in our pleasures but shouts to us in our pain.”
- We are created to be in relationship with God and one another. From His first covenant with Abram in Gen. 12, God has been drawing together His family, blessing them to be a blessing to the world. He promises us that He will be our God and we will be His people, and through Him we can be made righteous. As we read in Gen. 15:6, “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.” Genesis points us toward a time where this relationship and this righteousness will culminate in the person of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the second Adam, the new Moses, the fullness of all of God’s plan and the fulfillment of all of God’s promises.
As we prepare to spend three months in the Book of Romans this fall, it might be helpful to know that Paul quotes the Old Testament more in this book than in any other, many of these references coming from Genesis. It might be useful for all of us to revisit this first book of the Bible, readying our hearts to receive what God has for us!
