God Does The Saving

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 7:1-10.  Let’s go!

Genesis 7:1 (NIV)
1  The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

On verse 1:  The Lord found Noah to be “righteous in his generation”.  I believe that is best understood to mean that compared to others in his generation, Noah was relatively more God fearing and tried harder to please God than the people of his generation.  That is why God decided to save Noah and his family and use them to repopulate the earth after the flood. 

What can we learn from this?

1.     While God loves everybody, to accomplish His purposes on earth God especially loves to use people who fear Him and who try hard to honour Him. 

2.     Does this mean that somehow we can earn our way to heaven by trying to be good?  No.  Noah being found relatively “righteous in his generation” and usable for God’s purposes on earth is different from Noah being found absolutely righteous according to God’s standards for heaven.  The fact is that none of us is deserving of heaven on our own merit because none of us is absolutely righteous in God’s eyes.  

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Noah’s Ark, Jesus’ Body, My Salvation

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 6:11-22.  Let’s go!

Genesis 6:11-13 (NIV)
11  Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.
12  God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.
13  So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

On verses 11-13:  In Genesis 1, God saw that the earth He made was good.  Here, however, in verses 11-13 God saw how corrupt the earth had become due to the sins people would commit and the violence they would inflict on one another.  We’re only six chapters into the Bible, but we are now half way through the overarching story of the Bible:  “God made us.  We blew it.  Jesus came.  We need Him.”  This is the “we blew it” part.

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God Cares and God Is Watching

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 6:1-10.  Let’s go!

Genesis 6:1-7 (NIV)
1  When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them,
2  the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
3  Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
4  The Nephilim were on the earth in those days–and also afterward–when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
5  The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.
6  The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
7  So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth–men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air–for I am grieved that I have made them.”

On verses 1-7:  At first glance verses 1-7 read to me like a fairy tale, speaking of a whimsical, romantic time when the “sons of God” mated with the “daughters of men” (v1-2), a time when the Nephilim, known to be a race of giants, lived.  According to the Bible Knowledge Commentary, what could actually be happening here in verses 1-7 is that the author of Genesis (many scholars say it was Moses) was addressing the widely held beliefs of pagan nations which taught that you could attain god-like immortality by engaging in great immorality  Along this line of teaching,

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Life Beyond The Ordinary

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 5:1-32.  Let’s go!

Genesis 5:1-20 (NIV)
1  This is the written account of Adam’s line. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
2  He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them “man.”
3  When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
4  After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.
5  Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.
6  When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh….

On verses 1-20:  How could human beings live such a long time, in some cases almost 1,000 years (see for example Methuselah in verse 27)?  One theory is that God’s original plan was that God made man to live forever, but as sin came into the world, gradually lifespans would get shorter over time.  As the Quest Study Bible explains, “The Creator made men and women to be immortal.  Nevertheless, death – the result of sin – progressively decreased human longevity until 70 or 80 years became a normal life span (see Psalm 90:10).” (Quest Study Bible: New International Version. Zondervan, 2003).  Another explanation is that life spans remained this long during the first several generations of human beings as shown in Genesis 5, but in Genesis 6 we see that God intentionally limits the lifespan of human beings to 120 years (see Genesis 6:3).

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Marked By God For Protection

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 4:13-26.  Let’s go!

Genesis 4:13-15 (NIV)
13  Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is more than I can bear.
14  Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
15  But the LORD said to him, “Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.

On verses 13-15: Realizing that the punishment for his sin is that he will be hidden from God’s presence and vulnerable to attack, Cain cries out to God.  Was Cain asking for forgiveness or just complaining about his punishment?  While some commentators think Cain was asking for forgiveness, it would seem to me based on the text probably the latter.  Yet God has mercy on Cain, placing a mark on him so that no one would kill him (v15).  

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Blood That Cries Out

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 4:1-12.  Let’s go!

Genesis 4:1 (NIV)
1  Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man.”

On verse 1:  Adam and Eve welcome their first child, a son.  Even after they had sinned against God in Genesis 3, here we see Eve’s faith in the Lord as she name her firstborn “Cain” (which means “brought forth”), saying “with the Lord’s help I have brought forth a man.”

Genesis 4:2 (NIV)
2  Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.

On verse 2:  Abel (“hebel” in Hebrew) means “breath”.  Especially considering that his life was cut short, Abel’s name reminds me of Psalm 144:4, which says “Man is like a breath (hebel); his days are like a fleeting shadow”.  To me it’s a reminder that we have no control over the day of our birth and very little control over the day of our death, but what is up to us is how we live in that hyphen between the day of our birth and the day of our death.  No matter how long or short our days on earth, like Abel may we live each day giving our best to God.  When we do, it’s a life worth living, no matter how long or short it ends up being.

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Sin Creates Struggle, But God’s Love Makes Living Possible Again

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 3:1-12.  Let’s go!

Genesis 3:13-19 (NIV)
13  Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14  So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
15  And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
16  To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
17  To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
18  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
19  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

On verses 13-19:  What was the result of the man and woman giving into the serpent’s temptation?  Everything that used to be easy is now a great struggle:

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The Pursuing Love of God

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 3:1-12.  Let’s go!

Genesis 3:1 (NIV)
1  Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

On verse 1:  It is important to be aware of Satan’s tactics and the ways he wants to lead us astray.  That way you can guard yourself against them.  We see one tactic of Satan here in this verse: Satan likes to try to confuse us about what God actually said and what God actually requires.

Genesis 3:2-5 (NIV)
2  The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
3  but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'”
4  “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman.
5  “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

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Breath of Life

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 2:1-14.  Let’s go!

Genesis 2:1-3 (NIV)
1  Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2  By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.
3  And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

On verses 1-3:  God did not rest on the seventh day because He was tired.  Rather He rested as an example for all of us, that we would rest from our work once a week so that we can be renewed, restored and refreshed (Exodus 20:8-11).  Often times it’s a lack of rest, a refusal to obey God’s command to rest, that causes problems for us physically, emotionally, spiritually and relationally.

Genesis 2:4-7 (NIV)
4  This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens—
5  and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground,
6  but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground–
7  the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

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What Does It Mean To Be Made in God’s Image?

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Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 1:20-31.  Let’s go!

Genesis 1:20-25 (NIV)
20  And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.”
21  So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
22  God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”
23  And there was evening, and there was morning–the fifth day.
24  And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so.
25  God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

On verses 20-25:  One of the recurring phrases in Genesis 1 is, “And God saw that it was good.” (v21, 25.  See also v4, 10, 12 and 18)  In other words, God took pleasure in His creative work. 

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