Get ready to start a journey…a journey through the pages of the Bible and the pages of your life.
Do you ever get tired of waiting on God? Waiting for a job that isn’t materializing. Waiting for recovery from an illness. Waiting for marriage with no prospect in sight. Waiting for a prodigal child to come back home. You’ve spent plenty of time in prayer crying out to God, but you are stalled.
To this point in our study of Genesis, God has made three covenants with his people: the covenant of Eden, the covenant with Adam, and the covenant with Noah, indicated by a rainbow in the sky. Today, we will consider another covenant called the covenant with Abraham or the Abrahamic covenant.
Today we are going to consider Genesis 13-14, where Moses provides an account of Abram rescuing his nephew Lot. I will summarize that story and focus on a very interesting encounter that Abram had with a priest and king named Melchizedek.
God’s call on Abram was radical. He was to leave everything familiar—his country, his extended family, and his father’s house. God’s call was a call of faith. God simply told Abram to go to “the land that I will show you.”
Today we will end the second section, with the account of God dealing with man’s pride. But before we get there, let’s wrap up Noah’s story. We know that after the flood, two truths continue. First, man is born in God’s image. Second, sin remains fixed in the human heart. After the flood, God said, “The intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21).
As you begin to understand that God is writing his story in you, one thing you will learn is that God always keeps his promises. Whatever he says, he will do. Sometimes God’s promises are given in the form of a covenant—an agreement between God and man.
There are two key threads of truth that run throughout the book of Genesis. The first thread is the powerful Person of God; the second thread is God’s personal and powerful work in our lives. Actually, these threads run from Genesis to Revelation. That’s why understanding Genesis is essential to understanding the entire Bible and essential to understanding how God is writing his story in you.
Today we consider Genesis 6:1-8, a passage of Scripture describing superhuman beings that precipitated wickedness on the earth’s inhabitants. The ensuing evil that invaded the earth resulted in God’s decision to reset mankind. The particulars of this passage have been undoubtedly debated, so let me point out the highlights.
In Genesis 4, we considered the first murder recorded in biblical history. Cain killed his brother Abel. Of course, this was devasting to Adam and Eve, and they knew that their sin was the foundation for the death of their son. In his timing, God graciously provided another son.
God created the heavens and the earth, and everything he created was “good.” Everything God made was conducive to life. Yahweh Elohim created man in his image and stooped down to breathe into Adam the breath of life. God placed Adam and Eve in a beautiful, bountiful garden with only one command. In Genesis 3, they listened to Satan’s lies and disobeyed God. Sin entered the world, and now life on earth is not the way it was meant to be.
When Satan approached Eve in the Garden of Eden, with Adam standing right by her side, he attacked God’s grace, God’s Person, and God’s Word. God graciously provided Adam and Eve with everything they could ever want or need.
Where does evil come from? Why are things so messed up on planet Earth? Why does sin impact me in a personal way? These are some of the questions we’ll start to answer in today’s study of Genesis 3:1-7. Let’s begin with an overview of Genesis.