Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 21-23.

I always find the account of Hagar and Ishmael being sent away by Abraham interesting.  Reading it out of context makes it seem like Ishmael was a young boy at the time, but, if we read it in context, Ishmael was at least sixteen when this happened.  We know that Ishmael was fourteen when Isaac was born and this account took place when Isaac was weaned, which would have happened when Isaac was between two and five years old.  This completely destroys the idea that children were considered adult at younger ages than today.  Having said that I want to look at one other aspect of this story.  Sarah had felt that Hagar held her in contempt, which had led to Hagar running away in yesterday’s passage.  Only to have God tell her to return and submit to Sarah.  Now, Sarah felt that Ishmael mocked Isaac and would bully him, so she told Abraham to send Hagar and the boy away (I want to note that I am not saying that Sarah was wrong in either case, just that it was her perception of the sleight which led to her actions).  Abraham was hesitant to send Ishmael and Hagar away, but God told him that He would care for the two of them and be with them.  Abraham sent Ishmael and Hagar away at Sarah’s request in order to maintain peace in his household.  God confirmed to him that he was doing the right thing.  Then God provided for Hagar and Ishmael.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 19-20.

The first thing which really struck me when I read this was where it mentions that Lot was afraid to live in Zoar.  After that the passage mentions that at some point after that Lot’s daughters got him drunk so that he would impregnate them, since there were no men around them that they could marry.  My thought when I read that was that Lot became that crazy old man who lives “off the grid” out in the woods with his family and interacts with no one else.  The passage does not tell us why Lot was afraid to live in Zoar, but when you look at his experiences in Sodom you can hardly blame him.  He must have been suffering some pretty traumatic PTSD.  Let’s look at his story.  Shortly after he moved into Sodom, the city was conquered and he was taken captive, probably to be sold into slavery.  His uncle, Abram, rescued him.  Then, when he offered shelter to some men visiting Sodom, the men of Sodom attacked him.  The visitors he sheltered warned him to get out of Sodom because God was about to destroy it.  Then, as he fled from Sodom with his family, his wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.

But how did Lot get into this situation?  Back when Abram realized that he and Lot, and there flocks and herds, could not remain together, Abram gave Lot the choice of area.  Lot chose the easy, comfortable route by choosing the valley near Sodom and Gomorrah.  Additionally, Lot lived in Sodom for years, but failed to make any impact on the way his neighbors chose to live.  Perhaps I am being unfair to Lot, but his neighbors did not respect him for his morality.  Instead, they saw him as being judgmental.  The men engaged to marry his daughters thought he was joking when he told them that God was going to destroy the city.  Lot chose to take the “easy” way and paid the price.  The results Lot faced did not come from that one choice, but that one choice was indicative of a series of poor choices.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 16-18.

I am struggling with how to write out the lesson I see in the story of Hagar and Ishmael.  God had promised Abram that he would have a son and that through that son God would bless the entire world.  But Abram was 86 years old and Sarai had not given birth to a son.  So, she decided that Abram would need to have a son by another woman.  She chose to give him her slave, Hagar, to be his wife, to bear him a son.  This led to all sorts of problems, but God nevertheless chose to bless Ishmael, even though he was not part of God’s original plan.  Because Sarai tried to “fix” things so as to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram, she created problems for herself.  Because Abram did not stand firm on God’s promise and allowed Sarai to try her hand at “fixing” things, he had problems in his household which I am sure tore at his heart.  Because she became arrogant and looked at Sarai with contempt created problems for herself.  Nevertheless, God chose to bless Ishmael, even though he was never part of God’s plan to bless Abram.  It appears that God renamed Abram to Abraham because he had born Ishmael, thus, with the blessing which God was going to give Ishmael, Abram became the father of a multitude.  Thus we learn that we would be better off waiting on God, but that God will still bless us even when we move ahead of what He planned for us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 12-15.

This passage begins with God telling Abram that He will bless him.  I recently took the Kairos course from Simply Mobilizing, which endeavors to inculcate a dedication to missions in all members of Christ’s Church.  One of the foundational points it references is this blessing which God gave to Abram.  God tells Abram the following, “…I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  The point they made is that God blessed Abram so that he could be a blessing to others.  The same is true of us.  The purpose of every blessing which God gives us is so that we might be a blessing for others.  When I started writing I planned to write about this and about the end of the passage where God made a covenant with Abram, but wasn’t sure what I was going to write.  When God made the covenant with Abram He told him that his descendants would be sojourners in a land which was not there and would come back to the land which God promised Abram for his descendants, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”  Interestingly, the name of the course which made me notice that Abram was blessed in order to be a blessing to others was “Kairos”.  Kairos is the Greek word which means “the critical time”.  The kairos is the proper time for action.  So, God was telling Abram that his descendants would come back to the Land of Canaan and conquer it at the proper time, at the time when the wickedness of the people currently living in the land could no longer be overlooked.  Reading this in the context of Abram, and his descendants, being blessed so that they could bless others, God was promising Abram that his descendants would conquer the land when they could bring the greatest blessing to those living in the land who were not wicked.  In the same way, God blesses us at the time and place where we can bless others.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 8-11.

Since I had noted that in the Creation accounts it said that God had given only plants for people to eat, I want to note that here in the Flood account God gives mankind everything else as food as well.  This suggests to me that in the perfect world, humans would be strictly vegetarian, but since we do not live in such a world, God has given us meat to eat.  Before telling Noah and his sons that He was giving them all living things as food for them, God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.  What I had never noticed before is what the text says regarding why the people of Babel built their tower.  They chose to build the tower to make a name for themselves, “lest they be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”  God did not divide the languages because the people of Babel chose to build a tower which would reach to heavens.  He did so because they were avoiding obeying His command to fill the whole earth.  This tells us something about how God works with us.  A similar thing happens with Christians when we fail to truly fulfill the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  In fact, the Great Commission is a follow up to the command which God gave Noah and his sons.  They were told to fill the earth.  We are told to make disciples of all nations.  We are to fill the earth with disciples of Jesus.  If we become settled in our groups and stop reaching out to the unsaved, God will disrupt us.  He may do so by creating division within our group so that we spread out.  He may do so by introducing persecution against us so that we scatter.  He may use another mechanism to cause us to spread His word.  It is less painful if we do so on our own initiative.  The Great Commission is not optional for those who follow Christ.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 4-7.

I find it interesting that Cain’s first son was named Enoch.  We normally think of Enoch as the father of Methuselah, and as the man who walked with God and then was not because God took him.  We tend to overlook the other Enoch, Cain’s son.  I actually find it interesting that the account spends so much time telling us about the descendants of Cain and their accomplishments.  It makes me wonder if perhaps when the Flood account says that every one except those on Noah’s Ark were wiped out it was hyperbolic and not intended to be taken literally.  It was only after I wrote this that I realized that we have two Lamech’s as well.  One of them was Noah’s father.  The other was a descendant of Cain, who said that he had killed a young man who had attacked him.  Cain’s descendant Lamech made the claim that if the revenge on anyone who struck down Cain for murdering his brother was seven-fold, then the revenge on anyone who struck him down would be seventy-seven fold.  I am not quite sure what we should make of this claim by Lamech being included here.  Perhaps it represents the way in which seeking revenge for wrongs people suffered got out of hand.  This provides us with a contrast to the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 1-3.
I am switching to the English Standard Version(ESV) this year.  The main reason for making this change is that I have been using the New International Version(NIV) for multiple years now and I think that seeing the different translation choices of the ESV will cause me to think about verses that I am starting to take for granted.

I love starting the year off with the Creation Story.  People often read these three chapters as one story, viewing chapter two verse four to the end of chapter three as being a continuation of what came before.  However, as I read this passage, Chapter one verse one through chapter two verse three are a self-contained story which describes that God created the Universe and everything in it.  It does not tell us how God created, just that He did so.  The only aspect of this account which pushes towards a Young Earth view (the idea that the earth’s age should be counted in thousands of years rather than in billions of years) is that it suggests that all living creatures were originally created as pure vegetarians.  The point of this story is that God created the physical world and it was good.  The physical world is not a manifestation of evil.

The second story begins in chapter two verse four, continuing to the end of chapter two.  This story is not a sequel to the first story, taking place after the first story ended.  Rather, it is a related story about the creation of mankind.  The point of this story is that man and woman are made to be partners, to work together to do God’s work.  It sets up the family unit as the basis for all social structures.

Finally, chapter three is the third story.  This story is a sequel to the second story, taking up where that story leaves off.  It recounts how mankind lost its relationship with God.  Many people read this and blame the woman for eating the fruit.  In fact, Adam himself did so in this story.  However, if you read it closely you see that Adam had equal responsibility with Eve for choosing to eat the fruit.  While the serpent directed its argument to Eve, and it was Eve who first accepted those arguments, the passage tells us that Adam was right there with her.  He could have, and should have, interjected to question the serpent’s attempt to convince Eve to break God’s command.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 48-50.

I am going to touch on a few things today.  Perhaps I will try to tie my thoughts on them together, but I do not think that I will succeed.  When Joseph brought his two sons to his father Jacob, Jacob made some statements which demonstrated his trust that God would keep His promises.  As part of his blessings on his grandsons, Joseph’s sons, he gives us a message about how we can keep our faith.  As he began speaking to Joseph and his sons, he repeated the promise which God had made to him, and to his descendants, a promise which God had previously made to Abraham and Isaac.  At the end of his blessings on Joseph’s sons, he told Joseph the following, “I am about to die, but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your fathers.”  The translators’ notes tell us that the “you” and “yours” in that quote were plural in Hebrew, which means that Jacob was talking about Joseph and his brothers (and their descendants).  In the middle of this discussion, Jacob says something which is a message for Joseph about why he should trust God’s promises.  Jacob tells Joseph, “I never expected to see your face again, and now God has allowed me to see your children too.”  When he says that Jacob is giving an example of where God had previously done a good for him that God had not even promised, so Joseph can have faith that God will do that which He had promised to Jacob.  When we struggle with our faith, we should remind ourselves about all of the good which God has already done for us.  Actually, we should regularly remind ourselves of the good which God has done for us.  As we do so, our faith will be strengthened.

I was going to write a bit about Jacob’s prophecy concerning his sons, but I am going to skip over that because I want to wrap up with what Joseph said to his brothers after Jacob’s death.  After Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid that now Joseph would extract his revenge for what they had done to them.  When his brothers threw themselves upon his mercy, Joseph told them not to be ridiculous.  He would not put himself in the place of God.  While his brothers had intended him harm, the result of their action was greater good than he could have ever hoped for if they did not commit the crime against him (I was going to say “greater good than he have ever dreamed of, but then I realized that he HAD dreamed of it).  When we think that others have done us wrong, we should remember what Joseph said here.  They may have meant to harm us, but God will use it for our good.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 42-44.

The first thing which I thought about was how Jacob’s brothers had changed since they had sold him into slavery because their father spoiled him at their expense.  Jacob sent the ten brothers to Egypt, but kept Benjamin back because he was afraid that harm might come to him.  Jacob was willing to risk the ten brothers, but not Benjamin.  When they needed more food, Jacob still would not allow Benjamin to go, acknowledging that he was willing for Simeon to die rather than risk Benjamin (the passage suggests that Jacob believed that Simeon was already dead).  With all of that obvious favoritism, Reuben offered to sacrifice his own sons if he failed to protect Benjamin, and later Judah offered to be held personally accountable if anything should happen to Benjamin.  The brothers acknowledged to themselves and to each other that they had done wrong to Joseph.  In addition, they tried to make recompense for it in the way which they treated Benjamin.  They did not even think twice about going to Egypt to campaign on behalf of Benjamin.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 39-41.

Today’s passage starts with Joseph a slave, sold there by his brothers who thought of it as a way to kill him without getting blood on their hands.  Joseph finds himself in this terrible position, but he does not lose his faith in God, and does the best job he can serving the man who bought him.  As a result, Joseph rose up to as prominent position as possible for a slave.  When Potiphar’s wife attempted to seduce him, he could have viewed it as his just desserts (the account does not tell us, but Potiphar’s wife would almost certainly been highly attractive).  However, Joseph chose to remain faithful to God and his master by turning down her advances.  This led to him being placed in jail as an attempted rapist.  His situation was even worse than when he arrived in Egypt.  His faithfulness had resulted in things getting worse for him.  Nevertheless, Joseph did not lose his faith and he continued to do the work which God put in front of him.  And once again he rose up to the highest position he could gain as a prisoner, but still less than his position as a slave of Potiphar.  Then he gets a chance to get the ear of Pharaoh…and nothing comes of it.  In all of this Joseph remained faithful to God.  When Potiphar’s wife attempted to seduce him, after God allowed him to be ripped from his home and sold into slavery, Joseph says ,”How could I sin against God?”  When his fellow prisoners were troubled by dreams, Joseph did not claim an ability to interpret dreams, he said that God could.  After being forgotten for two years and summoned to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph said, “I cannot do it. But God will.”  Even after having to wait two years after thinking God was going to change his fortune for the better, Joseph did not try to seize glory for himself.  He just humbly carried out the task which God placed before him.  Let us follow his example: remain faithful even in times of trouble, and when opportunity comes, humbly act as God commands.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.