To Read: Genesis 11

“now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’  They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’” (Gen. 11:1-34)

 In Genesis 9, God promised Noah to never again destroy all life on earth by floodwaters. Like a warrior who hangs his bow over the mantelpiece to signal the end of his warring, so God hangs a rainbow over the earth to remember never again to totally destroy life on earth. How will God keep such a promise seeing that the human heart is incurably warlike?  The ferocity and magnitude of weaponry will inevitably increase. How will the Lord hinder their use? How will God keep men from killing each other off completely once they devise the way to do so? Genesis 11 discloses the strategy devised in heaven to preserve life on earth. That strategy is worldwide confusion.   

The Tower of Babel was built in order to assault heaven and cast down Christ. The tower was the plan devised in the minds of men to enthrone our race on high. “The plans of the mind belong to a man but the Lord directs his steps.” God cursed the plans of man by causing a cacophony of voices to rise from the earth instead of a tower. In Jesus Christ, God reversed the curse. In the preaching of Christ, people from every tribe and tongue and nation have heard the same message of salvation. Those who have heard count themselves as brothers and sisters of all those of like faith, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances in life.  

To Read: Genesis 12

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’”

(Gen. 12:1-3) 

The New Testament preachers proclaimed that God has kept his promise. The promise unites the Bible from Genesis 12 to Revelation 22. The promise is the inner meaning of history. Those who believe the promise have insider knowledge that makes sense of otherwise seemingly senseless events.  It is the promise that directs events to their appointed end.   

Genesis 12:1-3 begins the Bible story. Chapters 1-11 of Genesis are the prologue.  A prologue prepares the reader to understand the authors’ intent in the pages that follow. The first 11 chapters ready us to hear the story of the God who created a world that rebelled against his will and in the end was judged worthy of being drowned as visible evidence of the doom that waited them in the presence of the judge of all the earth. One man and his family escaped the deluge. Because he alone brought fallen human nature into the world that now is, Noah might as well be another Adam. The prologue closes by revealing how God by his grace acted to keep us from the ever-present danger of self-destruction. 

God promised Abraham that by his almighty power he would make his descendants into a great nation able to bless all the nations on earth.

To Read: Genesis 13

 “Lot looked up and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, toward Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.)  (Gen. 13:10)

Abram and Lot were very different men. The strife between their herdsmen became the occasion that exposed an estrangement much deeper than grazing rights and water rights. Whether Abram meant to or not, by offering his nephew to choose first where he would settle, the father of the faithful and the friend of God got to see what was in the heart of his brother’s son. What he saw was a “me first” spirit. Lot did what a “me first” mindset does, he chose what was best for himself. And he chose based on how things appeared to him. He chose for himself and he chose by sight. Abram, on the other hand, willingly took the left-overs.

In Genesis 12, we saw that Abram was humbled in Egypt. We have no evidence that Abram should have fled to Egypt in the first place. God led him to the promised land where he pitched his tent between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. Famine, not God, led him to go for help to Egypt. That decision was nothing but trouble for Abram and the Egyptians both. When we flee because of the famines in our lives, the remedy is to go back to where the Lord directed us to go. In Genesis 13, Abram is back “to the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had been earlier and where he had first built an altar. There (he) called on the name of the Lord.” (13:3,4)

To Read: Genesis 14

“One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew…” (Gen. 14:13)

This is the only time Abram, whose name will be changed to Abraham, is called the Hebrew. It is not a national name since as yet there was not yet a nation. It is a nickname. Puritan was a nickname for those who planted America in an effort to be instruments in the hand of God to purify England. They came here to be a new England. It was not unlike the designation “aboriginal” for native Australians. Abram was a foreigner in Canaan. He was a man “from the other side.” He was known as the man who had come, ”across the water.” Perhaps it came from his crossing the Jordan or even more likely crossing the great river Euphrates. This reality of being a foreigner will be true of all Abram’s spiritual descendants until the end of time.

Christians know they have crossed over into an invisible land they never knew before. Jimmy sought me out on Christmas day to tell me that at Thanksgiving time something profound happened to him. His entire upbringing at home, his teaching in the Sunday School and my preaching from the pulpit became real to him. The Bible began to speak to him personally. Paul described Jimmy’s experience when he wrote to the Colossians. “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (1:13)  

To Read: Genesis 15

“Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6) 

Genesis 15:6 bursts into the Bible story like an alien spacecraft might burst into our atmosphere out of another world. Genesis is about planting seeds. Revelation is about fruits and flowers. In Genesis, we are barely getting to know that there is a God and how he began his work. Then suddenly only 15 chapters into this, the book of beginnings, we learn that Abram leaned his full weight on the Lord. Complete trust is not easy for any human being, even Abram. Yet from this point on the Bible is about faith as it developes in Abram’s family line. 

As I grow older, I do not trust my balance to tie my shoes standing up unless I lean on something solid. The word translated “believed” literally means to steady oneself by leaning on something.” Abram leaned on the Lord and the Lord accounted that as righteousness. The faith of Abram was not in a promise as much as it was in the person who made the promise. That person has now appeared in flesh on the earth, his name is Jesus Christ.  

Righteousness is agreement with God’s will. Faith is righteousness in the extreme because it conforms us to God’s supreme will for humankind. Faith in Christ unites us to the one in whom God’s righteousness is perfect. Faith is therefore leaning on Christ and not on our own understanding. What are you leaning on?    

Saturday:  Genesis 16 

Sunday:  Genesis 17

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