Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 11:10-32 (day three)

“They set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan.” 

A death within the family of Terah ushered in a restlessness that fueled a movement westward.  They didn’t go as far as they had envisioned; loss seemed to weigh them down, and the name of their stopping place reflected the memory of the brother and son whose death so deeply etched their lives with grief.  Wanderlust would continue to roil Abram’s life, and into that nomadic spirit God would speak.  Restlessness was not a bug, it was a feature through which God worked to establish a people and a promise.  Sometimes discontent isn’t ingratitude, but rather an honest question: Where is God?

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 11:1-9 (day three)

“Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

Is the Lord threatened by the race of men growing too powerful?   Well, the Bible tells us the Lord laughs and scoffs at the wicked, so…no.  Rather—once again—his mercy speaks, and his grace acts.  If men act independently from God in a grasp at godhood, all plans of their hearts will be evil, and all evil will be possible, yielding destruction and death.  The Lord checked this runaway volition.  The human race will survive despite our best attempts to decree, “Our will be done.”  Why?  Because God will not be thwarted.  In his mercy, God preserves his creation.  In his grace, God says to us, “Live!”

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 10 (day three)

“From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.”  Why is there something rather than nothing?  This question has intrigued and vexed men for centuries.  It has intrigued because of the mystery surrounding the origins of the universe.  It has vexed because a materialistic worldview cannot allow a why question.  The Bible deals with both the intrigue and the vexed-ness.  It reveals the mystery of origins: “In the beginning God created.”  And it anticipates the dead end of materialism: “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”  God’s word was there as the nations populated the earth.  It still speaks as the nations rage.  Explanations come and go, but revelation remains.  Bring your questions to the Bible.

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 9:1-17 (day three)  

“Spread out over the earth and multiply on it.”  It seems that more than mere sexual function lies at the heart of this mandate.  We are not only biological, but also intellectual and spiritual and social beings.  God did not say, “Love everybody”, but rather, “Love your neighbor”.  God did not say, “Honor a person on the other side of the world”, but rather, “Honor your father and your mother.”  We find it easy to love the idea of people, but hard to love actual people.  It’s how we live with people close by that will make ours a flourishing society—or not. God commands us to grow more than just the population.  Servanthood and reconciliation and patience and humility must also increase. And that only happens over short distances.

Re: Verse reading–Genesis 7:1-4, 17-24; 8:1-5, 13-16, 20-22 (day three)

“Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.”  The images of a smiling Noah in his floating petting zoo adorning the wallpaper of many a toddler’s room will fade away when we consider for a few moments the actual account of this family’s journey through the deluge.  For instance, the family members conceivably kept personal possessions during their voyage.  But the culture from which those possessions had come was gone.  They had not only lost everything, they had lost the frame of reference for everything.  This family could not rely on any of those markers of place.  The only thing that remained the same was a person: God.  They restarted the human race from that eternal reference point.  What can you and I do when we begin with God?

Re: Verse reading–Genesis 6 (day three) 

“The Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth.”  God apparently told Moses, who wrote down this account, that the thoughts and feelings which arose in his mind as he regarded the rebellion of the human race were what Moses—and all humankind—would understand best as regret.  Maybe the word “regret” is only the nearest approximation that is understandable to a finite mind.  Whatever kind of movement occurs in God’s mind in response to the lives of morally responsible creatures, it arises from the one reality of God’s person that does not deviate from its intended aim: love.  God will not turn aside from, and cannot be made to turn aside from, love.  In love he exists, he creates, he punishes, he redeems.  Your plans will stand only when they stand firmly within God’s sovereign love.

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 4:1-16; 25-26 (day three) 

“At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord.”  This new shining world of self-made men turned out to be neither new nor shining.  The old serpent had sold humanity a bill of goods, and the luster was already off.  And now, men began to wonder if God was still there.  Had he left them?  In the succeeding passages, Genesis tells of faltering, unsteady, tenuous voices seeking God’s whereabouts and wrestling with half-forgotten stories of the days when God walked with men.  Through all those generations, the Bible reveals that God is indeed still here, there, and everywhere, placing himself within reach of all who will address him.  God does not forget men, men forget God.  May we remember him.  Today.

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 3:8-24  (day three)

“He must not be allowed to…take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”  The man and woman had taken on knowledge that they could not manage, thereby condemning the human race to every kind of evil that results from power without wisdom.  And as punishment, God kicked them out of the garden.  But was it punishment?  Is this ejection from Eden rather God’s mercy in action, rescuing us from an almost unimaginable outcome?  Let’s do a thought experiment.  If in their state of acquaintance with evil, they had also taken on immortality, what kind of existence would that have been?  Living forever as beings subject to evil would have been living forever in hell.  This is not the end that God had determined for his creation.  God loves–while we were yet sinners.

Re:Verse reading–Genesis 3:1-7  (day three)

“The woman saw that the fruit of the tree was… desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”  Within God’s life, desire occupies its rightful place of service to the other aspects of his character.  In our sin-corrupted lives, by contrast, we have elevated desire to a position of authority.  This is a position it is incapable of occupying well.  It was never meant to serve in place of reason.  It is a poor substitute for thinking.  It is a disaster when confused with love.  Here’s the history of sin in two words: I want.  Here’s the path back to purity in eight words: Not what I want, but what you want.  Which of these do you find yourself expressing?