Back to Genesis!

Today is Thursday, August 13, 2009, and I, like President Obama, feel a teachable moment coming on.

In January, our class, the Truth Seekers, started a verse-by-verse study through the book of Genesis. As teacher of these classes, this has been an amazing journey thus far, one that I count myself to be both humbled by and privileged to lead. Last week we finished Chapter 15 and I believe my class members would agree that the depth, breadth, and awesomeness of God and His revelation of Himself throughout these weeks and months have moved us all. Some might immediately conclude: Duh, it is God’s Word, after all, right? That is so true but when you slow down, take your time, and read it again, for the first time, God’s Sovereign power in providing these insights take our collective breath away. We know that Genesis is the foundation book of all of God’s revelation. We know that if it is in any way inaccurate then we have no basis for the rest of the Scriptures, therefore, it is thrilling to see how God’s plan and purpose was established in Creation as recorded in Genesis and interwoven into His working within His created human family as recorded in the rest of the Scriptures, and as experienced in the lives of those who believe.

This study has been provocative in many ways. It speaks to me a message that says we must promote the study of God’s Word. We are very much living in that day the Apostle Paul warned his young protégé to be watching for. It would be a time when people would no longer endure sound teaching but instead they would find teachers who would give them a steady diet of soothing nonsense that would please their senses while damning their souls to hell. (See 2 Timothy, Chapter 4) I am aware that many today have as their desired goal to rescue modern Christianity from the Bible thumpers. Those who alienate and challenge people by preaching the truth in love, but always the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, are no longer welcome within the community that is supposedly attune to what people want to hear today. In the pursuit of trying to excuse and apologize for God’s clear teachings they have rescued the lost, sadly, away from the Only Source by which they can be saved. I ask you: How smart is that?

Genesis tells us that Abram (later to be called Abraham) believed in the Lord and his faith/belief was accounted unto him by the Lord as righteousness. How do we know what it means to have saving faith? We go back to Genesis and we study the life and times of Abraham, that’s how. Because Abraham’s faith becomes the model for all believers at all times according to the New Testament as found in the inspired books penned by the Apostle Paul to the Romans, the Galatians, the anonymously written book of Hebrews and the Epistles of the Apostle Peter. That’s right. One man who lived all the way back to Genesis is the model of what it means to have believing faith. His life also proves that we can do nothing except to respond to God’s revelation of Himself and then He is the one who records us once and for all as being righteous. We can’t earn it. We can’t buy it. We can’t get it through out parents. It is an exercise of believing faith in God’s revealed truth that causes us to be made right with Him. Abraham never was perfect, even after God declared him to be righteous. Hello? What can we say to these things found in Genesis? What a mighty God we serve! Amen and Amen. I implore us all to find a place to worship and fellowship with other believers where they do not dumb down the truth or change it in any way whatsoever. Why? Because truth is what should change us, not the other way round! …..More later.