The Thread - Lessons from בראשית

God is alive. The creator of the universe, the all-knowing/all-powerful/always-present God, the One who’s Name is above all names, the untamed Lion, is living and active in our lives today. This is the God that is so full of existence that He can give existence away, can cause things to be, breathe life into the dust. He is truly beyond any description. You cannot have a good description of anything so vague. He is a God that cannot be proved but Who’s evidence is everywhere in our everyday lives. God is alive and God is good.

In response to God being God, man is man, and to be man is to be in sin. Mankind is dark. Genesis shows us this in the origins of sin (aka the “Fall of Man”) in chapter 3, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.” (KJV 3:6). Chapter 4 (the first recorded murder), “…and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” (4:8) and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapter 19, “And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? Son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.” (19:12-13). Mankind became so evil that God regretted even creating human beings, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” (6:5-7). It is apparent from Genesis that man is in need of a savior.

However God, being who He is, is at work behind all that is going on. It isn’t as apparent when you focus on individual chapters. In fact God seems crazy in some parts of the story, but when you take a step back and look at Genesis as a whole, it’s clear that God was present the whole time and He knew what He was doing. The Call of Abraham in Genesis 12 comes right after the Tower of Babel in chapter 11 to contrast man’s way with God’s way. The tower symbolizes all of the proud human attempts to attain salvation or heaven by their own strength. The story shows how we try to use our own skill and reason to create our own heaven. To this day we haven’t stopped building towers. All human towers come crashing down sooner or later. We try to reach the sky but end up doing just the opposite. Our ways are folly but the Divine’s are true. The Messiah is the perfect example. Think of how ridiculous the call of Abraham seems to human eyes. Yet that is God’s battle plan against evil-to pick one man, human just like the rest of us, and send him wandering through the wilderness with nothing but a promise. This is the beginning of the miracle known as the Jewish people. Their survival, transformation, and accomplishments through persecution, slavery, and genocide violate every known law of history and sociology.

Consider just one incident in Joseph’s story (Genesis 37-51). If one Egyptian tailor had not messed up on the thread of Joseph’s cloak, it would not have come apart in the hands of Potifer’s wife, who was then able to wrongly accuse Joseph of attempted rape and get him imprisoned, where he met Pharaoh’s butler and baker and interpreted their dreams, which would later bring him to Pharaoh to interpret his dream and save Egypt from famine. The grain, from which Joseph saved by prophesizing about saved his family who had sold him into slavery, when they became angry when he foretold their coming to Egypt. Generations later Egypt has numerous healthy slaves; awaiting Moses’ liberation, which would eventually bring forth many years of wandering, oppression, and King David who’s direct descendant would be a Jewish, son of a carpenter named Jesus. Consequently, we owe our salvation to a thread. God has a plan and is working throughout human history.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). Providence is the obvious lesson from the long story of Joseph that can be applied to my life. Joseph explains it to his brothers in 50:20, “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” God writes straight with crooked lines. He used Satan, Judas, Pilate, and Caiaphas to crucify Christ and redeem the world. God has nothing but flawed instruments to work with and yet his symphonies are beyond anything we have ever conceived. God uses the weak, stupid, sinful, and flawed. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.-every one of them a spiritual failure and yet what makes them heroes is not their “great deeds” or their strength but their faith in the Almighty. Christ even continued to do the same with his disciples. They let God be God and had faith. Abraham believed that God would even bring Isaac back from the dead in Genesis 22.

A common misunderstanding about God in the Old Testament is that he is only a God of wrath. God is indeed a God of justice and punishment, but love is his motivation behind it all. Love is just as evident throughout Genesis as it is in the Gospel of John. We see the faith that Abraham has in his Creator, but we also see the faith the Creator has in His Abraham. The six days of creation are as if they were sung with love, like the Great Lion singing Narnia into existence. We are shown the love and care that went into creating those six days through six words, ”…God saw that is was good.”

Genesis ends with the chosen people in slavery, but it also ends with hope. No book is more severe and no book is more hopeful than the Bible, from Genesis on. God remains true. Genesis destroys our illusion of pride, if we let it. It is completely bountiful in Love Himself. You cannot read it without being changed, if you let it interpret you before you interpret it.