Month: January 2024

Week 1  Genesis 5

This chapter is a list of family names: Adam Seth Enosh Kenan Mahalel Jared Enoch Methuselah Lamech Noah. From Adam to Noah.
One (secondary) thing about the list is that the age of each man is given and one surprising thing is how old these guys were (Enoch was the youngest and he lived for 365 years!) There’s likely quite a few people who think these ages are a bunch of cockamamie exaggerations. I think that idea is based on the fact that the numbers don’t reflect contemporary life expectancy (for instance in 2023 in Canada it’s about 83 years). If the Rule is: If It Can’t Happen Now It Couldn’t Happen Then that means it’s impossible to live 900 years. Personally I think a smarter approach might be “I don’t know for sure”. Another one would be “I think it’s possible that some things could have been different then”.
Anyway Methuselah is the oldest man on the list: 969 years. The fact that Methuselah was only two generations before Noah got me thinking. So I ran a couple of numbers on Methuselah-Lamech-Noah.
Methuselah was 187 years old when Lamech was born.
Lamech was 182 years old when Noah was born.
So Methuselah was 369 years old (187 + 182) when Noah was born.
Noah was 600 years old at the time of the flood. Which means Methuselah was 969 years old (369 + 600) when the flood came.
And so that means Methuselah died in the Year of the Flood.

Note: don’t take my numbers to the bank. Check Genesis 5:25-32 and 7:5.

Week 1  Genesis 1-2

Reading the story of creation it’s almost impossible to not mull over contemporary questions – non-24-hour days & natural selection & geology & dinosaurs & like that.
But then a couple of years ago I started noticing the things bible writers mulled over about creation. And so far I haven’t found any of them that’re very curious about the big-bang or Neanderthals.
It’s other things about creation that catches their interest. Creation’s creator for instance. Jeremiah says: you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power. Nothing is too hard for you. Someone who can create the universe can do pretty much anything.
The creation also acts like a huge advertisement about the creator’s capacity: the heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship. The ingenuity of the created world’s creator is on permanent display. A masterful design means a masterful designer
Bible writers also connect creation to personal outcomes:
You have forgotten your creator, the one who put the stars in the sky. Will you remain in constant dread of human oppression? Technically being on the creator’s side makes antagonism manageable. I’ll be braver.
Not only that…I should be paying better attention. Should be more loyal and compliant: You created me. Now give me the sense to follow your commands.
Anyway what I’ve been consistently seeing is that when it comes to creation bible writers show almost zero interest in modern questions about origins.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 32:16 Psalm 19:1 Isaiah 51:13 Psalm 119:73 (NLT)

Week 1  Genesis 1

Was anything going on before Genesis 1:1?
Here’s list of a few things I found last year:
Lord…before you gave birth to the world…you are God
Your throne, O Lord, has stood from time immemorial. You yourself are from the everlasting past
Jesus’ prayer: Father, bring me into the glory we shared before the world began
Jesus’ prayer: Father…you loved me even before the world began
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ
God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see – such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world
God’s plan: from before the beginning of time was to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.
This truth gives (believers) confidence that they have eternal life, which God promised them before the world began
God chose (Christ) as your ransom long before the world began
The Lamb who was killed before the world was made.
Verses like these are a good reminder that Genesis accounts for the beginning of the material world. But it doesn’t account for very much about Pre-Material happenings – about events that were going on before our space and before our time.

Note: quotes from Psalm 90:1-2 Psalm 93:2 John 17:5 John 17:24 Ephesians 1:4 Colossians 1:16-17 2 Timothy 1:9 Titus 1:2 1 Peter 1:20 Revelation 13:8 (NLT). Credit & thx to (I think) Francis Schaeffer for some of these refs.

Week 1  Genesis 1

The bible’s story begins: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness. And the Spirit of God was hovering over its surface.
The footnote says the opener could read: in the beginning when God created… Or even: when God began to create…
But the alternate readings don’t make much of a difference. The main thing for me today is how the New Earth is described:
Empty
An unformed mass
Dark.
In the beginning the earth had no contents. No structure. No light.
I try to picture it. I don’t think of it like the dark side of the moon – a barren – but solid – surface. I visualize it more like the middle of the Pacific Ocean at night during a storm. Mostly water. Something…but almost nothing. A shapeless unstructured dark mass with nothing in or on it.
If someone described hell this way I guess I could believe it. It’s an eerie & terrible-sounding place. But it was physical & material. It was something at least. Not nothing.
One thing I wonder about this empty unstructured dark place is how long it stayed that way. A week? A thousand years? Five billion years?
I don’t really need to know the answer. But I’m curious. So I’m only two-verses into my bible-reading year and I get Example #1 of an unexplained curiosity.  Plus I’m reminded that not all my curiosities are likely going to get explained.

Note: quote from Genesis 1:1-2 (NLT)

Week 1  Psalm 1

The last verse of the psalm says: the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
It sounds pretty straightforward but I figure I could make it a bit simpler for myself. For instance:
“The way of righteous people leads to life
The way of evil people leads to death”
That seems like a clearer way to write up the basic principle. It’s nicely balanced. And it’s still a legitimate bible idea. But that’s not how David wrote it. He complicated – and unbalanced – it a bit by including the idea of the Watching-Lord:
The Lord watches over the way of the righteous
But the way of the wicked will perish.
I could link-up David’s ideas with mine:
The Lord watches over the way of the righteous
The way of righteous people leads to life
The Lord also watches over the way of wicked people
The way of the wicked will perish.
But whatever modifying I could do with it I’m still getting reminded that the psalms are both nice & simple and not so nice & simple.
I’m glad about their nice simplicities but don’t want to be fooled into thinking that’s all there are.
I think of the psalms as a primer…but they’re a primer for Living Like a Sage.
The psalms are both what they are on the surface and also a little more than that in the sub-surface.

Note: quote from Psalm 1:6 (NIV)