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Week 1 Genesis

Genesis twenty is a stand-alone story, the story of Abimelech king of Gerar.
When Abraham’s company arrived in his territory Abimelech: went and took Sarah.
Just like that.
I’m not sure how Bronze-Age guys negotiated these kinds of arrangements but you get the feeling that Abimelech had the power to get whatever he wanted.
So the Lord used the medium of a dream and told Abimelech: you are a dead man because of the woman you have taken.
Abimelech must have sensed what he was up against because he started back-tracking immediately – I’m innocent! I’m blameless! I didn’t have sexual intercourse yet!
And the Lord tells him: I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her.
Which meant two things were happening at once. One, for some reason Abimelech had decided not to have sexual intercourse with Sarah, and two, the Lord had intervened to prevent the king from having sexual intercourse with Sarah.
So who decided? It’s a bit of a mystery how that works. Doesn’t seem compatible with regular decision-making.
In this story Abimelech made – as far as he was concerned – a personal sexual decision, but as free as it seemed it wasn’t independent of the Lord, who acted as a kind of prevention-ensuring intervener.

Note: quotes from Genesis 20:2, 3, 6 (NASB)

Week 1 Genesis

A couple of days ago I read the short bio of Enoch.
Today I read the short bio of Melchizedek.
Enoch is four verses, Melchizedek three.
Halfway through Genesis fourteen Melchizedek suddenly materializes and meets Abraham as he headed home.
Melchizedek wasn’t a phantom. He was the king of Salem. I checked a word book to see if Salem had even been mentioned before chapter fourteen. It hadn’t. I looked at my bible map and it showed the city of Salem about 25 kilometres west of the north-end of the Dead Sea. In brackets below Salem it said Jerusalem. I wasn’t sure if that was some cartographic guessing. Maybe, maybe not. Either way Melchizedek is still a middle-eastern man of mystery.
In my word book I see his name is only mentioned twice in the OT. Genesis says that: he was priest of God Most High. This is the first time the word priest appears in the bible. I guess there were probably all kinds of religious agents doing what they did. I don’t know how many were acting for God Most High the Creator of heaven and earth but that’s whose camp Melchizedek was in.
Melchizedek ghosts in and just as fast ghosts out of Genesis. And even though I think the bible sometimes goes on too long in some stories his isn’t one of them.

Note: quotes from Genesis 14:18, 19 (NIV). Melchizedek is mentioned eight other times in the NT – all in book of Hebrews.

Week 1 Genesis

The Noah story takes up a big chunk of the first section in Genesis. I wondered how big so I tallied Genesis 1-11 and came up with an estimate of 289-verses. Of the 289 129 were about Noah. Meaning Noah got the lion’s share of those chapters – almost 45% . That’s way more than any other story; twice as much as the creation of the whole world story.
So Noah & the Flood is long. It’s also kind of bleak; sobering; frightening.
One thing I saw right at the beginning – almost like an explanatory intro – was this: the Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
I guess lots of people read the Flood as a story of a god who’s ruthless tyrannical unfeeling destructive hateful murderous genocidal – like that. So the God-with-the-pain-filled-heart bumps up against that idea. The God-with-the-pain-filled-heart is a part of the mix. Which reminds me that while I’m reading through I need to keep all my pieces in play. I don’t know how many rules there are for reading through but that’s gotta be one of them: you don’t get to keep or discard what you want.
Which is one thing that makes reading through a bit more demanding than it already is.

Note: quote from Genesis 6:5-6 (NIV)

Week 1 Genesis

One plan for reading through the bible is called the Reading Through Except-For Plan. The RTE-F Plan allows me to make the content-exclusions of my choice. For example I might decide to skip long prophetic passages, histories of terrible people, pointless legal-ceremonial detail, tedious or demanding chapters. I might decide to skip name lists.
All of Genesis five is a name list and if I was excluding name lists I would leap-frog five and go right into chapter six.
Chapter five lists people in Adam’s family (the Nutshell Version: Adam Seth Enosh Kenan Mahalalel Jared Enoch Methuselah Lamech Noah).
The first and last names are familiar. But it’s Enoch who really stands out in this list: after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years…Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.
No other man in the list is said to have walked with God. The text doesn’t say the others didn’t, but it doesn’t say they did either. But Enoch walked with God.
When you start reading through it’s easy to have the sense of being in for a 1334-page grind – like observing evolution in real time – before landing on NT shores. But here I’m just over a hundred verses in, long before the Lord or prophets or kings or Moses or Abraham or the flood and I find an antiquity-guy who had what he needed to walk with God.

Note: quote from Genesis 5:22-24 (NIV)

Week 1 Genesis

One of the bible-reader’s dilemmas is that the bible is both too-long and not-long-enough.
Genesis four is an example of not-long-enough.
In chapter two Adam and Eve have a pretty good relationship with the Lord. Then in three the serpent appears, forms a short deceptive and killing friendship with A&E and then disappears, leaving A&E not having a pretty good relationship with the Lord anymore. That story ends with the couple heading east out of Eden.
Then between Genesis 3:24 and Genesis 4:1 there’s a half-inch of white space that could have very helpfully been filled with extra content.
But instead chapter four just picks up the story of Cain and Abel as young men.
Even though nothing is said it’s pretty clear the boys had learned something from A&E.
They obviously knew about giving an offering to the Lord.
And they likely also had some sense that some certain offerings were basically useless.
You definitely get the feeling that Cain wasn’t learning something brand new when the Lord spoke to him: why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.
But the bible doesn’t spell everything out exactly and totally.
If I’m a bible reader I have to dope some things out for myself.

Note: quote from Genesis 4:7 (NIV)

Week 1 Genesis

Somewhere out in the eastern regions of the aboriginal world the Lord set up a special place for Adam & Eve. It was a comprehensive self-contained environment that had everything a physically, mentally and emotionally perfect couple needed. A perfect place for A&E. Until one day evil glided into the garden.
Eden wasn’t set up like an old Russian-style gulag where no one could come or go. A&E were free people, accessible, available people, and they were confronted one day by a smooth assassin who was already a credentialed evil-doer and who wanted to turn the perfect couple.
Could the Lord have serpent-proofed the garden? For sure. And the fact that he didn’t put the burden of serpent-proofing on A&E. They had the chance to serpent-proof themselves.
Right at the very beginning of the bible there’s this simple story of two contending sides that are shaping up.
The Lord says don’t do x; and Satan says go ahead and do x.
Or the Lord says do y; and Satan says don’t do y.
It’s one of the basic up-front questions the bible faces me-the-bible-reader with: is the Lord telling me the truth or is the Lord lying?
However much more complicated it gets it starts there.
The Lord tells the truth…
The Lord’s a liar…
The reader gets to choose.

Week 52

Last big decision for 2020: start to read through the bible tomorrow.
My plan is to go through in front-to-back order and read about one-hundred chapters per month – plus one psalm per day.
Reading through means reading through the OT. I guess some people disregard the OT since its irrelevant outlandish inapplicable and basically squandering time and energy.
I thought about that. Thought about last January-August in the OT. Thought about some of the things I’d miss if I skipped the OT.
Adam & Eve Cain & Abel Noah Job the Tower of Babel Abraham & Sarah Hagar & Ishmael Sodom & Gomorrah Isaac & Rebecca Jacob Esau Judah Joseph Egypt Pharaoh the Plagues Moses Sinai the Ten Commandments the Tabernacle the Wilderness Nadab & Abihu the Twelve Spies Korah-Dathan-Abiram Balaam Rahab Joshua Caleb Jericho Achan the Promised Land Deborah-Barak Gideon Samson Ruth Hannah Samuel Eli Saul Jonathan David Goliath Abigail & Nabal, Bathsheba Absalom Solomon the Temple Rehoboam-Jeroboam the Divided Kingdom Elijah Ahab Naboth Micaiah Elisha Naaman Joash Sennacherib the Rabshakeh Assyria & Israel Manasseh Jonah Isaiah Jeremiah Hezekiah Babylon & Judah Ezekiel Daniel Shadrach-Meshach-Abednego Persia Esther Ezra Nehemiah the Wisdom books.
It’s quite a bit to miss.
About a month ago I was reading psalm 105 and verse four said: search for the Lord…and keep on searching. I didn’t take that as a MHJ-has-to-read-the-OT directive. But keep-on-searching makes better sense to me than just-quit-searching.

Week 52

I finished reading Revelation today.
I started the year reading the Creation Story: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Then today I saw this: and I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away.
What that sounds like is that everything – all of the OT, and all of the NT, and all of what has happened since the NT up to today, and then going forward from today on into the indefinite future – that everything so far takes place in the first earth, the old earth.
The first earth started out good and stayed good for two chapters – about fifty-six verses – but then changed into an earth that wasn’t as good any more.
The whole story of the bible this year from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20 has been the description of life on our second-class first earth, our internally busted-up world, our not-as-good-as-it-had-been earth. A temporary space that’s a kind of place-holder for a new earth to come.
It’s hard to say whether the first earth will be totally vaporized and that the Lord will create a second earth from scratch or whether the first earth will be renovated in a top-to-bottom way. But for the person who believes there will be a future in heaven it sounds like at least a part of that will include a new earth.

Note: quotes from Genesis 1:1 & Revelation 21:1 (NASB & NLT).

Week 52 Revelation

Religious Christmas cards show Mary & Joseph travelling on a cold-winter’s-night. The-stars-in-the-bright-sky are looking down at the baby Jesus. The cattle-are-lowing, the shepherds worshipful. All-is-calm. All-is-bright. A gospel’s Christmas.
Close to the end of the NT there’s a parallel Christmas narrative. It’s a bigger-than-normal Christmas story. John tells it this way:
I saw a woman clothed with sun, with moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant, and she cried out in the pain of labour as she awaited her delivery.
Suddenly, I witnessed in heaven another significant event. I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with seven crowns on his heads. His tail dragged down one-third of the stars which he threw to the earth. He stood before the woman as she was about to give birth to her child, ready to devour the baby as soon as it was born.
She gave birth to a boy who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And the child was snatched away from the dragon and was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness.
This is John’s Big Happenings Christmas Story.
Things might be pretty quiet in the little-town-of-Bethlehem but all hell has broken loose in the heavenlies.

Note: quote from Revelation 12:1-6 (NLT)

Week 52 Revelation

Chapters two-three are a kind of Church Quality Assessment Report that John wrote to the seven congregations of Revelation.
To clarify things for myself I drew up a table with three columns: Church – Pros – Cons. Below I had seven rows – one for each church.
I ended up with a cumulated listing of the Pros and the Cons of the seven churches.
On the Pro-side John commended churches for things like this: they worked hard for the Lord, had patience & endurance, didn’t tolerate evil, assessed what they heard to see if it was true, suffered patiently, hated immorality, experienced opposition-slander-imprisonment-persecution but stayed loyal to the Lord, loved each other, had faith, helped other people, were obedient to the Lord, and persevered in their faith. This lists pretty much all the Pros. No church had all of them; each church got at least one (except Laodicea which got none).
The Con-side was pretty sobering. John criticized churches for: not loving the Lord, not loving each other, being idolaters, practicing immorality, accepting bad teaching and believing it, doing evil things, being confident because of their money, being indifferent in their faith, and not being diligent. Smyrna and Philadelphia weren’t criticized at all. Laodicea was described as a dead church.
These lists seem like a pretty useful place to start thinking about the church I attend, its pros & cons.
And since I go to the church, I guess that means thinking about me.