genesis 12-15

--personal thoughts--

francis chan, passionate communicator at this conference we're attending, encouraged my heart to the core last night about reading the bible. he just passionately admonished us to read the Word...to study it. to take it literally...to go and live it out. see his talk at www.live.268generation.com. (just checked/i hope it will be available soon...then it will be up for 24 hrs. i think it will be "session four"...go to passion 2012-in red letters, then to live stream-in green) so excited to be reading the bible everyday!

i'm planning to come back to these early chapters in genesis toward the end of the week with thoughts from my study. but for today, i'm going to read and write about the back-story of genesis.

--old testament understanding--

in the bible there are these special people with whom God had special relations...as we read about noah, it was so evident why he was special. he was one in an evil day who desired God/sought after Him...and did not want to do evil. he was obedient to God's instruction, and his life and family were sustained.

abram was special as well. obedient to God's instruction. obedient to follow Him. he traveled away from his family's country and believed that God would bless him and that a nation would be born out of his obedience and that they would be given land on the earth to sustain them.

this twelfth chapter of genesis starts a section of the pentateuch referred to as the patriarchal history. abram's family and his story fill the remaining 38 chapters of genesis with narrative. this is further divided into sections about different characters: abraham (who is abram with a name-change), jacob, joseph...and genealogical records of ishmael and esau.

genesis gives back-story to all of history...from creation...to the flood account...to the record of the patriarch of the jewish peoples. most important in this is the idea that God has acted in history...reaching down to a man/to a people with a covenant that He established with abraham (more on that covenant later in the week)...to be involved in the plight of man and to establish them and to save them from sin that separates them from Him.

--personal thoughts--

i have an amaaaaaazing children's book called the Jesus storybook bible. written as an account of the old and new testaments...it continually points to Jesus (even in all of the old testament narratives/stories)...who will be born as a man to live and to die for us...to save us from sin and to reconnect us with Him. as we study the old testament, everything will point to Jesus like this. all of history...

here we are 2000+ years after Jesus walked the earth...on the other side of God's plan to redeem sin that has stained His creation. connection with Jesus is personal today...He lived and died and was resurrected so that we could be connected with God.