This week’s “Wednesday Word” is a summary of Dr. Wellum’s exposition of Genesis 12 from Sunday March 16, 2008.

In Noah, God preserved the human race; however, the idolatry of Babel would lead to the confusion of languages and the creation of many nations.  In Abraham, God plucks out one man from the now dispersed human race and purposes through him a means of blessing to all the nations.  Abraham is called by God to leave his idolatrous kindred and his homeland and go to the land which God would reveal to him (12:1).  It is here in the context of this calling that God first reveals his covenant with Abraham and assures him of his plans to make him a great nation, bless him, and make his name great that he might be a blessing to all the nations (12:2). 

This Abrahamic Covenant, initiated here in chapter 12, is picked up three more times throughout the course of Genesis.  Chapter 15 speaks of the inauguration of this covenant between God and Abraham where Abraham envisions a fiery torch passing through the pieces of the animals, signifying that it is God alone who will sustain the covenant.   In chapter 17, circumcision is established as the sign of the covenant between God and his people.  And finally, in chapter 22, Abraham is tested and found faithful, resulting in God’s recollection of the covenant, “‘And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.’”   

There is clear tension between the unconditional nature of the covenant’s inauguration in chapter 15 and its depiction as being based on Abraham’s obedience in chapter 22.  Is the covenant carried out on the basis of God’s faithfulness alone, or is the covenant’s future subject to the level of obedience of those who find themselves within it?  Abraham, together with the rest of Israel’s most faithful, though they will have much success within the covenant, ultimately will fall short of God’s standard for obedience.  Clearly, then, the only hope for God’s promise to Abraham is that it is sustained and upheld by God alone.   However, the need for obedience still remains.  How then will God justly keep his word? 

The pattern of disobedience will remain unbroken until the arrival of the one man, Jesus Christ, who will obey on behalf of all those who find their faith in him.   In Jesus Christ, God passes through the animal pieces and upholds his covenant with Abraham.  Only those who find themselves united with this perfectly obedient son will receive the blessings promised to Abraham.
 
“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (1 Cor 1:20).

Audio from this week’s lesson: Genesis 12.

~TDG

This week’s “Wednesday Word” is a summary of Dr. Wellum’s exposition of Genesis 9:9-9:29 from Sunday March 2, 2008.

This passage tells the story of a righteous man—Noah—who walked with God (6:9) in a perverse generation (6:1-7); who was delivered from divine judgment (7:1-8:12); and who was then commissioned, like Adam before him, to take dominion over the now fallen creation (8:13-9:7).

The first episode of the story reveals the extent and intensity with which the sin of Adam had become the sin of the majority of mankind: “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5, emphasis added). God’s pre-Fall, good and structured universe had become so distorted that even the “sons of God” (probably angels) had exceeded the boundaries of God’s structure, taking wives for themselves from “the daughters of men” (v. 2). Because of the state of His creation, the Lord determined to judge His creatures: “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals” (v. 7).

But, as is the case throughout the storyline of the Bible, God remembers mercy when He judges, and devises a plan in which a remnant of mankind and other of God’s creatures will be saved and in which man will be commissioned once again to rule creation as Adam was intended to do. In this instance, God’s judgment included devastating amounts of water (from both “the fountains of the deep” and “the floodgates of the sky” [7:11]), and God’s plan included the building of a large ark that served to preserve the remnant.

After the flood subsides, God covenants with Noah, stating, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man…and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done” (8:21). The Lord then commissions Noah, in a way reminiscent of Genesis 1:28-30, to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (9:1); also stating that all animals and plants are given “into your hand” (v. 2). By the end of chapter nine, however, one finds that Noah has not ruled well. In fact, he has allowed the fruit of the vine—one of the plants over which he was to have dominion—to rule over him instead (i.e., he got drunk).

As righteous as Noah might have been, he was definitely not the promised seed of Eve (Gen. 3:15) who would crush the head of the serpent, reverse the curse of sin, and rule properly over God’s created order. But while this particular story does not end well, it does serve—through God’s preservation of Noah’s family—to keep the larger story of God’s redemptive purposes going. In addition to this, a pattern is established in these chapters that will appear later on in the larger story of the Bible—a pattern in which people will once again be saved through a baptism of water; “not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21).

Audio from this week’s lesson: Genesis 6:9-9:29.

~DGG

Nearly all worldview clashes can be directly traced back to the issue to origins. For this reason, only a return to the very beginnings of humanity will bring to the fore the divinely intended purpose for our marriages in the face of an anti-Christian culture that has effectively robbed the term of its meaning.

The idea that both man and woman simultaneously share the image of God has previously been established in the opening chapter of Genesis (1:27). It is at this point in the creation narrative that Genesis 2 breaks-in and highlights the significance of the distinction in sexualities and the established order of the relationship between the two. Isolation is clearly not the purpose for which man has been created; rather, he is called to carry out the divine mandate in community and fellowship with another human being, one that Genesis 2 depicts is like him, but not like him, one who bears the image of God together with him, but complements the purpose of humanity in a way that he alone could not achieve on his own (2:18). The text carefully establishes the woman as being of the same essence of the man, and thus, does not relegate her existence to a manner of insignificance (2:21). However, there is a clear order that is to exist within the relationship as they carry out their purpose of ruling over creation. Man will do so as her leader, she will do so as his follower, and both will do so in submission to God. Only within God’s intended order do their differences align in a complementarity that prevents them from existing in antithesis. This leadership-followership structure is carefully articulated throughout the chapter: woman is “taken out of man” (2:24), named by man (2:24), and created for the purpose of being his “helper” (2:18).

The text is not clear as to when this first marriage actually takes place. Whether it was from the onset of woman’s creation or man’s acceptance of her in v. 23, it is clear from the text that present in these two first human beings exists the first marriage: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (2:24). They become a new unit within the community; more so, they now share the closest relationship possible amongst two human beings, closer than a father and a son or a mother and a daughter.

As the biblical storyline unfolds, this theme of marriage begins to be picked up as a way of describing God’s relationship to his people (Jer 2:2-3; Isa 62:5). For this reason, the New Testament very naturally appeals to this institution as a means of describing the relationship that exists between Christ and his church. (Eph 5:30-35, Rev 19:7-9). Marriage’s purpose, then, from the vantage point of all of Scripture, is to reflect this heavenly reality. It is not merely marriage that is displayed in the Gospel; but rather, it is the Gospel which is to be on display in our marriages. Just as the first man and woman were members of the same body after their union, so it is with Christ and his bride, the church.

Let us, therefore, appeal to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus as we interact with each other within our marriages, remembering we reflect the reality that exists between Christ and his bride, namely that he “gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:26-27).

Audio from this week’s lesson: Genesis 2:4-25.

~TDG