The Journey Brought Forth "Genesis"

This blog series is focused on God’s word bringing people through their journeys in His intentional way that He has set in front of them and brings them through to His completion.

Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and it builds the foundational understanding of who God is, and who His people are in the beginning and with Him on the Earth before and after sin entered it.

In the beginning, God created, made, and allowed things to bring forth and to be brought forth then rested on the seventh Day. All of the things that exist were in and on the earth upon its foundation, and they were as God had them to be. When God had Adam in the Garden of Eden, He told him about the forbidden tree and told him the penalty of eating from it was to die he did. God is not a liar and what He says will surely come to pass just as He says it will. It may seem on the surface that Adam lived a long time and had sons and daughters after the day he ate the fruit, but was he truly alive is the question. What God said did occur, but could not be seen with natural eyes; because it was spiritual that God had spoken. This spiritual death entered the world, and every person that has come into it has been under the same curse since it began.

The next thing I’ll mention that God tells His people in this book is how evil the world became, and He warned Noah one hundred twenty years in advance. This warning gave Noah the opportunity to build the ark God instructed him to build and gather His family and the animals that God had chosen out of the world to continue life as He designed it. Neither the animals nor Noah and His family had done anything to earn life; because we know that all men have sinned; so, why them? That is one of the questions God answers as this journey continues.

After Noah, the people start to multiply greatly and think they can build a building to heaven; so, God confuses them by changing their language from one into many different ones so they could not communicate effectively and they were scattered over the land. The city they attempted to build the tall building in is called Babel, and it is the same city that Babylon is today. Throughout this blog series, Babylon will be referred to, and it is not necessarily the same geographic location, but it the same spiritual nation.

God told Abram, later known as Abraham, that His descendants would live in a foreign land and be afflicted for four hundred years, God would judge them, and finally, they would come out with great substance. It happened then, and God has the same plan for His people today even if they don’t understand what it means or what it looks like before they go through their process of humility.

The next thing is Abram being changed into Abraham and having two sons. One was from his wife’s helper and the other by His wife. Both of the children were born after the typical age of childbearing, and each was born in the order of time for God’s purpose as we will learn later in this series. Abraham was tempted by God to see if he were willing to offer the child God had given him as a sacrifice. Abraham was going to pass the temptation, and God intervened with a ram caught in a thicket. This is another point we will get to discuss later in this series.

Isaac had a son named Jacob, the one who takes the place which later had His name changed to Israel, the prince of God. This name change was given when he was transformed from a person who took advantage and outwitted his brother into a man of integrity that had the twelve patriarchs of the Tribes of Israel, God’s chosen people.

During Israel’s life, one of His son’s whose name was Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and rose to be second in command over Egypt thirteen years after being brought there in this slave position. After a great famine had come to their region, Israel and his family of seventy-five people lived in Egypt with Joseph’s help, and the stage was set for the Israelites to be in Egypt for the time God had told Abraham. Joseph told his brothers who were scared of him, “And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.” And “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.”

Genesis ends with God’s people in a foreign land thinking they have been brought to a good place of comfort, but wait until tomorrow when the plot thickens.

Genesis tells God’s people about their origin, the first of their journeys, and how things might not look like they are working out, but seem like they are in other times which causes a “roller coaster ride” of a life style that God is taking them through according to His purpose which is for their good.