#1 -
Tonight I began reading through Genesis again. I came once again to the story of Noah. This is not a kid's story. It is about the destruction of all flesh because of the evil of humanity.
God saved a remnant. Noah was found to be a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah and his family alone survived. Untold numbers, including many, many animals perished.
To me, this is a reminder of our need to share the Gospel. This is a reminder of the sinfulness of man. This is a reminder that God's wrath is real. This is a reminder that I deserve destruction. This is a reminder that God has provided a way. This is a reminder that God's way is the only way.
Could God really mean it that Jesus is the only way to the Father and that all other ways lead to death...? Could God really have meant that everyone was going to perish except Noah and his family?
#2 -
In reading Genesis, I am comforted by the genealogies. I am comforted by the detailed lists of years of how long people lived. I am comforted by the specificity of detail about dates for when things happened in regards to the flood.
This - like the Gospels - are told in such a straightforward fashion, without any evident literary flourishes, and it is so earthy, so linked to details that we find no theological use for, other than they happened to note them. I am not one of those people who look into the Bible and expect to find some secret code or secret messages hidden within layers of meaning. I think God wants to communicate truth, that he is able to, and that he has created us with the ability to receive truth. Will we continue learning? Will we exhaust the Bible's treasures in our lifetime? Not likely! But the digging we must do is not a gnostic kind of digging.
It seems so plain to me that the genre here is history, and if I take seriously what the text presents me with, I am presented with a sovereign God of holiness and love. My faith drinks in the fact that the God presented in the Scriptures is powerful enough to bring me the Scriptures as he wants to. The Holy Spirit does a confirming work in my heart.
And he does it in genealogies of all places! How awesome! And it is precisely because I couldn't throw them into a pot and boil up a theological argument that I like them. They contain an air of mystery, but not one that flies into myth, one that humbly sinks its roots into the earthy ground of real people who just wanted to keep a family history.
As I read some of the details about Noah, I can easily imagine that Noah may have recorded some things, knowing that he and his family were the only link to a prior humanity. I can imagine these records being passed on to people and God bringing these records into Moses' hands as God inspired the writing of the Pentateuch.
I think basically I am just in a mood right now in which I am thankful for the Scriptures, and I want to spread that feeling around. What a treasure!
