Am I the only one that would like to know what skincare products Sarah (wife of Abraham) was using?
Here is a gal that I think is close to 90, and she is so hot that Abraham tells her she must pretend to be his sister so that he is not killed by the Egyptians. (Genesis 12)
If you are reading through Genesis with me (or have read the whole book before), are you finding that there is more drama and scandal than an episode of daytime tv?
And, oh yes--there are some truths sprinkled here and there, too. :-)
It is a beautiful thing how we are already seeing redemption, and how God meets our human failures, in this first book of the Bible.
I would love to hear what stands out for you in the comments section.
I am LOVING getting back into God's Word, and if you'd like to join us we are doing one chapter a day. Today is Genesis 14, tomorrow Genesis 15, etc.
This past week we were just introduced to Abraham (Abram at the beginning, before God changed his name), and we read all about Noah and the flood.
Did you see a glimpse of Christ in Noah's story?
In her book What The Bible Is All About, Henrietta Mears talks about how "Noah was saved from the flood by the ark (a perfect type or Old Testament picture example of Christ, our ark of safety). When he came out, the first thing he did was to erect an altar and worship God." (p. 30)
(As we talk about the Bible, you'll see me refer to this book a LOT! I am not a Bible scholar, but I want to share my impressions of what we are reading and will try my best to make sure I get my facts straight and interpret everything properly.)
Keeping this in mind about our ark of safety, I want to share a part of this story that terrifies me, a part that they seemed to have glossed over in Kids Church when we talked about Noah and sang songs about the rain coming down and animals marching two by two.
The civilization before the flood has been compared to that of Greece or Rome. In other words, they weren't just a bunch of savages, but had education and culture. They were also seriously wicked. In fact, if it weren't for Noah, you would not be reading this blog right now, nor would I have been around to write it. Noah was the ONE righteous man on earth, and he was the reason God didn't completely wipe out the human race.
God told Noah that he would send a flood, and for 120 years (!!!) as he built the ark Noah warned people about what would happen.
Even with all the nasty stuff that humanity was engaging in, they got another 120 years to turn from their wicked ways.
You know how many people survived the flood?
Eight.
God saved Noah, his wife, their sons, and their daughters-in-law.
Eight people on the entire planet.
I think it's easy (I am certainly guilty of this) to think that, if WE had lived back then, we would have totally listened to Noah and been right behind the hippos coming up the little walkway into the ark. I meah, DUH! How dumb could those people have been, right?
But would we really have believed God when He said what He was going to do? Remember, every other person on earth thought Noah was nuts.
The part that really makes my blood run cold is found in Genesis 7:
11-12 It was the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month that it happened: all the underground springs erupted and all the windows of Heaven were thrown open. Rain poured for forty days and forty nights.
13-16 That's the day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, accompanied by his wife and his sons' wives, boarded the ship. And with them every kind of wild and domestic animal, right down to all the kinds of creatures that crawl and all kinds of birds and anything that flies. They came to Noah and to the ship in pairs—everything and anything that had the breath of life in it, male and female of every creature came just as God had commanded Noah. Then God shut the door behind him. (The Message)
Then God shut the door behind him.
There is something so FINAL about that. Not just that a door closed, but that God himself shut it. There was no getting in or out at that point.
As the waters rose around a young mother, what was going through her mind?
When baby Dallas bonks his head, there is always that second between the bonk and the earsplitting scream and REAL TEARS that follow. And in that one second, everything I should have done and could have done to prevent this outcome flashes through my head, and I think, please, no! Please let him be okay. Please let me go back ten seconds.
But I can't go back.
God has told us in His word about the "flood" that is to come. Are we listening? Are we turning from our wicked ways, or continuing to party and thinking that there is plenty of time? Maybe we are not even openly defiant, but have just decided that all this talk about God is a nice story and has nothing to do with us.
One day, when the door to Christ, our ark of safety, is closed (either by our death or the rapture/His return) it will be too late for anyone who has refused to repent. And there will be an eternity to wish for being able to go back and make a different choice.
But the door will have been shut by God himself.
