Daily Bible Reading 1/2/2012

Some friends and I are trying to read through the Bible this year. I'll be posting comments I make on the passages I'm reading as I read them. I'm following the One Year Bible Reading Plan where you jump around and get a passage of OT, NT, Psalms, and Proverbs.

Gen. 3 always catches me.

1) Eve makes up her own religion in Gen. 3:3. She add's a prohibition of touching to God's command in Gen. 2:16-17 not to eat. We are the same way, at least I am. I produce new rules to relate to God in an effort to 'protect' myself from wrong doing. When I add to God's law, I change what He, in His perfection, has laid forth, and it leads me to eventual ruin like it did Eve.

2) Eve sort of works her way up to the sin in Gen. 3:6. She sees its good for food, that it looks good, and that it will make her wise, and then she dives in. Aren't we the same way? Don't we see a sin and justify it to ourselves slowly but surly to assuage the pain of the sin we our flesh desires us to commit?

3) Adam does nothing to defend his Wife from sin in Gen 3:6. Do I do anything to help my wife? I mean I try to set a good example, but it's not that great. And how do I defend her without being over-bearing and nagging? We don't do any Bible study together or pray together. I'm sure I drop the ball in many other relationships as well in helping to protect my loved ones from sin.

4) God is so merciful to them in Gen. 3:9-24. God promised in Gen. 2, that He would kill them if they ate of the tree. And yet he mercifully doesn't kill them, and instead talks to them. He of course lays out consequences for their actions, but even in the laying of consequences He provides the 'proto-evangelion', the first prophecy of Christ. There is an implied slaying of an animal in Gen 3:21 to make skins to cover their nakedness which does a much better job than the fig leaves they had made for themselves in Gen. 3:7. Another fore-taste of Christ's infinitely better covering of our sins. And He prevents us from living forever in a tainted sinful flesh. I couldn't bear permanent life associated with Sin. He is so kind to us despite ours and our forebears complete lack of deserving. (english major's toss some help to a nerd's poor english on that last phrase...)

Matt. 3:1-6 is a striking display of the call to repent and its affect on people. Such that the call would drive them into the wilderness to be cleansed. Do I have the strength to call people to repent, and help lead them to Christ?

Psalm 2 is such a scary warning of false belief. I pray those who have made new years resolutions have not resolved to oppose God. It will not go well with them.

Prov. 1:7. Being in Afghanistan was a big maturation change for me. I realized while I was there, that if I wanted to become a leader it was time to pick up that mantle and stop messing around. Actually it was John Snow who taught me to 'put the boy aside'. Given that charge, I want to be a wise leader. And to do so, I must fear the Lord above all.

Email Apologetics 5 (gospel illustrations in Genesis)

This is another post in the series of emails between my friend and his dad. In one of my friend's dad's emails he says the following sentence:

"I hope that God sees me fit for mercy and on the appointed day welcomes me into the Holy Presence."

How can God see him as fit? If its by works, not by grace, of which he would have some part in, then he's not going to get in. (Eph. 2:1-10). How do we teach him how often in scripture God points to His salvation of the people instead of their work? How about showing him these examples?
Genesis 3 (in particular vs 7 & 21): Man tries to cover his sin ineffectively with a fig leaf. God instead covers it effectively with an animal skin. God kills the animal and makes the clothes, not man!
Genesis 7 (in particular vs 16): God destroys the world b/c of people's sin, but saves Noah. He tells Noah how to build the ark, and then when Noah is inside, God shuts the door for him. The ark is an illustration of Jesus that protects us from God's wrath. And God was the source of all of it.
Genesis 22 (in particular vs 13-14 ): Abraham is to kill his son Issac. Abe logically believes that God will raise him from the dead. Instead God provides a ram to be sacrificed instead. God provides, not man. And the son of the promise is effectively slain but raised from the dead. I know this one is a little harder to see.
Genesis 28 (in particular vs 12): Jacob (soon to be renamed Israel) sees a ladder between heaven and earth with angels ascending and descending. This ladder is Jesus. He connects earth and heaven as only God can. Man doesn't create this ladder. Jesus even refers t this incident in John 1:50-51.
Genesis 37,41-45: Joseph is the son of promise who is hated by his brothers and sold into slavery, aka death. The son rises out of prison and rules all of Egypt and is able to provide for his family. Just like Jesus who was hated by His Jewish brothers, slain, and who raised on the 3rd day and now provides mediation and salvation to us who repent and believe in Him. And by the way in both cases man does nothing. God makes it all happen.

I can keep going to include Moses leading the people across the red sea, something in possible that man couldn't do. Or Joshua who rolls back the Jordan to a town called Adam so that we can clearly see that sin is rolled back to Adam in Christ. Or Ruth, a foreigner, who is granted a kinsman redeemer and welcomed into the true people of God. All of these happen b/c God does the work not man. God won't see us fit on the final judgment day. Only by claiming Christ and His work will we get in.

By the way if you think he's struggling with the veracity of the Bible and he'd listen to a lecture on it. This is my favorite one. If you haven't listened to this before, its well worth your time.

Discussion from Google Reader

I've been having a discussion on a google shared item for the last few days. I'm reprinting here for posterity... I've changed the name of the person I'm discussing with, and added the horizontal rules to make the sides of the conversation clear... The not-me starts out next:

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Not-me:

Haha! Now only if God hadn't written Leviticus...

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you:

I'm disappointed that the author didn't point out that the atheist's resulting judgment was to be punished by God for all eternity for not repenting and believing before dying. Of course God is loving and merciful, but He's also just, and therefore He must punish law-breakers, just like an earthly judge punishes law breakers no matter what they say or do to try and worm out of it. If they didn't punish they wouldn't be just, and neither would God.

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not-me:

Don't kid yourself, the Christian god isn't just or merciful. Ask the children of the ruler Sihon: Deut (2:33-34) And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain.

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you:

fascinating. you're saying God wasn't just in destroying a people who had rejected Him as God? Sounds like good grounds to me. In fact we all have rejected Him since the Garden. Its amazing mercy that He lets any of us live and breathe. Its His air after all, not ours.

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Not-Me:

That's exactly what I'm saying. God is imaginary, and justifying genocide in his name is a horrendous abuse of power. But, let's assume that god really exists for a second. All of those destroyed people went to hell, yes? How is an ETERNITY of punishment a morally acceptable form of 'justice' to any possible crime here on earth? Pol Pot doesn't deserve eternal punishment for what he did in Cambodia. The argument that the Christian god is just is false prima facie.

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you:

Ahh, so this is where your understanding is not accurate as to the nature of God. You're right that eternity of punishment for crimes committed here on earth isn't warranted. But those crimes aren't just committed here on earth. They're also committed against the Creator of the Universe. You'd be right that the punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime if the person to whom the crime was committed was an equivalent human agent such as ourselves. But that's just it God isn't equivalent to us. He is infinitely above us and therefore sins committed against Him are infinitely worse than those of ours committed against each other. As a weak illustration, imagine I threatened to kill you, at worst I might get some civil suit with a restraining order or an attempted murder charge which would only put me in prison for a few months or a couple of years. If instead I threatened or was able to kill a United States President, I would be jailed for life, or put in the electric chair. See the punishment changes based on who the offense is committed against, with the more stringent punishment applied to the one offending the greater person. Even the "little sin" of Adam disobeying in the garden was enough to get him and Eve booted out forever. Because it wasn't so much that they did what God told them not to, it was that they choose to be their own gods in their defiance of His will. This is the ultimate blasphemy and a perfect and Holy God must elevate Himself above all others. Therefore their elevation of themselves above Him, deserved death. A death that God delayed until it could be carried out on His Son. In fact this death was foretold twice right in chapter 3 of Genesis. Once when God says "he will strike your heel, but he will crush his head". This is God pointing out that Satan will nip Jesus by contributing to His death, but that Jesus' death and subsequent resurrection was the death blow for Satan. Secondly God kills an animal and makes a skin covering for Adam and Eve to replace the insufficient fig-leave covering they had made for themselves. This was the first death ever. A tremendous thing. God took sin so seriously that He killed the first ever animal as a symbol of the payment necessary that His Son would come to provide for Adam and Eve later. Sin is so serious to God that only blood can pay for it. The most precious substance we have. And the debt we have incurred so great that only the most valuable blood would be acceptable to a perfect God. That blood is the shed blood of the perfect God-man sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God isn't imaginary. The empty tomb proves it, the creation around us proves it, yours and my conscience proves it. But none of those proofs will work for you until you realize that your sin is way worse than you currently think it is. Reflect for a little on how much sin you've committed (the thousands of lies you've told, the repeated blasphemies declaring that God isn't real or just, the disobedience to your parents, the lustful thoughts, the things you've stolen, etc, etc..). The Bible says that God hates sin, and that He will in no-ways leave sins committed un-punished. Please think about how bad your sin is, and then repent and believe that Jesus' death is sufficient to cover your sins. Repenting means recognizing your sin's depths and confessing them to God and then turning away from them, and by God's grace and help stopping them. If you truly repent and believe then you will see your life change as the Holy Spirit begins to drive you to want to be more like Jesus.