The Book of Genesis - Part 2

 





The Book of Genesis - Part 2


Jon: We're walking through the book of Genesis which is made up of these two main parts.


Tim: In the first part begins in the Garden where we watched humanity spiral


downward in self-destruction and  it ends in the Tower of Babel where


a rebellious humanity is scattered by God.


Jon: Then the second part Genesis  zooms in and focuses on just one family


Tim: And right in the middle is this story that links the two parts of Genesis


together and helps us


understand what the whole book is all about.


Jon: So how do we get from the  Tower of Babel to the story here in the middle?

Tim: Well after the scattering at  Babel there's this genealogy

and it follows one of the tribes all the way down to this one guy named Abram.


Jon: You probably know him as Abraham.


Tim: And God starts making all  these promises to Abraham

like He's going to bless him and give him a ton of kids and He says that

through him and his family all the  nations of the earth are now going  to find God's blessing.

Basically God is trying to restore humanity back to the goodness of the Garden

into His original intentions for the world. So it's like His rescue plan for humanity.

That's why the whole second half of  Genesis is about this one family.


And so you have Abraham


and then he has a son Isaac who has  Jacob and then Jacob has twelve sons.

And to each generation God renews His promise

to bless them and all nations through them


Jon: So because of this promise to  use this family to rescue the world

it's pretty easy to read these stories as examples of how to be a good person.

 But actually, for the most part, this family is totally dysfunctional.


So, for example, let's go back to Abraham.


This whole story is about God giving him and his wife Sarah a family.

But two different times he basically gives Sarah away

to other men by denying that she's even his wife.

And then Sarah gets impatient  about having a son so she makes

Abraham sleep with her serving girl which then causes all of these other  problems in the family.


Jon: So they get really old


and you begin to think that there's  no way they're going to have a kid of their own.


But then, miraculously, they do.  It's Isaac.


 And Isaac he has two sons:  Esau and Jacob

and it seems like things are going pretty good.


 But, Jacob, the younger brother  wants the family's inheritance,

which belongs to Esau the older brother,

so he devises a plan where he's  gonna steal it from his father Isaac who at this point the story is now old and blind.

Which who does that? It's horrible  stealing from your blind father.

 Yeah and then he just takes off.

 So Jacob goes on from there  to have twelve sons, a big family.


But, Jacob loves his eleventh son, Joseph


way more than all the others and so he gives him this special technicolor


dream-coat and his brothers, because of this, come to hate him.


Jon: So much so that they plan on killing him.


 But they don't. They, instead,  just sell them as a slave down in Egypt.

 Now, while in Egypt, through  this crazy series of events,

Joseph goes from being in a prison cell to becoming the second in command there.

And so later on that the whole Middle East falls into this food shortage

and Joseph's brothers they come down to Egypt looking for food.

And then, when they get there, who should they find as the ruler  of the whole land? It's Joseph, that guy they sold into slavery.

But, he actually saves them from starving to death

 And so here you have it:  these are the great grandchildren of

Abraham who have done this heinous act to their brother

but God has transformed to their evil into something good.

And that's exactly what Joseph  says here in the last paragraph of the entire book.

He says, "You guys planned all this for evil

but God planned it for good to save people's lives." Now these words they conclude  the book because they

actually summarize the message  of the whole story so far.

Humans keep choosing evil and we are thinking they're

screwing up God's plan but He keeps turning their evil back into good


and somehow He's going to use


this family to restore humanity back to the Garden.

 So that's the book of Genesis but we still don't know

how exactly He's going to use this family to bring us back to the Garden.

 Well yeah, but this is just the first book so that's what the rest of the Bible


sets out to answer.


Hey there, I'm Tim


and this is Jon.


We believe the best way to understand the Bible is to get a handle


on its overall storyline


as well as the individual design of every book.


If you're wondering where we make all these videos we make them in Portland, Oregon


we actually share some space with the creative agency called Sincerely Truman


who serves coffee, free coffee, every morning so look us up and come by and have a cup.


We're a nonprofit so if you find these  valuable we would love your support.


God bless you 


Bible news x 





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