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Chapter 4: Cain and Abel.  All I can say right now is the reason I committed to this Bible read-through is that I relate more to Cain than I do Abel.  How sad my offerings have become.   My time, my gifts, my money, my service….

⁶ Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

A few weeks ago God grabbed me by the shirt collar and gave me this to chew on…

 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. James 4:17

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So let’s get to Genesis 5…such fun!  Have a pencil and your Bible in hand.  I know the genealogies can be boring, and we tend to look at how long they lived but there are hidden gems throughout the Bible. This is just one of them…

In your Bible, in this Genealogy, write the Hebrew translation above the names…

• 3 When Adam  (Man) had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.
• ⁶ When Seth (Appointed) had lived 105 years, he became the father^[k] of Enosh.
• ⁹ When Enosh (Mortal) had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan.
• ¹² When Kenan (Sorrow) had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. ¹
• ¹⁵ When Mahalalel (The Blessed God) had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared.
• ¹⁸ When Jared (Shall come Down) had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch.
• ²¹ When Enoch (Teaching/Walking with God) had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. 
• ²⁵ When Methuselah (His Death Shall Bring)  had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. ²
• ²⁸ When Lamech (Despairing) had lived 182 years, he had a son. ²⁹ He named him Noah
• ³² After Noah (Comfort, Rest)  was 500 years old,

Man (is) appointed mortal sorrow (but) The Blessed God shall come down teaching.  His death shall bring (the) despairing comfort.

There are 2 people ever in history to be taken up to heaven by the Lord without dying…do you know them? One was in this reading….Enoch.  Who is the other? 😁

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Noah, the son of Lamech (Lamech: the very man that bragged that you could kill someone and God would protect you (4:24) clearly he misunderstood God).  (read in comments why this was crossed out) Even if you do not go to church, you may have heard of Noah.  If you have gone to church all your life, know that you can read this story and still see something new.   I have read this chapter many times and each time I am like “What??? that wasn’t in there the last time I read it.”

We now know from this document that people knew how to worship the Lord (proven with Cain and Abel).  Cain had to suffer the consequences, however, God still blessed him with a family and a hedge of protection.   I can just picture Enoch and Methuselah sitting around talking to his family about sacrificing an innocent animal to “atone” for our sins just as God modeled in Eden for us.

Chapter 6 & 7

Hebrews 11:7 sums up the entire account of Noah: : By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

What is Faith?  Hebrews 11:1  “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”

– So Noah, the man who God knows as blameless (not perfect, but righteous) is the only one on earth found righteous because he had faith, confidence, and hope when given such a task.

So this man is asked to make a box called an Ark.  In this box Noah and his family will get in it (IGod will give him 120 years to get the Ark made and bags packed). Oh, and he will share it with every animal possible (some in a set of 2, some in a group of 14).  Why would we need sets of 14? 😁  Some will be used for sacrifices.

6:22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him

FAITH!  He didn’t tell him why or what was going to happen…until after Noah obeyed.

• go back and underline in your Bible 6:18-the 1st time the word Covenant is used (out of 332 times)

The flood is a foreshadow of final judgment.  This Ark, about the size of the Titanic, was a foreshadow of salvation.

I purposely left out some interesting things just to see if I can get some comments. 😂

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Well, here we are at 3 chapters you may or may not have read before.  But that is not a reason to skim!  Read them like you have NEVER read them before!  No doubt you will see something new.

Chapter 1: Look at the correlation between day 1 to 4,  then 2 to 5 and 3 to 6.  The first were “forming days” the next “filling” days:

When you read the Bible, it is fun to look for things like the presence of the Trinity.  An example is Gen 1:26.  –  When I see the Trinity (God, Jesus, Spirit) I put a in the margin. Genesis 1:26 says:  “Let US make man in OUR image”-1:26.   So how do we know it is the Trinity…go back to

1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

Sooo that’s 2 out of 3?  Nope, Jesus was there. Flip to the book of John chapter 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God in the beginning. John 1:1-2.  

Who was John writing about?  Jesus. was at the Creation.  ❤️

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Chapter 2

SOAK IN EVERY WORD.  Why?  Because there are only 4 chapters in the WHOLE Bible that show us what life with God ‘was’ and ‘will be’ without sin.  The first 2 chapters of Genesis and the last 2 chapters of Revelation.  Everything in between is a hot mess!!

During the Creation, God would say “and it is good”.    It was Perfect! –  BUT when man was alone, God said in verse 18: “it is not good”.  It was not Perfect! Adam did not know it was not good, God did.   So God made woman.

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”- Genesis 2:18 NIV

The word translated “helper” is the Hebrew term ‘ezer. This word is even used of God, sometimes, noting that He is our Helper (Psalm 115:9-11).  God was Adam’s helper (but superior) and the animals were his helpers (but inferior).  God desired a helper that was equal to Adam.  I researched the different versions and the Hebrew translations and they all concluded “suitable/helper” suggests something that completes.  (Makes me think of Jerry Maguire’s “You complete me”). 😂

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Chapter 3

Right from the beginning of Chapter 3 (the 3rd word), we have the serpent. This serpent has been waiting for an opportunity such as this.  The serpent is Satan.   Satan was once a beautiful angel, called the morning star.  One day he wanted to BE God.  God cast him out of heaven for some time and eventually he will be cast again- next time into Hell.  But from Chapter 3 until Revelation 19, he will be roaming Earth doing everything in his power to usurp God’s plan.

• Did you notice the serpent (satan) spoke to Eve about the tree? Why? Because the direct instruction from God was NOT given to her.  Go back to 2:16:

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

God gave this command to Adam. So of course the serpent was so crafty he went straight to her.  False Religion is taking a portion of what God says and then twisting it just enough to steer us away from what God asks of us.    Eve says to the serpent:  ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

See how not hearing something directly from the Word of God can get ‘twisted’ so quickly!  He never even said you would die if you TOUCHED IT.

After they ate the fruit they knew they had sinned.  How? (and note that with one sin, it spiraled down with each action)

1. They gained knowledge of what Sin is when they ate it.  That dark feeling did not exist in them before. The discernment of good verse evil.
2. They tried to cover their own Sin (with man-made covering)
3. They thought they could hide from God.
4. Adam threw Eve under the bus (3:12). She gave it to me!!
5. Eve blamed the serpent for deceiving her.

This moment is the saddest moment in History.  This brings the word “death’ into creation.

John 8:44-He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

After God speaks directly to Adam and Eve pointing out their role in the disobedience of listening to God…guess what happens???  He shows us how much He loves us regardless of our sin! ❤️ He offers a substitute for that death.  He will cover our sin so that we can be with him again.  The fancy word is “Substitutionary Atonement” (I am fancy sometimes!).  We see the First Foreshadow of the Crucifixion.  

3:21 The Lord made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

We see God’s Covenant of a substitutionary death. God killed something innocent to COVER them (that is where the skin came from).  The word atonement means to COVER.  The death of another covered their sin.  God set in motion the foreshadow of the Cross right here in Genesis 3

OK, one more thing I have to talk about or I will burst.  Look at the LAST verse of today’s reading.

After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.  Gen 3:24

WHY??  Why did GOD  HAVE to guard the tree??  The Tree of Life was in the garden for immortality.  God could spend eternity with us before sin was in the world.  But God is Holy and  everything changed.  God cannot be in community with sin and it created a separation between us and Him.

So God states in 3:19 ‘until you return to the ground….’ Death is now a part of this fallen world.  Good or Bad?  Well, here is the deal: If God chose to leave the Tree of Life for us, we would live forever separated from God.  However, God loves us so much that he has placed an Angel to hide the Tree of Life from us so that one day we will all have a death and be reunited with God (and the Tree) and be in community with Him again. Forever.

So I ask you… Will we see this tree again in the Bible?  The Tree of Life?  We already read 2 of the 4 chapters in the Bible that show us in perfection…the other 2 are at the end ( flip to the last chapter of Revelation 🙂.  We eat from the Tree of Life in Heaven giving us eternal life again with the Lord. ) Pretty cool huh.

Revelation 22: ¹⁴ “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.