Recently I was blessed with the opportunity to re-hash
Genesis with a group of friends. We
each took a few chapters and summarized those chapters and went through the
group. We covered it all in about 45
minutes. It was a lot of information to
take in, but also fun to hear our friends breathlessly try to fit in everything
that they could about the stories that we already knew, into the short few
minutes they were given to do this in.
The book of Genesis has an awful lot of drama. Hearing pieces of it, I thought a soap opera writer couldn’t have
done better themselves.
God makes man perfect, but gives us free will – Man sins-
Man is thrown out of the Garden of Eden- Man has two sons- One son kills the
other son, the world goes down hill.
God sends a flood to kill everything and start over. He then calls a man who is really really old
to follow him.
Abraham has a wife Sarah- Sarah can’t have babies so tells
him to take Hagar, her maid servant, and have a baby with her. Sarah is not happy when the baby comes, she
is actually jealous. Abraham moves and
tries to pass his wife off as his sister.
Sarah finally has a baby, the Abraham has to sacrifice it, but God
intervenes. During all this, Abraham’s
nephew Lot tries to give his daughters away to the people of Sodom so that he
can save visitors that came to his house.
God destroys the town they are living in, the family flees, his
daughters get him drunk and sleep with him and become pregnant by their own
father (ewwwwwwww).
Abraham’s son Isaac finds a woman, who happens to be his
cousin. They marry and she has twins –
one is the father’s favorite and one is the mother’s favorite. They don’t get along. The momma’s boy tricks the daddy’s boy into
selling him his birthright. The travel
to a different town due to ANOTHER famine and Isaac passes his wife Rebekah as
HIS sister (since apparently his father’s trick seemed like a good one)- the
king gets mad. There is fighting and
Jacob steals the blessing that his brother was to get, even though his brother
(father’s favorite, Esau), had already sold it to him.
Jacob then goes to his uncle’s house to find a wife. His Uncle Laban says that he can marry his
daughter if he works for 7 years. Isaac
is in love with Rachel but she has an older sister Leah. So after working 7 years for his uncle, the
wedding night comes and his uncle informs Leah to go into his tent and become
his wife. Therefore Isaac married Leah
first and not his true love. Rachel is
given to him later as long as he promises to work another 7 years for her
father. After that, they leave. He takes both the wives maidservants as
concubines and all together they have 12 children.
One of his children, Joseph who was his favorite, gets sold
into slavery by his other brothers and passed off for dead. God works in Joseph’s life and makes him
head of the prison guard, Potifar’s house.
Potifar’s wife finds Joseph attractive and wants to sleep with him. Joseph says no when she approaches him but
foolishly leaves behind his cloak. The
wife claims Joseph tried to rape her so he is thrown into jail. In jail he is made head of the jail,
predicts some dreams, is called out by Pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt, to
interpret his dream. Pharaoh likes him
and puts him in charge. ANOTHER Famine comes
and his brothers have to appeal to Joseph for food. Joseph imprisons 1 of his brothers at this time and then frames
another one for theft, then they all make up.
Another of Jacob’s children, Judah has 3 sons. The first one marries but God doesn’t like
him, so he dies, the second one doesn’t want to have sex with the wife of the
first one (as that was the tradition to produce an heir) so God kills him too,
the third son is too young to marry, but is promised to the wife of the first
so that she can have an heir. Judah
doesn’t follow through on this promise.
His daughter-in-law is bitter, wants an heir, hears her father-in-law,
Judah, is going on a trip so she dresses as a prostitute. Judah of course sleeps with her and she
becomes pregnant. Judah then wants to
burn her when he discovers that she is pregnant until she is able to prove that
he is actually the father. YIKES! Then she gives birth to twins.
Drama right? Those
are just the highlights too. I really
don’t think that there could have been a more dramatic book or past. What is amazing is that God worked all this
for good. God took all this bad stuff
that happened and he molded it into something beautiful, the nation of Israel,
the people of God. He took all the bad
decisions and made them right.
One of the twins that Judah’s daughter-in-law bore was the
Great (34x) Grandfather of Joseph, who’s line Jesus belonged to.
God takes all these imperfections and all these crazy lives
and molds them into the most beautiful story ever told. Sometimes I hear people say, my life is too
crazy for me to allow God to do anything in it. Or I am not good enough for God, have you seen my past? God can take the past of anyone and can make
it an amazing story as long as we strive to follow him. We are not going to be perfect every
time. David was an adulterer, Solomon
had concubines like crazy, you heard what happened in Genesis… But God used each one of these imperfect
people to give us eternal life.
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