Jesus In All Of GenesisSample

 

 

What’s Happening?

The opening chapters of Genesis tell us how the world was made. But they also show us how God is different from all other gods of the ancient world.

WHAT MAKES THIS GOD DIFFERENT?

One Creating God vs. Many Flippant gods

In other creation accounts, the gods do terrible, immoral things that cause the universe to be created almost by accident.

The one true God, however, creates the world on purpose, out of his purity, and simply by speaking his word.

In pagan religions, different gods were over the sky and the sea and the land. With the one true God, however, we see that the same voice that spoke the heavens, sky, and sea into being on days 1, 2, and 3 also filled them on days 4, 5, and 6.

In pagan religions, humans are also the result of the gods’ accidental actions. People are the unplanned by-product of the gods’ own problems.

The one true God, however, creates humans intentionally. Not only that, he makes them in his image. They are mini-gods with whom God has shared himself.

WHAT MAKES THIS GOD DIFFERENT?

Dignified Images on Mission vs. Haphazard Bystanders on Accident

Also, unlike the pagan gods who want nothing to do with the humans, the one true God tells the first humans why they exist. Their purpose is to multiply and fill the earth. By doing so, they would take God’s image and cover the whole world with his presence. All the while, they would enjoy God’s provision and presence, themselves.

So our purpose is to spread and enjoy God’s presence.

Pagan gods from this time portray women as less than men or even a curse to men. But in Genesis, God creates both man and woman in his image. In fact, the only time God says something is not good in these first two chapters is when he says that it is not good for man to be without woman.

Finally, unlike the pagan gods who are always causing more trouble with their never-ending evil work, the one true God rests after he has finished creating because all the work is done.

The opening of the Bible gives us a picture of the world and of God unlike anything else that man-made religions could come up with.

Where is Jesus?

Remarkably, the New Testament takes it one step further. It tells us that everything we read about in Genesis was actually created by the Word of God who became flesh in Jesus.

The God who made humans in his image is the God who came in the image of humans.

WHAT MAKES CHRISTIANITY DIFFERENT?

God coming to us in flesh and blood is ultimately what separates Christianity from every other religion. In every other religion, we are separated from God or gods or the spiritual realm and must perform a certain set of rituals or good deeds to get to them.

But in Genesis 1, we see that our God is different. He who made everything, not only makes us in his image, but he makes himself in ours. He comes to us and performs the commands given to Adam and Eve so we can return to the garden and be in God’s presence. By doing so, God offers us the rest he experienced on the seventh day of creation because all our work is complete in Jesus.

See For Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit would show you a God who is different from anything else in the universe and that you would see Jesus as the Word who spoke all things into existence, who also became like us so that he might bring us God’s presence and fill the earth with his image.