Genesis – First, God
Moving to a new place is exciting…in theory. The actual act of preparing, packing and making the move happen is totally exhausting! There are many decision to make with every aspect of the move. There are calls to make switching utilities from one place to the next place. Whether you are moving across town or across the country, the details are still the same. Packing all your stuff, including the stuff you haven’t seen in years into boxes, labeling the boxes so you can find your underwear when you unpack at your new location is labor intensive. I think we can all agree, we discover we have too much stuff!
In our moves, we usually have a destination. We have a new address, even if it is a temporary apartment to go to until our new home is ready. We leave, knowing where we will go, with a caravan of all our belongings. When the last box is unloaded at our new destination we heave a huge sigh of relief. We made it!
IMAGINE packing all your belongings, herds of animals, AND your extended family, to leave all you know, to simply go where God leads. You will be traveling for months. You will pitch tents and camp along the way until you arrive “for a land that I will show you” says God.
Wow, that makes our moves seem like a piece of cake, right?
Genesis 12, The Message
Abram and Sarai
God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.
2-3 I’ll make you a great nation
and bless you.
I’ll make you famous;
you’ll be a blessing.
I’ll bless those who bless you;
those who curse you I’ll curse.
All the families of the Earth
will be blessed through you.”
4-6 So Abram left just as God said, and Lot left with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot with him, along with all the possessions and people they had gotten in Haran, and set out for the land of Canaan and arrived safe and sound.Abram passed through the country as far as Shechem and the Oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites occupied the land.
7 God appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your children.” Abram built an altar at the place God had appeared to him.
8 He moved on from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent between Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. He built an altar there and prayed to God.9 Abram kept moving, steadily making his way south, to the Negev.
10-13 Then a famine came to the land. Abram went down to Egypt to live; it was a hard famine. As he drew near to Egypt, he said to his wife, Sarai, “Look. We both know that you’re a beautiful woman. When the Egyptians see you they’re going to say, ‘Aha! That’s his wife!’ and kill me. But they’ll let you live. Do me a favor: tell them you’re my sister. Because of you, they’ll welcome me and let me live.”
14-15 When Abram arrived in Egypt, the Egyptians took one look and saw that his wife was stunningly beautiful. Pharaoh’s princes raved over her to Pharaoh. She was taken to live with Pharaoh.
16-17 Because of her, Abram got along very well: he accumulated sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, men and women servants, and camels. But God hit Pharaoh hard because of Abram’s wife Sarai; everybody in the palace got seriously sick.
18-19 Pharaoh called for Abram, “What’s this that you’ve done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she’s your wife? Why did you say, ‘She’s my sister’ so that I’d take her as my wife? Here’s your wife back—take her and get out!”
20 Pharaoh ordered his men to get Abram out of the country. They sent him and his wife and everything he owned on their way.
THE BUMP IN THE ROAD OF FAITH
Life can be difficult. A faith that can’t be tested can’t be trusted. Peter compared the Christian’s trials to the testing of gold in the furnace (1 Peter 1:7), and the patriarch Job used the same image: “But He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10 nkjv). God’s purpose in allowing trials is not only to verify our faith but also to purify it and remove the impurities of our lives. God knows what kind of faith we have, but we don’t know, and the only way to advance in the “school of faith” is to take examinations.
In leaving his family and traveling to an unknown land, Abraham took a great step of faith. After he arrived, he saw God a second time and heard His word of promise. Abraham and Sarah probably expected to settle down and enjoy their new home, but God would not let them. Instead, God permitted a famine to come to the land.
Why did God allow the famine? To teach Abraham and Sarah a basic lesson in the “school of faith,” a lesson you must also learn: Tests often follow triumphs. “I thought that getting saved was the end of all my troubles,” a young believer said to me. “But now I know that faith in Christ has given me a whole new set of problems! But now there are two differences,” he added with a smile. “I don’t face them alone, because the Lord is with me, and I know He allows them for my good and His glory.”
One of the enemies of the life of faith is pride. When you win a victory, you may feel overconfident and start telling yourself that you can defeat any enemy at any time. You start depending on your past experience and your growing knowledge of the Word, instead of depending wholly on the Lord.
God did not want Abraham to become proud and self-confident, so He put him and his faith into the furnace of testing.
After you have won a great victory of faith, expect the enemy to attack you, or the Lord to test you, or both. This is the only way you can grow in your faith. God uses the tough circumstances of life to build the muscles of your faith and keep you from trusting something other than His Word. Don’t try to run away from the problem. It won’t work.
When circumstances become difficult and you are in the furnace of testing, remain where God has put you until He tells you to move. Faith moves in the direction of peace and hope, but unbelief moves in the direction of restlessness and fear. “He that believes shall not make haste” (Isa. 28:16). In times of testing, the important question is not “How can I get out of this?” but “What can I get out of this?” (James 1:1-12). God is at work to build your faith.
God alone is in control of circumstances. You are safer in a famine in His will than in a palace out of His will. It has well been said, “The will of God will never lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.” Abraham failed the test of circumstances and turned from the will of God.Abraham moved not only from the famine but he moved from trusting to scheming. Abraham had no altar in Egypt, and you don’t find him calling on the Lord for guidance and help.
Faith is living without scheming. When you stop trusting God’s Word, you start leaning on man’s wisdom, and this leads to trouble (Prov. 3:5-6; 1 Cor. 3:18-20). Abraham and Sarah brought this “half-truth” with them from Ur (Gen. 20:13), used it in Egypt and Gerar (Gen. 20), and then their son, Isaac, adopted it (Gen. 26). When you find yourself scheming in order to escape problems with people, beware; worse trouble is coming!
He also moved from confidence to fear. When you are in the place of God’s choosing, you don’t ever need to be afraid, for faith and fear cannot dwell in the same heart (Isa. 12:2; Mark 4:40). The fear of God is the fear that conquers every fear (Ps. 112; Isa. 8:13); but “the fear of man brings a snare” (Prov. 29:25 nkjv). God had repeatedly said “I will” to Abraham, but now Abraham was saying “They will” (Gen. 12:12). He took his eyes off the Lord and started looking at people.
A third change took place: He moved from “others” to self. He lied so that it might “be well with me for thy [Sarah’s] sake” (v. 13). As the husband, Abraham should have thought first of his wife and not of himself (1 Peter 3:7; Eph. 5:25, 28-29). In fact, he should never have taken his wife there in the first place! A husband out of the will of God can bring untold trouble to his wife and family.
This leads to a fourth change: He moved from bringing blessing to bringing judgment. God called Abraham to be a blessing to the nations (Gen. 12:1-3), but because of Abraham’s disobedience, judgment fell on Pharaoh and his household (v. 17).
If you want to be a blessing to others, then stay in the will of God. Jonah ran from God’s will and caused a storm that almost sank the ship. Like Jonah, Abraham lost his testimony before unbelievers and had to face embarrassment and rebuke.
God graciously watched over His servant and brought him out of a difficult situation. If Sarah had become one of Pharaoh’s wives, what would have happened to the promise of the Redeemer? When we don’t let God rule, He overrules and accomplishes His purposes, but we pay dearly for our disobedience.
Abraham learned his lesson, repented, and “went up” out of Egypt (13:1). When you disobey the will of God, the only right thing to do is to go back to the place where you left Him and make a new beginning (1 John 1:9). No failure is permanent in the “school of faith.” Abraham went back to his tent and altar and the life of a “pilgrim and stranger.”
THE LESSON FOR US
The practical lesson from all of this is simply never abandon your altar. Stay in fellowship with the Lord no matter what the circumstances may be. If you have disobeyed and God is disciplining you, go back to the place where you left Him and make things right. Remember the victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings. That is not an excuse for sin, but it is an encouragement for repentance.
Move when God says to move. Be still when He says to be still. Worship with gratitude, pray for repentance. We pray, God works.HE is God and we are not.
God, our Father,
Thank you for this lesson in faithful obedience. I will meditate on it all day long. Help me in my own tests and trials to remain focused on you, obedient to you and not on my circumstances or other people. I love you, Lord. I need you every hour. To You be the glory!
In Jesus Name, Amen
4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.”
“Man does what he can, God does what He will.” Solomon used more words but said it best: “There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel–that will stand” (Prov. 19:21 nkjv).
God had commanded the peoples to be fruitful and multiply and to scatter across the earth, but they decided to move to Nimrod’s city of Babylon and settle there (11:1-12). This move was blatant rebellion against God’s command that the people scatter. Apparently Nimrod wanted them in his cities and under his control.
“Every generation builds its own towers,” writes psychotherapist Naomi H. Rosenblatt, and she is right. Whether these are actual skyscrapers (the Willis Tower [formerly Sears] and Tribune Tower in Chicago, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Trump Tower in New York City), or mega-corporations that circle the globe, the idea is the same: “We will make a name for ourselves.” God’s people can’t escape being in the world, because it’s in the world that we have our ministry, but we must avoid being of the world. We’re not here to build the arrogant towers of men; we’re here to help build the church of Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit is using the church as an agent of reconciliation to bring people together in Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:10; 2 Cor. 5:14-21). In one sense, Pentecost was a reversal of Babel, for the people present in Jerusalem at Pentecost heard the praises of God in their own languages (Acts 2:1-12). The day will come when people from every tribe and nation will worship Jesus Christ (Rev. 15:4) and the judgment of Babel will be done away (Zeph. 3:9).
As we read from “the beginning” when God created the first man and then woman, we need to keep in mind that we all descended from Adam. Noah descended from Adam. This remnant after flood of Adam’s original family will populate the earth. They scatter over the earth as God commanded they will do. As they from groups, these groups form their own languages. That is a natural occurrence. 
People will have different interests and talents. Some people groups will be nomads that wander the desserts. Some will sail the seas and maybe become fishermen to make a living for their families. Some family groups will farm the land. Nimrod was a great warrior and hunter so his family probably ate a lot of meat! 
13-14 Egypt was ancestor to the Ludim, the Anamim, the Lehabim, the Naphtuhim, the Pathrusim, the Casluhim (the origin of the Philistines), and the Kaphtorim.
I believe this growing population is a miracle of God in and of itself. From three sons, the earth was populated into people groups that formed nations!
What do you do when your computer locks up, refuses to go where you want it to go and is stuck on the page you don’t want to be? First, we heave a huge sigh and moan of frustration. UGH! Right?
What happens when the internet stops streaming into your home causing the lights on the monitor to go dark? Our stress level rises quickly for we feel our lives depend on this line of communication! We feel we are blocked off from all civilization! Over dramatic? First we try everything we know how to do to fix it in our own way.
1-4 God blessed Noah and his sons: He said, “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill the Earth! Every living creature—birds, animals, fish—will fall under your spell and be afraid of you. You’re responsible for them. All living creatures are yours for food; just as I gave you the plants, now I give you everything else. Except for meat with its lifeblood still in it—don’t eat that.
8-11 Then God spoke to Noah and his sons: “I’m setting up my covenant with you including your children who will come after you, along with everything alive around you—birds, farm animals, wild animals—that came out of the ship with you. I’m setting up my covenant with you that never again will everything living be destroyed by floodwaters; no, never again will a flood destroy the Earth.”
12-16 God continued, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you. I’m putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.”
20-23 Noah, a farmer, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank from its wine, got drunk and passed out, naked in his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw that his father was naked and told his two brothers who were outside the tent. Shem and Japheth took a cloak, held it between them from their shoulders, walked backward and covered their father’s nakedness, keeping their faces turned away so they did not see their father’s exposed body.
Though God spoke especially to Noah and his sons, this covenant includes all of Noah’s descendants. The covenant doesn’t stop there, however, for it also includes “all living creatures of every kind”. Humans, birds, beasts, and wild animals are encompassed in this wonderful covenant.
In becoming a farmer, Noah followed the vocation of his father Lamech (5:28-29). This is the first mention of wine in Scripture, but wine-making was practiced before the flood, and Noah certainly knew what too much wine would do to him. In an attempt to exonerate Noah, some students claim that the flood brought about a change in the earth’s atmosphere, and this caused the grape juice to ferment for the first time, but the defense is feeble (almost laughable). Noah had picked the grapes, crushed them in the winepress, put the juice into skins, and waited for the juice to ferment. Noah knew what he was doing.
The Bible doesn’t excuse the sins of the saints but mentions them as warnings to us not to do what they did (1 Cor. 10:6-13). As Spurgeon said, “God never allows His children to sin successfully.” There’s always a price to pay.
It’s been said that on the battlefield of life, Christians are prone to kick their wounded, and too often this is true. But before we condemn others, we’d better consider ourselves, for all of us are candidates for conduct unbecoming to a Christian.
Do you need to hit the “reset”? 
Now IMAGINE this…Rains come to the neighborhood. You can’t get out of the house because of all the water. You sit tight inside. You wonder if your house can withstand the storm. Your house is suddenly lifted up, with you and those who love you and God nestled inside. Great waters come from below and above. You no longer see the sky or land, but you see your lost neighbors struggling to find something to hang on to in the storm. There is nothing for them. You hurt for them but you cannot save them. You can no longer reach them.
1-3 Then God turned his attention to Noah and all the wild animals and farm animals with him on the ship. God caused the wind to blow and the floodwaters began to go down. The underground springs were shut off, the windows of Heaven closed and the rain quit. Inch by inch the water lowered. After 150 days the worst was over.
NOAH’S RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORK
Jesus saves us today. Get on board. We are not perfect but we are perfectly forgiven by Jesus who took all our sins upon Himself and eliminated those sins forever. Jesus is THE PROMISE from God for eternal life with Him.
We have heard the story of Noah throughout our childhood. Even those who don’t go to church know obout Noah and the rainbow. But do they know about God, the One who shut the door to all that was defiling to Him. Do they know God shut the door to protect a righteous, faithful man called Noah and his family from the ravages of evil. The world was full of evil as we read in the previous chapter. Imagine the worst evil that happens in our world and know that it happened then, too. And God was heartbroken.
2-4 “Take on board with you seven pairs of every clean animal, a male and a female; one pair of every unclean animal, a male and a female; and seven pairs of every kind of bird, a male and a female, to insure their survival on Earth. In just seven days I will dump rain on Earth for forty days and forty nights. I’ll make a clean sweep of everything that I’ve made.”
13-16 That’s the day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, accompanied by his wife and his sons’ wives, boarded the ship. And with them every kind of wild and domestic animal, right down to all the kinds of creatures that crawl and all kinds of birds and anything that flies. They came to Noah and to the ship in pairs—everything and anything that had the breath of life in it, male and female of every creature came just as God had commanded Noah. Then God shut the door behind him.
17-23 The flood continued forty days and the waters rose and lifted the ship high over the Earth. The waters kept rising, the flood deepened on the Earth, the ship floated on the surface. The flood got worse until all the highest mountains were covered—the high-water mark reached twenty feet above the crest of the mountains. Everything died. Anything that moved—dead. Birds, farm animals, wild animals, the entire teeming exuberance of life—dead. And all people—dead. Every living, breathing creature that lived on dry land died; he wiped out the whole works—people and animals, crawling creatures and flying birds, every last one of them, gone. Only Noah and his company on the ship lived.
WHAT DID GOD DO?
WHAT GOD STILL DOES FOR US…
When they grow into teenagers, they feel your direction and guidance is no longer needed, so they go their own, seeking their own path, and feeling confident that they can direct their destiny…at least for that day. How does it feel when they no longer look at you, talk to you or even acknowledge your presence in the room?
3 Then God said, “I’m not going to breathe life into men and women endlessly. Eventually they’re going to die; from now on they can expect a life span of 120 years.”
5-7 God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil—evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes and bugs, birds—the works. I’m sorry I made them.”
9-10 This is the story of Noah: Noah was a good man, a man of integrity in his community. Noah walked with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
18-21 “But I’m going to establish a covenant with you: You’ll board the ship, and your sons, your wife and your sons’ wives will come on board with you. You are also to take two of each living creature, a male and a female, on board the ship, to preserve their lives with you: two of every species of bird, mammal, and reptile—two of everything so as to preserve their lives along with yours. Also get all the food you’ll need and store it up for you and them.”
Noah loved God. Noah did not break God’s heart. Noah did EVERYTHING God told him to do. Noah and his family were saved.
Everything hinges on God’s love.
Let me save you a lot of money and time on ancestry.com We ALL descended from Adam and Eve. It all began with two created humans, “in the likeness” of God, their Creator…and OUR Creator. God is still at work creating mankind. 
7-12 Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
21-23 When Enoch was sixty-five years old, he had Methuselah. Enoch walked steadily with God. After he had Methuselah, he lived another 300 years, having more sons and daughters. Enoch lived a total of 365 years.
Eight times in Genesis 5 you find the melancholy phrase “and he died,” for death was now reigning over mankind because of Adam’s sin (Rom. 5:12-17, 21). Sin and death still reign today, but through Jesus Christ we can “reign in life” (vv. 17, see 21).
3-5 Time passed. Cain brought an offering to God from the produce of his farm. Abel also brought an offering, but from the firstborn animals of his herd, choice cuts of meat. God liked Abel and his offering, but Cain and his offering didn’t get his approval. Cain lost his temper and went into a sulk.
9 God said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?”
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” wrote Shakespeare. “They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”
THE BOTTOM LINE…
The Lord warned Cain that temptation was like a fierce beast crouching at the door of his life, and he had better not open the door. It’s dangerous to carry grudges and harbor bitter feelings in our hearts, because all of this can be used by Satan to lead us into temptation and sin. This is what Paul meant when he wrote “neither give place to the devil” (Eph. 4:27). If we aren’t careful, we can tempt ourselves and bring about our own ruin.
HOLY PAUSE
I loved music in grade school and I still love all kinds of music. However, I didn’t like my grade school music teacher. She was mean and rigid, making kids ask to go to the bathroom in French before they could go. Believe me, I learned French (from grandpa) quickly. That information was highly important when you are a grade school kid. My heart was sad when a few students would dance around trying to form the French words so they could relieve themselves.
On that day, I pretended to chew gum so that I could be thrown out of class! I had never done this before today. I didn’t even know what punishment was going to be administered. I just decided to do what others dared to do. The minute I found myself sitting with a few other students (all boys) on the bench outside the principle’s office I began to rethink what I had just done. Maybe this was not the best idea…
The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?”
16 He told the Woman:
20 The Man, known as Adam, named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living.
HOLY PAUSE
Pray, ask God to reveal Himself to you. I am.
