I have the privilege to meet every other week with a friend of mine at a local cafe. If you know me, I don't do coffee. I have found that I like a carmel latte with sugar free syrup and skim milk, no whip cream. Occasionally, I will get a blend of the day staight in a pursuit to aquire a taste for good coffee (if there is such a thing).
Anyway, we are studying the Old Testament together. We have started in Genesis, looking at God from a relational point of view. We have looked at how God created man to have a relationship with Him. Even when we mess up, God is intentional about sustaining a relationship with us.
God kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden for disobeying Him. He punishes them, then in a redeeming way makes clothes for them so they would not be ashamed of their nakedness.
Cain kills Abel. God punishes him saying that he is going to be a restless wanderer. Cain is fearful that people will kill him as he wanders on the earth. In a redeeming way, God places a mark on Cain so that no one who finds him will kill him. If they do, they suffer the vengeance of God. God protects Cain.
But the one that impressd me the most comes out of Genesis 6:3 (maybe because it has a direct effect on me), "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." Up until Tuesday morning I had been interpreting this passage wrong--nobody is perfect. My friend John pointed out that God was so intentional about sustaining a relationship with man, that he was giving them one hundred and twenty years to get it right.
God's intention was to eliminate his creation from the earth, once and for all. But he decided to wait one hundred and twenty years. As the hundred and twenty years drew closer, he found Noah who "walked with God." Again his redeeming quality is revealed through Noah. He told him to build an enormousboat in the middle of nowhere so that Noah's family could be saved from his wrath.
Within the first 9 chapters of Genesis we see a God who wants to restore imperfect people. We see a God who wants more than anything for man to be in a relationship with Him.
Thank goodness none of us are perfect, because it is in our imperfections that we see how important we really are to God.
1 comment:
This was such an inspirational insight into this passage of scripture. In all my days of studying the O.T. (which I don't do enough of lately) I have never thought of it that way. Thanks.
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