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Take a breath, find your place, and read deeply. Discover the joy of reading God’s word with the Immerse New Living Translation (NLT) Bible.
This daily Bible podcast will take you through the Bible in a year following the Immerse Bible Reading Experience. So grab your family and small group and go through the Bible in a year together with Immerse. Each of the 6 volumes is available online or at your favorite Christian bookstore.
Malcom: Welcome To Immerse: The
Daily Bible Reading Experience.
Day 82
introduction to Beginnings.
The Bible tells this story
of how our world that's gone
wrong is being made right.
Again.
God's creation was intended to be
beautiful and harmonious, but due
to the deception of evil powers and
human disobedience, the creation
became broken and disordered.
Cursed.
Yet ever since the fall, God has been
working patiently and carefully to restore
humanity to his presence and the whole
creation to its lost beauty and harmony.
The biblical narrative of restoration and
renewal takes a significant step forward.
Every time God establishes a covenant.
These covenants are God initiated
sets of promises and obligations
that establish a binding relationship
between God and his people.
In our day, we are more familiar
with contracts, agreements,
enforceable by human law.
But in the ancient world, people
made covenants, which carried the
expectation that God would bless
them for keeping the covenants terms
or curse them for breaking them.
And as a full participant in the covenants
he makes, God actually puts himself under
his own curse, should he break the terms.
The goal of these God initiated covenants
is to gather people into communities
that will live the life he intends
for everyone through communities
deeply connected to their creator.
This life will spread outward to
other people as well, starting
with chosen individuals, then
a family, and then a nation.
God moves in the interest of winning
back all things in heaven and on earth.
The first five books of the Bible tell
the story of the first three covenants
God makes with Noah, Abraham, and Moses,
who act as humanities representatives.
The first nine books of the Bible,
Genesis through Samuel Kings are actually
one continuous narrative, sometimes
referred to as Israel's primary history.
This saga covers this story from the
birth of the world to the painful
account of God's people being
exiled from the Land of promise.
The first five books have a special
status of their own, and in Christian
tradition are known as the Pentateuch,
meaning five books in Greek.
But its ancient Hebrew name, Torah reveals
the purpose of these books more clearly.
Torah is probably best translated
as instruction as God's covenant
community follows these instructions.
They not only receive God's blessings,
but also are uniquely positioned to
bring renewal and healing to the world
as implied in God's promises to Abraham.
God's instructions to his people
are the catalyst for their
movement to show all peoples the
true character and nature of God.
The community of God's people is
being sent on a mission to renew
the world, and these instructions
are, its marching orders.
This Torah is conveyed through a variety
of literary genres or kinds of writing.
About two thirds of these first five books
consist of laws that instruct people on
how to live the life that God intends.
These laws appear both in general terms,
love your neighbor as yourself, and
in specific cases, if you come upon
your enemy's ox or donkey that has
stray away, take it back to its owner.
These laws were given to govern
the covenant relationship
between God and his people.
It is important to understand that
these laws are for God's people in
a particular historical and cultural
setting, and in an early stage of
God's story with respect to the world.
Many of the particular laws
are not God's final timeless
answers about how we should live.
The entire Bible tells this
ongoing story and more light is
shed as the story moves forward.
In addition to stories and laws, we
find songs and poems that celebrate
special events or anticipate the future.
There are family trees genealogies,
listing people in relation to their
ancestors and descendants locating
their historical place in the community
that experienced God's faithfulness,
generation after generation.
Other kinds of lists appear as
well, detailing kings spies,
stopping points along a journey,
job assignments, and so forth.
These books also contain elaborate
blueprints for a place of worship
and its furnishings, and even census
reports for the population of Israel.
All of these different kinds of writing
are woven together into a single work
whose overall purpose is to describe
the formation of the covenant community.
This community, the ancient nation
of Israel will constitute God's
people on earth for the first
three quarters of the Bible.
Over the course of these
first five books, beginnings.
We follow the community from its
earliest ancestors to the moment
it is poised to enter the land.
God promised them there, the community
can begin living a life that will lead
the surrounding nations to exclaim.
How wise and prudent are the
people of this great nation
immersed in Genesis.
The first book of the Bible
lays the foundation for the
rest of the Bible's story.
It reveals God as the
world's sovereign creator.
It shows his intention to bring blessing
to people, his image bearers, and for all
life to thrive by living in his presence.
Genesis tells us about the entrance of
evil into the world and the commencement
of God's struggle against it.
A theme that flows
through the whole Bible.
God created the world as his own
temple intending to live here
among humanity for their wellbeing.
But how will God achieve his goal in
the face of rebellion and disobedience?
Genesis tells the story of God's
dealings with humanity from the
world's creation to the time when
Abraham's descendants were beginning
to grow into the nation of Israel.
It does this by giving the accounts
the word that marks the major divisions
of the book of notable people.
The most important figures are part of
the covenant lineage and therefore advance
the ongoing story Others described much
more briefly represent offshoots that
will be drawn back in later as the reach
of the covenant community spreads to all
of humanity in the first four accounts,
human disobedience leads to evil and
violence that corrupt the created world.
Seeing that everything people think or
imagine is consistently and totally evil.
God is sorry he made them.
He destroys wicked humanity in a great
cleansing flood, but spares Noah and
his family, the only righteous people
left after the flood, Noah worships
God and God makes his first covenant.
With Noah serving as their
representative, humanity and all
animals on earth receive God's promise.
Never again will floodwaters
kill all living creatures.
God then makes a second covenant one
that will ultimately transform humanity.
Starting with only a small
group, God promises A man named
Abram later renamed Abraham.
That all the nations of
the earth will be blessed.
Through him and his descendants.
God tells him to leave his
home and move to a new place.
The land of Canaan Abraham
essentially becomes a wanderer
in that land and eventually has
a son named Isaac who becomes the
heir to all that God has promised.
God renews his covenant with Isaac
and then again with Isaac's son Jacob,
who then has 12 sons of his own.
These 12 sons will become the
ancestors of the tribes of Israel.
The book concludes by describing the
life of Joseph, one of Jacob's sons.
Joseph is betrayed and cast off by his
jealous brothers, but he ultimately has a
surprising role in preserving the family
so that it can expand into a nation.
Throughout Genesis, we see God
relentlessly pursuing his plans
to renew humanity and the rest of
creation, blessing the covenant
community and their obedience and
overcoming their disobedience.
Genesis consists mostly of stories,
but family trees which connect
the stories of people in different
generations also play a big role.
Ancient Hebrew writers loved to tell
stories using the literary form of
chiasm in which the first and last
episodes slash elements are paired.
Then the second and next to last episodes
slash elements are paired and so forth.
This literary structure lays out a series
of situations that are resolved in the
reverse order of their initial appearance.
The formatting of this edition of
Genesis will single out the separate
elements of the chams as they appear.
Here's a brief example from
the account of the flood.
A Noah builds an arc.
B God tells Noah to enter the arc.
C, the waters rise.
D, the waters flood the earth.
C, the waters recede.
B, God tells Noah to leave the ark.
A Noah builds an altar.
The overall story in Genesis
has an artistic shape.
Its 11 accounts together with
its prologue about creation.
Give it to 12 parts.
Mirroring the 12 tribes.
Abraham's descendants would grow
into the storytelling in Genesis
is marvelous and it's best to read
continuously through the whole book.
The stories are set in an ancient
world, very different from our own, so
don't be surprised at the strangeness
of some of what we encounter.
But the characters in these
stories are human and very
much like us in crucial ways.
God is wrestling with them to slowly bring
his redemptive purposes into our world.
The name Genesis means beginnings.
It is the perfect introduction to the
entire Bible, giving us the framework
for understanding everything that follows
the book of Genesis.
In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth.
The earth was formless and empty,
and darkness covered the deep waters
and the spirit of God was hovering
over the surface of the waters.
Then God said, let there be
light, and there was light, and
God saw that the light was good.
Then he separated the
light from the darkness.
God called the light day and the
darkness night and evening passed, and
morning came marking the first day.
Then God said, let there be a space
between the waters to separate the
waters of the heavens from the waters
of the earth, and that is what happened.
God made this space to separate
the waters of the earth.
From the waters of the heavens.
God called the space sky and
evening passed and mourning
came marking the second day.
Then God said, let the waters beneath
the sky flow together into one place.
So dry ground may appear,
and that is what happened.
God called the dry ground land and the
waters seas and God saw that it was good.
Then God said, let the land
sprout with vegetation.
Every sword of seed bearing plant and
trees that grow seed bearing fruit.
These seeds will then produce the
kinds of plants and trees from which
they came, and that is what happened.
The land produced vegetation, all
sorts of seed bearing plants and
trees with seed bearing fruit.
Their seeds produced plants and trees
of the same kind and God saw that
it was good and evening passed and
morning came marking the third day.
Then God said, let lights appear in the
sky to separate the day from the night.
Let them be signs to mark
the seasons, days and years.
Let these lights in the sky shine down
on the earth, and that is what happened.
God made two great lights, the
larger one to govern the day and
the smaller one to govern the night.
He also made the stars, the God set
these lights in the sky to light the
earth, to govern the day and night and
to separate the light from the darkness.
And God saw that it was good.
And evening passed, and morning
came marking the fourth day.
Then God said, let the water
swarm with fish and other life.
Let the skies be filled
with birds of every kind.
So God created great sea creatures
and every living thing that scurries
and swarms and the water and
every sort of bird, each producing
offspring of the same kind.
And God saw that it was good.
Then God blessed them saying,
be fruitful and multiply.
Let the fish fill the seas and let
the birds multiply on the earth.
And evening passed and morning
came marking the fifth day.
Then God said, let the earth
produce every sort of animal, each
producing offspring of the same kind,
livestock, small animals that scurry
along the ground and wild animals.
And that is what happened.
God made all sorts of wild animals,
livestock and small animals, each
able to produce offspring of the same
kind, and God saw that it was good.
Then God said, let us make human
beings in our image to be like us.
They will reign over the fish in
the sea, the birds in the sky, the
livestock, all the wild animals on
the earth, and the small animals
that scurry along the ground.
So God created human beings in his own
image, in the image of God, he created
them, male and female, he created them.
Then God blessed them and
said, be fruitful and multiply.
Fill the earth and govern it.
Rain over the fish in the sea,
the birds and the sky, and all the
animals that scurry along the ground.
Then God said, look, I have given you
every seed bearing plant throughout the
earth and all the fruit trees for your
food, and I have given every green plant
as food for all the wild animals, the
birds in the sky, and the small animals
that scurry along the ground, everything
that has life, and that is what happened.
Then God looked over all he had made
and he saw that it was very good.
And evening passed and morning
came marking the sixth day.
So the creation of the heavens
and the earth and everything
in them was completed.
On the seventh day, God had finished
his work of creation, so he rested
from all his work and God blessed
the seventh day and declared it
holy because it was the day when he
rested from all his work of creation.
This concludes today's
Immer Reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.