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Word in the Wild is a one year Bible adventure with friends. Join from anywhere and enjoy a fun, rewarding, and doable 12-month journey through the Bible where you read it from cover to cover and understand it. It’s not a devotional or recap. It’s a guide by your side through God’s Word. With support from a weekly podcast and an online community of fellow travelers, this is the year when you finally explore the Bible in its own words and on its own terms for yourself.
Word & the Wild | Week 1 | The Edge of Reality
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[00:00:00] Owen: This is The Word and the Wild, the one year Bible adventure with friends, and today is the day. We've been preparing and now we are finally ready to head out. It's week one, so let's go! My name is Owen. I'm your host and your guide. Together we are on a 12 month journey as a podcast plus community. On this journey, we read the Bible for ourselves, but not By ourselves.
[00:00:32] It's a real treat to have you with us. And I want to say a special welcome to our word and the wild plus members. It's been fun getting to know you. We're already getting started there in the wild. That's our online community group. And you're going to want to check that group for today's reading in the daily reading tracker and make sure you toss in your questions and thoughts this week.
[00:00:53] We've got that live Q and a coming up inside the wild later on. Well, this is week one. And so it all starts here. We're picking up with the chronological Bible reading that's marked as January 1 through January 7 in our chrono Bibles. If you haven't picked up your copy of the Bible we're using, you can find a link to it in the show notes for this episode.
[00:01:18] You can also see a link to a PDF. of our reading plan to hold you over until you get a copy of that Bible in your hands.
[00:01:28] Well, we are here at the beginning of our one year Bible adventure together, and so it makes sense, obviously, we're starting in the beginning of the Bible itself. We're talking about Genesis. The word Genesis simply means that, beginning. And as we jump in this week, no kidding, we're going to take a step over to the very edge of reality as we know it, seriously.
[00:01:55] Now, here at the very start, we're going to have to unlearn some old habits, especially if you're like me and you have a long history with the Bible, or if you have a faith background that involves the Bible. See, I spent a lot of time in a tradition that approaches the Bible like a textbook. You know, you read it like you're studying for a test.
[00:02:18] You feel unsettled if there's something you don't understand, it can be stressful and just. taxing and anxiety inducing. No, no, don't get me wrong. The Bible rewards careful study, but for this adventure through the Bible together, I'd like to suggest another approach. Now don't think of the Bible like a textbook, think of it more like a movie.
[00:02:43] We're going to move through the Bible the way you would enjoy a movie. Now movies can give you information. I love movies like that, I like the historical movies, even documentaries or based on a true story movies. I love those. But a really great movie. Does more than just give you information. A great movie wants your attention.
[00:03:06] It wants to capture your heart. It wants to spark your imagination. It wants to pull at your emotions. It wants to inspire you to see something in a new way. All right. And as we dive in this week, I want you to stop, slow down, seriously, take. Take a couple deep breaths and remember that information is not your destination.
[00:03:34] You are here at the start to watch an epic story unfold.
[00:03:41] The establishing shot of this epic story takes us somewhere very different than where you are right now. Take a look around. Really, take a look. I'll wait. Where are you? What's the physical space around you? What's in your space? For me. All right. I'm in my home. I've got my coffee at my elbow. I see a table, got my Bible, got my laptop, I see chairs, a lamp, walls, floor, doors, windows, outside there's a patio paved with old brick, and then beyond that I see trees, birds on a fence, and a creek.
[00:04:36] And what about you? Maybe you're on the road. You see the steering wheel. You see your car dash with that pebbly texture. You see the windshield and then beyond it there's the pavement. Other cars moving around. Buildings. Someone on the sidewalk. Signs. Sky. Clouds. Now, imagine each thing you see right now.
[00:05:06] Slowly fading away. Creek. Birds. Trees. Patio. Windows. Doors. Walls. Floors. Slamp. Chairs, table, clouds, sun, sky, they all peacefully, silently fade to black. No sights, no sounds. This is where the story of the Bible begins. The establishing shot in this movie. Takes us to the very edge of reality as we know it and that edge is not a place It's a time.
[00:05:58] It's the beginning. There's nothing there's no thing but there is Some one the four opening words of the Bible
[00:06:14] in the beginning God It's no coincidence that the story starts here. This is Reality. The way the Bible sees it. This is the story it wants to tell. Later, there will be so much. Babies will be born. Battles fought. Journeys traveled. There'll be kingdoms and inventions and art and love and betrayal and noise and clatter and travel.
[00:06:48] Later. But out here On the edge of time is a key kernel of the plot to the whole story. There's a being called God. We can't see God. We don't know anything about God. We know it's the beginning. We know the story starts here. And we know that God is already there, alive, and a mystery. Who is God? Well, like a great movie, the Bible leaves us with questions from the very first scene.
[00:07:35] I mean, the beginning. The beginning of who? The beginning of what?
[00:07:40] Now me, as your tour guide for this thing, I gotta point out a few highlights to look for this week as you read. Starting from the very edge of reality, that spot in time, that beginning where there's nothing, no one, but God. In the reading marked January 1 in your chrono Bible, there's a lot that happens.
[00:08:09] In these few opening pages and because this is the start of the story. It's worth slowing down to Appreciate what's happening here in Genesis 1 we get this big Beautiful poetic account of our main character. That's God He's creating the heavens and the earth we go from the blank nothing of eternity to light and darkness Then a universe filled with stars, sun, and moon all there to mark day and night and help us Earthlings keep our time.
[00:08:48] Planet Earth hangs in the expanse of this universe Filled with life life that reproduces itself life in the water the sky on the ground even in the ground There's life everywhere It says in chapter 1 verse 20 life scurries and swarms all over the earth The earth is filled with vibrant beautiful life and it all appears simply as At God's command.
[00:09:21] So far, this is all we know in the story about this being called God. We know He created all that we see with His word. And with this poetic, artistic flair. He fills the universe, not only with non living art pieces. He packs the planet with scampering, scattering life. God likes color he likes a little bit of chaos.
[00:09:50] He creates things and beings that have purpose. And he sets them loose to reproduce, spread their wings, flap their fins, grow their fruit with freedom inside the boundaries of that purpose that he's given them. Creation is not a total free for all. But, but creatures are all free to explore all that they can do and become as created beings.
[00:10:18] This is the, the picture that the Bible paints. This is the story. This is how the movie begins. And in the pinnacle of all this creating, there we are, human beings. The rest of creation is amazing, but only human beings are created in God's own image. Notice that there on page two of your chrono bible, Genesis chapter one, verses twenty six through twenty eight.
[00:10:48] Let me read you a couple verses. It goes like this, Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, and the birds in the sky, the livestock, and all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground. I love that word, scurry.
[00:11:11] 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. multiply, fill the earth, and govern it. That's Genesis chapter 1. Human beings get created on God's final workday of the Genesis 1 week. God rests on day 7.
[00:11:36] He caps his work on day 6. Male and female human beings together, they make some of God's characteristics visible and knowable. inside God's creation. Human beings are not God like, but we are like God. We have some similarities to Him and that's by design. God wants the world He has made to know something about Him through us humans.
[00:12:08] Through all of us. And notice there's a little interesting side comment that God throws in here. He says let us Make human beings. That's super interesting. We don't know much about God yet, but this is something to file away. Because God is a being, human beings are like God in some ways, but God referring to himself as us, tells us, the reader, there's more to God than what we know so far.
[00:12:42] He's, well he's, maybe he's plural. Somehow. Put a pin in that as something to look on as a theme as we walk through this adventure together. That's all we know for now.
[00:12:56] So then we get Genesis chapter 2. Genesis 2 rewinds back to the moment when God created those human beings we just talked about in chapter 1 and explains and provides more detail to that, that part of God's creative work, making, creating human beings. In chapter one, God creates human beings with beauty and purpose.
[00:13:20] That's, that's kind of the kernel there. And in chapter two, God presents human beings with choices. Alright, that's important. And if we need any more indication that humans are There's something unique about humans inside of this this story that's unfolding. Chapter 2, verse 7 gives it and you can see it there in chapter 2, verse 7, it talks about the first man breathing because God breathes into him.
[00:13:55] I don't know if you've ever given someone CPR, okay? If you have, you know it's a very personal experience, let's just say that. And that's, that's similar to how we see God giving this first man his life. It wasn't mouth to mouth, it was mouth to nose. But it's, it's very, it's very personal. And and even intimate.
[00:14:20] Like, God gives the first human. First male human being gives him a place to live. It's called the Garden of Eden. And he gives the first human work to do. This man names animals and is taking care of the garden. That's his job. But here God gives. Just one caution. God has created a plant called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and God warns the man to stay away from it and don't eat it's fruit then, and this is pretty cool.
[00:15:01] God sees the one thing that this man lacks for a good life. He lacks a companion and a counterpart. And so God creates the woman who gets named Eve at the end of chapter three. You see Eve be described in our chrono bibles on page three, that's chapter two, verse 18. And it describes her as a helper who is just right for him, meaning the first man who will later be known as Adam.
[00:15:34] Now when you see a helper. That's, that doesn't really capture the power of this idea. A helper, you think of like an assistant or an employee, I don't know, a hired hand kind of a situation. But there's more to it than that. It's got, it's a much more powerful word later on the same Hebrew term.
[00:15:53] Helper is how we translate it will be used to describe God himself in Psalm 46 1 it says God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble Eve is a helper just like in some ways like God God is a helper. The woman is man's go to, essential companion, and together they form a representation of God's image and are launched out into the earth to fulfill their purpose.
[00:16:27] To fill the earth, to take care of it, to interact in relationship with God and with each other. And this, my friend, is the ideal, the Bible's ideal, the Bible's picture. of The Good Life. This is, this is paradise. It's life, breath, friendship with God, meaningful work, choices, freedom, and intimate human companionship.
[00:17:01] This is the good, good life. And then, in Genesis chapter 3, the plot of this movie turns. Stories have at least three parts, right? There's a beginning. A middle and an end, bare minimum. In Genesis 3, we cross the line from beginning into a long, muddy, murky middle. And so that's why I'm slowing down to note this here, because on the tour, as we watch the movie, you gotta understand when we cross into a new part of the plot.
[00:17:42] And this happens in chapter 3 of Genesis. God, Adam, and Eve, they don't stay together in paradise. You're gonna read it, you're gonna see it. A tragic choice gets made. And this whole story turns from some kind of a, like a happy rom com into an adventure packed thriller. And the whole story we're about to go from that PG rating, and we're gonna get into some TVMA rating.
[00:18:14] It's not pretty. In fact, it's quite ugly, and at times a little bit shocking what happens as we pivot from this ideal, beautiful beginning to the messy middle. This is the point where a character that we see is called The Serpent. And we also are going to see that the tree of knowledge of good and evil becomes the location of a struggle for Adam and Eve between obedience to God and the temptation to choose their own path.
[00:18:50] In the aftermath of that struggle, we learn a little bit more about God. You're going to see that play out. No need to talk about it here. This is, again, you're supposed to read this, so go read it. But as you read, notice this. In the aftermath of that struggle, we do in fact learn a few more things about the main character of the story, God.
[00:19:12] We've already learned he's the creator, but he's more than that. We learn here he's the arbiter. He holds his creation accountable when they use their freedom. And it, it takes them out of bounds outside of, of their purpose and what they've been designed and created to do and, and the life they've been created to live.
[00:19:35] Adam and Eve. They get banished from the Garden of Eden as a result of their disobedience to God's command to not eat that forbidden fruit. And, and God lets them know, in no uncertain terms, they face a future. There, there's going to be pain, toil, fractured relationships, and all of these are the steep consequences that reverberate for generations, consequences of their choices.
[00:20:01] From this moment on in the story, there's now a before and an after. There's before that fateful sin and after, before they eat the fruit and after, among other things, there's now an expiration date on all living things. Death becomes a part of the story, but we also learn something else about God in this tragic moment.
[00:20:29] It's something. Honestly, quite hopeful and beautiful. See, not only is God the Creator, not only is He the Arbiter, He gets to hold everyone accountable for their choices, there's also a hint in here that God is something of a Savior. See, God curses the serpent in Genesis chapter 3, and when He does it in chapter 3 verses 14 and 15.
[00:20:58] As you're going to read, he foretells this ongoing battle between the Serpent's offspring and the Eve's offspring, okay, and it reads like this. I'm reading it to you because I hope you'll underscore it when you get to the reading. God says to the Serpent, because you've done this, meaning because you have been a part of deceiving Eve in this whole episode, again, because you have done this, God says, Cursed are you above all livestock and wild animals.
[00:21:25] You will crawl on your belly. You will eat dust all the days of your life. And here's the key part. God says, I will put enmity. Between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers, he will crush your head and you will strike his heel. Enmity meaning conflict, hatred is the word, hatred, severe.
[00:21:49] intense hatred. Hatfield and McCoy's. Okay. Then the serpent and his tribe are going to cause pain, but one of Eve's offspring will wind up delivering a crushing defeat to that serpent. That's a little bit of hope. See, because it tells us there's a future where God is still working. To, to rescue this thing together, Adam and Eve will continue to fulfill their purpose.
[00:22:22] They're going to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, represent God, care for creation, but things won't be quite as easy or fun and enjoyable. And don't we all feel that pain, suffering, conflict, drama is just a part of life. But the hope is in God's promise there. That there will be an end to this unhappy state of affairs.
[00:22:46] Someday rescue and restoration will arrive.
[00:22:50] Now that's all just day one. And it was worth slowing down to take a look at this in detail. Because it is one of, honestly, the key three plot. in the story, which is kind of amazing. The Bible puts it out there. This incredible story throws out a lot to think about and consider right off the bat. And now, as we get into the rest of this week's reading in our chrono Bibles, it's marked as January two through seven.
[00:23:20] We start to see the aftermath of Adam and Eve's choices to go their own way. And that long, long road to restoration and rescue. And that road is a long and winding road. We meet Cain and Abel, we see Noah we get to meet Abraham this week, and in this movie, in this story, you know, we started out with a big wide angle shot that showed us the whole universe, literally, just out there.
[00:23:48] And then we slowly pushed in, just picture it like a movie you know, you slowly zoom in and you see the earth. Little bit further, you zoom in to a point on the earth, you see the garden, and then humanity being created. And then we start to focus down on one individual family as we zoom further in.
[00:24:10] Adam has a son named Seth, who ends up being the The forefather of a man named Noah, who has a son named Shem, who has a descendant named Abram. And the scope of the story zooms in and comes to rest on Abram and God's promise to bless all the families of the earth through him. And this all connects this idea of God being the rescuer the restorer.
[00:24:38] Look for the connections on how all that fits together. That's the plot, okay? In fact, you'll see in January 5 this week, the January 5 reading, despite all the betrayal and drama that is in this world, as in the aftermath of that fall in the Garden of Eden, God is still interested in friendship with humankind, as honestly as unbelievable as that may seem.
[00:25:08] In fact, it's in Genesis 15, verse 6. It talks about Abram's relationship with God. And it says, The Lord. And the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith. As Abram learns, a close relationship with God doesn't require perfection. All it takes is trust and cooperation. Trust and obedience. In other words, faith.
[00:25:41] And we've fallen pretty far from the majestic beginning. We had just at the beginning of this week, but along the way we've learned more about God. More about us, and because God isn't willing to give up on his beloved creation, the story took a dark turn, but we still, in the story, have hope.
[00:26:06] And with that, my friend, you are all set up to enjoy the first week of our Bible reading adventure together. Don't forget, Word and the Wild is a Bible adventure with. Friends, the friends part's key, so don't be going it alone out there. Subscribe to this podcast so you get next week's episode delivered right to you.
[00:26:28] Then at bare minimum, follow the word in the wild on Facebook. There'll be some conversation there on the word in the wild Facebook page. And if you're really looking to dive in, just encourage you to become a word in the wild plus community member in our safe, private, lively online community. You can interact with me, my fellow guides.
[00:26:50] Plus enjoy benefits like bonus content, our weekly live stream Q& A daily reading tracker, more live stream events, all that more stuff. Go to word and the wild. com. You can learn more about it there or click on the link in the show notes. So let's get this conversation popping. And I'm going to drop out for now.
[00:27:11] Word and the wild is a Line House community. It's part of the LineHouse Community Network... A nonprofit organization with a mission to bring neighbors together to promote awareness, appreciation and understanding of the Bible, because friendship and God's word change lives and change cities.
[00:27:30] Word & the Wild is presented by the Lumavoz podcast network. Many thanks to those guys and thanks to our members for their support of this whole big thing keeping us going. Until next time. See you next week. I'm Owen. I'm your host and your guide. I'll see you out there on the trail in the Word & the Wild .