THIS SUNDAY! Join Element at Ferini Park in Los Alamos at 9:00am for ONE Church Service In The Park! All are welcome. Help us Celebrate together with Old Days.
Various Speakers - April 21, 2012
Genesis 14 - God Provides A Way
By James Fairfield. Last week we learned the pattern of human history after the fall was: be born, sin, and die. It is only through Jesus that we can be born, sin, be born again, and live forever. In today’s text, God decides to judge the earth with water; by sending a flood. Sin has destroyed humanity and mankind is unwilling to change; so God righteously judges the earth. The consequence of sin is death (as clearly seen in Genesis 6 and 7). Even in judgment, God provides a way to safety, to life, and a way to live in community with God. Noah is the only one who listens to and walks with God, everyone else perishes in the flood. Instead of completely starting over, God in his goodness gives grace to Noah and saves him and his family. This same grace offered to Noah is offered to us today. People haven’t changed: we are born (we live), sin, and die. Yet God in his love sends his son to die for us, take our judgement, and offers us relationship with Him. Just like in the days of Noah, God provides a way to life.
From Series: "Genesis"
he book of Genesis has a groove to it. It runs from poem to song to narrative to poem to song. The Book of Genesis has a unity to it that fits with the entire Torah (the Pentateuch or the first 5 books of scripture). There is a definitive strategy laid out and sometimes this leads to a narrative that isn’t always smooth and uniform. This has led many people to assume that Genesis was written by different authors and is a disjointed mess. For example, the short narrative about building the city of Babylon (Genesis 11:1-9) is almost entirely self-contained and shows little external relationship with other narratives within its immediate context…But the narrative plays a strategic role in the development of one of the major themes in the book: covenant and restoration. By placing a self-contained story between two genealogies the story actually shows the difference between what man desires “Let us make a name for ourselves” (11:4) and the central point of the patriarchal narratives--”and God said, “I will make your name great’” (12:2a). Thus the genealogies of “Shem” provide a narrative link between the story of the city of Babylon and the account of the call of Abraham. Far from being disjointed, Genesis is a literary masterpiece that weaves all the scriptures themes together in wonderful unity.