Week 3...Genesis 1-11

   Okay, I have like ten minutes to write this post, but...I REALLY need to share with you what I learned this week. (In case any of you were wondering...I'm swimming against West this week, and I'm swimming the 200 IM and the 100 Fly. : )

   Genesis 1-2 are a wonderful pair of interlocking stories.  Genesis 1, as most of you already know, is about how God created everything in six days, and how everything was "very good," to quote what the Bible says.  What most people don't go on to read is chapter 2.  Chapter 2... I don't want to say is more important than chapter 1, but it's going into a different way of "explaining" chapter 1.  In a sense it is summarizing what just went on in chapter 1 in a much more beautiful way.  How about I just show it to you:

   "1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. 4 These are the generations

of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. 5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,

'This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.'

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."

   Now, what I really wanted to show you are verses 4-9 and 15-25.  Verses 4-9 summarize how God made the creation we see around us.  Verses 15-25 talk about how God created the first woman, and the special intimacy that God created between a man and a woman.  Adam and Eve had a perfect relationship, at least before the first sin.   

   This brings us to chapters 3-11, the first sin and the nature of sin.  Chapter 3 is where our main agonist of the Bible comes into play.  Satan tempts Eve (it should be noted that Adam was with Eve every moment of the time Eve was by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) and Eve eats and so does Adam.  Thus, they are kicked out of the garden to protect them from eating of the tree of life, which would give them eternal life and not give them the chance to be saved.  We move on to chapters 4-11, where the incident with Cain and Abel occurs, the Flood happens, and the world still proves to have a sinful nature with the Tower of Babel.  All this "opening scene" history is to set us up for God's plan for salvation, but most of all to make us recognize our sin problem, because even Noah was considered a righteous man in God's eyes, but even he sinned.  Thus, it is important for us to not be caught up in the fact that we are "better" than anyone else, because we're not. : ( But that is why God made a way for salvation by grace and faith. 

I copied Genesis 2 from esvbible.com, so thank you to them for making the process of copying easier!