An incubation and a meal

I am onto the last portion of the book of Genesis as I read R. Kent Hughes book on it. It felt like I was moving into the excitement that you get when you come to the closing of a historical saga. I did say that I can only take a chapter of Hughes' book a day, since every chapter is like a sermon with insights into the given passage and life application points. But today, I read six chapters at one go! It was like, "What next? What next?" And Hughes certainly has many great insights in this most favourite historical account of mine.

There is no doubt that I have learnt so many lessons today, but two of them have left a stronger imprint in my mind.

First is a statement that he quoted from John Walton's Genesis, NIV Application Commentary. It refers to the time when Jacob and his entire household was to move into Egypt in order to survive the great famine, and I quote, "the time in Egypt is not an interruption of the covenant but an incubation of the covenant people."

I love the word "incubation". It reminds of certain periods of my life when all is quiet and peaceful only to have problems and troubles piling in one after another. God gives us times and periods of incubation. I am reminded that I must use these times to enjoy the presence and the holiness of God, and then I can stand strong beneath his wings when trials come, which will definitely come in this broken world. I can even say that life here on earth is like an incubator for us to grow in God and be fed by his goodness and his Word before we are reunited with him in his full presence in the day to come.

Moreover, Hughes highlighted that "astonishingly, Israel would not become a great nation in the land of promise but on the pagan Nile!" Even so for the Christians in this broken world of ours, where hatred, revenge, murders, lies and slanders thrive.

The second truth that I am now holding close to my heart refers to when Joseph invites his brothers into his home for a meal, when his brothers have not yet realised who Joseph really was. Hughes was quoting Westermann, "the meal was not just an expression of communion (Gemeinschaft), but engenders and preserves this commonality. The acceptance of a guest into the fellowship of the meal is therefore simultaneously the granting of participation in one's own existence" (Claus Westermann, Joseph: Eleven Bible Studies on Genesis, 1996).

I shall remember this the next time I attend the Lord's Supper and with that I look forward with hope to be eating with my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ in the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. (Rev 19:9)

pearlie

I am an Esau too?

I am getting along pretty well with Kent Hughes' Genesis, Beginning and Blessing and finally met Esau for all that he was. Just like Lot, I never identified with Esau until now.

Here is what Hughes said: Esau despised his birthright. He was no villain, but he was young, attractive with an unbridled nature. He was spontaneous, extroverted, impulsive outdoorsman - a good guy, as we say. A prince of men, prime favourite both with men, and women, and children, with a good word and a good gift from the field for them all. But the tragedy was, that was just about the sum total of who the man was. He was a man of the present and cared not at all about the covenant's future promises of Canaan and a multitude of descendants. What good were they in the present? Even the firstborn entitlement to a double portion of the inheritance meant nothing now. But he did become a good man after a 20-year hiatus and received Jacob with much grace.

So how are we like Esau? Do Christian things mean little or much to us? Is heaven faraway and disconnected to real life? Do we despised our heritage, both the biblical heritage and our own Christian heritage?

I just found our that King Herod was an Edomite, a descendant of Esau and Hughes said this well, that the "ultimate sons of Esau and Jacob (Herod the King and Christ the King) testified to the significance of the path we take up...For every generation, the challenge is the same - to see that there is more to life than a meal, or a video game, or baseball, or a party, or a movie, or an indulgence of some kind - to see, as Paul puts it, that the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

Are we selling what God has given us through his Word, our churches, and our families for a cheap pleasure?

pearlie

I am a Lot

I have just finished the section on Lot in my devotion material on Genesis, and I am not so comfortable with it. All along my understanding of Lot has not been more than -- here's Lot, he separated himself from Abram, he settled in Sodom, Sodom is to be destroyed, he got out, and his wife turned into a pillar of salt for looking back.

But now I am beginning to see that we are, or at least I am, so much like him, and that is scary.

From the Genesis description of Sodom, we know that it is a town that was bad to the core. Ezekiel in 16:49 contends to that: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. Hughes writes, "Sodom and Gomorrah were terrible little towns in which the inhabitants cared only for themselves while they brutalized and oppressed each other". Historian David Wells wrote, "There is violence on the earth. The liberated search only for power. Industry despoils the earth. The powerful ride roughshod over the weak. The poor are left to die on street grates. the unborn are killed before they can see the rich and beautiful word that God has made. The elderly are encouraged to get on with the business of dying so that we might take their places. The many forms that violence takes in our world provide stunning reminders of how false have the illusions about freedom will which we have, for two centuries, been enticed in the West".

So Sodom and Gomorrah were bad and so is the world we live in now.

Then Hughes wrote, "Lot was a conflicted soul, at the same time both offended and allured by Sodom. He liked the prosperity, the comforts, the 'culture', and the prestige. But he was worn down by the filthy lives of lawless men and perpetually tortured in his righteous soul by the deeds he saw and heard. As such, he is the prototype and paradigm of so many believers today. He is not a caricature, a joke written on the pages of antiquity. Lot is for real!"

Bear in mind that Peter called Lot "righteous" three times (2 Pet 2:6-9). So there is no question about his righteousness -- he is not yet perfect, but still righteous on account of his faith. But Lot got comfortable, albeit worn down, in Sodom. I am getting comfortable in this world I live in. Lot saw many shameless things happening in Sodom but probably did nothing about it. Probably he couldn't do much. I am seeing many shameless things around me, in TV, in the movies, in books, in the news, and I am doing nothing about it. I couldn't do much. He compromised by offering his daughters when people demanded for him to present to them the two guests in his house.

Have I compromised by selling my soul to the world for comfort, for entertainment, or just to fit in?

pearlie

Simple faith and belief?

I have reached the section on Abram's faith being counted as righteousness and here is where I got stuck.

According to Hughes, Abram was a moon worshipper but he believed in Yahweh when Yahweh called him.

I reckon I am looking from my perspective where the Word has been revealed to us and we believed, have faith and continue to seek understanding.

How was it for Abram? Is it as simple as God spoke and he believed?

Maybe I don't understand it as much because I grew up in a Christian family, I knew God from young and gradually grew in faith. And yes, I do not have one conversion date, which used to bother me a whole lot, but not anymore.

Maybe I can even liken my faith experience to the Israelites as being already the chosen people of God, but whose hearts still needed circumcision.

In that line of thinking, maybe Abram's faith is the model for the conversion of non-believers nowadays. With no background in the knowledge of God, God spoke to them, whether through friends or sermons or Scriptures or even dreams, they believe and have faith.

Simple faith and pureness of belief, and that faith is counted as righteousness through Jesus.

pearlie

My daily devotion

Pastor Marvin preached from Nehemiah 8 yesterday. This is the 17th of his 24-sermon series on the bible as a whole. He drew focus on the rebuilding of the people of God through His own word, and that it is always His word that God directs His people to.

One thing that struck me most from the sermon is when he said that we can be sure that whenever we open the bible and read it, God is at work in us. This is a reminder and encouragement to me to be fervent in the reading of His word everyday.

I am not very good in keeping schedules. Timetables don't work for me - I tried, setting the time and all - but it just doesn't work in the long term. So I am trying a checklist. I have a to-do list in my iPhone and the "Devotion" item is now permanently there everyday and I make sure I get to check it as done every morning. I hope this will last.

The other thing I have decided on is to use R. Kent Hughes series on Preaching the Word as my daily devotion reading. I have tried the day-to-day devotional materials like D.A. Carson's fabulous For the Love of God (Vol 1 & 2), but for someone who cannot keep schedules, having a must-read-everyday book became quite a stressor!

So I thought a "dateless"-a-message-a-chapter book would be ideal. There are many of such books available, but I have to find the right one with the right depth and breadth that I need. I have read the one on Ecclesiastes by Philip Graham Ryken in the Preaching the Word series back in 2011. I did not use it as devotion material then and have found it a more beneficial read if I were to go slowly chapter by chapter, but it defeated my purpose of my book challenge, i.e. to read as many books as I can in 2011/2012. So this time, with my interest in the book of Genesis, when I purchased the book in the series, I found that there are 75 chapters in the book! It will take me almost forever to finish it as a regular read. So I decided to use it as my devotional material, which is a perfect fit for me.


Genesis, Beginning and Blessing 
by R. Kent Hughes (Crossway Books, 2004)

This morning, I read the passage on the creation of Eve as Adam's helper. Hughes has several insights that are new to me and they really make sense. One of them is this: I have always wondered why God would have Adam try to find a helper amongst the animals to be his companion. Hughes suggested God did that to create an awareness for Adam, that as he named the animals, he realised that not one is like him and that he needs someone just like him to be with him. And when Eve was presented to Adam, he broke out with an adulation of poetry, the first recorded human utterance in the bible:

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.

And Hughes quoted a line from the Merchant of Venice, which I thought was so beautiful.

For she is wise, if I can judge her,
And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true,
And true she is , as she hath prov'd herself,
And therefore, like herself, fair, wise, and true,
Shall she be placed in my constant soul.

God created man and woman to be devoted to each other, to be by each other's side. It is when we find ourselves especially in times of difficulty and conflict, we must remember that marriage is a covenant that is before God, before husband and wife, and before the community. It is not just a legal document between two people.

pearlie