Things you can learn from Genesis: part 10

This is not shocking. After the whole scattering incident God seems to randomly choose one of them to be His next person. God does have people. He is a chooser of people. It is one of the things He does. And the way He chooses makes no sense to us. It is just His way. And so He looks about the whole of the earth and He picks Abram. Abram has done nothing remarkable. We are not even told what Abram has done. Unlike Noah he is not even righteous or holy from what we can tell. Now he does set up alters and make sacrifices and these actions seem to indicate he is a man who follows God. But by the same token within one verse of making a sacrifice he is also cruising into Egypt and giving his wife away to pharaoh in order to save his own life. But that is later.

For now it is altogether strange that God has chosen another man period. God says to Abram, "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." These are some pretty big promises right there. At this point from what we can see Abram has done nothing. God tells him if you will do something then I will do all these things. All Abram must do is move. Pretty simple. Pack everything up, take all your stuff and your friends and your family and move to the next land on down the way a bit. He did not have to leave anything behind except the land.

God wants Abram to move to Cannan. Now here is something interesting, in Genesis  chapter 11 we are told Abram was headed there anyway. At some point Abram's dad was headed to Cannan and decided to stop short and set up life in Haran. So God is asking Abram to get to the place where the family was headed to at one point anyway. Abram has big cash flow, lots a family and friends, so he packs everything up and off he heads to Cannan. God has made some big promises. Why not go?

It is a good time to stop and really take a look at all the things not said here. Clearly, Abram has a relationship with God. I mean God has a pretty long conversation with him and Abram is not too shocked about talking with God. Another thing here is that God makes big promises. He does not just say go to Cannan and I will make you happy. He literally promises blessing forever. Beyond that Abram is already super wealthy. He pretty much has everything. But he hears God and God says move to a new land so he goes.

On top of everything God has promised He also adds in a few more things. He tells Abram that God will "bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse." Now that is pretty crazy. God literally sets it up that all things that occur on earth have two implications. People will receive blessing or they will be cursed. Again this is a critical component of who God is. He has set His kingdom up around a man He has chosen. All people will be blessed or cursed based on how they treat this man and his offspring. The implication is that how people treat this man is how they see God. Think Matthew 25. Think sheep and goats. Think "come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Remember the sheep were all when did we ever see you? And they are told it is all about how they treated the people around them?

See what God did there? He did consistent. He did steadfast. He did unchanging. God has always picked a man and said how you treat this man is how you see me. Oh, think two commands. Think love God and love your neighbor. Think who is this God that He would choose a man, in a town and say move to a new town. Start a new place. Meet new people. He would tell this man I will send you sheep. I will make you known in all the world. And here is how we will do it. We will choose who is for us and who is against us based only on how they treat you. God does this thing just like He did with Adam. He does this "us" and "we" thing. It is always Him but He is always saying look what we did. Think God making people so he can be with them. Think God letting man name stuff.Think unchanging again. This is who He is . . . Always.

Things you can learn from Genesis: part 9

Here is the truth about people. Even apart from God we are capable of the amazing. This is at the heart of our choosing darkness over light. It is pretty clear that we are pretty awesome even when God is not involved. We are capable of tending to the lonely, we can feed the homeless, we can fix the broken hearted. We can set right perceived wrongs. We have the ability to rescue those who need rescuing. We can cure disease. We can make cool stuff that makes our daily lives easier. We literally can do all things.

The earliest thing we figured out how do do was to build giant buildings. It is still one of the great things we do. It is a sign of how advanced we are. If we can make something rise up into the sky we are to be honored and feared among men. It is a bench mark of advancement.

So it is no wonder that the first thing we do after the floods subside and the people recreate, is build. In Genesis 11 we learn that the whole earth had one voice. And we also learn that they decide it's time to build something big. We learn that the people know how to make bricks and that they also know how to stack them and make a tower. They say, "come let us build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."

Now this is Weird thought process but it is tied up in our wrong thinking.  We think we can be like God by being impressive.

Now these are some interesting developments. The people are pretty impressive. They can and do build things. They apparently can build these things into the heavens. This is no small feat. People are pretty impressive. They also seem to have a goal in mind. They seem to know there is a God and they desire to build a tower to where He is. Beyond that they also seem to have a fear. They have a fear that they will all be separated. They seem convinced that by building they can ward off separation from each other. Hmmm?

God's reaction to the whole event is equally stunning. The Lord comes down to check out the handy work of the people. He is obviously quite impressed. He says of this project, "Behold they are one people and they have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing they propose to do will now be impossible for them."  This is a stunning moment to say the least. God is aware that man kind has continued to discover the limitless possibilities it has when unified and organized. Remember this is post flood, event one. God is looking at what they have done and He knows that if He does not take action people will do more amazing things to glorify themselves. He knows that they contain unlimited creativity and ability. He knows that they can do whatever they set their mind to. He understands that because they are from Him and yet because they have grown evil from their youth God knows that man kind will do all things and move further away from Him. He can see that there may be no way to reconcile this people if he does not step in and actively thwart what they can do.

So he grabs the rest of Himself ( no really easy way to explain the "us"). He says "come let us go down and there confuse their language so that they may not understand one another's speech"  and we are told this works. As they did not complete the building of the city. They all head off in separate directions as they feared would be the case. It is quite an interesting thing that perhaps needs further thought. Why is their greatest fear that they would be separated from each other. In a world that is defined by its rampant individualism is it not then interesting that the great fear is separation from others. My guess is that is still the great fear disguised as self reliance but rooted in the fear of being alone. Stunning that most of us stumble because we seek approval of man. Alone we don't do much one way or the other. 

We can see the inherent problem with mankind. Those all around us who would argue they can do great things without God are not liars. This is not a secret to God. He recognized this aspect of us even from the beginning. What He has always known is that we are impressive. He did make us after all. But He also understood right from the beginning that everything we do is driven by our desire to be great. It is economics 101. It all works because we act in self interest. When we all work in our own self interest we will be led to create and do things that will benefit all. And God knew this from the earliest moments. He knew that if He was not going to destroy us again that He would have to act to split us into smaller groups. As a fragmented people it would take us longer to re organize and create things apart from Him. All of this to show His perfect plan and mercy.

See we don't need God in order to be impressive. We need God because apart from Him there is no good. Apart from Him there is no light. The truth is that all the impressive things we do leave us trapped in dark. We cannot find good when we have created fake good in the dark. When God set about creation everything He made was good. From that point on all things that we have made are super cool and down right amazing. So amazing in fact that even God can see it. But nothing we have made is good. It is just a fact. We conspire to do evil. There is no escaping that truth. 

The mercy of God is that He loves us. He has made a way. He has caused confusion and delay. And He is using this time to tenderize our hearts. He wants us to know that being impressive is not the same as being good. It is the one thing we consistently get wrong. We can build some cool stuff. We can even fight for worthy causes. But all the cool stuff in the world will not rescue us from the dark. We don't need the light to accomplish cool things. We need the light because in the light is God. At the end of the day that is reason enough. We don't need to build towers to the heavens when we are in the light. We don't need to reach God. He is already here, in the light.

Dark and Light again.

I am reading over the notes I have written down every time I come to ihop. Here is something I wrote to myself in March 2011. "Apart from Him we grow in darkness not light." We somehow get confused about these concepts. Because we are people we are absolutely convinced that there is a third choice, a neutral place. For whatever reason our brains want to convince us that there is a place of non movement. But I feel pretty sure that there is not a third option. I feel pretty sure that there is not a neutral moment in God. It seems clear that there is a battle that is rageing. It seems clear that this whole thing is an epic battle between strength and weakness. The heart of God does not see neutral space between Himself and Satan.

When we are in the light we are in Christ. He is light and when we are with Him we are in the light. His light is perfect light so there are not shades of light. There is just light. His light does not get brighter the nearer we are. This would somehow indicate that God's love has a limit or that it fades. God's love is best seen as a perfect circle. It is perfect light from beginning to end. At the edge of the light is perfect light. His light is powerful and radiant. It does not grow dim.

Where the light ends there is not a fading of the light. There is light and then it ends as abruptly as it began. There is perfect light and then there is darkness. Darkness behaves like the light. There are not degrees of dark. There is just dark. We do not move through the dark to discover darker. The dark is perfectly dark all throughout. It is everything outside the circle. Perfect light and then nothing. Just black. Just dark.

This is how God designed the whole thing. Once we are not in the light we are in the dark. For God there are no degrees of darkness. There is just everything that is Him and everything that is not. Degrees of light and dark are man made ideas. It is how we compare ourselves to others. We believe that others are darker than us and that others are lighter than us. God does not have this. God sees who is in the light and He does not see those in the dark. 1 John tells us that God does not fellowship with the dark. In fact it makes clear that He fellowships exclusively with those in the light. In the light there is fellowship. There is no fellowship outside in the dark. All things are made new in the light. Our joy is made full in the light.

He is pretty particular. So to my thoughts from 2011. I'm not sure we grow in darkness. I'm pretty sure dark is dark. But i am also sure that when we are not in fellowship with Him we are fully in the dark. Standing in the dark with no clue we are there. We somehow think there is light around us. But without Him we are absolutely in darkness. Without Him we do not have any light. Not even just a little bit. Light does not work that way. No one in the light is trying to explain degrees of light, hues of light. But isn't it interesting that those in the dark have created and entire system of false light. Those in the dark have made the dark look like light. There are entire systems dedicated to making dark look like light. Dark constantly argues that it has a light. It argues that there are those among the dark who are evil and those in the dark who are good. Having electricity does not create real light. It creates a false light. It is not the sun. It is something like the sun, but not. But the truth is that dark is dark. Even if it looks like light. John 1:5 makes it clear that even though the light(Jesus) came into the dark everything in the dark could not see. The dark is so convinced of it's own light. It can't be confused by the truth.