I've been thoroughly enjoying my study of Genesis via The Village Church Ladies' Bible Study podcast and have found much to meditate on just in chapters 1-2, let alone chapters 3-11! I am continually amazed at how these ancient words can still touch and teach my heart today, thousands of years later, and I absolutely love what they reveal about our amazing God!
Right out of the gate in Genesis 1:1 we learn something amazing about God. ~ In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth. Stop to ponder just that thought alone... God created the heavens and the earth. God created all that is in the skies and all that is on this planet, both on macro levels and micro levels. Think about how big our universe is and that God, "standing" outside of that and outside of time, spoke the words... let there be ... and it was so! Over and over again He spoke and it was so. What kind of Being can simply speak, and all that we know (and all that we have yet to discover) ... is so? What kind of power must He have? What kind of intelligence must He have to make all these things work together? Just these thoughts alone are mind blowing and I am unable to fathom it ... but it gets even better!
Then in chapter 2 this impossibly big and powerful God decides to get His hands dirty, so to speak, and create humans. After almost a whole entire chapter of God speaking commands and things coming into being, the text seems to shift to something much more intimate. Even the name for God changes from Elohim, used in chapter 1, to YHWH Elohim ... the personal and covenant name for God. Gen. 2:7 says, "the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." Do you hear the intimacy in those words? The closeness? He formed the man...no longer does it say - and God spoke and it was so. Instead He forms him, like a potter with his fingers covered in clay, shaping and forming the lifeless lump into something valuable. And then He gets even closer... and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life...He gives us life. Can you picture God breathing life into man? What a beautiful picture of a relational and intimate God these words give us!
This almighty, most powerful God is also a relational and intimate God. I struggle to comprehend how this can be! How can he even notice me let alone desire a relationship with me? And worse, in light of all this, how can I ignore Him, reject Him, disbelieve Him, not trust Him? And yet I have...often.
And then the gospel comes rushing back at me with force...while I was still in my sin...while I denied Him, rejected Him, ignored Him...Christ died to pay the penalty for my treason to the Most High Creator God! Is this not an overwhelming and transformational truth? The gospel is what transforms us and if we look closely we can see a story of re-creation in the gospel of Jesus...this all powerful God through the work of Jesus' death on the cross is now forming me, one who was dead in my sin, into the image of His Son Jesus Christ. He is breathing into me the breath of a new life...and I am a new, living creation!
Shouldn't this understanding of God and the gospel transform how I think, how I believe, and how I live? How can I give Him anything less than my complete allegiance...my love...my all, no matter the cost?
What an incredibly big God He is! Big in power, big in strength, big in intelligence, and big in love! May this understanding of God never be far from my heart.
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