Annual Bible Reading 2017: Genesis 9-12

3^rd January Morning

Genesis 9-10

Floods have wiped away the entire world as the chronicler wants us to believe. There is no one else except for Noah and his Family and the beasts that had entered the Ark. So life begins afresh, not without SIN and SINNERS, but without sinning meanwhile. Genesis 9:1-3 sounds like Genesis 1:28-30 (Please read). What we see in here are two fundamental factors: first God ties Human diet to the ground and not to any flesh. Before we even raise the argument of clean animals and unclean animals like Leviticus will circumstantially argue later. It is important to understand that man was not designed for flesh but for fruits. And it is not a coincidence that most drugs are derived from herbs.

Therefore, Diet is a key thing in here. People are what they eat, that is why in this very chapter the Bible reveals that brother Noah chose the wrong plant, consumed it and in return it also dominated him. Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard and he drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. (Genesis 9:20-21 RSV). Noah was a drug-abuser and we must all avoid such for purposes of a healthy body.

The other thing we see in chapter 9 is the concept of the Covenant. Simply put, a covenant is an intended binding agreement. It was God who initiated this covenant between him and Noah. So the Noahic covenant was initiated by God himself, and in it, he pledged not to ever destroy the world with water. Note that he did not promise not to ever destroy the world but never to destroy it with water. The interesting thing about a covenant is that it is a two-party process. And these parties are never equals but one is always a superior and the other an inferior.

In the covenants between God and man, God is always the worker and man is always a recipient. God is always faithful and man unfaithful, This is the cross-cutting trend throughout all Biblical covenants. God’s covenants with men are not like human contracts that expire, and neither are they eternal, but they exist as long as the situations that necessitate them are present in different generations.

Theologians and scientists dismiss the universality of floods and even the floods themselves but like I have always argued, we must always draw a theology from every mythology. And I think all we draw from this story is that God is involved in the affairs of this world and those events that affect our lives and environment. For God to involve himself in a covenant with individuals who he knows will never keep their part is a sign that we worship a God of COMMITMENT. An infallible and eternal God involves himself in a covenant relationship with fallible, mortal and drunkards like Noah and me. This is a revelation that, God is committed to love and stay with us come what may.

We live in a world that does not desire to make long-term commitments and when it does, it maintains clauses in which they can exit. I know of many respectable people to whom the covenant of marriage is often avoided, and some of us who have made vows, those vows lack the permanence and commitment. Personally, I am both a victim and a culprit of divorce. In our world, guarantees are given for a very short period. Contracts are often vaguely worded and are undermined by loopholes and fine print.

After all that happened, Noah had nothing to commit his life to but God had something to commit to. We must learn to commit ourselves and when we commit we must deliver upon our pledge. Noahic Covenant is a covenant of commitment. It is a vow whose ring is not made from the fading material of this world like our marriage rings but that, which is displayed by nature in what we call a rainbow. As the rainbow has many colors, so is the commitment a package of many beautiful and positive intentions from God who has committed himself to man.

God teaches two fundamental lessons here;

First always initiate the covenant. If people are delaying the commitment, commit yourself before everyone else does. Be an initiator of every positive thing. Do not ask for permission to do the right thing. People do not have to accept, recommend you, validate or even appreciate you. Just establish a covenant with yourself first then announce it to them. Make it official. I wish those in unclear relationships could understand what I am saying here.

Secondly, God teaches us through this Noahic covenant that we must always commit to do our part and do it right regardless of the performance of our partners in the covenant. This is what we call the EMUNAH (faithfulness) OF GOD.

A.A. Hodge in the Outlines of Theology Page 161 says:

God’s faithfulness is His reliability, His determination to fulfill all that He promises. His faithfulness is grounded in His absolute truth. God is perfectly sincere in all His undertakings and dependable in discharging all His engagements.

Millard J. Erickson in his huge volume of Christian Theology page 291 writes:

“Thus, he could never commit himself to do something of which he would eventually prove incapable.” Psalm 146 tells us that the God of Jacob “made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is” and that He is the God who “keepeth truth for ever.” God’s faithfulness is His determination to keep truth, and He does this forever. Scripture contains numerous declarations of God’s faithfulness. God promised to give the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan, and His faithfulness is demonstrated in His fulfillment of that promise. “And the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give unto their fathers . . . there failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass” (Joshua 21:43–45).

Thomas O. Chisholm (1866-1960), a Methodist preacher and author of some 800 published hymns, is perhaps best known for his hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” The text for this hymn is based in part on Jeremiah’s classic passage: “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22, 23). Though he never revealed the particular circumstances leading to his authorship of this hymn, Chisholm did write to a friend: “My income has not been large at any time due to impaired health in earlier years which has followed me on until now” (and, ironically enough, followed him until he was 94 years of age). “I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God and that He has given me many wonderful displays of His providing care, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness” (Guye Johnson, Treasury of Great Hymns, p. 191). I could go on and on but the point here is not so much here on how God is faithful but rather on how we his partners are the absolute opposite that never affects his behavior. That is the message of the concept of the Covenants throughout the Bible..

I could go on and on but the point here is not so much here on how God is faithful but rather on how we his partners are the absolute opposite that never affects his behavior. That is the message of the concept of the Covenants throughout the Bible. I do not care which covenant will interest you. Noahic, Mosaic, Abrahamic, New or Old. God is Faithful and we are not, unfortunately.

Now let’s look at chapter 10 quickly. I was sitting at a certain hospital with my friend Joshua Byenkya and in room 29 of that hospital, many South-Sudanese kept moving out and in. Later, two other tall and darker-skinned men and women showed up who seemed to be looking for their patient’s room. As they stood before me and Josh, I was quick to tell them: “GO TO ROOM 29, THAT’S WHERE PEOPLE WHO LOOK LIKE YOU ARE“. After they left, Josh and other people who were sitting next to me laughed and said they couldn’t believe what I had just done. In my defense I said, what I said was right, guys were too black and too tall (comparatively), and they couldn’t be looking for any other people but those who looked like them. Josh told me, that; yes it might be the truth but presented not in a palatable manner. We laughed off.

Genesis 10 is exactly about the why of these identities we have given names and boundaries.  Steve J. Cole says:

The chapter is a genealogy, but not in the sense of Genesis 5 and 11, which trace lineage from father to son (or grandson). Rather, it contains individual names, place names, and many names of tribes or people groups, some of which may be derived from the patriarch of that group. Thus it is not just tracing individual histories, but the development of nations, especially as they related to Israel at the time of the conquest of Canaan. It isn’t a complete catalog of all nations, but rather a list that would help Israel understand the origins of the people they would encounter during the conquest, especially in light of the blessings and cursings of Noah’s oracle (9:25-27).

It must be understood that for one to appreciate the Bible and distinguish it from all other holy books of cultures and cults in history, you must understand that ever since Genesis 4, the Bible narrows down its camera to a particular people and traces that as it implies the existence of the other humanity outside the events recorded in the set. This is what we call a plot in literature. What am trying to tell you is that, the language you see in the early texts of the Bible like: “All people”, “whole world”, etc. do not necessarily mean the international community as the modern man knows it but “ALL PEOPLE”, and “WHOLE WORLD”, was the scope and extent of the cameras and psychology of the chronicler.

This is why in Genesis where we assume to have one family of Adam and Eve with their two sons (Abel and Cain), we see God warning a certain constituency not to ever touch Cain (Genesis 4:15) and then we see Cain marrying (Genesis 4:16-17). So since we established that the word Adam means “human-race“, it is important to demonstrate that the Bible is a book whose intention to construct a specific world-view by answering specific questions that subsequently form its world-view.

Many philosophers and theologians have labored to discuss worldviews and questions but I personally subscribe to that of N.T Wright, one of my professors. This is how he briefly puts it in his book, The New Testament and the People of God, Page 132:

First, Christian theology tells a story, and seeks to tell it coherently. We have already summarized this story, and can do so again briefly. The story is about a creator and his creation, about humans made in this creator’s image and given tasks to perform, about the rebellion of humans and the dissonance of creation at every level, and particularly about the creator’s acting, through Israel and climactically through Jesus, to rescue his creation from its ensuing plight. The story continues with the creator acting by his own spirit within the world to bring it towards the restoration which is his intended goal for it. A great deal of Christian theology consists of the attempt to tell this story as clearly as possible, and to allow it to subvert other ways of telling the story of the world, including those which offer themselves as would-be Christian tellings but which, upon close examination, fall short in some way or other.

Second, this story, as the fundamental articulation of the worldview, offers as set of answers to the four worldview questions. We may set these out as follows, noting as we do some of the alternative views that are thereby ruled out. …

1. Who are we? We are humans, made in the image of the creator. We have responsibilities that come with this status. We are not fundamentally determined by race, gender, social class, geographical location; nor are we simply pawns in a determinist game.

2. Where are we? We are in a good and beautiful, though transient, world, the creation of the god in whose image we are made. We are not in an alien world, as the Gnostic imagines; nor in a cosmos to which we owe allegiance as to a god, as the pantheist would suggest.

3. What is wrong? Humanity has rebelled against the creator. This rebellion reflects a cosmic dislocation between the creator and the creation, and the world is consequently out of tune with its created intention. A Christian worldview rejects dualisms which associate evil with createdness or physicality; equally it rejects monisms that analyse evil simply in terms of some humans not being fully in tune with their environment. Its analysis of evil is more subtle and far-reaching. It likewise rejects as the whole truth all partial analyses, such as those of Marx or Freud, which elevate half-truths to the status of the whole truth.

4. What is the solution? The creator has acted, is acting, and will act within his creation to deal with the weight of evil set up by human rebellion, and to bring his world to the end for which it was made, namely that it should resonate fully with his own presence and glory. This action, of course, is focused upon Jesus and the spirit of the creator. We reject, that is, solutions to the human plight which only address one part of the problem.

Now why have I exhausted you with this in relation to chapter 10 of the book of Genesis. I just wanted you to know that, the Bible from its own pages, tells us that it might be a literal book with ink and paper like any other writng but its content is not human but divine. Chapter 10 adresses the issue of nations, and kindreds. Our looks and kinds are not a result of sin but a product of God’s creative prerogatives. I think I was right in pointing to the darker-skinned and tall individuals to a South-Sudan room. It is not because of sin, what is sinful, however, is our stereotyping and boundaries we have demarcated on the Land God created without borders. Genesis 10 is about boarder-free nations. Something Christianity and our globalization concept are struggling with today.

3^rd January Evening
Genesis 11-12

If you read chapter 10 and understand it you have then covered 90% of chapter 11 and the lessons are profound and immense. The chronicler (by the way, by chronicler I mean the writer of the Pentateuch-first five books of the Bible), is consistently and coherently building a subject matter of the object lesson he wants to communicate. He still observes the concept of genealogies in his setting and he is sensitive with the characters he brings into play. From chapter 6 to 11, we are looking at Noah and his descendants and these individuals we do not mind, are important for those we cherish to be who they are.

The reason for the tower project in Genesis 11:4 is to avoid scattering. However, as verse 8 puts it, this project failed when God himself scattered them. Note God did not scatter them but he scattered them. Like a farmer scatters seeds in the garden, God scattered us, but the scattering was in the context of our kind. Those we call Asians were scattered to that part of the land, and so were the Caucasians, Africans, Europeans etc. All these lived peacefully until our fallen-ness ignited our selfishness and we started setting borders, extending them and taking advantage of the weak over resources. I hope someone is following. Let us pick a leaf from chapter 10: The chapter is divided

Let us pick a leaf from chapter 10: The chapter is divided between the descendants of Japheth (10:1-5), Ham (10:6-20), and Shem (10:21-32). There is debate among scholars as to the birth order of Noah’s sons. Some translate verse 21 so that Shem is the older brother of Japheth, whereas others understand Japheth to be the eldest (NIV, NKJV). I do not subscribe to the view that all nations are descendants of the man Noah. For I am one who does not look at Noah as Adam, while Adam might not have been a man, who literally existed Noah as was. So to look at Noah as Adam is incoherent and not corresponding to the principle message of the word of God. Those who argue that all nations come from Noah and his descendants have missed the idea that all people and whole world language is not literal but symbolic.

Secondly, to consider Noah as the father of Nations is equivalent to the African Baganda people who collectively agree to have come from a certain mythological figure known as KINTU but with different tribes and subsequent kings. The proper thing to believe is that chapter 10 and 11 intend to communicate the fact that where people are and how they look, so they were created but did not evolve to look so. I personally look at immigrations as part of the design and not as an innovation. So these seven continents (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America) were originally created and all man has done in his selfishness is to build walls around them, due to resources.

Unlike the stereotype understanding of chapters 10 and 11, these chapters are about the ONENESS OF THE HUMAN RACE. My friend Steve J. Cole puts it thus:

There is one true and living God; there is also one human race which He has created in His image. We all are descended from the same family. We who are theologically conservative sometimes hesitate to talk about the brotherhood of man, because the liberals use it to imply that everyone is in the family of God, apart from personal salvation. But there is a true biblical doctrine of the brotherhood of all men. Paul referred to it in his sermon at Athens when he said that God “made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation” (Acts 17:26). In that same sermon he calls us all “the offspring of God” (Acts 17:29).

If Christians would stop to ponder the implications of this rather dry tenth chapter of Genesis, racial prejudice would be dissolved. I have often been shocked to hear racist comments from Christians. Sad to say, many chapters of the Ku Klux Klan have Christian pastors serving as chaplains! But the Bible is clear that whatever your skin color, you can trace your ancestry back to one of the three sons of Noah. We are all brothers and sisters! Why then are we so quick to divide from one another and to oppress one another?

The history of the human race has been one of power struggles at every level of society and among the various nations. Why? Because the one human race has one basic need: “… there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans. 3:22-23). As God said to Noah after the flood, “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21). That is your need and mine – to repent of our sin, pride, and prejudice, and to know God’s forgiveness so that His gospel of reconciliation can flow through us to those who have not heard.

Here comes chapter twelve. European scholars call the first eleven chapters ‘primeval history.’ The last chapters are known as ‘patriarchal history.’ But I think the unifying chapter of the book of Genesis is chapter 12, while Genesis 3:15 is the key verse (depending on how you interpret it), and Genesis 1:1 being the anchor on which all rotate.

If we conclude that there is something wrong with the human race, then there must be a solution or it should be found. And according to Genesis 3:15, the Redeemer was to come from the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), then from the descendants of Seth, then Noah, and now Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3). Now this explains the heck with the genealogies and all the names mentioned. What is going to follow is a full and aggressive involvement of God in the history of man and the technical term is HEILSGESCHICHTE (Salvation History).

It is in the character of Abraham that the gospel is first demonstrated but chapter 12 begins with a call to leave. The father of Abraham was a man who always was in the right direction but never reached the destination. He was stuck in Haran and God knew he could not use Abraham what he had purposed to use him for if he was still in the company of people who never get to where they are going. Abraham had to leave his family, but like his father, he procrastinated until his father died. He waited until there was a funeral in his life (I have preached about this already. I have an audio). But either way, Abraham is one of the greatest Patriarchs.

According to Schultz, “Abraham,” in The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible p. 26. He says:

“In Genesis chapter 12 we come not only to a new division and an important theological covenant, but most of all to a great and godly man Abraham. Nearly one-fourth of the book of Genesis is devoted to this man’s life. Over 40 Old Testament references are made to Abraham. It is of interest to note that Islam holds Abram second in importance to Mohammed, with the Koran referring to Abraham 188 times”.

We will now and then throughout this year mention and pick some lessons from this man. So allow me pose from here.

God bless you. I invoke TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, and FAITH.

Am Pr. I.T.White. THE GOSPEL HAWKER

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