Week two we bathed in 119 and began our jouney at the beginning, in Genesis 1:1.
We discussed the significance of Psalm 119 being the central and longest chapter in Scripture. John mentioned the repetitive nature of the text, we noticed the Hebraic Aleph-Bet (alphabet) which we discussed is a long acrostic poem. We discussed how the Scripture repetition was the Ancient way to Highlight, Underline, or Bold a point that required attention. The more repetition, the more God's intention is that we pay attention.
Psalm 119 is by far the longest chapter in the Bible and it is where we see what "A Man after God's own Heart" looks like. Desirous to please God through devoted obedience and love of God's wisdom and instruction as the authority over our lives.
Take a moment below to view this graphic created to give a visual depiction of the over 63,000 cross references in our Bible. When we think about how God's word was penned over 1500 years by over 40 authors, the volume and frequency of these seamless references are beyond simple human explanation. What stood out to me when viewing this graphic was the central signal of Psalm 119. Along the bottom of the graphic are represented in vertical lines each chapter in our Bible, Psalm 119 certainly stands out as an intentional "Read Me" that I believe God placed central and prominent for a reason.
We then talked about Genesis 1 and how God chose to reveal Himself progressively to mankind and progressively in His written word. Only when we stay in the word and continue going back over passages after more revelation is given along the way do we see how He wants us to piece together a story by consistently chewing on it rather than having it spoon-fed or sipped through a straw.
We see the evidence of the Torah well before Moses at Sinai, glimpses of the instruction of sacrifices in Adam and Eve as they left the garden, Cain and Abel and their offerings, Noah being told to distinguish and categorize clean and unclean offerings, etc.
We examined the genealogy of Adam to Noah, realizing that Adam was a contemporary of Lamech Noah's father which helps us understand how "Torah" could have been consistently passed down through the generations. When you have all of your generations still living 9 forefathers back, it seems much more realistic than what we experience as memory loss today to keep the integrity of passing along oral instruction.
Another interesting thing to note is that it only took one generation outside of living memory of creation (Adam passed just before Noah's birth), for the world to become so despicably wicked that it had to be purged. We will see as we go on, that is the unfortunate pattern of mankind. This pattern seems to continue even into the millenium after Messiah returns as revealed by John in Revelation.
My takeaway on the first chapter of the Bible:
This sets the tone of exactly how we are to read the Word of God, the pattern of the text of Genesis is simple:
"And God Said ..... And it happened so."
We are to read God's Word and understand that it happened and will happen exactly the way He says, and not attempt to take our far-removed, limited worldview and understanding and place it over His text. Don't water it down, try to make it fit the modern sensibility or devolution of our day. We are to take Him at His Word.
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