In the Beginning (Bereshith) God Created the Light

Andrew Choi

Description

This spirituality book offers an examination of Genesis and the characters within, discussing how this first book of the Bible carries a theme of the history of redemption.
The book of Genesis reveals that God created humans and animals on the same day, the sixth day of the creation. Human beings were formed from the dust of the ground. If there was no image of God in human beings, and if there was no spirit of God in humans, humans and animals would have no differences. Thankfully, humans do have the spirit of God within them and are made in God’s image and his likeness.
In In the Beginning (Bereshith), author Andrew Choi examines the book of Genesis, telling the stories of and examining the lives of the characters within. With discussion questions and reflections included, he shares the lessons that today’s Christians can glean from this book that forms the basis of the Bible.
Choi tells how Genesis is a theological book, a story of God. Genesis is the restoration, redemption, and reconciliation story of the panorama unfolding from ancient times until now.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• Jesús de Nazaret
• Jesus
• Spirituality
• Joy
• Religion
• Hope
• Jésus de Nazareth

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 18 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664279261
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

IN THE BEGINNING (BERESHITH) GOD CREATED THE LIGHT
(Bereshith) No more Chaos, No more Darkenss
ANDREW CHOI


Copyright © 2022 Andrew Choi.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc. TM. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-7927-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-7928-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-7926-1 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917842
 
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 09/23/2022
CONTENTS
Preface
 
Chapter 1 God’s Creation
Chapter 2 God’s Creation of the Happy Life, Garden of Eden
Chapter 3 Life Is Worth the Living Just because He Lives
Chapter 4 God’s Image Is in You, So Look at Yourself as God Sees You
Chapter 5 Creation Story of Heaven and Earth and Living Being
Chapter 6 The Promise of the Coming Messiah at the Time of the Fall
Chapter 7 The First Brothers, Cain and Abel
Chapter 8 Man’s Wickedness on the Earth
Chapter 9 God’s Unchangeable Promise of Love Shown in the Beautiful Rainbow
Chapter 10 God’s Calling of Abram
Chapter 11 Melchizedek
Chapter 12 City of Sodom Was Destroyed
Chapter 13 Glorification—Those He Justified, He Also Glorified
Chapter 14 Abram Repeatedly Made a Big Mistake
Chapter 15 Family of Isaac and Rebekah
Chapter 16 The Highway to Heaven Is Wide Open: Jacob’s Dream
Chapter 17 Reconciliation between Brothers: Esau and Jacob and Joseph to His Brothers
Chapter 18 The Joy of Finding the Lost
Chapter 19 Jacob’s Life Journey Involves Trusting the Providence of God Absolutely and Seeing the Big Picture of God
Chapter 20 God of Mahanaim
Chapter 21 The Bright Morning of Jacob: Jacob Changed to a New Person, Israel
Chapter 22 Jacob and Esau’s Reconciliation
Chapter 23 God of El Bethel I
Chapter 24 Stories of Jacob and His Sons
Chapter 25 Joseph’s Dream and God’s Providence
Chapter 26 The Funeral of Jacob and Joseph’s Last Will to bury in the promised land
Chapter 27 Jacob Gives Special Blessings to Joseph’s Two Sons, Ephraim and Manasseh
Chapter 28 Joseph’s Life Teaches What Jesus Said to the Man Born Blind
Chapter 29 Joseph’s Forgiveness
PREFACE
God so loved the world that He created the perfect happy garden for humanity in the beginning. God has always given humanity everything needed for true happiness out of His love: eternal life and salvation, family, beautiful rivers, companionship, and more.
However, we have seen disharmony, natural disasters, tornadoes, earthquakes, and the threat of nuclear war in this twenty-first century. Especially in these days, we are experiencing how much COVID-19, the global pandemic, terrifies us and brings disaster to the people of the world. Recently, Russian dictator Putin cruelly invaded Ukraine, bringing lots of sorrow and disastrous chaos. We cannot predict when Putin’s evil plot is going to end.
These world stories of the twenty-first century show God’s animosity toward and unhappiness with human beings. Do you realize that this disharmony and animosity of God toward humans is because people resist God’s love and righteousness?
Exiled from the Garden of Eden, human beings lost their entire source of happiness and lived instead on the cursed earth. The fall not only resulted in this fatal and damning tragedy for the human race, but it also affected all creation. The universe groaned and suffered the pains of childbirth, as apostle Paul said to the Romans: “The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:21–22).
Luckily God’s love and grace are still present in our lives and the world, just like the sun still rises up every morning and shines. Yet we still need a permanent solution. What would be a permanent solution to the exodus of these global miseries and restore the happy garden that God presented in the time of Genesis?
We need reconciliation to welcome the new life and the new day. Colossians 1:19–20 says, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” The Genesis story is the restoration, redemption, and reconciliation story of the panorama unfolding from ancient times until now.
The story of the descendants of Noah, the son of Abraham—Isaac and Ishmael—and of their descendants is recorded in the patriarchal history of Genesis. Theology of Genesis emphasizes the importance of the seed of promise for the covenant relationship. That is the ground of the covenant relationship for salvation. But it could lead us to misunderstand that God discriminates between humans. It also induces people to think that God has caused the sparks of conflict, the bloody and cruel fight among descendants of Semites and Islam from ancient times to the present time.
However, the emphasis on the seed of the covenant in the patriarchal history of Genesis should not become the ground theory for discriminating against humankind and thus provoke a spark of race war. It only emphasizes the one truth that God’s work of salvation for all people will come through the seed of Abraham, Israel, the Christ.
The greatest theologian, Augustine, laid the foundation for important Christian theology in the history of the Christian church. He was troubled when he thought about the story of Israel’s conquering Canaan because it looked like a cruel ethnic cleansing.
When Augustine was a young Hellenistic scholar, the question that always caused doubt in his heart was, “Why did God in the Old Testament promote Israel to slaughter the Canaanites so cruelly when they conquered Canaan?” He could hardly accept such a racist and cruel God as his God. Then, Ambrose, a teacher of early Christianity, gave a sermon that struck Augustine like a thunderbolt, saying, “To kill all the people of Canaan is God’s word that we must repent and be cleansed of all the sins in our hearts.”
Augustine converted to be a genuine Christian when he heard the sermon of Ambrose, the great teacher of the early church. His troubled mind and doubt about God as the One who discriminates among tribes was resolved, and he had a peace in his heart.
This is an important lesson to love all humans without any prejudice. Augustine’s view advices me on how to approach the reading of Genesis. Genesis is a theological book. It is a story of God. Therefore, we should not draw human-centered, morally oriented conclusions from it and use them as standards of general application. For example, if we make a religious formula from Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac as a guide for religious practice that we should also sacrifice children, we would be making a serious mistake.
OVERALL STRUCTURE OF GENESIS
An outline of the entire Bible with a theme of the history of redemption looks as follows:
1) Creation
2) The fall, human sin and suffering
3) God’s judgment (judgment of Noah’s day, the Flood)
4) One man, Abram, being chosen and called as the source of blessing and the promise to become the father of all people’s blessings
OVERALL SUMMARY
Genesis 1–11: Creation and the human fall story, countless hours from creation to Abraham
Genesis 12–50: Patriarchs, from humankind to the Israelites, 215 years from Abraham’s entry into Canaan to Jacob’s journey to Egypt
The tunnel narrows from all humankind to the family of Abraham, from all humankind to the direction of the people of Israel.
It is explained by the structure of the genealogy— toledot , that is, to give birth, to begin, to be born. (Account, generation, history, genealogy)
The genealogical list does not simply list names but contains a story within it.
בְּרֵאשִׁית (Bereshith) In the Beginning (Gen 1:1)
Beer Lahai Roi (Gen 16:14)
El Shaddai (Gen 17:1)
Jehovah-Jireh (Gen 22:14)
Rehoboth (Gen 26:22)
Bethel (Gen 28:19)
Peniel (Gen 32:30)
El Elohe Israel (Gen 33:20)
CHAPTER 1
GOD’S CREATION
Genesis 1:1–2:3, as the start of the book of Genesis, explains the foundational concept of God’s creation for the entire Bible. Among three verses of Genesis 1:1–3, the first verse says God’s creation.
Genesis is not written to explain creation scientifically but to introduce the concept of God’s creation. Therefore, it is right to see verse one as an independent verse that proclaims the absolute creation of God. It is more competent to see it as creating from nothing ( creatio ex nihilo