Today’s thought “A Perfect World” (January 02)

Today’s thought

“A Perfect World”

(January 02)

On January the 1st we had an eye on Genesis 1.2. Today we look at Genesis 3-4.

The Genesis record is so simple in the way it lays out the days of creation. A Divine Being not limited or restricted by time. It was there when there was void and chaos and created some order in that chaos. There was a time there was no earth (Prov 8:23), but only space.

In the first book of Moses we are given a picture of the world God wanted for His creation. We find a Royal Garden with man placed in it and having the right to give the things a name. Adam could take care of that Royal Garden in which God had placed him.

In this story of creation we can see that our Heavenly Father can take total chaos and create out of it, a functional, dynamic, God glorifying creation.

Nine verses in Gen 1 (v.3,6,9,11,14,20,24,26,29) begin

“And God said…“

We cannot help but remember that

‘In the beginning was the Word’.

The Creator God (the Bore) bore all the Wisdom and man could rely on Him. Man had to give ear to what was above or out of earth, the firmament God called heaven (Gen 1:8).

“Lights in the firmament of heaven,”

the sun and moon (v.14-15).

In the expanse of the heavens we can find the lights to separate the day from the night. For man they should not only be to mark seasons, days, and years, but also to be signs and tokens of God’s provident care.

On this planet God provided souls or living beings. We find God made one “creature” after the other. [Heb. “nephesh” (5315) means a breathing creature, animal, beast, body, man, person, life, soul, etc.]. The waters were not teaming with immortal souls swimming around, and nowhere do we read “immortal soul(s)” in the Bible. In Genesis 2.7 KJV translates man became a living “soul” whereas the New King James Bible and the NIV translates man became a living “being”, whilst the Lexham Bible talks about a “living creature“, the Easy to read version ‘degrading it to a “living thing”. The word for both soul and being is the Heb. “nephesh” (5315).

The living being formed from the red earth, A-dham, was told to eat from any tree in the garden, but one.

¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat^[Genesis 2:17Or when you eat^] of it you shall surely die.” {English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK)}

The partner of the first man knew they should not eat from that tree of moral or conscience (or conscious), the Tree of knowledge of good and evil. Eve puts her own spin on God’s words and even attributes that spin to God himself. Here is the start of what later became the teaching of the Pharisees. Paul refers back to this incident in Col. 2:20-23.

Adam and Eve gave no ear to the Voice of God, the Voice from the heavens.They perhaps would better have thought about where wisdom could be found and to Whom we best listen. They better should have known like Job came to understand that man does not know wisdom its worth (Job 28:9-14).

Today man is busy, very busy doing – but is he wise in all he is doing?

Has he ears to the Voice of heaven? From which trees does he wants to eat?

For sure the Voice of God still sounds every day of the year. Looking at what happened in the past, man should be wiser and have come to know that the fear of Jehovah God, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding. When we fear God we hate evil.

¹³The fear of Jehovah is to hate evil:
Pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way,
And the perverse mouth, do I hate. {Proverbs 8:13American Standard Version (ASV)}

And unto man he said,
Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
And to depart from evil is understanding. {Job 28:28American Standard Version (ASV)}

Going into the New Year, we better do that by fearing the right person, or better the Right Being. We best listen to His Voice and give attention to His Sayings which He gave to man by His Word in the Book of books, the Bible. Therefore we advice you to make a good start, from the beginning of the New Year, by having good intentions, willing to go through the whole Bible this year in awe of all that the Creator must be, taking on the healthy attitude of mind which we can build on, under God’s guidance, to develop a real relationship with our Creator and His son.

At the beginning there was created a perfect world and man, in case he kept to God’s commandments, would have been able to live there for ever in that Royal Garden the Garden of Eden or the paradise. Though he might have been expelled God foresees that man shall once live again in His Royal Garden. The bestseller of all times brings the history of man en shows man the way to that paradise and the way to enter the gate to God’s Kingdom. Throughout the year you shall be able to follow the path by the reading plan and your study of the Scriptures.