Genesis: a book of intent and promise

The Bible is rightly called the Book of Books - it not only contains the quintessence of wisdom that is so necessary for us in our lives every day, but answers to the main questions that every thinking person asks himself: who he is, where and why he lives.

The Message of Love

And the Bible can be called a letter of God's love for humanity. This can be said with certainty about the book of Genesis, which opens exciting pages of Bible scriptures. The whole Bible is permeated with the rays of God's love - then inspiring, then burning to pain. And this love is always unchanged and unconditional.

Why are the first fifty chapters of the Holy Scripture called Genesis? The book tells about the origin of everything that once did not exist, but by the will of God arose. In addition to the physical aspect, there is a spiritual aspect: the Lord intends to devote a person not only to the secret of his origin, but also to give him a revelation of himself, of his purpose and purpose.

From the first lines you can see what creatures Genesis tells about. The book without any particular details, but expressively and capaciously represents the creation of heaven and earth, day and night, plants and animals, and finally, man as the crown of all creation. And then the book tells about the fall of man, about the history of mankind's life outside Eden, where once people could enjoy God's presence, about how among the ancient people the Jewish people arose.

Chapter Genesis can be divided into three ideological parts: Creation, Falling and Calling. What are the main messages of each of them?

Creation

The Scripture speaks very beautifully of how the Spirit of God trembled in the emptiness and darkness above the water abyss to give birth to life. The Spirit of God was the first and main condition for the emergence of life.

Similarly, the condition for the birth of our faith (and therefore life in its true sense) is the touch of God's Spirit.

After the trembling of the Spirit, God's Word came, which caused everything that exists from non-being. In 7 verse 2 of the chapter it is said that God made man from "earth dust" - this is a physical organ that gives the opportunity to interact with the material world.

But here it is said that the Creator breathed into the human nostrils the "breath of life" - a spiritual inner organ that allows one to come in contact with God Himself. What for? In order that a person could not simply perceive God, but communicate with Him in his spirit, for that is the purpose of our Creator. He wants us to be one with Him, able to express and represent Him on Earth, therefore he breathed into us not something but his own breath.

Two trees

For the pleasure of man, God placed him in Eden (this word is translated from the Hebrew as "pleasure"). In the middle of the garden, God placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as narrated in Genesis chapter 9, verse 9. The book dramatically narrates and that the Creator gave man the first commandment, which is not connected with moral laws, but with food, because it depended on what exactly a person would accept. The Lord allowed to taste the fruit from any tree, including, from the tree of life, the prototype of which is the divine life. But He forbade man to eat from the tree of knowledge, having warned that it would lead to death. It was meant that the human spirit would die, not the body, which would lead to its death in eternity. Created by God's image, man and woman were blessed to populate the Earth with descendants and rule over it.

A fall

Everyone knows how the first people used their freedom . They were deceived by the cunning call of Satan, who turned with a serpent, having a proud desire to know everything like gods. By this they repeated the path of Satan himself, who was originally created by the best angel in God's environment. So people challenged the Creator, cut themselves off from him. The scene of exile from Eden can be interpreted on the basis of this choice. Adam and Eve sinned and did not repent - the loving God cried out to them, but they again rejected Him. The result was the loss of all blessings, the man no longer had the right to the tree of life, so that by eating from him he would not bring sin into eternity. He was already incapable of expressing and representing God among the creation, which, thanks to the responsibility of man, was also subject to the curse of death and vanity.

God did not abandon the exiles, moreover, at the same moment he gave a precious promise to man about the Redeemer Christ (chap. 3, verse 15). The interpretation of the book "Genesis" leads to the conclusion that the man was again promised in Christ the blessings of the tree of life, but now the path to them was long and difficult, he lay through torment and decay. Suffering and death were now also for Christ.

Vocation

A person with a defiled spirit was not easily given a further story. The first descendants of Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. The fratricide committed by Cain led to the fact that the first culture and civilization were Cain's, devoid of God, full of pride aspirations to do without Him. God could not count on the descendants of the Cain family and gave Eve a son named Seth (that is, "appointed"). It was his descendants who had to walk God's way of salvation.

There were very few of them, these people who knew God and therefore were saved from mass spiritual corruption, which reigned on the Earth in the antediluvian times. Deciding to free the land from the practitioner's depravity and the violence of humanity, God left the descendants of Seth-Noah and his family alive. Further Genesis narrates about the sons and great-grandsons of Noah, among whom God elects Abraham, who became the ancestor of the Jewish people. "With God he walks" and his son Isaac, who gave birth to Jacob, and the child of the latter - Joseph. Full of drama and events, the history of these people is completed by a chronicle called "Genesis". The book ends with the accession and death of Joseph in Egypt.

And then - the difficult history of the survival of God's people, his faithfulness and apostasy in other books of the Old Testament. Then - the Good News of the Savior and the wonderful writings of Christ's disciples in the New Testament. And finally, the Apocalypse, where everything that is promised in Genesis is embodied.

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" - a book by Milan Kundera

The postmodern novel of a Czech writer has no direct relation to the content of the biblical book of Genesis. Unless it once again confirms how contradictory, confused and tragic the blindfold path that every person goes, desperately dreaming of a lost paradise. The term "being" is treated here in a literal sense - as that which exists. According to the writer's conviction, existence has "unbearable ease", because every act of ours, like life itself, is not subject to the idea of "eternal return". They are fleeting, therefore, can not be subjected to either conviction or moral judgment.