the week of January 22
This is a great privilege to join you in this quest to read through the Bible in 31 weeks!
A few things you should know. There are thought questions available for each chapter at the end of the book, beginning at page 473. There are character descriptions beginning at page 489. The Bible passages referenced in each chapter are on 495-6. And a timeline is found from xi to xv and at the beginning of each chapter. These tools are helpful to give us historical context.
Each week I will write comments and create further questions to sharpen your thinking. Here we go…
Page 1… In the beginning God… The most important thing is that God did the creating. The process is important, the timing is less
important. Why is it that Christians bicker about whether the time to create took 7 days or billions of years? May we agree to disagree over this issue?
Page 2… God made animal life according to its own kind. Then He made Adam and Eve in His Own Image. In what way are people after God’s Own Kind?
Pages 2 & 3… After God finished ‘Days 1-5’ He said each ‘was good’. After finishing ‘Day 6’, which included His creating mankind, He
rested and said it ‘was very good’. What is the significance of this?
Page 4… God wanted Adam & Eve to have transparent relationships, with God and each other. What was the result of the broken trust between the humans and between them and God?
Page 5… It is sad that God had made mankind in His own image but they wanted to be like God on their own, that is equal to God. How do we currently do the same thing?
Page 5… God knew where Adam and Eve were hiding. But He still called out to them, ‘Where are you?’. What does this tell us about the
pursuant character of God?
Pages 9-11… How is Noah’s redemptive story a foretaste of our salvation in Christ?
See 1 Peter 3:18-22.
Our life group (Mebane, Graham, Elon, Efland) began our study of the Story last night (Jan 19). As the initial discussion leader, it quickly became apparent to me that this cannot be an in-depth study but needs to be focused narrowly on the highlights in each chapter. I decided that we would cover the book questions as a priority and in a sense as a discussion limiter and Randy's notes as supplemental based on the interests of the life group members.
ReplyDeleteAlso we used these two questions as a context for the big picture: 1. What does this passage say about the character of God? and 2. How does this passage fit into the main story of God?
We had a good amount of interesting discussion last night and look forward to continuing the study.
Dwight Thomas
The scientist in me wonders how the plants and vegetation created on the 3rd Day survived and grew before the sunlight was created on the 4th Day?
ReplyDeleteEd,
DeleteI believe there was already light on the 1st day for the plants when they were to come on day 3.
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning--the first day.
Hi Ed!
ReplyDeleteAs each day was one evening and one morning, the plants only had to go through one night cycle (12-24 hours depending on what part of the day they were created) without sunlight.
Had anyone thought about the question stated in Page 4 "These two people (Adam and Eve) were blessed to share their paradise with each other and God, so why would they want anything else?" or more (to me)?
ReplyDeleteSeems like we always want more; what we do no have. It is amazing that Adam & Eve could not be content in paradise with the Lord. But apparently they believed the serpent when he said they could "be like God". It must have appealed to them- to know all that God knows!
ReplyDeletethen a question came naturally "will we be content after we returned to the new paradise? Will 'be like God' still be a problem for us?"
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