The Bible Recap - Day 002 (Genesis 4-7) - Year 3

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap. Hello, I want to give you a quick heads up about time zones and podcast load times. We have listeners all around the world who listen using a variety of podcast apps and that can be confusing if you're the kind of person who looks at the date on the podcast, keep track of things. The best way to make sure you don't get confused is to pay attention to the day of the reading plan and not the date it posts.

Starting point is 00:00:34 And here's another pro tip. We have all the days and chapters marked out on the principal reading plan on our website, if that helps. Just go to thebibelrecap.com, forward slash start to download it. And by the way, if you live in the Eastern Hemisphere, we know the podcast usually loads halfway through your day. So if you want to have it available in your morning, one way you can solve this problem is to just stay one day behind.

Starting point is 00:00:55 That way, today's episode will be waiting for you when you wake up tomorrow. Today we read about the first children, Cain and Abel, and we saw how they carried out the same sin nature of their parents. The thing about being not God is that we're, by nature, less than perfect. Yesterday, when God finished creating, He declared it very good and He blessed man, but being very good and being blessed are entirely different than being perfect and complete. There is zero chance that imperfect man would live up to God's standard of perfection,

Starting point is 00:01:27 and we saw that played out today when Cain murdered his brother Abel. What's interesting to me in this passage is that this murder happened about 2,500 years before God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, but Cain's still new murder was wrong, even though it hadn't been written out on the tablets yet. Those stone tablets weren't necessary for mankind to know right from wrong. Can't even know what gestures required, he knew that it would be a natural consequence, because in 414 he even feared other people killing him in response to it. One of the things people often ask when they read this story is, where did Cain's wife come from? Because we see in 417 that he got married.

Starting point is 00:02:07 Scripture points to all humanity being descended from Adam and Eve, so it doesn't seem like God created a bunch of other people independent of them. However, Scripture does tell us that Adam and Eve had lots of children after Cain and Abel, so it seems likely that Cain could have married one of his sisters or nieces, and you're probably like, hold up, terribly. I know that's weird. This is, however, one of the least weird things we're going to cover in Scripture. It's not even the weirdest thing we're going to cover today. But here's a little bit of comfort that I discovered when I read up about this.

Starting point is 00:02:39 The scientific reason incest is problematic and dangerous is because of the genetic load, which didn't exist back then. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that Adam and Eve didn't have any genetic mutations, but that those developed over generations, so it wouldn't necessarily have been dangerous at that point. It wasn't until much later that God banned incest, and up until that point, it seems like it could have been the tool he used to populate the Earth. This does not suggest that God has changed, it just shows us that he has an orderly plan.

Starting point is 00:03:09 Here's another example of that. Yesterday, we saw that mankind started out as vegetarians, possibly even vegans, but tomorrow we'll see where he tells people to eat meat. He is intentional about all these things. Only God would know, at what point genetic mutations would be a problem for mankind, so only he would know when Inzes has served his purpose and crossed into dangerous territory. Okay, I'm going to get into something a little weirder here. So hang in there.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Genesis 6 has a lot going on, and I just want to try to break some heavy stuff down with a few short, simple explanations. In 6-4, we see see the terms sons of God used. This is one way Scripture refers to angelic beings. This is an interesting section in there a lot of theories on it, but the prevailing understanding among historic Jewish texts was that the sons of God referred to fallen angels, which means that the sons of God, the fallen angels, took human wives and had children with them, creating this crossbreed of angels and humans. In this section

Starting point is 00:04:11 of Scripture, they're referred to as the Nephilim. In Matthew 22 and Mark 12, we see that the angels in heaven don't procreate, but that potentially could be for two reasons. First, the angels in heaven are referred to as elect angels who live within the bounds of God's rules and don't rebel against him. But second, scripture seems to indicate that all angels are male. We never see a female angel in scripture.

Starting point is 00:04:37 So if they're all male, they can't procreate among themselves. But if they were to procreate with human females, then theoretically, this kind of crossbreeding would be possible. And if that's the case, then there's a strong chance that the fallen angels procreating with women corresponds to the increasing wickedness on the earth. Why would fallen angels want to do this? Here's a popular theory. If you are an angel who resided in heaven with God the Father and God the Son and God

Starting point is 00:05:06 the Spirit, and you knew that the plan from before the creation of earth was that someday God the Father was going to send God the Son to earth, born as a human name Jesus, who was conceived by God the Spirit, to redeem and restore everything, and then you rebelled against God in His kingdom. Wouldn't you want to thwart that plan? Wouldn't you want to counterfeit it in an attempt to deceive people and defeat Him? So it could be that the enemy was trying to corrupt the human bloodline to prevent the birth of the Messiah by counterfeiting the supernatural and natural union.

Starting point is 00:05:40 It's possible. It's important that we hold all this with an open hand because we don't have enough info here. We don't want to scream where scripture whispers. But if this did happen, the way the ancient Jews understood it, then God wiping out all this crossbreed population via the flood, which is about to happen, totally makes sense. He's wiping out the enemies attempt to wipe out the Messiah's bloodline.

Starting point is 00:06:02 And in this scenario, the only family whose bloodline hadn't been infiltrated by fallen angels was Noah's family, so God preserved them. Are you still with me? If all that's really confusing, check out the show notes for a link to more info on this. And if you don't know how to find the show notes on your particular podcast app,

Starting point is 00:06:22 try googling the name of the app you're using along with the words show notes. For most apps, you just swipe up, but that's not always the case. Now, regardless of what happened, we know that God has set apart this family. These particular descendants of Adam and Eve, as the family he is in relationship with, more on that in a second. Okay, a few tidbits about the ark that might help you picture the scale of this monstrosity. According to 615, it was one and a half football fields long, the width of a six-lane interstate, and as tall as a four-story building. Noah was a pretty smart man, so he probably took the tiniest version of all the animals, and we have way more breeds of animals these days, so I'm sure God knew that that was the perfect size to hold whatever he needed to

Starting point is 00:07:08 hold. Probably didn't smell great though. In 618, we encounter the first time God mentions the word covenant in all of scripture. He singles out Noah as the place where this covenant begins. God is continuing to work through this one family of people. Before the floodwaters come, he lets Noah know that this is only the beginning of their relationship. Noah is not going to die. Then, in 7-6, the flood occurred.

Starting point is 00:07:34 If the timeline is spot on, the flood would have happened 1,656 years after Adam and Eve were created. We've covered a lot of ground in just six chapters. You can see that Genesis is not really heavy on the details, because that's an average of 276 years per chapter. That's like trying to summarize the history of America in one chapter. God leaves out lots of information. And that's okay, because our aim isn't to know everything. Our aim is to know God.

Starting point is 00:08:03 So where did you see God's character displayed today? What picture of God was presented to you? What's your God shot? Here's mine. In all we read today, I saw God's sovereignty on display. Nothing can thwart his will. Nothing can keep him from his plan to rescue the people he has entered into relationship with. The enemy's attempts to thwart the bloodline of Christ did not prevail, and even if you don't subscribe to that particular interpretation of Genesis 6, we see his sovereignty over weather and creation, is it work in all these things to restore, fall in humanity, in relationship with himself?

Starting point is 00:08:39 And that's good news for us all, because he's where the joy is. We don't want to just help you read the Bible. We want to help you study the Bible and we want to help you engage with others about what you're reading. So we've built out two tools that we hope will help you and they work together perfectly. The first tool is a daily study guide. This is designed for you to do on your own. There are roughly five questions a day to help you dig into the text and learn more on

Starting point is 00:09:04 your own while you're reading. These questions tend to focus you dig into the text and learn more on your own while you're reading. These questions tend to focus more on research and study, and we've left a space for you to write in the guide itself. The second tool is the Weekly Discussion Guide. It has about 10 questions per week, and there are totally different questions from the Daily Study Guide, but again, they work together perfectly. The Weekly Discussion questions are more reflective, and they'll help guide your group through a conversation that will build relationships as you work through

Starting point is 00:09:27 Scripture together. To get your copies of these or see sample pages of each, check out the store link at thebibelrecap.com or click the link in the show notes. The Bible Recap is brought to you by D-group, discipleship and Bible study groups that meet in homes and churches around the world each week. that meet in homes and churches around the world each week.

The Bible Recap - Day 002 (Genesis 4-7) - Year 3

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