In our previous Why Am I Here? (The Answer) daily teaching we saw how, according to to the Genesis account, mankind was created to image God (Gen. 1:26a). But there’s still plenty more to see. So, as we make our way to the ultimate reason for man’s existence we will first continue to survey the opening chapter of God’s Word, looking back to the initial revelation of man’s creation to understand why we are here. We pick up today in the second half of Genesis 1:26.
Tag: worship (Page 1 of 2)
In Exodus 32 we see a prime example of what wasting wealth looks like; and not surprisingly, it comes in conjunction with people worshiping the wrong thing. When the children of Israel were about to leave Egypt God gave them favor in the sight of the Egyptians so that their neighbors willingly gave them an abundance of gold and silver (Ex 11:1-3; 12:35, 36). Granted, in those days there weren’t websites and apps at people’s fingertips whereby they could have seemingly instant access to gold and silver’s worth; but nonetheless, it was a very valuable resource and the Israelites left Egypt with a good amount of it as a result of God’s grace.
“That Worship is Horrible”. Perhaps you’ve heard this one before. Someone participates in a worship service and sometime after corporate worship is ended they say, “Church was good but that worship was horrible.” Usually what that person means is something akin to saying – “it didn’t seem like true, or passionate, or Spirit-led worship was happening during the singing portion of the service.” It’s also possible that person may simply be used to singing for something like 45 minutes and deem all singing periods shorter than that, without extended interludes between some songs, as ‘not Spirit-led’.
Have you ever asked any of these questions?
What can I learn from Jabal?
What can I learn from Jubal?
What can I learn from Tubal-Cain?
Probably not. These names are among the more obscure ones in Biblical history. That being said, when we look at what is said about them and the context in which they are found, there are valuable insights to be gleaned. First, by way of creating context, these men are descendants of Cain and sons of his descendant, Lamech. Lamech was a murderer and the first polygamist in Biblical history. He had two wives: Adah and Zillah; and the aforementioned men were the sons of these two women respectively.
Unforgetting. You might typically think of such an attribute as a negative one. The kind associated with someone who, say, forgives but refuses to forget. But the un-forgetting we see in the opening verse of chapter eight is a good kind. It’s the kind that remembers mercy, and communicates it to the objects of mercy in the midst of judgment. The flood came and the waters prevailed for one hundred and fifty days (Gen. 7:24). The judgment that God had promised had come, was complete, and in the opening verse of chapter eight we read the anthropomorphic expression: “Then God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided” (8:1). God never forgot Noah; rather, the expression “Then God remembered…” is way of saying, ‘After a period of time where God might have appeared, say, silent or distant, He undertook once again to do something on behalf of the objects of His mercy.’ For example: God remembered Abraham and delivered Lot from destruction (Gen 19:29); God remembered Rachel and opened her womb (Gen 30:22); and here God remembered Noah and all who were with him on the ark and He brought forth a wind, likely for the purpose of beginning to evaporate the waters (Gen 8:1). Even though for a time it might have seemed like Noah was forgotten in the ark as the waters prevailed on the earth, remember – he and his family were in the ark for one hundred fifty days leading up to Genesis 8:1 (not to mention the days that followed as the waters began to recede), and that might have been longer than Noah had anticipated, but through it all he and those with him were not forgotten. God remembered them and demonstrated afresh His kindness towards them by causing the waters to begin to recede. The words God spoke to Zion through the prophet Isaiah are a good reminder for all God’s people that the God who keeps His people not only does not slumber or sleep, neither does He forget. “Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Isa. 49:15).
