Be Fruitful, Increase in Number, Fill the Earth

Today's reading is from Genesis 9.

One of the most popular images from this passage is the rainbow, a sign of God's promise. But as I read it this time, another thing stood out to me more. It was these words in verse 1:

"Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth."

It's also in verse 7:

"As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it."

The idea of God wanting the earth to be filled with many people & why would God want such a thing really stood out to me & made me wonder~

But before I share my thoughts on that, let's pay attention to some other detail elsewhere first. So I'm sure most of us have heard of the origin of the rainbow from here. It was a sign of a covenant between God and Noah, as it says in verse 13, "I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth."

As I put more thought into it this time, it actually really made lots of sense. In our everyday lives, after we experience a huge rainstorm, when the sun comes out again, there the rainbow sits in the sky. As I see it now, it's really a reflection of what God promised Noah that day. 

Seeing the rainbow is a reminder of why the rain stopped. It's amazing how this physical sign of the covenant is still observable to this day!

Verse 3 raised a question from me.

Why did God introduce meat for food now, & not before?
Feel free to share your thoughts or knowledge on this.

So now back to the command God gave Noah.

"Be fruitful, increase in number, fill the earth.

As I read these words, I was left wondering, why did God want more people on the earth? Did He want more people to love? Was not an adequate amount of humans enough? Why did He want so many people?

It really reminded me that, every human life is special to God. The more people there were, the more He could share His love with. The more joy He would have & He could share~

He wanted to give many people, even yet to be born, an opportunity to share a relationship of love with Him.

Though, I'm sure God already knew how many people there would be on the earth. It was more or less 'predestined' by Him. Whatever the number may be, I'm sure it's very big, and big enough to fulfill God's purpose for the Earth & mankind.

This really shows that every individual is special to God. 

Everyone is unique, everyone is perfectly different.

The more people there are, the more variations of uniqueness there will be. Everyone has different experiences & different opportunities. There are people born with different genes, born in different places, & born into different cultures. None two people are the same.

Everyone is unique because God has a specific role for them in His kingdom.

In conclusion, the vast amount of people God wanted, meant a vast variation to fulfill the many unique roles He has given us in the world, & probably also in Heaven. It means everyone is needed by God. We are all part of one body, if I may. We are all special in our own way to God. Not only that, but God also wanted to give as many people the opportunity to share eternal glory with Him, not so He can be praised by us, but because He wants to share His love with us, even though we don't deserve it.

Godbless~

Always True To His Word

Well I actually studied this passage yesterday, but due to school starting and all, I ran out of time to make the post. This really isn't going to be as easy I thought with school, but I'll do my best to carry on.

So the passage is Genesis 8.

After all the incidents that have previously happened, I feel this this is a great turn around, a great reminder that at the end of the storm is God holding His arms wide open for us~

The first words of the passage are already very compelling in itself.
"But God remembered Noah"
My Bible has a sidenote that says the 'remember' here means the same as to 'pay attention' to. I personally think that this makes the words so much stronger.
Pay attention really implies that God never lost attention of Noah, that Noah had God's full concentration. Isn't that pretty amazing? To have God's full attention & therefore complete protection.
I really feel that here, God wasn't just 'keeping a covenant' with Noah by protecting him from the flood, but He was taking the extra mile because He really loved Noah~

So shortly afterwards, the waters began to recede, life on earth was given another chance.

By now, Noah had been in the ark for a very long time. I'm sure it wasn't the most comfortable place to be, having been tossed around by the ocean for so long, having to live amongst animals, but he would finally be able to leave the ark soon!
So to give him an idea of the progress of waters receding, Noah sent out birds to check for him. After the third bird, Noah had proof that the earth had almost dry.
Not only that, he even decided to remove the covering and have a look with his own two eyes. It says in verse 13  "Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry." So why didn't he leave the ark? Why did he remain in the ark for more than an extra month? I'm sure he would've really wanted to leave, & finally be able to stand on solid ground. But he waited.

He waited for God's command. I really think it's really amazing how much He trusts God now. Even though he saw with his own eyes that the earth had dried, he still waited to God said it was safe. It took another month & more before the earth was completely dry, as it says in verse 14.
I'm sure alot of the times nowadays, we really rely on what we see to confirm it's true. We must see to make sure. And when we do see, we're so sure of ourselves. But here we can really learn from Noah, after so many confirmations of his own power, he still waited for God. And he was right to do so~

Then when he finally was able to step out of the ark, the first thing he did was thank God, by building an altar to Him. As it says in verse 20 "Then Noah built an altar to the LORD".
Would we have done the same after having to experience such poor living conditions for so long? Would we have only been so relieved & forgotten about God?
Well Noah definitely didn't, he thought of God first, He remembered & was extremely thankful for God's plan for his life, even though alot of it was extremely difficult & painful.

God then blesses Noah.
One phrase really stood out to me here.
In verse 22,
"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest,"
Seedtime was obviously when people planted their seeds. But back then they didn't have machines, so I'm sure it would've been quite alot of work to walk a whole field & sprinkle seeds along the way.
Then in the harvest they would find out if all the hard work would be paid off.

At the end of this, God reassures us that both 'will never cease'.
It really reminds me that till now & till He comes back, we'll be expected to work hard on this earth. Work isn't something we should get away from or be lazy about. But at the same time, He assures us that with work comes results, comes rewards, comes the harvest~

So a key thing I picked up from this passage.

God payed attention to Noah.
It reminds me that God always takes the extra mile in His love for us. Are we just going to give Him some of us or none at all? Or are we going to give it all we've got as well?

Godbless~

The Floodgates of Heaven Open

So today.. it happens..
In Genesis 7.

I found the first verse quite important.
"Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation." It didn't say most righteous or anything, it just said righteous. I think if there were anymore righteous people in that generation, God would've saved them just the same. In the same way, if we remain righteous even when the whole world is wicked, we can be assured we will be safe. We don't have to be the most righteous or anything, we just have to be right with God~

Then it goes on to record the instructions God gave Noah regarding the animals. Questions that left me wondering were, why seven of every clean animal and also birds as well? Seven seems to be coming up quite alot in the Bible at this point.

As I read verses 6-16, I noticed the latter part kind of repeats the part before, but with a bit more detail.
Maybe it was written like this for emphasis? To emphasize the importance of Noah, his family & all the animals, which would be the only living things on earth after the flood.

In verse 16, I was quite shocked at first at the words. "The the LORD shut him in." It sounds pretty harsh all of a sudden, after all the goodness God has done for Noah. But knowing what's to come, all the devastation, it's really actually once again God's love that shines through. Even if Noah, for some reason wanted one last look at earth, the flood was coming, & God wanted Him safe. He dragged him completely out of harm's way.

Now to the climax.. the flood...

It's actually quite a detailed description of the whole event if you ask me. Even includes some digits to show how much the oceans exceeded the mountains by. The repetition of 'rose greatly' also stands out to me. I think here God is really throwing out at us in huge emphasis of what actually happened. How devastating it really was and all the deaths that occurred due to it.
In a way, He wants us to KNOW and FEAR His wrath when sin corrupts. Though He isn't showing us this so that we may bring out His wrath, but so that we may walk in the completely opposite direction & bring out His love for us. Again, it's a warning, a huge one this time, at what has to happen if we turn away from Him - it's an act of love for us~

Verse 23 is a really nice little summary.
"Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that moved along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark." After what seems to have been God losing control previously, here God shows that He was always in complete control. He was able to kill off every single human except for the specific few He said He wouldn't kill. I'm sure the ark could have easily started leaking, or hit a mountain & broke, but God was most definitely in control. It once again reminds us that our life is truly in the goodness of God's hands & all we need to do is trust Him.

So some important things I picked up from this passage.

In verse 15, the animals "came to Noah and entered the ark". It's a clear example of God being with Noah throughout the whole of this difficult task. There was probably no way Noah could have, by himself, went to find animals like lions & bring them back to the ark without being eaten. It should remind us that if God tells us or gives us a very difficult task, we can be assured we won't be doing it by ourselves. As a matter of fact, this applies to any task He gives us.

Throughout the whole passage, though it gives quite a detailed description of the flood, it doesn't give us much about the destruction, about the deaths itself of humankind. It doesn't show us how the wicked men panicked, or even maybe turned their face to God once more. This shows that the flood with all the destruction & deaths it caused, WAS NOT the main point to this. What is important, is the fact that people who fear God are saved. God wants us to know that the most important thing about Him is His love for us, not His wrath~

Hope this helped.

Godbless~

The Crazy Task

Today I read from Genesis 6:9-22

Noah is another example of God's goodness not being able to die out.
Despite the everyone else on the earth being morally corrupt, there was still one man that still put his faith in God. Pretty amazing right?
We can really be reminded that hope never dies out. We can never eliminate God from the picture. His goodness remains whatever the circumstances may be.

So here's Noah, completely different to the world around him.
It must have been extremely hard, all the mockery he would've received, watching his friends doing all the wrong things, having to live in a time where God was not feared~
I think he really had his heart set right. As he walked with God, he longed for what God wanted. This really helped him see how God saw, & helped him have a strong stance against Satan's forces.

So when God came up to him & asked him to build the ark, I'm sure he would have done it gladly. Though don't be mistaken, it was an enormous task at hand.
It was an ark, a giant boat, not a little small tug boat. It was to hold two of every animal on the earth.
Even with all our technological advances nowadays, if God went to a single person & asked him to build an ark today, I'm sure it still would be a huge difficult task. And back in Noah's time, they had nowhere near as much resources as we have nowadays, so imagine how hard the task would have been.

I also found it quite amazing how God could give Noah specific dimensions & instructions that all worked out perfectly. Despite not having visual of the boat or anything, he just knew~
It really once again reminds us of how great God really is, of what He can do in our lives. He knows every single aspect of our lives even though it hasn't happened yet.

I really love how the passage concludes.
"Noah did everything just as God commanded him."
Would we have done the same?
Noah's obedience & trust in God is something to be marveled at.
We can really learn from it.

Do we completely trust God today?
If God told us to do something crazy with no reason, would follow Him blindly?

God requires us a lot of the time to have faith in Him.
This means following His plan for our lives even though we may not know where it will take us.
It means doing things that may seem crazy to us without a given reason at the time.
But we can be assured it's all for the good of us.
Because He loves us~

Once again, in this passage, we're reminded what God must do when we walk away from Him. With all the corruption at the time, He had to destroy everything.
But for those of us who do walk with Him, we can be assured that God will put an end to evil once & for all one day. All the pain, sorrow, corruption will be refined into goodness, joy & glory.

Just something to think about
Do you want to be safely in the 'ark' when that happens or apart of the devastating 'flood'?

Godbless~

Pre-Noah: God failed again?!

Hey guys.

I initially thought I was going to read about Noah's flood today, but then I realized there was quite an important passage beforehand so I decided to do a study on that specifically before the 'huge event'.

So today I read from Genesis 6:1-8.

Firstly, I think there's an important thing to distinguish from this passage.
In verses 1-2, "Sons of God" & "men".
I think basically the only difference between them are that they know & walk with God or that they don't at all & indulge in all the pleasures of the world. So in this first little bit, it says men began to increase & had beautiful daughters. This is probably where it started to go wrong, the sons of God started seeking these beautiful woman who were raised by worldly men.. & slowly they grew further from God~

It should remind us to be careful & not indulge or be tempted by what's from this world. Whether it be a really nice girl you've met that's non-Christian or just sinful pleasures in general. It won't be easy, but we'll be able to see how badly it corrupts soon.

Then it goes on in v3 to say how God's Spirit won't be with mortal men forever. I personally think the way mortal is used here is for people that don't seek God & won't have eternal life. So in the same way, people that have eternal life are 'immortal' & God's Spirit will be with them forever. So we can be assured here that once we've accepted Christ as our Saviour we'll have the Holy Spirit forever!

I don't get why God ended up shortening our days to 120 years though. Maybe it was because they were becoming more corrupt? Also, I realized there were people that lived longer than that after the declaration.. It'll be really cool if you could leave a comment if you have any ideas about this.

After this, out of nowhere comes a passage about these "Nephilim".
They seemed really interesting so I did a quick search about them on Google. I got results like giants & product of women + fallen angels. Though there's no concrete proof of what they actually were. What seems interesting is that the name is related to the word naphal in Hebrew which means "to fall". If you know anything about these Nephilim you're more than welcome to share!

But what's funny is that it doesn't say much about them here, only the fact that they're "heroes of hold, men of renown", which probably means they're pretty powerful people. And it only says when they were on earth here...

Now from verse 5...
This is where I started getting confused.
Did God make 'another' mistake now? Once again it seems His creation is going wrong. Men are walking away from Him & disappointing Him~
I would have never gotten anything from this if the Holy Spirit didn't help me understand. But here's my understanding of what it says in this passage.

So the first time this happens is when the serpent tempts Adam & Eve into sinning.. then after God fixes things, guiding them in the right path, allowing the birth of Seth to replace Abel, walking with Enoch, He allows most of men to be completely corrupt again. It may leave us wondering, where's God's sovereignty, has God lost control of His own creation?

It then even goes on in verse 7 to say "The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." But I think here, the Bible is just trying to show God's feelings in a way that we can perceive it. As God isn't human like us, grief to Him isn't exactly the same as our grief & also the pain He feels. So don't try to think of our own grief & pain. It isn't exactly the same~

GOD IS SOVEREIGN.
It may not seem exactly like it here.. but I assure you, it's actually showing God's sovereignty here.

With our knowledge of how great God is.. it defies God to lose control right?

So think of the events here in this way.
God is letting this happen to show us what we will be like if we walk away from Him.
He wants us to know how He would feel if we turned away from Him & to sin instead.
He shows us what He has to do, through Noah, if we let this happen.
It's all within His control, it's part of His plan, as maybe a warning for us. It's an act of love to guide us away from devastation to life~

Remembering this will also set us up for the rest of the Bible.
It'll help us to see why God allows evil to prevail & cause humans grief alot of the time. It'll help us answer the "why God"s. They're all lessons we can learn from to warn us, & to also show us that He truly is Sovereign, He loves us, & we need Him.

We can really be reassured here in this passage, that God is in complete control at all times, even when it may have seemed He has lost control of us~

And in no matter what situations & doubts we may encounter, we can always have faith in God's sovereignty & love for us~

Godbless~

The First Genealogy

I realize I haven't done this in a while.
It's so bad.
But at least I've started again right.

So today, the reading is from Genesis 5.

At first thought, I really didn't think I could pick anything up from this passage as it's more or less just a list of names, years etc. But reading it this time really reminded me that every single word in the Bible is God spoken & has meaning & purpose in our lives, even the parts we sometimes think are completely irrelevant.

What struck me first is in verse 2.
"He created them male and female and blessed them."
It shows that since the beginning, we've been blessed. God's blessing doesn't wear off. So despite sin's corruption upon us, we'll always be made for & favored by God. It's up to us now to flee from our sin or not.

One main thing seen from this passage is how people died so late.. & also how they had sons & daughters so late. It seems the fleshly bodies at that time lasted longer. Maybe the cells decayed at a much slower rate, or the body was just more 'advanced' in general. I've never actually put much thought into this before.

Another thing that really caught my attention is how this genealogy is focused on the firstborns. It was only the firstborns that could bear more firstborns which led to someone important. Couldn't there have been a non-firstborn somewhere in between? Firstborns must therefore be pretty important. Also, it seems all firstborns were males... What do you think about this?

Another thing I noticed is the gradual decrease in the years to become a father from Adam to Mahalalel. It would've probably kept decreasing if maybe something special didn't happen during Jared's life?

One thing I picked up this time is the phrase "became father of". It kind of makes it sound like that it's a privilege to become the father of such a son. That latter generations were important, & as sons bore sons, it gradually got more important. Maybe it was pointing at Jesus? The son of God~

Now comes the the more exciting part of the passage - Enoch, the man who never died.
I never noticed this before, but Enoch was on earth for 365 years, the amount of days in a year. Maybe that has some significance? Something really stood out to me this time reading it, the blandness of the whole experience. Enoch was one Godly person, walking with God for 300 years. To the world, we'd expect it to say something like "so God blessed him immensely with riches, wisdom power etc." right? But instead, it just says "then he was no more, because took him away". It really doesn't sound that great at all if you ask me.
But if you think more into this, it's really true.
Alot of the times God rewards us, it isn't what flesh desires. It's something that means alot to us, but may seem really useless & stupid to other people. If we put more thought into what Enoch really got from God, we will really appreciate it. Enoch got to leave this sinful & corrupted world sooner than others to spend the rest of eternity in paradise with the all-loving God! Now that's probably the best thing anyone could ever want right?

Then after Methuselah's super long life, it goes onto Lamech, which lived significantly less than the others. Was it cause he wanted comfort from labor & pain? But look at the number, 777. The number 7 seems to have some purpose of perfection in the Bible from what I've heard. Maybe living less, but at that specific age was a blessing afterall? Maybe it symbolized God's perfection right before the storm during Noah's life?

I'm really surprised I could pick up so much from reading a genealogy!
This really proves that the Bible isn't just words from a book, but God's words spoken to us~

So something important to think about to finish off.

Alot of the time, what God grants us in our lives may seem really stupid & disappointing on the surface. But remember, what comes from God is always amazingly good & so much better than we could ever imagine. Be assured that God will reward us immensely as Christians, but remember that isn't the purpose of our lives, but because He deserves it & we need to glorify Him~

Godbless~