Word & the Wild

Pits, Prison, & Prostitutes | Week TWO | Episode 04
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[00:00:00] Owen: Well, hello and welcome in. This is Word and the Wild, the one year Bible adventure with friends. My name is Owen. I'm your host and your guide, and together we are on a 12 month journey as a podcast plus community. On this journey, we read the Bible for ourselves. But not by ourselves. And just like that, here we are in week two coming up ahead for us this week on the trail.

[00:00:39] We've got pits, prisons, and prostitutes. Not necessarily in that order. Oh man, who needs HBO when you've got Genesis? Am I right? Well, settle in, my friend. It's a real treat to be walking out this adventure with you. And a special hello to our Word and the Wild Plus community members. It's thanks to them.

[00:01:05] We've got what we need to keep this show rolling each week We got into all kinds of interesting conversations in our word and the wild plus community just in the live stream Q& A alone We talked about things like is God plural? Were there humans outside the Garden of Eden? Where is Eden? How do we get back there?

[00:01:26] Why did God make the serpent so mean? Why did God give Adam and Eve animal skin clothes? When did polygamy start in the Bible? And why did God stop all the progress that was happening with the Tower of Babel? So, it was pretty much just a roaring good time.

[00:01:44] If that sounds like something you'd like to be part of and enjoy, consider joining our Word and the Wild PLUS community for yourself. There's all kinds of fun conversation going on inside and it's not too late for you to jump in. There's info on how to do that over at wordandthewild. com and in the show notes for today's episode.

[00:02:09] And with that, let's jump into week two. And we're picking up with the chronological Bible reading that's marked as January 8 14 in our ChronoBibles. We are in the middle of the wild world that is Genesis. If you haven't picked up your copy of the Bible you're using, or the the The plan chart that we have available for you.

[00:02:33] You can find a link to it in the show notes for this episode. Now, before we step ahead on the trail, I would not be doing my duty as your guide. If we didn't take a look back at what we saw in week one, and we saw a lot we, we, we went all the way from the beginning of the universe, all the way through characters like Adam.

[00:02:58] Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah, all the way up to Abraham and his son Isaac, and even the start of Isaac's family with his wife, Rebecca. So that was all just in the last week. Remember back at the very beginning, the establishing shot for this epic movie. And that's how we're trying to look at what we're doing here.

[00:03:21] We're trying to see the Bible like a movie, an unfolding story, an epic movie with an epic plot. And the establishing shot for this epic movie, we see God in the center of that shot because God is the main character of this movie. We met him literally in the beginning. The very word number four in our Bible is the word God.

[00:03:51] And since he is the main character. It's worth stopping here to ask ourselves what we saw from God this last week as we read. Who is God? What is he like? What do we know about God so far? So we're gonna take a second right here. Seriously, based on what you have read so far, I'm gonna give you a sentence and I want you to finish the sentence.

[00:04:17] I'm gonna give you a few seconds. Think about it and then say something out loud. Yeah, really out loud. Go ahead. All right, here we go finish this sentence God is Blank, okay based on what you've read so far. God is

[00:04:41] Go ahead. Shout it out.

[00:04:50] All right. Well, here's what I've got as an answer to that Response to that sentence finishing that sentence. So let's compare notes. All right Based on what we've read so far, here's what I would say. I would say, first of all, God is powerful. I mean, we saw God. He speaks time, space, the universe, and life itself into existence.

[00:05:16] I mean, He unfolds creation like a work of art with effortless delight. He loves every Second of it, this is God's universe and we are all just living in it. That's how the Bible shows God. He's the unmatched unquestioned owner of this whole thing. He's the creator. He holds his creation accountable. God is powerful.

[00:05:45] So there's one. How about another one? If I was going to finish that sentence, God is, I'd say God is personal. He's a person. He interacts with people. I may be Captain Obvious here, but right? We gotta start with the basics. God walks and talks with Adam and Eve. He talks with Noah, Abraham, so many others. From God, we see emotion, he's pleased at the end of the creation week, it's all very good.

[00:06:18] Later, he's heartbroken at the state of affairs that leads up to the flood. He's a, he's a person. And from the Bible's point of view, you really can't understand God unless you watch how he interacts with people. It's, it's through the, the isolation of Hagar that we discover the gem that God is. It's the God who sees me as she calls him.

[00:06:46] It's in the desperation of Abraham with that knife in his hand and Isaac up there on the mountaintop that, that we see that the look that, that God is the Lord who provides God isn't. Some distant observer. He's present. He's active and he is interactive. God is personal. How about a couple more? I'll throw these out here.

[00:07:12] Here's another thing about God this week. We saw in week one. God gives purpose. God gives everything he creates a role to play, a job to do, and he sets there the value of what he creates. This to me shines through. with the very pinnacle of his creation, human beings, God creates human beings, male and female in his image right there in Genesis chapter one, they, they exist to carry a reminder of God's authority and God's attributes into the world.

[00:07:51] God wants his image. to multiply and scatter. So he commissions human beings to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. God wants to stake his claim and show his heart from every point on the surface of the earth through human beings who care for what he has made. So I say that that's that's God giving purpose.

[00:08:17] God. Also, here's another one. God makes. Promises. We saw this all over, right? Some promises are conditional. For example, he tells Adam, if you eat the fruit, then you will die. If then, that's there in chapter two of Genesis. Remember that? That's a conditional promise. Others are unconditional. God just says he will do what he promises regardless of how others act, no matter what.

[00:08:45] Like his promise to Noah to never flood the entire earth again or his promises to Abraham, which we saw fold out later in the week. How about one more? We've also seen that God has a plan. God is powerful. God is personal. We've seen that God gives purpose. I would say God also makes promises and God has a plan.

[00:09:12] There's a plot to this story. And God is moving that plot forward. From his prophecy to Eve, that one of her offspring will deal the serpent, that head, that crushing blow to the head in Genesis chapter 3, whatever that means. I don't know, we're not that far in the story yet, but it's gotta mean something.

[00:09:34] That's, that's, that's evidence that God has a plan. Also in God's prediction, remember that he predicts to Abraham that his descendants will spend 400 years enslaved? That was in Genesis 15, we read this week. These all indicate we're not watching some random series of events. God has a plan.

[00:09:57] And one more I see here, God not only is, is powerful, personal. Not only does God give purpose, make promises, and have a plan, but God walks a path. Not only does, does does God have a plan, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's also a way he's moving that plan forward. He's carrying out that plan day by day, event by event, step by step, God walks a path.

[00:10:31] And that's just some of the things we've seen about God so far. God's powerful. He's personal. God gives purpose. God makes promises. Those promises mark God's plan and God walks a path to move his plan forward. To me, this is where the other characters in the story that we have met so far all come into play.

[00:10:52] Not only does God walk a path, but people can walk God's path with Him.

[00:11:10] As we are looking back, At week one, there have been a lot of characters in the story so far, colorful characters, Bible is just full of some really memorable people and stories that some of them really stand out. I think of three guys, we, we, we met Enoch we met Noah, we met Abraham and these really stand out.

[00:11:35] These are people we can see that they are, are special. They get singled out. You've got Enoch while everyone else in the story so far lives and dies in those genealogies, you know, so and so begets so and so, and then so and so lived X years, and then they died. But Enoch it's different. Enoch doesn't die, he disappears.

[00:11:57] Then you've got Noah. When God's creation fills him with sadness and regret, God comes to Noah, of all people, with this plan to reboot the world and build a giant boat. That's that's out there. And then you got Abraham. This is a guy, on one hand, he's lying about his wife. He is fathering an illegitimate son who causes nothing but problems for himself, his family, and literally human history.

[00:12:30] And yet, God makes Abraham these unconditional promises to bless every family on earth through him to give him a son To give his descendants a permanent home and to give Abraham and his family That perhaps the greatest gift of all This idea that that God says he promises in Genesis 17 Remember this to to be their very own God that they get to to claim this creator god as their own god forever.

[00:13:03] That's amazing! So the question then is, I mean, what, what sets these, these, these people apart? What makes an Enoch, a Noah, an Abraham really stand out? And why does God interact with these particular characters? So differently, well, did you notice that each of these three guys, they have something in common and it's in the way the Bible talks about these three guys, as the story unfolds, they've got something in common.

[00:13:35] Let me show you what I mean. First of all, look at Enoch. It says in Genesis 5 24 that Enoch, it says, walked in close fellowship with God. And then look at Noah, the next chapter down, Genesis 6 9. It says Noah was the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked. In close fellowship with God.

[00:14:03] Same phrase. In a very similar turn of phrase God invites Abraham to continue to walk faithfully with me. To serve me faithfully. It says in Genesis 17, verse 2. These three characters in the story are different because they have a different kind of interaction with God. While most people in their time did their own thing.

[00:14:28] These three men, it says they walked with God. And here in the story, as your guide, I've got to point out. We've got a major plot point here. It's the topic of faith, of, of relating to God. This is a big deal because God, we just saw God is personal. He relates, he interacts with people. What's that relationship like?

[00:14:58] We get a couple of clues from these guys and around the idea of faith. And while we tend to think of faith as very, I don't know, very digital, at least I do, it's like you either have faith or you don't. It's like, it's an on or off switch. We're see through these interactions between God and people, especially Enoch, especially Noah, and especially, especially Abraham, that faith is really an idea that's, it's more of a relationship.

[00:15:29] I would say even a friendship. In fact, later on in Isaiah, chapter 41, verse 8, it actually says that Abraham was called the friend of God. It's Abraham was God's friend. That's really interesting because friendship is somewhat fluid. It's not on or off. A lot of the times. I mean, I have people in my life who, for a while, they're close friends, and then we kind of drift apart.

[00:16:00] Sometimes those people pull in close again, and we're friends again. It's, it's, it, think about it, Abraham, right? One minute he's having these great conversations with God. Next episode, he's over there sleeping with Hagar, or lying to Pharaoh about his wife. And if you think of faith as like a a have it or not kind of thing you either have faith or don't, well, like, a guy like Abraham's life, it's confusing.

[00:16:30] But if you think of faith as a, a friendship with God, then it makes more sense. Sometimes you can be a close friend, and other times Well, you kind of drift away. You lose touch. And faith is like that. It's, I think we've seen that so far. It's this friendship with God. It's a, it's a relationship of trust, of honesty, of a willingness to, to let go of control.

[00:16:59] And a guy like an Abraham, a Noah they didn't move down their own path, but instead they chose to walk with God as God takes his path and works his plan. God is a relationship you definitely want to maintain. We've seen that, right? God's the creator. to Be apart from him is death. To be with him is life.

[00:17:26] I mean, Adam and Eve felt this in the garden. They chose their own path. They chose to walk away from the friendship and they were banished from the garden and all so much unhappiness resulted. We saw this with Cain. We saw this with Lot. To walk with God is to enjoy a blessing and friendship. To walk away from God is to take a path of shame, hurt, and harm.

[00:17:59] Faith, to be God's companion, to walk in close fellowship with Him, to move with Him on His path, to cooperate with His plan, to be God's friend. That is the place to be.

[00:18:23] Well, that's kind of a long look back, but these are key, key, key storylines. So be looking for how those storylines pop up next this week and going forward now for this week Let's look ahead. Now. What's coming our way the focus of the story stays with Abraham's family We're going to see Isaac his son and Isaac's wife Rebecca They're gonna have a family of their own and there are definitely gonna be some like unlikes Father, like son moments, not going to spoil it for you, but look for those, you're going to see them and you're going to be like, wait, have I read this before?

[00:19:01] So then you got, so that's Isaac and Rebecca. And while they are facing their very human problems back in the background and through all of it, God, we're going to see him continue to work out his plan very intentionally, right? We're going to follow Isaac's son, Jacob. Through a number of misadventures with romance and fatherhood, and we will meet the men who eventually give their names to 11 of the 12 tribes of Israel.

[00:19:31] That's coming up this week too. And if you're asking, who's Israel? What are the tribes? What's all that? We'll just keep reading. That's what's coming up this week. And This week, we get to meet one of my absolute favorite characters in the entire story. His name is Joseph, and he takes a wild ride full of ups and downs, twists and turns.

[00:19:54] And as you watch his story play out this week, keep in mind what we've already seen about God. And keep in mind What it's like to have that close relationship with him. To recognize that God has a plan and a path and see what that does in Joseph's life. And just like that, you my friend are all set for what's ahead on the trail.

[00:20:24] Don't forget, Word and the Wild is a Bible adventure with friends. Friends, that's a key part of this whole thing, so don't be going it alone out there. First thing you can do is just subscribe to this podcast so you get next week's episode delivered right to you. And then you can also join our Facebook community for some interaction there.

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[00:21:28] Word and the Wild is the LineHouse Community. It's part of the LineHouse Community Network, a nonprofit organization with a mission to bring neighbors together to promote awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the Bible.

[00:21:42] Because friendship and God's Word change lives and change cities.

[00:21:48] Word and the Wild is presented by the LumaVoz podcast network. Many thanks to our friends at LumaVoz for giving us a cozy podcast home. And with that, we're out. I'm Owen, I'm your host and your guide. Until next time, I'll see you out there on the trail in the Word and the Wild.

[00:22:11] Have a good one.