God is Faithful - Genesis

As I've been reading through the Bible this year, I've really been blown away by God. Who He is. What He does. What He commands. Just Him. So I've decided to try and blog about some large scale themes I see in each book of the Bible that I read through.

When I finished Genesis, I really felt the weight of God's Faithfulness.

"And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel--and God knew." (Exodus 2:24-25)

I know this verse is not actually in Genesis, but I think it summarizes God's faithfulness from Genesis in a magnificent way. God made a covenant (Genesis 12:1-3). He remembered it. He heard the people's groaning. He knew. Wow! (What follows in Exodus is even more of God showing His faithfulness by bringing the Israelites out of Egypt against all odds... more on that later.)

Another way that we see God's faithfulness in keeping this same covenant is in the fulfillment of "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed," which God brought about through Jesus (Genesis 12:3). Jesus was from the line of Abraham (see Matthew 1), and he brought blessing to all the nations on the earth by offering Himself as their/our atonement for sin. He, as the second Adam, defeated Satan's ability to steal, kill, and destroy, and He offers eternal life to all who hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:9-10, 25-30).

But that's not the only covenant He kept. One covenant that we see God keeping quite regularly is the covenant He made with Noah: that He would never again destroy all flesh by a flood, which He put rainbows in the sky to remind us of (Genesis 9). What a beautiful sign of God's faithfulness in keeping His covenants.

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If you want to read through the Bible in a year, I highly recommend the reading plan I'm doing, which was recommended to me by our church. The Discipleship Journal organized it, and you can find it here. What I like most about it is that there are only 25 readings per month, so you have time to catch up if you get behind and time to think back over each month's readings to meditate on what you learned. I also highly recommend underlining and highlighting in your Bible as you read because 1) it makes you a more active reader, 2) it helps you see themes and other important things, and 3) it makes reviewing later much easier.