Read an Excerpt
The Grand Sweep
365 Days From Genesis Through Revelation
By J. Ellsworth Kalas Abingdon Press
Copyright © 2016 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5018-3599-5
CHAPTER 1
GENESIS 1; PSALMS 1–2 Week 1, Day1
When Genesis draws back the curtain on the Eternal Drama, there's only one Person on stage. God and Beginning are synonymous. Without God there is no beginning, and there is no beginning before God. So the drama begins, and God quickly establishes lighting (1:3) and time (1:5), then begins moving in scenery — waters, sky, dry land, vegetation.
Then there are creatures with a possibility of being more than scenery: birds, fish, animals, crawling things. At last, human beings (1:26-31), creatures who will play opposite God in this drama. They can fill this role because they are made in God's image and are therefore able to communicate with God.
It's an awesome picture, and all the more so because of the simplicity with which it is drawn. The writer sees no need to accumulate adjectives; it is enough that God will say, at intervals, Good! If God feels that way about it, what other word is needed?
I am impressed that the creation is such an intimate process. The Creator might be portrayed as a Master Engineer or the Ultimate Computer. Instead, Genesis tells us that God has soul; he wants to talk with someone. So the creation develops step by step on the framework "God said."
Science speaks increasingly of a Big Bang at creation. Genesis tells of a big conversation. But, of course, science is talking about how, while Genesis is telling us about who.
PRAYER: Help me, O God, on this day of new beginnings, to have all my beginnings in you. Amen.
* * *
How will my attitude toward the environment be affected if I seriously believe in God as Creator?
GENESIS 2; PSALMS 3–4 Week 1, Day 2
Genesis 1 told us we are made in the image of God. That's exciting, but from practical experience it's also confusing. We don't feel that God-like all the time; some days, we don't feel God-like at all.
Genesis 2 helps by telling us more about ourselves. We are creatures of the dust, which is easy to believe. Our physical person will decay into dust, and our personality is earthy enough to suggest our origins. But into that dust, God breathes something of the divine. Here is both our dilemma and our glory — that we are a bit of sod and a breath from God.
Perhaps the best evidence of our God-likeness is that we desire, like God, to communicate. Genesis 1 pictured both male and female created at once (1:27), but this chapter uses a beautiful story to let us know that we human beings need one another. We are bone of each other's bone and flesh of each other's flesh. John Donne underlined the point centuries later by saying that when one person dies, every person is diminished.
The intimacy of which we human beings are capable is uniquely expressed in marriage, partly because in marriage there is the possibility of engaging with God in the creation process.
There is a kind of divine humility in this chapter. Though the man is able to commune with God, he isn't expected to find fulfillment in God alone. "It is not good that the man should be alone" (2:18). We need God, but we also need one another.
PRAYER: Help me, I pray, to see every human being as part of my very being. Amen.
* * *
If marriage is part of the divine plan, how does a person who has not married, or is divorced or widowed, interpret her or his singleness?
GENESIS 3–4; PSALMS 5–6 Week 1, Day 3
When Genesis 2 ends, all is perfect; man and woman have each other, they are in communion with God, happily employed, and blessed with idyllic housing and food.
Then, enter the villain. He is known by a variety of names, but probably the most significant is Adversary or Accuser. He enters our story making accusations against God, but it is soon evident that the object of destruction is the human creature.
The sin, quite simply, is disobedience to God. What Adam and Eve wanted was itself admirable (as is often the case with sin); they wanted to "be like God." But they pursued their goal in the wrong way.
The results were catastrophic. They found themselves distanced from God, from each other, from nature, and from their own selves.
The pain continued into the next generation, and it continues to our own time. All our deeds, for good or ill, have consequences. In Adam and Eve's case, the tragedy grew monstrous when their older son murdered the younger.
But there's a note of grace from the very beginning. When Adam and Eve sinned, they received a message that traditional scholars over the centuries have seen as a promise of the Messiah (3:15); and when godly Abel was killed, there was a birth of new hope in Seth.
PRAYER: Save me, O God, from the day of temptation; and if I fall, teach me to repent. Amen.
* * *
Analyze your personal experience of temptation by comparing it with Eve's encounter with the serpent. What was Eve's experience? What is yours?
GENESIS 5–6; PSALM 7 Week 1, Day 4
There's much to be learned from reading an obituary column, chief of which is that we will all die. That, as Samuel Johnson would say, concentrates the attention. Genesis 5 is the first obituary column; its brief biographies are identical in their endings: and he died.
All but one. Enoch is a different sort of human being. In a setting of dying, he insisted on living, by means of his extraordinary communion with God.
Genesis 6 is an obituary column of another kind. It portrays a dead society. The smell of destruction is all about it, in proportions so ugly that "every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually," until at last "the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind."
But here, too, there was an element of wondrous life, in the man named Noah. He "found favor in the sight of the Lord," for with evil all around him, he was "blameless in his generation." Further, he managed to communicate his goodness to his family, so that his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law accepted his spiritual leadership.
No one else did, however. Though a New Testament writer calls Noah a "herald of righteousness" (2 Peter 2:5), his message was not heeded. Perhaps it was achievement enough to be good and godly in a thoroughly perverse time, even to the point of winning his own household.
PRAYER: Grant me, dear Savior, the grace to be a child of life, no matter how great the measure of death around me. Amen.
* * *
List several phrases from Genesis 6 that describe the degree of evil that characterized Noah's time.
GENESIS 7–8; PSALM 8 Week 1, Day 5
If Hollywood were telling this story, a large share of the screen time would be invested in scenes of terrifying destruction. Genesis tells us the proportions of the rain (forty days and nights), the total involvement of nature ("the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened" [7:11]), and the long wait for the waters to subside; but there is no description of human terror or of vast areas of desolation.
Instead, the emphasis is on restoration. We are told much about what was saved of both animal and human life, and of the patience and faith with which Noah waited for an end to his journey. Then, a moving interaction between Noah and God. Noah builds an altar and presents a sacrifice to God, and God, in turn, expresses divine pleasure at Noah's act. Never again, God vows, will there be such destruction; seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.
In this scene of judgment the overriding quality is mercy. Judgment has come so a worse fate can be avoided. God's judgments are never for pointless destruction or revenge, but for redemption.
So, too, the flood is not an end, but a beginning. And what a beginning it is! A human being in trusting worship, and God responding with the assurance of continuing mercy.
PRAYER: When I face judgment, dear Lord, help me to see it as redemption at work; in Jesus' name. Amen.
* * *
Describe a rainbow experience in your life — that is, an occasion when a time of suffering or trial concluded with a bright new hope.
GENESIS 9–11; PSALM 9 Week 1, Day 6
The Bible is a book of new beginnings. When sin seems to have destroyed an age or an individual, there is always a place of starting again.
It is as if the flood had washed the earth clean for this new start. The "first generation" was told to "be fruitful ... and fill the earth" (1:28); now Noah and his family are given the same instructions (9:1). And as if recalling the sins of Cain and Lamech, a warning is reiterated against the shedding of blood (9:6).
But things soon began to go wrong. Even as the rainbow of the covenant fades from view, Noah falls into drunkenness and one of his sons mocks his shame. Then, as the descendants of Noah multiply, a new spirit of rebellion appears: "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens" (11:4). So the original sin repeats itself: A people would, by their own devices, become like God and perhaps even displace him.
Their effort ends in disarray. When we set ourselves against God, whether as a civilization or as individuals, we put ourselves out of joint with the very nature of things and we are captured by confusion. Not only is communication with others broken, but within our own souls we speak a multitude of tongues.
But now, a new ray of hope: "Terah was the father of Abram ...; the name of Abram's wife was Sarai" (11:27-29). God has a friend, and who can say what good lies ahead?
PRAYER: Deliver me, dear Savior, from the confusion that comes from my rebellions against your love. Amen.
* * *
What was so sinful about the tower of Babel?
GENESIS 12–13; PSALM 10 Week 1, Day 7
Abraham is known as the father of the faithful (Galatians 3:6-7). These two chapters show why he deserves the title. They also show that faith almost always follows an uneven course, because it resides in human vessels.
Abraham's faith begins in a dramatic act: "Get up and go!" That could be said to be the essence of faith, because faith leads to action. So Abraham and Sarah, who were partners in the faith venture, left all that was familiar and dear to follow a promise.
But faith, as I said a moment ago, takes an uneven course. In Egypt, Abraham seems to retreat into doubt through his fear of the Egyptians. One would think that a person who was ready to go into the wilderness of the unknown would confront Pharaoh with confidence, but we human beings are rarely that consistent. That's why we need God's grace.
Abraham returns to his position of sublime strength, however, when there is conflict with Lot's herdsmen. He makes a decision based on character and trust, letting Lot have the far better portion, and only after the choice is made is Abraham revisited by God with a message of grand assurance. God said, "Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are ...; all the land that you see I will give to you" (13:14-15). And with that, Abraham moved on, and "built an altar to the LORD" (13:18).
PRAYER: When I fail, dear Savior, help me to trust in you and rise up to try again; in Jesus' name. Amen.
* * *
Contrast the qualities of character in Abram that caused him, on one hand, to lie to the pharaoh, and then, on the other, to deal so unselfishly with Lot.
Prayer Time
As I think of Abram and Sarai, who were available for God's purposes, I will pray that, like them, I may be a friend of God.
I want especially to pray daily for these persons:
How the Drama Develops GENESIS 1–13
I call the Bible a drama because it is. It has love, intrigue, suspense, and tragedy. And it has the two most significant lead characters conceivable — God and our human race.
The truths the Bible seeks to communicate probably could not be communicated in any other way. I remember a fine novelist who said that life's most important insights must be put into symbolic language because straight factual language isn't strong enough or sensitive enough to bear them.
The biblical drama — the ultimate drama, from which all other dramas take their plot line — begins with only one Person in view. Call God the First Person Singular. First, indeed — who else, since God is the beginning? Person, indeed — since our very definitions of personhood begin in God. Singular, indeed — in the sense of being unique, for who can be compared with God?
I like the way God creates, speaking everything into existence. I like this because of what it tells us about the kind of God we're doing business with. We have a communicating God, one who honors the creation by speaking to it with words.
— From Heroes, Rogues, and the Rest: Lives That Tell the Story of the Bible (2014); page 4.
But God chooses not to remain alone, and a creation comes into existence. It is perfect in every way until the entrance of a villain. (Is the villain perhaps the very fact of choice itself?) Suddenly the Edenic scene is shattered, and the human race finds itself refugees from perfection. Millennia later, we are still refugees, still looking for our Eden.
Adam and Eve seem to take the seed of the forbidden fruit with them as they leave the garden, because from that point forward, tragedies of sin unfold. First there is the story of Cain and Abel, with murder in the family, springing from ego twisted into jealousy, and born in (of all places) a setting of worship.
And then it gets worse, with humanity becoming so evil that "every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). So the Flood comes; it is as if nature itself cannot endure such human evil. The human story begins again, with a redeemed minority of Noah and his family. But the Flood is hardly past when Noah himself stumbles and one of his sons, Ham, compounds the evil. Then, with the passage of still more time, comes Babel. Here is the sin of Eden reenacted, as humans seek to compete with and displace God.
But through all this story is a continual strand of hope. It begins with Abel, who reaches out to God in worship, which the New Testament writer will describe as faith (Hebrews 11:4). And when the world becomes so shamefully, tragically evil, along comes Noah — "a righteous man, blameless in his generation" (Genesis 6:9).
The chapters following Noah seem to hold little promise. There is the embarrassment within Noah's own family, then the debacle at Babel, and a series of names that seem inconsequential. But suddenly, there in the midst of those names are Abram and Sarai; and with them, the biblical drama takes a whole new turn. They represent a line of promise that will continue all the way through the Old Testament and will take on new significance in the New Testament as the followers of Jesus Christ are identified as the offspring of Abraham, and heirs with him of God's promise (Galatians 3:29). The drama is not only unfolding; early in the first act we see the possibilities of an eventual climax.
Seeing Life Through Scripture
If we read the Creation story with faith-sensitive eyes, we can't help asking ourselves this question: If God has indeed made us, what manner of creatures ought we to be?
And still more, if we are made in God's image, to what degree are we reflecting that image? How badly blurred is the image of God in my life, as I live out my days in deeds, in words, and in thoughts?
Could a neutral observer — an angel, perhaps — ever see in me evidence that I am made in the image of God and that the breath of God is in me?
I must also remind myself that I live in a world that is at odds with the purposes of God. That's why we pray, "Your will be done, / on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). We are refugees not only from the perfection of Eden but also from our own best intentions and from the wholeness of life that God has intended for us.
I don't want to be part of the personal violence that characterized itself in Cain or of the culture-violence that characterized Noah's day; nor do I want to become absorbed in the Babel kind of society in which life seems to be a rather meaningless confusion. But I have a pattern — Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abram, Sarai. You and I can be God's people, personal outposts of a lost Eden, in our time and place.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Grand Sweep by J. Ellsworth Kalas. Copyright © 2016 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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