January 2, 2010 Daily Reading

Today’s reading plan contains the beginning of sin, grace, promise, the implications of sin, two curses, two acts of God’s grace, worship, false worship and the implications of these and finally we begin to see a promise fulfilled in the birth of Jesus the Christ.

After God has now called everything good and Adam has a wife and a law was given (don’t eat of the tree) with a promise of life if obedience was practiced, we are introduced to a “serpent”. We later come to find out that this serpent is named the Devil, Satan, Adversary or the prince of the power of the air. He enters the scene quickly and he gets right to his duties of being the enemy of God.  He convinces them to eat of the tree, their eyes are opened and we now have something called “sin” (not sins) and everything God promised would happen began to happen. There was a death, we later come to find out this death is spiritual one (Ephesians 2:1) though they will also die physically and that everyone has been infected by sin (Romans 5:12-15). God pronounces a curse over all of His creation and it doesn’t take long to see this curse working in and through humanity (Genesis 4:8-16 and Genesis 4:23-24)

Yet in spite of this we see a promise in the midst of the chaos. In Genesis 3:15 we see a promise of a seed that will crush the head of the serpent. My friends this is the beginning of what is known as redemptive history (we see a genealogy that follows the Godly Seth versus the cursed Cain) and we see this “seed” unfold to be a promised prophet, king, God with us, and later fully as the Lord Jesus Christ.  In our New Testament reading Matthew 2:1-6 the child being born to Mary and Joseph will “shepherd” the people (you will see this shepherd language throughout your reading of the Old Testament).

I want to point out a few things that we begin to see that will be clearer as we read throughout this year. We first see a picture of “substitute”. Two animals are killed in our readings. The first in Genesis 3:20-21. An animal is killed to clothe Adam and Eve (no animal has died before this point). Next we see an animal being a satisfying offering to God as worship. We read this in Genesis 4:1-7. This will become more apparent as to why the slaying (blood) of animals is necessary to worship God. We also see dissatisfaction of false worship. God will not allow false worship and Cain is angered (just as many today are angered by the Gospel) and kills his brother because of it. We see early on that God has a very SPECIFIC way to be worshipped and nothing else is accepted (today many believe they can worship God how they please, and that is because God has been created in our image not His revealed image).

Finally we end with the birth of a King, so we are left with a cliff hanger. What will this king do? He is only a child yet he is being worshipped by Magi from the East who followed his star. We see again false worship. There is another king who does not want this new king to be worshipped, so he goes into deplorable depths to ensure that this child king does not grow up to become an adult and take his rightful place as the true king., God’s king. Well we have to continue reading to see how this unfolds and how it harmonizes itself with our Old Testament readings.

Genesis, Matthew, Redemptive History, The Fall, Worship