Viewing entries tagged
Genesis
Work that was once fruitful, is now in vain. Somewhere between our last study and this Psalm something went very very wrong. Work that was perfect, is now anxious. And we know this all too well ourselves — how did your day go? How has 2024 been treating you? Genesis 3 holds the answer to that and we will look at the nature of sin, its impact on work, and what hope we have for an otherwise hopeless situation.
This passage — Genesis 2 — might be a familiar passage, especially when we resolved to start Bible reading plans at the start of the year. But have we thought about what God’s word says about work? As we begin this study on work, it is important for us to understand how God designed work! Otherwise we will be shaped by other voices!
We’ll consider the issue of purity first by using the life of Joseph, then going to see what the New Testament says!
In the previous study, we began our series and tried to lay out the prerequisite to know God’s good design for gender. Genesis 1-2 depicts the male and female as two equal yet distinct holy persons reflecting the image of God. We saw how our anthropology is meant to reflect God. Our genders aren’t just statements in themselves, but is meant to point to God.
In this study, we are going to consider the issue of dating. Now, the Bible doesn’t speak of modern “dating”, because this is a new historical idea. But nevertheless, we can still glean some important and helpful principles from His Word!
This is our new series on the Bible, relationships and love. As young adults, relationships, love and marriage are things that we think or worry about, watch shows about and talk to people about. Today, our culture is obsessed with love and relationships. We see it on social media and in entertainment and as we consume more and more of this content, our view of love and relationships and marriages become shaped more by the world than by God’s Word. This series hopes to tackle this central area of life for young people. We will engage with a variety of issues that single, dating and married people face and we will come out of what the culture tells us to ask, what does God’s Word have to say?
This is the last study in our Doctrine of Scripture series. We started our series with a speaking God, and we went through some of the attributes of Scripture — sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary. Then we studied about the Canon of the Bible, how we have the set of books in our bibles today. Last week, we spoke about how Scripture cannot be broken. And we come to this week, where we want to trace the storyline of the Bible, because we know that what God says will come to pass!
In this series, we’re going to focus on why and how we can trust Scripture to be reliable and trustworthy. We’ll examine what Scripture says about itself, but today, we’re going to begin by looking at the God of Scripture. Our goal in this series is not to get more information but to learn about what Christians through the ages have believed about God and His word!
Through this series, we hope to drive home the fact that you do not need a seminary degree to read the Bible. Wait what? Yes, because sometimes in our churches, we talk about the Bible as if the Old Testament were only for seminarians. That is wrong. The OT is for God’s children, and all Christians are His children.
Today, we look at the first 5 books of the Old Testament, also known as the Torah, the Pentateuch, and the books of Moses. Read on to see the big structure and key sections to fill in that structure, so that you would have confidence to fill in everything in-between!
Every year, to wrap up our Advent series and to mark Christmas, we will hold a “Lessons and Carols” session at the Fellowship. This year was no exception. At this session, instead of our usual Bible study format, we read from select texts in the Bible and also sang hymns fit for the season.
Gender. It's an incredibly important and hot topic these days, mostly because the issues are so weighty and so personal at the same time. Few issues go to the heart of our humanity and personhood like this one. Thus, we should be careful at all times, to speak of these matters with great care and love, ever conscious of the dignity of human persons. This is core for Christians in every context. Gender and sexuality are sacred issues for us and we must not be careless. Thus, for us, instead of tackling each of the specific issues individually, we're going to start first looking at the character of God, and the nature of humanity He designed. In order to develop shared ground to speak of, we should not start from our experiences, which are varied, and expectations, which could come from different sources. Our controlling mechanism must begin with who God is, and who we are as human beings, so let’s start from there.
What is the church? Christians often describe the church as a gathering. Yet, there is a lot of confusion about what the church is. In our world today, there is no end to Christian gatherings – small groups like these or our parachurch ministries on campus or our cell group in our church made up of people that are of a similar demographic to us. Today, we hope to study the Bible and see how God intended for His church to be.
In the first study, we learnt about the world that God created in Gen 1. He declared that all that He had made was good, but that world looks very different from the world we live in today. We live in a world after Gen 3, and today, we will learn about the cause of the brokenness of this world.
In the first of our "Gospel Explained" series, we start from the beginning, and look at the focus of the first chapter of the Bible -- God. This might come as a surprise to some of us, but in reading Gen 1 with God as the main subject, we might come to learn a lot about Him, and ourselves in the process.
The Old Testament is made up of different genres, but each of these books of the Old Testament work together to tell one narrative. It is not a collection of short stories, but is really one story.
Here's how each book fits into the larger storyline.
When we read any novel or book, where do we begin? Of course at the beginning, you'd say. It's a no brainer. And the Bible is no different really. I don't know about you, but sometimes I do struggle with reading the Bible. Certain chapters don't make sense. Narratives are easier, but when it comes to law and poetry, sometimes things seem complicated. Is it just for the intellectual few? No!
In this new series, we'll consider what the Bible's storyline is all about. Sometimes we think we know these things and assume that we've understood everything, but it really is worth pausing and reconsidering what the Bible says about itself, about God and about us. Ready? Let's begin right at the beginning, in Genesis to consider who God is and what is God's initial plan for you and me.
In the first 11 chapters, we see the downward spiral after the fall of man and the extent of sin's destruction in this Paradise Lost. Chapter 12-50, however, showed us God's faithfulness in keeping His promises through the generations of one man, Abraham. Genesis reminds us that there is a story beyond our short lives here on earth. Our lives are wrapped up in a larger narrative, beyond what we can actually imagine.
What can we learn from the last verses of the last chapter in Genesis?
We're almost at the end of Genesis, and this chapter records for us the death of one of the patriarchs. Nearing the end of his life, we read of 3 blessing sequences in Genesis 47-49. He blesses Pharaoh (Gen 47), Joseph's sons (Gen 48) and his own sons (Gen 49). Before we go on to study today's passage, why is it so important that the book of Genesis ends with the idea of blessing? Following from the idea of the curse in Gen 3, the rest of Genesis proceeds to reverse and undo this curse. Once again, we are reminded that the Bible must be read in context! Like the previous chapters on blessings, therefore, Gen 50 reminds us of the curse of Gen 3, for all man will die now.
In Gen 49, we are at the end of Jacob's life and he issues a call for them to gather themselves together (v.1). Jacob churches them, and in the New Testament, we see this word for gathering being used to describe the church. The Bible's understanding of the church is not an institution, but an assembly of God's people and early on in the Bible even in Genesis, we see glimpses and the beginning of this idea. Notice also how the sons are referred to in verse 28. They have changed from sons to tribes at the end of the blessing. They are no longer individuals within a family, but have taken the identity of heads of households of a nation. Gen 49 not only helps us to see the importance of people in God's eyes, but also that God's people are assembled in some form of organizational structures. These tribes introduced in Gen 49 persist right to the end, to the book of Revelation!
We're almost at the end of Genesis, and nearing the end of Jacob's life. Gen 48 begins with Joseph being told that his father Jacob as ill and dying, and he brings his two sons to meet their grandfather. This might seem like an extended ending to some of us. After all, we wouldn't be surprised if the story ended with Joseph being reunited with his father and brothers. A simple "and they lived happily ever after" would not shock us. Yet, the narrative continues in Gen 48, and it continues to teach us so many things about how we read the Bible! We often come to the Bible with our own preferences and ideas, and this extended ending reminds us to read God's Word because it fundamentally the very words of God.
