January 16, 21014 Good Genealogies

Good Genealogies

Read Genesis 5

Gen 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 

WHEN people discuss reading the Bible, they often speak of their favorite translation. We all have our preferences on the kind of language that is the most comfortable for us to understand. That is good to a point. We certainly need to understand what we read. But it’s also very good to read the words, phrases and even books we don’t understand. Why?

      As you read these words right now you are doing something you couldn’t do without a proper education to learn to read and understand the words. If early in your life you had said, “I don’t know how to read. I don’t know the words.” and then left it at that, you would have never learned to read and learn through reading. The Bible has hundreds of words we don’t readily know. We can decide to leave them or learn them.

      That takes us to today’s scripture that relates to the “generations of Adam”. Do you want to skip it, thinking, “Genealogies are boring.”

      The reason to read genealogies throughout scripture is to see how God deliberately moves from generation to generation. It is essential that God shows you how he has moved from Adam to Abraham to Jesus as his purpose to save the world is wrapped tightly in the generations of mankind. These genealogies connect God’s promises in Genesis to the fulfillment of his promises in the Gospels.

      God’s Word is sometimes difficult to understand. We shy away from the difficulty. But I encourage you to embrace the less glamorous passages, the repetitious stories and the difficult words. They are all there to help you learn of God’s great grace to save you.

LIFE Connection: To learn of God means you go to what you don’t know.