In 2017, I am reading through the Gospel Transformation Bible.  In its back pages, there is a reading plan that takes you through the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation in a year.  If you don’t have a reading plan for this year, join me.  I plan to highlight notable quotes from the study notes throughout the year.  In the past two weeks, here are some of my favorite observations to accompany the Biblical text:

• “The early church confessed readily that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were all involved in the work of creation, reinforcing early Christian beliefs about the Trinity” (p. 3).
• “Jesus Christ, however, as the second Adam, fulfills God’s image-bearing purposes and enables God’s people to do the same” (5).
• “God can do more with our six days than we can do with all seven.  So we can and should rest in him” (7).
• “The account of Noah ends on a strange note, as he winds up drunk and naked in his tent (vv. 20-21), with an immoral (cf. v. 22 and Lev. 18:6-18; 20:17) and dysfunctional family being divided by cursing and blessings (Gen. 9:22-27).  Even a man as great as Noah required mercy from God” (15).
• “Leaving our moral resumes at home, we are invited into God’s shining favor if we will bring nothing to him but our need, with trust in his ultimate care.  It is Christ-trusting sinners, not the self-trusting ‘righteous,’ who are the children of Abraham and are entitled to all the promises God made to Abraham (Mark 2:17; Luke 19:10; Gal. 3:26-29)” (23).
• “Strong in body and weak in soul before wrestling God, Jacob was now weak in body and strong in soul” (49).
• “Jacob was the appeaser; he simply wanted no trouble. . . .The gospel grants courage to those of us tempted to appease through passivity, for if God has been appeased through Jesus, we need not be concerned with appeasing others” (51).
• “The apparent hiddenness of God does not indicate the uncaring absence of God” (55).
• “Felt or unfelt, seen or unseen, in sin or success, God is with us” (58).

Thank God for His presence and His hope through the gospel in these opening chapters in Genesis.