In the Beginning (Bereshith) God Created the Light: (Bereshith) No More Chaos, No More Darkenss

By Andrew Choi

The book of Genesis reveals that God created humans and animals on the same day, the sixth day of the creation. Human beings were formed from the dust of the ground. If there was no image of God in human beings, and if there was no spirit of God in humans, humans and animals would have no differences. Thankfully, humans do have the spirit of God within them and are made in God’s image and his likeness.

In In the Beginning (Bereshith), author Andrew Choi examines the book of Genesis, telling the stories of and examining the lives of the characters within. With discussion questions and reflections included, he shares the lessons that today’s Christians can glean from this book that forms the basis of the Bible.
Choi tells how Genesis is a theological book, a story of God. Genesis is the restoration, redemption, and reconciliation story of the panorama unfolding from ancient times until now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664279261

Andrew Choi

Andrew Choi received his doctorate degree in ministry from the Houston Graduate School of Theology. He devoted his life to evangelizing youngsters for fifteen years. He served as a US Army chaplain for twenty-one years. The highlight of his chaplain’s ministry was serving as a community pastor of the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) from 1997 to 1999. Choi and his wife, Sarah, have two children. This is his fifth book.

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Copyright © 2022 Andrew Choi.

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Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc. TM. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7927-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7928-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7926-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917842

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/23/2022

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1God’s Creation

Chapter 2God’s Creation of the Happy Life, Garden of Eden

Chapter 3Life Is Worth the Living Just because He Lives

Chapter 4God’s Image Is in You, So Look at Yourself as God Sees You

Chapter 5Creation Story of Heaven and Earth and Living Being

Chapter 6The Promise of the Coming Messiah at the Time of the Fall

Chapter 7The First Brothers, Cain and Abel

Chapter 8Man’s Wickedness on the Earth

Chapter 9God’s Unchangeable Promise of Love Shown in the Beautiful Rainbow

Chapter 10God’s Calling of Abram

Chapter 11Melchizedek

Chapter 12City of Sodom Was Destroyed

Chapter 13Glorification—Those He Justified, He Also Glorified

Chapter 14Abram Repeatedly Made a Big Mistake

Chapter 15Family of Isaac and Rebekah

Chapter 16The Highway to Heaven Is Wide Open: Jacob’s Dream

Chapter 17Reconciliation between Brothers: Esau and Jacob and Joseph to His Brothers

Chapter 18The Joy of Finding the Lost

Chapter 19Jacob’s Life Journey Involves Trusting the Providence of God Absolutely and Seeing the Big Picture of God

Chapter 20God of Mahanaim

Chapter 21The Bright Morning of Jacob: Jacob Changed to a New Person, Israel

Chapter 22Jacob and Esau’s Reconciliation

Chapter 23God of El Bethel I

Chapter 24Stories of Jacob and His Sons

Chapter 25Joseph’s Dream and God’s Providence

Chapter 26The Funeral of Jacob and Joseph’s Last Will to bury in the promised land

Chapter 27Jacob Gives Special Blessings to Joseph’s Two Sons, Ephraim and Manasseh

Chapter 28Joseph’s Life Teaches What Jesus Said to the Man Born Blind

Chapter 29Joseph’s Forgiveness

PREFACE

God so loved the world that He created the perfect happy garden for humanity in the beginning. God has always given humanity everything needed for true happiness out of His love: eternal life and salvation, family, beautiful rivers, companionship, and more.

However, we have seen disharmony, natural disasters, tornadoes, earthquakes, and the threat of nuclear war in this twenty-first century. Especially in these days, we are experiencing how much COVID-19, the global pandemic, terrifies us and brings disaster to the people of the world. Recently, Russian dictator Putin cruelly invaded Ukraine, bringing lots of sorrow and disastrous chaos. We cannot predict when Putin’s evil plot is going to end.

These world stories of the twenty-first century show God’s animosity toward and unhappiness with human beings. Do you realize that this disharmony and animosity of God toward humans is because people resist God’s love and righteousness?

Exiled from the Garden of Eden, human beings lost their entire source of happiness and lived instead on the cursed earth. The fall not only resulted in this fatal and damning tragedy for the human race, but it also affected all creation. The universe groaned and suffered the pains of childbirth, as apostle Paul said to the Romans: The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time (Romans 8:21–22).

Luckily God’s love and grace are still present in our lives and the world, just like the sun still rises up every morning and shines. Yet we still need a permanent solution. What would be a permanent solution to the exodus of these global miseries and restore the happy garden that God presented in the time of Genesis?

We need reconciliation to welcome the new life and the new day. Colossians 1:19–20 says, For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. The Genesis story is the restoration, redemption, and reconciliation story of the panorama unfolding from ancient times until now.

The story of the descendants of Noah, the son of Abraham—Isaac and Ishmael—and of their descendants is recorded in the patriarchal history of Genesis. Theology of Genesis emphasizes the importance of the seed of promise for the covenant relationship. That is the ground of the covenant relationship for salvation. But it could lead us to misunderstand that God discriminates between humans. It also induces people to think that God has caused the sparks of conflict, the bloody and cruel fight among descendants of Semites and Islam from ancient times to the present time.

However, the emphasis on the seed of the covenant in the patriarchal history of Genesis should not become the ground theory for discriminating against humankind and thus provoke a spark of race war. It only emphasizes the one truth that God’s work of salvation for all people will come through the seed of Abraham, Israel, the Christ.

The greatest theologian, Augustine, laid the foundation for important Christian theology in the history of the Christian church. He was troubled when he thought about the story of Israel’s conquering Canaan because it looked like a cruel ethnic cleansing.

When Augustine was a young Hellenistic scholar, the question that always caused doubt in his heart was, Why did God in the Old Testament promote Israel to slaughter the Canaanites so cruelly when they conquered Canaan? He could hardly accept such a racist and cruel God as his God. Then, Ambrose, a teacher of early Christianity, gave a sermon that struck Augustine like a thunderbolt, saying, To kill all the people of Canaan is God’s word that we must repent and be cleansed of all the sins in our hearts.

Augustine converted to be a genuine Christian when he heard the sermon of Ambrose, the great teacher of the early church. His troubled mind and doubt about God as the One who discriminates among tribes was resolved, and he had a peace in his heart.

This is an important lesson to love all humans without any prejudice. Augustine’s view advices me on how to approach the reading of Genesis. Genesis is a theological book. It is a story of God. Therefore, we should not draw human-centered, morally oriented conclusions from it and use them as standards of general application. For example, if we make a religious formula from Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac as a guide for religious practice that we should also sacrifice children, we would be making a serious mistake.

OVERALL STRUCTURE OF GENESIS

An outline of the entire Bible with a theme of the history of redemption looks as follows:

1) Creation

2) The fall, human sin and suffering

3) God’s judgment (judgment of Noah’s day, the Flood)

4) One man, Abram, being chosen and called as the source of blessing and the promise to become the father of all people’s blessings

OVERALL SUMMARY

Genesis 1–11: Creation and the human fall story, countless hours from creation to Abraham

Genesis 12–50: Patriarchs, from humankind to the Israelites, 215 years from Abraham’s entry into Canaan to Jacob’s journey to Egypt

The tunnel narrows from all humankind to the family of Abraham, from all humankind to the direction of the people of Israel.

It is explained by the structure of the genealogy—toledot, that is, to give birth, to begin, to be born. (Account, generation, history, genealogy)

The genealogical list does not simply list names but contains a story within it.

בְּרֵאשִׁית (Bereshith) In the Beginning (Gen 1:1)

Beer Lahai Roi (Gen 16:14)

El Shaddai (Gen 17:1)

Jehovah-Jireh (Gen 22:14)

Rehoboth (Gen 26:22)

Bethel (Gen 28:19)

Peniel (Gen 32:30)

El Elohe Israel (Gen 33:20)

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CHAPTER 1

GOD’S CREATION

Genesis 1:1–2:3, as the start of the book of Genesis, explains the foundational concept of God’s creation for the entire Bible. Among three verses of Genesis 1:1–3, the first verse says God’s creation.

Genesis is not written to explain creation scientifically but to introduce the concept of God’s creation. Therefore, it is right to see verse one as an independent verse that proclaims the absolute creation of God. It is more competent to see it as creating from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). So what does the heavens and the earth mean? It means that God created everything from heaven to earth, rather than creating two things, heaven and earth.

There is also a view that there is a time difference between verse one and verse two, called the gap theory, that suggests there was a big time lapse in cosmic creation, like the big bang, at the time of creation.

SPIRIT OF GOD

GENESIS 1:2

God’s Spirit, or luach, is the meaning of wind. When the whole world was submerged in water at the time of Noah’s flood, the wind (luach) blew so that the new creation began again. When Adam was created, God’s breath and wind (luach) blew.

Now the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2).

The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis 2:7).

Since God breathed luach into Adam, Adam became a living being (nephesh).

SEVEN DAYS OF CREATION

GENESIS 1:2–19

Genesis 1:2 states that the cosmos before God’s creation was in a state of chaos and void—a simple view saying that the earth was empty and out of order. Another theory says that, hundreds of millions of years ago, a fallen angel caused the world to become chaotic and empty. This interpretation is possible if the book of Genesis was influenced by the myths of the ancient Near East.

Before God’s creation, this universe was, itself, blackness, emptiness, and chaos. God’s creation became a breakthrough that created light, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and order.

This is similar to the life of Job. Before encountering God the Creator, Job’s life was painful, empty, and full of anxiety. He had physically suffered, his home was destroyed, his children were lost, and he lost all his wealth. It was extremely painful. More than that, he was confused; his soul was in chaos, and he had an uneasy mind.

He felt guilty and condemned. It was all black rock.

Human chaos, emptiness, anxiety, and disordered individual souls and lives can have spiritual fullness and order. Transcendent peace, joy, and satisfaction are possible when the light of God shines into their souls, as Job experienced.

DAY ONE: LIGHT

The creation of light occurs repeatedly: the first light (Genesis 1:3), the light of the sun and moon, and the light of the stars in the universe (Genesis 1:14–16). The first created light comes from God Himself, who is separated from the sun’s light. Both 1 John 1:5–10 and John 1:3–9 say that Jesus, God the Son, is light.

Revelation gives us the promise of the coming heavenly kingdom, the new heaven, and the new earth. The realm is full of light because of the light of Jesus. Therefore, in the heavenly kingdom, we don’t need the sun and the moon (Revelation 21:23).

But when did the first day end? What are possible interpretations of day? Is it ten billion years or twenty-four hours? We don’t know because we weren’t there. But if we look at how the readers of Genesis understood the Old Testament, it makes sense that creation occurred over a seven-day span with each day having twenty-four hours.

DAY TWO

What does the water on the court window mean? In a creative science, it means different layers of water above the sky. I think that, thirty-five hundred years ago, an Israelite just saw it as a cloud in the sky.

The palace window was the last round part of the space that people viewed. In those days, it was the space through which many stars shone in the sky.

DAY THREE

At this time, God created the land, water, trees, and vegetables that became food. This type of environment is important for human survival and happiness. As God created the good environment, His loving consideration for human life was expressed.

God Himself expressed His joy and satisfaction with the awesome expression, It is good! It is a strong expression that God loves the environment he created: trees, flowers, and vegetables, as well as what the shepherd David expressed in Psalm 8:

Lord, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory

in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants,

you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

you put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds,

and the animals of the wild,

the birds in the sky,

and the fish in the sea,

all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:1–9)

DAY FOUR: THE LIGHT THAT SHINES DURING THE DAY AND NIGHT

Why is the light discussed here not expressed as the sun and moon but as the light sphere? The great light is intended to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night (Genesis 1:14). When the people of Israel left God, they worshipped the sun (Sumesh) as the greatest god in the ancient Near East. They also worshipped the moon. The writer of Genesis probably did not like their use of the idol.

With the creation of light and seasons, signs started. Verse 14 includes a description of the seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. In Judaism, this season also means the promised days, such as Passover and others.

DAY FIVE

Big sea chests are like dragons or sea monsters that are the gods of the Near East. Job also records beasts such as sea monsters and