The Book of Genesis

Pastor Tim Potter leads us through an in-depth look at the first book of the Bible.

A genuine walk of faith rejoices in God’s will, clears obstacles to one’s walk, and evangelizes in one’s world.

There are no more happy people on earth than those who know and do the will of God! God’s will is found as we study His Word. We are responsible to what we know of the Scriptures.

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The enduring faith and compelling sacrifice of a father.

In God’s providence, the next chapter of Genesis fits perfectly with a Father’s Day theme. The Lord provides for every need of His people’s hearts when preaching through the whole Word of God.

The American evangelical culture can view God as an activity director on a cruise ship. We expect Him to be blessing us every moment, or He is not doing His job. This passage corrects that understanding. Faith is cultivated through trials.

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The mourning of the faithful.

Genesis 23 shows Abraham going through the most extreme trial of an aged Christian’s life. He loses his wife Sarah, whom he had been married to for 100 years or more! How Abraham endures this agony is a great lesson to us.

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God’s grace is seen through our relationships and in our futures.

Though Genesis 24 is about the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah on the surface, that is not the primary focus of the chapter. There are many spiritual principles for us to learn from these 67 verses.

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A life lived for God will be a life abundantly blessed by God.

Genesis 25 records the end of Abraham’s life and shows two the contrasting lives of his sons, Ishmael and Isaac.

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God’s Enduring Faithfulness in Times of our Periodic Impatience.

Our culture has an obsession with greatness that often leaves us normal people asking, if I can’t be great, is my life really worth anything? Yet there is greatness in spiritual simplicity. The greatest thing we could do is to know Jesus Christ, walk with Him, and serve in His local church for the Gospel’s sake. Let God be great through your obedience.

Isaac was a simple man, mostly known for being the son of Abraham and the father of Jacob – yet God used him to perpetuate an eternal seed.

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God’s Strength and Sovereignty Remain as Our Faith Struggles.

Our study of the Regeneration section of Genesis continues with the second and third of the patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob. Isaac demonstrated his faith throughout his life by being a submissive perpetuator of the faith. He made mistakes, but he won more spiritual battles than he lost. Lest we read this account from the end of his life and assume he was a failure, remember that Isaac is included in the Great Hall of Faith (see Hebrews 11:20).

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Please be patient: God is not finished with Jacob yet!

God can still use saints that have failed and help them make right choices again, even in their last years. Isaac and Rebekah are an example that it’s never too late to do right. True saints experience guilt and conviction that leads to repentance, forsaking sin, and prospering again. Now governed by the Spirit, Isaac comes to his senses and sends Jacob on a journey to continue in God’s will.

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Once saved, we never graduate from the School of Christ while on earth.

You’ve probably of someone “cramming 4 years of college into 10.” In Genesis 29, Jacob spends 20 years in the school of spiritual hard knocks. The first events are glorious, but they are soon followed by tragedy and consequences.

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Of all things we experience in life, our relationships reveal the most about our character.

All Scripture is God’s Word, and is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). It’s our natural tendency to apply principles that we know from the New Testament to Old Testament stories. But remember, a text taken out of context leaves just a con. So don’t judge Jacob too harshly. His family did not have the written Bible, but they did have the oral Word of God which they were responsible for.

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