The rest of the book of Exodus is about God and the Israelites getting to know one another. God has just promised Pharaoh that he is about to do something so awful that the Egyptians will finally not just allow the Israelites, but beg them, to leave Egypt. During the Easter season, we pick up the story toward the end of a major show-down between God and Pharaoh: God wants Pharaoh to let the Israelites go Pharaoh continually refuses and God shows his power and his determination by punishing the Egyptians with plagues of ever-increasing severity.

We began reading Exodus during the previous season, Lent. Introducing Exodus and LeviticusД«oth Exodus and Leviticus are written by Moses, the great leader who, by GodвЂ™s power, rescues the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, introduces them to God, and leads them to the land God gives them. As we see how God interacts with these people, ancient in their context but recognizable in their humanity, I believe weвЂ™ll learn a lot about ourselves, God, and the world. They face the same problems, challenges, and opportunities as we do-and in very similar ways. The people in Genesis seem to live in a much different world than ours, but I think weвЂ™ll probably be surprised to find how similar to us the people themselves are. Even more remarkable, though, than these places of dissonance between our worldview and the worldview of Genesis, are the points of connection. There are some unavoidable mysteries in Genesis, things that are difficult to grasp with our modern minds and experience of the world. ItвЂ™s true that, as we read this story, we will encounter some things that will be foreign to us, a talking animal and a 900-year old man being just two examples. LetвЂ™s do our best to read Genesis on its own terms-and then apply it to the context of our modern lives. Rather, itвЂ™s a story about the primary questions of existence it both fits well into its ancient Near Eastern cultural context, and at the same time transcends that context in amazing ways. For what itвЂ™s worth, I simply donвЂ™t think that this very ancient story is very well-suited to addressing specific modern scientific ideas, like the Big Bang Theory. The book of Genesis, and particularly the first chapter of Genesis, has gained some cultural currency recently in big debates about the place of Creationism and Evolutionism in school curriculums.

One biblical commentator, David Atkinson, calls Genesis an вЂoverture to the rest of the Bible.вЂ™ ItвЂ™s like a miniature introduction to the whole story of God, introducing every theme that the rest of the Bible will elaborate on. And thatвЂ™s what the book is about: the beginning of the world, of human civilization, and of GodвЂ™s relationship with humanity. The name Genesis comes from the Greek for, вЂIn the beginning,вЂ™ the first words in the book.

Introduction to the book of james