PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship

You need to read Genesis again according to this principle to see what kind of God is there. Genesis is the first book of God's history. By reading Genesis in this way, you can see this God manifested and shown to us through all the stories of Him with man. When you add all these stories together, you see His history. Without Genesis you cannot know God very well. Some people say that the New Testament is more important than the Old, and some would even say that we do not need the Old Testament today. But I must tell you that without the Old Testament, you cannot know God so well. Without the story in Genesis 32 could you believe that God wrestled with the man Jacob and that He was not able to prevail against a man (v. 25)? In His wrestling He had no way to put Jacob down, but He exercised His almighty, divine, omnipotent strength and touched his thigh. Then Jacob was crippled, and from then on he limped when he walked. Without such a story how could you know that God would even wrestle with His people? Perhaps you think that this is just the story of God with Jacob and that today He would not wrestle with anyone. But you are wrong. He may have even tried to wrestle with you this morning, but perhaps you were not ready. Jacob was ready that night because he was desperate, because his brother, whom he had cheated, was coming. He was afraid, so he sent his wife and his children ahead while he remained there. Then he began to wrestle with God, and he would not let God go, for he had one thing to solve with God.

God is this kind of God, but without the Bible we cannot know God in this way.... If you would pick up this principle when you read the Bible, I believe that from today the Bible would be a different book to you.

GOD IN ETERNITY PAST

... Why is the record of God in eternity past so short? Because there was no man there. Since there was no man there, God did not have much interest in recording this. Therefore the record in Genesis 1 concerning this is just a half-sentence long. In the first sentence of the Bible only the first half-sentence is concerning God in eternity. "In the beginning ...." This is in eternity past. Then the next half is concerning time: "God created the heaven and the earth." God's creation is a landmark between eternity and time. On the other side of creation is eternity, and on this side of creation is time. But these two sides are presented in just one verse. We know more about God in eternity past than what is in this verse because in the sixty-six books of the Bible, there is a sentence here and half a sentence there, a small point here and a small point there, about this matter. We have spent years to pick up all these points. But the record in Genesis 1 is so short: "In the beginning." If you could ask God why the record is so short, I believe He would say, "Do you not realize that in the beginning, in eternity past, there was no man? I have no interest in that because I want to be in man that I can be one with man. I wanted to make man so that he can be like Me. This is My interest." Now we can understand why the Bible is full of men, even full of men with troubles of all kinds. It is in all the troubles among men that God is revealed. We can know God in His history only through man's stories.

Time began at the creation of the universe, as recorded in Genesis 1:1, and continues until the final judgment at the great white throne (Revelation 20:11-15). Hence, Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 20:15 relates God's history in time. Eternity past was before Genesis 1:1, and eternity future will be after Revelation 20:15. In between, there is the long span of time going from God's creation to His final judgment.

In this span of time, probably around seven thousand years, God has a long history. Although the record of His history in eternity is not very long and does not have many stories, His history in time is long and full of stories. There is even a story about two twin brothers who fought in their mother's womb (Genesis 25:22-26). They were competing to see who would come out first. I have never read another book that tells of twins fighting in their mother's womb, struggling to be the first to come out of the womb. Only in the Bible have I read such a story. Yet you can see God in this story because it is a part of the history of God. In that fighting God evidently chose Jacob. God loved him and hated Esau (Romans 9:13). We all know that God is a loving God, but through His dealing with Esau we know that He is also a hating God. If God is both a loving God and a hating God, how do we know whether He loves us or hates us? We know that He loves us because the Bible tells us that in eternity past He loved us and chose us, and after choosing us, He predestinated us in love (Ephesians 1:4-5). We are not under God's hating as Esau was but under God's loving as Jacob was. We may not be as good as Esau; but even if we are as bad as Jacob, God can hate the good one and love the bad one. This may not be logical, but it is the Bible as God's history. By all these stories you can see that the Bible is a history of God in humanity.
Witness Lee, The History of God in His Union With Man, Chapter Two, pp. 24-29

APPLICATION

1. Genesis is a record written by Moses, but where did Moses get all his facts for the writing of this book?

2. How much of the record in Genesis 1 is concerning God in eternity past and why is the record of God in this book of creation so short?

3. Since the record of God's creation is so short, why in this same book of Genesis is the record concerning a man named Joseph so long?