Brief Core Lessons from Parashat Bereshit

Genesis 1:1

The most important and foundational text of the whole Bible is Genesis 1:1,

In Hebrew this verse has seven words! I don’t think that the Bible starts with seven words accidentally and these seven words are the most important word of God in the whole Bible.

Just think about it! In the Hebrew Bible the phrase: “God of Israel” appears 203 times.

This God, who has chosen Abraham and his seed to be the instrument that will eradicate idolatry from the world, that will spread the knowledge of God to the ends of the Earth, they will teach mankind to love one another, to respect the blind, and deaf, just the same as the powerful and rich – it is the God who created the heavens and the Earth!

Core Lessons From Parashat Bereisheet

Here some of the implications that the beginning of Genesis teaches and confirms:

1. This world was created by a God that is a spirit and truth. He has no image, nor does He need temples and monuments and statues to represent Him.

2. Everything in our world, from the smallest to the greatest, was created and exists because the Creator designed it and planned it and wanted it and needed to have it exist in His world.

3. The Creator created not only our small planet Earth, but our whole universe (solar system). This means that our God is much much bigger than we, small humans, can even imagine! The creation of our world and of us, as human beings, children of Adam and Eve, are created of one blood!

   
   

   “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings…” – Acts 17:26 [NKJV]

   There is no end to the importance of this text for our world. If Christians would have believed this word of the Holy Spirit – there would have been no racism, no anti-Semitism, no abuse of one race against another, and above all, our life in this world would be so much more pleasant and brotherly.

4. If God didn’t create our world and everything in it, there must be another creator, or our world, and we ourselves, are nothing more than a cosmic accident. If we are only a cosmic accident, all morality, civility, justice, right and wrong, civil rights, become totally irrelevant! We are worse than a jungle. The jungle has rules and principles, and even the animal kingdom has respect and wisdom among the animals.

5. The human being can sin and rebel against his creator, and make decisions that are fundamentally based on the freedom to obey or disobey his Heavenly Father.

The Scope of Parashat Bereisheet

The first chapters of Genesis have in them embedded all the wonderful and all the horrible things that human history has demonstrated to be true, and all the challenges that humans face from the dawn of history to the end of this world and the creation of the New Earth and the New Heaven.

The reading of the first chapters of Genesis also has the basic Messianic principles:

1. The victory of the Son of Man over the primeval snake:

   
   

   “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” — Genesis 3:15 [NKJV]

2. The prediction that God can and did create a human being without a father and mother, and Adam has a genealogy:

   
   

   “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created.” — Genesis 5:1,2 [NKJV]

3. The reading of Genesis 1-6 is also a demonstration of the ability and possibility of the Creator to create and destroy the world that He created. The story of the flood is a living demonstration of that ability of the Creator to save and rebuild the world of His creation, and the destiny and future of God’s creation, of this world, is in the righteousness of God. And in the relationship of God and His creation, mankind’s righteousness or sin will decide the future of God’s creation and of this Earth.

4. The first chapters of Genesis also reveal to all the generations of mankind that a man and a woman are the essential molecules of the survival and future of humanity. This is how God created this star called Earth, that surrounds the sun, and waits for its redemption.

Conclusion

Genesis 1:1 is the most important and foundational text in the whole Bible that has all the essential information of God’s love and God’s judgment of the world that He created! The most important thing that this text teaches us is that God is not a part of nature like all the idolaters hold, but above and outside of nature!

Just like any creator or artist the artist made the picture. He is the owner and creator of the picture, but he is outside of the picture, although His signature and finger prints are on His creation.

The entire Bible would be totally meaningless without Genesis 1:1, and even until now it is the most difficult verse to really understand and digest. Keep meditating on this verse it will help you pass this life with faith and special strength. Start reading your Bible from Genesis 1:1 all the way to the end.