God Tries Again

Genesis is a particularly detailed picture of covenant relationships being broken and mended, of God’s unending work of reconciliation between person and person, and between person and Creator. Among other things, it shows that most of what God has accomplished in human history has been done through families. God first reassured Adam and Eve that He had not and would not abandon them, but that He would send a redeemer. (Gen. 3:15) Not long after that, He attempted to reconcile Cain and Abel. (Gen. 4:6, 7) When that failed because of free will (God’s greatest ally and fiercest enemy), He worked through Seth’s line, one of whom, Enoch, was the first prophet to be shown great reunion of the second coming, as far as we know. (Jude 14) It was a family in that same line, Noah’s family, who consented to salvation

in the form of the ark.

But God’s new beginning after the Flood didn’t seem to do much better. The world-wide community of humans, speaking one language and working together, conspired to “reach the heavens” with the tower now known as Babel because of what God did there. (Gen. 11) He broke up the community! Why would God do that? Apparently, to make new, smaller communities of languages and kindreds, through whom He might work more closely.

God chose another family - the clan of Abram and Sarai of Chaldea, soon to become Abraham and Sarah, friends of God. It was, on the whole, a pretty dysfunctional family. They kept trying to “help” God accomplish His purposes, and there was enough infighting to supply a long soap opera series. Is this what God means by fellowship? Partly, yes. We are shown people making choices that break relationships, then often getting another chance to choose again. So Jacob, at Jabbok (Gen. 32:28-30), becomes Israel, another friend of God. He reconciles with the brother he had cheated years earlier. (Gen. 33:3, 4) Joseph reconciles with the brothers who sold him into slavery, and reunites his family. (Gen. 45) It is Joseph, again, who reiterates what could almost be the thesis sentence for all of Genesis: “Do not be afraid. . . .You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (Gen. 50:19, 20)

Eventually, God rescues Abraham’s sons and daughters, now as “numerous as the stars,” from the land of Egypt where they had been slaves and nearly forgotten all about true worship. He draws them out to the wilderness with Himself, where they can become a true covenant fellowship, and even teaches them an entire system of worship based around the covenant of love between God and the His children. But they continue a pattern of trying to connect with various forms of false worship they see around them, in a union that is doomed from the start.

God sends prophets to call the people back into fellowship with each other and Himself. But by this time the system of worship He gave them has degenerated into list after list of rules, and what little ability some people had to try to imagine the face of God is nearly obliterated. Is this what God means by fellowship?