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November 30, 2018 - February 2, 2019
Right from the start, then, God has company—other divine beings, the sons of God. Most
God (elohim) stands in the divine assembly; he administers judgment in the midst of the gods (elohim
The term literally means “one of a kind” or “unique” without connotation of created origin.
imagers
God’s heavenly council members are corruptible; they are not perfect.
Representation of God as his imagers and possession of free will are inextricably related.
Since the lesser elohim were also created as God’s imagers, they too must have free will.
But the only way in which there was no risk involved for God is if you define risk as the threat of harm.
The meaning is clearly that the second generation was not held morally accountable for the sins of their parents. Though as children they were under the authority of their parents, they had no decision-making authority in the matter and were thus not willing participants. Therefore they were not considered liable. They were innocent
Prior to knowing good and evil, Adam and Eve were innocent. They had never made a willing, conscious decision to disobey God.
1 Samuel 23:1–13.
When Saul discovers this fact (v. 13), he abandons his trip to Keilah. Saul never made it to the city. The men of Keilah never turned David over to Saul. Why is this significant? This passage clearly establishes that divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination
That which never happens can be foreknown by God, but it is not predestined, since it never happened.
Since foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination, foreknown events that happen may or may not have been predestined.
Some of those systems presume that foreknowledge requires predestination, and so everything must be predestined—all the way from the fall to the holocaust, to what you’ll choose off a dinner menu.
Others dilute foreknowledge by proposing that God doesn’t foreknow all possibilities, since all possibilities cannot happen. Or they posit other universes where all the possibilities happen. These ideas are unnecessary in light of 1 Samuel 23 and other passages that echo the same fundamental idea: foreknowledge does not necessitate predestination.
God may know and predestine the end—that something is ultimately going to happen—without predestining the means to that end.
God can decree something and then leave the means up to the decisions of other free-will agents.
Like good leaders: give the vision, purpose, and end state but let them find, empower them to succeed.
The end is sovereignly ordained; the means to that end may or may not be.
There is no biblical reason to argue that God predestined the fall, though he foreknew it. There is no biblical reason to assert that God predestined all the evil events throughout human history simply because he foreknew them.
God does not need evil as a means to accomplish anything.
evil is the perversion of God’s good gift of free will.
First, God has a divine family—a heavenly assembly, or council, of elohim. These elohim are not a replacement for the Trinity, nor do they add to it. Yahweh is among the elohim, but he is superior to all other elohim. He is their creator and sovereign master. He is unique. Since Jesus is Yahweh in flesh, he too is distinct from, and superior to, all elohim. While God has no need of a council, Scripture makes it clear that he uses one. His divine family is his divine administration. The elohim serve him to carry out his decrees.
God also has a human family and administration. Their status and function mirror the divine family-administration.
Heaven and Earth are separate but connected realms.
Humans were created to enjoy everlasting access to God’s presence, working side by side with God’s loyal elohim.
Free will in the hearts and hands of imperfect beings, whether human or divine, means imagers can opt for their own authority in place of God’s.
Both of God’s households will experience rebellion.
The truth is that an ancient reader would not have expected Eve to be frightened. Given the context—she was in Eden, the realm of Yahweh and his elohim council—it would have been clear that she was conversing with a divine being.
Where there are no offspring, there can be no human imaging and no kingdom.
Recall that the Old Testament tells us that Jewish intellectuals were taken to Babylon. During those seventy years, the Jews learned to speak Aramaic. They later brought it back to Judah. This is how Aramaic became the primary language in Judea by the time of Jesus.
Mesopotamian apkallus and their giant offspring.
My view is that, to solve this messaging problem, the Jewish scribes adopted an Aramaic noun: naphiyla—which means “giant.” When you import that word and pluralize it for Hebrew, you get nephiylim, just what we see in Numbers 13:33. This is the only explanation to the meaning of the word that accounts for all the contexts and all the details.
But instead of obeying and having Yahweh be their god, the people gathered to build the tower. The theological messaging of the story is clear. Humanity had shunned Yahweh and his plan to restore Eden through them, so he would shun them and start again.
But in his covenant with Abram, God said that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abram, through his descendants (Gen 12:1–3).
“the God of gods” and the “Lord of lords”
The rebel inserted himself into the role of Most High, casting himself as God’s mouthpiece, but wound up as lord of the dead.
God, the Life-giver, forgave Adam and Eve. They were not destroyed. Humanity would survive.
This new circumstance—this gracious good news—would demand that humanity make the choice rejected in Eden.
Free-will rebellion didn’t end with Eden. It was only the beginning—for both divine and human imagers. Transgressions before (Gen 6:1–4) and after (Gen 11:1–9; Deut 32:8–9) the flood are cases in point, as well as points of reference.
But first Yahweh’s portion, his people, would have to take root. Yahweh would initiate a relationship with Abraham, and that required a meeting. That presented a fundamental problem for God. He is so unlike anything in human experience that his pure presence cannot be processed by the human senses. It would, in fact, be lethal. God’s solution was to veil himself for human protection and detection. This was necessary even in Eden, where the writer casts God as a man, walking through the garden, searching for his fallen imagers (Gen 3:8). That, too, will emerge as a pattern hidden in plain
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AHWEH PLACED THE nations under the governance of junior elohim—the sons of God of his divine council.
genealogy of Abram (Abraham) back to Noah’s son Shem.
Yahweh appeared to Abraham. Abraham’s first divine encounter in Mesopotamia involved a visible appearance of Yahweh.
Since the Word is clearly equated with and identified as Yahweh in Genesis 12 and 15, when the New Testament has Jesus saying “that was me,” he is claiming to be the Word of the Old Testament, who was the visible Yahweh.
The angel of Yahweh burns up the sacrifice and then leaves (v. 21). But we learn in verse 23 that Yahweh is still there and speaks to Gideon after the Angel’s departure. Not only did the writer blur the distinction between the two figures, but he had them both in the same scene.
Christians affirm that God is more than one Person, but that each of those Persons is the same in essence. We affirm that Jesus is one of those Persons. He is God. But in another respect, Jesus isn’t God—he is not the Father. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father. Nevertheless, they are the same in essence. This theology did not originate in the New Testament. You’ve now been exposed to its Old Testament roots.
Genesis told us that God had a divine council of imagers who represented his authority in the unseen realm and participated in his rule. It also showed us that God planned a mirror-council on earth, this time composed of human imagers.
Heaven had come to earth at Eden. Humanity was charged with extending the earthly presence and rule of God throughout the whole earth.
is. Once you realize that this pattern continues through the remainder of the Bible, the messaging becomes clear. Eventually, God will refer to the king of Israel as his son (Psa 2:7). The ultimate future king, the messiah, since he will sit on the seat of David, must be Yahweh’s son as well.
Must be of the correct lineage: Noah - Shem - ...
