ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS --JESUS EXPLAINS THE SCRIPTURES -- EPISODE 3 - part 1

 Genesis

 the Book of Creation, Covenants,

 and the  Promise of the Messiah 

[As I was planning my next Bible Study Class that I have been running for the past 16 years, (has it really been THAT long ago!)  I decided to start over from the beginning with the Book of Genesis. I have had many new members join since I did Genesis the last time, so many of my members were excited to do that study, as were the members who have been with me for years.  (The more you study the Bible the more there is to discover in it!)  
Because of my  new fascination with finding how the New Testament is hidden in the Old, (which is called Typology) I spent extra time looking for the clues to the New Testament that Jesus spoke about to his disciples on the Road to Emmaus.  I have posted a few blogs on this very topic before, but now I wanted to go into greater detail, and find even more hidden signs of God's plan of salvation.  I would like to share what I have discovered with the followers of my blog. Due to the length of my findings, I plan to post  in shorter episodes so as to not bog down my followers. I will start with a summary of Genesis and some of the typology that can be found in it.]

The Book of Genesis

The name for the first book of the Bible, Genesis, has a dual meaning.  In Hebrew, the opening word is “Bereshit” which means “In the beginning” and from the Greek, Genesis means a book of generations of the heavens and the earth.

The creation story in Genesis is written with figurative or metaphorical elements.  This does not mean it is fictional, nor does it mean that it is a book of scientific facts.  But it is written in a way to cause man to ponder the meaning of creation and human life and to develop a deep faith in the Creator and to show man how to live in this creation.

The Creation of Man

How God created the world is of little importance in the grand scheme of the Bible.  The purpose of its writing is to understand what God created and why.  When God created man, he breathed into him (Holy Spirit) and with that man was created in God’s likeness.  The presence of the Holy Spirit made him eternal.  But man lost that eternal life with the first sin, as he would now experience death.  Only after Jesus breathes on the Apostles and gives them the Holy Spirit is there the re-gifting of eternal life.

God’s Covenants with his Creation

Covenant is the Golden Thread that holds the entire Bible together.  Covenant means Testament, which is why the Bible is divided between the covenants of the Old and the Covenant of the New.  Covenant is a swearing of and oath between God and man.  Covenant is binding and solemn and God remains ever faithful even when his people are not.  God never broke covenant, only man has, but God in His infinite mercy has made a new covenant with man when man has found his way back to Him. Covenants are formed by the swearing of an oath and, interesting enough, the Latin word for OATH is SACRAMENT.

One enters into a covenant with a promise, invoking God’s holy name, an oath.  It is not an exchange of goods, but of people, a kinship bond, where the two parties are now family.  One cannot get out of a covenant, even if broken.  The result of breaking a covenant is to be cursed.  Throughout the Old Testament is a vicious cycle of breaking covenant with God.  When God’s people kept their covenant they received blessings, when they broke covenant they were cursed.

Through covenants God binds himself to his people in a relationship of fidelity and care.  As a husband to his wife, God binds himself to his people Israel of the Old Testament and to the Jews and Gentiles of the New Israel of the New Testament.

The First Covenant between God and Adam

 One of the most important things to come out of the creation story is the importance of the Sabbath.  As in creation where each day that God creates the various parts of the cosmos, the day begins with the evening and ends when the day turns into the next evening—so does the Sabbath. This is how the Hebrews counted their days.  And, as God rested on the 7^th day, so should man.  The Sabbath is the sign of the first Covenant God made with man.   God put man in charge of His creation.  This is why man was tasked with naming each element of God’s creation.  Giving a thing its name meant you were responsible for it and must take care of it.  Man,   Adam, had dominion (ruler) of the world.

Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden.  The World was God’s temple, but the Garden was his Holy of Holies.  Adam was the first priest, whose job was to guard the sanctuary. Just as the Ark of the Covenant was guarded by the carved Cherubim, so was the  eastern gate of the Garden near the Tree of Life guarded by two Cherubim.(Gen3:24).  Adam failed in his priestly duties by allowing the serpent   to tempt the woman and him.  God told Adam before he created the woman, not to eat from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil.  If he did eat from it he shall die.  The Serpent tempted Eve first , but Adam was standing right next to her  and did not stop her from eating it, and he went further by eating the fruit himself.  With this breaking of God’s first covenant with man, Adam was cursed.  To be cursed meant to be excluded or alienated from the blessings of communion with God.  Eve would experience pain in child bearing, and her relationship with her husband was affected as she became dependent on him and he would rule over her.  Adam would toil in order to eat all the days of his life. And worst of all he lost his likeness of God as he lost the Holy Spirit and would now experience death.

After man’s fall, the book of Genesis sets out the Lord’s blueprint for the reconciliation and salvation of fallen humanity. God, under his plan, would gradually reveal himself through a chosen people; preparing mankind for the Messiah and His Church.

The consequence of sin, (turning away from the source of life—God) is death.  Sin filled the Earth and death came to all men.  Jealousy raged and resulted in the murder of a brother.  Sin continued to spread rampant so that “every desire that their heart conceived was always nothing but evil, the Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and his heart was grieved.” (Gen 6:5-6) “But Noah found favor with the Lord. (Gen 6:8)

The Second Covenant between God and Noah

God spoke to Noah and told him about the evil He had seen in man and told him he was to build an Ark to save his family from the total annihilation he was planning for the rest of mankind.  Noah did everything God commanded him.  As in creation and the later building of the Temple and the Ark of the Covenant, the building of the ark was carried out just as God commanded.   Noah was to become the new Adam and the Flood brings about the New Creation.  The Ark symbolizes God’s Church to come which is the bringer of salvation through her sacraments.   Just as later in Exodus, all first born were exterminated except for those protected by the Paschal lamb, so here all sinful humanity is drowned, except those protected by the wood of the ark.  The waters of the Flood themselves represent the Last Judgement, in which the good are saved and the wicked damned, and the flood water prefigures Baptism, by which we are saved from condemnation  as first spoken of in the First Letter of St. Peter, 3:20-21.  There are other typological elements as well.  The dove sent out by Noah, which returns with an olive branch, represents the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  God spoke seven times to Noah.  (The number seven means Spiritual Perfection)   In the first creation story God separates the land from the water as a wind (symbolic of the Holy Spirit) that swept over the water.  In Noah’s story after the flood, God made a wind sweep (the Holy Spirit) over the Earth and the waters began to subside.  In the first creation story on the seventh day God rested—in Noah’s story the name Noah means “rest”.  The sign of the second covenant is the rainbow as God promises to never destroy man again and the obligation of the covenant is to respect life.

 The Tower of Babel

The building of the Tower of Babel represents the attempt of man to make a name for himself on earth, to create a technological civilization that rivals God and that reaches up to heaven.  Such a society has no use for God or heaven. St. Augustine sees it as a perfect symbol of the earthly city: a civilization opposed to the City of God (kingdom of God), focused on the love of self to the point of contempt for God.  On the contrary the City of God is a civilization built on the love of God, building a pathway to heaven, not through pride in man’s works, but through the divine condescension of the Incarnation and Passion of Christ.

It was fitting that the punishment for Babel and its cult of pride was the proliferation of tongues and the dispersal of peoples.  By its nature, the sin of pride divides individuals and societies from one another.  Thus, Babel is the opposite of the Church which beginning with Pentecost, seeks to unite all men into one Body through the bond of charity and which unites all tongues in praising God.  When Peter spoke and all Jews from many different countries could understand him in their own tongue, this was the sign that God was beginning to undo the scattering of the Tower of Babel.  He was fulfilling the promise of the outpouring of the spirit by keeping his covenant with Abraham that he would bless the whole world.  The Church seeks to reestablish in the unity of faith, hope and charity, all mankind as it becomes the Light to the Nations.

The Third Covenant between God and Abraham

The call of Abram came immediately after the Destruction of the Tower of Babel and the scattering of its builders.  One purpose of this bond was to reconcile the peoples of the Earth and reuniting them into one family.  The Old Testament hints at how the reconciliation will come about, but it is only in the coming of Jesus Christ where we clearly see God’s plan.  The New Covenant would be ratified by Jesus Christ in his blood and the promise of the Spirit would be fulfilled at Pentecost when Peter spoke and all in Jerusalem from many different countries could understand him in their own tongue.  This was the sign that God was beginning to undo the scattering of the Tower of Babel, he was fulfilling the promise of the outpouring of the spirit—and keeping the covenant with Abraham that he would bless the whole world.

God chooses Abram because through him the one true God would be made known to the world.  (This anticipates the coming of the Church of Christ)  This great covenant with the Patriarch Abraham and his decedents binds God to his people in a relationship of fidelity and care as a husband pledges to his wife.  God promises to make of Abraham a great nation in a land of plenty. This foreshadows the heavenly kingdom of God.  The sign of the covenant was marked in the circumcision of Abraham and all his male descendants, just as the sign of the New Covenant in the Holy Spirit is marked on our hearts.

This covenant was renewed with Isaac, who was born to the elderly Abraham and Sarah, after the birth was foretold by the Three Visitors at Mamre whom Abraham addressed as one. (The Holy Trinity)   God continued this covenant with Isaac’s son Jacob and his 12 sons (prefiguring the 12 Apostles.)  At first, Jacob was depicted negatively, stealing his older twin brother’s birthright, etc. but later in Genesis Jacob wrestles with a mysterious stranger (later to be revealed as the Lord) who gave him the name Israel.  Pope Benedict XVI interpreted this incident as a “long night of seeking God, the struggle to learn his name and see his face.” 

The remainder of Salvation history is foretold in the 3 parts of the Covenant that God successfully formed with Abram in Genesis 15, 17 and with Abraham’s seed in Genesis 22.

In Genesis 15, in the first part of the covenant, God promises Abram that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. This covenant is fulfilled in the Mosaic Covenant when God forms Israel into a nation at the foot of Mt. Sinai in the Arabian Desert.   In the second part of the covenant, in Chapter 17, God promises that he will make Abraham the father of a multitude of nations and that kings will stem from him and he will be given the land of Canaan as a permanent possession.  This covenant is fulfilled in the Davidic covenant when God takes the nation  of Israel and transforms it into a kingdom under David, his heir Solomon, and each subsequent Davidic king—the last being Jesus Christ.  In Genesis 22 the third part of the covenant would be that in Abraham’s descendants, all the nations of the earth will find blessing because Abraham obeyed God’s command.  This is fulfilled when Jesus Christ at his Ascension proclaims to the apostles “go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always until the end of the age.”  (Mt 28:19, 20)   The covenant God made with the Patriarchs and the divine plan of forming one people is fulfilled in Christ as the Light of the World is preached to all nations and all are baptized in Christ and become heirs to the promise.

The Faith of Abraham

In Genesis 22, Abraham is tested. Finally he has the son he was promised, even after failing to fulfill the promise himself with his wife’s handmaiden, Hagar.   In God’s time the promise is fulfilled.   Abraham has a son named Isaac.  After years of living with the joy of his life, God comes to Abraham and asks him to offer Isaac up as a burnt offering.  Abraham is heartbroken yet he complies.  “On the third day,” Abraham and Isaac reach Mount Moriah (Centuries later this place will be the location of the city of Jerusalem, where Solomon builds the Temple.)  Abraham is thus the first person to worship God on that site.  Isaac carries the wood for the sacrifice on his back as he climbs up the mountain. (Foreshadowing Christ carrying his cross up Golgotha)  He asks his father where the sheep for the sacrifice is.  And Abraham replies that God will provide the sheep.   (In God’s time He would provide his own son, the Lamb of God as the sacrifice on Calvary.) With a heavy heart Abraham prepares the altar and arranges the wood on it.   Isaac allows Abraham to bind him and he climbs on top of the wood.  (This prefigures God’s Beloved Son who is also bound and climbs onto his cross allowing his sacrifice.)  Ready to sacrifice his son, Abraham somehow believes that his son is to be the source of his future generations.  He now has the faith he lacked earlier when Isaac was first promised to him.  He knows that God will fulfill his promise…that his sacrifice will somehow result in Isaac being raised from the dead, (Hebrews 11:19) fulfilling God’s promise (foreshadowing Christ’s resurrection).  He didn’t know exactly how, but he trusted God to fulfill the promise he made to him.  Just as Abraham is about to kill his son, an angel stops him.  His faith has saved his son.  Just as Jesus is resurrected “on the third day” so too is Isaac given back to his father when God provided another sacrifice (the ram).  Abraham’s faith and trust in God proves to all generations that trust in God will be rewarded.