The Ultimate, Eternal Hook
2/4 Reading Portions: Genesis 37; Mark 7; Job 3; Romans 7
Online Bible Audio/Readings Links (ESV)
2/4 Reading Portions: Genesis 37; Mark 7; Job 3; Romans 7
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
TRUST
Commercial authors and editors in the American publishing business speak of having a great hook to open a novel. A first sentence that beckons the reader to continue reading. It can elicit several thoughts, emotions, or inquiries that entice the reader to read on—that if this is the first sentence, and if this is what the writer has in store for me, then I will most certainly read the rest. I can attest to this from my own experience. I have picked up a number of novels in bookstores and thrift stores that made me purchase the book because of the first sentence. Conversely, I disregarded an even larger number of books because the hook didn’t grab me. It didn’t mean the book, or the hook, wasn’t any good. It just wasn’t for me.
The first sentence of the Bible is the ultimate, eternal hook. I didn’t always think so. Before the Lord saved me, but after my believing father passed away in 1963, I had picked up his personal Bible several times and attempted to read it from page one. I had read Genesis 1:1 many times. But I didn’t get it. I was, after all, unsaved. I couldn’t make it beyond Genesis 5. Because the Bible is revelation truth. It is divinely inspired—literally, “breathed out by God” (1 Tim 3:16-17). It must be divinely revealed by God the Holy Spirit (Heb 1:1-2; 2 Pet 1:19-21), all testifying to the truth of the Lord Jesus Messiah (John 5:39; 15:26). So, once we are saved by God’s grace, this first sentence is truly a grabber—gripping the soul as a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb 4:12). It has been said, and rightly so, that if you don’t have trouble with the first verse of the Bible, you will have little to no trouble with everything else that follows. In other words, trusting that God, and no one or nothing else, created the heavens and the earth, we should have no problem trusting Him to be holy, just, and good in everything else that He does. Will we always understand? Will we always know exactly how to act or what to say? Of course not. That is by design by His good providence… so that we trust our triune God explicitly (Prov 3:5-6). Hallelujah! What a Savior!