Parasha With Passion – Torah Reading Cycle – Week 1
Greetings Beloveds,
In the beginning, God created man in His very likeness. Mankind was the very elect of all that God had created. God created man for the purpose of relationship.
In the beginning was God and all of creation was filled with God’s divine presence….
In Parashat Bereishit, the creation story tells us a lot about God’s character. God loves oneness. God loves relationship. God created Adam to join Him in an everlasting partnership to govern creation. God placed Adam in charge of Eden and gave him dominion and authority to govern all that which He had created.
Paradise Lost
Then came disobedience… our unbroken serenity was eclipsed by darkness, rebellion, sin, difficulty, loss, complexity, suffering, and death.
By design, Adam was created to live inter-dependently with God, not independently from God. Adam and Eve’s choice to come from under the protective counsel of the Lord, to decide what was good and evil for themselves, was an act of rebellion against God and against His plan of blessing for all creation. This rebellion brought a curse on everything.
Adam, being the first, would have become the progenitor of the goodness of God and would have enjoyed the first fruit of God’s intended blessings whereby all of creation after him would have lived in perfect union with God.
In Genesis 3:1-6, we see the first reference of the enemy of our soul, Satan, who crept his way into paradise and beguiled Eve, causing the disobedience of Adam, which ultimately brought separation between God and His creation.
Adam, through his disobedience forfeited his righteous inheritance. Instead of blessings, Adam became the progenitor of that which is fallen, whereby mankind would inherit a fallen world, and a sin nature which separates man from God. Even nature rebelled and resisted Adam’s attempt to re-establish order by not yielding the bounty that God had ordained for man.
God never intended life to be this hard. It was never God’s intention for His creation to suffer sickness, poverty, famine, and disease. The fall of man introduced sin into the world and the result of sin is death.
However, God loves His creation and had a plan of redemption through Yeshua Messiah to restore all things. In this week’s Parashah, God spoke the first Messianic prophecy, telling of the coming Messiah who would ultimately deal with the root of all evil (Satan).
Genesis 3:15:
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.”
In this passage, God warns that throughout the generations there will be constant conflict between Satan and the people of God. However, God declares that the seed of the woman (Messiah Yeshua) will be victorious over the enemy.
Paradise Found
The story of humanity began in paradise and will ultimately culminate, once again, in an everlasting paradise. We will once again live in perfect union with our Creator and abide in His goodness throughout all eternity.
As believers, when we enter into covenant relationship with Messiah Yeshua, we re-activate our destiny – our oneness reality – by which our existence becomes meaningful and whole.
We can experience true oneness (echad) with God, by simply cultivating a life that includes God in the details of everyday living. Like any relationship, our relationship with Yeshua must be nurtured and strengthened. If neglected, it will wither and grow cold, causing us to drift into behaviors that leads to destruction.
The Alpha and Omega
God has declared the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). Parashat Bereishit begins the story of God’s eschatological purpose of redemption for humanity.
In the book of Beresihit, God tells of His unconditional love for humanity, the battle between good and evil, and reveals His redemptive plan to restore all His creation to the perfect order in which He had originally intended.
The story of humanity began in a paradise in the book of Bereishit and will culminate in an everlasting paradise in the book of Revelations: (i) beginning with the inaugural events of the creation of the heavens and the earth, (ii) the introduction to sin and the fall of man, (iii) and the sojourn of God’s covenant people.
The story of humanity apexes in the book of Revelations (i) with the inaugural events of the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, (ii) the ultimate destruction of sin and the root of all evil, (iii) and the fulfillment of God’s intended purpose to dwell in harmony with His covenant people.
The entire word of God is like a road map to help us find our way back to complete redemption – oneness with our God.
Weekly Scripture Readings
Torah: Genesis 1:1 – 6:8
Haftarah: Isaiah 42:5 – 43:10
Shlichim: Mt 1:1-17; Mk 10:1-12; Lk 3:23-38
Parasha With Passion - Weekly Torah Portions 