Bible Study Day 1

Genesis 1:1-3:24

God felt good about His work, we can be pleased with ours. However, we should not feel good about our work if God would not be pleased with it.

God used plural form in, “Let us make man in our image”. It is in reference to the Trinity (God, the God, Jesus Christ His Son and the Holy Spirit).

Ways we are made in God’s image:

• we are reflections of God’s glory. 
• we do have the ability to reflect His character in our love, patience, forgiveness, kindness & faithfulness. 
• human worth is not based on possessions, achievements, physical attractiveness, or public acclaim. It is instead based on being made in God’s image. 

If at times you feel worthless or of little value, remember that God made you for a good reason. You are valuable to Him.

God gives us choices, and we too, often choose wrongly. These wrong choices may cause pain, but they can help us learn and grow and make better choices in the future. Living with the consequences of our choices teaches us to think and choose more carefully.

The Tree of Life and Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil provided an exercise in choice, with rewards for choosing to obey and sad consequences for choosing to disobey. When you are faced with a choice, always choose to obey God.

God chose to make woman from the man’s flesh and bone. In doing so, he illustrated for us that in marriage, man and woman symbolically become one flesh. The goal in marriage should be more than friendship, it should be oneness.

God forms and equips men and women for various tasks, but all these tasks leads to the same goal - honoring God.

Three aspects of a strong marriage:

1. the man leaves his parents and, in a public act, promises himself to his wife; 
2. the man and woman are joined together by taking responsibility for each other’s welfare and by loving the mate above all others 
3. the two become one flesh in the intimacy and commitment of sexual union that is reserved for marriage. 

When we fail to expose our secret thoughts to God, we break our lines of communications with Him.

Our small and large acts of rebellion prove that we are descendants of Adam. Only by asking for forgiveness of Jesus Christ can we become children of God.

Satan was an angel who rebelled against God and was thrown out of heaven. Temptation is Satan’s invitation to give in to his kind of life and give up on God’s kind of life.

How could we resist temptation?
We must realize that being tempted is not a sin. We have not sinned until we give in to the temptation.

• pray for strength to resist 
• run, sometimes literally 
• say no when confronted with what we know is wrong. 

We fall into trouble when we dwell on the few things we don’t have rather than on the countless things God has given us. When you are feeling sorry for yourself and what you don’t have, consider all you do have and thank God. Then your doubts won’t lead you into sin.

Sometimes we have the illusion that freedom is doing anything we want. But God says that true freedom comes from obedience and knowing what not to do.

To become more like God is humanity’s highest goal.

Self-exaltation leads to rebellion against God. As soon as we begin to leave God out of our plans, we are placing ourselves above Him.

We cannot always prevent temptation, but there is always a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). Use God’s word and God’s people to help you stand against it.

Recognize and confess your sin to God before you are tempted to pollute those around you.

Honesty will strengthen your relationship with God.

Sins have broken our close relationship with God. But Jesus Christ, God’s son, opens the way for us to renew our fellowship with Him. God longs to be with us. He actively offers us his unconditional love. Our natural response is fear because we can’t live up to His standards. But understanding that He loves us, regardless of our faults, can help remove that dread.

God’s commands are for our own good, but we may not always understand the reasons behind them. People who trust God will obey because God asks them to, whether or not they understand why God commands it.

God knows the truth, and he holds each of us responsible for what we do. Admit your wrong attitudes and actions and apologize to God. Don’t try to get away with sin by blaming someone else.

God is preparing a new earth as an eternal paradise for His people (Revelation 22)

How Adam and Eve broke their relationship with God

• they became convinced their way was better than God’s 
• they became self-conscious and hid 
• they tried to excuse and defend themselves. 

To build a relationship with God

• we must drop our excuses and self-defenses 
• we must stop trying to hide from God 
• we must become convinced that God’s way is better than our way

Reference: Project 365 for Year 2012