I aim to carry Scripture with me as I go through my day. I want God’s word continually on my heart because I am prone to worry throughout my day, But Isaiah 26:3 promises:
You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
For this reason, I keep my mind on God’s Word. Some days I try to memorize certain verses, and other days I’ll write a verse on a scrap piece of paper and stick it in my pocket. Every time, then, that I reach for my phone or wallet the biblical passage re-emerges in my mind.
Carry Scripture with you at all times. Carry it in your mind, your heart, and sometimes even your pocket. Here are some verses from Genesis for you to treasure:
1.) Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
I’ve read a lot of books, and I love opening lines. In all my reading, I have found no greater opening line than this. Not just in truthfulness, of which the Bible’s opening line is supreme, but in literary beauty.
Re-readers of the Bible will think of John 1:1 when they read Genesis 1:1. The Bible beckons us to think of the incarnation of God at the creation of the world. The narrative unity of the Bible invites us to think of Jesus in Genesis:
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:2-3)
2.) Genesis 1:3
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
God speaking creation into existence reveals so much that is praiseworthy about him. And this verse has Jesus’s name all over it. For one, it foreshadows his spoken rebuke of the storm:
[Jesus] awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm… And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4: 39, 41)
The answer to the disciple’s question, of course, is God himself. God commands creation with his spoken word.
3.) Genesis 1:5 and Genesis 1:16
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis 1:5)
And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night… (Genesis 1:16)
God’s glory is proclaimed not only in the historical fact he created the world but also in how he created it. On the first day, God created “Day” and “Night.” On the fourth day, God created “the greater light” to rule the day and “the lesser light” to rule the night.
Our God is a God of order. He prepared room, then he filled it. We see this pattern with the waters/expanse in Day 2, and the fish/birds in Day 5. We see this pattern with the dry land in Day 3, and the animals, livestock, and mankind in Day 6.
God puts all things in their proper place. He is a supremely good and ordered God. Praise him!
4.) Genesis 3:24
He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
In this verse, like many others, we see how the Bible fits together as one unified story. God knew his plan from the beginning. His plan was always for Jesus Christ to redeem humanity.
Every part of Genesis 1-3 shows this truth. Here, we can see it in the cherubim who guards the entrance back into Eden. Throughout the Old Testament, Israelites were instructed to decorate the veil of the tabernacle with cherubim (See Exodus 26:31). So, when Jesus’s death causes the tearing of the veil (Luke 23:45), we see one glimpse into the narrative unity of the Bible: Jesus faced the Cherubim’s sword, took a fatal blow, but opened an entrance through him back into a relationship with God.
We will never go back to Eden, but we can now again have the relationship Adam and Eve once had with God in the Garden.
As a bonus note further displaying the unity of the Bible, consider Luke 20:15. Mary, in seeing Jesus for the first time after his resurrection, does not recognize him. Instead, she supposes him to be “the gardener.”
5.) Genesis 15:17
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
Perhaps you’re thinking: What a weird verse to highlight by itself! And you may be right, the whole chapter in which Abram and the LORD make a covenant is what I really mean to highlight. Verse 17, though, is the plot twist.
This is the moment where we expect Abram to walk through the two pieces, signaling he would accept the consequence of a broken covenant. And yet, it is God who does this. God reveals he himself will pay the penalty for his people, should they rebel.
And thus Genesis 15:17 points us to John 19:30, in which Jesus paid the penalty for these sins, and says, “It is finished.”
Why We Treasure God’s Word
At the end of the day, it’s not about clever connections, fancy hermeneutics, or literary value. The Bible is not important to us simply because it is interesting; The Bible is God’s inerrant word that points us directly to Jesus Christ. It authoritatively glorifies Jesus Christ. That’s why we treasure it above all else.
For we treasure God’s word and we treasure Christ, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).
