The Rich Man and Lazarus is the go-to proof text for hell. Flames, a great chasm, a man begging for a drop of water. But what if that’s the one question Jesus wasn’t answering?

In this episode we read Luke 16 the way Luke built it. The chapter opens with “you cannot serve God and money,” then the Pharisees, who loved money, ridicule Jesus. This parable is his reply. It isn’t a map of the afterlife. It puts the powerful on trial for stepping over the weak at their gate.

What if the Garden of Eden was never about how the world began?

Around 407 BC, a Persian prince named Cyrus showed a Spartan general his royal garden, and told him he'd planted the trees with his own hands. That story opens a window into the world that shaped Genesis. The Persians called these walled royal gardens pairidaēza. It's where we get the word "paradise."

In this episode we read Genesis 1 and 2 through the eyes of the people who first heard them: exiles coming home under a foreign empire, asking whether their God was still on the throne. We look at why Genesis 1 reads like a royal decree, what it means to be made in God's image (tselem), why Eden is drawn like a temple, and the two Hebrew words, avad and shamar, that turn the first human job description into priestly work.

"The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it." Genesis 2:15 (NLT)

Genesis isn't an answer to how things got here. It's an answer to who's still in charge when everything falls apart, and what he made you to do about it.

Disagree with me, argue with me, all good. Drop it in the comments.

Go deeper at https://storiesoftov.com

Jesus didn't read Scripture like a rulebook. See how Matthew 5, the Sabbath, and the divorce texts teach us to read the Bible for wisdom.