Genesis at a Glance

Well, this morning we are going to begin a new series. We're going to begin walking through the book of Genesis together as a church. We finish our first series, 1 John, and I'm going to take this occasion this morning to look at some introductory matters of Genesis and to give a big picture overview of the book as a whole. What an encouraging service we do have this morning. Two months in a row, we get to start off the month with the Lord's Supper and a family meal together as usual, but then also to celebrate the baptisms of two young believers. And we rejoice with them and we rejoice as a family together with them. If you want to know more about what the series is going to look like, our preaching calendar will be on the website soon. And you can see the next few on the back of your bulletin. The first thing I want to do before we get into kind of the overview material of Genesis is look through some of the problematic or introductory matters. Genesis is probably the most debated book in the Bible. And that doesn't mean it's the book that gets the most questions as if it should be in the canon. But whenever people question a book of the Bible based upon their research or their presuppositions, Genesis is the book that gets questioned the most. And so we're going to walk through and we're going to discuss some of the very typical hard questions. And I'm going to give a very armchair answer to those questions. And if you have a desire to learn more about these issues, I can point you to resources. I'm not going to get into the deep complications of it all this morning. The first major question we have to ask, or the major question that is asked about the book of Genesis is who wrote it? Who wrote the book of Genesis? And to answer this question, we really have to look broader and say, who wrote the Pentateuch? Genesis is one book of five that makes up the first portion of the Bible, really the foundation of the Bible. And the traditional answer is Moses. And I rarely depart with tradition. I have to have a good reason to deny what the fathers have handed down to us and what Moses himself claimed. So here are the reasons why I believe Moses wrote the old, the Pentateuch. First, he was very capable of writing the Pentateuch. If you recall, Moses was trained in the finest Egyptian schools of the day. He had the best education money could buy. And it was given to him. He was trained in the finest schools as a young boy in Egypt. And this gave him the capability of writing the Pentateuch. I don't know if you've ever read it front to end. The whole Pentateuch. I know you get bogged down in certain parts of Numbers and Leviticus, but it's worth doing. If you read it from Genesis to Deuteronomy, if you just read Genesis alone, that's the challenge this week. Just read Genesis in one sitting. You'll be amazed at the different literary forms that are presented there. You'll be amazed at different genres and literary types that are presented there. There's poetry. There's high prose, there's narrative, there's genealogy, there's prayers, there's songs. Whoever wrote Genesis had to be a very skilled writer. He uses inclusios, foreshadowing, and irony, and little catchphrases that we'll see later that really make the book kind of punchy and fun to read. As we look at the Pentateuch, do I think Moses had to pin every single word from Genesis to Deuteronomy? Well, I don't think he possibly could have because his funeral is in there. OK, so when someone says, no, Moses couldn't have written the whole thing. OK, we get it. He couldn't write his funeral. I guess he could have, but we most likely think he did not. No, what Moses has done is probably compiled a lot of resources together and has written most of what we have in Genesis. I believe Joshua probably wrote his funeral for him and compiled it at the end, according to Moses's command. Let's take another piece. Genesis one verses in chapter two, verse three. It's this great poem about creation. It doesn't really fit the rest of Genesis in terms of style and form. It fits it with content. Do I think Moses could have written this? Yes. You also think Moses could have found this poem, someone else could have written this poem, and Moses could have incorporated it into what he considered the canon, the first five books of Scripture. Yes. It's the same way Paul incorporated a hymn in Philippians 2, or the way Paul incorporates a Cretan philosopher in Titus. He could have written it. He could have added it. One of the most interesting things about the questions of if Moses wrote the Pentateuch is the method by which they determined he could not have, the historical liberal scholars. It's a theory called J-E-D-P, and you're not supposed to pronounce it J-E-D-P, but you can if you want. It stands for Jehovah, Elohim, Deuteronomy, and the Priestly. And what they say is that since there's different names for God throughout the whole thing, that shows that every time a different name for God is being used, that's a different author. And then somebody really late in Israel's history put together all these stories and it just happens to kind of go together. So every time you see a new name in Scripture, the Pentateuch especially, that can't be the same author. Well, that's absurd. You would have to discount every historical book ever written about a religion if you did that. Because every historical religious book has different names for God. Using a different name for God does not demand a different author. What's amazing through scripture is that we have different names for God because no name sums him up perfectly because he is infinite in his glorious nature. One of the most convincing arguments I've heard for Moses being the author of the Pentateuch Well, Jesus, Mark 12, 26. Jesus says, if you do not believe Moses and his account of the burning bush and the patriarchs, the fathers, Abraham and Isaac and so forth, how would you believe me? Now, I believe Jesus was fully God. I believe he was infinite in his knowledge, omniscient. And either Jesus lied intentionally, because that's what everyone thought in the day that Moses wrote it, or Jesus was affirming Well, I don't believe Jesus could lie. So, anyone who is questioning the authority of, or questioning the Mosaic authorship, really has a big problem with Jesus' account. Alright, question two. I'm really stepping into trouble here, maybe. So, there are questions about how Genesis and science relate to one another. Now, I know nothing about science. I have really no great understanding about the physical sciences. I know the philosophy that kind of lie behind them because I was able to study with William Dembski for a semester, but I really don't understand the physical sciences. So I'm really looking forward to all the questions and comments I'm going to get after this. But here are some basic principles I think that should control our conversation about scripture and science. If we believe We're evangelicals and we believe in inspiration. We must believe that scripture and creation are the two books of God. They're the two sources for knowledge of God. Scripture gives us specific knowledge of God. They tell us about who he is and what he's done throughout the history. And we also must look at creation and see that he created it and his handprints all over it. And we can learn about God by studying creation. It has his handprint on it. It's got a great beauty and a great harmony. There's unity in creation. And we can see that there are certain attributes of God if we look at creation. We should be able to go up to the Grand Canyon and not think, wow, I wonder how long this took. No, we should look at the Grand Canyon and the great mountains and the great seas and the great creatures. We say, what a glorious creator. What an amazing Creator that can bring about all this diversity and have it all work in harmony and in unity. So for Christians, we have to realize that Scripture and our study of the world, they correspond with one another. They can't negate one another. What we believe Scripture affirms, what we believe real science affirms, they must correspond together. Now, obviously, the big question with Genesis in science is how did this world come to be? And this is where I'm going to get in trouble, maybe. But, philosophically, I'm going to step out there. Physical science cannot give us any absolute knowledge about the origins of the world. Physical science is, by nature, an inductive study. An inductive study goes out and takes a bunch of data. You gather as much data as possible, you put it together, then you make a hypothesis, then you test that hypothesis with the data. Your hypothesis is never proven absolutely, it's only proven probably. because what happens as you get your hypothesis and your data you prove it over and over and over again and you get more and more data until it either becomes most probable or unlikely. Now This doesn't mean we should doubt everything about science. When I have an infection, I take an antibiotic, and I have a pretty good understanding and a foundation to say, my past and all the research tells me when I take that medicine, it's going to fix my problem. But the point is, is most of the physical sciences, they're inductive by nature. And if we understand that everything is deductive and inductive, and sorry for the philosophy class, but this is what we've got to do here, Inductive doesn't give you definite absolutes. Inductive gives you probabilities. Then we can have a lot of very probable truth claims from science. But something science cannot give you a probability about is how this world came to be. Please tell me, what instrument do you use to measure and to define and determine how this world came to be? Where do you stand to analyze and research how this world came to be? Where is the data that gives you any opportunity to think about the probabilities of how this world came to be? Now let's make sure we're talking about the right question. Science, I think they have some data and they have some tools that can tell us some information about how old this earth is. Let's make sure we're focusing on the right questions. But how this world came to be? There's not a place to stand. There's not that Archimedean point upon which we can stand to get leveraged to start determining how this world came to be. There's lots of theories. And those theories are fun, especially the ones that involve aliens. But the inductive study by its very nature can't go back and study what happened in history. The issue I really want to get to the most is the idea that something came from nothing. That one just, it blows my mind. that people will adamantly argue that science proves that something comes from nothing. And this theory goes all the way back to Aristotle and beyond, the idea of spontaneous generation. And the first scientists who said, you know, believed in spontaneous generation and taught it, well, they would leave meat out on the table. And they believed that leaving that meat out on the table, well, that caused maggots to spontaneously generate. Or you can leave cheese out in the lab, and then rats would spontaneously generate. Well, then men like Pasteur came along and started putting things in jars, and those things no longer spontaneously generated. We got a microscope and realized, no, maggots come from bacteria and other things. We see this. No one has ever proven that something comes from nothing. There's no evidence that something can come from nothing. But what's amazing about the desire to prove that something comes from nothing, it's really not science that drives that argument. It's a sinful heart. We want to promote and believe that something comes from nothing because we don't want a God. So many people are adamant that science proves that something comes from nothing, that there isn't a God, that we just happen to be here by chance. It's not science that drives that. There's no science that can even promote that. No, it's a rebellious heart that doesn't want an authority. It's a rebellious heart that doesn't want to submit to the Creator. Friends, as we look at Scripture, We must be careful to affirm clearly those things that Scripture affirms. As we look at science, we of all people should be leading the world in science. Christians should have the best science because we're the only ones that believe we were created with the capacity to do science. We're the only ones that believe we're the image of God. We actually can have the meaning of this world. Our brains, our figures, our functions, everything about us was meant to study and know this world. So we must be careful whenever we're weighing Scripture and science. They don't compete. They correspond. And we must be clear to affirm all things that Scripture declares. And the most important one is that God created everything out of nothing. God created everything out of nothing. This isn't something comes from nothing. No, this is everything comes from the very powerful, the most powerful God who declares us into being with His Word alone. He doesn't form us out of preexistent material. No, God speaks. And there are the heavens. They're the stars. There's a wonderful creation that we all enjoy. We must recognize a clear creator creation distinction. God is not dependent upon this world. No, it's a one way dependency. We are dependent upon the creator. So let us worship that creator. And if you are someone who's desiring for an atheistic worldview. Wrestle with if it's science that's pushing that, or if it's your desire to not have a God. Third, and this one really gets even into a more interesting heated debate. Whose book is it? Is it a Christian book? I think so. Paul declares that we are the children of Abraham, all who believe. or the Jewish book alone. This is a great debate in the early church. The stories held within are also claimed by Muslims. So you see the three great world religions, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, they all claim to go back to Abraham. This book is extremely important to think about how we communicate with all of the religions. And finally, I'm going to end on a nice note. How do you organize the book? Well, there's two main ways. You can organize it according to the narrative structure of the book, and that is every time Moses says these are the generations, you can organize it according to those generations. It's broken up according to genealogies. And the genealogies are in chapter two, verse four, five, one, six, nine, 10-1, 11-10, 11-27, 25-12, 25-19, 36-1 and 37-2. We'll put those on a blog whenever I put that up. Those are all different places you see a genealogy, and it's important to see these genealogies because they are carrying the story of the book. I know you like to read over them. but they're extremely important to how you understand the organization of the book. The other way to organize the book is according to three sections. You have the primeval history, you have Genesis 1-11, you have the early patriarchs, 12-36, and you have the later patriarchs, 37-50. So that's why it's debated. But let's get into the book itself. Let's look at what the book tells us and why it is foundational. The book begins with a great declaration about the Creator. The book begins with a great poem. It actually has features of prose and poetry. It's a very unique genre, a very unique style of literature. It declares how great and mighty God is. He spoke the world into being. It declares how orderly and perfect and beautiful all of creation is. And then in that creation, it declares the importance of us. On the sixth day, really the climax of the creation account in Genesis 1, He forms man in His image. We were made vice-regents of creation. We were given the opportunity to lead this world in worship. We were given the opportunity to spread the glory of God throughout all of creation. He gave us great ability. He gave us great tools. He gave us great responsibility. But instead of being vice regents, we desired something more. We decided to be the king. Man didn't take long to overthrow the king, deny the king his proper place. We took that which he demanded us not to take, rebelled against him. There you have the fall. And God responds with a curse. We'll look at that curse in detail, and that curse is really interesting in terms of explaining the problems we have in this world. When we think about suffering, Do you immediately think, why do bad things happen to good people? Or do you start thinking, why is this happening? Oh yes, this world is under a curse. This world is cursed and I have to participate in that curse because I participated in Adam. One of the most glorious things about that curse is in the midst of that curse, there's a promise. It's the first proclamation of the gospel. God says, the woman will have a seed and he will crush the head of the serpent. There we see a promise that there will be a child born of the woman and that child will destroy our greatest enemy, sin and death. And that's why those genealogies are so important, friends. Because as we see child after child, seed after seed, you're supposed to be asking yourself, is this the one? Is this the one? Is this the one? As it gets clearer and clearer as to where this child is going to come from, you're supposed to be anticipating, anxiously, is this the one? When it's clear that through Genesis, we do not get that one. But interesting, if we fast forward through Cain and Abel, interesting sibling rivalry, we get to the flood. We get to Noah, we get to one of the seeds, we get to one of the children and we see something interesting about Noah. He's righteous. He obeys God. God protects him. He's the only man left, the only head of household left, he and his family. First, we are amazed by the judgment of God. But then we're amazed by Noah. Because as Noah gets off the boat, what does he do? He makes an altar. He builds a vineyard. He takes the fruit of the vine. He gets drunk. And he's laying there naked in his shame. Now, if you're familiar with Genesis, you hear the correspondence. Adam took the fruit of the tree. He realized he was naked and there was shame. Noah is the second Adam. Noah was supposed to be the beginning of a new race, but right off the boat, Noah falls just like Adam. Genesis is a book about failure. That's what makes Christianity so interesting. Our heroes are all failures. The great stories we tell about Noah and Abraham and David. There are stories of their failure in God's grace. We go on from the universal flood and we see the Tower of Babel. This is an amazing story. This is really the height of rebellion before God gives His promise to Abraham. Here you have all people gathered in one place. They're all speaking one language and they're going to build a tower up to the heavens. And then wonderfully, The author says, God came down to see it. Do you get the beauty of what's happening there? They're trying to build a tower up to the heavens and God has to come down to see it. Your greatest achievement is so small. Let me come down. And then he confuses their language. And while we see great judgment happening at the Tower of Babel, you actually see great mercy. Because God is making them fulfill His creation mandate. They're going to go out into all the world. And there are going to be many nations because all these different people are speaking their own tongue. And they start their own nations throughout all of creation. And that's merciful because then God gets to call out one of those nations to be the one nation through which He will fulfill Genesis 3.15. Genesis 12 is a huge transition in the story. And what's interesting about Abraham versus the Tower of Babel, they were trying to make a great name for themselves. They were desiring to make a great name for themselves by building up this great tower, but God in His mercy, He calls out Avram and says, I will make your name great. The contrast is so obvious in what God is declaring. He is the one who's going to make names great. He is the one who's going to deliver His people. But we've got to think of the curse. The curse is that childbearing will be difficult. Abraham and Sabbath do not have children. In order for Abraham to be great, in order for his name to be great, in order for these promises to be fulfilled, he has to have numerous children so that he can have children as much as the stars and the sands. And you see this bumbling man lie about his sister. Instead of being a blessing to Egypt, he's a curse. He's not fulfilling his covenant responsibility. Then you see him fail over and over again, and every time he fails, what does God do? He restates the covenant. He doesn't stop. God doesn't give up on Abraham. No, God keeps his covenant with Abraham. And he continues to repeat that covenant promise over and over again. And we can talk about Ishmael and the problems thereof. But let's get to Isaac. The birth of Isaac. Because God tells Abraham, you will have a son through Sarah. They're getting old in age. They're getting long. They're waiting. And God comes back and reminds them of the promise once again. And what do they do? They laugh. They've gotten so tired of waiting. They laugh at God making His promise. So, what does God name the Son? Brilliant. He names Him Laughter. This is God saying, I am in absolute control. This is a fantastic story. This is a fantastic piece of writing that tells us of God's patience with His creation. That tells us how sinful we are. that tells us that He is in control. If you look at Isaac, who really has a very minor part, other than the fact that he's about to be sacrificed and God provides the lamb, he has two children, Jacob and Esau, a hairy man. Again, fascinating book. Esau comes in famished. He's the older brother. And he sells his birthright. As you're reading that, you're just thinking, how hungry were you? What is wrong that you're going to sell your entire birthright? Having stars. Having children as numerous as the stars. You're going to sell your birthright. And then, the mother tricks him out of his birthright. And all this happened to bring about what God had already determined. That Jacob, He would love. And Esau, He would hate. The amazing work of God that His plan is being brought forth even through the devious and sinful actions of man. And then Jacob, who retakes the blessing. His name is changed to Israel. He has 12 sons. And one of them is a real cocky kid with a fancy coat. And he keeps telling his other siblings, hey, I'm going to be your ruler one day. You're going to bow down to me." So, what do these other 11 siblings do? Well, they're merciful. They don't kill them. They sell them off to Egypt. And then a famine comes. And they have to go bag Egypt for food. And they had no idea what God was doing with these evil actions. God all along was building up Joseph to be a a leader in Egypt, to be the man who would have to hear their requests and grant them those requests. And then God uses that opportunity to bring the entire nation of Israel into Egypt so that they can grow in prosperity. They can grow in number. They can grow without worrying about protection. They can grow to be a great nation. And then we get, that sets us up for the book of Exodus. For God will prove that He is a God who delivers His people. As we look through that history, really only touching the high parts. I left out the nasty stuff, by the way. We're going to look at it in detail, though, as we walk through this slowly. As we look at this, we learn a number of great things. One, Genesis revealed to us the way the world was supposed to be. It was supposed to be good. It was supposed to be orderly. We were supposed to be walking and talking with God in the garden. We were supposed to be enjoying the harmony and the beauty of creation. We were supposed to enjoy work. We were supposed to be friends with God. Humble, obedient servants to Him. We were supposed to lead this entire created order in worship. We were supposed to fill this world with His glory. But we lost it all. We lost our position. We lost our position of being friends with God. We lost our position of being humble, obedient servants of God. And instead of being servants of God, we take upon us wrath. We lost our place in the garden. We lost our place there with God. We lost the privilege of working with Him and for Him. But God kept our purpose. God, with His promise, kept the purpose. He said, I will save you. You cannot save yourself out of this rebellion. You cannot save yourself out of my wrath. God made a promise and he's kept that promise. God made that promise in Genesis 3.15. He continues to build upon that promise. And we as Christians get to say that in Jesus Christ, every one of these promises are a yes and an amen. Because on the cross of Christ, Satan bruised his heel. Satan had a day of victory where he conquered the Son of God. Or rather, the Son of God. Jesus Christ allowed him to nail upon that cross. But Jesus gave up His Spirit. Jesus gave up His life. And in Him, He destroys. And in Christ, we see death destroyed. Because He rose from the grave. In Christ, we see sin destroyed. Because He takes upon our sin the judgment thereof. And He gives us His righteousness. Friends, as we look at Genesis, we must see that God is to be worshipped. As one great theologian said it best, we are restless till we find our rest in Him. We are restless. Until we find our rest in Him, we will long for significance and purpose. We were created with significance and purpose. And until we find the significance and purpose we were created for, we will have no rest. It is only as we find God in Jesus Christ that we're renewed, we're saved, we're forgiven. were put back in the proper place of God's program and His kingdom. As we look at Genesis, we see that God is holy and merciful. Every time He judges, He gives grace. God is holy in His being and He must punish sinners. We are offensive to Him in His perfect holiness. While He exercises wrath in His holiness, He exercises great mercy in His love. Friends, we may think we can stare death in the face like the poem in Vic Deuce encourages us to do. We may think we can look death in the eye and say, I'm not afraid of you. But friend, death is going to come upon us all. Death is one of the few things that is absolute. We're all going to die. The question is, what happens after that death? I'm here to tell you that you will face a holy God. A God who will look at your life and His wrath will be upon your sin. Unless you place your faith in Jesus Christ. Unless you believe Jesus Christ died for that sin. Unless you believe Jesus Christ took the wrath of your sin upon Himself, God's wrath will be upon you. He is a holy God that we should fear. But that holy God has loved us with the greatest love that He Himself came to die for us so that we might have hope. The last thing we should see is that he is patient in his promise. I tried to point out just the small areas, not even the most significant areas in which the patriarchs, as we call them, bumbled and failed. We must realize we identify with those men and those women. We must identify that we ourselves are failures. We must realize that we ourselves are sinners. We must praise God that in his patience, he hasn't already judged us. and let's take the opportunity in His patience to repent of our sin and believe in Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Almighty God, we come before You. We praise You, Lord, that we get to worship You. We praise You, Lord, that we get to hear of Your work of creation. We praise You, Lord, that we can look out into the window, out the windows, We can go out into the world and we can see Your hand and what it has done. We can glorify You. More important, we can look at Your Word and we can see how You've been patient with us in Your holiness. We can see how You've been loving towards us. Merciful. We can see how we can claim the blessing of God and have the curse removed in Jesus Christ. I pray for anyone here that does not know You, that You will convict them now. Your Spirit would apply the Gospel. Your Spirit would move in us. Help us, Lord, all to see Your glory, as You are not only the Creator, but You are our great Savior. In Your name we pray, Amen.