Genesis Intro

Chad Myhre

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Introduction:

First off: Invite live feed to post questions… I’ll address them at end.

As we begin this study of Genesis… I’d like to introduce some ground rules… and maybe take some presuppositions out of the way… early on. ++

This will be my third time teaching this...The first time was… a long time ago. I worked through it verse by verse with the help of my Bible School notes, devotional commentaries and the examples of other people’s sermons.

We took it on.. one bite at at time… and in doing so, I failed to consider some ‘big picture’ issues. I missed some of the broad sweeping context. I missed a lot of the cultural insight, and the ancient worldview that this was written in.

The second time through… we did hit some of the big picture stuff and the broad sweeping context… but pretty much that was all… - Our second study of Genesis was a part of an overview study of the Pentateuch.

This time… is going to be the same as the previous studies… in some ways… and completely different in other ways.

Here are some things we will bring into this study… that maybe we missed in previous studies..

ONE

We will be cognitive of the ancient world this was written in. This was was written in a cultural context that is quite different than ours. We need to understand how the people of this time would have received this letter. ++

We need to understand the religious and social climate of the world this letter was introduced into. The context of Genesis isn’t our time period, our doctrine, our traditions or our science. The context of Genesis is ancient… and we will do our best to understand… how it was written, and how it would have been received.

TWO

We will see the big picture. - Genesis 1-11 sets forth a problem… that can only be solved in Jesus. -We learn about man… -what it means to be fallen… -man’s big problem with rebellion… -and God’s ultimate… divine plan to redeem mankind through a Messiah.

THREE

The Ancient World had a supernatural perspective that was well established… from the time of Genesis… all the way into the first century of the church. One of the prime influencers of the first century was Augustine… who rejected many of the supernatural elements of the early scriptures… and his views have influenced the church heavily.

To truly understand Genesis… we need to understand… a little bit more about the supernatural worldview of that day. We covered this topic in one of our live feed mid week studies with the Covid-19 thing first hit… but I’ll give it a quick overview here.

The Hebrew word ‘Elohim’ is a term that is used often in the OT. Some think that this is a name of God… but’s not. It’s a classification term. It’s a term for any being that exists in the spiritual realm. So, yes, God is Elohim… but so are other beings… like angels, and seraphim, and living creatures, and cherubim… there are even a couple times where the word elohim refers to humans who have died

The majority of the uses of elohim are for Yahweh...

But it is also used as the divine members of god’s counsel, the gods of foreign nations, demons, the deceased human dead and for angels.

elohim gets translated a god quite a bit… which is where it gets confusing...

But, to be clear… the Bible is not teaching polytheism. Yahweh remains the one true God who is all powerful and has existed from eternity past.

There are Elohim, that serve with God in something called the ‘divine counsel’…

Divine Counsel is kind of a synonym for a more familiar term: ‘heavenly host’ - speaking of the the spiritual beings in the spiritual world who are loyal to God.

What do they do? - They administer the cosmos under God’s direction… that is… they ‘rule and reign with Him’.

This might be an unfamiliar concept looking back into the past… but it is, for many Christians a familiar concept looking forward.

We have no problem saying, that we will, one day… rule and reign with Christ.

Revelation 5:10 ESV

10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”

1 Corinthians 6:2 ESV

2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?

2 Timothy 2:12 ESV

12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;

Revelation 20:4 ESV

4 Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

Our God does not need us to rule and reign with Him. Our God is sufficient… but our God has shown us, that this is something He likes to do. He likes to work in community with His creation. We see this even in the order of the church…

So it might sound strange, that God administers His work with a divine counsel… but God is who God is… He does not change. This is how He works…

We read about this divine counsel in a few different places…

Psalm 82:1 ESV

1 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

Literally… in the midst of the ‘elohim’ (plural)… he holds judgment.

Psalm 89:5–7 ESV

5 Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones! 6 For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, 7 a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him?

This Psalm mentions the ‘assembly of the holy ones’… ‘the heavenly beings’… ‘the council of the holy ones’… and ‘all who are around him’.

++.

We get a couple examples of God’s divine counsel meeting together and taking action…

1 Kings 22:19–23 ESV

19 And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; 20 and the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. 21 Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ 22 And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ 23 Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has declared disaster for you.”

In this passage… the counsel was assembled… all the host of heaven standing beside him… and the Lord addressed them concerning Ahab.

In the second half of vs. 2… the divine counsel gave some ideas..

And in vs. 21… one of these ‘elohim’ came forward with a suggestion… and God commissioned this being to do what it suggested.

The counsel member carried it out… but God took responsibility for it… based on vs. 23. ++

We get another image of this counsel coming together in Daniel…

Daniel 7:9–10 ESV

9 “As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames; its wheels were burning fire. 10 A stream of fire issued and came out from before him; a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.

Once you see this supernatural thing that is happening behind the scenes… it’s hard to unsee.. You begin to see references of it all over the Bible… that you didn’t notice before…

We saw them, we read them… but we didn’t really think about what they were…

But these elohim play a role in the Bible… and especially in Genesis. They serve in counsel with God… and we will see… many of them will rebel… causing all kinds of trouble…

Also… we will see the role of these rebellious elohim… when the nations are divided in Genesis 11… and how that event sets forth the great problem in humanity… that can only be redeemed in Jesus..

Some of you are familiar with this… some of you are not. Like I said, I covered it in one of the midweek studies in March or April… but, to understand what’s going on in Genesis… - this is context we will need.

So… these three things are necessary for us to understand many of the things we will study in Genesis…

The ancient and cultural perspective

The Big picture

The supernatural worldview.

So… with that said… Let’s jump in...

Very quickly… for the sake of overview… Genesis has 2 parts. Chapters 1-11 high light the story of God, creation, man… man’s multiple rebellions, and God’s responses to those rebellions.

The second part is 12-50… and basically tells us the story of Abraham and his descendants.

Chapter 12 is the call of Abraham… and the beginning of an incredible work that will culminate in Jesus. God is going to take the chaos and disorder of humanity… and make something beautiful from it… That process begins in chapter 12

That process will be, in a way… an echo of the first few verses of chapter one…

Genesis 1:1–3 ESV

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

The Bible wastes no time getting controversial. For granted… this wasn’t controversial to the original readers.

This has become controversial because of philosophies which have crept into society, that challenge a plain reading of the creation account. It has become controversial, because people want to prove or disprove things scientifically.

For some people, this is a very interesting topic. There are entire ministries and organizations built upon these ideas…

But our goal is not… to bring modern science into this ancient literature. Let those who are called to do such things, debate over issues of evolution, old earth, or young earth…

Personally, I lean heavily to a young earth view, with a nod of recognition to the old earth view… and a complete disregard to the option of evolution..

But… the more I read Genesis… the more I come to think that these side debates don’t matter that much… it’s like reading Revelation only to debate pre, mid, or post trib…

We get distracted by modern debates… and overlook what is actually going on in the ancient text…

The debate over verse one falls heavily on the translation. Much of this centers around the definite article.. ‘the’. Some say it is there, some say it is not. If it is not there, the nuance of this passage is a little different.

If it is there… we might say… that verse 1 represents the very beginning point of all things that are ever created… in spite of the fact that verse two tells us… that something was already here before the first thing was created, in vs. 3..

If it is not there… the ‘beginning’ is not so absolute…

One would say “In the Beginning of all things ultimately”

While the other might say:

“The beginning period that God created the heavens and the earth…”

Here’s what I see… and scholars and ministries based on Genesis might disagree… but I’m doing my best to rely on both… a plain reading of the text, and the work of evangelical, Bible believing Hebrew Scholars who have labored over this.

God’s first recorded act of creation is in verse 3...

Verse one is a summary of the creation accounts that are to follow...

And verse two tells us what pre-existed this record of creation.

So… it would seem… that when God began the creation account in vs. 3… that something had already been created. Who created it? Well God created it… of course.

Multiple passages from the NT affirm that Yahweh our God is the creator of all things…

1 Cor 8:6, Heb 11:3, Rev 4:11, Heb 2:10, 1 Cor 11:12, Romans 11:36, Col 1:15

All these passages affirm… that God created all things…

There’s a back story here that we have not been let in on… and that bothers us… the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.

What’s the story here?

How did this raw material of darkness and chaos come into existence?

Guess what? It doesn’t tell us.

But… it does have a part in the greater narrative…

In these first few verses… God is going to confront chaos and disorder… and from it… bring order and beauty.

Why did I call it chaos and disorder? Because… this explanation of the deep waters would have communicated that to the readers. This is what the ocean… this is what flood waters represented to the people of this day… - It was symbolic of chaos.

So… what are we starting with? … vs. 2… the earth was w/o form and void… literally… it was a formless waste. Apparently, it’s covered with water, the word ‘deep’ also meaning ‘ocean’… But… there was a presence… there was something there besides darkness and chaos.

The Spirit of God… - literally… the wind, or the breath of Elohim. - And we find out… it’s ‘hovering’…

Immediately, our minds go to things like helicopters or Ufo… large things that can simply hover in one place…

But I’m not sure if that’s the image here…

This isn’t an ominous… still position…

The word also means to flutter… or to shake… in Deut 32:11… it speaks of an eagle that stirs up its nest… that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions.

The spirit of God is not just present… it is active… it is in a posture of anticipation…

For what? For this very next proclamation… - and God said… ‘Let there be light...”… or simply… let light be.

I love this… we always say that God brought creation into being by speaking it… but in the case of light… he simply gave nothing permission to be something.

And as a result… there was light.

Genesis 1:4–5 ESV

4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Darkness was everything… then, something happened… then, it became distinguishable.

Here’s a timeless spiritual principle. When your life is in darkness… all you know… is darkness. For a lot of people… they know they are not content or at peace… but they don’t know what’s wrong.

If there was no such thing as light… you would be in darkness… but you wouldn’t really know what was wrong. It would be normal and inescapable..

The only thing… that would distinguish it… would be light. The same for our spiritual darkness… we are incapable of seeing the light of the Gospel… unless it is miraculously shown to us, by the HS.

1 Thessalonians 1:5 ESV

5 because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.

You know… the word of faith preachers will tell you… since you are made in the image of God… that you too can speak things into creation.

They tell you that… but it’s a doctrine based only on speculation and deduction…

However… there is still something powerful that you can speak… that has the potential to bring about a supernatural response… - When we speak the Gospel… in word… - It can become a powerful message. How? Through the work of the HS… who uses those words… to bring conviction.

You want to speak a word of faith? Then speak the Gospel message. Share the story of Jesus… - Let the HS bring light, miraculously into darkness… All you have to do… is speak the story of Jesus.

In vs. 4, God acknowledged the goodness of what He made. He acknowledged… that it was pleasant… it was valuable… it was appropriate.

He didn’t need to tell Himself that… this was His affirmation to us… that He makes good things… and we should see them as such.

Then… he separated light from darkness… he assigned time limits to them… establishing a pattern that planetary and star movements would follow shortly there after..

In the places where it was light… it was day… and in the places where it was dark… it was night.

Then… we get this curious statement: “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

When the ancient reader… or hearer… for this probably existed as an oral telling before it was written down… but when they heard this phrase… it meant something to them.

It was a common figure of speech found in ancient Mesopotamian literature. - It simply meant… the beginning and the end of a process.

It also works out to be a day… from a simple reading.

The person who heard this story in ancient times probably wouldn’t have given the difference a thought… because they didn’t have to worry about Darwin’s influence upon their impressionable youth.

This repeated phrase, gives the Old Earth view of creationism a pass… and when I say “Old Earth”… i’m not talking about a philosophy that exists to justify evolution. Those who espouse this view have strong arguments against evolution… arguments that still hold to the Biblical creation narrative.

This is where everyone wants to get hung up… Are they literal 24 days or are periods of time? - The answer is… yes… it’s one of those… or technically … both of those. I might be a period of time literally restrained with in 24 hours..

I lean towards 24 hours… simply because… both cases are miraculous and beyond scientific reason. We think one might be easier to understand, because we think millions of years will make something happen, because we simply can’t comprehend millions of years..

There can be a biblical argument for old earth… based on the Mesopotamian figure of speech rendering of this phrase… - but I’m still… personally… heavy on the young earth side of things.. Why? Because God can.

If God can create light, simply by giving nothingness permission to be something… then God can create all of creation in a millisecond… - He doesn’t need 24 hour days… and He doesn’t need millions of years.

Just my two cents… and for the most part… the time frame of the week of creation.,.. for me, personally… falls in the same bucket as end times prophecy… and that bucket is labeled… - “Stuff I’m not super interested in”.

So… that’s the end of verse 5… I think we’ve made some good progress tonight… and if there are any questions on the live feed… or here in the room.. I’d be happy to discuss them…

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