Genesis Part 1
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I was going to tell you a funny story about maps and getting lost but I’m so excited and I fear for our time today because when I get excited about something I tend to go long so I’m just going to jump right into things and pray it all still makes sense even without my introduction.
Year in the Bible
The Goal -
If you seriously engage with the Bible and are faithful to take the next steps of faith that it calls you to, you won’t be the same person at the end of 2022 that you are right now.
We said that we are changed as we come to realize …(story is about God and leads to his revelation as Jesus & our relationship to him)
About the Bible:
40+ Authors and editors over 1300 years, 3 continents, and 3 languages, 1663 commands, 3237 characters, 1/3rd poetry, letters, history, apocalyptic literature, and roughly 400+ independent story-lines that weave together to tell one unified story.
DO THE (COMMUNICATE 1 THING WITH THE HELP OF 3 OTHER PEOPLE IS NEAR IMPOSSIBLE AND WE SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE) BIT...
And yet...
The claim of the Bible is that it is not only true and without error or inconsistency but that it has the power to change your life.
Maybe some of you aren’t sure about that…stick around and by the end of this study I guarantee you will have definitively made up your mind one way or another.
Let’s talk a little more about the Bible in general...Talk about the split
Old Testament 39 books
New Testament 27 books
INSERT PICTURE OF HOW WE BREAK THOSE BOOKS DOWN
BUT!!!…we want to start this series the right way…do arrow bit...
You are going to hear me make a really big deal about this the entire series starting today but,
We want to understand the Bible the correct way and to do that, we must see the Bible the way its first audience saw it.
Let’s go back to our picture I showed a second ago about the book breakdown and just zoom in on the Old Testament Portion…INSERT CROPPED PICTURE 2
Show TaNaK pictures 1, 2, then 3 as I explain that’s how they saw it.
Explain why understanding the Bible the way Jesus and the other NT writers did is so important…it was their framework. They saw themselves as completing a story left hanging. Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of prophecy and everything that the Old Testament had been alluding to.
Explain that’s why we are going to start there.
Show TaNaK Bible that I have and read Gen 1:1 out of it.
Genesis means Beginning. Show where the name comes from.
Tie back in map example and show how Genesis is the key to the map…especially the first eleven chapters. That’s what we are going to do today (explain it is going to be a little bit different).
Every week we are going to try and accomplish three major things as we look at each book (briefly explain each of these):
Story overview
Study Concepts & Resources
Pictures of Christ and the Gospel meant to challenge and change us in the book.
Story overview
Story overview
Chapter 1:
Read Genesis 1:1-5
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
4 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, one day.
There are seven cycles of this...
And then we get to chapter two and see something weird...
Chapter 2 narrative telling
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.
5 Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Now, God had already created mankind in chapter one so is this a retelling or a second and different creation account?…do Lilith funny bit...
Genesis 1 is like spoken word poetry and Genesis 2 is the narrative account of creation.
Do Exodus 14 & 15 bit...
Chapter 3 is the account of mankind’s fall and expulsion from the presence of God.
Chapter 4 begins the downward spiral of mankind into sin and is about the generational reality of sin.
Do the “it was way worse than we immediately give it credit for in a cursory reading...” bit
It doesn’t end with Cain though…tell about Lamech being a bad dude
Chapter 5 is one of ten Toledots in the book of Genesis.
Toledot is the Hebrew word for genealogy.
Explain how those ten Toledots shoot forward through the text of the Bible like arrows and all of the authors moving forward latch onto them, add to them, and use them to tell a story…explain Matthew’s Gospel opening.
Chapters 6-9 detail the descent of all mankind into sin and the flood God used to wipe them out.
We think of the flood as this barbaric act of God’s cruelty and yet it was what I would call a severe mercy. (Explain that if God hadn’t rebooted creation, we would’ve destroyed ourselves before His redemptive plan was even able to get off the ground).
Chapter 10 is another Toledot.
Chapter 11 is about the Tower of Babel and the table of Nations.
That is what the story is about, but in order for us to grasp the story’s meaning and impact on our life, we need to know a few basic Bible interpretation techniques. This is the part where I want to help you learn how to study the Bible effectively for yourself. So, I want to teach you 3 new study concepts this week.
Study Concepts
Study Concepts
I can give you a single sentence that if you will take it seriously and begin to read the Bible with this sentence in the front of your mind and seek to understand the Bible in light of this sentence, it will drastically change the way you read your Bible forever. Not only that, but it will connect you to the true power of the Bible in your life as it connects you to the truth in the Bible.
Here it is, and this is study concept number 1:
1. The Bible can’t mean something to us today that it did not mean to the original audience.
Here is what that presupposes:
God the divine author did in fact intend to speak to us.
But...God used human authors in a specific time and place to write to a specific group of people in a specific set of circumstances.
That means, God used their language, culture, and framework of understanding the world to communicate His truths. Explain how we are going to read some things in the Bible and not understand why they are there. No, God’s Word doesn’t need an update. It doesn’t need to be drug kicking and screaming into the 21st century and our socially and culturally accepted norms and worldview. God used the understanding and culture of a particular people to communicate timeless truths to all generations. And so…next point...
As we understand what the Bible meant to them, we connect to the original intended truth that still has application and meaning for our lives today.
Here is an illustration: Do the “I am so freaked out, I can’t believe I actually killed him” bit...
It sounds easy enough in practice, but lets look at an example from our text.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
4 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, one day.
READ:
This was God’s first act of creation. To create light. But, this is quite problematic from our view of the world because where does light come from? Well light must have a source and yet, God doesn’t create the source of light until day four when He creates the sun, moon, and stars. Which, by the way, we should mention that those came after the creation of all of the vegetation was created.
Some of you who have thought through this argument before are already thinking of the solution in your mind. People try and explain this away by saying that the light came from God’s presence. There is only one problem with this and it is a big one. God is immutable. That means that God’s nature, being, and character are unchanging from eternity past to eternal future. Yes God is light but we should note that that means He always has been. God didn’t just decide to flip on His Holy light switch on day one of creation.
Do you see the inherent problems that begin to arise as we try and force our cosmology (that is to say our view of the order and creation of the material universe) onto the text. And ya’ll, this is just the tip of the proverbial problematic iceberg when it comes to Genesis 1 and 2 and the origins of the universe.
What if I were to tell you that Genesis one and two aren’t primarily about the origins of the material universe? I realize that it is literally labeled the creation account in your Bible but just stick with me for a moment. It both is and is not about the creation of the material universe in that it is but just not in the way we typically think about it.
Do superman and spiderman bit
In our minds, we want Genesis 1 and 2 to explain the origin of the universe from a 21st century scientific perspective. We want to know whether it happened in seven literal days. Or was it seven ages of untold time? Perhaps it happened over millions of years as God created, guided, and governed creation into its final form that was capable of supporting life.
And if you have been in church long enough, I guarantee you that you’ve been in a Bible study over the creation account that has sought to answer just such questions. I have watched well-meaning Bible teachers abandon hard and fast rules of interpretation around this issue that they never would at any other place because there are such tightly held views on the origins of the universe.
Look at me really closely! I know good, orthodox biblical scholars who hold views on either side of this issue. Some who would say that it happened just as literally as the poetry in chapter one says. I know others who say it happened over seven day ages and still others who say God took His time over billions of years intimately crafting every detail and aspect of His creation the way a watchmaker carefully fine-tunes every part of his creation. In fact, some of our earliest theologians who had access to the entire completed work of Scripture…guys like Athenasius, Iranius, and Saint Augustine…guys who are taught in conservative seminaries the world over…looked at the text and concluded that God took much longer than seven days to create the universe. And this was long before theories of evolution and natural selection were on the scene…long before science and faith were at war.
Now look, I’m not trying to tell you one way or other what to believe. There are inherent pitfalls to any of the positions out there today. I’m just trying to tell you that the early audience was watching a spiderman movie so don’t be upset that superman doesn’t show up in the film. That is to say, don’t be upset when Genesis doesn’t answer all of your 21st century cosmological questions because it was never meant to; and if you go into it looking for that to be satisfied, you will always walk away frustrated.
No...
For the original audience, creation was about giving order, form, and function to the created order.
If you look at the passage, God creates these spaces and then defines them with laws to govern them and then calls it good. And then, in subsequent days, God fills those spaces with creations that abide by those laws and as they function in accordance to their design, He then calls them good.
For all of the other nations…do creation as an act of war…mankind was the result of the death of a god, afterbirth spilling onto the earth, or because capricious gods wanted slaves to do their bidding they were too lazy to do themselves...
Explain how that was the complete opposite with Gods creation of the world and mankind...
When we understand that this story is telling us more about who God is than how we got here the whole narrative beings to make much more sense.
This story becomes good news because it:
Destroys atheism’s argument as the story just opens with an assumption that God is here and in control.
It destroys polytheism because we are not cued into a story with many gods at war with one another but a single God acting from an overflow of his love within his own parts; father, word, and spirit.
It destroys pantheism (or the belief that God is in everything and by extension all matter is god) because God is pictured as separate from His creation standing outside of and thus completely in control of it.
It destroys naturalism (or the belief that nature is the ultimate measure of reality). We do not see a God at war with the primeval forces of nature but a God who, by the word of his mouth, creates and orders all of creation to be good.
It also destroys secular humanism (or the belief that mankind is the ultimate measure of reality and therefore our needs are king). Even as the pinnacle of God’s creation, humanity is still just a mirror meant to reflect Gods goodness and rule into the created order.
Here is an example of that that proves this point perfectly. When God put mankind in the Garden of Eden, what did he have him doing?
19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.
God creates and then invites his image bearers to participate in the act of creation by naming and giving order to the animals. In the minds of the original audience, we are participating in the same act of creation as our creator. This stands in stark contrast to the way the rest of the world viewed God and His relationship to mankind.
We are meant to walk away seeing God as a loving creator intimately involved in the life of His creation and as the being we derive our life, purpose, and definition of good and evil from.
Second in the Study Concept is the...
Meta Theme - themes which derive their meaning from systematic and progressively building occurences.
Two major meta-themes we see in Genesis 1-11 are the Water of Life and the Tree of Life.
Water, chaos and life - creation opens with God’s Spirit hovering over the water, water equaled chaos and yet God’s Spirit (like a gentle dove) turns water into a life-giving thing.
Garden of Eden and the water of life encircling it and going out into the world.
Water turned back into chaos in the flood narrative to extinguish all life because all of humanity had rejected God.
Jesus’ statement about the water of life.
End of the story and the river of the water of life flowing from the foot of God’s throne.
Tree of life.
Gives eternal life of all who partake.
This becomes synonymous with God’s presence.
Jesus makes the claim he, being Gods presence, is this vine that brings fruit of life to any who are in him.
End of the story, we see that along the banks of the river of life, the tree of life sitting there drawing from the river to produce fruit
And because I like to be a tad bit dramatic and give new information that hopefully you’ve never heard before, I want to talk about the meta theme of dust. Yep…dust is a meta-theme in the Bible.
7 Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
There is God’s words to the serpent about crawling in the dust and eating dust which is amazing but is a tangent we don’t even almost have time for today.
And then there are these words spoken to mankind as part of the curse:
19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
Just as a side note, the name we call Adam is both a proper name and in Hebrew it is actually Ah-dom which means mankind. So when God hands down the curse, he isn’t talking to Adam and Eve (proper names) he is talking to mankind and life itself.
So what is dust?
We think of it as our composition…what we are made of…and yet that wasn’t anywhere on their radar…that had zero framework for chemistry. And in fact, dust (if it is referring to our composition) is a very poor description as we have almost zero dust in us.
Perhaps it is speaking of God’s craftsmanship…talk about how I always view God as taking the time to reach down and make a little human sandcastle and then breathing into it...
READ:
There is a major problem with this though. The Bible has a meta-theme describing the care and craftsmanship with which God created us and its clay. By its very nature, dust is a poor building material. One shapes clay, not dust. The latter is impervious to being shaped by its very nature.
The third option, and the one that allows us to view this theme the way the original audience did is that dust represents mortality.
Explain them seeing bodies turn to dust in family tombs...
So in one sense its safe to say we are made from dust…in the authors imagination and framework his observation isn’t wrong but he’s not trying to communicate our chemical composition as much as he is communicating our finite mortality. And what better picture than the delicate and easily wind-blown form of dust to communicate that. That only the breath of God can bring life to dust.
Ready to have your minds blown:
That means God created us as mortals…even in the Garden of Eden.
I know that may seem controversial but hear me out…your mind might instantly be transported to Romans 5 and Paul’s words about death coming to all mankind because of Adam…is that what he’s really saying…not according to the rest of the context which is decidedly about spiritual life and death as a result of sin.
If you are still doubting me, there is actually a really good biblical precedent for this truth right in the creation narrative. Check it out:
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—
23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
READ:
Its like death is a virus and the tree of life is the cure. Listen to me really closely…this doesn’t fundamentally change anything about what you already know to be true of the Bible. God has always given us a choice. We can accept God as creator and serve him as king and live forever or we can reject his authority and define good and evil on our own and death is always the result. That choice is ours today and it was the same choice offered to Adam and Eve in the garden. It was just more pronounced then. And because sin cannot exist in the presence of God (the same way a snowball can’t exist on the surface of the sun) we were sent out of God’s presence to work the dust by the sweat of our brow until we returned to it.
It seems terrible and harsh but God actually did us enormous favor by allowing us to experience death. We have a concept of living forever in the consequences of our choices to define good and evil for ourselves (or sin for short)…its called hell.
The beauty of this theme is that God is making a way back into his presence back to the tree of life.
Finally in the study concepts is the
Archetypes - an original example that serves as a template for future occurences.
There are several in the first 11 chapters of Genesis and because this is the key to the whole Bible, we will return here again and again to look at a few and so for now, we are just going to look at one archetype…perhaps one of the biggest.
Babel becomes and Archetype of the kingdom of man that has set itself up in opposition to God’s rule and reign.
And God comes down and handles it. With the word of His mouth he just puts its down in a move that will come to be called the day of the Lord. He’s already done this once before in the flood narrative.
In 39 chapters he’s going to do it to the nation of Egypt who has become Babel.
He does it to the Canaanites.
Israel becomes Babel themselves and he does it to them.
Then its Babylon…ya’ll its literally a cosmic play on words.
Then its Persia
Then its the Greeks
Then its the Romans.
Then look how the story ends:
19 “And they threw dust on their heads and were crying out, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth, for in one hour she has been laid waste!’
20 “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.”
21 Then a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer.
And then:
11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war.
12 His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself.
13 He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses.
15 From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty.
16 And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”
Remind them the beast is another name for the world systems set up in rebellion to God...
20 And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone.
21 And the rest were killed with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.
And look at how the story ends…or begins depending on where you stand:
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.
2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them,
YALL!!! COME ON!!!
So, that’s about God right. This isn’t our story…all of that is meant to tell us something about who God is and who we are in relationship to him. The story takes on meaning for us and changes us as we see ourselves in relation to Jesus and the Gospel.
So, I want to close out today by looking at the pictures of Jesus from those first eleven chapters:
Pictures of Christ and the Gospel
Pictures of Christ and the Gospel
8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
Explain they were tying fig leaves together...
We see the picture of a God who comes to be with people meeting them in the middle of their sin.
He had the power to, with a word, wipe out the entire cosmos and begin again but he doesn’t. He comes and moves towards His people in an act that is both judgment over their sin and salvation. Check it out.
In the middle of God pronouncing judgement on them for their sin look at this little sparkle of hope:
15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
Jesus is the snake crushing king who would take death to the grave as he allowed it to exhaust all of its power on him.
Then we read this in verse 21 of that same chapter:
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
Ya’ll this is the creator of the universe! He could’ve spoken some nylon tracksuits into existence or some cotton sweat pants or a couple of silk robes! He didn’t though. God introduced death into the world by drawing first blood. From this wee see that:
Death is the required payment for the covering of our guilt and the shame of our sin.
Sin requires payment in blood and God drew first blood. God would provide the first sacrifice and the final sacrifice to cover the guilt and shame of our sin.
In chapter four, He is the innocent blood spilled because of our sin.
Look back at the language there and notice that it is incredibly intentional.
In the flood narrative, He is the ark of salvation for all who fear and trust in him.
Check this little beauty out from Genesis 9. Read vs. 11-13.
11 “I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations;
13 I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.
Do bow as an instrument of wrath…and that bow is drawn back and pointed at God himself bit...
The next time God unleashes the flood of His wrath against the collective sins of mankind it will be pointed at Himself on a cross.
Wrap it all together by putting it all together in a coherent picture of the Gospel.