Genesis, In the beginning God
Genesis 1:1-5; Genesis 1:1 · Vern Peterman · Dec 2, 2007
Genesis, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492604630444

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We are beginning the series on Genesis. I revealed my excitement about teaching through Galatians, certainly certain portions of it. And Genesis, I'm no less excited about it. First, I want to touch on a few things. We let you know last week we would have available Galatians Expanded and Explained.

It's on the cabinet to the right as you exit this room. I don't know what we'd do if we didn't have the cabinet at the right. That's where we'd go with all the supplements. But at any rate, there should be a number of copies. If we run short, let me know. We'll certainly get some more for you.

It's just slightly over 11 pages and it includes the Expanded and Explained from the very beginning of our Expanded and Explained portions of the Book of Galatians. The other thing is just to underscore the electives that we have. I'm really excited about these electives.

Each one of them is just great. They'll each go about two to three quarters, so you have some idea there. Who You Are in Christ, we've got four teachers involved in that one. This is just wonderful stuff. Every week is just full of richness. And so that's one I'd certainly recommend you consider. The Gospel of John, every time I look at it, I get more and more enthusiastic about this study. So this is a great one that's coming up. and recommend that you consider that one as well.

The third one that we have is biblical anthropology and biblical counseling. I reminded folks last week biblical anthropology is not looking at old bones or trying to act out strange tribal customs, but it is instead looking at what does the Bible say about man. And we intend to make distinctions about things like what's the difference between the old nature and the old man. We want to look at, what does it mean to be in Christ?

Things like that. Biblical counseling is, what does the Bible say about counseling? And the Bible says, by the way, a very great deal about counseling. And we want to take it, what does the Bible say? Because there is a lot out there available to us, anything from secular counseling to even things that get called Christian counseling. But in truth, Scripture has a great deal to say, and we want to take a look at that over a period of, say, a couple of quarters, following the first quarter on what the Bible says about man.

So anyway, those are the three electives. We ask that you would sign up in the lobby. That way we can plan accordingly for space, where the class is located, materials, et cetera. And so we appreciate your jumping on the sign up on that. OK. We're going to begin our, excuse me, Genesis series. Not starting over again in Galatians. Here we have the book of Genesis. If you were to look at the Bible book case, this is the way the books would stack up.

I don't expect you to read all those, so let's jump to the first five there. These first five books of the Bible are, it's interesting, they've got about three names that are commonly known and maybe a few that you've heard of, but the Torah is the Jewish name and it means instruction. And you might have heard, for example, the Jews will talk about a Torah scroll. It'll be a scroll that contains all five books all in one scroll.

Or it's also called the law, and that's frequently the name translated from the Greek that's used in the New Testament, often even in the Gospels. Or another name you may have heard is the Pentateuch, the penta meaning five, and that's the Latin name. So we've got names from a few different languages here.

Now Moses is credited generally and traditionally with writing the books of Genesis. What's interesting is he's credited with writing the book of Genesis. However, all of the book is from a time before Moses lived. And so it's generally concluded that he must have collected from and selected from books that were previously available. So it's interesting, although Moses wrote about 3,400 years ago, the documents that he drew from were older than that.

What we oftentimes forget, essentially, I would be safe in assuming probably all of us have a copy of the Bible, perhaps multiple copies. What you have is an ancient Israeli artifact. Isn't that interesting? You have an ancient Israeli artifact in the sense that that ancient document has been brought forward in a form that we can read and it is an astounding, amazing thing that we have that.

So let's ask the question, did Moses write the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis? We have some powerful clues. Some of those are like this. I haven't said anything funny yet, but OK. The five books of Moses include some passages where it says directly that Moses wrote. And we have those in Exodus and Deuteronomy and some of the passages that you have there in page one of your handout.

Also, we have this here, Moses is told by God and is quoted as such. He's told to write, and it even says directly that Moses did write. So we have all these references here that indicate right in the books themselves that Moses indeed wrote and did exactly as God intended. We have further reinforcement from scripture, and that is that Christ himself credits Genesis, and he refers to it as the Torah or the law. to Moses.

In each one of the Gospels we have that kind of a reference at least once. Christ also, aside from referring to the law and making a reference to it, also quoted from or made a reference to something in Genesis in each of the first three Gospels and quoted from it as authoritative as being from Scripture.

Now how about where did this name come from? How did we get this name Genesis? The Jews originally actually did it this way. They took each of the five books, and they took the first word in Hebrew from each one of those, and had their own name based on what's the first word in Hebrew. So if you look at the book of Genesis, the first word is Bereshit. And with that, that's their title. And we could go through each of the five books that are the first five books of the Bible, or what they call the Torah, and that's how they named them.

Now, as for the way we got this name Genesis, because that doesn't sound like Bereshith. Genesis is Latin. It's from the Greek Gnesaios. And it's from the Hebrew Toledoth. You say, well, wait a minute. That doesn't sound alike. Here's what's in common between all three of those, Genesis, Gnesaios, and Toledoth. And each of those words means generations.

And something we're going to find as we step our way through the book of Genesis is we'll find repeatedly, the first place will be in chapter 2 verse 4, repeatedly we'll see this word generations. And yes, we will go through the book of Genesis and actually study the genealogies. Oh, excuse me. No, we will go through them and study the genealogies. And so when we do that, it'll be in reference to these generations. That's ultimately where we get this name Genesis that we'll be calling the book by as we step our way through it. Now, I'm glad you're all sitting down.

I'm going to tell you something. As we go through it, I want you to memorize the book of Genesis. Okay, now in case that puts some of you into horrible horror and shock, okay, I want to calm your nerves. In order for you to memorize the book of Genesis, all I want you to remember is eight words. Yeah, eight words, okay?

Creation, Fall, Flood, Nations is the first four. So you can hold your hand up like this, four fingers. Say it with me. Creation, Fall, Flood, Nations. Now, if it helps you to have some sort of memory handle, that's fine. Like if you want to remember the first letters with something like Courtney, Flings, Fig Newtons, that's fine. If that helps you memorize these words, then that's great. Just be careful about doing that at Courtney's house.

The next four is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Can you say that with me? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Good, see now you've got the whole book of Genesis memorized. Isn't that great? It's wonderful. If it helps you to remember, Alan is just joking. Then you've got it. It's not a problem. That's all it takes. So if you do that, you'll have memorized the book of Genesis. You probably already got it done and you're there. Especially if you can remember Alan joking and Courtney throwing Fig Newtons. Now, here's the timeline. This is also on page one of your handout. And we'll kind of keep this in front of us so you just kind of get a perspective. Here's how we'll go through it.

The Old Testament was written, starting with Moses, about 1400 BC in round numbers, and then finished in 400 BC. So it took about a thousand years to bring together and write all the books of the Old Testament. 1400 BC to about 400 BC. Just quick round numbers. The first of that is Moses. The New Testament was written in less than a century. And it includes basically the first century. Now, there's a 400 year gap between them.

But the book of Genesis covers a period of at least 2,200 years, I say at least, we'll talk about that more later, that ended about four centuries before Moses wrote, just again in round numbers. So this Genesis actually covers a period of time longer than the rest of the whole Bible.

All right. Now, something else to take a look at. I think this is really big, especially as we're talking to those who are not believers. Views of history. We have a view out there that is typically not just a scientist's view, but a scientism view that looks at the world as, you know, the material world is all there is. That's a philosophy, isn't it?

The material world is all there is. And I've run into people and talked with people at length who hold this view, that this is all there is. There is nothing more. There is nothing spiritual. There is no afterlife. What you see is what you get. And ultimately there is no more meaning or significance to our lives than what you find right here and then you're done. That's the materialist view.

The next view that comes out is the Eastern religion and philosophy view. Have you ever had somebody say something along the lines of, you know, people can get to God however they want. They can, you know, believe in Jesus or they can, you know, follow Buddhism or anything of that sort. And so they kind of have all roads lead to God philosophy.

Well, the only way you can do that is by ignoring what those various philosophies say. Buddha was asked, well, what about God? And he closed his mouth. He said nothing. He had nothing to say. Most branches of Buddhism, and there are several different branches, most branches of Buddhism don't believe in a God. And the ones that do don't believe in a personal God.

Well, guess what? Scripture is quite different. The other thing is that most of Eastern philosophy and religion, and there are some exceptions, most of Eastern philosophy and religion look at history as certainly it has a continuing characteristic, but it's mostly cyclical.

What's the cycle? The cycle of reincarnation dominates. The cycle that you are born from somebody else who died, And then you grow up through your life, and then you die, and then you will be reincarnated into another. And most of the views along this line look at people going through the cycle of samsara. The cycle on and on and on for thousands of times.

And it is absolutely graceless. There is no grace and karma. Zip. Nothing. Absolutely, totally graceless. And the whole reason you try to reach moksha in Hinduism or nirvana in Buddhism is to get out of this cycle of endless death and rebirth, death and rebirth, death and rebirth for thousands of times.

Now, biblical Christianity, history is linear. History is going somewhere. Are there cycles? Yes, but the predominant thing is it's headed somewhere. History is headed towards fulfilling God's purpose. Matter of fact, let's be more specific, God's eternal purpose. History has meaning. History is going somewhere. Your life has meaning. And you're not looking towards endless cycles of death and rebirth. You're not looking at a meaningless material universe. You are going down a road that God intends.

All right, here's the historical timeline. You have it on page one. We have Abraham at about the year 2000, Moses at about 1400, as we've noted, and the New Testament during the first century, just to get a time frame with respect to the book of Genesis. All right, now, remember this memorizing. This is the Courtney one for creation, OK? And so Genesis 1, 1 through 5 would be a good example. Why don't you turn in your Bibles to Genesis 1, 1 through 5? I'm reading here from the New American Standard translation. You can read along with me in whatever translation you have.

And it begins there, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 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. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, one day. Now, if we assume that, and we'll be talking about this more in detail, the ages and time frames given in the Bible are to be taken at face value. We understand them as they're written. Secondly, that they are given without gaps.

And I realize this is something we'll have to talk about some more, but making that assumption initially. And if we take the days of Genesis 1 as literal solar days, and again, we'll talk about that some more as well, then we arrive at a creation about 4,000 BC, or approximately 6,000 years ago. We'll talk in detail about each of those assumptions.

So if one of those grabs your attention and says, whoa, it's all right, we'll talk about it some more. I myself began college majoring in geology and so I'm not completely ignorant of the issues. I believed as I have here on the word day that the earth was quite old and it was over the course of studying geology that I ended up with a different conclusion. So we'll talk about that some more too. As we proceed through the book of Genesis, we get into some of the verses we just read.

In the beginning, God, and the earth was formless and void. God said, let there be light. And we'll be taking a look at that in more detail. What's interesting is the stars are usually looked at as this is the source of everything. And you hear about terms like the Big Bang. Well, guess what?

The Bible puts that creation of the stars in the middle of the creation process as an incidental. He made the stars also. Amazing. Towards the end of the chapter, it says, God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. The end of chapter one. That's why the animals don't do this. All right. All right. And by the way, you won't be required to do that.

One of the things that we will point out, and we'll actually kind of pause and hesitate and hover over, God gave definition early in the book of Genesis to what is a man and what is a woman. Additionally to that, God founded and declared his intent, and by the way, he did this before the fall, before Adam sinned. He declared the intent for marriages and for families and for extended families.

So we will certainly take a look at that. As a matter of fact, I'll be looking at that particular passage, kind of visiting some related passages as well, for three weeks in the month of January, just to stop and take a look at that. All right, so here was Adam created on the sixth day of creation along with his wife Eve. We'll be studying that in Genesis 2.

After that came the fall and all mankind with him. And so here's this fall. This is the flinging the fig newton part, okay? All right. Here's the fall, and she gave also her husband with her, and he ate, Genesis 3.6. And we find near the end of the passage that Adam and Eve, and particularly the emphasis is upon Adam being driven from the garden and actually having the way to the tree of life guarded. What is interesting, and we'll study this, is the tree of life was the concern as a continuing resource for these fallen beings.

Now we get the flood. This is the fig part. The flood is the next major pivotal event. This is on page two of your handout. It took place in the days of Noah and I wrote here just after the death of Methuselah. It's possible that the death of Methuselah was because of the flood.

It doesn't say that, but that's a possibility. And so the Lord instructed Noah as to how to build this ark. Not only what do you make it of, but here are the dimensions and even here's the structure in terms of the number of floors that you put into it. And so the Lord brought this flood upon the earth and I think we will cover this as well. I believe it was a global flood, not simply a local flood. Well, we'll get into that in more detail, but at any rate, I think a global flood is the best explanation both of the scriptural passage and also what that meant scientifically. The Lord at the end of the flood gave the rainbow as a sign of his covenant never to destroy the earth again with a flood.

You have this on the bottom of page two in your handout. This is a chart that shows the lifetimes of the patriarchs. One of the things that becomes quite evident as you read the early chapters of Genesis is, boy, those people lived a long time. I know Courtney was referring earlier to being 50. Well, that would be a young'un. That would be very much a young'un in the times, especially before the flood. We will take note of the fact that the ages after the flood don't just suddenly drop down, but taper off. And we'll take a look at that as well.

Some of the key points here before the flood was that Enoch was taken away by the Lord. It says, Enoch walked with God. Enoch walked with God. The time of the flood, of course, there is centered upon Noah. There are key people in Genesis that we'll be stepping our way through and these are the ones that are marked on the bottom of your page 2. And that first of all is Adam, referred to again in the New Testament several times. Enoch, the one who walked with God. And of course Noah and his son Shem. Why the son Shem? Because that's the line through whom Abraham and Isaac and Jacob came, and those are the next ones that you see there on the chart. We will go through this in a little more detail and talk about what that means. And now we've got the Newton part of it, the nations. This is a pattern, and I don't have this in your handout, but we will include it in a later one when we get to that place. where the population shifted from there.

It basically underscores and reinforces what you see in chapters 10 and 11 of the book of Genesis, and then followed through with information that anthropologists and archaeologists have been able to determine. Then we find the account, especially in chapter 11, of the Tower of Babel. And the Tower of Babel is a pivotal time. And if you ever had any difficulty speaking someone else who had a different language, and I found myself that Boston is far enough away to have a different language. But at any rate, this is a very insightful passage for us here. We see here, and we have a time place there approximately for the Tower of Babel, based again on our initial assumptions, where the Lord confounded the languages and the people scattered from Babel at that point.

We'll see some of the different directions that people went, as well as even globally from the prior map that we showed. Now we get to the second half. You know, Alan is just joking part of it. And so we have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are the primary biblical characters that we'll see. This is running from chapter 12 through chapter 50, the end of the book of Genesis. Abraham, again, is about the year 2000, and he's told by the Lord to leave early Chaldees.

The ziggurat has been reconstructed, but is there. As a matter of fact, certain portions of early Chaldees have been reconstructed. It was a place that they immediately went to when they invaded Iraq and crossed the border from Kuwait. Here's an even cosmetic box with a lid. It was not just some sort of a primitive culture, but actually a fairly advanced culture. that he walked away from.

Once we get into the time of Abraham and beyond, while some of what we've read that we'll be reading about up to chapter 12 will be within this fertile crescent, this green area, all, once we get to chapter 12, will be within this area of the fertile crescent.

And we'll take a look at the details of that when we get there. Now, with the time of Abraham, we also get to see some more general correspondence between secular accounts of history and the biblical account. The time before that, and we'll talk about the importance of it, there is, no doubt, disagreement between the secular view and the biblical view. And we'll certainly talk about that as we step our way through it.

Now, with God's covenant with Abraham, What we see is the beginning of the basis of the outworking of all the rest of human history. You get that? The beginning of the basis of all the outworking of the rest of human history starts there. As we'll find in Genesis, even this mess we got over in the Middle East is in Genesis, the basis of it. We'll find that as well.

Abraham will journey as we go through the chapters from Ur to the area north on the Fertile Crescent, then heading south towards the land that's promised to him, then into Egypt and back. We'll obviously go into that in more detail than this, but that's the intro.

We'll step through various parts where, for example, when Sarah was hearing about her bearing children at her age, she laughs. We'll read about the part where Hagar and Ishmael are sent away, which, as I mentioned before, actually has an impact on what we're involved in in the Middle East right now. We'll read about Abraham telling his son Lot, you pick whichever area you want to go. I'll go elsewhere. And we'll see an interlude in the middle of that about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now, let's get to the Isaac part of it. Isaac, Abraham's son. will be shown there in the middle section of Genesis. And we'll talk about several things, but including where the Lord tells Abraham to go offer up Isaac as a sacrifice. This is the promised one as a sacrifice only to stop him at the last minute. And so we'll look at that. We'll see where Eliezer is sent out by Abraham to look for a wife. for Isaac and meets Rebecca at the well, so we'll read that account.

Now in the story of Jacob, Isaac's son, Jacob by trickery gets blessed by Isaac, but we'll read of other accounts too, and Jacob and Laban and how Jacob wrestled with an angel, so we'll read of that as well. All three of those guys that we have on this list here, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they lived under a similar culture and we'll see that pattern repeated as we go through the chapters. And that's confirmed not only from what we read in scripture but also by the archaeological record.

Now finally the last one here, Joseph. We'll read about Joseph, how Joseph was sold by his brothers into slavery. How Joseph was made master of Potiphar's household, even to the point where it says that Potiphar only had to worry about lifting his food to his mouth.

About that. And then is finally cast into prison for refusing to succumb to the seduction of Potiphar's wife. ultimately to be reunited with his father and brothers, and to have the Lord blessing each of the sons. Just before Christmas, we'll do a Sunday that will include one of those blessings on one of the sons. Now, think about this. Here we have this book of Genesis.

It answers a great many questions as to who, how, and why. Lots of questions, and some of them, is there a God? Certainly answers that. If so, who is God and what is He like? It will begin to answer that question that really the rest of Scripture continues to underscore.

Who are we? What am I? How did everything get here that's here? And why am I here? What's my meaning and purpose? What value and meaning do I have? It answers big questions. Why do we have a sense that things ought to be different? Ever think about that? Why does somebody have any sense that things ought to be different than they are? Hmm. It ought to be this way. It ought not to be that way. That's a very interesting thing.

Why do we automatically have a sense that that's the case? Why doesn't God just finish things up? I mean, after all, He knows how it's going to turn out. Why doesn't He just kind of wrap it up and get her done? Okay? What's God waiting for? Other questions. How come we have a need for this thing called hope? Ever notice that in your life? Why do we have a need to be saved? And what is it we're saved from? And how's that going to get taken care of? Who's going to pull it off?

This from the beginning phrase is something we'll continue to run into throughout scripture. A great many things in the Bible are said to be from the beginning, or at least with respect to the beginning. From the beginning, since the beginning, and a few other phrases are used. And we have on your handout, actually not all, but some of the places where things are referred to as back to the beginning. Things are explained to people based on how it was from the beginning, or how it was not from the beginning.

What did God intend since the very start? We're also going to see something else here in Genesis. There are two people groups that were begun and the basis for a third people group is revealed. Now notice I said the basis for the third people group is revealed. Genesis reveals the root of the Gentiles.

Who are Gentiles? Those are the nations or peoples who aren't Jewish. It shows how God separates out for himself a people called Israel, through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through that lineage, those who are Jewish, and breaks them out into a different group. So you have the Gentiles and then the Jews, separate groups. Each of those groups, Jews and Gentiles, are an earthly distinction. But then he breaks out another one. The group is not revealed in the book of Genesis, but the basis for that group is revealed.

We'll see that when we get to Genesis chapter 12. It was something that we studied in Galatians 3, verses 8 and 9. I'll let you take a look at that. What does Genesis have to tell us about how we talk to others about Christ? As we look at this here, have you ever been in some kind of a situation where here's how you tell people about Christ and maybe somebody said, well, what you do is you give them law. And then they'll feel bad and feel like they've fallen short, and then they'll receive it. Well, there might be some value, I suppose. But actually, if you look at examples, and we've given you some quick ones here, Paul, in his first evangelistic message on his first missionary journey in the book of Acts, what does he do?

He refers to creation. He refers to the first 11 chapters of Genesis in order to talk to these people about their need for the Lord. Real interesting. You look at the next part, he talks, he's the words generations like we'll see repeatedly in Genesis. He talks about nations. That's Genesis 10 and 11. They go their own way. He gives man rain from heaven and fruitful seasons.

That's all out of the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Interesting, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are entirely the basis for his evangelistic message, not one mention of law. Here's another one. We'll skip this slide, but keep it for you as reference.

In Acts 17, he starts off with, God who made the world and all things in it, since he is Lord and heaven of earth. And he goes and begins talking about creation to talk about evangelism. Genesis 1 and 2. He continues on in there, and what does he do? He refers to Genesis chapters 2 through 11 for the rest of it. These first 11 chapters of Genesis are essential.

And I told, it's either you or somebody else, but I'm past 50 like Courtney. I don't remember whether I told you or another group, but a lot of things I learned, I learned from Randy. And Randy was the one that says, if you want to evangelize people, go to Genesis, especially the first few chapters. But the first 11 chapters are full of important truths for evangelism to tell people about the Lord.

Why? They've got to get it straight about how did we get here and what did God intend? Or did this universe create everything that's in it within itself? We're going to be studying through Genesis which starts off with, in the beginning, God. And what we're going to find is everything that matters begins here. Everything that matters begins in the pages that we're about to study. And the purpose and meaning and reasons behind all of what God is doing and continuing to do will be revealed here. These are wonderful pages that God has revealed by His intent See, God could have just kept this all a secret. But no, He says, I want them to know. Why? Because He loves us.

And it will help us to understand how we are involved in amazingly with the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You as we look at Genesis and anticipate its study in detail. We thank You for what You've revealed. We thank You for Your love and care shown to us. We thank you that you've laid these things out so that we might have understanding and perspective and that we might be able to answer clearly, distinctly, and by your intent, the most important questions of life. And we just give you thanks for your love shown even through the pages we're about to study. In Jesus' name, amen.