Route 66: Genesis - Where It All Begins

Thank you for us continuing our Thanksgiving on Tuesday.

Well, welcome to Route 66,.

And we're not in Chicago, yeah, and we're not in LA either.

Well, we're in the book of Genesis and beginning tonight and going through all the Sunday evenings that we have we don't meet during holiday weekends on Sunday night and other things come up, you know, like VBS preparation and things like that.

So 66 weeks of studies, of course, are going to stretch out to probably a year and a half, but we're right at the launching point in the book of Genesis.

The most basic question in life may well be why is there something rather than nothing?

Why is there anything at all?

Well, you could ask people that question and you would talk to people who are naturalists and they would sort of laugh at you for thinking that kind of question was a relevant question, because they might say something like well, everything that existed always has, and so they would just sidestep the question.

They wouldn't even consider the question why is there something rather than nothing?

Well, something's always been.

The difficulty is is, as astronomers are studying the universe, they're realizing that it's expanding, and ever expanding, from what was once a compact coil and that, if they think about it, brings them back to the very same question why is there that something rather than nothing?

And of course they have their own theories as to why that might be.

But can there be something from nothing?

Some people say no.

Maria von Trapp in the movie Sound of Music was in the gazebo with the captain singing and she says nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever can.

But Christian theism believes that there is a God who is personal and transcendent.

He's the creator of the universe and he's the creator of us.

And it answers the question why is there something rather than nothing?

In fact, the Bible's opening sentence answers that very question.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

But that question is not the only question humans ask, that we ask what about the beginning of us, the human race?

Who are we?

Were we made for a purpose?

Does our existence have any meaning outside the short limits of our birth and our death?

Some of those questions really get into our hearts and minds.

But there are other questions.

What is our relationship to creation?

Is it here for our use?

Are we simply one of everything else?

Equally, none of us more privileged than the other.

Was the world created for us?

Are we just an accident of chemical and biological processes.

Even more questions Is there something beyond the physical?

Is what we see all there is, or is there something else beyond our senses?

What about God?

Is there one?

If he is, what is he like?

How do we relate to him?

Like?

How do we relate to him?

These are questions that people ask and the book of Genesis, not addressing every one of those questions, fully answers every one of those questions directly, because the Bible is the word of God.

Genesis is the foundation of that book.

In Genesis we learn of God's creation, we learn of human rebellion, we learn of God's pursuit to redeem us.

We run into people who are familiar to us now Adam and Eve, noah, abraham, joseph and so many other people.

Genesis begins with creation and it ends with Israel and his sons and their wives and children in Egypt.

Tonight I want to introduce you to the book of Genesis.

Some of this you will know, some of it you may not know, but in any case we'll all come to a realization of its significance within the context and the corpus of the Bible and where it means to bring us.

So I'm going to answer some basic questions who, when, what, where, why, how, those kind of questions.

I'm going to buzz through most of them very, very quickly in order to sort of land on some that I think we'll slow down for a minute and really find out what the significance of Genesis is.

First of all, who?

Genesis is the first book of the Bible.

It's the first volume in a five-volume work called the Pentateuch.

It provides an introduction to us by way mostly of a life of Moses.

Exodus, chapter 2, he's born, at the end of Deuteronomy, he dies, and so four of those five books really are wrapped around the life of Moses himself.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

Moses is regarded by the biblical record as the author of Exodus, numbers, leviticus, numbers and Deuteronomy and, by implication, also Genesis.

Where did he write it?

Also Genesis, where did he write it?

Well, he must have written it somewhere between Mount Sinai and the banks of the Jordan River, where he died before the people crossed over into the promised land.

So all that he wrote in the book of Genesis would have been from the perspective of that journey from one point to the other.

When did he write it?

Well, obviously he must have had some sources, but he compiled those sources and wrote while the people were in the wilderness, wandering somewhere around the time of 1446 to 1406 BC, the 15th century BC.

Why did he write the book of Genesis to the people in their wanderings?

What he was doing was bringing the cosmic and universal implications of this exodus that the people were on and showed how what was happening to them is rooted in human history not just a deliverance of one man, moses, from one evil man, pharaoh and helping them realize that God had a purpose plan for them by pulling them out of Egypt and shows them that God's global purposes of redemption were to be, they were a part of and they were discovering and seeing for themselves.

That kind of moves into the why of Genesis a little bit, but we'll get more deeply into that in just a moment.

As we get into the why, we understand that the book of Genesis comes from the Hebrew.

The Hebrew book we call Genesis is called In the Beginning and it takes those very first words from Genesis Bereshit.

In the Beginning.

The English title, genesis, comes from a Greek word which means origins, which means origins, and we'll talk about exactly where that comes from in just a moment.

And so we recognize that this book, Genesis, provides for us an understanding of origins the origin of the universe, the origin of the earth, the origin of animate life in general, the origin of humanity, the origin of history, the origin of the fall, the origin of promises of redemption a lot of beginnings in the book of Genesis.

It's a very foundational book, foundational to the Torah, foundational to the Old Testament, foundational to all of the Scripture.

It serves as an introduction to us and is indispensable in our understanding to know what the rest of the Bible is about.

The book narrates the origins of the people of Israel, the people through whom God was going to bless the world and focusing on his promises through them to restore his creation back to the way it was at the beginning.

And so we learn more in the book of Genesis, not just about Adam, but moving very quickly to Abraham and slowing down dramatically to learn about his children, his grandchildren and their children.

How is this book structured?

Well, if I was to ask you that question, I think many of you would come up very quickly with an answer.

We have the first 11 chapters of Genesis and we have chapters 12 to 50.

How many of you would have thought that would have been a good way to divide it up?

How many of you are afraid to do that Because I'm asking you the question, right.

Well, I think that's not a bad way to do it, and I think it's a very good way to do it, because we have the origin story in Genesis 1, and we move up through to chapter 11, and we have just moving, you know, into the table of nations and some of the genealogies there, and then boom, there's Abram and everything seems to focus on him and slows quite a ways down.

So it'd be easy to see a division there.

But there's something going on to the book in Genesis which might not be quite so apparent to everyone, because interspersed within Genesis are 10 repetitions of a word, toledotot in Hebrew, and that word can be translated the account of lines of descent, the descendants, the genealogical record, the family line, something along that line, and you will see it.

For instance, let's go to Genesis, chapter 2 and verse 4.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Right after we have the first chapter and a bit in the book of Genesis, we come to verse 4 and it says this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, and there we see the Toledot, or the account of, or the lines of descent of, or the descendants, or the geological record of creation.

And then you go to chapter 5 and verse 1, in verse 1, and you will see this is the written count of Adam's line and it uses the exact same word.

And I'm not going to take you to all 10, but chapter 6.

In verse 9, you'll see that about Noah, chapter 10, in verse 1, you'll see it about Noah's sons, and then it splinters into one of Noah's sons in chapter 11 and verse 10, the genealogy of Shem.

And then, right before chapter 12, in Genesis 11 and verse 27, you read this is the account of Terah, who is the father of Abram.

You get to chapter 25 and verse 12, the genealogy of Ishmael, chapter 25 and verse 19,.

The genealogy of Isaac, chapter 36 and verse 1, the genealogy of Esau, and then chapter 37 and verse 2, all the way to the end of the book, the genealogy of Jacob.

These 10 divisions, these 10 statements of the word Toledot are what give us the structure of the book of Genesis Toledot, t-o-l-e-d-o-t-h.

And they don't say quite so isish as we do, so right.

However, this is where we get the book, or the name of the book, genesis, from, because the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, every time Toledot is stated in these 10 places, they use the word genesis, genesis, genesis.

So instead of saying Toledo, transliterating it into Greek, they use the word genesis.

And this is why we call our first book of the Bible Genesis, because it comes from these 10 statements.

Because it comes from these 10 statements and the term Genesis in Greek carries a larger meaning than what Toledot does.

It means birth or beginnings, birth or beginnings.

Now, why this structure?

Why these 10 statements?

Well, there's several reasons.

First of all, it stresses the importance of origins.

Genesis meaning birth or beginning.

Obviously, this is the birth or the beginning of each of these lines.

So we can see that and it works well with the beginning of creation, the beginning of humanity, the beginning of family, the beginning of work, the beginning of humanity, the beginning of family, the beginning of work, the beginning of sin, the beginning of the promises of God.

But there's a deeper reason, I think.

By using this sort of family tree structure, all of humanity is able to find its roots and its origin in one couple Adam and Eve.

Because everybody, as branched out as we are, returns back here, every variety of humanity, every way we divide ourselves, we can bring ourselves back to one couple.

And when you get to Genesis, chapter 5 and verse 1, we read something about this first couple.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

It says to us this this is the written account of Adam's line.

That's all of us, mind you.

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

He created them male and female and blessed them.

During the times of the writing that Moses wrote, only royalty would claim any divine origin.

They would trace their line back to the gods in order to give them some sense of dignity and sovereignty and right of dominion.

What does the Bible say?

Every single human has an origin from royalty.

Every one of us, not just the kings, not just the rulers, not just the powerful people who sway nations, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody.

This structure of genealogy also shows us the significance of descent, which is important in Scripture.

This is why, in two of the Gospels we have a genealogy about Jesus.

That line of descent is very important.

Something else here Moses is able to trace not only the historical roots of all humanity.

He's able to sort of use this branch structure to focus his attention rather rapidly on one part of it.

We see Adam and all the people, and then we see him pulling a thread out of that and tracing it there, and then it spreads, and then he grabs another one and says this is the one we're going to focus on.

So it brings all of us very quickly to a place where we can concentrate on one line out of all the lines of humanity and realize our connection to that one line, and that's where the narrative slows down.

Line.

And that's where the narrative slows down.

The first five of these genealogies moves us rather rapidly and the last five slow us down dramatically.

The last five take up some 80% of the book of Genesis and this is why we have that 1 to 11, 12 to 50 division.

That's very common to us.

Now let's focus on what I think is more significant than these things.

This just gets us to a point.

What do we discover in the book of Genesis?

Well, the first thing that we discover is the reason for reality, that big question why is there something rather than nothing?

The reason for reality?

The answer in that very first, the very first words in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth.

These are the first words, not just of Genesis, but of the Old Testament, of the whole Bible.

Everything is based on this.

These seven Hebrew words speak about the seven days of creation and the seven pronouncements of good that God makes in those days.

Genesis, in a masterpiece of literature, opens us up to all of God's purpose plan for humanity, and you can feel the threads of it echoed in John's prologue in the beginning.

It opens up for us a picture of God's magnificent accomplishment.

There, in the first chapter we discover in very intimate ways of a personal God and his creation, and it gives us an understanding, a theological understanding of reality that the world is a product of God's deliberate purpose.

By God's deliberate plan and his intimate activity, creation and reality materialize at the voice of God, at his command.

He speaks, and immediately it is so, and he speaks, and immediately it is so, and we see it all work together in beautiful symmetry as these six days sort of paralleled, three against three, capstoned by the seventh day of rest.

You might ask yourself why am I making a point of this?

Because this discussion about the existence of reality, the way the scriptures describe it, is quite a contrast to the literature of Moses' day.

If you were to go over to Babylon or to other places in the Near East and read their literature of the origins of all that we know, you would discover that there were gods who were often rather angry with one another and fighting, that the sun and the moon and the stars were important deities and that there were sea monsters in all of the oceans that were demonically energized.

And if you were to go to the British Library, as I have, and see the Enuma Elish, which is the epic of creation by the Babylonians, and you would find there that Marduk conquers Tiamat and he takes Tiamat and crushes her skull, splits her in two and takes part of her body to make the heavens and part of her body to make the earth.

Her tears drop and make the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and her tail thrown into the expanse is what has made the Milky Way.

If you were to read further in the Epic of Creation, you would find that Marduk took her consort and that killed him and then took some of his blood and mixed it with the ground and formed humanity.

What does the Bible have to say about that kind of creation view?

Instead of a big warfare, instead of deities at enmity with each other, fighting chaos and rage, with all sorts of other sordid things that I won't even get into tonight, we see that God speaks and things are.

He doesn't have to fight to bring about creation.

He simply commands it to be so.

He simply commands it to be so.

Instead of those raging, demonically controlled beasts in the oceans, the whales are playing away, as God made them to be the sun and the moon.

They're not deities, they're simply instruments to guide the seasons and to bring light the stars.

They hardly get a mention at all in the book of Genesis.

The world isn't divine itself.

It's just a reflection of God's divine glory.

The world is not a dangerous place of chaos.

It's not a place full of vengeful wrath and conflict.

It was made safe, it was made secure.

It was made as a place to thrive, to flourish, to rest, to relate.

You see how important that is.

We read this and we're asking questions that the Bible's not answering at the moment.

It's giving us a different apologetic God's good purposes of creation, not done in chaos, but done with controlled consent and determination.

What else do we learn in the book of Genesis?

We learn of relationships, relationships, ultimately our most important relationship, that of the regal one, the creator, with us, his viceroys, his representatives, taking his sovereign rule and exercising it on his behalf on earth, where he created us, when we get to day six of creation, we see the climax of God's days of forming all things Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five.

Everything is made by God's command.

But there's something different about this last creation of humanity.

God speaks, not a word of command but a word of relationship.

Let us make man in our image, let us make man in our image, and in this moment we see that humanity emerges from the divine relationship of the Father, the Son and the Spirit that we were made for relationships, by a relationship, by a relating God, and he makes us male and female so that we might be, side by side, fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and having dominion in it.

As I said a moment ago, in the world of the Bible only kings claim to be made in the image of God.

Of the Bible, only kings claim to be made in the image of God.

But Genesis here states that every one of us are, every one of us are put here as God's representatives, bearing his royal status, exercising his dominion, but to do so in relationship with him and in glad relationship with one another.

You see, that divine-human relationship turns into a human-creation relationship, and we are to exercise that relationship.

When we acknowledge the first relationship, the relationship between God and humanity is focused in on.

In chapter one, we have the bigger picture.

In chapter two we zero in just on this couple and we see God acting like a potter to take up dirt and forming a man, but then we see him acting like an artisan and taking part of Adam and shaping a wife for him, eve.

Not only do we notice that, but we also see that the words for God are changed.

When he's creating everything else, he's Elohim, he's God, but when he speaks with humanity, he's Yahweh, he's a covenant-keeping God, he's a God of relationship with us.

In a way, he's not in relationship with other things, and we show that this sovereign God, this creator God, condescends to have relationship with us, A theme that runs all through Scripture I will be your God and you will be my people and it's evidenced most intimately in Jesus.

And the word became flesh and dwelled among us.

The first Adam and Eve were created to maintain the garden, to develop it to its fullest potential.

They were allowed to have free run of creation.

They could eat and enjoy everything there was on earth, except for one tree, tree of knowledge and good and evil.

The tree that represented the sin of moral autonomy, the tree that would be the place where they would seek to erase the boundary between God and humanity and by eating that forbidden fruit, they would seek for themselves the autonomy to determine what was right and what was good.

But as it was originally designed, the garden was a place of relationship, of enjoyment, of bountiful work, fruitful work, and of rest, and of rest.

What else do we learn in the book of Genesis?

We learn of ruin, not just reality, not just relationship, but also of ruin.

The avalanche of sin and death comes flying down the mountain of creation very quickly, and we see it in Genesis, chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The writer, though using colorful ways of describing it, tells us about real people in a real place, tempting to really eradicate a divine human relationship and boundary.

The serpent, the first speaker and his first topic is God.

He's the first theologian.

Someone said he's the first person in the Bible to talk about God.

He's the first theologian.

Someone said he's the first person in the Bible to talk about God, and he calls into question God's character when the divine prohibition is raised up for discussion.

He speaks lies about God.

He speaks insinuating questions about God's character and God's goodness and God's purposes behind the prohibition.

But when he speaks about God, he goes back to that creator language, elohim.

He doesn't use the word Yahweh, he doesn't use the covenant name of God, because he doesn't know God relationally.

He only knows about God and so he can only speak about him as Elohim and not the Lord God.

He doesn't know him in personal relationship.

And Adam and Eve chose to sin.

They chose the things of this world rather than the things of God.

They chose to be the determiners of what is right and good rather than to listen to what God says about what is good and what is right.

And the unity of our relationship, as we were designed, was broken, and immediately flooding in was shame and guilt and accusation.

They sought to hid their nakedness from God.

They tried to improvise it with some clothing.

They hid from God among the trees.

What was once a joy, god's presence, is now to them a threat that they want to be rid of.

God enters in and calls them all to question and judgment and curse results, first to the serpent, then to Eve and then to Adam.

We'll get to the serpent in just a moment.

But Eve and someone said this and I said it so well, I'm just going to read it.

The woman, which the Hebrew word is Esau or Esau, made from man, esh.

So you can hear the cognitive connection there.

Esh and Esau, they're so closely related.

The same word one's just masculine, the other one's feminine, ending Was made to be a companion and a co-ruler with Adam and because of the fall she becomes a competitor and an opponent and she can only bring life by suffering Adam.

Adam made from the earth, adamah Once, given the earth to rule, now has to struggle with the earth to live and the earth finally wins because Adam would return to Adamah, the dust.

We see them banished from the garden paradise.

We see them removed from the tree of life.

We see them exiled from the presence of God and from the rest of Genesis on.

God speaks not in the garden but from heaven down to earth.

So separated are we from God.

And we see the snowballing effect of sin in Genesis 1 through the rest of the way through chapter 3, 4, all the way to 11.

Chapters 3 through 9, the word curse is mentioned five times.

In Genesis 4, we see the first murder In the flood.

We see the world gripped by violence and bloodshed After the flood.

We see the Tower of Babel constructed as humanity tries to storm heaven once again, to erase any kind of divine human relationship and boundary.

We see humanity in all of its community, in all of its ability, in all of its technology set dead against God.

All of our skill and all of our craft is marred by sin and death.

This once pristine creation now becomes a source of pain and degradation and death.

By the time we get to the end of chapter 11, we have to be asking ourselves is there any solution to the way we are?

And that brings us to the fourth thing we discover in the book of Genesis Not just reality, not just relationship, not just ruin, but redemption.

Redemption From the earliest moments after humanity's revolt.

We see God is merciful.

He told them that when you eat of this tree you will die.

Did they die that day?

Physically, they did not.

God held back the full display of his furious wrath and let them live, let humanity continue to exist.

Yes, the effects of the fall were there and death was marching its way to their death.

And yes, they were separated from God and their spiritual death was very real and palpable.

But there was mercy in judgment.

Even in that first expression was mercy in judgment, even in that first expression.

And then, when God turns his attention to the serpent, he speaks to Adam and Eve words of hope that something was going to happen.

When he speaks and curses the serpent, he expresses a limitation of its power.

You will be on your belly, you will not be as powerful as you think you are right now and you will come to a final end.

In Genesis 3.15, I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.

He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.

Those words that were not addressed to Adam and Eve must have caused them to wonder what's the next chapter going to be like?

When is that going to happen?

Chapter going to be like?

When is that going to happen?

This promise of victory of humanity over the one that brought them into the very place of their demise?

Conflict between the seed of the woman and the serpent would eventually end in the death of the serpent.

So Adam and Eve were told to look for one who would come from woman, who would be the one who would end the serpent and restore the conditions of paradise.

Interesting in Luke, chapter 10, in verse 17, jesus had sent out emissaries, two by two, to proclaim the kingdom of heaven.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

And they came back to him and said Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.

And he replied I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and overcome all the power of the enemy.

Nothing will harm you.

There was something about Jesus' name that meant that snakes and scorpions, and the evil one, were put on notice, that death was on its way for them.

And so Paul picks that up in Romans, chapter 16 and verse 20, and says the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

Romans 16 · chapter mention

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you, under your feet.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.

And then, in that vision of eternal things Revelation 12 and verses 9 to 11, the great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.

He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.

And I heard a loud voice in heaven say now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God, day and night has been hurled down, and they triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony.

They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

This first announcement of the gospel, announcing the conflict of the seed of the woman and the serpent, would truly end with the death of death and the death of the introducer of death to humanity, the devil himself.

This conqueror would be a human, a human descendant, and so the Toledot genealogies, the family lines of humanity.

Those are important statements.

Where would this one come from?

Would it be this line or this line?

This line or this line?

Where would the threat of redemption trace itself?

This is why Genesis is written the way it is.

It shows us that ultimate triumph of the seed of the woman would come through this genealogical structure.

One day, people wondered if they were part of it.

Adam cries out I've gotten a man, the Lord, could it be him?

It wasn't.

Noah's father names his son in hope that he would be a deliverer.

Was he Only in picture form, not the actual one who would crush the head of the serpent?

Abraham was given promises, promises that the day would come through him, and so we see the narrowing of that statement of promise.

Come through him, and so we see the narrowing of that statement of promise.

The word blessing is used often instead of curses when God speaks to Abraham in chapter 12.

Curses, curses, curses and curses again in chapters three through nine, but blessing, blessing, upon blessing in chapter 12.

Upon blessing in chapter 12.

Abram represents for all of us.

Something about him brings us the way back to paradise.

What's that going to look like?

Through his descendants?

We read in the book of Genesis that they came into the land just as Abram left his own to come to this place of promise, and he builds an altar there, staking a claim for God in that land.

But, interestingly enough, as his progeny unfolds in the land and eventually leave it for some time, the only land that the families buy are plots for burial.

Doesn't seem like they're owning the land at all.

But they die in hope, even wanting their very bones to be brought back, because they think that promise is going to be fulfilled.

We see in the patriarchal stories the seed of the woman triumphing over infertility, over captivity, over oppression and even over famine.

This family won't die.

It keeps going on.

It keeps going on and we find, at the very end of it, that Israel speaks to one son, judah, and tells him that he would rule the nations.

And again we're given a hint of where to look for this seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, for this seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.

Eventually we get to a person named Jesus, who was introduced to us by way of genealogies, and we discover that he's a son of Adam, he's a son of Abraham, he's a son of David, he comes from the tribe of Judah.

He's the one, he's the one, he's the one.

And Paul brings up a recognition to us that this is not just Jesus the Christ, but he's also described as the second Adam, the second Adam.

And he tells us that all who are in the first Adam die because he disobeyed, that all who are in the first Adam die because he disobeyed, but all who are in the second Adam live because he obeyed and he died to cover our disobediences.

So we learn of reality, we learn of relationships, we learn of ruin.

We learn of relationships, we learn of ruin.

We learn of the Redeemer in the book of Genesis.

But there's one last thing, if time will allow me.

Bob said I only had 30 minutes, so I'm trying to get this done.

What do we see in the book of Genesis?

We see the beginning of the end.

In Genesis 1 and 2, we see creation, the cosmos, humanity, relationship with God, all things in pristine condition.

We see us relating with him and one another and the rest of creation in perfect harmony.

God places Adam and Eve in the garden that contains the tree of life.

We see Adam and Eve there in all of life's fullness and abundance.

And we see in Genesis 1.28, god blesses them and says be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and govern it.

We see God's blessings on them, yes, complicated by chapter three, the fracture of that relationship and the story of the Bible all the way up until Revelation, chapter 20.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

But the last two chapters of the book of Revelation bring something else in.

When you read the last two chapters of Revelation, you discover all the language of Genesis 1 and 2 coming right back again.

And there it is, at the very end that the end of the Bible brings us back to the beginning of the Bible when we started with everything in harmony with us, in perfect relationship with the covenant creator, god, who is condescended to relate to us and to bless us, because that's what he wants to do and that's where we're going.

And the story starts here.

Let's pray, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the word of God.

We thank you for how it opens up to us something we could never devise of our own, a recognition of all that has been made and why and how you are so intimately involved in it and in us as your creation.

We thank you, father, that your purposes are pure and right and holy and full of love and mercy and grace.

Lord, I pray that, as we continue down this road of Route 66, that all of these things that have been introduced to us in the book of Genesis will become more real, more significant, more influential in our lives.

More influential in our lives that we might live our life the way we ought, in relationship to you and faith and obedience, recognition for full and necessary dependence upon you for everything life, breath, eternity.

And that, father, we might find our lives ordered more and more by your purpose plan, as we come to know you better, by visiting each and every one of the books that you've given to us to read and to understand and to live by, and we pray Father, it would truly bring you glory in this place.

In Christ's name, amen.