Equipped 2026: Leadership: "Genesis Characters in the Epistles" by Allen Webster

Genesis is the second longest book in the Old Testament. Only Psalms is longer.

There are 1,533 verses in Genesis.

And there doesn't seem to be one number that's agreed upon by how many characters are in the book,

but I think there are 139 characters in the book of Genesis.

And that probably is more than any other book in the Old Testament,

outside of perhaps 1 Samuel or Joshua, of all the names.

Now, when you look at this assignment, we are asked to talk about the Genesis characters

that are talked about in the epistles of the New Testament.

So, if you wanted to look at the Old Testament and the New Testament, just a brief outline,

5.12, 5.5.12 would be the Old Testament, 5 books of law, 12 books of history, 5 books of poetry, 5 major, 12 minor prophets.

Then the New Testament, 4.1.21.1, this is where we are.

4 biographies of Jesus, 1 book of history, 21 letters or epistles, and 1 book of prophecy.

So, we are going to focus on the first of the 5 books of law in the Old Testament and the 21 letters.

So, the combination between those two in this class.

Now, as far as I can tell, there are 15 of the 139 characters of Genesis that are included in the epistles.

So, this is one of those classes where you debate how to handle it as a teacher or a speaker.

We teach our students, you know, don't ever have more than 7 points in a sermon.

3 is ideal, 5 is okay, but don't go past 7. This is double plus 1.

So, what we are going to do is put it on the screen and you will be able to follow along.

And whenever somebody says they are going to do 15 lessons, don't try to remember all 15

because the average person can remember 4 things at a time.

So, pick out 3 or 4 of these lessons or characters that are especially meaningful to you

and then you can build a lesson on those or you can personalize those with your own thoughts or your own needs.

But we are going to go through it briefly. All 15 at a time allows to be able to get 10,

but I am going to try to pace myself to get as many as we can.

So, we are going to start in Genesis chapter 2 with Adam and Eve, the first two.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

We are going to jump around. I am going to give you, this is a leadership preacher slash leadership track.

So, I am going to give you sermon ideas and sermon points if you want them.

Now, you won't have time to write all this, but if you have your phone with you, you can snap pictures.

I won't give them to you after the lesson is over, but you can come up and take a picture of this or I can email it to you.

But, what we are going to do is just go through a lot of material in the next 40 minutes.

We are going to go as fast as we can.

So, Adam's lesson, as you notice, Adam's lesson is human failure, divine redemption.

Because that is how he is used in the New Testament.

We find that Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 deal with, he plunged the human race into iniquity or sin and Jesus brought us back.

So, there is a contrast between the first Adam and the second Adam.

In fact, before we notice Genesis 2, I will jump ahead and notice this in Romans 5.

This section begins in verse 12 and goes to the end of the chapter.

I am not going to take time to read all of that, but this is a chart of what happens in these verses.

So, it says that sin came by man. That man was Adam. He plunged us into sin.

So, you see the arrow going down into sin.

Then Romans Paul says in this section that sin led to condemnation.

All human beings have been guilty of sin and therefore we are all on the same sinking ship.

And sin brings death. So, condemnation and death.

And death reigned until Moses. That is what verse 14 says.

Now, all men were under the reign of death according to verse 12.

But, the good news is, beginning in this section that has grace six times in the chapter,

you see grace in verse 2, verse 15, verse 17, and two times in the last two verses, 20 and 21.

Now, speaking of grace, notice the last part of verse 20 says,

but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

So, man created a huge problem. Adam started us down our own path.

But, Jesus is able to overcome all the sins of humanity.

He is the answer to the sin problem that began with Adam in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Now, back to the chart, you see all men were condemned, but by Christ and grace were justified.

And now we have eternal life, which is in contrast to death.

So, that's the main lesson to learn from Adam in Genesis chapter 2 through chapter 3 primarily.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

That he cleansed us into sin, brought death, but Jesus fixed that problem and gives us eternal life.

That's the main lesson to learn.

Now, let's go back over to Genesis and notice a little more about Adam and Eve,

some practical ways to preach this study or to preach this material.

I like the lesson of Adam and Eve as a type of the church.

A lot of types and antitypes in the Old Testament.

We have a picture and then they didn't even understand it.

But in the New Testament, the way God does types and antitypes,

so you have God shining the light from eternity back over the church,

casting a shadow into the Old Testament.

Only God can do this.

So, he's shining the light from eternity on the church or on Christ, whatever the figure is,

and it casts a shadow on the Old Testament and that shadow is what we're reading.

They didn't understand it.

They lived and died practicing these things without really knowing

that they were being represented as a representation of what would happen later.

So, that's what you have here.

I won't be able to read all these, but you just notice the parallels.

Adam came by miracle.

Jesus was born in the virgin.

Adam is the head of the physical family.

Christ is the head of the spiritual family.

Adam's wife came from his side being opened and the rib being removed.

Well, Jesus' side was pierced when he died on the cross for her.

So, you see how many parallels there are.

We are to cleave to each other in the church just as they were.

There was only one process of procreation for the human family.

There's only one process of procreation in the spiritual family,

which is teaching the gospel and being born again.

Now, the next lesson that you see here is about the sin.

There are three levels of law.

Genesis 2.15 is the tie-in to our text.

So, you see in verse 15,

the Lord took the man and put him in the garden to dress it and to keep it.

And he commanded him that he had permission to eat of every tree

except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, verse 17.

So, there's a law.

Don't eat of this tree.

But the law has an additional clause modifying it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

So, there's a threat with it.

There are three levels of law.

You have level one is an expression of God's will written on man's heart.

That's Romans 2.15.

Then you have level two, a written ordinance without a promise, reward, or threat.

Just thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do this.

But now I'm saying you need punishment or reward for it.

The third level, the highest level,

is a written ordinance with an attached reward or punishment.

That's what you have here.

You will surely die.

That's a threat that goes with it.

Now, Adam, of course, told Eve.

And then Eve had a conversation with the devil.

And then she did exactly what God said not to do.

And Adam did the same thing when she gave him the fruit and he ate it also.

Now, let's move...

I want to go back and notice Eve's lesson.

And then we will go back to that context.

So Eve teaches two lessons.

One is marriage design.

And the second is spiritual vigilance.

So God created Eve from Adam's rib because of Eve's leap to come upon Adam.

Took from him a rib, made from the rib.

Eve brought her to the man and performed the first wedding ceremony.

And they were the first couple.

They were the first family.

They soon had children.

We do have an example of why God intended marriage to be one man, one woman for one lifetime.

Because there were no choices.

Adam couldn't say, I'm going to get rid of you and take that woman over there.

There were no other women.

She couldn't divorce Adam and say, I like my old boyfriend better.

There were no other boyfriends.

There was only the two of them.

And everybody else that eventually was in the world were their direct descendants, their children.

So God intended for, we don't know how long Eve lived, but Adam lived 930 years.

So women outlive men in every culture.

So we might assume that she outlived Adam.

So she was standing at that grave when she buried her husband.

Nine centuries later.

Now you women think it's hard to be married to a man.

20 years? 50 years?

Try nine centuries.

But as far as we know, she was faithful to him until death parted them.

In Genesis chapter 5.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

So that's the marriage design.

But what about the spiritual vigilance?

Eve was the first sinner and Adam was the second sinner.

So she teaches us a lesson about how to deal with the devil.

Or in this case, what not to do when tempted by the devil.

And you go back over to where we were in Genesis 3.

And we observe that Satan used three tactics against her.

And they're the same three tactics he uses against me and you.

One is he questioned God.

Hath God said?

In other words, are you sure about what you're living by?

Could that be interpreted a different way?

Or is that a fair statement?

A fair requirement?

He wanted to create doubt in God's word.

Number two, a flat denial.

Thou shalt not surely die.

God said thou shalt surely die.

He added the not.

He changed the meaning of what God said.

So what does he want today?

He wants us to doubt God's love for us.

Number two, he wants us to reject the teachings of the Bible.

I know the Bible says that, but.

How do you finish that statement?

I know the Bible says that, but.

There's no good way to finish that.

If the Bible says that, it must be accepted or obeyed.

I can't sit in judgment on the Bible.

The Bible sits in judgment on me.

And number three, to substitute something else.

If you will take this fruit and eat it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be better.

This is better than the way God designed your life.

Do this and, well, today people say,

my life would be better, be easier, be more fun if I rejected the Bible,

if I did what the world does.

Well, it's the same process today.

The only, well, I think I will, instead of going to get tested on this one,

I'll just go on to our next, because I'm talking a lot.

Let's go to Abel, let's go to Cain and Abel in Genesis 4.

Someone read for me verse 4, Hebrews 11, 4, and then I will read with you from Genesis.

Hebrews 11, 4 has both brothers in one verse.

Someone read for us 11, 4.

Thanks, Hall of Fame.

Hebrews 11, 4?

Yes.

By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,

to which he obtained witness that he was righteous,

God testifying of his gifts, and through it he, being dead, still speaks.

So, Abel teaches two lessons.

One is faithful worship.

Two is lasting influence.

The last part of what Richard read, he being dead yet speaks.

So he's been dead a long time, and yet people are still talking about Abel

and learning from his example.

So you and I can outlive ourselves by living a good life,

by influencing other people, and using the resources God gives us

to bless the world that we won't live in after a certain amount of time.

We're going to leave and go on, but our influence can continue.

And Abel is the one that inspires us to do that.

He was dead, but he was still speaking.

We want to extend our lives beyond our graves.

But let's focus on Cain and Abel in Genesis' account.

There are three studies that I'll give you four, actually.

So Cain, on the other hand, is false religion.

He substituted his will for the will of God.

He did not offer by faith.

And Cain also teaches the lesson of anger violence.

Anger violence.

Because he became so angry, he became violent and murdered his own brother.

So, one of the ways of Cain, he was careless.

He did not listen carefully to what God said, or he chose to ignore it.

He was angry.

Then he was impenitent, because after God confronted him,

am I my brother's keeper?

In other words, I don't need to keep up.

Well, I'm not being asked about my brother.

When God knew what he had done to his brother, he was trying to avoid it.

So he's impenitent.

And then he is used in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 2, as the natural man.

Or he's an example of the natural man that's talked about in 1 Timothy 2.

I want to read you the seven ways of Cain.

But if you're a preacher, you might want to take this down,

or you want to do it for your own Bible study.

These are the example, the applications of the example of Cain.

There's seven of them.

And every one of them is negative, not positive.

Now, there's a contrast between brothers in this context.

Cain is of the seed of the serpent.

That is, he's following the will of the devil.

Abel is of the seed of righteousness because he's following the will of God.

At birth, they start out equal.

Cain is not born into sin.

Abel is not born into righteousness.

They start out equally innocent at birth.

At work, we find a contrast because Cain is a farmer, a tiller of the ground,

which has been cursed, you remember, because of the sin of Adam.

And then Abel is a shepherd.

Shepherds, this is the first mention of shepherds,

but they're going to be looked on favorably throughout the Bible.

You know, David was a shepherd before he was king.

Jesus is the good shepherd. He gives his life for the sheep.

So shepherds, well, after this point, these painted in a positive light.

And nothing wrong with farming.

That's the basis of being able to live and support oneself in this life.

But it was wrong when it came to religion.

So we learned, we just saw up here, the way of Cain.

Then at worship, there's also a contrast.

Abel offered by faith, in the verse that Richard read,

by faith Abel offered an excellent sacrifice to Cain.

The only way you can offer by faith is to offer according to the will of God, Romans 10, 17.

So God had instructed them what he wanted.

Abel listened to God, and he went and founded the sheep and gave God what he asked for.

And for whatever reason like this, he said, well, what I've got is vegetables.

Well, I want God to accept that.

I mean, I'm going to have to go get a lamb from Abel,

and I can just give him what I made with my own hands.

That's got to be better if you give Cain God what God didn't ask for.

And his was rejected. Abel's was acceptable to God.

So you had bloody versus bloodless.

You remember that type and anatype we're talking about?

They had no way to understand what was going to happen at the cross.

Of course, God had already hinted at it in 315 with the bruising of the heel.

We understand that now looking back on it.

That's a picture of Calvary when the devil got his blow in against Jesus,

thought he had won, Jesus put him to grave.

Well, that was the equivalent of a heel wound.

He said, well, that was horrible what they did to him.

They beat him, they nailed him, they put a crown of thorns.

That's not like a bruised heel.

It's not about the intensity of it.

It's about the duration of it.

If you bruised your heel today, a year from now would you still be limping?

A heel wound is over in a couple of days.

But a fatal wound you don't recover from.

So when you have this crushing of the head,

the devil never recovered from the blow of the resurrection.

Jesus recovered from the blow of the crucifixion in three days.

But the devil never recovered.

So that's the idea of Genesis 315.

But Cain and Abel didn't understand that.

I don't think that Moses understood it when he wrote about it 1,500 years later.

I don't even think that Jewish scholars who studied it all through those centuries

really understood Genesis 315.

We can understand it because Galatians 4.4 and Galatians 3 explains

that the seed is Christ.

The seed of woman is Christ.

He's the only one ever born of the seed of woman without the participation of the male.

So we can identify Jesus because he's in a class of one.

So it's easy for us to understand that.

But they did not.

So here you have them participating in the type of blood sacrifice

versus a bloodless sacrifice.

But they didn't understand it.

But God knew what he wanted and that's what he asked for.

So you have Abel respecting God, Cain rejecting God.

He's rejected.

Therefore, Abel is acceptable.

And then the rejected one murders the one that God accepted.

So in the field after that, you have the victim versus the perpetrator.

And in the judgment seat, you have one accepted and one cursed.

All right.

For sake of time, we're going to move on and talk about number four on our list,

which is Enoch.

Genesis 5.22.

And Enoch is talked about in Hebrews 11, place of all things.

It's talked about again in Jude 1, 14 and 15.

And the lesson of Enoch is if you walk with God, you get to go home with God.

There's a story about a little girl telling the story of Enoch to her little brother.

And she said, Enoch liked to take walks with God.

And one day they walked farther than they had ever walked before.

And God said, it's late.

It's getting dark.

Why don't you come and go home with me?

Well, that's not exactly what Genesis 5.22 says, but it's pretty close.

It's pretty close.

Walk with God and you get to go home to stay with God.

Now, there are good lessons about Enoch, and I'll just give you maybe only one.

Let's get over to chapter five.

So there are three or four listed here.

Enoch is mentioned in nine verses of the Bible.

His name means dedicated, and he lived up to that name.

And you notice this note to the side beginning in verse 21.

An amazing life covered in four verses.

That's all we know about Enoch.

But what an amazing person Enoch must have been.

He lived 365 years, and that was a short lifetime in this context.

He didn't die because God took him about a third of the way through a normal life span at that time.

Others were living about 900 years, so a half to a third as long as the others, even in this context.

In fact, when you read your Bible, do you mark it in your Bible?

I know some people don't like to mark it in their Bible.

I like to, I think it helps to understand it.

If you do that, then the next time you read Genesis 5, you might mark Adam, Seth, Enos, Cain, Nahalil, Jared, Enoch, all the way down,

so you can quickly identify where they're being talked about.

Let me just give you this one.

A man who took walks with God.

It's just a textual study of verse 22.

Enoch is a good name.

You and I want to have a good name with God, a good reputation.

His name means dedicated, and we want to demonstrate by our character our name will be associated with dedicated living.

Walked, that indicates progress.

You're not sitting.

Now standing around, you're making progress.

You walked with God.

With God as the best companion.

The God-sons of dollars, he furthered God's image on the earth,

because his children, as all children, were made in the image of God.

When he was not where God took him, he accomplished life's primary goal.

Even if he had lived to be a thousand years old, he couldn't have done any better than to go home with God.

So he accomplished life's primary goal.

Now, if you wanted to apply this, the average lifespan is 29,000 days, 4,000 months.

Don't do this right now, because it might be depressing,

but you can multiply the number of birthdays that you've had times 365,

and subtract that for 29,000, and that's the amount of life you still have left

if Jesus delays his coming and you live a full lifetime.

Probably for most of us, that's a smaller number than the number that we subtracted from 29,000.

In other words, we're more than halfway through.

That's okay, because we're more than halfway through our journey toward heaven, so that's a good thing.

But, it's also the case that we've only got 29,000 days to prepare to meet God in judgment.

And you don't need to waste any of those.

Nobody has too many days to prepare to meet God.

We need to make use of every one of them.

So, and also it means that whatever it is I ever want to accomplish for God,

and I haven't done it, I better get busy.

Joshua 13, God was keeping notes when Joshua wasn't.

He said, there's much work yet to be done.

Joshua was an old man.

God said, you haven't finished the work I gave you yet.

So, what about me?

If I finish the work that God wants me to do, that I want to do, well, I better get busy.

Because one day I won't be able to think.

I won't be able to walk.

I won't be able to do the things without the strength of my body to do the things I can do now.

So, get busy doing those.

Alright, that's all I'm going to say about Enoch.

Now, let's go back over and pick up on our list of Bible characters.

Noah, one of the most famous of the characters of the patriarchal age.

Noah teaches us about obedient faith and separation from the world.

Thus did Noah according to all that the Lord commanded him, Genesis 6.22.

So, he is an example of obedience.

God said, build a boat, he built a boat.

God said, I want it to be this big, he built it according to those dimensions.

God said, I want it to be made of this kind of wood, he made it of that kind of wood.

God says, get on the boat, Noah got on the boat.

2 Peter 3 says that Noah was the 8th person saved.

That tells me, and you fathers and husbands, you'll relate to this.

If everybody had to get on the boat, would you get on first and say everybody come in here?

No, you would say, okay everybody, walk up the plane and get on the boat.

After everybody was safe on board, you would be the 8th one saved.

That's what happened with Noah.

And then God closed the door, started raining a week later.

God locked out the entire world.

Everybody they'd ever known before, they didn't know again because they were all drowned.

And then they stepped out of that ark a year later into a pristine world.

So, you have the lesson of obedient faith and the lesson of spiritual separation.

God separated that family from the wickedness of the world around them.

So, those two lessons.

Now, there are a lot of lessons about Noah, so let's see what we have.

I'll just put this on the screen really quickly if you want this.

Six Reasons Noah Found Grace.

And that's the description the Bible gives.

And that's the first time grace was found in the Bible.

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Why did he find grace?

Out of all the people, and there were probably a billion people in the world by this point,

why was Noah the one that found grace and nobody else did?

Well, there's the reason right there.

Now, this person is the same one that finds grace today.

You and me. It's the same principles.

Now, here are six people in the Bible.

The Bible specifically says, found grace.

And so, that's an interesting lesson from different contexts.

Now, let's go over to 1 Peter 3.

And notice a lesson relating to baptism.

1 Peter 3.20.

I think I will only be able to give you this one.

Let me give you this one.

There's more there, but let's look at this one.

Noah was saved by these things.

And guess what?

Sinners are saved by these things.

Same things.

So, what saved Noah?

Grace did.

We already saw that faith did.

Obedience, we saw that.

Water saved Noah.

That's interesting that Peter doesn't talk about the ark saving Noah, but the water saving Noah.

Two different concepts.

The ark saved him from the water, but the water saved him from wickedness.

Because the water separated the wicked world from the new world.

It wiped it clean.

So, he was saved by water, not by the boat.

He was saved by the boat, too.

But from God's perspective, he was being saved from wickedness, not from the flood.

Very interesting.

Then he was saved by the ark.

As Noah had the ark, so sinners must enter the church.

Would Noah have survived if he had stayed outside the ark?

He would have drowned.

So, what about a sinner today that says,

I'm just spiritual, I don't want to be a Christian.

I'm going to stay out of the church.

I'll just be religious.

No, you've got to get in the ark to be saved.

And the ark is the church today.

That's the top and any top.

Now, 2 Peter 2 also talks about Noah, so...

Let me stop out here just a minute.

It's going to be about...

What?

So, here's one about Noah.

This is for those who preach in here.

An example to preachers.

Noah attempted to turn sinners to God.

That's what we do.

Noah faithfully preached, even when no one listened.

That's what we must do if nobody will listen.

We still preach.

Number 3, Noah preached righteousness in a wicked world.

Is our world wicked?

Well, we still preach righteousness.

We don't compromise the standard just because the world is far below the standard.

Number 4, Noah continued in spite of a lack of response.

Have you ever preached a whole year and had no responses?

What about a whole century?

He preached 120 years.

And the only people...

Now, don't discount what he actually did accomplish.

But nobody got no vote except his family.

Now, if everybody said it's his family, that would be an improvement over what we have currently.

Sometimes that's not the fault of the parents, but the influences of the children later.

But either way, he at least accomplished that.

He lived consistently with his message.

His work was not just messages.

He also was building the ark.

And he did not complain.

You don't read any complaints.

It would be easy to complain about living in that world and preaching to that group of people.

But you don't read whatever he did.

So, now we move back and talk about Lot in Genesis.

This is really beginning in 13.

So, we're down as...

I want to go to jump ahead.

I'll go back and get Abraham and Sarah.

But I just saw a lot in the passage that were worse.

So, I want to go back to that passage.

Lot's lesson is worldliness and maintaining faith.

One's negative, one's positive.

Lot pitched his tent towards Sodom.

And then he lost his family.

He lost everything that he had hoped to gain in this world.

Only escape from the clothes on his back.

That's the negative lesson.

We'll look at some lessons about that.

But there is a positive about Lot.

In that as long as he lived in Sodom, Sodom never lived in him.

He was always vexed, troubled by the world around him.

That is saying something.

That's a strong character to be able to do that.

Now, he put himself in that harm's way.

But at least he never compromised his mind about what was right and about God.

So, let's see both of those lessons.

Maybe not.

Lot, is that right?

Yeah.

Alright.

Alright, change of pace.

Change of plan.

We're going to do the rest of the 15 lessons.

So, I'll just go down.

Because I want you at least to have these.

And if you want any of those sermons from those other places, just see me after.

I'll be glad to give them to you.

Alright, Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham's lesson is justification by faith and works.

Not one or the other.

Romans 4, justification by faith.

And guess who Paul's example is?

Abraham.

James, justification by works.

James 2, guess who his example is?

Abraham.

Same God, same Holy Spirit.

Abraham's example above.

Alright, then you've got Sarah.

Her example is be patient.

Can you imagine a woman telling her husband,

why don't you have a baby with this other woman?

Genesis 21.

Is it any wonder she was jealous afterward?

That was a foolish mistake.

But she wanted a baby so bad.

And God had promised one.

They'd been waiting for like, what, 20 years at that point?

No baby.

So, she's trying to get ahead of God.

Help God out.

God doesn't need any help.

And eventually she did have her baby.

But that caused problems.

But 20 years later, there was another baby that persecuted him.

And she's also using 1 Peter 3 as an example of being in subjection to your husband.

Submitting to your husband.

She's called a whore.

In that passage, she's an example of holy women.

That is the daughter of Sarah I want to look up to.

Alright, the next one is Isaac.

We've talked about Isaac in the auditorium.

His lesson has to do with substitution sacrifice.

Because Abraham took him up on the mountain.

And then he asked a question.

This boy had been to worship before.

And the boy said, he's probably a grown man.

Upper teens, maybe at this point.

So he's physically strong.

He's mentally an adult.

And so he says, you brought the fire.

And you got the wood.

But dad, where's the lamb?

You know, that question echoes the rest of the Old Testament.

Where is the lamb?

Until John says, behold the lamb of God.

Just take what is in the world.

Well, anyway.

Abraham raised him up.

He was going to plunge him into the beating heart of his own son.

The son of promise.

And before he could bear down with it.

Abraham! Abraham!

Can you imagine?

This is a gentleman flowing through me.

Just talking about it.

Can you imagine what was going through his mind?

Through his body?

Substitution sacrifice.

It was a ram caught.

The ram died that day and not Isaac.

Jesus died and not us.

That's the point.

Alright.

The next lesson.

He also loved peace.

We saw that in an earlier lesson in the auditorium.

Ishmael.

The lesson is bondage under the law of Moses.

Galatians chapter 4.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

Versus the freedom in Christ.

Isaac represented the freedom.

Ishmael the bondage.

There's an allegory there.

Allegory is an unusual figure of speech in scripture.

But there's one using the license for it.

Jacob.

Jacob is talked about in Genesis 27-36.

We studied the initial installment on the record of Jacob in the earlier class.

There are two lessons from Jacob.

One is election.

And Paul talks about this in Romans 9-13.

Before they were even born, God chose Jacob and not Esau.

The elder shall serve the younger.

Now, the election in the New Testament goes like this.

God has elected to save those who are righteous.

To reject those who are unrighteous.

God voted for everybody to be saved.

1 Timothy 2-4.

And none to be lost.

2 Peter 3-9.

The devil voted for everybody to be lost and none to be saved.

We cast a deciding vote.

Am I going to be with the righteous?

Am I going to be in the family of God?

Or am I going to reject God and His way?

Go my own way, which is the equivalent of going the devil's way.

So I cast a deciding vote.

I've already won God's election.

Everybody did.

But I can choose not to accept it and reject it.

That's the lesson that we learned from Jacob.

The second lesson is growth.

We touched on this earlier.

He started out so horribly.

And he lied to his own father.

But then he had that vision of the ladder.

And the blessings that God wanted to give him.

And he had a change of heart.

And he grew.

Now, there were still weaknesses in his character.

But over the years that were to come, he became a spiritual giant.

And the father of the tribes of Israel.

So, if you're a little frustrated with where you are right now spiritually,

that would probably be most of us, some of us.

I'm not where I want to be yet.

Are you?

No.

And you may not have had as long to work on it as some of the rest of us.

You may be a new Christian.

Well, you can grow.

And God will help you grow.

And the Bible is there to give you the food to produce the growth.

So, be diligent.

Don't let the spark go out.

Keep praying.

Keep reading.

Keep meditating.

Keep talking.

Keep worshiping.

And your growth will continue.

Do you have a young person in your extended family that you don't see too often?

Like a grandchild or a niece or a nephew.

And maybe you only see them on big holidays when people come in.

Have you ever said,

My, how have you grown?

I can't believe how big you are.

That's what happens with us.

You and I are daily growing a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit.

And then if we compare ourselves with a year ago or two years ago,

My, how have you grown?

I'm much more mature than I realize.

But it was just incremental.

So, I didn't realize it as it was happening.

So, don't be frustrated with yourself.

Just keep on growing.

The next one is inverse, number 13 on the list, Esau.

We started about him earlier, so I won't spend more time here,

except just to mention that his lesson is profane living and misplaced priorities.

He lived in this world.

Most of the people out there, wherever out there is for you,

they don't give a second thought.

They're not atheists if you ask them,

but they're practical atheists because they live like there is no God.

They would never say it, but they live like,

I don't need to worship God.

I don't need to read the Bible.

I'll live the way I want to live.

I'm doing the best I can.

That's the mindset of an average person.

That's Esau's mindset.

He lived for this world.

Hunting, food, marrying wives, getting advantage over his brother.

That sounds like our world, doesn't it?

And then the last two, Joseph, which I love to preach Joseph,

but his lesson, there are two here.

Providence and forgiveness.

There's a lot more with Joseph about morality.

For instance, Genesis 37.

But the two that we'll talk about and that are emphasized in the New Testament,

are providence and forgiveness.

He's talked about it in Stephen's sermon in Acts 7.

He's talked about it in Hebrews 11.

The providence aspect, the next time you get an opportunity,

go through Genesis 37 and read all the little things that fell in place

for Joseph to be attacked and sold by his brothers.

It's like ten of them.

He could have gone home and they weren't where they were supposed to be.

He just happened to run into somebody and said,

I heard them say they were going over to Dothan.

Where would that person have been then?

All those things.

They could have killed him, but they put him in the pit.

So forth.

So, providence.

Later, he says, Genesis 50, 20.

Even if you're evil, God made forgiveness.

God had a plan.

And then forgiveness, he said, I'm not going to do anything to you, my brothers.

Then the last one, Melchizedek, is an example of a priesthood of Christ.

Melchizedek is found in Genesis 14, a mysterious person on purpose.

We don't know much about him.

He comes on the stage, we don't know where he came from.

He exits the stage, we don't know where he went.

All we know is what we got in Genesis chapter 14.

Genesis 14 · chapter mention

And there's a reason, because God intended us not to know that.

Because he's an example of one who didn't have a beginning.

Jesus, who came from eternity, went to eternity, just on the stage for those 33 years.

So he's an example.

But also because he was a priest.

And Jesus couldn't be a priest after the order of Aaron, because he was not the right tribe.

Levi.

But he could be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, because he did not have a tribe.

It predated the tribes of Israel.

All right.

That's all.

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate you coming in this class.