From the Start - Introduction (A Genesis Sermon Series Part 1)

The year was somewhere around 1996 or 97.

I was sitting there in my humanities class at Diablo

Valley College in the San Francisco East Bay.

I knew the Bible and I would regularly defend it if I needed

to. My humanities teacher asked

something like who in here is a Christian or or if you believe

the Bible was true, something like that.

I don't remember the exact substance of her question.

A few of us brave souls in a class of around 100 students

raised our hands. The teacher then proceeded to

hurl criticisms of the Bible and the Christian faith at us.

Normally I would defend the Bible, but she said something

that I just didn't know what to do with.

She said the Bible's story about the flood was just copying the

Epic of Gilgamesh. I'd heard of the Epic of

Gilgamesh before, but I had no idea what was in it.

I knew there was some dude named Inky Doo and and of course

Gilgamesh, but beyond that I had no idea what it was and when it

was written I was stunned and had nothing to say she had won

because I had no idea what the Epic of Gilgamesh was and and

the notion that that the foundation for the flood

narrative in Genesis seemed blasphemous to me, and rightly

so. Well, in the years since, I've

come to learn a few things. First of all, every ancient

culture has its own creation story and flood narratives are

quite widespread, especially throughout the ancient Near

East. However, Genesis stands apart

from these other narratives and who communicates the creator,

Creator to be and the nature of his relationship with his

creation. And I will talk more about the

flood when we get there in a few weeks, probably more than a few

weeks. So our next series is going to

be in the book of Genesis. So where did this book come from

and what is the purpose of it? Now, of course, the astute Bible

student will natural place Genesis in the Pentateuch, the

first five books of the Bible, which we sometimes refer to as

the Torah or the Law. God gave Moses the Torah when he

was up on Mount Sinai. Genesis was written to Jews who

are likely about to settle the Promised Land.

It's possibly. We don't know for sure whether

it's to those who personally experienced the Exodus or

whether it's to their children, the next generation as they're

about to cross over the Jordan River to conquer the land.

And the text serves both as an encouragement to them in their

faith as well as a reminder of how God had worked not only in

their lives, but in the lives of their ancestors.

The title for this book, Genesis stems from the Septuagint and

and the word Genesis means or or beginnings In Hebrew, it's a

different title. The word is better sheets, which

means in the beginning which is taken from literally the first 3

words that we have in our English Bibles.

So while Genesis serves as the creation account of Yahweh's

people, the Genesis account differs from other accounts in

that one creation isn't a result of cosmic conflict between gods

as is often the case in in other creation accounts and Yahweh.

Yahweh is depicted. Our God is depicted as as

transcended. He not only transcendence,

though, He's loving, He's ordered, and He's purpose

filled. Now it's no secret that I have

an affinity for the Old Testament.

There's so much to be found in the Old Testament and it serves

as a foundation for what you see in the New Testament so often.

I was talking to someone recently.

Oh yeah, her son. He just want, he just wants to

read Paul. Paul is great.

But it's important for us to understand the 1st 3/4 of our

Bible because when we understand what's in the 1st 3/4 of our

Bible, then it makes the last quarter make so much more sense.

Unfortunately, today there are so many people who don't really

know what's in Genesis, or in the rest of the Old Testament

for, for that matter. So it seems fitting for us to

start here at the beginning of it all, in one of my favorite

books, Genesis. So here we go.

I'm going to cover the entire book, Genesis one one through

5026 in the next few minutes. Actually, this may be my

shortest sermon that I've delivered here, and I cut pages

from this message sometimes. What you don't know is sometimes

when we write a sermon, you can have just as much stuff that you

cut out as what you include, and this is no exception.

There's a lot to cover here. Now, it all starts back in the

beginning. Before time began, God spoke

into the nothing and he called nothing.

It's a something and and then he hung that something on nothing,

hung it there in space. It's truly profound to consider

the thoughts of the universe and the Earth hanging there in

place, spinning at the right speed, tilted at the right

angle, covered with the right amounts of oxygen in order to be

able to sustain life. All of this is called the fine

tuning of the universe. Now remember, I'm flying over

this at a high level. I don't even know if it's 30,000

feet. We're almost at like 60,000 feet

Here is what we're doing this morning.

So we're just hitting some some big issues here.

The main topics. Then on the 6th day, God created

his crowning achievement. He'd made the sun, moon, the

stars separated the waters from the land.

He filled the waters, He filled the land, but nothing was as

great as mankind. Previously everything was

declared good, but now after he created mankind, it was very

good. So here we have the first

humans, Adam and Eve. We consider the fact that no

other creation accounts depicts a God creating in his own

likeness, but that's what God did.

He created man and woman in his own image In the garden.

Everything was good. Life was complete.

It was full and it was easy. Man would work the garden, but

it would be easy and and it didn't feel laborious.

It didn't feel like work. There was only one rule, and

that was to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good

and Evil. Everything's going along fine

until this sneaky, sly serpent entered the scene.

He was naturally rebellious against God, and he wanted to

lead the humans to rebel against God as well.

The serpent was able to deceive them when he called God's words

into question. Did God actually say you shall

not eat of any tree in the garden?

Well, no, that is not what God said.

And Eve told the serpent that that they would die if they

touched the tree. And of course, you know how it

ends. She saw that the tree was good

for food. It looked good as well.

And, and it would make her wise. She gave in to the lust of the

flesh, to the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

And she took a bite, and then she gave some to Adam.

Before this moment God had decided what was good and right.

But here humanity was deciding what was right and wrong on

their own terms. Instantly everything changed.

The easy relationship between the man and the woman was now

broken. They couldn't trust each other

and and they were now ashamed of their naked bodies and life

became difficult. Sin had significantly changed

the mindset of these humans, even their very own DNA.

As I talked about last week, sin has consequences and death had

entered the world. The relationship with God had

been broken and they were exiled from the Garden.

But not all was lost as God promised to one day defeat the

serpent. Fast forward hundreds of years,

sin has advanced on the earth and Noah was told to build an

ark. People were evil so God planned

to destroy the earth with a flood, performing a hard reset

on humanity if you will. So for 40 days, water poured

forth from the deep and and the heavens opened up.

OK, this reboot should work, right?

Well, not exactly. Even from the first moments,

Noah gets drunk and his son Ham does something sexual to him,

earning a curse for his son Canaan.

And in spite of the restart, sin continued to run rampant.

Pride was on the upswing. A skilled group of laborers

gathered in Babylon and decided, let's build a tower up to the

heavens. But God intervenes.

He humbles them, gives them different languages, and

scatters them all over the known world.

Remember the command was be fruitful, multiply and fill the

earth. And here humanity is, living in

a city confined to one place when they were supposed to be

filling the earth. Despite humanity's evil, God was

determined to bless and rescue the world.

So what does he do? He calls out to an idol

worshipper who's living in what is now southern Iraq.

He says to to Abraham, he says go to a land that I will show

you. So Abraham doesn't even know

where he's going, but he was obedient and in faith he

responded to God's promise. God had planned to rescue

humanity through Abraham, so he made a covenant with him, and he

said he would give Abraham a land.

And he also says, I'm going to make of you a great nation.

You have many, many, many descendants, and I'm going to

bless the people of the world through you.

Abraham had become the father of our faith, but he, like others

before him, was deeply flawed. Twice he betrays his wife

claiming she was his sister, which was 1/2 truth.

It wasn't entirely true. Yes, in a way she was his

sister, but she was also his wife, and he didn't want to

acknowledge that for fear of their lives.

He also slept with his wife's maid, Hagar, in order to

conceive the child that was promised to he and Sarah.

Abraham trusted God's promise, and this faith was what made him

righteous. But here he took matters into

his own hands and actually created a separate line of

people. And this separate line of people

was not the people through whom God wanted to pass on His

blessing. It was not the people that God

had sovereignly chosen to be His.

It wasn't until 25 years after God had promised them a child

that Sarah conceived and gave birth to Isaac the child.

A promise. When he was born, Sarah was 19,

Abraham was 100, both well past the age of producing an heir.

But this was God's awesome power at work.

The story about Isaac, which people are most familiar with

happened when he was maybe 17/18/1920.

We don't know exactly, but God told Abraham to take Isaac, the

son of promise, up on the mountain and to offer Isaac as a

sacrifice of worship. It's important to understand

Isaac's age. I think it's easy for us to

think, oh, this, this was a little boy.

He was 567. He was just carrying some sticks

up up the mountain, just trying to help out his daddy, oblivious

to to what was going on and the need for a sacrifice.

Yet this was not the case. Teenage young man Isaac knew

what was happening. He certainly didn't have to lay

down on the altar that this 115 year old man told him to get on.

He could have walked, but he was obedient and an Angel interrupts

the moment and God provides a ram for the sacrifice.

Many years later, Isaac is 60. His wife Rebecca gave birth to

twins Jacob and Esau. Jacob means heel catcher and is

figuratively figuratively interpreted to mean deceiver.

This character trait actually becomes a hallmark of his life.

He stole his older brother brother's birthright by tricking

his old blind father Isaac. The identity of this man in

front of him. Are you sure you're Esau?

Jacob's mother had helped him soul, so he is working to

convince Isaac. Yes, I'm Esau, feel my arms.

I'm Esau your oldest. Sure, Jacob got the birthright,

but he knew it wasn't safe for him to stay, so he fled to his

Uncle Laban's house. It was there that Jacob got a

taste of his own medicine, as he was cheated out of 14 years of

his life. He'd fallen in love with Rachel,

but he was subsequently tricked into marrying her older sister

Leah instead. And Laban also tried to cheat

Jacob out of any prophets. However, God was constantly on

Jacob's side and working to bless him.

Jacob essentially ends up with four wives, 2 actual wives, +2

concubines and there is a competition that ensues to see

who can have the most children. And he's able through these four

women's to four women to produce 12 sons, the favoured 2 of

course coming from his favoured wife Rachel.

When Jacob finally returned back to Canaan, he had an interesting

encounter with an Angel. It seems this was likely a pre

Incarnate version of Jesus says the words used to describe this

being are ish, which is the word for a man, and L which is a word

for God. This was the God man that Jacob

wrestled with it and he was adamant about being blessed.

He won and he received his blessing, but not until his hip

had been taken out of socket by the God man and his name is

changed on the spot. And Jacob would no longer be

called a deceiver, but rather he would now be called Israel, one

who struggles or strives with God.

And in this moment, God's people receive a name.

They are now the people of Israel.

While Jacob had twelve sons, it was one in particular who was

most special to him. The oldest son of his favored

wife, Rachel. This was Joseph, and you're all

familiar with his Technicolor dreamcoats.

He was a bit presumptuous and and proud as a young teen.

He even had the audacity to tell his older brothers that one day

they would bow down to him. I don't know of any brothers who

want to hear, oh, you're going to bow down to me someday.

So they concocted a plan to kill their father's favorite son, the

oldest brother. Ruben, though, felt a little

guilty about the plan, so he thought it would be better to

just sell Joseph off into slavery.

You see, this would get Joseph out of their lives, and they

wouldn't have to live with the guilt of actually having killed

him. So they sold Joseph into

slavery. They took his coats, put an

animal's blood on it, and sent it back to their father, Jacob.

There are many ups and downs in Joseph's life.

God's hand was clearly on him, and everything he touched turned

to gold. Potiphar was captain of

Pharaoh's garden. Joseph became his slave, leading

to Potiphar's prosperity under the virtuous Joseph.

Unfortunately, Potiphar's wife was not so virtuous, and when

she tried to seduce Joseph, he ran.

She wasn't pleased with this, so she claimed he tried to rape

her, leading to Joseph's imprisonment.

A lot transpires in prison, but it all culminated in his ability

to interpret Pharaoh's dreams. God was active and working in

Joseph's life, causing him to be elevated to #2 in the nation of

Egypt. God had used Joseph's gift to

save the Egyptians from famine, as well as Joseph's own family

who came to Egypt in search of food.

And Joseph's story is powerful. Pride, betrayal, death,

injustice, reward, reconciliation and restoration.

The great grandchildren of Abraham have performed this

heinous act of selling their brother into slavery, but God

transforms their evil act into something good.

We see this all through the Genesis narrative.

Humans doing something evil and God turning it for good.

So what's the importance of all this?

Is it even relevant to us today, these things that happened

thousands of years ago? Well, obviously, yes, it is very

relevant. That is why I have chosen this

book for our first book study. The first thing we learn from

Genesis has to do with cosmology.

Genesis teaches us about the origins of the universe.

This is cosmology. How did this world get here?

There's a lot of there's a lot of debate about this even in

Christian circles, and we'll talk about this some later.

Did God create the world in six literal 24 hour time periods?

6 literal days, or or are the days analogous to ages of time?

Christians have been debating this for a long time.

What we can absolutely, unequivocally state without a

doubt is that God created it all.

No amount of time can account for the onset of the universe

without something to 'cause it. How did it all come to be?

The origins of the cosmos came about by God's very own words.

He spoke. God spoke and created it all.

The opening lines of Genesis tell us there was no order in

the world. Everything was wild and waste.

But our Creator God spoke into the void and and he ordered it

appropriately. In theology terms, we say that

God created X Niallo, that is, he created out of nothing.

So God spoke and created it all. Then Genesis also teaches us

about anthropology. We're we're going to school this

morning, in case you didn't already realize, it teaches us

about anthropology, about humanity.

There are two main categories of anthropology.

There's the biological aspect of anthropology as well as the

cultural aspects. Anthropology that means that is

our archaeology, things that humans build and make, as well

as their language. But more than simply answering

the question of where life came from, Genesis also answers the

three big questions of life that I mentioned early this summer.

You may recall. Where did I come from?

The meaning of human origins is a bit more personal when it's

viewed through the lens of Genesis.

Why am I here? What's what's my purpose, and

where am I going? Is there an afterlife or is this

all there is? Because if this is all there is,

throw the chains off. Do whatever you want.

Live life without restraints. Genesis provides the answers the

world needs. Secular humanism answers that

question with Darwinian evolution.

If your answer to the question of origins is evolutionary

processes, then the answer to the second question, why am I

here? Will leave you wanting.

Our purpose is derived from our origins.

If humanity is simply an exalted ape, then humanity has no

intrinsic value or purpose. Where am I going?

Genesis points to the answer to that question as well.

On page three, we get a glimmer of hope for humanity, knowing

the serpent will receive a mortal blow and things will be

made right. As Christians, we also believe

that humanity is more than just what we do.

The things we make, people, we marry, the language we use.

We also believe that humans have greater value than the rest of

creation. And the reason for this is

because we were created in God's image.

We were created in God's image, where unique representations of

God's nature and and to be created in God's image means

that we reflect both his character and his authority on

earth. So those next blanks are to

reflect God's character and to be representatives of God's

rule. It's our task to to harness

creation's potential and to use it for God's good and God's

purposes. Now, it's natural for us to

think of Genesis as as telling our story, telling humanity's

story. But it's not telling our story.

Genesis is history. Generous Genesis is his story.

Genesis teaches us theology. It teaches us about God.

He's the focal point of this book, not us.

It's important to learn about God and who he actually is.

You see, today there's a tendency to redefine God.

And when people describe God, God actually sounds a lot like

them. He acts like them, he thinks

like them. He he's a God fashion basically

in their own image and consequently that God doesn't

ask anything of them. But in the pages of Genesis and

and scripture you see who God really is.

Genesis reveals God to be pre existence all powerful creator.

He is the pre-existing all powerful creator and scripture

is the revelation of God himself.

It's not only God disclosing truth to us.

Yes, scripture is truth, but it's God actually revealing

himself to us. Genesis 11 says in the

beginning, God. If we're not careful, we'll only

catch the latter part of that verse, which is God created the

heavens and the earth. While it's important to know

that God is the source of all creation, this verse also tells

us the Creator God. He was around before it all

began. He's the unmoved mover that

Aristotle speaks of, the one who caused all to function and move

as intended without himself being moved.

He is consistent. He is unchanging.

As we further look at what Genesis teaches us about God, we

see his justice. We learned that God is just.

This means that he's concerned for the marginalized as well As

for the need to punish sin. Those who walk in disobedience

receive what they deserve. Adam and Eve were kicked out of

the garden after they sinned. Cain, after killing his brother

Abel, was exiled in the ground, cursed for farming.

Noah's generation lost their lives when they lived in open

rebellion against God and mocked the man who was obedient to

God's commands. But there's a positive side to

justice as well. The good are rewarded.

Abel's sacrifice was accepted, Enoch walked with God, Noah was

chosen to relaunch humanity, and Abraham's obedience was rewarded

with being declared righteous when he followed God's call and

became the father to a nation. We also see that God is

faithful. God is faithful.

He's faithful to keep his promises, and we see him making

covenants with his flawed followers, Noah and Abraham.

His people will sin, but he remains committed to them

through it all. Lastly, the last area of study

that we see is soteriology. Soteriology.

Genesis teaches us about salvation.

The Greek word for salvation is sotair, so we call the study of

salvation soteriology. What's the basis for salvation?

How is it that God would even seek to save us?

Genesis provides the answer for these questions and before we

fully close out the message, I'm going to ask the worship team to

come on up. I know this is different, but

you see, it's only appropriate when we're talking about

salvation naturally takes us to sitting at the Lord's table.

So if you haven't received grabbed the communion elements,

we have them available. Raise your hand if you would

like to receive have not already received, we have Brendan,

Brendan in the booth there. Anyone else?

Just raise your hand and Anita will get those for you.

Anybody else? So God's grace and mercy are on

full display all throughout this book as we routinely see broken,

flawed, sinful people being used for His purposes.

The Sinner isn't automatically cast off, but rather is offered

a second chance of third chance, and so on.

God's grace was on Cain when he when he received a mark in order

to prevent him from being killed.

God's grace was on Sarah when, in her old age, she doubted

God's provision of a child. God's grace pours through the

pages of this book. In fact, God's grace shows up

just as quickly as sin does. In Genesis 36, the woman sinned,

and in a mere 9 verses later in verse 15, a foreshadowing of

God's grace is revealed. God says to the serpent, I will

put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring

and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and

you shall bruise his heel. The serpent Satan bruised the

heel of humanity, striking A superficial blow to Jesus on the

cross. But Satan didn't get the last

word. It's God who got the last word

when Jesus conquered sin and the grave.

We call this the proto evangelion.

This is the first gospel, or the first good news.

God longs to redeem humanity from the penalty of sin, to make

things right, and in fact, the blood of Jesus is pouring

through this book. When Adam and Eve sinned, an

animal paid the price and was killed to provide covering for

these sinners whose relationship with God had just been broken.

When Abraham took the teenage teenager Isaac up on the

mountain to offer him as a sacrifice, God provided a ram, a

way out. Joseph, who seemed to live a

very virtuous life, suffered but proved to be the physical savior

of his family and the Egyptians. God's grace, Mercy and salvation

are demonstrated over and over again in this book.

Without this book we miss the meaning of what happens in Jesus

life later in the New Testaments.

The prototype is here set. Sin has a cost, and the cost has

to be paid. This morning we can approach

this time at the Lord's table because Jesus paid that cost.

God's justice doles out a penalty for our sin.

Jesus stepped up to pay the price we couldn't pay.

He bore our sin in Himself on the cross, and because He paid

the price, we are now made new in Him.

This is the glorious, marvellous truth that because Jesus Christ

paid all of our debt, we are now made new.

We're not the same old thing that we were, but we have been

completely transformed by Jesus Christ.