Genesis Introduction Various Texts

I preached my first sermon in this pulpit seven months ago on February 12th. The first sermon, I explained why I preach from the Word of God every single week. And one of the points I emphasize is that the Holy Spirit changes people through the preaching of the Word of God.

So if you've ever met a mature believer, you can know that it was the Word of God that the Holy Spirit used to change that person. And my prayer is that growth has taken place in you since I started preaching the Bible to you.

And I trust that the Lord will do that in the future. So we started this journey last spring when we went through the letter of Philippians. We concluded that at the end of May. In early June, I started a sermon series on the attributes of God, the ultimate pursuit of knowing God.

And I trust that through that series, we know a little bit more about God than we did before. And in some of you, maybe you know a lot more about God than you did before. Today, we start a new journey.

And this is a journey that is going to take us 18 months, as I already mentioned. And so, we might look a little bit different by the end of the sermon series. And so, Lord willing, he will take us through this.

The Foundation of Genesis for the Rest of Scripture

And I feel it is right to take us through Genesis because of how foundational it is to the rest of Scripture. It really is the foundation of the Bible. The Bible flows out of Genesis. And so, if we understand Genesis, then we're going to understand the Bible so much better.

And so, with that, we are going to start our sermon series right now. And it's titled, How It All Began, A Study of the Book of Genesis. How It All Began, A Study of the Book of Genesis. And what we're going to look at this morning to begin is the author, the date, the intended audience, and where the word Genesis came from.

So, if you have a bulletin with you, I encourage you to bring that out right now. And what I encourage you to do is to take notes. It's always good to take notes. This will feel a little bit like a class today.

It's still going to be a sermon, but it's going to feel a little bit like a class because I'm going to give you a little bit of background knowledge about the book of Genesis. First, we're going to look at the author.

Moses as the Traditional Author of the Pentateuch

Traditionally, the book of Genesis has been thought to have been written by Moses. And, of course, Moses is well known as the man who God chose to take the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and eventually toward the Promised Land.

And this has been believed by Jews and Christians for millennia, that Moses wrote the book of Genesis. Genesis is tied in with the four books after it. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

So, these books have been called the five books of Moses, or the Pentateuch. The word pent means five. There are two places in these five books where it specifically says that Moses wrote portions. And the first is Numbers, chapter 33, verse 2.

It says Moses wrote down their starting places, stage by stage, by command of the Lord. And these are their stages according to their starting places. Okay, so it says specifically here that Moses wrote this down in the book of Numbers.

Secondly, Deuteronomy, chapter 31, verses 24 through 26, says that Moses wrote. It says, Take this book of the law and put it by the side of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God that it may be there for a witness against you.

Okay, so what this is saying in Deuteronomy 31 is that the entire book of Deuteronomy was a book that Moses wrote. And this was a book that was put in the tabernacle right next to the Ark of the Covenant.

Now, Genesis is an introductory book to these books, Numbers and Deuteronomy. So it has been assumed that he wrote Genesis also. The belief that Moses is the primary author of the first books of the Bible is very certain.

And what even makes this evidence stronger is that Jesus thought that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. And obviously, we want to take the words of Jesus and believe them 100%. John 5, 45 through 47, this is what Jesus said, Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father.

There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me. For he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

Okay, so in that passage there, Jesus is saying, Moses wrote about me. And Jesus is talking to the Pharisees here who knew the Old Testament very well and he's telling them, You missed this. The Old Testament is about me.

The first five books of the Bible point to Jesus Christ. And the Jewish leaders at this time missed this. So we can conclude that the author of Genesis and the four books after it, the Pentateuch or the five books of Moses, Moses is the author.

The Date of Genesis and Divine Inspiration

Now the next point here is the date and divine inspiration. Now Moses would have written this book about the 15th century B .C. So about 3 ,500 years ago. Moses' writing style reflects that of the 2nd millennium B .C.

The stories that he wrote about would have been passed down to him by word of mouth. Human history started thousands of years before Moses wrote. And so this information would have been passed down to him.

Now what's interesting is that there are creation myths and there are flood myths that actually have some similarities with Genesis. And so you get liberal people, liberal scholars who say that they must have borrowed, Genesis must have borrowed from these people.

But that's not the case at all because if you read Genesis, it has authenticity to it. It's written like history. It's written like it should be believed. If you read these creation myths or the flood myths, you can tell it's a myth.

It's not true. I mean, just when you read it, you can see that these stories are not true. And so it actually proves the authenticity because obviously all of human history has this history from Adam and Eve.

And so all humans experienced the flood. And of course, facts about the creation would have been passed down too. And so Moses is the one who wrote down the accurate account of how things started including the flood which came later on.

And so I find that interesting. And we'll talk about that more here in the coming months. But he told these stories accurately because God made sure he did. This is what we call divine inspiration. So as Moses wrote, the Holy Spirit guided what he wrote.

God guided him so that every word that he wrote would be truthful. And let me give you an example here of how we know that these words are God's words. Now there's little bits of treasures here in the Bible that point this out.

In Matthew chapter 19, verses 3 through 5, Jesus is having this conversation with the Pharisees about divorce. And then Jesus quotes from Genesis chapter 2. So follow along with, or listen to me here as I read.

Okay, so God who created them said, Okay, so who, Jesus here just quotes Genesis 2 .24. And he says here that God said it. But Moses wrote it. Okay, you see that? So Moses wrote Genesis 2 .24, but Jesus is saying here that God said it.

Okay, so you see the human component and then you see the divine component. And it's not just Genesis that has this. It's the entire Bible. It's a human document. There's 40 different authors who wrote the Bible, but God inspired it all.

So that is the date and the divine inspiration. Moses also had an intended audience, as you will see in your notes here. The first audience of this book is Israel in the wilderness. So after Israel was taken out of Egypt, Moses led them through the wilderness and this is when he wrote to them.

This first audience that Moses wrote to, they were either the generation that first came out of Egypt or the children of that generation. Okay, so sometime in the 1400s BC. Genesis is a book for God's people then and God's people now.

Okay, so the first audience was the Israelites. But obviously this book has been preserved and today we are the church of God. We are the people of God also. And so this book has been preserved for us as well.

Okay, so that is the intended audience. Now the title Genesis, you might wonder sometimes, how do we get the names of the books of the Bible? Well, I'm going to explain to you how we got the title Genesis to start off this book, or to start off the Bible.

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The first three words of this book, Genesis, says, in the beginning. So the title of this book in the Hebrew Bible is, in the beginning. Over 2 ,000 years ago, there was a translation of the Old Testament into Greek.

And that was called the Septuagint. They titled this first book as Origins. My mom said yesterday, birth, right? So the same thing, origins or birth. A translation of origins into English is Genesis or beginnings.

Okay, so when we say the Genesis of something, we say that it's the beginning of something. So the book of Genesis is all about origins. And in the remaining minutes of this sermon, I'm going to highlight four different beginnings that Genesis highlights.

Okay, there's four different beginnings that Genesis highlights. And so our theme this morning is that Genesis is a book of origins. And the first beginning that we're going to look at today is the beginning of creation.

The Beginning of Creation

We're going to look at the creation in detail next week, Genesis chapter 1. But I'm going to highlight a few things this morning. Right from the get-go, we see that God created all things. Genesis 1 .1 is a verse that all of you probably know.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In the remainder of chapter 1, God creates light, the atmosphere. He creates plants. He creates the stars, including the sun and the moon. A few weeks ago, those crossed, of course, with the eclipse.

Then God creates the animals. This includes land animals, birds, and fish. Then lastly, Genesis 1 closes by saying that God created mankind in his own image. What we see early on in Genesis is that mankind has a special place in God's creation.

I mentioned this last week that the human race is the pinnacle of God's creation. Genesis chapter 2 is devoted to the creation of mankind to highlight the importance of God's image bearers. So the beginning we see at the start of Genesis is the beginning of all things, including the human race.

And what we saw this past summer was that before there was a creation, there was just God. And that's hard for us to wrap our minds around, but it's true. God existed. There was no space. There was no matter.

Obviously, there was no people. There was nothing. It was just him, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So in Genesis 1, we see the beginning of creation. So this is the first beginning. And next week, we're going to look at this in detail.

The Beginning of Sin

The second beginning that I'm going to highlight this morning is the beginning of sin. We looked at Genesis 3 last week about the origin of sin. God created everything good. God did not create sinners.

He could do no such thing. God created good people, Adam and Eve, who chose to sin. Now, the question of how good people could even have the inclination to sin is a great mystery. But it's true. They did.

And no one has that answer, how two perfectly good people could even think about sinning. But they did. They chose to sin just as Satan chose to sin. And by the way, Satan, too, was an angel at one time, and he was created good.

And he made the choice to sin. And what we will see in Genesis 3 is that Satan was the first one to sin. And we do not know when this happened, but he likely led a rebellion in heaven where one-third of the angels followed him.

And, of course, they became demons. Satan is the head of demons. Revelation 12 .4 alludes to this rebellion that took place where one-third of the angels followed him. The first sinner, Satan, then tempts Adam and Eve to sin for the first time.

What we will see in the rest of Genesis is that sin is plentiful as it is passed down from generation to generation. And what we will find is that it did not take long for horrible sins to happen. Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel.

They were their first two children. What happened? Cain murders Abel. So this generational sin is passed down, and it happened not too long after. So this is the second beginning that I'm going to highlight in Genesis here, or that I just highlighted, the beginning of sin.

The Restart of Humanity After the Flood

The third beginning is the restart of humanity. The restart of humanity. One thing that people fail to realize in our modern world is that there was a global flood. There was a time when the entire planet was covered with water.

And then the flood that just happened in Houston would be a very small flood compared to what happened. The global flood that happened so long ago. And I look forward to telling you in a few months about the flood and the evidence of the flood all over planet Earth.

It's unmistakable to miss it. So much time has elapsed since the flood that people deny that it happened. But we, as the body of Christ, know better. We know that it happened. 2 Peter 3, verses 3 -7, describe the attitude that people will have toward the idea that there was a flood.

And this is interesting. Listen to this. Okay, so, so people scoff at the idea that planet Earth was flooded at one time. And obviously those people that Peter dealt with are dead. But there's people today who scoff, not only that the flood didn't happen, but they scoff about Christ returning.

Because it's making this parallel between the two. That just as God judged the Earth with a flood long ago, a future judgment is coming. And people scoff about that happening, too. But the flood points to the reality that this is going to happen.

And so we need to recognize that. That if you see people talking like that, the Bible said it was going to be like that. And we should not be surprised. And several thousand years after God created the world, he destroyed it.

Genesis 6 -9 explains this. Everything living, plants, animals, and humans were destroyed. Only eight people were spared. Noah and his family. So the entire human race had to start over again. Along with all the animals that were taken on the ark.

As the Earth was restarted, Noah's sons, and anybody know their names? Ham, Shem, and Jepeth? Yeah, very good. They started the repopulation. I shouldn't ask that question if I'm going to answer it myself, right?

All the people were gathered into one place. And as you might imagine, if you gather lots of sinners into one place, what's going to happen? Bad things are going to happen. So what happened is they built this tower known as the Tower of Babel.

This comes from Genesis chapter 11. And we'll look at that in the coming weeks. Actually, a few months from now. And they wanted to make a name for themselves. And so they built this tower as high as they could.

And they said, we're going to build this tower to heaven. And God looks down and he says, okay, we can't have all these people in one place. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to scatter them. And the way that I'm going to scatter them is by confusing their language.

And so instead of them all speaking one language and able to do all this evil, they're going to be confused. And so they're not going to be able to do as much. And so the people are scattered all over the Earth.

And eventually they made it to Eureka. Obviously this population spread. That's why we're here today. It started in the Middle East at the Tower of Babel. This is why people cover all the corners of the Earth today.

And that's in Genesis chapters 10 and 11. And we're going to look at that in the month of December. So that's the third beginning that I'm highlighting today. The restart of humanity. And then the fourth and final beginning is the beginning of Israel.

The Beginning of Israel

The beginning of Israel. Israel starts in chapter 12 with the story of Abraham. And this is really fascinating. And I'm looking forward to going through this with you because we always wonder, well, where did countries get their start?

We think of our own country. Where did America get its start? It didn't start in 1776. It started in the early 1600s when people from England started to make their way over here. The pilgrims come to mind.

And actually Brianna and I on our honeymoon went to Williamsburg, Virginia, which isn't too far from Jamestown, which was the first English settlement in Virginia. So if we talk about when did America begin, our history really started in the early 1600s.

When we talk about when did Israel begin, Israel really began with Abraham even though they did not have land until about 600 years after that fact when Joshua led the Israelites into the land. So Abraham is the father of Israel.

He's the one. It starts with him. All Israelites trace their history back to him. And what we're going to see is different stories of this people from chapter 12 all the way to the end of Genesis in chapter 50.

From this, we'll set the stage for the rest of the Old Testament and the rest of Scripture. If you look at the Old Testament, the Old Testament is really a history book of Israel. And like I said earlier, it's intended for us because we are God's people, too.

But the church did not start until 2 ,000 years ago after Christ's resurrection when he ascended to heaven. That's when the church started. Before then, the people of God was Israel. So if you can imagine yourself living 2 ,500 years ago, you may have been an Israelite as a child of God, as God's people.

And personally, I love studying history and there is no nation more fascinating to study than that of Israel because this is God's people. Out of all the peoples of the earth, God chose them to be his.

Deuteronomy 7, 6 and 7 says this. This is the Lord speaking. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. Out of all the peoples who are the face of the earth, it was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you.

For you were the fewest of all the peoples. And so Israel was this small people. They were this small people that eventually, they were in slavery in Egypt and eventually, they grew to be much bigger but they started off so small and they had all these nations around them that were so much bigger than them.

But God chose Israel. He didn't choose these other big nations like Egypt. He chose Israel. And they're the only nation in the history of the world who's ever been chosen by God. In fact, out of Israel would come the Messiah who would not only save Israel but would also save the whole world.

Abraham is the father of Israel and God makes this promise to him that the whole world would be blessed through him. That's what Genesis 12 through says. I'm sorry, Genesis 12, 3. That the whole world would be blessed through Abraham.

And it would be blessed through Abraham because Abraham's offspring, eventually Jesus, comes from that line and Jesus is the Savior of the world. And so you see that God's plan for the whole world comes through this one nation.

And anyone in the world who believes in him will be saved. And this is why in John 4, 22, the Apostle John writes that salvation is from the Jews because it really is from the Jews. God's plan went through this nation and the Messiah comes out of this nation.

And learning about Israel is very significant and I look forward to leading you through the history of Israel because our history is interconnected with theirs. As I already mentioned, the first people that made up the church came out of Israel.

All the apostles were Jews. We are Gentiles. We are non-Jews. But our history comes from theirs. So this is the fourth beginning I have highlighted in this sermon, the beginning of Israel. And we will look at the story of Abraham and then from there on, on New Year's Eve.

Okay, so we'll finish off the year with the story of Abraham and how it starts. So we saw this morning that Genesis is a book of origins. And over the coming weeks and months and years, I'm kidding, kind of, extending to March 2019, we're going to look at these beginnings.

The beginning of all things, the beginning of sin, the restart of humanity, and the beginning of Israel. And this sermon series is foundational to us because this is where we came from. This is where all humans came from.

And this is how it all started, which is why I titled this sermon series How It All Began. Learning Genesis will help us understand the Bible so much better. The ultimate goal is that as we understand Scripture better, we will grow into a deeper relationship with God, meeting Him as we meditate on the Scriptures.

And this leads us to worship Him, becoming more like Him. Okay, so I look forward to going on this journey with you over the future extending 18 months. And with that, let's close in prayer. Father in Heaven, I do pray, Lord, that You would guide us through this journey.

Lord, I need Your help every step of the way to help me with this and to lead us to understand what Your Word is saying. Lord, there's so many treasures here that are there for us to see. And so, Lord, I ask that You would help us to see them and that we would have a better understanding of the Bible and that we would have a better understanding of Your workings in this world and how it relates to us.

And so we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.