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Single pastor church. Okay, wow. And he's also a seminary extension instructor teaching classes at a minimum security prison in Oklahoma. So tonight, we're blessed to have him present for us on the topic of biblical hermeneutics with a focus on Genesis 1 through 11.
And as a reminder, we will be recording so or we are recording. So this is going to go to YouTube. Cameras are you, your microphones, we encourage you to keep them on mute, we'll mute you if you unmute yourself.
You have the option. No, not you. You have the option to keep your camera on or off. But if you do keep it on, just we ask that you don't do anything too distracting, you know, mess with your lights, get up and down or anything like that.
Make sure you're properly clothed. If you stand up, all of those kinds of things. So also, while he's presenting, if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat box, we'll have a Q and A afterward.
And that includes any questions that you guys have already entered. So with that, I'm happy to turn it over to my friend Pastor Steve Ellison.
All right, let's see if I can remember how to do this. This is my very first zoom meeting to even participate in. So I'm going to give it a shot. I intend to share a screen with you. And let's see if this is going to work.
Well, it looks like it's working. If I can get I think I'm just about set up.
There. I see green eyes. All right. And those aren't my.
Mind. But I am. I'm glad to be here. And I take it as an honor. And I hope I'm not in over my head. But I did see the list of speakers that you have had so far this summer. And that's quite a scholarly and technical group that you have had there.
And so Terry said they wanted me to come in for comedic relief. And so here I am. And I heard Jim say a minute ago, he was looking for in depth exegesis. I'm not sure I'm going to get there. In fact, I will probably do exactly the opposite, not eisegesis, but I will probably back up to a 40 ,000 foot view.
I don't want you to think that I have anything new to share with you. Everything that I have is something that I have gleaned from someone else. But one of the things that we have dealt with, and the screen should have changed, let me see.
Well, I am screen sharing, but it didn't didn't.
Remember you have to use that app. Terry, what did you go.
Through last?
I don't know what happened. But there it came. We'll see if it'll go to the next one. What I grow weary over is hearing from people and I'm coming from a pastoral perspective. And everything that I do revolves around the Great Commission.
And I grow weary of people saying, well, let's just focus on the main thing. And what they think the main thing is, is that telling people that God loves them, and then that they don't even include truth in that love that it's just, you know, don't hurt their feelings and be kind and compassionate, which is something that we need to do.
But a truth is really, really important. And you can't love people without also including the truth. And so if we, if we think that Genesis one through 11 is not essential, we are fooling ourselves. And so that's a perspective that I want to come from.
And this is not a new thing. And many of you are aware of this, but this fellow, William Paul Young wrote a couple of books, you're probably familiar with at least one of them. And in one of the books, he wrote this, if God has originated the cross, then we worship a cosmic abuser.
So he's calling the God of the Bible, if you believe Genesis one through 11, and the need for the cross, you're worshiping a cosmic child abuser. And then he gets sarcastic and says, who in divine wisdom, has created a means not only to torture his own son, but also created that in order to torture human beings.
So it would be in place so that his son could be tortured. And he arrives at that by not taking Genesis one through 11 seriously. And because he doesn't take Genesis one through 11 seriously, then he doesn't take the Gospels seriously.
And that's a problem and an issue. Here's another example, very similar. You'll notice that the very first word is in italics, that emphasis is mine. The article calls him a Christian musician, but I'm not sure that you can call him a Christian musician, if this is his attitude.
I would love to hear more artists who sing to God and fewer who include the old rugged cross. And so he went on to say, and if you can't think of anything to sing to God other than the old rugged cross, then take a look at nature, take a look at the blessings in material life.
And that comes as a direct result of not taking Genesis one through 11 as the truth. Here's another fellow who, he's a Baptist. I'm a Southern Baptist. He's in Britain, he's written a book, The Lost Message of Jesus.
And in this book, he has concluded that Genesis is true myth. Well, I don't really know what true myth is, except for he's going to argue that it entails a spiritual message that's true, but it's not historical and it's not literal.
Well, if it's not grounded in history, I don't know what foundation you have. He's also concluded that same sex marriage is good. He's concluded that there's no such thing as original sin. Because there's no original sin, he's concluded there's no substitutionary atonement.
And he also uses that same term cosmic child abuse. And that stuff that I have there on the slide came from several different articles in a liberal British newspaper called The Guardian. And they continually refer to him as an evangelical.
That's a mighty loose definition of evangelical. And I'm sure that when Mike Riddle was in front of you, and I think that was last week, I'm sure that you heard about death before sin. But I wanted to make sure that you certainly did not miss that.
Because if your worldview does not, if your worldview includes death and dying and corruption in the world before man sinned, I don't think that you have a Christian worldview. And I'm not sure how you can arrive at the need to be saved in your own mind and how you can arrive at Christ dying in your place on the cross, if you think that there was death and disease and corruption in the world before sin arrived.
And I'm sure that Mike drilled that home to you. I just want to remind you once again, that the preacher in Ecclesiastes said, there's nothing new under the sun. And there's certainly nothing new in my teaching.
And you won't you won't find anything new here. This is just simply what I have learned from other people. These are places that I go to, these are places that you go to, I feel quite sure. I just wanted to give them credit for, you know, things that I have learned and that sort of thing.
When I preach, and that's primarily what I do with Genesis, one through 11. Almost always, if I'm preaching from the first 11 chapters of Genesis, I consult Jonathan Sarfati's book that is in my, in my library, it's the best commentary that I have on Genesis one through 11.
Well, the first thing that we need to understand if we're going to come to a, an understanding of what Genesis one through 11 is all about is, we need to understand that, that this book is not a history book.
It's not a science book. It's not a book on archaeology. It's not a book on even religious or spiritual truths, though all of those things are included. It is the Creator's story, and it is grounded in real events.
And the most, the most loving thing and the the best thing, the most righteous thing, the, the purest thing, the kindest thing, the most compassionate thing, that the Creator can do for His creation is to reveal Himself to us.
And that's what the Bible is about. If you read the Bible for religious rules, you are missing the blessing of the scripture. And if you're reading it for science, you'll find science, but that's not the point.
If you're reading it for history, well, you'll find history, but that's not the point. The point is, is even more than that you know about God, but you will know God. The Creator wants His creation to know Him.
And that is, that is the most compassionate and loving thing that the Creator can do for His creation. And so that's what He's done in His book. And every time I open the Bible up, that's, that's immediately where my mind goes.
That's the first thing that I think about, that it is His revelation of Himself to His creation. That's what He wants to do. You've seen and heard this over and over again. Genesis is the key to understanding the scripture.
If you don't get the first book, the foundational book, you're not going to understand the rest of it. And it is based on real historical events, or I am sadly mistaken. I cannot remember where I came up with this.
It looks like something I would have adapted from John Piper. But I don't know. Can't remember. So don't want you to think it's necessarily mine. But I think there's a lot of truth in it. It seems that God created the world as a temple, and He placed His image bearers, us, in it.
In other words, the universe is a theater to display God's glory. That seems really true to me. You and I are participants, sometimes willing, sometimes unwilling, in this grand drama. And the single goal is to display the glory and majesty of God to all of His creation.
And that's what His book is about to show us our place and our part in that. If you pick up the scripture, you need to understand at least in my worldview, that the Bible is going to rule over government that God ordained government, it's going to rule over law that comes from God ordained government.
And it ministers to me, but the Bible rules over me and it rules over it. The same exact thing is true for archaeology. And the same exact thing is true for science. And I think that that is the only way to look at the scripture if you're going to hold a biblical worldview.
Well, if we've determined what the scripture is, that it is God's revelation of Himself to us, so that we can know Him, well, that still leaves us with a question of how do we go about interpreting it?
Because when we read it, we need to understand it. That means that some interpretation is going to be required. Well, there has been a raging battle, at least in the United States and in other parts of the world as well, I know, about who gets to determine the meaning of any particular document.
And I think that probably the two things that have been attacked the most have been the Bible and the U .S. Constitution. And I'm not sure how you can arrive at the idea that the reader would determine the meaning.
But there are many people who read Shakespeare, they read the Bible, they read the Constitution, and they think that they are the ones that get to decide what it means. Then the next two, different people argue for different things about whether it's the text that determines the meaning or whether it's the author that determines the meaning.
I don't see a great deal of difference between those two. I do understand the argument that if you just say it's the text, that it's a lot easier for me or anybody else to twist the text to come around to the way that I think that it should mean.
It's a little bit harder to twist the author. It's really a matter of putting it into context, and who the original intended recipients of the text were, and what the author meant. But in any case, it's not the reader.
Okay. And so when I read the Scripture, it's dangerous for me to say, well, what does that mean to me? Well, if you want to go that route, in my estimation, it's a lot safer thing to say something like this.
What is God calling me to do? And what is God calling me to be? And so that's a lot safer in my mind than for me to say, what does that mean to me? Because I think I might be inclined to make it say what I want it to say.
That's not good. Well, the first thing that we need to understand is, is if we're going to say that the author determines the meaning, we ought to remember that if we are believers in the Lord, then at that point, when we were born again, that we were indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
And if we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we have a marvelous tool. We have a tremendous help. We have the author of the book living inside of us. Now, I know that, and it's easy to say that sitting here in front of a computer talking to you, but I can't tell you how often, I'd be embarrassed to tell you how often I pick up the Scripture and read it without properly asking for illumination from the author who is indwelling me, who loves me more than I love myself, who is part of the Trinity.
And so that's just a confession to me. Perhaps you need to make the same confession. I don't know, but I need to do a better job of every single time I open the Scripture of immediately asking, I need illumination.
I got a couple of Scriptures that I think would be worth looking at very briefly related to that. And I have down in the lower left-hand corner, the New American Standard updated just to tell you that anything that I have on the slide will be from NASU unless I noted otherwise.
And I don't think I have anything else on this particular set of slides. But 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 4, Paul writes to me, says, the God, lowercase g, of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that, well, he's blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see.
It's interesting. He's blinded their minds so they can't see. And so this is related to understanding. The unbelievers have a severe handicap in trying to understand what the Scripture says. And that makes it difficult for me to relate to them properly, because I expect unbelievers to act like believers, or at least people that understand the Scripture.
Okay? So that they might not see, well, what is it that the evil one, the one who shows up in Genesis chapter 3, what is it that he does not want people to understand? Well, he does not want them to see or understand the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
So the evil one blinds their minds, so they do not understand what the Scripture says about the focal point of the Scripture, which is Christ. Colossians 1, marvelous passage on the deity of Christ. Christ is the image of the invisible God.
I don't know exactly why it is, but it is true that the Father and the Holy Spirit have, and I'll speak here as a fool, have pushed the Son to the forefront. The Father and the Spirit have intentionally put the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus himself, out in the front and they have chosen to use him to reveal the Trinity to us.
And so we don't see a whole lot about the Father and the Spirit in terms of recognizing them except through the Son. And I don't know if we'll ever know the answer to that question, but that is the point in reading the Scriptures that we might see the Lord Jesus.
I'm quite sure that Jason Lyle talked to you about this, but I thought it was too important to pass over in case there are new people on who missed that. The doctrine of perspicuity simply means that anybody of normal or average intelligence can understand the Bible when he or she reads it.
You don't have to have a doctorate. You have, if you're a pastor, you have the help of the Holy Spirit, and it is understandable. It does not have to be picked apart, though sometimes that's helpful, but anybody can understand it.
And you're probably familiar with that, but I thought it was worth the time to take a look at. Dr. Lyle, if the plain sense makes sense, we should seek no other sense lest we create nonsense. And he's right.
If you're reading the Scripture, and you come across something that you don't understand, well, you don't need to ask me. You need to ask the rest of the Scripture. You need to let other places that speak about the same thing to interpret the Scriptures that you don't understand.
So let Scripture interpret Scripture. You let that which is very clear, that which is explicit, inform or interpret that which is not as clear to you. If you find a verse that you think is a little unclear, well, check out the rest of the Scripture, and you will probably find something that will make that more clear.
So you let that which is explicit interpret the implicit. The classic example that most creationists turn to is that there are passages in Deuteronomy and in the New Testament as well that speak about the earth as being old or ancient.
And those who would believe in an old earth would say, see, it's old and it's ancient. Well, of course, it's old and it's ancient. It is several thousand years old, just like Genesis tells you. Certainly, the context is going to be incredibly important if you're going to understand what the Scripture says.
And if you come across a verse and you decide that you know what it means, well, if it doesn't fit in the paragraph that you find it in, and if it doesn't fit in the path, a little next larger passage, if it doesn't fit in the book, it doesn't fit in the Testament, it doesn't fit in the overall Bible, you've probably interpreted incorrectly, or I have.
And so we need to make sure that it that it fits. A quick illustration, I guess, if you were, if you decided you know what the field is in the parable of the hidden treasure in the field, or if you figured out what the hidden treasure is, and you come up with an idea about that, and you check it and it doesn't fit with the three parables that are grouped right around it about hidden treasures, or if it doesn't fit in the larger passage of the kingdom parables, if it doesn't fit with the message of the book of Matthew, if it doesn't fit with the New Testament, if it doesn't fit with the Bible overall, you better look for another interpretation.
If I'm going to understand any part of the Bible, if I'm going to understand Genesis one through 11, I need to understand that there is nothing in Genesis one through 11 or any other part of the scripture that is there by accident.
God has intentionally selected what he has written down. He does not have a contract with a book publisher, where he needs a certain number of words or pages. He's not trying to, you know, just fill up pages, and he doesn't leave anything out.
And so it's there for a reason. And if it's not there, then it's left out for a reason. And that doesn't always make sense to me, and it doesn't always make sense to you. But he doesn't put things in there that muddy the waters.
And whatever he puts in there, whatever he has put in, is there on purpose. He's intentionally selected all of that. This is a very simple idea that I think a lot of people miss. And people will go and begin to go down to the most minute details immediately in a verse and never get the big picture.
And I think that's doing it in reverse. I think the proper way is to read the larger passage, maybe the entire book that it's in, but the larger passage, and you get a good look at the big picture. And then I think it will be much easier to make the details fall into place and you'll get a clear understanding of what God is trying to reveal about himself.
Here's a passage from the New Testament that I think that will give you a glimpse into what is really the main point of the Scriptures. Jesus is speaking in John chapter 5 to a group of arrogant and rebellious religious leaders.
And he says to them, you search the Scriptures, the Old Testament, because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me, and you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life.
They've been reading the Old Testament. They've spent a great deal of their life memorizing at least the Pentateuch. And yet they do not recognize Jesus. And he is getting on to them. He is chastising them a little bit more so if you continue in this passage, because they haven't recognized him.
Verse 45, he says, do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you've set your hope. For if you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
So the first five books are attributed to Moses, and he has written about Jesus. If you don't believe those, then how are you going to believe Jesus who is speaking? Another familiar passage to you, Jesus has been resurrected from the dead.
He's on the Emmaus Road, and he comes upon two disciples. And I don't know if they're part of the 12 or not, but they're disciples. And he said to them, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.
Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory? Then a most amazing thing takes place. Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.
So based on the two bookends there, Moses and all the prophets, and then all the scriptures, you know, I conclude that the Old Testament, for all practical purposes, is just one huge set of illustrations that tell you about the Lord Jesus and about salvation that is available in him.
I ran across this, this cartoon just today, as a matter of fact, I found it interesting. And it's a quote from John Calvin. And you notice that all these Old Testament characters that you recognize are pointing to one and the same thing to the cross.
And Calvin says, this is what we, we should in short, seek in the whole of scripture, truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father.
If one were to sift thoroughly the law and the prophets, he would not find a single word which would not draw and bring us to him. I don't clear my throat and I don't apologize. Whenever I'm in front of people with the scripture, I'm looking for Jesus.
And perhaps I'll have to answer for that one day. And maybe I'll stand in front of the judgment seat. And maybe I'll have to explain why I saw Jesus in too many places. I don't know. But I unashamedly, I'm looking for Jesus in the scriptures, very roughly broken down into the time in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were walking with God in a paradise, perfect communion with him.
And then very shortly, they rebel, and they fall, and sin has entered the world, and they will live with God at a distance. And that'll be the true, true all throughout the Old Testament. God won't totally abandon his creation, but there will be a separation between people and God.
The people rebel and God backs away to some degree. But then there will be Emmanuel. There'll be God with us. And though he only stays on the earth for a short time and ascends to the Father, he doesn't leave them alone.
Another person of the Trinity will take his place very, very quickly at Pentecost. And you will have God with us for a very long time. And then when this is all ended here on earth, it'll be us with God, which won't be exactly like God with us.
And you know that. I want to run through a quick summary of the scripture, because I really think that it is important to back off. And I do think that that's the best contribution that I could make to you.
You've listened and heard from all sorts of people who have a lot more technical expertise than I do. And you have heard from people with a lot more scientific expertise, people who probably have, certainly have more expertise in Hebrew and in other linguistic studies and in just scriptural knowledge.
But I think that it's helpful to look at the overall picture and see how Genesis 1 through 11 fits in. Because I think that solves a lot of the issues that the unbelieving world has. Well, the first thing that the Creator does in his book is he introduces himself and he just proclaims he's there.
He exists all by himself. He's self-existent. Power rests in him. Wisdom rests in him. Creativity rests in him. He creates a perfect creation from nothing. Then man is created, introduced into the record of scripture, created in the image of God.
But before you get to thinking too highly of yourself, you are dirt. You are dust to the ground. God introduces himself as the lawgiver. He lays down a law, a rule for them. The possibility of choosing is revealed.
And I know that there are some that would disagree with me and say man really doesn't have a choice. But they may need to let God know about that because God writes in his book all throughout it that choose, choose, choose.
And here are the ramifications of choosing this way and the ramifications of choosing this other way. And then very quickly, we're introduced to the absence of good, perhaps even the absence of God, I guess, in that evil.
But in any case, good is absent in this choice that the evil one gives to them. You see that a choice is actually made. It is a reality. Sin has entered the world. There's rebellion. And that means that there must be a way for man to be reconciled with God because man can't do anything to do that.
And so God's going to provide that. You see that the Messiah is promised in the seed of the woman. You see that a war of the serpent is promised. The serpent will be doing everything in his power to prevent the seed of the woman from being born.
You see in Genesis beginning in chapter 12, all of you just seem to see barren woman after barren woman. The serpent does not want the seed of the woman to be born. If the seed of the woman is born, he does everything in his power to destroy the seed of the woman.
If he can't destroy the seed of the woman, he tries to corrupt the seed of the woman. You see it in the lives of the patriarchs. You see it in the lives of many other famous men in the scripture that the evil one does everything in his power to corrupt them and especially to corrupt them with sexual sin.
Very difficult for them to lead their lives because the evil one singled them out for attack in that area. The curse that comes upon creation and the death that enters is a constant reminder to us of the faithfulness of God.
He's going to do what he said he's going to do. And at the end, he is going to judge all of his creation, including us. The record of the flood certainly reminds us of the total depravity of mankind, how awful that we were.
Scripture then moves to one picture after another of the Messiah just continually throughout the scripture. You're going to see that at the Babel event that nations will be created. And I think it's worth noting that the special nation that God wants to use to reach the world is going to be created not from the Babel event, but it's going to be created from nothing, if you will.
It will be created from one single man. So it's not God choosing one of the nations that is created at the Tower of Babel, but it's a special one created from a single man. You're going to see throughout the Old Testament, choose life, choose death, choose blessings, choose curses, choose, choose, choose, choose.
You're going to see prophecy after prophecy after prophecy of the Messiah, so that when the Messiah does enter time and space, then we will have the opportunity to recognize him. And so the Messiah comes in the words of Luke 19, to seek and to save the lost.
You see that the first Adam failed miserably, though he was in paradise, with a helper suitable for him, with everything that he needed, with direct communion with the Lord. He was one rule to keep and he failed miserably.
The last Adam, the second Adam, as the scripture calls him both things, he is going to be not in a paradise, but in a wilderness, in a desert, and he's going to be accosted by the evil one. He's going to be all alone.
He's not going to have food, and he is going to succeed anyway. Hallelujah for that. He is going to reveal himself as the way, the truth, and the life. He is going to be sacrificed as the true Passover lamb.
He is going to ascend to the Father, and the Holy Spirit is going to descend. The church is born. God is going to bless the world through the church, doing virtually the same thing that the nation of Israel was supposed to do.
The church is in process of being sanctified to become a suitable bride for the groom for the end times. That continues now. Some point in the future, the church is going to be taken to be with the Lord, and it will be glorified at that point, will be rendered spotless and unblemished and ready to be the bride.
I don't have these in any particular order, and I don't know that I know the order of these things. But the Creator is going to judge creation and restore all things or replace all things. There is a real heaven, and there is a real hell.
In spite of all the hypocrisy that you see taught, where some would indicate that they believe in a real heaven, but they don't believe in a real hell. They will also believe that you get to go to heaven if you're just not a mass murderer, and that sort of a thing.
There's a real heaven. There's a real hell. There are real teachings about them. And there is a judgment. And the judgment is, do you have the Son or do you not have the Son? There'll be a wedding supper of the Lamb.
Looking forward to that. And we don't know exactly what will take place in eternity. We're given the chance to serve, the Scripture says. We'll be given rewards, the Scripture says. The Scripture says that age will roll upon age, and we will receive grace continually and continually.
And we will be used by God Himself to teach those created beings who did not fall about His grace. They never received the opportunity to receive grace. They either obeyed and remained in place, or they did not obey and they fell with no reconciliation possible according to what we know from the Scripture.
Without an understanding of Genesis being in real history, those six slides summarizing the Scripture just don't make any sense. There's no need for the cross, if there's not an actual, real, literal Adam and Eve who really, really fell.
And so it does affect the gospel. And so at this point, I hope there is an understanding that the essential things begin in Genesis 1 through 11. It's not just that you can just come to the New Testament and ignore the Old Testament.
You can't ignore Genesis 1 through 11. Because without Genesis 1 through 11, it's not possible to understand the good news of the Lord Jesus. And in fact, for those that don't believe in Genesis 1 through 11, they come to the conclusion that we saw in those illustrations at the beginning, that the gospel is not good news at all, that the gospel is rather a God who is cruel.
If you hold an acorn in your hand, or if you plant an acorn, and an oak tree grows from it, the question that comes to my mind is, a hundred years later, and you have a magnificent oak tree, how much of that oak tree was in the acorn in the beginning?
Well, the answer to that is all of it. Okay? And it grows from that one acorn. And I think that when we read the Old Testament, when we read Genesis, we find many, many, many truths. You're going to find those truths commented on and explained to some degree in the rest of the Scripture, but you're going to find most of the major doctrines that you find anywhere in the Scripture, you'll find them originating in Genesis 1 through 11.
So Genesis 1 through 11 are foundational events. When you come to chapter, that reveal God, when you come to chapter 12, and you go to the end of the book, you're going to find foundational characters, but the characters aren't really the most important thing, it's their foundational characters who teach you about God.
They reveal God and your relationship to God in those foundational characters. You go through Genesis 1 through 11, you see all these events, all these things that are just incredibly significant events that happen.
Then you get to 12, and it just flips and begins to talk about people and incredibly important things. In the life of Abraham, you find out about most everything you need to know about faith. Sometimes he's not faithful, you find out from his mistakes what faith is.
You go to his son Isaac, and you learn about submission, and boy, doesn't he teach you about submission. We saw the cartoon earlier, and it showed a picture of a young boy tied up on an altar, and I assumed that that was Isaac, but Isaac was pretty close to full grown.
He was certainly able, would have been able to resist Abraham, who was incredibly old at this point, but he submitted himself to that. You're going to find out about submission to God from Isaac. You're going to find out about wrestling with yourself from Jacob, particularly in shifting from being self-sufficient to dependent upon the Lord in the life of Jacob.
Then you're going to see in Joseph, I think, all three of those things wrapped up, faith, submission, and becoming dependent or surrendering to the Lord from the life of Jacob. This New American Commentary written by Kenneth Matthews on Genesis 1 through 11, I taught a class that used that as a textbook, and there are several things that I disagree with Matthews about, particularly the age of the earth.
I don't really recommend that, and I don't use that a great deal, but this quote I thought was pretty interesting, speaking about the length of time that it took God to create the world. There are a lot of folks today in modern thinking that just try to make it sound like it wouldn't be possible for God to create the world in only six days and resting on the seventh.
But Matthews there, quotes, speaks and says, the early Jewish and Christian interpreters looked at it in the opposite way. They couldn't understand why it would take God so long to create the world. Here's a quote from Sarfati, and he says, the main reason for claiming that Genesis 1 through 11 is poetry or allegory is that science, my emphasis there underlining it, has supposedly proved that Genesis can't be real history.
I think he's exactly right. I don't think it's possible to read Genesis 1 through 11, anybody of ordinary intelligence to read that passage, unless they have a preconceived idea, unless they have some presuppositions, they are assuming that it's not literal.
I don't know how you can read it and come up with old age and evolution. God is really seems to be going to great lengths to indicate that we are, that he has created in six 24 hour days and then rested on a seventh one.
Is Genesis poetry? A lot of linguists have done a lot of studies on that and concluded that very little of Genesis is poetry. And when it is, it has been clearly marked, you don't have any problem telling that it is.
I think it's pretty clear that Genesis is indeed history. I don't know who's coined this phrase, it's probably just grown up from a multitude of people. But rather than trying to argue with people that any particular part of the scripture is strictly literal, you're going to create a lot of headaches and problems for yourself because there are places in the scripture where it's clearly not meant to be taken literally.
I mean, I don't think that Jesus is literally saying that if you got a problem with lust, you need to blind yourself. But he is using hyperbole to indicate to you that this is a lot more serious than we normally allow ourselves to think.
So it's easier to say literal, historical grammatical method so that you don't get back yourself into a corner and can't back yourself up. Virtually everybody that claims that Genesis 1 -11 is poetic will also say that Genesis 12 -50 is history.
Well, personally, when I read it, I don't see any break there that indicates that we have changed genres. And very few other people really come to that conclusion either. In the beginning, God just simply declares that he is there, and he is in existence, and he has existed forever.
And if you're gonna let other scriptures, you know, inform that verse, Ecclesiastes tells us that God has set eternity in our hearts. And so we have some idea that he has existed for eternity and that he will exist forever.
Forever. And Romans 1 makes it very plain that you and I are without excuse. He has revealed himself to us in nature and through our conscience that we know that we didn't get here by accident, that we are the result of a creator.
I'm going to rely on the program hosts to cut me off when they're tired of hearing from me or tell me when it's time to stop, because there's no way that I will get through. So just so that you guys know that you need to cut me off.
Genesis chapter one, as I reminded or said at the beginning, I'm not going to dig down and try to give you the details and try to use linguistic tools and explain the meanings of these verses. But what I want to see is how does this fit with the gospel message?
How does this impact my ability to carry out the great commission? A hundred years ago, you could talk to a man, plow in his field and tell him, don't ask him the question, wouldn't you like to be saved?
And he might say something like, not yet. But he would understand that he would need to be saved. Well, today, it seems to be drilled into people that I'm okay, you're okay, everything's okay. There's no such thing as absolute truth.
And I don't really need to be saved. And if you say that I need to be saved, that is an absolute affront to me, that I could, that I'm offended by that. God exists. He created everything. He created without any outside help.
He did it without effort. There is nothing that is impossible for him. In fact, there is no grading of things that he would do in terms of how difficult it is. Everything is of the exact same difficulty level for him.
Not at all. There is no difficulty for him. Everything that God created in its original form was good. It was blessed. And in fact, he will come at the end of it and say, not only is it good, it's very good.
And most of us, that is, it's perfect without blemish, without sin. We've already talked about that you are in the image of God and you are also from the dust of the ground. So, as Paul writes in the New Testament in a couple of places, don't think more highly of yourselves than you ought to.
Don't think more lowly of yourselves. Think properly about yourself. Okay. Genesis 1 commands fruitfulness to all of creation, including mankind. And it is six literal 24 hour days. If you simply read it at face value.
Genesis 1 seems to be a refuting in some ways of some other ancient Near Eastern religions that would say that, well, there are different gods and this one has control over that one or dominance over this one.
The God of the Bible is his own autonomous master. He has an uncontested word. There is no one to contest it. He is the only being that has an absolute free will can determine what he wants to do. I cannot tell you that I'm going to continue for the next five minutes and then quit at that point because he could stop me before then.
There's nothing before him. He has no competition. There are no chaos gods that other religions would talk about. He is there. Genesis 1, I surely hope that you have noted that there is only one race.
Every person is descended from Adam and Eve. Every person is also descended from Noah and his wife. And it does not matter what you look like, or what your capabilities are. There is only one race in every single one is in the image of God.
You and me and every single person. There is only one race. You've seen that and we've talked about that. It was very good. There was evening, and there was morning, and it was the sixth day, and it is perfect.
There was no death and there was no disease and there was no corruption. When you read Genesis 1, I cannot for the life of me, fathom how God could have worded that differently to have made it more apparent that he created in six literal days.
You move into Genesis chapter 2. He finishes on day the sixth. He completes his work. He rests because there's nothing left to provide for his creation. He is resting because all is right in the kingdom.
And he blesses and declares holy day the seventh. We come to a new section in Genesis. Genesis is the only book in the Bible that God outlined for the reader. I'm not exactly sure what the significance of that is, but I do believe that it's significant or God would not have done that.
But he outlines the Bible for us. Those various translations have translated the Toledot as account or generations or the records of the generations or the families. And so you can see when you come to those various places, what's being spoken about.
For example, the very first one, the Toledot of the heavens and the earth. In other words, the records of the heavens of the earth, the account of the heavens of the earth. So it answers the question, what became of or what's the record of or what happened to the heavens and the earth?
Well, it's a fairly long section, but it can be boiled down pretty much to this. Sin entered at least the earth. Now I'm not indicating that sin entered heaven, though there were, you know, angels that fell, but I'm not indicating that there's sin in heaven.
But this is the Toledot of the heavens and the earth. And what you see is that sin enters, death enters, and it devastates the creation. Can't understand the gospel unless you come to that. Okay. That in parentheses is the foot note in the new American standard.
This is the account. Okay, this literally these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that Yahweh Elohim made earth and heaven. The point here is the God that seems to be above everything in Genesis one, okay, is one in the same God as the God that is walking with them in chapter two, in chapter three, one and the same.
You come across this pairing of Jehovah and Elohim, two different words that the scripture uses to name the creator, the divine being. You find it 20 times in chapters two and three of Genesis, you only find it one more time in the rest of the Torah, and only 20 more times in the rest of the Old Testament, which indicates to me that this is the definitive passage that God wants to get your attention about this.
And I think the point is, is that the transcendent God is the same as the eminent God, the God who created everything and seems to be standing off a little bit aloof. He's the same one that comes and makes covenant with us, the same one and the same.
Continuing with this Toledot of the heavens and the earth, there's only one rule to keep. They're in paradise. They got perfect communication with the creator. And he tells them, dying, you shall die if you disobey the rule.
And as Ken Hamm says, you're going to keep on dying until you're dead. And that's pretty accurate. You also see that mankind gets to name the animals. So you find out that man has dominance over superiority over the animals.
That's what naming them means. And you come across where God creates Eve, and brings her to Adam. And Adam basically says, Wow. And that's what happens when a man and woman fall in love, that it should be that kind of a relationship and God is going to introduce marriage.
And it appears to me that there's no other human relationship that compares. And I think that if you read the rest of the scripture, to comment on this passage, that the best thing that a husband or wife can do for their children is to love each other.
And they will do a good job parenting if they get that right. This relationship takes precedence. God brought the woman to the man, she's a gift. Heterosexual monogamy is the established intended expected pattern.
Man strays from that pretty quick. But that is the expected pattern. It does indicate that man and wife become one flesh. And don't miss this. We have failed in our teaching in modern times, or postmodern times, whatever you want to call it, but current times, because we have failed to teach that marriage is important and significant.
Not primarily because it's the best way to raise kids, though it is not primarily because it's the best thing for civilization, though it is, it is significant, mostly, mainly, most importantly, because it gives us the picture of the union between the body of Christ and Christ.
It pictures that tremendous union between the individuals in the body of Christ and Christ and the church itself. And when we fool around with that, when people get involved in any kind of sexual immorality, any and every kind, they are damaging the union, damaging the picture of the union with the body of Christ and Christ.
We come to the place where sin enters the world to a federal head. And been a lot of people complained about that and said, you know, gee, I don't think that's fair. Well, I'm here to tell you, if you, you better stop short of that, because if, if you don't think it's fair that sin would enter through one man, well, then you're probably not going to get the penalty being paid by one man.
And so I don't know how you can understand the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, without understanding Genesis 3. Okay? Adam and Eve were naked, none ashamed, no sin, perfect harmony between man and woman, harmony with the animals, and no corruption, nothing going on.
The tempter enters, created being. He instigates, leads mankind into doing what mankind probably was ready to do, to rebel. And then God walks through the garden, giving you a picture of what he's going to do from that point forward, what he continues to do now, and will do until the time of judgment.
He is saying, oh man, where are you? And if that doesn't arrest your attention, I don't know what will. If you haven't listened anytime, you need to search out Don Francisco singing the song he wrote, Adam, Where Are You?
I don't know how you understand Luke chapter 19, where you see the Messiah, the Son of Man, has come to seek and to save the lost. I don't know how you fail to connect to those two things. Then you're going to see there in Genesis 3, that God is going to hold court.
You see that the gift of repentance is granted to men, but not to angels. Angels only understand grace by seeing it given to us. And I think that is how God uses us to teach angels throughout eternity.
Punishment is meted out in this courtroom. There is a curse placed on serpent and on the ground, but not on the men and the women, man and the woman. You see the first example of evangelism here, or the indication that the evangelist is coming.
Proto-evangelium, you see that the Messiah is promised and he will come. You will see that there will be a double protection given to Adam and Eve and to the descendants. They are ushered out of the presence of the tree of life and not allowed to come back in.
And you see that there are a pair of cherubim there and that there is a sword that continually rotates that will prevent them from coming back to the tree of life. You see this Toledot continues. You see in chapter 4, in 17 verses, you see Cain's name mentioned 14 times.
Obviously, this is about Cain. You're going to see a portrait of an unbeliever, and you're going to see that you know who an unbeliever is because he refuses to worship. There's a proper way to worship.
Abel did that. Cain does not. Many have tried to indicate that it has to do with the fact that Abel's sacrifice included blood and Cain's did not. I do not see that when I read the scripture, but I don't spend any time arguing about that.
It appears to me that it's attitude of the heart. But in any case, what you do see there is you see a progression of this unbelief in this refusal to worship. You see anger present in Cain. You see no remorse when God approaches him.
You see no repentance when it's offered. You see that he resents the truth, and then he ultimately rejects the truth. You see a blessed warning from the Lord. Sin crouches at your door and its desire is for you.
You see reconciliation is offered by God himself, but Cain refuses it. That's generally what we do when we are stuck in unbelief. His unrepentant sin grows worse. It goes from anger to murder, and you have the first death.
The unbelievers cursed. You see that's different from the curse on the serpent and on the ground and no curse on Adam and Eve. But now there is a curse on a human being, on the unbeliever. That's important.
You see, this is how you can understand the gospel message in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and in the epistle. The unbeliever is cursed. He went out from the presence of the Lord. That's what an unbeliever does.
God was hidden from the unbeliever's face. Not all of this is from Genesis 4. Some of this is from Jude as well. The unbeliever is a wandering vagrant on the face of the earth. That's where we come up with the term, the lost.
He lives a miserable life. The unbeliever finds his way into your churches, and he is like a hidden reef that the ships in your church body crash on. They're hidden in there. You can understand the wheat and the tares.
They are autumn trees without fruit. In other words, you see them in your churches. They should be bearing fruit, but they are not. And then you see a sad verse, for whom the black darkness is reserved forever.
We come to a new Toledot. This is the book of the generations of Adam. This is a little different from the other Toledots. This is the only one that doesn't say, these are the generations of. It says, this is the book of the generations of Adam.
It's the only one that adds it. You will see that Matthew 1 .1 has the same formula. Genesis 5 tells you the generations that proceed from the first Adam. Matthew 1 .1 tells you the generations that precede the last Adam.
In the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. That's important in the likeness of God. It's repeating what's already been told to you back in Genesis 1. You're also going to see that not only is Adam in the likeness of God, but Seth is in the likeness of Adam.
Good indication that you and I have inherited that as well. Adam was in the likeness of God, Seth was in the likeness of Adam, and so forth. The genealogies, particularly in chapter 5, but also in chapter 11, are genealogies that many have called chronogeneologies.
They don't leave you any possibility of having left out any time, even if a person is left out of the genealogy, there's no time left out because of the way that it is constructed. You'll see that there are two genetic bottlenecks in Genesis 1 -11.
We are in between those two. There's one right here, and then there will be one after Noah and his family get off of the ark. I tend to think that that is the reason why the lifespans are greatly reduced after the flood, or gradually greatly reduced, because there are genetic mutations.
There's a genetic bottleneck in the time of Adam, but there are no mutations at first, and so it doesn't affect lifespan. But there are enough mutations already in the human population that when they get off of the ark and they begin to mate with close relatives, there'll be enough mutations that that will cause the lifespan to go down.
That seems the most plausible explanation to me. The Bible doesn't speak directly to it. Something the Bible does speak directly to is chapter 5. We find out that in addition to Abel having died, fulfilling God's promise about death entering the world, there is a repetition eight times of a little phrase, and he died.
Eight times. God wants you to know that what he said was true. Chapter 6, 1 -4, I could spend a lot of time on that and never say anything that was worth you hearing. There is a hint at the Trinity, obviously, in there.
There is a mention of 120 years, and people have argued about what that means, whether it's lifespan of man, or whether it is the length of time before the flood comes and all those kinds of things. But there's a mention of some giants or some tyrants.
But I think the main point there is the gross immorality that is found there in that passage.
Pastor Steve?
Yes, ma 'am.
Do you want to go ahead and start winding down maybe six more minutes?
Okay, I can stop any time. I'll say this, that about this passage, it seems to be the greatest passage or description of the depravity of man. And there is a wordplay there in the intent that man was intending evil as God was intending good in informing Adam.
And the wicked acts are the result of wicked thoughts. You know, James writes about that in the New Testament. And so I know that I probably haven't really said much of anything that was new to you. But I hope that I have tied some things together that maybe you hadn't thought of in that way before.
And I hope that maybe I have reviewed and repeated some things that you've heard before, in terms of context and in terms of what the Scripture means as a whole, and that it is easier to understand it if we back off from it just a little bit and look at it from a higher view.
And what is going to wind up taking place at the end of this section, in fact, it's really at the beginning of chapter 12, you're going to see that the Lord has been working throughout all of these events that occur in Genesis 1 through 11, and all the things that He has to do in response to what His creation does.
In Genesis 12, 1, 2, and 3, you're very familiar with it. It's the call of Abram, and it's the covenant with Abram, and it's God promising to bless every family on the earth. He eventually gets around to saying that, and He's going to do it through this one man.
And it is a clear indication that this Creator who created everything good, man messed it all up. And you see every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. You see the pride and the arrogance and rebellion at Babel.
And then you see immediately God raises up a man, He's going to create a special nation, and He's going to bless the whole world by giving a great blessing. And primarily, He's going to give two things.
He's going to give the law, which is going to point us toward our need for a Savior. And then He's going to give us Himself as that Savior. And so I hope I haven't bored you too badly. And I thank you for allowing me to be here.
I hope.
It was worthwhile.
I really enjoyed it.
There, I found my unmute thing. Yeah, I wasn't bored. And I think a lot of us were really enjoying it. And we weren't bored. June, I think, June, do you have a question that you want to ask Pastor C?
Hi, June.
Can you hear me now? Yes.
Yes. Okay. Um, yeah, I was a little bit confused when I went and read it. And I'm seeing everybody's response. What were you referring to? What script were you referring to where it said that God offered Cain reconciliation?
And I went back and read the one that somebody said Genesis 4, JD said Genesis 4 .7. So did Brian say Genesis 4 .7? And I'm going back and I'm it's just not something I'm seeing. That's not it's not what I'm taking away from it.
Is there any other reference? Or is that the one you're referring to is Genesis?
Is that true?
