Survey of the Pentateuch

The Meaning of the Pentateuch and Why It Matters

Well, good evening, everyone. Everyone comfortable? Ready for the next hour and a half? Okay, well, we are continuing tonight in our survey of the Old Testament. And tonight, we are going to be doing a survey of the Pentateuch.

Now, as we begin, I just want to define that particular term. Most of us are probably familiar with it, but some of you may not be. And so the term Pentateuch refers to five books. The word tukioi is the word for scroll.

So the last part refers to scrolls. And penta means five. So we have essentially the Pentateuch is the five scrolls or the five books. And it's traditionally been referred to as the books of Moses. So the Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses.

Now, you remember last week that we talked about the fact that the Hebrew Bible is referred to sometimes as the Tanakh. You remember there were three Hebrew phrases referencing the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets.

Or the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. You had the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim. Well, the Torah is also another name for the first five books of the Bible. So you can refer to it as the Pentateuch or you can simply refer to it as the Torah.

And the word Torah means Law. So the Pentateuch means five scrolls or five books. The word Torah means Law or Instruction. And I want to read a quote from Griffith Thomas on the Pentateuch. The five books of the Pentateuch record the introduction of the divine religion into the world.

Each book gives one phase of God's plan and together they constitute a real unity. Genesis speaks of the origin of the religion and of the people of God chosen as its medium. Exodus records the formation of the people into a nation and the establishment of God's relationship with it.

Leviticus shows the various ways in which the relationship was maintained. Numbers shows how the people were organized for the purpose of commencing the life of divine religion in the promised land. This book also tells of the nation's failure and the consequent delay with reorganization.

Then Deuteronomy shows how the people were prepared while on the border of the promised land for entry was soon to follow. So that is Griffith Thomas' explanation of the unity and the familial nature of the first five books of the Bible.

Each one essentially rolls into the next giving a full account of not only creation but all the way into the creation of a nation. You have God's word showing the creation of man and then God's choosing of one of those men to be his vessel out of which a nation would come to be the recipient of his blessing and his law.

Since the whole Bible is reliant upon these five books, it stands to reason why they are so often attacked. If faith in the integrity and authenticity of the first five books can be undermined, the foundations of Christianity itself would be shaken for it is dependent upon the truth of what these books proclaim.

Don't ever let anyone fool you. Don't ever let anyone say, as Christians we don't need the Old Testament. As Christians we can do away with the Old Testament. In fact, recently, and when I say recently, remember how my mind works.

I feel like yesterday was 1999, so it's hard sometimes when I say recently. I mean, it could be a few years ago, but relatively recently, within the last few years, there was a very well-known and influential pastor up in Georgia who made waves because he encouraged the church, in a sense his church, but the church in the greater scheme, the larger universal church, to essentially unhitch.

That was the language he used. To unhitch the belief in Christ from the Old Testament. We need to unhitch from the Old Testament. He would later backpedal and come out and sort of step back and say, well, maybe his words were a little ill-informed.

But honestly, though, if you've ever listened to any amount of his teaching and preaching for any length of time, it fits into the narrative that he has created because he has created a Christianity that doesn't need the Old Testament.

And if you listen to what he says, a lot of times it's the only thing that we have faith in is the resurrection. That's the foundation of our faith. We don't believe in a book, we believe in an event.

We believe in the resurrection. That's the basis of his argument. The problem is that event is found in a book. And the moment you begin to destroy the foundations of that book, then that event that you are so willing to base everything on becomes a problem as well.

You see, the Bible does stand or fall together. And while a lot of people take issue with that, we really shouldn't. We should see the Bible as a whole unit and understand that the foundations of that Bible are in the first five books.

Think about what all is in these first five books. The identity of God. The explanation of His nature. The understanding of how He is satisfied through the process of propitiation and sacrifice. The way that He is holy and identifies Himself as holy.

And even says to Moses, after the death of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who offered strange fire before the Lord, He says to them, He says to the man, the uncle of the two men that were just killed, as the father stands there grieving, God says to him, among those who approach Me, I will be regarded as holy.

He doesn't apologize. He doesn't beg Aaron's forgiveness for taking his sons. He says, those who approach Me will understand that I am holy. And if they do not, if they come to Me offering a strange fire, if they come to Me offering what I have not commanded, they will see My wrath.

You see, God invests in these five books His character. What is the law of God if not an explanation of His own nature? And who He is. And so we cannot abandon these books. We cannot write these books off.

These books are the very foundations. I'll give you an example. You all are probably familiar with this name. His name is Ken Ham. He's with Answers in Genesis. And he has a PowerPoint presentation that I've seen him give several times.

And the PowerPoint presentation is two castles. And one castle is supposed to be Christianity. And the other castle is supposed to be ungodly, worldly thinking. I forget what word he uses. But it's basically the world.

So you have the church and the world. And from this castle, the church, they're firing arrows over the top. And this castle over here, the world, is firing cannons at the foundation. Which one's going to succeed?

Well, we know the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. The world will never succeed in destroying the church. But at the same time, the point in the visual is very well made. The point is, the attack that comes against the word is at the foundations of the word.

The attack that comes against the word is against the very beginning. Because it's well established that if you can pull that thread and get that piece of cloth to begin to unweave, it will fall apart.

The Documentary Hypothesis and Moses as the Author of the Law

One of the most famous attacks against the Pentateuch is called the Documentary Hypothesis. I think if you are taking notes, that would be a good thing to write down. The Documentary Hypothesis. The Documentary Hypothesis regards the authorship of the Pentateuch particularly.

The first five books of the Bible. As conservative Christians, and I call myself a conservative in the sense that I believe, some might call me a fundamentalist. But I would maybe prefer just the term biblical Christian.

Or maybe conservative. One who believes in the traditions of the faith. That's what conservative means. It means to conserve tradition. And so, as opposed to liberal, which means to be free from tradition.

Or to be loosed. And so, when we consider the traditional conservative interpretation of the authorship of the Pentateuch, the author is Moses. Okay? So, when we say the Pentateuch, the Torah, it's the books of Moses.

That's another way of saying it. And that's the traditional understanding of the authorship. However, the Documentary Hypothesis proposes that Genesis through Deuteronomy was not written by Moses, but instead was written by four different groups of people.

Not even one other person. As if it wasn't written by Moses, but it was written by some later person. No, it proposes the idea that Genesis through Deuteronomy is written by four different, essentially four different committees.

Four different groups that have had their hand in the writing of the Pentateuch. And the Documentary Hypothesis proposes that it was not completed during the Exodus. By the way, if Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, then it had to have been written during the Exodus, during the wilderness wanderings.

That's when it would have been written. Because certainly Moses would not have written it in the first 40 years of his life when he was in Egypt. He certainly probably would not have written it in the second 40 years of his life.

But he would have written it during the time of his leading the people of God. So if you go through Numbers particularly, you'll see it's almost as if it's a daily account of what's happening. And so this is being written and what's being written.

And I'm not saying he never would use a scribe or an amanuensis, someone who would write for him. I'm not saying that there was never a time that he dictated. And I'm also not saying that every single word was written by him.

Because I do believe the ending of Deuteronomy would have had to have been written by someone else. Because it tells of Moses' death. And so in that regard, I'm not saying every single word. But the traditional understanding is that Moses wrote it.

The documentary hypothesis comes along and says, No, there are at least four different groups. You have the J-E-P-D. And I'll write that down. J-E-P-D. And the J-E-P-D stands for... First, well, the J is what we might refer to as the Jehovah's, but would actually be pronounced the Yahweh's.

And that is the... I'll write that, Yahweh's. The Yahweh's, there should be a H in there, I'm sorry. Y-A-H-W-I-S-T. Y-A-H-W-I-S-T. That would be whenever we see the name Yahweh. They would say, when you see the name Yahweh, you know we're dealing with the Yahwist group.

Because that's what they called God. Okay? And the E stands for the Elohist. And the Elohist is the Hebrew word Elohim. And so they would say that the second group... Anytime you see Elohim, that's what they called God.

And so you can make a distinction. Right away, there's a problem, though. Because while Genesis chapter 1, the word Elohim is used, and Genesis chapter 2, the word Yahweh, or Jehovah, is used, Genesis chapter 2 uses both together.

In Genesis 2 -4, it says, these are the generations of the heavens and the earth when Yahweh Elohim made the earth and the heavens. The phrase, it doesn't use one or the other, it uses both. And so to say that the Yahwists wrote this portion and the Elohists wrote this portion, well, what about when they're together?

See, right away we have to remember this. Elohim refers to God's nature. And Yahweh refers to God's name. Elohim is what God is. Yahweh is who God is. So when we call Him Yahweh Elohim, we are saying He is Lord God.

Or He is Yahweh God. So right away, I'm sort of getting ahead of myself because I'm debunking it as I go. But the other two are what is known as the Priestly. And that's not Jason Priestly, for those of you who lived in the 90s, and that would be relevant for...

Okay, nobody? All right. I saw a smile over there. I think, you know, Jason Priestly was a very... had a very small window of success in the 90s. 90210, yes, thank you. And then the D stands for the Deuteronomic.

The Deuteronomic, which is basically like writing Deuteronomy, but instead of Deuteronomy, it's Deuteronomic. And they would say, ultimately, there was a Priestly group that would have been largely responsible for writing Leviticus because Leviticus deals with the ministration of the priests.

And there would have been a Deuteronomic group who was primarily responsible for writing Deuteronomy. So you see now what the documentary hypothesis is proposing. It's proposing four groups that all had a hand in the production of the Pentateuch.

And all four of these committees essentially contributed their portions. And at a certain point in history, sometime much later in history, a patchwork was brought together. Some even believe that it was not brought together until sometime around the 5th century BC, which would have been around the time of Ezra.

I mean, that's much, much later than the traditional dating of 1400 BC, the time of Moses. A thousand years of distinction. So, Dr. Unger says this about the documentary hypothesis. He says, If it were true, the Pentateuch would be inauthentic, unhistoric, and unreliable.

A fabrication of men, not a work of God. Because it removes the supernatural elements of the origin of the books. It encourages an evolutionary mindset. Not evolution in the sense of evolution of man, but an evolution of religious thought.

And it allows us to cherry pick what's true and what's not. Because if it wasn't revelation given by God to Moses, then it's simply four committees coming together to decide what they think God is like.

And therefore, we have no reason to see the first five books as divinely authoritative. And some people might say, Well, why do we need to know this? Well, this is probably the most popular, if not the most popular, teaching about the authorship of the Pentateuch that is given in most colleges and even some seminaries.

How many of you have ever heard the name Jordan Peterson? Jordan Peterson is a social commentator. He is a psychologist. He's said some really smart things. I don't want to say that he hasn't made some worthwhile contributions to the world.

I read his book and I've spent some time looking into what he has said. But here's what I learned when I read his book. He takes the documentary hypothesis for granted. And therefore, if you read Twelve Rules for Life, which is the book by Jordan Peterson, the very first thing you'll notice is when he talks about the Bible, he mentions the Yahwist and he mentions the Elohist.

As if it's not even a debate. As if there's no question. Well, this is why they said that and this is why they said that. And it's accepted as if it were not contestable. Well, it is contestable. Because though this is a popular theory among unbelievers, I don't think believers should be moved by it at all.

And I'll give you four reasons. Four reasons why I don't accept the documentary hypothesis. Four reasons why I can't talk. No, four reasons why I don't accept the documentary hypothesis. Number one, there is no manuscript evidence to support any type of editorial work that it suggests and must have included.

Think about what it would take. Especially if the books of Moses were not around until the 5th century. Think about what it would take. What was David talking about when he was saying about the law and he was proclaiming the blessedness of God's law in Psalm 119?

He talks about the law, the law, the law. What is he referring to if not the books of Moses? There is no manuscript evidence to support this claim. Number two, there is wide disagreement among those who hold this theory about where the divisions should be.

There is no agreement among those who hold it as to who wrote which part. It's just a theory that it must have had multiple authors because, well, we say so. There is no agreement as to who supposedly wrote which part except for us to say the portions with this name or that name.

But there's no universal agreement. Number three, there is archaeological support for the writings, customs, and religious knowledge that the books contain as being ancient. I know these are long points.

They're not easy points. Let me say that again. There is archaeological support for the writings, customs, and religious knowledge as being ancient. Basically what that's saying is those things that it writes about and says, archaeology agrees that this is the way the world was at that time.

The fourth one is the one that convinces me the most and the one that I really am most, as far as evidentially. There is an internal unity and coherence that does not support a cut-and-paste origin.

There is an internal coherence and unity that does not support a cut-and-paste origin. But if that doesn't convince you, if those four reasons is not enough, I would point you to the very main reason why Christians, of course, should believe Moses wrote the law, and that is because Jesus says he wrote it.

And so if there were a question, I would consult John chapter 5, verses 45 to 47. I want you to listen to what Jesus says. 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. So, right there from the mouth of Jesus. Now, certainly he doesn't say, Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy. They didn't even call it Genesis through Deuteronomy at that time.

But what he does say is something implicit that's important. He says, Moses condemns you. What condemns them? The law. And so there's an implied statement that what Moses wrote is what's the condemning agent, and the condemning agent is the written law.

BJ, you had your hand up, buddy. That was John 5, 45 and 46, and then 47 says this, but if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? That's huge. Jesus said, if you don't believe what Moses wrote, how are you going to believe what I'm saying?

So, twice he tells us Moses wrote. In that, he implies that Moses wrote the law, and he says if you don't believe Moses wrote the law, how are you going to believe me? I mean, that verse, we should scribe that out and post it.

Because that's just such a powerful thought. So, I have, as a Christian, as a believer in the word of God, as somebody who does take the traditional position on this, I have no reason to not accept that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, with some very brief exceptions.

And of course, sitting at the beginning of the Pentateuch is the book that we're going to spend the next few minutes talking about, and that is the book of Genesis. So, let's turn our attention now to Genesis.

I'm just going to take a sip here before we move on. Many of you know, because some of you used to come on Sunday morning, that we are currently going through the book of Genesis, verse by verse, in our Sunday morning service.

I've been doing that since September of last year. I am preaching chapter 2, verse 7 this Sunday. So, it's taken a little bit of time to get to where we are. So, for me to condense Genesis into the next 15 minutes or so is going to hurt a lot.

But you notice I started tonight right off the bat. I just welcomed you, because there's so much. I didn't want to speed through this. So, let's begin by talking about Genesis. The book of Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch, and the word Genesis is a Greek term, and it means beginnings.

It means beginnings. In Hebrew, the name of the book is Bereshith, and the word Bereshith means in the beginning. It's the very first words of the Hebrew Bible. Bereshith is in the beginning, and so that's what they call Genesis.

We would call it Genesis. The word Genesis has this word in it, which we should all be familiar with, the word gene. You think about your genes as where you're from, your origin, your genes. So, that word in Greek, gene, in the Greek means the beginning of something, or the root, or the source of something.

So, Genesis is the source. It's the beginning. And the big question that we have to ask ourselves as we begin to invest a look at Genesis is the question of literary type. Because when you're interpreting a book, it's essential that you know what type of literature you're interpreting.

If you pick up a poetry book and try to interpret it according to the rules of didactic or narrative writing, then you're not going to come to the right conclusions. And so, many people believe that Genesis falls into the category of mythology.

And, obviously, I don't. But, remember, when you think about the world, and you think about, I mean, there's almost 8 billion people now in the world. And, according to most statistical analysis, somewhere around 2 billion of those people would identify as Christians.

Most of them are Roman Catholic. So, the idea of 6 billion people are not Christians. And then, of course, you have Jews and Muslims, many of which do accept the early part of Genesis as being accurate and true.

But, still, even within Christianity, there are people who would look at Genesis and say, A garden? A woman came out of a guy's rib? He was made out of dust? A snake was talking? Are you for real? I mean, seriously.

So, you understand the attitude of mythology. Run over to Numbers and there's a donkey who talks. You ever wonder where they got the idea for Shrek? That's a flying talking donkey. I know. Why do you beat me?

I'll give you a quick, quick anecdote. I had to preach for my homiletics class when I was in seminary, and I preached that passage. I love Numbers and I love that narrative. And so, it's just funny to think about that story.

And, by the way, the whole idea of Genesis being mythology, this is one of the reasons why I do not support teaching the Bible in school. Everybody's, Oh, we need the Bible taught in school. No, we don't.

Because it will be taught as mythology at best. Even to the point it could be taught as hate literature. I mean, you know, it talks about slavery. It talks about all kinds of things that could be misread and misinterpreted and used to bear false witness against God if misread.

Huh? Yeah, sexism, racism, slavery, all kinds of things, misogyny, all kinds of things could be laid at the feet of Scripture if read out of context and seeking to find something about which to argue.

So, I don't support reading or teaching the Bible in schools in the way that most people do. Everybody gets excited. Oh, you know, we're going to see the Bible taught in school. Slow down. If you want the Bible taught to your children, teach the Bible to your children.

It's your job. Now I'm getting a little off track. But that's your mom and dad, if you are. It's your job. Teach your kids the Scripture. So, what is Genesis? Is Genesis mythology? Well, it certainly has parts that would lend that direction if we allow our minds to go there.

A woman turns to salt. Remember that? Lot's wife. Remember Lot's wife. That was one of Billy Graham's most famous sermons. It was entitled, Remember Lot's Wife. While poetic portions certainly do exist within Genesis, it is my contention and the contention of this class that Genesis stands primarily as historical narrative.

And the reason why I believe that it is historical narrative is because it is written in the form of the historical narrative. For instance, one of the things that we find in the book of Genesis ten times is genealogies.

And we do not typically find genealogies in mythology. Genealogies are intended to take people back in history to a particular point in time and a particular people. And therefore, the inclusion of genealogies in Genesis would lead us to believe that it's written in the form of the historic narrative.

Genesis is broken into two primary divisions. The first division is in chapter 1 to 11. We call that primitive history. Chapters 12 through 50 is patriarchal history. Or patriarchal history. We have the first...

Yes, sir? 1 through 11 is primitive history. The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell us about the creation of man. The second section, chapter 12 through 50, tell us about the creation of the nation of Israel.

One of the phrases that you see in Genesis over and over and over ten times is the phrase Toledot. Toledot means in the generations of. And we see this in chapter 2. We see this in chapter 5. We see this throughout Genesis in generations of.

And it always precedes a list of names. In the generation of this person, you have these people following. And those are the marking posts of Genesis. Because it's telling a story. It's telling a story first of the creation of man, then the creation of the nation of Israel.

One of the things that we must realize is that while Genesis is accurate and true in all that it says, it is not intended to answer all of our scientific questions. And it is not a textbook. Or it's not a science textbook like you would have in school.

Now having said that, I'm not saying it's unscientific. But it doesn't use the same language that we would use today. Genesis uses something called phenomenological language. Phenomenological language simply means the language of appearance.

A phenomenon, it's something that you see. It's something that appears. So phenomenological is the language of appearance. So, what time did the sun rise this morning? 6 .30? But did it really? No, that's not what I meant.

What I mean is when we say the sun rises, that is phenomenological language. Because the sun is not what's moving. Well, it is moving, but it's not moving in the sense of what we see. We see the sun come up.

We see the sun make a circuit in the sky. We see the sun go down. Even the book of Psalms talks about the sun coming out in the daytime and making its circuit and going back into its rest at night. Because that's what we see.

That's called the language of appearance. It's not actually what's happening. What's happening is we're turning in a direction. And what we see as the sun moving is actually us moving. Unless, of course, you're a flat earth person.

If you're a flat earth person, then the sun is moving. But that's a conversation for another time. The point is if you take the heliocentric view, which is the view that the sun is in the center of our solar system and that we are moving around the sun, then to say that the sun rises is actually wrong scientifically.

But nobody ever calls the weatherman and says, Hey weatherman, you got it wrong when you said the sun rose at 7 .30 this morning. Because why would we be so foolish as to think that that's what he meant?

What's that? Okay. You understand the point. When we come into the scripture, we see the use of phenomenological languages in certain things. And so we have to understand that not everything is intended to be understood as scientific.

But neither is it being deceptive. It's giving the language of appearance. This is what was seen. This is what would have been seen. Genesis also makes claims that science cannot account for. Science cannot account for the supernatural.

Why? Because science is the study of the natural. Therefore, it cannot account for the supernatural. Science is by its very nature anti-supernatural because it's not attempting to explain the supernatural.

What do they call things in science that they can't explain? An act of God. Right? We don't know what that was. It was an act of God. Somebody's sick. They're dying. The medicine has not helped them. And miraculously they are healed.

They say, it must have been divine intervention. It must have been an act of God. Right? Because there's no explanation scientifically for why this person who was riddled with cancer is now completely cancer free.

Right? We know it doesn't happen a lot, but we know that it has happened. And therefore, there are things that are not understood scientifically. And think about Genesis. God created the world out of nothing.

Right away, that's unscientific. Because you can't get something from nothing. It's impossible. It's the rule of ex nihilo nihil fit. It means out of nothing, nothing comes. If you have a jar of nothing and you put it on a shelf for four billion years and go back to it, it's still going to have nothing in it because nothing produces nothing.

But the Bible says God created all things, ex nihilo, out of nothing. He spoke and it was. That's a miracle. Creation itself is a miracle. And therefore, science cannot account for miracle. It's not supposed to.

It's not its purpose. Science is in the realm of the natural. And it's limited to the realm of the natural. So when we're dealing with, for instance, when we get to Exodus, the water stands as a heap on both sides.

Guess what water doesn't do? Stand up. Water don't stand up. If I pour water out right here, it will never stand up. It'll flood. It will disperse. It will spread. And it will fall into the cracks. And it will soak the floor.

But it will never get one inch high off the ground. Unless there's something to hold it up. But the Bible says in Exodus, it says when the people of Israel walked through the Red Sea, it says the water stood as a heap on both sides.

And they walked through on dry ground. Stood as a heap. Water doesn't do that. So what do the scientists come in and say? Couldn't have happened. It's unscientific. Well, we're not dealing with science.

We're not dealing with the natural. We're dealing with the supernatural. See, the problem with most scientists is the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism. That was the title of my master's thesis.

It was the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism. I was trying to be fancy and use a big name. But it really was. The point of the thesis was the problem with modern science is the presupposition that there is nothing outside the natural.

And that's where science is limited to. And I appreciate that. Scientists cannot study the supernatural. And that's okay. But they deny it because they can't study it. That's not okay. Okay, I've gotten, again, I see these little rabbit trails I end up down.

But the point is Genesis is not unscientific, but it deals with things that science cannot quantify, specifically miracles and supernatural events. And we could say that for Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy 2, particularly the talking donkey.

That's something that science cannot answer. God spoke through the donkey. Okay, it's not as if the donkey learned how to speak. That's not the point. It's not as if that one donkey was born with vocal cords.

That's not the point. Something to consider. When it comes to creation, Genesis is primarily concerned with the who and the why more than the how and the when. Let me say that again. Genesis is primarily concerned with the who, God, and the why, His glory, than the how, how it all went, and the when.

But what do we almost always argue about? The how and the when. How did God really make the world out of nothing, and when did He do it? Did He do it 6 ,000 years ago, or did He do it 4 .5 billion years ago?

And Genesis doesn't seek to answer that question. Now, I'm not saying we can't have an opinion. I have an opinion. I tend to be a young earth creationist, meaning I don't think the earth is as old as science, because, again, science is limited to the natural and has to study the natural, and because they are limited, I think they've gotten that wrong.

But at the end of the day, I can say if somebody has a difference of opinion about the age of the earth, I'm not going to write them out of the kingdom. I think Hugh Ross is a brother in Christ, and he is a scientist who believes in an old earth creation model.

I don't write him out of the kingdom. I just disagree. I've read his books. I've had an opportunity to hear him teach. I think he's very brilliant, and I'm glad he's on our side in one sense. I'm glad he's a believer.

But I don't have to agree with everything that he says. I don't agree with everything Ken Ham says. But you understand the point. The Bible's focus is on God and why he's doing what he's doing. He's doing what he's doing to glorify himself.

The whole Bible is written to one end, the glory of God. You exist for one purpose, the glory of God, and you will glorify God no matter what, because you will either glorify God as an object of his mercy or you will glorify God as an object of his divine justice.

That's it. In the end, you will glorify God because that is the very reason for which you were created. You weren't created to be happy. I'm not saying it's wrong to be happy, but everybody thinks the goal of life is happiness.

If anything, the goal of life is holiness. Not happiness. Because the goal of life is to glorify God and how better to glorify the holy God than to be holy as he is holy. People always say, I just know God wants me to be happy so I'm going to do this sin.

Slow down. Are you really sure? I'm certain. That's a dangerous certainty. Write this verse down, Matthew 19, 3 through 9. Matthew 19, 3 through 9. Jesus quotes Genesis 1 and 2. I talked about this Sunday in my last sermon.

Jesus quotes Genesis 1 and 2 when he's asked about the subject of marriage and divorce. Jesus said, From the beginning, Moses wrote, from the beginning, God created them, male and female, and for this reason, a man should leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh.

He quotes from Genesis 1 .27 and Genesis 2 .24. He quotes two verses. By the way, the documentary hypothesis people, they would say a different person wrote chapter 1 than wrote chapter 2. Jesus quotes from both and says both was written by Moses in Matthew 19.

So we have every reason to believe Moses wrote it and we have every reason to believe that it's true because Jesus says it's true. Again, is he not the very foundation for our faith? And when he says Moses wrote it and it's true, he's citing it as a source of truth, then there lays again another layer of foundation.

Now, we've spent a lot of time in Genesis and I know we have four other books to get to, but understand this, so much of the next four books rest upon what we have in Genesis. I want to say just a couple more things and then we'll move on.

What is the theme of Genesis? Genesis begins with the grand narrative that encapsulates three major points. Creation, fall, redemption. That is the major theme of the book. Creation, fall, and redemption.

And how does Genesis deal with redemption? It's the calling out of a peculiar people, Israel, from the descendants of Abraham. That's the redemption line, right? The redemption through the promise given by God to Abraham in Genesis 12.

We have the very first covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 12. So we have creation, fall, redemption. That's the grand meta-narrative of the whole Bible, but in small form, it's the meta-narrative of Genesis.